"

I could not but compare the undulating countryside, on which so vast
an amount of labour had been expended, with what it would have been
under European treatment and the influence of an European
climate--possibly picturesque pasture with high hedges. The congeries
of rice fields was fringed, where the water supply had given out, with
upland cultivation. On the low mud walls which separated the paddies
beans grew except at a boundary corner, where a tea or mulberry bush
served as a landmark. In looking down or up the little valleys one saw
how completely the houses had been brushed aside to the foot of the
low hills so that no land cultivable as paddies should be wasted. This
intensely developed countryside was not however ideal land. It was
often much too sandy. Not a few paddies had to depend to some extent
on the water they could catch for themselves. A naturally draughty and
hungry land was yielding crops by a laborious manurial improvement of
its physical and chemical condition, by wonders being wrought in rural
hydraulics and by unending industry in cultivation and petty
engineering.

It might be supposed that beauty had gone from the countryside. Some
of what the land agents call the amenities of the district had
certainly disappeared. There seemed to be nowhere for the pedestrian
to sit down in order to refresh himself with those rural sights and
sounds which exhilarate the spirit. But this marvellously delved,
methodised and trimmed countryside had a character and a stimulus of
its own. It reflected the energy and persistence that had subdued it.
I saw nothing ugly. The tidied rice plots, shaped at every possible
curve and angle, and eloquent of centuries of unremitting toil; the
upland beyond them, worked to a skilled perfection of finish; the
nesting houses which nowhere offended the eye; the big still ponds
contrived by the rude forefathers of the hamlet for water storage or
the succour of the rice in the hottest weather; the low hilltops green
with pine because cultivation could not ascend so far, and hiding here
and there a Shinto sanctuary: such a countryside was satisfying in its
own way.

In Chiba, as in other prefectures, one is impressed by the way in
which the exertions of many generations have resulted in the levelling
of wide areas and even the complete removal of small hills. In many
places one can still see low hills in process of demolition. In Tokyo
itself several small hills have been ca