"On the other hand the position of the farmer has been very much improved socially. A great deal of pity bestowed by the casual foreign visitor is wasted. The farmer is accustomed to extremes of heat and cold and to a bare living and poor shelter. And after all there is a great deal of happiness in the villages. It is hardly possible to take a day's kuruma ride without coming on a festival somewhere, and drunkenness has undoubtedly diminished."
I spoke with an old resident about the agricultural advance in the prefecture. "In fifteen years," he said, "our agricultural production has doubled. As to the non-material condition of the people, generally speaking the villagers are very shallow in their religion. Not so long ago officials used to laugh at religion, but I don't know that some of them are not now changing their point of view. Some of us have thought that, just as we made a Japanese Buddhism, we might make a Japanese Christianity which would not conflict with our ideas."
FOOTNOTES:
[ [192] This is, I am officially informed, the highest rank ever bestowed on a foreigner; but then Hearn was naturalised. In 1921 an appreciation of "Koizumi Yakumo" was included by the Department of Education in a middle-school textbook. Curiously enough, the fact that Hearn married a Japanese is overlooked. Owing to the fact that Hearn bought land in Tokyo which has appreciated in value his family is in comfortable circumstances.
[ [193] Coastwise traffic is also forbidden to foreign vessels, as is traffic between France and Algeria to other than French vessels.
[ [194] See [Appendix LIII].