Although the average geisha may be inane in her patter and have little more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic ability. Alas, behind the merry laugh and sprightliness of the girls who adorn a feast lurks a skeleton. One is haunted by thoughts of the future of a large proportion of these butterflies. No doubt most foreigners generalise too freely in identifying the professions of geisha and _joro_. In the present organisation of society some geisha play a legitimate rôle. They gain in the career for which they have laboriously trained an outlet for the expression of artistic and social gifts which would have been denied them in domestic life. At the same time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration the temptation to drink is great. The opening of new avenues to feminine ability, the enlarged opportunities of education and self-respect and the increasing opening for women on the stage--from which women have been excluded hitherto--must have their effect in turning the minds of girls of wit and originality to other means of earning a living than the morally and physically hazardous profession of the geisha. When we left Matsue by steamer on our way to Tottori prefecture I saw middle-school eights at practice. An agriculturist told me of the custom of giving holidays to oxen and horses. The villagers carefully brush their animals, decorate them and lead them to pastures where, tethered to rings attached to a long rope, "they may graze together pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore the name of the giant radish, Daikon, which is itself a corruption of the word for octopus. The island devoted itself mainly to the growing of peonies and ginseng. The ginseng is largely exported to China and Korea, but there is a certain consumption in Japan. Ginseng is sometimes chewed, but is generally soaked, the liquid being drunk. Ginseng is popularly supposed to be an invigorant, and Japanese doctors in Korea have lately declared that it has some value. The root is costly, hence the proverb about eating ginseng and hanging oneself, i.e. getting into debt.