In the evening I talked with two distinguished men until a late hour. "We are not a metaphysical people," one of them said. "Nor were our forefathers as religious as some students may suppose. Those who went before us gave to the Buddhist shrine and even worshipped there, but their daily life and their religion had no close connection. We did not define religion closely. Religion has phases according to the degree of public instruction. Our religion has had more to do with propitiation and good fortune than with morality. If you had come here a century ago you would have been unable to find even then religion after another pattern. If it be said that a man must be religious in order to be good the person who says so does not look about him. I am not afraid to say that our people are good as a result of long training in good behaviour. Their good character is due to the same causes as the freedom from rowdiness which may be marked in our crowds." "What is wanted in the villages," said the other personage, "is one good personality in each." I said that the young men's association seemed to me to be often a dull thing, chiefly indeed a mechanism by means of which serious persons in a village got the young men to work overtime. "Yes," was the response, "the old men make the young fellows work." The first speaker said that there had been three watchwords for the rural districts. "There was Industrialisation and Increase of Production. There was Public Spirit and Public Welfare. There was The Shinto Shrine the Centre of the Village. We have a certain conception of a model village, but perhaps some hypocrisy may mingle with it. They say that the village with well-kept Buddhist and Shinto shrines is generally a good village." "In other words," I ventured, "the village where there is some non-material feeling." The rejoinder was: "Western religion is too high, and, I fear, inapplicable to our life. It may be that we are too easily contented. But there are nearly 60 millions of us. I do not know that we feel a need or have a vacant place for religion. There is certainly not much hope for an increase of the influence of Buddhism." As we went along in the train I was told that on a sixth of the rice area in Tottori there had been a loss of 70 per cent. by wind. When a man's harvest loss exceeds this percentage he is not liable for rates and taxes. A passenger told me about "nursery pasture." This is a patch of grass in the hills to which a farmer sends his ox to be pastured in common with the oxen of other farmers under the care of a single herdsman. It is from cattle keeping on this modest scale that the present beef requirements of the country are largely met.[194]