One does not expect to find in a remote and wholly Buddhist village many other animals than horses, and in this community the additional live stock consists of ten goats (kept for giving milk for invalids), two pigs and a number of poultry. A working horse over four years was worth 150 yen. The value of land[196] is to be considered in relation to local standards of value. It is doubtful if the priest, who seemed to be comfortably off, is in receipt of more than 250 yen a year. The midwife, who belongs to the oldest family and has been trained in Tokyo, gets from 2 to 2-1/2 yen per case. As new land is always available on the hillsides there is very little emigration to the towns, but twenty girls are working in the factories in the big silk-reeling centre twelve miles off. The hillside land which is owned by the village is not sold but rented to those who want it. To make new paddies is primarily a question of having enough capital with which to buy the artificial manure required for the crops. I was given to understand that no one in the village was poor enough to need public help, but that the school fees of twelve children were paid by the community. This is a system peculiar to Nagano, which is a progressive prefecture vying with other prefectures to increase the percentage of school attendance. One of the signs of the well-off character of the village which appears when one is able to investigate a little is that the place is a favourite haunt of beggars, who, I am told--every calling is organised--have made it over to the less fortunate members of their fraternity. The village has enough money to spend to make it worth while for tradesmen from a distance to open temporary shops every _Bon_ season and at the New Year festival. A man in an average position may lay out 200 yen on his daughter's wedding. A farmer who knew his fellow-villagers' position pretty closely said he thought that the position of tenant farmers was "rather well." In the whole village there might be seventy or eighty householders who had some debt, but it was justifiable. In an ordinary year about 150 farmers would have something to lay by after their twelve months' work. Perhaps fifty farmers, if the price of rice or of cocoons were low, might be unable to save; but ordinarily they would have something in their pockets. About half the farmers are engaged in sericulture--I noticed cocoons offered at the shrine. The other half sell their mulberry leaf crop to their neighbours. The village, which is perhaps 400 years old, is increasing in population by about forty every year. The family which is said to have founded the village is still largely represented in it. [Illustration: FIRE ENGINE AND PRIMITIVE FIGURES]