I tried to find out what the _oaza_ might be spending on religion. The Shinto priest seemed to get 5 sen a month per family, which as there are eighty families would be 48 yen yearly. The Buddhist priest had land attached to his temple and money was given him at burials and at the _Bon_ season. The _oaza_ might spend 100 yen a year to send five pilgrims as far away as Yamagata, on the other side of Japan. The priests did not seem to count for much. "Their only concern with the public," I was informed, "is to be succoured by it. They are living very painfully. The Buddhist priests have to send money to their sect at Kyoto." In one of my strolls I passed the Shinto priest carrying a rice basket and looking, as my companion said, "just like any other man." At a shrine I saw a number of bowls hung up. A hole cut in the bottom of each seemed a pathetic symbol of need, material or spiritual. The keeper of the teahouse in the _oaza_ had been given a small sum by our host to take himself off, but in the village of which the _oaza_ formed a part there were two teahouses, where ten times as much was spent as was laid out on religion. No one had ever heard of a case of illegitimacy in the _oaza_ but there had been in the twelve months three cases which pointed to abortion. It was five years since there had been an arrest. The young men's association helped twice a year families whose boys had been conscripted. According to what I was told in various quarters, some landowners in Chiba did a certain amount of public work but most devoted themselves to indoor trivialities. The fact that two banks had recently broken at the next town, one for a quarter of a million yen, and that a landowner had lost a total of 30,000 yen in these smashes, seemed to show that there was a certain amount of money somewhere in the district. No one appeared to "waste time on politics." In ten years "there had been one or two politicians," but "one member of Parliament set a wholesome example by losing a great deal of money in politics." As to local politics, election to the prefectural assembly seemed to cost about 500 yen. Membership of the village assembly might mean "a cup of _saké_ apiece to the electors." I was assured that this hamlet was above the economic level of the county. The belief was expressed that it could maintain that position for three or four years. "I do not feel so much anxiety about the present condition of the people," my host said; "they are passive enough: but as to the future it is a difficult and almost insoluble question." "The condition of our rural life is the most difficult question in Japan," said a fellow guest.