I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master craftsmen in Japan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great hoarding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without will. The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings was also adopted outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a hundred yen to one yen. The charge to scholars at this school, I found, was 10 sen per month during the first compulsory six years and 30 sen during the next two years. Just after Christmas I walked again into the country. There were miles of dreary brown paddies with the stubble in puddles. On the non-paddy land there was the refreshing green of young corn which seemed greatly to enjoy being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot dip in the opening. In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked _daikon_. Such malformed roots used to be presented to shrines by women desirous of having children. In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to examine the dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among a host of other particulars about a certain person's origin and condition I read that he was a minor when his father died, that such and such a person acted as his guardian, that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her husband's death.