The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country. Japanese æstheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the smoking chimneys of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the Parliamentary and administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly worldwide diplomacy are all borne on the bent backs of _Ohyakusho no Fufu_,[4] the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The depositories of the authentic _Yamato damashii_ (Japanese spirit) are to be found knee deep in the sludge of their paddy fields. One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath that surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to discover the _foundations_ of the Japan which is intent on cutting such a figure in the East and in the West. There it is possible to learn not only what Japan is but what she may have it in her to become. A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young and Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone of a healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close acquaintance with the rural civilisation of two pre-eminently small-holdings countries, Holland and Denmark, but by what I knew to be precious in the rural life of my own land. An interest in rural problems cannot be simulated. As I journeyed about the country the sincerity of my purpose--there are few words in commoner use in the Far East than sincerity--was recognised and appreciated. I enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had been broken down and those who spoke said what they felt. We inevitably discussed not only agricultural economy but life, religion and morality, and the way Japan was taking.