[112] It will be remembered that this conversation took place in the summer of 1915 at the outset of my investigation. Since then, as noted throughout this book, economic questions have increasingly pressed themselves forward. I may mention that in 1919 Yanagi wrote a vigorous and moving protest against misgovernment in Korea. In a recent letter to me he says: "You know that I am going to establish a Korean Folk Art Society in Seoul. This is a big work, but I want to do it with all my power for love of Korea. I approach the solution of the Korean question by the way of Art. Politics can never solve the question. I want to use the gallery as a meeting-place of Koreans and Japanese. People cannot quarrel in beauty. This is my simple yet definite belief." Yanagi's manifesto on his project made one think of the age when the great culture of China and India glowed across the straits of Tsushima in the wake of early Buddhism. [113] A well-known member of the Shirakaba group started two years ago an "ideal village" among the mountains. It is an effort towards social freedom in which the police manifest a continuous interest. ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND BACK) CHAPTER XII TO THE HILLS (TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA) Nothing which concerns a _countryman_ is a matter of unconcern to me.--TERENCE During the month of July I went from one side of Japan to the other, starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which lies America, and coming out at Niigata, across the sea from which lies Siberia. We first made a four hours' railway run through the great Kwanto plain (6,000 square miles). Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for travellers take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy--he has the word "Boy" on his collar in English--brings fans and bedroom slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised "Hotels in European style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway[114]," offered on the other a poem and a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful _hokku_ (seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the humblest creatures. One poem is: Come and play with me, Thou orphan sparrow! Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse. As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher lands someone recalled the saying about saints living in the mountains and sages by the sea. Speaking of religion, one man said that he had known of people giving half their income to religious purposes. He also mentioned that for some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in a Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still served her Buddhist shrine.