with their satchels on their backs to the village school in democratic
Japanese fashion. Japan is a much more democratic country than the
tourist imagines. Distinctions of class are accompanied by easy
relations in many important matters.

I went for a second time to the restful city of Nagoya. It is out of
the sphere of influence of Tokyo and is conservative of old ideas.
People live with less display than in the capital and perhaps pride
themselves on doing so. But if the houses of even the well-to-do are
small and inconspicuous, the interiors are of satisfying quality in
materials and workmanship, and the family godowns bring forth
surprises. Here as elsewhere the guest is served in treasured lacquer
and porcelain. (While we are not accustomed in the West to look at the
marks on our host's table silver, it is perfect Japanese manners to
admire a food bowl by examining the potter's marks.) My host hung a
rural _kakemono_ in my room, one day a fine old study of poultry,
another an equally beautiful painting of hollyhocks.

As we left the town my attention was attracted by a commemorative
stone overlooking rice fields. The inscription proclaimed the fact
that at that spot the late Emperor Meiji,[34] as a lad of fifteen, on
his historic first journey to Tokyo, "beheld the farmers reaping."

The matron of a farmhouse two centuries old showed me a tub containing
tiny carp which she had hatched for her carp pond, the inmates of
which, as is common, came to be fed when she clapped her hands. In the
garden there was an old clay butt still used for archery. In the
farmhouse I was taken into a room in which in the old days the daimyo
overlord had rested, into another room which had a secret door and
into a third room where--an electric fan was buzzing.