The landlord told me that the sea dikes took two years to build and
that most of the earth was carried by women, 5,000 of them. Their
labour was cheap and the small quantities of earth which each woman
brought at a time permitted of a better consolidation of an embankment
that was 240 feet wide at the base. More than a million yen were laid
out on the work. The reclaimed land was free of State taxes for half a
century, but the landlord made a voluntary gift to the village of
2,000 yen a year. The yearly rent coming in was already nearly 56,000
yen. The cost of the management of the drained land and of repairs to
the embankment, 20,000 yen a year, was just met by the profits of a
fishpond. A valuable edible seaweed industry was carried on outside
the sea dikes. The landlord mentioned that he had had great difficulty
in overcoming the objections of his grandfather to the investment, but
that eventually the old man got so much interested that at
ninety-three he used to march about giving orders.

One day in the course of my journeying I was near a railway station
where country people had assembled to watch the passing of a train by
which the Emperor was travelling. No one was permitted along the line
except at specified points which were carefully watched. A young
constable who wore a Russian war medal was opposite the spot where I
stood. He politely asked me to keep one _shaku_ (foot) or so away from
the paling. When someone's child pushed itself half-way through the
paling the police instruction was, "Please keep back the little one
for, if it should pass through, other children will no doubt wish to
follow." A later request by the constable was to take off our hats and
keep silence when he raised his hand on the approach of the Imperial
train. We were further asked not to point at the Emperor and on no
account to cry Banzai. (The Japanese shout _Banzai_ for the Emperor in