My first experience of Japanese scenery of any wildness was gained
while shooting the rapids of the Katsuragava, an exciting voyage among
boulders in a shallow and often very turbulent stream in a steep and
craggy valley a few miles from Kyoto. Previous to this expedition I
had seen, from the train, only the trim rice fields,--each a tiny
parallelogram with its irrigation channels as a boundary, so carefully
tended that there is not a weed in the whole country. Japan is cut up
into these absurd little squares, of which twenty and more would go into
an ordinary English field. Often the terminal posts are painted a bright
red; often a little row of family tombs is there too. The watermill is
a common object of the country. But birds are few and animals one sees
never. Indeed in all my three weeks I saw no four-footed animals, except
a dead rat, two pigs and one cat. I am excluding of course beasts of
draught--horses and bullocks--which are everywhere. Not a cow, not a
sheep, not a dog! but that there are cattle is proved by the proverbial
excellence of Kobe steaks, which I tested and can swear to. In all
my three weeks, both in cities and the country, I saw only one crying
child. Of children there were millions, mostly boys, but only one was
unhappy.