or the “main village,” as the central part of Osawa was called.
All these enterprises flourished.
The company began to buy up, at double price too, the straw huts of the remaining peasantry, which were not even fit for fuel, and the land under them.
The few peasant farmers who were working on their own land acted as agents in these transactions, as well as our friend Tsuboi. Having sold their houses and land, the peasants went to Kyoto and the neighbouring villages. Now there were only eighty homesteads left.
These tenants had long ago spent the six hundred and sixty yen compensation they had received.
In the meantime Motomura had become a regular little town and seven splendid hotels had been built in Yotani.
Buses ran between Otsu and Motomura and the company made an automobile road between Motomura and Yotani.
“So long as the Suihei still have huts in the ‘hermits’ valley’ it will be difficult to get visitors to the springs.”
That’s what they said in Motomura.
“Since we agree to pay proper compensation for you to quit, it is to our mutual interest to settle things,” the company told the remaining families. “Only think, if you get good money for quitting you could go somewhere else and go in for peddling and the like.”
Such a proposal was sheer mockery. It must be refused. A struggle must be waged.
