Page:TASJ-1-3.djvu/332

 the way. The last ri or so leading into Koriyama is over a carefully made wide road, the first piece of real carriage road that one sees after leaving Tôkiô.

Koriyama is a large flourishing place, and its townsmen have the reputation of being wealthy. In the outskirts some branch of silk manufacture is actively carried on in almost every house.

Between Motomiya and Nihon Matsu are some valleys of rice-land separated by hills crossed by a horrible corduroy road. The lofty mountain of Daki rears its double peak from the range on the left.

Nihon Matsu is a large town extending up and down the sides of an exceedingly steep hill. It was a castle-town the seat of a daimiô of 110,000 koku. It is the chief town of the Shinobu Kôri, one of the principal silk producing districts of Ôshiu, and has a silk-reeling factory with machinery copied in wood from that used at Tomioka, and worked by water-power. It is also noted for a kind of sweetmeat called yôkan.

From Nihon Matsu through Hachonome to Fukushima is all up and down terrible hills. At the end of February this year there was a foot of snow on the road nearly the whole way. A short distance before reaching Fukushima one emerges from a muddy village on to an excellent piece of road which leads to a causeway forming the approach to a magnificent bridge over the Su kawa said to be 250 yards in length.

Fukushima is the chief town of the Ken to which it gives its name, and was the seat of a daimiô of 70,000 koku. The shiro has been dismantled, but the moats and banks are kept in good order. Fukushima is a great centre of the Silk trade, and is the head quarters during the season of the Tôkiô silk buyers. Yanagawa in the Date Kôri and Nihon Matsu are the two chief silk producing places in the Ken, which is also noted for the excellence of its dried kaki (persimmons). The town is well lighted with kerosene lamps, and has a telegraph office, The Ken authorities are paying attention to the great want of Japan, the making of roads. In