Page:The Cannery Boat.pdf/153



is a mountain village in the province of Shiga. In the winter it is half-buried in deep snow-drifts. It contains five hundred houses, and about two thousand inhabitants.

In this village there are a hundred and seventy homesteads of “despised peasantry.” They settled here more than forty years ago, on the high valley to the west of the village, and formed a closely-knit society of their own. The place where they live is called “Yotani,” or “the hermit’s valley,” and is held in low repute by the whole village.

But suddenly radio-active springs gushed out in Yotani.

About a hundred and fifty of the houses in Yotani were let to tenants.

Igari Ihei was the hereditary elder of the village and at the same time a big landowner. A hundred and fifty peasants rented land from Igari. Igari grew fat and round on the rent they paid. He