I descended back down into the grove of chestnut trees. I felt so light-hearted that I broke into a song I had learned at school. There was no one he… - Fumiko Kaneko

I got disgusted with the widespread desire among socialists to get their names in the paper.

It was a quiet day, and I was alone in the kitchen, squatting in front of the stove. Lulled by the lethargic pounding of the pestle, the drizzle of the rain, and the soulful tones of the , I was lost in my own melancholy thoughts and savored the quiet that my loneliness afforded.

In my view, if a village can cultivate silk worms, the peasants should spin silk thread and wear silk clothing, even for work. There is no need for them to buy striped cotton “country clothes” and obi from traders from the city. But, of course, the villagers cannot do this. The villagers sell their cocoons and charcoal to the city and then must turn around and buy inferior cotton and hair ornaments, losing the money they earned to the city in exchange. The temptation, money, is there, and they sell their cocoons and charcoal in order to get it. Merchants from the cities come into the villages to take advantage of them. A peddler bundles up boxes of goods which he carries on his back into a village. [...] Girls buy collars and hair ornaments without telling their fathers. Mothers come with cocoons or hand-spun raw silk or s, or still covered with earth and wrapped in straw, and exchange these things for something worth only a third as much. Year in and year out, villagers have the fruit of their hard labor stolen by such people.