The Project Gutenberg eBook of The foundations of Japan
    
This ebook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
of the Project Gutenberg License included with this ebook or online
at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the United States,
you will have to check the laws of the country where you are located
before using this eBook.

Title: The foundations of Japan
        Notes made during journeys of 6,000 miles in the rural districts as a basis for a sounder knowledge of the Japanese people

Author: J. W. Robertson Scott

Release date: January 6, 2005 [eBook #14613]
                Most recently updated: December 19, 2020

Language: English

Credits: Produced by Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Ronald Holder and the PG Online
        Distributed Proofreading Team


*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN ***




Produced by Produced by Michael Ciesielski, Ronald Holder and the PG Online
Distributed Proofreading Team





[Illustration: BATH IN AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL]

[Illustration: JŪJITSU (AND RIFLES) AT THE SAME SCHOOL.]

YOUNG JAPAN

[_Frontispiece_




THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

FAR EASTERN

THE PEOPLE OF CHINA
JAPAN, GREAT BRITAIN AND THE WORLD.
  (Nippon Eikoku oyobi Sekai.)
THE IGNOBLE WARRIOR. (Koredemo Bushika.)
THE NEW EAST. (Tokyo.) Vols. I, II & III.
  (Edited.)

AGRICULTURAL

A FREE FARMER IN A FREE STATE. (Holland.)
WAR TIME AND PEACE IN HOLLAND. (With
  an Introduction by the late LORD REAY.)
THE LAND PROBLEM: AN IMPARTIAL SURVEY
SUGAR BEET: SOME FACTS AND SOME CONCLUSIONS.
  A Study in Rural Therapeutics.
THE TOWNSMAN'S FARM
THE SMALL FARM
POULTRY FARMING: SOME FACTS AND SOME
  ILLUSIONS
THE CASE FOR THE GOAT. (With Introductions
  by the DUCHESS OF HAMILTON and SIR H.
  RIDER HAGGARD.)
COUNTRY COTTAGES
THE STORY OF THE DUNMOW FLITCH
IN SEARCH OF AN £150 COTTAGE. (Edited.)
THE JOURNAL OF A JOURNEYMAN FARMER.
  (Edited.)


ALL RIGHTS RESERVED



THE FOUNDATIONS
OF JAPAN

NOTES MADE DURING JOURNEYS OF
6,000 MILES IN THE RURAL DISTRICTS AS
A BASIS FOR A SOUNDER KNOWLEDGE
OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE

BY J.W. ROBERTSON SCOTT

("HOME COUNTIES")

WITH 85 ILLUSTRATIONS


"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door, yet it is a little window"


LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1922




TO

SCOTT SAN NO OKUSAN

FOR WHOLESOME CRITICISM




A concern arose to spend some time with them that I might feel and
understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I might
receive some instruction from them, or they might be in any degree
helped forward by my following the leadings of truth among them when
the troubles of War were increasing and when travelling was more
difficult than usual. I looked upon it as a more favourable
opportunity to season my mind and to bring me into a nearer sympathy
with them.--_Journal of John Woolman_, 1762.

I determined to commence my researches at some distance from the
capital, being well aware of the erroneous ideas I must form should I
judge from what I heard in a city so much subjected to foreign
intercourse.--BORROW.




INTRODUCTION


The hope with which these pages are written is that their readers may
be enabled to see a little deeper into that problem of the relation of
the West with Asia which the historian of the future will
unquestionably regard as the greatest of our time.

I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book is a record of
many of the things I saw and experienced and some of the things I was
told chiefly during rural journeys--more than half the population is
rural--extending to twice the distance across the United States or
nearly eight times the distance between the English Channel and John
o' Groats.

These pages deal with a field of investigation in Japan which no other
volume has explored. Because they fall short of what was planned, and
in happier conditions might have been accomplished, a word or two may
be pardoned on the beginnings of the book--one of the many literary
victims of the War.

The first book I ever bought was about the Far East. The first leading
article of my journalistic apprenticeship in London was about Korea.
When I left daily journalism, at the time of the siege of the Peking
Legations, the first thing I published was a book pleading for a
better understanding of the Chinese.

After that, as a cottager in Essex, I wrote--above a _nom de guerre_
which is better known than I am--a dozen volumes on rural subjects.
During a visit to the late David Lubin in Rome I noticed in the big
library of his International Institute of Agriculture that there was
no took in English dealing with the agriculture of Japan.[1] Just
before the War the thoughts of forward-looking students of our home
affairs ran strongly on the relation of intelligently managed small
holdings to skilled capitalist farming.[2] During the early "business
as usual" period of the War, when no tasks had been found for men over
military age--Mr. Wells's protest will be remembered--it occurred to
me that it might be serviceable if I could have ready, for the period
of rural reconstruction and readjustment of our international ideas
when the War was over, two books of a new sort. One should be a
stimulating volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than
technically agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming system and
rural life, and the other a complementary American volume based on a
study of the enterprising large farming of the Middle West. I proposed
to write the second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer
who had often invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father of the
present American Minister of Agriculture. Early in 1915 I set out for
Japan to enter upon the first part of my task. Mr. Wallace died while
I was still in Japan, and the Middle West book remains to be
undertaken by someone else.

The Land of the Rising Sun has been fortunate in the quality of the
books which many foreigners have written.[3] But for every work at the
standard of what might be called the seven "M's"--Mitford, Murdoch,
Munro, Morse, Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern--there are many volumes
of fervid "pro-Japanese" or determined "anti-Japanese" romanticism.
The pictures of Japan which such easily perused books present are
incredible to readers of ordinary insight or historical imagination,
but they have had their part in forming public opinion.

The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country.
Japanese æstheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the
smoking chimneys of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the
Parliamentary and administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly
worldwide diplomacy are all borne on the bent backs of _Ohyakusho no
Fufu_,[4] the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The depositories
of the authentic _Yamato damashii_ (Japanese spirit) are to be found
knee deep in the sludge of their paddy fields.

One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the
village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath
that surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to
discover the _foundations_ of the Japan which is intent on cutting
such a figure in the East and in the West. There it is possible to
learn not only what Japan is but what she may have it in her to
become.

A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of
agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young
and Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone
of a healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close
acquaintance with the rural civilisation of two pre-eminently
small-holdings countries, Holland and Denmark, but by what I knew to
be precious in the rural life of my own land.

An interest in rural problems cannot be simulated. As I journeyed
about the country the sincerity of my purpose--there are few words in
commoner use in the Far East than sincerity--was recognised and
appreciated. I enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had
been broken down and those who spoke said what they felt. We
inevitably discussed not only agricultural economy but life, religion
and morality, and the way Japan was taking.

I spoke and slept in Buddhist temples. I was received at Shinto
shrines. I was led before domestic altars. I was taken to gatherings
of native Christians. I planted commemorative trees until more
persimmons than I can ever gather await my return to Japan. I wrote so
many _gaku_[5] for school walls and for my kind hosts that my memory
was drained of maxims. I attended guileless horse-races. I was present
at agricultural shows, fairs, wrestling matches, _Bon_ dances, village
and county councils and the strangest of public meetings. I talked not
only with farmers and their families but with all kinds of landlords,
with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, policemen, shopkeepers,
priests, co-operative society enthusiasts, village officials, county
officials, prefectural officials, a score of Governors and an Ainu
chief. I sought wisdom from Ministers of State and nobles of every
rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down
to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with
farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill
girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked,
talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I
discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college
agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote region,
beheld what is rare nowadays, the old countryman kneeling before his
cottage with his head to the ground as the stranger rode past.

I made notes as I traversed paddy-field paths, by mountain ways, in
colleges, schools, houses and inns. It can only have been when
crossing water on men's backs that I did not make notes. I jotted
things down as I walked, as I sat, as I knelt, as I lay on my _futon_,
as I journeyed in _kuruma_, on horseback, in jolting _basha_, in
automobiles, in shaking cross-country trains and in boats; in
brilliant sunshine and sweltering heat, in the shade and in dust; in
the early morning with chilled fingers or more or less furtively as I
crouched at protracted private or official repasts, or late at night
endeavoured to gather crumbs from the wearing conversation of polite
callers who, though set on helping me, did not always find it easy to
understand the kind of information of which I was in search. One of
these asked my travelling companion _sotto voce_, "Is he after metal
mines?"

I went on my own trips and on routes planned out for me by
agricultural and social zealots, and from time to time I returned
physically and mentally fatigued to my little Japanese house near
Tokyo to rest and to write out from my memoranda, to seek data for new
districts from the obliging Department of Agriculture and the
Agricultural College people at the Imperial University, and to eat and
drink with rural authorities who chanced to be visiting the capital
from distant prefectures. I had many setbacks. I was misinformed, now
and then intentionally and often unintentionally. There were many days
which were not only harassing but seemingly wasted. I often despaired
of achieving results worth all the exertion I was making and the money
I was spending. I must have worn to shreds the patience of some
English-speaking Japanese friends, but they never owned defeat. In the
end I found that I made progress.

But so did the War, which when I set out from London few believed
would last long. I was troubled by continually meeting with incredible
ignorance about the War, the issues at stake and the certain end. The
Japanese who talked with me were 10,000 miles away from the fighting.
Japan had nothing to lose, everything indeed to gain from the
abatement of Europe's activities in Asia. Not only Japanese soldiers
but many administrative, educational, agricultural and commercial
experts had been to school in Germany. There was much in common in the
German and Japanese mentalities, much alike in Central European and
Farthest East regard for the army and for order, devotion to
regulations, habit of subordination and deification of the State.
Eventually the well-known anti-Ally campaign broke out in Tokyo, a
thing which has never been sufficiently explained. Soon I was pressed
to turn aside from my studies and attempt the more immediately useful
task: to explain why Western nations, whose manifest interests were
peace, were resolutely squandering their blood and wealth in War.

If what I published had some measure of success,[6] it was because by
this time, unlike some of the critics who sharply upbraided Japan and
made impossible proposals in impossible terms, I had learnt something
at first hand about the Japanese, because I wrote of the difficulties
as well as the faults of Japan, and because I was now a little known
as her well-wisher. One of the two books I published was translated as
a labour of love, as I shall never forget, by a Japanese public man
whose leisure was so scant that he sat up two nights to get his
manuscript finished. Before long I had involved myself in the arduous
task of founding and of editing for two years a monthly review, _The
New East (Shin Toyo)_,[7] with for motto a sentence of my own which
expresses what wisdom I have gained about the Orient, _The real
barrier between East and West is a distrust of each other's morality
and the illusion that the distrust is on one side only._

The excuse for so personal a digression is that, when this period of
literary and journalistic stress began, my rural notebooks and MSS.,
memoranda of conversations on social problems and a heterogeneous
collection of reports and documents had to be stowed into boxes. There
they stayed until a year ago. The entries in a dozen of my little
hurriedly filled notebooks have lost their flavour or are
unintelligible: I have put them all aside. Neither is it possible to
utilise notes which were submarined or lost in over-worked post
offices. This book--I have had to leave out Kyushu entirely--is not
the work I planned, a complete account of rural life and industry in
every part of Japan, with an excursus on Korea and Formosa, and
certain general conclusions: a standard work, no doubt, in, I am
afraid, two volumes, and forgetful at times of the warning that "to
spend too much Time in Studies is Sloth."

What I had transcribed before leaving Japan I have now been able in
the course of a leisured year in England to overhaul and to supplement
by up-to-date statistics in an extensive Appendix. In the changed
circumstances in which the book is completed I have also ruthlessly
transferred to this Appendix all the technical matter in the text, so
that nothing shall obstruct the way of the general reader. At some
future date there may be by another hand a book about Japan in terms
of soils, manures and crops. That is the book the War saved me from
writing. In the present work I have the opportunity which so few
authors have enjoyed of jettisoning all technics into an Appendix.

[Illustration: _Shin Koron_
"BYGONE DAYS IN JAPAN" IS THE TITLE OF THIS CARTOON]

"It is necessary," says a wise modern author, "to meditate over one's
impressions at leisure, to start afresh again and again with a clearer
vision of the essential facts." And a Japanese companion of my
journeys writes, "Never can you be sorry that this book is coming
late. This time of delay has been the best time; we have had enough
of first impressions." The justification for this volume is that, in
spite of the difficulties attending the composition of it, it may be
held to offer a picture of some aspects of modern Japan to be found
nowhere else. Politics is not for these pages, nor, because there are
so many charming books on æsthetic and scenic Japan, do I write on Art
or about Fuji, Kyoto, Nara, Miyanoshita and Nikko. I went to Japan to
see the countryman. The Japanese whom most of the world knows are
townified, sometimes Americanised or Europeanised, and, as often as
not, elaborately educated. They are frequently remarkable men. They
stand for a great deal in modern Japan. But their untownified
fellow-countrymen, with the training of tradition and experience, of
rural schoolmasters and village elders, and, as frequently, of the
carefully shielded army, are more than half of the nation.

What is their health of mind and body? By what social and moral
principles and prejudices are they swayed? To what extent are they
adequate to the demand that is made and is likely to be made upon
them? In what respects are they the masters of their lives or are
mastered? In what ways are they still open to Western influences? And
in what directions are they now inclined to trust to "themselves
alone"?

If the masters of the rural journal were sometimes mistaken in the
observations they made from horseback, I cannot have escaped
blundering in passing through more dimly lit scenes than they visited.
"If there appears here and there any uncorrectness, I do not hold
myself obliged to answer for what I could not perfectly govern."[8]
But I have laboriously taken all the precautions I could and I have
obeyed as far as possible a recent request that "visitors to the Far
East should confine themselves to what they have seen with their own
eyes." As Huxley wrote, "all that I have proposed to myself is to say,
This and this have I learned."

I take pleasure in recalling that some years ago I was approached with
a view to undertaking for the United States Government a
socio-agricultural investigation in a foreign country. Reared as I
have been in the whole faith of a citizen of the English-speaking
world, I am glad to think that the present volume may be of some
service to American readers. The United States is within ten
days--Canada is within nine--of Japan against Great Britain's month by
the Atlantic-C.P.R.-Pacific route and eight weeks by Suez. There are
more American visitors than British to Japan. It was America that
first opened Japan to the West, and the debt of Japan to American
training and stimulus is immense. But British services to Japan have
also been substantial. Great Britain was the first to welcome her
within the circle of the Great Powers, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance
did more for Japan than some Japanese have been willing to admit. The
problem of Japan is the problem of the whole English-speaking world.
Rightly conceived, the interests of the British Empire and the United
States in the Far East are one and indivisible.

The Japanese version of the title of this book (kindly suggested by
Mr. Seichi Narusé) is _Nihon no Shinzui_, literally, "The Marrow" or
"The Core of Japan." His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, the
beauty of whose calligraphy is well known, was so very kind as to
allow me to requisition his clever brush for the script for the
engraver; but it must be understood that Baron Hayashi has seen
nothing of the volume but the cover.

I greatly regret that the present conditions of book production make
it impossible to reproduce more than one in thirty of my photographs.

It is in no spirit of ingratitude to my hosts and many other kind
people in Japan that I have taken the decision resolutely to strike
out of the text all those names of places and persons which give such
a forbidding air to a traveller's page. I have pleasure in
acknowledging here the particular obligations I am under to Kunio
Yanaghita, formerly Secretary of the Japanese House of Peers and a
distinguished and disinterested student of rural conditions, Dr.
Nitobe, assistant secretary of the League of Nations, and his wife,
Professor Nasu, Imperial University, Mr. Yamasaki, Mr. M. Yanagi, Mr.
Kanzō Uchimura, Mr. Bernard Leach, Mr. M. Tajima, Mr. Ono and two
young officials in Hokkaido, who each in turn found time to join me on
my journeys and showed me innumerable kindnesses. It was a piece of
good fortune that while these pages were in preparation Mr. Yanaghita,
Professor Nasu and other fellow-travellers were in Europe and
available for consultation. Professor Nasu unweariedly furnished
painstaking answers to many questions, and was kind enough to read all
of the book in proof; but he has no responsibility, of course, for the
views which I express. I am also specially indebted to Dr. Kozai,
President of the Imperial University, to Mr. Ito and other officials
of the Ministry of Agriculture, to Mr. Tsurimi, one of the most
understanding of travelled Japanese, to Mr. Iwanaga, formerly of the
Imperial Railway Board, to Dr. Sato, President of Hokkaido University,
and his obliging colleagues, to the Imperial Agricultural Society, to
Professors Yahagi and Yokoi, and to Viscount Kano, Dr. Kuwada, Mr. I.
Yoshida, Mr. K. Ohta, Mr. H. Saito, Mr. S. Hoshijima, and many
provincial agricultural and sociological experts.

Portions of drafts for this book have appeared in the _Daily
Telegraph, World's Work, Manchester Guardian, New East, Asia, Japan
Chronicle_ and _Christian World_. I am indebted to the _World's Work_
and _Asia_ for some additional illustrations from blocks made from my
photographs, and to the _New East_ for some sketches by Miss Elizabeth
Keith.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] There is a small book by an able American soil specialist, the
late Professor King, which describes through rose-tinted glasses the
farming of Japan, and of China and Korea as well, on the basis of a
flying trip to countries the population of which is thrice that of
Great Britain and the United States together. The author of another
book, published last year, delivers himself of this astonishing
opinion: "The Japanese is no better fitted to direct his own
agriculture than I am to steer a rudderless ship across the Atlantic."

[2] _Vide_ Sir Daniel Hall's _Pilgrimage of English Farming_ and
articles of mine in the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Times_, and my _Land
Problem_.

[3] The Japanese have only lately, however, made some acknowledgment
of their debt to Hearn, and in an eight-page bibliography of the best
books about Japan in the _Japan Year Book_ Murdoch's as yet unrivalled
_History_ is not even mentioned.

[4] _Ohyakusho_ must not be confused with _Oo-hyakusho_ or
_Oo-byakusho_, which means a large farmer. _O_ is a polite prefix;
_Oo_ or _O_ means large.

[5] Horizontal wall writings.

[6] About 35,000 copies of my two bilingual books were circulated.

[7] With the backing of a London Committee composed of Lord Burnham,
Sir G.W. Prothero, Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey and Mr. C.V. Sale.

[8] Tenison, 1684.




CONTENTS


STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE (AICHI)


CHAPTER

      I. THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

     II. "GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY PRECAUTIOUS"

    III. EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS ACTIVITIES

     IV. "THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH"

      V. COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

     VI. BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-KAMI

    VII. OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI


THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD

   VIII. THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

     IX. THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION



BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE AND THE ARTIST

      X. A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

     XI. THE IDEA OF A GAP


ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND BACK)

   XII. TO THE HILLS (TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA)

  XIII. THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS (FUKUSHIMA)

   XIV. SHRINES AND POETRY (NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)

   XV. THE NUN'S CELL (NAGANO)


IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE

   XVI. PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE
        (SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

  XVII. THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE
        SILK-WORM (NAGANO)

 XVIII. "GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES
        (NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

   XIX. "FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE


FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE WEST COAST

     XX. "THE GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE
         CULTIVATED" (FUKUSHIMA AND YAMAGATA)

    XXI. THE "TANOMOSHI" (YAMAGATA)


BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

   XXII. "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST
         (YAMAGATA, AKITA, AOMORI, IWATE,
         MIYAGI, FUKUSHIMA AND IBARAKI)

  XXIII. A MIDNIGHT TALK


THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

  XXIV. LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA"
        (TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KAGAWA)

   XXV. "SPECIAL TRIBES" (EHIME)

  XXVI. THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN (EHIME)


THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN

  XXVII. UP-COUNTRY ORATORY (YAMAGUCHI)

 XXVIII. MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES (SHIMANE)

   XXIX. FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN (SHIMANE, TOTTORI AND HYOGO)


TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE (NAGANO)

    XXX. THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

   XXXI. "BON" SEASON SCENES


IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

  XXXII. PROGRESS OF SORTS (SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

 XXXIII. GREEN TEA AND BLACK (SHIDZUOKA)


EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

  XXXIV. A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS (CHIBA)

   XXXV. THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND
         THE CARPENTER (SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

  XXXVI. "THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"
         (GUMMA, KANAGAWA AND CHIBA)


REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO

 XXXVII. COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

XXXVIII. SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?

  XXXIX. MUST THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN "YOFUKU"?

     XL. THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN


APPENDICES

INDEX




LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BATH IN AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL _facing title-page_

JŪJITSU (AND RIFLES) AT THE SAME SCHOOL

BYGONE DAYS IN JAPAN

THE ROOM IN WHICH THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN

THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

"TO ROUSE THE VILLAGE YOU MUST FIRST ROUSE THE PRIEST"

PLAN OF THE FARMER'S SYMBOLIC TREES

ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS

LIBRARY AND WORKSHED OF A Y.M.A.

LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER

SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE

MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, AUTHOR AND PROF. NASU

THE HOUSE IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE

AUTHOR QUESTIONING OFFICIALS

AUTHOR PLANTING COMMEMORATIVE TREES

RICE POLISHING BY FOOT POWER

"HIBACHI," A FLOWER ARRANGEMENT AND "KAKEMONO"

SCHOOL SHRINE CONTAINING EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT

FENCING AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL

WAR MEMENTOES--ALL SCHOOLS HAVE SOME

A 200-YEARS-OLD DRAWING OF THE RICE PLANT

SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED
PADDIES

PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS

PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER

MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP PRICE OF RICE DOWN

MUZZLED EDITORS

"THE JAPANESE CARLYLE"

MR. AND MRS. YANAGI

CHILDREN CATCHING INSECTS ON RICE-SEED BEDS

MASTERS OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL AND SOME CHILDREN

CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS

IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OF RICE

MOVABLE STAGE AT A FESTIVAL

FARMHOUSE AT WHICH MR. UCHIMURA PREACHED

TENANT FARMERS' HOUSES

AUTHOR AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING"

SOME PERFORMERS AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING"

IN A BUDDHIST NUNNERY

JAPANESE GRASS-CUTTING TOOLS COMPARED WITH A SCYTHE

CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS' SAVINGS

NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A "CELL"

STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL

TEACHERS OF A VILLAGE SCHOOL

GIRLS CARRYING BALES OF RICE

SERICULTURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS

SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA

VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM

ARCHERY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL

CULTIVATION OF THE HILLSIDE

RAILWAY STATION "BENTO" AND POT OF TEA

A SCARECROW

THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS COLLECTING-BAG

MR. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONATION CEREMONY ROBES

PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR RAISING WATER

VILLAGE SCHOOL WITH PORTRAIT OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE

RIVER-BEDS IN THE SUMMER

SCHOOL SHRINE FOR EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT

AUTHOR ADDRESSING LAFCADIO HEARN MEETING

A PEASANT PROPRIETOR'S HOUSE

GRAVESTONES REASSEMBLED AFTER PADDY ADJUSTMENT

TEMPLE IN WHICH THIS CHAPTER WAS WRITTEN

FIRE ENGINE AND PRIMITIVE FIGURES

YOUNG MEN'S CLUB-ROOM

MEMORIAL STONES

ROOF PROTECTED AGAINST STORMS BY STONES

OFF TO THE UPLAND FIELDS

FARMER'S WIFE

MOTHER AND CHILD

A CRADLE

FIRE ALARM AND OBSERVATION POST

RACK FOR DRYING RICE

VILLAGE CREMATORIUM

DOG HELPING TO PULL JINRIKISHA

AUTHOR, MR. YAMASAKI AND YOUNGEST INHABITANTS

"TORII" AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX GOD

TABLETS RECORDING GIFTS TO A TEMPLE

INSIDE THE "SHOJI"

AUTOMATIC RICE POLISHER

AUTHOR IN A CRATER

A TYPE OF WAYSIDE MONUMENTS

GIANT RADISH OR "DAIKON"

CUTTING GRASS




CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES
AND OFFICIAL TERMS


The prices given in the text (but not in the footnotes and Appendix) were
recorded before the War inflation began. The War was followed by a
severe financial crisis. Professor Nasu wrote to me during the summer of
1921:

"You are very wise to leave the figures as they stood. It is useless
to try to correct them, because they are still changing. The price of
rice, which did not exceed 15 yen per koku when you were making your
research work, exceeded 50 yen in 1919, and is now struggling to
maintain the price of 25 yen. Taking at 100 the figures for the years
1915 or 1916--fortunately there is not much difference between these
two years--the prices of six leading commodities reached in 1919 an
average of about 250. After 1919 the prices of some commodities went
still higher, but mostly they did not change very much; on the other
hand, recently the prices of many commodities--among them rice and raw
silk especially--have been coming down and this downward movement is
gradually extending to all other commodities. From these
considerations I deduce that the index number of general commodities
may be safely taken as 200 when your book appears. _The reader of your
book has simply to double the figures given by you--that is the
figures of_ 1915 _and_ 1916--_in order to get a rough estimate of
present prices._"

Where exact statements of area and yield are necessary, as in the
study of the intense agriculture of Japan, local measures are
preferable to our equivalents in awkward fractions. Further, the
measures used in this book are easily remembered, and no serious study
of Japanese agriculture on the spot is possible without remembering
them. While, however, Japanese currency, weights and measures have
been uniformly used, equivalents have been supplied at every place in
the book where their omission might be reasonably considered to
interfere with easy reading. The following tables are restricted to
currency, weights and measures mentioned in the book.


MONEY[9]

_Yen_ = roughly (at the time notes for the book were made) a florin or half
a dollar = 100 sen.

_Sen_ = a farthing or half cent = 10 rin.


LONG

_Ri_ = roughly 2-1/2 miles.

_Shaku_ (roughly 1 ft.) = 11.93 in.

Ri are converted into miles by being multiplied by 2.44.


SQUARE

_Ri_ (roughly 6 sq. miles) = 5.955 sq. miles.

_Chō_ (sometimes written, _Chōbu_) (roughly 2-1/2 acres) = 2.450 acres =
10 tan = 3,000 tsubo.

_Tan_ or _Tambu_ (roughly 1/4 acre) = 0.245 acres = 10 se = 300 bu.

_Bu_ or _Tsubo_ (roughly 4 sq. yds.) = 3.953 sq. yds.

An acre is about 4 tan 10 bu or 1,200 bu or tsubo (an urban measure).
The size of rooms is reckoned by the number of mats, which are ordinarily
6 shaku in length and 3 shaku in breadth.


CAPACITY

_Koku_ (roughly 40 gals, or 5 bush.) = 39.703 gals, or 4.960 bush. =
10 tō. According to American measurements, there are 47.653 gals,
(liquid) and 5.119 bush, (dry) in a koku. A koku of rice is 313-1/2 lbs.
(British).

A koku of imported rice is, however, 330-1/2 lbs. The following koku must
also be noted: ordinary barley, 231 lbs.; naked barley 301.1 lbs.; wheat
288.7 lbs.; proso millet, 247.9 lbs.; foxtail millet, 280.9 lbs.; barnyard
millet, 165.2 lbs.; brickaheat, 247.9 lbs.; maize, 289.2 lbs.; soya beans,
286.5 lbs.; azuki (red) beans, 319.9 lbs.; horse beans, 266.6 lbs.; peas,
306.5 lbs.

_Hyō_ (roughly 2 bush.) = 1.985 bush. = 4 tō = bale of rice.

_Tō_ (roughly 4 gals, or 1/2 bush.) = 3.970 gals, or .496 bush, or
1.985 pecks = 10 shō.

_Shō_ (roughly 1-1/2 qts.) = 1.588 qts. or 0.198 pecks or 108-1/2
cub. in. = 10 gō.

_Gō_ (roughly 1/3 pint) =.3176 pints or 0.019 pecks.

Rice is not bagged but baled, and a bale is 4 tō or 1 hyō.


WEIGHT

_Kwan_ or _kwamme_ (roughly 8-1/4 lbs.) = 8.267 lbs. av. or 10.047 lbs.
troy = 1,000 momme.

_Kin_ (catty) = 1.322 lbs. av. or 1.607 troy = 160 momme.

_Momme_ = 2.116 drams or 2.411 dwts. According to American measurements
a momme is 0.132 oz. av. and 0.120 oz. troy.

_Hyakkin_ (_picul_) = 100 kin = 132.277 lbs.

A stone is 1.693, a cwt. is 13.547, and a ton 270.950 kwamme.


LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE TERMS

_Ken_.--Prefecture. There are forty-three ken and Hokkaido. Ken
and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name
of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the same: example,
Shidzuoka-ken, capital Shidzuoka.

_Fu_.--Three prefectures are municipal prefectures and are called not
ken but fu. They are Tokyo-fu, Kyoto-fu and Osaka-fu.

_Gun_ (_kōri_).--Division of a prefecture, a county or rural district.
There are 636 gun. Gun are now being done away with.

_Shi_.--City. There are seventy-nine cities.

_Cho_.--A town or rather a district preponderatingly urban. There are
1,333 cho.

_Machi_.--Japanese name for the Chinese character cho.

_Son_.--A village or rather a district preponderatingly rural. There are
10,839 son.

_Mura_.--Japanese name for a Chinese character son.

A true idea of the Japanese village is obtained as soon as one mentally
defines it as a commune. There may be a rural community called son
or a municipal community called cho. The cho or son consists of a number of
oaza, that is, big aza, which in turn consists of a number of ko-aza or
small aza. A ko-aza may consist of twenty or thirty dwellings, that is,
a hamlet, or it may be only one dwelling. It may be ten acres in extent
or fifty. I found that the population of a particular municipality was
10,000 in seven big oaza comprising twenty-two ko-aza.

[Illustration: THE ROOM, OVERLOOKING THE PACIFIC, IN WHICH MUCH OF
THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
The feet of the chair and table are fitted with wooden slats so as not
to injure the _tatami_. Electricity as a matter of course!]

[Illustration: THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
The worshippers in the front row lost relatives by a flood.
This is not the priest referred to in Chapter I.]




THE
FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE
(AICHI)[10]

CHAPTER I

THE MERCY OF BUDDHA

The only hard facts, one learns to see as one gets older, are the
facts of feeling. Emotion and sentiment are, after all, incomparably
more solid than any statistics. So that when one wanders back in
memory through the field one has traversed in diligent search of hard
facts, one comes back bearing in one's arms a Sheaf of
Feelings.--HAVELOCK ELLIS.


One day as I walked along a narrow path between rice fields in a
remote district in Japan, I saw a Buddhist priest coming my way. He
was rosy-faced and benign, broad-shouldered and a little rotund. He
had with him a string of small children. I stood by to let him pass
and lifted my hat. He bowed and stopped, and we entered into
conversation. He told me that he was taking the children to a
festival. I said that I should like to meet him again. He offered to
come to see me in the evening at my host's house. When he arrived, and
I asked him, after a little polite talk, what was the chief difficulty
in the way of improving the moral condition of his village, he
answered, "I am."

We spoke of Buddhism, and he complained that its sects were "too
aristocratic." When his own sect of Buddhism, Shinshu, was started, he
said, it was something "quite democratic for the common people." But
with the lapse of time this democratic sect had also "become
aristocratic." "Though the founder of Shinshu wore flaxen clothing,
Shinshu priests now have glittering costumes. And everyone has heard
of the magnificence of the Kyoto Hongwanji" (the great temple at
Kyoto, the headquarters of the sect).[11] "Contrary to the principles
of religion and democracy," people thought of the priest and the
temple "as something beyond their own lives." All this stood in the
way of improvement.

The fashion in which many landowners "despised exertion and lived
luxuriously" was another hindrance. These men looked down on
education, "thinking themselves clever because they read the
newspapers." Landlords of this sort were fond of curios, and kept
their capital in such things instead of in agriculture. Sellers of
curios visited the village too often. A wise man had called the
curio-seller the "Spirit of Poverty" (_Bimbogami_). He said that the
Spirit visited a man when he became rich--in order to bring curios to
him; and again when he became poor--in order to take them away from
him! After he became poor the Spirit of Poverty never visited him
again.

Yet another drawback to rural progress was petty political ambition.
People slandered neighbours who belonged to another party and they
would not associate with them. Such party feeling was one of the bad
influences of civilisation.

Further, "a mercenary spirit and materialism" had to be fought in the
village. There was not, however, much trouble due to drink, and there
was no gambling now. There might still be impropriety between young
people--formerly young men used to visit the factory girls--but it was
rare. Lately there had been land speculation, and some of those who
made money went to tea-houses to see geisha.

There was in the neighbourhood, this Buddhist pastor went on, a temple
belonging to the same sect as his own, and he was on friendly terms
with its priest. It was good discipline, he said, for two priests to
be working near one another if they were of the same sect, for their
work was compared. In answer to my enquiry, the old man said that he
preached four days a month. Each service consisted of reading for an
hour and then preaching for two hours. About 150 or 200 persons would
attend. He had also a service every morning from five to six. In
addition to these gatherings in the temple he conducted services in
farmers' houses. "I feel rather ashamed sometimes," he said, "when I
listen to the good sermons of Christians."

As the priest was taking leave he told me that he was going to a
farmer's house in order to conduct a service. I asked to be allowed to
accompany him. He kindly agreed, and invited me to stay the night in
his temple.

When I reached the farmhouse there were there about two dozen kneeling
people, including members of the family. On the coming of the priest,
who had gone to the temple to put on his robes, the farmer threw open
the doors of the family shrine and lighted the candles in it. The
priest knelt down by the shrine and invited me to kneel near him. In a
few words he told the people why I was in the district. Whereupon the
farmer's aged mother piped, "We heard that a tall man had come, but to
think that we should see him and be in the same room with him!"

When he had prayed, the priest read from a roll of the Shinshu
scripture which he had taken reverently from a box and a succession of
wrappings. Afterwards he preached from a "text," continuing, of
course, to kneel as we did. A flickering light fell upon us from a
lamp hanging from a beam. The room was pervaded with incense from an
iron censer which the farmer gently swung. The worshippers told their
beads, and in intervals between the priest's sentences I heard the
murmur of fervent prayer. The priest preached his sermon with his eyes
shut, and I could watch him narrowly. It is not so often that one sees
an old man with a sweet face. But there was sweetness in both the face
and voice of this priest. He spoke slowly and clearly, sometimes
pausing for a little between his sentences as if for better
inspiration, as a Quaker will sometimes do in speaking at meeting. His
tones were no higher than could be heard clearly in the room. There
was nothing of the exhorter in this man. His talk did not sound like
preaching at all. It was like kind, friendly talk at the fireside at a
solemn time. "Faith, prayer, morality: these alone are necessary," was
the burden of the simple address. "We have faith by divine providence;
out of our thanksgiving comes prayer, and we cannot but be good." It
was plain that the old women loved their priest. In the front of the
congregation were three crones gnarled in hands and face. When the
sermon of an hour or so came to an end they spoke quaveringly of the
mercy of Buddha to them, and of their own feebleness to do well. The
old priest gently offered them comfort and counsel.

After the service, in the light of the priest's paper lantern, I made
my way along the road to the temple. At length I found myself mounting
the lichened stone steps to the great closed gates. The priest drew
the long wooden bolt and pushed one gate creakingly back. We went by a
paved pathway into the deeper shadow of the temple. Then a light
glowed from the side of the building, and we were in the priest's
house. It was like a farmer's house only more refined in detail.

About half-past four in the morning I was awakened by the booming of
the temple bell. It is the sound which of all delights in the Far East
is most memorable. I got up, and, following the example of my host,
had a bath in the open, and dressed.

Then I was lighted along passages into the public part of the temple.
The priest with an acolyte began service at the middle altar.
Afterwards he proceeded to a side altar. At one stage of the service
he chanted a hymn which ran something like this:

From the virtues and the mercies of divine providence we
    get faith, the worth of which is boundless.
The ice of petty care and trouble which froze our hearts
    is melted.
It has become the water of divine illumination, bearing
    us on to peace.
The more care and trouble, the greater the illumination
    and the reward.

I knelt on the outside of the congregational group. It was cold as
the great doors were slid open from time to time and the kneeling
figures grew in number to about forty. Day broke and a few sparrows
twittered by the time the first part of the service was over.

The priest then took up his lamp and low table, and, coming without
the altar rail, knelt down in the midst of the congregation. In this
familiar relation with his people he delivered a homily in a
conversational tone. Buddha was to mankind as a father to his
children, he said. If a man did bad things but repented, his father
would be more delighted than if he got rich. The way of serving Buddha
was to feel his love. To ask of the rich or of a master was
supplication, but we did not need to supplicate Buddha. Our love of
Buddha and his love for us would become one thing. Carelessness, an
evil spirit, doubt: these were the enemies. Gold was beautiful to look
at, but if the gold stuck in one's eyes so that one could not see, how
then? The true essence of belief was the abandonment of ourselves to
divine providence.

So the speaker went on, pressing home his thoughts with anecdote or
legend. There was the tale of a woman whose character benefited when
her husband became a leper. Another story was of an injured lizard
which was fed for many days by its mate. We were also told of a
mischievous fellow who tried to anger a believer. The ne'er-do-weel
went to the man's house and called him a liar. The believer thanked
him for his faithful dealing, and said that it might be true that he
was a liar. He would be glad, he said, to be given further advice
after his wife had warmed water in order that his visitor might wash
his feet. "The mind of the vagabond was thereupon changed."

The rays of light from the lamp illumined the large Buddha-like shaven
head and mild countenance of the priest and the labour-worn faces of
his flock around him. Two weatherbeaten men curiously resembled
Highland elders. I saw that they, an old woman and a young mother with
a child tied on her back kept their eyes fixed on the preacher. It was
plain that in the service they found strength for the day.

I was in a reverie when the priest ended his talk. To my
embarrassment he begged me to come with him within the altar rail and
speak to the people. I had been quickened to such a degree by the
experience of the previous night and by this service at dawn that I
stood up at once. But there seemed to be not one word at my call, and
my knees knocked because of cold and shyness. I grasped the chilly
brass altar rail, and, as I met the gaze of friendly, sun-tanned,
care-rutted alien faces, which yet had the look of "kent folk," I
marvellously found sentence following sentence. What I said matters
nothing. What I felt was the unity of all religion, my veneration for
this rare priest, a sense of kinship with these worshippers of another
race and faith, and a realisation of the elemental things which lie at
the basis of international understanding. Several old men and women
came up to me and bowed and made little speeches of kindness and
cordiality. Six was striking on a clock in the priest's house as the
doors of the temple were slid open, the great cryptomeria[12] which
guard the village fane stood forth augustly in the morning light, and
the congregation went out to its labour.

As I knelt at breakfast and ate my rice and pickles and drank my
_miso_ soup,[13] the priest, after the manner of a Japanese with an
honoured guest, did not take food but waited upon me. He asked if the
English clergy wore a costume which marked them off from the people.
He liked the way of some of our preachers who wore ordinary clothes
and eschewed the title of "reverend." He was also taken by the idea of
the Quaker meeting at which there is silence until someone feels he
has a message to utter. As to the future of Buddhism, he deeply
regretted to say that many priests were a generation behind the age.
If the priests were "more democratic, better educated and more truly
religious," then they might be able to keep hold of young men. He knew
of one priest in Tokyo who had a dormitory for university students.

The priest presented his wife, a kindly woman full of character. "This
is my wife," he said; "please teach her." I spoke of a kind of
kindergarten which I had learnt had been conducted at the temple for
five years. "We merely play with the children," she said. "I had the
plan of it from the kindergarten of a missionary," her husband added.
The priest and his wife were kneeling side by side in the still
temple-room looking out on their restful garden. Behind them was a
screen the inscription on which might be translated, "We are to be
thankful for our environment; we are to become content quite naturally
by the gracious influence of the universe and by the strength of our
own will."

I could learn nothing from the priest concerning several helpful
organisations which I had heard that the villagers owed to his
influence and exertions. But the manager of the village agricultural
association told me that for a quarter of a century Otera San (Mr.
Temple) had superintended the education of the young people, that
under his guidance the village had a seven years' old co-operative
credit and selling society, 294 families belonged to a poultry
society, 320 men and women gathered to study the doctrines of Ninomiya
(whom we in the West know from a little book by a late Japanese
Ambassador in London, called _For His People_), and the young men's
association performed its discipline at half-past five in the morning
in the winter and at four o'clock in the summer.

[Illustration: "TO ROUSE THE VILLAGE YOU MUST FIRST ROUSE THE PRIEST"
(Autograph of Otera San)]

FOOTNOTES:

[9] Exchange in 1916; in 1921 the yen is worth 2s. 8d.

[10] The chapters in this section are based on notes of several visits
paid to Aichi, which is in the middle of Japan, and agriculturally and
socially one of the most interesting of the prefectures. It is three
prefectures distant from Tokyo.

[11] Throughout this book an attempt has been made to preserve in
translation something of the character of the Japanese phraseology.

[12] _Cryptomeria japonica_, or in Japanese, _sugi_, allied to the
sequoia, yew and cypress.

[13] _Miso_, bean paste.




CHAPTER II

"GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY PRECAUTIOUS"

Je ne propose rien, je n'impose rien, j'expose.--_De la liberté du travail_


He had been through Tokyo University, but his hands were rough with
the work of the rice fields. "I resent the fact that a farmer is
considered to be socially inferior to a townsman," he said. "I am
going to show that the income of a farmer who is diligent and skilful
may equal that of a Minister of State. I also propose to build a fine
house, not out of vanity, but in order to show that an honest farmer
can do as well for himself as a townsman."

When I asked the speaker to tell me something about himself he went
on: "My father was a follower of a pupil of the great Ninomiya.
Schools of frugal living and high ideals were common in the Tokugawa
period.[14] The object sought was the education of heart and spirit.
At night when I was in bed my father used to kneel by me,[15] his
eldest son, and say, 'When you grow big you must become a great man
and distinguish our family name.' This instruction was given to me
repeatedly and it went deeply into my heart."

"When I became a young man," he continued, "I had two friends. We made
promises to each other. One said, 'I will become the greatest scholar
in Japan.' The second said, 'I will become the greatest statesman.'
The third, myself, said, 'I will be the greatest rice grower in this
country.' If we all succeeded we were to build beautiful houses and
invite each other to them.

"I did not graduate at the University because, by the entreaty of my
father, when I reached twenty-one, I left Tokyo in order to become a
practical farmer. It is twenty-one years since I began farming. I
consulted with skilful agriculturists and then I saw my way to make a
plan. Rice in my native place is inferior. I improved it for three or
four years. I gained the first gold prize at the prefectural show.
Some years later I obtained the first prize at the exhibition which
was held by five prefectures together. Later still I received the
first prize at the exhibition for eighteen prefectures, also the first
prize at the exhibition of the National Agricultural Association.
Further, I was appointed a judge of rice and travelled about.

"I consumed a great deal of time in doing this public work. One day I
was made to think. A collector for a charity said in my hearing that
he expected larger subscriptions from practical men because though
public men were esteemed by society their economic power was small. I
at once resolved that before doing any more public work I should put
myself in a sound financial position.

"As I thought over the matter it seemed to me that it was not to be
expected that a public man should be able to do his really best work
if his financial position were not sound. Again, could he have lasting
influence with people in practical affairs if his own practical
affairs were not in good order?[16] At any rate I determined not to go
out to any more exhibitions or lectures except those which were
remunerative, and I resolved to devote myself as my first duty to my
farming.

"I set to work and managed my land, 3 _chō_ (a _chō_ is 2-1/2 acres),
so as to obtain the gross income of an M.P. [The reader could scarcely
have a more striking illustration of the intensity with which Japanese
land is cultivated--the average area is under 3 acres per family.] I
am now working about 4 _chō_ (10 acres). Later on I am going to farm 7
_chō_ (15-1/2 acres) and from that I am expecting the income of a
Minister.[17] I have already collected the materials for my villa, for
I am approaching my goal. One of my two friends, who is also forty
years of age, is a distinguished chemist in the Imperial Agricultural
College. My other friend, who is forty-four, is Secretary of the
Korean Government."

The indomitable experimenter swallowed another cupful of tea and
declared that "in order to be prosperous, all the members of the
family must work." All the members of his family did work. His wife
was strong and there were five healthy children. He used the ordinary
farm implements and his livestock consisted of only a horse and a few
hens. The home farm was five miles from the station. The outlying
farms were scattered in five villages--"there are always spendthrift
lazy fellows willing to sell their land." "I have a firm belief," the
speaker added complacently, "that agriculture is the most honest, the
most sincere, the most interesting, the most secure and the most
profitable calling."

"Very often," he went on, "good people are not sufficiently
precautious"--I give the excellent word coined by my interpreter.
"They spend for the public good, and in the end they are left poor.
Renowned, rich families have come to a miserable condition by such
action. What they have done may have been good. But they are reduced
to pauperism and they are laughed at by many persons. People jeer that
they pretended to do good, yet they could not do good to themselves.
If all people who work for the public benefit are laughed at at
last--and many are--it will come to be thought that to work for the
public benefit is not good. Therefore I think that the man who would
work for the public good must be careful in his own affairs. He must
not be a poor man if he is to help public business. However
philanthropic he may be, if his financial position is not strong he
cannot go on long. He will be stopped on his good way. He cannot help
other people. Therefore I am now gathering wealth for strengthening
my financial position as a means to attain the higher end."

As the speaker awaited my judgment on his career, I ventured to
suggest that gifts, qualities and inspiration which made a man a
public man did not necessarily equip him for being a great success in
business life. The question was, perhaps, whether the type of man who
was pre-eminently successful in promoting his own pecuniary interests
was necessarily the best type of public man. Was the average character
equal to the strain of many years of concentration on money-making to
the exclusion of public interests? When men emerged from the sphere of
concentrated money-making, were they worth so very much as public men?
Might not the values of things have altered a little for them? Might
it not have a shrivelling effect on the heart to resist applications
which must be refused when the strengthening of one's financial
position was regarded as the chief object in life?

At this point our host, Mr. Yamasaki, the respected principal of the
big agricultural school of the prefecture and a well-known rural
author and speaker, broke in with the ejaculation, "He has got a
needle in your head"--the Japanese equivalent for "touching the
spot"--and continued: "Surely he is right who through his life offers
freely what he may have as to members of his own family. I give away
many pamphlets and I have guests. I could save in these directions.
But I am not doing it. I am content if I can support my family. I gave
a savings book to each of my five children. When the boy becomes
twenty-one he will have enough to finish at the university or start as
a small merchant so as not to be a parasite. My girls will be provided
with enough to furnish the costs of modest marriage. If I did more I
might perhaps become greedy."

I cannot say that the farmer who had so kindly outlined his life's
programme was impressed either by our host's views or by mine, but he
told us that he now spent 5 per cent. of his income on public
purposes, and that 150 yen received for giving lectures was spent on
books and recreation "for enlarging mind and heart." He happened to
mention that, though his family was of the Zen sect of Buddhism, he
was a Shintoist. It is difficult to believe that a genuine Buddhist
could have evolved such a life scheme. There is certainly a Shinto
symbolism in his plan of tree planting before his house. He has set
there, in the order shown, eleven pines which he named as marked:

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ELEVEN SYMBOLIC TREES WHICH THE FARMER PLANTED
OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE AND THE EVILS (REPRESENTED BY ARROWS)
FROM WHICH THEY ARE SHIELDING HIM]

The virtues inscribed on this plan are the guardians of the farmer and
his family, which is represented in the middle of it. The words behind
the arrows represent the character of the attacks to which the farmer
conceives himself and his family to be exposed. Courage is imagined as
going before and Wisdom as protecting the rear.

The talk turned to some advice which had been given to farmers to lay
out "economic gardens." They were to plant no trees but fruit trees.
To this an old farmer of our company replied: "If you are too
economical your children will become mercenary. Some families were too
economical and cut down beautiful trees, planting instead economical
ones. Those families I have seen come to an evil end. The man who
exercises rigid economy may be a good man, but his children can know
little of his real motives and must be wrongly influenced by his
conduct." We all agreed that there was nowadays too much talk about
money-making in rural Japan. "Even I," laughed the owner of the
symbolic trees, "planted not persimmons but pines."

FOOTNOTES:

[14] That is, before the Revolution of half a century ago, when the
Tokugawa Shogun resigned his powers to the Emperor.

[15] The Japanese bed, _futon_, consists of a soft mattress of cotton
wool, two or three inches thick. It is spread on the floor, which
itself consists of mats of almost the same thickness, 6 ft. long by 3
ft. wide.

[16] Most of the really big men of Australia have left political life
in comparatively impoverished circumstances. Not only did Sir Henry
Parkes die poor. Sir George Reid took the High Commissionership in
London; Sir Graham Berry was provided with a small annuity; Sir George
Dibbs was made the manager of a State savings bank; Sir Edmund Barton
was lifted to the High Court Bench.--_Times_, January 11, 1921.

To the last day of his life, executions were levied in his
house.--Rosebery on Pitt.

[17] For his figures see Appendix I.




CHAPTER III

EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS
ACTIVITIES

I should be heartily sorry if there were no signs of partiality. On the
other hand, there is, I trust, no importunate advocacy or tedious
assentation.--MORLEY


"The alarum clocks for waking us at four o'clock in the summer and
five in the winter"--it was the chairman of a village Early-Rising
Society who was speaking to me--are placed at the houses of the
secretaries, and each member is in turn a secretary. The duty of a
secretary, when the alarum clock strikes, is to get up and visit the
houses of all the members allotted to him and to shout for the young
men until they answer. Each member on rising walks to the house of the
secretary of his division and writes his name on the record of
attendances. Then the member goes to the shrine, where we fence and
wrestle for a time. At first we thought that if we fenced and wrestled
early in the morning we should be tired for our work, but we found
that it was not so.

"Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring, so a few of us may
be getting up later that morning. Or a man becomes afraid of sleeping
too late, fears his clock is wrong, and gets up at 3 o'clock and then
goes off to waken members. Hence complaints. Some cunning fellows ask
their friends or brothers to write down for them their names on the
list of attendances. But we find out their deceit by their
handwriting. It is very difficult to form the habit of early rising,
because members are not expected to report at the secretaries' houses
on a rainy day. As there is no control over them that day, they are
easy in their minds and sleep on. Thus they break the habit of early
rising that they are forming. Getting up early is necessary not only
because it is good to begin work early but because early rising
overcomes the habit of gadding about at night which is customary in
many villages.

"You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of young men," the
chairman continued. "But if you ask from them comfortable practices
only, how can you expect from them a remarkable result? Young men
should ponder this and be willing to exert themselves." Later on it
was explained to me that it had been found that it took a great deal
of time for the secretaries to call up all the members in the morning
by shouting to them, "so the secretary obtained bugles; but even the
bugles were not heard everywhere, so they were changed to drums, and
now five drums go round our village every morning."

In every village of Japan there is a young men's association, which is
by no means to be confounded with the world-encircling Y.M.C.A.[18]
The village Y.M.A. of Japan is an institution of some antiquity and it
has nothing whatever to do with religious effort. One day, when I was
staying in a rural district, I was invited to a remoter part in order
to see something of the discipline that the members of a group of
young men's associations were imposing on themselves. The members of
this group of Y.M.A. belonged to the branches established in a village
of nineteen _aza_, that is hamlets. This fact, with the further fact
that the village containing the nineteen _aza_ had four elementary
schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese village may
be much larger than a Western one.

Nearly six hundred young men were in the parade. They were dressed
exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers and kimono of jacket
length which the Japanese farmer ordinarily wears. Each man had the
usual _obi_ (waist scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the _obi_ was
thrust the small cotton towel which Japanese carry with them
everywhere. The young men wore puttees, _waraji_ (straw sandals) and
caps. It is only of late that the Japanese worker has taken to wearing
head-gear, or at any rate head-gear other than he could contrive with
his towel. The physical condition of the young fellows was good and
their evolutions with dummy "rifles" were smart and skilful. The
paraders seemed lost in their desire to do their best for their
credit's sake and their own good. After the first movements, the
"troops" with "rifles" held as if there were bayonets at the end, made
rushes with loud cries. The secret of this somewhat surprising display
far away in the heart of Japan was that the work of the young men had
been done under the direction of two fit, be-medalled army surgeons,
reserve officers, who were present in order to answer my questions.

Every morning half an hour before sunrise these Y.M.A. members
assemble in the grounds of their Shinto shrine or of their school,
where they exercise until the sun shows itself. In the evenings after
work they also fence, wrestle, lift weights and develop their wrists.
This wrist development is done by two youths grasping a pole, one at
either end, and then trying to rotate it one against the other.

The members endeavour to cultivate their minds as well as their
bodies, and they also observe in their dress a self-denying ordinance.
On ceremonial occasions they permit themselves to wear a full-length
kimono and the _hakama_ or divided skirt, but they deny themselves the
third article of a Japanese man's full dress, the _haori_ or silk
overcoat. An effort is also made to dispense with the use of
"luxurious" _geta_ (the national wooden pattens).[19]

The object of all this varied discipline is to develop physique,
self-control, self-respect and what the Japanese call the spirit of
association, or, as we might say, good fellowship. The spirit of
association is needed in order to promote greater administrative,
educational and social efficiency. The modern Japanese village is no
longer an historical but a political unit which covers a considerable
district. It is, as I have explained, a combination of clusters of
_aza_ (hamlets). Each of these _aza_ has its local sentiment, and this
local sentiment when untouched by outside influences tends to become
selfish, narrow and prejudiced. If, however, anything is to be done in
the development of rural life there must be co-operation between
_aza_ for all sorts of objects.

I was assured that in addition to the development of physique, _moral_
and the spirit of association, there was to be seen, under the
influence of the Y.M.A., a development of good manners and mental
nimbleness. A special result of early rising and discipline in one
area had been that "the habit of spending evening hours idly has died
away, immorality has diminished, singing loudly and foolishly and
boasting oneself have disappeared, while punctuality and respect for
old age have increased." I was even assured that parents--whom no true
Japanese would ever dream of attempting to reform at first
hand--parents, I say, moved by the physical and mental advance in
their sons, have "begun to practise greater punctuality."

After the drilling was over I was taken to a large elementary school
and was called upon to address the young men, who were kneeling in
perfect files. Mr. Yamasaki followed me and told the youths that
Japanese were not so tall as they might be, and that therefore their
physique "must be continuously developed." Nor were rural conditions
all they should be from a moral point of view. Therefore, "every
desire which interferes with the development of your health or
morality must be overcome."

Let me speak of another village. It numbers a thousand families and it
rises in the morning and goes to bed at night by the sound of the
bugle. It has five public baths and a notice-board of news "to enlarge
people's ideas." The shopkeepers are said to "work very diligently, so
things are cheaper." The education of such of the young men as are
exempted from military service is continued on Saturday evenings for
four years. The Y.M.A., in addition to the military discipline,
fencing, wrestling, weight-lifting and pole-twisting of which I have
spoken, exercises itself in handwriting--which many Japanese practise
as an art during their whole lifetime--and in composing the
conventional short poem. I was gravely informed that "the custom of
spending money on sweet-stuff is decreasing." What this really means
is that the young men were not frequenting the sweet-stuff shops,
which are staffed by girls who are in many cases a greater temptation
than the sweets. The worthy members of this association had "burnt
their _geta_."

In some places Y.M.A. members give their labour when a school teacher
or a fellow member is building his house, or they do repairs at the
school. Bicycle excursions are made to neighbouring villages in order
to participate in inter-Y.M.A. debates, or to study vegetable raising,
fruit culture or poultry keeping. The Japanese are much given to
"taking trips," and the special training which they receive at school
in making notes and plans results in everybody having a notebook and
being able to sketch a rough route-plan for personal use, or for a
stranger who may ask his way.

Not a few associations favour members cutting each other's hair once a
fortnight, thus at one and the same time saving money and curbing
vanity. Several Y.M.A.s publish cyclostyled monthlies. Others minutely
investigate the economic condition of their villages. Some Y.M.A.s
provide public "complaint boxes," and have boards up asking for
friendly help for soldiers billeted in the district. One association
has issued instructions to its members that they are not to ride when
in charge of ox-drawn carts. The reason is that the ox is only
partially under control and may injure a pedestrian--unwittingly, I am
sure, for the gentleness of the ox and even of the bull in harness
arrests one's attention. Many Y.M.A.s devote themselves to cultivating
improved qualities of rice or to breaking up new land. Sometimes the
land of the Shinto shrine is cultivated. I have heard of Y.M.A.s in
remote parts having handed over to them the exclusive sale of _saké_.

I find a Y.M.A. counselling its members "not to speak vulgar words in
a crowd." There is also among the members of Y.M.A.s a certain
addiction to diary keeping for moral as well as economic purposes. The
diaries are distributed by the associations and "afterwards examined
and rewarded"--a plan which would hardly work in the West. There are
Y.M.A.s which make a point of seeing off conscripts with flags and
music. Others have fallen on the more economical plan of "writing to
the conscript as often as possible and helping with labour the family
which is suffering from the loss of his services." By some Y.M.A.s
"old people are respected and comforted." More than one association
has a practice of serving out red and black balls to its members at
the opening of every new year, when good resolutions are in order, and
at the end of the year recalling either the red or the black according
to the degree to which the publicly announced good resolutions have
been kept. Among the good resolutions are: to worship at the Shinto
shrine or the Buddhist temple regularly, to be tidier, to be more
efficient in cropping the land, to undertake work for the common good,
to have a secondary occupation in addition to farming, to sit with
more decorum at meals, to rise earlier, to visit the graves of
ancestors monthly, to be more considerate to parents or elder
brothers, and "not to remain idly at people's houses."

One Y.M.A. decrees that a member found in a tea-house in conversation
with a geisha shall be fined 20 yen. There is even a village in which
the young men's association and the young women's association have
united to issue a regulation providing that at night time members, in
order that their doings shall be public, shall carry lanterns painted
with the ideographs of their societies.[20]

With regard to the young women's associations, I found that one of
them studied domestic matters and good manners, "asking questions and
receiving answers." The motto of the organisation was "Good Wives and
Good Mothers." A member, this Society believes, should be "polite,
gentle and warm-hearted, but with a strong will inside and able to
meet difficulties." Her hairdressing and clothes "should not be
luxurious," and she "must not run after fashions." She must "respect
Buddha and abandon sweet-eating," for "taking food between meals is
bad for your health, for economy and for your posterity."

Let us now hear something of Societies for the Cultivation of Rice by
Schoolboys. The lads become responsible for the cultivation of a _tan_
of their family land, or of a small paddy, and they work it themselves
with the help of such advice as the schoolmaster may give them. (The
cultivation of a _tan_ of a paddy, a quarter of an acre, is supposed
to need in a year about twenty-one days' labour of a man working from
sunrise to sunset.) The report of one boy to which I turned in a
collection of reports by members of a rice-cultivation society showed
that he was between fourteen and fifteen. His diary of work and
observations was as follows:

  _June_ 5.--4 _to_ of herring applied.

  _June_ 7.--Locusts and other insects arrive.[21]

  _June_ 20.--153 clumps of rice transplanted from the seed bed.[22]

  _July_ 11.--Rice cultivated and 4 _to_ of herring applied.

  _July_ 27.--First weeding.

  _Aug_. 6.--Second weeding.

  _Aug_. 8.--Locusts again.

  _Aug_. 11.--Third weeding.

  _Sept_. 10.--All ears shot.

  _Oct_. 10.--Some plants suffering from bacillus.

It was further noted that the soil was sandy, that cold spring water
was percolating through the bottom of the paddy field, that the
aeration of the soil was bad and that some plants were laid by wind.
The young farmer appended to his report an excellent plan. He received
marks as follows: Method of planting, 15; levelling, 20; provision
against insects, 5; general attention, 25; total, 65. Some boys got as
many as 99 marks.

A word concerning a Village Association for Promoting Morality. One of
the things it does is to assemble yearly the whole population, old and
young, "in order to get friendly." The police meanwhile keep an eye
open for strangers who might take it into their heads to visit the
village on that day and help themselves from the houses. I may quote
three poems in rough translations from a speech made by a priest at
the annual meeting:

The legs of a horse, the rudder of a boat, the pin of a fan,
    and the sincerity of a man.
Let your heart be pure and true and you need not pray
    for the protection of the gods.
The bride brings many things with her to her new home,
    but one thing more, the spirit of sincerity, will not
    encumber her.

After these varied accounts of rural merit, I could not but listen
with attention to a tale of village gamblers, the offence of gambling
having been "introduced by the excavators on the new railway." First
the headman fined a dozen young men. Then he made a raid and found
among the village sinners several members of his own council. "The
salaried officials were at a loss to know what to do, and proposed to
resign. But the headman brought the prisoners together before the
whole body of officials. He spoke of the sufferings of the troops in
Manchuria and the heroic deaths among them. (It was the time of the
Russian war.) 'Lest your offences should come to be known by our
soldiers and discourage them,' said the headman, 'I cannot but
overlook your conduct.' It is thought that gambling practically ceased
from that time."

Local officials have a way of making the most of historic events in
order to touch the imagination of their villagers. Many original
undertakings were begun, for example, under the inspiration of the
Coronation. One village set about raising a fund by a system of
taxation under which inhabitants contribute according to the following
tariff:

  Birth of a child, 10 sen (that is, 2-1/2 d. or 5 cents).
  Wedding, 15 sen.
  Adoption, 15 sen.
  Graduation from the primary school, 10 sen; advanced
      school, 20 sen.
  Teacher or official on appointment, 2 per cent. of salary;
      when salary is increased, 10 per cent. of increase.
  When an official receives a prize of money from his
      superior, 5 per cent.
  Every villager to pay every quarter, 1 sen.

On the basis of this assessment it is expected that fifty-seven years
after the Coronation such a sum will have been accumulated as will
enable the villagers to live rate free. Some villages have
thanksgiving associations in connection with Shinto shrines. Aged
villagers are "respected by being blessed before the shrine and by
being given a present." Worthy villagers who are not aged "receive
prizes and honour."

More than once when I went to a village I was welcomed first by a
parade of the Y.M.A., then by the school children in rows, and finally
in the school grounds by two lines of venerable members of an
Ex-Public Servants' Association. The object of an E.P.S.A. is to
strengthen the hands of the present officials and to give honour to
their predecessors. A headman explained to me: "If ex-officials fell
into poverty or lacked public respect, people would not be inclined to
work for the public good. A former clerk in the village office whom
everybody had forgotten was working as a labourer. But as a member of
the association he was seen to be treated with honour, so the children
were impressed. The funeral of such a man is apt to be lonely, but
when this man died all the members of the association attended his
funeral in ceremonial dress and offered some money to his memory.[23]
His honour is great and the villagers say, 'We may well work for the
public benefit.'"

Every village in Japan has a Village Agricultural Association. One
V.A.A., which belongs to a village of less than 6,000 people, sees the
fruit of its labours in the existence of "322 good manure houses." The
gift of a plan and the grant of a yen had prompted the building of
most of them. Then the organisation incites its members to cement the
ground below their dwellings. This is not so much for the benefit of
the farmer and his family as for the welfare of their silkworms. A fly
harmful to silkworms winters in the soil, but it cannot find a
resting-place in concrete.

[Illustration: A WIDE EXPANSE OF ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS.]

A word may also be said about the way in which silkworm rearers have
been induced by the V.A.A. to keep the same breed of caterpillar, so
facilitating bulking of cocoons at the association's co-operative
sales. A small library of silkworm-culture books has been started in
the village, and there is a special pamphlet for young men which
they are urged to keep in "their pockets and to study ten minutes each
day." A general library has 2,400 volumes divided into eight
circulating libraries. The cost of the building which provides the
library in chief, a meeting hall and also a storehouse for cocoons has
been defrayed by the commissions charged for the co-operative sale of
cocoons.

[Illustration: LIBRARY AND WORKSHED OF A YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION.]

Again, there used to be no cattle in the village, but now, thanks to
the purchase of young animals by the association, and thanks to
village shows, there are 103.

There is a competition to get the biggest yield of rice, and there is
also "an exhibition of crops." This exhibition incidentally aims at
ending trouble between landlord and tenants due to complaints of the
inferiority of the rice brought in as rent. (Paddy-field rent is
invariably paid in rice.) These complaints are more directly dealt
with by the V.A.A. arbitrating between landlords and tenants who are
at issue. In addition to rice crop and cattle shows in the village,
there is a yearly exhibition of the prod ucts of secondary industries,
such as mats, sandals and hats.

The V.A.A. is also working to secure the planting of hill-side waste.
Some 300,000 tree seedlings have been distributed to members of the
Y.M.A., who "grow them on," and, after examination and criticism,
plant them out. I must not omit to speak of the V.A.A.s' distribution
of moral and economic diaries of the type already referred to. The
villagers, in the spirit of boy-scoutism, are "advised to do one good
thing in a day." I saw several of these diaries, well thumbed by their
authors after having been laboured at for a year. One young farmer
noted down on the space for January 2 that he said his prayers and
then went _daikon_[24] pulling, and that _daikon_ pulling (like our
mangold pulling) is a cold job.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] There are, however, 11,000 members of Y.M.C.A. in Japan. There is
also a Y.W.C.A. with a considerable membership.

[19] See Appendix II.

[20] For official action in regard to the Y.M.A.s, see later.

[21] The damage done by insects is estimated at 10 million yen a year.
In some parts locusts are roasted and eaten.

[22] For an account of the processes of rice cultivation, see Chapter
IX.

[23] It is the practical Japanese custom to make a gift of money to a
family on the occasion of a death. The Emperor makes a present to the
family of a deceased statesman.

[24] The giant white radish which reaches 2 or 3 ft. in length and 3
in. or more in diameter. There is also a correspondingly large
turnip-shaped sort.




CHAPTER IV

"THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH"

It has been said that we should emulate rather than imitate them.
All I say is, Let us study them.--MATTHEW ARNOLD


For seven years in succession the men, old, middle-aged and young, who
had done the most remarkable things in the agriculture of the
prefecture had been invited to gather in conference. I went to this
annual "meeting of skilful farmers." Among the speakers were the local
governor and chiefs of departments who had been sent down by the
Ministry of Agriculture and the Home Office. According to our ideas,
everybody but the unpractised speakers--the expert farmers who were
called from time to time to the platform--spoke too long. But the
kneeling audience found no fault. Indeed, a third of it was taking
notes. It was an audience of seeking souls.

One of the impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-marked farmer,
told how forty years before he had gone to the next prefecture and
opened new land. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the
chairman--if the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a
Japanese meeting may be properly called a chairman--"he looks like a
gentleman; but he works hard." And the man showed his hands as a
testimony to the severity of his labours.

"It was in the winter," he said, "that I went away from my home and
obtained a certain tract of waste. I had no acquaintance near. I
brought some food, but when I fell short I had no more. I had gone
with my third boy. We lived in a small hut and were in a miserable
condition. Then a fierce wind took off the roof. It was at four in the
morning when the roof blew off. In February I began to open a rice
field. Gradually we got a _chō_. At length I opened another _chō_,
but there was much gravel. Some of my newly opened fields are very
high up the hill. If you chance to pass my house please come to see
me. The maple leaves are very beautiful and you can enjoy the sight of
many birds."

The early meetings of the expert farmers used to last not one day but
two, for the men delighted in narrating their experiences to one
another. Some of the audience used to weep as the older men told their
tales. The farmers would sit up late round a farmer or a professor who
was talking about some subject that interested them. The originator of
these gatherings, Mr. Yamasaki, told me that he was "more than once
moved to tears by the merits and pure hearts of the farmer speakers."

Of the regard and respect which the farmers had for this man I had
many indications. Like not a few agricultural authorities, he is a
samurai.[25] He is exceptionally tall for a Japanese, looks indeed
rather like a Highland gillie, and when one evening I prevailed on him
to put on armour, thrust two swords in his _obi_ and take a long bow
in his hand, he was an imposing figure. He carries the ideals of
_bushido_ into his rural work. He does not sleep more than five hours,
and he is up every morning at five.

But I am getting away from the meeting. There was a priest who spoke,
a man curiously like Tolstoy. (He had, no doubt, Ainu blood in him.)
He wore the stiff buttoned-up jacket of the primary school teacher and
spoke modestly. "Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered very
much from bad irrigation," he said, "but when that was put right the
soil became excellent. In the days when the soil was bad the people
were good and no man suspected another of stealing his seal.[26] But
when the soil became good the disposition of the people was influenced
in a bad way, and they brought their seals to the temple to be kept
safe.

"At that time the organiser of this meeting came and made a speech in
my village. On hearing his speech I thought it an easy task to make my
village good. At once I began to do good things. I formed several
men's and women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha. But
the real condition of the people was not much improved. There came
many troubles upon me, and our friend wrote a letter. I was very
thankful, and I have been keeping that letter in the temple and bowing
there morning and evening.

"I began to ask many distinguished persons to help me. They influenced
the farmers. The sight of a good man is enough. Speech is unnecessary.
The villagers were not educated enough to understand moralisings or
thinking, but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was a
man in the village who was demoralised, and when I told of him to a
distinguished man who lives near our village he sympathised very much.
That distinguished man is eighty-four years old, but he accompanied
that demoralised man for three days, giving no instruction but simply
living the same life, and the demoralised man was an entirely changed
man and ever thankful.

"I am a sinful man. Sometimes it happens that after I have been
working for the public benefit I am glad that I am offered thanks. I
know it is not a good thing when people express gratitude to me, for I
ought not to accept it. When I know I am doing a good thing and
expecting thanks, I am not doing a good thing. My thanks must not come
from men but from Buddha. I am trying to cast out my sinful feelings.
It must not be supposed that I am leading these people. You skilful
farmers kindly come to my village if you pass. You need not give any
speech. Your good faces will do."

But the two speeches I have reported are hardly a fair sample of the
discourses which were delivered. The addresses of the earnest Tokyo
officials and the Governor were directed towards urging on the farmers
increased production and increased labour, and the duty was pressed
upon them, as I understood, in the name of the highest patriotism and
of devotion to their ancestors. This talk was excellent in its way,
but when I got up I hazarded a few words on different lines. If I
venture to summarise my somewhat elementary address it is because it
furnishes a key to some of the enquiries I was to make during my
journeys. I was told the next day that the local daily had declared
that my "tongue was tipped with fire," which was a compliment to my
kind and clever interpreter, who, when he let himself go, seemed to be
able to make two or three sentences out of every one of mine:

I said that my Japanese friends kept asking me my impressions, and one
thing I had to say to them was that I had got an impression in many
quarters of spiritual dryness. I dared to think that some
responsibility for a materialistic outlook must be shared by the
admirable officials and experts who moved about among the farmers.
They were always talking about crop yields and the amount of money
made, and they unconsciously pressed home the idea that rural progress
was a material thing.

But the rural problem was not only a problem of better crops and of
greater production. Man did not live by food alone. Tolstoy wrote a
book called _What Men Live By_, and there was nothing in it about
food. Men lived not by the number of bales of rice they raised, but by
the development of their minds and hearts. It might be asked if it was
not the business of rural experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of
my country had said that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner
sty. It was necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to
know something higher than agriculture. The teacher must be more
advanced than his pupils. There must be a source from which the energy
of the rural teacher must be again and again renewed. There must be a
well from which he must be continually refreshed and stimulated. Some
called that well by the name of religion, unity with God. Some called
it faith in mankind, faith in the destiny of the world, that faith in
man which is faith in God. But it must be a real belief, not a
half-hearted, shivering faith.

Agriculture was not only the oldest and the most serviceable calling,
it was the foundation of everything. But the fact must not be lost
sight of that agriculture, important and vital though it was, was only
a means to an end. The object in view was to have in the rural
districts better men, women and children. The highest aim of rural
progress was to develop the minds and hearts of the rural population,
and in all discussion of the rural problems it was necessary not to
lose in technology a clear view of the final object.

But when account is taken of all the drab materialism in the rural
districts there remains a leaven of unworldliness. It takes various
forms. Here is the story of a landlord at whose beautiful house I
stayed. "When a tenant brings his rent rice to this landlord's
storehouse," a fellow-guest told me, "it is never examined. The door
of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is brought by
the tenant when he is minded to do so. No one takes note of his
coming. If he meets his landlord on the road he may say, 'I brought
you the rent,' and the landlord says, 'It is very kind of you.' It is
an old custom not to supervise the tenants' bringing of the rent.

"Nowadays, however, some tenants are sly. They say, 'Our landlord
never looks into our payments. Therefore we can bring him inferior
rice or less than the quantity.' The landlord loses somewhat by this,
but it is not in accordance with the honour of his family to change
the method of collecting his rent. He is now chairman of the village
co-operative society as well as of the young men's society, and he
aims to improve his village fundamentally."

I also heard this narrative. The tenants in a certain place wished to
cultivate rice land rather than to farm dry land. But when silkworm
cultivation became prosperous they began to prefer dry land again in
order that they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the
landlords raised the rents of the dry farms. But there was one
landlord who said, "If this dry farm land had been improved by me I
should be justified in raising the rent. But I did not improve it.
Therefore it would be base to take advantage of economic conditions to
raise the rent."

So he did not raise the rent. Then he was excluded from social
intercourse by the other landlords because their tenants grumbled.
These landlords said to him, "You can afford not to raise your rents,
but we cannot." Therefore the landlord who had not raised his rents
called his tenants together. He said to them, "It is a hard thing for
me to have no social intercourse with my equals. Therefore I will now
raise the rents. But I cannot accept that raised portion, and I will
take care of it for you, and in ten years I think it will amount to
enough for you to start a cooperative society."

That was eight years ago and the formation of the society was now
proceeding. In order that the reader may not forget on what a very
different scale landlordism exists in Japan, I may mention that the
area owned by this landlord was only 10 _chō_.

I was told the story of a landlord's solution of the rent reduction
problem. "Tenants," the narrator said, "sometimes pretend that their
crops are poorer than they are. Landlords may reduce the payment due,
but sometimes with a certain resentment. One landowner was asked for a
reduction for several years in succession on account of poor crops,
and gave it. But he was trying to think of a plan to defeat the
pretences of his tenants. At last he hit on one. While the tenants'
rice was young he often visited the fields, and when any insects were
to be seen he sent his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the same
way, when crops seemed to be under-manured, he secretly cast
artificial manure on them. At last his tenants found out what he was
doing, and they said, 'As our landlord is so kind to us, we must not
pretend that we need a reduction.' And they did not, and things are
going on very well there. This is an illustration of the fact that our
people are moved more by feeling than by logic."

This was capped by another story. "A landlord, a samurai, has for his
tenants his former subjects, so something of the relation of master
and servant still remains. He wished to raise his tenants to the
position of peasant proprietors, so when land was for sale in the
village he advised them to buy. They said they had no money, but he
answered, 'Means may perhaps be found.' He secretly subscribed a sum
to the Shinto shrine and then advised the formation of a co-operative
society, which could borrow from the shrine for a tenant, so that the
tenant need not go to the landlord to thank him and feel patronised by
him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks there." "The
landlord," added the speaker in his imperfect English, "has entirely
hided himself from the business." A third of the tenants had become
peasant proprietors.

In order to better the feeling between the farmers and landowners this
landlord and several others had begun to ask their tenants to their
gardens, where they were given tea and fruit. "In Japan," said one man
to me, "we see feudal ideas broken down by the upper, not the lower
class."

I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles from the
railway. Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year to the eighty-eight
temples on the peninsula, and in some parts the people are such strict
Buddhists that in one village the county authorities find great
difficulty in overcoming an objection to destroying the insect life
which preys on the rice crops. When rice land does not yield well, one
landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives advice based
upon it to the tenant, saying, "Do this, and if you lose I will
compensate you. If you gain, the advantage will be yours." Money is
also contributed by the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys in
order to study farming methods.

A landlord here--I had the pleasure of being his guest--had started an
agricultural association. It had developed the idea of a secondary
school for practical instruction, "rich men to give their money and
poor men their labour." In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to
get money with which to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord
had thought of the plan of setting aside each harvest 250 _shō_[27] of
rice to each tenant's 3 _shō_.

Good work was done in teaching farmers' wives. "When no instruction is
given," I was informed, "a wife may say, when her husband is testing
his rice seed with salt water, 'Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not
fresh water?' If a husband is kind he will explain. If not, some
unpleasantness may arise, so wives are taught about the necessity of
selecting by salt water."

[Illustration: LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER OFF TO THE VILLAGE
SCHOOL.]

[Illustration: BUDDHIST SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE.]

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day. In order to keep them
steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked to bring their savings
to their landlord every ten days. It is troublesome to be
constantly receiving so many small sums, but the landlord and his
brother think that they should not grudge the trouble. In two years
nearly 1,000 yen have been saved. Said one tenant to his landlord, "I
know how to save now, therefore I save."

[Illustration: MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, THE AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR
NASU.]

[Illustration: THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE.]

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all his tenants
peasant proprietors before he was fifty. The relation of this landlord
and his tenants was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several
farmers brought produce to the kitchen "because we heard that the
landlord had guests." The village was very kind in its reception of
the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple. I told the
story of Wren's _Si monumentum requiris circumspice_ and pointed a
rural moral. Some months afterwards I received a request from my host
to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address
which he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.

This landlord's family had lived in the same house for eleven
generations. The courtesy of my host and his relatives and the beauty
of their old house and its contents are an ineffaceable memory. From
the time my party arrived until the time we left no servant was
allowed to do anything for us. The ladies of the house cooked our food
and the landlord and his younger brother brought it to us. The younger
brother waited upon us throughout our meals, even peeling our pears.
At night he spread our silk-covered _futon_ (mattresses). In the
morning he folded them up, arranged my clothes, swept the room and
stood at hand with towels, all of which were new, while I washed.

When on our arrival in the house we sat and talked in the first
reception-room we entered, I noticed that outside the lattice a
company of villagers was listening with no consciousness of intrusion,
in full view of our host, to the sound of foreign speech. It was a
Shakespearean scene.

Out of its setting, as it is often witnessed to-day, the tea ceremony
seems meaningless and wearisome, an affected simplicity of the idle.
But as a guest of this old house of fine timbers weathered to
silver-grey I found the secret of _Cha-no-yu_. This flower of Far
Eastern civilisation is an æsthetic expression of true
good-fellowship, and a gentle simplicity and sincerity are of its
essence. The admission of a foreigner to a family _Cha-no-yu_ was a
gesture of confidence.

Five of us gathered late in the afternoon of an August day in the cool
matted rest-room in the garden. We looked on the beauty that
generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds
rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of
the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we
rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight
figure in grey with snow-white _tabi_ and new straw sandals, we passed
by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure
hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests distance. The
hut-like tea-room, traditionally rude in the material of which it was
built but perfect in every detail of its workmanship, we entered one
by one. According to old custom we humbly crept through the small
opening which serves as entrance, the idea being that all worldly rank
must bow at the sanctuary of beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides
the wonderful vessels of the ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue
Michaelmas daisies, and an exquisite scroll of wild duck in flight in
the miniature _tokonoma_,[28] the tea mistress, our host and four
guests. We drank from a black daimyo bowl which had been made four
hundred years before. We passed an hour together and in the twilight
we came out from the little room as from a sacrament of friendship. A
year afterwards my host wrote to me, "Yesterday we had _Cha-no-yu_
again and you were in our thoughts. During the ceremony we placed your
photograph in the _tokonoma_."

After dinner we had _kyōgen_[29] by distinguished amateurs, one of
whom, a neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared before the
Emperor. After the plays he painted _kyōgen_ scenes for us on
_kakemono_ and fans. He painted the _kakemono_ as he knelt with his
paper lying on a square of soft material on the floor.

The plays were performed in ancient costumes or copies of old ones
and of course without scenery. The players were lighted by oily
candles two inches in diameter, which flamed and guttered in
candlesticks not of this century nor of the last. A player may make
his exit merely by sitting down. The players are men; masks are used
in playing women's parts. The stories are of the simplest. There was
the well-known tale of the sly servant who was sent to town by a
stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and, though he brought back an
umbrella, succeeded in imposing it on his master. There was also the
play of the fox who comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill foxes,
but is himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good
tenants who had been rewarded by their landlord with an order that
they should receive hats. Owing to an oversight they received one hat
only between the two. Problem, how to meet the difficulty. It was
solved by the rustics fastening two pieces of wood together T-shape,
raising the hat of honour upon the structure and walking home in
triumph under either side of the T.

The next morning I was greeted by the aged father and mother of our
host. The household was an interesting one, for the landlord and his
brother were married to two sisters. Before taking our departure we
knelt with our landlord and his father before the Buddhist shrine on
which rested the memorial tablets of former heads of the house. I
expressed my sense of the privilege extended to strangers. The reply
was, "Our ancestors will feel pleasure in your being among us."

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Samurai or _shizoku_ comprise about a twentieth of the
population.

[26] Every Japanese signs by means of a stone or hard-wood seal which
he keeps in a case and ordinarily carries with him.

[27] A _shō_ is about a quart and a half.

[28] The raised recess in which is usually displayed the flower
arrangement, a piece of pottery and a _kakemono_. (See Note, page 35.)

[29] Farcical interludes of the _Nō_ stage.




CHAPTER V

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

The sense of a common humanity is a real political force.--J.R. GREEN


The stranger in Japan sees so little of the intimacies of country life
that I shall say something of further visits to what we should call
county families. My hosts, who seemed to be active to a greater or
less degree in promoting the welfare of their tenants, lived in purely
Japanese style. Yet now and then in a beautiful house there was a
showy gilt timepiece or some other thing of a deplorable Western
fashion. At all the houses without exception we were waited upon by
the host and his son, son-in-law or brother, and for some time after
our arrival our host and the members of his family would kneel, not in
the apartment in which our _zabuton_ (kneeling cushions) were
arranged, but in the adjoining apartment with its screens pushed back.
Even when the time of sweets and tea had passed and a regular meal was
served, all the little tables of food were brought in not by servants
but by the master of the house and such male relatives as were at
home.

When the duration of a Japanese meal is borne in mind, some idea may
be gained of the fatigue endured by the head of a house in serving
many guests. The host sometimes honours his guests still further by
eating apart from them or by partaking of a portion only of the meal.
The name of a feast in Japanese is significant, "a running about." The
ladies of the house are usually seen for only a few minutes, when they
come with the children to welcome the guests on their arrival; but on
the second day of the visit the ladies may bring in food or tea or
play the _koto_.

The foreigner, though on his knees, feels a little at a loss to know
how to acknowledge politely the repeated bows of so many kneeling men
and women. He watches with appreciation the perfect response of his
Japanese travelling companions. It is difficult to convey a sense of
the charm and dignity of old courtesies exchanged with sincerity
between well-bred people in a fine old house. Although all the
_shoji_[30] are open, the trees of the beautiful garden cast a pensive
shade. The ancient ceremonial of welcome and introduction would seem
ludicrous in the full light of a Western drawing-room, but in the
perfectly subdued light of these romantically beautiful apartments,
charged with some strange and melancholy emotion, the visitor from the
West feels himself entering upon the rare experience of a new world.

Everyone knows how few are the treasures that a Japanese displays in
his house. His heirlooms and works of art are stored in a fireproof
annexe. For the feasting of the eye of every guest or party of
visitors the appropriate choice of _kakemono_,[31] carving or pottery
is made. I had the delight of seeing during my country-house visiting
many ancient pictures of country life and of animals and birds. It was
also a precious opportunity to inspect armour and wonderful swords and
stands of arrows in the houses in which the men who had worn the
armour and used the weapons had lived. The way of stringing the
seven-feet-high bow was shown to me by a kimono-clad samurai, as has
been recorded in the previous chapter. When he threw himself into a
warlike attitude and with an ancient cry whirled a gleaming two-handed
sword in the dim light thrown by lanterns which had lighted the house
in the time of the Shoguns, the figures on old-time Japanese prints
had a new vividness.

What also helped in illuminating for me the old prints of warlike
scenes was a display of a remarkable kind of fencing with naked
weapons which one of my hosts kindly provided in his garden one
evening. The tournament was conducted by the village young men's
association. The exercises, which, as I saw them, are peculiar to the
district, are called _ki-ai_, which means literally "spirit meeting."
They call not only for long training but for courage and ardour. The
combats took place on a small patch of grass which was fenced by four
bamboo branches. These were connected by a rope of paper streamers
such as are used to distinguish a consecrated place. Before the first
bout the bamboos and rope were taken away and a handful of salt was
thrown on the grass. Salt was similarly thrown on the grass before
every contest. The idea is that salt is a purifier. It signifies, like
the handshake of our boxers, that the feelings of the combatants are
cleansed from malice.

Most of the events were single combats, but there were two meetings in
which a man confronted a couple of assailants. The contests I recall
were spear _v_. spear, spear _v_. sword, sword _v_. long billhook,
spear _v_. the short Japanese sickle and a chain, spear _v_. paper
umbrella and sword, pole _v_. wooden sword, pole _v_. pole, and long
billhook _v_. fan and sword. The weapons were sharp enough to inflict
serious wounds if a false move should be made or there should be a
momentary lack of self-control. The flashing steel gave an impression
of imminent danger. There was also the feeling aroused in the
spectators by the way in which the combatants sought to gain advantage
over one another by fierce snarls, stamping on the ground and
appalling gestures. The neck veins of the fighters swelled and their
faces flamed with mock defiance. Their agility in escaping descending
blades was amazing. But the _ki-ai_ player's dexterity is famous. It
is his boast that with his sword he could cut a straw on a friend's
head. I noticed that no women were present at the "spirit meeting."

More than once I found that my landlord host was accustomed to make a
circuit of his village once or twice a week in order to see how things
were going with his tenants. Public-spirited landlords were working
for their people by means of co-operation, lectures and prizes, the
distribution of leaflets and the giving of from 2-1/2 to 7-1/2 per
cent. discount in rent when good rice was produced. The rural
philanthropist in Japan sees himself as the father of his village.[32]
The Japanese word for landlord is "land master" and for tenant "son
tiller." The old idea was patronage on the one side and respect on the
other. This idea is disappearing. "We wish," said one landlord to me,
"to pass through the transition stage gradually. We do not feel the
same responsibility to our people, perhaps, now that they do not show
the same reverence for us, but we do not say to them that they may go
to the factory and we will invest our money for our children. We check
ourselves. We know well, however, that things will change in our
grandsons' time. We therefore try to mix our grandfathers' ideas and
modern ideas. We are believers in co-operation and we try to be
counsellors and to work behind the curtain."

From time to time there are such things as tenants' strikes. Mr.
Yamasaki assured me that the problem of the rural districts can be
solved only by appealing to the feelings of the people in the right
way. He said that "the Japanese are largely moved by feelings, not by
convictions." In some coastwise counties, someone told me, a hurricane
destroyed the crops to such an extent that the tenants could not pay
rent, and the landlords who depended on their rents were impoverished.
Things reached such a pass that a hundred thousand peasants signed a
paper swearing fidelity to an anti-landlord propaganda. Officials and
lawyers achieved nothing. Then Mr. Yamasaki went, and, sitting in the
local temple, talked things over with both sides for days. He got the
landlords to say that they were sorry for their tenants and the
tenants to say that they were sorry for the landlords, and eventually
he was allowed to burn the oath-attested document in the temple.[33]

Many landlords are "endeavouring to cultivate a moral relation"
between themselves and their tenants. They have often the advantage
that their ancestors were the landlords of the same peasant families
for many generations. But there are still plenty of absentee landlords
and landlords who are usurers. There are also the landlords who have
let their lands to middlemen. The cultivator therefore pays out of all
proportion to what the landlord receives. Of landlords generally, an
ex-daimyo's son said to me: "Many landlords treat their tenants
cruelly. The rent enforced is too high. In place of the intimate
relations of former days the relations are now that of cat and dog.
The ignorance of the landlords is the cause of this state of things.
It is very important that the landlord's son shall go to the
agricultural school, where there is plenty of practical work which
will bring the perspiration from him." The object of most good
landlords is to increase the income of their tenants. It is felt that
unless the farmers have more money in their hands, progress is
impossible. There is one direction in which the landlords are not
tried. The franchise is so narrow that farmers cannot vote against
their landlords.

In the house of one old landowning family in which I was a guest I saw
a _gaku_ inscribed, "Happiness comes to the house whose ancestors were
virtuous." I was admitted to the family shrine. Round the walls of the
small apartment in which the shrine stood were the autographs or
portraits of distinguished members of the house going back four or
five hundred years. It was easy to see that the inspiring force of
this family was its untarnished name. It was a crime against the
ancestors to reduce the prestige or merit of the family. No stronger
influence could be exerted upon an erring member of such a family than
to be brought by his father or elder brother before the family shrine
and there reprimanded in the presence of the ancestral spirits. The
head of this house is at present a schoolboy of twelve and the
government of the family is in the hands of a "regent," the lad's
uncle. I saw the boy and his younger sister trot off in the morning
with their satchels on their backs to the village school in democratic
Japanese fashion. Japan is a much more democratic country than the
tourist imagines. Distinctions of class are accompanied by easy
relations in many important matters.

I went for a second time to the restful city of Nagoya. It is out of
the sphere of influence of Tokyo and is conservative of old ideas.
People live with less display than in the capital and perhaps pride
themselves on doing so. But if the houses of even the well-to-do are
small and inconspicuous, the interiors are of satisfying quality in
materials and workmanship, and the family godowns bring forth
surprises. Here as elsewhere the guest is served in treasured lacquer
and porcelain. (While we are not accustomed in the West to look at the
marks on our host's table silver, it is perfect Japanese manners to
admire a food bowl by examining the potter's marks.) My host hung a
rural _kakemono_ in my room, one day a fine old study of poultry,
another an equally beautiful painting of hollyhocks.

As we left the town my attention was attracted by a commemorative
stone overlooking rice fields. The inscription proclaimed the fact
that at that spot the late Emperor Meiji,[34] as a lad of fifteen, on
his historic first journey to Tokyo, "beheld the farmers reaping."

The matron of a farmhouse two centuries old showed me a tub containing
tiny carp which she had hatched for her carp pond, the inmates of
which, as is common, came to be fed when she clapped her hands. In the
garden there was an old clay butt still used for archery. In the
farmhouse I was taken into a room in which in the old days the daimyo
overlord had rested, into another room which had a secret door and
into a third room where--an electric fan was buzzing.

At a school I had to face the usual ordeal of having to "write" as
best I could a motto for use as a wall picture. Our lettering, when
done with a brush, falls pitifully behind Chinese characters in
decorative value, and our mottoes will not readily translate into
Japanese. I was often grateful to Henley for "I am the master of my
fate, I am the captain of my soul," because with the substitution of
"commander" for captain, the lines translate literally.

We left the village through arches which had been erected by the young
men's association. At an old country house four interesting things
were shown to me. There was, first, a phial of rice seed 230 years
old. The agricultural professor who was my fellow-guest told me that
he had germinated some of the grains, but they did not produce rice
plants. The second thing was a fine family shrine before which a
religious ceremony had been performed twice a day by succeeding
generations of the same family for 350 years. The third object of
interest was a little, narrow, flat steel dagger about eight inches
long, sheathed in the scabbard of a sword. The dagger was used for
"fastening an enemy's head on." After the owner of the sword had
beheaded his foe, he drew the smaller weapon, and, thrusting one end
into the headless trunk and the other end into the base of the head,
politely united head and body once more, thus making it possible "to
show due respect and sympathy towards the dead." Finally, I had the
privilege of handling a wonderful suit of armour which was fitted
slowly together for me out of many pieces. Although it had been made
several centuries ago, this rich suit of lacquered leather had been a
Japanese general's wear on the field of battle within living memory.

One of the landowners I met was a poet who had been successful in the
Imperial poem competition which is held every New Year. A subject is
set by His Majesty and the thousands of pieces sent in are submitted
to a committee. The dozen best productions are read before the
sovereign himself, and this is the honour sought by the competitors.
The subject for competition in the year in which the landowner had
been successful was, "The cryptomeria in a temple court." His poem was
as follows:

        In transplanting
        The young cryptomeria trees
        Within the sacred fence
        There is a symbol
        Of the beginning of the reign.

The New Year poems come from every class of the community and there
is seldom a year in which landowners or farmers are not among the
fortunate twelve.

As we rode along a companion spoke of the force of public opinion in
keeping things straight in the countryside, also of the far-reaching
control exercised by fathers and elder brothers. But the good
behaviour of some people was due, he said, to a dread of being
ridiculed in the newspapers, which allow themselves extraordinary
freedom in dealing with reputations.

I met a man who had had a monument erected to him. He was a member of
a little company which received me in a farmer's house. He was
formerly the richest man in the village, that is to say, he owned 20
_chō_ and was worth about 100,000 yen. Moved by the poverty of his
neighbours, he devoted his substance to improving their condition. Now
many of them are well off, the village has been "praised and rewarded"
by the prefecture for its "good farming and good morals," and the
philanthropist is worth only 50,000 yen. Impressed by his
unselfishness, the village has raised a great slab of stone in his
honour.

I made enquiries continually about the influence exerted by priests. I
was told of many "careless" priests, but also of others who delivered
sermons of a practical sort. A few of the younger priests were
described as "philosophical" and some preached "the kingdom of God is
within you." Many people laid stress on the necessity for a better
education of the priesthood and for combating superstition among the
peasantry, though the schools had already had a powerful influence in
shaking the faith of thousands of the common people in charms and
suchlike. Many folk put up charms because it was the custom or to
please their old parents or because it could do no harm.

I was told that the Government does not encourage the erection of new
temples. Its notion is that it is better to maintain the existing
temples adequately. When I went to see a gorgeous new temple, I found
that official permission for its erection had been obtained because
the figures, vessels and some of the fittings of an old and
dilapidated temple were to be used in the new edifice. This temple
was on a large tract of land which had recently been recovered from
the sea. The building had cost between 80,000 and 90,000 yen. It stood
on piles on rising ground and had a secondary purpose in that it
offered a place of refuge to the settlers on the new land if the sea
dike should break.

The founder of the temple was the man who had drained the land and
established the colony. He had given an endowment of 500 yen a year,
three-quarters of which was for the priest. This functionary had also
an income of 150 yen from a _chō_ of land attached to the temple.
Further he received gifts of rice and vegetables. I noticed that the
gifts of rice--acknowledged on a list hung up in his house--varied in
quantity from four pecks to half a cupful. Probably the priest bought
very little of anything. If he needed matting for his house, which was
attached to the temple, or if he had to make a journey, the villagers
saw that his requirements were met. And he was always getting presents
of one kind or another. "A man says to the priest," I was told, "'This
is too good for me; please accept it.'" The villagers on their side
sat and smoked in one of the temple rooms and drank his reverence's
tea for hours before and after service.[35]

The building of the temple was not only an act of piety but a work of
commercial necessity. The colonists on the reclaimed land would never
have settled there if there had not been a temple to hold them to the
place and to provide burial rites for their old parents. Not all the
people were of the same sect of Buddhism, but "they gradually came
together." A third of what a tenant produced went for rent and another
third for fertilisers, the remaining third being his own. The
population was 1,800 in 300 families. The average area per family was
2 _chō_ and colonists were expected to start with about 200 yen of
capital. Some unpromising tenants had been sent away and "some had
left secretly." Half of the people were in debt to the landlord--the
total indebtedness was about 15,000 yen--for the erection of houses
and the purchase of implements and stock. The rate was 8 per cent. In
the district 10 per cent. was quite usual and 12 per cent. by no means
rare. The co-operative society lent at the daily rate of 2-1/2 sen per
100 yen.

The landlord told me that the sea dikes took two years to build and
that most of the earth was carried by women, 5,000 of them. Their
labour was cheap and the small quantities of earth which each woman
brought at a time permitted of a better consolidation of an embankment
that was 240 feet wide at the base. More than a million yen were laid
out on the work. The reclaimed land was free of State taxes for half a
century, but the landlord made a voluntary gift to the village of
2,000 yen a year. The yearly rent coming in was already nearly 56,000
yen. The cost of the management of the drained land and of repairs to
the embankment, 20,000 yen a year, was just met by the profits of a
fishpond. A valuable edible seaweed industry was carried on outside
the sea dikes. The landlord mentioned that he had had great difficulty
in overcoming the objections of his grandfather to the investment, but
that eventually the old man got so much interested that at
ninety-three he used to march about giving orders.

One day in the course of my journeying I was near a railway station
where country people had assembled to watch the passing of a train by
which the Emperor was travelling. No one was permitted along the line
except at specified points which were carefully watched. A young
constable who wore a Russian war medal was opposite the spot where I
stood. He politely asked me to keep one _shaku_ (foot) or so away from
the paling. When someone's child pushed itself half-way through the
paling the police instruction was, "Please keep back the little one
for, if it should pass through, other children will no doubt wish to
follow." A later request by the constable was to take off our hats and
keep silence when he raised his hand on the approach of the Imperial
train. We were further asked not to point at the Emperor and on no
account to cry Banzai. (The Japanese shout _Banzai_ for the Emperor in
his absence and cry _Banzai_ to victorious generals and admirals, but
perfect silence is considered the most respectful way of greeting the
Emperor himself.) The Imperial train, which was preceded by a pilot
engine drawing a van full of rather anxious-looking police, slowed
down on approaching the station so that everyone had a chance of
seeing the Emperor, who was facing us. All the school children of the
district had been marshalled where they could get a good view. The
Japanese bow of greatest respect--it has been introduced since the
Restoration, I was told--is an inclination of the head so slight that
it does not prevent the person who bows seeing his superior. This bow
when made by rows of people is impressive. Undoubtedly the crowd was
moved by the sight of its sovereign. Not a few people held their hands
together in front of them in an attitude of devotion. The day before I
had happened to see first a priest and then a professor examining a
magazine which had a portrait of the Emperor as frontispiece. Both
bowed slightly to the print. Coloured portraits of the Emperor and
Empress are on sale in the shops, but in many cases there is a little
square of tissue paper over the Imperial countenances.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] _Shoji_ are the screens which divide a room from the outside.
They are a dainty wooden framework of many divisions, each of which is
covered by a sheet of thin white paper. The _shoji_ provide light and
are never painted. The sliding doors between two rooms are _karakami
(fusuma_ is a literary word). They are a wooden framework with thick
paper or cloth on both sides of it and with paper packing between the
layers. _Karakami_ are often decorated with writing or may be painted.
No light passes through them.

[31] A writing or a picture on a long perpendicular strip of paper or
silk or of paper mounted on silk, with rollers. The length is about
three times the width, which is usually 1 ft. 3 in. or 1 ft. 10 in.
The _kakemono_ in the _tokonoma_ of tea-ceremony rooms is about 10 in.
wide.

[32] For budgets of large property owners, see Appendix III.

[33] There have been several serious tenants' demonstrations in Aichi
during 1921. See Chapter XIX.

[34] Each Emperor receives on his succession a name which is applied
to the period of his reign. The period of Mutsuhito's reign,
1868-1912, is called _Meiji_; that of the present Emperor _Taisho_.
Thus the year 1912 would be _Taisho_ I.

[35] It will be remembered that there is only one prefecture in which
tea is not grown in larger or smaller areas, and that it is served
economically without sugar or milk.




CHAPTER VI

BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI[36]

Nor do I see why we should take it for granted that their gods are
unworthy of respect.--_Valerius_


In Aichi prefecture I was asked to plant trees (persimmons) in the
grounds of three temples or shrines and on the land of several
farmers. In an exposed position on a hill-top I found persimmons being
grown on a system under which the landlord provided the land, trees
and manures and the farmer the labour, and the produce was equally
divided.

The cryptomeria at one of the shrines I visited were of great age. All
of them had lost their tops by lightning. It cannot be easy for those
who have never seen cryptomeria or the redwoods of California to
realise the impression made by dark giant trees that have stood before
some shrine for generations. At the approach to the shrine of which I
speak there were venerable wooden statues. I recall one figure carved
in wood as full of life as that of the famous Egyptian headman.

The aged chief priest, who was assisted by two younger priests, kindly
invited me to take part in a Shinto service. First, I ceremonially
washed my hands and rinsed my mouth. Then, having ascended the steps,
my shoes were removed for me so that my hands should not be defiled.
On entering the shrine I knelt opposite the young priests, one of whom
brought me the usual evergreen bough with paper streamers. On
receiving it I rose to my feet, passed through the beautiful building
and advanced to what I may call, for the lack of a more accurate term,
the altar table. On this table, which, as is usual in Shinto
ceremonies, was of new white wood following the ancient design, I laid
the offering. Then I bowed and gave the customary three smart
hand-claps which summon the attention of the deity of the shrine, and
bowed again. On returning to my former kneeling-place one of the
priests offered me _saké_ and a small piece of dried fish in
paper.[37] The chief priest was good enough to read and to hand to me
an address headed, "Words of Congratulation to the Investigator,"
which may be Englished as follows:

"I, Yukimichi Otsu, the chief priest, speak most respectfully and
reverently before the shrine of the august deity,
Okunitama-no-miko-no-kami, and other deities here enshrined: Dr.
Robertson Scott, of England, is here this good day. He comes to see
the things of Japan under the governance of our gracious Emperor. I,
having made myself quite pure and clean, open the door of gracious
eyes that they may look upon those who are here. May Dr. Robertson
Scott be protected during night and day, no accident happening
wherever he may go. Dr. Robertson Scott goes everywhere in this
country; he may cross a hundred rivers and pass over many hills. May
there be no foundering of his boat, no stumbling of his horse.
Offering produce of land and sea, I say this most respectfully before
the shrine."

After the shrine I visited a co-operative store, curiously reminiscent
of many a similar rural enterprise I had seen in Denmark. Sugar,
coarser than anything sold at home, was dear. Half the price paid for
sugar in Japan is tax. I was informed that there were no fewer than
400 cooperative organisations in the prefecture.

[Illustration: AUTHOR QUESTIONING OFFICIALS--]

[Illustration: AND PLANTING COMMEMORATIVE TREES]

At several places, although the villagers were busy rice planting, the
young men's association turned out. The young men were reinforced by
reservists and came sharply to attention as our _kuruma_
(_jinrikisha_, usually pneumatic-tyred) passed. Some of the villages
we bowled through were off the ordinary track, and the older villagers
observed the ancient custom of coming out from their houses or farm
plots, dropping on their knees and bowing low as we passed.[38] All
over Japan, a villager encountered on the road removed the towel from
his head before bowing. If a cloak or outer coat was worn, it was
taken off or the motion of taking it off was made. Frequently, in
showery weather, cyclists who were wearing mackintoshes or capes,
alighted and removed these outer garments before saluting.

[Illustration: RICE POLISHING BY FOOT POWER.]

I saw a village which a few years ago had been "disorderly and poor"
and in continual friction with its landlord. Eventually this man
realised his responsibility, and, inspired by Mr. Yamasaki, took the
situation in hand. He talked in a straightforward way with his
villagers, reduced a number of rents and spent money freely in
ameliorative work. To-day the village is "remarkable for its good
conduct" and the relation between landlord and tenant seems to be
everything that can be desired. The landlord is not only the moving
spirit of the co-operative store but has started a school for girls of
from fifteen to twenty. They bring their own food but the schooling is
free.

On the gables of one or two houses near the roof I noticed ventilators
which were cut in the form of the Chinese ideograph which means water,
a kind of charm against fire. At the door of one rather well-to-do
peasant house I saw several paper charms against toothache. There was
also an inscription intimating that the householder was a director of
the co-operative society and another announcing that he was an expert
in the application of the moxa.[39] Every house I went into had a
collection of charms. One charm, a verse of poetry hung upside-down,
as is the custom, was against ants. Another was understood to ensure
the safe return of a straying cat.

In one house in the village my attention was drawn to the fact that
the rice pot contained a large percentage of barley.

In two or three places I passed pits for the excavation of lignite,
which does not look unlike the wood taken out of bogs. A pit I stopped
at was twenty-two fathoms deep. There were twenty miners at work and
air was being pumped down.

One of the things we in the West might imitate with advantage is the
village crematorium. In Japan it is of the simplest construction. The
rate for villagers was 50 sen, that for outsiders 2 yen. No doubt
there would be an additional yen for the priest. In a little building
which was thirty years old 200 bodies had been cremated.

I looked into a small co-operative rice storehouse. The building was
provided by a number of members "swearing" to save at the rate of a
yen and a half a month each until the funds needed had accumulated.
The money was obtained by extra labour in the evening. Just before I
left Japan the Department of Agriculture was arranging to spend 2
million yen within a ten-years' period to encourage the building of
4,000 rice storehouses.

As I watched the water pouring from one rice field to another and
wondered how the rights of landowners were ever reconciled, someone
reminded me of the phrase, "water splashing quarrels," that is
disputes in which each side blames the other without getting any
farther forward. To take an unfair advantage in controversy is to draw
water into one's own paddy. The equivalent for "pouring water on a
duck's back" is "flinging water in a frog's face." A Western European
is always astonished in Japan by the lung power of Far Eastern frogs.
The noise is not unlike the bleating of lambs.

Every now and again one comes on a fragrant bed of lotus in its paddy
field. It seems odd at first that lotus--and burdock--should be
cultivated for food. As a pickle burdock is eatable, but lotus and
some unfamiliar tuberous plants are pleasant food resembling in
flavour boiled chestnuts. _Konnyaku_ (_hydrosme rivieri_), a near
relative of the arum lily, is produced to the weight of 11 million
_kwan_--a _kwan_ is roughly 8-1/4 lbs.[40] The yield of burdock is
about 44 million _kwan_. The chief of all vegetables is the giant
radish, of which 7-1/4 million _kwan_ are grown. Taro yields about 150
million _kwan_. Foreigners usually like the young sprouts taken from
the roots of the bamboo, a favourite Japanese vegetable.

This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an important
agricultural fact, the enormous amount of filth worked into the
paddies. As is well known, hardly any of the night soil of Japan is
wasted. Japanese agriculture depends upon it. Formerly the night soil
was removed from the houses after being emptied into a pair of tubs
which the peasant carried from a yoke. Such yoke-carried tubs are
still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrying the substance to the
paddies. The tubs which are taken to dwellings are now mostly borne on
light two-wheeled handcarts which carry sometimes four and sometimes
six. A farmer will push or pull his manure cart from a town ten or
twelve miles off. It is difficult to leave or enter a town without
meeting strings of manure carts. The men who haul the carts get
together for company on their tedious journey. They seem insensible to
the concentrated odour. Often the wife or son or daughter may be seen
pushing behind a cart. There is a certain amount of transportation by
horse-drawn frame carts, carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by
boats. I was told of a city of half a million inhabitants which had
thirty per cent. of its night soil taken ten miles away. The work was
undertaken by a co-operative society which paid the municipality the
large sum of 70,000 yen a year. The removal of night soil, its storage
in the fields in sunken butts and concrete cisterns--carefully
protected by thatched, wooden or concrete roofs--and its constant
application to paddy fields or upland plots cause an odour to prevail
which the visitor to Japan never forgets.[41]

It must not be supposed that, because the Japanese are careful to
utilise human waste products, no other manure is employed. There is an
enormous consumption of chemical fertilisers. Then there are brought
into service all sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw,
grass, compost, silkworm waste, fish waste, and of course the manure
produced by such stock as is kept.[42] In Aichi the value of human
waste products used on the land is only a quarter of the value of the
bean cake and fish waste similarly employed.

At Mr. Yamasaki's excellent agricultural school (prefectural), which
I visited more than once,[43] I was struck by the grave bearing of the
students. I saw them not only in their classrooms but in their large
hall, where I was invited to speak from a platform between the busts
of two rural worthies, Ninomiya, of whom we have heard before, and
another who was "distinguished by the righteousness of his public
career." As in the Danish rural high schools, store is set on hard
physical exercise. An hour of exercise--_judō_ (jujitsu), sword play
or military drill--is taken from six to seven in the morning and
another at midday with the object of "strengthening the spirit" and
"developing the character," for "our farmers must not only be honest
and determined but courageous." Severe physical labour, shared by the
teacher, is also given out of doors, for example, in heaping manure.
"We believe," said one of the instructors, "in moral virtue taught by
the hands."

For an hour a day "the main points of moral virtue" are put before the
different grades of students, according to their ages and development.
The school has a guild to which the twenty teachers and all the
students belong. It is a kind of co-operative society for the
"purchase and distribution of daily necessities," but one of its
objects is "the maintenance of public morality." Then there is the
students' association which has literary and gymnastic sides, the one
side "to refine wisdom and virtue," the other "for the rousing of
spirit." Mention may also be made of a "discipline calendar" of fixed
memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe":
the ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and
morality, and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest
and at the maturity of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is
Spartan but the rooms are high and well lighted and ventilated. The
students' hot bath accommodates a dozen lads at a time. The studies
are also the dormitories, and in the corner of each there is stored a
big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards near the doors,
these rooms consist of the usual raised platform covered with the
national _tatami_ or matting.

I heard a characteristic story of the Director. During the
Russo-Japanese war everybody was economising, and many people who had
been in the habit of riding in _kuruma_ began to walk. Our
agricultural celebrity had always had a passion for walking, so it was
out of his power to economise in _kuruma_. What he did was to cease
walking and take to _kuruma_ riding, for, he said, "in war time one
must work one's utmost, and if I move about quickly I can get more
done."

I may add a story which this rare man himself told me. I had seen in
his house a photograph of a memorial slab celebrating the heroic death
of a peasant. It appeared that in a period of scarcity there was left
in this peasant's village only one unbroken bale of rice. This rice
was in the possession of the peasant, who was suffering from lack of
food. But he would not cook any of the rice because he knew that if he
did the village would be without seed in spring. Eventually the brave
man was found dead of hunger in his cottage. His pillow had been the
unopened bale of rice.

In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the inscriptions
on the two _gaku_ signified "Buddha's teaching broken by a beautiful
face" and "Cast your eyes on high." On the wall there was also a copy
of a resolution concerning a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural
householders, at a meeting in the county, had "sworn to observe," and,
as I understood, to read two or three times a year.

Japan, as I have already noted, has always been a more democratic
country than is generally understood; but the people have been
accustomed to act under leaders. Some time ago an official of the
Department of Agriculture visited a certain district in order to speak
at the local temple in advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See
Chapter VIII.) A dignitary corresponding to the chairman of an English
county council was at the temple to receive the official, but at the
time appointed for the meeting to begin the audience consisted of one
old man. Although the official from Tokyo and the _gunchō_ (head of a
county) waited for some time, no one else put in an appearance. So
they asked the old man the reason. He replied by asking them the
object of the meeting. They told him. He said that he had so
understood and that the community had so understood, but the farmers
were very busy men. Therefore, as he was the oldest man in the
district, they had sent him as their representative. Their
instructions were that he would be able to tell from his experience of
the district whether what the authorities proposed would be a good
thing for it or not. If he considered it to be a bad thing they would
not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing they would do it.
He was to hear all that was said and then to give a decision on the
community's behalf to the officials who might attend. "So," said the
old man to the Tokyo official and the _gunchō_, "if you convince me
you have convinced the village." And after two hours' explanation they
convinced him!

There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their
way as any I have seen in the Netherlands. Some of these works, for
example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through
considerable hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants. In one
place I found that 80 miles or more of irrigation was based on a canal
made two centuries ago. It is good to see so many embankings of
refractory streams and excavations of river beds commemorated by slabs
recording the public services of the men who, often at their own
charges, carried out these works of general utility.

In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had
reached a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing
trees. One day I stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had
added 1,000 yen a year to his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old
maple was one of his triumphs. Another was a pomegranate about a foot
and a half high. It was in flower and would bear fruit of ordinary
size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as is now well known, by
cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful pruning,
manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens were
displayed before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in which we
sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water with great
effectiveness hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate and a cabbage.

One marks the respect shown to the rural policeman. In his summer
uniform of white cotton, with his flat white cap and white gloves, and
an imposing sword, he looks like a naval officer, even if, as
sometimes happens, his feet are in _zori_. He gets respect because of
his dignified presence and sense of official duty, because of the
considerable powers which he is able to exercise, because he stands
for the Government, and because he is sometimes of a higher social
grade than that to which policemen belong in other countries. At the
Restoration many men of the samurai class did not think it beneath
them to enter the new sword-wearing police force and they helped to
give it a standing which has been maintained. As to the policeman
being a representative of the Government, the ordinary Japanese has a
way of speaking of the Government doing this or that as if the
Government were irresistible power. Average Japanese do not yet
conceive the Government as something which they have made and may
unmake[44]. But is it likely that they should, parliamentary history,
the work of their betters, being as short as it is? It is not whithout
significance that the Chambers of the Diet are housed in temporary
wooden buildings.

The rural policeman is not only a paternal guardian of the peace but
an administrative official. He keeps an eye on public health. He is
charged with correctly maintaining the record of names and
addresses--and some other particulars--of everybody in the village. It
is his duty to secure correct information as to the name, age, place
of origin and real business of every stranger. He attends all public
meetings, even of the young men's and young women's associations, and
no strolling players can give their entertainment without his
presence. As to the movements of strangers, my own were obviously well
known. Indeed a friend told me that in the event of my losing myself I
had only to ask a policeman and he would be able to tell me where I
was expected next! At the houses of well-to-do people I was struck by
the way in which the local police officer--sometimes, no doubt, a
sergeant or perhaps a man of the rank of our superintendent or chief
constable--called with the headman and joined our kneeling circle in
the reception-room. Nominally he came to pay his respects, but his
chief object, no doubt, was to take stock of what was going on. I
invariably took the opportunity of closely interviewing him.

The extraordinary degree to which Japanese are commonly accustomed in
their differences of opinion to refrain from blows makes many of their
quarrels harmless. The threat to send for the policeman or the actual
appearance of the policeman has an almost magical effect in calming a
disturbance. The Japanese policeman believes very much in reproving or
reprimanding evil doers and in reasoning with folk whose
"carelessness" has attracted attention. Sometimes for greater
impressiveness the admonitions or exhortations are delivered at the
police station[45]. In more than one village I heard a tribute paid to
the good influence exerted on a community by a devoted policeman.

The chief of an agricultural experiment station also seems to obtain a
large measure of respect, to some extent, no doubt, because he
occupies a public office. The regard felt for Mr. Yamasaki goes
deeper. A few years ago he was sent on a mission abroad and in his
absence his local admirers cast about for a way of showing their
appreciation of his work. They began by raising what was described to
me as "naturally not a large but an honourable sum." With this money
they decided to add three rooms to his dwelling. They had noted how
visitors were always coming to his house in order to profit by his
experience and advice. Mr. Yamasaki uses the rooms primarily as "an
hotel for people of good intentions--those who work for better
conditions." I was proud to stay at this "hotel" and to receive as a
parting gift an old _seppuku_ blade.

Which reminds me that one night at a house in the country I found
myself sitting under photographs of the late General and Countess Nogi
and of the gaunt bloodstained room of the depressing "foreign style"
house in which they committed suicide on the day of the funeral of
the Emperor Meiji[46]. One of my fellow-guests was a professor at the
Imperial University; the other was a teacher of lofty and unselfish
spirit. They were both samurai. I mentioned that a man of worth and
distinction has said to me that, while he recognised the nobility of
Nogi's action, he could but not think it unjustifiable. I was at once
told that Japanese who do not approve of Nogi's action "must be
over-influenced by Western thought." "Those who are quintessentially
Japanese," it was explained, "think that Nogi did right. Bodily death
is nothing, for Nogi still lives among us as a spirit. He labours with
a stronger influence. Many hearts were purified by his sacrifice. One
of Nogi's reasons for suicide was no doubt that he might be able to
follow his beloved Emperor, but his intention was also to warn many
vicious or unpatriotic people. Some politicians and rich people say
they are patriotic, but they are animated by selfish motives and
desires. Nogi's suicide was due to his loving his fellow-countrymen
sincerely. Surely he was acting after the manner of Christ. Nogi
crucified himself for the people in order to atone in a measure for
their sins and to lead them to a better way of life."

I heard from my friends something of Nogi's demeanour. The old general
was a familiar figure in Tokyo. In the street cars--those were the
days when they were not over-crowded--he was always seen standing. His
admirers used to say that his face "beamed with beneficence." But
Nogi, though he loved to be within reach of the Emperor and did his
part as head of the Peers' School, liked nothing better than to get
away to the country. He was originally a peasant and he still
possessed a _chō_ of upland holding. He was glad to work on it with
the digging mattock of the farmer.

FOOTNOTES:

[36] Son-God-of-the-Spirit-of-the-Province.

[37] It was a tiny squid. There are seventy sorts of cuttlefish and
octopuses in Japanese waters. Value of dried cuttlefish in 1917, 4
million yen.

[38] The hands are laid flat on the ground with finger-tips meeting
and the forehead touches the hands.

[39] See Chapter XX.

[40] The root grows to about the size of a big apple. It may be seen
in the shops in white dried sections. A stiff greyish jelly made from
it is eaten with rice. It is also eaten as _oden_ or _dengaku_.

[41] See Appendix IV.

[42] See Appendix XX.

[43] See Appendix V.

[44] The truth is being learnt by the younger generation.

[45] For crime statistics, see Appendix VI.

[46] _Harakiri_ (_seppuku_ is the polite word) still happens. Just
before writing this note I read of the captain of the first company of
the Japanese garrison in a Korean town having committed _seppuku_
because of a sense of responsibility for the irregularities of
subordinates. But of 7,239 suicides of men in 1916 only 308 were by
cold steel. Of 4,558 cases of women suicides 140 were by steel.




CHAPTER VII

OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI

The consciousness of a common purpose in mankind, or even the
acknowledgment that such a common purpose is possible, would alter the
face of world politics at once.--GRAHAM WALLAS


There was a bad landlord who was nicknamed "Devil-gon." He was shot.
There was another bad landlord who, as he was crossing a narrow bridge
over a brook, was "pistolled through the sleeve and tumbled into the
water." Although the murderer was well known, his name was never
revealed to the police, and the family of the dead man was glad to
leave the district. The villagers celebrated their freedom by eating
the "red rice" which is prepared on occasions of festivity. In another
village, the _gunchō_ who spoke to me of these things said, there were
several usurious landlords. "The village headman got angry. He called
the landlords to him. He said to them that if they continued to lend
at high interest the people would set fire to their houses and he
would not proceed against them. So the landlords became affrighted and
amended their lives." The rural people of Japan have always three
weapons against usury, it was explained to me. First, there may be
tried injuring the offending person's house--rural dwellings are
mainly bamboo work and mud--by bumping into it with the heavy
palanquin which is carried about the roadway at the time of the annual
festival. If such a hint should prove ineffective, recourse may be had
to arson. Finally, there is the pistol. I remember someone's remark,
"A man does not lose a common mind and heart by becoming a landowner."

I could not travel about the rural districts without there being
brought under my eyes the conditions which lead country girls to go to
the towns as _joro_ (prostitutes). A considerable agricultural
authority who had been all over Japan told me that he was in no doubt
that most of the girls adopted an immoral life through poverty. I
spoke to this man, who had been abroad, of the disgrace to Japan
involved in the presence of thousands of Japanese _joro_ at Singapore
and so many other ports of the Asiatic mainland. Did these women go
there of their free will? My informant was of opinion that "half are
deceived." I remember that on the Japanese steamship by which I went
out to Japan there were several Japanese girls, degraded in aspect and
apparently in ill health, who were returning from Singapore. They were
shepherded by an evil-looking fellow. The parting of these
unfortunates from their girl friends as the vessel was about to start
was a piteous sight. An official who called on me in Aichi--I
understood that he was the chief of the prefectural police--told me
that there were in the prefecture 2,011 girls in 222 houses, and that
there were in a year 725,598 customers, of whom 2,147 were foreigners.
Sums of from 200 to 500 yen might be paid to parents for a girl for a
three-years term. Food and clothes were also provided, but the girls
were almost invariably drawn into debt to the keepers, and not more
than 15 per cent. were able to return to their villages. All the girls
in the houses had alleged poverty as the reason for their being
there.[47]

Because I was told that the moral condition of the town of
Anjo--population 17,000--where the agricultural school of the
prefecture is situated, had improved since its establishment, I asked
for some statistics. I found that there were 23 registered geisha, no
_joro_, 50 teahouse girls with dubious characters and 55 sellers of
_saké_. Against these figures were to be counted 19 Buddhist temples
of four sects with 19 priests and 20 Shinto shrines with 4 priests.

I met a schoolmaster who had prepared a history of his village in a
dozen beautifully written volumes. He had been a vegetarian for
fifteen years because, as a Buddhist, he believed that "all living
things are in some degree my relatives." I picked up from him a
variant on "the early bird catches the worm." It was, "The early riser
may find a lost _rin_" (tenth of a farthing). He gave me another
proverb, "The contents of a spitting pot, like riches, become fouler
the more they accumulate."

I heard of temples which were promoting rural improvement by means of
lanterns. In one village the lanterns were at the service of borrowers
at three different places. The inscription on the lanterns says,
"Think of the mercy of Buddha who illuminates the darkness of your
heart." There is written in smaller characters, "If you live half a
_ri_ away you need not return this lantern." Three hundred lanterns
are lost or damaged in a year, but paper lanterns are cheap.

One temple has a society composed of those who have family graves in
its grounds. These people "study how to get the most abundant crop."
There is a prize for the best cultivated _tan_. Under this temple's
auspices there is not only a co-operative credit and purchase
association, a poultry society and an annual exhibition of
agricultural products, but a school for nurses--they are "taught to be
nurses not only physically but morally." The boys and girls of the
village are invited to the temple once a month and "told a story." The
youngsters are asked to come to a "learning meeting" where they must
recite or exhibit something they have written or drawn; "blockheads as
well as clever children are encouraged." A fund is being raised so
that "a genius who may be suffering from poverty may be able to get
proper education." Then there is a Women's Religious Association which
aims at "the improvement, necessary from a religious point of view, in
the home and of agricultural business." Sermons are given to 500 women
monthly. The society sent comfort bags, containing letters,
tooth-brushes and sweets, to soldiers at the taking of Tsingtao. A
similar organisation for men had for thirteen years listened to a
monthly lecture by a well-known priest. It sends occasional
subscriptions outside the village. Finally, this praiseworthy temple
issues every month 20,000 copies of a 4-1/2-sen magazine.

The Shinto shrines of the prefecture have in all a little more than 40
_chō_ of land. Someone has hit on the plan of getting the
agricultural societies of the county and villages to provide the
priests with rice seed of superior varieties, the crop of which can be
exchanged with farmers for common rice. This is done on a profitable
basis, because the shrines exchange unpolished rice for polished. A
_gō_ of seed rice makes only about .5 _gō_ when husked.

I walked along the road some little way with a Buddhist priest. In
answer to my enquiry he said that as a Buddhist he felt no difficulty
about the bag strung across his shoulders being of leather, for the
founder of his sect (Shinshu) ate meat. Even a strict Buddhist might
nowadays eat animals not intentionally killed, animals which had not
been seen alive and animals which were killed painlessly. But my
companion abstained as much as possible from meat. As to the reason
why some priests were inactive in the work of rural amelioration, he
supposed that their poverty, the tradition of devoting themselves to
unworldly business and the fact that many of them were hereditary
priests accounted for it. He dwelt on the things in common between
Shinshu and Christianity and said that, next to the teaching of the
head of the agricultural college in the prefecture, the preaching of a
missionary had led him to work for the good of his village.

In my host's house in the evening someone happened to quote the
proverb, "Richer after the fire." It means, of course, that after the
fire the neighbours are so ready with help that the last state of the
victim of the fire is better than the first. The view was expressed
that hitherto charitable institutions of some Western patterns had not
been so much needed in Japan as might be supposed.[48] "Those who go
to Europe from Japan are indeed much surprised by the number of
institutions to help people." Here, however, is the story of an
institution coming into existence in a village: "There was a man who
was thought to be rich, but he lived like a miser. His _shoji_ were
made of waste paper and his guests received tea only. So he was
despised. But many years afterwards it was found that for a long time
he had been collecting books. Then, to the surprise of everybody, he
built a library for his village. He is not at all proud of this and
those who ridiculed him are now ashamed."

I was invited to a "Rural Life Exhibition." Some agricultural produce
was shown, but three hundred of the exhibits were manuscript books or
diagrams. One diagram illustrated the development in a particular
county of the use of two bactericides, formalin and carbon bisulphide.
The formalin was in use to the value of 2,000 yen. Then there was a
wall picture, a sort of Japanese "The Child: What will he Become?" The
good boy, aged fifteen, was shown spending his spare time in making
straw rope to the value of 3 sen 3 rin nightly, with the result that
after thirty years of such industry he became a rural capitalist who
possessed 1,000 yen and lived in circumstances of dignity. In contrast
with this virtuous career there was shown the rural rake's progress. A
youth who was in the habit of laying out 3 sen 3 rin riotously in
sweet-shops was proved to have wasted 1,000 yen in thirty years: the
prodigal was justly exhibited fleeing from his home in debt.

One of the books on exhibition mentioned the volumes most in demand at
some village library. I translate the titles:

        Physical and Intellectual Training
        About being Ambitious
        The Housewife of a Peasant Family
        The Management of a Farm
        The Days when Statesmen were Boys
        Culture and Striving
        Essence of Rural Improvement
        A Hundred Beautiful Stories
        The Art of Composition
        The Preparation of the Conscript
        A Medical Treatise
        A Translation of "Self-Help"
        Nature and Human Life
        The Glories of Native Places
        Anecdotes concerning Culture
        Lives of Distinguished Peasants
        Mulberry Planting
        Chinese Romances
        Glories of this Peaceful Reign
        Ninomiya Sontoku

I noticed among the exhibits a short autobiography of a farmer, an
engaging egoist who wrote:

"As a young man my will was not in study and though I used my wits I
did many stupid things and the results were bad. Then I became a
little awakened and for two years I studied at night with the primary
school teacher. After that I thought to myself in secret, 'Shall I
become a wise man in this village, or, by diligently farming, a rich
man?' That was my spiritual problem. Then all my family gathered
together and consulted and decided[49] that it would suit the family
better if I were to become a rich man, and I also agreed. To
accomplish that aim I increased my area under cultivation and worked
hard day and night. I cut down the cryptomeria at my homestead and
planted in their stead mulberries and persimmons. And I slowly changed
my dry land into rice fields (making it therefore more valuable). The
soil I got I heaped up at the homestead for eighteen years until I had
28,000 cubic feet. I was able then to raise the level of my house
which had become damp and covered with mould. The increase of my
cultivated area and of the yield per _tan_ and the improvement of my
house and the practice of economy were the delight of my life. I felt
grateful to my ancestors who gave me such a strong body. Sometimes I
kept awake all night talking with my wife about the goodness of my
ancestors. Also when in bed I planned a compact homestead. I once read
a Japanese poem, 'What a joy to be born in this peaceful reign and to
be favoured by ploughs and horses.' (Most Japanese farming is done
without either horses or ploughs.) It went deeply into my heart. Also
I heard from the school teacher of four loves: love of State, love of
Emperor, love of teacher and love of parent. I have been much favoured
by those loves. I also heard the doctrines of Ninomiya: sincerity,
diligence, moderate living, unselfishness. I felt it a great joy to
live remembering those doctrines. I also went to the prefectural
experiment station and studied fruit growing and my spirit was much
expanded. I returned again to the station and the expert talked to me
very earnestly. I asked for a special variety of persimmon. The expert
sent to Gifu prefecture for it. I planted the tree and made its top
into six grafts. It bore fruit and many passers-by envied it. Two
years after that I grafted five hundred trees and sold the grafted
stock."

Several villages sent to the exhibition statistics of great interest.
One village set forth the changes which had taken place in the social
status of its inhabitants[50]. Some communities were represented by
statements of their hours of labour[51]. One small community's tables
showed how many of its inhabitants were "diligent people," how many
"average workers" and how many "other people[52]." A county
agricultural association had painstakingly collected information not
only about the work done in a year[53] and the financial returns
obtained by three typical farmers but about the way in which they
spent what they earned.[54]

On my way back from the exhibition I heard the story of a priest. When
fourteen years of age he obtained seeds of cryptomeria and planted
them in a spot in the hills. He also practised many economies. When
still in his teens he asked permission to take two shares in a 50-yen
money-sharing club, but was not allowed to do so as no one would
believe that he could complete his payments. He persisted, however,
that he would be able to pay what was required and he was at length
accepted as a member. At twenty he became priest of a small temple
which was in bad repair and had a debt of 125 yen. He brought with him
his 100 yen from the club and the young cryptomeria. He planted the
trees in the temple grounds. He said, "I wish to rebuild the temple
when these trees grow up." He cultivated the land adjoining his temple
and contrived to employ several labourers. At last the cryptomeria
grew large enough for his purpose and he rebuilt the temple, expending
on the work not only his trees but 600 yen which he had by this time
saved. Then he proceeded to bring waste land into cultivation. At the
age of sixty-two he gave his temple to another priest and went to live
in a hut on the waste land. There came a tidal wave near the place, so
he went to the sufferers and invited five families to his now
cultivated waste land. He gave them each a _tan_ of land and the
material for building cottages and showed them how to open more land.

[Illustration: "HIBACHI" AND, IN "TOKONOMA," FLOWER ARRANGEMENT AND
"KAKEMONO."]

[Illustration: SCHOOL SHRINE CONTAINING EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT.]

A good judge expressed the opinion that Buddhism was flourishing in 80
per cent. of the villages of Aichi, but this was in a material and
ceremonial sense. The prefectures of Aichi and Niigata had been called
the "kitchens of Hongwanji"[55] (the great temple at Kyoto), such
liberal contributions were forthcoming from them. "A belief in
progress," this speaker said, "may be a substitute for religion for
many of our people; another substitute is a belief in Japan." A
village headman from the next prefecture (Shidzuoka) said: "People in
my village do not omit to perform their Buddhist ceremonies, but they
are not at their hearts religious. In our prefecture the influence of
Ninomiya is greater than that of Buddhism. If the villagers are good
it is Ninomiyan principles that make them so. Under Ninomiyan
influence the spirit of association has been aroused, thriftiness has
been encouraged and extravagance reprimanded."

[Illustration: FENCING AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.]

[Illustration: WAR MEMENTOES AT THE SAME SCHOOL--ALL SCHOOLS HAVE SOME]

I told Mr. Yamasaki one day that there was an old Scotswoman who
divided good people into "rael Christians and guid moral fowk." What I
was curious to know was what proportion of Japanese rural people might
be fairly called "real Buddhists" and what proportion "good moral
folk." "There are certainly some real Buddhists, not merely good moral
folk," he assured me. "If you penetrate deeply into the lives of the
people you will be able to find a great number of them. In ordinary
daily life, during a period when nothing extraordinary happens, it is
not easy to distinguish the two classes; but when any trouble comes
then those real religious people are undismayed, while the ordinarily
good moral people may sometimes go astray. The proportion of religious
people is rather large among the poor compared with the middle and
upper classes. These poor people are always weighted with many
troubles which would be a calamity to persons of the middle or upper
classes. Such humble folk get support for their lives from what is in
their hearts. Though they may suffer privation or loss they are glad
that they can live on by the mercy of Buddha. There are some religious
people even among those who are not poor. They are usually people who
have lost some of their riches suddenly, or a dear child, or have been
deprived of high position, or have met some kind of misfortune.
Sometimes a man may become religious because he feels deeply the
misfortunes or miseries of a neighbour or the miseries of war. Or his
religion may come by meditation. A man who begins to be religious is
not, however, at once noticed. On the contrary, if he is a true
believer his daily life will be most ordinary."

One day I passed a primary school playground. The girls had just
finished and the boys were beginning Swedish drill. Everyone engaged
in the drill, including the master, was barefoot.

I saw that some of the cottages were built in an Essex fashion, of
puddled clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards. Some
dwellings, however, were faced with straw instead of boards. They had
just had their wall thatch renewed for the winter.

In one spot there was a quarter of a mile of wooden aqueduct for the
service of the paddy fields. Much agricultural pumping is done in
Aichi. I visited an irrigation installation where pumps (from London)
were turning barren hill tops into paddy fields.[56] The work was
being done by a co-operative society of 550 members who had borrowed
the 40,000 yen they needed from a bank on an undertaking to repay in
fifteen years.

It was stated that common paddy near Anjo had been bought at 5,000 yen
per _chō_ and not for building purposes. When one member of our
company said, "The farmers here are rivalling each other in hard
work," the weightiest authority among us replied: "What the farmer
must do is to work not harder but better. At present he is not working
on scientific principles. The hours he is spending on really
profitable labour are not many. He must work more rationally. In 26
villages in the south-west of Japan, where farming calls for much
labour, it was found that the number of days' work in the year was
only 192. Statistics for Eastern Japan give 186 days.[57] As to a
secondary industry, one or two hours' work a night at straw rope
making for a month may bring in a yen because the market for rope is
confined to Japan. The same with _zori_, a coarse sort being
purchasable for 2 sen a pair. But supplementary work like silk-worm
culture produces an article of luxury for which there is a world
market."

When we returned home my host was kind enough to summarise for me--the
general reader may skip here--some of the reasons set forth by a
professor of agricultural politics for the farmer's position being
what it is:

1. The average area cultivated per family is very small.

2. The law of diminishing return.

3. Imperfection of the agricultural system. Mainly crop raising, not a
combination of crop and stock raising, as in England. No profitable
secondary business but silkworm culture. Therefore the distribution of
labour throughout the year is not good and the number of days of
effective labour is relatively small.

4. The commercial side of agriculture has not been sufficiently
developed.

5. There has been a rise in the standard of living. In the old days
the farmer did not complain; he thought his lot could not be changed.
He was forbidden to adopt a new calling and he was restricted by law
to a frugal way of living. Now farmers can be soldiers, merchants or
officials and can live as they please. They begin to compare their
standard of living with that of other callings. What were once not
felt to be miseries are now regarded as such.

6. Formerly the farmer had not the expense of education and of losing
the services of his sons to the army. There is also an increase in
taxation. A representative family which incurred a public expenditure,
not including education, of 12.86 yen in 1890, paid in 1898 19.68 yen.
In 1908 it was faced by a claim for 34.28 yen.[58]

7. Although the area of land does not increase in relation to the
increase of population, the size of the peasant family is increasing
owing to the decrease of infanticide and abortion and the development
of sanitation.

8. The farmer suffers from debts at high interest.

9. The character, morality and ability of the farmer are not yet fully
developed.

10. Formerly the farmer lived an economically self-contained
existence. He had no great need of money. He must now sell his produce
on a market with wider and wider fluctuations.

11. There are many expensive customs and habits, for instance the two
or three days' feasting at weddings and funerals.

During the evening I was told this story. In a village in a far part
of the prefecture there lived a farmer called Yosōgi. He was a thrifty
and diligent man. When he became old he gave all that he had to his
son. But the old man could not stop working. He would go to the farm
and help his son. The son did not like this. He wanted his old father
to rest. In the end he found that the only way to cope with his
industrious parent was to work very hard and leave him nothing to do.
But the old man was not to be balked. He took himself off to the
hillside and began to make a paddy field where there had never been a
paddy field before. To make a paddy field on such a slope is a
difficult task. The land must be embanked with stones and then
levelled. The building of the strong embankment alone calls for much
labour. The old man toiled very hard at his job and sometimes his son
in despair sent his labourers to help him. At length the paddy field
was finished. But it was only a tenth of a _tan_ in area. When the son
saw the small result of so much labour he said to his father, "I
grieve for the way you have toiled. You have laboured hard for many
days and my labourers have helped you, but all that has been
accomplished is the making of a paddy field so small and distant that
it is uneconomical."

To this the old man replied: "When you go to Tokyo and see the
graveyard at Aoyama you will behold there many monuments of generals
and ministers of State. Their merits and their works in this world are
described on those monuments. But do you know where the monument of
the famous hero Kusunoki Masashige is? It is near Kobe, and it is not
more than half as big as those monuments at Tokyo. Do you know where
the monument of the great Taiko is? It is in Kyoto, but it is only
recently that this monument was put up. Thus the monuments of our
greatest heroes are small or have been erected recently. The reason is
that it is unnecessary to raise big monuments for them because what
they did in their lives was in itself their monument. They built their
monument in the hearts of the people. Therefore we can never judge
from the size of the monument the kind of work which was accomplished
by the man who sleeps under it. Monuments are not only for ministers
and warriors. We peasants can also erect monuments in our own way. To
open a new paddy field, to plant the bare hillside with trees, these
are our monuments. How lonely it would be for me if there were no
monument left after my death. However small this paddy field may be,
it will not be forgotten so long as it yields for your posterity the
blessing of its rice crop." "Happily," the interpreter added, "the old
man did not die so soon as he thought he would do. He lived for
several years and planted the bare hillside with trees. Now the wood
which grows there is worth 10,000 yen."

A peasant proprietor expressed the conviction that goodness in a
family was "not the result of its own efforts but of the accumulation
of ancestral effort." The "ancestral merits and good spirit remain in
the family." On the problem of rich and poor he quoted the proverb,
"The very rich cannot remain very rich for more than three
generations; a poor family cannot long remain poor." He said that he
would be interested to know what I found to be "the causes of our
villagers becoming good or bad." "For ourselves," he said, quoting
another proverb, "'At the foot of the lighthouse it is dark.'"




THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER VIII

THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

_Toyo-ashiwara-no-chiiho-aki-mizuho-no-Kuni_ (Land of plenteous ears
of rice in the plain of luxuriant reeds).


The vast difference between Far Eastern and Western agriculture is
marked by the fact that, except by using such a phrase as shallow
pond--and this is inadequate, because a pond has a sloping bottom and
a rice field necessarily a level one--it is difficult to describe a
rice field in terms intelligible to a Western farmer. The Japanese
have a special word for a rice field, _ta_, water field, written
[Kanji: ta]. It will be noticed that the ideograph looks like a water
field in four compartments. Another word, _hata_ or _hatake_,[59]
written [Kanji: hata], tells the story of the dry or upland field. It
is the ideograph for water field in association with the ideograph for
fire, and, as we shall see later on, when we make acquaintance with
"fire farming," an upland field is a tract the vegetation of which was
originally burnt off.

Many of us have seen rice growing in Italy or in the United States.
But in Japan[60] the paddies are very-much smaller than anything to be
seen in the Po Valley and in Texas. Owing to the plentiful water
supply of a mountainous land, cultivation proceeds with some degree of
regularity and with a certain independence of the rainy season; and
there has been applied to traditional rice farming not a few
scientific improvements.

There is a kind of rice with a low yield called upland rice which,
like corn, is grown in fields. But the first requisite of general rice
culture is water. The ordinary rice crop can be produced only on a
piece of ground on which a certain depth of water is maintained.

In order to maintain this depth of water, three things must be done.
The plot of ground must be made level, low banks of earth must be
built round it in order to keep in the water, and a system of
irrigation must be arranged to make good the loss of water by
evaporation, by leakage and by the continual passing on of some of the
water to other plots belonging to the same owner or to other farmers.
The common name of a rice plot is paddy, and the rice with its husk
on, that is, as it is knocked from the ear by threshing, is called
paddy rice. The rice exported from Japan is some of it husked and some
of it polished.

[Illustration: A 200-YEARS-OLD JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE RICE PLANT]

Some 90 per cent. of the rice grown in Japan is ordinary rice. The
remaining 10 per cent. is about 2 per cent. upland and 8 per cent,
glutinous[61]--the sort used for making the favourite _mochi_ (rice
flour dumplings, which few foreigners are able to digest). It would be
possible to collect in Japan specimens of rice under 4,000 different
names, but, like our potato names, many of these represent duplicate
varieties. Rice, again reminding us of potatoes, is grown in early,
middle and late season sorts.[62]

Just one-half of the cultivated area of Japan is devoted to paddy,
but there is to be added to this area under rice more than a quarter
million acres producing the upland rice, the yield of which is lower
than that of paddy rice. The paddy and upland rice areas together make
up more than a half of the cultivated land. The paddies which are not
in situations favourable to the production of second crops of rice
(they are grown in one prefecture only) are used, if the water can be
drawn off, for growing barley or wheat or green manure as a second
crop[63].

It is not only the Eastern predilection for rice and the wet condition
of the country, but the heavy cropping power of the plant[64]--500
_go_ per _tan_ above barley and wheat yields--that makes the Japanese
farmer labour so hard to grow it[65]. Intensively cultivated though
Japan is, the percentage of cultivated land to the total area of the
country is, however, little more than half that in Great Britain[66].
This is because Japan is largely mountains and hills. Level land for
rice paddies can be economically obtained in many parts of such a
country by working it in small patches only. There is no minimum size
for a Japanese paddy. I have seen paddies of the area of a counterpane
and even of the size of a couple of dinner napkins.

The problem is not only to make the paddy in a spot where it can be
supplied with water, but to make it in such a way that it will hold
all the water it needs. It must be level, or some of the rice plants
will have only their feet wet while others will be up to their necks.
The ordinary procedure in making a paddy is to remove the top soil,
beat down the subsoil beneath, and then restore the top soil--there
may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the best efforts of the
paddy-field builder may be brought to naught by springs or by a
gravelly bottom. Then the farmer must make the best terms he can with
fortune.

Paddies, as may be imagined from their physical limitations, are of
every conceivable shape. There is assuredly no way of altering the
shape of the paddies which are dexterously fitted into the hillsides.
But large numbers of paddies are on fairly level ground.[67] There is
no real need for these being of all sizes and patterns. They are what
they are because of the degree to which their construction was
conditioned by water-supply problems, the financial resources of those
who dug them or the position of neighbours' land. And no doubt in the
course of centuries there has been a great deal of swapping, buying
and inheriting. So the average farmer's paddies are not only of all
shapes and sizes but here, there and everywhere.

Therefore there arose wise men to point out that for a farmer to work
a number of oddly shaped bits of land scattered all about the village
was uneconomical and out of date. (Like the old English strip system
which still survives in the Isle of Axholme.) So what was called an
adjustment of paddy fields was carried out in many places. The farmers
were persuaded to throw their varied assortment of fields into
hotchpot and then to have the mass cut up into oblong fields of equal
or relative sizes. These were then shared out according to what each
man had contributed. In some cases a little compensation had to be
given, for there were differences in the qualities as well as the
areas of the holdings. But reasonable justice was eventually done all
round, and ever afterwards a farmer, now that his holding was in
adjoining tracts, might spend his time working in his paddies instead
of in walking to and from them. Because many unnecessary paths and
divisions between paddies were done away with there was brought about
a saving of labour and increased efficiency of cultivation. There was
also a little more land to cultivate and the paddies were big enough
for an ox or a pony to be employed in them, and the water supply was
better and sufficiently under control for floods to be averted.[68] In
brief, costs were lower and crops were better.[69]

Thus all over Japan nowadays one sees considerable tracts of adjusted
paddy fields. They are a joy to the rural sociologist. In its way
there has been nothing like it agriculturally in our time. For each of
these little farmers valued his odds and ends of paddy above their
agricultural worth. He or his forbears had made them or bought them or
married into them. And he believed that his own paddies were in a
condition of fertility surpassing not a few, and he doubted greatly
whether after adjustment he would find himself in possession of as
valuable land as his own. Sometimes also he believed that his paddies
were especially fortunate geomantically.[70] Yet, convinced by the
arguments for adjustment, the peasant agreed to the proposed
rearrangement, let his old tracts go and accepted in exchange neat
oblongs out of the common stock. Sometimes so great was the change
brought about in a village by adjustment that more than the paddies
were dealt with. Cottages were taken to new sites and the bones in
many little grave plots were removed. In a village in which there had
been an exhumation of the bones of 2,700 persons and a transference of
tombstones, I was told that the assembling together of the remains of
the departed in one place "had had a unifying effect on the
community." In this village within a period of twelve years 96 per
cent. of the paddies had been adjusted.[71]

An advantage of adjustment which has not yet been mentioned is that
adjusted paddies can usually be dried off at harvest and can therefore
be put under a second crop, usually of grain. More than a third of the
paddy-field area of the country can be dried off, and therefore
produces a second crop of barley or wheat. The farmer has two
advantages if, owing to adjustment or natural advantages, he is able
to dry off his land. Of the first or rice crop, if he is a tenant
farmer, he has had to pay his landlord perhaps 60 per cent, in rent,
less straw;[72] but the second crop is his own. The further advantage
is that second-crop land can be cultivated dry shod. One-crop paddy is
under water all the year round, and must be cultivated with wet feet
and legs.

It is because more than half the paddies are always under water that
rice cultivation is so laborious. Think of the Western farm labourer
being asked to plough and the allotment holder to dig almost knee-deep
in mud. Although much paddy is ploughed with the aid of an ox, a cow
or a pony,[73] most rice is the product of mattock or spade labour.
There is no question about the severity of the labour of paddy
cultivation. For a good crop it is necessary that the soil shall be
stirred deeply.

Following the turning over of the stubble under water, comes the clod
smashing and harrowing by quadrupedal or bipedal labour. It is not
only a matter of staggering about and doing heavy work in sludge. The
sludge is not clean dirt and water but dirty dirt and water, for it
has been heavily dosed with manure, and the farmer is not fastidious
as to the source from which he obtains it.[74] And the sludge
ordinarily contains leeches. Therefore the cultivator must work
uncomfortably in sodden clinging cotton feet and leg coverings. Long
custom and necessity have no doubt developed a certain indifference to
the physical discomfort of rice cultivation. The best rice will grow
only in mud and, except on the large uniform paddies of the adjusted
areas, there is small opportunity for using mechanical methods.

One day when I went into the country it happened to be raining hard,
but the men and women toiled in the paddies. They were breaking up the
flooded clods with a tool resembling the "pulling fork" used in the
West for getting manure from a dung cart. On other farms the task of
working the quagmire was being done by two persons with the aid of a
disconsolate pony harnessed to a rude harrow. The men and women in the
paddies kept off the rain by means of the usual wide straw hats and
loose straw mantles, admirable in their way in their combination of
lightness and rainproofness. Often, besides the farmer's wife, a young
widow or a young unmarried woman may be seen at work, but, as was once
explained to me, "The old Miss is not frequent in Japan."[75]

Planting time arrives in the middle of June or thereabouts, when the
paddy has been brought by successive harrowings into a fine tilth or
rather sludge. It is illustrative of the exacting ways of rice that
not only has it to have a growing place specially fashioned for it, it
cannot be sown as cereals are sown. It must be sown in beds and then
be transplanted. The seed beds have been sown in the latter part of
April or the early part of May, according to the variety of rice and
the locality.[76] The seeds have usually been selected by immersion in
salt water and have been afterwards soaked in order to advance
germination. There is a little soaking pond on every farm. By the use
of this pond the period in which the seeds are exposed to the
depredations of insects, etc., is diminished. The seed bed itself is
about the width of an onion bed, in order that weeds and insect pests
may be easily reached. The seed bed is, of course, under water. The
seed is dropped into the water and sinks into the mud. Within about
thirty or forty days the seedlings are ready for transplanting. They
have been the object of unremitting care. Weeds have been plucked out
and insects have been caught by nets or trapped. There is a
contrivance which, by means of a wheel at either end, straddles the
seed bed, and is drawn slowly from one end to the other. It catches
the insects as they hop or fly up.

In many localities specially fine varieties are grown for seed on the
land of the Shinto shrines. In other localities special sorts are
raised in ordinary paddies but surrounded by the rope and white paper
streamers which represent a consecrated place. In not a few villages
there are communal seed beds so that many farmers may grow the same
variety, and there may be a considerable bulk for co-operative sale.

At transplanting time every member of the family capable of helping
renders assistance. Friends also give their aid if it is not planting
time for them too. The work is so engrossing that young children who
are not at school are often left to their own devices. Sometimes they
play by the ditch round the paddies and are drowned. Five such cases
of drowning are reported from three prefectures on the day I write
this. The suggestion is made that in the rice districts there should
be common nurseries for farmers' children at planting time.

The rate at which the planters, working in a row across the paddy, set
out the seedlings in the mud below the water, is remarkable.[77] The
first weeding or raking takes place about a fortnight after planting.
After that there are three more weedings, the last being about the end
of August. All kinds of hoes are used in the sludge. They are usually
provided with a wooden or tin float. But most of the weeding is done
simply by thrusting the hand into the mud, pulling out the weed and
thrusting it back into the sludge to rot. The back-breaking character
of this work may be imagined. As much of it is done in the hottest
time of the year the workers protect themselves by wide-brimmed hats
of the willow-plate pattern and by flapping straw cloaks or by bundles
of straw fastened on their backs.

A sharp look-out must be kept for insects of various sorts. In more
than one place I saw the boys and girls of elementary schools wading
in the paddies and stroking the young rice with switches in order to
make noxious insects rise. The creatures were captured by the young
enthusiasts with nets. The children were given special times off from
school work in which to hunt the rice pests and were encouraged to
bring specimens to school.

There is no greater delight to the eye than the paddies in their early
green, rippled and gently laid over by the wind. (One should say
greens, for there is every tint from the rather woe-begone yellowish
green of the newly planted out rice to the happy luxuriant dark green
of the paddies that have long been enjoying the best of quarters.) As
harvest time approaches,[78] the paddies, because they are not all
planted with the same variety of rice, are in patches of different
shades. Some are straw colour, some are reddish brown or almost black.
A poet speaks of the "hanging ears of rice." Rice always seems to hang
its head more than other crops. It is weaker in the straw than barley,
but rice frequently droops not only because of its natural habit, but
because it has been over-manured or wrongly manured or because of wind
or wet.

Beyond wind,[79] insects and drought, floods are the enemies of rice.
When the plants are young, three or four days' flooding do not matter
much, but in August, when the ears are shooting, it is a different
matter. The sun pours down and soon rots the rice lying in the warm
water. Sometimes the farmer, by almost withdrawing the water from his
paddies, raises the temperature of the soil with benefit to the crop.

The farmer is fortunate who is able to get the water completely out of
his paddies by the time harvest arrives, but, as we have seen,
two-thirds of the paddies must be harvested in sludge. Many crops are
muddied before they can be cut. Sometimes on the eve of harvest the
farmer wades in and tries, by arranging the fallen stems across one
another, to keep some of the ears out of the water. But he is not very
successful. Rice may lie in the wet a week or even the best end of a
fortnight without serious damage. But all that this means is that
within the period specified it may not sprout. It must be damaged to
some extent even by a few days' immersion. The reason why it is not
damaged more than it is is no doubt, first, because rice is a plant
which has been brought up to take its chances with water, and in the
second place because the thing which is known to the housewife as rice
is not really the grain at all but the interior of the grain.

Western farmers are hard put to it when their grain crops are beaten
down by wind and rain; Japanese agriculturists, because they gather
their harvest with a short sickle, do not find a laid crop difficult
to cut. But these harvesters are very muddy indeed. When the rice is
cut and the sheaves are laid along the low mud wall of the paddy they
are still partly in the sludge. We know how miserable a wet harvest is
at home, but think of the slushy harvest with which most Japanese
farmers struggle every year of their lives. The rice grower, although
year in and year out he has the advantage of a great deal of sunshine,
seldom gets his crop in without some rain. How does he manage to dry
his October and November rice? By means of a temporary fence or rack
which he rigs up in his paddy field or along a path or by the
roadside. On this structure the sheaves are painstakingly suspended
ears down. Sometimes he utilises poles suspended between trees. These
trees, grown on the low banks of the paddies, have their trunks
trimmed so that they resemble parasols.

When the sheaves are removed in order to be threshed on the upland
part of the holding, they are carried away at either end of a pole on
a man's shoulder or are piled up on the back of an ox, cow or pony.
The height of the pile under which some animals stagger up from the
paddies gives one a vivid conception of "the last straw."

Threshing is usually done by a man, woman, girl or youth taking as
many stems as can be easily grasped in both hands and drawing the
ears, first one way and then another, through a horizontal row of
steel teeth. The flail is not used for threshing rice but is employed
for barley. Another common way of knocking out grain is by beating the
straw over a table or a barrel. There are all sorts of cheap
hand-worked threshing machines. After the threshing of the rice comes
the winnowing, which may be done by the aid of a machine but is more
likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by one person pouring the
roughly threshed ears from a basket or skep while another worker
vigorously fans the grain. The result is what is known as paddy rice.
The process which follows winnowing is husking. This is done in the
simplest possible form of hand mill. Before husking the rice grain is
in appearance not unlike barley and it is no easy matter to get its
husk off. The husking mill is often made of hardened clay with many
wooden teeth on the rubbing surface. After husking there is another
winnowing. Then the grains are run through a special apparatus of
recent introduction called _mangoku doshi_, so that faulty ones may be
picked out. The result is unpolished rice.

It looks grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing
but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar
hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One
may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar
with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened to
a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by
water, oil or steam power. Constantly in the country there are seen
little sheds in each of which a small polishing mill driven by a water
wheel is working away by itself. After the polishing, the _mangoku
doshi_ is used again to free the rice from the bran. This polished
rice is still further polished by the dealer, who has more perfect
mills than the farmer.

[Illustration: SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED PADDIES.]

The farmer pays his rent not in the polished but in the husked rice.
At the house of a former _daimyo_ I saw an instrument which the
feudal lord's bailiff was accustomed to thrust into the rice the
tenants tendered. If when the instrument was withdrawn more than three
husks were found adhering, the rice was returned to be recleaned.
There are names for all the different kinds of rice. For instance,
paddy rice is _momi_; husked rice is _gemmai_; half-polished rice is
_hantsukimai_; polished rice is _hakumai_; cooked rice is _gohan_.

[Illustration: PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS.]

[Illustration: PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER (TOKYO).]

A century ago the farmer ate his rice at the _gemmai_ stage, that is
in its natural state, and there was no _beri-beri_. The "black saké"
made from this _gemmai_ rice is still used in Shinto ceremonies. In
order to produce clear _saké_ the rice was polished. Then well-to-do
people out of daintiness had their table rice polished. Now polished
rice is the common food. Half-polished rice may be prepared with two
or three hundred blows of the mallet; fully polished or white rice may
receive six, seven or eight hundred, or even it may be a thousand
blows.

FOOTNOTES:

[47] See Appendix VII.

[48] See Appendix VIII.

[49] Family in the French sense.

[50] See Appendix IX.

[51] See Appendix X.

[52] See Appendix XI.

[53] See Appendix XII.

[54] See Appendix XIII.

[55] It was recently stated that the consent of the authorities was
awaited for collections to the amount of 20 million yen, of which
13-1/2 million were for the two Hongwanjis.

[56] For yields of new paddy, see Appendix XIV.

[57] See Appendix XII.

[58] It would be from 80 to 100 yen now.

[59] _Hata_ (upland field) is not to be confounded with _hara_
(prairie, wilderness, moor, often erroneously translated, plain).

[60] Rice is grown in every prefecture. The largest total yields are
in Niigata, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aichi, Yamagata, Ibariki and Chiba.

[61] See Appendix XV.

[62] The average yield of the three kinds at Government experimental
farms--the middle variety yields best and next comes the late
variety--is about 2-1/2 _koku_ per _tan_ or roughly (a _koku_ being
about 5 bushels and a _tan_ about a quarter of an acre) about 45
bushels per acre. The average yield of ordinary rice in Japan in an
ordinary year is 40-3/4 bushels. In the bumper year of 1920 the
average yield was 41-1/3 bushels. In the year 1916 (to which most of
the figures in this book, apart from the Appendix and footnotes, in
which the latest available figures are given, refer) there was
produced 58-1/4 million _koku_ of all kinds of rice, the value of
which was 826-1/2 million yen. The normal yield (average of 7 years,
excluding the years of highest and lowest production) is 54-1/2
million _koku_. See Appendix XV.

[63] For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.

[64] A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.

[65] The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed
in Appendix XVII.

[66] See Appendix XVIII.

[67] In Japanese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a
tract of land which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for
the purposes of habitation. Sometimes it is called prairie, but this
is not always correct as it is very often a barren waste, a tract of
volcanic ash, or an area producing bamboo grass. Some of this land,
however, could be cultivated after proper irrigation, etc. In this
note, plains is employed in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Of
such plains there are several. The plain in which Tokyo is situated is
82,000 acres in extent. The traveller from Kobe to Tokyo passes
through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka stand. It is
said to feed 2-1/2 million people. Four other plains are reputed to
feed 7-1/2 million.

[68] Rivers supply about 65 per cent. of the paddy water and
reservoirs about 21 per cent. The remainder has to be got from other
sources.

[69] An acreage of a _tan_ is aimed at, but it is frequently larger;
it may even be 4 _tan_ (an acre). The cost ranges from about 8 yen to
50 yen per _tan_. The average increase in yield alter adjustment is
about 15 per cent., to which must be added the yield of the new land
obtained, say 3 per cent. of the area adjusted. The consent of half
the owners is required for adjustment.

[70] Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid
informed her that the house was unlucky because a certain necessary
apartment faced the wrong point of the compass.

[71] In the whole of Japan by 1919 two million and a half acres had
been adjusted or were in course of adjustment.

[72] The rent is usually 57 per cent. of the rice harvest in the
paddies and 44 per cent. (in cash or kind) of the crops on the
non-paddy land. Any crop raised in the paddies between the harvesting
of one rice crop and the planting out of the next belongs to the
farmer. (All taxes and rates are paid by the landlord, and amount to
from 30 to 33 per cent. of the rent.) The area under paddy and the
area of upland under cultivation are almost equal.

[73] See Appendix XIX.

[74] See Appendix XX.

[75] In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.

[76] See Appendix XXI.

[77] See Appendix XXII.

[78] The harvest extends from mid-September in the north of Japan to
the end of October or beginning of November in the south. The harvest
is taken early in the north for fear of frost.

[79] The "210th day" (counted from the beginning of spring), when
flowering commences, is so critical a period that the weather
conditions during the twenty-four hours in every prefecture are
reported to the Emperor.




CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION

I thank whatever gods there be....--HENLEY

I


How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade
realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it receives from the
farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk? A necessary part of
the grain is lost. No wonder that sensible people in Japan and the
West demand the grey unpolished rice. In Japan some enterprising
person has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the
rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing process. It does not
look appetising. An easier thing would be to leave some of the coating
on the rice. One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread:

"They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter. Thus they
sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging
eye, and the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live."

Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten
with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the
Japanese people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice
for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If they have
anything to eat between meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes---
to the foreigner's taste a loathly, half-cooked compost of rice flour
or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid underdone muffin. We in the
West have bread at every meal as the Japanese have rice, but we eat
our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and bread-and-butter;
we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.

Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set before each
kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in Japan there is one which is
empty. This is the rice bowl. When the meal begins--or in the case of
an elaborate dinner at the rice course--the maid brings in a large
covered wooden copper-bound or brass-bound tub or round lacquered box
of hot rice. This rice she serves with a big wooden spoon, the only
spoon ever seen at a Japanese meal. A man may have three helpings or
four in a bowl about as big as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is
that, though other dishes may be pecked at, the rice in one's bowl
must be finished. The usage on this point may have originated in the
feeling that it was almost impious to waste the staple food of the
country. It is not difficult to pick up the last rice grains with the
wooden _hashi_ (chopsticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft
rice is served to invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty
the custom is to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then to drink
this, so getting rid of the odd grains. It is through omitting to
drink in this way that foreigners get indigestion when at a Japanese
meal they eat a lot of rice.

At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that people can
come with appetite to several bowls of plain rice three times a
day.[80] But good rice does seem to have something of the property of
oatmeal, the property of a continual tastiness. Further, the rice
eater picks up now and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle
which may have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The
nutrition gained at a Japanese meal is largely in soups in which the
bean preparations, _tofu_ and _miso_, and occasionally eggs, are used.
And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in
Japan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish--fresh,
dried and salted, shell-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all
sorts of ingenious treatment--is consumed by almost everybody.

The Japanese are in no doubt that the foreign rice which is brought
into the country to supplement the home supply is inferior to their
own.[81] Inferior means that they prefer the flavour of their own
rice, just as most Scots prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in
Scotland.


II

In the year of the Coronation--it took place three years after the
Emperor's accession--two prefectures had the honour of being chosen to
produce the rice to be placed before gods, Emperor and dignitaries at
Kyoto. The work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a witness
of the rites performed at the planting of the rice in one of the
prefectures. Plots had been prepared with enormous care. Along the top
of the special fencing were the Shinto straw bands and paper
streamers. A small shrine had been built to overlook the plots. Even
the instruments of the little meteorological station near, by which
the management of the crop would be guided, were surrounded by straw
bands and streamers--religion protecting science. The mattocks and
other implements which had been used in the preparation of the paddy
or were to be used in getting in the crops and in cultivating,
harvesting, threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring
which had manured the plot had been "specially selected and blessed."
Further, there was a special bath-house where the young men and women
who were to plant the rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.

We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or thirty thousand
people who were gathering to witness the ceremony. A covered platform
had been built in front of the rice field shrine, and on either side
were large roofed-in spaces for some scores of Shinto priests and the
favoured spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried us
magically away from a Japan of frock coats to Japan of a thousand, it
may be two thousand years ago. Between the wail of ancient wood and
wind instruments and the cinema operators who missed nothing external
and some bored top-hatted spectators who furtively puffed a cigarette
before the ceremony came to an end,[82] what a gulf! Platter after
platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes vegetables, sometimes
fruit, sometimes a big fish, was passed by one priest to another in
the sunlight until all the offerings were reverently placed by a
special dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, undecorated
but exquisitely proportioned altars which are an artistic glory of
Shintoism. The shrine was wholly open on the side of the rice field,
and the high priest was in full view as he stood before the altar with
bowed head and folded hands, his robe caught by the breeze, and
delivered in a loud voice his zealous invocation. His words were
stressed not only by an acolyte who twanged the strings of a venerable
harp, but by the song of a lark which rose with the first strains of
the harpist. The purpose of the ceremony was to call down the gods and
to gain their blessing for the crop and the new reign. At the moment
of highest solemnity the thousands assembled bowed their heads: the
gods were deigning to descend and accept the offering. More ancient
music, more ceremonial, and the gods having been called upon to return
to high heaven, the laden platters were gravely removed, and the rice
planting in the adjoining field began. To the sound of drum the young
men and women in special costumes strode through the wicket into the
mud of the paddies, and, under the supervision of the director of the
prefectural agricultural experiment station in a silk hat, planted out
the tufts of rice seedlings in scrupulously measured rows.

I asked a distinguished Japanese who was standing near me--he is a
Christian--how many of the educated people in the assembly believed
that the gods had descended. His answer was, "I may not believe that
the gods of a truth descended, but I find something beautiful in
calling on the gods with a harp of Old Japan, and I do believe that
our humble and natural offering to-day may be acceptable to whatever
gods there may be and that it is a worthy exercise for us to undertake
and may also be conducive to a good harvest." My friend attempted the
following rough rendering of a song which had been sung by the rice
planters before the shrine:

This day the beginning of sowing at an auspicious time--
Long life to the rice!
May it be a token of the years of the Reign,
The seed of peace for the world--
May it start from this consecrated field!
One in heart we see to it that our seedlings are well matched.
Mikawa's[83] millennium and the millennium of rice.
Let us pray for an abundant shooting.
Now let us plant the seedlings straight;
Pleasing to the gods are the ways that are not crooked.

After this ceremony, in which the staple crop of the country and the
labour of the farmer in his paddy field had been honoured by the State
and dignified by ancestral blessings, there was luncheon in one of
those deftly contrived reed-covered structures, of the building of
which the Japanese have the knack, and the Governor asked some of us
to say a few words. Then on a raised platform in the open there was
enacted a comic interlude such as might have been seen in England in
the Middle Ages. In the evening I was bidden to a dinner of the
officials responsible for the day's doings. The Governor made a kindly
reference to my labours and the local M.P. presented me with a kimono
length of the cotton material which had been woven for the planters of
the sacred rice.


III[84]

The production of rice has increased more quickly than the growth of
the population. If we consider, along with the advance in population,
the crops of the years 1882 and 1913, which were held to be average,
and, in order to be as up-to-date as possible, the normal annual
yield[85] of the five-years period 1912-18, we find that, as between
1882 and 1913, the population increased 45 per cent. and rice
production increased 63 per cent., while as between 1882 and the
normal annual yield period of 1912-18, the population increased 55 per
cent, and the crop 75 per cent.[86]

This is a noteworthy fact. But equally noteworthy is the fact that in
the 1882-1913 period, in which the production of rice increased 63 per
cent. and the population only 45 per cent., the price of rice did not
fall. On the contrary it rose. This was due largely[87] to the fact
that people had begun to eat rice who had not before been able to
afford it. Many people who grow rice eat, as has been noted, barley or
barley mixed with a little rice. From the 'eighties onwards more and
more rice was eaten.[88]

The reason was that, what with the cash obtained from cocoons through
the enormous development of sericulture,[89] what with the money
received by the girls who had gone to the factories, what with the
growth of big cities causing an increased demand for vegetables, eggs
and especially fruit at good prices, what with the use of better seed
and more artificial manure, what with agricultural co-operation,
paddy-field adjustment and the taking-in of new land, the farmer, in
spite of increased taxation,[90] was doing better, or at any rate was
minded to live better. In the thirty-years period 1882-1913, his crop
increased 63 per cent. although his area under cultivation increased
by only 17 per cent. In the following pages we shall hear more of the
methods by which the farmer's receipts have been increased. We shall
hear also, alas! of the ways in which his expenditure has increased.
He is indeed in a trying situation. Everything depends on his
character and education and on the influences, social and political,
moral and religious, under which he lives. That is why this book, in
devoting itself to an examination of the foundations of an
agricultural country, is concerned with rural sociology rather than
with the technique of crops and cropping.

The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations in
price.[91] It is also the problem of the landlord, for rents are fixed
not at so much money but at so many _koku_ of rice. This means that
on rent day the farmer must pay the same amount of rice whether his
crop has been good or bad. It also means that when the price of rice
rises the amount of rent is automatically raised. If rent were paid,
not in so many _koku_ of rice but in money at a fixed amount, the
landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in an easier
position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and he
would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice.
The counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build
storehouses and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after
harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, marketing each
month about the same amount if possible. The Government Granary plan
came into force in 1921, some 3 million _koku_ of unpolished rice
being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen. In the year
before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per _koku_ (5 bushels). The
previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen--had risen at times to 23
yen--an unheard-of price. Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely
from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen.[92] In the year in which the
War broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11
yen. By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.

The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915
(that is, 57,006,541 _koku_ and 55,924,590 _koku_ as compared with the
50,255,000 _koku_ of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which
may be taken as the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such
exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of
from 4½ to 6 million _koku_ over and above the needs of the country,
which are roughly estimated at 1 _koku_ per head including infants and
the old and feeble. In 1916 it was established, when account was taken
of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like 6 or 7
million _koku_. Therefore a fall in price took place. The extent to
which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV. This
Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I
entered into the question of the correctness of rice statistics.
Roughly, the statistics show a production 15 per cent. less than the
actual crops. Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent. The
practice has its origin in the old taxation system.

The notes for the account of rural life in Japan which will be found
in this book were chiefly made in the second and third years of the
War. Since that time there has been an enormous rise in the price of
everything. For a time the farmers prospered as they had prospered in
the high rice-price years, 1912-13.[93] The high prices of all grain
as well as the fabulous price of raw silk (due to increased export to
America and to increased home consumption) were a great advantage.

[Illustration: MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP THE PRICE OF RICE
FROM RISING]

Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general slump and
finally the commercial and industrial crash. Raw silk fell nearly to
one-third of its top price, and farmers had to sell cocoons under the
cost of production. Everywhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in
the factories were discharged in droves. A large proportion of these
unfortunates returned to their villages to dispel some rural dreams of
urban Eldorado.

But this matter of the going up and coming down of prices has but a
passing interest for the reader. The only economic fact of which he
need lay hold is that in recent years the farmers have been led into
the way of spending more money--in taxation as well as in general
expenses of living--and that, when account is taken of every advantage
they have gained from better methods of production, they have pressing
on them the limitations imposed by the size of their farms and their
farming practice. Whatever the prices obtained for the: products of
the soil, climatic facts,[94] the character and social condition of
the people, their attitude towards life and authority and the attitude
of authority towards them remain very much the same. And thus a
narrative of things seen and heard chiefly during the first years of
the War is not at all out of date even if it were not supplemented as
it is by a plentiful supply of notes containing the latest statistical
data.

There is one curious exception only. The reader of these pages will
constantly come on references to the poverty of the tenant farmers.
They are, of course, practically labourers, for they cultivate two or
three acres only, and at the end of the year, as has been shown, have
merely a trifle in hand and sometimes not that. Influenced by the
labour movement, which developed in the industrial centres during and
after the War,[95] this depressed class has of late shown spirit. It
has begun to assert its claims against landowners. At the end of 1920
there were as many as ninety associations of tenant farmers, and sixty
of these had been started for the specific purpose of representing
tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes of tenants began and
continue. The end of this movement of a proverbially conservative
class is not at all certain.[96]

The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind about agricultural
Japan are that the population is as thick on the ground as the
population of the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of
Japan is mountain and waste)--ten times thicker than the population of
the United States[97]--that Japan is primarily an agricultural
country, while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading
country, and that only 15½ per cent. of Japan proper (including
Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per cent. in Great
Britain.[98] The average area cultivated per farming family in Japan,
counting paddy and upland together, is less than 3 acres. As the total
population of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920,
plus the annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed close on
four persons. ("Even in Hokkaido," Dr. Sato notes, "the average area
per family is only 7½ acres.") Happily the number of families
cultivating less than 1¼ acres is decreasing and the number
cultivating from 1¼ up to 5 acres is increasing.[99] In other words,
the favourite size of farm is one which finds work for all the members
of the farmer's family. As on small holdings all over the world, it is
found that profits are difficult to make when help has to be paid for.
The facts that in the last four years for which figures are available
the number of farming families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a
million and that every year the area of land under cultivation
increases show that new ways of increasing income are eagerly seized
on.

FOOTNOTES:

[80] For estimate of daily consumption of rice by Japanese, see
Appendix XXIII.

[81] For statistics of imported and exported rice, see Appendix XXIV.

[82] Japanese. I was the only foreigner present.

[83] The old name for a considerable part of Aichi

[84] This section of the chapter was written in 1921.

[85] For the way in which "normal yield" is arrived at, see p. 70.

[86] See Appendix XXV.

[87] War with China, 1894; with Russia, 1904.

[88] For farmers' diet, see Appendix XXVI.

[89] Farmers in sericultural districts live better than the ordinary
rice farmers.

[90] See Appendix XXVII.

[91] See Appendix XXVIII.

[92] For prices, see Appendix XVII.

[93] The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in
the cost of living throughout the world, has been discussed on page
xxv.

[94] See Appendix XXIX.

[95] See Chapter XX.

[96] Recent figures show 400 tenants' associations, of which a third
are militant.

[97] See Appendix XXX and page 97.

[98] See Chapter XX.

[99] See Appendix XXXI.




BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE
AND THE ARTIST

CHAPTER X

A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

The signification of this gift of life, that we should leave a better
world for our successors, is being understood.--MEREDITH


To some people in Japan the countryman Kanzō Uchimura is "the Japanese
Carlyle." To others he is a religious enthusiast and the Japanese
equivalent of a troubler of Israel. He appeared to me in the guise of
a student of rural sociology.

Uchimura is the man who as a school teacher "refused to bow before the
Emperor's portrait."[100] He endured, as was to be expected, social
ostracism and straitened means. But when his voice came to be heard in
journalism it was recognised as the voice of a man of principle by
people who heard it far from gladly. There is a seamy side to some
Japanese journalism[101] and Uchimura soon resigned his editorial
chair. He abandoned a second editorship because he was determined to
brave the displeasure of his countrymen by opposing the war with
Russia. To-day he deplores many things in the relations of Japan and
China.

[Illustration: _Fuhei_
MUZZLED EDITORS]

Uchimura has written more than two dozen books, mostly on religion.
_How I became a Christian_ has been translated into English, German,
Danish, Russian and Chinese, and is to that extent a landmark in the
literary history of Japan. His Christianity is an Early Christianity
which places him in antagonism, not only to his own countrymen who are
Shintoists, Buddhists or Confucians, or vaguely Nationalists, but to
such foreign missionaries as are sectarians and literalists. His
earliest training was in agricultural science, and the welfare of the
Japanese countryside is near his heart. If he be a Carlyle, as his
fibre and resolution, downright way of writing and speaking, hortatory
gift, humour, plainness of life and dislike of officials, no less than
his cast of countenance, his soft hat and long gaberdine-like coat
have suggested, he is a Carlyle who is content to stay both in body
and mind at Ecclefechan. He is not, however, like Carlyle, whom he
calls "master," a peasant, but a samurai.

"As you penetrate into the lives of the farmers and discover the
influences brought to bear on them," Uchimura said to me in his
decisive way, "there will be laid bare to you _the foundations of
Japan_. You know our proverb, of course, _No wa kuni no taihon nari_
('Agriculture is the basis of a nation')? Have you been to Nikko?"
This seemed a little inconsequent, but I told him I had not yet been
to Nikko. ("Until you have seen Nikko," runs the adage, "do not say
'splendid'.") "How many of the tourists who are delighted with Nikko,"
he went on, "have heard how the richest farms near that town were
devastated? A century ago a minister of the Shogun, who realised that
fertility depended on trees, saw to the whole range of Nikko hills
being afforested. It was a tract twenty miles by twenty miles in
extent. But the 'civilised' authorities of our own days sold all the
timber to a copper company for 8,000 yen. The company destroyed the
fertility of the district not only by cutting down the forest but by
poisoning the water with which the farmers irrigated their crops. A
member of Parliament gave himself with such devotion to the cause of
the ruined farmers that when he died the ashes of his cremated body
were divided and preserved in four shrines erected to his memory."

It was a sad thing, said Uchimura, that the farmers of Japan, because
of the decreased fertility of the land due to the denudation of the
hills of trees, and because of their increased expenses, should be
laying out "a quarter of their incomes on artificial manures." "The
enemies which Japan has most to fear to-day," Uchimura declared, "are
impaired fertility and floods."

It may be well, perhaps, to explain for a few readers how floods do
their ill work. The rain which falls on treeless mountains is not
absorbed there. The water washes down the mountain sides, bringing
with it first good soil and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills
eventually become those peaked deserts the queer look of which must
have puzzled many students of Japanese pictures. The debris washed
away is carried into the rivers, along with trees from the lower
slopes, and the level of the river beds is raised. Because there is
less space in the river beds for water the rivers overflow their
banks, and disastrous floods take place. The farmers, the local
authorities and the State raise embankments higher and higher, but
embankment building is costly and cannot go on indefinitely. The real
remedy is to decrease the supply of water by planting forests in the
mountains[102]. In many places the rivers are flowing above the level
of the surrounding country. The imagination is caught by the fact that
there are four earthquakes a day in Japan[103] and that within a
twelvemonth fires destroy 400 acres or so of buildings; but every
year, on an average, floods, tidal waves and typhoons together drown
more than 600 people and cause a money loss of 25 million yen! Every
year 10½ million yen are spent by the State and the prefectures on
river control alone.

Uchimura put on his famous wideawake and we went out for a walk. "I
should like," he said, "to press the view that the vaunted expansion
of Japan has meant to the farmers an increase of prices and taxes and
of armaments out of all proportion to our population[104]."

Uchimura stood stock still in the little wood we had entered. "There
is one thing more," he added gravely. "Before you can get deeply into
your subject you must touch religion. There you see the depths of the
people. A large part of the deterioration of the countryside is due to
the deterioration of Buddhism. You must ask about it. You will see in
the villages much of what your old writers used to call 'priestcraft.'
You will hear of the thraldom of many of the people. You will see with
your own eyes that real Christianity may be a moral bath for a rural
district."

"The essentials, not the forms of Christianity," he declared, would
save the countryside by "brotherly union." "Brotherly union" would
make a better life and a better agriculture. The rural class, he
explained, was more sharply divided than foreigners understood into
owners of land who lived on their rents and farmers who farmed[105].
The division between the two classes was "as great as an Indian caste
division." "To the landowner who lives in his village like a feudal
lord the simple Gospel, with its insistence on the sacredness of work,
comes as an intellectual revolution." Women as well as men of means
received from Christianity "a new conception of humanity." They ceased
to "look upon their own glory and to take delight in the flattery of
poor people." They changed their way of speaking to the peasants. They
developed an interest, of which they knew nothing before, in the
spiritual and material betterment of the men, women and children of
their village.

I went a two-days journey into the country with Uchimura. We stayed at
the house of a landowner who was one of his adherents. I found myself
in a large room where two swallows were flitting, intent on building
on a beam which yearly bore a nest. In this room stood a shrine
containing the ancestral tablets. The daily offerings were no longer
made, but Uchimura's counsel, unlike that of some zealots, was to
preserve not only this shrine but the large family shrine in the
courtyard. Near by was an engraving of Luther.

[Illustration: "THE JAPANESE CARLYLE."]

[Illustration: MR. AND MRS. YANAGI.]

Uchimura spoke in the house to some thirty or more "people of the
district who had accepted Christianity." His appeal was to "live
Christianity as given to the world by its founder." The address, which
was delivered from an arm-chair, was based on the fifth chapter of
Matthew, which in the preacher's copy appeared to contain
cross-references to two disciples called Tolstoy and Carlyle. When I
was asked to speak I found that the women in the gathering had places
in front. "The remarkable effect of Christianity among those who
have come to think with us," Uchimura told me afterwards, "is seen
most in their treatment of women. Our host, had he not been a
Christian, would have been credited by public opinion with the
possession of a concubine, and would not have been blamed for it."
When, after the speaking, we knelt in a circle and talked less
formally of how best to benefit rural people, we were joined by the
women folk. Later, when a dozen of the neighbours were invited to
dinner, it was not served at separate tables for each kneeling guest,
but at one long table, an innovation "to indicate the brotherly
relation."

[Illustration: CHILDREN CATCHING INSECTS ON RICE-SEED BEDS]

[Illustration: MASTERS OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL AND SOME OF THE CHILDREN.]

"So you see," said Uchimura, as we walked to the station in the
morning, "in an antiquated book, which, I suppose, stands dusty on the
shelves of some of your reformers, there is power to achieve the very
things they aim at." He went on to explain that he looked "in the
lives of hearers, not in what they say," for results from his
teaching. He believed in liberty and freedom, in sowing the seed of
change and reform and allowing people to develop as they would. "Let
men and women believe as they have light."

He spoke in his kindly way of how "the bond of a common faith enables
Japanese to get closer to the foreigner and the foreigner closer to
the Japanese." There were many things we foreigners did not
understand. We did not understand, for example, that "A man's a man
for a' that" was an unfamiliar conception to a Japanese. I was to
remember, when I interrogated Japanese about the problems of rural
life, that they had had to coin a word for "problems." Above all, I
must be careful not to "exaggerate the quality of Eastern morality."
Uchimura asserted sweepingly that "morality in the Anglo-Saxon sense
is not found in Japan." We of the West underrated the value of the
part played by the Puritans in our development. Our moral life had
been evolved by the soul-stirring power of the Hebrew prophets and of
Christ. To deny this was "kicking your own mother." Just as it was not
possible for the Briton or American to get his present morality from
Greece and Rome exclusively, it was not possible for the Japanese to
obtain it from the sources at his disposal.

The faults of the Eastern were that he thought too much of outward
conduct. Good political and neighbourly-relations, kindliness, honesty
and thrift were his idea of morality. "To love goodness and to hate
evil with one's whole soul is a Christian conception for which you may
search in vain through heathendom." The horror which the Western man
of high character felt when he thought of the future of the little
girls in attendance on geisha was not a horror generated by Plato.
"Heathen life looks nice on the outside to foreigners," but
Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism had all been weak in their
attitude towards immorality. It was Christianity alone which
controlled sexual life. Without deep-seated love of and joy in
goodness and deep-seated horror of evil it was impossible to reform
society.

Uchimura said that it had taken him thirty years to reach the
conviction that the best way of raising his countrymen was by
preaching the religion of "a despised foreign peasant." Many things he
had been told by exponents of Christianity now seemed "very strange,"
but there remained in the first four books of the New Testament, in
the essence of Christianity, principles "which would give new life to
all men." Moved by this belief, Uchimura and his friends gave their
lives to the work of the Gospel, to a work attended by humiliations;
"but this is our glory."

Japanese civilisation, he reiterated, was "only good in the sense that
Greek and Roman civilisations were good." Modern Japan represented
"the best of Europe minus Christianity; the moral backbone of
Christianity is lacking." "Probe a dozen Buddhist priests in turn," he
said, "and you find something lacking; you don't find the Buddhist or
Confucian really to be your brother[106]."

"The greatness of England," he went on, "is not due to the inherent
greatness of the English people, but to the greatness of the truths
which they have received." In considering the sources of national
greatness, it was idle to believe that some peoples were original and
some not original in their ideas and methods. Where were the people to
be found who were without extraneous influence? Where would England be
without Greek philosophy, Roman law, and Christianity?

Our talk broke off as several peasant women passed us on the narrow
way by the rice fields. The mattocks they carried were the same weight
as their husbands' mattocks and the women were going to do the same
work as the men. But the women were nearly all handicapped by having a
child tied on their backs. Uchimura, returning to his objection to
foreign political adventure, said that Japan, properly cultivated,
could support twice its present population. There were many marshy
districts which could be brought into cultivation by drainage. Then
what might not forestry do? But the progress could not be made because
of lack of money. The money was needed for "national defence."

"For myself," said Uchimura, "I find it still possible to believe in
some power which will take care of inoffensive, quiet, humble,
industrious people. If all the high virtues of mankind are not
safeguarded somehow, then let us take leave of all the ennobling
aspirations, all the poetry, and all the deepest hopes we have, and
cease to struggle upward. The question is whether we have faith." We
still waited, he declared, for the nation which would be Christian
enough to take its stand on the Gospel and sacrifice itself
materially, if need be, to its faith that right was greater than
might.

And so "impractical, outspoken to rashness, but thoroughly sincere and
experienced," as one of his appreciative countrymen characterised him
to me, we take leave of the "Japanese Carlyle." With whom could I have
gone more provocatively towards the foundation of things at the
beginning of my investigation in farther Japan?

FOOTNOTES:

[100] The statement is, he told me, a calumny. He explained that he
lost his post for refusing to bow, not to the portrait, but to the
signature of the Emperor, the signature appended to that famous
Imperial rescript on education which is appointed to be read in
schools. Uchimura is very willing, he said, to show the respect which
loyal Japanese are at all times ready to manifest to the Emperor, and
he would certainly bow before the portrait of His Majesty; but in the
proposal that reverence should be paid to the Imperial autograph he
thought he saw the demands of a "Kaiserism"--his word, he speaks
vigorous English--which was foreign to the Japanese conception of
their sovereign, which would be inimical to the Emperor's influence
and would be bad for the nation.

[101] But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good,
and some of the best brains of the country is represented in it.
Papers like the _Jiji, Asahi, Nichi Nichi_, and the Osaka papers run
in conjunction with them have altogether a circulation approaching two
millions.

[102] For statistics of forests, see Appendix XXXII.

[103] A severe shook occurs on an average about every six years. The
eminent seismologist, Professor Omori, told me that he does not expect
an earthquake of a dangerous sort for a generation.

[104] The _Oriental Economist_, a Japanese publication, in the autumn
of 1921 suggested the abandonment of all the extensions to the Empire
on the score that they had not been a benefit to Japan, and that she
was in no way dependent on them. See also Appendix XXXIII.

[105] See Appendix XXXIV.

[106] What of the old story which I have heard from Uchimura and
others of the Confucian missionary to certain head hunters of Formosa?
After many years of labour among them they promised to give up head
hunting if they might take just one more head. At last the good man
yielded, and told them that a Chinaman in a red robe was coming
towards the village the next day and his head might be taken. On the
morrow the men lay in wait for the stranger, sprang on him and cut off
his head, only to find that it was the head of their beloved
missionary. Struck with remorse and realising the evil of head taking,
the tribe gave up head hunting for ever.




CHAPTER XI

THE IDEA OF A GAP

Bold is the donkey driver, O Khedive, and bold is the Khedive who
dares to say what he will believe, not knowing in any wise the mind of
Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart.


The "Japanese Carlyle" is getting grey. It seemed well to seek out
some young Japanese thinker and take his view of that "heathenism"
concerning which Uchimura had delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me
speak of my first visit to my friend Yanagi.

As a youth Yanagi was a lonely student. He took his own way to
knowledge and religion. The famed General Nogi had been given by the
Emperor the direction of the Peers' School, but even under such
distinguished tutelage the stripling made his stand. His reading led
him to write for the school magazine an anti-militarist article. The
veteran, as I once learned from a friend of Yanagi, promptly paraded
the school, boys and masters. He spoke of disloyal, immoral,
subversive ideas, and bade the youthful disturber of the peace attend
him at his own house. When Yanagi stood before Nogi and was asked what
he had to say, he replied with the question, "Don't you feel pain
because of sending so many men to death before Port Arthur[107]?"

Again I found my prophet in a cottage. It was a cottage overlooking
rice fields and a lagoon. From the Japanese scene outdoors I passed
indoors to a new Japan. Cezanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van
Gogh, Henry Lamb, Augustus John, Matisse and Blake--Yanagi has written
a big book on Blake which is in a second edition--hung within sight
of a grand piano and a fine collection of European music[108].
Chinese, Korean and Japanese pottery and paintings filled the places
in the dwelling not occupied by Western pictures and the Western
library of a man well advanced with an interpretative history of
Eastern and Western mysticism. An armful of books about Blake and
Boehme, all Swedenborg, all Carlyle, all Emerson, all Whitman, all
Shelley, all Maeterlinck, all Francis Thompson, and all Tagore, and
plenty of other complete editions; early Christian mystics; much of
William Law, Bergson, Eucken, Caird, James, Haldane, Bertrand Russell,
Jefferies, Havelock Ellis, Carpenter, Strindberg, "Æ," Yeats, Synge
and Shaw; not a little poetry of the fashion of Vaughan, Traherne and
Crashaw; a well-thumbed Emily Brontë; all the great Russian novelists;
numbers of books on art and artists--it was an arresting collection to
come on in a Japanese hamlet, and odd to sit down beside it in order
to talk of "heathen."

"Yes," said Yanagi--he speaks an English which reflects his wide
reading--"our young maid, on being shown the full moon the other
night, bowed her head. I find this natural instinct of some value. Our
people have much natural feeling towards Nature. If modern Japanese
art has degenerated it is because it does not sufficiently find out
life in things. The sough of the wind in the trees may have only a
slight influence on character, but it is a vital influence. I do not
like, of course, the word 'heathendom' of which Uchimura seems so
fond. I dearly admire Christ, but most of the Christianity of to-day
is not Christ. It is largely Paul. It is a mixture. It is not the
clear, pure, original thing. Christians must reform their Christianity
before it can satisfy us. In the East we now see clearly enough to
seek only the best that the West can offer."

Yanagi said that the spontaneity and naturalness of Eastern religions
ought to be recognised. "You will find Christians admiring Walt
Whitman, but it is Whitman the democrat they admire, not Whitman the
prophet of naturalness." He spoke with appreciation of the Zen sect
of Buddhists. Many of the Zen devotees were "noble and had a profound
idea." He was unable to see "any difference at all" between the best
part of Buddhism and the best part of Christianity. He said that his
own mysticism was based on science, art, religion and philosophy. "My
sincerest wish," he declared, "is to produce a beautiful
reconciliation of these four. As it is, too often scientists and
philosophers have no deep knowledge of religion or art, artists have
no deep knowledge of religion or science, and the religious have no
idea of art. Surely the deepest religious idea is the deepest artistic
and philosophic idea. Perhaps our scientists are in the poorest state
just now with no understanding of art or religion. Our scientists are
immersed in the problem of matter, our religious people in the problem
of spirit, and our artists forget that in dealing with nature they are
dealing with spirit as well as body."

Faced by force and science when Commander Perry came, Japan, in order
to save herself from foreign colonisation, had had to concentrate all
her attention on force and science. She had concentrated her attention
with signal success. But naturally she had had, in the process, to
slacken her hold somewhat on the spiritual life.

"Always remember how difficult the Japanese find it to know which way
to take. Their whole basis has been shaken and on the surface all has
become chaotic. Ten years hence it will be possible to take a just
view. There is much reason for high hopes. For one thing, the burden
of old thought does not rest so heavily on us as might be supposed. We
are very free in many ways. In the matter of religion Japan is the
most free nation in the world. If England were to become Buddhist it
would sound strange or exotic, but Japan is free to become what she
may."

"There may be a great difference between one of our temples and
shrines and an English church," Yanagi proceeded, "but I cannot
believe in the gap which some people seem to see yawning between East
and West. It is deplorable that the world should think that there is
such a complete difference between East and West. It is usually said
that self-denial, asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to
self-affirmation, individualism, self-realisation; but I do not
believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the idea of a gap. It is an
idea which was obtained analytically. The meeting of East and West
will not be upon a bridge over a gap, but upon the destruction of the
idea of a gap.

"In future, religion cannot be limited by this or that sect or idea.
Religion cannot be limited to Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism or
Mahomedanism. Uchimura says that it is the essence of Christianity
which has the power to rescue Japan from its chaotic state. But the
essence of Buddhism can also contribute some important element to the
future of Japan. The notion that the essence of Christianity and the
essence of Buddhism are far apart is artificial and prejudiced."

One day some weeks later I walked with Yanagi on the hills. He said:
"The weakest point in the Japanese character is the lack of the power
of questioning. We are repressed by our educational system. And so
many things come here at one time that it makes confusion. What is so
often taken for a lack of originality in us is a state resulting from
an immense importation of foreign ideas. They have been overpowering.
Many of us have no clear ideas on life, society, sex and so on, and
you will find it difficult to get satisfactory answers to many
questions which you will want to ask."

As to morality, it was dangerous to say "this or that is immoral."
Morality was often merely custom. Ordinary morality had scant
authority. Critics of Japanese morality should not forget that, in the
opinion of Japanese, Western people were more erotic than they were.
Western dancing--not to speak of Western women's evening costumes--was
undoubtedly more erotic than Japanese dancing. Again, the sexual
curiosity of foreigners seemed stronger than that manifested by
Japanese. It was a well-known fact that the girls at many hotels and
restaurants had not a little to complain of from foreign men who
misjudged their naïve ways. It must be remembered that Japanese were
franker in sexual matters than Europeans and Americans. Sexual
ill-doing was not so much concealed as in Europe. A wrong impression
of Japanese morality was taken away by tourists whose guides showed
them, as in Paris, what they expected to see.

"I wonder," he said, "that Western visitors to Tokyo who talk of our
immorality are not struck by the fact that in an Eastern capital a
foreign lady may walk home at night and be practically safe from being
spoken to. The Japanese are undoubtedly a very kind people. They may
be unmoral, but they are not immoral."

"Most of our people do not understand liberty in the mental sexual
relations. Love is not free. In a very large proportion of cases,
indeed, parents would oppose a match because a son or daughter had
fallen in love. And if it is difficult to marry for love it is not
easy to fall in love.[109] Society in which young men and young women
meet is restricted; there are few opportunities of conversation.
Without liberty towards women there can be no perfect sense of
responsibility towards them."

What had been taught to women as the supreme virtue was the virtue of
sacrifice for father, husband, children. It was most important to let
women know the significance of individualism. They were always
offering themselves for others before they became themselves. But the
idea of individuality was very little clearer to the Japanese man than
to the Japanese woman. People were too prone to wish to give 100 yen
before they had 100 yen. The Japanese were the most devotional people
in the world, but they hardly knew yet the things to be devoted to.

Yanagi is a leading member of a small association of literary men,
artists and students who graduated together from the Peers' School.
They call themselves for no obvious reason the Shirakaba or Silver
Birch Society. The intelligent and consistent efforts of these young
men to introduce vital Western work in literature, philosophy,
painting, sculpture, draughtsmanship and music, and the large measure
of success they have attained is of some significance. Several members
of the group belong to the old Kuge families, that is the ancient
nobility which surrounded the Emperor at Kyoto before the
Restoration. Cut off for centuries from military and administrative
activities by the dominance of the Shogunate Government, the Kuge
devoted themselves to the arts and the refinements of life. For the
exclusiveness of the past some of their descendants substitute
artistic integrity. The Shirakaba has had for several years a
remarkable magazine. Its editor and its publisher, its size, its price
and its date of publication are continually changed; it never makes
any bid for popularity; it expresses its sentiments in a downright way
and it has always been anti-official: yet it survives and pays its
way. Beyond the magazine, the Society has had every year at least one
exhibition of what its members conceive to be significant modern
European work. The members have also supported a few Japanese artists
of outstanding sincerity. Through the Shirakaba the influence of
Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Blake, Delacroix, Matisse, Augustus John,
Beardsley, Courbet, Daumier, Maillol, Chavannes and Millet,
particularly Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and Blake, has been marked. The
Silver Birch group has never tired of extolling the great names of
Rembrandt, Dürer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo, Michael Angelo,
Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna[110].

While an ardent Young Japan has formed and dissolved many societies,
movements and fashions, this Shirakaba group has held fast and has
gained friends by its sincerity, its vision and its audacity[111].
Rodin encouraged the Shirakaba efforts to reproduce the best Western
art by presenting it with three pieces of sculpture.

"The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has written. Why do
not Yanagi and his friends make a stand on public questions?
"Because," he said, "at the present stage of our development it is
almost impossible to take up a strong attitude, and because, important
though political and social questions are, they are not, in our
opinion, of the first importance. To artists, philosophers, students
of religion, such problems are secondary. More important problems are:
What is the meaning of this world? What is God? What is the essence of
religion? How can we best nourish ourselves so as to realise our own
personalities? Political and social problems are secondary for us at
present; they are not related emotionally to our present
conditions[112].

        For the East the Root,
        For the West the Fruit.

"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them
primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present attitude
does not prove, however, that we are cold to political and social
problems. In fact, when we think of these terrible political and
social questions they make us boil. But you will understand that in
order to have something to give to others, we must have that
something. We are seeking after that something."

Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new
artistic movement in Japan, under the influence of modern Western art,
was making to the solution of political and social questions[113]. The
interest of the younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite
disharmonious with the ordinary attitude towards militarism."
European art broke down barriers in the Japanese mind. When the
younger generation, nourished on higher ideals, grew up, it would be
the State, and there would be a more hopeful condition of affairs.
People generally supposed that social questions were the most
practical; but religious, artistic, philosophic questions were, in the
truest sense of the word, the most practical.

Yanagi went on to tell of his devotion to Blake. He could not
understand "why Englishmen are so cool to him." He asked me how it was
that there was no word about Blake in Andrew Lang's work on English
literature. "I cannot imagine," he said, "why such an intelligent man
could not appreciate Blake." Yanagi regarded Blake as "the artist of
immense will, of immense desire, and a man in whom can be seen that
affirmative attitude towards life, exhibited later by Whitman." Yanagi
spoke also of "Anglo-Saxon nobility, liberty, depth of character and
healthiness," and of "a deep and noble character" in English
literature which he did not find elsewhere. Whitman, Emerson, Poe and
William James were "the crown of America."

As I close this chapter I recall Yanagi's library, in the service of
which, bettering Mark Pattison's example, two-thirds of its owner's
income was for some time expended. I remember the thatched dwelling
overlooking the quiet reed-bound lagoon with its frosty sunrises, red
moonrises and apparitions of Fuji above the clouds seventy miles away.
No Western visitor whom I took to Abiko failed to be moved by that
room, designed by Yanagi himself in every detail, wherein East meets
West in harmony. I have made note of his Western books but not of the
classics and strange mystic writings of Chinese and Korean priests in
piles of thin volumes in soft bindings of blue or brown. I have not
mentioned a Rembrandt drawing and next to it the vigorous but restful
brush lines of an artist priest of the century that brought Buddhism
to Japan; severe little gilt-bronze figures of deities from China, a
little older; pottery figures of exquisite beauty from the tombs of
Tang, a little later; Sung pottery, a dynasty farther on; Korai
celadons from Korean tombs of the same epoch; and whites and blue and
whites of Ming and Korean Richo. On the wall a black and yellow tiger
is "burning bright" on a strip of blood-red silk tapestry woven on a
Chinese loom for a Taoist priest 500 years ago. Cimabue's portrait of
St. Francis breathes over Yanagi's writing desk from one side, while
from the other Blake's amazing life mask looks down "with its Egyptian
power of form added to the intensity of Western individualism." These
are Yanagi's silent friends. His less quiet friends of the flesh have
felt that this room was a sanctuary and Yanagi a priest of eternal
things, but a priest without priestcraft, a priest living joyously in
the world. Above his desk is inscribed the line of Blake:

        Thou also, dwellest in eternity

and Kepler's aspiration, "My wish is that I may perceive God whom I
find everywhere in the external world in like manner within and
without me."

FOOTNOTES:

[107] One of the reasons assigned for the suicide of the General was
thoughts of his responsibility for the terrible slaughter in the
assaults on Port Arthur.

[108] Mrs. Yanagi is one of the best contraltos heard at the now
numerous Japanese concerts of Western music.

[109] _Shinjū_, or suicide for love, the girl often being a geisha, is
common.

[110] "I am inclined to think," wrote Yanagi in 1921, in a paper on
Korean art, "that we have paid if anything rather too much attention
to European works while making little effort to pay attention to what
lies much nearer to us."

[111] POLICE STANDARDS.--The sale of one issue of the magazine was
prohibited by the police, who found a nude "antagonistic to the
ordinary standard of public morals." The editors' answer next
month--the police standard being, "No front views"--was to publish
half a dozen more nudes with their backs to the reader.

[112] It will be remembered that this conversation took place in the
summer of 1915 at the outset of my investigation. Since then, as noted
throughout this book, economic questions have increasingly pressed
themselves forward. I may mention that in 1919 Yanagi wrote a
vigorous and moving protest against misgovernment in Korea. In a
recent letter to me he says: "You know that I am going to establish a
Korean Folk Art Society in Seoul. This is a big work, but I want to do
it with all my power for love of Korea. I approach the solution of the
Korean question by the way of Art. Politics can never solve the
question. I want to use the gallery as a meeting-place of Koreans and
Japanese. People cannot quarrel in beauty. This is my simple yet
definite belief." Yanagi's manifesto on his project made one think of
the age when the great culture of China and India glowed across the
straits of Tsushima in the wake of early Buddhism.

[113] A well-known member of the Shirakaba group started two years ago
an "ideal village" among the mountains. It is an effort towards social
freedom in which the police manifest a continuous interest.




ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND
BACK)

CHAPTER XII

TO THE HILLS

(TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA)

Nothing which concerns a _countryman_ is a matter of unconcern to
me.--TERENCE


During the month of July I went from one side of Japan to the other,
starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which lies America, and
coming out at Niigata, across the sea from which lies Siberia.

We first made a four hours' railway run through the great Kwanto plain
(6,000 square miles). Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for
travellers take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy--he
has the word "Boy" on his collar in English--brings fans and bedroom
slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised "Hotels in European
style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway[114],"
offered on the other a poem and a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail
played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem
was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful _hokku_
(seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the
humblest creatures. One poem is:

        Come and play with me,
        Thou orphan sparrow!

Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse.

As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher lands someone
recalled the saying about saints living in the mountains and sages by
the sea. Speaking of religion, one man said that he had known of
people giving half their income to religious purposes. He also
mentioned that for some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in
a Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still served her
Buddhist shrine.

It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano--the
odour of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district--that
I first enjoyed the attentions of the blind _amma_ (_masseur_ or
_masseuse_), the call of whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening
in the smallest community. _Amma san_ rubbed and pommelled me for an
hour for 28 sen. The _amma_ does not massage the skin, but works
through the _yukata_ (bath gown) of the patient. I had my massaging as
I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an entertainment arranged
for the benefit of residents. The entertainers, professional and
non-professional--the non-professionals were local farmers--knelt on a
low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily able.
A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young
wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an
old-time Court lady.

The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the
volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that
knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to
farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom
and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has
traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo
fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food
supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the
farmers.

At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano.
Soon we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead
trees and scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an
awesome desolation of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At
the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the volcano's
vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur pouring out,
brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to whom there first came
the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must surely have
looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and
spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The
sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air
was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind.

Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the
orifices, and in this way had compelled the volcano to furnish them
with sulphur free from dirt. The production of sulphur in Japan is
valued at close on three million yen.

As we went on our journey we spoke of the sturdiness and cheeriness of
our chief carrier, who had told us that he was seventy. I asked him if
he thought it fair that he should have to walk so far on a hot day
with so much to carry while we were empty-handed. He replied that it
might appear to be unjust, but that he was happy enough. He said that
he had lived long and seen many things, and he knew that to be rich
was not always to be happy. He quoted the proverb, "Sunshine and rice
may be found everywhere," and the poem which may be rendered, "If you
look at a water-fowl thoughtlessly you may imagine that she has
nothing to do but float quietly on the water, yet she is moving her
feet ceaselessly beneath the surface."

At the little hot spring inn where we next stayed, insect powder was
on sale, not without reasonable hope of patronage by the guests. The
_Asahi_ once facetiously reported that I had taken on a journey three
_to_ (six pecks) of insect powder. The chief protector of the prudent
traveller in remote Japan is a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets
into it and ties the strings together under his chin. The mats and
futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The hard cylindrical
Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also, but I never got
accustomed to using it, and laid my head on a doubled-up kneeling
cushion.

A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from the women's.
My cold bath in the morning I found I had to take unselfconsciously at
a water-gush in front of the house. As the food was poor here, we
were glad of our tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course
in a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually
available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and
soups. With a pot of jam or two and some powdered milk in one's bag,
one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places
on giving notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children.
If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has resolved to
see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try to do their
best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered
for by the provision of _bento_ (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms
of stations. These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold
fish or chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and
inexpensive meal.

Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke
of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are
still people who escape the census and live a wild life. The records
of a gipsy folk called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800
years.

As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of
"fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a
favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when
the fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after
fire-farming "tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking
may have been introduced from China there could not be such large
areas of tea growing wild if tea were not indigenous.

Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed
that trees were often felled in order that mushrooms might be grown on
and around their trunks. There is a large consumption of these
tree-grown mushrooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half
million yen.

[Illustration: CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS.]

An inscribed stone by our path was a reminder of the belief in
"mountain maidens." They have the undoubted merit of not being "so
peevish as fairies." At another stone, before which was a pile of
small stones, a farmer told us that when a traveller threw a stone
on the heap he "left behind his tiredness."

[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OF RICE]

In the first house we came to we found a young widow turning bowls
with power from a water-wheel. She could finish 400 bowls in a day and
got from one to five sen apiece. She said that she had often wished to
see a foreigner. Like nearly all the girls and women of the hills, she
wore close-fitting blue cotton trousers.

We descended to a kind of prairie which had a tree here and there and
roughly wooded hills on either side. This brought us to the problem of
the wise method of dealing with the enormous wood-bearing areas of the
country, the timber crop of which is so irregular in quality. Japan
requires many more scientifically planned forests. As coal is not in
domestic use, however, large quantities of cheap wood are needed for
burning and for charcoal making. The demand for hill pasture is also
increasing. How shall the claims of good timber, good firewood, good
charcoal-making material and good pasture be reconciled? In the county
through which we were passing--a county which, owing to its large
consumption of wood fuel, needs relatively little charcoal--the
charcoal output was worth as much as 35,000 yen a year.

We saw "buckwheat in full bloom as white as snow," as the Chinese poem
says. At a farmhouse there was a box fixed on a barn wall. It was for
communications for the police from persons who desired to make their
suggestions for the public welfare privately.

Towards evening, when we had done about twenty miles, I managed to
twist an ankle. Happily I had the chance of a ride. It was on the back
of a dour-looking mare which was accompanied by her foal and tied by a
halter to the saddle of a led pack-horse which was carrying two large
boxes. Thus impressively I did several miles in descending darkness
and across the rocky beds of two rivers. The horse of this district is
a downcast-looking animal in spite of the fact that it is stalled
under the same roof as its owner and is thus able to share to some
extent in his family life.

At the town at which we at last arrived, the comfort of the hot bath
was enhanced by a sturdy lass of the inn who unasked and unannounced
came and applied herself resolutely to scrubbing and knuckling our
backs.

The next day I went to the principal school. There were in the place
three primary schools, one with a branch for agricultural work. The
"attendance" at the principal school, where there were 379 boys and
girls, was 98 per cent, for the boys and 94 per cent, for the
girls.[115] The buildings were most creditable to a small place fifty
miles from a railway station. The community had met the whole cost out
of its official funds and by subscriptions. More than half the
expenditure of many a village is on education, which in Japan is
compulsory but not free. One cannot but be impressed by the pride
which is taken in the local schools. The dominating man-made feature
of the landscape is less frequently than might be supposed a temple or
a shrine: where the picture which catches the eye is not the vast
expanse of the crops of the plain or the marvels of terracing for hill
crops, it is the long, low school building, set almost invariably on
the best possible site. The poorly paid men and women teachers are
earnest and devoted, and their influence must be far-reaching. They
are rewarded in part, no doubt, by the respect which pupils and the
general public give to the _sensei_ (teacher).[116] At the school I
visited, the children, as is customary, swept and washed out the
schoolrooms and kept the playground trim. Above one teacher's desk
were the following admonitions:

        Be obedient.
        Be decent.
        Be active.
        Be social.
        Be serious.

"Be serious"!--graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here,
as usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers
all sorts of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the
sufficiency of reprimands, of "standing out" and of detention after
school hours was unshaken.

A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen,
a large sum in Japan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap.
It was to be used chiefly for the gymnastics which are steadily adding
to the stature of the Japanese people. At one end there was an
opening, about 20 ft. across and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable
place for the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which are solemnly
exposed to view on Imperial birthdays[117].

Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in
education, one of the reasons for the building of new schools and
adding to old ones is to be found in the recent extension of the
period of compulsory attendance. It used to be from six to ten years
of age; it is now from six to twelve. The visitor to Japan usually
under-estimates the ages of children because they are so small.
Japanese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.

In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were,
I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch
schools, 3 secondary schools and 17 winter schools. Within the same
area there were 46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125
Shinto shrines with 11 priests.

The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of
71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with. When charges were
not proceeded with it was either because restitution had been made or
the chief constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the
offender with a reprimand. When transgressors are dismissed with a
reprimand an eye is kept on them for a year. As the Japanese are in
considerable awe of their police, I have no doubt that, as was
explained to me, those who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are
released from custody with a warning, may "tremble and correct their
conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions were given
at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal
statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and
children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held,
perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured,
only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of
them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly
patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told
that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young
women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they
could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or
of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save
the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register
illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives.
Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call
the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his
daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are
vitiated by the fact that in Japan children are recorded as
illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their
otherwise respectable unions.[118]

In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the
still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to
imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district
girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival.
One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled
stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted
William Poel. Formerly these plays were given by the local youths; now
professional actors are employed. The different acts of the historical
dramas which were performed were divided into half a dozen scenes, and
when one of these scenes had been enacted the stage was wheeled
farther along the street. At the conclusion of each scene some three
dozen small boys, all wearing the white-and-black speckled cotton
kimono and German caps which are the common wear of lads throughout
Japan, would swarm up on the stage, and, with fans waved downwards,
would yell at the pitch of their voices an ancient jingle, which
seemed to signify "Push, push, push and go on!" This was addressed to
a score or so of young men who with loud shouts hauled the heavy
stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the four moving
theatres went on simultaneously and sometimes the cars passed one
another. The performances were given on the eve and on the day and
through the night of the festival. The acting was amazingly good,
considering the July heat and the cramped conditions in which the
actors worked. Happy boys sat at the back of the scenes fanning the
players. Our kindly and voluble landlady was not satisfied with the
number of times the stages stopped before her inn. She loudly
threatened the youths who were dragging them that she would reclaim
some properties she had lent and tell her dead husband of their
ingratitude!

At one of the booths which had been opened for the festival by a
strolling company there were women actors, contrary to the convention
of the Japanese stage on which men enact female rôles and in doing so
use a special falsetto. Some of these actresses performed men's parts.
At every performance in a Japanese theatre, as I have already
mentioned, a policeman is provided with a chair on a special platform,
or in an otherwise favourable position, so that he can view and if
necessary censor what is going on. The constable at this particular
play was kind enough to offer me his seat. The rest of the audience
was content with the floor. The poor little company of players brought
to their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they had to
do everything in the rudest way. They were in no way embarrassed by
the attendants frequently trimming the inferior oil lamps on the
stage. A little girl on the floor, entranced by the performance on the
stage, or curious about some detail of it, ran forward and laid her
chin on the boards and studied the actors at leisure. The folk in the
front row of the gallery dangled their naked legs for coolness.

One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West to identify the
people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained
that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until
nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre
until the play was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion
of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the
proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre
identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms of
their hands.

From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They charged 2 sen.
We were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a snake, an unhappy bear, three
doleful monkeys and some stuffed animals which may or may not have had
in life an uncommon number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture by
a young and pretty show-woman who insisted that two marmots in her lap
were the offspring of a girl. "Look," she cried, "at two sisters, the
daughters of one mother. See their hands!" And she held up their paws.
She rounded off the fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed
milk.

As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that
I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a
paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in
the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The
prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but
described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell
where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low
door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on
their knees.

We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a
celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary,
perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of _geta_," said our
landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to
attend without taking a bath in the early morning."[119]

At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the
annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his
hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains
of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A
decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine.
Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and
_saké_. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a
strip of cloth before his mouth and nose[120] and addressed the chief
deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in
the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in
all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran
freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an
end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the
shrine read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed.
His thin voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a
child's cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the
cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.

After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the
people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large
room of the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial _saké_ to
which rice had been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried
fish. Not so long ago the presence of a foreigner would have been
unwelcome at such a ceremony as we had witnessed: the fear of
"contagion of foreigners" extended even to people from another
prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few
moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.

Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight
days. He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been
cooked at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch
other persons, particularly women; he had bathed several times daily
in cold water and he had said many prayers. The heads of the household
in the community whose turn it was to attend at the shrine were also
supposed to have observed some of the same taboos. Only those persons
might make offerings at the shrine whose fathers and mothers were
living.[121] Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and _saké_ at
the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.

In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for
moral or non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then
came home training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was
too often indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One
person well qualified to express an opinion said that a "wise and
benevolent" chief constable could exercise a good moral influence.
Others believed in public opinion. A policeman said, "The first thing
is for people to have food and clothes; without such primary
satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In
considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is not
without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a
school receive about the same salary. Assistant teachers and plain
constables are also on an equality. I found the salary of the
administrative head of one county, the _gunchō_, to be only 2,000 yen
a year.

I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through there were
no fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a
capital of two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a
turnover of three million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a
temperature for the rice or to floods which drown the crop,
co-operation had proved its value. The prefectures north of Tokyo
facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine, for near Sendai
the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I was told
that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine
has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a
hundred." These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who
suffered from lack of suitable nourishment." Every year the
development of railway and steam communications makes easier the task
of relieving famine sufferers.[122] In the old days people were often
found dead who had money but were unable to get food for it. As Japan
is a long island with varying climates there is never general
scarcity.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] For statistics of railways, see Appendix XXXV.

[115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of
Japan is officially reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.;
villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not mean daily attendance.

[116] Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been
raised to 26, 16 and 15 yen per month, according to grade.

[117] Only last year (1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an
endeavour to save the Emperor's portrait from his burning school.

[118] See Appendix XXXVI.

[119] A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and
evening in most Japanese hotels. In the morning people are content
merely with rinsing their hands and face.

[120] In addressing a superior, many Japanese still draw in their
breath from time to time audibly.

[121] That is, persons who might be considered not to have failed in
their filial duties.

[122] After the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons
were in receipt of famine relief.




CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS
(FUKUSHIMA)

I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects--my study
is man.--BORROW


Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his
tenants' rent rice into _saké_. He was of the fifth generation of
brewers. He said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the
street; now, he said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival
days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured
aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found
these beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the Japanese have
the knack of tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes
them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised
everywhere, have also affected the consumption of _saké_.[123] _Saké_
is usually compared with sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet,
lasting five or six hours or longer, a man "strong in _saké_" may
conceivably drink ten _go_ (a _go_ is about one-third of a pint)
before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected by
three _go_. Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of _saké_
they can consume--I have heard of men declaring that they could drink
twenty _go_--are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The
little _saké_ bottles are opaque, and it is easy to remove them for
refilling before they are quite empty.

The brewer, who was a firm adherent of the Jishu sect of Buddhists,
was accustomed to burn incense with his family at the domestic shrine
every morning. But this was not the habit of all the adherents of his
denomination. As to the moral advancement of the neighbourhood, his
grandfather "tried very earnestly to improve the district by means of
religion, but without result." He himself attached most value to
education and after that to young men's associations.

As we left the town we passed a "woman priest" who was walking to
Nikko, eighty miles away. Portraits of dead people, entrusted to her
by their relatives for conveyance to distant shrines, were hung round
her body.

As the route became more and more hilly I realised how accurate is
that representation of hills in Japanese art which seems odd before
one has been in Japan: the landscape stands out as if seen in a flash
of lightning.

Three things by the way were arresting: the number of shrines, mostly
dedicated to the fox god; the rice suspended round the farm buildings
or drying on racks; and the masses of evening primroses, called in
Japan "moon-seeing flowers."

A feature of every village was one or more barred wooden sheds
containing fire-extinguishing apparatus, often provided and worked by
the young men's association. Sometimes a piece of ground was described
to me as "the training ground of the fire defenders." The night
patrols of the village were young fellows chosen in turn by the
constable from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of
the village. There stood up in every village a high perpendicular
ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give the alarm. The
emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers
attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer
awarded by the prefecture.

On a sweltering July day it was difficult to realise that the villages
we passed through, now half hidden in foliage, might be under 7 ft. of
snow in winter. In travelling in this hillier region one has an extra
_kurumaya_, who pushes behind or acts as brakeman.

At the "place of the seven peaks" we found a stone dedicated to the
worship of the stars which form the Plough. Again and again I noticed
shrines which had before them two tall trees, one larger than the
other, called "man and wife." It was explained to me that "there
cannot be a more sacred place than where husband and wife stand
together." A small tract of cryptomeria on the lower slopes of a hill
belonged to the school. The children had planted it in honour of the
marriage of the Emperor when he was Crown Prince.

Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom more than
about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside
waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in
the kneeling position so often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere,
there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could
possibly be made.

On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by receiving the
bows of small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours
to perform their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are
taught at school to bow to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter
villages of Holland the stranger also received the bows of young
people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for
protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs,
and he quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on
the smile of your mother-in-law."

We had before us a week's travel by _kuruma_. Otherwise we should have
liked to have brought away specimens of the wooden utensils of some of
the villages. The travelling woodworker whom we often encountered--he
has to travel about in order to reach new sources of wood supply--has
been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that
there was a special deity to look after him. In the town we had left
there was delightful woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was
pitiful trash made after what was supposed to be foreign fashions. I
may also mention the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories
upon Western models which were piled up in the stationers' shops.

As we walked up into the hills--the _kuruma_ men were sent by an
easier route--we passed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large
masses of blue single hydrangea and white and pink spirea. We came on
the ruined huts of those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken
from it a few crops of buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees stood up
among the green undergrowth that had invaded the patches. There was a
great deal of plantain and a _kurumaya_ mentioned that sometimes when
children found a dead frog they buried it in leaves of that plant.
Japanese children are also in the habit of angling for frogs with a
piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are jerked ashore.

We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff climb and we
marvelled at the expense to which a poor county must be put for the
maintenance of roads which so often hang on cliff sides or span
torrents. The great piles of wood accumulated at the summit turned the
talk to "silent trade." In "silent trade" people on one side of a hill
traded with people on the other side without meeting. The products
were taken to the hill top and left there, usually in a rough shed
built to protect the goods from rain. The exchange might be on the
principle of barter or of cash payment. But the amount of goods given
in exchange or the cash payment made was left to honour. "Silent
trade" still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes the price
expected for goods is written up in the shed. "Silent trade"
originated because of fears of infectious disease; it survives because
it is more convenient for one who has goods to sell or to buy to
travel up and down one side of a mountain than up and down two sides.

As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck by the
extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country where every household
is burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the
houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and
there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder
that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood.
Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting
make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no
fitting word but jungle.

At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote hills the
guests are mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own
rice and _miso_, and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In
the passage ways one finds rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood
ash in the centre of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to
the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow
is never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one
school during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent.
for girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My _kurumaya_ pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were
nearly three acres of beautiful flowers. The rice fields in the hills
were suffering from lack of water and a deputation of villagers had
gone ten miles into the mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at
what altitudes rice fields are contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft. In
looking down from a place where the cliff road hung out over the river
that flowed a hundred feet below I noticed a stone image lying on its
back in the water. It may have come there by accident, but the ducking
of such a figure in order to procure rain is not unknown.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously visited us if
there would be much competition for his seat when he retired from the
village assembly. He thought that there would be several candidates.
In the town from which we had set out on our journey through the
highlands a doctor had spent 500 yen in trying to get on the assembly.

The tea at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb,
"Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first
cup." On going to the village office I found that for a population of
2,000 there were, in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other
shrines and three Buddhist temples. Against fire there were four fire
pumps and 155 "fire defenders." A dozen of the young men of the
village were serving in the army, four were home on furlough, six were
invalided and forty were of the reserve. As many as thirty-seven had
medals. The doctors were two in number and the midwives three. There
was a sanitary committee of twenty-three members. The revenue of the
village was 5,740 yen. It had a fund of 740 yen "against time of
famine." The taxes paid were 2,330 yen for State tax, 2,460 yen for
prefectural tax and 4,350 yen for village tax. The village possessed
two co-operative societies, a young men's association, a Buddhist
young men's association, a Buddhist young women's association, a
society for the development of knowledge, a society of the graduates
of the primary school, two thrift organisations, a society for
"promoting knowledge and virtue," and an association the members of
which "aimed at becoming distinguished." There were in the village
ninety subscribers to the Red Cross and two dozen members of the
national Patriotic Women's Association.

In the county through which we were moving there was gold, silver and
copper mining.[124] Out of its population of 36,000 only 632 were
entitled to vote for an M.P.

We rested at a school where the motto was, "Even in this good reign I
pray because I wish to make our country more glorious." There were
portraits of four deceased local celebrities and of Peter the Great,
Franklin, Lincoln, Commander Perry and Bismarck. Illustrated wall
charts showed how to sit on a school seat, how to identify poisonous
plants and how to conform to the requirements of etiquette. The
following admonitions were also displayed--a copy of them is given to
each child, who is expected to read the twelve counsels every morning
before coming to school:

  1.--Do your own work and don't rely on others to do it.

  2.--Be ardent when you learn or play.

  3.--Endeavour to do away with your bad habits and cultivate good ones.

  4.--Never tell a lie and be careful when you speak.

  5.--Do what you think right in your heart and at the same time have
  good manners.

  6.--Overcome difficulties and never hold back from hard work.

  7.--Do not make appointments which you are uncertain to keep.

  8.--Do not carelessly lend or borrow.

  9.--Do not pass by another's difficulties and do not give another
  much trouble.

  10.--Be careful about things belonging to the public as well as
  about things belonging to yourself.

  11.--Keep the outside and inside of the school clean and also
  take care of waste paper.

  12.--Never play with a grumbling spirit.

There was stuck on the roofs of many houses a rod with a piece of
white paper attached, a charm against fire. One house so provided was
next door to the fire station. Frequently we passed a children's
_jizō_ or Buddha, comically decked in the hat and miscellaneous
garments of youngsters whose grateful mothers believed them to have
been cured by the power of the deity.

Speaking of clothes, it was the hottest July weather and the natural
garment was at most a loin cloth. The women wore a piece of red or
coloured cotton from their waist to their knees. The backs of the men
and women who were working in the open were protected by a flapping
ricestraw mat or by an armful of green stuff. The boys under ten or so
were naked and so were many little girls. But the influence of the
Westernising period ideas of what was "decent" in the presence of
foreigners survives. So, whenever a policeman was near, people of all
ages were to be seen huddling on their kimonos. I was sorry for a
merry group of boys and girls aged 12 or 13 who in that torrid
weather[125] were bathing at an ideal spot in the river and suddenly
caught sight of a policeman. It is deplorable that a consciousness of
nakedness should be cultivated when nakedness is natural, traditional
and hygienic. (Even in the schools the girls are taught to make their
kimonos meet at the neck--with a pin![126]--much higher than they used
to be worn.) It is only fair to bear in mind, however, that some
hurrying on of clothes by villagers is done out of respect to the
passing superior, before whom it is impolite to appear without
permission half dressed or wearing other than the usual clothing.

At a hot spring we found many patrons because, as I was told, "Ox-day
is very suitable for bathing." The old pre-Meiji days of the week were
twelve: Rat-, Ox-, Tiger-, Hare-, Dragon-, Snake-, Horse-, Sheep-,
Monkey-, Fowl-, Dog-and Boar-day. When the Western seven days of the
week were adopted they were rendered into Japanese as: Sun, Moon,
Fire, Water, Wood, Metal and Earth, followed by the word meaning star
or planet and day. For instance, Sunday is _Nichi_ (Sun) _yo_ (star)
_bi_ (day), and Monday, _Getsu_ (Moon) _yo_ (planet) _bi_ (day), or
_Nichi-yo-bi_ and _Getsu-yo-bi_. For brevity the _bi_ is often dropped
off.

The headman of a village we passed through told me that the occasion
of my coming was the first on which English had been heard in those
parts. Talking about the people of his village, he said that there had
been four divorces in the year. Once in four or five years a child was
born within a few months of marriage. In the whole county there had
been among 310 young men examined for the army only four cases of
"disgraceful disease." There was no immoral woman in the 75-miles-long
valley. Elsewhere in the county many young men were in debt, but in
the headman's village no youth was without a savings-bank book. And
the local men-folk "did not use women's savings as in some places."

One shrine we passed seemed to be dedicated to the moon. Another was
intended to propitiate the horsefly. Several villages had boxes
fastened on posts for the reception of broken glass. As we approached
one village I saw an inscription put up by the young men's
association, "Good Crops and Prosperity to the Village." When we came
to the next village the schoolmaster was responsible for an
inscription, "Peace to the World and Safety to the State." In other
places I found young men's society notice boards giving information
about the area of land in a village, how it was cropped, the kind of
crops, the area of forest, lists of famous places, etc.

[Illustration: MOVABLE STAGE AT A FESTIVAL FIFTY MILES FROM A RAILWAY.]

[Illustration: FARMHOUSE AT WHICH MR. UCHIMURA PREACHED.]

In the gorges we rode over many suspension bridges and crossed the
backbone of Japan in unforgettable scenes of romantic beauty. From
the craggy paths of our highlands, amid a wealth not only of gorgeous
flowers and greenery but of great velvety butterflies, we saw the
far-off snow-clad Japanese Alps.

[Illustration: TENANT FARMERS' HOUSES]

[Illustration: AUTHOR AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING."]

[Illustration: SOME PERFORMERS AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING."]

At one of the schools where we lunched I noticed that the large wall
maps were of Siam and Malaya, Borneo, Australia and China (two). The
portraits were of Florence Nightingale, Lincoln, Napoleon and Christ
as the Good Shepherd, the last named being "a present from a believer
friend of the schoolmaster."[127] This school closed at noon from July
10 to July 31, and had twenty days' vacation in August and another
twenty days in the rice-planting and busy sericultural season. The
sewing-room of the school was used in winter as a dormitory for boys
who lived at a distance. Accommodation for girls was provided in the
village. The children brought their rice with them. The products of
the school farm were also eaten by the boarding pupils. It was
estimated that the cost of maintaining the girls was 10 sen a day.
Three-fourths of this expense was borne by the village. The regularity
and strictness of the dormitory management were found to have an
excellent effect. At the winter school, an adjunct of the day school,
there was an attendance of a score of youths and sixty girls.

Speaking of a place where we stayed for the night, one who had a wide
knowledge of rural Japan said that he did not think that there was a
lonelier spot where farming was carried on. There was no market or
fair for 80 or 90 miles and the little groups of houses were 2 or 3
miles apart. In this district, it was explained, "the rich are not so
rich and the poor are not so poor."

We passed somewhere a fine shrine for the welfare of horses. At a
certain festival hundreds of horses are driven down there to gallop
round and round the sacred buildings. Thousands of people attend this
festival, but it was declared that no one was ever hurt by the horses.

The poetical names of country inns would make an interesting
collection. I remember that it was at "the inn of cold spring water"
that the waiting-maid had never seen cow's milk. She proved to be the
daughter of the host and wore a gold ring by way of marking the fact.
This girl told us that on the banks of the river there was only one
house in 70 miles. The village was having the usual holiday to
celebrate the end of the toilsome sericultural season.

On our way to the next village we met two far-travelled young women
selling the dried seaweed which, in many varieties, figures in the
Japanese dietary.[128] (There are shops which sell nothing but
prepared seaweeds.) A notice board there informed us that the road was
maintained at the cost of the local young men's society. As we were on
foot we felt grateful, for the road was well kept. We passed for miles
over planking hung on the cliff side or on roadway carried on
embankments. On the suspended pathways there was now and then a plank
loose or broken, and there was no rail between the pedestrian and the
torrent dashing below. Where there was embanked roadway it was almost
always uphill and downhill and it frequently swung sharply round the
corner of a cliff. As the river increased in volume we saw many rafts
of timber shooting the rapids. At one place twenty-six raftsmen had
been drowned. The remnants of two bridges showed the force of the
floods.

In this region the _kurumaya_ were hard put to it at times and once a
_kuruma_ broke down. Its owner cheerfully detached its broken axle and
went off with it at a trot ten miles or so to a blacksmith. Later he
traversed the ten miles once more to refit his _kuruma_, afterwards
coming on fifteen more miles to our inn. The endurance and cheeriness
of the _kurumaya_ were surprising. It was usually in face of their
protests that we got out to ease them while going uphill. Every
morning they wanted to arrange to go farther than we thought
reasonable. Each man had not only his passenger but his passenger's
heavy bag. One day we did thirty-six miles over rough roads. The
_kurumaya_ proposed to cover fifty. They showed spirit, good nature
and loyalty. The character of their conversation is worth mentioning.
At one point they were discussing the plays we had witnessed, at other
times the scenery, local legends, the best routes and the crops,
material condition and disposition of the villagers. Our _kurumaya_
compared very favourably indeed with men of an equal social class at
home. Their manners were perfect. They stayed at the same inns as we
did--once in the next room--and behaved admirably. Every evening the
men washed their white cotton shorts and jackets--their whole costume
except for a wide-brimmed sun hat and straw _waraji_. Tied to the axle
of each _kuruma_ were several pairs of _waraji_, for on the rough hill
roads this simple form of footgear soon wears out. Discarded _waraji_
are to be seen on every roadside in Japan.

The inscriptions on some of the wayside stones we passed had been
written by priests so ignorant that the wording was either ridiculous
or almost without meaning. But there was no difficulty in deciphering
an inscription on a stone which declared that it had been erected by a
company of Buddhists who claimed to have repeated the holy name of
Amida 2,000,000 times. (The idea is that salvation may be obtained by
the repetition of the phrase _Namu Amida Butsu_.) A small stone set up
on a rock in the middle of paddy fields intimated that at that spot
"people gathered to see the moon one night every month." A third stone
was dedicated to the monkey as the messenger of a certain god, just as
the fox is regarded as the messenger of Inari.

We saw during our journey large numbers of _kiri_ (Paulownia) used for
making _geta_ and bride's chests. Some farmers seem to plant _kiri_
trees at the birth of a daughter so as to have wood for her wedding
chest or money for her outfit[129]. _Kiri_ seems to be increasingly
grown. On the other hand in the same districts lacquer trees were now
seldom planted. The farmers complained that they were cheated by the
collectors of lacquer who come round to cut the trees. The age of
cutting was given me as the eighth or ninth year, but poor farmers
sometimes allowed a young tree to be cut. A tree may be cut once a
year for three or four years. After that it is useless even for fuel,
owing to the smell it gives off, and is often left standing. The old
scarred trunks, sometimes headless, suggested the tattooed faces and
bodies of Maori veterans. As lacquer is poisonous to the skin the wood
calls for careful handling. I saw one of the itinerant lacquer
collectors, his hands wrapped in cotton, operating on a tree.

During a particularly hot run we had the good fortune to come on a
soda-water spring from which we all drank freely. A factory erected to
tap the spring was in ruins. Evidently the cost of carriage was
prohibitive.

In these hills the rice was planted farther apart than is usual so
that the sun might warm the water. Here as elsewhere _daikon_ were
hung up to dry on walls and trees, and looked like giant tallow
candles. Below a bridge, which marked the village boundary, flags had
been flung down by way of keeping off epidemics. Evil spirits were
warded off by special dances.

The porch of a little tea-house where we rested was covered with
grapes. Soon after leaving it we reached our destination for the
night, a small town of houses of several storeys which clustered on a
hillside under the shadow of a Zen temple. Meat and eggs were
forbidden to the town, but as the residents were all Zen Buddhists the
restriction was no hardship. There was no cow in the place, but
condensed milk was allowed. A man at the inn told me that he knew of
ten Shinto shrines which forbade the use of chickens and eggs in their
localities. The view from the temple, perched high on its rock above
the wide riverway, was exceptionally fine. Parties of boys and girls
of thirteen paid visits to this temple "because thirteen is known as a
perilous age." The people of the vegetarian town, instead of feeding
on the fish in the river, fed them. I saw a shoal of fish being given
scraps at the water edge.

As we went on our way and spoke of the bad roads it was suggested that
in the old days roads were purposely left uphill and downhill in order
that the advance of enemies might be hindered. We came to a
dilapidated tea-house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touching
fondness for a cat and a dog. From her shack we had a view of a
volcano which had destroyed two villages a few years before. Our
hostess, who made much of us, said that the catastrophe had been
preceded by "horrible da-da-da-bang" sounds and lightnings, and that
it was accompanied by "thunderbolts and heavy thick smoke." The old
woman had beheld "soil boiling and cracking."

Along our route we had more evidences of "fire farming." The procedure
was to sow buckwheat the first year and rape and millet the second
year. In the cryptomeria forests there was a variety which, when cut,
sprouts from the ground and makes a new growth like an elm. One crop
we saw was ginseng, protected by low structures covered by matting.

At length we heard the distant sound of a locomotive whistle. We were
approaching the newly opened railway which was to take us the short
run to the sea. Soon we were in a rather unkempt village which had
hardly recovered from its surprise at finding that it had a railway
station. We paid our _kurumaya_ the sum contracted for and something
over for their faithful service and for their long return run, and
having exchanged bows and cordial greetings, we left for a time the
glorified perambulators which a foreign missionary is supposed to have
introduced half a century ago. (The Japanese claim the honour of
"inventing" the jinrikisha.)

FOOTNOTES:

[123] See Appendix XXXVII.

[124] See Appendix XXXVIII.

[125] In Tokyo one may sleep night after night in summer with no
covering but the thinnest loose cotton kimono and have an electric fan
going within the mosquito curtain, and still feel the heat.

[126] The kimono has no button, hook, tie, or fastening of any kind,
and is kept in place by the waist string and _obi_.

[127] It is an illustration of the difficulty of using a foreign
symbolism that it is unlikely that a single child in the school had
ever seen a shepherd or a sheep.

[128] In 1918 the value of seaweed was returned at 13,600,000 yen.

[129] In fifteen years a _kiri_ tree may be about 20 ft. high and 3
ft. in circumference and be worth 30 yen. _Kiri_ trees to the value of
3 million yen were felled in 1918.




CHAPTER XIV

SHRINES AND POETRY

(NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)

Sir, I am talking of the mass of the people.--JOHNSON


The railway made its way through snow stockades and through many
tunnels which pierced cryptomeria-clad hills. Eventually we descended
to the wonderful Kambara plains, a sea of emerald rice. Fourteen
million bushels of rice are produced on the flats of Niigata
prefecture, which grows more rice than any other. The rice, grown
under 800 different names, is officially graded into half a dozen
qualities. The problem of the high country we had come from was how to
keep its paddy fields from drying up; the problem of Niigata is
chiefly to keep the water in its fields at a sufficiently low level.
Almost every available square yard of the prefecture is paddy.

At Gosen there were depressing-looking weaving sheds, but the Black
Country created by the oil fields farther on was in even more striking
contrast with the beautiful region we had left. The petroleum yield
was 65 million gallons, and the smell of the oil went with us to the
capital city.

Niigata has a dark reputation for exporting farmers' daughters to
other parts of Japan, but I have also heard that the percentage of
attendance made by the children at the primary schools of the
prefecture is higher than anywhere else. Like Amsterdam, Niigata is a
city of bridges. There must be 200 of them. The big timber bridge
across the estuary is nearly half a mile long. One finds in Niigata a
Manchester-like spirit of business enterprise. Our hotel was
excellent.

Because they speak with all sorts of people and hear a great deal of
conversation the blind _amma_ are full of interesting gossip. A clever
_amma_ who ran his knuckles up and down my back said that farm land a
good way from Niigata was sold at from 200 yen to 300 yen and
sometimes at 400 yen per quarter acre.[130] Prefectural officials who
called on me explained that drainage operations on a large scale were
being completed. The water of which the low land was relieved would be
used to extend farming in the hills. An effort was also being made to
develop stock-keeping in the uplands. It was proposed "to supply every
farmer with a scheme for increasing his live stock." The optimistic
authorities were particularly attracted by the notion of keeping
sheep. The plan was to arrange for co-operation in hill pasturing and
in wool and meat production. Mutton was as yet unknown, however, in
Niigata. (The mutton eaten by foreigners in Japan usually comes from
Shanghai.)

I went into the country to a little place where the natural gas from
the soil was used by the farmers for lighting and cooking. I heard
talk in this village and in others of the influence of the local army
reservists' society. "Young men on returning from their army service
are always influential. They are much respected by the youths and are
talkative indeed in the village assembly."

As our host was the village headman he kindly brought the assembly
together to meet me. I asked the assembled fathers about two stones
erected in the village. Somebody had kindled a fire of rice screenings
near one of them and it had been scorched. On the other stone a kimono
had been hung to dry. The explanation was that the stones were
monuments not shrines, and that the people who had set them up had
left the district. The stones were no doubt respected while the donors
lived. It was not uncommon for a pilgrim to a shrine to erect a
memorial on his return home.

In this village fifty Shinto shrines of the fifth class had been
closed under the influence of the Home Office. They were shrines which
had no offering from the village to support them. They had only a few
worshippers. All the remaining shrines were of the fifth class but
one, and it was of the fourth class. In the county there was a
second-class shrine and in the whole prefecture there were two or
three first-class shrines. The villagers had agreed among themselves
which of their own shrines should be made an end of. A shrine which
was dispensed with was burnt. The stone steps approaching it were also
removed. Burning was not sacrilege but purification. On the closing of
a shrine there might be complaints on the part of some old man or
woman, but the majority of people approved. One Shinto shrine guardian
lived at the fourth-class shrine and conducted a ceremony at the
sixteen fifth-class shrines. Of the twenty Buddhist temples in the
village (300 families cultivating an average of a _chō_ apiece),
twelve were Hokke, five Shingon, two Shinshu and one Zen. All the
priests were married.[131]

I have used the phrase "Buddhist temple" loosely and may do so again,
for it conveys an idea which "Buddhist church" does not. A temple
(_dō_) is properly an edifice in which a Buddha is enshrined. This
building is not for services or burial ceremonies or anniversary
offerings for departed souls. It may or may not have a guardian
(_domori_). He is never a priest with a shaven head. A Buddhist church
(_tera_) is a place where adherents go as anniversaries come round or
for sermons. It possesses a priest. There is a considerable difference
in the style of Buddhist edifices according to their denomination--Zen
buildings are particularly plain--but all are more elaborate than
Shinto shrines.

A large Shinto shrine is called _yashiro_ (house of god); a small one
_hokora_. A _hokora_ is transportable. Originally it was and in some
places it still is a perishable wooden shrine thatched with reed or
grass straw which is renewed at the spring and autumn festivals. It
may be less than two feet high and may be made of stone or wood. But
it cannot be regarded as a building. Inside there are _gohei_ (upright
sticks with paper streamers). In a rich man's house a _hokora_ may be
seven or eight feet high or bigger than the smallest _yashiro_, and
may be embellished with colour and metal.

Returning to Buddhism, if a priest has a son he may be succeeded by
him. But many Buddhist priests marry late and have no children. Or
their children do not want to be priests. So the priest adopts a
successor. Sometimes he maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor.
During the day this assistant goes to school. In the evenings and
during holidays he is taught to become a priest. When the
primary-school education is finished the lad may be sent by his
patron, if he is well enough off, to a school of his sect at Kyoto or
Tokyo.

My travelling companion spoke of the infiltration of new ideas in town
and country. "A mixing is taking place in the heart and head of
everybody who is not a bigot. But I don't know that some kinds of
Christianity are to do much for us. I heard the other day of a
Japanese Presbyterian who was preaching with zest about hell fire.
Generally speaking, our old men are looking to the past and our young
men are aspiring, but not all. Some are content if they can live
uncriticised by their neighbours. When they become old they may begin
to think of a future life and visit temples. But as young men their
thoughts are fully occupied by things of this world."

In the office of the headman whom I mentioned a page or so back, there
was behind his chair a _kakemono_ which read, "Reflecting and
Examining One's Inner Spirit." We passed a night in the old house of
this headman, who was a poet and a country gentleman of a delightful
type. Being an eldest son he had married young, and his relations with
his eldest boy, a frank and clever lad, were pleasant to see. The
garden, instead of being shut in by a wall with a tiled coping or by a
palisade of bamboo stems in the ordinary way, was open towards the
rice fields, a scene of restful beauty. As our _kuruma_ drew near the
house, the steward appeared, a broom in his hand. Running for a short
distance before us until we entered the courtyard, he symbolically
swept the ground according to old custom. After a delightful hot bath
and an elaborate supper, which my fellow traveller afterwards assured
me had meant a week's work for the women of the household--snapping
turtle and choice bamboo shoots were among the honourable dishes--we
gathered at the open side of the room overlooking the garden.
Fireflies glowed in the paddies and in the garden two stone lanterns
had been lighted. One of them, which had a crescent-shaped opening cut
in it, gleamed like the moon; the other, which had a small serrated
opening, represented a star.

I paid a visit to the local agricultural co-operative store which did
business under the motto, "Faith is the Mother of all Virtue." More
than half the money taken at the store was for artificial manures.
Next came purchases of imported rice, for, like the Danish peasants
who export their butter and eat margarine, the local peasants sold
their own rice and bought the Saigon variety. The society sold in a
year a considerable quantity of _saké_. Stretched over the doorway of
the building in which the goods of the society were stored were the
rope and paper streamers which are seen before Shinto shrines and
consecrated places. The society had a large flag post for weather
signals, a white flag for a fine day, a red one for cloudy weather and
a blue one for rain.

I brought away from this village a calendar of agricultural operations
with poems or mottoes for each month, in the collection of which I
suspect the poet had a hand:

_January_: Future of the day determined in the morning.

_February_: The voice of one reading a farming book coming
  from the snow-covered window.

_March_: Grafting these young trees, thinking of the days
  of my grandchildren.

_April_: Digging the soil of the paddy field, sincerity
  concentrated on the edge of the mattock.

_May_: Returning home with the dim moonlight glinting
  on the edges of our mattocks.

_June_: Boundless wealth stored up by gracious heaven:
  dig it out with your mattock, take it away with your
  sickle.

_July_: Weeding the paddy field[132] in a happiness and
  contentment which townspeople do not know.

_August_: Standing peasant worthier than resting rich man.

_September_: Ears of rice bend their heads as they ripen.
  (An allusion to wisdom and meekness.)

_October_: White steam coming out of a manure house on
 an autumn morning.

_November_: Moon clear and bright above neatly divided
  paddy fields.

_December_: All the members of the family smiling and
  celebrating the year's end, piling up many bales of rice.

In this district I first noticed cotton. It is sown in June and is
picked from time to time between early September and early November.
Cotton has been grown for centuries in Japan, but nowadays it is
produced for household weaving only, the needs of the factories being
met by foreign imports. The plant has a beautiful yellow flower with a
dark brown eye.

In one village I asked how many people smoked. The answer was 60 per
cent. of the men and 10 per cent. of the women. In the same village,
which did not seem particularly well off, I was told that 200 daily
papers might be taken among 1,300 families. Eighty per cent. of the
local papers were dailies and cost 35 sen a month. Tokyo papers cost
45 or 50 sen a month.

I visited a school, half of which was in a building adjoining a temple
and half in the temple itself. In the same county there were two other
schools housed in temples. The small Shinto shrine in this temple held
the Imperial Rescript on education. On one side of it was an ugly
American clock and on the other a thermometer. In the temple (Zen) two
Tokyo University students were staying in ideal conditions for
vacation study.

I saw at one place a very tired, unslept-looking peasant with a small
closed tub carried over his shoulder by means of a pole. On the tub
was tied a white streamer, such as is supplied at a Shinto shrine, and
a branch of _sakaki_ (_Eurya ochnacea_, the sacred tree). The
traveller was the delegate of his village. He had been to a mountain
shrine in the next prefecture and the tub held the water he had got
there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making the journey home
without stopping anywhere his efforts will result in rain coming down
at his village. If he should stop at any place to rest or sleep, and
there should be the slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain
will be procured not for his own village but for the community in
which he has tarried. So our voyager had walked not only for a whole
day but through the night. I heard of a rain delegate who had stamina
enough to keep walking for three or four days without sleeping.

Another way of obtaining rain has principally to do with tugging at a
rock with a straw rope. Then there is the plan already referred to of
tying straw ropes to a stone image and flinging it into the river,
saying, "If you don't give us rain you will stay there; if you do give
us rain you shall come out." There is also the method of paying
someone liberally to throw the split open head of an ox into the deep
pool of a waterfall. "Then the water god being much angry," said my
informant, "he send his dragon to that village, so storm and rain come
necessarily." Yet another plan is for the villagers simply to ascend
to a particular mountain top crying, "Give us rain! Give us rain!"
While dealing with these magic arts I may reproduce the following
rendering of a printed "fortune" which I received from a rural shrine:
"Wish to agree but now somewhat difficult. Wait patiently for a while.
Do nothing wrong. Wait for the spring to come. Everything will be
completed and will become better. Endeavouring to accomplish it soon
will be fruitless."

It was a student of agricultural conditions, in Toyama who gossiped to
me of the large expenditure by farmers of that prefecture on the
marriage of their daughters. "It is not so costly as the boys'
education and it procures a good reception for the girl from
father-and mother-in-law. The pinch comes when there is a second and
third daughter, for the average balance in hand of a peasant
proprietor in this prefecture at the end of the year is only 48 yen.
Borrowing is necessary and I heard of one bankruptcy. The Governor
tried to stop the custom but it is too old. They say Toyama people
spend more proportionately than the people in other prefectures. In
general they do not keep a horse or ox. I heard of young farmers
stealing each other's crops. Parents are very severe upon a daughter
who becomes ill-famed, for when they seek a husband for her they must
spend more. So mostly daughters keep their purity before marriage. But
I know parts of Japan where a large number of the girls have ceased to
be virtuous. Concerning the priests, those of Toyama are the worst. A
peasant proprietor with seven of a family and a balance at the end of
the year of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the temple. Some priests
threaten the farmer, saying that if he does not pay as much as is
imposed on him by the collector an inferior Buddha will go past his
door. Priests want to keep farmers foolish as long as they can."

FOOTNOTES:

[130] For prices of land, see Appendix LIV.

[131] There are about 116,000 Shinto shrines of all grades and 14,000
priests, and 71,000 temples and 51,000 priests. There are about a
dozen Shinto sects and about thirty Buddhist sects and sub-sects.

[132] It is done by wading in leech-infested water under a burning sun
and pulling out the weeds by hand and pushing them down into the
sludge.




CHAPTER XV

THE NUN'S CELL

(NAGANO)

It is one more incitement to a man to do well.--BOSWELL


Eighty per cent. of Nagano is slope. Hence its dependence on
sericulture. The low stone-strewn roofs of the houses, the railway
snow shelters and the zig-zag track which the train takes, hint at the
climatic conditions in winter time. Despite the snow--ski-ing has been
practised for some years--the summer climate of Nagano has been
compared with that of Champagne and there is one vineyard of 60,000
vines.

I was invited to join a circle of administrators who were discussing
rural morality and religion. One man said that there was not 20 per
cent. of the villages in which the priests were "active for social
development." Another speaker of experience declared that "the four
pillars of an agricultural village" were "the _sonchō_ (headman), the
schoolmaster, the policeman and the most influential villager." He
went on: "In Europe religion does many things for the support and
development of morality, but we look to education, for it aims not at
only developing intelligence and giving knowledge, but at teaching
virtue and honesty. But there is something beyond that. Thousands of
our soldiers died willingly in the Russian war. There must have been
something at the bottom of their hearts. That something is a certain
sentiment which penetrates deeply the characters of our countrymen.
Our morality and customs have it in their foundations. This spirit is
_Yamato damashii_ (Japanese spirit). It appeared among our warriors as
_bushido_ (the way of the soldier), but it is not the monopoly of
soldiers. Every Japanese has some of this spirit. It is the moral
backbone of Japan."

"I should like to say," another speaker declared, "that I read many
European and American books, but I remain Japanese. Mr. Uchimura sees
the darkest side of Buddhism and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn expected too much
from it. 'So mysterious,' Hearn said, but it is not so mysterious to
us. We must be grateful to him for seeing something of the essence of
our life. Sometimes, however, we may be ashamed of his beautifying
sentences. I am a modern man, but I am not ashamed when my wife is
with child to pray that it may be healthy and wise. It is possible for
us Japanese to worship some god somewhere without knowing why. The
poet says, 'I do not know the reason of it, but tears fall down from
my eyes in reverence and gratitude.' I suppose this is natural
theology. The proverb says, 'Even the head of a sardine is something
if believed in.' I attach more importance to a man's attitude to
something higher than himself than to the thing which is revered by
him. Whether a man goes to Nara and Kyoto or to a Roman Catholic or a
Methodist church he can come home very purified in heart."

"Some foreigners have thought well to call us 'half civilised,'" the
speaker went on. "Can it be that uncivilised is something distasteful
to or not understood by Europeans and Americans? We have the ambition
to erect some system of Eastern civilisation. It is possible that we
may have it in our minds to call some things in Europe 'half
civilised.' Surely the barbarians are usually the people other than
ourselves. When the townsman goes to the country he says the people
are savages. But the countryman finds his fellow-savages quite decent
people."

"Some time ago," broke in a professor, "I read a novel by René Bazin
and I could not but think how much alike were our peasants and the
peasants of the West."

The previous speaker resumed: "The other day a foreigner laughed in my
presence at our old art of incense burning and actually said that we
were deficient in the sense of smell. I told him that fifty years ago
our samurai class, in excusing their anti-foreign manifestations,
said they could not endure the smell of foreigners, and that to this
day our peasants may be heard to say of Western people, 'They smell;
they smell of butter and fat.'"

In the city of Nagano early in the morning I went to a large Buddhist
temple where the authorities had kindly given me special facilities to
see the treasures--alas! all in a wooden structure. A strange thing
was the preservation untouched of the room in which the Emperor Meiji
rested thirty years ago. May oblivion be one day granted to that awful
chenille table cover and those appalling chairs which outrage the
beautiful woodwork and the golden _tatami_ of a great building! At the
entrance of the temple priests in a kind of open office were reading
the newspaper, playing _gō_ or smoking. More pleasing was the sight of
matting spread right round the temple below its eaves, in order that
weary pilgrims might sleep there, and the spectacle of travel-stained
women tranquilly sleeping or suckling their infants before the shrine
itself. There is a pitch dark underground passage below the floor
round the foundations of the great Buddha, and if the circuit be made
and the lock communicating with the entrance door to the sacred figure
be fortunately touched on the way, paradise, peasants believe, is
assured. I made the circuit a few moments after an old woman and found
the lock, and on returning to the temple with the rustic dame knelt
with her before the shrine as the curtain which veils the big Buddha
was withdrawn. The face of one wooden figure in the temple had been
worn, like that of many another in Japan, with the stroking that it
had received from the ailing faithful.

[Illustration: IN A BUDDHIST NUNNERY.]

[Illustration: GRASS-CUTTING TOOLS COMPARED WITH A WESTERN SCYTHE.]

I had the privilege of visiting the adjoining nunnery. As I was
specially favoured by a general admission, I asked to be permitted to
see some nuns' cells. They showed a Buddhist advance on Western ideas.
The word "cells" was a misnomer for beautiful little flower-adorned
rooms of a cheerful Japanese house. The fragile, wistful nun who was
so kind as to speak with me had a consecrated expression. Her dress
was white, and over it was brocade in a perfect combination of green
and cream. Her head was shaven; her hands, which continually told
her beads, were hidden. Religious services are conducted and sermons
are delivered here and in other nunneries by the nuns themselves. I
could not but be sorry for some girl children who had become nuns on
their relatives' or guardians' decision. Adult newcomers are given a
month in which, if they wish, they may repent them of their vows; but
what of the children? The head of this nunnery was a member of the
Imperial family. The institution, like the temple from which I had
just come, stores thousands of wooden tablets to the memory of the
dead. There are many little receptacles in which the hair, the teeth
or the photographs of believers are preserved. I found that both at
the nunnery and the temple a practical interest was being shown in the
reformation of ex-criminals.

[Illustration: THE CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS' SAVINGS.]

[Illustration: NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A "CELL" BY THE AUTHOR.]

[Illustration: STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.]

While in the highlands of Nagano I spent a night at Karuizawa, a hill
resort at which tired missionaries and their families, not only from
all parts of Japan but from China, gather in the summer months beyond
the reach of the mosquito.[133] I stayed in the summer cottage of my
travelling companion's brother-in-law. The family consisted of a
reserved, cultivated man with a pretty wife of what I have heard a
foreigner call "the maternal, domestic type." In their owlishness
newcomers to the country are inclined to commiserate all Japanese
housewives as the "slaves of their husbands." They would have been
sadly wrong in such thoughts about this happy wife and mother. The
eldest boy, a wholesome-looking lad, had just passed through the
middle school on his way to the university, and spoke to me in simple
English with that air of responsibility which the eldest son so soon
acquires in Japan. His brothers and sisters enjoyed a happy relation
with him and with each other. The whole family was merry, unselfish
and, in the best sense of the word, educated. As we knelt on our
_zabuton_ we refreshed ourselves with tea and the fine view of the
active volcano, Asama, and chatted on schools, holidays, books, the
country and religion. After a while, a little to my surprise, the
mother in her sweet voice gravely said that if I would not mind at all
she would like very much to ask me two questions. The first was, "Are
the people who go to the Christian church here all Christians?" and
the second, "Are Christians as affectionate as Japanese?"

Karuizawa, which is full of ill-nourished, scabby-headed,
"bubbly-nosed"[134] Japanese children, is an impoverished place on one
of the ancient highways. We took ourselves along the road until we
reached at a slightly higher altitude the decayed village of Oiwaké.
When the railway came near it finished the work of desolation which
the cessation of the daimyos' progresses to Yedo (now Tokyo) had begun
half a century ago. In the days of the Shogun three-quarters of the
300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds of the houses have become
uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down and rebuilt elsewhere.
The Shinto shrines are neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple
is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tombstones
in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half hidden in moss
and undergrowth.

The farm rents now charged in Oiwaké had not been changed for thirty,
forty or fifty years. In the old inn there was a Shinto shrine, about
12 ft. long by nearly 2 ft. deep, with latticed sliding doors. It
contained a dusty collection of charms and memorials dating back for
generations. Outside in the garden at the spring I found an irregular
row of half a dozen rather dejected-looking little stone _hokora_
about a foot high. Some had faded _gohei_ thrust into them, but from
the others the clipped paper strips had blown away. At the foot of the
garden I discovered a somewhat elaborate wooden shrine in a
dilapidated state. "Few country people," someone said to me, "know who
is enshrined at such a place." It is generally thought that these
shrines are dedicated to the fox. But the foxes are merely the
messengers of the shrine, as is shown by the figures of crouching or
squatting foxes at either side. A well-known professor lately arrived
at the conviction that the god worshipped at such shrines is the god
of agriculture. He went so far as to recommend the faculty of
agriculture at Tokyo university to have a shrine erected within its
walls to this divinity, but the suggestion was not adopted.

In the course of another chat with the old host of the inn he referred
to the time, close on half a century ago, when 3,000 hungry peasants
marched through the district demanding rice. They did no harm. "They
were satisfied when they were given food; the peasants at that time
were heavily oppressed." To-day the people round about look as if they
were oppressed by the ghosts of old-time tyrants. But there is
"something that doth linger" of self-respect. When we left on our way
to Tokyo I gave the man who brought our bags a mile in a barrow to the
station 40 sen. He returned 10 sen, saying that 30 sen was enough.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] Although, as has been seen, the rural problems under
investigation in this book are inextricably bound up with religion,
limits of space make it necessary to reserve for another volume the
consideration of the large and complex question of missionary work.

[134] As to the "bubbly-nosed callant," to quote the description given
of young Smollett, nasal unpleasantness seems to be popularly regarded
as a sign of health. The constant sight of it is one of the minor
discomforts of travel.




IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE[135]

CHAPTER XVI

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

(SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

A foreigner who comes among us without prejudice may speak his
mind freely.--GOLDSMITH


I went back to Nagano to visit the silk industrial regions. My route
lay through the prefectures of Saitama and Gumma. I left Tokyo on the
last day of June. Many farmers were threshing their barley. On the
dry-land patches, where the grain crop had been harvested, soya bean,
sown between the rows of grain long before harvest, was becoming
bushier now that it was no longer overshadowed. Maize in most places
was about a foot high, but where it had been sown early was already
twice that height. The sweet potato had been planted out from its
nursery bed for weeks. Here and there were small crops of tea which
had been severely picked for its second crop. I noticed melons,
cucumbers and squashes, and patches of the serviceable burdock. Many
paddy farmers had water areas devoted to lotus, but the big floating
leaves were not yet illumined by the mysterious beauty of the
honey-scented flowers.

In order to imagine the scene on the rice flats, the reader must not
think of the glistering paddy fields[136] as stretching in an unbroken
monotonous series over the plain. Occasionally a rocky patch,
outcropping from the paddy tract, made a little island of wood.
Sometimes it was a sacred grove in which one caught a glimpse of a
Shinto shrine or the head stones of the dead. Sometimes there was a
little clump of cropped tree greenery which kept a farmhouse cool in
summer and, at another time of the year, sheltered from the wind. Few
householders were too poor or too busy to be without their little
patch of flowers.

Before the train climbed out of the Kwanto plain temperature of not
far below 100° F. the planting of rice seemed to be almost an enviable
occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat,
sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious
feeling of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot day-one
recalled the mud baths of the West-when the alternative was walking on
a dusty road, digging on the sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house
or the train.

With the rise in the level a few mulberries began to appear and
gradually they occupied a large part of the holdings. Sometimes the
mulberries were cultivated as shoots from a stump a little above
ground level, and sometimes as a kind of small standard. As mulberry
culture increased, the silk factories' whitewashed cocoon stores and
the tall red and black iron chimneys of the factories themselves
became more numerous. It is a pity that the silk factory is not always
so innocent-looking inside as the pure white exterior of its stores
might suggest. It is certain that the overworked girl operatives,
sitting at their steaming basins, drawing the silk from the soaked
cocoons, were glad to find the weather conditions such that they could
have the sides of their reeling sheds removed.

At many of the railway stations there were stacks of large, round,
flat bean cakes, for the farmer feeds his "cake" to his fields direct,
not through the medium of cattle. Although a paddy receives less
agreeable nutritive materials than bean cake, the extensive use of
this cake must be comforting to a little school of rural reformers in
the West. These ardent vegetarians have refused to listen to the
allegation that vegetarianism was impossible because without
meat-eating there would be no cattle and therefore no nitrogen for the
fields.

It was not only the bean cakes at the stations which caught my
attention but the extensive use of lime. Square miles of paddy field
were white with powdered lime, scattered before the planting of the
rice, an operation which in the higher altitudes would not be finished
until well on in July.

A contented and prosperous countryside was no doubt the impression
reflected to many passengers in the train that sunny day. But I knew
how closely pressed the farmers had been by the rise in prices of many
things that they had got into the way of needing. I had learnt, too,
the part that superstition[137] as well as simple faith played in the
lives of the country folk. When, however, I pondered the way in which
the rural districts had been increasingly invaded by factories run
under the commercial sanctions of our eighteen-forties, I asked myself
whether there might not be superstitions of the economic world as well
as of religious and social life.

I heard a Japanese speak of being well treated at inns in the old days
for 20 sen a night. It should be remembered, however, that there is a
system not only of tipping inn servants but of tipping the inn. The
gift to the inn is called _chadai_ and guests are expected to offer a
sum which has some relation to their position and means and the food
and treatment they expect. I have stayed at inns where I have paid as
much _chadai_ as bill. To pay 50 per cent. of the bill as _chadai_ is
common. The idea behind _chadai_ is that the inn-keeper charges only
his out-of-pocket expenses and that therefore the guest naturally
desires to requite him. In acknowledgment of _chadai_ the inn-keeper
brings a gift to the guest at his departure--fans, pottery, towels,
picture postcards, fruit or slabs of stiff acidulated fruit jelly (in
one inn of grapes and in another of plums) laid between strips of
maize leaf. The right time to give _chadai_ is on entering the hotel,
after the "welcome tea." In handing money to any person in Japan,
except a porter or a _kurumaya_, the cash or notes are wrapped in
paper.

On the journey from the city of Nagano to Matsumoto, wonderful views
were unfolded of terraced rice fields, and, above these, of terraced
fields of mulberry. How many hundred feet high the terraces rose as
the train climbed the hills I do not know, but I have had no more
vivid impression of the triumphs of agricultural hydraulic
engineering. We were seven minutes in passing through one tunnel at a
high elevation.

I spoke in the train with a man who had a dozen _chō_ under grapes, 20
per cent. being European varieties and 80 per cent. American. He said
that some of the people in his district were "very poor." Some farmers
had made money in sericulture too quickly for it to do them good. He
volunteered the opinion, in contrast with the statement made to me
during our journey to Niigata, that the people of the plains were
morally superior to the people of the mountains. The reason he gave
was that "there are many recreations in the plains whereas in the
mountains there is only one." In most of the mountain villages he knew
three-quarters of the young men had relations with women, mostly with
the girls of the village or the adjoining village. He would not make
the same charge against more than ten per cent. of the young men of
the plains, and "it is after all with teahouse girls." He thought that
there were "too many temples and too many sects, so the priests are
starved."

An itinerant agricultural instructor in sericulture who joined in our
conversation was not much concerned by the plight of the priests. "The
causes of goodness in our people," he said, "are family tradition and
home training. Candidly, we believe our morals are not so bad on the
whole. We are now putting most stress on economic development. How to
maintain their families is the question that troubles people most.
With that question unsolved it is preaching to a horse to preach
morality. We can always find high ideals and good leaders when
economic conditions improve. The development of morality is our final
aim, but it is encouraged for six years at the primary school. The
child learns that if it does bad things it will be laughed at and
despised by the neighbours and scolded by its parents. We are busy
with the betterment of economic conditions and questions about
morality and religion puzzle us."

When I reached Matsumoto I met a rural dignitary who deplored the
increasing tendency of city men to invest in rural property.
"Sometimes when a peasant sells his land he sets up as a
money-lender." I was told that nearly every village had a sericultural
co-operative association, which bought manures, mulberry trees and
silk-worm eggs, dried cocoons and hatched eggs for its members and
spent money on the destruction of rats. Of recent years the county
agricultural association had given 5 yen per _tan_ to farmers who
planted improved sorts of mulberry. About half the farmers in the
county had manure houses. Some 800 farmers in the county kept a
labourer.

I went to see a _gunchō_ and read on his wall: "Do not get angry.
Work! Do not be in a hurry, yet do not be lazy." "These being my
faults," he explained, "I specially wrote them out." There was also on
his wall a _kakemono_ reading: "At twenty I found that even a plain
householder may influence the future of his province; at thirty that
he may influence the future of his nation; at forty that he may
influence the future of the whole world." Below this stirring
sentiment was a portrait of the writer, a samurai scholar, from a
photograph taken with a camera which he had made himself. He lived in
the last period of the Shogunate and studied Dutch books. He was
killed by an assassin at the instance, it was believed, of the Shogun.

One of the noteworthy things of Matsumoto was the agricultural
association's market. Another piece of organisation in that part of
the world was fourteen institutes where girls were instructed in the
work of silk factory hands. The teachers' salaries were paid by the
factories. So were also the expenses of the silk experts of the local
authorities. On the day I left the city the daily paper contained an
announcement of lectures on hygiene to women on three successive days,
"the chief of police to be present." This paper was demanding the
exemption of students from the bicycle tax, the rate of which varies
in different prefectures.

A young man was brought to see me who was specialising in musk melons.
He said that the Japanese are gradually getting out of their
partiality for unripe fruit.

On our way to the Suwas we saw many wretched dwellings. The feature
of the landscape was the silk factories' tall iron chimneys,
ordinarily black though sometimes red, white or blue.

It is not commonly understood that Japanese lads by the time they
"graduate" from the middle school into the higher school have had some
elementary military training. A higher-school youth knows how to
handle a rifle and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the
problem of how middle-class boys should procure economical lodging
while attending their classes had been solved by self-help. An
ex-scholar of twenty had managed to borrow 4,000 yen and had proceeded
to build on a hillside a dormitory accommodating thirty-six boarders.
Lads did the work of levelling the ground and digging the well. The
frugal lines on which the lodging-house was conducted by the lads
themselves may be judged from the fact that 5 yen a month covered
everything. Breakfast consisted of rice, _miso_ soup and pickles.
Cooking and the emptying of the _benjo_[138] were done by the lads in
turn. A kitchen garden was run by common effort. Among the many
notices on the walls was one giving the names of the residents who
showed up at 5 o'clock in the morning for a cold bath and fencing. I
also saw the following instruction written by the founder of the
house, which is read aloud every morning by each resident in turn:

Be independent and pure and strive to make your characters more
beautiful. Expand your thought. Help each other to accomplish your
ambitions. Be active and steady and do not lose your self-control. Be
faithful to friends and righteous and polite. Be silent and keep
order. Do not be luxurious (_sic_). Keep everything clean. Pay
attention to sanitation. Do not neglect physical exercises. Be
diligent and develop your intelligence.

The borrower of the 4,000 yen with which the institution was built
managed to pay it back within seven years with interest, out of the
subscriptions of residents and ex-residents.

An agricultural authority whom I met spoke of "farming families
living from hand to mouth and their land slipping into the possession
of landlords"; also of a fifth of the peasants in the prefecture being
tenants. A young novelist who had been wandering about the Suwa
district had been impressed by the grim realities of life in poor
farmers' homes and cited facts on which he based a low view of rural
morality.

Suwa Lake lies more than 3,500 ft. above sea level and in winter is
covered with skaters. The country round about is remarkable
agriculturally for the fact that many farmers are able to lead into
their paddies not only warm water from the hot springs but water from
ammonia springs, so economising considerably in their expenditure on
manure. A simple windmill for lifting the fertilising water is sold
for only 4 yen.

We went to Kōfu, the capital of Yamanashi prefecture, through many
mountain tunnels and ravines. Entrancing is the just word for this
region in the vicinity of the Alps. But joy in the beauty through
which we passed is tinged for the student of rural life by thoughts of
the highlander's difficulties in getting a living in spots where quiet
streams may become in a few hours ungovernable torrents. I remember
glimpses of grapes and persimmons, of parties of middle-school boys
tramping out their holiday--every inn reduces its terms for them--and
of half a dozen peasant girls bathing in a shaded stream. But there
were less pleasing scenes: hills deforested and paddies wrecked by a
waste of stones and gravel flung over them in time of flood. Here and
there the indomitable farmers, counting on the good behaviour of the
river for a season or two, were endeavouring, with enormous labour, to
resume possession of what had been their own. The spectacle
illustrated at once their spirit and their industry and their need of
land. At night we slept at Kōfu at "the inn of greeting peaks." In the
morning a Governor with imagination told me of the prefecture's
gallant enterprises in afforestation and river embanking at
expenditures which were almost crippling.

FOOTNOTES:

[135] The three leading silk prefectures are in order: Nagano,
Fukushima and Gumma.

[136] At this time of the year, when the rice plants are small, the
water in the paddies is still conspicuous.

[137] An old Japan hand once counselled me that "the thing to find out
in sociological enquiries is not people's religions but their
superstitions."

[138] See Appendix IV.




CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM

(NAGANO)

The mulberry leaf knoweth not that it shall be silk.--_Arab proverb_


One acre in every dozen in Japan produces mulberry leaves for feeding
the silk-worms which two million farming families--more than a third
of the farming families of the country--painstakingly rear.

But the mulberry is not the only mark of a sericultural district. Its
mark may be seen in the tall chimneys of the factories and in the
structure of the farmers' houses. Breeders of silk-worms are often
well enough off to have tiled instead of thatched roofs; they have
frequently two storeys to their dwellings; and they have almost always
a roof ventilator so that the vitiated air from the _hibachi_-heated
silk-worm chambers may be carried off. Yet another sign of sericulture
being a part of the agricultural activities of a district is its
prosperity. Silk-worms produce the most valuable of all Japanese
exports. Japan sends abroad more raw silk than any other country.[139]

It is in the middle of the country that sericulture chiefly nourishes.
The smallest output of raw silk is from the most northerly prefecture
and from the prefecture in the extreme south-west of the mainland. But
human aptitude plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is
a wonderful piece of mechanism--look at the hands of the next Japanese
you meet--and in sericulture its delicate touch is used to the utmost
advantage.

The gains of sericulture are not made without corresponding
sacrifices. Silk-worm raising is infinitely laborious. The constant
picking of leaves, the bringing of them home and the chopping and
supplying of these leaves to the smallest of all live stock and the
maintenance of a proper temperature in the rearing-chamber day and
night mean unending work. The silk-worms may not be fed less than four
or five times in the day; in their early life they are fed seven or
eight times. This is the feeding system for spring caterpillars.
Summer and autumn breeds must have two or three more meals. The men
and women who attend to them, particularly the women, are worn out by
the end of the season. "The women have only three hours' rest in the
twenty-four hours," I remember someone saying. "They never loose their
_obi_."

When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the
silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry
leaves are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less
fine as the silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves
adhering to the shoots are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to
supply from the very beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots.
The caterpillars live in bamboo trays or "beds" on racks. In the house
of one farmer I found caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch
long occupying fifteen trays. When the silk-worms grew larger they
would occupy two hundred trays.

The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought adhering to cards
about a foot square. There are usually marked on these cards
twenty-eight circles about 2 ins. in diameter. Each circle is covered
with eggs. The eggs come to be arranged in these convenient circles
because, as will be explained later on, the moths have been induced to
lay within bottomless round tins placed on the circles on the cards.
The eggs are sticky when laid and therefore adhere. In a year
35,000,000 cards, containing about a billion eggs, are produced on
some 10,000 egg-raising farms.

The eggs--they are called "seed"--are hatched in the spring (end of
April--as soon as the first leaves of the mulberry are available--to
the middle of May), summer (June and July) and autumn (August and
October). It takes from three to seven days--according to
temperature--for the "seed" to hatch, and from twenty to thirty-two
days--according to temperature--for the silk-worms to reach maturity.
Half the hatching is done in spring. In one farmer's house I visited
in the spring season I found that he had hatched fifty cards of
"seed." From the birth of the caterpillars to the formation of cocoons
the casualties must be reckoned at ten per cent. daily. Not more than
eighty-five per cent. of the cocoons which are produced are of good
quality. The remainder are misshapen or contain dead chrysalises. As
there are more than a thousand breeds of silk-worm, all cocoons are
not of the same shape and colour. Some are oval; some are shaped like
a monkey nut. Most are white but some are yellow and others yellow
tinted.

In the whole world of stock raising there is nothing more remarkable
than the birth of silk-worm moths. The cocoons on the racks in the
farmer's loft are covered by sheets of newspaper in which a number of
round holes about three-quarters of an inch in diameter have been cut.
When the moths emerge from their cocoons they seek these openings
towards the light and creep through to the upper side of the
newspaper. For newly born things they come up through these openings
with astonishing ardour. In body and wings the moths are flour white.
White garments are suitable for the babe, the bride and the dead, and
the moth perfected in the cocoon is arrayed not only for its birth but
for bridal and death, which come upon it in swift succession. The male
as well as the female is in white and is distinguishable by being
somewhat smaller in size. On the newspaper the few males who have not
found partners are executing wild dances, their wings whirring the
while at a mad pace. When from time to time they cease dancing they
haunt the holes in the paper through which the newly born moths
emerge. When a female appears a male instantly rushes towards her, or
rather the two creatures rush towards one another, and they are at
once locked in a fast embrace. Immediately their wings cease to
flutter, the only commotion on the newspaper being made by the unmated
males. In a hatching-room these males on the stacks of trays are so
numerous that the place is filled with the sound of the whirring of
their wings. The down flies from their wings to such an extent that
one continually sneezes. The spectacle of the stacks of trays covered
by these ecstatic moths is remarkable, but still more remarkable is
the thrilling sense of the power of the life-force in a supposedly low
form of consciousness.

The wonder of the scene is missed, no doubt, by most of those who are
habituated to it. From time to time weary, stolid-looking girls or old
women lift down the trays and run their hands over them in order to
pick up superfluous male moths. Sometimes the male moths are walking
about the newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously from the
embrace of their mates. The fate of the male moths is to be flung into
a basket where they stay until the next day, when perhaps some of them
may be mated again. The novice is impressed not only by the
ruthlessness of this treatment but by the way in which the whole loft
is littered by male moths which have fallen or have been flung on the
floor and are being trampled on.

The female moths, when their partners have been removed, are taken
downstairs in newspapers in order to be put into the little tin
receptacles where the eggs are to be laid. On a tray there are spread
out a number of egg cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight
printed circles on each of them. On these circles are placed the
twenty-eight half-inch-high bottomless enclosures of tin. Some one
takes up a handful of moths and scatters them over the tins. Some of
the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece. Others are helped into the
little enclosures in which, to do them credit, they are only too
willing to take up their quarters. The curious thing is the way in
which each moth settles down within her ring. Indeed from the moment
of her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never used her
wings to fly. Nor did the male moth seem to wish to fly. The sexes
concentrate their whole attention on mating. After that the female
thinks of nothing but laying eggs. Almost immediately after she is
placed within her little tin she begins to deposit eggs, and within a
few hours the circle of the card is covered.

Food is given neither to the females nor to the males. Those which are
not kept in reserve for possible use on the second day are flung out
of doors. When the female moth has deposited her eggs she also is
destroyed.[140] The _shoji_ of the breeding and egg-laying rooms
permit only of a diffused light. The discarded moths are cast out into
the brilliant sunshine where they are eaten by poultry or are left to
die and serve as manure.

Sericulture is always a risky business. There is first the risk of a
fall in prices. Just before I reached Japan prices were so low that
many people despaired of being able to continue the business, and
shortly after I left there was a crisis in the silk trade in which
numbers of silk factories failed. At the time I was last in a
silk-worm farmer's house cocoons were worth from 5 to 6 yen per _kwan_
of 8-1/4 lbs. From 8 to 10 _kwan_ of cocoons could be expected from a
single egg card. Eggs were considered to be at a high price when they
were more than 2 yen per card. The risks of the farmer are increased
when he launches out and buys mulberry leaves to supplement those
produced on his own land. Sometimes the price of leaves is so high
that farmers throw away some of their silk-worms. The risks run by the
man who grows mulberries beyond his own leaf requirements on the
chance of selling are also considerable.

Beyond the risk of falling prices or of a short mulberry crop there is
in sericulture the risk of disease. One advantage of the system in
which the eggs are laid in circles on the cards instead of all over
them is that if any disease should be detected the affected areas can
be easily cut out with a knife and destroyed. Disease is so serious a
matter that silk-worm breeding, as contrasted with silk-worm raising,
is restricted to those who have obtained licences. The silk-worm
breeder is not only licensed. His silkworms, cocoons and mother moths
are all in turn officially examined. Breeding "seeds" were laid one
year by about 33,000,000 odd moths; common "seeds" by about
948,000,000.

Of recent years enormous progress has been made in combating disease.
I have spoken of how a silk-worm district may be recognised by the
structure of the farmhouses and the prosperity of the farmers, but
another striking sign of sericulture is the trays and mats lying in
the sun in front of farmers' dwellings or on the hot stones of the
river banks in order to get thoroughly purified from germs. It is
illustrative of the progress that has been made under scientific
influence, that whereas twenty years ago a sericulturist would reckon
on losing his silk-worm harvest completely once in five years, such a
loss is now rare. Scientific instructors have their difficulties in
Japan as in the rural districts of other countries, but the people
respect authority, and they are accustomed to accept instruction given
in the form of directions. Also the Japanese have an unending interest
in the new thing. Further, there is a continual desire to excel for
the national advantage and in emulation of the foreigner. The advance
in scientific knowledge in the rural districts is remarkable, because
it is in such contrast with the primitive lives of the country people.
Picture the surprise of British or American farmers were they brought
face to face with thermometers, electric light and a working knowledge
of bacteriology in the houses of peasants in breech clouts.

It was while I was trying to learn something of the sericultural
industry that I had the opportunity of visiting a noteworthy
institution. It is noteworthy, among other reasons, because I seldom
met a foreigner in Japan who knew of its existence. It is the great
Ueda Sericultural College in the prefecture of Nagano. I was struck
not only by its extent but by its systematised efficiency. On a level
with the director's eyes was a motto in large lettering, "Be diligent.
Develop your virtues."

[Illustration: TEACHERS OF A VILLAGE SCHOOL.]

[Illustration: GIRLS CARRYING BALES OF RICE.]

[Illustration: SERICULTURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS.]

The Institute devotes itself to mulberries, silk-worms and silk
manufacture. There are 200 students, as many as it will hold. The
young men become teachers of sericulture, advisers in mills and
experts of co-operative sericultural societies. The institution, in
addition to the fees it receives and its earnings from its own
products, some 33,000 yen in all, has an annual Government subsidy of
about 114,000 yen. There are other sericultural colleges doing similar
work in Tokyo and Kyoto, and there is also in the capital the Imperial
Sericultural Experiment Station (with a staff of 87), where I saw
all sorts of research work in progress. This experiment station has
half a dozen branches scattered up and down the silk districts.

[Illustration: SOME OF THE SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA.]

[Illustration: VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM.]

At Ueda I went through corridors and rooms, sterilised thrice a year,
to visit professors engaged in a variety of enquiries. One professor
had turned into a kind of beef tea the pupæ thrown away when the
cocoons are unwound; another had made from the residual oil two or
three kinds of soap. The usual thing at a silk factory is for the
pupæ, which are exposed to view when the silk is unrolled from the
scalded cocoons, to lie about in horrid heaps until they are sold as
manure or carp food. The professor declared that his product was equal
to a third of the total weight of the pupæ utilised, and was sure that
it could be sold at a fifteenth of the price of Western beef essences.
The Director of the College had tried the product with his breakfast
for a fortnight and avowed that during the experiment he was never so
perky.

It was a pleasure to look into the well-kept dormitories of the
students, where there was evidence, in books, pictures and athletic
material, of a strenuous life. The young men are made fit not only by
_judō_, fencing, archery, tennis and general athletics, but by being
sent up the mountains on Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the
open fencing contest twice a year the visitors are usually beaten. The
director quoted to me Roosevelt's "Sweat and be saved."

From men we went to machines and mulberries. I inspected all sorts of
hot chambers for killing cocoons. I saw, in rooms draped in black
velvet like the pictured scenes at a beheading, silk testing for
lustre and colour. I gazed with respect on many kinds of winding and
weaving machinery. Then, going out into the experiment fields, I
strode through more varieties of mulberry than I had imagined to
exist. There are supposed to be 500 sorts in the country but many are
no doubt duplicates. The varieties differ so much in shape and texture
of leaf that the novice would not take some of them for mulberries.

It was held that it would not be difficult to increase the mulberry
area in Japan by another quarter of a million acres. The yield of
leaves might be raised by 3,300 lbs. per acre if the right sort of
bushes were always grown and the right sort of treatment were given to
them and to the soil. As to the additional labour needed for an
extended sericulture, the annual increase in the population of Japan
would provide it. I was told that "the technics of sericulture are
sure to improve." It would be easy to raise the yield 2 _kwan_ per egg
card for the whole country. Within a seven-year period the production
of cocoons per egg card had become 20 per cent. better. The talk was
of doubling the present yield of cocoons. The "proper encouragement"
needed for doubling the production of cocoons was more technical
instruction and more co-operative societies. There had been a
continual rise in the world's demand for silk and there was no need to
fear "artificial silk." "People who buy it often come to appreciate
natural silk." And I read in an official publication that "the climate
of Japan is suitable for the cultivation of mulberry trees from
south-west Formosa to Hokkaido in the north."

FOOTNOTES:

[139] For statistics of sericulture, see Appendix XXXIX.

[140] She is examined microscopically in order to make sure that she
was not affected by infectious disease.




CHAPTER XVIII

"GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES

(NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

At your return show the truth.--FROISSART


I visited factories in more than one prefecture. At the first
factory--it employed about 1,000 girls and 200 men--work began at 4.30
a.m., breakfast was at 5 and the next meal at 10.30. The stoppages for
eating were for a few minutes only. A cake was handed to each girl at
her machine at 3. Suppertime came after work was finished at 7.[141]
No money was paid the first year. The second year the wages might be 3
or 4 yen a month. The statement was made that at the end of her five
years' term a girl might have 300 yen, but that this sum was not
within the reach of all.[142] The girls were driven at top speed by a
flag system in which one bay competed with another and was paid
according to its earnings. Owing to the heat the flushed girls
probably looked better in health than they really were. They were fat
in the face, but this could not be regarded as an indication of their
general well-being. It was admitted that some girls left through
illness. Employees returned to their homes for January and February,
when the factory was closed down; there was also three days' holiday
in June. In the dormitory I noticed that each girl had the space of
one mat only (6 ft. by 3 ft.). Twenty-two girls slept in each
dormitory. The men connected with this factory were low-looking and
shifty-eyed.

An agricultural expert who was well acquainted with the conditions of
silk manufacture and of the district and was in a disinterested
position told me after my visit to this factory how the foremen
scoured the country for girl labour during January and February. The
success of the _kemban_ or girl collector was due to the poverty of
the people, who were glad "to be relieved of the cost of a daughter's
food." Occasionally the _kemban_ had sub-agents. The mill proprietors
were in competition for skilled girls, and money was given by a
_kemban_ intent on stealing another factory's hand.

The novices had no contract. The contract of a skilled girl provided
that she should serve at the factory for a specified period and that
if she failed to do so, she should pay back twenty times the 5 yen or
whatever sum had been advanced to her. Obviously 100 yen would be a
prohibitive sum for a peasant's daughter to find. The amount of the
workers' pay was not specified in the contract. The document was
plainly one-sided and would be regarded in an English court as against
public policy and unenforceable. Married women might take an infant
with them to the factory. In more than one factory I saw several
thin-faced babies.

The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the countryside
well told me, was "not good." The girls had weakened constitutions as
the result of their factory life and when they married had fewer than
the normal number of children. The general result of factory life was
degeneration. The girls "corrupted their villages."

The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept on the factory
premises except when they could allege urgent business in town. But
they were allowed out on the three nights of the _Bon_ festival. It
was rare that priests visited the factories and there were no shrines
there. The girls had sometimes "lessons" given them and occasionally
story-tellers or gramophone owners amused them. The food supplied by
some factories was not at all adequate and the girls had to spend
their money at the factory tuck-shops. "Most proprietors," I was told,
"endeavour to make part of their staff permanent by acting as
middlemen to arrange marriages between female and male workers." The
infants of married workers were "looked after by the youngest
apprentices."

In another place I saw over a factory which employed about 160 girls,
who were worked from 5:30 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. with twenty minutes for
each meal. If a girl "broke her contract" it was the custom to send
her name to other factories so that she could not get work again. The
foremen at this establishment seemed decent men.

One who had no financial interest in the silk industry but knew the
district in which this second factory stood said that "many girls"
came home in trouble. The peasants did not like "the spoiling of their
daughters," but were "captured in their poverty by the idea of the
money to be gained." Undoubtedly the factory life was pictured in
glowing colours by the _kemban_.

In a third factory there were more than 200 girls and only 15 men. The
proprietor and manager seemed good fellows. I was assured that it was
forbidden for men workers to enter the women's quarters, but on
entering the dormitory I came on a man and woman scuffling. The girls
of this factory and in others had running below their feet an iron
pipe which was filled with steam in cold weather. On some days in
July, the month in which I visited this factory, I noticed from the
temperature record sheet that the heat had reached 94 degrees in the
steamy spinning bays, where, unless the weather be damp, it was
impossible, because of spinning conditions, to admit fresh air. I saw
a complaint box for the workers. As in other factories, there was a
certain provision of boiled water and ample bathing accommodation. Hot
baths were taken every night in summer and every other night in
winter. Here, as elsewhere, though many of the girls were pale and
anaemic, all were clean in their persons, which is more than can be
said of all Western factory hands. Work began at 4 a.m. and went on
until 7 p.m. From 10 to 15 minutes were allowed for meals. The winter
hours were from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

In this factory, as in others, there was a system of tallies, showing
to all the workers the ranking of the girls for payment. The standard
wage seemed to be 20 sen a day, and the average to which it was
brought by good work 30 sen. There were thirty or more girls who had
deductions from their 20 sen. Apprentices were shown as working at a
loss. Once or twice a month a story-teller came to entertain the girls
and every fortnight a teacher gave them instruction. When I asked if a
priest came I was told that "in this district the families are not so
religious, so the girls are not so pious." Two doctors visited the
factory, one of them daily. Counting all causes, 5 per cent. of the
girls returned home. The owner of the factory, a man in good physical
training and with an alert and kindly face, said the industry
succeeded in his district because the employers "exerted themselves"
and the girls "worked with the devotion of soldiers." I thought of a
motto written by the Empress, which I had seen at Ueda, "It is my wish
that the girls whose service it is to spin silk shall be always
diligent." Behind the desk of this factory proprietor hung the motto,
"Cultivate virtues and be righteous."

The fourth factory I saw seemed to be staffed entirely with
apprentices who were turned over to other factories in their third
year. The girls appeared to have to sleep three girls to two mats. In
the event of fire the dormitory would be a death-trap. I was told that
there was an entertainment or a "lecture on character" once a week.
The motto on the walls of this factory was, "Learning right ways means
loving mankind."

I went over the factory which belonged to the largest concern in Japan
and had 10,000 hands. The girls were looked after in well-ventilated
dormitories by ten old women who slept during the day and kept watch
at night. There was a fire escape. All sorts of things were on sale at
wholesale prices at the factory shop, but for any good reason an exit
ticket was given to town. The dining-room was excellent. There was a
hospital in this factory and the nurse in the dispensary summarised at
my request the ailments of the 35 girls who were lying down
comfortably: stomachic, 12; colds, 7; fingers hurt by the hot water of
the cocoon-soaking basins, 5; female affections, 4; nervous, 2; eyes,
rheumatism, nose, lungs and kidneys, 1 each. The average wages in this
factory worked out at 60 yen for 9 months. The hour of beginning work
was 4:30 at the earliest. The factory stopped at sunset, the latest
hour being 6:30. I was assured that of the girls who did not get
married 70 per cent. renewed their contracts. A large enclosed open
space was available in which the girls might stroll before going to
bed. The motto of the establishment was, "I hear the voice of spring
under the shadow of the trees." In reference to the new factory
legislation the manager said that the hours of labour were so long
that it would be some time before 10 hours a day would be
initiated.[143] This factory and its branches were started thirty
years ago by a man who was originally a factory worker. Although now
very rich he had "always refused to be photographed and had not
availed himself of an opportunity of entering the House of Peers."

I visited several factories the girls working at which did not live in
dormitories but outside. At a winding and hanking factory which was
airy and well lighted the hours were from 6 to 6. At a factory where
the hours were from 4:30 to 7 some reelers had been fined. Japanese
Christian pastors sometimes came to see the girls, and on the wall of
the recreation room there were paper _gohei_ hung up by a Shinto
priest.

I got the impression that the girls in the factories at Kōfu in
Yamanashi prefecture were not driven so hard as those at the factories
in the Suwas in Nagano. Someone said: "However the Suwa people may
exploit their girls, we are able, working shorter hours and giving
more entertainments, to produce better silk, for the simple reason
that the girls are in better condition. We can get from 5 to 10 per
cent. more for our silk." A factory manager said that it would be
better if the girls had a regular holiday once a week, but one firm
could not act alone. (The factories are working seven days a week,
except for festival days and public holidays.)

With regard to the _kemban_, I was told in Yamanashi that many girls
went to the factories "unwillingly by the instructions of their
parents." It was also stated that the money paid to girls or their
parents on their engagement was not properly a gratuity but an
advance. I heard that the police keep a special watch on _kemban_.
They would not do this without good reason.

FOOTNOTES:

[141] The times stated are those given to me in the factories. The
question of overtime is referred to later in the Chapter.

[142] Again the reader must be reminded of the rise in wages and
prices (estimated on p. xxv). During the recent period of inflation,
silk rose to 3,000 yen per picul and fell to 1,300 or 1,400 yen. There
have been great fluctuations in the wages of factory girls. At the
most flourishing period as much as 25 yen per head was paid to
recruiters of girls. In this Chapter, however, it is best to record
exactly what I saw and heard.

[143] On the day on which I re-read this for the printers, I notice in
an American paper that one of the largest employers of labour in the
United States has just stated that he did not see his way to abolish
the twelve-hours' day.




CHAPTER XIX

"FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

The psychology of behaviour teaches us that [a country's] failures and
semi-failures are likely to continue until there is a far more
widespread appreciation of the importance of studying the forces which
govern behaviour.--SAXBY

I


I do not think that some of the factory proprietors are conscious that
they are taking undue advantage of their employees. These men are just
average persons at the ante-Shaftesbury stage of responsibility
towards labour.[144] Their case is that the girls are pitifully poor
and that the factories supply work at the ruling market rates for the
work of the pitifully poor. Said one factory owner to me genially:
"Peasant families are accustomed to work from daylight to dark. In the
silk-worm feeding season they have almost no time for sleep. Peasant
people are trained to long hours. Lazy people might suffer from the
long hours of the factory, but the factory girls are not lazy."

It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is all the difference
between a long day at the varied work of a farm, even in the trying
silk-worm season, and a long day, for nine or ten months on end,
sitting still, with the briefest intervals for food, in the din and
heat of a factory. Such a life must be debilitating. When it is added
that in most factories, in the short period between supper and sleep,
and again during the night, the girls are closely crowded, no further
explanation is wanted of the origin of the tuberculosis which is so
prevalent in the villages which supply factory labour.[145] There is
no question that in the scanty moments the girls do have for an airing
most of them are immured within the compounds of their factories. A
large proportion of the many thousands of factory girls[146] who are
to be mothers of a new generation in the villages are passing years of
their lives in conditions which are bad for them physically and
morally. It must not be forgotten that very many of the girls go to
the factories before they are fully grown. On the question of
morality, evidence from disinterested quarters left no doubt on my
mind that the _morale_ of the girls was lowered by factory life. The
Lancashire factory girl goes home every evening and she has her
Saturday afternoon and her Sunday, her church or chapel, her societies
and clubs, her amusements and her sweetheart. Her Japanese sister has
none of this natural life and she has infinitely worse conditions of
labour.

It is only fair to remember, however, that the Japanese factory girl
comes from a distance. She has no relatives or friends in the town in
which she is working. But the plea that she would get into trouble if
she were allowed her liberty without control of any sort does not
excuse her present treatment. If the factories offered decent
conditions of life not a few of the companies would get at their doors
most of the labour they need and many of the girls would live at home.
If the factories insist on having cheap rural labour then they should
do their duty by it. The girls should have reasonable working hours,
proper sleeping accommodation and proper opportunities inside and
outside the factories for recreation and moral and mental improvement.
It is idle to suggest that fair treatment of this sort is impossible.
It is perfectly possible.

The factory proprietors are no worse than many other people intent on
money making. But the silk industry, as I saw it, was exploiting,
consciously or unconsciously, not only the poverty of its girl
employees but their strength, morality, deftness[147] and remarkable
school training in earnestness and obedience. Several times I heard
the unenlightened argument that, if there were a certain sacrifice of
health and well-being, a rapidly increasing population made the
sacrifice possible; that, as silk was the most valuable product in
Japan, and it was imperative for the development and security of the
Empire that its economic position should be strengthened, the
sacrifice must be made. Nothing need be said of such a hopelessly
out-of-date and nationally indefensible attitude except this: that it
is doubtful whether any considerable proportion of the people
connected with the silk industry have felt themselves specially
charged with a mission to strengthen the economic condition of their
country. They have simply availed themselves of a favourable
opportunity to make money. That opportunity was presented by the cheap
labour available in farmers' daughters unprotected by effective trade
unions, by properly administered factory laws or by public opinion.



II[148]


The enterprise, the efficiency and the profits shown by the
sericultural industry have been remarkable, and not a few of the
capitalists connected with it are personally public-spirited. But many
well-wishers of Japan, native-born and foreign, cannot help wondering
what is the real as compared with the seeming return of the industry
to a nation the strength of which is in its reservoir of rustic health
and willingness. It is significant of the extent to which the
factories are working with cheap labour that, in a country in which
there are more men than women,[149] there was in about 20,000
factories 58 per cent. of female labour. If I stress the fact of
female employment it is because in Japan nearly every woman
eventually marries. Enfeebled women must therefore hand on
enfeeblement to the next generation.[150]

The Japanese, in their present factory system, as in other
developments, insist on making for themselves all the mistakes that we
have made and are now ashamed of. In judging the Japanese let us
remember that all our industrial exploitation of women[151] was not,
as we like to believe, an affair as far off as the opening nineteenth
century. I do not forget as a young man filling a newspaper poster
with the title of an article which recounted from my own observation
the woes of women chain makers who, with bared breasts and their
infants sprawling in the small coals, slaved in domestic smithies for
a pittance. And as I write it is announced that the head of the United
States Steel Corporation says that "there is no necessity for trade
unions," which are, in his opinion, "inimical to the best interests of
the employers and the public." That is precisely the view of most
Japanese factory proprietaries.

The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have been drawn
(1) by the enactment that "those who, with the object of causing a
strike, seduce or incite others" shall be sentenced to imprisonment
from one to six months with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen; (2) by the
power given to the police (_a_) to detain suspected persons for a
succession of twenty-four hour periods, and (_b_) summarily to close
public meetings, and (3) by the franchise being so narrow that few
trade unionists have votes. During the six years of the War there were
as many as 141,000 strikers, but a not uncommon method of these
workers was merely to absent themselves from work, to refrain from
working while in the factory, or to "ca' canny." Nevertheless 633 of
them were arrested. When I attended in Tokyo a gathering of members of
the leading labour organisation in Japan it was discreetly named
Yu-ai-kai (Friend-Love-Society, i.e. Friendly Society). Now it is
boldly called the Confederation of Japanese Labour. A Socialist
League[152] and several labour publications exist. Workers assemble to
see moving pictures of labour demonstrations, and a labour meeting has
defied the police in attendance by singing the whole of the "Song of
Revolution." But crippled as the unions are under the law against
strikes and by the poverty of the workers, they find it difficult to
attain the financial strength necessary for effective action. Many
workers are trade unionists when they are striking but their trade
unionism lapses when the strike is over, for then the unions seem to
have small reason for existing. The head of the Federation of Labour
lately announced that the number of trade unionists was only 100,000,
or half what it was during the recent big strikes and it is doubtful
whether, even including the 7,000 members of the Seamen's Union, there
are in Japan more than 50,000 contributing members of the different
unions. But this 50,000 may be regarded as staunch.

The poverty-stricken unions certainly afford no real protection to the
girl workers, who form indeed a very small proportion of their
members. And the Factory Law does little for them. A Japanese friend
who knows the labour situation well writes to me:

"According to the Factory Law, which came into force in the autumn of
1916, 'factory employers are not allowed to let women work more than
twelve hours in a day.' (Article III, section 1.) But if necessary,
'the competent Minister is entitled to extend this limitation to
fourteen hours.' (Section 2.) As to night work the law says that
'factory employers are not allowed to let women work from 10 p.m. to 4
a.m.' (Article IV.) If, however, there are necessary reasons, 'the
employers can be exempted from the obligation of the Article IV.'
(Article V.) Article IX says that 'the employers are forbidden to let
women engage in dangerous work.' But whether work is dangerous or not
is determined by 'the competent Minister' (Article XI), who may or may
not be well informed. There is also Article XII, 'The competent
Minister can limit or prohibit the work of women about to have
children' and within three weeks after confinement. But anyone who
enters factories may see women with pale faces because they work too
soon after their confinement.

"I cannot tell you how far these provisions are enforced. I can only
say that I have not yet heard of employers being punished for
violating the Factory Law. Can it be supposed that employers are so
honest as never to violate the Factory Law? As to working hours, in
some factories they may work less than fourteen hours as the law
indicates. In others they may work more, because 'there are necessary
reasons.' This is especially true of the factories in the country
parts. As 200 inspectors have been appointed, the authorities must by
now know the actual situation pretty well."

Dr. Kuwata, a former member of the Upper House, with whom I frequently
discussed the labour situation, declares the Factory Law to be
"palpably imperfect and primitive." At the end of 1917 there were,
according to official figures, 99,000 female factory operatives under
fifteen years of age and 2,400 under twelve. Some 20,000 of these
children were employed in silk factories. What protection have they?
Before passing this page for the press I have shown it to a
well-informed Japanese friend and he says that he has never seen any
newspaper report of a prosecution under the Factory Law. Obviously a
Factory Law under which no one is ever prosecuted is not
operative.[153]

It is excellent that Japan has sent a large permanent delegation to
Switzerland to establish a system of liaison with the International
Labour Office of the League of Nations. This company of young men will
keep the Japanese Government well informed. There is undoubtedly in
Japan, under Western influence, a steady development of sensitiveness
to working-class conditions and a rapid growth of modern social
ideas. But the Government and the Diet will not step out far in
advance of general opinion, the most will naturally be made by the
authorities and trade interests of bad factory conditions on the
Continent of Europe and in some industries in the United States, and
the majority of a public which has been carefully nurtured in the
belief that a profitable industrialism is the great desideratum for
Japan will not be restive. Real factory reform is not to be expected
until an enlightened view is taken by Japanese in general of the
exploitation of girls for any purpose. It is not in commercial human
nature, Eastern or Western, that factory directors and shareholders
should forgo without a struggle the advantage of possessing cheaper
and more subjected labour than their foreign rivals. Some influence
may be exerted in the right direction by the fact that those who are
profiting by cheap and docile labour may themselves be undersold
before long by cheaper and still more docile labour in China.[154] And
in 1922 Japan is under an obligation, accepted at the Washington
Labour Conference, to stop women working more than eleven hours a day
and to abolish night work. Meantime the labour movement makes
progress. It is significant that many of its leaders are under the
influence of "direct action" ideas. They hope little from a Diet
elected on a narrow franchise and supported by a strong Government
machine backed by the Conservative farmer vote. Although, however,
there does not seem to be as yet a junction between the labour
movement and the unions of the tenant farmers, who have their own
interests alone in view, the future may present unexpected
developments. As I write, the labour movement is conducting a trial of
strength with the great Mitsubishi and Kawasaki enterprises and is
presenting a stronger front than it has yet done.

This Chapter would give an unfair impression of the relations of
capital and labour in Japan if it included no reference to the
well-intentioned efforts made by several large employers to improve
the conditions of working-class life and labour. Sometimes they have
followed the example of philanthropic firms in Great Britain and
America. As often as not they have been inspired by old Japanese ideas
of a master's responsibilities. Many leading industrials have believed
and still believe that by the conservation and development of old
ideas of paternalism and loyalty the trade-union stage of industrial
development may be avoided. This conviction was expressed to me by,
among others, Mr. Matsukata, of the famous Kawasaki concern, who has
made generous contributions to "welfare" work. My own brief experience
as an employer in Japan made me acquainted with some canons in the
relationship of employer and employed which have lost their authority
in the West. Given wisdom on the part of masters, the prolonged
bitterness which has marked the industrial development of the West
need not be repeated in Japan, but whether that wisdom will be
displayed in time is doubtful. The Japanese commercial world has been
commendably quick to learn in many directions in the West. It will be
a serious reflection on the intelligence of the country if the lessons
of the industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States should
not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty which the foreign observer owes
to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts as silly as they are
useless[155] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large proportion
of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have been made
by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be
placed on the statute book in order to be enforced. But if he be
honest he must also recognise the handicap of specially costly
equipment[156] and of unskilled labour and inexperience under which
the Japanese business world is competing for the place in foreign
trade to which it has a just claim. Such conditions do not in the
least excuse inhumanity, but they help to explain it.

FOOTNOTES:

[144] It is a chastening exercise to read before proceeding with this
Chapter an extract from Spencer Walpole's _History of England_, vol.
iii, p. 317, under the year 1832: "The manufacturing industries of the
country were collected into a few centres. In one sense the persons
employed had their reward: the manufacturers gave them wages. In
another sense their change of occupation brought them nothing but
evil. Forced to dwell in a crowded alley, occupying at night a house
constructed in neglect of every known sanitary law, employed in the
daytime in an unhealthy atmosphere and frequently on a dangerous
occupation, with no education available for his children, with no
reasonable recreation, with the sky shrouded by the smoke of an
adjoining capital, with the face of nature hidden by a brick wall,
neglected by an overworked clergyman, regarded as a mere machine by an
avaricious employer, the factory operative turned to the public house,
the prize ring or the cockpit."

[145] See Appendix XL.

[146] Number of factory workers, a million and a half, of whom 800,000
are females. For statistics of women workers, see Appendix XLI.

[147] The Minister of Commerce has himself stated that the
sericultural industry is rooted in the dexterity of the Japanese
countrywoman.

[148] This section of the Chapter was written in 1921.

[149] In Japan in 1918 there were, per 1,000, 505.2 men to 494.8
women.

[150] Of the workers under the age of fifteen in the 20,000 factories,
82 per cent. were girls. The statistics in this paragraph were issued
by the Ministry of Commerce in 1917.

[151] For sketches of women and children (with a chain between their
legs) harnessed to coal wagons in the pits, see _Parliamentary
Papers_, vol. xv, 1842. "There is a factory system grown up in England
the most horrible that imagination can conceive," wrote Sir William
Napier to Lady Hester Stanhope two years after Queen Victoria's
accession. "They are hells where hundreds of children are killed
yearly in protracted torture." In Torrens's _Memoirs of the Queen's
First Prime Minister_, one reads: "Melbourne had a Bill drawn which
with some difficulty he persuaded the Cabinet to sanction, prohibiting
the employment of children _under 9 in any except silk mills_."

[152] More than 200 books on Socialism were published in 1920.

[153] For a declaration by Dr. Kuwata concerning bad food and
"defiance of hygienic rules," see Appendix XLII.

[154] See Appendix XLIII.

[155] See Appendix XLII.

[156] In a pre-War publication of the United States Department of
Commerce it was stated that the cost of cotton mills per spindle is in
England _32s._, in the United States _44s._, in Germany _52s._, and in
Japan _100s._

[Illustration: ARCHERY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.]

[Illustration: CULTIVATION OF THE HILLSIDE.]

[Illustration: RAILWAY STATION "BENTO" BOX (OPEN) AND POT OF TEA WITH
CUP. p. 110  The _bento_ box provides rice, meat, fish, omelette and
assorted pickles; also paper napkin and _hashi_ (chop-sticks) and
(between them) a toothpick.]




FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE
WEST COAST

CHAPTER XX

"THE GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED"

(FUKUSHIMA AND YAMAGATA)

BOSWELL: If you should advise me to go to Japan I believe I should.
JOHNSON: Why yes, Sir, I am serious.


In one of my journeys I went from Tokyo to the extreme north of Japan,
travelling up the west coast and down the east. Fukushima
prefecture--in which is Shirakawa, famous for a horse fair which lasts
a week--encourages the eating of barley, for on the northern half of
the east coast of Japan there is no warm current and the rice crop may
be lost in a cold season. "Officials of the prefecture and county,"
someone said to me, "take barley themselves; enthusiastic _gunchō_
take it gladly."

The prefectural station, by selecting the best varieties of rice for
sowing, had effected a 10 per cent. improvement in yield. In each
county an official "agricultural encourager" had been appointed. The
lectures given at the experiment station were attended by 18,000
persons. The studious who listen to the lectures had formed an
association that provided at the station a fine building where supper,
bed, breakfast and lunch cost 30 sen. It contained a model of the Ise
shrine with a motto in the handwriting of a well-known Tokyo
agricultural professor, "Difficulties Polish You."

"Some villagers," said a local authority, "want to make the Buddhist
temple the centre of the development of village life. In several
places agricultural products are exhibited at Shinto shrines. Farmers
offer them out of a kind of piety, but the products are afterwards
criticised from a technical point of view. This is done on the
initiative of the villagers encouraged by the prefecture."

Hereabouts the winter work of the people, in addition to basket, rope
and mat making, was paper making and smoothing out the wrinkles of
tobacco.[157] A considerable number of people had emigrated to South
America. The principal need of the villages, it was stated, was money
at less than the current rate of 20 per cent. In one place I found a
factory built on the side of a daimyo's castle.

I was told of crops of _konnyaku_ which had made one man the second
richest person in the prefecture and had therefore qualified him for
membership in the House of Peers. (The House includes one member from
each prefecture as the representative of the highest taxpayers of that
prefecture.)

During my journeys I picked up many odds and ends of information by
walking through the trains and having chats with country people. I was
also helped by county and prefectural agricultural officials who,
having learnt of my movements, were kind enough to join me in the
train for an hour or so. One head of an agricultural school which was
full up with students told me that there were already in Fukushima two
prefectural and five county agricultural schools.

Our train, half freight with a locomotive at each end, went over the
backbone of Japan through the usual series of snow shelters and
tunnels. Having surmounted the heights we slid down into Yamagata. I
should properly write Yamagataken, which we cannot translate
Yamagatashire, for a _ken_ (prefecture) is made up of counties. There
are eleven counties in Yamagataken.

Almost any sort of dwelling looks tolerable in August, but many of the
houses that first caught our attention must be lamentable shelters in
winter. Some farmers, I learnt, were "in a very bad condition." We
dropped from a silk and rice plateau and then to a region where the
main crop was rice. The bare hills to be seen in our descent were an
appalling spectacle when it was realised how close was their relation
to the disastrous floods of the prefecture. A man in the train had
lost 10,000 yen by floods, a large sum in rural Japan. In two years
the prefecture had spent in river-bank repairs nearly a million yen. A
flood some years ago did damage to the amount of 20 million yen. The
prefecture had a debt of 60 million yen, chiefly due to havoc wrought
by its big river. A yearly sum was spent on afforestation in addition
to what was laid out by the State and by private individuals. A
forestry association was trying to raise half a million yen for tree
planting. But the flooding of the plains was not the only water
trouble of the Yamagatans. In one district they had a stream which
contained solutions of compounds of sulphuric acid so strong that
crops fail for three years on ground watered from it. In other parts
of the prefecture, however, farmers had the advantage, enjoyed in many
parts of Japan, of being able to water from ammonia water springs.

Hereabouts I first noticed the device common to many districts of
having on the roof of a cottage a water barrel, tub or cistern, ready
to be emptied on the shingle roof when sparks fly from a burning
dwelling. Sometimes the wooden water receptacles are wrapped round
with straw.

In the prefectural city of Yamagata I heard of a primary school which
had a farm and made a profit, also of four landowners who had engaged
an agricultural expert for the instruction of their tenants. "A very
certain crop" round about the city was grapes. Some 25,000 persons
yearly visited the prefectural 12 _-chō_ experiment station, which
within a year had distributed to farmers 7,600 cyanided fruit trees
and 80 bushels of special seed rice.

Near the experiment station was a crematorium of ugly brick and
galvanised iron belonging to the city of Yamagata at which 1,000
bodies were burnt in a year in furnaces heated with pine blocks. A
selection might be made from four rates ranging from 35 sen to 5 yen.
The most expensive rate was for folk who arrived in Western-style
coffins.

The experiment station had another institution at its doors. This had
to do not with the dead but with the living. Its name was "The Garden
where Virtues are Cultivated." The director of it was the father of
the agricultural expert of the prefecture. The garden, which was not a
garden, was a home for bad boys, or rather for thirty bad boys and one
bad girl. The bad girl--the director, being a man of humanity, common
sense and courage, thought it most necessary that there should be at
least one bad girl--acted as maidservant to the director. The bad boys
"maided" themselves and the school. The lads were such as had fallen
into the hands of the police. They were being reformed in a somewhat
original way by a somewhat original director.

Early in the day they had their cold bath, which was itself a break
with Japanese custom, for, though most Japanese have a nightly hot
bath, they are content with a basin wash in the morning. Then the boys
"cleaned school." Next they were marched up one by one to a mirror and
required to take a good look at themselves, in order, no doubt, to see
just how bad they were. After this they were called on to "give thanks
to the Emperor and their ancestors." Finally came a half-hour lecture
on "morality." It was considered that by this time the boys were
entitled to their breakfast. For open-air labour they were sent to the
experiment station, but they had manual work also in their own school,
where, among other things, they "made useful things out of waste," the
income from which went to their families. On Sundays the master,
though he must be nearer sixty than fifty, fenced with every one of
the thirty boys in turn--no ordinary task, for Japanese fencing calls
not only for an eye and a hand, but for a muscular back. Some
wholesome-looking young fellows, members of a young men's association,
served as volunteer masters and lived in the bare fashion that was so
good for the boys.

The director did not believe that bad boys were hopeless. He said that
not only the boys but their parents were better for the work done in
"The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated." He seemed to have become a
sort of consulting expert to primary school-masters who were at a loss
to know how to manage bad boys. Chastisement, as is well known, is
unusual in Japanese schools. The director of the human _hortus
inclusus_ confessed to me that though two of his boys whom he had
caught fighting might not have been separated without, in the Western
phrase, "feeling the weight of his hand," his heaviest punishment on
other difficult occasions was the moxa.

The moxa brings us back to real horticulture. Moxa is _mogusa_ or
mugwort. _Mogusa_ means "burning herb." The moxa is a great
therapeutic agent in the Far East. A bit of the dried herb is laid on
the skin and set fire to as a sort of blister. From the application of
the moxa as a cure for physical ills to its application for the cure
of bad boys is a natural step. One sees by the scars on the backs of
not a few Japanese that in their youth either their health or their
characters left something to be desired. The moxa, then, is the rod in
pickle in "The Garden where Virtues are Cultivated." But I think it is
not brought out often. A wrestling ring in a mass of sand thrown down
in a yard, a harmonium, a blackboard for the boys to work their will
on, doors labelled "The Room of Patience," "The Room of Honesty," "The
Room of Cleanliness" and "The Room of Good Arrangement," not to speak
of a rabbit loping about the school premises--these and some other
touches in the management of the school spoke of an even stronger
influence toward well-doing than the moxa. But even if the moxa should
fail, the attention of the boys could always be drawn to the
crematorium.

One who knew the rural districts discoursed to me in this wise: "The
best men are not numerous, but neither are the worst. I doubt whether
the desire to enjoy life is as strong in the Japanese as in the people
of the West. Most farmers would no doubt be happy with material
comfort. Pressed as they have been by material needs, they have no
time to think. When they are easier, they may get something beyond the
physical. At present we must regard their material welfare as the most
urgent thing." But a man standing by, who was also a countryman,
strongly dissented. "Religion," he said, "is not only important but
fundamental."

I have been received by more than one prefectural governor at eight in
the morning. His Excellency of Yamagata sets a good example by rising
at five and by going to bed at nine. He told me that he thought the
farmer's chief lack was cheap money. Low interest and a long term
might convert into arable 25,000 acres of barren land in his
prefecture. In the old days, as I knew, the farmers drove tunnels
considerable distances for irrigation, but with modern engineering
better results would be possible if money were available. As to the
misdeeds of the rivers, it might almost be said that every village was
feeling the need of embanking and of going to the source of loss by
planting trees in the hills. Beautiful forests of feudal period had
been wasted in the early days of Meiji and the result was now plain.

But attention had to be given to the minds as well as the pockets of
the villagers. Families that were once reasonably content were now
discontented. A livelihood was harder to get, taxation was heavier and
there was an increase in needs. Country people imagined townspeople to
be comfortably off, "not realising how they were tormented." Villagers
envied townsmen their amusements. Some prefectures had forbidden the
_Bon_ dance and had supplied nothing in its place. It was easy to see
why farmers no longer applied themselves so closely to their calling
and were wavering in their allegiance to country life. Healthful
amusements were necessary for those whose minds were not much
developed. Also, country people should be taught the true character of
town life, and that agriculture, though it might not yield the profit
of commerce and industry, ensured a reasonably happy life in healthful
places where physical strength could be enjoyed. The right kind of
village libraries should be encouraged. Music might perhaps be forced
into competition with _saké_.

A mental awakening by education was the final solution of the rural
problem, the Governor thought. Religion was also important for the
development of the village. Believers not under the eyes of others
would avoid wrong-doing because watched by heaven. Lectures on
agriculture and sanitation had a good influence when delivered by
priests. Temples were often schools before the era of Meiji and so
priests were socially active. Under the new dispensation the work was
taken out of their hands. So they had come to care little for the
affairs of the world. But they were influential and the prefecture had
asked for their help. The merits of many priests might not be
conspicuous, but the number of them who were active was increasing and
the villagers deferred to them if they took any step.

The most hopeful thing in the villages was the awakening of the young
men: they were becoming "sincere," a favourite Japanese word. For the
most part the credit societies were not efficient, but in one county
credit societies had lessened the business of the banks. The best way
to furnish capital to farmers was out of the capital of their fellow
farmers.

Possibly the girls of the villages were not making the same advance as
the boys. They did not go to their field labour willingly. Sometimes
when a woman was asked by a neighbour on the road, "Have you been
working on the farm?" she would answer, "No, I have been to the
temple." The host of women's papers had a bad effect. With regard to
the _habutae_ (silk goods) factories, there was a bright side, for
they gave work to the girls in winter, when they were idle "and
therefore poor and sometimes immoral." On the other hand, factory
girls tended to become vain and thriftless and the stay-at-home girls
were inclined to imitate them.

FOOTNOTES:

[157] See Appendix XLV.




CHAPTER XXI

THE "TANOMOSHI"

(YAMAGATA)

Society is kept in animation by the customary and by sentiment.--MEREDITH


Six feet of snow is common on the line on which we travelled in
Yamagata prefecture, and washouts are not infrequent. A train has been
stopped for a week by snow. It was difficult to think of snow when one
saw groups of pilgrims with their flopping sun-mats on their backs.
The shrines on three local mountain tops are visited by 20,000 people
yearly.

We bought at railway stations different sorts of gelatinous fruit
preparations. Most places in Japan have a speciality in the form of a
food or a curiosity that can be bought by travellers.

In the great Shonai plain, which extends through three counties, there
are no fewer than 82,500 acres of rice and the unending crops were a
sight to see. A great deal of the paddy land has been adjusted. In one
county there is the largest adjusted area in Japan, 20,000 acres. When
one raises one's eyes from the waving fields of illimitable rice, the
dominating feature of the landscape is Mount Chokai with his August
snow cap.

The three-storey hotel at which we stayed had been taken to pieces and
transported twenty miles. Such removal of houses to a more convenient
or, in the case of an hotel, a more profitable site, is not uncommon.
I sometimes patronised at Omori a large hotel on a little hill halfway
between Yokohama and Tokyo, which had formerly been the prefectural
building at Kanagawa. In the hotel in which I was now staying I was
interested in the "Notice" in my room:

1. A spitting-pot is provided. [Usually of bamboo or porcelain.]

2. No towels are lent for fear of _trachoma_.[158] [The traveller in
Japan carries his own towels, but a towel is a common gift on a
guest's departure in acknowledgment of his tea money.]

3. There is a table of rates. Guests are requested to say in which
they desire to be reckoned. [To the hotel proprietor, landlord or
manager when the visit of courtesy is paid on the guest's arrival.
Otherwise a judgment is formed from the guest's clothes, demeanour and
baggage.]

4. Please lock up your valuables or let us keep them. [There are no
locks on Japanese doors.]

5. Railroad, _kuruma_, box-sledge or automobile charges on
application. [The box-sledge shows what the country is like in
winter.]

In conversations about local conditions I was told that "landowners of
the middle grade" were suffering from "trying to keep up their
position." I remembered the song which may be rendered:

        Would that my daughter
        Were married to a middle farmer.
        With two _chō_ of farm
        And a _tan_ in the wood.
        No borrowing; no lending;
        Both ends meeting.
        Visiting the temple by turns--
        Someone must stay at home.
        Going to Heaven sooner or later.
        What a happy life!
        What a happy life!

Tenants were rather well off because their standard of living was
lower than that of owners. Economic conditions were improving in
Yamagata, but in the adjoining prefecture of Miyagi on the eastern
coast of Japan "whole villages" had gone to Hokkaido. Some poor
farmers were spending only 5 sen a day on food, the rest of what they
ate coming entirely from their own holdings. Some farmers said, "If
you calculate our income, we are certainly unable to make a living,
but in some way or other we are able," which is what some small
holders in many countries would say.

I was told that a labourer's 5 _tan_ could be cultivated by working
half days. Generally more was earned by labouring than could be gained
from a small patch of land. But for half the year labourer's work was
not obtainable. My informant found small tenant labourers "well off"
if both husband and wife had wages: "they are able to buy a bottle of
_saké_ in the evening." Their position was better than that of a small
peasant proprietor.

One in a thousand of the families in a specified county slept in
straw. I heard of the payment of 20 to 25 per cent. to pawnbroker
lenders.

But there is another way of borrowing. The plan of the _kō_ may be
adopted. A _kō_--it is odd that it should so closely resemble our
abbreviation "Co."--is simple and effective. If a man is badly off or
wants to undertake something beyond his financial resources, and his
friends decide to help him, they may proceed by forming a _kō_. A _kō_
is composed of a number of people who agree to subscribe a certain sum
monthly and to divide the proceeds monthly by ballot, beginning by
giving the first month's receipts to the person to succour whom the
_kō_ was formed. Suppose that the subscription be fixed at a yen a
month and that there are fifty subscribers. Then the beneficiary--who
pays in his yen with the rest--gets 50 yen on the occasion of the
first ingathering. Every month afterwards a member who is lucky in the
ballot gets 50 yen. The monthly paying in and paying out continue for
fifty months and all the subscribers duly get their money back, with
the advantage of having had a little excitement and having done a
neighbourly action.

But the _kō_, or _tanomoshi_, as I ought to call it, is not always the
innocent organisation I have described. There is a _tanomoshi_ system
under which, after member A, the beneficiary, has received the first
month's subscriptions, the other members are open to receive bids for
their shares. That is to say that, when the time comes round for the
second paying out of 50 yen, member F, who happens to have become as
much in need of ready money as A was, offers, if the month's moneys be
handed over to him, to distribute among the members sums up to 20 yen.
July and December, when most people need ready money, are months in
which a hard-up member of a _tanomoshi_ may sometimes offer to
distribute as much as 50 per cent. of what he receives. The result of
such bidding for shares is that well-to-do members of a _tanomoshi_,
who are the last to draw their 50 yen, receive in addition to it all
the extra payments made by impoverished members who took their shares
earlier. Benevolence in a _tanomoshi_ is not seldom a mask for avarice
that the law against usury cannot touch. In truth, the only virtuous
part of a _tanomoshi_ may be the first sharing out to the person in
whose interest it was supposed to be started. It should be added,
however, that there is a sort of _tanomoshi_ which has no particular
beneficiary and is merely a kind of co-operative credit society. In
one place I heard of a _tanomoshi_ that maintained a large fund for
the relief of orphans and the sick.

In many villages there were private or co-operative godowns for the
storage of rice against fire, rats and damp. Though the farmer who
sends rice to such a store receives a receipt, it is not legally a
marketable document. Hence an improvement on this simple storage plan.
I visited the premises of a company that could store more than 500,000
bushels of rice, and I found purification by carbon bisulphide going
on. The receipts given by this company--"certificated" for large
quantities and "tickets" for small--certify not only the quantity but
the quality of the rice, and are readily cashed. The storehouse owners
work under a licence, and they have the advantage that the buyer of
the receipts of non-licensed stores is not protected by the courts.

In the office of the company were samples of eleven market qualities
of rice, and before them, by way of showing respect to the great food
staple, was set the _gohei_ of cut white paper seen in Shinto
shrines. Outside the office, girl porters carried the bales of rice to
and fro. Close to the store was a river in which some of the dusty,
perspiring porters were washing and cooling themselves with a
simplicity to which Western civilisation is not yet equal. Opposite
them men were fishing by casting in draw nets from the shore just as
in biblical pictures the apostles are represented as doing.

The company has a rice market where farmers were putting their
business in the dealers' hands. Each dealer has to deposit 5,000 yen
with the State. The dealer who buys rice from a farmer has better
polishing machinery than the farmer possesses. Therefore he can give
the rice a more uniform appearance. By decreasing the weight of the
rice during the polishing he gives it he is also able to lessen the
sum payable for carriage and he has the value of the offal.

In order to visit farmers I rode some distance into the country.[159]
The village, which was of the Zen sect, was at work cleaning out and
straightening the stream which, as is usual in many villages, ran
through the middle of it. I was impressed during my visit not only by
the readiness and intelligence with which my questions were answered
but by the good humour with which a stranger's inquiries concerning
personal matters was received. I had another thought, that I might not
have found a group of Western farmers so well informed about their
financial position as these simple, primitively clad men.

Our _kuruma_ route to and from the village had been through one great
tract of well-adjusted rice fields. Adjustment was not difficult in
this region because half the land belongs to the Homma family, which
has given much study to the art of land-holding. For two centuries the
clan by charging moderate rents and studying the interests of its
tenants has maintained happy relations with them.

For many years a plan has been in operation by which 200 one-_tan_
paddy-fields are cultivated by the agents or managers of the estate,
by tenants selected by their fellow tenants for merit, by tenants
chosen by the landlord for diligence and by others picked out because
of their interest in agriculture. In order to increase the zest of
competition the cultivators are divided into a black and a white
company. The names of those who raise the most and best rice are
published in the order of their success, farm implements are
distributed as prizes, the clever cultivators are invited to the
landlord's New Year entertainment to the agents and managers, and at
that feast "places of distinction are given."

There is also a system of rewarding the best five-years averages. A
competition takes place between what are called "dress fields" because
those who get the best results from them receive a ceremonial dress
bearing the inscription, "Prosperity and Welfare." The honour of
wearing these robes in the presence of their landlord at his annual
feast is valued by these simple countrymen.

Through the introduction by the landlord of horse labour and
ploughs--implements with which the farmers were formerly
unacquainted--second cropping of part of the paddies has become
possible. There is an elaborate system of "progressive reduction" and
"average reduction" of rents in a bad season, by which, it was
explained, "the industrious tenant enjoys a larger reduction than an
idle one." "Tenants are grouped in fives, which help one another in
their work and in cases of misfortune." In their agreement with their
landlord, tenants promise that "wrong-doing shall be mutually
reprimanded and counsel shall be given one to another." "Again, if a
tenant falls ill, has his house burnt or meets with misfortune,
assistance shall be given by his fellows." During the war with Russia
the following instructions were issued:

Those enlisted in the army shall render their service at the cost of
their lives.

Those who stay at home shall do their best, complying with the
principles laid down by the Minister of Agriculture.

Relatives of soldiers at the front shall be helped and sympathised
with.

All shall subscribe to war bonds as much as possible.

All shall practise thrift and economy in accordance with their social
standing.

Musical entertainments shall be given up for two years.

Methods proved to be effective in cultivation shall be reported.

In the warm, cloudy days insects multiply rapidly. Think of your
brothers at the front, struggling against one of the mighty military
powers of the world, and be ashamed to be vanquished by hordes of
insects or masses of vegetable growth in your fields. For the purpose
of destroying insects an ample supply of oil is to be had at the
experimental farm, as during last year; and payment therefor may be
deferred until after harvest.

A communication to agents and managers says: "Comport yourselves in a
way suitable to the dignity of an agent of the clan. Bear in mind the
privileges and favours you enjoy, and exert yourselves to requite
these favours. Respect the name and the coat-of-arms of the clan." In
the neighbourhood there are about a hundred families bearing the name
of Homma.

FOOTNOTES:

[158] In the three years 1916-18 the percentage of conscripts
suffering from trachoma was 15.8.

[159] For farmers' budgets, see Appendix XIII (end).




BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

CHAPTER XXII

"BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

(YAMAGATA, AKITA,[160] AOMORI, IWATE, MIYAGI, FUKUSHIMA
AND IBARAKI)

The worst of our education is that it looks askance, looks over its
shoulder at sex.--R.L.S.


A village headman, encountered in the train just as we were leaving
Yamagata prefecture, gave me some insight into the life of his little
community. The fathers of two-score families were shopkeepers and
tradesmen--- that is, tradesmen in the old meaning of the word. There
were also a few labourers. About two hundred and fifty families owned
land and some of them rented additional tracts. Another sixty were
simply tenants. The poorer farmers were also labourers or artisans.
Most of them were "comfortable enough." There were, however, half a
dozen people in the village who were helped from village funds. Of the
middle-grade farmers "it might be said that they do not become richer
or poorer."

The headman had formed a society which sent its members to visit
prefectures more developed agriculturally. This society had engaged an
instructor from without the prefecture and he had taught horse tillage
and the management of upland fields and had made model paddies. Five
stallions had been obtained and a simple adjustment of paddy-land had
been brought about. As a result the rice yield had risen.

This headman had also had addresses delivered in the village for the
first time. Further, after buying a number of books, he had visited
all the villagers in turn and shown them the books and had said to
each of them, "I wish you to buy a book and, after reading it, to give
it to the library." "And," he told me, "none of them objected." Soon a
valuable library came into existence.

This admirable functionary felt some satisfaction at having been able
to abate the custom according to which the young men, with the tacit
permission of their parents, had gone into the neighbouring town after
harvest "to visit the immoral women." "They used to spend as much as 5
yen," said our headman. He had started worthier forms of after-harvest
relaxation, and "the cost of the amusement days is now only 50 or 60
sen."

When we got on the main line again and pursued our way farther north,
it was through even stouter snow shelters and through many tunnels.
Not a few miserable dwellings were to be seen as we passed into Akita
prefecture. We broke our journey after some hours' travelling to stay
the night at a rather primitive hot spring inn four or five miles up
in the hills. A slight rain was falling. Four passengers at a time
made the ascent to the hotel, squatting on a mat in an old
contractor's wagon, pushed along roughly laid rails by two perspiring
youths in rain-cloaks of bark strips. At the inn, on going to the
bath, I found therein a miscellaneous collection of people of both
sexes from grandparents to grandchildren. One bather enlivened us by
performances on the flute, which, if a musical instrument must be
played in a bath, seems as suitable as any. In this rambling inn there
were many farmers who, by preparing their own food and doing for
themselves generally, were holiday-making at bedrock prices.

As it was the _Bon_ season, when the spirits of the dead are supposed
to return, I was a witness of the method adopted to help the ghosts to
find their old homes. At the top of a 30 or 40 ft. pole a lantern is
fixed with a pulley. Fastened up beside the lantern is a bunch of
green stuff, cryptomeria in many cases. The lantern is lighted each
evening for a week. Having heard a good deal about the suppression of
_Bon_ dances and songs I was interested when a fellow-guest began
talking about them. He had seen many _Bon_ dances and had heard many
_Bon_ songs. There can be no doubt that there has been some
unenlightened interference with the _Bon_ gathering. The country
people seem to be suffering from the determination of officialdom to
make an end of everything in country as well as town that may be
considered "uncivilised" by any foreigner, however ill instructed. In
towns the sexes are not accustomed to meet, but country people must
work together; therefore they find it natural to dance and sing
together. As to the _Bon_ songs, it is common sense that expressions
which may be regarded as outrageous and indecent in a drawing-room may
not be so terrible on a hilltop among rustics used to very plain
speech and to easy recognition of natural facts that are veiled from
townspeople. My chance acquaintance at the inn recited a number of
_Bon_ songs and next morning brought me some more that he had
remembered and had been kind enough to write down. They merely
established the fact that bucolic wit is as elemental in Japan as in
other lands. Most of the songs had a Rabelaisian touch, some were
nasty, but nearly all had wit. The following is an entirely harmless
example:

        Mr. Potato of the Countryside
        Got his new European suit.
        But a potato is still a potato.
        He took one and a half _rin_[161] out of his bag
        And bought _amé_[162] and licked at it.

Here are three others:

        Tip-toe, tip-toe,
        Creaks the floor.
        Girl made prayer,
        Dreading ghost.
        But 'twas her lover
        Who stealthily came.

        Dancer, dancer,
        Do not laugh at me.
        My dance is very bad,
        But I only began last year.

        How thin a thin-legged man may be
        If he does not take his _miso_ soup.[163]

The quality of these dramatic songs will be entirely missed if the
reader does not bear in mind the mimetic skill of the amateur Japanese
dancer and his power as a contortionist. Clever dancers often use
their powers in a humorous pretence of clumsiness. Of the freer sort
of songs I may quote two:

        Never buy vegetables in Third Street,[164]
        You'll lose 30 sen and your nose.

        Onions from a basket hanging in the _benjo_[165]
        Were cooked in _miso_[166] and given to a blind man,
        But that chap was greatly delighted.

Some of the other songs may be described, I suppose, as obscene, if
obscene be, as the dictionary says, "something which delicacy, purity
and decency forbid to be exposed"; but "delicacy, purity and decency"
must be considered in relation to climate, work and social usage. What
one feels about some critics of _Bon_ songs and dances is that they
need a course of _The Golden Bough_. Such an illustration as _Bon_
songs furnish of the moral and mental conditions from which country
folk must raise themselves is of value if rural sociology is a real
thing. There is far too much theorising about the countryman and the
countrywoman, far too much idealising of them and far too much rating
of them as clods. If country people of all lands are free-spoken let
us be neither hypercritical nor hypocritical. A big gap seems to yawn
between the paddy-field peasant in his breech clout and the immaculate
clubman, but what difference is there between the savour of the
average _Bon_ song and of many a smoking-room jest which is not to the
credit of the peasant? At an inn in Naganoken a Japanese artist on
holiday showed me his sketch book. Among his drawings was a
representation of a shrine festival which he had witnessed in a remote
village. A festival car was being pushed by a knot of youths and by
about an equal number of young women and all of them were nude. But no
enlightened person believes that either decency or morals depends on
clothing, or would expect to find more essential indecency and
immorality in that village than in a modern city. What one would
expect to find would be marriages between physically well-developed
men and women.

How the race moves on is shown in the famous tale of a saintly Zen
priest which I first heard in that little hill inn but was afterwards
to see in dramatic form on the stage of a Tokyo theatre. An unmarried
girl in the village in which the priest's temple was situated was
about to have a child. She would not confess to her angry father the
name of her lover. At last she attributed her condition to the greatly
honoured priest. Her father was astonished but he was also glad that
his daughter was in the favour of so eminent a man. So he went to the
priest and said that he brought him good tidings: the girl whom he had
deigned to notice was about to have a child. The father went on to
express at length his sense of obligation to the priest for the honour
done to his family. All the priest said in reply was, _So desuka_? (Is
that so?) Soon after the birth of the child the girl besought her
father to marry her to a certain young farmer. The father, proud of
the association with the priest, refused. Finally the girl told her
parent that it was not the priest but the young farmer who was the
father of her child. The parent was aghast and chagrined as he
recalled the terms in which he had addressed the saintly man. He
betook himself at once to the temple and expressed in many words his
feelings of shame and deep contrition. The priest heard him out, but
all he said was, _So desuka_?

Yamagata signifies "shape of a mountain" and Akita means "autumn rice
field." Although Akita prefecture is mountainous there is a greater
proportion of level land in it than in Yamagata. I find "Rice, rice,
rice" written in my notebook. An agricultural expert gave me to
understand that fifteen per cent. of the farmers were probably living
on rents or on the dividends of silk factories, that 55 or 60 per
cent. were of the middle grade with an annual income of 300 yen, that
25 or 30 per cent. had about 150 yen--the lowest sum on which a family
could be supported--and that there were 3 or 4 per cent. of farm
labourers who earned less than 150 yen. There had been much paddy
adjustment and the prefecture was spending 300,000 yen a year for the
encouragement of adjustment and the opening of new paddies. In the
case of newly opened fields, tenants had contracts, but ordinary
tenancies were by word of mouth generation after generation. A great
deal of agricultural instruction was given by the prefecture, the
counties and the villages, and in 30 years the rice crop had been
doubled although the area had remained about the same. In order to
secure help in the work of rural amelioration a gathering of Buddhist
priests and another of Shinto priests had been lectured to at the
prefectural office. Nearly 300,000 yen had been spent in twelve months
on afforestation. The following year a special effort was to be made
to spend 500,000 yen. A society raised young trees and sold them at
cheap rates to farmers. Every young men's association in the
prefecture had land and had planted trees. It was in Akita that I
first saw peat in Japan. There are said to be 7,000 acres of it in the
country.

The prefecture of Aomori forms the northern tip of the mainland. Apart
from its enormous forest area and the railroad stacks of sawn lumber,
what caught my eye were the apple orchards and the number of farmers
on horseback or seated in wagons. Who that has been in Japan has not a
memory of narrow winding roads along which men and women and young
people are pulling and pushing carts? Here many farming folk rode. I
was told that Akita produced apples and potatoes to the value of a
million yen each and that there were ten co-operative apple societies.
Much of the fruit went to Russia.

Having passed through the city of Aomori we started to come down the
east coast. An agricultural authority said that the net profit of a
dry farm, that is a farm without any paddy, was almost negligible.
Because of low prices, cattle keeping had decreased to half what it
used to be. (The only cattle I saw from the train were on the road
with harness on their backs.) Only 18 yen could be got for a
two-year-old; the Aomori cattle were indeed the cheapest in Japan. The
expert added, "There are no buyers; only robbers."

But the dealers were not the only robbers. Boats came from Hokkaido
and stole cattle from the prefecture to the number of a hundred a
year. Sometimes horses were taken too, but horse thefts were rare
"because you cannot kill a horse and sell it for meat." The average
price of a two-year-old not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was
a little less in the next prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.) Half
of the stallions belonging to the "Bureau of Horse Politics" of the
Ministry of Agriculture were bought in Aomori.

The farmers by the lake that we passed on our way south were described
as "very poor," for their soil was barren and their climate bad. Their
crops were only a third of what could be raised in another part of the
prefecture. The agriculture of all the prefectures through which I now
journeyed south to Tokyo suffer from the cold temperature of the sea.
The east-coast temperature drops in winter to 7 degrees below
freezing.[167] "Living is more and more difficult," said someone to
me. "The number of tenants increases because farmers get into debt and
have to sell their land. Millet and buckwheat are much eaten. Although
the temperature is 5 per cent. colder in Hokkaido, the people do worse
here because our soil is barren and there is no profitable winter
occupation like lumbering. Only 10 per cent. of the rural population
save anything. In bad times 65 per cent. of the families get into
debt."

At Morioka in Iwate prefecture I visited the excellent higher
agricultural college, where there were 300 students. The competition
for places, as at every educational institution in Japan, was keen.
The number who sat at the last entrance examinations--the average age
was twenty--was 317, of whom only 80 got in. There were 15 professors
and 10 assistants. The charge to students was 300 yen for a year of
ten months. The annual cost of the college to the Government was
70,000 yen. Of the foreign volumes among the 20,000 books in the
library 50 per cent. were German, 30 per cent. English and 20 per
cent. American.

An apiary of a single skep in a roped-off enclosure was an
illustration of unfamiliarity with bees. It seemed strange to find
that in this up-to-date and efficient institution the biggest
implement for cutting grass which was in use, a sickle of course, had
a blade no longer than 8 inches. Hung up at the back of a shed I
noticed a rusty scythe. When I tried to show what it could do it was
suggested that the implement was "too heavy, too difficult and too
dangerous."

Iwate is the poorest of the northern prefectures, for bad weather so
often comes when the rice is in flower. As many as 40 per cent. of the
people were just making ends meet. Another 40 per cent. were always
dogged by poverty. Millet was the food of 10 per cent. of the farmers;
millet, salted vegetables and bean soup were the meagre diet of 5 per
cent; the staple food of the remainder was barley and rice. There are
few temples in Iwate compared with the rest of Japan. "Education is
more backward than in other prefectures," someone said. "The farmers
are not able. Too much _saké_ is drunk." Farmers come in to Morioka to
sell charcoal and wood and I saw some of them turning into the _saké_
shops.

There was talk in praise of millet. Though low socially in the dietary
of Japan, it has merits. It withstands cold and even salt spray. It
ripens earlier than rice and so may sometimes be harvested before a
spell of bad weather. It yields well, it will store for some time, its
taste is "little inferior to rice and better than that of barley" and
it contains more protein than rice. It is cooked after slight
polishing and the straw provides fodder. "In the north-east, where
millet is most eaten," I was told, "there are people who are 5 ft. 10
ins. to 6 ft. and there are many wrestlers." The seeds in the handsome
heavy ears of millet are about the size of the letter O in the
footnote type of this book.

In the train a farmer who knew the prefecture spoke of _Bon_ songs
and dances: "The result of the action against them was not good. The
meeting of young men and women at the _Bon_ gatherings was in their
minds half the year in prospect and half in retrospect. Bearing in
mind the condition of the people, even the worst _Bon_ songs are not
objectionable. But when the people become educated some songs will be
objectionable."

Visitors to a poor prefecture like Miyagi must be surprised to see so
much adjusted paddy. There is more adjusted paddy in Miyagi than in
any other prefecture. Some 90,000 acres have been taken in hand and a
large amount of money has been spent. The work has been carried out
largely by way of giving wages to farmers during famine. A new tunnel
brought water to 6,000 acres. "The bad climate of Miyagi cannot be
mended," I was told; "all that can be done is to seek for the earliest
varieties of rice, to sow early, to work as diligently as possible and
to deal with floods by embanking the rivers and by tree planting." As
many as 7,000 people go from Miyagi to Hokkaido in a year. It seems to
point to a certain amount of fecklessness that 15 per cent. of them
return.

One man I spoke with during my journey south gave a vivid impression
of the influence of young men's associations. "Before they started,"
said he, "the young men spent their time in singing indecent songs, in
gambling, in talking foolishly, and twice or thrice a year in
immorality. A young widow has sometimes been at fault; the
parents-in-law need her help and village sentiment is against her
remarriage. The suppression of _Bon_ dances has done more harm than
good by keeping out of sight what used to be said and done
openly[168]. Two or three priests are active in this prefecture. Where
the Shinshu sect is strong you will find little divorce. But the
influence of Buddhism has been stationary in recent years. There is
some action by missionaries of the Japanese Christian church, but the
number of Christians among real rustics is very small."

At Sendai it was pleasant to see a prefectural office--or most of
it--housed in a Japanese building instead of a dreadful edifice "in
Western style." In feudal times the building was a school. Portraits
of daimyos and famous scholars of the Sendai clan surround the
Governor's room, and adjoining it is the _tatami_-covered apartment in
which the daimyo used to sit when he was present at the examinations.
Among the portraits is one of a retainer which was painted in Rome,
where he had been sent on a mission of inquiry.

[Illustration: A SCARECROW.--A SKETCH BY PROFESSOR NASU.]

In his scarecrow-making the Japanese farmer seems to have great faith
in the Western-style cap, felt hat, or even umbrella, if he can get
hold of one. Ordinarily, the bogey man has a bow with the arrow
strung. Occasionally a farmer seeks to scare birds by means of
clappers which he places in the hands of a child or an old man who
sits in a rough shelter raised high enough to overtop the rice. Now
and then there is a clapper connected with a string to the farm-house.
I have also seen a row of bamboos carried across a paddy field with a
square piece of wood hanging loosely against each one. A rope
connecting all the bamboos with one another was carried to the
roadway, and now and then a passer-by of a benevolent disposition, or
with nothing better to do, or, it may be, standing in some degree of
relationship to the paddy-field proprietor, gave the rope a tug. Then
all the bamboos bent, and as they smartly straightened themselves
caused the clappers to give forth a sound sufficiently agitating to
sparrow pillagers in several paddies.

On leaving Miyagi we were once more in Fukushima, with notes on which
this account of a trip to the north of Japan and back again began.
This time, instead of journeying by routes through the centre of the
prefecture, as in coming north, or as in the visit paid to Fukushima
in the Tokyo-to-Niigata journey, I travelled along the sea coast. When
we had passed through Fukushima we were in Ibaraki, a characteristic
feature of which is swamps. Drainage operations have been going on
since the time of the Shogunate. There is in this prefecture the
biggest production of beans in Japan, and we have come far enough
south to see tea frequently. In the lower half of the prefecture we
are in the great Kwanto plain, the prefectures in which are most
conveniently surveyed from Tokyo.

FOOTNOTES:

[160] Some Yamagata notes and those relating to Akita are conveniently
included in this Chapter, but these two prefectures are on the west
coast.

[161] A _rin_ is the tenth part of a sen, which in its turn is a
farthing.

[162] A kind of barley sugar.

[163] Bean soup.

[164] A street in Akita in which many prostitutes live.

[165] Closet.

[166] Bean paste.

[167] The warm black current from the south flows up the east and west
coasts. Some distance north of Tokyo, the east-coast current meets the
cold Oyashiro current from Kamchatka, and is turned off towards
America.

[168] See _A Free Farmer in a Free State_, pp. 173-4, for an account
of the custom in Zeeland by which peasants preserved themselves from
the calamity of childless marriage.




CHAPTER XXIII

A MIDNIGHT TALK

True religion is a relation, accordant with reason and knowledge, which
man establishes with the infinite life surrounding him, and it is such as
binds his life to that infinity, and guides his conduct.--TOLSTOY


One of the most instructive experiences I had during my rural journeys
occurred one night when I was staying at a country inn. At a late hour
I was told that the Governor of the prefecture was in a room overhead.
I had called on him a few days before in his prefectural capital. He
was a large daimyo-like figure, dignified and courteous, but seemingly
impenetrable. There was no depth in our talk. His aloof and
uncommunicative manner was deterring, but by this time I had learnt
the elementary lesson of unending patience and freedom from hasty
judgment that is the first step to an advance in knowledge of another
race. I felt that I should like to know more about the man inside this
Excellency. No one had told me anything of his life.

Now that he was in the same inn with me it was Japanese good manners
to pay him a visit. So I went upstairs with my travelling companion,
telling him on the way that we should not remain more than five
minutes. We were wearing our bath kimonos. The Governor was also at
his ease in one of these garments. He was kneeling at a low table
reading. We knelt at the other side, spoke on general topics, asked
one or two questions and began to take our leave. On this the Governor
said that he would like very much to ask me in turn some questions. We
spoke together until one in the morning, his Excellency continually
expressing his unwillingness for us to go. He spoke rapidly and with
such earnestness that I was balked of understanding what he said
sentence by sentence. The next day my companion wrote out a summary
of what the Governor had said and I had tried to say in reply. As a
brief report of a talk of three hours' duration it is plainly
imperfect. The artless account is of some interest, however, because
it furnishes an impression at once of an engaging simplicity and
sincerity in the Japanese character and of the pressure of Western
ideas.

_Governor_: "There have died lately my mother, my wife and one of my
daughters. Some of my officials come to me and ask what consolation I
am getting. What do I feel at first when such things happen? Am I
content under such misfortune? I feel that I should be happy if I
could believe something and tell it to them. I am tormented by the
conflict of my scientific and religious feelings. How is the relation
of science and religion in your mind? Are you tormented or are you
composed and peaceful even when meeting such misfortune as mine?"

_Myself_: "It is certain that it is not well to torment ourselves, for
grief is loss.[169] As to science, it did not drive away religion.
Science seeks after truth in all matters, but there are truths which
are to be searched out through our feeling, conscience and instinct.
Religion has to do with these truths. It is quite good for religion if
all superstition, dogma and ignorance are cleared away by science.
Concerning a future life, we are hampered in our thinking by our
traditions, prejudices, deep ignorance and poor mental strength and
training; and much energy is needed in the world for present service.
Some have thought of an immortality which is that a man's sincere
influence, his unselfish manifestations, those things which are the
essence of a man's existence, will live on; in other words, that the
best of a life is immortal; but not in the way of ghosts. As to the
memory, example and achievement of the dead it is sure that we are
aided by them."

_Governor_: "If we sacrifice ourselves for the public good it is the
best that we can do in this world. But are you composed at the sad
news concerning the _Lusitania_? If you think that event was directed
by divine destiny then you can be composed and may not complain."

_Myself_: "Such an accident may only be by divine destiny in the sense
that everything in this world, the saddest misery, the greatest
misfortunes, are suffered in the development of mankind, so that even
this War is unquestionably for the final betterment of the whole
world."

_Governor_: "Please say what is God."

_Myself_: "'If I could tell you what God is, I should be God myself.'
Many of my own countrymen have been taught that God is 'Spirit,
infinite, eternal, unchangeable in His Being, wisdom, power, holiness,
justice, goodness and truth.' There are those who would say that God
may be the total developing or bettering energy, and that we are all
part of God. Some people have a more personal conception of God, the
sum of all goodness. May not his Excellency consider the peasant's
idea of a Governor of a prefecture? The peasant's idea of a Governor
is greater than that of any particular Governor. His Excellency's good
works are not done by himself alone, but by all the good energies
inherent in the Governorship. Those energies are unseen but real. The
Japanese army and navy triumphed by the virtue of the Emperor--by the
virtue of ideas."

_Governor_: "The thought of _Sensei_[170] is quite Oriental."

_Myself_: "All religions are from Asia."

_Governor_: "This world where stars move, flowers blossom and decay,
spring and autumn come, and people are born and die is too full of
mystery, but I can feel some intelligence working through it though
incomprehensible."

_Myself_: "Alas, people will try to explain that
incomprehensibleness."

_Governor_: "What you have said is what I have been accepting to this
day. It satisfies my reason, but I feel in my heart something lacking.
I seek for a warmer interpretation of the world, for a more heartfelt
relation with cosmos. Several of my officials themselves lost their
dear children recently. They cannot with heart and brain accept their
loss, and they ask my direction."

_Myself_: "In the New Testament one thing is taught, God is Love. We
can be composed if we feel that God is love. The Gospel of John is the
most tender story in the world."

_Governor_: "It may be difficult for all people to come to the same
point and agree altogether. We must solve a great problem by
ourselves."

_Myself_: "We have opportunities of doing some good works in this
life. Therefore we must go on till we die and we must be content at
being able to do something good, directly or indirectly, in however
small measure. 'Earth is not as thou ne'er hadst been,' wrote an
Englishwoman poet of great scientific ability[171] who died while yet
a young woman."

_Governor_: "I think of Napoleon dying tormented on St. Helena, and
the peaceful attitude of Socrates though being poisoned by enemies.
But Socrates had done many good things, yet he was poisoned."

_Myself_: "Socrates had done what he could for his country and the
world, yet by his brave death he could add one thing more."[172]

The Governor said that he "got comfort from our talk," but this did
not perfectly reassure me. The next evening, however, I found a
parboiled Governor alone in the bath and he greeted me very warmly.
Without our interpreter we could say nothing that mattered, but we
were glad of this further meeting in the friendly hot water. It seemed
that our midnight talk would be memorable to both of us.

It is convenient to copy out here the following dicta on religion and
morals which were delivered to me at various times during my journeys:

A. "The weakest deterrent influence among us is, 'It is wrong.' A
stronger deterrent influence is, 'Heaven will punish you.' The
strongest deterrent influence of all is, 'Everybody will laugh at
you.'"

B. "In Japan all religions have been turned into sentiment or
æstheticism."

C. (_after speaking appreciatively of the ideas animating many
Japanese Christians_): "All the same I do not feel quite safe about
trusting the future of Japan to those people."

D. "We Japanese have never been spiritually gifted. We are neither
meditative and reflective like the Hindus nor individualistic like the
Anglo-Saxons. Nevertheless, like all mankind we have spiritual
yearnings. They will be best stirred by impulses from without."

E. (_in answer to my enquiry whether a Quakerism which compromised on
war, as John Brights male descendants had done, might not gain many
adherents in Japan_): "Other sects may have a smaller ultimate chance
than Quakerism. One mistake made by the Quakers was in going to work
first among the poorer classes. The Quakers ought to have begun with
the intellectual classes, for every movement in Japan is from the
top."

F. "You will notice what a number of the gods of Japan are deified
men. There is a good side to the earth earthy, but many Japanese seem
unable to worship anything higher than human beings. The readiest key
to the religious feeling of the Japanese is the religious life of the
Greeks. The more I study the Greeks the more I see our resemblance to
them in many ways, in all ways, perhaps, except two, our lack of
philosophy and our lack of physical comeliness."

G. "As to uncomeliness there are several Japanese types. The refined
type is surely attractive. If many Japanese noses seem to be too
short, foreigners' noses seem to us to be too long. The results of
intermarriage between Western people and Japanese who are of equal
social and educational status and of good physique should be closely
watched."

H. "In our schools an hour or two a week is reserved for culture, but
the true spirit of culture is lacking. The Imperial Rescript on
education is very good moral doctrine, but the real life's aim of many
of us is to be well off, to have an automobile, to become a Baron or
to extend the Empire. We do not ask ourselves, 'For what reason?'"

I. "I conduct certain classes which the clerks of my bank must attend.
The teaching I give is based on Confucian, Christian and Buddhist
principles. I try to make the young men more manful. I constantly urge
upon them that 'you must be a man before you can be a clerk.'"

J. (_a septuagenarian ex-daimyo_): "Confucianism is the basis of my
life, but twice a month I serve at my Shinto shrine and I conduct a
Buddhist service in my house morning and evening. It is necessary to
make the profession that Buddha saves us. I do not believe in
paradise. It is paradise if when I die I have a peaceful mind due to a
feeling that I have done my duty in life and that my sons are not bad
men. Unless I am peaceful on my deathbed I cannot perish but must
struggle on. Therefore my sons must be good. I myself strove to be
filial and I have always said to my sons, 'Fathers may not be fathers
but sons must be sons.'"

K. (_the preceding speaker's son expressing his opinion on another
occasion_): "My father as a Confucian is kind to people negatively. We
want to be kind positively because it is right to be kind. As to
filial obedience, even fathers may err; we are righteous if we are
right. My father is a Shintoist because it is our national custom. He
wants to respect his ancestors in a wide sense and he desires that
Japan, his family and his crops may be protected."

L. "I wish foreigners had a juster idea about 'idols'. There is a
difference between frequenters of the temples believing the figures to
be holy and believing them to be gods. Every morning my mother serves
before her shrine of Buddha but she does not believe our Buddha to be
God. She would not soil or irreverently handle our Buddha, but it is
only holy as a symbol, as an image of a holy being. My mother has said
to me, 'Buddha is our father. He looks after us always; I cannot but
thank him. If there be after life Buddha will lead me to Paradise.
There is no reason to beg a favour.' My mother is composed and
peaceful. All through her life she has met calamities and troubles
serenely. I admire her very much. She is a good example of how
Buddha's influence makes one peaceful and spiritual. But such
religious experience may not be grasped from the outside by
foreigners."

M. "When I am in a temple or at a shrine I realise its value in
concentrating attention. The daily domestic service before the shrine
in the house also ensures some religious life daily. Many of my
countrymen no doubt regard religion as superstition; they know little
of spiritual life. For some of them patriotism or humanitarian
sentiments or eagerness to seek after scientific truth takes the place
of religion. Most men think that they can never comprehend the cosmos
and say, 'We may believe only what we can prove. Let us follow not
after preachers but after truth.' I believe with your Western
philosophers who say that the cosmos is not perfect but that it is
moving towards perfection. Many think that this War shows that the
cosmos is not perfect. Spiritual life is living according to one's
purest consciousness. But what is of first importance is our actions.
It is not enough merely to strive after moral development. One must
strive after economic and social development. Some religious people
think only of the spiritual life and have no sympathy with economics.
The labours of such religious people must be of small value."

In later Chapters the views of other thoughtful Japanese are noted
down as they were communicated to me.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] "The strength that is given at such times arises not from
ignoring loss or persuading oneself that the thing is not that _is_,
but from the resolute setting of the face to the East and the taking
of one step forwards. Anything that detaches one, that makes one turn
from the past and look simply at what one has to do, brings with it
new strength and new intensity of interest."--HALDANE.

[170] Teacher, instructor, master, or a polite way of saying
"You"--the usual title by which I was addressed.

[171] Constance Naden.

[172] "The _Phaedo_ was bought for us by the death of
Socrates."--QUILLER COUCH.

[Illustration: THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS COLLECTING-BAG.]

[Illustration: MR. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONATION CEREMONY ROBES.]

[Illustration: PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR RAISING WATER.]

[Illustration: VILLAGE SCHOOL WITH PORTRAIT OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.]

[Illustration: RIVER-BEDS IN THE SUMMER From which may be imagined
the power of the water in time of flood.]




THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

CHAPTER XXIV

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA"
(TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KAGAWA)

The most capital article, the character of the inhabitants.--TYTLER


In travelling southwards I noticed between Kyoto and Osaka that farms
were being irrigated from wells in the primitive way by means of the
weighted swinging pole and bucket. Along the coast to the south,
indeed as far as Hiroshima, there have been great gains from the sea,
and in the neighbourhood of Kobe there are three parallel roads which
mark successive recoveries of land. Before crossing the Inland Sea at
Okayama to Shikoku (area about 1,000 square miles) I visited one of
the new settlements on recovered land. The labour available from a
family was reckoned as equal to that of two men, and as much as 4 to 5
_chō_ was allotted to each house. It will be seen how much larger is
this area--5 _chō_ is 12-1/2 acres--than the average Japanese farming
family must be content with, a little less than 3 acres. The company
supplied houses, seeds, manures, etc., and after all expenses were met
the workers were allowed 25 per cent, of the net income of their
summer crop and 35 per cent, of the net income of their second crop.
The cultivation was directed by the company. There had been 300
applications for the last twenty houses built. An experiment station
was maintained, and a campaign against a rice borer had been of
benefit to the amount of about 10,000 yen. I found the company's
winnowing machine discharging its chaff into the furnace of the
rice-drying apparatus.

One of the experts of the company came with me for some distance in
the train in order to discuss some of his problems. He thought
agricultural work could be done in less back-breaking ways. He wanted
a small threshing machine which would be suitable not only for
threshing small quantities of rice or corn but for easy conveyance
along the narrow and easily damaged paths between the rice fields. If
he had such a machine he would like to improve it so that it would lay
out the threshed straw evenly, so making the straw more valuable for
the many uses to which it is put. He wished to see a machine invented
for planting out rice seedlings and another contrivance devised for
drying wheat. The company's rice-drying machine handled 200 _koku_ of
rice a day, but there were difficulties in drying wheat. (In many
places I noticed the farmers drying their corn by the primitive method
of singeing it and thus spoiling it.)[173]

On the Inland Sea, aboard the smart little steamer of the Government
Railways, my companion spoke of the extent to which sea-faring men, a
conservative class, had abandoned the use of the single square sail
which one sees in Japanese prints; the little vessels had been
re-rigged in Western fashion. But many superstitions had survived the
abolished square sails. The mother of my fellow-traveller once told
him that, when she crossed the Inland Sea in an old-style ship and a
storm arose, the shipmaster earnestly addressed the passengers in
these words, "Somebody here must be unclean; if so, please tell me
openly." The title of the book my companion was reading was _The
History of the Southern Savage_. Who was the "Southern Savage"? The
word is _namban_, the name given to the early Portuguese and Spanish
voyagers to Japan. (The Dutch were called _komojin_, red-haired men.)
In looking through the official railway guide on the boat I saw that
there was a list of specially favourable places for viewing the moon.
An M.P. passenger told me that the average cost of getting returned to
the Diet was 10,000 yen[174].

The difficulties of communication in Shikoku are so considerable that
I was compelled to leave the two prefectures of Tokushima and Kochi
unvisited. Kochi is without a yard of railway line. In the prefecture
of Ehime most of my journey had to be made by _kuruma_. Communication
between the four prefectures of Shikoku--the one in which I landed was
Kagawa--is largely conducted by coasting steamers and sailing craft.
An interesting thing in Kochi is the area by the sea in which two
crops of rice are grown in the year. Tokushima holds a leading place
in the production of indigo. At one place in the hills the adventurous
have the satisfaction of crossing a river by means of suspension
bridges made of vine branches.

The streets of Takamatsu, the capital of Kagawa, are many of them so
narrow that the shopkeepers on either side have joint sun screens
which they draw right across the thoroughfares. Here I found the carts
hauled by a smallish breed of cow. The placid animals are handier in a
narrow place and less expensive than horses. They are shod, like their
drivers, in _waraji_. In Shikoku the cow or ox is generally used in
the paddies instead of the horse. "It is slower but strong and can
plough deep," one agricultural expert said. "It eats cheaper food than
the horse, which moves too fast in a small paddy. Cows and oxen are
probably not working for more than seventy-five or eighty days in the
year."

At Takamatsu I had the opportunity of visiting a daimyo's castle. I
was impressed by its strength not only because of the wide moats but
because of the series of earthen fortifications faced with cyclopean
stonework through which an invading force must wind its way. There was
within the walls a surprisingly large drilling ground for troops and
also an extensive drug garden. The present owner of the castle
proposed to build here a library and a museum for the town. I was glad
of the opportunity to ascend one of the high pagoda-like towers so
familiar in Japanese paintings. I was disillusioned. Instead of
finding myself in beautiful rooms for the enjoyment of marvellous
views and sea breezes I had to clamber over the roughest cob-webbed
timbers. One storey was connected with another by a stair of rude
planking. Such pagodas were built only for their military value as
lookouts and for their delightful appearance from the outside.

The town now enjoyed as a park of more than ten acres the grounds of a
subsidiary residence of the daimyo. The magnificent trees, with lakes,
rivulets and hills fashioned with infinite art,[175] and the
background of natural hill and woodland, made in all a possession
which exhibited the delectable possibilities of Japanese gardening. An
occasional electric light amid the trees gave an effect in the evening
in which Japanese delight. Some of the old carp which dashed up to the
bridges when they heard our footsteps seemed to be not far short of 3
ft. long.

Except for a small patch of sugar cane in Shidzuoka--it is grown
practically on the sea beach where it is visible from the express--the
visitor to Japan may never see sugar cane until Shikoku is reached.
The value of the crop in the whole island is about 800,000 yen. The
tall cane is conspicuous alongside the more diminutive rice. In this
prefecture an experiment is being made in growing olives.

Kagawa is remarkable in having had until lately 30,000 pond reservoirs
for the irrigation of rice fields. Under the new system of rice-field
adjustment many of the ponds are joined together. Because in Shikoku
flat tracts of land or tracts that can be made flat are limited in
number the farmers have to be content with small pieces of land. The
average area of farm in Kagawa outside the mountainous region is less
than two acres. When the farms are near the sea, as they commonly are,
the agriculturists may also be fishermen.

The number of place names ending in _ji_ (temple) proclaims the former
flourishing condition of Buddhism. Shikoku is a great resort of
white-clothed pilgrims. Sometimes it is a solitary man whom one sees
on the road, sometimes a company of men, occasionally a family. Not
seldom the pilgrim or his companion is manifestly suffering from some
affection which the pilgrimage is to cure. In the old days it was not
unusual to send the victim of "the shameful disease" or of an
incurable ailment on a pilgrimage from shrine to shrine or temple to
temple. He was not expected to return. In Shikoku there are
eighty-eight temples to Buddha and the founder of the Shingon sect,
and it is estimated that it would mean a 760 miles' journey to visit
them all.

We went off our route at one point where my companion wished to visit
a gorgeous shrine. A guidebook said that people flocked there "by the
million," but what I was told was that last year's attendance was
80,000. The street leading to the approach to the shrine was in a
series of steps. On either side were the usual shops with piled-up
mementoes in great variety and of no little ingenuity, and also, on
spikes, little stacks of _rin_--the old copper coin with a square hole
through the middle--into which the economical devotee takes care to
exchange a few sen. We climbed to the shrine when twilight was coming
on. At the point where the series of street steps ended there began a
new series of about a thousand steps belonging to the shrine. A
thousand granite steps may be tiring after a hot day's travel in a
_kuruma_. All the way up to the shrine there were granite pillars
almost brand new, first short ones, then taller, then taller still,
and after these a few which topped the tallest. They were
conspicuously inscribed with the names of donors to the shrine. A
small pillar was priced at 10 yen. What the big, bigger and biggest
cost I do not know. I turned from the pillars to the stone lanterns.
"They burn cedar wood, I believe," said my companion. But soon
afterwards I saw a man working at them with a length of electric-light
wire.

The great shrine was impressive in the twilight. There was a platform
near, and from it we looked down from the tree-covered heights through
the growing darkness. Where the lights of the town twinkled there was
a subsidiary shrine. A bare-headed, kimono-clad sailor stepped forward
near us and bowed his head to some semblance of deity down there.
Various fishermen had brought the anchors of their ships and the oars
of their boats to show forth their thankfulness for safety at sea. In
the murkiness I was just able to pick out the outlines of a bronze
horse which stands at the shrine, "as a sort of scape-goat," my
companion explained. "It is probably Buddhist," he said; "but you can
never be sure; these priests embellish the history of their temples
so."

It was at the inn in the evening that someone told me that in the town
which is dependent on the shrine there were "a hundred prostitutes,
thirty geisha and some waitresses." Late at night I had a visit from a
man in a position of great responsibility in the prefecture. He was at
a loss to know what could be done for morality. "Religion is not
powerful," he said, "the schools do not reach grown-up people, the
young men's societies are weak, many sects and new moralities are
attacking our people, and there are many cheap books of a low class."

Next day I laid this view before a group of landlords. They did not
reply for a little and my skilful interpreter said, "they are thinking
deeply." At length one of them delivered himself to this effect:
"Landowners hereabouts are mostly of a base sort. They always consider
things from a material and personal point of view. But if they are
attacked and made to act more for the public good it may have an
effect on rural conditions which are now low."

I enquired about the new sects of Buddhism and Shintoism, for there
had been pointed out to me in some villages "houses of new religions."
"New religions in many varieties are coming into the villages," I was
told, "and extravagant though they may be are influencing people. The
adherents seem to be moral and modest, and they pay their taxes
promptly. There is a so-called Shinto sect which was started twenty
years ago by an ignorant woman. It has believers in every part of
Japan. It is rather communistic."[176] None of the landlords who
talked with me believed in the possibility of a "revival of Buddhism."
One of them noted that "people educated in the early part of Meiji are
most materialistic. It is a sorrowful circumstance that the officials
ask only materialistic questions of the villagers."

I asked one of the landlords about his tenants. He said that his
"largest tenant" had no more than 1.3 _tan_ of paddy. It was explained
that "tenants are obedient to the landowner in this prefecture." Under
the system of official rewards which exists in Japan, 1,086 persons in
the prefecture had been "rewarded" by a kind of certificate of merit
and nine with money--to the total value of 26 yen.

When I drew attention to the fact that the manufacture of _saké_ and
_soy_ seemed to be frequently in the hands of landowners it was
explained to me that formerly this was their industry exclusively.
Even now "whereas an ordinary shop-keeper is required by etiquette to
say 'Thank you' to his customer, a purchaser of _saké_ or _soy_ says
'Thank you' to the shop-keeper."

The flower arrangement in my room in the inn consisted of an effective
combination of _hagi_ (_Lespedeza bicolor_, a leguminous plant
which is grown for cattle and has been a favourite subject of Japanese
poetry), a cabbage, a rose, a begonia and leaf and a fir branch.

A landowner I chatted with in the train showed me that it was a
serious matter to receive the distinction of growing the millet for
use at the Coronation. One of his friends who was growing 5 _sh=o_,
the actual value of which might be 50 or 60 sen, was spending on it
first and last about 3,000 yen.

I enquired about the diversions of landowners. It is easy, of course,
to have an inaccurate impression of the extent of their leisure. Only
about 1 per cent, have more than 25 acres.[177] Therefore most of
these men are either farmers themselves or must spend a great deal of
time looking after their tenants. Still, some landowners are able to
take things rather easily. The landowners I interrogated marvelled at
the open-air habits of English landed proprietors. They were greatly
surprised when I told them of a countess who is a grandmother but
thinks nothing of a canter before breakfast. The mark of being well
off was often to stay indoors or at any rate within garden walls,
which necessarily enclose a very small area. (Hence the fact that one
object of Japanese gardening is to suggest a much larger space than
exists.) A good deal of time is spent "in appreciating fine arts."
Ceremonial tea drinking still claims no small amount of attention. (In
many gardens and in the grounds of hotels of any pretensions one comes
on the ostentatiously humble chamber for _Cha-no-yu_.) No doubt there
is among many landowners a considerable amount of drinking of
something stronger than tea, and not a few men sacrifice freely to
Venus. Perhaps the greatest claimant of all on the time of those who
have time to spare is the game of _go_, which is said to be more
difficult than chess. One cannot but remark the comparatively pale
faces of many landowners.

As we went along by the coast it was pointed out to me that it was
from this neighbourhood that some of the most indomitable of the
old-time pirates set sail on their expeditions to ravage the Chinese
coast. They visited that coast all the way from Vladivostock, now
Russian (and like to be Japanese), to Saigon, now French. There are
many Chinese books discussing effectual methods of repelling the
pirates. In an official Japanese work I once noticed, in the
enumeration of Japanese rights in Taiwan (Formosa), the naïve claim
that long ago it was visited by Japanese pirates! The Japanese
fisherman is still an intrepid person, and in villages which have an
admixture of fishing folk the seafarers, from their habit of following
old customs and taking their own way generally, are the constant
subject of rural reformers' laments.

I spent some time in a typical inland village. The very last available
yard of land was utilised. The cottages stood on plots buttressed by
stone, and only the well-to-do had a yard or garden; paddy came right
up to the foundations. Now that the rice was high no division showed
between the different paddy holdings. I noticed here that the round,
carefully concreted manure tank which each farmer possessed had a
reinforced concrete hood. I asked a landowner who was in a comfortable
position what societies there were in his village. He mentioned a
society "to console old people and reward virtue." Then there was the
society of householders, such as is mentioned in Confucius, which met
in the spring and autumn, and ate and drank and discussed local
topics "with open heart." There were sometimes quarrels due to
_saké_. Indeed, some villagers seemed to save up their differences
until the householders' meeting at its _saké_ stage. At householders'
meetings where there was no _saké_ peace appeared to prevail. The
householders' meeting was a kind of informal village assembly. That
assembly itself ordinarily met twice a year. There were in the
village, in addition to the householders' organisation, the usual
reservists' association, the young men's society and agricultural
association. As to _kō_, from philanthropic motives my informant was a
member of no fewer than ten.

My host told me that he spent a good deal of time in playing _go_, but
in the shooting season (October 15 to April 15) he made trips to the
hills and shot pheasants, hares, pigeons and deer. In the garden of
his house two gardeners were stretched along the branches of a pine
tree, nimbly and industriously picking out the shoots in order to get
that bare appearance which has no doubt puzzled many a Western student
of Japanese tree pictures. Each man's ladder--two lengths of bamboo
with rungs tied on with string--was carefully leant against a pole
laid from the ground through the branches. Many of the well-cared-for
trees in the gardens and public places of Japan pass the winter in
neat wrappings of straw.

I visited a farm-house and found the farmer making baskets. When I was
examining the winnowing machine my companion reminded me smilingly
that when he was a boy he was warned never to turn the wheel of the
winnowing machine when the contrivance had no grain in it or a demon
might come out. There was a properly protected tank of liquid manure
and a well-roofed manure house. The family bath in an open shed was of
a sort I had not seen before, a kind of copper with a step up to it.
Straw rope about three-quarters of an inch in diameter was being made
by the farmer's son, a day's work being 40 yds. At another farm a
woman showed me the working of a rough loom with which she could in a
day make a score of mats worth in all 60 sen. From the farmer's house
I went to the room of the young men's association and looked over its
library. I was impressed by the high level of civilisation which this
village seemed to exhibit in essentials.

When we continued our journey we saw two portable water wheels by
means of which water was being lifted into a paddy. Each wheel was
worked by a man who continually ascended the floats. The two men were
able to leave their wheels in turn for a rest, for a third man was
stretched on the ground in readiness for his spell. It seems that a
man can keep on the water tread-mill for an hour. The two wheels
together were lifting an amazing amount of water at a great rate. When
the pumping is finished one of these light water wheels is easily
carried home on a man's shoulders.

Farther on I saw in a dry river bed a man sieving gravel in an
ingenious way. The trouble in sieving gravel is that if the sieve be
filled to its capacity the shaking soon becomes tiring. This man had a
square sieve which when lying on the ground was attached at one side
by two ropes to a firmly fixed tripod of poles. When the sieve was
filled the labourer lifted it far enough away from the tripod for it
to be swinging on one side. Therefore when he shook the sieve he
sustained a portion only of its weight.

As we rode along I was told that the largest taxpayer in the county
"does not live in idleness but does many good works." The next largest
taxpayer "labours every day in the field." When I enquired as to the
recreations of moneyed men I was told "travelling, _go_ and poem
writing."

As we rode by the sea a trustworthy informant pointed out to me an
islet where he said the young men have the young women in common and
"give permission for them to marry." There is a house in which the
girls live together at a particular time and are then free from the
attentions of the youths. Children born are brought up in the families
of the mothers but there is some infanticide. In another little island
off the coast there are only two classes of people, the seniors and
the juniors. Any person senior to any other "may give him orders and
call him by his second name." (The surname comes first in Japanese
names.)

Our route led us along the track of the new railway line which was
penetrating from Kagawa into Ehime. Not for the first time on my
journeys was I told of the corrupting influence exerted on the
countryside by the imported "navvies," if our Western name may be
applied to men who in figure and dress look so little like the big
fellows who do the same kind of work in England. Although these
navvies were a rough lot and our ancient _basha_ (a kind of
four-wheeled covered carriage) was a thing for mirth, we met with no
incivility as we picked our way among them for a mile or two. I was a
witness indeed of a creditable incident. A handcart full of earth was
being taken along the edge of the roadway, with one man in the shafts
and another pushing behind. Suddenly a wheel slipped over the side of
the roadway, the cart was canted on its axle, the man in the shafts
received a jolt and the cargo was shot out. Had our sort of navvies
been concerned there would have been words of heat and colour. The
Japanese laughed.

The reference to our venerable _basha_ reminds me of a well-known
story which was once told me by a Japanese as a specimen of Japanese
humour. A _basha_, I may explain, has rather the appearance of a
vehicle which was evolved by a Japanese of an economical turn after
hearing a description of an omnibus from a foreigner who spoke very
little Japanese and had not been home for forty years. The body of the
vehicle is just high enough and the seats just wide enough for
Japanese. So the foreigner continually bumps the roof, and when he is
not bumping the roof he has much too narrow a seat to sit on.
Sometimes the _basha_ has springs of a sort and sometimes it has none.
But springs would avail little on the rural roads by which many
_basha_ travel. The only tolerable place for Mr. Foreigner in a
_basha_ is one of the top corner seats behind the driver, for the
traveller may there throw an arm round one of the uprights which
support the roof. If at an unusually hard bump he should lose his hold
he is saved from being cast on the floor by the responsive bodies of
his polite and sympathetic fellow-travellers who are embedded between
him and the door. The tale goes that a tourist who was serving his
term in a _basha_ was perplexed to find that the passengers were
charged, some first-, some second-and some third-class fare. While he
clung to his upright and shook with every lurch of the conveyance this
problem of unequal fares obsessed him. It was like the persistent
"punch-in-the-presence-of-the-passengare." What possible advantage, he
pondered, could he as first class be getting over the second and the
second class over the third? At length at a steep part of the road the
vehicle stopped. The driver came round, opened the door, and bowing
politely said: "Honourable first-class passengers will graciously
condescend to keep their seats. Second-class passengers will be good
enough to favour us by walking. Third-class passengers will kindly
come out and push." And push they did, no doubt, kimonos rolled up
thighwards, with good humour, sprightliness and cheerful grunts, as is
the way with willing workers in Japan.

FOOTNOTES:

[173] At Anjo agricultural experiment station I saw eighteen kinds of
small threshing machines at from 13 to 18 yen. There were husking
machines of three sorts. A rice thresher was equal to dealing with the
crop of one _tan_, estimated at 2 _koku_ 4 _to_, in three hours.

[174] See Appendix XLVI.

[175] It is quite possible that the trees had also come into their
positions artificially. There are no more skilful tree movers than the
Japanese.

[176] It has recently come into collision with the authorities.
Another sect with Shinto ideas was also started by a woman.

[177] See Appendix XLVII.




CHAPTER XXV

"SPECIAL TRIBES"

(EHIME)

A frank basis of reality.--Meredith


In the prefecture of Ehime our journey was still by _basha_ or
_kuruma_ and near the sea. The first man we talked with was a _gunchō_
who said that "more than half the villages contained a strong
character who can lead." He told us of one of the new religions which
taught its adherents to do some good deed secretly. The people who
accepted this religion mended roads, cleaned out ponds and made
offerings at the graves of persons whose names were forgotten. I think
it was this man who used the phrase, "There is a shortage of
religions."

I had not before noticed wax trees. They are slighter than apple
trees, but often occupy about the same space as the old-fashioned
standard apple. The clusters of berries have some resemblance to
elderberries and would turn black if they were not picked green.[178]
Occasionally we saw fine camphor trees. Alas, owing to the high price
of camphor, some beautiful specimens near shrines, where they were as
imposing as cryptomeria, had been sacrificed.

I began to observe the dreadful destruction wrought in the early ear
stage of rice not by cold but by wind. The wind knocks the plants
against one another and the friction generates enough heat to arrest
further development. The crops affected in this way were grey in
patches and looked as if hot water had been sprayed over them. In one
county the loss was put as high as 90 per cent. Happily farmers
generally sow several sorts of rice. Therefore paddies come into ear
at different times.

The heads of millet and the threshed grain of other upland crops were
drying on mats by the roadside, for in the areas where land is so much
in demand there is no other space available. Sesame, not unlike
snapdragon gone to seed, only stronger in build, was set against the
houses. On the growing crops on the uplands dead stalks and chopped
straw were being used as mulch.

I noticed that implements seemed always to be well housed and to be
put away clean. Handcarts, boats and the stacks of poles used in
making frameworks for drying rice were protected from the weather by
being thatched over.

We continued to see many white-clad pilgrims and everywhere touring
students, as often afoot as on bicycles. I noted from the registers at
many village offices that the number of young men who married before
performing their military service seemed to be decreasing. In one
community, where there were two priests, one Tendai and the other
Shingon, neither seemed to count for much. One was very poor, and
cultivated a small patch near his temple; the other had a little more
than a _chō_. The custom was for the farmers to present to their
temple from 5 to 10 _shō_ of rice from the harvest.

In connection with the question of improved implements I noticed that
a reasonably efficient winnowing machine in use by a comfortably-off
tenant was forty-nine years old--that is, that it dated back to the
time of the Shogun. The secondary industry of this farmer was
dwarf-plant growing. He had also a loom for cotton-cloth making. There
were in his house, in addition to a Buddhist shrine, two Shinto
shrines. After leaving this man I visited an ex-teacher who had lost
his post at fifty, no doubt through being unable to keep step with
modern educational requirements. He had on his wall the lithograph of
Pestalozzi and the children which I saw in many school-houses.

On taking the road again I was told that the local landlords had held
a meeting in view of the losses of tenants through wind. Most had
agreed to forgo rents and to help with artificial manure for next
year. I found taro being grown in paddies or under irrigation. Not
only the tubers of the taro but its finer stalks are eaten. I saw
gourds cut into long lengths narrower than apple rings and put out to
dry. I also noticed orange trees a century old which were still
producing fruit. Boys were driving iron hoops--the native hoop was of
bamboo--and one of the hoop drivers wore a piece of red cloth stitched
on his shoulder, which indicated that he was head of his class. One
missed a dog bounding and barking after the hoop drivers. Sometimes at
the doors of houses I noticed dogs of the lap-dog type which one sees
in paintings or of the wolf type to which the native outdoor dog
belongs. The cats were as ugly as the dogs and no plumper or happier
looking. When I patted a dog or stroked a cat the act attracted
attention.

We saw a good deal of _hinoki_ (ground cypress), the wood of which is
still used at Shinto festivals for making fire by friction.

We were able to visit an Eta village or rather _oaza_. Whether the Eta
are largely the descendants of captives of an early era or of a low
class of people who on the introduction of Buddhism in the seventh or
eighth century were ostracised because of their association with
animal eating, animal slaughter, working in leather and grave digging
is in dispute. No doubt they have absorbed a certain number of
fugitives from higher grades of the population, broken samurai,
ne'er-do-weels and criminals. The situation as the foreigner discovers
it is that all over Japan there are hamlets of what are called
"special tribes." In 1876, when distinctions between them and Japanese
generally were officially abolished, the total number was given as
about a million. Most of these peculiar people, perhaps three-quarters
of them, are known as Eta. But whether they are known as Eta or Shuku,
or by some other name, ordinary Japanese do not care to eat with them,
marry with them or even talk with them. In the past Eta have often
been prosperous, and many are prosperous to-day, but a large number
are still restricted to earning a living as butchers and skin and
leather workers, and grave diggers. The members of these "special
tribes," believing themselves to be despised without cause, usually
make some effort to hide the fact that they are Eta.

Shuku seem to be living principally in hamlets of a score or so of
houses in the vicinity of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara, and are often
travelling players, or, like some Eta, skilled in making tools and
musical instruments. There seems to be a half Shuku or intermarried
class. Many prostitutes are said to be Shuku or Eta. I was told that
most of the girls in the prostitutes' houses of Shimane prefecture are
from "special tribes," and that they are "preferred by the
proprietors" because, as I was gravely informed, "they do not weary of
their profession and are therefore more acceptable to customers." As
prostitutes are frequently married by their patrons, it is believed
that not a few women from "special villages" are taken to wife without
their origin being known. Unwitting marriage with an Eta woman has
long been a common motif in fiction and folk story. Many members of
the "special tribes" go to Hokkaido and there pass into the general
body of the population. The folk of this class are "despised," I was
told by a responsible Japanese, "not so much for themselves as for
what their fathers and grandfathers did." The country people
undoubtedly treat them more harshly than the townspeople, but a man of
the "special tribes" is often employed as a watchman of fields or
forests. I was warned that it was judicious to avoid using the word
Eta or Shuku in the presence of common people lest one might be
addressing by chance a member of the "special tribes."

Except that the houses of the village we were visiting looked possibly
a trifle more primitive than those of the non-Eta population outside
the _oaza_, I did not discern anything different from what I saw
elsewhere. The people were of the Shinshu sect; there was no Shinto
shrine. At the public room I noticed the gymnastic apparatus of the
"fire defenders." The hamlet was traditionally 300 years old and one
family was still recognised as chief. According to the constable, who
eagerly imparted the information, the crops were larger than those of
neighbouring villages "because the people, male and female, are always
diligent."

The man who was brought forward as the representative of the village
was an ex-soldier and seemed a quiet, able and self-respecting but sad
human being. His house and holding were in excellent order. None of
his neighbours smiled on us. Some I thought went indoors needlessly; a
few came as near to glowering as can be expected in Japan. I got the
impression that the people were cared for but were conscious of being
"hauden doon" or kept at arm's length.[179]

Our next stop was for a rest in a fine garden, the effect of which was
spoilt in one place by a distressing life-size statue of the owner's
father. When we took to our _kuruma_ again we passed through a village
at the approaches to which thick straw ropes such as are seen at
shrines had been stretched across the road. Charms were attached. The
object was to keep off an epidemic.

The indigo leaves drying on mats in front of some of the cottages were
a delight to the eye. There were also mats covered with cotton which
looked like fluffy cocoons. On the telegraph wires, the poles of which
all over Japan take short cuts through the paddies, swallows clustered
as in England, but it is to the South Seas, not to Africa, that the
Japanese swallow migrates. When the telegraph was a newer feature of
the Japanese landscape than it is now swallows on the wires were a
favourite subject for young painters.

We crossed a dry river bed of considerable width at a place where the
current had made an excavation in the gravel, rocks and earth several
yards deep. It was an impressive illustration of the power of a heavy
flood.

I found in one mountainous county that only about a sixth of the area
was under cultivation. A responsible man said: "This is a county of
the biggest landlords and the smallest tenants. Too many landowners
are thinking of themselves, so there arise sometimes severe conflicts.
Some 4,000 tenants have gone to Hokkaido." The conversation got round
to the young men's societies and I was told a story of how an Eta
village threatened by floods had been saved by the young men of the
neighbouring non-Eta village working all night at a weakened
embankment. Some days later an Eta deputation came to the village and
"with tears in their eyes gave thanks for what had been done." The
comment of a Japanese friend was: "In the present state of Japan
hypocrisy may be valuable. The boys and the Eta were at least
exercising themselves in virtue."

Four villages in this county have among them eight fish nurseries, the
area of salt water enclosed being roughly 120 acres. I looked into
several cottages where paper making was going on.[180]

I also went into two cotton mills. In both there were girls who were
not more than eleven or twelve. "They are exempted from school by
national regulation because of the poverty of their parents,"[181] I
was told.

As we passed the open shop fronts of the village barbers I saw that as
often as not a woman was shaving the customer or using the patent
clippers on him.

We looked at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was
constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by
means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a
curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather
belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was
attached. When these ropes were extended the granite block became the
hub of a wheel of which the ropes were the spokes. A number of women
and girls took ropes apiece and jerked them simultaneously, whereupon
the granite block rose in the air to the level of the rope pullers'
heads. It was then allowed to fall with a thud. After each thud the
pullers moved along a foot so that the block should drop on a fresh
spot. The gangs hauling at the rammers worked to the tune of a
plaintive ditty which went slowly so as to give them plenty of
breathing time. It was something like this:

        Weep not,
        Do not lament,
        This world is as the wheel of a car.
        If we live long,
        We may meet again on the road.

None of the sturdy earth thumpers seemed to be overworked in the
bracing air of the dam top, and they certainly looked picturesque with
their white and blue towels round their heads. Indeed, with all the
singing and movement, not to speak of the refreshment stalls, the
scene was not unlike a fair. When we got back to the road again we
passed through a well-watered rice district which was equal to the
production of heavy crops. Only three years before it had been covered
by a thick forest in which it was not uncommon for robbers to lurk.
The transformation had been brought about by the construction of a dam
in the hills somewhat similar to the one we had just visited.

I could not but notice in this district the considerable areas given
up to grave-plots. No crematoria seemed to be in use. There had been a
newspaper proposal that in areas where the population was very large
in proportion to the land available for cultivation the dead should be
taken out to sea. Where land is scarce one sees various expedients
practised so that every square foot shall be cropped. I repeatedly
found stacks of straw or sticks standing not on the land but on a
rough bridge thrown for the purpose over a drainage ditch. In this
district land had been recovered from the sea.

FOOTNOTES:

[178] For an account of a vegetable wax factory, see Appendix XLVIII.

[179] For further particulars of Eta in Japan and America, see
Appendix XLIX.

[180] See Appendix L.

[181] In 1918 net profits of 33 million yen were made by cotton
factories. The factories are anticipating sharp competition from
China.




CHAPTER XXVI

THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN

(EHIME)

The thing to do is to rise humorously above one's body which is the
veritable rebel, not one's mind.--MEREDITH


It is delightful to find so many things made of copper. Copper, not
iron, is in Japan the most valuable mineral product after coal.[182]
But there are drawbacks to a successful copper industry. Several times
as I came along by the coast I heard how the farmers' crops had been
damaged by the fumes of a copper refinery. "There are four copper
refineries in Japan, who fighted very much with the farmers," it was
explained. The Department of Agriculture is also the Department of
Commerce and "it was embarrassed by those battles." The upshot was
that one refinery moved to an island, another rebuilt its chimney and
the two others agreed to pay compensation because it was cheaper than
to install a new system. The refinery which had removed to an island
seven miles off the coast I had been traversing had had to pay
compensation as well as remove. I saw an apparatus that it had put up
among rice fields to aid it in determining how often the wind was
carrying its fumes there. The compensation which this refinery was
paying yearly amounted to as much as 75,000 yen. It had also been
compelled to buy up 500 _chō_ of the complaining farmers' land. When
we ascended by _basha_ into the mountains we looked down on a copper
mine in a ravine through which the river tumbled. The man who had
opened the original road over the pass had had the beautiful idea of
planting cherry trees along it so that the traveller might enjoy the
beauty of their blossoms in spring and their foliage and outlines the
rest of the year. The trees had attained noble proportions when the
refinery started work and very soon killed most of them. They looked
as if they had been struck by lightning.

Some miles farther on, wherever on the mountain-side a little tract
could be held up by walling, the chance of getting land for
cultivation had been eagerly seized. It would be difficult to give an
impression of the patient endeavour and skilful culture represented by
the farming on these isolated terraces held up by Galloway dykes.
Elsewhere the heights were tree-clad. In places, where the trees had
been destroyed by forest fires or had been cleared, amazingly large
areas had been closely cut over for forage. One great eminence was a
wonderful sight with its whole side smoothed by the sickles of
indomitable forage collectors. In some spots "fire farming" had been
or was still being practised. Here and there the cultivation of the
shrubs grown for the production of paper-making bark had displaced
"fire farming." I saw patches of millet and sweet potato which from
the road seemed almost inaccessible.

On the admirable main road we passed many pack ponies carrying immense
pieces of timber. Speaking of timber, the economical method of
preserving wood by charring is widely practised in Japan. The
palisades around houses and gardens and even the boards of which the
walls or the lower part of the walls of dwellings are constructed are
often charred. The effect is not cheerful. What does have a cheerful
and trim effect is a thing constantly under one's notice, the habit of
keeping carefully swept the unpaved earth enclosed by a house and
buildings as well as the path or roadway to them. This careful
sweeping is usually regarded as the special work of old people. Even
old ladies in families of rank in Tokyo take pleasure in their daily
task of sweeping.

When we had crossed the pass and descended on the other side and taken
_kuruma_ we soon came to a wide but absolutely dry river bed. The high
embankments on either side and the width of the river bed, which,
walking behind our _kuruma_, it took us exactly four minutes to
cross, afforded yet another object lesson in the severity of the
floods that afflict the country. The rock-and rubble-choked condition
of the rivers inclines the traveller to severe judgments on the State
and the prefectures for not getting on faster with the work of
afforestation; but it is only fair to note that in many places
hillsides were pointed out to me which, bare a generation ago, are now
covered with trees. Within a distance of twenty-five miles hill
plantations were producing fruit to a yearly value of half a million
yen. As for the cultivation on either side of the roadway, along which
our _kurumaya_ were trotting us, I could not see a weed anywhere.

A favourite rural recreation in Ehime, as in Shimane on the mainland,
is bull fighting. It is not, however, fighting with bulls but between
bulls: the sport has the redeeming feature that the animals are not
turned loose on one another but are held all the time by their owners
by means of the rope attached to the nose ring. The rope is gripped
quite close to the bull's head. The result of this measure of control
is, it was averred, that a contest resolves itself into a struggle to
decide not which bull can fight better but which animal can push
harder with his head. That the bulls are occasionally injured there
can be no doubt. The contests are said to last from fifteen to twenty
minutes and are decided by one of the combatants turning tail. There
is a good deal of gambling on the issue. In another prefecture of
Shikoku the rustics enjoy struggles between muzzled dogs. A taste for
this sport is also cultivated in Akita. A certain amount of dog and
cock fighting goes on in Tokyo.

At an inn there was an evident desire to do us honour by providing a
special dinner. One bowl contained transparent fish soup. Lying at the
bottom was a glassy eye staring up balefully at me. (The head,
especially the eye, of a fish is reckoned the daintiest morsel.) There
was a relish consisting of grapes in mustard. A third dish presented
an entire squid. I passed honourable dishes numbers two and three and
drank the fish soup through clenched teeth and with averted gaze.

I interrogated several chief constables on the absence of assaults on
women from the lists of crimes in the rural statistics I had
collected. Various explanations were offered to me: if there were
cases of assault they were kept secret for the credit of the woman's
family; no prosecution could be instituted except at the instance of
the woman, or, if married, the woman's husband; women did not go out
much alone; the number of cases was not in fact as large as might be
imagined, because the people were well behaved. An official who had
had police experience in the north of Japan declared that the south
was more "moral and more civilised and had higher tastes." In Ehime,
for example, there was very little illegitimacy and fewer children
still-born than in any other prefecture. Nevertheless four offences
against women had occurred in villages in Ehime within the preceding
twelve months.

One of the most interesting stories of rural regeneration I heard was
told me by a blind man who had become headman of his village at the
time of the war with Russia. His life had been indecorous and he had
gradually lost his sight, and he took the headmanship with the wish to
make some atonement for his careless years. This is his story:

"Although I thought it important to advance the economic condition of
the village it was still more important to promote friendship. As the
interests of landowners and tenants was the same it was necessary to
bring about an understanding. I began by asking landowners to
contribute a proportion of the crops to make a fund. I was blamed by
only fourteen out of two hundred. But the landowners who did blame me
blamed me severely, so much so that my family[183] were uneasy. I went
from door to door with a bag collecting rice as the priests do. My
eccentric behaviour was reported in the papers. The anxiety of my
household and relatives grew. My children were told at the school that
their father was a beggar. During the first harvest in which I
collected I gathered about 40 _koku_ (about 200 bushels). In the
fourth year a hundred tenants came in a deputation to me. They said:
'This gathering of rice is for our benefit. But you gather from the
landowners only. So please let us contribute every year. Some of us
will collect among ourselves and bring the rice to you, so giving you
no trouble.' I was very pleased with that. But I did not express my
pleasure. I scolded them. I said: 'Your plan is good but you think
only of yourselves. You do not give the landowners their due. When you
bring your rent to them you choose inferior rice. It is a bad custom.'
I advised them to treat their landowners with justice and achieve
independence in the relation of tenant and landowner. They were moved
by my earnestness.

"In the next year the tenants exerted themselves and the landowners
were pleased with them. Thus the relation of landlord and tenant
became better. The landowners in their turn became desirous of showing
a friendly feeling toward the tenants. Some landlords came to me and
said, 'If you wish for any money in order to be of service to the
tenants we will lend it to you without interest.' I received some
money. I lent money to tenants to buy manure and cattle, to attack
insect pests, to provide protection against wind and flood and to help
to build new dwellings nearer their work. By these means the tenants
were encouraged and their welfare was promoted. The landlords were
also happier, for the rice was better and the land improved. The
landlords found that their happiness came from the tenants. There was
good feeling between them. The landlords began to help the tenants
directly and indirectly. Roads and bridges and many aids to
cultivation were furnished by the landlords. A body of landlords was
constituted for these purposes and it collected money. My idea was
realised that the way of teaching the villages is to let landlords and
tenants realise that their interests agree and they will become more
friendly."

The co-operative credit society which the blind headman established
not only buys and sells for its members in the ordinary way but hires
land for division among the humbler cultivators. One of the
departments of the society's work is the collection of villagers'
savings. They are gathered every Sunday by school-children. One lad, I
found from his book, had collected on a particular Sunday 5 sen
each--5 sen is a penny--from two houses and 10 sen each from another
two dwellings. The next Sunday he had received 5 sen from one house,
10 sen from two houses, 30 sen and 50 sen from others and a whole yen
from the last house on his list. The subscriber gets no receipt but
sees the lad enter in his book the amount handed over to him, and the
next Sunday he sees the stamp of the bank against the sum. Some 390
householders out of the 497 in the village hand over savings to the
boy and girl collectors, whose energy is stimulated with 1 per cent.
on the sums they gather. In five years the Sunday collections have
amassed 60,000 yen. The previous year had been marked by a bad harvest
and large sums had been drawn out of the bank, but there was still a
sum of 14,000 yen in hand.

In this village there had been issued one of the economic and moral
diaries mentioned in an earlier chapter. The diary of this village has
two spaces for every day--that is, the economic space and the moral
space. The owner of this book had to do two good deeds daily, one
economic and the other moral, and he had to enter them up. Further, he
had to hand in the book at the end of the year to the earnest village
agricultural and moral expert who devised the diary and carefully
tabulates the results of twelve months' economic and moral endeavour.
One might think that the scheme would break down at the handing in of
the diary stage, but I was assured that there were good reasons for
believing that a considerable proportion of the 440 persons who had
taken out diaries would return them.

There is an old custom by which Buddhist believers, in companies of a
dozen or so, meet to eat and drink together. As a good deal is eaten
and drunk the gatherings are costly. Our blind headman met the
difficulty of expense in his village by getting the companies of
believers to cultivate together in their spare time about three acres
of land. His object was to associate religion and agriculture and so
to dignify farming in the eyes of young men. He also wished to provide
an object lesson in the results of good cultivation. The profits
proved to be, as he anticipated, so considerable as to leave a balance
after defraying the cost of the social gathering. The headman
prevailed on the cultivators to keep accurate accounts and they made
plain some unexpected truths: as for example, that a _tan_ of paddy
did not need the labour of a man for more than twenty-three days of
ten hours, and that the net income from such an area was a little more
than 16 yen, and that thus the return for a day's labour was 73 sen.
It was demonstrated, therefore, that labour was recompensed very well,
and that instead of farming being "the most unprofitable of
industries"--for in Japan as in the West there are sinners against the
light who say this--it was reasonably profitable.

But if rice called for only twenty-three days' labour per
_tan_--nearly all the farmers' land was paddy--and the whole holding
numbered only a few _tan_, it was also plain that there were many days
in the year when the farmer was not fully employed. From this it was
easy to proceed to the conviction that the available time should be
utilised either in secondary employments, or in, say, draining, which
would reduce the quantity of manure needed on the land. So the farmers
began to think about drainage and the means of economising labour.
They began to realise how time was wasted owing to most farmers
working not only scattered, but irregularly shaped pieces of land. So
the rice lands were adjusted, and everybody was found to have a trifle
more land than he held before, and the fields were better watered and
more easily cultivated. Only from sixteen to seventeen days' labour
instead of twenty-three were now needed per _tan_[184] and the crops
were increased. There is now no exodus from this progressive village.

Concerning his blindness the headman said that it was more profitable
for him to hear than to see, for by sight "energy might be diverted."
He had recited in every prefecture his personal experience of rural
reform. He asserted that while conditions varied in every prefecture,
there was, generally speaking, labour on the land for no more than 200
days in the year. He deplored the disappearance of some home
employments. He did not approve of the condition of things in the
north where women worked as much in the fields as their husbands and
brothers. Women were "so backward and conservative." The biggest
obstacles to agricultural progress were old women. To introduce a
secondary industry was to take women from the fields.

I spoke with an agricultural expert, one of whose dicta was that
"students at normal schools who come from town families are not so
clever as students from farmers' families." He told me that 10,000
young men in his county had sworn "to act in the way most fitting to
youths of a military state [sic], to buy and use national products as
far as possible and so to promote national industry."

What was wrong with some farming, according to an official of a county
agricultural association whom I met later, was that the farmers
cultivated too intensively. They used too much "artificial." A
prefectural official, speaking of the possibility of extending the
cultivated area in Japan, said that in Ehime there were 6,000 _chō_
which might be made into paddies if money were available. As to
afforestation, 100,000 yen a year, exclusive of salaries, was spent in
the prefecture. As a final piece of statistics he mentioned that
whereas ten years before pears were grown only in a certain island of
the prefecture, the production of a single county was now valued at
half a million yen yearly.

I spent a night at a hot spring. It is said that the volume of water
is decreasing. What a situation for a town which lives on a hot spring
if the hot-water supply should suddenly stop! I heard of another
hot-spring resort at which the water is gradually cooling: it is
warmed up by secret piping.

I have not troubled my readers with many stories of the jostling of
past and present, but I noticed in an electric street car at Matsuyama
a peasant trying to light his pipe with flint and tinder. As he did
not succeed a fellow-passenger offered him a match. He was so inexpert
with it that he still failed to get a light and he had to be handed a
cigarette stump.

In riding down to the port in the street car I borrowed for a few
moments a schoolboy's English reader. It seemed rather mawkish. A book
of Japanese history which I was also allowed to look at was full of
reproductions of autographs of distinguished men. "They make the
impression very strong," I was told.

FOOTNOTES:

[182] See Appendix XXXVIII.

[183] That is, not only his household but his relatives.

[184] Adding to the 17 days' labour for the rice crop, 13 days' labour
for the succeeding barley crop, the total was 30 days' labour per
_tan_ against the general Japan average of 39 days per _tan_.




THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN

CHAPTER XXVII

UP-COUNTRY ORATORY

(YAMAGUCHI)

I have confidence, which began with hope and strengthens with
experience, that humanity is gaining in the stores of mind.--MEREDITH


The main street of an Inland Sea island we visited was 4 ft. wide.
Because it was the eve of a festival the old folk were at home
"observing their taboo." The islander who had been the first among the
inhabitants to visit a foreign country was only fifty. The local
policeman made us a gift of pears when we left.

At another primitive island querns were in use and "ordinary families"
were "only beginning to indulge in tombstones." In contrast with this,
the constable told us that a small condensed-milk factory had been
started. (This constable was a fine, dignified-looking fellow, but so
poor that his toes were showing through his blue cloth _tabi_.) The
condensed-milk factory must have been responsible for some surprises
to the cows when they were first milked in its interests. I heard a
tale of the first milking of an elderly cow. She had ploughed paddies,
carried hay and other things and had drawn a cart. But it took five
men and a woman to persuade her that to be milked into a clay pot was
a reasonable thing.

The third island we explored lies in such a situation in the Inland
Sea that sailing ships used to be glad to shelter under it while
waiting for a favourable wind. Someone had the evil thought of
providing it with prostitutes, and, until steam began to take the
place of sails, the number of these women established in the island
was large. Even now, although the whole population numbers only a
hundred families, there are thirty women of bad character. These poor
creatures were conspicuous because of their bright clothing and
dewomanised look. A scrutiny of the islanders old and young yielded
the impression that the whole place was suffering from its peculiar
traffic. There were two houses, one for registering the women and the
other for investigating their state of health, and the purpose of the
buildings was bluntly proclaimed on the nameboards at their doors.

When we got out to sea again the newest Japanese battleship doing her
trials was pointed out to me, but I was more interested in a large
fishing boat running before the wind. A sturdy woman was at the helm
and her naked young family was sprawling about the craft.

Someone spoke of villagers of the mainland "failing to realise that
they now possessed the privilege of self-government." I was reminded
of the pleasant way of the headman of a village assembly in the
Loochoos, Japan's oldest outlying possession. He assembles or used to
assemble his colleagues in his courtyard and appear there with a draft
of proposed legislation. They bowed and departed and the Bill had
become an Act.

Although we were already within the territorial waters of Hiroshima
prefecture, we determined not to make the mainland at once but to stay
the night at the famous island which is called both Miyajima (shrine
island) and Itsukushima (taboo island), and is considered to be one of
the three most noteworthy sights in Japan. Photographs and drawings of
the shrine with its red colonnades on piles by the shore and its big
red _torii_ standing in the sea are as familiar as representations of
Fuji. It used to be the custom to prevent as far as possible births
and deaths occurring on the island. Even now, funerals, dogs and
kuruma are prohibited. The iron lanterns of the shrine and galleries
and a hundred more in the pine tree-studded approaches are undoubtedly
"a most magnificent spectacle at full tide on a moonless night"; but
what of the subservience to the profitable foreign tourist seen in
this shrine notice?--

_Zori_ (straw sandals), _geta_ (wooden pattens) and all footgear
_except shoes and boots_ are forbidden.

One is attracted by the idea of listening to music and watching dances
which came from afar in the seventh or eighth centuries, but the
business-like tariff,

  Ordinary music, 12 sen to 5 yen,
  Special music and dance, 10 yen and upwards,
  Lighting all lanterns, 9 yen,

is calculated to take one out of the atmosphere of Hearn's dreams. The
deities of the shrine get along as best they can with the raucous
sirens of the tourist steamers, the din of the motor boats and the
boom of the big guns which are hidden at the back of the island and
make of Miyajima and its vicinity "a strategic zone" in which
photography, sketching or the too assiduous use of a notebook is
forbidden. Alas, I had myself arrived in a steamer which blew its
siren loudly, and in the morning I crossed from the holy isle to the
mainland in a motor launch.

The name of Yamaguchi prefecture, which is at the extreme end of the
mainland and has the sea to the south, the east and the north, is not
so familiar as the name of its port, Shimoneseki. It was mentioned to
me that the farmers of Yamaguchi worked a smaller number of days than
in Ehime, possibly only a hundred in the year. The comment of my
companion, who had visited a great deal of rural Japan, was that 150
full days' work was the average for the whole country.[185]

I was told that here as elsewhere there was an unsound tendency to
turn sericulture from a secondary into a primary industry. "Experts
are not always expert," confessed an official. "Our farmers have had
bitter experience. Experts come who have learnt only from books or in
other districts, so they give unsuitable counsel. Then they leave the
prefecture for other posts before the results of their unwisdom are
apparent."

The same official told me of a "little famine" in one county which had
imprudently concentrated its attention on the production of grape
fruit to the annual value of about a million yen. When a storm came
one spring there was almost a total loss. "The river and the sea were
covered with fruit, fishing was interfered with, and the county town
complained of the smell of the rotting fruit." It seems that many of
the suffering orange growers were samurai who found fruit farming a
more gentlemanly pursuit than the management of paddies. Like rural
amateurs everywhere, "some of them would do better if they knew more
about the working of the land."

Rice was being assailed by a pest which survived in the straw stack
and had done damage in the prefecture to the amount of 30,000 yen.

In this prefecture and two others during our tour my companion
delivered addresses to farmers under the auspices of the National
Agricultural Association. The burden of his talk was their duty as
agriculturists in the new conditions which were opening for the
nation. His three audiences numbered about 700, 1,000 and 1,500. They
were composed largely of picked men. At the first gathering the
audience squatted; at the next chairs were provided; at the third
there were school forms with backs. What I particularly noticed was
the easy-going way in which the meetings were conducted. No gathering
began exactly at the time announced, although one of the audiences had
been encouraged to be in time by the promise of a gift of mottoes to
the first hundred arrivals. At each meeting the Governor of the
prefecture was the first speaker. At one meeting the Governor arrived
about 8.30 a.m., made his speech and departed. When my friend had been
introduced to various people in the anteroom, had drunk tea and had
smoked and chatted a little, he was taken to the platform half an hour
or three quarters after the conclusion of the Governor's speech.
Nothing had happened at the meeting in the interval. The idea was that
the wait would help the audience's digestion of the speech it had had
and the speech it was going to have. There was no formal introduction
of the orator. He just mounted the platform and spoke for two hours.

[Illustration: SCHOOL SHRINE FOR EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT.]

[Illustration:cTHE AUTHOR ADDRESSING, THROUGH AN INTERPRETER, LAFCADIO
HEARN DEATH-DAY MEETING AT MATSUE.]

At the second meeting the Governor awaited our arrival but "went
on" alone. The star speaker meanwhile refreshed himself in the
anteroom with tea, tobacco and conversation as before. In a few
minutes the Governor, having done his turn, rejoined us, and my friend
proceeded to the meeting to deliver his speech, the Governor taking
his departure.

[Illustration: A PEASANT PROPRIETOR'S HOUSE.]

[Illustration: GRAVESTONES REASSEMBLED AFTER PADDY ADJUSTMENT.]

At the third meeting the Governor and the speaker of the day did enter
the hall together, but before the Governor had finished his
introductory harangue my companion took himself off to the anteroom to
refresh himself with a cigar and a chat. When the Governor concluded
and returned to the anteroom there was conversation for a few minutes,
and then my friend and his Excellency went into the meeting together.
This time the Governor stayed to the end.

In his three speeches my friend said many moving things and his
audiences were appreciative. But no one presumed to interrupt with
applause. At the end, however, there was a hearty round of
hand-clapping, now a general custom at public gatherings. On the
conclusion of each of his addresses the orator stepped down from the
platform and made off to the hall, for no one dreamt of asking
questions. When he was gone an official expressed the thanks of the
audience and there was another round of applause. Then everybody
connected with the arrangement of the meeting gathered in the anteroom
and one after the other made appreciative speeches and bows. I
marvelled at the orator's toughness. Before he went on the platform he
had been pestered with unending introductions and beset by
conversation. But I do not know that my friend felt any strain. Nor
did the fashion in which the speakers wandered on and off the
platform, and thus, according to our notions, did their utmost to damp
the enthusiasm of the meetings, seem to have any such effect. Once in
an oculist's consulting clinic in Tokyo I was struck by the fact that
when water was squirted into the eyes of a succession of patients of
both sexes and various ages, they did not wince as Western people
would have done.

I was told that school fees go up a little when the price of rice is
high; also of the "negatively good" effects of young men's
associations. During the period of our tour efforts were being made to
systematise these organisations. The Department of Agriculture wanted
a farmer at the head of each society, the War Office an ex-soldier.
There can be no doubt that the militarists have been doing their best
to give the societies the mental attitude of the army.

In the country we were entering, the horse had taken the place of the
ox as the beast of burden. Two men of some authority in the prefecture
agreed that it was difficult to think of tracts in the south-west that
would be suitable for cattle grazing. There was certainly no "square
_ri_ where the price of land was low enough to keep sheep." As to
cattle breeding and forestry, one of them must give way. It was
necessary to keep immense areas under evergreen wood for the defence
of the country against floods. With regard to the areas available for
afforestation, for cattle keeping and for cultivation respectively, it
was necessary to be on one's guard against "experts" who were disposed
to claim all available land for their specialties.

When we took to an automobile for the first stage of our long journey
through Yamaguchi and Shimane--the railway came no farther than the
city of Yamaguchi--I noticed that just as the bridges are often
without parapets, the roads winding round the cliffs were, as in
Fukushima, unprotected by wall or rail. This was due, no doubt, to
considerations of economy, to a widely diffused sense of
responsibility which makes people look after their own safety, and
also, in some degree, to stout Japanese nerves. That our driver's
nerves were sound enough was shown by the speed at which he drove the
heavy car round sharp corners and down slippery descents where we
should have dropped a few hundred feet had we gone over.

At our first stopping-place I saw a photograph showing a Shinshu
priest engaged with the girl pupils of a Buddhist school in tree
planting. Our talk here was about the low incomes on which people
contrive to live. A little more than a quarter of a century ago the
family of a friend of mine, now of high rank, was living in a county
town on 5 yen a month! There were two adults and three children. Rent
was 1.20 yen and rice came to 1.80 yen. Even to-day an ex-Minister may
have only 1,500 yen a year. Many ex-Governors are living quietly in
villages. We went to call upon one of them who was getting great
satisfaction out of his few _tan_. Among other things he told us was
that there were five doctors and one midwife in the community. These
doctors do not possess a Tokyo qualification. They have qualified by
being taught by their fathers or by some other practitioner, and they
are entitled to practise in their own village and in, perhaps, a
neighbouring one.

It was thoughtless of me, after inquiring about the doctors, to ask
about the gravedigger. I was told that when there was no member of a
"special tribe" available it was the duty of neighbours to dig graves.
A community's displeasure was marked by neighbours refraining from
helping to dig an unpopular person's grave. (One might have expected
to hear that such a grave would be dug with alacrity.) Families which
had run counter to public opinion had had to "apologise" before they
could get neighbourly help at the burial of their dead.

Only one family in the village, I learnt from the headman, was being
helped from public funds. This family consisted of an old man and his
daughter, who, owing to the attendance her father required, could not
go out to work. The village provided a small house and three pints of
rice daily. The headman in his private capacity gave the girl, with
the assistance of some friends, straw rope-making to do and paid a
somewhat higher price than is usual.

Of last year's births in the village 10 per cent. had been legally and
5 per cent. actually illegitimate. Four or five births had occurred a
few months after marriage.

We ate our lunch in the headman's room in the village office. Hanging
from the ceiling was a sealed envelope to be opened on receipt of a
telegram. Some member of the village staff always slept in that room.
The envelope contained instructions to be acted upon if mobilisation
took place.

When we had gone on some distance I stopped to watch a farmer's wife
and daughter threshing in a barn by pulling the rice through a row of
steel teeth, the simple form of threshing implement which is seen in
slightly different patterns all over Japan. (It is the successor of a
contrivance of bamboo stakes.) The women told me that one person could
thresh fourteen bushels a day. The implement cost 2-1/2 yen from
travelling vendors but only 1-1/2 yen from the co-operative society.
While we talked the farmer appeared. I apologised to him for
unwittingly stepping on the threshold of the barn--that is, the
grooved timber in which the sliding doors run. It is considered to be
an insult to the head of the house to tread on the threshold as in
some way "standing on the householder's head."

This man had a bamboo plantation, and he told me, in reply to a
question, that the bamboo would shoot up at the rate of more than a
foot in twenty-four hours. (During the month in which this is dictated
I have measured the growth of a shoot of a Dorothy Perkins climber and
find that it averages about quarter of an inch in twenty-four hours.)

FOOTNOTES:

[185] See Appendix XII.




CHAPTER XXVIII

MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES

(SHIMANE)

Nothing but omniscience could suffice to answer all the questions
implicitly raised.--J.G. FRAZER


When we descended from the hills we were in Shimane, a long, narrow,
coastwise prefecture through which one travels over a succession of
heights to the capital, Matsue, situated at the far end. Two-thirds of
the journey must be made on foot and by _kuruma_.[186] Some talk by
the way was about the farmers going five or six miles daily to the
hills to cut grass for their "cattle," the average number of cattle
per farmer being 1.3 hereabouts. It seemed strange to see buckwheat at
the flowering stage reached by the crops seen in Fukushima several
months before. The explanation was that buckwheat is sown both in
spring and autumn.

In the old days notable samurai, fugitives from Tokyo, had kept
themselves secluded in the rooms we occupied at Yamaguchi. In Shimane
we had small plain low-ceiled rooms in which daimyos had been
accommodated. Not here alone had I evidences of the simplicity of the
life of Old Japan.

I was wakened in the morning by the voice of a woman earnestly
praying. She stood in the yard of the house opposite and faced first
in one direction and then in another. A friend of mine once stayed
overnight at an inn on the river at Kyoto. In the morning he saw
several men and a considerable number of women praying by the
waterside. They were the keepers and inmates of houses of ill-fame.
The old Shinto idea was that prayers might be made anywhere at other
times than festivals, for the god was at the shrine at festivals only.
Nowadays some old men go to the shrine every morning, just as many old
women are seen at the Buddhist temples daily. Half the visitors to a
Shinto shrine, an educated man assured me, may pray, but in the case
of the other half the "worship" is "no more than a motion of respect."
My friend told me that when he prayed at a shrine his prayer was for
his children's or his parents' health.

At a county town I found a library of 4,000 volumes, largely an
inheritance from the feudal regime. Wherever I went I could not but
note the cluster of readers at the open fronts of bookshops.[187]

On our second day's journey in Shimane I had a _kuruma_ with wooden
wheels, and in the hills the day after we passed a man kneeling in a
_kago_, the old-fashioned litter. When we took to a _basha_ we
discovered that, owing to the roughness of the road, we had a driver
for each of our two horses. We had also an agile lad who hung on first
to one part and then another of the vehicle and seemed to be essential
in some way to its successful management. The head of the hatless
chief driver was shaved absolutely smooth.

It was a rare thing for a foreigner to pass this way. My companion
frequently told me that he had difficulty in understanding what people
said.

We saw an extinct volcano called "Green Field Mountain." There was not
a tree on it and it was said never to have possessed any. The whole
surface was closely cut, the patches cut at different periods showing
up in rectangular strips of varying shades. Wherever the hills were
treeless and too steep for cultivation they were carefully cut for
fodder. In cultivable places houses were standing on the minimum of
ground. More than once we had a view of a characteristic piece of
scenery, a dashing stream seen through a clump of bamboo.

When our basha stopped for the feeding of the horses, they had a tub
of mixture composed of boiled naked barley, rice chaff, chopped straw
and chopped green stuff. I noticed near the inn a doll in a tree. It
had been put there by children who believe that they can secure by so
doing a fine day for an outing. When we started again we met with a
company of strolling players: a man, his wife and two girls, all with
clever faces. We also saw several peasant anglers fishing or going
home with their catch. A licence available from July to December cost
50 sen.

At a shop I made a note of its signs, the usual strips of white wood
about 8 ins. by 3, nailed up perpendicularly, with the inscriptions
written in black. One sign was the announcement of the name and
address of the householder, which must be shown on every Japanese
house. A second stated that the place was licensed as a shop, a third
that the householder's wife was licensed to keep an inn, a fourth that
the householder was a cocoon merchant, a fifth that he was a member of
the co-operative credit society, a sixth that he belonged to the Red
Cross Society, a seventh that his wife was a member of the Patriotic
Women's Society,[188] the eighth, ninth and tenth that the shopkeeper
was an adherent of a certain Shinto shrine, a member of a Shinto
organisation and had visited three shrines and made donations to them.
An eleventh board proclaimed that he was of the Zen sect of Buddhism.
Finally, there was a box in which was stored the charms from various
shrines.

We passed a company of villagers working on the road for the local
authority. The labourers were chiefly old people and they were taking
their task very easily. Farther along the road men and women were
working singly. It seemed that the labourers belonged to families
which, instead of paying rates, did a bit of roadmending. The work was
done when they had time to spare.

For some time we had been in a part of the country in which the ridges
of the houses were of tiles. At an earlier stage of our journey they
had been either of straw or of earth with flowers or shrubs growing in
it. The shiny, red-brown tiles give place elsewhere to a
slate-coloured variety. The surface of all of these tiles is so
smooth that they are unlikely to change their hard tint for years.
Meanwhile they give the villages a look of newness. Their use is
spreading rapidly. Shiny though the tiles may be, one cannot but
admire the neat way in which they interlock. One day when I wondered
about the cost involved in recovering roofs with these tiles, a woman
worker who overheard me promptly said that, reckoning tiles and
labour, the cost was 60 or 70 sen per 22 tiles. In the old days tiled
porticoes were forbidden to the commonalty. They were allowed only to
daimyos who also used exclusively the arm rests which every visitor to
an inn may now command. Besides arm rests I have frequently had
kneeling cushions of the white brocade formerly used only for the
_zabuton_ of Buddhist priests.

In the county through which we were passing the fine water grass,
called _i_, used for mat making, is grown on an area of about 78
_chō_. It is sown in seed beds like rice and is transplanted into
inferior paddies in September. (The grass is better grown in Hiroshima
and Okayama.)

I saw a beautiful tree in red blossom. The name given to it is "monkey
slip," because of the smoothness of its skin, which recalled the name
of that very different ornament of suburban gardens, "monkey puzzle."

During this journey we recovered something of the conditions of
old-time travel. There were chats by the way and conferences at the
inn in the evening and in the morning concerning distances, the kind
of vehicles available, the character of their drivers, the charges,
the condition of the road, the probable weather and the places at
which satisfactory accommodation might be had. What was different from
the old days was that at every stopping-place but one we had electric
light. Part of our journey was done in a small motor bus lighted by
electricity. Like the automobile we had hired a day or two before, it
was driven--by two young men in blue cotton tights--at too high a
speed considering the narrowness and curliness of the roads by which
we crossed the passes. The roads are kept in reasonably good
condition, but they were made for hand cart and _kuruma_ traffic.

We passed an island on which I was told there were a dozen houses.
When a death occurs a beacon fire is made and a priest on the mainland
conducts a funeral ceremony. By the custom of the island it is
forbidden to increase the number of the houses, so presumably several
families live together. In the mountain communities of the mainland,
where the number of houses is also restricted, it is usual for only
the eldest brother to be allowed to marry. The children of younger
brothers are brought up in the families of their mothers.

We passed at one of the fishing hamlets the wreck of a Russian cruiser
which came ashore after the battle of Tsushima. Two boat derricks from
the cruiser served as gate posts at the entrance of the school
playground.

A familiar sight on a country road is the itinerant medicine vendor.
He or his employer believes in pushing business by means of an
impressive outfit. One typical cure-all seller, who had his medicines
in a shiny bag slung over his shoulders, wore yellow shoes, cotton
drawers, a frock coat, a peaked cap with three gold stripes, and a
mysterious badge. On his hands he had white cotton gloves and as he
walked he played a concertina. A common practice is to leave with
housewives a bag of medicines without charge. Next year another call
is made, when the pills and what not which have been used are paid for
and a new bag is exchanged for the old one.

The use of dogs to help to draw _kuruma_ is forbidden in some
prefectures, but in three stages of our journey in Shimane we had the
aid of robust dogs. During this period, however, I saw, attached to
_kuruma_ we passed, three dogs which did not seem up to their work.
Dogs suffer when used for draught purposes because their chests are
not adapted for pulling and because the pads of their feet get tender.
The animals we had were treated well. Each _kuruma_ had a cord, with a
hook at the end, attached to it; and this hook was slipped into a ring
on the dog's harness. The dogs were released when we went downhill and
usually on the level. Several times during each run, when we came to a
stream or a pond or even a ditch, the dogs were released for a bathe.
They invariably leapt into the water, drank moderately, and then, if
the water was too shallow for swimming, sat down in it and then lay
down. Sometimes a dog temporarily at liberty would find on his own
account a small water hole, and it was comical to see him taking a
sitz bath in it. When the sun was hot a dog would sometimes be
retained on his cord when not pulling in order that he might trot
along in the shade below the _kuruma_. The dog of the _kuruma_
following mine usually managed when pulling to take advantage of the
shade thrown by my vehicle. A _kurumaya_ told me that he had given 8
yen for his dog. Dogs were sometimes sold for from 10 to 15 yen. The
difficulty was to get a dog that had good feet and would pull. The
dogs I saw were all mongrels with sometimes a retriever, bloodhound or
Great Dane strain.

I made enquiries about another county town library. There were 18,000
volumes of which 300 consisted of European books and 600 of bound
magazines. The annual expenditure on books, and I presume magazines,
was 600 yen.

We passed a "special tribe" hamlet. Here the Eta were devoting
themselves to tanning and bamboo work. I was told of other "peculiar
people" called Hachia, also of a hawker-beggar class which sells small
things of brass or bamboo or travels with performing monkeys.

Water from hot springs is piped long distances in water pipes made of
bamboo trunks, the ends of which are pushed into one another. A turn
is secured by running two pipes at the angle required into a block of
wood which has been bored to fit.

When we got down to the sand dunes there were windbreaks, 10 or 15 ft.
high, made of closely planted pines cut flat at the top. Elsewhere I
saw such windbreaks 30 ft. high. On the telegraph wires there were big
spiders' webs about 4 ft. in diameter.

As we sped through a village my attention was attracted by a funeral
feast. The pushed-back _shoji_ showed about a dozen men sitting in a
circle eating and drinking. Women were waiting on them. At the back of
the room, making part of the circle, was the square coffin covered by
a white canopy.

While passing a Buddhist temple I heard the sound of preaching. It
might have been a voice from a church or chapel at home.

Shortly afterwards I came on a memorial to the man who introduced the
sweet potato into the locality 150 years before. This was the first of
many sweet-potato memorials which I encountered in the prefecture and
elsewhere. Sometimes there were offerings before the monuments.
Occasionally the memorial took the form of a stone cut in the shape of
a potato. There is a great exportation of sweet potatoes--sliced and
dried until they are brittle--to the north of Japan where the tuber
cannot be cultivated.[189]

While we rested at the house of a friend of my companion we spoke of
emigration. There are four or five emigration companies, and it is an
interesting question just how much emigration is due to the initiative
of the emigrants themselves and how much to the activity of the
companies. The chief reason which induces emigrants to go to South
America is that, under the contract system, they get twice as much
money as they would obtain, say, in Formosa.[190]

Our host did not remember any foreigner visiting his village since his
boyhood, though it is on the main road. It took nearly four days for a
Tokyo newspaper to arrive. This region is so little known that when a
resident mentioned it in Tokyo he was sometimes asked if it was in
Hokkaido.

I was interested to see how many villages had erected monuments to
young men who had won distinction away from home as wrestlers.

I had often noticed bulls drawing carts and behaving as sedately as
donkeys, but it was new to see a bull tethered at the roadside with
children playing round it. Why are the Japanese bulls so friendly?

In the mountainous regions we passed through I saw several paddies no
bigger than a hearthrug. At one spot a land crab scurried across the
road. It was red in colour and about 2-1/2 ins. long.

At a village office the headman's gossip was that priests had been
forbidden by the prefecture to interfere in elections. We looked
through the expenses of the village agricultural association. For a
lecture series 5 yen a month was being paid. Then there had been an
expenditure by way of subsidising a children's campaign against
insects preying on rice. For ten of the little clusters of eggs one
may see on the backs of leaves 4 rin was paid, while for 10 moths the
reward was 2 rin. The association spent a further 10 yen on helping
young people to attend lectures at a distance. The commune in which
those things had been done numbered 3,100 people. There had been two
police offences during the year, but both offenders were strangers to
the locality.

In a cutting which was being made for the new railway, girl labourers
were steering their trucks of soil down a half-mile descent and
singing as they made the exhilarating run. The building of a railway
through a closely cultivated and closely populated country involves
the destruction of a large amount of fertile land and the rebuilding
of many houses. The area of agricultural land taken during the
preceding and present reigns, not only for railways and railway
stations but for roads, barracks, schools and other public buildings,
has been enormous. "The owner of land removed from cultivation may
seem to do well by turning his property into cash," a man said to me.
"He may also profit to some extent while the railway is building by
the jobs he is able to do for the contractor, with the assistance of
his family and his horse or bull; but afterwards he has often to seek
another way of earning his living than farming."

We neared railhead on a market day and many folk in their best were
walking along the roads. Of fourteen umbrellas used as parasols to
keep off the sun that I counted one only was of the Japanese paper
sort; all the others were black silk on steel ribs in "foreign style"
except for a crude embroidery on the silk.

When we got into the town it was as much as our _kurumaya_ could do to
move through the dense crowd of rustics in front of booths and shops.
Once more I was impressed by the imperturbability and natural
courtesy of the people. At the station quite a number of farmers and
their families had assembled, not to travel by the train but to see it
start.

During the short journey by train I noticed lagoons in which fish were
artificially fed. At an agricultural experiment station in the place
at which we alighted there were two specimen windmills set up to show
farmers who were fortunate enough to have ammonia water on their land
the cheapest means of raising it for their paddies. The tendency here
as elsewhere was to apply too much of the ammonia water. All rubbish
on this extensive experiment station was carefully burnt under cover
in order to demonstrate the importance not only of getting all the
potash possible but of preserving it when obtained.

Farmers who are without secondary industries are short of cash except
at the times when barley, rice and cocoons are sold, and in certain
places they seem to have taken to saving money on salt. An old man
told us with tears in his eyes how he had protested to his neighbours
against the tendency to do without salt. An excuse for attempting to
save on salt, besides the economical one, was the size of the salt
cubes. Neighbours clubbed together to buy a cube, and thus a family,
when it had finished its share, had to wait until the neighbours had
disposed of theirs and market day came round.[191]

I saw a monument erected to the memory of "a good farmer" who had
planted a wood and developed irrigation.

We made a stay at the spot where, on a forest-clad hill overlooking
the sea, there stands in utter simplicity the great shrine of Izumo.
The customary collection of shops and hotels clustering at the town
end of the avenue of _torii_ cannot impair the impression which is
made on the alien beholder by this shrine in the purest style of
Shinto architecture. In the month in which we arrived at Izumo the
deities are believed to gather there. Before the shrine the Japanese
visitor makes his obeisance and his offering at the precise spot--four
places are marked--to which his rank permits him to advance. (This
inscription may be read: "Common people at the doorway.") The
estimate which an official gave me of the number of visitors last
year, 40,000, bore no relation to the "quarter of a million" of the
guide book. But it had been a bad year for farmers. Forty-seven
geisha, who had reported the previous year that they had received
35,000 yen--there is no limit to what is tabulated in Japan--now
reported that they had gained only half that sum in twelve months,
"the price of cocoons being so low that even well-to-do farmers could
not come." I noticed that there was a clock let into one of the
granite votive pillars of the avenue along which one walks from the
town to the shrine. As I glanced at the clock it happened that the
sound of children's voices reached me from a primary school. I
wondered what time and modern education, which have brought such
changes in Japan, might make of it all.

FOOTNOTES:

[186] The railway has now been extended in the direction of Yamaguchi.

[187] See Appendix LI.

[188] Protests have been made against the way in which the country
people are dunned for subscriptions to these semi-official
organisations. A high agricultural authority has stated that in Nagano
the farmers' taxes and subscriptions to the Red Cross and Patriotic
Women Societies are from 65 to 70 per cent. of their expenditure as
against 30 to 35 per cent. spent on outlay other than food and
clothing.

[189] _Satsuma-imo_ is sweet potato. Our potato is called _jaga-imo_
or _bareisho_. _Imo_ is the general name.

[190] See Appendix LII.

[191] The Salt Monopoly profits are estimated at 314,204 yen for
1920-21.




CHAPTER XXIX

FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN

(SHIMANE, TOTTORI AND HYOGO)

Those who suffer learn, those who love know.--MRS. HAVELOCK ELLIS


At Matsue, with which the name of Lafcadio Hearn will always be
associated, I chanced to arrive on the anniversary of his death. His
local admirers were holding a memorial meeting. As a foreigner I was
honoured with a request to attend. First, however, I had the chance of
visiting Hearn's house. Matsue was the first place at which Hearn
lived. He always remembered it and at last came back there to marry.
Except that a pond has been filled up--no doubt to reduce the number
of mosquitoes--the garden of his house is little changed.

The most interesting feature of the meeting was old pupils' grateful
recollections of Hearn, the middle-school teacher. The gathering was
held in a room belonging to the town library in the prefectural
grounds, but neither the Governor nor the mayor was present. A
sympathetic speech was made by a chance visitor to the town, the
secretary-general to the House of Peers. He recalled the antagonism
which the young men at Tokyo University, himself among them, felt
towards the odd figure of Hearn--he had a terribly strained eye and
wore a monocle--when he became a professor, and how very soon he
gained the confidence and regard of the class.

I had often wondered that there was no Japanese memorial to Hearn, and
when I rose to speak I said so. I added that it was rare to meet a
Japanese who had any understanding of how much Hearn had done in
forming the conception of Japan possessed by thousands of Europeans
and Americans. The fault in so many books about Japan, I went on, was
not that their "facts" were wrong. What was wrong was their authors'
attitude of mind. I had heard Japanese say that Hearn was "too
poetical" and that some of his inferences were "inaccurate." That was
as might be. What mattered was that the mental attitude of Hearn was
so largely right. He did not approach Japan as a mere "fact" collector
or as a superior person. What he brought to the country was the
humble, studious, imaginative, sympathetic attitude; and it was only
by men and women of his rare type that peoples were interpreted one to
the other.

In that free-and-easy way in which meetings are conducted in Japan it
was permissible for us to leave after another speech had been made.
The proceedings were interrupted while the promoters of the gathering
showed us a collection of books and memorials of Hearn, arranged under
a large portrait, and accompanied us to the door of the hall. I do not
recall during the time I was in Japan any other public gathering in
honour of Hearn, and I met several prominent men who had either never
heard his name or knew nothing of the far-reaching influence of his
books. But some months after this Matsue meeting there was included
among the Coronation honours a posthumous distinction for
Hearn--"fourth rank of the junior grade."[192]

During this journey I attended a dinner of officials and leading
agriculturists and had the odd sensation of making a short
after-dinner speech on my knees. At such a dinner the guests kneel on
cushions ranged round the four walls of the room, and each man has a
low lacquer table to himself, and a geisha to wait on him. When the
geisha is not bringing in new dishes or replenishing the _saké_
bottle, she kneels before the table and chatters entertainingly. The
governors of the feast visit the guests of honour and drink with them.
In the same way a guest drinks with his neighbour and with his
attendant geisha. I have a vivid memory of a grave and elderly
dignitary who at the merry stage of such a function capered the whole
length of the room with his kneeling-cushion balanced on the top of
his head. There is a growing temperance movement in Japan but a
teetotaller is still something of an oddity. My abstinence from _saké_
was frequently supposed to be the result of a vow.

Although the average geisha may be inane in her patter and have little
more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls
who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to
that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable
position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the
comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius.
Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic
ability. Alas, behind the merry laugh and sprightliness of the girls
who adorn a feast lurks a skeleton. One is haunted by thoughts of the
future of a large proportion of these butterflies. No doubt most
foreigners generalise too freely in identifying the professions of
geisha and _joro_. In the present organisation of society some geisha
play a legitimate rôle. They gain in the career for which they have
laboriously trained an outlet for the expression of artistic and
social gifts which would have been denied them in domestic life. At
the same time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha
cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration the temptation
to drink is great. The opening of new avenues to feminine ability, the
enlarged opportunities of education and self-respect and the
increasing opening for women on the stage--from which women have been
excluded hitherto--must have their effect in turning the minds of
girls of wit and originality to other means of earning a living than
the morally and physically hazardous profession of the geisha.

When we left Matsue by steamer on our way to Tottori prefecture I saw
middle-school eights at practice. An agriculturist told me of the
custom of giving holidays to oxen and horses. The villagers carefully
brush their animals, decorate them and lead them to pastures where,
tethered to rings attached to a long rope, "they may graze together
pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore the name of the giant
radish, Daikon, which is itself a corruption of the word for octopus.
The island devoted itself mainly to the growing of peonies and
ginseng. The ginseng is largely exported to China and Korea, but there
is a certain consumption in Japan. Ginseng is sometimes chewed, but is
generally soaked, the liquid being drunk. Ginseng is popularly
supposed to be an invigorant, and Japanese doctors in Korea have
lately declared that it has some value. The root is costly, hence the
proverb about eating ginseng and hanging oneself, i.e. getting into
debt.

In walking across the island I passed a forlorn little shrine. It was
merely a rough shed with a wide shelf at the back, on which stood a
row of worn and dusty figures, decked with the clothes of children
whose recovery was supposed to have been due to their influence. It
was raining and the shelter was full of children playing in the
company of an old crone with a baby on her back. Further on in the
village I came across a new public bath. The price of admission was
one sen, children half price.

A small port was pointed out to me as being open to foreign trade.
Everybody is not aware that in Japan there is a restriction upon
foreign shipping except at sixty specified places.[193] The reason
given for the restriction is the unprofitableness of custom houses at
small places. One day, perhaps, the world will wake up to the
inconvenience and financial burden imposed by the custom-house system
of raising revenue.

We stayed the night at a little place at the eastern extremity of the
Shimane promontory where there is a shrine and no cultivation of any
sort is allowed "for fear of defilement." Waste products are taken
away by boat. I marked a contrast between theoretical and practical
holiness. Our inn overlooked a special landing-place where, because a
"sacred boat" from the shrine is launched there, a notice had been put
up forbidding the throwing of rubbish into the sea. A few minutes
after the board had been pointed out to me I saw an old man cast a
considerable mass of rubbish into the water not six feet away from it.
When we visited the shrine three pilgrims were at their devotions. The
next morning when our steamer left and the chief priest of the shrine
was bidding us adieu my attention was attracted by loud conversation
in the second storey of an inn, the _shoji_ of which were open. Our
pilgrims, two of whom were bald, had spent the night at an inn of bad
character and were now in the company of prostitutes in the sight of
all men. One pilgrim had a girl on his knee, another was himself on a
girl's knee and a third had his arm round a girl's neck. In this
"sacred" place of 2,000 inhabitants there were forty "double license"
girls, five being natives. A few years ago all the girls were natives.
A "double license" girl means one who is licensed both as a geisha and
a prostitute. The plan of issuing "double licenses" is adopted at
Kyoto and elsewhere. As to the pilgrims to whom I have referred,
someone quoted to me the saying, "It is only half a pilgrimage going
to the shrine without seeing the girls."

Returning to the custom of launching a sacred boat it is not without
significance that many Japanese deities have some connection with the
sea. Even in the case of the deities of shrines a long way from the
sea the ceremony of "going down to the sea" is sometimes observed.
Sand and sea water are sent for in order to be mixed with the water
used to cleanse the car in which the figure of the deity is drawn
through the streets.

The social and financial position of tenants was illustrated by an
incident at an inn. As the maid came from the country I asked her if
her father were a tenant or an owner. My companion interrupted to tell
me that the question was not judiciously framed because the girl would
"think it a disgrace to own that her father was a tenant." The name of
a tenant used long ago to be "water drinker." This waiting-maid was a
good-looking and rather clever girl. I was dismayed when my friend
told me that she had said to him quite simply that she had thoughts
of becoming a _joro_. She thought it would be a "more interesting
life."

When we reached Tottori prefecture we found ourselves in a country
which grows more cotton than any other. Japanese cotton (grown on
about 400 _chō_) is unsuitable for manufacture into thread, but
because of its elasticity is considered to be valuable for the padding
of winter clothing and for _futon_ and _zabuton_. Their softness is
maintained by daily sunning.

At a county office I noted that the persons who were receiving relief
were classified as follows: Illness, 26; cripples, 17; old age, 16;
schoolboys, 12; infancy, 1.

In the course of our journey a Shinto priest was pointed out to me as
observing the priestly taboo by refusing tea and cake. I noticed,
however, that he smoked. I was told that when he was in Tokyo he
purified himself in the sea even in midwinter. I did not like his
appearance. Nor for the matter of that was I impressed by the
countenances of some Buddhist priests I encountered in the train from
time to time. "Thinking always of money," someone said. But every now
and again I saw fine priestly faces.

I have noted down very little in regard to the crops and the
countryside in Tottori. Things seemed very much the same as I had seen
in Shimane. At an agricultural show in the city of Tottori the
varieties of yam and taro were so numerous as to deceive the average
Westerner into believing that he was seeing the roots of different
kinds of plants. A feature of the show was a large realistic model of
a rice field with two life-size figures.

In the evening I talked with two distinguished men until a late hour.
"We are not a metaphysical people," one of them said. "Nor were our
forefathers as religious as some students may suppose. Those who went
before us gave to the Buddhist shrine and even worshipped there, but
their daily life and their religion had no close connection. We did
not define religion closely. Religion has phases according to the
degree of public instruction. Our religion has had more to do with
propitiation and good fortune than with morality. If you had come here
a century ago you would have been unable to find even then religion
after another pattern. If it be said that a man must be religious in
order to be good the person who says so does not look about him. I am
not afraid to say that our people are good as a result of long
training in good behaviour. Their good character is due to the same
causes as the freedom from rowdiness which may be marked in our
crowds."

"What is wanted in the villages," said the other personage, "is one
good personality in each." I said that the young men's association
seemed to me to be often a dull thing, chiefly indeed a mechanism by
means of which serious persons in a village got the young men to work
overtime. "Yes," was the response, "the old men make the young fellows
work."

The first speaker said that there had been three watchwords for the
rural districts. "There was Industrialisation and Increase of
Production. There was Public Spirit and Public Welfare. There was The
Shinto Shrine the Centre of the Village. We have a certain conception
of a model village, but perhaps some hypocrisy may mingle with it.
They say that the village with well-kept Buddhist and Shinto shrines
is generally a good village."

"In other words," I ventured, "the village where there is some
non-material feeling."

The rejoinder was: "Western religion is too high, and, I fear,
inapplicable to our life. It may be that we are too easily contented.
But there are nearly 60 millions of us. I do not know that we feel a
need or have a vacant place for religion. There is certainly not much
hope for an increase of the influence of Buddhism."

As we went along in the train I was told that on a sixth of the rice
area in Tottori there had been a loss of 70 per cent. by wind. When a
man's harvest loss exceeds this percentage he is not liable for rates
and taxes. A passenger told me about "nursery pasture." This is a
patch of grass in the hills to which a farmer sends his ox to be
pastured in common with the oxen of other farmers under the care of a
single herdsman. It is from cattle keeping on this modest scale that
the present beef requirements of the country are largely met.[194]

Although the opinions expressed to me by Governors of prefectures
have been frequently recorded in these pages, I have not felt at
liberty to identify more than one of the Excellencies who were good
enough to express their views to me. A friend who knew many Governors
offered me the following criticism, which I thought just: "They are
too practical and too much absorbed in administration to be able to
think. Often they read very little after leaving the university. They
have seldom anything to tell you about other than ordinary things, and
they seldom show their hearts. You cannot learn much from Governors
who have nothing original to say or are fearful or live in their frock
coats or do not mean to show half their minds or are practising the
old official trick of talking round and round and always evading the
point. One fault of Governors is that they are being continually
transferred from prefecture to prefecture. You have no doubt yourself
noticed how often Governors were new to their prefectures. But with
all the faults that our Governors have, there are not a few able, good
and kind men among them and they are not recruited from Parliament but
must be members of the Civil Service. One of the most common words in
our political life is _genshitsu_, 'responsibility for one's own
words.' If Governors fear to assume the responsibility of their own
views they are only of a part with a great deal of the official
world."

We turned away from the northern sea coast and struck south in order
to cross Japan to the Inland Sea en route for Kobe and Tokyo.

As we came through Hyogo prefecture my companion pointed to hill after
hill which had been afforested since his youth. One of the things
which interested me was the number and the tameness of the kites which
were catching frogs in the paddies.

Before I left Hyogo I had the advantage of a chat with one who for
many years past had thought about the rural situation in Japan
generally. He spoke of "the late Professor King's idealising of the
Japanese farmer's condition." He went on: "While King laid stress on
the ability to be self-supporting on a small area he ignored the
extent to which many rural people are underfed. The change in the
Meiji era has been a gradual transference from ownership to tenancy.
Many so-called representative farmers have been able to add field to
field until they have secured a substantial property and have ceased
to be farmers. An extension of tenancy is to be deplored, not only
because it takes away from the farmer a feeling of independence and of
incentive, but because it creates a parasitic class which in Japan is
perhaps even more parasitic than in the West. A landowner in the West
almost invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan a
landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the State are often
imperfectly understood.

"On the other hand the position of the farmer has been very much
improved socially. A great deal of pity bestowed by the casual foreign
visitor is wasted. The farmer is accustomed to extremes of heat and
cold and to a bare living and poor shelter. And after all there is a
great deal of happiness in the villages. It is hardly possible to take
a day's _kuruma_ ride without coming on a festival somewhere, and
drunkenness has undoubtedly diminished."

I spoke with an old resident about the agricultural advance in the
prefecture. "In fifteen years," he said, "our agricultural production
has doubled. As to the non-material condition of the people, generally
speaking the villagers are very shallow in their religion. Not so long
ago officials used to laugh at religion, but I don't know that some of
them are not now changing their point of view. Some of us have thought
that, just as we made a Japanese Buddhism, we might make a Japanese
Christianity which would not conflict with our ideas."

FOOTNOTES:

[192] This is, I am officially informed, the highest rank ever
bestowed on a foreigner; but then Hearn was naturalised. In 1921 an
appreciation of "Koizumi Yakumo" was included by the Department of
Education in a middle-school textbook. Curiously enough, the fact that
Hearn married a Japanese is overlooked. Owing to the fact that Hearn
bought land in Tokyo which has appreciated in value his family is in
comfortable circumstances.

[193] Coastwise traffic is also forbidden to foreign vessels, as is
traffic between France and Algeria to other than French vessels.

[194] See Appendix LIII.




TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE

CHAPTER XXX

THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

(NAGANO)

The condition of the lower orders is the true mark.--JOHNSON


The Buddhist temple in which I lived for about two months stands on
high ground in a village lying about 2,500 ft. above sea-level in the
prefecture of Nagano and does not seem to have been visited by
foreigners. It is reached by a road which is little better than a
track. No _kuruma_ are to be found in the district, but there are a
few light two-wheeled lorries. Practically all the traffic is on
horseback or on foot. There is a view of the Japanese Alps and of
Fuji.

Running through the village[195] is a river. Most of the summer it may
be crossed by stepping stones, but the width of the rocky bed gives
some notion of the volume of water which pours down after rains and on
the melting of the snow. Two or three miles up from the village a
considerable amount of water is drawn off into two channels which have
been dug, one on either side of the river, at a gentler slope than
that at which the stream flows. The rapid fall of the river is
indicated by the fact that these channels reach the village more than
100 ft. above the level at which the river itself enters it. The
channels, cut as they have been through sharply sloping banks packed
with boulders and big stones, and strengthened throughout by banking,
in order to cope as far as possible with the torrents which rage down
the hillside in winter, represent a vast amount of communal labour. By
the side of each channel the excavated earth and stones have been used
to make a path for pack horses. The water which comes down these
channels serves not only for the ordinary uses of the village but for
irrigating the rice fields and for driving the many water wheels, the
plashing and groaning of which are heard night and day.

[Illustration: THE BUDDHIST TEMPLE (WITH SHINTO SHRINE ON THE LEFT)
IN WHICH THIS CHAPTER WAS WRITTEN]

The whole area of the _oaza_ is officially recorded as 800 _chō_, but
the real area may be double, or even more than that. About 40 per
cent. is cultivated either as paddy or as dry land. The remaining 60
per cent., from which 18 _chō_ may be deducted for house land, is
under grass and wood. Half of this grass and woodland belongs to the
_oaza_ and half to private persons. The grass is mostly couch grass
and weeds. In places there is a certain amount of clover and vetch. Of
the 200 families, numbering about 1,700 people, less than a dozen are
tenants. Of the others, a third cultivate their own land and hire
some more. The remaining two-thirds cultivate their own land and hire
none. The outstanding crop beyond rice is mulberry. A considerable
amount of millet and buckwheat is also grown.

The village is obviously well off. The signs are: successful
sericulture, the large quantity of rice eaten, the number of
well-looking horses (the millet seems to be grown largely for them,
but they also receive beans and wheat boiled), the fact that no
attempt is made to collect the considerable amount of horse manure on
the roads, the cared-for appearance of the temple and shrines, the
almost complete absence of tea-houses, the ease with which new land
may be obtained and the contented look of the people.

One does not expect to find in a remote and wholly Buddhist village
many other animals than horses, and in this community the additional
live stock consists of ten goats (kept for giving milk for invalids),
two pigs and a number of poultry. A working horse over four years was
worth 150 yen. The value of land[196] is to be considered in relation
to local standards of value. It is doubtful if the priest, who seemed
to be comfortably off, is in receipt of more than 250 yen a year. The
midwife, who belongs to the oldest family and has been trained in
Tokyo, gets from 2 to 2-1/2 yen per case. As new land is always
available on the hillsides there is very little emigration to the
towns, but twenty girls are working in the factories in the big
silk-reeling centre twelve miles off. The hillside land which is owned
by the village is not sold but rented to those who want it. To make
new paddies is primarily a question of having enough capital with
which to buy the artificial manure required for the crops.

I was given to understand that no one in the village was poor enough
to need public help, but that the school fees of twelve children were
paid by the community. This is a system peculiar to Nagano, which is a
progressive prefecture vying with other prefectures to increase the
percentage of school attendance. One of the signs of the well-off
character of the village which appears when one is able to investigate
a little is that the place is a favourite haunt of beggars, who, I am
told--every calling is organised--have made it over to the less
fortunate members of their fraternity. The village has enough money to
spend to make it worth while for tradesmen from a distance to open
temporary shops every _Bon_ season and at the New Year festival. A man
in an average position may lay out 200 yen on his daughter's wedding.
A farmer who knew his fellow-villagers' position pretty closely said
he thought that the position of tenant farmers was "rather well." In
the whole village there might be seventy or eighty householders who
had some debt, but it was justifiable. In an ordinary year about 150
farmers would have something to lay by after their twelve months'
work. Perhaps fifty farmers, if the price of rice or of cocoons were
low, might be unable to save; but ordinarily they would have something
in their pockets. About half the farmers are engaged in sericulture--I
noticed cocoons offered at the shrine. The other half sell their
mulberry leaf crop to their neighbours. The village, which is perhaps
400 years old, is increasing in population by about forty every year.
The family which is said to have founded the village is still largely
represented in it.

[Illustration: FIRE ENGINE AND PRIMITIVE FIGURES]

The village has as many as six fire engines, which can be moved about
either on wheels or on runners according to the weather, and as many
look-out ladders and fire-alarm bells. The young men's association has
no fewer than half a dozen buildings, the property of the village.
Five of them are little more than sheds and seem to be used on wet
days as nurseries and playrooms for children. The sixth is the
village theatre, playing at which appears to have been abandoned for
some years. Travelling players give their shows where they will. The
theatre stands in a space encircled by large trees opposite the chief
shrine of the village. There is also here a smaller shrine (fox god)
and some tombstones.

[Illustration: YOUNG MEN'S CLUB ROOM]

Before the chief shrine are two large leaden lanterns. At the base of
these a considerable strip of metal has been torn away. This unusual
destruction by village lads caused me to make enquiry. I found that
the boys had merely enlarged a hole made by adults. The destruction
had been wrought in order to remove the inscription on the lanterns.
It was said that the local donor had meanly omitted to make the
customary gift to the shrine to cover the small expense of lighting
the lanterns on the occasion of festivals. It was the feeling of the
villagers, therefore, that he should not be allowed to blazon his name
in connection with a shabby gift.

[Illustration: MEMORIAL STONES]

There is a ceremony about half a dozen times a year at the chief
shrine, which is about a century old. The Shinto priest, who seemed to
be a genuine antiquary, was of opinion that the structure inside the
shrine might have been built two hundred years ago. In addition to
this chief shrine and the small shrine near it, there are two other
shrines in the village, one in the temple yard (god of happiness) and
the other (horse god) in an open space of its own.

[Illustration: ROOF PROTECTED AGAINST STORMS BY STONES]

But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the non-material life of
this village is the fact that it contains no fewer than 400 carved
stones of a more or less religious character. A few are Buddhist; some
are memorials to priests or teachers; several bear that representation
of a man and a woman facing one another (p. 265) which is one of the
oldest mystic emblems; the majority are devoted apparently to the
horse god. Every man who loses a horse erects a stone. There are two
persons in the village who can carve these stones at a cost of about 2
yen. Some stones which are painted red are dedicated to the fire god.
The 400 stones of which I am speaking do not include grave stones.
These are seen everywhere, many of them just by the wayside. Nearly
every family buries in its own ground. Some burial places with stones
of many forms dating back for a long period of years are extremely
impressive. At the _Bon_ season the grass on every burying ground is
carefully cut.

All the shop-keepers seem to own their own houses and all but three
have some land. There are three _saké_ shops, two of which sell other
things than _saké_, two general shops, two cake and sweet shops, two
tobacco shops, a lantern shop and a barber. There are eight
carpenters, four stonecutters, five plasterers and wall builders, five
woodcutters, two roof makers, two horse shoers, and in the winter a
blacksmith. (The cost of putting on four shoes is 60 sen.) All these
artisans own their own houses and all have land.

As to the health of the village there are two doctors who come every
other day. One was qualified at Chiba and the other at Sendai. They
make no charge for advice and the price of medicine is only 10 sen
unless the materials are expensive. I suppose they may receive
presents. They also probably have a piece of land. There is no
veterinary surgeon, but one is to be found in the village which
composes the other half of the commune.

A physician who had been born in the village and was staying for a few
days with the Buddhist priest who was my host, thought that 90 per
cent. of the villagers ate no meat whatever and that only 50 or 60 per
cent. ate fish, and then only ceremonially, that is at particular
times in the year when it is the custom in Japan to eat fish. The
villagers who did eat meat or fish did not take it oftener than twice
or thrice a month. The canned meat and canned fish in the
shops--Japanese brands--were used almost entirely for guests. The
doctor expressed the opinion of most Japanese that "people who do not
eat meat are better tempered and can endure more." I have heard
Japanese say that "foreigners are short-tempered because they eat so
much meat."

We spoke of the considerable consumption of pickles, highly salted or
fermented. For example, in the ordinary 25-sen _bento_ (lunch) box
there are three or four different kinds of pickles. The doctor said
that pickles were not only a means of taking salt and so appetisers to
help the rice down, but digestives; fermented pickles supplied
diastase which enabled the stomach to deal promptly with the large
quantities of rice swallowed.

I asked for the doctor's opinion as to the prevalence of tumours,
displacements and cancer among women who labour in the fields and have
to bring up children and do all the housework of a peasant's dwelling.
The doctor replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the
ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was certainly rare. He
knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout were all less common than
in the West. He expressed the opinion that childbirth was easier than
in the West. It was a delight to see the fine carriage of the women
and girls astride on the high saddles of the horses.[197] Both sexes
in the district wear over their kimonos blue cotton trousers,
something like a plumber's overall only tighter in the legs. The women
are certainly strong. One day I saw a woman carrying uphill on her
back two wooden doors about 6 ft. by 5 ft. 6 ins. An old woman I met
on the road volunteered her view that women were "stronger" than men.
She was very much concerned to know how foreigners could live without
eating rice. She said--and this is characteristically Japanese--that
she envied me being able to travel all over the world.

[Illustration: OFF TO THE UPLAND FIELDS]

The Buddhist temple is built wholly of wood and the roof is thatched.
Whenever there was an earthquake the timbers seemed to crackle rather
than creak. The temple is relatively new and seems to have been built
with materials given by the villagers and by means of a gift of 1,000
yen. The workmanship was local and a good deal of it was faulty. This
may have been due to lack of experience, but it is more likely that
the cause was limited funds. The plan and proportions of the building
are excellent and the carving is first-rate. The right of
"presentation to the living" is in the hands of the village. The
priest and his family live in a large house on one side of the temple.
On the other side is a small Shinto shrine to which the priest seems
to give such attention as is necessary. The temple is Shingon. There
is a sermon once a year only, or "when some famous man comes." The
actual temple in which the priest, who showed me a fine collection of
robes, conducts his services is between forty and fifty mats in area.
Behind it is the room in which the _ihai_ or tablets of the dead are
arranged. This part of the building is covered on the outside with
plaster in the manner of a _kura_ (godown) so as to be fire-proof. On
either side of the actual temple are rooms very much as in a spacious
private house. There are two of eighteen and fifteen mats, two of
twelve and ten mats and two small ones. There is also a wide covered
_engawa_ (verandah) in front and at the sides. A small kitchen and
what the auctioneers call the usual offices complete the building.

Right round the temple there is a nice garden which keeps the priest's
man, a picturesque, sweet-tempered, guileless old fellow, occupied
much of his time. The priest conducted a service twice a day, at 5:30
in the morning and at 7:30 in the evening. When he fell ill and had to
be carried in a litter to the nearest town for an operation, we missed
his beautiful chanting and expert sounding of the deep-toned gong of
the sanctuary. The great bell in the court-yard was struck by the
priest's boy at sundown. The priest kept the old rule against meat. He
and his wife would not eat even cake or biscuits because they feared
that there might be milk and butter in them. The couple were very kind
to us and we enjoyed a delightfully quiet life in the lofty sunny
temple rooms. I should judge that _Otera San_ (Mr. Temple) was
respected in the village. His wife was a bustling woman of such
sweetness and simplicity of nature as can only be found in a far
valley.

I have mentioned that the total incomings of the priest are probably
about 250 yen. He receives no salary but has his house free. He must
"discuss about anything wanted in the temple." I do not suppose he had
to ask anybody whether he might lodge us or not. He receives
considerable gifts of rice, perhaps to the value of 120 yen, at any
rate enough for the whole year. He has also the rent of the "glebe,"
which consists of 12 _tan_ of paddy, 2 _tan_ of dry field and 10 _tan_
of woodland. Then there are the gifts which are made to him at
funerals and for the services he conducts at the villagers' houses on
the days of the dead. One day during the _Bon_ season every household
sent a little girl or boy with a present to the priest. In return
these small visitors were given sweets. During the _Bon_ season some
very old men of the village came and worshipped at the Shinto shrine
and were entertained with _saké_ by the priest on the _engawa_ of his
temple. The amount in the collecting box in front of the little Shinto
shrine in the temple yard, largely in _rin_, would not be more than 10
or 15 sen in the year. Most of the contributions are in the form of
pinches of rice. The priest may give 10 yen a year to his man who
works about the temple and his house and accompanies him to funerals
and to the memorial services at the villagers' dwellings; but this
servitor, like his master, no doubt receives presents.

The Shinto priest is probably not so well off as the Buddhist priest.
The village makes a small payment to him twice a year. At New Year 3
yen in all may be flung in the collecting box at the shrine, but the
priest has presents made to him when he goes to see ailing folk and
when he officiates at the building of a new house. Most people when
they are ill seem to send for the Shinto priest. But he explained to
me that he does not expect a sick man to "worship only." He is
accustomed to say to the people, "Doctor first, god second," from
which I was to conclude, one who heard told me, that the priest was
"rather a civilised man." The Shinto priest had succeeded a relative
in his position. The village had found its Buddhist priest in a
neighbouring district.

The Buddhist priest told me that every year 150 or 160 men and women
made a pilgrimage to a famous shrine some few miles off. The custom
was for every house to be represented in the pilgrimage. Half a dozen
people in the year might go on personal pilgrimages and fifty or so
might visit a little shrine on a neighbouring mountain.

FOOTNOTES:

[195] The village consists of about 270 houses. It is joined
administratively to another village, about two miles off, in order to
form a _mura_ (commune). The village I am about to describe is an
_oaza_ (large hamlet), which is made up in its turn of two _aza_
(small hamlets). These aza are themselves divided into six _kumi_
(companies), which are again sub-divided, in the case of the largest,
into four.

[196] See Appendix LIV.

[197] The horses wear basket-work muzzles to prevent them nibbling the
crops. By way of compensation for these encumbrances they have head
tassels and belly cloths to keep off the flies.




CHAPTER XXXI

"BON" SEASON SCENES

(NAGANO)

As moderns we have no direct affinity; as individuals we have a capacity
for personal sympathy.--MATTHEW ARNOLD


I had the good fortune to be in the village during the _Bon_ season.
The idea is that the spirits which are visiting their old homes remain
between the 11th and 14th of August. The 11th is called _mukae bon_
and the 14th _okuri bon_. (_Mukae_ means going to meet; _okuri_ to see
off.) On the 11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front
of their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in the
temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary gong and drum.
The prayer seemed peculiarly sad. Before the shrines in their houses
the villagers placed offerings. One was a horse made out of a
cucumber, the legs being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the
hair-like substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings of real
and artificial flowers and of grapes. In one house I visited I saw
_geta_, _waraji_, kimonos, pumpkins, caramels and pencils. Strings of
buck-wheat macaroni were laid over twigs of flax set in a vase. The
_ihai_ (name-plates of the dead) seemed to be displayed more
prominently than usual. (They are kept in a kind of small oratory
called _ihaido_, and after a time several names are collected on a
single plate.) _Mochi_ (rice-flour dumpling) is eaten at this time. On
the 12th and 14th the priest called at each house for two or three
minutes.

I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at
the _Bon_ season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children
believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young
women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other
things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly
at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a Japanese
house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist
shrine--where the name plates of the dead for several generations are
treasured--cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the
dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the
minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is
a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto
shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in
the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me
to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that
lugubriousness which Western people commonly associate with what is
sacred. The Japanese conception of reverence is somewhat different
from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is
the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what
in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he
told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran
down his face.

[Illustration: FARMER'S WIFE]

When the _Bon_ season ended on the fourteenth all the flowers and
decorations of the domestic shrines were taken early in the morning to
the bridge over the diminished river and flung down. The idea is
perhaps that they are carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact
there was so little water that almost everything flung in from the
bridge remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.) When the
flowers and decorations had been cast from the bridge the people went
off to worship at the graves. Many coloured streamers of paper,
written on by the priest, were flying there.

The _Bon_ dances took place five nights running in the open space
between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have
been duller. The line from _Ruddigore_ came to mind, "This is one of
our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently
shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little
more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain
animation; but even then the movement, the song and the whole scheme
of the dance seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that a
number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring, which got
larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited outside. The girls
bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands.
The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms--the girls
had fans in their hands--and a simple attitudinising. The lads all
clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of
way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans.
The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round
their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in
all their best clothes with fine _obi_ and white aprons. The music was
dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be
singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these
five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The only
word I can think of which approximately describes what I heard, but it
seems harsh, is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and
then the girls responded with a slightly more musical repetition of
the same sounds. For all the notice the boys appeared to take of the
girls they might not have been present. The lads and lasses were no
doubt fully conscious, however, of each other's presence. The dancing
took place on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and,
owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was often dimly
lit.

To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say that the
dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight o'clock and went on till
midnight. "They would not be fit for their work next day if they
danced later," a sober-minded adult explained. This was only one
suggestion among many that the dance has been devitalised under the
respectabilising influence of the policeman and village elders who had
forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it did not seem to matter very
much whether the dance, as it is now, continues or not. Occasionally
one had an impression that it had once been a folk dance of vigour and
significance. But the present-day performance might have been
conceived and presented by a P.S.A. All this is true when the dance is
contrasted with an English West-country dance or a dance in Scotland
at Hallowe'en. But it must be remembered that the _Bon_ dance during
the first nights is in the nature of a lament for the dead. There is
something haunting in the strange little refrain, though it is
difficult to hum or whistle it. Perhaps the whole festival is too
intimately racial to be fully understood by a stranger. By the end of
the festival, on the night of merrymaking in honour of the village
guardian spirit, things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently
had _saké_ and even the girls had lost their demureness.

[Illustration: MOTHER AND CHILD]

After the Buddhist _Bon_ season was over it was the turn of Shinto,
and the village children were paraded before the shrine. A number of
Shinto priests in the neighbourhood took a leading part in making the
customary offerings and the local priest read a longish address to the
guardian spirit of the village. Respectful correctness rather than
devoutness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed to
apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local priest was
reverential. The ceremonies of the day evidently meant a great deal to
him. The children paid a well-drilled attention. They also sang the
national anthem and a special song for the day under the leadership of
the school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which sounded
as portable harmoniums usually sound. The whole proceedings wore a
semi-official look.

Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which
we were invited later in the day. A special little platform had been
put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The
wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They
did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a
wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of
the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the
competitors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and
bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a "Nō" player,
proclaimed the names and styles--it seems that the wrestlers have a
fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers--in a fashion
which recalled the tournament. There was also another personage, with
a Dan Leno-like face and an extraordinary gift of contorting his legs,
who played the buffoon, and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who
remained unmoved while the audience laughed. It was evidently the
right thing for the prizes--they were awarded at the end of each
bout--to be presented as comically as possible; and some of the
Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully to the groundlings
at the Globe were enacted as if neither space nor time intervened
between us and the Elizabethans.

The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are accustomed
to, but they were none the less exciting. The result was invariably in
some doubt and often entirely unexpected. The usual rule was that he
who threw his man twice was the winner. In some events, immediately a
wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants rushed at
the victor, one after the other, without allowing him time even to
straighten his back. Some of the competitors were poorly developed but
the lankiest and skinniest were often excellent wrestlers. At an
interval in the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to
wrestlers and spectators. I wanted to make some little acknowledgment
of the kindness of the young men's association in providing us with
our little platform, and it was suggested that autographed fans at
about a penny three-farthings apiece for about forty wrestlers would
be acceptable. This gift was announced on a long streamer. The funny
man of the ring also made a speech of welcome. I may add that the
young men's association had fitted up on the way to the scene of the
wrestling a number of special lanterns which bore efforts in English
by a student home for the holidays.

I was told that the people of the village were "honest, independent
and earnest," and I am disposed to think that this may be true of most
of them. As to honesty, we had the satisfaction of living without any
thought of _dorobo_ (robbers). It is a great comfort to be able at
night to leave open most of the _shoji_ and not to have to pull out
the _amado_ (wooden shutters) from their case. The nature of our
possessions was well known not only in the village but throughout the
district, for there was seldom a day on which a knot of grown-ups or
children did not come to peer into our rooms. The inspection was
accompanied by many polite bows and friendly smiles. On a festival day
the crowd occasionally reached about fifty.

There were formerly several teahouses in the village, but under the
influence of the young men's association all houses of entertainment
but two had been closed. These two had become "inns." In one of these
the girl attendant was the proprietor's daughter; in the other there
was a solitary waitress. One of the abolished teahouses had taken
itself two miles away, where possibly it still had visitors. There
seemed to be two public baths in the village, both belonging to
private persons. The charge was 1 sen for adults and 5 _rin_ for
children. At one of the baths I noticed separate doors for men and
women; in the bath itself the division between the sexes was about two
feet high.

The smallest subdivision of the village is called _kumi_ or company.
Each of these has a kind of manager who is elected on a limited
suffrage. The managers of the _kumi_, it was explained, are "like
diplomatists if something is wanted against another village." The
_kumi_ also seems to have some corporate life. There is once a month a
semi-social, semi-religious meeting at each member's house in turn.
The persons who attend lay before the house shrine 3 or 5 sen each or
a small quantity of rice for the feast. The master of the house
provides the sauce or pickles. I heard also of a kind of _kō_ called
_mujin_, a word which has also the meaning of "inexhaustible." By such
agencies as these money is collected for people who are poor or for
men who want help in their business or who need to go on a journey.

We have seen that the village is by every token well off. What are its
troubles? Undoubtedly the people work hard. I imagine, however, that
there are very many districts where the people work much harder. The
foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working
continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a handicraft or
at business, an Oriental gives the impression of having no notion of
getting his work done and being finished with it. The working day
lasts all day and part of the night. Whether much more is done in the
time than in the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief
silk-worm season many of the women of the village in which I stayed
are afoot for a long day and for part of the night, but the winter
brings relief from the strain of all sorts of work. Owing to the snow
it is practically impossible to do any work out of doors in January,
February and March. The snow may stop work even in December. Here,
then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women
have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken
too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two
miles and hares are easily got.

Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase
incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past
because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to
increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to
possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that
this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What
the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village
loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously
some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed.

The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population
of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what
someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going
to lectures. Lectures are a great institution in Nagano. For these
lectures country people tramp into a county town in their _waraji_
carrying their _bento_. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A
friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for
seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days
and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and
a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the
first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed
that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about
100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not
the country people, who left.

[Illustration: A CRADLE]

I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had been living
there had been one arrest only during the previous year. The charge
was one of theft. Half a dozen other people had got into trouble but
their arrests had been "postponed." Two of these six delinquents had
"caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty theft, and
the remaining two had sold things of small value which did not belong
to them. During the twelve months there had been no charges of
immorality and no gambling. Perhaps, however, there may have been
police admonitions. It seemed to have been a long time since there had
been a case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a child being
born in the first months of a young couple's marriage. Someone
mentioned, however, that the girls who went to the silk factories
were, as a consequence of their life there, "debased morally and
physically."

A notable thing in the village was four fires, two the month before we
arrived and two while we were there. They were suspected to have been
the work of a person of weak intellect. (As in our own villages half a
century ago, there is in every community at least one "natural.") On
the night of the first fire we were awakened about 3 a.m. by shouting,
by the clanging of the fire bell and by the booming of the great bell
in the temple yard. The fire was about four houses away. It was a
still night and the flames and sparks went straight up. As the
possibility of the wind shifting and the fire spreading could not be
entirely excluded we quickly got our more important possessions on the
_engawa_--at least a young maidservant did so. The continual
experience which the Japanese have of fires makes them self-possessed
on these occasions, and this girl had _futon_, bags, etc., neatly tied
in big _furoshiki_ (wrapping cloths) in the shortest possible time. It
was only when she was satisfied that our belongings were in readiness
for easy removal that she went to look after her own. The
matter-of-fact, fore-sighted, neat way in which she got to work was
admirable. With great kindness one of the elders of the village came
hurriedly to the temple, evidently thinking we should feel alarmed,
and cried out, "_Yoroshii, Yoroshii_" ("All right").

[Illustration: FIRE ALARM AND OBSERVATION POST]

As I stood before the blaze what struck me most was the orderliness
and quiet of the crowd and the way in which whatever help was needed
was at once forthcoming without fuss. The fire brigades were working
in an orderly way and everything was so well managed that the scene
seemed almost as if it were being rehearsed for a cinema. One
difference between what I saw and what would be seen at home at a fire
was that the scene was well lighted from the front, for the members of
the fire brigades carried huge lanterns on high poles. From the mass
of old wet reed in the roadway I judged that the first act of the
firemen had been to use their long hooks to denude the roof of the
burning house of its thatch, which in the lightest wind is so
dangerous to surrounding dwellings. Nobody in the village is insured,
but the neighbours seem to meet about a third of the loss caused by a
fire. It is an illustration of local values that a larger subscription
than 2 yen would not be accepted from me. In connection with this fire
someone mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent in
some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is the usual
means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by a person who threatens
arson is, "I will make the red worm creep into your roof."

During the winter there is too much drinking--"generally by poor
men"--but there is said to be less of this than formerly. Some people
stop their newspaper in the summer and resume taking it during the
greater leisure of the winter. It has been noted, among other small
matters, that the local vocabulary has expanded during the past
fifteen years. During our stay the young midwife, who was going to
America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in the
kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also gave help in
the evenings thrice a week to one of the school teachers who had
managed to obtain a fair reading knowledge of English. The earnestness
with which these two people studied was touching. While I was in the
village the young men's association began the issue of a magazine.
Lithographic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in
autograph as well as in translation. The association, which receives
10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots of paddy and
dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with imitation rifles,
imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges. I felt that I should know
more about the villagers if I could learn, like Synge, their topics of
conversation when no stranger was present. One day while strolling
with a friend I asked him what was being said by two girls who were
working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge
(hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was
enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince
by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which
reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria
was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the
conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices.
Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular,
"because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual
questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village
said cautiously, "They say there are some moneylenders here."




IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

CHAPTER XXXII

PROGRESS OF SORTS

(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural
population.--BORROW


The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of
electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is
possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the
sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper
or silk factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they found
that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the
agricultural population. The farmers also realised that to the
factories were due electric light, the telephone, better roads and
more railway stations. The farmers are undoubtedly better off. They
are so well off indeed that the district can afford an agricultural
expert of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of
_geta_, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport coats cut
after a supposedly Western fashion. But the people, it was insisted,
have become a little "sly," and girls return from the factories less
desirable members of the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority whom I met
during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question
of the condition of the farmer in Japan. He expressed the opinion that
10 per cent. of the farmers were in a "wretched condition." Big
holdings--if any holdings in Japan can be called big--were getting
bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the
owners of the small and the medium-sized classes of holding. The fact
that many rural families were in debt, not for seed or manure but for
food spoke for itself. The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes,
but when the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80 yen
was a serious matter; and 80 yen was the average debt of farming
families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka. No one could say that the
farmers were lazy: they were working hard according to their lights.
They were working too hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got.
There could be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman
was being lowered.

Again, there was the fact of the rural exodus--the phrase sounded
strangely in the middle of a Japanese sentence. As to the causes, the
first unquestionably was that the farmer had not enough land on which
to make a living. If the farmer could have 5 acres or thereabouts he
would be well off. But the average area per farmer in the prefecture
in which we were travelling was a little less than 2-1/2 acres. High
taxes were another cause of the farmer's present condition. Then a
year's living would be mortgaged for the expenses of a marriage
ceremony. At a funeral, too, the neighbours came to eat and drink.
They took charge of the kitchen and even ordered in food. (After a
Japanese feast the guests are given at their departure the food that
is left over.) Further, some farmers wasted their substance on the
ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had gone off to the
army hatless and wearing straw shoes came home hatted and sometimes
booted. Military service deprived farmers of labour, and their boys
while away asked their parents for money. Conscription pressed more
heavily on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued
their education to the middle school, and attendance at a middle
school entitled a young man to reduction of military service to one
year only.[198]

The countryside was suffering from the way in which importance was
increasingly attached to industry and commerce. Many M.P.s were of the
agricultural class, but they were chiefly landlords, and they were
often shareholders and directors of industrial companies. There was
very little real Parliamentary representation of the farming class and
it had not yet found literary expression. There were signs, however,
that some landlords were realising that industry and agriculture were
not of equal importance. But the farmers were slow to move. The
traditions of the Tokugawa epoch survived, making action difficult.
Finally, there was the drawback to rural development which exists in
the family system. But that, as Mr. Pickwick said, comprises by itself
a difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude, and we must return
to it on another occasion.

In one of my excursions I went over a large agricultural school, the
boast of which was that of all the youths who had passed through it,
twenty only had deserted the land. I met the present scholars marching
with military tread, mattocks on shoulders, to the school paddies.

I noticed schoolgirls wearing a wooden tablet. It was a good-conduct
badge. If a girl was not wearing it on reaching home her parents knew
that her teacher had retained it because of some fault; if she was not
wearing it at school her teacher knew that her parents had kept it
back for a similar reason. The girls when they come to school have
often baby brothers or sisters tied on their backs. Otherwise the
girls would have to stay at home in order to look after them. I asked
a schoolmaster what happened when children were kept at home. He said
that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the
parents in order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported
the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings.
Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village
authorities to the county authorities. They summoned the father to
appear before them. This meant loss of time and the cost of the
journey. Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5
to 10 yen for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not
sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic association had provided the
speaker's school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered umbrellas so
that children who had come unprovided could go home on a rainy day
without a parent, elder brother or sister having to leave work to
bring an umbrella to school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform before which
the children assembled every morning. The headmaster, standing on the
platform, gravely saluted the children and the children as gravely
responded. The scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the
centre of which is the Emperor's palace. An inscription hanging in the
school was, "Exert yourself to kill harmful insects." In another
school there was a portrait of a former teacher who had covered the
walls of the school with water-colours of local scenery. I noticed in
the playground of a third school a flower-covered cairn and an
inscribed slab to the memory of a deceased master. Every school
possesses equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-Japanese
war, usually a shell, a rifle and bayonet and an entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men's associations' efforts to
discourage "cheek binding," which is the wearing of the head towel in
such a way as to disguise the face and so enable the cheek binder to
do, if he be so minded, things he might not do if he were
recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just been rebuilt
after a fire. Within four hours the blaze aided by a strong wind had
consumed 1,700 houses and caused the deaths of nine persons. The
destruction of so many dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or
thatch, or the light pieces of wood from the _shoji_, which are
carried aflame by the wind, setting fire to several houses
simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone _jizō_, the
cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing near; but
they looked as incongruous in the position they occupied as did a
small shrine which was standing in the shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse girls in
private families. A poor farmer may enter into a contract when his
girl is five for her to go into service at eight. He receives cash in
anticipation of the fulfilment of the contract.

I was assured by a man competent to speak on the matter that a
certain small town was notorious for receiving boys who had been
stolen as small children from their homes in the hills. Up to 30 yen
might be given for a boy. There might be a dozen of such unfortunates
in the place. Happily many of the children obtained by this "slave
system," as my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old
enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which he and his
father had improved under the precepts of Ninomiya. The hillside had
been covered with tea, orange trees and mulberry; the community had
not only got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its
boundaries; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it was averred, had
"disappeared"; there were larger and better crops; and "the habit of
enjoying nature" had increased. The amusements of the village were
wrestling, fencing, _jūjitstu_, and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often injured by stores
was as often mysteriously repaired. On a watch being kept it was found
that the good work was done by a villager who had been scrupulous to
keep secret his labours for the public welfare. Another tale was of a
poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and brought it to his humble
dwelling. On his neighbours suggesting that a finer house were a
fitter resting-place for such a shrine, the man replied: "I do not
think so. My shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may
be fine. But the place in which the shrine stands is my place; it need
not be fine."

In travelling the roads notices are often seen on official-looking
boards with pent roofs. But all of these notices are not official; one
I copied was the advertisement of a shrine which declared itself to be
unrivalled for toothache. The horses on the roads are sometimes
protected from the sun by a kind of oblong sail, which works on a
swivel attached to the harness. Black velvety butterflies as big as
wrens flit about. (There are twice as many butterflies and moths in
Japan as at home.) Snakes, ordinarily of harmless varieties, are
frequently seen, dead or alive.

Many of the people one passes are smoking, usually the little brass
pipe used both by men and women, which, like some of the earliest
English pipes, does not hold more tobacco than will provide a few
draws. The pipe is usually charged twice or thrice in succession. One
notices an immense amount of cigarette smoking, which cannot be
without ill effect. There is a law forbidding smoking below the age of
twenty. It is not always enforced, but when enforced there is a
confiscation of smoking materials and a fining of the parents. The
voices of many middle-aged women and some young ones are raucous owing
to excessive smoking of pipes or cigarettes.

I looked into a school and saw the wall inscription, "Penmanship is
like pulling a cart uphill. There must be no haste and no stopping."
Here, as in so many places, I saw the well-worn cover and much-thumbed
pages of _Self Help_. I may add a fact which would be in its place in
a new edition of Smiles's _Character_. As a simple opening to
conversation I often asked if a man had been in Europe or America. His
answer, if he had not travelled, was never "No." It was always "Not
yet."

In these country schools most of the songs are set to Western tunes.
Such airs as "Ye Banks and Braes," "Auld Lang Syne," "Annie Laurie,"
"Home, Sweet Home" and "The Last Rose of Summer" are utilised for the
songs not only of school children but of university students. Few of
the singers have any notion that the music was not written in their
own land. A Japanese friend told me that all the airs I mentioned
"seem tender and touching to us," and I remember a Japanese
agricultural expert saying, "Reading those poems of Burns, I believe
firmly that our hearts can vibrate with yours."

As I have denied myself the pleasure of dwelling on Japanese scenic
beauties, I may not pause to bear witness to the faery delights of
cherry blossom which I enjoyed everywhere during this journey. But I
may record two cherry-blossom poems I gathered by the way. The first
is, "Why do you wear such a long sword, you who have come only to see
the cherry blossoms?" The second is, "Why fasten your horse to the
cherry tree which is in full bloom, when the petals would fall off if
the horse reared?" A Japanese once told me that a foreigner had
greatly surprised him by asking if the cherry trees bore much fruit.

Orange as well as tea culture is a feature of the agricultural life of
the prefecture. As in California and South Africa, ladybirds have been
reared in large numbers in order to destroy scale. I saw at the
experiment station miserable orange trees encaged for producing scale
for the breeding ladybirds. The insects are distributed from the
station chiefly as larvae. They are sent through the post about a
hundred at a time in boxes. The ladybird, which has, I believe, eight
generations a year, and as an adult lives some twenty days, lays from
200 to 250 eggs, 150 of the larvae from which may survive. Alas for
the released ladybirds of Shidzuoka! Scale is said to be disappearing
so quickly that they are having but a hard life of it.

In the neighbouring prefecture of Kanagawa I paid a visit to a
gentleman who, with his brother, had devoted himself extensively to
fruit and flower growing. Their produce was sent the twenty-six hours'
journey by road to Tokyo, where four shops were maintained. A
considerable quantity of foreign pears had been produced on the
palmette verrier system. The branches of the extensively grown native
pear are everywhere tied to an overhead framework which completely
covers in the land on which the trees stand. This method was adopted
in order to cope with high winds and at the same time to arrest
growth, for in the damp soil in which Japanese pears are rooted, the
branches would be too sappy. Foreign pears are not more generally
cultivated because they come to the market in competition with
oranges, and the Japanese have not yet learnt to buy ripe pears. The
native pear looks rather like an enormous russet apple but it is as
hard as a turnip, and, though it is refreshing because of its
wateriness, has little flavour. Progress is being made with peaches
and apricots. Figs are common but inferior. A fine native fruit, when
well grown, is the _biwa_ or loquat. And homage must be paid to the
best persimmons, which yield place only to oranges and
tangerines.[199] In the north the apples are good, but most orchards
are badly in need of spraying. Experiments have been made with dates.
Flowers have a weaker scent than in Europe. A rose called the
"thousand _ri_"--a _ri_ is two and a half miles--has only a slight
perfume two and a half inches away, and then only when pulled. I met
with no heather--it is to be seen in Saghalien, which has several
things in common with Scotland--but found masses of sweet-scented
thyme.

One of the horticulturists to whom I have referred was something of an
Alpinist and was married to a Swiss lady. They had several children. I
also met an American lady who had had great experience of fruit
growing in California, had married a Japanese farmer there, and had
come to live with him in a remote part of his native country. From
such alliances as these there may come some day a woman's impressions
of the life and work of women and girls on the farms and in the
factories of rural Japan. Many a visitor to the country districts must
have marked the dumbness of the women folk. Women were often present
at the conversations I had in country places, but they seldom put in a
word. I was received one day at the house of a man who is well known
as a rural philanthropist--he has indeed written two or three
brochures on the problems of the country districts--but when he, my
friend and I sat at table his wife was on her knees facing us two
rooms off. Every instructed person knows that there is a beautiful
side to the self-suppression of the Japanese woman--many moving
stories might be told--and that the "subservience" is more apparent
than real. But there is certainly unmerited suffering. The men and
women of the Far East seem to be gentler and simpler, however, than
the vehement and demonstrative folk of the West, and conditions which
appear to the foreign observer to be unjust and unbearable cannot be
easily and accurately interpreted in Western terms. At present many
women who are conscious of the situation of their sex see no means of
improvement by their own efforts. But the development of the women's
movement is proceeding in some directions at a surprising pace. Many
young men are sincerely desirous to do their part in bringing about
greater freedom. They realise what is undoubtedly true that not a few
things which urgently need changing in Japan must be changed by men
and women working together.

Money has always been forthcoming, officially, semi-officially and
privately, for sending to America and Europe numbers of intelligent
young men and women. So disciplined and studious are most of these
young people that their country has had back with interest every yen
of the funds so wisely provided. We have much to learn from Japanese
methods in this matter of well-considered post-graduate foreign
travel.[200]

FOOTNOTES:

[198] See Appendix LXIII.

[199] See Appendix LV.

[200] See Appendix LVI.




CHAPTER XXXIII

GREEN TEA AND BLACK

(SHIDZUOKA)

Things I would know but am forbid
By time and briefness.

LAURENCE BINYON


More than half of the tea grown in Japan comes from the hilly
coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which every traveller
passes on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto to Tokyo. He sees a terraced
cultivation of tea and fruit carried up to the skyline. But there is
more tea on the hills than the passenger in the train imagines. When
viewed from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various parts
of southern Japan patches of tea may be noticed growing on little
islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill plant and it is on the sides
of hills and on the plateaus at the top of them that the plantations
are to be found.

Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow like box to a
height which can be conveniently picked over. The rows of neat-looking
plants are half a dozen feet apart. The first picking may take place
when the bush is three or four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty
or even a hundred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between
twenty and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or so. A
good deal depends on the pruning. After each picking the bushes are
cut over with the shears just as we trim box. These trimmings may be
used to make an inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be
utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine--the two products
are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are cut round-topped, but
occasionally they are roof-shaped and sometimes they are like giant
green toadstools.

The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the rows of tea
bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses which manufacture their
own tea. (The word manufacture is used in the original sense, for
farmhouse tea is hand-made.) In a country where the houses are
chimneyless these galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.

The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely by women and
children. The pickers are supposed to take only the three leaves at
the tips. But the pickers mostly take bigger pieces, for the somewhat
higher price given for good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf
stuff only. It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves
gathered should be all of such a choice sort.

Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea. Picking is regarded
as "polite labour by the daughters of the higher middle class of
farmers." It has also the attraction that farmers' sons have a way of
visiting tea gardens in order to "pick up wives." The girls certainly
give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they can do, for
they are at work for a long day, often of from twelve to fourteen
hours. In such a day it is possible, I was told, to pick 50, 80 or
even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces
a minute. Four pounds of leaves make a pound of tea.

In one district the first picking may take place during the first
three weeks of May. In colder districts it is proceeding until the end
of the month. The second season is from the end of June until the
beginning of July. The third is in August. The bushes, after producing
their three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which are
about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are worth about a sen
a pound. Oil is pressed from them.

Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting over and good
manuring. In some places I saw soya bean being grown between the rows
as green manuring. Like so many other crops, tea is or ought to be
sprayed. The northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must
be protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture to a
great depth. The region in which tea cannot be grown is that in which
the temperature falls below zero for two months. Tea is not grown, as
in India and Ceylon, by tea planters, but in small areas and as a
side-line at that. I never saw a plantation of more than five acres.
Most areas are much smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is
largely manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the capacity
of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is limited. In Shidzuoka
nearly a quarter of the tea is hand rolled and three-quarters made by
machinery. Elsewhere in Japan half the crop may be hand rolled.

When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take place in booths
opened by them in the tea districts. It is a busy scene in the region
of the cottage factories. One is on a wide plateau covered almost
entirely with rows of tea plants. Here and there are parties of
chattering pickers, their heads protected by the national towel.
Against the blue hilltops on the horizon stand out the cottages of the
farmers with chimney-pipes smoking, the booths of the dealers, and, in
every patch of tea, the thatched roof over the precious sunken pot of
liquid manure by which the tea bushes have so often benefited. On the
road one passes women with baskets on their backs, like Scotch
fish-wives with their creels, men carrying two baskets suspended from
a pole across one shoulder, or a man and his wife hauling a barrow,
all heavy-laden with newly picked leaves. Small horse-drawn wagons
carry the manufactured tea in big, well-tied, pink paper bales. On the
whole, although the labour is hard it seemed a better life having to
do with the fragrant tea than with the rice of the sludge ponds in the
valley below.

[Illustration: RACK FOR DRYING RICE.]

[Illustration: VILLAGE CREMATORIUM.]

[Illustration: DOG HELPING TO PULL JINRIKISHA.]

[Illustration: AUTHOR, MR. YAMASAKI AND YOUNGEST INHABITANTS.]

The tea produced in Japan is principally green tea. Most of this is of
the kind called _sencha--cha_ means tea. An inferior article made out
of older and tougher leaves is called _bancha_. The custom is for the
maid who serves _bancha_ to heat the leaves over the charcoal fire
just before infusing. This gives it an agreeable roasted flavour. It
is often served in a darker shade of porcelain than is used for
ordinary tea. There are also the finer teas, _kikicha_ (powdered tea)
and _gyokuro_ (jewelled dewdrops), which is the best kind of _sencha_.
Black tea was being made experimentally when I first arrived in Japan.
Brick tea (pressed to the consistency and weight of wood) may be green
or black. Most of the exported tea, other than brick tea, goes to
America.

[Illustration: "TORII" AT FOX-GOD SHRINE.]

[Illustration: RECORD OF GIFTS TO A TEMPLE.]

It is unnecessary to state that the Japanese tea-tray does not include
a sugar basin, cream jug or spoons. It does include, however, a squat
oval jug into which the hot water from the kettle is poured in order
to lower the temperature below boiling point. Boiling water would
bring out a bitter flavour from the tea. Made with water just below
boiling point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a
flavour and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is certainly
refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively harmless.
_Bancha_ is made with hotter water than other tea. The handleless cups
hold about half of what our teacups contain.[201] Tea is not the only
plant used for making "tea." One drinks in some parts infusions of
cherry, plum or peach blossom.

The processes of tea manufacture in farmers' outhouses and in
factories are described in school-books, and I need not transcribe my
impressions.[202] But I may note that some of the money the tea farmer
earns for the country is spent in his interests. There is in Shidzuoka
a well-directed prefectural experiment station which exercises itself
over problems of tea production. Every tea grower and tea dealer in
the prefecture must belong to the prefectural tea guild. He must also
belong to his county tea guild. The rules of the guilds--there is a
central guild in Tokyo--have the force of law. Evil doers in the tea
industry have their product confiscated. Tea dealers who do not carry
their guild membership card are fined. It is not difficult to discover
colouring in tea if it is rubbed on white paper. The Government's part
in subduing tea colouring was to seize all the dye stuff it could lay
hold of which could be used for colouring tea.

The future of green tea depends almost entirely on the demand from
the growing population of Japan, but a taste for the "foreign style"
black tea--with condensed milk--is spreading. The cheap labour of
India and China and the big plantations and factories of India have
diminished the Japanese green tea trade and the effort to produce
black tea is also met by foreign competition. I was told that China
tea receives much sunshine while growing, and that there was most hope
for Japanese black tea when made from leaves grown in the extreme
south. There is a difference between the Chinese and the Japanese tea
plant and it cannot be got over by importing Chinese plants, for the
climate of Japan simply Japanises the imported sort.

I found in the United States that green tea is bought, as it is no
doubt sold in Shidzuoka, on appearance. American housewives were
paying for an appearance that matters little in an article that is not
to be looked at but soaked. Not only is much extra labour required for
sifting the leaf several times in order to obtain a good appearance,
but the bulk is reduced from 5 to 10 per cent. The drinking quality of
the tea also suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the best cup
quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only they might be at
least from 5 to 10 per cent. cheaper.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for
less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup--you are entitled to keep
both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept
hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.

[202] For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.




EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

CHAPTER XXXIV

A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

(CHIBA)

What was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided
excursions and gleaned as industry should find or chance should
offer.--JOHNSON


When I first went to Chiba, the peninsular prefecture lying across the
bay from Tokyo, many carriages in the trains were heated by iron
_hibachi_[203]with pieces of old carpet thrown over them. It is on the
Chiba trains that the recruits of that section of the army which has
to do with the operation of the railways learn their business. It is
in part of Chiba--and also in a district in Tokyo prefecture--that the
earliest rice is grown. Chiba also contains more poultry than any
other prefecture.[204] It has the further distinction of having tried
to issue truthful crop statistics.[205]

Wherever one goes in Japan one is impressed by the large consumption
of fish--fresh, dried, and salted. Thin slices of raw fish make one of
the tasty dishes at a Japanese meal. The foreigner, forgetting the
Western relish for oysters and clams, is repelled by this raw fish,
but a liking for it seems to be quickly acquired. In Tokyo the slices
of raw fish are cut from the meaty bonito (tunny), but _tai_ (bream)
is also used. Bonito also provides the long narrow steaks, dried to a
mahogany-like hardness, which are known as _katsubushi_. This
_katsubushi_ keeps indefinitely and is grated or shaved with a kind
of plane and used much as the Western cook employs Parmesan cheese.

I heard a man in Chiba combating very strongly the idea of there being
a connection between leprosy and fish eating. As to leprosy, it is
doubtful if the belief expressed by the Chinese name for the disease,
"heavenly punishment," has disappeared. There are at least 24,000
lepers in Japan, and as a well-known Japanese work of reference
casually remarks, "the hospitals can at present accommodate only 5 per
cent. of them."

I could not but compare the undulating countryside, on which so vast
an amount of labour had been expended, with what it would have been
under European treatment and the influence of an European
climate--possibly picturesque pasture with high hedges. The congeries
of rice fields was fringed, where the water supply had given out, with
upland cultivation. On the low mud walls which separated the paddies
beans grew except at a boundary corner, where a tea or mulberry bush
served as a landmark. In looking down or up the little valleys one saw
how completely the houses had been brushed aside to the foot of the
low hills so that no land cultivable as paddies should be wasted. This
intensely developed countryside was not however ideal land. It was
often much too sandy. Not a few paddies had to depend to some extent
on the water they could catch for themselves. A naturally draughty and
hungry land was yielding crops by a laborious manurial improvement of
its physical and chemical condition, by wonders being wrought in rural
hydraulics and by unending industry in cultivation and petty
engineering.

It might be supposed that beauty had gone from the countryside. Some
of what the land agents call the amenities of the district had
certainly disappeared. There seemed to be nowhere for the pedestrian
to sit down in order to refresh himself with those rural sights and
sounds which exhilarate the spirit. But this marvellously delved,
methodised and trimmed countryside had a character and a stimulus of
its own. It reflected the energy and persistence that had subdued it.
I saw nothing ugly. The tidied rice plots, shaped at every possible
curve and angle, and eloquent of centuries of unremitting toil; the
upland beyond them, worked to a skilled perfection of finish; the
nesting houses which nowhere offended the eye; the big still ponds
contrived by the rude forefathers of the hamlet for water storage or
the succour of the rice in the hottest weather; the low hilltops green
with pine because cultivation could not ascend so far, and hiding here
and there a Shinto sanctuary: such a countryside was satisfying in its
own way.

In Chiba, as in other prefectures, one is impressed by the way in
which the exertions of many generations have resulted in the levelling
of wide areas and even the complete removal of small hills. In many
places one can still see low hills in process of demolition. In Tokyo
itself several small hills have been carried off in recent years.

I was in Chiba several times and I remember to have noticed one winter
day with what considered roughness the paddies had been dug in order
to receive from frost and sun the benefits which are as good as a
manuring. Some notion of the strength of the weather forces at work
may be gathered from the fact that, though I was walking without an
overcoat and was glad to shade my eyes by pulling down the brim of my
hat, the frost of the two previous nights had produced ice on the
paddies an inch thick.

Sometimes at the irrigation reservoirs one may see notice boards
announcing that these water areas are stocked with _koi_ (carp). This
fish is also kept in the paddies. The carp are put in as yearlings or
two-year-olds, when the paddies are flooded, and a score out of every
hundred come out in the autumn--assuming the happiest conditions--ten
inches or so long. Carp culture flourishes in the sericulture
districts, where the pupæ which remain when the cocoons are unwound
are thrown to the fish; but pupæ fed carp have a flavour which
diminishes their value. Indeed paddy-field fish, which on the whole
must have a rather troubled existence, do not bring the price of river
carp. Other fish than carp, eels for instance, are also kept in
paddies.[206]

I visited a vigorous personality who was at once a landowner and
rural oculist, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He
had graduated at Tokyo and had kept himself abreast of German
specialist literature. There was accommodation for about a hundred
patients in the buildings attached to his house. He believed in the
efficacy in eye cases of "the air of the rice fields," not to speak of
the shrine which overlooks the patients' quarters. As the number of
blind people in Japan is appalling,[207] it was interesting to hear
the opinion that the chief causes were gonorrhœa, inadequate attention
at birth, insufficient nourishment in childhood and nervous
disease--all more or less preventible. Nearly a quarter of my host's
patients had had their eyes wounded by rice-stem points while stooping
in the paddies. As the people are hurt in the busy season they often
put off coming for help until it is too late.

The landowner-oculist's premises were lighted by natural gas from a
depth of 900 ft. According to a fellow-guest, who happened to be an
expert in this matter, natural gas is to be had all over Japan.[208]

The room in which I slept belonged to a part of the house which was of
great age, but by my _futon_ there was laid an electric torch.

A pleasant thing during my visit was the presence of a dozen
intelligent, kindly students who early in the evening came and knelt
in a semicircle round us, "in order to profit by our talk." One of
them, a son of the house, an athlete (and now, after travelling in
Europe, his father's successor), did all sorts of services for me
during my stay, in the simple-hearted fashion that shows such an
attractive side of the Japanese character. One question asked by the
students was, "For what reasons does _Sensei_ believe that the
influence of women in public life would be good?" Another enquiry was,
"Which are the best London and Paris papers?" These lads could hardly
hope to get through the university before they were twenty-five or
twenty-six. Yet, compared with our undergraduates, they had very
little time for general reading, discussions and outdoor sports. I
remember a man of some experience in the educational world saying to
me, "Our students do not read enough apart from their studies; it is
their misfortune." They have not only the burden of having to learn
nearly several thousand ideographs,[209] three scripts and Japanese
and Chinese pronunciation. They have to acquire Western languages,
which, owing to their absolute dissimilarity from Oriental
tongues--for example, the word for "I" is _watakushi_--must be learnt
entirely from memory. It is not that the Japanese student does not
begin early as well as leave off late. A professor once said to me,
"For some little time after I first went to school I was still fed
from the bosom of my mother." In some ways it is no doubt a source of
strength for Japan that her men can spend from their earliest years to
the age of twenty-six on the acquirement of knowledge and
self-discipline--the privileges of the student class and the
generosity of their families and friends and the public at large are
remarkable--but the disadvantages are plain. No sight seems stranger
to a new arrival in Japan than that of so many men in their middle or
late twenties still wearing the conspicuous kimono and German bandsman
cap of the student.

To return to our host, he told us that tenants were "getting clever."
They were paying their rent in "worse and worse qualities of rice."
The landlords "encouraged" their tenants with gifts of tools, clothes
or saké in order that they might bring them the best rice, but the
tenants evidently thought it paid better to forgo these benefits and
market their best rice. This raises the question whether rent ought
nowadays to be paid in kind. Rural opinion as a whole is in favour of
continuing in the old way, but there is a clear-headed if small
section of rural reformers which is for rent being paid in cash.

One thing I found in my notes of my talk with the landowner-oculist I
hesitated to transcribe without confirmation. Speaking of the physique
of the people, he had said that few farmers could carry the weights
their fathers and grandfathers could move about. But later on a high
agricultural authority mentioned to me that it had been found
necessary to reduce the weight of a bale of rice from 19 to 18
_kwamme_ and then to 15--1 _kwamme_ is 8.26 lbs.

In the _oaza_ in which I was staying there were eighty families.
Seventy were tenants. Under a savings arrangement initiated by my
host, the hamlet, including its five peasant proprietors, was saving
120 yen a month. On the other hand, more than half the tenants were in
debt "in connection with family excesses," such as weddings, births
and burials. But there might be unknown savings. I should state that
the villagers seemed contented enough.

For some reason or other I was particularly struck by the sturdiness
of the small girls. This was interesting because Chiba had for long an
evil reputation for infanticide, and under a system of infanticide in
the Far East it would be supposed--I have heard this view stoutly
questioned--that more girls die than boys. The landowner-oculist was
of opinion that in stating the causes of the low economic condition of
his tenants the abating of infanticide must be put first. People no
longer restricted themselves to three of a family. The average area
available locally was only 6 _tan_ of paddy and 1.2 _tan_ of dry land.
In a one-crop district in which there was work for only a part of the
year this area was obviously insufficient and there was not enough dry
land for mulberries. Then taxation was now 2-1/2 yen per bale of rice
(_hyō_). A third of the rice went in rent.

I tried to find out what the _oaza_ might be spending on religion. The
Shinto priest seemed to get 5 sen a month per family, which as there
are eighty families would be 48 yen yearly. The Buddhist priest had
land attached to his temple and money was given him at burials and at
the _Bon_ season. The _oaza_ might spend 100 yen a year to send five
pilgrims as far away as Yamagata, on the other side of Japan. The
priests did not seem to count for much. "Their only concern with the
public," I was informed, "is to be succoured by it. They are living
very painfully. The Buddhist priests have to send money to their sect
at Kyoto." In one of my strolls I passed the Shinto priest carrying a
rice basket and looking, as my companion said, "just like any other
man." At a shrine I saw a number of bowls hung up. A hole cut in the
bottom of each seemed a pathetic symbol of need, material or
spiritual.

The keeper of the teahouse in the _oaza_ had been given a small sum by
our host to take himself off, but in the village of which the _oaza_
formed a part there were two teahouses, where ten times as much was
spent as was laid out on religion. No one had ever heard of a case of
illegitimacy in the _oaza_ but there had been in the twelve months
three cases which pointed to abortion. It was five years since there
had been an arrest. The young men's association helped twice a year
families whose boys had been conscripted.

According to what I was told in various quarters, some landowners in
Chiba did a certain amount of public work but most devoted themselves
to indoor trivialities. The fact that two banks had recently broken at
the next town, one for a quarter of a million yen, and that a
landowner had lost a total of 30,000 yen in these smashes, seemed to
show that there was a certain amount of money somewhere in the
district. No one appeared to "waste time on politics." In ten years
"there had been one or two politicians," but "one member of Parliament
set a wholesome example by losing a great deal of money in politics."
As to local politics, election to the prefectural assembly seemed to
cost about 500 yen. Membership of the village assembly might mean "a
cup of _saké_ apiece to the electors."

I was assured that this hamlet was above the economic level of the
county. The belief was expressed that it could maintain that position
for three or four years. "I do not feel so much anxiety about the
present condition of the people," my host said; "they are passive
enough: but as to the future it is a difficult and almost insoluble
question."

"The condition of our rural life is the most difficult question in
Japan," said a fellow guest.

In one of the farmers' houses a girl, with the assistance of a
younger brother, was weaving rough matting for baling up artificial
manure. Near them two Minorcas were laying in open boxes. In this
family there were seven children, "three or four of whom can work."
The hired land was 8 _tan_ of paddy and 2-1/2 of dry. There was
nothing to the good at the end of the year. Indeed rice had had to be
borrowed from the landlord. The family was therefore working merely to
keep itself alive. But it looked cheerful enough. Looking cheerful is,
however, a Japanese habit. The conditions of life here were what many
Westerners would consider intolerable. But it was not Westerners but
Orientals who were concerned, and what one had to try to guess was how
far the conditions were satisfactory to Eastern imaginations and
requirements. The people at every house I visited--as it happened to
be a holiday the mending of clothing and implements seemed to be in
order--were plainly getting enjoyment from the warm sunshine.
Undoubtedly the long spells of sunshine in the comparatively idle
period of the year make hard conditions of life more endurable.

In a very small house which was little more than a shelter, the father
and mother of a tenant were living. It is not uncommon for old
peasants to build a dwelling for themselves when they get nearly past
work, or sometimes after the eldest son marries.

I found a 1-_chō_ peasant proprietor playing _go_ and rather the worse
for saké, though it was early in the morning. A 3-_chō_ proprietor was
living in a good-sized house which had a courtyard and an imposing
gateway.

On the thatch of one house I noticed a small straw horse perhaps two
feet long. On July 7 such a horse is taken by young people to the
hills, where a bale of grass is tied on its back. On the reappearance
of the figure at the house, dishes of the ceremonial red rice and of
the ordinary food of the family are set before it. "The offering of
other than horse food indicates," it was explained, "that the desire
is to keep the straw animal as a little deity." Finally the horse is
flung on the roof.

I went some distance to visit an _oaza_ of twenty families. It was
described to me as "well off and peaceful." Alas, one peasant
proprietor had gone to Tokyo, where he had made money, and on his
return had built his second son a house with Tokyo labour instead of
with the labour of his neighbours. So the _oaza_ was "excited with
bitter inward animosity." Like our own hamlets, these _oaza_ in the
sunshine, seemingly so peaceful, whisper nothing to townsfolk of their
bickerings and feuds.

One of the thatched mud houses I came to was at once a primitive
co-operative sale-and-purchase society and the clubhouse of the old
people of the _oaza_. The rent the old folk received from the society
was enough to maintain the building. The oldsters gather from time to
time in order to eat, drink and make merry with gossip and dancing.
Dancing is a possibility for old people because it is swaying, sliding
and attitudinising, with an occasional stamp of the foot, rather than
hopping and whirling. One of the best amateur dances I have seen was
performed by a grandsire. Such clubhouses, places for the comfort of
the ageing and aged, are found in many villages. Young people are not
admitted. The subscription to this particular clubhouse was 2 yen and
3 _sho_ of saké on joining and 2 yen a year.

As we went on our way there was pointed out to me a house the owner of
which had sold half a _tan_ of land for 120 yen and was drinking
steadily. He had tried to make money by opening an open-air village
theatre which owing to rain had been a failure.

I visited an _oaza_ where all the land belonged to the man I called
upon. He assured me that most of his tenants "made ends meet." The
remainder had a deficiency at the end of the year due to "lack of will
to save" and to their "lack of capital which caused them to pay
interest to manure dealers." A co-operative society had just been
started.

In looking at a map of the village to which some of these _oaza_
belonged I noticed many holdings tinted a special colour. These were
called "jump land." They consisted of land subdued from the wild by
strangers. The properties were regarded as belonging to the _oaza_ in
which their cultivators lived.

I walked through a bit of woodland which had formerly been held in
common and had been divided up, amid felicitations no doubt, at the
rate of half a tan each to every family. But the well-to-do people
soon got hold of their poorer neighbours' portions.

In a roughish tract I came on burial grounds. One portion was set
apart for the eight families which recognised the chief landlord as
their head. The graves of lowlier folk seemed to occur anywhere. Each
grave was covered by a pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of
twig stuck in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown. A
child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll before a
little headstone. By way of shelter for these offerings there was hung
on the headstone a peasant's wide straw hat. A large beehive-shaped
bamboo basket over another grave was a reminder of the time when a
grave needed such protection in order to save the body from wild
animals.

I saw at a distance in the midst of paddies two tree-covered mounds, a
large one and a small one. They looked like the grave mounds I had
seen in China, but it was suggested that they were probably on an old
frontier line and marked spots at which ceremonies for scaring off
disease were performed.

In one place I found the people planting plum trees in order to meet
their communal taxation. It was reckoned that the yield of one tree
when it came into full bearing would defray the taxes of a
moderate-sized family.

An open space in a wood was pointed out to me as the spot on which
dead horses were formerly thrown to the dogs and birds. Nowadays
notice was given to the Eta that a dead horse was to be cast away, and
they came and, after skinning the animal, buried the body. Farther
off, on the high road, I saw an 8 ft. high monument to a local steed
that had died in Manchuria.

One of my further visits to Chiba was in the spring. The paddies,
which had been fallow since November, were under water; but much of
the stubble had been turned over with the long-bladed mattock. The
seed beds from which the rice is transplanted to the paddies were a
vivid green. On the high ground I saw good clean crops of barley and
wheat, beans and peas, on soil of very moderate quality.

The name of Funabashi at a station reminded me of a Japanese friend
having told me that it was "famous for a shrine and a very immoral
place." But I afterwards heard that the keeper of that shrine, "acting
from conscientious motives, gave up his lucrative post and died a poor
man." It is said of one of the most sacred places in Japan that it is
also the "most immoral." Kyoto which contains nine hundred shrines is
also supposed to harbour several thousand women of bad character.

I passed a place where 25,000 Russian prisoners had been detained.
There was an old peasant there who told his son that he could not
understand why so many Japanese went abroad at such great cost to see
the different peoples of the world. If they would only stay at home,
he said, they would see them all in turn, for first there had been the
Chinese prisoners, then the Russians and now there were the Germans.

In the uplands it was peaceful and restful to walk through the shady
lanes between the tree-studded homesteads or along the road passing
between plots of mulberry, tea, vegetables or grain, cultivated with
the care given to plants in a garden. In the herbage by the roadside,
but not among the crops I need hardly say, I noticed dandelions, sow
thistles, Scots thistles, plantains and some other familiar weeds.

In the paddies some men wore only a narrow band of red cotton between
their legs joined to a waist string, which, though convenient wear in
paddies, was comically conspicuous. I recall a friend's story of a
little foreign girl of seven who stayed with her mother in a Japanese
hamlet and struck up a friendship with a kindly old peasant. One hot
summer day the child came home carrying all her scanty garments over
her arm, and covered with mud to the waist. In answer to her mother's
enquiries the child said, "Well, mother, Ito San has all his clothes
off, and I could not go into the paddy to help him with mine on."

I visited an elementary school which was little more than a shed. The
roofing was of bark and the paper-covered window shutters were of the
roughest. It said much for the stamina of the children that they could
sit there in bleak weather. An attempt had been made to shut off the
classes from one another by pieces of thin cotton sheeting fastened to
a string. But such essential furniture, from a hygienic point of view,
as benches with backs had been provided, for it is considered by the
national educational authorities that kneeling in the Japanese manner
is inimical to physical development. I noticed, also, that when the
children sang they had been taught to place their hands on their hips
in order that their chests might benefit from the vocal exercise. The
earnestness and kindliness of the men and women teachers were evident.
All the teachers came to school bare-foot on _geta_.[210]

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where there was
nothing between us and America. My companion and I were carried over
shallows on the backs of fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures.
Above high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying. They were to be
turned into oil and fish-waste manure. I saw an earthenware vase with
a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot and found that it was used, with
a rope attached to the rim, for catching octopus. When the octopus
comes across such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter
constructed on exactly the right principles and takes up his abode
therein. He is easily captured, for he refuses to let go his vase when
it is brought to the surface. Indeed the only way to dislodge him is
to pour hot water through the hole in the bottom of his upturned
tenement.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] The Japanese firepot, which is made of wood or porcelain as well
as metal, contains pieces of charcoal smouldering in wood ash.

[204] I saw poultry of the table breeds which we call Indian Game or
Malay; the Japanese call them Siamese.

[205] See Appendix LVIII.

[206] In 1918 carp was produced to the value of a million and a half
yen and eels to the value of nearly a million.

[207] See Appendix LIX.

[208] See Appendix LX.

[209] To cite a word already used in these pages, there are half a
dozen words spelt _ko_ and as many as fourteen spelt _kō_, but all
have a different ideograph. When the prolongation of the educational
course by the ideographs is dwelt on, it is wholesome for us to
remember Professor Gilbert Murray's declaration that "English spelling
entails a loss of one year in the child's school time." Other
authorities have considered the loss to be much more.

[210] For statistics of stamina, heights and weights of children, see
Appendix LXI.




CHAPTER XXXV

THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER

(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skim them
over.--BACON


One day in the third week of October when the roads were sprinkled
with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the Kwanto plain and
passed from the prefecture of Tokyo into that of Saitama.[211] The
weather now made it necessary for Japanese to wear double kimonos.
During the middle of the day, however, I was glad to walk with my
jacket over my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about
naked. The region visited had a naturally well-drained dark soil,
composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of humus from buried
vegetation, and it went down to a depth beyond the need of the longest
_daikon_ (giant radish). Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the
ground, and large areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or
were in course of preparation for winter wheat and barley; but the
most conspicuous crop was _daikon_. There were miles and miles of it
at all sorts of stages from newly transplanted rows to roots ready for
pulling. There is _daikon_ production up to the value of about a
million yen. In addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a
large export trade in _daikon_ salted in casks.

I came into a district where there was a system of alternate grain and
wood crops. The rotation was barley and wheat for three or four years,
then fuel wood for about fifteen. The tendency was to lengthen the
corn period in the rotation.

The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton trousers like
the men. One farm-house I entered was a century old but it had not
been more than forty years on its present site. It had been
transported three miles. I was once more impressed by the low standard
of living. If by this time I had not been getting to know something of
the ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to credit the
fact that a household I visited was worth ten thousand yen.

Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop. They were
bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a yen the 82 lbs. bale. The
consumer was paying double that. Not a few of the farmers were
cultivating as much as 5 _chō_ or even 8 _chō_, for there was little
paddy. Even then, I was told, "it's a very hard life for a third of
the farmers." The reason was that there was no remunerative winter
employment.

Before the Buddhist temple, where there was preaching twice a year,
were rows of little stone figures, many of which had lost their heads.
The heads were in much demand among gamblers who value them as
mascots. Among some mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw
a little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was there,
it was explained, "not because of belief but of custom." The evening
was drawing in and Fuji showed itself blue and mystical above the dark
greenery of the country. As I gazed a sweet-sounding gong was struck
thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this summons to
other thoughts than those of the common task.

[Illustration: INSIDE THE "SHOJI."]

[Illustration: AUTOMATIC RICE POLISHER.]

[Illustration: THE AUTHOR (AND THE KODAK HOLDER) IN THE CRATER OF A
VOLCANO.]

My companion entered into conversation with a decent middle-aged
pedestrian, neatly but poorly dressed, and found that he was a man who
had formerly pulled his _kuruma_ in Tokyo. The man had found the work
of a _kurumaya_ too much for him and had withdrawn to his village to
open a tiny shop. But he had been taken ill and had been removed to
hospital. When he came out he found that his wife was in poverty and
that his eldest son had been summoned to serve in the army. Now his
wife had become ill and he was on his way to a distant relative to ask
him to take charge of a small child and to help him with a little
money to start some petty business. My companion gave him a yen and
deplored the fact that poor people should fail to take advantage of
the law releasing from service a son required for the support of a
parent. They failed occasionally to find friends to represent their
case to the authorities.

[Illustration: A WAYSIDE MONUMENT.]

[Illustration: THE GIANT RADISH OR "DAIKON," WHICH IS USED AS A
PICKLE.]

While waiting at the station we talked with another old man. He had
come to see his daughter whose husband had been called up for two
years' service. She was living of course with her parents-in-law. He
said that his daughter would have no difficulty in keeping the farm
going during the young man's absence, but his being away was "a great
loss."

The old man, who squatted at our feet as he spoke, went on to tell us
about a young man of his village who had served his term in the navy
but thought of remaining for another term. "Gran'fer" thought it a
good opening for him; he would not only get his living and clothes
but--and this is characteristic--"see the world and send back
interesting letters." The ancient was specially interested in the
sailor, he said, because his wife had "given milk" to the adventurer
when an infant.

It is difficult to enter a village which has not its pillar or its
slab to the memory of a youth or youths who perished in the Russian or
Chinese wars.[212] But in the severe struggle with Russia the villages
did more than give their sons and build memorials to them when they
were killed. They tried, in the words of an official circular of that
time, "to preserve the spirit of independence in the hearts of the
relieved and to avoid the abuses of giving out ready money." There was
the secret ploughing society of the young men of a village in Gumma
prefecture. "Either at night or when nobody knew these young men went
out and ploughed for those who were at the front." In one prefecture
the school children helped in working soldiers' farms. In villages in
Osaka and Hyogo prefectures there was given to soldiers' families the
monopoly of selling _tofu_, matches and other articles. Some of the
societies which laboured in war time were the Women's One Heart
Society, the Women's Chivalrous Society, the National Backing Society
and the Nursing Place of Young Children of those Serving at the Front.

In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not being the slave
of clothing. When it rains _kuruma_ men and workmen habitually roll up
their kimonos round their loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take
them off.[213] Of course no Japanese believes in catching cold through
getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continually
experienced, for the cotton _tabi_ are wet through at every shower.
Some years back it was not uncommon in walking along the sea-beach at
night to find fishermen sleeping out on the sand. An old man told me
that it used to be the custom in his sea-shore hamlet for all members
of a family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and infants.

On my return from the country I found myself in a company of earnest
rural reformers who were discussing a plan of State colonisation for
the inhabitants of some villages where everything had been lost in a
volcanic eruption. Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15
yen for a cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of
food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen per child
per day). During the evening I was shown the figure of a goddess of
farming venerated by the afflicted folk. The deity was represented
standing on bales of rice, with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a
big serving spoon in her right.

The gathering discussed the question of rural morality. As to the
relations of the young men and women of the villages, to which there
has necessarily been frequent references in these pages, the reader
must always bear in mind the way in which the sexes are normally kept
apart under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this Japanese
countryside differ more noticeably from our own than in the fact that
joyous young couples are never seen arming each other along the road
of an evening. Thousands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry,
innumerable scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of
which Japan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in the
public view no "random fits of dallin'." An unmarried young man and
young woman do not walk and talk together. A young man and woman who
were together of an evening would be suspected of immorality. Even
when married they would not think of linking arms on the road. I was a
beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in which a young
wife met her young husband returned from abroad. There were merely
repeated bows and many smiles. The view taken of kissing in Japan is
shown by the fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited
by the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are helped to
understand the Japanese standpoint a little if we remember how
repugnant to English and American ideas is the Continental custom of
men kissing one another. Kissing is understood by the Japanese to be a
sexual act, as is shown by their word for it.

Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are
taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows
of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be
cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two
dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and
liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre
has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing is
believed to afford greater protection against the weather. (Outside
the volcanic-soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The
volcanic soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made,
is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the liberal
applications of manure has made it black.

I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and
overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an
elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of
grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that
beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The
construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master
craftsmen in Japan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great
hoarding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and
the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the
completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force
of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened
to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction
that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without
will.

The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings was also adopted
outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a
hundred yen to one yen. The charge to scholars at this school, I
found, was 10 sen per month during the first compulsory six years and
30 sen during the next two years.

Just after Christmas I walked again into the country. There were miles
of dreary brown paddies with the stubble in puddles. On the non-paddy
land there was the refreshing green of young corn which seemed greatly
to enjoy being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked
soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school
because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of
the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the
farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the
fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and
the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot
dip in the opening.

In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked _daikon_.
Such malformed roots used to be presented to shrines by women desirous
of having children.

In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to examine the
dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among a host of other particulars
about a certain person's origin and condition I read that he was a
minor when his father died, that such and such a person acted as his
guardian, that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and
that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her husband's
death.

In not a few places I found that the tiny shrines of hamlets (_aza_)
had been taken away and grouped together at a communal shrine with the
notion of promoting local solidarity. At one such combination of
shrines I saw notice boards intimating that "tramps, pedlars,
wandering priests and other carriers of subscription lists and
proselytisers" were not received in the village. It was explained that
a community was sometimes all of one faith: "therefore it does not
want to be disturbed by tactless preachers of other beliefs."

At an inn there was a middle-aged widow who served there as waitress
in the summer but in the winter returned to Tokyo, where she employed
a number of girls in making _haori_ tassels. (She gave them board and
lodging and clothes for two years, and, after that period,
wages.[215]) Remembering what I had written down about courting, I
asked for her mature judgment on our rural custom of "walking out."
She was amused, but, in that way the Japanese have of trying to look
at a Western custom on its merits, she said, after consideration, that
there was much to be said for the plan. "In Japan," she declared, "you
cannot know a husband's character until you are married. On the whole,
I wish I had been a man." In order to catch our train we had to leave
this inn the moment our meal was finished, although the widow quoted
to us the adage, "Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."

On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a friend who was
taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn 4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I
continually heard the note of the _kakkō_ (cuckoo). On the higher
parts of the mountain there were azaleas at every yard, some quite
small but others 12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by
cattle. Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at the
top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches and pines,
stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches broken off by the
terrific blasts which from time to time sweep along the top of the
extinct volcano.

One of the products of rural Japan is the wrestler. _Sumo_, which is
going on in every school and college of the country, exhibits its
perfect flower twice a year in the January and May ten-days-long
tournaments in the capital. The immense rotunda of the wrestlers'
association suggests a rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000
people.[216] On the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing
room. Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of the
wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their countrymen. The
rigorous training, Gargantuan feeding and somewhat severe discipline
of the wrestlers enable them to grow beyond the average stature and to
a girth, protected by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which
reinforces strength with great weight.[217]

I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a train to
witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of these massive,
good-tempered men. There is not in the world, probably, a more
remarkable illustration than they afford of what superior physical
training and superior feeding can do. At first sight, indeed, these
gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder
that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and
distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I
first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair--for,
like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long--was performed by a
personage who combined the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There
is nothing of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers.
Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their
self-esteem which they receive in their disciplinary progress from the
contests of their native villages through all the grades of their
profession to the highest rank. Their sexual morality is commonly of
the lowest.

In my own hamlet at home in England I have seen the shoemaker, tailor
and carpenter successively pass away; the only craftsman left is the
smith. In Japan the hereditary craftsman survives for a while. I
watched in my house one day the labours of such a worker. He was not
arrayed in a Sunday suit fallen to the greasy bagginess of everyday
wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue cotton
jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of the same stuff, and
both garments, which were washed at least once a week, were admirably
fitted to their wearer's work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own
medieval and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the back of
his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative Chinese
characters in white. There are nowadays in the cities many inferior
workers, but all the men who came to my house worked with rapidity and
concentration, hardly ever lifting their eyes from their jobs. The
dexterity of the Japanese workman is seldom exaggerated. To his
dexterity he adds the considerable advantage of having more than two
hands, for he uses his feet together or singly. His supple big toes
are a great possession. We have lost the use of ours, but the Japanese
artisan, accustomed from his youth to _tabi_ with a special division
for the big toe, and to _geta_, which can be well managed only when
the big toe is lissom, uses his toes as naturally as a monkey, with
his paws and mouth full of nuts, gives a few to his feet to hold. The
first sight of a foot holding a tool is uncanny.

The pitiful thing is that a modest, polite, cheerful, industrious,
skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic hereditary
craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial
system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her
long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the
things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so
little conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's progress
is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally
sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be
recovered. It is no doubt true that when our own handicrafts were
dying we also were insensitive. But because the Middle Ages in England
encountered the industrial system gradually we suffered our loss more
slowly than Japan is doing. Because, too, we never had in our
bustling history the long periods of immunity from home and foreign
strife by which Japanese craftsmanship profited so wonderfully, we may
not have had such large stores of precious skill and taste to squander
as New Japan, the spendthrift of Old Japan's riches, is unthinkingly
casting away.

It is at Christmas at home that we have in the Christmas tree our
reminder of the country. It is on New Year's Day that in Japan a pine
tree is set up on either side of the front gate, but there are three
bamboos with it, and the four trunks are all beautifully bound
together with rope. If the ground be too hard for the trees to be
stuck in the ground, they are kept upright by having a dozen heavy
pieces of wood, not unlike fire logs, neatly bound round them. The
pines may be about 10 ft. high, the bamboo about 15 ft. To the trees
are affixed the white paper _gohei_. Over the doorway itself is an
arrangement of straw, an orange, a lobster, dried cuttlefish and more
_gohei_. A less expensive display consists of a sprig of pine and
bamboo. Poor people have to be content with a yard-high pine branch
with a French nail through it at either side of their doorway. I have
been ruralist enough to harbour thoughts of the extent to which the
woods are raided for all this New Year forestry. Some prefectures, in
the sincerity of their devotion to afforestation, forbid the New Year
destruction of pine trees.

I remember the gay and elaborate dressing of the horses during the New
Year holidays. I saw one driver of a wagon who was not content with
tying streamers on every part of his horse where streamers could be
tied: he had also decorated himself, even to the extent of having had
his head cropped to a special pattern, tracts of hair and bare scalp
alternating.

It was pleasant to learn that a fine chrysanthemum show arranged in an
open space in Tokyo was free to the public. Some plants, by means of
grafting, bore flowers of half a dozen different varieties. Several
plants had been wondrously trained into the form of _kuruma_, etc. Not
a few of the varieties exhibited were, according to our ideas,
atrocious in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels
of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horticultural skill was
represented in the chrysanthemums I saw at the Imperial garden party.
A chief of a department of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that
from a chrysanthemum growing in the ground it was possible to have a
thousand blooms.

In a Japanese room the timber upright alongside the _tokonoma_ is
always a tree trunk in the rough. If it be cherry it has its bark on.
The contrast with the finely finished wood of the rest of the room is
arresting. It is said that the use of the unplaned upright is not more
than three or four hundred years old and that it had its origin in
_Cha-no-yu_ affectations of simplicity.

I was visited one evening by an agricultural official who had returned
from a visit to Great Britain. He spoke of the "lonelyism" of our best
hotels. In a Japanese hotel of the same class one's room is so simple
and the view of the garden is so refreshing that, with the beautiful
flower arrangement indoors, the frequent change of _kakemono_, the
serving of one's meals in a different set of lacquer and porcelain
each day and the willing and smiling service always within the call of
a hand clap, there comes a sense of restfulness and peace. The
drawback which the Western man experiences is the lack of any means of
resting his back but by lying down and the inability to read for long
while resting an elbow on an arm rest which is too low for him.[218] A
Japanese often reads kneeling before a table.

Here I am reminded to say that the development of the desire for books
and newspapers in the rural districts is a noticeable thing, if only
because it is new. It is not so long ago that reading was considered
to be an occupation for old men and women and for children. The
samurai had few books and the farmers fewer still. But the idea of
combining cultivation and culture was not unknown. I have heard a
rural student humbly quote the old saying, _Sei-kō U-doku_
(literally, "Fine weather--farming--Rainy weather--reading").

I have a rural note of one of my visits to the _Nō_.[219] One farce
brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now extinct but
surely deserves to be remembered for its encouragement of mountain
climbing. This "mountain climber," as he was called, was hungry and
climbed a farmer's tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor got
on a stool, obligingly steadied by a supposedly invisible attendant,
and pretended to clamber up a corner post of the stage.) While he was
eating the persimmons he was discovered by their owner. The farmer was
a man of humour and said that he thought that "that must be a crow in
the tree." So the poor priest tried to caw. "No," said the farmer, "it
is surely a monkey." So the priest began to scratch after the manner
of monkeys. "But perhaps," the farmer went on, "it is really a kite."
The priest flapped his arms--and fell. The farmer thought that he had
the priest at his mercy. But the priest, rubbing his beads together,
put a spell on him and escaped. The word _Nō_ is written with an
ideograph which means ability, but _Nō_ also stands for
agriculture.[220]

FOOTNOTES:

[211] The Kwanto plain (73 by 96 miles) includes most of Tokyo and
Saitama prefecture, and also the larger part of Kanagawa and Chiba and
parts of Ibaraki, Gumma and Tochigi.

[212] The characters on these slabs are beautifully written. They have
usually been penned by distinguished men.

[213] The Japanese man wears below his kimono or trousers a pair of
bathing shorts. Peasants frequently wear in the fields nothing but a
little cotton bag and string.

[214] Poor households ordinarily use, instead of movable _hibachi_, a
big square box in an opening in the floor and resting on the earth.

[215] When I was in Tokyo, tradesmen's messenger boys received only
their food, lodging and clothing and an occasional present, with help
no doubt in starting a linked business when they were out of their
time. Now such youths, as a development of the labour movement, are on
a wage basis and receive 20 yen a month.

[216] The place has since been burnt down. A bigger building has been
erected.

[217] See Appendix LXII.

[218] There is also the occasional whiff of the _benjo_; but, as an
agricultural expert said, "It is not a bad thing that a people which
is increasingly under the influence of industrialism should be
compelled to give a thought to agriculture." There are European
countries famous for their farming whose sanitary experts are
evidently similarly minded.

[219] The fact that Dr. Waley's scholarly book is the third work on
the _Nō_ to be published in England in recent years is evidence that a
knowledge of a form of lyrical drama of rare artistry is gradually
extending in the West.

[220] Hence the names of the two national agricultural organisations,
Teikoku Nōkai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai
Nippon Nōkai, that is the Great Japan Agricultural Society.




CHAPTER XXXVI

"THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

(GUMMA, KANAGAWA AND CHIBA)

I find the consolation of life in things with which Governments cannot
interfere, in the light and beauty the earth puts forth for her children.
If the universe has any meaning, it exists for the purposes of soul.--Æ


One December night there walked into my house a professor of
agricultural politics, clad in tweeds and an overcoat, and with him a
man who wore only a cotton kimono and a single under-garment. The
sunburnt forehead of this man showed that he was not in the habit of
wearing a hat. There is a smiling Japanese face which to many
foreigners is merely irritating. It is not less irritating when, as
often happens, it displays bad teeth ostentatiously gold-stopped. This
man's smile was sincere and he had beautiful teeth. His hands were
nervous and thin, his bearing was natural and his voice gentle. Here,
evidently, was an altruist, perhaps a zealot, probably a celibate. He
was introduced as a rural religionist from Gumma prefecture set on
reforming his countrymen. It is important to know the strength of the
reforming power which Japan is itself generating: here was a man who
for eight years had lived a life of poverty in remote regions and had
shaped his life by three heroes, "St. Francis, Tolstoy and Kropotkin."
He believed that the way to influence people was "to work with them."
He lived on his dole as a junior teacher in an elementary school. His
food, which he cooked himself, was chiefly rice and _miso_. He had
been a vegetarian for ten years. He was twenty-nine.

He said that as far as the people of his village--largely peasant
proprietors who hired additional land--were concerned, "It is happy
for them if they end the year without debt." I asked how the men in
the village who owned land but did not work it spent their time. The
reply was: "They are chattering of many things, very trivial things,
and they disturb the village. They drink too much and they have
concubines or women elsewhere."

"If an ordinary peasant went to the next town to see women there," the
speaker continued, "young men of the village would go and give him a
good knock. In former times 'waitresses' were highly spoken of in the
village, but not now. There are some young men who may go at night to
a house where there are young girls in the family and open the door.
Sometimes they bring cucumbers. Cucumbers are symbols. Some do this
out of fun and some sincerely to express their feelings. If the young
men who do such a thing do it out of fun they are given a good knock
by members of that house when discovered. If they are sincere the
members of the family will smile. There are in our village of 6,000
inhabitants only four illegitimate children."

As to the influences exerted for the betterment of the people the
follower of St. Francis was convinced that "when Buddhist influence,
Shintoism, Confucianism and the good customs of our race are all mixed
together so that you cannot discern one from the other we have some
living power." His own religion was "that of St. Francis combined with
Buddhism."

Speaking generally of rural people my visitor said: "They are falling
into miserable conditions, are in effect spending what was accumulated
by their ancestors. Their houses are not so practical and cost more.
They think they live better but their physical condition is not
better. The number who cannot earn much is increasing." I was told of
a growing habit among village boys of running off to Tokyo without
their parents' permission. And bands of girls came to the district to
help in the silk-worm season "often without their parents' approval."

Many villagers consulted my visitor on all sorts of subjects until he
had almost no leisure. Some wanted counsel about the future of their
children, some desired advice about the family debt, some wanted to
know how to put an end to quarrels and some asked "how a man will be
able to be easy-minded." The ordinary result of the primary school
system was "a mass of many informations in young brains and they
cannot tell wisdom from knowledge. The result is that they are
discontented with their hard lot. They grow up wishing to rob each
other within the bounds of the law. They want to live comfortably
without hard work. Good customs which were the crystallisation of the
experience of our race are dying away."

My visitor had met an old woman on the road clad miserably. She earned
as a labourer on a farm, beside her board and lodging, 25 sen daily.
Of this sum she handed to a fellow-villager whom she trusted 20 sen.
He gave away many clothes to the poor and her contribution was used
with the money he expended. "If," said she, "one shall give to God a
small thing in darkness then it is accepted to its full value, but, if
it be known, it is accepted only at a small value." She was "content
and quite happy."

This woman and many others in the district had a primitive kind of
religion. They observed the days called "waiting for the sun" and
"waiting for the moon." "The same-minded people gather. The one most
deeply experienced tells something to those assembled and they begin
to be imbued with the same spirit. It is some kind of transformed
worship of the sun god. They feel the mercy of the sun. They do not
worship the heavenly bodies but as the symbol of the merciful
universe. These people take meals together several times in a year.
They talk not only on spiritual but on common things and about the
news in the papers. It may seem to a stranger that what they talk is
foolish, but they have a wonderful power to attract the essential out
of those trifles."

"The fundamental power which made Japan what it is," the speaker went
on with animation, "is not institutions and statesmen, but those
primitive religious acts. The people strongly resembling the old woman
I spoke of may be only 1 per cent., but almost all villagers are
imbued with such religious notions and feel thankfulness, and on rare
occasions a latent sentiment springs from their hearts. Their religion
may be connected with Buddhism or Shintoism; it is not Buddhism or
Shintoism, however, but a primitive belief which in its manifestation
varies much in different villages. For example, in one village the
good deeds of an ancient sage are told. The time when that priest
lived and particulars about him are getting dimmer and dimmer, but his
influence is still considerable. Though many people are worshipped in
national and prefectural shrines the influence of those enshrined is
small compared with the influence of a man or woman of the past who
was not much celebrated but was thought to be good by the rustic
people.

"Think of the way in which the memory of the maid-servant Otake is
worshipped by the peasants through one-half of Japan. That was a pious
and illuminated person who worked very hard. As her _uta_ (poem) says,
'Though hands and feet are very busy at work, still I can praise and
follow God always because my mind and heart are not occupied by
worldly things.' She ate poor food and gave her own food to beggars.
So when a countryman wastes the bounty of nature he is still
reprimanded by the example of that maid-servant. She is more respected
than many great men."

My visitor thought a religious revival might happen under the
leadership of a Christian or of a Buddhist, or of a man who "united
Buddhism and Christianity" or "developed the primitive form of faith
among the lower people." He thought there were "already men in the
country who might be these leaders." He said that much might happen in
ten years. "Materialism is prevalent everywhere, but people will begin
to feel difficulties in following their materialism. When they cannot
go any further with it they will begin to be awakened."

And then this young man who sincerely desires to do something with his
life and has at any rate made a beginning went his way. Up and down
Japan I met several single-hearted men not unlike him.

One day I made an excursion from Tokyo and came on an extraordinary
avenue of small wooden red painted _torii_, gimcracky things made out
of what a carpenter would call "two by two stuff." By the time I got
to the shrine to which the _torii_ led I must have passed a thousand
of these erections. In one spot there was a stack of _torii_ lying on
their sides. The shrine was in honour of the fox god and there was a
curious story behind it. Twenty years before a man interested in the
"development" of the district had caused it to be given out that
foxes, the messengers of the god Inari, had been seen on this spot in
the vicinity of a humble shrine to that divinity. The farmers were
continually questioned about the matter. It was suggested that the god
was manifesting his presence. In the end more and more worshippers
came, and, with the liberal assistance of the speculator, a fine new
shrine was erected in place of the shabby one. His hand was also seen
in the building of a big burrow--of concrete--for the comfort of the
god's messenger. The top of the burrow also furnished an excellent
view of the surrounding district, and teahouses were built in the
vicinity. Indeed in a year or two quite a village of teahouses came
into existence. The place, which was on the sea-coast, had become a
kind of Southend or Coney Island, and attracted thousands of visitors.

A large proportion of these teahouses would have great difficulty in
establishing a claim to respectability. Numbers of lamps which crowded
the space before the shrine were the gifts of women of bad character
and the inscriptions on these gifts bore the _addresses and
profession_ of the donors. The final irony was the provision of a tram
service for the convenience of those who wished to worship at another
altar than that of the fox god. Although most of the visitors found
the chief attraction of the place in the teahouses,[221] they were
none the less devout. Every visitor to the teahouses worshipped at the
shrine.

What do those who bow their heads and throw their Coppers in the
treasury pray for? "Well-being to my family and prosperity to my
business" was, I was told, a common form of invocation. Even among not
a few reasonably well educated people there is a conviction that
prayers made at the altar of the fox god are peculiarly efficacious.
Kanzō Uchimura, who accompanied me on this trip, improved the occasion
by saying in his vigorous English: "You in the West have some
difficulty, no doubt, in understanding the fierceness of the
indignation with which Old Testament prophets denounce heathen gods.
When you behold such an exhibition as this you may be helped to
understand. Here is impurity under divine protection, and this place
may fairly be called a fashionable shrine. The visitor to Japan often
vaunts himself on being broadminded. He regards heathendom as only
another sect and he desires to be respectful to it. But I want to show
you that it is not a case of only another sect but often a case of
gross and demoralising superstition and priestly countenancing of
immorality. Heaven forbid that I should deny the beauty of the idea of
the foxes being the messengers of divinity or that I should suggest
that some religious feelings may not inspire and some religious
feeling may not reward the sincere devotion of the countryman to his
fox god, but how much does it amount to in sum?"

I thought of what Uchimura had said when one day, in the course of a
walk with his critic, Yanagi (Chapter XI), I was shown a shrine
pitifully bedizened by the _waraji_ (straw sandals) and _ema_[222] of
a thousand or more pilgrims who were suffering or had recovered from
syphilis.[223]

During our conversation Yanagi said: "Shintoism is not of course a
religion at all. It draws great strength from the national instinct
for cleanliness manifested by people living in a hot climate. The
religion of poor people is largely custom; I complain of educated
people not that they are sceptical but that they are not sceptical
enough. They simply don't care. According to Mr. Uchimura, there is
only one way to God and that is through Christianity. But there are
many ways. A personal religion like Christianity is more effective
than Buddhism, but it does not follow that Christianity is better than
Buddhism. I find I get to like Mr. Uchimura more and more and his
views less and less. It is not his theoretical Christianity but his
courageous spirit which attracts. He is a courageous man and we have
very great need of morally courageous men. Although Christianity is
impossible without Christ, Buddhism is possible without Buddha. A
variety of religions is not harmful, and we have to take note of the
Christian temperament and the Buddhistic temperament. Orientals can
only be appealed to by an Oriental religion. Christianity is an
Oriental religion no doubt, but it has been Westernised. It must
always be borne in mind that Buddhistic literature is in a special
language and that it is difficult for most people to get a general
view of Buddhism."

In further talk the speaker said that in Japan the individual had not
been separated from the mass. But it was difficult to exaggerate the
swiftness of the national development. The newer Russian writers were
"certainly as well known in England, possibly better known." As to
Tolstoy alone, there were at least fifty books about him. But it had
to be admitted that, generally speaking, the Japanese development
though rapid had not gone deep. In painting there was dexterity and
technique but few men knew where they were going. Their work was
"surface beautiful." They had not passed the stage of Zorn.

We spoke of conscription and I said that it had not escaped my
attention that many young men showed an increasing desire to avoid
military service. From a single person I had heard of youths who had
escaped by looking ill--through a week's fasting--by impairing their
eyesight by wearing strong glasses for a few weeks, by contriving to
be examined in a fishing village where the standard of physique was
high, or by shamming Socialist.[224] Many Japanese bear
uncomplainingly the heavy burden of the military system. But the
others are to be reckoned with.

Said one of these to me: "We Japanese are not inherently a warlike
people and have no desire to be militarists; but we are suffering from
German influence not only in the army but through the middle-aged
legal, scientific and administrative classes who were largely educated
in Germany or influenced by German teaching. This German influence may
have been held in check to some extent, perhaps, by the artistic
world, which has certainly not been German, except in relation to
music, and after all that is the best part of Germany. Many young
people have taken their ideas largely from Russia; more from the
United States and Great Britain. But Germany will always make her
appeal on account of her reputation with us for system, order,
industry, depth of knowledge, persistence and nationalism."

On the family system, the study of which was more than once urged upon
me in connection with the rural problem, this statement was made to me
by an agricultural expert: "I will tell you the story of an official
whose salary was that of a Governor. His father was a farmer. The
farmer borrowed money to educate his son. When the son became an
official he paid the money back, but on the small salaries he received
this repayment was a strain. Then two brothers came to his house
frequently for money, and when they received it spent it in ridiculous
ways. This begging has gone on for nine years. My friend has to live
not like an Excellency but like a _gunchō_. He cannot treat his wife
and children fairly. But of the money he gives to his brothers he
says, 'It is my family expense.'"

I also heard this story: "A married B. B died without having any
children. A next married B's sister, C. Then, because of the necessity
of having a male heir for the maintenance of his family, and because
he thought it was unlikely that his wife C would have children as her
dead sister B had had none, he adopted his wife's younger brother, D.
But the wife C did have children. Consequently, not only is A's wife
his sister-in-law and his eldest 'son' his wife's brother, but his
children are his eldest 'son's' nephews. The eldest of these children,
E, is legally the younger son. He says, 'I am glad that instead of an
uncle I have an elder brother. I am much attached to him and he is
attached to me. I am not sorry to be younger instead of elder brother,
for when my father dies my adopted brother will become head of the
family and he must then bring up his younger brothers and sisters,
manage the family fortunes, bear the family troubles and keep all the
cousins and uncles in good humour by inviting them occasionally and at
other times by visiting them and giving them presents.'[225]

"It is obvious that our family system, for speaking in criticism of
which officials have been dismissed from their posts, puts too much
stress on the family and too little on the individual. The family is
the unit of society. Any member of it is only a fraction of that unit.
For the sake of the family every member of it must sacrifice almost
everything.[226] Sometimes the development of the individual character
and individual initiative is checked by the family system. An eldest
son is often required to follow his father's calling irrespective of
his tastes. Nowadays some eldest sons go abroad, but their departure
attracts attention and you seldom find such a thing happening among
farmers. The family system, by which all is subordinated to family, is
convenient to farmers for it means increased labour and economy of
living. Sometimes there may be two married sons living at home and
then there is often strife. Generally speaking, the family system at
one and the same time keeps young men from striking out in the world
and compels their early marriage so that the helping hands to the
family may be more numerous. The family system concentrates the
attention on the family and not on society. There is no energy left
for society.

"Again, the family system gives too much power to relatives and leads
to disagreeable interference. In the case of a marriage being proposed
between family A and family B, the families related to A or B who will
be brought into closer connection by the marriage may object. On the
other hand, the family system has the advantage that the relatives who
interfere may also be looked upon for help. Not a few people are all
for maintaining the family system. But the spirit of individualism is
entering into some families and here and there children are beginning
to claim their rights and to act against relatives' wishes. One hears
of farmers sending boys, even elder sons, to the towns, and for their
equipment borrowing from the prefectural agricultural bank instead of
spending on the development of their business."

At a Christmas-day luncheon I met four students of rural problems, two
of whom were peers, one a governor of an important prefecture, and a
fourth a high official in the agricultural world. One man, speaking of
the family system, said "the success of agriculture depends on it."
"In my opinion," someone remarked, "the foundation of the family
system is common production and common consumption, so when these
things go there must be a gradual disappearance of the family system."
"No," came the rejoinder, "the only enemy of the family system is
Western influence." "Yes," the fourth speaker added, "an enemy whose
blows have told."

Someone suggested that the Japanese rural emigrant always hoped to
return home, that is if he could return with dignity--does not the
proverb speak of the desirability of returning home in good clothes?
One of the company said that he had seen in Kyushu rows of
white-washed slated houses which had been erected by returned
emigrants. "But they were successful prostitutes. Often, however,
these girls invest their money unwisely and have to go abroad again."

Everybody at table agreed that there was in the villages a slow if
steady slackening of "the power of the landlord, of the authorities
and of religion," and a development of a desire and a demand for
better conditions of life. One who proclaimed himself a conservative
urged that changes of form were too readily confounded with changes of
spirit. The change in thought in Japan, he said, was slow, and some
occurrences might be easily misjudged. I said that that very day I had
heard from my house the drone of an aeroplane prevail over the sound
of a temple bell, happening to speak of _The Golden Bough_, I asked my
neighbour, who had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating
view some things could ever be the same again. He answered frankly,
"There are things in our life which are too near to criticise. Do you
know that there are parts of Japan where folklore is still being
made?"

I was invited one evening to dinner to meet a dozen men conspicuous in
the agricultural world. Priests were apologised for because most of
them were "very poor men and also poorly educated." Very few had been
even to a middle school. Many priests read Chinese scriptures aloud
but they did not understand what they were reading.

One man reported that an old farmer had said to him that paddy-field
labour was harder than dry-land labour, but young men did not go off
to Tokyo because of the severity of the work; they went away because
of "the bondage of rural life."

How much has the economic stress affected old convictions? How general
and how eager is the Japanese resolution to Westernise farther? None
of the rural sociologists had given any thought apparently to a new
factor in the rural problem: the way in which compulsory military
service, in taking farmers' sons to the cities as soldiers and
bluejackets, is giving them an acquaintance with neo-Malthusianism. In
Tokyo and other large cities certain articles are prominently
advertised on the hoardings. It is of some importance to consider what
will be the effect of this knowledge in competition with the national
appreciation of large families.[227] Is it likely that an intensely
"practical" people, which has bolted so much of European and American
"civilisation," will be wholly uninfluenced by the Western practice of
limitation of offspring? What is to-day the actual strength of the
social needs which have produced the large Japanese family?[228]
Whatever middle-aged Japanese may think, the matter is not in their
hands, but in the hands of the younger generation. Most Western
economists would no doubt argue that if fewer babies arrived in Japan
there would not be so many farmers' boys and university graduates bent
on emigrating.

Without the voluntary limitation of families, however, the number of
children born is likely to be diminished by the increased cost of
living and by the postponement of marriage. I know Japanese men who
were married before they were twenty; the younger generation of my
friends is marrying nearer thirty.[229]

There is reason to believe that the population has not increased of
recent years at the old rate.[230] A responsible authority expressed
the opinion to me that the necessities of the population are unlikely
to overtake the means of production in the near future.[231]

The Japanese are intensely practical, but they have, as we have seen,
another side. If that other side is not "spiritual," in the sense in
which the word is largely used in the West, it is at least regardful
of other considerations than the "practical." It is with thoughts of
that vital side of the national character that I recall a story told
me by Dr. Nitobe of the last days of the Forty-seven Ronin. It is well
authenticated. When the Ronin had slain their dead lord's persecutor
and had given themselves up to the authorities, they were found worthy
of death. But the Shogun was in some anxiety as to what might justly
be done. He sent privily to a famous abbot saying that it was at all
times the duty of the Shogun to condemn to death men who had committed
murder. Yet it was the privilege of a priest to ask for mercy, and in
the matter of the lives of the Ronin the Shogun would not be unwilling
to listen to a plea for mercy. The abbot answered that he sympathised
deeply with the Ronin, but because he so sympathised with them he was
unwilling to take any steps which might hinder the carrying out of the
sentence. It was true, he said, that there were old men among the
Ronin, but many, of them were young men--one was only fifteen--and it
had to be borne in mind that if they escaped death at the hands of the
law it was hardly likely that during the whole course of their
after-lives they could hope to escape committing sin of some sort or
another. At the moment they had reached a pinnacle of nobility which
they could never pass and it was a thing to be desired for them that
they should die now, when they would live to all posterity as heroes.
The happiest fate for the Ronin was a righteous death, and as their
admiring sympathiser the abbot expressed his unwillingness to do
anything which might have the effect of saving them from so glorious
an end.

FOOTNOTES:

[221] Someone said to me, "I have in mind one village where there is a
poorly cared-for school and a score of teahouses giving employment to
nearly two hundred people."

[222] "Small boards with crude designs painted on them. They may be
prayers, thank-offerings or protective charms. A shrine where many
thanks _ema_ have been left is clearly that of a god ready to hear and
answer prayer. Worshippers flock to the place and the accumulation of
painted boards--whether prayers or thanks--increases."--FREDERICK
STARR, _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan_, vol. xlviii.

[223] The percentage in conscripts in 1918 was 2.2 per cent, against
2.5 per cent, in 1917 and 2.7 per cent, in 1916. ("Not less than 10
per cent. of the population of our large towns are infected with
syphilis and a much larger proportion with gonorrhœa."--SIR JAMES
CRICHTON-BROWNE.) The figures for the general population of Japan must
be higher.

[224] See Appendix LXIII.

[225] It sometimes happens that an adopted son is dismissed with "a
sufficient monetary compensation" when a real son is born.

[226] I met a fine ex-daimyo, who after the Restoration had served as
a prefectural governor. He was so generous in giving money to public
objects in his prefecture that his family compelled him to resign
office.

[227] See Appendix XXX.

[228] It is only within the last quarter of a century that the
authorities have taken a stand against infanticide. There is no
traditional dislike of an artificial diminution of progeny, for many
of the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation practised
it. Methods of procuring abortion were also common. A certain plant
has a well-known reputation as an abortifacient. A young peer and his
wife are now conducting a campaign on behalf of smaller families, and
the discussion has advanced far enough for a magazine to invite Dr.
Havelock Ellis to express his views.

[229] According to the 1918 figures the ages at which men and women
married were as follows per 1,000: before 20, m. 37.6, w. 259.0;
20-25, m. 304.9, w. 434.8; 26-30, m. 347.9, w. 159.4; 31-35, m. 145.1,
w. 67.3; 36-40, m. 70.0, w. 37.1; 41-45, m. 41.8, w. 21.4; 46-50, m.
22.8, w. 10.5; 51-55, m. 14.7, w. 6.0; 56-60, m. 7.3, w. 2.5; 61 and
upwards, m. 7.9, w. 2.

[230] See Appendix XXX.

[231] See Appendices XXV and LXXX; also page 363 for the reasons
operating against emigration. Mr. J. Russell Kennedy, of
Kokusai-Reuter, declared (1921) that it was "a myth that Japan must
find an outlet for surplus population; Japan has plenty of room within
her own border," that is, including Korea and Formosa as well as
Hokkaido in Japan. Mr. S. Yoshida, Secretary of the Japanese Embassy
in London, in an address also delivered in 1921, stressed the value of
the fishing-grounds and the mercantile marine as openings for an
increased population. "The resources of the sea," he said, "give Japan
more room for her population than appears."




REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO

CHAPTER XXXVII

COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

Above all, this is not concerned with poetry.--WILFRED OWEN


When the traveller stands at the northern end of the mainland[232] of
Japan he is five hundred miles from Tokyo. In the north of Hokkaido he
is a thousand miles away. Hokkaido, the most northerly and the second
biggest of the four islands into which Japan is divided, is curiously
American. The wide straight streets of the capital, Sapporo,[233] laid
out at right angles, the rough buggies with the farmer and his wife
riding together, the wooden houses with stove stacks, and, instead of
paper-covered _shoji_, window panes: these things are seen nowhere
else in Japan and came straight from America. It was certainly from
America that the farmers had their cries of "Whoa." One of the best
authorities on Hokkaido has declared that the administrative and
agricultural instructors whom America sent there from about the time
of the Franco-Prussian war "gave Japan a fairer, kindlier conception
of America than all her study of American history."

In Old Japan there is always something which speaks of the centuries
that are gone; in Sapporo there is nothing that matters which is fifty
years old. One of the most remarkable facts in the agricultural
history of Japan is that a country with a teeming population and an
intensive farming should have left entirely undeveloped to so late a
period as the early seventies a great island of 35,000 square miles
which lies within sight of its shores. The wonder is that an attempt
on Yezo[234] was not made by the Russians, who, but for the vigorous
action of a British naval commander, would undoubtedly have taken
possession of the island of Tsushima, 700 miles farther south and
midway between Japan and Korea. Up to the time of the fall of the
Shogun the revenue of the lords of Yezo was got by taxing the harvest
of the sea and the precarious gains of hunters. The Imperial Rescript
carried by the army which was sent against certain adherents of the
Shogun who had fled there said: "We intend to take steps to reclaim
and people the island."[235] It is doubtful if at that period the
population was more than 60,000[236] (including Ainu).[237]

When Count Kuroda was put at the head of the Colonial Government he
went over to America and secured as his adviser-in-chief the chief of
the Agricultural Department at Washington. Stock, seeds, fruit trees,
implements and machinery, railway engines, buildings, practically
everything was American in the early days of Hokkaido. During a
ten-year period, in which forty-five American instructors were sent
for, five Russians, four Britons, four Germans, three Dutchmen and a
Frenchman were also imported.[238]

Governor Kuroda had a million yen placed at his disposal for ten years
in succession, and a million yen was a big sum in those days. Before
long there were flour mills, breweries, beet-sugar factories, canning
plants, lead and coal mining and silk manufacturing and an experiment
in soldier colonisation which owed something to Russian experiments in
Cossack farming. An agricultural school grew into a large agricultural
college; and this agricultural college has lately become the
University of Hokkaido, with nearly a thousand students.[239] How much
of a pioneer Sapporo College was may be gathered from the fact that
when I was in Hokkaido 67 out of the 140 men who were members of the
faculty had been themselves taught there. Dean Sato (Japan's first
exchange lecturer to American universities), Dr. Nitobe (Japanese
Secretary of the League of Nations) and Kanzō Uchimura were among the
first students. There have always been American professors at
Sapporo--its first president came from Massachusetts--and the
professorship of English has always been held by an American.

The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University buildings
stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere else in Japan but
Hokkaido.[240] The extent of the University's landed possessions is
also unexpected. There are two training farms of 185 and 260 acres
respectively, beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000
acres on which there are already more than a thousand tenants, and
300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and Korea. Four or
five times as many students as can be admitted offer themselves at
Sapporo.

There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life conceived for a
country where stock may be kept and a farmer does not need to practise
the superintensive farming of Old Japan. At the first University farm
I looked over it was clear that not only American but Swedish, German
and Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer was the
farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A silo dominated the
scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in Old Japan, was a crop for
stock.[241] I also noticed crops of oats and rye.

I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen suit and
was glad to put on a woollen one. By September 29 it was snowing.
Snow-shoes were shown among the products of the island at the
prefectural exhibition. Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido
to that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great Lakes, but
the cold current from the North makes comparisons of this sort
ineffective. It is only in southern Hokkaido that apples will grow.
Thirty years ago wolves and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and
bear may still be found within ten miles.

The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture and
forestry are greater money makers. Even without forestry agriculture
is well ahead of factory industry, which is also eclipsed by mining.
Industry is aided by the presence of coal. Among manufactures, brewing
stands out even more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning.
One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from Hokkaido.[242]
In contrast with the situation in Old Japan, where the land is half
paddy and half upland, there is in Hokkaido only a ninth of the
cultivated land under rice.[243] When I was in Hokkaido there were
600,000 _chō_ under cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than
there were in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the
north-eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island on the
northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond the skill of rice
growers. There is always uncertainty with the rice crop in Hokkaido.
As the growing period is short, half the rice is not transplanted but
sown direct in the paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven
years. In such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not
good.

Immigrants get 5 _chō_, but if they are without capital they first go
to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply
labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have
capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without
hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than
2-1\2 _chō_ to rice--from 3 to 5 _chō_ are the absolute limit--against
1-1\2 or 2 _chō_ to other crops. When the holder of a 5-_chō_ holding
prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and
hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 _chō_ is considered as
much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15
_chō_ it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the
busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only
at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the
lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244]
The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 _chō_. (Stock farming is
for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk
factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is
understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245]

On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which brought home to
me the colonial character of the agriculture was the tree stumps
sticking up in the paddies. The second was the extent to which the
rivers were still uncontrolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles
long, is in Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in need
of draining. Peat--there are 300,000 _chō_ of it--may be a standby
when the waste of timber that is going on brings about a shortage of
fuel other than coal. From poor peat soil, which was growing oats,
buckwheat and millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and
saw ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for only twenty
years, but already the farmers had cultivated the hillsides in the
assiduous fashion of Old Japan.

From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim _basha_ to places
which were always several miles farther on than they were supposed to
be and were usually reached by tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9
ins. long and having ruts a foot deep.

We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were mostly working
2-1/2 _chō_, though some had twice as much. Nearly all of these
tenants appeared to have one or two horses, although the estate
manager had advised them to use oxen or cows as more economical
draught animals. When I remembered the distance the farmers were from
the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satisfaction
which the men we passed displayed in being able to ride, it was easy
to believe that the possession of a horse might have its value as a
means of social progress. During the last ten years half the tenants
had made enough to enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this
estate had two temples and one shrine.[246]

I visited a fifteen-years-old co-operative alcohol factory with a
capital of 300,000 yen. Of its materials 80 per cent. seemed to be
potato starch waste and 20 per cent. maize. The product was 6,000 or
7,000 _koku_ of alcohol. The dividend was 8 per cent. On the waste a
large number of pigs was fed. The animals were kept in pens with
boarded floors within a small area, and I was not surprised to learn
that three or four died every month. Starch making, which produces the
waste used by the alcohol factory, is managed on quite a small scale.
An outfit may cost no more than 30 or 50 yen. I went over a small
peppermint-making plant. Most of the peppermint raised in Japan--it
reaches a value of 2 million yen--is grown in Hokkaido.

One day in the eastern part of the island I met in a small hotel,
which was run by a man and his wife who had been in America, several
old farmers who had obviously made money. They declared that formerly
only 20 per cent. of the colonists succeeded, but now the proportion
was more than 65 per cent. I imagine that they meant by success that
the colonists did really well, for it was added that it was rare in
that district for people to return to Old Japan. One of the company
said that not more than 5 per cent. returned. "Land is too expensive
at home," he continued; "when a Japanese comes here and gets some, he
works hard." A good man, they said, should make, after four or five
years, 70 to 100 yen clear profit in a year.

I rather suspect that the men I talked with had made some of their
money by advancing funds to their neighbours on mortgage. They all
seemed to own several farms. When I asked how religion prospered in
Hokkaido they said with a smile, "There are many things to do here, so
there is no spare time for religion as in our native places." There is
a larger proportion of Christians in Hokkaido than on the mainland.
One village of a thousand inhabitants contained two churches and a
Salvation Army barracks. It was reputed, also, to have eight or ten
"waitresses" and five saké shops. It is said that a good deal of
_shochu_, which is stronger than saké, is drunk.

The roughest _basha_ ride I made was to a place seven miles from
railhead in the extreme north-east. Such roads as we adventured by are
little more than tracks with ditches on either side. The journey back,
because there were no horses to ride, we made in a narrow but
extraordinarily heavy farm wagon with wheels a foot wide and drawn by
a stallion. Shortly after starting there was a terrific thunderstorm
which soaked us and hastened uncomfortably the pace of the animal in
the shafts. When the worst of the downpour was over, and we had faced
the prospect of slithering about the wagon for the rest of the
journey, for the stallion had decided to hurry, a farmer's wife asked
us for a lift and clambered in with agility. My companion and I were
then sitting in a soggy state with our backs against the wagon front
and our legs outstretched resignedly. The cheery farmer's wife, who
was wet too, plopped down between us and, as the bumps came, gripped
one of my legs with much good fellowship. She was a godsend by reason
of her plumpness, for we were now wedged so tight that we no longer
rocked and pitched about the wagon at each jolt. And no doubt we dried
more quickly. Providence had indeed been good to us, for shortly
afterwards we passed, lying on its side in a _spruit_, the _basha_
that had carried us on our outward journey.

We were three hours in all in the wagon. Our passenger told us that
her husband had several farms and that they were very comfortably off
and very glad that they had come to Hokkaido. When the farmer's wife
had to alight a mile from our destination we chose to walk. Bad roads
are a serious problem for the Hokkaido farmer. In one district, only
fifteen miles from the capital, they are so bad that rice is at half
the price it makes in Sapporo. It is unfortunate that the roads are at
their worst in autumn and spring when the farmer wants to transport
his produce.

I visited the 700-acre settlement which Mr. Tomeoka has opened in
connection with his Tokyo institution for the reclamation of young
wastrels. His formula is, "Feed them well, work them hard and give
them enough sleep." Among the volumes on his shelves there were three
books about Tolstoy and another three, one English, one American and
one German, all bearing the same title, _The Social Question_.
Needless to say that _Self-Help_ had its place.

I liked Mr. Tomeoka's idea of an open-air chapel on a tree-shaded
height from which there was a fine view. It reminded me of the view
from an open space on rising ground near the famous Danish rural high
school of Askov, from which, on Sundays, parties of excursionists used
to look down enviously on Slesvig and irritate the Germans by singing
Danish national songs. Mr. Tomeoka believed in better houses and
better food for farmers and in money raised by means of the _kō_--"the
rules and regulations of co-operative societies are too complicated
for farmers to understand."

I saw the huts of some settlers who had weathered their first Hokkaido
winter. Buckwheat, scratched in in open spaces among the trees, was
the chief crop. The huts consisted of one room. Most of the floor was
raised above the ground and covered with rough straw matting. In the
centre of the platform was the usual fire-hole. The walls were matting
and brushwood. I was assured that "the snow and good fires, for which
there is unlimited fuel, keep the huts warm."

The railway winds through high hills and makes sharp curves and steep
ascents and descents. There are tracts of rolling country under rough
grass. Sometimes these areas have been cleared by forest fires
started by lightning. Wide spaces are a great change from the scenery
of closely farmed Japan. The thing that makes the hillsides different
from our wilder English and Scottish hillsides is that there are
neither sheep nor cattle on them.

When the culpable destruction of timber in Hokkaido is added to what
has been lost by forest fires, due to lightning or to accident--one
conflagration was more than 200 acres in extent--it is easy to realise
that the rivers are bringing far more water and detritus from the
hills than they ought to do and are preparing flood problems with
which it will cost millions to cope when the country gets more closely
settled. It is deplorable that, apart from needless burning on the
hillsides, the farmers have not been dissuaded from completely
clearing their arable land of trees. On many holdings there is not
even a clump left to shelter the farmhouse and buildings. In not a few
districts the colonists have created treeless plains. In place after
place the once beautiful countryside is now ugly and depressing.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] The word used by people in Hokkaido for the main island, Hondo
or Honshu (_Hon_, main; _do_ or _shu_, land), is _Naichi_ (interior).

[233] From Aomori on the mainland to Hakodate in Hokkaido is a
50-miles sea trip. Then comes a long night journey to Sapporo, during
which one passes between two active volcanoes. The sea trip is 50
miles because a large part of the route taken by the steamer is
through Aomori Bay. The nearest part of Hokkaido to the mainland is a
little less than the distance between Dover and Calais.

[234] Foreigners sometimes confound Yezo (Hokkaido) with Yedo, the old
name for Tokyo.

[235] A sixth of Hokkaido still belongs to the Imperial Household. In
1918 it decided to sell forest and other land (parts of Japan not
stated) to the value of 100 million yen. In 1917 the Imperial estates
were estimated at 18-3/4 million chō of forest and 22-1/4 million chō
of "plains," that is tracts which are not timbered nor cultivated nor
built on.

[236] In 1919 it was 2,137,700.

[237] Considerations of space compel the holding over of a chapter on
the Ainu for another volume.

[238] Of the 96 foreign instructors in institutions "under the direct
control" of the Tokyo Department of Education in 1917-18, there were
27 British, 22 German, 19 American and 12 French.

[239] Hokkaido is one of five Imperial universities. There are in
addition several well-known private universities.

[240] Grouse are also to be found in Hokkaido, but no pheasants and no
monkeys. The deep Tsugaru Strait marks an ancient geological division
between Hokkaido and the mainland.

[241] It is sometimes eaten, ground to a rough meal, with rice. The
argument is that maize is two thirds the price of rice and more easily
digested.

[242] See Appendix XXXVII.

[243] The latest figures for Hokkaido show only a tenth.

[244] For farmers' incomes, see Appendix XIII.

[245] For sizes of farms, see Appendix LXIV.

[246] For a tenant's contract, see Appendix LXV.




CHAPTER XXXVIII

SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?

_Bon yori shoko_ (Proof, not argument)


One day in Tokyo I heard a Japanese who was looking at a photograph of
a British woman War-worker feeding pigs ask if the animals were sheep.
Sheep are so rare in Japan that an old ram has been exhibited at a
country fair as a lion. In contrast with Western agriculture based on
live stock we have in Japan an agriculture based on rice.[247] But a
section of the Japanese agricultural world turns its eyes longingly to
mixed farming, and so, when I returned to Sapporo from my trip to the
north of Hokkaido, I was taken to see a Government stock farm--with a
smoking volcano in the background. Hokkaido has four other official
farms, one belonging to the Government and one for raising horses for
the army. I was shown, in addition to horses, Ayrshire, Holstein and
Brown Swiss cattle, Berkshire and Yorkshire pigs and Southdown and
Shropshire sheep in good buildings. I noticed two self-binders and a
hay loader and I beheld for the first time in Japan a dairymaid and
collies--one was of a useless show type.

The extent to which the knack of looking after animals and a liking
for them can be developed is an interesting question. Experts in
stock-keeping with generations of experience behind them will agree
that it is on the answer to this question that the success or
non-success of the Japanese in animal industry in no small measure
depends.

I have a note of a discussion on the general treatment of domestic
animals in Japan in the course of which it was admitted that they were
"certainly not treated as well as in most parts of Europe, or as in
China." One reason given was that "most sects believe in the
reincarnation of the wicked in the form of animals." The freedom which
dogs enjoyed in English houses seemed strange; my friends no doubt
forgot that Western houses have no _tatami_ to be preserved. It was
contended, however, that cavalry soldiers "often weep on parting from
their horses" and that "people with knowledge of animals are fond of
them." I have myself seen farmers' wives in tears at a horse fair when
the foals they had reared were to be sold and the animals in their
timidity nuzzled them. Westerners who are familiar with the exquisite
and humoursome studies of animal, bird and insect life by Japanese
artists of the past and present day,[248] are in no doubt that such
work was prompted by real knowledge and love of the "lower creation."
The Japanese have a keen appreciation of the "song" of an amazing
variety of "musical" insects--there are 20,000 kinds of insects. It is
an appreciation not vouchsafed to the foreigner whose nerves are
racked by the insistent bizz of the _semi_ or cicada--there are 38
kinds of cicada. Everyone will recall Hearn's chapter on the trade in
"singing insects."

One of my hosts in Aichi had two tiny cages which each contained one
of these creatures. The cages were hung from the eaves. In the evening
when the stone lantern in the garden was lit, and it was desired to
give an illusion of greater coolness after a hot day a servant was
sent up to the roof to pour down a tubful of water in order to produce
the dripping sound of rain; and this at once set the caged insects
chirping.

The sensitive foreigner is distressed by the way in which newly born
puppies and kittens are thrown out to die because their Buddhist
owners are too scrupulous to kill them. The stranger's feelings are
also worked on by the unhappy demeanour and uncared-for look of dogs
and cats. On chancing to enter in a Japanese city an English home
where there were three dogs I could not but mark how they contrasted
in bearing and appearance with the generality of the animals I had
seen. Yet these dogs were all mongrel foundlings which had been
abandoned near my friend's house or dropped into her garden. No doubt
most Japanese dogs suffer from having too much rice--and polished at
that--and practically no bones. An excuse for the neglect of cats is
that they scratch woodwork and _tatami_ and insist on carrying their
food into the best room.

Horses are often overloaded and mercilessly driven on hilly
roads.[249] On the other hand, carters lead their horses. It might be
added that the coolies who haul and push handcarts bearing enormous
loads never spare themselves. I was told more than once of people who
had been too tenderhearted to make an end of old horses. I also heard
of hens which had been allowed to live on until they died of old age.
In some mountain communities it is the custom, when a chicken must be
killed for a visitor's meal, for an exchange of birds to be made with
a neighbour in order that the killing may not be too painful for the
owner.[250]

Except in hotels and stores in Tokyo and the cities which cater for
foreigners, one seldom sees such an animal product as cheese. On the
Government farm I found excellent cheese and butter being made.
Untravelled Japanese have the dislike of the smell of cheese that
Western people have of the stench of boiling _daikon_. Nor is cheese
the only alien food with which the ordinary Japanese has a difficulty.
The smell of mutton is repugnant to him and he has yet to acquire a
taste for milk. The demand for milk is increasing, however. The guide
books are quite out of date. Nearly all the milk ordinarily sold for
foreigners and invalids is supplied sterilised in bottles. On the
platforms of the larger railway stations bottles of milk are vended
from a copper container holding hot water. In places where I have been
able to obtain bread I have usually had no difficulty in getting milk.
(The word for bread, _pan_, has been in the language since the coming
of the Portuguese, and all over Japan one finds sponge cake,
_kasutera_, a word from the Spanish.) Butter in country hotels is
usually rancid, for the reason, I imagine, that it is carelessly
handled and kept too long and that few Japanese know the taste of good
butter. The development of a liking for bread and butter is obviously
one of the conditions of the establishment of a successful animal
industry. Condensed milk is sold in large quantities, but chiefly to
supplement infants' supplies and to make sweetstuff. The 1919
production was estimated at 57 million tins.

One argument for an animal industry is that with an increasing
population the fish supply will not go so far as it has done. It is
said that fish are not to be found in as large quantities as formerly.
Another argument is that the national imports include many products of
animal industry which might be advantageously produced at home. Not
only is more milk, condensed and fresh, being consumed: with the
adoption of foreign clothes in professional and business life and in
the army and navy, more and more wool is being worn[251] and more and
more leather is needed for the boots which are being substituted for
_geta_ and also for service requirements. It is contended that for the
emancipation of Japanese agriculture from the _petite culture_ stage
it is essential that a larger number of draught oxen and horses shall
be used. It is equally important, it is suggested, that more manure
shall be made on the farms, so that a limit shall be placed on the
outlay on imported fertilisers. Finally there are those who urge that
the Japanese should be better fed and that better feeding can only be
brought about by an increased consumption of animal products.[252]

The possibilities of outdoor stock keeping in Hokkaido are limited by
the fact that snow lies from November to the middle of February and in
the north of the island to the end of March. A high agricultural
authority did not think that the number of cattle in all Japan could
be raised to more than two million within twenty years.[253]

In the management of sheep--there were about 5,000 in the whole
country when I was in Hokkaido--there has been failure after failure,
but it is held that the prospects for sheep in Hokkaido are promising.
(The question is discussed in the next Chapter.) At present, owing to
the lack of a market for mutton, pigs, which used to be kept in the
days before Buddhism exerted its influence, seem more attractive to
experimenting farmers than sheep. No one has proposed that sheep
should be kept in ones and twos for milking as in Holland.[254] When
milk is needed it is said that goats, of which there are more than
90,000 in Japan, are desirable stock, but I doubt whether more than
500 of these goats are milked.[255] They are kept to produce meat.
Some people hope that those who eat goat's flesh will come to realise
the superiority of mutton.

The case for pigs is that sweet potatoes and squash can be fed to
them, that they produce frequent litters, that pork is more and more
appreciated, and that there are 300,000 of them in the country
already. Some confident experts who have possibly been influenced by
the large consumption of pork in China argue that pork may become
equally popular in Japan. There are two bacon factories not far from
Tokyo.

As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign
imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths. Japan, which aims
above all at being an exporting country, cannot attain her desire
without receiving imports to pay for her exports.[256] The
physiological argument for an animal industry is unconvincing. The
Japanese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little
fish and a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally ingenious
variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and
the Japanese have become accustomed to digest vegetable protein.[257]
It might be suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter
of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the
influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[258] In
Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption
among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to
diminish the amount of meat consumed. There is also in the West an
increasing sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in
transportation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry were
established in Japan there would certainly be a great deal of
transportation by rail and steamer from the breeding to the rearing
districts, and from these districts to the slaughtering centres. If
the present advocacy of an animal industry for Japan should triumph
over the reluctance to take animal life inculcated by Buddhism it is
hardly likely to be regarded in the West as a forward step in the
ethical evolution of the Japanese.[259]

I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who has made a
special study of the food of the Japanese people, Professor Morimoto
of the University. He said that he had no doubt that when the Japanese
began to eat bread instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat
as well as butter. With great kindness he placed at my disposal
statistics which he afterwards expanded in a thesis for Johns Hopkins
University. He had investigated the dietary of the families of 200
tenants of the University farms. Reduced to terms of men per day the
result was:

                            Sen.                 Sen.
Rice (1.95 _go_)            4.2     Vegetables   2.2
(Naked) barley (3.45 _go_)  3.3     Pickles[260]  .6
Fish                        1.0     Saké          .08
_Miso_                       .7     Sugar         .02
_Shoyu_ (soy)                .03               ------
                                                12.13

Or at Tokyo prices, 14.3 sen. On averaging, in terms of per man per
day, the food and drink consumption of all Japan, Professor Morimoto
found the result to be:

                        Sen.                        Sen.
Grain                   6.60          Fruits         .40
Legumes                  .39          Sugar          .53
Vegetables              2.00          Salt           .20
Fish and seaweeds        .54          Tea            .10
Beef and veal            .10 }        Alcoholic
Other animal food        .03 }          liquor      1.50
Chicken                  .03 } .33    Tobacco        .45
Eggs                     .13 }
Milk                     .04 }
                                                   -----
                                                   13.04[261]


The Professor compares with these totals the 34.4 sen and 39.3 sen per
day which seem to represent the cost of the food of the rank and file
in the navy and army, and three standards of diet issued by the
official Bureau of Hygiene providing for expenditures of 32.1 sen, 33
sen and 44.4 sen respectively. (All the prices I have cited are dated
1915.) Beef and pork as well as fish are used in the army and navy.
The navy also uses bread.

Professor Morimoto estimates that a Japanese may be fairly expected to
consume only 80 per cent. of what a foreigner needs, for the average
weight of Japanese is only 13 _kwan_ 830 _momme_ to the European's 17
_kwan_ 20 _momme_.

My personal impression, which I give merely for what it is worth, for
I have made no investigation of the subject, is that, though Japanese
may thrive on meagre fare, they eat large quantities of food when
their resources permit of indulgence. The common ailment seems to be
"stomach ache." This may be due to eating at irregular hours, to an
unbalanced dietary, to the eating of undercooked viands or to
occasional over-eating, or to all of these causes.[262] Undoubtedly
there is much room for dietetic reform.

Professor Morimoto had come to the conclusion "that there is
under-feeding, largely due to a bad choice of foods, that the relation
of the nutritive value of foods to their cost is insufficiently
studied and that cooking can be improved." It is of course an old
criticism of the Japanese table that food is either imperfectly cooked
or prepared too much with a view to appearance. The Professor's
finding was that the Japanese need the addition of meat and bread to
their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not convince me. Let
me quote him on the soy bean: "It is a remarkably good substitute for
meat. It is very low in price but its nutritive value is very high.
The essential element of _miso_, _tofu_ and _shoyu_ is soy bean."
Bread is another matter. The Japanese Navy, presumably because it may
find itself far from Japan, has accustomed its sailors to eat bread,
and a case can certainly be made out for the general population not
relying on rice as a grain food. But, as the large quantities of
barley eaten show, there is no such reliance now. Morimoto urged that
while there might be no difference in the nutritive value of wheat and
rice, rice as usually eaten induced "abnormal distension of the
stomach and poor nutrition." Again, wheat was a world crop,[263]
whereas rice, owing to the Japanese objection to foreign rice, was a
local crop. If the Japanese were users of wheat as well as of rice
they would not have to pay so much for food, when, on the failure of
the rice crop in considerable parts of Japan, the price of rice was
high. "The consumption is about 10 million bushels more than the
production." Further, rice was more costly in cultivation than wheat,
and its production could not be increased so as to keep pace with the
increase in population. The yield, which was 46 million _koku_ in
1904, was only 50 millions in 1912; and 65 millions in 1927 seemed an
excessive estimate. In 1912 the importation of rice was 2 million
_koku_. But on all these points the reader should take note of the
data on page 84 and in Appendices XXIV and XXV.

The Professor's concluding point against rice was that it was
expensive to prepare. The washing of the rice in a succession of
waters and the cleaning of the sticky pot in which it was cooked and
of the equally sticky tub in which it was served took a great deal of
time. Then in order to cook rice properly--and the Japanese have
become connoisseurs--the exact proportion of water must be gauged. The
supplies of rice to be cooked were so considerable that the name of
the servant lass was "girl to boil the rice." But when bread was used
instead of rice, said the Professor jubilantly, a baking twice a week
would do. Why, an hour a day might be saved, which in twenty years
would be 73,000 hours, or a whole year, and, reckoning women's labour
as worth 5 sen an hour, that would be a saving of 565 yen!

FOOTNOTES:

[247] For statistics of cultivated area and live stock, see Appendix
LXVI.

[248] One thinks of Takeuchi Seiho who lives in Kyoto, of
Toba Sojo (11th century) for monkeys, frogs and bullocks, and in the
Tokugawa period of Okio for dogs and carp, of Jakchū for fowls and
birds, of Hasegawa Tohaku and Sosen for monkeys, of Kawanabe Kyosai
for crows, and of Kesai and Hokusai for birds, fish and insects.

[249] Nevertheless it is well not to be hasty in judgment. On the day
on which this footnote was written, April 7, 1921, I find the
following items in the _Daily Mail_. On page 4 the Attorney-General
regrets that the law tolerates the "cruel practice" by which 30
pigeons were killed or injured at a certain pigeon-shooting
competition and expresses inability to bring in legislation. On page
5, col. 2, an M.P. is reported as mentioning a case in which a puppy
had been kicked to death and as asking the Home Secretary whether the
law imposing imprisonment for a short term could not be strengthened.
On the same page, col. 5, a railway porter is reported as having been
fined for flinging three small calves into a farm cart by the tails.

[250] For poultry statistics, see Appendix LXVII.

[251] Before the extensive use of _yofuku_ (foreign clothes) the dress
of Japanese men and women was entirely of cotton and silk or of cotton
only. Much of the material from which _yofuku_ are made is no doubt
cotton.

[252] See Appendix LXVIII

[253] The number of cattle, which was 1,342,587 in 1916, was only
1,307,120 in 1918. See also Appendix LXVI.

[254] For photographs and particulars of the milk sheep, see my _Free
Farmer in a Free State_.

[255] The value of the well-bred and well-cared-for goat as a milk and
manure producer is underestimated. The problem of keeping goats in
such a way that they shall not be destructive and shall yield the
maximum of manure is discussed in my _Case for the Goat_.

[256] This question as it affects an agricultural country is discussed
in _A Free Farmer in a Free State_.

[257] There is a consensus of scientific opinion that "non-meat
eating" races such as the Japanese have longer alimentary tracts than
flesh-eating Europeans. It is difficult to be precise on the subject,
an eminent Western surgeon tells me, for bowels are as contractile as
worms, which at one minute measure 100 units in length and the next
minute have shortened to 30. So much depends on the state at death.

[258] On the other hand, the Japanese have taken up many new things at
the point which we in the West have only recently reached. They begin
to produce milk and supply it, not in the milkman's pail, but in
sterilised bottles. They abandon candles and lamps and, practically
skipping gas, adopt electric light or power. The capital invested in
electric enterprises in 1919 was about 700 million yen or seven times
that invested in gas.

[259] There is one blameless form of stock keeping which is developing
in Hokkaido. Bees, which have still to make their way in Old Japan,
are now 6,000 hives strong in the northern island, though a start was
made only six or seven years ago.

[260] It is illustrative of the extent to which pickle is
consumed in Japan that a family in Sapporo was found to have eaten no
fewer than 283 _daikon_ in a year.

[261] The reader must put away the impression which this table
gives of a varied dietary. Few Japanese have such a range of food. The
average man habitually lives on rice, bean products (_tofu_, bean
jelly and _miso_, soft bean cheese), pickles, vegetables, tea, a
little fish and sometimes eggs. People of narrow means see little of
eggs and not much fish, unless it be _katsubushi_.

[262] The watering of vegetables with liquid manure, the usual
practice of the Japanese farmer, and the pollution of the paddies make
salads and insufficiently cooked green stuff dangerous and many water
supplies of questionable purity. Great efforts have been made to
provide safe tap water from the hills. Intestinal parasites are
common. The build of the Japanese makes for strength, but in the urban
areas there is much absence from work on the plea of ill-health. Both
in Japan and in England I have been struck by the fact that when I
made an excursion with an urban Japanese he often tired before I did,
and on none of these trips was I in anything like first-class
condition.

[263] Many Japanese look forward to a great production of wheat on the
north-eastern Asiatic mainland under Japanese auspices. In considering
imports of wheat it should be remembered that some of it is used in
soy and macaroni.




CHAPTER XXXIX

MUST THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN "YOFUKU"?[264]

"God damn all foreigners!"_--Interrupter at one of Mr. Gladstone's
early meetings at Oxford_


When I was in Hokkaido sheep were being experimented with at different
places on the mainland, investigators and sheep buyers had gone off to
Australia, New Zealand and South America, and a Tokyo Sheep Bureau of
two dozen officials had been established. Great hopes were built on a
few hundred sheep in Hokkaido.[265] But I noticed that Government farm
sheep were under cover on a warm September day. Also I heard of
trouble with two well-known sheep ailments. There was talk
nevertheless of the day when there would be a million sheep in
Hokkaido, perhaps three millions. On the mainland I also met high
officials and enthusiastic prefectural governors who dreamed dreams of
sheep farming in Old Japan, where land is costly, farms small,
agriculture intensive, grazing ground to seek, and farmland
necessarily damp. This sheep keeping is conceived as one animal or
perhaps two on a holding as rather unhappy by-products. The notion is
that the wool and manure of a sheep would meet the expense of its keep
and that the mutton would be profit. Hopes of an extension of sheep
breeding resting on such a basis seem to be extravagant. One high
authority told me that it would take twenty or thirty years to develop
sheep keeping.

The sheep at present in Japan are not living in natural conditions.
They feed on cultivated crops. Sheep could hardly live a week on
natural Japanese pasture. The wild herbage is full of the sharp bamboo
grass. In the summer much of the eatable herbage dries up. Not only
must sheep endure the summer heat and insects; they must survive the
trying rainy season. But they must do more than merely endure and
survive. In order to produce good wool it is necessary that they shall
be in good condition. The hair of one's head immediately shows the
effect of imperfect nutrition or unhealthy conditions, and it is the
same with the wool on the back of the sheep.

It is said that the quality of the wool on the sheep kept in Japan
depreciates. However this may be, it is plain that sheep breeding must
be conducted on a large scale in order to produce wool in commercial
quantities and of even quality. Some notion of the land normally
required for sheep may be estimated from the fact that Australian
pasture carries no more than four sheep per acre.[266]

An improvement of Japanese herbage sufficient to fit it for sheep
would be a heavy task even in small areas. It is not only the herbage
but the rocks below it which are all wrong for sheep, if we are to
judge by the geological formations on which sheep flourish in the
West. If the sheep were put on cultivated land[267] or placed on straw
as I saw them in Hokkaido there would be serious risks of foot rot. No
doubt there would also be insect pests to control. If Japan set up
sheep keeping she would no doubt have to devise her own special breed
of sheep, for the well-known Western breeds are artificial products.
Probably the experiments which are being made in China with sheep at
an earlier stage of development are proceeding on the right lines. I
have already spoken of the fact that a Japanese taste for mutton has
yet to be cultivated.

This is a formidable list of difficulties confronting the new
Governmental Sheep Bureau. No doubt much may be done by a large
expenditure of money and much patience. The Japanese have wrought
marvels before by spending money and having a large stock of patience.
Account must also be taken of the spirit reflected in the speech made
to me by a Japanese friend when I read the foregoing paragraph to
him:

"But we are keen to try. If there were no necessity to prepare for
war, when we must have wool for soldiers, sailors and officials, we
might rely on Australia and elsewhere and hope to improve the inferior
and dirty Chinese wool. But thinking of the disease prevailing in
Northern Manchuria and of service needs, we want to try sheep keeping
with some subsidy in Hokkaido and on the mainland in Northern Aomori
where there is much dry wild land and the farmers are often
miserable--there are villages where the people do not wash. We might
provide some of the wool needed by Japan. We have practically met our
needs in sugar, though of course our needs are small compared with
England and America."

Let us turn from the sheep problem to the factory problem. What are
the difficulties of the woollen industry? In the first place, as we
have seen, there is no home supply of wool worth mentioning. Further,
there is the intricacy of woollen manufacture. Cotton machinery has
been brought to such a pitch of perfection for every operation and
there are in existence so many technical manuals for every department
of cotton manufacture that a certain standardisation of output is not
difficult. The problem of woollen manufacture is much more
complicated. The output cannot be similarly standardised, and there
are many directions in which originality, self-reliance and experience
come into play decisively.

In the woollen districts of Great Britain the operatives are people
who have been in the trade all their lives, whose parents and
grandparents have been in the trade before them. There is not only an
hereditary aptitude but an hereditary interest. There is not only an
individual interest but an interest of the whole community. The
welfare of a town or city is wrapped up in the woollen industry. This
is not so in Japan. The mill workers in the Tokyo prefecture, for
example, come from remote parts of Japan, and the girls--and
three-quarters of the employees of the woollen industry are girls--are
merely on a three-years contract. The girls arrive absolutely
inexperienced. Even in England it is considered that it takes two or
three years to make a worker skilful. Within the three-years period
for which the Japanese mill girls or their parents contract, as many
as 30 per cent. leave the mills and, appalling fact, from 20 to 25 per
cent. die.[268] Not more than 10 per cent. renew their three-years
contract. Therefore there is, at present at any rate, little real
skilled labour in the factories. Another difficulty is the absence of
skilful wool sorters. Even before the War a good wool sorter commanded
in England from £3 to £4 a week. One of the things which hampers the
Japanese woollen industry is the prevalence of illness at the
factories. They must have, in consequence, about 25 per cent. more
labour than is needed.

Generally one would say that the industry at its present stage is not
only weak on the labour side,[269] but, where it is efficient, is
skilful rather in imitation than in original design. Everything
produced is an imitation of foreign designs. That is not an unnatural
state of things, however, at the commencement of a new industry.

With regard to the old complaint of Japanese goods failing to come up
to sample, the shortcoming is often due not to intentional dishonesty
but simply to inability to produce a uniform product. In one factory
an order had to be filled by bringing together work from 300 different
places. The first delivery of the cloth produced for the Russian army
was like the sample, but the later deliveries, though of excellent
material, were not, for the simple reason that the precise raw
materials for the required blending did not exist in Japan.

One of the marvels of the industry is the high prices obtained in
Japan. The best winter serge was selling in England before the War at
8s. a yard. The Japanese price for winter serge was from 5 to 6 yen.
Before the War it was possible to import cloth at 50 per cent. less
than the local rates. Nevertheless there seemed to be a market for
everything. Japanese cloth lacks finish but it is made out of good
materials and will wear. The factories are compelled to use a better
quality of material in order to get anywhere near the appearance of
imported goods. A foreign manufacturer, "owing to his skill in
manufacture," as it was once explained to me, may produce a cloth of a
certain quality containing only 10 per cent. new wool: the Japanese
manufacturer, in order to produce a comparable article must use 30 per
cent. new wool. Obviously this means that the Japanese factory must
charge higher prices.

In considering the position of the industry it is natural to ask how
it would be affected if the Japanese factories were able to draw more
largely upon Manchuria for wool. The answer is that the sheep in
Manchuria at present yield what is called "China" wool, which is
suitable only for blankets and coarse cloth.

To some who feel a sympathy for Japan in her present stage of
industrial development and are inclined to take long views it may seem
a pity that she should contemplate making such a radical change in her
national habits as is represented by the demand for woollen materials
and for meat. Japanese dress, easy, hygienic and artistic though it
is, and admirably suited for wearing in Japanese dwellings, is ill
adapted for modern business life, not to speak of factory conditions.
But it has not yet been demonstrated that Japan is under the necessity
of substituting, to so large an extent as she evidently contemplates
doing, woollen for cotton and silk clothing, and Western clothing for
her own characteristic raiment.[270] The cotton padded garment and bed
cover are both warm and clean. It is odd that this new demand on the
part of Japan for woollen material should coincide with movements in
Europe and America to utilise more cotton, for underclothing at any
rate. There is undoubtedly a hygienic case of a certain force against
wool. The same is true of meat. It may well be that the dietary of
many Japanese has not been sufficiently nutritious, but much of the
meat-eating which is now being indulged in seems to be due more to an
aping of foreign ways than to physical requirements. The more meat
Japan eats and the more she dresses herself in wool the more she
places herself under the control of the foreigner.[271] Whatever
degree of success may attend sheep breeding within the limits imposed
upon it by physical conditions in Japan, the raw material of the
woollen industry must be mostly a foreign product. As far as meat is
concerned, it is difficult to believe that while the agriculture of
Japan is based upon rice production there is room for the production
of meat on a large scale. If the meat and wool are to be produced in
Manchuria and Mongolia we shall see what we shall see. The
significance of the experiment of the Manchuria Railway Company since
1913 in crossing merino and Mongolian sheep and the work which is
being done on the sheep runs of Baron Okura in Mongolia cannot be
overlooked. Ten years hence it will be interesting to examine
industrially and socially the position of the woollen industry[272]
and the animal industry in Japan and on the mainland, and the net gain
that the country has made.

FOOTNOTES:

[264] _Yofuku_ means foreign clothes.

[265] In 1920 there were 8,219 sheep in Japan, including 945 in
Hokkaido.

[266] A sheep produces about 7 lbs. of wool in the year. But this is
the unscoured weight. In Japan, an expert assured me, it would not
reach more than 56 to 60 per cent. when scoured.

[267] "To-day sheep cannot, be kept on arable to leave any reward to
the farmer."--_Country Life_, August 20, 1921.

[268] See Appendix LXIX.

[269] See Appendix LXX.

[270] An immense amount of silk is used in Japanese men's clothing.
The kimono, except the cheaper summer kind and the bath kimono
_(yukata)_, which are cotton, is silk. So are the _hakama_ (divided
skirt) and the _haori_ (overcoat). Japanese women's clothes are
largely silk. The dress of working people is cotton, but even they
have some silk clothing.

[271] "By degrees they proceeded to all the stimulations of banqueting
which was indeed part of their bondage."--Tacitus on the Britons under
Roman influence.

[272] The industry has already made on the London market an impression
of competence in some directions. For production and exports, see
Appendix LXX.




CHAPTER XL

THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

Concerning these things, they are not to be delivered but from much
intercourse and discussion.--PLATO


Emigrants do not willingly seek a climate worse than their own. This
is one of the reasons why the development of Hokkaido has not been
swifter. The island is not much farther from the mainland than
Shikoku, but it is near, not the richest and warmest part of the
mainland, but the poorest and the coldest. If we imagine another
Scotland lying off Cape Wrath, at the distance of Ireland from
Scotland, and with a climate corresponding to the northerly situation
of such a supposititious island, we may realise how remoteness and
climatic limitations have hindered the progress of Hokkaido.

"Our mode of living is not suited to the colder climate," an
agricultural professor said to me. "Poor emigrants do not have money
enough to build houses with stoves and properly fitting windows."

To what extent the modified farming methods rendered necessary by the
Hokkaido climate have had a deterring effect on would-be settlers I do
not know. It has never been demonstrated that the Japanese farmer
prefers arduous amphibious labour to the dry-land farming in which
most of the world's land workers are engaged; but the cultivation of
paddy or a large proportion of paddy is his traditional way of
farming. Rice culture also means to him the production of the crop
which, when weather conditions favour, is more profitable than any
other. In Hokkaido, as we have seen, the remunerative kind of
agriculture is mixed farming, and, in a large part of the country,
rice cannot be grown at all. Against objections to Hokkaido on the
ground of the strangeness of its farming may probably be set,
however, the cheapness of land there.

An undoubted hindrance to the colonisation of Hokkaido has been land
scandals and land grabbing. Many of what the late Lord Salisbury
called the "best bits" are in the hands of big proprietors or
proprietaries. Some large landowners no doubt show public spirit. But
their class has contrived to keep farmers from getting access to a
great deal of land which, because of its quality and nearness to
practicable roads and the railway, might have been worked to the best
advantage. In various parts of Japan I heard complaints. "The land
system in Hokkaido," one man in Aichi said to me, "is so queer that
land cannot be got by the families needing it, I mean good land."
Again in Shikoku I was assured that "the most desirable parts of the
Hokkaido are in the hands of capitalists who welcome tenants only." In
more than one part of northern Japan I was told of emigrants to
Hokkaido who had "returned dissatisfied." A charge made against the
large holder of Hokkaido land is that he is an absentee and a city man
who lacks the knowledge and the inclination to devote the necessary
capital to the development of his estate. Of late the rise in the
value of timber has induced not a few proprietors to interest
themselves much more in stripping their land of trees than in
developing its agricultural possibilities.

The development of Hokkaido may also have been slowed down to some
extent by a lower level of education among the people than is
customary on most of the mainland, by a rougher and less skilful
farming than is common in Old Japan and by the existence of a residuum
which would rather "deal" or "let George do it" or cheat the Ainu than
follow the laborious colonial life. But no cause has been more potent
than a lack of money in the public treasury. I was told that for five
years in succession Tokyo had cut down the Hokkaido budget. Necessary
public work and schemes for development have been repeatedly stopped.
At a time when the interests of Hokkaido demand more farmers and there
is a general complaint of lack of labour, at a time when there are
persistent pleas for oversea expansion, there are in Japan twice or
thrice as many people applying for land in the island as are granted
entry. The blunt truth is that the State has felt itself compelled to
spend so much on military and naval expansion that the claims of
Hokkaido for the wherewithal for better roads, more railway line and
better credit have often been put aside.[273]

One thing is certain, that slow progress in the development of
Hokkaido gives an opening to the critics of Japan who doubt whether
her need for expansion beyond her own territory is as pressing as is
represented by some writers. However this may be, Hokkaido is stated
to take only a tenth of the overplus of the population of Old Japan.
The number of emigrants in 1913 was no larger than the number in 1906.
A usual view in Hokkaido is that the island can hold twice as many
people as it now contains. "When 3,625,000 acres are brought into
cultivation," says an official publication, "Hokkaido will be able
easily to maintain 5,000,000 inhabitants on her own products."

Very much of what has been achieved in Hokkaido has been done under
the stimulating influence of the Agricultural College, now the
University. The northern climate seems to be conducive to mental
vigour in both professors and students. If in moving about Hokkaido
one is conscious of a somewhat materialistic view of progress it may
be remembered that an absorption in "getting on" is characteristic of
colonists and their advisers everywhere. It is not high ideals of life
but bitter experience of inability to make a living on the mainland
which has brought immigrants to Hokkaido. As time goes on, the rural
and industrial development may have a less sordid look.[274] At
present the visitor who lacks time to penetrate into the fastnesses
of Hokkaido and enjoy its natural beauties brings away the unhappy
impression which is presented by a view of man's first assault on the
wild.

But he must still be glad to have seen this distant part of Japan. He
finds there something stimulating and free which seems to be absent
from the older mainland. It is possible that when Hokkaido shall have
worked out her destiny she may not be without her influence on the
development of Old Japan. Those of the settlers who are reasonably
well equipped in character, wits and health are not only making the
living which they failed to obtain at home; they are testing some
national canons of agriculture. Face to face with strangers and with
new conditions, these immigrants are also examining some ideals of
social life and conduct which, old though they are, may not be
perfectly adapted to the new age into which Japan has forced herself.
One evening in Hokkaido I saw a lone cottage in the hills. At its door
was the tall pole on which at the _Bon_ season the lantern is hung to
guide the hovering soul of that member of the family who has died
during the year. The settler's lantern, steadily burning high above
his hut, was an emblem of faith that man does not live by gain alone
which the hardest toil cannot quench. In whatever guise it may express
itself, it is the best hope for Hokkaido and Japan.

During my stay in the island I had an opportunity of meeting some of
the most influential men from the Governor downwards; also several
interesting visitors from the mainland. We often found ourselves
getting away from Hokkaido's problems to the general problems of rural
life.

Of the good influences at work in the village, the first I was once
more assured, was "popular education and school ethics, a real
influence and blessing." The second was "the disciplinary training of
the army for regularity of conduct." ("The influence of officers on
their young soldiers is good, and they give them or provide them with
lectures on agricultural subjects and allow them time to go in
companies to experimental farms.")

Someone spoke of "the influence of the religion of the past." "The
religion of the past!" exclaimed an elderly man; "in half a dozen
prefectures it may be that religion is a rural force, but elsewhere in
the Empire there is a lack of any moral code that takes deep root in
the head. After all Christians are more trustworthy than people
drinking and playing with geisha."

On the other hand a prominent Christian said: "There is a weakness in
our Christians, generally speaking. There is an absence of a sound
faith. The native churches have no strong influence on rural life.
There is often a certain priggishness and pride in things foreign in
saying, 'I am a Christian.'"

Another man spoke in this wise: "I have been impressed by some of the
following of Uchimura. They seem ardent and real. But I have also been
attracted by strength of character in members of various sects of
Christians. The theology and phraseology of these men may be curious,
may be in many respects behind the times, but their religion had a
beautiful aspect.[275] Many of our people have got something of
Christian ethics, but are no church-goers. Some Japanese try to
combine Christian principles with old Japanese virtues; others with
some soul supporting Buddhistic ideas. We must have Christianity if
only to supply a great lack in our conception of personality. People
who have accepted Christianity show so much more personality and so
much more interest in social reform."

When we returned to agricultural conditions, one who spoke with
authority said: "In Old Japan the agricultural system has become
dwarfed. The individual cannot raise the standard of living nor can
crops be substantially increased. The whole economy is too small.[276]
The people are too close on the ground. They must spread out to
north-eastern Japan, to Hokkaido, Korea and Manchuria. The population
of Korea could be greatly increased. There is an immense opening in
Manchuria, which is four or five times the area of the Japanese Empire
and sparsely populated. There is also Mongolia."[277]

"But in Korea," one who had been there said, "there are the Koreans,
an able if backward people, to be considered--they will increase with
the spread of our sanitary methods among a population which was
reduced by a primitive hygiene and by maladministration. And as to our
people going to the mainland of Asia, we do not really like to go
where rice is not the agricultural staple, and we prefer a warm
country. In Formosa, where it is warm, we are faced by the competition
of the Chinese at a lower standard of life.[278] The perfect places
for Japanese are California, New Zealand and Australia, but the
Americans and Australasians won't have us. I do not complain; we do
not allow Chinese labour in Japan. But we think that we might have had
Australasia or New Zealand if we had not been secluded from the world
by the Tokugawa régime, and so allowed you British to get there first.
It is not strange that some of our dreamers should grudge you your
place there, should cherish ideas of expansion by walking in your
footsteps. But it is wisdom to realise that we cannot do to-day what
might have been done centuries ago or make history repeat itself for
our benefit. It is wiser to seek to reduce the amount of
misapprehension, prejudice and--shall I say?--national feeling in
Japan and America and Australasia, and try to procure ultimate
accommodation for us all in that way. But not too much reduce,
perhaps, for, in the present posture of the world, nationalist
feeling and--we do not want premature inter-marriage--racial feeling
are still valuable to mankind."

A speaker who followed said: "Remember to our credit how our area
under cultivation in Old Japan continually increases.[279] Bear in
mind, too, what good use we have made of the land we have been able to
get under cultivation--so many thousand more _chō_ of crops than there
are _chō_ of land, due, of course, to the two or three crops a year
system in many areas."[280]

"As for the situation the emigrants[281] leave behind them in Old
Japan," resumed the first speaker, "the experiment should be tried of
putting ten or so of tiny holdings[282] under one control, and an
attempt should be made to see what improved implements and further
co-operation[283] can effect. I suppose the thing most needed on the
mainland is working capital at a moderate rate. Think of 900 million
yen of farmers' debt, much of it at 12 per cent. and some of it at 20
per cent.! I do not reckon the millions of prefectural, county and
village debt. Of what value is it to raise the rice crop to 3 or 4
_koku_ per _tan_ (60 or 80 bushels per acre)[284] if the moneylender
profits most? The farmers of Old Japan are undoubtedly losing land to
the moneyed people.[285] Every year the number of farmers owning their
own land decreases[286] and the number of tenants increases and more
country people go to the towns.[287] And, as an official statement
says, 'the physical condition of the army conscripts from the rural
districts is always superior to that of the conscripts of the urban
districts.'"

Some Western criticism of Japanese agriculture cannot be
overlooked.[288] Criticism is naturally invited by (1) Japanese
devotion to what is in Western eyes an exotic crop--but owing to
exceptional water supplies, favourable climatic conditions and
acquired skill in cultivation, the best crop for all but the extreme
north-east of Japan;[289] (2) the small portions in which much of that
crop is grown--of necessity; (3) the primitive implements--not
ill-adapted, however, to a primitive cultural system; (4) the
non-utilisation of animal or mechanical power in a large part of the
country--due as much to physical conditions as to lack of cheap
capital; (5) what is spoken of as "the never-ending toil"--against
which must be set the figures I have quoted showing the number of
farmers who do not work on an average more than 4 or 5 days a week;
and (6) the moderate total production compared with the number of
producers--which must be considered in reference to the object of
Japanese agriculture and in relation to a lower standard of living.
Japanese agriculture, as we have seen, has shortcomings, many of which
are being steadily met; but with all its shortcomings it does succeed
in providing, for a vast population per square _ri_, subsistence in
conditions which are in the main endurable and might be easily made
better.

Paddy adjustment has clearly shown that paddies above the average size
are more economically worked than small ones, but these adjusted
paddies are on the plains and a large proportion of Japanese paddies
have had to be made on uneven or hilly ground where physical
conditions make it impossible for these rice fields to be anything
else than small and irregular. Japanese agriculture is what it is and
must largely remain what it is because Japan is geologically and
climatically what it is, and because the social development of a large
part of Japan is what it is. Comparisons with rice culture in Texas,
California and Italy are usually made in forgetfulness of the fact
that the rice fields there are generally on level fertile areas, in
America sometimes on virgin soil. In Japan rice culture extends to
poor unfavourable land because the people want to have rice
everywhere.[290] The Japanese have cultivated the same paddies for
centuries, Some American rice land is thrown out of cultivation after
a few years. In fertile localities the Japanese get twice the average
crop. It must also be remembered that Japanese paddies often produce
two crops, a crop of rice and an after-crop. Japanese technicians are
well acquainted with Texan, Californian and Italian rice culture, and
Japanese have tried rice production both in California and Texas.

"They talk of Texan and Italian rice culture," said one man who had
been abroad on a mission of agricultural investigation, "but I found
the comparative cost of rice production greater in Texas than in
Japan. Some Japanese farmers who went to Texas were overcome by weeds
because of dear labour. In Italian paddies, also, I saw many more
weeds than in ours. It is rational, of course, for Americans and
Italians to use improved machinery, for they have expensive labour
conditions, but we have cheap labour. The Texans have large paddies
because their land is cheap, but ours is dear. In these big paddies
the water cannot be kept at two or three inches, as with us. It is
necessarily five inches or so, too deep, and the soil temperature
falls and they lose on the crops what they gain by the use of
machinery. Further, it must be remembered that we are not producing
our rice for export. It is a special kind for ourselves, which we
like;[291] but foreigners would just as soon have any other sort. We
have no call, therefore, to develop our rice culture in the same
degree as our sericulture, which rests mainly on a valuable oversea
trade."

"On this general question of improvement of implements and methods,"
said another member of our company, "we must use machinery and
combine farming management when industrial progress drives us to it;
but why try to do it before we are compelled? Concerning horses, the
difficulty which some farmers have in using them is the difficulty of
feeding them economically. Concerning cereals, our consumption is not
less than that of Germany, but Germany imports more than twice the
cereals we do, so there would seem to be something to be said for our
system."

[Illustration: CUTTING GRASS]

"Some revolutionising of Japanese farming is necessary, in combined
threshing, for instance," the expert who had opened our discussion
said. "This combined threshing is now seen in several districts, and
combined threshing will be extended. But there is the objection to the
threshing machine that it breaks the straw and thus spoils it for
farmers' secondary industries. It should not be impossible to invent
some way of avoiding this, but the threshing machine is also too heavy
for narrow roads between paddies. It is difficult to deliver the crops
to the machine in sufficient bulk. Necessity may show us ways, but
small threshing machines are not so economical. Of course we must have
much more co-operative buying of rural requirements, and certainly
there is room in some places for the Western scythe made smaller, but
our people, as you have seen, are dexterous with their extremely
sharp, short sickle, and fodder is often cut on rather difficult
slopes, from which it is not easy to descend loaded, with a scythe.
Some foreigners who speak so positively about machinery for paddies,
and for, I suppose, the sloping uplands to which our arable farming is
relegated, do not really grasp the physical conditions of our
agriculture. And they are always forgetting the warm dankness of our
climate. They forget, too, that implements for hand use are more
efficient than machinery, and, if labour be cheap, more economical.
They forget above all that we are of necessity a small-holdings
country."

Is it such a bad thing to be a small-holdings country? Does the rural
life of countries which are pre-eminently small-holding, like Denmark
and Holland, compare so unfavourably with that of England? I wonder
how much money has been sunk--most of it lost--during the past quarter
of a century in attempts to increase small holdings in England.

"Because we have much remote, wild, uncultivated land," the speaker I
have interrupted continued, "that is not to say that most of it, often
at a high elevation, or sloping, or poor in quality, as well as
remote, can be profitably broken up for paddies. Much of this land can
be and ought to be utilised in one fashion or another, but we have
found some experiments in this direction unprofitable, even when rice
was dear. But it may be said, Why break up this wild land into
paddies? Why not have nice grassy slopes for cattle as in Switzerland?
But our experts have tried in vain to get grass established. The heavy
rains and the heat enable the bamboo grass to overcome the new fodder
grass we have sown. The first year the fodder grass grows nicely, but
the second year the bamboo grass conquers. In Hokkaido and Saghalien
we are conquering bamboo grass with fodder grass. The advice to go in
largely for fruit ignores the fact of our steamy damp climate, which
encourages sappy growth, disease and those insects which are so
numerous in Japan. We cannot do much more than grow for home
consumption."

"The advice to draw the cultivation of our small farms under group
control has not always been profitable when followed by landlords,"
one who had not yet spoken remarked. "They have not always made more
when they farmed themselves than when they let their land. All the
world over, land workers do better for themselves than for others.
Proposals further to capitalise farming which, with a rural exodus
already going on, would have the effect of driving people off the land
who are employed on it healthily and with benefit to the social
organism, do not seem to offer a more satisfactory situation for
Japan. No country has shown itself less afraid of business combination
than Japan, and the world owes as much to industry as to agriculture,
and I am not in the least afraid of machinery and capital; but
production is not our final aim. Production is to serve us; we are not
to serve production. If people can live in self-respect on the land
they are better off in many ways than if they are engaged in industry
in some of its modern developments."

"The world is also better off," my interpreter in his notes records me
as saying when I was pressed to state my opinion. "The day will come
when the uselessness and waste of a certain proportion of industry and
commerce will be realised, when the saving power of an export and
import trade in unnecessary things will be questioned and when the
cultivator of the ground will be restored to the place in social
precedence he held in Old Japan. With him will rank the other real
producers in art, literature and science, industry and commerce. The
industrialisation of the West and its capitalistic system have not
been so perfectly successful in their social results for it to be
certain that Japan should be hurried more quickly in the industrial
and capitalistic direction than she is travelling already.[292] If she
takes time over her development, the final results may be better for
her and for the world. I have not noticed that Japanese rural people
who have departed from a simple way of life through the acquirement of
many farms or the receipt of factory dividends have become worthier.
On the question of the alleged over-population of rural Japan, one
Japanese investigator has suggested to me that as many as 20 per
cent. could be advantageously spared from agricultural labour. But he
was not himself an agriculturist or an ex-agriculturist. He was not
even a rural resident. Further, he conceived his 20 per cent. as
entering rural rather than urban industry.

"A great deal of afforestation and better use of a large proportion of
forest land, much more co-operation for borrowing and buying, improved
implements where improved implements can be profitably used, animal
and mechanical power where they can be employed to advantage, paddy
adjustment to the limit of the practical, more intelligent manuring, a
wider use of better seeds,[293] the bringing in of new land which is
capable of yielding a profit when an adequate expenditure is made upon
it, a mental and physical education which is ever improving--all
these, joined to better ways of life generally, are obvious avenues of
improvement, in Northern Japan particularly, not to speak of
Hokkaido.[294] But it is not so much the details of improvement that
seem urgently to need attention. It is the general principles. I have
been assured again and again by prefectural governors and agricultural
experts--and in talking to a foreigner they would hardly be likely to
exaggerate--that considered plans for the prevention of disastrous
floods, for the breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans
and for the development of public intelligence and well-being were
hindered in their areas by lack of money alone. The degree to which
rural improvements, with which the best interests of Japan now and in
the future are bound up, may have been arrested and may still be
arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends
to which public energy and public funds[295] may be wisely devoted is
a matter for patriotic reflection.[296] No impression I have gained
in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism. For good
or ill, patriotism is the outstanding Japanese virtue. What some
patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a
quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is. The Japanese, with
so many talents, so many natural and fortuitous advantages, and with
opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed, of being able to
profit by the social, economic and international experience of States
that have bought their experience dearly and have much to rue, cannot
fairly expect to be lightly judged by contemporaries or by history. If
the course taken by Japan towards national greatness is at times
uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many
will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for the enlightened
judgment of the world on the Japanese people: the degree to which they
are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution
and common-sense with which they take their own way."

"Our rural problems," a sober-minded young professor added, after one
of those pauses which are usual in conversations in Japan, "is not a
technical problem, not even an economic problem. It is, as you have
realised, a sociological problem. It is bound up with the mental
attitude of our people--and with the mental attitude of the whole
world."

FOOTNOTES:

[273] A high authority assured me that 100 million yen (pre-War
figures) could be laid out to advantage. A Japanese economist's
comment was: "Why not touch on the extraordinary proportion of land
owned by the Imperial Household and also by the State for military
purposes?"

[274] In driving through what seemed to be one of the best streets in
Sapporo, I noticed that some exceptionally large houses were the
dwellings of the registered prostitutes. Each house had a large
ground-floor window. Before it was a barrier about a yard high which
cleared the ground, leaving a space of about another yard. Such of the
public as were interested were able, therefore, to peer in without
being identified from the street, for only their legs and feet were
visible. In Tokyo and elsewhere this exhibition of girls to the public
has ceased. The place of the girls is taken by enlarged framed
photographs. I found on enquiry that the Sapporo houses are so well
organised as to have their proprietors' association. At a little town
like Obihiro an edifice was pointed out to me containing fifty or more
women.

[275] The classification is 101,671 Protestants, 75,983 Roman
Catholics and 36,265 Greek Church.

[276] "'Spade farming' is an apt designation of the system of farming
or rather of cultivation, for little is done in the way of raising
stock."--PROFESSOR YOKOI.

[277] See Appendix XXX.

[278] But surely the basic reason against a large emigration of
farmers and artisans to Formosa, or to Manchuria, Mongolia or Korea,
with the intention of working at their callings, is that the standard
of living is lower there? The chief attraction of America and
Australasia is that the standard of living is higher. The question of
over-population must be considered in relation to the facts in
Appendices XXV, XXX and LXXX, and on page 331. It is not established
that the Japanese have now, or are likely to have in the near future,
a pressing need to emigrate.

[279] See Appendix LXXII.

[280] See Appendix LXXIII.

[281] See Appendix LXXIV.

[282] Between 1909 and 1918 the average area of holdings rose from
1.03 to 1.09 _chō_ or from 2.52 to 2.67 acres or 1.02 to 1.08
hectares.

[283] There were in 1919 some 13,000 co-operative societies of all
sorts. The number increases about 500 a year.

[284] For rise in production per _tan_, see Appendix LXXV.

[285] See Appendix LXXVI.

[286] See Appendix LXXVII.

[287] See Appendix LXXVIII.

[288] See, for example, C.V. Sale in the _Transactions of the Society
of Arts_, 1907, and J.M. McCaleb in the _Transactions of the Asiatic
Society of Japan_, 1916.

[289] For the question, is rice the right crop for Japan? See Appendix
LXXIX.

[290] Dr. Yahagi in an address delivered in Italy pointed out to his
audience that Japan had 15 times as large an area under rice as Italy
and that, while the Italian harvest ranged between 42 and 83
hectolitres per hectare, the Japanese ranged between 55 and 130. The
area under rice in the United States in 1920 was 1,337,000 acres and
the yield 53,710,000 bushels. The area under rice has steadily
increased since 1913, when it was only 25,744,000 bushels.

[291] A well-informed Japanese who read this Chapter doubted the
ability of his countrymen to distinguish between native and Korean,
Californian or Texan rice. Saigon is another matter. See Appendix
XXIV.

[292] "Some of our statesmen," notes a Japanese reader of this
Chapter, "are carried away by ideas of an industrial El Dorado." Such
men have no understanding of the relation of rural Japan to the
national welfare. They are as blind guides as the Japanese who, caught
by the glamour of the West, threw away the artistic treasures of their
forefathers and pulled down beautiful temples and _yashiki_. Japan has
much to gain from a wise and just industrial system, but not a little
of the present industrialisation is an exploitation of cheap labour, a
destruction of craftsmanship and social obligation, and an attempt to
cut out the foreigner by the production of rubbish.

[293] The chairman of Rothamsted declares as I write that the standard
of English farming could be raised 50 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have
estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United
Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes.

[294] For a discussion of the question of inner colonisation versus
foreign expansion, see Appendix LXXX.

[295] For figures bearing on the relative importance of agriculture,
commerce and industry, see Appendix LXXXI. For armaments, see Appendix
XXXIII.

[296] There are many Britons who now reflect that millions which have
gone into Mesopotamia might have been better spent by the Ministries
of Health and Education.




        The blessing of her sun-warmed days;
          Her sea-spun cloak of wet;
        Her pointing valleys, veiled in haze,
          Where field and wood have met;
        When we have gone our differing ways
          These we shall not forget.
                          L.T., in _The New East_.




APPENDICES

The sermon was bad enough, but the appendix was abominable.--MR.
BOWDLER.


THE INCOME OF A MINISTER OF STATE FROM THE LAND[I]. The speaker began
by inheriting 3 _chō_ (7-1/2 acres). He farmed a _chō_ of rice field
and about a third of a _chō_ of dry land. With rent from the part he
let, with gains from the part he farmed and with interest on 2,000 yen
spare capital, he had at end of the year a balance of 370 yen. With
the money gained from year to year more and more land was bought. At
the time of his talk with me he owned 8 _chō_. His net income, after
deducting cost of living, was 1,200 yen (including 500 yen from the
land that was let). In the future, when he farmed 7 _chō_ (15-1/2
acres), he believed that his balance would be 4,500 yen, which is the
salary of a Governor! Or was, until the rise in prices when Governors'
salaries were raised about another 1,000 yen, with an additional
allowance of from 600 to 400 yen in the case of some prefectures. See
also Appendix III.


"GETA" [II]. The _geta_ is a flat piece of hard wood, about the length
of the foot but a little wider, with two stumpy pieces fastened
transversely below it. The foot maintains an uncertain and, in the
case of a novice whose big toe has not been accustomed to separation
from its fellows, a painful hold by means of a toe strap of thick rope
or cotton. To persons unused from childhood to the special toe grip
and scuffle of the _geta_, it seems odd to associate with this
difficult clattering footgear the idea of "luxury." But no pains are
spared by the _geta_ makers in choosing fine woods and pretty cords.


BUDGETS OF LARGE PROPERTY OWNERS [III]. Two landlords, A and B, kindly
allowed me to look into their budgets:


A
                                yen
80 _chō_ of rural land        320,000
20 _chō_ of rural land         60,000
20,000 _tsubo_ of city land   130,000
Negotiable instruments        150,000
Dwelling and furniture        150,000
                              _______
             Total property   810,000
                              =======

EXPENDITURE OF PAST YEAR

                                yen
House                           2,100
Food and drink                  1,350
Clothing                        1,000
Social intercourse              1,500
Public benefit                    800
Miscellaneous                   1,000
Taxes                           5,000
                               ______
                               12,750
                               ======


B

owns 62 _chō_ 4 _tan_ and receives in rent 623 _koku_ 7 _to_. Members
of family, 11; servants, 8.

EXPENDITURE OF PAST YEAR

                                                           yen
House                                                      519
Food and drink (18 sen each per day for members of
  family; 13 sen each for servants)                      1,102
Fuel                                                       156
Light                                                       36
Clothing                                                   770
Education (3 middle-school boys at 20 yen per month;
  3 primary-school boys and girls at 2 yen)                312
Social intercourse                                         120
Amusements (journey, 100 yen; summer trip, 231;
  others, 50)                                              381
Miscellaneous (servants, 480 yen; medicine, 150; other
  things, 150)                                             780
Donations                                                  300
Taxes                                                    3,976
                                                        ______
                                                         8,451
                                                        ======


THE "BENJO" [IV]. I never noticed a case in which earth was thrown
into the domestic closet tub according to Dr. Poore's system. I have
come across attempts to use deodorisers, but the application of a
germicide is inhibited because of the injury which would be caused to
the crops. Farmers are chary about removing night soil which has been
treated even with a deodoriser. I ventured to suggest more than once
that Japanese science should be equal to evolving a deodoriser to
which the farmer, who in Japan seems to be so easily directed, could
have no objection. The drawback to using Dr. Poore's system is that
the added earth would greatly increase the weight of the substance to
be removed. There would be the same objection to the use of _hibachi_
ash (charcoal ash), but there is not enough produced to have any
sensible effect. The truth is that there is no lively interest in the
question of getting rid of the stink for everyone has become
accustomed to it. The odour from the _benjo_--the politer word is
_habakari_--which is always indoors, though at the end of the _engawa_
(verandah), often penetrates the house. (_Engawa_ [edge or border] is
the passage which faces to the open; _roka_ is a passage inside a
house between two rooms or sometimes a bridgelike passage in the open,
connecting two separate buildings or parts of a house.) Emptying day
is particularly trying. This much must be said, however, that the
farmers' tubs are washed, scrubbed and sunned after every journey and
have close-fitting lids. And primitive though the _benjo_ is, it is
scrupulously clean. Also, if it is always more or less smelly, it is
contrived on sound hygienic principles. There is no seat requiring an
unnatural position. The user squats over an opening in the floor about
2 ft. long by 6 ins. wide. This opening is encased by a simple
porcelain fitting with a hood at the end facing the user. The top of
the tub is some distance below the floor. In peasants' houses there is
no porcelain fitting. Manure is so valuable in Japan that farmers
whose land adjoins the road often build a _benjo_ for the use of
passers-by. Although the traveller in Japan has much to endure from
the unpleasant odour due to the thrifty utilisation of excreta, the
Japanese deserve credit for the fact that their countryside is never
fouled in the disgusting fashion which proves many of our rural folk
to be behind the primitive standard of civilisation set up in
Deuteronomy (chap, xxiii. 13). The Western rural sociologist is not
inclined to criticise the sanitary methods of Japan. He is too
conscious of the neglect in the West to study thoroughly the grave
question of sewage disposal in relation to the needs of our crops and
the cost of nitrogenous fertilisers. See also Appendix XX.


AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS [V]. In Mr. Yamasaki's school there was dormitory
accommodation for 200 youths, some 40 lived in teachers' houses,
another 15 were in lodgings, and 45 came daily from their parents'
homes. Lads were admitted from 14 to 16 and the course was for 3
years. The students worked 30 hours weekly indoors and the rest of
their time outside. Upper and lower grade agricultural schools number
280 with 23,000 students. In addition there are 7,908 agricultural
continuation schools with more than 430,000 pupils. The ratio of
illiteracy in Japan for men of conscription age (that is, excluding
old people and young people), which had been over 5 per cent. up to
1911, was reported to be only 2 per cent. in 1917.


CRIME [VI]. In 1916 the chief offences in Japan were:

Dealt with at police station  445,502
Gambling and lotteries         81,649
Larceny                        81,063
Fraud and usurpation           49,772
Assaults                       19,022
Robbery                        10,383
Arson                           9,533
Accidental assaults             3,277
Obscenity                       2,796
Wilful injury                   2,032
Murder                          1,886
Abortion                        1,252
Abduction                         907
Rioting                           813
Official disgrace                 481
Military and naval                387
Desertion                         315
Forgery                           307
Coining                           206


PROSTITUTES [VII]. The chief of police was good enough to let me have
a copy of the form to be filled up by girls desiring to enter the
houses in the prefecture. It is under nine heads: 1. The reason for
adopting the profession. 2. Age. 3. Permission of head of household.
If permission is not forthcoming, reason why. 4. If a minor, proof of
permission. 5. House at which the girl is going to "work." 6. Home
address. 7. Former means of getting a living. 8. Whether prostitute
before. If so, particulars. 9. Other details.

When I was in Japan there were reputed to be about 50,000 _joro_
(prostitutes), about half that number of geisha and about 35,000
"waitresses."


PHILANTHROPIC AGENCIES [VIII]. In 1917 the number of paupers, tramps
and foundlings relieved by the State did not exceed 10,000. The number
of institutions was 730 (of which 40 were run by foreigners), with the
expenditure of about 5-1/2 million yen.


CHANGES IN RURAL STATUS [IX]. It seemed that during 47 years 18
tenants had become peasant proprietors, 14 peasant proprietors had
become landowners (that is men who make their living by letting land
rather than by working it), 8 tenants had stepped straightway into the
position of landowners, 7 landowners had fallen to the grade of
peasant proprietors and 7 more to that of tenants, while 114
householders had changed their callings or had gone to Hokkaido.


HOURS OF WORK PER DAY [X]. One of these villages showed that during
January and February it worked 6 hours, during March and April 8
hours, from May to August 12-1/2 hours, during September and October
9-1/2 hours, and during November and December 9 hours. There was a
further record of labour at night. In January and February it worked
from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., during March and April and September and
October from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and in November and December from 7
p.m. to 10 p.m. As in the period from May to August inclusive the day
working hours were from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., there then was no night
labour.


DILIGENT PEOPLE AND OTHERS [XI]. The adults of the village were
classified as follows: Diligent people, men 294, women 260; average
workers, men 270, women 236; other people, men 242, women 191. One
supposes that, in considering the women's activities, all that was
estimated was the number of hours spent in agricultural work or in
remunerative employment in the evening.


FARM AREAS AND DAYS WORKED IN THE YEAR [XII]. The information
concerned three typical peasant proprietors, A, B and C, living in the
same county. The areas of their land are given in _tan_:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
  |Where farming |Paddy |Dry |Homestead |Rented  |Children |Parents |
---------------------------------------------------------------------
A |In hills      |6     |3   |1         |  --    |3        |2       |
B |On plain      |6.6   |2.6 |.5        |2 paddy |3        |2       |
C |Near town     |6     |4   |1         |  --    |3        |-       |
---------------------------------------------------------------------

Next we are told the number of days that not only A, B and C but their
wives and their parents worked and did not work during the year:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
             |            |Domestic |National   |        |Remaining
             |Agriculture |Work     |Holidays & |Illness |Days
             |            |         |Festivals  |        |
--------------------------------------------------------------------
         {A  |254         | 28      |25         | 6      |52
Husbands {B  |239         | 37      |25         | -      |64
         {C  |231         | 49      |19         | 2      |64
             |            |         |           |        |
         {A  |239         | 54      | 7         | -      |64
Wives    {B  |150         |128      |26         | -      |64
         {C  |141         |174      | 9         | -      |41
             |            |         |           |        |
         {A  |144         | 47      |85         |18      |72
Fathers  {B  |205         | 69      |40         | -      |51
         {C  | -          | -       | -         | -      | -
             |            |         |           |        |
         {A  | 15         |324      | 6         | -      |20
Mothers  {B  | 82         |220      |23         | -      |41
         {C  | -          | -       | -         | -      | -
--------------------------------------------------------------------

It will be seen that men only were ill! [See next page.]

For average of hours worked elsewhere, see page 232 and page 237.


FARMERS' EARNINGS AND SPENDINGS [XIII]. If the reader should feel that
the following details are lacking in comprehensiveness or
definiteness, he should understand that reports of a national and
authoritative character on the economic condition of the farmer were
not available. There existed certain reports of the Ministry of
Agriculture, but they were subjected to criticism. The National
Agricultural Association had set on foot an elaborate enquiry as to
the condition of the "middle farmer," but it was suggested that too
much reliance was placed on arithmetical calculations and too little
on known facts. I have had to rely, therefore, on official and private
investigations made in various prefectures and villages, and I give a
selection for what they are worth. Of the general condition of the
agricultural population the reader is offered the impressions recorded
in my different Chapters.

INCOMES AND EXPENDITURES OF PEASANT PROPRIETORS.--

The incomes and expenditures of the three households referred to in
Appendix XII were:

-----------------------------------------
    |Income |Expenditure |Balance in hand
-----------------------------------------
    |yen    |yen         |yen
  A |477    |449         |28
  B |915    |838         |77
  C |971    |703         |68
-----------------------------------------

HOUSEHOLD EXPENDITURES.--The household expenditures of the three
families were, in yen:

-------------------------------------------
                    |A      |B      |C
-------------------------------------------
                    |yen    |yen    |yen
Food                |192.76 |216.64 |189.57
House               |  2.32 |  2.24 |  1.20
Clothes             | 18.72 | 15.16 | 10.08
Fuel                | 12.72 | 13.53 | 21.00
Tools and furniture | 10.97 |160.18 |  1.66
Social intercourse  |  9.58 |  --   |  6.05
Education           |  1.56 |  --   |  4.15
Amusement           |  3.30 |  2.03 | 18.00
Unforeseen          |  7.85 | 13.72 | 22.33
Miscellaneous       |  6.43 |  7.71 | 11.15
                    |-------|-------|------
                    |266.21 |431.21 |285.19
-------------------------------------------

It will be observed that the expenditure of B under the
heading of furniture, 160 yen, is out of all proportion with the
expenditures of A and C, 10 yen and 1 yen respectively. This
is due to the fact that B had to provide a bride's chest for a
daughter.

A balance sheet given me by a peasant proprietor in Aichi
(5_tan_ of two-crop paddy and 5 _tan_ of upland) showed a balance
in hand of 27 yen.

An agricultural expert said to me, "The peasant proprietors
are the backbone of the country, but the condition of the backbone
is not good. The peasant proprietors can make ends meet
only by secondary employments." The expert showed me average
figures for 18 farmers for 1891, 1900 and 1909. The average
land of these men was a little over a _chō_ of paddy and 5 _tan_ of
upland and some woodland. They had spent 39, 63 and 86
yen on artificial manures as against 100, 153 and 204 yen on
food. The balance at the end of the year for the three years
respectively was 27, 40 and 29 yen. "The figures reflect the
general condition," I was told.

INCOMES AND EXPENDITURES OF TENANTS.--I may also note the
circumstances of the largest and of the smallest tenant in an Aichi
village I visited. The largest tenant family showed a balance in hand,
93 yen; the smallest tenant, 23 yen.

The accounts of 16 tenants for 1891 showed an average sum of 3 yen in
hand at the end of the year, for 1900 a loss of 5 yen and for 1909 a
gain of 1 yen. These men had an average of 9 _tan_ of paddy and 2
_tan_ of upland. The man who gave me the data said that in the
north-east of Japan "the condition of the tenants is miserable--eating
almost cattle food." The only bright spot for tenants was that, as
compared with peasant proprietors, they were free to change their
holdings and even their business.

INCOMES OF TENANTS AND PEASANT PROPRIETORS (SHIDZUOKA).--One tenant,
who pays 159 yen in rent and taxes, shows a total income of 374 yen
and an expenditure of 538 yen, with a _net loss of 164 yen_. "Farmers
of this class," notes the local expert on the memorandum he gave me,
"are becoming poorer every year." This tenant spent 2 yen on medicine
and 5 yen on tobacco. ("Nothing else for enjoyment," pencils the
expert.) In addition to parents, a man, a woman and a girl of the
family worked. Food cost 321 yen (cost of fish and meat, 4-1/2 yen)
and clothing 34 yen.

In a "model village," where "the farmers are always diligent," a
small tenant's income was 508 yen and expenditure 527 yen; _loss_, 19
_yen_. Clothes cost 95 yen and food 190 yen. (Cost of fish and meat,
4-3/4 yen.) There was an expenditure on medicine of 1-1/2 yen and on
tobacco and _saké_ ("only enjoyment") 10 yen.

Twenty per cent, of the farmers, I was told, "lead a middle-class life
and occupy a somewhat rational area of land." The budgets often of
these men, who own their own land, show a _balance of 85 yen_. "If
they were tenants they would not be in such a good condition." "We
think the farmer ought to have 2 _chō_."

BUDGETS OF FARMERS ON THE LAND OF THE HOMMA CLAN, YAMAGATA (page
186).--A tenant had 3 _chō_ of paddy and a small piece of vegetable
land. There lived with him his wife, two sons and the widow and child
of the eldest son. After paying his rent he had 30 _koku_ of rice
left. The cost of production and taxes, 100 yen or a little more, had
to come out of that. This tenant had a debt of 250 yen.

A sturdy wagoner with a sturdy horse lived with his wife and three
children and his old mother. He hired 1 _chō_ for 28 _koku_ of rice
and his crop was 40 _koku_. He spent 30 yen on manure and 4 yen went
in taxes.

A middle-grade farmer owned a house and a little more than 1 _chō_ and
rented 3 _chō_ of paddy and a patch for vegetables. His rent was about
38 _koku_. He spent 100 yen on manure and 128 yen for taxes, temple
dues and regulation of the paddy. He employed at 2-1/2 _koku_ a man
who lived with the family, also temporary labour for 48 days. His crop
might be 100 _koku_ or more. He had no debt.

A third man was above the middle grade of farmer. His taxes were 240
yen and his manure bill 130 yen. His payment for paddy-field
regulation, to continue for ten years, was 60 yen. He had three
labourers and he also hired extra labour for 100 days. He had three
unmarried sons of 40, 29 and 25. There were 260 yen of pensions in
respect of the war service of one son and the death of another.

INCOME OF PEASANT PROPRIETORS (HOKKAIDO).--The following statistics
for the whole of Hokkaido are based on the experience of peasant
proprietors. The 2-1/2 _chō_ men are rice farmers--rice farming means
farming with rice as the principal crop. The 5-_chō_ men are engaged
in mixed farming:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Farmer's|Income |  Income  | Total |  Cost of  |Cost of |Total |Balance.
  Area  | from  |from Other|       |Cultivation|Living  |Outlay|
        |Farming|   Work   |       |           |        |      |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
        |  yen  |    yen   |  yen  |    yen    |  yen   | yen  | yen
2-1/2   |       |          |       |           |        |      |
chō     |  366  |     43   |  409  |    107    |  276   | 382  |  27
        |       |          |       |           |        |      |
5 chō   |  441  |     33   |  474  |    119    |  301   | 423  |  52
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

It will be seen that mixed farming is the more profitable.

Income of Tenants (Hokkaido).--Professor Takaoka was kind enough to
give me the following summaries of balance sheets of tenants of
college lands in different parts of Hokkaido in 1915. (In all cases
the accounts have been debited with wages for the farmer's family.)

Five _chō_. Income, 447 yen; _net return, 37 yen_. (Rye, wheat, oats,
corn, soy, potatoes, grass, flax, buckwheat and rape. One horse and a
few hens.)

Five _chō_. Income, 763 yen; _net return, 58 yen_. (Rye, wheat, oats,
rape, soy, potatoes, corn, grass, flax and onions. Three cows, one
horse.)

Ten _chō_. Income, 1,015 yen; _net return, 122 yen_. (Same crops with
two cows and one horse and some hired labour.)

Five _chō_ (peppermint on 3 _chō_). Income, 882 yen; _net return_, 93
_yen_.

Three _chō_. Income, 1,195 yen; _net return, 332 yen_. (Vegetable
farming. 206 yen paid for labour.)

Thirty _chō_. Income, 1,979 yen; _net return, 61 yen_. (Mixed farming;
632 yen paid for labour.)

Model _5-chō_ farm without rice. Made 604 yen, and 107 yen _net
return_, farm capital being 1,487 yen. (208 yen allowed for labour,
interest 128 yen, amortisation 27 yen, and taxes 13 yen.)

Milk farmer, 12 _chō_ and 90 cattle. Income, 12,280 yen; _net return
of 3,641 yen_.

2,120 _chō_ (1,235 forest, 402 pasture, 110 artificial grass and 42
crops; 111 cattle). Income, 66,205 yen; _net return, 1,011 yen_. (Milk
and meat farming.)

Average income and expenditure of 200 tenants of University land whose
budgets Professor Morimoto (see Chapter XXXIV) investigated:

                                                         yen
Crops                                                   451.66
Wages earned                                             61.33
Horses                                                   20.09
Poultry and eggs                                           .96
Pigs                                                       .85
Manure (animal, 35 _kwan_; human, 14 _koku_)             24.50
Other income                                             29.64
                                                        ------
                                                        589.03
                                                 yen
Cultivation, etc.                               206.32
Cost of living                                  303.33
                                                ------
                                                509.65
                                                        ------
Profit                                                   79.38
                                                        ======

The returns of capital yielded the following averages:

                                                           yen
Tenant right in respect of 5-16 _chō_                    750.82
Buildings (32.2 _tsubo_)                                 195.95
Clothing                                                 162.82
Horse (average 1.23)                                     108.48
Furniture                                                 58.47
Implements                                                51.23
Poultry (average 2.58)                                     1.15
Pigs (average .12)                                          .87
                                                       --------
                                              Total    1,329.79
                                                       ========


VALUE OF NEW PADDY [XIV]. More delicious rice could be got, I was
told, from well-fertilised barren land than from naturally fertile
land. The first year the new paddy yielded per _tan_ an average of 1.2
_koku_, the second 1.6, the third 2, and this fourth year the yield
would have been 2.3 had it not been for damage by storm.


AREAS AND CROPS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF RICE [XV]. In 1919 there was
grown of paddy rice 2,984,750 _chō_ (2,729,639 ordinary, 255,111
glutinous) and of upland rice 141,365 _chō_. Total, 3,126,115 _chō_.
The yield (husked, uncleaned) was of paddy 61,343,403 _koku_
(ordinary, 56,438,005; glutinous, 4,905,398); of upland, 1,839,312.
Total, 63,182,715 _koku_; value, 2,352,145,519 yen.

In 1877 the area is reputed to have been 1,940,000 _chō_ with a yield
of 24,450,000 _koku_ and in 1882 2,580,000 _chō_ with a yield of
30,692,000 _koku_. The average of the five years 1910-14 was 3,033,000
_chō_ with a yield of 57,006,000 _koku_; of the five years 1915-19,
3,081,867 _chō_ with a yield of 94,817,431 _koku_.

In a prefecture in south-western Japan I found that 2 _koku_ 5 _to_
(or 2-1/2 _koku_, there being 10 _to_ in a _koku_) per _tan_ was
common and that from 3 _koku_ to 3 _koku_ 5 _to_ was reached. "A good
yield for 1 _tan_," says an eminent authority, "is 3 _koku_, or on the
best fields even 4 _koku_." The average yield in _koku_ per _tan_ for
the whole country has been (paddy-field rice only): 1882, 1.19;
1894-8, 1.38; 1899-1903, 1.44; 1904-8, 1.57; 1909-13, 1.63; 1914-18,
1.86; 1919, 1.99; 1920, 2.05 (ordinary, 2.06; glutinous, 1.92). Upland
rice in 1920, 1.30 as against 1.02 in 1909. All these figures are for
husked, uncleaned rice.


BARLEY AND WHEAT CROPS [XVI]. The following table (average of five
years, 1913-17) shows the yields per _tan_ of the two sorts of barley
and of wheat and the average yield all three together in comparison
with the rice yield (all quantities husked):

                 _go_                          _go_
Barley           1,672 | All three together    1,307
Naked barley     1,172 | Rice                  1,808
Wheat            1,073 |

Naked barley is grown as an upland crop, as are ordinary barley and
wheat; but it is more largely grown as a second crop in paddies than
either barley or wheat. The barleys are chiefly used for human food
with or without rice. Wheat is eaten in macaroni, sweetstuffs and
bread. It is also used in considerable quantities in the manufacture
of soy, the chief ingredient of which is beans. There was imported in
the year 1920 wheat to the value of 28-1/2 million yen, and flour to
the value of 3-1/4 million yen. Macaroni is largely made of buckwheat
as well as of wheat. The other grain crop is millet, which is eaten by
the poorest farmers. In 1918, as against 60 million _koku_ of rice,
there were grown 5 million _koku_ of beans and peas. The crops of
barley were 17 million, of wheat 6 million, of millet 3-1/4 million,
and of buckwheat 3/4 million. More than a million _kwan_ of sweet
potatoes were produced and nearly half a million of "Irish" potatoes.
(The figures for barley and wheat are for 1919.)


COST AND PRICE OF RICE [XVII]. The annual figures (from Aichi) for the
years 1894 to 1915 (page 384) show the cost of producing a _tan_ of
rice, that is the summer crop. The amounts per _tan_ are calculated on
the basis of the expenses of a tenant who is cropping 8 _tan_. The
totals for the winter crop are also given. The figures which appear on
the opposite page were described to me by the farmer concerned as
"compiled on the basis of investigations by the chairman of the
village agricultural association and by its managers and still further
proved and quite trustworthy." It will be seen that the value of the
winter crop is low; a secondary employment is usually a better thing
for the farmer. In one or two places there is a sen or so difference
in the additions which may have been made by the transcriber from the
Japanese original. The difference in amounts of rent is due to
difference in fields rented and also to reduction allowed owing to bad
crops. The difference in the income from crops is usually due to
destruction by hail or wind.


COST AND PRICE OF RICE (see page 383)

|Year
|      |Yield in
|      |_koku_
|      |      |Reserved for Rent
|      |      |and Seeds (_koku_)
|      |      |      |Market Price per
|      |      |      |_koku_ (yen)
|      |      |      |       |Gross Income including
|      |      |      |       |Straw and Chaff,
|      |      |      |       |not usually sold (yen)
|      |      |      |       |       |Manures (yen)
|      |      |      |       |       |     |Taxes and Amortisation
|      |      |      |       |       |     |of Implements (sen)
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |Total Outlay (yen)
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |Net Income from Summer
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |Crop of Rice (yen)
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |Days of Labour on
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |Summer Crop of Rice
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |      |Net Income from
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |      |Winter Crop (?Barley)
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |      |       |Total Net
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |      |       |Income from
|      |      |      |       |       |     |    |      |       |      |       |both Crops.
|------|------|------|-------|-------|-----|----|------|-------|------|-------|-------|
| 1894 | 2.23 | 1.05 |  7.66 |  9.81 | 2   | 21 | 2.21 |  7.60 |  2.5 |  2.51 | 10.11 |
| 1895 | 2.13 | 1.05 |  8.09 |  8.71 | 2   | 21 | 2.26 |  6.45 | 21.5 |  2.48 |  8.92 |
| 1896 | 1.53 |  .80 |  8.67 |  6.89 | 2.4 | 22 | 2.58 |  4.31 | 21.5 |  3.38 |  7.69 |
| 1897 | 1.88 | 1.05 | 11.53 | 10.63 | 2.9 | 23 | 3.13 |  7.50 | 21.5 |  5.22 | 12.72 |
| 1898 | 2.39 | 1.05 | 14.62 | 21.13 | 3.2 | 25 | 3.40 | 17.73 | 21.5 |  5.50 | 23.23 |
| 1899 | 1.75 |  .88 | 12.05 | 11.48 | 3.8 | 30 | 4.11 |  7.37 | 21   |  2.22 |  9.99 |
| 1900 | 2.14 | 1.05 | 11.11 | 13.24 | 4.1 | 31 | 4.40 |  8.84 | 21   |  4.22 | 13.06 |
| 1901 | 2.10 | 1.05 | 10.53 | 12.06 | 4   | 32 | 4.35 |  7.71 | 21   |  3.87 | 11.58 |
| 1902 | 1.86 |  .99 | 12.99 | 12.40 | 3.1 | 38 | 3.51 |  8.89 | 21   |  4.11 | 13    |
| 1903 | 2.06 | 1.04 | 12.50 | 13.85 | 3.4 | 49 | 3.79 | 10.05 | 21   |  6    | 16.85 |
| 1904 | 2.24 | 1.03 | 12.20 | 16    | 2.6 | 53 | 3.11 |  9.89 | 21   |  6.06 | 15.95 |
| 1905 | 1.77 |  .99 | 13.42 | 11.60 | 2.1 | 46 | 2.55 |  9.05 | 21   |  6.67 | 15.71 |
| 1906 | 1.96 | 1.05 | 15.15 | 15 09 | 4   | 56 | 4.61 | 10.49 | 21   |  5.79 | 16.27 |
| 1907 | 1.98 | 1.14 | 16.39 | 16.69 | 4.4 | 42 | 4.83 | 11.84 | 21   |  8.60 | 20.43 |
| 1908 | 2.21 | 1.14 | 14.29 | 16.80 | 5.1 | 42 | 5.54 | 11.26 | 21   | 10.79 | 22.05 |
| 1909 | 2.27 | 1.14 | 11.63 | 14.39 | 3.7 | 99 | 4.64 |  9.75 | 21   | 11.49 | 21.24 |
| 1910 | 2.02 | 1.14 | 14.09 | 13.37 | 4.5 | 80 | 5.27 |  8.51 | 21   | 12.41 | 20.91 |
| 1911 | 2.22 | 1.14 | 16.67 | 19.72 | 4.4 | 78 | 5.13 | 14.59 | 21   | 13.49 | 28.08 |
| 1912 | 2.02 |  .90 | 21.74 | 26.48 | 5.9 | 75 | 6.60 | 19.88 | 21.5 |  3.73 | 23.6  |
| 1913 | 2.31 | 1.14 | 20.83 | 24.67 | 6.5 | 79 | 7.30 | 17.37 | 21.5 | 12.62 | 30    |
| 1914 | 2.48 | 1.14 | 12.50 | 18.29 | 5.8 | 78 | 6.53 | 11.75 | 21.5 | 11.54 | 23.30 |
| 1915 | 2.36 | 1.20 | 11.77 | 14.91 | 5.8 | 82 | 6.67 |  8.24 | 21.5 |  9.67 | 18.91 |

This table may be supplemented by the following prices for
(unpolished) rice in Tokyo: 1916, 13 yen 76 sen; 1917, 19 yen 84 sen;
1918, 32 yen 75 sen; 1919, 45 yen 99 sen.


In the spring of 1921 the League for the Prevention of Sales of Rice
at a Sacrifice proposed that rice should not be sold under 35 yen per
_koku_. The price passed the figure of 35 yen in July 1918. At the
time the League's proposals were made the Ministry of Agriculture was
quoted as stating that the cost of producing rice "is now 40 yen per
_koku_." The accuracy of the figures on which the Ministry's estimates
are made is frequently called in question.


CULTIVATED AREA IN JAPAN AND GREAT BRITAIN [XVIII]. In 1919 there were
in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the
Channel Islands) 15,808,000 acres of arable, 15,910,000 of pasture and
13,647,000 of grazing, or a total of 45,365,000 acres out of a total
area of 56,990,000 acres. In Japan there were 15,044,202 acres of
paddy and of cultivated upland, 46,958,000 acres of forest and
8,773,000 acres of waste; total 70,775,000, out of 90,880,000 acres.
The area of the United Kingdom without Ireland is 56,990,080 acres;
that of Japan Proper, 75,988,378 acres. The population of the United
Kingdom without Ireland (in 1911) was 41,126,000, and of Japan Proper
(in 1911) 51,435,000. (See also Appendix XXX.)


HUMAN LABOUR _v_. CATTLE POWER [XIX]. The Department of Agriculture
stated in 1921 that "from 200 to 300, sometimes more than 500 days'
labour [of one man] are required to grow a _chō_ of rice." The area of
paddy which is ploughed by horse or cattle power was 61.89 per cent.
The area of upland so cultivated was only 38.97 per cent. The "average
year's work of the ordinary adult farmer" was put at 200 days. The
Department estimated an average man's day's work (10 hours) as
follows:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
Nature of Work          | Tools used                   |Output by one
                        |                              | Man per Day
---------------------------------------------------------------------
                        |                              |hectare
Tillage of paddy        |_Kuwa_ (mattock)              | 0.06
  "     "   "           |_Fumi-guwa_ (heavy spade)     | 0.1-0.15
Transplanting rice      |Hand work                     | 0.07-0.1
Weeding                 |Sickle and weeding tools      | 0.1
Cutting the rice crop   |Sickle                        | 0.1-0.15
Mowing grass            |Sickle (long handle)          | 0.5
  "      "              |Scythe                        | 0.5
---------------------------------------------------------------------

But I have never seen a scythe in use in Japan!


MANURE [XX]. The value of the manure used in Japan in a year has been
estimated at about 220 million yen, but for the three years ending
1916 it averaged 241 millions, as follows:

Produced or obtained by the Farmer  | Purchased
                        yen         |                         yen
Compost              63,500,000     | Bean cake            32,000,000
Human waste          54,000,000     | Mixed                17,000,000
Green manure          9,600,000     | Miscellaneous        16,000,000
Rice chaff            5,000,000     | Sulphate of ammonia  15,000,000
                                    | Superphosphate       12,000,000
                                    | Fish waste           12,000,000

Dr. Sato puts the artificial manure used per _tan_ at a sixth of that
of Belgium and a quarter of that of Great Britain and Germany. See
also Appendix IV. An agricultural expert once said to me, "Japanese
farmer he keep five head of stock, his own family."


SOWING OF RICE [XXI]. A common seeding time is the eighty-eighth day
of the year according to the old calendar, say May 1 or 2.
Transplanting is very usual at the end of May or early in June. In
Kagawa, Shikoku, I found that rice was sown at the beginning of May or
even at the end of April, the transplanting being done in mid-June.
The harvest was obtained 10 per cent. about September 10th, 30 per
cent. in October and 60 per cent. about the beginning of November. The
winter crop of naked barley was sown in the first quarter of December
and was harvested late in May or early in June, so there was just time
for the rice planting in mid-June.

In Kochi the first crop is sown about March 15, the seedlings are put
out in mid-May and the harvest is ready about August 10. The second
crop, which has been sown in June, is ready with its seedlings from
August 13 to August 15, and the harvest arrives about November 1 and
2. The first crop may yield about 3 _koku_, the second 1-1/2 _koku_.

A good deal depends in raising a big crop on a good seed bed. This is
got by reducing the quantity of seed used and by applying manure
wisely. Whereas formerly as much as from 5 to 7 _go_ of seed was sown
per _tsubo_, the biggest crops are now got from 1 _go_.

The Japanese names of the most widely grown varieties are Shinriki,
Aikoku, Omachi, Chikusei and Sekitori. At an experiment station I
copied the names of the varieties on exhibition there: Banzai,
Patriotism, Japanese Embroidery, Good-looking, Early Power of God,
Bamboo, Small Embroidery, Power of God, Mutual Virtue, Yellow Bamboo,
Late White, Power of God (glutinous), Silver Rice Cake and Eternal
Rice Field.

There are several thousand _chō_ in the vicinity of Tokyo where, owing
to the low temperature of the marshy soil, the seed is sown direct in
the paddies, not broadcast but at regular intervals and in thrice or
four times the normal quantities.


RATE OF PLANTING [XXII]. I have been told that an adult who has the
seedlings brought to his or her hand can stick in a thousand an hour.
The early varieties may be set in clumps of seven or eight plants;
middle-growth sorts may contain from five to six; the latest kind may
include only three or four. The number of clumps planted may be 42 per
_tsubo_, which, as a _tsubo_ is nearly four square yards, is about ten
per square yard. The clumps are put in their places by being pushed
into the mud. A straight line is kept by means of a rope. The success
of the crop depends in no small degree on skilful planting.


HOW MUCH RICE DOES A JAPANESE EAT? [XXIII]. The daily consumption of
rice per head, counting young and old, is nearly 3 _go_. (A _go_ is
roughly a third of a pint.) A sturdy labourer will consume at least 5
_go_ in a day, and sometimes 7 or even 10 _go_. The allowance for
soldiers is 6 _go_. These quantities represent the rice uncooked. In
recent years more and more rice has been eaten by those who formerly
ate barley or mainly barley. And some who once ate a good deal of
millet and _hiye_ are now eating a certain amount of rice. The
average annual consumption per head of the Japanese population (Korea
and Formosa excluded from the calculation) was: 1888-93, 948 _go_;
1908-13, 1,037 _go_; 1913-18, 1,050 _go_. The averages of 25 years
(1888-1912) were: production, 42,756,584 _koku_; consumption,
44,410,725 _koku_; deficit, 1,984,970 _koku_; population, 45,140,094;
per head, 0.980 _koku_. In 1921 the Department of Agriculture,
estimating a population of 55,960,000 (see Appendix XXX) and an annual
consumption per head of 1.1 _koku_ per year, put the national
consumption for a year at about 61,550,000 _koku_. See also Appendix
XXVI.


IMPORTED AND EXPORTED RICE [XXIV]. "Good rice" is imported from Korea
and Formosa. The objection is to "Rangoon" rice. But most of the
imported rice does not come from Rangoon but from Saigon. The figures
for 1919 were in yen: China, 283,011; British India, 1,012,979;
Kwantung, 15,053,977; Siam, 29,367,430; French Indo-China,
116,313,525; other countries, 39,918; total, 162,070,840. The exports
in 1919 were in yen: China, 1,354; Australia, 6,570; Asiatic Russia,
165,463; Kwantung, 213,633; British America, 356,600; United States,
476,756; Hawaii, 3,046,598; other countries, 60,707--all obviously in
the main for Japanese consumption. The total imports and exports were
in _koku_ and yen over a period of years:

--------------------------------------------------------
       |       Imports         |       Exports         |
  Year |-----------------------|-----------|-----------|
       |  _Koku_   |Value (yen)|  _Koku_   |Value (yen)|
--------------------------------------------------------
  1909 | 1,325,243 | 13,585,817|  422,513  | 5,867,290 |
  1910 |   918,627 |  8,644,439|  429,251  | 5,900,477 |
  1911 | 1,719,566 | 11,721,085|  216,198  | 3,940,541 |
  1912 | 2,234,437 | 30,193,481|  208,423  | 4,367,824 |
  1913 | 3,637,269 | 48,472,304|  204,002  | 4,372,979 |
  1914 | 2,022,644 | 24,823,933|  260,738  | 4,974,108 |
  1915 |   457,606 |  4,886,125|  662,629  | 9,676,969 |
  1916 |   309,158 |  3,087,616|  686,479  |11,197,356 |
  1917 |   564,376 |  6,513,373|  769,129  |14,662,546 |
  1918 | 4,647,168 | 89,755,678|  264,565  | 8,321,965 |
  1919 | 4,642,382 |162,070,840|   95,219  | 4,327,690 |
  1920 |   471,083 | 18,059,194|  116,249  | 5,897,675 |
--------------------------------------------------------

The twenty-five years' average (1888-1912) of excess of import
over export was 1,339,493 _koku_. See also Appendix XXVIII.


INCREASE OF RICE YIELD AND OF POPULATION [XXV].

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
           |           |           |Percentage |           | Percentage
           |    1882   |   1913    |   of      |   1918    |    of
           |           |           |Increase   |           |Increase[*]
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
Population |36,700,000 |53,362,000 |   45      |66,851,000 |    55
Rice crop  |30,692,000 |50,222,000 |   63      |53,893,000 |    75
  (_koku_) |           |           |           |           |
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

* 1882-1918. The degree to which the increase in production will
be maintained is of course a matter for discussion. As far as rice is
concerned, it must be borne in mind that there is an increasing
consumption per head.


FARMERS' DIET [XXVI]. It is officially stated in 1921 that "the common
farm diet consists of a mixture of cooked rice and barley as the
principal food with vegetables and occasionally fish." The barley is
what is known as naked barley. Ordinary barley is eaten in northern
Japan, but two-thirds of the barley eaten elsewhere is the wheat-like
naked barley, which cannot be grown in Fukushima and the north. The
husking of ordinary barley is hard work. The young men do it during
the night when it is cool. They keep on until cock-crow. Their songs
and the sound of their mallets make a memorable impression as one
passes through a village on a moonlight night. Another substitute for
rice beyond millet is _hiye_ (panic grass). In the south it is
regarded as a weed of the paddies, but in the north many _tan_ are
planted with this heavy-yielding small grain.


TAXATION [XXVII]. Before 1906 national taxation was 2.5 per cent. of
the legal price of land. In 1900 it was 3.3 per cent., in 1904 5.5 per
cent., in 1911 4.7 per cent, and in 1915 4.5 per cent. But local
taxation increased in greater proportion.


FLAVOUR OF RICE AND PRICE FLUCTUATIONS [XXVIII]. Japanese rice has a
fatty flavour which the people of Japan like. Therefore the native
rice commands a higher price in Japan than Chinese or Indian rice.
With the exception of a small quantity exported to Japanese abroad,
Japanese rice is consumed in Japan. The supply of it and the demand
for it are exclusively a Japanese affair. Naturally, when the crop
fails the price soars, and when there is a superabundant harvest the
price comes down to the level of foreign rice. Here is the secret of
the enormous fluctuations in the price of Japanese rice with which
the authorities have so often endeavoured to cope.

The Government granary plan is the third big effort of authority to
manage rice prices. The Okuma Government, under the administration of
which rice went down to 14 yen per _koku_, had a Commission to raise
prices. The Terauchi Ministry, at a time when prices rose, touching 55
yen, had a Commission to bring prices down.


AREA AND CLIMATE [XXIX]. Japan Proper comprises a main island, three
other large islands in sight of the main island, and
archipelagos--4,000 islets have been counted. The main island, Honshu,
with Shikoku behind it, lies off the coast of Korea; the next largest
and northernmost island, Hokkaido, off the coast of Siberia, and the
remaining sizeable island and the southernmost, Kyushu, off the coast
of China over against the mouth of the Yangtse. The area of this
territory, that is of Japan before the acquirement of Formosa, Korea,
southern Saghalien and part of Manchuria, is about 142,000 square
miles in area, which is that of Great Britain in possession not of one
Wales but of four, or nearly 1 per cent. of the area of Asia. But
there are several million more people in Japan than there are
inhabitants of Great Britain and thrice as many as there are Britons
in Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and India. (See also
Appendix XXX.) Japan, which lies between the latitudes of Cairo and
the Crimea, may be said to consist of mountains, of which fifty are
active volcanoes, with some land, either hilly or boggy, at the foot
of them. It is nowhere more than 200 miles across and in one place is
only 50. A note on the ocean currents which exercise an influence on
agriculture will be found on page 195. The protection afforded to the
eastern prefectures by mountain ranges is obvious. Generally the
summer temperature of Japan is higher and the winter temperature is
lower than is recorded in Europe and America within the same
latitudes.

"The mild climate and abundant rainfall," says the Department of
Agriculture, "stimulate a luxuriant forest development throughout the
country which in turn provides ample fountain heads for rivers. The
rivers and streams run in all directions, affording opportunity for
irrigation all over the country. The insular position of the country
renders its humidity high and its rainfall abundant when compared with
Continental countries. The rainy season prevails during the months of
June and July, making this season risky for the harvest of wheat and
barley; on the other hand it affords a beneficent irrigation supply to
paddy-grown rice, which is the most important crop. The characteristic
feature of the climate in the greater part of the islands is the
frequency of storms in the months of August and September. As the
flowers of the rice plant commence to bloom during the same period,
these late summer storms cause much damage."

The weather in Tokyo in 1918 was as follows:

-------------------------------------------------------------------------
            |Jan.|Feb.|Mar.|Apl.| May|June|July|Aug.|Sept.|Oct.|Nov.|Dec.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Rain and    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |    |     |    |    |
  snow (mm.)|  10|  65| 163| 108| 123| 149|  82|  78|  202| 135| 142| 80
Temp. (C.)  | 1.6| 3.6| 6.7|11.7|16.7|20.2|26.0|26.0| 22.6|16.0|10.4|3.9
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

The varied climate of Japan is indicated by the following statistics
for centres as far distant as Nagasaki in the extreme south-west and
Sapporo in Hokkaido:

---------------------------------------------------------------------
                |Nagasaki| Kyoto |Tokyo | Niigata | Aomori | Sapporo
----------------|--------|-------|------|---------|--------|---------
 Days of rain or|        |       |      |         |        |
  snow          |   179  |   176 |  144 |    218  |  229   |    216
 Average        |        |       |      |         |        |
  temp. (C.)    |  14.9  |  13.6 | 13.8 |   12.5  |  9.4   |    7.3
 Maximum        |  36.7  |  37.2 | 36.6 |   39.1  | 36.0   |   33.4
 Minimum        |  _5.6_ | _11.9_| _8.1_|   _9.7_ | _19.0_ |  _25.6_
---------------------------------------------------------------------

The italicised temperatures are below zero. Average dates of last
frost: Tokyo, April 6; Nagoya, April 13; Matsumoto, May 17.


POPULATION OF JAPAN, MANCHURIA AND MONGOLIA [XXX]. The population of
the Empire according to the 1920 census was 77,005,510, which included
Korea, 17,284,207; Formosa, 3,654,398; Saghalien, 105,765; and South
Manchuria (that is, the Kwantung Peninsula), 80,000. In Old Japan
(Honshu, Shikoku and Kyushu with the near islands, and Loo-choos and
Bonins) there were 53,602,043, and in Hokkaido (including Kuriles)
2,359,097.

Tokyo is the largest city, 2,173,000, followed by Osaka, 1,252,000.
Kobe and Kyoto have a little more than half a million; Nagoya and
Yokohama four hundred thousand apiece. Ten other cities have a hundred
thousand odd.

In the following table the populations and areas of Japan, Great
Britain and the United States are compared:

------------------------------------------------------------------------
      Country                   |  Area   | Population    |  Population
                                |         |               | per sq. mile
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Japan (excluding Korea, Formosa |         |               |
  and Saghalien)                | 142,000 | 55,961,140    |     394
                                |         |   (1920)      |
British Isles                   | 121,636 | 47,306,664[*] |     388
                                |         |   (1921)      |
United States (excluding Alaska |         |               |
  and oversea possessions)      |3,000,000| 105,683,108   |      35
                                |         |   (1920)      |
------------------------------------------------------------------------

* Ireland taken at 1911 census figures.

Japan's 394 per square mile is lowered by the population of Hokkaido
(2,359,097), which is only 66 per square mile. The population of the
three chief Japanese islands is: Honshu, the mainland (41,806,930),
471; Shikoku (3,066,890), 423; and Kyushu (8,729,088), 511. (These
figures are for 1920.) "As regards density per square kilometre,"
writes an official of the Imperial Bureau of Statistics in the _Japan
Year-book_, with the figures antecedent to the 1920 census before him,
"it is calculated at 140 for Japan and this compares as follows with
Belgium (1910) 252, England and Wales (1911) 239, Holland (1909) 171,
Italy (1911) 121, Germany (1910) 120 and France 44. When comparison is
made on the basis of habitable area Japan may be considered to surpass
all as to density, for while in Japan it constitutes only 19 per cent,
of the total area, the ratio is as high as 74 for Belgium, 73 for
England and Wales, 67 for Holland, 76 for Italy, 65 for Germany and 70
for France." The Professor of Agricultural Science at Tokyo University
says: "The area under cultivation, even in the densely populated
parts, is comparatively smaller than in any other country."

In a statement issued in 1921 the Department of Agriculture reckoned
the population at 145 per square kilometre and recorded the mean rate
of increase "in recent years" as 12.06 per 1,000. It stated that the
density of the rural population was 44 per square kilometre or 9.42
per hectare of arable, in other words that the density "is higher
than that of France, Belgium, Switzerland and some other countries
where the agriculture is marked by fairly intensive methods." Mr.
Nikaido, of the Bureau of Statistics, writes in the _Japan Year-book_
that the annual increase of Japan's population was 14.78 per 1,000 for
1909-13 and 12.06 for 1914-18, "a rate greater than in any civilised
country, with the exception of Germany and Rumania in the pre-War
years."

The birth rate is high, but so is the mortality. The death rate of
minors is thrice that of Germany and Great Britain. Here the
increasing industrialisation of the country is no doubt playing its
part. The ratio of still births has steadily risen since the eighties.
The ratio of births, other than still births, per 1,000 of population,
which in 1889-93 was 28.6, increased by 1909-13 to 33.7; but the death
rate fell only from 21.1 to 20.6. The ratio of unmarried, 63.22 in
1893, was 66.22 in 1918.

The following figures for Japan Proper are printed by the _Financial
and Economic Annual_, issued by the Department of Finance:

---------------------------------------------------------
Year. | Total.     |Annual Increase |Average Increase per
      |            |of Population.  |1,000 Inhabitants.
---------------------------------------------------------
 1910 | 50,716,600 |  --            | 14.09}
 1911 | 51,435,400 |718,800         | 14.17}
 1912 | 52,167,000 |731,600         | 14.22}  14.21
 1913 | 52,911,800 |744,800         | 14.28}
 1914 | 53,668,600 |756,800         | 14.30}
      |            |                |
 1915 | 54,448,200 |779,600         | 14.53}
 1916 | 55,235,000 |786,800         | 14.45}
 1917 | 56,035,100 |800,100         | 14.49}  14.50
 1918 | 56,851,300 |816,200         | 14.57}
 1919 | 57,673,938 |822,638         | 14.47}
 1920 | 55,961,140 |  --            |  --
---------------------------------------------------------

It will be seen that for the year 1920 there was a big drop. The
population of 55,961,140 for the year 1920 is the actual population as
returned by the census; the figures of the preceding years are
"based," it is explained to me, "on the local registrars' entries. The
national census has demonstrated that the figures were larger than the
actual number of inhabitants, the discrepancies being partly due to
erroneous and duplicate registration and partly to the exodus of
persons to the colonies or foreign countries whilst retaining their
legal domiciles at home. But the table serves to show the rate of
increase." A million and three-quarters is a substantial figure,
however, to account for in this way. It would seem reasonable to
suppose that the increased cost of living, marriage at a later age
than formerly and increased mortality due directly or indirectly to
the factory system have arrested the rate of increase of the
population in recent years. For trustworthy figures of the Japanese
population we must await the next census and compare its figures with
those of the 1920 census, the first to be taken scientifically.

A considerable part of Japan is uninhabitable. Of how much of the
British Isles can this be said? The fact that there are in Japan fifty
more or less active volcanoes, about a thousand hot springs and two
dozen mountains between 12,000 and 8,000 ft. high speaks for itself.
Ben Nevis is only 4,400, Snowdon only 3,500 ft.

The population of Korea in 1920 (17,284,207) was 239 per square mile.
According to _Whitaker_ for 1921 the population of Manchuria (11
millions) is 30 per square mile, and of Mongolia (3 millions) 2.8.


SMALL FARMS DECREASING [XXXI].

------------------------------------------------------
Year |Below 5 |Over 5 |Over 5 |Over 2 |Over 3 |Over 5
     |_tan_   |_tan_  |_chō_  |_chō_  |_chō_  |_chō_
------------------------------------------------------
1908 |37.28   |32.61  |19.51  |6.44   |3.01   |1.15
1912 |37.14   |33.25  |19.61  |5.96   |2.83   |1.21
1918 |35.54   |33.30  |20.70  |6.33   |2.82   |1.31
1919 |35.36   |33.18  |20.68  |6.21   |2.83   |1.74
----------------------------------------------------

See also Appendix XLVII.


FORESTS [XXXII]. The following figures for 1918 show, in thousand
_chō_, the ownership of forests (bared tracts in brackets): Crown,
1,303 (89); State, 7,288 (392); prefectures, cities, towns and
villages, 2,894 (1,383); temples and shrines, 111 (15); 7,186 (1,630);
total, 18,782 (3,509). The largest yield is from sugi (cryptomeria),
pine and _hinoki_ (_Charmae-cyparis obtusa_).


ARMAMENTS [XXXIII]. 1,505 million yen of the national debt is for
armaments and military purposes against 923 million yen for
reproductive undertakings (railways, harbours, drainage, roads,
steelworks, mining, telephones, etc.), 143 million for exploitation of
Formosa, Korea and Saghalien, 123 million for financial adjustment
and 98 million for feudal pensions and feudal debt. Of the expenditure
for 1920-1, 846 million, some 395 million were for the army and navy.
During a period of 130 years the United States Government has spent
nearly four-fifths of its revenue on war or objects related to war.


LANDOWNING AND FARMING [XXXIV]. Before the Restoration the farmers
were the tenants of the daimyos' vassals, the samurai, or of the
daimyos direct. When the daimyos gave up their lands the Crown made
the farmers the owners of the land they occupied. Its legal value was
assessed and the national land tax was fixed at 3 per cent, and the
local tax at 1 per cent. Various adjustments have since taken place.

The Japanese Constitutional Labour Party has insisted in a
communication to the International Labour Conference at Geneva that
Japanese tenant farmers are not properly called farmers but that they
are "labourers pure and simple." See Appendix LXXVI.


STATE RAILWAYS [XXXV]. The railways, which were nationalised in 1907,
extended in 1919 to 6,000 miles. There were also nearly 2,000 miles of
light railways (in addition to 1,368 of electric street cars). Most of
the lines are single track. The gauge is 3 ft. 6 in. The Government
has proposed gradually to electrify the whole system.


ILLEGITIMACY [XXXVI]. In Japan illegitimacy is a question not of
morals but of law. That is to say, it is a question of registration.
If a husband omits to register his marriage he is not legally married.
Thus it is possible for there to be born to a married pair a child
which is technically illegitimate. If the child should die at an early
age it is equally possible for it to appear on the official records as
illegitimate. A birth must be registered within a fortnight. It may be
thought perhaps that it is practicable for the father to register his
marriage after the birth of the child and within the time allowed for
registration. It is possible but it is not always easy. An application
for the registration of the marriage of a man under twenty-five must
bear the signature of his parents and the signature of two persons who
testify that the required consent has been regularly obtained. In the
event of a man's father having "retired," the signature of the head of
the family must be secured. If a man is over twenty-five, then the
signatures of his parents or of any two relatives will suffice. Now
suppose that a man is living at a distance from his birthplace or
suppose that the head of his family is travelling. Plainly, there may
be a difficulty in securing a certificate in time. Therefore, because,
as has been explained, no moral obloquy attaches to unregistered
marriage or to unregistered or legally illegitimate children,
registration is often put off. When a man removes from one place to
another and thereupon registers, it may be that his marriage and his
children may be illegitimate in one place and legitimate in another.
There is a difference between actual and legal domicile. A man may
have his domicile in Tokyo but his citizen rights in his native
village.


SAKÉ AND BEER [XXXVII]. Saké is sold in 1 or 2 _go_ bottles at from 10
to 25 sen for 2 _go_. As it is cheaper to buy the liquor unbottled
most people have it brought home in the original brewery tub. There
are five sorts of _saké_: _seishu_ (refined), _dakushu_ (unrefined or
muddy), _shirozake_ (white _saké_), _mirin_ (sweet _saké_) and
_shōchū_ (distilled _saké_). _Saké_ may contain from 10 to 14 per
cent. of alcohol; _shōchū_ is stronger; _mirin_ has been described as
a liqueur. Japanese beers contain from 1 to 2 per cent. less alcohol
than English beers and only about a quarter of the alcohol in _saké_.
More than four-fifths of it is sold in bottles. Beer is replacing
_saké_ to some extent, but owing to the increase in the population of
Japan the total consumption of _saké_ (about 4,000,000 _koku_) remains
practically the same. In 1919 beer and _saké_ were exported to the
value of 7,200,000 and 4,500,000 yen respectively.


MINERAL PRODUCTION [XXXVIII]. In 1919 the production was as follows:
gold, 1,938,711 _momme_, value 9,681,494 yen; silver, 42,822,160
_momme_, value 11,131,861 yen; copper, 130,737,861 _kin_, value
67,581,475 yen; iron, steel and iron pyrites, 169,545,050 _kwan_, the
value of the steel being 72,666,867 yen; coal, 31,271,093 metric tons,
value 442,540,941 yen.


JAPAN AS SILK PRODUCER [XXXIX], In exportation of silk, Japan, which
in 1919 had under sericulture 8.6 of her total cultivated area and
17.1 per cent, of her upland, passed Italy in 1901 and China in 1910.
Her exportation is now twice that of China. In production her total is
thrice that of Italy. France is a long way behind Italy. The
production of China is an unknown quantity.

As to the advantages and drawbacks of Japan for sericulture the
Department of Agriculture wrote in 1921: "Japan is not favourably
placed, inasmuch as atmospheric changes are often very violent, and
the air becomes damp in the silk-culture seasons. This is especially
the case in the season of spring silkworms, for the cold is severe at
the beginning and the air becomes excessively damp as the rainy season
sets in. The intense heat in July and August, too, is very trying for
the summer and autumn breeds. Compared with France and Italy, Japan
seems to be heavily handicapped, but the abundance of mulberry leaves
all over the land and the comparatively rich margin of spare labour
among the farmers have proved great advantages."

The length of the sericultural season ranges from 54 days in spring to
31 or 32 days in autumn, but there are variations according to
weather, methods and seed. The season begins with the incubation
period. Then follows the rearing. Last is the period in which the
caterpillars mount the little straw stacks provided for them in order
that they may wind themselves into cocoons. I do not enter into the
technics of the retardation and stimulation of seed in order to delay
or to hasten the hatch according to the movements of the market.
Hydrochloric and sulphuric-acid baths and electricity are used as
stimulants; storage in "wind holes" is practised to defer hatching.

Cocoons are reckoned both by the _kwan_ of 8-1/4 lbs. and by the
_koku_ of approximately 5 bushels. The cocoon production in 1918
worked out at about 16-1/2 bushels per acre of mulberry or 18 bushels
per family engaged in sericulture. About 34 million bushels of cocoons
are produced. In 1919 the production was 270,800,000 kilos. The
average production of a _tambu_ of mulberry field was 1.356 _koku_. In
1919 a _koku_ was worth on the average 106.81 yen (including double
and waste cocoons). The cost of producing cocoons rose from 4.105 yen
per _kwamme_ in 1916 to 11.284 yen in 1920. The daily wages of
labourers employed by the farmers rose from 62 sen for men and 47 sen
for women in 1910 to 1 yen 93 sen for men and 1 yen 44 sen for women
in 1920. With the slump, the price of cocoons fell below the cost of
production and there was trouble in several districts when wages were
due. The labourers engaged for the silk seasons of 1916 numbered
341,577, of whom 30,000 came from other than their employers'
prefectures. These people migrate from the early to the late districts
and so manage to provide themselves with work during a considerable
period. As many as 5-1/2 per cent, of the persons engaged in the
industry are labourers. Many employment agencies are engaged in
supplying labour.

It has been estimated that the labour of 19.8 persons (200 per
hectare) is needed for a _tambu_ of mulberry field. The silkworms
hatched from a card of eggs (laid by 100 moths) are supposed to call
for the labour of 49.2 persons (1,456 per kilo, 2.204 lbs.)

The production of _cocoons_ rose from 0.866 _koku_ per card in 1914 to
1.105 in 1918, or from 4,412,000 to 6,832,000.

More than three-quarters of the raw silk produced used to be exported.
Now, with the increase of factories in Japan (the figures are for
1918), only 67 per cent, goes abroad, the bulk of it to the United
States, which obtained from Japan, in 1917-18, 75 per cent., and in
1919, it has been stated, 90 per cent, of its total supply. About 28
per cent, of the world's consumption is supplied by Japan. Whereas in
1915 the output of raw silk was 5,460,000 _kwan_ valued at 217,746,000
yen, it was in 1918 7,891,000 _kwan_ valued at 546,543,000 yen. While
in 1915-16 the percentage of Japanese exporters to foreign exporters
was 64-4, it had risen in 1919-20 to 77.5. Against 450 _chō_ of
mulberries in 1914 there were in 1918 508,993 _chō_. The total export
of raw silk and silk textiles to all countries in 1920 was 382 and 158
million yen respectively. In 1919, 96 per cent. of the raw silk Japan
exported went to the United States and 46 out of 101 million yens'
worth of exported silk textiles (habutal). Japan's whole trade with
the United States is worth 880 million yen a year. But the proportion
of basins in the factories steadily increases. There are nearly five
thousand factories, big and little. A well-informed correspondent
writes to me: "You know of course of the big organisation subsidised
by the Government to control prices and not to make too much silk. The
truth is the silk interest became too powerful and the Government is
not a free agent."


TUBERCULOSIS [XL]. Phthisis and tuberculosis sweep off 22 per cent,
and bronchitis and inflammation of the lungs 18 per cent., or together
more than a third of the population. See also Appendix LXIX.


WOMEN WORKERS [XLI]. In addition to women and girls working in
agriculture, in the mines, in the factories and & trades there are
said to be 1,200,000 in business and the public services. Teachers
number about 52,000, nurses 33,000, midwives 28,000 and doctors 700.


FACTORY FOOD AND "DEFIANCE OF HYGIENIC RULES" [XLII]. Dr. Kuwata says
in the _Japan Year-book_ (1920-1) that "in cotton mills where
machinery is run day and night it is not uncommon when business is
brisk to put operatives to 18 hours' work. In such cases holidays are
given only fortnightly or are entirely withheld. The silk factories in
Naganoken generally put their operatives to 14 or 16 hours' work and
in only a small portion are the hours 13."

Summarising a report of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, he
says of the factory workers: "The bulk of workers are female and are
chiefly fed with boiled rice in 43 per cent. of the factories. In
other factories the staple food is poor, the rice being mixed with
cheaper barley, millet or sweet potato in the proportion of from 20 to
50 per cent. In most cases subsidiary dishes consist of vegetables,
meat or beans being supplied on an average only eight times a month.
Dormitories are in defiance of hygienic rules. In most cases only half
to 1 _tsubo_ (4 square yards) are allotted to one person." See also
Appendix LXIX.


CHINESE COMPETITION WITH JAPAN [XLIII]. The _Jiji_ called attention in
the spring of 1921 to the way in which spinning mills in China were an
increasing menace to Japanese industry. There were in China 810,000
spindles under Chinese management, 250,000 under European and 340,000
under Japanese, a total of 1,430,000, which will shortly be increased
to 1,150,000 against 3,000,000 in Japan only 1,800,000 of which are at
work. The 1919 return was: China, 1,530,000; Japan, 3,200,000.


HOODWINKING THE FOREIGNER [XLIV] In the _Manchester Guardian_ Japan
Number, June 9, 1921, the managing director of a leading spinning
company, in a page and a half article, states that among the reasons
why a large capitalisation is needed by Japanese factories, beyond the
fact of higher cost of machinery, is the "special protection needed
for Japanese operatives and the special consideration given by the
spinners to the happiness and welfare of their operatives." When will
Japanese believe their best friends when they tell them that such
attempts to hoodwink the foreigner achieve no result but to cover
themselves with ridicule?


TOBACCO [XLV]. In 1918-19 there was produced on 24,439 _chō_
10,308,089 _kwan_ of tobacco. During the same period 9,681,274 _kwan_
were taken by the Government, which paid 19,114,803 yen or 1.974 per
_kwan_. In 1919 there was imported leaf tobacco to the value of
5,288,918 yen. Cigarettes to the value of 589,744 yen were exported.
The profits of the Tobacco Monopoly, estimated at 71 millions for
1919-20, were estimated at 88 millions for 1920-1.


ELECTORAL OFFENCES [XLVI]. There were candidates at the 1920 election
who spent 50,000 yen. It is not uncommon for the number of persons
charged with election offences to reach four figures. The
qualification for a vote (law of 1918) is the payment of 3 yen of
national tax. Under the old law there were about 25 voters per 1,000
inhabitants; now there are 54.


SMALLNESS OF ESTATES [XLVII]. The number of men holding from 5 to 10
_chō_ was, in 1919, 121,141 and between 10 and 50 _chō_, 45,978. The
number holding 50 _chō_ (125 acres) and upwards was only 4,226, and
400 or so of these were in Hokkaido. See also Appendix XXXI.


VEGETABLE WAX MAKING [XLVIII]. The wax-tree berries are flailed and
then pounded. Next comes boiling. The mush obtained is put into a bag
and that bag into a wooden press. The result is wax in its first
state. A reboiling follows and then--the discovery of the method was
made by a wax manufacturer while washing his hands--a slow dropping of
the wax into water. What is taken out of the water is wax in a flaked
state. It is dried, melted and poured into moulds. The best berries
yield 13 per cent. of fine wax. The variety of wax grown was _oro_
(yellow wax). There is another variety. The sort I saw is grafted at
three years with its own variety. The fruitful period lasts for a
quarter of a century. Roughly, the yield is 100 _kwan_ per _tan_.
Formerly, wax was made from wild trees.


NAMES FOR ETA [XLIX]. Eta (great defilement) is an offensive name. The
phrase _tokushu buraku_ (special villages), applied to Eta hamlets, is
also objected to. _Heimin_ is the official name, but the Eta are
generally termed _shin heimin_ (new common people), which is again
regarded as invidiously distinguishing them. The name _chihō_ is now
officially proposed for Eta villages. The fact that many Eta have
made large sums during the war has somewhat improved the position of
their class. Some Eta are well satisfied with their name and freely
acknowledge their origin. Year by year intermarriage increases in
Japan. A Home Department official has been quoted as saying that in
1918 as many as 450 marriages were registered between Eta and ordinary
Japanese.

The population of the village I visited, 1,900 in 300 families, was
getting its living as follows: farming 682, trade 185, industry 31,
day labour 97, travelling players 180, not reported 180. The
Parliamentary voters were 10, prefectural 17, county 19 and village
57. There were 98 ex-soldiers in the community and one man was a
member of the local education committee. The birth rate was above the
local average. The crimes committed during the year were: theft 2,
gambling 2, assault 1, police offences 3. Of the 300 families only one
was destitute, and it had been taken care of by the young women's
society.

A considerable proportion of the early emigrants to America were Eta.
It is now recognised that it was a short-sighted policy on the part of
the authorities to allow them to go.


PAPER MAKING [L]. A paper-making outfit may cost from 60 to 70 yen
only. The shrubs grown to produce bark for paper making are _kōzo_
(the paper mulberry), _mitsumata_ (_Edgworthia chrysantha_) and
_gampi_ (_Wilkstroemia sikokiana_). Someone has also hit on the idea
of turning the bark of the ordinary mulberry to use in paper making.


LIBRARIES, THE PRESS AND THE CENSORSHIP [LI]. There are 1,200
libraries in the country with 4 million books and 8 million visitors
in the year. About 47,000 books are published in a year, of which less
than half, probably, are original works. From one to two hundred are
translations, usually condensed translations. The largest number deal
with politics. There are about 3,000 newspapers and periodicals. In
1917 some 1,200 issues of newspapers and periodicals attracted the
attention of the censor and the sale of 600 books was prohibited. Some
sixty foreign books were stopped.


JAPANESE IN BRAZIL [LII]. Emigration to South America has latterly
been arrested through the rise in wages at home. During the past four
years an average of about 3,000 families has gone every twelve months
to Brazil, where about a quarter of a million acres are owned and
leased by Japanese. The Japanese Government spends 100,000 yen a year
on giving a grant of 50 yen to each emigrating family up to 2,000 in
number, through the Overseas Colonisation Company. The Brazilian
Government also offers a gratuity.


CATTLE KEEPING IN SOUTH-WESTERN JAPAN [LIII]. Tajima, the old province
which comprises about four counties in Tottori, is a large supplier of
"Kobe beef," but it is a cattle-feeding not a grazing district. The
number of cattle in Hyogo is double the cattle population of Tottori,
but no cattle keeper has more than a score of beasts. The usual thing
is for farmers to have two or three apiece. Some of the "Kobe beef"
comes from the prefectures of Hiroshima and Okayama. It is in the
north of Japan, where the people are not so thick on the ground and
cultivation is less intense, that cattle production has its best
chance.


VALUE OF LAND [LIV]. The value of land in the hill-village in which I
stayed necessarily varied, but the average price of paddy was given me
as 250 yen per _tan_. Dry land was half that. Open hill land, that is
the so-called grass land, might be worth 120 yen. The rise in values
which has taken place is illustrated by the following table of
farm-land values per _tan_ in 1919, published by the Bank of Japan:

------------------------------------------------------------
                 |       Paddy          |      Upland
------------------------------------------------------------
                 |Good  |Ordinary|Bad   |Good |Ordinary|Bad
------------------------------------------------------------
Hokkaido         |231   |158     |95    |115  |62      |26
       {North }  |802   |579     |366   |477  |295     |170
Honshu {Tokyo }  |863   |607     |406   |673  |442     |272
(main  {middle}  |1,226 |834     |523   |875  |565     |313
island){west  }  |1,226 |840     |525   |727  |443     |244
Shikoku          |1,120 |784     |470   |752  |450     |225
Kyushu           |960   |652     |416   |538  |300     |175
-----------------------------------------------------------


FRUIT PRODUCTION [LV]. The Japanese when they do not eat meat do not
feel the need of fruit which is experienced in the West. But there is
now a steady increase in the fruit crops. For 1918 the figures were
(in thousands of _kwan_): persimmons, 43,620; pears, 27,730; oranges,
73,660; peaches, 12,810; apples, 6,695; grapes, 6,240; plums (largely
used pickled), 6,190.


JAPANESE STUDENTS ABROAD [LVI]. During 1921 more than 200 young
professors or candidates for professorships were sent to Europe and
America by the Ministry of Education. Probably another 300 were
studying on funds (£450 for a year plus fares is the grant which is
made by the Ministry of Education) supplied by the Ministries of
Agriculture, of Railways and of the Army and Navy (often supplemented,
no doubt, by money furnished by their families). If to these students
are added those sent by independent Universities, institutions,
corporations and private firms, the total cannot be fewer than 1,000.
The students stay from six months to two or three years, and when they
return others take their places. Counting diplomatists, business men,
tourists and students there are, of course, more Japanese in Great
Britain than there are British in Japan. There are fifteen hundred
Japanese in London alone.


TEA PRODUCTION [LVII]. Every prefecture but Aomori produces some tea,
but very little is grown in the prefectures of the extreme north. The
largest producers are in order: Shidzuoka, Miye, Nara, Kyoto,
Kumamoto, Gifu, Kagoshima, Shiga, Saitama, Osaka and Ibariki. In 1919
Shidzuoka produced 4 million _kwan_, valued at nearly 13 million yen.
But the statistics of tea production are unsatisfactory. Much tea is
produced and sold locally which is unreported. A great deal of this is
of inferior quality and produced from half-wild bushes. The 1919
figures are: area, 48,843 _chō_; number of factories, 1,122,164; green
tea--_sencha_, 7,205,886 _kwan_; _bancha_, 2,580,035 _kwan; gyokuro_,
75,826 _kwan_; black, 50,756 _kwan_; others, 234,868 _kwan_; _sencha_
dust, 249,862 _kwan_; other dust, 486 _kwan_. Total, 10,397,719
_kwan_; value, 33,377,460 yen. There was exported green tea (pan
fired), 12,420,000 yen; green tea (basket fired), 4,575,000 yen;
others, 1,405,000 yen. Of this there went to the United States
consignments to the value of 15,600,000 yen and to Canada of 1,700,000
yen. In 1918 the export to America was 50,000 tons; in 1919, 30,000;
and in 1920, 23,000; and a further decline is expected in 1921. The
total exports, which were, in 1909, 62 per cent, of the production,
were, in 1918, only 57 per cent, and, in 1919, 37 per cent.


THEINE PERCENTAGES.--The following percentages of theine in black and
green tea were furnished me by the Department of Agriculture:

---------------------------------------------------
       |Green          |Green       |Black |Oolong
       |(Basket Fired) |(Pan Fired) |      |
---------------------------------------------------
Theine |2.81           |2.22        |2.26  |2.35
Tannin |15.08          |14.29       |7.32  |16.15
---------------------------------------------------

Theine or caffeine is a feathery-looking substance which resembles
the material of a silk-worm's cocoon. There is more theine or caffeine
in tea leaves than in coffee.


MISTAKES IN CROP STATISTICS [LVIII]. Generally speaking, it may be
said that cereals are under-estimated and cocoons over-estimated.
Cereals may be 20 per cent. under-estimated. The under-estimation may
no doubt be traced back to the time when taxation was on the basis of
the grain yield.


OCCUPATIONS FOR THE BLIND [LIX]. A third of the 70,000 sightless are
_amma_, about a quarter as many practise acupuncture and the
application of the moxa, while nearly the same number are musicians or
storytellers. The blind have petitioned the Diet to restrict the
calling of _amma_ to men and women who have lost their sight.


WELL SINKING FOR GAS [LX]. The presence of gas, which is odourless, is
betrayed by the discoloration of the water from which it emanates and
by bubbles.


HEALTH, HEIGHTS AND WEIGHTS OF SCHOOL CHILDREN [LXI]. In 1917-18 the
constitutions of 1,193,000 elementary school boys were reported as 53
per cent. robust, 48 per cent. medium and 4 per cent. weak. The
constitutions of 1,016,000 elementary school girls were reported 49
per cent. robust, 48 per cent. medium and 3 per cent. weak. Just as
women are often underfed in Japan, girls may frequently be less well
fed than boys. Elementary school boys of 16 averaged 4.84 _shaku_ in
height and 10.85 _kwan_ in weight. The average height and weight of
512 elementary school girls of the same age were 4.71 _shaku_ and
10.83 _kwan_.


HEIGHT AND WEIGHT OF WRESTLERS [LXII]. In a list of ten famous
wrestlers the tallest is stated to be 6.30 _shaku_ (a _shaku_ is 11.93
inches) and the heaviest as 33.2 _kwan_ (a _kwan_ is 8.267 lbs.). The
average height and weight of these men work out at 5.84 _shaku_ and
28.4 _kwan_. By way of comparison it may be mentioned that the
percentage of conscripts in 1918 over 5.5 _shaku_ was 2.58 per cent.
The average weight of Japanese is recorded as 13 _kwan_ 830 _momme_.


EXEMPTION FROM AND AVOIDANCE OF CONSCRIPTION [LXIII]. The age is 20
and the service two years (with four years in reserve and ten years
depot service). The only son of a parent over 60 unable to support
himself or herself is released. Middle school boys' service is
postponed till they are 25. Students at higher schools and
universities need not serve till 26 or 27. The service of young men
abroad (i.e. elsewhere than China) is similarly postponed. (If still
abroad at 37, they are entered in territorial army list and exempted.)
Young men of education equal to that of middle-school graduates can
volunteer for a year and pay 100 yen barracks expenses and be passed
out with the rank of non-commissioned officers and be liable
thereafter for only two terms of three months in territorial army.
There are about half a million youths liable to conscription annually.
To this number is to be added about 100,000 postponed cases. (In 1917,
47,324 students, 32,263 abroad, 15,920 whereabouts unknown, 5,069 ill,
3,147 criminal causes, 2,477 absentees, family reasons or crime.)
Evasions in 1917: convicted, 234; suspected, 1,582. There are two
conscription insurance companies with policies issued for 69 million
yen. In one place charms against being conscripted are sold--at a
shrine. Desertions in 1916 (7 per cent, officers) 956, of which 258
received more than "light punishment." The conscripts suffering from
trachoma were 15.3 per cent. and from venereal diseases 2.2 per cent.
Heights (1918): under 5 _shaku_, 10.95 per cent.; 5-5.3 _shaku_, 53.34
per cent.; 5.3-5.5 _shaku_, 33.13 per cent.; above 5.5 _shaku_, 2.58
per cent. In these four classes there was a decrease in height in the
first two of .39 per cent. and .57 per cent. respectively and an
increase in the second two of .80 per cent. and 15 per cent.
respectively.


HOKKAIDO HOLDINGS [LXIV]. There are only 28 holdings of more than
1,000 _chō_, 62 of over 500 _chō_, 161 over 100 _chō_ and 80 over 50
_chō_. These large holdings are used for cattle breeding alone. There
are no more than 620 holdings over 20 _chō_ and only 6,756 over 10.
The number over 5 _chō_ is 51,877, and over 2 _chō_ 62,015. Under the
area of 2 _chō_ there are as many as 40,928. Few of the largest
holdings are worked as single farms. They are let in sections to
tenants.


CLAUSES IN A TENANT'S CONTRACT [LXV]. (1) The tenant must make at
least 1 _chō_ of paddy every year. (2) Rent rice must be the best of
the harvest, but the tenant may pay in money. (3) In the following
cases the owner will give orders to the tenants: (_a_) If tenants do
not use enough manure, (_b_) If there is disease of plants or insect
pests, (_c_) If the tenant neglects to mend the road or other
necessary work is neglected. (4) The owner will dismiss a tenant:
(_a_) If the tenant does not pay his rent without reason, (_b_) If
the tenant is neglectful of his work or is idle, (_c_) If the tenant
is not obedient to the owner and does not keep this contract
faithfully. (_d_) If the tenant is punished by the law. (5) When
tenants leave without permission of absence more than twenty days the
owner can treat as he will crops or buildings. (6) In the following
cases the tenant must provide two labourers to the owner: mending
road, drainage canal or bridges; mending water gate and irrigation
canal; when necessary public works must be undertaken.


CULTIVATED AREA AND LIVESTOCK [LXVI]. The area of cultivated land in
Japan (counting paddy and arable) was, in 1919, 15,179,721 acres
(6,071,888 _chō_). The number of animals kept for tillage purposes was
1,199,970 horses and 1,036,020 homed cattle. The total number of
horses in the country was only 1,510,626 and of horned cattle,
excluding 207,891 returned as "calving" and 12,761 as "deaths,"
1,307,120. Sheep, 4,546; goats, 91,777; swine, 398,155. The number of
horned cattle slaughtered in the year was 226,108. Some 86,800 horses
were also slaughtered. In Great Britain (arable, pasture and grazing
area, 63 million acres) there were, in 1919, 11 million cattle, 25
million sheep, 3 million pigs and 1-3/4 million horses.


EGGS AND POULTRY [LXVII]. Even with the assistance of a tariff on
Chinese eggs and of a Government poultry yard, which distributes birds
and sittings at cost price, there were in 1919 14,105,085 fowls and
11,278,783 chickens. There was an importation of 3-1/2 million "fresh"
eggs.


MEAT CONSUMPTION [LXVIII]. The present meat consumption by Japanese is
uncertain, for there were in 1920[A] 3,579 foreign residents and
22,104 visitors, and there is an exportation of ham and tinned and
potted foods. The number of animals slaughtered in 1918 was: cattle
and calves, 226,108; horses, 86,800; sheep and goats, 9,587; swine,
327,074. Someone said to me that "the nutritious flesh of the horse
should not be neglected, for the farmer is able to digest tough food."

[Footnote A: In 1921 as many as 24,000 foreigners landed in nine months.]


TUBERCULOSIS IN THE MILLS [LXIX]. When we remember early and
mid-Victorian conditions in English mills and the conditions of the
sweat shops in New York and other American cities (vide "Susan
Lenox"), we shall be less inclined to take a harsh view of industrial
Japan during a period of transition. But it is to the interest of the
woollen industry no less than that of its workers that the fact should
be stated that a competent authority has alleged that 50 per cent. of
the employees in the mills suffer from consumption and that many girls
sleep ten in a room of only ten-mat size. Improvements have been made
lately under the influence of legislation and enlightened
self-interest--the president of the largest company is a man of
foresight and public spirit--but when I was in Japan, as I recorded in
the _New East_ at the time, girls of 13 and 14 were working 11-hour
day and night shifts in some mills.


WOOLLEN FACTORIES [LXX]. In the Japanese woollen factory the cost of
the hands is low individually, but expensive collectively. An expert
suggested that it takes half a dozen of the unskilled girls to do the
work of an English mill-girl. It is much the same with male labour.
"An English worker may be expected to produce work equal to the output
of four Japanese hands." Labour for heads of departments is also
difficult to get. There are textile schools and probably a hundred men
are graduated yearly. But the men are not all fitted for the jobs
which are vacant. Therefore, one finds a man acting as an engineer
who, because of his lack of technical experience, is unable to
exercise sufficient control over the men in his charge. A curiosity of
the industry is the high wages which many men of this sort command.
They are really being paid better for inferior work than skilled men
in England. The capital of the factories in 1918 was 46-1/2 million
yen with 32-3/4 million paid up. Before the War the companies made 8
per cent, as against the 2-1/2 per cent, which contents the English
manufacturer, who has often side lines to help his profits. There was
more than 100 million yen invested in the woollen textile business,
manufacturing and retail. The industry did well during the War by
supplies of cloth to Russia and of yarn and muslin to countries which
ordinarily are able to supply themselves. In 1918 the production
(woollen fabrics and mixtures) was valued at 85 million yen (muslin,
32; cloth, 21; serges, 19; blankets, 3; flannel, 1; others, 8). The
imports of wool were 60 million and of yarn 251,000. In 1919 the
figures were 61 million and 710,000 respectively. In 1920 the exports
were: woollen or worsted yarns, 1,437,926 yen; woollen cloth and
serges, 3,019,382 yen; blankets, 1,024,540 yen; other woollens,
548,922 yen. The Nippon Wool Weaving Company, which in 1921
distributed a 20 per cent, ordinary and 20 per cent. extraordinary
dividend, has 15 foreign experts.


POPULATION OF HOKKAIDO [LXXI]. In 1869, 58,467; has risen as follows:

Year            Population

1874             174,368
1884             276,414
1894             616,650
1904           1,233,669
1914           1,869,582
1919           2,137,700
1920           2,359,097


EXTENSION OF CROP-BEARING AREA OF JAPAN [LXXII]. There is normally
added to the crop-bearing area about 53,000 _chō_ (132,000 acres) a
year. From the new crop-bearing area every year is deducted the loss
of arable land from floods, the extension of cities and towns and
railways and the building of factories and institutions. This is
reckoned at nearly 8,000 _chō_ in the year. One computation is that
there are 2 million _chō_ (5 million acres) available for addition to
the crop-bearing area, of which 1 million _chō_ would be convertible
into paddies. A decision was taken by the Government in 1919 to bring
250,000 _chō_ under cultivation within nine years from that date, and
by 1920 some 20,000 _chō_ had been reclaimed. Persons who reclaim more
than 5 _chō_ receive 6 per cent, of their expenditure.

The increase in the area of cultivation has been as follows (in
_chō_):

|Year     |Paddy       |Upland Farm |Total       |
--------------------------------------------------
|1905     |2,841,471   |2,540,906   |5,382,378   |
|1906     |2,849,288   |2,551,170   |5,400,459   |
|1907     |2,858,628   |2,639,680   |5,498,309   |
|1908     |2,882,426   |2,684,531   |5,566,958   |
|1909     |2,902,899   |2,777,453   |5,680,352   |
|1910     |2,910,970   |2,804,434   |5,715,405   |
|1911     |2,923,520   |2,836,002   |5,759,522   |
|1912     |2,939,445   |2,880,301   |5,819,756   |
|1913     |2,953,947   |2,902,445   |5,856,392   |
|1914     |2,961,639   |2,916,569   |5,878,208   |
|1915     |2,974,042   |2,948,075   |5,922,118   |
|1916     |2,987,579   |2,971,800   |5,959,379   |
|1917     |3,005,679   |3,012,685   |6,018,364   |
|1918     |3,011,000   |3,070,000   |6,081,000   |
|1919     |3,021,879   |3,050,008   |6,071,887   |

Whereas the percentage of cultivated land to uncultivated was in 1909
14.6 per cent., it was in 1918 15.6 per cent.


USE TO WHICH THE LAND IS PUT [LXXIII]. Here are the details of the
division of the land in 1909 and 1918:

Division of the Land    | Years  | Area in _chō_  | Percentage of
                        |        |  in 000 's     |  Total Area
------------------------|--------|----------------|--------------
Total area              | 1909   | 38,847         | 100.0
                        | 1918   | 38,864         | 100.0
                        |        |                |
Paddy fields            | 1909   | 2,903          | 7.5
                        | 1918   | 3,011          | 7.7
                        |        |                |
Upland fields           | 1909   | 2,777          | 7.1
                        |        | 3,070          | 7.9
                        |        |                |
Total arable as above   | 1909   | 5,680          | 14.6
                        | 1918   | 6,081          | 15.6
                        |        |                |
Meadows and pastures    | 1909   | 39             | 0.1
                        | 1918   | 43             | 0.1
                        |        |                |
Grass lands and heather | 1909   | 1,941          | 5.0
(excluding pastures)    | 1918   | 3,509          | 9.0
                        |        |                |
Forests                 | 1909   | 22,072         | 56.8
                        | 1918   | 18,783         | 48.3
                        |        |                |
Dwellings, factories,   | 1909   | 9,115          | 23.5
roads, railways,        | 1918   | 10,448         | 27.0
institutions, etc.      |        |                |
------------------------|--------|----------------|--------------



Crop                 | Chō       | Yield
-----------------------------------------------------------
Rice (1919)          | 3,104,611 | 60,818,163 _koku_;
                     |           | value, 2,891,397,063 yen
                     |           |
Mulberry (1918)      | 508,993   | 6,832,000 _koku_;
                     |           | raw silk, 7,891,000 _kwan_;
                     |           | value,  546,543,000 yen
                     |           |
Tea (1919)           | 48,843    | 10,397,719 _kwan_
                     |           | value, 33,377,460 yen
                     |           |
Barley (1919)        | 534,279   | 9,664,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Naked Barley (1919)  | 646,362   | 7,995,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Wheat (1919)         | 548,508   | 5,611,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Soy Bean (1918)      | 432,207   | 3,451,320 _koku_
                     |           |
Other Beans (1918)   |    --     | 1,237,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Peas (1918)          |    --     | 536,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Millets (1918)       |    --     | 2,903,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Buckwheat (1918)     | 136,313   | 852,000 _koku_
                     |           |
Sweet Potato (1918)  | 314,012   | 918,328,000 _kwan_
                     |           |
Irish Potato (1918)  | 132,090   | 323,930,000 _kwan_
                     |           |
Rape Seed (1918)     | 116,300   | 856,880 _kwan_
                     |           |
Sugar Cane (1918)    | 29,367    | 316,745,596 _kwan_
                     |           |
Indigo (1918)        | 5,570     | 2,717,757 _kwan_
                     |           |
Hemp (1918)          | 11,821    | 2,564,114 _kwan_
                     |           |
Cotton (1918)        | 2,930     | 681,021 _kwan_
-----------------------------------------------------------

Radish (1917), 576,746,000 _kwan_; taro (1917), 159,168,000 _kwan_;
burdock (1917), 43,424,000 _kwan_; turnip (1917), 41,527,000 _kwan_;
onion (1917), 37,601,000 _kwan_; carrot (1917), 26,976,000 _kwan_;
cabbage (1917); 19,951,000 _kwan_; wax-tree seed (1918), 13,761,000
_kwan_; rush for matting, (1918), 10,442,000 _kwan_; flax (1918),
17,300,000 _kwan_; ginger (1918), 8,189,000 _kwan_; paper mulberry
(1918), 6,964,000 _kwan_; peppermint (1918), 3,380,000 _kwan_; lily
(1917), 682,000 _kwan_; chillies (1918), 441,000 _kwan_.


EMIGRANTS AND RESIDENTS ABROAD (LXXIV). The latest official figures as
to Japanese resident abroad, supplied in 1921 and probably gathered in
1920, are:

           Asia
China                200,740
Kwantung              79,307
Tsingtao              23,555
Philippines           11,156
Strait Settlements    10,828
Russian Asia           7,028
Dutch India            4,436
Hongkong               3,083
India                  1,278
Burma                    680
Indo-China               371

          Europe
England                1,638
Germany                  409
Holland                  375
France                   342
Switzerland               87
Italy                     34
Belgium                   12
Sweden                    10

       North America
U.S.A.               115,186
Hawaii               112,221
Canada                17,716
Mexico                 2,198
Panama                   225

       South America
Brazil                34,258
Peru                  10,102
Argentine              1,958
Chile                    484
Bolivia                  145

           Africa
South Africa              38
Egypt                     35

          Oceania
Australia              5,274
South Seas             3,399

Total                648,915

(The comparable return for 1918 was 493,845.) It has been suggested
that these official statistics are incomplete; 7,000 as the number of
Japanese in Russian territory seems low. Even during the War, in 1917,
passports were issued to 62,000 Japanese going abroad. Of these,
according to the _Japan Year-book_, 23,000 were made out for Siberia.
Professor Shiga has stated that "no small number" of Japanese leave
their country as stowaways.


RISE IN PRODUCTION PER "TAN" OF PADDY [LXXV]. The 3 or 4 _koku_ is
reached in favourable circumstances only. The average is far below
this, but it rises, as shown in Appendix XV.

Between 1887 and 1915 the area under barley and wheat rose from
1,591,000 _chō_ to 1,812,000 _chō_, the yield from 15,822,000 _koku_
to 23,781,000 _koku_ and the yield per _tan_ from .994 _koku_ to
1.313. Between 1882 and 1914 the increase in the crops of the three
varieties of millet averaged .515 _koku_ per _tan_. The increased
yield of soy beans was .229 _koku_ per _tan_, of sweet potatoes 138
_kwamme_ per _tan_ and of Irish potatoes 138 _kwamme_.


LABOURERS [LXXVI]. When hired labour is required on farms it is
supplied either by relatives and neighbours or by the surplus labour
of strangers who are small farmers or members of a small farmer's
family. According to the Department of Agriculture: "Ordinary fixed
employees are upon an equal social footing. Apprentice labourers are
very numerous. No working class holds a special social position as
such. This is the greatest point of difference between the Japanese
agricultural labour situation and that of Europe." The number of
labourers in October 1920 was:

                           |    Day    | Seasonal| All the
                           |           |         |year round|   Total
---------------------------|-----------|---------|----------|---------
Labourers living  { male   |   119,676 |  52,007 |  49,110  |   220,793
solely on wages,  { female |    80,870 |  42,193 |  23,862  |   146,925
agricultural and  {        |           |         |          |
other             {        |   200,546 |  94,200 |  72,972  |   367,718
                           |           |         |          |
                           |           |         |          |
Labourers who are { male   |   949,266 | 407,596 | 188,369  | 1,546,231
labourers part    { female |   646,720 | 405,131 | 116,152  | 1,168,003
of their time              |           |         |          |
                           | 1,595,986 | 813,727 | 304,521  | 2,714,234
                           |           |         |          |
      Total .  .  .  .  .  | 1,796,532 | 907,927 | 377,493  | 3,081,952
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

In addition to the total of 3,081,952 "there are 32,973 agricultural
labourers who are boys and girls under 14."


DECREASE OF FARMERS TILLING THEIR OWN LAND [LXXVII]. In 1914 the
number of farmers owning their own land was 1,731,247; in 1919 it had
fallen to 1,700,747. In 1914 the number of tenants was 1,520,476; in
1919 it had increased to 1,545,639. That is, there were 30,500 fewer
landowners and 25,163 more tenants. During the period between 1914 and
1919 the number of farmers (landowners and tenants) increased 30,293.
While from 1909 to 1914 the percentage of landowners fell from 33.27
to 31.73, the percentage of tenant farmers rose from 27.69 to 27.87
and the percentage of persons partly owner and partly tenant from
39.04 to 40.40. See Appendix XXXIV.


RURAL AND URBAN POPULATIONS [LXXVIII]. The following table shows the
percentage of the population living in communes under 5,000 and 10,000
inhabitants in 1913 and 1918:

 Year | Percentage of Population living in | Percentage of Families
      |           Communities              | engaged in Agricultural
      |------------------------------------|  to Total Families in
      |  under 5,000  |  under 10,000      |       Japan Proper
------|---------------|--------------------|------------------------
 1913 |     50.44     |       72.39        |          57.6
 1918 |     46.23     |       67.71        |          52.3
------|---------------|--------------------|------------------------
      |     -4.21     |       -4.68        |          -5.3
--------------------------------------------------------------------

These figures clearly indicate the decrease of the rural population.
To take 10,000 inhabitants as the demarcation line between urban and
rural population is probably less correct than to take a demarcation
line of 7,500 inhabitants. A mean of the two percentages of
populations living in communities under 5,000 and under 10,000
inhabitants shows 61.41 per cent, in 1913 and 56.97 per cent, in 1918,
a decrease of 4.44 per cent. The variation between this result and the
preceding one has a simple explanation. About 30 per cent, of the
families engaged in agriculture carry on their farming as an accessory
business. Teachers, priests and mechanics may all have patches of
land. On the other hand, a small number of people have no land.
Therefore, the percentage of the rural population is only slightly
higher than that of the families engaged in agriculture. In 1918 there
were 5,476,784 farming families (to 10,460,440 total families or 52.3
per cent.), and if we multiply by 5-1/3--the average number of persons
per family in Japan is 5.317 (1918)--to find the population dependent
on agriculture, the number is 29,209,514. The total population of
Japan in 1918 was 55,667,711. The Department of Agriculture has stated
that on the basis of the census of 1918 the number of persons in
households engaged in agriculture was 52 per cent. of the population.
According to one set of statistics the percentage of farming families
to non-farming families fell from 64 per cent, in 1904 to 60.3 per
cent. in 1910 and 56 in 1914. We shall probably not be far wrong in
supposing the rural population to be at present about 55 per cent, of
the population. The percentage of persons actually working on the
farms is another matter. As has been seen, some 30 per cent, of the
5-1/2 million farming families are engaged in agriculture as a
secondary business only. It may be, therefore, that the 5-1/2 million
families do not actually yield more than 10 million effective farm
hands.


IS RICE THE RIGHT CROP FOR JAPAN [LXXIX]. Mr. Katsuro Hara, of the
College of Literature, Kyoto University, asks, "Is Japan specially
adapted for the production of rice?" and answers: "Southern Japan is
of course not unfit. But rice does not conform to the climate of
northern Japan. This explains the reason why there have been repeated
famines. By the choice of this uncertain kind of crop as the principal
foodstuff the Japanese have been obliged to acquiesce in a
comparatively enhanced cost of living. The tardiness of civilisation
may be perhaps partly attributed to this fact. Why did our forefathers
prefer rice to other cereals? Was a choice made in Japan? If the
choice was made in this country the unwisdom of the choice and of the
choosers is now very patent."

Along with this expression of opinion may be set the following
figures, showing the total production of rice and of other grain crops
during the past six years, in thousands of _koku_:

---------|----------|---------------|--------|-------------|--------
   Year  |  Barley  | Naked Barley  | Wheat  | Barley and  |  Rice
         |          |               |        |   Wheat     |
---------|----------|---------------|--------|-------------|--------
   1915  | 10,253   |    8,296      | 5,231  |   23,781    | 55,924
   1916  |  9,559   |    7,921      | 5,869  |   23,350    | 58,442
   1917  |  9,169   |    8,197      | 6,786  |   24,155    | 54,658
   1918  |  8,368   |    7,777      | 6,431  |   22,576    | 54,699
   1919  |  9,664   |    7,995      | 5,611  |   23,271    | 60,818
---------|----------|---------------|--------|-------------|--------

From 1910 to 1919 the areas under barleys and wheat were, in _chō_,
1,771,655-1,729,148, and under rice 2,949,440-3,104,611.


INNER COLONISATION _v_. FOREIGN EXPANSION [LXXX]. _An Introduction to
the History of Japan_ (1921), written by an Imperial University
professor and published by the Yamato Society, the members of which
include some of the most distinguished men in Japan, says: "It is
doubtful whether the backwardness of the north can be solely
attributed to its climatic inferiority. Even in the depth of winter
the cold in the northern provinces cannot be said to be more
unbearable than that of the Scandinavian countries or of north-eastern
Germany. The principal cause of the retardation of progress in
northern Japan lies rather in the fact that it is comparatively
recently exploited.... The northern provinces might have become far
more populous, civilised and prosperous than we see them now.
Unfortunately for the north, just at the most critical time in its
development the attention of the nation was compelled to turn from
inner colonisation to foreign relations. The subsequent acquisition of
dominions oversea made the nation still more indifferent."

According to a report of the Hokkaido Government in 1921, the number
of immigrants during the latest three year period was 90,000, and one
and a half million acres are available for cultivation and
improvement.


AGRICULTURE _v_. COMMERCE AND INDUSTRY [LXXXI]. There is supposed to
be more money invested in land than in commerce or industry.
Comprehensive figures of a trustworthy kind establishing the relative
importance of agriculture, commerce and industry are not readily
obtained. "This is a question," writes a Japanese professor of
agriculture to me, "which we should like to study very much."
Industrial and commercial figures at the end of and immediately after
the War are not of much use because of the inflation of that period.
The annual value of agricultural production before the War was about
1,800 million yen; it must be by now about 2,500 or 3,000. In 1912,
according to the Department of Finance, the debt of the agricultural
population was 740 million yen. In 1916 the Japan Mortgage Bank and
the prefectural agricultural and industrial banks had together
advanced to agricultural organisations 110 millions and to other
borrowers 273 millions. In 1915 co-operative credit associations had
advanced 45 millions to farmers and 11 millions to other borrowers.
The paid-up capital of companies, was, in 1913, 1,983 million, of
which 27 million was agricultural, and in 1916, 2,434 million, of
which 31 million was agricultural. The reserves were, in 1913, 542
million, of which 1 million was agricultural, and in 1916, 841
million, of which 3 were agricultural. (For some reason or other,
"fishing" is included under "agricultural." On careful dissection I
find that of the 45 million of investments credited to agriculture in
1918, only 28 million are purely agricultural.) The land tax is
estimated to yield 73 million yen in 1920-1. It is 2-1/2 per cent. on
residential land, 4.5 per cent. on paddy and cultivated land--3.2 per
cent, in Hokkaido--and 5.5 per cent. on other land--4 per cent. in
Hokkaido.




INDEX


_This Index may be regarded as a Glossary inasmuch as every Japanese
word which occurs in the book will be found in it. The meaning is
usually given on the page the number of which comes first._

132 (2) _signifies that there are two references on page 132 to the
subject indexed._

_Such subjects as Agriculture, Hokkaido, Labour, Paddies, Rice and
Sericulture are indexed at length, but some matters which relate to
them and are of general interest appear in the body of the Index._

Abbot and Ronin 333

Abiko 105

Ability 66

Abortion 65, 303;
  Abortifacient 332

Abroad, first, 235

Accommodation with the West 363

Acreage, see Agriculture

Acting 115 (2), 320

Adjustment 85, 186, 194, 197, 210, 232, 365, 370, 380;
  Cost 72;
  Cottages 72;
  Graves 72;
  Method and Results 71-2;
  Statistics 72

Admonition, see Police, 54

Adoption 21, 328

Adulteration 356

Æ 99, 321

Aerated waters 119

Aeroplanes 31

Aestheticism 203

Affection, Question by a Japanese, 144

Affinity 272

Afforestation, see Deforestation,
  Floods, Tree planting; 23, 92-3, 97, 152, 177, 194, 197, 228, 233,
  240, 260, 318, 370

Africa 410

Agriculture, see Adjustment, Animals under different names, Area,
  Cattle, Crops under different names, Cultivation, Farmers, Grain,
  Hokkaido, Implements under different names, Land new, Land available,
  Land utilised, Manure, Milk, Paddies, Peasant Proprietors, Tenants,
  Tools, Rice and other crops, Sericulture, Upland;
  Advantages 365, 367;
  Accessory business 412;
  American, proposed study of, vii;
  Arable 409, (British) 385;
  Areas 394, 400,
    quarter acre 89,
    one and a quarter acre to five acres 89,
    two 210,
    two and a half 9, 284,
    three 10,
    five 284,
    seven and a half 89, 373,
    ten 10,
    twelve and a half 207,
    fifteen 10,
    twenty-five 213,
    one _tan_ 232,
    five 184,
    six 302,
    eight 304, 383,
    twelve 270,
    fifteen and a half 373,
    one _chō_ 220, 304, 377 (3), 379, 380, 385,
    one and a half 379,
    two 380,
    two and a half,
    see Hokkaido,
    three 373, 380,
    four 10,
    four to four and a half 338,
    four to five 207,
    five 310, 337-8,
    seven 10, 338, 373,
    eight 310, 373,
    ten 28,
    ten to fifteen 28, 338,
    thirty 338,
    sixty-two 374;
  Associations against landlords 88;
  v. Armaments 93, 359;
  an Author on viii;
  Based on rice 343;
  Basis of nation ix, 92;
  Calendar of operations 136;
  Compared with British 390;
  Capitalisation 368-9;
  College 195;
  Criticism of 362, 365, (backbreaking) 75;
  v. Commerce and industry 180, 414;
  Commercial side 65;
  Company 207;
  Consolidation of holdings 364;
  Crop statistics errors 404;
  "Encourager" 176;
  Experiment station 158, 176-7, 207, 370;
  Experts 207, 283, (respect for) 54;
  Foundation and means to an end ix, 27;
  Foreign 365, 367;
  v. "Foreign relations" 414;
  and Family system 330;
  Faults of 65;
  like Gardening 307;
  God of 145;
  Goddess of 312;
  Helpful 180;
  Holdings, Consolidation of 368;
  How to teach 27;
  Grazing 240, (British) 385;
  Hydraulic engineering 149;
  Industry and Commerce 284;
  Implements 268;
  Improvement, Principles of 370;
  Land, how used, 408;
  Machinery 365, 367-8-9;
  in praise of 10;
  Methods 208;
  Limitations imposed on 365 (2), 367;
  Merits 365;
  National Agricultural Society 378;
  Night work 359;
  Number of families engaged in 412;
  Relations to national welfare 369, 370-1;
  Pasture 111, 409, (British) 385;
  Petite Culture 346;
  Production not final aim 367;
  Profitable 232, 373;
  Progress 261;
  Remedies 368-9, 370;
  Revolutionising 367;
  and Religion 231;
  Schools, see Schools, 176, 375;
  Shortcomings 365;
  Strikes 88;
  Students not leaving land 285;
  Subsistence provided by 365;
  Small farms decreasing 394;
  Tenants' Movement, see Landlords;
  Without rice 381 (2)

Aichi 1-67, 84, 345

"Aiming at being Distinguished" 124

Ainu x, 25

Akagi 315

Akita 189, 190, 193

Alimentary tract, 348, 351

Allah 98

"All family smiling" 137

Alpinist 290

Alps, 127, 152, 262

_Amado_ 277

"A man's a man," etc. 95

_Amé_ 191

America,
  see Hokkaido, 137, 141, 288, 290, 363 (2);
  Rice culture 365-6

_Amida_ xxx, 129

_Amma_ 108, 133

Ammonia water 177, 251

Amphibious labour 358

Amusements, see Farmers, 180, 287, 374, 378

Ancestors 19, 26, 33, 38 (3), 58, 61, 67, 94, 178

Anchors 211

Angelo, Michael, 103

Angling 245

Anglo-Japanese Alliance xv;
  Anglo-Saxons 203

Animals
  Bird artists 344;
  Buddhism and 59;
  Food, see Meat, 349;
  Industry 346, 348;
  Knack of looking after 343;
  Liking for 221, 343;
  Power 365, 370;
  Tillage 406

Anjo 57

Anniversaries 50

Antelopes 110

Anti-Landlord movement 37, 88

Ants 47

Aomori 189, 194, 195, 334, 354, 391

Aoyama 66

"A plain householder" 150

Apostle and artist 90

Appetiser 268

Apples, see Hokkaido, 194, 289, 402

Appointments 125;
  Tax 21

Apprentices 411

Apricots 289

Aqueduct 64

Archery 39, 40, 159

Architecture 198

Ardour 124

Area 65, 390;
  and Habitable compared with other countries 385, 392;
  per Family 42, 89 (2)

Armaments 93, 97, 394;
  U.S. expenditure 394

Armour 36, 40

Arm rest 246, 319

Army 202, 346, 350, 360 (2), 403;
  Discipline 361;
  and Farmer ix;
  Officers and Agriculture 362;
  Railway service 297

Arnold, Matthew, 24, 272

Arrests postponed 280

Arson 56, 280, 282

Art 99, 214, 369;
  Degenerated 99;
  and Farmer ix;
  Hills in 120;
  Korean 103;
  Influence of Western 103-4;
  Artists 99, 100;
  Sketches at festivals 193;
  Artistry 317;
  Artistic treasures 369;
  Artistic world 102-3-4-5, 328

Artificials, see Manure

Artisans 317;
  with land and houses 268;
  see Farmers

"_Asahi_" 90, 109

Asama, Mt., 143

Asceticism 101

Asia, see West and East, 202;
  Residents in 410;
  Asiatic Mainland 351, 363;
  Asiatic Society of Japan 364
  "Aspiring" young men 135

Assaults 282

Assentation 14

Associations against Landlords 88;
  for Economical agricultural Students 176;
  Spirit of 16

"At twenty I found" 150

Athletics,
  see under different names, 159

Attempts to deceive the West 174

Attitude
  for foreign student 254;
  of world, 371;
  to something higher;
  see Materialism, Spirituality

Attorney-General, 345

Audience, 24

Australia, 127, 352-3, 363 (2), 388;
  Might have possessed, 363

Author
  Attitude towards Japan, xii;
  before domestic shrine, 33;
  Carried, 308;
  Chats in trains, 176;
  "Fortune", 138;
  First Englishman in place, 126;
  Governor and, 84;
  on Hearn, 254;
  Some Conclusions, see Hokkaido, 369;
  and Police, 53;
  Reception at Shinto Shrine, 45;
  Shinto address to, 46;
  Speeches, 6, 26, 31, 254;
  Tree planting, 45;
  Welcome, 22;
  at Wrestling match, 297

Authority
  Disobedience to, 285;
  Power going, 330

Autobiography of a Farmer-Egotist, 61

Autographs, 38, 324

Automobile, see Chauffeur, 205

Autumn, 214

"Average workers", 62, 377

Awakening, 324

Axholme, Isle of, 71

_Aza_ xxv, 15, 16, 262, 315

Azaleas, 316


Babies, 285

Backbreaking, 75, 208

Back to the Land, 88

Backwardness of North,
  see Japan, Northern

Bacon, 347

Bacon, Lord, xii, 309

Bactericides, 60

"Bad tea has its tolerable," etc., 123

Bag and string, 312

Balls, Black and red, 19

Bamboo, 48, 318, 244, 248;
  Grass, 70, 108, 352, 368;
  and Mice, 108;
  Rate of growth, 242;
  Shoots, 136;
  Work, 248

_Bancha_, 294, 403

Bankruptcy, 138

Banks, 205, 303, 402, 414

Banqueting, 357

_Banzai_, 43

Barbers, 224, 267

Barefoot, 64

Bark strips, 190

Barley, 146, 175, 196, 307, 313 (3), 349, 351, 386, 389, 391, 409, 410;
  Big crop, 313;
  Husking, 389;
  Naked, 409;
  with and without Rice, 47, 80, 85, 383, 387;
  Production compared with Wheat, 413

Barons x, 204

Barriers ix, 104

Barter, 122

Barton, Sir E., 9

_Basha_, see Hokkaido, 244;
  story, 217

Baskets, 177, 215

Baths x, 17, 50, 82, 109, 112, 116-7, 190, 203, 215, 256, 277, 314, 354;
  "A moral bath", 94;
  Bathing, 125, 152, 186

Battleship, 235

Bayonets, Imitation, 282

Bazin René, 141

Beans, see Soya, 147, 199, 307, 383, 409;
  Cake, 386

Beardsley, Aubrey, 98, 103

Bears, see Hokkaido, 110

Beauty, see Hokkaido, 104, 127, 298

"Be diligent", 158;
  "Be serious", 112

Beef, see Kobe beef, 259, 349, 350;
  Essence, 158

Beer, see Hokkaido, 119, 396

Bees, 196, 348

Beggars, 265, 324

Begonia, 213

Behaviour, Training in good, 259

Belgium, 386

Beliefs, see Customs, 310, 331;

Believers, 63;
  Believer and ne'er do well, 5

Belly cloths, 269

_Benjo_, 151, 192, 374

Ben Nevis, 394

_Bento_ 110, 268, 279

Bergson, 99

_Beri beri_, 79

Berry, Sir G., 9

Better living, 370;
  Better world, 90

_Bi_, 126

Bible, 95

Bicycles, 18, 150, 220

Binyon, L., 292

Birches, 316

Birds, 25, 117, 344

Births,
  see Still;
  Celebration of, 302;
  Forbidden, 236;
  Rate, 392;
  Tax, 21

Biscuits, 270

_Biwa_, 289

Black and white company, 187

Black Country, 132

"Black saké", 79

Blacksmith, 264

Blake, William, 98, 103, 105-6

Blind,
  see _Amma_, 192, 300;
  Advantage of Blindness, 232;
  Blind guides, 369;
  Headman, 229

Blood and thunder stories 121

Boar day 126

Boasting 17

Boat, sacred, 257

Body 226

Boehme 99

Bog 390

"Bold is the donkey driver" 98

Bolting ideas 331

_Bon_ 180, 190, 265, 267, 271-2, 302, 361;
  Songs and dances 189, 190, 197 (2), 274

Bonins 391

Bonito 297

Books 159, 190, 319, 401;
  Cheap 212;
  Faults of many about Japan 254;
  Foreign 141, 196, 248;
  In demand 60;
  In a Village Library 60;
  Shops 244

Booths 115

Boots 236, 284, 346

Borneo 127

Borrow vi, 119, 283

Borrowing,
  see Credit, _Ko, Tanomoshi_; 125, 183

Boswell, 140, 175

Bottles, tied with rope, 119

Bowing 44 (2), 46, 83, 121, 286, 313

Bowels 348, 351

Bowls, Turning, 111;
  at shrine 303

Box for letters for Police 111

Boy
  Growth of 113;
  Labour 411;
  Tradesmen's 315;
  Reformation of 178;
  Running away 322;
  Stolen 286;
  "Boy San" 103

Brazil 401

Bread 80 (2), 346 (2), 350-1 (2), 383

Bream 297

Breath 117

Brewing, see Hokkaido, 119

Bribery 208, 400; 123, 303

Bride 21;
  Chest 129, 379

Bridges 128, 132, 240;
  Mysteriously repaired, 287;
  Suspension 209

Briefness 292

Bright, John, 203

Britons, see Hokkaido, 403

Broadmindedness 326

Brontë, E., 99

Brothels 56, 222, 243

Brother, Eldest, 19, 329

Brotherly union 94-5

Buckwheat, see Hokkaido; 111, 122, 243, 264, 381, 409;
  "As white as snow" 111

Buddha 1, 3, 4, 5, 19, 26 (2), 51, 58 117, 125, 142, 205-6;
  Inferior 139;
  Heads 310.
  --Buddhism 19, 30, 42, 57 (2), 63 (3), 96, 101,
  197, 205, 210, 212, 322, 324;
    and Animal life 59, 345, 347;
    behind the age 6;
    without Buddha 322, 327;
    and Christianity 59, 100-1, 324, 362;
    Definition of 93;
    Difficulty of getting a general view of 327, 321;
    England and 100;
    of old time 258;
    Too aristocratic 1
  Buddhist 91, 96, 129;
  Gatherings 231;
  Influence 259;
  Literature 327, 331;
  Real 63;
  Sects, under names;
  Services 3, 205 (2), 270;
  Strict 30;
  Y.M.A. 124;
  Y.W.A. 124.
  --Buddhist Priests, see _Bon_; 1-7, 96, 113, 118, 134, 142,
  194, 231, 240, 258, 264, 269, 270 (2)-1-2, 302, 314;
    Priest's man 270-1;
    Succession to 135;
    Wives 6, 270;
  Shrines 220,
    Value of 273;
  Temples, 113, 123, 134, 142, 176, 180, 211, 244, 249, 258-9, 269,
  310, 327;
    Architecture 134,
    "Church" 134,
    New, 313,
    Sleeping in x;
    Two months in 262,
    Underground passage 142

Buffoon 276

Bugles 15-17

Bulls 18, 249, 250;
  Fighting 228

Burden of the Old 100

Burdock 48, 146, 410

Bureau of Horse Politics 195;
  of Hygiene 350

Burials, see Graves, 121, 267, 306;
  at Sea 225

Burnham, Lord, 9

Burns, Robert, 107, 288

_Bushido_ 25, 140

Businesses, linked, 315;
  "Business, My," 326

Butter 142, 270, 346

Butterflies 127, 287


Cabbage 53, 213, 440

Caffeine 292, 403

Cairo 390

Calendar 136

California 290, 363, 365-6

Camphor trees 219

Canada 388

Cancer 268

Candles 340

Canning, see Hokkaido, 368;
  Canned meat and fish 268

Cape 267, 270

Capes 47

Cape Wrath 358

Capitalism 368-9

Caps 114, 301

Caramels 272

Carbon bisulphide 60

"Carelessness" 54

Carlyle, T., 90-1, 94, 99

Carp, 39, 158, 210, 299

Carpenter 99, 267, 317

Carrier's conversation 109

Carrot 410

Carts 209;
  Push 194

Carving 269

"Case for the Goat, The," 347

Cast 94

Cats 47, 131, 221, 345

Cattle, see Cow, Oxen, Bulls, Hokkaido; 23, 194-5, 230, 240, 243, 316,
  347, 381, 406;
  Keeping 194, 259, 402;
  Thieves 195

Cedar wood 211

Cells 116, 143

Censorship 401

Census 393-4

Cereals 367, 404

Certificate of merit 213

Cezanne 98, 103

_Chadai_ 148

Chaff 386

Chainmakers 170

Chairman 24

Champagne 140

Changes, seeming, 331

_Cha-no-yu_ 31, 214, 319

Character 88, 151, 201, 203-4-5-6-7 258, 259, 269, 288, 290, 311, 317,
  323, 331-2;
  Nature and 99;
  Weakness of 101;
  Wish to give before have anything 102;
  Chinese 39

Charcoal 111, 122-3, 196

Charitable Institutions 59, 376

Charms 41, 47, 121, 125, 223, 245

Charring 227

Chastity 114, 139, 149

Chauffeur 240, 246

Chavannes, Puvis de, 98, 103

Cheek-binding 286

Cheerfulness 304, 317

Cheese 345

Chemist, Distinguished, 10

Chenille 142

Cherries 295, 319;
  Poems 288;
  Refineries 226

Chestnuts 121

Chiba 268, 297, 309, 321

Chicken 110, 349

Chief Constable, Influence of, 118

_Chihō_ 400

Children 110, 112, 117, 203, 216, 323, 377;
  Childbirth 268;
  Ages of 113;
  Assaults on 229;
  British exploitation of 170;
  Charm to obtain 314;
  Contracts 286;
  Crimes against 114;
  Marriage 197;
  Politeness 121;
  Services for 130;
  and Temple 58;
  What will he become? 60;
  Workers, see Labour, 314

Chillies 41

Chimneys 147, 151

China 110, 127, 143, 214, 256, 306, 344, 347, 388, 390, 396-7, 404;
  War 85, 311;
  Chinaman in Formosa story 96;
  Tea 296;
  Relations with 91;
  Chinese competition 399;
  Labour 363;
  Prisoners 307;
  Scriptures not understood 331;
  Sheep and wool 353-4-5-6

_Cho_ xxiv;
  _Chō_ xxv

Chokai, Mount, 182

Chopsticks 81

Chōsen, see Korea

Christ 55, 95, 96, 127;
  Christianity, see Hokkaido, 96, 99, 101, 198, 205, 324;
  Christian, 99, 203, 362 (3);
  a Japanese question 144;
  and Buddhism 101, 108, 324, 327, 362;
  Conceptions 96,
  Early 91;
  Essence of 94 (2);
  Ethics of 362;
  Influence of 94;
  Japanese 83, 135, 261;
  and Personality 362;
  and Social reform 362;
  Temperament 327;
  Christmas 318;
  Churches 96, 362

Chrysanthemum 318

Cicada 344

Cider champagne 119

Cigarettes 82, 288, 400

Cimabue 106

Cities xxv;
  workers 87

Civilisation 96, 141, 216, 229

Clan 188

Classes 94, 251

Cleanliness 326, 354

Clerks 205

Climate, see Hokkaido, Weather; 88, 140, 195-6, 197, 198, 299, 309, 327,
  358, 363, 365, 372, 390, 413

Cloak 47, 76

Clock 252

Clothing, see Farmers, 19, 30, 74, 125, 193, 307, 312, 317, 321, 323,
  330, 346, 355-6-7, 374, 378, 380, 382;
  Advantages and Disadvantages of 356;
  Cotton and Silk v. Wool 356;
  Foreign 283, 346, 352

Clover 263

Clubhouse 305

Coal, see Hokkaido, 226, 396

Coasting steamers 209;
  coastwise traffic 256

Coat 47

Cobbett, William, ix

Cockfighting 228

Coffin 121, 248

Cold 261;
  Catching 312

Collectors, Boy, 230

Colleges 158

Colony 207

Colouring 295

Comeliness 204

Comfort 201, 203;
  Bags 58

Comic interlude 84

Commerce, 414;
  Uselessness of some, 369;
  Commercial crash 87

Common good, Work for, 19;
  Common humanity 34;
  "Common people at the gateway" 252;
  Common purpose in mankind 56

Commune 268;
  Communal labour 263;
  Communistic 212

Communities under 5,000 and 10,000 population 412

Companies 414

Complaint boxes 18

Concentration 206, 317

Concrete 22, 214, 325

Concubines 95, 322

Conduct 200, 361

Coney Island 325

Confucianism 91, 96, 101, 205 (3), 214, 322

Confusion 101

Conscience 201

Conscription, see Soldiers, 19, 65, 123, 284, 311 (2), 327, 331, 364;
  Statistics 404

Conservative view 331

Consolation 201, 321

Constitutional Party 395

"Contagion of foreigners" 117

Contentment 7, 259, 264, 302, 323

Contracts 194, 286

Controversy 48

Conversation, Subjects of, 129, 282

Conviction 37, 331

Cooking 350 (2)

Coolies 345

Co-operation, see Cocoons, Hokkaido,
_Kō_, _Tanomoshi_, 7, 28-9 (2), 37 (2), 43, 47, 50, 58, 64, 85,
  118, 124, 133, 136, 150, 185, 187, 194, 230, 305 (2), 364, 414;
  Capital for 48;
  More 370

Copper 92, 124, 226, 396

Coronation 21;
  Rice Ceremony 82;
  Millet 213

Corruption 208, 400

Cosmos 202, 206

Cottages, see Houses

Cotton, 132, 137, 223, 258, 404;
  Clothing 346;
  Chinese competition 399;
  Factories 174;
  Industry 354;
  Loom 220;
  Factory Manager's _Manchester Guardian_ article 399;
  Silk v. Wool 366

Couch grass 265

Counsel 187

Countess 213

Country folk xiv,
  Countryman ix, xiv, 107, 141, 192, 233, 283, 302, 324, 331;
  Countryside 148,
    contrasted with Western 298, 313;
  County families and Country-house life 34

County Agricultural Association 150 (2)

Courage, Moral, 327

Courbet 103

Court lady 108

Courtesy, see Politeness, 36

Cows,
  see Paddies;
  First milking 235;
  Oxen, 209, 235, 381 (2)

Crab, Land, 249

Cradle 279

Craftsmanship 314, 317, 369

Crashaw 99

Crater 108-9

Credit,
  see Cheap money;
  Cooperation 181, 370, 414

Crematoria 48, 177

Crest, see _Mon_

Crime,
  see Police, 54, 279, 303;
  Charges not proceeded with 113;
  Table of crimes 376;
  Ex-criminals 143

Crimea 390

Crisis, Industrial and Commercial, 87

Crops 313, 380-1;
  see Agriculture, Paddies, Upland;
  Area devoted to each 408-9;
  Better 19, 370;
  Competitions to increase 58;
  Drying 208;
  Increase compared with area 364

Crow 320

Crowds 250, 259

Crown Prince 282

Cruelty to Animals 344-5

Cryptomeria 6, 40, 45, 61-2, 117, 121, 131-2, 190, 316, 394

Cuckoo 315

Cucumbers 146, 322

Cultivation, see
  Agriculture, Backbreaking, Cows, Harrowing, Hoes, Horses, Mattock,
  Paddy, Pony, Ploughing, Rice, Seed, Spade;
  Area compared with Great Britain 89;
  Area under 223;
  Doubling population 97;
  Increase of area 364, 414;
  Two or three crops 364;
  Japan and Great Britain 305;
    in relation to Stock 406;
  Methods to be reported 188;
    in proportion to Wild 408;
  Prizes 58;
  Too intensive 233;
  yearly increase of 408

Culture, see Education, 204

Curio Collectors 2

Curiosity 279

Currency xxiv

Currents, Warm and Cold, 118, 175, 195

Customs 66, 182, 310, 322-3;
  Houses unprofitable 256,
  World realisation of cost and inconvenience 256

Cutting out the foreigner 369

Cuttle fish, see Squid, Octopus; 46, 318

Cyanide 177

Cymbals 272

"Daffin" 313

Dagger 40

_Daikon_ 23, 130, 309, 314, 345, 409

Daikon (island) 256

_Daily Mail_ 345

Daimyo 33, 39, 144, 176, 198, 205, 210, 246, 395;
  ex-Daimyo 329;
  Castle 209

_Dai Nippon Nōkai_ 320

_Dakushu_ 396

Dam 224-5

Damp 185, 289, 368, 372

Dancing, see _Bon_ Dances; 130, 237, 305;
  Western 101

Dandelions 307

Danish _Hojskōle_ 50

Dates 290

Daumier 103

Days,
  of the Dead, 271;
  of the week 126;
  Suitable 126;
  Worked 377-8;

Dead 201, 219;
  Belief in return of 272;
  Days of the 271;
  Return 190;
  Tablets of, see _Ihai_;
  Memorials of, see Hair, Teeth, Portraits

Dealers 195

Death
  Forbidden 236;
  Presents at 22;
  Rate 393;
  Minors 393

Debates 18

Debt, see Farmers; 66, 126, 195 (2), 265, 287, 302, 322-3, 364, 380, 414;
  for Food 284

"Decency" 125, 193

Deception of the West 174

Deer 215, 278

Defiled 45;
  Defilement 256

Deforestation, see Afforestation; 92, 152, 176, 180, 318

Deftness 169

Deified men 204

Deities and the Sea 257

Delacroix 102

_De la liberté du travail_ 8

Delay, Advantage of, xiii

Democracy 38, 51, 99;
  and religion 2

Demon 215

Demonstrations 88

Demoralised men 26

_Dengaku_ 48

Denmark ix, 46, 368;
  see Danish

Denudation of hills, see Deforestation, 92

"Depths of the people" 93

Derricks 248

"Despised foreign peasant" 96

Destiny 202

Deuteronomy 375

Development,
  Economic, 206;
  Moral 206;
  National 327;
  Social 206

"Devil-gon" 56

Diagrams 60

Diaries 18, 23, 231

Diastase 268

Dibbs, Sir G., 9

Diet, see Food

Dietetic reform 350

Difficulties 124-5;
  "Difficulties polish you" 176

Digestive 268

Dikes, Women's work on, 43

Diligence 151;
  "Diligent people" 62, 377

Diminishing return 65

Dinner 228, 254

Diplomacy, Farmer and, ix

"Direct action" 173

Discipline 50

Discontent 323

Discussion 358

Disease 210, 350

"Disgraceful disease," see Syphilis

Dishonesty 354

Displacements 268

Distinguished man and demoralised man 26

Dividends, Effect of factory, 369

Divorce 126, 197

_Dō_ 134;
  _Do_ (land) 334

Doctors   123, 241, 268 (2), 399;
  "Doctor first, God second," 271

Dogs 131, 221, 236, 344-5;
  Dog day 126;
  Fighting 228;
  for _kuruma_ 248

Doing good secretly 219, 323

Doll in tree 244

Domicile 396

_Domori_ 134

"Do not get angry" 150

Doorway inscription 47

_Dorobo_, see Robber

Dossiers 314

"Double licence" 257

Dover and Calais 334

Dowries 138

Dragon Day 126

Drainage see Irrigation, Water; 97, 133, 199, 232

Drapers' stuff 121

Draughtsmanship 102

"Drawing water into one's own paddy" 48

Draw nets 186

Dreamers 363

Dress, see Clothing; Fields, 187; of Honour, 187

Drill 15, 50, 282

Drinking, see Drunkenness

Drivers' hair cutting 318

Drought 132

Drowning 128

Drum 15, 17, 83, 272

Drunkenness 116, 119, 187, 261, 282, 305, 322;
  see Saké 2

Dürer 103

Dutch 208;
  Books 150

Dwarf trees, see Trees dwarfed; 52, 220

Dye 295


"Early riser may catch," etc. 57

Early rising 57, 179

Early Rising Societies 14 _et seq_.

Earnestness 168, 277, 308

Earth 126

"Earth is not as," etc. 203

Earthquakes, see Volcanoes 23

East, see also West and East;
  Wants the best 99;
  East and West 141;
  Bridge 101;
  Inharmony 105;
  Supposed difference 100;
  Eastern, Faults of 96;
  Ideals 96

"Easy minded" 323

Economic conditions and development 149, 206;
  Economic questions 104;
  Economic superstition 148;
  Economy, see Thrift, 19;
  Economy too small 362

_Edgworthia chrysantha_, see _Mitsumata_
Education, see Farmers, Genius, Hokkaido,
  Schools, 17, 26, 98, 120, 127, 140, 169, 194, 196, 204, 252,
  361, 374, 378;
  Burden 65;
  Better 370;
  Competition for places 195;
  Ill result of 204, 301, 323;
  System, repressed by 101;
  Western 189

Eels 299

Eggs 85, 110, 130, 348-9, 406

Egoist's story 61

Ehime 201, 219, 226

Eights 255

Elder brothers 19, 329

Eldest son 143, 329

El Dorado 88

Electoral offences, see Bribery, Corruption

Electricity 39;
  Among trees 210;
  and Fuji 283;
  Fan 125;
  Light 211;
  Torch 300

El Greco 103

Elizabethan scenes 116, 276

Ellis, Dr. Havelock, xiii, 1, 99, 332;
  Mrs. 253

_Ema_ 326

Embanking 93, 152, 197

Emerson, R.W. 99, 105

Emigration, see Hokkaido (Immigrants); 176, 249, 264, 330, 332 (2),
  358, 360, 363, 401, 376, 413-4;
  Number of emigrants 410;
  No pressing need 363;
  Why emigrants do not go to mainland and Formosa 363

Emperor, see also Imperial train; 22, 46, 82, 121, 178, 202, 286;
  Etiquette 44;
  Portrait 90, 113;
  Respect for 44;
  Seeing 43

Empire, To extend the 205

Endurance 261

_Engawa_ 270, 271, 280, 375

England: and Buddhism 100;
  and Christianity 97;
  Greatness of 97;
  and Greek Philosophy 97;
  and Roman law 97

English (language) 126, 282, 297;
  Reader (book) 234;
  Speaking world and Japan xv

"Enlarge people's ideas" 17

"Enlarging mind and heart" 11

Entertainers 108

Epidemics 121, 130, 223

Erotic West 101

Eruption, see Volcano

"Essential out of trifles" 323

Estates, see Hokkaido;
  Smallness of 213, 400

_Eta_ 221, 223, 248, 307, 400;
  in America 401;
  Marriages 400

Ethical evolution 348

Etiquette, see Manners; 6, 19, 35, 39, 124, 148, 200, 213, 242, 273;
  in roadway 47

Europe 288, 410;
  Half civilised 141

European 141

_Eurya ochnacea_, 137

Evening primroses, 120

"Even in this good reign," 124

"Even the devil was once," etc., 123

"Even the head of a sardine," 141

Evolution, Ethical, 348

Excel, Desire to, 158

Excreta, see Manure;
  375, 382, 386

Excursions, 18, 297

Exercise, 151

"Exert yourself to kill harmful insects," 286

Exhibition, see Show;
  also Bural Life Exhibition;
  58, 60

Ex-officials, 22;
  Ex-preacher, 220;
  Ex-Public Servants' Association, 22

Expansion, 360, 413-4;
  Suggested abandonment of oversea possessions, 93

Expenditure, see Farmers

Experts, see Agricultural Experts;
  27, 237, 240

Exports, 414;
  Some useless, 369

Eyesight, 327


Faces, Good will do, 26

Factories, see also Tuberculosis, 282;
  ante-Shaftesbury, 167;
  Bathing 163;
  Babies 162-3;
  Better treatment, more silk, 165;
  _Bon_, 162;
  British and American conditions, 406;
  Child workers, 172;
  Chimneys, 151;
  Compounds, 162;
  164-5, 168 (2);
  Contracts, 162-3, 165;
  "Cost of a daughter's food," 162;
  Dexterity, 169;
  Diet, see Parliament;
  Discharged workers, 88;
  Dividends and effect of, 193, 369;
  Dormitories, 162, 164 (2)-5, 168 (2), 399, 407;
  Education and Entertainment, 162, 164 (2)-5, 168;
  Earnestness 169;
  Effect of, 162-3, 181, 280, 283;
  Empress, 164;
  English parallels, 167-8, 170 (2);
  Fair treatment of Employees practicable, 168;
  Flag system, 161, 164;
  Food, 161-2-3 (2)-4, 168, 399;
  Foremen, 162-3, 165;
  Girls, 2, 85, 264;
  Government, 172-3;
  Health, 161-2-3-4 (2);
  Heat, 161;
  Holidays, 161, 165;
  Hours (thirteen, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen), 161, 163 (2)-4-5 (3), 167;
  Illness, 161-2-3-4, 168;
  Immorality, 163 (2);
  International Labour Office, 172;
  _Kemban_, see Recruiters, Köfu, 165;
  Kuwata, Dr., 172;
  Labour cheap, 169 (2), 173;
  Labour docile, 173;
  Legislation, 165, 171;
  Married women, 162;
  Marriages, 163;
  Morale, 168;
  Mottoes, 164 (3)-5;
  Number of workers, 168;
  Obedience, 169;
  Parliament, 173 (2);
  Police 166;
  Pressure 161;
  Priests and Missionaries, 162, 165;
  Proprietors, 163 (2)-4-5, 167-8;
  Recruiters, 161-2-3, 166;
  Sleeping, see Dormitories;
  Suwa, 165;
  Switzerland, 172;
  Wages 161-2, 164-5, 167-8;
  Walpole's History, 167;
  Washington Conference, 173;
  Western responsibility, 173;
  "Worked like soldiers," 164;
  and daimyo's castle, 176;
  and farmers, 282; Silk 147, 150, 161;
  Tea 403;
  Visits to, 161;
  Woollen, 354-5-6-7

Failures, A country's, due to, 167

Fairies, 110

Faith, 27, 97, 148;
  "Faith is the mother," etc., 136

Fame, Worldly, and good repute, 324

Familiarity, 273

Family, 61, 326;
  Discords, 282;
  "Excesses," 302;
  Large, Appreciation of, 302, 331;
  Size of, see also Limitation of, 66, 331 (2), 377;
  Number in, 412;
  System, 285, 328-9, 330

Famines, 118, 124, 197, 237, 413

Fans, 115, 148, 314

Farmers, see also Adjustment, Agriculture, Area per family, Countryman,
  Debt, Heroic peasant, Labour, Paddy, Peasant Proprietors, Rice,
  Tenants, Work;
  Ability, 65;
  Aged mother, 3;
  and Adjustment, 71;
  and Artisan, 189;
  Attraction of towns, 180;
  and Copper companies, 92, 227;
  Egotist 61;
  and M.P. 92;
  and reading, 319;
  and thieving priest, 320;
  Attitude towards Science, 158;
  as poets 41;
  Autobiography, 8;
  Bondage 331;
  British, 370;
  Capital, 42;
  Character needed, 50;
  Children clever, 233;
  Clothing, 186;
  Condition, 18, 173, 189, 283-4-5, 265, 304, 310 (2), 314, 322, 354,
  365, 378;
  Condition improved, 261;
  Condition of success, 10;
  Days working, 232 (3);
  (hand work, heavy spade, long-handled sickle, mattock, sickle, scythe,
  weeding 385-6;)
  Debts 42;
  Expenditure, 62, 381-2;
  Evicted by Railways, 250;
  Families 412;
  for and against Family system 330;
  Fishermen 210;
  Foreign sympathy excessive 261;
  Food 378, 380-1, 389;
  in sericultural districts 85;
  Future 303;
  Holidays, too small,
  Home, 61; 281; Good humour 186;
  Hours worked 278;
  Idealising of 260;
  Importance of Character, Education and Influences brought to bear on 85;
  Incomes too low 38;
  Lowest on which can live 194;
  of an M.P. and of a Minister of State 9-10;
  Increased expenditure 88;
  Intelligence of 186;
  Knowledge of financial position 186;
  Laboriousness 298;
  Lack of cash 251;
  Large, see Hokkaido;
  Limitations imposed by area, practice and physical conditions 88,
  364 _et seq._;
  Long hours, see Day's working, 167;
  Metayer system 207;
  Meeting of skilful 24;
  Middle 183, 189, 193, 378, 380;
  Mixed, see Hokkaido;
  Monument 251;
  Morality 66;
  No time to think 149, 179;
  Not able 196;
  Not inferior to a townsman 8;
  Pilgrimages 252;
  Pluck, industry and need of land 152;
  Poverty 176, 183, 195;
  Pressure on 148;
  Profit, see Hokkaido;
  Self-contained existence no longer 66;
  Selling land 10;
  Shall rent be paid in cash? 301;
  Small decreasing, large increasing, 89;
  Social precedence, 369;
  Spade 362;
  Stories 24-25;
  Temporary prosperity 87;
  Tenants' movement, see Landlords;
  Thatch for implements, 220;
  "Toil never ending" 365;
  Unrepresented in Parliament 285;
  Why better off 85;
  Why poor 65;
  Wives 30;
  Working days 237;
  Yosōgi's story 66

Farce 320

Fashions 19

Fasting 327

Fat 142

Father and son 8, 135, 205 (2);
  Father-in-law 138

Feast, name of, 34

Feeling 210;
  v. Statistics 1;
  Logic 29, 37

Feet 317;
  Wet 312

Fencing and Wrestling, see Wrestling;
  14, 16, 159, 178, 287

Ferment 323

Fertiliser 42;
  Fertility 92 (2)

Festivals 50, 114, 235, 261, 287, 377;
   Sketches at, 192

Feudal ideas 30;
  Pensions and debt 395;
  Régime 244

Field (Upland) 372

Figs 289

Filial duties 117, 205 (2)

Filth, see Manure

Fine arts 214

Fine days 245

Fines 285

Fir 213

Fire defenders and Fire extinguishing 22, 120, 123, 222, 281;
  Flies 136

Fire farming 110, 122, 227, 131

Fire God 267

Fire holes 314

Fires, see also Arson; 59, 93, 125-6,185, 227, 280, 286, 342

Fish 81, 83, 110, 117 (2), 268, 297, 348-9 (2), 379, 380, 389;
  Ceremonial 46;
  Daintiest part 228;
  Eyes 228;
  Fed 130;
  Nurseries 224, 251;
  Soup 228;
  Supply 346;
  Waste 308, 386

Fisheries, see also Hokkaido; 43, 414

Fishermen 211, 214, 308;
  Farmers 210

Fishing 186, 332;
  Boat 235;
  Village 327

Flags 130, 136

Flail 78

Flax 272-3, 381 (2), 410

Fleas 109

"Flinging water at a frog's back" 48

Flint and tinder 233

Floods 92, 93, 118, 128, 152, 177, 180, 197, 223 (2), 227, 240, 370

Flowers 123, 127, 147, 272, 289, 290;
  Arrangement 53, 213, 319

Flute 190

Folklore being made 331

Food, see Farmers, Hokkaido; 34, 71, 196, 228, 261, 312, 324, 346,
  374 (2), 389, 404;
  and Clothes 118;
  Five _sen_ a day 184;
  Japanese v. foreign 350;
  Lack of 114;
  Production 367;
  Specialities 182;
  Tea and Rice 81;
  Rice and Pickle 81;
  Taken away by guests 284;
  Unbalanced 350;
  When travelling 110

Forage 227, 243-4, 367

Forces which govern behaviour 167

Foreign: Apeing Foreign 306, 362;
  Benevolence 376;
  Books 196;
  Emulation of 158;
  Fashions 121;
  Influence 97;
  Ideas overpowering 101;
  Pride in things foreign 362;
  Tourist 236;
  Under control 357

Foreigners 69, 80, 81, 111, 117, 141 (2), 146, 204, 217, 244, 249, 262,
  269, 345, 352;
  Cutting them out 369;
  and idols 205;
  and Japanese, Closer relations with 95;
  and Waitresses 101;
  Hoodwinking 399;
  Ill-instructed 191;
  Immorality 56;
  Sexual curiosity 101;
  Short-tempered because of Meat-eating 268;
  Smell of 142

Forests, see Floods; 194, 240, 370, 390, 385, 394, 409

Forestry, see Hokkaido;
  Association 177

Formalin 60

Formosa, see Taiwan; 96, 214, 249, 390-1, 332, 363 (2)

Fortunate days 126

"Fortune" 138

Forty-seven Ronin 333

Foster mother 311

Foundations of Japan in village ix, 92

Foundlings 376

Fowl day 126

Fox 33, 129, 144, 326;
  God 120, 266, 325-6 (2)

France 397 (2);
  and Algeria 256

Franchise 38, 124, 170, 173, 400

Franklin, B., 124

Frankness 146

Frazer, Sir J.G., 243

Freedom, see Hokkaido; 273, 361

_Free Farmer in a Free State, A_, 197, 347-8

Free, Japan very, 100

Frockcoats 82, 259

Frogs 48 (2), 122, 260

Froissart 161

Frontier line 306

Frost 195, 391

Froude, J.A., 103

Frugality 8, 151

Fruit, see Names of; 18, 85, 148, 177, 282, 289, 292, 307, 349, 368,
  402;
  Disease 368;
  Growing 61;
  Jelly 148;
  Insects 368;
  Preparations 182;
  Unripe 150

_Fu_ xxv

Fuel, see Charcoal, Coal, Wood; 374, 378

Fuji 107, 262, 310;
  and Electricity 283

Fukushima 107, 119, 175, 189, 199

Funabushi 307

Fundamental power 323

Funerals 22, 66, 270, 302;
  Forbidden 236;
  Feast 248

Furniture 382

_Furoshiki_ 280

Fusuma 36

_Futon_ 8, 31, 109, 258, 280, 300

"Future in the morning" 136;
  Future Life 201


_Gaku_ 4, 38-9, 51

Galloway dykes 227

Gambling 21, 197, 280, 287, 310

_Gampi_ 401

Gap between East and West 100

Gardens 135, 210, 213-4, 215, 222, 270, 313;
  Economic 12;
  "Garden where virtues, etc." 177

Gas 348;
  Natural 133, 300, 404;
  Gasometer and shrine 286

Geisha 2, 19, 57, 96, 102, 114, 212, 252, 254, 257, 362

_Gemmai_ 79

Geniuses, Education of, 58

Genre pictures 313

_Genshitsu_ 259

Gentleness 19

Geology 365

Geomancy 72

German prisoners 307

Germany, see Hokkaido; 300-1, 328, 386, 413

_Geta_ 16, 18, 116, 236, 272, 308, 317, 346, 373

_Getsu-yo-bi_ 126

Gifu 61

Gillie 25

Ginger 410

_Ginseng_ 131, 256

Giotto 103

Girls, see School girls; 13-4, 181, 275, 407;
  Babies on backs 285;
  Exploitation 173;
  in hotels and restaurants 101;
  Labourers 250, 286, 322, 411;
  Porters 186;
  Primitive conditions 216;
  Sturdiness 302;
  Wages 315;
  Gipsies 110

Gladstone 352

Glamour of West 369

Glass, Box for broken, 126

Globe 276

"Glory of the Morning" 121

_Go_ (measure) 119;
  _Gō_ (chess) 142, 214-5

Goats 264, 321, 347, 406

Godown 185, 376

Gods 21, 80, 82, 202-3-4, 244, 251;
  of Agriculture 145;
  calling down 83;
  Christian view of 83;
  "God damn all foreigners" 352;
  of Fire 261;
  of Happiness 267;
  of Horses 26;
  "If one shall give to God" 323;
  Respect for 45;
  and Sea 257;
  "God second" 271;
  Sirens and guns 237

Gogh, Van, 98

_Gohai_ 134, 144, 185, 318

_Gohan_ 79

Goitre 268

Gold 124, 396;
  Story 5

_Golden Bough, The_, 192, 331

Goldsmith, Oliver, 146

Gong 272, 310

Gonorrhœa 300

Good:
  Doing 26;
  Fellowship 16;
  Humour 217;
  "Good people are not sufficiently precautious" 8;
  Resolutions, Black and red balls for, 19;
  "Good wives and good mothers" 19;
  Good Shepherd 127;
  Goodness, Causes of, 67, 149

Goods, not up to sample, 354

Gosen 132

Gospel 94, 97

Gourds 221

Government,
  Feeling towards, 63;
  Granary 86

Governors 21, 39, 84, 152, 179, 198, 200, 202-3, 238, 259, 328, 352,
  361, 370, 373;
  Ex- 241

Goya 103

Graduation tax 21

"Grafting, Thinking," 136

Grain 307, 349;
  and wood crops 309

Granary 86

Grandfather's story 43

Grapes 130, 140, 149, 152, 177, 272, 402;
  in mustard 228;
  Grapefruit 238

Grass, see Forage; 381 (3), 409;
  Land available 368;
  Hokkaido and Saghalien 368;
  Bamboo 352

Gratitude 26, 141

Gravel 25

Graves, see Burial grounds; 19, 58, 72, 225, 306;
  Stones 121, 144, 147, 219, 235, 267;
  Gravedigger 241;
  Unpopular persons 241

Great Britain xv, 328, 386

Greece 95-6, 204;
  Greek Church 362

Green, J.K., 34

"Greenfield Mountain" 244

Grief 201, 273

Ground cypress 221

"Guid moral fowk" 63

Guilds 295, 317

Gumma 146, 309, 321

_Gun_ xxv;
  _Gunchō_ 51, 56, 118, 150, 175, 219, 328

Guns, sirens and gods, 237

Gutters 286

Gymnastics 113, 222

_Gyokuro_ 294, 403



_Habakari_ 375

Habits 124

Hachia 248

_Hagi_ 213

Hair 18, 19, 143, 224, 318, 353;
  Tied up 116

_Hakama_ 16, 356

_Hakumai_ 79

Haldane, Lord, 201

Half-civilised 141;
  dressed 126

Hall, Sir D., viii, 370

Ham 406

Hamlets xxvi, 15, 16

Hand-claps 45-6, 319;
  Hands 153

Handicrafts, Japanese and British, 317

_Hantsukimai_ 79

_Haori_ 16, 315, 356

Happiness 109, 261;
  God of, 267

_Harakiri_, see _Seppuku_, 55

_Hara_ (prairie) 68

Hara, Professor, 413 (2)

Hard work, or better, 64

Hare 278;
  Day 126

Harmoniums 276

Harp 83

Harvest, see Paddy, 50;
  Gods and, 83

Hasegawa, Tokaku, 344

_Hashi_ 81

Hata 68;
  _Hatake_ 68

Hats 74, 76, 83, 129, 198, 284

Hawaii 388

Hawker: beggar 248

Hayashi, Baron, xv

Haze 392

Headhunters 96

Headman, see Blind Headman, 54, 56, 121, 126, 133, 140, 189, 241, 250;
  and Officials 21;
  Loochoos 236

Health, see Bureau of Hygiene, Invalids, Physique, Tuberculosis;
  50, 53, 80, 180, 268, 308, 368, 375, 398, 404

Hearn, Lafcadio, viii, 141, 237, 253, 344

Hearts 25, 27

Heat, 125, 147, 261, 307

"Heathen" 96, 98, 99, 326

Heather 290

Heaven 23, 183;
  "Heavenly punishment" 298

Hebrew prophets 95

Height 17, 404-5

_Heimin_ 400

Hell 109

Hemp 409

Henley, W.E., 40, 80

Hens, Pensions for, 345

"Here the Emperor beheld," etc. 39

Herring blessed 82

_Hibachi_ 153, 297, 374

"Hided himself" 29

Highways, Ancient, 144

Hills 390;
  Artificial 210

Hills removed 299

Hindus 203

_Hinoki_ 221, 394

Hiroshima 207, 236, 402

History: Cannot be repeated 363;
  of England 167;
  of the "Southern Savage" 208

_Hiye_ 387, 389

Hoes, see Paddy

Hokkaido xxv, 89 (2), 195, 197, 222-3, 249, 332, 363, 390;
  Agricultural college, 336;
  American supplies and influence 334(2)-5-6 (2);
  Apples 337;
  Ashigawa 338;
  Ainu 336;
  Alcohol factory 339;
  Askov 341;
  _Basha_ 338, 340;
  Bear 337;
  Beer 337;
  "Best bits" 359;
  Beauty 361;
  Brewing 335-6-7;
  Britons 336;
  Brothels 360;
  Buckwheat 338, 341;
  Budget cut down 359;
  Buggies 334;
  Canning 336-7;
  Cattle 343;
  Christians 340;
  Climate 337;
  Collies 343;
  Cooperation 339, 341;
  Countryside 342;
  Credit 360;
  Cossack farming 336;
  Dairymaid 343;
  Danish songs 341;
  Development, 335, 358-9, 360, 414;
  Drainage 338;
  Dutch 336;
  Education 359;
  Elms 336;
  Farms, Area, 239, 337-8;
    Mixed, milk, meat, 338, 343, 348;
    Profits 340, 380-1-2;
    Official farms 343,
    Farms, large, 338;
  "Feed them well" 341;
  Fisheries 335, 337;
  Floods 342;
  Flour mills 336;
  Food 341;
  Foreign practice 336;
  Forestry 337;
  Forest fires 342;
  French 336;
  "Getting on" 360;
  Germans 336, 341;
  Grouse 336;
  Immigrants 337, 339, 340, 341, 359;
  Grass 341;
  Hakadate 334;
  Hay 343;
  Horses 338, 341;
  Houses 334;
  Hunting 335;
  Huts 341;
  Imperial household 335-6, 360,
    Rescript 336;
  Immigration into island, 360, 414;
  Industry 337;
  Influence on Old Japan 334, 361;
  _Kō_ 341;
  Kuroda 336;
    Labour difficulties 337-8,
    Land scandals 359,
    Not available 360,
    System 359;
  Licensed Quarters, see Brothel;
  Manitoba 337;
  Maize 336-7;
  Milk 338;
  Millet 338;
  Mining 337;
  Moneylenders 340;
  Money wanted 359;
  Monkeys 336;
  Mortgage 340;
  Nitobe, Dr., 336;
  Oats 337;
  Oxen 339;
  Peat 338;
  Peppermint 339;
  Pheasants 336;
  Pigs 339, 343;
  Population 335, 360, 414;
  Potato, see Starch;
  Prostitutes 360;
  Railway 341, 360;
  Religion 340;
  Residuum 341, 359;
  Rice 337-8, 341;
  Rivers 338, 342;
  Roads 338, 341, 360;
  Riding 339;
  Russians 335-6;
  Rye 337;
  Saké 340;
  Salisbury, Lord, 359;
  Salvation Army 340;
  Sapporo, 343-4 (2), 337-8, 391;
  Sato, Dr., 336;
  Scenery 342;
  Self-binders 343;
  _Self-help_ 341;
  Sheep 343, 347, 352-3-4;
  Silo 336;
  Stock-keeping 343, 347;
  _shōchū_ 340;
  Shrine 339;
  Slesvig 341;
  Snow 341, 347;
  "Social question" 341;
  Soldier colony 336;
  "Sordid" 360;
  Stallion 340;
  Starch factory 339;
  Stimulating and free 361;
  Streets 334;
  Sugar-beet factories 336;
  Taxation 414;
  Temples 339;
  Tenants 339;
  Tolstoy 341;
  Tomeoka 341;
  Trees 338, 342;
  Uchimura 336;
  Ugliness 342;
  University 336, 360;
  Value of land 402;
  Volcanoes 334, 343, 390;
  Wagon storage 340;
  "Whoa" 334;
  Windows 334;
  Wolves 337;
  Wood pulp 337;
  Yezo 335

Hokke 134

_Hokku_ 107

_Hokora_ 134, 144

Hokusai 344

Holidays 128, 278, 377;
  Cheap 123, 190;
  To cattle 256

Holiness, Theoretical and practical, 256

Holland, see Dutch; ix, 121, 368

Hollyhocks 39

Home Office 24, 133, 345;
  Home training 149

Homma 186, 188, 380

_Hon_ 334

Hondo, see Honshu

Honesty 140, 145, 277

"Honourable first-class passengers" 218

Honours, 187

Honshu 334, 390-1-2, 402

Hoops 221

Hopes for the future 361

Horses, see Hokkaido, Paddy; 61, 111, 139, 187, 189, 194-5, 209,
  240, 262-3-4, 269, 287, 307, 345 (2), 346, 381 (3) -2 (2), 406;
  Bronze 212;
  Day 126;
  Difficulty of feeding 367;
  Dressing 318;
  Fair 175;
  Feed 244;
  Fondness for 344;
  Fly 126;
  God 267 (2), 304;
  Holidays for 256;
  Monuments to 167, 307;
  Power 385;
  Shows 268;
  Slaughtered 406;
  Shrine 127;
  Symbol 272, 304;
  Horseman's hair cutting 318

Hotels, see Inns, 107;
  Japanese and English 319;
  "Hotel for people of good intentions" 54

Hot spring 126, 190;
  Story 233

Houses, see Hokkaido; 66, 153, 207, 214, 261, 314, 322, 378;
  Beauties of 31, 35;
  Building 17;
  Courtesies 34-5;
  of ill fame, see Brothels;
  Miserable 176, 190;
  New forbidden 247;
  Simplicity 39;
  Transported 310;
  Western "taste" 34

"How I became a Christian" 91

Humanity 235;
  New conception of 94;
  Humanitarians 206

Humidity, see Climate

Humour 217, 276

Humus 309, 313

Hunger 145

Hunting, see Hokkaido, 278

Husband and Wife 121

Huxley xiv

Hydrangea 53, 122

Hydraulic works 52

Hygiene, see Health

Hyogo 253, 260, 311, 402

Hypocrisy 224, 259


_I_ 246, 410

"I am the master of my fate" 41;
  "I remain Japanese" 141;
  "I hear the voice of Spring" 165

Ibaraki 189, 199, 309

Idea of a Gap 98;
  Old ideas 331

Ideographs 68, 301

Idleness, Correction of, 17, 19

"Idols" 142, 205

"If you look at a water fowl" 101;
  "If you should advise me" 175

_Ihai_ 143, 270, 272;
  _Ihaido_ 272-3

Illegitimacy 114, 229, 241, 280, 303, 322, 395

Illiteracy 375

Illness 187, 350, 377

Image, see Idols, 142, 205

Imitation, 24

Immorality, see Morality, Women, Primitive conditions;
  2, 17, 101-2, 114, 126, 132, 139, 149, 193, 190, 191-2, 197,
  201, 212, 214, 241, 280, 287, 307, 315, 322;
  Foreigners, 56;
  and Shrine, 325-6

Imperial Household, see Hokkaido;
  Garden Party, 319;
  Rescript 50-1, 90, 137, 204;
  Poem competition 40;
  Train 44

Imperturbability 251

Implements 364, 378, 382;
  Better, 365, 367, 370;
  Cared for, 220;
  Primitive, 365

Imports, Doing away with 347;
  Some useless 369

Impressions xiii, 27

Improvement, Principles of, 370

Inari 129, 325

Incendiarism, see Arson

Incense 119, 141

"Incitement to do well" 140

Income of a Governor, 373;
  of a Minister of State 373;
  Small 240

Incomprehensibleness 202

Incongruity 137

Indecency 192, 197

Independence 151, 277, 311

India 388

Indigo 209, 223, 409

Individualism 101-2, 204, 327, 330

Indo-China 388

Indoors 213

Industry (quality) 297, 317

Industry, see Hokkaido, Factories, Sericulture;
  Alleged economic necessity for Sweating 169;
  "Industry and Increase of Production" 259;
  Cheap labour 169 (2), 173;
  Cotton factories 174;
  Chinese competition 173;
  and Commerce v. Agriculture 284, 414;
  Crash 87;
  Criticism 369;
  Destruction of Craftsmanship 317;
  Death rate 393;
  Deception of West 174;
  Docile Labour 169, 173;
  Employers' public spirit 173;
  Excuses for shortcomings 169;
  Exploiting 169 (2);
  El Dorado 369;
  Female labour 169, 399;
  Foreign competition 173-4;
  Handicap of 174;
  Indefensible attitude 169;
  Inexperienced labour 174;
  Inhumanity 174;
  Just claim 174;
  Mistakes imitating West 170;
  Net return to Japan 169;
  Number of workers 168;
  Profits 174;
  Rural v. Urban 369;
  Success of 169;
  Uselessness of some 369;
  Unskilled labour 174;
  Welfare work 174;
  Wellwishers' fears 169;
  Western lessons 174, 369;
  Wisdom, Will it be displayed? 174;
  Woollen, 354-5-6-7

Infanticide 66, 216, 302, 332

Infinity 200

Inflation xxiv, 414

Influence 201, 203, 321, 324;
  Influential villager 140

Inhalation 117

Inland Sea 207-8, 235

Inner colonisation, 307, 413-4

Inn 108-9-10, 116, 122-3, 127, 132, 144-5, 152, 190,
  214, 228, 315;
  of Cold Spring Water 128;
  Entertainment 108;
  Notices in 183;
  Old days 148;
  Rates 148, 183;
  Restfulness 319;
  Transportation of 182

Inscriptions 47, 126, 129

Insects 20 (2), 188, 230, 250, 286, 344, 353, 368;
  Fondness for, 344;
  Insect powder 109

Instinct 201

Instructions 26, 151

Insurance 281

Intellectuals 103, 203

Intelligence 140, 151, 370

Intercourse 358

Interest, see Usury; 43, 66

Intermarriage 204, 252, 290, 364

International Labour Conference 395;
  Understanding, see West and East

Interpreter 27

Intestines 348, 351

_Introduction to the History of Japan_, 413

Invalids 110, 346

Ireland 358

Iron 226, 396

Irrigation, see Water, Waterwheels, Wells;
  25, 52, 180, 197, 207, 210, 262, 390-1

Ise Shrine 176

Islands 235 (3), 390;
  Beacon 247

Italy 365-6, 396-7

Ito San 307

Itsukushima 236

Iwate 189, 195-6

Izumo 251


_Jaga-imo_ 249

Jakchū, 344

James, William, 105

Japan, see Japanese;
  Anti-Ally campaign xi;
  Belief in, a substitute for religion, 63;
  Books, good and bad, on viii;
  and Germany xi;
  and Great Britain 89, 385, 390;
  Compared with Asia 390;
  Could support double the population 97;
  Course 371;
  Danger of Foreign colonisation 100;
  English-speaking world and xv;
  Free 100;
  Future, neither a technical nor an economic problem, 371;
  Forced into Materialism, 100;
  Great Britain and, xv;
  Mental attitude 371;
  New and Old 318;
  Northern 365, 370, 402, 413 (2), 414;
  Proper 385, 390;
  Thousand years ago 82;
  United States and xv;
  Width 390;
  Will o' the wisps 371;
  World opinion on ix

Japanese: Advantages 371;
  Aestheticism and farmer ix;
  Closer relations with foreigners 95;
  Christian church 197;
  Common sense 371;
  Devotional 102;
  Essence of life 141;
  Family, a, 143;
  Ideas, old, 174;
  Judgment on 371;
  Kindness 102;
  Number in Great Britain 403;
    in London 403;
  Opportunities 371;
  Puzzled 100;
  "Japanese spirit," see _Yamato damashii_, 140, 323;
  Talents 371;
  True v. mediocre, 371

Jeffries, 99

_Ji_ 210

"_Jiji_" 90

_Jinrikisha_, see Kurumo; 46, 131

_Jishu_ 119

_Jizō_ 125, 286

John, Augustus 98, 103

Johns Hopkins 349

Johnson, Dr., 132, 175, 262, 297

_Joro_, see Prostitutes; 56, 255, 258
_Judō_ 50, 159

_Jūjitsu_ 50, 287

"Jump land" 305

Jungle 122


Kagawa 207, 209

_Kago_ 244

Kaiserism 90

_Kakemono_ 36, 39, 135, 150 (2), 319

_Kakkō_ 315

Kambara 132

Kamchatka 195

Kanagawa 182, 283, 309, 321

_Karakami_ 36

Karuizawa 143-4

_Kasutera_ 346

_Katsubushi_ 297, 349

Kawasaki, see Labour

"Keeping up position" 183

_Ken_ xxvi, 176

Kennedy, J. Russell, 332

Kepler 106, 123, 344

Khedive 98

_Ki-ai_ 36

_Kikicha_ 294

Kimonos 15, 16, 84, 114, 125 (4), 200, 218, 269, 272,
  301, 309, 312, 317, 321, 356;
  Respect for superiors 125

Kinai 71

Kindergarten 7

Kindness 102, 205, 307

King, Professor, vii, 260

_Kiri_ 129

Kissing 313

Kitchens of Hongwanji 63

Kites 260

Kittens, see Cats; 345

Kneeling 17, 308, 319

Knife 282

Knowledge 301, 328

_Kō_, see Hokkaido, _Tanomoshi_; 215, 278, 301

_Ko-aza_ xxvi

Kobe 66, 71, 207, 260, 292, 392;
  "Kobe beef" 402

Kochi 207, 209, 386

Kōfu 152

_Koi_, see Carp

Koizumi Yakumo 254

Kokusai-Reuter 332

_Komojin_ 208

_Konnyaku_ 48, 176

Korea 99, 103, 104, 256, 332, 336, 363 (2), 390 (2), 391, 394;
  Folk art 104;
  Secretary of Government 10

_Korai_ 105

_Kōri_ xxvi

_Koto_ 34

_Kōzo_ 401

Kropotkin 321

_Kuge_ 102-3

_Kumi_ 262, 278

_Kura_, see Godown

Kuriles 391

_Kuruma_ 46, 121 (2), 209, 243, 262, 310;
  in War time 51;
  Forbidden 236;
  Wooden wheels 244;
  _Kurumaya_ 120, 122-3, 128, 131, 148, 250;
  Story 310

Kusonoki Masashige 66-7

Kuwata, Dr., 399

Kwanto 107, 147, 199, 309

Kwantung 388, 391

_Kyōgen_ 32

Kyosai, Kawanabe, 344

Kyōto xxvi, 63, 66, 82, 141, 207, 222, 243, 257, 292,
  303, 307, 391-2;
  Hongwanji 2

Kyushu xii, 330, 390-1-2, 402


Labour, see Factories, Farmers, Land, Paternalism, Revolution;
  Socialism, 160;
  Arrests 171;
  Better directed 64;
  Ca'-canny 171;
  Cheap labour exploited 369;
  Child workers 170, 172, 224;
  Confederation of Japanese Labour 171;
  Labour contractors, see Hokkaido, Sericulture;
  Days in the Year, 62, 65 (2), 377;
  Employers' public spirit 173;
  English parallels 167, 170 (2);
  Factory law 165, 169, 171-2 (2), 224;
  Hours 62, 376-7, 378;
    Eleven 173,
    Twelve 170,
    Fourteen 171-2;
  Farmer's Co-operation, see Tenants' movement;
  "Friend-Love-Society" 171;
  Girls' labour 224;
  Imprisonment 170;
  Increased 26;
  Irregular 350;
  Given 17;
  Kawasaki 173-4;
  Matsukata 173-4;
  Mitsubishi 173;
  Night 48, 171;
  Police 170-1;
  Prosecutions 172;
  Publications 171;
  Public meetings 170;
  Public opinion 169, 172-3;
  Seaman's Union 171;
  Strikes, 88, 170;
  Tenants' Movement 173;
  Trade Unions 169, 170 (2) -1;
  Wages substituted for apprentice system 315;
  Women workers, see Silk (Factories) 171-2;
  _Yu-ai-kai_ 171;

Labourers, see Girl labourers, 150, 184, 189, 194, 380-1,
  395, 397, 411

Lacquer 39, 130, 319

Ladder for tree pruning 215

Ladybirds 289

Lamb, Henry, 98

Lamps 348

Land available, see Utilised, 97, 180, 233, 368, 408, 414;
  Covered by buildings, railways, etc., 250, 409;
  City investments in, 150;
    under Cultivation 70;
  Divided up, result, 306;
  New 18, 24, 42-3, 62, 66, 85, 194, 207 (2), 225 (2), 264, 305, 370;
  Yearly 408;
  Government action, 408;
  Ownership decrease, 411;
  "of Plenteous ears" 68;
  Made over to farmers at Restoration 395;
    from the Sea, 41;
    held by Tradesmen and other, 412;
  Utilised, 214, 225, 227, 244;
  Value of, 64, 133, 240, 339, 402

Landlady and Players 115

Landless 412

Landlords, see also Tenants, Hokkaido, Homma;
  193, 212, 223, 303, 305, 358, 376, 394;
  Area 29, 41, 213, 400;
  Absentees 38;
  Advice and gifts by 30 (2);
  Bad 58 (4);
  Budgets 41, 373;
  Boycotted 28;
  Competition for Farmers 186;
  Circuit of village 36;
  Cruel 38;
  Expert engaged 177;
  Diversions 213;
  Factory dividends 193;
  as Farmers, 213;
  Idle 322;
    and Farmers' wives 30;
  Garden parties 30;
  "Hided himself" 29;
  "Land master" 37;
  Parasitic 261;
  Poets 41;
  Power going from 36, 330;
  Rents and Reduction of 29, 37, 85, 220;
  Sharing system, 45;
  Storehouses, 28 (2);
    and Tenants, 23 29, 30, 31, 34, 37-8, 88, 94, 152, 229, 230, 301;
  Taxes 73;
  Tenant movement 37-8;
  Perspiration, 38;
  Reformation of village, 47;
  Uchimura 94;
  Usurers 38;
  Western and Japanese compared, 261

Landscape 120

Lanes 307

Lang, A., 105

Language 301

Lanterns 19, 36, 58, 136, 190, 211, 237, 266-7

Lark 83

Laughter 217

Law, William, 99

Leaders 26, 51, 140

League of Nations, Japanese Secretary, 336

"Learning Meeting" 58;
  "Learning right ways," etc., 164

Lectures 150, 176, 180, 189, 250, 279

Leeches, see Paddy, 137

"Left behind his tiredness" 111

Legislation 236

Legumes 349

Lemonade 119

Lending, see Borrowing, _Kō, Tanomoshi_, 125, 183

Leonardo 103

Leprosy 5, 298

_Lespedeza bicolor_ 213

Letter in the temple 26

Letters, interesting, 311;
  Lettering, Western v. Eastern, 39

_Liberté du travail, De la_, 8

Libraries 23, 59, 60, 180, 190, 196, 215, 244, 248, 401

Licensed Quarters, see Brothels

Life 101;
  Aim 205;
  Chaotic 100;
  Desire to enjoy 179;
  Significance of 90;
  Too near to Criticise 331

Lignite 47

Lighthouse, "At foot it is dark," 67

Lighting 120

Lily 410

Lime 148

Lincoln 124, 127

Literature 369; Western 102

"Livestock, his family," 386

Living, Bare, 261;
  Better 370;
  Cost of 278;
  Standard of 65, 85, 310, 240;
  "What men live by" 27;
  "Living Power" 322

Lizard story 5

Lobster 318

Locks 183

Locusts 20

Logic v. feeling 29

Loin cloth 125, 307

London 64;
  Market 357

Lonely spot 127;
  "Lonelyism" 319

Loochoos 236, 391

Loquat 289

Lorries 621

Loss 201, 203

Lotus 48, 146

Louse 107

Love, Not easy to fall in, 102;
  Not free 102;
  Four loves 61

Loyalty 174

L.T. 372

Lubin, David, vii

Lucky days 126

Lugubriousness, Absence of, 273

Lumbering, see Forests; 194-5

Lunacy, see "Natural"

"Lusitania" 202

Luther 94

Luxury 2, 19, 151

Lying 124


Macaroni 272, 351, 381

McCaleb, J.M., 364

_Machi_ xxv

Mackintoshes 47

Maeterlinck 99

Magazines 18, 58, 282

Mahomedanism 101

Maid servant 324

Maillol 103

Maize, see Hokkaido, 146, 148, 272, 381 (2)

Malaya 127

Mallets 359

_Manchester Guardian_ 339

Man 150;
  "Man and Wife" 121;
  Development 202;
  with a monument 41;
  Study of 119;
  Manfulness 205

Manchuria 21, 354, 356-7, 363 (2), 390, 394;
  Railway company 357

_Mangoku doshi_ 78

Mantles 74, 76

Manners, see Etiquette 17, 19

Manual labour 50

Mantegna 103

Manure, see _Benjo_; 230, 232-3, 259, 264, 298,
  308, 313, 346, 352, 374, 380-2, 384, 386;
  Artificial 49, 85, 92, 136;
  Better manuring 370;
  Co-operation 49;
  Manure blessed 82;
  House 22, 137, 150, 215;
  Green 386;
  Liquid, for Vegetables, 350;
  "Livestock, his family," 386;
  Odour 49;
  Students and 50;
  Tanks 214-5;
  "White steam rising" 137

Maples 25, 52

Market, No, 127

Marmots 166

Marriage, see Weddings, Unmarried;
  11, 114-5, 138, 170, 193, 220, 247, 284, 293,
  315, 330, 379, 380, 395, 400;
  Ages 332;
  Marrying for love, 102;
  Remarriage 197

"Marrow of Japan, The," xv

Masses 132

Mascots 310

Masters and men, 174, 315

Materialism 2, 27-8, 212, 324

Matisse 103

Mats, see _Tatami_, 177, 215, 270, 304

Matsue 243, 253-4

Matsukata, see Labour

Matsumoto 148, 150, 391

Matter 100

Matthew, St., 94

Mattocks, see Paddies; 97, 285, 385;
  Wealth and 136

Meadow 409

Meals 34, 323

Meanness punished 266

Meat 130, 133, 346, 348, 349, 350, 356-7, 368, 379, 380, 406;
  and Good Temper 268

Mechanical power 370, 412

Medals 123

Medicine 248, 268, 374, 379, 380

Meetings, see Public meetings; 63, 238, 254

Meiji, Emperor, 39, 142

Melbourne 167

Melons 146, 150

_Memoirs of the Queen's First Prime Minister_ 170

Memorial stones 41, 51-2, 67, 311;
  Services 271;
  Days 50

Mental attitude 254;
  nimbleness 17

Mercantile Marine 332;
  Farmer and ix

Mercenary spirit 2, 12

Merciful universe 323;
  "Mercy of the sun" 321

Meredith 90, 182, 219, 226, 235

Merits 25

Mesopotamia 371

Metal 126;
  Mines story xi

Metaphysical, Not, 258

Metayer system 45, 207

Methodist 141

Mice and bamboo 108

Middle Ages 84, 317

Middle School boys 151, 255, 284, 404

Middle men 38

Midwives 123, 241, 264, 282, 399

Migration 264, 364

Mikawa 84

Militarism 104, 233, 240, 328, 360;
  Military service, see Conscription, 220;
  Training 151, 282, 285

Milk, see Hokkaido; 110, 116, 128, 130, 150 (2), 235, 264,
  345, 347-349, 381 (2);
  Foster mother 311

Millet, see Hokkaido 103, 131, 195-6 (2), 213, 219, 227, 264,
  383, 389, 409, 411

Mimetic skill, 192

Minds, 27, 151, 226

Minerals, see also Hokkaido; 284, 396

Ming 106

Ministers and Ministries of Agriculture 24, 378, 385, 390, 397, 403,
  411;
  of Health and Education (British) 371;
  of Finance 414;
  of Railways 403;
  of State, Income of, 373;
  Ministers, ex- 241

Mirror 178

_Mirin_ 396

Misapprehensions, International, 363

Miser 59

Misfortune 187, 201;
  and Religion, 63

_Miso_ 6, 81, 123, 151, 191-2, 196, 321, 349 (2), 350

Missionaries 7, 59, 143, 197

Mitsubishi, see Labour

_Mitsumata_ 401

"Mixing in the heart" 135

Miyagi 189, 197

Miyajima 236

Mobilisation 241

_Mochi_ 69, 272

Modesty 317

_Mogusa_ 179

_Momi_ 79

_Mon_ 188

Monday 126

Money: Etiquette 148;
  Cheap 176, 184, 364;
  Need of 66, 370;
  Moneylenders, see Usury, 150, 282, 364;
  Money-sharing Club, see _Kō, tanomoshi_

Mongolia 357, 363 (2), 394

Monkey, see Hokkaido; 110, 129, 248;
  Monkey day 126;
  "Monkey slip" 246

Moon 126 (2), 129, 137, 208, 275;
  Bowing to 99;
  "Moon-seeing flowers" 120;
  Moonlight on mattocks 136;
  "Waiting for the Moon" 323

Morality, see Crime, Immorality, Police;
  17, 20, 37, 50, 66, 95, 101-2, 140, 149, 152, 169, 179, 193, 203,
  206, 229, 313;
  Anglo-Saxon sense of 95;
  Moral backbone 96, 141;
  "Moral bath" 94;
  Code, Lack of, 362;
  "Distrust of each other's morality the barrier" xii;
  Morality dependent on material well-being 118, 149;
  Quality of Eastern 95;
  "Not so bad" 149

Morimoto 349

Morioka 195-6

Morley, 14

Mosquitoes 50, 125, 143

"Mother, from the bosom of," 301;
  Mother-in-law 121, 138

Motor bus 246;
  Launch 237

Mottoes 7, 39, 126, 135-6, 150, 158, 187, 288

Mounds 306

Mountains 70, 108, 159, 176, 390 (2), 394;
  "Mountain climbers" 320;
  Mountain maidens 110

Moxa, see _Mogusa_; 47, 179

M.P., see Franchise; 124, 208, 285;
  Ashes of 92;
  and farmers 92

"Mr. Temple" 7, 270

M's, Seven, viii

Mud baths 147

_Mujin_ 278

_Mukae bon_ 272

Mulberry 40, 61, 147, 149, 153, 158-9 (2), 160, 264-5, 282, 287, 298,
  302, 307, 310;
  Area and Yield 153, 409;
  Paper 410;
  Proverb 153

Mulch 220

_Mura_ xxv, 262

Murdoch, James, Japanese and, viii

Murray, Gilbert, 301

Mushrooms 110

Music 102, 116, 180, 188, 237, 328;
  Ancient 82;
  Instruments 222;
  Western 99 (2), 288

Mutton, see also Sheep; 133, 345, 347

Muzzles 269

Mysticism 99, 100, 267

"My wish is that I may perceive" 106

Naden, Constance, 203

Nagano 140, 146, 153, 262, 272, 399

Nagasaki 391

Nagoya 38, 391, 392

_Naichi_ 334

Naked children 309;
  Nakedness 115, 125, 193;
  Child story 307

_Namban_ 208

"Name, called by second," 217

"_Namu Amida_," etc., 129

Napier, Sir W., 170

Napoleon 127, 203

Nara 222

Nasu, Mount 108

Nasu, Professor S., xv, xxiv

Nation 8;
  National Agricultural Societies 238, 320;
  Backing Society 312;
  Defence 97;
  Feeling 363;
  Funds 371;
  Greatness, Sources of, 97;
  Products 233;
  Nationalism 204, 328;
  Nationalists 91

_Natsu mekan_ 238

Nature 287;
  and Character 99;
  Feeling towards 99;
  "Natural" 280;
  Naturalness 99

Naval Service 311

Navvies 21, 217

Navy 311, 346, 350-1, 360, 403;
  Farmer and ix

"Needle in your head" 11

Negation 101

Neo-Malthusianism 331-2

Nerves 238, 240

Nets 186

New and modern ideas 37;
  New ideas 135;
  New and Old Japan 318;
  New Age 361;
  "New rural type" 79

_New East_ xii, 372, 406

News, see Notice boards, 323;
  Newspapers, see Press, 137, 249, 282, 300, 301, 319

New Testament 96, 203

New Year 265

New York 271, 318

New Zealand 352, 363

_Nichi_ 126

"_Nichi-Nichi_" 90

_Nichi-yo-bi_ 126

Nightingale, Florence, 127

Night-soil, see Manure

Night-time 19

_Nihon no Shinzui_ xv

Niigata 107, 132, 295, 391

Nikko 92, 120

Ninomiya 7, 8, 50, 60, 61, 287

Nirvana 205

Nitobe, Dr., see Hokkaido; xv, 333

Nitrogen 147, 348

_Nō_ 32, 320

Nogi, General, 54, 98

Non-material feeling 259

Normal school 233

"Normal yield" 70

North America 410

North, backwardness of, see Japan, Northern

North of Japan, see Japan, Northern

Noses 144, 192, 204

Note-books 18

"Nothing which concerns a countryman," etc., 107

Notice boards for news 17, 126;
  Notices 287

"Not yet" 288

Novelist 152;
  Novelists, Russian, 99

_No wa kuni taihon nari_ 92

Nunnery 142;
  Nuns 140, 142, 143

Nursery pasture 259;
  Nurseries, see Paddies, Children drowned, 266;
  Nurses 58, 399;
  "Nursing-place for children of soldiers" 312

Nutrition poor, see Food


Oaks 316

Oars 211

Oats 381 (2)

_Oaza_ xxvi, 221, 263, 302, 304, 305

_Obi_ 15, 25

Obedience 169

Obscenity 192

Oceania 410

Octopus 46, 308

Oculist 239, 300

_Oden_ 48

Offerings 272

Officials 27, 51, 176, 212, 261;
  Official rewards 213

_Ohyakusho no Fufu_ ix

Oil, see Petroleum;
  For insects 188

Oiwaké 144

Okayama 207, 402

Okio 344

Okuma, Prince, 390

_Okunitama no Miko no Kami_ 45, 46

Okura, Baron, 357

_Okuri bon_ 272

Old age 17, 19, 22, 43;
  Old farmer to his son 66;
  Old man and officials 51;
  Old men 135, 271;
  "Old Miss not frequent" 74;
  Old Japan 391;
  Old People's Clubhouse 305,
    Houses 304,
    Work 227

Old Testament 326

Olives 210

Omelette 110

Omori 93, 182

Onions 381 (2), 410

"Only half a pilgrimage," etc., 257

Open heart 215

Oranges 221, 287, 289 (2), 402

Order 328;
  "Orders, May give him," etc., 217

_Oriental Economist_ 93;
  Oriental religion for Orientals 327

Originality, supposed lack of 101

_Oro_ 400

Orphans 185

Osaka ix, xxv, 71, 90, 207, 222, 311, 392

Otake 324

_Otera San_ 7, 270

"Other people" 62, 377

_Otsu Yukimichi_ 46

Out-of-date ideas 348

Owen, Wilfrid, 334

Overloading 345

Over-population, see Population

Overpowering foreign ideas 101

Overseas Colonisation Co. 402

Overwork 114

Oxen, see Cows, Cattle, Hokkaido, Holidays, Paddies; 18, 139, 346;
  Ox-day 126;
  Ox-drawn carts 18

Oyashiro current 195


Paddies, see Adjustment, Agriculture, Bull, Cow, Horse, Lime,
  Mattock, Plough, Pony, Rice, Straw, _Ta_, Windmills;
  20, 66, 68-9, 70-1-2, 132, 264;
  Adjustment 182;
  Appearance 146, 298;
  Area, see Size, 385;
  Back breaking 75;
  Beauty 76;
  Blindness 300;
  At Christmas 314;
  Carp 299;
  Children drowned 75;
  Clothing 74;
  Cow 73, 77;
  Cultivated for centuries 366;
  Cultivation in sludge 73;
  Damaged crops 76-7;
  Discomfort 74;
  Drying 73, 77;
  Paddy v. Dry field labour 358;
  Floods 72, 76;
  Frost 299;
  Harrowing 73-4;
  Harvest 76-7;
  Hoes 75;
  Horse 73;
  _I_ 246;
  Insects 74-5-6;
  Italy 68;
  Labour 70-3 _et seq_., 331, 358, 365;
  Labour required per _tan_ 232;
  Leeches 74;
  Mattock 73, see Mattock;
  Model 189, 258;
  Ox 72-3, 77;
  Ploughing 73, 385;
  Pony 73, 77;
  Pulling Fork 74;
  Rent, see Rent, 23, 73;
  Reservoirs 72, 210, 299;
  Scattered 71;
  Second crop 70, 73;
  Seed bed 74-5-6, 84;
  Shape 69, 70-1;
  Shinto streamers 75;
  Sickle 77;
  Size 70, 249, 365-6, 360 (2);
  Soil 70, 73;
  Sowing 74-5;
  Spade 73;
  in Spring 307;
  Straw 76;
  Stubble 73;
  Temperature raised 76;
  Transplanting 74-5 (3), 84;
  Two hundred and tenth day 76;
  U.S.A. 68;
  Value 214, 402, 408-9;
  Wet 76-7;
  Water, Ammonia, Depth, Warm, 70, 72, 152, 366;
  Wet Feet 73;
  Weeding 74-5(2);
  Wind 76;
  Women 74;
  Work of 147

Pagodas 209

Painting 102, 223, 286, 327

Palisades 227

_Pan_ 346

Panic grass, see _Hiye_

Paper 125, 148, 177, 227, 401

Paradise 205 (2)

Parasites 261, 350

Parasol, see Umbrellas

Parents 17, 102, 117, 149

Park 210

Parkes, Sir Henry, 9

Parliament 53;
  Cost of election 208;
  Farmers and ix

Parmesan 298

Partiality 14

Party feeling, see Politics, 2

Past and Present 233

Paternalism 174

Patience 153

Patriotism 26, 206, 371;
  Patriotic Women's Society, 105, 124

Patronage 37

Pattison, Mark, 105

Paul, St., 99

Paulownia 129

Paupers 376

Peace of the world 84;
  Peaceful mind 205 (2)

Peaches 277, 289, 295, 402

Pears 31, 233, 235, 289, 402

Peas 307, 383, 409

Peasant, of East and West, 141;
  Heroic 51;
  Hungry 145;
  and Lucifer match 233;
  Monuments to 67;
  "Peasant Sage of Japan" 7

Peasant Proprietors, see Tenants; 138-9, 184, 189, 261, 264, 284,
  321, 364, 376, 378-9, 380 (4), 411

Peat, see Hokkaido, 194

Pedlars 315

Peers, School, 55, 102;
  Qualifications for House of 176

Pencils 272

Pensions 380

Peonies 256

People, Condition of, 262

Peppermint 381, 410

Perfection 283

Perry, Commander, 100, 124

Persimmons x, 13, 45, 61 (2), 152, 289, 320, 402

Persistence 328

Personalities 104

Perspiration 38

Pestalozzi, 220

Peter the Great 124

Petroleum 132

_Phædo_ 203

Pheasants, see Hokkaido, 215

Philanthropy, see Charitable institutions; 41, 376

Philosophy 100, 102, 204, 206

Photographs xvi

Physique 16, 171, 193, 204, 284, 302, 322, 350, 364

Piano 99

Pickles 81, 110, 159, 268, 349

Picture postcards 148

Pigeons 215

Pigs, see Hokkaido; 27, 264, 347, 382 (2), 406

Pilgrims 20, 133, 142, 182, 210-1, 220, 252, 271, 302;
  and Prostitutes, 257

Pillow 109; slip 109

Pine 215, 248, 299, 316, 318, 394

Pipes 288

Pirates 214

Pistol 56

Pitt 9

"Places of distinction" 187;
  "Place of the Seven Peaks" 120

Plains 70

Planet 126

Plans 18

Plantain 122, 307

Plasters 267

Plato 96, 358

Players 115, 124-5, 245, 266;
  Playrooms 260

Ploughing, see Agriculture, Hokkaido, Paddies;
  Worship of 61, 87, 120

Plums 295, 307, 405

Poe 105

Poel, William, 114

Poet 27, 40, 135;
  Poems, see Song, _Uta_; 20, 61, 107, 109, 111, 136, 141, 183, 216,
  288, 324;
  Poetry 313, 334

Poisonous plants 124

Pole and bucket 207

Police, see Arrests, Cells, Crime, Postponed offences, Prisoners, Theft;
  20, 43-4, 53-4, 113, 116, 125, 140,
  150, 235, 280;
  Influence of 118;
  Letters for 111;
  Offences 250;
  Shirakaba 103;
  at Theatre 115

Politeness 19, 40, 217, 251, 277, 317

Politics, see Franchise, "Direct Action"; 103, 104, 303;
  Local 284, 303;
  Slander 2

Pomegranate 52-3

Ponds, cleaned out free, 219

Pony, see Paddies; 227;
  at Shrine 116

Poor, see Farmers, Relief; 57, 63, 67, 94, 145, 149, 278, 320, 323;
  Cannot remain poor 67;
  Flattery of 94

Poore, Dr., 374

Population, see Birth and Death rates 160, 391;
  Census 393-4;
  Compared with Great Britain and U.S.A. 82, 385, 392;
  Cost of living and postponement of marriage 332 (2);
  Empire and its parts 391;
  Percentage Habitable compared with other Countries 392-3;
  How to support double 97;
  Increase of 89, 392-3-4;
  Increase compared with increase of Rice production 389;
  and Means of Production 332;
  Decrease of Rural 412;
    and Rural and Urban compared 412;
  Sexes 169;
  per square mile 392;
  per square kilometre compared with Belgium, England and Wales,
    Holland, Italy, Germany and France 392;
  Surplus 332, 360, 369, 413

Porcelain 39, 319

Pork 347, 350

Port Arthur 98;
  Ports, Open, 256

Porters 186

Porticoes 246

Portraits 38, 120, 143, 198

Portuguese 208, 346

Posterity 19

Post-impressionism 104

Potash 251

Potatoes 191, 194, 249;
  Irish 383, 409, 411;
  Sweet 146, 227, 309, 347, 381 (2), 383, 409, 411;
  Memorials 249

Pottery 99, 148

Poultry 7, 18, 39, 58, 264, 297, 304, 381-2 (2), 406;
  Pensions for 345
  "Pouring water on a duck's back" 48

Poverty, see Poor

Power, Fundamental, 323

Prairie 71, 111

Prayer 141, 243-4, 272, 326

Preaching 3, 4, 5, 249, 270, 310, 314-15

Prefecture xxv

Prejudice 146, 363

Pre-nuptial relations, see Immorality

Presents 218, 271 (2), 329

Press, see Newspapers;
  Brains and circulation of 90;
  Dread of 41

Prices xxiv, 13;
  Prices in this book xxiv, 87-8;
  Rise in Prices 87-8

Priests, see Buddhist priest, Shinto priest; 1, 20, 45, 57,
  139, 140, 149 (2), 180-1, 197, 212, 220, 247, 331, 412;
  Dress 25;
  Priest-craft 93;
  at Elections 250;
  Good deeds 324;
  Ignorance 120;
  and Illegitimate child 193;
  Income 42;
  Influence, Character and Education 41;
  Silent 189;
  Speech by 25;
  Talk with 1, 51, 59;
  Thieving 320;
  Thrifty 62;
  Wandering 315

Priggishness 362

Primitive belief, 323-4 (2)

Prisoners 307

Prize tax 21

Problems 95, 104

Prodigal 60

Production 26, 369, 414

Professors 42

Progress 63, 235, 279;
  Delayed by lack of money 97;
  Erroneous conception of 370;
  by means of horses 339

"Proof not argument" 343

Prospects 119

"Prosperity and welfare" 187

Prostitutes, see Hokkaido, Immorality; 56, 114, 132, 190, 192,
  212, 222, 235, 243, 257, 325, 330, 376

"Protection for inoffensive people" 97

Protein, vegetable, 348-9

Protestants 362

Prothero, Sir G.W., 9

Proverbs, see Mottoes; 48, 57-8-9, 67, 109, 121, 123, 136, 141,
  256-7, 307, 315, 343

Pruning 215

P.S.A. 275

Psychology of behaviour 167

Public benefit 374;
  Energy 371;
  Funds 371;
  Good 22, 201-3;
  Health, see Health, Public;
  Public man, Farmers' and Author's view, 9-10-11;
  Meetings 24, 170, 238;
  "Public Spirit and Public Welfare" 259;
  Opinion 41, 118, 135, 149, 203;
  Welfare 125;
  Work 303

Pumping, see Water-wheels, 64

Pumpkins 272

Punishment 112, 178

Puppies 345

"Purified in heart" 141;
  Purification 134;
  Puritans 95;
  Purity 151

"Push, push, push," 115


"Q" 203

Quaker 3, 6, 203

Quarrelling, see also Family discords; 54, 322

Queen Victoria 282

Querns 235

Questions 243, 303;
  difficulty of, 101;
  Questioning, lack of power of, 101

Rabbits 179

Race, Factories' effect on, 168-70;
  Method of gaining knowledge of another 200;
  Racial feeling 364

"Rael Christians" 63

Rafts 128

Railway 131-2,144,176,182, 208-9, 217, 243, 250, 251, 395

Rain 74, 137, 190, 285, 312, 345, 390-1 (3);
  Rain making 123, 137-8;
  Ducked figure 123

Rake's progress 317

Ram 343

Rammer 224

Ranks 251, 254

Rape seed 131, 381 (2), 409

Rapids 128;
  Rapid work 317

Rats 150, 185;
  Rat day 126

Ravine 152

Reading 279, 319

Reality 219

"Realm, Wounds of the," 309

Reclaimed land, see Land, new

Recreation and Immorality 149

Red Cross 124, 245

"Red worm" 282

Reed-covered buildings 84

"Reflecting and Examining" 135

Reformers and Bible 95

Reformer "St. Francis" 321

"Regent" 38

Reid, Sir G., 9

Reincarnation 344

Relief, see Kō, Poor, _Tanomoshi_; 189, 241, 258, 264, 311

Religion, see Hokkaido; 27, 63, 108, 120, 135, 140-1, 149, 179, 180,
  200, 202, 203, 212, 258-9, 261, 302, 310, 323, 326, 327, 331, 362;
  and Agriculture 231;
  as Custom 327;
  "the Depths of the People" 93;
  Religious idea, the deepest 100;
  and Morality 259;
  Naturalness 99;
  New 212, 219;
  Primitive 323-4;
  Protecting Science 82;
  Reconciliation of 100;
  Revival 324;
  and Science 201;
  Not limited to Sects or Ideas 101;
  Substitutes for 63;
  and Taxation 212;
  Advantage of Variety 327;
  Western "too high" 259

Remarriage 197

Rembrandt 103, 105

Remoteness 127-8, 249

Rents, see Rice, Paddy; 23, 28-9, 38, 42, 73, 78, 86, 144, 186-7, 301-2

Reprimand, see Admonition, 187

Research work 158

Reservists 123, 133, 215

Residents abroad 410

Resolutions, see Good resolutions

Respect 37, 40, 324

"Responsibility for one's words" 240, 259

"Best after a meal," etc. 315

Restoration 395

Retainer 198

Reunion 313

Reverence 141, 273

"Revolution, Song of," 171

Rewards 213

"_Ri_ away" 58

Rice, see Adjustment, Agriculture, Aqueduct, Barley, Hokkaido,
  Implements under their different names, Irrigation, Millet,
  Normal yield, Paddies, _Ta_, Tunnels, Water;
  123, 127, 264, 268-9, 271, 321, 349, 389;
  Aeration of soil 20;
  America 365-6;
  Areas 132, 182, 193, 382-3 (2), 409;
  Agriculture based on 343;
  Air of rice fields 300;
  Altitude 123;
  "All members of family smiling" 137;
  Appearance 146, 298;
  Adjustment, see Adjustment, story 51;
  Compared with Barley and Wheat 70, 413;
  Barley substituted for 80, 85;
  Beauty of 76;
  _Beri beri_ 79;
  Bowl 80-1;
  Cakes 80;
  California 365-6;
  Ceremonies 50, 82;
  Certificates 185;
  Climate 197, 391;
  Collecting 229;
  Consumption 81, 86, 127, 351, 366, 387;
  Cooking 351;
  Crop 68, 70, 193, 209, 364-5, 387-8, 410;
  Cost of production 383;
  Cultivation 18, 19, 20;
  Daimyo's test 79;
  Dealers 78, 186;
  Deficit 388;
  Disease 207, 238;
  Distance apart 130;
  Dog's food 345;
  Drying 77, 120, 207-8;
  "Ears bend as ripen" 137;
  more Eaten 85;
  Emigration and 363;
  Etiquette, 81;
  Engineering 52;
  Everywhere paddies 121;
  Exports 86, 388;
  Flavour, see Saigon, Rangoon, California, 366, 382, 389;
  Flowering 196, 391;
  Foreign 81;
  Gemmai 79;
  "Girl to boil" 351;
  Goddess 312;
  Glutinous 69, 382-3;
  _Gohei_ 185;
  _Gohan_ 79;
  Government action 48, 86, 390;
  Granary, see Government action;
  _Hakumai_ 79;
  Hand mills 78;
  "Hanging ears" 76;
  _Hantsukimai_ 79;
  Harvest 76, 77, 86, 386;
  Heavy cropping power 70;
  Heroic peasants 51;
  Husking 77, 382-3;
  Imports 86, 136, 351, 388;
  Indigestion 81;
  Insects 74, 201, 250;
  Italy 365-6;
  Japanese v. foreign production 366;
  Kew plants 70;
  Day's labour to produce 1 _chō_ 385;
  Land available 368;
  "Last straw" 77;
  League for Preventing Sales at a Sacrifice 384;
  Licences 185;
  Locusts 20;
  _Mangoku Doshi_ 78;
  Manure, see Manure, 20;
  Market 186;
  Mat for workers 125;
  _Momi_ 79;
  Names, see Varieties, 79, 387;
  and Oatmeal 81-2;
  Ordinary 382-3;
  "Paddy" 69;
  Opening a new Paddy 24;
  Phial of old 40;
  Polishing 78-9 (2), 186;
  Porters 186;
  Prefectures where most is grown 68;
  Prices 85 (2) -6 (2) -7, 351, 383-4, 389, 390;
  Profitable 358;
  Production 351, and population increased 84;
  Prizes at shows 9;
  Qualities, see Varieties, 185;
  Rangoon 388;
  Red 56;
  Rent rice, Inferiority of, see Rent, 23;
  Reservoirs 210;
  Respect for 185;
  Right crop for Japan? 413;
  Riots 87;
  Rotting 76;
  Saigon 366, 388;
  Salt water, Testing with, 30;
  School fees 239;
  Seasons 69;
  Seed 177, 208, 387;
  at Shrine 116 (2), 118;
  Soaking pond 74;
  Soft for Invalids 81;
  Song 83;
  Sowing 386, Direct 387;
  State 84;
  Statistics, see Appendix, 84, 86;
  Storehouses 48, 86, 185;
  at Table 80, 91;
  Tastiness 81;
  for Temple 220;
  Terraces 149;
  Texas 365-6;
  Threshing 77-8, 241;
  Tickets 185;
  Transplanting 20, 386-7;
  Tub 81;
  Two hundred and tenth day 76;
  Uncleaned 382-3;
  Unpolished 78;
  Upland 69 (2), 73, 383;
  U.S. area and crop 366;
  Varieties, see Qualities, 69, 132;
  Weeding 20, 75;
  Weight of Bale 302;
  Wet 76, 77;
  Rice v. Wheat 351;
  Wind 20, 76, 219, 220, 259;
  Winnowing 78, 207;
  Yahagi, Dr., 366;
  Yields 69, 175, 382-3;
    Compared with Increase of Population 389

"Rich are not so rich" 127;
  "Rich cannot remain rich" 67;
  Riches 58;
  "Richer after the fire" 59

Richo 106

Rickets 268

Riding, see Hokkaido; 194

Rifles 151, 282

_Rin_ 191, 211, 271

Ring 128

Riots 87

Rise in prices, see Prices

Rivers, see Hokkaido; 72, 93, 262, 390;
  Beds, see Floods, 111

R.L.S. 189

Roads 122, 128, 130, 194, 219, 224, 240, 246, 287;
  Mending free, 219,
  for Rates, 245

Robbers 195, 225, 277

Robes 2, 270;
  of Honour 187

Rodin, 103

_Roka_ 375

Roman Catholics 141, 362;
  Rome 198

_Ronin_, Forty-seven, 333

_Ron yori shoko_ 343

Roof makers 268;
  Roofs 153

"Room of Patience" 179

Roosevelt 159

Rope, see Straw, 215;
  Making 177;
  Straw (Shinto) 223

Rose 213, 290;
  Rate of growth 242

Rosebery, Lord, 9

Rotation 309

Rothamsted 370

Route plans 18

Rubbish, Production of, 369

_Ruddigore_ 274

Running about 34

Rural, and urban population compared, 364, 412;
  "Bondage" 331;
  Districts' relation to national welfare 369, 370-1;
  Exodus 284;
  Life, Most difficult question in Japan, 303;
  Exhibition 60;
  Aim of Progress 27;
  Rake's progress 60;
  Sociology iv, ix, 85, 192

Rush, see _I_, 410

Russia, see Hokkaido; 194, 328;
  Cruiser 248;
  Novelists 99;
  Prisoners 307;
  War 85, 187, 286, 311;
  Writers 327

Rye 381 (2)


Sacred boat 257;
  Grove 146;
  Sacredness of work 94

Sacrifice 101;
  for father, husband, children, 102

Sacrilege 134

Saddles 269

Sages 108

Saghalien 290, 336, 390-1

Saigon, see Rice

Sailing craft 208-9;
  Ships 235

Sailors 211

Sails, Western for Japanese, 208

St. Francis 106, 321-2

Saints 107

Saitama 107, 146, 309, 313

_Sakaki_ 137

Saké, see Drunkenness; 18, 46, 57, 79, 116 (2), 118-9, 136, 180, 184,
  213, 215, 254-5, 267, 271, 303, 305, 313, 349 (2), 380, 396

Salads dangerous 350

Sale, C.V., xii, 364

Salt 36, 251, 268, 349

Salvation Army, see Hokkaido

Samurai 25, 53, 92, 141, 238, 243, 319, 395;
  Scholar's kakemono 150

Sanitary Committee 123

Sanitation, Western 375

_Sanka_ 110

Sappy growth 368

Sato, Dr., see Hokkaido; 386

Savages 141

Savings 302;
  Bank book 126;
  Collected 230

Saxby 167

Sayings, see Proverbs

Scale 289

Scandinavia 413

Scapegoat 212

Scarecrows 198

Scenery 119, 152;
  Characteristic 244

Schools, see Children, Teachers, Schoolmasters; 15, 41, 113, 144, 212;
  Agricultural 50, 375;
  Influence of 57;
  Attendance 112, 123, 264;
  Barefoot drill 64;
  Boys 38;
  Boys' badges 221;
  Buildings 112-3;
  Care of 112;
  Children (Heights, weights and physique) 404;
  Cleaned by children 112;
  Compulsory attendance 113;
  Co-operative 30;
  Counsels 112, 124;
  Early age of attendance 301;
  Ethics 361;
  Farm 127, 177;
  Fees 239, 264, 314;
  For girls' 47;
  Girls' badge 285;
  Influence of 118;
  Masters, see Teachers, 20, 57, 61, 118, 140;
  Maps 127;
  Military relics 286;
  Morality 149;
  Mottoes 112, 124;
  Order 127;
  Poor 325;
  Portraits 124;
  Pride in 112;
  Punishments 112, 178;
  Rainy days 185;
    in temple 137;
  Truants 285;
  Shrines 113;
  Salutes 286;
  Spartan conditions 50, 307;
  Swedish drill 64;
  Training 169;
  Tree planting 121;
  Vacation for helping with crops 127;
  Winter arrangements 127

Science 369;
  and Religion 82, 201;
  and Farmers 158;
  Scientific truth 206;
  Scientists 100

Scolding 149

Scotland 290, 358

Scott San no Okusan (Mrs. Scott) v

Screen over streets 209

Sculpture 102

Scythe 196, 367, 385

Sea 108, 332;
  Beach sleeping 312;
  Deities and 257;
  Gains from 207;
  Weed 43, 128, 349

Seals 25

Seats 124

Secondary Industries 23, 65, 195, 232, 251, 279, 310, 379, 385

Secret Ploughing Society 311

Sects, see under names of; 149, 212

Seeds, Better, 85, 370;
  "Seed" (silkworm eggs), see Sericulture

Seiho, Takeuchi 344

_Sei-kō U-doku_ 310

_Seishu_ 396

Self affirmation 101;
  Command 280;
  Control 16, 151, 157, 193;
  Denial 101;
  Discipline 301;
  Government 236;
  Realisation 101, 124, 125;
  Respect 16, 369;
  Self supporting but underfed 261

_Self Help_, see Hokkaido; 60, 288

_Semi_ 344

Semi-official 276

_Sencha_ 294, 403

Sendai 118, 198, 268

Seniors and juniors 216

_Sensei_ 12, 202, 300

Sentiment 182, 203;
  Latent 324

_Seppuku_ 54-5, 333

Sericulture, see Factories (Silk), Industry, Silk (below);
  140, 237, 264-5;
  Advantage to Farmers 85;
  Aptitude 153;
  Beef tea 158;
  Books for young men 22;
  Ceremonies 50;
  Cocoons 87, 150, 160, 404,
    (Co-operation 22,
    Killing 22, 159,
    Production and price 397,
    Retardation and Stimulation 397,
    Shape 155,
    Stores 147,
    Where most are produced 153;)
  Co-operation 160;
  Disease 157-8;
  Eggs 150, 153-4, 156-7, 160;
  Feeding 153;
  Girl Collectors 161;
  Hatching 154, 397-8;
  Hard work 153;
  How sericulture districts are distinguishable 153;
  Instruction, capacity for, 158;
  Japan's advantages and disadvantages 397;
  Licences 157;
  Losses 155;
  Mating 155-6;
  Microscopic examination 157;
  Moths 155-6-7;
  Mulberry 157, 397-8;
  Nagano 161;
  New thing 158;
  Prices 157;
  Purification 158;
  Pupæ 158;
  Rearing 154;
  Risks 157;
  Season 397;
  "Seed," see Eggs; Prospects of, 160;
  Quick profits 149;
  Silkworms, 22, 89, 158, 278;
  Science 157-8;
  Soap 158;
  Students 158;
  Temperature 153;
  Wind holes 397;
  Yamanashi 161.
  --Silk 158, 160;
    Artificial 160;
    Clothing 346, 356;
    Consumption 398;
    Export 398;
    Government 398;
    Institutes 150;
    Japanese export compared with other countries 153, 396;
    Machinery 159;
    Prefectures in which grown 146;
    Production 398;
    Rise in prices 87;
    Testing 159;
    U.S.A. 398;
    World market 65

Sermons, see Preaching, 58

Servants 280, 374

Service 319;
  by hosts 31

Sesame 220

Sewing 127

Sex 101, 189, 274, 282

Sexes, see Bath, Bathing; 269, 315;
  Balance of 169;
  Curiosity 101;
  Kept apart 313;
  Ill-doing little concealed 101;
  Numbers of 74;
  Relations of 322;
  Relations, no liberty in, 102;
  Sex life and Japanese cults 97

Shakespearean scenes 31, 276

Shanghai 133

Sheep, see Hokkaido; 240, 343, 347, 352-3-4, 406;
  Bureau 352;
  Day 126;
  Milk 347

Shelley 99

_Shi_ xxvi

Shidzuoka 25, 63, 210, 283, 292, 396

Shiga, Professor, 410

Shikoku 207, 358, 379, 390, 391-2, 402

Shimane 222, 243, 253

Shimoneseki 237

_Shin heimin_ 400

Shingon 134, 211, 220, 269

_Shinjū_ 102

Shinshu 2, 3, 134, 197, 222, 240

Shinto 12, 19, 83, 96, 205 (2), 322, 326;
  Architecture 251;
  Ceremonies 45, 79, 82, 117, 275;
  Deities 244;
  Festival 192, 221;
  Shintoists 91;
  Priests 82-3, 113, 118, 134, 194. 258, 266, 271, 302-3;
  Sects 134;
  Shelf, value of, 273;
  Shrines x, 16, 18, 22, 29, 45, 57, 75, 82, 94, 116, 123, 126,
  130, 144 (2), 147, 186, 205, 220, 244, 251, 259, 263, 264, 266 (3),
  269, 271, 299, 300:
    "The centre of the village" 259;
    Closing of 133-4;
    Produce at 177;
    Seed from 59

Shipping, Foreign, 256

Shirakaba 102

Shirakawa 175

Shrine, see Buddhist shrine, Shinto Shrine; 120 (8), 127, 138, 206,
  211, 219, 236, 237, 245, 256, 324, 326;
  Advertisement of 287;
  and gasometer 286;
  and immorality 257, 307, 325-6;
  Bowls at, 203;
  Communal 315;
  Family 38-40;
  Mothers before 142, 287, 325

_Shōchū_ 396

Shoes, see Boots, 236, 283-4, 45

_Shogun_ 144, 150, 220, 333, 335

_Shōji_, see Hokkaido for Windows; 36, 248, 257, 277, 286

Shonai 182

Shooting 215

Shopkeepers 189, 213;
  Diligent 17;
  With land 267

Shorts, Bathing, 312

Shows, see Rural Life Exhibition; 9, 23, 58, 60, 103, 116, 258

_Shōyū_, see Soy

_Shu_ 334

Shuku 222

Siam 127, 388

Siberia 388, 390, 410

Sick relief 185

Sickles, see Paddies; 196, 227, 363, 385

Sieve 216

"Sight of a good man enough" 24

Signs, Shop, 245

"Silent Trade" 122

Silver 124, 396

Silver Birch Society 102

_Si monumentum_ 31

Simplicity 50, 186;
  of living 38;
  in Old Japan 240, 243

Sincerity 20, 21, 124, 181;
  "On the edge of the mattock" 136

"Sinful man, I am," 26

Singapore 57

Singing 17, 308

Sirens, guns and gods, 237

Sitting 124

Skating 152

Ski-ing 140

Skill 317;
  "Skill in manufacture" 356

"Slave system" 287;
  "Slaves of their husbands" 143

Sledge 183;
  on beach 312

Sleep 25

"Sly" 283

Smallholders' incomes 184;
  Smallholdings, see Farmer;
  and country 368;
  Condition of success 89;
  in Great Britain 368

Smells, see Manure;
  "They smell" 142

Smiling 288, 321

Smoking 137, 142, 258, 288

Smollett 80, 144

Snail 107

Snakes 287;
  Day 126

Snapping turtle 136

Snow, see Hokkaido; 120, 123, 132, 140, 182, 278, 391;
  Shelters 140, 176, 190

Snowdon 394

Soap 158

Social Conditions 88;
  Development 206, 365;
  Ideals 361;
  Intercourse 374, 378;
  Obligation exploited 369;
  Reform and Christianity 362;
  Question, see Hokkaido, 104;
  Status, changes in, 62, 376

Socialism 171, 328;
   League 171

Society 101, 182;
  Restrictions 102;
  Societies 214, 312;
  "For Aiming at being Distinguished" 124;
  "for Developing Knowledge" 124;
  "for Knowledge and Virtue" 124;
  for Rice cultivation by Schoolboys 19;
  for Visiting other Prefectures 189;
  of householders 214;
  of primary school graduates 124;
  to reward virtue 214;
  to console old people 214

Sociologist, A joy to 72;
  Rural 85

Socrates 203

Soda water 130
_Sō desuka?_ 193

Soil 307;
  and farmers' character 25;
  Barren 195;
  Dark 309;
  Improvement of 298;
  Volcanic 309, 313-4

Sojo, Toba 344

Soldiers, see Conscripts; 18, 58, 187;
  farms 311

"Something that doth linger" 145

Son, see Eldest brother;
  Eldest, 329;
  and father 205 (2);
  Son's death 273;
  "Son tiller" 37

_Son_, xxvi, _-chō_ 140
Song 224, 313;
  of insects 344;
  of Revolution 171;
  of rice planters 83;
  Western 288

Sorrow 273

Sosen 344

Soul 321

Soups 110

South America 176, 249, 352, 410;
  South Seas 223

Southend 329

_Soy_ 213, 349, 350, 381 (2), 383;
  Soya bean 146, 295, 409, 411

Spade, see Paddies; 385;
  Farming 362

Spanish 346;
  Spaniards 208

Sparrows 107, 199

Speaking 24, 238;
  Way of, to peasants, 94

Special tribes 221, 241, 248
Speculation 2;
  Speculator and shrine 325

Speech, see Author, Lectures, Speaking; 26, 238, 279;
  Unnecessary 26

Spelling, English, 301

Spiders' big webs 248

Spirea 122

Spirit 50, 61, 67, 100;
  Spirits 130;
  Spirit meeting 36;
  of Japan 323;
  Spiritual betterment 95;
  Dryness 27;
  Spirituality 203, 206, 322-3, 361;
  Why slackened 100

Spitting pot 58, 183

Spontaneity 99

Spraying 290

Spring 214

Squashes 146, 347

Squid, see Cuttlefish, Octopus; 46, 228

Stage, movable, 115;
  Women on, 255

Standard of living, see Living standard; 365, 378-9, 380-1-2;
  and Emigration 363

"Standing on householder's head" 242

"Standing Peasant" 137

Stanhope, Lady Hester, 170

Starr, Dr., 326

State Colonisation 312; Statesmen
  and Industrialism 369

Statistics, see Appendix; 62, 297;
  and Feeling 1;
  Mistakes in 404

Statues 45, 222

Stealing, see Thefts, Crime;
  Boys, 287

Steel 396

Steps 211

Sterilisation 159, 348

Steward's broom, 135

Still births 114, 393

Stockades 132

Stock-keeping, see Hokkaido, 133

Stomach-ache 350 (2), 351

Stones, cutters, 267;
  Memorial 133;
  Pile of 110

Storehouses 48, 86

Storeys 153

Storms 316, 391

Stoves 358

Strachey, J. St. Loe 9

Strategic zone 237

Straw, see Hats, Cloaks, Mantles; 73, 208, 367;
  Rope 65;
  Sleeping in 184;
  Wrappings for trees 215

Stream, Cleaning, 186

Streamers 136

Streets, Narrow, 209, 235

Strindberg 99

Stroking 142

Students 150, 152, 159, 195, 220, 300;
  Abroad 291, 402;
  Character 50;
  Grants to, 403;
  Guild 50;
  Holidays 137;
  Promises to one another 8;
  Sympathetic attitude 254

Sty 27

Subscriptions 281, 314 (2), 315

Subservience 231

Sugar 46, 210, 349 (2), 354, 409

Suicide 55;
  for love 102

Sulphate of ammonia 386;
  Sulphur 109;
  Sulphuric acid water 177

Summer 390

_Sumo_, see Wrestlers

Sun, 126 (2), 372;
  God worship 323;
  Waiting for the, 323;
  Sunshine 76-7, 304;
  "and rice may be found," etc., 109;
  Sunday 126, 159

Sung 105

Superior person 254

Superphosphate 386

Superstition 41, 148 (3), 206, 208, 326

"Surface beautiful" 327

Suspension bridges 126

Suwas 151;
  Suwa Lake 152

Swallows 94, 223

Swamps 199

Swearing 48

Sweat and be saved 169

Swedenborg 99

Sweeping earth 31, 227;
  Symbolical 135

Sweethearts 302

Sweets 17, 19, 267, 346, 383;
  Shop girls 17

Swine, see Pigs
Swiss 290;
  Switzerland 368

Swords 36

Symbolism, Foreign, 127

Sympathy 272-3

Synge, J.M., 99, 282

Syphilis, see Gonorrhœa, 126, 211, 326

System 328

_Ta_ 68

_Tabi_ 312, 317

Table, One long, 95

Tablets 314 (3)

Tabu 117, 235-6, 258

Tacitus 357

Tagore 99

_Tai_ 297

Taiko, 66

_Taisho_ 39

Taiwan, see Formosa

Tajima 402

Takamatsu 209

Takaoka, Professor, 381
Talking foolishly 197;
  "Talking with my wife" 61;
  Talk 201

Taming 248

_Tan_, see Agriculture

Tang 105

Tangerines 289

_Tanomoshi_ 62, 182, 185

Taoist 106

_Taro_ 48, 220, 258, 309, 409

Task, Summons from common, 310

_Tatami_, see Mats; 50, 142, 198, 345

Taxation 46, 65, 73, 85, 124, 176, 180, 284, 302, 307,
  380, 389, 395, 404;
  Voluntary 21;
  Freedom from 43;
    and Religion 212;
  Largest taxpayer 216

Tea 42, 110, 123, 146, 199, 287, 298, 307, 349, 409;
  and cake 258;
  Experiment stations 295;
  Export 403;
  Growing and making 292;
  Prefectures 283, 403;
  Tea Ceremony, see _Cha-no-yu_;
  Houses 2, 19, 57, 130 (2), 149, 264, 277,
  303, 325

Teachers, see Schools, Schoolmasters; 27, 112, 282, 308, 321, 399, 412

Technology xiii, 28

Teeth 143, 321

Teetotalism 255

_Teikoku Nōkai_ 320

Telegraph wire 223

Temper, Better without meat, 268

Temperance, see Teetotalism

Temperature, see Heat; 195, 390-1

Temples, see Buddhist temples, Buddhism; 20, 31, 37, 45, 57-8 (2), 62,
  149, 183, 196, 206, 210, 220, 263-4, 369;
  Bell 331;
  Dues 139, 380;
  Government attitude, 41;
  New, 41;
  Priest's house in 4;
  Services 3;
  Schools 137;
  "Temples, Shrines and English church" 100

Ten years hence, see Time; 100, 324, 357

Tenants, see Agriculture, Hokkaido, Farmers, Landlords;
  37, 42, 152 (2), 189, 194-5, 213, 223, 258, 261, 263, 265, 283,
  301-2, 364, 376, 411;
  as "Labourers" 88, 395;
  Condition of 207, 304-5, 379, 380 (3)-1;
  Contract 405;
  Common interests with landlord 229-30;
  Eating cattle food 379;
  Gifts to landlord 31;
  Movement against landlords, see Tenants' movement (Landlords);
  Rewarded 33, 187;
  Sly 28;
  Transference to Peasant Proprietorship 29-30 (2), 31

Tendai 220

Tenison xiv

Tennis 159

_Tera_ 134

Terauchi 390

Terence 107

Terracing 149, 227

Texas 365-6

Thanks not to be accepted 26

Thatch 153, 281, 286

Theatre 115, 266, 305;
  and Police 53;
  Moving 115;
  Stamp on hands 115

Theft, see Crime; 113, 139, 195, 280 (2)

Theine 292, 403

Theology 362; Natural 141

Thermometer 137

"They feel the mercy of the sun" 321

"Thirteen a perilous age" 130

Thistles 307

Thompson, Francis, 99

"Those who suffer learn," etc., 253

"Thou also dwellest," 106

"Though hands and feet," etc., 324

Thought changes really slow 331

Threshing 208, 367;
  Machinery, 78

Threshold 242

Thrift 11, 12, 13, 30-1, 48, 50, 60-1, 124, 187

Thunderbolts 131

Thyme 290

Tidal waves 62, 93

Tidiness 19

Tiger-day 126

Tiles 153, 245

Timber 111, 122, 128, 194, 227

Time, see Ten years hence; 252, 292

Tintoretto 103

"Tipped with fire" 27

Tipping 145, 148

Toast 80

Tobacco 177, 267, 349, 379, 380, 400

Tochigi 107, 309

Toes 317

_Tōfu_ 81, 311, 349, 350

_Tokobashira_, see Tree in room

_Tokonoma_ 32, 319

Tokugawa Iyesato, Prince, x;
  Tokugawa period 8, 285, 363

_Tokushu buraku_ 400

Tokushima 207, 209

Tokyo xxvi, 26, 38, 55, 66, 71-2, 102, 107, 144, 182, 227, 249, 260,
  286, 289, 292, 299, 309, 313, 318, 322, 331, 334, 349, 387, 391 (2);
  Population 392;
  University 145

Tolstoy, see Hokkaido; 25, 27, 94, 200, 321, 327

Tombstones 72

"Too near to criticise" 331;
  "Too poetical" 254

Tools, see Paddies, Implememts; 174, 222, 301, 317

Top, Movement from, 30, 204

_Torii_ 236, 251, 325

Torrens 170

Tottori 253, 255, 402

Tourist steamers 237

Towels 16, 31, 148, 183, 286, 295

Town life, True character of, 180;
  Townsman envied 180;
  Townsman v. Countryman 233

Toyama 132, 138

_Toyo-ashiwara_, etc., 68

_Trachoma_ 183, 405

Trade Unions, see Labour;
  U.S. and 170;
  Tradesmen 189;
  Tradesmen's boys 315

Tradition, Family, 149

Traherne, 99

Training, Home, 149

Tramps 315, 376

_Transactions of Society of Arts_, see Asiatic; 364

Translations 401

Travel, see Trips; 216, 269;
  Counsel 110;
  Old time 246;
  Postgraduate 29

Trees, see Varieties of, under names, 62, 147, 227, 316;
  Cutting down 13;
  Dwarfed 52;
  Homesteads studded 146, 307;
  in the house 319;
  Moving 210;
  Mushrooms 110;
  Planting, see Afforestation, 45, 67, 121, 240;
  in Room 319;
  Symbolical 12, 121;
  Pictures 215;
  Trimmed 77;
  in Winter 215

"Tremble and correct their conduct" 113

Trips 18

Troubler of Israel 90

Trousers 111, 269, 310, 312

Truth 161

Tsingtao 58

Tsushima 248, 335

Tuberculosis 398, 406

Tunnels 52, 132, 149, 152, 176, 190, 197

Tumours 268

Turnips 410

Twelve hours' day, U.S. and, 170

Types (Racial) 204

Typhoons 93

Tytler 207

Uchimura, Kanz=o, see also Hokkaido; 90-7, 99, 101, 141, 326-7, 362

Ueda Sericulture College 158-9

Umbrellas 198, 250, 285

Unclean 208

Undercooking 350

Underfeeding 350

Understanding, see West and East

Uninhabitable, see also Area habitable; 394;
  compared with Great Britain 394

United States 328, 388;
  and British Interests in Far East xv;
  and Japan xv;
  Government xiv;
  and twelve hours' day 170;
  Steel Corporation 170

Universe 7, 321

Universities 300, 403

Unmarried 393

Unworldliness 28
Upland, see also Rice; 372;
  _Hata_ 68;
  Area 385;
  Area ploughed by cattle 385;
  Profit of 194;
  Value of 402

Upper class reformers 30

Usury 38, 56, 176, 184, 185

_Uta_ 324

Utilisation of waste, see Waste; 48


Vacation, see Schools

_Valerius_ 45

Valleys 372

Van Eyck 103

Van Gogh 103

Vaughan 99

Veal 349

Vegetable protein 348-9

Vegetables 18, 85, 307, 349 (2), 389;
  at Shrine 16, 83;
  Salted 196

Vegetarianism 57, 59, 130, 147, 270, 321, 348

Venus 214

Vetch 263

Veterinary surgeon 268

Views 119

Village activities 250;
  Association for promoting morality 20;
  Callings 189;
  Cleaning stream 186;
  Conditions 322;
  Discords 305;
  Founders 265;
  Funds 124, 279;
  Histories 57;
  Ideal 104;
  Improvement of 28;
  Library 59;
  Mobilisation 241;
  Meetings 20, 278;
  Model 259, 380;
  Number of Houses in 262;
  Office 314;
  Praised and rewarded 41;
  Reformed 47;
  Return to 88;
  Revenue 124;
  Signs of being well off 263-4;
  Signs of good 259;
  Tax free 21;
  Troubles 278;
  Unified by removal of graves 72;
  Wanted one good personality in 259;
  Villagers, not educated enough to understand, 26, 341;
    Savings 230;
    Taxes in work 245;
  Worthy 22

Village Agricultural Association 22-3, 30, 215, 250, 303, 380

Village assembly 123, 133, 215
Villages, see Famine, Revenue, Sanitary Committee, Societies, Taxation;
  xxvi, 16, 18, 43, 134

Vine branches 209

Virtue, see Morality; 140;
  Supreme 120;
  Taught by hands 50

Vladivostok 214

Voelcker, Dr., 370

"Voice of one," etc., 136
Volcanic ash 70;
  Eruption grants 312;
  Soil 309, 313

Volcanoes, see Earthquakes, Hokkaido; 108, 131, 143, 316, 390, 394

Voters, see Franchise; 124, 400

Votive pillars 211;
  clock 252

Vow 255

Vulgar words 18

Waist string 307

Waitresses 212, 315, 322, 376;
  and Foreigners 101

Waley, A., 320

"Walking out" 313, 315

Wall builders 267;
  Wall charts 124

Wallace, Robert, viii

Wallas, Graham, 86

War 203, 311, 354, 414;
  and this book xxv, 87-8;
  Bonds 187;
  China 85;
  Counsels 187;
  Great War x, 206;
  Russia, see Russia, 21, 85, 91

_Waraji_ 15, 129, 209, 272, 279, 326

Washing 45, 317, 354;
  Washouts 182

Waste 70, 324, 385;
  of time xi;
  Planting of, see Afforestation;
  Utilisation of 48, 178

Wastrels, see Hokkaido

_Watakushi_ 301

Watchword 259

Water 64, 126, 132-3, 262, 298-9, 390;
  Colours 286;
  Dangerous 108, 350;
  "Water drinker" 258;
  Hot piped 248;
  Pollution 350;
  On roof 177;
  Wheels 216, 263;
  Splashing quarrels 48;
  Works 52

Wax and trees 219, 400, 410

Weather, see Climate; 86, 136, 391

Weddings, see Marriages; 66, 265, 302, 332, 379;
  Tax 21

Weeds, see Paddies; 228, 263, 307, 314, 366, 385;
  "Weeding in happiness" 137

Week 126

"Weep not," etc., 224;
  Weeping 25

Weights 350, 404;
  Lifting 16;
  and Measures xxv

Welcome tea 148

Well off 204, 264 (2), 370

Wells 27, 207

Wells, H.G., viii

West and East, Elemental things 6;
  Glamour 369;
  Importance of problem vii;
  Real barrier xii
Western art 102;
  Costumes 101;
  Dancing 101;
  Civilisation 186;
  Eroticism 101;
  Ideas 201;
  Influence 174, 330, 369;
  Literature 102;
  Music 102;
  Painting 102;
  Philosophy 102;
  Sculpture 102;
  Thought 55

Wet, see Climate

"What a happy life" 183

Wheat 307, 351 (2), 381 (2), 391, 409-10;
  Compared with Rice 351, 383;
  Imports 383

Whitman, Walt, 99 (2), 105

"Why do you wear," etc., 288;
  "Why fasten your horse," etc., 288

Widows 111, 197

Wild people 110

_Wilkstroemia Sikokiana_, see Gampi

Will 19, 314

Windbreaks 248;
  Mills 152, 251;
  and Taxes 259

Windows 358

Winnowing 215, 220

Winter 278, 282, 390, 413;
  Crop 384-5-6

Wisdom or Riches 61

Wit 191

Wives, see Marriage, Wedding; 143;
  "Please teach her" 6

Women, see Farmers' wives, Nurses, Paddies, Porters, Teachers, Wives;
  34, 205, 212;
  Barbers 224;
  British Exploitation of 170;
  Carriage of 268;
  Children on back 97;
  Women's Chivalrous Society 312;
  Clothing 125;
  Cooking 136;
  Crime against 114, 229;
  on dam and dyke 43, 224;
  Diseases 268;
  Exploitation of 173;
  Fisher women 235;
  Individualism 102;
  Influence of Christianity 94 (2), 95;
  Kindness 31;
  Labourers 323;
  Women's Movement 290;
  and Men 102, 169, 290;
  New openings for 255;
  Number of Workers 168-9, 399;
  One Heart Society 312;
  Overworked 114;
  Press 181;
  Praying 243;
  and Priest 4;
  Priest 120;
  Primitive conditions 216, 247;
  Obstacles to Agricultural progress 232;
  Public life 300;
  Same implements as husband 97;
  Savings not used by men 126;
  Story of old woman 323;
  Religious Association 58;
  Self-suppression 290;
  Strength 269;
  Suffering 181, 290;
  Trousers, see Trousers, 111;
  compared with Western 290;
  Western costumes 101;
  Wives, see Wives, 293;
  Work 278

Wood 110, 126, 196, 372;
  Cutters 267;
  Divided up, Result, 306;
  and Grain crops 309;
  Preservation 227;
  Quantity needed 111;
  Utensils 121;
  Wealth of 122;
  Workers 121;
  White (Shinto) 46, 83

Wool 133, 346, 352-3-4-5-6-7;
  v. Cotton and Silk 356;
  Woollen factories compared with English 354-7;
  Industry 354-5-6-7, 407

Woolman, John, vi

Work, for common good 19;
  to Gain influence 321;
  Good 317;
  Hard 125, 284;
  "Make the young fellows" 259;
  Sacredness of 94;
  Workers 218, City 87-8;
  Workmen good 317

World, Attitude, 371;
  Better world 90, 202

Worship 141, 244, 271, 324, 326

"Would that my daughter," etc. 183

"Wounds of the realm" 309

Wren 31

Wrens 287

Wrestlers 16, 28, 108, 179, 196, 249, 276, 316, 404

Wrist development 16

Writing 17, 288, 311;
  "Penmanship is like," etc., 288


Yahagi, Dr., 366

Yam 258

Yamagata 175, 176, 182, 189, 193, 302, 380

Yamaguchi 235, 237

Yamanashi 146

Yamasaki, N., 11, 17, 25, 37, 47, 51, 54, 63, 375

_Yamato damashii_ ix, 140

Yamato Society 413

Yanagi, M., 98-106, 326-7;
  Mrs. 99

Yangtse 390

_Yashiki_ (mansion) 369

_Yashiro_ 134

Yeats, W.B., 99

Yeddo, see Tokyo, Yezo; 144, 335

Yields, see Agriculture, Crops and names of

Y.M.A. 7, 15 _et seq._, 22, 23, 28, 46, 120 (2), 124, 126, 128,
  178, 194, 197, 212, 215, 223, 239, 265, 286;
  Criticism of 259, 277 (2), 282, 303;
  Official action 240;
  Y.M.C.A. 15;
  Y.W.A. 19;
  Y.W.C.A. 15

_Yo_ 126

_Yofuku_, see Foreign clothes

Yokohama 182, 392

Yokoi, Dr., 362

_Yoroshii_ 280

Yoshida, S., 332

Yosōgi 66

Young, Arthur, ix

Young men 135, 181;
  and Women, see Sexes, 313;
  with a mission 324

_Yukata_ 108, 356


_Zabuton_ 34, 143, 246, 258

Zeeland 197

_Zen_ 11, 100, 130, 134, 144, 186, 193, 245, 313

Zig-zag tracks 140

_Zori_ 65, 236

Zorn 327


[Compiler's Notes

The following typographical errors or inconsistencies were corrected:
Page xv (Introduction), 315: The name Kanzō Uchimura did not have a
macron over the o, but it did in the index and two other locations
in the text, and it was confirmed from another source, so the macrons
were edited in.
Page xv (Introduction): The term 'kōri' (division of a prefecture)
did not have the macron, but it did in the index; also confirmed
from another source, so put the macron character in.
In four places, the term 'gunchō' (head of a county) did not
have a macron over the o, but in five other places, it did,
so I have edited the word on pages 51, 52, and 56, and in the index.
Page 55: Changed 'familar' to 'familiar'.
Page 125: The term 'jizō' did not have a macron over the o,
but it did in another location and in the index, so I edited it.
Page 226: Changed 'instal' to 'install'.
Page 315: The term 'kakkō' (cuckoo) did not have a macron over the o,
but it did in the index, and I determined from another
source that it should have the macron, so I edited it.
Index: various hyphenated words did not have hyphens in the index
entries, edited in the hyphens.
Index: Entry for 'Cimabue' should not have accented e (confirmed
from another source) so corrected it.
Index: Entry for 'furoshiki' had two i's at the end; confirmed with
another source it should only have one i at the end; corrected.
Index: Entry for 'genshitsu' was mis-spelled, confirmed from another
source, corrected.
Index: Entry for phrase 'Getsu-yo-bi' was mis-spelled, obvious from
the text in the book, so corrected.
Index: phrase 'Okunitama-no-miko-no-kami mis-spelled, corrected.'
Index: entry for phrase 'Sei-kō U-doku' did not have a macron but in
the book it did, so edited the index entry.
Index: entry for phrase 'Tokushu buraku' was mis-spelled, confirmed
from another source, corrected.
Index: entry for word 'yofuku' had macron over the o here, but not
anywhere in the book, so it was made consistent by using a normal o.
Index: The name 'Yosōgi' had the macron over the first o instead of
the second one, inconsistent with the other index listing and the
chapter text, so the index entry was corrected. The Chapter title
does not use a macron at all, and has been left as printed.
Index: Entry for 'Yukata' should not have a macron on the u - verified
this from another source, made correction.]




End of Project Gutenberg's The Foundations of Japan, by J.W. Robertson Scott



*** END OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN ***


    

Updated editions will replace the previous one—the old editions will
be renamed.

Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
States without permission and without paying copyright
royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG™
concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
and may not be used if you charge for an eBook, except by following
the terms of the trademark license, including paying royalties for use
of the Project Gutenberg trademark. If you do not charge anything for
copies of this eBook, complying with the trademark license is very
easy. You may use this eBook for nearly any purpose such as creation
of derivative works, reports, performances and research. Project
Gutenberg eBooks may be modified and printed and given away—you may
do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks not protected
by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the trademark
license, especially commercial redistribution.


START: FULL LICENSE

THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE

PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK

To protect the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting the free
distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg”), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
Project Gutenberg™ License available with this file or online at
www.gutenberg.org/license.

Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project Gutenberg™
electronic works

1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg™
electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in your
possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
Project Gutenberg™ electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the person
or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph 1.E.8.

1.B. “Project Gutenberg” is a registered trademark. It may only be
used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
Gutenberg™ electronic works if you follow the terms of this
agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg™
electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.

1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation (“the
Foundation” or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works. Nearly all the individual
works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
that you will support the Project Gutenberg™ mission of promoting
free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg™
works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
Project Gutenberg™ name associated with the work. You can easily
comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg™ License when
you share it without charge with others.

1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
other Project Gutenberg™ work. The Foundation makes no
representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
country other than the United States.

1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:

1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg™ License must appear
prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg™ work (any work
on which the phrase “Project Gutenberg” appears, or with which the
phrase “Project Gutenberg” is associated) is accessed, displayed,
performed, viewed, copied or distributed:

    This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
    other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
    whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms
    of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online
    at www.gutenberg.org. If you
    are not located in the United States, you will have to check the laws
    of the country where you are located before using this eBook.
  
1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is
derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase “Project
Gutenberg” associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg™
trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg™ electronic work is posted
with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
will be linked to the Project Gutenberg™ License for all works
posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
beginning of this work.

1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg™
License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg™.

1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
Gutenberg™ License.

1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg™ work in a format
other than “Plain Vanilla ASCII” or other format used in the official
version posted on the official Project Gutenberg™ website
(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original “Plain
Vanilla ASCII” or other form. Any alternate format must include the
full Project Gutenberg™ License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.

1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg™ works
unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.

1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
access to or distributing Project Gutenberg™ electronic works
provided that:

    • You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
        the use of Project Gutenberg™ works calculated using the method
        you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
        to the owner of the Project Gutenberg™ trademark, but he has
        agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
        within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
        legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
        payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
        Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
        Section 4, “Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
        Literary Archive Foundation.”
    
    • You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
        you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
        does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg™
        License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
        copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
        all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg™
        works.
    
    • You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
        any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
        electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
        receipt of the work.
    
    • You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
        distribution of Project Gutenberg™ works.
    

1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work or group of works on different terms than
are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
from the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the manager of
the Project Gutenberg™ trademark. Contact the Foundation as set
forth in Section 3 below.

1.F.

1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
Gutenberg™ collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
contain “Defects,” such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
cannot be read by your equipment.

1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the “Right
of Replacement or Refund” described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
Gutenberg™ trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
Gutenberg™ electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
DAMAGE.

1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
without further opportunities to fix the problem.

1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you ‘AS-IS’, WITH NO
OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.

1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
remaining provisions.

1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
providing copies of Project Gutenberg™ electronic works in
accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg™
electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
or any Project Gutenberg™ work, (b) alteration, modification, or
additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg™ work, and (c) any
Defect you cause.

Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg™

Project Gutenberg™ is synonymous with the free distribution of
electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
from people in all walks of life.

Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg™’s
goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg™ collection will
remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
and permanent future for Project Gutenberg™ and future
generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at www.gutenberg.org.

Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation

The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non-profit
501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
Revenue Service. The Foundation’s EIN or federal tax identification
number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
U.S. federal laws and your state’s laws.

The Foundation’s business office is located at 809 North 1500 West,
Salt Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up
to date contact information can be found at the Foundation’s website
and official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact

Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
Literary Archive Foundation

Project Gutenberg™ depends upon and cannot survive without widespread
public support and donations to carry out its mission of
increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
freely distributed in machine-readable form accessible by the widest
array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
status with the IRS.

The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular state
visit www.gutenberg.org/donate.

While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
approach us with offers to donate.

International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.

Please check the Project Gutenberg web pages for current donation
methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate.

Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg™ electronic works

Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
Gutenberg™ concept of a library of electronic works that could be
freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
distributed Project Gutenberg™ eBooks with only a loose network of
volunteer support.

Project Gutenberg™ eBooks are often created from several printed
editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
edition.

Most people start at our website which has the main PG search
facility: www.gutenberg.org.

This website includes information about Project Gutenberg™,
including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.