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 cho.

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 sho[27] of rice to each tenant's 3 sho.

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."



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."



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 aesthetic 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 kyogen[29] by distinguished amateurs, one of whom, a neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared before the Emperor. After the plays he painted kyogen 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 sho 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 No 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 cho 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 cho 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 cho 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 sake 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.



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.



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—judo (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 guncho (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 guncho, "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 cho 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 guncho 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 sake. 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 cho 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 go of seed rice makes only about .5 go 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.



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."



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 cho 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 Yosogi. 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.



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].