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 Kofu 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.



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 guncho 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 -cho 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 sake.

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 cho 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 sake 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 ko may be adopted. A ko—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 ko. A ko 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 ko 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 ko, 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 ame[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 sake is drunk." Farmers come in to Morioka to sell charcoal and wood and I saw some of them turning into the sake 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.



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 aestheticism."

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."