The most interesting feature of the meeting was old pupils' grateful recollections of Hearn, the middle-school teacher. The gathering was held in a room belonging to the town library in the prefectural grounds, but neither the Governor nor the mayor was present. A sympathetic speech was made by a chance visitor to the town, the secretary-general to the House of Peers. He recalled the antagonism which the young men at Tokyo University, himself among them, felt towards the odd figure of Hearn—he had a terribly strained eye and wore a monocle—when he became a professor, and how very soon he gained the confidence and regard of the class.

I had often wondered that there was no Japanese memorial to Hearn, and when I rose to speak I said so. I added that it was rare to meet a Japanese who had any understanding of how much Hearn had done in forming the conception of Japan possessed by thousands of Europeans and Americans. The fault in so many books about Japan, I went on, was not that their "facts" were wrong. What was wrong was their authors' attitude of mind. I had heard Japanese say that Hearn was "too poetical" and that some of his inferences were "inaccurate." That was as might be. What mattered was that the mental attitude of Hearn was so largely right. He did not approach Japan as a mere "fact" collector or as a superior person. What he brought to the country was the humble, studious, imaginative, sympathetic attitude; and it was only by men and women of his rare type that peoples were interpreted one to the other.

In that free-and-easy way in which meetings are conducted in Japan it was permissible for us to leave after another speech had been made. The proceedings were interrupted while the promoters of the gathering showed us a collection of books and memorials of Hearn, arranged under a large portrait, and accompanied us to the door of the hall. I do not recall during the time I was in Japan any other public gathering in honour of Hearn, and I met several prominent men who had either never heard his name or knew nothing of the far-reaching influence of his books. But some months after this Matsue meeting there was included among the Coronation honours a posthumous distinction for Hearn—"fourth rank of the junior grade."[192]

During this journey I attended a dinner of officials and leading agriculturists and had the odd sensation of making a short after-dinner speech on my knees. At such a dinner the guests kneel on cushions ranged round the four walls of the room, and each man has a low lacquer table to himself, and a geisha to wait on him. When the geisha is not bringing in new dishes or replenishing the sake bottle, she kneels before the table and chatters entertainingly. The governors of the feast visit the guests of honour and drink with them. In the same way a guest drinks with his neighbour and with his attendant geisha. I have a vivid memory of a grave and elderly dignitary who at the merry stage of such a function capered the whole length of the room with his kneeling-cushion balanced on the top of his head. There is a growing temperance movement in Japan but a teetotaller is still something of an oddity. My abstinence from sake was frequently supposed to be the result of a vow.

Although the average geisha may be inane in her patter and have little more than conventional grace and charm, I have been waited on by girls who added real mental celerity, wit and a power of skilful mimicry to that elusive and seductive quality that accounts for the impregnable position of their class. At one dinner impersonations in both the comic and the tragic vein were given by a girl of unmistakable genius. Frequently a plain, elderly geisha will display unsuspected mimetic ability. Alas, behind the merry laugh and sprightliness of the girls who adorn a feast lurks a skeleton. One is haunted by thoughts of the future of a large proportion of these butterflies. No doubt most foreigners generalise too freely in identifying the professions of geisha and joro. In the present organisation of society some geisha play a legitimate role. They gain in the career for which they have laboriously trained an outlet for the expression of artistic and social gifts which would have been denied them in domestic life. At the same time the degrading character of the life led by many geisha cannot be doubted. Apart from every other consideration the temptation to drink is great. The opening of new avenues to feminine ability, the enlarged opportunities of education and self-respect and the increasing opening for women on the stage—from which women have been excluded hitherto—must have their effect in turning the minds of girls of wit and originality to other means of earning a living than the morally and physically hazardous profession of the geisha.

When we left Matsue by steamer on our way to Tottori prefecture I saw middle-school eights at practice. An agriculturist told me of the custom of giving holidays to oxen and horses. The villagers carefully brush their animals, decorate them and lead them to pastures where, tethered to rings attached to a long rope, "they may graze together pleasantly." One of the islands we visited bore the name of the giant radish, Daikon, which is itself a corruption of the word for octopus. The island devoted itself mainly to the growing of peonies and ginseng. The ginseng is largely exported to China and Korea, but there is a certain consumption in Japan. Ginseng is sometimes chewed, but is generally soaked, the liquid being drunk. Ginseng is popularly supposed to be an invigorant, and Japanese doctors in Korea have lately declared that it has some value. The root is costly, hence the proverb about eating ginseng and hanging oneself, i.e. getting into debt.

In walking across the island I passed a forlorn little shrine. It was merely a rough shed with a wide shelf at the back, on which stood a row of worn and dusty figures, decked with the clothes of children whose recovery was supposed to have been due to their influence. It was raining and the shelter was full of children playing in the company of an old crone with a baby on her back. Further on in the village I came across a new public bath. The price of admission was one sen, children half price.

A small port was pointed out to me as being open to foreign trade. Everybody is not aware that in Japan there is a restriction upon foreign shipping except at sixty specified places.[193] The reason given for the restriction is the unprofitableness of custom houses at small places. One day, perhaps, the world will wake up to the inconvenience and financial burden imposed by the custom-house system of raising revenue.

We stayed the night at a little place at the eastern extremity of the Shimane promontory where there is a shrine and no cultivation of any sort is allowed "for fear of defilement." Waste products are taken away by boat. I marked a contrast between theoretical and practical holiness. Our inn overlooked a special landing-place where, because a "sacred boat" from the shrine is launched there, a notice had been put up forbidding the throwing of rubbish into the sea. A few minutes after the board had been pointed out to me I saw an old man cast a considerable mass of rubbish into the water not six feet away from it. When we visited the shrine three pilgrims were at their devotions. The next morning when our steamer left and the chief priest of the shrine was bidding us adieu my attention was attracted by loud conversation in the second storey of an inn, the shoji of which were open. Our pilgrims, two of whom were bald, had spent the night at an inn of bad character and were now in the company of prostitutes in the sight of all men. One pilgrim had a girl on his knee, another was himself on a girl's knee and a third had his arm round a girl's neck. In this "sacred" place of 2,000 inhabitants there were forty "double license" girls, five being natives. A few years ago all the girls were natives. A "double license" girl means one who is licensed both as a geisha and a prostitute. The plan of issuing "double licenses" is adopted at Kyoto and elsewhere. As to the pilgrims to whom I have referred, someone quoted to me the saying, "It is only half a pilgrimage going to the shrine without seeing the girls."

Returning to the custom of launching a sacred boat it is not without significance that many Japanese deities have some connection with the sea. Even in the case of the deities of shrines a long way from the sea the ceremony of "going down to the sea" is sometimes observed. Sand and sea water are sent for in order to be mixed with the water used to cleanse the car in which the figure of the deity is drawn through the streets.

The social and financial position of tenants was illustrated by an incident at an inn. As the maid came from the country I asked her if her father were a tenant or an owner. My companion interrupted to tell me that the question was not judiciously framed because the girl would "think it a disgrace to own that her father was a tenant." The name of a tenant used long ago to be "water drinker." This waiting-maid was a good-looking and rather clever girl. I was dismayed when my friend told me that she had said to him quite simply that she had thoughts of becoming a joro. She thought it would be a "more interesting life."

When we reached Tottori prefecture we found ourselves in a country which grows more cotton than any other. Japanese cotton (grown on about 400 cho) is unsuitable for manufacture into thread, but because of its elasticity is considered to be valuable for the padding of winter clothing and for futon and zabuton. Their softness is maintained by daily sunning.

At a county office I noted that the persons who were receiving relief were classified as follows: Illness, 26; cripples, 17; old age, 16; schoolboys, 12; infancy, 1.

In the course of our journey a Shinto priest was pointed out to me as observing the priestly taboo by refusing tea and cake. I noticed, however, that he smoked. I was told that when he was in Tokyo he purified himself in the sea even in midwinter. I did not like his appearance. Nor for the matter of that was I impressed by the countenances of some Buddhist priests I encountered in the train from time to time. "Thinking always of money," someone said. But every now and again I saw fine priestly faces.

I have noted down very little in regard to the crops and the countryside in Tottori. Things seemed very much the same as I had seen in Shimane. At an agricultural show in the city of Tottori the varieties of yam and taro were so numerous as to deceive the average Westerner into believing that he was seeing the roots of different kinds of plants. A feature of the show was a large realistic model of a rice field with two life-size figures.

In the evening I talked with two distinguished men until a late hour. "We are not a metaphysical people," one of them said. "Nor were our forefathers as religious as some students may suppose. Those who went before us gave to the Buddhist shrine and even worshipped there, but their daily life and their religion had no close connection. We did not define religion closely. Religion has phases according to the degree of public instruction. Our religion has had more to do with propitiation and good fortune than with morality. If you had come here a century ago you would have been unable to find even then religion after another pattern. If it be said that a man must be religious in order to be good the person who says so does not look about him. I am not afraid to say that our people are good as a result of long training in good behaviour. Their good character is due to the same causes as the freedom from rowdiness which may be marked in our crowds."

"What is wanted in the villages," said the other personage, "is one good personality in each." I said that the young men's association seemed to me to be often a dull thing, chiefly indeed a mechanism by means of which serious persons in a village got the young men to work overtime. "Yes," was the response, "the old men make the young fellows work."

The first speaker said that there had been three watchwords for the rural districts. "There was Industrialisation and Increase of Production. There was Public Spirit and Public Welfare. There was The Shinto Shrine the Centre of the Village. We have a certain conception of a model village, but perhaps some hypocrisy may mingle with it. They say that the village with well-kept Buddhist and Shinto shrines is generally a good village."

"In other words," I ventured, "the village where there is some non-material feeling."

The rejoinder was: "Western religion is too high, and, I fear, inapplicable to our life. It may be that we are too easily contented. But there are nearly 60 millions of us. I do not know that we feel a need or have a vacant place for religion. There is certainly not much hope for an increase of the influence of Buddhism."

As we went along in the train I was told that on a sixth of the rice area in Tottori there had been a loss of 70 per cent. by wind. When a man's harvest loss exceeds this percentage he is not liable for rates and taxes. A passenger told me about "nursery pasture." This is a patch of grass in the hills to which a farmer sends his ox to be pastured in common with the oxen of other farmers under the care of a single herdsman. It is from cattle keeping on this modest scale that the present beef requirements of the country are largely met.[194]

Although the opinions expressed to me by Governors of prefectures have been frequently recorded in these pages, I have not felt at liberty to identify more than one of the Excellencies who were good enough to express their views to me. A friend who knew many Governors offered me the following criticism, which I thought just: "They are too practical and too much absorbed in administration to be able to think. Often they read very little after leaving the university. They have seldom anything to tell you about other than ordinary things, and they seldom show their hearts. You cannot learn much from Governors who have nothing original to say or are fearful or live in their frock coats or do not mean to show half their minds or are practising the old official trick of talking round and round and always evading the point. One fault of Governors is that they are being continually transferred from prefecture to prefecture. You have no doubt yourself noticed how often Governors were new to their prefectures. But with all the faults that our Governors have, there are not a few able, good and kind men among them and they are not recruited from Parliament but must be members of the Civil Service. One of the most common words in our political life is genshitsu, 'responsibility for one's own words.' If Governors fear to assume the responsibility of their own views they are only of a part with a great deal of the official world."

We turned away from the northern sea coast and struck south in order to cross Japan to the Inland Sea en route for Kobe and Tokyo.

As we came through Hyogo prefecture my companion pointed to hill after hill which had been afforested since his youth. One of the things which interested me was the number and the tameness of the kites which were catching frogs in the paddies.

Before I left Hyogo I had the advantage of a chat with one who for many years past had thought about the rural situation in Japan generally. He spoke of "the late Professor King's idealising of the Japanese farmer's condition." He went on: "While King laid stress on the ability to be self-supporting on a small area he ignored the extent to which many rural people are underfed. The change in the Meiji era has been a gradual transference from ownership to tenancy. Many so-called representative farmers have been able to add field to field until they have secured a substantial property and have ceased to be farmers. An extension of tenancy is to be deplored, not only because it takes away from the farmer a feeling of independence and of incentive, but because it creates a parasitic class which in Japan is perhaps even more parasitic than in the West. A landowner in the West almost invariably realises that he has certain duties. In Japan a landowner's duties to his neighbourhood and to the State are often imperfectly understood.

"On the other hand the position of the farmer has been very much improved socially. A great deal of pity bestowed by the casual foreign visitor is wasted. The farmer is accustomed to extremes of heat and cold and to a bare living and poor shelter. And after all there is a great deal of happiness in the villages. It is hardly possible to take a day's kuruma ride without coming on a festival somewhere, and drunkenness has undoubtedly diminished."

I spoke with an old resident about the agricultural advance in the prefecture. "In fifteen years," he said, "our agricultural production has doubled. As to the non-material condition of the people, generally speaking the villagers are very shallow in their religion. Not so long ago officials used to laugh at religion, but I don't know that some of them are not now changing their point of view. Some of us have thought that, just as we made a Japanese Buddhism, we might make a Japanese Christianity which would not conflict with our ideas."

FOOTNOTES:

[192] This is, I am officially informed, the highest rank ever bestowed on a foreigner; but then Hearn was naturalised. In 1921 an appreciation of "Koizumi Yakumo" was included by the Department of Education in a middle-school textbook. Curiously enough, the fact that Hearn married a Japanese is overlooked. Owing to the fact that Hearn bought land in Tokyo which has appreciated in value his family is in comfortable circumstances.

[193] Coastwise traffic is also forbidden to foreign vessels, as is traffic between France and Algeria to other than French vessels.

[194] See Appendix LIII.



TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE

CHAPTER XXX

THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS

(NAGANO)

The condition of the lower orders is the true mark.—JOHNSON

The Buddhist temple in which I lived for about two months stands on high ground in a village lying about 2,500 ft. above sea-level in the prefecture of Nagano and does not seem to have been visited by foreigners. It is reached by a road which is little better than a track. No kuruma are to be found in the district, but there are a few light two-wheeled lorries. Practically all the traffic is on horseback or on foot. There is a view of the Japanese Alps and of Fuji.

Running through the village[195] is a river. Most of the summer it may be crossed by stepping stones, but the width of the rocky bed gives some notion of the volume of water which pours down after rains and on the melting of the snow. Two or three miles up from the village a considerable amount of water is drawn off into two channels which have been dug, one on either side of the river, at a gentler slope than that at which the stream flows. The rapid fall of the river is indicated by the fact that these channels reach the village more than 100 ft. above the level at which the river itself enters it. The channels, cut as they have been through sharply sloping banks packed with boulders and big stones, and strengthened throughout by banking, in order to cope as far as possible with the torrents which rage down the hillside in winter, represent a vast amount of communal labour. By the side of each channel the excavated earth and stones have been used to make a path for pack horses. The water which comes down these channels serves not only for the ordinary uses of the village but for irrigating the rice fields and for driving the many water wheels, the plashing and groaning of which are heard night and day.



The whole area of the oaza is officially recorded as 800 cho, but the real area may be double, or even more than that. About 40 per cent. is cultivated either as paddy or as dry land. The remaining 60 per cent., from which 18 cho may be deducted for house land, is under grass and wood. Half of this grass and woodland belongs to the oaza and half to private persons. The grass is mostly couch grass and weeds. In places there is a certain amount of clover and vetch. Of the 200 families, numbering about 1,700 people, less than a dozen are tenants. Of the others, a third cultivate their own land and hire some more. The remaining two-thirds cultivate their own land and hire none. The outstanding crop beyond rice is mulberry. A considerable amount of millet and buckwheat is also grown.

The village is obviously well off. The signs are: successful sericulture, the large quantity of rice eaten, the number of well-looking horses (the millet seems to be grown largely for them, but they also receive beans and wheat boiled), the fact that no attempt is made to collect the considerable amount of horse manure on the roads, the cared-for appearance of the temple and shrines, the almost complete absence of tea-houses, the ease with which new land may be obtained and the contented look of the people.

One does not expect to find in a remote and wholly Buddhist village many other animals than horses, and in this community the additional live stock consists of ten goats (kept for giving milk for invalids), two pigs and a number of poultry. A working horse over four years was worth 150 yen. The value of land[196] is to be considered in relation to local standards of value. It is doubtful if the priest, who seemed to be comfortably off, is in receipt of more than 250 yen a year. The midwife, who belongs to the oldest family and has been trained in Tokyo, gets from 2 to 2-1/2 yen per case. As new land is always available on the hillsides there is very little emigration to the towns, but twenty girls are working in the factories in the big silk-reeling centre twelve miles off. The hillside land which is owned by the village is not sold but rented to those who want it. To make new paddies is primarily a question of having enough capital with which to buy the artificial manure required for the crops.

I was given to understand that no one in the village was poor enough to need public help, but that the school fees of twelve children were paid by the community. This is a system peculiar to Nagano, which is a progressive prefecture vying with other prefectures to increase the percentage of school attendance. One of the signs of the well-off character of the village which appears when one is able to investigate a little is that the place is a favourite haunt of beggars, who, I am told—every calling is organised—have made it over to the less fortunate members of their fraternity. The village has enough money to spend to make it worth while for tradesmen from a distance to open temporary shops every Bon season and at the New Year festival. A man in an average position may lay out 200 yen on his daughter's wedding. A farmer who knew his fellow-villagers' position pretty closely said he thought that the position of tenant farmers was "rather well." In the whole village there might be seventy or eighty householders who had some debt, but it was justifiable. In an ordinary year about 150 farmers would have something to lay by after their twelve months' work. Perhaps fifty farmers, if the price of rice or of cocoons were low, might be unable to save; but ordinarily they would have something in their pockets. About half the farmers are engaged in sericulture—I noticed cocoons offered at the shrine. The other half sell their mulberry leaf crop to their neighbours. The village, which is perhaps 400 years old, is increasing in population by about forty every year. The family which is said to have founded the village is still largely represented in it.



The village has as many as six fire engines, which can be moved about either on wheels or on runners according to the weather, and as many look-out ladders and fire-alarm bells. The young men's association has no fewer than half a dozen buildings, the property of the village. Five of them are little more than sheds and seem to be used on wet days as nurseries and playrooms for children. The sixth is the village theatre, playing at which appears to have been abandoned for some years. Travelling players give their shows where they will. The theatre stands in a space encircled by large trees opposite the chief shrine of the village. There is also here a smaller shrine (fox god) and some tombstones.



Before the chief shrine are two large leaden lanterns. At the base of these a considerable strip of metal has been torn away. This unusual destruction by village lads caused me to make enquiry. I found that the boys had merely enlarged a hole made by adults. The destruction had been wrought in order to remove the inscription on the lanterns. It was said that the local donor had meanly omitted to make the customary gift to the shrine to cover the small expense of lighting the lanterns on the occasion of festivals. It was the feeling of the villagers, therefore, that he should not be allowed to blazon his name in connection with a shabby gift.



There is a ceremony about half a dozen times a year at the chief shrine, which is about a century old. The Shinto priest, who seemed to be a genuine antiquary, was of opinion that the structure inside the shrine might have been built two hundred years ago. In addition to this chief shrine and the small shrine near it, there are two other shrines in the village, one in the temple yard (god of happiness) and the other (horse god) in an open space of its own.



But perhaps the most remarkable thing about the non-material life of this village is the fact that it contains no fewer than 400 carved stones of a more or less religious character. A few are Buddhist; some are memorials to priests or teachers; several bear that representation of a man and a woman facing one another (p. 265) which is one of the oldest mystic emblems; the majority are devoted apparently to the horse god. Every man who loses a horse erects a stone. There are two persons in the village who can carve these stones at a cost of about 2 yen. Some stones which are painted red are dedicated to the fire god. The 400 stones of which I am speaking do not include grave stones. These are seen everywhere, many of them just by the wayside. Nearly every family buries in its own ground. Some burial places with stones of many forms dating back for a long period of years are extremely impressive. At the Bon season the grass on every burying ground is carefully cut.

All the shop-keepers seem to own their own houses and all but three have some land. There are three sake shops, two of which sell other things than sake, two general shops, two cake and sweet shops, two tobacco shops, a lantern shop and a barber. There are eight carpenters, four stonecutters, five plasterers and wall builders, five woodcutters, two roof makers, two horse shoers, and in the winter a blacksmith. (The cost of putting on four shoes is 60 sen.) All these artisans own their own houses and all have land.

As to the health of the village there are two doctors who come every other day. One was qualified at Chiba and the other at Sendai. They make no charge for advice and the price of medicine is only 10 sen unless the materials are expensive. I suppose they may receive presents. They also probably have a piece of land. There is no veterinary surgeon, but one is to be found in the village which composes the other half of the commune.

A physician who had been born in the village and was staying for a few days with the Buddhist priest who was my host, thought that 90 per cent. of the villagers ate no meat whatever and that only 50 or 60 per cent. ate fish, and then only ceremonially, that is at particular times in the year when it is the custom in Japan to eat fish. The villagers who did eat meat or fish did not take it oftener than twice or thrice a month. The canned meat and canned fish in the shops—Japanese brands—were used almost entirely for guests. The doctor expressed the opinion of most Japanese that "people who do not eat meat are better tempered and can endure more." I have heard Japanese say that "foreigners are short-tempered because they eat so much meat."

We spoke of the considerable consumption of pickles, highly salted or fermented. For example, in the ordinary 25-sen bento (lunch) box there are three or four different kinds of pickles. The doctor said that pickles were not only a means of taking salt and so appetisers to help the rice down, but digestives; fermented pickles supplied diastase which enabled the stomach to deal promptly with the large quantities of rice swallowed.

I asked for the doctor's opinion as to the prevalence of tumours, displacements and cancer among women who labour in the fields and have to bring up children and do all the housework of a peasant's dwelling. The doctor replied that he was disposed to think that cases of the ailments I spoke of were not numerous. Cancer was certainly rare. He knew that in Japan rickets, goitre and gout were all less common than in the West. He expressed the opinion that childbirth was easier than in the West. It was a delight to see the fine carriage of the women and girls astride on the high saddles of the horses.[197] Both sexes in the district wear over their kimonos blue cotton trousers, something like a plumber's overall only tighter in the legs. The women are certainly strong. One day I saw a woman carrying uphill on her back two wooden doors about 6 ft. by 5 ft. 6 ins. An old woman I met on the road volunteered her view that women were "stronger" than men. She was very much concerned to know how foreigners could live without eating rice. She said—and this is characteristically Japanese—that she envied me being able to travel all over the world.



The Buddhist temple is built wholly of wood and the roof is thatched. Whenever there was an earthquake the timbers seemed to crackle rather than creak. The temple is relatively new and seems to have been built with materials given by the villagers and by means of a gift of 1,000 yen. The workmanship was local and a good deal of it was faulty. This may have been due to lack of experience, but it is more likely that the cause was limited funds. The plan and proportions of the building are excellent and the carving is first-rate. The right of "presentation to the living" is in the hands of the village. The priest and his family live in a large house on one side of the temple. On the other side is a small Shinto shrine to which the priest seems to give such attention as is necessary. The temple is Shingon. There is a sermon once a year only, or "when some famous man comes." The actual temple in which the priest, who showed me a fine collection of robes, conducts his services is between forty and fifty mats in area. Behind it is the room in which the ihai or tablets of the dead are arranged. This part of the building is covered on the outside with plaster in the manner of a kura (godown) so as to be fire-proof. On either side of the actual temple are rooms very much as in a spacious private house. There are two of eighteen and fifteen mats, two of twelve and ten mats and two small ones. There is also a wide covered engawa (verandah) in front and at the sides. A small kitchen and what the auctioneers call the usual offices complete the building.

Right round the temple there is a nice garden which keeps the priest's man, a picturesque, sweet-tempered, guileless old fellow, occupied much of his time. The priest conducted a service twice a day, at 5:30 in the morning and at 7:30 in the evening. When he fell ill and had to be carried in a litter to the nearest town for an operation, we missed his beautiful chanting and expert sounding of the deep-toned gong of the sanctuary. The great bell in the court-yard was struck by the priest's boy at sundown. The priest kept the old rule against meat. He and his wife would not eat even cake or biscuits because they feared that there might be milk and butter in them. The couple were very kind to us and we enjoyed a delightfully quiet life in the lofty sunny temple rooms. I should judge that Otera San (Mr. Temple) was respected in the village. His wife was a bustling woman of such sweetness and simplicity of nature as can only be found in a far valley.

I have mentioned that the total incomings of the priest are probably about 250 yen. He receives no salary but has his house free. He must "discuss about anything wanted in the temple." I do not suppose he had to ask anybody whether he might lodge us or not. He receives considerable gifts of rice, perhaps to the value of 120 yen, at any rate enough for the whole year. He has also the rent of the "glebe," which consists of 12 tan of paddy, 2 tan of dry field and 10 tan of woodland. Then there are the gifts which are made to him at funerals and for the services he conducts at the villagers' houses on the days of the dead. One day during the Bon season every household sent a little girl or boy with a present to the priest. In return these small visitors were given sweets. During the Bon season some very old men of the village came and worshipped at the Shinto shrine and were entertained with sake by the priest on the engawa of his temple. The amount in the collecting box in front of the little Shinto shrine in the temple yard, largely in rin, would not be more than 10 or 15 sen in the year. Most of the contributions are in the form of pinches of rice. The priest may give 10 yen a year to his man who works about the temple and his house and accompanies him to funerals and to the memorial services at the villagers' dwellings; but this servitor, like his master, no doubt receives presents.

The Shinto priest is probably not so well off as the Buddhist priest. The village makes a small payment to him twice a year. At New Year 3 yen in all may be flung in the collecting box at the shrine, but the priest has presents made to him when he goes to see ailing folk and when he officiates at the building of a new house. Most people when they are ill seem to send for the Shinto priest. But he explained to me that he does not expect a sick man to "worship only." He is accustomed to say to the people, "Doctor first, god second," from which I was to conclude, one who heard told me, that the priest was "rather a civilised man." The Shinto priest had succeeded a relative in his position. The village had found its Buddhist priest in a neighbouring district.

The Buddhist priest told me that every year 150 or 160 men and women made a pilgrimage to a famous shrine some few miles off. The custom was for every house to be represented in the pilgrimage. Half a dozen people in the year might go on personal pilgrimages and fifty or so might visit a little shrine on a neighbouring mountain.

FOOTNOTES:

[195] The village consists of about 270 houses. It is joined administratively to another village, about two miles off, in order to form a mura (commune). The village I am about to describe is an oaza (large hamlet), which is made up in its turn of two aza (small hamlets). These aza are themselves divided into six kumi (companies), which are again sub-divided, in the case of the largest, into four.

[196] See Appendix LIV.

[197] The horses wear basket-work muzzles to prevent them nibbling the crops. By way of compensation for these encumbrances they have head tassels and belly cloths to keep off the flies.



CHAPTER XXXI

"BON" SEASON SCENES

(NAGANO)

As moderns we have no direct affinity; as individuals we have a capacity for personal sympathy.—MATTHEW ARNOLD

I had the good fortune to be in the village during the Bon season. The idea is that the spirits which are visiting their old homes remain between the 11th and 14th of August. The 11th is called mukae bon and the 14th okuri bon. (Mukae means going to meet; okuri to see off.) On the 11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front of their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in the temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary gong and drum. The prayer seemed peculiarly sad. Before the shrines in their houses the villagers placed offerings. One was a horse made out of a cucumber, the legs being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the hair-like substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings of real and artificial flowers and of grapes. In one house I visited I saw geta, waraji, kimonos, pumpkins, caramels and pencils. Strings of buck-wheat macaroni were laid over twigs of flax set in a vase. The ihai (name-plates of the dead) seemed to be displayed more prominently than usual. (They are kept in a kind of small oratory called ihaido, and after a time several names are collected on a single plate.) Mochi (rice-flour dumpling) is eaten at this time. On the 12th and 14th the priest called at each house for two or three minutes.

I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at the Bon season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a Japanese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist shrine—where the name plates of the dead for several generations are treasured—cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that lugubriousness which Western people commonly associate with what is sacred. The Japanese conception of reverence is somewhat different from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran down his face.



When the Bon season ended on the fourteenth all the flowers and decorations of the domestic shrines were taken early in the morning to the bridge over the diminished river and flung down. The idea is perhaps that they are carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact there was so little water that almost everything flung in from the bridge remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.) When the flowers and decorations had been cast from the bridge the people went off to worship at the graves. Many coloured streamers of paper, written on by the priest, were flying there.

The Bon dances took place five nights running in the open space between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from Ruddigore came to mind, "This is one of our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain animation; but even then the movement, the song and the whole scheme of the dance seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that a number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring, which got larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands. The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms—the girls had fans in their hands—and a simple attitudinising. The lads all clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine obi and white aprons. The music was dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The only word I can think of which approximately describes what I heard, but it seems harsh, is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and then the girls responded with a slightly more musical repetition of the same sounds. For all the notice the boys appeared to take of the girls they might not have been present. The lads and lasses were no doubt fully conscious, however, of each other's presence. The dancing took place on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and, owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was often dimly lit.

To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say that the dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight o'clock and went on till midnight. "They would not be fit for their work next day if they danced later," a sober-minded adult explained. This was only one suggestion among many that the dance has been devitalised under the respectabilising influence of the policeman and village elders who had forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it did not seem to matter very much whether the dance, as it is now, continues or not. Occasionally one had an impression that it had once been a folk dance of vigour and significance. But the present-day performance might have been conceived and presented by a P.S.A. All this is true when the dance is contrasted with an English West-country dance or a dance in Scotland at Hallowe'en. But it must be remembered that the Bon dance during the first nights is in the nature of a lament for the dead. There is something haunting in the strange little refrain, though it is difficult to hum or whistle it. Perhaps the whole festival is too intimately racial to be fully understood by a stranger. By the end of the festival, on the night of merrymaking in honour of the village guardian spirit, things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently had sake and even the girls had lost their demureness.



After the Buddhist Bon season was over it was the turn of Shinto, and the village children were paraded before the shrine. A number of Shinto priests in the neighbourhood took a leading part in making the customary offerings and the local priest read a longish address to the guardian spirit of the village. Respectful correctness rather than devoutness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed to apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local priest was reverential. The ceremonies of the day evidently meant a great deal to him. The children paid a well-drilled attention. They also sang the national anthem and a special song for the day under the leadership of the school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which sounded as portable harmoniums usually sound. The whole proceedings wore a semi-official look.

Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which we were invited later in the day. A special little platform had been put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the competitors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a "No" player, proclaimed the names and styles—it seems that the wrestlers have a fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers—in a fashion which recalled the tournament. There was also another personage, with a Dan Leno-like face and an extraordinary gift of contorting his legs, who played the buffoon, and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who remained unmoved while the audience laughed. It was evidently the right thing for the prizes—they were awarded at the end of each bout—to be presented as comically as possible; and some of the Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully to the groundlings at the Globe were enacted as if neither space nor time intervened between us and the Elizabethans.

The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are accustomed to, but they were none the less exciting. The result was invariably in some doubt and often entirely unexpected. The usual rule was that he who threw his man twice was the winner. In some events, immediately a wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants rushed at the victor, one after the other, without allowing him time even to straighten his back. Some of the competitors were poorly developed but the lankiest and skinniest were often excellent wrestlers. At an interval in the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to wrestlers and spectators. I wanted to make some little acknowledgment of the kindness of the young men's association in providing us with our little platform, and it was suggested that autographed fans at about a penny three-farthings apiece for about forty wrestlers would be acceptable. This gift was announced on a long streamer. The funny man of the ring also made a speech of welcome. I may add that the young men's association had fitted up on the way to the scene of the wrestling a number of special lanterns which bore efforts in English by a student home for the holidays.

I was told that the people of the village were "honest, independent and earnest," and I am disposed to think that this may be true of most of them. As to honesty, we had the satisfaction of living without any thought of dorobo (robbers). It is a great comfort to be able at night to leave open most of the shoji and not to have to pull out the amado (wooden shutters) from their case. The nature of our possessions was well known not only in the village but throughout the district, for there was seldom a day on which a knot of grown-ups or children did not come to peer into our rooms. The inspection was accompanied by many polite bows and friendly smiles. On a festival day the crowd occasionally reached about fifty.

There were formerly several teahouses in the village, but under the influence of the young men's association all houses of entertainment but two had been closed. These two had become "inns." In one of these the girl attendant was the proprietor's daughter; in the other there was a solitary waitress. One of the abolished teahouses had taken itself two miles away, where possibly it still had visitors. There seemed to be two public baths in the village, both belonging to private persons. The charge was 1 sen for adults and 5 rin for children. At one of the baths I noticed separate doors for men and women; in the bath itself the division between the sexes was about two feet high.

The smallest subdivision of the village is called kumi or company. Each of these has a kind of manager who is elected on a limited suffrage. The managers of the kumi, it was explained, are "like diplomatists if something is wanted against another village." The kumi also seems to have some corporate life. There is once a month a semi-social, semi-religious meeting at each member's house in turn. The persons who attend lay before the house shrine 3 or 5 sen each or a small quantity of rice for the feast. The master of the house provides the sauce or pickles. I heard also of a kind of ko called mujin, a word which has also the meaning of "inexhaustible." By such agencies as these money is collected for people who are poor or for men who want help in their business or who need to go on a journey.

We have seen that the village is by every token well off. What are its troubles? Undoubtedly the people work hard. I imagine, however, that there are very many districts where the people work much harder. The foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a handicraft or at business, an Oriental gives the impression of having no notion of getting his work done and being finished with it. The working day lasts all day and part of the night. Whether much more is done in the time than in the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief silk-worm season many of the women of the village in which I stayed are afoot for a long day and for part of the night, but the winter brings relief from the strain of all sorts of work. Owing to the snow it is practically impossible to do any work out of doors in January, February and March. The snow may stop work even in December. Here, then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two miles and hares are easily got.

Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed.

The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going to lectures. Lectures are a great institution in Nagano. For these lectures country people tramp into a county town in their waraji carrying their bento. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about 100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not the country people, who left.



I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had been living there had been one arrest only during the previous year. The charge was one of theft. Half a dozen other people had got into trouble but their arrests had been "postponed." Two of these six delinquents had "caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty theft, and the remaining two had sold things of small value which did not belong to them. During the twelve months there had been no charges of immorality and no gambling. Perhaps, however, there may have been police admonitions. It seemed to have been a long time since there had been a case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a child being born in the first months of a young couple's marriage. Someone mentioned, however, that the girls who went to the silk factories were, as a consequence of their life there, "debased morally and physically."

A notable thing in the village was four fires, two the month before we arrived and two while we were there. They were suspected to have been the work of a person of weak intellect. (As in our own villages half a century ago, there is in every community at least one "natural.") On the night of the first fire we were awakened about 3 a.m. by shouting, by the clanging of the fire bell and by the booming of the great bell in the temple yard. The fire was about four houses away. It was a still night and the flames and sparks went straight up. As the possibility of the wind shifting and the fire spreading could not be entirely excluded we quickly got our more important possessions on the engawa—at least a young maidservant did so. The continual experience which the Japanese have of fires makes them self-possessed on these occasions, and this girl had futon, bags, etc., neatly tied in big furoshiki (wrapping cloths) in the shortest possible time. It was only when she was satisfied that our belongings were in readiness for easy removal that she went to look after her own. The matter-of-fact, fore-sighted, neat way in which she got to work was admirable. With great kindness one of the elders of the village came hurriedly to the temple, evidently thinking we should feel alarmed, and cried out, "Yoroshii, Yoroshii" ("All right").



As I stood before the blaze what struck me most was the orderliness and quiet of the crowd and the way in which whatever help was needed was at once forthcoming without fuss. The fire brigades were working in an orderly way and everything was so well managed that the scene seemed almost as if it were being rehearsed for a cinema. One difference between what I saw and what would be seen at home at a fire was that the scene was well lighted from the front, for the members of the fire brigades carried huge lanterns on high poles. From the mass of old wet reed in the roadway I judged that the first act of the firemen had been to use their long hooks to denude the roof of the burning house of its thatch, which in the lightest wind is so dangerous to surrounding dwellings. Nobody in the village is insured, but the neighbours seem to meet about a third of the loss caused by a fire. It is an illustration of local values that a larger subscription than 2 yen would not be accepted from me. In connection with this fire someone mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent in some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is the usual means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by a person who threatens arson is, "I will make the red worm creep into your roof."

During the winter there is too much drinking—"generally by poor men"—but there is said to be less of this than formerly. Some people stop their newspaper in the summer and resume taking it during the greater leisure of the winter. It has been noted, among other small matters, that the local vocabulary has expanded during the past fifteen years. During our stay the young midwife, who was going to America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in the kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also gave help in the evenings thrice a week to one of the school teachers who had managed to obtain a fair reading knowledge of English. The earnestness with which these two people studied was touching. While I was in the village the young men's association began the issue of a magazine. Lithographic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in autograph as well as in translation. The association, which receives 10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots of paddy and dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with imitation rifles, imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges. I felt that I should know more about the villagers if I could learn, like Synge, their topics of conversation when no stranger was present. One day while strolling with a friend I asked him what was being said by two girls who were working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge (hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices. Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, "because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, "They say there are some moneylenders here."



IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

CHAPTER XXXII

PROGRESS OF SORTS

(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population.—BORROW

The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they found that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the agricultural population. The farmers also realised that to the factories were due electric light, the telephone, better roads and more railway stations. The farmers are undoubtedly better off. They are so well off indeed that the district can afford an agricultural expert of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of geta, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport coats cut after a supposedly Western fashion. But the people, it was insisted, have become a little "sly," and girls return from the factories less desirable members of the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question of the condition of the farmer in Japan. He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent. of the farmers were in a "wretched condition." Big holdings—if any holdings in Japan can be called big—were getting bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the owners of the small and the medium-sized classes of holding. The fact that many rural families were in debt, not for seed or manure but for food spoke for itself. The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes, but when the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80 yen was a serious matter; and 80 yen was the average debt of farming families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka. No one could say that the farmers were lazy: they were working hard according to their lights. They were working too hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got. There could be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman was being lowered.

Again, there was the fact of the rural exodus—the phrase sounded strangely in the middle of a Japanese sentence. As to the causes, the first unquestionably was that the farmer had not enough land on which to make a living. If the farmer could have 5 acres or thereabouts he would be well off. But the average area per farmer in the prefecture in which we were travelling was a little less than 2-1/2 acres. High taxes were another cause of the farmer's present condition. Then a year's living would be mortgaged for the expenses of a marriage ceremony. At a funeral, too, the neighbours came to eat and drink. They took charge of the kitchen and even ordered in food. (After a Japanese feast the guests are given at their departure the food that is left over.) Further, some farmers wasted their substance on the ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had gone off to the army hatless and wearing straw shoes came home hatted and sometimes booted. Military service deprived farmers of labour, and their boys while away asked their parents for money. Conscription pressed more heavily on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued their education to the middle school, and attendance at a middle school entitled a young man to reduction of military service to one year only.[198]

The countryside was suffering from the way in which importance was increasingly attached to industry and commerce. Many M.P.s were of the agricultural class, but they were chiefly landlords, and they were often shareholders and directors of industrial companies. There was very little real Parliamentary representation of the farming class and it had not yet found literary expression. There were signs, however, that some landlords were realising that industry and agriculture were not of equal importance. But the farmers were slow to move. The traditions of the Tokugawa epoch survived, making action difficult. Finally, there was the drawback to rural development which exists in the family system. But that, as Mr. Pickwick said, comprises by itself a difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude, and we must return to it on another occasion.

In one of my excursions I went over a large agricultural school, the boast of which was that of all the youths who had passed through it, twenty only had deserted the land. I met the present scholars marching with military tread, mattocks on shoulders, to the school paddies.

I noticed schoolgirls wearing a wooden tablet. It was a good-conduct badge. If a girl was not wearing it on reaching home her parents knew that her teacher had retained it because of some fault; if she was not wearing it at school her teacher knew that her parents had kept it back for a similar reason. The girls when they come to school have often baby brothers or sisters tied on their backs. Otherwise the girls would have to stay at home in order to look after them. I asked a schoolmaster what happened when children were kept at home. He said that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings. Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village authorities to the county authorities. They summoned the father to appear before them. This meant loss of time and the cost of the journey. Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic association had provided the speaker's school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered umbrellas so that children who had come unprovided could go home on a rainy day without a parent, elder brother or sister having to leave work to bring an umbrella to school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform before which the children assembled every morning. The headmaster, standing on the platform, gravely saluted the children and the children as gravely responded. The scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the centre of which is the Emperor's palace. An inscription hanging in the school was, "Exert yourself to kill harmful insects." In another school there was a portrait of a former teacher who had covered the walls of the school with water-colours of local scenery. I noticed in the playground of a third school a flower-covered cairn and an inscribed slab to the memory of a deceased master. Every school possesses equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-Japanese war, usually a shell, a rifle and bayonet and an entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men's associations' efforts to discourage "cheek binding," which is the wearing of the head towel in such a way as to disguise the face and so enable the cheek binder to do, if he be so minded, things he might not do if he were recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just been rebuilt after a fire. Within four hours the blaze aided by a strong wind had consumed 1,700 houses and caused the deaths of nine persons. The destruction of so many dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or thatch, or the light pieces of wood from the shoji, which are carried aflame by the wind, setting fire to several houses simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone jizo, the cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing near; but they looked as incongruous in the position they occupied as did a small shrine which was standing in the shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse girls in private families. A poor farmer may enter into a contract when his girl is five for her to go into service at eight. He receives cash in anticipation of the fulfilment of the contract.

I was assured by a man competent to speak on the matter that a certain small town was notorious for receiving boys who had been stolen as small children from their homes in the hills. Up to 30 yen might be given for a boy. There might be a dozen of such unfortunates in the place. Happily many of the children obtained by this "slave system," as my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which he and his father had improved under the precepts of Ninomiya. The hillside had been covered with tea, orange trees and mulberry; the community had not only got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its boundaries; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it was averred, had "disappeared"; there were larger and better crops; and "the habit of enjoying nature" had increased. The amusements of the village were wrestling, fencing, jujitstu, and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often injured by stores was as often mysteriously repaired. On a watch being kept it was found that the good work was done by a villager who had been scrupulous to keep secret his labours for the public welfare. Another tale was of a poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and brought it to his humble dwelling. On his neighbours suggesting that a finer house were a fitter resting-place for such a shrine, the man replied: "I do not think so. My shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may be fine. But the place in which the shrine stands is my place; it need not be fine."

In travelling the roads notices are often seen on official-looking boards with pent roofs. But all of these notices are not official; one I copied was the advertisement of a shrine which declared itself to be unrivalled for toothache. The horses on the roads are sometimes protected from the sun by a kind of oblong sail, which works on a swivel attached to the harness. Black velvety butterflies as big as wrens flit about. (There are twice as many butterflies and moths in Japan as at home.) Snakes, ordinarily of harmless varieties, are frequently seen, dead or alive.

Many of the people one passes are smoking, usually the little brass pipe used both by men and women, which, like some of the earliest English pipes, does not hold more tobacco than will provide a few draws. The pipe is usually charged twice or thrice in succession. One notices an immense amount of cigarette smoking, which cannot be without ill effect. There is a law forbidding smoking below the age of twenty. It is not always enforced, but when enforced there is a confiscation of smoking materials and a fining of the parents. The voices of many middle-aged women and some young ones are raucous owing to excessive smoking of pipes or cigarettes.

I looked into a school and saw the wall inscription, "Penmanship is like pulling a cart uphill. There must be no haste and no stopping." Here, as in so many places, I saw the well-worn cover and much-thumbed pages of Self Help. I may add a fact which would be in its place in a new edition of Smiles's Character. As a simple opening to conversation I often asked if a man had been in Europe or America. His answer, if he had not travelled, was never "No." It was always "Not yet."

In these country schools most of the songs are set to Western tunes. Such airs as "Ye Banks and Braes," "Auld Lang Syne," "Annie Laurie," "Home, Sweet Home" and "The Last Rose of Summer" are utilised for the songs not only of school children but of university students. Few of the singers have any notion that the music was not written in their own land. A Japanese friend told me that all the airs I mentioned "seem tender and touching to us," and I remember a Japanese agricultural expert saying, "Reading those poems of Burns, I believe firmly that our hearts can vibrate with yours."

As I have denied myself the pleasure of dwelling on Japanese scenic beauties, I may not pause to bear witness to the faery delights of cherry blossom which I enjoyed everywhere during this journey. But I may record two cherry-blossom poems I gathered by the way. The first is, "Why do you wear such a long sword, you who have come only to see the cherry blossoms?" The second is, "Why fasten your horse to the cherry tree which is in full bloom, when the petals would fall off if the horse reared?" A Japanese once told me that a foreigner had greatly surprised him by asking if the cherry trees bore much fruit.

Orange as well as tea culture is a feature of the agricultural life of the prefecture. As in California and South Africa, ladybirds have been reared in large numbers in order to destroy scale. I saw at the experiment station miserable orange trees encaged for producing scale for the breeding ladybirds. The insects are distributed from the station chiefly as larvae. They are sent through the post about a hundred at a time in boxes. The ladybird, which has, I believe, eight generations a year, and as an adult lives some twenty days, lays from 200 to 250 eggs, 150 of the larvae from which may survive. Alas for the released ladybirds of Shidzuoka! Scale is said to be disappearing so quickly that they are having but a hard life of it.

In the neighbouring prefecture of Kanagawa I paid a visit to a gentleman who, with his brother, had devoted himself extensively to fruit and flower growing. Their produce was sent the twenty-six hours' journey by road to Tokyo, where four shops were maintained. A considerable quantity of foreign pears had been produced on the palmette verrier system. The branches of the extensively grown native pear are everywhere tied to an overhead framework which completely covers in the land on which the trees stand. This method was adopted in order to cope with high winds and at the same time to arrest growth, for in the damp soil in which Japanese pears are rooted, the branches would be too sappy. Foreign pears are not more generally cultivated because they come to the market in competition with oranges, and the Japanese have not yet learnt to buy ripe pears. The native pear looks rather like an enormous russet apple but it is as hard as a turnip, and, though it is refreshing because of its wateriness, has little flavour. Progress is being made with peaches and apricots. Figs are common but inferior. A fine native fruit, when well grown, is the biwa or loquat. And homage must be paid to the best persimmons, which yield place only to oranges and tangerines.[199] In the north the apples are good, but most orchards are badly in need of spraying. Experiments have been made with dates. Flowers have a weaker scent than in Europe. A rose called the "thousand ri"—a ri is two and a half miles—has only a slight perfume two and a half inches away, and then only when pulled. I met with no heather—it is to be seen in Saghalien, which has several things in common with Scotland—but found masses of sweet-scented thyme.

One of the horticulturists to whom I have referred was something of an Alpinist and was married to a Swiss lady. They had several children. I also met an American lady who had had great experience of fruit growing in California, had married a Japanese farmer there, and had come to live with him in a remote part of his native country. From such alliances as these there may come some day a woman's impressions of the life and work of women and girls on the farms and in the factories of rural Japan. Many a visitor to the country districts must have marked the dumbness of the women folk. Women were often present at the conversations I had in country places, but they seldom put in a word. I was received one day at the house of a man who is well known as a rural philanthropist—he has indeed written two or three brochures on the problems of the country districts—but when he, my friend and I sat at table his wife was on her knees facing us two rooms off. Every instructed person knows that there is a beautiful side to the self-suppression of the Japanese woman—many moving stories might be told—and that the "subservience" is more apparent than real. But there is certainly unmerited suffering. The men and women of the Far East seem to be gentler and simpler, however, than the vehement and demonstrative folk of the West, and conditions which appear to the foreign observer to be unjust and unbearable cannot be easily and accurately interpreted in Western terms. At present many women who are conscious of the situation of their sex see no means of improvement by their own efforts. But the development of the women's movement is proceeding in some directions at a surprising pace. Many young men are sincerely desirous to do their part in bringing about greater freedom. They realise what is undoubtedly true that not a few things which urgently need changing in Japan must be changed by men and women working together.

Money has always been forthcoming, officially, semi-officially and privately, for sending to America and Europe numbers of intelligent young men and women. So disciplined and studious are most of these young people that their country has had back with interest every yen of the funds so wisely provided. We have much to learn from Japanese methods in this matter of well-considered post-graduate foreign travel.[200]

FOOTNOTES:

[198] See Appendix LXIII.

[199] See Appendix LV.

[200] See Appendix LVI.



CHAPTER XXXIII

GREEN TEA AND BLACK

(SHIDZUOKA)

Things I would know but am forbid By time and briefness.

LAURENCE BINYON

More than half of the tea grown in Japan comes from the hilly coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which every traveller passes on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto to Tokyo. He sees a terraced cultivation of tea and fruit carried up to the skyline. But there is more tea on the hills than the passenger in the train imagines. When viewed from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various parts of southern Japan patches of tea may be noticed growing on little islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill plant and it is on the sides of hills and on the plateaus at the top of them that the plantations are to be found.

Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow like box to a height which can be conveniently picked over. The rows of neat-looking plants are half a dozen feet apart. The first picking may take place when the bush is three or four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty or even a hundred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between twenty and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or so. A good deal depends on the pruning. After each picking the bushes are cut over with the shears just as we trim box. These trimmings may be used to make an inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine—the two products are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are cut round-topped, but occasionally they are roof-shaped and sometimes they are like giant green toadstools.

The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the rows of tea bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses which manufacture their own tea. (The word manufacture is used in the original sense, for farmhouse tea is hand-made.) In a country where the houses are chimneyless these galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.

The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely by women and children. The pickers are supposed to take only the three leaves at the tips. But the pickers mostly take bigger pieces, for the somewhat higher price given for good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf stuff only. It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves gathered should be all of such a choice sort.

Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea. Picking is regarded as "polite labour by the daughters of the higher middle class of farmers." It has also the attraction that farmers' sons have a way of visiting tea gardens in order to "pick up wives." The girls certainly give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they can do, for they are at work for a long day, often of from twelve to fourteen hours. In such a day it is possible, I was told, to pick 50, 80 or even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces a minute. Four pounds of leaves make a pound of tea.

In one district the first picking may take place during the first three weeks of May. In colder districts it is proceeding until the end of the month. The second season is from the end of June until the beginning of July. The third is in August. The bushes, after producing their three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are worth about a sen a pound. Oil is pressed from them.

Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting over and good manuring. In some places I saw soya bean being grown between the rows as green manuring. Like so many other crops, tea is or ought to be sprayed. The northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must be protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture to a great depth. The region in which tea cannot be grown is that in which the temperature falls below zero for two months. Tea is not grown, as in India and Ceylon, by tea planters, but in small areas and as a side-line at that. I never saw a plantation of more than five acres. Most areas are much smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is largely manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the capacity of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is limited. In Shidzuoka nearly a quarter of the tea is hand rolled and three-quarters made by machinery. Elsewhere in Japan half the crop may be hand rolled.

When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take place in booths opened by them in the tea districts. It is a busy scene in the region of the cottage factories. One is on a wide plateau covered almost entirely with rows of tea plants. Here and there are parties of chattering pickers, their heads protected by the national towel. Against the blue hilltops on the horizon stand out the cottages of the farmers with chimney-pipes smoking, the booths of the dealers, and, in every patch of tea, the thatched roof over the precious sunken pot of liquid manure by which the tea bushes have so often benefited. On the road one passes women with baskets on their backs, like Scotch fish-wives with their creels, men carrying two baskets suspended from a pole across one shoulder, or a man and his wife hauling a barrow, all heavy-laden with newly picked leaves. Small horse-drawn wagons carry the manufactured tea in big, well-tied, pink paper bales. On the whole, although the labour is hard it seemed a better life having to do with the fragrant tea than with the rice of the sludge ponds in the valley below.



The tea produced in Japan is principally green tea. Most of this is of the kind called sencha—cha means tea. An inferior article made out of older and tougher leaves is called bancha. The custom is for the maid who serves bancha to heat the leaves over the charcoal fire just before infusing. This gives it an agreeable roasted flavour. It is often served in a darker shade of porcelain than is used for ordinary tea. There are also the finer teas, kikicha (powdered tea) and gyokuro (jewelled dewdrops), which is the best kind of sencha. Black tea was being made experimentally when I first arrived in Japan. Brick tea (pressed to the consistency and weight of wood) may be green or black. Most of the exported tea, other than brick tea, goes to America.



It is unnecessary to state that the Japanese tea-tray does not include a sugar basin, cream jug or spoons. It does include, however, a squat oval jug into which the hot water from the kettle is poured in order to lower the temperature below boiling point. Boiling water would bring out a bitter flavour from the tea. Made with water just below boiling point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a flavour and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is certainly refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively harmless. Bancha is made with hotter water than other tea. The handleless cups hold about half of what our teacups contain.[201] Tea is not the only plant used for making "tea." One drinks in some parts infusions of cherry, plum or peach blossom.

The processes of tea manufacture in farmers' outhouses and in factories are described in school-books, and I need not transcribe my impressions.[202] But I may note that some of the money the tea farmer earns for the country is spent in his interests. There is in Shidzuoka a well-directed prefectural experiment station which exercises itself over problems of tea production. Every tea grower and tea dealer in the prefecture must belong to the prefectural tea guild. He must also belong to his county tea guild. The rules of the guilds—there is a central guild in Tokyo—have the force of law. Evil doers in the tea industry have their product confiscated. Tea dealers who do not carry their guild membership card are fined. It is not difficult to discover colouring in tea if it is rubbed on white paper. The Government's part in subduing tea colouring was to seize all the dye stuff it could lay hold of which could be used for colouring tea.

The future of green tea depends almost entirely on the demand from the growing population of Japan, but a taste for the "foreign style" black tea—with condensed milk—is spreading. The cheap labour of India and China and the big plantations and factories of India have diminished the Japanese green tea trade and the effort to produce black tea is also met by foreign competition. I was told that China tea receives much sunshine while growing, and that there was most hope for Japanese black tea when made from leaves grown in the extreme south. There is a difference between the Chinese and the Japanese tea plant and it cannot be got over by importing Chinese plants, for the climate of Japan simply Japanises the imported sort.

I found in the United States that green tea is bought, as it is no doubt sold in Shidzuoka, on appearance. American housewives were paying for an appearance that matters little in an article that is not to be looked at but soaked. Not only is much extra labour required for sifting the leaf several times in order to obtain a good appearance, but the bulk is reduced from 5 to 10 per cent. The drinking quality of the tea also suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the best cup quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only they might be at least from 5 to 10 per cent. cheaper.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup—you are entitled to keep both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.

[202] For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.



EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

CHAPTER XXXIV

A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS

(CHIBA)

What was yet wanting must be sought by fortuitous and unguided excursions and gleaned as industry should find or chance should offer.—JOHNSON

When I first went to Chiba, the peninsular prefecture lying across the bay from Tokyo, many carriages in the trains were heated by iron hibachi[203]with pieces of old carpet thrown over them. It is on the Chiba trains that the recruits of that section of the army which has to do with the operation of the railways learn their business. It is in part of Chiba—and also in a district in Tokyo prefecture—that the earliest rice is grown. Chiba also contains more poultry than any other prefecture.[204] It has the further distinction of having tried to issue truthful crop statistics.[205]