Wherever one goes in Japan one is impressed by the large consumption of fish—fresh, dried, and salted. Thin slices of raw fish make one of the tasty dishes at a Japanese meal. The foreigner, forgetting the Western relish for oysters and clams, is repelled by this raw fish, but a liking for it seems to be quickly acquired. In Tokyo the slices of raw fish are cut from the meaty bonito (tunny), but tai (bream) is also used. Bonito also provides the long narrow steaks, dried to a mahogany-like hardness, which are known as katsubushi. This katsubushi keeps indefinitely and is grated or shaved with a kind of plane and used much as the Western cook employs Parmesan cheese.

I heard a man in Chiba combating very strongly the idea of there being a connection between leprosy and fish eating. As to leprosy, it is doubtful if the belief expressed by the Chinese name for the disease, "heavenly punishment," has disappeared. There are at least 24,000 lepers in Japan, and as a well-known Japanese work of reference casually remarks, "the hospitals can at present accommodate only 5 per cent. of them."

I could not but compare the undulating countryside, on which so vast an amount of labour had been expended, with what it would have been under European treatment and the influence of an European climate—possibly picturesque pasture with high hedges. The congeries of rice fields was fringed, where the water supply had given out, with upland cultivation. On the low mud walls which separated the paddies beans grew except at a boundary corner, where a tea or mulberry bush served as a landmark. In looking down or up the little valleys one saw how completely the houses had been brushed aside to the foot of the low hills so that no land cultivable as paddies should be wasted. This intensely developed countryside was not however ideal land. It was often much too sandy. Not a few paddies had to depend to some extent on the water they could catch for themselves. A naturally draughty and hungry land was yielding crops by a laborious manurial improvement of its physical and chemical condition, by wonders being wrought in rural hydraulics and by unending industry in cultivation and petty engineering.

It might be supposed that beauty had gone from the countryside. Some of what the land agents call the amenities of the district had certainly disappeared. There seemed to be nowhere for the pedestrian to sit down in order to refresh himself with those rural sights and sounds which exhilarate the spirit. But this marvellously delved, methodised and trimmed countryside had a character and a stimulus of its own. It reflected the energy and persistence that had subdued it. I saw nothing ugly. The tidied rice plots, shaped at every possible curve and angle, and eloquent of centuries of unremitting toil; the upland beyond them, worked to a skilled perfection of finish; the nesting houses which nowhere offended the eye; the big still ponds contrived by the rude forefathers of the hamlet for water storage or the succour of the rice in the hottest weather; the low hilltops green with pine because cultivation could not ascend so far, and hiding here and there a Shinto sanctuary: such a countryside was satisfying in its own way.

In Chiba, as in other prefectures, one is impressed by the way in which the exertions of many generations have resulted in the levelling of wide areas and even the complete removal of small hills. In many places one can still see low hills in process of demolition. In Tokyo itself several small hills have been carried off in recent years.

I was in Chiba several times and I remember to have noticed one winter day with what considered roughness the paddies had been dug in order to receive from frost and sun the benefits which are as good as a manuring. Some notion of the strength of the weather forces at work may be gathered from the fact that, though I was walking without an overcoat and was glad to shade my eyes by pulling down the brim of my hat, the frost of the two previous nights had produced ice on the paddies an inch thick.

Sometimes at the irrigation reservoirs one may see notice boards announcing that these water areas are stocked with koi (carp). This fish is also kept in the paddies. The carp are put in as yearlings or two-year-olds, when the paddies are flooded, and a score out of every hundred come out in the autumn—assuming the happiest conditions—ten inches or so long. Carp culture flourishes in the sericulture districts, where the pupae which remain when the cocoons are unwound are thrown to the fish; but pupae fed carp have a flavour which diminishes their value. Indeed paddy-field fish, which on the whole must have a rather troubled existence, do not bring the price of river carp. Other fish than carp, eels for instance, are also kept in paddies.[206]

I visited a vigorous personality who was at once a landowner and rural oculist, as his father and grandfather had been before him. He had graduated at Tokyo and had kept himself abreast of German specialist literature. There was accommodation for about a hundred patients in the buildings attached to his house. He believed in the efficacy in eye cases of "the air of the rice fields," not to speak of the shrine which overlooks the patients' quarters. As the number of blind people in Japan is appalling,[207] it was interesting to hear the opinion that the chief causes were gonorrhoea, inadequate attention at birth, insufficient nourishment in childhood and nervous disease—all more or less preventible. Nearly a quarter of my host's patients had had their eyes wounded by rice-stem points while stooping in the paddies. As the people are hurt in the busy season they often put off coming for help until it is too late.

The landowner-oculist's premises were lighted by natural gas from a depth of 900 ft. According to a fellow-guest, who happened to be an expert in this matter, natural gas is to be had all over Japan.[208]

The room in which I slept belonged to a part of the house which was of great age, but by my futon there was laid an electric torch.

A pleasant thing during my visit was the presence of a dozen intelligent, kindly students who early in the evening came and knelt in a semicircle round us, "in order to profit by our talk." One of them, a son of the house, an athlete (and now, after travelling in Europe, his father's successor), did all sorts of services for me during my stay, in the simple-hearted fashion that shows such an attractive side of the Japanese character. One question asked by the students was, "For what reasons does Sensei believe that the influence of women in public life would be good?" Another enquiry was, "Which are the best London and Paris papers?" These lads could hardly hope to get through the university before they were twenty-five or twenty-six. Yet, compared with our undergraduates, they had very little time for general reading, discussions and outdoor sports. I remember a man of some experience in the educational world saying to me, "Our students do not read enough apart from their studies; it is their misfortune." They have not only the burden of having to learn nearly several thousand ideographs,[209] three scripts and Japanese and Chinese pronunciation. They have to acquire Western languages, which, owing to their absolute dissimilarity from Oriental tongues—for example, the word for "I" is watakushi—must be learnt entirely from memory. It is not that the Japanese student does not begin early as well as leave off late. A professor once said to me, "For some little time after I first went to school I was still fed from the bosom of my mother." In some ways it is no doubt a source of strength for Japan that her men can spend from their earliest years to the age of twenty-six on the acquirement of knowledge and self-discipline—the privileges of the student class and the generosity of their families and friends and the public at large are remarkable—but the disadvantages are plain. No sight seems stranger to a new arrival in Japan than that of so many men in their middle or late twenties still wearing the conspicuous kimono and German bandsman cap of the student.

To return to our host, he told us that tenants were "getting clever." They were paying their rent in "worse and worse qualities of rice." The landlords "encouraged" their tenants with gifts of tools, clothes or sake in order that they might bring them the best rice, but the tenants evidently thought it paid better to forgo these benefits and market their best rice. This raises the question whether rent ought nowadays to be paid in kind. Rural opinion as a whole is in favour of continuing in the old way, but there is a clear-headed if small section of rural reformers which is for rent being paid in cash.

One thing I found in my notes of my talk with the landowner-oculist I hesitated to transcribe without confirmation. Speaking of the physique of the people, he had said that few farmers could carry the weights their fathers and grandfathers could move about. But later on a high agricultural authority mentioned to me that it had been found necessary to reduce the weight of a bale of rice from 19 to 18 kwamme and then to 15—1 kwamme is 8.26 lbs.

In the oaza in which I was staying there were eighty families. Seventy were tenants. Under a savings arrangement initiated by my host, the hamlet, including its five peasant proprietors, was saving 120 yen a month. On the other hand, more than half the tenants were in debt "in connection with family excesses," such as weddings, births and burials. But there might be unknown savings. I should state that the villagers seemed contented enough.

For some reason or other I was particularly struck by the sturdiness of the small girls. This was interesting because Chiba had for long an evil reputation for infanticide, and under a system of infanticide in the Far East it would be supposed—I have heard this view stoutly questioned—that more girls die than boys. The landowner-oculist was of opinion that in stating the causes of the low economic condition of his tenants the abating of infanticide must be put first. People no longer restricted themselves to three of a family. The average area available locally was only 6 tan of paddy and 1.2 tan of dry land. In a one-crop district in which there was work for only a part of the year this area was obviously insufficient and there was not enough dry land for mulberries. Then taxation was now 2-1/2 yen per bale of rice (hyo). A third of the rice went in rent.

I tried to find out what the oaza might be spending on religion. The Shinto priest seemed to get 5 sen a month per family, which as there are eighty families would be 48 yen yearly. The Buddhist priest had land attached to his temple and money was given him at burials and at the Bon season. The oaza might spend 100 yen a year to send five pilgrims as far away as Yamagata, on the other side of Japan. The priests did not seem to count for much. "Their only concern with the public," I was informed, "is to be succoured by it. They are living very painfully. The Buddhist priests have to send money to their sect at Kyoto." In one of my strolls I passed the Shinto priest carrying a rice basket and looking, as my companion said, "just like any other man." At a shrine I saw a number of bowls hung up. A hole cut in the bottom of each seemed a pathetic symbol of need, material or spiritual.

The keeper of the teahouse in the oaza had been given a small sum by our host to take himself off, but in the village of which the oaza formed a part there were two teahouses, where ten times as much was spent as was laid out on religion. No one had ever heard of a case of illegitimacy in the oaza but there had been in the twelve months three cases which pointed to abortion. It was five years since there had been an arrest. The young men's association helped twice a year families whose boys had been conscripted.

According to what I was told in various quarters, some landowners in Chiba did a certain amount of public work but most devoted themselves to indoor trivialities. The fact that two banks had recently broken at the next town, one for a quarter of a million yen, and that a landowner had lost a total of 30,000 yen in these smashes, seemed to show that there was a certain amount of money somewhere in the district. No one appeared to "waste time on politics." In ten years "there had been one or two politicians," but "one member of Parliament set a wholesome example by losing a great deal of money in politics." As to local politics, election to the prefectural assembly seemed to cost about 500 yen. Membership of the village assembly might mean "a cup of sake apiece to the electors."

I was assured that this hamlet was above the economic level of the county. The belief was expressed that it could maintain that position for three or four years. "I do not feel so much anxiety about the present condition of the people," my host said; "they are passive enough: but as to the future it is a difficult and almost insoluble question."

"The condition of our rural life is the most difficult question in Japan," said a fellow guest.

In one of the farmers' houses a girl, with the assistance of a younger brother, was weaving rough matting for baling up artificial manure. Near them two Minorcas were laying in open boxes. In this family there were seven children, "three or four of whom can work." The hired land was 8 tan of paddy and 2-1/2 of dry. There was nothing to the good at the end of the year. Indeed rice had had to be borrowed from the landlord. The family was therefore working merely to keep itself alive. But it looked cheerful enough. Looking cheerful is, however, a Japanese habit. The conditions of life here were what many Westerners would consider intolerable. But it was not Westerners but Orientals who were concerned, and what one had to try to guess was how far the conditions were satisfactory to Eastern imaginations and requirements. The people at every house I visited—as it happened to be a holiday the mending of clothing and implements seemed to be in order—were plainly getting enjoyment from the warm sunshine. Undoubtedly the long spells of sunshine in the comparatively idle period of the year make hard conditions of life more endurable.

In a very small house which was little more than a shelter, the father and mother of a tenant were living. It is not uncommon for old peasants to build a dwelling for themselves when they get nearly past work, or sometimes after the eldest son marries.

I found a 1-cho peasant proprietor playing go and rather the worse for sake, though it was early in the morning. A 3-cho proprietor was living in a good-sized house which had a courtyard and an imposing gateway.

On the thatch of one house I noticed a small straw horse perhaps two feet long. On July 7 such a horse is taken by young people to the hills, where a bale of grass is tied on its back. On the reappearance of the figure at the house, dishes of the ceremonial red rice and of the ordinary food of the family are set before it. "The offering of other than horse food indicates," it was explained, "that the desire is to keep the straw animal as a little deity." Finally the horse is flung on the roof.

I went some distance to visit an oaza of twenty families. It was described to me as "well off and peaceful." Alas, one peasant proprietor had gone to Tokyo, where he had made money, and on his return had built his second son a house with Tokyo labour instead of with the labour of his neighbours. So the oaza was "excited with bitter inward animosity." Like our own hamlets, these oaza in the sunshine, seemingly so peaceful, whisper nothing to townsfolk of their bickerings and feuds.

One of the thatched mud houses I came to was at once a primitive co-operative sale-and-purchase society and the clubhouse of the old people of the oaza. The rent the old folk received from the society was enough to maintain the building. The oldsters gather from time to time in order to eat, drink and make merry with gossip and dancing. Dancing is a possibility for old people because it is swaying, sliding and attitudinising, with an occasional stamp of the foot, rather than hopping and whirling. One of the best amateur dances I have seen was performed by a grandsire. Such clubhouses, places for the comfort of the ageing and aged, are found in many villages. Young people are not admitted. The subscription to this particular clubhouse was 2 yen and 3 sho of sake on joining and 2 yen a year.

As we went on our way there was pointed out to me a house the owner of which had sold half a tan of land for 120 yen and was drinking steadily. He had tried to make money by opening an open-air village theatre which owing to rain had been a failure.

I visited an oaza where all the land belonged to the man I called upon. He assured me that most of his tenants "made ends meet." The remainder had a deficiency at the end of the year due to "lack of will to save" and to their "lack of capital which caused them to pay interest to manure dealers." A co-operative society had just been started.

In looking at a map of the village to which some of these oaza belonged I noticed many holdings tinted a special colour. These were called "jump land." They consisted of land subdued from the wild by strangers. The properties were regarded as belonging to the oaza in which their cultivators lived.

I walked through a bit of woodland which had formerly been held in common and had been divided up, amid felicitations no doubt, at the rate of half a tan each to every family. But the well-to-do people soon got hold of their poorer neighbours' portions.

In a roughish tract I came on burial grounds. One portion was set apart for the eight families which recognised the chief landlord as their head. The graves of lowlier folk seemed to occur anywhere. Each grave was covered by a pyramidal mound of sandy earth with a piece of twig stuck in it. Sometimes a tree had been planted and had grown. A child's grave had some tiny bowls of food and a clay doll before a little headstone. By way of shelter for these offerings there was hung on the headstone a peasant's wide straw hat. A large beehive-shaped bamboo basket over another grave was a reminder of the time when a grave needed such protection in order to save the body from wild animals.

I saw at a distance in the midst of paddies two tree-covered mounds, a large one and a small one. They looked like the grave mounds I had seen in China, but it was suggested that they were probably on an old frontier line and marked spots at which ceremonies for scaring off disease were performed.

In one place I found the people planting plum trees in order to meet their communal taxation. It was reckoned that the yield of one tree when it came into full bearing would defray the taxes of a moderate-sized family.

An open space in a wood was pointed out to me as the spot on which dead horses were formerly thrown to the dogs and birds. Nowadays notice was given to the Eta that a dead horse was to be cast away, and they came and, after skinning the animal, buried the body. Farther off, on the high road, I saw an 8 ft. high monument to a local steed that had died in Manchuria.

One of my further visits to Chiba was in the spring. The paddies, which had been fallow since November, were under water; but much of the stubble had been turned over with the long-bladed mattock. The seed beds from which the rice is transplanted to the paddies were a vivid green. On the high ground I saw good clean crops of barley and wheat, beans and peas, on soil of very moderate quality.

The name of Funabashi at a station reminded me of a Japanese friend having told me that it was "famous for a shrine and a very immoral place." But I afterwards heard that the keeper of that shrine, "acting from conscientious motives, gave up his lucrative post and died a poor man." It is said of one of the most sacred places in Japan that it is also the "most immoral." Kyoto which contains nine hundred shrines is also supposed to harbour several thousand women of bad character.

I passed a place where 25,000 Russian prisoners had been detained. There was an old peasant there who told his son that he could not understand why so many Japanese went abroad at such great cost to see the different peoples of the world. If they would only stay at home, he said, they would see them all in turn, for first there had been the Chinese prisoners, then the Russians and now there were the Germans.

In the uplands it was peaceful and restful to walk through the shady lanes between the tree-studded homesteads or along the road passing between plots of mulberry, tea, vegetables or grain, cultivated with the care given to plants in a garden. In the herbage by the roadside, but not among the crops I need hardly say, I noticed dandelions, sow thistles, Scots thistles, plantains and some other familiar weeds.

In the paddies some men wore only a narrow band of red cotton between their legs joined to a waist string, which, though convenient wear in paddies, was comically conspicuous. I recall a friend's story of a little foreign girl of seven who stayed with her mother in a Japanese hamlet and struck up a friendship with a kindly old peasant. One hot summer day the child came home carrying all her scanty garments over her arm, and covered with mud to the waist. In answer to her mother's enquiries the child said, "Well, mother, Ito San has all his clothes off, and I could not go into the paddy to help him with mine on."

I visited an elementary school which was little more than a shed. The roofing was of bark and the paper-covered window shutters were of the roughest. It said much for the stamina of the children that they could sit there in bleak weather. An attempt had been made to shut off the classes from one another by pieces of thin cotton sheeting fastened to a string. But such essential furniture, from a hygienic point of view, as benches with backs had been provided, for it is considered by the national educational authorities that kneeling in the Japanese manner is inimical to physical development. I noticed, also, that when the children sang they had been taught to place their hands on their hips in order that their chests might benefit from the vocal exercise. The earnestness and kindliness of the men and women teachers were evident. All the teachers came to school bare-foot on geta.[210]

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where there was nothing between us and America. My companion and I were carried over shallows on the backs of fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures. Above high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying. They were to be turned into oil and fish-waste manure. I saw an earthenware vase with a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot and found that it was used, with a rope attached to the rim, for catching octopus. When the octopus comes across such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter constructed on exactly the right principles and takes up his abode therein. He is easily captured, for he refuses to let go his vase when it is brought to the surface. Indeed the only way to dislodge him is to pour hot water through the hole in the bottom of his upturned tenement.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] The Japanese firepot, which is made of wood or porcelain as well as metal, contains pieces of charcoal smouldering in wood ash.

[204] I saw poultry of the table breeds which we call Indian Game or Malay; the Japanese call them Siamese.

[205] See Appendix LVIII.

[206] In 1918 carp was produced to the value of a million and a half yen and eels to the value of nearly a million.

[207] See Appendix LIX.

[208] See Appendix LX.

[209] To cite a word already used in these pages, there are half a dozen words spelt ko and as many as fourteen spelt ko, but all have a different ideograph. When the prolongation of the educational course by the ideographs is dwelt on, it is wholesome for us to remember Professor Gilbert Murray's declaration that "English spelling entails a loss of one year in the child's school time." Other authorities have considered the loss to be much more.

[210] For statistics of stamina, heights and weights of children, see Appendix LXI.



CHAPTER XXXV

THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER

(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skim them over.—BACON

One day in the third week of October when the roads were sprinkled with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the Kwanto plain and passed from the prefecture of Tokyo into that of Saitama.[211] The weather now made it necessary for Japanese to wear double kimonos. During the middle of the day, however, I was glad to walk with my jacket over my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about naked. The region visited had a naturally well-drained dark soil, composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of humus from buried vegetation, and it went down to a depth beyond the need of the longest daikon (giant radish). Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the ground, and large areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or were in course of preparation for winter wheat and barley; but the most conspicuous crop was daikon. There were miles and miles of it at all sorts of stages from newly transplanted rows to roots ready for pulling. There is daikon production up to the value of about a million yen. In addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a large export trade in daikon salted in casks.

I came into a district where there was a system of alternate grain and wood crops. The rotation was barley and wheat for three or four years, then fuel wood for about fifteen. The tendency was to lengthen the corn period in the rotation.

The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton trousers like the men. One farm-house I entered was a century old but it had not been more than forty years on its present site. It had been transported three miles. I was once more impressed by the low standard of living. If by this time I had not been getting to know something of the ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to credit the fact that a household I visited was worth ten thousand yen.

Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop. They were bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a yen the 82 lbs. bale. The consumer was paying double that. Not a few of the farmers were cultivating as much as 5 cho or even 8 cho, for there was little paddy. Even then, I was told, "it's a very hard life for a third of the farmers." The reason was that there was no remunerative winter employment.

Before the Buddhist temple, where there was preaching twice a year, were rows of little stone figures, many of which had lost their heads. The heads were in much demand among gamblers who value them as mascots. Among some mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw a little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was there, it was explained, "not because of belief but of custom." The evening was drawing in and Fuji showed itself blue and mystical above the dark greenery of the country. As I gazed a sweet-sounding gong was struck thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this summons to other thoughts than those of the common task.



My companion entered into conversation with a decent middle-aged pedestrian, neatly but poorly dressed, and found that he was a man who had formerly pulled his kuruma in Tokyo. The man had found the work of a kurumaya too much for him and had withdrawn to his village to open a tiny shop. But he had been taken ill and had been removed to hospital. When he came out he found that his wife was in poverty and that his eldest son had been summoned to serve in the army. Now his wife had become ill and he was on his way to a distant relative to ask him to take charge of a small child and to help him with a little money to start some petty business. My companion gave him a yen and deplored the fact that poor people should fail to take advantage of the law releasing from service a son required for the support of a parent. They failed occasionally to find friends to represent their case to the authorities.



While waiting at the station we talked with another old man. He had come to see his daughter whose husband had been called up for two years' service. She was living of course with her parents-in-law. He said that his daughter would have no difficulty in keeping the farm going during the young man's absence, but his being away was "a great loss."

The old man, who squatted at our feet as he spoke, went on to tell us about a young man of his village who had served his term in the navy but thought of remaining for another term. "Gran'fer" thought it a good opening for him; he would not only get his living and clothes but—and this is characteristic—"see the world and send back interesting letters." The ancient was specially interested in the sailor, he said, because his wife had "given milk" to the adventurer when an infant.

It is difficult to enter a village which has not its pillar or its slab to the memory of a youth or youths who perished in the Russian or Chinese wars.[212] But in the severe struggle with Russia the villages did more than give their sons and build memorials to them when they were killed. They tried, in the words of an official circular of that time, "to preserve the spirit of independence in the hearts of the relieved and to avoid the abuses of giving out ready money." There was the secret ploughing society of the young men of a village in Gumma prefecture. "Either at night or when nobody knew these young men went out and ploughed for those who were at the front." In one prefecture the school children helped in working soldiers' farms. In villages in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures there was given to soldiers' families the monopoly of selling tofu, matches and other articles. Some of the societies which laboured in war time were the Women's One Heart Society, the Women's Chivalrous Society, the National Backing Society and the Nursing Place of Young Children of those Serving at the Front.

In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not being the slave of clothing. When it rains kuruma men and workmen habitually roll up their kimonos round their loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take them off.[213] Of course no Japanese believes in catching cold through getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continually experienced, for the cotton tabi are wet through at every shower. Some years back it was not uncommon in walking along the sea-beach at night to find fishermen sleeping out on the sand. An old man told me that it used to be the custom in his sea-shore hamlet for all members of a family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and infants.

On my return from the country I found myself in a company of earnest rural reformers who were discussing a plan of State colonisation for the inhabitants of some villages where everything had been lost in a volcanic eruption. Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15 yen for a cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen per child per day). During the evening I was shown the figure of a goddess of farming venerated by the afflicted folk. The deity was represented standing on bales of rice, with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a big serving spoon in her right.

The gathering discussed the question of rural morality. As to the relations of the young men and women of the villages, to which there has necessarily been frequent references in these pages, the reader must always bear in mind the way in which the sexes are normally kept apart under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this Japanese countryside differ more noticeably from our own than in the fact that joyous young couples are never seen arming each other along the road of an evening. Thousands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry, innumerable scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of which Japan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in the public view no "random fits of dallin'." An unmarried young man and young woman do not walk and talk together. A young man and woman who were together of an evening would be suspected of immorality. Even when married they would not think of linking arms on the road. I was a beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in which a young wife met her young husband returned from abroad. There were merely repeated bows and many smiles. The view taken of kissing in Japan is shown by the fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited by the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are helped to understand the Japanese standpoint a little if we remember how repugnant to English and American ideas is the Continental custom of men kissing one another. Kissing is understood by the Japanese to be a sexual act, as is shown by their word for it.

Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing is believed to afford greater protection against the weather. (Outside the volcanic-soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The volcanic soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made, is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the liberal applications of manure has made it black.

I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master craftsmen in Japan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great hoarding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without will.

The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings was also adopted outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a hundred yen to one yen. The charge to scholars at this school, I found, was 10 sen per month during the first compulsory six years and 30 sen during the next two years.

Just after Christmas I walked again into the country. There were miles of dreary brown paddies with the stubble in puddles. On the non-paddy land there was the refreshing green of young corn which seemed greatly to enjoy being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot dip in the opening.

In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked daikon. Such malformed roots used to be presented to shrines by women desirous of having children.

In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to examine the dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among a host of other particulars about a certain person's origin and condition I read that he was a minor when his father died, that such and such a person acted as his guardian, that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her husband's death.

In not a few places I found that the tiny shrines of hamlets (aza) had been taken away and grouped together at a communal shrine with the notion of promoting local solidarity. At one such combination of shrines I saw notice boards intimating that "tramps, pedlars, wandering priests and other carriers of subscription lists and proselytisers" were not received in the village. It was explained that a community was sometimes all of one faith: "therefore it does not want to be disturbed by tactless preachers of other beliefs."

At an inn there was a middle-aged widow who served there as waitress in the summer but in the winter returned to Tokyo, where she employed a number of girls in making haori tassels. (She gave them board and lodging and clothes for two years, and, after that period, wages.[215]) Remembering what I had written down about courting, I asked for her mature judgment on our rural custom of "walking out." She was amused, but, in that way the Japanese have of trying to look at a Western custom on its merits, she said, after consideration, that there was much to be said for the plan. "In Japan," she declared, "you cannot know a husband's character until you are married. On the whole, I wish I had been a man." In order to catch our train we had to leave this inn the moment our meal was finished, although the widow quoted to us the adage, "Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."

On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a friend who was taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn 4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I continually heard the note of the kakko (cuckoo). On the higher parts of the mountain there were azaleas at every yard, some quite small but others 12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by cattle. Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at the top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches and pines, stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches broken off by the terrific blasts which from time to time sweep along the top of the extinct volcano.

One of the products of rural Japan is the wrestler. Sumo, which is going on in every school and college of the country, exhibits its perfect flower twice a year in the January and May ten-days-long tournaments in the capital. The immense rotunda of the wrestlers' association suggests a rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000 people.[216] On the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing room. Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of the wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their countrymen. The rigorous training, Gargantuan feeding and somewhat severe discipline of the wrestlers enable them to grow beyond the average stature and to a girth, protected by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which reinforces strength with great weight.[217]

I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a train to witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of these massive, good-tempered men. There is not in the world, probably, a more remarkable illustration than they afford of what superior physical training and superior feeding can do. At first sight, indeed, these gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair—for, like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long—was performed by a personage who combined the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There is nothing of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers. Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their self-esteem which they receive in their disciplinary progress from the contests of their native villages through all the grades of their profession to the highest rank. Their sexual morality is commonly of the lowest.

In my own hamlet at home in England I have seen the shoemaker, tailor and carpenter successively pass away; the only craftsman left is the smith. In Japan the hereditary craftsman survives for a while. I watched in my house one day the labours of such a worker. He was not arrayed in a Sunday suit fallen to the greasy bagginess of everyday wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue cotton jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of the same stuff, and both garments, which were washed at least once a week, were admirably fitted to their wearer's work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own medieval and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the back of his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative Chinese characters in white. There are nowadays in the cities many inferior workers, but all the men who came to my house worked with rapidity and concentration, hardly ever lifting their eyes from their jobs. The dexterity of the Japanese workman is seldom exaggerated. To his dexterity he adds the considerable advantage of having more than two hands, for he uses his feet together or singly. His supple big toes are a great possession. We have lost the use of ours, but the Japanese artisan, accustomed from his youth to tabi with a special division for the big toe, and to geta, which can be well managed only when the big toe is lissom, uses his toes as naturally as a monkey, with his paws and mouth full of nuts, gives a few to his feet to hold. The first sight of a foot holding a tool is uncanny.

The pitiful thing is that a modest, polite, cheerful, industrious, skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic hereditary craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so little conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's progress is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be recovered. It is no doubt true that when our own handicrafts were dying we also were insensitive. But because the Middle Ages in England encountered the industrial system gradually we suffered our loss more slowly than Japan is doing. Because, too, we never had in our bustling history the long periods of immunity from home and foreign strife by which Japanese craftsmanship profited so wonderfully, we may not have had such large stores of precious skill and taste to squander as New Japan, the spendthrift of Old Japan's riches, is unthinkingly casting away.

It is at Christmas at home that we have in the Christmas tree our reminder of the country. It is on New Year's Day that in Japan a pine tree is set up on either side of the front gate, but there are three bamboos with it, and the four trunks are all beautifully bound together with rope. If the ground be too hard for the trees to be stuck in the ground, they are kept upright by having a dozen heavy pieces of wood, not unlike fire logs, neatly bound round them. The pines may be about 10 ft. high, the bamboo about 15 ft. To the trees are affixed the white paper gohei. Over the doorway itself is an arrangement of straw, an orange, a lobster, dried cuttlefish and more gohei. A less expensive display consists of a sprig of pine and bamboo. Poor people have to be content with a yard-high pine branch with a French nail through it at either side of their doorway. I have been ruralist enough to harbour thoughts of the extent to which the woods are raided for all this New Year forestry. Some prefectures, in the sincerity of their devotion to afforestation, forbid the New Year destruction of pine trees.

I remember the gay and elaborate dressing of the horses during the New Year holidays. I saw one driver of a wagon who was not content with tying streamers on every part of his horse where streamers could be tied: he had also decorated himself, even to the extent of having had his head cropped to a special pattern, tracts of hair and bare scalp alternating.

It was pleasant to learn that a fine chrysanthemum show arranged in an open space in Tokyo was free to the public. Some plants, by means of grafting, bore flowers of half a dozen different varieties. Several plants had been wondrously trained into the form of kuruma, etc. Not a few of the varieties exhibited were, according to our ideas, atrocious in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horticultural skill was represented in the chrysanthemums I saw at the Imperial garden party. A chief of a department of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that from a chrysanthemum growing in the ground it was possible to have a thousand blooms.

In a Japanese room the timber upright alongside the tokonoma is always a tree trunk in the rough. If it be cherry it has its bark on. The contrast with the finely finished wood of the rest of the room is arresting. It is said that the use of the unplaned upright is not more than three or four hundred years old and that it had its origin in Cha-no-yu affectations of simplicity.

I was visited one evening by an agricultural official who had returned from a visit to Great Britain. He spoke of the "lonelyism" of our best hotels. In a Japanese hotel of the same class one's room is so simple and the view of the garden is so refreshing that, with the beautiful flower arrangement indoors, the frequent change of kakemono, the serving of one's meals in a different set of lacquer and porcelain each day and the willing and smiling service always within the call of a hand clap, there comes a sense of restfulness and peace. The drawback which the Western man experiences is the lack of any means of resting his back but by lying down and the inability to read for long while resting an elbow on an arm rest which is too low for him.[218] A Japanese often reads kneeling before a table.

Here I am reminded to say that the development of the desire for books and newspapers in the rural districts is a noticeable thing, if only because it is new. It is not so long ago that reading was considered to be an occupation for old men and women and for children. The samurai had few books and the farmers fewer still. But the idea of combining cultivation and culture was not unknown. I have heard a rural student humbly quote the old saying, Sei-ko U-doku (literally, "Fine weather—farming—Rainy weather—reading").

I have a rural note of one of my visits to the No.[219] One farce brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now extinct but surely deserves to be remembered for its encouragement of mountain climbing. This "mountain climber," as he was called, was hungry and climbed a farmer's tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor got on a stool, obligingly steadied by a supposedly invisible attendant, and pretended to clamber up a corner post of the stage.) While he was eating the persimmons he was discovered by their owner. The farmer was a man of humour and said that he thought that "that must be a crow in the tree." So the poor priest tried to caw. "No," said the farmer, "it is surely a monkey." So the priest began to scratch after the manner of monkeys. "But perhaps," the farmer went on, "it is really a kite." The priest flapped his arms—and fell. The farmer thought that he had the priest at his mercy. But the priest, rubbing his beads together, put a spell on him and escaped. The word No is written with an ideograph which means ability, but No also stands for agriculture.[220]

FOOTNOTES:

[211] The Kwanto plain (73 by 96 miles) includes most of Tokyo and Saitama prefecture, and also the larger part of Kanagawa and Chiba and parts of Ibaraki, Gumma and Tochigi.

[212] The characters on these slabs are beautifully written. They have usually been penned by distinguished men.

[213] The Japanese man wears below his kimono or trousers a pair of bathing shorts. Peasants frequently wear in the fields nothing but a little cotton bag and string.

[214] Poor households ordinarily use, instead of movable hibachi, a big square box in an opening in the floor and resting on the earth.

[215] When I was in Tokyo, tradesmen's messenger boys received only their food, lodging and clothing and an occasional present, with help no doubt in starting a linked business when they were out of their time. Now such youths, as a development of the labour movement, are on a wage basis and receive 20 yen a month.

[216] The place has since been burnt down. A bigger building has been erected.

[217] See Appendix LXII.

[218] There is also the occasional whiff of the benjo; but, as an agricultural expert said, "It is not a bad thing that a people which is increasingly under the influence of industrialism should be compelled to give a thought to agriculture." There are European countries famous for their farming whose sanitary experts are evidently similarly minded.

[219] The fact that Dr. Waley's scholarly book is the third work on the No to be published in England in recent years is evidence that a knowledge of a form of lyrical drama of rare artistry is gradually extending in the West.

[220] Hence the names of the two national agricultural organisations, Teikoku Nokai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai Nippon Nokai, that is the Great Japan Agricultural Society.



CHAPTER XXXVI

"THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN"

(GUMMA, KANAGAWA AND CHIBA)

I find the consolation of life in things with which Governments cannot interfere, in the light and beauty the earth puts forth for her children. If the universe has any meaning, it exists for the purposes of soul.—AE

One December night there walked into my house a professor of agricultural politics, clad in tweeds and an overcoat, and with him a man who wore only a cotton kimono and a single under-garment. The sunburnt forehead of this man showed that he was not in the habit of wearing a hat. There is a smiling Japanese face which to many foreigners is merely irritating. It is not less irritating when, as often happens, it displays bad teeth ostentatiously gold-stopped. This man's smile was sincere and he had beautiful teeth. His hands were nervous and thin, his bearing was natural and his voice gentle. Here, evidently, was an altruist, perhaps a zealot, probably a celibate. He was introduced as a rural religionist from Gumma prefecture set on reforming his countrymen. It is important to know the strength of the reforming power which Japan is itself generating: here was a man who for eight years had lived a life of poverty in remote regions and had shaped his life by three heroes, "St. Francis, Tolstoy and Kropotkin." He believed that the way to influence people was "to work with them." He lived on his dole as a junior teacher in an elementary school. His food, which he cooked himself, was chiefly rice and miso. He had been a vegetarian for ten years. He was twenty-nine.

He said that as far as the people of his village—largely peasant proprietors who hired additional land—were concerned, "It is happy for them if they end the year without debt." I asked how the men in the village who owned land but did not work it spent their time. The reply was: "They are chattering of many things, very trivial things, and they disturb the village. They drink too much and they have concubines or women elsewhere."

"If an ordinary peasant went to the next town to see women there," the speaker continued, "young men of the village would go and give him a good knock. In former times 'waitresses' were highly spoken of in the village, but not now. There are some young men who may go at night to a house where there are young girls in the family and open the door. Sometimes they bring cucumbers. Cucumbers are symbols. Some do this out of fun and some sincerely to express their feelings. If the young men who do such a thing do it out of fun they are given a good knock by members of that house when discovered. If they are sincere the members of the family will smile. There are in our village of 6,000 inhabitants only four illegitimate children."

As to the influences exerted for the betterment of the people the follower of St. Francis was convinced that "when Buddhist influence, Shintoism, Confucianism and the good customs of our race are all mixed together so that you cannot discern one from the other we have some living power." His own religion was "that of St. Francis combined with Buddhism."

Speaking generally of rural people my visitor said: "They are falling into miserable conditions, are in effect spending what was accumulated by their ancestors. Their houses are not so practical and cost more. They think they live better but their physical condition is not better. The number who cannot earn much is increasing." I was told of a growing habit among village boys of running off to Tokyo without their parents' permission. And bands of girls came to the district to help in the silk-worm season "often without their parents' approval."

Many villagers consulted my visitor on all sorts of subjects until he had almost no leisure. Some wanted counsel about the future of their children, some desired advice about the family debt, some wanted to know how to put an end to quarrels and some asked "how a man will be able to be easy-minded." The ordinary result of the primary school system was "a mass of many informations in young brains and they cannot tell wisdom from knowledge. The result is that they are discontented with their hard lot. They grow up wishing to rob each other within the bounds of the law. They want to live comfortably without hard work. Good customs which were the crystallisation of the experience of our race are dying away."

My visitor had met an old woman on the road clad miserably. She earned as a labourer on a farm, beside her board and lodging, 25 sen daily. Of this sum she handed to a fellow-villager whom she trusted 20 sen. He gave away many clothes to the poor and her contribution was used with the money he expended. "If," said she, "one shall give to God a small thing in darkness then it is accepted to its full value, but, if it be known, it is accepted only at a small value." She was "content and quite happy."

This woman and many others in the district had a primitive kind of religion. They observed the days called "waiting for the sun" and "waiting for the moon." "The same-minded people gather. The one most deeply experienced tells something to those assembled and they begin to be imbued with the same spirit. It is some kind of transformed worship of the sun god. They feel the mercy of the sun. They do not worship the heavenly bodies but as the symbol of the merciful universe. These people take meals together several times in a year. They talk not only on spiritual but on common things and about the news in the papers. It may seem to a stranger that what they talk is foolish, but they have a wonderful power to attract the essential out of those trifles."

"The fundamental power which made Japan what it is," the speaker went on with animation, "is not institutions and statesmen, but those primitive religious acts. The people strongly resembling the old woman I spoke of may be only 1 per cent., but almost all villagers are imbued with such religious notions and feel thankfulness, and on rare occasions a latent sentiment springs from their hearts. Their religion may be connected with Buddhism or Shintoism; it is not Buddhism or Shintoism, however, but a primitive belief which in its manifestation varies much in different villages. For example, in one village the good deeds of an ancient sage are told. The time when that priest lived and particulars about him are getting dimmer and dimmer, but his influence is still considerable. Though many people are worshipped in national and prefectural shrines the influence of those enshrined is small compared with the influence of a man or woman of the past who was not much celebrated but was thought to be good by the rustic people.

"Think of the way in which the memory of the maid-servant Otake is worshipped by the peasants through one-half of Japan. That was a pious and illuminated person who worked very hard. As her uta (poem) says, 'Though hands and feet are very busy at work, still I can praise and follow God always because my mind and heart are not occupied by worldly things.' She ate poor food and gave her own food to beggars. So when a countryman wastes the bounty of nature he is still reprimanded by the example of that maid-servant. She is more respected than many great men."

My visitor thought a religious revival might happen under the leadership of a Christian or of a Buddhist, or of a man who "united Buddhism and Christianity" or "developed the primitive form of faith among the lower people." He thought there were "already men in the country who might be these leaders." He said that much might happen in ten years. "Materialism is prevalent everywhere, but people will begin to feel difficulties in following their materialism. When they cannot go any further with it they will begin to be awakened."

And then this young man who sincerely desires to do something with his life and has at any rate made a beginning went his way. Up and down Japan I met several single-hearted men not unlike him.

One day I made an excursion from Tokyo and came on an extraordinary avenue of small wooden red painted torii, gimcracky things made out of what a carpenter would call "two by two stuff." By the time I got to the shrine to which the torii led I must have passed a thousand of these erections. In one spot there was a stack of torii lying on their sides. The shrine was in honour of the fox god and there was a curious story behind it. Twenty years before a man interested in the "development" of the district had caused it to be given out that foxes, the messengers of the god Inari, had been seen on this spot in the vicinity of a humble shrine to that divinity. The farmers were continually questioned about the matter. It was suggested that the god was manifesting his presence. In the end more and more worshippers came, and, with the liberal assistance of the speculator, a fine new shrine was erected in place of the shabby one. His hand was also seen in the building of a big burrow—of concrete—for the comfort of the god's messenger. The top of the burrow also furnished an excellent view of the surrounding district, and teahouses were built in the vicinity. Indeed in a year or two quite a village of teahouses came into existence. The place, which was on the sea-coast, had become a kind of Southend or Coney Island, and attracted thousands of visitors.

A large proportion of these teahouses would have great difficulty in establishing a claim to respectability. Numbers of lamps which crowded the space before the shrine were the gifts of women of bad character and the inscriptions on these gifts bore the addresses and profession of the donors. The final irony was the provision of a tram service for the convenience of those who wished to worship at another altar than that of the fox god. Although most of the visitors found the chief attraction of the place in the teahouses,[221] they were none the less devout. Every visitor to the teahouses worshipped at the shrine.

What do those who bow their heads and throw their Coppers in the treasury pray for? "Well-being to my family and prosperity to my business" was, I was told, a common form of invocation. Even among not a few reasonably well educated people there is a conviction that prayers made at the altar of the fox god are peculiarly efficacious. Kanzo Uchimura, who accompanied me on this trip, improved the occasion by saying in his vigorous English: "You in the West have some difficulty, no doubt, in understanding the fierceness of the indignation with which Old Testament prophets denounce heathen gods. When you behold such an exhibition as this you may be helped to understand. Here is impurity under divine protection, and this place may fairly be called a fashionable shrine. The visitor to Japan often vaunts himself on being broadminded. He regards heathendom as only another sect and he desires to be respectful to it. But I want to show you that it is not a case of only another sect but often a case of gross and demoralising superstition and priestly countenancing of immorality. Heaven forbid that I should deny the beauty of the idea of the foxes being the messengers of divinity or that I should suggest that some religious feelings may not inspire and some religious feeling may not reward the sincere devotion of the countryman to his fox god, but how much does it amount to in sum?"

I thought of what Uchimura had said when one day, in the course of a walk with his critic, Yanagi (Chapter XI), I was shown a shrine pitifully bedizened by the waraji (straw sandals) and ema[222] of a thousand or more pilgrims who were suffering or had recovered from syphilis.[223]

During our conversation Yanagi said: "Shintoism is not of course a religion at all. It draws great strength from the national instinct for cleanliness manifested by people living in a hot climate. The religion of poor people is largely custom; I complain of educated people not that they are sceptical but that they are not sceptical enough. They simply don't care. According to Mr. Uchimura, there is only one way to God and that is through Christianity. But there are many ways. A personal religion like Christianity is more effective than Buddhism, but it does not follow that Christianity is better than Buddhism. I find I get to like Mr. Uchimura more and more and his views less and less. It is not his theoretical Christianity but his courageous spirit which attracts. He is a courageous man and we have very great need of morally courageous men. Although Christianity is impossible without Christ, Buddhism is possible without Buddha. A variety of religions is not harmful, and we have to take note of the Christian temperament and the Buddhistic temperament. Orientals can only be appealed to by an Oriental religion. Christianity is an Oriental religion no doubt, but it has been Westernised. It must always be borne in mind that Buddhistic literature is in a special language and that it is difficult for most people to get a general view of Buddhism."

In further talk the speaker said that in Japan the individual had not been separated from the mass. But it was difficult to exaggerate the swiftness of the national development. The newer Russian writers were "certainly as well known in England, possibly better known." As to Tolstoy alone, there were at least fifty books about him. But it had to be admitted that, generally speaking, the Japanese development though rapid had not gone deep. In painting there was dexterity and technique but few men knew where they were going. Their work was "surface beautiful." They had not passed the stage of Zorn.

We spoke of conscription and I said that it had not escaped my attention that many young men showed an increasing desire to avoid military service. From a single person I had heard of youths who had escaped by looking ill—through a week's fasting—by impairing their eyesight by wearing strong glasses for a few weeks, by contriving to be examined in a fishing village where the standard of physique was high, or by shamming Socialist.[224] Many Japanese bear uncomplainingly the heavy burden of the military system. But the others are to be reckoned with.

Said one of these to me: "We Japanese are not inherently a warlike people and have no desire to be militarists; but we are suffering from German influence not only in the army but through the middle-aged legal, scientific and administrative classes who were largely educated in Germany or influenced by German teaching. This German influence may have been held in check to some extent, perhaps, by the artistic world, which has certainly not been German, except in relation to music, and after all that is the best part of Germany. Many young people have taken their ideas largely from Russia; more from the United States and Great Britain. But Germany will always make her appeal on account of her reputation with us for system, order, industry, depth of knowledge, persistence and nationalism."

On the family system, the study of which was more than once urged upon me in connection with the rural problem, this statement was made to me by an agricultural expert: "I will tell you the story of an official whose salary was that of a Governor. His father was a farmer. The farmer borrowed money to educate his son. When the son became an official he paid the money back, but on the small salaries he received this repayment was a strain. Then two brothers came to his house frequently for money, and when they received it spent it in ridiculous ways. This begging has gone on for nine years. My friend has to live not like an Excellency but like a guncho. He cannot treat his wife and children fairly. But of the money he gives to his brothers he says, 'It is my family expense.'"

I also heard this story: "A married B. B died without having any children. A next married B's sister, C. Then, because of the necessity of having a male heir for the maintenance of his family, and because he thought it was unlikely that his wife C would have children as her dead sister B had had none, he adopted his wife's younger brother, D. But the wife C did have children. Consequently, not only is A's wife his sister-in-law and his eldest 'son' his wife's brother, but his children are his eldest 'son's' nephews. The eldest of these children, E, is legally the younger son. He says, 'I am glad that instead of an uncle I have an elder brother. I am much attached to him and he is attached to me. I am not sorry to be younger instead of elder brother, for when my father dies my adopted brother will become head of the family and he must then bring up his younger brothers and sisters, manage the family fortunes, bear the family troubles and keep all the cousins and uncles in good humour by inviting them occasionally and at other times by visiting them and giving them presents.'[225]

"It is obvious that our family system, for speaking in criticism of which officials have been dismissed from their posts, puts too much stress on the family and too little on the individual. The family is the unit of society. Any member of it is only a fraction of that unit. For the sake of the family every member of it must sacrifice almost everything.[226] Sometimes the development of the individual character and individual initiative is checked by the family system. An eldest son is often required to follow his father's calling irrespective of his tastes. Nowadays some eldest sons go abroad, but their departure attracts attention and you seldom find such a thing happening among farmers. The family system, by which all is subordinated to family, is convenient to farmers for it means increased labour and economy of living. Sometimes there may be two married sons living at home and then there is often strife. Generally speaking, the family system at one and the same time keeps young men from striking out in the world and compels their early marriage so that the helping hands to the family may be more numerous. The family system concentrates the attention on the family and not on society. There is no energy left for society.

"Again, the family system gives too much power to relatives and leads to disagreeable interference. In the case of a marriage being proposed between family A and family B, the families related to A or B who will be brought into closer connection by the marriage may object. On the other hand, the family system has the advantage that the relatives who interfere may also be looked upon for help. Not a few people are all for maintaining the family system. But the spirit of individualism is entering into some families and here and there children are beginning to claim their rights and to act against relatives' wishes. One hears of farmers sending boys, even elder sons, to the towns, and for their equipment borrowing from the prefectural agricultural bank instead of spending on the development of their business."

At a Christmas-day luncheon I met four students of rural problems, two of whom were peers, one a governor of an important prefecture, and a fourth a high official in the agricultural world. One man, speaking of the family system, said "the success of agriculture depends on it." "In my opinion," someone remarked, "the foundation of the family system is common production and common consumption, so when these things go there must be a gradual disappearance of the family system." "No," came the rejoinder, "the only enemy of the family system is Western influence." "Yes," the fourth speaker added, "an enemy whose blows have told."

Someone suggested that the Japanese rural emigrant always hoped to return home, that is if he could return with dignity—does not the proverb speak of the desirability of returning home in good clothes? One of the company said that he had seen in Kyushu rows of white-washed slated houses which had been erected by returned emigrants. "But they were successful prostitutes. Often, however, these girls invest their money unwisely and have to go abroad again."

Everybody at table agreed that there was in the villages a slow if steady slackening of "the power of the landlord, of the authorities and of religion," and a development of a desire and a demand for better conditions of life. One who proclaimed himself a conservative urged that changes of form were too readily confounded with changes of spirit. The change in thought in Japan, he said, was slow, and some occurrences might be easily misjudged. I said that that very day I had heard from my house the drone of an aeroplane prevail over the sound of a temple bell, happening to speak of The Golden Bough, I asked my neighbour, who had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating view some things could ever be the same again. He answered frankly, "There are things in our life which are too near to criticise. Do you know that there are parts of Japan where folklore is still being made?"

I was invited one evening to dinner to meet a dozen men conspicuous in the agricultural world. Priests were apologised for because most of them were "very poor men and also poorly educated." Very few had been even to a middle school. Many priests read Chinese scriptures aloud but they did not understand what they were reading.

One man reported that an old farmer had said to him that paddy-field labour was harder than dry-land labour, but young men did not go off to Tokyo because of the severity of the work; they went away because of "the bondage of rural life."

How much has the economic stress affected old convictions? How general and how eager is the Japanese resolution to Westernise farther? None of the rural sociologists had given any thought apparently to a new factor in the rural problem: the way in which compulsory military service, in taking farmers' sons to the cities as soldiers and bluejackets, is giving them an acquaintance with neo-Malthusianism. In Tokyo and other large cities certain articles are prominently advertised on the hoardings. It is of some importance to consider what will be the effect of this knowledge in competition with the national appreciation of large families.[227] Is it likely that an intensely "practical" people, which has bolted so much of European and American "civilisation," will be wholly uninfluenced by the Western practice of limitation of offspring? What is to-day the actual strength of the social needs which have produced the large Japanese family?[228] Whatever middle-aged Japanese may think, the matter is not in their hands, but in the hands of the younger generation. Most Western economists would no doubt argue that if fewer babies arrived in Japan there would not be so many farmers' boys and university graduates bent on emigrating.

Without the voluntary limitation of families, however, the number of children born is likely to be diminished by the increased cost of living and by the postponement of marriage. I know Japanese men who were married before they were twenty; the younger generation of my friends is marrying nearer thirty.[229]

There is reason to believe that the population has not increased of recent years at the old rate.[230] A responsible authority expressed the opinion to me that the necessities of the population are unlikely to overtake the means of production in the near future.[231]

The Japanese are intensely practical, but they have, as we have seen, another side. If that other side is not "spiritual," in the sense in which the word is largely used in the West, it is at least regardful of other considerations than the "practical." It is with thoughts of that vital side of the national character that I recall a story told me by Dr. Nitobe of the last days of the Forty-seven Ronin. It is well authenticated. When the Ronin had slain their dead lord's persecutor and had given themselves up to the authorities, they were found worthy of death. But the Shogun was in some anxiety as to what might justly be done. He sent privily to a famous abbot saying that it was at all times the duty of the Shogun to condemn to death men who had committed murder. Yet it was the privilege of a priest to ask for mercy, and in the matter of the lives of the Ronin the Shogun would not be unwilling to listen to a plea for mercy. The abbot answered that he sympathised deeply with the Ronin, but because he so sympathised with them he was unwilling to take any steps which might hinder the carrying out of the sentence. It was true, he said, that there were old men among the Ronin, but many, of them were young men—one was only fifteen—and it had to be borne in mind that if they escaped death at the hands of the law it was hardly likely that during the whole course of their after-lives they could hope to escape committing sin of some sort or another. At the moment they had reached a pinnacle of nobility which they could never pass and it was a thing to be desired for them that they should die now, when they would live to all posterity as heroes. The happiest fate for the Ronin was a righteous death, and as their admiring sympathiser the abbot expressed his unwillingness to do anything which might have the effect of saving them from so glorious an end.

FOOTNOTES:

[221] Someone said to me, "I have in mind one village where there is a poorly cared-for school and a score of teahouses giving employment to nearly two hundred people."

[222] "Small boards with crude designs painted on them. They may be prayers, thank-offerings or protective charms. A shrine where many thanks ema have been left is clearly that of a god ready to hear and answer prayer. Worshippers flock to the place and the accumulation of painted boards—whether prayers or thanks—increases."—FREDERICK STARR, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, vol. xlviii.

[223] The percentage in conscripts in 1918 was 2.2 per cent, against 2.5 per cent, in 1917 and 2.7 per cent, in 1916. ("Not less than 10 per cent. of the population of our large towns are infected with syphilis and a much larger proportion with gonorrhoea."—SIR JAMES CRICHTON-BROWNE.) The figures for the general population of Japan must be higher.

[224] See Appendix LXIII.

[225] It sometimes happens that an adopted son is dismissed with "a sufficient monetary compensation" when a real son is born.

[226] I met a fine ex-daimyo, who after the Restoration had served as a prefectural governor. He was so generous in giving money to public objects in his prefecture that his family compelled him to resign office.

[227] See Appendix XXX.

[228] It is only within the last quarter of a century that the authorities have taken a stand against infanticide. There is no traditional dislike of an artificial diminution of progeny, for many of the fathers and grandfathers of the present generation practised it. Methods of procuring abortion were also common. A certain plant has a well-known reputation as an abortifacient. A young peer and his wife are now conducting a campaign on behalf of smaller families, and the discussion has advanced far enough for a magazine to invite Dr. Havelock Ellis to express his views.

[229] According to the 1918 figures the ages at which men and women married were as follows per 1,000: before 20, m. 37.6, w. 259.0; 20-25, m. 304.9, w. 434.8; 26-30, m. 347.9, w. 159.4; 31-35, m. 145.1, w. 67.3; 36-40, m. 70.0, w. 37.1; 41-45, m. 41.8, w. 21.4; 46-50, m. 22.8, w. 10.5; 51-55, m. 14.7, w. 6.0; 56-60, m. 7.3, w. 2.5; 61 and upwards, m. 7.9, w. 2.

[230] See Appendix XXX.

[231] See Appendices XXV and LXXX; also page 363 for the reasons operating against emigration. Mr. J. Russell Kennedy, of Kokusai-Reuter, declared (1921) that it was "a myth that Japan must find an outlet for surplus population; Japan has plenty of room within her own border," that is, including Korea and Formosa as well as Hokkaido in Japan. Mr. S. Yoshida, Secretary of the Japanese Embassy in London, in an address also delivered in 1921, stressed the value of the fishing-grounds and the mercantile marine as openings for an increased population. "The resources of the sea," he said, "give Japan more room for her population than appears."



REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO

CHAPTER XXXVII

COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS

Above all, this is not concerned with poetry.—WILFRED OWEN

When the traveller stands at the northern end of the mainland[232] of Japan he is five hundred miles from Tokyo. In the north of Hokkaido he is a thousand miles away. Hokkaido, the most northerly and the second biggest of the four islands into which Japan is divided, is curiously American. The wide straight streets of the capital, Sapporo,[233] laid out at right angles, the rough buggies with the farmer and his wife riding together, the wooden houses with stove stacks, and, instead of paper-covered shoji, window panes: these things are seen nowhere else in Japan and came straight from America. It was certainly from America that the farmers had their cries of "Whoa." One of the best authorities on Hokkaido has declared that the administrative and agricultural instructors whom America sent there from about the time of the Franco-Prussian war "gave Japan a fairer, kindlier conception of America than all her study of American history."

In Old Japan there is always something which speaks of the centuries that are gone; in Sapporo there is nothing that matters which is fifty years old. One of the most remarkable facts in the agricultural history of Japan is that a country with a teeming population and an intensive farming should have left entirely undeveloped to so late a period as the early seventies a great island of 35,000 square miles which lies within sight of its shores. The wonder is that an attempt on Yezo[234] was not made by the Russians, who, but for the vigorous action of a British naval commander, would undoubtedly have taken possession of the island of Tsushima, 700 miles farther south and midway between Japan and Korea. Up to the time of the fall of the Shogun the revenue of the lords of Yezo was got by taxing the harvest of the sea and the precarious gains of hunters. The Imperial Rescript carried by the army which was sent against certain adherents of the Shogun who had fled there said: "We intend to take steps to reclaim and people the island."[235] It is doubtful if at that period the population was more than 60,000[236] (including Ainu).[237]

When Count Kuroda was put at the head of the Colonial Government he went over to America and secured as his adviser-in-chief the chief of the Agricultural Department at Washington. Stock, seeds, fruit trees, implements and machinery, railway engines, buildings, practically everything was American in the early days of Hokkaido. During a ten-year period, in which forty-five American instructors were sent for, five Russians, four Britons, four Germans, three Dutchmen and a Frenchman were also imported.[238]

Governor Kuroda had a million yen placed at his disposal for ten years in succession, and a million yen was a big sum in those days. Before long there were flour mills, breweries, beet-sugar factories, canning plants, lead and coal mining and silk manufacturing and an experiment in soldier colonisation which owed something to Russian experiments in Cossack farming. An agricultural school grew into a large agricultural college; and this agricultural college has lately become the University of Hokkaido, with nearly a thousand students.[239] How much of a pioneer Sapporo College was may be gathered from the fact that when I was in Hokkaido 67 out of the 140 men who were members of the faculty had been themselves taught there. Dean Sato (Japan's first exchange lecturer to American universities), Dr. Nitobe (Japanese Secretary of the League of Nations) and Kanzo Uchimura were among the first students. There have always been American professors at Sapporo—its first president came from Massachusetts—and the professorship of English has always been held by an American.

The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University buildings stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere else in Japan but Hokkaido.[240] The extent of the University's landed possessions is also unexpected. There are two training farms of 185 and 260 acres respectively, beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000 acres on which there are already more than a thousand tenants, and 300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and Korea. Four or five times as many students as can be admitted offer themselves at Sapporo.

There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life conceived for a country where stock may be kept and a farmer does not need to practise the superintensive farming of Old Japan. At the first University farm I looked over it was clear that not only American but Swedish, German and Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer was the farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A silo dominated the scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in Old Japan, was a crop for stock.[241] I also noticed crops of oats and rye.

I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen suit and was glad to put on a woollen one. By September 29 it was snowing. Snow-shoes were shown among the products of the island at the prefectural exhibition. Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido to that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great Lakes, but the cold current from the North makes comparisons of this sort ineffective. It is only in southern Hokkaido that apples will grow. Thirty years ago wolves and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and bear may still be found within ten miles.

The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture and forestry are greater money makers. Even without forestry agriculture is well ahead of factory industry, which is also eclipsed by mining. Industry is aided by the presence of coal. Among manufactures, brewing stands out even more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning. One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from Hokkaido.[242] In contrast with the situation in Old Japan, where the land is half paddy and half upland, there is in Hokkaido only a ninth of the cultivated land under rice.[243] When I was in Hokkaido there were 600,000 cho under cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than there were in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the north-eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island on the northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond the skill of rice growers. There is always uncertainty with the rice crop in Hokkaido. As the growing period is short, half the rice is not transplanted but sown direct in the paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven years. In such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not good.

Immigrants get 5 cho, but if they are without capital they first go to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than 2-12 cho to rice—from 3 to 5 cho are the absolute limit—against 1-12 or 2 cho to other crops. When the holder of a 5-cho holding prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 cho is considered as much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15 cho it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244] The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 cho. (Stock farming is for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245]