The foundations of Japan _ Notes made during journeys of 6_000 miles in the rural districts as a basis for a sounder knowledge of the Japanese people J. W. Robertson Scott 1352 dow

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

Author: J. W. Robertson Scott

Release date: January 6, 2005 [eBook #14613]
Most recently updated: October 28, 2024

Language: English

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

T H E F O U N D AT I O N S O F
J A PA N

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

AGRICULTURAL

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

THE FOUNDATIONS
OF JAPAN

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

BY J.W. ROBERTSON SCOTT
("HOME COUNTIES")

WITH 85 ILLUSTRATIONS
"In good sooth, my masters, this is no door, yet it is a little window"

LONDON

JOHN MURRAY, ALBEMARLE STREET, W.

1922
TO
SCOTT SAN NO OKUSAN
FOR WHOLESOME CRITICISM

TO TABLE OF CONTENTS
A concern arose to spend some time with them that I might
feel and understand their life and the spirit they live in, if haply I
might receive some instruction from them, or they might be in
any degree helped forward by my following the leadings of truth
among them when the troubles of War were increasing and when
travelling was more difficult than usual. I looked upon it as a
more favourable opportunity to season my mind and to bring me
into a nearer sympathy with them.—Journal of John Woolman,
1762.
I determined to commence my researches at some distance
from the capital, being well aware of the erroneous ideas I must
form should I judge from what I heard in a city so much
subjected to foreign intercourse.—Borrow.

INTRODUCTION

The hope with which these pages are written is that their readers may be
enabled to see a little deeper into that problem of the relation of the West
with Asia which the historian of the future will unquestionably regard as the
greatest of our time.
I lived for four and a half years in Japan. This book is a record of many of
the things I saw and experienced and some of the things I was told chiefly
during rural journeys—more than half the population is rural—extending to
twice the distance across the United States or nearly eight times the distance
between the English Channel and John o' Groats.
These pages deal with a field of investigation in Japan which no other
volume has explored. Because they fall short of what was planned, and in
happier conditions might have been accomplished, a word or two may be
pardoned on the beginnings of the book—one of the many literary victims of
the War.
The first book I ever bought was about the Far East. The first leading
article of my journalistic apprenticeship in London was about Korea. When I
left daily journalism, at the time of the siege of the Peking Legations, the
first thing I published was a book pleading for a better understanding of the
Chinese.
After that, as a cottager in Essex, I wrote—above a nom de guerre which
is better known than I am—a dozen volumes on rural subjects. During a visit
to the late David Lubin in Rome I noticed in the big library of his
International Institute of Agriculture that there was no took in English
dealing with the agriculture of Japan. [1] Just before the War the thoughts of
forward-looking students of our home affairs ran strongly on the relation of
intelligently managed small holdings to skilled capitalist farming. [2] During
the early "business as usual" period of the War, when no tasks had been
found for men over military age—Mr. Wells's protest will be remembered—
it occurred to me that it might be serviceable if I could have ready, for the
period of rural reconstruction and readjustment of our international ideas

when the War was over, two books of a new sort. One should be a
stimulating volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than
technically agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming system and rural
life, and the other a complementary American volume based on a study of
the enterprising large farming of the Middle West. I proposed to write the
second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer who had often
invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father of the present American Minister
of Agriculture. Early in 1915 I set out for Japan to enter upon the first part of
my task. Mr. Wallace died while I was still in Japan, and the Middle West
book remains to be undertaken by someone else.
The Land of the Rising Sun has been fortunate in the quality of the books
which many foreigners have written. [3] But for every work at the standard of
what might be called the seven "M's"—Mitford, Murdoch, Munro, Morse,
Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern—there are many volumes of fervid
"pro-Japanese" or determined "anti-Japanese" romanticism. The pictures of
Japan which such easily perused books present are incredible to readers of
ordinary insight or historical imagination, but they have had their part in
forming public opinion.
The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country. Japanese
æstheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the smoking chimneys
of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the Parliamentary and
administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly worldwide diplomacy are
all borne on the bent backs of Ohyakusho no Fufu,[4] the Japanese peasant
farmer and his wife. The depositories of the authentic Yamato damashii
(Japanese spirit) are to be found knee deep in the sludge of their paddy
fields.
One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the
village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath that
surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to discover the
foundations of the Japan which is intent on cutting such a figure in the East
and in the West. There it is possible to learn not only what Japan is but what
she may have it in her to become.
A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of
agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young and
Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone of a
healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close acquaintance with
the rural civilisation of two pre-eminently small-holdings countries, Holland

and Denmark, but by what I knew to be precious in the rural life of my own
land.
An interest in rural problems cannot be simulated. As I journeyed about
the country the sincerity of my purpose—there are few words in commoner
use in the Far East than sincerity—was recognised and appreciated. I
enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had been broken down
and those who spoke said what they felt. We inevitably discussed not only
agricultural economy but life, religion and morality, and the way Japan was
taking.
I spoke and slept in Buddhist temples. I was received at Shinto shrines. I
was led before domestic altars. I was taken to gatherings of native
Christians. I planted commemorative trees until more persimmons than I can
ever gather await my return to Japan. I wrote so many gaku[5] for school
walls and for my kind hosts that my memory was drained of maxims. I
attended guileless horse-races. I was present at agricultural shows, fairs,
wrestling matches, Bon dances, village and county councils and the strangest
of public meetings. I talked not only with farmers and their families but with
all kinds of landlords, with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, policemen,
shopkeepers, priests, co-operative society enthusiasts, village officials,
county officials, prefectural officials, a score of Governors and an Ainu
chief. I sought wisdom from Ministers of State and nobles of every rank,
from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to
democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers'
wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a
memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and
bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation of
Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories and
classrooms, and, in a remote region, beheld what is rare nowadays, the old
countryman kneeling before his cottage with his head to the ground as the
stranger rode past.
I made notes as I traversed paddy-field paths, by mountain ways, in
colleges, schools, houses and inns. It can only have been when crossing
water on men's backs that I did not make notes. I jotted things down as I
walked, as I sat, as I knelt, as I lay on my futon, as I journeyed in kuruma, on
horseback, in jolting basha, in automobiles, in shaking cross-country trains
and in boats; in brilliant sunshine and sweltering heat, in the shade and in
dust; in the early morning with chilled fingers or more or less furtively as I

crouched at protracted private or official repasts, or late at night endeavoured
to gather crumbs from the wearing conversation of polite callers who,
though set on helping me, did not always find it easy to understand the kind
of information of which I was in search. One of these asked my travelling
companion sotto voce, "Is he after metal mines?"
I went on my own trips and on routes planned out for me by agricultural
and social zealots, and from time to time I returned physically and mentally
fatigued to my little Japanese house near Tokyo to rest and to write out from
my memoranda, to seek data for new districts from the obliging Department
of Agriculture and the Agricultural College people at the Imperial
University, and to eat and drink with rural authorities who chanced to be
visiting the capital from distant prefectures. I had many setbacks. I was
misinformed, now and then intentionally and often unintentionally. There
were many days which were not only harassing but seemingly wasted. I
often despaired of achieving results worth all the exertion I was making and
the money I was spending. I must have worn to shreds the patience of some
English-speaking Japanese friends, but they never owned defeat. In the end I
found that I made progress.
But so did the War, which when I set out from London few believed
would last long. I was troubled by continually meeting with incredible
ignorance about the War, the issues at stake and the certain end. The
Japanese who talked with me were 10,000 miles away from the fighting.
Japan had nothing to lose, everything indeed to gain from the abatement of
Europe's activities in Asia. Not only Japanese soldiers but many
administrative, educational, agricultural and commercial experts had been to
school in Germany. There was much in common in the German and Japanese
mentalities, much alike in Central European and Farthest East regard for the
army and for order, devotion to regulations, habit of subordination and
deification of the State. Eventually the well-known anti-Ally campaign
broke out in Tokyo, a thing which has never been sufficiently explained.
Soon I was pressed to turn aside from my studies and attempt the more
immediately useful task: to explain why Western nations, whose manifest
interests were peace, were resolutely squandering their blood and wealth in
War.
If what I published had some measure of success, [6] it was because by this
time, unlike some of the critics who sharply upbraided Japan and made
impossible proposals in impossible terms, I had learnt something at first

hand about the Japanese, because I wrote of the difficulties as well as the
faults of Japan, and because I was now a little known as her well-wisher.
One of the two books I published was translated as a labour of love, as I
shall never forget, by a Japanese public man whose leisure was so scant that
he sat up two nights to get his manuscript finished. Before long I had
involved myself in the arduous task of founding and of editing for two years
a monthly review, The New East (Shin Toyo), [7] with for motto a sentence of
my own which expresses what wisdom I have gained about the Orient, The
real barrier between East and West is a distrust of each other's morality and
the illusion that the distrust is on one side only.
The excuse for so personal a digression is that, when this period of literary
and journalistic stress began, my rural notebooks and MSS., memoranda of
conversations on social problems and a heterogeneous collection of reports
and documents had to be stowed into boxes. There they stayed until a year
ago. The entries in a dozen of my little hurriedly filled notebooks have lost
their flavour or are unintelligible: I have put them all aside. Neither is it
possible to utilise notes which were submarined or lost in over-worked post
offices. This book—I have had to leave out Kyushu entirely—is not the
work I planned, a complete account of rural life and industry in every part of
Japan, with an excursus on Korea and Formosa, and certain general
conclusions: a standard work, no doubt, in, I am afraid, two volumes, and
forgetful at times of the warning that "to spend too much Time in Studies is
Sloth."
What I had transcribed before leaving Japan I have now been able in the
course of a leisured year in England to overhaul and to supplement by up-to-
date statistics in an extensive Appendix. In the changed circumstances in
which the book is completed I have also ruthlessly transferred to this
Appendix all the technical matter in the text, so that nothing shall obstruct
the way of the general reader. At some future date there may be by another
hand a book about Japan in terms of soils, manures and crops. That is the
book the War saved me from writing. In the present work I have the
opportunity which so few authors have enjoyed of jettisoning all technics
into an Appendix.

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

What is their health of mind and body? By what social and moral
principles and prejudices are they swayed? To what extent are they adequate
to the demand that is made and is likely to be made upon them? In what
respects are they the masters of their lives or are mastered? In what ways are
they still open to Western influences? And in what directions are they now
inclined to trust to "themselves alone"?
If the masters of the rural journal were sometimes mistaken in the
observations they made from horseback, I cannot have escaped blundering in
passing through more dimly lit scenes than they visited. "If there appears
here and there any uncorrectness, I do not hold myself obliged to answer for
what I could not perfectly govern."[8] But I have laboriously taken all the
precautions I could and I have obeyed as far as possible a recent request that
"visitors to the Far East should confine themselves to what they have seen
with their own eyes." As Huxley wrote, "all that I have proposed to myself is
to say, This and this have I learned."
I take pleasure in recalling that some years ago I was approached with a
view to undertaking for the United States Government a socio-agricultural
investigation in a foreign country. Reared as I have been in the whole faith
of a citizen of the English-speaking world, I am glad to think that the present
volume may be of some service to American readers. The United States is
within ten days—Canada is within nine—of Japan against Great Britain's
month by the Atlantic-C.P.R.-Pacific route and eight weeks by Suez. There
are more American visitors than British to Japan. It was America that first
opened Japan to the West, and the debt of Japan to American training and
stimulus is immense. But British services to Japan have also been
substantial. Great Britain was the first to welcome her within the circle of the
Great Powers, and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance did more for Japan than
some Japanese have been willing to admit. The problem of Japan is the
problem of the whole English-speaking world. Rightly conceived, the
interests of the British Empire and the United States in the Far East are one
and indivisible.
The Japanese version of the title of this book (kindly suggested by Mr.
Seichi Narusé) is Nihon no Shinzui, literally, "The Marrow" or "The Core of
Japan." His Excellency the Japanese Ambassador, the beauty of whose
calligraphy is well known, was so very kind as to allow me to requisition his
clever brush for the script for the engraver; but it must be understood that
Baron Hayashi has seen nothing of the volume but the cover.

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

FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is a small book by an able American soil specialist, the late Professor King,
which describes through rose-tinted glasses the farming of Japan, and of China and Korea
as well, on the basis of a flying trip to countries the population of which is thrice that of
Great Britain and the United States together. The author of another book, published last

year, delivers himself of this astonishing opinion: "The Japanese is no better fitted to
direct his own agriculture than I am to steer a rudderless ship across the Atlantic."
[2] Vide Sir Daniel Hall's Pilgrimage of English Farming and articles of mine in the
Nineteenth Century and Times, and my Land Problem.
[3] The Japanese have only lately, however, made some acknowledgment of their debt
to Hearn, and in an eight-page bibliography of the best books about Japan in the Japan
Year Book Murdoch's as yet unrivalled History is not even mentioned.
[4] Ohyakusho must not be confused with Oo-hyakusho or Oo-byakusho, which means
a large farmer. O is a polite prefix; Oo or O means large.
[5] Horizontal wall writings.
[6] About 35,000 copies of my two bilingual books were circulated.
[7] With the backing of a London Committee composed of Lord Burnham, Sir G.W.
Prothero, Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey and Mr. C.V. Sale.
[8] Tenison, 1684.

CONTENTS

STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE (AICHI)
CHAPTER
I. THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
II. "GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY PRECAUTIOUS"
III. EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS
ACTIVITIES
IV. "THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH"
V. COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE
VI. BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-KAMI
VII. OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI

THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD
CHAPTER
VIII. THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD
IX. THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION

BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE
AND THE ARTIST

CHAPTER
X. A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL
XI. THE IDEA OF A GAP

ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND
BACK)
CHAPTER
XII. TO THE HILLS (TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND
FUKUSHIMA)
XIII. THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS (FUKUSHIMA)
XIV. SHRINES AND POETRY (NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)
XV. THE NUN'S CELL (NAGANO)

IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE
CHAPTER
XVI. PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE (SAITAMA,
GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)
XVII. THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM
(NAGANO)
XVIII. "GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES (NAGANO AND
YAMANASHI)
XIX. "FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE WEST
COAST
CHAPTER
XX. "THE GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED"
(FUKUSHIMA AND YAMAGATA)
XXI. THE "TANOMOSHI" (YAMAGATA)

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST
CHAPTER
XXII. "BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST (YAMAGATA,
AKITA, AOMORI, IWATE, MIYAGI, FUKUSHIMA AND IBARAKI)
XXIII. A MIDNIGHT TALK

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU
CHAPTER
XXIV. LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA" (TOKUSHIMA,
KOCHI AND KAGAWA)
XXV. "SPECIAL TRIBES" (EHIME)
XXVI. THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN (EHIME)

THE SOUTH-WEST OF JAPAN
CHAPTER

XXVII. UP-COUNTRY ORATORY (YAMAGUCHI)
XXVIII. MEN, DOGS AND SWEET POTATOES (SHIMANE)
XXIX. FRIENDS OF LAFCADIO HEARN (SHIMANE, TOTTORI
AND HYOGO)

TWO MONTHS IN TEMPLE (NAGANO)
CHAPTER
XXX. THE LIFE OF THE PEASANTS AND THEIR PRIESTS
XXXI. "BON" SEASON SCENES

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE
CHAPTER
XXXII. PROGRESS OF SORTS (SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)
XXXIII. GREEN TEA AND BLACK (SHIDZUOKA)

EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO
CHAPTER
XXXIV. A COUNTRY DOCTOR AND HIS NEIGHBOURS (CHIBA)
XXXV. THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE
CARPENTER (SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)
XXXVI. "THEY FEEL THE MERCY OF THE SUN" (GUMMA,
KANAGAWA AND CHIBA)

REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO
CHAPTER
XXXVII. COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS
XXXVIII. SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?
XXXIX. MUST THE JAPANESE MAKE THEIR OWN "YOFUKU"?
XL. THE PROBLEMS OF JAPAN

APPENDICES

INDEX

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

BATH IN AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL facing title-page
JŪJITSU (AND RIFLES) AT THE SAME SCHOOL
BYGONE DAYS IN JAPAN
THE ROOM IN WHICH THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
"TO ROUSE THE VILLAGE YOU MUST FIRST ROUSE THE
PRIEST"
(AUTOGRAPH OF OTERA SAN)
PLAN OF THE FARMER'S SYMBOLIC TREES
ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS
LIBRARY AND WORKSHED OF A Y.M.A.
LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER
SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE
MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, AUTHOR AND PROF. NASU
THE HOUSE IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE
AUTHOR QUESTIONING OFFICIALS
AUTHOR PLANTING COMMEMORATIVE TREES
RICE POLISHING BY FOOT POWER
"HIBACHI," A FLOWER ARRANGEMENT AND "KAKEMONO"
SCHOOL SHRINE CONTAINING EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT
FENCING AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL
WAR MEMENTOES—ALL SCHOOLS HAVE SOME
A 200-YEARS-OLD DRAWING OF THE RICE PLANT
SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED PADDIES
PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS
PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER

MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP PRICE OF
RICE DOWN
MUZZLED EDITORS
"THE JAPANESE CARLYLE"
MR. AND MRS. YANAGI
CHILDREN CATCHING INSECTS ON RICE-SEED BEDS
MASTERS OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL AND SOME CHILDREN
CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS
IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OF
RICE
MOVABLE STAGE AT A FESTIVAL
FARMHOUSE AT WHICH MR. UCHIMURA PREACHED
TENANT FARMERS' HOUSES
AUTHOR AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING"
SOME PERFORMERS AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING"
IN A BUDDHIST NUNNERY
JAPANESE GRASS-CUTTING TOOLS COMPARED WITH A
SCYTHE
CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS' SAVINGS
NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A "CELL"
STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL
TEACHERS OF A VILLAGE SCHOOL
GIRLS CARRYING BALES OF RICE
SERICULTURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS
SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA
VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM
ARCHERY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL
CULTIVATION OF THE HILLSIDE
RAILWAY STATION "BENTO" AND POT OF TEA
A SCARECROW
THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS COLLECTING-BAG

MR. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONATION CEREMONY ROBES
PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR RAISING WATER
VILLAGE SCHOOL WITH PORTRAIT OF FLORENCE
NIGHTINGALE
RIVER-BEDS IN THE SUMMER
SCHOOL SHRINE FOR EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT
AUTHOR ADDRESSING LAFCADIO HEARN MEETING
A PEASANT PROPRIETOR'S HOUSE
GRAVESTONES REASSEMBLED AFTER PADDY ADJUSTMENT
TEMPLE IN WHICH THIS CHAPTER WAS WRITTEN
FIRE ENGINE AND PRIMITIVE FIGURES
YOUNG MEN'S CLUB-ROOM
MEMORIAL STONES
ROOF PROTECTED AGAINST STORMS BY STONES
OFF TO THE UPLAND FIELDS
FARMER'S WIFE
MOTHER AND CHILD
A CRADLE
FIRE ALARM AND OBSERVATION POST
RACK FOR DRYING RICE
VILLAGE CREMATORIUM
DOG HELPING TO PULL JINRIKISHA
AUTHOR, MR. YAMASAKI AND YOUNGEST INHABITANTS
"TORII" AT THE SHRINE OF THE FOX GOD
TABLETS RECORDING GIFTS TO A TEMPLE
INSIDE THE "SHOJI"
AUTOMATIC RICE POLISHER
AUTHOR IN A CRATER
A TYPE OF WAYSIDE MONUMENTS
GIANT RADISH OR "DAIKON"
CUTTING GRASS

CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND
OFFICIAL TERMS

The prices given in the text (but not in the footnotes and Appendix) were
recorded before the War inflation began. The War was followed by a severe
financial crisis. Professor Nasu wrote to me during the summer of 1921:
"You are very wise to leave the figures as they stood. It is
useless to try to correct them, because they are still changing.
The price of rice, which did not exceed 15 yen per koku when
you were making your research work, exceeded 50 yen in 1919,
and is now struggling to maintain the price of 25 yen. Taking at
100 the figures for the years 1915 or 1916—fortunately there is
not much difference between these two years—the prices of six
leading commodities reached in 1919 an average of about 250.
After 1919 the prices of some commodities went still higher, but
mostly they did not change very much; on the other hand,
recently the prices of many commodities—among them rice and
raw silk especially—have been coming down and this downward
movement is gradually extending to all other commodities. From
these considerations I deduce that the index number of general
commodities may be safely taken as 200 when your book
appears. The reader of your book has simply to double the figures
given by you—that is the figures of 1915 and 1916—in order to
get a rough estimate of present prices."
Where exact statements of area and yield are necessary, as in
the study of the intense agriculture of Japan, local measures are
preferable to our equivalents in awkward fractions. Further, the
measures used in this book are easily remembered, and no
serious study of Japanese agriculture on the spot is possible
without remembering them. While, however, Japanese currency,
weights and measures have been uniformly used, equivalents

have been supplied at every place in the book where their
omission might be reasonably considered to interfere with easy
reading. The following tables are restricted to currency, weights
and measures mentioned in the book.

MONEY[9]
Yen = roughly (at the time notes for the book were made) a
florin or half a dollar = 100 sen.
Sen = a farthing or half cent = 10 rin.

LONG
Ri = roughly 2½ miles.
Shaku (roughly 1 ft.) = 11.93 in.
Ri are converted into miles by being multiplied by 2.44.

SQUARE
Ri (roughly 6 sq. miles) = 5.955 sq. miles.
Chō (sometimes written, Chōbu) (roughly 2½ acres) = 2.450
acres = 10 tan = 3,000 tsubo.
Tan or Tambu (roughly ¼ acre) = 0.245 acres = 10 se = 300
bu.
Bu or Tsubo (roughly 4 sq. yds.) = 3.953 sq. yds.
An acre is about 4 tan 10 bu or 1,200 bu or tsubo (an urban
measure). The size of rooms is reckoned by the number of mats,
which are ordinarily 6 shaku in length and 3 shaku in breadth.

CAPACITY
Koku (roughly 40 gals. or 5 bush.) = 39.703 gals, or 4.960
bush. = 10 tō. According to American measurements, there are
47.653 gals, (liquid) and 5.119 bush, (dry) in a koku. A koku of
rice is 313½ lbs. (British).
A koku of imported rice is, however, 330½ lbs. The following
koku must also be noted: ordinary barley, 231 lbs.; naked barley
301.1 lbs.; wheat 288.7 lbs.; proso millet, 247.9 lbs.; foxtail

millet, 280.9 lbs.; barnyard millet, 165.2 lbs.; brickaheat, 247.9
lbs.; maize, 289.2 lbs.; soya beans, 286.5 lbs.; azuki (red) beans,
319.9 lbs.; horse beans, 266.6 lbs.; peas, 306.5 lbs.
Hyō (roughly 2 bush.) = 1.985 bush. = 4 tō = bale of rice.
Tō (roughly 4 gals, or ½ bush.) = 3.970 gals, or .496 bush, or
1.985 pecks = 10 shō.
Shō (roughly 1½ qts.) = 1.588 qts. or 0.198 pecks or 108½
cub. in. = 10 gō.
Gō (roughly ⅓ pint) =.3176 pints or 0.019 pecks.
Rice is not bagged but baled, and a bale is 4 tō or 1 hyō.

WEIGHT
Kwan or kwamme (roughly 8¼ lbs.) = 8.267 lbs. av. or 10.047
lbs. troy = 1,000 momme.
Kin (catty) = 1.322 lbs. av. or 1.607 troy = 160 momme.
Momme = 2.116 drams or 2.411 dwts. According to American
measurements a momme is 0.132 oz. av. and 0.120 oz. troy.
Hyakkin (picul) = 100 kin = 132.277 lbs.
A stone is 1.693, a cwt. is 13.547, and a ton 270.950 kwamme.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE TERMS
Ken.—Prefecture. There are forty-three ken and Hokkaido.
Ken and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces.
Sometimes the name of the ken and the name of the capital of the
ken are the same: example, Shidzuoka-ken, capital Shidzuoka.
Fu.—Three prefectures are municipal prefectures and are
called not ken but fu. They are Tokyo-fu, Kyoto-fu and Osaka-fu.
Gun (kōri).—Division of a prefecture, a county or rural
district. There are 636 gun. Gun are now being done away with.
Shi.—City. There are seventy-nine cities.
Cho.—A town or rather a district preponderatingly urban.
There are 1,333 cho.
Machi.—Japanese name for the Chinese character cho.

Son.—A village or rather a district preponderatingly rural.
There are 10,839 son.
Mura.—Japanese name for a Chinese character son.
A true idea of the Japanese village is obtained as soon as one
mentally defines it as a commune. There may be a rural
community called son or a municipal community called cho. The
cho or son consists of a number of oaza, that is, big aza, which in
turn consists of a number of ko-aza or small aza. A ko-aza may
consist of twenty or thirty dwellings, that is, a hamlet, or it may
be only one dwelling. It may be ten acres in extent or fifty. I
found that the population of a particular municipality was 10,000
in seven big oaza comprising twenty-two ko-aza.

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

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

THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN

[10]
STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE (AICHI)

CHAPTER I

THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
The only hard facts, one learns to see as one gets older, are the
facts of feeling. Emotion and sentiment are, after all,
incomparably more solid than any statistics. So that when one
wanders back in memory through the field one has traversed in
diligent search of hard facts, one comes back bearing in one's
arms a Sheaf of Feelings.—Havelock Ellis.
One day as I walked along a narrow path between rice fields in a remote
district in Japan, I saw a Buddhist priest coming my way. He was rosy-faced
and benign, broad-shouldered and a little rotund. He had with him a string of
small children. I stood by to let him pass and lifted my hat. He bowed and
stopped, and we entered into conversation. He told me that he was taking the
children to a festival. I said that I should like to meet him again. He offered
to come to see me in the evening at my host's house. When he arrived, and I
asked him, after a little polite talk, what was the chief difficulty in the way
of improving the moral condition of his village, he answered, "I am."
We spoke of Buddhism, and he complained that its sects were "too
aristocratic." When his own sect of Buddhism, Shinshu, was started, he said,
it was something "quite democratic for the common people." But with the
lapse of time this democratic sect had also "become aristocratic." "Though
the founder of Shinshu wore flaxen clothing, Shinshu priests now have
glittering costumes. And everyone has heard of the magnificence of the
Kyoto Hongwanji" (the great temple at Kyoto, the headquarters of the sect).
[11]
"Contrary to the principles of religion and democracy," people thought of
the priest and the temple "as something beyond their own lives." All this
stood in the way of improvement.
The fashion in which many landowners "despised exertion and lived
luxuriously" was another hindrance. These men looked down on education,
"thinking themselves clever because they read the newspapers." Landlords

of this sort were fond of curios, and kept their capital in such things instead
of in agriculture. Sellers of curios visited the village too often. A wise man
had called the curio-seller the "Spirit of Poverty" (Bimbogami). He said that
the Spirit visited a man when he became rich—in order to bring curios to
him; and again when he became poor—in order to take them away from
him! After he became poor the Spirit of Poverty never visited him again.
Yet another drawback to rural progress was petty political ambition.
People slandered neighbours who belonged to another party and they would
not associate with them. Such party feeling was one of the bad influences of
civilisation.
Further, "a mercenary spirit and materialism" had to be fought in the
village. There was not, however, much trouble due to drink, and there was
no gambling now. There might still be impropriety between young people—
formerly young men used to visit the factory girls—but it was rare. Lately
there had been land speculation, and some of those who made money went
to tea-houses to see geisha.
There was in the neighbourhood, this Buddhist pastor went on, a temple
belonging to the same sect as his own, and he was on friendly terms with its
priest. It was good discipline, he said, for two priests to be working near one
another if they were of the same sect, for their work was compared. In
answer to my enquiry, the old man said that he preached four days a month.
Each service consisted of reading for an hour and then preaching for two
hours. About 150 or 200 persons would attend. He had also a service every
morning from five to six. In addition to these gatherings in the temple he
conducted services in farmers' houses. "I feel rather ashamed sometimes," he
said," when I listen to the good sermons of Christians."
As the priest was taking leave he told me that he was going to a farmer's
house in order to conduct a service. I asked to be allowed to accompany him.
He kindly agreed, and invited me to stay the night in his temple.
When I reached the farmhouse there were there about two dozen kneeling
people, including members of the family. On the coming of the priest, who
had gone to the temple to put on his robes, the farmer threw open the doors
of the family shrine and lighted the candles in it. The priest knelt down by
the shrine and invited me to kneel near him. In a few words he told the
people why I was in the district. Whereupon the farmer's aged mother piped,

"We heard that a tall man had come, but to think that we should see him and
be in the same room with him!"
When he had prayed, the priest read from a roll of the Shinshu scripture
which he had taken reverently from a box and a succession of wrappings.
Afterwards he preached from a "text," continuing, of course, to kneel as we
did. A flickering light fell upon us from a lamp hanging from a beam. The
room was pervaded with incense from an iron censer which the farmer
gently swung. The worshippers told their beads, and in intervals between the
priest's sentences I heard the murmur of fervent prayer. The priest preached
his sermon with his eyes shut, and I could watch him narrowly. It is not so
often that one sees an old man with a sweet face. But there was sweetness in
both the face and voice of this priest. He spoke slowly and clearly,
sometimes pausing for a little between his sentences as if for better
inspiration, as a Quaker will sometimes do in speaking at meeting. His tones
were no higher than could be heard clearly in the room. There was nothing
of the exhorter in this man. His talk did not sound like preaching at all. It
was like kind, friendly talk at the fireside at a solemn time. "Faith, prayer,
morality: these alone are necessary," was the burden of the simple address.
"We have faith by divine providence; out of our thanksgiving comes prayer,
and we cannot but be good." It was plain that the old women loved their
priest. In the front of the congregation were three crones gnarled in hands
and face. When the sermon of an hour or so came to an end they spoke
quaveringly of the mercy of Buddha to them, and of their own feebleness to
do well. The old priest gently offered them comfort and counsel.
After the service, in the light of the priest's paper lantern, I made my way
along the road to the temple. At length I found myself mounting the lichened
stone steps to the great closed gates. The priest drew the long wooden bolt
and pushed one gate creakingly back. We went by a paved pathway into the
deeper shadow of the temple. Then a light glowed from the side of the
building, and we were in the priest's house. It was like a farmer's house only
more refined in detail.
About half-past four in the morning I was awakened by the booming of
the temple bell. It is the sound which of all delights in the Far East is most
memorable. I got up, and, following the example of my host, had a bath in
the open, and dressed.
Then I was lighted along passages into the public part of the temple. The
priest with an acolyte began service at the middle altar. Afterwards he

proceeded to a side altar. At one stage of the service he chanted a hymn
which ran something like this:

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

I knelt on the outside of the congregational group. It was cold as the great
doors were slid open from time to time and the kneeling figures grew in
number to about forty. Day broke and a few sparrows twittered by the time
the first part of the service was over.
The priest then took up his lamp and low table, and, coming without the
altar rail, knelt down in the midst of the congregation. In this familiar
relation with his people he delivered a homily in a conversational tone.
Buddha was to mankind as a father to his children, he said. If a man did bad
things but repented, his father would be more delighted than if he got rich.
The way of serving Buddha was to feel his love. To ask of the rich or of a
master was supplication, but we did not need to supplicate Buddha. Our love
of Buddha and his love for us would become one thing. Carelessness, an evil
spirit, doubt: these were the enemies. Gold was beautiful to look at, but if the
gold stuck in one's eyes so that one could not see, how then? The true
essence of belief was the abandonment of ourselves to divine providence.
So the speaker went on, pressing home his thoughts with anecdote or
legend. There was the tale of a woman whose character benefited when her
husband became a leper. Another story was of an injured lizard which was
fed for many days by its mate. We were also told of a mischievous fellow
who tried to anger a believer. The ne'er-do-weel went to the man's house and
called him a liar. The believer thanked him for his faithful dealing, and said
that it might be true that he was a liar. He would be glad, he said, to be given
further advice after his wife had warmed water in order that his visitor might
wash his feet. "The mind of the vagabond was thereupon changed."

The rays of light from the lamp illumined the large Buddha-like shaven
head and mild countenance of the priest and the labour-worn faces of his
flock around him. Two weatherbeaten men curiously resembled Highland
elders. I saw that they, an old woman and a young mother with a child tied
on her back kept their eyes fixed on the preacher. It was plain that in the
service they found strength for the day.
I was in a reverie when the priest ended his talk. To my embarrassment he
begged me to come with him within the altar rail and speak to the people. I
had been quickened to such a degree by the experience of the previous night
and by this service at dawn that I stood up at once. But there seemed to be
not one word at my call, and my knees knocked because of cold and shyness.
I grasped the chilly brass altar rail, and, as I met the gaze of friendly, sun-
tanned, care-rutted alien faces, which yet had the look of "kent folk," I
marvellously found sentence following sentence. What I said matters
nothing. What I felt was the unity of all religion, my veneration for this rare
priest, a sense of kinship with these worshippers of another race and faith,
and a realisation of the elemental things which lie at the basis of
international understanding. Several old men and women came up to me and
bowed and made little speeches of kindness and cordiality. Six was striking
on a clock in the priest's house as the doors of the temple were slid open, the
great cryptomeria [12] which guard the village fane stood forth augustly in the
morning light, and the congregation went out to its labour.
As I knelt at breakfast and ate my rice and pickles and drank my miso
soup, [13] the priest, after the manner of a Japanese with an honoured guest,
did not take food but waited upon me. He asked if the English clergy wore a
costume which marked them off from the people. He liked the way of some
of our preachers who wore ordinary clothes and eschewed the title of
"reverend." He was also taken by the idea of the Quaker meeting at which
there is silence until someone feels he has a message to utter. As to the future
of Buddhism, he deeply regretted to say that many priests were a generation
behind the age. If the priests were "more democratic, better educated and
more truly religious," then they might be able to keep hold of young men.
He knew of one priest in Tokyo who had a dormitory for university students.
The priest presented his wife, a kindly woman full of character. "This is
my wife," he said; "please teach her." I spoke of a kind of kindergarten
which I had learnt had been conducted at the temple for five years. "We
merely play with the children," she said. "I had the plan of it from the

kindergarten of a missionary," her husband added. The priest and his wife
were kneeling side by side in the still temple-room looking out on their
restful garden. Behind them was a screen the inscription on which might be
translated, "We are to be thankful for our environment; we are to become
content quite naturally by the gracious influence of the universe and by the
strength of our own will."
I could learn nothing from the priest concerning several helpful
organisations which I had heard that the villagers owed to his influence and
exertions. But the manager of the village agricultural association told me that
for a quarter of a century Otera San (Mr. Temple) had superintended the
education of the young people, that under his guidance the village had a
seven years' old co-operative credit and selling society, 294 families
belonged to a poultry society, 320 men and women gathered to study the
doctrines of Ninomiya (whom we in the West know from a little book by a
late Japanese Ambassador in London, called For His People), and the young
men's association performed its discipline at half-past five in the morning in
the winter and at four o'clock in the summer.

To Rouse the Village you must first rouse the Priest
(Autograph of Otera-San)

FOOTNOTES:
[9] Exchange in 1916; in 1921 the yen is worth 2s. 8d.
[10] The chapters in this section are based on notes of several visits paid to Aichi,
which is in the middle of Japan, and agriculturally and socially one of the most interesting
of the prefectures. It is three prefectures distant from Tokyo.
[11] Throughout this book an attempt has been made to preserve in translation
something of the character of the Japanese phraseology.
[12] Cryptomeria japonica, or in Japanese, sugi, allied to the sequoia, yew and cypress.
[13] Miso, bean paste.

CHAPTER II

"GOOD PEOPLE ARE NOT SUFFICIENTLY PRECAUTIOUS"
Je ne propose rien, je n'impose rien, j'expose.—De la liberté
du travail
He had been through Tokyo University, but his hands were rough with the
work of the rice fields. "I resent the fact that a farmer is considered to be
socially inferior to a townsman," he said. "I am going to show that the
income of a farmer who is diligent and skilful may equal that of a Minister
of State. I also propose to build a fine house, not out of vanity, but in order to
show that an honest farmer can do as well for himself as a townsman."
When I asked the speaker to tell me something about himself he went on:
"My father was a follower of a pupil of the great Ninomiya. Schools of
frugal living and high ideals were common in the Tokugawa period.[14] The
object sought was the education of heart and spirit. At night when I was in
bed my father used to kneel by me, [15] his eldest son, and say, 'When you
grow big you must become a great man and distinguish our family name.'
This instruction was given to me repeatedly and it went deeply into my
heart."
"When I became a young man," he continued, "I had two friends. We
made promises to each other. One said, 'I will become the greatest scholar in
Japan.' The second said, 'I will become the greatest statesman.' The third,
myself, said, 'I will be the greatest rice grower in this country.' If we all
succeeded we were to build beautiful houses and invite each other to them.
I did not graduate at the University because, by the entreaty of my father,
when I reached twenty-one, I left Tokyo in order to become a practical
farmer. It is twenty-one years since I began farming. I consulted with skilful
agriculturists and then I saw my way to make a plan. Rice in my native place
is inferior. I improved it for three or four years. I gained the first gold prize
at the prefectural show. Some years later I obtained the first prize at the
exhibition which was held by five prefectures together. Later still I received

the first prize at the exhibition for eighteen prefectures, also the first prize at
the exhibition of the National Agricultural Association. Further, I was
appointed a judge of rice and travelled about.
"I consumed a great deal of time in doing this public work. One day I was
made to think. A collector for a charity said in my hearing that he expected
larger subscriptions from practical men because though public men were
esteemed by society their economic power was small. I at once resolved that
before doing any more public work I should put myself in a sound financial
position.
"As I thought over the matter it seemed to me that it was not to be
expected that a public man should be able to do his really best work if his
financial position were not sound. Again, could he have lasting influence
with people in practical affairs if his own practical affairs were not in good
order? [16] At any rate I determined not to go out to any more exhibitions or
lectures except those which were remunerative, and I resolved to devote
myself as my first duty to my farming.
"I set to work and managed my land, 3 chō (a chō is 2½ acres), so as to
obtain the gross income of an M.P. [The reader could scarcely have a more
striking illustration of the intensity with which Japanese land is cultivated—
the average area is under 3 acres per family.] I am now working about 4 chō
(10 acres). Later on I am going to farm 7 chō (15½ acres) and from that I am
expecting the income of a Minister.[17] I have already collected the materials
for my villa, for I am approaching my goal. One of my two friends, who is
also forty years of age, is a distinguished chemist in the Imperial
Agricultural College. My other friend, who is forty-four, is Secretary of the
Korean Government."
The indomitable experimenter swallowed another cupful of tea and
declared that "in order to be prosperous, all the members of the family must
work." All the members of his family did work. His wife was strong and
there were five healthy children. He used the ordinary farm implements and
his livestock consisted of only a horse and a few hens. The home farm was
five miles from the station. The outlying farms were scattered in five
villages—"there are always spendthrift lazy fellows willing to sell their
land." "I have a firm belief," the speaker added complacently, "that
agriculture is the most honest, the most sincere, the most interesting, the
most secure and the most profitable calling."

"Very often," he went on, "good people are not sufficiently precautious"—
I give the excellent word coined by my interpreter. "They spend for the
public good, and in the end they are left poor. Renowned, rich families have
come to a miserable condition by such action. What they have done may
have been good. But they are reduced to pauperism and they are laughed at
by many persons. People jeer that they pretended to do good, yet they could
not do good to themselves. If all people who work for the public benefit are
laughed at at last—and many are—it will come to be thought that to work
for the public benefit is not good. Therefore I think that the man who would
work for the public good must be careful in his own affairs. He must not be a
poor man if he is to help public business. However philanthropic he may be,
if his financial position is not strong he cannot go on long. He will be
stopped on his good way. He cannot help other people. Therefore I am now
gathering wealth for strengthening my financial position as a means to attain
the higher end."
As the speaker awaited my judgment on his career, I ventured to suggest
that gifts, qualities and inspiration which made a man a public man did not
necessarily equip him for being a great success in business life. The question
was, perhaps, whether the type of man who was pre-eminently successful in
promoting his own pecuniary interests was necessarily the best type of
public man. Was the average character equal to the strain of many years of
concentration on money-making to the exclusion of public interests? When
men emerged from the sphere of concentrated money-making, were they
worth so very much as public men? Might not the values of things have
altered a little for them? Might it not have a shrivelling effect on the heart to
resist applications which must be refused when the strengthening of one's
financial position was regarded as the chief object in life?
At this point our host, Mr. Yamasaki, the respected principal of the big
agricultural school of the prefecture and a well-known rural author and
speaker, broke in with the ejaculation, "He has got a needle in your head"—
the Japanese equivalent for "touching the spot"—and continued: "Surely he
is right who through his life offers freely what he may have as to members
of his own family. I give away many pamphlets and I have guests. I could
save in these directions. But I am not doing it. I am content if I can support
my family. I gave a savings book to each of my five children. When the boy
becomes twenty-one he will have enough to finish at the university or start
as a small merchant so as not to be a parasite. My girls will be provided with

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

Plan of the Eleven Symbolic Trees which the Farmer Planted
outside his House and the Evils (represented by Arrows) from which

they are Shielding Him

The virtues inscribed on this plan are the guardians of the farmer and his
family, which is represented in the middle of it. The words behind the arrows
represent the character of the attacks to which the farmer conceives himself
and his family to be exposed. Courage is imagined as going before and
Wisdom as protecting the rear.
The talk turned to some advice which had been given to farmers to lay out
"economic gardens." They were to plant no trees but fruit trees. To this an
old farmer of our company replied: "If you are too economical your children
will become mercenary. Some families were too economical and cut down
beautiful trees, planting instead economical ones. Those families I have seen
come to an evil end. The man who exercises rigid economy may be a good
man, but his children can know little of his real motives and must be
wrongly influenced by his conduct." We all agreed that there was nowadays
too much talk about money-making in rural Japan. "Even I," laughed the
owner of the symbolic trees, "planted not persimmons but pines."

FOOTNOTES:
[14] That is, before the Revolution of half a century ago, when the Tokugawa Shogun
resigned his powers to the Emperor.
[15] The Japanese bed, futon, consists of a soft mattress of cotton wool, two or three
inches thick. It is spread on the floor, which itself consists of mats of almost the same
thickness, 6 ft. long by 3 ft. wide.
[16] Most of the really big men of Australia have left political life in comparatively
impoverished circumstances. Not only did Sir Henry Parkes die poor. Sir George Reid
took the High Commissionership in London; Sir Graham Berry was provided with a small
annuity; Sir George Dibbs was made the manager of a State savings bank; Sir Edmund
Barton was lifted to the High Court Bench.—Times, January 11, 1921.
To the last day of his life, executions were levied in his house.—Rosebery on Pitt.
[17] For his figures see Appendix I.

CHAPTER III

EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS
ACTIVITIES
I should be heartily sorry if there were no signs of partiality.
On the other hand, there is, I trust, no importunate advocacy or
tedious assentation.—Morley
"The alarum clocks for waking us at four o'clock in the summer and five
in the winter"—it was the chairman of a village Early-Rising Society who
was speaking to me—are placed at the houses of the secretaries, and each
member is in turn a secretary. The duty of a secretary, when the alarum clock
strikes, is to get up and visit the houses of all the members allotted to him
and to shout for the young men until they answer. Each member on rising
walks to the house of the secretary of his division and writes his name on the
record of attendances. Then the member goes to the shrine, where we fence
and wrestle for a time. At first we thought that if we fenced and wrestled
early in the morning we should be tired for our work, but we found that it
was not so.
"Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring, so a few of us may
be getting up later that morning. Or a man becomes afraid of sleeping too
late, fears his clock is wrong, and gets up at 3 o'clock and then goes off to
waken members. Hence complaints. Some cunning fellows ask their friends
or brothers to write down for them their names on the list of attendances. But
we find out their deceit by their handwriting. It is very difficult to form the
habit of early rising, because members are not expected to report at the
secretaries' houses on a rainy day. As there is no control over them that day,
they are easy in their minds and sleep on. Thus they break the habit of early
rising that they are forming. Getting up early is necessary not only because it
is good to begin work early but because early rising overcomes the habit of
gadding about at night which is customary in many villages.

"You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of young men," the
chairman continued. "But if you ask from them comfortable practices only,
how can you expect from them a remarkable result? Young men should
ponder this and be willing to exert themselves." Later on it was explained to
me that it had been found that it took a great deal of time for the secretaries
to call up all the members in the morning by shouting to them, "so the
secretary obtained bugles; but even the bugles were not heard everywhere,
so they were changed to drums, and now five drums go round our village
every morning."
In every village of Japan there is a young men's association, which is by
no means to be confounded with the world-encircling Y.M.C.A. [18] The
village Y.M.A. of Japan is an institution of some antiquity and it has nothing
whatever to do with religious effort. One day, when I was staying in a rural
district, I was invited to a remoter part in order to see something of the
discipline that the members of a group of young men's associations were
imposing on themselves. The members of this group of Y.M.A. belonged to
the branches established in a village of nineteen aza, that is hamlets. This
fact, with the further fact that the village containing the nineteen aza had
four elementary schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese
village may be much larger than a Western one.
Nearly six hundred young men were in the parade. They were dressed
exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers and kimono of jacket length
which the Japanese farmer ordinarily wears. Each man had the usual obi
(waist scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the obi was thrust the small
cotton towel which Japanese carry with them everywhere. The young men
wore puttees, waraji (straw sandals) and caps. It is only of late that the
Japanese worker has taken to wearing head-gear, or at any rate head-gear
other than he could contrive with his towel. The physical condition of the
young fellows was good and their evolutions with dummy "rifles" were
smart and skilful. The paraders seemed lost in their desire to do their best for
their credit's sake and their own good. After the first movements, the
"troops" with "rifles" held as if there were bayonets at the end, made rushes
with loud cries. The secret of this somewhat surprising display far away in
the heart of Japan was that the work of the young men had been done under
the direction of two fit, be-medalled army surgeons, reserve officers, who
were present in order to answer my questions.

Every morning half an hour before sunrise these Y.M.A. members
assemble in the grounds of their Shinto shrine or of their school, where they
exercise until the sun shows itself. In the evenings after work they also
fence, wrestle, lift weights and develop their wrists. This wrist development
is done by two youths grasping a pole, one at either end, and then trying to
rotate it one against the other.
The members endeavour to cultivate their minds as well as their bodies,
and they also observe in their dress a self-denying ordinance. On ceremonial
occasions they permit themselves to wear a full-length kimono and the
hakama or divided skirt, but they deny themselves the third article of a
Japanese man's full dress, the haori or silk overcoat. An effort is also made
to dispense with the use of "luxurious" geta (the national wooden pattens).
[19]

The object of all this varied discipline is to develop physique, self-control,
self-respect and what the Japanese call the spirit of association, or, as we
might say, good fellowship. The spirit of association is needed in order to
promote greater administrative, educational and social efficiency. The
modern Japanese village is no longer an historical but a political unit which
covers a considerable district. It is, as I have explained, a combination of
clusters of aza (hamlets). Each of these aza has its local sentiment, and this
local sentiment when untouched by outside influences tends to become
selfish, narrow and prejudiced. If, however, anything is to be done in the
development of rural life there must be co-operation between aza for all
sorts of objects.
I was assured that in addition to the development of physique, moral and
the spirit of association, there was to be seen, under the influence of the
Y.M.A., a development of good manners and mental nimbleness. A special
result of early rising and discipline in one area had been that "the habit of
spending evening hours idly has died away, immorality has diminished,
singing loudly and foolishly and boasting oneself have disappeared, while
punctuality and respect for old age have increased." I was even assured that
parents—whom no true Japanese would ever dream of attempting to reform
at first hand—parents, I say, moved by the physical and mental advance in
their sons, have "begun to practise greater punctuality."
After the drilling was over I was taken to a large elementary school and
was called upon to address the young men, who were kneeling in perfect
files. Mr. Yamasaki followed me and told the youths that Japanese were not

so tall as they might be, and that therefore their physique "must be
continuously developed." Nor were rural conditions all they should be from
a moral point of view. Therefore, "every desire which interferes with the
development of your health or morality must be overcome."
Let me speak of another village. It numbers a thousand families and it
rises in the morning and goes to bed at night by the sound of the bugle. It has
five public baths and a notice-board of news "to enlarge people's ideas." The
shopkeepers are said to "work very diligently, so things are cheaper." The
education of such of the young men as are exempted from military service is
continued on Saturday evenings for four years. The Y.M.A., in addition to
the military discipline, fencing, wrestling, weight-lifting and pole-twisting of
which I have spoken, exercises itself in handwriting—which many Japanese
practise as an art during their whole lifetime—and in composing the
conventional short poem. I was gravely informed that "the custom of
spending money on sweet-stuff is decreasing." What this really means is that
the young men were not frequenting the sweet-stuff shops, which are staffed
by girls who are in many cases a greater temptation than the sweets. The
worthy members of this association had "burnt their geta."
In some places Y.M.A. members give their labour when a school teacher
or a fellow member is building his house, or they do repairs at the school.
Bicycle excursions are made to neighbouring villages in order to participate
in inter-Y.M.A. debates, or to study vegetable raising, fruit culture or poultry
keeping. The Japanese are much given to "taking trips," and the special
training which they receive at school in making notes and plans results in
everybody having a notebook and being able to sketch a rough route-plan for
personal use, or for a stranger who may ask his way.
Not a few associations favour members cutting each other's hair once a
fortnight, thus at one and the same time saving money and curbing vanity.
Several Y.M.A.s publish cyclostyled monthlies. Others minutely investigate
the economic condition of their villages. Some Y.M.A.s provide public
"complaint boxes," and have boards up asking for friendly help for soldiers
billeted in the district. One association has issued instructions to its members
that they are not to ride when in charge of ox-drawn carts. The reason is that
the ox is only partially under control and may injure a pedestrian—
unwittingly, I am sure, for the gentleness of the ox and even of the bull in
harness arrests one's attention. Many Y.M.A.s devote themselves to
cultivating improved qualities of rice or to breaking up new land. Sometimes

the land of the Shinto shrine is cultivated. I have heard of Y.M.A.s in remote
parts having handed over to them the exclusive sale of saké.
I find a Y.M.A. counselling its members "not to speak vulgar words in a
crowd." There is also among the members of Y.M.A.s a certain addiction to
diary keeping for moral as well as economic purposes. The diaries are
distributed by the associations and "afterwards examined and rewarded"—a
plan which would hardly work in the West. There are Y.M.A.s which make a
point of seeing off conscripts with flags and music. Others have fallen on the
more economical plan of "writing to the conscript as often as possible and
helping with labour the family which is suffering from the loss of his
services." By some Y.M.A.s "old people are respected and comforted." More
than one association has a practice of serving out red and black balls to its
members at the opening of every new year, when good resolutions are in
order, and at the end of the year recalling either the red or the black
according to the degree to which the publicly announced good resolutions
have been kept. Among the good resolutions are: to worship at the Shinto
shrine or the Buddhist temple regularly, to be tidier, to be more efficient in
cropping the land, to undertake work for the common good, to have a
secondary occupation in addition to farming, to sit with more decorum at
meals, to rise earlier, to visit the graves of ancestors monthly, to be more
considerate to parents or elder brothers, and "not to remain idly at people's
houses."
One Y.M.A. decrees that a member found in a tea-house in conversation
with a geisha shall be fined 20 yen. There is even a village in which the
young men's association and the young women's association have united to
issue a regulation providing that at night time members, in order that their
doings shall be public, shall carry lanterns painted with the ideographs of
their societies. [20]
With regard to the young women's associations, I found that one of them
studied domestic matters and good manners, "asking questions and receiving
answers." The motto of the organisation was "Good Wives and Good
Mothers." A member, this Society believes, should be "polite, gentle and
warm-hearted, but with a strong will inside and able to meet difficulties."
Her hairdressing and clothes "should not be luxurious," and she "must not
run after fashions." She must "respect Buddha and abandon sweet-eating,"
for "taking food between meals is bad for your health, for economy and for
your posterity."

Let us now hear something of Societies for the Cultivation of Rice by
Schoolboys. The lads become responsible for the cultivation of a tan of their
family land, or of a small paddy, and they work it themselves with the help
of such advice as the schoolmaster may give them. (The cultivation of a tan
of a paddy, a quarter of an acre, is supposed to need in a year about twenty-
one days' labour of a man working from sunrise to sunset.) The report of one
boy to which I turned in a collection of reports by members of a rice-
cultivation society showed that he was between fourteen and fifteen. His
diary of work and observations was as follows:
June 5.—4 to of herring applied.
June 7.—Locusts and other insects arrive. [21]
June 20.—153 clumps of rice transplanted from the seed bed.
[22]

July 11.—Rice cultivated and 4 to of herring applied.
July 27.—First weeding.
Aug. 6.—Second weeding.
Aug. 8.—Locusts again.
Aug. 11.—Third weeding.
Sept. 10.—All ears shot.
Oct. 10.—Some plants suffering from bacillus.
It was further noted that the soil was sandy, that cold spring water was
percolating through the bottom of the paddy field, that the aeration of the
soil was bad and that some plants were laid by wind. The young farmer
appended to his report an excellent plan. He received marks as follows:
Method of planting, 15; levelling, 20; provision against insects, 5; general
attention, 25; total, 65. Some boys got as many as 99 marks.
A word concerning a Village Association for Promoting Morality. One of
the things it does is to assemble yearly the whole population, old and young,
"in order to get friendly." The police meanwhile keep an eye open for
strangers who might take it into their heads to visit the village on that day
and help themselves from the houses. I may quote three poems in rough
translations from a speech made by a priest at the annual meeting:

The legs of a horse, the rudder of a boat, the pin of a fan, and
the sincerity of a man.

Let your heart be pure and true and you need not pray for the
protection of the gods.
The bride brings many things with her to her new home, but
one thing more, the spirit of sincerity, will not
encumber her.
After these varied accounts of rural merit, I could not but listen with
attention to a tale of village gamblers, the offence of gambling having been
"introduced by the excavators on the new railway." First the headman fined a
dozen young men. Then he made a raid and found among the village sinners
several members of his own council. "The salaried officials were at a loss to
know what to do, and proposed to resign. But the headman brought the
prisoners together before the whole body of officials. He spoke of the
sufferings of the troops in Manchuria and the heroic deaths among them. (It
was the time of the Russian war.) 'Lest your offences should come to be
known by our soldiers and discourage them,' said the headman, 'I cannot but
overlook your conduct.' It is thought that gambling practically ceased from
that time."
Local officials have a way of making the most of historic events in order
to touch the imagination of their villagers. Many original undertakings were
begun, for example, under the inspiration of the Coronation. One village set
about raising a fund by a system of taxation under which inhabitants
contribute according to the following tariff:
Birth of a child, 10 sen (that is, 2½ d. or 5 cents).
Wedding, 15 sen.
Adoption, 15 sen.
Graduation from the primary school, 10 sen; advanced school, 20
sen.
Teacher or official on appointment, 2 per cent. of salary; when
salary is increased, 10 per cent. of increase.
When an official receives a prize of money from his superior, 5
per cent.
Every villager to pay every quarter, 1 sen.
On the basis of this assessment it is expected that fifty-seven years after
the Coronation such a sum will have been accumulated as will enable the
villagers to live rate free. Some villages have thanksgiving associations in
connection with Shinto shrines. Aged villagers are "respected by being

blessed before the shrine and by being given a present." Worthy villagers
who are not aged "receive prizes and honour."
More than once when I went to a village I was welcomed first by a parade
of the Y.M.A., then by the school children in rows, and finally in the school
grounds by two lines of venerable members of an Ex-Public Servants'
Association. The object of an E.P.S.A. is to strengthen the hands of the
present officials and to give honour to their predecessors. A headman
explained to me: "If ex-officials fell into poverty or lacked public respect,
people would not be inclined to work for the public good. A former clerk in
the village office whom everybody had forgotten was working as a labourer.
But as a member of the association he was seen to be treated with honour, so
the children were impressed. The funeral of such a man is apt to be lonely,
but when this man died all the members of the association attended his
funeral in ceremonial dress and offered some money to his memory. [23] His
honour is great and the villagers say, 'We may well work for the public
benefit.'"
Every village in Japan has a Village Agricultural Association. One V.A.A.,
which belongs to a village of less than 6,000 people, sees the fruit of its
labours in the existence of "322 good manure houses." The gift of a plan and
the grant of a yen had prompted the building of most of them. Then the
organisation incites its members to cement the ground below their dwellings.
This is not so much for the benefit of the farmer and his family as for the
welfare of their silkworms. A fly harmful to silkworms winters in the soil,
but it cannot find a resting-place in concrete.

A WIDE EXPANSE OF ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS.

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

LIBRARY OF A YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION.

WORKSHED OF A YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION.

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

There is a competition to get the biggest yield of rice, and there is also "an
exhibition of crops." This exhibition incidentally aims at ending trouble
between landlord and tenants due to complaints of the inferiority of the rice
brought in as rent. (Paddy-field rent is invariably paid in rice.) These
complaints are more directly dealt with by the V.A.A. arbitrating between
landlords and tenants who are at issue. In addition to rice crop and cattle
shows in the village, there is a yearly exhibition of the products of secondary
industries, such as mats, sandals and hats.
The V.A.A. is also working to secure the planting of hill-side waste. Some
300,000 tree seedlings have been distributed to members of the Y.M.A., who
"grow them on," and, after examination and criticism, plant them out. I must
not omit to speak of the V.A.A.s' distribution of moral and economic diaries
of the type already referred to. The villagers, in the spirit of boy-scoutism,
are "advised to do one good thing in a day." I saw several of these diaries,
well thumbed by their authors after having been laboured at for a year. One
young farmer noted down on the space for January 2 that he said his prayers
and then went daikon [24] pulling, and that daikon pulling (like our mangold
pulling) is a cold job.

FOOTNOTES:
[18] There are, however, 11,000 members of Y.M.C.A. in Japan. There is also a
Y.W.C.A. with a considerable membership.
[19] See Appendix II.
[20] For official action in regard to the Y.M.A.s, see later.
[21] The damage done by insects is estimated at 10 million yen a year. In some parts
locusts are roasted and eaten.
[22] For an account of the processes of rice cultivation, see Chapter IX.
[23] It is the practical Japanese custom to make a gift of money to a family on the
occasion of a death. The Emperor makes a present to the family of a deceased statesman.
[24] The giant white radish which reaches 2 or 3 ft. in length and 3 in. or more in
diameter. There is also a correspondingly large turnip-shaped sort.

CHAPTER IV

"THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH"
It has been said that we should emulate rather than imitate
them. All I say is, Let us study them.—Matthew Arnold
For seven years in succession the men, old, middle-aged and young, who
had done the most remarkable things in the agriculture of the prefecture had
been invited to gather in conference. I went to this annual "meeting of skilful
farmers." Among the speakers were the local governor and chiefs of
departments who had been sent down by the Ministry of Agriculture and the
Home Office. According to our ideas, everybody but the unpractised
speakers—the expert farmers who were called from time to time to the
platform—spoke too long. But the kneeling audience found no fault. Indeed,
a third of it was taking notes. It was an audience of seeking souls.
One of the impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-marked farmer, told
how forty years before he had gone to the next prefecture and opened new
land. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the chairman—if the
man who takes the initiative from time to time at a Japanese meeting may be
properly called a chairman—"he looks like a gentleman; but he works hard."
And the man showed his hands as a testimony to the severity of his labours.
"It was in the winter," he said, "that I went away from my home and
obtained a certain tract of waste. I had no acquaintance near. I brought some
food, but when I fell short I had no more. I had gone with my third boy. We
lived in a small hut and were in a miserable condition. Then a fierce wind
took off the roof. It was at four in the morning when the roof blew off. In
February I began to open a rice field. Gradually we got a chō. At length I
opened another chō, but there was much gravel. Some of my newly opened
fields are very high up the hill. If you chance to pass my house please come
to see me. The maple leaves are very beautiful and you can enjoy the sight of
many birds."

The early meetings of the expert farmers used to last not one day but two,
for the men delighted in narrating their experiences to one another. Some of
the audience used to weep as the older men told their tales. The farmers
would sit up late round a farmer or a professor who was talking about some
subject that interested them. The originator of these gatherings, Mr.
Yamasaki, told me that he was "more than once moved to tears by the merits
and pure hearts of the farmer speakers."
Of the regard and respect which the farmers had for this man I had many
indications. Like not a few agricultural authorities, he is a samurai.[25] He is
exceptionally tall for a Japanese, looks indeed rather like a Highland gillie,
and when one evening I prevailed on him to put on armour, thrust two
swords in his obi and take a long bow in his hand, he was an imposing
figure. He carries the ideals of bushido into his rural work. He does not sleep
more than five hours, and he is up every morning at five.
But I am getting away from the meeting. There was a priest who spoke, a
man curiously like Tolstoy. (He had, no doubt, Ainu blood in him.) He wore
the stiff buttoned-up jacket of the primary school teacher and spoke
modestly. "Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered very much from
bad irrigation," he said, "but when that was put right the soil became
excellent. In the days when the soil was bad the people were good and no
man suspected another of stealing his seal. [26] But when the soil became
good the disposition of the people was influenced in a bad way, and they
brought their seals to the temple to be kept safe.
"At that time the organiser of this meeting came and made a speech in my
village. On hearing his speech I thought it an easy task to make my village
good. At once I began to do good things. I formed several men's and
women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha. But the real condition
of the people was not much improved. There came many troubles upon me,
and our friend wrote a letter. I was very thankful, and I have been keeping
that letter in the temple and bowing there morning and evening.
"I began to ask many distinguished persons to help me. They influenced
the farmers. The sight of a good man is enough. Speech is unnecessary. The
villagers were not educated enough to understand moralisings or thinking,
but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was a man in the village
who was demoralised, and when I told of him to a distinguished man who
lives near our village he sympathised very much. That distinguished man is
eighty-four years old, but he accompanied that demoralised man for three

days, giving no instruction but simply living the same life, and the
demoralised man was an entirely changed man and ever thankful.
"I am a sinful man. Sometimes it happens that after I have been working
for the public benefit I am glad that I am offered thanks. I know it is not a
good thing when people express gratitude to me, for I ought not to accept it.
When I know I am doing a good thing and expecting thanks, I am not doing
a good thing. My thanks must not come from men but from Buddha. I am
trying to cast out my sinful feelings. It must not be supposed that I am
leading these people. You skilful farmers kindly come to my village if you
pass. You need not give any speech. Your good faces will do."
But the two speeches I have reported are hardly a fair sample of the
discourses which were delivered. The addresses of the earnest Tokyo
officials and the Governor were directed towards urging on the farmers
increased production and increased labour, and the duty was pressed upon
them, as I understood, in the name of the highest patriotism and of devotion
to their ancestors. This talk was excellent in its way, but when I got up I
hazarded a few words on different lines. If I venture to summarise my
somewhat elementary address it is because it furnishes a key to some of the
enquiries I was to make during my journeys. I was told the next day that the
local daily had declared that my "tongue was tipped with fire," which was a
compliment to my kind and clever interpreter, who, when he let himself go,
seemed to be able to make two or three sentences out of every one of mine:
I said that my Japanese friends kept asking me my
impressions, and one thing I had to say to them was that I had got
an impression in many quarters of spiritual dryness. I dared to
think that some responsibility for a materialistic outlook must be
shared by the admirable officials and experts who moved about
among the farmers. They were always talking about crop yields
and the amount of money made, and they unconsciously pressed
home the idea that rural progress was a material thing.
But the rural problem was not only a problem of better crops
and of greater production. Man did not live by food alone.
Tolstoy wrote a book called What Men Live By, and there was
nothing in it about food. Men lived not by the number of bales of
rice they raised, but by the development of their minds and
hearts. It might be asked if it was not the business of rural
experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of my country had said

that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner sty. It was
necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to know
something higher than agriculture. The teacher must be more
advanced than his pupils. There must be a source from which the
energy of the rural teacher must be again and again renewed.
There must be a well from which he must be continually
refreshed and stimulated. Some called that well by the name of
religion, unity with God. Some called it faith in mankind, faith in
the destiny of the world, that faith in man which is faith in God.
But it must be a real belief, not a half-hearted, shivering faith.
Agriculture was not only the oldest and the most serviceable
calling, it was the foundation of everything. But the fact must not
be lost sight of that agriculture, important and vital though it was,
was only a means to an end. The object in view was to have in
the rural districts better men, women and children. The highest
aim of rural progress was to develop the minds and hearts of the
rural population, and in all discussion of the rural problems it
was necessary not to lose in technology a clear view of the final
object.
But when account is taken of all the drab materialism in the rural districts
there remains a leaven of unworldliness. It takes various forms. Here is the
story of a landlord at whose beautiful house I stayed. "When a tenant brings
his rent rice to this landlord's storehouse," a fellow-guest told me, "it is never
examined. The door of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is
brought by the tenant when he is minded to do so. No one takes note of his
coming. If he meets his landlord on the road he may say, 'I brought you the
rent,' and the landlord says, 'It is very kind of you.' It is an old custom not to
supervise the tenants' bringing of the rent.
"Nowadays, however, some tenants are sly. They say, 'Our landlord never
looks into our payments. Therefore we can bring him inferior rice or less
than the quantity.' The landlord loses somewhat by this, but it is not in
accordance with the honour of his family to change the method of collecting
his rent. He is now chairman of the village co-operative society as well as of
the young men's society, and he aims to improve his village fundamentally."
I also heard this narrative. The tenants in a certain place wished to
cultivate rice land rather than to farm dry land. But when silkworm
cultivation became prosperous they began to prefer dry land again in order

that they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the landlords raised
the rents of the dry farms. But there was one landlord who said, "If this dry
farm land had been improved by me I should be justified in raising the rent.
But I did not improve it. Therefore it would be base to take advantage of
economic conditions to raise the rent."
So he did not raise the rent. Then he was excluded from social intercourse
by the other landlords because their tenants grumbled. These landlords said
to him, "You can afford not to raise your rents, but we cannot." Therefore the
landlord who had not raised his rents called his tenants together. He said to
them, "It is a hard thing for me to have no social intercourse with my equals.
Therefore I will now raise the rents. But I cannot accept that raised portion,
and I will take care of it for you, and in ten years I think it will amount to
enough for you to start a cooperative society."
That was eight years ago and the formation of the society was now
proceeding. In order that the reader may not forget on what a very different
scale landlordism exists in Japan, I may mention that the area owned by this
landlord was only 10 chō.
I was told the story of a landlord's solution of the rent reduction problem.
"Tenants," the narrator said, "sometimes pretend that their crops are poorer
than they are. Landlords may reduce the payment due, but sometimes with a
certain resentment. One landowner was asked for a reduction for several
years in succession on account of poor crops, and gave it. But he was trying
to think of a plan to defeat the pretences of his tenants. At last he hit on one.
While the tenants' rice was young he often visited the fields, and when any
insects were to be seen he sent his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the
same way, when crops seemed to be under-manured, he secretly cast
artificial manure on them. At last his tenants found out what he was doing,
and they said, 'As our landlord is so kind to us, we must not pretend that we
need a reduction.' And they did not, and things are going on very well there.
This is an illustration of the fact that our people are moved more by feeling
than by logic."
This was capped by another story. "A landlord, a samurai, has for his
tenants his former subjects, so something of the relation of master and
servant still remains. He wished to raise his tenants to the position of peasant
proprietors, so when land was for sale in the village he advised them to buy.
They said they had no money, but he answered, 'Means may perhaps be
found.' He secretly subscribed a sum to the Shinto shrine and then advised

the formation of a co-operative society, which could borrow from the shrine
for a tenant, so that the tenant need not go to the landlord to thank him and
feel patronised by him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks
there." "The landlord," added the speaker in his imperfect English, "has
entirely hided himself from the business." A third of the tenants had become
peasant proprietors.
In order to better the feeling between the farmers and landowners this
landlord and several others had begun to ask their tenants to their gardens,
where they were given tea and fruit. "In Japan," said one man to me, "we see
feudal ideas broken down by the upper, not the lower class."
I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles from the railway.
Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year to the eighty-eight temples on the
peninsula, and in some parts the people are such strict Buddhists that in one
village the county authorities find great difficulty in overcoming an
objection to destroying the insect life which preys on the rice crops. When
rice land does not yield well, one landlord causes an investigation to be
made and gives advice based upon it to the tenant, saying, "Do this, and if
you lose I will compensate you. If you gain, the advantage will be yours."
Money is also contributed by the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys
in order to study farming methods.
A landlord here—I had the pleasure of being his guest—had started an
agricultural association. It had developed the idea of a secondary school for
practical instruction, "rich men to give their money and poor men their
labour." In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to get money with which
to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord had thought of the plan of
setting aside each harvest 250 shō[27] of rice to each tenant's 3 shō.
Good work was done in teaching farmers' wives. "When no instruction is
given," I was informed, "a wife may say, when her husband is testing his rice
seed with salt water, 'Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not fresh water?' If a
husband is kind he will explain. If not, some unpleasantness may arise, so
wives are taught about the necessity of selecting by salt water."

LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER OFF TO THE VILLAGE
SCHOOL.

BUDDHIST SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE.

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day. In order to keep them
steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked to bring their savings to their
landlord every ten days. It is troublesome to be constantly receiving so many
small sums, but the landlord and his brother think that they should not

grudge the trouble. In two years nearly 1,000 yen have been saved. Said one
tenant to his landlord, "I know how to save now, therefore I save."

MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, THE AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR
NASU.

THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE.

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all his tenants peasant
proprietors before he was fifty. The relation of this landlord and his tenants
was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several farmers brought produce
to the kitchen "because we heard that the landlord had guests." The village
was very kind in its reception of the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in
the temple. I told the story of Wren's Si monumentum requiris circumspice
and pointed a rural moral. Some months afterwards I received a request from
my host to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address
which he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.
This landlord's family had lived in the same house for eleven generations.
The courtesy of my host and his relatives and the beauty of their old house
and its contents are an ineffaceable memory. From the time my party arrived
until the time we left no servant was allowed to do anything for us. The

ladies of the house cooked our food and the landlord and his younger brother
brought it to us. The younger brother waited upon us throughout our meals,
even peeling our pears. At night he spread our silk-covered futon
(mattresses). In the morning he folded them up, arranged my clothes, swept
the room and stood at hand with towels, all of which were new, while I
washed.
When on our arrival in the house we sat and talked in the first reception-
room we entered, I noticed that outside the lattice a company of villagers
was listening with no consciousness of intrusion, in full view of our host, to
the sound of foreign speech. It was a Shakespearean scene.
Out of its setting, as it is often witnessed to-day, the tea ceremony seems
meaningless and wearisome, an affected simplicity of the idle. But as a guest
of this old house of fine timbers weathered to silver-grey I found the secret
of Cha-no-yu. This flower of Far Eastern civilisation is an æsthetic
expression of true good-fellowship, and a gentle simplicity and sincerity are
of its essence. The admission of a foreigner to a family Cha-no-yu was a
gesture of confidence.
Five of us gathered late in the afternoon of an August day in the cool
matted rest-room in the garden. We looked on the beauty that generations of
gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds rested in the quiet as in
the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of the kettle and listened to the
incense." At length at a signal we rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony,
our host's aunt, a slight figure in grey with snow-white tabi and new straw
sandals, we passed by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the
azure hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests distance. The hut-like
tea-room, traditionally rude in the material of which it was built but perfect
in every detail of its workmanship, we entered one by one. According to old
custom we humbly crept through the small opening which serves as
entrance, the idea being that all worldly rank must bow at the sanctuary of
beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides the wonderful vessels of the
ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue Michaelmas daisies, and an
exquisite scroll of wild duck in flight in the miniature tokonoma, [28] the tea
mistress, our host and four guests. We drank from a black daimyo bowl
which had been made four hundred years before. We passed an hour together
and in the twilight we came out from the little room as from a sacrament of
friendship. A year afterwards my host wrote to me, "Yesterday we had Cha-

no-yu again and you were in our thoughts. During the ceremony we placed
your photograph in the tokonoma."
After dinner we had kyōgen [29] by distinguished amateurs, one of whom, a
neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared before the Emperor. After the
plays he painted kyōgen scenes for us on kakemono and fans. He painted the
kakemono as he knelt with his paper lying on a square of soft material on the
floor.
The plays were performed in ancient costumes or copies of old ones and
of course without scenery. The players were lighted by oily candles two
inches in diameter, which flamed and guttered in candlesticks not of this
century nor of the last. A player may make his exit merely by sitting down.
The players are men; masks are used in playing women's parts. The stories
are of the simplest. There was the well-known tale of the sly servant who
was sent to town by a stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and, though he
brought back an umbrella, succeeded in imposing it on his master. There was
also the play of the fox who comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill
foxes, but is himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good tenants
who had been rewarded by their landlord with an order that they should
receive hats. Owing to an oversight they received one hat only between the
two. Problem, how to meet the difficulty. It was solved by the rustics
fastening two pieces of wood together T-shape, raising the hat of honour
upon the structure and walking home in triumph under either side of the T.
The next morning I was greeted by the aged father and mother of our host.
The household was an interesting one, for the landlord and his brother were
married to two sisters. Before taking our departure we knelt with our
landlord and his father before the Buddhist shrine on which rested the
memorial tablets of former heads of the house. I expressed my sense of the
privilege extended to strangers. The reply was, "Our ancestors will feel
pleasure in your being among us."

FOOTNOTES:
[25] Samurai or shizoku comprise about a twentieth of the population.
[26] Every Japanese signs by means of a stone or hard-wood seal which he keeps in a
case and ordinarily carries with him.
[27] A shō is about a quart and a half.
[28] The raised recess in which is usually displayed the flower arrangement, a piece of
pottery and a kakemono. (See Note, page 35.)

[29] Farcical interludes of the Nō stage.

CHAPTER V

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE
The sense of a common humanity is a real political force.—
J.R. Green
The stranger in Japan sees so little of the intimacies of country life that I
shall say something of further visits to what we should call county families.
My hosts, who seemed to be active to a greater or less degree in promoting
the welfare of their tenants, lived in purely Japanese style. Yet now and then
in a beautiful house there was a showy gilt timepiece or some other thing of
a deplorable Western fashion. At all the houses without exception we were
waited upon by the host and his son, son-in-law or brother, and for some
time after our arrival our host and the members of his family would kneel,
not in the apartment in which our zabuton (kneeling cushions) were
arranged, but in the adjoining apartment with its screens pushed back. Even
when the time of sweets and tea had passed and a regular meal was served,
all the little tables of food were brought in not by servants but by the master
of the house and such male relatives as were at home.
When the duration of a Japanese meal is borne in mind, some idea may be
gained of the fatigue endured by the head of a house in serving many guests.
The host sometimes honours his guests still further by eating apart from
them or by partaking of a portion only of the meal. The name of a feast in
Japanese is significant, "a running about." The ladies of the house are
usually seen for only a few minutes, when they come with the children to
welcome the guests on their arrival; but on the second day of the visit the
ladies may bring in food or tea or play the koto.
The foreigner, though on his knees, feels a little at a loss to know how to
acknowledge politely the repeated bows of so many kneeling men and
women. He watches with appreciation the perfect response of his Japanese
travelling companions. It is difficult to convey a sense of the charm and
dignity of old courtesies exchanged with sincerity between well-bred people

in a fine old house. Although all the shoji[30] are open, the trees of the
beautiful garden cast a pensive shade. The ancient ceremonial of welcome
and introduction would seem ludicrous in the full light of a Western
drawing-room, but in the perfectly subdued light of these romantically
beautiful apartments, charged with some strange and melancholy emotion,
the visitor from the West feels himself entering upon the rare experience of a
new world.
Everyone knows how few are the treasures that a Japanese displays in his
house. His heirlooms and works of art are stored in a fireproof annexe. For
the feasting of the eye of every guest or party of visitors the appropriate
choice of kakemono, [31] carving or pottery is made. I had the delight of
seeing during my country-house visiting many ancient pictures of country
life and of animals and birds. It was also a precious opportunity to inspect
armour and wonderful swords and stands of arrows in the houses in which
the men who had worn the armour and used the weapons had lived. The way
of stringing the seven-feet-high bow was shown to me by a kimono-clad
samurai, as has been recorded in the previous chapter. When he threw
himself into a warlike attitude and with an ancient cry whirled a gleaming
two-handed sword in the dim light thrown by lanterns which had lighted the
house in the time of the Shoguns, the figures on old-time Japanese prints had
a new vividness.
What also helped in illuminating for me the old prints of warlike scenes
was a display of a remarkable kind of fencing with naked weapons which
one of my hosts kindly provided in his garden one evening. The tournament
was conducted by the village young men's association. The exercises, which,
as I saw them, are peculiar to the district, are called ki-ai, which means
literally "spirit meeting." They call not only for long training but for courage
and ardour. The combats took place on a small patch of grass which was
fenced by four bamboo branches. These were connected by a rope of paper
streamers such as are used to distinguish a consecrated place. Before the first
bout the bamboos and rope were taken away and a handful of salt was
thrown on the grass. Salt was similarly thrown on the grass before every
contest. The idea is that salt is a purifier. It signifies, like the handshake of
our boxers, that the feelings of the combatants are cleansed from malice.
Most of the events were single combats, but there were two meetings in
which a man confronted a couple of assailants. The contests I recall were
spear v. spear, spear v. sword, sword v. long billhook, spear v. the short

Japanese sickle and a chain, spear v. paper umbrella and sword, pole v.
wooden sword, pole v. pole, and long billhook v. fan and sword. The
weapons were sharp enough to inflict serious wounds if a false move should
be made or there should be a momentary lack of self-control. The flashing
steel gave an impression of imminent danger. There was also the feeling
aroused in the spectators by the way in which the combatants sought to gain
advantage over one another by fierce snarls, stamping on the ground and
appalling gestures. The neck veins of the fighters swelled and their faces
flamed with mock defiance. Their agility in escaping descending blades was
amazing. But the ki-ai player's dexterity is famous. It is his boast that with
his sword he could cut a straw on a friend's head. I noticed that no women
were present at the "spirit meeting."
More than once I found that my landlord host was accustomed to make a
circuit of his village once or twice a week in order to see how things were
going with his tenants. Public-spirited landlords were working for their
people by means of co-operation, lectures and prizes, the distribution of
leaflets and the giving of from 2½ to 7½ per cent. discount in rent when
good rice was produced. The rural philanthropist in Japan sees himself as the
father of his village. [32] The Japanese word for landlord is "land master" and
for tenant "son tiller." The old idea was patronage on the one side and
respect on the other. This idea is disappearing. "We wish," said one landlord
to me, "to pass through the transition stage gradually. We do not feel the
same responsibility to our people, perhaps, now that they do not show the
same reverence for us, but we do not say to them that they may go to the
factory and we will invest our money for our children. We check ourselves.
We know well, however, that things will change in our grandsons' time. We
therefore try to mix our grandfathers' ideas and modern ideas. We are
believers in co-operation and we try to be counsellors and to work behind
the curtain."
From time to time there are such things as tenants' strikes. Mr. Yamasaki
assured me that the problem of the rural districts can be solved only by
appealing to the feelings of the people in the right way. He said that "the
Japanese are largely moved by feelings, not by convictions." In some
coastwise counties, someone told me, a hurricane destroyed the crops to
such an extent that the tenants could not pay rent, and the landlords who
depended on their rents were impoverished. Things reached such a pass that
a hundred thousand peasants signed a paper swearing fidelity to an anti-

landlord propaganda. Officials and lawyers achieved nothing. Then Mr.
Yamasaki went, and, sitting in the local temple, talked things over with both
sides for days. He got the landlords to say that they were sorry for their
tenants and the tenants to say that they were sorry for the landlords, and
eventually he was allowed to burn the oath-attested document in the temple.
[33]

Many landlords are "endeavouring to cultivate a moral relation" between
themselves and their tenants. They have often the advantage that their
ancestors were the landlords of the same peasant families for many
generations. But there are still plenty of absentee landlords and landlords
who are usurers. There are also the landlords who have let their lands to
middlemen. The cultivator therefore pays out of all proportion to what the
landlord receives. Of landlords generally, an ex-daimyo's son said to me:
"Many landlords treat their tenants cruelly. The rent enforced is too high. In
place of the intimate relations of former days the relations are now that of cat
and dog. The ignorance of the landlords is the cause of this state of things. It
is very important that the landlord's son shall go to the agricultural school,
where there is plenty of practical work which will bring the perspiration
from him." The object of most good landlords is to increase the income of
their tenants. It is felt that unless the farmers have more money in their
hands, progress is impossible. There is one direction in which the landlords
are not tried. The franchise is so narrow that farmers cannot vote against
their landlords.
In the house of one old landowning family in which I was a guest I saw a
gaku inscribed, "Happiness comes to the house whose ancestors were
virtuous." I was admitted to the family shrine. Round the walls of the small
apartment in which the shrine stood were the autographs or portraits of
distinguished members of the house going back four or five hundred years. It
was easy to see that the inspiring force of this family was its untarnished
name. It was a crime against the ancestors to reduce the prestige or merit of
the family. No stronger influence could be exerted upon an erring member of
such a family than to be brought by his father or elder brother before the
family shrine and there reprimanded in the presence of the ancestral spirits.
The head of this house is at present a schoolboy of twelve and the
government of the family is in the hands of a "regent," the lad's uncle. I saw
the boy and his younger sister trot off in the morning with their satchels on
their backs to the village school in democratic Japanese fashion. Japan is a

much more democratic country than the tourist imagines. Distinctions of
class are accompanied by easy relations in many important matters.
I went for a second time to the restful city of Nagoya. It is out of the
sphere of influence of Tokyo and is conservative of old ideas. People live
with less display than in the capital and perhaps pride themselves on doing
so. But if the houses of even the well-to-do are small and inconspicuous, the
interiors are of satisfying quality in materials and workmanship, and the
family godowns bring forth surprises. Here as elsewhere the guest is served
in treasured lacquer and porcelain. (While we are not accustomed in the
West to look at the marks on our host's table silver, it is perfect Japanese
manners to admire a food bowl by examining the potter's marks.) My host
hung a rural kakemono in my room, one day a fine old study of poultry,
another an equally beautiful painting of hollyhocks.
As we left the town my attention was attracted by a commemorative stone
overlooking rice fields. The inscription proclaimed the fact that at that spot
the late Emperor Meiji, [34] as a lad of fifteen, on his historic first journey to
Tokyo, "beheld the farmers reaping."
The matron of a farmhouse two centuries old showed me a tub containing
tiny carp which she had hatched for her carp pond, the inmates of which, as
is common, came to be fed when she clapped her hands. In the garden there
was an old clay butt still used for archery. In the farmhouse I was taken into
a room in which in the old days the daimyo overlord had rested, into another
room which had a secret door and into a third room where—an electric fan
was buzzing.
At a school I had to face the usual ordeal of having to "write" as best I
could a motto for use as a wall picture. Our lettering, when done with a
brush, falls pitifully behind Chinese characters in decorative value, and our
mottoes will not readily translate into Japanese. I was often grateful to
Henley for "I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul,"
because with the substitution of "commander" for captain, the lines translate
literally.
We left the village through arches which had been erected by the young
men's association. At an old country house four interesting things were
shown to me. There was, first, a phial of rice seed 230 years old. The
agricultural professor who was my fellow-guest told me that he had
germinated some of the grains, but they did not produce rice plants. The

second thing was a fine family shrine before which a religious ceremony had
been performed twice a day by succeeding generations of the same family
for 350 years. The third object of interest was a little, narrow, flat steel
dagger about eight inches long, sheathed in the scabbard of a sword. The
dagger was used for "fastening an enemy's head on." After the owner of the
sword had beheaded his foe, he drew the smaller weapon, and, thrusting one
end into the headless trunk and the other end into the base of the head,
politely united head and body once more, thus making it possible "to show
due respect and sympathy towards the dead." Finally, I had the privilege of
handling a wonderful suit of armour which was fitted slowly together for me
out of many pieces. Although it had been made several centuries ago, this
rich suit of lacquered leather had been a Japanese general's wear on the field
of battle within living memory.
One of the landowners I met was a poet who had been successful in the
Imperial poem competition which is held every New Year. A subject is set by
His Majesty and the thousands of pieces sent in are submitted to a
committee. The dozen best productions are read before the sovereign
himself, and this is the honour sought by the competitors. The subject for
competition in the year in which the landowner had been successful was,
"The cryptomeria in a temple court." His poem was as follows:

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

The New Year poems come from every class of the community and there
is seldom a year in which landowners or farmers are not among the fortunate
twelve.
As we rode along a companion spoke of the force of public opinion in
keeping things straight in the countryside, also of the far-reaching control
exercised by fathers and elder brothers. But the good behaviour of some
people was due, he said, to a dread of being ridiculed in the newspapers,
which allow themselves extraordinary freedom in dealing with reputations.
I met a man who had had a monument erected to him. He was a member
of a little company which received me in a farmer's house. He was formerly

the richest man in the village, that is to say, he owned 20 chō and was worth
about 100,000 yen. Moved by the poverty of his neighbours, he devoted his
substance to improving their condition. Now many of them are well off, the
village has been "praised and rewarded" by the prefecture for its "good
farming and good morals," and the philanthropist is worth only 50,000 yen.
Impressed by his unselfishness, the village has raised a great slab of stone in
his honour.
I made enquiries continually about the influence exerted by priests. I was
told of many "careless" priests, but also of others who delivered sermons of
a practical sort. A few of the younger priests were described as
"philosophical" and some preached "the kingdom of God is within you."
Many people laid stress on the necessity for a better education of the
priesthood and for combating superstition among the peasantry, though the
schools had already had a powerful influence in shaking the faith of
thousands of the common people in charms and suchlike. Many folk put up
charms because it was the custom or to please their old parents or because it
could do no harm.
I was told that the Government does not encourage the erection of new
temples. Its notion is that it is better to maintain the existing temples
adequately. When I went to see a gorgeous new temple, I found that official
permission for its erection had been obtained because the figures, vessels
and some of the fittings of an old and dilapidated temple were to be used in
the new edifice. This temple was on a large tract of land which had recently
been recovered from the sea. The building had cost between 80,000 and
90,000 yen. It stood on piles on rising ground and had a secondary purpose
in that it offered a place of refuge to the settlers on the new land if the sea
dike should break.
The founder of the temple was the man who had drained the land and
established the colony. He had given an endowment of 500 yen a year, three-
quarters of which was for the priest. This functionary had also an income of
150 yen from a chō of land attached to the temple. Further he received gifts
of rice and vegetables. I noticed that the gifts of rice—acknowledged on a
list hung up in his house—varied in quantity from four pecks to half a
cupful. Probably the priest bought very little of anything. If he needed
matting for his house, which was attached to the temple, or if he had to make
a journey, the villagers saw that his requirements were met. And he was
always getting presents of one kind or another. "A man says to the priest," I

was told, "'This is too good for me; please accept it.'" The villagers on their
side sat and smoked in one of the temple rooms and drank his reverence's tea
for hours before and after service. [35]
The building of the temple was not only an act of piety but a work of
commercial necessity. The colonists on the reclaimed land would never have
settled there if there had not been a temple to hold them to the place and to
provide burial rites for their old parents. Not all the people were of the same
sect of Buddhism, but "they gradually came together." A third of what a
tenant produced went for rent and another third for fertilisers, the remaining
third being his own. The population was 1,800 in 300 families. The average
area per family was 2 chō and colonists were expected to start with about
200 yen of capital. Some unpromising tenants had been sent away and "some
had left secretly." Half of the people were in debt to the landlord—the total
indebtedness was about 15,000 yen—for the erection of houses and the
purchase of implements and stock. The rate was 8 per cent. In the district 10
per cent. was quite usual and 12 per cent. by no means rare. The co-
operative society lent at the daily rate of 2½ sen per 100 yen.
The landlord told me that the sea dikes took two years to build and that
most of the earth was carried by women, 5,000 of them. Their labour was
cheap and the small quantities of earth which each woman brought at a time
permitted of a better consolidation of an embankment that was 240 feet wide
at the base. More than a million yen were laid out on the work. The
reclaimed land was free of State taxes for half a century, but the landlord
made a voluntary gift to the village of 2,000 yen a year. The yearly rent
coming in was already nearly 56,000 yen. The cost of the management of the
drained land and of repairs to the embankment, 20,000 yen a year, was just
met by the profits of a fishpond. A valuable edible seaweed industry was
carried on outside the sea dikes. The landlord mentioned that he had had
great difficulty in overcoming the objections of his grandfather to the
investment, but that eventually the old man got so much interested that at
ninety-three he used to march about giving orders.
One day in the course of my journeying I was near a railway station where
country people had assembled to watch the passing of a train by which the
Emperor was travelling. No one was permitted along the line except at
specified points which were carefully watched. A young constable who wore
a Russian war medal was opposite the spot where I stood. He politely asked
me to keep one shaku (foot) or so away from the paling. When someone's

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

FOOTNOTES:
[30] Shoji are the screens which divide a room from the outside. They are a dainty
wooden framework of many divisions, each of which is covered by a sheet of thin white
paper. The shoji provide light and are never painted. The sliding doors between two
rooms are karakami (fusuma is a literary word). They are a wooden framework with thick
paper or cloth on both sides of it and with paper packing between the layers. Karakami
are often decorated with writing or may be painted. No light passes through them.
[31] A writing or a picture on a long perpendicular strip of paper or silk or of paper
mounted on silk, with rollers. The length is about three times the width, which is usually 1
ft. 3 in. or 1 ft. 10 in. The kakemono in the tokonoma of tea-ceremony rooms is about 10
in. wide.
[32] For budgets of large property owners, see Appendix III.
[33] There have been several serious tenants' demonstrations in Aichi during 1921. See
Chapter XIX.

[34] Each Emperor receives on his succession a name which is applied to the period of
his reign. The period of Mutsuhito's reign, 1868-1912, is called Meiji; that of the present
Emperor Taisho. Thus the year 1912 would be Taisho I.
[35] It will be remembered that there is only one prefecture in which tea is not grown
in larger or smaller areas, and that it is served economically without sugar or milk.

CHAPTER VI

BEFORE OKUNITAMA-NO-MIKO-NO-KAMI [36]
Nor do I see why we should take it for granted that their gods
are unworthy of respect.—Valerius
In Aichi prefecture I was asked to plant trees (persimmons) in the grounds
of three temples or shrines and on the land of several farmers. In an exposed
position on a hill-top I found persimmons being grown on a system under
which the landlord provided the land, trees and manures and the farmer the
labour, and the produce was equally divided.
The cryptomeria at one of the shrines I visited were of great age. All of
them had lost their tops by lightning. It cannot be easy for those who have
never seen cryptomeria or the redwoods of California to realise the
impression made by dark giant trees that have stood before some shrine for
generations. At the approach to the shrine of which I speak there were
venerable wooden statues. I recall one figure carved in wood as full of life as
that of the famous Egyptian headman.
The aged chief priest, who was assisted by two younger priests, kindly
invited me to take part in a Shinto service. First, I ceremonially washed my
hands and rinsed my mouth. Then, having ascended the steps, my shoes
were removed for me so that my hands should not be defiled. On entering
the shrine I knelt opposite the young priests, one of whom brought me the
usual evergreen bough with paper streamers. On receiving it I rose to my
feet, passed through the beautiful building and advanced to what I may call,
for the lack of a more accurate term, the altar table. On this table, which, as
is usual in Shinto ceremonies, was of new white wood following the ancient
design, I laid the offering. Then I bowed and gave the customary three smart
hand-claps which summon the attention of the deity of the shrine, and bowed
again. On returning to my former kneeling-place one of the priests offered
me saké and a small piece of dried fish in paper.[37] The chief priest was good

enough to read and to hand to me an address headed, "Words of
Congratulation to the Investigator," which may be Englished as follows:
"I, Yukimichi Otsu, the chief priest, speak most respectfully and
reverently before the shrine of the august deity, Okunitama-no-miko-no-
kami, and other deities here enshrined: Dr. Robertson Scott, of England, is
here this good day. He comes to see the things of Japan under the
governance of our gracious Emperor. I, having made myself quite pure and
clean, open the door of gracious eyes that they may look upon those who are
here. May Dr. Robertson Scott be protected during night and day, no
accident happening wherever he may go. Dr. Robertson Scott goes
everywhere in this country; he may cross a hundred rivers and pass over
many hills. May there be no foundering of his boat, no stumbling of his
horse. Offering produce of land and sea, I say this most respectfully before
the shrine."
After the shrine I visited a co-operative store, curiously reminiscent of
many a similar rural enterprise I had seen in Denmark. Sugar, coarser than
anything sold at home, was dear. Half the price paid for sugar in Japan is tax.
I was informed that there were no fewer than 400 cooperative organisations
in the prefecture.

AUTHOR QUESTIONING OFFICIALS—

AND PLANTING COMMEMORATIVE TREES

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

RICE POLISHING BY FOOT POWER.

I saw a village which a few years ago had been "disorderly and poor" and
in continual friction with its landlord. Eventually this man realised his
responsibility, and, inspired by Mr. Yamasaki, took the situation in hand. He
talked in a straightforward way with his villagers, reduced a number of rents
and spent money freely in ameliorative work. To-day the village is
"remarkable for its good conduct" and the relation between landlord and
tenant seems to be everything that can be desired. The landlord is not only
the moving spirit of the co-operative store but has started a school for girls
of from fifteen to twenty. They bring their own food but the schooling is
free.
On the gables of one or two houses near the roof I noticed ventilators
which were cut in the form of the Chinese ideograph which means water, a
kind of charm against fire. At the door of one rather well-to-do peasant
house I saw several paper charms against toothache. There was also an
inscription intimating that the householder was a director of the co-operative
society and another announcing that he was an expert in the application of
the moxa. [39] Every house I went into had a collection of charms. One

charm, a verse of poetry hung upside-down, as is the custom, was against
ants. Another was understood to ensure the safe return of a straying cat.
In one house in the village my attention was drawn to the fact that the rice
pot contained a large percentage of barley.
In two or three places I passed pits for the excavation of lignite, which
does not look unlike the wood taken out of bogs. A pit I stopped at was
twenty-two fathoms deep. There were twenty miners at work and air was
being pumped down.
One of the things we in the West might imitate with advantage is the
village crematorium. In Japan it is of the simplest construction. The rate for
villagers was 50 sen, that for outsiders 2 yen. No doubt there would be an
additional yen for the priest. In a little building which was thirty years old
200 bodies had been cremated.
I looked into a small co-operative rice storehouse. The building was
provided by a number of members "swearing" to save at the rate of a yen
and a half a month each until the funds needed had accumulated. The money
was obtained by extra labour in the evening. Just before I left Japan the
Department of Agriculture was arranging to spend 2 million yen within a
ten-years' period to encourage the building of 4,000 rice storehouses.
As I watched the water pouring from one rice field to another and
wondered how the rights of landowners were ever reconciled, someone
reminded me of the phrase, "water splashing quarrels," that is disputes in
which each side blames the other without getting any farther forward. To
take an unfair advantage in controversy is to draw water into one's own
paddy. The equivalent for "pouring water on a duck's back" is "flinging
water in a frog's face." A Western European is always astonished in Japan by
the lung power of Far Eastern frogs. The noise is not unlike the bleating of
lambs.
Every now and again one comes on a fragrant bed of lotus in its paddy
field. It seems odd at first that lotus—and burdock—should be cultivated for
food. As a pickle burdock is eatable, but lotus and some unfamiliar tuberous
plants are pleasant food resembling in flavour boiled chestnuts. Konnyaku
(hydrosme rivieri), a near relative of the arum lily, is produced to the weight
of 11 million kwan—a kwan is roughly 8¼ lbs. [40] The yield of burdock is
about 44 million kwan. The chief of all vegetables is the giant radish, of
which 7¼ million kwan are grown. Taro yields about 150 million kwan.

Foreigners usually like the young sprouts taken from the roots of the
bamboo, a favourite Japanese vegetable.
This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an important agricultural
fact, the enormous amount of filth worked into the paddies. As is well
known, hardly any of the night soil of Japan is wasted. Japanese agriculture
depends upon it. Formerly the night soil was removed from the houses after
being emptied into a pair of tubs which the peasant carried from a yoke.
Such yoke-carried tubs are still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrying
the substance to the paddies. The tubs which are taken to dwellings are now
mostly borne on light two-wheeled handcarts which carry sometimes four
and sometimes six. A farmer will push or pull his manure cart from a town
ten or twelve miles off. It is difficult to leave or enter a town without
meeting strings of manure carts. The men who haul the carts get together for
company on their tedious journey. They seem insensible to the concentrated
odour. Often the wife or son or daughter may be seen pushing behind a cart.
There is a certain amount of transportation by horse-drawn frame carts,
carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by boats. I was told of a city of half a
million inhabitants which had thirty per cent. of its night soil taken ten miles
away. The work was undertaken by a co-operative society which paid the
municipality the large sum of 70,000 yen a year. The removal of night soil,
its storage in the fields in sunken butts and concrete cisterns—carefully
protected by thatched, wooden or concrete roofs—and its constant
application to paddy fields or upland plots cause an odour to prevail which
the visitor to Japan never forgets. [41]
It must not be supposed that, because the Japanese are careful to utilise
human waste products, no other manure is employed. There is an enormous
consumption of chemical fertilisers. Then there are brought into service all
sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw, grass, compost, silkworm
waste, fish waste, and of course the manure produced by such stock as is
kept. [42] In Aichi the value of human waste products used on the land is only
a quarter of the value of the bean cake and fish waste similarly employed.
At Mr. Yamasaki's excellent agricultural school (prefectural), which I
visited more than once, [43] I was struck by the grave bearing of the students.
I saw them not only in their classrooms but in their large hall, where I was
invited to speak from a platform between the busts of two rural worthies,
Ninomiya, of whom we have heard before, and another who was
"distinguished by the righteousness of his public career." As in the Danish

rural high schools, store is set on hard physical exercise. An hour of exercise
—judō (jujitsu), sword play or military drill—is taken from six to seven in
the morning and another at midday with the object of "strengthening the
spirit" and "developing the character," for "our farmers must not only be
honest and determined but courageous." Severe physical labour, shared by
the teacher, is also given out of doors, for example, in heaping manure. "We
believe," said one of the instructors, "in moral virtue taught by the hands."
For an hour a day "the main points of moral virtue" are put before the
different grades of students, according to their ages and development. The
school has a guild to which the twenty teachers and all the students belong.
It is a kind of co-operative society for the "purchase and distribution of daily
necessities," but one of its objects is "the maintenance of public morality."
Then there is the students' association which has literary and gymnastic
sides, the one side "to refine wisdom and virtue," the other "for the rousing
of spirit." Mention may also be made of a "discipline calendar" of fixed
memorial days and ceremonies "that all the students should observe": the
ceremony of reading the Imperial Rescript on education, thrift and morality,
and the ceremonies at the end of rice planting, at harvest and at the maturity
of the silk-worm. The fitting-up of the school is Spartan but the rooms are
high and well lighted and ventilated. The students' hot bath accommodates a
dozen lads at a time. The studies are also the dormitories, and in the corner
of each there is stored a big mosquito netting. Except for a few square yards
near the doors, these rooms consist of the usual raised platform covered with
the national tatami or matting.
I heard a characteristic story of the Director. During the Russo-Japanese
war everybody was economising, and many people who had been in the
habit of riding in kuruma began to walk. Our agricultural celebrity had
always had a passion for walking, so it was out of his power to economise in
kuruma. What he did was to cease walking and take to kuruma riding, for, he
said, "in war time one must work one's utmost, and if I move about quickly I
can get more done."
I may add a story which this rare man himself told me. I had seen in his
house a photograph of a memorial slab celebrating the heroic death of a
peasant. It appeared that in a period of scarcity there was left in this peasant's
village only one unbroken bale of rice. This rice was in the possession of the
peasant, who was suffering from lack of food. But he would not cook any of
the rice because he knew that if he did the village would be without seed in

spring. Eventually the brave man was found dead of hunger in his cottage.
His pillow had been the unopened bale of rice.
In the house of a small peasant proprietor I visited the inscriptions on the
two gaku signified "Buddha's teaching broken by a beautiful face" and "Cast
your eyes on high." On the wall there was also a copy of a resolution
concerning a recent Imperial Rescript which 500 rural householders, at a
meeting in the county, had "sworn to observe," and, as I understood, to read
two or three times a year.
Japan, as I have already noted, has always been a more democratic
country than is generally understood; but the people have been accustomed
to act under leaders. Some time ago an official of the Department of
Agriculture visited a certain district in order to speak at the local temple in
advocacy of the adjustment of rice fields. (See Chapter VIII.) A dignitary
corresponding to the chairman of an English county council was at the
temple to receive the official, but at the time appointed for the meeting to
begin the audience consisted of one old man. Although the official from
Tokyo and the gunchō (head of a county) waited for some time, no one else
put in an appearance. So they asked the old man the reason. He replied by
asking them the object of the meeting. They told him. He said that he had so
understood and that the community had so understood, but the farmers were
very busy men. Therefore, as he was the oldest man in the district, they had
sent him as their representative. Their instructions were that he would be
able to tell from his experience of the district whether what the authorities
proposed would be a good thing for it or not. If he considered it to be a bad
thing they would not do it, but if he thought it to be a good thing they would
do it. He was to hear all that was said and then to give a decision on the
community's behalf to the officials who might attend. "So," said the old man
to the Tokyo official and the gunchō, "if you convince me you have
convinced the village." And after two hours' explanation they convinced
him!
There are in Japan hydraulic engineering works as remarkable in their
way as any I have seen in the Netherlands. Some of these works, for
example the tunnels for conducting rice-field water through considerable
hills, have been the work of unlettered peasants. In one place I found that 80
miles or more of irrigation was based on a canal made two centuries ago. It
is good to see so many embankings of refractory streams and excavations of

river beds commemorated by slabs recording the public services of the men
who, often at their own charges, carried out these works of general utility.
In various parts of the country I came upon smallholders who had reached
a high degree of proficiency in the fine art of dwarfing trees. One day I
stopped to speak with a farmer who by this art had added 1,000 yen a year to
his agricultural income. A thirty-years-old maple was one of his triumphs.
Another was a pomegranate about a foot and a half high. It was in flower
and would bear fruit of ordinary size. The wonder of dwarfing is wrought, as
is now well known, by cramping the roots in the pot and by extremely skilful
pruning, manuring and watering. While we drank tea some choice specimens
were displayed before a screen of unrelieved gold. In the room in which we
sat the farmer had arranged in a bowl of water with great effectiveness
hydrangea, a spray of pomegranate and a cabbage.
One marks the respect shown to the rural policeman. In his summer
uniform of white cotton, with his flat white cap and white gloves, and an
imposing sword, he looks like a naval officer, even if, as sometimes happens,
his feet are in zori. He gets respect because of his dignified presence and
sense of official duty, because of the considerable powers which he is able to
exercise, because he stands for the Government, and because he is
sometimes of a higher social grade than that to which policemen belong in
other countries. At the Restoration many men of the samurai class did not
think it beneath them to enter the new sword-wearing police force and they
helped to give it a standing which has been maintained. As to the policeman
being a representative of the Government, the ordinary Japanese has a way
of speaking of the Government doing this or that as if the Government were
irresistible power. Average Japanese do not yet conceive the Government as
something which they have made and may unmake[44] . But is it likely that
they should, parliamentary history, the work of their betters, being as short
as it is? It is not without significance that the Chambers of the Diet are
housed in temporary wooden buildings.
The rural policeman is not only a paternal guardian of the peace but an
administrative official. He keeps an eye on public health. He is charged with
correctly maintaining the record of names and addresses—and some other
particulars—of everybody in the village. It is his duty to secure correct
information as to the name, age, place of origin and real business of every
stranger. He attends all public meetings, even of the young men's and young
women's associations, and no strolling players can give their entertainment

without his presence. As to the movements of strangers, my own were
obviously well known. Indeed a friend told me that in the event of my losing
myself I had only to ask a policeman and he would be able to tell me where I
was expected next! At the houses of well-to-do people I was struck by the
way in which the local police officer—sometimes, no doubt, a sergeant or
perhaps a man of the rank of our superintendent or chief constable—called
with the headman and joined our kneeling circle in the reception-room.
Nominally he came to pay his respects, but his chief object, no doubt, was to
take stock of what was going on. I invariably took the opportunity of closely
interviewing him.
The extraordinary degree to which Japanese are commonly accustomed in
their differences of opinion to refrain from blows makes many of their
quarrels harmless. The threat to send for the policeman or the actual
appearance of the policeman has an almost magical effect in calming a
disturbance. The Japanese policeman believes very much in reproving or
reprimanding evil doers and in reasoning with folk whose "carelessness" has
attracted attention. Sometimes for greater impressiveness the admonitions or
exhortations are delivered at the police station [45]. In more than one village I
heard a tribute paid to the good influence exerted on a community by a
devoted policeman.
The chief of an agricultural experiment station also seems to obtain a large
measure of respect, to some extent, no doubt, because he occupies a public
office. The regard felt for Mr. Yamasaki goes deeper. A few years ago he was
sent on a mission abroad and in his absence his local admirers cast about for
a way of showing their appreciation of his work. They began by raising what
was described to me as "naturally not a large but an honourable sum." With
this money they decided to add three rooms to his dwelling. They had noted
how visitors were always coming to his house in order to profit by his
experience and advice. Mr. Yamasaki uses the rooms primarily as "an hotel
for people of good intentions—those who work for better conditions." I was
proud to stay at this "hotel" and to receive as a parting gift an old seppuku
blade.
Which reminds me that one night at a house in the country I found myself
sitting under photographs of the late General and Countess Nogi and of the
gaunt bloodstained room of the depressing "foreign style" house in which
they committed suicide on the day of the funeral of the Emperor Meiji [46].
One of my fellow-guests was a professor at the Imperial University; the

other was a teacher of lofty and unselfish spirit. They were both samurai. I
mentioned that a man of worth and distinction has said to me that, while he
recognised the nobility of Nogi's action, he could but not think it
unjustifiable. I was at once told that Japanese who do not approve of Nogi's
action "must be over-influenced by Western thought." "Those who are
quintessentially Japanese," it was explained, "think that Nogi did right.
Bodily death is nothing, for Nogi still lives among us as a spirit. He labours
with a stronger influence. Many hearts were purified by his sacrifice. One of
Nogi's reasons for suicide was no doubt that he might be able to follow his
beloved Emperor, but his intention was also to warn many vicious or
unpatriotic people. Some politicians and rich people say they are patriotic,
but they are animated by selfish motives and desires. Nogi's suicide was due
to his loving his fellow-countrymen sincerely. Surely he was acting after the
manner of Christ. Nogi crucified himself for the people in order to atone in a
measure for their sins and to lead them to a better way of life."
I heard from my friends something of Nogi's demeanour. The old general
was a familiar figure in Tokyo. In the street cars—those were the days when
they were not over-crowded—he was always seen standing. His admirers
used to say that his face "beamed with beneficence." But Nogi, though he
loved to be within reach of the Emperor and did his part as head of the Peers'
School, liked nothing better than to get away to the country. He was
originally a peasant and he still possessed a chō of upland holding. He was
glad to work on it with the digging mattock of the farmer.

FOOTNOTES:
[36] Son-God-of-the-Spirit-of-the-Province.
[37] It was a tiny squid. There are seventy sorts of cuttlefish and octopuses in Japanese
waters. Value of dried cuttlefish in 1917, 4 million yen.
[38] The hands are laid flat on the ground with finger-tips meeting and the forehead
touches the hands.
[39] See Chapter XX.
[40] The root grows to about the size of a big apple. It may be seen in the shops in
white dried sections. A stiff greyish jelly made from it is eaten with rice. It is also eaten as
oden or dengaku.
[41] See Appendix IV.
[42] See Appendix XX.
[43] See Appendix V.
[44] The truth is being learnt by the younger generation.

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

CHAPTER VII

OF "DEVIL-GON" AND YOSOGI
The consciousness of a common purpose in mankind, or even
the acknowledgment that such a common purpose is possible,
would alter the face of world politics at once.—Graham Wallas
There was a bad landlord who was nicknamed "Devil-gon." He was shot.
There was another bad landlord who, as he was crossing a narrow bridge
over a brook, was "pistolled through the sleeve and tumbled into the water."
Although the murderer was well known, his name was never revealed to the
police, and the family of the dead man was glad to leave the district. The
villagers celebrated their freedom by eating the "red rice" which is prepared
on occasions of festivity. In another village, the gunchō who spoke to me of
these things said, there were several usurious landlords. "The village
headman got angry. He called the landlords to him. He said to them that if
they continued to lend at high interest the people would set fire to their
houses and he would not proceed against them. So the landlords became
affrighted and amended their lives." The rural people of Japan have always
three weapons against usury, it was explained to me. First, there may be tried
injuring the offending person's house—rural dwellings are mainly bamboo
work and mud—by bumping into it with the heavy palanquin which is
carried about the roadway at the time of the annual festival. If such a hint
should prove ineffective, recourse may be had to arson. Finally, there is the
pistol. I remember someone's remark, "A man does not lose a common mind
and heart by becoming a landowner."
I could not travel about the rural districts without there being brought
under my eyes the conditions which lead country girls to go to the towns as
joro (prostitutes). A considerable agricultural authority who had been all
over Japan told me that he was in no doubt that most of the girls adopted an
immoral life through poverty. I spoke to this man, who had been abroad, of
the disgrace to Japan involved in the presence of thousands of Japanese joro

at Singapore and so many other ports of the Asiatic mainland. Did these
women go there of their free will? My informant was of opinion that "half
are deceived." I remember that on the Japanese steamship by which I went
out to Japan there were several Japanese girls, degraded in aspect and
apparently in ill health, who were returning from Singapore. They were
shepherded by an evil-looking fellow. The parting of these unfortunates from
their girl friends as the vessel was about to start was a piteous sight. An
official who called on me in Aichi—I understood that he was the chief of the
prefectural police—told me that there were in the prefecture 2,011 girls in
222 houses, and that there were in a year 725,598 customers, of whom 2,147
were foreigners. Sums of from 200 to 500 yen might be paid to parents for a
girl for a three-years term. Food and clothes were also provided, but the girls
were almost invariably drawn into debt to the keepers, and not more than 15
per cent. were able to return to their villages. All the girls in the houses had
alleged poverty as the reason for their being there.[47]
Because I was told that the moral condition of the town of Anjo—
population 17,000—where the agricultural school of the prefecture is
situated, had improved since its establishment, I asked for some statistics. I
found that there were 23 registered geisha, no joro, 50 teahouse girls with
dubious characters and 55 sellers of saké. Against these figures were to be
counted 19 Buddhist temples of four sects with 19 priests and 20 Shinto
shrines with 4 priests.
I met a schoolmaster who had prepared a history of his village in a dozen
beautifully written volumes. He had been a vegetarian for fifteen years
because, as a Buddhist, he believed that "all living things are in some degree
my relatives." I picked up from him a variant on "the early bird catches the
worm." It was, "The early riser may find a lost rin" (tenth of a farthing). He
gave me another proverb, "The contents of a spitting pot, like riches, become
fouler the more they accumulate."
I heard of temples which were promoting rural improvement by means of
lanterns. In one village the lanterns were at the service of borrowers at three
different places. The inscription on the lanterns says, "Think of the mercy of
Buddha who illuminates the darkness of your heart." There is written in
smaller characters, "If you live half a ri away you need not return this
lantern." Three hundred lanterns are lost or damaged in a year, but paper
lanterns are cheap.

One temple has a society composed of those who have family graves in its
grounds. These people "study how to get the most abundant crop." There is a
prize for the best cultivated tan. Under this temple's auspices there is not
only a co-operative credit and purchase association, a poultry society and an
annual exhibition of agricultural products, but a school for nurses—they are
"taught to be nurses not only physically but morally." The boys and girls of
the village are invited to the temple once a month and "told a story." The
youngsters are asked to come to a "learning meeting" where they must recite
or exhibit something they have written or drawn; "blockheads as well as
clever children are encouraged." A fund is being raised so that "a genius who
may be suffering from poverty may be able to get proper education." Then
there is a Women's Religious Association which aims at "the improvement,
necessary from a religious point of view, in the home and of agricultural
business." Sermons are given to 500 women monthly. The society sent
comfort bags, containing letters, tooth-brushes and sweets, to soldiers at the
taking of Tsingtao. A similar organisation for men had for thirteen years
listened to a monthly lecture by a well-known priest. It sends occasional
subscriptions outside the village. Finally, this praiseworthy temple issues
every month 20,000 copies of a 4½-sen magazine.
The Shinto shrines of the prefecture have in all a little more than 40 chō of
land. Someone has hit on the plan of getting the agricultural societies of the
county and villages to provide the priests with rice seed of superior varieties,
the crop of which can be exchanged with farmers for common rice. This is
done on a profitable basis, because the shrines exchange unpolished rice for
polished. A gō of seed rice makes only about .5 gō when husked.
I walked along the road some little way with a Buddhist priest. In answer
to my enquiry he said that as a Buddhist he felt no difficulty about the bag
strung across his shoulders being of leather, for the founder of his sect
(Shinshu) ate meat. Even a strict Buddhist might nowadays eat animals not
intentionally killed, animals which had not been seen alive and animals
which were killed painlessly. But my companion abstained as much as
possible from meat. As to the reason why some priests were inactive in the
work of rural amelioration, he supposed that their poverty, the tradition of
devoting themselves to unworldly business and the fact that many of them
were hereditary priests accounted for it. He dwelt on the things in common
between Shinshu and Christianity and said that, next to the teaching of the

head of the agricultural college in the prefecture, the preaching of a
missionary had led him to work for the good of his village.
In my host's house in the evening someone happened to quote the proverb,
"Richer after the fire." It means, of course, that after the fire the neighbours
are so ready with help that the last state of the victim of the fire is better than
the first. The view was expressed that hitherto charitable institutions of some
Western patterns had not been so much needed in Japan as might be
supposed. [48] "Those who go to Europe from Japan are indeed much
surprised by the number of institutions to help people." Here, however, is the
story of an institution coming into existence in a village: "There was a man
who was thought to be rich, but he lived like a miser. His shoji were made of
waste paper and his guests received tea only. So he was despised. But many
years afterwards it was found that for a long time he had been collecting
books. Then, to the surprise of everybody, he built a library for his village.
He is not at all proud of this and those who ridiculed him are now ashamed."
I was invited to a "Rural Life Exhibition." Some agricultural produce was
shown, but three hundred of the exhibits were manuscript books or
diagrams. One diagram illustrated the development in a particular county of
the use of two bactericides, formalin and carbon bisulphide. The formalin
was in use to the value of 2,000 yen. Then there was a wall picture, a sort of
Japanese "The Child: What will he Become?" The good boy, aged fifteen,
was shown spending his spare time in making straw rope to the value of 3
sen 3 rin nightly, with the result that after thirty years of such industry he
became a rural capitalist who possessed 1,000 yen and lived in
circumstances of dignity. In contrast with this virtuous career there was
shown the rural rake's progress. A youth who was in the habit of laying out 3
sen 3 rin riotously in sweet-shops was proved to have wasted 1,000 yen in
thirty years: the prodigal was justly exhibited fleeing from his home in debt.
One of the books on exhibition mentioned the volumes most in demand at
some village library. I translate the titles:
Physical and Intellectual Training
About being Ambitious
The Housewife of a Peasant Family
The Management of a Farm
The Days when Statesmen were Boys
Culture and Striving
Essence of Rural Improvement

A Hundred Beautiful Stories
The Art of Composition
The Preparation of the Conscript
A Medical Treatise
A Translation of "Self-Help"
Nature and Human Life
The Glories of Native Places
Anecdotes concerning Culture
Lives of Distinguished Peasants
Mulberry Planting
Chinese Romances
Glories of this Peaceful Reign
Ninomiya Sontoku
I noticed among the exhibits a short autobiography of a farmer, an
engaging egoist who wrote:
"As a young man my will was not in study and though I used my wits I
did many stupid things and the results were bad. Then I became a little
awakened and for two years I studied at night with the primary school
teacher. After that I thought to myself in secret, 'Shall I become a wise man
in this village, or, by diligently farming, a rich man?' That was my spiritual
problem. Then all my family gathered together and consulted and decided [49]
that it would suit the family better if I were to become a rich man, and I also
agreed. To accomplish that aim I increased my area under cultivation and
worked hard day and night. I cut down the cryptomeria at my homestead and
planted in their stead mulberries and persimmons. And I slowly changed my
dry land into rice fields (making it therefore more valuable). The soil I got I
heaped up at the homestead for eighteen years until I had 28,000 cubic feet. I
was able then to raise the level of my house which had become damp and
covered with mould. The increase of my cultivated area and of the yield per
tan and the improvement of my house and the practice of economy were the
delight of my life. I felt grateful to my ancestors who gave me such a strong
body. Sometimes I kept awake all night talking with my wife about the
goodness of my ancestors. Also when in bed I planned a compact homestead.
I once read a Japanese poem, 'What a joy to be born in this peaceful reign
and to be favoured by ploughs and horses.' (Most Japanese farming is done
without either horses or ploughs.) It went deeply into my heart. Also I heard
from the school teacher of four loves: love of State, love of Emperor, love of

teacher and love of parent. I have been much favoured by those loves. I also
heard the doctrines of Ninomiya: sincerity, diligence, moderate living,
unselfishness. I felt it a great joy to live remembering those doctrines. I also
went to the prefectural experiment station and studied fruit growing and my
spirit was much expanded. I returned again to the station and the expert
talked to me very earnestly. I asked for a special variety of persimmon. The
expert sent to Gifu prefecture for it. I planted the tree and made its top into
six grafts. It bore fruit and many passers-by envied it. Two years after that I
grafted five hundred trees and sold the grafted stock."
Several villages sent to the exhibition statistics of great interest. One
village set forth the changes which had taken place in the social status of its
inhabitants [50]. Some communities were represented by statements of their
hours of labour [51]. One small community's tables showed how many of its
inhabitants were "diligent people," how many "average workers" and how
many "other people [52]." A county agricultural association had painstakingly
collected information not only about the work done in a year [53] and the
financial returns obtained by three typical farmers but about the way in
which they spent what they earned. [54]
On my way back from the exhibition I heard the story of a priest. When
fourteen years of age he obtained seeds of cryptomeria and planted them in a
spot in the hills. He also practised many economies. When still in his teens
he asked permission to take two shares in a 50-yen money-sharing club, but
was not allowed to do so as no one would believe that he could complete his
payments. He persisted, however, that he would be able to pay what was
required and he was at length accepted as a member. At twenty he became
priest of a small temple which was in bad repair and had a debt of 125 yen.
He brought with him his 100 yen from the club and the young cryptomeria.
He planted the trees in the temple grounds. He said, "I wish to rebuild the
temple when these trees grow up." He cultivated the land adjoining his
temple and contrived to employ several labourers. At last the cryptomeria
grew large enough for his purpose and he rebuilt the temple, expending on
the work not only his trees but 600 yen which he had by this time saved.
Then he proceeded to bring waste land into cultivation. At the age of sixty-
two he gave his temple to another priest and went to live in a hut on the
waste land. There came a tidal wave near the place, so he went to the
sufferers and invited five families to his now cultivated waste land. He gave

them each a tan of land and the material for building cottages and showed
them how to open more land.

"HIBACHI" AND, IN "TOKONOMA," FLOWER
ARRANGEMENT AND "KAKEMONO."

SCHOOL SHRINE CONTAINING EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT.

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

Ninomiyan principles that make them so. Under Ninomiyan influence the
spirit of association has been aroused, thriftiness has been encouraged and
extravagance reprimanded."

FENCING AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.

WAR MEMENTOES AT THE SAME SCHOOL—ALL SCHOOLS
HAVE SOME

I told Mr. Yamasaki one day that there was an old Scotswoman who
divided good people into "rael Christians and guid moral fowk." What I was
curious to know was what proportion of Japanese rural people might be
fairly called "real Buddhists" and what proportion "good moral folk." "There
are certainly some real Buddhists, not merely good moral folk," he assured
me. "If you penetrate deeply into the lives of the people you will be able to
find a great number of them. In ordinary daily life, during a period when
nothing extraordinary happens, it is not easy to distinguish the two classes;
but when any trouble comes then those real religious people are undismayed,
while the ordinarily good moral people may sometimes go astray. The

proportion of religious people is rather large among the poor compared with
the middle and upper classes. These poor people are always weighted with
many troubles which would be a calamity to persons of the middle or upper
classes. Such humble folk get support for their lives from what is in their
hearts. Though they may suffer privation or loss they are glad that they can
live on by the mercy of Buddha. There are some religious people even
among those who are not poor. They are usually people who have lost some
of their riches suddenly, or a dear child, or have been deprived of high
position, or have met some kind of misfortune. Sometimes a man may
become religious because he feels deeply the misfortunes or miseries of a
neighbour or the miseries of war. Or his religion may come by meditation. A
man who begins to be religious is not, however, at once noticed. On the
contrary, if he is a true believer his daily life will be most ordinary."
One day I passed a primary school playground. The girls had just finished
and the boys were beginning Swedish drill. Everyone engaged in the drill,
including the master, was barefoot.
I saw that some of the cottages were built in an Essex fashion, of puddled
clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards. Some dwellings, however,
were faced with straw instead of boards. They had just had their wall thatch
renewed for the winter.
In one spot there was a quarter of a mile of wooden aqueduct for the
service of the paddy fields. Much agricultural pumping is done in Aichi. I
visited an irrigation installation where pumps (from London) were turning
barren hill tops into paddy fields. [56] The work was being done by a co-
operative society of 550 members who had borrowed the 40,000 yen they
needed from a bank on an undertaking to repay in fifteen years.
It was stated that common paddy near Anjo had been bought at 5,000 yen
per chō and not for building purposes. When one member of our company
said, "The farmers here are rivalling each other in hard work," the weightiest
authority among us replied: "What the farmer must do is to work not harder
but better. At present he is not working on scientific principles. The hours he
is spending on really profitable labour are not many. He must work more
rationally. In 26 villages in the south-west of Japan, where farming calls for
much labour, it was found that the number of days' work in the year was
only 192. Statistics for Eastern Japan give 186 days. [57] As to a secondary
industry, one or two hours' work a night at straw rope making for a month
may bring in a yen because the market for rope is confined to Japan. The

same with zori, a coarse sort being purchasable for 2 sen a pair. But
supplementary work like silk-worm culture produces an article of luxury for
which there is a world market."
When we returned home my host was kind enough to summarise for me—
the general reader may skip here—some of the reasons set forth by a
professor of agricultural politics for the farmer's position being what it is:

1. The average area cultivated per family is very small.
2. The law of diminishing return.
3. Imperfection of the agricultural system. Mainly crop raising, not a
combination of crop and stock raising, as in England. No profitable
secondary business but silkworm culture. Therefore the distribution of
labour throughout the year is not good and the number of days of
effective labour is relatively small.
4. The commercial side of agriculture has not been sufficiently developed.
5. There has been a rise in the standard of living. In the old days the
farmer did not complain; he thought his lot could not be changed. He
was forbidden to adopt a new calling and he was restricted by law to a
frugal way of living. Now farmers can be soldiers, merchants or
officials and can live as they please. They begin to compare their
standard of living with that of other callings. What were once not felt to
be miseries are now regarded as such.
6. Formerly the farmer had not the expense of education and of losing the
services of his sons to the army. There is also an increase in taxation. A
representative family which incurred a public expenditure, not
including education, of 12.86 yen in 1890, paid in 1898 19.68 yen. In
1908 it was faced by a claim for 34.28 yen. [58]
7. Although the area of land does not increase in relation to the increase of
population, the size of the peasant family is increasing owing to the
decrease of infanticide and abortion and the development of sanitation.
8. The farmer suffers from debts at high interest.
9. The character, morality and ability of the farmer are not yet fully
developed.
10. Formerly the farmer lived an economically self-contained existence. He
had no great need of money. He must now sell his produce on a market
with wider and wider fluctuations.

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

During the evening I was told this story. In a village in a far part of the
prefecture there lived a farmer called Yosōgi. He was a thrifty and diligent
man. When he became old he gave all that he had to his son. But the old man
could not stop working. He would go to the farm and help his son. The son
did not like this. He wanted his old father to rest. In the end he found that the
only way to cope with his industrious parent was to work very hard and
leave him nothing to do. But the old man was not to be balked. He took
himself off to the hillside and began to make a paddy field where there had
never been a paddy field before. To make a paddy field on such a slope is a
difficult task. The land must be embanked with stones and then levelled. The
building of the strong embankment alone calls for much labour. The old man
toiled very hard at his job and sometimes his son in despair sent his
labourers to help him. At length the paddy field was finished. But it was only
a tenth of a tan in area. When the son saw the small result of so much labour
he said to his father, "I grieve for the way you have toiled. You have
laboured hard for many days and my labourers have helped you, but all that
has been accomplished is the making of a paddy field so small and distant
that it is uneconomical."
To this the old man replied: "When you go to Tokyo and see the graveyard
at Aoyama you will behold there many monuments of generals and ministers
of State. Their merits and their works in this world are described on those
monuments. But do you know where the monument of the famous hero
Kusunoki Masashige is? It is near Kobe, and it is not more than half as big
as those monuments at Tokyo. Do you know where the monument of the
great Taiko is? It is in Kyoto, but it is only recently that this monument was
put up. Thus the monuments of our greatest heroes are small or have been
erected recently. The reason is that it is unnecessary to raise big monuments
for them because what they did in their lives was in itself their monument.
They built their monument in the hearts of the people. Therefore we can
never judge from the size of the monument the kind of work which was
accomplished by the man who sleeps under it. Monuments are not only for
ministers and warriors. We peasants can also erect monuments in our own
way. To open a new paddy field, to plant the bare hillside with trees, these
are our monuments. How lonely it would be for me if there were no

monument left after my death. However small this paddy field may be, it
will not be forgotten so long as it yields for your posterity the blessing of its
rice crop." "Happily," the interpreter added, "the old man did not die so soon
as he thought he would do. He lived for several years and planted the bare
hillside with trees. Now the wood which grows there is worth 10,000 yen."
A peasant proprietor expressed the conviction that goodness in a family
was "not the result of its own efforts but of the accumulation of ancestral
effort." The "ancestral merits and good spirit remain in the family." On the
problem of rich and poor he quoted the proverb, "The very rich cannot
remain very rich for more than three generations; a poor family cannot long
remain poor." He said that he would be interested to know what I found to be
"the causes of our villagers becoming good or bad." "For ourselves," he said,
quoting another proverb, "'At the foot of the lighthouse it is dark.'"

FOOTNOTES:
[47] See Appendix VII.
[48] See Appendix VIII.
[49] Family in the French sense.
[50] See Appendix IX.
[51] See Appendix X.
[52] See Appendix XI.
[53] See Appendix XII.
[54] See Appendix XIII.
[55] It was recently stated that the consent of the authorities was awaited for collections
to the amount of 20 million yen, of which 13½ million were for the two Hongwanjis.
[56] For yields of new paddy, see Appendix XIV.
[57] See Appendix XII.
[58] It would be from 80 to 100 yen now.

THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER VIII

THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD
Toyo-ashiwara-no-chiiho-aki-mizuho-no-Kuni (Land of
plenteous ears of rice in the plain of luxuriant reeds).
The vast difference between Far Eastern and Western agriculture is
marked by the fact that, except by using such a phrase as shallow pond—and
this is inadequate, because a pond has a sloping bottom and a rice field
necessarily a level one—it is difficult to describe a rice field in terms
intelligible to a Western farmer. The Japanese have a special word for a rice
field, ta, water field, written [Kanji: ta]. It will be noticed that the ideograph
looks like a water field in four compartments. Another word, hata or hatake,
[59]
written [Kanji: hata], tells the story of the dry or upland field. It is the
ideograph for water field in association with the ideograph for fire, and, as
we shall see later on, when we make acquaintance with "fire farming," an
upland field is a tract the vegetation of which was originally burnt off.
Many of us have seen rice growing in Italy or in the United States. But in
Japan[60] the paddies are very-much smaller than anything to be seen in the
Po Valley and in Texas. Owing to the plentiful water supply of a
mountainous land, cultivation proceeds with some degree of regularity and
with a certain independence of the rainy season; and there has been applied
to traditional rice farming not a few scientific improvements.
There is a kind of rice with a low yield called upland rice which, like corn,
is grown in fields. But the first requisite of general rice culture is water. The
ordinary rice crop can be produced only on a piece of ground on which a
certain depth of water is maintained.
In order to maintain this depth of water, three things must be done. The
plot of ground must be made level, low banks of earth must be built round it
in order to keep in the water, and a system of irrigation must be arranged to
make good the loss of water by evaporation, by leakage and by the continual
passing on of some of the water to other plots belonging to the same owner

or to other farmers. The common name of a rice plot is paddy, and the rice
with its husk on, that is, as it is knocked from the ear by threshing, is called
paddy rice. The rice exported from Japan is some of it husked and some of it
polished.

A 200-YEARS-OLD JAPANESE DRAWING OF THE RICE PLANT

Some 90 per cent. of the rice grown in Japan is ordinary rice. The
remaining 10 per cent. is about 2 per cent. upland and 8 per cent, glutinous[61]
—the sort used for making the favourite mochi (rice flour dumplings, which
few foreigners are able to digest). It would be possible to collect in Japan
specimens of rice under 4,000 different names, but, like our potato names,
many of these represent duplicate varieties. Rice, again reminding us of
potatoes, is grown in early, middle and late season sorts. [62]
Just one-half of the cultivated area of Japan is devoted to paddy, but there
is to be added to this area under rice more than a quarter million acres
producing the upland rice, the yield of which is lower than that of paddy
rice. The paddy and upland rice areas together make up more than a half of
the cultivated land. The paddies which are not in situations favourable to the
production of second crops of rice (they are grown in one prefecture only)

are used, if the water can be drawn off, for growing barley or wheat or green
manure as a second crop[63].
It is not only the Eastern predilection for rice and the wet condition of the
country, but the heavy cropping power of the plant [64]—500 go per tan
above barley and wheat yields—that makes the Japanese farmer labour so
hard to grow it [65]. Intensively cultivated though Japan is, the percentage of
cultivated land to the total area of the country is, however, little more than
half that in Great Britain [66]. This is because Japan is largely mountains and
hills. Level land for rice paddies can be economically obtained in many parts
of such a country by working it in small patches only. There is no minimum
size for a Japanese paddy. I have seen paddies of the area of a counterpane
and even of the size of a couple of dinner napkins.
The problem is not only to make the paddy in a spot where it can be
supplied with water, but to make it in such a way that it will hold all the
water it needs. It must be level, or some of the rice plants will have only
their feet wet while others will be up to their necks. The ordinary procedure
in making a paddy is to remove the top soil, beat down the subsoil beneath,
and then restore the top soil—there may be from 5 to 10 in. of it. But the
best efforts of the paddy-field builder may be brought to naught by springs
or by a gravelly bottom. Then the farmer must make the best terms he can
with fortune.
Paddies, as may be imagined from their physical limitations, are of every
conceivable shape. There is assuredly no way of altering the shape of the
paddies which are dexterously fitted into the hillsides. But large numbers of
paddies are on fairly level ground. [67] There is no real need for these being of
all sizes and patterns. They are what they are because of the degree to which
their construction was conditioned by water-supply problems, the financial
resources of those who dug them or the position of neighbours' land. And no
doubt in the course of centuries there has been a great deal of swapping,
buying and inheriting. So the average farmer's paddies are not only of all
shapes and sizes but here, there and everywhere.
Therefore there arose wise men to point out that for a farmer to work a
number of oddly shaped bits of land scattered all about the village was
uneconomical and out of date. (Like the old English strip system which still
survives in the Isle of Axholme.) So what was called an adjustment of paddy
fields was carried out in many places. The farmers were persuaded to throw
their varied assortment of fields into hotchpot and then to have the mass cut

up into oblong fields of equal or relative sizes. These were then shared out
according to what each man had contributed. In some cases a little
compensation had to be given, for there were differences in the qualities as
well as the areas of the holdings. But reasonable justice was eventually done
all round, and ever afterwards a farmer, now that his holding was in
adjoining tracts, might spend his time working in his paddies instead of in
walking to and from them. Because many unnecessary paths and divisions
between paddies were done away with there was brought about a saving of
labour and increased efficiency of cultivation. There was also a little more
land to cultivate and the paddies were big enough for an ox or a pony to be
employed in them, and the water supply was better and sufficiently under
control for floods to be averted. [68] In brief, costs were lower and crops were
better. [69]
Thus all over Japan nowadays one sees considerable tracts of adjusted
paddy fields. They are a joy to the rural sociologist. In its way there has been
nothing like it agriculturally in our time. For each of these little farmers
valued his odds and ends of paddy above their agricultural worth. He or his
forbears had made them or bought them or married into them. And he
believed that his own paddies were in a condition of fertility surpassing not a
few, and he doubted greatly whether after adjustment he would find himself
in possession of as valuable land as his own. Sometimes also he believed
that his paddies were especially fortunate geomantically. [70] Yet, convinced
by the arguments for adjustment, the peasant agreed to the proposed
rearrangement, let his old tracts go and accepted in exchange neat oblongs
out of the common stock. Sometimes so great was the change brought about
in a village by adjustment that more than the paddies were dealt with.
Cottages were taken to new sites and the bones in many little grave plots
were removed. In a village in which there had been an exhumation of the
bones of 2,700 persons and a transference of tombstones, I was told that the
assembling together of the remains of the departed in one place "had had a
unifying effect on the community." In this village within a period of twelve
years 96 per cent. of the paddies had been adjusted. [71]
An advantage of adjustment which has not yet been mentioned is that
adjusted paddies can usually be dried off at harvest and can therefore be put
under a second crop, usually of grain. More than a third of the paddy-field
area of the country can be dried off, and therefore produces a second crop of
barley or wheat. The farmer has two advantages if, owing to adjustment or

natural advantages, he is able to dry off his land. Of the first or rice crop, if
he is a tenant farmer, he has had to pay his landlord perhaps 60 per cent, in
rent, less straw;[72] but the second crop is his own. The further advantage is
that second-crop land can be cultivated dry shod. One-crop paddy is under
water all the year round, and must be cultivated with wet feet and legs.
It is because more than half the paddies are always under water that rice
cultivation is so laborious. Think of the Western farm labourer being asked
to plough and the allotment holder to dig almost knee-deep in mud.
Although much paddy is ploughed with the aid of an ox, a cow or a pony,[73]
most rice is the product of mattock or spade labour. There is no question
about the severity of the labour of paddy cultivation. For a good crop it is
necessary that the soil shall be stirred deeply.
Following the turning over of the stubble under water, comes the clod
smashing and harrowing by quadrupedal or bipedal labour. It is not only a
matter of staggering about and doing heavy work in sludge. The sludge is
not clean dirt and water but dirty dirt and water, for it has been heavily dosed
with manure, and the farmer is not fastidious as to the source from which he
obtains it. [74] And the sludge ordinarily contains leeches. Therefore the
cultivator must work uncomfortably in sodden clinging cotton feet and leg
coverings. Long custom and necessity have no doubt developed a certain
indifference to the physical discomfort of rice cultivation. The best rice will
grow only in mud and, except on the large uniform paddies of the adjusted
areas, there is small opportunity for using mechanical methods.
One day when I went into the country it happened to be raining hard, but
the men and women toiled in the paddies. They were breaking up the
flooded clods with a tool resembling the "pulling fork" used in the West for
getting manure from a dung cart. On other farms the task of working the
quagmire was being done by two persons with the aid of a disconsolate pony
harnessed to a rude harrow. The men and women in the paddies kept off the
rain by means of the usual wide straw hats and loose straw mantles,
admirable in their way in their combination of lightness and rainproofness.
Often, besides the farmer's wife, a young widow or a young unmarried
woman may be seen at work, but, as was once explained to me, "The old
Miss is not frequent in Japan."[75]
Planting time arrives in the middle of June or thereabouts, when the paddy
has been brought by successive harrowings into a fine tilth or rather sludge.
It is illustrative of the exacting ways of rice that not only has it to have a

growing place specially fashioned for it, it cannot be sown as cereals are
sown. It must be sown in beds and then be transplanted. The seed beds have
been sown in the latter part of April or the early part of May, according to
the variety of rice and the locality.[76] The seeds have usually been selected
by immersion in salt water and have been afterwards soaked in order to
advance germination. There is a little soaking pond on every farm. By the
use of this pond the period in which the seeds are exposed to the
depredations of insects, etc., is diminished. The seed bed itself is about the
width of an onion bed, in order that weeds and insect pests may be easily
reached. The seed bed is, of course, under water. The seed is dropped into
the water and sinks into the mud. Within about thirty or forty days the
seedlings are ready for transplanting. They have been the object of
unremitting care. Weeds have been plucked out and insects have been caught
by nets or trapped. There is a contrivance which, by means of a wheel at
either end, straddles the seed bed, and is drawn slowly from one end to the
other. It catches the insects as they hop or fly up.
In many localities specially fine varieties are grown for seed on the land
of the Shinto shrines. In other localities special sorts are raised in ordinary
paddies but surrounded by the rope and white paper streamers which
represent a consecrated place. In not a few villages there are communal seed
beds so that many farmers may grow the same variety, and there may be a
considerable bulk for co-operative sale.
At transplanting time every member of the family capable of helping
renders assistance. Friends also give their aid if it is not planting time for
them too. The work is so engrossing that young children who are not at
school are often left to their own devices. Sometimes they play by the ditch
round the paddies and are drowned. Five such cases of drowning are
reported from three prefectures on the day I write this. The suggestion is
made that in the rice districts there should be common nurseries for farmers'
children at planting time.
The rate at which the planters, working in a row across the paddy, set out
the seedlings in the mud below the water, is remarkable. [77] The first
weeding or raking takes place about a fortnight after planting. After that
there are three more weedings, the last being about the end of August. All
kinds of hoes are used in the sludge. They are usually provided with a
wooden or tin float. But most of the weeding is done simply by thrusting the
hand into the mud, pulling out the weed and thrusting it back into the sludge

to rot. The back-breaking character of this work may be imagined. As much
of it is done in the hottest time of the year the workers protect themselves by
wide-brimmed hats of the willow-plate pattern and by flapping straw cloaks
or by bundles of straw fastened on their backs.
A sharp look-out must be kept for insects of various sorts. In more than
one place I saw the boys and girls of elementary schools wading in the
paddies and stroking the young rice with switches in order to make noxious
insects rise. The creatures were captured by the young enthusiasts with nets.
The children were given special times off from school work in which to hunt
the rice pests and were encouraged to bring specimens to school.
There is no greater delight to the eye than the paddies in their early green,
rippled and gently laid over by the wind. (One should say greens, for there is
every tint from the rather woe-begone yellowish green of the newly planted
out rice to the happy luxuriant dark green of the paddies that have long been
enjoying the best of quarters.) As harvest time approaches, [78] the paddies,
because they are not all planted with the same variety of rice, are in patches
of different shades. Some are straw colour, some are reddish brown or
almost black. A poet speaks of the "hanging ears of rice." Rice always seems
to hang its head more than other crops. It is weaker in the straw than barley,
but rice frequently droops not only because of its natural habit, but because it
has been over-manured or wrongly manured or because of wind or wet.
Beyond wind,[79] insects and drought, floods are the enemies of rice. When
the plants are young, three or four days' flooding do not matter much, but in
August, when the ears are shooting, it is a different matter. The sun pours
down and soon rots the rice lying in the warm water. Sometimes the farmer,
by almost withdrawing the water from his paddies, raises the temperature of
the soil with benefit to the crop.
The farmer is fortunate who is able to get the water completely out of his
paddies by the time harvest arrives, but, as we have seen, two-thirds of the
paddies must be harvested in sludge. Many crops are muddied before they
can be cut. Sometimes on the eve of harvest the farmer wades in and tries,
by arranging the fallen stems across one another, to keep some of the ears
out of the water. But he is not very successful. Rice may lie in the wet a
week or even the best end of a fortnight without serious damage. But all that
this means is that within the period specified it may not sprout. It must be
damaged to some extent even by a few days' immersion. The reason why it
is not damaged more than it is is no doubt, first, because rice is a plant which

has been brought up to take its chances with water, and in the second place
because the thing which is known to the housewife as rice is not really the
grain at all but the interior of the grain.
Western farmers are hard put to it when their grain crops are beaten down
by wind and rain; Japanese agriculturists, because they gather their harvest
with a short sickle, do not find a laid crop difficult to cut. But these
harvesters are very muddy indeed. When the rice is cut and the sheaves are
laid along the low mud wall of the paddy they are still partly in the sludge.
We know how miserable a wet harvest is at home, but think of the slushy
harvest with which most Japanese farmers struggle every year of their lives.
The rice grower, although year in and year out he has the advantage of a
great deal of sunshine, seldom gets his crop in without some rain. How does
he manage to dry his October and November rice? By means of a temporary
fence or rack which he rigs up in his paddy field or along a path or by the
roadside. On this structure the sheaves are painstakingly suspended ears
down. Sometimes he utilises poles suspended between trees. These trees,
grown on the low banks of the paddies, have their trunks trimmed so that
they resemble parasols.
When the sheaves are removed in order to be threshed on the upland part
of the holding, they are carried away at either end of a pole on a man's
shoulder or are piled up on the back of an ox, cow or pony. The height of the
pile under which some animals stagger up from the paddies gives one a vivid
conception of "the last straw."
Threshing is usually done by a man, woman, girl or youth taking as many
stems as can be easily grasped in both hands and drawing the ears, first one
way and then another, through a horizontal row of steel teeth. The flail is not
used for threshing rice but is employed for barley. Another common way of
knocking out grain is by beating the straw over a table or a barrel. There are
all sorts of cheap hand-worked threshing machines. After the threshing of the
rice comes the winnowing, which may be done by the aid of a machine but is
more likely to be effected in the immemorial way, by one person pouring the
roughly threshed ears from a basket or skep while another worker vigorously
fans the grain. The result is what is known as paddy rice. The process which
follows winnowing is husking. This is done in the simplest possible form of
hand mill. Before husking the rice grain is in appearance not unlike barley
and it is no easy matter to get its husk off. The husking mill is often made of
hardened clay with many wooden teeth on the rubbing surface. After husking

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

SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED PADDIES.

The farmer pays his rent not in the polished but in the husked rice. At the
house of a former daimyo I saw an instrument which the feudal lord's bailiff
was accustomed to thrust into the rice the tenants tendered. If when the

instrument was withdrawn more than three husks were found adhering, the
rice was returned to be recleaned. There are names for all the different kinds
of rice. For instance, paddy rice is momi; husked rice is gemmai; half-
polished rice is hantsukimai; polished rice is hakumai; cooked rice is gohan.

PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS.

PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER (TOKYO).

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

FOOTNOTES:
[59] Hata (upland field) is not to be confounded with hara (prairie, wilderness, moor,
often erroneously translated, plain).
[60] Rice is grown in every prefecture. The largest total yields are in Niigata, Hyogo,
Fukuoka, Aichi, Yamagata, Ibariki and Chiba.
[61] See Appendix XV.
[62] The average yield of the three kinds at Government experimental farms—the
middle variety yields best and next comes the late variety—is about 2½ koku per tan or
roughly (a koku being about 5 bushels and a tan about a quarter of an acre) about 45

bushels per acre. The average yield of ordinary rice in Japan in an ordinary year is 40¾
bushels. In the bumper year of 1920 the average yield was 41⅓ bushels. In the year 1916
(to which most of the figures in this book, apart from the Appendix and footnotes, in
which the latest available figures are given, refer) there was produced 58¼ million koku
of all kinds of rice, the value of which was 826½ million yen. The normal yield (average
of 7 years, excluding the years of highest and lowest production) is 54½ million koku. See
Appendix XV.
[63] For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.
[64] A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.
[65] The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed in Appendix XVII.
[66] See Appendix XVIII.
[67] In Japanese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a tract of land
which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for the purposes of habitation.
Sometimes it is called prairie, but this is not always correct as it is very often a barren
waste,a tract of volcanic ash, or an area producing bamboo grass. Some of this land,
however, could be cultivated after proper irrigation, etc. In this note, plains is employed in
the ordinary acceptation of the word. Of such plains there are several. The plain in which
Tokyo is situated is 82,000 acres in extent. The traveller from Kobe to Tokyo passes
through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka stand. It is said to feed 2½
million people. Four other plains are reputed to feed 7½ million.
[68] Rivers supply about 65 per cent. of the paddy water and reservoirs about 21 per
cent. The remainder has to be got from other sources.
[69] An acreage of a tan is aimed at, but it is frequently larger; it may even be 4 tan (an
acre). The cost ranges from about 8 yen to 50 yen per tan. The average increase in yield
alter adjustment is about 15 per cent., to which must be added the yield of the new land
obtained, say 3 per cent. of the area adjusted. The consent of half the owners is required
for adjustment.
[70] Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid informed her
that the house was unlucky because a certain necessary apartment faced the wrong point
of the compass.
[71] In the whole of Japan by 1919 two million and a half acres had been adjusted or
were in course of adjustment.
[72] The rent is usually 57 per cent. of the rice harvest in the paddies and 44 per cent.
(in cash or kind) of the crops on the non-paddy land. Any crop raised in the paddies
between the harvesting of one rice crop and the planting out of the next belongs to the
farmer. (All taxes and rates are paid by the landlord, and amount to from 30 to 33 per
cent. of the rent.) The area under paddy and the area of upland under cultivation are
almost equal.
[73] See Appendix XIX.
[74] See Appendix XX.
[75] In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.
[76] See Appendix XXI.
[77] See Appendix XXII.
[78] The harvest extends from mid-September in the north of Japan to the end of
October or beginning of November in the south. The harvest is taken early in the north for
fear of frost.

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

CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION
I thank whatever gods there be....—Henley

I
How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade
realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it receives from the farmer and
the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk? A necessary part of the grain is lost. No
wonder that sensible people in Japan and the West demand the grey
unpolished rice. In Japan some enterprising person has started selling bottled
stuff made from the part of the rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing
process. It does not look appetising. An easier thing would be to leave some
of the coating on the rice. One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread:
"They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter. Thus they
sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging eye, and
the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live."
Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten
with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the Japanese
people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice for breakfast, rice
for lunch and rice for dinner. If they have anything to eat between meals it is
as like as not to be rice cakes—- to the foreigner's taste a loathly, half-
cooked compost of rice flour or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid
underdone muffin. We in the West have bread at every meal as the Japanese
have rice, but we eat our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and
bread-and-butter; we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.
Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set before each
kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in Japan there is one which is empty.

This is the rice bowl. When the meal begins—or in the case of an elaborate
dinner at the rice course—the maid brings in a large covered wooden
copper-bound or brass-bound tub or round lacquered box of hot rice. This
rice she serves with a big wooden spoon, the only spoon ever seen at a
Japanese meal. A man may have three helpings or four in a bowl about as big
as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is that, though other dishes may be
pecked at, the rice in one's bowl must be finished. The usage on this point
may have originated in the feeling that it was almost impious to waste the
staple food of the country. It is not difficult to pick up the last rice grains
with the wooden hashi (chopsticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft rice
is served to invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty the custom is
to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then to drink this, so getting rid of
the odd grains. It is through omitting to drink in this way that foreigners get
indigestion when at a Japanese meal they eat a lot of rice.
At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that people can come with
appetite to several bowls of plain rice three times a day.[80] But good rice
does seem to have something of the property of oatmeal, the property of a
continual tastiness. Further, the rice eater picks up now and then from a
small saucer a piece of pickle which may have either a salty or a sweet
fermented taste. The nutrition gained at a Japanese meal is largely in soups
in which the bean preparations, tofu and miso, and occasionally eggs, are
used. And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in
Japan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish—fresh, dried and
salted, shell-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all sorts of ingenious
treatment—is consumed by almost everybody.
The Japanese are in no doubt that the foreign rice which is brought into
the country to supplement the home supply is inferior to their own.[81]
Inferior means that they prefer the flavour of their own rice, just as most
Scots prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in Scotland.

II
In the year of the Coronation—it took place three years after the
Emperor's accession—two prefectures had the honour of being chosen to
produce the rice to be placed before gods, Emperor and dignitaries at Kyoto.

The work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a witness of the rites
performed at the planting of the rice in one of the prefectures. Plots had been
prepared with enormous care. Along the top of the special fencing were the
Shinto straw bands and paper streamers. A small shrine had been built to
overlook the plots. Even the instruments of the little meteorological station
near, by which the management of the crop would be guided, were
surrounded by straw bands and streamers—religion protecting science. The
mattocks and other implements which had been used in the preparation of
the paddy or were to be used in getting in the crops and in cultivating,
harvesting, threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring which
had manured the plot had been "specially selected and blessed." Further,
there was a special bath-house where the young men and women who were
to plant the rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.
We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or thirty thousand
people who were gathering to witness the ceremony. A covered platform had
been built in front of the rice field shrine, and on either side were large
roofed-in spaces for some scores of Shinto priests and the favoured
spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried us magically away
from a Japan of frock coats to Japan of a thousand, it may be two thousand
years ago. Between the wail of ancient wood and wind instruments and the
cinema operators who missed nothing external and some bored top-hatted
spectators who furtively puffed a cigarette before the ceremony came to an
end, [82] what a gulf! Platter after platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes
vegetables, sometimes fruit, sometimes a big fish, was passed by one priest
to another in the sunlight until all the offerings were reverently placed by a
special dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, undecorated but
exquisitely proportioned altars which are an artistic glory of Shintoism. The
shrine was wholly open on the side of the rice field, and the high priest was
in full view as he stood before the altar with bowed head and folded hands,
his robe caught by the breeze, and delivered in a loud voice his zealous
invocation. His words were stressed not only by an acolyte who twanged the
strings of a venerable harp, but by the song of a lark which rose with the first
strains of the harpist. The purpose of the ceremony was to call down the
gods and to gain their blessing for the crop and the new reign. At the
moment of highest solemnity the thousands assembled bowed their heads:
the gods were deigning to descend and accept the offering. More ancient
music, more ceremonial, and the gods having been called upon to return to

high heaven, the laden platters were gravely removed, and the rice planting
in the adjoining field began. To the sound of drum the young men and
women in special costumes strode through the wicket into the mud of the
paddies, and, under the supervision of the director of the prefectural
agricultural experiment station in a silk hat, planted out the tufts of rice
seedlings in scrupulously measured rows.
I asked a distinguished Japanese who was standing near me—he is a
Christian—how many of the educated people in the assembly believed that
the gods had descended. His answer was, "I may not believe that the gods of
a truth descended, but I find something beautiful in calling on the gods with
a harp of Old Japan, and I do believe that our humble and natural offering to-
day may be acceptable to whatever gods there may be and that it is a worthy
exercise for us to undertake and may also be conducive to a good harvest."
My friend attempted the following rough rendering of a song which had
been sung by the rice planters before the shrine:

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

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

[84]
III
The production of rice has increased more quickly than the growth of the
population. If we consider, along with the advance in population, the crops
of the years 1882 and 1913, which were held to be average, and, in order to
be as up-to-date as possible, the normal annual yield[85] of the five-years
period 1912-18, we find that, as between 1882 and 1913, the population
increased 45 per cent. and rice production increased 63 per cent., while as
between 1882 and the normal annual yield period of 1912-18, the population
increased 55 per cent, and the crop 75 per cent. [86]
This is a noteworthy fact. But equally noteworthy is the fact that in the
1882-1913 period, in which the production of rice increased 63 per cent. and
the population only 45 per cent., the price of rice did not fall. On the
contrary it rose. This was due largely [87] to the fact that people had begun to
eat rice who had not before been able to afford it. Many people who grow
rice eat, as has been noted, barley or barley mixed with a little rice. From the
'eighties onwards more and more rice was eaten. [88]
The reason was that, what with the cash obtained from cocoons through
the enormous development of sericulture, [89] what with the money received
by the girls who had gone to the factories, what with the growth of big cities
causing an increased demand for vegetables, eggs and especially fruit at
good prices, what with the use of better seed and more artificial manure,
what with agricultural co-operation, paddy-field adjustment and the taking-
in of new land, the farmer, in spite of increased taxation, [90] was doing better,
or at any rate was minded to live better. In the thirty-years period 1882-1913,
his crop increased 63 per cent. although his area under cultivation increased
by only 17 per cent. In the following pages we shall hear more of the
methods by which the farmer's receipts have been increased. We shall hear
also, alas! of the ways in which his expenditure has increased. He is indeed
in a trying situation. Everything depends on his character and education and
on the influences, social and political, moral and religious, under which he
lives. That is why this book, in devoting itself to an examination of the
foundations of an agricultural country, is concerned with rural sociology
rather than with the technique of crops and cropping.
The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations in price.[91] It is
also the problem of the landlord, for rents are fixed not at so much money

but at so many koku of rice. This means that on rent day the farmer must pay
the same amount of rice whether his crop has been good or bad. It also
means that when the price of rice rises the amount of rent is automatically
raised. If rent were paid, not in so many koku of rice but in money at a fixed
amount, the landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in
an easier position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and
he would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice. The
counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build storehouses and not to
sell the whole of his crop immediately after harvest, but to extend the sale
over the whole year, marketing each month about the same amount if
possible. The Government Granary plan came into force in 1921, some 3
million koku of unpolished rice being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to
33 yen. In the year before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per koku (5
bushels). The previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen—had risen at times to
23 yen—an unheard-of price. Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely
from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen. [92] In the year in which the War
broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11 yen. By
1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.
The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915 (that
is, 57,006,541 koku and 55,924,590 koku as compared with the 50,255,000
koku of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which may be taken as
the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such exceptional harvests as
those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of from 4½ to 6 million koku over
and above the needs of the country, which are roughly estimated at 1 koku
per head including infants and the old and feeble. In 1916 it was established,
when account was taken of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something
like 6 or 7 million koku. Therefore a fall in price took place. The extent to
which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV. This
Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I entered
into the question of the correctness of rice statistics. Roughly, the statistics
show a production 15 per cent. less than the actual crops. Formerly the
under-estimation was 20 per cent. The practice has its origin in the old
taxation system.
The notes for the account of rural life in Japan which will be found in this
book were chiefly made in the second and third years of the War. Since that
time there has been an enormous rise in the price of everything. For a time
the farmers prospered as they had prospered in the high rice-price years,

1912-13. [93] The high prices of all grain as well as the fabulous price of raw
silk (due to increased export to America and to increased home
consumption) were a great advantage.

MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP THE
PRICE OF RICE FROM RISING

Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general slump and finally
the commercial and industrial crash. Raw silk fell nearly to one-third of its
top price, and farmers had to sell cocoons under the cost of production.
Everywhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in the factories were
discharged in droves. A large proportion of these unfortunates returned to
their villages to dispel some rural dreams of urban Eldorado.
But this matter of the going up and coming down of prices has but a
passing interest for the reader. The only economic fact of which he need lay
hold is that in recent years the farmers have been led into the way of
spending more money—in taxation as well as in general expenses of living
—and that, when account is taken of every advantage they have gained from
better methods of production, they have pressing on them the limitations
imposed by the size of their farms and their farming practice. Whatever the
prices obtained for the: products of the soil, climatic facts, [94] the character

and social condition of the people, their attitude towards life and authority
and the attitude of authority towards them remain very much the same. And
thus a narrative of things seen and heard chiefly during the first years of the
War is not at all out of date even if it were not supplemented as it is by a
plentiful supply of notes containing the latest statistical data.
There is one curious exception only. The reader of these pages will
constantly come on references to the poverty of the tenant farmers. They are,
of course, practically labourers, for they cultivate two or three acres only,
and at the end of the year, as has been shown, have merely a trifle in hand
and sometimes not that. Influenced by the labour movement, which
developed in the industrial centres during and after the War, [95] this
depressed class has of late shown spirit. It has begun to assert its claims
against landowners. At the end of 1920 there were as many as ninety
associations of tenant farmers, and sixty of these had been started for the
specific purpose of representing tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes
of tenants began and continue. The end of this movement of a proverbially
conservative class is not at all certain. [96]
The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind about agricultural
Japan are that the population is as thick on the ground as the population of
the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of Japan is mountain and
waste)—ten times thicker than the population of the United States [97]—that
Japan is primarily an agricultural country, while Great Britain is largely a
manufacturing and trading country, and that only 15½ per cent. of Japan
proper (including Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per cent. in
Great Britain.[98] The average area cultivated per farming family in Japan,
counting paddy and upland together, is less than 3 acres. As the total
population of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920, plus the
annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed close on four persons.
("Even in Hokkaido," Dr. Sato notes, "the average area per family is only 7½
acres.") Happily the number of families cultivating less than 1¼ acres is
decreasing and the number cultivating from 1¼ up to 5 acres is increasing.
[99]
In other words, the favourite size of farm is one which finds work for all
the members of the farmer's family. As on small holdings all over the world,
it is found that profits are difficult to make when help has to be paid for. The
facts that in the last four years for which figures are available the number of
farming families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a million and that

every year the area of land under cultivation increases show that new ways
of increasing income are eagerly seized on.

FOOTNOTES:
[80] For estimate of daily consumption of rice by Japanese, see Appendix XXIII.
[81] For statistics of imported and exported rice, see Appendix XXIV.
[82] Japanese. I was the only foreigner present.
[83] The old name for a considerable part of Aichi
[84] This section of the chapter was written in 1921.
[85] For the way in which "normal yield" is arrived at, see p. 70.
[86] See Appendix XXV.
[80] War with China, 1894; with Russia, 1904.
[88] For farmers' diet, see Appendix XXVI.
[89] Farmers in sericultural districts live better than the ordinary rice farmers.
[90] See Appendix XXVII.
[91] See Appendix XXVIII.
[92] For prices, see Appendix XVII.
[93] The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in the cost of living
throughout the world, has been discussed on page xxv.
[94] See Appendix XXIX.
[95] See Chapter XX.
[96] Recent figures show 400 tenants' associations, of which a third are militant.
[97] See Appendix XXX and page 97.
[98] See Chapter XX.
[99] See Appendix XXXI.

BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE
AND THE ARTIST

CHAPTER X

A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL
The signification of this gift of life, that we should leave a
better world for our successors, is being understood.—Meredith
To some people in Japan the countryman Kanzō Uchimura is "the
Japanese Carlyle." To others he is a religious enthusiast and the Japanese
equivalent of a troubler of Israel. He appeared to me in the guise of a student
of rural sociology.
Uchimura is the man who as a school teacher "refused to bow before the
Emperor's portrait." [100] He endured, as was to be expected, social ostracism
and straitened means. But when his voice came to be heard in journalism it
was recognised as the voice of a man of principle by people who heard it far
from gladly. There is a seamy side to some Japanese journalism [101] and
Uchimura soon resigned his editorial chair. He abandoned a second
editorship because he was determined to brave the displeasure of his
countrymen by opposing the war with Russia. To-day he deplores many
things in the relations of Japan and China.

Fuhei
MUZZLED EDITORS

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

Ecclefechan. He is not, however, like Carlyle, whom he calls "master," a
peasant, but a samurai.
"As you penetrate into the lives of the farmers and discover the influences
brought to bear on them," Uchimura said to me in his decisive way, "there
will be laid bare to you the foundations of Japan. You know our proverb, of
course, No wa kuni no taihon nari ('Agriculture is the basis of a nation')?
Have you been to Nikko?" This seemed a little inconsequent, but I told him I
had not yet been to Nikko. ("Until you have seen Nikko," runs the adage,
"do not say 'splendid'.") "How many of the tourists who are delighted with
Nikko," he went on, "have heard how the richest farms near that town were
devastated? A century ago a minister of the Shogun, who realised that
fertility depended on trees, saw to the whole range of Nikko hills being
afforested. It was a tract twenty miles by twenty miles in extent. But the
'civilised' authorities of our own days sold all the timber to a copper
company for 8,000 yen. The company destroyed the fertility of the district
not only by cutting down the forest but by poisoning the water with which
the farmers irrigated their crops. A member of Parliament gave himself with
such devotion to the cause of the ruined farmers that when he died the ashes
of his cremated body were divided and preserved in four shrines erected to
his memory."
It was a sad thing, said Uchimura, that the farmers of Japan, because of
the decreased fertility of the land due to the denudation of the hills of trees,
and because of their increased expenses, should be laying out "a quarter of
their incomes on artificial manures." "The enemies which Japan has most to
fear to-day," Uchimura declared, "are impaired fertility and floods."
It may be well, perhaps, to explain for a few readers how floods do their
ill work. The rain which falls on treeless mountains is not absorbed there.
The water washes down the mountain sides, bringing with it first good soil
and then subsoil, stones and rock. The hills eventually become those peaked
deserts the queer look of which must have puzzled many students of
Japanese pictures. The debris washed away is carried into the rivers, along
with trees from the lower slopes, and the level of the river beds is raised.
Because there is less space in the river beds for water the rivers overflow
their banks, and disastrous floods take place. The farmers, the local
authorities and the State raise embankments higher and higher, but
embankment building is costly and cannot go on indefinitely. The real
remedy is to decrease the supply of water by planting forests in the

mountains[102] . In many places the rivers are flowing above the level of the
surrounding country. The imagination is caught by the fact that there are four
earthquakes a day in Japan [103] and that within a twelvemonth fires destroy
400 acres or so of buildings; but every year, on an average, floods, tidal
waves and typhoons together drown more than 600 people and cause a
money loss of 25 million yen! Every year 10½ million yen are spent by the
State and the prefectures on river control alone.
Uchimura put on his famous wideawake and we went out for a walk. "I
should like," he said, "to press the view that the vaunted expansion of Japan
has meant to the farmers an increase of prices and taxes and of armaments
out of all proportion to our population [104]."
Uchimura stood stock still in the little wood we had entered. "There is one
thing more," he added gravely. "Before you can get deeply into your subject
you must touch religion. There you see the depths of the people. A large part
of the deterioration of the countryside is due to the deterioration of
Buddhism. You must ask about it. You will see in the villages much of what
your old writers used to call 'priestcraft.' You will hear of the thraldom of
many of the people. You will see with your own eyes that real Christianity
may be a moral bath for a rural district."
"The essentials, not the forms of Christianity," he declared, would save the
countryside by "brotherly union." "Brotherly union" would make a better life
and a better agriculture. The rural class, he explained, was more sharply
divided than foreigners understood into owners of land who lived on their
rents and farmers who farmed [105]. The division between the two classes was
"as great as an Indian caste division." "To the landowner who lives in his
village like a feudal lord the simple Gospel, with its insistence on the
sacredness of work, comes as an intellectual revolution." Women as well as
men of means received from Christianity "a new conception of humanity."
They ceased to "look upon their own glory and to take delight in the flattery
of poor people." They changed their way of speaking to the peasants. They
developed an interest, of which they knew nothing before, in the spiritual
and material betterment of the men, women and children of their village.
I went a two-days journey into the country with Uchimura. We stayed at
the house of a landowner who was one of his adherents. I found myself in a
large room where two swallows were flitting, intent on building on a beam
which yearly bore a nest. In this room stood a shrine containing the ancestral
tablets. The daily offerings were no longer made, but Uchimura's counsel,

unlike that of some zealots, was to preserve not only this shrine but the large
family shrine in the courtyard. Near by was an engraving of Luther.

"THE JAPANESE CARLYLE."

MR. AND MRS. YANAGI.

Uchimura spoke in the house to some thirty or more "people of the district
who had accepted Christianity." His appeal was to "live Christianity as given
to the world by its founder." The address, which was delivered from an arm-
chair, was based on the fifth chapter of Matthew, which in the preacher's
copy appeared to contain cross-references to two disciples called Tolstoy and
Carlyle. When I was asked to speak I found that the women in the gathering
had places in front. "The remarkable effect of Christianity among those who
have come to think with us," Uchimura told me afterwards, "is seen most in
their treatment of women. Our host, had he not been a Christian, would have

been credited by public opinion with the possession of a concubine, and
would not have been blamed for it." When, after the speaking, we knelt in a
circle and talked less formally of how best to benefit rural people, we were
joined by the women folk. Later, when a dozen of the neighbours were
invited to dinner, it was not served at separate tables for each kneeling guest,
but at one long table, an innovation "to indicate the brotherly relation."

CHILDREN CATCHING INSECTS ON RICE-SEED BEDS

MASTERS OF A COUNTRY SCHOOL AND SOME OF THE
CHILDREN.

"So you see," said Uchimura, as we walked to the station in the morning,
"in an antiquated book, which, I suppose, stands dusty on the shelves of
some of your reformers, there is power to achieve the very things they aim
at." He went on to explain that he looked "in the lives of hearers, not in what
they say," for results from his teaching. He believed in liberty and freedom,
in sowing the seed of change and reform and allowing people to develop as
they would. "Let men and women believe as they have light."
He spoke in his kindly way of how "the bond of a common faith enables
Japanese to get closer to the foreigner and the foreigner closer to the
Japanese." There were many things we foreigners did not understand. We did
not understand, for example, that "A man's a man for a' that" was an
unfamiliar conception to a Japanese. I was to remember, when I interrogated
Japanese about the problems of rural life, that they had had to coin a word
for "problems." Above all, I must be careful not to "exaggerate the quality of

Eastern morality." Uchimura asserted sweepingly that "morality in the
Anglo-Saxon sense is not found in Japan." We of the West underrated the
value of the part played by the Puritans in our development. Our moral life
had been evolved by the soul-stirring power of the Hebrew prophets and of
Christ. To deny this was "kicking your own mother." Just as it was not
possible for the Briton or American to get his present morality from Greece
and Rome exclusively, it was not possible for the Japanese to obtain it from
the sources at his disposal.
The faults of the Eastern were that he thought too much of outward
conduct. Good political and neighbourly-relations, kindliness, honesty and
thrift were his idea of morality. "To love goodness and to hate evil with one's
whole soul is a Christian conception for which you may search in vain
through heathendom." The horror which the Western man of high character
felt when he thought of the future of the little girls in attendance on geisha
was not a horror generated by Plato. "Heathen life looks nice on the outside
to foreigners," but Confucianism, Buddhism and Shintoism had all been
weak in their attitude towards immorality. It was Christianity alone which
controlled sexual life. Without deep-seated love of and joy in goodness and
deep-seated horror of evil it was impossible to reform society.
Uchimura said that it had taken him thirty years to reach the conviction
that the best way of raising his countrymen was by preaching the religion of
"a despised foreign peasant." Many things he had been told by exponents of
Christianity now seemed "very strange," but there remained in the first four
books of the New Testament, in the essence of Christianity, principles
"which would give new life to all men." Moved by this belief, Uchimura and
his friends gave their lives to the work of the Gospel, to a work attended by
humiliations; "but this is our glory."
Japanese civilisation, he reiterated, was "only good in the sense that Greek
and Roman civilisations were good." Modern Japan represented "the best of
Europe minus Christianity; the moral backbone of Christianity is lacking."
"Probe a dozen Buddhist priests in turn," he said, "and you find something
lacking; you don't find the Buddhist or Confucian really to be your brother
[106]
."
"The greatness of England," he went on, "is not due to the inherent
greatness of the English people, but to the greatness of the truths which they
have received." In considering the sources of national greatness, it was idle
to believe that some peoples were original and some not original in their

ideas and methods. Where were the people to be found who were without
extraneous influence? Where would England be without Greek philosophy,
Roman law, and Christianity?
Our talk broke off as several peasant women passed us on the narrow way
by the rice fields. The mattocks they carried were the same weight as their
husbands' mattocks and the women were going to do the same work as the
men. But the women were nearly all handicapped by having a child tied on
their backs. Uchimura, returning to his objection to foreign political
adventure, said that Japan, properly cultivated, could support twice its
present population. There were many marshy districts which could be
brought into cultivation by drainage. Then what might not forestry do? But
the progress could not be made because of lack of money. The money was
needed for "national defence."
"For myself," said Uchimura, "I find it still possible to believe in some
power which will take care of inoffensive, quiet, humble, industrious people.
If all the high virtues of mankind are not safeguarded somehow, then let us
take leave of all the ennobling aspirations, all the poetry, and all the deepest
hopes we have, and cease to struggle upward. The question is whether we
have faith." We still waited, he declared, for the nation which would be
Christian enough to take its stand on the Gospel and sacrifice itself
materially, if need be, to its faith that right was greater than might.
And so "impractical, outspoken to rashness, but thoroughly sincere and
experienced," as one of his appreciative countrymen characterised him to
me, we take leave of the "Japanese Carlyle." With whom could I have gone
more provocatively towards the foundation of things at the beginning of my
investigation in farther Japan?

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

[101] But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good, and some of the
best brains of the country is represented in it. Papers like the Jiji, Asahi, Nichi Nichi, and
the Osaka papers run in conjunction with them have altogether a circulation approaching
two millions.
[102] For statistics of forests, see Appendix XXXII.
[103] A severe shook occurs on an average about every six years. The eminent
seismologist, Professor Omori, told me that he does not expect an earthquake of a
dangerous sort for a generation.
[104] The Oriental Economist, a Japanese publication, in the autumn of 1921 suggested
the abandonment of all the extensions to the Empire on the score that they had not been a
benefit to Japan, and that she was in no way dependent on them. See also Appendix
XXXIII.
[105] See Appendix XXXIV.
[106] What of the old story which I have heard from Uchimura and others of the
Confucian missionary to certain head hunters of Formosa? After many years of labour
among them they promised to give up head hunting if they might take just one more head.
At last the good man yielded, and told them that a Chinaman in a red robe was coming
towards the village the next day and his head might be taken. On the morrow the men lay
in wait for the stranger, sprang on him and cut off his head, only to find that it was the
head of their beloved missionary. Struck with remorse and realising the evil of head
taking, the tribe gave up head hunting for ever.

CHAPTER XI

THE IDEA OF A GAP
Bold is the donkey driver, O Khedive, and bold is the Khedive
who dares to say what he will believe, not knowing in any wise
the mind of Allah, not knowing in any wise his own heart.
The "Japanese Carlyle" is getting grey. It seemed well to seek out some
young Japanese thinker and take his view of that "heathenism" concerning
which Uchimura had delivered himself so unsparingly. Let me speak of my
first visit to my friend Yanagi.
As a youth Yanagi was a lonely student. He took his own way to
knowledge and religion. The famed General Nogi had been given by the
Emperor the direction of the Peers' School, but even under such
distinguished tutelage the stripling made his stand. His reading led him to
write for the school magazine an anti-militarist article. The veteran, as I once
learned from a friend of Yanagi, promptly paraded the school, boys and
masters. He spoke of disloyal, immoral, subversive ideas, and bade the
youthful disturber of the peace attend him at his own house. When Yanagi
stood before Nogi and was asked what he had to say, he replied with the
question, "Don't you feel pain because of sending so many men to death
before Port Arthur [107]?"
Again I found my prophet in a cottage. It was a cottage overlooking rice
fields and a lagoon. From the Japanese scene outdoors I passed indoors to a
new Japan. Cezanne, Puvis de Chavannes, Beardsley, Van Gogh, Henry
Lamb, Augustus John, Matisse and Blake—Yanagi has written a big book on
Blake which is in a second edition—hung within sight of a grand piano and a
fine collection of European music[108]. Chinese, Korean and Japanese pottery
and paintings filled the places in the dwelling not occupied by Western
pictures and the Western library of a man well advanced with an
interpretative history of Eastern and Western mysticism. An armful of books
about Blake and Boehme, all Swedenborg, all Carlyle, all Emerson, all

Whitman, all Shelley, all Maeterlinck, all Francis Thompson, and all Tagore,
and plenty of other complete editions; early Christian mystics; much of
William Law, Bergson, Eucken, Caird, James, Haldane, Bertrand Russell,
Jefferies, Havelock Ellis, Carpenter, Strindberg, "Æ," Yeats, Synge and
Shaw; not a little poetry of the fashion of Vaughan, Traherne and Crashaw; a
well-thumbed Emily Brontë; all the great Russian novelists; numbers of
books on art and artists—it was an arresting collection to come on in a
Japanese hamlet, and odd to sit down beside it in order to talk of "heathen."
"Yes," said Yanagi—he speaks an English which reflects his wide reading
—"our young maid, on being shown the full moon the other night, bowed
her head. I find this natural instinct of some value. Our people have much
natural feeling towards Nature. If modern Japanese art has degenerated it is
because it does not sufficiently find out life in things. The sough of the wind
in the trees may have only a slight influence on character, but it is a vital
influence. I do not like, of course, the word 'heathendom' of which Uchimura
seems so fond. I dearly admire Christ, but most of the Christianity of to-day
is not Christ. It is largely Paul. It is a mixture. It is not the clear, pure,
original thing. Christians must reform their Christianity before it can satisfy
us. In the East we now see clearly enough to seek only the best that the West
can offer."
Yanagi said that the spontaneity and naturalness of Eastern religions ought
to be recognised. "You will find Christians admiring Walt Whitman, but it is
Whitman the democrat they admire, not Whitman the prophet of
naturalness." He spoke with appreciation of the Zen sect of Buddhists. Many
of the Zen devotees were "noble and had a profound idea." He was unable to
see "any difference at all" between the best part of Buddhism and the best
part of Christianity. He said that his own mysticism was based on science,
art, religion and philosophy. "My sincerest wish," he declared, "is to produce
a beautiful reconciliation of these four. As it is, too often scientists and
philosophers have no deep knowledge of religion or art, artists have no deep
knowledge of religion or science, and the religious have no idea of art.
Surely the deepest religious idea is the deepest artistic and philosophic idea.
Perhaps our scientists are in the poorest state just now with no understanding
of art or religion. Our scientists are immersed in the problem of matter, our
religious people in the problem of spirit, and our artists forget that in dealing
with nature they are dealing with spirit as well as body."

Faced by force and science when Commander Perry came, Japan, in order
to save herself from foreign colonisation, had had to concentrate all her
attention on force and science. She had concentrated her attention with
signal success. But naturally she had had, in the process, to slacken her hold
somewhat on the spiritual life.
"Always remember how difficult the Japanese find it to know which way
to take. Their whole basis has been shaken and on the surface all has become
chaotic. Ten years hence it will be possible to take a just view. There is much
reason for high hopes. For one thing, the burden of old thought does not rest
so heavily on us as might be supposed. We are very free in many ways. In
the matter of religion Japan is the most free nation in the world. If England
were to become Buddhist it would sound strange or exotic, but Japan is free
to become what she may."
"There may be a great difference between one of our temples and shrines
and an English church," Yanagi proceeded, "but I cannot believe in the gap
which some people seem to see yawning between East and West. It is
deplorable that the world should think that there is such a complete
difference between East and West. It is usually said that self-denial,
asceticism, sacrifice, negation are opposed to self-affirmation, individualism,
self-realisation; but I do not believe in such a gap. I wish to destroy the idea
of a gap. It is an idea which was obtained analytically. The meeting of East
and West will not be upon a bridge over a gap, but upon the destruction of
the idea of a gap.
"In future, religion cannot be limited by this or that sect or idea. Religion
cannot be limited to Christianity, Buddhism, Confucianism or
Mahomedanism. Uchimura says that it is the essence of Christianity which
has the power to rescue Japan from its chaotic state. But the essence of
Buddhism can also contribute some important element to the future of Japan.
The notion that the essence of Christianity and the essence of Buddhism are
far apart is artificial and prejudiced."
One day some weeks later I walked with Yanagi on the hills. He said:
"The weakest point in the Japanese character is the lack of the power of
questioning. We are repressed by our educational system. And so many
things come here at one time that it makes confusion. What is so often taken
for a lack of originality in us is a state resulting from an immense
importation of foreign ideas. They have been overpowering. Many of us
have no clear ideas on life, society, sex and so on, and you will find it

difficult to get satisfactory answers to many questions which you will want
to ask."
As to morality, it was dangerous to say "this or that is immoral." Morality
was often merely custom. Ordinary morality had scant authority. Critics of
Japanese morality should not forget that, in the opinion of Japanese, Western
people were more erotic than they were. Western dancing—not to speak of
Western women's evening costumes—was undoubtedly more erotic than
Japanese dancing. Again, the sexual curiosity of foreigners seemed stronger
than that manifested by Japanese. It was a well-known fact that the girls at
many hotels and restaurants had not a little to complain of from foreign men
who misjudged their naïve ways. It must be remembered that Japanese were
franker in sexual matters than Europeans and Americans. Sexual ill-doing
was not so much concealed as in Europe. A wrong impression of Japanese
morality was taken away by tourists whose guides showed them, as in Paris,
what they expected to see.
"I wonder," he said, "that Western visitors to Tokyo who talk of our
immorality are not struck by the fact that in an Eastern capital a foreign lady
may walk home at night and be practically safe from being spoken to. The
Japanese are undoubtedly a very kind people. They may be unmoral, but
they are not immoral."
"Most of our people do not understand liberty in the mental sexual
relations. Love is not free. In a very large proportion of cases, indeed,
parents would oppose a match because a son or daughter had fallen in love.
And if it is difficult to marry for love it is not easy to fall in love. [109] Society
in which young men and young women meet is restricted; there are few
opportunities of conversation. Without liberty towards women there can be
no perfect sense of responsibility towards them."
What had been taught to women as the supreme virtue was the virtue of
sacrifice for father, husband, children. It was most important to let women
know the significance of individualism. They were always offering
themselves for others before they became themselves. But the idea of
individuality was very little clearer to the Japanese man than to the Japanese
woman. People were too prone to wish to give 100 yen before they had 100
yen. The Japanese were the most devotional people in the world, but they
hardly knew yet the things to be devoted to.

Yanagi is a leading member of a small association of literary men, artists
and students who graduated together from the Peers' School. They call
themselves for no obvious reason the Shirakaba or Silver Birch Society. The
intelligent and consistent efforts of these young men to introduce vital
Western work in literature, philosophy, painting, sculpture, draughtsmanship
and music, and the large measure of success they have attained is of some
significance. Several members of the group belong to the old Kuge families,
that is the ancient nobility which surrounded the Emperor at Kyoto before
the Restoration. Cut off for centuries from military and administrative
activities by the dominance of the Shogunate Government, the Kuge devoted
themselves to the arts and the refinements of life. For the exclusiveness of
the past some of their descendants substitute artistic integrity. The Shirakaba
has had for several years a remarkable magazine. Its editor and its publisher,
its size, its price and its date of publication are continually changed; it never
makes any bid for popularity; it expresses its sentiments in a downright way
and it has always been anti-official: yet it survives and pays its way. Beyond
the magazine, the Society has had every year at least one exhibition of what
its members conceive to be significant modern European work. The
members have also supported a few Japanese artists of outstanding sincerity.
Through the Shirakaba the influence of Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin, Blake,
Delacroix, Matisse, Augustus John, Beardsley, Courbet,Daumier, Maillol,
Chavannes and Millet, particularly Cezanne, Van Gogh, Rodin and Blake,
has been marked. The Silver Birch group has never tired of extolling the
great names of Rembrandt, Dürer, El Greco, Van Eyck, Goya, Leonardo,
Michael Angelo, Tintoretto, Giotto and Mantegna [110].
While an ardent Young Japan has formed and dissolved many societies,
movements and fashions, this Shirakaba group has held fast and has gained
friends by its sincerity, its vision and its audacity [111]. Rodin encouraged the
Shirakaba efforts to reproduce the best Western art by presenting it with
three pieces of sculpture.
"The intellectual man does no fighting," Froude has written. Why do not
Yanagi and his friends make a stand on public questions? "Because," he said,
"at the present stage of our development it is almost impossible to take up a
strong attitude, and because, important though political and social questions
are, they are not, in our opinion, of the first importance. To artists,
philosophers, students of religion, such problems are secondary. More
important problems are: What is the meaning of this world? What is God?

What is the essence of religion? How can we best nourish ourselves so as to
realise our own personalities? Political and social problems are secondary
for us at present; they are not related emotionally to our present
conditions[112].

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

"If we faced such problems directly we should probably make them
primary problems, as you do in Great Britain. Our present attitude does not
prove, however, that we are cold to political and social problems. In fact,
when we think of these terrible political and social questions they make us
boil. But you will understand that in order to have something to give to
others, we must have that something. We are seeking after that something."
Yanagi, continuing, spoke of the direct contribution which the new artistic
movement in Japan, under the influence of modern Western art, was making
to the solution of political and social questions [113]. The interest of the
younger generation in Post Impressionism was "quite disharmonious with
the ordinary attitude towards militarism." European art broke down barriers
in the Japanese mind. When the younger generation, nourished on higher
ideals, grew up, it would be the State, and there would be a more hopeful
condition of affairs. People generally supposed that social questions were the
most practical; but religious, artistic, philosophic questions were, in the
truest sense of the word, the most practical.
Yanagi went on to tell of his devotion to Blake. He could not understand
"why Englishmen are so cool to him." He asked me how it was that there
was no word about Blake in Andrew Lang's work on English literature. "I
cannot imagine," he said, "why such an intelligent man could not appreciate
Blake." Yanagi regarded Blake as "the artist of immense will, of immense
desire, and a man in whom can be seen that affirmative attitude towards life,
exhibited later by Whitman." Yanagi spoke also of "Anglo-Saxon nobility,
liberty, depth of character and healthiness," and of "a deep and noble
character" in English literature which he did not find elsewhere. Whitman,
Emerson, Poe and William James were "the crown of America."
As I close this chapter I recall Yanagi's library, in the service of which,
bettering Mark Pattison's example, two-thirds of its owner's income was for
some time expended. I remember the thatched dwelling overlooking the

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

Thou also, dwellest in eternity

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

FOOTNOTES:
[107] One of the reasons assigned for the suicide of the General was thoughts of his
responsibility for the terrible slaughter in the assaults on Port Arthur.
[108] Mrs. Yanagi is one of the best contraltos heard at the now numerous Japanese
concerts of Western music.
[109] Shinjū, or suicide for love, the girl often being a geisha, is common.
[110] "I am inclined to think," wrote Yanagi in 1921, in a paper on Korean art, "that we
have paid if anything rather too much attention to European works while making little
effort to pay attention to what lies much nearer to us."
[111] Police Standards.—The sale of one issue of the magazine was prohibited by the
police, who found a nude "antagonistic to the ordinary standard of public morals." The

editors' answer next month—the police standard being, "No front views"—was to publish
half a dozen more nudes with their backs to the reader.
[112] It will be remembered that this conversation took place in the summer of 1915 at
the outset of my investigation. Since then, as noted throughout this book, economic
questions have increasingly pressed themselves forward. I may mention that in 1919
Yanagi wrote a vigorous and moving protest against misgovernment in Korea. In a recent
letter to me he says: "You know that I am going to establish a Korean Folk Art Society in
Seoul. This is a big work, but I want to do it with all my power for love of Korea. I
approach the solution of the Korean question by the way of Art. Politics can never solve
the question. I want to use the gallery as a meeting-place of Koreans and Japanese. People
cannot quarrel in beauty. This is my simple yet definite belief." Yanagi's manifesto on his
project made one think of the age when the great culture of China and India glowed
across the straits of Tsushima in the wake of early Buddhism.
[113] A well-known member of the Shirakaba group started two years ago an "ideal
village" among the mountains. It is an effort towards social freedom in which the police
manifest a continuous interest.

ACROSS JAPAN (TOKYO TO NIIGATA AND
BACK)

CHAPTER XII

TO THE HILLS
(TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA)
Nothing which concerns a countryman is a matter of
unconcern to me.—Terence
During the month of July I went from one side of Japan to the other,
starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which lies America, and coming out
at Niigata, across the sea from which lies Siberia.
We first made a four hours' railway run through the great Kwanto plain
(6,000 square miles). Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for travellers
take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy—he has the word
"Boy" on his collar in English—brings fans and bedroom slippers. The fans,
which on one side advertised "Hotels in European style, directly managed by
the Imperial Government Railway [114]," offered on the other a poem and a
drawing. A poem addressed to a snail played with the idea of its giving its
life to climbing Fuji. The poem was composed by a poet who wrote many
delightful hokku (seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy
with the humblest creatures. One poem is:

Come and play with me,
Thou orphan sparrow!

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

It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano—the odour
of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district—that I first
enjoyed the attentions of the blind amma (masseur or masseuse), the call of
whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening in the smallest community.
Amma san rubbed and pommelled me for an hour for 28 sen. The amma
does not massage the skin, but works through the yukata (bath gown) of the
patient. I had my massaging as I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an
entertainment arranged for the benefit of residents. The entertainers,
professional and non-professional—the non-professionals were local farmers
—knelt on a low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily
able. A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young
wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an old-
time Court lady.
The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the volcano. Its
lower slopes were covered with a variety of that knee-high bamboo with a
creeping root, which is so troublesome to farmers when they break up new
ground. One variety is said to blossom and fruit once in sixty years and then
die. An ingenious professor has traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year
in which the bamboo fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly.
Suddenly their food supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live
with the farmers.
At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano. Soon
we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead trees and
scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an awesome desolation
of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At the summit we looked
down into the churning horror of the volcano's vat and at different spots saw
the treacly sulphur pouring out, brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to
whom there first came the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must
surely have looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and
spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The sound
of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air was stifling. It
was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind.
Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the
orifices, and in this way had compelled the volcano to furnish them with
sulphur free from dirt. The production of sulphur in Japan is valued at close
on three million yen.

As we went on our journey we spoke of the sturdiness and cheeriness of
our chief carrier, who had told us that he was seventy. I asked him if he
thought it fair that he should have to walk so far on a hot day with so much
to carry while we were empty-handed. He replied that it might appear to be
unjust, but that he was happy enough. He said that he had lived long and
seen many things, and he knew that to be rich was not always to be happy.
He quoted the proverb, "Sunshine and rice may be found everywhere," and
the poem which may be rendered, "If you look at a water-fowl thoughtlessly
you may imagine that she has nothing to do but float quietly on the water,
yet she is moving her feet ceaselessly beneath the surface."
At the little hot spring inn where we next stayed, insect powder was on
sale, not without reasonable hope of patronage by the guests. The Asahi once
facetiously reported that I had taken on a journey three to (six pecks) of
insect powder. The chief protector of the prudent traveller in remote Japan is
a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets into it and ties the strings together under
his chin. The mats and futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The
hard cylindrical Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also, but I never got
accustomed to using it, and laid my head on a doubled-up kneeling cushion.
A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from the women's. My
cold bath in the morning I found I had to take unselfconsciously at a water-
gush in front of the house. As the food was poor here, we were glad of our
tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course in a remote part. Apart
from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually available at the inns chicken,
fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and soups. With a pot of jam or two and
some powdered milk in one's bag, one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can
now be got in unlikely places on giving notice overnight. It is produced for
invalids and children. If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller
who has resolved to see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try
to do their best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered
for by the provision of bento (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms of stations.
These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold fish or chicken and
assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and inexpensive meal.
Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke of a
troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are still people
who escape the census and live a wild life. The records of a gipsy folk called
Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800 years.

As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of
"fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a
favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when the
fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after fire-farming "tea
springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking may have been
introduced from China there could not be such large areas of tea growing
wild if tea were not indigenous.
Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed that
trees were often felled in order that mushrooms might be grown on and
around their trunks. There is a large consumption of these tree-grown
mushrooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half million yen.

CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS.

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

IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES,

AND A BALE OF RICE

In the first house we came to we found a young widow turning bowls with
power from a water-wheel. She could finish 400 bowls in a day and got from
one to five sen apiece. She said that she had often wished to see a foreigner.
Like nearly all the girls and women of the hills, she wore close-fitting blue
cotton trousers.
We descended to a kind of prairie which had a tree here and there and
roughly wooded hills on either side. This brought us to the problem of the
wise method of dealing with the enormous wood-bearing areas of the
country, the timber crop of which is so irregular in quality. Japan requires
many more scientifically planned forests. As coal is not in domestic use,
however, large quantities of cheap wood are needed for burning and for
charcoal making. The demand for hill pasture is also increasing. How shall
the claims of good timber, good firewood, good charcoal-making material
and good pasture be reconciled? In the county through which we were
passing—a county which, owing to its large consumption of wood fuel,
needs relatively little charcoal—the charcoal output was worth as much as
35,000 yen a year.
We saw "buckwheat in full bloom as white as snow," as the Chinese poem
says. At a farmhouse there was a box fixed on a barn wall. It was for
communications for the police from persons who desired to make their
suggestions for the public welfare privately.
Towards evening, when we had done about twenty miles, I managed to
twist an ankle. Happily I had the chance of a ride. It was on the back of a
dour-looking mare which was accompanied by her foal and tied by a halter
to the saddle of a led pack-horse which was carrying two large boxes. Thus
impressively I did several miles in descending darkness and across the rocky
beds of two rivers. The horse of this district is a downcast-looking animal in
spite of the fact that it is stalled under the same roof as its owner and is thus
able to share to some extent in his family life.
At the town at which we at last arrived, the comfort of the hot bath was
enhanced by a sturdy lass of the inn who unasked and unannounced came
and applied herself resolutely to scrubbing and knuckling our backs.
The next day I went to the principal school. There were in the place three
primary schools, one with a branch for agricultural work. The "attendance"
at the principal school, where there were 379 boys and girls, was 98 per cent,
for the boys and 94 per cent, for the girls. [115] The buildings were most

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

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

"Be serious"!—graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here, as
usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers all sorts
of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the sufficiency of reprimands, of
"standing out" and of detention after school hours was unshaken.
A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen, a
large sum in Japan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap. It was
to be used chiefly for the gymnastics which are steadily adding to the stature
of the Japanese people. At one end there was an opening, about 20 ft. across
and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable place for the portraits of the
Emperor and Empress, which are solemnly exposed to view on Imperial
birthdays [117].
Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in education,
one of the reasons for the building of new schools and adding to old ones is
to be found in the recent extension of the period of compulsory attendance. It
used to be from six to ten years of age; it is now from six to twelve. The

visitor to Japan usually under-estimates the ages of children because they are
so small. Japanese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.
In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were, I
learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch schools, 3
secondary schools and 17 winter schools. Within the same area there were
46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125 Shinto shrines with 11
priests.
The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of 71
charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with. When charges were not
proceeded with it was either because restitution had been made or the chief
constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the offender with a
reprimand. When transgressors are dismissed with a reprimand an eye is
kept on them for a year. As the Japanese are in considerable awe of their
police, I have no doubt that, as was explained to me, those who have lapsed
into evil-doing, but are released from custody with a warning, may "tremble
and correct their conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions
were given at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal
statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and children.
The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held,
perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured, only 14
geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of them were
living in the town and they were said to be chiefly patronised by commercial
travellers and imported labourers. I was told that there were pre-nuptial
relations between many young men and young women. Two undoubted
authorities in the district agreed that they could not answer for the chastity of
any young men before marriage or of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young
women. In an effort to save the reputation of their daughters, fathers
sometimes register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and
their wives. Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father
may call the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his
daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are vitiated by the
fact that in Japan children are recorded as illegitimate who are born to
people who have omitted to register their otherwise respectable unions. [118]
In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the still
births might be put down to immoral relations and half to imperfect
nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district girls marry from
17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival.
One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled
stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted William
Poel. Formerly these plays were given by the local youths; now professional
actors are employed. The different acts of the historical dramas which were
performed were divided into half a dozen scenes, and when one of these
scenes had been enacted the stage was wheeled farther along the street. At
the conclusion of each scene some three dozen small boys, all wearing the
white-and-black speckled cotton kimono and German caps which are the
common wear of lads throughout Japan, would swarm up on the stage, and,
with fans waved downwards, would yell at the pitch of their voices an
ancient jingle, which seemed to signify "Push, push, push and go on!" This
was addressed to a score or so of young men who with loud shouts hauled
the heavy stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the four
moving theatres went on simultaneously and sometimes the cars passed one
another. The performances were given on the eve and on the day and through
the night of the festival. The acting was amazingly good, considering the
July heat and the cramped conditions in which the actors worked. Happy
boys sat at the back of the scenes fanning the players. Our kindly and
voluble landlady was not satisfied with the number of times the stages
stopped before her inn. She loudly threatened the youths who were dragging
them that she would reclaim some properties she had lent and tell her dead
husband of their ingratitude!
At one of the booths which had been opened for the festival by a strolling
company there were women actors, contrary to the convention of the
Japanese stage on which men enact female rôles and in doing so use a
special falsetto. Some of these actresses performed men's parts. At every
performance in a Japanese theatre, as I have already mentioned, a policeman
is provided with a chair on a special platform, or in an otherwise favourable
position, so that he can view and if necessary censor what is going on. The
constable at this particular play was kind enough to offer me his seat. The
rest of the audience was content with the floor. The poor little company of
players brought to their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they
had to do everything in the rudest way. They were in no way embarrassed by
the attendants frequently trimming the inferior oil lamps on the stage. A little
girl on the floor, entranced by the performance on the stage, or curious about
some detail of it, ran forward and laid her chin on the boards and studied the

actors at leisure. The folk in the front row of the gallery dangled their naked
legs for coolness.
One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West to identify the
people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained that as
our performances did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it
was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play was over. At a
Japanese playhouse, however, a portion of the audience may be disposed to
go home at some stage of the proceedings and return later. The careful
manager of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a small
stamp on the palms of their hands.
From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They charged 2 sen. We
were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a snake, an unhappy bear, three doleful
monkeys and some stuffed animals which may or may not have had in life
an uncommon number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture by a young
and pretty show-woman who insisted that two marmots in her lap were the
offspring of a girl. "Look," she cried, "at two sisters, the daughters of one
mother. See their hands!" And she held up their paws. She rounded off the
fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed milk.
As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that I was
preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a paper
lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in the street
were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The prisoner was a
drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but described himself as a
journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell where topers are confined
until they are sober. It had a very low door, so that culprits might be
compelled to enter and leave humbly on their knees.
We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a
celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary, perhaps,
to attend the ceremony in a special kind of geta," said our landlady, "it
would be as well if you observed the old rule not to attend without taking a
bath in the early morning." [119]
At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the
annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his
hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains of old
instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A decorous procession
was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine. Youths and maidens carried

aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and saké. These were received by the chief
priest. He carefully placed a strip of cloth before his mouth and nose [120] and
addressed the chief deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the
offerings in the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery
naturalness in all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress
ran freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When
an end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the shrine
read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed. His thin
voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a child's cry, the
twittering of birds and the wind rustling the cryptomeria, dark against the
blue of the hills.
After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the
people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large room of
the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial saké to which rice had
been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried fish. Not so long ago the
presence of a foreigner would have been unwelcome at such a ceremony as
we had witnessed: the fear of "contagion of foreigners" extended even to
people from another prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our
hands for a few moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.
Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight days.
He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been cooked
at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch other persons,
particularly women; he had bathed several times daily in cold water and he
had said many prayers. The heads of the household in the community whose
turn it was to attend at the shrine were also supposed to have observed some
of the same taboos. Only those persons might make offerings at the shrine
whose fathers and mothers were living.[121] Formerly portions of the offerings
of rice and saké at the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.
In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for moral or
non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then came home
training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was too often
indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One person well qualified
to express an opinion said that a "wise and benevolent" chief constable could
exercise a good moral influence. Others believed in public opinion. A
policeman said, "The first thing is for people to have food and clothes;
without such primary satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be
moral." In considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is

not without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a
school receive about the same salary. Assistant teachers and plain constables
are also on an equality. I found the salary of the administrative head of one
county, the gunchō, to be only 2,000 yen a year.
I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through there were no
fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a capital of
two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a turnover of three
million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a temperature for the rice or to
floods which drown the crop, co-operation had proved its value. The
prefectures north of Tokyo facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine,
for near Sendai the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I
was told that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine
has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a hundred."
These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who suffered from lack
of suitable nourishment." Every year the development of railway and steam
communications makes easier the task of relieving famine sufferers. [122] In
the old days people were often found dead who had money but were unable
to get food for it. As Japan is a long island with varying climates there is
never general scarcity.

FOOTNOTES:
[114] For statistics of railways, see Appendix XXXV.
[115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of Japan is officially
reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.; villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not
mean daily attendance.
[116] Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been raised to 26, 16
and 15 yen per month, according to grade.
[117] Only last year (1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an endeavour to save
the Emperor's portrait from his burning school.
[118] See Appendix XXXVI.
[119] A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and evening in most
Japanese hotels. In the morning people are content merely with rinsing their hands and
face.
[120] In addressing a superior, many Japanese still draw in their breath from time to
time audibly.
[121] That is, persons who might be considered not to have failed in their filial duties.
[122] After the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons were in receipt of
famine relief.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS (FUKUSHIMA)
I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects—
my study is man.—Borrow
Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his
tenants' rent rice into saké. He was of the fifth generation of brewers. He
said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the street; now, he
said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival days.
There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured
aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found these
beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the Japanese have the knack of
tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes them easily
transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised everywhere, have
also affected the consumption of saké. [123] Saké is usually compared with
sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet, lasting five or six hours or longer, a
man "strong in saké" may conceivably drink ten go (a go is about one-third
of a pint) before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected
by three go. Some of the topers who boast of the quantity of saké they can
consume—I have heard of men declaring that they could drink twenty go—
are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The little saké bottles
are opaque, and it is easy to remove them for refilling before they are quite
empty.
The brewer, who was a firm adherent of the Jishu sect of Buddhists, was
accustomed to burn incense with his family at the domestic shrine every
morning. But this was not the habit of all the adherents of his denomination.
As to the moral advancement of the neighbourhood, his grandfather "tried
very earnestly to improve the district by means of religion, but without
result." He himself attached most value to education and after that to young
men's associations.

As we left the town we passed a "woman priest" who was walking to
Nikko, eighty miles away. Portraits of dead people, entrusted to her by their
relatives for conveyance to distant shrines, were hung round her body.
As the route became more and more hilly I realised how accurate is that
representation of hills in Japanese art which seems odd before one has been
in Japan: the landscape stands out as if seen in a flash of lightning.
Three things by the way were arresting: the number of shrines, mostly
dedicated to the fox god; the rice suspended round the farm buildings or
drying on racks; and the masses of evening primroses, called in Japan
"moon-seeing flowers."
A feature of every village was one or more barred wooden sheds
containing fire-extinguishing apparatus, often provided and worked by the
young men's association. Sometimes a piece of ground was described to me
as "the training ground of the fire defenders." The night patrols of the village
were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable from the fire-prevention
parties, made up by the youths of the village. There stood up in every village
a high perpendicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give
the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers
attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer awarded
by the prefecture.
On a sweltering July day it was difficult to realise that the villages we
passed through, now half hidden in foliage, might be under 7 ft. of snow in
winter. In travelling in this hillier region one has an extra kurumaya, who
pushes behind or acts as brakeman.
At the "place of the seven peaks" we found a stone dedicated to the
worship of the stars which form the Plough. Again and again I noticed
shrines which had before them two tall trees, one larger than the other, called
"man and wife." It was explained to me that "there cannot be a more sacred
place than where husband and wife stand together." A small tract of
cryptomeria on the lower slopes of a hill belonged to the school. The
children had planted it in honour of the marriage of the Emperor when he
was Crown Prince.
Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom more than about
2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin
is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so

often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in
every spot where rice fields could possibly be made.
On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by receiving the bows of
small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours to perform
their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are taught at school to bow
to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter villages of Holland the stranger
also received the bows of young people.
On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for
protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs, and he
quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on the smile of
your mother-in-law."
We had before us a week's travel by kuruma. Otherwise we should have
liked to have brought away specimens of the wooden utensils of some of the
villages. The travelling woodworker whom we often encountered—he has to
travel about in order to reach new sources of wood supply—has been
despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that there was a
special deity to look after him. In the town we had left there was delightful
woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was pitiful trash made after what
was supposed to be foreign fashions. I may also mention the large collection
of blood-and-thunder stories upon Western models which were piled up in
the stationers' shops.
As we walked up into the hills—the kuruma men were sent by an easier
route—we passed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large masses of blue
single hydrangea and white and pink spirea. We came on the ruined huts of
those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken from it a few crops of
buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees stood up among the green
undergrowth that had invaded the patches. There was a great deal of plantain
and a kurumaya mentioned that sometimes when children found a dead frog
they buried it in leaves of that plant. Japanese children are also in the habit
of angling for frogs with a piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and
are jerked ashore.
We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff climb and we marvelled
at the expense to which a poor county must be put for the maintenance of
roads which so often hang on cliff sides or span torrents. The great piles of
wood accumulated at the summit turned the talk to "silent trade." In "silent
trade" people on one side of a hill traded with people on the other side

without meeting. The products were taken to the hill top and left there,
usually in a rough shed built to protect the goods from rain. The exchange
might be on the principle of barter or of cash payment. But the amount of
goods given in exchange or the cash payment made was left to honour.
"Silent trade" still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes the price
expected for goods is written up in the shed. "Silent trade" originated
because of fears of infectious disease; it survives because it is more
convenient for one who has goods to sell or to buy to travel up and down one
side of a mountain than up and down two sides.
As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck by the
extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country where every household is
burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but
most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be
no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has
been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of
timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of
hillside I saw there is no fitting word but jungle.
At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote hills the guests are
mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own rice and miso,
and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In the passage ways one finds
rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood ash in the centre of which
charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.
We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to
the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow is
never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one school
during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent. for girls. (See
note, p. 112.)
My kurumaya pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were nearly
three acres of beautiful flowers. The rice fields in the hills were suffering
from lack of water and a deputation of villagers had gone ten miles into the
mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at what altitudes rice fields are
contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft. In looking down from a place where the
cliff road hung out over the river that flowed a hundred feet below I noticed
a stone image lying on its back in the water. It may have come there by
accident, but the ducking of such a figure in order to procure rain is not
unknown.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously visited us if there
would be much competition for his seat when he retired from the village
assembly. He thought that there would be several candidates. In the town
from which we had set out on our journey through the highlands a doctor
had spent 500 yen in trying to get on the assembly.
The tea at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb,
"Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first cup." On
going to the village office I found that for a population of 2,000 there were,
in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other shrines and three Buddhist
temples. Against fire there were four fire pumps and 155 "fire defenders." A
dozen of the young men of the village were serving in the army, four were
home on furlough, six were invalided and forty were of the reserve. As many
as thirty-seven had medals. The doctors were two in number and the
midwives three. There was a sanitary committee of twenty-three members.
The revenue of the village was 5,740 yen. It had a fund of 740 yen "against
time of famine." The taxes paid were 2,330 yen for State tax, 2,460 yen for
prefectural tax and 4,350 yen for village tax. The village possessed two co-
operative societies, a young men's association, a Buddhist young men's
association, a Buddhist young women's association, a society for the
development of knowledge, a society of the graduates of the primary school,
two thrift organisations, a society for "promoting knowledge and virtue," and
an association the members of which "aimed at becoming distinguished."
There were in the village ninety subscribers to the Red Cross and two dozen
members of the national Patriotic Women's Association.
In the county through which we were moving there was gold, silver and
copper mining. [124] Out of its population of 36,000 only 632 were entitled to
vote for an M.P.
We rested at a school where the motto was, "Even in this good reign I pray
because I wish to make our country more glorious." There were portraits of
four deceased local celebrities and of Peter the Great, Franklin, Lincoln,
Commander Perry and Bismarck. Illustrated wall charts showed how to sit
on a school seat, how to identify poisonous plants and how to conform to the
requirements of etiquette. The following admonitions were also displayed—
a copy of them is given to each child, who is expected to read the twelve
counsels every morning before coming to school:
1.—Do your own work and don't rely on others to do it.

2.—Be ardent when you learn or play.
3.—Endeavour to do away with your bad habits and cultivate
good ones.
4.—Never tell a lie and be careful when you speak.
5.—Do what you think right in your heart and at the same time
have good manners.
6.—Overcome difficulties and never hold back from hard
work.
7.—Do not make appointments which you are uncertain to
keep.
8.—Do not carelessly lend or borrow.
9.—Do not pass by another's difficulties and do not give
another much trouble.
10.—Be careful about things belonging to the public as well as
about things belonging to yourself.
11.—Keep the outside and inside of the school clean and also
take care of waste paper.
12.—Never play with a grumbling spirit.
There was stuck on the roofs of many houses a rod with a piece of white
paper attached, a charm against fire. One house so provided was next door to
the fire station. Frequently we passed a children's jizō or Buddha, comically
decked in the hat and miscellaneous garments of youngsters whose grateful
mothers believed them to have been cured by the power of the deity.
Speaking of clothes, it was the hottest July weather and the natural
garment was at most a loin cloth. The women wore a piece of red or
coloured cotton from their waist to their knees. The backs of the men and
women who were working in the open were protected by a flapping
ricestraw mat or by an armful of green stuff. The boys under ten or so were
naked and so were many little girls. But the influence of the Westernising
period ideas of what was "decent" in the presence of foreigners survives. So,
whenever a policeman was near, people of all ages were to be seen huddling
on their kimonos. I was sorry for a merry group of boys and girls aged 12 or
13 who in that torrid weather[125] were bathing at an ideal spot in the river
and suddenly caught sight of a policeman. It is deplorable that a
consciousness of nakedness should be cultivated when nakedness is natural,

traditional and hygienic. (Even in the schools the girls are taught to make
their kimonos meet at the neck—with a pin! [126]—much higher than they
used to be worn.) It is only fair to bear in mind, however, that some hurrying
on of clothes by villagers is done out of respect to the passing superior,
before whom it is impolite to appear without permission half dressed or
wearing other than the usual clothing.
At a hot spring we found many patrons because, as I was told, "Ox-day is
very suitable for bathing." The old pre-Meiji days of the week were twelve:
Rat-, Ox-, Tiger-, Hare-, Dragon-, Snake-, Horse-, Sheep-, Monkey-, Fowl-,
Dog-and Boar-day. When the Western seven days of the week were adopted
they were rendered into Japanese as: Sun, Moon, Fire, Water, Wood, Metal
and Earth, followed by the word meaning star or planet and day. For
instance, Sunday is Nichi (Sun) yo (star) bi (day), and Monday, Getsu
(Moon) yo (planet) bi (day), or Nichi-yo-bi and Getsu-yo-bi. For brevity the
bi is often dropped off.
The headman of a village we passed through told me that the occasion of
my coming was the first on which English had been heard in those parts.
Talking about the people of his village, he said that there had been four
divorces in the year. Once in four or five years a child was born within a few
months of marriage. In the whole county there had been among 310 young
men examined for the army only four cases of "disgraceful disease." There
was no immoral woman in the 75-miles-long valley. Elsewhere in the county
many young men were in debt, but in the headman's village no youth was
without a savings-bank book. And the local men-folk "did not use women's
savings as in some places."
One shrine we passed seemed to be dedicated to the moon. Another was
intended to propitiate the horsefly. Several villages had boxes fastened on
posts for the reception of broken glass. As we approached one village I saw
an inscription put up by the young men's association, "Good Crops and
Prosperity to the Village." When we came to the next village the
schoolmaster was responsible for an inscription, "Peace to the World and
Safety to the State." In other places I found young men's society notice
boards giving information about the area of land in a village, how it was
cropped, the kind of crops, the area of forest, lists of famous places, etc.

MOVABLE STAGE AT A FESTIVAL FIFTY MILES FROM A
RAILWAY.

FARMHOUSE AT WHICH MR. UCHIMURA PREACHED.

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

TENANT FARMERS' HOUSES

AUTHOR AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING."

SOME PERFORMERS AT THE "SPIRIT MEETING."

At one of the schools where we lunched I noticed that the large wall maps
were of Siam and Malaya, Borneo, Australia and China (two). The portraits
were of Florence Nightingale, Lincoln, Napoleon and Christ as the Good
Shepherd, the last named being "a present from a believer friend of the
schoolmaster." [127] This school closed at noon from July 10 to July 31, and
had twenty days' vacation in August and another twenty days in the rice-
planting and busy sericultural season. The sewing-room of the school was
used in winter as a dormitory for boys who lived at a distance.
Accommodation for girls was provided in the village. The children brought
their rice with them. The products of the school farm were also eaten by the
boarding pupils. It was estimated that the cost of maintaining the girls was
10 sen a day. Three-fourths of this expense was borne by the village. The
regularity and strictness of the dormitory management were found to have an
excellent effect. At the winter school, an adjunct of the day school, there was
an attendance of a score of youths and sixty girls.
Speaking of a place where we stayed for the night, one who had a wide
knowledge of rural Japan said that he did not think that there was a lonelier
spot where farming was carried on. There was no market or fair for 80 or 90
miles and the little groups of houses were 2 or 3 miles apart. In this district,
it was explained, "the rich are not so rich and the poor are not so poor."
We passed somewhere a fine shrine for the welfare of horses. At a certain
festival hundreds of horses are driven down there to gallop round and round

the sacred buildings. Thousands of people attend this festival, but it was
declared that no one was ever hurt by the horses.
The poetical names of country inns would make an interesting collection.
I remember that it was at "the inn of cold spring water" that the waiting-maid
had never seen cow's milk. She proved to be the daughter of the host and
wore a gold ring by way of marking the fact. This girl told us that on the
banks of the river there was only one house in 70 miles. The village was
having the usual holiday to celebrate the end of the toilsome sericultural
season.
On our way to the next village we met two far-travelled young women
selling the dried seaweed which, in many varieties, figures in the Japanese
dietary. [128] (There are shops which sell nothing but prepared seaweeds.) A
notice board there informed us that the road was maintained at the cost of the
local young men's society. As we were on foot we felt grateful, for the road
was well kept. We passed for miles over planking hung on the cliff side or on
roadway carried on embankments. On the suspended pathways there was
now and then a plank loose or broken, and there was no rail between the
pedestrian and the torrent dashing below. Where there was embanked
roadway it was almost always uphill and downhill and it frequently swung
sharply round the corner of a cliff. As the river increased in volume we saw
many rafts of timber shooting the rapids. At one place twenty-six raftsmen
had been drowned. The remnants of two bridges showed the force of the
floods.
In this region the kurumaya were hard put to it at times and once a kuruma
broke down. Its owner cheerfully detached its broken axle and went off with
it at a trot ten miles or so to a blacksmith. Later he traversed the ten miles
once more to refit his kuruma, afterwards coming on fifteen more miles to
our inn. The endurance and cheeriness of the kurumaya were surprising. It
was usually in face of their protests that we got out to ease them while going
uphill. Every morning they wanted to arrange to go farther than we thought
reasonable. Each man had not only his passenger but his passenger's heavy
bag. One day we did thirty-six miles over rough roads. The kurumaya
proposed to cover fifty. They showed spirit, good nature and loyalty. The
character of their conversation is worth mentioning. At one point they were
discussing the plays we had witnessed, at other times the scenery, local
legends, the best routes and the crops, material condition and disposition of
the villagers. Our kurumaya compared very favourably indeed with men of

an equal social class at home. Their manners were perfect. They stayed at the
same inns as we did—once in the next room—and behaved admirably. Every
evening the men washed their white cotton shorts and jackets—their whole
costume except for a wide-brimmed sun hat and straw waraji. Tied to the
axle of each kuruma were several pairs of waraji, for on the rough hill roads
this simple form of footgear soon wears out. Discarded waraji are to be seen
on every roadside in Japan.
The inscriptions on some of the wayside stones we passed had been
written by priests so ignorant that the wording was either ridiculous or
almost without meaning. But there was no difficulty in deciphering an
inscription on a stone which declared that it had been erected by a company
of Buddhists who claimed to have repeated the holy name of Amida
2,000,000 times. (The idea is that salvation may be obtained by the
repetition of the phrase Namu Amida Butsu.) A small stone set up on a rock
in the middle of paddy fields intimated that at that spot "people gathered to
see the moon one night every month." A third stone was dedicated to the
monkey as the messenger of a certain god, just as the fox is regarded as the
messenger of Inari.
We saw during our journey large numbers of kiri (Paulownia) used for
making geta and bride's chests. Some farmers seem to plant kiri trees at the
birth of a daughter so as to have wood for her wedding chest or money for
her outfit [129]. Kiri seems to be increasingly grown. On the other hand in the
same districts lacquer trees were now seldom planted. The farmers
complained that they were cheated by the collectors of lacquer who come
round to cut the trees. The age of cutting was given me as the eighth or ninth
year, but poor farmers sometimes allowed a young tree to be cut. A tree may
be cut once a year for three or four years. After that it is useless even for
fuel, owing to the smell it gives off, and is often left standing. The old
scarred trunks, sometimes headless, suggested the tattooed faces and bodies
of Maori veterans. As lacquer is poisonous to the skin the wood calls for
careful handling. I saw one of the itinerant lacquer collectors, his hands
wrapped in cotton, operating on a tree.
During a particularly hot run we had the good fortune to come on a soda-
water spring from which we all drank freely. A factory erected to tap the
spring was in ruins. Evidently the cost of carriage was prohibitive.
In these hills the rice was planted farther apart than is usual so that the sun
might warm the water. Here as elsewhere daikon were hung up to dry on

walls and trees, and looked like giant tallow candles. Below a bridge, which
marked the village boundary, flags had been flung down by way of keeping
off epidemics. Evil spirits were warded off by special dances.
The porch of a little tea-house where we rested was covered with grapes.
Soon after leaving it we reached our destination for the night, a small town
of houses of several storeys which clustered on a hillside under the shadow
of a Zen temple. Meat and eggs were forbidden to the town, but as the
residents were all Zen Buddhists the restriction was no hardship. There was
no cow in the place, but condensed milk was allowed. A man at the inn told
me that he knew of ten Shinto shrines which forbade the use of chickens and
eggs in their localities. The view from the temple, perched high on its rock
above the wide riverway, was exceptionally fine. Parties of boys and girls of
thirteen paid visits to this temple "because thirteen is known as a perilous
age." The people of the vegetarian town, instead of feeding on the fish in the
river, fed them. I saw a shoal of fish being given scraps at the water edge.
As we went on our way and spoke of the bad roads it was suggested that
in the old days roads were purposely left uphill and downhill in order that
the advance of enemies might be hindered. We came to a dilapidated tea-
house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touching fondness for a cat
and a dog. From her shack we had a view of a volcano which had destroyed
two villages a few years before. Our hostess, who made much of us, said that
the catastrophe had been preceded by "horrible da-da-da-bang" sounds and
lightnings, and that it was accompanied by "thunderbolts and heavy thick
smoke." The old woman had beheld "soil boiling and cracking."
Along our route we had more evidences of "fire farming." The procedure
was to sow buckwheat the first year and rape and millet the second year. In
the cryptomeria forests there was a variety which, when cut, sprouts from the
ground and makes a new growth like an elm. One crop we saw was ginseng,
protected by low structures covered by matting.
At length we heard the distant sound of a locomotive whistle. We were
approaching the newly opened railway which was to take us the short run to
the sea. Soon we were in a rather unkempt village which had hardly
recovered from its surprise at finding that it had a railway station. We paid
our kurumaya the sum contracted for and something over for their faithful
service and for their long return run, and having exchanged bows and cordial
greetings, we left for a time the glorified perambulators which a foreign

missionary is supposed to have introduced half a century ago. (The Japanese
claim the honour of "inventing" the jinrikisha.)

FOOTNOTES:
[123] See Appendix XXXVII.
[124] See Appendix XXXVIII.
[125] In Tokyo one may sleep night after night in summer with no covering but the
thinnest loose cotton kimono and have an electric fan going within the mosquito curtain,
and still feel the heat.
[126] The kimono has no button, hook, tie, or fastening of any kind, and is kept in
place by the waist string and obi.
[127] It is an illustration of the difficulty of using a foreign symbolism that it is
unlikely that a single child in the school had ever seen a shepherd or a sheep.
[128] In 1918 the value of seaweed was returned at 13,600,000 yen.
[129] In fifteen years a kiri tree may be about 20 ft. high and 3 ft. in circumference and
be worth 30 yen. Kiri trees to the value of 3 million yen were felled in 1918.

CHAPTER XIV

SHRINES AND POETRY

(NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)
Sir, I am talking of the mass of the people.—Johnson
The railway made its way through snow stockades and through many
tunnels which pierced cryptomeria-clad hills. Eventually we descended to
the wonderful Kambara plains, a sea of emerald rice. Fourteen million
bushels of rice are produced on the flats of Niigata prefecture, which grows
more rice than any other. The rice, grown under 800 different names, is
officially graded into half a dozen qualities. The problem of the high country
we had come from was how to keep its paddy fields from drying up; the
problem of Niigata is chiefly to keep the water in its fields at a sufficiently
low level. Almost every available square yard of the prefecture is paddy.
At Gosen there were depressing-looking weaving sheds, but the Black
Country created by the oil fields farther on was in even more striking
contrast with the beautiful region we had left. The petroleum yield was 65
million gallons, and the smell of the oil went with us to the capital city.
Niigata has a dark reputation for exporting farmers' daughters to other
parts of Japan, but I have also heard that the percentage of attendance made
by the children at the primary schools of the prefecture is higher than
anywhere else. Like Amsterdam, Niigata is a city of bridges. There must be
200 of them. The big timber bridge across the estuary is nearly half a mile
long. One finds in Niigata a Manchester-like spirit of business enterprise.
Our hotel was excellent.
Because they speak with all sorts of people and hear a great deal of
conversation the blind amma are full of interesting gossip. A clever amma
who ran his knuckles up and down my back said that farm land a good way
from Niigata was sold at from 200 yen to 300 yen and sometimes at 400 yen
per quarter acre. [130] Prefectural officials who called on me explained that

drainage operations on a large scale were being completed. The water of
which the low land was relieved would be used to extend farming in the
hills. An effort was also being made to develop stock-keeping in the uplands.
It was proposed "to supply every farmer with a scheme for increasing his
live stock." The optimistic authorities were particularly attracted by the
notion of keeping sheep. The plan was to arrange for co-operation in hill
pasturing and in wool and meat production. Mutton was as yet unknown,
however, in Niigata. (The mutton eaten by foreigners in Japan usually comes
from Shanghai.)
I went into the country to a little place where the natural gas from the soil
was used by the farmers for lighting and cooking. I heard talk in this village
and in others of the influence of the local army reservists' society. "Young
men on returning from their army service are always influential. They are
much respected by the youths and are talkative indeed in the village
assembly."
As our host was the village headman he kindly brought the assembly
together to meet me. I asked the assembled fathers about two stones erected
in the village. Somebody had kindled a fire of rice screenings near one of
them and it had been scorched. On the other stone a kimono had been hung
to dry. The explanation was that the stones were monuments not shrines, and
that the people who had set them up had left the district. The stones were no
doubt respected while the donors lived. It was not uncommon for a pilgrim
to a shrine to erect a memorial on his return home.
In this village fifty Shinto shrines of the fifth class had been closed under
the influence of the Home Office. They were shrines which had no offering
from the village to support them. They had only a few worshippers. All the
remaining shrines were of the fifth class but one, and it was of the fourth
class. In the county there was a second-class shrine and in the whole
prefecture there were two or three first-class shrines. The villagers had
agreed among themselves which of their own shrines should be made an end
of. A shrine which was dispensed with was burnt. The stone steps
approaching it were also removed. Burning was not sacrilege but
purification. On the closing of a shrine there might be complaints on the part
of some old man or woman, but the majority of people approved. One Shinto
shrine guardian lived at the fourth-class shrine and conducted a ceremony at
the sixteen fifth-class shrines. Of the twenty Buddhist temples in the village

(300 families cultivating an average of a chō apiece), twelve were Hokke,
five Shingon, two Shinshu and one Zen. All the priests were married. [131]
I have used the phrase "Buddhist temple" loosely and may do so again, for
it conveys an idea which "Buddhist church" does not. A temple (dō) is
properly an edifice in which a Buddha is enshrined. This building is not for
services or burial ceremonies or anniversary offerings for departed souls. It
may or may not have a guardian (domori). He is never a priest with a shaven
head. A Buddhist church (tera) is a place where adherents go as
anniversaries come round or for sermons. It possesses a priest. There is a
considerable difference in the style of Buddhist edifices according to their
denomination—Zen buildings are particularly plain—but all are more
elaborate than Shinto shrines.
A large Shinto shrine is called yashiro (house of god); a small one hokora.
A hokora is transportable. Originally it was and in some places it still is a
perishable wooden shrine thatched with reed or grass straw which is
renewed at the spring and autumn festivals. It may be less than two feet high
and may be made of stone or wood. But it cannot be regarded as a building.
Inside there are gohei (upright sticks with paper streamers). In a rich man's
house a hokora may be seven or eight feet high or bigger than the smallest
yashiro, and may be embellished with colour and metal.
Returning to Buddhism, if a priest has a son he may be succeeded by him.
But many Buddhist priests marry late and have no children. Or their children
do not want to be priests. So the priest adopts a successor. Sometimes he
maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor. During the day this assistant
goes to school. In the evenings and during holidays he is taught to become a
priest. When the primary-school education is finished the lad may be sent by
his patron, if he is well enough off, to a school of his sect at Kyoto or Tokyo.
My travelling companion spoke of the infiltration of new ideas in town
and country. "A mixing is taking place in the heart and head of everybody
who is not a bigot. But I don't know that some kinds of Christianity are to do
much for us. I heard the other day of a Japanese Presbyterian who was
preaching with zest about hell fire. Generally speaking, our old men are
looking to the past and our young men are aspiring, but not all. Some are
content if they can live uncriticised by their neighbours. When they become
old they may begin to think of a future life and visit temples. But as young
men their thoughts are fully occupied by things of this world."

In the office of the headman whom I mentioned a page or so back, there
was behind his chair a kakemono which read, "Reflecting and Examining
One's Inner Spirit." We passed a night in the old house of this headman, who
was a poet and a country gentleman of a delightful type. Being an eldest son
he had married young, and his relations with his eldest boy, a frank and
clever lad, were pleasant to see. The garden, instead of being shut in by a
wall with a tiled coping or by a palisade of bamboo stems in the ordinary
way, was open towards the rice fields, a scene of restful beauty. As our
kuruma drew near the house, the steward appeared, a broom in his hand.
Running for a short distance before us until we entered the courtyard, he
symbolically swept the ground according to old custom. After a delightful
hot bath and an elaborate supper, which my fellow traveller afterwards
assured me had meant a week's work for the women of the household—
snapping turtle and choice bamboo shoots were among the honourable
dishes—we gathered at the open side of the room overlooking the garden.
Fireflies glowed in the paddies and in the garden two stone lanterns had been
lighted. One of them, which had a crescent-shaped opening cut in it,
gleamed like the moon; the other, which had a small serrated opening,
represented a star.
I paid a visit to the local agricultural co-operative store which did business
under the motto, "Faith is the Mother of all Virtue." More than half the
money taken at the store was for artificial manures. Next came purchases of
imported rice, for, like the Danish peasants who export their butter and eat
margarine, the local peasants sold their own rice and bought the Saigon
variety. The society sold in a year a considerable quantity of saké. Stretched
over the doorway of the building in which the goods of the society were
stored were the rope and paper streamers which are seen before Shinto
shrines and consecrated places. The society had a large flag post for weather
signals, a white flag for a fine day, a red one for cloudy weather and a blue
one for rain.
I brought away from this village a calendar of agricultural operations with
poems or mottoes for each month, in the collection of which I suspect the
poet had a hand:
January: Future of the day determined in the morning.
February: The voice of one reading a farming book coming
from the snow-covered window.

March: Grafting these young trees, thinking of the days of my
grandchildren.
April: Digging the soil of the paddy field, sincerity
concentrated on the edge of the mattock.
May: Returning home with the dim moonlight glinting on the
edges of our mattocks.
June: Boundless wealth stored up by gracious heaven: dig it
out with your mattock, take it away with your sickle.
July: Weeding the paddy field [132] in a happiness and
contentment which townspeople do not know.
August: Standing peasant worthier than resting rich man.
September: Ears of rice bend their heads as they ripen. (An
allusion to wisdom and meekness.)
October: White steam coming out of a manure house on an
autumn morning.
November: Moon clear and bright above neatly divided paddy
fields.
December: All the members of the family smiling and
celebrating the year's end, piling up many bales of rice.
In this district I first noticed cotton. It is sown in June and is picked from
time to time between early September and early November. Cotton has been
grown for centuries in Japan, but nowadays it is produced for household
weaving only, the needs of the factories being met by foreign imports. The
plant has a beautiful yellow flower with a dark brown eye.
In one village I asked how many people smoked. The answer was 60 per
cent. of the men and 10 per cent. of the women. In the same village, which
did not seem particularly well off, I was told that 200 daily papers might be
taken among 1,300 families. Eighty per cent. of the local papers were dailies
and cost 35 sen a month. Tokyo papers cost 45 or 50 sen a month.
I visited a school, half of which was in a building adjoining a temple and
half in the temple itself. In the same county there were two other schools
housed in temples. The small Shinto shrine in this temple held the Imperial
Rescript on education. On one side of it was an ugly American clock and on
the other a thermometer. In the temple (Zen) two Tokyo University students
were staying in ideal conditions for vacation study.

I saw at one place a very tired, unslept-looking peasant with a small
closed tub carried over his shoulder by means of a pole. On the tub was tied
a white streamer, such as is supplied at a Shinto shrine, and a branch of
sakaki (Eurya ochnacea, the sacred tree). The traveller was the delegate of
his village. He had been to a mountain shrine in the next prefecture and the
tub held the water he had got there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making
the journey home without stopping anywhere his efforts will result in rain
coming down at his village. If he should stop at any place to rest or sleep,
and there should be the slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain will be
procured not for his own village but for the community in which he has
tarried. So our voyager had walked not only for a whole day but through the
night. I heard of a rain delegate who had stamina enough to keep walking for
three or four days without sleeping.
Another way of obtaining rain has principally to do with tugging at a rock
with a straw rope. Then there is the plan already referred to of tying straw
ropes to a stone image and flinging it into the river, saying, "If you don't give
us rain you will stay there; if you do give us rain you shall come out." There
is also the method of paying someone liberally to throw the split open head
of an ox into the deep pool of a waterfall. "Then the water god being much
angry," said my informant, "he send his dragon to that village, so storm and
rain come necessarily." Yet another plan is for the villagers simply to ascend
to a particular mountain top crying, "Give us rain! Give us rain!" While
dealing with these magic arts I may reproduce the following rendering of a
printed "fortune" which I received from a rural shrine: "Wish to agree but
now somewhat difficult. Wait patiently for a while. Do nothing wrong. Wait
for the spring to come. Everything will be completed and will become better.
Endeavouring to accomplish it soon will be fruitless."
It was a student of agricultural conditions, in Toyama who gossiped to me
of the large expenditure by farmers of that prefecture on the marriage of their
daughters. "It is not so costly as the boys' education and it procures a good
reception for the girl from father-and mother-in-law. The pinch comes when
there is a second and third daughter, for the average balance in hand of a
peasant proprietor in this prefecture at the end of the year is only 48 yen.
Borrowing is necessary and I heard of one bankruptcy. The Governor tried to
stop the custom but it is too old. They say Toyama people spend more
proportionately than the people in other prefectures. In general they do not
keep a horse or ox. I heard of young farmers stealing each other's crops.

Parents are very severe upon a daughter who becomes ill-famed, for when
they seek a husband for her they must spend more. So mostly daughters keep
their purity before marriage. But I know parts of Japan where a large number
of the girls have ceased to be virtuous. Concerning the priests, those of
Toyama are the worst. A peasant proprietor with seven of a family and a
balance at the end of the year of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the
temple. Some priests threaten the farmer, saying that if he does not pay as
much as is imposed on him by the collector an inferior Buddha will go past
his door. Priests want to keep farmers foolish as long as they can."

FOOTNOTES:
[130] For prices of land, see Appendix LIV.
[131] There are about 116,000 Shinto shrines of all grades and 14,000 priests, and
71,000 temples and 51,000 priests. There are about a dozen Shinto sects and about thirty
Buddhist sects and sub-sects.
[132] It is done by wading in leech-infested water under a burning sun and pulling out
the weeds by hand and pushing them down into the sludge.

CHAPTER XV

THE NUN'S CELL

(NAGANO)
It is one more incitement to a man to do well.—Boswell
Eighty per cent. of Nagano is slope. Hence its dependence on sericulture.
The low stone-strewn roofs of the houses, the railway snow shelters and the
zig-zag track which the train takes, hint at the climatic conditions in winter
time. Despite the snow—ski-ing has been practised for some years—the
summer climate of Nagano has been compared with that of Champagne and
there is one vineyard of 60,000 vines.
I was invited to join a circle of administrators who were discussing rural
morality and religion. One man said that there was not 20 per cent. of the
villages in which the priests were "active for social development." Another
speaker of experience declared that "the four pillars of an agricultural
village" were "the sonchō (headman), the schoolmaster, the policeman and
the most influential villager." He went on: "In Europe religion does many
things for the support and development of morality, but we look to
education, for it aims not at only developing intelligence and giving
knowledge, but at teaching virtue and honesty. But there is something
beyond that. Thousands of our soldiers died willingly in the Russian war.
There must have been something at the bottom of their hearts. That
something is a certain sentiment which penetrates deeply the characters of
our countrymen. Our morality and customs have it in their foundations. This
spirit is Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit). It appeared among our warriors
as bushido (the way of the soldier), but it is not the monopoly of soldiers.
Every Japanese has some of this spirit. It is the moral backbone of Japan."
"I should like to say," another speaker declared, "that I read many
European and American books, but I remain Japanese. Mr. Uchimura sees
the darkest side of Buddhism and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn expected too much

from it. 'So mysterious,' Hearn said, but it is not so mysterious to us. We
must be grateful to him for seeing something of the essence of our life.
Sometimes, however, we may be ashamed of his beautifying sentences. I am
a modern man, but I am not ashamed when my wife is with child to pray that
it may be healthy and wise. It is possible for us Japanese to worship some
god somewhere without knowing why. The poet says, 'I do not know the
reason of it, but tears fall down from my eyes in reverence and gratitude.' I
suppose this is natural theology. The proverb says, 'Even the head of a
sardine is something if believed in.' I attach more importance to a man's
attitude to something higher than himself than to the thing which is revered
by him. Whether a man goes to Nara and Kyoto or to a Roman Catholic or a
Methodist church he can come home very purified in heart."
"Some foreigners have thought well to call us 'half civilised,'" the speaker
went on. "Can it be that uncivilised is something distasteful to or not
understood by Europeans and Americans? We have the ambition to erect
some system of Eastern civilisation. It is possible that we may have it in our
minds to call some things in Europe 'half civilised.' Surely the barbarians are
usually the people other than ourselves. When the townsman goes to the
country he says the people are savages. But the countryman finds his fellow-
savages quite decent people."
"Some time ago," broke in a professor, "I read a novel by René Bazin and
I could not but think how much alike were our peasants and the peasants of
the West."
The previous speaker resumed: "The other day a foreigner laughed in my
presence at our old art of incense burning and actually said that we were
deficient in the sense of smell. I told him that fifty years ago our samurai
class, in excusing their anti-foreign manifestations, said they could not
endure the smell of foreigners, and that to this day our peasants may be
heard to say of Western people, 'They smell; they smell of butter and fat.'"
In the city of Nagano early in the morning I went to a large Buddhist
temple where the authorities had kindly given me special facilities to see the
treasures—alas! all in a wooden structure. A strange thing was the
preservation untouched of the room in which the Emperor Meiji rested thirty
years ago. May oblivion be one day granted to that awful chenille table
cover and those appalling chairs which outrage the beautiful woodwork and
the golden tatami of a great building! At the entrance of the temple priests in
a kind of open office were reading the newspaper, playing gō or smoking.

More pleasing was the sight of matting spread right round the temple below
its eaves, in order that weary pilgrims might sleep there, and the spectacle of
travel-stained women tranquilly sleeping or suckling their infants before the
shrine itself. There is a pitch dark underground passage below the floor
round the foundations of the great Buddha, and if the circuit be made and the
lock communicating with the entrance door to the sacred figure be
fortunately touched on the way, paradise, peasants believe, is assured. I
made the circuit a few moments after an old woman and found the lock, and
on returning to the temple with the rustic dame knelt with her before the
shrine as the curtain which veils the big Buddha was withdrawn. The face of
one wooden figure in the temple had been worn, like that of many another in
Japan, with the stroking that it had received from the ailing faithful.

IN A BUDDHIST NUNNERY.

GRASS-CUTTING TOOLS COMPARED WITH A WESTERN
SCYTHE.

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

which I had just come, stores thousands of wooden tablets to the memory of
the dead. There are many little receptacles in which the hair, the teeth or the
photographs of believers are preserved. I found that both at the nunnery and
the temple a practical interest was being shown in the reformation of ex-
criminals.

THE CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS' SAVINGS.

NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A "CELL" BY THE AUTHOR.

STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.

While in the highlands of Nagano I spent a night at Karuizawa, a hill
resort at which tired missionaries and their families, not only from all parts
of Japan but from China, gather in the summer months beyond the reach of
the mosquito. [133] I stayed in the summer cottage of my travelling

companion's brother-in-law. The family consisted of a reserved, cultivated
man with a pretty wife of what I have heard a foreigner call "the maternal,
domestic type." In their owlishness newcomers to the country are inclined
to commiserate all Japanese housewives as the "slaves of their husbands."
They would have been sadly wrong in such thoughts about this happy wife
and mother. The eldest boy, a wholesome-looking lad, had just passed
through the middle school on his way to the university, and spoke to me in
simple English with that air of responsibility which the eldest son so soon
acquires in Japan. His brothers and sisters enjoyed a happy relation with
him and with each other. The whole family was merry, unselfish and, in the
best sense of the word, educated. As we knelt on our zabuton we refreshed
ourselves with tea and the fine view of the active volcano, Asama, and
chatted on schools, holidays, books, the country and religion. After a while,
a little to my surprise, the mother in her sweet voice gravely said that if I
would not mind at all she would like very much to ask me two questions.
The first was, "Are the people who go to the Christian church here all
Christians?" and the second, "Are Christians as affectionate as Japanese?"
Karuizawa, which is full of ill-nourished, scabby-headed, "bubbly-nosed"
[134]
Japanese children, is an impoverished place on one of the ancient
highways. We took ourselves along the road until we reached at a slightly
higher altitude the decayed village of Oiwaké. When the railway came near
it finished the work of desolation which the cessation of the daimyos'
progresses to Yedo (now Tokyo) had begun half a century ago. In the days
of the Shogun three-quarters of the 300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds
of the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down
and rebuilt elsewhere. The Shinto shrines are neglected and some are
unroofed, the Zen temple is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a
thousand tombstones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half
hidden in moss and undergrowth.
The farm rents now charged in Oiwaké had not been changed for thirty,
forty or fifty years. In the old inn there was a Shinto shrine, about 12 ft.
long by nearly 2 ft. deep, with latticed sliding doors. It contained a dusty
collection of charms and memorials dating back for generations. Outside in
the garden at the spring I found an irregular row of half a dozen rather
dejected-looking little stone hokora about a foot high. Some had faded
gohei thrust into them, but from the others the clipped paper strips had
blown away. At the foot of the garden I discovered a somewhat elaborate

wooden shrine in a dilapidated state. "Few country people," someone said
to me, "know who is enshrined at such a place." It is generally thought that
these shrines are dedicated to the fox. But the foxes are merely the
messengers of the shrine, as is shown by the figures of crouching or
squatting foxes at either side. A well-known professor lately arrived at the
conviction that the god worshipped at such shrines is the god of agriculture.
He went so far as to recommend the faculty of agriculture at Tokyo
university to have a shrine erected within its walls to this divinity, but the
suggestion was not adopted.
In the course of another chat with the old host of the inn he referred to
the time, close on half a century ago, when 3,000 hungry peasants marched
through the district demanding rice. They did no harm. "They were satisfied
when they were given food; the peasants at that time were heavily
oppressed." To-day the people round about look as if they were oppressed
by the ghosts of old-time tyrants. But there is "something that doth linger"
of self-respect. When we left on our way to Tokyo I gave the man who
brought our bags a mile in a barrow to the station 40 sen. He returned 10
sen, saying that 30 sen was enough.

FOOTNOTES:
[133] Although, as has been seen, the rural problems under investigation in this book
are inextricably bound up with religion, limits of space make it necessary to reserve for
another volume the consideration of the large and complex question of missionary work.
[134] As to the "bubbly-nosed callant," to quote the description given of young
Smollett, nasal unpleasantness seems to be popularly regarded as a sign of health. The
constant sight of it is one of the minor discomforts of travel.

[135]
IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE

CHAPTER XVI

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

(SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)
A foreigner who comes among us without prejudice may
speak his mind freely.—Goldsmith
I went back to Nagano to visit the silk industrial regions. My route lay
through the prefectures of Saitama and Gumma. I left Tokyo on the last day
of June. Many farmers were threshing their barley. On the dry-land patches,
where the grain crop had been harvested, soya bean, sown between the rows
of grain long before harvest, was becoming bushier now that it was no
longer overshadowed. Maize in most places was about a foot high, but
where it had been sown early was already twice that height. The sweet
potato had been planted out from its nursery bed for weeks. Here and there
were small crops of tea which had been severely picked for its second crop.
I noticed melons, cucumbers and squashes, and patches of the serviceable
burdock. Many paddy farmers had water areas devoted to lotus, but the big
floating leaves were not yet illumined by the mysterious beauty of the
honey-scented flowers.
In order to imagine the scene on the rice flats, the reader must not think
of the glistering paddy fields [136] as stretching in an unbroken monotonous
series over the plain. Occasionally a rocky patch, outcropping from the
paddy tract, made a little island of wood. Sometimes it was a sacred grove
in which one caught a glimpse of a Shinto shrine or the head stones of the
dead. Sometimes there was a little clump of cropped tree greenery which
kept a farmhouse cool in summer and, at another time of the year, sheltered
from the wind. Few householders were too poor or too busy to be without
their little patch of flowers.
Before the train climbed out of the Kwanto plain temperature of not far
below 100° F. the planting of rice seemed to be almost an enviable

occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat,
sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious feeling
of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot day-one recalled the mud
baths of the West-when the alternative was walking on a dusty road, digging
on the sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house or the train.
With the rise in the level a few mulberries began to appear and gradually
they occupied a large part of the holdings. Sometimes the mulberries were
cultivated as shoots from a stump a little above ground level, and
sometimes as a kind of small standard. As mulberry culture increased, the
silk factories' whitewashed cocoon stores and the tall red and black iron
chimneys of the factories themselves became more numerous. It is a pity
that the silk factory is not always so innocent-looking inside as the pure
white exterior of its stores might suggest. It is certain that the overworked
girl operatives, sitting at their steaming basins, drawing the silk from the
soaked cocoons, were glad to find the weather conditions such that they
could have the sides of their reeling sheds removed.
At many of the railway stations there were stacks of large, round, flat
bean cakes, for the farmer feeds his "cake" to his fields direct, not through
the medium of cattle. Although a paddy receives less agreeable nutritive
materials than bean cake, the extensive use of this cake must be comforting
to a little school of rural reformers in the West. These ardent vegetarians
have refused to listen to the allegation that vegetarianism was impossible
because without meat-eating there would be no cattle and therefore no
nitrogen for the fields.
It was not only the bean cakes at the stations which caught my attention
but the extensive use of lime. Square miles of paddy field were white with
powdered lime, scattered before the planting of the rice, an operation which
in the higher altitudes would not be finished until well on in July.
A contented and prosperous countryside was no doubt the impression
reflected to many passengers in the train that sunny day. But I knew how
closely pressed the farmers had been by the rise in prices of many things
that they had got into the way of needing. I had learnt, too, the part that
superstition [137] as well as simple faith played in the lives of the country
folk. When, however, I pondered the way in which the rural districts had
been increasingly invaded by factories run under the commercial sanctions

of our eighteen-forties, I asked myself whether there might not be
superstitions of the economic world as well as of religious and social life.
I heard a Japanese speak of being well treated at inns in the old days for
20 sen a night. It should be remembered, however, that there is a system not
only of tipping inn servants but of tipping the inn. The gift to the inn is
called chadai and guests are expected to offer a sum which has some
relation to their position and means and the food and treatment they expect.
I have stayed at inns where I have paid as much chadai as bill. To pay 50
per cent. of the bill as chadai is common. The idea behind chadai is that the
inn-keeper charges only his out-of-pocket expenses and that therefore the
guest naturally desires to requite him. In acknowledgment of chadai the
inn-keeper brings a gift to the guest at his departure—fans, pottery, towels,
picture postcards, fruit or slabs of stiff acidulated fruit jelly (in one inn of
grapes and in another of plums) laid between strips of maize leaf. The right
time to give chadai is on entering the hotel, after the "welcome tea." In
handing money to any person in Japan, except a porter or a kurumaya, the
cash or notes are wrapped in paper.
On the journey from the city of Nagano to Matsumoto, wonderful views
were unfolded of terraced rice fields, and, above these, of terraced fields of
mulberry. How many hundred feet high the terraces rose as the train
climbed the hills I do not know, but I have had no more vivid impression of
the triumphs of agricultural hydraulic engineering. We were seven minutes
in passing through one tunnel at a high elevation.
I spoke in the train with a man who had a dozen chō under grapes, 20 per
cent. being European varieties and 80 per cent. American. He said that some
of the people in his district were "very poor." Some farmers had made
money in sericulture too quickly for it to do them good. He volunteered the
opinion, in contrast with the statement made to me during our journey to
Niigata, that the people of the plains were morally superior to the people of
the mountains. The reason he gave was that "there are many recreations in
the plains whereas in the mountains there is only one." In most of the
mountain villages he knew three-quarters of the young men had relations
with women, mostly with the girls of the village or the adjoining village. He
would not make the same charge against more than ten per cent. of the
young men of the plains, and "it is after all with teahouse girls." He thought

that there were "too many temples and too many sects, so the priests are
starved."
An itinerant agricultural instructor in sericulture who joined in our
conversation was not much concerned by the plight of the priests. "The
causes of goodness in our people," he said, "are family tradition and home
training. Candidly, we believe our morals are not so bad on the whole. We
are now putting most stress on economic development. How to maintain
their families is the question that troubles people most. With that question
unsolved it is preaching to a horse to preach morality. We can always find
high ideals and good leaders when economic conditions improve. The
development of morality is our final aim, but it is encouraged for six years
at the primary school. The child learns that if it does bad things it will be
laughed at and despised by the neighbours and scolded by its parents. We
are busy with the betterment of economic conditions and questions about
morality and religion puzzle us."
When I reached Matsumoto I met a rural dignitary who deplored the
increasing tendency of city men to invest in rural property. "Sometimes
when a peasant sells his land he sets up as a money-lender." I was told that
nearly every village had a sericultural co-operative association, which
bought manures, mulberry trees and silk-worm eggs, dried cocoons and
hatched eggs for its members and spent money on the destruction of rats. Of
recent years the county agricultural association had given 5 yen per tan to
farmers who planted improved sorts of mulberry. About half the farmers in
the county had manure houses. Some 800 farmers in the county kept a
labourer.
I went to see a gunchō and read on his wall: "Do not get angry. Work! Do
not be in a hurry, yet do not be lazy." "These being my faults," he explained,
"I specially wrote them out." There was also on his wall a kakemono
reading: "At twenty I found that even a plain householder may influence the
future of his province; at thirty that he may influence the future of his
nation; at forty that he may influence the future of the whole world." Below
this stirring sentiment was a portrait of the writer, a samurai scholar, from a
photograph taken with a camera which he had made himself. He lived in the
last period of the Shogunate and studied Dutch books. He was killed by an
assassin at the instance, it was believed, of the Shogun.

One of the noteworthy things of Matsumoto was the agricultural
association's market. Another piece of organisation in that part of the world
was fourteen institutes where girls were instructed in the work of silk
factory hands. The teachers' salaries were paid by the factories. So were
also the expenses of the silk experts of the local authorities. On the day I
left the city the daily paper contained an announcement of lectures on
hygiene to women on three successive days, "the chief of police to be
present." This paper was demanding the exemption of students from the
bicycle tax, the rate of which varies in different prefectures.
A young man was brought to see me who was specialising in musk
melons. He said that the Japanese are gradually getting out of their partiality
for unripe fruit.
On our way to the Suwas we saw many wretched dwellings. The feature
of the landscape was the silk factories' tall iron chimneys, ordinarily black
though sometimes red, white or blue.
It is not commonly understood that Japanese lads by the time they
"graduate" from the middle school into the higher school have had some
elementary military training. A higher-school youth knows how to handle a
rifle and has fired twice at a target. At Kami Suwa the problem of how
middle-class boys should procure economical lodging while attending their
classes had been solved by self-help. An ex-scholar of twenty had managed
to borrow 4,000 yen and had proceeded to build on a hillside a dormitory
accommodating thirty-six boarders. Lads did the work of levelling the
ground and digging the well. The frugal lines on which the lodging-house
was conducted by the lads themselves may be judged from the fact that 5
yen a month covered everything. Breakfast consisted of rice, miso soup and
pickles. Cooking and the emptying of the benjo [138] were done by the lads in
turn. A kitchen garden was run by common effort. Among the many notices
on the walls was one giving the names of the residents who showed up at 5
o'clock in the morning for a cold bath and fencing. I also saw the following
instruction written by the founder of the house, which is read aloud every
morning by each resident in turn:
Be independent and pure and strive to make your characters
more beautiful. Expand your thought. Help each other to
accomplish your ambitions. Be active and steady and do not lose
your self-control. Be faithful to friends and righteous and polite.

Be silent and keep order. Do not be luxurious (sic). Keep
everything clean. Pay attention to sanitation. Do not neglect
physical exercises. Be diligent and develop your intelligence.
The borrower of the 4,000 yen with which the institution was built
managed to pay it back within seven years with interest, out of the
subscriptions of residents and ex-residents.
An agricultural authority whom I met spoke of "farming families living
from hand to mouth and their land slipping into the possession of
landlords"; also of a fifth of the peasants in the prefecture being tenants. A
young novelist who had been wandering about the Suwa district had been
impressed by the grim realities of life in poor farmers' homes and cited facts
on which he based a low view of rural morality.
Suwa Lake lies more than 3,500 ft. above sea level and in winter is
covered with skaters. The country round about is remarkable agriculturally
for the fact that many farmers are able to lead into their paddies not only
warm water from the hot springs but water from ammonia springs, so
economising considerably in their expenditure on manure. A simple
windmill for lifting the fertilising water is sold for only 4 yen.
We went to Kōfu, the capital of Yamanashi prefecture, through many
mountain tunnels and ravines. Entrancing is the just word for this region in
the vicinity of the Alps. But joy in the beauty through which we passed is
tinged for the student of rural life by thoughts of the highlander's difficulties
in getting a living in spots where quiet streams may become in a few hours
ungovernable torrents. I remember glimpses of grapes and persimmons, of
parties of middle-school boys tramping out their holiday—every inn
reduces its terms for them—and of half a dozen peasant girls bathing in a
shaded stream. But there were less pleasing scenes: hills deforested and
paddies wrecked by a waste of stones and gravel flung over them in time of
flood. Here and there the indomitable farmers, counting on the good
behaviour of the river for a season or two, were endeavouring, with
enormous labour, to resume possession of what had been their own. The
spectacle illustrated at once their spirit and their industry and their need of
land. At night we slept at Kōfu at "the inn of greeting peaks." In the
morning a Governor with imagination told me of the prefecture's gallant
enterprises in afforestation and river embanking at expenditures which were
almost crippling.

FOOTNOTES:
[135] The three leading silk prefectures are in order: Nagano, Fukushima and Gumma.
[136] At this time of the year, when the rice plants are small, the water in the paddies
is still conspicuous.
[137] An old Japan hand once counselled me that "the thing to find out in sociological
enquiries is not people's religions but their superstitions."
[138] See Appendix IV.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM

(NAGANO)
The mulberry leaf knoweth not that it shall be silk.—Arab
proverb
One acre in every dozen in Japan produces mulberry leaves for feeding
the silk-worms which two million farming families—more than a third of
the farming families of the country—painstakingly rear.
But the mulberry is not the only mark of a sericultural district. Its mark
may be seen in the tall chimneys of the factories and in the structure of the
farmers' houses. Breeders of silk-worms are often well enough off to have
tiled instead of thatched roofs; they have frequently two storeys to their
dwellings; and they have almost always a roof ventilator so that the vitiated
air from the hibachi-heated silk-worm chambers may be carried off. Yet
another sign of sericulture being a part of the agricultural activities of a
district is its prosperity. Silk-worms produce the most valuable of all
Japanese exports. Japan sends abroad more raw silk than any other country.
[139]

It is in the middle of the country that sericulture chiefly nourishes. The
smallest output of raw silk is from the most northerly prefecture and from
the prefecture in the extreme south-west of the mainland. But human
aptitude plays its part as well as climate. The Japanese hand is a wonderful
piece of mechanism—look at the hands of the next Japanese you meet—and
in sericulture its delicate touch is used to the utmost advantage.
The gains of sericulture are not made without corresponding sacrifices.
Silk-worm raising is infinitely laborious. The constant picking of leaves, the
bringing of them home and the chopping and supplying of these leaves to
the smallest of all live stock and the maintenance of a proper temperature in
the rearing-chamber day and night mean unending work. The silk-worms

may not be fed less than four or five times in the day; in their early life they
are fed seven or eight times. This is the feeding system for spring
caterpillars. Summer and autumn breeds must have two or three more
meals. The men and women who attend to them, particularly the women,
are worn out by the end of the season. "The women have only three hours'
rest in the twenty-four hours," I remember someone saying. "They never
loose their obi."
When the caterpillars emerge from the tiny, pin-head-like eggs of the
silk-worm moth they are minute creatures. Therefore the mulberry leaves
are chopped very fine indeed. They are chopped less and less fine as the
silk-worms grow, until finally whole leaves and leaves adhering to the
shoots are given. Some rearers are skilful enough to supply from the very
beginning leaves or leaves still on the shoots. The caterpillars live in
bamboo trays or "beds" on racks. In the house of one farmer I found
caterpillars about three-quarters of an inch long occupying fifteen trays.
When the silk-worms grew larger they would occupy two hundred trays.
The eggs, when not produced on the farm, are bought adhering to cards
about a foot square. There are usually marked on these cards twenty-eight
circles about 2 ins. in diameter. Each circle is covered with eggs. The eggs
come to be arranged in these convenient circles because, as will be
explained later on, the moths have been induced to lay within bottomless
round tins placed on the circles on the cards. The eggs are sticky when laid
and therefore adhere. In a year 35,000,000 cards, containing about a billion
eggs, are produced on some 10,000 egg-raising farms.
The eggs—they are called "seed"—are hatched in the spring (end of
April—as soon as the first leaves of the mulberry are available—to the
middle of May), summer (June and July) and autumn (August and October).
It takes from three to seven days—according to temperature—for the "seed"
to hatch, and from twenty to thirty-two days—according to temperature—
for the silk-worms to reach maturity. Half the hatching is done in spring. In
one farmer's house I visited in the spring season I found that he had hatched
fifty cards of "seed." From the birth of the caterpillars to the formation of
cocoons the casualties must be reckoned at ten per cent. daily. Not more
than eighty-five per cent. of the cocoons which are produced are of good
quality. The remainder are misshapen or contain dead chrysalises. As there
are more than a thousand breeds of silk-worm, all cocoons are not of the

same shape and colour. Some are oval; some are shaped like a monkey nut.
Most are white but some are yellow and others yellow tinted.
In the whole world of stock raising there is nothing more remarkable than
the birth of silk-worm moths. The cocoons on the racks in the farmer's loft
are covered by sheets of newspaper in which a number of round holes about
three-quarters of an inch in diameter have been cut. When the moths emerge
from their cocoons they seek these openings towards the light and creep
through to the upper side of the newspaper. For newly born things they
come up through these openings with astonishing ardour. In body and wings
the moths are flour white. White garments are suitable for the babe, the
bride and the dead, and the moth perfected in the cocoon is arrayed not only
for its birth but for bridal and death, which come upon it in swift
succession. The male as well as the female is in white and is distinguishable
by being somewhat smaller in size. On the newspaper the few males who
have not found partners are executing wild dances, their wings whirring the
while at a mad pace. When from time to time they cease dancing they haunt
the holes in the paper through which the newly born moths emerge. When a
female appears a male instantly rushes towards her, or rather the two
creatures rush towards one another, and they are at once locked in a fast
embrace. Immediately their wings cease to flutter, the only commotion on
the newspaper being made by the unmated males. In a hatching-room these
males on the stacks of trays are so numerous that the place is filled with the
sound of the whirring of their wings. The down flies from their wings to
such an extent that one continually sneezes. The spectacle of the stacks of
trays covered by these ecstatic moths is remarkable, but still more
remarkable is the thrilling sense of the power of the life-force in a
supposedly low form of consciousness.
The wonder of the scene is missed, no doubt, by most of those who are
habituated to it. From time to time weary, stolid-looking girls or old women
lift down the trays and run their hands over them in order to pick up
superfluous male moths. Sometimes the male moths are walking about the
newspaper, sometimes they are torn callously from the embrace of their
mates. The fate of the male moths is to be flung into a basket where they
stay until the next day, when perhaps some of them may be mated again.
The novice is impressed not only by the ruthlessness of this treatment but
by the way in which the whole loft is littered by male moths which have
fallen or have been flung on the floor and are being trampled on.

The female moths, when their partners have been removed, are taken
downstairs in newspapers in order to be put into the little tin receptacles
where the eggs are to be laid. On a tray there are spread out a number of
egg cards with, as before mentioned, twenty-eight printed circles on each of
them. On these circles are placed the twenty-eight half-inch-high
bottomless enclosures of tin. Some one takes up a handful of moths and
scatters them over the tins. Some of the moths fall neatly into a tin apiece.
Others are helped into the little enclosures in which, to do them credit, they
are only too willing to take up their quarters. The curious thing is the way in
which each moth settles down within her ring. Indeed from the moment of
her emergence from the cocoon until now she has never used her wings to
fly. Nor did the male moth seem to wish to fly. The sexes concentrate their
whole attention on mating. After that the female thinks of nothing but
laying eggs. Almost immediately after she is placed within her little tin she
begins to deposit eggs, and within a few hours the circle of the card is
covered.
Food is given neither to the females nor to the males. Those which are
not kept in reserve for possible use on the second day are flung out of
doors. When the female moth has deposited her eggs she also is destroyed.
[140]
The shoji of the breeding and egg-laying rooms permit only of a
diffused light. The discarded moths are cast out into the brilliant sunshine
where they are eaten by poultry or are left to die and serve as manure.
Sericulture is always a risky business. There is first the risk of a fall in
prices. Just before I reached Japan prices were so low that many people
despaired of being able to continue the business, and shortly after I left
there was a crisis in the silk trade in which numbers of silk factories failed.
At the time I was last in a silk-worm farmer's house cocoons were worth
from 5 to 6 yen per kwan of 8¼ lbs. From 8 to 10 kwan of cocoons could be
expected from a single egg card. Eggs were considered to be at a high price
when they were more than 2 yen per card. The risks of the farmer are
increased when he launches out and buys mulberry leaves to supplement
those produced on his own land. Sometimes the price of leaves is so high
that farmers throw away some of their silk-worms. The risks run by the man
who grows mulberries beyond his own leaf requirements on the chance of
selling are also considerable.

Beyond the risk of falling prices or of a short mulberry crop there is in
sericulture the risk of disease. One advantage of the system in which the
eggs are laid in circles on the cards instead of all over them is that if any
disease should be detected the affected areas can be easily cut out with a
knife and destroyed. Disease is so serious a matter that silk-worm breeding,
as contrasted with silk-worm raising, is restricted to those who have
obtained licences. The silk-worm breeder is not only licensed. His
silkworms, cocoons and mother moths are all in turn officially examined.
Breeding "seeds" were laid one year by about 33,000,000 odd moths;
common "seeds" by about 948,000,000.
Of recent years enormous progress has been made in combating disease.
I have spoken of how a silk-worm district may be recognised by the
structure of the farm houses and the prosperity of the farmers, but another
striking sign of sericulture is the trays and mats lying in the sun in front of
farmers' dwellings or on the hot stones of the river banks in order to get
thoroughly purified from germs. It is illustrative of the progress that has
been made under scientific influence, that whereas twenty years ago a
sericulturist would reckon on losing his silk-worm harvest completely once
in five years, such a loss is now rare. Scientific instructors have their
difficulties in Japan as in the rural districts of other countries, but the people
respect authority, and they are accustomed to accept instruction given in the
form of directions. Also the Japanese have an unending interest in the new
thing. Further, there is a continual desire to excel for the national advantage
and in emulation of the foreigner. The advance in scientific knowledge in
the rural districts is remarkable, because it is in such contrast with the
primitive lives of the country people. Picture the surprise of British or
American farmers were they brought face to face with thermometers,
electric light and a working knowledge of bacteriology in the houses of
peasants in breech clouts.
It was while I was trying to learn something of the sericultural industry
that I had the opportunity of visiting a noteworthy institution. It is
noteworthy, among other reasons, because I seldom met a foreigner in
Japan who knew of its existence. It is the great Ueda Sericultural College in
the prefecture of Nagano. I was struck not only by its extent but by its
systematised efficiency. On a level with the director's eyes was a motto in
large lettering, "Be diligent. Develop your virtues."

TEACHERS OF A VILLAGE SCHOOL.

GIRLS CARRYING BALES OF RICE.

SERICULTURAL SCHOOL STUDENTS.

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

SOME OF THE SILK FACTORIES IN KAMISUWA.

VILLAGE ASSEMBLY-ROOM.

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

strenuous life. The young men are made fit not only by judō, fencing,
archery, tennis and general athletics, but by being sent up the mountains on
Sundays. The men are kept so hard that at the open fencing contest twice a
year the visitors are usually beaten. The director quoted to me Roosevelt's
"Sweat and be saved."
From men we went to machines and mulberries. I inspected all sorts of
hot chambers for killing cocoons. I saw, in rooms draped in black velvet
like the pictured scenes at a beheading, silk testing for lustre and colour. I
gazed with respect on many kinds of winding and weaving machinery.
Then, going out into the experiment fields, I strode through more varieties
of mulberry than I had imagined to exist. There are supposed to be 500 sorts
in the country but many are no doubt duplicates. The varieties differ so
much in shape and texture of leaf that the novice would not take some of
them for mulberries.
It was held that it would not be difficult to increase the mulberry area in
Japan by another quarter of a million acres. The yield of leaves might be
raised by 3,300 lbs. per acre if the right sort of bushes were always grown
and the right sort of treatment were given to them and to the soil. As to the
additional labour needed for an extended sericulture, the annual increase in
the population of Japan would provide it. I was told that "the technics of
sericulture are sure to improve." It would be easy to raise the yield 2 kwan
per egg card for the whole country. Within a seven-year period the
production of cocoons per egg card had become 20 per cent. better. The talk
was of doubling the present yield of cocoons. The "proper encouragement"
needed for doubling the production of cocoons was more technical
instruction and more co-operative societies. There had been a continual rise
in the world's demand for silk and there was no need to fear "artificial silk."
"People who buy it often come to appreciate natural silk." And I read in an
official publication that "the climate of Japan is suitable for the cultivation
of mulberry trees from south-west Formosa to Hokkaido in the north."

FOOTNOTES:
[139] For statistics of sericulture, see Appendix XXXIX.
[140] She is examined microscopically in order to make sure that she was not affected
by infectious disease.

CHAPTER XVIII

"GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES

(NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)
At your return show the truth.— Froissart
I visited factories in more than one prefecture. At the first factory—it
employed about 1,000 girls and 200 men—work began at 4.30 a.m.,
breakfast was at 5 and the next meal at 10.30. The stoppages for eating were
for a few minutes only. A cake was handed to each girl at her machine at 3.
Suppertime came after work was finished at 7. [141] No money was paid the
first year. The second year the wages might be 3 or 4 yen a month. The
statement was made that at the end of her five years' term a girl might have
300 yen, but that this sum was not within the reach of all. [142] The girls were
driven at top speed by a flag system in which one bay competed with
another and was paid according to its earnings. Owing to the heat the
flushed girls probably looked better in health than they really were. They
were fat in the face, but this could not be regarded as an indication of their
general well-being. It was admitted that some girls left through illness.
Employees returned to their homes for January and February, when the
factory was closed down; there was also three days' holiday in June. In the
dormitory I noticed that each girl had the space of one mat only (6 ft. by 3
ft.). Twenty-two girls slept in each dormitory. The men connected with this
factory were low-looking and shifty-eyed.
An agricultural expert who was well acquainted with the conditions of
silk manufacture and of the district and was in a disinterested position told
me after my visit to this factory how the foremen scoured the country for
girl labour during January and February. The success of the kemban or girl
collector was due to the poverty of the people, who were glad "to be
relieved of the cost of a daughter's food." Occasionally the kemban had sub-

agents. The mill proprietors were in competition for skilled girls, and
money was given by a kemban intent on stealing another factory's hand.
The novices had no contract. The contract of a skilled girl provided that
she should serve at the factory for a specified period and that if she failed to
do so, she should pay back twenty times the 5 yen or whatever sum had
been advanced to her. Obviously 100 yen would be a prohibitive sum for a
peasant's daughter to find. The amount of the workers' pay was not
specified in the contract. The document was plainly one-sided and would be
regarded in an English court as against public policy and unenforceable.
Married women might take an infant with them to the factory. In more than
one factory I saw several thin-faced babies.
The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the countryside well
told me, was "not good." The girls had weakened constitutions as the result
of their factory life and when they married had fewer than the normal
number of children. The general result of factory life was degeneration. The
girls "corrupted their villages."
The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept on the factory
premises except when they could allege urgent business in town. But they
were allowed out on the three nights of the Bon festival. It was rare that
priests visited the factories and there were no shrines there. The girls had
sometimes "lessons" given them and occasionally story-tellers or
gramophone owners amused them. The food supplied by some factories
was not at all adequate and the girls had to spend their money at the factory
tuck-shops. "Most proprietors," I was told, "endeavour to make part of their
staff permanent by acting as middlemen to arrange marriages between
female and male workers." The infants of married workers were "looked
after by the youngest apprentices."
In another place I saw over a factory which employed about 160 girls,
who were worked from 5:30 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. with twenty minutes for each
meal. If a girl "broke her contract" it was the custom to send her name to
other factories so that she could not get work again. The foremen at this
establishment seemed decent men.
One who had no financial interest in the silk industry but knew the
district in which this second factory stood said that "many girls" came home
in trouble. The peasants did not like "the spoiling of their daughters," but
were "captured in their poverty by the idea of the money to be gained."

Undoubtedly the factory life was pictured in glowing colours by the
kemban.
In a third factory there were more than 200 girls and only 15 men. The
proprietor and manager seemed good fellows. I was assured that it was
forbidden for men workers to enter the women's quarters, but on entering
the dormitory I came on a man and woman scuffling. The girls of this
factory and in others had running below their feet an iron pipe which was
filled with steam in cold weather. On some days in July, the month in which
I visited this factory, I noticed from the temperature record sheet that the
heat had reached 94 degrees in the steamy spinning bays, where, unless the
weather be damp, it was impossible, because of spinning conditions, to
admit fresh air. I saw a complaint box for the workers. As in other factories,
there was a certain provision of boiled water and ample bathing
accommodation. Hot baths were taken every night in summer and every
other night in winter. Here, as elsewhere, though many of the girls were
pale and anaemic, all were clean in their persons, which is more than can be
said of all Western factory hands. Work began at 4 a.m. and went on until 7
p.m. From 10 to 15 minutes were allowed for meals. The winter hours were
from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.
In this factory, as in others, there was a system of tallies, showing to all
the workers the ranking of the girls for payment. The standard wage seemed
to be 20 sen a day, and the average to which it was brought by good work
30 sen. There were thirty or more girls who had deductions from their 20
sen. Apprentices were shown as working at a loss. Once or twice a month a
story-teller came to entertain the girls and every fortnight a teacher gave
them instruction. When I asked if a priest came I was told that "in this
district the families are not so religious, so the girls are not so pious." Two
doctors visited the factory, one of them daily. Counting all causes, 5 per
cent. of the girls returned home. The owner of the factory, a man in good
physical training and with an alert and kindly face, said the industry
succeeded in his district because the employers "exerted themselves" and
the girls "worked with the devotion of soldiers." I thought of a motto
written by the Empress, which I had seen at Ueda, "It is my wish that the
girls whose service it is to spin silk shall be always diligent." Behind the
desk of this factory proprietor hung the motto, "Cultivate virtues and be
righteous."

The fourth factory I saw seemed to be staffed entirely with apprentices
who were turned over to other factories in their third year. The girls
appeared to have to sleep three girls to two mats. In the event of fire the
dormitory would be a death-trap. I was told that there was an entertainment
or a "lecture on character" once a week. The motto on the walls of this
factory was, "Learning right ways means loving mankind."
I went over the factory which belonged to the largest concern in Japan
and had 10,000 hands. The girls were looked after in well-ventilated
dormitories by ten old women who slept during the day and kept watch at
night. There was a fire escape. All sorts of things were on sale at wholesale
prices at the factory shop, but for any good reason an exit ticket was given
to town. The dining-room was excellent. There was a hospital in this factory
and the nurse in the dispensary summarised at my request the ailments of
the 35 girls who were lying down comfortably: stomachic, 12; colds, 7;
fingers hurt by the hot water of the cocoon-soaking basins, 5; female
affections, 4; nervous, 2; eyes, rheumatism, nose, lungs and kidneys, 1 each.
The average wages in this factory worked out at 60 yen for 9 months. The
hour of beginning work was 4:30 at the earliest. The factory stopped at
sunset, the latest hour being 6:30. I was assured that of the girls who did not
get married 70 per cent. renewed their contracts. A large enclosed open
space was available in which the girls might stroll before going to bed. The
motto of the establishment was, "I hear the voice of spring under the
shadow of the trees." In reference to the new factory legislation the manager
said that the hours of labour were so long that it would be some time before
10 hours a day would be initiated. [143] This factory and its branches were
started thirty years ago by a man who was originally a factory worker.
Although now very rich he had "always refused to be photographed and had
not availed himself of an opportunity of entering the House of Peers."
I visited several factories the girls working at which did not live in
dormitories but outside. At a winding and hanking factory which was airy
and well lighted the hours were from 6 to 6. At a factory where the hours
were from 4:30 to 7 some reelers had been fined. Japanese Christian pastors
sometimes came to see the girls, and on the wall of the recreation room
there were paper gohei hung up by a Shinto priest.
I got the impression that the girls in the factories at Kōfu in Yamanashi
prefecture were not driven so hard as those at the factories in the Suwas in

Nagano. Someone said: "However the Suwa people may exploit their girls,
we are able, working shorter hours and giving more entertainments, to
produce better silk, for the simple reason that the girls are in better
condition. We can get from 5 to 10 per cent. more for our silk." A factory
manager said that it would be better if the girls had a regular holiday once a
week, but one firm could not act alone. (The factories are working seven
days a week, except for festival days and public holidays.)
With regard to the kemban, I was told in Yamanashi that many girls went
to the factories "unwillingly by the instructions of their parents." It was also
stated that the money paid to girls or their parents on their engagement was
not properly a gratuity but an advance. I heard that the police keep a special
watch on kemban. They would not do this without good reason.

FOOTNOTES:
[141] The times stated are those given to me in the factories. The question of overtime
is referred to later in the Chapter.
[142] Again the reader must be reminded of the rise in wages and prices (estimated on
p. xxv). During the recent period of inflation, silk rose to 3,000 yen per picul and fell to
1,300 or 1,400 yen. There have been great fluctuations in the wages of factory girls. At
the most flourishing period as much as 25 yen per head was paid to recruiters of girls. In
this Chapter, however, it is best to record exactly what I saw and heard.
[143] On the day on which I re-read this for the printers, I notice in an American paper
that one of the largest employers of labour in the United States has just stated that he did
not see his way to abolish the twelve-hours' day.

CHAPTER XIX

"FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE
The psychology of behaviour teaches us that [a country's]
failures and semi-failures are likely to continue until there is a
far more widespread appreciation of the importance of studying
the forces which govern behaviour.—Saxby

I
I do not think that some of the factory proprietors are conscious that they
are taking undue advantage of their employees. These men are just average
persons at the ante-Shaftesbury stage of responsibility towards labour. [144]
Their case is that the girls are pitifully poor and that the factories supply
work at the ruling market rates for the work of the pitifully poor. Said one
factory owner to me genially: "Peasant families are accustomed to work
from daylight to dark. In the silk-worm feeding season they have almost no
time for sleep. Peasant people are trained to long hours. Lazy people might
suffer from the long hours of the factory, but the factory girls are not lazy."
It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is all the difference between a
long day at the varied work of a farm, even in the trying silk-worm season,
and a long day, for nine or ten months on end, sitting still, with the briefest
intervals for food, in the din and heat of a factory. Such a life must be
debilitating. When it is added that in most factories, in the short period
between supper and sleep, and again during the night, the girls are closely
crowded, no further explanation is wanted of the origin of the tuberculosis
which is so prevalent in the villages which supply factory labour. [145] There
is no question that in the scanty moments the girls do have for an airing
most of them are immured within the compounds of their factories. A large

proportion of the many thousands of factory girls [146] who are to be mothers
of a new generation in the villages are passing years of their lives in
conditions which are bad for them physically and morally. It must not be
forgotten that very many of the girls go to the factories before they are fully
grown. On the question of morality, evidence from disinterested quarters
left no doubt on my mind that the morale of the girls was lowered by
factory life. The Lancashire factory girl goes home every evening and she
has her Saturday afternoon and her Sunday, her church or chapel, her
societies and clubs, her amusements and her sweetheart. Her Japanese sister
has none of this natural life and she has infinitely worse conditions of
labour.
It is only fair to remember, however, that the Japanese factory girl comes
from a distance. She has no relatives or friends in the town in which she is
working. But the plea that she would get into trouble if she were allowed
her liberty without control of any sort does not excuse her present
treatment. If the factories offered decent conditions of life not a few of the
companies would get at their doors most of the labour they need and many
of the girls would live at home. If the factories insist on having cheap rural
labour then they should do their duty by it. The girls should have reasonable
working hours, proper sleeping accommodation and proper opportunities
inside and outside the factories for recreation and moral and mental
improvement. It is idle to suggest that fair treatment of this sort is
impossible. It is perfectly possible.
The factory proprietors are no worse than many other people intent on
money making. But the silk industry, as I saw it, was exploiting,
consciously or unconsciously, not only the poverty of its girl employees but
their strength, morality, deftness [147] and remarkable school training in
earnestness and obedience. Several times I heard the unenlightened
argument that, if there were a certain sacrifice of health and well-being, a
rapidly increasing population made the sacrifice possible; that, as silk was
the most valuable product in Japan, and it was imperative for the
development and security of the Empire that its economic position should
be strengthened, the sacrifice must be made. Nothing need be said of such a
hopelessly out-of-date and nationally indefensible attitude except this: that
it is doubtful whether any considerable proportion of the people connected
with the silk industry have felt themselves specially charged with a mission
to strengthen the economic condition of their country. They have simply

availed themselves of a favourable opportunity to make money. That
opportunity was presented by the cheap labour available in farmers'
daughters unprotected by effective trade unions, by properly administered
factory laws or by public opinion.

[148]
II
The enterprise, the efficiency and the profits shown by the sericultural
industry have been remarkable, and not a few of the capitalists connected
with it are personally public-spirited. But many well-wishers of Japan,
native-born and foreign, cannot help wondering what is the real as
compared with the seeming return of the industry to a nation the strength of
which is in its reservoir of rustic health and willingness. It is significant of
the extent to which the factories are working with cheap labour that, in a
country in which there are more men than women, [149] there was in about
20,000 factories 58 per cent. of female labour. If I stress the fact of female
employment it is because in Japan nearly every woman eventually marries.
Enfeebled women must therefore hand on enfeeblement to the next
generation.[150]
The Japanese, in their present factory system, as in other developments,
insist on making for themselves all the mistakes that we have made and are
now ashamed of. In judging the Japanese let us remember that all our
industrial exploitation of women [151] was not, as we like to believe, an affair
as far off as the opening nineteenth century. I do not forget as a young man
filling a newspaper poster with the title of an article which recounted from
my own observation the woes of women chain makers who, with bared
breasts and their infants sprawling in the small coals, slaved in domestic
smithies for a pittance. And as I write it is announced that the head of the
United States Steel Corporation says that "there is no necessity for trade
unions," which are, in his opinion, "inimical to the best interests of the
employers and the public." That is precisely the view of most Japanese
factory proprietaries.
The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have been drawn (1)
by the enactment that "those who, with the object of causing a strike,
seduce or incite others" shall be sentenced to imprisonment from one to six

months with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen; (2) by the power given to the police
(a) to detain suspected persons for a succession of twenty-four hour
periods, and (b) summarily to close public meetings, and (3) by the
franchise being so narrow that few trade unionists have votes. During the
six years of the War there were as many as 141,000 strikers, but a not
uncommon method of these workers was merely to absent themselves from
work, to refrain from working while in the factory, or to "ca' canny."
Nevertheless 633 of them were arrested. When I attended in Tokyo a
gathering of members of the leading labour organisation in Japan it was
discreetly named Yu-ai-kai (Friend-Love-Society, i.e. Friendly Society).
Now it is boldly called the Confederation of Japanese Labour. A Socialist
League[152] and several labour publications exist. Workers assemble to see
moving pictures of labour demonstrations, and a labour meeting has defied
the police in attendance by singing the whole of the "Song of Revolution."
But crippled as the unions are under the law against strikes and by the
poverty of the workers, they find it difficult to attain the financial strength
necessary for effective action. Many workers are trade unionists when they
are striking but their trade unionism lapses when the strike is over, for then
the unions seem to have small reason for existing. The head of the
Federation of Labour lately announced that the number of trade unionists
was only 100,000, or half what it was during the recent big strikes and it is
doubtful whether, even including the 7,000 members of the Seamen's
Union, there are in Japan more than 50,000 contributing members of the
different unions. But this 50,000 may be regarded as staunch.
The poverty-stricken unions certainly afford no real protection to the girl
workers, who form indeed a very small proportion of their members. And
the Factory Law does little for them. A Japanese friend who knows the
labour situation well writes to me:
"According to the Factory Law, which came into force in the
autumn of 1916, 'factory employers are not allowed to let
women work more than twelve hours in a day.' (Article III,
section 1.) But if necessary, 'the competent Minister is entitled to
extend this limitation to fourteen hours.' (Section 2.) As to night
work the law says that 'factory employers are not allowed to let
women work from 10 p.m. to 4 a.m.' (Article IV.) If, however,
there are necessary reasons, 'the employers can be exempted
from the obligation of the Article IV.' (Article V.) Article IX says

that 'the employers are forbidden to let women engage in
dangerous work.' But whether work is dangerous or not is
determined by 'the competent Minister' (Article XI), who may or
may not be well informed. There is also Article XII, 'The
competent Minister can limit or prohibit the work of women
about to have children' and within three weeks after
confinement. But anyone who enters factories may see women
with pale faces because they work too soon after their
confinement.
"I cannot tell you how far these provisions are enforced. I can
only say that I have not yet heard of employers being punished
for violating the Factory Law. Can it be supposed that
employers are so honest as never to violate the Factory Law? As
to working hours, in some factories they may work less than
fourteen hours as the law indicates. In others they may work
more, because "there are necessary reasons." This is especially
true of the factories in the country parts. As 200 inspectors have
been appointed, the authorities must by now know the actual
situation pretty well."
Dr. Kuwata, a former member of the Upper House, with whom I
frequently discussed the labour situation, declares the Factory Law to be
"palpably imperfect and primitive." At the end of 1917 there were,
according to official figures, 99,000 female factory operatives under fifteen
years of age and 2,400 under twelve. Some 20,000 of these children were
employed in silk factories. What protection have they? Before passing this
page for the press I have shown it to a well-informed Japanese friend and he
says that he has never seen any newspaper report of a prosecution under the
Factory Law. Obviously a Factory Law under which no one is ever
prosecuted is not operative.[153]
It is excellent that Japan has sent a large permanent delegation to
Switzerland to establish a system of liaison with the International Labour
Office of the League of Nations. This company of young men will keep the
Japanese Government well informed. There is undoubtedly in Japan, under
Western influence, a steady development of sensitiveness to working-class
conditions and a rapid growth of modern social ideas. But the Government
and the Diet will not step out far in advance of general opinion, the most

will naturally be made by the authorities and trade interests of bad factory
conditions on the Continent of Europe and in some industries in the United
States, and the majority of a public which has been carefully nurtured in the
belief that a profitable industrialism is the great desideratum for Japan will
not be restive. Real factory reform is not to be expected until an enlightened
view is taken by Japanese in general of the exploitation of girls for any
purpose. It is not in commercial human nature, Eastern or Western, that
factory directors and shareholders should forgo without a struggle the
advantage of possessing cheaper and more subjected labour than their
foreign rivals. Some influence may be exerted in the right direction by the
fact that those who are profiting by cheap and docile labour may themselves
be undersold before long by cheaper and still more docile labour in China.
[154]
And in 1922 Japan is under an obligation, accepted at the Washington
Labour Conference, to stop women working more than eleven hours a day
and to abolish night work. Meantime the labour movement makes progress.
It is significant that many of its leaders are under the influence of "direct
action" ideas. They hope little from a Diet elected on a narrow franchise
and supported by a strong Government machine backed by the
Conservative farmer vote. Although, however, there does not seem to be as
yet a junction between the labour movement and the unions of the tenant
farmers, who have their own interests alone in view, the future may present
unexpected developments. As I write, the labour movement is conducting a
trial of strength with the great Mitsubishi and Kawasaki enterprises and is
presenting a stronger front than it has yet done.
This Chapter would give an unfair impression of the relations of capital
and labour in Japan if it included no reference to the well-intentioned efforts
made by several large employers to improve the conditions of working-
class life and labour. Sometimes they have followed the example of
philanthropic firms in Great Britain and America. As often as not they have
been inspired by old Japanese ideas of a master's responsibilities. Many
leading industrials have believed and still believe that by the conservation
and development of old ideas of paternalism and loyalty the trade-union
stage of industrial development may be avoided. This conviction was
expressed to me by, among others, Mr. Matsukata, of the famous Kawasaki
concern, who has made generous contributions to "welfare" work. My own
brief experience as an employer in Japan made me acquainted with some
canons in the relationship of employer and employed which have lost their

authority in the West. Given wisdom on the part of masters, the prolonged
bitterness which has marked the industrial development of the West need
not be repeated in Japan, but whether that wisdom will be displayed in time
is doubtful. The Japanese commercial world has been commendably quick
to learn in many directions in the West. It will be a serious reflection on the
intelligence of the country if the lessons of the industrial acerbities of
Europe and the United States should not be grasped. Meantime it is a duty
which the foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts
as silly as they are useless[155] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large
proportion of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have
been made by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to
be placed on the statute book in order to be enforced. But if he be honest he
must also recognise the handicap of specially costly equipment [156] and of
unskilled labour and inexperience under which the Japanese business world
is competing for the place in foreign trade to which it has a just claim. Such
conditions do not in the least excuse inhumanity, but they help to explain it.

FOOTNOTES:
[144] It is a chastening exercise to read before proceeding with this Chapter an extract
from Spencer Walpole's History of England, vol. iii, p. 317, under the year 1832: "The
manufacturing industries of the country were collected into a few centres. In one sense
the persons employed had their reward: the manufacturers gave them wages. In another
sense their change of occupation brought them nothing but evil. Forced to dwell in a
crowded alley, occupying at night a house constructed in neglect of every known
sanitary law, employed in the daytime in an unhealthy atmosphere and frequently on a
dangerous occupation, with no education available for his children, with no reasonable
recreation, with the sky shrouded by the smoke of an adjoining capital, with the face of
nature hidden by a brick wall, neglected by an overworked clergyman, regarded as a
mere machine by an avaricious employer, the factory operative turned to the public
house, the prize ring or the cockpit."
[145] See Appendix XL.
[146] Number of factory workers, a million and a half, of whom 800,000 are females.
For statistics of women workers, see Appendix XLI.
[147] The Minister of Commerce has himself stated that the sericultural industry is
rooted in the dexterity of the Japanese countrywoman.
[148] This section of the Chapter was written in 1921.
[149] In Japan in 1918 there were, per 1,000, 505.2 men to 494.8 women.
[150] Of the workers under the age of fifteen in the 20,000 factories, 82 per cent. were
girls. The statistics in this paragraph were issued by the Ministry of Commerce in 1917.
[151] For sketches of women and children (with a chain between their legs) harnessed
to coal wagons in the pits, see Parliamentary Papers, vol. xv, 1842. "There is a factory

system grown up in England the most horrible that imagination can conceive," wrote Sir
William Napier to Lady Hester Stanhope two years after Queen Victoria's accession.
"They are hells where hundreds of children are killed yearly in protracted torture." In
Torrens's Memoirs of the Queen's First Prime Minister, one reads: "Melbourne had a Bill
drawn which with some difficulty he persuaded the Cabinet to sanction, prohibiting the
employment of children under 9 in any except silk mills."
[152] More than 200 books on Socialism were published in 1920.
[153] For a declaration by Dr. Kuwata concerning bad food and "defiance of hygienic
rules," see Appendix XLII.
[154] See Appendix XLIII.
[155] See Appendix XLII.
[156] In a pre-War publication of the United States Department of Commerce it was
stated that the cost of cotton mills per spindle is in England 32s., in the United States
44s., in Germany 52s., and in Japan 100s.

ARCHERY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL.

CULTIVATION OF THE HILLSIDE.

RAILWAY STATION "BENTO" BOX (OPEN) AND POT OF TEA
WITH CUP.
The bento box provides rice, meat, fish, omelette and assorted pickles;

also paper napkin and hashi (chop-sticks) and (between them) a
toothpick.

FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE WEST
COAST

CHAPTER XX

"THE GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED"
(FUKUSHIMA AND YAMAGATA)
Boswell: If you should advise me to go to Japan I believe I
should.
Johnson: Why yes, Sir, I am serious.
In one of my journeys I went from Tokyo to the extreme north of Japan,
travelling up the west coast and down the east. Fukushima prefecture—in
which is Shirakawa, famous for a horse fair which lasts a week—
encourages the eating of barley, for on the northern half of the east coast of
Japan there is no warm current and the rice crop may be lost in a cold
season. "Officials of the prefecture and county," someone said to me, "take
barley themselves; enthusiastic gunchō take it gladly."
The prefectural station, by selecting the best varieties of rice for sowing,
had effected a 10 per cent. improvement in yield. In each county an official
"agricultural encourager" had been appointed. The lectures given at the
experiment station were attended by 18,000 persons. The studious who
listen to the lectures had formed an association that provided at the station a
fine building where supper, bed, breakfast and lunch cost 30 sen. It
contained a model of the Ise shrine with a motto in the handwriting of a
well-known Tokyo agricultural professor, "Difficulties Polish You."
"Some villagers," said a local authority, "want to make the Buddhist
temple the centre of the development of village life. In several places
agricultural products are exhibited at Shinto shrines. Farmers offer them out
of a kind of piety, but the products are afterwards criticised from a technical
point of view. This is done on the initiative of the villagers encouraged by
the prefecture."
Hereabouts the winter work of the people, in addition to basket, rope and
mat making, was paper making and smoothing out the wrinkles of tobacco.

[157]
A considerable number of people had emigrated to South America. The
principal need of the villages, it was stated, was money at less than the
current rate of 20 per cent. In one place I found a factory built on the side of
a daimyo's castle.
I was told of crops of konnyaku which had made one man the second
richest person in the prefecture and had therefore qualified him for
membership in the House of Peers. (The House includes one member from
each prefecture as the representative of the highest taxpayers of that
prefecture.)
During my journeys I picked up many odds and ends of information by
walking through the trains and having chats with country people. I was also
helped by county and prefectural agricultural officials who, having learnt of
my movements, were kind enough to join me in the train for an hour or so.
One head of an agricultural school which was full up with students told me
that there were already in Fukushima two prefectural and five county
agricultural schools.
Our train, half freight with a locomotive at each end, went over the
backbone of Japan through the usual series of snow shelters and tunnels.
Having surmounted the heights we slid down into Yamagata. I should
properly write Yamagataken, which we cannot translate Yamagatashire, for
a ken (prefecture) is made up of counties. There are eleven counties in
Yamagataken.
Almost any sort of dwelling looks tolerable in August, but many of the
houses that first caught our attention must be lamentable shelters in winter.
Some farmers, I learnt, were "in a very bad condition." We dropped from a
silk and rice plateau and then to a region where the main crop was rice. The
bare hills to be seen in our descent were an appalling spectacle when it was
realised how close was their relation to the disastrous floods of the
prefecture. A man in the train had lost 10,000 yen by floods, a large sum in
rural Japan. In two years the prefecture had spent in river-bank repairs
nearly a million yen. A flood some years ago did damage to the amount of
20 million yen. The prefecture had a debt of 60 million yen, chiefly due to
havoc wrought by its big river. A yearly sum was spent on afforestation in
addition to what was laid out by the State and by private individuals. A
forestry association was trying to raise half a million yen for tree planting.
But the flooding of the plains was not the only water trouble of the

Yamagatans. In one district they had a stream which contained solutions of
compounds of sulphuric acid so strong that crops fail for three years on
ground watered from it. In other parts of the prefecture, however, farmers
had the advantage, enjoyed in many parts of Japan, of being able to water
from ammonia water springs.
Hereabouts I first noticed the device common to many districts of having
on the roof of a cottage a water barrel, tub or cistern, ready to be emptied on
the shingle roof when sparks fly from a burning dwelling. Sometimes the
wooden water receptacles are wrapped round with straw.
In the prefectural city of Yamagata I heard of a primary school which had
a farm and made a profit, also of four landowners who had engaged an
agricultural expert for the instruction of their tenants. "A very certain crop"
round about the city was grapes. Some 25,000 persons yearly visited the
prefectural 12-chō experiment station, which within a year had distributed
to farmers 7,600 cyanided fruit trees and 80 bushels of special seed rice.
Near the experiment station was a crematorium of ugly brick and
galvanised iron belonging to the city of Yamagata at which 1,000 bodies
were burnt in a year in furnaces heated with pine blocks. A selection might
be made from four rates ranging from 35 sen to 5 yen. The most expensive
rate was for folk who arrived in Western-style coffins.
The experiment station had another institution at its doors. This had to do
not with the dead but with the living. Its name was "The Garden where
Virtues are Cultivated." The director of it was the father of the agricultural
expert of the prefecture. The garden, which was not a garden, was a home
for bad boys, or rather for thirty bad boys and one bad girl. The bad girl—
the director, being a man of humanity, common sense and courage, thought
it most necessary that there should be at least one bad girl—acted as
maidservant to the director. The bad boys "maided" themselves and the
school. The lads were such as had fallen into the hands of the police. They
were being reformed in a somewhat original way by a somewhat original
director.
Early in the day they had their cold bath, which was itself a break with
Japanese custom, for, though most Japanese have a nightly hot bath, they
are content with a basin wash in the morning. Then the boys "cleaned
school." Next they were marched up one by one to a mirror and required to
take a good look at themselves, in order, no doubt, to see just how bad they

were. After this they were called on to "give thanks to the Emperor and
their ancestors." Finally came a half-hour lecture on "morality." It was
considered that by this time the boys were entitled to their breakfast. For
open-air labour they were sent to the experiment station, but they had
manual work also in their own school, where, among other things, they
"made useful things out of waste," the income from which went to their
families. On Sundays the master, though he must be nearer sixty than fifty,
fenced with every one of the thirty boys in turn—no ordinary task, for
Japanese fencing calls not only for an eye and a hand, but for a muscular
back. Some wholesome-looking young fellows, members of a young men's
association, served as volunteer masters and lived in the bare fashion that
was so good for the boys.
The director did not believe that bad boys were hopeless. He said that not
only the boys but their parents were better for the work done in "The
Garden where Virtues are Cultivated." He seemed to have become a sort of
consulting expert to primary school-masters who were at a loss to know
how to manage bad boys. Chastisement, as is well known, is unusual in
Japanese schools. The director of the human hortus inclusus confessed to
me that though two of his boys whom he had caught fighting might not
have been separated without, in the Western phrase, "feeling the weight of
his hand," his heaviest punishment on other difficult occasions was the
moxa.
The moxa brings us back to real horticulture. Moxa is mogusa or
mugwort. Mogusa means "burning herb." The moxa is a great therapeutic
agent in the Far East. A bit of the dried herb is laid on the skin and set fire
to as a sort of blister. From the application of the moxa as a cure for
physical ills to its application for the cure of bad boys is a natural step. One
sees by the scars on the backs of not a few Japanese that in their youth
either their health or their characters left something to be desired. The
moxa, then, is the rod in pickle in "The Garden where Virtues are
Cultivated." But I think it is not brought out often. A wrestling ring in a
mass of sand thrown down in a yard, a harmonium, a blackboard for the
boys to work their will on, doors labelled "The Room of Patience," "The
Room of Honesty," "The Room of Cleanliness" and "The Room of Good
Arrangement," not to speak of a rabbit loping about the school premises—
these and some other touches in the management of the school spoke of an
even stronger influence toward well-doing than the moxa. But even if the

moxa should fail, the attention of the boys could always be drawn to the
crematorium.
One who knew the rural districts discoursed to me in this wise: "The best
men are not numerous, but neither are the worst. I doubt whether the desire
to enjoy life is as strong in the Japanese as in the people of the West. Most
farmers would no doubt be happy with material comfort. Pressed as they
have been by material needs, they have no time to think. When they are
easier, they may get something beyond the physical. At present we must
regard their material welfare as the most urgent thing." But a man standing
by, who was also a countryman, strongly dissented. "Religion," he said, "is
not only important but fundamental."
I have been received by more than one prefectural governor at eight in
the morning. His Excellency of Yamagata sets a good example by rising at
five and by going to bed at nine. He told me that he thought the farmer's
chief lack was cheap money. Low interest and a long term might convert
into arable 25,000 acres of barren land in his prefecture. In the old days, as I
knew, the farmers drove tunnels considerable distances for irrigation, but
with modern engineering better results would be possible if money were
available. As to the misdeeds of the rivers, it might almost be said that
every village was feeling the need of embanking and of going to the source
of loss by planting trees in the hills. Beautiful forests of feudal period had
been wasted in the early days of Meiji and the result was now plain.
But attention had to be given to the minds as well as the pockets of the
villagers. Families that were once reasonably content were now
discontented. A livelihood was harder to get, taxation was heavier and there
was an increase in needs. Country people imagined townspeople to be
comfortably off, "not realising how they were tormented." Villagers envied
townsmen their amusements. Some prefectures had forbidden the Bon
dance and had supplied nothing in its place. It was easy to see why farmers
no longer applied themselves so closely to their calling and were wavering
in their allegiance to country life. Healthful amusements were necessary for
those whose minds were not much developed. Also, country people should
be taught the true character of town life, and that agriculture, though it
might not yield the profit of commerce and industry, ensured a reasonably
happy life in healthful places where physical strength could be enjoyed. The

right kind of village libraries should be encouraged. Music might perhaps
be forced into competition with saké.
A mental awakening by education was the final solution of the rural
problem, the Governor thought. Religion was also important for the
development of the village. Believers not under the eyes of others would
avoid wrong-doing because watched by heaven. Lectures on agriculture and
sanitation had a good influence when delivered by priests. Temples were
often schools before the era of Meiji and so priests were socially active.
Under the new dispensation the work was taken out of their hands. So they
had come to care little for the affairs of the world. But they were influential
and the prefecture had asked for their help. The merits of many priests
might not be conspicuous, but the number of them who were active was
increasing and the villagers deferred to them if they took any step.
The most hopeful thing in the villages was the awakening of the young
men: they were becoming "sincere," a favourite Japanese word. For the
most part the credit societies were not efficient, but in one county credit
societies had lessened the business of the banks. The best way to furnish
capital to farmers was out of the capital of their fellow farmers.
Possibly the girls of the villages were not making the same advance as
the boys. They did not go to their field labour willingly. Sometimes when a
woman was asked by a neighbour on the road, "Have you been working on
the farm?" she would answer, "No, I have been to the temple." The host of
women's papers had a bad effect. With regard to the habutae (silk goods)
factories, there was a bright side, for they gave work to the girls in winter,
when they were idle "and therefore poor and sometimes immoral." On the
other hand, factory girls tended to become vain and thriftless and the stay-
at-home girls were inclined to imitate them.

FOOTNOTES:
[157] See Appendix XLV.

CHAPTER XXI

THE "TANOMOSHI"

(YAMAGATA)
Society is kept in animation by the customary and by
sentiment.—Meredith
Six feet of snow is common on the line on which we travelled in
Yamagata prefecture, and washouts are not infrequent. A train has been
stopped for a week by snow. It was difficult to think of snow when one saw
groups of pilgrims with their flopping sun-mats on their backs. The shrines
on three local mountain tops are visited by 20,000 people yearly.
We bought at railway stations different sorts of gelatinous fruit
preparations. Most places in Japan have a speciality in the form of a food or
a curiosity that can be bought by travellers.
In the great Shonai plain, which extends through three counties, there are
no fewer than 82,500 acres of rice and the unending crops were a sight to
see. A great deal of the paddy land has been adjusted. In one county there is
the largest adjusted area in Japan, 20,000 acres. When one raises one's eyes
from the waving fields of illimitable rice, the dominating feature of the
landscape is Mount Chokai with his August snow cap.
The three-storey hotel at which we stayed had been taken to pieces and
transported twenty miles. Such removal of houses to a more convenient or,
in the case of an hotel, a more profitable site, is not uncommon. I
sometimes patronised at Omori a large hotel on a little hill halfway between
Yokohama and Tokyo, which had formerly been the prefectural building at
Kanagawa. In the hotel in which I was now staying I was interested in the
"Notice" in my room:
1. A spitting-pot is provided. [Usually of bamboo or
porcelain.]

2. No towels are lent for fear of trachoma. [158] [The traveller
in Japan carries his own towels, but a towel is a common gift on
a guest's departure in acknowledgment of his tea money.]
3. There is a table of rates. Guests are requested to say in
which they desire to be reckoned. [To the hotel proprietor,
landlord or manager when the visit of courtesy is paid on the
guest's arrival. Otherwise a judgment is formed from the guest's
clothes, demeanour and baggage.]
4. Please lock up your valuables or let us keep them. [There
are no locks on Japanese doors.]
5. Railroad, kuruma, box-sledge or automobile charges on
application. [The box-sledge shows what the country is like in
winter.]
In conversations about local conditions I was told that "landowners of the
middle grade" were suffering from "trying to keep up their position." I
remembered the song which may be rendered:

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

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

unable to make a living, but in some way or other we are able," which is
what some small holders in many countries would say.
I was told that a labourer's 5 tan could be cultivated by working half
days. Generally more was earned by labouring than could be gained from a
small patch of land. But for half the year labourer's work was not
obtainable. My informant found small tenant labourers "well off" if both
husband and wife had wages: "they are able to buy a bottle of saké in the
evening." Their position was better than that of a small peasant proprietor.
One in a thousand of the families in a specified county slept in straw. I
heard of the payment of 20 to 25 per cent. to pawnbroker lenders.
But there is another way of borrowing. The plan of the kō may be
adopted. A kō—it is odd that it should so closely resemble our abbreviation
"Co."—is simple and effective. If a man is badly off or wants to undertake
something beyond his financial resources, and his friends decide to help
him, they may proceed by forming a kō. A kō is composed of a number of
people who agree to subscribe a certain sum monthly and to divide the
proceeds monthly by ballot, beginning by giving the first month's receipts
to the person to succour whom the kō was formed. Suppose that the
subscription be fixed at a yen a month and that there are fifty subscribers.
Then the beneficiary—who pays in his yen with the rest—gets 50 yen on
the occasion of the first ingathering. Every month afterwards a member
who is lucky in the ballot gets 50 yen. The monthly paying in and paying
out continue for fifty months and all the subscribers duly get their money
back, with the advantage of having had a little excitement and having done
a neighbourly action.
But the kō, or tanomoshi, as I ought to call it, is not always the innocent
organisation I have described. There is a tanomoshi system under which,
after member A, the beneficiary, has received the first month's
subscriptions, the other members are open to receive bids for their shares.
That is to say that, when the time comes round for the second paying out of
50 yen, member F, who happens to have become as much in need of ready
money as A was, offers, if the month's moneys be handed over to him, to
distribute among the members sums up to 20 yen. July and December, when
most people need ready money, are months in which a hard-up member of a
tanomoshi may sometimes offer to distribute as much as 50 per cent. of
what he receives. The result of such bidding for shares is that well-to-do

members of a tanomoshi, who are the last to draw their 50 yen, receive in
addition to it all the extra payments made by impoverished members who
took their shares earlier. Benevolence in a tanomoshi is not seldom a mask
for avarice that the law against usury cannot touch. In truth, the only
virtuous part of a tanomoshi may be the first sharing out to the person in
whose interest it was supposed to be started. It should be added, however,
that there is a sort of tanomoshi which has no particular beneficiary and is
merely a kind of co-operative credit society. In one place I heard of a
tanomoshi that maintained a large fund for the relief of orphans and the
sick.
In many villages there were private or co-operative godowns for the
storage of rice against fire, rats and damp. Though the farmer who sends
rice to such a store receives a receipt, it is not legally a marketable
document. Hence an improvement on this simple storage plan. I visited the
premises of a company that could store more than 500,000 bushels of rice,
and I found purification by carbon bisulphide going on. The receipts given
by this company—"certificated" for large quantities and "tickets" for small
—certify not only the quantity but the quality of the rice, and are readily
cashed. The storehouse owners work under a licence, and they have the
advantage that the buyer of the receipts of non-licensed stores is not
protected by the courts.
In the office of the company were samples of eleven market qualities of
rice, and before them, by way of showing respect to the great food staple,
was set the gohei of cut white paper seen in Shinto shrines. Outside the
office, girl porters carried the bales of rice to and fro. Close to the store was
a river in which some of the dusty, perspiring porters were washing and
cooling themselves with a simplicity to which Western civilisation is not yet
equal. Opposite them men were fishing by casting in draw nets from the
shore just as in biblical pictures the apostles are represented as doing.
The company has a rice market where farmers were putting their business
in the dealers' hands. Each dealer has to deposit 5,000 yen with the State.
The dealer who buys rice from a farmer has better polishing machinery than
the farmer possesses. Therefore he can give the rice a more uniform
appearance. By decreasing the weight of the rice during the polishing he
gives it he is also able to lessen the sum payable for carriage and he has the
value of the offal.

In order to visit farmers I rode some distance into the country. [159] The
village, which was of the Zen sect, was at work cleaning out and
straightening the stream which, as is usual in many villages, ran through the
middle of it. I was impressed during my visit not only by the readiness and
intelligence with which my questions were answered but by the good
humour with which a stranger's inquiries concerning personal matters was
received. I had another thought, that I might not have found a group of
Western farmers so well informed about their financial position as these
simple, primitively clad men.
Our kuruma route to and from the village had been through one great
tract of well-adjusted rice fields. Adjustment was not difficult in this region
because half the land belongs to the Homma family, which has given much
study to the art of land-holding. For two centuries the clan by charging
moderate rents and studying the interests of its tenants has maintained
happy relations with them.
For many years a plan has been in operation by which 200 one-tan
paddy-fields are cultivated by the agents or managers of the estate, by
tenants selected by their fellow tenants for merit, by tenants chosen by the
landlord for diligence and by others picked out because of their interest in
agriculture. In order to increase the zest of competition the cultivators are
divided into a black and a white company. The names of those who raise the
most and best rice are published in the order of their success, farm
implements are distributed as prizes, the clever cultivators are invited to the
landlord's New Year entertainment to the agents and managers, and at that
feast "places of distinction are given."
There is also a system of rewarding the best five-years averages. A
competition takes place between what are called "dress fields" because
those who get the best results from them receive a ceremonial dress bearing
the inscription, "Prosperity and Welfare." The honour of wearing these
robes in the presence of their landlord at his annual feast is valued by these
simple countrymen.
Through the introduction by the landlord of horse labour and ploughs—
implements with which the farmers were formerly unacquainted—second
cropping of part of the paddies has become possible. There is an elaborate
system of "progressive reduction" and "average reduction" of rents in a bad
season, by which, it was explained, "the industrious tenant enjoys a larger

reduction than an idle one." "Tenants are grouped in fives, which help one
another in their work and in cases of misfortune." In their agreement with
their landlord, tenants promise that "wrong-doing shall be mutually
reprimanded and counsel shall be given one to another." "Again, if a tenant
falls ill, has his house burnt or meets with misfortune, assistance shall be
given by his fellows." During the war with Russia the following instructions
were issued:
Those enlisted in the army shall render their service at the
cost of their lives.
Those who stay at home shall do their best, complying with the
principles laid down by the Minister of Agriculture.
Relatives of soldiers at the front shall be helped and
sympathised with.
All shall subscribe to war bonds as much as possible.
All shall practise thrift and economy in accordance with their
social standing.
Musical entertainments shall be given up for two years.
Methods proved to be effective in cultivation shall be reported.
In the warm, cloudy days insects multiply rapidly.
Think of your brothers at the front, struggling against one of the
mighty military powers of the world, and be ashamed to be
vanquished by hordes of insects or masses of vegetable growth
in your fields. For the purpose of destroying insects an ample
supply of oil is to be had at the experimental farm, as during last
year; and payment therefor may be deferred until after harvest.
A communication to agents and managers says: "Comport yourselves in a
way suitable to the dignity of an agent of the clan. Bear in mind the
privileges and favours you enjoy, and exert yourselves to requite these
favours. Respect the name and the coat-of-arms of the clan." In the
neighbourhood there are about a hundred families bearing the name of
Homma.

FOOTNOTES:
[158] In the three years 1916-18 the percentage of conscripts suffering from trachoma
was 15.8.
[159] For farmers' budgets, see Appendix XIII (end).

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

CHAPTER XXII

"BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

(YAMAGATA, AKITA, [160] AOMORI, IWATE, MIYAGI,
FUKUSHIMA AND IBARAKI)
The worst of our education is that it looks askance, looks over
its shoulder at sex.—R.L.S.
A village headman, encountered in the train just as we were leaving
Yamagata prefecture, gave me some insight into the life of his little
community. The fathers of two-score families were shopkeepers and
tradesmen—- that is, tradesmen in the old meaning of the word. There were
also a few labourers. About two hundred and fifty families owned land and
some of them rented additional tracts. Another sixty were simply tenants.
The poorer farmers were also labourers or artisans. Most of them were
"comfortable enough." There were, however, half a dozen people in the
village who were helped from village funds. Of the middle-grade farmers
"it might be said that they do not become richer or poorer."
The headman had formed a society which sent its members to visit
prefectures more developed agriculturally. This society had engaged an
instructor from without the prefecture and he had taught horse tillage and
the management of upland fields and had made model paddies. Five
stallions had been obtained and a simple adjustment of paddy-land had been
brought about. As a result the rice yield had risen.
This headman had also had addresses delivered in the village for the first
time. Further, after buying a number of books, he had visited all the
villagers in turn and shown them the books and had said to each of them, "I
wish you to buy a book and, after reading it, to give it to the library."
"And," he told me, "none of them objected." Soon a valuable library came
into existence.

This admirable functionary felt some satisfaction at having been able to
abate the custom according to which the young men, with the tacit
permission of their parents, had gone into the neighbouring town after
harvest "to visit the immoral women." "They used to spend as much as 5
yen," said our headman. He had started worthier forms of after-harvest
relaxation, and "the cost of the amusement days is now only 50 or 60 sen."
When we got on the main line again and pursued our way farther north, it
was through even stouter snow shelters and through many tunnels. Not a
few miserable dwellings were to be seen as we passed into Akita prefecture.
We broke our journey after some hours' travelling to stay the night at a
rather primitive hot spring inn four or five miles up in the hills. A slight rain
was falling. Four passengers at a time made the ascent to the hotel,
squatting on a mat in an old contractor's wagon, pushed along roughly laid
rails by two perspiring youths in rain-cloaks of bark strips. At the inn, on
going to the bath, I found therein a miscellaneous collection of people of
both sexes from grandparents to grandchildren. One bather enlivened us by
performances on the flute, which, if a musical instrument must be played in
a bath, seems as suitable as any. In this rambling inn there were many
farmers who, by preparing their own food and doing for themselves
generally, were holiday-making at bedrock prices.
As it was the Bon season, when the spirits of the dead are supposed to
return, I was a witness of the method adopted to help the ghosts to find their
old homes. At the top of a 30 or 40 ft. pole a lantern is fixed with a pulley.
Fastened up beside the lantern is a bunch of green stuff, cryptomeria in
many cases. The lantern is lighted each evening for a week. Having heard a
good deal about the suppression of Bon dances and songs I was interested
when a fellow-guest began talking about them. He had seen many Bon
dances and had heard many Bon songs. There can be no doubt that there has
been some unenlightened interference with the Bon gathering. The country
people seem to be suffering from the determination of officialdom to make
an end of everything in country as well as town that may be considered
"uncivilised" by any foreigner, however ill instructed. In towns the sexes
are not accustomed to meet, but country people must work together;
therefore they find it natural to dance and sing together. As to the Bon
songs, it is common sense that expressions which may be regarded as
outrageous and indecent in a drawing-room may not be so terrible on a
hilltop among rustics used to very plain speech and to easy recognition of

natural facts that are veiled from townspeople. My chance acquaintance at
the inn recited a number of Bon songs and next morning brought me some
more that he had remembered and had been kind enough to write down.
They merely established the fact that bucolic wit is as elemental in Japan as
in other lands. Most of the songs had a Rabelaisian touch, some were nasty,
but nearly all had wit. The following is an entirely harmless example:

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

Here are three others:

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

Dancer, dancer,
Do not laugh at me.
My dance is very bad,
But I only began last year.

How thin a thin-legged man may be
If he does not take his miso soup. [163]

The quality of these dramatic songs will be entirely missed if the reader
does not bear in mind the mimetic skill of the amateur Japanese dancer and
his power as a contortionist. Clever dancers often use their powers in a
humorous pretence of clumsiness. Of the freer sort of songs I may quote
two:

Never buy vegetables in Third Street, [164]
You'll lose 30 sen and your nose.

Onions from a basket hanging in the benjo [165]
Were cooked in miso [166] and given to a blind man,
But that chap was greatly delighted.
Some of the other songs may be described, I suppose, as obscene, if
obscene be, as the dictionary says, "something which delicacy, purity and
decency forbid to be exposed"; but "delicacy, purity and decency" must be
considered in relation to climate, work and social usage. What one feels
about some critics of Bon songs and dances is that they need a course of
The Golden Bough. Such an illustration as Bon songs furnish of the moral
and mental conditions from which country folk must raise themselves is of
value if rural sociology is a real thing. There is far too much theorising
about the countryman and the countrywoman, far too much idealising of
them and far too much rating of them as clods. If country people of all lands
are free-spoken let us be neither hypercritical nor hypocritical. A big gap
seems to yawn between the paddy-field peasant in his breech clout and the
immaculate clubman, but what difference is there between the savour of the
average Bon song and of many a smoking-room jest which is not to the
credit of the peasant? At an inn in Naganoken a Japanese artist on holiday
showed me his sketch book. Among his drawings was a representation of a
shrine festival which he had witnessed in a remote village. A festival car
was being pushed by a knot of youths and by about an equal number of
young women and all of them were nude. But no enlightened person
believes that either decency or morals depends on clothing, or would expect
to find more essential indecency and immorality in that village than in a
modern city. What one would expect to find would be marriages between
physically well-developed men and women.
How the race moves on is shown in the famous tale of a saintly Zen
priest which I first heard in that little hill inn but was afterwards to see in
dramatic form on the stage of a Tokyo theatre. An unmarried girl in the
village in which the priest's temple was situated was about to have a child.
She would not confess to her angry father the name of her lover. At last she
attributed her condition to the greatly honoured priest. Her father was
astonished but he was also glad that his daughter was in the favour of so
eminent a man. So he went to the priest and said that he brought him good
tidings: the girl whom he had deigned to notice was about to have a child.
The father went on to express at length his sense of obligation to the priest
for the honour done to his family. All the priest said in reply was, So

desuka? (Is that so?) Soon after the birth of the child the girl besought her
father to marry her to a certain young farmer. The father, proud of the
association with the priest, refused. Finally the girl told her parent that it
was not the priest but the young farmer who was the father of her child. The
parent was aghast and chagrined as he recalled the terms in which he had
addressed the saintly man. He betook himself at once to the temple and
expressed in many words his feelings of shame and deep contrition. The
priest heard him out, but all he said was, So desuka?
Yamagata signifies "shape of a mountain" and Akita means "autumn rice
field." Although Akita prefecture is mountainous there is a greater
proportion of level land in it than in Yamagata. I find "Rice, rice, rice"
written in my notebook. An agricultural expert gave me to understand that
fifteen per cent. of the farmers were probably living on rents or on the
dividends of silk factories, that 55 or 60 per cent. were of the middle grade
with an annual income of 300 yen, that 25 or 30 per cent. had about 150 yen
—the lowest sum on which a family could be supported—and that there
were 3 or 4 per cent. of farm labourers who earned less than 150 yen. There
had been much paddy adjustment and the prefecture was spending 300,000
yen a year for the encouragement of adjustment and the opening of new
paddies. In the case of newly opened fields, tenants had contracts, but
ordinary tenancies were by word of mouth generation after generation. A
great deal of agricultural instruction was given by the prefecture, the
counties and the villages, and in 30 years the rice crop had been doubled
although the area had remained about the same. In order to secure help in
the work of rural amelioration a gathering of Buddhist priests and another
of Shinto priests had been lectured to at the prefectural office. Nearly
300,000 yen had been spent in twelve months on afforestation. The
following year a special effort was to be made to spend 500,000 yen. A
society raised young trees and sold them at cheap rates to farmers. Every
young men's association in the prefecture had land and had planted trees. It
was in Akita that I first saw peat in Japan. There are said to be 7,000 acres
of it in the country.
The prefecture of Aomori forms the northern tip of the mainland. Apart
from its enormous forest area and the railroad stacks of sawn lumber, what
caught my eye were the apple orchards and the number of farmers on
horseback or seated in wagons. Who that has been in Japan has not a
memory of narrow winding roads along which men and women and young

people are pulling and pushing carts? Here many farming folk rode. I was
told that Akita produced apples and potatoes to the value of a million yen
each and that there were ten co-operative apple societies. Much of the fruit
went to Russia.
Having passed through the city of Aomori we started to come down the
east coast. An agricultural authority said that the net profit of a dry farm,
that is a farm without any paddy, was almost negligible. Because of low
prices, cattle keeping had decreased to half what it used to be. (The only
cattle I saw from the train were on the road with harness on their backs.)
Only 18 yen could be got for a two-year-old; the Aomori cattle were indeed
the cheapest in Japan. The expert added, "There are no buyers; only
robbers."
But the dealers were not the only robbers. Boats came from Hokkaido
and stole cattle from the prefecture to the number of a hundred a year.
Sometimes horses were taken too, but horse thefts were rare "because you
cannot kill a horse and sell it for meat." The average price of a two-year-old
not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was a little less in the next
prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.) Half of the stallions belonging to the
"Bureau of Horse Politics" of the Ministry of Agriculture were bought in
Aomori.
The farmers by the lake that we passed on our way south were described
as "very poor," for their soil was barren and their climate bad. Their crops
were only a third of what could be raised in another part of the prefecture.
The agriculture of all the prefectures through which I now journeyed south
to Tokyo suffer from the cold temperature of the sea. The east-coast
temperature drops in winter to 7 degrees below freezing. [167] "Living is
more and more difficult," said someone to me. "The number of tenants
increases because farmers get into debt and have to sell their land. Millet
and buckwheat are much eaten. Although the temperature is 5 per cent.
colder in Hokkaido, the people do worse here because our soil is barren and
there is no profitable winter occupation like lumbering. Only 10 per cent. of
the rural population save anything. In bad times 65 per cent. of the families
get into debt."
At Morioka in Iwate prefecture I visited the excellent higher agricultural
college, where there were 300 students. The competition for places, as at
every educational institution in Japan, was keen. The number who sat at the

last entrance examinations—the average age was twenty—was 317, of
whom only 80 got in. There were 15 professors and 10 assistants. The
charge to students was 300 yen for a year of ten months. The annual cost of
the college to the Government was 70,000 yen. Of the foreign volumes
among the 20,000 books in the library 50 per cent. were German, 30 per
cent. English and 20 per cent. American.
An apiary of a single skep in a roped-off enclosure was an illustration of
unfamiliarity with bees. It seemed strange to find that in this up-to-date and
efficient institution the biggest implement for cutting grass which was in
use, a sickle of course, had a blade no longer than 8 inches. Hung up at the
back of a shed I noticed a rusty scythe. When I tried to show what it could
do it was suggested that the implement was "too heavy, too difficult and too
dangerous."
Iwate is the poorest of the northern prefectures, for bad weather so often
comes when the rice is in flower. As many as 40 per cent. of the people
were just making ends meet. Another 40 per cent. were always dogged by
poverty. Millet was the food of 10 per cent. of the farmers; millet, salted
vegetables and bean soup were the meagre diet of 5 per cent; the staple food
of the remainder was barley and rice. There are few temples in Iwate
compared with the rest of Japan. "Education is more backward than in other
prefectures," someone said. "The farmers are not able. Too much saké is
drunk." Farmers come in to Morioka to sell charcoal and wood and I saw
some of them turning into the saké shops.
There was talk in praise of millet. Though low socially in the dietary of
Japan, it has merits. It withstands cold and even salt spray. It ripens earlier
than rice and so may sometimes be harvested before a spell of bad weather.
It yields well, it will store for some time, its taste is "little inferior to rice
and better than that of barley" and it contains more protein than rice. It is
cooked after slight polishing and the straw provides fodder. "In the north-
east, where millet is most eaten," I was told, "there are people who are 5 ft.
10 ins. to 6 ft. and there are many wrestlers." The seeds in the handsome
heavy ears of millet are about the size of the letter O in the footnote type of
this book.
In the train a farmer who knew the prefecture spoke of Bon songs and
dances: "The result of the action against them was not good. The meeting of
young men and women at the Bon gatherings was in their minds half the

year in prospect and half in retrospect. Bearing in mind the condition of the
people, even the worst Bon songs are not objectionable. But when the
people become educated some songs will be objectionable."
Visitors to a poor prefecture like Miyagi must be surprised to see so
much adjusted paddy. There is more adjusted paddy in Miyagi than in any
other prefecture. Some 90,000 acres have been taken in hand and a large
amount of money has been spent. The work has been carried out largely by
way of giving wages to farmers during famine. A new tunnel brought water
to 6,000 acres. "The bad climate of Miyagi cannot be mended," I was told;
"all that can be done is to seek for the earliest varieties of rice, to sow early,
to work as diligently as possible and to deal with floods by embanking the
rivers and by tree planting." As many as 7,000 people go from Miyagi to
Hokkaido in a year. It seems to point to a certain amount of fecklessness
that 15 per cent. of them return.
One man I spoke with during my journey south gave a vivid impression
of the influence of young men's associations. "Before they started," said he,
"the young men spent their time in singing indecent songs, in gambling, in
talking foolishly, and twice or thrice a year in immorality. A young widow
has sometimes been at fault; the parents-in-law need her help and village
sentiment is against her remarriage. The suppression of Bon dances has
done more harm than good by keeping out of sight what used to be said and
done openly[168] . Two or three priests are active in this prefecture. Where
the Shinshu sect is strong you will find little divorce. But the influence of
Buddhism has been stationary in recent years. There is some action by
missionaries of the Japanese Christian church, but the number of Christians
among real rustics is very small."
At Sendai it was pleasant to see a prefectural office—or most of it—
housed in a Japanese building instead of a dreadful edifice "in Western
style." In feudal times the building was a school. Portraits of daimyos and
famous scholars of the Sendai clan surround the Governor's room, and
adjoining it is the tatami-covered apartment in which the daimyo used to sit
when he was present at the examinations. Among the portraits is one of a
retainer which was painted in Rome, where he had been sent on a mission
of inquiry.

A Scarecrow.—A sketch by Professor Nasu.

In his scarecrow-making the Japanese farmer seems to have great faith in
the Western-style cap, felt hat, or even umbrella, if he can get hold of one.
Ordinarily, the bogey man has a bow with the arrow strung. Occasionally a
farmer seeks to scare birds by means of clappers which he places in the
hands of a child or an old man who sits in a rough shelter raised high
enough to overtop the rice. Now and then there is a clapper connected with
a string to the farm-house. I have also seen a row of bamboos carried across
a paddy field with a square piece of wood hanging loosely against each one.
A rope connecting all the bamboos with one another was carried to the
roadway, and now and then a passer-by of a benevolent disposition, or with
nothing better to do, or, it may be, standing in some degree of relationship
to the paddy-field proprietor, gave the rope a tug. Then all the bamboos
bent, and as they smartly straightened themselves caused the clappers to
give forth a sound sufficiently agitating to sparrow pillagers in several
paddies.
On leaving Miyagi we were once more in Fukushima, with notes on
which this account of a trip to the north of Japan and back again began. This

time, instead of journeying by routes through the centre of the prefecture, as
in coming north, or as in the visit paid to Fukushima in the Tokyo-to-
Niigata journey, I travelled along the sea coast. When we had passed
through Fukushima we were in Ibaraki, a characteristic feature of which is
swamps. Drainage operations have been going on since the time of the
Shogunate. There is in this prefecture the biggest production of beans in
Japan, and we have come far enough south to see tea frequently. In the
lower half of the prefecture we are in the great Kwanto plain, the
prefectures in which are most conveniently surveyed from Tokyo.

FOOTNOTES:
[160][160] Some Yamagata notes and those relating to Akita are conveniently
included in this Chapter, but these two prefectures are on the west coast.
[161] A rin is the tenth part of a sen, which in its turn is a farthing.
[162] A kind of barley sugar.
[163] Bean soup.
[164] A street in Akita in which many prostitutes live.
[165] Closet.
[166] Bean paste.
[167] The warm black current from the south flows up the east and west coasts. Some
distance north of Tokyo, the east-coast current meets the cold Oyashiro current from
Kamchatka, and is turned off towards America.
[168] See A Free Farmer in a Free State, pp. 173-4, for an account of the custom in
Zeeland by which peasants preserved themselves from the calamity of childless
marriage.

CHAPTER XXIII

A MIDNIGHT TALK

True religion is a relation, accordant with reason and
knowledge, which man establishes with the infinite life
surrounding him, and it is such as binds his life to that infinity,
and guides his conduct.—Tolstoy
One of the most instructive experiences I had during my rural journeys
occurred one night when I was staying at a country inn. At a late hour I was
told that the Governor of the prefecture was in a room overhead. I had
called on him a few days before in his prefectural capital. He was a large
daimyo-like figure, dignified and courteous, but seemingly impenetrable.
There was no depth in our talk. His aloof and uncommunicative manner
was deterring, but by this time I had learnt the elementary lesson of
unending patience and freedom from hasty judgment that is the first step to
an advance in knowledge of another race. I felt that I should like to know
more about the man inside this Excellency. No one had told me anything of
his life.
Now that he was in the same inn with me it was Japanese good manners
to pay him a visit. So I went upstairs with my travelling companion, telling
him on the way that we should not remain more than five minutes. We were
wearing our bath kimonos. The Governor was also at his ease in one of
these garments. He was kneeling at a low table reading. We knelt at the
other side, spoke on general topics, asked one or two questions and began to
take our leave. On this the Governor said that he would like very much to
ask me in turn some questions. We spoke together until one in the morning,
his Excellency continually expressing his unwillingness for us to go. He
spoke rapidly and with such earnestness that I was balked of understanding
what he said sentence by sentence. The next day my companion wrote out a
summary of what the Governor had said and I had tried to say in reply. As a
brief report of a talk of three hours' duration it is plainly imperfect. The
artless account is of some interest, however, because it furnishes an
impression at once of an engaging simplicity and sincerity in the Japanese
character and of the pressure of Western ideas.
Governor: "There have died lately my mother, my wife and one of my
daughters. Some of my officials come to me and ask what consolation I am
getting. What do I feel at first when such things happen? Am I content
under such misfortune? I feel that I should be happy if I could believe
something and tell it to them. I am tormented by the conflict of my

scientific and religious feelings. How is the relation of science and religion
in your mind? Are you tormented or are you composed and peaceful even
when meeting such misfortune as mine?"
Myself: "It is certain that it is not well to torment ourselves, for grief is
loss. [169] As to science, it did not drive away religion. Science seeks after
truth in all matters, but there are truths which are to be searched out through
our feeling, conscience and instinct. Religion has to do with these truths. It
is quite good for religion if all superstition, dogma and ignorance are
cleared away by science. Concerning a future life, we are hampered in our
thinking by our traditions, prejudices, deep ignorance and poor mental
strength and training; and much energy is needed in the world for present
service. Some have thought of an immortality which is that a man's sincere
influence, his unselfish manifestations, those things which are the essence
of a man's existence, will live on; in other words, that the best of a life is
immortal; but not in the way of ghosts. As to the memory, example and
achievement of the dead it is sure that we are aided by them."
Governor: "If we sacrifice ourselves for the public good it is the best that
we can do in this world. But are you composed at the sad news concerning
the Lusitania? If you think that event was directed by divine destiny then
you can be composed and may not complain."
Myself: "Such an accident may only be by divine destiny in the sense that
everything in this world, the saddest misery, the greatest misfortunes, are
suffered in the development of mankind, so that even this War is
unquestionably for the final betterment of the whole world."
Governor: "Please say what is God."
Myself: "'If I could tell you what God is, I should be God myself.' Many
of my own countrymen have been taught that God is 'Spirit, infinite, eternal,
unchangeable in His Being, wisdom, power, holiness, justice, goodness and
truth.' There are those who would say that God may be the total developing
or bettering energy, and that we are all part of God. Some people have a
more personal conception of God, the sum of all goodness. May not his
Excellency consider the peasant's idea of a Governor of a prefecture? The
peasant's idea of a Governor is greater than that of any particular Governor.
His Excellency's good works are not done by himself alone, but by all the
good energies inherent in the Governorship. Those energies are unseen but

real. The Japanese army and navy triumphed by the virtue of the Emperor—
by the virtue of ideas."
Governor: "The thought of Sensei [170] is quite Oriental."
Myself: "All religions are from Asia."
Governor: "This world where stars move, flowers blossom and decay,
spring and autumn come, and people are born and die is too full of mystery,
but I can feel some intelligence working through it though
incomprehensible."
Myself: "Alas, people will try to explain that incomprehensibleness."
Governor: "What you have said is what I have been accepting to this day.
It satisfies my reason, but I feel in my heart something lacking. I seek for a
warmer interpretation of the world, for a more heartfelt relation with
cosmos. Several of my officials themselves lost their dear children recently.
They cannot with heart and brain accept their loss, and they ask my
direction."
Myself: "In the New Testament one thing is taught, God is Love. We can
be composed if we feel that God is love. The Gospel of John is the most
tender story in the world."
Governor: "It may be difficult for all people to come to the same point
and agree altogether. We must solve a great problem by ourselves."
Myself: "We have opportunities of doing some good works in this life.
Therefore we must go on till we die and we must be content at being able to
do something good, directly or indirectly, in however small measure. 'Earth
is not as thou ne'er hadst been,' wrote an Englishwoman poet of great
scientific ability [171] who died while yet a young woman."
Governor: "I think of Napoleon dying tormented on St. Helena, and the
peaceful attitude of Socrates though being poisoned by enemies. But
Socrates had done many good things, yet he was poisoned."
Myself: "Socrates had done what he could for his country and the world,
yet by his brave death he could add one thing more." [172]
The Governor said that he "got comfort from our talk," but this did not
perfectly reassure me. The next evening, however, I found a parboiled
Governor alone in the bath and he greeted me very warmly. Without our
interpreter we could say nothing that mattered, but we were glad of this

further meeting in the friendly hot water. It seemed that our midnight talk
would be memorable to both of us.
It is convenient to copy out here the following dicta on religion and
morals which were delivered to me at various times during my journeys:
A. "The weakest deterrent influence among us is, 'It is wrong.' A stronger
deterrent influence is, 'Heaven will punish you.' The strongest deterrent
influence of all is, 'Everybody will laugh at you.'"
B. "In Japan all religions have been turned into sentiment or
æstheticism."
C. (after speaking appreciatively of the ideas animating many Japanese
Christians): "All the same I do not feel quite safe about trusting the future
of Japan to those people."
D. "We Japanese have never been spiritually gifted. We are neither
meditative and reflective like the Hindus nor individualistic like the Anglo-
Saxons. Nevertheless, like all mankind we have spiritual yearnings. They
will be best stirred by impulses from without."
E. (in answer to my enquiry whether a Quakerism which compromised on
war, as John Brights male descendants had done, might not gain many
adherents in Japan): "Other sects may have a smaller ultimate chance than
Quakerism. One mistake made by the Quakers was in going to work first
among the poorer classes. The Quakers ought to have begun with the
intellectual classes, for every movement in Japan is from the top."
F. "You will notice what a number of the gods of Japan are deified men.
There is a good side to the earth earthy, but many Japanese seem unable to
worship anything higher than human beings. The readiest key to the
religious feeling of the Japanese is the religious life of the Greeks. The
more I study the Greeks the more I see our resemblance to them in many
ways, in all ways, perhaps, except two, our lack of philosophy and our lack
of physical comeliness."
G. "As to uncomeliness there are several Japanese types. The refined type
is surely attractive. If many Japanese noses seem to be too short, foreigners'
noses seem to us to be too long. The results of intermarriage between
Western people and Japanese who are of equal social and educational status
and of good physique should be closely watched."

H. "In our schools an hour or two a week is reserved for culture, but the
true spirit of culture is lacking. The Imperial Rescript on education is very
good moral doctrine, but the real life's aim of many of us is to be well off,
to have an automobile, to become a Baron or to extend the Empire. We do
not ask ourselves, 'For what reason?'"
I. "I conduct certain classes which the clerks of my bank must attend. The
teaching I give is based on Confucian, Christian and Buddhist principles. I
try to make the young men more manful. I constantly urge upon them that
'you must be a man before you can be a clerk.'"
J. (a septuagenarian ex-daimyo): "Confucianism is the basis of my life,
but twice a month I serve at my Shinto shrine and I conduct a Buddhist
service in my house morning and evening. It is necessary to make the
profession that Buddha saves us. I do not believe in paradise. It is paradise
if when I die I have a peaceful mind due to a feeling that I have done my
duty in life and that my sons are not bad men. Unless I am peaceful on my
deathbed I cannot perish but must struggle on. Therefore my sons must be
good. I myself strove to be filial and I have always said to my sons, 'Fathers
may not be fathers but sons must be sons.'"
K. (the preceding speaker's son expressing his opinion on another
occasion): "My father as a Confucian is kind to people negatively. We want
to be kind positively because it is right to be kind. As to filial obedience,
even fathers may err; we are righteous if we are right. My father is a
Shintoist because it is our national custom. He wants to respect his
ancestors in a wide sense and he desires that Japan, his family and his crops
may be protected."
L. "I wish foreigners had a juster idea about 'idols'. There is a difference
between frequenters of the temples believing the figures to be holy and
believing them to be gods. Every morning my mother serves before her
shrine of Buddha but she does not believe our Buddha to be God. She
would not soil or irreverently handle our Buddha, but it is only holy as a
symbol, as an image of a holy being. My mother has said to me, 'Buddha is
our father. He looks after us always; I cannot but thank him. If there be after
life Buddha will lead me to Paradise. There is no reason to beg a favour.'
My mother is composed and peaceful. All through her life she has met
calamities and troubles serenely. I admire her very much. She is a good
example of how Buddha's influence makes one peaceful and spiritual. But

such religious experience may not be grasped from the outside by
foreigners."
M. "When I am in a temple or at a shrine I realise its value in
concentrating attention. The daily domestic service before the shrine in the
house also ensures some religious life daily. Many of my countrymen no
doubt regard religion as superstition; they know little of spiritual life. For
some of them patriotism or humanitarian sentiments or eagerness to seek
after scientific truth takes the place of religion. Most men think that they
can never comprehend the cosmos and say, 'We may believe only what we
can prove. Let us follow not after preachers but after truth.' I believe with
your Western philosophers who say that the cosmos is not perfect but that it
is moving towards perfection. Many think that this War shows that the
cosmos is not perfect. Spiritual life is living according to one's purest
consciousness. But what is of first importance is our actions. It is not
enough merely to strive after moral development. One must strive after
economic and social development. Some religious people think only of the
spiritual life and have no sympathy with economics. The labours of such
religious people must be of small value."
In later Chapters the views of other thoughtful Japanese are noted down
as they were communicated to me.

FOOTNOTES:
[169] "The strength that is given at such times arises not from ignoring loss or
persuading oneself that the thing is not that is, but from the resolute setting of the face to
the East and the taking of one step forwards. Anything that detaches one, that makes one
turn from the past and look simply at what one has to do, brings with it new strength and
new intensity of interest."— Haldane.
[170] Teacher, instructor, master, or a polite way of saying "You"—the usual title by
which I was addressed.
[171] Constance Naden.
[172] "The Phaedo was bought for us by the death of Socrates."—Quiller Couch.

THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS COLLECTING-BAG.

MR. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONATION CEREMONY ROBES.

PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR RAISING WATER.

VILLAGE SCHOOL WITH PORTRAIT OF FLORENCE
NIGHTINGALE.

RIVER-BEDS IN THE SUMMER
From which may be imagined the power of the water in time of flood.

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

CHAPTER XXIV

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA" (TOKUSHIMA,
KOCHI AND KAGAWA)
The most capital article, the character of the inhabitants.—
Tytler
In travelling southwards I noticed between Kyoto and Osaka that farms
were being irrigated from wells in the primitive way by means of the
weighted swinging pole and bucket. Along the coast to the south, indeed as
far as Hiroshima, there have been great gains from the sea, and in the
neighbourhood of Kobe there are three parallel roads which mark
successive recoveries of land. Before crossing the Inland Sea at Okayama to
Shikoku (area about 1,000 square miles) I visited one of the new
settlements on recovered land. The labour available from a family was
reckoned as equal to that of two men, and as much as 4 to 5 chō was
allotted to each house. It will be seen how much larger is this area—5 chō is
12½ acres—than the average Japanese farming family must be content
with, a little less than 3 acres. The company supplied houses, seeds,
manures, etc., and after all expenses were met the workers were allowed 25
per cent, of the net income of their summer crop and 35 per cent, of the net
income of their second crop. The cultivation was directed by the company.
There had been 300 applications for the last twenty houses built. An
experiment station was maintained, and a campaign against a rice borer had
been of benefit to the amount of about 10,000 yen. I found the company's
winnowing machine discharging its chaff into the furnace of the rice-drying
apparatus.
One of the experts of the company came with me for some distance in the
train in order to discuss some of his problems. He thought agricultural work
could be done in less back-breaking ways. He wanted a small threshing
machine which would be suitable not only for threshing small quantities of

rice or corn but for easy conveyance along the narrow and easily damaged
paths between the rice fields. If he had such a machine he would like to
improve it so that it would lay out the threshed straw evenly, so making the
straw more valuable for the many uses to which it is put. He wished to see a
machine invented for planting out rice seedlings and another contrivance
devised for drying wheat. The company's rice-drying machine handled 200
koku of rice a day, but there were difficulties in drying wheat. (In many
places I noticed the farmers drying their corn by the primitive method of
singeing it and thus spoiling it.) [173]
On the Inland Sea, aboard the smart little steamer of the Government
Railways, my companion spoke of the extent to which sea-faring men, a
conservative class, had abandoned the use of the single square sail which
one sees in Japanese prints; the little vessels had been re-rigged in Western
fashion. But many superstitions had survived the abolished square sails. The
mother of my fellow-traveller once told him that, when she crossed the
Inland Sea in an old-style ship and a storm arose, the shipmaster earnestly
addressed the passengers in these words, "Somebody here must be unclean;
if so, please tell me openly." The title of the book my companion was
reading was The History of the Southern Savage. Who was the "Southern
Savage"? The word is namban, the name given to the early Portuguese and
Spanish voyagers to Japan. (The Dutch were called komojin, red-haired
men.) In looking through the official railway guide on the boat I saw that
there was a list of specially favourable places for viewing the moon. An
M.P. passenger told me that the average cost of getting returned to the Diet
was 10,000 yen [174].
The difficulties of communication in Shikoku are so considerable that I
was compelled to leave the two prefectures of Tokushima and Kochi
unvisited. Kochi is without a yard of railway line. In the prefecture of
Ehime most of my journey had to be made by kuruma. Communication
between the four prefectures of Shikoku—the one in which I landed was
Kagawa—is largely conducted by coasting steamers and sailing craft. An
interesting thing in Kochi is the area by the sea in which two crops of rice
are grown in the year. Tokushima holds a leading place in the production of
indigo. At one place in the hills the adventurous have the satisfaction of
crossing a river by means of suspension bridges made of vine branches.

The streets of Takamatsu, the capital of Kagawa, are many of them so
narrow that the shopkeepers on either side have joint sun screens which
they draw right across the thoroughfares. Here I found the carts hauled by a
smallish breed of cow. The placid animals are handier in a narrow place and
less expensive than horses. They are shod, like their drivers, in waraji. In
Shikoku the cow or ox is generally used in the paddies instead of the horse.
"It is slower but strong and can plough deep," one agricultural expert said.
"It eats cheaper food than the horse, which moves too fast in a small paddy.
Cows and oxen are probably not working for more than seventy-five or
eighty days in the year."
At Takamatsu I had the opportunity of visiting a daimyo's castle. I was
impressed by its strength not only because of the wide moats but because of
the series of earthen fortifications faced with cyclopean stonework through
which an invading force must wind its way. There was within the walls a
surprisingly large drilling ground for troops and also an extensive drug
garden. The present owner of the castle proposed to build here a library and
a museum for the town. I was glad of the opportunity to ascend one of the
high pagoda-like towers so familiar in Japanese paintings. I was
disillusioned. Instead of finding myself in beautiful rooms for the
enjoyment of marvellous views and sea breezes I had to clamber over the
roughest cob-webbed timbers. One storey was connected with another by a
stair of rude planking. Such pagodas were built only for their military value
as lookouts and for their delightful appearance from the outside.
The town now enjoyed as a park of more than ten acres the grounds of a
subsidiary residence of the daimyo. The magnificent trees, with lakes,
rivulets and hills fashioned with infinite art, [175] and the background of
natural hill and woodland, made in all a possession which exhibited the
delectable possibilities of Japanese gardening. An occasional electric light
amid the trees gave an effect in the evening in which Japanese delight.
Some of the old carp which dashed up to the bridges when they heard our
footsteps seemed to be not far short of 3 ft. long.
Except for a small patch of sugar cane in Shidzuoka—it is grown
practically on the sea beach where it is visible from the express—the visitor
to Japan may never see sugar cane until Shikoku is reached. The value of
the crop in the whole island is about 800,000 yen. The tall cane is

conspicuous alongside the more diminutive rice. In this prefecture an
experiment is being made in growing olives.
Kagawa is remarkable in having had until lately 30,000 pond reservoirs
for the irrigation of rice fields. Under the new system of rice-field
adjustment many of the ponds are joined together. Because in Shikoku flat
tracts of land or tracts that can be made flat are limited in number the
farmers have to be content with small pieces of land. The average area of
farm in Kagawa outside the mountainous region is less than two acres.
When the farms are near the sea, as they commonly are, the agriculturists
may also be fishermen.
The number of place names ending in ji (temple) proclaims the former
flourishing condition of Buddhism. Shikoku is a great resort of white-
clothed pilgrims. Sometimes it is a solitary man whom one sees on the road,
sometimes a company of men, occasionally a family. Not seldom the
pilgrim or his companion is manifestly suffering from some affection which
the pilgrimage is to cure. In the old days it was not unusual to send the
victim of "the shameful disease" or of an incurable ailment on a pilgrimage
from shrine to shrine or temple to temple. He was not expected to return. In
Shikoku there are eighty-eight temples to Buddha and the founder of the
Shingon sect, and it is estimated that it would mean a 760 miles' journey to
visit them all.
We went off our route at one point where my companion wished to visit a
gorgeous shrine. A guidebook said that people flocked there "by the
million," but what I was told was that last year's attendance was 80,000.
The street leading to the approach to the shrine was in a series of steps. On
either side were the usual shops with piled-up mementoes in great variety
and of no little ingenuity, and also, on spikes, little stacks of rin—the old
copper coin with a square hole through the middle—into which the
economical devotee takes care to exchange a few sen. We climbed to the
shrine when twilight was coming on. At the point where the series of street
steps ended there began a new series of about a thousand steps belonging to
the shrine. A thousand granite steps may be tiring after a hot day's travel in
a kuruma. All the way up to the shrine there were granite pillars almost
brand new, first short ones, then taller, then taller still, and after these a few
which topped the tallest. They were conspicuously inscribed with the names
of donors to the shrine. A small pillar was priced at 10 yen. What the big,

bigger and biggest cost I do not know. I turned from the pillars to the stone
lanterns. "They burn cedar wood, I believe," said my companion. But soon
afterwards I saw a man working at them with a length of electric-light wire.
The great shrine was impressive in the twilight. There was a platform
near, and from it we looked down from the tree-covered heights through the
growing darkness. Where the lights of the town twinkled there was a
subsidiary shrine. A bare-headed, kimono-clad sailor stepped forward near
us and bowed his head to some semblance of deity down there. Various
fishermen had brought the anchors of their ships and the oars of their boats
to show forth their thankfulness for safety at sea. In the murkiness I was just
able to pick out the outlines of a bronze horse which stands at the shrine,
"as a sort of scape-goat," my companion explained. "It is probably
Buddhist," he said; "but you can never be sure; these priests embellish the
history of their temples so."
It was at the inn in the evening that someone told me that in the town
which is dependent on the shrine there were "a hundred prostitutes, thirty
geisha and some waitresses." Late at night I had a visit from a man in a
position of great responsibility in the prefecture. He was at a loss to know
what could be done for morality. "Religion is not powerful," he said, "the
schools do not reach grown-up people, the young men's societies are weak,
many sects and new moralities are attacking our people, and there are many
cheap books of a low class."
Next day I laid this view before a group of landlords. They did not reply
for a little and my skilful interpreter said, "they are thinking deeply." At
length one of them delivered himself to this effect: "Landowners hereabouts
are mostly of a base sort. They always consider things from a material and
personal point of view. But if they are attacked and made to act more for the
public good it may have an effect on rural conditions which are now low."
I enquired about the new sects of Buddhism and Shintoism, for there had
been pointed out to me in some villages "houses of new religions." "New
religions in many varieties are coming into the villages," I was told, "and
extravagant though they may be are influencing people. The adherents seem
to be moral and modest, and they pay their taxes promptly. There is a so-
called Shinto sect which was started twenty years ago by an ignorant
woman. It has believers in every part of Japan. It is rather communistic."
[176]
None of the landlords who talked with me believed in the possibility of

a "revival of Buddhism." One of them noted that "people educated in the
early part of Meiji are most materialistic. It is a sorrowful circumstance that
the officials ask only materialistic questions of the villagers."
I asked one of the landlords about his tenants. He said that his "largest
tenant" had no more than 1.3 tan of paddy. It was explained that "tenants
are obedient to the landowner in this prefecture." Under the system of
official rewards which exists in Japan, 1,086 persons in the prefecture had
been "rewarded" by a kind of certificate of merit and nine with money—to
the total value of 26 yen.
When I drew attention to the fact that the manufacture of saké and soy
seemed to be frequently in the hands of landowners it was explained to me
that formerly this was their industry exclusively. Even now "whereas an
ordinary shop-keeper is required by etiquette to say 'Thank you' to his
customer, a purchaser of saké or soy says 'Thank you' to the shop-keeper."
The flower arrangement in my room in the inn consisted of an effective
combination of hagi (Lespedeza bicolor, a leguminous plant which is grown
for cattle and has been a favourite subject of Japanese poetry), a cabbage, a
rose, a begonia and leaf and a fir branch.
A landowner I chatted with in the train showed me that it was a serious
matter to receive the distinction of growing the millet for use at the
Coronation. One of his friends who was growing 5 sh=o, the actual value of
which might be 50 or 60 sen, was spending on it first and last about 3,000
yen.
I enquired about the diversions of landowners. It is easy, of course, to
have an inaccurate impression of the extent of their leisure. Only about 1
per cent, have more than 25 acres. [177] Therefore most of these men are
either farmers themselves or must spend a great deal of time looking after
their tenants. Still, some landowners are able to take things rather easily.
The landowners I interrogated marvelled at the open-air habits of English
landed proprietors. They were greatly surprised when I told them of a
countess who is a grandmother but thinks nothing of a canter before
breakfast. The mark of being well off was often to stay indoors or at any
rate within garden walls, which necessarily enclose a very small area.
(Hence the fact that one object of Japanese gardening is to suggest a much
larger space than exists.) A good deal of time is spent "in appreciating fine
arts." Ceremonial tea drinking still claims no small amount of attention. (In

many gardens and in the grounds of hotels of any pretensions one comes on
the ostentatiously humble chamber for Cha-no-yu.) No doubt there is
among many landowners a considerable amount of drinking of something
stronger than tea, and not a few men sacrifice freely to Venus. Perhaps the
greatest claimant of all on the time of those who have time to spare is the
game of go, which is said to be more difficult than chess. One cannot but
remark the comparatively pale faces of many landowners.
As we went along by the coast it was pointed out to me that it was from
this neighbourhood that some of the most indomitable of the old-time
pirates set sail on their expeditions to ravage the Chinese coast. They visited
that coast all the way from Vladivostock, now Russian (and like to be
Japanese), to Saigon, now French. There are many Chinese books
discussing effectual methods of repelling the pirates. In an official Japanese
work I once noticed, in the enumeration of Japanese rights in Taiwan
(Formosa), the naïve claim that long ago it was visited by Japanese pirates!
The Japanese fisherman is still an intrepid person, and in villages which
have an admixture of fishing folk the seafarers, from their habit of
following old customs and taking their own way generally, are the constant
subject of rural reformers' laments.
I spent some time in a typical inland village. The very last available yard
of land was utilised. The cottages stood on plots buttressed by stone, and
only the well-to-do had a yard or garden; paddy came right up to the
foundations. Now that the rice was high no division showed between the
different paddy holdings. I noticed here that the round, carefully concreted
manure tank which each farmer possessed had a reinforced concrete hood. I
asked a landowner who was in a comfortable position what societies there
were in his village. He mentioned a society "to console old people and
reward virtue." Then there was the society of householders, such as is
mentioned in Confucius, which met in the spring and autumn, and ate and
drank and discussed local topics "with open heart." There were sometimes
quarrels due to saké. Indeed, some villagers seemed to save up their
differences until the householders' meeting at its saké stage. At
householders' meetings where there was no saké peace appeared to prevail.
The householders' meeting was a kind of informal village assembly. That
assembly itself ordinarily met twice a year. There were in the village, in
addition to the householders' organisation, the usual reservists' association,

the young men's society and agricultural association. As to kō, from
philanthropic motives my informant was a member of no fewer than ten.
My host told me that he spent a good deal of time in playing go, but in
the shooting season (October 15 to April 15) he made trips to the hills and
shot pheasants, hares, pigeons and deer. In the garden of his house two
gardeners were stretched along the branches of a pine tree, nimbly and
industriously picking out the shoots in order to get that bare appearance
which has no doubt puzzled many a Western student of Japanese tree
pictures. Each man's ladder—two lengths of bamboo with rungs tied on
with string—was carefully leant against a pole laid from the ground through
the branches. Many of the well-cared-for trees in the gardens and public
places of Japan pass the winter in neat wrappings of straw.
I visited a farm-house and found the farmer making baskets. When I was
examining the winnowing machine my companion reminded me smilingly
that when he was a boy he was warned never to turn the wheel of the
winnowing machine when the contrivance had no grain in it or a demon
might come out. There was a properly protected tank of liquid manure and a
well-roofed manure house. The family bath in an open shed was of a sort I
had not seen before, a kind of copper with a step up to it. Straw rope about
three-quarters of an inch in diameter was being made by the farmer's son, a
day's work being 40 yds. At another farm a woman showed me the working
of a rough loom with which she could in a day make a score of mats worth
in all 60 sen. From the farmer's house I went to the room of the young
men's association and looked over its library. I was impressed by the high
level of civilisation which this village seemed to exhibit in essentials.
When we continued our journey we saw two portable water wheels by
means of which water was being lifted into a paddy. Each wheel was
worked by a man who continually ascended the floats. The two men were
able to leave their wheels in turn for a rest, for a third man was stretched on
the ground in readiness for his spell. It seems that a man can keep on the
water tread-mill for an hour. The two wheels together were lifting an
amazing amount of water at a great rate. When the pumping is finished one
of these light water wheels is easily carried home on a man's shoulders.
Farther on I saw in a dry river bed a man sieving gravel in an ingenious
way. The trouble in sieving gravel is that if the sieve be filled to its capacity
the shaking soon becomes tiring. This man had a square sieve which when

lying on the ground was attached at one side by two ropes to a firmly fixed
tripod of poles. When the sieve was filled the labourer lifted it far enough
away from the tripod for it to be swinging on one side. Therefore when he
shook the sieve he sustained a portion only of its weight.
As we rode along I was told that the largest taxpayer in the county "does
not live in idleness but does many good works." The next largest taxpayer
"labours every day in the field." When I enquired as to the recreations of
moneyed men I was told "travelling, go and poem writing."
As we rode by the sea a trustworthy informant pointed out to me an islet
where he said the young men have the young women in common and "give
permission for them to marry." There is a house in which the girls live
together at a particular time and are then free from the attentions of the
youths. Children born are brought up in the families of the mothers but
there is some infanticide. In another little island off the coast there are only
two classes of people, the seniors and the juniors. Any person senior to any
other "may give him orders and call him by his second name." (The
surname comes first in Japanese names.)
Our route led us along the track of the new railway line which was
penetrating from Kagawa into Ehime. Not for the first time on my journeys
was I told of the corrupting influence exerted on the countryside by the
imported "navvies," if our Western name may be applied to men who in
figure and dress look so little like the big fellows who do the same kind of
work in England. Although these navvies were a rough lot and our ancient
basha (a kind of four-wheeled covered carriage) was a thing for mirth, we
met with no incivility as we picked our way among them for a mile or two.
I was a witness indeed of a creditable incident. A handcart full of earth was
being taken along the edge of the roadway, with one man in the shafts and
another pushing behind. Suddenly a wheel slipped over the side of the
roadway, the cart was canted on its axle, the man in the shafts received a
jolt and the cargo was shot out. Had our sort of navvies been concerned
there would have been words of heat and colour. The Japanese laughed.
The reference to our venerable basha reminds me of a well-known story
which was once told me by a Japanese as a specimen of Japanese humour. A
basha, I may explain, has rather the appearance of a vehicle which was
evolved by a Japanese of an economical turn after hearing a description of
an omnibus from a foreigner who spoke very little Japanese and had not

been home for forty years. The body of the vehicle is just high enough and
the seats just wide enough for Japanese. So the foreigner continually bumps
the roof, and when he is not bumping the roof he has much too narrow a
seat to sit on. Sometimes the basha has springs of a sort and sometimes it
has none. But springs would avail little on the rural roads by which many
basha travel. The only tolerable place for Mr. Foreigner in a basha is one of
the top corner seats behind the driver, for the traveller may there throw an
arm round one of the uprights which support the roof. If at an unusually
hard bump he should lose his hold he is saved from being cast on the floor
by the responsive bodies of his polite and sympathetic fellow-travellers who
are embedded between him and the door. The tale goes that a tourist who
was serving his term in a basha was perplexed to find that the passengers
were charged, some first-, some second-and some third-class fare. While he
clung to his upright and shook with every lurch of the conveyance this
problem of unequal fares obsessed him. It was like the persistent "punch-in-
the-presence-of-the-passengare." What possible advantage, he pondered,
could he as first class be getting over the second and the second class over
the third? At length at a steep part of the road the vehicle stopped. The
driver came round, opened the door, and bowing politely said: "Honourable
first-class passengers will graciously condescend to keep their seats.
Second-class passengers will be good enough to favour us by walking.
Third-class passengers will kindly come out and push." And push they did,
no doubt, kimonos rolled up thighwards, with good humour, sprightliness
and cheerful grunts, as is the way with willing workers in Japan.

FOOTNOTES:
[173] At Anjo agricultural experiment station I saw eighteen kinds of small threshing
machines at from 13 to 18 yen. There were husking machines of three sorts. A rice
thresher was equal to dealing with the crop of one tan, estimated at 2 koku 4 to, in three
hours.
[174] See Appendix XLVI.
[175] It is quite possible that the trees had also come into their positions artificially.
There are no more skilful tree movers than the Japanese.
[176] It has recently come into collision with the authorities. Another sect with Shinto
ideas was also started by a woman.
[177] See Appendix XLVII.

CHAPTER XXV

"SPECIAL TRIBES"

(EHIME)
A frank basis of reality.—Meredith
In the prefecture of Ehime our journey was still by basha or kuruma and
near the sea. The first man we talked with was a gunchō who said that
"more than half the villages contained a strong character who can lead." He
told us of one of the new religions which taught its adherents to do some
good deed secretly. The people who accepted this religion mended roads,
cleaned out ponds and made offerings at the graves of persons whose names
were forgotten. I think it was this man who used the phrase, "There is a
shortage of religions."
I had not before noticed wax trees. They are slighter than apple trees, but
often occupy about the same space as the old-fashioned standard apple. The
clusters of berries have some resemblance to elderberries and would turn
black if they were not picked green. [178] Occasionally we saw fine camphor
trees. Alas, owing to the high price of camphor, some beautiful specimens
near shrines, where they were as imposing as cryptomeria, had been
sacrificed.
I began to observe the dreadful destruction wrought in the early ear stage
of rice not by cold but by wind. The wind knocks the plants against one
another and the friction generates enough heat to arrest further
development. The crops affected in this way were grey in patches and
looked as if hot water had been sprayed over them. In one county the loss
was put as high as 90 per cent. Happily farmers generally sow several sorts
of rice. Therefore paddies come into ear at different times.
The heads of millet and the threshed grain of other upland crops were
drying on mats by the roadside, for in the areas where land is so much in
demand there is no other space available. Sesame, not unlike snapdragon

gone to seed, only stronger in build, was set against the houses. On the
growing crops on the uplands dead stalks and chopped straw were being
used as mulch.
I noticed that implements seemed always to be well housed and to be put
away clean. Handcarts, boats and the stacks of poles used in making
frameworks for drying rice were protected from the weather by being
thatched over.
We continued to see many white-clad pilgrims and everywhere touring
students, as often afoot as on bicycles. I noted from the registers at many
village offices that the number of young men who married before
performing their military service seemed to be decreasing. In one
community, where there were two priests, one Tendai and the other
Shingon, neither seemed to count for much. One was very poor, and
cultivated a small patch near his temple; the other had a little more than a
chō. The custom was for the farmers to present to their temple from 5 to 10
shō of rice from the harvest.
In connection with the question of improved implements I noticed that a
reasonably efficient winnowing machine in use by a comfortably-off tenant
was forty-nine years old—that is, that it dated back to the time of the
Shogun. The secondary industry of this farmer was dwarf-plant growing.
He had also a loom for cotton-cloth making. There were in his house, in
addition to a Buddhist shrine, two Shinto shrines. After leaving this man I
visited an ex-teacher who had lost his post at fifty, no doubt through being
unable to keep step with modern educational requirements. He had on his
wall the lithograph of Pestalozzi and the children which I saw in many
school-houses.
On taking the road again I was told that the local landlords had held a
meeting in view of the losses of tenants through wind. Most had agreed to
forgo rents and to help with artificial manure for next year. I found taro
being grown in paddies or under irrigation. Not only the tubers of the taro
but its finer stalks are eaten. I saw gourds cut into long lengths narrower
than apple rings and put out to dry. I also noticed orange trees a century old
which were still producing fruit. Boys were driving iron hoops—the native
hoop was of bamboo—and one of the hoop drivers wore a piece of red cloth
stitched on his shoulder, which indicated that he was head of his class. One
missed a dog bounding and barking after the hoop drivers. Sometimes at the

doors of houses I noticed dogs of the lap-dog type which one sees in
paintings or of the wolf type to which the native outdoor dog belongs. The
cats were as ugly as the dogs and no plumper or happier looking. When I
patted a dog or stroked a cat the act attracted attention.
We saw a good deal of hinoki (ground cypress), the wood of which is still
used at Shinto festivals for making fire by friction.
We were able to visit an Eta village or rather oaza. Whether the Eta are
largely the descendants of captives of an early era or of a low class of
people who on the introduction of Buddhism in the seventh or eighth
century were ostracised because of their association with animal eating,
animal slaughter, working in leather and grave digging is in dispute. No
doubt they have absorbed a certain number of fugitives from higher grades
of the population, broken samurai, ne'er-do-weels and criminals. The
situation as the foreigner discovers it is that all over Japan there are hamlets
of what are called "special tribes." In 1876, when distinctions between them
and Japanese generally were officially abolished, the total number was
given as about a million. Most of these peculiar people, perhaps three-
quarters of them, are known as Eta. But whether they are known as Eta or
Shuku, or by some other name, ordinary Japanese do not care to eat with
them, marry with them or even talk with them. In the past Eta have often
been prosperous, and many are prosperous to-day, but a large number are
still restricted to earning a living as butchers and skin and leather workers,
and grave diggers. The members of these "special tribes," believing
themselves to be despised without cause, usually make some effort to hide
the fact that they are Eta.
Shuku seem to be living principally in hamlets of a score or so of houses
in the vicinity of Osaka, Kyoto and Nara, and are often travelling players,
or, like some Eta, skilled in making tools and musical instruments. There
seems to be a half Shuku or intermarried class. Many prostitutes are said to
be Shuku or Eta. I was told that most of the girls in the prostitutes' houses
of Shimane prefecture are from "special tribes," and that they are "preferred
by the proprietors" because, as I was gravely informed, "they do not weary
of their profession and are therefore more acceptable to customers." As
prostitutes are frequently married by their patrons, it is believed that not a
few women from "special villages" are taken to wife without their origin
being known. Unwitting marriage with an Eta woman has long been a

common motif in fiction and folk story. Many members of the "special
tribes" go to Hokkaido and there pass into the general body of the
population. The folk of this class are "despised," I was told by a responsible
Japanese, "not so much for themselves as for what their fathers and
grandfathers did." The country people undoubtedly treat them more harshly
than the townspeople, but a man of the "special tribes" is often employed as
a watchman of fields or forests. I was warned that it was judicious to avoid
using the word Eta or Shuku in the presence of common people lest one
might be addressing by chance a member of the "special tribes."
Except that the houses of the village we were visiting looked possibly a
trifle more primitive than those of the non-Eta population outside the oaza,
I did not discern anything different from what I saw elsewhere. The people
were of the Shinshu sect; there was no Shinto shrine. At the public room I
noticed the gymnastic apparatus of the "fire defenders." The hamlet was
traditionally 300 years old and one family was still recognised as chief.
According to the constable, who eagerly imparted the information, the
crops were larger than those of neighbouring villages "because the people,
male and female, are always diligent."
The man who was brought forward as the representative of the village
was an ex-soldier and seemed a quiet, able and self-respecting but sad
human being. His house and holding were in excellent order. None of his
neighbours smiled on us. Some I thought went indoors needlessly; a few
came as near to glowering as can be expected in Japan. I got the impression
that the people were cared for but were conscious of being "hauden doon"
or kept at arm's length. [179]
Our next stop was for a rest in a fine garden, the effect of which was
spoilt in one place by a distressing life-size statue of the owner's father.
When we took to our kuruma again we passed through a village at the
approaches to which thick straw ropes such as are seen at shrines had been
stretched across the road. Charms were attached. The object was to keep off
an epidemic.
The indigo leaves drying on mats in front of some of the cottages were a
delight to the eye. There were also mats covered with cotton which looked
like fluffy cocoons. On the telegraph wires, the poles of which all over
Japan take short cuts through the paddies, swallows clustered as in England,
but it is to the South Seas, not to Africa, that the Japanese swallow migrates.