The foundations of Japan

IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE ^[135]

CHAPTER XVI

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

(SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

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:

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.

CHAPTER XVII

THE BIRTH, BRIDAL AND DEATH OF THE SILK-WORM

(NAGANO)

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."

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.

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."

CHAPTER XVIII

"GIRL COLLECTORS" AND FACTORIES

(NAGANO AND YAMANASHI)

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.

CHAPTER XIX

"FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE