The foundations of Japan

I

I do not think that some of the factory proprietors are conscious that they are taking undue advantage of their employees. These men are just average persons at the ante-Shaftesbury stage of responsibility towards labour. ^[144] Their case is that the girls are pitifully poor and that the factories supply work at the ruling market rates for the work of the pitifully poor. Said one factory owner to me genially: "Peasant families are accustomed to work from daylight to dark. In the silk-worm feeding season they have almost no time for sleep. Peasant people are trained to long hours. Lazy people might suffer from the long hours of the factory, but the factory girls are not lazy."

It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is all the difference between a long day at the varied work of a farm, even in the trying silk-worm season, and a long day, for nine or ten months on end, sitting still, with the briefest intervals for food, in the din and heat of a factory. Such a life must be debilitating. When it is added that in most factories, in the short period between supper and sleep, and again during the night, the girls are closely crowded, no further explanation is wanted of the origin of the tuberculosis which is so prevalent in the villages which supply factory labour. ^[145] There is no question that in the scanty moments the girls do have for an airing most of them are immured within the compounds of their factories. A large proportion of the many thousands of factory girls ^[146] who are to be mothers of a new generation in the villages are passing years of their lives in conditions which are bad for them physically and morally. It must not be forgotten that very many of the girls go to the factories before they are fully grown. On the question of morality, evidence from disinterested quarters left no doubt on my mind that the morale of the girls was lowered by factory life. The Lancashire factory girl goes home every evening and she has her Saturday afternoon and her Sunday, her church or chapel, her societies and clubs, her amusements and her sweetheart. Her Japanese sister has none of this natural life and she has infinitely worse conditions of labour.

It is only fair to remember, however, that the Japanese factory girl comes from a distance. She has no relatives or friends in the town in which she is working. But the plea that she would get into trouble if she were allowed her liberty without control of any sort does not excuse her present treatment. If the factories offered decent conditions of life not a few of the companies would get at their doors most of the labour they need and many of the girls would live at home. If the factories insist on having cheap rural labour then they should do their duty by it. The girls should have reasonable working hours, proper sleeping accommodation and proper opportunities inside and outside the factories for recreation and moral and mental improvement. It is idle to suggest that fair treatment of this sort is impossible. It is perfectly possible.

The factory proprietors are no worse than many other people intent on money making. But the silk industry, as I saw it, was exploiting, consciously or unconsciously, not only the poverty of its girl employees but their strength, morality, deftness ^[147] and remarkable school training in earnestness and obedience. Several times I heard the unenlightened argument that, if there were a certain sacrifice of health and well-being, a rapidly increasing population made the sacrifice possible; that, as silk was the most valuable product in Japan, and it was imperative for the development and security of the Empire that its economic position should be strengthened, the sacrifice must be made. Nothing need be said of such a hopelessly out-of-date and nationally indefensible attitude except this: that it is doubtful whether any considerable proportion of the people connected with the silk industry have felt themselves specially charged with a mission to strengthen the economic condition of their country. They have simply availed themselves of a favourable opportunity to make money. That opportunity was presented by the cheap labour available in farmers' daughters unprotected by effective trade unions, by properly administered factory laws or by public opinion.

II^[148]

The enterprise, the efficiency and the profits shown by the sericultural industry have been remarkable, and not a few of the capitalists connected with it are personally public-spirited. But many well-wishers of Japan, native-born and foreign, cannot help wondering what is the real as compared with the seeming return of the industry to a nation the strength of which is in its reservoir of rustic health and willingness. It is significant of the extent to which the factories are working with cheap labour that, in a country in which there are more men than women, ^[149] there was in about 20,000 factories 58 per cent. of female labour. If I stress the fact of female employment it is because in Japan nearly every woman eventually marries. Enfeebled women must therefore hand on enfeeblement to the next generation.^[150]

The Japanese, in their present factory system, as in other developments, insist on making for themselves all the mistakes that we have made and are now ashamed of. In judging the Japanese let us remember that all our industrial exploitation of women ^[151] was not, as we like to believe, an affair as far off as the opening nineteenth century. I do not forget as a young man filling a newspaper poster with the title of an article which recounted from my own observation the woes of women chain makers who, with bared breasts and their infants sprawling in the small coals, slaved in domestic smithies for a pittance. And as I write it is announced that the head of the United States Steel Corporation says that "there is no necessity for trade unions," which are, in his opinion, "inimical to the best interests of the employers and the public." That is precisely the view of most Japanese factory proprietaries.

The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have been drawn (1) by the enactment that "those who, with the object of causing a strike, seduce or incite others" shall be sentenced to imprisonment from one to six months with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen; (2) by the power given to the police (a) to detain suspected persons for a succession of twenty-four hour periods, and (b) summarily to close public meetings, and (3) by the franchise being so narrow that few trade unionists have votes. During the six years of the War there were as many as 141,000 strikers, but a not uncommon method of these workers was merely to absent themselves from work, to refrain from working while in the factory, or to "ca' canny." Nevertheless 633 of them were arrested. When I attended in Tokyo a gathering of members of the leading labour organisation in Japan it was discreetly named Yu-ai-kai (Friend-Love-Society, i.e. Friendly Society). Now it is boldly called the Confederation of Japanese Labour. A Socialist League^[152] and several labour publications exist. Workers assemble to see moving pictures of labour demonstrations, and a labour meeting has defied the police in attendance by singing the whole of the "Song of Revolution." But crippled as the unions are under the law against strikes and by the poverty of the workers, they find it difficult to attain the financial strength necessary for effective action. Many workers are trade unionists when they are striking but their trade unionism lapses when the strike is over, for then the unions seem to have small reason for existing. The head of the Federation of Labour lately announced that the number of trade unionists was only 100,000, or half what it was during the recent big strikes and it is doubtful whether, even including the 7,000 members of the Seamen's Union, there are in Japan more than 50,000 contributing members of the different unions. But this 50,000 may be regarded as staunch.

The poverty-stricken unions certainly afford no real protection to the girl workers, who form indeed a very small proportion of their members. And the Factory Law does little for them. A Japanese friend who knows the labour situation well writes to me:

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.

FROM TOKYO TO THE NORTH BY THE WEST COAST

CHAPTER XX

"THE GARDEN WHERE VIRTUES ARE CULTIVATED"

(FUKUSHIMA AND YAMAGATA)

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.

CHAPTER XXI

THE "TANOMOSHI"

(YAMAGATA)

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:

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:

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: