The foundations of Japan

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.

BACK AGAIN BY THE EAST COAST

CHAPTER XXII

"BON" SONGS AND THE SILENT PRIEST

(YAMAGATA, AKITA, ^[160] AOMORI, IWATE, MIYAGI, FUKUSHIMA AND IBARAKI)

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:

Here are three others:

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:

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.

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.

CHAPTER XXIII

A MIDNIGHT TALK

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.

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

CHAPTER XXIV

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA" (TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KAGAWA)

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.