The Foundations of Japan Part 10

[63] For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.

[64] A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.

[65] The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed in Appendix XVII.

[66] See Appendix XVIII.

[67] In j.a.panese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a tract of land which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for the purposes of habitation. Sometimes it is called prairie, but this is not always correct as it is very often a barren waste, a tract of volcanic ash, or an area producing bamboo gra.s.s. Some of this land, however, could be cultivated after proper irrigation, etc. In this note, plains is employed in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Of such plains there are several. The plain in which Tokyo is situated is 82,000 acres in extent. The traveller from Kobe to Tokyo pa.s.ses through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka stand. It is said to feed 2-1/2 million people. Four other plains are reputed to feed 7-1/2 million.

[68] Rivers supply about 65 per cent. of the paddy water and reservoirs about 21 per cent. The remainder has to be got from other sources.

[69] An acreage of a _tan_ is aimed at, but it is frequently larger; it may even be 4 _tan_ (an acre). The cost ranges from about 8 yen to 50 yen per _tan_. The average increase in yield alter adjustment is about 15 per cent., to which must be added the yield of the new land obtained, say 3 per cent. of the area adjusted. The consent of half the owners is required for adjustment.

[70] Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid informed her that the house was unlucky because a certain necessary apartment faced the wrong point of the compa.s.s.

[71] In the whole of j.a.pan by 1919 two million and a half acres had been adjusted or were in course of adjustment.

[72] The rent is usually 57 per cent. of the rice harvest in the paddies and 44 per cent. (in cash or kind) of the crops on the non-paddy land. Any crop raised in the paddies between the harvesting of one rice crop and the planting out of the next belongs to the farmer. (All taxes and rates are paid by the landlord, and amount to from 30 to 33 per cent. of the rent.) The area under paddy and the area of upland under cultivation are almost equal.

[73] See Appendix XIX.

[74] See Appendix XX.

[75] In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.

[76] See Appendix XXI.

[77] See Appendix XXII.

[78] The harvest extends from mid-September in the north of j.a.pan to the end of October or beginning of November in the south. The harvest is taken early in the north for fear of frost.

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

CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE G.o.dS AND THE NATION

I thank whatever G.o.ds there be....--HENLEY

I

How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it receives from the farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk? A necessary part of the grain is lost. No wonder that sensible people in j.a.pan and the West demand the grey unpolished rice. In j.a.pan some enterprising person has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing process. It does not look appetising. An easier thing would be to leave some of the coating on the rice. One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread:

"They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter. Thus they sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging eye, and the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live."

Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the j.a.panese people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If they have anything to eat between meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes--- to the foreigner's taste a loathly, half-cooked compost of rice flour or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid underdone m.u.f.fin. We in the West have bread at every meal as the j.a.panese have rice, but we eat our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and bread-and-b.u.t.ter; we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.

Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set before each kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in j.a.pan there is one which is empty. This is the rice bowl. When the meal begins--or in the case of an elaborate dinner at the rice course--the maid brings in a large covered wooden copper-bound or bra.s.s-bound tub or round lacquered box of hot rice. This rice she serves with a big wooden spoon, the only spoon ever seen at a j.a.panese meal. A man may have three helpings or four in a bowl about as big as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is that, though other dishes may be pecked at, the rice in one's bowl must be finished. The usage on this point may have originated in the feeling that it was almost impious to waste the staple food of the country. It is not difficult to pick up the last rice grains with the wooden _hashi_ (chopsticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft rice is served to invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty the custom is to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then to drink this, so getting rid of the odd grains. It is through omitting to drink in this way that foreigners get indigestion when at a j.a.panese meal they eat a lot of rice.

At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that people can come with appet.i.te to several bowls of plain rice three times a day.[80] But good rice does seem to have something of the property of oatmeal, the property of a continual tastiness. Further, the rice eater picks up now and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle which may have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The nutrition gained at a j.a.panese meal is largely in soups in which the bean preparations, _tofu_ and _miso_, and occasionally eggs, are used.

And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in j.a.pan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish--fresh, dried and salted, sh.e.l.l-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all sorts of ingenious treatment--is consumed by almost everybody.

The j.a.panese are in no doubt that the foreign rice which is brought into the country to supplement the home supply is inferior to their own.[81] Inferior means that they prefer the flavour of their own rice, just as most Scots prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in Scotland.

II

In the year of the Coronation--it took place three years after the Emperor's accession--two prefectures had the honour of being chosen to produce the rice to be placed before G.o.ds, Emperor and dignitaries at Kyoto. The work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a witness of the rites performed at the planting of the rice in one of the prefectures. Plots had been prepared with enormous care. Along the top of the special fencing were the Shinto straw bands and paper streamers. A small shrine had been built to overlook the plots. Even the instruments of the little meteorological station near, by which the management of the crop would be guided, were surrounded by straw bands and streamers--religion protecting science. The mattocks and other implements which had been used in the preparation of the paddy or were to be used in getting in the crops and in cultivating, harvesting, threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring which had manured the plot had been "specially selected and blessed."

Further, there was a special bath-house where the young men and women who were to plant the rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.

We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or thirty thousand people who were gathering to witness the ceremony. A covered platform had been built in front of the rice field shrine, and on either side were large roofed-in s.p.a.ces for some scores of Shinto priests and the favoured spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried us magically away from a j.a.pan of frock coats to j.a.pan of a thousand, it may be two thousand years ago. Between the wail of ancient wood and wind instruments and the cinema operators who missed nothing external and some bored top-hatted spectators who furtively puffed a cigarette before the ceremony came to an end,[82] what a gulf! Platter after platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes vegetables, sometimes fruit, sometimes a big fish, was pa.s.sed by one priest to another in the sunlight until all the offerings were reverently placed by a special dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, undecorated but exquisitely proportioned altars which are an artistic glory of Shintoism. The shrine was wholly open on the side of the rice field, and the high priest was in full view as he stood before the altar with bowed head and folded hands, his robe caught by the breeze, and delivered in a loud voice his zealous invocation. His words were stressed not only by an acolyte who tw.a.n.ged the strings of a venerable harp, but by the song of a lark which rose with the first strains of the harpist. The purpose of the ceremony was to call down the G.o.ds and to gain their blessing for the crop and the new reign. At the moment of highest solemnity the thousands a.s.sembled bowed their heads: the G.o.ds were deigning to descend and accept the offering. More ancient music, more ceremonial, and the G.o.ds having been called upon to return to high heaven, the laden platters were gravely removed, and the rice planting in the adjoining field began. To the sound of drum the young men and women in special costumes strode through the wicket into the mud of the paddies, and, under the supervision of the director of the prefectural agricultural experiment station in a silk hat, planted out the tufts of rice seedlings in scrupulously measured rows.

I asked a distinguished j.a.panese who was standing near me--he is a Christian--how many of the educated people in the a.s.sembly believed that the G.o.ds had descended. His answer was, "I may not believe that the G.o.ds of a truth descended, but I find something beautiful in calling on the G.o.ds with a harp of Old j.a.pan, and I do believe that our humble and natural offering to-day may be acceptable to whatever G.o.ds there may be and that it is a worthy exercise for us to undertake and may also be conducive to a good harvest." My friend attempted the following rough rendering of a song which had been sung by the rice planters before the shrine:

This day the beginning of sowing at an auspicious time-- Long life to the rice!

May it be a token of the years of the Reign, The seed of peace for the world-- May it start from this consecrated field!

One in heart we see to it that our seedlings are well matched.

Mikawa's[83] millennium and the millennium of rice.

Let us pray for an abundant shooting.

Now let us plant the seedlings straight; Pleasing to the G.o.ds are the ways that are not crooked.

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

III[84]

The production of rice has increased more quickly than the growth of the population. If we consider, along with the advance in population, the crops of the years 1882 and 1913, which were held to be average, and, in order to be as up-to-date as possible, the normal annual yield[85] of the five-years period 1912-18, we find that, as between 1882 and 1913, the population increased 45 per cent. and rice production increased 63 per cent., while as between 1882 and the normal annual yield period of 1912-18, the population increased 55 per cent, and the crop 75 per cent.[86]

This is a noteworthy fact. But equally noteworthy is the fact that in the 1882-1913 period, in which the production of rice increased 63 per cent. and the population only 45 per cent., the price of rice did not fall. On the contrary it rose. This was due largely[87] to the fact that people had begun to eat rice who had not before been able to afford it. Many people who grow rice eat, as has been noted, barley or barley mixed with a little rice. From the 'eighties onwards more and more rice was eaten.[88]

The reason was that, what with the cash obtained from coc.o.o.ns through the enormous development of sericulture,[89] what with the money received by the girls who had gone to the factories, what with the growth of big cities causing an increased demand for vegetables, eggs and especially fruit at good prices, what with the use of better seed and more artificial manure, what with agricultural co-operation, paddy-field adjustment and the taking-in of new land, the farmer, in spite of increased taxation,[90] was doing better, or at any rate was minded to live better. In the thirty-years period 1882-1913, his crop increased 63 per cent. although his area under cultivation increased by only 17 per cent. In the following pages we shall hear more of the methods by which the farmer's receipts have been increased. We shall hear also, alas! of the ways in which his expenditure has increased.

He is indeed in a trying situation. Everything depends on his character and education and on the influences, social and political, moral and religious, under which he lives. That is why this book, in devoting itself to an examination of the foundations of an agricultural country, is concerned with rural sociology rather than with the technique of crops and cropping.

The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations in price.[91] It is also the problem of the landlord, for rents are fixed not at so much money but at so many _koku_ of rice. This means that on rent day the farmer must pay the same amount of rice whether his crop has been good or bad. It also means that when the price of rice rises the amount of rent is automatically raised. If rent were paid, not in so many _koku_ of rice but in money at a fixed amount, the landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in an easier position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and he would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice.

The counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build storehouses and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, marketing each month about the same amount if possible. The Government Granary plan came into force in 1921, some 3 million _koku_ of unpolished rice being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen. In the year before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per _koku_ (5 bushels). The previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen--had risen at times to 23 yen--an unheard-of price. Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen.[92] In the year in which the War broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11 yen. By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.

The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915 (that is, 57,006,541 _koku_ and 55,924,590 _koku_ as compared with the 50,255,000 _koku_ of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which may be taken as the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of from 4 to 6 million _koku_ over and above the needs of the country, which are roughly estimated at 1 _koku_ per head including infants and the old and feeble. In 1916 it was established, when account was taken of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like 6 or 7 million _koku_. Therefore a fall in price took place. The extent to which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV. This Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I entered into the question of the correctness of rice statistics.

Roughly, the statistics show a production 15 per cent. less than the actual crops. Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent. The practice has its origin in the old taxation system.

The notes for the account of rural life in j.a.pan which will be found in this book were chiefly made in the second and third years of the War. Since that time there has been an enormous rise in the price of everything. For a time the farmers prospered as they had prospered in the high rice-price years, 1912-13.[93] The high prices of all grain as well as the fabulous price of raw silk (due to increased export to America and to increased home consumption) were a great advantage.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP THE PRICE OF RICE FROM RISING]

Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general slump and finally the commercial and industrial crash. Raw silk fell nearly to one-third of its top price, and farmers had to sell coc.o.o.ns under the cost of production. Everywhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in the factories were discharged in droves. A large proportion of these unfortunates returned to their villages to dispel some rural dreams of urban Eldorado.