The Foundations of Japan Part 14

"Be serious"!--graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here, as usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers all sorts of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the sufficiency of reprimands, of "standing out" and of detention after school hours was unshaken.

A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen, a large sum in j.a.pan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap.

It was to be used chiefly for the gymnastics which are steadily adding to the stature of the j.a.panese people. At one end there was an opening, about 20 ft. across and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable place for the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which are solemnly exposed to view on Imperial birthdays[117].

Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in education, one of the reasons for the building of new schools and adding to old ones is to be found in the recent extension of the period of compulsory attendance. It used to be from six to ten years of age; it is now from six to twelve. The visitor to j.a.pan usually under-estimates the ages of children because they are so small.

j.a.panese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.

In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were, I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch schools, 3 secondary schools and 17 winter schools. Within the same area there were 46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125 Shinto shrines with 11 priests.

The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of 71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with. When charges were not proceeded with it was either because rest.i.tution had been made or the chief constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the offender with a reprimand. When transgressors are dismissed with a reprimand an eye is kept on them for a year. As the j.a.panese are in considerable awe of their police, I have no doubt that, as was explained to me, those who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are released from custody with a warning, may "tremble and correct their conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions were given at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and children.

The fact that the county was in a remote part of j.a.pan may be held, perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was a.s.sured, only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they could not answer for the chast.i.ty of any young men before marriage or of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives.

Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are vitiated by the fact that in j.a.pan children are recorded as illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their otherwise respectable unions.[118]

In the county in which I was travelling I was a.s.sured that half the still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.

The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival.

One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted William Poel. Formerly these plays were given by the local youths; now professional actors are employed. The different acts of the historical dramas which were performed were divided into half a dozen scenes, and when one of these scenes had been enacted the stage was wheeled farther along the street. At the conclusion of each scene some three dozen small boys, all wearing the white-and-black speckled cotton kimono and German caps which are the common wear of lads throughout j.a.pan, would swarm up on the stage, and, with fans waved downwards, would yell at the pitch of their voices an ancient jingle, which seemed to signify "Push, push, push and go on!" This was addressed to a score or so of young men who with loud shouts hauled the heavy stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the four moving theatres went on simultaneously and sometimes the cars pa.s.sed one another. The performances were given on the eve and on the day and through the night of the festival. The acting was amazingly good, considering the July heat and the cramped conditions in which the actors worked. Happy boys sat at the back of the scenes fanning the players. Our kindly and voluble landlady was not satisfied with the number of times the stages stopped before her inn. She loudly threatened the youths who were dragging them that she would reclaim some properties she had lent and tell her dead husband of their ingrat.i.tude!

At one of the booths which had been opened for the festival by a strolling company there were women actors, contrary to the convention of the j.a.panese stage on which men enact female roles and in doing so use a special falsetto. Some of these actresses performed men's parts.

At every performance in a j.a.panese theatre, as I have already mentioned, a policeman is provided with a chair on a special platform, or in an otherwise favourable position, so that he can view and if necessary censor what is going on. The constable at this particular play was kind enough to offer me his seat. The rest of the audience was content with the floor. The poor little company of players brought to their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they had to do everything in the rudest way. They were in no way embarra.s.sed by the attendants frequently tr.i.m.m.i.n.g the inferior oil lamps on the stage. A little girl on the floor, entranced by the performance on the stage, or curious about some detail of it, ran forward and laid her chin on the boards and studied the actors at leisure. The folk in the front row of the gallery dangled their naked legs for coolness.

One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West to identify the people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre until the play was over. At a j.a.panese playhouse, however, a portion of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms of their hands.

From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They charged 2 sen.

We were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a snake, an unhappy bear, three doleful monkeys and some stuffed animals which may or may not have had in life an uncommon number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture by a young and pretty show-woman who insisted that two marmots in her lap were the offspring of a girl. "Look," she cried, "at two sisters, the daughters of one mother. See their hands!" And she held up their paws.

She rounded off the fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed milk.

As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on their knees.

We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary, perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of _geta_," said our landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to attend without taking a bath in the early morning."[119]

At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the annual function had a.s.sembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine.

Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and _sake_. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a strip of cloth before his mouth and nose[120] and addressed the chief deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the shrine read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed.

His thin voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a child's cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.

After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large room of the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial _sake_ to which rice had been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried fish. Not so long ago the presence of a foreigner would have been unwelcome at such a ceremony as we had witnessed: the fear of "contagion of foreigners" extended even to people from another prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.

Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight days. He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been cooked at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch other persons, particularly women; he had bathed several times daily in cold water and he had said many prayers. The heads of the household in the community whose turn it was to attend at the shrine were also supposed to have observed some of the same taboos. Only those persons might make offerings at the shrine whose fathers and mothers were living.[121] Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and _sake_ at the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.

In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for moral or non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then came home training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was too often indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One person well qualified to express an opinion said that a "wise and benevolent" chief constable could exercise a good moral influence.

Others believed in public opinion. A policeman said, "The first thing is for people to have food and clothes; without such primary satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is not without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a school receive about the same salary. a.s.sistant teachers and plain constables are also on an equality. I found the salary of the administrative head of one county, the _guncho_, to be only 2,000 yen a year.

I was told that in the prefecture we were pa.s.sing through there were no fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a capital of two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a turnover of three million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a temperature for the rice or to floods which drown the crop, co-operation had proved its value. The prefectures north of Tokyo facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine, for near Sendai the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I was told that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a hundred." These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who suffered from lack of suitable nourishment." Every year the development of railway and steam communications makes easier the task of relieving famine sufferers.[122] In the old days people were often found dead who had money but were unable to get food for it. As j.a.pan is a long island with varying climates there is never general scarcity.

FOOTNOTES:

[114] For statistics of railways, see Appendix x.x.xV.

[115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of j.a.pan is officially reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.; villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not mean daily attendance.

[116] Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been raised to 26, 16 and 15 yen per month, according to grade.

[117] Only last year (1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an endeavour to save the Emperor's portrait from his burning school.

[118] See Appendix x.x.xVI.

[119] A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and evening in most j.a.panese hotels. In the morning people are content merely with rinsing their hands and face.

[120] In addressing a superior, many j.a.panese still draw in their breath from time to time audibly.

[121] That is, persons who might be considered not to have failed in their filial duties.

[122] After the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons were in receipt of famine relief.

CHAPTER XIII

THE DWELLERS IN THE HILLS (f.u.kUSHIMA)

I didn't visit this place in the hope of seeing fine prospects--my study is man.--BORROW

Before I left the town I had a chat with a landowner who turned his tenants' rent rice into _sake_. He was of the fifth generation of brewers. He said that in his childhood drunken men often lay about the street; now, he said, drunken men were only to be seen on festival days.

There had been a remarkable development in the trade in flavoured aerated waters, "lemonade" and "cider champagne" chiefly. I found these beverages on sale in the remotest places, for the j.a.panese have the knack of tying a number of bottles together with rope, which makes them easily transportable. The new lager beers, which are advertised everywhere, have also affected the consumption of _sake_.[123] _Sake_ is usually compared with sherry. It is drunk mulled. At a banquet, lasting five or six hours or longer, a man "strong in _sake_" may conceivably drink ten _go_ (a _go_ is about one-third of a pint) before achieving drunkenness, but most people would be affected by three _go_. Some of the topers who boast of the quant.i.ty of _sake_ they can consume--I have heard of men declaring that they could drink twenty _go_--are cheated late in the evening by the waiting-maids. The little _sake_ bottles are opaque, and it is easy to remove them for refilling before they are quite empty.

The brewer, who was a firm adherent of the Jishu sect of Buddhists, was accustomed to burn incense with his family at the domestic shrine every morning. But this was not the habit of all the adherents of his denomination. As to the moral advancement of the neighbourhood, his grandfather "tried very earnestly to improve the district by means of religion, but without result." He himself attached most value to education and after that to young men's a.s.sociations.

As we left the town we pa.s.sed a "woman priest" who was walking to Nikko, eighty miles away. Portraits of dead people, entrusted to her by their relatives for conveyance to distant shrines, were hung round her body.

As the route became more and more hilly I realised how accurate is that representation of hills in j.a.panese art which seems odd before one has been in j.a.pan: the landscape stands out as if seen in a flash of lightning.

Three things by the way were arresting: the number of shrines, mostly dedicated to the fox G.o.d; the rice suspended round the farm buildings or drying on racks; and the ma.s.ses of evening primroses, called in j.a.pan "moon-seeing flowers."

A feature of every village was one or more barred wooden sheds containing fire-extinguishing apparatus, often provided and worked by the young men's a.s.sociation. Sometimes a piece of ground was described to me as "the training ground of the fire defenders." The night patrols of the village were young fellows chosen in turn by the constable from the fire-prevention parties, made up by the youths of the village. There stood up in every village a high perpendicular ladder with a bell or wooden clapper at the top to give the alarm. The emblem of the fire brigade, a pole with white paper streamers attached, was sometimes distinguished by a yellow paper streamer awarded by the prefecture.

On a sweltering July day it was difficult to realise that the villages we pa.s.sed through, now half hidden in foliage, might be under 7 ft. of snow in winter. In travelling in this hillier region one has an extra _kurumaya_, who pushes behind or acts as brakeman.

At the "place of the seven peaks" we found a stone dedicated to the worship of the stars which form the Plough. Again and again I noticed shrines which had before them two tall trees, one larger than the other, called "man and wife." It was explained to me that "there cannot be a more sacred place than where husband and wife stand together." A small tract of cryptomeria on the lower slopes of a hill belonged to the school. The children had planted it in honour of the marriage of the Emperor when he was Crown Prince.

Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often a.s.sumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly be made.

On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by receiving the bows of small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours to perform their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are taught at school to bow to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter villages of Holland the stranger also received the bows of young people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs, and he quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on the smile of your mother-in-law."