The Foundations of Japan Part 24

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 j.a.pan all religions have been turned into sentiment or aestheticism."

C. (_after speaking appreciatively of the ideas animating many j.a.panese Christians_): "All the same I do not feel quite safe about trusting the future of j.a.pan to those people."

D. "We j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan_): "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 cla.s.ses. The Quakers ought to have begun with the intellectual cla.s.ses, for every movement in j.a.pan is from the top."

F. "You will notice what a number of the G.o.ds of j.a.pan are deified men. There is a good side to the earth earthy, but many j.a.panese seem unable to worship anything higher than human beings. The readiest key to the religious feeling of the j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese types. The refined type is surely attractive. If many j.a.panese noses seem to be too short, foreigners' noses seem to us to be too long. The results of intermarriage between Western people and j.a.panese 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 cla.s.ses 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 j.a.pan, 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 G.o.ds. Every morning my mother serves before her shrine of Buddha but she does not believe our Buddha to be G.o.d. 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 superst.i.tion; 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 j.a.panese are noted down as they were communicated to me.

FOOTNOTES:

[169] "The strength that is given at such times arises not from ignoring loss or persuading oneself that the thing is not that _is_, but from the resolute setting of the face to the East and the taking of one step forwards. Anything that detaches one, that makes one turn from the past and look simply at what one has to do, brings with it new strength and new intensity of interest."--HALDANE.

[170] Teacher, instructor, master, or a polite way of saying "You"--the usual t.i.tle by which I was addressed.

[171] Constance Naden.

[172] "The _Phaedo_ was bought for us by the death of Socrates."--QUILLER COUCH.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE BLIND HEADMAN AND HIS COLLECTING-BAG. p. 229]

[Ill.u.s.tration: MR. YANAGHITA IN HIS CORONATION CEREMONY ROBES. p. xv]

[Ill.u.s.tration: PORTABLE APPARATUS FOR RAISING WATER. p. 216]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLAGE SCHOOL WITH PORTRAIT OF FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE.

p. 127]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RIVER-BEDS IN THE SUMMER From which may be imagined the power of the water in time of flood. p. 92]

THE ISLAND OF SHIKOKU

CHAPTER XXIV

LANDLORDS, PRIESTS AND "BASHA"

(TOKUSHIMA, KOCHI AND KAGAWA)

The most capital article, the character of the inhabitants.--TYTLER

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 _cho_ was allotted to each house. It will be seen how much larger is this area--5 _cho_ is 12-1/2 acres--than the average j.a.panese 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 quant.i.ties 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 cla.s.s, had abandoned the use of the single square sail which one sees in j.a.panese prints; the little vessels had been re-rigged in Western fashion. But many superst.i.tions 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 pa.s.sengers in these words, "Somebody here must be unclean; if so, please tell me openly." The t.i.tle 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 j.a.pan. (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. pa.s.senger 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 paG.o.da-like towers so familiar in j.a.panese 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 paG.o.das 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 j.a.panese gardening. An occasional electric light amid the trees gave an effect in the evening in which j.a.panese 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 j.a.pan 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 prost.i.tutes, 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 cla.s.s."

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."