The Foundations of Japan Part 31

I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at the _Bon_ season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a j.a.panese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist shrine--where the name plates of the dead for several generations are treasured--cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that lugubriousness which Western people commonly a.s.sociate with what is sacred. The j.a.panese conception of reverence is somewhat different from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran down his face.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FARMER'S WIFE]

When the _Bon_ season ended on the fourteenth all the flowers and decorations of the domestic shrines were taken early in the morning to the bridge over the diminished river and flung down. The idea is perhaps that they are carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact there was so little water that almost everything flung in from the bridge remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.) When the flowers and decorations had been cast from the bridge the people went off to worship at the graves. Many coloured streamers of paper, written on by the priest, were flying there.

The _Bon_ dances took place five nights running in the open s.p.a.ce between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from _Ruddigore_ came to mind, "This is one of our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain animation; but even then the movement, the song and the whole scheme of the dance seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that a number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring, which got larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands.

The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms--the girls had fans in their hands--and a simple att.i.tudinising. The lads all clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans.

The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine _obi_ and white ap.r.o.ns. The music was dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The only word I can think of which approximately describes what I heard, but it seems harsh, is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and then the girls responded with a slightly more musical repet.i.tion of the same sounds. For all the notice the boys appeared to take of the girls they might not have been present. The lads and la.s.ses were no doubt fully conscious, however, of each other's presence. The dancing took place on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and, owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was often dimly lit.

To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say that the dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight o'clock and went on till midnight. "They would not be fit for their work next day if they danced later," a sober-minded adult explained. This was only one suggestion among many that the dance has been devitalised under the respectabilising influence of the policeman and village elders who had forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it did not seem to matter very much whether the dance, as it is now, continues or not. Occasionally one had an impression that it had once been a folk dance of vigour and significance. But the present-day performance might have been conceived and presented by a P.S.A. All this is true when the dance is contrasted with an English West-country dance or a dance in Scotland at Hallowe'en. But it must be remembered that the _Bon_ dance during the first nights is in the nature of a lament for the dead. There is something haunting in the strange little refrain, though it is difficult to hum or whistle it. Perhaps the whole festival is too intimately racial to be fully understood by a stranger. By the end of the festival, on the night of merrymaking in honour of the village guardian spirit, things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently had _sake_ and even the girls had lost their demureness.

[Ill.u.s.tration: MOTHER AND CHILD]

After the Buddhist _Bon_ season was over it was the turn of Shinto, and the village children were paraded before the shrine. A number of Shinto priests in the neighbourhood took a leading part in making the customary offerings and the local priest read a longish address to the guardian spirit of the village. Respectful correctness rather than devoutness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed to apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local priest was reverential. The ceremonies of the day evidently meant a great deal to him. The children paid a well-drilled attention. They also sang the national anthem and a special song for the day under the leadership of the school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which sounded as portable harmoniums usually sound. The whole proceedings wore a semi-official look.

Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which we were invited later in the day. A special little platform had been put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the compet.i.tors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a "No" player, proclaimed the names and styles--it seems that the wrestlers have a fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers--in a fashion which recalled the tournament. There was also another personage, with a Dan Leno-like face and an extraordinary gift of contorting his legs, who played the buffoon, and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who remained unmoved while the audience laughed. It was evidently the right thing for the prizes--they were awarded at the end of each bout--to be presented as comically as possible; and some of the Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully to the groundlings at the Globe were enacted as if neither s.p.a.ce nor time intervened between us and the Elizabethans.

The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are accustomed to, but they were none the less exciting. The result was invariably in some doubt and often entirely unexpected. The usual rule was that he who threw his man twice was the winner. In some events, immediately a wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants rushed at the victor, one after the other, without allowing him time even to straighten his back. Some of the compet.i.tors were poorly developed but the lankiest and skinniest were often excellent wrestlers. At an interval in the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to wrestlers and spectators. I wanted to make some little acknowledgment of the kindness of the young men's a.s.sociation in providing us with our little platform, and it was suggested that autographed fans at about a penny three-farthings apiece for about forty wrestlers would be acceptable. This gift was announced on a long streamer. The funny man of the ring also made a speech of welcome. I may add that the young men's a.s.sociation had fitted up on the way to the scene of the wrestling a number of special lanterns which bore efforts in English by a student home for the holidays.

I was told that the people of the village were "honest, independent and earnest," and I am disposed to think that this may be true of most of them. As to honesty, we had the satisfaction of living without any thought of _dorobo_ (robbers). It is a great comfort to be able at night to leave open most of the _shoji_ and not to have to pull out the _amado_ (wooden shutters) from their case. The nature of our possessions was well known not only in the village but throughout the district, for there was seldom a day on which a knot of grown-ups or children did not come to peer into our rooms. The inspection was accompanied by many polite bows and friendly smiles. On a festival day the crowd occasionally reached about fifty.

There were formerly several teahouses in the village, but under the influence of the young men's a.s.sociation all houses of entertainment but two had been closed. These two had become "inns." In one of these the girl attendant was the proprietor's daughter; in the other there was a solitary waitress. One of the abolished teahouses had taken itself two miles away, where possibly it still had visitors. There seemed to be two public baths in the village, both belonging to private persons. The charge was 1 sen for adults and 5 _rin_ for children. At one of the baths I noticed separate doors for men and women; in the bath itself the division between the s.e.xes was about two feet high.

The smallest subdivision of the village is called _k.u.mi_ or company.

Each of these has a kind of manager who is elected on a limited suffrage. The managers of the _k.u.mi_, it was explained, are "like diplomatists if something is wanted against another village." The _k.u.mi_ also seems to have some corporate life. There is once a month a semi-social, semi-religious meeting at each member's house in turn.

The persons who attend lay before the house shrine 3 or 5 sen each or a small quant.i.ty of rice for the feast. The master of the house provides the sauce or pickles. I heard also of a kind of _ko_ called _mujin_, a word which has also the meaning of "inexhaustible." By such agencies as these money is collected for people who are poor or for men who want help in their business or who need to go on a journey.

We have seen that the village is by every token well off. What are its troubles? Undoubtedly the people work hard. I imagine, however, that there are very many districts where the people work much harder. The foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a handicraft or at business, an Oriental gives the impression of having no notion of getting his work done and being finished with it. The working day lasts all day and part of the night. Whether much more is done in the time than in the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief silk-worm season many of the women of the village in which I stayed are afoot for a long day and for part of the night, but the winter brings relief from the strain of all sorts of work. Owing to the snow it is practically impossible to do any work out of doors in January, February and March. The snow may stop work even in December. Here, then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two miles and hares are easily got.

Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed.

The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going to lectures. Lectures are a great inst.i.tution in Nagano. For these lectures country people tramp into a county town in their _waraji_ carrying their _bento_. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about 100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not the country people, who left.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A CRADLE]

I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had been living there had been one arrest only during the previous year. The charge was one of theft. Half a dozen other people had got into trouble but their arrests had been "postponed." Two of these six delinquents had "caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty theft, and the remaining two had sold things of small value which did not belong to them. During the twelve months there had been no charges of immorality and no gambling. Perhaps, however, there may have been police admonitions. It seemed to have been a long time since there had been a case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a child being born in the first months of a young couple's marriage. Someone mentioned, however, that the girls who went to the silk factories were, as a consequence of their life there, "debased morally and physically."

A notable thing in the village was four fires, two the month before we arrived and two while we were there. They were suspected to have been the work of a person of weak intellect. (As in our own villages half a century ago, there is in every community at least one "natural.") On the night of the first fire we were awakened about 3 a.m. by shouting, by the clanging of the fire bell and by the booming of the great bell in the temple yard. The fire was about four houses away. It was a still night and the flames and sparks went straight up. As the possibility of the wind shifting and the fire spreading could not be entirely excluded we quickly got our more important possessions on the _engawa_--at least a young maidservant did so. The continual experience which the j.a.panese have of fires makes them self-possessed on these occasions, and this girl had _futon_, bags, etc., neatly tied in big _furoshiki_ (wrapping cloths) in the shortest possible time. It was only when she was satisfied that our belongings were in readiness for easy removal that she went to look after her own. The matter-of-fact, fore-sighted, neat way in which she got to work was admirable. With great kindness one of the elders of the village came hurriedly to the temple, evidently thinking we should feel alarmed, and cried out, "_Yoroshii, Yoroshii_" ("All right").

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRE ALARM AND OBSERVATION POST]

As I stood before the blaze what struck me most was the orderliness and quiet of the crowd and the way in which whatever help was needed was at once forthcoming without fuss. The fire brigades were working in an orderly way and everything was so well managed that the scene seemed almost as if it were being rehea.r.s.ed for a cinema. One difference between what I saw and what would be seen at home at a fire was that the scene was well lighted from the front, for the members of the fire brigades carried huge lanterns on high poles. From the ma.s.s of old wet reed in the roadway I judged that the first act of the firemen had been to use their long hooks to denude the roof of the burning house of its thatch, which in the lightest wind is so dangerous to surrounding dwellings. n.o.body in the village is insured, but the neighbours seem to meet about a third of the loss caused by a fire. It is an ill.u.s.tration of local values that a larger subscription than 2 yen would not be accepted from me. In connection with this fire someone mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent in some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is the usual means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by a person who threatens arson is, "I will make the red worm creep into your roof."

During the winter there is too much drinking--"generally by poor men"--but there is said to be less of this than formerly. Some people stop their newspaper in the summer and resume taking it during the greater leisure of the winter. It has been noted, among other small matters, that the local vocabulary has expanded during the past fifteen years. During our stay the young midwife, who was going to America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in the kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also gave help in the evenings thrice a week to one of the school teachers who had managed to obtain a fair reading knowledge of English. The earnestness with which these two people studied was touching. While I was in the village the young men's a.s.sociation began the issue of a magazine.

Lithographic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in autograph as well as in translation. The a.s.sociation, which receives 10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots of paddy and dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with imitation rifles, imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges. I felt that I should know more about the villagers if I could learn, like Synge, their topics of conversation when no stranger was present. One day while strolling with a friend I asked him what was being said by two girls who were working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge (hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices.

Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, "because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and s.e.xual questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, "They say there are some moneylenders here."

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

CHAPTER x.x.xII

PROGRESS OF SORTS

(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population.--BORROW

The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they found that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the agricultural population. The farmers also realised that to the factories were due electric light, the telephone, better roads and more railway stations. The farmers are undoubtedly better off. They are so well off indeed that the district can afford an agricultural expert of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of _geta_, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport coats cut after a supposedly Western fashion. But the people, it was insisted, have become a little "sly," and girls return from the factories less desirable members of the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question of the condition of the farmer in j.a.pan. He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent. of the farmers were in a "wretched condition." Big holdings--if any holdings in j.a.pan can be called big--were getting bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the owners of the small and the medium-sized cla.s.ses of holding. The fact that many rural families were in debt, not for seed or manure but for food spoke for itself. The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes, but when the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80 yen was a serious matter; and 80 yen was the average debt of farming families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka. No one could say that the farmers were lazy: they were working hard according to their lights.

They were working too hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got.

There could be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman was being lowered.

Again, there was the fact of the rural exodus--the phrase sounded strangely in the middle of a j.a.panese sentence. As to the causes, the first unquestionably was that the farmer had not enough land on which to make a living. If the farmer could have 5 acres or thereabouts he would be well off. But the average area per farmer in the prefecture in which we were travelling was a little less than 2-1/2 acres. High taxes were another cause of the farmer's present condition. Then a year's living would be mortgaged for the expenses of a marriage ceremony. At a funeral, too, the neighbours came to eat and drink.

They took charge of the kitchen and even ordered in food. (After a j.a.panese feast the guests are given at their departure the food that is left over.) Further, some farmers wasted their substance on the ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had gone off to the army hatless and wearing straw shoes came home hatted and sometimes booted. Military service deprived farmers of labour, and their boys while away asked their parents for money. Conscription pressed more heavily on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued their education to the middle school, and attendance at a middle school ent.i.tled a young man to reduction of military service to one year only.[198]

The countryside was suffering from the way in which importance was increasingly attached to industry and commerce. Many M.P.s were of the agricultural cla.s.s, but they were chiefly landlords, and they were often shareholders and directors of industrial companies. There was very little real Parliamentary representation of the farming cla.s.s and it had not yet found literary expression. There were signs, however, that some landlords were realising that industry and agriculture were not of equal importance. But the farmers were slow to move. The traditions of the Tokugawa epoch survived, making action difficult.

Finally, there was the drawback to rural development which exists in the family system. But that, as Mr. Pickwick said, comprises by itself a difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude, and we must return to it on another occasion.

In one of my excursions I went over a large agricultural school, the boast of which was that of all the youths who had pa.s.sed through it, twenty only had deserted the land. I met the present scholars marching with military tread, mattocks on shoulders, to the school paddies.

I noticed schoolgirls wearing a wooden tablet. It was a good-conduct badge. If a girl was not wearing it on reaching home her parents knew that her teacher had retained it because of some fault; if she was not wearing it at school her teacher knew that her parents had kept it back for a similar reason. The girls when they come to school have often baby brothers or sisters tied on their backs. Otherwise the girls would have to stay at home in order to look after them. I asked a schoolmaster what happened when children were kept at home. He said that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings.

Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village authorities to the county authorities. They summoned the father to appear before them. This meant loss of time and the cost of the journey. Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic a.s.sociation had provided the speaker's school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered umbrellas so that children who had come unprovided could go home on a rainy day without a parent, elder brother or sister having to leave work to bring an umbrella to school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform before which the children a.s.sembled every morning. The headmaster, standing on the platform, gravely saluted the children and the children as gravely responded. The scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the centre of which is the Emperor's palace. An inscription hanging in the school was, "Exert yourself to kill harmful insects." In another school there was a portrait of a former teacher who had covered the walls of the school with water-colours of local scenery. I noticed in the playground of a third school a flower-covered cairn and an inscribed slab to the memory of a deceased master. Every school possesses equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-j.a.panese war, usually a sh.e.l.l, a rifle and bayonet and an entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men's a.s.sociations' efforts to discourage "cheek binding," which is the wearing of the head towel in such a way as to disguise the face and so enable the cheek binder to do, if he be so minded, things he might not do if he were recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just been rebuilt after a fire. Within four hours the blaze aided by a strong wind had consumed 1,700 houses and caused the deaths of nine persons. The destruction of so many dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or thatch, or the light pieces of wood from the _shoji_, which are carried aflame by the wind, setting fire to several houses simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone _jizo_, the cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing near; but they looked as incongruous in the position they occupied as did a small shrine which was standing in the shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse girls in private families. A poor farmer may enter into a contract when his girl is five for her to go into service at eight. He receives cash in antic.i.p.ation of the fulfilment of the contract.

I was a.s.sured by a man competent to speak on the matter that a certain small town was notorious for receiving boys who had been stolen as small children from their homes in the hills. Up to 30 yen might be given for a boy. There might be a dozen of such unfortunates in the place. Happily many of the children obtained by this "slave system," as my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which he and his father had improved under the precepts of Ninomiya. The hillside had been covered with tea, orange trees and mulberry; the community had not only got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its boundaries; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it was averred, had "disappeared"; there were larger and better crops; and "the habit of enjoying nature" had increased. The amus.e.m.e.nts of the village were wrestling, fencing, _jujitstu_, and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often injured by stores was as often mysteriously repaired. On a watch being kept it was found that the good work was done by a villager who had been scrupulous to keep secret his labours for the public welfare. Another tale was of a poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and brought it to his humble dwelling. On his neighbours suggesting that a finer house were a fitter resting-place for such a shrine, the man replied: "I do not think so. My shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may be fine. But the place in which the shrine stands is my place; it need not be fine."

In travelling the roads notices are often seen on official-looking boards with pent roofs. But all of these notices are not official; one I copied was the advertis.e.m.e.nt of a shrine which declared itself to be unrivalled for toothache. The horses on the roads are sometimes protected from the sun by a kind of oblong sail, which works on a swivel attached to the harness. Black velvety b.u.t.terflies as big as wrens flit about. (There are twice as many b.u.t.terflies and moths in j.a.pan as at home.) Snakes, ordinarily of harmless varieties, are frequently seen, dead or alive.