The Foundations of Japan Part 32

Many of the people one pa.s.ses are smoking, usually the little bra.s.s pipe used both by men and women, which, like some of the earliest English pipes, does not hold more tobacco than will provide a few draws. The pipe is usually charged twice or thrice in succession. One notices an immense amount of cigarette smoking, which cannot be without ill effect. There is a law forbidding smoking below the age of twenty. It is not always enforced, but when enforced there is a confiscation of smoking materials and a fining of the parents. The voices of many middle-aged women and some young ones are raucous owing to excessive smoking of pipes or cigarettes.

I looked into a school and saw the wall inscription, "Penmanship is like pulling a cart uphill. There must be no haste and no stopping."

Here, as in so many places, I saw the well-worn cover and much-thumbed pages of _Self Help_. I may add a fact which would be in its place in a new edition of Smiles's _Character_. As a simple opening to conversation I often asked if a man had been in Europe or America. His answer, if he had not travelled, was never "No." It was always "Not yet."

In these country schools most of the songs are set to Western tunes.

Such airs as "Ye Banks and Braes," "Auld Lang Syne," "Annie Laurie,"

"Home, Sweet Home" and "The Last Rose of Summer" are utilised for the songs not only of school children but of university students. Few of the singers have any notion that the music was not written in their own land. A j.a.panese friend told me that all the airs I mentioned "seem tender and touching to us," and I remember a j.a.panese agricultural expert saying, "Reading those poems of Burns, I believe firmly that our hearts can vibrate with yours."

As I have denied myself the pleasure of dwelling on j.a.panese scenic beauties, I may not pause to bear witness to the faery delights of cherry blossom which I enjoyed everywhere during this journey. But I may record two cherry-blossom poems I gathered by the way. The first is, "Why do you wear such a long sword, you who have come only to see the cherry blossoms?" The second is, "Why fasten your horse to the cherry tree which is in full bloom, when the petals would fall off if the horse reared?" A j.a.panese once told me that a foreigner had greatly surprised him by asking if the cherry trees bore much fruit.

Orange as well as tea culture is a feature of the agricultural life of the prefecture. As in California and South Africa, ladybirds have been reared in large numbers in order to destroy scale. I saw at the experiment station miserable orange trees encaged for producing scale for the breeding ladybirds. The insects are distributed from the station chiefly as larvae. They are sent through the post about a hundred at a time in boxes. The ladybird, which has, I believe, eight generations a year, and as an adult lives some twenty days, lays from 200 to 250 eggs, 150 of the larvae from which may survive. Alas for the released ladybirds of Shidzuoka! Scale is said to be disappearing so quickly that they are having but a hard life of it.

In the neighbouring prefecture of Kanagawa I paid a visit to a gentleman who, with his brother, had devoted himself extensively to fruit and flower growing. Their produce was sent the twenty-six hours'

journey by road to Tokyo, where four shops were maintained. A considerable quant.i.ty of foreign pears had been produced on the palmette verrier system. The branches of the extensively grown native pear are everywhere tied to an overhead framework which completely covers in the land on which the trees stand. This method was adopted in order to cope with high winds and at the same time to arrest growth, for in the damp soil in which j.a.panese pears are rooted, the branches would be too sappy. Foreign pears are not more generally cultivated because they come to the market in compet.i.tion with oranges, and the j.a.panese have not yet learnt to buy ripe pears. The native pear looks rather like an enormous russet apple but it is as hard as a turnip, and, though it is refreshing because of its wateriness, has little flavour. Progress is being made with peaches and apricots. Figs are common but inferior. A fine native fruit, when well grown, is the _biwa_ or loquat. And homage must be paid to the best persimmons, which yield place only to oranges and tangerines.[199] In the north the apples are good, but most orchards are badly in need of spraying. Experiments have been made with dates.

Flowers have a weaker scent than in Europe. A rose called the "thousand _ri_"--a _ri_ is two and a half miles--has only a slight perfume two and a half inches away, and then only when pulled. I met with no heather--it is to be seen in Saghalien, which has several things in common with Scotland--but found ma.s.ses of sweet-scented thyme.

One of the horticulturists to whom I have referred was something of an Alpinist and was married to a Swiss lady. They had several children. I also met an American lady who had had great experience of fruit growing in California, had married a j.a.panese farmer there, and had come to live with him in a remote part of his native country. From such alliances as these there may come some day a woman's impressions of the life and work of women and girls on the farms and in the factories of rural j.a.pan. Many a visitor to the country districts must have marked the dumbness of the women folk. Women were often present at the conversations I had in country places, but they seldom put in a word. I was received one day at the house of a man who is well known as a rural philanthropist--he has indeed written two or three brochures on the problems of the country districts--but when he, my friend and I sat at table his wife was on her knees facing us two rooms off. Every instructed person knows that there is a beautiful side to the self-suppression of the j.a.panese woman--many moving stories might be told--and that the "subservience" is more apparent than real. But there is certainly unmerited suffering. The men and women of the Far East seem to be gentler and simpler, however, than the vehement and demonstrative folk of the West, and conditions which appear to the foreign observer to be unjust and unbearable cannot be easily and accurately interpreted in Western terms. At present many women who are conscious of the situation of their s.e.x see no means of improvement by their own efforts. But the development of the women's movement is proceeding in some directions at a surprising pace. Many young men are sincerely desirous to do their part in bringing about greater freedom. They realise what is undoubtedly true that not a few things which urgently need changing in j.a.pan must be changed by men and women working together.

Money has always been forthcoming, officially, semi-officially and privately, for sending to America and Europe numbers of intelligent young men and women. So disciplined and studious are most of these young people that their country has had back with interest every yen of the funds so wisely provided. We have much to learn from j.a.panese methods in this matter of well-considered post-graduate foreign travel.[200]

FOOTNOTES:

[198] See Appendix LXIII.

[199] See Appendix LV.

[200] See Appendix LVI.

CHAPTER x.x.xIII

GREEN TEA AND BLACK

(SHIDZUOKA)

Things I would know but am forbid By time and briefness.

LAURENCE BINYON

More than half of the tea grown in j.a.pan comes from the hilly coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which every traveller pa.s.ses on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto to Tokyo. He sees a terraced cultivation of tea and fruit carried up to the skyline. But there is more tea on the hills than the pa.s.senger in the train imagines. When viewed from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various parts of southern j.a.pan patches of tea may be noticed growing on little islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill plant and it is on the sides of hills and on the plateaus at the top of them that the plantations are to be found.

Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow like box to a height which can be conveniently picked over. The rows of neat-looking plants are half a dozen feet apart. The first picking may take place when the bush is three or four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty or even a hundred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between twenty and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or so. A good deal depends on the pruning. After each picking the bushes are cut over with the shears just as we trim box. These tr.i.m.m.i.n.gs may be used to make an inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine--the two products are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are cut round-topped, but occasionally they are roof-shaped and sometimes they are like giant green toadstools.

The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the rows of tea bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses which manufacture their own tea. (The word manufacture is used in the original sense, for farmhouse tea is hand-made.) In a country where the houses are chimneyless these galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.

The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely by women and children. The pickers are supposed to take only the three leaves at the tips. But the pickers mostly take bigger pieces, for the somewhat higher price given for good picking is not enough to secure three-leaf stuff only. It is not absolutely necessary, however, that the leaves gathered should be all of such a choice sort.

Women and girls come from a distance to pick tea. Picking is regarded as "polite labour by the daughters of the higher middle cla.s.s of farmers." It has also the attraction that farmers' sons have a way of visiting tea gardens in order to "pick up wives." The girls certainly give would-be husbands every chance of seeing what they can do, for they are at work for a long day, often of from twelve to fourteen hours. In such a day it is possible, I was told, to pick 50, 80 or even 100 lbs. of leaves. One man put the rate as from 50 to 120 pieces a minute. Four pounds of leaves make a pound of tea.

In one district the first picking may take place during the first three weeks of May. In colder districts it is proceeding until the end of the month. The second season is from the end of June until the beginning of July. The third is in August. The bushes, after producing their three crops of leaves, bear in November their seeds, which are about three-quarters of an inch in diameter and are worth about a sen a pound. Oil is pressed from them.

Good tea depends on climate and soil, careful cutting over and good manuring. In some places I saw soya bean being grown between the rows as green manuring. Like so many other crops, tea is or ought to be sprayed. The northern limit of tea is Niigata, where the bushes must be protected from the snow, which may fall in that prefecture to a great depth. The region in which tea cannot be grown is that in which the temperature falls below zero for two months. Tea is not grown, as in India and Ceylon, by tea planters, but in small areas and as a side-line at that. I never saw a plantation of more than five acres.

Most areas are much smaller. The chief reason for this is that tea is largely manufactured on the day on which it is picked and the capacity of a farmer's tea manufacturing equipment is limited. In Shidzuoka nearly a quarter of the tea is hand rolled and three-quarters made by machinery. Elsewhere in j.a.pan half the crop may be hand rolled.

When leaves are sold to factors the transactions take place in booths opened by them in the tea districts. It is a busy scene in the region of the cottage factories. One is on a wide plateau covered almost entirely with rows of tea plants. Here and there are parties of chattering pickers, their heads protected by the national towel.

Against the blue hilltops on the horizon stand out the cottages of the farmers with chimney-pipes smoking, the booths of the dealers, and, in every patch of tea, the thatched roof over the precious sunken pot of liquid manure by which the tea bushes have so often benefited. On the road one pa.s.ses women with baskets on their backs, like Scotch fish-wives with their creels, men carrying two baskets suspended from a pole across one shoulder, or a man and his wife hauling a barrow, all heavy-laden with newly picked leaves. Small horse-drawn wagons carry the manufactured tea in big, well-tied, pink paper bales. On the whole, although the labour is hard it seemed a better life having to do with the fragrant tea than with the rice of the sludge ponds in the valley below.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RACK FOR DRYING RICE. p. 77]

[Ill.u.s.tration: VILLAGE CREMATORIUM. p. 48]

[Ill.u.s.tration: DOG HELPING TO PULL JINRIKISHA]

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUTHOR, MR. YAMASAKI AND YOUNGEST INHABITANTS, p. 309]

The tea produced in j.a.pan is princ.i.p.ally green tea. Most of this is of the kind called _sencha--cha_ means tea. An inferior article made out of older and tougher leaves is called _bancha_. The custom is for the maid who serves _bancha_ to heat the leaves over the charcoal fire just before infusing. This gives it an agreeable roasted flavour. It is often served in a darker shade of porcelain than is used for ordinary tea. There are also the finer teas, _kikicha_ (powdered tea) and _gyokuro_ (jewelled dewdrops), which is the best kind of _sencha_.

Black tea was being made experimentally when I first arrived in j.a.pan.

Brick tea (pressed to the consistency and weight of wood) may be green or black. Most of the exported tea, other than brick tea, goes to America.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "TORII" AT FOX-G.o.d SHRINE. p. 325]

[Ill.u.s.tration: RECORD OF GIFTS TO A TEMPLE. p. 311]

It is unnecessary to state that the j.a.panese tea-tray does not include a sugar basin, cream jug or spoons. It does include, however, a squat oval jug into which the hot water from the kettle is poured in order to lower the temperature below boiling point. Boiling water would bring out a bitter flavour from the tea. Made with water just below boiling point the tea is deliciously soft, even oily, and has a flavour and aroma which cream and sugar would ruin. It is certainly refreshing, and, when drunk newly infused, relatively harmless.

_Bancha_ is made with hotter water than other tea. The handleless cups hold about half of what our teacups contain.[201] Tea is not the only plant used for making "tea." One drinks in some parts infusions of cherry, plum or peach blossom.

The processes of tea manufacture in farmers' outhouses and in factories are described in school-books, and I need not transcribe my impressions.[202] But I may note that some of the money the tea farmer earns for the country is spent in his interests. There is in Shidzuoka a well-directed prefectural experiment station which exercises itself over problems of tea production. Every tea grower and tea dealer in the prefecture must belong to the prefectural tea guild. He must also belong to his county tea guild. The rules of the guilds--there is a central guild in Tokyo--have the force of law. Evil doers in the tea industry have their product confiscated. Tea dealers who do not carry their guild membership card are fined. It is not difficult to discover colouring in tea if it is rubbed on white paper. The Government's part in subduing tea colouring was to seize all the dye stuff it could lay hold of which could be used for colouring tea.

The future of green tea depends almost entirely on the demand from the growing population of j.a.pan, but a taste for the "foreign style"

black tea--with condensed milk--is spreading. The cheap labour of India and China and the big plantations and factories of India have diminished the j.a.panese green tea trade and the effort to produce black tea is also met by foreign compet.i.tion. I was told that China tea receives much sunshine while growing, and that there was most hope for j.a.panese black tea when made from leaves grown in the extreme south. There is a difference between the Chinese and the j.a.panese tea plant and it cannot be got over by importing Chinese plants, for the climate of j.a.pan simply j.a.panises the imported sort.

I found in the United States that green tea is bought, as it is no doubt sold in Shidzuoka, on appearance. American housewives were paying for an appearance that matters little in an article that is not to be looked at but soaked. Not only is much extra labour required for sifting the leaf several times in order to obtain a good appearance, but the bulk is reduced from 5 to 10 per cent. The drinking quality of the tea also suffers, for the largest leaf has usually the best cup quality. If teas were bought for cup quality only they might be at least from 5 to 10 per cent. cheaper.

FOOTNOTES:

[201] At many stations one used to have handed into the carriage for less than a penny a pot of tea and a cup--you are ent.i.tled to keep both pot and cup if you like. The tea-seller's kettle of water is kept hot with charcoal. Tea is freshly infused in each customer's pot.

[202] For statistics and theine percentages, see Appendix LVII.

EXCURSIONS FROM TOKYO

CHAPTER x.x.xIV