The Foundations of Japan Part 34

The sea was not far off and we went to the beach where there was nothing between us and America. My companion and I were carried over shallows on the backs of fishermen, wonderful bronze-coloured figures.

Above high-water mark heaps of small fish were drying. They were to be turned into oil and fish-waste manure. I saw an earthenware vase with a hole in the bottom like a flowerpot and found that it was used, with a rope attached to the rim, for catching octopus. When the octopus comes across such a vase on the sea bottom he regards it as a shelter constructed on exactly the right principles and takes up his abode therein. He is easily captured, for he refuses to let go his vase when it is brought to the surface. Indeed the only way to dislodge him is to pour hot water through the hole in the bottom of his upturned tenement.

FOOTNOTES:

[203] The j.a.panese firepot, which is made of wood or porcelain as well as metal, contains pieces of charcoal smouldering in wood ash.

[204] I saw poultry of the table breeds which we call Indian Game or Malay; the j.a.panese call them Siamese.

[205] See Appendix LVIII.

[206] In 1918 carp was produced to the value of a million and a half yen and eels to the value of nearly a million.

[207] See Appendix LIX.

[208] See Appendix LX.

[209] To cite a word already used in these pages, there are half a dozen words spelt _ko_ and as many as fourteen spelt _ko_, but all have a different ideograph. When the prolongation of the educational course by the ideographs is dwelt on, it is wholesome for us to remember Professor Gilbert Murray's declaration that "English spelling entails a loss of one year in the child's school time." Other authorities have considered the loss to be much more.

[210] For statistics of stamina, heights and weights of children, see Appendix LXI.

CHAPTER x.x.xV

THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER

(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skim them over.--BACON

One day in the third week of October when the roads were sprinkled with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the Kwanto plain and pa.s.sed from the prefecture of Tokyo into that of Saitama.[211] The weather now made it necessary for j.a.panese to wear double kimonos.

During the middle of the day, however, I was glad to walk with my jacket over my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about naked. The region visited had a naturally well-drained dark soil, composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of humus from buried vegetation, and it went down to a depth beyond the need of the longest _daikon_ (giant radish). Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the ground, and large areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or were in course of preparation for winter wheat and barley; but the most conspicuous crop was _daikon_. There were miles and miles of it at all sorts of stages from newly transplanted rows to roots ready for pulling. There is _daikon_ production up to the value of about a million yen. In addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a large export trade in _daikon_ salted in casks.

I came into a district where there was a system of alternate grain and wood crops. The rotation was barley and wheat for three or four years, then fuel wood for about fifteen. The tendency was to lengthen the corn period in the rotation.

The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton trousers like the men. One farm-house I entered was a century old but it had not been more than forty years on its present site. It had been transported three miles. I was once more impressed by the low standard of living. If by this time I had not been getting to know something of the ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to credit the fact that a household I visited was worth ten thousand yen.

Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop. They were bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a yen the 82 lbs. bale. The consumer was paying double that. Not a few of the farmers were cultivating as much as 5 _cho_ or even 8 _cho_, for there was little paddy. Even then, I was told, "it's a very hard life for a third of the farmers." The reason was that there was no remunerative winter employment.

Before the Buddhist temple, where there was preaching twice a year, were rows of little stone figures, many of which had lost their heads.

The heads were in much demand among gamblers who value them as mascots. Among some mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw a little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was there, it was explained, "not because of belief but of custom." The evening was drawing in and Fuji showed itself blue and mystical above the dark greenery of the country. As I gazed a sweet-sounding gong was struck thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this summons to other thoughts than those of the common task.

[Ill.u.s.tration: 1. INSIDE THE "SHOJI." p. 35]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 2. AUTOMATIC RICE POLISHER. p. 263]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 3. THE AUTHOR (AND THE KODAK HOLDER) IN THE CRATER OF A VOLCANO. p. 108]

My companion entered into conversation with a decent middle-aged pedestrian, neatly but poorly dressed, and found that he was a man who had formerly pulled his _kuruma_ in Tokyo. The man had found the work of a _kurumaya_ too much for him and had withdrawn to his village to open a tiny shop. But he had been taken ill and had been removed to hospital. When he came out he found that his wife was in poverty and that his eldest son had been summoned to serve in the army. Now his wife had become ill and he was on his way to a distant relative to ask him to take charge of a small child and to help him with a little money to start some petty business. My companion gave him a yen and deplored the fact that poor people should fail to take advantage of the law releasing from service a son required for the support of a parent. They failed occasionally to find friends to represent their case to the authorities.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A WAYSIDE MONUMENT. p. 39]

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE GIANT RADISH OR "DAIKON," WHICH IS USED AS A PICKLE. p. 309]

While waiting at the station we talked with another old man. He had come to see his daughter whose husband had been called up for two years' service. She was living of course with her parents-in-law. He said that his daughter would have no difficulty in keeping the farm going during the young man's absence, but his being away was "a great loss."

The old man, who squatted at our feet as he spoke, went on to tell us about a young man of his village who had served his term in the navy but thought of remaining for another term. "Gran'fer" thought it a good opening for him; he would not only get his living and clothes but--and this is characteristic--"see the world and send back interesting letters." The ancient was specially interested in the sailor, he said, because his wife had "given milk" to the adventurer when an infant.

It is difficult to enter a village which has not its pillar or its slab to the memory of a youth or youths who perished in the Russian or Chinese wars.[212] But in the severe struggle with Russia the villages did more than give their sons and build memorials to them when they were killed. They tried, in the words of an official circular of that time, "to preserve the spirit of independence in the hearts of the relieved and to avoid the abuses of giving out ready money." There was the secret ploughing society of the young men of a village in Gumma prefecture. "Either at night or when n.o.body knew these young men went out and ploughed for those who were at the front." In one prefecture the school children helped in working soldiers' farms. In villages in Osaka and Hyogo prefectures there was given to soldiers' families the monopoly of selling _tofu_, matches and other articles. Some of the societies which laboured in war time were the Women's One Heart Society, the Women's Chivalrous Society, the National Backing Society and the Nursing Place of Young Children of those Serving at the Front.

In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not being the slave of clothing. When it rains _kuruma_ men and workmen habitually roll up their kimonos round their loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take them off.[213] Of course no j.a.panese believes in catching cold through getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continually experienced, for the cotton _tabi_ are wet through at every shower.

Some years back it was not uncommon in walking along the sea-beach at night to find fishermen sleeping out on the sand. An old man told me that it used to be the custom in his sea-sh.o.r.e hamlet for all members of a family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and infants.

On my return from the country I found myself in a company of earnest rural reformers who were discussing a plan of State colonisation for the inhabitants of some villages where everything had been lost in a volcanic eruption. Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15 yen for a cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen per child per day). During the evening I was shown the figure of a G.o.ddess of farming venerated by the afflicted folk. The deity was represented standing on bales of rice, with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a big serving spoon in her right.

The gathering discussed the question of rural morality. As to the relations of the young men and women of the villages, to which there has necessarily been frequent references in these pages, the reader must always bear in mind the way in which the s.e.xes are normally kept apart under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this j.a.panese countryside differ more noticeably from our own than in the fact that joyous young couples are never seen arming each other along the road of an evening. Thousands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry, innumerable scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of which j.a.pan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in the public view no "random fits of dallin'." An unmarried young man and young woman do not walk and talk together. A young man and woman who were together of an evening would be suspected of immorality. Even when married they would not think of linking arms on the road. I was a beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in which a young wife met her young husband returned from abroad. There were merely repeated bows and many smiles. The view taken of kissing in j.a.pan is shown by the fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited by the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are helped to understand the j.a.panese standpoint a little if we remember how repugnant to English and American ideas is the Continental custom of men kissing one another. Kissing is understood by the j.a.panese to be a s.e.xual act, as is shown by their word for it.

Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing is believed to afford greater protection against the weather. (Outside the volcanic-soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The volcanic soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made, is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the liberal applications of manure has made it black.

I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master craftsmen in j.a.pan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great h.o.a.rding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without will.

The method of announcing subscriptions on h.o.a.rdings was also adopted outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a hundred yen to one yen. The charge to scholars at this school, I found, was 10 sen per month during the first compulsory six years and 30 sen during the next two years.

Just after Christmas I walked again into the country. There were miles of dreary brown paddies with the stubble in puddles. On the non-paddy land there was the refreshing green of young corn which seemed greatly to enjoy being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I pa.s.sed the farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot dip in the opening.

In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked _daikon_.

Such malformed roots used to be presented to shrines by women desirous of having children.

In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to examine the dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among a host of other particulars about a certain person's origin and condition I read that he was a minor when his father died, that such and such a person acted as his guardian, that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her husband's death.

In not a few places I found that the tiny shrines of hamlets (_aza_) had been taken away and grouped together at a communal shrine with the notion of promoting local solidarity. At one such combination of shrines I saw notice boards intimating that "tramps, pedlars, wandering priests and other carriers of subscription lists and proselytisers" were not received in the village. It was explained that a community was sometimes all of one faith: "therefore it does not want to be disturbed by tactless preachers of other beliefs."

At an inn there was a middle-aged widow who served there as waitress in the summer but in the winter returned to Tokyo, where she employed a number of girls in making _haori_ ta.s.sels. (She gave them board and lodging and clothes for two years, and, after that period, wages.[215]) Remembering what I had written down about courting, I asked for her mature judgment on our rural custom of "walking out."

She was amused, but, in that way the j.a.panese have of trying to look at a Western custom on its merits, she said, after consideration, that there was much to be said for the plan. "In j.a.pan," she declared, "you cannot know a husband's character until you are married. On the whole, I wish I had been a man." In order to catch our train we had to leave this inn the moment our meal was finished, although the widow quoted to us the adage, "Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."

On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a friend who was taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn 4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I continually heard the note of the _kakko_ (cuckoo). On the higher parts of the mountain there were azaleas at every yard, some quite small but others 12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by cattle. Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at the top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches and pines, stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches broken off by the terrific blasts which from time to time sweep along the top of the extinct volcano.

One of the products of rural j.a.pan is the wrestler. _Sumo_, which is going on in every school and college of the country, exhibits its perfect flower twice a year in the January and May ten-days-long tournaments in the capital. The immense rotunda of the wrestlers'

a.s.sociation suggests a rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000 people.[216] On the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing room. Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of the wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their countrymen. The rigorous training, Gargantuan feeding and somewhat severe discipline of the wrestlers enable them to grow beyond the average stature and to a girth, protected by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which reinforces strength with great weight.[217]

I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a train to witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of these ma.s.sive, good-tempered men. There is not in the world, probably, a more remarkable ill.u.s.tration than they afford of what superior physical training and superior feeding can do. At first sight, indeed, these gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair--for, like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long--was performed by a personage who combined the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There is nothing of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers.

Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their self-esteem which they receive in their disciplinary progress from the contests of their native villages through all the grades of their profession to the highest rank. Their s.e.xual morality is commonly of the lowest.

In my own hamlet at home in England I have seen the shoemaker, tailor and carpenter successively pa.s.s away; the only craftsman left is the smith. In j.a.pan the hereditary craftsman survives for a while. I watched in my house one day the labours of such a worker. He was not arrayed in a Sunday suit fallen to the greasy bagginess of everyday wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue cotton jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of the same stuff, and both garments, which were washed at least once a week, were admirably fitted to their wearer's work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own medieval and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the back of his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative Chinese characters in white. There are nowadays in the cities many inferior workers, but all the men who came to my house worked with rapidity and concentration, hardly ever lifting their eyes from their jobs. The dexterity of the j.a.panese workman is seldom exaggerated. To his dexterity he adds the considerable advantage of having more than two hands, for he uses his feet together or singly. His supple big toes are a great possession. We have lost the use of ours, but the j.a.panese artisan, accustomed from his youth to _tabi_ with a special division for the big toe, and to _geta_, which can be well managed only when the big toe is lissom, uses his toes as naturally as a monkey, with his paws and mouth full of nuts, gives a few to his feet to hold. The first sight of a foot holding a tool is uncanny.

The pitiful thing is that a modest, polite, cheerful, industrious, skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic hereditary craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so little conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's progress is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be recovered. It is no doubt true that when our own handicrafts were dying we also were insensitive. But because the Middle Ages in England encountered the industrial system gradually we suffered our loss more slowly than j.a.pan is doing. Because, too, we never had in our bustling history the long periods of immunity from home and foreign strife by which j.a.panese craftsmanship profited so wonderfully, we may not have had such large stores of precious skill and taste to squander as New j.a.pan, the spendthrift of Old j.a.pan's riches, is unthinkingly casting away.