The Foundations of Japan Part 37

From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim _basha_ to places which were always several miles farther on than they were supposed to be and were usually reached by tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9 ins. long and having ruts a foot deep.

We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were mostly working 2-1/2 _cho_, though some had twice as much. Nearly all of these tenants appeared to have one or two horses, although the estate manager had advised them to use oxen or cows as more economical draught animals. When I remembered the distance the farmers were from the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satisfaction which the men we pa.s.sed displayed in being able to ride, it was easy to believe that the possession of a horse might have its value as a means of social progress. During the last ten years half the tenants had made enough to enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this estate had two temples and one shrine.[246]

I visited a fifteen-years-old co-operative alcohol factory with a capital of 300,000 yen. Of its materials 80 per cent. seemed to be potato starch waste and 20 per cent. maize. The product was 6,000 or 7,000 _koku_ of alcohol. The dividend was 8 per cent. On the waste a large number of pigs was fed. The animals were kept in pens with boarded floors within a small area, and I was not surprised to learn that three or four died every month. Starch making, which produces the waste used by the alcohol factory, is managed on quite a small scale.

An outfit may cost no more than 30 or 50 yen. I went over a small peppermint-making plant. Most of the peppermint raised in j.a.pan--it reaches a value of 2 million yen--is grown in Hokkaido.

One day in the eastern part of the island I met in a small hotel, which was run by a man and his wife who had been in America, several old farmers who had obviously made money. They declared that formerly only 20 per cent. of the colonists succeeded, but now the proportion was more than 65 per cent. I imagine that they meant by success that the colonists did really well, for it was added that it was rare in that district for people to return to Old j.a.pan. One of the company said that not more than 5 per cent. returned. "Land is too expensive at home," he continued; "when a j.a.panese comes here and gets some, he works hard." A good man, they said, should make, after four or five years, 70 to 100 yen clear profit in a year.

I rather suspect that the men I talked with had made some of their money by advancing funds to their neighbours on mortgage. They all seemed to own several farms. When I asked how religion prospered in Hokkaido they said with a smile, "There are many things to do here, so there is no spare time for religion as in our native places." There is a larger proportion of Christians in Hokkaido than on the mainland.

One village of a thousand inhabitants contained two churches and a Salvation Army barracks. It was reputed, also, to have eight or ten "waitresses" and five sake shops. It is said that a good deal of _shochu_, which is stronger than sake, is drunk.

The roughest _basha_ ride I made was to a place seven miles from railhead in the extreme north-east. Such roads as we adventured by are little more than tracks with ditches on either side. The journey back, because there were no horses to ride, we made in a narrow but extraordinarily heavy farm wagon with wheels a foot wide and drawn by a stallion. Shortly after starting there was a terrific thunderstorm which soaked us and hastened uncomfortably the pace of the animal in the shafts. When the worst of the downpour was over, and we had faced the prospect of slithering about the wagon for the rest of the journey, for the stallion had decided to hurry, a farmer's wife asked us for a lift and clambered in with agility. My companion and I were then sitting in a soggy state with our backs against the wagon front and our legs outstretched resignedly. The cheery farmer's wife, who was wet too, plopped down between us and, as the b.u.mps came, gripped one of my legs with much good fellowship. She was a G.o.dsend by reason of her plumpness, for we were now wedged so tight that we no longer rocked and pitched about the wagon at each jolt. And no doubt we dried more quickly. Providence had indeed been good to us, for shortly afterwards we pa.s.sed, lying on its side in a _spruit_, the _basha_ that had carried us on our outward journey.

We were three hours in all in the wagon. Our pa.s.senger told us that her husband had several farms and that they were very comfortably off and very glad that they had come to Hokkaido. When the farmer's wife had to alight a mile from our destination we chose to walk. Bad roads are a serious problem for the Hokkaido farmer. In one district, only fifteen miles from the capital, they are so bad that rice is at half the price it makes in Sapporo. It is unfortunate that the roads are at their worst in autumn and spring when the farmer wants to transport his produce.

I visited the 700-acre settlement which Mr. Tomeoka has opened in connection with his Tokyo inst.i.tution for the reclamation of young wastrels. His formula is, "Feed them well, work them hard and give them enough sleep." Among the volumes on his shelves there were three books about Tolstoy and another three, one English, one American and one German, all bearing the same t.i.tle, _The Social Question_.

Needless to say that _Self-Help_ had its place.

I liked Mr. Tomeoka's idea of an open-air chapel on a tree-shaded height from which there was a fine view. It reminded me of the view from an open s.p.a.ce on rising ground near the famous Danish rural high school of Askov, from which, on Sundays, parties of excursionists used to look down enviously on Slesvig and irritate the Germans by singing Danish national songs. Mr. Tomeoka believed in better houses and better food for farmers and in money raised by means of the _ko_--"the rules and regulations of co-operative societies are too complicated for farmers to understand."

I saw the huts of some settlers who had weathered their first Hokkaido winter. Buckwheat, scratched in in open s.p.a.ces among the trees, was the chief crop. The huts consisted of one room. Most of the floor was raised above the ground and covered with rough straw matting. In the centre of the platform was the usual fire-hole. The walls were matting and brushwood. I was a.s.sured that "the snow and good fires, for which there is unlimited fuel, keep the huts warm."

The railway winds through high hills and makes sharp curves and steep ascents and descents. There are tracts of rolling country under rough gra.s.s. Sometimes these areas have been cleared by forest fires started by lightning. Wide s.p.a.ces are a great change from the scenery of closely farmed j.a.pan. The thing that makes the hillsides different from our wilder English and Scottish hillsides is that there are neither sheep nor cattle on them.

When the culpable destruction of timber in Hokkaido is added to what has been lost by forest fires, due to lightning or to accident--one conflagration was more than 200 acres in extent--it is easy to realise that the rivers are bringing far more water and detritus from the hills than they ought to do and are preparing flood problems with which it will cost millions to cope when the country gets more closely settled. It is deplorable that, apart from needless burning on the hillsides, the farmers have not been dissuaded from completely clearing their arable land of trees. On many holdings there is not even a clump left to shelter the farmhouse and buildings. In not a few districts the colonists have created treeless plains. In place after place the once beautiful countryside is now ugly and depressing.

FOOTNOTES:

[232] The word used by people in Hokkaido for the main island, Hondo or Honshu (_Hon_, main; _do_ or _shu_, land), is _Naichi_ (interior).

[233] From Aomori on the mainland to Hakodate in Hokkaido is a 50-miles sea trip. Then comes a long night journey to Sapporo, during which one pa.s.ses between two active volcanoes. The sea trip is 50 miles because a large part of the route taken by the steamer is through Aomori Bay. The nearest part of Hokkaido to the mainland is a little less than the distance between Dover and Calais.

[234] Foreigners sometimes confound Yezo (Hokkaido) with Yedo, the old name for Tokyo.

[235] A sixth of Hokkaido still belongs to the Imperial Household. In 1918 it decided to sell forest and other land (parts of j.a.pan not stated) to the value of 100 million yen. In 1917 the Imperial estates were estimated at 18-3/4 million cho of forest and 22-1/4 million cho of "plains," that is tracts which are not timbered nor cultivated nor built on.

[236] In 1919 it was 2,137,700.

[237] Considerations of s.p.a.ce compel the holding over of a chapter on the Ainu for another volume.

[238] Of the 96 foreign instructors in inst.i.tutions "under the direct control" of the Tokyo Department of Education in 1917-18, there were 27 British, 22 German, 19 American and 12 French.

[239] Hokkaido is one of five Imperial universities. There are in addition several well-known private universities.

[240] Grouse are also to be found in Hokkaido, but no pheasants and no monkeys. The deep Tsugaru Strait marks an ancient geological division between Hokkaido and the mainland.

[241] It is sometimes eaten, ground to a rough meal, with rice. The argument is that maize is two thirds the price of rice and more easily digested.

[242] See Appendix x.x.xVII.

[243] The latest figures for Hokkaido show only a tenth.

[244] For farmers' incomes, see Appendix XIII.

[245] For sizes of farms, see Appendix LXIV.

[246] For a tenant's contract, see Appendix LXV.

CHAPTER x.x.xVIII

SHALL THE j.a.pANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?

_Bon yori shoko_ (Proof, not argument)

One day in Tokyo I heard a j.a.panese who was looking at a photograph of a British woman War-worker feeding pigs ask if the animals were sheep.

Sheep are so rare in j.a.pan that an old ram has been exhibited at a country fair as a lion. In contrast with Western agriculture based on live stock we have in j.a.pan an agriculture based on rice.[247] But a section of the j.a.panese agricultural world turns its eyes longingly to mixed farming, and so, when I returned to Sapporo from my trip to the north of Hokkaido, I was taken to see a Government stock farm--with a smoking volcano in the background. Hokkaido has four other official farms, one belonging to the Government and one for raising horses for the army. I was shown, in addition to horses, Ayrshire, Holstein and Brown Swiss cattle, Berkshire and Yorkshire pigs and Southdown and Shropshire sheep in good buildings. I noticed two self-binders and a hay loader and I beheld for the first time in j.a.pan a dairymaid and collies--one was of a useless show type.

The extent to which the knack of looking after animals and a liking for them can be developed is an interesting question. Experts in stock-keeping with generations of experience behind them will agree that it is on the answer to this question that the success or non-success of the j.a.panese in animal industry in no small measure depends.

I have a note of a discussion on the general treatment of domestic animals in j.a.pan in the course of which it was admitted that they were "certainly not treated as well as in most parts of Europe, or as in China." One reason given was that "most sects believe in the reincarnation of the wicked in the form of animals." The freedom which dogs enjoyed in English houses seemed strange; my friends no doubt forgot that Western houses have no _tatami_ to be preserved. It was contended, however, that cavalry soldiers "often weep on parting from their horses" and that "people with knowledge of animals are fond of them." I have myself seen farmers' wives in tears at a horse fair when the foals they had reared were to be sold and the animals in their timidity nuzzled them. Westerners who are familiar with the exquisite and humoursome studies of animal, bird and insect life by j.a.panese artists of the past and present day,[248] are in no doubt that such work was prompted by real knowledge and love of the "lower creation."

The j.a.panese have a keen appreciation of the "song" of an amazing variety of "musical" insects--there are 20,000 kinds of insects. It is an appreciation not vouchsafed to the foreigner whose nerves are racked by the insistent bizz of the _semi_ or cicada--there are 38 kinds of cicada. Everyone will recall Hearn's chapter on the trade in "singing insects."

One of my hosts in Aichi had two tiny cages which each contained one of these creatures. The cages were hung from the eaves. In the evening when the stone lantern in the garden was lit, and it was desired to give an illusion of greater coolness after a hot day a servant was sent up to the roof to pour down a tubful of water in order to produce the dripping sound of rain; and this at once set the caged insects chirping.

The sensitive foreigner is distressed by the way in which newly born puppies and kittens are thrown out to die because their Buddhist owners are too scrupulous to kill them. The stranger's feelings are also worked on by the unhappy demeanour and uncared-for look of dogs and cats. On chancing to enter in a j.a.panese city an English home where there were three dogs I could not but mark how they contrasted in bearing and appearance with the generality of the animals I had seen. Yet these dogs were all mongrel foundlings which had been abandoned near my friend's house or dropped into her garden. No doubt most j.a.panese dogs suffer from having too much rice--and polished at that--and practically no bones. An excuse for the neglect of cats is that they scratch woodwork and _tatami_ and insist on carrying their food into the best room.

Horses are often overloaded and mercilessly driven on hilly roads.[249] On the other hand, carters lead their horses. It might be added that the coolies who haul and push handcarts bearing enormous loads never spare themselves. I was told more than once of people who had been too tenderhearted to make an end of old horses. I also heard of hens which had been allowed to live on until they died of old age.

In some mountain communities it is the custom, when a chicken must be killed for a visitor's meal, for an exchange of birds to be made with a neighbour in order that the killing may not be too painful for the owner.[250]

Except in hotels and stores in Tokyo and the cities which cater for foreigners, one seldom sees such an animal product as cheese. On the Government farm I found excellent cheese and b.u.t.ter being made.

Untravelled j.a.panese have the dislike of the smell of cheese that Western people have of the stench of boiling _daikon_. Nor is cheese the only alien food with which the ordinary j.a.panese has a difficulty.

The smell of mutton is repugnant to him and he has yet to acquire a taste for milk. The demand for milk is increasing, however. The guide books are quite out of date. Nearly all the milk ordinarily sold for foreigners and invalids is supplied sterilised in bottles. On the platforms of the larger railway stations bottles of milk are vended from a copper container holding hot water. In places where I have been able to obtain bread I have usually had no difficulty in getting milk.

(The word for bread, _pan_, has been in the language since the coming of the Portuguese, and all over j.a.pan one finds sponge cake, _kasutera_, a word from the Spanish.) b.u.t.ter in country hotels is usually rancid, for the reason, I imagine, that it is carelessly handled and kept too long and that few j.a.panese know the taste of good b.u.t.ter. The development of a liking for bread and b.u.t.ter is obviously one of the conditions of the establishment of a successful animal industry. Condensed milk is sold in large quant.i.ties, but chiefly to supplement infants' supplies and to make sweetstuff. The 1919 production was estimated at 57 million tins.

One argument for an animal industry is that with an increasing population the fish supply will not go so far as it has done. It is said that fish are not to be found in as large quant.i.ties as formerly.

Another argument is that the national imports include many products of animal industry which might be advantageously produced at home. Not only is more milk, condensed and fresh, being consumed: with the adoption of foreign clothes in professional and business life and in the army and navy, more and more wool is being worn[251] and more and more leather is needed for the boots which are being subst.i.tuted for _geta_ and also for service requirements. It is contended that for the emanc.i.p.ation of j.a.panese agriculture from the _pet.i.te culture_ stage it is essential that a larger number of draught oxen and horses shall be used. It is equally important, it is suggested, that more manure shall be made on the farms, so that a limit shall be placed on the outlay on imported fertilisers. Finally there are those who urge that the j.a.panese should be better fed and that better feeding can only be brought about by an increased consumption of animal products.[252]

The possibilities of outdoor stock keeping in Hokkaido are limited by the fact that snow lies from November to the middle of February and in the north of the island to the end of March. A high agricultural authority did not think that the number of cattle in all j.a.pan could be raised to more than two million within twenty years.[253]

In the management of sheep--there were about 5,000 in the whole country when I was in Hokkaido--there has been failure after failure, but it is held that the prospects for sheep in Hokkaido are promising.

(The question is discussed in the next Chapter.) At present, owing to the lack of a market for mutton, pigs, which used to be kept in the days before Buddhism exerted its influence, seem more attractive to experimenting farmers than sheep. No one has proposed that sheep should be kept in ones and twos for milking as in Holland.[254] When milk is needed it is said that goats, of which there are more than 90,000 in j.a.pan, are desirable stock, but I doubt whether more than 500 of these goats are milked.[255] They are kept to produce meat.

Some people hope that those who eat goat's flesh will come to realise the superiority of mutton.

The case for pigs is that sweet potatoes and squash can be fed to them, that they produce frequent litters, that pork is more and more appreciated, and that there are 300,000 of them in the country already. Some confident experts who have possibly been influenced by the large consumption of pork in China argue that pork may become equally popular in j.a.pan. There are two bacon factories not far from Tokyo.