The Foundations of Japan Part 8

In my host's house in the evening someone happened to quote the proverb, "Richer after the fire." It means, of course, that after the fire the neighbours are so ready with help that the last state of the victim of the fire is better than the first. The view was expressed that hitherto charitable inst.i.tutions of some Western patterns had not been so much needed in j.a.pan as might be supposed.[48] "Those who go to Europe from j.a.pan are indeed much surprised by the number of inst.i.tutions to help people." Here, however, is the story of an inst.i.tution coming into existence in a village: "There was a man who was thought to be rich, but he lived like a miser. His _shoji_ were made of waste paper and his guests received tea only. So he was despised. But many years afterwards it was found that for a long time he had been collecting books. Then, to the surprise of everybody, he built a library for his village. He is not at all proud of this and those who ridiculed him are now ashamed."

I was invited to a "Rural Life Exhibition." Some agricultural produce was shown, but three hundred of the exhibits were ma.n.u.script books or diagrams. One diagram ill.u.s.trated the development in a particular county of the use of two bactericides, formalin and carbon bisulphide.

The formalin was in use to the value of 2,000 yen. Then there was a wall picture, a sort of j.a.panese "The Child: What will he Become?" The good boy, aged fifteen, was shown spending his spare time in making straw rope to the value of 3 sen 3 rin nightly, with the result that after thirty years of such industry he became a rural capitalist who possessed 1,000 yen and lived in circ.u.mstances of dignity. In contrast with this virtuous career there was shown the rural rake's progress. A youth who was in the habit of laying out 3 sen 3 rin riotously in sweet-shops was proved to have wasted 1,000 yen in thirty years: the prodigal was justly exhibited fleeing from his home in debt.

One of the books on exhibition mentioned the volumes most in demand at some village library. I translate the t.i.tles:

Physical and Intellectual Training About being Ambitious The Housewife of a Peasant Family The Management of a Farm The Days when Statesmen were Boys Culture and Striving Essence of Rural Improvement A Hundred Beautiful Stories The Art of Composition The Preparation of the Conscript A Medical Treatise A Translation of "Self-Help"

Nature and Human Life The Glories of Native Places Anecdotes concerning Culture Lives of Distinguished Peasants Mulberry Planting Chinese Romances Glories of this Peaceful Reign Ninomiya Sontoku

I noticed among the exhibits a short autobiography of a farmer, an engaging egoist who wrote:

"As a young man my will was not in study and though I used my wits I did many stupid things and the results were bad. Then I became a little awakened and for two years I studied at night with the primary school teacher. After that I thought to myself in secret, 'Shall I become a wise man in this village, or, by diligently farming, a rich man?' That was my spiritual problem. Then all my family gathered together and consulted and decided[49] that it would suit the family better if I were to become a rich man, and I also agreed. To accomplish that aim I increased my area under cultivation and worked hard day and night. I cut down the cryptomeria at my homestead and planted in their stead mulberries and persimmons. And I slowly changed my dry land into rice fields (making it therefore more valuable). The soil I got I heaped up at the homestead for eighteen years until I had 28,000 cubic feet. I was able then to raise the level of my house which had become damp and covered with mould. The increase of my cultivated area and of the yield per _tan_ and the improvement of my house and the practice of economy were the delight of my life. I felt grateful to my ancestors who gave me such a strong body. Sometimes I kept awake all night talking with my wife about the goodness of my ancestors. Also when in bed I planned a compact homestead. I once read a j.a.panese poem, 'What a joy to be born in this peaceful reign and to be favoured by ploughs and horses.' (Most j.a.panese farming is done without either horses or ploughs.) It went deeply into my heart. Also I heard from the school teacher of four loves: love of State, love of Emperor, love of teacher and love of parent. I have been much favoured by those loves. I also heard the doctrines of Ninomiya: sincerity, diligence, moderate living, unselfishness. I felt it a great joy to live remembering those doctrines. I also went to the prefectural experiment station and studied fruit growing and my spirit was much expanded. I returned again to the station and the expert talked to me very earnestly. I asked for a special variety of persimmon. The expert sent to Gifu prefecture for it. I planted the tree and made its top into six grafts. It bore fruit and many pa.s.sers-by envied it. Two years after that I grafted five hundred trees and sold the grafted stock."

Several villages sent to the exhibition statistics of great interest.

One village set forth the changes which had taken place in the social status of its inhabitants[50]. Some communities were represented by statements of their hours of labour[51]. One small community's tables showed how many of its inhabitants were "diligent people," how many "average workers" and how many "other people[52]." A county agricultural a.s.sociation had painstakingly collected information not only about the work done in a year[53] and the financial returns obtained by three typical farmers but about the way in which they spent what they earned.[54]

On my way back from the exhibition I heard the story of a priest. When fourteen years of age he obtained seeds of cryptomeria and planted them in a spot in the hills. He also practised many economies. When still in his teens he asked permission to take two shares in a 50-yen money-sharing club, but was not allowed to do so as no one would believe that he could complete his payments. He persisted, however, that he would be able to pay what was required and he was at length accepted as a member. At twenty he became priest of a small temple which was in bad repair and had a debt of 125 yen. He brought with him his 100 yen from the club and the young cryptomeria. He planted the trees in the temple grounds. He said, "I wish to rebuild the temple when these trees grow up." He cultivated the land adjoining his temple and contrived to employ several labourers. At last the cryptomeria grew large enough for his purpose and he rebuilt the temple, expending on the work not only his trees but 600 yen which he had by this time saved. Then he proceeded to bring waste land into cultivation. At the age of sixty-two he gave his temple to another priest and went to live in a hut on the waste land. There came a tidal wave near the place, so he went to the sufferers and invited five families to his now cultivated waste land. He gave them each a _tan_ of land and the material for building cottages and showed them how to open more land.

[Ill.u.s.tration: "HIBACHI" AND, IN "TOKONOMA," FLOWER ARRANGEMENT AND "KAKEMONO." See Index]

[Ill.u.s.tration: SCHOOL SHRINE CONTAINING EMPEROR'S PORTRAIT. p. 113]

A good judge expressed the opinion that Buddhism was flourishing in 80 per cent. of the villages of Aichi, but this was in a material and ceremonial sense. The prefectures of Aichi and Niigata had been called the "kitchens of Hongwanji"[55] (the great temple at Kyoto), such liberal contributions were forthcoming from them. "A belief in progress," this speaker said, "may be a subst.i.tute for religion for many of our people; another subst.i.tute is a belief in j.a.pan." A village headman from the next prefecture (Shidzuoka) said: "People in my village do not omit to perform their Buddhist ceremonies, but they are not at their hearts religious. In our prefecture the influence of Ninomiya is greater than that of Buddhism. If the villagers are good it is Ninomiyan principles that make them so. Under Ninomiyan influence the spirit of a.s.sociation has been aroused, thriftiness has been encouraged and extravagance reprimanded."

[Ill.u.s.tration: FENCING AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. p. 50]

[Ill.u.s.tration: WAR MEMENTOES AT THE SAME SCHOOL--ALL SCHOOLS HAVE SOME]

I told Mr. Yamasaki one day that there was an old Scotswoman who divided good people into "rael Christians and guid moral fowk." What I was curious to know was what proportion of j.a.panese rural people might be fairly called "real Buddhists" and what proportion "good moral folk." "There are certainly some real Buddhists, not merely good moral folk," he a.s.sured me. "If you penetrate deeply into the lives of the people you will be able to find a great number of them. In ordinary daily life, during a period when nothing extraordinary happens, it is not easy to distinguish the two cla.s.ses; but when any trouble comes then those real religious people are undismayed, while the ordinarily good moral people may sometimes go astray. The proportion of religious people is rather large among the poor compared with the middle and upper cla.s.ses. These poor people are always weighted with many troubles which would be a calamity to persons of the middle or upper cla.s.ses. Such humble folk get support for their lives from what is in their hearts. Though they may suffer privation or loss they are glad that they can live on by the mercy of Buddha. There are some religious people even among those who are not poor. They are usually people who have lost some of their riches suddenly, or a dear child, or have been deprived of high position, or have met some kind of misfortune.

Sometimes a man may become religious because he feels deeply the misfortunes or miseries of a neighbour or the miseries of war. Or his religion may come by meditation. A man who begins to be religious is not, however, at once noticed. On the contrary, if he is a true believer his daily life will be most ordinary."

One day I pa.s.sed a primary school playground. The girls had just finished and the boys were beginning Swedish drill. Everyone engaged in the drill, including the master, was barefoot.

I saw that some of the cottages were built in an Ess.e.x fashion, of puddled clay and chopped straw faced with tarred boards. Some dwellings, however, were faced with straw instead of boards. They had just had their wall thatch renewed for the winter.

In one spot there was a quarter of a mile of wooden aqueduct for the service of the paddy fields. Much agricultural pumping is done in Aichi. I visited an irrigation installation where pumps (from London) were turning barren hill tops into paddy fields.[56] The work was being done by a co-operative society of 550 members who had borrowed the 40,000 yen they needed from a bank on an undertaking to repay in fifteen years.

It was stated that common paddy near Anjo had been bought at 5,000 yen per _cho_ and not for building purposes. When one member of our company said, "The farmers here are rivalling each other in hard work," the weightiest authority among us replied: "What the farmer must do is to work not harder but better. At present he is not working on scientific principles. The hours he is spending on really profitable labour are not many. He must work more rationally. In 26 villages in the south-west of j.a.pan, where farming calls for much labour, it was found that the number of days' work in the year was only 192. Statistics for Eastern j.a.pan give 186 days.[57] As to a secondary industry, one or two hours' work a night at straw rope making for a month may bring in a yen because the market for rope is confined to j.a.pan. The same with _zori_, a coa.r.s.e sort being purchasable for 2 sen a pair. But supplementary work like silk-worm culture produces an article of luxury for which there is a world market."

When we returned home my host was kind enough to summarise for me--the general reader may skip here--some of the reasons set forth by a professor of agricultural politics for the farmer's position being what it is:

1. The average area cultivated per family is very small.

2. The law of diminishing return.

3. Imperfection of the agricultural system. Mainly crop raising, not a combination of crop and stock raising, as in England. No profitable secondary business but silkworm culture. Therefore the distribution of labour throughout the year is not good and the number of days of effective labour is relatively small.

4. The commercial side of agriculture has not been sufficiently developed.

5. There has been a rise in the standard of living. In the old days the farmer did not complain; he thought his lot could not be changed.

He was forbidden to adopt a new calling and he was restricted by law to a frugal way of living. Now farmers can be soldiers, merchants or officials and can live as they please. They begin to compare their standard of living with that of other callings. What were once not felt to be miseries are now regarded as such.

6. Formerly the farmer had not the expense of education and of losing the services of his sons to the army. There is also an increase in taxation. A representative family which incurred a public expenditure, not including education, of 12.86 yen in 1890, paid in 1898 19.68 yen.

In 1908 it was faced by a claim for 34.28 yen.[58]

7. Although the area of land does not increase in relation to the increase of population, the size of the peasant family is increasing owing to the decrease of infanticide and abortion and the development of sanitation.

8. The farmer suffers from debts at high interest.

9. The character, morality and ability of the farmer are not yet fully developed.

10. Formerly the farmer lived an economically self-contained existence. He had no great need of money. He must now sell his produce on a market with wider and wider fluctuations.

11. There are many expensive customs and habits, for instance the two or three days' feasting at weddings and funerals.

During the evening I was told this story. In a village in a far part of the prefecture there lived a farmer called Yosogi. He was a thrifty and diligent man. When he became old he gave all that he had to his son. But the old man could not stop working. He would go to the farm and help his son. The son did not like this. He wanted his old father to rest. In the end he found that the only way to cope with his industrious parent was to work very hard and leave him nothing to do.

But the old man was not to be balked. He took himself off to the hillside and began to make a paddy field where there had never been a paddy field before. To make a paddy field on such a slope is a difficult task. The land must be embanked with stones and then levelled. The building of the strong embankment alone calls for much labour. The old man toiled very hard at his job and sometimes his son in despair sent his labourers to help him. At length the paddy field was finished. But it was only a tenth of a _tan_ in area. When the son saw the small result of so much labour he said to his father, "I grieve for the way you have toiled. You have laboured hard for many days and my labourers have helped you, but all that has been accomplished is the making of a paddy field so small and distant that it is uneconomical."

To this the old man replied: "When you go to Tokyo and see the graveyard at Aoyama you will behold there many monuments of generals and ministers of State. Their merits and their works in this world are described on those monuments. But do you know where the monument of the famous hero Kusunoki Masashige is? It is near Kobe, and it is not more than half as big as those monuments at Tokyo. Do you know where the monument of the great Taiko is? It is in Kyoto, but it is only recently that this monument was put up. Thus the monuments of our greatest heroes are small or have been erected recently. The reason is that it is unnecessary to raise big monuments for them because what they did in their lives was in itself their monument. They built their monument in the hearts of the people. Therefore we can never judge from the size of the monument the kind of work which was accomplished by the man who sleeps under it. Monuments are not only for ministers and warriors. We peasants can also erect monuments in our own way. To open a new paddy field, to plant the bare hillside with trees, these are our monuments. How lonely it would be for me if there were no monument left after my death. However small this paddy field may be, it will not be forgotten so long as it yields for your posterity the blessing of its rice crop." "Happily," the interpreter added, "the old man did not die so soon as he thought he would do. He lived for several years and planted the bare hillside with trees. Now the wood which grows there is worth 10,000 yen."

A peasant proprietor expressed the conviction that goodness in a family was "not the result of its own efforts but of the acc.u.mulation of ancestral effort." The "ancestral merits and good spirit remain in the family." On the problem of rich and poor he quoted the proverb, "The very rich cannot remain very rich for more than three generations; a poor family cannot long remain poor." He said that he would be interested to know what I found to be "the causes of our villagers becoming good or bad." "For ourselves," he said, quoting another proverb, "'At the foot of the lighthouse it is dark.'"

THE MOST EXACTING CROP IN THE WORLD

CHAPTER VIII

THE HARVEST FROM THE MUD

_Toyo-ashiwara-no-chiiho-aki-mizuho-no-Kuni_ (Land of plenteous ears of rice in the plain of luxuriant reeds).

The vast difference between Far Eastern and Western agriculture is marked by the fact that, except by using such a phrase as shallow pond--and this is inadequate, because a pond has a sloping bottom and a rice field necessarily a level one--it is difficult to describe a rice field in terms intelligible to a Western farmer. The j.a.panese have a special word for a rice field, _ta_, water field, written [Kanji: ta]. It will be noticed that the ideograph looks like a water field in four compartments. Another word, _hata_ or _hatake_,[59]

written [Kanji: hata], tells the story of the dry or upland field. It is the ideograph for water field in a.s.sociation with the ideograph for fire, and, as we shall see later on, when we make acquaintance with "fire farming," an upland field is a tract the vegetation of which was originally burnt off.

Many of us have seen rice growing in Italy or in the United States.

But in j.a.pan[60] the paddies are very-much smaller than anything to be seen in the Po Valley and in Texas. Owing to the plentiful water supply of a mountainous land, cultivation proceeds with some degree of regularity and with a certain independence of the rainy season; and there has been applied to traditional rice farming not a few scientific improvements.

There is a kind of rice with a low yield called upland rice which, like corn, is grown in fields. But the first requisite of general rice culture is water. The ordinary rice crop can be produced only on a piece of ground on which a certain depth of water is maintained.

In order to maintain this depth of water, three things must be done.

The plot of ground must be made level, low banks of earth must be built round it in order to keep in the water, and a system of irrigation must be arranged to make good the loss of water by evaporation, by leakage and by the continual pa.s.sing on of some of the water to other plots belonging to the same owner or to other farmers.

The common name of a rice plot is paddy, and the rice with its husk on, that is, as it is knocked from the ear by threshing, is called paddy rice. The rice exported from j.a.pan is some of it husked and some of it polished.

[Ill.u.s.tration: A 200-YEARS-OLD j.a.pANESE DRAWING OF THE RICE PLANT]

Some 90 per cent. of the rice grown in j.a.pan is ordinary rice. The remaining 10 per cent. is about 2 per cent. upland and 8 per cent, glutinous[61]--the sort used for making the favourite _mochi_ (rice flour dumplings, which few foreigners are able to digest). It would be possible to collect in j.a.pan specimens of rice under 4,000 different names, but, like our potato names, many of these represent duplicate varieties. Rice, again reminding us of potatoes, is grown in early, middle and late season sorts.[62]