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The Foundations of Japan by J.W. Robertson Scott

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Immigrants get 5 _cho_, but if they are without capital they first go
to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply
labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have
capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without
hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than
2-1\2 _cho_ to rice--from 3 to 5 _cho_ are the absolute limit--against
1-1\2 or 2 _cho_ to other crops. When the holder of a 5-_cho_ holding
prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and
hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 _cho_ is considered as
much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15
_cho_ it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the
busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only
at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the
lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244]
The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 _cho_. (Stock farming is
for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk
factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is
understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245]

On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which brought home to
me the colonial character of the agriculture was the tree stumps
sticking up in the paddies. The second was the extent to which the
rivers were still uncontrolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles
long, is in Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in need
of draining. Peat--there are 300,000 _cho_ of it--may be a standby
when the waste of timber that is going on brings about a shortage of
fuel other than coal. From poor peat soil, which was growing oats,
buckwheat and millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and
saw ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for only twenty
years, but already the farmers had cultivated the hillsides in the
assiduous fashion of Old Japan.

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 passed 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 Japan--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 Japan. One of the company
said that not more than 5 per cent. returned. "Land is too expensive
at home," he continued; "when a Japanese 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 bumps came, gripped
one of my legs with much good fellowship. She was a godsend 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 passed, 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 passenger 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 institution 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 title, _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 space 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 spaces 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 assured 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
grass. Sometimes these areas have been cleared by forest fires
started by lightning. Wide spaces are a great change from the scenery
of closely farmed Japan. 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 passes 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 Japan 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 space compel the holding over of a chapter on
the Ainu for another volume.

[238] Of the 96 foreign instructors in institutions "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 XXXVII.

[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 XXXVIII

SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?

_Bon yori shoko_ (Proof, not argument)


One day in Tokyo I heard a Japanese 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 Japan 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 Japan an agriculture based on rice.[247] But a
section of the Japanese 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 Japan 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 Japanese in animal industry in no small measure
depends.

I have a note of a discussion on the general treatment of domestic
animals in Japan 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 Japanese
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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japanese 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 butter being made.
Untravelled Japanese 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 Japanese 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 Japan one finds sponge cake,
_kasutera_, a word from the Spanish.) Butter in country hotels is
usually rancid, for the reason, I imagine, that it is carelessly
handled and kept too long and that few Japanese know the taste of good
butter. The development of a liking for bread and butter is obviously
one of the conditions of the establishment of a successful animal
industry. Condensed milk is sold in large quantities, 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 quantities 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 substituted for
_geta_ and also for service requirements. It is contended that for the
emancipation of Japanese agriculture from the _petite 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 Japanese 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 Japan 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 Japan, 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 Japan. There are two bacon factories not far from
Tokyo.

As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign
imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths. Japan, which aims
above all at being an exporting country, cannot attain her desire
without receiving imports to pay for her exports.[256] The
physiological argument for an animal industry is unconvincing. The
Japanese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little
fish and a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally ingenious
variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and
the Japanese have become accustomed to digest vegetable protein.[257]
It might be suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter
of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the
influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[258] In
Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption
among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to
diminish the amount of meat consumed. There is also in the West an
increasing sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in
transportation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry were
established in Japan there would certainly be a great deal of
transportation by rail and steamer from the breeding to the rearing
districts, and from these districts to the slaughtering centres. If
the present advocacy of an animal industry for Japan should triumph
over the reluctance to take animal life inculcated by Buddhism it is
hardly likely to be regarded in the West as a forward step in the
ethical evolution of the Japanese.[259]

I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who has made a
special study of the food of the Japanese people, Professor Morimoto
of the University. He said that he had no doubt that when the Japanese
began to eat bread instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat
as well as butter. With great kindness he placed at my disposal
statistics which he afterwards expanded in a thesis for Johns Hopkins
University. He had investigated the dietary of the families of 200
tenants of the University farms. Reduced to terms of men per day the
result was:

Sen. Sen.
Rice (1.95 _go_) 4.2 Vegetables 2.2
(Naked) barley (3.45 _go_) 3.3 Pickles[260] .6
Fish 1.0 Sake .08
_Miso_ .7 Sugar .02
_Shoyu_ (soy) .03 ------
12.13

Or at Tokyo prices, 14.3 sen. On averaging, in terms of per man per
day, the food and drink consumption of all Japan, Professor Morimoto
found the result to be:

Sen. Sen.
Grain 6.60 Fruits .40
Legumes .39 Sugar .53
Vegetables 2.00 Salt .20
Fish and seaweeds .54 Tea .10
Beef and veal .10 } Alcoholic
Other animal food .03 } liquor 1.50
Chicken .03 } .33 Tobacco .45
Eggs .13 }
Milk .04 }
-----
13.04[261]


The Professor compares with these totals the 34.4 sen and 39.3 sen per
day which seem to represent the cost of the food of the rank and file
in the navy and army, and three standards of diet issued by the
official Bureau of Hygiene providing for expenditures of 32.1 sen, 33
sen and 44.4 sen respectively. (All the prices I have cited are dated
1915.) Beef and pork as well as fish are used in the army and navy.
The navy also uses bread.

Professor Morimoto estimates that a Japanese may be fairly expected to
consume only 80 per cent. of what a foreigner needs, for the average
weight of Japanese is only 13 _kwan_ 830 _momme_ to the European's 17
_kwan_ 20 _momme_.

My personal impression, which I give merely for what it is worth, for
I have made no investigation of the subject, is that, though Japanese
may thrive on meagre fare, they eat large quantities of food when
their resources permit of indulgence. The common ailment seems to be
"stomach ache." This may be due to eating at irregular hours, to an
unbalanced dietary, to the eating of undercooked viands or to
occasional over-eating, or to all of these causes.[262] Undoubtedly
there is much room for dietetic reform.

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