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The Foundations of Japan by J.W. Robertson Scott

J >> J.W. Robertson Scott >> The Foundations of Japan




The indomitable experimenter swallowed another cupful of tea and
declared that "in order to be prosperous, all the members of the
family must work." All the members of his family did work. His wife
was strong and there were five healthy children. He used the ordinary
farm implements and his livestock consisted of only a horse and a few
hens. The home farm was five miles from the station. The outlying
farms were scattered in five villages--"there are always spendthrift
lazy fellows willing to sell their land." "I have a firm belief," the
speaker added complacently, "that agriculture is the most honest, the
most sincere, the most interesting, the most secure and the most
profitable calling."

"Very often," he went on, "good people are not sufficiently
precautious"--I give the excellent word coined by my interpreter.
"They spend for the public good, and in the end they are left poor.
Renowned, rich families have come to a miserable condition by such
action. What they have done may have been good. But they are reduced
to pauperism and they are laughed at by many persons. People jeer that
they pretended to do good, yet they could not do good to themselves.
If all people who work for the public benefit are laughed at at
last--and many are--it will come to be thought that to work for the
public benefit is not good. Therefore I think that the man who would
work for the public good must be careful in his own affairs. He must
not be a poor man if he is to help public business. However
philanthropic he may be, if his financial position is not strong he
cannot go on long. He will be stopped on his good way. He cannot help
other people. Therefore I am now gathering wealth for strengthening
my financial position as a means to attain the higher end."

As the speaker awaited my judgment on his career, I ventured to
suggest that gifts, qualities and inspiration which made a man a
public man did not necessarily equip him for being a great success in
business life. The question was, perhaps, whether the type of man who
was pre-eminently successful in promoting his own pecuniary interests
was necessarily the best type of public man. Was the average character
equal to the strain of many years of concentration on money-making to
the exclusion of public interests? When men emerged from the sphere of
concentrated money-making, were they worth so very much as public men?
Might not the values of things have altered a little for them? Might
it not have a shrivelling effect on the heart to resist applications
which must be refused when the strengthening of one's financial
position was regarded as the chief object in life?

At this point our host, Mr. Yamasaki, the respected principal of the
big agricultural school of the prefecture and a well-known rural
author and speaker, broke in with the ejaculation, "He has got a
needle in your head"--the Japanese equivalent for "touching the
spot"--and continued: "Surely he is right who through his life offers
freely what he may have as to members of his own family. I give away
many pamphlets and I have guests. I could save in these directions.
But I am not doing it. I am content if I can support my family. I gave
a savings book to each of my five children. When the boy becomes
twenty-one he will have enough to finish at the university or start as
a small merchant so as not to be a parasite. My girls will be provided
with enough to furnish the costs of modest marriage. If I did more I
might perhaps become greedy."

I cannot say that the farmer who had so kindly outlined his life's
programme was impressed either by our host's views or by mine, but he
told us that he now spent 5 per cent. of his income on public
purposes, and that 150 yen received for giving lectures was spent on
books and recreation "for enlarging mind and heart." He happened to
mention that, though his family was of the Zen sect of Buddhism, he
was a Shintoist. It is difficult to believe that a genuine Buddhist
could have evolved such a life scheme. There is certainly a Shinto
symbolism in his plan of tree planting before his house. He has set
there, in the order shown, eleven pines which he named as marked:

[Illustration: PLAN OF THE ELEVEN SYMBOLIC TREES WHICH THE FARMER PLANTED
OUTSIDE HIS HOUSE AND THE EVILS (REPRESENTED BY ARROWS)
FROM WHICH THEY ARE SHIELDING HIM]

The virtues inscribed on this plan are the guardians of the farmer and
his family, which is represented in the middle of it. The words behind
the arrows represent the character of the attacks to which the farmer
conceives himself and his family to be exposed. Courage is imagined as
going before and Wisdom as protecting the rear.

The talk turned to some advice which had been given to farmers to lay
out "economic gardens." They were to plant no trees but fruit trees.
To this an old farmer of our company replied: "If you are too
economical your children will become mercenary. Some families were too
economical and cut down beautiful trees, planting instead economical
ones. Those families I have seen come to an evil end. The man who
exercises rigid economy may be a good man, but his children can know
little of his real motives and must be wrongly influenced by his
conduct." We all agreed that there was nowadays too much talk about
money-making in rural Japan. "Even I," laughed the owner of the
symbolic trees, "planted not persimmons but pines."

FOOTNOTES:

[14] That is, before the Revolution of half a century ago, when the
Tokugawa Shogun resigned his powers to the Emperor.

[15] The Japanese bed, _futon_, consists of a soft mattress of cotton
wool, two or three inches thick. It is spread on the floor, which
itself consists of mats of almost the same thickness, 6 ft. long by 3
ft. wide.

[16] Most of the really big men of Australia have left political life
in comparatively impoverished circumstances. Not only did Sir Henry
Parkes die poor. Sir George Reid took the High Commissionership in
London; Sir Graham Berry was provided with a small annuity; Sir George
Dibbs was made the manager of a State savings bank; Sir Edmund Barton
was lifted to the High Court Bench.--_Times_, January 11, 1921.

To the last day of his life, executions were levied in his
house.--Rosebery on Pitt.

[17] For his figures see Appendix I.




CHAPTER III

EARLY-RISING SOCIETIES AND OTHER INGENUOUS
ACTIVITIES

I should be heartily sorry if there were no signs of partiality. On the
other hand, there is, I trust, no importunate advocacy or tedious
assentation.--MORLEY


"The alarum clocks for waking us at four o'clock in the summer and
five in the winter"--it was the chairman of a village Early-Rising
Society who was speaking to me--are placed at the houses of the
secretaries, and each member is in turn a secretary. The duty of a
secretary, when the alarum clock strikes, is to get up and visit the
houses of all the members allotted to him and to shout for the young
men until they answer. Each member on rising walks to the house of the
secretary of his division and writes his name on the record of
attendances. Then the member goes to the shrine, where we fence and
wrestle for a time. At first we thought that if we fenced and wrestled
early in the morning we should be tired for our work, but we found
that it was not so.

"Sometimes a clock gets damaged and does not ring, so a few of us may
be getting up later that morning. Or a man becomes afraid of sleeping
too late, fears his clock is wrong, and gets up at 3 o'clock and then
goes off to waken members. Hence complaints. Some cunning fellows ask
their friends or brothers to write down for them their names on the
list of attendances. But we find out their deceit by their
handwriting. It is very difficult to form the habit of early rising,
because members are not expected to report at the secretaries' houses
on a rainy day. As there is no control over them that day, they are
easy in their minds and sleep on. Thus they break the habit of early
rising that they are forming. Getting up early is necessary not only
because it is good to begin work early but because early rising
overcomes the habit of gadding about at night which is customary in
many villages.

"You may say that all this is a great deal to ask of young men," the
chairman continued. "But if you ask from them comfortable practices
only, how can you expect from them a remarkable result? Young men
should ponder this and be willing to exert themselves." Later on it
was explained to me that it had been found that it took a great deal
of time for the secretaries to call up all the members in the morning
by shouting to them, "so the secretary obtained bugles; but even the
bugles were not heard everywhere, so they were changed to drums, and
now five drums go round our village every morning."

In every village of Japan there is a young men's association, which is
by no means to be confounded with the world-encircling Y.M.C.A.[18]
The village Y.M.A. of Japan is an institution of some antiquity and it
has nothing whatever to do with religious effort. One day, when I was
staying in a rural district, I was invited to a remoter part in order
to see something of the discipline that the members of a group of
young men's associations were imposing on themselves. The members of
this group of Y.M.A. belonged to the branches established in a village
of nineteen _aza_, that is hamlets. This fact, with the further fact
that the village containing the nineteen _aza_ had four elementary
schools and one higher school, will show that a Japanese village may
be much larger than a Western one.

Nearly six hundred young men were in the parade. They were dressed
exactly alike in the tight blue calico trousers and kimono of jacket
length which the Japanese farmer ordinarily wears. Each man had the
usual _obi_ (waist scarf) tied round his kimono, and in the _obi_ was
thrust the small cotton towel which Japanese carry with them
everywhere. The young men wore puttees, _waraji_ (straw sandals) and
caps. It is only of late that the Japanese worker has taken to wearing
head-gear, or at any rate head-gear other than he could contrive with
his towel. The physical condition of the young fellows was good and
their evolutions with dummy "rifles" were smart and skilful. The
paraders seemed lost in their desire to do their best for their
credit's sake and their own good. After the first movements, the
"troops" with "rifles" held as if there were bayonets at the end, made
rushes with loud cries. The secret of this somewhat surprising display
far away in the heart of Japan was that the work of the young men had
been done under the direction of two fit, be-medalled army surgeons,
reserve officers, who were present in order to answer my questions.

Every morning half an hour before sunrise these Y.M.A. members
assemble in the grounds of their Shinto shrine or of their school,
where they exercise until the sun shows itself. In the evenings after
work they also fence, wrestle, lift weights and develop their wrists.
This wrist development is done by two youths grasping a pole, one at
either end, and then trying to rotate it one against the other.

The members endeavour to cultivate their minds as well as their
bodies, and they also observe in their dress a self-denying ordinance.
On ceremonial occasions they permit themselves to wear a full-length
kimono and the _hakama_ or divided skirt, but they deny themselves the
third article of a Japanese man's full dress, the _haori_ or silk
overcoat. An effort is also made to dispense with the use of
"luxurious" _geta_ (the national wooden pattens).[19]

The object of all this varied discipline is to develop physique,
self-control, self-respect and what the Japanese call the spirit of
association, or, as we might say, good fellowship. The spirit of
association is needed in order to promote greater administrative,
educational and social efficiency. The modern Japanese village is no
longer an historical but a political unit which covers a considerable
district. It is, as I have explained, a combination of clusters of
_aza_ (hamlets). Each of these _aza_ has its local sentiment, and this
local sentiment when untouched by outside influences tends to become
selfish, narrow and prejudiced. If, however, anything is to be done in
the development of rural life there must be co-operation between
_aza_ for all sorts of objects.

I was assured that in addition to the development of physique, _moral_
and the spirit of association, there was to be seen, under the
influence of the Y.M.A., a development of good manners and mental
nimbleness. A special result of early rising and discipline in one
area had been that "the habit of spending evening hours idly has died
away, immorality has diminished, singing loudly and foolishly and
boasting oneself have disappeared, while punctuality and respect for
old age have increased." I was even assured that parents--whom no true
Japanese would ever dream of attempting to reform at first
hand--parents, I say, moved by the physical and mental advance in
their sons, have "begun to practise greater punctuality."

After the drilling was over I was taken to a large elementary school
and was called upon to address the young men, who were kneeling in
perfect files. Mr. Yamasaki followed me and told the youths that
Japanese were not so tall as they might be, and that therefore their
physique "must be continuously developed." Nor were rural conditions
all they should be from a moral point of view. Therefore, "every
desire which interferes with the development of your health or
morality must be overcome."

Let me speak of another village. It numbers a thousand families and it
rises in the morning and goes to bed at night by the sound of the
bugle. It has five public baths and a notice-board of news "to enlarge
people's ideas." The shopkeepers are said to "work very diligently, so
things are cheaper." The education of such of the young men as are
exempted from military service is continued on Saturday evenings for
four years. The Y.M.A., in addition to the military discipline,
fencing, wrestling, weight-lifting and pole-twisting of which I have
spoken, exercises itself in handwriting--which many Japanese practise
as an art during their whole lifetime--and in composing the
conventional short poem. I was gravely informed that "the custom of
spending money on sweet-stuff is decreasing." What this really means
is that the young men were not frequenting the sweet-stuff shops,
which are staffed by girls who are in many cases a greater temptation
than the sweets. The worthy members of this association had "burnt
their _geta_."

In some places Y.M.A. members give their labour when a school teacher
or a fellow member is building his house, or they do repairs at the
school. Bicycle excursions are made to neighbouring villages in order
to participate in inter-Y.M.A. debates, or to study vegetable raising,
fruit culture or poultry keeping. The Japanese are much given to
"taking trips," and the special training which they receive at school
in making notes and plans results in everybody having a notebook and
being able to sketch a rough route-plan for personal use, or for a
stranger who may ask his way.

Not a few associations favour members cutting each other's hair once a
fortnight, thus at one and the same time saving money and curbing
vanity. Several Y.M.A.s publish cyclostyled monthlies. Others minutely
investigate the economic condition of their villages. Some Y.M.A.s
provide public "complaint boxes," and have boards up asking for
friendly help for soldiers billeted in the district. One association
has issued instructions to its members that they are not to ride when
in charge of ox-drawn carts. The reason is that the ox is only
partially under control and may injure a pedestrian--unwittingly, I am
sure, for the gentleness of the ox and even of the bull in harness
arrests one's attention. Many Y.M.A.s devote themselves to cultivating
improved qualities of rice or to breaking up new land. Sometimes the
land of the Shinto shrine is cultivated. I have heard of Y.M.A.s in
remote parts having handed over to them the exclusive sale of _sake_.

I find a Y.M.A. counselling its members "not to speak vulgar words in
a crowd." There is also among the members of Y.M.A.s a certain
addiction to diary keeping for moral as well as economic purposes. The
diaries are distributed by the associations and "afterwards examined
and rewarded"--a plan which would hardly work in the West. There are
Y.M.A.s which make a point of seeing off conscripts with flags and
music. Others have fallen on the more economical plan of "writing to
the conscript as often as possible and helping with labour the family
which is suffering from the loss of his services." By some Y.M.A.s
"old people are respected and comforted." More than one association
has a practice of serving out red and black balls to its members at
the opening of every new year, when good resolutions are in order, and
at the end of the year recalling either the red or the black according
to the degree to which the publicly announced good resolutions have
been kept. Among the good resolutions are: to worship at the Shinto
shrine or the Buddhist temple regularly, to be tidier, to be more
efficient in cropping the land, to undertake work for the common good,
to have a secondary occupation in addition to farming, to sit with
more decorum at meals, to rise earlier, to visit the graves of
ancestors monthly, to be more considerate to parents or elder
brothers, and "not to remain idly at people's houses."

One Y.M.A. decrees that a member found in a tea-house in conversation
with a geisha shall be fined 20 yen. There is even a village in which
the young men's association and the young women's association have
united to issue a regulation providing that at night time members, in
order that their doings shall be public, shall carry lanterns painted
with the ideographs of their societies.[20]

With regard to the young women's associations, I found that one of
them studied domestic matters and good manners, "asking questions and
receiving answers." The motto of the organisation was "Good Wives and
Good Mothers." A member, this Society believes, should be "polite,
gentle and warm-hearted, but with a strong will inside and able to
meet difficulties." Her hairdressing and clothes "should not be
luxurious," and she "must not run after fashions." She must "respect
Buddha and abandon sweet-eating," for "taking food between meals is
bad for your health, for economy and for your posterity."

Let us now hear something of Societies for the Cultivation of Rice by
Schoolboys. The lads become responsible for the cultivation of a _tan_
of their family land, or of a small paddy, and they work it themselves
with the help of such advice as the schoolmaster may give them. (The
cultivation of a _tan_ of a paddy, a quarter of an acre, is supposed
to need in a year about twenty-one days' labour of a man working from
sunrise to sunset.) The report of one boy to which I turned in a
collection of reports by members of a rice-cultivation society showed
that he was between fourteen and fifteen. His diary of work and
observations was as follows:

_June_ 5.--4 _to_ of herring applied.

_June_ 7.--Locusts and other insects arrive.[21]

_June_ 20.--153 clumps of rice transplanted from the seed bed.[22]

_July_ 11.--Rice cultivated and 4 _to_ of herring applied.

_July_ 27.--First weeding.

_Aug_. 6.--Second weeding.

_Aug_. 8.--Locusts again.

_Aug_. 11.--Third weeding.

_Sept_. 10.--All ears shot.

_Oct_. 10.--Some plants suffering from bacillus.

It was further noted that the soil was sandy, that cold spring water
was percolating through the bottom of the paddy field, that the
aeration of the soil was bad and that some plants were laid by wind.
The young farmer appended to his report an excellent plan. He received
marks as follows: Method of planting, 15; levelling, 20; provision
against insects, 5; general attention, 25; total, 65. Some boys got as
many as 99 marks.

A word concerning a Village Association for Promoting Morality. One of
the things it does is to assemble yearly the whole population, old and
young, "in order to get friendly." The police meanwhile keep an eye
open for strangers who might take it into their heads to visit the
village on that day and help themselves from the houses. I may quote
three poems in rough translations from a speech made by a priest at
the annual meeting:

The legs of a horse, the rudder of a boat, the pin of a fan,
and the sincerity of a man.
Let your heart be pure and true and you need not pray
for the protection of the gods.
The bride brings many things with her to her new home,
but one thing more, the spirit of sincerity, will not
encumber her.

After these varied accounts of rural merit, I could not but listen
with attention to a tale of village gamblers, the offence of gambling
having been "introduced by the excavators on the new railway." First
the headman fined a dozen young men. Then he made a raid and found
among the village sinners several members of his own council. "The
salaried officials were at a loss to know what to do, and proposed to
resign. But the headman brought the prisoners together before the
whole body of officials. He spoke of the sufferings of the troops in
Manchuria and the heroic deaths among them. (It was the time of the
Russian war.) 'Lest your offences should come to be known by our
soldiers and discourage them,' said the headman, 'I cannot but
overlook your conduct.' It is thought that gambling practically ceased
from that time."

Local officials have a way of making the most of historic events in
order to touch the imagination of their villagers. Many original
undertakings were begun, for example, under the inspiration of the
Coronation. One village set about raising a fund by a system of
taxation under which inhabitants contribute according to the following
tariff:

Birth of a child, 10 sen (that is, 2-1/2 d. or 5 cents).
Wedding, 15 sen.
Adoption, 15 sen.
Graduation from the primary school, 10 sen; advanced
school, 20 sen.
Teacher or official on appointment, 2 per cent. of salary;
when salary is increased, 10 per cent. of increase.
When an official receives a prize of money from his
superior, 5 per cent.
Every villager to pay every quarter, 1 sen.

On the basis of this assessment it is expected that fifty-seven years
after the Coronation such a sum will have been accumulated as will
enable the villagers to live rate free. Some villages have
thanksgiving associations in connection with Shinto shrines. Aged
villagers are "respected by being blessed before the shrine and by
being given a present." Worthy villagers who are not aged "receive
prizes and honour."

More than once when I went to a village I was welcomed first by a
parade of the Y.M.A., then by the school children in rows, and finally
in the school grounds by two lines of venerable members of an
Ex-Public Servants' Association. The object of an E.P.S.A. is to
strengthen the hands of the present officials and to give honour to
their predecessors. A headman explained to me: "If ex-officials fell
into poverty or lacked public respect, people would not be inclined to
work for the public good. A former clerk in the village office whom
everybody had forgotten was working as a labourer. But as a member of
the association he was seen to be treated with honour, so the children
were impressed. The funeral of such a man is apt to be lonely, but
when this man died all the members of the association attended his
funeral in ceremonial dress and offered some money to his memory.[23]
His honour is great and the villagers say, 'We may well work for the
public benefit.'"

Every village in Japan has a Village Agricultural Association. One
V.A.A., which belongs to a village of less than 6,000 people, sees the
fruit of its labours in the existence of "322 good manure houses." The
gift of a plan and the grant of a yen had prompted the building of
most of them. Then the organisation incites its members to cement the
ground below their dwellings. This is not so much for the benefit of
the farmer and his family as for the welfare of their silkworms. A fly
harmful to silkworms winters in the soil, but it cannot find a
resting-place in concrete.

[Illustration: A WIDE EXPANSE OF ADJUSTED RICE-FIELDS. p. 71]

A word may also be said about the way in which silkworm rearers have
been induced by the V.A.A. to keep the same breed of caterpillar, so
facilitating bulking of cocoons at the association's co-operative
sales. A small library of silkworm-culture books has been started in
the village, and there is a special pamphlet for young men which
they are urged to keep in "their pockets and to study ten minutes each
day." A general library has 2,400 volumes divided into eight
circulating libraries. The cost of the building which provides the
library in chief, a meeting hall and also a storehouse for cocoons has
been defrayed by the commissions charged for the co-operative sale of
cocoons.

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