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The Foundations of Japan by J.W. Robertson Scott

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[Illustration: LIBRARY AND WORKSHED OF A YOUNG MEN'S ASSOCIATION. p. 15]

Again, there used to be no cattle in the village, but now, thanks to
the purchase of young animals by the association, and thanks to
village shows, there are 103.

There is a competition to get the biggest yield of rice, and there is
also "an exhibition of crops." This exhibition incidentally aims at
ending trouble between landlord and tenants due to complaints of the
inferiority of the rice brought in as rent. (Paddy-field rent is
invariably paid in rice.) These complaints are more directly dealt
with by the V.A.A. arbitrating between landlords and tenants who are
at issue. In addition to rice crop and cattle shows in the village,
there is a yearly exhibition of the prod ucts of secondary industries,
such as mats, sandals and hats.

The V.A.A. is also working to secure the planting of hill-side waste.
Some 300,000 tree seedlings have been distributed to members of the
Y.M.A., who "grow them on," and, after examination and criticism,
plant them out. I must not omit to speak of the V.A.A.s' distribution
of moral and economic diaries of the type already referred to. The
villagers, in the spirit of boy-scoutism, are "advised to do one good
thing in a day." I saw several of these diaries, well thumbed by their
authors after having been laboured at for a year. One young farmer
noted down on the space for January 2 that he said his prayers and
then went _daikon_[24] pulling, and that _daikon_ pulling (like our
mangold pulling) is a cold job.

FOOTNOTES:

[18] There are, however, 11,000 members of Y.M.C.A. in Japan. There is
also a Y.W.C.A. with a considerable membership.

[19] See Appendix II.

[20] For official action in regard to the Y.M.A.s, see later.

[21] The damage done by insects is estimated at 10 million yen a year.
In some parts locusts are roasted and eaten.

[22] For an account of the processes of rice cultivation, see Chapter
IX.

[23] It is the practical Japanese custom to make a gift of money to a
family on the occasion of a death. The Emperor makes a present to the
family of a deceased statesman.

[24] The giant white radish which reaches 2 or 3 ft. in length and 3
in. or more in diameter. There is also a correspondingly large
turnip-shaped sort.




CHAPTER IV

"THE SIGHT OF A GOOD MAN IS ENOUGH"

It has been said that we should emulate rather than imitate them.
All I say is, Let us study them.--MATTHEW ARNOLD


For seven years in succession the men, old, middle-aged and young, who
had done the most remarkable things in the agriculture of the
prefecture had been invited to gather in conference. I went to this
annual "meeting of skilful farmers." Among the speakers were the local
governor and chiefs of departments who had been sent down by the
Ministry of Agriculture and the Home Office. According to our ideas,
everybody but the unpractised speakers--the expert farmers who were
called from time to time to the platform--spoke too long. But the
kneeling audience found no fault. Indeed, a third of it was taking
notes. It was an audience of seeking souls.

One of the impromptu speakers, a white-haired, toil-marked farmer,
told how forty years before he had gone to the next prefecture and
opened new land. "With his spectacles and moustache," explained the
chairman--if the man who takes the initiative from time to time at a
Japanese meeting may be properly called a chairman--"he looks like a
gentleman; but he works hard." And the man showed his hands as a
testimony to the severity of his labours.

"It was in the winter," he said, "that I went away from my home and
obtained a certain tract of waste. I had no acquaintance near. I
brought some food, but when I fell short I had no more. I had gone
with my third boy. We lived in a small hut and were in a miserable
condition. Then a fierce wind took off the roof. It was at four in the
morning when the roof blew off. In February I began to open a rice
field. Gradually we got a _cho_. At length I opened another _cho_,
but there was much gravel. Some of my newly opened fields are very
high up the hill. If you chance to pass my house please come to see
me. The maple leaves are very beautiful and you can enjoy the sight of
many birds."

The early meetings of the expert farmers used to last not one day but
two, for the men delighted in narrating their experiences to one
another. Some of the audience used to weep as the older men told their
tales. The farmers would sit up late round a farmer or a professor who
was talking about some subject that interested them. The originator of
these gatherings, Mr. Yamasaki, told me that he was "more than once
moved to tears by the merits and pure hearts of the farmer speakers."

Of the regard and respect which the farmers had for this man I had
many indications. Like not a few agricultural authorities, he is a
samurai.[25] He is exceptionally tall for a Japanese, looks indeed
rather like a Highland gillie, and when one evening I prevailed on him
to put on armour, thrust two swords in his _obi_ and take a long bow
in his hand, he was an imposing figure. He carries the ideals of
_bushido_ into his rural work. He does not sleep more than five hours,
and he is up every morning at five.

But I am getting away from the meeting. There was a priest who spoke,
a man curiously like Tolstoy. (He had, no doubt, Ainu blood in him.)
He wore the stiff buttoned-up jacket of the primary school teacher and
spoke modestly. "Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered very
much from bad irrigation," he said, "but when that was put right the
soil became excellent. In the days when the soil was bad the people
were good and no man suspected another of stealing his seal.[26] But
when the soil became good the disposition of the people was influenced
in a bad way, and they brought their seals to the temple to be kept
safe.

"At that time the organiser of this meeting came and made a speech in
my village. On hearing his speech I thought it an easy task to make my
village good. At once I began to do good things. I formed several
men's and women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha. But
the real condition of the people was not much improved. There came
many troubles upon me, and our friend wrote a letter. I was very
thankful, and I have been keeping that letter in the temple and bowing
there morning and evening.

"I began to ask many distinguished persons to help me. They influenced
the farmers. The sight of a good man is enough. Speech is unnecessary.
The villagers were not educated enough to understand moralisings or
thinking, but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was a
man in the village who was demoralised, and when I told of him to a
distinguished man who lives near our village he sympathised very much.
That distinguished man is eighty-four years old, but he accompanied
that demoralised man for three days, giving no instruction but simply
living the same life, and the demoralised man was an entirely changed
man and ever thankful.

"I am a sinful man. Sometimes it happens that after I have been
working for the public benefit I am glad that I am offered thanks. I
know it is not a good thing when people express gratitude to me, for I
ought not to accept it. When I know I am doing a good thing and
expecting thanks, I am not doing a good thing. My thanks must not come
from men but from Buddha. I am trying to cast out my sinful feelings.
It must not be supposed that I am leading these people. You skilful
farmers kindly come to my village if you pass. You need not give any
speech. Your good faces will do."

But the two speeches I have reported are hardly a fair sample of the
discourses which were delivered. The addresses of the earnest Tokyo
officials and the Governor were directed towards urging on the farmers
increased production and increased labour, and the duty was pressed
upon them, as I understood, in the name of the highest patriotism and
of devotion to their ancestors. This talk was excellent in its way,
but when I got up I hazarded a few words on different lines. If I
venture to summarise my somewhat elementary address it is because it
furnishes a key to some of the enquiries I was to make during my
journeys. I was told the next day that the local daily had declared
that my "tongue was tipped with fire," which was a compliment to my
kind and clever interpreter, who, when he let himself go, seemed to be
able to make two or three sentences out of every one of mine:

I said that my Japanese friends kept asking me my impressions, and one
thing I had to say to them was that I had got an impression in many
quarters of spiritual dryness. I dared to think that some
responsibility for a materialistic outlook must be shared by the
admirable officials and experts who moved about among the farmers.
They were always talking about crop yields and the amount of money
made, and they unconsciously pressed home the idea that rural progress
was a material thing.

But the rural problem was not only a problem of better crops and of
greater production. Man did not live by food alone. Tolstoy wrote a
book called _What Men Live By_, and there was nothing in it about
food. Men lived not by the number of bales of rice they raised, but by
the development of their minds and hearts. It might be asked if it was
not the business of rural experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of
my country had said that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner
sty. It was necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to
know something higher than agriculture. The teacher must be more
advanced than his pupils. There must be a source from which the energy
of the rural teacher must be again and again renewed. There must be a
well from which he must be continually refreshed and stimulated. Some
called that well by the name of religion, unity with God. Some called
it faith in mankind, faith in the destiny of the world, that faith in
man which is faith in God. But it must be a real belief, not a
half-hearted, shivering faith.

Agriculture was not only the oldest and the most serviceable calling,
it was the foundation of everything. But the fact must not be lost
sight of that agriculture, important and vital though it was, was only
a means to an end. The object in view was to have in the rural
districts better men, women and children. The highest aim of rural
progress was to develop the minds and hearts of the rural population,
and in all discussion of the rural problems it was necessary not to
lose in technology a clear view of the final object.

But when account is taken of all the drab materialism in the rural
districts there remains a leaven of unworldliness. It takes various
forms. Here is the story of a landlord at whose beautiful house I
stayed. "When a tenant brings his rent rice to this landlord's
storehouse," a fellow-guest told me, "it is never examined. The door
of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is brought by
the tenant when he is minded to do so. No one takes note of his
coming. If he meets his landlord on the road he may say, 'I brought
you the rent,' and the landlord says, 'It is very kind of you.' It is
an old custom not to supervise the tenants' bringing of the rent.

"Nowadays, however, some tenants are sly. They say, 'Our landlord
never looks into our payments. Therefore we can bring him inferior
rice or less than the quantity.' The landlord loses somewhat by this,
but it is not in accordance with the honour of his family to change
the method of collecting his rent. He is now chairman of the village
co-operative society as well as of the young men's society, and he
aims to improve his village fundamentally."

I also heard this narrative. The tenants in a certain place wished to
cultivate rice land rather than to farm dry land. But when silkworm
cultivation became prosperous they began to prefer dry land again in
order that they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the
landlords raised the rents of the dry farms. But there was one
landlord who said, "If this dry farm land had been improved by me I
should be justified in raising the rent. But I did not improve it.
Therefore it would be base to take advantage of economic conditions to
raise the rent."

So he did not raise the rent. Then he was excluded from social
intercourse by the other landlords because their tenants grumbled.
These landlords said to him, "You can afford not to raise your rents,
but we cannot." Therefore the landlord who had not raised his rents
called his tenants together. He said to them, "It is a hard thing for
me to have no social intercourse with my equals. Therefore I will now
raise the rents. But I cannot accept that raised portion, and I will
take care of it for you, and in ten years I think it will amount to
enough for you to start a cooperative society."

That was eight years ago and the formation of the society was now
proceeding. In order that the reader may not forget on what a very
different scale landlordism exists in Japan, I may mention that the
area owned by this landlord was only 10 _cho_.

I was told the story of a landlord's solution of the rent reduction
problem. "Tenants," the narrator said, "sometimes pretend that their
crops are poorer than they are. Landlords may reduce the payment due,
but sometimes with a certain resentment. One landowner was asked for a
reduction for several years in succession on account of poor crops,
and gave it. But he was trying to think of a plan to defeat the
pretences of his tenants. At last he hit on one. While the tenants'
rice was young he often visited the fields, and when any insects were
to be seen he sent his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the same
way, when crops seemed to be under-manured, he secretly cast
artificial manure on them. At last his tenants found out what he was
doing, and they said, 'As our landlord is so kind to us, we must not
pretend that we need a reduction.' And they did not, and things are
going on very well there. This is an illustration of the fact that our
people are moved more by feeling than by logic."

This was capped by another story. "A landlord, a samurai, has for his
tenants his former subjects, so something of the relation of master
and servant still remains. He wished to raise his tenants to the
position of peasant proprietors, so when land was for sale in the
village he advised them to buy. They said they had no money, but he
answered, 'Means may perhaps be found.' He secretly subscribed a sum
to the Shinto shrine and then advised the formation of a co-operative
society, which could borrow from the shrine for a tenant, so that the
tenant need not go to the landlord to thank him and feel patronised by
him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks there." "The
landlord," added the speaker in his imperfect English, "has entirely
hided himself from the business." A third of the tenants had become
peasant proprietors.

In order to better the feeling between the farmers and landowners this
landlord and several others had begun to ask their tenants to their
gardens, where they were given tea and fruit. "In Japan," said one man
to me, "we see feudal ideas broken down by the upper, not the lower
class."

I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles from the
railway. Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year to the eighty-eight
temples on the peninsula, and in some parts the people are such strict
Buddhists that in one village the county authorities find great
difficulty in overcoming an objection to destroying the insect life
which preys on the rice crops. When rice land does not yield well, one
landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives advice based
upon it to the tenant, saying, "Do this, and if you lose I will
compensate you. If you gain, the advantage will be yours." Money is
also contributed by the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys in
order to study farming methods.

A landlord here--I had the pleasure of being his guest--had started an
agricultural association. It had developed the idea of a secondary
school for practical instruction, "rich men to give their money and
poor men their labour." In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to
get money with which to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord
had thought of the plan of setting aside each harvest 250 _sho_[27] of
rice to each tenant's 3 _sho_.

Good work was done in teaching farmers' wives. "When no instruction is
given," I was informed, "a wife may say, when her husband is testing
his rice seed with salt water, 'Salt is very dear, nowadays, why not
fresh water?' If a husband is kind he will explain. If not, some
unpleasantness may arise, so wives are taught about the necessity of
selecting by salt water."

[Illustration: LANDOWNER'S SON AND DAUGHTER OFF TO THE VILLAGE
SCHOOL. p. 38]

[Illustration: BUDDHIST SHRINE IN A LANDOWNER'S HOUSE. p. 33]

Tenants are advised to save a farthing a day. In order to keep them
steadfast in their thriftiness they are asked to bring their savings
to their landlord every ten days. It is troublesome to be
constantly receiving so many small sums, but the landlord and his
brother think that they should not grudge the trouble. In two years
nearly 1,000 yen have been saved. Said one tenant to his landlord, "I
know how to save now, therefore I save."

[Illustration: MR. YAMASAKI, DR. NITOBE, THE AUTHOR AND PROFESSOR
NASU. p. xv]

[Illustration: THE HOME IN WHICH THE TEA CEREMONY TOOK PLACE. p. 31]

One of my hosts, who was thirty-two, hoped to see all his tenants
peasant proprietors before he was fifty. The relation of this landlord
and his tenants was illustrated by the fact that on my arrival several
farmers brought produce to the kitchen "because we heard that the
landlord had guests." The village was very kind in its reception of
the foreign visitor. A meeting was called in the temple. I told the
story of Wren's _Si monumentum requiris circumspice_ and pointed a
rural moral. Some months afterwards I received a request from my host
to write a word or two of preface to go with a report of my address
which he was giving to each of his tenants as a New Year gift.

This landlord's family had lived in the same house for eleven
generations. The courtesy of my host and his relatives and the beauty
of their old house and its contents are an ineffaceable memory. From
the time my party arrived until the time we left no servant was
allowed to do anything for us. The ladies of the house cooked our food
and the landlord and his younger brother brought it to us. The younger
brother waited upon us throughout our meals, even peeling our pears.
At night he spread our silk-covered _futon_ (mattresses). In the
morning he folded them up, arranged my clothes, swept the room and
stood at hand with towels, all of which were new, while I washed.

When on our arrival in the house we sat and talked in the first
reception-room we entered, I noticed that outside the lattice a
company of villagers was listening with no consciousness of intrusion,
in full view of our host, to the sound of foreign speech. It was a
Shakespearean scene.

Out of its setting, as it is often witnessed to-day, the tea ceremony
seems meaningless and wearisome, an affected simplicity of the idle.
But as a guest of this old house of fine timbers weathered to
silver-grey I found the secret of _Cha-no-yu_. This flower of Far
Eastern civilisation is an aesthetic expression of true
good-fellowship, and a gentle simplicity and sincerity are of its
essence. The admission of a foreigner to a family _Cha-no-yu_ was a
gesture of confidence.

Five of us gathered late in the afternoon of an August day in the cool
matted rest-room in the garden. We looked on the beauty that
generations of gardeners of a single vision had created. Our minds
rested in the quiet as in the quaint phrase, we "tasted the sound of
the kettle and listened to the incense." At length at a signal we
rose. Led by the priestess of the ceremony, our host's aunt, a slight
figure in grey with snow-white _tabi_ and new straw sandals, we passed
by the dripping rocky fountain, with its lilies, and the azure
hydrangea of the hills which, some say, suggests distance. The
hut-like tea-room, traditionally rude in the material of which it was
built but perfect in every detail of its workmanship, we entered one
by one. According to old custom we humbly crept through the small
opening which serves as entrance, the idea being that all worldly rank
must bow at the sanctuary of beauty. The tiny chamber held, besides
the wonderful vessels of the ceremony, a flower arrangement of blue
Michaelmas daisies, and an exquisite scroll of wild duck in flight in
the miniature _tokonoma_,[28] the tea mistress, our host and four
guests. We drank from a black daimyo bowl which had been made four
hundred years before. We passed an hour together and in the twilight
we came out from the little room as from a sacrament of friendship. A
year afterwards my host wrote to me, "Yesterday we had _Cha-no-yu_
again and you were in our thoughts. During the ceremony we placed your
photograph in the _tokonoma_."

After dinner we had _kyogen_[29] by distinguished amateurs, one of
whom, a neighbouring landowner, had lately appeared before the
Emperor. After the plays he painted _kyogen_ scenes for us on
_kakemono_ and fans. He painted the _kakemono_ as he knelt with his
paper lying on a square of soft material on the floor.

The plays were performed in ancient costumes or copies of old ones
and of course without scenery. The players were lighted by oily
candles two inches in diameter, which flamed and guttered in
candlesticks not of this century nor of the last. A player may make
his exit merely by sitting down. The players are men; masks are used
in playing women's parts. The stories are of the simplest. There was
the well-known tale of the sly servant who was sent to town by a
stupid daimyo in order to buy a fan, and, though he brought back an
umbrella, succeeded in imposing it on his master. There was also the
play of the fox who comes to a farmer to advise him not to kill foxes,
but is himself caught in a trap. I also recall a story of two good
tenants who had been rewarded by their landlord with an order that
they should receive hats. Owing to an oversight they received one hat
only between the two. Problem, how to meet the difficulty. It was
solved by the rustics fastening two pieces of wood together T-shape,
raising the hat of honour upon the structure and walking home in
triumph under either side of the T.

The next morning I was greeted by the aged father and mother of our
host. The household was an interesting one, for the landlord and his
brother were married to two sisters. Before taking our departure we
knelt with our landlord and his father before the Buddhist shrine on
which rested the memorial tablets of former heads of the house. I
expressed my sense of the privilege extended to strangers. The reply
was, "Our ancestors will feel pleasure in your being among us."

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Samurai or _shizoku_ comprise about a twentieth of the
population.

[26] Every Japanese signs by means of a stone or hard-wood seal which
he keeps in a case and ordinarily carries with him.

[27] A _sho_ is about a quart and a half.

[28] The raised recess in which is usually displayed the flower
arrangement, a piece of pottery and a _kakemono_. (See Note, page 35.)

[29] Farcical interludes of the _No_ stage.




CHAPTER V

COUNTRY-HOUSE LIFE

The sense of a common humanity is a real political force.--J.R. GREEN


The stranger in Japan sees so little of the intimacies of country life
that I shall say something of further visits to what we should call
county families. My hosts, who seemed to be active to a greater or
less degree in promoting the welfare of their tenants, lived in purely
Japanese style. Yet now and then in a beautiful house there was a
showy gilt timepiece or some other thing of a deplorable Western
fashion. At all the houses without exception we were waited upon by
the host and his son, son-in-law or brother, and for some time after
our arrival our host and the members of his family would kneel, not in
the apartment in which our _zabuton_ (kneeling cushions) were
arranged, but in the adjoining apartment with its screens pushed back.
Even when the time of sweets and tea had passed and a regular meal was
served, all the little tables of food were brought in not by servants
but by the master of the house and such male relatives as were at
home.

When the duration of a Japanese meal is borne in mind, some idea may
be gained of the fatigue endured by the head of a house in serving
many guests. The host sometimes honours his guests still further by
eating apart from them or by partaking of a portion only of the meal.
The name of a feast in Japanese is significant, "a running about." The
ladies of the house are usually seen for only a few minutes, when they
come with the children to welcome the guests on their arrival; but on
the second day of the visit the ladies may bring in food or tea or
play the _koto_.

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