The Foundations of Japan Part 17

I saw at one place a very tired, unslept-looking peasant with a small closed tub carried over his shoulder by means of a pole. On the tub was tied a white streamer, such as is supplied at a s.h.i.+nto shrine, and a branch of _sakaki_ (_Eurya ochnacea_, the sacred tree). The traveller was the delegate of his village. He had been to a mountain shrine in the next prefecture and the tub held the water he had got there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making the journey home without stopping anywhere his efforts will result in rain coming down at his village. If he should stop at any place to rest or sleep, and there should be the slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain will be procured not for his own village but for the community in which he has tarried. So our voyager had walked not only for a whole day but through the night. I heard of a rain delegate who had stamina enough to keep walking for three or four days without sleeping.

Another way of obtaining rain has princ.i.p.ally to do with tugging at a rock with a straw rope. Then there is the plan already referred to of tying straw ropes to a stone image and flinging it into the river, saying, "If you don't give us rain you will stay there; if you do give us rain you shall come out." There is also the method of paying someone liberally to throw the split open head of an ox into the deep pool of a waterfall. "Then the water G.o.d being much angry," said my informant, "he send his dragon to that village, so storm and rain come necessarily." Yet another plan is for the villagers simply to ascend to a particular mountain top crying, "Give us rain! Give us rain!"

While dealing with these magic arts I may reproduce the following rendering of a printed "fortune" which I received from a rural shrine: "Wish to agree but now somewhat difficult. Wait patiently for a while.

Do nothing wrong. Wait for the spring to come. Everything will be completed and will become better. Endeavouring to accomplish it soon will be fruitless."

It was a student of agricultural conditions, in Toyama who gossiped to me of the large expenditure by farmers of that prefecture on the marriage of their daughters. "It is not so costly as the boys'

education and it procures a good reception for the girl from father-and mother-in-law. The pinch comes when there is a second and third daughter, for the average balance in hand of a peasant proprietor in this prefecture at the end of the year is only 48 yen.

Borrowing is necessary and I heard of one bankruptcy. The Governor tried to stop the custom but it is too old. They say Toyama people spend more proportionately than the people in other prefectures. In general they do not keep a horse or ox. I heard of young farmers stealing each other's crops. Parents are very severe upon a daughter who becomes ill-famed, for when they seek a husband for her they must spend more. So mostly daughters keep their purity before marriage. But I know parts of j.a.pan where a large number of the girls have ceased to be virtuous. Concerning the priests, those of Toyama are the worst. A peasant proprietor with seven of a family and a balance at the end of the year of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the temple. Some priests threaten the farmer, saying that if he does not pay as much as is imposed on him by the collector an inferior Buddha will go past his door. Priests want to keep farmers foolish as long as they can."

FOOTNOTES:

[130] For prices of land, see Appendix LIV.

[131] There are about 116,000 s.h.i.+nto shrines of all grades and 14,000 priests, and 71,000 temples and 51,000 priests. There are about a dozen s.h.i.+nto sects and about thirty Buddhist sects and sub-sects.

[132] It is done by wading in leech-infested water under a burning sun and pulling out the weeds by hand and pus.h.i.+ng them down into the sludge.

CHAPTER XV

THE NUN'S CELL

(NAGANO)

It is one more incitement to a man to do well.--BOSWELL

Eighty per cent. of Nagano is slope. Hence its dependence on sericulture. The low stone-strewn roofs of the houses, the railway snow shelters and the zig-zag track which the train takes, hint at the climatic conditions in winter time. Despite the snow--ski-ing has been practised for some years--the summer climate of Nagano has been compared with that of Champagne and there is one vineyard of 60,000 vines.

I was invited to join a circle of administrators who were discussing rural morality and religion. One man said that there was not 20 per cent. of the villages in which the priests were "active for social development." Another speaker of experience declared that "the four pillars of an agricultural village" were "the _soncho_ (headman), the schoolmaster, the policeman and the most influential villager." He went on: "In Europe religion does many things for the support and development of morality, but we look to education, for it aims not at only developing intelligence and giving knowledge, but at teaching virtue and honesty. But there is something beyond that. Thousands of our soldiers died willingly in the Russian war. There must have been something at the bottom of their hearts. That something is a certain sentiment which penetrates deeply the characters of our countrymen.

Our morality and customs have it in their foundations. This spirit is _Yamato damas.h.i.+_ (j.a.panese spirit). It appeared among our warriors as _bus.h.i.+do_ (the way of the soldier), but it is not the monopoly of soldiers. Every j.a.panese has some of this spirit. It is the moral backbone of j.a.pan."

"I should like to say," another speaker declared, "that I read many European and American books, but I remain j.a.panese. Mr. Uchimura sees the darkest side of Buddhism and Mr. Lafcadio Hearn expected too much from it. 'So mysterious,' Hearn said, but it is not so mysterious to us. We must be grateful to him for seeing something of the essence of our life. Sometimes, however, we may be ashamed of his beautifying sentences. I am a modern man, but I am not ashamed when my wife is with child to pray that it may be healthy and wise. It is possible for us j.a.panese to wors.h.i.+p some G.o.d somewhere without knowing why. The poet says, 'I do not know the reason of it, but tears fall down from my eyes in reverence and grat.i.tude.' I suppose this is natural theology. The proverb says, 'Even the head of a sardine is something if believed in.' I attach more importance to a man's att.i.tude to something higher than himself than to the thing which is revered by him. Whether a man goes to Nara and Kyoto or to a Roman Catholic or a Methodist church he can come home very purified in heart."

"Some foreigners have thought well to call us 'half civilised,'" the speaker went on. "Can it be that uncivilised is something distasteful to or not understood by Europeans and Americans? We have the ambition to erect some system of Eastern civilisation. It is possible that we may have it in our minds to call some things in Europe 'half civilised.' Surely the barbarians are usually the people other than ourselves. When the townsman goes to the country he says the people are savages. But the countryman finds his fellow-savages quite decent people."

"Some time ago," broke in a professor, "I read a novel by Rene Bazin and I could not but think how much alike were our peasants and the peasants of the West."

The previous speaker resumed: "The other day a foreigner laughed in my presence at our old art of incense burning and actually said that we were deficient in the sense of smell. I told him that fifty years ago our samurai cla.s.s, in excusing their anti-foreign manifestations, said they could not endure the smell of foreigners, and that to this day our peasants may be heard to say of Western people, 'They smell; they smell of b.u.t.ter and fat.'"

In the city of Nagano early in the morning I went to a large Buddhist temple where the authorities had kindly given me special facilities to see the treasures--alas! all in a wooden structure. A strange thing was the preservation untouched of the room in which the Emperor Meiji rested thirty years ago. May oblivion be one day granted to that awful chenille table cover and those appalling chairs which outrage the beautiful woodwork and the golden _tatami_ of a great building! At the entrance of the temple priests in a kind of open office were reading the newspaper, playing _go_ or smoking. More pleasing was the sight of matting spread right round the temple below its eaves, in order that weary pilgrims might sleep there, and the spectacle of travel-stained women tranquilly sleeping or suckling their infants before the shrine itself. There is a pitch dark underground pa.s.sage below the floor round the foundations of the great Buddha, and if the circuit be made and the lock communicating with the entrance door to the sacred figure be fortunately touched on the way, paradise, peasants believe, is a.s.sured. I made the circuit a few moments after an old woman and found the lock, and on returning to the temple with the rustic dame knelt with her before the shrine as the curtain which veils the big Buddha was withdrawn. The face of one wooden figure in the temple had been worn, like that of many another in j.a.pan, with the stroking that it had received from the ailing faithful.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN A BUDDHIST NUNNERY. p. 142]

[Ill.u.s.tration: GRa.s.s-CUTTING TOOLS COMPARED WITH A WESTERN SCYTHE. p. 367]

I had the privilege of visiting the adjoining nunnery. As I was specially favoured by a general admission, I asked to be permitted to see some nuns' cells. They showed a Buddhist advance on Western ideas.

The word "cells" was a misnomer for beautiful little flower-adorned rooms of a cheerful j.a.panese house. The fragile, wistful nun who was so kind as to speak with me had a consecrated expression. Her dress was white, and over it was brocade in a perfect combination of green and cream. Her head was shaven; her hands, which continually told her beads, were hidden. Religious services are conducted and sermons are delivered here and in other nunneries by the nuns themselves. I could not but be sorry for some girl children who had become nuns on their relatives' or guardians' decision. Adult newcomers are given a month in which, if they wish, they may repent them of their vows; but what of the children? The head of this nunnery was a member of the Imperial family. The inst.i.tution, like the temple from which I had just come, stores thousands of wooden tablets to the memory of the dead. There are many little receptacles in which the hair, the teeth or the photographs of believers are preserved. I found that both at the nunnery and the temple a practical interest was being shown in the reformation of ex-criminals.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE CHILD-COLLECTORS OF VILLAGERS' SAVINGS. p. 230]

[Ill.u.s.tration: NUNS PHOTOGRAPHED IN A "CELL" BY THE AUTHOR. p. 142]

[Ill.u.s.tration: STUDENTS' STUDY AT AN AGRICULTURAL SCHOOL. p. 50]

While in the highlands of Nagano I spent a night at Karuizawa, a hill resort at which tired missionaries and their families, not only from all parts of j.a.pan but from China, gather in the summer months beyond the reach of the mosquito.[133] I stayed in the summer cottage of my travelling companion's brother-in-law. The family consisted of a reserved, cultivated man with a pretty wife of what I have heard a foreigner call "the maternal, domestic type." In their owlishness newcomers to the country are inclined to commiserate all j.a.panese housewives as the "slaves of their husbands." They would have been sadly wrong in such thoughts about this happy wife and mother. The eldest boy, a wholesome-looking lad, had just pa.s.sed through the middle school on his way to the university, and spoke to me in simple English with that air of responsibility which the eldest son so soon acquires in j.a.pan. His brothers and sisters enjoyed a happy relation with him and with each other. The whole family was merry, unselfish and, in the best sense of the word, educated. As we knelt on our _zabuton_ we refreshed ourselves with tea and the fine view of the active volcano, Asama, and chatted on schools, holidays, books, the country and religion. After a while, a little to my surprise, the mother in her sweet voice gravely said that if I would not mind at all she would like very much to ask me two questions. The first was, "Are the people who go to the Christian church here all Christians?" and the second, "Are Christians as affectionate as j.a.panese?"

Karuizawa, which is full of ill-nourished, scabby-headed, "bubbly-nosed"[134] j.a.panese children, is an impoverished place on one of the ancient highways. We took ourselves along the road until we reached at a slightly higher alt.i.tude the decayed village of Oiwake.

When the railway came near it finished the work of desolation which the cessation of the daimyos' progresses to Yedo (now Tokyo) had begun half a century ago. In the days of the Shogun three-quarters of the 300 houses were inns. Now two-thirds of the houses have become uninhabitable, or have been sold, taken down and rebuilt elsewhere.

The s.h.i.+nto shrines are neglected and some are unroofed, the Zen temple is impoverished, the school is comfortless and a thousand tombstones in the ancient burying ground among the trees are half hidden in moss and undergrowth.

The farm rents now charged in Oiwake had not been changed for thirty, forty or fifty years. In the old inn there was a s.h.i.+nto shrine, about 12 ft. long by nearly 2 ft. deep, with latticed sliding doors. It contained a dusty collection of charms and memorials dating back for generations. Outside in the garden at the spring I found an irregular row of half a dozen rather dejected-looking little stone _hokora_ about a foot high. Some had faded _gohei_ thrust into them, but from the others the clipped paper strips had blown away. At the foot of the garden I discovered a somewhat elaborate wooden shrine in a dilapidated state. "Few country people," someone said to me, "know who is enshrined at such a place." It is generally thought that these shrines are dedicated to the fox. But the foxes are merely the messengers of the shrine, as is shown by the figures of crouching or squatting foxes at either side. A well-known professor lately arrived at the conviction that the G.o.d wors.h.i.+pped at such shrines is the G.o.d of agriculture. He went so far as to recommend the faculty of agriculture at Tokyo university to have a shrine erected within its walls to this divinity, but the suggestion was not adopted.

In the course of another chat with the old host of the inn he referred to the time, close on half a century ago, when 3,000 hungry peasants marched through the district demanding rice. They did no harm. "They were satisfied when they were given food; the peasants at that time were heavily oppressed." To-day the people round about look as if they were oppressed by the ghosts of old-time tyrants. But there is "something that doth linger" of self-respect. When we left on our way to Tokyo I gave the man who brought our bags a mile in a barrow to the station 40 sen. He returned 10 sen, saying that 30 sen was enough.

FOOTNOTES:

[133] Although, as has been seen, the rural problems under investigation in this book are inextricably bound up with religion, limits of s.p.a.ce make it necessary to reserve for another volume the consideration of the large and complex question of missionary work.

[134] As to the "bubbly-nosed callant," to quote the description given of young Smollett, nasal unpleasantness seems to be popularly regarded as a sign of health. The constant sight of it is one of the minor discomforts of travel.

IN AND OUT OF THE SILK PREFECTURE[135]

CHAPTER XVI

PROBLEMS BEHIND THE PICTURESQUE

(SAITAMA, GUMMA, NAGANO AND YAMANAs.h.i.+)

A foreigner who comes among us without prejudice may speak his mind freely.--GOLDSMITH

I went back to Nagano to visit the silk industrial regions. My route lay through the prefectures of Saitama and Gumma. I left Tokyo on the last day of June. Many farmers were thres.h.i.+ng their barley. On the dry-land patches, where the grain crop had been harvested, soya bean, sown between the rows of grain long before harvest, was becoming bus.h.i.+er now that it was no longer overshadowed. Maize in most places was about a foot high, but where it had been sown early was already twice that height. The sweet potato had been planted out from its nursery bed for weeks. Here and there were small crops of tea which had been severely picked for its second crop. I noticed melons, cuc.u.mbers and squashes, and patches of the serviceable burdock. Many paddy farmers had water areas devoted to lotus, but the big floating leaves were not yet illumined by the mysterious beauty of the honey-scented flowers.

In order to imagine the scene on the rice flats, the reader must not think of the glistering paddy fields[136] as stretching in an unbroken monotonous series over the plain. Occasionally a rocky patch, outcropping from the paddy tract, made a little island of wood.

Sometimes it was a sacred grove in which one caught a glimpse of a s.h.i.+nto shrine or the head stones of the dead. Sometimes there was a little clump of cropped tree greenery which kept a farmhouse cool in summer and, at another time of the year, sheltered from the wind. Few householders were too poor or too busy to be without their little patch of flowers.

Before the train climbed out of the Kwanto plain temperature of not far below 100 F. the planting of rice seemed to be almost an enviable occupation. The peasant had his great umbrella-shaped straw hat, sometimes an armful of green stuff tied on his back, and a delicious feeling of being up to the knees in water or mud on a hot day-one recalled the mud baths of the West-when the alternative was walking on a dusty road, digging on the sun-baked upland or perspiring in a house or the train.

With the rise in the level a few mulberries began to appear and gradually they occupied a large part of the holdings. Sometimes the mulberries were cultivated as shoots from a stump a little above ground level, and sometimes as a kind of small standard. As mulberry culture increased, the silk factories' whitewashed coc.o.o.n stores and the tall red and black iron chimneys of the factories themselves became more numerous. It is a pity that the silk factory is not always so innocent-looking inside as the pure white exterior of its stores might suggest. It is certain that the overworked girl operatives, sitting at their steaming basins, drawing the silk from the soaked coc.o.o.ns, were glad to find the weather conditions such that they could have the sides of their reeling sheds removed.

At many of the railway stations there were stacks of large, round, flat bean cakes, for the farmer feeds his "cake" to his fields direct, not through the medium of cattle. Although a paddy receives less agreeable nutritive materials than bean cake, the extensive use of this cake must be comforting to a little school of rural reformers in the West. These ardent vegetarians have refused to listen to the allegation that vegetarianism was impossible because without meat-eating there would be no cattle and therefore no nitrogen for the fields.

It was not only the bean cakes at the stations which caught my attention but the extensive use of lime. Square miles of paddy field were white with powdered lime, scattered before the planting of the rice, an operation which in the higher alt.i.tudes would not be finished until well on in July.