The Foundations of Japan Part 38

As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign imports is pushed in j.a.pan to ridiculous lengths. j.a.pan, 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 j.a.panese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little fish and a few eggs. There exists in j.a.pan an exceptionally ingenious variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and the j.a.panese 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of the adoption of a meat dietary the j.a.panese are once more under the influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[258] In Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to diminish the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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.pan 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 j.a.panese.[259]

I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who has made a special study of the food of the j.a.panese people, Professor Morimoto of the University. He said that he had no doubt that when the j.a.panese began to eat bread instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat as well as b.u.t.ter. 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 j.a.pan, 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 j.a.panese may be fairly expected to consume only 80 per cent. of what a foreigner needs, for the average weight of j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese may thrive on meagre fare, they eat large quant.i.ties 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.

Professor Morimoto had come to the conclusion "that there is under-feeding, largely due to a bad choice of foods, that the relation of the nutritive value of foods to their cost is insufficiently studied and that cooking can be improved." It is of course an old criticism of the j.a.panese table that food is either imperfectly cooked or prepared too much with a view to appearance. The Professor's finding was that the j.a.panese need the addition of meat and bread to their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not convince me. Let me quote him on the soy bean: "It is a remarkably good subst.i.tute for meat. It is very low in price but its nutritive value is very high.

The essential element of _miso_, _tofu_ and _shoyu_ is soy bean."

Bread is another matter. The j.a.panese Navy, presumably because it may find itself far from j.a.pan, has accustomed its sailors to eat bread, and a case can certainly be made out for the general population not relying on rice as a grain food. But, as the large quant.i.ties of barley eaten show, there is no such reliance now. Morimoto urged that while there might be no difference in the nutritive value of wheat and rice, rice as usually eaten induced "abnormal distension of the stomach and poor nutrition." Again, wheat was a world crop,[263]

whereas rice, owing to the j.a.panese objection to foreign rice, was a local crop. If the j.a.panese were users of wheat as well as of rice they would not have to pay so much for food, when, on the failure of the rice crop in considerable parts of j.a.pan, the price of rice was high. "The consumption is about 10 million bushels more than the production." Further, rice was more costly in cultivation than wheat, and its production could not be increased so as to keep pace with the increase in population. The yield, which was 46 million _koku_ in 1904, was only 50 millions in 1912; and 65 millions in 1927 seemed an excessive estimate. In 1912 the importation of rice was 2 million _koku_. But on all these points the reader should take note of the data on page 84 and in Appendices XXIV and XXV.

The Professor's concluding point against rice was that it was expensive to prepare. The was.h.i.+ng of the rice in a succession of waters and the cleaning of the sticky pot in which it was cooked and of the equally sticky tub in which it was served took a great deal of time. Then in order to cook rice properly--and the j.a.panese have become connoisseurs--the exact proportion of water must be gauged. The supplies of rice to be cooked were so considerable that the name of the servant la.s.s was "girl to boil the rice." But when bread was used instead of rice, said the Professor jubilantly, a baking twice a week would do. Why, an hour a day might be saved, which in twenty years would be 73,000 hours, or a whole year, and, reckoning women's labour as worth 5 sen an hour, that would be a saving of 565 yen!

FOOTNOTES:

[247] For statistics of cultivated area and live stock, see Appendix LXVI.

[248] One thinks of Takeuchi Seiho who lives in Kyoto, of Toba Sojo (11th century) for monkeys, frogs and bullocks, and in the Tokugawa period of Okio for dogs and carp, of Jakchu for fowls and birds, of Hasegawa Tohaku and Sosen for monkeys, of Kawanabe Kyosai for crows, and of Kesai and Hokusai for birds, fish and insects.

[249] Nevertheless it is well not to be hasty in judgment. On the day on which this footnote was written, April 7, 1921, I find the following items in the _Daily Mail_. On page 4 the Attorney-General regrets that the law tolerates the "cruel practice" by which 30 pigeons were killed or injured at a certain pigeon-shooting compet.i.tion and expresses inability to bring in legislation. On page 5, col. 2, an M.P. is reported as mentioning a case in which a puppy had been kicked to death and as asking the Home Secretary whether the law imposing imprisonment for a short term could not be strengthened.

On the same page, col. 5, a railway porter is reported as having been fined for flinging three small calves into a farm cart by the tails.

[250] For poultry statistics, see Appendix LXVII.

[251] Before the extensive use of _yof.u.ku_ (foreign clothes) the dress of j.a.panese men and women was entirely of cotton and silk or of cotton only. Much of the material from which _yof.u.ku_ are made is no doubt cotton.

[252] See Appendix LXVIII

[253] The number of cattle, which was 1,342,587 in 1916, was only 1,307,120 in 1918. See also Appendix LXVI.

[254] For photographs and particulars of the milk sheep, see my _Free Farmer in a Free State_.

[255] The value of the well-bred and well-cared-for goat as a milk and manure producer is underestimated. The problem of keeping goats in such a way that they shall not be destructive and shall yield the maximum of manure is discussed in my _Case for the Goat_.

[256] This question as it affects an agricultural country is discussed in _A Free Farmer in a Free State_.

[257] There is a consensus of scientific opinion that "non-meat eating" races such as the j.a.panese have longer alimentary tracts than flesh-eating Europeans. It is difficult to be precise on the subject, an eminent Western surgeon tells me, for bowels are as contractile as worms, which at one minute measure 100 units in length and the next minute have shortened to 30. So much depends on the state at death.

[258] On the other hand, the j.a.panese have taken up many new things at the point which we in the West have only recently reached. They begin to produce milk and supply it, not in the milkman's pail, but in sterilised bottles. They abandon candles and lamps and, practically skipping gas, adopt electric light or power. The capital invested in electric enterprises in 1919 was about 700 million yen or seven times that invested in gas.

[259] There is one blameless form of stock keeping which is developing in Hokkaido. Bees, which have still to make their way in Old j.a.pan, are now 6,000 hives strong in the northern island, though a start was made only six or seven years ago.

[260] It is ill.u.s.trative of the extent to which pickle is consumed in j.a.pan that a family in Sapporo was found to have eaten no fewer than 283 _daikon_ in a year.

[261] The reader must put away the impression which this table gives of a varied dietary. Few j.a.panese have such a range of food. The average man habitually lives on rice, bean products (_tofu_, bean jelly and _miso_, soft bean cheese), pickles, vegetables, tea, a little fish and sometimes eggs. People of narrow means see little of eggs and not much fish, unless it be _katsubus.h.i.+_.

[262] The watering of vegetables with liquid manure, the usual practice of the j.a.panese farmer, and the pollution of the paddies make salads and insufficiently cooked green stuff dangerous and many water supplies of questionable purity. Great efforts have been made to provide safe tap water from the hills. Intestinal parasites are common. The build of the j.a.panese makes for strength, but in the urban areas there is much absence from work on the plea of ill-health. Both in j.a.pan and in England I have been struck by the fact that when I made an excursion with an urban j.a.panese he often tired before I did, and on none of these trips was I in anything like first-cla.s.s condition.

[263] Many j.a.panese look forward to a great production of wheat on the north-eastern Asiatic mainland under j.a.panese auspices. In considering imports of wheat it should be remembered that some of it is used in soy and macaroni.

CHAPTER x.x.xIX

MUST THE j.a.pANESE MAKE THEIR OWN "YOf.u.kU"?[264]

"G.o.d d.a.m.n all foreigners!"_--Interrupter at one of Mr. Gladstone's early meetings at Oxford_

When I was in Hokkaido sheep were being experimented with at different places on the mainland, investigators and sheep buyers had gone off to Australia, New Zealand and South America, and a Tokyo Sheep Bureau of two dozen officials had been established. Great hopes were built on a few hundred sheep in Hokkaido.[265] But I noticed that Government farm sheep were under cover on a warm September day. Also I heard of trouble with two well-known sheep ailments. There was talk nevertheless of the day when there would be a million sheep in Hokkaido, perhaps three millions. On the mainland I also met high officials and enthusiastic prefectural governors who dreamed dreams of sheep farming in Old j.a.pan, where land is costly, farms small, agriculture intensive, grazing ground to seek, and farmland necessarily damp. This sheep keeping is conceived as one animal or perhaps two on a holding as rather unhappy by-products. The notion is that the wool and manure of a sheep would meet the expense of its keep and that the mutton would be profit. Hopes of an extension of sheep breeding resting on such a basis seem to be extravagant. One high authority told me that it would take twenty or thirty years to develop sheep keeping.

The sheep at present in j.a.pan are not living in natural conditions.

They feed on cultivated crops. Sheep could hardly live a week on natural j.a.panese pasture. The wild herbage is full of the sharp bamboo gra.s.s. In the summer much of the eatable herbage dries up. Not only must sheep endure the summer heat and insects; they must survive the trying rainy season. But they must do more than merely endure and survive. In order to produce good wool it is necessary that they shall be in good condition. The hair of one's head immediately shows the effect of imperfect nutrition or unhealthy conditions, and it is the same with the wool on the back of the sheep.

It is said that the quality of the wool on the sheep kept in j.a.pan depreciates. However this may be, it is plain that sheep breeding must be conducted on a large scale in order to produce wool in commercial quant.i.ties and of even quality. Some notion of the land normally required for sheep may be estimated from the fact that Australian pasture carries no more than four sheep per acre.[266]

An improvement of j.a.panese herbage sufficient to fit it for sheep would be a heavy task even in small areas. It is not only the herbage but the rocks below it which are all wrong for sheep, if we are to judge by the geological formations on which sheep flourish in the West. If the sheep were put on cultivated land[267] or placed on straw as I saw them in Hokkaido there would be serious risks of foot rot. No doubt there would also be insect pests to control. If j.a.pan set up sheep keeping she would no doubt have to devise her own special breed of sheep, for the well-known Western breeds are artificial products.

Probably the experiments which are being made in China with sheep at an earlier stage of development are proceeding on the right lines. I have already spoken of the fact that a j.a.panese taste for mutton has yet to be cultivated.

This is a formidable list of difficulties confronting the new Governmental Sheep Bureau. No doubt much may be done by a large expenditure of money and much patience. The j.a.panese have wrought marvels before by spending money and having a large stock of patience.

Account must also be taken of the spirit reflected in the speech made to me by a j.a.panese friend when I read the foregoing paragraph to him:

"But we are keen to try. If there were no necessity to prepare for war, when we must have wool for soldiers, sailors and officials, we might rely on Australia and elsewhere and hope to improve the inferior and dirty Chinese wool. But thinking of the disease prevailing in Northern Manchuria and of service needs, we want to try sheep keeping with some subsidy in Hokkaido and on the mainland in Northern Aomori where there is much dry wild land and the farmers are often miserable--there are villages where the people do not wash. We might provide some of the wool needed by j.a.pan. We have practically met our needs in sugar, though of course our needs are small compared with England and America."

Let us turn from the sheep problem to the factory problem. What are the difficulties of the woollen industry? In the first place, as we have seen, there is no home supply of wool worth mentioning. Further, there is the intricacy of woollen manufacture. Cotton machinery has been brought to such a pitch of perfection for every operation and there are in existence so many technical manuals for every department of cotton manufacture that a certain standardisation of output is not difficult. The problem of woollen manufacture is much more complicated. The output cannot be similarly standardised, and there are many directions in which originality, self-reliance and experience come into play decisively.

In the woollen districts of Great Britain the operatives are people who have been in the trade all their lives, whose parents and grandparents have been in the trade before them. There is not only an hereditary apt.i.tude but an hereditary interest. There is not only an individual interest but an interest of the whole community. The welfare of a town or city is wrapped up in the woollen industry. This is not so in j.a.pan. The mill workers in the Tokyo prefecture, for example, come from remote parts of j.a.pan, and the girls--and three-quarters of the employees of the woollen industry are girls--are merely on a three-years contract. The girls arrive absolutely inexperienced. Even in England it is considered that it takes two or three years to make a worker skilful. Within the three-years period for which the j.a.panese mill girls or their parents contract, as many as 30 per cent. leave the mills and, appalling fact, from 20 to 25 per cent. die.[268] Not more than 10 per cent. renew their three-years contract. Therefore there is, at present at any rate, little real skilled labour in the factories. Another difficulty is the absence of skilful wool sorters. Even before the War a good wool sorter commanded in England from 3 to 4 a week. One of the things which hampers the j.a.panese woollen industry is the prevalence of illness at the factories. They must have, in consequence, about 25 per cent. more labour than is needed.

Generally one would say that the industry at its present stage is not only weak on the labour side,[269] but, where it is efficient, is skilful rather in imitation than in original design. Everything produced is an imitation of foreign designs. That is not an unnatural state of things, however, at the commencement of a new industry.

With regard to the old complaint of j.a.panese goods failing to come up to sample, the shortcoming is often due not to intentional dishonesty but simply to inability to produce a uniform product. In one factory an order had to be filled by bringing together work from 300 different places. The first delivery of the cloth produced for the Russian army was like the sample, but the later deliveries, though of excellent material, were not, for the simple reason that the precise raw materials for the required blending did not exist in j.a.pan.

One of the marvels of the industry is the high prices obtained in j.a.pan. The best winter serge was selling in England before the War at 8s. a yard. The j.a.panese price for winter serge was from 5 to 6 yen.

Before the War it was possible to import cloth at 50 per cent. less than the local rates. Nevertheless there seemed to be a market for everything. j.a.panese cloth lacks finish but it is made out of good materials and will wear. The factories are compelled to use a better quality of material in order to get anywhere near the appearance of imported goods. A foreign manufacturer, "owing to his skill in manufacture," as it was once explained to me, may produce a cloth of a certain quality containing only 10 per cent. new wool: the j.a.panese manufacturer, in order to produce a comparable article must use 30 per cent. new wool. Obviously this means that the j.a.panese factory must charge higher prices.