The Foundations of Japan Part 40

"The advice to draw the cultivation of our small farms under group control has not always been profitable when followed by landlords,"

one who had not yet spoken remarked. "They have not always made more when they farmed themselves than when they let their land. All the world over, land workers do better for themselves than for others.

Proposals further to capitalise farming which, with a rural exodus already going on, would have the effect of driving people off the land who are employed on it healthily and with benefit to the social organism, do not seem to offer a more satisfactory situation for j.a.pan. No country has shown itself less afraid of business combination than j.a.pan, and the world owes as much to industry as to agriculture, and I am not in the least afraid of machinery and capital; but production is not our final aim. Production is to serve us; we are not to serve production. If people can live in self-respect on the land they are better off in many ways than if they are engaged in industry in some of its modern developments."

"The world is also better off," my interpreter in his notes records me as saying when I was pressed to state my opinion. "The day will come when the uselessness and waste of a certain proportion of industry and commerce will be realised, when the saving power of an export and import trade in unnecessary things will be questioned and when the cultivator of the ground will be restored to the place in social precedence he held in Old j.a.pan. With him will rank the other real producers in art, literature and science, industry and commerce. The industrialisation of the West and its capitalistic system have not been so perfectly successful in their social results for it to be certain that j.a.pan should be hurried more quickly in the industrial and capitalistic direction than she is travelling already.[292] If she takes time over her development, the final results may be better for her and for the world. I have not noticed that j.a.panese rural people who have departed from a simple way of life through the acquirement of many farms or the receipt of factory dividends have become worthier.

On the question of the alleged over-population of rural j.a.pan, one j.a.panese investigator has suggested to me that as many as 20 per cent. could be advantageously spared from agricultural labour. But he was not himself an agriculturist or an ex-agriculturist. He was not even a rural resident. Further, he conceived his 20 per cent. as entering rural rather than urban industry.

"A great deal of afforestation and better use of a large proportion of forest land, much more co-operation for borrowing and buying, improved implements where improved implements can be profitably used, animal and mechanical power where they can be employed to advantage, paddy adjustment to the limit of the practical, more intelligent manuring, a wider use of better seeds,[293] the bringing in of new land which is capable of yielding a profit when an adequate expenditure is made upon it, a mental and physical education which is ever improving--all these, joined to better ways of life generally, are obvious avenues of improvement, in Northern j.a.pan particularly, not to speak of Hokkaido.[294] But it is not so much the details of improvement that seem urgently to need attention. It is the general principles. I have been a.s.sured again and again by prefectural governors and agricultural experts--and in talking to a foreigner they would hardly be likely to exaggerate--that considered plans for the prevention of disastrous floods, for the breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans and for the development of public intelligence and well-being were hindered in their areas by lack of money alone. The degree to which rural improvements, with which the best interests of j.a.pan now and in the future are bound up, may have been arrested and may still be arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends to which public energy and public funds[295] may be wisely devoted is a matter for patriotic reflection.[296] No impression I have gained in j.a.pan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism. For good or ill, patriotism is the outstanding j.a.panese virtue. What some patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is. The j.a.panese, with so many talents, so many natural and fortuitous advantages, and with opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed, of being able to profit by the social, economic and international experience of States that have bought their experience dearly and have much to rue, cannot fairly expect to be lightly judged by contemporaries or by history. If the course taken by j.a.pan towards national greatness is at times uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for the enlightened judgment of the world on the j.a.panese people: the degree to which they are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution and common-sense with which they take their own way."

"Our rural problems," a sober-minded young professor added, after one of those pauses which are usual in conversations in j.a.pan, "is not a technical problem, not even an economic problem. It is, as you have realised, a sociological problem. It is bound up with the mental att.i.tude of our people--and with the mental att.i.tude of the whole world."

FOOTNOTES:

[273] A high authority a.s.sured me that 100 million yen (pre-War figures) could be laid out to advantage. A j.a.panese economist's comment was: "Why not touch on the extraordinary proportion of land owned by the Imperial Household and also by the State for military purposes?"

[274] In driving through what seemed to be one of the best streets in Sapporo, I noticed that some exceptionally large houses were the dwellings of the registered prost.i.tutes. Each house had a large ground-floor window. Before it was a barrier about a yard high which cleared the ground, leaving a s.p.a.ce of about another yard. Such of the public as were interested were able, therefore, to peer in without being identified from the street, for only their legs and feet were visible. In Tokyo and elsewhere this exhibition of girls to the public has ceased. The place of the girls is taken by enlarged framed photographs. I found on enquiry that the Sapporo houses are so well organised as to have their proprietors' a.s.sociation. At a little town like Obihiro an edifice was pointed out to me containing fifty or more women.

[275] The cla.s.sification is 101,671 Protestants, 75,983 Roman Catholics and 36,265 Greek Church.

[276] "'Spade farming' is an apt designation of the system of farming or rather of cultivation, for little is done in the way of raising stock."--PROFESSOR YOKOI.

[277] See Appendix x.x.x.

[278] But surely the basic reason against a large emigration of farmers and artisans to Formosa, or to Manchuria, Mongolia or Korea, with the intention of working at their callings, is that the standard of living is lower there? The chief attraction of America and Australasia is that the standard of living is higher. The question of over-population must be considered in relation to the facts in Appendices XXV, x.x.x and Lx.x.x, and on page 331. It is not established that the j.a.panese have now, or are likely to have in the near future, a pressing need to emigrate.

[279] See Appendix LXXII.

[280] See Appendix LXXIII.

[281] See Appendix LXXIV.

[282] Between 1909 and 1918 the average area of holdings rose from 1.03 to 1.09 _cho_ or from 2.52 to 2.67 acres or 1.02 to 1.08 hectares.

[283] There were in 1919 some 13,000 co-operative societies of all sorts. The number increases about 500 a year.

[284] For rise in production per _tan_, see Appendix LXXV.

[285] See Appendix LXXVI.

[286] See Appendix LXXVII.

[287] See Appendix LXXVIII.

[288] See, for example, C.V. Sale in the _Transactions of the Society of Arts_, 1907, and J.M. McCaleb in the _Transactions of the Asiatic Society of j.a.pan_, 1916.

[289] For the question, is rice the right crop for j.a.pan? See Appendix LXXIX.

[290] Dr. Yahagi in an address delivered in Italy pointed out to his audience that j.a.pan had 15 times as large an area under rice as Italy and that, while the Italian harvest ranged between 42 and 83 hectolitres per hectare, the j.a.panese ranged between 55 and 130. The area under rice in the United States in 1920 was 1,337,000 acres and the yield 53,710,000 bushels. The area under rice has steadily increased since 1913, when it was only 25,744,000 bushels.

[291] A well-informed j.a.panese who read this Chapter doubted the ability of his countrymen to distinguish between native and Korean, Californian or Texan rice. Saigon is another matter. See Appendix XXIV.

[292] "Some of our statesmen," notes a j.a.panese reader of this Chapter, "are carried away by ideas of an industrial El Dorado." Such men have no understanding of the relation of rural j.a.pan to the national welfare. They are as blind guides as the j.a.panese who, caught by the glamour of the West, threw away the artistic treasures of their forefathers and pulled down beautiful temples and _yas.h.i.+ki_. j.a.pan has much to gain from a wise and just industrial system, but not a little of the present industrialisation is an exploitation of cheap labour, a destruction of craftsmans.h.i.+p and social obligation, and an attempt to cut out the foreigner by the production of rubbish.

[293] The chairman of Rothamsted declares as I write that the standard of English farming could be raised 50 per cent. Hall and Voelcker have estimated that 20 million tons of farmyard manure made in the United Kingdom is wasted through avoidable causes.

[294] For a discussion of the question of inner colonisation versus foreign expansion, see Appendix Lx.x.x.

[295] For figures bearing on the relative importance of agriculture, commerce and industry, see Appendix Lx.x.xI. For armaments, see Appendix x.x.xIII.

[296] There are many Britons who now reflect that millions which have gone into Mesopotamia might have been better spent by the Ministries of Health and Education.

The blessing of her sun-warmed days; Her sea-spun cloak of wet; Her pointing valleys, veiled in haze, Where field and wood have met; When we have gone our differing ways These we shall not forget.

L.T., in _The New East_.

APPENDICES

The sermon was bad enough, but the appendix was abominable.--MR.

BOWDLER.

THE INCOME OF A MINISTER OF STATE FROM THE LAND[I]. The speaker began by inheriting 3 _cho_ (7-1/2 acres). He farmed a _cho_ of rice field and about a third of a _cho_ of dry land. With rent from the part he let, with gains from the part he farmed and with interest on 2,000 yen spare capital, he had at end of the year a balance of 370 yen. With the money gained from year to year more and more land was bought. At the time of his talk with me he owned 8 _cho_. His net income, after deducting cost of living, was 1,200 yen (including 500 yen from the land that was let). In the future, when he farmed 7 _cho_ (15-1/2 acres), he believed that his balance would be 4,500 yen, which is the salary of a Governor! Or was, until the rise in prices when Governors'

salaries were raised about another 1,000 yen, with an additional allowance of from 600 to 400 yen in the case of some prefectures. See also Appendix III.

"GETA" [II]. The _geta_ is a flat piece of hard wood, about the length of the foot but a little wider, with two stumpy pieces fastened transversely below it. The foot maintains an uncertain and, in the case of a novice whose big toe has not been accustomed to separation from its fellows, a painful hold by means of a toe strap of thick rope or cotton. To persons unused from childhood to the special toe grip and scuffle of the _geta_, it seems odd to a.s.sociate with this difficult clattering footgear the idea of "luxury." But no pains are spared by the _geta_ makers in choosing fine woods and pretty cords.

BUDGETS OF LARGE PROPERTY OWNERS [III]. Two landlords, A and B, kindly allowed me to look into their budgets:

A yen 80 _cho_ of rural land 320,000 20 _cho_ of rural land 60,000 20,000 _tsubo_ of city land 130,000 Negotiable instruments 150,000 Dwelling and furniture 150,000 _______ Total property 810,000 =======

EXPENDITURE OF PAST YEAR

yen House 2,100 Food and drink 1,350 Clothing 1,000 Social intercourse 1,500 Public benefit 800 Miscellaneous 1,000 Taxes 5,000 ______ 12,750 ======

B

owns 62 _cho_ 4 _tan_ and receives in rent 623 _koku_ 7 _to_. Members of family, 11; servants, 8.

EXPENDITURE OF PAST YEAR