The misfortunes and death of the farmer Sôgorô, which, although the
preternatural appearances by which they are said to have been followed
may raise a smile, are matters of historic notoriety with which every
Japanese is familiar, furnish a forcible illustration of the relations
which exist between the tenant and the lord of the soil, and of the
boundless power for good or for evil exercised by the latter. It is
rather remarkable that in a country where the peasant--placed as he is
next to the soldier, and before the artisan and merchant, in the four
classes into which the people are divided--enjoys no small
consideration, and where agriculture is protected by law from the
inroads of wild vegetation, even to the lopping of overshadowing
branches and the cutting down of hedgerow timber, the lord of the
manor should be left practically without control in his dealings with
his people.
The land-tax, or rather the yearly rent paid by the tenant, is usually
assessed at forty per cent. of the produce; but there is no principle
clearly defining it, and frequently the landowner and the cultivator
divide the proceeds of the harvest in equal shapes. Rice land is
divided into three classes; and, according to these classes, it is
computed that one _tan_ (1,800 square feet) of the best land should
yield to the owner a revenue of five bags of rice per annum; each of
these bags holds four tô (a tô is rather less than half an imperial
bushel), and is worth at present (1868) three riyos, or about sixteen
shillings; land of the middle class should yield a revenue of three or
four bags. The rent is paid either in rice or in money, according to
the actual price of the grain, which varies considerably. It is due in
the eleventh month of the year, when the crops have all been gathered,
and their market value fixed.
The rent of land bearing crops other than rice, such as cotton, beans,
roots, and so forth, is payable in money during the twelfth month. The
choice of the nature of the crops to be grown appears to be left to
the tenant.
The Japanese landlord, when pressed by poverty, does not confine
himself to the raising of his legitimate rents: he can always enforce
from his needy tenantry the advancement of a year's rent, or the loan
of so much money as may be required to meet his immediate necessities.
Should the lord be just, the peasant is repaid by instalments, with
interest, extending over ten or twenty years. But it too often happens
that unjust and merciless lords do not repay such loans, but, on the
contrary, press for further advances. Then it is that the farmers,
dressed in their grass rain-coats, and carrying sickles and bamboo
poles in their hands, assemble before the gate of their lord's palace
at the capital, and represent their grievances, imploring the
intercession of the retainers, and even of the womankind who may
chance to go forth. Sometimes they pay for their temerity by their
lives; but, at any rate, they have the satisfaction of bringing shame
upon their persecutor, in the eyes of his neighbours and of the
populace.
[Illustration: THE DEPUTATION OF PEASANTS AT THEIR LORD'S GATE.]
The official reports of recent travels in the interior of Japan have
fully proved the hard lot with which the peasantry had to put up
during the government of the Tycoons, and especially under the
Hatamotos, the created nobility of the dynasty. In one province, where
the village mayors appear to have seconded the extortions of their
lord, they have had to flee before an exasperated population, who,
taking advantage of the revolution, laid waste and pillaged their
houses, loudly praying for a new and just assessment of the land;
while, throughout the country, the farmers have hailed with
acclamations the resumption of the sovereign power by the Mikado, and
the abolition of the petty nobility who exalted themselves upon the
misery of their dependants. Warming themselves in the sunshine of the
court at Yedo, the Hatamotos waxed fat and held high revel, and
little cared they who groaned or who starved. Money must be found, and
it was found.
It is necessary here to add a word respecting the position of the
village mayors, who play so important a part in the tale.
The peasants of Japan are ruled by three classes of officials: the
Nanushi, or mayor; the Kumigashira, or chiefs of companies; and the
Hiyakushôdai, or farmers' representatives. The village, which is
governed by the Nanushi, or mayor, is divided into companies, which,
consisting of five families each, are directed by a Kumigashira; these
companies, again, are subdivided into groups of five men each, who
choose one of their number to represent them in case of their having
any petition to present, or any affairs to settle with their
superiors. This functionary is the Hiyakushôdai. The mayor, the chief
of the company, and the representative keep registers of the families
and people under their control, and are responsible for their good and
orderly behaviour. They pay taxes like the other farmers, but receive
a salary, the amount of which depends upon the size and wealth of the
village. Five per cent. of the yearly land tax forms the salary of the
mayor, and the other officials each receive five per cent. of the tax
paid by the little bodies over which they respectively rule.
The average amount of land for one family to cultivate is about one
chô, or 9,000 square yards; but there are farmers who have inherited
as much as five or even six chô from their ancestors. There is also a
class of farmers called, from their poverty, "water-drinking farmers,"
who have no land of their own, but hire that of those who have more
than they can keep in their own hands. The rent so paid varies; but
good rice land will bring in as high a rent as from £1 18s. to £2 6s.
per tan (1,800 square feet).
Farm labourers are paid from six or seven riyos a year to as much as
thirty riyos (the riyo being worth about 5s. 4d.); besides this, they
are clothed and fed, not daintily indeed, but amply. The rice which
they cultivate is to them an almost unknown luxury: millet is their
staple food, and on high days and holidays they receive messes of
barley or buckwheat. Where the mulberry-tree is grown, and the
silkworm is "educated," there the labourer receives the highest wage.
The rice crop on good land should yield twelve and a half fold, and on
ordinary land from six to seven fold only. Ordinary arable land is
only half as valuable as rice land, which cannot be purchased for less
than forty riyos per tan of 1,800 square feet. Common hill or wood
land is cheaper, again, than arable land; but orchards and groves of
the Pawlonia are worth from fifty to sixty riyos per tan.
With regard to the punishment of crucifixion, by which Sôgorô was put
to death, it is inflicted for the following offences:--parricide
(including the murder or striking of parents, uncles, aunts, elder
brothers, masters, or teachers) coining counterfeit money, and passing
the barriers of the Tycoon's territory without a permit.[59] The
criminal is attached to an upright post with two cross bars, to which
his arms and feet are fastened by ropes. He is then transfixed with
spears by men belonging to the Eta or Pariah class. I once passed the
execution-ground near Yedo, when a body was attached to the cross. The
dead man had murdered his employer, and, having been condemned to
death by crucifixion, had died in prison before the sentence could be
carried out. He was accordingly packed, in a squatting position, in a
huge red earthenware jar, which, having been tightly filled up with.
salt, was hermetically sealed. On the anniversary of the commission of
the crime, the jar was carried down to the execution-ground and
broken, and the body was taken out and tied to the cross, the joints
of the knees and arms having been cut, to allow of the extension of
the stiffened and shrunken limbs; it was then transfixed with spears,
and allowed to remain exposed for three days. An open grave, the
upturned soil of which seemed almost entirely composed of dead men's
remains, waited to receive the dishonoured corpse, over which three or
four Etas, squalid and degraded beings, were mounting guard, smoking
their pipes by a scanty charcoal fire, and bandying obscene jests. It
was a hideous and ghastly warning, had any cared to read the lesson;
but the passers-by on the high road took little or no notice of the
sight, and a group of chubby and happy children were playing not ten
yards from the dead body, as if no strange or uncanny thing were near
them.
[Footnote 59: This last crime is, of course, now obsolete.]