DOMESTIC INDUSTRIES IN FARMING FAMILIES
Before passing on to study the various classes of workers constantly
recruited in no small numbers from the homes of farmers, we should first
consider the high development of industrial occupations within these
homes themselves. To appreciate both the opportunity and the need for
this, we turn to the official statistics of marriage and education.
Until 1908 compulsory education, as has been already stated, covered
four years from the age of six to ten. According to governmental
statistics (1912) 98.8 per cent. of the boys and 97.5 per cent. of the
girls were actually fulfilling the requirement. This percentage seems
high to American statistical students, but investigations show that,
while Japanese rules for the attendance of pupils and methods of
counting the same differ in some respects from those that prevail in
the United States and Canada, yet, as a matter of fact, in school
attendance Japan compares well with other lands. It should be
remembered, however, that the nature of the Japanese written language is
such that even six years of elementary education is probably not equal
to four years of similar schooling in Western lands. American children,
at the close of their elementary education, possess a mastery of the
tools of civilization and a degree of general intelligence considerably
in advance of Japanese children who have enjoyed the same number of
years of school life. As we have already seen, this amount of compulsory
education is insufficient to give children ability to read and write
with freedom.
The question for us however is as to the number of girls above school
age and still unmarried who, because of family poverty, must find some
form of wage-earning occupation. Turning to the vital statistics
provided by the government (1914), we find that in 1908 there were
2,496,142 girls between ten and fifteen years of age, and 2,180,408
young women between fifteen and twenty years of age. But how many of
these are married? Again relying on government statistics for the same
year, we learn that only 199 girls under fifteen had been married,
whereas 193,978 had married under twenty years of age. In view of the
fact that 709,021 marriages took place between twenty and twenty-five
years of age, it is altogether probable that, of those married under
twenty, a large majority were married in their nineteenth year.
Remembering that many do not marry until the twenty-third or
twenty-fourth year, we can confidently assert that there are over
4,000,000 unmarried girls and young women between the ages of ten and
twenty-five; and, as 58 per cent. belong to the farming class, we have
in the vicinity of 3,000,000 girls who belong to families of such
economic state that they, no less than the boys, must contrive in some
way to earn a share at least of their own living. Girls of fifteen and
upwards in farmers' families help their fathers in the lighter forms of
agriculture, planting the rice, as we have seen, and reaping and
threshing the crops. But the small acreage to each family barely
provides work enough for the man, much less for the half-grown boys and
girls, hence the need of finding something besides the agricultural work
for the growing family. The younger children (under fifteen) are pressed
into lighter farming, and such household duties as are within their
strength and ability, as cooking and caring for the still younger
children; while the older children and the mother help the father, or
take up some domestic industry, such as the rearing of silkworms,
reeling of silk, spinning of thread, and weaving of silk and cotton
fabrics, or similar work which can be easily and profitably done in the
house in spare hours. Hence has come the widespread practise of
household industries, by which the female members supplement the family
income. There were, in 1907, 1,628,000 members of farming families who
were earning a part of their living in this way. This condition has
prevailed for many generations, and is the secret of the wonderful
development of the arts and home industries in Japan.
[Illustration: A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD
TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS]
From of old Japan's industrial system, like that of other lands, has
been domestic--carried on in the house. There have been families and
gilds which have made their entire livelihood by these manual
industries. There have also been hundreds of thousands of farming
families which have supplemented their meager income from their farms by
taking up some of these domestic industries, and those who have
displayed or developed special aptitude for such work have naturally
drifted into this wholly industrial life. This has doubtless been the
origin of industrial families and gilds. But the point to be especially
noted is that this wide development of domestic industries is due to the
skill and diligence of Japan's working _women_. Japanese men have
produced the food by which the nation has been fed; her women have
produced industries by which the nation has been clothed, as indeed is
the case of all great civilized nations. Their long-continued drill,
from generation to generation, in home industrial occupations, has
produced a high degree of manual dexterity; the eye and hand
instinctively move accurately and rapidly in the work, and the result is
that Japan's leading industries to this day are dependent on female
labor. "Sericulture, silk-reeling, cotton spinning, _habutae_ (a
particular variety of silk fabric), and other woven goods, tea-picking,
straw and chip braids, etc., are practically dependent on female labor,"
says the _Japanese Year Book_ for 1910. "But an industry depending on
female labor has this peculiarity, namely: it is not compatible with the
factory system, but thrives best on the domestic plan. Generally
speaking it is in industries which admit of being carried on
independently at separate homes by housewives and mothers that skilled
female labor is seen to the best advantage. As operatives of family
industries Japanese women show an efficiency rarely reached by their
foreign sisters." But in this connection we may remind ourselves of the
great skill and industry of our grandmothers and preceding generations
of women, who lived before the great factory system made their home
industrial occupations unnecessary. Japan is merely several decades
behind Western lands in her industrial development.
[Illustration: SPINNING COTTON THREAD FOR WEAVING
AT WORK IN A KITCHEN]
We are to understand, then, that a large portion of these 3,000,000
unmarried Japanese women and girls are engaged more or less continuously
in some sort of industrial work, either in their own homes or in small
groups in their immediate vicinity. The introduction into Japan of
Occidental mechanical civilization, with its great machinery run by
steam power, and the great factory system, taking girls and young women
away from their home industries, home restraints, and home training, is
producing mighty changes in Japan's traditional civilization. The real
consequences of these new modes of life and labor are still little
appreciated. There is taking place a rapid readjustment of population,
which indeed is easily seen, but the disastrous results to the mental,
moral, and religious life of the people, even to the maintenance of the
ideals and standards that controlled the older arts and industries, are
yet little realized, for the great changes have only begun within the
past two decades. A generation or two must pass before we can see
clearly what it all really means. Meanwhile it is for those who foresee
coming evils to sound aloud the call, and, as prophets, to do that which
in them lies to meet the threatened disasters, and turn new conditions
into blessings. Japan has the advantage of a century of European
experience from which to learn wisdom. It is to be hoped that she will
avoid many of the perils and evils into which the West has fallen, but
the signs of the times are not altogether reassuring. There are, as we
shall see later on, ominous clouds on Japan's industrial horizon.