THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION
I thank whatever gods there be....--HENLEY
I
How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade
realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it receives from the
farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk? A necessary part of
the grain is lost. No wonder that sensible people in Japan and the
West demand the grey unpolished rice. In Japan some enterprising
person has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the
rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing process. It does not
look appetising. An easier thing would be to leave some of the coating
on the rice. One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread:
"They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter. Thus they
sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging
eye, and the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live."
Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten
with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the
Japanese people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice
for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If they have
anything to eat between meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes---
to the foreigner's taste a loathly, half-cooked compost of rice flour
or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid underdone muffin. We in the
West have bread at every meal as the Japanese have rice, but we eat
our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and bread-and-butter;
we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.
Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set before each
kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in Japan there is one which is
empty. This is the rice bowl. When the meal begins--or in the case of
an elaborate dinner at the rice course--the maid brings in a large
covered wooden copper-bound or brass-bound tub or round lacquered box
of hot rice. This rice she serves with a big wooden spoon, the only
spoon ever seen at a Japanese meal. A man may have three helpings or
four in a bowl about as big as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is
that, though other dishes may be pecked at, the rice in one's bowl
must be finished. The usage on this point may have originated in the
feeling that it was almost impious to waste the staple food of the
country. It is not difficult to pick up the last rice grains with the
wooden _hashi_ (chopsticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft
rice is served to invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty
the custom is to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then to drink
this, so getting rid of the odd grains. It is through omitting to
drink in this way that foreigners get indigestion when at a Japanese
meal they eat a lot of rice.
At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that people can
come with appetite to several bowls of plain rice three times a
day.[80] But good rice does seem to have something of the property of
oatmeal, the property of a continual tastiness. Further, the rice
eater picks up now and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle
which may have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The
nutrition gained at a Japanese meal is largely in soups in which the
bean preparations, _tofu_ and _miso_, and occasionally eggs, are used.
And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in
Japan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish--fresh,
dried and salted, shell-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all
sorts of ingenious treatment--is consumed by almost everybody.
The Japanese are in no doubt that the foreign rice which is brought
into the country to supplement the home supply is inferior to their
own.[81] Inferior means that they prefer the flavour of their own
rice, just as most Scots prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in
Scotland.
II
In the year of the Coronation--it took place three years after the
Emperor's accession--two prefectures had the honour of being chosen to
produce the rice to be placed before gods, Emperor and dignitaries at
Kyoto. The work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a witness
of the rites performed at the planting of the rice in one of the
prefectures. Plots had been prepared with enormous care. Along the top
of the special fencing were the Shinto straw bands and paper
streamers. A small shrine had been built to overlook the plots. Even
the instruments of the little meteorological station near, by which
the management of the crop would be guided, were surrounded by straw
bands and streamers--religion protecting science. The mattocks and
other implements which had been used in the preparation of the paddy
or were to be used in getting in the crops and in cultivating,
harvesting, threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring
which had manured the plot had been "specially selected and blessed."
Further, there was a special bath-house where the young men and women
who were to plant the rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.
We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or thirty thousand
people who were gathering to witness the ceremony. A covered platform
had been built in front of the rice field shrine, and on either side
were large roofed-in spaces for some scores of Shinto priests and the
favoured spectators. The ceremony lasted two hours. It carried us
magically away from a Japan of frock coats to Japan of a thousand, it
may be two thousand years ago. Between the wail of ancient wood and
wind instruments and the cinema operators who missed nothing external
and some bored top-hatted spectators who furtively puffed a cigarette
before the ceremony came to an end,[82] what a gulf! Platter after
platter of food, sometimes rice, sometimes vegetables, sometimes
fruit, sometimes a big fish, was passed by one priest to another in
the sunlight until all the offerings were reverently placed by a
special dignitary on one of those unpainted, unvarnished, undecorated
but exquisitely proportioned altars which are an artistic glory of
Shintoism. The shrine was wholly open on the side of the rice field,
and the high priest was in full view as he stood before the altar with
bowed head and folded hands, his robe caught by the breeze, and
delivered in a loud voice his zealous invocation. His words were
stressed not only by an acolyte who twanged the strings of a venerable
harp, but by the song of a lark which rose with the first strains of
the harpist. The purpose of the ceremony was to call down the gods and
to gain their blessing for the crop and the new reign. At the moment
of highest solemnity the thousands assembled bowed their heads: the
gods were deigning to descend and accept the offering. More ancient
music, more ceremonial, and the gods having been called upon to return
to high heaven, the laden platters were gravely removed, and the rice
planting in the adjoining field began. To the sound of drum the young
men and women in special costumes strode through the wicket into the
mud of the paddies, and, under the supervision of the director of the
prefectural agricultural experiment station in a silk hat, planted out
the tufts of rice seedlings in scrupulously measured rows.
I asked a distinguished Japanese who was standing near me--he is a
Christian--how many of the educated people in the assembly believed
that the gods had descended. His answer was, "I may not believe that
the gods of a truth descended, but I find something beautiful in
calling on the gods with a harp of Old Japan, and I do believe that
our humble and natural offering to-day may be acceptable to whatever
gods there may be and that it is a worthy exercise for us to undertake
and may also be conducive to a good harvest." My friend attempted the
following rough rendering of a song which had been sung by the rice
planters before the shrine:
This day the beginning of sowing at an auspicious time--
Long life to the rice!
May it be a token of the years of the Reign,
The seed of peace for the world--
May it start from this consecrated field!
One in heart we see to it that our seedlings are well matched.
Mikawa's[83] millennium and the millennium of rice.
Let us pray for an abundant shooting.
Now let us plant the seedlings straight;
Pleasing to the gods are the ways that are not crooked.
After this ceremony, in which the staple crop of the country and the
labour of the farmer in his paddy field had been honoured by the State
and dignified by ancestral blessings, there was luncheon in one of
those deftly contrived reed-covered structures, of the building of
which the Japanese have the knack, and the Governor asked some of us
to say a few words. Then on a raised platform in the open there was
enacted a comic interlude such as might have been seen in England in
the Middle Ages. In the evening I was bidden to a dinner of the
officials responsible for the day's doings. The Governor made a kindly
reference to my labours and the local M.P. presented me with a kimono
length of the cotton material which had been woven for the planters of
the sacred rice.
III[84]
The production of rice has increased more quickly than the growth of
the population. If we consider, along with the advance in population,
the crops of the years 1882 and 1913, which were held to be average,
and, in order to be as up-to-date as possible, the normal annual
yield[85] of the five-years period 1912-18, we find that, as between
1882 and 1913, the population increased 45 per cent. and rice
production increased 63 per cent., while as between 1882 and the
normal annual yield period of 1912-18, the population increased 55 per
cent, and the crop 75 per cent.[86]
This is a noteworthy fact. But equally noteworthy is the fact that in
the 1882-1913 period, in which the production of rice increased 63 per
cent. and the population only 45 per cent., the price of rice did not
fall. On the contrary it rose. This was due largely[87] to the fact
that people had begun to eat rice who had not before been able to
afford it. Many people who grow rice eat, as has been noted, barley or
barley mixed with a little rice. From the 'eighties onwards more and
more rice was eaten.[88]
The reason was that, what with the cash obtained from cocoons through
the enormous development of sericulture,[89] what with the money
received by the girls who had gone to the factories, what with the
growth of big cities causing an increased demand for vegetables, eggs
and especially fruit at good prices, what with the use of better seed
and more artificial manure, what with agricultural co-operation,
paddy-field adjustment and the taking-in of new land, the farmer, in
spite of increased taxation,[90] was doing better, or at any rate was
minded to live better. In the thirty-years period 1882-1913, his crop
increased 63 per cent. although his area under cultivation increased
by only 17 per cent. In the following pages we shall hear more of the
methods by which the farmer's receipts have been increased. We shall
hear also, alas! of the ways in which his expenditure has increased.
He is indeed in a trying situation. Everything depends on his
character and education and on the influences, social and political,
moral and religious, under which he lives. That is why this book, in
devoting itself to an examination of the foundations of an
agricultural country, is concerned with rural sociology rather than
with the technique of crops and cropping.
The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations in
price.[91] It is also the problem of the landlord, for rents are fixed
not at so much money but at so many _koku_ of rice. This means that
on rent day the farmer must pay the same amount of rice whether his
crop has been good or bad. It also means that when the price of rice
rises the amount of rent is automatically raised. If rent were paid,
not in so many _koku_ of rice but in money at a fixed amount, the
landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in an easier
position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and he
would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice.
The counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build
storehouses and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after
harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, marketing each
month about the same amount if possible. The Government Granary plan
came into force in 1921, some 3 million _koku_ of unpolished rice
being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen. In the year
before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per _koku_ (5 bushels). The
previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen--had risen at times to 23
yen--an unheard-of price. Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely
from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen.[92] In the year in which the
War broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11
yen. By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.
The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915
(that is, 57,006,541 _koku_ and 55,924,590 _koku_ as compared with the
50,255,000 _koku_ of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which
may be taken as the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such
exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of
from 4½ to 6 million _koku_ over and above the needs of the country,
which are roughly estimated at 1 _koku_ per head including infants and
the old and feeble. In 1916 it was established, when account was taken
of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like 6 or 7
million _koku_. Therefore a fall in price took place. The extent to
which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV. This
Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I
entered into the question of the correctness of rice statistics.
Roughly, the statistics show a production 15 per cent. less than the
actual crops. Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent. The
practice has its origin in the old taxation system.
The notes for the account of rural life in Japan which will be found
in this book were chiefly made in the second and third years of the
War. Since that time there has been an enormous rise in the price of
everything. For a time the farmers prospered as they had prospered in
the high rice-price years, 1912-13.[93] The high prices of all grain
as well as the fabulous price of raw silk (due to increased export to
America and to increased home consumption) were a great advantage.
[Illustration: MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP THE PRICE OF RICE
FROM RISING]
Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general slump and
finally the commercial and industrial crash. Raw silk fell nearly to
one-third of its top price, and farmers had to sell cocoons under the
cost of production. Everywhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in
the factories were discharged in droves. A large proportion of these
unfortunates returned to their villages to dispel some rural dreams of
urban Eldorado.
But this matter of the going up and coming down of prices has but a
passing interest for the reader. The only economic fact of which he
need lay hold is that in recent years the farmers have been led into
the way of spending more money--in taxation as well as in general
expenses of living--and that, when account is taken of every advantage
they have gained from better methods of production, they have pressing
on them the limitations imposed by the size of their farms and their
farming practice. Whatever the prices obtained for the: products of
the soil, climatic facts,[94] the character and social condition of
the people, their attitude towards life and authority and the attitude
of authority towards them remain very much the same. And thus a
narrative of things seen and heard chiefly during the first years of
the War is not at all out of date even if it were not supplemented as
it is by a plentiful supply of notes containing the latest statistical
data.
There is one curious exception only. The reader of these pages will
constantly come on references to the poverty of the tenant farmers.
They are, of course, practically labourers, for they cultivate two or
three acres only, and at the end of the year, as has been shown, have
merely a trifle in hand and sometimes not that. Influenced by the
labour movement, which developed in the industrial centres during and
after the War,[95] this depressed class has of late shown spirit. It
has begun to assert its claims against landowners. At the end of 1920
there were as many as ninety associations of tenant farmers, and sixty
of these had been started for the specific purpose of representing
tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes of tenants began and
continue. The end of this movement of a proverbially conservative
class is not at all certain.[96]
The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind about agricultural
Japan are that the population is as thick on the ground as the
population of the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of
Japan is mountain and waste)--ten times thicker than the population of
the United States[97]--that Japan is primarily an agricultural
country, while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading
country, and that only 15½ per cent. of Japan proper (including
Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per cent. in Great
Britain.[98] The average area cultivated per farming family in Japan,
counting paddy and upland together, is less than 3 acres. As the total
population of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920,
plus the annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed close on
four persons. ("Even in Hokkaido," Dr. Sato notes, "the average area
per family is only 7½ acres.") Happily the number of families
cultivating less than 1¼ acres is decreasing and the number
cultivating from 1¼ up to 5 acres is increasing.[99] In other words,
the favourite size of farm is one which finds work for all the members
of the farmer's family. As on small holdings all over the world, it is
found that profits are difficult to make when help has to be paid for.
The facts that in the last four years for which figures are available
the number of farming families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a
million and that every year the area of land under cultivation
increases show that new ways of increasing income are eagerly seized
on.
FOOTNOTES:
[80] For estimate of daily consumption of rice by Japanese, see
Appendix XXIII.
[81] For statistics of imported and exported rice, see Appendix XXIV.
[82] Japanese. I was the only foreigner present.
[83] The old name for a considerable part of Aichi
[84] This section of the chapter was written in 1921.
[85] For the way in which "normal yield" is arrived at, see p. 70.
[86] See Appendix XXV.
[87] War with China, 1894; with Russia, 1904.
[88] For farmers' diet, see Appendix XXVI.
[89] Farmers in sericultural districts live better than the ordinary
rice farmers.
[90] See Appendix XXVII.
[91] See Appendix XXVIII.
[92] For prices, see Appendix XVII.
[93] The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in
the cost of living throughout the world, has been discussed on page
xxv.
[94] See Appendix XXIX.
[95] See Chapter XX.
[96] Recent figures show 400 tenants' associations, of which a third
are militant.
[97] See Appendix XXX and page 97.
[98] See Chapter XX.
[99] See Appendix XXXI.
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