TO THE HILLS
(TOKYO, SAITAMA, TOCHIGI AND FUKUSHIMA)
Nothing which concerns a _countryman_ is a matter of unconcern to
me.--TERENCE
During the month of July I went from one side of Japan to the other,
starting from Tokyo, across the sea from which lies America, and
coming out at Niigata, across the sea from which lies Siberia.
We first made a four hours' railway run through the great Kwanto plain
(6,000 square miles). Travelling is comfortable on such a trip, for
travellers take off their coats and waistcoats, and the train-boy--he
has the word "Boy" on his collar in English--brings fans and bedroom
slippers. The fans, which on one side advertised "Hotels in European
style, directly managed by the Imperial Government Railway[114],"
offered on the other a poem and a drawing. A poem addressed to a snail
played with the idea of its giving its life to climbing Fuji. The poem
was composed by a poet who wrote many delightful _hokku_
(seventeen-syllable poems), showing a humorous sympathy with the
humblest creatures. One poem is:
Come and play with me,
Thou orphan sparrow!
Like Burns, Issa addressed a poem to a louse.
As we climbed from the vicinity of the sea to higher lands someone
recalled the saying about saints living in the mountains and sages by
the sea. Speaking of religion, one man said that he had known of
people giving half their income to religious purposes. He also
mentioned that for some years his mother had gone to hear a sermon in
a Japanese Christian church every Sunday, but she still served her
Buddhist shrine.
It was at an inn at the hot spring near the Mount Nasu volcano--the
odour of the sulphurous hot water was everywhere in the district--that
I first enjoyed the attentions of the blind _amma_ (_masseur_ or
_masseuse_), the call of whose plaintive pipe is heard every evening
in the smallest community. _Amma san_ rubbed and pommelled me for an
hour for 28 sen. The _amma_ does not massage the skin, but works
through the _yukata_ (bath gown) of the patient. I had my massaging as
I knelt with the other guests of the inn at an entertainment arranged
for the benefit of residents. The entertainers, professional and
non-professional--the non-professionals were local farmers--knelt on a
low platform or danced in front of it. They were extraordinarily able.
A dramatic tale by one of the story-tellers was about a yokelish young
wrestler and a daimyo. Another described the woes and suicide of an
old-time Court lady.
The next day we started on foot on a seven miles' climb of the
volcano. Its lower slopes were covered with a variety of that
knee-high bamboo with a creeping root, which is so troublesome to
farmers when they break up new ground. One variety is said to blossom
and fruit once in sixty years and then die. An ingenious professor has
traced mice plagues to this habit. In the year in which the bamboo
fruits the mice increase and multiply exceedingly. Suddenly their food
supply gives out and they descend to the plains to live with the
farmers.
At length we came in sight of the smoke and vapour of the volcano.
Soon we were near the top, where the white trunks and branches of dead
trees and scrub, killed by falling ash or gusts of vapour, dotted an
awesome desolation of calcined and fused stone and solidified mud. At
the summit we looked down into the churning horror of the volcano's
vat and at different spots saw the treacly sulphur pouring out,
brilliant yellow with red streaks. The man to whom there first came
the idea of hell and a prisoned revengeful power must surely have
looked into a crater. In the throat of this crater there seethed and
spluttered an ugliness that was scarlet, green, brown and yellow. The
sound of the steam blowing off was like the roar of the sea. The air
was stifling. It was very hot, and there was a high eerie wind.
Adventurous men had built rude bulwarks of stone over some of the
orifices, and in this way had compelled the volcano to furnish them
with sulphur free from dirt. The production of sulphur in Japan is
valued at close on three million yen.
As we went on our journey we spoke of the sturdiness and cheeriness of
our chief carrier, who had told us that he was seventy. I asked him if
he thought it fair that he should have to walk so far on a hot day
with so much to carry while we were empty-handed. He replied that it
might appear to be unjust, but that he was happy enough. He said that
he had lived long and seen many things, and he knew that to be rich
was not always to be happy. He quoted the proverb, "Sunshine and rice
may be found everywhere," and the poem which may be rendered, "If you
look at a water-fowl thoughtlessly you may imagine that she has
nothing to do but float quietly on the water, yet she is moving her
feet ceaselessly beneath the surface."
At the little hot spring inn where we next stayed, insect powder was
on sale, not without reasonable hope of patronage by the guests. The
_Asahi_ once facetiously reported that I had taken on a journey three
_to_ (six pecks) of insect powder. The chief protector of the prudent
traveller in remote Japan is a giant pillowslip of cotton. He gets
into it and ties the strings together under his chin. The mats and
futon of old-fashioned hotels are full of fleas. The hard cylindrical
Japanese pillow has no doubt its tenants also, but I never got
accustomed to using it, and laid my head on a doubled-up kneeling
cushion.
A foot-high partition separated the men's hot bath from the women's.
My cold bath in the morning I found I had to take unselfconsciously at
a water-gush in front of the house. As the food was poor here, we
were glad of our tinned food and ship's biscuits. This was of course
in a remote part. Apart from ordinary Japanese food, there are usually
available at the inns chicken, fish of some sort, eggs, omelettes and
soups. With a pot of jam or two and some powdered milk in one's bag,
one can live fairly well. Fresh milk can now be got in unlikely places
on giving notice overnight. It is produced for invalids and children.
If one makes no fuss, remembers one is a traveller who has resolved to
see rural Japan, and realises that the inn people will try to do their
best, one will not fare so badly. On the railway one is well catered
for by the provision of _bento_ (lunch) boxes, sold on the platforms
of stations. These chip boxes contain rice (hot), cold omelette, cold
fish or chicken and assorted pickles, and provide an appetising and
inexpensive meal.
Monkeys, bears and antelopes are shot in this district. One man spoke
of a troop of eighty monkeys. In the high mountain regions there are
still people who escape the census and live a wild life. The records
of a gipsy folk called Sanka have a history going back 700 or 800
years.
As we wound our way up and down the hill-sides we saw evidence of
"fire-farming." It is the simple method by which a small tract with a
favourable aspect is cleared by fire and cultivated, and then, when
the fertility is exhausted, abandoned. I was assured that after
fire-farming "tea springs up naturally," and that though tea-drinking
may have been introduced from China there could not be such large
areas of tea growing wild if tea were not indigenous.
Most of our paths lay through woods and matted vegetation. I noticed
that trees were often felled in order that mushrooms might be grown on
and around their trunks. There is a large consumption of these
tree-grown mushrooms in Japan and an export trade worth two and a half
million yen.
[Illustration: CULTIVATION TO THE HILL-TOPS.]
An inscribed stone by our path was a reminder of the belief in
"mountain maidens." They have the undoubted merit of not being "so
peevish as fairies." At another stone, before which was a pile of
small stones, a farmer told us that when a traveller threw a stone
on the heap he "left behind his tiredness."
[Illustration: IMPLEMENTS, MEASURES AND MACHINES, AND A BALE OF RICE]
In the first house we came to we found a young widow turning bowls
with power from a water-wheel. She could finish 400 bowls in a day and
got from one to five sen apiece. She said that she had often wished to
see a foreigner. Like nearly all the girls and women of the hills, she
wore close-fitting blue cotton trousers.
We descended to a kind of prairie which had a tree here and there and
roughly wooded hills on either side. This brought us to the problem of
the wise method of dealing with the enormous wood-bearing areas of the
country, the timber crop of which is so irregular in quality. Japan
requires many more scientifically planned forests. As coal is not in
domestic use, however, large quantities of cheap wood are needed for
burning and for charcoal making. The demand for hill pasture is also
increasing. How shall the claims of good timber, good firewood, good
charcoal-making material and good pasture be reconciled? In the county
through which we were passing--a county which, owing to its large
consumption of wood fuel, needs relatively little charcoal--the
charcoal output was worth as much as 35,000 yen a year.
We saw "buckwheat in full bloom as white as snow," as the Chinese poem
says. At a farmhouse there was a box fixed on a barn wall. It was for
communications for the police from persons who desired to make their
suggestions for the public welfare privately.
Towards evening, when we had done about twenty miles, I managed to
twist an ankle. Happily I had the chance of a ride. It was on the back
of a dour-looking mare which was accompanied by her foal and tied by a
halter to the saddle of a led pack-horse which was carrying two large
boxes. Thus impressively I did several miles in descending darkness
and across the rocky beds of two rivers. The horse of this district is
a downcast-looking animal in spite of the fact that it is stalled
under the same roof as its owner and is thus able to share to some
extent in his family life.
At the town at which we at last arrived, the comfort of the hot bath
was enhanced by a sturdy lass of the inn who unasked and unannounced
came and applied herself resolutely to scrubbing and knuckling our
backs.
The next day I went to the principal school. There were in the place
three primary schools, one with a branch for agricultural work. The
"attendance" at the principal school, where there were 379 boys and
girls, was 98 per cent, for the boys and 94 per cent, for the
girls.[115] The buildings were most creditable to a small place fifty
miles from a railway station. The community had met the whole cost out
of its official funds and by subscriptions. More than half the
expenditure of many a village is on education, which in Japan is
compulsory but not free. One cannot but be impressed by the pride
which is taken in the local schools. The dominating man-made feature
of the landscape is less frequently than might be supposed a temple or
a shrine: where the picture which catches the eye is not the vast
expanse of the crops of the plain or the marvels of terracing for hill
crops, it is the long, low school building, set almost invariably on
the best possible site. The poorly paid men and women teachers are
earnest and devoted, and their influence must be far-reaching. They
are rewarded in part, no doubt, by the respect which pupils and the
general public give to the _sensei_ (teacher).[116] At the school I
visited, the children, as is customary, swept and washed out the
schoolrooms and kept the playground trim. Above one teacher's desk
were the following admonitions:
Be obedient.
Be decent.
Be active.
Be social.
Be serious.
"Be serious"!--graver small folk sit in no schools in the world. Here,
as usual, corporal punishment was never given. I suggested to teachers
all sorts of juvenile delinquencies, but their faith in the
sufficiency of reprimands, of "standing out" and of detention after
school hours was unshaken.
A new wing, a beautiful piece of carpenter's work, had cost 4,000 yen,
a large sum in Japan, where wood and village labour are equally cheap.
It was to be used chiefly for the gymnastics which are steadily adding
to the stature of the Japanese people. At one end there was an
opening, about 20 ft. across and 5 ft. deep, designed as an honourable
place for the portraits of the Emperor and Empress, which are solemnly
exposed to view on Imperial birthdays[117].
Apart from a local spirit of pride and emulation and a belief in
education, one of the reasons for the building of new schools and
adding to old ones is to be found in the recent extension of the
period of compulsory attendance. It used to be from six to ten years
of age; it is now from six to twelve. The visitor to Japan usually
under-estimates the ages of children because they are so small.
Japanese boys grow suddenly from about fifteen to sixteen.
In the whole of this county, with a population of 35,000, there were,
I learnt at the county offices, 22 elementary schools with 36 branch
schools, 3 secondary schools and 17 winter schools. Within the same
area there were 46 Buddhist temples with about 60 priests, and 125
Shinto shrines with 11 priests.
The chief police officer, in chatting with me, mentioned that, out of
71 charges of theft, only 47 were proceeded with. When charges were
not proceeded with it was either because restitution had been made or
the chief constable had exercised his discretion and dismissed the
offender with a reprimand. When transgressors are dismissed with a
reprimand an eye is kept on them for a year. As the Japanese are in
considerable awe of their police, I have no doubt that, as was
explained to me, those who have lapsed into evil-doing, but are
released from custody with a warning, may "tremble and correct their
conduct." In the whole county in a year 14,400 admonitions were given
at 14 police stations. The noteworthy thing in the criminal
statistics is the small proportion of crime against women and
children.
The fact that the county was in a remote part of Japan may be held,
perhaps, to account for the fact that there were in it, I was assured,
only 14 geisha and 8 women known to be of immoral character. All of
them were living in the town and they were said to be chiefly
patronised by commercial travellers and imported labourers. I was told
that there were pre-nuptial relations between many young men and young
women. Two undoubted authorities in the district agreed that they
could not answer for the chastity of any young men before marriage or
of "as many as 10 per cent." of the young women. In an effort to save
the reputation of their daughters, fathers sometimes register
illegitimate children as the offspring of themselves and their wives.
Or when an unmarried girl is about to have a child her father may call
the neighbours to a feast and announce to them the marriage of his
daughter to her lover. The figures for illegitimate births are
vitiated by the fact that in Japan children are recorded as
illegitimate who are born to people who have omitted to register their
otherwise respectable unions.[118]
In the county in which I was travelling I was assured that half the
still births might be put down to immoral relations and half to
imperfect nourishment or overworking of the mother. In this district
girls marry from 17 or 18, men from 18 to 30.
The town was full of country people who had come to see the festival.
One feature of it was the performance of plays on four ancient wheeled
stages of a simplicity in construction that would have delighted
William Poel. Formerly these plays were given by the local youths; now
professional actors are employed. The different acts of the historical
dramas which were performed were divided into half a dozen scenes, and
when one of these scenes had been enacted the stage was wheeled
farther along the street. At the conclusion of each scene some three
dozen small boys, all wearing the white-and-black speckled cotton
kimono and German caps which are the common wear of lads throughout
Japan, would swarm up on the stage, and, with fans waved downwards,
would yell at the pitch of their voices an ancient jingle, which
seemed to signify "Push, push, push and go on!" This was addressed to
a score or so of young men who with loud shouts hauled the heavy
stage-wagon along the street. The performances on the four moving
theatres went on simultaneously and sometimes the cars passed one
another. The performances were given on the eve and on the day and
through the night of the festival. The acting was amazingly good,
considering the July heat and the cramped conditions in which the
actors worked. Happy boys sat at the back of the scenes fanning the
players. Our kindly and voluble landlady was not satisfied with the
number of times the stages stopped before her inn. She loudly
threatened the youths who were dragging them that she would reclaim
some properties she had lent and tell her dead husband of their
ingratitude!
At one of the booths which had been opened for the festival by a
strolling company there were women actors, contrary to the convention
of the Japanese stage on which men enact female rôles and in doing so
use a special falsetto. Some of these actresses performed men's parts.
At every performance in a Japanese theatre, as I have already
mentioned, a policeman is provided with a chair on a special platform,
or in an otherwise favourable position, so that he can view and if
necessary censor what is going on. The constable at this particular
play was kind enough to offer me his seat. The rest of the audience
was content with the floor. The poor little company of players brought
to their work both ability and an artistic conscience, but they had to
do everything in the rudest way. They were in no way embarrassed by
the attendants frequently trimming the inferior oil lamps on the
stage. A little girl on the floor, entranced by the performance on the
stage, or curious about some detail of it, ran forward and laid her
chin on the boards and studied the actors at leisure. The folk in the
front row of the gallery dangled their naked legs for coolness.
One of my friends asked me how we managed in the West to identify the
people who wanted to leave the theatre between the acts. I explained
that as our performances did not last from early afternoon until
nearly midnight it was rare for anyone to wish to leave a theatre
until the play was over. At a Japanese playhouse, however, a portion
of the audience may be disposed to go home at some stage of the
proceedings and return later. The careful manager of a small theatre
identifies these patrons by impressing a small stamp on the palms of
their hands.
From the theatre we went to the travelling shows. They charged 2 sen.
We were shown a mermaid, peepshows, a snake, an unhappy bear, three
doleful monkeys and some stuffed animals which may or may not have had
in life an uncommon number of legs. There was a barefaced imposture by
a young and pretty show-woman who insisted that two marmots in her lap
were the offspring of a girl. "Look," she cried, "at two sisters, the
daughters of one mother. See their hands!" And she held up their paws.
She rounded off the fraud by feeding the creatures with condensed
milk.
As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that
I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a
paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in
the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The
prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but
described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell
where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low
door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on
their knees.
We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a
celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary,
perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of _geta_," said our
landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to
attend without taking a bath in the early morning."[119]
At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the
annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his
hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains
of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A
decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine.
Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and
_saké_. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a
strip of cloth before his mouth and nose[120] and addressed the chief
deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in
the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in
all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran
freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an
end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the
shrine read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed.
His thin voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a
child's cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the
cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.
After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the
people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large
room of the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial _saké_ to
which rice had been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried
fish. Not so long ago the presence of a foreigner would have been
unwelcome at such a ceremony as we had witnessed: the fear of
"contagion of foreigners" extended even to people from another
prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few
moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.
Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight
days. He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been
cooked at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch
other persons, particularly women; he had bathed several times daily
in cold water and he had said many prayers. The heads of the household
in the community whose turn it was to attend at the shrine were also
supposed to have observed some of the same taboos. Only those persons
might make offerings at the shrine whose fathers and mothers were
living.[121] Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and _saké_ at
the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.
In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for
moral or non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then
came home training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was
too often indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One
person well qualified to express an opinion said that a "wise and
benevolent" chief constable could exercise a good moral influence.
Others believed in public opinion. A policeman said, "The first thing
is for people to have food and clothes; without such primary
satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In
considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is not
without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a
school receive about the same salary. Assistant teachers and plain
constables are also on an equality. I found the salary of the
administrative head of one county, the _gunchō_, to be only 2,000 yen
a year.
I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through there were
no fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a
capital of two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a
turnover of three million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a
temperature for the rice or to floods which drown the crop,
co-operation had proved its value. The prefectures north of Tokyo
facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine, for near Sendai
the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I was told
that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine
has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a
hundred." These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who
suffered from lack of suitable nourishment." Every year the
development of railway and steam communications makes easier the task
of relieving famine sufferers.[122] In the old days people were often
found dead who had money but were unable to get food for it. As Japan
is a long island with varying climates there is never general
scarcity.
FOOTNOTES:
[114] For statistics of railways, see Appendix XXXV.
[115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of
Japan is officially reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.;
villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not mean daily attendance.
[116] Since 1919 the salaries of elementary school teachers have been
raised to 26, 16 and 15 yen per month, according to grade.
[117] Only last year (1921) another schoolmaster lost his life in an
endeavour to save the Emperor's portrait from his burning school.
[118] See Appendix XXXVI.
[119] A hot bath is ordinarily obtainable only in the afternoon and
evening in most Japanese hotels. In the morning people are content
merely with rinsing their hands and face.
[120] In addressing a superior, many Japanese still draw in their
breath from time to time audibly.
[121] That is, persons who might be considered not to have failed in
their filial duties.
[122] After the failure of the 1918-19 crop in India, 600,000 persons
were in receipt of famine relief.