SHRINES AND POETRY
(NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)
Sir, I am talking of the mass of the people.--JOHNSON
The railway made its way through snow stockades and through many
tunnels which pierced cryptomeria-clad hills. Eventually we descended
to the wonderful Kambara plains, a sea of emerald rice. Fourteen
million bushels of rice are produced on the flats of Niigata
prefecture, which grows more rice than any other. The rice, grown
under 800 different names, is officially graded into half a dozen
qualities. The problem of the high country we had come from was how to
keep its paddy fields from drying up; the problem of Niigata is
chiefly to keep the water in its fields at a sufficiently low level.
Almost every available square yard of the prefecture is paddy.
At Gosen there were depressing-looking weaving sheds, but the Black
Country created by the oil fields farther on was in even more striking
contrast with the beautiful region we had left. The petroleum yield
was 65 million gallons, and the smell of the oil went with us to the
capital city.
Niigata has a dark reputation for exporting farmers' daughters to
other parts of Japan, but I have also heard that the percentage of
attendance made by the children at the primary schools of the
prefecture is higher than anywhere else. Like Amsterdam, Niigata is a
city of bridges. There must be 200 of them. The big timber bridge
across the estuary is nearly half a mile long. One finds in Niigata a
Manchester-like spirit of business enterprise. Our hotel was
excellent.
Because they speak with all sorts of people and hear a great deal of
conversation the blind _amma_ are full of interesting gossip. A clever
_amma_ who ran his knuckles up and down my back said that farm land a
good way from Niigata was sold at from 200 yen to 300 yen and
sometimes at 400 yen per quarter acre.[130] Prefectural officials who
called on me explained that drainage operations on a large scale were
being completed. The water of which the low land was relieved would be
used to extend farming in the hills. An effort was also being made to
develop stock-keeping in the uplands. It was proposed "to supply every
farmer with a scheme for increasing his live stock." The optimistic
authorities were particularly attracted by the notion of keeping
sheep. The plan was to arrange for co-operation in hill pasturing and
in wool and meat production. Mutton was as yet unknown, however, in
Niigata. (The mutton eaten by foreigners in Japan usually comes from
Shanghai.)
I went into the country to a little place where the natural gas from
the soil was used by the farmers for lighting and cooking. I heard
talk in this village and in others of the influence of the local army
reservists' society. "Young men on returning from their army service
are always influential. They are much respected by the youths and are
talkative indeed in the village assembly."
As our host was the village headman he kindly brought the assembly
together to meet me. I asked the assembled fathers about two stones
erected in the village. Somebody had kindled a fire of rice screenings
near one of them and it had been scorched. On the other stone a kimono
had been hung to dry. The explanation was that the stones were
monuments not shrines, and that the people who had set them up had
left the district. The stones were no doubt respected while the donors
lived. It was not uncommon for a pilgrim to a shrine to erect a
memorial on his return home.
In this village fifty Shinto shrines of the fifth class had been
closed under the influence of the Home Office. They were shrines which
had no offering from the village to support them. They had only a few
worshippers. All the remaining shrines were of the fifth class but
one, and it was of the fourth class. In the county there was a
second-class shrine and in the whole prefecture there were two or
three first-class shrines. The villagers had agreed among themselves
which of their own shrines should be made an end of. A shrine which
was dispensed with was burnt. The stone steps approaching it were also
removed. Burning was not sacrilege but purification. On the closing of
a shrine there might be complaints on the part of some old man or
woman, but the majority of people approved. One Shinto shrine guardian
lived at the fourth-class shrine and conducted a ceremony at the
sixteen fifth-class shrines. Of the twenty Buddhist temples in the
village (300 families cultivating an average of a _chō_ apiece),
twelve were Hokke, five Shingon, two Shinshu and one Zen. All the
priests were married.[131]
I have used the phrase "Buddhist temple" loosely and may do so again,
for it conveys an idea which "Buddhist church" does not. A temple
(_dō_) is properly an edifice in which a Buddha is enshrined. This
building is not for services or burial ceremonies or anniversary
offerings for departed souls. It may or may not have a guardian
(_domori_). He is never a priest with a shaven head. A Buddhist church
(_tera_) is a place where adherents go as anniversaries come round or
for sermons. It possesses a priest. There is a considerable difference
in the style of Buddhist edifices according to their denomination--Zen
buildings are particularly plain--but all are more elaborate than
Shinto shrines.
A large Shinto shrine is called _yashiro_ (house of god); a small one
_hokora_. A _hokora_ is transportable. Originally it was and in some
places it still is a perishable wooden shrine thatched with reed or
grass straw which is renewed at the spring and autumn festivals. It
may be less than two feet high and may be made of stone or wood. But
it cannot be regarded as a building. Inside there are _gohei_ (upright
sticks with paper streamers). In a rich man's house a _hokora_ may be
seven or eight feet high or bigger than the smallest _yashiro_, and
may be embellished with colour and metal.
Returning to Buddhism, if a priest has a son he may be succeeded by
him. But many Buddhist priests marry late and have no children. Or
their children do not want to be priests. So the priest adopts a
successor. Sometimes he maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor.
During the day this assistant goes to school. In the evenings and
during holidays he is taught to become a priest. When the
primary-school education is finished the lad may be sent by his
patron, if he is well enough off, to a school of his sect at Kyoto or
Tokyo.
My travelling companion spoke of the infiltration of new ideas in town
and country. "A mixing is taking place in the heart and head of
everybody who is not a bigot. But I don't know that some kinds of
Christianity are to do much for us. I heard the other day of a
Japanese Presbyterian who was preaching with zest about hell fire.
Generally speaking, our old men are looking to the past and our young
men are aspiring, but not all. Some are content if they can live
uncriticised by their neighbours. When they become old they may begin
to think of a future life and visit temples. But as young men their
thoughts are fully occupied by things of this world."
In the office of the headman whom I mentioned a page or so back, there
was behind his chair a _kakemono_ which read, "Reflecting and
Examining One's Inner Spirit." We passed a night in the old house of
this headman, who was a poet and a country gentleman of a delightful
type. Being an eldest son he had married young, and his relations with
his eldest boy, a frank and clever lad, were pleasant to see. The
garden, instead of being shut in by a wall with a tiled coping or by a
palisade of bamboo stems in the ordinary way, was open towards the
rice fields, a scene of restful beauty. As our _kuruma_ drew near the
house, the steward appeared, a broom in his hand. Running for a short
distance before us until we entered the courtyard, he symbolically
swept the ground according to old custom. After a delightful hot bath
and an elaborate supper, which my fellow traveller afterwards assured
me had meant a week's work for the women of the household--snapping
turtle and choice bamboo shoots were among the honourable dishes--we
gathered at the open side of the room overlooking the garden.
Fireflies glowed in the paddies and in the garden two stone lanterns
had been lighted. One of them, which had a crescent-shaped opening cut
in it, gleamed like the moon; the other, which had a small serrated
opening, represented a star.
I paid a visit to the local agricultural co-operative store which did
business under the motto, "Faith is the Mother of all Virtue." More
than half the money taken at the store was for artificial manures.
Next came purchases of imported rice, for, like the Danish peasants
who export their butter and eat margarine, the local peasants sold
their own rice and bought the Saigon variety. The society sold in a
year a considerable quantity of _saké_. Stretched over the doorway of
the building in which the goods of the society were stored were the
rope and paper streamers which are seen before Shinto shrines and
consecrated places. The society had a large flag post for weather
signals, a white flag for a fine day, a red one for cloudy weather and
a blue one for rain.
I brought away from this village a calendar of agricultural operations
with poems or mottoes for each month, in the collection of which I
suspect the poet had a hand:
_January_: Future of the day determined in the morning.
_February_: The voice of one reading a farming book coming
from the snow-covered window.
_March_: Grafting these young trees, thinking of the days
of my grandchildren.
_April_: Digging the soil of the paddy field, sincerity
concentrated on the edge of the mattock.
_May_: Returning home with the dim moonlight glinting
on the edges of our mattocks.
_June_: Boundless wealth stored up by gracious heaven:
dig it out with your mattock, take it away with your
sickle.
_July_: Weeding the paddy field[132] in a happiness and
contentment which townspeople do not know.
_August_: Standing peasant worthier than resting rich man.
_September_: Ears of rice bend their heads as they ripen.
(An allusion to wisdom and meekness.)
_October_: White steam coming out of a manure house on
an autumn morning.
_November_: Moon clear and bright above neatly divided
paddy fields.
_December_: All the members of the family smiling and
celebrating the year's end, piling up many bales of rice.
In this district I first noticed cotton. It is sown in June and is
picked from time to time between early September and early November.
Cotton has been grown for centuries in Japan, but nowadays it is
produced for household weaving only, the needs of the factories being
met by foreign imports. The plant has a beautiful yellow flower with a
dark brown eye.
In one village I asked how many people smoked. The answer was 60 per
cent. of the men and 10 per cent. of the women. In the same village,
which did not seem particularly well off, I was told that 200 daily
papers might be taken among 1,300 families. Eighty per cent. of the
local papers were dailies and cost 35 sen a month. Tokyo papers cost
45 or 50 sen a month.
I visited a school, half of which was in a building adjoining a temple
and half in the temple itself. In the same county there were two other
schools housed in temples. The small Shinto shrine in this temple held
the Imperial Rescript on education. On one side of it was an ugly
American clock and on the other a thermometer. In the temple (Zen) two
Tokyo University students were staying in ideal conditions for
vacation study.
I saw at one place a very tired, unslept-looking peasant with a small
closed tub carried over his shoulder by means of a pole. On the tub
was tied a white streamer, such as is supplied at a Shinto shrine, and
a branch of _sakaki_ (_Eurya ochnacea_, the sacred tree). The
traveller was the delegate of his village. He had been to a mountain
shrine in the next prefecture and the tub held the water he had got
there. The idea is that if he succeeds in making the journey home
without stopping anywhere his efforts will result in rain coming down
at his village. If he should stop at any place to rest or sleep, and
there should be the slightest drip from his tub there, then the rain
will be procured not for his own village but for the community in
which he has tarried. So our voyager had walked not only for a whole
day but through the night. I heard of a rain delegate who had stamina
enough to keep walking for three or four days without sleeping.
Another way of obtaining rain has principally to do with tugging at a
rock with a straw rope. Then there is the plan already referred to of
tying straw ropes to a stone image and flinging it into the river,
saying, "If you don't give us rain you will stay there; if you do give
us rain you shall come out." There is also the method of paying
someone liberally to throw the split open head of an ox into the deep
pool of a waterfall. "Then the water god being much angry," said my
informant, "he send his dragon to that village, so storm and rain come
necessarily." Yet another plan is for the villagers simply to ascend
to a particular mountain top crying, "Give us rain! Give us rain!"
While dealing with these magic arts I may reproduce the following
rendering of a printed "fortune" which I received from a rural shrine:
"Wish to agree but now somewhat difficult. Wait patiently for a while.
Do nothing wrong. Wait for the spring to come. Everything will be
completed and will become better. Endeavouring to accomplish it soon
will be fruitless."
It was a student of agricultural conditions, in Toyama who gossiped to
me of the large expenditure by farmers of that prefecture on the
marriage of their daughters. "It is not so costly as the boys'
education and it procures a good reception for the girl from
father-and mother-in-law. The pinch comes when there is a second and
third daughter, for the average balance in hand of a peasant
proprietor in this prefecture at the end of the year is only 48 yen.
Borrowing is necessary and I heard of one bankruptcy. The Governor
tried to stop the custom but it is too old. They say Toyama people
spend more proportionately than the people in other prefectures. In
general they do not keep a horse or ox. I heard of young farmers
stealing each other's crops. Parents are very severe upon a daughter
who becomes ill-famed, for when they seek a husband for her they must
spend more. So mostly daughters keep their purity before marriage. But
I know parts of Japan where a large number of the girls have ceased to
be virtuous. Concerning the priests, those of Toyama are the worst. A
peasant proprietor with seven of a family and a balance at the end of
the year of 100 yen must pay 30 to 40 yen to the temple. Some priests
threaten the farmer, saying that if he does not pay as much as is
imposed on him by the collector an inferior Buddha will go past his
door. Priests want to keep farmers foolish as long as they can."
FOOTNOTES:
[130] For prices of land, see Appendix LIV.
[131] There are about 116,000 Shinto shrines of all grades and 14,000
priests, and 71,000 temples and 51,000 priests. There are about a
dozen Shinto sects and about thirty Buddhist sects and sub-sects.
[132] It is done by wading in leech-infested water under a burning sun
and pulling out the weeds by hand and pushing them down into the
sludge.