THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER
(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)
We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skim them
over.--BACON
One day in the third week of October when the roads were sprinkled
with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the Kwanto plain and
passed from the prefecture of Tokyo into that of Saitama.[211] The
weather now made it necessary for Japanese to wear double kimonos.
During the middle of the day, however, I was glad to walk with my
jacket over my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about
naked. The region visited had a naturally well-drained dark soil,
composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of humus from buried
vegetation, and it went down to a depth beyond the need of the longest
_daikon_ (giant radish). Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the
ground, and large areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or
were in course of preparation for winter wheat and barley; but the
most conspicuous crop was _daikon_. There were miles and miles of it
at all sorts of stages from newly transplanted rows to roots ready for
pulling. There is _daikon_ production up to the value of about a
million yen. In addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a
large export trade in _daikon_ salted in casks.
I came into a district where there was a system of alternate grain and
wood crops. The rotation was barley and wheat for three or four years,
then fuel wood for about fifteen. The tendency was to lengthen the
corn period in the rotation.
The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton trousers like
the men. One farm-house I entered was a century old but it had not
been more than forty years on its present site. It had been
transported three miles. I was once more impressed by the low standard
of living. If by this time I had not been getting to know something of
the ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to credit the
fact that a household I visited was worth ten thousand yen.
Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop. They were
bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a yen the 82 lbs. bale. The
consumer was paying double that. Not a few of the farmers were
cultivating as much as 5 _chō_ or even 8 _chō_, for there was little
paddy. Even then, I was told, "it's a very hard life for a third of
the farmers." The reason was that there was no remunerative winter
employment.
Before the Buddhist temple, where there was preaching twice a year,
were rows of little stone figures, many of which had lost their heads.
The heads were in much demand among gamblers who value them as
mascots. Among some mulberry plots belonging to different owners I saw
a little wooden shrine, evidently for the general good. It was there,
it was explained, "not because of belief but of custom." The evening
was drawing in and Fuji showed itself blue and mystical above the dark
greenery of the country. As I gazed a sweet-sounding gong was struck
thrice in the temple. Three times a day there is heard this summons to
other thoughts than those of the common task.
[Illustration: INSIDE THE "SHOJI."]
[Illustration: AUTOMATIC RICE POLISHER.]
[Illustration: THE AUTHOR (AND THE KODAK HOLDER) IN THE CRATER OF A
VOLCANO.]
My companion entered into conversation with a decent middle-aged
pedestrian, neatly but poorly dressed, and found that he was a man who
had formerly pulled his _kuruma_ in Tokyo. The man had found the work
of a _kurumaya_ too much for him and had withdrawn to his village to
open a tiny shop. But he had been taken ill and had been removed to
hospital. When he came out he found that his wife was in poverty and
that his eldest son had been summoned to serve in the army. Now his
wife had become ill and he was on his way to a distant relative to ask
him to take charge of a small child and to help him with a little
money to start some petty business. My companion gave him a yen and
deplored the fact that poor people should fail to take advantage of
the law releasing from service a son required for the support of a
parent. They failed occasionally to find friends to represent their
case to the authorities.
[Illustration: A WAYSIDE MONUMENT.]
[Illustration: THE GIANT RADISH OR "DAIKON," WHICH IS USED AS A
PICKLE.]
While waiting at the station we talked with another old man. He had
come to see his daughter whose husband had been called up for two
years' service. She was living of course with her parents-in-law. He
said that his daughter would have no difficulty in keeping the farm
going during the young man's absence, but his being away was "a great
loss."
The old man, who squatted at our feet as he spoke, went on to tell us
about a young man of his village who had served his term in the navy
but thought of remaining for another term. "Gran'fer" thought it a
good opening for him; he would not only get his living and clothes
but--and this is characteristic--"see the world and send back
interesting letters." The ancient was specially interested in the
sailor, he said, because his wife had "given milk" to the adventurer
when an infant.
It is difficult to enter a village which has not its pillar or its
slab to the memory of a youth or youths who perished in the Russian or
Chinese wars.[212] But in the severe struggle with Russia the villages
did more than give their sons and build memorials to them when they
were killed. They tried, in the words of an official circular of that
time, "to preserve the spirit of independence in the hearts of the
relieved and to avoid the abuses of giving out ready money." There was
the secret ploughing society of the young men of a village in Gumma
prefecture. "Either at night or when nobody knew these young men went
out and ploughed for those who were at the front." In one prefecture
the school children helped in working soldiers' farms. In villages in
Osaka and Hyogo prefectures there was given to soldiers' families the
monopoly of selling _tofu_, matches and other articles. Some of the
societies which laboured in war time were the Women's One Heart
Society, the Women's Chivalrous Society, the National Backing Society
and the Nursing Place of Young Children of those Serving at the Front.
In the train we talked of the hardiness induced by not being the slave
of clothing. When it rains _kuruma_ men and workmen habitually roll up
their kimonos round their loins, or if they are wearing trousers, take
them off.[213] Of course no Japanese believes in catching cold through
getting his feet wet. This is a condition which is continually
experienced, for the cotton _tabi_ are wet through at every shower.
Some years back it was not uncommon in walking along the sea-beach at
night to find fishermen sleeping out on the sand. An old man told me
that it used to be the custom in his sea-shore hamlet for all members
of a family to sleep on the beach except fathers, mothers and infants.
On my return from the country I found myself in a company of earnest
rural reformers who were discussing a plan of State colonisation for
the inhabitants of some villages where everything had been lost in a
volcanic eruption. Families had been given a tract of forest land, 15
yen for a cottage, 45 yen for tools and implements and the cost of
food for ten months (reckoned at 8 sen per adult and 7 sen per child
per day). During the evening I was shown the figure of a goddess of
farming venerated by the afflicted folk. The deity was represented
standing on bales of rice, with a bowl of rice in her left hand and a
big serving spoon in her right.
The gathering discussed the question of rural morality. As to the
relations of the young men and women of the villages, to which there
has necessarily been frequent references in these pages, the reader
must always bear in mind the way in which the sexes are normally kept
apart under the influence of tradition. In nothing does this Japanese
countryside differ more noticeably from our own than in the fact that
joyous young couples are never seen arming each other along the road
of an evening. Thousands of allusions in our rural songs and poetry,
innumerable scenes in our genre pictures, speak of blissful hours of
which Japan gives no sign. There is no courting; there are in the
public view no "random fits of dallin'." An unmarried young man and
young woman do not walk and talk together. A young man and woman who
were together of an evening would be suspected of immorality. Even
when married they would not think of linking arms on the road. I was a
beholder of a family reunion at a railway station in which a young
wife met her young husband returned from abroad. There were merely
repeated bows and many smiles. The view taken of kissing in Japan is
shown by the fact that an issue of a Tokyo periodical was prohibited
by the police because it contained an allusion to it. We are helped to
understand the Japanese standpoint a little if we remember how
repugnant to English and American ideas is the Continental custom of
men kissing one another. Kissing is understood by the Japanese to be a
sexual act, as is shown by their word for it.
Early in November in the neighbourhood of Tokyo, where three crops are
taken in the year and sometimes four or five, I found between the rows
of growing winter barley two lines of green stuff which would be
cleared off as the barley rose. The barley was sown in clumps of two
dozen or even thirty plants, each clump being about a foot apart, and
liberally treated with liquid manure. In Saitama 100 bushels per acre
has been produced by a good farmer. The clump method of sowing is
believed to afford greater protection against the weather. (Outside
the volcanic-soil area ordinary sowing in rows is common.) The
volcanic soil, as one sees in spots where excavations have been made,
is originally light yellow. The humus introduced by the liberal
applications of manure has made it black.
I came upon a hollow in some low hills, studded with trees and
overlooking Tokyo Bay, which had been secured for the building of an
elaborate series of temples at a cost of three million yen. Acres of
grounds were being laid out with genius. The buildings were of that
beautiful simplicity which marks the edifices of the Zen sect. The
construction was in the hands of some of the cleverest master
craftsmen in Japan. The work was to be spread over four years. A great
hoarding displayed thousands of wooden tablets bearing the names and
the amounts of the subscriptions of the faithful. In one of the
completed temples a kindly priest was preaching. He added to the force
of his gestures by the use of a fan. He was being attentively listened
to by an intelligent-looking congregation. I caught the injunction
that in the attainment of goodness aspiration was little worth without
will.
The method of announcing subscriptions on hoardings was also adopted
outside the new primary school near by. The subscriptions were from a
hundred yen to one yen. The charge to scholars at this school, I
found, was 10 sen per month during the first compulsory six years and
30 sen during the next two years.
Just after Christmas I walked again into the country. There were miles
of dreary brown paddies with the stubble in puddles. On the non-paddy
land there was the refreshing green of young corn which seemed greatly
to enjoy being treated as a garden plant in a deep exquisitely worked
soil with never a weed in an acre. But children were kept from school
because their parents could not get along without their help. Many of
the school teachers seemed as poor as the farmers. As I passed the
farm-houses in the evening they seemed bleak and uninviting. In the
fire hole[214] of every house, however, there was a generous blaze and
the bath tub out-of-doors was steaming for the customary evening hot
dip in the opening.
In my host's house I noticed an old painting of a forked _daikon_.
Such malformed roots used to be presented to shrines by women desirous
of having children.
In the office of one village I visited I was permitted to examine the
dossiers of some of the inhabitants. Among a host of other particulars
about a certain person's origin and condition I read that he was a
minor when his father died, that such and such a person acted as his
guardian, that the guardianship ended on such and such a date, and
that his widowed mother had a child nine years after her husband's
death.
In not a few places I found that the tiny shrines of hamlets (_aza_)
had been taken away and grouped together at a communal shrine with the
notion of promoting local solidarity. At one such combination of
shrines I saw notice boards intimating that "tramps, pedlars,
wandering priests and other carriers of subscription lists and
proselytisers" were not received in the village. It was explained that
a community was sometimes all of one faith: "therefore it does not
want to be disturbed by tactless preachers of other beliefs."
At an inn there was a middle-aged widow who served there as waitress
in the summer but in the winter returned to Tokyo, where she employed
a number of girls in making _haori_ tassels. (She gave them board and
lodging and clothes for two years, and, after that period,
wages.[215]) Remembering what I had written down about courting, I
asked for her mature judgment on our rural custom of "walking out."
She was amused, but, in that way the Japanese have of trying to look
at a Western custom on its merits, she said, after consideration, that
there was much to be said for the plan. "In Japan," she declared, "you
cannot know a husband's character until you are married. On the whole,
I wish I had been a man." In order to catch our train we had to leave
this inn the moment our meal was finished, although the widow quoted
to us the adage, "Rest after a meal even if your parents are dead."
On a morning in May I went into the country to visit a friend who was
taking a holiday in a ramshackle inn 4,000 ft. up Mount Akagi. I
continually heard the note of the _kakkō_ (cuckoo). On the higher
parts of the mountain there were azaleas at every yard, some quite
small but others 12 or even 15 ft. high. Many had been grazed by
cattle. Big cryptomeria were plentiful part of the way up, but at the
top there were no trees but diminutive oaks, birches and pines,
stunted and lichen covered, the topmost branches broken off by the
terrific blasts which from time to time sweep along the top of the
extinct volcano.
One of the products of rural Japan is the wrestler. _Sumo_, which is
going on in every school and college of the country, exhibits its
perfect flower twice a year in the January and May ten-days-long
tournaments in the capital. The immense rotunda of the wrestlers'
association suggests a rather rickety Albert Hall and holds 13,000
people.[216] On the day I went in I paid 2 yen and had only standing
room. Everybody knows the more than Herculean proportions of the
wrestlers in comparison with the rest of their countrymen. The
rigorous training, Gargantuan feeding and somewhat severe discipline
of the wrestlers enable them to grow beyond the average stature and to
a girth, protected by enormously developed abdominal muscles, which
reinforces strength with great weight.[217]
I had often the opportunity at a railway station or in a train to
witness the easy carriage and magnificent pride of these massive,
good-tempered men. There is not in the world, probably, a more
remarkable illustration than they afford of what superior physical
training and superior feeding can do. At first sight, indeed, these
gigantic creatures seem to belong to a different race. It is no wonder
that they should be so commonly proteges of the rich and
distinguished. When an eminent wrestler retired in the year in which I
first saw a good wrestling bout the ceremony of cutting his hair--for,
like Samson, the wrestler wears his hair long--was performed by a
personage who combined the dignities of an admiral and a peer. There
is nothing of the bruiser in the looks of the smooth-faced wrestlers.
Many, however, are the bruises to their bodies and to their
self-esteem which they receive in their disciplinary progress from the
contests of their native villages through all the grades of their
profession to the highest rank. Their sexual morality is commonly of
the lowest.
In my own hamlet at home in England I have seen the shoemaker, tailor
and carpenter successively pass away; the only craftsman left is the
smith. In Japan the hereditary craftsman survives for a while. I
watched in my house one day the labours of such a worker. He was not
arrayed in a Sunday suit fallen to the greasy bagginess of everyday
wear, topped by a soiled collar. He appeared in a blue cotton
jacket-length kimono and tight-fitting trousers of the same stuff, and
both garments, which were washed at least once a week, were admirably
fitted to their wearer's work. Almost the same rig was worn by our own
medieval and pre-medieval workmen. The carpenter had on the back of
his coat the name of his master or guild in decorative Chinese
characters in white. There are nowadays in the cities many inferior
workers, but all the men who came to my house worked with rapidity and
concentration, hardly ever lifting their eyes from their jobs. The
dexterity of the Japanese workman is seldom exaggerated. To his
dexterity he adds the considerable advantage of having more than two
hands, for he uses his feet together or singly. His supple big toes
are a great possession. We have lost the use of ours, but the Japanese
artisan, accustomed from his youth to _tabi_ with a special division
for the big toe, and to _geta_, which can be well managed only when
the big toe is lissom, uses his toes as naturally as a monkey, with
his paws and mouth full of nuts, gives a few to his feet to hold. The
first sight of a foot holding a tool is uncanny.
The pitiful thing is that a modest, polite, cheerful, industrious,
skilful, and in the best sense of the word artistic hereditary
craftsmanship is proving only too easy a prey to the new industrial
system. It is a sad reflection that the country which, owing to her
long period of seclusion, had the opportunity of applying to all the
things of common life so remarkable a skill and artistry, should be so
little conscious of the pace at which her industrial rake's progress
is proceeding, so insensible to the degree to which she is prodigally
sacrificing that which, when it is lost to her, can never be
recovered. It is no doubt true that when our own handicrafts were
dying we also were insensitive. But because the Middle Ages in England
encountered the industrial system gradually we suffered our loss more
slowly than Japan is doing. Because, too, we never had in our
bustling history the long periods of immunity from home and foreign
strife by which Japanese craftsmanship profited so wonderfully, we may
not have had such large stores of precious skill and taste to squander
as New Japan, the spendthrift of Old Japan's riches, is unthinkingly
casting away.
It is at Christmas at home that we have in the Christmas tree our
reminder of the country. It is on New Year's Day that in Japan a pine
tree is set up on either side of the front gate, but there are three
bamboos with it, and the four trunks are all beautifully bound
together with rope. If the ground be too hard for the trees to be
stuck in the ground, they are kept upright by having a dozen heavy
pieces of wood, not unlike fire logs, neatly bound round them. The
pines may be about 10 ft. high, the bamboo about 15 ft. To the trees
are affixed the white paper _gohei_. Over the doorway itself is an
arrangement of straw, an orange, a lobster, dried cuttlefish and more
_gohei_. A less expensive display consists of a sprig of pine and
bamboo. Poor people have to be content with a yard-high pine branch
with a French nail through it at either side of their doorway. I have
been ruralist enough to harbour thoughts of the extent to which the
woods are raided for all this New Year forestry. Some prefectures, in
the sincerity of their devotion to afforestation, forbid the New Year
destruction of pine trees.
I remember the gay and elaborate dressing of the horses during the New
Year holidays. I saw one driver of a wagon who was not content with
tying streamers on every part of his horse where streamers could be
tied: he had also decorated himself, even to the extent of having had
his head cropped to a special pattern, tracts of hair and bare scalp
alternating.
It was pleasant to learn that a fine chrysanthemum show arranged in an
open space in Tokyo was free to the public. Some plants, by means of
grafting, bore flowers of half a dozen different varieties. Several
plants had been wondrously trained into the form of _kuruma_, etc. Not
a few of the varieties exhibited were, according to our ideas,
atrocious in colouring, but many were beautiful and all were marvels
of cultivation. Even greater manipulative and horticultural skill was
represented in the chrysanthemums I saw at the Imperial garden party.
A chief of a department of the Ministry of Agriculture told me that
from a chrysanthemum growing in the ground it was possible to have a
thousand blooms.
In a Japanese room the timber upright alongside the _tokonoma_ is
always a tree trunk in the rough. If it be cherry it has its bark on.
The contrast with the finely finished wood of the rest of the room is
arresting. It is said that the use of the unplaned upright is not more
than three or four hundred years old and that it had its origin in
_Cha-no-yu_ affectations of simplicity.
I was visited one evening by an agricultural official who had returned
from a visit to Great Britain. He spoke of the "lonelyism" of our best
hotels. In a Japanese hotel of the same class one's room is so simple
and the view of the garden is so refreshing that, with the beautiful
flower arrangement indoors, the frequent change of _kakemono_, the
serving of one's meals in a different set of lacquer and porcelain
each day and the willing and smiling service always within the call of
a hand clap, there comes a sense of restfulness and peace. The
drawback which the Western man experiences is the lack of any means of
resting his back but by lying down and the inability to read for long
while resting an elbow on an arm rest which is too low for him.[218] A
Japanese often reads kneeling before a table.
Here I am reminded to say that the development of the desire for books
and newspapers in the rural districts is a noticeable thing, if only
because it is new. It is not so long ago that reading was considered
to be an occupation for old men and women and for children. The
samurai had few books and the farmers fewer still. But the idea of
combining cultivation and culture was not unknown. I have heard a
rural student humbly quote the old saying, _Sei-kō U-doku_
(literally, "Fine weather--farming--Rainy weather--reading").
I have a rural note of one of my visits to the _Nō_.[219] One farce
brought on an inferior priest of a sect which is now extinct but
surely deserves to be remembered for its encouragement of mountain
climbing. This "mountain climber," as he was called, was hungry and
climbed a farmer's tree in order to steal persimmons. (The actor got
on a stool, obligingly steadied by a supposedly invisible attendant,
and pretended to clamber up a corner post of the stage.) While he was
eating the persimmons he was discovered by their owner. The farmer was
a man of humour and said that he thought that "that must be a crow in
the tree." So the poor priest tried to caw. "No," said the farmer, "it
is surely a monkey." So the priest began to scratch after the manner
of monkeys. "But perhaps," the farmer went on, "it is really a kite."
The priest flapped his arms--and fell. The farmer thought that he had
the priest at his mercy. But the priest, rubbing his beads together,
put a spell on him and escaped. The word _Nō_ is written with an
ideograph which means ability, but _Nō_ also stands for
agriculture.[220]
FOOTNOTES:
[211] The Kwanto plain (73 by 96 miles) includes most of Tokyo and
Saitama prefecture, and also the larger part of Kanagawa and Chiba and
parts of Ibaraki, Gumma and Tochigi.
[212] The characters on these slabs are beautifully written. They have
usually been penned by distinguished men.
[213] The Japanese man wears below his kimono or trousers a pair of
bathing shorts. Peasants frequently wear in the fields nothing but a
little cotton bag and string.
[214] Poor households ordinarily use, instead of movable _hibachi_, a
big square box in an opening in the floor and resting on the earth.
[215] When I was in Tokyo, tradesmen's messenger boys received only
their food, lodging and clothing and an occasional present, with help
no doubt in starting a linked business when they were out of their
time. Now such youths, as a development of the labour movement, are on
a wage basis and receive 20 yen a month.
[216] The place has since been burnt down. A bigger building has been
erected.
[217] See Appendix LXII.
[218] There is also the occasional whiff of the _benjo_; but, as an
agricultural expert said, "It is not a bad thing that a people which
is increasingly under the influence of industrialism should be
compelled to give a thought to agriculture." There are European
countries famous for their farming whose sanitary experts are
evidently similarly minded.
[219] The fact that Dr. Waley's scholarly book is the third work on
the _Nō_ to be published in England in recent years is evidence that a
knowledge of a form of lyrical drama of rare artistry is gradually
extending in the West.
[220] Hence the names of the two national agricultural organisations,
Teikoku Nōkai, that is the Imperial Agricultural Society, and Dai
Nippon Nōkai, that is the Great Japan Agricultural Society.