COLONIAL JAPAN AND ITS UN-JAPANESE WAYS
Above all, this is not concerned with poetry.--WILFRED OWEN
When the traveller stands at the northern end of the mainland[232] of
Japan he is five hundred miles from Tokyo. In the north of Hokkaido he
is a thousand miles away. Hokkaido, the most northerly and the second
biggest of the four islands into which Japan is divided, is curiously
American. The wide straight streets of the capital, Sapporo,[233] laid
out at right angles, the rough buggies with the farmer and his wife
riding together, the wooden houses with stove stacks, and, instead of
paper-covered _shoji_, window panes: these things are seen nowhere
else in Japan and came straight from America. It was certainly from
America that the farmers had their cries of "Whoa." One of the best
authorities on Hokkaido has declared that the administrative and
agricultural instructors whom America sent there from about the time
of the Franco-Prussian war "gave Japan a fairer, kindlier conception
of America than all her study of American history."
In Old Japan there is always something which speaks of the centuries
that are gone; in Sapporo there is nothing that matters which is fifty
years old. One of the most remarkable facts in the agricultural
history of Japan is that a country with a teeming population and an
intensive farming should have left entirely undeveloped to so late a
period as the early seventies a great island of 35,000 square miles
which lies within sight of its shores. The wonder is that an attempt
on Yezo[234] was not made by the Russians, who, but for the vigorous
action of a British naval commander, would undoubtedly have taken
possession of the island of Tsushima, 700 miles farther south and
midway between Japan and Korea. Up to the time of the fall of the
Shogun the revenue of the lords of Yezo was got by taxing the harvest
of the sea and the precarious gains of hunters. The Imperial Rescript
carried by the army which was sent against certain adherents of the
Shogun who had fled there said: "We intend to take steps to reclaim
and people the island."[235] It is doubtful if at that period the
population was more than 60,000[236] (including Ainu).[237]
When Count Kuroda was put at the head of the Colonial Government he
went over to America and secured as his adviser-in-chief the chief of
the Agricultural Department at Washington. Stock, seeds, fruit trees,
implements and machinery, railway engines, buildings, practically
everything was American in the early days of Hokkaido. During a
ten-year period, in which forty-five American instructors were sent
for, five Russians, four Britons, four Germans, three Dutchmen and a
Frenchman were also imported.[238]
Governor Kuroda had a million yen placed at his disposal for ten years
in succession, and a million yen was a big sum in those days. Before
long there were flour mills, breweries, beet-sugar factories, canning
plants, lead and coal mining and silk manufacturing and an experiment
in soldier colonisation which owed something to Russian experiments in
Cossack farming. An agricultural school grew into a large agricultural
college; and this agricultural college has lately become the
University of Hokkaido, with nearly a thousand students.[239] How much
of a pioneer Sapporo College was may be gathered from the fact that
when I was in Hokkaido 67 out of the 140 men who were members of the
faculty had been themselves taught there. Dean Sato (Japan's first
exchange lecturer to American universities), Dr. Nitobe (Japanese
Secretary of the League of Nations) and Kanzō Uchimura were among the
first students. There have always been American professors at
Sapporo--its first president came from Massachusetts--and the
professorship of English has always been held by an American.
The 50 acres of elm-studded land in which the University buildings
stand are a surprise, for the elm grows nowhere else in Japan but
Hokkaido.[240] The extent of the University's landed possessions is
also unexpected. There are two training farms of 185 and 260 acres
respectively, beautifully kept botanic gardens, a tract of 15,000
acres on which there are already more than a thousand tenants, and
300,000 acres of forests in Hokkaido, Saghalien and Korea. Four or
five times as many students as can be admitted offer themselves at
Sapporo.
There is in Hokkaido an agricultural and rural life conceived for a
country where stock may be kept and a farmer does not need to practise
the superintensive farming of Old Japan. At the first University farm
I looked over it was clear that not only American but Swedish, German
and Swiss farming practice had had its influence. No longer was the
farmer content with mattocks, hoes and flails. A silo dominated the
scene, and maize, eaten from the cob in Old Japan, was a crop for
stock.[241] I also noticed crops of oats and rye.
I arrived in Hokkaido in the last week of August in a linen suit and
was glad to put on a woollen one. By September 29 it was snowing.
Snow-shoes were shown among the products of the island at the
prefectural exhibition. Canadians have likened the climate of Hokkaido
to that of Manitoba. Hokkaido is on the line of the Great Lakes, but
the cold current from the North makes comparisons of this sort
ineffective. It is only in southern Hokkaido that apples will grow.
Thirty years ago wolves and bear were shot two miles from Sapporo and
bear may still be found within ten miles.
The sea fisheries of Hokkaido are valuable but agriculture and
forestry are greater money makers. Even without forestry agriculture
is well ahead of factory industry, which is also eclipsed by mining.
Industry is aided by the presence of coal. Among manufactures, brewing
stands out even more conspicuously than wood-pulp making or canning.
One of the three best-known beers in Japan comes from Hokkaido.[242]
In contrast with the situation in Old Japan, where the land is half
paddy and half upland, there is in Hokkaido only a ninth of the
cultivated land under rice.[243] When I was in Hokkaido there were
600,000 _chō_ under cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than
there were in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the
north-eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island on the
northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond the skill of rice
growers. There is always uncertainty with the rice crop in Hokkaido.
As the growing period is short, half the rice is not transplanted but
sown direct in the paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven
years. In such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not
good.
Immigrants get 5 _chō_, but if they are without capital they first go
to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply
labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have
capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without
hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than
2-1\2 _chō_ to rice--from 3 to 5 _chō_ are the absolute limit--against
1-1\2 or 2 _chō_ to other crops. When the holder of a 5-_chō_ holding
prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and
hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 _chō_ is considered as
much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15
_chō_ it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the
busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only
at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the
lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244]
The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 _chō_. (Stock farming is
for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk
factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is
understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245]
On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which brought home to
me the colonial character of the agriculture was the tree stumps
sticking up in the paddies. The second was the extent to which the
rivers were still uncontrolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles
long, is in Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in need
of draining. Peat--there are 300,000 _chō_ of it--may be a standby
when the waste of timber that is going on brings about a shortage of
fuel other than coal. From poor peat soil, which was growing oats,
buckwheat and millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and
saw ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for only twenty
years, but already the farmers had cultivated the hillsides in the
assiduous fashion of Old Japan.
From Ashigawa we made some excursions in a prim _basha_ to places
which were always several miles farther on than they were supposed to
be and were usually reached by tracks covered with stones from 6 to 9
ins. long and having ruts a foot deep.
We visited a large estate with 350 tenants who were mostly working
2-1/2 _chō_, though some had twice as much. Nearly all of these
tenants appeared to have one or two horses, although the estate
manager had advised them to use oxen or cows as more economical
draught animals. When I remembered the distance the farmers were from
the town and the state of the roads, and noticed the satisfaction
which the men we passed displayed in being able to ride, it was easy
to believe that the possession of a horse might have its value as a
means of social progress. During the last ten years half the tenants
had made enough to enable them to buy farms. The tenants on this
estate had two temples and one shrine.[246]
I visited a fifteen-years-old co-operative alcohol factory with a
capital of 300,000 yen. Of its materials 80 per cent. seemed to be
potato starch waste and 20 per cent. maize. The product was 6,000 or
7,000 _koku_ of alcohol. The dividend was 8 per cent. On the waste a
large number of pigs was fed. The animals were kept in pens with
boarded floors within a small area, and I was not surprised to learn
that three or four died every month. Starch making, which produces the
waste used by the alcohol factory, is managed on quite a small scale.
An outfit may cost no more than 30 or 50 yen. I went over a small
peppermint-making plant. Most of the peppermint raised in Japan--it
reaches a value of 2 million yen--is grown in Hokkaido.
One day in the eastern part of the island I met in a small hotel,
which was run by a man and his wife who had been in America, several
old farmers who had obviously made money. They declared that formerly
only 20 per cent. of the colonists succeeded, but now the proportion
was more than 65 per cent. I imagine that they meant by success that
the colonists did really well, for it was added that it was rare in
that district for people to return to Old Japan. One of the company
said that not more than 5 per cent. returned. "Land is too expensive
at home," he continued; "when a Japanese comes here and gets some, he
works hard." A good man, they said, should make, after four or five
years, 70 to 100 yen clear profit in a year.
I rather suspect that the men I talked with had made some of their
money by advancing funds to their neighbours on mortgage. They all
seemed to own several farms. When I asked how religion prospered in
Hokkaido they said with a smile, "There are many things to do here, so
there is no spare time for religion as in our native places." There is
a larger proportion of Christians in Hokkaido than on the mainland.
One village of a thousand inhabitants contained two churches and a
Salvation Army barracks. It was reputed, also, to have eight or ten
"waitresses" and five saké shops. It is said that a good deal of
_shochu_, which is stronger than saké, is drunk.
The roughest _basha_ ride I made was to a place seven miles from
railhead in the extreme north-east. Such roads as we adventured by are
little more than tracks with ditches on either side. The journey back,
because there were no horses to ride, we made in a narrow but
extraordinarily heavy farm wagon with wheels a foot wide and drawn by
a stallion. Shortly after starting there was a terrific thunderstorm
which soaked us and hastened uncomfortably the pace of the animal in
the shafts. When the worst of the downpour was over, and we had faced
the prospect of slithering about the wagon for the rest of the
journey, for the stallion had decided to hurry, a farmer's wife asked
us for a lift and clambered in with agility. My companion and I were
then sitting in a soggy state with our backs against the wagon front
and our legs outstretched resignedly. The cheery farmer's wife, who
was wet too, plopped down between us and, as the bumps came, gripped
one of my legs with much good fellowship. She was a godsend by reason
of her plumpness, for we were now wedged so tight that we no longer
rocked and pitched about the wagon at each jolt. And no doubt we dried
more quickly. Providence had indeed been good to us, for shortly
afterwards we passed, lying on its side in a _spruit_, the _basha_
that had carried us on our outward journey.
We were three hours in all in the wagon. Our passenger told us that
her husband had several farms and that they were very comfortably off
and very glad that they had come to Hokkaido. When the farmer's wife
had to alight a mile from our destination we chose to walk. Bad roads
are a serious problem for the Hokkaido farmer. In one district, only
fifteen miles from the capital, they are so bad that rice is at half
the price it makes in Sapporo. It is unfortunate that the roads are at
their worst in autumn and spring when the farmer wants to transport
his produce.
I visited the 700-acre settlement which Mr. Tomeoka has opened in
connection with his Tokyo institution for the reclamation of young
wastrels. His formula is, "Feed them well, work them hard and give
them enough sleep." Among the volumes on his shelves there were three
books about Tolstoy and another three, one English, one American and
one German, all bearing the same title, _The Social Question_.
Needless to say that _Self-Help_ had its place.
I liked Mr. Tomeoka's idea of an open-air chapel on a tree-shaded
height from which there was a fine view. It reminded me of the view
from an open space on rising ground near the famous Danish rural high
school of Askov, from which, on Sundays, parties of excursionists used
to look down enviously on Slesvig and irritate the Germans by singing
Danish national songs. Mr. Tomeoka believed in better houses and
better food for farmers and in money raised by means of the _kō_--"the
rules and regulations of co-operative societies are too complicated
for farmers to understand."
I saw the huts of some settlers who had weathered their first Hokkaido
winter. Buckwheat, scratched in in open spaces among the trees, was
the chief crop. The huts consisted of one room. Most of the floor was
raised above the ground and covered with rough straw matting. In the
centre of the platform was the usual fire-hole. The walls were matting
and brushwood. I was assured that "the snow and good fires, for which
there is unlimited fuel, keep the huts warm."
The railway winds through high hills and makes sharp curves and steep
ascents and descents. There are tracts of rolling country under rough
grass. Sometimes these areas have been cleared by forest fires
started by lightning. Wide spaces are a great change from the scenery
of closely farmed Japan. The thing that makes the hillsides different
from our wilder English and Scottish hillsides is that there are
neither sheep nor cattle on them.
When the culpable destruction of timber in Hokkaido is added to what
has been lost by forest fires, due to lightning or to accident--one
conflagration was more than 200 acres in extent--it is easy to realise
that the rivers are bringing far more water and detritus from the
hills than they ought to do and are preparing flood problems with
which it will cost millions to cope when the country gets more closely
settled. It is deplorable that, apart from needless burning on the
hillsides, the farmers have not been dissuaded from completely
clearing their arable land of trees. On many holdings there is not
even a clump left to shelter the farmhouse and buildings. In not a few
districts the colonists have created treeless plains. In place after
place the once beautiful countryside is now ugly and depressing.
FOOTNOTES:
[232] The word used by people in Hokkaido for the main island, Hondo
or Honshu (_Hon_, main; _do_ or _shu_, land), is _Naichi_ (interior).
[233] From Aomori on the mainland to Hakodate in Hokkaido is a
50-miles sea trip. Then comes a long night journey to Sapporo, during
which one passes between two active volcanoes. The sea trip is 50
miles because a large part of the route taken by the steamer is
through Aomori Bay. The nearest part of Hokkaido to the mainland is a
little less than the distance between Dover and Calais.
[234] Foreigners sometimes confound Yezo (Hokkaido) with Yedo, the old
name for Tokyo.
[235] A sixth of Hokkaido still belongs to the Imperial Household. In
1918 it decided to sell forest and other land (parts of Japan not
stated) to the value of 100 million yen. In 1917 the Imperial estates
were estimated at 18-3/4 million chō of forest and 22-1/4 million chō
of "plains," that is tracts which are not timbered nor cultivated nor
built on.
[236] In 1919 it was 2,137,700.
[237] Considerations of space compel the holding over of a chapter on
the Ainu for another volume.
[238] Of the 96 foreign instructors in institutions "under the direct
control" of the Tokyo Department of Education in 1917-18, there were
27 British, 22 German, 19 American and 12 French.
[239] Hokkaido is one of five Imperial universities. There are in
addition several well-known private universities.
[240] Grouse are also to be found in Hokkaido, but no pheasants and no
monkeys. The deep Tsugaru Strait marks an ancient geological division
between Hokkaido and the mainland.
[241] It is sometimes eaten, ground to a rough meal, with rice. The
argument is that maize is two thirds the price of rice and more easily
digested.
[242] See Appendix XXXVII.
[243] The latest figures for Hokkaido show only a tenth.
[244] For farmers' incomes, see Appendix XIII.
[245] For sizes of farms, see Appendix LXIV.
[246] For a tenant's contract, see Appendix LXV.