CHAPTER XXXI
"BON" SEASON SCENES
(NAGANO)
As moderns we have no direct affinity; as individuals we have a capacity for personal sympathy.—Matthew Arnold
I had the good fortune to be in the village during the Bon season. The idea is that the spirits which are visiting their old homes remain between the 11th and 14th of August. The 11th is called mukae bon and the 14th okuri bon. (Mukae means going to meet; okuri to see off.) On the 11th the villagers burned a piece of flax plant in front of their houses. That night the priest said a special prayer in the temple and used the cymbals in addition to the ordinary gong and drum. The prayer seemed peculiarly sad. Before the shrines in their houses the villagers placed offerings. One was a horse made out of a cucumber, the legs being bits of flax twig and the tail and mane the hair-like substance from maize cobs. There were also offerings of real and artificial flowers and of grapes. In one house I visited I saw geta, waraji, kimonos, pumpkins, caramels and pencils. Strings of buck-wheat macaroni were laid over twigs of flax set in a vase. The ihai (name-plates of the dead) seemed to be displayed more prominently than usual. (They are kept in a kind of small oratory called ihaido, and after a time several names are collected on a single plate.) Mochi (rice-flour dumpling) is eaten at this time. On the 12th and 14th the priest called at each house for two or three minutes.
I asked if the villagers really believed that their dead returned at the Bon season. The answer was, "Only the old men and young children believe that the dead actually come, but the young men and young women, when they see the burning of the flax-plant and the other things that are done, think of the dead; they remember them solemnly at this time." And I think it was so. The stranger to a Japanese house, in which there is not only a Shinto shelf but a Buddhist shrine—where the name plates of the dead for several generations are treasured—cannot but feel that, when all allowances are made for the dulling influences of use and wont, the plan is a means of taking the minds of the household beyond the daily round. The fact that there is a certain familiarity with the things of the shrine and of the Shinto shelf, just as there is a certain freedom at the public shrines and in the temple, does not destroy the impression. When a man has taken me to his little graveyard I have been struck by the lack of that lugubriousness which Western people commonly associate with what is sacred. The Japanese conception of reverence is somewhat different from our own. As to sorrow, the idea is, as is well known, that it is the height of bad manners to trouble strangers with a display of what in many cases is largely a selfish grief. A manservant smiled when he told me of his only son's death. On my offering sympathy the tears ran down his face.
FARMER'S WIFE
When the Bon season ended on the fourteenth all the flowers and decorations of the domestic shrines were taken early in the morning to the bridge over the diminished river and flung down. The idea is perhaps that they are carried away to the sea. (As a matter of fact there was so little water that almost everything flung in from the bridge remained in sight for weeks until there was a storm.) When the flowers and decorations had been cast from the bridge the people went off to worship at the graves. Many coloured streamers of paper, written on by the priest, were flying there.
The Bon dances took place five nights running in the open space between the Shinto shrine and the old barn theatre. Nothing could have been duller. The line from Ruddigore came to mind, "This is one of our blameless dances." The first night the performers were evidently shy and the girls would hardly come forward. Things warmed up a little more each night and on the last night of all there was a certain animation; but even then the movement, the song and the whole scheme of the dance seemed to be lacking in vigour. What happened was that a number of lads gradually formed themselves into a ring, which got larger or smaller as the girls joined it or waited outside. The girls bunched together all the time. None of the dancers ever took hands. The so-called dancing consisted of a raising of both arms—the girls had fans in their hands—and a simple attitudinising. The lads all clapped their hands together in time, but in a half-hearted kind of way; the girls struck the palms of their left hands with their fans. The boys were in clean working dress. Some had towels wound round their heads, some wore caps and others hats. The girls were got up in all their best clothes with fine obi and white aprons. The music was dirge-like. It was not at all what Western people understand to be singing. The performers emitted notes in a kind of falsetto, and these five or six notes were repeated over and over and over again. The only word I can think of which approximately describes what I heard, but it seems harsh, is the Northern word, yowling. First the lads yowled and then the girls responded with a slightly more musical repetition of the same sounds. For all the notice the boys appeared to take of the girls they might not have been present. The lads and lasses were no doubt fully conscious, however, of each other's presence. The dancing took place on the nights of the full moon. But it was cloudy, and, owing to the big surrounding trees, the performance was often dimly lit.
To me the dancing was depressing, but that is not to say that the dancers found it so. Dancing began at eight o'clock and went on till midnight. "They would not be fit for their work next day if they danced later," a sober-minded adult explained. This was only one suggestion among many that the dance has been devitalised under the respectabilising influence of the policeman and village elders who had forgotten their youth. To the onlooker it did not seem to matter very much whether the dance, as it is now, continues or not. Occasionally one had an impression that it had once been a folk dance of vigour and significance. But the present-day performance might have been conceived and presented by a P.S.A. All this is true when the dance is contrasted with an English West-country dance or a dance in Scotland at Hallowe'en. But it must be remembered that the Bon dance during the first nights is in the nature of a lament for the dead. There is something haunting in the strange little refrain, though it is difficult to hum or whistle it. Perhaps the whole festival is too intimately racial to be fully understood by a stranger. By the end of the festival, on the night of merrymaking in honour of the village guardian spirit, things were livelier. Some of the lads had evidently had saké and even the girls had lost their demureness.
MOTHER AND CHILD
After the Buddhist Bon season was over it was the turn of Shinto, and the village children were paraded before the shrine. A number of Shinto priests in the neighbourhood took a leading part in making the customary offerings and the local priest read a longish address to the guardian spirit of the village. Respectful correctness rather than devoutness is the phrase which one would ordinarily be disposed to apply to the ceremonies at a Shinto shrine, but the local priest was reverential. The ceremonies of the day evidently meant a great deal to him. The children paid a well-drilled attention. They also sang the national anthem and a special song for the day under the leadership of the school teacher, who played on a portable harmonium which sounded as portable harmoniums usually sound. The whole proceedings wore a semi-official look.
Happily there was nothing semi-official about the wrestling to which we were invited later in the day. A special little platform had been put up for us. The ring was made on rice chaff and earth. The wrestlers squatted in two parties at opposite sides of the ring. They did not wear the straw girdles of the professionals. Each man had a wisp of cotton cloth tied round his waist and between his legs. One of the best things about the wrestling was the formal introduction of the competitors. A weazened little man with a tucked-up cotton kimono and bare legs, but with the address and dignity of a "Nō" player, proclaimed the names and styles—it seems that the wrestlers have a fancy to be known by the names of mountains and rivers—in a fashion which recalled the tournament. There was also another personage, with a Dan Leno-like face and an extraordinary gift of contorting his legs, who played the buffoon, and gyrated round the dignified M.C., who remained unmoved while the audience laughed. It was evidently the right thing for the prizes—they were awarded at the end of each bout—to be presented as comically as possible; and some of the Shakespearean humours which appealed so powerfully to the groundlings at the Globe were enacted as if neither space nor time intervened between us and the Elizabethans.
The bouts were not so fast as professional wrestlers are accustomed to, but they were none the less exciting. The result was invariably in some doubt and often entirely unexpected. The usual rule was that he who threw his man twice was the winner. In some events, immediately a wrestler had been thrown, a succession of other contestants rushed at the victor, one after the other, without allowing him time even to straighten his back. Some of the competitors were poorly developed but the lankiest and skinniest were often excellent wrestlers. At an interval in the wrestling the committee flung hard peaches to wrestlers and spectators. I wanted to make some little acknowledgment of the kindness of the young men's association in providing us with our little platform, and it was suggested that autographed fans at about a penny three-farthings apiece for about forty wrestlers would be acceptable. This gift was announced on a long streamer. The funny man of the ring also made a speech of welcome. I may add that the young men's association had fitted up on the way to the scene of the wrestling a number of special lanterns which bore efforts in English by a student home for the holidays.
I was told that the people of the village were "honest, independent and earnest," and I am disposed to think that this may be true of most of them. As to honesty, we had the satisfaction of living without any thought of dorobo (robbers). It is a great comfort to be able at night to leave open most of the shoji and not to have to pull out the amado (wooden shutters) from their case. The nature of our possessions was well known not only in the village but throughout the district, for there was seldom a day on which a knot of grown-ups or children did not come to peer into our rooms. The inspection was accompanied by many polite bows and friendly smiles. On a festival day the crowd occasionally reached about fifty.
There were formerly several teahouses in the village, but under the influence of the young men's association all houses of entertainment but two had been closed. These two had become "inns." In one of these the girl attendant was the proprietor's daughter; in the other there was a solitary waitress. One of the abolished teahouses had taken itself two miles away, where possibly it still had visitors. There seemed to be two public baths in the village, both belonging to private persons. The charge was 1 sen for adults and 5 rin for children. At one of the baths I noticed separate doors for men and women; in the bath itself the division between the sexes was about two feet high.
The smallest subdivision of the village is called kumi or company. Each of these has a kind of manager who is elected on a limited suffrage. The managers of the kumi, it was explained, are "like diplomatists if something is wanted against another village." The kumi also seems to have some corporate life. There is once a month a semi-social, semi-religious meeting at each member's house in turn. The persons who attend lay before the house shrine 3 or 5 sen each or a small quantity of rice for the feast. The master of the house provides the sauce or pickles. I heard also of a kind of kō called mujin, a word which has also the meaning of "inexhaustible." By such agencies as these money is collected for people who are poor or for men who want help in their business or who need to go on a journey.
We have seen that the village is by every token well off. What are its troubles? Undoubtedly the people work hard. I imagine, however, that there are very many districts where the people work much harder. The foreigner is too apt to confuse working hard with working continuously. Whether outdoors or indoors, whether at a handicraft or at business, an Oriental gives the impression of having no notion of getting his work done and being finished with it. The working day lasts all day and part of the night. Whether much more is done in the time than in the shorter Western day may be doubted. During the brief silk-worm season many of the women of the village in which I stayed are afoot for a long day and for part of the night, but the winter brings relief from the strain of all sorts of work. Owing to the snow it is practically impossible to do any work out of doors in January, February and March. The snow may stop work even in December. Here, then, is a natural holiday. Whether with their men indoors the women have much of a holiday is uncertain. But indoors should not be taken too exactly. There is some hunting in the winter. Deer come within two miles and hares are easily got.
Well-off though the village is, there is a strong desire to increase incomes. The people are working harder than they have done in the past because the cost of living has risen. An attempt is to be made to increase secondary employments. Corporately, the village is said to possess 10,000 yen in cash in addition to its land. It is said that this money is lent out to some of the more influential people. What the security is and how safe the monetary resources of a village loaned out in this way may be I do not know, but there is obviously some risk and I gathered that some anxiety existed.
The people of the village, like a large proportion of the population of the prefecture, are distinctly progressive. Nagano is full of what someone called "a new rural type" of men who read and delight in going to lectures. Lectures are a great institution in Nagano. For these lectures country people tramp into a county town in their waraji carrying their bento. To these rustics a lecture is a lecture. A friend of mine who is given to lecturing spoke on one occasion for seven hours. It is true that he divided the lecture between two days and allowed himself a half hour's rest in the middle of each three and a half hours' section. He started with an audience of 500. On the first day at the end of the second part of the lecture it was noticed that the audience had decreased by about 70. On the second day about 100 people in all wearied in well-doing. But it was the townsfolk, not the country people, who left.
A CRADLE
I found upon enquiry that in the village in which I had been living there had been one arrest only during the previous year. The charge was one of theft. Half a dozen other people had got into trouble but their arrests had been "postponed." Two of these six delinquents had "caused fire accidentally," two had been guilty of petty theft, and the remaining two had sold things of small value which did not belong to them. During the twelve months there had been no charges of immorality and no gambling. Perhaps, however, there may have been police admonitions. It seemed to have been a long time since there had been a case of what we should call illegitimacy or of a child being born in the first months of a young couple's marriage. Someone mentioned, however, that the girls who went to the silk factories were, as a consequence of their life there, "debased morally and physically."
A notable thing in the village was four fires, two the month before we arrived and two while we were there. They were suspected to have been the work of a person of weak intellect. (As in our own villages half a century ago, there is in every community at least one "natural.") On the night of the first fire we were awakened about 3 a.m. by shouting, by the clanging of the fire bell and by the booming of the great bell in the temple yard. The fire was about four houses away. It was a still night and the flames and sparks went straight up. As the possibility of the wind shifting and the fire spreading could not be entirely excluded we quickly got our more important possessions on the engawa—at least a young maidservant did so. The continual experience which the Japanese have of fires makes them self-possessed on these occasions, and this girl had futon, bags, etc., neatly tied in big furoshiki (wrapping cloths) in the shortest possible time. It was only when she was satisfied that our belongings were in readiness for easy removal that she went to look after her own. The matter-of-fact, fore-sighted, neat way in which she got to work was admirable. With great kindness one of the elders of the village came hurriedly to the temple, evidently thinking we should feel alarmed, and cried out, "Yoroshii, Yoroshii" ("All right").
FIRE ALARM AND OBSERVATION POST
As I stood before the blaze what struck me most was the orderliness and quiet of the crowd and the way in which whatever help was needed was at once forthcoming without fuss. The fire brigades were working in an orderly way and everything was so well managed that the scene seemed almost as if it were being rehearsed for a cinema. One difference between what I saw and what would be seen at home at a fire was that the scene was well lighted from the front, for the members of the fire brigades carried huge lanterns on high poles. From the mass of old wet reed in the roadway I judged that the first act of the firemen had been to use their long hooks to denude the roof of the burning house of its thatch, which in the lightest wind is so dangerous to surrounding dwellings. Nobody in the village is insured, but the neighbours seem to meet about a third of the loss caused by a fire. It is an illustration of local values that a larger subscription than 2 yen would not be accepted from me. In connection with this fire someone mentioned to me that incendiarism is specially prevalent in some prefectures, while in others the use of the knife is the usual means of wiping out scores. The phrase used by a person who threatens arson is, "I will make the red worm creep into your roof."
During the winter there is too much drinking—"generally by poor men"—but there is said to be less of this than formerly. Some people stop their newspaper in the summer and resume taking it during the greater leisure of the winter. It has been noted, among other small matters, that the local vocabulary has expanded during the past fifteen years. During our stay the young midwife, who was going to America to join her husband, was eager to give her service in the kitchen for the chance of improving her English. We also gave help in the evenings thrice a week to one of the school teachers who had managed to obtain a fair reading knowledge of English. The earnestness with which these two people studied was touching. While I was in the village the young men's association began the issue of a magazine. Lithographic ink was brought to me so that I might contribute in autograph as well as in translation. The association, which receives 10 yen a year from the village, cultivates several plots of paddy and dry land. The bigger schoolboys drilled with imitation rifles, imitation bayonets and imitation cartridges. I felt that I should know more about the villagers if I could learn, like Synge, their topics of conversation when no stranger was present. One day while strolling with a friend I asked him what was being said by two girls who were working among the mulberries and were hidden from us by a hedge (hedges only occur round mulberry plots). He told me that one was enhancing to her companion the tremendous dignity of the Crown Prince by exaggerating grotesquely the size of the house he lived in, which reminded me of the servant who told her friend that "Queen Victoria was so rich that she had a piano in her kitchen." Generally the conversational topics of the villagers seemed to be people and prices. Undoubtedly, I was told, the subjects which were most popular, "because they provoked hilarity," were family discords and sexual questions. One man with whom I spoke about the morality of the village said cautiously, "They say there are some moneylenders here."