Rare days in Japan

by George Trumbull Ladd

Soon after nine o’clock Mr. Takarayama, the head-master, came to conduct us to the school. Our way there was lined with villagers, some of them with chubby babies strapped upon their backs or held aloft in the arms, and all eager to see the wonderful sight. A yet more beautiful arch than any we had before seen had been constructed by the pupils at the entrance to the school-grounds. Inside the gateway, too, was a most elaborate system of decorations, arranged by displaying many flags of all nations which had been laboriously painted by the same youthful hands. Teachers and scholars made a thick-set avenue by which the building where the addresses were to be given must be approached. This and all the other buildings, now newly completed but already paid for, stand within grounds that are ample for the future expansion of the school. The site is lovely. It is a gently sloping ground, with the water in sight. The bay which washes its feet is called “Nagi,” or “The Peaceful”; and it is rightly named.

The morning exercises, including the address by the foreign Sensei, or Teacher, were to be devoted to the pupils and patrons of the school; while the afternoon meeting was more particularly intended for the several hundred teachers in the district, many of whom had come by jinrikisha or, more often, on foot, from twenty and even thirty miles away. But even the morning’s programme was sufficiently elaborate to impress the visitors from surrounding parts with the great importance of an occasion so unique. A study of the somewhat quaint translation of the Japanese original disclosed the following particulars, duly itemised and correctly numbered:

(1) Visiting the recitation rooms; (2) Salutation (all together); (3) introduction (the Principal); (4) singing a welcome song (the pupils); (5) address of welcome (a pupil); (6) sketch of the school (a pupil); (7) welcome (Mr. K. Hamaguchi); (8) Address (Professor Ladd); (9) Thanks (the Principal); (10) singing of a school song; (11) (dismission).

Under certain circumstances it is no small advantage not to be familiar with the language in which you are being addressed. This is especially true when one is either excessively praised or excessively blamed and denounced. In this way the foreign speaker at this morning gathering in Hiro-mura was spared the temptation which would have accompanied the knowledge that the youth who gave the address of welcome—No. 5 upon the programme—was comparing his fame to Fuji and his graciousness and charm to the cherry-blossoms on Mount Yoshino; but this is what the translation of the address subsequently revealed. Such things, however, were commoner and more congenial to the poetic license of the Old Japan. Now, in spite of certain attempts at modernising, this part of Kishu remains much the same as of old; and so, both the youthful reader of the words and the adult hearers of them were quite properly solemn and unmoved by the sight and fragrance of such flowers of flattery.

Nature, however, was preparing to give the audience another sort of reminder of the days and deeds of Hamaguchi Gōryo. For the foreign guest had scarcely heard his last sentences interpreted by the head-master, when a loud explosion, followed by rumbling noises like those which would be made by scores of huge ten-pin balls rolling over a wooden alley, startled us all. It was within a few seconds of noon; and the watches of those who had them came out promptly in order that their owners might note the exact time. The lady of the foreign guests indeed interpreted it all to mean that the noon-gun had just been fired. She was alone in this impression; every one else knew that there was no noon-gun to be fired, within many miles; but that some stratum of rock under the neighbouring sea could no longer bear the strain, and so had parted in this sudden and demonstrative way. In brief, it was an earthquake—just such an one as is peculiar to this region, and such as caused the incoming wave which overwhelmed Hiro-mura in 1855. This, however, was only a small quake; although the building shook under the first blow upon its foundations. Nor was there any perceptible disturbance of “Peaceful Bay” to follow. And if there had been, it would not easily have surmounted the high and broad earth-works, with their avenue of stately trees, which were a half-century ago made the guardians of the future safety of the village.

After tiffin it was necessary almost immediately to return to the school for the address to the teachers of Hiro-mura, Yuasa, and the country districts far around. Nearly five hundred of these teachers were present at the afternoon meeting. The subject of the address was “The Ideals of the Teacher.” Here, as quite uniformly in the country at large, the speaker’s heart went out to the audience with warm feelings of respect, sympathy, and even pity.

I have been in more or less familiar intercourse for nearly twenty years with thousands of this class in Japan. In spite of the sincere and largely intelligent interest which both Government and people take in matters of education, the public-school teachers of the country are heavily overworked and lamentably underpaid. But the ideal of His Majesty’s celebrated Imperial Rescript is steadily held up before them—namely, that there shall be no household in the land, and no member of any household, to whom the benefits of education shall not have been supplied in liberal measure. To realise this ideal, Japan must have an entire generation or more of peace and of peaceful development. At present its Normal Schools, Higher Schools (those of the so-called Koto grade), and Universities, can scarcely provide for more than one-tenth of those who are desirous of fitting themselves for advanced positions and larger influence in the service of the nation. As a result, in many of the country places the scholastic training of the teachers cannot be of a high grade. But the eagerness with which these humble men (for, unlike-the case with us, the great majority of the common-school teachers are males,—many of them in middle life and beyond) avail themselves of every opportunity to see and hear anything which may help them in their work, is both encouraging and pathetic. Where in the United States, for example, could a voluntary class of more than eight hundred teachers be held together for twenty hours of lectures on education,—each session more than filling up the period between four and six o’clock of the afternoon, during the busiest part of term-time? Yet—as I have already said—this was readily done in Kyoto, the ancient capital, in the Winter of 1907.

“[THE BEAUTIFUL GROUNDS IN FULL SIGHT OF THE BAY]”

Nowhere else, therefore, in Hiro-mura, not even in the strong protecting dyke, is the spirit of Hamaguchi, with its affectionate interest in the welfare of his fellow villagers, more prominently and powerfully displayed than in the planting of the school on [the beautiful grounds in full sight of the bay] which is called Nagi, or “The Peaceful.” The dyke shall continue to push back the sea; and the school, under its protection, shall continue to push back the forces of ignorance and immorality.