The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

Would that my daughter
Were married to a middle farmer.
With two chō of farm
And a tan in the wood.
No borrowing; no lending;
Both ends meeting.
Visiting the temple by turns—
Someone must stay at home.
Going to Heaven sooner or later.
What a happy life!
What a happy life!

Tenants were rather well off because their standard of living was lower than that of owners. Economic conditions were improving in Yamagata, but in the adjoining prefecture of Miyagi on the eastern coast of Japan "whole villages" had gone to Hokkaido. Some poor farmers were spending only 5 sen a day on food, the rest of what they ate coming entirely from their own holdings. Some farmers said, "If you calculate our income, we are certainly unable to make a living, but in some way or other we are able," which is what some small holders in many countries would say.

I was told that a labourer's 5 tan could be cultivated by working half days. Generally more was earned by labouring than could be gained from a small patch of land. But for half the year labourer's work was not obtainable. My informant found small tenant labourers "well off" if both husband and wife had wages: "they are able to buy a bottle of saké in the evening." Their position was better than that of a small peasant proprietor.

One in a thousand of the families in a specified county slept in straw. I heard of the payment of 20 to 25 per cent. to pawnbroker lenders.

But there is another way of borrowing. The plan of the kō may be adopted. A kō—it is odd that it should so closely resemble our abbreviation "Co."—is simple and effective. If a man is badly off or wants to undertake something beyond his financial resources, and his friends decide to help him, they may proceed by forming a kō. A kō is composed of a number of people who agree to subscribe a certain sum monthly and to divide the proceeds monthly by ballot, beginning by giving the first month's receipts to the person to succour whom the kō was formed. Suppose that the subscription be fixed at a yen a month and that there are fifty subscribers. Then the beneficiary—who pays in his yen with the rest—gets 50 yen on the occasion of the first ingathering. Every month afterwards a member who is lucky in the ballot gets 50 yen. The monthly paying in and paying out continue for fifty months and all the subscribers duly get their money back, with the advantage of having had a little excitement and having done a neighbourly action.

But the kō, or tanomoshi, as I ought to call it, is not always the innocent organisation I have described. There is a tanomoshi system under which, after member A, the beneficiary, has received the first month's subscriptions, the other members are open to receive bids for their shares. That is to say that, when the time comes round for the second paying out of 50 yen, member F, who happens to have become as much in need of ready money as A was, offers, if the month's moneys be handed over to him, to distribute among the members sums up to 20 yen. July and December, when most people need ready money, are months in which a hard-up member of a tanomoshi may sometimes offer to distribute as much as 50 per cent. of what he receives. The result of such bidding for shares is that well-to-do members of a tanomoshi, who are the last to draw their 50 yen, receive in addition to it all the extra payments made by impoverished members who took their shares earlier. Benevolence in a tanomoshi is not seldom a mask for avarice that the law against usury cannot touch. In truth, the only virtuous part of a tanomoshi may be the first sharing out to the person in whose interest it was supposed to be started. It should be added, however, that there is a sort of tanomoshi which has no particular beneficiary and is merely a kind of co-operative credit society. In one place I heard of a tanomoshi that maintained a large fund for the relief of orphans and the sick.

In many villages there were private or co-operative godowns for the storage of rice against fire, rats and damp. Though the farmer who sends rice to such a store receives a receipt, it is not legally a marketable document. Hence an improvement on this simple storage plan. I visited the premises of a company that could store more than 500,000 bushels of rice, and I found purification by carbon bisulphide going on. The receipts given by this company—"certificated" for large quantities and "tickets" for small—certify not only the quantity but the quality of the rice, and are readily cashed. The storehouse owners work under a licence, and they have the advantage that the buyer of the receipts of non-licensed stores is not protected by the courts.

In the office of the company were samples of eleven market qualities of rice, and before them, by way of showing respect to the great food staple, was set the gohei of cut white paper seen in Shinto shrines. Outside the office, girl porters carried the bales of rice to and fro. Close to the store was a river in which some of the dusty, perspiring porters were washing and cooling themselves with a simplicity to which Western civilisation is not yet equal. Opposite them men were fishing by casting in draw nets from the shore just as in biblical pictures the apostles are represented as doing.

The company has a rice market where farmers were putting their business in the dealers' hands. Each dealer has to deposit 5,000 yen with the State. The dealer who buys rice from a farmer has better polishing machinery than the farmer possesses. Therefore he can give the rice a more uniform appearance. By decreasing the weight of the rice during the polishing he gives it he is also able to lessen the sum payable for carriage and he has the value of the offal.

In order to visit farmers I rode some distance into the country. [^[159]] The village, which was of the Zen sect, was at work cleaning out and straightening the stream which, as is usual in many villages, ran through the middle of it. I was impressed during my visit not only by the readiness and intelligence with which my questions were answered but by the good humour with which a stranger's inquiries concerning personal matters was received. I had another thought, that I might not have found a group of Western farmers so well informed about their financial position as these simple, primitively clad men.