The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

How the race moves on is shown in the famous tale of a saintly Zen priest which I first heard in that little hill inn but was afterwards to see in dramatic form on the stage of a Tokyo theatre. An unmarried girl in the village in which the priest's temple was situated was about to have a child. She would not confess to her angry father the name of her lover. At last she attributed her condition to the greatly honoured priest. Her father was astonished but he was also glad that his daughter was in the favour of so eminent a man. So he went to the priest and said that he brought him good tidings: the girl whom he had deigned to notice was about to have a child. The father went on to express at length his sense of obligation to the priest for the honour done to his family. All the priest said in reply was, So desuka? (Is that so?) Soon after the birth of the child the girl besought her father to marry her to a certain young farmer. The father, proud of the association with the priest, refused. Finally the girl told her parent that it was not the priest but the young farmer who was the father of her child. The parent was aghast and chagrined as he recalled the terms in which he had addressed the saintly man. He betook himself at once to the temple and expressed in many words his feelings of shame and deep contrition. The priest heard him out, but all he said was, So desuka?

Yamagata signifies "shape of a mountain" and Akita means "autumn rice field." Although Akita prefecture is mountainous there is a greater proportion of level land in it than in Yamagata. I find "Rice, rice, rice" written in my notebook. An agricultural expert gave me to understand that fifteen per cent. of the farmers were probably living on rents or on the dividends of silk factories, that 55 or 60 per cent. were of the middle grade with an annual income of 300 yen, that 25 or 30 per cent. had about 150 yen—the lowest sum on which a family could be supported—and that there were 3 or 4 per cent. of farm labourers who earned less than 150 yen. There had been much paddy adjustment and the prefecture was spending 300,000 yen a year for the encouragement of adjustment and the opening of new paddies. In the case of newly opened fields, tenants had contracts, but ordinary tenancies were by word of mouth generation after generation. A great deal of agricultural instruction was given by the prefecture, the counties and the villages, and in 30 years the rice crop had been doubled although the area had remained about the same. In order to secure help in the work of rural amelioration a gathering of Buddhist priests and another of Shinto priests had been lectured to at the prefectural office. Nearly 300,000 yen had been spent in twelve months on afforestation. The following year a special effort was to be made to spend 500,000 yen. A society raised young trees and sold them at cheap rates to farmers. Every young men's association in the prefecture had land and had planted trees. It was in Akita that I first saw peat in Japan. There are said to be 7,000 acres of it in the country.

The prefecture of Aomori forms the northern tip of the mainland. Apart from its enormous forest area and the railroad stacks of sawn lumber, what caught my eye were the apple orchards and the number of farmers on horseback or seated in wagons. Who that has been in Japan has not a memory of narrow winding roads along which men and women and young people are pulling and pushing carts? Here many farming folk rode. I was told that Akita produced apples and potatoes to the value of a million yen each and that there were ten co-operative apple societies. Much of the fruit went to Russia.

Having passed through the city of Aomori we started to come down the east coast. An agricultural authority said that the net profit of a dry farm, that is a farm without any paddy, was almost negligible. Because of low prices, cattle keeping had decreased to half what it used to be. (The only cattle I saw from the train were on the road with harness on their backs.) Only 18 yen could be got for a two-year-old; the Aomori cattle were indeed the cheapest in Japan. The expert added, "There are no buyers; only robbers."

But the dealers were not the only robbers. Boats came from Hokkaido and stole cattle from the prefecture to the number of a hundred a year. Sometimes horses were taken too, but horse thefts were rare "because you cannot kill a horse and sell it for meat." The average price of a two-year-old not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was a little less in the next prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.) Half of the stallions belonging to the "Bureau of Horse Politics" of the Ministry of Agriculture were bought in Aomori.

The farmers by the lake that we passed on our way south were described as "very poor," for their soil was barren and their climate bad. Their crops were only a third of what could be raised in another part of the prefecture. The agriculture of all the prefectures through which I now journeyed south to Tokyo suffer from the cold temperature of the sea. The east-coast temperature drops in winter to 7 degrees below freezing.[ ^[167]] "Living is more and more difficult," said someone to me. "The number of tenants increases because farmers get into debt and have to sell their land. Millet and buckwheat are much eaten. Although the temperature is 5 per cent. colder in Hokkaido, the people do worse here because our soil is barren and there is no profitable winter occupation like lumbering. Only 10 per cent. of the rural population save anything. In bad times 65 per cent. of the families get into debt."

At Morioka in Iwate prefecture I visited the excellent higher agricultural college, where there were 300 students. The competition for places, as at every educational institution in Japan, was keen. The number who sat at the last entrance examinations—the average age was twenty—was 317, of whom only 80 got in. There were 15 professors and 10 assistants. The charge to students was 300 yen for a year of ten months. The annual cost of the college to the Government was 70,000 yen. Of the foreign volumes among the 20,000 books in the library 50 per cent. were German, 30 per cent. English and 20 per cent. American.

An apiary of a single skep in a roped-off enclosure was an illustration of unfamiliarity with bees. It seemed strange to find that in this up-to-date and efficient institution the biggest implement for cutting grass which was in use, a sickle of course, had a blade no longer than 8 inches. Hung up at the back of a shed I noticed a rusty scythe. When I tried to show what it could do it was suggested that the implement was "too heavy, too difficult and too dangerous."

Iwate is the poorest of the northern prefectures, for bad weather so often comes when the rice is in flower. As many as 40 per cent. of the people were just making ends meet. Another 40 per cent. were always dogged by poverty. Millet was the food of 10 per cent. of the farmers; millet, salted vegetables and bean soup were the meagre diet of 5 per cent; the staple food of the remainder was barley and rice. There are few temples in Iwate compared with the rest of Japan. "Education is more backward than in other prefectures," someone said. "The farmers are not able. Too much saké is drunk." Farmers come in to Morioka to sell charcoal and wood and I saw some of them turning into the saké shops.

There was talk in praise of millet. Though low socially in the dietary of Japan, it has merits. It withstands cold and even salt spray. It ripens earlier than rice and so may sometimes be harvested before a spell of bad weather. It yields well, it will store for some time, its taste is "little inferior to rice and better than that of barley" and it contains more protein than rice. It is cooked after slight polishing and the straw provides fodder. "In the north-east, where millet is most eaten," I was told, "there are people who are 5 ft. 10 ins. to 6 ft. and there are many wrestlers." The seeds in the handsome heavy ears of millet are about the size of the letter O in the footnote type of this book.