The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

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.