The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

IN AND OUT OF THE TEA PREFECTURE

CHAPTER XXXII

PROGRESS OF SORTS

(SHIDZUOKA AND KANAGAWA)

I am not of those who look for perfection amongst the rural population.—Borrow

The torrents that foam down the slopes of Fuji are a cheap source of electricity, and, though the guide book may not stress the fact, it is possible that the first glimpse of the unutterable splendours of the sacred mountain may be gained in the neighbourhood of a cotton, paper or silk factory. The farmers welcomed the factories when they found that factory contributions to local rates eased the burden of the agricultural population. The farmers also realised that to the factories were due electric light, the telephone, better roads and more railway stations. The farmers are undoubtedly better off. They are so well off indeed that the district can afford an agricultural expert of its own, children may be seen wearing shoes instead of geta, and the agriculturists themselves occasionally sport coats cut after a supposedly Western fashion. But the people, it was insisted, have become a little "sly," and girls return from the factories less desirable members of the community.

Mention of these matters led an agricultural authority whom I met during my trip in Shidzuoka to deliver himself on the general question of the condition of the farmer in Japan. He expressed the opinion that 10 per cent. of the farmers were in a "wretched condition." Big holdings—if any holdings in Japan can be called big—were getting bigger; it was an urgent question how to secure the position of the owners of the small and the medium-sized classes of holding. The fact that many rural families were in debt, not for seed or manure but for food spoke for itself. The amounts might seem trivial in Western eyes, but when the average income was only 350 yen a year a debt of 80 yen was a serious matter; and 80 yen was the average debt of farming families in the prefecture of Shidzuoka. No one could say that the farmers were lazy: they were working hard according to their lights. They were working too hard, perhaps, on the limited food they got. There could be no doubt that the physical condition of the countryman was being lowered.

Again, there was the fact of the rural exodus—the phrase sounded strangely in the middle of a Japanese sentence. As to the causes, the first unquestionably was that the farmer had not enough land on which to make a living. If the farmer could have 5 acres or thereabouts he would be well off. But the average area per farmer in the prefecture in which we were travelling was a little less than 2½ acres. High taxes were another cause of the farmer's present condition. Then a year's living would be mortgaged for the expenses of a marriage ceremony. At a funeral, too, the neighbours came to eat and drink. They took charge of the kitchen and even ordered in food. (After a Japanese feast the guests are given at their departure the food that is left over.) Further, some farmers wasted their substance on the ambitions of local politics. Again, conscripts who had gone off to the army hatless and wearing straw shoes came home hatted and sometimes booted. Military service deprived farmers of labour, and their boys while away asked their parents for money. Conscription pressed more heavily on the poor because the sons of well-to-do people continued their education to the middle school, and attendance at a middle school entitled a young man to reduction of military service to one year only.[^[198]]

The countryside was suffering from the way in which importance was increasingly attached to industry and commerce. Many M.P.s were of the agricultural class, but they were chiefly landlords, and they were often share holders and directors of industrial companies. There was very little real Parliamentary representation of the farming class and it had not yet found literary expression. There were signs, however, that some landlords were realising that industry and agriculture were not of equal importance. But the farmers were slow to move. The traditions of the Tokugawa epoch survived, making action difficult. Finally, there was the drawback to rural development which exists in the family system. But that, as Mr. Pickwick said, comprises by itself a difficult study of no inconsiderable magnitude, and we must return to it on another occasion.

In one of my excursions I went over a large agricultural school, the boast of which was that of all the youths who had passed through it, twenty only had deserted the land. I met the present scholars marching with military tread, mattocks on shoulders, to the school paddies.