The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

I noticed schoolgirls wearing a wooden tablet. It was a good-conduct badge. If a girl was not wearing it on reaching home her parents knew that her teacher had retained it because of some fault; if she was not wearing it at school her teacher knew that her parents had kept it back for a similar reason. The girls when they come to school have often baby brothers or sisters tied on their backs. Otherwise the girls would have to stay at home in order to look after them. I asked a schoolmaster what happened when children were kept at home. He said that when a child had been absent a week he called twice on the parents in order to remonstrate. If there was no result he reported the matter to the village authorities, who administered two warnings. Failing the return of the truant a report was made by the village authorities to the county authorities. They summoned the father to appear before them. This meant loss of time and the cost of the journey. Should the parent choose to continue defiant he was fined 5 to 10 yen for disobedience to authority and up to 30 yen for not sending his child to school.

I found that a local philanthropic association had provided the speaker's school with a supply of large oil-paper-covered umbrellas so that children who had come unprovided could go home on a rainy day without a parent, elder brother or sister having to leave work to bring an umbrella to school.

In the playground of this school there was a low platform before which the children assembled every morning. The headmaster, standing on the platform, gravely saluted the children and the children as gravely responded. The scholars also bowed in the direction of Tokyo, in the centre of which is the Emperor's palace. An inscription hanging in the school was, "Exert yourself to kill harmful insects." In another school there was a portrait of a former teacher who had covered the walls of the school with water-colours of local scenery. I noticed in the playground of a third school a flower-covered cairn and an inscribed slab to the memory of a deceased master. Every school possesses equipment taken from the enemy during the Russo-Japanese war, usually a shell, a rifle and bayonet and an entrenching spade.

In this prefecture I heard of young men's associations' efforts to discourage "cheek binding," which is the wearing of the head towel in such a way as to disguise the face and so enable the cheek binder to do, if he be so minded, things he might not do if he were recognisable.

One day I made my headquarters in a town that had just been rebuilt after a fire. Within four hours the blaze aided by a strong wind had consumed 1,700 houses and caused the deaths of nine persons. The destruction of so many dwellings is wrought by bits of paper or thatch, or the light pieces of wood from the shoji, which are carried aflame by the wind, setting fire to several houses simultaneously.

Beside street gutters I came across little stone jizō, the cheerful-looking guardian deities of the children playing near; but they looked as incongruous in the position they occupied as did a small shrine which was standing in the shadow of a gasometer.

I heard of contracts under which girls served as nurse girls in private families. A poor farmer may enter into a contract when his girl is five for her to go into service at eight. He receives cash in anticipation of the fulfilment of the contract.

I was assured by a man competent to speak on the matter that a certain small town was notorious for receiving boys who had been stolen as small children from their homes in the hills. Up to 30 yen might be given for a boy. There might be a dozen of such unfortunates in the place. Happily many of the children obtained by this "slave system," as my informant called it, ran away as soon as they were old enough to realise how they had been treated.

I visited a well-known rural reformer in the village which he and his father had improved under the precepts of Ninomiya. The hillside had been covered with tea, orange trees and mulberry; the community had not only got out of debt but had come to own land beyond its boundaries; gambling, drunkenness and immorality, it was averred, had "disappeared"; there were larger and better crops; and "the habit of enjoying nature" had increased. The amusements of the village were wrestling, fencing, jūjitsu, and the festivals.

I heard here a story of how a bridge which was often injured by stores was as often mysteriously repaired. On a watch being kept it was found that the good work was done by a villager who had been scrupulous to keep secret his labours for the public welfare. Another tale was of a poor man who bought an elaborate shrine and brought it to his humble dwelling. On his neighbours suggesting that a finer house were a fitter resting-place for such a shrine, the man replied: "I do not think so. My shrine is the place of my parents and ancestors, and may be fine. But the place in which the shrine stands is my place; it need not be fine."