"Again, the family system gives too much power to relatives and leads to disagreeable interference. In the case of a marriage being proposed between family A and family B, the families related to A or B who will be brought into closer connection by the marriage may object. On the other hand, the family system has the advantage that the relatives who interfere may also be looked upon for help. Not a few people are all for maintaining the family system. But the spirit of individualism is entering into some families and here and there children are beginning to claim their rights and to act against relatives' wishes. One hears of farmers sending boys, even elder sons, to the towns, and for their equipment borrowing from the prefectural agricultural bank instead of spending on the development of their business."
At a Christmas-day luncheon I met four students of rural problems, two of whom were peers, one a governor of an important prefecture, and a fourth a high official in the agricultural world. One man, speaking of the family system, said "the success of agriculture depends on it." "In my opinion," someone remarked, "the foundation of the family system is common production and common consumption, so when these things go there must be a gradual disappearance of the family system." "No," came the rejoinder, "the only enemy of the family system is Western influence." "Yes," the fourth speaker added, "an enemy whose blows have told."
Someone suggested that the Japanese rural emigrant always hoped to return home, that is if he could return with dignity—does not the proverb speak of the desirability of returning home in good clothes? One of the company said that he had seen in Kyushu rows of white-washed slated houses which had been erected by returned emigrants. "But they were successful prostitutes. Often, however, these girls invest their money unwisely and have to go abroad again."
Everybody at table agreed that there was in the villages a slow if steady slackening of "the power of the landlord, of the authorities and of religion," and a development of a desire and a demand for better conditions of life. One who proclaimed himself a conservative urged that changes of form were too readily confounded with changes of spirit. The change in thought in Japan, he said, was slow, and some occurrences might be easily misjudged. I said that that very day I had heard from my house the drone of an aeroplane prevail over the sound of a temple bell, happening to speak of The Golden Bough, I asked my neighbour, who had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating view some things could ever be the same again. He answered frankly, "There are things in our life which are too near to criticise. Do you know that there are parts of Japan where folklore is still being made?"
I was invited one evening to dinner to meet a dozen men conspicuous in the agricultural world. Priests were apologised for because most of them were "very poor men and also poorly educated." Very few had been even to a middle school. Many priests read Chinese scriptures aloud but they did not understand what they were reading.
One man reported that an old farmer had said to him that paddy-field labour was harder than dry-land labour, but young men did not go off to Tokyo because of the severity of the work; they went away because of "the bondage of rural life."
How much has the economic stress affected old convictions? How general and how eager is the Japanese resolution to Westernise farther? None of the rural sociologists had given any thought apparently to a new factor in the rural problem: the way in which compulsory military service, in taking farmers' sons to the cities as soldiers and bluejackets, is giving them an acquaintance with neo-Malthusianism. In Tokyo and other large cities certain articles are prominently advertised on the hoardings. It is of some importance to consider what will be the effect of this knowledge in competition with the national appreciation of large families. [[227]] Is it likely that an intensely "practical" people, which has bolted so much of European and American "civilisation," will be wholly uninfluenced by the Western practice of limitation of offspring? What is to-day the actual strength of the social needs which have produced the large Japanese family?[[228]] Whatever middle-aged Japanese may think, the matter is not in their hands, but in the hands of the younger generation. Most Western economists would no doubt argue that if fewer babies arrived in Japan there would not be so many farmers' boys and university graduates bent on emigrating.
Without the voluntary limitation of families, however, the number of children born is likely to be diminished by the increased cost of living and by the postponement of marriage. I know Japanese men who were married before they were twenty; the younger generation of my friends is marrying nearer thirty. [[229]]
There is reason to believe that the population has not increased of recent years at the old rate.[ [230]] A responsible authority expressed the opinion to me that the necessities of the population are unlikely to overtake the means of production in the near future. [[231]]
The Japanese are intensely practical, but they have, as we have seen, another side. If that other side is not "spiritual," in the sense in which the word is largely used in the West, it is at least regardful of other considerations than the "practical." It is with thoughts of that vital side of the national character that I recall a story told me by Dr. Nitobe of the last days of the Forty-seven Ronin. It is well authenticated. When the Ronin had slain their dead lord's persecutor and had given themselves up to the authorities, they were found worthy of death. But the Shogun was in some anxiety as to what might justly be done. He sent privily to a famous abbot saying that it was at all times the duty of the Shogun to condemn to death men who had committed murder. Yet it was the privilege of a priest to ask for mercy, and in the matter of the lives of the Ronin the Shogun would not be unwilling to listen to a plea for mercy. The abbot answered that he sympathised deeply with the Ronin, but because he so sympathised with them he was unwilling to take any steps which might hinder the carrying out of the sentence. It was true, he said, that there were old men among the Ronin, but many, of them were young men—one was only fifteen—and it had to be borne in mind that if they escaped death at the hands of the law it was hardly likely that during the whole course of their after-lives they could hope to escape committing sin of some sort or another. At the moment they had reached a pinnacle of nobility which they could never pass and it was a thing to be desired for them that they should die now, when they would live to all posterity as heroes. The happiest fate for the Ronin was a righteous death, and as their admiring sympathiser the abbot expressed his unwillingness to do anything which might have the effect of saving them from so glorious an end.