The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

The early meetings of the expert farmers used to last not one day but two, for the men delighted in narrating their experiences to one another. Some of the audience used to weep as the older men told their tales. The farmers would sit up late round a farmer or a professor who was talking about some subject that interested them. The originator of these gatherings, Mr. Yamasaki, told me that he was "more than once moved to tears by the merits and pure hearts of the farmer speakers."

Of the regard and respect which the farmers had for this man I had many indications. Like not a few agricultural authorities, he is a samurai.[^[25] ] He is exceptionally tall for a Japanese, looks indeed rather like a Highland gillie, and when one evening I prevailed on him to put on armour, thrust two swords in his obi and take a long bow in his hand, he was an imposing figure. He carries the ideals of bushido into his rural work. He does not sleep more than five hours, and he is up every morning at five.

But I am getting away from the meeting. There was a priest who spoke, a man curiously like Tolstoy. (He had, no doubt, Ainu blood in him.) He wore the stiff buttoned-up jacket of the primary school teacher and spoke modestly. "Formerly the rice fields of my village suffered very much from bad irrigation," he said, "but when that was put right the soil became excellent. In the days when the soil was bad the people were good and no man suspected another of stealing his seal.[^[26]] But when the soil became good the disposition of the people was influenced in a bad way, and they brought their seals to the temple to be kept safe.

"At that time the organiser of this meeting came and made a speech in my village. On hearing his speech I thought it an easy task to make my village good. At once I began to do good things. I formed several men's and women's associations, all at once, as if I were Buddha. But the real condition of the people was not much improved. There came many troubles upon me, and our friend wrote a letter. I was very thankful, and I have been keeping that letter in the temple and bowing there morning and evening.

"I began to ask many distinguished persons to help me. They influenced the farmers. The sight of a good man is enough. Speech is unnecessary. The villagers were not educated enough to understand moralisings or thinking, but the kind face of a good man has efficacy. There was a man in the village who was demoralised, and when I told of him to a distinguished man who lives near our village he sympathised very much. That distinguished man is eighty-four years old, but he accompanied that demoralised man for three days, giving no instruction but simply living the same life, and the demoralised man was an entirely changed man and ever thankful.

"I am a sinful man. Sometimes it happens that after I have been working for the public benefit I am glad that I am offered thanks. I know it is not a good thing when people express gratitude to me, for I ought not to accept it. When I know I am doing a good thing and expecting thanks, I am not doing a good thing. My thanks must not come from men but from Buddha. I am trying to cast out my sinful feelings. It must not be supposed that I am leading these people. You skilful farmers kindly come to my village if you pass. You need not give any speech. Your good faces will do."

But the two speeches I have reported are hardly a fair sample of the discourses which were delivered. The addresses of the earnest Tokyo officials and the Governor were directed towards urging on the farmers increased production and increased labour, and the duty was pressed upon them, as I understood, in the name of the highest patriotism and of devotion to their ancestors. This talk was excellent in its way, but when I got up I hazarded a few words on different lines. If I venture to summarise my somewhat elementary address it is because it furnishes a key to some of the enquiries I was to make during my journeys. I was told the next day that the local daily had declared that my "tongue was tipped with fire," which was a compliment to my kind and clever interpreter, who, when he let himself go, seemed to be able to make two or three sentences out of every one of mine:

I said that my Japanese friends kept asking me my impressions, and one thing I had to say to them was that I had got an impression in many quarters of spiritual dryness. I dared to think that some responsibility for a materialistic outlook must be shared by the admirable officials and experts who moved about among the farmers. They were always talking about crop yields and the amount of money made, and they unconsciously pressed home the idea that rural progress was a material thing.

But the rural problem was not only a problem of better crops and of greater production. Man did not live by food alone. Tolstoy wrote a book called What Men Live By, and there was nothing in it about food. Men lived not by the number of bales of rice they raised, but by the development of their minds and hearts. It might be asked if it was not the business of rural experts to teach agriculture. But a poet of my country had said that it took a soul to move a pig into a cleaner sty. It was necessary for a man who was to teach agriculture well to know something higher than agriculture. The teacher must be more advanced than his pupils. There must be a source from which the energy of the rural teacher must be again and again renewed. There must be a well from which he must be continually refreshed and stimulated. Some called that well by the name of religion, unity with God. Some called it faith in mankind, faith in the destiny of the world, that faith in man which is faith in God. But it must be a real belief, not a half-hearted, shivering faith.

Agriculture was not only the oldest and the most serviceable calling, it was the foundation of everything. But the fact must not be lost sight of that agriculture, important and vital though it was, was only a means to an end. The object in view was to have in the rural districts better men, women and children. The highest aim of rural progress was to develop the minds and hearts of the rural population, and in all discussion of the rural problems it was necessary not to lose in technology a clear view of the final object.