The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

But when account is taken of all the drab materialism in the rural districts there remains a leaven of unworldliness. It takes various forms. Here is the story of a landlord at whose beautiful house I stayed. "When a tenant brings his rent rice to this landlord's storehouse," a fellow-guest told me, "it is never examined. The door of the storehouse is left unpadlocked, and the rent rice is brought by the tenant when he is minded to do so. No one takes note of his coming. If he meets his landlord on the road he may say, 'I brought you the rent,' and the landlord says, 'It is very kind of you.' It is an old custom not to supervise the tenants' bringing of the rent.

"Nowadays, however, some tenants are sly. They say, 'Our landlord never looks into our payments. Therefore we can bring him inferior rice or less than the quantity.' The landlord loses somewhat by this, but it is not in accordance with the honour of his family to change the method of collecting his rent. He is now chairman of the village co-operative society as well as of the young men's society, and he aims to improve his village fundamentally."

I also heard this narrative. The tenants in a certain place wished to cultivate rice land rather than to farm dry land. But when silkworm cultivation became prosperous they began to prefer dry land again in order that they might extend the area of mulberries. Therefore the landlords raised the rents of the dry farms. But there was one landlord who said, "If this dry farm land had been improved by me I should be justified in raising the rent. But I did not improve it. Therefore it would be base to take advantage of economic conditions to raise the rent."

So he did not raise the rent. Then he was excluded from social intercourse by the other landlords because their tenants grumbled. These landlords said to him, "You can afford not to raise your rents, but we cannot." Therefore the landlord who had not raised his rents called his tenants together. He said to them, "It is a hard thing for me to have no social intercourse with my equals. Therefore I will now raise the rents. But I cannot accept that raised portion, and I will take care of it for you, and in ten years I think it will amount to enough for you to start a cooperative society."

That was eight years ago and the formation of the society was now proceeding. In order that the reader may not forget on what a very different scale landlordism exists in Japan, I may mention that the area owned by this landlord was only 10 chō.

I was told the story of a landlord's solution of the rent reduction problem. "Tenants," the narrator said, "sometimes pretend that their crops are poorer than they are. Landlords may reduce the payment due, but sometimes with a certain resentment. One landowner was asked for a reduction for several years in succession on account of poor crops, and gave it. But he was trying to think of a plan to defeat the pretences of his tenants. At last he hit on one. While the tenants' rice was young he often visited the fields, and when any insects were to be seen he sent his labourers secretly to destroy them. In the same way, when crops seemed to be under-manured, he secretly cast artificial manure on them. At last his tenants found out what he was doing, and they said, 'As our landlord is so kind to us, we must not pretend that we need a reduction.' And they did not, and things are going on very well there. This is an illustration of the fact that our people are moved more by feeling than by logic."

This was capped by another story. "A landlord, a samurai, has for his tenants his former subjects, so something of the relation of master and servant still remains. He wished to raise his tenants to the position of peasant proprietors, so when land was for sale in the village he advised them to buy. They said they had no money, but he answered, 'Means may perhaps be found.' He secretly subscribed a sum to the Shinto shrine and then advised the formation of a co-operative society, which could borrow from the shrine for a tenant, so that the tenant need not go to the landlord to thank him and feel patronised by him. He need only to go to the shrine and give thanks there." "The landlord," added the speaker in his imperfect English, "has entirely hided himself from the business." A third of the tenants had become peasant proprietors.

In order to better the feeling between the farmers and landowners this landlord and several others had begun to ask their tenants to their gardens, where they were given tea and fruit. "In Japan," said one man to me, "we see feudal ideas broken down by the upper, not the lower class."

I visited the romantic coast of a peninsula a dozen miles from the railway. Some 10,000 pilgrims come in a year to the eighty-eight temples on the peninsula, and in some parts the people are such strict Buddhists that in one village the county authorities find great difficulty in overcoming an objection to destroying the insect life which preys on the rice crops. When rice land does not yield well, one landlord causes an investigation to be made and gives advice based upon it to the tenant, saying, "Do this, and if you lose I will compensate you. If you gain, the advantage will be yours." Money is also contributed by the landlord to enable tenants to make journeys in order to study farming methods.

A landlord here—I had the pleasure of being his guest—had started an agricultural association. It had developed the idea of a secondary school for practical instruction, "rich men to give their money and poor men their labour." In order to obtain a fund to enable tenants to get money with which to set up as peasant proprietors, this landlord had thought of the plan of setting aside each harvest 250 shō[27] of rice to each tenant's 3 shō.