As I returned to the inn from these Elizabethan scenes I noticed that I was preceded in the crowd by a spectacled policeman who carried a paper lantern. Although, as I have explained, the stage plays given in the street were continued all night, only one arrest was made. The prisoner was a drunkard who proved to be a medicine seller but described himself as a journalist. I went to see the clean wooden cell where topers are confined until they are sober. It had a very low door, so that culprits might be compelled to enter and leave humbly on their knees.
We had begun our festival day at six in the morning by attending a celebration at the Shinto shrine. "Although it is no longer necessary, perhaps, to attend the ceremony in a special kind of geta," said our landlady, "it would be as well if you observed the old rule not to attend without taking a bath in the early morning." [[119]]
At the ancient shrine the townspeople whose turn it was to attend the annual function had assembled in ceremonial costumes. One man wore his hair tied up in the fashion of the old prints. The plaintive strains of old instruments made the strange appeal of all folk music. A decorous procession was headed by the piebald pony of the shrine. Youths and maidens carried aloft tubs of rice, vegetables, fish and saké. These were received by the chief priest. He carefully placed a strip of cloth before his mouth and nose [[120]] and addressed the chief deity, all heads being bowed. Then the priest placed the offerings in the darkened interior of the shrine. There was a cheery naturalness in all the proceedings. A few small children in gay holiday dress ran freely among the worshippers and encountered indulgent smiles. When an end had been made of offering food and drink the priest within the shrine read a second message to the deity. Again all heads were bowed. His thin voice was heard in the morning quiet, interrupted only by a child's cry, the twittering of birds and the wind rustling the cryptomeria, dark against the blue of the hills.
After the ceremony the food and drink which had been brought by the people were consumed by the priests and the country folk in a large room of the chief priest's house. We were given ceremonial saké to which rice had been added and as mementoes little cakes and dried fish. Not so long ago the presence of a foreigner would have been unwelcome at such a ceremony as we had witnessed: the fear of "contagion of foreigners" extended even to people from another prefecture. To-day the amiable priest placed in our hands for a few moments a small Buddha supposed to be six centuries old.
Before the festival the priest had observed certain taboos for eight days. He had avoided meeting persons in mourning and his food had been cooked at a specially prepared fire. He had been careful not to touch other persons, particularly women; he had bathed several times daily in cold water and he had said many prayers. The heads of the household in the community whose turn it was to attend at the shrine were also supposed to have observed some of the same taboos. Only those persons might make offerings at the shrine whose fathers and mothers were living.[[121]] Formerly portions of the offerings of rice and saké at the shrine were solemnly given to a young girl.
In this district, when we discussed the influences which made for moral or non-material improvement, everyone put the school first. Then came home training. In this part of the world the Buddhist priest was too often indifferent; the Shinto priest worked at his farm. One person well qualified to express an opinion said that a "wise and benevolent" chief constable could exercise a good moral influence. Others believed in public opinion. A policeman said, "The first thing is for people to have food and clothes; without such primary satisfaction it is very difficult to expect them to be moral." In considering the influence of the police and the schoolmaster it is not without interest to remember that a chief of police and the head of a school receive about the same salary. Assistant teachers and plain constables are also on an equality. I found the salary of the administrative head of one county, the gunchō, to be only 2,000 yen a year.
I was told that in the prefecture we were passing through there were no fewer than 360 co-operative societies. The credit branches had a capital of two million yen; the purchase and sale branches showed a turnover of three million yen. In time of famine, due to too low a temperature for the rice or to floods which drown the crop, co-operation had proved its value. The prefectures north of Tokyo facing the Pacific are the chief victims of famine, for near Sendai the warm current from the south turns off towards America. I was told that the number of persons who actually die as the result of famine has been "exaggerated." The number in 1905 was "not more than a hundred." These unfortunates were infants "and infirm people who suffered from lack of suitable nourishment." Every year the development of railway and steam communications makes easier the task of relieving famine sufferers.[ [122]] In the old days people were often found dead who had money but were unable to get food for it. As Japan is a long island with varying climates there is never general scarcity.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [114] For statistics of railways, see [Appendix XXXV].
[ [115] The percentage of children "attending" school for the whole of Japan is officially reported in 1918 as: cities, 98.18 per cent.; villages, 99.23 per cent.; but this does not mean daily attendance.