The foundations of Japan

by J. W. Robertson Scott

Often the burial-grounds, the stones of which are seldom more than about 2 ft. high by 6 ins. wide, are on narrow strips of roadside waste. (The coffin is commonly square, and the body is placed in it in the kneeling position so often assumed in life.) Here, as elsewhere, there seemed to be rice fields in every spot where rice fields could possibly be made.

On approaching a village the traveller is flattered by receiving the bows of small girls and boys who range themselves in threes and fours to perform their act of courtesy. I was told that the children are taught at school to bow to foreigners. I remember that in the remoter villages of Holland the stranger also received the bows of young people.

On the house of the headman of one village were displayed charms for protection from fire, theft and epidemic. We spoke of weather signs, and he quoted a proverb, "Never rely on the glory of the morning or on the smile of your mother-in-law."

We had before us a week's travel by kuruma. Otherwise we should have liked to have brought away specimens of the wooden utensils of some of the villages. The travelling woodworker whom we often encountered—he has to travel about in order to reach new sources of wood supply—has been despised because of his unsettled habits, but I was told that there was a special deity to look after him. In the town we had left there was delightful woodwork, but most of the draper's stuff was pitiful trash made after what was supposed to be foreign fashions. I may also mention the large collection of blood-and-thunder stories upon Western models which were piled up in the stationers' shops.

As we walked up into the hills—the kuruma men were sent by an easier route—we passed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large masses of blue single hydrangea and white and pink spirea. We came on the ruined huts of those who had burnt a bit of hillside and taken from it a few crops of buckwheat. The charred trunks of trees stood up among the green undergrowth that had invaded the patches. There was a great deal of plantain and a kurumaya mentioned that sometimes when children found a dead frog they buried it in leaves of that plant. Japanese children are also in the habit of angling for frogs with a piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are jerked ashore.

We took our lunch on a hill top. It had been a stiff climb and we marvelled at the expense to which a poor county must be put for the maintenance of roads which so often hang on cliff sides or span torrents. The great piles of wood accumulated at the summit turned the talk to "silent trade." In "silent trade" people on one side of a hill traded with people on the other side without meeting. The products were taken to the hill top and left there, usually in a rough shed built to protect the goods from rain. The exchange might be on the principle of barter or of cash payment. But the amount of goods given in exchange or the cash payment made was left to honour. "Silent trade" still continues in certain parts of Japan. Sometimes the price expected for goods is written up in the shed. "Silent trade" originated because of fears of infectious disease; it survives because it is more convenient for one who has goods to sell or to buy to travel up and down one side of a mountain than up and down two sides.

As we proceeded on our way we were once more struck by the extraordinary wealth of wood. Here is a country where every household is burning wood and charcoal daily, a country where not only the houses but most of the things in common use are made of wood; and there seems to be no end to the trees that remain. It is little wonder that in many parts there has been and is improvident use of wood. Happily every year the regulation of timber areas and wise planting make progress. But for many square miles of hillside I saw there is no fitting word but jungle.

At the small ramshackle hot-spring inns of the remote hills the guests are mostly country folk. Many of them carefully bring their own rice and miso, and are put up at a cost of about 10 sen a day. In the passage ways one finds rough boxes about 4 ft. square full of wood ash in the centre of which charcoal may be burned and kettles boiled.

We were in a region where there is snow from the middle of November to the middle of April. For two-thirds of December and January the snow is never less than 2 ft. deep. The attendance of the children at one school during the winter was 95 per cent. for boys and 90 per cent. for girls. (See note, p. 112.)

My kurumaya pointed to a mountain top where, he said, there were nearly three acres of beautiful flowers. The rice fields in the hills were suffering from lack of water and a deputation of villagers had gone ten miles into the mountains to pray for rain. It is wonderful at what altitudes rice fields are contrived. I noted some at 2,500 ft. In looking down from a place where the cliff road hung out over the river that flowed a hundred feet below I noticed a stone image lying on its back in the water. It may have come there by accident, but the ducking of such a figure in order to procure rain is not unknown.