Part 1 (2/2)
”It is necessary,” says a wise modern author, ”to meditate over one's impressions at leisure, to start afresh again and again with a clearer vision of the essential facts.” And a j.a.panese companion of my journeys writes, ”Never can you be sorry that this book is coming late. This time of delay has been the best time; we have had enough of first impressions.” The justification for this volume is that, in spite of the difficulties attending the composition of it, it may be held to offer a picture of some aspects of modern j.a.pan to be found nowhere else. Politics is not for these pages, nor, because there are so many charming books on aesthetic and scenic j.a.pan, do I write on Art or about Fuji, Kyoto, Nara, Miyanos.h.i.+ta and Nikko. I went to j.a.pan to see the countryman. The j.a.panese whom most of the world knows are townified, sometimes Americanised or Europeanised, and, as often as not, elaborately educated. They are frequently remarkable men. They stand for a great deal in modern j.a.pan. But their untownified fellow-countrymen, with the training of tradition and experience, of rural schoolmasters and village elders, and, as frequently, of the carefully s.h.i.+elded army, are more than half of the nation.
What is their health of mind and body? By what social and moral principles and prejudices are they swayed? To what extent are they adequate to the demand that is made and is likely to be made upon them? In what respects are they the masters of their lives or are mastered? In what ways are they still open to Western influences? And in what directions are they now inclined to trust to ”themselves alone”?
If the masters of the rural journal were sometimes mistaken in the observations they made from horseback, I cannot have escaped blundering in pa.s.sing through more dimly lit scenes than they visited.
”If there appears here and there any uncorrectness, I do not hold myself obliged to answer for what I could not perfectly govern.”[8]
But I have laboriously taken all the precautions I could and I have obeyed as far as possible a recent request that ”visitors to the Far East should confine themselves to what they have seen with their own eyes.” As Huxley wrote, ”all that I have proposed to myself is to say, This and this have I learned.”
I take pleasure in recalling that some years ago I was approached with a view to undertaking for the United States Government a socio-agricultural investigation in a foreign country. Reared as I have been in the whole faith of a citizen of the English-speaking world, I am glad to think that the present volume may be of some service to American readers. The United States is within ten days--Canada is within nine--of j.a.pan against Great Britain's month by the Atlantic-C.P.R.-Pacific route and eight weeks by Suez. There are more American visitors than British to j.a.pan. It was America that first opened j.a.pan to the West, and the debt of j.a.pan to American training and stimulus is immense. But British services to j.a.pan have also been substantial. Great Britain was the first to welcome her within the circle of the Great Powers, and the Anglo-j.a.panese Alliance did more for j.a.pan than some j.a.panese have been willing to admit. The problem of j.a.pan is the problem of the whole English-speaking world.
Rightly conceived, the interests of the British Empire and the United States in the Far East are one and indivisible.
The j.a.panese version of the t.i.tle of this book (kindly suggested by Mr. Seichi Naruse) is _Nihon no s.h.i.+nzui_, literally, ”The Marrow” or ”The Core of j.a.pan.” His Excellency the j.a.panese Amba.s.sador, the beauty of whose calligraphy is well known, was so very kind as to allow me to requisition his clever brush for the script for the engraver; but it must be understood that Baron Hayas.h.i.+ has seen nothing of the volume but the cover.
I greatly regret that the present conditions of book production make it impossible to reproduce more than one in thirty of my photographs.
It is in no spirit of ingrat.i.tude to my hosts and many other kind people in j.a.pan that I have taken the decision resolutely to strike out of the text all those names of places and persons which give such a forbidding air to a traveller's page. I have pleasure in acknowledging here the particular obligations I am under to Kunio Yanaghita, formerly Secretary of the j.a.panese House of Peers and a distinguished and disinterested student of rural conditions, Dr.
Nitobe, a.s.sistant secretary of the League of Nations, and his wife, Professor Nasu, Imperial University, Mr. Yamasaki, Mr. M. Yanagi, Mr.
Kanzo Uchimura, Mr. Bernard Leach, Mr. M. Tajima, Mr. Ono and two young officials in Hokkaido, who each in turn found time to join me on my journeys and showed me innumerable kindnesses. It was a piece of good fortune that while these pages were in preparation Mr. Yanaghita, Professor Nasu and other fellow-travellers were in Europe and available for consultation. Professor Nasu unweariedly furnished painstaking answers to many questions, and was kind enough to read all of the book in proof; but he has no responsibility, of course, for the views which I express. I am also specially indebted to Dr. Kozai, President of the Imperial University, to Mr. Ito and other officials of the Ministry of Agriculture, to Mr. Tsurimi, one of the most understanding of travelled j.a.panese, to Mr. Iwanaga, formerly of the Imperial Railway Board, to Dr. Sato, President of Hokkaido University, and his obliging colleagues, to the Imperial Agricultural Society, to Professors Yahagi and Yokoi, and to Viscount Kano, Dr. Kuwada, Mr. I.
Yos.h.i.+da, Mr. K. Ohta, Mr. H. Saito, Mr. S. Hos.h.i.+jima, and many provincial agricultural and sociological experts.
Portions of drafts for this book have appeared in the _Daily Telegraph, World's Work, Manchester Guardian, New East, Asia, j.a.pan Chronicle_ and _Christian World_. I am indebted to the _World's Work_ and _Asia_ for some additional ill.u.s.trations from blocks made from my photographs, and to the _New East_ for some sketches by Miss Elizabeth Keith.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] There is a small book by an able American soil specialist, the late Professor King, which describes through rose-tinted gla.s.ses the farming of j.a.pan, and of China and Korea as well, on the basis of a flying trip to countries the population of which is thrice that of Great Britain and the United States together. The author of another book, published last year, delivers himself of this astonis.h.i.+ng opinion: ”The j.a.panese is no better fitted to direct his own agriculture than I am to steer a rudderless s.h.i.+p across the Atlantic.”
[2] _Vide_ Sir Daniel Hall's _Pilgrimage of English Farming_ and articles of mine in the _Nineteenth Century_ and _Times_, and my _Land Problem_.
[3] The j.a.panese have only lately, however, made some acknowledgment of their debt to Hearn, and in an eight-page bibliography of the best books about j.a.pan in the _j.a.pan Year Book_ Murdoch's as yet unrivalled _History_ is not even mentioned.
[4] _Ohyakusho_ must not be confused with _Oo-hyakusho_ or _Oo-byakusho_, which means a large farmer. _O_ is a polite prefix; _Oo_ or _O_ means large.
[5] Horizontal wall writings.
[6] About 35,000 copies of my two bilingual books were circulated.
[7] With the backing of a London Committee composed of Lord Burnham, Sir G.W. Prothero, Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey and Mr. C.V. Sale.
[8] Tenison, 1684.
CURRENCY, WEIGHTS AND MEASURES AND OFFICIAL TERMS
The prices given in the text (but not in the footnotes and Appendix) were recorded before the War inflation began. The War was followed by a severe financial crisis. Professor Nasu wrote to me during the summer of 1921:
”You are very wise to leave the figures as they stood. It is useless to try to correct them, because they are still changing. The price of rice, which did not exceed 15 yen per koku when you were making your research work, exceeded 50 yen in 1919, and is now struggling to maintain the price of 25 yen. Taking at 100 the figures for the years 1915 or 1916--fortunately there is not much difference between these two years--the prices of six leading commodities reached in 1919 an average of about 250. After 1919 the prices of some commodities went still higher, but mostly they did not change very much; on the other hand, recently the prices of many commodities--among them rice and raw silk especially--have been coming down and this downward movement is gradually extending to all other commodities. From these considerations I deduce that the index number of general commodities may be safely taken as 200 when your book appears. _The reader of your book has simply to double the figures given by you--that is the figures of_ 1915 _and_ 1916--_in order to get a rough estimate of present prices._”
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