Part 15 (1/2)

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 fas.h.i.+ons. 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 pa.s.sed plenty of sweet chestnuts and saw large ma.s.ses 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.

j.a.panese children are also in the habit of angling for frogs with a piece of plantain. The frogs seize the plantain and are jerked ash.o.r.e.

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 acc.u.mulated 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 j.a.pan. 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 pa.s.sage 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 alt.i.tudes 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.

At an inn I asked one of the greybeards who courteously visited us if there would be much compet.i.tion for his seat when he retired from the village a.s.sembly. He thought that there would be several candidates.

In the town from which we had set out on our journey through the highlands a doctor had spent 500 yen in trying to get on the a.s.sembly.

The tea at this resting place was poor and someone quoted the proverb, ”Even the devil was once eighteen and bad tea has its tolerable first cup.” On going to the village office I found that for a population of 2,000 there were, in addition to the village shrine, sixteen other shrines and three Buddhist temples. Against fire there were four fire pumps and 155 ”fire defenders.” A dozen of the young men of the village were serving in the army, four were home on furlough, six were invalided and forty were of the reserve. As many as thirty-seven had medals. The doctors were two in number and the midwives three. There was a sanitary committee of twenty-three members. The revenue of the village was 5,740 yen. It had a fund of 740 yen ”against time of famine.” The taxes paid were 2,330 yen for State tax, 2,460 yen for prefectural tax and 4,350 yen for village tax. The village possessed two co-operative societies, a young men's a.s.sociation, a Buddhist young men's a.s.sociation, a Buddhist young women's a.s.sociation, a society for the development of knowledge, a society of the graduates of the primary school, two thrift organisations, a society for ”promoting knowledge and virtue,” and an a.s.sociation the members of which ”aimed at becoming distinguished.” There were in the village ninety subscribers to the Red Cross and two dozen members of the national Patriotic Women's a.s.sociation.

In the county through which we were moving there was gold, silver and copper mining.[124] Out of its population of 36,000 only 632 were ent.i.tled to vote for an M.P.

We rested at a school where the motto was, ”Even in this good reign I pray because I wish to make our country more glorious.” There were portraits of four deceased local celebrities and of Peter the Great, Franklin, Lincoln, Commander Perry and Bismarck. Ill.u.s.trated wall charts showed how to sit on a school seat, how to identify poisonous plants and how to conform to the requirements of etiquette. The following admonitions were also displayed--a copy of them is given to each child, who is expected to read the twelve counsels every morning before coming to school:

1.--Do your own work and don't rely on others to do it.

2.--Be ardent when you learn or play.

3.--Endeavour to do away with your bad habits and cultivate good ones.

4.--Never tell a lie and be careful when you speak.

5.--Do what you think right in your heart and at the same time have good manners.

6.--Overcome difficulties and never hold back from hard work.

7.--Do not make appointments which you are uncertain to keep.

8.--Do not carelessly lend or borrow.

9.--Do not pa.s.s by another's difficulties and do not give another much trouble.

10.--Be careful about things belonging to the public as well as about things belonging to yourself.

11.--Keep the outside and inside of the school clean and also take care of waste paper.

12.--Never play with a grumbling spirit.