Part 16 (1/2)
As we went on our way and spoke of the bad roads it was suggested that in the old days roads were purposely left uphill and downhill in order that the advance of enemies might be hindered. We came to a dilapidated tea-house kept by an ugly old woman who showed a touching fondness for a cat and a dog. From her shack we had a view of a volcano which had destroyed two villages a few years before. Our hostess, who made much of us, said that the catastrophe had been preceded by ”horrible da-da-da-bang” sounds and lightnings, and that it was accompanied by ”thunderbolts and heavy thick smoke.” The old woman had beheld ”soil boiling and cracking.”
Along our route we had more evidences of ”fire farming.” The procedure was to sow buckwheat the first year and rape and millet the second year. In the cryptomeria forests there was a variety which, when cut, sprouts from the ground and makes a new growth like an elm. One crop we saw was ginseng, protected by low structures covered by matting.
At length we heard the distant sound of a locomotive whistle. We were approaching the newly opened railway which was to take us the short run to the sea. Soon we were in a rather unkempt village which had hardly recovered from its surprise at finding that it had a railway station. We paid our _kurumaya_ the sum contracted for and something over for their faithful service and for their long return run, and having exchanged bows and cordial greetings, we left for a time the glorified perambulators which a foreign missionary is supposed to have introduced half a century ago. (The j.a.panese claim the honour of ”inventing” the jinrikisha.)
FOOTNOTES:
[123] See Appendix x.x.xVII.
[124] See Appendix x.x.xVIII.
[125] In Tokyo one may sleep night after night in summer with no covering but the thinnest loose cotton kimono and have an electric fan going within the mosquito curtain, and still feel the heat.
[126] The kimono has no b.u.t.ton, hook, tie, or fastening of any kind, and is kept in place by the waist string and _obi_.
[127] It is an ill.u.s.tration of the difficulty of using a foreign symbolism that it is unlikely that a single child in the school had ever seen a shepherd or a sheep.
[128] In 1918 the value of seaweed was returned at 13,600,000 yen.
[129] In fifteen years a _kiri_ tree may be about 20 ft. high and 3 ft. in circ.u.mference and be worth 30 yen. _Kiri_ trees to the value of 3 million yen were felled in 1918.
CHAPTER XIV
SHRINES AND POETRY
(NIIGATA AND TOYAMA)
Sir, I am talking of the ma.s.s of the people.--JOHNSON
The railway made its way through snow stockades and through many tunnels which pierced cryptomeria-clad hills. Eventually we descended to the wonderful Kambara plains, a sea of emerald rice. Fourteen million bushels of rice are produced on the flats of Niigata prefecture, which grows more rice than any other. The rice, grown under 800 different names, is officially graded into half a dozen qualities. The problem of the high country we had come from was how to keep its paddy fields from drying up; the problem of Niigata is chiefly to keep the water in its fields at a sufficiently low level.
Almost every available square yard of the prefecture is paddy.
At Gosen there were depressing-looking weaving sheds, but the Black Country created by the oil fields farther on was in even more striking contrast with the beautiful region we had left. The petroleum yield was 65 million gallons, and the smell of the oil went with us to the capital city.
Niigata has a dark reputation for exporting farmers' daughters to other parts of j.a.pan, but I have also heard that the percentage of attendance made by the children at the primary schools of the prefecture is higher than anywhere else. Like Amsterdam, Niigata is a city of bridges. There must be 200 of them. The big timber bridge across the estuary is nearly half a mile long. One finds in Niigata a Manchester-like spirit of business enterprise. Our hotel was excellent.
Because they speak with all sorts of people and hear a great deal of conversation the blind _amma_ are full of interesting gossip. A clever _amma_ who ran his knuckles up and down my back said that farm land a good way from Niigata was sold at from 200 yen to 300 yen and sometimes at 400 yen per quarter acre.[130] Prefectural officials who called on me explained that drainage operations on a large scale were being completed. The water of which the low land was relieved would be used to extend farming in the hills. An effort was also being made to develop stock-keeping in the uplands. It was proposed ”to supply every farmer with a scheme for increasing his live stock.” The optimistic authorities were particularly attracted by the notion of keeping sheep. The plan was to arrange for co-operation in hill pasturing and in wool and meat production. Mutton was as yet unknown, however, in Niigata. (The mutton eaten by foreigners in j.a.pan usually comes from Shanghai.)
I went into the country to a little place where the natural gas from the soil was used by the farmers for lighting and cooking. I heard talk in this village and in others of the influence of the local army reservists' society. ”Young men on returning from their army service are always influential. They are much respected by the youths and are talkative indeed in the village a.s.sembly.”
As our host was the village headman he kindly brought the a.s.sembly together to meet me. I asked the a.s.sembled fathers about two stones erected in the village. Somebody had kindled a fire of rice screenings near one of them and it had been scorched. On the other stone a kimono had been hung to dry. The explanation was that the stones were monuments not shrines, and that the people who had set them up had left the district. The stones were no doubt respected while the donors lived. It was not uncommon for a pilgrim to a shrine to erect a memorial on his return home.
In this village fifty s.h.i.+nto shrines of the fifth cla.s.s had been closed under the influence of the Home Office. They were shrines which had no offering from the village to support them. They had only a few wors.h.i.+ppers. All the remaining shrines were of the fifth cla.s.s but one, and it was of the fourth cla.s.s. In the county there was a second-cla.s.s shrine and in the whole prefecture there were two or three first-cla.s.s shrines. The villagers had agreed among themselves which of their own shrines should be made an end of. A shrine which was dispensed with was burnt. The stone steps approaching it were also removed. Burning was not sacrilege but purification. On the closing of a shrine there might be complaints on the part of some old man or woman, but the majority of people approved. One s.h.i.+nto shrine guardian lived at the fourth-cla.s.s shrine and conducted a ceremony at the sixteen fifth-cla.s.s shrines. Of the twenty Buddhist temples in the village (300 families cultivating an average of a _cho_ apiece), twelve were Hokke, five s.h.i.+ngon, two s.h.i.+nshu and one Zen. All the priests were married.[131]
I have used the phrase ”Buddhist temple” loosely and may do so again, for it conveys an idea which ”Buddhist church” does not. A temple (_do_) is properly an edifice in which a Buddha is enshrined. This building is not for services or burial ceremonies or anniversary offerings for departed souls. It may or may not have a guardian (_domori_). He is never a priest with a shaven head. A Buddhist church (_tera_) is a place where adherents go as anniversaries come round or for sermons. It possesses a priest. There is a considerable difference in the style of Buddhist edifices according to their denomination--Zen buildings are particularly plain--but all are more elaborate than s.h.i.+nto shrines.
A large s.h.i.+nto shrine is called _yas.h.i.+ro_ (house of G.o.d); a small one _hokora_. A _hokora_ is transportable. Originally it was and in some places it still is a perishable wooden shrine thatched with reed or gra.s.s straw which is renewed at the spring and autumn festivals. It may be less than two feet high and may be made of stone or wood. But it cannot be regarded as a building. Inside there are _gohei_ (upright sticks with paper streamers). In a rich man's house a _hokora_ may be seven or eight feet high or bigger than the smallest _yas.h.i.+ro_, and may be embellished with colour and metal.
Returning to Buddhism, if a priest has a son he may be succeeded by him. But many Buddhist priests marry late and have no children. Or their children do not want to be priests. So the priest adopts a successor. Sometimes he maintains an orphan as acolyte or coadjutor.