Part 26 (1/2)
Four villages in this county have among them eight fish nurseries, the area of salt water enclosed being roughly 120 acres. I looked into several cottages where paper making was going on.[180]
I also went into two cotton mills. In both there were girls who were not more than eleven or twelve. ”They are exempted from school by national regulation because of the poverty of their parents,”[181] I was told.
As we pa.s.sed the open shop fronts of the village barbers I saw that as often as not a woman was shaving the customer or using the patent clippers on him.
We looked at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes were extended the granite block became the hub of a wheel of which the ropes were the spokes. A number of women and girls took ropes apiece and jerked them simultaneously, whereupon the granite block rose in the air to the level of the rope pullers'
heads. It was then allowed to fall with a thud. After each thud the pullers moved along a foot so that the block should drop on a fresh spot. The gangs hauling at the rammers worked to the tune of a plaintive ditty which went slowly so as to give them plenty of breathing time. It was something like this:
Weep not, Do not lament, This world is as the wheel of a car.
If we live long, We may meet again on the road.
None of the st.u.r.dy earth thumpers seemed to be overworked in the bracing air of the dam top, and they certainly looked picturesque with their white and blue towels round their heads. Indeed, with all the singing and movement, not to speak of the refreshment stalls, the scene was not unlike a fair. When we got back to the road again we pa.s.sed through a well-watered rice district which was equal to the production of heavy crops. Only three years before it had been covered by a thick forest in which it was not uncommon for robbers to lurk.
The transformation had been brought about by the construction of a dam in the hills somewhat similar to the one we had just visited.
I could not but notice in this district the considerable areas given up to grave-plots. No crematoria seemed to be in use. There had been a newspaper proposal that in areas where the population was very large in proportion to the land available for cultivation the dead should be taken out to sea. Where land is scarce one sees various expedients practised so that every square foot shall be cropped. I repeatedly found stacks of straw or sticks standing not on the land but on a rough bridge thrown for the purpose over a drainage ditch. In this district land had been recovered from the sea.
FOOTNOTES:
[178] For an account of a vegetable wax factory, see Appendix XLVIII.
[179] For further particulars of Eta in j.a.pan and America, see Appendix XLIX.
[180] See Appendix L.
[181] In 1918 net profits of 33 million yen were made by cotton factories. The factories are antic.i.p.ating sharp compet.i.tion from China.
CHAPTER XXVI
THE STORY OF THE BLIND HEADMAN
(EHIME)
The thing to do is to rise humorously above one's body which is the veritable rebel, not one's mind.--MEREDITH
It is delightful to find so many things made of copper. Copper, not iron, is in j.a.pan the most valuable mineral product after coal.[182]
But there are drawbacks to a successful copper industry. Several times as I came along by the coast I heard how the farmers' crops had been damaged by the fumes of a copper refinery. ”There are four copper refineries in j.a.pan, who fighted very much with the farmers,” it was explained. The Department of Agriculture is also the Department of Commerce and ”it was embarra.s.sed by those battles.” The upshot was that one refinery moved to an island, another rebuilt its chimney and the two others agreed to pay compensation because it was cheaper than to install a new system. The refinery which had removed to an island seven miles off the coast I had been traversing had had to pay compensation as well as remove. I saw an apparatus that it had put up among rice fields to aid it in determining how often the wind was carrying its fumes there. The compensation which this refinery was paying yearly amounted to as much as 75,000 yen. It had also been compelled to buy up 500 _cho_ of the complaining farmers' land. When we ascended by _basha_ into the mountains we looked down on a copper mine in a ravine through which the river tumbled. The man who had opened the original road over the pa.s.s had had the beautiful idea of planting cherry trees along it so that the traveller might enjoy the beauty of their blossoms in spring and their foliage and outlines the rest of the year. The trees had attained n.o.ble proportions when the refinery started work and very soon killed most of them. They looked as if they had been struck by lightning.
Some miles farther on, wherever on the mountain-side a little tract could be held up by walling, the chance of getting land for cultivation had been eagerly seized. It would be difficult to give an impression of the patient endeavour and skilful culture represented by the farming on these isolated terraces held up by Galloway d.y.k.es.
Elsewhere the heights were tree-clad. In places, where the trees had been destroyed by forest fires or had been cleared, amazingly large areas had been closely cut over for forage. One great eminence was a wonderful sight with its whole side smoothed by the sickles of indomitable forage collectors. In some spots ”fire farming” had been or was still being practised. Here and there the cultivation of the shrubs grown for the production of paper-making bark had displaced ”fire farming.” I saw patches of millet and sweet potato which from the road seemed almost inaccessible.
On the admirable main road we pa.s.sed many pack ponies carrying immense pieces of timber. Speaking of timber, the economical method of preserving wood by charring is widely practised in j.a.pan. The palisades around houses and gardens and even the boards of which the walls or the lower part of the walls of dwellings are constructed are often charred. The effect is not cheerful. What does have a cheerful and trim effect is a thing constantly under one's notice, the habit of keeping carefully swept the unpaved earth enclosed by a house and buildings as well as the path or roadway to them. This careful sweeping is usually regarded as the special work of old people. Even old ladies in families of rank in Tokyo take pleasure in their daily task of sweeping.
When we had crossed the pa.s.s and descended on the other side and taken _kuruma_ we soon came to a wide but absolutely dry river bed. The high embankments on either side and the width of the river bed, which, walking behind our _kuruma_, it took us exactly four minutes to cross, afforded yet another object lesson in the severity of the floods that afflict the country. The rock-and rubble-choked condition of the rivers inclines the traveller to severe judgments on the State and the prefectures for not getting on faster with the work of afforestation; but it is only fair to note that in many places hillsides were pointed out to me which, bare a generation ago, are now covered with trees. Within a distance of twenty-five miles hill plantations were producing fruit to a yearly value of half a million yen. As for the cultivation on either side of the roadway, along which our _kurumaya_ were trotting us, I could not see a weed anywhere.
A favourite rural recreation in Ehime, as in s.h.i.+mane on the mainland, is bull fighting. It is not, however, fighting with bulls but between bulls: the sport has the redeeming feature that the animals are not turned loose on one another but are held all the time by their owners by means of the rope attached to the nose ring. The rope is gripped quite close to the bull's head. The result of this measure of control is, it was averred, that a contest resolves itself into a struggle to decide not which bull can fight better but which animal can push harder with his head. That the bulls are occasionally injured there can be no doubt. The contests are said to last from fifteen to twenty minutes and are decided by one of the combatants turning tail. There is a good deal of gambling on the issue. In another prefecture of s.h.i.+koku the rustics enjoy struggles between muzzled dogs. A taste for this sport is also cultivated in Akita. A certain amount of dog and c.o.c.k fighting goes on in Tokyo.
At an inn there was an evident desire to do us honour by providing a special dinner. One bowl contained transparent fish soup. Lying at the bottom was a gla.s.sy eye staring up balefully at me. (The head, especially the eye, of a fish is reckoned the daintiest morsel.) There was a relish consisting of grapes in mustard. A third dish presented an entire squid. I pa.s.sed honourable dishes numbers two and three and drank the fish soup through clenched teeth and with averted gaze.