The Foundations of Japan | Page 3

made notes as I traversed paddy-field paths, by mountain ways, in
colleges, schools, houses and inns. It can only have been when crossing
water on men's backs that I did not make notes. I jotted things down as
I walked, as I sat, as I knelt, as I lay on my _futon_, as I journeyed in
_kuruma_, on horseback, in jolting _basha_, in automobiles, in shaking
cross-country trains and in boats; in brilliant sunshine and sweltering
heat, in the shade and in dust; in the early morning with chilled fingers
or more or less furtively as I crouched at protracted private or official
repasts, or late at night endeavoured to gather crumbs from the wearing
conversation of polite callers who, though set on helping me, did not
always find it easy to understand the kind of information of which I
was in search. One of these asked my travelling companion _sotto
voce_, "Is he after metal mines?"
I went on my own trips and on routes planned out for me by
agricultural and social zealots, and from time to time I returned
physically and mentally fatigued to my little Japanese house near
Tokyo to rest and to write out from my memoranda, to seek data for
new districts from the obliging Department of Agriculture and the
Agricultural College people at the Imperial University, and to eat and
drink with rural authorities who chanced to be visiting the capital from
distant prefectures. I had many setbacks. I was misinformed, now and
then intentionally and often unintentionally. There were many days
which were not only harassing but seemingly wasted. I often despaired
of achieving results worth all the exertion I was making and the money
I was spending. I must have worn to shreds the patience of some
English-speaking Japanese friends, but they never owned defeat. In the
end I found that I made progress.
But so did the War, which when I set out from London few believed
would last long. I was troubled by continually meeting with incredible
ignorance about the War, the issues at stake and the certain end. The
Japanese who talked with me were 10,000 miles away from the fighting.
Japan had nothing to lose, everything indeed to gain from the
abatement of Europe's activities in Asia. Not only Japanese soldiers but

many administrative, educational, agricultural and commercial experts
had been to school in Germany. There was much in common in the
German and Japanese mentalities, much alike in Central European and
Farthest East regard for the army and for order, devotion to regulations,
habit of subordination and deification of the State. Eventually the
well-known anti-Ally campaign broke out in Tokyo, a thing which has
never been sufficiently explained. Soon I was pressed to turn aside
from my studies and attempt the more immediately useful task: to
explain why Western nations, whose manifest interests were peace,
were resolutely squandering their blood and wealth in War.
If what I published had some measure of success,[6] it was because by
this time, unlike some of the critics who sharply upbraided Japan and
made impossible proposals in impossible terms, I had learnt something
at first hand about the Japanese, because I wrote of the difficulties as
well as the faults of Japan, and because I was now a little known as her
well-wisher. One of the two books I published was translated as a
labour of love, as I shall never forget, by a Japanese public man whose
leisure was so scant that he sat up two nights to get his manuscript
finished. Before long I had involved myself in the arduous task of
founding and of editing for two years a monthly review, _The New
East (Shin Toyo)_,[7] with for motto a sentence of my own which
expresses what wisdom I have gained about the Orient, _The real
barrier between East and West is a distrust of each other's morality and
the illusion that the distrust is on one side only._
The excuse for so personal a digression is that, when this period of
literary and journalistic stress began, my rural notebooks and MSS.,
memoranda of conversations on social problems and a heterogeneous
collection of reports and documents had to be stowed into boxes. There
they stayed until a year ago. The entries in a dozen of my little
hurriedly filled notebooks have lost their flavour or are unintelligible: I
have put them all aside. Neither is it possible to utilise notes which
were submarined or lost in over-worked post offices. This book--I have
had to leave out Kyushu entirely--is not the work I planned, a complete
account of rural life and industry in every part of Japan, with an
excursus on Korea and Formosa, and certain general conclusions: a
standard work, no doubt, in, I am afraid, two volumes,