The Foundations of Japan | Page 2

books of a new sort. One should be a stimulating volume on Japan, based on a study, more sociological than technically agricultural, of its remarkable small-farming system and rural life, and the other a complementary American volume based on a study of the enterprising large farming of the Middle West. I proposed to write the second book in co-operation with a veteran rural reformer who had often invited me to visit him in Iowa, the father of the present American Minister of Agriculture. Early in 1915 I set out for Japan to enter upon the first part of my task. Mr. Wallace died while I was still in Japan, and the Middle West book remains to be undertaken by someone else.
The Land of the Rising Sun has been fortunate in the quality of the books which many foreigners have written.[3] But for every work at the standard of what might be called the seven "M's"--Mitford, Murdoch, Munro, Morse, Maclaren, "Murray" and McGovern--there are many volumes of fervid "pro-Japanese" or determined "anti-Japanese" romanticism. The pictures of Japan which such easily perused books present are incredible to readers of ordinary insight or historical imagination, but they have had their part in forming public opinion.
The basic fact about Japan is that it is an agricultural country. Japanese ?stheticism, the victorious Japanese army and navy, the smoking chimneys of Osaka, the pushing mercantile marine, the Parliamentary and administrative developments of Tokyo and a costly worldwide diplomacy are all borne on the bent backs of _Ohyakusho no Fufu_,[4] the Japanese peasant farmer and his wife. The depositories of the authentic Yamato damashii (Japanese spirit) are to be found knee deep in the sludge of their paddy fields.
One book about Japan may well be written in the perspective of the village and the hamlet. There it is possible to find the way beneath that surface of things visible to the tourist. There it is possible to discover the foundations of the Japan which is intent on cutting such a figure in the East and in the West. There it is possible to learn not only what Japan is but what she may have it in her to become.
A rural sociologist is not primarily interested in the technique of agriculture. He conceives agriculture and country life as Arthur Young and Cobbett did, as a means to an end, the sound basis, the touchstone of a healthy State. I was helped in Japan not only by my close acquaintance with the rural civilisation of two pre-eminently small-holdings countries, Holland and Denmark, but by what I knew to be precious in the rural life of my own land.
An interest in rural problems cannot be simulated. As I journeyed about the country the sincerity of my purpose--there are few words in commoner use in the Far East than sincerity--was recognised and appreciated. I enjoyed conversations in which customary barriers had been broken down and those who spoke said what they felt. We inevitably discussed not only agricultural economy but life, religion and morality, and the way Japan was taking.
I spoke and slept in Buddhist temples. I was received at Shinto shrines. I was led before domestic altars. I was taken to gatherings of native Christians. I planted commemorative trees until more persimmons than I can ever gather await my return to Japan. I wrote so many _gaku_[5] for school walls and for my kind hosts that my memory was drained of maxims. I attended guileless horse-races. I was present at agricultural shows, fairs, wrestling matches, Bon dances, village and county councils and the strangest of public meetings. I talked not only with farmers and their families but with all kinds of landlords, with schoolmasters and schoolmistresses, policemen, shopkeepers, priests, co-operative society enthusiasts, village officials, county officials, prefectural officials, a score of Governors and an Ainu chief. I sought wisdom from Ministers of State and nobles of every rank, from the Prince who is the heir of the last of the Shoguns down to democratic Barons who prefer to be called "Mr.", I chatted with farmers' wives and daughters, I interrogated landladies and mill girls, and I paid a memorable visit to a Buddhist nunnery. I walked, talked, rode, ate and bathed with common folk and with dignitaries. I discussed the situation of Japan with the new countryman in college agricultural laboratories and classrooms, and, in a remote region, beheld what is rare nowadays, the old countryman kneeling before his cottage with his head to the ground as the stranger rode past.
I 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