The Foundations of Japan | Page 7

or 1,200 bu or tsubo (an urban measure). The size of rooms is reckoned by the number of mats, which are ordinarily 6 shaku in length and 3 shaku in breadth.
CAPACITY
Koku (roughly 40 gals, or 5 bush.) = 39.703 gals, or 4.960 bush. = 10 to. According to American measurements, there are 47.653 gals, (liquid) and 5.119 bush, (dry) in a koku. A koku of rice is 313-1/2 lbs. (British).
A koku of imported rice is, however, 330-1/2 lbs. The following koku must also be noted: ordinary barley, 231 lbs.; naked barley 301.1 lbs.; wheat 288.7 lbs.; proso millet, 247.9 lbs.; foxtail millet, 280.9 lbs.; barnyard millet, 165.2 lbs.; brickaheat, 247.9 lbs.; maize, 289.2 lbs.; soya beans, 286.5 lbs.; azuki (red) beans, 319.9 lbs.; horse beans, 266.6 lbs.; peas, 306.5 lbs.
Hyo (roughly 2 bush.) = 1.985 bush. = 4 to = bale of rice.
To (roughly 4 gals, or 1/2 bush.) = 3.970 gals, or .496 bush, or 1.985 pecks = 10 sho.
Sho (roughly 1-1/2 qts.) = 1.588 qts. or 0.198 pecks or 108-1/2 cub. in. = 10 go.
Go (roughly 1/3 pint) =.3176 pints or 0.019 pecks.
Rice is not bagged but baled, and a bale is 4 to or 1 hyo.
WEIGHT
Kwan or kwamme (roughly 8-1/4 lbs.) = 8.267 lbs. av. or 10.047 lbs. troy = 1,000 momme.
Kin (catty) = 1.322 lbs. av. or 1.607 troy = 160 momme.
Momme = 2.116 drams or 2.411 dwts. According to American measurements a momme is 0.132 oz. av. and 0.120 oz. troy.
Hyakkin (_picul_) = 100 kin = 132.277 lbs.
A stone is 1.693, a cwt. is 13.547, and a ton 270.950 kwamme.
LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE TERMS
Ken.--Prefecture. There are forty-three ken and Hokkaido. Ken and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the same: example, Shidzuoka-ken, capital Shidzuoka.
Fu.--Three prefectures are municipal prefectures and are called not ken but fu. They are Tokyo-fu, Kyoto-fu and Osaka-fu.
Gun (_kori_).--Division of a prefecture, a county or rural district. There are 636 gun. Gun are now being done away with.
Shi.--City. There are seventy-nine cities.
Cho.--A town or rather a district preponderatingly urban. There are 1,333 cho.
Machi.--Japanese name for the Chinese character cho.
Son.--A village or rather a district preponderatingly rural. There are 10,839 son.
Mura.--Japanese name for a Chinese character son.
A true idea of the Japanese village is obtained as soon as one mentally defines it as a commune. There may be a rural community called son or a municipal community called cho. The cho or son consists of a number of oaza, that is, big aza, which in turn consists of a number of ko-aza or small aza. A ko-aza may consist of twenty or thirty dwellings, that is, a hamlet, or it may be only one dwelling. It may be ten acres in extent or fifty. I found that the population of a particular municipality was 10,000 in seven big oaza comprising twenty-two ko-aza.
[Illustration: THE ROOM, OVERLOOKING THE PACIFIC, IN WHICH MUCH OF THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN The feet of the chair and table are fitted with wooden slats so as not to injure the tatami. Electricity as a matter of course!]
[Illustration: THE MERCY OF BUDDHA The worshippers in the front row lost relatives by a flood. This is not the priest referred to in
Chapter I
.]

THE FOUNDATIONS OF JAPAN
STUDIES IN A SINGLE PREFECTURE (AICHI)[10]

CHAPTER I
THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
The only hard facts, one learns to see as one gets older, are the facts of feeling. Emotion and sentiment are, after all, incomparably more solid than any statistics. So that when one wanders back in memory through the field one has traversed in diligent search of hard facts, one comes back bearing in one's arms a Sheaf of Feelings.--HAVELOCK ELLIS.
One day as I walked along a narrow path between rice fields in a remote district in Japan, I saw a Buddhist priest coming my way. He was rosy-faced and benign, broad-shouldered and a little rotund. He had with him a string of small children. I stood by to let him pass and lifted my hat. He bowed and stopped, and we entered into conversation. He told me that he was taking the children to a festival. I said that I should like to meet him again. He offered to come to see me in the evening at my host's house. When he arrived, and I asked him, after a little polite talk, what was the chief difficulty in the way of improving the moral condition of his village, he answered, "I am."
We spoke of Buddhism, and he complained that its sects were "too aristocratic." When his own sect of Buddhism, Shinshu, was started, he said, it was something "quite democratic for the common people." But with the lapse of time this democratic sect had also "become aristocratic." "Though the founder