A century ago, Japan's countryside was full of grain and nature deities
From sacred rituals to daily life, explore rural Japan a century ago through National Geographic’s vivid photos.
Of all the poetic titles applied by the Japanese in olden times to their land, perhaps the most ancient was that of Toyo-ashiwara-mizuho no-kuni, "The fertile, reed-clad country, rich in grain." In this we have the intimation that from the earliest ages of the national existence agriculture has been the occupation of the majority of the people and their most fruitful source of livelihood.
The sudden emergence of modern Japan from the hermit-like seclusion of former days into the rush of busy intercourse and competition with the Western world has tended to blind the eyes of many observers to that which really forms the basis of its national prosperity.
It is only in rural Japan that we gain an insight into the most characteristic features of the life of the people. The real strength of national organization and the most attractive aspects of the national character cannot be fully appreciated until one passes from the crowded cities and westernized beaten tracks to the fields and farms of one of the most intelligent and friendly peasantries in the world.
In spite of the rapid strides made in the manufacturing and mining industries in recent years, agriculture still constitutes the chief source of the wealth and power of the Japanese people.
The rural population number sixty percent of the whole, and it is they who supply the empire with most of its food and with the greater part of its raw materials for manufactures.
Practically no machinery used in Japanese farming
There are few large landed proprietors, and a feature of agriculture is the tillage of small holdings. This is carried on by the whole of the farmer's household. The land does really belong to him, for the popular idea that both the peasantry and their fields are property of the Emperor is a mere legal fiction, and it is no wonder, therefore, that the man "on the land" works as few peasants in the world have ever been known to work.
Only about twelve percent of the whole area of Japan is cultivable, and even this is not naturally very fertile. It is only made to yield its utmost by the most minute and careful system of subsoil working, manuring, terracing, and irrigation, and these are carried on with a thoroughness that almost suggests gardening rather than farming.
There is practically no machinery employed and nearly all the work is done by hand, hoe and spade, helped out at times by the ox or the horse. It is in the task of their subjugation of the land to the service of man that the best characteristics of the Japanese people have been developed—their boundless patience and perseverance, their intelligence, ingenuity, and self-control, their tough constitutions and temperate habits.
Peasants make exceptional soldiers
Some of the finest fighting men in the army are drawn from the peasant classes—hardy, stolid, and entirely unafflicted with nerves. Most of them come from the hill country, and their surroundings have left their impress on their character and habits.
It was remarked by British officers during the Russo-Japanese War that, in districts where long marches had to be made over routes chiefly leading along goat tracks or across pathless gullies and crags, each man having to find his own way and to meet his company again on the other side, it was the native mountaineering habitudes of the lower ranks that led them to take the best possible line of country.
In mountain warfare the hillmen among the Japanese infantry displayed—as compared with other infantry—some of the attributes and mobility of cavalry. Moreover, there is something in the open and communistic character of the daily life of the country people (for to them privacy is an unknown condition) that renders them natural and considerate and promotes a resourcefulness and readiness to help each other that must be experienced to be understood.
It is among such as these that one finds human nature most unsophisticated and unspoilt, nor has all that is artificial and materialistic in our vaunted twentieth century civilization yet laid a paralyzing hand upon that inborn simplicity and courteous bearing which in days gone by did so much to justify the title by which the Japanese delighted that their land should be known—Kunshi no Koku—"The Country of Gentlemen."
One of the most striking features of the countryside, to one who wanders out from the crowded life of the great towns, is the extraordinary and minute care with which the hills, rising abruptly, as most of them do, from the alluvial plains and the seashore, are terraced from base to summit, wherever a single ear of rice or corn can be made to grow, the resultant landscape resembling nothing so much as a gigantic chessboard decked in yellows, gold, and greens of every shade.
What makes these agricultural achievements the more astonishing is the fact that they are attained with the most primitive of instruments, for the peasantry are the most conservative class in the nation. The whole of their agricultural system was borrowed from China nearly two thousand years ago and has known practically no change. The plow they use is that of the Egyptians of the days of Pharaohs, and spade, hoe, sickle, harrow, and flail differ but little from those of their instructors. The wagon and the wheelbarrow are almost unknown.
Of all the ancient and popular festivals of Japan, those that are celebrated with the greatest zest and enjoyment invariably belong to the life of the countryside and form a standing witness to the primeval and paramount significance of agriculture to the entire nation. The so called "national ones," dealing with alleged historical events, are of official origin and nearly all quite modern. Their observance is chiefly confined to the large towns and exercises comparatively slight influence on the popular sentiment or imagination. To the outer world, these are sufficiently unfamiliar and significant to deserve record by way of illustration.
The festival of the Fox Goddess
One of the earliest in the year is that of Inari-Sama, the Goddess of Food, at whose gaily decorated shrine services of intercession are held on the first day of the second month (old style)—i. e., March-on behalf of a fruitful rice harvest later in the year. Inari-Sama (about whose sex there is some ambiguity) is sometimes spoken of as the Fox Goddess, and is commonly identified with her servant the fox.
In view of the all-importance of rice to the whole nation, it is natural that this divinity should be held in such honor, not to say dread, and we find that these festal gatherings partake of the nature of a combination of communion, eucharist, and love-feast. Papers stamped with the picture of a fox are pasted on cottage doors as charms of exceptional potency.
This animal is credited with supernatural powers of bewitchment, and the belief in Kitsune tsuki—"Fox-possession"—is very real and widespread. It belongs to a class of folk-lore and superstition of which little is known outside their own country, and but half acknowledged by the educated Japanese themselves, though it is of much psychological and scientific interest to the student and the medical man.
Honor for the powerful River Goddess
Japan is one of the most richly watered countries in the world, and as nearly every swift-flowing river and impetuous mountain torrent has its own presiding divinity, we are not surprised to find them credited with power to hurt or help the lands through which their waters pass.
In districts liable to damage through inundations, services of intercession are held in the third month, our April, at popular shrines like those of the River Goddess of Kofu, in the broad and fertile plain of Koshu, in central Japan.
The goddess is taken out for an airing in her sacred car and earnest supplications are addressed to her for the protection of the fields and farms of the peasantry in the coming days when, with the melting of the winter snows and the storms of early summer and autumn, the myriad mountain torrents swell the parent rivers on their resistless course through the cultivated plains to their wide and populated deltas at the sea.
The month of May sees the countryside under its brightest, busiest, and most varied aspects, and in all its activities nearly every one, old or young, has his or her part to play. Barley, wheat, and (especially) millet are ripening and "honorable" tea is now ready to be picked.
The grains enumerated are the real staple food of the rural districts, for though all, who can, live on rice, most of the peasantry, especially in the remoter parts, cannot afford to do so and only indulge in it on high days and holidays or in cases of sickness.
A friend of mine tells me of an old lady whom he heard remark of a sick neighbor in a country hamlet, with a grave shake of the head: "What! do you mean to say that it has come to giving her rice ?" In other words, "The poor thing must be in a bad way!"
Supplication is made to God of Hailstorms
The chief festival of this season is that of the God of Hailstorms, and many an anxious farmer in the silk-producing districts in the great inland provinces of Shinano and Kai then visits the ancient village shrine to pray for the preservation of his precious mulberry trees from the dread scourge.
Strangely enough, however, these trees are said to be almost immune from lightning, and there is a popular belief that a man caught in the open in a thunder storm has only to call out "kuwabara"—i. e., "mulberry grove"—in order to surround himself with the prophylactic properties of that valued object and so avert the threatened danger.
The Christian Japanese farmer can read with sympathetic interest the story of the plague of hail in Exodus ix, where we learn that "the flax and the barley was smitten: for the barley was in the car and the flax was boiled" (i. e., in bud).
Nearly every article of food and domestic utility is committed to the care of its own guardian divinity, and a Japanese writer has observed that, if the interests of the peasantry are not protected by unseen powers, it is not for want of earnest supplications addressed to them at all seasons and for every possible boon desired.
Of special significance is the festival of the rice harvest, with its twin observances (like those of the ancient Hebrews) of the offering of the first fruits—in the middle of October—known as Kannamesai, with its complement in the Niinamesai, on the 23d of November, when the Emperor tastes the new rice that has just been presented at the holiest of all the shrines of Japan—that of the Imperial Ancestors at Ise—at the climax of the ingathering.
The former of these festivals is an essentially popular one, and the best of the precious grain is presented at thousands of village altars throughout the length and breadth of the land.
Close by these, on the stages which are usually found at the side of the most ancient shrines and erected for the purpose, a pantomimic dance, known as O Kagura—"The Seat of the Gods"—is then performed to entertain the guardian divinity in grateful acknowledgment of his kindly care, a thought which is further impressed on the children themselves by the closing of the schools, in order to set them free to keep the festival with innocent gaiety.
The arrangements which enable neighboring villages to hold their celebrations on different days, like those in English country parishes at harvest-tide, and so to share their mutual rejoicings, make for a friendly community of interest and neighborly good feeling.
Ebisu is the deaf god among Japan’s eight million divinities
There is one other festival which is highly popular with the peasantry in late autumn, that of Ebisu, the God of Honest Hard Work, as well as of Wealth. This is kept with twofold energy, partly because all desire to be rich and partly because, on the basis of "sympathetic magic," it is felt that one who controls the gift of prosperity should naturally be courted with every sign of merriment and enjoyment of the good things of life.
At this festival, in the Province of Kii, when the procession bearing the appropriate offerings approaches the shrine the village head-man calls out in a loud voice, "According to our annual custom, let us all laugh"; to which exhortation a hearty response is given.
The reason given for this is that Ebisu alone of all the eight million divinities has not gone to visit the great Shinto shrine in Izumo on the annual holiday sacred to them; for he, being deaf, could not hear the summons thither. And so his worshipers seek to cheer him in his loneliness by their own infectious merriment.
It is a natural instinct of the human heart to feel that this act must be acceptable to the object of its most unfettered rejoicings: "Let us come before His presence with thanksgiving and show ourselves glad in Him with psalms."
Japan produces 4,000 varieties of rice
It is impossible to get a clear idea of the life of rural Japan until we realize the all-importance of the rice crop to the nation at large. Two-thirds of the cultivated land is devoted to it, and no less than 4,000 varieties are produced, while, as we have seen, it is the sowing, transplanting, and ingathering of it that form the chief occasions of popular solicitude and rejoicing.
Until, at the Restoration, in 1868, the Daimyo, the old feudal lords, retired into private life, their incomes were paid in rice, and today the peasants pay their rent in the same commodity.
Only when we have wandered observantly off the beaten tracks and listened to the chance scraps of conversation among the country-folk in the summer months, and heard most of it bearing on the state of the crops and the probable prices ahead, can we appreciate what the precious grain means, even in these days of growing industrialism, to the people of Japan.
Japan is not only the third most important rice-producing country in the world, but its rice stands first in quality. In its cultivation all is carried out according to the strictest rule, with a conservatism born of experience. The sowing, for instance, must take place on the 88th day of spring, the first day of which is also New Year's Day.
Before sowing, the seed is soaked in salt water for a week, washed in fresh water, and then dried, after which it is planted in well-watered "nursery" beds. About the end of May it is transplanted into "paddy" fields in small bunches about a foot apart, an operation employing hundreds of thousands of men and women knee-deep in water and mud.
This is an occasion of great rejoicing and is celebrated with special songs, known as ta-ue-uta—"rice-field planting songs."
The most momentous period of the year
The most momentous period of the whole year, however, comes at the end of August or the beginning of September, when the ni-hyaku-toka draws near—the "two hundred and tenth day"—for it is the ten days which then follow that form the season of intensest anxiety, of mingled hopes and fears, through which the bulk of the population of Japan passes from year to year.
The rice is then ripening fast, and it is a gentle breeze that is urgently needed, although it is just at that precise moment that there is usually the gravest peril threatening, in the dread typhoon, which not only marks the break-up of summer, but incidentally the breaking up of much else.
With the ripening of the various crops in their proper seasons and with the birds and countless varieties of insects in which Japan so abounds eager to prey on them, the fields are dotted over with little flags of bamboo and paper inscribed with charms against their depredations. These are called mushi-yoke—"vermin-dispellers"—and are bought at shrines of repute all over the country.
‘The honorable little gentleman’—the silkworm
Next in importance to rice. come the silk and tea industries, which furnish revenues of some $100,000,000 and $25,000,000 respectively, silk being produced mainly in central and tea in central and southern Japan.
There are many features of peculiar interest connected with the cultivation of silk, of which not the least is the treatment of the precious worm itself. It is popularly called O ko sama—"The honorable little gentleman"—and during the period of his "intensive cultivation," mainly the month of August, the satisfaction of his voracious appetite keeps whole households occupied day and night, to the exclusion of all else.
The leaf-strewn trays, arranged in tiers, fill nearly every room in the house, and the sound of the ceaseless nibbling of the countless myriads is precisely that of the scratching of a thousand pens in the great hall of a college or university on an examination day.
It is believed that any harsh or noisy, ill-bred conduct on the part of persons within earshot of the little creature will seriously affect the quality of the silk produced.
Sugarless tea
Of tea, the national beverage of Japan (drunk always without sugar or milk), we cannot speak in detail. Like most good things in Japan, it was introduced from China about 800 A. D., and for one thousand years its use was almost confined to the aristocracy and the court. It is picked after three years' growth of the plant and is nearly all consumed in the country, with the exception of some fifty million pounds exported to Canada and the United States.
Not the least interesting of one's acquaintances in rural Japan is the country policeman—ever ready to act, when needed, as guide, philosopher, and friend—upon his lonely beat. Some years ago he received the following counsels from police headquarters for the benefit of the unsophisticated of the countryside, the unconscious humor of some of these admonitions suggesting that the person who drafted them did so somewhat feelingly:
“No criticisms should be made, either by gesture or words, regarding the language, attire, or actions of foreigners.
“Foreigners are most sensitive regarding cruelty to animals; therefore special attention should be given to this matter.
“If a foreigner pulls out his watch and looks at it, you should think that he has business elsewhere, and that it is time for you to leave.
“It is a mistake to suppose that a foreigner will always respond to a request for a loan of money."
During one of my explorations in the Japanese Alps I met a little policeman—the exact circumstances need not now be specified—who insisted on sharing my little room in the primitive hut where we spent several nights. He also insisted on sleeping on the floor, underneath my hammock, which I had slung to a convenient beam in the roof. And yet when I chanced to roll out during my sleep he made no further reference to this startling interruption than to murmur a word of polite apology: "O jama wo itashima shita!"—"I am so sorry to have been in your honorable way!"
At the close of the paper contributed to The Geographic for July, 1921, I spoke of the strange contrasts that may often be met with in modern Japan and which cause one almost to rub one's eyes and ask whether we are living in the twentieth century or the tenth.
Since those words were written a curious illustration of this has come to my knowledge. Near the famous Naval Yard of Kure, in southern Japan, a ceremony was recently held for the souls of departed bullocks! One hundred oxen, gaily garlanded, were led in solemn array to one of the chief Buddhist temples, where suitable prayers were said on behalf of their departed comrades. This was followed by instruction in the Buddhist scriptures, and finally they were given a grand feast by their masters, who apologized for all the unkind things they had done to them!
A mile away Japan was building one of the biggest battleships in the world!
