DISCOVERY 



229 



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 tem- 

 perate habits. 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 surround- 

 ings 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 companj- 

 again on the other side, it was the native mountaineer- 

 ing habitudes of the lower ranks that led them to take 

 the least inaccessible line of country. In mountain 

 warfare the hill-men among the Japanese infantry 

 displaj'ed — as compared with other infantry — some 

 of the attributes and mobility of cavalry. Moreover, 

 there is something in the open and communistic char- 

 acter 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 resource- 

 fulness 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 unsophisti- 

 cated and unspoilt, nor has all that is artificial and 

 materialistic in our vaunted twentieth-century civilisa- 

 tion yet laid a paralysing 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 — Kiinshi no 

 Koku — " the Country of Gentlemen." 



One of the most striking features of the country-side, 

 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 

 com can be made to grow, the resultant landscape 

 resembling nothing so much as a gigantic chessboard 

 decked in yellows, golds and greens of every shade. 

 A story is told of the diligence so characteristic of 

 these tireless toilers that one farmer terraced his little 

 hill-sides into no less than eleven tiers. Then he sat 

 down on the summit to rest and survey in triumph 

 the prospect at his feet. To his dismay he could count 

 but ten of the terraces he had shaped. The eleventh 

 was there, but invisible, for he was sitting upon it ! 

 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 practi- 

 cally no change ; the plough they use is that of the 

 Egyptians of the days of the Pharaohs, and spade, hoe, 

 sickle, harrow and flail differ but little from those of 

 their first instructors. On the other hand, however, 

 the wagon and the wheelbarrow are almost unknown. 



Of all the most ancient and popular festivals of 

 Japan, those that are celebrated with the geatest zest 

 and enjojTTient invariably belong to the life of the 

 country-side, 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 compara- 

 tively slight influence on the popular sentiment or 

 imagination. To the outer world the former are 



A TYPIC.\i VILL.^GE STREET IN' RURAL J.\P.\X. 

 The womau is washing her rice cauldron. 



sufficiently unfamiliar and significant to deserve record 

 by way of illustration. 



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 honour, 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. The 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 in this country. 



