added, "an enemy whose
blows have told."
Someone suggested that the Japanese rural emigrant always hoped to
return home, that is if he could return with dignity--does not the
proverb speak of the desirability of returning home in good clothes?
One of the company said that he had seen in Kyushu rows of
white-washed slated houses which had been erected by returned
emigrants. "But they were successful prostitutes. Often, however,
these girls invest their money unwisely and have to go abroad again."
Everybody at table agreed that there was in the villages a slow if
steady slackening of "the power of the landlord, of the authorities
and of religion," and a development of a desire and a demand for
better conditions of life. One who proclaimed himself a conservative
urged that changes of form were too readily confounded with changes of
spirit. The change in thought in Japan, he said, was slow, and some
occurrences might be easily misjudged. I said that that very day I had
heard from my house the drone of an aeroplane prevail over the sound
of a temple bell, happening to speak of _The Golden Bough_, I asked my
neighbour, who had read it, if to a Japanese who got its penetrating
view some things could ever be the same again. He answered frankly,
"There are things in our life which are too near to criticise. Do you
know that there are parts of Japan where folklore is still being
made?"
I was invited one evening to dinner to meet a dozen men conspicuous in
the agricultural world. Priests were apologised for because most of
them were "very poor men and also poorly educated." Very few had been
even to a middle school. Many priests read Chinese scriptures aloud
but they did not understand what they were reading.
One man reported that an old farmer had said to him that paddy-field
labour was harder than dry-land labour, but young men did not go off
to Tokyo because of the severity of the work; they went away because
of "the bondage of rural life."
How much has the economic stress affected old convictions? How general
and how eager is the Japanese resolution to Westernise farther? None
of the rural sociologists had given any thought apparently to a new
factor in the rural problem: the way in which compulsory military
service, in taking farmers' sons to the cities as soldiers and
bluejackets, is giving them an acquaintance with neo-Malthusianism. In
Tokyo and other large cities certain articles are prominently
advertised on
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