Geography Reference
In-Depth Information
Ihara Saikaku, an eighteenth-century novelist, included a story in his collection,
The
Japanese Family Storehouse,
about a farmer who made good: he was considerably ideal-
ized, being given credit for improvements that were certainly not the product of just one
man's brain, but the story demonstrates the reward that virtue might bring. In typically
Saikakufashion,thesecondhalfofthisstoryshowsthefarmer'sson,afterhisdeath,squan-
dering his fortune and reducing the family to penury. The following is a paraphrase of the
first part of this little tale:
There was a small farmer called Kusuke who scraped a wretched living in the vil-
lageofAsahiinYamato.Heworkedhislandbyhisownefforts,forhehadnooxen,
and his wife toiled from first light at her loom, weaving hempen cloth. In many an
autumn he had measured out the one and two-tenths
koku
oftaxation-rice, and until
the age of over 50 he carried out the usual rituals at the New Year, hung sardine
heads and holly at his tiny windows like everyone else, and threw beans down as
a protection against the invisible demons that come around. One year he gathered
the beans together again, and on impulse sowed one of them in a piece of waste-
land.Thatsummeritproducedamassofstalksgreenwithleaves,andintheautumn
thereripenedmorethanadoublehandfulofbeans.Thesehesowedalongthewater-
channels between his rice-fields, and each year without fail he harvested them. The
yield increased until after ten years it reached 88
koku.
With the proceeds of this he
had a great lantern built to lighten the darkness on the Hase highway: it still shines
and is known as the “bean lantern.”
All things gradually accumulate, and man's greatest desires sometimes come to
fruition. Kusuke continued to work in the same spirit to increase the prosperity of
his household. He acquired more land for rice and other crops, and in time became
a big farmer. At the proper time he manured his fields and removed weeds, and let
in water, so that the ears of his rice ripened plump and full, and the flowers of his
cottonplantslookedlikeflightsofbutterflies.Ifhisprosperitywasgreaterthanthat
of other men, it was not only by chance, but because he worked unceasingly, morn-
ing and evening, hard enough to wear out his spade and hoe. He was a man of great
ingenuity, who did much for the good of mankind. He made the rake with its rows
of iron teeth, and there was nothing of more use to men for breaking up the soil. He
also introduced the Chinese Winnower and the Thousand Koku Sieve. The work of
threshingcornbyhandtookagreatdealoftime,andheinventedanimplementwith
a row of bamboo spikes, so that whereas two men had been needed to thresh his
crop, now one could do it without great effort. He also developed a device whereby
a woman could prepare many times more cotton for spinning in a day than before.
Heboughtsnowymountainsofcotton,employedmanyworkers,andsentcountless
