THEY EVEN PLAY RUGBY THERE!

New Zealand Listener, Volume 17, Issue 436, 31 October 1947, Page 10

THEY EVEN PLAY RUGBY THERE!

A Part of Japan That Could be New Zealand

| Written for "The Listener" |

by

H.R.

C.

O most New Zealanders who visited Japan before the war or who have.lived there since its end, a countryside with pasture lands instead of paddy fields, with farms surrounded by barns and bounded with fences, and where there are milkmen in the streets of the towns and butter and cheese for sale in the shops, would be a thought of home rather than a reality of the East. But in Hokkaido, the most northern of the four main islands of the Japanese archipelago, dairying is as common as ricecropping is in Honshu and a sheep that would be a zoological oddity elsewhere in Japan is of interest only to its owner. Round the coasts there are seals; in the rivers there are salmon and trout; in the hills there are bear and deer; and living to themselves in their small villages throughout the island are the few remaining and slowly vanishing thousands of a people who are as primitive as any in the world and much more dirty-the Hairy Ainus. With the 72 million population of the three other islands, the three and onehalf million Japanese of Hokkaido have, really, only one thing in commonnationality, and, of course, the same language; their countryside, climate, flora and fauna, work, housing, dress, tecreations, and even (and this reluctantly) food supply are largely different. Separating Hokkaido from the main island of Honshu are the Straits of Tsugaru; and geologists have suggested that so great is the depth of these waters thag it is most improbable that the smaller island was ever a part of Japan proper. A New Zealand visitor from Honshu to Hokkaido can easily imagine himself more than a thousand

miles of ocean away in a different corner of the world; this is his first journey to this antique land, and yet, curiously, he has been there before; this is not the first time he has seen the blueness of those bush-clad hills or a great plain rolling out towards them. For Hokkaido in many, many ways is like New Zealand. Yet, in spite of its comparatively small population, its essential differences from the rest of Tanan. and a

history that in»eco- , nomic importance is of less than a century compared with Honshu’s 2000 years, Hokkaido to-day is

probably Japan’s greatest single, hope for recovery from her present plight. For Hokkaido, again like. New Zealand, is under-populated and under-developed; and there is room for some of the jammed millions of the other islands, fertile ground which when broken to the plough will grow their crops and feed their animals, and, in short, at least give them a chance to live. Within the next 12 years-if ,the present plan, which has been worked out in detail with the help of experts from the American Military Government, is carried out-scores of thousands of families will have been settled on their own small farms, on land that has not before been cultivated. Already since the end of war 600,000 acres has been cleared and put into production, and the aim by 1950°is 1,000,000 acres. Its attainment depends on whether the desperate shortages of essentials that vary from supplies of fertiliser and seed to materials for housing and farm buildings can be overcome, and whether the roads, railways, and bridges can be

provided over a great area of the country that at present is all but inaccessible. To-day, with the disposal of goods and materials which are available in Japan, Hokkaido has many priorities; and there is a small but continuing help from the United States-giving another example of the benevolence of their occupation policy, the reasons for which many persons in New Zealand, unfortunately, find difficult to understand.

From Shimonoseki, at the tip of southern Honshu, where our New Zealand force is stationed. to Sapporo.

the capital. and largest centre of Hokkaido, took almost as long by express train as the voyage from Wellington to Sydney by ship. Even with electric fans and. unlimited ice-water, the journey through the high temperatures and unpleasant. humidity of the Japanese summer was wearingly tedious. North from Tokio, on the morning of the third daf¥, the character of the countryside became noticeably different. There were still the flooded paddies with the green rice plants rising slenderly from the water, with peasant women, strawhatted for protection from the sun, stooping to their hoeing. On their backs or on the sides of the fields watched over by an older child were their bundled babies. But here there was not the intense cultivation of the south, that ever-con-tinuing market-garden of southern Honshu where not one inch is wasted, a beauty of neatness where, when the winter grain crop is ripe for harvest, the rice seedlings are already six inches high and ready for transplanting

so that they may be in the ground before the first flooding of the rainy season; where washing is hung on lines stretched across the narrow streets to save ground; and where vegetables are planted in soil that has been packed on the flat roofs of the small implement sheds. Yet here we could see from the train, although there was no apparent waste of land, the countryside looked looser and lazier, less as though it had been hounded through 2000 years by peasants desperate for its profit, The reason probably was a less favourable climate in this cooler north and where, consequently, the land must be tilled less harshly. We Were the First | Late in the afternoon of the third day we arrived at Aomori, the most northern town and port of Honshu, where we boarded the large ferry that was to take us, ‘train and all, across the Tsugaru straits to Hakodate, the main port of Hokkaido. Hakodate, by the way, was one of the first two Japanese ports opened to American trade after Commodore Perry in 1854 held a shotgun (in the form of an American fleet) to the heads of the Japanese Govern- ment. The ferry like the train was for occupation forces only and we were the only British troops aboard among the several hundred United States army personnel-we were in fact the first two from the New Zealand force and almost the first from any B.C.O.F. unit to have travelled to Hokkaido. Late that evening we landed at Hakodate; and for an hour before the train left for the last night of our journey we wandered through the chill, foggy streets, which were narrow and dimly lit. The few Japanese about, obviously either fishermen or. seamen, seemed to move with the shadows, eerily; everywhere was the smell of fish. In the dark corners of the station, huddled close for warmth, were people asleep: some of them would be travellers waiting for trains to take them further in their search for food, others of these unfortunate people would be there because of no home or shelter and without prospect of either. Always there seemed more women than men, many with babies and young children. There in the cold corners of railway stations and city buildings they spend their nights and there some of them die-last night, to-night, or some night. That Japan has earned despair makes it no less terrible when you yourself see the individual with too heavy a share. We rattled our way through the last night. Next morning, a sleepy five o’clock, there was hot water for washing for the first time; and not until then did we realise that in place of the fans we had found so necessafy in Honshu the steam heaters were working. Four days before we had been sweltering in heat and humidity that made shorts and shirt uncomfortable through the day and at night even a sheet impossible. Snow, Cold, Floods Hokkaido has an average temperature of between 20 and 30 degrees ‘Fahrenheit lower than the rest of Japan. For five or six months of the year

snow lies deeply over nearly the whole island and icy winds from Siberia drag the temperatures down to sub-zero. On the north coast the intensity of cold is enough to freeze over several open harbours. Even in the summer although the days are warm enough the nights are cold and damp. This winter bitterness and the short summer growing season explain the past reluctance of the Japanese to develop and settle in Hokkaido. Since towards the end of last century, when the first serious efforts were made to exploit the undoubtedly rich resources, there have been several schemes for development that have been pushed with varying energy and eventually abandoned. As one prefectural Government report stated . . . "moreover, Manchurian troubles unfortunately broken out at that time aroused more interest in Manchuria as a finer reclamation country. than MHokkaido, where cold _ is intense."’ Certainly Manchuria, however unfortunate’ the "troubles," was more pleasant than the desolation of a winter that snowed you in and a spring that flooded you out, It Could Be Canterbury Our first sight of Hokkaido countryside at once brought an exclamation of "Canterbury": from the carriage window we could see a wide plain, green with growing crops, rolling into blue foothills with white smudges of mountains behind. Scattered over the plain were clumps of heavy pines grown as windbreaks for the farmhouses. Erosion scars showed up from the hills and what looked like the flame of gorse. Along a white dusty road a man cycled, and although it was probably Fujitomisan off to see Yoshikosan it could easily have been George on his way to see Mary. And so much of the countryside not only looks like New Zealand, but the soil profiles are also similar. There are, for instance, large areas of volcanic ash country similar to that of the North Island, and the problems of development and cropping that we once had to study and solve are the same problems that are worrying the farmers of Hokkaido to-day. Sapporo, where we left the train, was completely different from any of the hundred of cities and towns that we haf seen in Japan. Here in place of the confusing and sun-hidden maze of narrow streets and criss-crossing alleys that characterise feven the largest of the cities, where you may be only a few yards from a neighbourhood you know well and yet be hopelessly lost, was a metropolis of broad avenues planted with trees and running north to south and east to west. This city vas laid out ‘in 1871 to an American plan with the help of American experts who were brought to Hokkaido -at, that time to further the first serious effort to develop the country. Not only did these Americans, headed by General Capron, a veteran of: the Civil War and a former United States Secretary of Agriculture, plan cities and design buildings but they also promoted large-scale public works and introduced. the American way of farming-even to the farm buildings that are found in the United States. In the 60 or 70 years since the demand ‘for their services ended (for the plan was abandoned within 10 years) those methods of farming have neither changed nor been modified, and in spite of intensive research in the many agricultural colleges and experimental stations the

their colleagues the world over, are still struggling confidently along with practices that are at least 50 years behind the times. "Land of Horses" Hokkaido is a land of horses, bred sturdy, yet light enough for ®work in the paddy fields of Honshu and Kyushu, where they are sold by the thousand each year. The main street of Sapporo, along which we walked to the Imperial University, was crowded with — local farmers, no less conservative drawn vehicles, and the morning was loud with the jingling of bells, for no matter how decrepit the cart or mundane its use there are always five or six shining ‘bells attached to the horse’s halter. It was midsummer, and with about every second cart or wagon, trotting along beside its mother in the shafts, was a long-legged foal, it, too, with a circle of bells. For the whole of our stay in Hokkaido we were never without that sound of bells, and at any time of night we could wake to hear that clear bell-song and imagine a cartload of timber or produce swinging along to a distant but profitable black market. The Imperial University of Hokkaido, attached to which is a large experimental farm, is the foremost agricultural college of Japan, with students (including women) from all over the country. Not only does it conduct agricultural courses, but also specialises in research, with emphasis on conditions in Hokkaido.. Its success with coldweather farming, including the development of such crops as rye-wheat hybrids, and uplands farming is recognised by agriculturists the world over, and before the war classes there were attended by many students from overseas. Torao Teshima, one of the professors, told us in hesitant English that the university had been founded about 1870 by Dr. W. H. Clarke, dean of a Massachusetts University, who had spent more than a year in Sapporo. He had never been forgotten, and many years ago a large bronze bust of Dr. Clarke had been erected in a place of honour in the university grounds. During the war, however, Professor Teshima continued wryly, feeling toward anything American changed, and it had been insisted that the bust of Dr. Clarke be melted down for scrap metal. Gladsome Sight Late in the afternoon when we were returning through the fine grounds of the university we saw a sight that gladdened our hearts after more than a year in a country which has adopted baseball as its national sport. There in front of us was a Rugby match. This match, which was' hard fought and cleanly played, was between two of the faculties, and was watched by an excited crowd of students-and public excitement is rare in Japan (their race crowds, for instance, sit or stand without even a murmur or a jostle while the race is run). Strictly controlled by the réferee, the match could easily have been between two of, our own university teams, and the ‘only change from play as we know it was the’ throwing in of the ball from the line-outs by the first five-eighths instead of the wing-three-quarters. At the end of the game the two teams lined up facing each other and bowed deeply and ceremoniously. But the best of that game was that it was not played with baseball bats. (To be Continued.)