Jaime Sorenson The Soil 1

The Soil, written by Nagatsuka Takashi, offers a very realistic view of the lives of one

poor farming family around 1910. It is set around the time of vast modernization and

westernization that are characteristic of the Meiji era, and Takashi's novel reveals how lower

class farmers were affected by these reforms. The quality of the characters' lives in The Soil are

also vastly different when compared to a merchant family's life as seen in Makiko's New World

which is also set in 1910. While the country was undergoing massive changes, the farming

villages tended to remain much the same, with few changes, with their work routines only

changing fundamentally in the 1960s (Gordon, 2003: 253).

The author of The Soil was the first son of a substantial landowning family, born in 1879,

and based the novel's community on his own village. Many of the characters are drawn from

individuals from his village, even his own mother is the model for "Okamisan" (Takashi, 1989:

viii). Because of his background, he was in the position to observe and be involved with all of

the members in his community as well as visit other villages and attend middle school. Even

though The Soil is written as a novel, it is still a very good source of accurate historical facts

because of, in part, who the author is. When Oshina becomes terribly ill with tetanus, Kanji, her

husband, runs to fetch a doctor who can give her medicine, drugs that are then injected with a

hypodermic needle. This is very interesting because during most of the novel, the lives of the

farmers could be mistaken for those of a century earlier, but the reader is constantly brought back

to 1910 with little hints like the medicine, needles, railroads and others. The presence of such

modern medicine, though not very available to tenant farmers like Kanji, was becoming more

and more available with Japan's interactions with foreign countries like Germany.

According to an essay by Anne Walthall, sending young girls into service at an

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establishment or house was a very common for bolstering the family's income, decreasing the

amount of food needed at the house, and teaching the daughters important life skills. Studies of

villages in central Japan show that three-fourths of the daughters of tenants from one village left

home in search of work while almost two-thirds from another were sent into service outside of

the village at least one time (Bernstein, 1991: 50). Oshina and Kanji had planned on sending

their daughter into service when she was 15 and her infant brother was old enough that he did not

need as intense constant supervision. Walthall also talks about the occurrences of premarital sex

among the village youth. While it is still widely assumed that the official samurai teaching were

the norm: "After a girl is ten, she should not mix with boys. After she is twelve or thirteen, she

should not come near men" (Bernstein, 1991: 50-51). However, that is not the case with many

village youth including Kanji and Oshina. These two had had many encounters with one

resulting in Oshina becoming pregnant at 19 years old. Due to her pregnancy, her family and

Kanji's family met to resolve the issue, deciding to have them marry each other to avoid a

scandal. Several historians argue that the evidence from areas around Japan suggest that sexual

relations were permitted in order for the boys to spend time with girls and then chose a marriage

partner or were permitted only after the couple became engaged (Bernstein, 1991: 51). The Soil

follows Otsugi's family in detail in such a way that readers become sympathetic to the horrible

but real hardships suffered by tenant farmers seen in history books, but presented in novel form.

The opportunities for the two children, Otsugi and Yokichi, in The Soil are greater in

number than those available to their parents, Oshina and Kanji, or their grandfather, Uhei. One

major new import into their lives, by means of their diet, is the new foodstuffs including salt and

beef. In a survey compiled in 1910 in a village shows that 65 percent of food money went for
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rice and grains with 13.5 percent going towards vegetables and none on meat, which was

considered a luxury even in urban areas (Hane, 1982: 40). For Otsugi's family, their diet was

very heavy on starches with their meals consisted mainly of rice mixed with barley, few

vegetables and some eggs. However, when Kanji's sister Otsuta suffered severely from a flood,

the village office gave her, among other things, lumps of table salt and cans of boiled beef which

she graciously brought over to Otsugi's house. These items were extremely rare in the rural areas

of Japan to the extent that one of their neighbors remarked "Is it really salt? I've never seen

anything like it" (Takashi, 1989: 150).

Another opportunity of the children was schooling seeing as attending was made

compulsory. The Meiji era brought with it a number of reforms including one regarding

education used towards strengthening the foundation of the new Japan. The new Japanese

government sent a number of citizens of all ages on missions to foreign countries to learn new

technologies and methods and bring back this knowledge to the Japanese people. One such bit of

knowledge is mentioned briefly in The Soil as a passing remark made by one of the main

characters named Kanji. On his way to the doctor in another village, he notes how straight the

path is because of the vast amount of land adjustment and the new irrigation system being used

for the paddies that absolutely fascinates him (Takashi, 1989: 155). This and other new farming

methods were incredibly beneficial in increasing food production to feed the growing Japanese

population. Not much is mentioned in The Soil about what Yokichi learns at school, but only

states that he leaves to and returns from school. It can be assumed that he was taught during the

course of the novel basic reading and writing skill as well as having the ideas of filial piety and

patriotism drilled into his mind (Gorden, 2003: 105). His books were manufactured in a factory
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and issued by the government who kept strict reign over what was taught and how it was taught.

After all, the Meiji government stressed advancing the nation instead of advancing the

individual.

While Otsugi and Yokichi were exposed to more opportunities than their older relatives,

their experiences and lives differ drastically from those of a daughter in a merchant family

depicted in Makiko's New World. Otsugi, at 13, began caring for Yokichi when he was born, a

duty which she continued until her mother died at which point she became a surrogate mother for

him. That year, she began working in the fields every day from sun up to sun down while

juggling all of the household chores of cleaning, cooking, sewing, and caring for Yokichi. As a

result of all of this manual labor, she is constantly tired and dirty and acquires blisters and dry

broken skin. All of this work is done to earn enough money to buy just enough food and clothing

to survive. Makiko, on the other hand, is part of a significantly more wealthy family and thus

does very little if any manual labor. Makiko is reprimanded by her mother-in-law at one point

because she had been avoiding work and letting the servants do everything without even

supervising them. Being in the city and part of the merchant family, she has time in which to

socialize with friends, visit temples like the Kiyomizudera, and even watch a noh play. The

closest Otsugi gets to any of these activities is taking sewing lessons with other girls.

As for paying for food, Makiko hosts a memorial service banquet for 26 people at a rate

of 1 yen 50 sen per person. The total cost for food comes out to 39 yen, an impossible amount for

Otsugi to even imagine having on hand to spend. For her, being put into service at another house

would only get her roughly 10 yen a year (Takashi, 1989: 27). While Otsugi's diet consists

mostly of starch, like barley-rice gruel and pickles, Makiko has the chance to taste exotic
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Western foods like bananas and Munich beer. She even takes Western cooking lessons. Even

their basic living conditions were drastically different. Makiko's husband installed Western doors

in some rooms in their house which held a phone, binoculars and a snapshot camera that cost 23

yen. Otsugi's house on the other hand is made from wood, straw, and dirt. While not described

explicitly, most tenant farmers like her family "lived in dark tiny homes with dirt floors in the

kitchen and wooden boards... in the rest of the house. Their dwellings were drafty and bitter cold

in winter" (Gorden, 2003: 145).

Ultimately, The Soil is amazingly a source of accurate historical information as well as a

story that draws the reader into the troubles of the villagers. Within the story, the reflections of

the Meiji Restoration are visible in the tiny hints of modernization in medicine, farming

techniques, and education. More and more opportunities are available, slowly trickling down

from higher families like Makiko's to the poor farmers in the village.