CHAPTER XITHE ISLANDS PASS UNDER THEGOVERNMENT OF JAPAN

A SUPPLEMENTARY CHAPTER

In which a short account is given of the Islands after their appropriation by the Japanese, and of the opening of St. George's Church

FROM the year 1876 until 1904 when, under the Revised Treaties foreigners secured the right of travel and residence in any part of the Japanese Empire, no new settlers other than Japanese could make their home on the Bonin Islands. Japanese settlers were slow in coming, and for the first two or three years the Japanese colony did not prosper. But there was to be no more withdrawal, and, after the Government had set things in some order and made life under Japanese conditions more possible, emigration to the islands became even too popular.

The Japanese are happiest in a warm climate; fish is one of the staples of their food; fish were to be had in abundance; and granted that the vessels from Japan brought sufficiency of rice, the frugal, industrious Japanese--always attracted too by novel enterprises--were nothing loth to try their fortunes in this new field.

The two chief islands are no longer "Peel" Island and "Bailey" Island. As newer maps and charts supersede the old ones, the names given by Captain Beechey will gradually disappear and be forgotten. "Peel" Island is now Chichijima, Father Island; its harbour Futami ; "Bailey" Island is Hahajima, or Mother Island, and on each of these islands to-day is a population of roughly three thousand. The original settlers--and I must not omit mentioning that they have all become naturalized citizens of Japan--thus found themselves every year more and more environed by Japanese. They have profited much by being under government; by the regular service of steamers; by the laying out of the little harbour town with its stores; by the construction of roads, and by other facilities offered them. On the other hand they had lost their freedom and independence of action, so far as they were no longer their own masters, and had to submit to the growing domination of the Japanese. They have watched the goats and turtles disappearing, and fish becoming procurable only in the open sea; they could make no protest against the ruthless clearings, the wholesale cutting down of trees; nor check the keen competition of the Japanese, one with the other, and all with themselves, to derive from the islands all the immediate profit they could; and it must be said in pity for the islands, that almost all the Japanese who have gone there, as farmers and cultivators, have gone there without any capital.

Hahajima, or the South Island, is mainly peopled by workers on the sugar farms, but Chichijima, though it has the smaller population, is an island of altogether greater consequence. This is due, of course, to its fine harbour. On Chichijima to-day there is the Government House with its staff of secretaries and clerks, the headquarters of the island police, the post office, the school with its certificated teachers from Japan, the office of the steamship company, a canning factory, etc. But this harbour island has further become a telegraph station, for when the island of Guam had been ceded to the United States after the war with Spain, cable connexion was established between that island and Hawaii, and latterly, in 1906, the cable was carried through Chichijima to Japan. As a telegraph station the island must be permanently of some importance and, because of this telegraphic connexion with the mainland a meteorological observatory (or "station") has also been established on the island.

The production of sugar is the chief industry, and bananas are largely cultivated; but hardly a year passes without serious damage being wrought by the typhoons. Another industry, which has furnished considerable employment for the women, is the making of soft white plaited baskets from the long ribbon leaves of the Lohala palm; handles are given to them and they are fastened with bits of shell or coral which pass through a loop. A company has secured the monopoly of this trade, and while the baskets, strangely enough, may be purchased in towns in England and elsewhere, they will not be found in the shops in Japan.

For many years the stalwart men-settlers made their living chiefly by seal-hunting, but this is a pursuit which is unfortunately no longer open to them. They were engaged by companies, and left the island to join their sealing schooners, at Yokohama, or Hakodate, generally in March, to return in October or November. If they had average luck, a hunter would bring back the equivalent of about ￡40 or ￡50.

A mail steamer of some 2000 tons now goes to the islands from Yokohama twice a month. Formerly little steamers of not half that tonnage made the voyage in alternate months, but when the seas ran high they were greatly delayed. Moreover, 160 miles out from Yokohama there is the large island of Hachijo with rocky inhospitable shores, and here the steamers have to discharge and take in cargo. I remember once, in one of my earlier visits, how the high seas and strong currents round Hachijo fairly baffled us, and our little steamer having shifted from one side of the island to the other, had at last to give up in despair and make back for Yokohama.

It would be worth very little to say that on the whole, and all things considered, the relations between our settler friends and the Japanese have been as amicable as could have been reasonably expected; for the relations, under the circumstances that had thrown them together, and taking into account their strangely differing characteristics, would have furnished scope for a most interesting psychological study. But with the general statement, made above, we must for the present content ourselves.

Where I think the Japanese certainly failed from the first in their duty towards the settlers was in making no provision for teaching their children the elements of English. This was a boon they might easily have conferred upon them. Latterly this defect was supplied by the opening of a mission school, presided over by Joseph Gonzales, and many of the Japanese were not slow to avail themselves of the opportunity thus offered for their own children. To-day the children of our settlers go as a matter of course to the Japanese elementary school, but we must bear in mind that many of the men, Mr. Gonzales included, have married Japanese wives, and the children of such marriages are hardly distinguishable from Japanese.

After Japan's two victorious wars against China and Russia, the Bonins were just a place where national pride was likely to display itself too arrogantly, and missionaries who came to the islands could not fail here and there to be unfavourably impressed with the bearing of the people. But having said this, I gladly acknowledge that we have met with so much compensating friendliness that our stays on the island have always been pleasurable. By the Governor we have never been otherwise than courteously welcomed, and no obstacles of any kind have been put in the way of our missionary work.

The occasion of the opening of S. George’s Church on Sunday, October 17, 1909, was a memorable one. The church had been specially designed by Mr. Josiah Conder, F.R.I.B.A., of Tokyo, to whom our debt of gratitude was largely increased for undertaking, under necessarily difficult conditions, the work of its erection and its internal furnishing. It is a wooden structure on a solid concrete foundation, with a deeply thatched roof of cabbage palm. A rose window at the west end was appropriately the gift of the S. George’s Societies in Yokohama and Kobe. The other windows with their stained glass designs were the generous gift of the architect himself. On the Tuesday previous to the consecration of the Church by Bishop Cecil,[1] we incvited all the chief people in and around the little town to a reception in the Church frounds. The refreshments had been put in the hands of a caterer in Yokohama, and the party had to be a little accelerated for fear lest certain of the good things should spoil, and the ice for the ice-creams should melt away. The gathering was a most successful one, and a speech was made by the Governor, Mr. Ari Kotaro, to which the Bishop replied. Post cards with a picture of the Church were distributed to all the guests, and the master of the post-office kindly allowed them to be postmarked with the date.

There had been suggestion that the Church should receive the name of St. Nathanael or of St. Bartholomew, who has been generally identified with him, but there were not a few minor considerations which tended to confirm our eventual decision to commemorate the fact that the Bonins had once in the name of King George IV been claimed for England, by dedicating the first Church on the islands to England’s patron saint.