Yet, And This Seems A Little Confusing, There Are Between
Five And Seven Other Local, Provincial, And Municipal Taxes Which Can
Reasonably Be Applied To The Same Ends.
No one of these taxes exceeds a
half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per
cent.
In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the
better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are
those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it
looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on
their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than
they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of
their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar
complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there
is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the
damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule.
Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so
cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at
least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the
water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley - argument,
protest, and the breaking of heads.
The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead.
* * * * *
This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields
from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze
Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by. He has been
described again and again - his majesty, his aloofness, and every one of
his dimensions, the smoky little shrine within him, and the plumed hill
that makes the background to his throne. For that reason he remains, as
he remained from the beginning, beyond all hope of description - as it
might be, a visible god sitting in the garden of a world made new. They
sell photographs of him with tourists standing on his thumb nail, and,
apparently, any brute of any gender can scrawl his or its ignoble name
over the inside of the massive bronze plates that build him up. Think
for a moment of the indignity and the insult! Imagine the ancient,
orderly gardens with their clipped trees, shorn turf, and silent ponds
smoking in the mist that the hot sun soaks up after rain, and the
green-bronze image of the Teacher of the Law wavering there as it half
seems through incense clouds. The earth is all one censer, and myriads
of frogs are making the haze ring. It is too warm to do more than to sit
on a stone and watch the eyes that, having seen all things, see no
more - the down-dropped eyes, the forward droop of the head, and the
colossal simplicity of the folds of the robe over arm and knee.
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