3. The Japanese and the Earthquake

Once in far-away Japan there lived a rich man who owned a large ranch—not of alfalfa, or wheat, or other grain—but of rice. One afternoon he stood looking over his large fields of rice, saying, “What a rich man this great harvest makes me!” Suddenly he felt an earthquake and saw that the waves of the sea were running away from the land and rolling far out. He knew that it would only be a little while before the waves would return in a great flood, which would overflow the little strip of land along the seashore, in the valley below the high plain on which his ranch was situated, and all the people in the little village would be drowned. It was a holiday and the people in their merrymaking and fun and laughter had not noticed the earthquake. The rich man cried to his servants, “Bring torches! make haste! set fire to the rice!” Then he and his servants set on fire stack after stack of the rice. In a moment the flames and smoke rose high, the big bell from the village pealed the fire-signal, and all the boys and girls and men and women ran up the hill as fast as they could to see the fire, and to try to save the rice-crop of the rich man. When they saw him setting fire to his rice, they shouted, “Look, he is mad; he is setting fire to his rice.” “Look!” shouted the old man. They looked and saw the raging and surging waves of the sea come rolling in. They looked again a few moments later and saw nothing but the straw which had been the thatched roofs of their homes tossing on the waters and their whole village blotted out by the sea. “That is why I set fire to my rice,” said the old Japanese. “If I had not done that you would have all been drowned in those waves!” He stood among them almost as poor as any of them, but he had the consciousness that by the sacrifice of his fortune he had saved four hundred lives that day.—Adapted from “Gleanings in Buddha-fields,” by L. Hearn.