The foundations of Japan

"Some revolutionising of Japanese farming is necessary, in combined threshing, for instance," the expert who had opened our discussion said. "This combined threshing is now seen in several districts, and combined threshing will be extended. But there is the objection to the threshing machine that it breaks the straw and thus spoils it for farmers' secondary industries. It should not be impossible to invent some way of avoiding this, but the threshing machine is also too heavy for narrow roads between paddies. It is difficult to deliver the crops to the machine in sufficient bulk. Necessity may show us ways, but small threshing machines are not so economical. Of course we must have much more co-operative buying of rural requirements, and certainly there is room in some places for the Western scythe made smaller, but our people, as you have seen, are dexterous with their extremely sharp, short sickle, and fodder is often cut on rather difficult slopes, from which it is not easy to descend loaded, with a scythe. Some foreigners who speak so positively about machinery for paddies, and for, I suppose, the sloping uplands to which our arable farming is relegated, do not really grasp the physical conditions of our agriculture. And they are always forgetting the warm dankness of our climate. They forget, too, that implements for hand use are more efficient than machinery, and, if labour be cheap, more economical. They forget above all that we are of necessity a small-holdings country."

Is it such a bad thing to be a small-holdings country? Does the rural life of countries which are pre-eminently small-holding, like Denmark and Holland, compare so unfavourably with that of England? I wonder how much money has been sunk—most of it lost—during the past quarter of a century in attempts to increase small holdings in England.

"Because we have much remote, wild, uncultivated land," the speaker I have interrupted continued, "that is not to say that most of it, often at a high elevation, or sloping, or poor in quality, as well as remote, can be profitably broken up for paddies. Much of this land can be and ought to be utilised in one fashion or another, but we have found some experiments in this direction unprofitable, even when rice was dear. But it may be said, Why break up this wild land into paddies? Why not have nice grassy slopes for cattle as in Switzerland? But our experts have tried in vain to get grass established. The heavy rains and the heat enable the bamboo grass to overcome the new fodder grass we have sown. The first year the fodder grass grows nicely, but the second year the bamboo grass conquers. In Hokkaido and Saghalien we are conquering bamboo grass with fodder grass. The advice to go in largely for fruit ignores the fact of our steamy damp climate, which encourages sappy growth, disease and those insects which are so numerous in Japan. We cannot do much more than grow for home consumption."

"The advice to draw the cultivation of our small farms under group control has not always been profitable when followed by landlords," one who had not yet spoken remarked. "They have not always made more when they farmed themselves than when they let their land. All the world over, land workers do better for themselves than for others. Proposals further to capitalise farming which, with a rural exodus already going on, would have the effect of driving people off the land who are employed on it healthily and with benefit to the social organism, do not seem to offer a more satisfactory situation for Japan. No country has shown itself less afraid of business combination than Japan, and the world owes as much to industry as to agriculture, and I am not in the least afraid of machinery and capital; but production is not our final aim. Production is to serve us; we are not to serve production. If people can live in self-respect on the land they are better off in many ways than if they are engaged in industry in some of its modern developments."

"The world is also better off," my interpreter in his notes records me as saying when I was pressed to state my opinion. "The day will come when the uselessness and waste of a certain proportion of industry and commerce will be realised, when the saving power of an export and import trade in unnecessary things will be questioned and when the cultivator of the ground will be restored to the place in social precedence he held in Old Japan. With him will rank the other real producers in art, literature and science, industry and commerce. The industrialisation of the West and its capitalistic system have not been so perfectly successful in their social results for it to be certain that Japan should be hurried more quickly in the industrial and capitalistic direction than she is travelling already. ^[292] If she takes time over her development, the final results may be better for her and for the world. I have not noticed that Japanese rural people who have departed from a simple way of life through the acquirement of many farms or the receipt of factory dividends have become worthier. On the question of the alleged over-population of rural Japan, one Japanese investigator has suggested to me that as many as 20 per cent. could be advantageously spared from agricultural labour. But he was not himself an agriculturist or an ex-agriculturist. He was not even a rural resident. Further, he conceived his 20 per cent. as entering rural rather than urban industry.

"A great deal of afforestation and better use of a large proportion of forest land, much more co-operation for borrowing and buying, improved implements where improved implements can be profitably used, animal and mechanical power where they can be employed to advantage, paddy adjustment to the limit of the practical, more intelligent manuring, a wider use of better seeds, ^[293] the bringing in of new land which is capable of yielding a profit when an adequate expenditure is made upon it, a mental and physical education which is ever improving—all these, joined to better ways of life generally, are obvious avenues of improvement, in Northern Japan particularly, not to speak of Hokkaido. ^[294] But it is not so much the details of improvement that seem urgently to need attention. It is the general principles. I have been assured again and again by prefectural governors and agricultural experts—and in talking to a foreigner they would hardly be likely to exaggerate—that considered plans for the prevention of disastrous floods, for the breaking up of new land, for the provision of loans and for the development of public intelligence and well-being were hindered in their areas by lack of money alone. The degree to which rural improvements, with which the best interests of Japan now and in the future are bound up, may have been arrested and may still be arrested by erroneous conceptions of national progress and of the ends to which public energy and public funds ^[295] may be wisely devoted is a matter for patriotic reflection. ^[296] No impression I have gained in Japan is sharper than an impression of ardent patriotism. For good or ill, patriotism is the outstanding Japanese virtue. What some patriots here and elsewhere do not seem to realise, however, is what a quiet, homely, everyday thing true patriotism is. The Japanese, with so many talents, so many natural and fortuitous advantages, and with opportunities, such as no other nation has enjoyed, of being able to profit by the social, economic and international experience of States that have bought their experience dearly and have much to rue, cannot fairly expect to be lightly judged by contemporaries or by history. If the course taken by Japan towards national greatness is at times uncertain, it is due no doubt to the fascinations of many will-o'-the-wisps. There can be one basis only for the enlightened judgment of the world on the Japanese people: the degree to which they are able to distinguish the true from the mediocre and the resolution and common-sense with which they take their own way."

"Our rural problems," a sober-minded young professor added, after one of those pauses which are usual in conversations in Japan, "is not a technical problem, not even an economic problem. It is, as you have realised, a sociological problem. It is bound up with the mental attitude of our people—and with the mental attitude of the whole world."

APPENDICES

 
THE INCOME OF A MINISTER OF STATE FROM THE LAND[I]. The speaker began by inheriting 3 chō (7½ acres). He farmed a chō of rice field and about a third of a chō of dry land. With rent from the part he let, with gains from the part he farmed and with interest on 2,000 yen spare capital, he had at end of the year a balance of 370 yen. With the money gained from year to year more and more land was bought. At the time of his talk with me he owned 8 chō. His net income, after deducting cost of living, was 1,200 yen (including 500 yen from the land that was let). In the future, when he farmed 7 chō (15½ acres), he believed that his balance would be 4,500 yen, which is the salary of a Governor! Or was, until the rise in prices when Governors' salaries were raised about another 1,000 yen, with an additional allowance of from 600 to 400 yen in the case of some prefectures. See also Appendix III.

 
"GETA" [II]. The geta is a flat piece of hard wood, about the length of the foot but a little wider, with two stumpy pieces fastened transversely below it. The foot maintains an uncertain and, in the case of a novice whose big toe has not been accustomed to separation from its fellows, a painful hold by means of a toe strap of thick rope or cotton. To persons unused from childhood to the special toe grip and scuffle of the geta, it seems odd to associate with this difficult clattering footgear the idea of "luxury." But no pains are spared by the geta makers in choosing fine woods and pretty cords.

 
BUDGETS OF LARGE PROPERTY OWNERS [III]. Two landlords, A and B, kindly allowed me to look into their budgets:

A

B

owns 62 chō 4 tan and receives in rent 623 koku 7 to. Members of family, 11; servants, 8.

 
THE "BENJO" [IV]. I never noticed a case in which earth was thrown into the domestic closet tub according to Dr. Poore's system. I have come across attempts to use deodorisers, but the application of a germicide is inhibited because of the injury which would be caused to the crops. Farmers are chary about removing night soil which has been treated even with a deodoriser. I ventured to suggest more than once that Japanese science should be equal to evolving a deodoriser to which the farmer, who in Japan seems to be so easily directed, could have no objection. The drawback to using Dr. Poore's system is that the added earth would greatly increase the weight of the substance to be removed. There would be the same objection to the use of hibachi ash (charcoal ash), but there is not enough produced to have any sensible effect. The truth is that there is no lively interest in the question of getting rid of the stink for everyone has become accustomed to it. The odour from the benjo—the politer word is habakari—which is always indoors, though at the end of the engawa (verandah), often penetrates the house. (Engawa [edge or border] is the passage which faces to the open; roka is a passage inside a house between two rooms or sometimes a bridgelike passage in the open, connecting two separate buildings or parts of a house.) Emptying day is particularly trying. This much must be said, however, that the farmers' tubs are washed, scrubbed and sunned after every journey and have close-fitting lids. And primitive though the benjo is, it is scrupulously clean. Also, if it is always more or less smelly, it is contrived on sound hygienic principles. There is no seat requiring an unnatural position. The user squats over an opening in the floor about 2 ft. long by 6 ins. wide. This opening is encased by a simple porcelain fitting with a hood at the end facing the user. The top of the tub is some distance below the floor. In peasants' houses there is no porcelain fitting. Manure is so valuable in Japan that farmers whose land adjoins the road often build a benjo for the use of passers-by. Although the traveller in Japan has much to endure from the unpleasant odour due to the thrifty utilisation of excreta, the Japanese deserve credit for the fact that their countryside is never fouled in the disgusting fashion which proves many of our rural folk to be behind the primitive standard of civilisation set up in Deuteronomy (chap, xxiii. 13). The Western rural sociologist is not inclined to criticise the sanitary methods of Japan. He is too conscious of the neglect in the West to study thoroughly the grave question of sewage disposal in relation to the needs of our crops and the cost of nitrogenous fertilisers. See also Appendix XX.

 
AGRICULTURAL SCHOOLS [V]. In Mr. Yamasaki's school there was dormitory accommodation for 200 youths, some 40 lived in teachers' houses, another 15 were in lodgings, and 45 came daily from their parents' homes. Lads were admitted from 14 to 16 and the course was for 3 years. The students worked 30 hours weekly indoors and the rest of their time outside. Upper and lower grade agricultural schools number 280 with 23,000 students. In addition there are 7,908 agricultural continuation schools with more than 430,000 pupils. The ratio of illiteracy in Japan for men of conscription age (that is, excluding old people and young people), which had been over 5 per cent. up to 1911, was reported to be only 2 per cent. in 1917.

 
CRIME [VI]. In 1916 the chief offences in Japan were:

 
PROSTITUTES [VII]. The chief of police was good enough to let me have a copy of the form to be filled up by girls desiring to enter the houses in the prefecture. It is under nine heads: 1. The reason for adopting the profession. 2. Age. 3. Permission of head of household. If permission is not forthcoming, reason why. 4. If a minor, proof of permission. 5. House at which the girl is going to "work." 6. Home address. 7. Former means of getting a living. 8. Whether prostitute before. If so, particulars. 9. Other details.

When I was in Japan there were reputed to be about 50,000 joro (prostitutes), about half that number of geisha and about 35,000 "waitresses."

 
PHILANTHROPIC AGENCIES [VIII]. In 1917 the number of paupers, tramps and foundlings relieved by the State did not exceed 10,000. The number of institutions was 730 (of which 40 were run by foreigners), with the expenditure of about 5½ million yen.

 
CHANGES IN RURAL STATUS [IX]. It seemed that during 47 years 18 tenants had become peasant proprietors, 14 peasant proprietors had become landowners (that is men who make their living by letting land rather than by working it), 8 tenants had stepped straightway into the position of landowners, 7 landowners had fallen to the grade of peasant proprietors and 7 more to that of tenants, while 114 householders had changed their callings or had gone to Hokkaido.

 
HOURS OF WORK PER DAY [X]. One of these villages showed that during January and February it worked 6 hours, during March and April 8 hours, from May to August 12½ hours, during September and October 9½ hours, and during November and December 9 hours. There was a further record of labour at night. In January and February it worked from 6:30 p.m. to 10 p.m., during March and April and September and October from 8 p.m. to 10 p.m. and in November and December from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. As in the period from May to August inclusive the day working hours were from 5 a.m. to 7:30 p.m., there then was no night labour.

 
DILIGENT PEOPLE AND OTHERS [XI]. The adults of the village were classified as follows: Diligent people, men 294, women 260; average workers, men 270, women 236; other people, men 242, women 191. One supposes that, in considering the women's activities, all that was estimated was the number of hours spent in agricultural work or in remunerative employment in the evening.

 
FARM AREAS AND DAYS WORKED IN THE YEAR [XII]. The information concerned three typical peasant proprietors, A, B and C, living in the same county. The areas of their land are given in tan:
 

Next we are told the number of days that not only A, B and C but their wives and their parents worked and did not work during the year:
 

 
It will be seen that men only were ill! [See next page.]

For average of hours worked elsewhere, see page 232 and page 237.

 
FARMERS' EARNINGS AND SPENDINGS [XIII]. If the reader should feel that the following details are lacking in comprehensiveness or definiteness, he should understand that reports of a national and authoritative character on the economic condition of the farmer were not available. There existed certain reports of the Ministry of Agriculture, but they were subjected to criticism. The National Agricultural Association had set on foot an elaborate enquiry as to the condition of the "middle farmer," but it was suggested that too much reliance was placed on arithmetical calculations and too little on known facts. I have had to rely, therefore, on official and private investigations made in various prefectures and villages, and I give a selection for what they are worth. Of the general condition of the agricultural population the reader is offered the impressions recorded in my different Chapters.

Incomes And Expenditures Of Peasant Proprietors.—

The incomes and expenditures of the three households referred to in Appendix XII were:

Household Expenditures.—The household expenditures of the three families were, in yen:

It will be observed that the expenditure of B under the heading of furniture, 160 yen, is out of all proportion with the expenditures of A and C, 10 yen and 1 yen respectively. This is due to the fact that B had to provide a bride's chest for a daughter.

A balance sheet given me by a peasant proprietor in Aichi (5tan of two-crop paddy and 5 tan of upland) showed a balance in hand of 27 yen.

An agricultural expert said to me, "The peasant proprietors are the backbone of the country, but the condition of the backbone is not good. The peasant proprietors can make ends meet only by secondary employments." The expert showed me average figures for 18 farmers for 1891, 1900 and 1909. The average land of these men was a little over a chō of paddy and 5 tan of upland and some woodland. They had spent 39, 63 and 86 yen on artificial manures as against 100, 153 and 204 yen on food. The balance at the end of the year for the three years respectively was 27, 40 and 29 yen. "The figures reflect the general condition," I was told.

Incomes and Expenditures of Tenants.—I may also note the circumstances of the largest and of the smallest tenant in an Aichi village I visited. The largest tenant family showed a balance in hand, 93 yen; the smallest tenant, 23 yen.

The accounts of 16 tenants for 1891 showed an average sum of 3 yen in hand at the end of the year, for 1900 a loss of 5 yen and for 1909 a gain of 1 yen. These men had an average of 9 tan of paddy and 2 tan of upland. The man who gave me the data said that in the north-east of Japan "the condition of the tenants is miserable—eating almost cattle food." The only bright spot for tenants was that, as compared with peasant proprietors, they were free to change their holdings and even their business.

Incomes of Tenants and Peasant Proprietors (Shidzuoka).—One tenant, who pays 159 yen in rent and taxes, shows a total income of 374 yen and an expenditure of 538 yen, with a net loss of 164 yen. "Farmers of this class," notes the local expert on the memorandum he gave me, "are becoming poorer every year." This tenant spent 2 yen on medicine and 5 yen on tobacco. ("Nothing else for enjoyment," pencils the expert.) In addition to parents, a man, a woman and a girl of the family worked. Food cost 321 yen (cost of fish and meat, 4½ yen) and clothing 34 yen.

In a "model village," where "the farmers are always diligent," a small tenant's income was 508 yen and expenditure 527 yen; loss, 19 yen. Clothes cost 95 yen and food 190 yen. (Cost of fish and meat, 4¾ yen.) There was an expenditure on medicine of 1½ yen and on tobacco and saké ("only enjoyment") 10 yen.

Twenty per cent, of the farmers, I was told, "lead a middle-class life and occupy a somewhat rational area of land." The budgets often of these men, who own their own land, show a balance of 85 yen. "If they were tenants they would not be in such a good condition." "We think the farmer ought to have 2 chō."

Budgets of Farmers on the Land of the Homma Clan, Yamagata (page 186).—A tenant had 3 chō of paddy and a small piece of vegetable land. There lived with him his wife, two sons and the widow and child of the eldest son. After paying his rent he had 30 koku of rice left. The cost of production and taxes, 100 yen or a little more, had to come out of that. This tenant had a debt of 250 yen.

A sturdy wagoner with a sturdy horse lived with his wife and three children and his old mother. He hired 1 chō for 28 koku of rice and his crop was 40 koku. He spent 30 yen on manure and 4 yen went in taxes.

A middle-grade farmer owned a house and a little more than 1 chō and rented 3 chō of paddy and a patch for vegetables. His rent was about 38 koku. He spent 100 yen on manure and 128 yen for taxes, temple dues and regulation of the paddy. He employed at 2½ koku a man who lived with the family, also temporary labour for 48 days. His crop might be 100 koku or more. He had no debt.

A third man was above the middle grade of farmer. His taxes were 240 yen and his manure bill 130 yen. His payment for paddy-field regulation, to continue for ten years, was 60 yen. He had three labourers and he also hired extra labour for 100 days. He had three unmarried sons of 40, 29 and 25. There were 260 yen of pensions in respect of the war service of one son and the death of another.

Income of Peasant Proprietors (Hokkaido).—The following statistics for the whole of Hokkaido are based on the experience of peasant proprietors. The 2½ chō men are rice farmers—rice farming means farming with rice as the principal crop. The 5-chō men are engaged in mixed farming:

It will be seen that mixed farming is the more profitable.

Income of Tenants (Hokkaido).—Professor Takaoka was kind enough to give me the following summaries of balance sheets of tenants of college lands in different parts of Hokkaido in 1915. (In all cases the accounts have been debited with wages for the farmer's family.)

Five chō. Income, 447 yen; net return, 37 yen. (Rye, wheat, oats, corn, soy, potatoes, grass, flax, buckwheat and rape. One horse and a few hens.)

Five chō. Income, 763 yen; net return, 58 yen. (Rye, wheat, oats, rape, soy, potatoes, corn, grass, flax and onions. Three cows, one horse.)

Ten chō. Income, 1,015 yen; net return, 122 yen. (Same crops with two cows and one horse and some hired labour.)

Five chō (peppermint on 3 chō). Income, 882 yen; net return, 93 yen.

Three chō. Income, 1,195 yen; net return, 332 yen. (Vegetable farming. 206 yen paid for labour.)

Thirty chō. Income, 1,979 yen; net return, 61 yen. (Mixed farming; 632 yen paid for labour.)

Model 5-chō farm without rice. Made 604 yen, and 107 yen net return, farm capital being 1,487 yen. (208 yen allowed for labour, interest 128 yen, amortisation 27 yen, and taxes 13 yen.)

Milk farmer, 12 chō and 90 cattle. Income, 12,280 yen; net return of 3,641 yen.

2,120 chō (1,235 forest, 402 pasture, 110 artificial grass and 42 crops; 111 cattle). Income, 66,205 yen; net return, 1,011 yen. (Milk and meat farming.)

Average income and expenditure of 200 tenants of University land whose budgets Professor Morimoto (see Chapter XXXIV) investigated:

The returns of capital yielded the following averages:

 
VALUE OF NEW PADDY [XIV]. More delicious rice could be got, I was told, from well-fertilised barren land than from naturally fertile land. The first year the new paddy yielded per tan an average of 1.2 koku, the second 1.6, the third 2, and this fourth year the yield would have been 2.3 had it not been for damage by storm.

 
AREAS AND CROPS OF DIFFERENT KINDS OF RICE [XV]. In 1919 there was grown of paddy rice 2,984,750 chō (2,729,639 ordinary, 255,111 glutinous) and of upland rice 141,365 chō. Total, 3,126,115 chō. The yield (husked, uncleaned) was of paddy 61,343,403 koku (ordinary, 56,438,005; glutinous, 4,905,398); of upland, 1,839,312. Total, 63,182,715 koku; value, 2,352,145,519 yen.

In 1877 the area is reputed to have been 1,940,000 chō with a yield of 24,450,000 koku and in 1882 2,580,000 chō with a yield of 30,692,000 koku. The average of the five years 1910-14 was 3,033,000 chō with a yield of 57,006,000 koku; of the five years 1915-19, 3,081,867 chō with a yield of 94,817,431 koku.

In a prefecture in south-western Japan I found that 2 koku 5 to (or 2½ koku, there being 10 to in a koku) per tan was common and that from 3 koku to 3 koku 5 to was reached. "A good yield for 1 tan," says an eminent authority, "is 3 koku, or on the best fields even 4 koku." The average yield in koku per tan for the whole country has been (paddy-field rice only): 1882, 1.19; 1894-8, 1.38; 1899-1903, 1.44; 1904-8, 1.57; 1909-13, 1.63; 1914-18, 1.86; 1919, 1.99; 1920, 2.05 (ordinary, 2.06; glutinous, 1.92). Upland rice in 1920, 1.30 as against 1.02 in 1909. All these figures are for husked, uncleaned rice.

 
BARLEY AND WHEAT CROPS [XVI]. The following table (average of five years, 1913-17) shows the yields per tan of the two sorts of barley and of wheat and the average yield all three together in comparison with the rice yield (all quantities husked):

Naked barley is grown as an upland crop, as are ordinary barley and wheat; but it is more largely grown as a second crop in paddies than either barley or wheat. The barleys are chiefly used for human food with or without rice. Wheat is eaten in macaroni, sweetstuffs and bread. It is also used in considerable quantities in the manufacture of soy, the chief ingredient of which is beans. There was imported in the year 1920 wheat to the value of 28½ million yen, and flour to the value of 3¼ million yen. Macaroni is largely made of buckwheat as well as of wheat. The other grain crop is millet, which is eaten by the poorest farmers. In 1918, as against 60 million koku of rice, there were grown 5 million koku of beans and peas. The crops of barley were 17 million, of wheat 6 million, of millet 3¼ million, and of buckwheat ¾ million. More than a million kwan of sweet potatoes were produced and nearly half a million of "Irish" potatoes. (The figures for barley and wheat are for 1919.)

 
COST AND PRICE OF RICE [XVII]. The annual figures (from Aichi) for the years 1894 to 1915 (page 384) show the cost of producing a tan of rice, that is the summer crop. The amounts per tan are calculated on the basis of the expenses of a tenant who is cropping 8 tan. The totals for the winter crop are also given. The figures which appear on the opposite page were described to me by the farmer concerned as "compiled on the basis of investigations by the chairman of the village agricultural association and by its managers and still further proved and quite trustworthy." It will be seen that the value of the winter crop is low; a secondary employment is usually a better thing for the farmer. In one or two places there is a sen or so difference in the additions which may have been made by the transcriber from the Japanese original. The difference in amounts of rent is due to difference in fields rented and also to reduction allowed owing to bad crops. The difference in the income from crops is usually due to destruction by hail or wind.

COST AND PRICE OF RICE (see page 383)

This table may be supplemented by the following prices for (unpolished) rice in Tokyo: 1916, 13 yen 76 sen; 1917, 19 yen 84 sen; 1918, 32 yen 75 sen; 1919, 45 yen 99 sen.

In the spring of 1921 the League for the Prevention of Sales of Rice ed that rice should not be sold under 35 yen per koku. The price passed the figure of 35 yen in July 1918. At the time the League's proposals were made the Ministry of Agriculture was quoted as stating that the cost of producing rice "is now 40 yen per koku." The accuracy of the figures on which the Ministry's estimates are made is frequently called in question.

 
CULTIVATED AREA IN JAPAN AND GREAT BRITAIN [XVIII]. In 1919 there were in Great Britain (England, Scotland, Wales, the Isle of Man and the Channel Islands) 15,808,000 acres of arable, 15,910,000 of pasture and 13,647,000 of grazing, or a total of 45,365,000 acres out of a total area of 56,990,000 acres. In Japan there were 15,044,202 acres of paddy and of cultivated upland, 46,958,000 acres of forest and 8,773,000 acres of waste; total 70,775,000, out of 90,880,000 acres. The area of the United Kingdom without Ireland is 56,990,080 acres; that of Japan Proper, 75,988,378 acres. The population of the United Kingdom without Ireland (in 1911) was 41,126,000, and of Japan Proper (in 1911) 51,435,000. (See also Appendix XXX.)

 
HUMAN LABOUR v. CATTLE POWER [XIX]. The Department of Agriculture stated in 1921 that "from 200 to 300, sometimes more than 500 days' labour [of one man] are required to grow a chō of rice." The area of paddy which is ploughed by horse or cattle power was 61.89 per cent. The area of upland so cultivated was only 38.97 per cent. The "average year's work of the ordinary adult farmer" was put at 200 days. The Department estimated an average man's day's work (10 hours) as follows:

But I have never seen a scythe in use in Japan!

 
MANURE [XX]. The value of the manure used in Japan in a year has been estimated at about 220 million yen, but for the three years ending 1916 it averaged 241 millions, as follows:

Dr. Sato puts the artificial manure used per tan at a sixth of that of Belgium and a quarter of that of Great Britain and Germany. See also Appendix IV. An agricultural expert once said to me, "Japanese farmer he keep five head of stock, his own family."

 
SOWING OF RICE [XXI]. A common seeding time is the eighty-eighth day of the year according to the old calendar, say May 1 or 2. Transplanting is very usual at the end of May or early in June. In Kagawa, Shikoku, I found that rice was sown at the beginning of May or even at the end of April, the transplanting being done in mid-June. The harvest was obtained 10 per cent. about September 10th, 30 per cent. in October and 60 per cent. about the beginning of November. The winter crop of naked barley was sown in the first quarter of December and was harvested late in May or early in June, so there was just time for the rice planting in mid-June.

In Kochi the first crop is sown about March 15, the seedlings are put out in mid-May and the harvest is ready about August 10. The second crop, which has been sown in June, is ready with its seedlings from August 13 to August 15, and the harvest arrives about November 1 and 2. The first crop may yield about 3 koku, the second 1½ koku.

A good deal depends in raising a big crop on a good seed bed. This is got by reducing the quantity of seed used and by applying manure wisely. Whereas formerly as much as from 5 to 7 go of seed was sown per tsubo, the biggest crops are now got from 1 go.

The Japanese names of the most widely grown varieties are Shinriki, Aikoku, Omachi, Chikusei and Sekitori. At an experiment station I copied the names of the varieties on exhibition there: Banzai, Patriotism, Japanese Embroidery, Good-looking, Early Power of God, Bamboo, Small Embroidery, Power of God, Mutual Virtue, Yellow Bamboo, Late White, Power of God (glutinous), Silver Rice Cake and Eternal Rice Field.

There are several thousand chō in the vicinity of Tokyo where, owing to the low temperature of the marshy soil, the seed is sown direct in the paddies, not broadcast but at regular intervals and in thrice or four times the normal quantities.

 
RATE OF PLANTING [XXII]. I have been told that an adult who has the seedlings brought to his or her hand can stick in a thousand an hour. The early varieties may be set in clumps of seven or eight plants; middle-growth sorts may contain from five to six; the latest kind may include only three or four. The number of clumps planted may be 42 per tsubo, which, as a tsubo is nearly four square yards, is about ten per square yard. The clumps are put in their places by being pushed into the mud. A straight line is kept by means of a rope. The success of the crop depends in no small degree on skilful planting.

 
HOW MUCH RICE DOES A JAPANESE EAT? [XXIII]. The daily consumption of rice per head, counting young and old, is nearly 3 go. (A go is roughly a third of a pint.) A sturdy labourer will consume at least 5 go in a day, and sometimes 7 or even 10 go. The allowance for soldiers is 6 go. These quantities represent the rice uncooked. In recent years more and more rice has been eaten by those who formerly ate barley or mainly barley. And some who once ate a good deal of millet and hiye are now eating a certain amount of rice. The average annual consumption per head of the Japanese population (Korea and Formosa excluded from the calculation) was: 1888-93, 948 go; 1908-13, 1,037 go; 1913-18, 1,050 go. The averages of 25 years (1888-1912) were: production, 42,756,584 koku; consumption, 44,410,725 koku; deficit, 1,984,970 koku; population, 45,140,094; per head, 0.980 koku. In 1921 the Department of Agriculture, estimating a population of 55,960,000 (see Appendix XXX) and an annual consumption per head of 1.1 koku per year, put the national consumption for a year at about 61,550,000 koku. See also Appendix XXVI.

 
IMPORTED AND EXPORTED RICE [XXIV]. "Good rice" is imported from Korea and Formosa. The objection is to "Rangoon" rice. But most of the imported rice does not come from Rangoon but from Saigon. The figures for 1919 were in yen: China, 283,011; British India, 1,012,979; Kwantung, 15,053,977; Siam, 29,367,430; French Indo-China, 116,313,525; other countries, 39,918; total, 162,070,840. The exports in 1919 were in yen: China, 1,354; Australia, 6,570; Asiatic Russia, 165,463; Kwantung, 213,633; British America, 356,600; United States, 476,756; Hawaii, 3,046,598; other countries, 60,707—all obviously in the main for Japanese consumption. The total imports and exports were in koku and yen over a period of years:

The twenty-five years' average (1888-1912) of excess of import over export was 1,339,493 koku. See also Appendix XXVIII.