Part 10 (1/2)

[63] For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.

[64] A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.

[65] The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed in Appendix XVII.

[66] See Appendix XVIII.

[67] In j.a.panese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a tract of land which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for the purposes of habitation. Sometimes it is called prairie, but this is not always correct as it is very often a barren waste, a tract of volcanic ash, or an area producing bamboo gra.s.s. Some of this land, however, could be cultivated after proper irrigation, etc. In this note, plains is employed in the ordinary acceptation of the word. Of such plains there are several. The plain in which Tokyo is situated is 82,000 acres in extent. The traveller from Kobe to Tokyo pa.s.ses through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka stand. It is said to feed 2-1/2 million people. Four other plains are reputed to feed 7-1/2 million.

[68] Rivers supply about 65 per cent. of the paddy water and reservoirs about 21 per cent. The remainder has to be got from other sources.

[69] An acreage of a _tan_ is aimed at, but it is frequently larger; it may even be 4 _tan_ (an acre). The cost ranges from about 8 yen to 50 yen per _tan_. The average increase in yield alter adjustment is about 15 per cent., to which must be added the yield of the new land obtained, say 3 per cent. of the area adjusted. The consent of half the owners is required for adjustment.

[70] Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid informed her that the house was unlucky because a certain necessary apartment faced the wrong point of the compa.s.s.

[71] In the whole of j.a.pan by 1919 two million and a half acres had been adjusted or were in course of adjustment.

[72] The rent is usually 57 per cent. of the rice harvest in the paddies and 44 per cent. (in cash or kind) of the crops on the non-paddy land. Any crop raised in the paddies between the harvesting of one rice crop and the planting out of the next belongs to the farmer. (All taxes and rates are paid by the landlord, and amount to from 30 to 33 per cent. of the rent.) The area under paddy and the area of upland under cultivation are almost equal.

[73] See Appendix XIX.

[74] See Appendix XX.

[75] In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.

[76] See Appendix XXI.

[77] See Appendix XXII.

[78] The harvest extends from mid-September in the north of j.a.pan to the end of October or beginning of November in the south. The harvest is taken early in the north for fear of frost.

[79] The ”210th day” (counted from the beginning of spring), when flowering commences, is so critical a period that the weather conditions during the twenty-four hours in every prefecture are reported to the Emperor.

CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE G.o.dS AND THE NATION

I thank whatever G.o.ds there be....--HENLEY

I

How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade realise that rice, in the course of the polis.h.i.+ng it receives from the farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk? A necessary part of the grain is lost. No wonder that sensible people in j.a.pan and the West demand the grey unpolished rice. In j.a.pan some enterprising person has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the rice grain that is rubbed off in the polis.h.i.+ng process. It does not look appetising. An easier thing would be to leave some of the coating on the rice. One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread:

”They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter. Thus they sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging eye, and the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live.”

Although, for economy's sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the j.a.panese people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner. If they have anything to eat between meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes--- to the foreigner's taste a loathly, half-cooked compost of rice flour or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid underdone m.u.f.fin. We in the West have bread at every meal as the j.a.panese have rice, but we eat our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and bread-and-b.u.t.ter; we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.

Among the covered lacquer dishes on the little table set before each kneeling breakfaster, luncher or diner in j.a.pan there is one which is empty. This is the rice bowl. When the meal begins--or in the case of an elaborate dinner at the rice course--the maid brings in a large covered wooden copper-bound or bra.s.s-bound tub or round lacquered box of hot rice. This rice she serves with a big wooden spoon, the only spoon ever seen at a j.a.panese meal. A man may have three helpings or four in a bowl about as big as a large breakfast cup. The etiquette is that, though other dishes may be pecked at, the rice in one's bowl must be finished. The usage on this point may have originated in the feeling that it was almost impious to waste the staple food of the country. It is not difficult to pick up the last rice grains with the wooden _has.h.i.+_ (chopsticks), for the rice is skilfully boiled. (Soft rice is served to invalids only.) But when the bowl is almost empty the custom is to pour into it weak tea or hot water, and then to drink this, so getting rid of the odd grains. It is through omitting to drink in this way that foreigners get indigestion when at a j.a.panese meal they eat a lot of rice.

At first it is not easy for the foreigner to believe that people can come with appet.i.te to several bowls of plain rice three times a day.[80] But good rice does seem to have something of the property of oatmeal, the property of a continual tastiness. Further, the rice eater picks up now and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle which may have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The nutrition gained at a j.a.panese meal is largely in soups in which the bean preparations, _tofu_ and _miso_, and occasionally eggs, are used.

And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in j.a.pan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish--fresh, dried and salted, sh.e.l.l-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all sorts of ingenious treatment--is consumed by almost everybody.