REFLECTIONS IN HOKKAIDO

The prices given in the text (but not in the footnotes and Appendix) were recorded before the War inflation began. The War was followed by a severe financial crisis. Professor Nasu wrote to me during the summer of 1921:

"You are very wise to leave the figures as they stood. It is useless to try to correct them, because they are still changing. The price of rice, which did not exceed 15 yen per koku when you were making your research work, exceeded 50 yen in 1919, and is now struggling to maintain the price of 25 yen. Taking at 100 the figures for the years 1915 or 1916—fortunately there is not much difference between these two years—the prices of six leading commodities reached in 1919 an average of about 250. After 1919 the prices of some commodities went still higher, but mostly they did not change very much; on the other hand, recently the prices of many commodities—among them rice and raw silk especially—have been coming down and this downward movement is gradually extending to all other commodities. From these considerations I deduce that the index number of general commodities may be safely taken as 200 when your book appears. The reader of your book has simply to double the figures given by you—that is the figures of 1915 and 1916—in order to get a rough estimate of present prices."

Where exact statements of area and yield are necessary, as in the study of the intense agriculture of Japan, local measures are preferable to our equivalents in awkward fractions. Further, the measures used in this book are easily remembered, and no serious study of Japanese agriculture on the spot is possible without remembering them. While, however, Japanese currency, weights and measures have been uniformly used, equivalents have been supplied at every place in the book where their omission might be reasonably considered to interfere with easy reading. The following tables are restricted to currency, weights and measures mentioned in the book.

MONEY [^[9]]

Yen = roughly (at the time notes for the book were made) a florin or half a dollar = 100 sen.

Sen = a farthing or half cent = 10 rin.

LONG

Ri = roughly 2½ miles.

Shaku (roughly 1 ft.) = 11.93 in.

Ri are converted into miles by being multiplied by 2.44.

SQUARE

Ri (roughly 6 sq. miles) = 5.955 sq. miles.

Chō (sometimes written, Chōbu) (roughly 2½ acres) = 2.450 acres = 10 tan = 3,000 tsubo.

Tan or Tambu (roughly ¼ acre) = 0.245 acres = 10 se = 300 bu.

Bu or Tsubo (roughly 4 sq. yds.) = 3.953 sq. yds.

An acre is about 4 tan 10 bu or 1,200 bu or tsubo (an urban measure). The size of rooms is reckoned by the number of mats, which are ordinarily 6 shaku in length and 3 shaku in breadth.

CAPACITY

Koku (roughly 40 gals. or 5 bush.) = 39.703 gals, or 4.960 bush. = 10 tō. According to American measurements, there are 47.653 gals, (liquid) and 5.119 bush, (dry) in a koku. A koku of rice is 313½ lbs. (British).

A koku of imported rice is, however, 330½ lbs. The following koku must also be noted: ordinary barley, 231 lbs.; naked barley 301.1 lbs.; wheat 288.7 lbs.; proso millet, 247.9 lbs.; foxtail millet, 280.9 lbs.; barnyard millet, 165.2 lbs.; brickaheat, 247.9 lbs.; maize, 289.2 lbs.; soya beans, 286.5 lbs.; azuki (red) beans, 319.9 lbs.; horse beans, 266.6 lbs.; peas, 306.5 lbs.

Hyō (roughly 2 bush.) = 1.985 bush. = 4 tō = bale of rice.

Tō (roughly 4 gals, or ½ bush.) = 3.970 gals, or .496 bush, or 1.985 pecks = 10 shō.

Shō (roughly 1½ qts.) = 1.588 qts. or 0.198 pecks or 108½ cub. in. = 10 gō.

Gō (roughly ⅓ pint) =.3176 pints or 0.019 pecks.

Rice is not bagged but baled, and a bale is 4 tō or 1 hyō.

WEIGHT

Kwan or kwamme (roughly 8¼ lbs.) = 8.267 lbs. av. or 10.047 lbs. troy = 1,000 momme.

Kin (catty) = 1.322 lbs. av. or 1.607 troy = 160 momme.

Momme = 2.116 drams or 2.411 dwts. According to American measurements a momme is 0.132 oz. av. and 0.120 oz. troy.

Hyakkin (picul) = 100 kin = 132.277 lbs.

A stone is 1.693, a cwt. is 13.547, and a ton 270.950 kwamme.

LOCAL ADMINISTRATIVE TERMS

Ken.—Prefecture. There are forty-three ken and Hokkaido. Ken and fu are made up of the former sixty-six provinces. Sometimes the name of the ken and the name of the capital of the ken are the same: example, Shidzuoka-ken, capital Shidzuoka.

Fu.—Three prefectures are municipal prefectures and are called not ken but fu. They are Tokyo-fu, Kyoto-fu and Osaka-fu.

Gun (kōri).—Division of a prefecture, a county or rural district. There are 636 gun. Gun are now being done away with.

Shi.—City. There are seventy-nine cities.

Cho.—A town or rather a district preponderatingly urban. There are 1,333 cho.

Machi.—Japanese name for the Chinese character cho.

Son.—A village or rather a district preponderatingly rural. There are 10,839 son.

Mura.—Japanese name for a Chinese character son.

A true idea of the Japanese village is obtained as soon as one mentally defines it as a commune. There may be a rural community called son or a municipal community called cho. The cho or son consists of a number of oaza, that is, big aza, which in turn consists of a number of ko-aza or small aza. A ko-aza may consist of twenty or thirty dwellings, that is, a hamlet, or it may be only one dwelling. It may be ten acres in extent or fifty. I found that the population of a particular municipality was 10,000 in seven big oaza comprising twenty-two ko-aza.

THE ROOM, OVERLOOKING THE PACIFIC, IN WHICH MUCH OF THIS BOOK WAS WRITTEN
The feet of the chair and table are fitted with wooden slats so as not to injure the tatami. Electricity as a matter of course!

THE MERCY OF BUDDHA
The worshippers in the front row lost relatives by a flood.
This is not the priest referred to in Chapter I.