Each man owns his own little farm, which he tills in primitive fashion, growing rice, wheat, or beans, according to the soil or season. Almost no livestock is kept, and pastures are rarely seen. An average farm, supporting a family of six, has about three and a half acres.
A RICE FIELD.
The soya bean, which is much grown, really furnishes an industry in itself. It has many uses. Soy, the national sauce, is made from it, and also bean cheese. Recently an English chemist has discovered a method of producing artificial milk from it. Its oil is extracted and sold to foreign markets, rivalling the cottonseed oil, which is better known. The pulp remaining is used as fodder and fertilizer.
Rice is the favourite crop and is of such good quality that much of it is exported to India, whence a cheaper grade is imported in return for the use of the poorer classes. Instead of forming the national diet, as we are inclined to suppose, rice is really such a luxury that many people never eat it except in sickness or on feast-days.
For all the Japanese farmer is so independent, he is often miserably poor. An acre of rice may in good years produce an annual profit of a dollar and a half, but there is quite likely to be a deficit instead. When one considers that it takes the labour of seventeen men and nine women to cultivate two and a half acres of rice, this is not surprising. Vegetables do better than grain, and mulberry plantations for the raising of silkworms do best of all, but it has been figured that a hard-working man, with very likely a large family to support, does well if he clears a hundred and twenty dollars in the course of a year. As a result of this, most of the peasantry are in debt, and many of them are leaving their farms and going to the city, as they are doing in our own country.
Really more important than rice, of which we hear so much, is the sweet potato, of which we hear so little. The first one reached Japan some two hundred years ago as the gift of the King of the Loochoo Islands to the Lord of Satsuma. The latter prince was so pleased with the taste of it that he asked for seed-potatoes, and before long the Government commanded that the new vegetable should be grown throughout the country, since it could be raised even in famine years, when other crops failed. In Tokyo there are over a thousand sweet-potato shops, where one buys them halved or sliced or whole, all hot and nicely roasted, serving in cold weather to warm one's hands before delighting the inner man—or rather, child—for they are a delicacy much prized by children. There is no waste in their preparation, for not only are the peelings sold for horse-fodder, but the ashes in which they are roasted are used again around the charcoal in the hibachi!
The silkworm was introduced into Japan by a Chinese prince in 195 a. d., and a century later Chinese immigrants taught the people how to weave the new thread. To-day sericulture is largely carried on by the women and children of the farm, and is twice as productive as the rest of the crops. As in poultry-raising, however, the gains are not in proportion to the size of the plant, the smaller ones being the more successful.
The mining industries have been much slower to develop than most of the others, although they are of ancient origin. A great deal of metal—gold, silver and copper—was exported during the Middle Ages. It has been suggested that Columbus had the gold of Japan in view when he set out upon the voyage which resulted in the discovery of America.