As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths. Japan, which aims above all at being an exporting country, cannot attain her desire without receiving imports to pay for her exports. [[256]] The physiological argument for an animal industry is unconvincing. The Japanese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little fish and a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally ingenious variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and the Japanese have become accustomed to digest vegetable protein. [[257]] It might be suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[[258]] In Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to diminish the amount of meat consumed. There is also in the West an increasing sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in transportation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry were established in Japan there would certainly be a great deal of transportation by rail and steamer from the breeding to the rearing districts, and from these districts to the slaughtering centres. If the present advocacy of an animal industry for Japan should triumph over the reluctance to take animal life inculcated by Buddhism it is hardly likely to be regarded in the West as a forward step in the ethical evolution of the Japanese. [[259]]
I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who has made a special study of the food of the Japanese people, Professor Morimoto of the University. He said that he had no doubt that when the Japanese began to eat bread instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat as well as butter. With great kindness he placed at my disposal statistics which he afterwards expanded in a thesis for Johns Hopkins University. He had investigated the dietary of the families of 200 tenants of the University farms. Reduced to terms of men per day the result was:
| Sen. | |
| Rice (1.95 go) | 4.2 |
| Vegetables | 2.2 |
| (Naked) barley (3.45 go) | 3.3 |
| Fish | 1.0 |
| Miso | .7 |
| Pickles[[260]] | .6 |
| Sake | .08 |
| Shoyu (soy) | .03 |
| Sugar | .02 |
| —— | |
| 12.13 |
Or at Tokyo prices, 14.3 sen. On averaging, in terms of per man per day, the food and drink consumption of all Japan, Professor Morimoto found the result to be:
| Sen. | ||
| Grain | 6.60 | |
| Legumes | .39 | |
| Vegetables | 2.00 | |
| Fish and seaweeds | .54 | |
| Beef and veal | .10 } | |
| Other animal food | .03 } | |
| Chicken | .03 } | .33 |
| Eggs | .13 } | |
| Milk | .04 } | |
| Fruits | .40 | |
| Sugar | .53 | |
| Salt | .20 | |
| Tea | .10 | |
| Alcoholic liquor | 1.50 | |
| Tobacco | .45 | |
| —— | ||
| 13.04 | [[261]] |
The Professor compares with these totals the 34.4 sen and 39.3 sen per day which seem to represent the cost of the food of the rank and file in the navy and army, and three standards of diet issued by the official Bureau of Hygiene providing for expenditures of 32.1 sen, 33 sen and 44.4 sen respectively. (All the prices I have cited are dated 1915.) Beef and pork as well as fish are used in the army and navy. The navy also uses bread.
Professor Morimoto estimates that a Japanese may be fairly expected to consume only 80 per cent. of what a foreigner needs, for the average weight of Japanese is only 13 kwan 830 momme to the European's 17 kwan 20 momme.
My personal impression, which I give merely for what it is worth, for I have made no investigation of the subject, is that, though Japanese may thrive on meagre fare, they eat large quantities of food when their resources permit of indulgence. The common ailment seems to be "stomach ache." This may be due to eating at irregular hours, to an unbalanced dietary, to the eating of undercooked viands or to occasional over-eating, or to all of these causes.[[262]] Undoubtedly there is much room for dietetic reform.
Professor Morimoto had come to the conclusion "that there is under-feeding, largely due to a bad choice of foods, that the relation of the nutritive value of foods to their cost is insufficiently studied and that cooking can be improved." It is of course an old criticism of the Japanese table that food is either imperfectly cooked or prepared too much with a view to appearance. The Professor's finding was that the Japanese need the addition of meat and bread to their dietary. As far as meat is concerned he did not convince me. Let me quote him on the soy bean: "It is a remarkably good substitute for meat. It is very low in price but its nutritive value is very high. The essential element of miso, tofu and shoyu is soy bean." Bread is another matter. The Japanese Navy, presumably because it may find itself far from Japan, has accustomed its sailors to eat bread, and a case can certainly be made out for the general population not relying on rice as a grain food. But, as the large quantities of barley eaten show, there is no such reliance now. Morimoto urged that while there might be no difference in the nutritive value of wheat and rice, rice as usually eaten induced "abnormal distension of the stomach and poor nutrition." Again, wheat was a world crop, [[263]] whereas rice, owing to the Japanese objection to foreign rice, was a local crop. If the Japanese were users of wheat as well as of rice they would not have to pay so much for food, when, on the failure of the rice crop in considerable parts of Japan, the price of rice was high. "The consumption is about 10 million bushels more than the production." Further, rice was more costly in cultivation than wheat, and its production could not be increased so as to keep pace with the increase in population. The yield, which was 46 million koku in 1904, was only 50 millions in 1912; and 65 millions in 1927 seemed an excessive estimate. In 1912 the importation of rice was 2 million koku. But on all these points the reader should take note of the data on page 84 and in Appendices XXIV and XXV.
The Professor's concluding point against rice was that it was expensive to prepare. The washing of the rice in a succession of waters and the cleaning of the sticky pot in which it was cooked and of the equally sticky tub in which it was served took a great deal of time. Then in order to cook rice properly—and the Japanese have become connoisseurs—the exact proportion of water must be gauged. The supplies of rice to be cooked were so considerable that the name of the servant lass was "girl to boil the rice." But when bread was used instead of rice, said the Professor jubilantly, a baking twice a week would do. Why, an hour a day might be saved, which in twenty years would be 73,000 hours, or a whole year, and, reckoning women's labour as worth 5 sen an hour, that would be a saving of 565 yen!