PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER (TOKYO).
A century ago the farmer ate his rice at the gemmai stage, that is in its natural state, and there was no beri-beri. The "black saké" made from this gemmai rice is still used in Shinto ceremonies. In order to produce clear saké the rice was polished. Then well-to-do people out of daintiness had their table rice polished. Now polished rice is the common food. Half-polished rice may be prepared with two or three hundred blows of the mallet; fully polished or white rice may receive six, seven or eight hundred, or even it may be a thousand blows.
FOOTNOTES:
[ [59] Hata (upland field) is not to be confounded with hara (prairie, wilderness, moor, often erroneously translated, plain).
[ [60] Rice is grown in every prefecture. The largest total yields are in Niigata, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aichi, Yamagata, Ibariki and Chiba.
[ [61] See [Appendix XV].
[ [62] The average yield of the three kinds at Government experimental farms—the middle variety yields best and next comes the late variety—is about 2½ koku per tan or roughly (a koku being about 5 bushels and a tan about a quarter of an acre) about 45 bushels per acre. The average yield of ordinary rice in Japan in an ordinary year is 40¾ bushels. In the bumper year of 1920 the average yield was 41⅓ bushels. In the year 1916 (to which most of the figures in this book, apart from the Appendix and footnotes, in which the latest available figures are given, refer) there was produced 58¼ million koku of all kinds of rice, the value of which was 826½ million yen. The normal yield (average of 7 years, excluding the years of highest and lowest production) is 54½ million koku. See [Appendix XV].
[ [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].