| Square miles. | Population. | Density per square mile. | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nippon, Northern | 30,556 | 6,455,287 | 191 |
| Nippon, Central | 37,028 | 16,368,995 | 442 |
| Nippon, Western | 20,922 | 9,523,168 | 453 |
| Island of Shikoku | 7,113 | 2,929,639 | 412 |
| Island of Kiu-Siu | 17,037 | 6,524,024 | 384 |
| Hokkaido, or Yezo | 36,734 | 469,507 | 13 |
| 149,390 | 42,270,620 | 316 | |
| Formosa | 8,995 | 2,041,809 | 228 |
| 158,385 | 44,312,429 | 272 |
Even more remarkable than the population is the small area of cultivated land required to support such an immense number of people. Japan is an extremely mountainous country, and although the plains and valleys, especially in the east and south, are admirably cultivated, and the rice-fields occasionally cover hills that slope so close to the sea as not to allow of the existence of even a small fringe of cultivable land, the mountain ranges in the interior are still covered with forests, and even the northern part of the great island, where the land is excellent, is quite uncultivated. According to recent statistics, about one-fifth of the total surface of the country has been reclaimed and subdivided into a remarkable number of small farms and tenements. The forest lands, on the other hand, cover 88,632 square miles, of which 28,544 square miles belong to private owners, 51,834 square miles to the State or to the various provinces, and 8,254 square miles are Crown lands. The remainder of the island is occupied by moors, uncultivated tracts of land, extremely extensive in Yezo, where the forests are of vast extent, and where only 1,269 square miles of land repay cultivation. If we leave aside the northern island, and only take into consideration the land occupied by 99 per cent. of the Japanese population, we discover that, exclusive of 67,571 square miles of forest land, only 21,234 square miles provide food for 42,000,000 people, whereas in France there are about 56,917 square miles devoted to cereals alone, and if we add potatoes, vineyards and other edibles, we arrive at a total of 75,889 square miles for a population much inferior to that of Japan; moreover, France imports provisions very largely from other countries.
In England and in France, as in most other European countries, very extensive and superior pasture lands are set aside for the forage of domestic animals intended for food. In Japan there is nothing of the sort. On the highroads you will meet peasants dragging their own carts and waggons, and if you travel by any other means than the railway, it will be in a jinrikisha hurried along by human runners, or in a palanquin carried on men’s shoulders, rarely, if ever, in a carriage or on horseback. Sheep and goats are absolutely unknown in the Empire, but I am assured there are a few pigs, although I never saw any. A European who had lived many years in Japan assured me he had travelled for twelve hours by rail without seeing a bullock or a cow; in the west, however, I myself have often met with cattle. The scarcity of animals is one of the peculiarities of Japan which most surprises the traveller. Statistics confirm this impression, for they give only a return of 1,097,000 head of cattle and 1,477,000 horses.
Doubtless this singularity may be attributed to the predominance of the Buddhist religion, which prohibits the eating of flesh, notwithstanding which the Japanese are not above relishing a fowl, although poultry is nothing like as abundant as it is in our villages. The very great quantity of fish eaten doubtless accounts for this enormous population being able to exist in so mountainous a country on such an abstemious diet. The various fishing industries for 1894 returned produce valued at £2,740,000. We have already mentioned the countless fishing villages which send out a fleet of not less than 600,000 of those graceful one-sailed junks that sometimes seriously impede the progress of the numerous steamers in the Inland Sea. The secondary and very rocky island of Awaju does not contain a single town, but nevertheless can boast of a population of 198,000 inhabitants, spread over an area of only 220 square miles, subsisting entirely on its fishing industries.
The importance of the fisheries does not prevent Japanese agriculture from taking a foremost position, and it must be admitted that farming must have reached a high degree of perfection if the limited space allotted to it can support such a dense population, a fact all the more remarkable when we remember that Japan imports very few articles of food. It is true that in many places there are two crops yearly, although rice has only two harvests in the southern island of Shokoku; in many other places, in November, as soon as this has been gathered, the earth is manured again and sown with barley, or daikon, a kind of monster turnip. The following statistics of 1895, which give the extent of cultivated land and the nature of the various products, will serve to illustrate how relatively great these are when compared with the area of land in cultivation.
| Area in Acres. | Produce. | ||
|---|---|---|---|
| Rice | 6,821,694 | 195,612,321 | bshls. |
| Barley | 1,600,632 | 33,830,173 | 〃 |
| Rye | 1,649,390 | 34,377,074 | 〃 |
| Wheat | 1,096,257 | 19,470,855 | 〃 |
| Peas and azuki | 1,318,779 | 17,701,808 | 〃 |
| Millet | 848,282 | 18,633,157 | 〃 |
| Buckwheat | 422,928 | 5,891,613 | 〃 |
| Sweet potatoes | 586,478 | 1,865,709 | cwts. |
| Potatoes | 56,727 | 18,598,076 | 〃 |
| Colza | 374,072 | 4,932,246 | bshls. |
| Cotton | 148,649 | 471,978 | cwts. |
| Hemp | 51,431 | 102,967 | 〃 |
| Indigo | 114,999 | 579,298 | 〃 |
| Tobacco | 88,185 | 279,870 | 〃 |
| Mulberry-trees | 675,972 | 279,870 | 〃 |
| Tea | 123,404 | 635,979 | 〃 |
The absence of domestic animals obliges the Japanese to have recourse to novel methods of manuring the land. The rice-fields are strewn with green grass, freshly cut in openings in the forests and on the mountain sides, which, when covered with muddy water, speedily decomposes; to this lime is sometimes added. Excrements of all kinds are also largely employed in all fields except those devoted to the cultivation of rice, and along the coast-line fish manure is much used.
Everywhere, excepting in Yezo, the cultivation of rice preponderates, especially in the northern part of the principal island, mainly because the climate is elsewhere too cold to allow of any other crop being sown during the winter and spring. Barley and wheat are grown mainly in the centre of the great island of Nippon, rye in the western parts of the same island, and also in the two southern islands of Shikoku and Kiu-Siu, the last-named of which produces sweet potatoes in abundance. These were originally imported from Java to Satsuma, and are still called Satsuma-imo, or Satsuma potatoes. Tobacco, which was introduced by the Portuguese in the sixteenth century, and which is universally used all over the islands, being one of the few customs the Japanese have retained from their first contact with Europeans, is cultivated everywhere, except, perhaps, in the north. The mulberry-tree grows exclusively in the mountainous regions of the centre, and only in very small quantities in the north. Tea will be met with, on the other hand, only in the plains, and at the foot of the lower ranges of hills. From the windows of the train which passes from Tokio to Kioto, and principally in the environs of this last-named town, as also of Osaka and Nara, one sees extensive tea-plantations lifting their deep, green foliage from the rice-fields.
As may well be imagined, owing to the smallness of his tenement, the Japanese peasant is by no means rich, and has to live on very little. In the plains he subsists mainly on rice boiled in water, precisely as do the workpeople in the towns, a little fish seasoned with soy, or Japanese sauce, flavours this very simple menu, which also includes a few eggs, and occasionally a chicken, a little game, or a wild duck. In the mountains, where the people are very poor, and rice is considered a luxury, barley and millet are sometimes substituted. The fisher-folk replace this almost exclusively vegetarian diet by the produce of their work. Even among well-off people in the towns the principal dish at dinner consists of boiled rice. During meals the usual drink is hot saké, which the guests offer each other in little cups with a good deal of polite ceremony. This very weak form of brandy is distilled from rice, and about 150,000,000 gallons of it are consumed annually. The other great Japanese drink is green tea.
The Japanese peasantry usually live in small villages, separated from each other only by a few hundred yards. Sometimes, however, their houses are built in little groups of four or five, but it is extremely rare to find a peasant’s cottage quite isolated. Nothing can exceed the simplicity of the construction of these habitations, which only differ from those of the townspeople by their lofty and heavy thatched roofs, which usually contain a granary, and are supported by very stout wooden pillars, rising from a heap of stones placed on the bare ground, without any attempt at a foundation. Those walls only which support the gable are solidly built with clay kept together by a bamboo lattice. The two principal façades stand back about a yard inside the pillars, and consist of paper screens which slide backwards and forwards. At night, or in stormy weather, these screens are replaced by wooden shutters. The whole front is thrown wide open when the weather is fine or there is a ray of sunshine, so that passers-by may have a full view of the interior. It is this curious fashion of living in public which most strikes the traveller who arrives in Japan from China, where you cannot even see what is going on in the outer courtyard, and is one of the chief characteristics that differentiate the Japanese from all other Orientals. Another very striking feature is the scrupulous cleanliness which reigns in these dwellings, whose only furniture are tatamis, or thick straw mats, which cover the floor of the whole house, excepting a space immediately opposite the door where visitors are expected to leave their boots and slippers.