Yamagata signifies “shape of a mountain” and Akita means “autumn rice field.”  Although Akita prefecture is mountainous there is a greater proportion of level land in it than in Yamagata.  I find “Rice, rice, rice” written in my notebook.  An agricultural expert gave me to understand that fifteen per cent. of the farmers were probably living on rents or on the dividends of silk factories, that 55 or 60 per cent. were of the middle grade with an annual income of 300 yen, that 25 or 30 per cent. had about 150 yen—­the lowest sum on which a family could be supported—­and that there were 3 or 4 per cent. of farm labourers who earned less than 150 yen.  There had been much paddy adjustment and the prefecture was spending 300,000 yen a year for the encouragement of adjustment and the opening of new paddies.  In the case of newly opened fields, tenants had contracts, but ordinary tenancies were by word of mouth generation after generation.  A great deal of agricultural instruction was given by the prefecture, the counties and the villages, and in 30 years the rice crop had been doubled although the area had remained about the same.  In order to secure help in the work of rural amelioration a gathering of Buddhist priests and another of Shinto priests had been lectured to at the prefectural office.  Nearly 300,000 yen had been spent in twelve months on afforestation.  The following year a special effort was to be made to spend 500,000 yen.  A society raised young trees and sold them at cheap rates to farmers.  Every young men’s association in the prefecture had land and had planted trees.  It was in Akita that I first saw peat in Japan.  There are said to be 7,000 acres of it in the country.

The prefecture of Aomori forms the northern tip of the mainland.  Apart from its enormous forest area and the railroad stacks of sawn lumber, what caught my eye were the apple orchards and the number of farmers on horseback or seated in wagons.  Who that has been in Japan has not a memory of narrow winding roads along which men and women and young people are pulling and pushing carts?  Here many farming folk rode.  I was told that Akita produced apples and potatoes to the value of a million yen each and that there were ten co-operative apple societies.  Much of the fruit went to Russia.

Having passed through the city of Aomori we started to come down the east coast.  An agricultural authority said that the net profit of a dry farm, that is a farm without any paddy, was almost negligible.  Because of low prices, cattle keeping had decreased to half what it used to be. (The only cattle I saw from the train were on the road with harness on their backs.) Only 18 yen could be got for a two-year-old; the Aomori cattle were indeed the cheapest in Japan.  The expert added, “There are no buyers; only robbers.”

But the dealers were not the only robbers.  Boats came from Hokkaido and stole cattle from the prefecture to the number of a hundred a year.  Sometimes horses were taken too, but horse thefts were rare “because you cannot kill a horse and sell it for meat.”  The average price of a two-year-old not thus illicitly vended was 70 yen. (It was a little less in the next prefecture of Iwate and in Hokkaido.) Half of the stallions belonging to the “Bureau of Horse Politics” of the Ministry of Agriculture were bought in Aomori.