[209] To cite a word already used in these pages, there are half a dozen words spelt ko and as many as fourteen spelt ko, but all have a different ideograph.  When the prolongation of the educational course by the ideographs is dwelt on, it is wholesome for us to remember Professor Gilbert Murray’s declaration that “English spelling entails a loss of one year in the child’s school time.”  Other authorities have considered the loss to be much more.

[210] For statistics of stamina, heights and weights of children, see Appendix LXI.

CHAPTER XXXV

THE HUSBANDMAN, THE WRESTLER AND THE CARPENTER

(SAITAMA, GUMMA AND TOKYO)

We are here to search the wounds of the realm, not to skim them over.—­BACON

One day in the third week of October when the roads were sprinkled with fallen leaves I made an excursion into the Kwanto plain and passed from the prefecture of Tokyo into that of Saitama.[211] The weather now made it necessary for Japanese to wear double kimonos.  During the middle of the day, however, I was glad to walk with my jacket over my arm, and many little boys and girls were running about naked.  The region visited had a naturally well-drained dark soil, composed of river silt, of volcanic dust and of humus from buried vegetation, and it went down to a depth beyond the need of the longest daikon (giant radish).  Sweet potatoes and taro were still on the ground, and large areas, worked to a perfect tilth, had been sown or were in course of preparation for winter wheat and barley; but the most conspicuous crop was daikon.  There were miles and miles of it at all sorts of stages from newly transplanted rows to roots ready for pulling.  There is daikon production up to the value of about a million yen.  In addition to the roots sent into Tokyo, there is a large export trade in daikon salted in casks.

I came into a district where there was a system of alternate grain and wood crops.  The rotation was barley and wheat for three or four years, then fuel wood for about fifteen.  The tendency was to lengthen the corn period in the rotation.

The women even as near Tokyo as this wore blue cotton trousers like the men.  One farm-house I entered was a century old but it had not been more than forty years on its present site.  It had been transported three miles.  I was once more impressed by the low standard of living.  If by this time I had not been getting to know something of the ways of the farmers I should have found it difficult to credit the fact that a household I visited was worth ten thousand yen.

Sweet potatoes are here much the most important crop.  They were bringing the farmer in Tokyo a little over a yen the 82 lbs. bale.  The consumer was paying double that.  Not a few of the farmers were cultivating as much as 5 cho or even 8 cho, for there was little paddy.  Even then, I was told, “it’s a very hard life for a third of the farmers.”  The reason was that there was no remunerative winter employment.