[234] Foreigners sometimes confound Yezo (Hokkaido) with Yedo, the old name for Tokyo.

[235] A sixth of Hokkaido still belongs to the Imperial Household.  In 1918 it decided to sell forest and other land (parts of Japan not stated) to the value of 100 million yen.  In 1917 the Imperial estates were estimated at 18-3/4 million cho of forest and 22-1/4 million cho of “plains,” that is tracts which are not timbered nor cultivated nor built on.

[236] In 1919 it was 2,137,700.

[237] Considerations of space compel the holding over of a chapter on the Ainu for another volume.

[238] Of the 96 foreign instructors in institutions “under the direct control” of the Tokyo Department of Education in 1917-18, there were 27 British, 22 German, 19 American and 12 French.

[239] Hokkaido is one of five Imperial universities.  There are in addition several well-known private universities.

[240] Grouse are also to be found in Hokkaido, but no pheasants and no monkeys.  The deep Tsugaru Strait marks an ancient geological division between Hokkaido and the mainland.

[241] It is sometimes eaten, ground to a rough meal, with rice.  The argument is that maize is two thirds the price of rice and more easily digested.

[242] See Appendix XXXVII.

[243] The latest figures for Hokkaido show only a tenth.

[244] For farmers’ incomes, see Appendix XIII.

[245] For sizes of farms, see Appendix LXIV.

[246] For a tenant’s contract, see Appendix LXV.

CHAPTER XXXVIII

SHALL THE JAPANESE EAT BREAD AND MEAT?

Bon yori shoko (Proof, not argument)

One day in Tokyo I heard a Japanese who was looking at a photograph of a British woman War-worker feeding pigs ask if the animals were sheep.  Sheep are so rare in Japan that an old ram has been exhibited at a country fair as a lion.  In contrast with Western agriculture based on live stock we have in Japan an agriculture based on rice.[247] But a section of the Japanese agricultural world turns its eyes longingly to mixed farming, and so, when I returned to Sapporo from my trip to the north of Hokkaido, I was taken to see a Government stock farm—­with a smoking volcano in the background.  Hokkaido has four other official farms, one belonging to the Government and one for raising horses for the army.  I was shown, in addition to horses, Ayrshire, Holstein and Brown Swiss cattle, Berkshire and Yorkshire pigs and Southdown and Shropshire sheep in good buildings.  I noticed two self-binders and a hay loader and I beheld for the first time in Japan a dairymaid and collies—­one was of a useless show type.

The extent to which the knack of looking after animals and a liking for them can be developed is an interesting question.  Experts in stock-keeping with generations of experience behind them will agree that it is on the answer to this question that the success or non-success of the Japanese in animal industry in no small measure depends.