Except in hotels and stores in Tokyo and the cities which cater for foreigners, one seldom sees such an animal product as cheese.  On the Government farm I found excellent cheese and butter being made.  Untravelled Japanese have the dislike of the smell of cheese that Western people have of the stench of boiling daikon.  Nor is cheese the only alien food with which the ordinary Japanese has a difficulty.  The smell of mutton is repugnant to him and he has yet to acquire a taste for milk.  The demand for milk is increasing, however.  The guide books are quite out of date.  Nearly all the milk ordinarily sold for foreigners and invalids is supplied sterilised in bottles.  On the platforms of the larger railway stations bottles of milk are vended from a copper container holding hot water.  In places where I have been able to obtain bread I have usually had no difficulty in getting milk.  (The word for bread, pan, has been in the language since the coming of the Portuguese, and all over Japan one finds sponge cake, kasutera, a word from the Spanish.) Butter in country hotels is usually rancid, for the reason, I imagine, that it is carelessly handled and kept too long and that few Japanese know the taste of good butter.  The development of a liking for bread and butter is obviously one of the conditions of the establishment of a successful animal industry.  Condensed milk is sold in large quantities, but chiefly to supplement infants’ supplies and to make sweetstuff.  The 1919 production was estimated at 57 million tins.

One argument for an animal industry is that with an increasing population the fish supply will not go so far as it has done.  It is said that fish are not to be found in as large quantities as formerly.  Another argument is that the national imports include many products of animal industry which might be advantageously produced at home.  Not only is more milk, condensed and fresh, being consumed:  with the adoption of foreign clothes in professional and business life and in the army and navy, more and more wool is being worn[251] and more and more leather is needed for the boots which are being substituted for geta and also for service requirements.  It is contended that for the emancipation of Japanese agriculture from the petite culture stage it is essential that a larger number of draught oxen and horses shall be used.  It is equally important, it is suggested, that more manure shall be made on the farms, so that a limit shall be placed on the outlay on imported fertilisers.  Finally there are those who urge that the Japanese should be better fed and that better feeding can only be brought about by an increased consumption of animal products.[252]

The possibilities of outdoor stock keeping in Hokkaido are limited by the fact that snow lies from November to the middle of February and in the north of the island to the end of March.  A high agricultural authority did not think that the number of cattle in all Japan could be raised to more than two million within twenty years.[253]