The sheep at present in Japan are not living in natural conditions.  They feed on cultivated crops.  Sheep could hardly live a week on natural Japanese pasture.  The wild herbage is full of the sharp bamboo grass.  In the summer much of the eatable herbage dries up.  Not only must sheep endure the summer heat and insects; they must survive the trying rainy season.  But they must do more than merely endure and survive.  In order to produce good wool it is necessary that they shall be in good condition.  The hair of one’s head immediately shows the effect of imperfect nutrition or unhealthy conditions, and it is the same with the wool on the back of the sheep.

It is said that the quality of the wool on the sheep kept in Japan depreciates.  However this may be, it is plain that sheep breeding must be conducted on a large scale in order to produce wool in commercial quantities and of even quality.  Some notion of the land normally required for sheep may be estimated from the fact that Australian pasture carries no more than four sheep per acre.[266]

An improvement of Japanese herbage sufficient to fit it for sheep would be a heavy task even in small areas.  It is not only the herbage but the rocks below it which are all wrong for sheep, if we are to judge by the geological formations on which sheep flourish in the West.  If the sheep were put on cultivated land[267] or placed on straw as I saw them in Hokkaido there would be serious risks of foot rot.  No doubt there would also be insect pests to control.  If Japan set up sheep keeping she would no doubt have to devise her own special breed of sheep, for the well-known Western breeds are artificial products.  Probably the experiments which are being made in China with sheep at an earlier stage of development are proceeding on the right lines.  I have already spoken of the fact that a Japanese taste for mutton has yet to be cultivated.

This is a formidable list of difficulties confronting the new Governmental Sheep Bureau.  No doubt much may be done by a large expenditure of money and much patience.  The Japanese have wrought marvels before by spending money and having a large stock of patience.  Account must also be taken of the spirit reflected in the speech made to me by a Japanese friend when I read the foregoing paragraph to him: 

“But we are keen to try.  If there were no necessity to prepare for war, when we must have wool for soldiers, sailors and officials, we might rely on Australia and elsewhere and hope to improve the inferior and dirty Chinese wool.  But thinking of the disease prevailing in Northern Manchuria and of service needs, we want to try sheep keeping with some subsidy in Hokkaido and on the mainland in Northern Aomori where there is much dry wild land and the farmers are often miserable—­there are villages where the people do not wash.  We might provide some of the wool needed by Japan.  We have practically met our needs in sugar, though of course our needs are small compared with England and America.”