To what extent the modified farming methods rendered necessary by the Hokkaido climate have had a deterring effect on would-be settlers I do not know.  It has never been demonstrated that the Japanese farmer prefers arduous amphibious labour to the dry-land farming in which most of the world’s land workers are engaged; but the cultivation of paddy or a large proportion of paddy is his traditional way of farming.  Rice culture also means to him the production of the crop which, when weather conditions favour, is more profitable than any other.  In Hokkaido, as we have seen, the remunerative kind of agriculture is mixed farming, and, in a large part of the country, rice cannot be grown at all.  Against objections to Hokkaido on the ground of the strangeness of its farming may probably be set, however, the cheapness of land there.

An undoubted hindrance to the colonisation of Hokkaido has been land scandals and land grabbing.  Many of what the late Lord Salisbury called the “best bits” are in the hands of big proprietors or proprietaries.  Some large landowners no doubt show public spirit.  But their class has contrived to keep farmers from getting access to a great deal of land which, because of its quality and nearness to practicable roads and the railway, might have been worked to the best advantage.  In various parts of Japan I heard complaints.  “The land system in Hokkaido,” one man in Aichi said to me, “is so queer that land cannot be got by the families needing it, I mean good land.”  Again in Shikoku I was assured that “the most desirable parts of the Hokkaido are in the hands of capitalists who welcome tenants only.”  In more than one part of northern Japan I was told of emigrants to Hokkaido who had “returned dissatisfied.”  A charge made against the large holder of Hokkaido land is that he is an absentee and a city man who lacks the knowledge and the inclination to devote the necessary capital to the development of his estate.  Of late the rise in the value of timber has induced not a few proprietors to interest themselves much more in stripping their land of trees than in developing its agricultural possibilities.

The development of Hokkaido may also have been slowed down to some extent by a lower level of education among the people than is customary on most of the mainland, by a rougher and less skilful farming than is common in Old Japan and by the existence of a residuum which would rather “deal” or “let George do it” or cheat the Ainu than follow the laborious colonial life.  But no cause has been more potent than a lack of money in the public treasury.  I was told that for five years in succession Tokyo had cut down the Hokkaido budget.  Necessary public work and schemes for development have been repeatedly stopped.  At a time when the interests of Hokkaido demand more farmers and there is a general complaint of lack of labour, at a time when there are persistent pleas for oversea expansion, there are in Japan twice or thrice as many people applying for land in the island as are granted entry.  The blunt truth is that the State has felt itself compelled to spend so much on military and naval expansion that the claims of Hokkaido for the wherewithal for better roads, more railway line and better credit have often been put aside.[273]