FARMERS’ DIET [XXVI].  It is officially stated in 1921 that “the common farm diet consists of a mixture of cooked rice and barley as the principal food with vegetables and occasionally fish.”  The barley is what is known as naked barley.  Ordinary barley is eaten in northern Japan, but two-thirds of the barley eaten elsewhere is the wheat-like naked barley, which cannot be grown in Fukushima and the north.  The husking of ordinary barley is hard work.  The young men do it during the night when it is cool.  They keep on until cock-crow.  Their songs and the sound of their mallets make a memorable impression as one passes through a village on a moonlight night.  Another substitute for rice beyond millet is hiye (panic grass).  In the south it is regarded as a weed of the paddies, but in the north many tan are planted with this heavy-yielding small grain.

TAXATION [XXVII].  Before 1906 national taxation was 2.5 per cent. of the legal price of land.  In 1900 it was 3.3 per cent., in 1904 5.5 per cent., in 1911 4.7 per cent, and in 1915 4.5 per cent.  But local taxation increased in greater proportion.

FLAVOUR OF RICE AND PRICE FLUCTUATIONS [XXVIII].  Japanese rice has a fatty flavour which the people of Japan like.  Therefore the native rice commands a higher price in Japan than Chinese or Indian rice.  With the exception of a small quantity exported to Japanese abroad, Japanese rice is consumed in Japan.  The supply of it and the demand for it are exclusively a Japanese affair.  Naturally, when the crop fails the price soars, and when there is a superabundant harvest the price comes down to the level of foreign rice.  Here is the secret of the enormous fluctuations in the price of Japanese rice with which the authorities have so often endeavoured to cope.

The Government granary plan is the third big effort of authority to manage rice prices.  The Okuma Government, under the administration of which rice went down to 14 yen per koku, had a Commission to raise prices.  The Terauchi Ministry, at a time when prices rose, touching 55 yen, had a Commission to bring prices down.

AREA AND CLIMATE [XXIX].  Japan Proper comprises a main island, three other large islands in sight of the main island, and archipelagos—­4,000 islets have been counted.  The main island, Honshu, with Shikoku behind it, lies off the coast of Korea; the next largest and northernmost island, Hokkaido, off the coast of Siberia, and the remaining sizeable island and the southernmost, Kyushu, off the coast of China over against the mouth of the Yangtse.  The area of this territory, that is of Japan before the acquirement of Formosa, Korea, southern Saghalien and part of Manchuria, is about 142,000 square miles in area, which is that of Great Britain in possession not of one Wales but of four, or nearly 1 per cent. of the area of Asia.  But there are several million more people in Japan than there are inhabitants of Great Britain and thrice as many as there are Britons