Every now and again one comes on a fragrant bed of lotus in its paddy field.  It seems odd at first that lotus—­and burdock—­should be cultivated for food.  As a pickle burdock is eatable, but lotus and some unfamiliar tuberous plants are pleasant food resembling in flavour boiled chestnuts. Konnyaku (hydrosme rivieri), a near relative of the arum lily, is produced to the weight of 11 million kwan—­a kwan is roughly 8-1/4 lbs.[40] The yield of burdock is about 44 million kwan.  The chief of all vegetables is the giant radish, of which 7-1/4 million kwan are grown.  Taro yields about 150 million kwan.  Foreigners usually like the young sprouts taken from the roots of the bamboo, a favourite Japanese vegetable.

This is as convenient a place as any to speak of an important agricultural fact, the enormous amount of filth worked into the paddies.  As is well known, hardly any of the night soil of Japan is wasted.  Japanese agriculture depends upon it.  Formerly the night soil was removed from the houses after being emptied into a pair of tubs which the peasant carried from a yoke.  Such yoke-carried tubs are still seen, but are chiefly employed in carrying the substance to the paddies.  The tubs which are taken to dwellings are now mostly borne on light two-wheeled handcarts which carry sometimes four and sometimes six.  A farmer will push or pull his manure cart from a town ten or twelve miles off.  It is difficult to leave or enter a town without meeting strings of manure carts.  The men who haul the carts get together for company on their tedious journey.  They seem insensible to the concentrated odour.  Often the wife or son or daughter may be seen pushing behind a cart.  There is a certain amount of transportation by horse-drawn frame carts, carrying a dozen or sixteen tubs, and by boats.  I was told of a city of half a million inhabitants which had thirty per cent. of its night soil taken ten miles away.  The work was undertaken by a co-operative society which paid the municipality the large sum of 70,000 yen a year.  The removal of night soil, its storage in the fields in sunken butts and concrete cisterns—­carefully protected by thatched, wooden or concrete roofs—­and its constant application to paddy fields or upland plots cause an odour to prevail which the visitor to Japan never forgets.[41]

It must not be supposed that, because the Japanese are careful to utilise human waste products, no other manure is employed.  There is an enormous consumption of chemical fertilisers.  Then there are brought into service all sorts of crop-feeding materials, such as straw, grass, compost, silkworm waste, fish waste, and of course the manure produced by such stock as is kept.[42] In Aichi the value of human waste products used on the land is only a quarter of the value of the bean cake and fish waste similarly employed.