Planting time arrives in the middle of June or thereabouts, when the paddy has been brought by successive harrowings into a fine tilth or rather sludge.  It is illustrative of the exacting ways of rice that not only has it to have a growing place specially fashioned for it, it cannot be sown as cereals are sown.  It must be sown in beds and then be transplanted.  The seed beds have been sown in the latter part of April or the early part of May, according to the variety of rice and the locality.[76] The seeds have usually been selected by immersion in salt water and have been afterwards soaked in order to advance germination.  There is a little soaking pond on every farm.  By the use of this pond the period in which the seeds are exposed to the depredations of insects, etc., is diminished.  The seed bed itself is about the width of an onion bed, in order that weeds and insect pests may be easily reached.  The seed bed is, of course, under water.  The seed is dropped into the water and sinks into the mud.  Within about thirty or forty days the seedlings are ready for transplanting.  They have been the object of unremitting care.  Weeds have been plucked out and insects have been caught by nets or trapped.  There is a contrivance which, by means of a wheel at either end, straddles the seed bed, and is drawn slowly from one end to the other.  It catches the insects as they hop or fly up.

In many localities specially fine varieties are grown for seed on the land of the Shinto shrines.  In other localities special sorts are raised in ordinary paddies but surrounded by the rope and white paper streamers which represent a consecrated place.  In not a few villages there are communal seed beds so that many farmers may grow the same variety, and there may be a considerable bulk for co-operative sale.

At transplanting time every member of the family capable of helping renders assistance.  Friends also give their aid if it is not planting time for them too.  The work is so engrossing that young children who are not at school are often left to their own devices.  Sometimes they play by the ditch round the paddies and are drowned.  Five such cases of drowning are reported from three prefectures on the day I write this.  The suggestion is made that in the rice districts there should be common nurseries for farmers’ children at planting time.

The rate at which the planters, working in a row across the paddy, set out the seedlings in the mud below the water, is remarkable.[77] The first weeding or raking takes place about a fortnight after planting.  After that there are three more weedings, the last being about the end of August.  All kinds of hoes are used in the sludge.  They are usually provided with a wooden or tin float.  But most of the weeding is done simply by thrusting the hand into the mud, pulling out the weed and thrusting it back into the sludge to rot.  The back-breaking character of this work may be imagined.  As much of it is done in the hottest time of the year the workers protect themselves by wide-brimmed hats of the willow-plate pattern and by flapping straw cloaks or by bundles of straw fastened on their backs.