It looks grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing but valuable outer coat is polished away.  This is done in a mortar hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone.  One may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet.  Often the beetle is fastened to a beam and worked by foot.  Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by water, oil or steam power.  Constantly in the country there are seen little sheds in each of which a small polishing mill driven by a water wheel is working away by itself.  After the polishing, the mangoku doshi is used again to free the rice from the bran.  This polished rice is still further polished by the dealer, who has more perfect mills than the farmer.

[Illustration:  SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED PADDIES, p. 20]

The farmer pays his rent not in the polished but in the husked rice.  At the house of a former daimyo I saw an instrument which the feudal lord’s bailiff was accustomed to thrust into the rice the tenants tendered.  If when the instrument was withdrawn more than three husks were found adhering, the rice was returned to be recleaned.  There are names for all the different kinds of rice.  For instance, paddy rice is momi; husked rice is gemmai; half-polished rice is hantsukimai; polished rice is hakumai; cooked rice is gohan.

[Illustration:  PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS. p. 75]

[Illustration:  PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER (TOKYO). p. 49]

A century ago the farmer ate his rice at the gemmai stage, that is in its natural state, and there was no beri-beri.  The “black sake” made from this gemmai rice is still used in Shinto ceremonies.  In order to produce clear sake the rice was polished.  Then well-to-do people out of daintiness had their table rice polished.  Now polished rice is the common food.  Half-polished rice may be prepared with two or three hundred blows of the mallet; fully polished or white rice may receive six, seven or eight hundred, or even it may be a thousand blows.

FOOTNOTES: 

[47] See Appendix VII.

[48] See Appendix VIII.

[49] Family in the French sense.

[50] See Appendix IX.

[51] See Appendix X.

[52] See Appendix XI.

[53] See Appendix XII.

[54] See Appendix XIII.

[55] It was recently stated that the consent of the authorities was awaited for collections to the amount of 20 million yen, of which 13-1/2 million were for the two Hongwanjis.

[56] For yields of new paddy, see Appendix XIV.

[57] See Appendix XII.

[58] It would be from 80 to 100 yen now.

[59] Hata (upland field) is not to be confounded with hara (prairie, wilderness, moor, often erroneously translated, plain).