[60] Rice is grown in every prefecture.  The largest total yields are in Niigata, Hyogo, Fukuoka, Aichi, Yamagata, Ibariki and Chiba.

[61] See Appendix XV.

[62] The average yield of the three kinds at Government experimental farms—­the middle variety yields best and next comes the late variety—­is about 2-1/2 koku per tan or roughly (a koku being about 5 bushels and a tan about a quarter of an acre) about 45 bushels per acre.  The average yield of ordinary rice in Japan in an ordinary year is 40-3/4 bushels.  In the bumper year of 1920 the average yield was 41-1/3 bushels.  In the year 1916 (to which most of the figures in this book, apart from the Appendix and footnotes, in which the latest available figures are given, refer) there was produced 58-1/4 million koku of all kinds of rice, the value of which was 826-1/2 million yen.  The normal yield (average of 7 years, excluding the years of highest and lowest production) is 54-1/2 million koku.  See Appendix XV.

[63] For wheat and barley crops, see Appendix XVI.

[64] A few rice plants may be seen growing at Kew.

[65] The cost of the rice crop and the income it yields are discussed in Appendix XVII.

[66] See Appendix XVIII.

[67] In Japanese rural statistics the word plain may be said to mean a tract of land which is neither cultivated nor timbered nor used for the purposes of habitation.  Sometimes it is called prairie, but this is not always correct as it is very often a barren waste, a tract of volcanic ash, or an area producing bamboo grass.  Some of this land, however, could be cultivated after proper irrigation, etc.  In this note, plains is employed in the ordinary acceptation of the word.  Of such plains there are several.  The plain in which Tokyo is situated is 82,000 acres in extent.  The traveller from Kobe to Tokyo passes through the Kinai plain in which Kobe, Kyoto and Osaka stand.  It is said to feed 2-1/2 million people.  Four other plains are reputed to feed 7-1/2 million.

[68] Rivers supply about 65 per cent. of the paddy water and reservoirs about 21 per cent.  The remainder has to be got from other sources.

[69] An acreage of a tan is aimed at, but it is frequently larger; it may even be 4 tan (an acre).  The cost ranges from about 8 yen to 50 yen per tan.  The average increase in yield alter adjustment is about 15 per cent., to which must be added the yield of the new land obtained, say 3 per cent. of the area adjusted.  The consent of half the owners is required for adjustment.

[70] Once when a friend in Tokyo had trouble with her servants a maid informed her that the house was unlucky because a certain necessary apartment faced the wrong point of the compass.

[71] In the whole of Japan by 1919 two million and a half acres had been adjusted or were in course of adjustment.