[72] The rent is usually 57 per cent. of the rice harvest in the paddies and 44 per cent. (in cash or kind) of the crops on the non-paddy land.  Any crop raised in the paddies between the harvesting of one rice crop and the planting out of the next belongs to the farmer. (All taxes and rates are paid by the landlord, and amount to from 30 to 33 per cent. of the rent.) The area under paddy and the area of upland under cultivation are almost equal.

[73] See Appendix XIX.

[74] See Appendix XX.

[75] In 1920 there were 38,922,437 males and 38,083,073 females.

[76] See Appendix XXI.

[77] See Appendix XXII.

[78] The harvest extends from mid-September in the north of Japan to the end of October or beginning of November in the south.  The harvest is taken early in the north for fear of frost.

[79] The “210th day” (counted from the beginning of spring), when flowering commences, is so critical a period that the weather conditions during the twenty-four hours in every prefecture are reported to the Emperor.

CHAPTER IX

THE RICE BOWL, THE GODS AND THE NATION

I thank whatever gods there be....—­HENLEY

I

How many people who have not been in the East or in the rice trade realise that rice, in the course of the polishing it receives from the farmer and the dealer, loses nearly half its bulk?  A necessary part of the grain is lost.  No wonder that sensible people in Japan and the West demand the grey unpolished rice.  In Japan some enterprising person has started selling bottled stuff made from the part of the rice grain that is rubbed off in the polishing process.  It does not look appetising.  An easier thing would be to leave some of the coating on the rice.  One thinks of what Smollett said of white bread: 

“They prefer it to wholesome bread because it is whiter.  Thus they sacrifice their health to a most absurd gratification of a misjudging eye, and the tradesman is obliged to poison them in order to live.”

Although, for economy’s sake, a considerable amount of barley is eaten with or instead of rice, it may be said in a general way that the Japanese people, like so many millions of other Asiatics, have rice for breakfast, rice for lunch and rice for dinner.  If they have anything to eat between meals it is as like as not to be rice cakes—–­ to the foreigner’s taste a loathly, half-cooked compost of rice flour or pounded rice and water, a sort of tepid underdone muffin.  We in the West have bread at every meal as the Japanese have rice, but we eat our bread not only as plain bread but as toast and bread-and-butter; we also ring the changes on brown, white and oat bread.