any rate was minded to live better.  In the thirty-years period 1882-1913, his crop increased 63 per cent. although his area under cultivation increased by only 17 per cent.  In the following pages we shall hear more of the methods by which the farmer’s receipts have been increased.  We shall hear also, alas! of the ways in which his expenditure has increased.  He is indeed in a trying situation.  Everything depends on his character and education and on the influences, social and political, moral and religious, under which he lives.  That is why this book, in devoting itself to an examination of the foundations of an agricultural country, is concerned with rural sociology rather than with the technique of crops and cropping.

The outstanding problem of the rice grower is fluctuations in price.[91] It is also the problem of the landlord, for rents are fixed not at so much money but at so many koku of rice.  This means that on rent day the farmer must pay the same amount of rice whether his crop has been good or bad.  It also means that when the price of rice rises the amount of rent is automatically raised.  If rent were paid, not in so many koku of rice but in money at a fixed amount, the landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in an easier position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and he would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice.  The counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build storehouses and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, marketing each month about the same amount if possible.  The Government Granary plan came into force in 1921, some 3 million koku of unpolished rice being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen.  In the year before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per koku (5 bushels).  The previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen—­had risen at times to 23 yen—­an unheard-of price.  Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen.[92] In the year in which the War broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11 yen.  By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.

The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915 (that is, 57,006,541 koku and 55,924,590 koku as compared with the 50,255,000 koku of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which may be taken as the average of the seven-years period 1907-13).  Such exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of from 41/2 to 6 million koku over and above the needs of the country, which are roughly estimated at 1 koku per head including infants and the old and feeble.  In 1916 it was established, when account was taken of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like 6 or 7 million koku.  Therefore a fall in price took place.  The extent to which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV.  This Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I entered into the question of the correctness of rice statistics.  Roughly, the statistics show a production 15 per cent. less than the actual crops.  Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent.  The practice has its origin in the old taxation system.