The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind about agricultural Japan are that the population is as thick on the ground as the population of the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of Japan is mountain and waste)—­ten times thicker than the population of the United States[97]—­that Japan is primarily an agricultural country, while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading country, and that only 151/2 per cent. of Japan proper (including Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per cent. in Great Britain.[98] The average area cultivated per farming family in Japan, counting paddy and upland together, is less than 3 acres.  As the total population of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920, plus the annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed close on four persons. ("Even in Hokkaido,” Dr. Sato notes, “the average area per family is only 71/2 acres.”) Happily the number of families cultivating less than 11/4 acres is decreasing and the number cultivating from 11/4 up to 5 acres is increasing.[99] In other words, the favourite size of farm is one which finds work for all the members of the farmer’s family.  As on small holdings all over the world, it is found that profits are difficult to make when help has to be paid for.  The facts that in the last four years for which figures are available the number of farming families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a million and that every year the area of land under cultivation increases show that new ways of increasing income are eagerly seized on.

FOOTNOTES: 

[80] For estimate of daily consumption of rice by Japanese, see Appendix XXIII.

[81] For statistics of imported and exported rice, see Appendix XXIV.

[82] Japanese.  I was the only foreigner present.

[83] The old name for a considerable part of Aichi

[84] This section of the chapter was written in 1921.

[85] For the way in which “normal yield” is arrived at, see p. 70.

[86] See Appendix XXV.

[87] War with China, 1894; with Russia, 1904.

[88] For farmers’ diet, see Appendix XXVI.

[89] Farmers in sericultural districts live better than the ordinary rice farmers.

[90] See Appendix XXVII.

[91] See Appendix XXVIII.

[92] For prices, see Appendix XVII.

[93] The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in the cost of living throughout the world, has been discussed on page xxv.

[94] See Appendix XXIX.

[95] See Chapter XX.

[96] Recent figures show 400 tenants’ associations, of which a third are militant.

[97] See Appendix XXX and page 97.

[98] See Chapter XX.

[99] See Appendix XXXI.

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