Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/46

18 farmers are very careful and thoroughly understand their business. "In spade-husbandry," says Dr. Griffis, "they have little to learn"; but "in stock-raising, fruit-growing, and the raising of hardier grains than rice, they need much instruction."

A Japanese farmer is hard-working, industrious, stolid, conservative, and yet, by reason of his fatalistic and stoical notions, in a way happy and contented. "Left to the soil to till it, to live and die upon it, the Japanese farmer has remained the same, with his horizon bounded by his rice-fields, his water-courses, or the timbered hills, his intellect laid away for safe-keeping in the priest's hands,  caring little who rules him, unless he is taxed beyond the power of flesh and blood to bear." He is, however, more than ordinarily interested in taxation, for the land-tax of three and one-third per cent of the assessed value of the land amounts to about half the national revenue, and is no inconsiderable part of the state, county, town, and village taxes. It would have reverted to the original rate of two and one-half per cent; but it has been still further increased on account of the Russo-Japanese War.