Page:Things Japanese (1905).djvu/31

Rh sense of the word) of some of the reader's Japanese servants or friends. Unless we are much mistaken, this will prove to be a puzzle of the highest order of difficulty. (See also Article on .)

 Agriculture. Till recently the Japanese had neither manufactures nor foreign commerce, neither have they yet any flocks of sheep and goats, any droves of geese, turkeys, or pigs. Even cattle are comparatively scarce, and neither their flesh nor their milk is in general use, beef being still regarded as a luxury, and milk rather as a medicine than a food. The pasture meadow and the farmyard are alike lacking. Here, far more than in the West, agriculture in its narrower sense has been all in all, forming the basis on which the whole social fabric rests. Justly, therefore, in feudal times, did the peasantry rank next to the Samurai or gentry, and before the merchants and mechanics. Even under the new regime, more than half the population is engaged in field labour, and nearly half the national revenue flows from that source. There are no large landed proprietors. As a rule, each farmer or peasant tills his own field with the help of his sons and often his wife and daughters; and the land is really his own, for the doctrine that everything belongs absolutely to the Emperor is, of course, only a convenient legal fiction. No wonder that he works with a will.

In this land of mountains, barely twelve per cent, of the entire surface can be cultivated, and even the cultivable portion is not highly fertile by nature. It is made so by subsoil working, by minutely careful weeding, by manure judiciously and laboriously applied, by terracing, and by an elaborate method of irrigation. The whole agricultural system came from China, and has altered little since the earliest ages. The peasantry are the most conservative class in the nation, and their implements still strangely primitive, the plough in common use, for instance, differing little rom that of Egypt in the time of the Pharaohs. The hoe is in