90 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



THE AGEICULTURE OF JAPAN. 



BY WILLIAM S. CLAKK, PEESIBENT MASSACHUSETTS AGKICULTUBAL 



COLLEGE. 



Dai Nippon, Great Japan, was but a few years ago one 

 of the most unknown and inaccessible countries of the far- 

 off Orient. To-day, thanks to American enterprise, this 

 " Land of the Rising Sun " has become our next-door neigh- 

 bor on the west; and the progress wliich her people have 

 made in the last ten years in their political, educational, and 

 industrial affairs, has never before been equalled, either in 

 history or romance. Your attention is invited this evening 

 to a few facts concerning the situation, extent, and resources 

 of this country, the characteristics and condition of its in- 

 habitants, and especially of its farmers, and the peculiarities 

 and results of its ancient system of agriculture. 



The Empire of Japan consists of nearly four thousand 

 islands, which constitute the western boundary of the 

 Northern Pacific Ocean : they extend nearly two thousand 

 miles in a south-westerly direction from the peninsula of 

 Kamtschatka, lying mostly between the fiftieth and the thir- 

 tieth parallels of north latitude. They are separated from 

 the continent of Asia by the Japan Sea, which varies in 

 width from one hundred to three hundred miles. Among all 

 these islands, only half a dozen are of any consequence, 

 most of them consisting of barren rocks, which are laigely of 

 volcanic origin. The total area of the land is about a hun- 

 dred and fifty thousand square miles, a large part of which 

 is found on the great island of Hondo. This island the 

 Japanese call the mainland, and on our maps it is named 

 Niphon. It is nine hundred miles long, and its extreme 

 width is two hundred and forty miles. The interior portions 

 of Hondo are mountainous, and htive an elevation of from 

 three thousand to twelve thousand feet. The highest peak 

 and the most famous mountain of Japan is a volcanic cone 

 of lava resting on granite, whose snow-clad summit looms up 

 before the traveller as he enters the bay of Yeddo. A recent 

 author says, " Perhaps no view is so perfect, so impressive 

 for a lifetime, so well fitted to inspire that intense apprecia- 

 tion of Nature's masterpieces, whose glory and freshness we 

 can feel intensely but once, as is the view of Fuji from an 



