58 



hands. It lias been impossible to ascertain the actual amount of 

 taxation, since the taxes are prefectural and differ in every district ; 

 they are levied either as license fees for particular classes of fishery, 

 or as rentals for particular areas, or as direct taxes on boats, nets or 

 persons. The fees and rentals for the right to fish on the Saghalien 

 coasts amount to a sum probably equal to the whole fishery expenditure 

 of the empire ; in the Hokkaido or Northern Island, where the herring 

 fishery is pre-eminent, as also salmon and other valuable fisheries, 

 the " taxes and public burdens " on the members of two-thirds of 

 the associations are officially recorded as Es. 5'88 lakhs, of which 

 the actual fishery tax was Rs. 4*12 lakhs ; as the total value of the 

 catches by those associations aggregated to Rs. 108'24 lakhs, the 

 actual tax was nenrly 4 per cent, of the gross, and since there were 

 39,259 members in the associations, the taxes and public burdens 

 were just Es. 15 per head out of ])er capita proceeds of Rs. 275. 



127. In a prefecture of the main island I found the statistics of a 

 large fishing village to be as follows : — 



Since the income per house i:irobably does not much, if at all, 

 exceed Rs. 100 per annum (paragraphs 4 and 113 supra), the tax 

 amounts to about 3|- per cent, of the gross earnings. The 50 per cent 

 '' additional tax " is probably a war levy, but is not so stated. 



As the usual number of working fisher folk per house including 

 boys over 15, is about 2*4 per house, the rate per head will be nearly 

 Rs. 1-8-0. 



