12 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



Also the land devoted exclusively to the paper- mulberry, to the 

 lacquer-tree and the tallow-tree, and to fruit-raising, all of which 

 would come to 60,000 cho ; so that from the above 1,852,455 cho, 

 212,000 cho in round numbers are to be subtracted, and there will 

 remain for agriculture, under a and b, only about 4,282,000 cho in 

 all, or 15 per cent, of the total area. 



If one takes into consideration, moreover, the other island groups, 

 it becomes apparent that only the Riukiu islands, with their 156 sq. 

 ri = 244,026 square cho, are under advanced cultivation ; while the 

 great Yezo with the Kuriles = 6,093 square ri = 9,477,280 square 

 cho, has a small amount of agriculture to show. We shall reckon 

 it and the Riukiu high enough in taking the total area of the latter 

 as cultivated land, and adding this to the above 4,282,000 square 

 cho. So then, it turns out that the whole Japanese Empire, with 

 24,799 square ri = 38,564,345 square cho, has at the most an area 

 of 4,518,500 square cho for the cultivation of field products, that 

 is to say, not quite 12 per cent, of the entire surface. And even 

 in Old Japan, this small proportion sinks in some provinces, as 

 Hida and Inaba, to as little as 5 per cent, and under. 



Of the Kuriles, only the most southerly are arable at all, even 

 in streaks and patches ; of Yezo, only the alluvial plains of the 

 Ishikari and other rivers in the west and south, not the north and 

 east coasts, which are foggy, and cold even in summer. 



In Germany, 41 per cent, of the ground is devoted to agriculture, 

 and II per cent, more is meadow-land, for which Japan has no 

 equivalent, since the bottoms of the valleys — with us, especially 

 among the mountains, used for raising grass — are in Japan put 

 under cultivation for rice and similar products. The hara, too, 

 cannot, in an economical sense, be compared with our pastures. 



Taking the population of Japan as 37,000,000, and that of the 

 German Empire as 47,000,000, the cultivated arable land of the for- 

 mer as 4,270,000 ha, and of the latter as 22,181,000 ha (41 per cent, 

 of 541,000 square kilometres), we discover that there are in Japan 

 11 '5 Are to the head, against 47*2 to the head in Germany. The 

 cause of this remarkable fact lies partly in the climate and the 

 nature of the soil, partly in the method of farming. 



Vegetation — and consequently agriculture also — depends above 

 all upon climate, particularly upon temperature, light, and moisture, 

 and is only secondarily conditioned and modified by the nature of the 

 soil and other circumstances. Now, the climate of Japan, as was 

 minutely explained in the first volume, pp. 120-153,^ is, in a reduced 

 scale, the same as that of the neighbouring continent and that of 

 the oceanic islands, to a certain extent uniting both. Japan lies 

 under the influence of the monsoons and of the sea, which deflects 

 them somewhat and weakens their effects. Atmospheric depressions, 



^ In addition to that work, the publications, subsequently issued, of E. Knip- 

 ping, of Tokio, the highly deserving director of the meteorological observa-, 

 tories in Japan, were made use of 



