32 AGRICULTURE AND FORESTRY. 



ploughshare. A cross-bar through the thinner end of the ploughtail 

 forms the handle. The Japanese plough is therefore without fore- 

 plough, coulter, or loam-board, that is, without any arrangement for 

 turning furrows or for ploughing deep or shallow at will. The 

 peasant carries it afield on his shoulder, walking after his ox or 

 horse. With such a plough there is no possibility of thoroughly 

 working the soil by clean, regular, successive furrows, or of cutting 

 roots and laying them bare. It is no wonder that it is not ex- 

 tensively used, and that all deeper working and loosening of the 

 soil is accomplished with the hoe (Kuwa) mostly, and the spade 

 (Suki). The former especially is known in all forms and sizes, 

 and is indisputably the most important tool of the Japanese 

 gardener and farmer. It consists of an iron disk, which as a rule 

 surrounds a wooden centre or hub, through which runs the handle, 

 sixty centimeters long. A second form is the iron four-tined fork- 

 hoe, and then comes the Kumade with four bamboo tines, and the 

 Matsubagaki, with seven tines of the same material. These prongs 

 radiate from one point, and form a right-angled triangle, at whose 

 base they end, and are bent downwards, hook-fashion. These two 

 implements form, to a certain extent, the transition to the simple 

 rake (Sarai). I have seen ploughs used, chiefly in spring, for work- 

 ing rice-fields, but even in this case only sparingly. Remembering 

 that rice-land, after being provided with dykes and then flooded, 

 is worked with the hoe and by hand to an even and uniform paste, 

 one recognises that subsoil culture is employed here, ploughs or 

 no ploughs. 



For a harrow (Maguwa, pronounced Magwa), they often use an 

 implement which resembles more a large rake, its principal feature 

 being a board with a row of wooden or iron nails. It is attached 

 to the draught animal by two wooden shafts, and has a gallows- 

 shaped arrangement on top which serves as a handle. But there 

 are many modifications of this implement. 



Wagons (Kuruma) are not used at all in Japanese agriculture. 

 They have not even the wheel-barrow (Ichirin-sha) so popular in 

 China.^ Manure and seed are taken to the fields, and their pro- 

 ducts in turn are carried home or to market, in vessels slung on 

 both ends of poles laid across the shoulder, or on the backs of 

 pack-horses or oxen. 



Especially simple, or rather primitive, is the grain-harvesting. 

 Straw is used chiefly in plaits of many sorts, ropes, sandals (even 

 for beasts of burden), and mats, but also for thatching, and some- 

 what for manuring too. Grain is usually cut close to the ground 

 with a sickle (Kama), as in Germany, and then bound in small 

 sheaves. These are either stacked about the stems of alder or 

 other trees along the edges of the fields, or piled in front of the 

 houses, and when necessary, exposed to the sun for drying and 

 maturing. 



Taking such a bundle by the stalks, and spreading it out in their 



