AGRICULTURAL INDUSTRIES. 



127 



ago. In another passage of the " Amoenitates exotica^ " the author 

 states that the best Uji tea was reserved for the court, and that he 

 had been told that a Httle dish of it, set before him, was worth one 

 Bu (about a shiUing). I bought a pound of tea in Uji, which I had 

 followed in the making, and it cost me three yen. I heard, how- 

 ever, that the finest is sold for five yen, — twenty shillings. 



The court had its special official in Uji, who had to superintend 

 most carefully the ceremonial and the regulations for the prepar- 

 ation of its tea as well as its transportation. 



So long as the Portuguese had the Japanese trade in their hands, 

 tea was scarcely thought of, and even in the long period when 

 Holland alone enjoyed commercial relations with Japan, tea did 

 not figure among that country's exports. It did not begin to do 

 so until the ports were opened in consequence of the Perry ex- 

 pedition. The appended table shows to what extent the expor- 

 tation of tea from Japan has grown since then. As exportation 

 increased, the plant was more extensively grown, so that on my 

 journeys I could see new gardens laid out in hundreds of places 

 where tea had never been before cultivated. In Tokio itself, as 

 is well known to any one who has lived there any time, many a 

 piece of ground has been transformed, even from the former parks 

 of Daimio residences, into tea-gardens. The Japanese government 

 has reckoned that in this way altogether 4,600 cho of land have in 

 recent times been withdrawn from cultivation for other crops and 

 devoted to raising tea. 



According to H. Gribble, whose statistical statements I here 

 follow, Japan possessed 42,224 cho = 41,874 ha, in tea-plantations, 

 in the year 1881. Thus they at present embrace at least 42,000 

 ha, or about 2^ per cent, of all the cultivated land. Tea is grown 

 in nearly all the provinces of Japan south of the Tsugaru Strait, 

 though in widely varying quantities. North of the thirty-seventh 

 parallel and in the high-lying provinces of the interior, as Shinano 

 and Hida, it is confined to a {qw favourable spots. In other parts 

 it is the chief source of wealth. In both the quality and the 

 quantity of their product the provinces of central Hondo take the 

 lead. Two mighty wings have grown from the old centre of tea- 

 culture, at the southern end of Biwa Lake, between the bays 

 of Idzumi, Owari, and Wakasa, to which are to be reckoned 

 the provinces of Yamashiro, Yamato, Ise, Iga, Omi, Mino, and 

 Tamba. One of these, beginning with Ise, embraces the pro- 

 vinces of the Tokaido, particularly Mikawa, Totomi, Suruga, 

 Musashi, Shimosa, and Hitachi. The other reaches over those of 

 the Hokurokudo, among which Kaga and Echigo deserve especial 

 attention. It is precisely in the region of these two highway- 

 districts (the Tokaido and Hokurokudo) that tea-culture has been 

 greatly extended during the last twenty years. It would un- 

 doubtedly have spread still further in the provinces of the Sea of 

 Japan, especially in Echizen and Wakasa, if market facilities were 



