Miscellaneous. 



150 



[Aug l st, 1008. 



drier periods of the year." But if the 

 climate is favourable, the same cannot 

 be said of the soil. Of the total area of 

 the country only 1,353 per cent, is arable 

 land, and very little of the remainder 

 is fit for cultivation, "In the south it 

 would seem that almost every foot of 

 the valleys has been already levelled 

 and cultivated, while the hillsides are 

 terraced in little fields often to their 

 tops." All authorities agree that the 

 soil is naturally sterile, and that it is 

 only through the indefatigable care and 

 industry of the peasantry that it has 

 become as fruitful as it now proves to 

 be. The holdings, too, are small aver- 

 aging 255 acres each; this small area 

 has not only to support the family of the 

 peasant, but also to pay very consider- 

 able sums in rates and taxes. Taxes are 

 paid to the State and rates to the local 

 authority. They were originally paid 

 in kind, but in recent years have been 

 fixed on cash basis. In 1881 the State 

 tax and the local rates were fixed at a 

 sum calculated to represent about 21 

 per cent, of the gross produce. Since 

 that time prices have risen largely, but 

 so have expenses of cultivation, and 

 during the Russian war the State land 

 tax was raised by 120 per cent, and 

 local rates in almost the same propor- 

 tion. At present the State and local 

 taxes together fall at the rate of about 

 Rs. 10 per acre on all arable land, and 

 there is little likelihood that the exigen- 

 cies of the State will allow of the 

 reduction of the assessment. In the 

 United Provinces the average incidence 

 of land revenue and local rates together 

 is no more than Rs. 2 per acre 

 of cultivation. But this does not mea- 

 sure the whole liabilities of the major 

 portion of the peasantry of Japan. For 

 only one-third of the land is cultivated 

 bycits proprietors, the remaining two- 

 thirds being, held by tenants who pay 

 competition rents to its owners. These 

 rents are exceedingly high, and it is 

 stated by aji Japanese writer that in 

 some districts no less than four-fifths 

 of the crop goes to the owner, leaving 

 only one-fitfh for the cost of cultivation 

 and, the subsistence of the tenant and 

 his family. As yet there has been no 

 attempt to regulate these excessive 

 rentals. 



Such are the burdens laid upon the 

 land. " What, then, are the secrets ?" 

 Sir F. Nicholson asks, "which have 

 enabled a country of petty cultivators, 

 poor, isolated, unorganised, ignorant, 

 devoid of cattle, and usually rack- 

 rented to produce good and regular 

 crops, and even to increase the fertility 

 f the soils. "The answer," the author 

 e oes on to say, "will be found in the 



manuring and tillage systems neces- 

 sarily adopted ; on the one hand the 

 utilisation of all waste both in matter, 

 space and time, and on the other persis- 

 tent, dogged, strenuous labour ; it is not 

 capital or agricultural education, or 

 Government aid, or imported food and 

 fertilisers, which have hitherto fed 

 Japan, but the utilisation of those sub- 

 stances and forces which are or may be 

 available in greater or less degree to 

 every Indian farmer. Professor Bald- 

 win long ago said — broadly, of course — 

 that the Irish peasant farmer could in 

 general double his produce without extra 

 capital,?simply by the use of more labour, 

 more diligently and intelligently applied ; 

 it is this strenuous, intelligent labour — 

 intelligent even if only in traditional 

 methods — which regards no useful sub- 

 stance as abhorrent, avoids no toil that 

 may be fruitful which has both fed 

 Japan and has educated and stiffened 

 its people." 



Japan possesses but very few cattle. 

 Except in some few districts all labour is 

 manual, and the chief cultivating tools 

 are the spade, the hoe and the fork. 

 "There is no slovenly cultivation, no 

 carelessly worked areas ; all is like one 

 vast, well-worked garden. The soil, 

 generally of dark loam, is absolutely 

 clean ; weeds are not to be seen at any 

 time among the crops, and all stones are 

 removed, so that every square inch may 

 play its part" ; and as in some Indian gar- 

 dens where tomatoes are planted beneath 

 the shade of rows of peas not yet ripe, 

 the ridge system of cultivation allows of 

 one crop being sown in upland tracts 

 before the crop on the ground is reaped. 

 A Japanese writer gives the following 

 example of this system; "A field is well 

 worked in the autumn and ridged about 

 20 inches apart, and winter wheat or 

 barley is drilled in shallow trenches on 

 the tops of the ridges. These are care- 

 fully maintained, and in April young 

 indigo or other plants which have been 

 raised in a separate seed bed are planted 

 in the space between the ridges. After 

 the harvesting of the winter crop the 

 soil occupied by them is worked over 

 and manured, and as the plants grow 

 the earth is gradually drawn up to them, 

 so that what was once a furrow becomes 

 a ridge. Between the two cuttings cf 

 indigo, soya beans are sown in the 

 furrows, and after the indigo has been 

 pulled no the farmer turns all his atten- 

 tion to his beans which are harvested in 

 October, and the field is then deeply 

 worked over and ready for the winter 

 crop." Such close and continuous crop- 

 ping is not, of course, practicable every- 

 where, even in Japan, and it is only 

 rendered possible by the system and 



