THE ECONOMIC PLANTS OF JAPAN. 



land tenure, and range themselves under many and 

 opposing standards. It has reached the reviews, 

 quarterlies, great popular magazines, and literary 

 and religious weeklies. To some degree it tinctures 

 politics, and that curious compound of iron, brass, 

 and clay which we call the modern sensational 

 newspaper. But the man who should be the most 

 interested in the affair goes steadily ahead, plants 

 turnips, hoes potatoes, sprays fruit-trees, gathers 

 cucumbers, hybridizes roses, digs angle-worms and 

 goes " fishin' up the crick." Is it stupid indiffer- 

 ence, or stupendous folly, or sublime wisdom ? 



It needs not that I take sides in this article, for 

 it is not meant for the discussion of a problem, but 

 simply to point out the curious absence of such 

 discussion. Beyond a doubt, great social changes 

 are now in progress, and their seeds are sown 

 broadcast on every wind. The men who till the 

 land can do much to determine the nature and ex- 

 tent of such changes. The nationalist says that 

 the "producing classes" will uaite to give the 

 modern state power to do many more things than 

 those for which corporations are now organized, 

 and, to distribute equally among all the fruits 

 of the labor of all. The single tax man looks to 

 the land-owner to aid in the movement to have so- 

 ciety take to itself the rent-value of land, and abolish 

 all other forms of duties and taxes. Christian social- 

 ism has an especial word for the land-owner, and 

 so has each and every reform movement of the 

 age. Is it conceivable that all the confused noise 



of conflict can go on much longer about the land 

 owner, without arousing him to examine the grounds 

 of his tenure, and make his choice among the social 

 creeds ? 



Our German ancestors, the freemen of the 

 forests, the " children of the mark," with their 

 common lands and their famous "three field 

 tillage," accepted the fair promise of the feudal 

 order, and gave up their ancient system. Again,. 

 wheTi the feudal order decayed and individual own- 

 ership of land grew — it also full of fair promise 

 — the unnumbered millions of tillers of the soil 

 slowly forgot that any other land-tenure had ever 

 existed. Perhaps it will be so again. Changes in 

 the social order may even now be going on which 

 will more profoundly alter the relations between the 

 man and the "land." Land tenure is a more 

 vital question to the man who tills the land, than 

 is the sum-total of all the other discussions which 

 appear in his agricultural or horticultural journal. 

 Whatever affects land-tenure, affects his interests 

 in the same degree. Farm-mortgages, the drift of 

 energy from the country to the city, the lack of 

 growth in many rural communities, the increased 

 number of renters of farms — all are subjects of 

 immense importance, but at the very root of the 

 whole social order lies the land tenure question. It 

 can only be decided upon grounds of justice, and 

 every man who owns or tills a piece of land must 

 work out the problem for hims^ 



California. Ch.\rles Howard Shinn. 



THE ECONOMIC PLANTS OF JAPAN— I. 



PHYSICAL FEATURES OF THE ISLAND EMPIRE POMACEOUS FRUITS. 



SOJOURN of nearly four years 

 in Japan — from the beginning 

 of 1886 till the autumn of 18S9 

 — as professor of agriculture 

 and horticulture in the Impe- 

 rial College of Agriculture at 

 Tokio gave the writer unusu- 

 ally good facilities for the study of economic 

 plants peculiar to that country, and being a subject 

 of extreme mterest, he applied himself with some 

 assiduity to the task of learning something of their 

 character, uses and culture, so far as they are 

 cultivated at all. It is now proposed to give the 

 readers of The American Garden the results of 

 these observations in a series of papers, which it is 

 hoped, may prove, in a degree, both interesting and 

 instructive to all progressive Americans. 



The better to understand the conditions under which 

 the plants grow, it may not be out of place to revive in 

 the reader's memory the situation of Japan, and point 

 out some of the physical features peculiar to the 

 country, which, in large degree, determine the char- 

 acter of the flora. 



It will be seen by a glance at the map (Fig. i.) that 

 Japan has no connection with the main land of Asia. It is 

 an elongated group of islands in the Pacific ocean, 

 strecthing out over many degrees of latitude inanorth- 

 easterly and southwesterly direction. All together, the 

 Mikado's empire is said to contain some three thousand 

 islands and to reach over twenty-seven degrees of lati- 

 tude. For the purposes of the present sketch, however, 

 we need to consider only the four chief islands, about 

 which most of the smaller islands cluster like goslings 

 about their parents ; namely^ Yezo, in the north ; 

 Hondo, the main island, in the center, and to the south 

 of it the two smaller ones, Shikoku and Kiushiu. 



