rice. This means that on rent day the farmer must pay the same amount of rice whether his crop has been good or bad. It also means that when the price of rice rises the amount of rent is automatically raised. If rent were paid, not in so many koku of rice but in money at a fixed amount, the landlord would know where he was and the tenant would be in an easier position, for when the rice crop failed the price would be high and he would be able to meet his rent by selling a smaller amount of rice. The counsel of the prudent to the rice producer is to build storehouses and not to sell the whole of his crop immediately after harvest, but to extend the sale over the whole year, marketing each month about the same amount if possible. The Government Granary plan came into force in 1921, some 3 million koku of unpolished rice being bought in five grades at from 27 yen to 33 yen. In the year before the War rice was selling at 20 yen per koku (5 bushels). The previous year (1912) it had been 21 yen-had risen at times to 28 yen-an unheard-of price. Between 1894 and 1912 it had climbed merely from about 7 yen to a maximum of 16 yen. In the year in which the War broke out, it dropped as low as 12 yen, and in 1915 it was only 11 yen. By 1916 it had not risen beyond 14 yen.

The fall in prices was due to exceptional harvests in 1914 and 1915 (that is, 57,006,541 koku and 55,924,590 koku as compared with the 50,255,000 koku of the year before the War, or the 51,312,000 which may be taken as the average of the seven-years period 1907-13). Such exceptional harvests as those of 1914 and 1915 showed a surplus of from 4 to 6 million koku over and above the needs of the country, which are roughly estimated at 1 koku per head including infants and the old and feeble. In 1916 it was established, when account was taken of stored rice, that the actual surplus was something like 6 or 7 million koku. Therefore a fall in price took place. The extent to which rice is imported and exported is shown in Appendix XXIV. This Chapter would become much more technical than is necessary if I entered into the question of the correctness of rice statistics. Roughly, the

1 For prices, see Appendix XVII.

THE RICE RIOTS

87

statistics show a production 15 per cent. less than the actual crops. Formerly the under-estimation was 20 per cent. The practice has its origin in the old taxation system.

The notes for the account of rural life in Japan which will be found in this book were chiefly made in the second and third years of the War. Since that time there has been an enormous rise in the price of everything. For a time the farmers prospered as they had prospered in the high rice-price years, 1912-13. The high prices of all

[Maiy

MINISTER OF AGRICULTURE'S EFFORTS TO KEEP THE PRICE OF RICE FROM RISING

grain as well as the fabulous price of raw silk (due to increased export to America and to increased home consumption) were a great advantage.

Then came the rice riots of the city workers, the general slump and finally the commercial and industrial crash. Raw silk fell nearly to one-third of its top price, and farmers had to sell cocoons under the cost of production. Everywhere countrymen and countrywomen employed in

1 The rise in prices towards the close of the War, with the rise in the cost of living throughout the world, has been discussed on page xxv.

the factories were discharged in droves. A large proportion of these unfortunates returned to their villages to dispel some rural dreams of urban Eldorado.

But this matter of the going up and coming down of prices has but a passing interest for the reader. The only economic fact of which he need lay hold is that in recent years the farmers have been led into the way of spending more money in taxation as well as in general expenses of living and that, when account is taken of every advantage they have gained from better methods of production, they have pressing on them the limitations imposed by the size of their farms and their farming practice. Whatever the prices obtained for the products of the soil, climatic facts,' the character and social condition of the people, their attitude towards life and authority and the attitude of authority towards them remain very much the same. And thus a narrative of things seen and heard chiefly during the first years of the War is not at all out of date even if it were not supplemented as it is by a plentiful supply of notes containing the latest statistical data.

There is one curious exception only. The reader of these pages will constantly come on references to the poverty of the tenant farmers. They are, of course, practically labourers, for they cultivate two or three acres only, and at the end of the year, as has been shown, have merely a trifle in hand and sometimes not that. Influenced by the labour movement, which developed in the industrial centres during and after the War,' this depressed class has of late shown spirit. It has begun to assert its claims against landowners. At the end of 1920 there were as many as ninety associations of tenant farmers, and sixty of these had been started for the specific purpose of representing tenants' interests against landowners. Strikes of tenants began and continue. The end of this movement of a proverbially conservative class is not at all certain.'

The outstanding facts which are to be borne in mind. about agricultural Japan are that the population is as 1 See Appendix XXIX. 2 See Chapter XX.

• Recent figures show 400 tenants' associations, of which a third are militant.

THE PRESSURE OF POPULATION

89

thick on the ground as the population of the British Isles (thicker in reality, for so much of Japan is mountain and waste)-ten times thicker than the population of the United States that Japan is primarily an agricultural country, while Great Britain is largely a manufacturing and trading country, and that only 15 per cent. of Japan proper (including Hokkaido) is under cultivation against 27 per cent. in Great Britain. The average area cultivated per farming family in Japan, counting paddy and upland together, is less than 8 acres. As the total population of Japan is now (1921) 56 millions (55,960,150 in 1920, plus the annual increase of 600,000), every acre has to feed close on four persons. ("Even in Hokkaido," Dr. Sato notes, "the average area per family is only 7 acres.") Happily the number of families cultivating less than 11 acres is decreasing and the number cultivating from 11 up to 5 acres is increasing. In other words, the favourite size of farm is one which finds work for all the members of the farmer's family. As on small holdings all over the world, it is found that profits are difficult to make when help has to be paid for. The facts that in the last four years for which figures are available the number of farming families keeping silk-worms has risen by half a million and that every year the area of land under cultivation increases show that new ways of increasing income are eagerly seized on.

1 See Appendix XXX and page 97.
See Appendix XXXI.

2 See Chapter XX.

BACK TO FIRST PRINCIPLES: THE APOSTLE

AND THE ARTIST

CHAPTER X

A TROUBLER OF ISRAEL

The signification of this gift of life, that we should leave a better world for our successors, is being understood.-MEREDITH

To some people in Japan the countryman Kanzō Uchimura is "the Japanese Carlyle." To others he is a religious enthusiast and the Japanese equivalent of a troubler of Israel. He appeared to me in the guise of a student of rural sociology.

Uchimura is the man who as a school teacher "refused to bow before the Emperor's portrait." He endured, as was to be expected, social ostracism and straitened means. But when his voice came to be heard in journalism it was recognised as the voice of a man of principle by people who heard it far from gladly. There is a seamy side to some Japanese journalism and Uchimura soon resigned his editorial chair. He abandoned a second editorship because he was determined to brave the displeasure of his

1 The statement is, he told me, a calumny. He explained that he lost his post for refusing to bow, not to the portrait, but to the signature of the Emperor, the signature appended to that famous Imperial rescript on education which is appointed to be read in schools. Uchimura is very

willing, he said, to show the respect which loyal Japanese are at all times ready to manifest to the Emperor, and he would certainly bow before the portrait of His Majesty; but in the proposal that reverence should be paid to the Imperial autograph he thought he saw the demands of a “Kaiserism ❞—his word, he speaks vigorous English-which was foreign to the Japanese conception of their sovereign, which would be inimical to the Emperor's influence and would be bad for the nation.

• But journalism is one of the most powerful influences for good, and some of the best brains of the country is represented in it. Papers like the Jiji, Asahi, Nichi Nichi, and the Osaka papers run in conjunction with them have altogether a circulation approaching two millions.