Untitled

EICE AND TEA CULTUKE. 447
intervening nine years the increase was at the rate of about 90,000 yearly. Hence
in the natural excess of births over deaths Japan stands
nearly on a level with
Great Britain, while the population of both countries is about equal. Should it
continue to enjoy internal peace, there can be no doubt that the archipelago will
outstrip France in the number of its inhabitants long before the close of the
nineteenth
century.
The returns having been
carefully made, the general results may be
accepted as
approximately true.
Consequently there can be no reasonable doubt that in Japan
the male is in excess of the female population, a remarkable fact
already attested by
the ancient national records. The excess seems to be about three per cent., whereas
in European countries, or in those in the enjoyment of European culture, this pro-
portion is found to be reversed in favour of the female sex wherever systematic
returns have hitherto been made.*
How such a large relative population can be supported in the land is explained
by the diet and habits of its inhabitants. The national tradition recognises five
sacred plants, rice, wheat, barley, sarasin, and the azuki pea, which the Wind-God,
brother of the Sun, extracted from the body of the Goddess of the Great Air, and
which he planted in the soil of South AT ip-pon. Amongst these five plants rice
holds by far the first rank, and supplies the chief food of the people. Every person
usually requires about two and a half pounds daily, but the vegetables, fruits, and
farinaceous preparations added to the staple article of diet do not average more than
ten ounces. The poor scarcely ever touch meat, which is little eaten even by the upper
classes. Thus all the arable land, formerly valued at scarcely more than 11,000,000
acres, is directly employed in the production of food. Wherever it can grow, even
on the slopes of the hills and mountains, which cannot be irrigated without great
labour, rice is planted. Xor is it loosely sown, but disposed by the hand in
parallel lines, carefully manured with animal substances and constantly watered.
RICE AND TEA CULTURE.
" Rice being the staple produce, the seasons for sowing, growing, and reaping,
are diligently watched by the farmers, who formerly cultivated the land under the
daimios as part of their retainers, but now farm under the Mikado's government,
paying an annual tax or rent. The rice lands generally lie fallow all the winter,
and consequently yield only one crop in the year. In the last days of April, or
about the 1st of May, little patches of ground are prepared in the corners of the
fields as seed-beds for the young plants.
Here the seed is sown thickly, sometimes
having been steeped in liquid manure previously to its being sown. It vegetates
in the wonderfullv short time of three or four days if the weather be moist or
warm, as is generally the case at that season of the year.
" In the meantime, while the seed-beds are vegetating, the labourers are busily
employed in preparing the land, into which it is to be transplanted. This operation
commences at the beginning of June. About three inches deep of water then cover
Proportion of the sexes nccorJing :
to the census of 1880: men 18,210,500; women: 17,714,823.