The National tribune. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1877-1917, 1888-11-01

tunes, and pity the faith of the lower classes.
In the temples themselves there seems to be a
god for everything. There is one for sick
women and one for babies, one for love-sick
maidens, and others for women who want TO
have children. Some of the gods of the past
were Of such nature that their description
will not bear repetition in drawing-room cir
cles, and many of the worst of these were abol-
ished by the Government when they found how
foreign nations looked upon them.
In my trip to Nikko l had good chance to
learn something of Japanese farming. The
m0sU of the Nation is engaged in agriculture,
and the farmers constitute old Japan. They
form the portion Of the people who have
changed neither their manners nor their ideas.
They believe and act as their fathers did be-
fore them, and it is among them that the real
Japan is to be found. The country regions of
Japan are far different from our American
farms There are no fences, no big fields and
no cows. You see no ploWs or moving ma
chimes, and the lusty farmer in his shirt sleeves
and top boots is absent. The japanese farmer
would take a Pennsylvania bank barn as a
mammoth temple and would worship in it if
he saw it. He would look upon the sheep rs
wild animals and he would consider the Jersey
stock much as the boy does the elephant in the
circus. The Japanese farms are as rule very
small, the average being not over two acres.
The farmers do not live on their farms, but in
villages, and the country looks like an i'm
mense garden. The land is divided by the
crops up into little patches of different shapes
and sizes and the whole looks like green
quilt of crazy patchwork. Some of the patches
are two feet higher up than others, in order
that the land may be properly irrigated, and
the lower patches are as a rule filed with green
crops OF rice. This is one of the best crops OF
the country, and it corresponds to our wheat
crop Rice is as good as wheat in the getting
of ready money, and nearly half of the culti-
waited area of Japan is devoted TO it. 1t is
planted and cared for much more iaboriously
than i'll America. The fields when green and
young look much like our wheatfelds, but
every blade is first raised from the seed and
then tTansplanted If you will consider the
labor of transpanting all of the blades or
sprouts in a wheatfeld, you will get some idea
of the labor of raising rice here. The rice
after transplautiug has to be flooded again and
again. 1t has to be kept free from weeds, and
il has to be cut and harvested and thrashed.
All of this is hand labor, and Japanese farmers
know nothing of machinery. The chief imple-
ments in use are a long wide bladed mattock,
a tined hoe, and little short scythes with long,
straight handles, and with blades not much
longer than a butcLerknife. The soil is hoed
up with the mattock, and have seen men and
women working together at this in the fields.
Ii was baclI-breaking work. and ] noted that
in many OF the fields the men wore but little
clothing except big round hat, and that the
women were clad in q single garment. They
looked very queer as they stopped over among
the plants or walked with their big hats shroud-
ing their eyes, through the fields. They laughed
as they worked, and l noted that the siesta was
frequent.