Farmers of Forty Centuries | Page 9

invested in machinery. Men were plenty and to spare. Rice was the fuel,
cooked without salt, boiled stiff, reinforced with a hit of pork or fish,
appetized with salted cabbage or turnip and perhaps two or three of
forty and more other vegetable relishes. And are these men strong and
happy? They certainly were strong. They are steadily increasing their
millions, and as one stood and watched them at their work their faces
were often wreathed in smiles and wore what seemed a look of
satisfaction and contentment.
Among the most common sights on our rides from Yokohama to Tokyo,
both within the city and along the roads leading to the fields, starting
early in the morning, were the loads of night soil carried on the

shoulders of men and on the backs of animals, but most commonly on
strong carts drawn by men, bearing six to ten tightly covered wooden
containers holding forty, sixty or more pounds each. Strange as it may
seem, there are not today and apparently never have been, even in the
largest and oldest cities of Japan, China or Korea, anything
corresponding to the hydraulic systems of sewage disposal used now by
western nations. Provision is made for the removal of storm waters but
when I asked my interpreter if it was not the custom of the city during
the winter months to discharge its night soil into the sea, as a quicker
and cheaper mode of disposal, his reply came quick and sharp, "No,
that would be waste. We throw nothing away. It is worth too much
money." In such public places as rail way stations provision is made for
saving, not for wasting, and even along the country roads screens invite
the traveler to stop, primarily for profit to the owner more than for
personal convenience.
Between Yokohama and Tokyo along the electric car line and not far
distant from the seashore, there were to be seen in February very many
long, fence-high screens extending east and west, strongly inclined to
the north, and built out of rice straw, closely tied together and
supported on bamboo poles carried upon posts of wood set in the
ground. These screens, set in parallel series of five to ten or more in
number and several hundred feet long, were used for the purpose of
drying varieties of delicate seaweed, these being spread out in the
manner shown in Fig. 3.
The seaweed is first spread upon separate ten by twelve inch straw mats,
forming a thin layer seven by eight inches. These mats are held by
means of wooden skewers forced through the body of the screen,
exposing the seaweed to the direct sunshine. After becoming dry the
rectangles of seaweed are piled in bundles an inch thick, cut once in
two, forming packages four by seven inches, which are neatly tied and
thus exposed for sale as soup stock and for other purposes. To obtain
this seaweed from the ocean small shrubs and the limbs of trees are set
up in the bottom of shallow water, as seen in Fig. 4. To these limbs the
seaweeds become attached, grow to maturity and are then gathered by
hand. By this method of culture large amounts of important food stuff
are grown for the support of the people on areas otherwise wholly
unproductive.

Another rural feature, best shown by photograph taken in February, is
the method of training pear orchards in Japan, with their limbs tied
down upon horizontal over-bead trellises at a height under which a man
can readily walk erect and easily reach the fruit with the hand while
standing upon the ground. Pear orchards thus form arbors of greater or
less size, the trees being set in quincunx order about twelve feet apart in
and between the rows. Bamboo poles are used overhead and these
carried on posts of the same material 1.5 to 2.5 inches in diameter, to
which they are tied. Such a pear orchard is shown in Fig. 5.
The limbs of the pear trees are trained strictly in one plane, tying them
down and pruning out those not desired. As a result the ground beneath
is completely shaded and every pear is within reach, which is a great
convenience when it becomes desirable to protect the fruit from insects,
by tying paper bags over every pear as seen in Figs. 6 and 7. The
orchard ground is kept free from weeds and not infrequently is covered
with a layer of rice or other straw, extensively used in Japan as a
ground cover with various crops and when so used is carefully laid in
handfuls from bundles, the straws being kept parallel as when
harvested.
To one from a country of 160-acre farms, with roads four rods wide; of
cities with broad streets