The industries of Japan : together with an account of its agriculture, forestry, arts, and commerce : from travels and researches undertaken at the cost of the Prussian government / by J.J. Rein.

  • Johannes Justus Rein
Date:
1889
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The industries of Japan : together with an account of its agriculture, forestry, arts, and commerce : from travels and researches undertaken at the cost of the Prussian government / by J.J. Rein. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    frame or swinging door has penetrated even into Zungaria, without having been adopted by other peoples. As Tokugawa lyeyasu, the founder of the last Shogun dynasty, emphasizes in the twelfth of his Eighteen Laws, the introduction of agriculture into Japan is to be ascribed to the sun-goddess Tenslio Daijin (Amaterasu). She was, to the old Japanese, Janus and Ceres in one. Her temple at Yamada, in Ise, was the great national sanctuary, which had to be cared for according to law, and built anew every twenty-one years out of consecrated Hinoki-wood {ChamcEcyparis obtiisa, S. and Z.), in order that the land might have peace, and the Gokoku thrive. By Gokoku (five chief cereals) were meant rice, barley and wheat, Italian millet, other kinds of millet, and beans—in fact, the principal Kokurni, that is, cereals and pulse. The term Go-koku, however, did not mean the same in all ages. Thus we find in Kaempfer, Amoen. exot. p. 834, Kome [Oiyza], 0-mugi {Hordeiivi), Ko-mugi {Tritiann), Uaidsu [Dolichos soja, L.) and Adzuki [Phaseo/ns radiatiis, L.) mentioned as Gokoku. Later, the idea was extended farther, and included all important food-plants belonging to the group of cereals and pulse. In this high estimate of the Go-koku thej- imitated the Chinese, as, in general, Chinese agriculture has been the starting-point and prototype of the Japanese.^ The Emperor Shinnung had introduced and spread the practice of agriculture in China, about the year 2700 B.C. F'or this he was deified after death, and a temple was dedicated to him in Peking. In the park-like surroundings of this temple, the emperor of China since then, at the time of the spring equinox, annually ploughs a piece of land and sows it with go-koku. The Mikado, it is true, was under no such obligation at the sanctuary of the mother of his race, in Ise ; but agriculture was none the less regarded in his realm on that account. The Japanese appreciates the fact that it is the first and best foundation of the prosperity of the population and of the State, being the most ne- cessary and the only sound basis ; and he expresses this idea in the saying, No wa kuni no moto, Agriculture is the prop of the country. According to the latest census of January i, 1883, it employed 18,160,213 persons, or about the half of a total popula- tion of 37,017,302. And these, moreover, are merely the Hiya- kusho, or actual peasants, to whom are to be added from the group of former Samurai, a portion, estimated at many thousands, who have, in recent times, likewise turned their attention to agriculture. Agriculture pays to the State 58 per cent, of its income ; or, with the addition of the agricultural industries, as Sake-manufacture, etc., and the tax upon them, as much as 80 per cent.- ' See Bretschncidcr: On the Study and \'alue of Chinese Botanical Works ; and Williams : The Middle Kingdom, i. 78. - At the close of the fiscal year which ended June 30, 18S4, the total revenue