diminishing return.

3. Imperfection of the agricultural system. Mainly crop raising, not a
combination of crop and stock raising, as in England. No profitable
secondary business but silkworm culture. Therefore the distribution of
labour throughout the year is not good and the number of days of
effective labour is relatively small.

4. The commercial side of agriculture has not been sufficiently
developed.

5. There has been a rise in the standard of living. In the old days
the farmer did not complain; he thought his lot could not be changed.
He was forbidden to adopt a new calling and he was restricted by law
to a frugal way of living. Now farmers can be soldiers, merchants or
officials and can live as they please. They begin to compare their
standard of living with that of other callings. What were once not
felt to be miseries are now regarded as such.

6. Formerly the farmer had not the expense of education and of losing
the services of his sons to the army. There is also an increase in
taxation. A representative family which incurred a public expenditure,
not including education, of 12.86 yen in 1890, paid in 1898 19.68 yen.
In 1908 it was faced by a claim for 34.28 yen.[58]

7. Although the area of land does not increase in relation to the
increase of population, the size of the peasant family is increasing
owing to the decrease of infanticide and abortion and the development
of sanitation.

8. The farmer suffers from debts at high interest.

9. The character, morality and ability of the farmer are not yet fully
developed.

10. Formerly the farmer lived an economically self-contained
existence. He had no great need of money. He must now sell his produce
on a market with wider and wider fluctuations.

11. There are many expensive customs and habits, for instance the two
or three days' feasting at weddings and funerals.

During the evening I was told this story. In a village in a far part
of the prefecture there lived a farmer called Yosogi. He was a thrifty
and diligent man. When he became old he gave all that he had to his
son. But the old man could not stop working. He would go to the farm
and help his son. The son did not like this. He wanted his old father
to rest. In the end he found that the only way to cope with his
industrious parent was to work very hard and leave him nothing to do.
But the old man was not to be balked. He took himself off to the
hillside and began to make a paddy field where t