of some of the
water to other plots belonging to the same owner or to other farmers.
The common name of a rice plot is paddy, and the rice with its husk
on, that is, as it is knocked from the ear by threshing, is called
paddy rice. The rice exported from Japan is some of it husked and some
of it polished.

[Illustration: A 200-YEARS-OLD JAPANESE DRAWING
OF THE RICE PLANT]

Some 90 per cent. of the rice grown in Japan is ordinary rice. The
remaining 10 per cent. is about 2 per cent. upland and 8 per cent,
glutinous[61]--the sort used for making the favourite _mochi_ (rice
flour dumplings, which few foreigners are able to digest). It would be
possible to collect in Japan specimens of rice under 4,000 different
names, but, like our potato names, many of these represent duplicate
varieties. Rice, again reminding us of potatoes, is grown in early,
middle and late season sorts.[62]

Just one-half of the cultivated area of Japan is devoted to paddy,
but there is to be added to this area under rice more than a quarter
million acres producing the upland rice, the yield of which is lower
than that of paddy rice. The paddy and upland rice areas together make
up more than a half of the cultivated land. The paddies which are not
in situations favourable to the production of second crops of rice
(they are grown in one prefecture only) are used, if the water can be
drawn off, for growing barley or wheat or green manure as a second
crop[63].

It is not only the Eastern predilection for rice and the wet condition
of the country, but the heavy cropping power of the plant[64]--500
_go_ per _tan_ above barley and wheat yields--that makes the Japanese
farmer labour so hard to grow it[65]. Intensively cultivated though
Japan is, the percentage of cultivated land to the total area of the
country is, however, little more than half that in Great Britain[66].
This is because Japan is largely mountains and hills. Level land for
rice paddies can be economically obtained in many parts of such a
country by working it in small patches only. There is no minimum size
for a Japanese paddy. I have seen paddies of the area of a counterpane
and even of the size of a couple of dinner napkins.

The problem is not only to make the paddy in a spot where it can be
supplied with water, but to make it in such a way that it will hold
all the water it needs. It must be level, or some of the rice plants
will have only their feet wet while others will be up to