ance not unlike barley and it is no easy matter to get its
husk off. The husking mill is often made of hardened clay with many
wooden teeth on the rubbing surface. After husking there is another
winnowing. Then the grains are run through a special apparatus of
recent introduction called _mangoku doshi_, so that faulty ones may be
picked out. The result is unpolished rice.

It looks grey and unattractive, and unfortunately the unprepossessing
but valuable outer coat is polished away. This is done in a mortar
hollowed out of a section of a tree trunk or out of a large stone. One
may see a young man or a young woman pounding the rice in the mortar
with a heavy wooden beetle or mallet. Often the beetle is fastened to
a beam and worked by foot. Or the polishing apparatus may be driven by
water, oil or steam power. Constantly in the country there are seen
little sheds in each of which a small polishing mill driven by a water
wheel is working away by itself. After the polishing, the _mangoku
doshi_ is used again to free the rice from the bran. This polished
rice is still further polished by the dealer, who has more perfect
mills than the farmer.

[Illustration: SCATTERING ARTIFICIAL MANURE IN ADJUSTED PADDIES, p. 20]

The farmer pays his rent not in the polished but in the husked rice.
At the house of a former _daimyo_ I saw an instrument which the
feudal lord's bailiff was accustomed to thrust into the rice the
tenants tendered. If when the instrument was withdrawn more than three
husks were found adhering, the rice was returned to be recleaned.
There are names for all the different kinds of rice. For instance,
paddy rice is _momi_; husked rice is _gemmai_; half-polished rice is
_hantsukimai_; polished rice is _hakumai_; cooked rice is _gohan_.

[Illustration: PLANTING OUT RICE SEEDLINGS. p. 75]

[Illustration: PUSH-CART FOR COLLECTION OF FERTILISER (TOKYO). p. 49]

A century ago the farmer ate his rice at the _gemmai_ stage, that is
in its natural state, and there was no _beri-beri_. The "black sake"
made from this _gemmai_ rice is still used in Shinto ceremonies. In
order to produce clear _sake_ the rice was polished. Then well-to-do
people out of daintiness had their table rice polished. Now polished
rice is the common food. Half-polished rice may be prepared with two
or three hundred blows of the mallet; fully polished or white rice may
receive six, seven or eight hundred, or even it may be a thousand
blows.

FOOT