h appetite to several bowls of plain rice three times a
day.[80] But good rice does seem to have something of the property of
oatmeal, the property of a continual tastiness. Further, the rice
eater picks up now and then from a small saucer a piece of pickle
which may have either a salty or a sweet fermented taste. The
nutrition gained at a Japanese meal is largely in soups in which the
bean preparations, _tofu_ and _miso_, and occasionally eggs, are used.
And there is no country in the world where more fish is eaten than in
Japan. The coast waters and rivers team with fish, and fish--fresh,
dried and salted, shell-fish and fish unrecognisable as fish after all
sorts of ingenious treatment--is consumed by almost everybody.

The Japanese are in no doubt that the foreign rice which is brought
into the country to supplement the home supply is inferior to their
own.[81] Inferior means that they prefer the flavour of their own
rice, just as most Scots prefer oatmeal made from oats grown in
Scotland.

II

In the year of the Coronation--it took place three years after the
Emperor's accession--two prefectures had the honour of being chosen to
produce the rice to be placed before gods, Emperor and dignitaries at
Kyoto. The work was not undertaken without ceremony. I was a witness
of the rites performed at the planting of the rice in one of the
prefectures. Plots had been prepared with enormous care. Along the top
of the special fencing were the Shinto straw bands and paper
streamers. A small shrine had been built to overlook the plots. Even
the instruments of the little meteorological station near, by which
the management of the crop would be guided, were surrounded by straw
bands and streamers--religion protecting science. The mattocks and
other implements which had been used in the preparation of the paddy
or were to be used in getting in the crops and in cultivating,
harvesting, threshing and cleaning it were all new. Even the herring
which had manured the plot had been "specially selected and blessed."
Further, there was a special bath-house where the young men and women
who were to plant the rice had washed ceremonially at an early hour.

We had reached the spot through a crowd of twenty or thirty thousand
people who were gathering to witness the ceremony. A covered platform
had been built in front of the rice field shrine, and on either side
were large roofed-in spaces for some scores of Shinto priests and the
favour