ers of intelligent
young men and women. So disciplined and studious are most of these
young people that their country has had back with interest every yen
of the funds so wisely provided. We have much to learn from Japanese
methods in this matter of well-considered post-graduate foreign
travel.[200]

FOOTNOTES:

[198] See Appendix LXIII.

[199] See Appendix LV.

[200] See Appendix LVI.

CHAPTER XXXIII

GREEN TEA AND BLACK

(SHIDZUOKA)

Things I would know but am forbid
By time and briefness.

LAURENCE BINYON

More than half of the tea grown in Japan comes from the hilly
coast-wise prefecture of Shidzuoka through which every traveller
passes on his journey from Kobe or Kyoto to Tokyo. He sees a terraced
cultivation of tea and fruit carried up to the skyline. But there is
more tea on the hills than the passenger in the train imagines. When
viewed from below much of the tea looks like scrub. In various parts
of southern Japan patches of tea may be noticed growing on little
islands in the paddies, but tea is a hill plant and it is on the sides
of hills and on the plateaus at the top of them that the plantations
are to be found.

Tea looks not unlike privet and grows or is made to grow like box to a
height which can be conveniently picked over. The rows of neat-looking
plants are half a dozen feet apart. The first picking may take place
when the bush is three or four years old. Bushes may last forty, fifty
or even a hundred years, but the ordinary life of tea is between
twenty and thirty. A bush is usually cut back every ten years or so. A
good deal depends on the pruning. After each picking the bushes are
cut over with the shears just as we trim box. These trimmings may be
used to make an inferior tea for farmhouse consumption, or they may be
utilised in the manufacture of caffeine or theine--the two products
are indistinguishable. Usually the bushes are cut round-topped, but
occasionally they are roof-shaped and sometimes they are like giant
green toadstools.

The characteristic feature of a tea district beyond the rows of tea
bushes is the chimney piping of the farmhouses which manufacture their
own tea. (The word manufacture is used in the original sense, for
farmhouse tea is hand-made.) In a country where the houses are
chimneyless these galvanised iron chimneys are conspicuous.

The picking of the tea seems to be done almost entirely by women and
children. The pickers are supposed to take o