000 _cho_ under cultivation, a hundred and fifty times more than
there were in 1873. The line marking the northern or rather the
north-eastern limit of rice shows roughly a third of the island on the
northern and eastern coasts to be at present beyond the skill of rice
growers. There is always uncertainty with the rice crop in Hokkaido.
As the growing period is short, half the rice is not transplanted but
sown direct in the paddies. A bad crop is expected once in seven
years. In such a season there is no yield and even the straw is not
good.

Immigrants get 5 _cho_, but if they are without capital they first go
to work as tenants. There are contractors in the towns who supply
labourers to farmers and factories at busy times. When newcomers have
capital and are keen on rice growing and are families working without
hired labour, they are strongly recommended not to devote more than
2-1\2 _cho_ to rice--from 3 to 5 _cho_ are the absolute limit--against
1-1\2 or 2 _cho_ to other crops. When the holder of a 5-_cho_ holding
prospers he buys a second farm and more horses and implements, and
hires labour for the busy period. But 10 or 15 _cho_ is considered as
much as can be worked in this way. If the area is more than 10 or 15
_cho_ it is difficult to get labour in the busy season, for it is the
busy season for everybody. Labourers from a distance can be got only
at an unprofitable rate. It is first the lack of capital and then the
lack of labour which prevents the farmer extending his holding.[244]
The limit of practical mixed farming is 30 _cho_. (Stock farming is
for milk rather than for meat, and more than one condensed-milk
factory is in operation.) Even in Hokkaido large farming, as it is
understood in Great Britain and America, is not easy to find.[245]

On my journey north from Sapporo the first thing which brought home to
me the colonial character of the agriculture was the tree stumps
sticking up in the paddies. The second was the extent to which the
rivers were still uncontrolled. The longest river in Japan, 260 miles
long, is in Hokkaido. There was obviously a vast moorland area in need
of draining. Peat--there are 300,000 _cho_ of it--may be a standby
when the waste of timber that is going on brings about a shortage of
fuel other than coal. From poor peat soil, which was growing oats,
buckwheat and millet, we passed to land capable of producing rice, and
saw ploughing with horses. One region had been opened for o