er feeding can only be
brought about by an increased consumption of animal products.[252]

The possibilities of outdoor stock keeping in Hokkaido are limited by
the fact that snow lies from November to the middle of February and in
the north of the island to the end of March. A high agricultural
authority did not think that the number of cattle in all Japan could
be raised to more than two million within twenty years.[253]

In the management of sheep--there were about 5,000 in the whole
country when I was in Hokkaido--there has been failure after failure,
but it is held that the prospects for sheep in Hokkaido are promising.
(The question is discussed in the next Chapter.) At present, owing to
the lack of a market for mutton, pigs, which used to be kept in the
days before Buddhism exerted its influence, seem more attractive to
experimenting farmers than sheep. No one has proposed that sheep
should be kept in ones and twos for milking as in Holland.[254] When
milk is needed it is said that goats, of which there are more than
90,000 in Japan, are desirable stock, but I doubt whether more than
500 of these goats are milked.[255] They are kept to produce meat.
Some people hope that those who eat goat's flesh will come to realise
the superiority of mutton.

The case for pigs is that sweet potatoes and squash can be fed to
them, that they produce frequent litters, that pork is more and more
appreciated, and that there are 300,000 of them in the country
already. Some confident experts who have possibly been influenced by
the large consumption of pork in China argue that pork may become
equally popular in Japan. There are two bacon factories not far from
Tokyo.

As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign
imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths. Japan, which aims
above all at being an exporting country, cannot attain her desire
without receiving imports to pay for her exports.[256] The
physiological argument for an animal industry is unconvincing. The
Japanese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little
fish and a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally ingenious
variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and
the Japanese have become accustomed to digest vegetable protein.[257]
It might be suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter
of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the
influence of foreign ideas which