Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/458

gathered from the fact that in 1901 there were no less than 2,475,819 families so engaged, while of silk manufacturers there were 421,941. The returns for the year 1901 show that of raw silk there was a total production of 14,639,670 pounds avoirdupois, of which the export trade took 11,596,941 pounds. Of this latter amount fully one-half went to the United States of America, nearly one-fifth to France, and about one-eighth to Italy. The trade with England amounted to only 17,195 pounds. The total sum realized by the raw silk product exported in 1901 was £7,416,733. Besides this amount, the waste raw silk exports bring into the country a revenue of about £500,000 per annum. As a means of promoting the export of silk, a regular silk-conditioning house, qualified to undertake the weighing of the gross and the net quality of silk, was established in 1896 at Yokohama. This business has progressed steadily, until the idea which it embodies is considered an important factor in the silk trade, offering the buyer, as it does, an absolute analysis and guarantee of the quality of the goods he wishes to purchase.

The mulberry farm keeps pace with the silk industry, the method of cultivation differing according to soil and climate. In the northern districts, where a comparatively low temperature prevails, the plants are allowed to remain unpruned all the year round; but in the south-western provinces, where the climatic conditions are quite the opposite, the shoots are pruned close to the root. In addition to the mulberry farm, the tree is grown for the purpose of making hedges and marking boundary-lines, these trees furnishing, it is estimated, about one-fourth of the entire amount of mulberry-leaves used in the silkworm industry of the country.

Rice, as is well known, is the chief food of the Japanese people, and the yearly harvest of it affects the Japanese economy in a degree much higher than the crop of wheat does the European markets, as the production of rice is limited to a narrower region than that of wheat. Thus Japan suffered much when in 1897 her rice harvest proved very poor, and she had to import a large amount of rice from China and European colonies in the Far East. The next year the highest figure of above 47,000,000 koku was attained; since then Japan has had continually a good harvest of rice, and in 1901 it nearly