If You Look Closely When The People Go To Work You Will See
That A Household Spreads Itself Over Plots, Maybe, A Quarter Of A Mile
Apart.
A revenue map of a village shows that this scatteration is
apparently designed, but the reason is not given.
One thing at least is
certain. The assessment of these patches can be no light piece of
work - just the thing, in fact, that would give employment to a large
number of small and variegated Government officials, any one of whom,
assuming that he was of an Oriental cast of mind, might make the
cultivator's life interesting. I remember now - a second-time-seen place
brings back things that were altogether buried - seeing three years ago
the pile of Government papers required in the case of one farm. They
were many and systematic, but the interesting thing about them was the
amount of work that they must have furnished to those who were neither
cultivators nor Treasury officials.
If one knew Japanese, one could collogue with that gentleman in the
straw-hat and the blue loincloth who is chopping within a sixteenth of
an inch of his naked toes with the father and mother of all weed-spuds.
His version of local taxation might be inaccurate, but it would sure to
be picturesque. Failing his evidence, be pleased to accept two or three
things that may or may not be facts of general application. They differ
in a measure from statements in the books. The present land-tax is
nominally 2-1/2 per cent, payable in cash on a three, or as some say a
five, yearly settlement. But, according to certain officials, there has
been no settlement since 1875. Land lying fallow for a season pays the
same tax as land in cultivation, unless it is unproductive through flood
or calamity (read earthquake here). The Government tax is calculated on
the capital value of the land, taking a measure of about 11,000 square
feet or a quarter of an acre as the unit.
Now, one of the ways of getting at the capital value of the land is to
see what the railways have paid for it. The very best rice land, taking
the Japanese dollar at three shillings, is about L65:10s per acre.
Unirrigated land for vegetable growing is something over L9:12s., and
forest L2:11s. As these are railway rates, they may be fairly held to
cover large areas. In private sales the prices may reasonably be higher.
It is to be remembered that some of the very best rice land will bear
two crops of rice in the year. Most soil will bear two crops, the first
being millet, rape, vegetables, and so on, sown on dry soil and ripening
at the end of May. Then the ground is at once prepared for the wet crop,
to be harvested in October or thereabouts. Land-tax is payable in two
instalments. Rice land pays between the 1st November and the middle of
December and the 1st January and the last of February. Other land pays
between July and August and September and December. Let us see what the
average yield is. The gentleman in the sun-hat and the loin-cloth would
shriek at the figures, but they are approximately accurate. Rice
naturally fluctuates a good deal, but it may be taken in the rough at
five Japanese dollars (fifteen shillings) per koku of 330 lbs. Wheat
and maize of the first spring crop is worth about eleven shillings per
koku. The first crop gives nearly 1-3/4 koku per tau (the quarter
acre unit of measurement aforesaid), or eighteen shillings per quarter
acre, or L3:12s. per acre. The rice crop at two koku or L1:10s. the
quarter acre gives L6 an acre. Total L9:12s. This is not altogether bad
if you reflect that the land in question is not the very best rice land,
but ordinary No. 1, at L25:16s. per acre, capital value.
A son has the right to inherit his father's land on the father's
assessment, so long as its term runs, or, when the term has expired, has
a prior claim as against any one else. Part of the taxes, it is said,
lies by in the local prefecture's office as a reserve fund against
inundations. Yet, and this seems a little confusing, there are between
five and seven other local, provincial, and municipal taxes which can
reasonably be applied to the same ends. No one of these taxes exceeds a
half of the land-tax, unless it be the local prefecture tax of 2-1/2 per
cent.
In the old days the people were taxed, or perhaps squeezed would be the
better word, to about one-half of the produce of the land. There are
those who may say that the present system is not so advantageous as it
looks. Beforetime, the farmers, it is true, paid heavily, but only, on
their nominal holdings. They could, and often did, hold more land than
they were assessed on. Today a rigid bureaucracy surveys every foot of
their farms, and upon every foot they have to pay. Somewhat similar
complaints are made still by the simple peasantry of India, for if there
is one thing that the Oriental detests more than another, it is the
damnable Western vice of accuracy. That leads to doing things by rule.
Still, by the look of those terraced fields, where the water is led so
cunningly from level to level, the Japanese cultivator must enjoy at
least one excitement. If the villages up the valley tamper with the
water supply, there must surely be excitement down the valley - argument,
protest, and the breaking of heads.
The days of romance, therefore, are not all dead.
* * * * *
This that follows happened on the coast twenty miles through the fields
from Yokohama, at Kamakura, that is to say, where the great bronze
Buddha sits facing the sea to hear the centuries go by.
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