Rice Japanese Food Mainstay

Manawatu Times, Volume 63, Issue 175, 27 July 1938, Page 9

Rice Japanese Food Mainstay

TOKYO—Rice, which Japanese call the “king of grains," is very emphatically the food mainstay for the Island Empire. The typical Japanese—apart from a small minority in the larger towns who have become partly westernized in their tastes —eats it three times a day. The regular accompaniment to rise at the morning meal consists of beancurd soup and a very bitter pickled plum as an appetizer, with perhaps some seaweed. Fish, vegetables, pickles, and beancurd are supplementary dishes at other meals. But rice is the central item in the Japanese menu. The per capital consumption of rice in Japan is a little over five bushels a year. The average crop yield has been doubled in the last generation. The peasants operate the simple machinery which regulates the flow of irrigation water into the ricefields. Rice culture depends on a regular and even supply of water and Japan has developed a far flung irrigation system. The cultivation of rice is mainly by hand iu Japan and one often sees peasants, the men in broadbrimmed hats, with picturesque straw raincoats, on the many rainy days in Japan, the women barelegged, with kerchiefs around their heads, working up to their knees in the muddy water.

Rice cultivation has been brought to a high state of efficiency. Japan’s two largest colonies, Korea and Formosa, both produce a surplus of rice; and, with the aid of these supplies, Japan is self-sufficient as regards its most important food. The district near Osaka is one of the richest in Japan; but rice is grown even where natural conditions are not favourable, as in the northeast ern Prefectures of Japan’s main island and in the northern island of Hokkaido. One often sees liny patches of irrigated rice-land clinging to the steep slopes of |Japan's many hills and mountains. The average Japanese will make almost any sacrifice to obtain his three rice meals a day and prefers Japaueso grown rice to imported varieties.

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