Instead of the harrow, farmers use amagu which is a kind of rake. Except the plow, amaguwa) and the carts sometimes used, there are almost no agricultural implements used with the horse.
A hand implement for digging, used exten sively, is eKuwa,s which is often erroneously translated hoe, but whith may be properly named a broad-shared mattock. Kuwa is the simplest and most serviceable of all implements. With it the farmer can dig, break clods, pul verize the soil, even press the surface, make high ridges and small and shallow furrows for sowing in rows, cultivate between the rows, dig holes, etc. One of its kind named (Bitschu has its share divided into three or four teeth and is used to dig paddy fields when wet. Spades are used in some of the districts.
An implement especially constructed to culti vate between the rows of rice is named g Gan zume,B and has long curved teeth and a short handle. Nowadays a hand implement named which may be defined as a kind of roller with teeth around, came much in use as it works much quicker than weeding with hands as was usual. Harvesting is done entirely with a sickle (Kama). Cereals are threshed generally with a comb-like implement, (something like a flax rippler) icinekogils or emuglogi.D Grains are chaffed with a speci ally constructed mill (momisuriusu).
Principal Manures.— From remote ages Japanese farmers have understood how to pre serve the soil from exhaustion by using manure. The manure par excellence was and is human excrement. The water closet is generally pro vided commonly with two earthen jars, one to receive the excrement and another to receive the urine. Farmers reserve these two excreta, mixing both in a large earthen jar or tub, lightly roofing over to exclude rainwater and sun shine. After they have rotted and the urea is changed into ammonia, they are diluted with a large quantity of water and are spread upon the soil, or applied in various ways even di rectly to crops growing between the rows. They are often mixed in making compost.
Green manures are largely used, the most common form being grass cut from natural meadows called gmagusaba,* or from under grass in forests. and soybean are
often sown in paddy fields and plowed in as green manure.
Compost manure also plays a great role. It is of many kinds, the principal of which is made of farmyard manure, often with a large quantity of grass used as litter. Compost is also made of earth mixed with dead leave from for ests. In districts where farming is intensively conducted, compost is carefully made in a small hut especially constructed for the purpose.
Rape cake is extensively used and was for merly the only manure to be bought. It has now much decreased, but its place is more than replaced by soybean cake imported from China. Fish manures are extensively used, the princi pal of which is herring cake, dried sardine and sardine cake.
Rice cleanings are used as manure as well as for food for livestock. Wood and straw ashes are extensively used, formerly being the only potash manure. Lime is much used, es pecially in paddy fields in the warmer half of the country.
Recently great changes have been, and are now being experienced in the manurial world, so to say. Artificial manures are now extensively used, and many factories have been established to manufacture them, phosphatic minerals being imported from America and various islands. Three factories for lime-nitrogen are also es tablished. Superphosphate alone, or with am monia and potash salts, is sold under the name of artificial manure, complete manure, etc. Farmers in various provinces plan to use ammonia sulphate as manure.
Cattle and horses are as yet not so numerous as in occidental countries, and meat, milk, butter and cheese are not so ex tensively used Milch cows are little kept by common farmers, but by special dairymen, who usually buy all food for these cows. Japanese cows have very poor milking quality, so that these dairymen depend entirely upon occidental breeds, such as Holstein, Ayrshire, Jersey, Swiss Brown, etc., or their crosses. Japanese breeds are very small but very good as working mals and farmers generally use cows instead of oxen. Their meat has a most excellent flavor.