Rice as a crop in Japan

1. Rice is the staple food crop of Japan, being grown on about 53% of the total cultivated area. 2. Most of the Japanese rice crop consists of the common type of paddy rice grown on the irrigated lowlands. Some upland rice is grown in the Kyushu and Kanto districts. Practically all rice grown in Japan is short-grained. 3. There are wide differences in total rice production from year to year. Poor harvests have been due primarily to agricultural disasters brought on by climatic factors, diseases, and insect pests. Low yields during World War II (1941-45) usually were attributed to a lack of fertilizers and to a shortage of manpower. 4. Paddy rice in Japan is almost always grown by the transplanting method in which the seedling rice plants are started in nursery beds and later transplanted into paddy fields. The principal reason for the practice is to permit a fall-sown wheat or barley crop to mature before it is necessary to transplant rice. This permits two cereal crops on the land per year, whereas only one would be possible in the direct seeding of rice. Direct seeding of paddy rice is practiced in Hokkaido where the season is short and farmers have comparatively large fields per family. When the weeds are controlled, the Japanese claim that the yields are about the same as with the transplanting method. 6. Upland rice is generally interplanted in wheat or barley. 7. The rice crop is harvested with hand sickles. It is dried on the ground or on racks. After drying, it is threshed by small threshers. Threshed rough rice is cleaned either by use of sieves or by a winnowing machine. Later it is dehulled to so-called brown rice. Brown rice is commonly milled for use as human food. The loss in milling varies from 10 to 15%. 8. The labor requirement per acre for rice production in Japan is high. Some data indicate that about 80 man days and 11 horse days per acre of paddy land are necessary where the yield is 86.4 bushels of rough rice. The labor requirement for 1 acre of upland rice has been estimated at about 71 man days and 1 horse day to produce a crop of 36.9 to 44.4 bushels of rough rice. 9. The most serious diseases of rice in Japan are blast, sesame spot, stem rot, bakanae disease, seedling rot, and stunt (virus disease). 10. The principal insect pests are the two-brooded rice borers, the three-brooded rice borer, and leaf hoppers. 11. Rice is utilized primarily for human food as boiled rice, but small amounts are used in making sake (rice wine) and rice cakes. The straw is used for making straw bags, for forage, and as manure.