The home of the average tenant farmer is a small, single-storied, thatch-roofed building, having usually two or three small rooms separated by sliding paper screens, and a kitchen with earthen floor. The smoke escapes as it can, passing through the roof or pervading the whole house. No privacy of any kind is possible, nor is any need of it felt. The house is free of furniture, save for one or two chests of drawers. A closet or two affords a place for the _futon_ (bedding) by day, and for the little extra clothing. Of course no books are found in such homes. The main room often has a board floor, with a fire box in the center, over which is a kettle suspended from the roof. Here the family eat, and friends gather to chat after the day's work is over. The food is of the poorest grade in the empire, though usually adequate in amount. Of course there are well-to-do farmers, not a few, who own their farms, employ fellow farmers, and cultivate large areas. Their homes are larger and better, but still in arrangement and structure they are practically the same. Their sons attend the middle schools and books and the daily paper are familiar objects.
The economic condition of the farming class may be judged from the fact that the land cultivated by each family averages three and one-third acres, which must provide food and clothing for five or six persons. The great majority of farmers live in little, compact villages, having populations ranging from 500 to 5,000. There are 12,706 villages under 5,000, and only 1,311 villages, towns, and cities over 5,000. These facts suggest the nature of the social conditions of the farming population. They live under the severest limitations of every kind, physical, intellectual, and spiritual. Yet during the recent era of Meiji (enlightened rule), from 1868 to 1912, the economic condition of the agricultural classes made great improvement. My gardener, a man of sixty, who remembers Japan before the reformation, 1868, says that farmers now live in luxury. The taxes they pay to-day are slight compared with what was required of them in former times, when, in his section, farmers had to give to their Daimio about five twelfth of the rice crop, while taxes to-day require but one fifth or less. He adds that families owning three and one third acres of land are well-to-do, seeing many families have to make their entire living from only one acre!