Unequalled Rice Crop in View if No Storms Come Tokio, Aug. 22.
Unless some very severe storms come within the next three weeks Japan will this year reap the greatest rice crop in her history and there will be at least cheap rice to make less grim the prospects of an otherwise hard winter, with much unemployment, Already, in view of the prospects, the price of rice has fallen twenty-five per cent. since the first of July, from eight yen a bushel to six.
Official estimates just made public predict an increased crop in all districts of Japan, from 10 to 40 per cent., with an estimated total of 347,200,000 bushels, an increase over any crop yet recorded of 35,- 000,000 and some 54,000,000 more than was harvested last year. It is also predicted by the Department of Agriculture and Commerce reporters that, owing to the most favourable weather, the crop will ripen this year two weeks ahead of the average date, making the crop thus more of a certainty.
The weather conditions this year have been perfect, with a wet spring, a hot, rainless summer and now, cooling, ripening breezes. The only danger now is in typhoons which may beat down the ripening grain and destroy it or bring floods that will wreak damage. The danger point will be past, according to the crop experts, on the 210th day of the season, which comes on September 19.
The exceptional crop prospects come as a great relief to the authorities, who know well that the coming winter is going to go hard with millions of Japanese. If rice, the Japanese staff of life, were to be scarce and expensive,-the trouble from unemployment would be greatly aggravated and there might be a recrudescence of the rice riots that have marked hard times in Japan on many occasions in the past.
#16 is to be feared that the typhoon of August 24 may have upset calculations, though it seems have been to some extent-confined to northern parts.—Ed.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.