─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────┬───────────────── │ Square miles. │ Population. │ Density per │ │ │ square mile. ─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────── Nippon, Northern │ 30,556│ 6,455,287│ 191 Nippon, Central │ 37,028│ 16,368,995│ 442 Nippon, Western │ 20,922│ 9,523,168│ 453 Island of Shikoku│ 7,113│ 2,929,639│ 412 Island of Kiu-Siu│ 17,037│ 6,524,024│ 384 Hokkaido, or Yezo│ 36,734│ 469,507│ 13 ─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────── │ 149,390│ 42,270,620│ 316 Formosa │ 8,995│ 2,041,809│ 228 ─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────── │ 158,385│ 44,312,429│ 272 ─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────── Even more remarkable than the population is the small area of cultivated land required to support such an immense number of people. Japan is an extremely mountainous country, and although the plains and valleys, especially in the east and south, are admirably cultivated, and the rice-fields occasionally cover hills that slope so close to the sea as not to allow of the existence of even a small fringe of cultivable land, the mountain ranges in the interior are still covered with forests, and even the northern part of the great island, where the land is excellent, is quite uncultivated. According to recent statistics, about one-fifth of the total surface of the country has been reclaimed and subdivided into a remarkable number of small farms and tenements. The forest lands, on the other hand, cover 88,632 square miles, of which 28,544 square miles belong to private owners, 51,834 square miles to the State or to the various provinces, and 8,254 square miles are Crown lands. The remainder of the island is occupied by moors, uncultivated tracts of land, extremely extensive in Yezo, where the forests are of vast extent, and where only 1,269 square miles of land repay cultivation. If we leave aside the northern island, and only take into consideration the land occupied by 99 per cent. of the Japanese population, we discover that, exclusive of 67,571 square miles of forest land, only 21,234 square miles provide food for 42,000,000 people, whereas in France there are about 56,917 square miles devoted to cereals alone, and if we add potatoes, vineyards and other edibles, we arrive at a total of 75,889 square miles for a population much inferior to that of Japan; moreover, France imports provisions very largely from other countries.