As in other countries, the argument for doing away with foreign imports is pushed in Japan to ridiculous lengths. Japan, which aims above all at being an exporting country, cannot attain her desire without receiving imports to pay for her exports.[256] The physiological argument for an animal industry is unconvincing. The Japanese have a long dietetic history as vegetarians who eat a little fish and a few eggs. There exists in Japan an exceptionally ingenious variety of nitrogenous foods derived from the vegetable kingdom, and the Japanese have become accustomed to digest vegetable protein.[257] It might be suggested, with some show of reason, that in this matter of the adoption of a meat dietary the Japanese are once more under the influence of foreign ideas which are a little out of date.[258] In Europe and America there is evidence of a decreasing meat consumption among educated people, and medical papers are full of counsels to diminish the amount of meat consumed. There is also in the West an increasing sensitiveness to the horrors inflicted on animals in transportation by rail and steamer, and if an animal industry were established in Japan there would certainly be a great deal of transportation by rail and steamer from the breeding to the rearing districts, and from these districts to the slaughtering centres. If the present advocacy of an animal industry for Japan should triumph over the reluctance to take animal life inculcated by Buddhism it is hardly likely to be regarded in the West as a forward step in the ethical evolution of the Japanese.[259] I had the good fortune to meet in Sapporo a man who has made a special study of the food of the Japanese people, Professor Morimoto of the University. He said that he had no doubt that when the Japanese began to eat bread instead of rice they would develop a taste for meat as well as butter. With great kindness he placed at my disposal statistics which he afterwards expanded in a thesis for Johns Hopkins University. He had investigated the dietary of the families of 200 tenants of the University farms. Reduced to terms of men per day the result was: Sen. Sen. Rice (1.95 _go_) 4.2 Vegetables 2.2 (Naked) barley (3.45 _go_) 3.3 Pickles[260] .6 Fish 1.0 Saké .08 _Miso_ .7 Sugar .02 _Shoyu_ (soy) .03 ------ 12.13 Or at Tokyo prices, 14.3 sen. On averaging, in terms of per man per day, the food and drink consumption of all Japan, Professor Morimoto found the result to be: