Agriculture wholly depends on opportunity; if you don't turn over in Spring nor weed out in Summer, how can you get harvest in Autumn? Without enough harvest in Autumn nor enough stock in Winter, you must worry starvation and even death.

Guan-zi says: "If even one farmer doesn't farm, it makes people starved. If even one weaver doesn't weave, it makes people feel cold. With a storehouse filled with grain, one can know the proprieties. With enough food and clothing, one can know honor and shame." The author said rightly.

My ancestor at Kasuga-yama in Echigo gave his arms back at the beginning of Tensho period. From that through seven generations my family has devoted themselves to agriculture, wiping drops out in the morning and looking up stars in the evening.

While they always ate plain food and wore poor cloths, satistied with these, they didn't want far more than deserved. They thought, waking or asleep, nothing but their descendants would not neglect their agricultural works. An ancient saying says "Rearing one's children without education is father's fault." Then, collecting teachings on how to farm, when to harvest and what manure to use, I'd like to give it to my unknown childs under the title "Private Talk on Agriculture."

The eighth year of Tenmei (1788 AD), the Major Earth and the Monkey, November.
At Tonami in Ecchu (now Toyama pref.), a farmer MIYANAGA Syouun

Book I
1. Soil, 2. Dung, 3. Seeds, 4. Rice Nursery, 5. Reclamation, 6. Sand Soil, 7. Making Ridge, 8. Preparing for Planting, 9. Rice Planting, 10. Chinese Rice, 11. Barnyard Grass on Rice Field, 12. Supplying Plant, 13. Adjustment of Water, 14. Re-turnover, 15. Weeding

Book II
1. Reaping, 2. threshing and storage, 3. Various kinds of Rice Plant, 4. Field Rice, 5. Barley, 6. Wheat, 7. Barnyard Grass, 8. Saybean, 9. Azuki Bean, 10. Foxtail Millet, 11. Millet, 12. Buckwheat

Book III
1. Sesame, 2. Rapeseed, 3. White Radish, 4. Turnip, 5. Eggplant, 6. Gourd, 7. Cucumber, 8. Carrot, 9. Burdock, 10. Taro, 11. Yam, 12. Various Kinds of Sweet Potatoes (Chinese Yam, "Kashu", "Tokoro"), 13. Cotton, 14. Ramie, 15. Hemp, 16. Indigo, 17. Safflower

Book IV
1. Tea Plant, 2. Vegetables and Utensils, 3. Crops for Oil, 4. Dietary Habits for Farmers, 5. Foods for Famine, 6, Mulberry, 7. Tree-planting

Book V
1. Sericulture, 2. Fortelling and Judging the Weather, 3. Miscellanea

Book VI
1. Miscellaneous Household Duties, 2. Cure for Diseases, 3. Antidotes and First-aid Treatments, 4. Remedies of Horses, 5. Works in Winter, 6. Agricultural Implements, 7. Pictures of Implements

[1] Soil quality is divided into the cool, the hot, the rich and the poor, each of which is divided into the positive and the negative. This is the first and most important knowledge for being a farmer. A farmer consider it as a doctor diagnoses the cause of a disease and gives appropriate medicine. For example, considering these soil qualities, in a case he uses dung, in another he sows or plants plants appropriate to the land so that he can get rich fruits or harvests, in the same way as a doctor gives appropriate medicin so that he can get good effects.

Examples of soil qualities are:
The cool: soil in the shade
The hot: soil in the sun
The poor: red soil full of stones
The rich: futile soil of well mixed stones and sand

[2] The ground with high mountain or steep hill in the southeast, called "North-Shade", has cool soil without exception.

[3] The ground with no shade in the southeast, with soft and all-day dried soil, has the hot quality and is called "hot" ground. "All Items on Medicinal Herbs" says too that the groung on the south of a mountain or that on the north of a river is called "positive ground." Therefore, it is important to plant plants appropriate to each ground considering it's quality even if it is in the same village; for among rice plant, other grains and vegetables some don't hate shade so much, others are not so strong against drying or too much sunny weather. Then one should choose seeds appropriate to each land for planting.

[4] Being hard as stone, red clay and "burned" (exhausted and barren) ground belongs to the poor.

[5] The land with stones and sand smoothly mixed or with fine color belongs to the rich. The Compendium of Agriculture says too: even yellow soil or black one can belong to the best ones, if it is heavy and fresh; generally speaking, good soil always has some blue-black small stones. Rice plant isn't particular so much about soil. Indeed, it is said, it's pretty good for the dirty water, loving even the place into which domestic dirty water flows or places with rich water whatsoever quality it may have.

[6] Barley or wheat is said to be good for the black and futile land, for it loves such soil without any paculiarities.

[7] Soybean loves red cray.

[8] Millet and foxtail millet like yellow-white soil; they grow well on any rich soil.

[9] Soil with rough sand agrees with barn grass.

[10] White radish loves land of fine and soft sand.

[11] Potatoes love deep-plowable rich ground.

[12] Generally speaking, rice plant is said to be good for dirty waterside and love dirty splash; even in one and the same village, on the one hand, a field with houses above naturally receives various kind of dirty water poured into the sewer - white water made by washing rice for daily meals, "dirt-water" after bathing of men or horses and even "pot-water" that is water coming from a pot for shit and piss -, and this makes the field better by making it fertile. On the other hand, a field located at the lower part of the village cannot keep dirty water but leave it to another village through the sewer so that it make other village's fields rich and itself poor, then even if it was once rich it gets poor. That's why in these "Ka-Etsu-Nou*" three states, since some villages are close to big towns of some thousands houses such as The Castle Town* first of all, Komatsu, Takaoka, Tokoro-guchi, Uodu, Ima-Isurugi, Himi, Jouhana, Mattou, Miyakosi, by receiving daily domestic waste water from these towns, their fields get recovered; there even fields with many stones get richer and richer every year into fields good for rice planting. Things being so, when a farmer allows his second or third son to have their own home, he must think where they should live in; that is, he should think they can live in the place where all dirty water - slops, sewage and so on - come in.

* Ka-Etsu-Nou: an abbreviation for "Kaga, Ecchuu and Noto", that is, Toyama pref. and whole Ishikawa one these days.
* The Castle Town: Kanazawa.

[13] An old farmer said: one can judge the soil quality by tasting it; that from a good field tasts sweet, average one salty, bad one bitter. The same farmer said thus too: one can judge it from mud snails living there; those living in a good one grow fat but those in poor soil of a poor field live in a small and thin shell.

[1.2.0] Dungs are: human manure (also called "ordure manure" or "real manure"), stable manure, chicken manure, "silkworm sand", urine, "stable soil", "grass urine", "straw urine", "jar soil", "trampled soil" (or "barnyard soil"), river rubbish, dried sardine, raw sardine, oilcake, rice bran, ashes, hay, grass, wisteria leaves, oak leaves, mugwort, willow leaves, reed root, iris, "Saku" (a wild herb; a kind of wild dropwort).

[1.2.1: Human Manure] A horseback of human manure is called "a backet", which is valued at six "Shou"* of rice. This dung works well on fertile field, deeply damp one and slightly marshy one. Incleased by trampling with straw of early-ripen rice, It should be spread in spring after crushing soil. It should be given when wind calms down, because it might be easily wasted if in a day of strong warm wind.

* Shou: a Japanese unit usually used for rice, liquors and soy-products.

[1.2.2: Stable Manure] Stable manure is wild grass mowed from summer to fall, well-trampled by horses, mixed with horse dung and well-mellowed, then piled up in a corner of a garden in the early fall, covered with soil, and finally spreaded over rice fields in September or October after harvesting rice; or straw wasted after threshing and hulling in winter after October, put into a stable for mixing with horse dung, then spreaded over dry fields in the next spring with rough plowing, or piled for using later as extra dung for early-ripen rice or regularly-ripen one.

[1.2.3: Stable Soil] Stable soil is soil put on the stable floor digged 5 or 6 shaku* in depth, mixed and well-mellowed with dripping manure. This soli should be dig out in February to make it manure for rice nursery; digged soil should be replaced by new soil from rice nursery.

* Shaku: 1 shaku = apprx. 30 cm.

[1.2.4: Jar Soil] Dig a hole of 50-80 "Ho" at the back of your house. Fill it up with new soil and pour waste water from the lavatory or kitchen into it. Turn the soil up four or five times a year to make it well-fermented. Then you get "Jar Soil." Letting excess moisture out and drying up, put the appropriate amount of it over dry field as well as wet one just before you plant rice.

* Ho: used in the same meaning as "Tan" (= approx. 3.3 m2) in this context; 50-80 ho corresponds to approx. 165-264 scuare metres.

[1.2.5: Trampled Soil] In October, before it snows or gives frost, bring soil by horse or man into a garden; spread it one "Shaku" or so in thickness; over it put leaves, rice-husks or strawdust to make them rotten [; then you get "trampled soil"]. In the following year, snow melted and dried up, you can bring them into dry field around your house for fertilizing, with weighing appropriate amount.

[1.2.6: Horse Manure] Horse manure works well for any plants; it can be put before sowing; or for "March greens", "Deep-rooted (leeks)" or (greek) leeks it can well be put afterward to make their growth fast; for letting peonies bloom a beautful bloom it works the best.

[1.2.7: Silkworm Sand] "Silkworm sand" [droppings, leftovers and other garbages from them] works pretty well for barn grass, foxtail millet and any other plants.

[1.2.8: Chicken Manure] Chicken manure works well for barn grass. To plant it: mow the field, make it smooth by smashing the soil off, then create ridges and on them spade holes (called "Kura") every "Shaku", then put a handful of barngrass plant into each holes and cover their roots with earth. Chicken manure could be increased by adding ash, if its amount is not enough.

[1.2.9: Urine] Urine is one of the best dungs to spread; it never harms any plants. [The most effective way to use it is:] early spring, when it thaws out and wheat, rape and "march greens" put their buds out to one fist height on seedling bed, sprinkle it on them after patting watar off from them in the evening. Besids this, when their sets don't grow well just before planting, give it to them, mixing with ash; this urine is called "urine ash." To white radish, gourd, egg plant and other vegetables, it may be given any time in all the four seasons.

[1.2.10: Oilcake]