The Iruma Magistrate Falls for White Rice

[Outside the West Gate, Kamikochō]

Running straight west from the West Gate, a strip of open ground 100 m wide stretched away. In future a twenty-lane motor road was to be laid here, but for now it was used as a plaza.

"Oh, white rice. How many years has it been?"

So marveled the Iruma Daikan, Yoshida Nishinoichinojō, at the sight of the white rice.

"Regrettably, it isn't yet miso soup and pickled daikon; only a clear soup and lightly pickled greens, I'm afraid."

Edamame might be one thing, but soybeans could not yet be harvested, so there was neither miso nor nattō. Summer was unsuited to making takuan, so there was no takuan either, though in this world no one called it "takuan." As for nori, with no sea, there was not even the prospect of obtaining it.

"Director of Books-dono, the other dishes can wait for their season. If I may eat white rice, I will do anything within my power… I said as much in spring, too."

"Indeed. I ask that you continue supplying seed potatoes and the like, and food besides. Sweet potatoes and potatoes cannot be summoned in the dungeon, so even if we set aside extra from this autumn's harvest for seed, it will fall short for the next planting."

There was no magazine-type reference book that came with seed potatoes as a supplement. Incidentally, perhaps because this was a world equivalent to the Edo period, potatoes and sweet potatoes did exist, only they were called by different names.

"Seed potatoes, is it."

"Please send over all the small potatoes, apart from what you keep for planting. We test them for disease, so not all of them will be usable."

"Farming is not my field, but can you not use all of them for seed?"

"If disease spreads through the potatoes, it risks bringing on a great famine. In the otherworld, in a country called Ireland, the potatoes that were the staple food fell sick, and the population was halved."

"That a poor harvest should come is unavoidable, but to do nothing and let it bring on a famine that halves the population… the rulers of that 'Ireland' are fools. They ought to slit their bellies."

"The root cause lies with the Irish themselves, who neglected birth control and let their numbers grow recklessly beyond the land's productive capacity. In this region too, if the population grows too large, then even with a million chōbu of paddy, it will at once fall into food shortage."

According to Malthus, the supply of potatoes, cheaper than wheat, increased marriages and brought about Ireland's population explosion. So the theory ran. Malthus himself, by the way, died before the potato famine.

"Director of Books-dono, do they really increase so quickly?"

"At present the population of these parts, of Bandō, is around five or six million. I'll skip a great deal of explanation, but what a million chōbu can support is fourteen million people. As it says in An Essay on the Principle of Population, with no constraints the population doubles in twenty-five years, so in a mere fifty years it would reach the ceiling of twenty million. Of course, Asura and Beasts do not multiply as humans do, so there is a little more room. And since the root cause of poverty is overpopulation, once the population exceeds the ceiling, then even if you solve the problem of distribution, starvation will spread."

If 70 percent of a million chōbu were paddy, at a yield of 2 koku per tan that came to 14 million koku; if 50 percent were wheat field, at 1.5 koku per tan that came to 7.5 million koku. Reckoning grain demand, including sake and food loss, at 1.5 koku per head, that was enough for 14 million people. As for the land tax, on a million chōbu at a nominal yield of 1 koku per tan, four parts to the lord and six to the people, it came to 4 million koku.

"… Fifty years. A mere fifty years?"

"There are three solutions. First, reduce marriages and so hold down the very number of children. Following the example of the Senba house and gelding all kinsmen and retainers save the head of the line would be one way, but that is the argument of the 'True Society Party,' not the 'Evolution Party.'"

This too was a surname peculiar to Saitama even in the otherworld; it was Senba. Of course they were not "geldings," nor were they castrated. Note that True Socialism is a doctrine seeking to remake human society into a eusocial one like that of bees or ants, and is utterly different from socialism.

"Hah. I do not follow."

"The second is to cull the surplus infants."

"Most magistracies forbid the culling of infants, but it cannot easily be stamped out. If the midwife reports a stillbirth, there is no way to verify it."

"The third is to deliberately stir up wars, or to hunt for human sacrifices like a certain dungeon, but… that would be a reckless argument beneath even a last resort."

"You sound just like a villain."

"Indeed. I do not think it the sort of thing to discuss over a meal, either. Still, population control is necessary. If you could simply keep that in a corner of your mind."

Malthus-Darwinism is Malthus's theory of population grafted onto Social Darwinism, eugenics, and the like. The "Evolution Party" advocates "racial improvement as national policy," arguing for population control through birth control and the introduction of migrants, in short, for reducing children and replacing them with migrants, so as to carry out "racial improvement" the way one carries out "horse improvement."

Is overpopulation to blame for everything: failing the entrance exam, struggling to find work, low wages, packed trains, long overtime, and houses being expensive?

"Horse improvement" refers to the improvement of farm horses, riding horses, and war horses carried out from the Taishō into the mid-Shōwa period. Foreign stallions and broodmares were imported and bred, while domestic horses were crossbred and gelded, all to improve the stock. Applying this to humans is "racial improvement."

It was discontinued because automobiles, tractors, and other agricultural machinery spread and demand for horses fell.