ABSTRACT
The collection of agricultural statistics stretches back into the mid-nineteenth century and has been an important government activity since. The importance of agricultural statistics is attested to by numerous Japanese statistical publications, many prepared on a regular basis. Although prewar data do suffer from inconsistencies, problems are minor compared to those found in other Asian rice economies. Rice, as the most important food crop, has received wide statistical coverage. A quick glance at the table shows that Japanese rice data are far more complete than any other country's data. One problem in the usage of Japanese data is that many statistical publications appear in Japanese only, although several dual-language, general-purpose publications provide ample information for most users.
