Perang Dunia Timur. Jepang, Tiongkok, dan Korea/Bab 7

LIMITS AND POSSESSIONS OF THE JAPANESE EMPIRE.

The Islands and their Situation—The Famous Mountain Fuji-yama—Rivers and Canals—Ocean Currents and Their Effect on the Japanese Climate—Japan not a Tropical Country—Flora and Fauna—The Important Cities—Strange History of Yokohama—Commerce—Mining—Agricultural Products—Ceramic Art—Government of the Realm.

The empire of Japan is a collection of islands of various dimensions, numbering nearly four thousand, and situated to the east of the Asiatic continent. Only four of these however, are of size sufficient to entitle them to considerable fame, and around these a sort of belt of defense is formed by the thousands of islets. Dai Nippon is the name given by the natives to their beautiful land, and from this expression, which means Great Japan, our own name for the empire has been taken. Foreign writers have very often blundered in calling the largest island Nippon or Niphon. This more properly applies to the entire empire, while the main island is named in the military geography of Japan, Hondo. This word itself means main land. The other three important islands are Kiushiu, the most southeasterly of all; Shikoku, which lies between the latter and Hondo; and Yesso, which is the most northerly of the chain.

Japan occupies an important position on the surface of the globe, measured by political and commercial possibilities. Its position is such that its people may not unreasonably hope to form a natural link between the Occident and the Orient. Lying in the Pacific Ocean, in the temperate zone and not in the torrid, as many have the thought, it bends like a crescent off the continent of Asia. In the extreme north, near the island of Saghalien, the distance from the main land of Asia is so short that it is little more than a day’s sail in a junk. At the southern extremity, where Kiushiu draws nearest to the Corean peninsula, the distance to the main land is even less. Between this crescent of islands and the Asiatic main land is enclosed the Sea of Japan. For more than four thousand miles eastward stretches the Pacific Ocean, with no stopping point for steamers voyaging to San 266Francisco unless they diverge far from their course for a call at Honolulu.

The island connections of Japan are numerous. To the south are the Liu Kiu islands, which have been annexed to Japan, and still farther the great island of Formosa. To the north are the Kurile islands, which extend far above Yesso and were ceded to Japan by Russia in return for Saghalien, over which rule was formerly disputed. The chain is almost continuous, although broken and irregular, to Kamtchatka, and thence prolonged by the Aleutian islands in an enormous semicircle to Alaska and our own continent.

The configuration of the land is that resulting from the combined effects of volcanic action and wave erosion. The area of the Japanese islands is about one hundred and fifty thousand square miles, or nearly as great as the New England and Middle States. But of this surface nearly two-thirds consists of mountain land, much of it still lying waste and uncultivated though apparently capable of tillage. On the main island a solid backbone of mountainous elevations runs through a great portion of its length, with subordinate chains extending at right angles and rising again in the other islands. The mountains decrease in height towards the south and there are few highlands along the sea coast. The range is reached by a gradual rise from the sea, until the backbone of the great island chain is reached. Japan rises abruptly from the sea, and deep water begins very close to the shore, indicating that the entire range of islands may be properly characterized as an immense mountain chain thrown up from the bottom of the ocean. The highest peak is Fuji-yama, which rises to a height of more than twelve thousand feet above the sea. It is a wonderfully beautiful mountain, and is the first glimpse that one has of land in approaching Yokohama from the Pacific Ocean. Of the position which this mountain occupies in the affections and traditions of the Japanese, mention will be made in a later chapter.

The islands forming the empire of Japan are comprehended in these limits; between twenty-four degrees and fifty-one degrees north latitude, and one hundred and twenty-four degrees and one hundred and fifty-seven degrees east longitude. That is, speaking 267roughly, it lies diagonally in and north of the subtropical belt, and has northern points corresponding with Paris and Newfoundland, and southern ones corresponding with Cairo and the Bermuda islands; or coming nearer home, it corresponds pretty nearly in latitude with the eastern coast line of the United States, added to Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, and the contrasts of climate in the latter island and in Florida are probably not more remarkable than those which are observed in the extreme northern and southern regions of Japan.

The most striking geographical feature of Japan is the Inland Sea, which is one of the beauties of the world. It is a long, irregularly shaped arm of the sea, with tides and rapid currents, of variable width and no great depth, studded with innumerable thickly wooded islands. It is the water area which separates Hondo from Shikoku and Kiushiu, and is often spoken of as the Japanese Mediterranean.

One or two of the rivers of Japan, such as the Sumida, on the banks of which Tokio, the capital, lies, and which is about as broad as the East River between New York and Brooklyn, are 268worthy of note. Here at the present time are situated several ship yards, and many modern craft built in the American fashion may be seen along the shore. Here it may be mentioned that any particular appellation given to a river in Japan holds good only for a limited part of its course, so that it changes its name perhaps four or five times in flowing a few hundred miles. Indeed the river which passes through the city of Ozaka changes its name four times within the city limits. Most of the larger rivers in the main land run a course tending almost north and south. The general contour of the land is such that they must be short, but this direction gives them the greatest length possible. There are brief periods of excessively heavy rain, and they are often then in fierce flood, carrying everything before them and leaving great plains of water-worn stones and gravel around their mouths. There are many picturesque waterfalls which attract travelers and command the admiration of native artists and poets. The rivers at a short distance from their outlets are rendered navigable chiefly by the courage and expertness of the boatmen,—who are among the most daring and skillful in the world.

Till recently little has been done to deepen river channels or protect their banks, except in the interest of agriculture. In the lower courses, where broad alluvial plains of great fertility have been formed, they are frequently intersected by numerous shallow canals, for the most part of comparatively recent excavation, but some of them are many centuries old and these have been of immense service in keeping up communication throughout the country. In spite of their shallowness and rapid silting, some of the rivers of Japan are capable of being improved so as to admit of the passage of steam vessels of the largest size, and there are fine natural inlets and spacious bays which form harbors of great excellence.

The Japanese coast is usually steep and even precipitous. Its chief natural features, such as sunken rocks, capes, straits, entrances to bays and harbors and the mouths of rivers are now well marked with beacons or lighthouses of modern construction. The tides are not great, and in Yeddo bay the rise is only about four feet on an average. In spring tides it rarely exceeds six feet, and in general the height of the flood tide is never very 269great. Navigation in summer is somewhat dangerous and difficult, owing to the mists and fogs which are deemed by its sailors to be the great scourge of Japan. Indeed these malarious cloud banks are probably as dangerous to the health of the landsmen as they are to the safety of the mariner. While a large area of land lying under shallow water, during rice cultivation, may have some share in the formation of these dangerous mists, there is the more general cause which is readily to be found in the ocean currents.

Japan occupies a striking position in these currents which flow northward from the Indian ocean and the Malay peninsula. That branch of the great Pacific equatorial current called the Kuro Shiwo, or dark tide or current, on account of its color, flows in a westerly direction past Formosa and the Liu Kiu islands, striking the south point of Kiushiu and sometimes in summer sending a branch up the Sea of Japan. With great velocity it scours the east coast of Kiushiu and the south of Shikoku; thence with diminished rapidity it envelopes the group of islands south of the Bay of Yeddo; and at a point a little north of Tokio it leaves the coast of Japan and flows northeast towards the shores of America, ultimately giving to our own Pacific coast states a far milder climate than the corresponding latitudes on the Atlantic coast.

The yearly evaporation at the tropics, of fully fourteen or fifteen feet of ocean water, causes the great equatorial current of the Pacific to begin its flow. When the warm water reaches the colder waters to the northward, condensation of the water-laden air takes place, with the resulting formation of great cloud banks. The water appears to be of a deep, almost indigo-blue color, whence the name given to the current by the Japanese. Fish occur in great numbers where the Arctic current of fresher, lighter, and cooler water meets the warm salt stream from the south, amidst great commotion. The analogy of this great current to the Gulf stream of the Atlantic is apparent, and there can be no doubt as to its great influence on the climate of Japan. A difference of from twelve to sixteen degrees may be observed in passing from its waters to the cold currents from the north, and the effect of this on the atmosphere is very marked. The sudden 270and severe changes of temperature are often noticed on the southern coast of Japan and even in Yeddo bay. They are evidently due to eddies or branch currents from the great streams of cold and warm water which interweave themselves in the neighborhood.

In the island of Yesso, the most northerly of the large ones, the extremes of temperature are nearly as great as in New England. In the vicinity of Tokio the winter is usually clear and mild, with occasional sharp frosts and heavy falls of snow. In summer the heat is oppressive for nearly three months. Even at night the heat remains so high that sleep becomes almost impossible, the air being oppressive and no breeze stirring. The greatest heat is usually from the middle of June to early in September. The cold in winter is much more severe on the northwestern coast, and the roads across the main island are often blocked with snow for many months. In Yokohama the snow fall is light, not often exceeding two or three inches. The ice seldom exceeds an inch in thickness. Earthquake shocks are frequent, averaging more than one a month, but of late years there have been none of great severity.

The winds of Japan are at all seasons exceedingly irregular, frequently violent, and subject to sudden changes. The northeast and easterly winds are generally accompanied by rain, and are not violent. The southwest and westerly winds are generally high, often violent, and accompanied with a low barometer. It is from the southwest that the cyclones or typhoons almost invariably come. On clear and pleasant days, which in the neighborhood of Yokohama prevail in excess of foggy ones, there is a regular land and sea breeze at all seasons. The rainfall is above the average of most countries, and about two-thirds of the rainfalls during the six months from April to October.

The flora of Japan is exceedingly interesting, not only to botanists and specialists, but to casual travelers and readers. The useful bamboo flourishes in all parts of the land; sugar cane and the cotton plant grow in the southern part; tea is grown almost everywhere. The tobacco plant, hemp, corn, mulberry for silkworm food, rice, wheat, barley, millet, buckwheat, potatoes, and yams are all cultivated. The beech, the oak, maples, and pine 273trees in rich variety; azaleas, camelias, etc., grow in the forests. Some of the more characteristic plants are wisteria, cryptomeria, calceolaria and chrysanthemums. Various varieties of evergreens are grown, and the Japanese gardeners are peculiarly expert in cultivating these trees in dwarf forms of great beauty. Many familiar wild flowers can be gathered, such as violets, blue-bells, forget-me-nots, thyme, dandelions, and others. The woods are rich in ferns, among which the royal fern is conspicuous, and in orchids, ivies, lichens, mosses and fungi. The beautiful locusts, though imported, may now fairly be considered as naturalized. There are many water lilies, reeds and rushes, some of which are of great beauty and others of utility.

The mammalia of Japan are not numerous. In ancient times, before the dawn of history, two species of dwarf elephants existed in the plains around Tokio. There are many monkeys in some parts, even in the extreme northern latitudes. Foxes abound and are regarded with reverence. Wolves and bears are destructive in the north. There are wild antelopes, red deer, wild boars, dogs, raccoons, badgers, otters, ferrets, bats, moles, and rats; while the sea is specially rich in seals, sea-otters, and whales. The country has been found quite unsuitable for sheep, but goats thrive well, although they are not much favored by the people. Oxen are used for draught purposes. Horses are small but are fair quality, and the breed is being improved. The cats are nearly tailless. The dogs are of a low, half-wolfish breed. There are some three hundred varieties of birds known in Japan. Few of them are what we call song-birds, but the lark is one brilliant exception. Game birds are plentiful, but are now protected.

Insects are very numerous, as no traveler will dispute, and Japan is a great field for investigation by entomologists. Locusts are often destructive, and mosquitoes are a great pest. Bees, the silk worm and the wax-insect are highly appreciated.

There are several kinds of lizards, a great variety of frogs, seven or eight snakes, including one deadly species, and two or three kinds of tortoise. The crustaceans are numerous and interesting, and of fish there is extraordinary variety, especially those found in salt water. Oysters and clams are excellent and plentiful.

Let us now turn to the temporal affairs of the people who dwell in this island empire, their cities, their industries, and to their government.

Japan like its oriental companion, China, is a country of great cities, although the smaller empire has not so many famous for their size as has China. With scarcely an exception these greater cities are situated at the heads of bays, most of them good harbors and accessible for commerce. The largest of these cities, of course, is the capital Tokio, which doubtless passes a million inhabitants, although it is impossible that it should justify the American tradition of not many years ago, that its numbers were twice a million. Tokio, or the old city of Yeddo, is situated near the head of Yeddo Bay, but a few miles from Yokohama, and but little farther from Uraga where the first reception to Commodore Perry was given. Among the other more important cities on the sea coast are Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Hiogo, Ozaka, Hiroshima, and Kanagawa.

Nagasaki is situated on the southwest coast of the island of Kiushiu, and is built in the form of an amphitheater. The European quarter in the east, stands upon land reclaimed from the sea at considerable labor and expense. Desima, the ancient Dutch factory, lies at the foot, and behind it is the native part of the town. The whole is sheltered by high wooden mountains. The city of Nagasaki was almost the first which attracted the attention of foreigners, partly from its being already known by name from the Dutch colony established there; partly because it was the nearest point to China and a port of great beauty; and also because before the political revolution which overthrew the power of the shogunate, the daimios of the south were there enabled, owing to its distance from Yeddo, to transact foreign affairs in their own way unmolested. This comparative importance did not last long, for affairs soon began to be concentrated in Yokohama, and the opening of the ports of Hiogo and Ozaka further reduced it to a secondary rank among commercial towns. It is still, however, a busy place and a great portion of the navigation of the Japanese seas passes by its beautiful port. But it is not a town of the future, and will be supplanted in prosperity to considerable extent by the more northern cities.

Yokohama, situated on the Gulf of Yeddo, owes its rise and importance to the merchants who came to seek their fortunes in the empire of the rising sun immediately after the signature of the treaties which threw open the coasts of Japan to adventurous foreigners. When Perry, with his augmented fleet, returned to Japan in February, 1854, the Japanese found him as inflexibly firm as ever. Instead of making the treaty at Uraga he must take it nearer Yeddo. Yokohama was the chosen spot, and there on the 8th of March, 1854, were exchanged the formal articles of convention between the United States and Japan.

By the treaty of Yokohama, Shimoda was one of the ports opened to Americans. Before it began to be of much service the place was visited by an earthquake and tidal wave, which overwhelmed the town and ruined the harbor. The ruin of Shimoda was the rise of Yokohama. By a new treaty Kanagawa, three miles across the bay from Yokohama, was substituted for Shimoda. The Japanese government decided to make Yokohama the future port. Their reasons for this were many. Kanagawa was on the line of the great highway of the empire, along which the proud Daimios and their trains of retainers were continually passing. With the antipathy to foreigners that existed, had Kanagawa been made a foreign settlement, its history would doubtless have had many more pages of assassination and incendiarism than did Yokohama. Foreseeing this, even though considered by the foreign ministers a violation of treaty agreements, the Japanese government immediately set to work to render Yokohama as convenient as possible for trade, residence and espionage.

They built a causeway nearly two miles long across the lagoons and marshes to make it of easy access. They built granite piers, custom house and officers’ quarters, and dwellings and store houses for the foreign merchants. After a long quarrel over which should be the city, the straggling colony of diplomats, missionaries, and merchants of Kanagawa finally pulled up their stakes and joined the settlement of Yokohama. Yokohama was settled in a squatter-like and irregular manner, and the ill effects of it are seen to this day. When compared with Shanghai, the foreign metropolis of China, it is vastly inferior.

The town grew slowly at first. Murders and assassinations of 276foreigners were frequent during the first few years. Diplomatic quarrels were constant, and threats of bombardment from some foreign vessel in the harbor of frequent occurrence. A fire which destroyed nearly the whole foreign town seemed to purify the place municipally, commercially, and morally. The settlement was rebuilt in a more substantial and regular manner. As the foreign population grew, banks, newspaper offices, hospitals, post-offices, and consulate buildings reappeared in a new dignity. Fire and police protection were organized. Steamers began to come from European ports and from San Francisco. Social life began as ladies and children came, and houses became homes. Then came the rapid growth of society and the finer things. Churches, theaters, clubs, schools were organized in rapid succession. Telegraph connection with Tokio, and thence around the globe, was accomplished, and the railway system increased rapidly. Within the thirty-five years of the life of Yokohama, it has grown from a fishing village of a few hundred to a city of fifty thousand people. Its streets are lighted with gas and electricity; its stores are piled full of rare silks, bronzes and curios. At present the foreign population of Yokohama numbers about two thousand residents. In addition to these the foreign transient population, made up of tourists and officers and sailors of the navy, and the merchant marine, numbers between three thousand and six thousand. Several daily newspapers, beside weeklies and monthlies, printed in English, furnish mediums of communication and news. Yokohama has become and will remain the great mercantile center of American and European trade in Japan.

Hiogo, or rather Kobe, as the foreign part has been called since the concession, is near Ozaka, both towns being situated on the inland Sea of Japan, near the south end of the Island of Niphon. Kobe is a considerable foreign settlement, with many fine houses and spacious warehouses. Ozaka, which contains more than half a million inhabitants, is one of the chief trading cities of Japan, and an immense proportion of the merchandise imported into the empire passes through it.

The commerce between Japan and western nations, European and American, increases year by year. England enjoys the profits from more than half of the total interchange, the United 279States is second, with a large portion of the remainder, and the rest of the commerce is divided among Germany, France, Holland, Norway, and Sweden. It is impossible to obtain figures recent enough to be a satisfactory index of the total volume of commerce annually, but it is now very many millions of dollars a year. Japan exports tobacco, rice, wax, tea, silks, and manufactured goods, such as curios, bronzes, lacquer ware, etc. The principal imports of Japan are cotton goods, manufactures of iron, machinery of all sorts, woolen fabrics, flour, etc.

Mining in Japan is seldom carried on by modern methods, and the mineral wealth has not been developed as it will be within a few years. In almost every portion of Japan are found ores of some kind and there is scarcely a district in which there are not traces of mines having been worked. No mines can be worked without special license of the government, and foreigners are excluded from ownership in any mining industry. Japan seems to be fairly well, though not richly, provided with mineral wealth. The mines include those for gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, tin, plumbago, antimony, arsenic, marble, sulphur, alum, salt, coal, petroleum, and other minerals.

The annual export of tea amounts to nearly thirty million pounds, of which considerably more than half is shipped from Yokohama. All Japanese tea is green and the United States is the chief customer for it.

The exact area of Japan is not known, though it is computed at nearly one hundred and fifty thousand square miles, with a population of more than two hundred persons to a square mile. The number of acres under cultivation is about nine million, or one-tenth of the entire area. Not one-fourth of the fertile portion of Japan is yet under cultivation. Immense portions of good land await the farmers’ plow and seed to return rich harvests. For centuries the agricultural art has been at a standstill. Population and acreage have increased, but the crop in bulk and quantity remains the same. The true wealth of Japan consists in her agricultural and not in her mineral and manufacturing resources. The government and intelligent classes seem to be awakening to this fact. The islands are capable of yielding good crops and adapted to support the finest breeds of cattle. With 280these branches of industry increased to the extent that they deserve, the prosperity of the empire will show constant increase.

The ceramic art of Japan and the art of the lacquer worker are two that have helped to make Japanese wares famous in the western world. The various wares of porcelain and faience are made in Japan in quality and art inferior to none in the world.

Since the restoration to power of the mikado in 1868, the government of Japan has been growing nearer and nearer into the forms of western monarchical governments. In a prior chapter the promise of the young mikado to advance the freedom of his people, and ultimately to adopt constitutional forms of rule, has been quoted. In the later years he has been aiming for the fulfillment of this promise. Supporting him, the party of progressionists, largely influenced by contact with European and American civilization, urge on every reform. The present government is simply the modernized form of the system established more than a thousand years ago, when centralized monarchy succeeded simple feudalism. After the emperor comes the Dai Jo Kuan, which is practically a supreme cabinet, and following this, three other cabinets of varying powers and duties. The council of ministers is made up of the heads of departments, the foreign office, home office, treasury, army, navy, education, religion, public works, judiciary, imperial household, and colonization. The Dai Jo Kuan directs the three imperial cities and the sixty-eight ken or prefectures. The provinces are now merely geographical divisions.

In the course of the efforts to bring the Japanese forms of government more into harmony with those of Europe and America, many important changes have been made. A system of nobility was devised, and titles were granted to those who were considered to be entitled to them, whether by birth or achievement. The four or five ranks included in this system closely follow the English models.

The judiciary, too, has been remodeled in many details to make it approach the western system. The methods of procedure are gradually conforming nearer and nearer to our own, as well as the names and jurisdiction of the courts. The Japanese people have been exceedingly anxious of late years to expunge the extraterritoriality 281clause which appears in the treaties with all western nations. It provides, in effect, that offenses by a foreigner against a Japanese shall be judged in a consular court presided over by the consul of that country whence the foreigner comes. In other words, Japanese courts have no jurisdiction over the doings of foreigners having consuls in that country. This provision has become very obnoxious to the Japanese people, placing them on a level, as it does, with barbaric and semi-barbaric countries, where like provisions hold. This has been one of the potent factors in influencing Japan to adopt western legal methods. Recent 282treaties which have been drawn with the United States and with England provide that this clause shall be expunged, and if they are finally agreed upon we may soon see Japan more absolutely independent than she has yet been.

In 1890 a constitution was granted to Japan by the emperor, and a few months later legislative bodies for the first time began deliberation in Tokio. The powers of this parliament are constantly increasing. The war between China and Japan has been a strong influence to weld the people of opposing political faiths into harmony, and in parliament conservatives and radicals alike have risen in patriotism, and have been glad to cast votes for every measure that would hold up the hands of those who were bearing the battles. With a government drawing for itself lines parallel with those of enlightened western nations, increasing the freedom of its people, the power of the people’s legislators, and the honesty of the people’s courts, Japan has every right to name herself as worthy of a place in full brotherhood with the family of civilized nations.