unfortunately, the new civilization of the West has carried into Japan the itch for gold and the desire for more numerous and more expensive luxuries, and has increased the cost of living without increasing proportionately the amount of income or wages.1

Industrial Japan has already become more or less modified by features of Occidental industrialism, such as guilds, trade unions, strikes, co-operative stores. It is true that feudal Japan also had guilds, which are, however, now run rather on modern lines. One of the oldest, strongest, and most compact is that of the dock coolies, who without many written rules are yet so well organized that they have almost an absolute monopoly, with frequent strikes, which are always successful. Others of the guilds are those of the sawyers, the plasterers, the stonemasons, the bricklayers, the carpenters, the barbers, the coolies (who can travel all over the empire without a penny and live on their fellows), the wrestlers, the actors, the gamblers, the pickpockets, etc. The beggars' guild is now defunct. The labor unions of modern days include the iron-workers, the shipcarpenters, the railway engineers, the railway workmen, the printers, and the European-style cooks. The last-mentioned is one in which foreigners resident in Japan necessarily take a practical interest! The only unions which have become absolute masters of the situation are those of the dock coolies, the railway laborers, and the railway engineers. As for

1 The Yankees of the East (Curtis), chap. xii. Also see Appendix.

co-operative stores, there are a dozen or more in Tōkyō, Yokohama, and Northern Japan.

The perfect organization of these modern unions is due largely to the efforts of a young man named Sen Katayama, who is the champion of the rights of the laboring man in Japan. He spent ten years in America and made a special study of social problems. He is the head of Kingsley Hall, a social settlement of varied activity in the heart of Tōkyō, and editor of the "Labor World," the organ of the working classes. That the changes rapidly taking place in the industrial life of Japan will raise up serious problems, there is no doubt; what phases they will assume cannot be foreseen. But "socialistic ideas are carefully repressed in modern Japan.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

"Japan and its Trade" and "Advance Japan" (Morris); "The Yankees of the East" (Curtis); "Japan in Transition" (Ransome), chap. x.; "The Awakening of the East" (LeroyBeaulieu), chaps. iv. and v.; and especially Rein's "Industries of Japan," in which the subject is treated in great detail with German thoroughness. But to keep pace with the rapid progress along industrial and commercial lines, one really needs current English newspapers and magazines, such as are mentioned in the chapter on "Language and Literature." The reports of the British and United States consular officials are also very useful in this respect. "Japan and America," a monthly magazine published in New York City, will be found convenient and valuable on this subject.

CHAPTER III

TRAVEL, TRANSPORTATION, COMMERCE

OUTLINE OF TOPICS: Travelling in Old Japan; vehicles of Old and New Japan; jinrikisha; railway travel; telegraph and telephone; street-car, bicycle, and automobile; steamships. - Postal system. Oil, gas, and electric light. - Foreign commerce; variety of imports.- Mixed corporations. - Stock and other exchanges. Banking system; coinage; monetary standard. - Baron Shibusawa on business ability of Japanese, prospects of industrial and commercial Japan, and financial situation. - Bibliography.

Ο

NE of the most common and most important

indications of a great change in the life and civilization of Japan is to be seen in the improved modes of travel and transportation. The ancient method, though in some sections pack-horses and oxen were used, was essentially pedestrian. The common people travelled on foot, and carried or dragged over the road their own baggage or freight. Couriers, carrying the most important despatches, relied upon fleetness of foot. The higher classes and wealthy people, even though not themselves making any exertions in their own behalf, were carried about in vehicles by coolies, who, with their human burdens, tramped from place to place. On water, too, travel and transportation depended mostly upon human muscular exertion, as all boats, small or large, had to be propelled by oars or poles, except when favored with a

breeze to swell the sails and allow the boatmen a respite from their toil. But all this hard labor developed, of course, a strength of limb and a power of endurance that even in recent years have enabled the Japanese soldiers to march and fight in either the piercing cold and deep snow of Manchuria or the blistering heat of Formosa. A life of constant outdoor exposure to wind, rain, cold, or heat has toughened and browned the skin, and made an altogether hardy race out of the common people; while the lack of this regular exercise and calisthenic training has left its mark in the comparatively weak constitutions of those who travelled, not on their own feet, but on the shoulders of others.

The common vehicles of the olden days were ordinary carts for freight and norimono and kago for passengers. The norimono is a good-sized sedan-chair or palanquin, in which the rider can sit in a fairly comfortable position. The kago is a sort of basket in which the traveller takes a half-sitting, half-reclining posture, not altogether comfortable at least for tall foreigners. At present the norimono is seldom if ever employed except for corpses or invalids, but the kago is still used in mountainous regions, where nothing else is available. It must be understood, of course, that the nobles and their retainers often rode on horseback; but the great mass of the people walked and the few rode in kago or norimono.

Now, however, modes of travel have changed greatly, and are changing year by year. There are still many pedestrians; the kago is yet to be seen;

boats are propelled by stern-end oar or laboriously pushed along with poles; and pack-horses and oxen

even in the streets of Tōkyō are in frequent use. But there are many other means of communication and transportation. There have come into use the horse-car, the stage, the jinrikisha, the railroad, with the telegraph and the telephone; the modern rowboat, the steamboat; the bicycle, the automobile, and the electric railway, with the electric light to show the road by night. An excellent postal system and various other modern contrivances for facilitating the means of communication have been adopted.

The most common mode of conveyance at present, in all possible localities, is the jin-riki-sha (man-powercarriage), or “Pull-man car," as it has been wittily called. This is a two-wheeled "small gig," or large baby-carriage, pulled by one or more men. A ride in a jinrikisha, after one has become accustomed to human labor in that capacity, is really comfortable and delightful. The coolies who pull these vehicles develop swiftness and endurance, but are comparatively short-lived. There is also a two-wheeled freight cart manipulated in the same fashion. It has been estimated that in Tōkyō alone there are more than 700,000 hand-carts, almost 200,000 jinrikishas, about 10,000 ox-carts, more than 25,000 other freight carts, and almost 3,000 omnibuses and horse-cars. The business of transportation there furnishes occupation to thousands of people, but gives to each engaged therein only a scanty remuneration, which is often