List given in Rept. of Mer. Marine Com., with totals paid in 1902-03, vol. 2, p. 946.
Mecker.
CHAPTER XI
JAPAN—CHINA
While France is the bounty-giving nation par excellence, Japan is a pressing second. The development of a modern merchant marine, together with a modern navy, was among the first undertakings of the awakening empire upon her assumption of Occidental civilization. Adopting what seemed to her statesmen of the new regime, from their study of Western methods, to be the speediest way to that end, she started out energetically to attain it through lavish money-grants from the national treasury for the establishment of steamship companies of her own people in coastwise and ocean service, and of modernized ship-yards and shipbuilders.
The initial venture resulted in the creation of a steamship monopoly. This was the subsidizing, in 1877, of the pioneer concern, to supply steam communication between various domestic ports, and also with Siberia, China, and Corea. It was founded by a broad-visioned Japanese merchant, Jwasaki Yataro,[[FC]] and controlled by him. To break his monopoly the Government in 1882 set up a rival State-supported company.[[FC]] After a period of "desperate competition" and warfare, Jwasaki persuaded the new concern to unite with his. So was effected a community of interests after the most approved Western pattern.[[FC]] By this union was formed, in 1885, the powerful Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japan Mail Steamship Company), which remained the most powerful of Japanese steamship establishments, with lines running to the same ports to which the American steamers run.