Not altogether unsatisfactory as is this result of the official efforts to encourage the saving habit among the people, it must be noted that we are in this respect far behind some of the European countries. Consulting the statistics for the year 1898, we find the postal savings reached in that year to £120,000,000 in England, £33,000,000 in France, £21,000,000 in Belgium, £4,800,000 in Austria, £1,000,000 in Hungary, £2,700,000 in Holland, and £3,400,000 in Sweden. In spite of the great improvement effected in the system of late years, especially in the way of simplifying the official procedure connected with the acceptance and repayment of the deposits, much still remains to be done in order to bring the facilities provided by it within easy reach of the people by increasing the number of the Post Offices authorized to receive deposits throughout the country.
While speaking of savings, it may not be uninteresting to mention a few figures on the state of the deposits at the ordinary banks. We do not happen to have at hand the statistics covering all the banking concerns in the country. The “Ginkō Tsushin-Roku,” however, supplies us with reliable statistics up to February, 1902, so far as the principal banking centres are concerned. We find, then, that the total amount of deposits at the banks belonging to the clearing-houses of Tōkyō, Ōsaka, Kyōto, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Kōbe, stood at the end of February at 308,289,000 yen, made up as follows, not including the deposits at the Bank of Japan:
| Yen. | |
|---|---|
| Tōkyō | 119,268,000 |
| Ōsaka | 75,824,000 |
| Yokohama | 49,280,000 |
| Kōbe | 23,423,000 |
| Kyōto | 22,616,000 |
| Nagoya | 17,878,000 |
In June, 1910, the Bank of Japan had a paid-up capital of 37,600,000 yen; in 1909 the deposits were 220,101,784 yen. At that time the Industrial Bank of Japan had deposits of 8,930,050 yen. The deposits in all the Japanese banks in 1909 amounted to 1,617,873,711 yen.
The Oil Industry in Japan[207]
Japan’s oil industry has a brilliant future before it. The use of kerosene in the country has grown at a wonderfully rapid pace. In the first year of Meiji the amount of oil imported was 639 koku. In 1901 it had reached 1,300,000 koku. The value of the oil imported in 1868 was only 7,236 yen; that imported in 1901 was 14 million yen.[208] The following table shows the rate at which the import of kerosene into Japan increased:—
| Years. | Koku. | Value. Yen. |
|---|---|---|
| 1868 | 639 | 7,236 |
| 1872 | 8,936 | 160,608 |
| 1877 | 53,645 | 605,598 |
| 1882 | 413,644 | 2,320,905 |
| 1887 | 421,177 | 1,871,428 |
| 1892 | 653,785 | 3,328,398 |
| 1897 | 1,221,164 | 7,667,350 |
| 1900 | 1,356,846 | 14,162,652 |
| 1901 | 1,379,927 | 14,943,400 |
Notwithstanding the large supply that has come from abroad, of late years the demand for the Echigo oil has gone on increasing, as shown in the subjoined table, which covers seven years.
| Years. | Koku of Crude Petroleum. | Value. Yen. |
|---|---|---|
| 1895 | 158,334 | 526,976 |
| 1896 | 207,470 | 619,333 |
| 1897 | 257,614 | 668,677 |
| 1898 | 355,006 | 670,308 |
| 1899 | 544,583 | 1,450,904 |
| 1900 | 836,628 | 2,142,003 |
| 1901 | 1,115,807 | 2,345,916 |
It is calculated that about 5/10 of the total quantity of this crude petroleum was used for lighting purposes. It would seem, then, that Echigo supplied 3/10 of the total amount of oil used for lighting in Japan during the seven years, and that the remaining 7/10 came from abroad. Taking the year 1901, the value of the crude petroleum being 2,345,916 yen, it is estimated that when refined this amount of petroleum would fetch not less than 4 million yen. But the fact remains that the proportion of oil imported is still very large, so that there is room for a further great development of the business.