Illustrated by large numbers of British Residents and Mercantile Firms and proportion of Trade and Shipping.
This is clearly illustrated by the following notable facts:—
(a) That British residents, numbering 1500 souls, of which two-thirds are males, equal numerically the representatives in Japan of the whole of the rest of the world, excluding the adjacent Chinese.
(b) That a like state of affairs exists with regard not only to the number of foreign mercantile firms, located in Japan, but also in the proportion borne by the British flag of the external trade.
(c) That since 1868, the first year of the new Japanese era, British shipping in the waters of Japan has, according to the calculation of her Majesty's Consul at Kobé, increased threefold in number and fifteenfold in tonnage. It carried last year two-thirds of the (extra Chinese) foreign trade, and 71 per cent. of the whole, in over 1000 ships inwards and outwards, giving employment to more than 25,000 persons, and this notwithstanding the harassing exclusion of foreign vessels from any share in the large coasting trade between other than the six open ports.
Volume of Japanese External Trade.
3.—The external trade (imports and exports) of Japan has more than doubled in the past ten years. It amounted in 1890 to 138¼ millions of silver yen or dollars[2] (say 21,000,000l. sterling) against 62¼ million yens in 1881. The exports, of which the British Empire took nearly a third, amounted to 54¾ million dollars; the imports to 81¾ millions.
The Foreign Element as a Source of Wealth to Japan.
4.—The financial value to the Empire of the foreign commercial houses is shown by the passage, through their agency, of 110 million dollars worth of the total external trade.
There is in addition the expenditure of many thousands of foreign visitors to the natural beauties of the country—of which 70 per cent. are calculated by Mr. Gubbins, secretary for Japanese to Her Majesty's Legation, to be British,—a sum estimated at an extreme minimum of three million dollars a year, or about 500,000l.