A GARDEN VIEW OF THE AMERICAN EMBASSY, TOKYO
"Having deposits of coal and iron, why may not Japan be developed into the Eastern equivalent of England?" ask stay-at-home admirers of the Japanese, who believe that to them nothing is impossible. The Mikado's territory has coal, iron and copper, it is true; but in no instance is the mineral present to an extent making it a national
asset of importance. Bituminous coal of good quality is mined at several points which is used by Japanese commercial and naval vessels; but elsewhere in the East it has to compete with Chinese and Indian coals. It is said in Nagasaki that her coal will last another two centuries, but were it mined on the scale of American and British coal it would be exhausted in a generation. The greatest efforts have been made to produce iron ore in paying quantities. In several instances public assistance has been lent to the industry, but seldom has a ton of ore been raised that has not cost twice its market value. Japan is determined to become a producer of iron, and to this end a long lease had been secured on an important mineral tract in China, whose ore blends advantageously with Mexican and Californian hematite, while it is asserted that the government has secured in Manchuria a seam of coal fifty feet in thickness, covered by a few feet of soil, that is contiguous to transportation, and which cannot be exhausted in hundreds of years. A valuable acquisition in conquered Saghalien—not noted by the newspapers—is beds of coal and iron of vast area. These may enable Japan, in her determination to become a manufacturing nation, to be eventually independent of other countries for basic supplies. But success in this direction is problematical, to say the least.
For two thousand years Japan has mined copper in a limited way, but the production of the metal is carried on at present without much profit. When the Chinese government requires a vast quantity of copper the order is sent to the United States. Japan cannot be considered as a producer of minerals of sufficient importance to aspire to a profitable career through them, for the yearly aggregate value of all minerals, including gold from the Formosa mines, is not more than $20,000,000.
The inevitable query in the reader's mind is, How is the Jap, knowing it is now or never with him—and cognizant that he is poor in all save ambition and enterprise—going to create for his beloved Nippon a position of prominence and security in the fast-rushing, selfish world? Every intelligent Japanese is aware of the slenderness of his country's resources, and yet every son of the Chrysanthemum Realm throbs with desire to see Japan a first-class and self-supporting power, honored and respected throughout the universe.
The Japanese possess some quality of golden value, otherwise cautious capitalists in America and Europe would never have lent them $360,000,000. What is it?
Japan's asset of importance is the awakened energy of her people—this was the soundest security back of the bond issues. It won the war over Russia, and persons familiar with the Japanese character believe it is now going to win commercially and industrially. Better proof of this is not wanted than the fact that Japanese bonds stood as firm as the rock of Gibraltar on the world's exchanges when it became known that Russia was to pay no indemnity. The information provoked street riots in Tokyo, but Japanese securities moved only fractionally in New York and London.
Two countries have long been keenly observed by enlightened Japanese. They study America as a model industrial land, and get manufacturing ideas from us; but they look to Great Britain for everything having to do with empire, with aggrandizement, and with diplomacy. To them England is a glittering object lesson of a nation existing in overcrowded islands extending its rule to other lands and other continents, producing endless articles needed by mankind, and carrying these to the ends of the earth in their own ships. These Japanese have perceived that the interchange of commodities between most countries of the globe is preponderatingly in the hands of the British—in fact, that the enterprise of British merchant or British ship-owner has placed practically the universe under tribute.
May not insular Japan become in time the Asiatic equivalent of Great Britain? Japan is advantageously located, and by common consent is now dominant in the Far East. Years ago England ceased to be an agricultural country, and the products of British workshops now buy food from other nations and allow for the keeping of a money balance at home. Nature has decreed that Japan can never be an agricultural land. Why, then, may she not do what England has done? England has her India, pregnant with the earth's bounty, and her Australia, yet awaiting completer development Kingdom become the handmaiden of Japan, without disturbing dynastic affairs, and primitive Korea be a fair equivalent of the Antipodean continent? It is known to be Japan's plan to permanently colonize Korea and Manchuria, teeming in agricultural and mineral riches, with her surplus population.
"Prestige and opportunity make this attainable," insist the ambitious sons of Japan; "and while it is probably too late to expand the political boundaries of our empire, we surely may make Nippon the seat of a mighty commercial control, including in its sphere all of China proper, Manchuria and Korea—welding them into 'commercial colonies' of Japan." This is precisely what the modern Japanese wants his country to do, and this Japanization of the Far East is an alluring project, certainly.