CHAPTER VI
THE GROWING EMPIRE
ALTHOUGH in many of her newer phases Japan is less fascinating to the casual tourist than where she is still "unspoiled," the efforts she is making to get into step with the rest of the world, and to solve the problems which are confronting her, are full of interest to the student and to the more sympathetic traveller.
To wide-awake Americans the growing Japan should be of especial interest, since however much we believe in and hope for continued peace between the two nations, there is bound to be more or less commercial competition.
Where the British Islands have stood in regard to shipping and commerce on the Atlantic, the islands of Nippon bid fair to stand on the Pacific. Even to-day the Pacific is by no means an empty ocean, but its development still lies largely in the future. It is the near future, however, and Japan knows it. The Panama Canal is almost completed; China is awakened and beginning to take active notice; Japanese colonies are being planted in South America and elsewhere.
While many countries of the Western world are facing a falling birth-rate, Japan's is rising rapidly. There is a tradition which accounts for this state of affairs. It seems that there was once a quarrel between the creators of the land, Izanami threatening his wife, Izanagi, that he would cause the population to die off at the rate of a thousand a day. The goddess, however, got the last word, and increased the birth-rate to fifteen hundred a day. Apparently she has been able to maintain the ratio to the present time—at any rate, there is an annual gain of half a million.
With a population already averaging three hundred to every habitable square mile, it is little wonder that the nation feels the need of extending her boundaries and to that end is trying to open up new territory to her emigrants.