In 1896 the agricultural produce of Japan was valued at £62,600,000, exclusive of the produce of the fens, which, however, is very important. The land taxes, therefore, at £3,800,000 are only 5·6 per cent., and the local land tax 2·8 per cent. of this total. All this is not excessive.

Finally, the land tax includes £352,500 derived from the tax on urban building land, which pays £1 12s. per acre, only four times as much as the rice-fields, and should easily return from £200,000 to £300,000 more. As regards the total of the land tax, it was decreased by one-sixth in 1877; an equivalent increase would bring in a return of about £600,000 more, and this could be effected without much inconvenience, owing to the general increase in the value of property. The tax on saké, the principal drink of the country, was raised in 1897 about one-half. It would bear augmentation, as at present it pays 5d. per gallon on a drink which is worth 1s. 3d. a gallon. In general, the Japanese financiers prefer to raise existing taxes rather than establish new ones. If we study the question from another point of view, and examine how best to increase Japanese taxes, let us consider the Budget as it will be five years hence, after the necessary taxes already mentioned have been added to it. Of the £17,300,000 of the Revenue, £3,400,000 will be derived from Crown lands, railways, and posts, £850,000 from Formosa, and £13,000,000 from monopolies and taxes paid by Japan proper. The population, increasing as it does at the rate of 350,000 to 400,000 souls a year, will have reached 45,500,000, contributing to the State at the rate of £13,000,000, or about 5s. 9d. per head, which does not seem to us excessive when compared with what is paid by people of other countries. A Frenchman, for instance, pays £3, an Italian £1 12s., a Russian 12s. 9d., an Egyptian 16s. 9d., and a Hindu 3s. 9d. I have not selected these nationalities haphazard, but because each of them has some special characteristic in common with Japan, especially Egypt, essentially an agricultural country. I do not think that anybody can maintain that an Italian, as a rule, is five or six times richer than a Japanese, or an Egyptian three times, or that the 130,000,000 of Russians, 20,000,000 of whom are Asiatics, possess incomes double the average to be found in Japan, and there is no doubt an immense inverse difference between a Hindu and a Japanese. Bearing in mind these facts, one must certainly conclude that the amount which the Jap will pay to his Treasury is considerably lighter than that obtained from almost every people in the Old World. With regard to the National Debt, five-sixths of which is held by natives, at the present moment it does not exceed £40,000,000, but it will reach its maximum in 1901, when it will stand at £49,930,000. The annual repayment stands at present at £720,000, but will increase to £1,000,000 in 1903, and go on augmenting, so that by 1938, unless fresh obligations are incurred beyond those already in view, Japan will be free of debt.

The financial difficulties confronting Japan at the present moment are therefore not so formidable as they appear. In 1899 the Chamber increased the land tax, which it had previously very persistently refused to do. At the same time it raised the tax on saké and on the posts. The Budget of ordinary receipts was therefore advanced to £19,000,000. This figure may appear excessive, but it shows a surplus of £4,000,000 on the actual expenses, a fact which indicates the intention of the Government to pay off as soon as possible the extraordinary expenses of the Ito programme, which means that these increased taxations are to be considered merely as temporary. They may possibly impede commerce at first, a thing which, unfortunately, cannot be helped, but, at any rate, the future will be considerably benefited thereby. The finances of Japan have, happily, always been managed in a highly satisfactory and prudent manner, and if the Empire carries out the present plan of expansion, and does not embark on any fresh schemes involving further outlay, Japan seems to have found a clear way out of the transient difficulties which at one time weighed upon her finances.

CHAPTER VIII
THE DOMESTIC POLITICS AND PARLIAMENT OF JAPAN

Present social organization—The nobles, or kwazoku; the shizoku, or ancient samurai; and the heimin—Equal civil rights for all citizens—Preponderance of the samurai in politics since the Restoration—Survival of the clan spirit—Japan governed during the past thirty years by the Choshiu and Satsuma clans—Creation in 1889 of a Constitution modelled on that of Prussia—Parliamentary struggles against Cabinets governed by Southern clans—Frequent crises and dissolutions—A Ministerial crisis in Japan—Efforts of the Chamber to impose Ministerial responsibility and to replace the Government of clans by that of parties—Signs of improvement in the working of the representative system—Its prospects in Japan.

We have now to study the least praiseworthy of the many institutions borrowed from Europe by modern Japan, that relating to the home politics of the country, which are very unsettled. Since 1889, when the Mikado, in fulfilment of the promise made to his people at the Restoration, first granted a Constitution analogous to that of Prussia, the Chambers have been dissolved not less than five times. A constant antagonism has existed between the representatives of the people and the various Cabinets which have succeeded each other; and if we except the time of the Chinese War, when the patriotism of the Japanese was so intense as to absorb even party feeling, we shall find that no Cabinet has been able to dispose of an important majority. In order to understand this state of affairs, we must recall the manner in which the Restoration took place, bearing in mind the actual social organization of Japan, and also the fact that the clan instinct has survived both class prejudice and feudal privileges, which were suppressed without the least opposition or regret.

Twenty-five years have now elapsed since the abolition of the old regime, and in the meantime the feudal system has been replaced, primarily by a centralized and absolute monarchy, and now by Parliamentary representation modelled on the European plan. The eighty odd historical provinces have become forty-five departments, each administered by a Prefect. The people are, however, still divided into three distinct classes: the aristocracy, or kwazoku, formed of a fusion of the ancient daimios with the kuges, or Court nobles, and of the shinkwazoku, or newly ennobled persons (in all 644 families, consisting of about 4,162 persons); the shizoku, or ancient samurai (numbering 432,458 families, or 2,049,144 persons); and finally the heimin, or commoners; but apart from the predominance of the nobility in the composition of the Chamber of Peers[[18]] no privileges have been granted either to them or to the shizoku: their duties are exactly the same as those of any other members. From the social point of view we shall, however, very soon find that far less exclusiveness exists in this country, where feudalism was in full force only so recently as thirty years ago, than we should in many in Europe, where its abolition dates back in some instances several centuries. A Japanese gentleman recently said to me: ‘In Japan we never dream of asking a person the first time we see him to what class he belongs.’ I dare say some time-honoured privileges still linger in their inner circle, and that a few old-fashioned noblemen do consider themselves superior to the heimin, but they take great care not to display any such feeling. One meets members of the Japanese aristocracy in every public resort and place of amusement, and they mingle without the least hesitation with the rest of the public. I remember one day at Tokio being present at a wrestling match, a very favourite sport with the Japanese. Someone pointed out to me Prince K⸺, the President of the House of Peers, seated among the crowd on one of the steps of the ring. The Marquis H⸺, the descendent of a great family of daimios, was also present, as well as the Marquis Tokukawa, who is an ardent admirer of the sport and belongs to the family of the Shoguns, to have merely looked upon a member of which a generation or so back would have cost a man of the people his life. These gentlemen appeared to thoroughly enjoy the entertainment, and evidently thought very little or nothing at all of their former exclusiveness.

Although the highest positions in the Government are open to all, they have hitherto always remained in the hands of the samurai. Just as immediately after the Restoration, so to-day the country is governed by members of this very numerous and intelligent gentry. All the successive Ministers, the majority of whom have been ennobled, even made kwazoku, have sprung from its ranks. The same may be said of all the high officials, and, with very few exceptions, of the majority of the smaller employés of the Government, even down to the very police agents and the vast majority of the military and naval officers. This is not surprising when we remember that the samurai constituted before the Restoration not only the military, but also the student and literary class. Even now the greater number of the students at the University are recruited from among them, and as a proof that a sort of special respect is still entertained for them, they form the majority of the members of the Lower House, although they only possess one-twentieth of the voting power of the country. The mass of the Japanese people may be described as caring very little about public affairs; and it is, after all, perhaps as well that the political and administrative affairs of such a new country should be in the hands of a distinct and cultured class. This is, however, merely a transitory state of affairs, not a privilege. It is already observed that the proportion of the heimin in all public offices, even in the army, tends to increase rapidly.

The only marked feature of the former regime which still survives the many social changes that have recently taken place in Japan is the clan spirit, which is as strong to-day as ever. The bond which united the followers of a former feudal prince among themselves still subsists, although the prince himself may have fallen almost to the level of his clansmen. The men who have up to the present governed modern Japan have always belonged to southern clans, especially to those of Choshiu and Satsuma; the two others, Hizen and Tosa, are less united, and although certain important political personages are of their number, they have had to fight their way to the front rather by dint of hard work than through any clan influence. The influential combination formed by the first-named clans, and unitedly known as the Sat-Cho, holds in its hands the reins of administration, rules the army, and makes its influence felt even more strongly in the navy. Their politics, however, are not quite identical. Those of the Satsuma, for instance, are usually believed to be rather more conservative and authoritative than otherwise, and it is from its ranks that are recruited the majority of the military party. The men of the Choshiu, on the other hand, are more progressive and more subtle, but they are also accused of being too fond of money. The chiefs of these clans appear to understand each other sufficiently well to establish a sort of balance of power between themselves, occasionally collaborating in a Cabinet, at other times succeeding each other as distinct Ministries. In the rank and file there is considerable rivalry, positions and honours being more liberally distributed among the followers of those in power. During the earlier part of my visit to Japan, under the last Premier, Count Matsukata, the Satsuma clan was in the ascendant, and to give some idea of its influence all I need say is that the Minister of Finance, the President of the Council, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Home Minister, and the Minister of War and Marine—in short, the five most important Ministers out of eight—were of their number, and a sixth was a prominent member of the Choshiu, their allied clan. Now the provinces of Yamaguchi and Kagoshima, which are the home of these two clans, contain only one out of the forty-two million inhabitants of the entire Empire. It is therefore not surprising that people in other parts of the country should complain of having so small a share in the Government. Imagine France ruled exclusively for thirty years by Provençaux! It would only be natural that such a state of affairs should lead to great dissatisfaction throughout the Republic.

So long as Japan remained an absolute monarchy, in which the Legislature was concentrated within a narrow circle, the Choshiu and Satsuma Ministries succeeded each other without any noisy opposition; but when in 1890 Parliamentary Government was established, an immediate collision occurred between the Lower Chamber, which is composed of representatives from all parts of the country,[[19]] and the Cabinet, dominated by the Sat-Cho combination. Although according to the Constitution, analogous to that of Prussia, the Ministers are not responsible to the Chambers, but to the Emperor alone, and although the Budget of the current year, if the finance bill is not voted in due time, becomes by law that of the following year also, the irreconcilable opposition which manifested itself from the beginning greatly embarrassed the first Matsukata Ministry in 1891 and 1892, and the Ito Ministry which succeeded it. This latter, whose plans for the extension of the Navy were obstinately rejected by the Chamber, twice dissolved it: in December, 1893, and again in May, 1894. After the war patriotic feeling ran so high that people cared very little about the Government and its measures, and projected laws were adopted without the least opposition; but when affairs began to settle down it was otherwise. In 1897 and 1898 there were two dissolutions, and in the latter year the Ministry in power was the ninth since December, 1885, and the seventh since the establishment of the Parliamentary system. This gives an average of about two years for each Cabinet, and even less for the Chamber, of which not one has yet attained its legal term.