The War in the East: Japan, China, and Corea

by Trumbull White

There are several kinds of lizards, a great variety of frogs, seven or eight snakes, including one deadly species, and two or three kinds of tortoise. The crustaceans are numerous and interesting, and of fish there is extraordinary variety, especially those found in salt water. Oysters and clams are excellent and plentiful.

Let us now turn to the temporal affairs of the people who dwell in this island empire, their cities, their industries, and to their government.

Japan like its oriental companion, China, is a country of great cities, although the smaller empire has not so many famous for their size as has China. With scarcely an exception these greater cities are situated at the heads of bays, most of them good harbors and accessible for commerce. The largest of these cities, of course, is the capital Tokio, which doubtless passes a million inhabitants, although it is impossible that it should justify the American tradition of not many years ago, that its numbers were twice a million. Tokio, or the old city of Yeddo, is situated near the head of Yeddo Bay, but a few miles from Yokohama, and but little farther from Uraga where the first reception to Commodore Perry was given. Among the other more important cities on the sea coast are Nagasaki, Yokohama, Hakodate, Hiogo, Ozaka, Hiroshima, and Kanagawa.

Nagasaki is situated on the southwest coast of the island of Kiushiu, and is built in the form of an amphitheater. The European quarter in the east, stands upon land reclaimed from the sea at considerable labor and expense. Desima, the ancient Dutch factory, lies at the foot, and behind it is the native part of the town. The whole is sheltered by high wooden mountains. The city of Nagasaki was almost the first which attracted the attention of foreigners, partly from its being already known by name from the Dutch colony established there; partly because it was the nearest point to China and a port of great beauty; and also because before the political revolution which overthrew the power of the shogunate, the daimios of the south were there enabled, owing to its distance from Yeddo, to transact foreign affairs in their own way unmolested. This comparative importance did not last long, for affairs soon began to be concentrated in Yokohama, and the opening of the ports of Hiogo and Ozaka further reduced it to a secondary rank among commercial towns. It is still, however, a busy place and a great portion of the navigation of the Japanese seas passes by its beautiful port. But it is not a town of the future, and will be supplanted in prosperity to considerable extent by the more northern cities.

Yokohama, situated on the Gulf of Yeddo, owes its rise and importance to the merchants who came to seek their fortunes in the empire of the rising sun immediately after the signature of the treaties which threw open the coasts of Japan to adventurous foreigners. When Perry, with his augmented fleet, returned to Japan in February, 1854, the Japanese found him as inflexibly firm as ever. Instead of making the treaty at Uraga he must take it nearer Yeddo. Yokohama was the chosen spot, and there on the 8th of March, 1854, were exchanged the formal articles of convention between the United States and Japan.

By the treaty of Yokohama, Shimoda was one of the ports opened to Americans. Before it began to be of much service the place was visited by an earthquake and tidal wave, which overwhelmed the town and ruined the harbor. The ruin of Shimoda was the rise of Yokohama. By a new treaty Kanagawa, three miles across the bay from Yokohama, was substituted for Shimoda. The Japanese government decided to make Yokohama the future port. Their reasons for this were many. Kanagawa was on the line of the great highway of the empire, along which the proud Daimios and their trains of retainers were continually passing. With the antipathy to foreigners that existed, had Kanagawa been made a foreign settlement, its history would doubtless have had many more pages of assassination and incendiarism than did Yokohama. Foreseeing this, even though considered by the foreign ministers a violation of treaty agreements, the Japanese government immediately set to work to render Yokohama as convenient as possible for trade, residence and espionage.

They built a causeway nearly two miles long across the lagoons and marshes to make it of easy access. They built granite piers, custom house and officers’ quarters, and dwellings and store houses for the foreign merchants. After a long quarrel over which should be the city, the straggling colony of diplomats, missionaries, and merchants of Kanagawa finally pulled up their stakes and joined the settlement of Yokohama. Yokohama was settled in a squatter-like and irregular manner, and the ill effects of it are seen to this day. When compared with Shanghai, the foreign metropolis of China, it is vastly inferior.

The town grew slowly at first. Murders and assassinations of foreigners were frequent during the first few years. Diplomatic quarrels were constant, and threats of bombardment from some foreign vessel in the harbor of frequent occurrence. A fire which destroyed nearly the whole foreign town seemed to purify the place municipally, commercially, and morally. The settlement was rebuilt in a more substantial and regular manner. As the foreign population grew, banks, newspaper offices, hospitals, post-offices, and consulate buildings reappeared in a new dignity. Fire and police protection were organized. Steamers began to come from European ports and from San Francisco. Social life began as ladies and children came, and houses became homes. Then came the rapid growth of society and the finer things. Churches, theaters, clubs, schools were organized in rapid succession. Telegraph connection with Tokio, and thence around the globe, was accomplished, and the railway system increased rapidly. Within the thirty-five years of the life of Yokohama, it has grown from a fishing village of a few hundred to a city of fifty thousand people. Its streets are lighted with gas and electricity; its stores are piled full of rare silks, bronzes and curios. At present the foreign population of Yokohama numbers about two thousand residents. In addition to these the foreign transient population, made up of tourists and officers and sailors of the navy, and the merchant marine, numbers between three thousand and six thousand. Several daily newspapers, beside weeklies and monthlies, printed in English, furnish mediums of communication and news. Yokohama has become and will remain the great mercantile center of American and European trade in Japan.

Hiogo, or rather Kobe, as the foreign part has been called since the concession, is near Ozaka, both towns being situated on the inland Sea of Japan, near the south end of the Island of Niphon. Kobe is a considerable foreign settlement, with many fine houses and spacious warehouses. Ozaka, which contains more than half a million inhabitants, is one of the chief trading cities of Japan, and an immense proportion of the merchandise imported into the empire passes through it.