JAPAN AND HER PEOPLE.
The eyes of the world are on Japan. No other nation has ever made such progress in the same length of time, and at no time in her history has Japan enjoyed greater prestige than she enjoys just now; and, it may be added, at no time has she had to face greater problems than those which now confront her.
We were fortunate in the time of our arrival. Baron Komura, the returning peace commissioner, returned two days later; the naval review celebrating the new Anglo-Japanese alliance took place in Yokohama harbor a week afterward, and this was followed next day by the reception of Admiral Togo at Tokyo. These were important events and they gave a visitor an extraordinary opportunity to see the people en masse. In this article I shall deal in a general way with Japan and her people, leaving for future articles her history, her government, her politics, her industries, her art, her education and her religions.
The term Japan is a collective title applied to four large islands, that is, Honshiu, Kyushu, Shikoku, Hokkaido and about six hundred smaller ones. Formosa and the islands immediately adjoining it are not generally included, although since the Chinese war they belong to Japan.
Japan extends in the shape of a crescent, curving toward the northeast, from fifty north latitude and one hundred and fifty-six east longitude to twenty-one degrees north latitude and one hundred and nineteen east longitude. The area is a little less than one hundred and sixty thousand square miles, more than half of which is on the island of Honshiu. The coast line is broken by numerous bays furnishing commodious harbors, the most important of which are at Yokohama, Osaka, Kobe, Nagasaki, Kagoshima and Hakodate. The islands are so mountainous that only about one-twelfth the area is capable of cultivation. Although Formosa has a mountain, Mt. Niitaka (sometimes called Mt. Morrison) which is two thousand feet higher, Fujiyama is the highest mountain in Japan proper. It reaches a height of 12,365 feet.
A PICTURESQUE VIEW.
Fuji (Yama is the Japanese word for mountain) is called the Sacred Mountain and is an object of veneration among the Japanese. And well it may be, for it is doubtful if there is on earth a more symmetrical mountain approaching it in height. Rising in the shape of a perfect cone, with its summit crowned with snow throughout nearly the entire year and visible from sea level, it is one of the most sublime of all the works of nature. Mt. Ranier, as they say at Seattle, or Tacoma, as it is called in the city of that name, and Popocatapetl, near Mexico's capital, are the nearest approach to Fuji, so far as the writer's observation goes. Pictures of Fuji are to be found on everything; they are painted on silk, embroidered on screens, worked on velvet, carved in wood and wrought in bronze and stone. We saw it from Lake Hakone, a beautiful sheet of water some three thousand feet above the ocean. The foot hills which surround the lake seem to open at one point in order to give a more extended view of the sloping sides of this sleeping giant.
And speaking of Hakone, it is one of the beauty spots of Japan. On an island in this lake is the summer home of the crown prince. Hakone is reached by a six-mile ride from Miyanoshita, a picturesque little village some sixty miles west of Yokohama. There are here hot springs and all the delights of a mountain retreat. One of the best modern hotels in Japan, the Fujiya, is located here, and one of its earliest guests was General Grant when he made his famous tour around the world. The road from the hotel to Hakone leads by foaming mountain streams, through closely cultivated valleys and over a range from which the coast line can be seen.