The Old World and Its Ways - Bryan William Jennings

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tobacco, coal, cars, turning lathes, condensed milk, flour and wheat. Of these items, flour, raw cotton and oil were by far the most valuable, each amounting to more than four and a half million dollars.

      In the ocean carrying trade, Japan is making rapid strides. In ten years her registered steamers have increased from four hundred and sixty-one to twelve hundred and twenty-four and her sailing vessels from one hundred and ninety-six to three thousand five hundred and twenty-three. There are now two hundred private ship yards in Japan, and in 1903 they built two hundred and seventy-nine vessels. The Japan Mail Steamship Company has a paid-up capital of eleven million dollars, runs steamers between Japan, America, Europe and Asia and pays a ten per cent dividend on its capital. The Osaka Mercantile Steamship Company (Osaka Shosen Kaisha) has a paid-up capital of nearly three and a half million dollars, owns about one hundred vessels and pays a dividend of ten per cent. These are the largest companies, but there are many smaller ones, some paying dividends of sixteen and twenty per cent.

      I will close this article with the suggestion that the mercantile marine seems likely to show large growth in the future, offering, as it does, a legitimate field for national expansion.

      Japan's fishing industries furnish a training for seamen and her people seem at home upon the water. She needs more territory for her expanding population and has about reached the limit in the cultivation of her tillable land. Every additional ship manned by her citizens is like a new island, rising from the waves, upon which her increasing population can be supported. If she seeks to acquire land in any direction, she finds her efforts contested by the inhabitants already there; no wonder she hails with delight these floating farms constructed by the genius of her own people – new land, as it were, won and held without the sacrifice of war.

      CHAPTER VI.

      EDUCATIONAL SYSTEM AND RELIGIONS

      Back of Japan's astonishing progress along material lines lies her amazing educational development. Fifty years ago but few of her people could read or write; now considerably less than ten per cent would be classed as illiterate. It is difficult to conceive of such a transformation taking place almost within a generation. The prompt adoption of western methods and the rapid assimilation of western ideas give indubitable proof of the pre-existence of a vital national germ. A pebble dropped into soil, however rich, and cultivated, no matter how carefully, gives back no response to the rays of the springtime sun. Only the seed which has life within can be awakened and developed by light and warmth and care. Japan had within her the vital spark, and when the winter of her isolation was passed, her latent energies burst forth into strong and sturdy growth.

      Her sons, ambitious to know the world, scattered themselves throughout Europe and America, and having laden themselves with new ideas, returned to apply them at home. In this way Japan constantly gained from every quarter and her educational system is modeled after the best that the ages have produced. She has her primary schools for boys and girls, attendance being compulsory, and below these in many places there are kindergarten schools. The middle schools, in which the boys and girls are separated, take up the course of instruction where the primary schools leave off.

      Then follow the universities, of which there are seven under the control of the government. Besides these there are in the cities institutions known as higher commercial schools, which combine general instruction with such special studies as are taught in our commercial colleges. There are also a number of normal schools for the training of teachers. In addition to the schools and colleges established and conducted by the government, there are a number founded by individuals and societies. The largest of these is Waseda College, founded and still maintained by Count Okuma, the leader of the progressive party. It is adjoining the home of the count and is built upon land which he donated. Dr. Hatoyama, at one time speaker of the national house of representatives, who holds a degree from Yale College, is the official head of this institution; in all of its departments it has some five thousand students.

      I have referred in a former article to the Keio Gijuku, the college founded by Mr. Fukuzawa. The attendance here is not so large as at Waseda, but the institution has had an illustrious career and exerts a wide influence upon the country. I visited both of these colleges and never addressed more attentive or responsive audiences. As English is taught in all the middle schools, colleges and universities, the students are able to follow a speech in that language without an interpreter.

      The state university at Tokyo includes six departments – law, medicine and engineering courses being provided, as well as courses in literature, science and agriculture. The total number of students enrolled at this university is about thirty-five hundred. The national university at Kyoto has three faculties – law, medicine and science – the last named including engineering; the attendance at this university is between six and seven hundred. In the states of Choshu and Satsuma there are higher schools supported by funds given by former feudal lords of those states.

      The education of girls is not neglected, although as a rule the girls do not go as far in their studies as the boys. There are a number of normal schools and seventy-nine high schools for girls, besides the Peeresses' school and several private institutions. The Woman's University of Tokyo, situated near Waseda College and under the patronage of Count Okuma, has had a phenomenal career. Established only five years ago, it has now an enrollment of some seven hundred, and is putting up several new buildings.

      There are also a number of missionary schools and colleges. The Presbyterians support three boarding schools for boys and eleven for girls, besides ten day schools; the total attendance at these schools is nearly twenty-three hundred.

      The Congregationalists have a number of schools, the largest, Doshisha College at Kyoto, being the most influential Christian institution in Japan. I had the pleasure of visiting both this college and Kyoto University.

      The Methodists have eighteen boarding schools and nineteen day schools with a total attendance of nearly five thousand. Their college at Kobe is a very promising institution.

      The Baptists have a theological seminary, an academy, five boarding schools for girls and eight day schools, with a total attendance of nearly a thousand. The Episcopal Church has also taken an important part in educational work, while the Catholics (who were first on the ground) have over sixty seminaries, schools and orphanages, with an attendance of some six thousand.

      The Japanese government supports more than twenty-five thousand primary schools, attended by over five million boys and girls; it supports more than two hundred and fifty middle schools, with an attendance of nearly one hundred thousand. While less than two per cent of the primary students enter the middle schools, more than ten per cent of the middle school students enter the higher colleges.

      Although these figures give some idea of the interest taken in education, they do not furnish an adequate conception of the enthusiasm with which a large number of these students pursue their studies. Nearly fifty young men called upon me or wrote to me asking to be taken to America that they might continue their studies. Many of the leading men in Japan to-day are graduates of American or European colleges. The physicians have shown a preference for German schools, while to engineers and politicians our universities have been more attractive. A part of the friendliness felt toward foreigners can be traced to the favors shown Japanese boys who left home in search of knowledge. Marquis Ito, one of the first of these, owes much to an elder of the Presbyterian Church in England in whose home he lived as a student, and the marquis has ever since been making returns in kindness to foreigners and Christians.

      Marquis Ito's case is not exceptional; all over Japan are men who hold in grateful remembrance Americans and Europeans to whom they are indebted for assistance. I met a man, now the publisher of an influential paper, who twenty years ago, at the age of sixteen, went to sea and in a shipwreck was cast upon one of the islands in the South Pacific. He became a retainer for the king of the islands and as such wore the scanty native dress, consisting of a loin cloth. He went with his king to Honolulu to pay a visit to the Hawaiian queen, and finding a Japanese settlement there, remained for two or three years. He then went to the United States and, making a friend of a professor in one of the universities, attended school there for several years. He now visits the United States every year or so on business, and one seeing him wearing a silk hat and a Prince Albert coat would hardly guess the experiences through which he has risen to his present

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