Japan's shipping enterprise was crippled for over two centuries, though the number of coasting junks no doubt remained large; for the character of the country made communication by water indispensable.
When the feudal government fell like a card palace, the restrictions on shipbuilding fell with it. The new Imperial government took a landable interest in the development of a mercantile marine of foreign build. Among other measures adopted with this end in view, a regulation prohibiting the construction of junks of over five hundred koku[1] burthen may be cited as one of the most efficacious. Nor was everything left to official initiative. Iwasaki Yatarō, the celebrated millionaire, started steamers of his own somewhere about 1870; and the company which he worked with the aid of judiciously selected European directors and agents, European captains, and European engineers, soon rose, under the name of the Mitsubishi[2] Mail Steamship Company, to be the most important commercial undertaking in the empire. It even influenced politics; for to the facilities which the Mitsubishi afforded for carrying troops at the time of the Satsuma rebellion, was due in no small measure the triumph of the Imperialists in that their hour of need. Later on, another company, named the Kybōdō Un-yu Kwaisha, was formed to run against the Mitsubishi. But the rivalry between the two proving ruinous, they were amalgamated in 1885, under the name of the Nippon Yūsen Kwaisha, or Japan Mail Steamship Company. This company now ranks as one of the principal steamship companies of the world, and not only trades between the various parts of the coast, but maintains regular services between Japan
- ↑ Article 3 of the "Regulations and Rules for the Measures of Vessels Capacity," published in 1888 by the Mercantile Marine Bureau of the Imperial Department of Communications, fixes the capacity of the koku, in vessels of Japanese build, as equivalent to 10 cubic feet. Whether this was the precise value of the maritime koku in earlier times, we cannot say.
- ↑ From mitsu, "three" and hishi, "the water caltrop," hence "lozenge," the leaves of the caltrop being approximately lozenge-shaped, and three lozenges having been chosen as the company's crest.
