and Europe, Australia, British India, America, China, Siberia, and the Philippines. The Ōsaka Shōsen Kwaisha is another important private company, owning a large fleet of vessels engaged in the domestic carrying trade and running to Korea, Formosa, and up the Yangtse. The Tōyō Kisen Kwaisha is a third, which runs steamers to San Francisco and Hongkong. A score of smaller companies and numerous privately owned vessels render the means of travel and transit everywhere easy.
Iwasaki's keen enterprising spirit, seconded by government assistance, greatly contributed to develop the country. Places formerly dependent on the casual services of junks found themselves supplied with regular shipping facilities, or were at least able to command tonnage at short notice. Methods, too, rapidly improved. The happy-go-lucky way of conducting the loading of a junk, which could afford to wait an indefinite period for a cargo, necessarily yielded to prompt shipment at the time stipulated. The China war of 1894-5 gave a great impetus to shipping. Many private steamers were engaged as transports, and others bought to supply their place. Then followed laws for the encouragement of navigation and shipbuilding, also the granting of liberal subsidies, with the result that Japanese steamers—as indicated above—now compete with the foreign carriers on the chief lines to and from Japan. The outlay has been considerable for a country which is not rich: yet it may be regarded as a sound investment, because calculated to pay in the long run. It has already succeeded in ousting foreign competition from certain fields, from the Formosa coast, for instance, where British shipping, so late as 1896, amounted to over 86 per cent of the whole steam tonnage entered from abroad, but where the Ōsaka Shōsen Kwaisha now reigns supreme. Great attention, too, has been devoted to the construction of repairing and building-yards and of dry docks.
So far the domestic trade. Japan is no less well-supplied with foreign tonnage, thanks partly to the sudden and enormous
