from year to year, scarcely any scope being afforded for private enterprise.
When the country was thrown open some forty years ago, the few large commercial houses of old standing were looked to for the purpose of establishing relations with the strangers newly arrived. They declined to venture on what appeared a hazardous experiment. Such a new departure was also beyond the mental grasp of the lesser merchants, who worked together in guilds, along lines settled for them beforehand by time-honoured precedents. Thus it fell out that Yokohama and the other foreign settlements became resorts for unscrupulous and irresponsible men,a calamity, truly, not only then but long afterwards. The Europeans at the ports naturally judged of the whole nation by the only specimens with whom they came in contact. The Japanese officials on the other hand, and to some extent the public at large, looked askance at the foreign mercantile community, because of its connection with a class indisputably contemptible. The average Japanese trader still has much to learn, especially in such matters as the punctual fulfilment of a contract and the meeting of an obligation; but he has become a keen man of business. Moreover, a new generation of merchants and bankers is coming to the fore,—men of good standing and liberal education. Though still comparatively few in number, these have taken up their calling in the spirit of earnestness and thoroughness which is characteristic of the modern Japanese in other walks of life. The oversea trade, built up and maintained by foreigners in the old "treaty port days, tends gradually to pass into these new hands. It has made rapid strides, particularly since 1889, during which period of fifteen years the Japanese Government has taken an intelligently active interest in every thing pertaining to the commercial and industrial welfare of the country.
The following figures may help to show Japan's rapid advance since the empire was thrown open to foreign trade in the second half of the nineteenth century:—
