| Total of Imports and Exports in 1868 | Yen | 26,246,544. |
| Do. in 1904 | 606,637,960. |
The principal imports into Japan from abroad are:—boilers, engines and machinery of all kinds, iron ore, pig iron, manufactured iron and steel, lead, zinc, tin, kerosene oil, wheat, rice, beans, barley, flour, tinned provisions, alcohol, chemicals, dyes, paints, glass, paper, sugar both raw and refined, raw and manufactured cotton, raw and manufactured wool, flax, hemp, jute, China grass, tobacco, Cardiff coal, malt, manures of various descriptions, wood pulp, timber, and explosives.
The chief exports are:—tea, rice, dried fish, seaweed, gelatine, chillies, ginseng, ginger, pea-nuts, vegetables, sake, soy, beer, mineral waters, cotton manufactures, raw and manufactured silk, camphor, peppermint, coal, sulphur, copper, manganese, zinc, bronze, fish oil, vegetable wax, paper, cigarettes, matches, Portland cement, railway sleepers, timber, bamboos, brushes, straw braid, straw matting, wood chips, porcelain, curios, and works of art.
Books recommended. The British Consular Trade Reports.—Annual Return of Foreign Trade, issued by the Imperial Japanese Department of Finance.—Curious details of the Portuguese, Spanish, Dutch, and English trade with Japan prior to the closing of the country in 1624 are given, passim, in Murdoch's History of Japan during the Century of Early Foreign Intercourse (1542—1651).
Treaties with Foreign Powers. The subject of treaty revision was for so many years the hinge on which Japanese foreign policy turned, the working of the new treaties is still such a burning question to the foreign residents, that the new comer desirous of peeping below the surface and learning some thing of the inner springs of local politics, will perhaps find an interest in details that might otherwise be condemned as "ancient history." In effect, is not the recent past our only trustworthy guide to the present and the near future?
Japan's first treaty with the United States was that wrung from her, in 1854, by the terror which Commodore Perry's "black
