Page:Japan by the Japanese (1904).djvu/481

It may be said that the rapid progress of foreign trade which the Far Eastern island empire has made during some thirty years is a well-known fact to all the world. It may be said, too, that the smallness or non-existence of the foreign commerce of Japan in former times was evidently due to her national policy of seclusion, and therefore so much weight cannot be laid on the great increase in recent years, rapid and great though it was. Apart from this, however, the prosperous state of her foreign trade can be seen easily through the fact that the total imports and exports, which only amounted to £30,000,000 in value in 1897, rose to £40,000,000 in 1898, £50,000,000 in 1901, and £60,000,000 in 1903.

If we compare her trade with that of China, which has a land area two-and-twenty times as large as, and a population nine and a half times that of Japan, no one can deny that the commercial expansion of Japan is something that cannot be ignored. The following table shows the amount of the export trade of both countries in short:

It will be noticed that the export trade of Japan was about one-half that of China ten years ago, and it surpassed the latter last year. The following table shows what kinds of goods take the principal parts in the export trade of Japan: