JAPAN. 



315 



districts. Since 1889 constitutional reform has 



been almost continuous, and has been effected 

 without popular disturbance. 



The fifteenth annual meeting of the Diet took 

 place Dec. 22, 1900. The second Yamagata min- 

 istry, after twenty-two months of ollice, retired in 



September, 1900, thus ending the last of the 40 

 ministries since 18G8, and of the 7 constitutional 

 cabinets since 1889, composed of the " elders," or 

 statesmen, of the Restoration of 1868. Marquis 

 Hirobumi Ito was called for the fifth time to form 

 the new Cabinet, which begins its work Oct. 19, 

 and consists, with the exception of himself, wholly 

 of young men trained for the most part in the 

 United States and Europe, and under modern con- 

 stitutional forms. In the three months' session 

 of " the spendthrift Parliament " of 1900, ending 

 Feb. 24, 37 out of the 59 bills brought forward 

 were debated, nearly every measure advocating 

 expenditure from the treasury. Of those with- 

 drawn, a great majority were schemes for fostering 

 private enterprises. 



The Emperor's Cabinet consists of the Minister- 

 President of State and the 9 heads of departments. 

 There is also a Privy Council of 20 veteran states- 

 men, who have great influence, especially in the 

 formation of cabinets and the appointment of en- 

 voys and officers. There is also a Court of Ac- 

 counts, an Administrative Tribunal, and a bureau 

 administrative for each of the chambers of peers 

 and of deputies. These all form the Central Gov- 

 ernment, in which are employed 49,208 salaried 

 functionaries, whose salaries require 12,599,955 

 yen. Under imperial control are also the prefec- 

 ture of the police of Tokio, the Department of Colo- 

 nization of Yezo, the (46) prefectui-es and (866) 

 districts, and the government of Formosa, in which 

 4 provincial governments are employed 19,668 sal- 

 aried officers, who draw 5,987,755 yen from the 

 treasury, making a total civil list of 58,876 per- 



sns, drawing 18,587,170 yen from the national 

 treasury. Since the war with China, in 1895, the 

 lumber of officials and the amount of salaries have 

 increased more than 50 per cent. 



Population. For more than a hundred years, 

 in the eighteenth and early in the nineteeth cen- 

 tury, the population was stationary. Since 1870, 

 when the first scientific census was made, showing 

 that the empire contained 7,107,841 houses and 

 33,110,825 souls, the population has increased 

 steadily, until at the end of 1898 the number was 



3,540,754 the nobles numbering 3,845, gentry 

 1,666,301, the remainder being the common people, 

 nany of the gentry of former years having vol- 

 jntarily dropped into the ranks of the commons. 

 The average yearly increase for a decade has been 

 nearly 500,000. The excess of births over deaths 

 in 1898 was 531.891, three fourths being on Hondo. 

 The rush of inhabitants from the country to the 

 cities, of which there are 48 called great and 30 



lore which, like the larger ones, have over 20,000 

 inhabitants, and the change of Japan from an 



jricultural to a manufacturing country, are very 



larked. In Tokio the population is now 1,002,863, 

 the growth being in the suburban districts, and 

 showing an increase of 200,000 since 1887. Osaka, 



rith 821.235 souls, increases relatively even more 

 than Tokio, making increase during 1897 of 59,311, 

 compared with Tokio's 38,194. Emigration is also 

 active. In 1898 33.297 persons received passports 

 travel abroad, and 70,801 Japanese dwelt out- 

 side of Japan. Of these, 15,000 were in China, 

 3,000 in English colonies, and 44,000 in the United 

 States; 11,589 foreigners resided in the empire 

 and 32.42B tourists traveled in the country. In 

 the Hokkaido 63,629 persons were immigrants and 

 11,381 went out, the majority of immigrants being 



farmers and fishermen from central and northern 

 Japan. The total population of Yezo island is 

 650,000, or about 18 to the square mile. Of the 

 Ainu aborigines there were counted 17,573; births 

 534, deaths 529. In 1898 the marriages in the 

 empire were 471,217, divorces 99,469, and of the 

 1,261,137 births, 108,485 were illegitimate. In the 

 empire there were, in 1897, 42,542 doctors, 35,384 

 midwives, nurses, and trained women, and 25,000 

 pharmacists and druggists; 705,028 persona suffer- 

 ing from fire or water were helped at a cost of 

 734,633 yen, and 736,270 yen were spent for those 

 in famine. In 1897, besides 7,740 suicides, there 

 were 4,542 violent deaths. In 146 prisons, with 

 12,177 functionaries, there were 70,784 prisoners. 

 In houses of prevention, 190,286 persons entered 

 and 179,098 passed out; the figures for houses of 

 detention were 274,952 and 217,098 respectively. 



Finances. Since Oct. 1, 1897, Japan has em- 

 ployed the gold standard, which was adopted with- 

 out disturbance of the trade or loss to the national 

 treasury, and the bonds of Japan are now inter- 

 national commodities. From Oct. 1, 1897, until 

 March 31, 1900, the new gold coins struck at the 

 mint amounted to 115,194,600 yen, but in the 

 same period 20,514,364 yen of silver pieces were 

 struck, and these are seen everywhere, there being 

 about 45,000,000 of these silver coins in circula- 

 tion, whereas the 8,738,730 gold pieces coined dur- 

 ing the past three years are rarely seen. The 

 profit of the mint since the introduction of the 

 gold standard in 1897 was 6,681,319 yen; whereas, 

 the total profit in the mint from 1870 to 1897 had 

 been only 12,152,444 yen, the result being from 

 the striking of subsidiary silver coins under the 

 new system, these covering all losses in connec- 

 tion with the change of monetary standard. The 

 tendency of prices to rise continues unabated. The 

 amount of currency in Japan at present is a little 

 over 5 yen per capita, against 70 in France, 38 

 in Germany, and 33 in England. The funds of the 

 Bank of Japan, for lending, are about 90,000,000 

 yen, while the volume of negotiable securities of- 

 fered to it is 700,000,000 yen annually. The out- 

 lays of the Japanese Government since the Chino- 

 Japanese War have nearly trebled, the increase 

 being chiefly in military and naval expenses. The 

 total deposits in the savings banks of all descrip- 

 tions aggregate 45,000,000 yen, or not quite 1 yen 

 per capita. For 1899-1900 the total revenue was 

 253,000,000, and the expenditures 250,000,000. The 

 budget for 1899-1900 shows an ordinary revenue of 

 193,000,000 and an extraordinary revenue of 60,- 

 000,000 and an expenditure of 250,000,000 yen ; that 

 of 1901-'02, ordinary revenue 201,000,000, extraor- 

 dinary 52,000,000; and of expenditure of 252,000,- 

 000 yen. Japanese economists reckon that Japan's 

 war fund, consisting of gold coin in London, de- 

 posits in the Bank of Japan, 4-per-cent. bonds, 

 capital fund for war ships, with reserves in connec- 

 tion with national calamities, education, and in- 

 demnity, amounts to nearly 150,000,000 yen. The 

 public debt in 1899 was 418,365,389 yen. At the 

 close of 1899 there were 2,032 banks in operation, 

 with a capital of 438,189,469 yen. 



The Army. After the war with China 

 (1894-'95) the army was reorganized into 12 di- 

 visions (instead of 6), in addition to the Imperial 

 Guard, with a total of 119 generals, 1,097 superior 

 officers, 7,244 officers, 5,821 underofficers, 32.733 

 noncommissioned officers, and 268,754 soldiers, 

 making a total of 315,808, with 4,233 civil func- 

 tionaries in the War Department. Of this total, 

 125,345 are in the active service, 115,666 in the 

 reserve, and 74,797 in the territorial army. In 

 the recruiting operations of 1897 477,555 males, 

 conscripts and volunteers, came under inspection, 



