330 THE COMMERCIAL DEVELOPMENT OF JAPAN 



in Japan as has the United States, and no country has as many- 

 Japanese citizens under her flag as has our own, while no nation 

 is so closely associated with the growth of her commerce or has 

 greater reason to expect an active participation in it. 



Japan has during the past few years assumed an important 

 rank in the list of commercial nations, and in doing so has 

 vastly increased her commerce with the United States, the nation 

 instrumental in first opening the doors of that country to com- 

 merce with the world. Within the last two years new treaties 

 have been made with the principal countries of the world, by 

 which their citizens are given equal privileges with the citizens 

 of Japan in all parts of the empire and made subject to its laws, 

 which have been recently revised. Also new commercial codes 

 have been established, new currency adopted, new tariffs cre- 

 ated, and new ports opened for commercial intercourse with the 

 world. Lastly, Japan and the United States have become near 

 neighbors physically, Japan's northern territory, the Kurile 

 islands, lying within 500 miles of the Aleutian islands, while her 

 southern extreme, Formosa, is within 200 miles of the Philip- 

 pines, thus making a complete chain along the Pacific front of 

 Asia. From Yokohama, her most important port of entry, the 

 distance to Manila as a trade center is practical^ the same as 

 that to Hongkong, which has proved so important a distribut- 

 ing point for British trade. From Yokohama to Honolulu, a 

 distance of 3,400 miles, Japanese steamships now regularly pty, 

 and from Yokohama to the Pacific coast ports of the United 

 States the distance is far less than to the ports of any other great 

 commercial nation, while the opening of an isthmian canal would 

 greatly lessen the water route between Japan and the Gulf and 

 Atlantic ports of the United States, from which she draws so large 

 and constantly increasing a proportion of her supplies. 



To the readers of The National Geographic Magazine the 

 earlier commercial relations of Japan to the world and the part 

 which the United States has had in developing them are so well 

 known that they need not be recounted in detail. Portuguese 

 adventurers, who were the first to establish commercial relations 

 in China, soon extended their trade to Japan, where sailors 

 landed in 1542, and within a few years established an active 

 commerce. Encouraged by that success, the Dutch East India 

 Company in 1598 dispatched five merchant vessels to Japan. In 

 1609 other Dutch ships arrived and were well received by the 

 Japanese, who conceded them a port on the island of Hirado 



