experience of many ages, at a right perception and
conception of the philosophy of life. Judged from the highest, and as
I think only true, standpoint, that is the standpoint of happiness not
in a merely material but in a spiritual form, they have reached a
condition that but few nations have yet attained. They may provoke the
pity of the man who believes in full diet and plenty of it, and who
fails to comprehend how a people living on a meagre fare of fish and
rice can be contented, much less happy, but the Japanese in his
philosophy has realised a fact that happiness is something other than
material, and that a man or woman can be largely independent of the
accidentals of life and can attain a realisation of true happiness by
keeping under the, too often, supremacy of matter over mind in the
average human being.

CHAPTER VII

TRADE--COMMERCE--AND INDUSTRIES

Nothing is perhaps so strongly indicative of the progress that Japan
has made as the record of her trade and commerce. I have no intention
of inflicting on my readers a mass of figures, but I shall have to
give a few in order to convey some idea as to the country's material
development of recent years. Japan, it must be recollected, is in her
youth in respect of everything connected with commerce and industry.
When the country was isolated it exported and imported practically
nothing, and its productions were simply such as were necessary for
the inhabitants, then far less numerous than at present. When the
Revolution took place trade and commerce were still at a very low ebb,
and the Japanese connected with trade was looked upon with more or
less of contempt, the soldier's and the politician's being the only
careers held much in esteem. For innumerable centuries the chief
industry of Japan was agriculture, and even to-day more than half of
the population is engaged thereon. Partly owing to religious
influences, and partly from other causes, the mass of the people have
been, and still are in effect, vegetarians.

The present trade of Japan is in startling contrast with that of her
near neighbour China, which, with an area about twenty-three times
greater, and a population nearly nine times as large, has actually a
smaller volume of exports. All the statistics available in reference
to Japan's trade, commerce, and industries point to the enormous and
annually increasing development of the country. Indeed, the trade has
marvellously increased of recent