Directory_and_Chronicle_1869 — Page 608

354

JAPAN.

visit with punishment not only the delinquents themselves, but their relatives and dependents, and even strangers who have accidentally been spectators of their crimes. The prisons are gloomy and horrid abodes, containing places for torture and private executions, besides numerous cells for solitary confinement.

The Japanese police is extremely strict in the maintenance of order, and the punishment of delinquents. It is also charged with the registration of births, deaths, and marriages.

Trade and Commerce.

The commercial intercourse of Japan with the United Kingkom is shown in the subjoined table, which gives the value of the total imports from Japan into the United Kingdom, and of the total exports of British and Irish produce and manufactures to Japan in each of the eight years 1859 to 1860.

Imports from

Exports of Home

Years.

Japan into the United Kingdom.

produce from the

United Kingdom

to Japan.

£

£

1859

97,078

2,917

1860

167,511

1861

538,687

43,100

1862

591,885

21

1863

1,283,631

108,897

1864

1,423,819

627,383

1865

614,743

1,576,794

1866

273,745

1,447,070

66

The trade of Japan with foreign countries showd an inmense expansion in the year 1865. The total imports brought to Japan by British vessels rose from 5,693,647 Mexican dollars in 1864 to 11,560,509 dollars in 1865, and the imports in other vessels from 1,157,640 to 2,634,262 dollars. The exports in British vessels rose from 9,941,404 dollars in 1864 to 16,186,823 dollars in 1865, and the exports in other foreign vessels from 630,818 to 2,303,407 dollars. But the increase in the value of the exports from Japan was owing chiefly to the great rise in the price of Japanese silk; the quantity shipped in 1865 was rather less than in 1863, although costing nearly a trebled price. The tea trade was checked by the imperfect preparation of the leaf in Japan, and the quality seems more suited to the American than the English market. Those who have most narrowly watched the progress of foreign intercourse with Japan" wrote the British Consul at Kanagawa, under date of March, 1864, “have long suspected that much of the antagonism to foreign countries, attributed by the Tycoon to the semi-independent Princes, was fictitious rather than real; that foreign trade as between the parties was a struggle-on the Tycoon's side to open the door leading to the outer world, of which he was lucky enough, in his representative capacity according to the traditions and established institutions of Japan, to possess the key, at the highest price on the side of the Daimios, to get cheaply through the barrier and part with as little as possible of their profits. The statements of Satsouma's agents, as well as other facts which have cropped up incidentally, have no doubt that that such is the true state of affairs.”