III

CHANGES AND TRANSFORMATIONS

T

HE Athenians in Paul's day delighted "to tell or hear some new thing." The Japanese are prone

to hear, see, or use new things if they become convinced that they will be pleased or benefited thereby. They do not intend to be behind in anything. Olympic games, a race for the South Pole, Shimose powder, flying machines, and a thousand other items would fail to complete the list of their activities. Years ago, a Japanese from the country came to Tokyo on a visit. It is the custom on returning from a long journey, to carry back many presents to friends and relatives. The most interesting item on this occasion was a box of foreign cake. As this new and strange item of Western diet had to accommodate a large circle of friends, it was cut into small bits, chewed deliberately, and swallowed under the high pressure of a volition determined to be abreast of the times. The cake proved to be a box of Mason's shoe blacking. Since then, the donor of the cake has educated one daughter in America and has made good in his efforts to outdo his forefathers.

Every year, every decade, brings changes to Japan. I was talking with a veteran missionary some weeks ago who saw the late Emperor's Procession which accompanied him in his first journey from Kyoto to Tokyo. The Emperor was entirely shut in within a magnificent box-like canopy which was born upon the poles of carriers. No one ever dreamed then of ever looking upon his face. But since then, both he and the present Emperor have frequently been seen while driving through the streets in a carriage or appearing openly at state and

public functions. The Emperor's chrysanthemum party is one of the occasions which is usually honoured by the Imperial presence. It is a time when foreign ambassadors are kept busy recommending their own nationals to the Japanese foreign Department as worthy of mixing with the nobility of the land.

But a few years ago, every one walked, or floated leisurely down the rivers in a boat. A few of the more delicate and aristocratic were carried about in a basket called a kago. Now the fast express with dining-car and sleepers goes rushing through the rice fields. In Tokyo, where the speed limit for any vehicle is ten miles an hour, chauffeurs at a safe distance from the police speed up to thirty miles an hour. Cyclists to-day, instead of the two-sworded Samurai, are the terror of the aged and little children. At busy corners one must sidestep for electric cars and rubber-tired jinrikishas, whose pullers have exchanged their warning yell for a nickel-plated bell.

Tokyo has changed since the opening of the century. Streets have been widened, sidewalks made, as well as roads paved with wood blocks and asphalt. The uniform one, or two storied buildings are being replaced in busy centres by buildings of brick and stone, with a frame-work of structural steel, finished with elevators and slate-roofs. A new central station over a thousand feet in length, is being built in Tokyo. At night, the outlines of the prominent buildings gleam with electric bulbs, and variating electrical advertisements flash out the excellences of Yebisu Beer and Lion Tooth Powder. Tokyo is crowding out into the adjoining rice fields and wheat fields. Land has risen in valuation until even the oyster beds of Tokyo Bay have become the foundations of dwellings and factories. Rising land values are driving the poor from their former haunts and have made many a poor farmer near the suburbs independently rich. In 1883 the Methodist Episcopal Church

bought twenty-five acres of land for $2500. Here they located several schools and built a number of missionary homes. To-day, the city has grown around the compound and the land has risen in value to $375,000.

Country life, while moving very much as in the days of Abraham, is experiencing its changes. Paper in the windows is giving place to glass. Tin and zinc are used for fences and roofing. Small towns are introducing electric lights or acetylene gas. Their dry goods stores cater to the youth in the way of neckties, white shirts, kid gloves, straw and felt hats. In the country, one encounters Standard Oil Company's tanks, Singer Sewing Machines, Worcestershire Sauce, Milkmaid Brand of condensed milk, French perfumery and great quantities of American cotton and flour. What are these articles but proof that if the nations can stop fighting long enough to get well acquainted, every nation will invite all other nations to contribute, in a commercial way, the best that it can produce for its own comforts, support, anđ enjoyment?

Commercially, industrially, and financially, none but a specialist could note the changes inaugurated or brewing in Japan. Great plants of brick are being erected where once the fox and the wild duck ignored the patient farmer at his toil. Iyeyasu, some three hundred years ago, limited the size of Japan's sea-going boats and restricted them to coasting and river traffic. In the last ten years an Osaka Steamship Company has made Tacoma a port of call, and the Oriental Steamship Company has joined hands with the Western Pacific to share with the Harriman Railway legacy the profits of the Pacific Ocean traffic. Heavy purchases of real estate in Shanghai have been made by Japanese buyers. Steam trawlers have been brought out from England to compel the sea to surrender more of its abundance of fish.

Japan has changed governmentally and geographically in the last twenty-five years. The promulgation of the