The Mastery of the Far East Paperback -

From the publisher

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can usually download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1919 edition. Excerpt: ... War swelled it to $252,500,000. The latter war cost Japan $585,000,000, and at its close the nation was staggering under a debt of $1,125,153,411. This does not look large in comparison with the enormous debts incurred by Western nations in the European War a decade later, but it was $23 per capita, which was ten times the per-capita debt of 1893. Almost everything is taxed. Official reports list among other sources of revenue taxes on land, incomes, business, succession, travelling, mining, bank-notes, liquors, soy, sugar, textile fabrics, kerosene-oil, bourses, imports, tonnage, stamps, and "other taxes," while postal, telegraph, telephone, and railway services, forests, salt, camphor, and tobacco are classed as "public undertakings and state property," whose profits accrue to the state treasury. In addition to an import duty of 15 per cent on manufactured articles, native manufacturers are heavily assessed, and every citizen with an annual income of more than $150 pays income tax. The Japanese have to pay from 20 to 30 per cent of their incomes for taxes. A Tokyo paper (the Kokumin Shimfun) declares that "the heavy debts of Japan are more than the nation can endure"; and Baron Shibusawa, one of the ablest financiers in Japan, admitted recently that "the present rate of taxation in Japan is indeed extremely high and more than the people at large can bear." Japan realizes that its material resources are greatly inferior to those of other first-class Powers, and that the position and ambitions of the nation require wealth as well as an army and navy. The Japanese cannot get this wealth by agriculture; for not only is Japan a comparatively small country territorially, but only 13 per cent of its area is easily susceptible of cultivation, ...