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 CHAPTER I


 * Situation of country; relation to the United States; lines of communication; "Key of Asia."—Area of empire.—Divisions: highways, provinces, prefectures, principal cities and ports.—Dense population; natives and foreigners; Japanese abroad.—Mountains, volcanoes, hot springs, earthquakes.—Lakes, rivers, bays, harbors, floods, tidal waves.—Epidemics, pests.—Climate: temperature, winds (typhoons), moisture, ocean currents.—Flora and fauna.—Peculiar position: Japan and the United States.—Bibliography.

HE Japanese may appropriately be called "our antipodal neighbors." They do not live, it is true, at a point exactly opposite to us on this globe; but they belong to the obverse, or Eastern, hemisphere, and are an Oriental people of another race. They are separated from us by from 4,000 to 5,000 miles of the so-called, but misnamed, Pacific Ocean; but they are connected with us by many lines of freight and passenger vessels. In fact, in their case, as in many other instances, the "disuniting ocean" (Oceanus dissociabilis) of the Romans has