Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/29

Rh down in a general way at about 14 days. The fast royal mail steamers of the Canadian Pacific line often make the trip in much less time, and thus bring Chicago, for instance, within only a little more than two weeks' communication with Yokohama. It must, therefore, be evident that Japan is no longer a remote country, but is as near to the Pacific coast of America, in time of passage, as the Atlantic coast of America was twenty years ago to Europe.

It is true that the steamers of the San Francisco and San Diego lines, especially those carrying mails and passengers, go and come via Honolulu, so that the voyage to Japan thus requires a few more days than the direct trip would take. But, as Hawaii is now part of the United States, our country has thus become only about 10 days distant from Japan. Moreover, as the Philippine Islands are also a portion of our country, and Formosa has been for several years a part of Japan, the territories of the two nations are brought almost within a stone's throw, and the people almost within speaking distance, of each other. This proximity of the two nations to each other should be an incentive to draw even more closely together the ties, not only historical, commercial, and material, but also political, social, educational, intellectual, moral, and religious, that bind them to each other, and, so far as possible, to make "Japan and America all the same heart."

But Japan is also an Asiatic country, and thus holds a peculiar relation to the countries on the