Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 1.djvu/24

 jima) on the east; the Loochoo (Riukiu or Okinawa) on the south; and the Pescadores, off the southwest coast of Formosa.

Territorial expansion has therefore been a feature of Japan's début upon the world's stage. Growth has marked the opening of her new career. The fact takes its place properly at the head of her modern records, for it constitutes a convincing proof that the diet of Western civilisation has brought to her an access of vigour, instead of overtaxing her digestion, as was generally feared at first.

To speak of a country as making its début upon the world's stage, is to suggest the idea of youth. But the age of the Japanese nation, measured by the mere lapse of centuries, is very mature. They themselves claim to have been an organised State for twenty-six hundred years, and there is no valid reason to deny at least the proximate accuracy of their estimate. It is a great age, yet insignificant compared with that of the neighbouring empire, China, which can count fully the double of Japan's tale of years. Both are ancient from an Occidental point of view, and perhaps because their fellowship with the West has been so short in comparison with the long succession of cycles covered by their records, it has become a habit to bracket them together as simultaneously introduced to the circle of civilised States. There is, however, a radical