Page:Brinkley - Japan - Volume 4.djvu/105

 the crowd that struggles in the interval between the two extremes shows more vivid contrasts of fortune and failure. Therefore the temptations to chicanery are becoming stronger. And so, too, are the opportunities. The day's work is much more complex in Japan now than it was fifty years ago; its affairs are more multitudinous, its evil suggestions more numerous. There seems to be no doubt that fraud and chicanery are increasing as the civilisation of greed obliterates the last remnants of the samurai's fine indifference to gain.

These remarks are well illustrated by the records of fraud. In 1888 the number of convictions in this category stood at 8,853; in 1893 it reached 16,100,—an increase of nearly 100 per cent in six years. A large part of the increase was due to the development of bogus-company promoters, an abuse that could not have flourished under the old guild system, to be spoken of by and by. Travelling facilities also have brought the rustic population within reach of the rusé gentlemen of the city. Now that a man can step into a train and, at the cost of few pence and two or three days' idleness, visit Tōkyō or Ōsaka or Kyōtō, which were virtually inaccessible in former times, many sight-seers from the country fall into the hands of city sharpers who practise an endless variety of the "confidence trick." The pickpocket has benefited similarly by the altered conditions of the time,—by the hur-