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Rh spirit, the sudden rise in prices and consequently in wages since the China war of 1894-5, and the adoption of a gold standard have affected Japanese industrialism unfavourably. Neither has Japanese ambition been content with those fields of industrial activity, where natural advantages counterbalanced the lack of experience, organisation, and capital. It is probably true also that Japanese labour and Far-Eastern labour generally is less cheap in the long run than appears at first sight; the result of the mechanic's daily toil has been found inferior in quality, and especially in quantity, to that of his Western rival. Doubtless, Japan is passing from the agricultural into the industrial stage, and she may look forward to a bright future, with China's huge market at her gates. Nevertheless, so far as our own mills and factories are concerned, we see little reason for alarm at the prospect of competition in this quarter.

Two or three of the characteristically Japanese industries, or rather arts—for arts they were—such as lacquer and wood-engraving, have been treated separately in this book. But to walk amidst the din of sledge-hammers and the smoke of factory chimneys is not to our taste, neither have we the talent to discourse of the two thousand three hundred odd Japanese banks, or of the brand-new insurance companies, or of the joint-stock companies which, after all, are not things Japanese, but things European recently transplanted.

 Japan. Our word "Japan," and the Japanese Nihon or Nippon, are alike corruptions of Jih-pên, the Chinese pronunciation of the characters 日本 literally "sun-origin," that is, "the place the sun comes from,"—a name given to Japan by the Chinese on account of the position of the archipelago to the east of their own country. Marco Polo's Zipangu and the poets' Cipango are from the same Chinese compound, with the addition of the word kuo (Jap. koku), 國 which means "country."

The name Nihon ("Japan") seems to have been first officially