ABSTRACT
Yet, only a few years later, the foreigners were directly challenged by the rise at Tokyo (the former Edo) of the Mitsubishi Steamship Company which, after amalgamation with the Kyodo Unyu Kaisha, in 1885 became the Nippon Yusen Kaisha. Very soon the NYK was a vital element in the set of maritime power instruments with which Japan delineated its local sphere of interesf3 and, after the victories over China and Russia, established itself as the indisputably strongest power in East Asia. By this stage the leisure time preferences of Britain and
America had become totally irrelevant to Japanese policy making and planning.
