ABSTRACT
Judge if Japan has or has not some endowment of the ' business imagination' from these words of Marquis Ito, who, though doubtless the country's Nestor, and therefore scarcely representative, here only crystallises the meditation and brooding of the traders, bankers, exporters, his countrymen : 'The Japanese * (the Marquis said, speaking to or for an assemblage of business men in Tokyo four years ago) * have outlived the days of the
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isolation of their destiny. To maintain our ground, to command a share of the gifts of fortune, it is of paramount importance for us to devote the strength and the sinew of our energy to the expansion and the upbuilding of our industries and our trade. I look to China as the field which our business enterprise should aspire to harvest. Geography has decreed that Japan shall be a commercial nation. We cross a ribbon of sea and tread a vast empire, boundless in extent, its hidden treasures intact, its millions upon millions of people ready to absorb the produce of the world and yet to want more. Shall we wonder that the nations of the earth jostle each other in their hurry to establish and extend their markets in that great country ? Japan, by the very force of circumstances, is compelled to build her modern statehood upon a foundation of industry and trade. It is in China that the merchants and manufacturers of the world will fight their future battles for commercial supremacy. Should we-should the merchants and manufacturers of this country-fail to plant, to root themselves in the soil of China before the field is usurped by their rivals, not only will a deathblow be struck at our trade and commerce but our national existence itself may be menaced.'
