ABSTRACT
I N order to understand as clearly as possible the progress made by New Japan during the past fifty years, it will be profitable to institute some
comparisons between conditions then and now. As a matter of fact the greater part of this wonderful advancement was achieved during the last third of the nineteenth century; but it suits our purpose better to compare 1801 and 1901, the first years of the two centuries. Thus can we appreciate fully with how much difference in conditions and prospects Japan has entered upon the twentieth century than she entered upon the nineteenth century.
