ABSTRACT
The railroad from Yokohama to Tokyo was the first line built in Japan, unless readers count the little toy road which Commodore Perry set up and ran with toy engines, to astonish and amuse the people. Japan has already begun to build her own; the foreign experts have been succeeded by natives in all departments, and, by this modification and that, the national mark has been set upon it all, as in Japan it invariably is–and ought to be. The koku measure has a peculiar significance, because in Old Japan all revenues were reckoned in koku of rice. The revenue given by the lords to their retainers was also paid in rice, each Samurai receiving a certain number of koku monthly. Naturally the Japanese, not being meat-eaters, make up by a large variety of vegetable food, and there are more green-grocers in some streets than almost any other provision dealers.
