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LITERATURE AND PUBLIC INSTRUCTION. 469
Ohotz has been connected with Kioto, and in Yeso, Sapporo, capital of the island,
now enjoys steam communication with the port of Otarunai. A beginning has
also been made with the great project of constructing a trunk line from the
northern to the southern extremity of Hondo, through Sendai, Tokio, Nagoya,
and Kioto, with branches ramifying to all the large towns on the west side of
the island. The first sections to be completed of this scheme are those running
from Ohotz to Tsuruga, and from Tokio to Takasaki. All the plant of the new
lines will be of local production, except only the locomotives, to be supplied from
America.
The progress of the telegraphic and postal services has been far more rapid.
The first telegraphic line was opened in 1869, and in 1880 the network comprised
altogether about 7,800 miles, including several submarine cables connecting it
through Shanghai and Vladivostok with the continental systems. At the same
date the postal routes had acquired a total development of 35,000 miles. In the
administration of this service, Japan, which was one of the first powers to join the
Universal Postal Union, is fully on a level with the leading states of the West, and
far in advance of several European countries.
LITERATURE AND PUBLIC INSTRUCTION.
The circulation of newspapers has increased at a surprising rate. The first
publication of this sort appeared in the year 1871, and in 1878 there were already
266 periodicals in Japanese and 9 in foreign languages, with a joint circulation of
about 29,000,000. During the same year 5,317 new works were published in
9,967 volumes, so that, in this respect, Japan takes the third place amongst the
nations of the world, exceeding even Great Britain in the number of its printed
works.* Of late years, unscrupulous Japanese editors have begun to compete with
those of Europe, by issuing counterfeit editions of English publications. Nearly
all the more important European scientific works are also regularly translated into
Japanese, and the names of Darwin, Huxley, and Herbert Spenser are household
words amongst the educated classes in the Empire of the Rising Sun.
The rapid progress of general literature shows how earnestly the Japanese have
taken up the question of public instruction. Education has been placed
on a
democratic footing, and all, whatever their social position, are now enabled to study
the arts and sciences in the public schools. According to the law, elementary
schools must be founded in the proportion of one to every 600 souls. The
educational machinery, as now organized, is completed by secondary and technical
colleges, academies of art, industrial institutions, the university of Tokio, and
M vcral scientific high schools. Of these, the first in point of time is the Nagasaki
School of Medicine, opened in 1829. Even the prisons are transformed to systematic
educational establishments, in which the political criminals usually act as monitors.
One of the heaviest items of the national expenditure is that administered by the
Board of Public Instruction, while, apart altogether from the action of the State,
London and China Express, N. 4, 1881.