For a long time the merchants of the concessions had their own
way in everything, and forced upon the native firms methods of
business to which no Occidental merchant would think of
submitting,--methods which plainly expressed the foreign
conviction that all Japanese were tricksters. No foreigner would
then purchase anything until it had been long enough in his hands
to be examined and re-examined and "exhaustively" examined,--or
accept any order for imports unless the order were accompanied by
"a substantial payment of bargain money"(1). Japanese buyers and
sellers protested in vain; they found themselves obliged to
submit. But they bided their time,--yielding only with the
determination to conquer. The rapid growth of the foreign town,
and the immense capital successfully invested therein, proved to
them how much they would have to learn before being able to help
themselves. They wondered without admiring, and traded with the
foreigners or worked for them, while secretly detesting them. In
old Japan the merchant ranked below the common peasant; but these
foreign invaders assumed the tone of princes and the insolence of
conquerors. As employers they were usually harsh, and sometimes
brutal. Nevertheless they were wonderfully wise in the matter of
making money; they lived like kings and paid high salaries. It
was desirable that young men should suffer in their service for
the sake of learning things which would have to be learned to
save the country from passing under foreign rule. Some day Japan
would have a mercantile marine of her own, and foreign banking
agencies, and foreign credit, and be well able to rid herself of
these haughty strangers: in the meanwhile they should be endured
as teachers.
So the import and export trade remained entirely in foreign
hands, and it grew from nothing to a value of hundreds of
millions; and Japan was well exploited. But she knew that she was
only paying to learn; and her patience was of that kind which
endures so long as to be mistaken for oblivion of injuries. Her
opportunities came in the natural order of things. The growing
influx of aliens seeking fortune gave her the first advantage.
The intercompetition for Japanese trade broke down old methods;
and new firms being glad to take orders and risks without
"bargain-money," large advance-payments could no longer be
exacted. The relations between foreigners and Japanese
simultaneously improved,--as the latter showed a dangerous
capacity for sudden combination against ill-treatment, could not
be cowed by revolvers, would not suffer abuse of any sort, and
knew how to dispose of the most dangerous rowdy in the space of a
few minutes. Already the rougher Japanese of the ports, the dregs
of the populace, were ready to assume the aggressive on the least
provocation.
Within two decades from the founding of the settlements, those
foreigners who once imagined it a mere question of time when the
whole country would belong to them, began to understand how
greatly they had underestimated the race. The Japanese had been
learning wonderfully well--"nearly as well as the Chinese." They
were supplanting the small foreign shopkeepers; and various
establishments had been compelled to close because of Japanese
competition. Even for large firms the era of easy fortune-making
was over; the period of hard work was commencing. In early days
all the personal wants of foreigners had necessarily been
supplied by foreigners,--so that a large retail trade had grown
up under the patronage of the wholesale trade. The retail trade
of the settlements was evidently doomed. Some of its branches had
disappeared; the rest were visibly diminishing.
To-day the economic foreign clerk or assistant in a business
house cannot well afford to live at the local hotels. He can hire
a Japanese cook at a very small sum per month, or can have his
meals sent him from a Japanese restaurant at five to seven sen
per plate. He lives in a house constructed in "semi-foreign
style," and owned by a Japanese. The carpets or mattings on his
floor are of Japanese manufacture. His furniture is supplied by a
Japanese cabinet-maker. His suits, shirts, shoes, walking-cane,
umbrella, are "Japanese make": even the soap on his washstand is
stamped with Japanese ideographs. If a smoker, he buys his Manila
cigars from a Japanese tobacconist half a dollar cheaper per box
than any foreign house would charge him for the same quality. If
he wants books he can buy them at much lower prices from a
Japanese than from a foreign book dealer,--and select his
purchases from a much larger and better-selected stock. If he
wants a photograph taken he goes to a Japanese gallery: no
foreign photographer could make a living in Japan. If he wants
curios he visits a Japanese house;--the foreign dealer would
charge him a hundred per cent. dearer.
On the other hand, if he be a man of family, his daily marketing
is supplied by Japanese butchers, fishmongers, dairymen,
fruit-sellers, vegetable dealers. He may continue for a time to
buy English or American hams, bacon, canned goods, etc., from
some foreign provision dealer; but he has discovered that
Japanese stores now offer the same class of goods at lower
prices. If he drinks good beer, it probably comes from a Japanese
brewery; and if he wants a good quality of ordinary wine or
liquor, Japanese storekeepers can supply it at rates below those
of the foreign importer. Indeed, the only things he cannot buy
from the Japanese houses are just those things which he cannot
afford,--high-priced goods such as only rich men are likely to
purchase. And finally, if any of his family become sick, he can
consult a Japanese physician who will charge him a fee perhaps
one tenth less than he would have had to pay a foreign physician
in former times. Foreign doctors now find it very hard to
live,--unless they have something more than their practice to
rely upon. Even when the foreign doctor brings down his fee to a
dollar a visit, the high-class Japanese doctor can charge two,
and still crush competition; for, he furnishes the medicine
himself at prices which would ruin a foreign apothecary. There
are doctors and doctors, of course, as in all countries; but the
German-speaking Japanese physician capable of directing a public
or military hospital is not easily surpassed in his profession;
and the average foreign physician cannot possibly compete with
him. He furnishes no prescriptions to be taken to a drugstore:
his drugstore is either at home or in a room of the hospital he
directs.
These facts, taken at random out of a multitude, imply that
foreign shops or as we call them in America, "stores," will soon
cease to be. The existence of some has been prolonged only by
needless and foolish trickery on the part of some petty Japanese
dealers,--attempts to sell abominable decoctions in foreign
bottles under foreign labels, to adulterate imported goods, or to
imitate trade-marks. But the common sense of the Japanese
dealers, as a mass, is strongly opposed to such immorality, and
the evil will soon correct itself. The native storekeepers can
honestly undersell the foreign ones, because able not only to
underlive them, but to make fortunes during the competition.
This has been for some time well recognized in the concessions.
But the delusion prevailed that the great exporting and importing
firms were impregnable; that they could still control the whole
volume of commerce with the West; and that no Japanese companies
could find means to oppose the weight of foreign capital, or to
acquire the business methods according to which it was employed.
Certainly the retail trade would go. But that signified little.
The great firms would remain and multiply, and would increase
their capacities.
(1) See Japan Mail, July 21, 1895.