er annual expenditure on account of the up-keep of her navy is at
present three and one-quarter million pounds sterling $17,000,000. No
feature is more remarkable than the fact that Japan can now build and
equip in her own yards and arsenals warships of the largest size. She
is no longer dependent on foreign countries for these essentials of
safety.

ENGRAVING: NIJU-BASHI (DOUBLE BRIDGE) (Entrance to the present
Imperial Palace, at Tokyo)

CHAPTER XLVII

WARS WITH CHINA AND RUSSIA

THE SAGHALIEN COMPLICATION

ONE of the problems which invited the attention of the new Government
early in the Meiji era had been handed down from the days of
feudalism. In those days, neither Yezo nor Saghalien nor the Kurile
Islands were under effective Japanese administration. The feudatory
of Matsumae had his castle at the extreme south of Yezo, but the
jurisdiction he exercised was only nominal. Yet the earliest
explorers of Saghalien were certainly Japanese. As far back as 1620,
some vassals of the Matsumae feudatory landed on the island and
remained there throughout a winter. The supposition then was that
Saghalien formed part of the Asiatic mainland. But, in 1806, Mamiya
Rinzo, a Japanese traveller, voyaged up and down the Amur, and,
crossing to Saghalien, discovered that a narrow strait separated it
from the continent. There still exists in Europe a theory that
Saghalien's insular character was discovered first by a Russian,
Captain Nevelskoy, in 1849, but in Japan the fact had already been
known.

Saghalien commands the estuary of the Amur, and Muravieff, the
distinguished Russian commander in East Asia, appreciated the
necessity of acquiring the island for his country. In 1858, he
visited Japan with a squadron and demanded that the Strait of La
Perouse, which separates Saghalien from Yezo, should be regarded as
the Russo-Japanese frontier. Japan naturally refused a proposal which
would have given the whole of Saghalien to Russia, and Muravieff then
resorted to the policy of sending emigrants to settle on the island.
Two futile attempts to prevent this process of gradual absorption
were made by the Japanese Government; they first proposed a division
of the island, and afterwards they offered to purchase the Russian
portion for a sum of about L400,000--$2,000,000. St. Petersburg
seemed inclined to acquiesce, but the bargain provoked opposition in
Tokyo, and not until 1875 was a final settlement reached, the
conditions b