Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/66
tively. We also beg leave to remind Americans that letter postage to Japan is not 2 cents, but 5 cents, per ounce.
Oil is most extensively used for lighting purposes; but gas and electricity are also employed, and bring good dividends to companies furnishing such illumination. A very large amount of oil has been annually imported from the United States and Russia; but as rich fields have been found in Northern Japan,[1] the Standard Oil Company is also interested in a Japanese corporation, the International Oil Company, organized to work Japanese fields. Foreign capital has also been invested in the Ōsaka Gas Company, and is sought by the Tōkyō Gas Company, as well as by several electric and steam railway companies. The first buildings erected for the Imperial Diet were supplied with electric lights, but caught fire in some way, and were totally destroyed. This calamity was laid at the door of a flaw in the electric lighting apparatus, and so frightened the Emperor that he decided not to use the electric lights in the palace; but if my memory serves me rightly, after one or two nights of imperfect and unsatisfactory lighting, he resorted once more to electricity.
The foreign trade of Japan had increased from $13,123,272 in 1868 to $265,017,161 in 1902,—twenty-fold in a third of a century.[2] Of recent years the imports have been larger than the exports; in