Note 434 — Chapter XVIII · THE FUTURE

The following remarks by Lafcadio Hearn on the question of the admission of foreign capital into Japan are not inapposite. "It appears to me that any person comprehending, even in the vaguest way, the nature of money-power and the average conditions of life throughout Japan, must recognise the certainty that foreign capital, with right of land-tenure, would find means to control legislation, to control government, and to bring about a state of affairs that would result in the practical domination of the Empire by alien interests.... Japan has incomparably more to fear from English or American capital than from Russian battleships and bayonets." (Japan: An Interpretation, p. 510.) Urgent economic considerations have, of course, compelled Japan not only to admit foreign capital in enormous amounts, but even to make heavy sacrifices in order to obtain it: but if any other course had been open to her she would gladly have adopted it.