The contrast between the condition of the local ship-building trade now and that of a few years back is a striking one. Perhaps the first real impetus given to private ship-building here was due to the enterprise of the late Mr. E. C. Kirby, at whose yard at Onohama—the plant of which was subsequently removed to Kure—one large cruiser and several smaller gunboats and steamers were successfully launched. Since then, the yards at Kawasaki, Ōsaka, Ishikawajima, Uraga, and Nagasaki have taken up the work vigorously, and demonstrated beyond possibility of cavil their ability to turn out ocean-going craft, and large river steamers of the highest standard. With the productions of Ōsaka and Kōbe ship-building establishments trading regularly on the Yangtze, and 6,000-ton liners from the Nagasaki Shipbuilding Engine Works, making record voyages between Seattle and the Orient, and others running regularly between home ports and London, there is no longer room for surprise in viewing Japan-built steamers. There is no doubt that with the opening up of additional lines in the China and Japan seas, sufficient work for local ship-builders will be forthcoming for some years to come, and it is therefore unlikely that they will enter into serious competition in the near future with ship-building yards in Shanghai, Hongkong, and Singapore. The home demand seems likely to engage their activities for some years yet, though the presence of a 700-ton steamer for the Shanghai customs on the stocks at Kawasaki may be held to belie the prediction.... Although Japanese ship-builders may have quite enough to do in the near future to meet the home demand, a young rival has entered the lists against the great ship-building concerns of the West; and this in itself is no small credit to the nation, which is already able to plume itself upon having accomplished more in a generation than any other people in Asia or in the South Seas, and as much, relatively, as the American and English peoples whose homes are on the Pacific slope. THE ŌSAKA EXHIBITION[204] Considering that as recently as 1873 Japan had no such institution as a factory, and knew nothing whatever of iron foundries or machine shops, the Japanese-made machinery display at the exhibition at Ōsaka was astonishing. There we found silk-weaving and mat-making machines, electrical motors and generators, gas and oil engines, locomotives, electrical fittings, tools, beltings, match-making machine, lemonade-making machine, distilling machine, fire-brigade appliances, rice-cleaning machines, huge steam navvy, oil tanks, soap-making machines, printing machines, massive hoisting engine, tea-refining machinery, heavy mining machinery, and many other smaller machines, all of Japanese manufacture, admirably made and efficient.