While speaking of savings, it may not be uninteresting to mention a few figures on the state of the deposits at the ordinary banks. We do not happen to have at hand the statistics covering all the banking concerns in the country. The “Ginkō Tsushin-Roku,” however, supplies us with reliable statistics up to February, 1902, so far as the principal banking centres are concerned. We find, then, that the total amount of deposits at the banks belonging to the clearing-houses of Tōkyō, Ōsaka, Kyōto, Nagoya, Yokohama, and Kōbe, stood at the end of February at 308,289,000 yen, made up as follows, not including the deposits at the Bank of Japan: _Yen._ Tōkyō 119,268,000 Ōsaka 75,824,000 Yokohama 49,280,000 Kōbe 23,423,000 Kyōto 22,616,000 Nagoya 17,878,000 In June, 1910, the Bank of Japan had a paid-up capital of 37,600,000 _yen_; in 1909 the deposits were 220,101,784 _yen_. At that time the Industrial Bank of Japan had deposits of 8,930,050 _yen_. The deposits in all the Japanese banks in 1909 amounted to 1,617,873,711 _yen_. THE OIL INDUSTRY IN JAPAN[207] Japan’s oil industry has a brilliant future before it. The use of kerosene in the country has grown at a wonderfully rapid pace. In the first year of _Meiji_ the amount of oil imported was 639 _koku_. In 1901 it had reached 1,300,000 _koku_. The value of the oil imported in 1868 was only 7,236 _yen_; that imported in 1901 was 14 million _yen_.[208] The following table shows the rate at which the import of kerosene into Japan increased:— =======+===========+============ | | VALUE. YEARS. | _Koku._ | _Yen._ -------+-----------+------------ 1868 | 639 | 7,236 1872 | 8,936 | 160,608 1877 | 53,645 | 605,598 1882 | 413,644 | 2,320,905 1887 | 421,177 | 1,871,428 1892 | 653,785 | 3,328,398 1897 | 1,221,164 | 7,667,350 1900 | 1,356,846 | 14,162,652 1901 | 1,379,927 | 14,943,400 =======+===========+============ Notwithstanding the large supply that has come from abroad, of late years the demand for the Echigo oil has gone on increasing, as shown in the subjoined table, which covers seven years. =======+=================+=========== | _Koku_ OF CRUDE | VALUE. YEARS. | PETROLEUM. | _Yen._ -------+-----------------+----------- 1895 | 158,334 | 526,976 1896 | 207,470 | 619,333 1897 | 257,614 | 668,677 1898 | 355,006 | 670,308 1899 | 544,583 | 1,450,904 1900 | 836,628 | 2,142,003 1901 | 1,115,807 | 2,345,916 =======+=================+===========