Considering the foreign trade of Japan apart from her manufactures, it is seen that its growth during the last eleven years has been rapid and on the whole regular. During this space of time the exports in 1904 reached 319¼ million _yen_, which means a gain of 256 per cent. over 1893, and the imports 371-¼ millions, or a gain of 320 per cent., while the total volume of trade amounted to 690-3/5 millions, that is, nearly three times as much as it was a decade ago. The figures for 1905 will possibly exceed the 850-million mark. This remarkable growth of trade has advanced hand in hand with an even more striking development of Japan's shipping industry. At the end of 1891 she owned 607 steam vessels with a total tonnage of 95,588, while in 1903 her vessels numbered 1088 and their capacity totaled 657,269 tons, so that Japan stood in 1902 in the ninth place in tonnage in the world's merchant marine, and the speed and general improvement of her ships were behind only those of the four greatest shipping nations on the globe. The gross income from freight and passengers in 1902 amounted to 12-3/5 million _yen_. Japanese steamboats now ply regularly between her shores and the ports in Siberia, Australia, India, Europe, and on the Pacific coast of America, and, in Korea and China, they play an active part in the coasting and inland navigation. We conclude this section by briefly pointing out what appear to be the most significant tendencies of Japan's trade and of her national growth in general. The growth of imports, which have risen from 23-1/5 million _yen_ in 1874 to 37-3/5 millions in 1904, is mainly due to causes which may be classified as follows: First, the progress of industries, resulting in an increasing demand, on the one hand, for machinery, and, on the other, for raw materials, particularly cotton and iron; second, a great advance in the standard of living among the people at large, which caused a remarkable growth of the general consumption of imported articles, including textiles, woolens, petroleum, and numerous other items; third, the rapid increase of population, coupled with the transition of the new nation from an agricultural to a manufacturing state of industry, which, besides aiding the growth of general consumption, necessitated a marked development of the importation of foodstuffs, such as rice, beans, flour, and sugar. These three classes of causes have all stimulated import trade to grow with rapidity, and are apt to continue to do so in the future, but, as the figures plainly show, in varying degrees from one another. And it is in this difference that one of the striking indications of Japan's call in the East is to be discovered. The increase of the imports due to the growth of the general consumption of foreign goods has not been nearly so fast as other classes of imports, as Japan is able to supply her people more and more with the fruits of her own manufacture, which itself is progressing rapidly.