Chapter XX: Japan’s Rented Territory

Although the Japanese Empire of to-day really ends in the middle of the Yalu River between Korea and Manchuria, Japan has a lease on another piece of territory on the continent. In order to understand the position of Japan in Manchuria, which the Chinese call their “Three Eastern Provinces,” we must look a little into recent history.

In 1904, as I have mentioned before, Japan had a war with Russia. Before that, Russia was very powerful in northeastern Asia. It had forced China to let a Russian railroad be built the whole length of Manchuria, from a Siberian junction to the southern end of Manchuria. The Russians already had a Far Eastern port at Vladivostok, but as that freezes up completely for about half the winter they desired a Pacific port that could be used all the year round. This the railway down through Chinese territory was intended to provide. At the southern point of Manchuria, on what is known as the Liaotung Peninsula, the Russians had built a commercial city and ocean port, which they called Dalny, and not far from it a fortress city named Port Arthur. Other European powers did similar things on Chinese territory, so Russia was not so bold in this matter as you might think.

Russia was beaten by Japan in the war between them. The treaty ending that war (which, by the way, was made at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, with the assistance of our President Roosevelt) turned over to Japan all the rights and properties of Russia in the southern half of Manchuria. In theory the Liaotung Peninsula had only been rented to Russia by China, and the lease went to the Japanese.

Dairen is called the gateway to Manchuria. It has one of the finest
harbors in the Far East and ranks next to Shanghai as a trading
port. About 6,000,000 tons of merchandise are handled annually on
its wharves.
]

The Japanese have given the two former Russian cities new names. Port Arthur they officially call Riojun, though it is very generally spoken of still as Port Arthur. Dalny they renamed Dairen. Both the cities have been greatly improved by the Japanese. Dairen, especially, is now one of the best-built cities of the Far East. From its central circle, with radiating cement walks, trees and shrubbery, and the statue of a famous Japanese, the streets extend in every direction, like those of Washington. Some of the government buildings, banks, hotels, and business structures look as if they had been brought from a handsome European city. The smaller buildings, stores, and homes are much better than those in most of China, or indeed in the average city of Japan proper. The well-paved streets are kept clean, and the police maintain as nearly perfect order as in any large city elsewhere.

Several steamship lines run from Dairen to other ports, one of the
longest lines being to Shanghai across the Yellow Sea. It is no
hardship to wait for a boat in such a pleasant room as this at the
Dairen wharves.
]

But it is especially down along the wharves that we see how important Dairen is to the Japanese. There are long rows of docks just as up to date as any in the United States or Europe. All the products of Manchuria may be seen there, being loaded into Japanese steamers by huge cranes under the most modern methods. Our attention is likely to be attracted first by great soya bean cakes that look like grindstones. Chinese coolies carry these, one at each end of their supple shoulder poles, from the warehouses to the dock-side, and whole steamers are loaded with them. The cakes, which consist of the pulp or residue of soya beans from which the oil or edible part has been squeezed in huge presses, are used for fertilizer, especially in the southern half of China. Sometimes the beans themselves are sent to Dairen in bags like those in which we ship wheat. Whole acres may be covered with such bags, stacked higher than a man’s head.

THE USES OF SOYA BEANS

{Manure {Hay.
Plants.{Forage. {Ensilage. {Breakfast foods. {Bread.
{Pasture. {Soiling. {Diabetic foods. {Cakes.
{Flour ............{Muffins.
{Human food.......{Infant foods. {Biscuit.
{Meal......{Stock feed. {Macaroni.
{ {Fertilizer. {Crackers.
{ {Milk.
{ {Glycerin.
{ {Explosives.
{ {Enamels.
{ {Varnish.
{ { {Butter substitute.
{ {Food products.....{Lard substitutes.
{ {Waterproof goods. {Edible oils.
{Oil.......{Linoleum. {Salad oils.
{ {Paints.
{ {Soap stock........{Soft soaps.
Seeds. { {Celluloid. {Hard soaps.
{ {Rubber substitute.
{ {Printing inks.
{ {Lighting. {Soy sauce.
{ {Lubricating. {Boiled beans.
{ {Baked beans.
{ {Dried beans.......{Soups. { {Fresh.
{ { {Coffee substitute. {Cheese. {Dried.
{ { {Roasted beans. { {Smoked.
{ { {Vegetable milk......{ {Fermented.
{Food......{ {Breakfast foods. {Condensed milk.
{ { {Fresh milk.
{ { {Green vegetables. {Confections.
{ {Green beans.......{Canned. {Casein.
{ { {Salads.

Soya beans, which form one of the great staple food products of Korea
and Manchuria, are stored in mat-rush bins that look somewhat like
our silos.
]

As may be seen from the table on page 246, the soya bean has a great variety of uses. It is one of the most important products of Manchuria.

Since 1905, the Japanese have established excellent industrial schools in Dairen, an experimental laboratory, a big glass factory, and many other features of modern civilization that are found in few parts of China. Most of the common labor in this great port city is done by the Chinese, while the skilled workmen are mainly Japanese.

Over at Port Arthur life moves a little more slowly, at least in times of peace. Perhaps when Japan is at war that is as busy and bustling a place as Dairen, for it is a fortified city, as well as the center of government of the leased territory. During the war with Russia great battles took place all about it, and some of the old fortresses and underground galleries that were broken down by Japanese shells are still kept as they were at the end of the war. Tourists go there not only to see the ruins but to bathe at the fine beaches near by. We found the ocean water very comfortably warm as early as May. Japan has scattered monuments to her war heroes far and wide over the hills about Port Arthur. As in the case of other Japanese fortified places no photography is allowed anywhere in or near the city.

Near Dairen, at Shakako, are the great car and locomotive shops of the
South Manchuria Railway. In this engine erecting shop, great
traveling cranes pick up locomotives as if they were toys.
]

The Japanese have not rebuilt the houses and streets of Port Arthur as much as they have those of Dairen. In Port Arthur we may still stop in hotels built by the Russians, and see many a home that is just as the former occupants left it. Instead of electric street cars there are rickshaws. But there are automobiles too. Under the rather stern Japanese government, the rickshaw runners are much more orderly than those in Chinese territory usually are.

An embroidery class in a girls’ school at Mukden, maintained by the
South Manchuria Railway. It is plain that bobbed hair has not yet
become popular in Manchuria.
]

In traveling northward from the end of Liaotung Peninsula, we shall find other Japanese towns, even though, in a sense, we are then in China.

Terraced open-cut coal mines at Fushun, showing tracks on different
levels. Elsewhere in this region are mines deep in the ground. There
are estimated deposits of 1,200,000,000 tons of bituminous coal.
]

A Railroad on the American Model

The South Manchuria Railway, which extends as far as Changchun, has a branch from the Korean border, and one from Port Arthur. These join at Mukden, and also connect there with the Peking-Mukden line. This road is more like our American railroads than almost any other line in Asia. It has the same width track as ours; the engines come from locomotive factories like ours, and the trains are very American, even to sleeping and dining cars.

The Japanese run the railroad without outside help, except for Chinese laborers. They have big shops, at Mukden and other places along the line, where they not only repair engines and cars but build new ones on the American model. The Japanese who come to Manchuria must find railroad travel there much stranger than Americans do. The equipment is certainly in great contrast to the little trains, with screeching engines and lengthwise seats, that are found in Japan proper.

A strip of land along the South Manchuria Railway is held by Japan to protect it. Wherever there is a station of any size, a Japanese town has grown up close to the railroad, with perhaps an old walled Chinese city back of the modern development. At Mukden, the capital of Manchuria, for instance, we must cross nearly three miles of Japanese city, built in the European style, before we come to the walls of the old Chinese city in which the Manchu emperors ruled before they conquered China. Many Japanese soldiers, with their red cap-bands and very modern rifles, may be seen along the whole length of the railroad.

A branch line from Mukden runs out to the coal mines of Fushun, which are also Japanese. These are queer looking mines, for instead of going down into the earth in deep shafts, the miners dig the coal out of great quarries open to the sky. Some of these coal quarries, their terraced sides reminding one of a huge stadium, are so large that long coal trains run back and forth in them. Some of the coal is used as fuel by the trains of the South Manchuria Railway and by the Japanese factories and institutions along the line; and some of it is sent to Japan on ships calling at Dairen. The miners who do the actual digging are Chinese, but Japanese hold all the higher positions.

In many Japanese towns along the railway there are Shinto temples, tea houses, and most of the other things found in Japan itself. Now and then Japanese actors come to give plays in the theaters, and groups of fat Japanese wrestlers match their weight and skill in temporary buildings made of boards and mats.

The signs at the railway stations are in English as well as in Japanese, just as they are in Japan proper. English, indeed, is the most important language, next to that of the country itself, throughout most of the Far East. It makes us rather proud to find that our language is really a kind of world language, much more useful the world over than any other tongue. But when we come to Changchun, where the Japanese part of the railway ends and the Russian part begins, our English is much less useful. From there on, the station signs are in Russian and Chinese, and it is about as easy for us to read one as the other. So when we reach Changchun, in traveling through the Japanese Empire, we rather naturally turn back to Mukden and take the Chinese railway westward toward the Great Wall of China and on to Peking. For if the empire of modern Japan is full of interest to the traveler and important to the world at large, the great land of China is no less so.

The big station at Mukden where the traveler takes the Chinese railway
westward toward Peking, and bids good-by to the Japanese Empire.
]

PRONUNCIATION LIST

Symbols of Webster’s New International Dictionary used in indicating
sounds.

abacus (ăb’a-kus)
Ainu (ī’noo)
Ama-no-hashidate (ä-mä-nŏ-hä-shē-dä’tā)
Arisan (ä-rē-sän’)

Beppu (bĕp’poo)
Biwa (bē’wä)

cana (kä’nä)
chang (jäng)
Changchun (chäng’choon’)
Chemulpo (chē-mul’pō)
Chishima (chē’shē-mä)
chiuh (jē-yoo’)
Chosen (chō-sĕn’)
cryptomeria (krĭp’tō-mē’rĭ-ä)

daimyos (dī’myōs)
Dairen (dī’rĕn’)
Dalny (däl’y’-nĭ)

Enoshima (ā-nō’shē-mä)

Formosa (fôr-mō’sä)
Fujiyama (foo’jē-yä’mä)
Fusan (foo’sän’)
Fushun (foo’shoon’)

geisha (gā’shä)
Gensan (gĕn’sän’)
geta (gä’tä)
gin-seng (jĭn’sĕng)

Hakkas (hä’käs’)
Hakodate (hä’kō-dä’tĕ)
Han (hän)
Heijo (hē-jō’)
hibachi (hē-bä’chē)
hibochi (hē-bō’chē)
hinoki (hē-nō’kē)
Hiroshima (hē’rō-shē’mä)
Hokkaido (hōk’kī’dō)
Hokushu (hō-koo’shoo)
Honshu (hŏn-shoo’)
Horando-san (hō-rän’dō-sän)

Izanagi (ē-zä-nä’gē)

Jinsen (jïn’sēn)
jiu-jitsu (joo’jǐt’soo)

Kagi (kä’-gē’)
kago (kä’gō)
Kagoshima (kä’gō-shē’mä)
Kaijo (kī’jō)
Kamakura (kä-mä’koo-rä)
Kamchatka (käm-chät’kä)
kaoliang (gou-lē-äng’)
Keelung (kē’loong’)
keesang (kē-säng’)
Keijo (kā’jō)
Kiirun (kē-ē-roon’)
kimchee (kïm-chē)
Kobe (kō’bē)
Kongo-san (kôn-gō-sän’)
Korea (kō-rē’ä)
koto (kō’tō)
Kotsu-do (kōt-soo-dō’)
Koya-san (kō-yä-sän’)
Kuriles (koo’rǐlz)
kuruma (koo’roo-mä)
kurumaya (koo-roo-mä’yä)
Kyoto (kyō’tō)
Kyushu (kyoo-shoo’)

Ladrones (lä-drōnz’)
Liaotung (lē-ou’toong’)

Matsushima (mät’soo-shē’mä)
Mukden (mook’dĕn’)
Meiji-za (mā-jē-zä’)
Mikado (mĭ-kä’dō)
Miyajima (mī-yä’jē-mä)

Nagasaki (nä’gä-sä’kē)
Nagoya (nä’gō-yä)
nesan (nā-sän’)
Niitakayama (nē-ē-tä-kä-yä’-mä)
Nikko (nēk’kō)

obi (ō’bĭ)
Osaka (ō-zä’kä)

Pingyang (pĭng’yäng’)

Riojun (rē-yō’joon)
Riu Kiu (rē-oo’kyoo’)

sake (sä’kĕ)
Sakhalin (sä’kä-lyēn’)
Sakurajima (sä-koo-rä-je’mä)
samisen (săm’ĭ-sĕn)
samurai (sä’moo-rī’)
Sapporo (säp’pō-rō)
Satsuma (sät’soo-mä)
sayonara (sä-yō-nä’rä)
Seoul (sĕ-ool’)
Shakako (shä-kä’kō)
Shikoku (shē’kō-koo)
Shimbashi (shĭm-bä’shē)
Shimonoseki (shē’mō-nō-sā’kē)
shogun (shō’goon’)
shoji (shō’jē)
Song-do (sông-dō’)
sool (sool)
soroban (sō’rō-bän’)

Taihoku (tī-hō’koo)
Tainan (tī’nän’)
Taipeh (tī’pā)
Taiwan (tī-wän’)
Takao (tä’kou)
Takasagoshima (tä-kä-sä-gō’shē-mä)
Tokaido (tō-kī’dō)
Tokugawa (tō-koo-gä’wä)
Tokyo (tō’kē-ō)
torii (tō’rē-ē)
turamaggie (too-rä-mä’gē)

Unkei (un-kā’)
Ushigome-ku (oo’shē-gō-mä-koo’)

Vladivostok (vlä’dyĭ-vŏs-tôk’)

yadoya (yä-dō’yä)
Yalu (yä’loo’)
Yamada-Ise (yä-mä’dä-ē’sā)
yangban (yäng’bän)
Yezo (yĕz’o)
Yokohama (yō’kō-hä’mä)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

_TRAVELS IN MANY LANDS_

A series of Geographical Readers for Intermediate
Grades, written by Harry A. Franck and published by F.
A. Owen Publishing Company:

THE JAPANESE EMPIRE
CHINA
MEXICO AND CENTRAL AMERICA
_Others in preparation_

✥

Books by Mr. Franck published by The Century Company:

A Vagabond Journey Around the World
Four Months Afoot in Spain
Tramping Through Mexico, Guatemala and Honduras
Zone Policeman 88
Vagabonding Down the Andes
Working North from Patagonia
Vagabonding Through Changing Germany
Roaming Through the West Indies
Glimpses of Japan and Formosa
Wandering in Northern China
Roving Through Southern China
East of Siam (French Indo-China)

------------------------------------------------------------------------

TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES

● Fixed typos; non-standard spelling and dialect retained. ● Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.