I consider that our most urgent necessity of the time is for our busi-newsmen to study how our country can obtain from foreign countries more gold currency, as quickly as possible. It our people will exert themselves in this spirit, 1 think it is not impossible for Japan to increase her exports of commodities such as 1 have mentioned of Y.100,000,000 in a year, and by at least Y.500,000,000 within five years, It would seem that only weak points of Japan, such as lack of some natural resources, or low level of wealth, are known to the world, and that neither foreign peoples nor even our own people have adequate knowledge of the many strong points of Japan. A case in point is our resources of gold ore. Marco Polo introduced pan to the world, for the first time, s the island of "Jipeng," teeming with limitless gold. Apart from thi story, it is* an obvious fact that Japan's production of gold was very large between the Genpei era and the age of Toyotomi, "Annals of the ceremonial tea cult relate that Hideyoshi Toyotomi, for his tea functions, had the pillars of rooms in his palace, as well as shelves, tables, and teacups, made of solid gold. After the fall of the Osaka castle of Toyotomi into the hands of the first Tokugawa Shogun, Ieyasu, the Nagoya castle was built, and on top of it were placed two dolphins made of solid gold found in the Osaka castle, each 8% feet in height, as-rounding the people.
Japan in those days possessed much gold, and it is-said that the gold stored in the Osaka castle alone was so great in quantity as to defy con-lecture. It is a fact that subsequently the Dutch and Portuguese carried off a great deal of our gold, which we gave them in exchange for their core modities. Much of what was left of Our enormous gold reserve was pala cut io foreign countries for stuff that we took into our heads to import after the Meiji Restoration.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.