PRESENT JAPAN
was suffered by Japan in that interval, perhaps by way of permanent punishment for standing so long aloof from the outer world: she had to surrender to Russia the island of Saghalien,—Karafuto, in her own nomenclature. But that exception tends only to emphasise the general rule of her expansion. First, she took steps to assure her possession of the Bonin group of islands—Ogasawara-jima, as she calls them—which, though discovered by her mariners two hundred years previously, were not included in her sphere of active occupation until 1871. Next she annexed the Riukiu archipelago, known to Western folks as the Loochoos, which form a series of stepping-stones between her shores and Formosa. They were claimed by China as an integral part of her empire, and the incidents of their acquisition by Japan almost involved the latter in a war with her colossal neighbour, at that time (1874) believed to be a Power of immense military resources. But Japan thought that she had a title to the islands, and she asserted it with courageous tenacity. The war then averted with difficulty, broke out twenty years later, and ended in a complete victory for Japan, one of the fruits of her success being that she added Formosa and the Pescadores to her dominions, which thus consist now of five large islands and a multitude of islets, the latter scattered along her coasts or grouped into four clusters,—the Kuriles (Chinshima) on the north; the Bonins (Ogasawara-
3
