the first line between Tōkyō and Yokohama! And so on with the whole list. We have paid the highest market price for our experience, with a thumping big commission for the privilege of buying it even at that rate. Yes, we have profited, but largely lost our own self-respect in the profiting."
Innocently unaware of storms in the beautiful Satsuma tea-pot, the globe-trotter goes his way, playing and paying to the satisfaction of all. But the business man, whose presence is an affront and not a compliment, has to bear the brunt of them. The difficulties which beset his calling are not to be paralleled elsewhere. There was a time when the native merchant would try to intimidate his rival into concluding a bargain by employing sōshi, importunate bravoes, to lay siege at all hours to the private and official door of their victim, until he capitulated or demanded police protection. But this somewhat naïf procedure did not command general approval. More easy and more usual is the device of ordering goods and refusing to take delivery except at a much reduced rate. The perpetually quoted case of Cornes v. Kimura (Yokohama, 1894), which the reader will find described at length in Mr. Chamberlain's "Things Japanese" (under the heading "Trade"), is more eloquent than pages of second-hand rhetoric. Briefly, the British importer, in spite of a verdict given in his favour by a Japanese judge, was compelled to retain some of the ordered goods, at a loss of 2500 yen, on pain of being boycotted by the Yarn Traders' Guild. If this case stood alone, one would be loath to revive recollection of it, but there remains so many a slip between the signing of similar contracts and their fulfilments, that the warehouses at the treaty-ports are never without
