Expenditures of the Russo-Japanese war / by Gotaro Ogawa.

EFFECTS ON PUBLIC FINANCE

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mous amount, inflating our annual expenditures to a very
great extent. The war caused a sharp increase in the expenditures for financial affairs, especially in those for national debt
and pensions, which continued to press on our public finance
for a long time, interfering with the execution of programs
which became necessary for keeping pace with the development of our national power. The foregoing table shows the
traces which the Russo-Japanese War left on the general
structure of our annual expenditures.
TAXES AND OTHER DUTIES
We must now inquire into the effects of the war on annual
revenues, since we have already dealt with the changes
wrought in annual expenditures. As was noted in earlier
pages, the greater part of the expenditures for carrying on the
war with Russia was raised by loans and increase of taxation,
so it need hardly be said that this brought about violent
changes in the conditions of our public debt and taxation. We
propose to consider in this section the effects of the war on
taxes and other duties, and in the next section the effects on
public debt.
As was already noticed, in the fiscal years 1904-5 and 1905-6,
a very large increase of taxation was adopted twice relating
to practically all sorts of existing taxes, besides the creation of
new taxes of importance. The result was that our tax revenues (including stamp revenues and profits from monopolies)
so sharply increased that after the war the receipts were far
more than twice the amount before the war. Our system of
taxation had made considerable growth in volume through
important increases in and creation of several taxes carried
out from time to time after the war with China (I894-95).
In I893-94, the fiscal year preceding this war, the tax revenues of Japan totaled only 72,000,000 yen, while the amount
for 1903-4, the year previous to the outbreak of the RussoJapanese War, reached 175,500,000 yen. Thus, the tax
revenues advanced some two and one-half times in ten years
preceding the war with Russia. Again, the tax revenues