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

PREFACE

Since the Imperial Restoration in I868 Japan has fought
no less than three international campaigns, namely, the SinoJapanese, the Russo-Japanese and the Germano-Japanese
Wars. Of these the most sanguinary was the Russo-Japanese
conflict.
In this greatest of the Far Eastern engagements, Japan
staked everything, because she was pitted against a renowned
military power whose troops were then reputed to be the
strongest in the world. When its dreaded fighters covered
in swarms the fields of Siberia and pressed down to the front,
while its devastating warships approached the Japanese waters
and threatened the annihilation of our navy, the hearts of
fifty million men, women and children quaked for the safety
of their country. And yet Japan unsheathed her sword
valiantly, because she knew that her fate would be sealed
should Russia be allowed to occupy Manchuria and extend
her influence to Korea. This desperate struggle fortunately
ended in our victory, but the sacrifices Japan made were by
no means light.
Japan lost a large number of men in this campaign and
millions of yen were unproductively spent. It was not an
easy task to raise this enormous amount of war expenditures.
Extraordinary special taxes were imposed and great public
loans w7ere floated, both for the same object. The former
were devised as a temporary war measure, but the effects of
the Russo-Japanese War on our national finance were so baneful that the extraordinary special taxes could not be abolished
with the restoration of peace, and most of them are still
being levied. It is not, therefore, too much to say that, even
to this day, the people of Japan are groaning under a heavy
burden of taxation, as a result of their war with Russia.
The flotation of the war loans wrought yet weightier effects
on our finance. Because large sums of money were borrowed
from abroad, no small amount of interest has been paid year
after year since the close of the war, and this in its turn has
affected our exchange with foreign countries. This last, again,
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