The city had about 18,000 people at the time according to a contemporary report, and its water works, electric lighting plant, and a number of modern brick buildings of European style. But of course the constructive work of Russia in Port Arthur and Dalny cannot compare with what she achieved at Harbin.

CHAPTER V

ENTER JAPAN

JAPAN came in direct touch with Manchuria early in the eighth century, in the days of the Kingdom of Pohai. A Japanese authority says that the Manchu kept up direct trade relations with Japan from 727 to 930 A.D., more than two centuries. Manchu traders came from a district near where the present Hunchun stands in the valley of the Tumen River near the present Chosen border. They crossed the Sea of Japan to the Japanese port of Tsuruga, whence they made their way overland to Nara, the new capital city of the Mikado, round about which the first great cultural epoch of the Yamato race was then coming to bloom, and to other cities of the provinces of Yamato and Yamashiro. The Manchus brought with them tiger and leopard skins and ermine and wild ginseng, and exchanged them for the brocades and silks of Japanese looms.

When the near-world Empire of the great Khublai rolled over Manchuria and Chosen, Japan came in touch with it also in 1268. The mighty Mongol fleet of 1,000 Chosen ships carrying 50,000 Mongol and 20,000 Chosen braves, combined with several hundreds of large oceangoing Chinese vessels with 100,000 Chinese and Mongol fighters aboard, was smashed off the coast of Kyushu August 14th, 1281, by "God's wind." That ended the second attempt of the Great Khan to bring Japan under his dominion. After that, Asian continental powers left Japan severely alone. But the Japanese adventurers and pirates kept in touch with Manchuria and the southChina coasts. These pirates usually made their base

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on the islands of Tsushima. They operated on a large scale. The people of the great wealthy cities along the coast of the Yellow and Eastern Seas lived in constant fear of them. Curiously one of these pirate bands met a disastrous defeat at a point not more than twenty miles east of the present Port of Dairen. It was in the summer of 1419. The Chinese commander in charge of the section of the country had been warned of the approach of the Japanese pirates. The warning came from Peking. Nothing shows more clearly how very seriously the movements of the Japanese pirates of those days engaged the attention of the great continental power. The Chinese forces waited the approach of the pirates in ambush, and, falling upon them from the rear, practically annihilated them. More than 700 were beheaded and IIO taken alive.

The next time the Japanese came in direct touch with Manchuria was nearly two centuries after that. In 1592 Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the warrior statesman who had achieved the unification of feudal Japan toward the close of the fifteenth century, addressed himself to the modest task of conquering China. It was no idle jest with him. Certainly it was no joke to Chosen people when, to their amazement, they found that he really meant what he had told them and his army fought its way through Chosen. It was a joke with the Ming Court at Peking at first. It sent 5,000 Chinese braves to roll back the Japanese invasion, which had driven the whole Chosen forces through the entire length of the peninsula to the boundary line of Manchuria. But the Celestials did not enjoy their little joke long: 3,000 of the 5,000 were killed and the rest ran a sort of irregular foot race over the Yalu back to its Manchurian side at the very first shock of contact. On the northward march through Chosen, the Second Army under the famous General Kato Kiyomasa took the northeastern route.