But all this took time, and the handicaps remained severe.40 Although the urban population more than doubled between 1890 and 1913, numbers engaged on the land remained about the same. Even on the eve of the First World War, over three-fifths of the Japanese population was engaged in agriculture, forestry, and fishing; and despite all the many improvements in farming techniques, the mountainous countryside and the small size of most holdings prevented an “agricultural revolution” on, say, the British model. With such a “bottom-heavy” agricultural base, all comparisons of Japan’s industrial potential or of per capita levels of industrialization were bound to show it at or close to the lower end of the Great Power lists (see Tables 14 and 17 above)