JAPAN'S POVERTY.

Auckland Star, Volume XLIV, Issue 127, 29 May 1913, Page 7

JAPAN'S POVERTY.

■ » HEA-VH.Y TAXED PEOFI-E. THE UKFOKTUXATE WORKING CLASS. (By WALTER' J. KIKGSL-EY.) The Japanese Government is doing all that it poesibly can to lighten the load of povx>rtv upon the people, and at the same time maintain and strengthen Japan's high place among the nations. In the north-eastern provinces, where the crops have failed, relief measures -were hurriedly eet in operation, and the more fortunate provinces gave liberally in proportion to their resources. Every facility is given to Jarpanese desiring to settle in Formosa, Korea, and Sakhalin.

Japan, however, Ls engaged in a brutal, disheartening struggle for pennies, and to the average Japanese a

penny looks as large as a five-shilling piece to an Englishman. The struggle for life is waged by the millions on a scale so pitifully small that to the prosperous Occidental it seems infinitesimal. What wonder, then, thai every steamer from Japan carries its full quota in the 'Asiatic steerage of men and women flying from home to regions where they can earn more in a day than Japan offers them for a prosperous week?

The tumult and fhe shouting that, followed the cessation of hostilities, the! uproar and rioting after the Treaty of 'Portsmouth, and the noisy, lantern-lit welcome to the returning soldiery seem already Tike historic memories of ancient eras. The vietorions .Japanese are now j feeling ihe weight of the wot upon their j shoulders —a crushing burden pressing! hard upon the popalace in every village, on every farm, and in every fishiirgboat. In mines and offices and factories there is repining. Japanese children do not laugh as 'blithely as in the old days. TTaippiness wars their heritage then, but now the nation demands that the little ones go to work at a time of life regarded in England as infancy. In the| manufacturing cities \\kc Osaka, there i are no longer seen thousands of boys and giris plaring , in dainty, majry-coionred costumes likp gorgeous -uutfcerflips on the grass of temples. You will find them in coarse, dn?l clothing, working like pathetic, dolls in the factories. These • babes, toiling for a few pennies :\ dey,| I form a vast and sorrowful army. OT.D AND XEW. ; Japan has been transformed without transition, and the astounding overturn of flic feudal system, with its irranv-hued. easy, tuid tranquil life, linds the j ese masses in a state of mind- that it 13 tilmost impossible to describe. The clash of the old and the new, the resistance of ancient traditions to the ideals of modernity, the munbnrlrse new needs, the expanded national egotism, the splendid visions of luxury revealed by the newly rich, and the general intellectual disquiet that has spread like a disease from the other side of the world, have mode the Japanese one of fchn most ex-j citable rae«s on earth. 'With small means, they desire everything. Tokyo lias slums the poverty of which I rearircs the last depth or human degradation. Uelow the cellars of Paris, the alleys of London, and the crowded slums of the Now York East Side, the Japanese capital reveals a lower gulf. It is a region that no ray lights. Your mouldy man of Paris and your '-hooligan" of London do have at times fierce joys and moments of acid pleasure, but the microscopic intensity of the distress in the Shitava quarter of Tokyo brtrt- ' out all hope," Tokyo has far too nrany poor people, and what is to become oi them is a pressing problem.' Thousands are shipped to Korea and Formosa, but the pressure steadily increases, owing to the constant migration of ambitious Japanese from the provinces to the capital city. Japan carefully avoids all public reference to these great sores on its body politic. Their existence is hidden from the foreign visitor. Rarely does a tourist see the slums, and specialists studying the city for precise information are sedulously kept out of the poorest quarters. Japan is so skilfully pre.ss-agented that the existence of these miserable purlieus fs not even suspected by the I average student of conditions. It is n jouralistie rule in Japan not to say anything that betrays weakness in the life of the people, and it is a rule generally observed. But there are writers in Japan who think that in adopting the civilisation of the Occident the republican ] form nf government should also hnve been imported, and these give the Ministry trouble at times by telling plain, unpalatable truths. Th- "Kohunrin" newspaper instructed a representative to live the life of the lowest and poorest in Tokyo, and his articles dealing with life lin the Shitaya district created an imI mense sensation. When translated into English in pamphlet form, the Government promptly bought up the entire edition and destroyed the plates. JAPAN'S ECONOMY. Even the average Japanese has good reason to be troubled. AH the neces- ! saries of life have gone up h> price, and jhe has been educated to scores of new desires and appetites imported from abroad, -while his earning capacity has lagged behind. the despotic paternalism of the Government and the I imported mechanism of the private monopolies, he is drained to the last ser. Ito maintain an army and navy and to I fatten the purses of a few favoured I capitalists of powerful clans. Government o-wnership by indirect taxation and the internal revenue and customs, together with heavy direct taxes, have bled the narion.

Nothing is wasted in Japan. After watching the poor gathering burned matches and garbage in Tokyo, one mnut consider tlie boasted economy of the Chicago packing-houses as rather coarse w<irk. The poor devour every scrap of fish entrails from the markets, anil eat with avidity rotten fruit, stinking vegetables, sour, spoiled rice, rancid grease, and fragments of meat. Nothing that is or ever was edible is negi-ccted in Tokyo's g-arbage. livery ounce of material goes to ehseap ea-ling-houses in the shuns to be retailed to the poor. A corporation has been formed to control the collection of gurbagoaml itß distribution to the restaurants which make up their bill of fare from the filthy ir«;ss brought to them daily. THE MAN IN THE STREET. Wrtih work scarce in comparison with the labour snpoly, wages low, and food and clothing high, hi price and going higher, the man fai the Tokyo street is becoming a grumbler. WJQi the newly rich evincing a class despotism that the kindly otd aristocracy never dseamed of, the Japanese is beginning to resent his wholesale exploitation. The artistic pride that Japanese artists once took in their work is disappearing in many places. The boge faesoiy is driving out the little shop where £he werl»r was an artist carrying oefc liis owm ideas of beauty in -the commonest things, and making his humble traiiatHaik .inmcrjs- iv

his locality. Bat. hardest of all. the Japanese capitalist is the most remorseless devourer of little ones the world has known. He las prevented any legLs-la-tron whatever to protect the children, and. they are remorselessly used as factory hands. The Ja-panes-e newspaper men work for salaries that -would be despised by a London office, boy. Scholarly, .brilliant fellows for the most part, they are underpaid even in a land of infinitesinrally small salaries, and their general reception by officials and public men in contjmptuous to a high degree. ■ They have their revenue by printing the minutest dptaite of scandals involvini; ■well-known' ifien.' The Government lets them blow oif'steair. in t'.iis way.

-Many returned .soldiers arc finding it bard to settle down in their old pla.ee*. or to find meane of livelihood anywjiero. Thousands of them are roaming the highways or starving in the city shims. Tinfact that ;i Japanese once in possession of a job cannot be dislodged made it hard for lha veterans to yet the stay-at-homes out of thn places they preempted when the fighting men went to thf front. These poor follows-found that while cheered in the streets they were politely, but nonp the loss firmly, rejected in shops and offices. There was no room for them.

Suffer as they will, howpver, object to the rise of the moneyed aristocracy, grnnifale over takes, work for preposterou-, wages, the people, as a nation are loyal. The trorst grumblers arc the first to insist upon war when the. nation's honour lias been called into question. In the slums of Tokyo out' can hear as revolutionary expressions of opinion as in Paris, but they are not really meant. The average citizen realises that -lapan. having stopped into the arena, cannot withdraw without, losing everything that it now holds dear. Therefore he is steadfast in his patriotism, saying always as rlo 111«» siorytellers in the Tokyo streets: '"When the Emperor and his soldiers have linished with the foreigners, he will make •lapan an earthly paradise with their wealth." And the Government says officially: ■'Although the national burden was rendered very Jieavy by the inorcuxc in tfrxat-ion, sneh was the loyalty anil patriotism of the whok , nation Ui:it n< tronhle. whatever was expcnVncd.'"