THE JAPANESE OUTLOOK

Dominion, Volume 29, Issue 185, 4 May 1936, Page 3

THE JAPANESE OUTLOOK

Lecture by Mr. Martin Smith A meeting of the Society for the Study of International Relations was held last week, Miss England being in the chair. The lecturer, Mr. Martin Smith, took as his subject the outlook of Japan to day, with which he dealt most competently and exhaustively. He traced the history ot Japan from the time of the expulsion of the Jesuits at the end of the eighteenth ceuturv, when the policy of isolation was adopted. Traces of the influence of the Jesuits still remained, but these bad been largely overlaid by Buddhism, .Contucianism. and of late years Shintoism. Mr. Martin Smith described the many sumptuary laws by which the life of the people was regulated down to the smallest detail and the caste system ingrained. .Mr. Martin Smith said that he considered that the menace of over-population in Japan was not so great as appeared at me time, and that the peak had been reached, with ihe probability ot staollity in 1950. With regard to the general attitude to Japanese trade, he pointed out that Japan had secured much of her trade bv opening up markets for herself among people who had not hitherto been buyers of the kinds of goods she produced, also that the only raw material she produced for herself was silk, and that therefore all her exports must be balanced by her imports. Actually, ho said. Japan imported more from British Dominions than she oxpnrtod to them. The Japanese people ho considered combined a feeling of superiority and contempt for the n estern world with one of inferiority in ninny matters, and this feeling had been added to by the exclusion and quota laws of Western countries, ami was largely responsible for her militaristic attitude. The Japanese people, said Mr. Martin Smith, desired peace, and it was the race between liberalism and militarism that would decide the issue.