JAPANESE ENVOY TO CANBERRA

Dominion, Volume 34, Issue 142, 12 March 1941, Page 8

JAPANESE ENVOY TO CANBERRA

Stresses Importance Of Friendship MR. KAWAI ARRIVES IN AUSTRALIA

(By Telegraph.—Press Assn.—Copyright.) (Received March 11, 7.50 p.m.) BRISBANE, March 11.

The Japanese Minister to Canberra, Mr. Kawai, on his arrival in Australia today, said friendship was of greater importance than mere trading relations. “Let us establish friendship; trade relations will be certain to follow,” he said.

“Some people think- that Australia and Japan must inevitably quarrel,” he added, “but there is no need for that if we understand each other’s problems, which, being neighbours geographically and closely related -economically, it is our duty to try to do.”

“I .made an overseas tour last year, and from what I saw the world appeared to me to be changing very rapidly,” Mr. Kawai said. Japan, lie added, regarded Australia as a nation with a great industrial future.

Mr. Kawai intends to establish his home and official quarters in Melbourne, but he will maintain a suite at Canberra, where he will attend periodically. , Mr. Tatsuo Kawai, the new Japanese Minister to Canberra,' is 51 and a former spokesman of the Foreign Office, Tokio. He graduated from the political department of the Tokio Imperial University in 1915 and entered the foreign service in 1918. He became consul in Shanghai in 1919, consul in Tsinan later the same year, third secretary of the embassy in Washington in 1921 and attended the Washington Conference. Other appointments followed: Consul in Vancouver 1925, chief of the first section of the Information Bureau of the Foreign Ministry 1928, chief of the foreign section of the Kwantung Government 1930, first secretary to the embassy in Washington 1932, first secretary to the legation in China 1933, and consul-general in Canton in 1934. He became Foreign Office Spokesman in 1937, and was well liked among foreign correspondents in Tokio for his frankness and fairness.