JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

Evening Post, Volume LXX, Issue 155, 30 December 1905, Page 6

JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

! The Straits Times of 14th October j says: — "Japan is . apparently confronting | grave causes for anxiety both at home and ' abroad as the outcome of the pence nego- i tiations ; and the papers to hand fTonii i the north by the last mail indicate that I her diplomatic troubles in Manchuria are no more leiminated by the Protocol than are her financial difficulties within the proper buiders of her Empire. . . . The sagacious if plain-spoken -Count Okuma, -in an interview of great length which is published in the Nichi Nichi virtually The Times of Tokio — gives it as his conviction that, for at least ti decade, the country must endure a season of fiuaucial depression and comparative fiscal oppression in order to meet the ■weight of 1700 million yen— about 170 millions sterling — which must rest upon Japan in consequence of the war, as well as that of another debt of about thirty millions which it will be necessary to incur through loans that will bs required to lcdeein or pay off the heavy interest on Japan's more recent foreign loans. Tliq Count, it may be stated, is byAo means a believer in the presence of foreigueis in Japan, and he foresees in the projected introduction of foreign capital what ho calls 'the undue expansion of enterprise' that will be caused by tho invitation of such capital for the purpose of exploiting the resources of a country weakened by war — as likely to be followed by panics and disturbances of the nio'lej market which must 'eventually have a bad effect. ... It appeals that, out of tie total issue of 480 million yen in domestic bonds issued by Japan during the war, foreigners now hold 120 millions. The mere interest on that sum is a fuither drain, if it has to go out of tlie country without aiiy other foreign capital being allowed to re-enter as compensation. However that may be, the liberal a.b well as the anti-foreign communities, in Japan, and especially the mobt conservative business men, lcok forward to the next ten years, at least> in the same or in an even more pessimistic spirit than Count Okuma, and all bitterly deplore tho outcome of the war."

A well-known telegraph officer, who takes a keen interest in football (says a Duuedin correspondent) had a startling forecast of the result of the New Zealand . v. Wales match in a dream on Friday night. The various incidents of - the match were vividly pourtrayed to his mind, and the final result Wales 3, New Zealand nil— was distinctly given. Ho wa« so impressed with the reality of the dream that "he told his friends in the offico about it, and wrote the iesult down, at the samo time fervently hoping that it \iould bp uonUtf..y to ike