JAPAN'S MILLIONS

Evening Post, Volume CI, Issue 14, 17 January 1921, Page 2

JAPAN'S MILLIONS

NEED FOR "ELBOW-ROOM*

LOOKING FOB, AN OUTLET.

The most difficult problem facing Japanese statesmen is how to find vent for Japan's surplus population, now increasing at the rate of three-quarters of a million a year. The cry of a white Australia, says the Tokio correspondent of the' Morning Post, is echoed by Canada and the United' States. Whero, then, is Japan to find an outlet for her people, now more than 350 to the square mile? As most of the more spaxsely-sefctledi lands of the world are under British or American rule, Japan naturally looks towards us to assist her cut .of the dilemma ; and because wo hesitate to offer any solution to the problem, and at the samo. time bar the door against Japanese, wbilo" admitting Germans and others, Japan cannot understand our avowals of friendship. She holds that race prejudice must bs hopelessly ingrained when it refused to find relief for labour troubles by Welcoming tha more efficient and strenuous toilers of tho Far East. Japan regards tho immigration problem as something more than a question for her or for any one nation, as a matter that should, concern humanity. ' It may be that she 'will find some measure of relief iv the new fields being opened- up in IMaJichuria, Siberia, and Saghalienbut the, Japanese are not • naturally a northern people; they do not like a climate of iow temperature, and so-ara not likely to immigrate in any consider, able number northwards,. unless there is abnormal profit in it. and even then but temporarily. After ithe forests and mines are fully exploited it is improbable that, the Japanese will care to remain. Moreover, in the view of Japan, this policy .would but retard for centuries longer th« evolutionary process that must needs bring East and West together if humanity is to attain ultimata unity aad its highest development. The longer that blending of the higher races is delayed the greater will be the clash, she holds .-when they are forced to meet by sheer congestion. A harmonious intermingling of East 1 and West by gradual immipratioS would ensure-a more humane result.