JAPANESE FARMERS

Evening Post, Volume CXXIII, Issue 2, 4 January 1937, Page 8

JAPANESE FARMERS

| EMIGRATION SCHEME I RESERVE FOR ARMED FORCES The Overseas Ministry in Tokio ha; drawn up a plan of State-aided emigre of Japanese farmers to Manchukuo I designed to place 5,000,000 settlers oi i the land at an estimated cost o 12,000,000,000 yen (about £12,000,000) j states the "Christian Science Monitor.' | The Japanese Government, accordin; I to this scheme, would furnish 800,000,001 i yen; the remainder of the funds woulc come from the settlers themselves anc i from railway and shipping companies 1 and other organisations interested ii promoting settlement in Manchukuo. Japanese military opinion is strongly in favour of energetic colonisation measures in Manchukuo. [ A MANCHU ARMY. A native Manchukuo army has beer organised; but, although it exceed; 100,000 in numbers, it leaves much tc be desired from the standpoint oi loyalty, morale, and fighting efficiency Cases when units of the Manchukuoar troops have passed over to the insurgent "bandits" or have sold arms tc them are not unknown. The Japanese officers who have organised the Manchukuo army have thoughtfully left it without artillery or aeroplanes oi other modern weapons which might be dangerous in possibly disloyal hands A human wall of Japanese colonies largely peopled by sturdy young farmers, many of them ex-servicemen wojuld be a valuable reserve for the Kwantung Army, which is now obliged to guard a long frontier and to carry on continual harassing campaigns against elusive bandits in the more hilly country. The figure of 5,000,000 settlers over a period of two decades is not large compared with the number of Chinese who were entering the country before the Japanese occupation. It is estimated that during the three years 1927, 1928, and 1929, 3,000.000 Chinese, mostly from Shantung Province, which was then suffering very much from gross misgovernment and chronic famines, settled in Manchukuo as immigrants. On the other hand, the figures of Japanese settlement on the land in Manchukuo up to the present time are remarkably small. Up to 1931 the Japanese were not permitted to own land outside the restricted area of the Kwantung Leased Territory and the Railway Zone. But during the five years since the Mukden "incident" less than 3000 Japanese seem to have settled in Manchukuo as farmers, according to the best available official information. COLD CLIMATE. There have been several reasons for the extremely slow development of Japanese colonisation. The average Japanese dislikes a cold climate; arid

the northern part of Manchukuc where most of the land suitable foi colonisation is to be found, has verj severe winters. The disturbed con dition of Manchukuo, with mobili guerrilla bands operating in man} regions off the main railway lines, ha: been no inducement to prospectivt settlers; Japanese settlements woulc be natural targets of attack for "ban dits" who are at least partially ani mated by nationalist spirit.^ The fact that the Chinese peasanl can underlive the Japanese is anothei serious obstacle to successful colonisa tion. A Japanese with long experience in Manchuria suggested that only a mass colonisation movement which would establish thousands of new homesteads at the same time coulc count on success. So the future of Japanese colonisation in Manchukuo seems to depend on the issue of a struggle of conflicting factors. Pressure of population and army and governmental encouragement are in favour of a substantial immigration movement into Manchukuo; it remains to be seen whether this combination of forces will overcome the negative factors which have hitherto kept the flow of Japanese farm 'immigrants to the mainland so extremely small. In this matter of State-sponsored migration, something of a race largely inspired by military considerations is in progress between the Soviet Union and Japan. The Soviet Union is eager to fill up the vast and relatively empty spaces east of Lake Baikal with new settlers, just as Japan wishes to tighten its grip on Manchukuo by colonising.