MODERNISED JAPAN

Evening Star, Issue 19763, 13 January 1928, Page 3

MODERNISED JAPAN

BUTTER AND MEAT WANTED MARKET FOR HEW ZEALAND In the process of moulding Japanese life_ on Western lines lie great potentialities lor the development ol New Zealand export trade ; n primary products. That is the opinion ol Bishop Juji Nakada, of the Japanese Holiness Church, Oriental Missionary Society, now terminating in Auckland a short visit to the dominion (says the ‘Herald’).

Japan, said Bishop Nakada, was last absorbing Western ideas—in clothing and food as well as civics and other phases of community life. Where not long ago butter was seen on but very few tables, it wis now demanded by an increasingly large section of the people. They_ were, too, rapidly becoming a nation of meat-eaters, and these circumstances, combined with a huge wool importation bill which lengthened annually as the Japanese more and more adopted European attire, betokened increasing trade with New Zealand and Australia. Great as were already Japan’s purchases of wool from the dominion and the Commonwealth, he had no doubt they would increase. “The people want butter and beef, but there is not enough of either,” said the bishop. “ Butter— nearly all the produce of Japan—cost the equivalent of 3s a lb, and beef is as dear.” A high-duty wall was responsible for restricted importations of butter and meat.

Discussing the problem of finding new lands for the settlement of Japan’s-surplus population, the visitor said eyes were now directed chiefly toward the Japanese concession in Manchuria, Russian Siberia, and Brazil. Already 200,000 Japanese were settled in the Manchurian concession, which was chiefly suited to- cattle farming, but Japan was watching with interest the evacuation of Russian peasantry from Siberian territory alongside. Due to tho oppressive taxation and regime of Bolshevism, Siberia, a land of wonderful agricultural possibilities, especially in the growing of rice, was being allowed, in a developmental sense, to drift. There, rather than in Manchuria, could his countrymen successfully settle in millions. In the meantime, every steamer leaving for South America was carrying Japanese going to tho coffee plantations of Brazil, where already 50,00 had emigrated. Tho idea that the Japanese looked toward Australia and New Zealand as desirable outlets for their “ spare millions ” was scouted by Bishop Nakada. “No one thinks of it,” he declared. Bishop _ Nakada said the spread _of Christianity in Japan was something at which to marvel. In Japan, as the world over, the middle class was the backbone of the nation, and, although few in numbers compared with the far greater masses of low-class people, wielded immense influence. It was significant, and a happy augury for the Christian future of the- country, that the middle class had largely become Christian, although not a few of the aristocracy, including several members of the Diet, had embraced its tenets.