JAPAH’S SURPLUS

Evening Star, Issue 20253, 14 August 1929, Page 12

JAPAH’S SURPLUS

OUTLET IK SOUTH AMERICA The handling and disposal of Japan’s rapidly-increasing surplus population, now averaging between 900.000 and 1.000. a year, is taxing the ingenuity and resourcefulness of Japanese statesmen, The initial step of a new and important project for Japanese emigration to South America, by which 14.000. acres of land in the State of Para, Brazil, have been made available for ten thousand Japanese families to bo drafted from Japan at the rate of one thousand families annually, is due to take effect this month. Japanese emigration to Brazil is no innovation. In the course of forty years Sail Paolo. the great coffee-producing centre, has attracted a colony of 60,000 Japanese living there now. _ This latest immigration is the result of studied co-oneration between the Brazilian and Japanese Governments, both desirous of making an organised experiment The Oriental emigrants are being selected with more than ordinary care by Mr Nachiro Fukahara, representative of the Japanese colonisation company, and it is said that the Japanese Foreign Office .has appropriated one million yen to assist in handling the increased number of emigrants, at the same time generously subsidising the colonisation scheme in Brazil. The American immigration law of shut the door on Japanese in North America, forcing thoju to find other outlets, urging them to acouire rights to settle in lands outside overcrowded Japan, such as Manchuria, for instance, As colonists, the Japanese not easily assimilated into the nation of theii adoption. Even North America, that melting pot of nations, races, and religions, has not succeeded in “digesting” the Japanese to the extent that it has done with their Celestial cousins, the Chinese. “ Once a Japanese gjways a Japanese.” and in that the Japanese are not unlike the British, who notoriously retain national characteristics! customs. and peculiarities of persona] environment in foreign circumstances and climes, all over the world.

Mr Mitsuya Tsiiimikawa. a Japanese business man who Tins been travelling in Java and the Pacific, deplores conditions and mental attitude of emigrated .Japanese, which is not unlike that of the British exclusiveness abroad. Only Mr Ishirnikawa, instead of rejoicing at such evidence ■ of national and racial pride, and desire to conserve tradition of country, cries out in the local Press; “What is the use of emigrating?” “If the Japanese abroad insist on having their children educated to think and act like Japanese why emigrate? tf this policy is nractised. Japanese abroad will never be ahlp to establish strong economic footholds, and truly belli the nation’s emigration policy.” T y iat the Japanese are an internation-ally-minded people is proved by the large proportion of those in any kind of position to travel, who do travel to Europe every year. Statistics for 1927-28 show that 31,217 Japanese went abroad during the twelve months, and one has only to come in contact .with Japanese travellers to realise that

their thirst and capacity for absorbing new ideas, information, their unflagging interest is second only to th« tenacious, unwearying German tourist of tradition and reality,