CROWDED JAPAN

Evening Star, Issue 21631, 29 January 1934, Page 12

CROWDED JAPAN

THE MEED DF MORE OUTLETS A TEN-YEAR TESTING PERIOD (‘ The Times.’) The patriots, politicians, and generals who cut so vivid a figure in the daily news seem little more than marionettes when compared with the economic forces which are shaping Japan’s destiny. In the next ten years ) Japan must find food and work for nearly 10,000,000 more people ethan she employs and feeds to-day. It is true that the death-rate and the birth-rate run in double harness; while the young workers are coming forward the old are quitting the scene. But the working population—the group between the ages of fifteen and fifty-nine—is increasing at the rate of 400,000 to 500,000 a year, and as half of these are young men, employment must be found annually for 250,000 additional persons. Many of the young women also will go out to work, - but most of them will marry early; and, on the other hand, some of the young men will serve in the army or enter the universities.. The “ natural increase ” of Japan’s population last year was 1,007,868, thatbeing the difference between 2,183.743 births and 1,174,875 deaths. Since these figures were published, the Cabinet Bureau .of Statistics has announced (November 14) that the population of Japan proper on October 1 was 66,238,000, an increase of 942,600 over the computed figures for the corresponding day of 1932. Professor Teijiro Ueda, of the Tokyo University of Commercej believes that the annual number of births has become stationary at about 2,100,000, and on this basis he suggests a population of 80,000,000 as the maximum, to be reached between 1950 and 1955, after which the numbers will begin to fall. A MILLION MORE MOUTHS. Meanwhile, 1,000,000 more mouths to feed and 250,000 new jobs to find each

year for the, next , twenty years is the Japanese problem. And, as Professor Ueda told the Pacific Relations' Con* ferencc, birth control cannot solve it, for the workers are already born. There is no room for them on the farms. The average Japanese farm is 2.7 acres in extent, and supports an average’ family of six. No countryside in the world is so crowded as Japan’s, with 959 inhabitants to the square kilometre of cultivated land. Belgium has only 394; and 5,500.0p0 Californians are spread over a cultivated area double'the size of Japan’s. _ The position has been trenchantly described a sthe combination of an Oriental birth-rate of 32,92. per 1.000 with a European death-rate of 17.72, but it would bo more correct to say that Japan is-in the full tide of an industrial revolution birth-rate. During the ero of seclusion, which ended in 1854, the Japanese population remained stationary at about 30,000,060. The industrial revolution which' followed the opening of the country had the same effect here as was experienced in Europe. Prosperity and population rose by leaps and bounds. The new mobility of the peasants and the introduction of,,chemical fertilisers doubled the food supply, and abortion and infanticide ceased. Western hygienic science, favoured by the traditional cleanliness of the people, reduced the toll of disease, and railways abolished regional famines- . Between 1890 and 1925 the population of the cities increased by over 300 per cent., that of the;countryside by only 7,per cent. The new factories were calling for workers and finding them in the overflow from the farms. Japan’s increase of population resembles that of Europe; but it comes in the twentieth instead of in the nineteenth centrry. 'lf Japanese workers-are now crowding the West out of Asia’s markets, the West_ called those workers into. existence; it was American, and later British and French warships which compelled Japan to open her doors. Seeking markets for ourselves, we released a djinn which now towers over Asia.

In due time the spurt of fecundity dwindled away in the West, and there can be no reason to' suppose that like causes will fail to produce like effects in Japan. The stastistical evidence already reveals that, though the_ annual increase is- larger, the rate of increase is slowly diminishing. In the five-year .period , the average pearly increase in the number of borths was 324,000 over the average for the 1900-04 quinquennium, fifteen years erlier. But the 1932 births numbered only 177,000 more than the average for the 1920-24 period. The span of the latter comparison isj of course, shorter, but sets a “ record ” against an average, and it cannot be expected that the remaining two years needed to complete the period will raise the average from 177,000 to 324,000. Birth control is almost unknown, but one important cause of this diminishing fecundity can be shown. ‘The marriage-rate is slowing down. From 9.76 per 1,000 in 1920 it became 7.77 in 1932. In 1921. 519,193 couples married of a population or 58,000,000; last year the population was 10,000,000 larger and the marriages' 4,000 fewer. Rising standards of living mean later marriages. THE MARRIAGE AGE. An item from the vernacular; newsfapers illustrates what is. happening, t announces the marriage of the heir of the Abbot of Senshuji- to the,daughter of the Town Master of Kawamori, and mentions that the bride’s age is twenty-five. A few days ago the Tokyo newspapers were describing . the “graduation” ceremony of what is popularly known as the School of Brides —an academy where young women who have completed their higher education receive a course in the arts 'appertaining to the successful management of : a household and husband. The average age of these prospective brides would be_ twenty-two or twenty-three. But this tendency will not begin to relieve the pressure for twenty years.

Japan paid a high price for the fascinating but miniature -civilisation, which she developed in her “ hermit nation ” period. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries _ Japanese navigators and pirates, like their compeers in Europe, had felt their way to the coasts of India and the islands of the South Seas. When lyeyasu Tokugawa closed the country in 1637 and prohibited the building of ships over fifty tons, he was unconsciously depriving Japan_ of colonies. On reopening her doors in 1855, Japan found that the desirable empty spaces of the globe had been acquired by the white races. She plunged, into the industrial revolution; to the four classes of feudal sopiety—warriors, farmers, artisans* and traders —she added a fifth, the factory proletariat ; and she is now confronting .the consequences of the change in a'rapidly rising population without the palliative and, safety valve which emigration or an expanding, frontier can provide. The Japanese have dealt with the problem successfully and indeed brilliantly, so fair, by extending their economic frontier. The 1 cheap goods of those factories into which the surplus workers of the farms were drained have found markets abroad. If the‘process does not continue, how is Japan to avoid an explosion which will either destroy the social order at home, or burst a way to expansion abroad? The Japanese are a disciplined but not a docile people. Ninety-seven per cent, of them can read and write. . They are great readers. The numbers of students at technical schools and_ colleges v is enormous. The competition to “ get on ” is intense; The newspapers are so' besieged with applications for, employ-' ment that they hold examinations inj which hundreds are rejected. At the last entrance examination for. the dip-, lomatic and consular service 300 candidates, most of them Imperial Univer-; sity graduates, competed for eleven places. For 465 places in the Military Academy (the school for officers) 10,442; came forward. The pressure is already making, itself felt, and the people have become so intoxicated with their ff pid ascent in half a century that their leaders rightly fear the social consequences of a setback. NO SAINTLY SUBMISSION. It is needless to say anything now about the competitive power or Japanese industry in certain lines. It is proving so formidable that a zareba of tariffs and obstructions is being raised against it. Thus, to the hard enough problem of selling abroad the goods produced by 250,000 additional workers every year'is added the fear that markets may be closed by fiscal barriers. Yet if Japan is a cheap producer, she is selling in the poorest _ market. It would seem that cheap shirts and rubber shoes cannot be intrinsically bad for naked black and brown men. The unsatisfied wants of Asia and Africa are Japan’s opportunity. Commonsense bids us remember the history of the past fifty years; 60,000,000 Japanese now live where 30,000,000 lived naif a century ago, and live better. But if the tendencies expressed in such terms as economic nationalism and economic blocs are to result in a general shrinking of the open market, the consequences will be quickly felt in Japan. A poor, proud, heavily armed nation can hardly be expected, as a Japanese writer has said, .to “ starve in saintly submission in its own back yard.”