LOOKING TO OWN INTERESTS

Evening Star, Issue 26029, 18 February 1947, Page 7

LOOKING TO OWN INTERESTS

AMERICANS IN JAPAN TEXTILE TRADE MOKOPOIY (N.Z.P.A. Special Correspondent.) LONDON, February * 17. American policy in Japan aims at a Japanese recovery which will offer a maximum market and minimum competition to her own*' General MacArthur does not intend the Japanese workers to have a say in the matter. These are the comments by the ‘ New Statesman and Nation,’ prompted by the remarks of Mr Hitofumi Ito, a former Japanese Ambassador *to Poland. He is reported to have remarked that Britain was indifferent to the Far East, and suggested that she is in danger of becoming little more than a name for the younger generation in Japan. “ Ito’s speech,” comments the journal* “ reflects the results of the year of American occupation, for whilst there is an Allied. Council for Japan meeting fortnightly in Tokio, and a Far Eastern. Commission working in Washington, it is Americans who are assured .of what is virtually a monopoly of control over Japanese affairs. Industrially, this has resulted in Japan already so far recovering her textile position that she will soon dominate the vast Asiatic market.”

The American programme allows for 67 per cent, of Japanese exports in future to manufactured textiles, compared with 23 per cent, in 1939. In pre-war days 50 per cent, of Japan’s raw cotton came from India, but America supplies the bulk to-day. Bv 1951 it is estimated that Japan will have a virtual world monopoly of the silk industry. It is also observed that £3,000.000 worth of Australian wool was sold to Supreme Headquarters acting onf Japan’s behalf. The journal suggests that General MacArtliur’s action over the recent strike should not escape the attention of the World Federation of Trade Unions delegation due in Tokio next month.