Japanese Living Standards

Inangahua Times, 28 March 1934, Page 4

Japanese Living Standards

“ Sheep and cattle cannot live on the bamboo grass of Japan, and, therefore, the Japanese are not a meateating people. Rice, fish, vegetables, and millet coat little. The climate is for the meat part moderate, and the Japanese people need comparatively little fuel. During half the year little and eheap clothing is adequate A Japanese gentleman these summer days may be well and comfortably dressed in the costume of the country for what a pair of gloves would cost him in Regent Street, London. It hae been relatively easy for the Japanese to maintain decent standards of life on small means. It may be literally true that some Japanese textile workers are paid only one-eighth or one-tenth of the money wages earned by the corresponding workers in England (at the present abnormal rate of exchange), bat it is entirely fallacious to suppose that their standard -of living is heref ore ten times worse. The Japanese .stand ard is lower in the sense that it is simpler and far less expensive, but it would be impossible for., anyone who knows the country, to argue that the Japanepe worker is more degraded or more dissatisfied tban the European.'.— Mr Hugh Byas, in the ' Asiatic Review. *