HOW THE JAPS LIVE

King Country Chronicle, Volume XXVIII, Issue 4527, 5 April 1934, Page 5

HOW THE JAPS LIVE

NEARLY 90 MILLIONS OF THEIW.

Dr. M. Oshima tells in the Japan Magazine how he put the delegates of the World Education Conference right about certain things in Japan. He says:— "I took occasion to explain that Japan proper alone has a population of seventy millions, a'nd that, with the inhabitants of Korea and Formosa included, the total population of Japan reaches some 90,000,000. "The various delegates were surprised by my explanation, because they did not know the facts up to that time, just as we Japanese do not know the population of every country in the world.

"They pointed out that no country in Europe has such a large population; and it is only natural that they

d wonder how a country so confined within narrow frontiers like Japan is able to hold and sustain such a large population. "This point I undertook to explain to my foreign colleagues at a tea party. Among other things, I said: " 'What do you eat every clay in your countries? What you eat are all obtained on land, such as fish, meat and vegetables. You eat very little of fish and shellfish, which live in the water. The Japanese people, howover, eat very much fish and shellfish, Ithough they also eat some meat. The Japanese people not only eat raw fish but salted fish and dried fish as well.'

" 'There are no inhabitants, not even in secluded places among the mountains in Japan, but eat dried honito, salted salmon and other fish dried after being boiled, as much as they eat vegetables. Thus the seas are'farms to us Japanese, so to speak. Not to mention the Inland Sea of Seto, the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean are farms of the Japanese people. We depend on the seas for our living, nay, we live on the seas and not on land.' "It is natural to think of land when we consider the living problem, but it. seems that Occidentals do not recognise the fact that the seas also are necessarily depended upon by the Japanese people for a living. "When it is made clear that the seas are farms to the Japanese people, Japan ceases to be a small country."