JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume 36, Issue 9506, 12 January 1906, Page 1

JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

The Straits Times of 14th October says :—"Japan is apparently confronting grave causes for anxiety both at home and abroad as the outcome of the peace negotiations ; and the papers to hand from the north by tho Jast mail indicate that her diplomatic troubles in Manchuria are no more terminated by Protocol than are her financial difficulties within the proper borders of her Empire. . . , The sagacious if plain-spoken Count Okuma, in an interview of great length which is published in the Nichi Nichi —virtually The Times of Tokio—gives it as his conviction that, for at least a decade, the country must endure a season of financial depression and comparative fiscal oppression in order to meet the weight of 1700 million yen —about 170 millions sterling—which must rest upon Japan in consequence of the war, as well as that of another debt of thirty millions which it will be necessary to incur through loans that will be required to redeem or pay off the heavy interest on Japan's more • recent foreign loans. The Count, it may be stated, is by no means a believer in the presence of foreigners in Japan, and he foresees in the projected introduction of foreign capital for what he calls ' tho undue expansion of enterprise'—that wiil be caused by the invitation of such capital for the purpose of exploiting the resources of a country weakened by war—as likely I to be followed by panics and disturb- 1 ances of the money market which must eventually have a bad effect. . It appears that, out of the total issue of 480 million yen in domestic bonds issued by Japan during the war, foreigners now hold 12Q millions. The mere interest on that sum is a further drain, if'it had to go out of the country without any other foreign capital being allowed to re-enter as compensation. However that may be, the liberal is well as the anti-foreign communities in Japan, and especially the most conservative business men, look forward to the next ten years, at least, in tho same or in an even more pessimistic spirit than- Count Okuma, and all bitterly deplore the outcome of the war."