JAPAN’S CANDOUR.

Manawatu Standard, Volume LV, Issue 230, 27 August 1935, Page 2

JAPAN’S CANDOUR.

ITALY TO “AIIND HER BUSINESS.”

Japan bluntly told Italy to-day to mind Iter business and mend her ways before telling other countries to put a strict censorship on news unfavourable to Italy, says a Tokio report of July 20. Japan was replying to the Italian Ambassador’s protest against publication of anti-Italian news in Japanese newspapers.

Count Giacinto Auriti, the Italian Ambassador, called on Foreign Minister Ivoki Hirota and requested a stricter censorship of the Press, which has been publishing news unfavourable to Italy.

The newspapers Jiji Shimpo and the Japan Times last week featured a story from Switzerland by an American writer, Albin Johnson, stating that the Italian people are halfheartedly supporting the Ethiopian campaign and that sickness is spreading among the troops. Count Auriti categorically denied the truth of these as well as all other statements in the story. Mr* Hirota, through the Foreign Office spokesman, Eiji Amau, to-day suggested, however. that the Italians might better mend their ways before asking favours of Tokio. He pointed out that leading Italian papers, which are strictly censored and controlled by the Government, have been publishing anti-Jap-anese matter and have charged that Abyssinia is breaking her treaty with Italy of 3928 by favouring Japanese goods over Italian. Japanese newspapers recall that Signor Mussolini went out of Iris way last vear to oppose the marriage of Alasako Kuroda, daughter of Viscount Hiroyuki Kuroda, to Prince Araya Ababa, a nephew of Emperor Haile Selassi I of Ethiopia. The marriage was subsequently called off. The Press and public here are also irked at the issuance of an official communique in Italy on the talks between Japanese Ambassador Yotaro Sugimaru and Mussolini without a previous agreement. , Mr Sugimaru was reported to have assured II Duce that the Jananese would not interfere in the Italo-Abys-sinian dispute. It was declared in Tokio that he had committed Japan without authority.