The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, JAN. 27, 1906. JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

Northern Advocate, 27 January 1906, Page 2

The Northern Advocate SATURDAY, JAN. 27, 1906. JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

♦ — Although Japan emerged triumphant from the war with Eusaia, her troubles are far from being at an end, judging from the following article which we reprint from the Straits Times : — "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 the last mail indicate that her diplomatic troubles in Manchuria are no more terminated by the 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 as the consequence of the' war, as well as that of another debt of about 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 what he calls ' the undue expansion of enterprise' — that will be caused by the invitation of such capital for the purpose of exploiting t^e .resources of a country weakened by war — as likely to be followed by panics and disturbances 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 120 millions. The mere interest on that sum is a further drain, if it has to go out of the country without any other foreign capital being allowed to re-enter as compensation. However that may be, the liberal as 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 the same or even more pessimistic spirit than Count Okuma, and all bitterly deplore the outcome of the war."