JAPAN’S TROUBLES

Northern Advocate, 4 January 1927, Page 3

JAPAN’S TROUBLES

LIVING ON BORROWED MONEY. INCREASING POPULATION. EMI G U ATI O-N Di FFILULTY. TOKYO, October 21. Jn many respects the Japanese economic condition, both in its fundamentals and in tin; peculiar difficulties now present, is similar to that of Great Britain. Botli are island empires, thickly popu.ated and dependent to a considerable extent on food supply from the outvie. National prosperity for both o f them is dependent on foreign markets for their products .sufficient to offset their purchases abroad and give them a favourable balance of trade. Like Great Britain, and unlike France, Italy and other nations of the European Con- . incut. Japan has no hidden income from abroad, such as comes from tourists or is remitted by her nationals in othei countries. She is solely dependent on competitive trade. Japan is like Great Britain just now, in that she is having the greatest difficulty in finding employment for hei large population and she is weighted down by an adverse trade balance that is increasing the total of her debts, public and private, year by year. Japan proper embodies only 148,756 square miles. The population of this area is now approximately 57,000,000 and is increasing at a rate of nearly half a million annually. Despite the fact that less than one-sixth of the land is arable, more than half of this population still lives by cultivating the 50i1—34,000,000 on a total of 15,000,000 acres subject to cultivation, an average of less than half an acre for each person, or 2£ acres per family.

PACKED IN THE CITIES. The remaining 23,000,000 of the population is packed into the cities with a margin inside the starvation line probably averaging leas than that of the farm population. Experts here say there is no actual starvation anywhere in Japan, but if this is so it is solely because of the perfection in distribution of income and the deficits of the National Government and of many of the most important industries which have been accumulating year by year since the war. The nation is running on borrowed money.

One particularly pessimistic but very * highly regarded Japanese economist - made the flat declaration that not only , the Government but the bulk of private* industry in Japan is bankrupt, and if book debts can be taken as a criterion this may be true. On the other hand, the exchange value of Japanese currency has been going up in recent months, and the excess of imports over exports has been coming down. There is very substantial indication that the nation is slowly but surely digging itself out of the hole into Which it was plunged by the after-war slump and the earthquake of 1923, and if internal dissensions can be avoided it will soon be on an even keel. To*say that the outlook is hopeful, however, is to go beyond the limit in optimism. For many years past.it has been apparent that, if the standard of living of the Japanese people is to be materially lifted, it must be by one of two j processes, either by reduction of popu- j < lation of the home islands by emigration, or by the sale of manufactured goods at a profit in foreign markets. Statistics show that the only places to which the Japanese in the past have shown a real desire to emigrae are the United States, Canada, Hawaii, Australia and New Zealand, all of which are now tightly closed against them. Even to Korea, where every inducement is offered for Japanese colonisation, emigration has been slow, rising from 171,543 residents at the time Korea was annexed to Japan in 1910 to only 411,593 in 1925. The new emigration of Japanese to Korea in the two years just elapsed totalled only 25,000. FEW GO TO MANCHURIA. The movement of Japanese into Manchuria, the other territory opened to them by the Russo-Japanese War, has been almost negligible. The total Japanese population of Manchuria is given by j the Japanese Year Book as only 31,608, , and Japanese residents in the whole of | the Asiatic mainland are placed at j 206,079. The reason the Japanese do not I go in numbers to Manchuria is that j they cannot compete as agriculturists with the Chinese natives. Some Japanese say the difficulty is the Chinese land laws, which forbid foreign ownership of any considerable tract of land. They say that if the Japanese were able to assemble large farms and introduce labour-saving machinery they could enormously increase the production of Mancuria. Of a total of 594,681 Japanese now resident abroad, 167,257 are in Hawaii, 131,357 in the United States, 19,160 in Canada. In contrast with this there are only 45,269 in the whole of China outside of Manchuria, and only 0120 in the Philippine Islands. There is abundant evidence that, however much they may desire to guide the destinies of Asia, the Japanese do not want to enter into manual competition with their neighbours. All varieties of Asiatic mainland population are rigidly ■ excluded from Japan, whereas the Jap--1 anese show little desire to emigrate to ■ the continent. No one recognises this j condition more than do the Japanese p themselves. They have long since given ■ up any idea that they could improve • their economic condition by reduction of I their home population. All Japanese • leaders agree in declaring that Japan • must stand or fall with her area find • j her population substantially as they are. 1 There is no practical way either of exi lending her territory or of disposing of population abroad.

The way out is industrialisation, but ' this likewise is not so easy. Every inch • of advance must be made in the face of competition with the dther industrial , nations of the world, and there is noth- i ing to indicate that this competition will lessen in the near future. The largest item of Japanese export of msnu- 1 factured goods is cotton clothing and yarn to China and other nations on the Asiatic continent. Up to the tinie of the world war Japan made slow progress in this market as compared with British, German and other European producers, but the war put European textile manufacturers largely out of the Far Eastern market. The Japanese textile industry increased by leaps and bounds during the period from 1914 to 1919.

During the world war Japan advanced ! rapidly towards domination of the i Asiatic markets, and in the peace conference at Paris she further extended her dominions by taking over most of the German islands in the Pacific. After the i war, however, there came a change. I Great Britain at the Washington Confer- I ence renounced her alliance with Japan,] and in its place sought an economic con- j cord with the United States in the ■ Pacific region. The five-five-throe naval ratio was accepted by Japan as a matter of economic necessity, but it did not serve to enhance her in the Far East. Then came the terrible blow of the earthquake, and literally on its heels the worst shock of all, so far_ as the American immigration law putting her nationals in the same category as Chinese and Hindus. Japan for more than half a century had been aiming to attain the level of civilisation of the Western nations. She fully believed she [ had accomplished this end. and she still i believes so, but the American exclusion I law was to the Japanese mind concrete 1 evidence that the Western world did not [ so regard her.