THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1926. JAPANESE COLONISATION.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIII, Issue 19416, 26 August 1926, Page 8

THE New Zealand Herald AND DAILY SOUTHERN CROSS. THURSDAY, AUGUST 26, 1926. JAPANESE COLONISATION.

An important new orientation of Japanese policy has been discerned in tho recent announcement that, instead of trying to gain for its people entry into countries where they are not wanted, the Japanese Government will concentrate on the development of its own northern territory, generally known as Hokkaido. It has been hailed as the solution of the Pacific problem. The Pacific has many • problems. The outward urge of Japanese population was only one of them, admittedly a very important one. If the demand for entry into California, Canada, Australia and New Zealand is to cease, even if it does not make all clear and easy for the regular development of Pacific countries, it will, as has been observed, remove a dangerous, irritating question from world politics. More than once immigration barriers have been discussed in a disquieting way at European conferences. Japan, without truculence, but with great adroitness and determination, has introduced the subject. If it is raised again without Japan openly or tacitly supporting the assault, it will lose almost all its potency. It cannot be expected that this one official announcement will instantaneously still all the feeling roused by an old and highly delicate question. As was shown not long ago, when the United States passed the much debated exclusion law, it was the inference of inferiority more than the concrete fact of exclusion which rankled in the Japanese mind. It will take time for such feeling to pass away. Time will be needed too. for the prejudices which made .California insistent on rigid exclusion to be forgotten. Yet this death of animosity should result if Tokio's announcement means all that it seems to mean.

The restrictions placed on Japanese entry into various countries, especially California, have a history of some standing. The movement is not so old in America as that to prohibit Chinese immigration, of which it is in fact the heir-at-law. Up to 1882 the, agitation hg-d all been against the admission of Chinese.- In that year, under a treaty with the Chinese Government, immigration was virtually prohibited. There has been little relaxation since. One result of this was the importation of many Japanese to supplv the growing need for labourers. More and more appeared in the State of California. In 1907 about 10.000 entered in the one year. The Californian agitation against this great stream of people, began about 1905. It was intensified because Japanese labourers had been utilised to break a strike. After a time the Federal Government was induced to make a "Gentlemen's Agreement" with Japan for the re J striction of migration. Still the agitation continued, to culminate in the rigid exclusion law' of recent date. The example of the United States, or more exactly California, is worth detailed examination, because it shows the most considerable degree of feeling against the Japanese individually. Elsewhere, save in a lesser degree in Canada, they have been excluded by laws aimed even more against other race? of Asiatic origin. California aimed exclusion against them in particular because of their concentration in that State, their acquisitiveness, their tendency to voluntary segregation and their very high birth-rate. Not the smallest part of the problem is the large number of Americanborn Japanese, technically American citizens, yet still claimed by Japan. So rapid is natural increase that it has been seriously predicted that by 1949 there will be more Japanese in California than people of European descent. This is a situation not touched bv the new nolicy, but it explains in part the feeling prompting exclusion, which now inspires Japan to divert the outward stream elsewhere.

It has been said the Japanese are not a colonising people, that their very failure to develop their own northerns islands is a proof that as migrants they prefer to follow where others have done the pioneering. Certainly the Hokkaido mentioned in the cable messages seems to. present an example of almost empty territory awaiting development. The term is usually applied to the one island of Yezo, but it also includes the Kurile Islands. The superficial. area of the territory is 35,739 square miles. The population some years ago was less than 1.500,000. It is the home of those curious people, the Ainu, who have parts of it entirely to themselves. It is not without possibilities, for it grows fruit admirably, produces grain, and is eminently suitable for the breeding of horses and cattle. Salmon abound in its rivers, game is plentiful. There are hints of huge coal reserves awaiting to be exploited. Yet much of the land is given over to dense forest and impenetrable marshes where bears, deer, wolves and foxes abound. This surelv is a possible outlet for some of the millions of Japanese swarming on the main islands of the Empire. It is not a paradise awaiting occupation. Its summer is brief, its winter severe. That is one of the reasons often advanced for Japanese failure to develop Hokkaido. There are real pioneering tasks to be accomplished, obviously there are privations and dangers to be encountered. Sunny California or tropic Hawaii sound more attractive. Yet while Yezo is left to the primitive Ainu, its possible wealth neither exploited nor systematically explored, much force goes out of the argument that Japan must have an outlet for population. .No doubt the Government has seen the force of • these circumstances, and so evolved the new policy, which is hailed as premising to affect world politics profoundly.