PACIFIC RELATIONS.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIV, Issue 19721, 22 August 1927, Page 6

PACIFIC RELATIONS.

THE PROBLEM OF JAPAN. i ■ " FOOD AND POPULATION. CALM SCIENTIFIC INQUIRY. ECONOMIC INTERDEPENDENCE. BS J E. CONDLIFFE. From China, the conference turned somewhat with relief to the more academic but not less real problems of population and food supply. The tension of the first three days had been very great. The politically-minded had had their innings. Discussion had concentrated on situations of urgent present importance and upon the practical -means of relieving these situations. The newspaper correspondents, scenting what they call colourful stories were exasperated by being excluded from both round tables and forums. The knowledge of their annoyance and a sharp criticism in one of the local papers heightened the feeling of tension which prevailed. Everyone was relieved and the situation became more natural when the politicians yielded the stage to scientists, who began to discuss the great underlying problems of food and population. The Japanese had brought two men whose scientific work was extraordinarily good, Professor Nasu and Professor Yamasaki. With them were matched Dr. Alsberg, Director of the Food Research Institute at Stanford University, Dr. 0. E. Baker, of the United States Department of Agriculture and Mr. G. L. Wood, of Melbourne. Upon the basis of exceptionally valuable statistics of population and food and fuel resources, the round tables spent two days discussing what is by all odds Japan's chief problem. Japan's Necessity. The chief interest to many participants in the discussion was the revelation of the thorough investigations already made in Japan by competent scientificallytrained workers. One of tie chief results of the discussion will be an effort first to provide means for the exchange of teachers and researchers between Japan and other countries and then to facilitate translation of many of the important works now locked up in the Japanese language. The records of the conference also will be enriched by the inclusion of diagrams which graphically represent the population difficulties with which Japan is j confronted. It is in Japan, after all; that the urgent problems of the awakening of the Orient are most real and acute. The available food resources of the narrow, poor and restricted Japanese islands are taxed to their limit. It is difficult to see how any more food can be produced even bv the utmost usage of scientific agriculture. Fuel and power resources and mineral deposits are quite inadequate to support a growing industrial community, nor is there much hope that further resources can now be discovered. On the other hand the dumber of people who must be fed increases with cumulative rapidity both by natural increase and by immigration. Last" year the increase was almost 900,000, which means that about every IS months a number as great as the whole population of New Zealand is added to the teeming millions of Japan. With industrialisa'tion the birth-rate may be expected to fall; but it will be long before any such fall comes about among the rural masses of Japan. Professor Yamasaki's diagrams show large rural areas from the Hokkaido downwards where the birthrate is over 40 per thousand per year. Pressure of Numbers. At the same time the introduction of scientific hygiene, sanitation and medicine, slow as it may be and inadequate, is already checking the death-rate and may be expected to do so cumulatively in the future. The prolongation in this way of the average expectation of life was the chief factor in quadrupling the population of Great Britain in the nineteenth century. It seems quite certain that a large increase in Japan's population will be caused in the same way. The statistical measurement of the trends already noticeable is an important contribution to our foreknowledge of an increasingly difficult problem. Japan's economic necessities form one of the basic elements also in the present political situation in the Far East. For her people, as for no other, the trend of events in China is a matter of life and death. But there is a further aspect of the problem of' food and population in the Far East, which arises from the beginnings of industrialisation in the Chinese Empire itself, and the first steps at introducing there also the measures, of sanitation,* hygiene and education which are characteristic of the West, and, in some degree, are beginning to be characteristic of Japan. It was with this in mind that- a set of research projects involving work over a long series of years was gradually developed by consultation among the experts. Survey o! Tropical Resources. In broad outline the plan- is to use the services of some of the scientists and professors who. are feeling the pinch of present necessity, to equip them with further training and start them on the survey of land utilisation, population, food consumption in their own parts of China. Projects elaborated for these purposes will be worked out in the days that lie ahead. At this point there is a clear illustration of, the economic interdependence ot - the world to-dav. This set ot projects designed specifically with- reference to China merged naturally ir>to a similai se for the study of Pacific tropical agriculture and so .to a survey of the islands of t' lo Pacific as sources "of food supply. immediate results are not expected from research projects, and it is probable tha immediate action may not be possible iegarding the projects of the islands. *> u ' everyone is clear that the pressure o population necessitating the exploitation o new sources of food supply, and e -^ ecl< v'of "essential materials, like vegetable ot will involve Australia and New Zealan , both directly arid indirectly.