CONDITIONS IN JAPAN.

Otago Daily Times, Issue 20287, 21 December 1927, Page 10

CONDITIONS IN JAPAN.

RAPID GROWTH OF POPULATION. FINANCIAL STRINGENCY CONTINUES. (Special to Daily Times.) AUCKLAND, December 20. “The population of Japan is increasing at the rate of 1,000,000 a year, and the country is alarmed at the prospects of a food shortage. The Japanese will never attempt to invade either Australia or New Zealand. They have no inclination to do so.” After living for 20 years in Japan Mr F. D; Burrows, managing director of the firm of Messrs Cooper and Co., of Kobe, Japan, can speak with authority on these subjects. He arrived by the Maunganui this morning on a holiday trip to New Zealand. The finances of Japan are in a bad wav, he said. The Government has plenty of money, and there is plenty in the country, but it has never deflated, since the period of the war boom. The country has not yet recovered from the big earthquake. Yokohama is still a wreck. A few large buildings have been erected by the Government and overseas business houses, but there are numberless tin shacks on the areas which were wrecked during the big earthquake. Mr Burrows said that the Japanese were penetrating into Manchuria. They will be the next to control that country, principally because it will mean their own protection from Russia. In Kobe and the other large centres of Japan there are numbers of Russians who have left their country and never wish to return to it. These refugees refuse to acknowledge the Russian Embassy.