JAPAN’S PROBLEMS

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17918, 24 October 1932, Page 12

JAPAN’S PROBLEMS

STATE OF TRANSITION SYDNEY PROFESSOR’S VIEWS SYDNEY, Oct. 6. In an address at Kiliara, Professor S. 11. Roberts, Professor of History at Sydney University, said that Japan’s main hope lay in industrialisation, and that, in order to obtain raw materials and secure markets i'or the finished goods, it was essential that she should secure peace on the mainland of Asia. “To speak of a ‘yellow peril’ so far as Japanese emigration is concerned,’’ he said, ‘‘is so much nonsense.” At present, said Professor Roberts, Japan was in a state of transition, following the over-industrialisation of the last 40 years and the war boom. So far, she showed no sign of emerging from the crisis. To complicate matters, there were labor upheavals. Control was unprecedentedly vigorous at the moment, but discontent could not be dammed up. Dealing with rural discontent, Professor Roberts said that it was taking the form of a struggle between tenants and owners of land. The number ot peasant owners had decreased by 1,500,000. Agriculture bad become economically unsound since the war. Rice was cheaper to import than to grow. Nearly 5,000,000 farming families were demanding instant help. There might be the clue to Japan’s urgent desire to stop tho war in China. Rice and silk would not pay, and an investment in land returned less than half the amount returned by investment in industry. Referring to Japan’s population, Professor Roberts said that Japanese statisticians were now saying that the maximum figure of population had been practically reached, and that the near future might seo an adjustment, and then even a decline. Even if that was not so, industrialisation could absorb many millions, provided that Japan could get the raw materials of the Asiatic mainland and have that region as a market for her manufacturers' goods. Speaking of Japan’s foreign policy, Professor .Roberts referred to the Inigo expenditure on armed forces and the constant vacillation of Jajmn between two trends, one favoring military expansion, and the oilier economic consolidation. The danger was that economic failure, ns in the last two years, always opened the way for the military. Japan stood at, the crossroads. She was occupying Manchuria, and speaking of submarines that could get to Hawaii and back, and of cruisers that could fire 150 shells a minute. Tier future was most uncertain. The industrial and social changes had not been assimilated. Whatever the outcome, tho peace of tho world was vifallv affected by her policies, because of the enormous importance of the “cockpit of Asia,” both economically and strategically.