AMERICA AND JAPAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 18 September 1920, Page 10

AMERICA AND JAPAN.

JAPS' MINATORY TONE, In a significant interview with an American correspondent recently Viscount Kancko, a member of the Privy Council of Japan, relative to a possible crisis arising between America and Japan by reason of California's discrimination against the Japanese, said that Japan had borne patiently a long series of attacks on the legal rights'of 60,000 Japanese in California, hut the limit of endurance had been very nearly reached. He did not in the slightest degree fear facing the danger of a breach of diplomatic relations between the two countries, but lie did fear that if the proposed legislation to be submitted to popular referendum in California next November goes through, there will be implanted in the Japanese mind a rankling sense of wrong inflicted by America that time will not efface. He described California's discrimination against Japanese settlers as progressive and continual in regard to land tenure, and culminating in a proposal to take away from Japanese children the rights accorded to the offspring of. parents of every nationality horn on American soil. And not only this, but under the n»w/system whose adoption will be contingent on the result of the popular vote, Japanese parents will not be allowed to act as trustees for their minor children, and the administration of their property and interests will be placed entirely in the hands of the State Officers of California. He described the work of Japan as entitling her to claim a place amongst the highly civilised nations, and concluded by saying:—"The American nation will never play the role that properly belongs to them in the peaceful development of Asia till they are able to judge Asiatic peoples by their standard of conduct instead of by that of race. If China and Japan stand for ideals as high as your own, maintain social convention's and political institutions that will not suffer by comparison with yours, then I hold they must be to all intents and purposes dealt with on a footing of absolute equality. From the American standpoint that may be regarded as a hard saying, but it is my profound conviction that it carries with it a truth which ali great Knglish-speaking countries will have to accept and act upon if their place in the world's great hereafter is to be at all comparable to that which it is to-day."