JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXXIII, Issue 12870, 4 January 1906, Page 6

JAPAN'S OUTLOOK.

HARD TIMES AHEAD. -'The''-"Straits Times" of 14th October says:—"Japan is apparently confronting grave- causes for anxiety both at home and abroad as the outcome of the peace negotiations; and the papers to hand from the north bv, the last mail indicate that her diplomatic troubles in Manchuria are so more terminated by the Protocol than are her financial difficulties within the proper borders of her Empire. . . The sagacious if plain-spoken Count Okuma, in an interview of great length which is published in the ' Nicbi Nicbi ' —virtually. "The Times' of Tokio—gives it as his conviction that, for at least a decade, the country must endure a season of financial depression and comparative fiscal oppression in order to meet the weight of 1700 million yen—about 170 millions sterling—which* must rest upon Japan in consequence of the war. as well as that of anoI ther debt of about thirty millions which it will be necessary to incur through loans that will be required to redeem or pay off the heavy interest on Japan's more recent foreign loans. The Count, it may be stated, is by no means, a believer in the presence of foreigners in Japan, and he' foresgees in the projected introduction of foreign capital what he calls 'the undue expansion of enterprise'—that will be caused by the invitation of such capital for the purpose ef exploiting the resources of a country weakened by war—as likely to be followed by panics and disturbances of the money market, which must eventually have a bad effect. . . It appears that, out of the total issue of 480 million yen in domestic bonds issued by Japan during the war, foreigners now holct 120 millions. The mere interest on that, sum" is a further drain, if it has to go out of the country without .any.-other foreign capital being allowed to re-enter as compensation. However that may be, the liberal as well as the anti-foreign communities in" Japan, and esJ>ecially the most conservative businessmen ook forward to the next ten years, at least, in the same or in an even more pessimistic spirit than. Count Okuma. and all bitterly deplore the outcome of the war."