The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1933. JAPAN’S QUEST OF TRADE.

Timaru Herald, Volume CXXXVII, Issue 19683, 28 December 1933, Page 6

The Timaru Herald. THURSDAY, DECEMBER 28, 1933. JAPAN’S QUEST OF TRADE.

All the news from Japan is emphatically suggestive of the growing conviction that the patriots, politicians and generals who figure so vividly in the newspapers are mere marionettes compared with the economic forces which are shaping Japan’s destiny. The cable messages this morning reveal the intensified activities of Japanese traders by direct service to West Africa, which serve to show the amazing expansion of the operations of Nippon’s exporters. Late in November it was reported that from the beginning of the current year up to the middle of October the foreign trade of Japan had enjoyed phenomenal development the total aggregating 2,951,618,000 yen (£295,161,800 at par), an increase of 812,700.000 yen over the corresponding period of last year. The Tokyo correspondent of The Morning Post, reported:

Of this total exports were valued at 1,454,384,000 yen, against 1,026,412,000 yen for the same term of the previous year; while imports amounted in value to 1,497,224,000 yen, against a value of 1,112,486,000 yen last year, reducing the unfavourable trade balance to about 42,840,000 yen, which is only half of what it was for the same period of the year before.

It is frankly confessed that as the traditional trend of Japanese foreign trade is towards an expansion of exports during the first half of the year, followed by a decline toward the end of the year, this rate of expansion cannot be expected to continue, yet there are certain features that may cause an exception to the rule. In addition to the reduction in the unfavourable trade balance already noted, there is the fact that both imports and exports have registered increases in value no less than in volume in numerous instances. And, compared with the general tendency of world trade to decline, Japan’s foreign trade has continued to gain in such an unprecedented manner as to alarm foreign nations and lead them to take special precautions against Japanese competition, and even to discriminate against Japan’s cheap products. Obviously, in a world becoming smaller as communications develop, it is altogether impossible for all nations to enjoy favourable trade balances. But Japan is in an aggressive mood, horn of sheer necessity; indeed, it has been repeatedly pointed out that Japan’s problem is how 7 to feed the millions more mouths in the next tw 7 enty years, and to find a quarter of a million new jobs each year. Birth control offers no solution, as the prospective workers are already horn. There is no room for them on the tiny farms:

Competition for employment is intense. The newspapers, besieged with applications for employment, hold examinations, and reject hundreds of applicants. Three hundred undergraduates competed for eleven places in the diplomatic and consular services, and 10,442 competed for 465 vacancies in the Army Academy.

Manifestly Japan is moving in the direction of a crisis. The economic pressure has already been felt so much, and the people are so intoxicated with the rapid ascent in the last fifty years, that their leaders rightly fear the social consequences of a setback. They also dread the effect of tariffs that will close foreign markets. The Tokio correspondents of the English press suggest;

It is obvious that the only way to meet Japanese, or any other competition based on cheap labour and low exchange, is either by a protective tariff or a reciprocal trade agreement to exchange raw material for equal value in exports. This, however, is rendered very difficult by the aggressive attitude of Japanese Industrialists and exporters, who, in negotiation with Western producers, make demands rather than seek concessions or considerations.

Their approach is that of those who have an unquestionable right to all the markets of the world. If foreign nations cannot compete with Japan the fault is theirs; no blame attaches to Japan.

The unpleasant fact that Japan is now completely under the dominance of the military party greatly prejudices the hope of peaceful negotiations of economic understandings, particularly in view of the rather disturbing fact that the Japanese ascribe the trade dispute to Western incompetence and prejudice against Japan as an Oriental race, thus proving that they do not yet quite understand the situation. In the same w r ay they do not understand why China should resist their policy; if she cannot resist then she should desist. The Western w 7 orld is confronted with the historical fact that when China resisted, by a boycott of Japanese goods, Japan called it a war, and resisted it by war; and yet Japan’s similar boycott of Indian cotton is not considered a war, even though the general attitude is a war of trade, which may produce international consequences of the gravest order.