SEAS AND FARMS

Waipa Post, Volume 48, Issue 3480, 16 June 1934, Page 8

SEAS AND FARMS

JAPAN'S FOOll SUPPLIES. Dr. M. Oshima tells in the “Japan Magazine’’ how he put the delegates of the recent World Education Conference right about certain things in Japan. He says: “I took occasion to explain that Japan proper alone has a population of seventy millions, and that, with the inhabitants of Korea and ' Formosa included, the total population of Japan reaches some 90,000,000. “The various delegates were surprised by my explanation, because they did not know the facts up to that time, just as we Japanese do not know the population of every country in the world. “They pointed out that no country in Europe has such a large population: and it is only natural that they should wonder how a country so confined within narrow frontiers like Japan is able to hold and sustain such a large population. “This point I undertook to ex plain (o my foreign colleagues at a tea party. Among other things, I said: “ ‘What do you eat every day in your countries? What you eat are all obtained on land, such as meat and vegetables. You eat very little of fish and shellfish, which live in the water. The Japanese people, however, eat very much fish and shellfish, although they also eat some meat. The Japanese people not only eat raw fish but salted fish and dried fish as well. “ ‘There are no inhabitants, not even in secluded places among the mountains in Japan, but eat dried bonito, salted salmon, and other fish dried after being boiled, as much as they eat vegetables. Thus the seas are farms to us Japanese, so to speak. Not to mention the Inland Sea of Seto, the Japan Sea and the Pacific Ocean are farms of the Japanese people. We depend on the seas for our living, nay, we live on the seas and not on land.’ “It is natural to think of land when we consider the living problem, but it seems that Occidentals do not recognise the fact that the seas also are necessarily depended upon by the Japanese people for a living. “When it is made clear that the seas are f'anns to the Japanese people, Japan ceases to he a small country."