UNFORTUNATE JAPAN.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume LXVI, Issue 11879, 15 January 1914, Page 4

UNFORTUNATE JAPAN.

A few days ago a cablegram from Tokio stated that nine million people wero starving in the north-eastern prefectures of Japan, and now a cablegram informs us that a terrible eruption, with loss of life, has occurred in another part of Japan. A famine is a much more serious matter than an

eruption. And when a famine does occur it is usually in the northern part of the "land of the Rising Sun," particularly in the province of Aomori. Severe cold and storms are common in the north of Japan, and that accoants largely for the periodic failuro of the rice crop. This year the crop has been almost an entire failure, this being due, so the cablegrams informed us some time ago, to the blinding snowstorms and bitterly cold weather which swept over tho north just before harvesting. A really good harvest is very rarely experienced in Japan—perhaps once in ten years. The Japanese Government has instituted a system of experimental plots in rice, and this will, no doubt, bring about an improvement in the crop. The object of the Government is to find rice seed which will germinate 15 days earlier than the present variety; if this is accomplished, then most of the districts of Japan will be

immune from famine