Asian Current

Japan Sweeps towards Empire Part IV

There is a school of thought, persuasively represented in England by Sir Norman Angell, among others, which contends that the national ownership of raw materials is unimportant and that the alleged grievances of the so-called (’have-not” powers are largely, if not entirely, spurious. Members of this school of economic thinking declare that the expense of conquering and administering colonies is out of all proportion to the trade, investment, and migration benefits which accrue from colonial imperialism. Since producers of essential raw materials are only too eager to find buyers, there is nothing, according to this line of argument, to prevent a nation which is poor in raw materials from buying what it needs in the cheapest market and building up its industries on imported raw materials.

There is indubitable weight in these arguments. The horse of poverty in raw materials has been ridden too hard. Yet it is significant that it is usually economists and publicists who are citizens of states which are richest in colonies who are most eager to demonstrate the unimportance of colonial possessions. Spokesmen for the “have-not” peoples have often been guilty of exaggeration in their claims. But in a world of rampant economic nationalism and protectionism the proletarian nation is at a disadvantage compared with its well-to-do brother.

Two concrete illustrations will help to show how Japan is handicapped in the economic race with countries which, like Great Britain and France, possess large colonial empires, or which, like America and the Soviet Union, are notably rich in internal resources.

Japan needs rubber. The natives of Malaya need cheap textiles. But the process of normal exchange is upset when the British Government, quite naturally concerned by the plight of the Lancashire textile industry, imposes a quota which sharply reduces Japanese sales of textiles in Malaya.

The remarkable growth of the paper and rayon industries is making heavy inroads on Japan’s reserves of timber. A time may come in the not very distant future when timber imports from Eastern Siberia will be desired. But the Soviet Union, with its tightly closed economic system and its state monopoly of foreign trade, will quite possibly refuse to sell this timber to Japan, if it wishes to payoff some political grudges, or may refuse to accept the exports which Japan can offer in exchange.

Of course it is theoretically possible for Japan to pay for Malayan rubber, or Siberian timber, or any other commodity which it may need, out of the receipts of its sales in other markets. But with trade restrictions established and multiplying all over the world, it is not easy to convince the Japanese that physical possession of essential raw materials is a matter of indifference. There is a strong temptation to cast the samurai sword into the mercantile scales that seem unfairly weighted against Japan.

The restless Japanese feeling of a need for expansion, for outlets, is intensified by the necessity of providing work and food for the half million people of working age who come on the labor market every year. Among the larger countries of the world Japan is second only to the Soviet Union in the rate of growth of its population. Between 1930 and 1935 the number of inhabitants of Japan proper (Japan proper consists of the four islands, Honshu, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Hokkaido, with a number of smaller islands scattered along their coasts. The Japanese Empire also includes Formosa, Korea, and Southern Sakhalin. The population of the empire is approximately 97,000,000.) increased from 64,450,005 to 69,254,148. Births exceeded deaths in 1935 by more than 1,000,000.

With an area slightly less than that of California, Japan proper must support about twelve times the population of California. Japan’s problem is made more difficult by the mountainous character of the country. Only 15.6 per cent of the area of Japan proper is rated as arable land. While the density of population in relation to total area is greater in Great Britain, Germany, Belgium, and the Netherlands, density in relation to arable land works out much less favorably to Japan, as the percentage of cultivated area is 43.7 in Germany, 40.2 in Belgium, 24.2 in Great Britain, and 27.8 in the Netherlands.