Osaka _Mainichi_, the Tokio _Jiji_ and the Tokio _Yorodzu_ take the
nation to task for attempting to compete with America’s navy. They
cry out against the expansionists’ slogan of “Japan’s supremacy on
the Pacific”. Here is the _Yorodzu’s_ plaint against the heavy taxes
involved: “Go to the hamlets and villages, and you find the sons of our
soil wearing the sad and worn appearance of the ‘man with the hoe’.
Ask the shopkeepers and merchants, and they tell you that they are at
a loss to know how to make ends meet. So do small manufacturers and
men of moderate salaries, and in fact all who come under the general
term of the middle class. Why? What else but that their taxes are too
heavy, and because the price of commodities has risen too high since
the war? The war has increased the wealth only of the contractors,
speculators, and a small group of millionaires, which accounts for the
sudden rise of the prices of the necessaries of life. Thus the chasm
between the poor and the rich is widening every day. What will become
of the country if the government does not bend all its energies to
the recuperation of our national strength, which has been overtaxed
during and since the late war? The only course which the government
should follow at this critical moment is to curtail all the unnecessary
expenses of administration, most of all, those of the army and navy.”
This succinctly covers what volumes could not cover better. The average
Japanese income is twenty-three dollars gold a year, out of which
one-fifth goes to taxes.
Freight rates and tariffs are in some places as powerful as battleships
and battalions in keeping out the commerce of a rival. When Japan and
Russia rejected America’s proposition for an international control
of Manchurian railways, so that the commerce of all nations would
pay the same duty and receive the same car supply in Manchuria,
Japan and Russia made a secret treaty regarding Manchuria on July 4,
1910, and another agreement in 1912. Among other points, it covered
interchange rates. The Russian railways can by high rates keep out
competitive Japanese goods, and the Japanese railways can retaliate.
On non-competitive goods needed for local consumption, low through
rates are accorded, Japan favoring the famous Harbin flour, timber,
kaoliang spirits from the Harbin distilleries, and Amur salmon and
fish. Russia accords low rates northward to Japanese (i. e., Fushun
and Yentai) coal, cement, fresh food, etc. On export competitive
soybeans, for instance, by low rates Japan tries to coax Russian
shipments southward via Dairen, and Russia makes a similar effort to
route Japanese-controlled beans via Vladivostok, but should a Russian
shipper try to send ten miles in the direction of Japanese-owned Dairen
he would find the soy rate higher than all the five hundred miles to
Vladivostok.
By indirect methods, such as loans at low interest, rebated godown
charges, rebated rates, and what not (for where there’s a will there’s
a way) Japan can militate against the competition of American and
British cottons, woolens, machinery, etc., in Manchuria. When the
Chinese junks on the Liao River compete in the open season for the
soy-bean traffic for Newchwang, the Japanese railways quote as low
a rate as five mills per ton mile to Dalny, as compared with the
lowest rate in America of eight mills. Japan is a David when she
goes out to slay! Japan was the whole cause of the denial by China
of an American-financed and constructed railway from Chin Wang Tao
through Manchuria northward to Aigun. Yet she says she doesn’t mean
to stay in Manchuria! She did not broad-gage Kuroki’s difficult
Antung-Mukden railway recently in such a permanent way as to suggest
that she ever intended to retire or sell out, “treaties and conventions
notwithstanding,” to use the apt phrase of the London _Times_. Though
America would under no circumstances accept a square foot of land in
China or Manchuria, except on lease in an international municipal
settlement, America must protect her growing and potential trade in
Manchuria and in China, and that trade will always be withstood in one
way or another by Japan. There is nothing now to go to war about, but
there will always be a good deal to argue about, and Japan, as well
as the Manchus, knows a dozen ways of presenting a smiling evasion.
Have you ever proposed a difficult question to a Japanese at a curio
auction, and watched his face! We have all voted that he was a success
in making language hide thought; a born diplomat.
The Japanese government debt outstanding is £300,000,000, as compared
with China’s debt of £93,000,000, and Japan’s industrials have borrowed
privately abroad an added £60,000,000.
Japan’s Debt Annual
in £. Interest. Due.
4% sterling £10,000,000
4½% sterling 29,750,000
4½% second series 29,750,000
4% 1905 Russia
war 25,000,000 After 1921
5% 1906 Russia
war, railways,
ships, Manchuria,
Korea, Formosa,
Saghalien,
etc. 183,000,000
5% 1907 11,500,000 After 1922
4% 1910 11,000,000 After 1920
------------
Total Japan’s debt £300,000,000 £12,000,000
Total China’s debt 93,000,000 4,642,000
Total India’s debt 170,000,000
Great as is Japan’s debt, she can make heavy payments on it because
she owns her railways, and can allot the railway surplus to the
diminishing of the debt, which China and India can also do because of
the nationalization of most of the railways.
In April, 1912, the Lodge Resolution in the American Senate brought
out the fact that a Japanese trans-Pacific steamship company, acting
doubtless on behalf of the Japan forward party, had long been
endeavoring to obtain from Mexico a strategic base on Magdalena Bay,
which could, as a coaling station, threaten the whole Pacific coast.
How would Japan like it if America obtained a coaling station in
Manchuria? She and Russia compelled China to refuse America a railway
franchise in Pechili in 1910.
What is the comparative strength of the American and Japanese
navies? The German specialist, Count von Reventlow, and the American,
Homer Lea, who accompanied Sun Yat Sen to China as military adviser,
though he is not a military man, have in several books prophesied
that Japan will and can defeat America. Japan has four dreadnoughts,
the _Settsu_, _Kawachi_, _Aki_ and _Satsuma_, completed since the
Russia War, but they have only half the gun-power of the ten American
superdreadnoughts. Japan has eight battleships of the 15,000-ton
_Mikasa_ type, including the salvaged and repaired Russian ships,
against America’s thirty battleships of the first class. America can
therefore patrol the Pacific from a Philippine base as soon as she has
docks enough, and if America and Britain ever approximate on world
questions, the British navy can be drawn to the Atlantic and waters
west of Ceylon. Two things are sure: first, that America and Britain
will never fight each other; and second, that Britain’s and America’s
commercial and political policies in the East are identical in destiny.
As long as America maintains a two-power standard on the Pacific,
that is, two ships to one of Japan’s she need fear no opposition
from Japan, and Japan has certainly nothing to fear from America,
as China ceaselessly praises the altruistic and non-land-grabbing
policy of America over the world. It is true that Japan has an almost
irresistible army, but sea power dictates, as Admiral Mahan’s brilliant
books show. Japan whipped Russia because she controlled the sea. If
America controls the Pacific, the Japanese army could do nothing in
Korea or Manchuria.
Now, as to Russia, the navies of America and Britain pounding on the
Baltic door, if necessary, as a last resort, could make Russia behave
in Manchuria; but if this did not prove wholly effective, a reformed
Chinese army, trained by American and British officers, could in time
do to the Russian battalions that were left what Oyama’s, Nogi’s and
Kuroki’s regiments did. China should not yet be called upon to waste
her money on a navy, as she has no interests for a century beyond the
great countries of Turkestan, Mongolia and Manchuria, which America and
Britain, with their navies, desire to enable her to retain. Britain and
America should have a persistent, consistent policy, and there will be
no naval war, the whole world over; and Germany can reduce her navy
and army charges, which are a curse to her people. If Germany wants
to do a noble work, let her use her army to influence parliamentary
and sociological reforms in tyrannical Russia, where men are blighted
by the curses of opinion-paralyzing detectivism and oligarchism. If a
consistent, persistent policy is maintained there need no more be an
Anglo-German feud on the Atlantic than an American-Japanese feud on the
Pacific.
England needs a two-power navy because she has Africa, India and
Atlantic Canada to defend. America needs a two-power Pacific navy
because she has, as a foster mother of civilization, to help defend
Australia, South America, the Philippines, Pacific Canada and
republican China. Looked upon in this way, a navy becomes a policeman,
and not a swashbuckler. Money is going to be invested to develop all
these countries, and property should be protected, not looted. Those
nations which have the most efficient naval police, and the most
altruistic policies, are the nations which should patrol, and they are
America, Britain and possibly Germany, if the last nation advances, as
it seems now to be doing, in parliamentarism to real representation.
America and Lloyd George’s Britain alone are essentially democracies,
and therefore qualify in international altruism. With Britain’s control
of the Suez Canal, and America’s ownership of the Panama Canal,
efficiency is assured in these two nations effectively standing by
to protect political progress and world commerce on a fuller and
freer basis than it has ever been. In amenability and high mechanical
intelligence, Britain, America and Germany alone have qualified in the
management of navies.
Japan and America will not fight on the Pacific, as Count von Reventlow
and Homer Lea prophesy, but America will overbuild Japan instead. Japan
has been more carefully reading the new lesson taught by America and
Britain that there must be no absorption of old China, and she is now
thinking of a possible new rôle, as the interpreter of the East to the
West, and the West to the East. The head of the First Imperial College,
Doctor Nitobe, the coiner of “Bushido”, is foremost in propagating this
idea. Japanese school-teachers are most numerous in Chinese government
schools, especially as teachers of English, in learning which, however,
they are not half so expert as the Chinese themselves. Doctor Nitobe is
a Christian.
At the time of the Japanese War, Professor Nitobe, then with the Tokio
University, wrote a fanciful book on the theme, _Bushido_ (Japanese
pronunciation of “Wu Shih Tao”--way of warrior). It was quite on the
style of Lafcadio Hearn’s apotheosis of the Japanese. Its effect in
Japan was to produce some hysteria and not a little conceit. Foreigners
were led to believe that the Japanese must be right because they were
reckless. The Japanese bureaucracy of the Choshiu, Satsuma and other
clans used the fetish to entrench themselves. No one can say that
Japan has real representative government. Her government is exactly
the government that Russia has. Her Diet is no more representative
than is the Duma. The ministry decides on the budget, and it is put
through by steam-roller when necessary, and ready-made opinion is
given to the press. There is no such thing as the British parliamentary
system of the commons absolutely controlling supply bills, or the
American principle of the Lower House being finally supreme. The
extensive press bureau which was established to popularize the Japan
side of the Japan-Russia War, encouraged hara-kiri and telegraphed
over the world in exaggerated terms the details of every hysterical
and self-advertising suicide. For instance, if the warriors could not
take the fort, instead of trying again, they were to march up and blow
their brains out before the moving-picture film, so to speak, leaving
a letter for the Mikado as follows: “We could not do what you asked
us; it is our fault. Therefore in shame we hara-kiri. Bushido! Banzai,
etc.” This thing is being kept up to a degree, and as long as it is
encouraged by the bureaucracy, constitutional government in Japan will
be postponed, the emperor being worshiped in his old office of pope of
Kioto instead of constitutional emperor at Tokio.
I quote the following of many press despatches which constantly appear
in the Japanese and world press: “To give his life as an atonement
because the emperor of Japan had to spend an hour in a common
waiting-room, Moji Shijiro Shimidzu, a trainmaster, threw himself under
a train. Shimidzu had been in charge of arrangements for a journey
the emperor made from Kyushu, after witnessing the army maneuvers.
The imperial train was delayed by a derailment at a misplaced switch.
Shimidzu left a letter saying that he considered it his duty to pay for
the emperor’s embarrassment with his life.” The spectacular suicide
of the immortal captor of Port Arthur, General Nogi, and his wife at
the time of the funeral of the Mikado Mutsuhito on September 13, 1912,
comes under the same category of godless savagery forbidden mankind by
the Sixth Commandment of Sinai. It is time for Japan to cease posing
through her press bureau. We all admire her for many sane and grand
things done, and to tell the truth, we admire the Japanese people more
than their present system of a privileged government where only five
millions out of sixty millions enjoy the franchise. It is a government
of the people, but not sufficiently a government for the people, and
certainly not a government by all the people, all of which conditions
Lincoln said should obtain if liberty was to be assured. That is the
aim of the whole world, and it has been accomplished now in England,
America, France, China, Portugal and Switzerland. The Shimidzus, who
commit suicide, do not exhibit patriotism but hysterical conceit,
and the thoroughly organized Japanese press bureau, and the Choshiu,
Satsuma, and other privileged clans, in their own best interests,
should discourage the nonsense; and instead of elevating the man as
a god in the Shinto shrine, they should exhibit him in the foyer of
fools. Christianity teaches that there is only one being for whom we
should give our lives, and that anything else is idolatry. It is not
the emperor or the president whom we are to serve, but the emperor’s
men and women; the president’s men and women; that is, the state, and
a real emperor and a real president must, too, serve the state, which
is all the people. Such is the modern logic Japan should teach her
people, and not the hysteria of Bushido. Japan is not ignorant of her
disabilities, and each of the Seiyukei, Kokuminto and Yushinkai parties
are endeavoring to extend the educational system which Guido Verbeck
fashioned for the favored Satsuma, Choshiu, Fujiwara, Gen, Tosa, Hizen,
Kago and other clans of five millions, to the forty-eight millions of
agriculturalists, miners, factorymen and fishermen, and twelve million
Koreans and Formosans. Success to Japan’s educational extension,
is America’s and Britain’s hearty wish, for it “will calm a sea of
troubles”.
Japan has been the first nation in the world to attack the land
taxation question, and Germany and Britain have followed recently,
a long way off, however, and America will probably also follow
the example. Until recently the large estates held by barons and
corporations have been taxed on the old feudal medieval system of an
infinitesimal valuation, while the small holder has been taxed on the
full selling value. This has now been changed, and large owners in
Japan can not hold at little cost to await unearned increment. They
must work the land or sell it. Until this system is adopted the poor of
the nations will be decapitalized by tariff, food, clothing, building
material, head, war, permit, excise, export, subsidy, educational and
other high taxes. Land values are about one-tenth what they are in
America, and the land tax is about eight per cent. on selling value. As
in China under the Manchus, land in Japan is nominally the property of
the emperor. Perpetual leases can only be owned outright by Japanese
subjects, or by a company which is incorporated only in Japan. A
foreigner in Japan can not own land, but his Japanese incorporated
company can, as the land would then be at Japan’s command, Japan having
no extraterritoriality exemption law favoring the foreigner, as has
China, in civil and criminal matters.
As is well known, the police are an arm of the central government
and not of the municipality, which savors of despotism and Russia’s
example. There is therefore no really free press in Japan, for state
trials may not be reported or commented on. The police exercise a
censorship of news under their Marunouchi Club of Tokio. There could
be no Roosevelts, Wilsons, Bryans and Lloyd Georges in Japan as in
America and England!
They have their money trust question in Japan, for while there are
thousands of small gathering banks, they all deposit in the trust
banks, which thus control the use of “other people’s money”, i. e.,
credit. These large banks, whose presidents confer in the meetings
of the “Eel Society”, are the Bank of Japan, Yokohama Specie Bank,
Hypothec Bank, Japan Credit Mobilier, Hokkaido Colonial Bank, Bank of
Formosa, Bank of Korea, and Mitsui’s Bank.
Japan must have its Gifford Pinchot somewhere. She has taken quick
action against states’ rights when conservation was endangered. It
was found that the provinces were selling water-power concessions to
speculators and dummies of the monopolies. The central government in
January, 1911, immediately suspended all provincial and colonial grants
until a national survey could be made, and applicants looked into. It
is proposed to harness several million horsepower of waterfalls on the
Switzerland, and not the Niagara plan (so as not to mar the scenery),
which, with cheap labor, will be a great asset of industrial Japan.
[Illustration: CHINESE REPUBLIC]
That Japan has taken up officially the correction of complaints which
have been made in scores of books and hundreds of magazines on her
trickiness and lack of commercial honor is shown in the following
article by Minister of Commerce Oura, in the _Jitsugyo no Nihon_
(Industrial Japan), written after his world tour, in which he praises
the sturdy honesty of old free-trade England. “I could not help
regretting to find that in commercial morality Japan was too young and
weak to be classed among the world’s foremost countries. Everywhere I
went I heard denunciations of and complaints against Japan. Japanese
business men not being particular about commercial morality,
people could not carry on business with our merchants with confidence.
I soon felt ashamed on reflecting upon the fact that we Japanese had
defects, subject to attacks and complaints in the matter of commercial
morality. Our merchandise can not pass the customs authorities on a
mere invoice, but is subjected to a rigorous examination. British
merchandise is always more substantial than is advertised. In short,
British-made goods never fail to justify their advertised description.
Quite the opposite is the case with Japanese goods. Complaints are
raised against Japanese manufactures that they are not up to sample.
It is usual, for instance, for a layer of larger-sized fruit to be
arranged on top of the box. Instances of overcharging, and tricky
inferior imitations of standard goods are common, and damage our
reputation.” Confession and contrition are the parents of reform, and
Japan is waking up.
Japan worked her mines in 1911 to the following extent: Coal,
16,000,000 tons, value, $30,000,000; copper, 120,000,000 pounds,
value $15,000,000; pig iron, 60,000 tons, value, $1,500,000 (Kamishi
and Sennin mines); zinc ore, 22,000 pounds, value, $300,000; lead,
8,000,000 pounds, value, $250,000. The coal came from Japan mines only,
and does not include the great product of the Fushun and Yentai mines
in Manchuria. The copper was mined principally at the Kune, Kosaka,
Ashio and Besshi mines at a cost of nine cents, which is lower than
the American cost. Japan is exhausting the ore in the islands, and is,
therefore, looking to rich Korea and China for her supply of this war
and industrial necessity. Her need of copper is another incentive to
expand politically.
Japan is building a railway along the western length of the main
island, and will need $18,000,000 of railway equipment for it. She
will probably go abroad for half of this. Small as Japan is, this
railway will open up scenic and productive districts and add vastly to
the riches and strategic resources of the country.
The method by which Japan built the Kobe harbor piers out into deep
water was most modern. Cement boats, or caissons, one hundred and
nineteen feet long, thirty-five feet high and thirty-four feet wide
were built on a floating dock (planned by a Westminster, England,
concern) at the shore. They were then conveyed to sea, the dock
being sunk from under the cement boat. This latter was floated into
position, and gradually sunk with cement, rubble and sand in the
comparatively cheap but massive piers. A tonnage of 135,000 tons can
be warped alongside the dredged sea walls at one time. It is not so
long ago that everything had to be lightered out to the steamers in
the wind-swept roadstead of Kobe, and many days were lost waiting for
smooth water. The writer recalls being held at Kobe for eighteen hours
during a typhonic blow because no launch or sanpan could bring off
the passengers who had gone ashore during a calm. There are now no
delays. There are power-driven cranes and travelers, godowns, and every
facility for the quick handling of cargo. As at Montreal, Hamburg,
Liverpool, Hongkong, etc., the government directly or indirectly
assists, advances, or guarantees in securing the necessary harbor
works, railway connection and dock machinery at Kobe. Kobe is Japan’s
great import harbor, as Yokohama is her export harbor. Tokio is to be
an export harbor, as a long canal for 10,000-ton ships is now being
dredged to Yokohama Bay.
Japan’s petroleum is found in the Echigo district, straight across
Hondo Island from Tokio. The oil is excellent for illuminating and
lubricating, and the industry, which is highly protected, employs 3,300
people, and pays twenty-five per cent. to the Nippon Oil Company. Fuel
oils and crude oils are brought from Sumatra, America and Mexico.
Much complaint was heard in England when the Grimsby steam trawlers,
owned by syndicates, drove the small owner and the hardy fisherman from
the seas, affecting the recruiting of the navy, as well as driving a
hardy independent class into a condition of economical and political
servitude. Japan has copied this unfortunate example, and steam
trawlers have been introduced in her fishing waters. The government
promises to control it before it seriously affects recruiting for the
navy.
The Japanese have gone into shirt-making, the duty on raw material
being rebated when the shirts are exported. Foreign designs are copied.
The men receive nine dollars a month and the women six dollars. The
hours are nine and one-half a day. The companies, like many of the
Japanese industrials, grant a few holidays, and provide theatrical
entertainments, moving-picture shows, baths and tea, none of which is
costly, but seem to keep the workers from realizing that their wages
should be three times what they are, even in Japan, for taxes amount to
one-third of the income.
Winter clothing for the masses in general, and service clothing for
the navy, army, artisans, etc., under modern conditions of hard wear,
has become a stern problem in both Japan and China. Silk will not
do. Cotton will not answer in this field. Wool has been adopted, and
the gorgeous colors and texture of the Orient begin to vanish before
the requirements of a practical age. Two of the largest woolen mills
in Japan are the Mousseline (Boshuku) Weaving Company, at Osaka, and
the Japan Woolen Company, at Kobe. Eighty per cent. of the total area
of rocky Japan is not under cultivation, being ruined with tough
bamboo grass, which seems impossible to eradicate, and which destroys
the delicate mouths and throats of sheep. Japan has, therefore, to
import her wool from Mongolia, Manchuria, England, France, Germany and
Australia. Not having a full supply of yarn mills, she imports yarn
also from England, France and Germany. Goat’s and camel’s hair is also
imported from South America and Mongolia.