The Daily News TUESDAY, MAY 8. THE FAMINE IN JAPAN.

Taranaki Daily News, Volume XLVII, Issue 8104, 8 May 1906, Page 2

The Daily News TUESDAY, MAY 8. THE FAMINE IN JAPAN.

.Recent reports from Japan show that the famine in that land is a great deal worse than admitted by the Japanese authorities, who seem to have done their best to keep the [actual state of affairs as dark us possible. The unfortunate country, through the failure of its rice, silk, and other crops, and the cost and drain of the war, appears to be in a particularly deplorable condition. In fact, some writers, who have an intimate knowledge of things, affirm that the famine is the worst ever experienced. The entire country is affected, and in many of the provinces the distress is as awful as it is inconceivable. In Miyagi province, with nearly 900,000 inhabitants, the scarcity of food is such that one-third of the population, according to the report of an investigating committee, is " under sentence of death " —liter ally without enough food to sustain life, unless aid comes from without. Less than 12 per cent, of the averago yield of rice has been harvested, and the silk crop's failure has left the people without money to buy imported food. In one county, where tho rieo crop has sunk to nothing, 18,000 out of a population of 90,000 nro said to be actually starving. In Iwate province, where the rice yield is only one-third of the average, more than 100,000 persons are in a similar plight- lu the Fukushima province, with a population of a million, fully G5 per cent, of the rice acreage has produced practically nothing, and 800,000 persons must depend on outside aid if they are to survive the winter. The desperate expedients to which the people are resorting to eke out life show how terrible the situation has become. Many residents of the provinces named are subsisting on fern roots, the bark of trees, and wild nuts, the Government having issued instructions that the people are to be admitted to the forest reserves to find these foods. In some districts the people are living on "briquettes consisting of 75 per cent, chopped straw and 25 per cent, foreign rice." The schools have been closed, so that the children may help in the family labour of finding something to eat. By appropriating money for repairing highways and other public works, the Government is seeking to give its suffering people a chance to earn money to buy imported rice, but next spring, when they must devote their labour to raising new crops, this expedient will fail, and the situation will be still worse. The conditions, which must have been foreseen in Tokio long before the Portsmouth Conference, throw an important light on Japan's reasons for accepting peace. The menace of famine at home was a danger far more serious than any which it had to fear at Russia's hands.