INDUSTRIOUS JAPAN.

Taranaki Daily News, 5 April 1919, Page 7

INDUSTRIOUS JAPAN.

AMAZING DEVELOPMENT. ~ COMMERCIAL VIRILITY. . "Japan occupies a position of dominating influence in the East, which, sooner or later, is bound to affect our own life/' said the Bev. P. J. Bazeley, general secretary of the Church Missionary Society of Australia, on his return to Sydney from a six months' visit to the East. "Viewing things and events there as an Australian, I must confess that I had an eye-opener. We are destined to know much more of Japan before we grow many years older." Mr Bazelcy was tremendously impressed by what he saw in Japan, as well as in China and India, where events are also moving rapidly The whole of the East was alive, and there were movements everywhere that were causing concern to those who best understood their significance- Japan occupied a dominating influence, not only commercially, but politically An outsider would hav<» difficulty in gauging what her real foreign policy was, for she was not a ■nation that was given to talk. In Formosa Japan had established strong monopolies, and in China also, owing to the bankruptcy of the Pekin authorities, she had secured concessions which, iudging from the reports of the Peaca Conference, she was evidently anxious to hold against all comers, Manchester of the EastThe country had made amazing strides industrially in recent years, and especially since the war, and was now a hive of industry. In 1017 1500 new factories were licensed in Tokio alone. Osaka, a city of a million and a-half people, was the Manchester of the Orient. In practically every city on the central island, Wherever there was access to tie water-front, factories were going up, not in ones and twos, but by the score. There was hardly an article one could name that the Japanese were not making. Their agents, always on the lookout for new openings, were all over the world, and in'countries like China arid India they were creating a demand for the articles made in Japan. The com[mercial penetration of China and India bv Japanese manufacturers was something to marvel at. In many cases the trade that had been lost toy other nations would never be regained. Japan was capturing markets wholesale. There was to-day, perhaps, no nation so well organised and so intensely patriotic. There was little social unrest; v.o evidences of Bolshevism. There was. no restriction regarding hours of labor; there was no "go-slow." Production seemed to be. the watchword of the nation.

DEMAND FOR FRANCHISE. TVioupjh there was this great prosperity, Mr Bazeley said he believed Japan would soon he' face to face with a serious dilemma. On the one aide there was the old element, and on the other the new, that was a growing force because of the new ideas that had come about since their increasing contact with other nations. The method of government was purely bureaucratic, and, while education was universal, the franfHuse was not, there 'being no more than 80,000 electors in the great city of Tokio, for example. The people were beginning to clamor for political rights find privileges, and, in the opinion of some observers, would have to be heard in their demands. There would be no Bolshevism, because officialdom and militarism were regarded by the masses an having moral" authority, and the people were too strongly imbued with patriotism to throw their countrv into disorder. 'Nevertheless,, the demand was arising for a more liberal franchise, and before long the Government would have to yield.