THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1909. JAPANESE EMIGRATION POLICY.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXII, Issue 3115, 15 February 1909, Page 4

THE Wairarapa Age MORNING DAILY MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 1909. JAPANESE EMIGRATION POLICY.

The speech delivered recently ill the Japanese Diet by Count Komura (Japanese Minister for Foreirn Affairs) in regard to Japan's emigration policy, is significant in more respects than one. Count Komura declared that Japan was relying upon the sense of justice among the American people regarding the proposed anti-Japanese legislation, and stated that the Japanese should concentrate in the Far East. Tho Government was, he said, enforcing the restriction of emigration to Canada and the United States of America. He further stated that I

Japan's good relations w*ith all the J Powers in alliance With Britain., i stood on aft enduring foundation, j The speech was remarkable as picturing th.3 Japanese Government, which represents a triumph of experimental constitutionalism that stands in bold contrast to the shaky institutions of Russia, Persia, and other innovators in that field, assuring the Legislature of good external relations as confidently as the British Government might assure its Parliament. From the Australasian, and perhaps from an inter national standpoint, however, the outstanding feature of Count Komura's speech ' 3 h> s argument that Japan should concentrate on the Far ijJast, enforcing restrictions upun emigration to the United States and Canada. The instant effect of such a policy would be to hush appi-e----nensions and protests in both those countries, on whose western coasts people have heard so much of the probabilities of Asiatic invasion tl at both in British Columbia and California they have authorised extreme preventive measures within the last few weeks. If they could be assured that all such danger from Japan was past, and if the Japanese Government could enforce its undertaking upon its people, the peace of the Pacific would*be more a reality than it has been for many years, and the world would be relieved by the thought that Japan was turning her expansive energies in a safe direction. This Japan might do, too, with benefit to her spreading nationality, for there is plenty of room in her immediate vicinity, and it is politically necessary that she should strengthen herself in Manchuria against the very probable effort of Russia to retrieve her losses of influence and territory there; But whether the Japanese Government* however well-inten-tioried, could so order things, is questionable. Governments can propose, but peoples dispose, and as the Japanese progress along the lines of Western civilisation they will be more and more likely to hanker after the new countries where conditions are so much more attractive than in their own.