CHAPTER II

JAPAN: HER PROBLEMS AND CLAIMS

JAPAN's entrance into the life of the world and acceptance of the civilization of the West has not been to her an unmixed blessing. In important respects her problems have become more intense. Her modern system of universal education giving world outlook, ideals, and ambitions to millions of her young men and women; her extraordinary industrial development and international trade bringing wealth and a higher scale of life to millions, but also bringing grinding toil, poverty, disease, and wretchedness to other millions; her new political system giving responsibility for national as well as for local government and causing the entire nation to consider and decide upon international relations and policies; her new ideals as to the value and rights of the individual begetting throughout the nation a spirit of insistence on rights and a forgetting of the importance of service and the necessity of duty; her modern hygiene and her medical and surgical efficiency giving remarkable success in battling with epidemics no less than with the regular diseases, and making possible a lower death-rate and a longer average of life-these many blessings have brought also many new problems.

The full discussion of these problems, however, is no part of our plan. We need to consider them only so far as they throw light on the character of the policy which America should adopt in her dealings with Japan.

Japan's old policy kept her people at home, almost stationary in numbers and relatively docile and contented. Her new policy opens their eyes to the great world, gives them efficiency in dealing with it, multiplies her millions and fires them with ambition both personal and national. Mighty economic and psychological forces are at work sweeping the entire nation along in its course and making certain for Japan an important rôle in international affairs.

A few concrete facts may help Americans to understand the situation better, and to sympathize more truly with the people as they face their modern problems.

Japan proper has an area of 147,000 square miles (California has 158,000), of which one-sixth, or about 15,000,000 acres, is under cultivation. Many States have more cultivated land than has Japan (Kansas has 30,000,000; Nebraska, 24,000,000; Indiana, 17,000,000; New York, 14,000,000; Ohio, 19,000,000). The average farm in Japan is two and a half acres, a half-acre to each individual on the farm, and a quarter-acre to each inhabitant of the nation.

Tenants pay for farm rentals 57 per cent of their rice, and 44 per cent of other crops. Taxes consume

16 per cent of the total yield of the farms. Farmer debts amount to $475,000,000, paying interest rates from 7 per cent to 20 per cent. The total private income of Japanese is taxed at from 20 to 30 per cent.

The population of Japan proper is nearly 55,000,000, growing yearly by about 700,000. (Great Britain has 46,000,000; Canada, 8,000,000; Australia, 6,000,000; and New Zealand, 1,100,000; total, about 60,000,000.)

With the exception of copper, Japan is poor in mineral resources. While the coal production of the United States was 458,000,000 tons in 1916, that of Japan was 22,000,000 tons, only enough to supply the United States Steel Corporation for eight months. Japan has no iron to speak of, and no cotton. She sells large quantities of her high-grade rice to foreign lands and imports low-grade rice for herself from China.

"It has often been pointed out that the population of Japan is not so dense as in Belgium or England. But Belgium and England are almost wholly arable; Japan is almost wholly mountainous. If we eliminate from the figures of area the unproductive lands of each country, the population per square mile works out approximately: England, 466; Belgium, 702; Japan, 2,688. A population of 2,688 on every square mile of arable land-less than a quarter of an acre of land for each person! There is more good land in mountainous Kentucky than in all Japan." 1

1 "Japan and America," by Carl Crow, p. 11.

Japan's problem is how adequately to feed, clothe, house, and educate her multiplying millions and give them that larger, richer life of the modern world for which their intelligence, industry, education, ambitions, and world outlook are fitting them.

Were Americans under the physical and economic conditions of the Japanese sketched above, would they not regard their load and their problems as staggering? And would they not feel compelled to avail themselves of every possible opportunity for trade, emigration, and legitimate territorial expansion? And with their history and intrinsic ability, would they not earnestly ask of the nations of the world a square deal, equal treatment, and honorable recognition?

If America were in Japan's place as to population, food-supplies, and natural resources, what would she

do?

The mutual impact of the expanding life of both Japan and the United States comes at three points, and requires some kind of adjustment of policies, if these two powerful, ambitious, and able nations are to live together as good neighbors.

These three points of impact as they have emerged historically, relate to matters of Japanese immigration into the United States, to the treatment of Japanese in the United States, and to the respective policies of the two nations in China. With reference to the third point we present no discussion in this

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volume, as it has already been discussed rather carefully in "America and the Orient," and is not immediately connected with the purpose of the present volume.

Nor shall we discuss the general features of Japanese immigration to California, the conditions there, the wrongs they have done and also suffered, and the improvement in the general situation that is now beginning to take place. These more general aspects of Japanese immigration have been considered at some length in the earlier chapters of "The American Japanese Problem."2

In this chapter I wish to emphasize the difference between the view-points of the Japanese and American Governments, and also of their respective peoples in regard to the "gentlemen's agreement." In general it may be said that both governments are well satisfied with its nature and its results while the peoples are not satisfied.

The government of the United States sees that without any legislation on our part, Japan by her own restrictive policy in regard to the issuing of passports, beginning in 1908, has practically stopped the coming of new Japanese labor immigration to the United States. The administration of the Chinese

1 "America and the Orient," Sidney L. Gulick (Missionary Education Movement, New York, 1916).

2 "The American Japanese Problem," Sidney L. Gulick (Charles Scribner's Sons, New York, 1914).

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