JAPAN: Liquidation

Japanese financiers, squatting in conference, pored dubiously last week over an imperial proclamation which seemed likely to affect the whole industrial development of Japan.

The imperial family, it was proclaimed, will proceed gradually to liquidate its holdings of industrial stocks and bonds.

At present Japanese workmen cannot strike if employed by an enterprise in which the Mikado or his family has an interest, for such a strike would be interpreted not only as an affront to the Imperial House but as a defamation of the gods from whom the Mikado is descended. Hence, in disputes between capital and labor, the Emperor has gradually been drawn into the position—undesirable for a modern sovereign—of standing always with the full purse against the empty. Now, by liquidating its holdings, the Imperial House will resume the high impartiality expected of sovereigns.