JAPAN: Greatest Shakedown

Every now & then high Japanese Army officers explode with the statement that “our peasantry are so poor they are eating grass!” In some parts of Japan at some seasons this is true, but in all parts of Japan the Army is recruited chiefly from among the peasantry and the Army takes care of its own. Last week Army pressure, which has shaken enormous “gifts” for peasant relief out of the wealthy families of Japan, shook probably the biggest philanthropic plum in Japanese history out of the Empire’s richest family, the stupendous banking, industrial and trading House of Mitsui which in normal times owns or has under charter a trading fleet as large as the entire mercantile marine of France and has been vastly rich since Poet William Shakespeare’s time.

Also a poet, as well as a water-colorist and singer of old war songs, is the Senior Baron Hachiroemon, 14th Baron Mitsui and Head of the House. Until last year he left as many details as possible to the gentle, astute old man who was called “the Prime Minister of the Mitsui Empire,” Baron Dr. Takuma Dan. Patriots assassinated Dr. Dan (TIME, March 14. 1932), partly because he was supposed to have made too much money for the Mitsuis by selling Japan’s yen short before it was taken off gold. Ever since Mitsui short-selling was exposed the various young patriots tried in Japan for assassinating Pacifist Premier Ki Inukai (TIME. Aug. 7, et seq.) have interlarded their pleadings in court with passionate, often random denunciation of “the traitorous Mitsui!” As a result no successor to Dr. Dan, no Mitsui candidate for assassination, has been appointed. His work is now done by a “Council of Three” Mitsui minions (who hate, fear and dodge photographers) : domineering, onetime newspaperman Seihin Ikeda; softspoken, old-fogyish Nagabumi Ariga; diplomatic, democratic Kikusaburo Fukui. It was on this Council’s advice that the Senior Baron last week signed away 30,000,000 yen,† created by a squiggle of his august pen a Mitsui Foundation “to relieve distress among farmers and fishermen.” Though Tokyo editors hailed this “largest private benefaction in the history of Japan,” they made bold to comment that the House of Mitsui has been “a shining target for resentment against excessive capitalist profits.” In Army circles satisfaction was tinged with comment that “the Mitsui should have given more!” Their gift last week was ten times as great as the sum they gave last year “for direct unemployment relief” after the assassination of Dr. Dan. To please the Army, the House of Mitsui and their competitors the House of Mitsubishi also subscribed a “loan” of 20,000,000 yen to the puppet Government of Manchukuo. Even such cooperation, swaggering Japanese officers declare, is “less than the duty of such profiteers.”

†Equivalent to only $8,700,000 at current exchange.