INTERNATIONAL: Japan Around the World

INTERNATIONAL

Japan Around the World

Last week Japan was shaken by the greatest natural disaster since the Tokyo earthquake and fire of 1923. But the holocaust at Hakodate failed to divert the Japanese Foreign Office, even temporarily, from its international maneuvers on half a dozen different fronts.

Most important, for the first time in two years a U. S. Secretary of State and a Foreign Minister of Japan exchanged direct communications on the subject of improving relations between the two nations. The text of both these diplomatic nosegays, sent month ago but published only last week, said precious little at great length, but did contain one significant sentence each. Wrote Foreign Minister Koki Hirota:

‘I can state with all emphasis at my command that the Japanese nation makes it a basic principle to collaborate in peace and harmony with all nations, and has no intention whatever to provoke and make trouble with any other power.”

Replied Secretary Cordell Hull:

“I receive this statement with special gratification, and I am glad to take this opportunity to state categorically that the United States on its part has no desire to create any issues and no intention to initiate any conflict in its relations with other countries.”

These sentences were like empty bottles into which observers could pour any meaning they chose. Most wiseacres interpreted them as a declaration by Japan that she was entertaining no thought of war with Soviet Russia, a hint by the U. S. that the State Department no longer maintains an attitude of outraged morality on Japanese occupation of Manchukuo.

Not the first exchange of greetings but the secret conversations to ensue are what will be important to Japanese-U. S. relations. A startling forecast of what these conversations may be came all the way from London last week. There United Press Correspondent Frederick Kuh announced that he had learned from “a most reliable source” that it was believed Japan would offer to make no move to increase its present naval ratio and would officially recognize the neutrality of the Philippines if and when freed by the U. S. in return for:

1) Revision of the U. S. ban on Japanese immigration. (Such revision would kindle California into political flame hotter than any which burned last week at Hakodate.)

2 Recognition of Manchukuo.

3) Abandonment of U. S. naval and air bases in the Philippines at an early date. (Abandonment of military posts there within ten to twelve years is provided in the independence bill signed last week by President Roosevelt.)

London added that these demands would all be denied at once in Tokyo and Washington. They were.

¶ In Washington the Japanese Embassy was informed by the State Department on another point last week. Recently the Japanese Foreign Office heard that on the minuscule island of Guam, Pacific coaling station for the U. S. Navy. a Japanese citizen had been forced to give up his property. The inquiry was shuffled from the State to the Navy Department where Secretary Swanson explained that under a law passed in 1918. no foreigners may own real estate in Guam. The Japanese had just transferred his property to his daughter-in-law, a U. S. citizen, and now everybody was happy. ¶ Foreign Minister Hirota next turned his attention to Brazil. Japanese emigrants have been flocking to Brazil in late years. More than 150,000 of them are settled there on little farms, growing rice and mulberry trees, tapping rubber, raising coffee. In 1933, 23,152 entered the country. A bill is now before the Brazilian Congress to amend the Constitution, limiting annual Japanese immigration to 2% of the present Japanese population. Foreign Minister Hirota wrote thus to Acting Foreign Minister Felix de Barros Cavalcanti de Lacerda:

“If the Brazilian government . . . discriminates against Japanese immigrants, it will have a serious bearing and, at the same time, cast a dark shadow upon the friendly relations between Brazil and Japan.”

¶ Japanese immigrants were still welcome in Paraguay last week. A shipload of them arrived in Asunsion on their way to dig cotton plantations out of the forests of Eastern Paraguay not far from a similar settlement of White Russians. The Paraguayan Government demanded only one thing: Should the present tide in the Chaco war turn and Bolivia start to invade Paraguayan territory, the new immigrants must serve in the army. ¶ Next problem was Russia and the Kamchatka fishing leases (TIME, March 5). Russia had refused to renew the Japanese leases because she felt that with the yen off gold they no longer represented a fair value. From Moscow last week went a new offer. Russia would accept the present Japanese bids provided Japan will reopen the entire matter before next year’s auction. This Minister Hirota refused to do, claiming that 282 of the disputed fishing grounds were already definitely leased until 1936. It was not the money, said Koki Hirota, it was the principle of the thing.