The daily morning journal and courier., 1904-02-16
JAPANls PECULIAR SITUATION.

An Intereresting Description of Condi-
 tions by an American Traveller.
 Japan will be ruined if she fights, and ruined If she doesn't fight" is the lremark often heard in the Orient. I
 had to travel from one end of Japan
 to the other before realized the force
 of the doleful prophecy. The keynote of her present trouble lies in the fact that |she canno. hope to maintain her posi- tion as a power without expansion, and Corea is the natural channel. If
 Russia blocks her there her condition
 will be unbearable.
 Americans living in roomy comfort cannot realize what land famine really is. Japan to-day is subsistiiig 50,00G, ,001 people ofi her island, the total area of which is about 1O2,000,00 acres This is
 over 10000 acres less than the last sur
 veys show in the state of California.
 But this not all. Not more than one acre out of eight can be cultivated. Her
 tillable land lies in narrow fringes |along the shores, and the interior is filled with steep, volcanic mountains, incaple of reclamation, except in very ,
 tween. Even this does not tell the
 story. Japan does not possess great
 material riches, either in soil or mine.
 Her limited area of level land has never been fertilized by glacial action,
 such as that which ground into dust of
 the middle states and New England,
 and made their soil so productive.
 These are no forage plants on the big hillsides, as there are on the Rocky mountains and in Nevade and there is almost no wild life. The farms are no longer than 8 good-sized lot in San
 Francisco, and the cultivation is in tense. The waters are farmed as well
 as the land, and for the fish the people could not get along at all As 1t is, their hours are long, their food scanty, and their comforts few. They deny themselves everything but the barest |necessaries of life, and when crop fails, thousands of them live on grass. It will be impossible for 50,OOo,0oo peo- Iple. or anything like that number, to Hive on those islands when the awaken ] to their true condition, and demand food, clothing and the comforts of life common to the poorest people in Amer |ica and Europe. The great mass of 1 them live in the most abject poverty There is no prosperous middle class, no community of thrifty landowners, as with uss When the feudal system was broken up, about 40 years ago, the lands went to the crown. They are farmed out to-day in tiny lots, and the crops ! are divided with liberal hand in favor lof the x-gatherer There is an astonishing scarcity of general wealth The large investments in livestock which enrich the American farmer are unknown. They do not know what a COW was made for, and have no use for the gentle bos. They know nothing of milk. butter or beef. The Shinto reli- zion forbids meat-eating, and Buddhism opposes taking life in any form. The absence of work animals reduces the farm to the bare land with shanty for shelter and perhaps go-down to store the crop in. No fences, stables, wagons or machinery are required. Sheep can not live in Japan, as the coarse ribbon grass lacerates their tender entrails, and they soon die.
 | Even in the cities there is no furniture in the dewllings, no stoves, or ranges for heating or cooking, no chimneys or | fireplaces built in the walls, no bedroom sets, no carpets, only straw mats upon ! the floor. and they take the place, not