Tokio, Nov. 10.
The tentative budget for the next fiscal year has just been framed by the Japanese financial authorities, and the most salient characteristic, or at least that which is of greatest interest to the foreigner, is that there is a reduction in the appropriations made for the army and the navy compared with the appropriations of the two preceding years.
Of a total budget amounting to Y.1,350,000,000 for the year 1922- 1923, the Navy gets Y.318,000,000 and the Army Y.225,000,000, making a total of Y.543,000,000 for the two services. The appropriations for the current year are Y.304,000,000 for the navy, and Y.253,000,000 for the army out of a total of Y.1,463,- 000,000. For the year preceding, out of a total national wealth of Y.1,562,000,000, the army got Y.772,000,000 and the Navy Y. 499,000,000. That was during the feverish days when the race for naval armaments was being recklessly yun, and more than war-clouds threatened to blacken the Pacific horizon. Immediately following these hectic days came the call for a round-table conference at Washington. The invitation was at first looked upon with considerable suspicion, but the end of the conference saw a better oriental tion in American-Japanese relations, and one of the immediate results was the reduction of the appropriations for the army and the navy.
The decrease in the appropriations for the navy represents sum of Y.76,000,000 less than the amount spent on this branch of the national defence service during the present fiscal year. This has been effected by extending the auxiliary i Ship construction programme one year through fixing the date of completion as 1928 instead of 1927. The present Premier, Admiral Kato, who has recommended this delay, was also the original framer Japan's eight-eight navy which j was to have been completed five years hence. He evidently does not see any extraordinary need for rushing completion of the vessels originally planned and_ afterwards adapted to conform with the naval limitation restrictions agreed to at Washington. The Vice-Minister of the Navy, however, regards the delay proposed as endangering the national defence and has requested the Premier to. reconsider his decision.
The chief feature of the new budget is that provision has been made. for a very small reduction of taxes. The original scheme of the Finance Department was to reduce taxes by Y.40,000,000, but the demands made by the various Government departments for increased appropriations have caused this amount to be reduced to Y.i4,- 000,000, which, to judge from comments in the vernacular press, falls far short of public expectations. The business tax and the stamp duty are to be reduced, while the income tax is to be revised and the kerosene excise abolished.
The' press generally criticize the Budget severely, insisting that the authorities have again "capitulate ed to the militarists," since the navy and the army yet continue to take the lion's share of the nation's annual wealth, and that measures taken for the reduction of taxation are "imperfect and temporizing."
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.