On all sides the necessity for} economy is being urged on the people, The most recent of, those to all attention to this need has been Mr. Ichinomiya, vice-president the Yokohama Specie Bank,—who stressed the fact that, unless people realize that the abandonment of non-essentials is indispensabt for the rehabilitation of Japai financial status and put their convietions into practice, whatever steps} the authorities, may take will not} fail to bring about the desired sults.
Some of the largest stores in the! country are stocked full of imported especially those well-known! department stores, the Mitsukoshi and the Shirokiya, which are two of the landmarks of Tokio's shopping! Aistrict, "From morn till night, customers. pour in through their large folding doors in steady! streams. The disparity between: the Japanese unit of currency and the American dollar or the pound sterling has not yet become so wide that the average person can no} longer afford to buy foreign goods.
The Yokohama customs house presents a sight of pile upon pile of merchandise from foreign lands} articles that cannot be manufactured here and which are far from indispensable to the daily life of the citizens. To the average Japanese the fall of the yen carries no meaning as yet. The fear of earthquakes still beclouds the mental out-Took of the people and the general! feeling seems to be to make the best Of life before the next fatal blow falls.
All classes in the country are prepared for a further fall in the value of the yen.
Tt can safely be said, however, that the Japanese unit of currency will not go even. remotely anywhere near the regions traversed by the Russian rouble or the German mark, for the Bank wna State financial institution ds enough gold to cover the note circulation on the market immediately and enrively. The drop in the value of the yen ix not due} to the (ess of credit in the stability of Japan's currency system or to any anxieties regarding her finuncial stability, but oather to the loss '0f proportion between exports and imports, due to the huge amount of goods indented from abroad for reconstruction purposes. When ports and exports adjust themselves to a more proportionate ratio, the yen cun be depended on to pick up the Grip of Luxury Reconstruction needs have been met, but the excess of imports over exports continues, large euuse of the luxurious cubits to which the Japanese became wedded since the European war when money was ensily and rapidly made, when wages became inflated prices soared proportionately, snd when the cation abandoned its former modern of living, modes of] Spartan simplicity, as became buoy the coost df the the' hemie examples unostentatious, simple living. that the "Empress," th fand the Crown Prince are setting before the people every day, and] despite the fact that every unnecessary indulgence plunges the country into yet deeper financial entanglements—the latter an argument that would have appealed to the patrio-tie sense fof the Japanese only a short while ago—the people in general have not been able to shal of insidious clutch that luxuries! the Feason for this} "dancing on the crater of the vol-ano" as the Governor of the Bank: of Japan characterized this trait io} the people?
In the stricken regions due, believe, to the fact that the people are yet mentally in the grip of earthquakes and the consequences of seismic uphea for the horrors of last year fresh in the memory of everyone who went through them. The people desire to make the most of what Years of life might yet be spared. to them. Thi is also responsible Cor the wave of ippancy, levity and frivolity to be seen all around The women have grown to be even more reckless than the men, The reeks Iessness is s0 brazen and shameless in some instances that it puzzles and balties the old-time This is the case i the stricken regions especially and explains to Targe extent, why the appears to abstain from luxuries, especially' those imported, fall on deaf ears. Tu the regions were spared the charnel-house horrors of last year} the self-indulgence evident can only be explained by the fact that the canker of luxurious living, born of the recent wat has spread too far and only some drastic operation ean} [root it out.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.