On the threshold of ai new year, there is a general stocktaking all! over the world. There is a great deal that Japan has to be thankful for as far og the year just over is concerned. First and formest, out ai the suspicions and misunderstandings that led to ai hectic fever of warship building that caused a feeling akin to despair in some of the noblest and most liberal spirits of the nation, there resulted before 1922 was very much older, a hope bern of understandings reached at Washington between Great Britain, the United States and Japan, the three countries with the greatest interests in the Pacific. The successful termination of the round-table conference at Washington banished the murky cloud of war that was darkening these shores and ushered in a. new era in international politics. That alone is a great' achievement for this land saving the country from the rocks of bankruptcy, if not worse. Coming to Japan's internal situation, there has been much less class and partisan strife in 1992 than there has been in the two years immediately preceding. The ion began to realize that the price of war booms has sooner or later to be paid, and although the business depression hit the country in 1920, it was only in 1992 that steps were taken to readjust business, both state and private, in such a manner as to prepare the. country for the competitions of peace that are yet to come. One outstanding fast of 1922 is the emancipation of thousands of Geisha girls from the silken slavery in which they had hitherto been held with the silent, if not active, consent of the law. It is as great a victory for the right in Japan as the emancipation of Chinese girls from the vicious mvvitsat aystem is for the millions of that country, Most of all, Japan has not had to face any kind of disorganization, national or economic, as has recently faced European countries.
Trade has not been what the average Japanese hoped it would be The margin of import excess over export excess had been increassing visibly during the year, and a year-end analysis shows that this is due chiefly to the loss of markets that Japan had captured during the war when the productive pewers of European nations had te be diverted to the less profitable pursuits of manufacturing munitions. This fact has led to some dislocation of Japanese industries, but far from the dislocation, and even paralysis, that hag overtaken many other lands economically. Whilst Fapan has lost the markets
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.