The city of Tokyo has entered pon a gigantic re-building programme which aims at a total reconstruction of the heart of Japan's capital. With the new Diet building, an imposing structure of the skyscraper class, as the contre, an area of about a' mile square is being transformed into a modern European city.
'A tremendous amount of expendi ture is entailed, and it is said that completion of the scheme will take years. For the construction of the new Diet buildings, the Premier's new official residence and the headquarters of the Metropolitan Police Board alone, a sum of Y.80,000,000 has been appropriated, most of this money going towards the purchase of property belonging to foreign Embassies and Legations, The programme, when completed, will change entirely the diplomatic and legal centre of the city. The main idea underlying the scheme is to bring about centralization, order and symmetry from the present Scattered condition of related government offices. The reconstruction planned in this area has nothing to do with the earthquake of 1923. This region was more or less un-seathed, but there is no doubt that the 1923 catastrophe tended to hasten and to broaden plans that had been made long before, New Light on Rice Mr. Matsumura, a Japanese scientist and food expert attached to the Tokyo Food Research Bureau, attributes the retrogression of the asiatic races largely to their diet of ree.
The retrogression of India, "the greatest, in olden days and yet famous for the wonderful philosophies and cultures she has evolved," he sets down as being entirely die to the rice diet of her people, lack of the proper amount and variety of vitamins in the food, essential to the proper growth of brain "and brawn, having caused the races of Hindusthan to become devitalized.
"China, once the fore-runner of civilization with India," he says, "is also rapidly dropping out of th race, as a result of hor rice diet.' 'The' people of the Orient and of the South Seas, feeding on rice a9 their staple diet, cannot keep step with the march of modern eivilization. "This has been noted by the Occidentals;" says Mr. Matsumura, "and they, therefore, no longer fear the Orientals."
Discussing. the effect of food on the appearance of various race Mr, Matsumura says that diet ha great dear fo do with the colour of human bodies,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.