Tokio, May 29.
German cigarettes, owing to their cheapness, threaten to monopolize the Japanese tobacco market. Within the past month or two, nearly 100,000 boxes of imported German cigarettes have been consumed in this country. The Government Monopoly Bureau is preparing, it is said, to check the import of German cigarettes by raising import duties. Negotiations are being carried on by tobacco traders here for the import of German tobacco on a great scale before the tariff wall can be built up.—Reuter.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.