Mental and National Lassitude Following Earthquake Worse than Any Foreign Exclusion Act: Japanese Critic's Anxious Questions Pow Our Owx Conmssroxvext.
Tokyo, June 28.
"We eat the produce of the soil we cultivate and we drink of the well we have dug. What benefit do we derive from the This ancient song of the Chinese, revived, it was said, when the Manchus were ousted, is, according to the "Oriental Economist," one of the! best periodicals published in the Japanese Empire, descriptive of the mood of mind of many a Japanese to-day.
'The article in the magazine, which questions whether revolutionary symptoms exist in the body politic of the nation, has attracted considerable attention. It declares, amongst other things, that, instead of determination and' concentration The only way out, according to this periodical, is to increase production and thereby get back to prosperity. tinues, "which ie very Increase of election expenses, which was, Spent from ¥.20,000 to ¥.60,000 to se-ire: a sent inthe, Dit" wile of mind to extricate themselves out of the hole into which the earthquake landed them, the Japanese people in general do not care a bra button whether the work of rehabil tation is done or not, or how it is being, done "Not eve The Ieiay pacer tat ined to the Riytiieias Praia cee der Statesmen, the fal cliques and to arty men. The Test of the nation huvdly manifests even the course the nation should stefan from ea presen pole erongye~hat eh bee The Beonomic Impasse.
Some of the "'stunts"—they are no more—that have been done here to dissatisfaction with the exclusion legislation, cabled abroad and dwelling on the dramatic and sensational side of such, rather than on the significance of the real motives behind such actions, which is largely the attempts of youthful "patriots" to come into the limelight, might give people in ther lands the idea that the Japanese are all wrought up and are straining every nerve to wipe out the alleged insult to their national honour. The Japanese, of every strata, are certainly very indignant over excluding them by legislative alatutes, but, against this, oven unofficial leaders of the nation are Tementing that the people, as a whole, are in a stupor of while the majority of the against the American have trained their biggest oratorical hatteries on the Japanese themselves "Zor the enervated and faintish condition" they are said to be i 'The "Oriental Economist" declares that the greatest menace that the Japanese nation is facing to-day not the immigration legislation 'America, but the dreadful economic impasse in which the country finds itself and insinuates that such an' economic condition, unless remedied, might prove to be the fore-runner of revolution. The direct causes of the present economic difficulties can be subdivided into two sections—namely, the reaction from the war oom; and the earthquake calamity. Interiwined with these two is the fact that a good proportion of the nation has abandoned the old virtues of thrift and frugality for ostenta-_ tion and luxury.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.