To the Editor of the "Norrs-Cuma Dany News."
Sm,—Being a simple sort of chap, 1 confess to knowing nothing at all about psychology, but I do try to understand plain facts and figures. Dr. Incr accepts the statistics I quoted about Japan's trade for the first seven months of this year, but does not consider these provide an answer to his previous assertion that Japan had been "virtually excluded" from the China market, He thinks the period chosen for examination was the""most promising within the last few years," and he is quite right, which makes Japan's affion since July the more incomprehensible or, shall I say, repre he Let us look back to last year if Dr. Mur objects to the current one. Customs figures for 1936 show that Japan's share of the import trade was 1629 per cent. (15.16 in 1935), and of the export trade 1445 per cent. (14-25 in 1935). Imports from Japan in 1936 showed an increase of 10 per cent. and exports an increase Of 24 per cent. compared with 1985, so if Dr. Mur is not prepared to accept this year's figures as showing ihat Japan was not "virtually excluded" from the China market, perhaps he will accept the figures for 1936.
Once again, however, I must' draw attention to the fact. that the totals above quoted of last year's Sino-Japanese trade do not include the rayon, sugar, cigarette-paper, kerosene, piece-goods, and sundries which (ale [ato China mem Japan during 936. arrangement" to an estimat-value of about $2,000,000 a week, This "special trade" done by Japan with China led to evasion of Customs duty to an estimated total of $50,- 000,000. There was, if I remember rightly, some "direct talk" on this subject between Nanking and Tokyo, but I do not recall that the smuggling was stopped as a result of these discussions. a, Dr. Mur may again retort that the 1936 percentages I have quoted are "miserably small for a next-door neighbour" to enjoy. Possibly s but the figures given do show(1) tha! Japan was not "virtually excluded" from the China market, as Dr. Mur alleged, and (2) that Japan's trade with China in 1986 showed an advance on the figures for 1935, while this year's figures again showed an advance on those for 1936—until some of Dr, Invr's fellow-countrymen decided upon a novel way of encouraging Chinese to buy more Japanese goods by applying large doses of high explosive to the centres of trade and industry. This may be the correct treatment from a psychologists point of view, but as I have said, I know nothing about psychology. All I do know is that to give a customer a crack on the head or a kick in the pants does not, in my country, encourage him to call again, but here in the Orient everything is so upside down that maybe Dr. INvrs countrymen are right and I am wrong when it comes to encouraging Sino-Japanese economic ce-operation.
But the manager of the Shanghai branch of the Mitsubishi Bank had much the same idea as myself when he sent out a circular early this year through' the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce, telling Japanese business-men that economic ce-operation was almost impossible because Japan had adopted the wrong tactics and resorted to measures which were not conducive to ce-operative effort, I would like to know what Mr. Seiji Yoshida thinks of the policy adopted sínee July to induce a better understanding by China of -Japan's intentions.
Shanghai, Oct, 25.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.