The point is that Japan abounds in gold ore. Now that the country needs gold, our output of the yellow metal is increasing fast. I am not at liberty to give definite figures regarding our present gold production, but I expect that it will be doubled in two or three years.
A foreign friend, on hearing this in conversation with me, remarked that Japan then would become the world's foremost gold producer, but that people abroad could not imagine that Japan possesses such deposits of gold. This typically illustrates how the average foreigner cannot realize what resources Japan has.
It Japan can obtain Y1,000,000,006 yearly from increasing the export of gold and of the commodities I have enumerated, it will mean great new strength for us. When this becomes a reality Japan will have a big margin with which to develop her plans for expansion of industrial productivity and for the economic development of Manchoukuo and China, When our productivity expansion plan bears tangible fruit, our country may well become self-sufficient as far as raw materials are concerned. This in turn will bring a corresponding increase in the production of commodities and greater income.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.