Some Problems of Population in Japan 



141 



Figure 23. No intermediates are pro- 

 duced and the heterozygous forms 

 appear normal. It is not difficult to 

 classify plants at the time the normals 

 are shedding pollen. Immature normal 

 tassels bear some resemblance to the 

 male steriles, but the spikelets are 



Table I. Number of Normal and Male Sterile 

 Plants in Progenies Grown from Self- 

 Pollinated Heterozygous Plants, Ms ms 



plump and firm even when quite young. 

 After the anthers of the normal plants 

 have fallen off, it becomes difficult or 

 impossible to distinguish between nor- 

 mal and male sterile plants. 



Table II. Number of Normal and Male Sterile 



Plants in Backcrosses to Male Sterile, ms ms 



X Ms ms 



SOME PROBLEMS OF POPULATION 



IN JAPAN 



OCCIDENTAL nations have been 

 overwhelmed with data regarding 

 their population problems during 

 recent years, but for the orient they have 

 had little except generalities. The fol- 

 lowing remarks in the London Times 

 of May 28, 1920, from J. O. P. Bland, 

 who was for many years secretary to 

 Sir Robert Hart in China, are there- 

 fore interesting. One need not, how- 

 ever, share his belief that the food-pro- 

 ducing powers of the two hemispheres 

 have reached their limit, and one is 

 certainly not obliged to conclude with 

 him that a high rate of infant mor- 

 tality is necessarily due to a scarcity 

 of food. 



"The prevalent conception of Japan 

 as an aggressive militarist nation owes 

 much of its origin, no doubt, to the 

 Government's policy towards China. 

 But if those who criticise that policy 

 would trace the unbroken connection 

 between it and the country's impera- 

 tive economic necessities, they would 

 be compelled to make more allowance 

 than they usually do for the absence 

 of altruism and lofty idealism in Orien- 

 tal statecraft. For a nation to claim 

 the right to expansion in a spirit of 

 wanton aggression is one thing; to do 

 so under the compulsion of a fierce 

 struggle for bare existence for food 



and elbow room, is merely to obey the 

 first law of nature, as every active, self- 

 helping race has obeyed it since the be- 

 ginning of time. A native writer put 

 the problem succinctly when he said: 

 'The Japanese people must either die 

 a saintly death in righteous starvation 

 or expand into the neighbour's back- 

 yard and Japan is not that much of a 

 saint.' 



"The problem which Japan has to 

 face is easily stated. It is merely a 

 question of providing food for a popu- 

 lation which already exceeds the limit 

 which the country's soil can support, 

 and which is debarred by our exclu- 

 sion Acts from seeking relief in the 

 least populated regions of the American 

 and Australian continents. The prob- 

 lem is in reality only one of many mani- 

 festations of the unpleasant truth, 

 which the war has brought home to the 

 world at large, that the pressure of 

 population upon this planet's food ca- 

 pacity has become, and must remain, 

 acute. The severity of this pressure 

 in Japan is grimly indicated by a death- 

 rate which averages 21.5 per thousand, 

 and by the fact that 260 out of every 

 1,000 deaths are those of children under 

 twelve months old. 



"The elemental facts of the Japanese 

 situation are (1) that, with a birth-rate 



