Japan: A World Problem

JAPAN has created in Asia much the same problem that Germany has created for Europe. Like the Germans, the Japanese have developed sufficient military and naval and air strength to upset the old equilibrium of power, and have embarked on a career of conquest so ambitious that the sole Japanese alternative in the future would seem to be world power or downfall. The literature of indictment against Japan has been much shorter than the literature of this type in regard to Germany, partly because Germany is a more familiar country to Americans, partly because Hitler occupied the center of the aggressors’ stage until last December. Now it has become painfully evident that there is a second center of world seismic disturbance in Tokyo. Mr. Timperley, a journalist of long experience in the Orient who has been for some years an adviser to the Chinese Government, undertakes to analyze the Japanese problem and to propose a solution in this little book. He stresses the absence of any dement of democracy in Japanese history, the exaggerated emphasis on the quality of loyalty, and declares that Japan “has not given to the world a single political, religious, or moral idea that has been of benefit to the human race.” His remedy for Japan is similar to that which some observers have proposed for Germany: to place it under severe restrictions as to military and naval power while according the Japanese trade opportunities and access to the raw materials of Asia. W. H. C.