14
to make the following comparison of increases of population in various parts of Japan's territory.
1908
1909
1910
1911
1912
Year.
INCREASE of Japanese Population from all Causes.
Ilokkaido.
Corea.
Formosa.
Kwantung Leased Territory.
56,189
?
5,401
9,057
89,590
?
6,367
6,964
73,450
25,396
8.352
8,432
66,436
39,146
11,738
4,976
71,455
33,040
?
?
In order to gain some idea of the relative volume of immigration into these territories, in the following table are given estimates of net increase by immigration in each case.
For the Hokkaido, official figures are taken as being approximately correct. In the other cases the number is arrived at by subtracting from the total increase the expected increase by excess of births over deaths at the average rate for Japan (12-8 per 1,000) on the population of the preceding year. The table is for 1911, the latest year for which all figures are available.
ESTIMATED Net Increase by Immigration, 1911.
Japanese population and of 1910.. Insrease by immigration in 1911..
Hokkaido.
1,610,545
47,854
Formosa.
Corea.
Kwantung.*
98,048 10,483
171,543 36,951
62,338 4,285
The total increase in 1908-11 in Kwantung leased territory is composed of 13,735 males and 15,694 females. This may throw some light on methods of colonisation in China, since a large excess of malos would be normal.
The approximate total of the net immigration of Japanese into territories under Japanese jurisdiction is therefore about 100,000 per annum.
CL
The official Résumé Statistique" states that in 1911 the number of passports issued to Japanese travelling to foreign countries was 29,950. Of these 7,774 were classified as emigrants, and 12,287 as fishermen. (Most of the latter would return to Japan in the same year, at the close of the season.) Travellers are not legally obliged to be furnished with passports, but in practice, especially if of the emigrant class, find them necessary, owing to the police and other regulations. These figures should therefore not he seriously incorrect.
The chief destination of these persons were:-
Russia (at least 12,000 fishermen, who return in autumn) United States
Hawaii
China
Canada
Philippines
Peru
Australia
Straits Settlements
16,210
3,895
2,950
2,143
865
651
411
386
259
to another.
15
It is plain that there cannot be any question of the population of Japan increasing so fast as to overflow its boundaries. In the first place its population increases, if anything, at a rate, slightly less than that of the United Kingdom (Japan, 10-6 per 1,000, United Kingdom, 11:06 per 1,000). In the second, the Hokkaido, with a total area of nearly one-fourth of the entire area of Japan, supports only about one-fiftieth of her population. It is estimated that there are in the Hokkaido 1,500,000 acres suitable for cultivation still undeveloped, so that, so far as concerns extent of territory, there is no pressure to cause emigration abroad. It is true that conditions of life in the Hokkaido are not easy for immigrants, but they are no harder than in the northern prefectures, nor is the climate any severer than that with which, say, the early settlers in New England had to contend, It certainly is less trying than that of Manchuria. That it is healthy is proved by the vital statistics, which show that the birth rate is so high and the death rate so low that the increment in population is 24 per 1,000,-twice that of the rest of Japan.
Yet 22 per cent. of the number of immigrants arriving in 1912 are recorded as having left the island in that year, and that is roughly in proportion for previous years. Though, under the circumstances, it cannot be said that an average immigration of nearly 50,000 per annum is small, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that at present the Japanese people are neither suited nor inclined to immigration on a large scale. They are, for one thing, at the mercy of their national diet. Even in the Iokkaido the amount of land under rice cultivation increases yearly, and every two or three years comes a bad crop, ruined by early frosts, with consequent famine and distress, as in 1913, with the result that in 1914 immigration figures dropped to 14,000.
A meat and wheat-eating population would stand in no such danger. His Majesty's consul at Dairen informs me that even in that district the amount of land under rice is increasing. With regard to the Hokkaido, it is interesting to recall that Horace Capron, the adviser of the Hokkaido Development Commission in 1871-4, always contended "that to ensure a healthy and vigorous development of the island it is necessary to change the habits and food of its present and prospective popula- tion; that it is folly to attempt a forced settlement depending on the rice of Nippon as their principal food." He maintained always that what the island really needed was white colonists, and this though he admired many Japanese characteristics.
It almost seems that the possible Japanese contribution to the development of any territory is at present confined to cheap labour. As an instance of this, one may mention that, among the chief sources of income of the Hokkaido is an annual sum of 300,000 derived from outside its boundaries from the salmon fisheries of Kamchatka, which are worked almost entirely by Japanese labour, and, it must be added, far more efficiently than could be done by Russian fishermen.
G. B. S.
476
It must of course be remembered that emigration to Australia, Canada, and the United States is restricted.
It is difficult to draw general conclusions from such statistics as the above; but defective as they are, they do seem to show that the volume of emigration from Japan, even to countries where admission is unrestricted, is so small that there cannot be any-truth in the statement so often beard that population is pressing on the limits of territory or subsistence. In the year for which statistics are cited above, about 130,300 Japanese left the main island for the Hokkaido, Japanese possessions, and all parts of the world. In the same year the number of emigrants from the United Kingdom was 454,527. Of the 130,000 Japanese emigrants, 100,000 went to Japanese territory. About half of these did no more than migrate from one part of Japan
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