ABSTRACT
There is, however, a lot more to be said about it, and this because it plays an important if composite part in the Japanese mental make-up. At times it ministers to national pride and is set to the tune of: “With these poor resources and with these too many men have we been able to achieve with energy this our humble place among the great economic powers.” Or, on the morrow, it serves the purpose of that discreet dosage of antagonism without which it would appear no nation can to itself prove true. Then is it set to the tune of: “See the vast empty spaces possessed by the acquisitive nations of the West, spaces to which we in our need are denied access on grounds of racial pride and economic self-interest.” Latterly it has ministered to a need for justification. “The West, in however qualified a fashion, disapproves of our Manchurian policy, but Manchuria is our life-line” (an appealing phrase this, unspecifically evocative of the population problem, so to say) “and what we have done we have done fundamentally” (another good word too, rich in its capacity to obscure more obvious and immediate urgencies) “under the pressure of the population problem, and to secure by unilateral effort the solution to which multilateral effort has refused to direct itself.” If man in his time plays many parts, the too many men in Japan have played many more.
