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THE ISLANDS OF HOKKAIDO, Honshu, Shikoku, and Kyushu, which compose Japan Proper, are peopled more densely than is any other whole country of Asia, though certain sub-areas of India, China, and Java may be as congested. Average population density per arable square kilometer in Japan Proper (1,163) is the greatest in the world. With the largest industrial plant in Asia, Japanese citizens enjoy one of the highest planes of living to be found in the Orient, excluding Soviet Siberia. They are among the nations on this globe probably the most disciplined by authority, the most Spartan in tradition and training. Their Empire is the one strictly Oriental great power, yet it was, until 1937-41, deficient in most of the natural resources which are commonly considered to be prerequisites for such military, political, and commercial leadership. Public opinion both in Japan and in the West seems still to be persuaded that these factors, together with resultant domestic problems, offer basic explanations of Japanese expansion and proof of overpopulation. Some Japanese began to predict overpopulation in 1897, when the Empire began a struggle against the need to import rice which was to last three decades. A look back to 1880 disclosed obvious growth in population. When, in 1905, Japan won a partial victory over a great power, her statesmen already realized that in this century a population of 80 to 100 millions would be required of any nation intent upon maintaining the status which Japan had almost automatically attained. Not until the remarkable demographic and industrial growth of the second decade and the failure of expansionist policies in Shantung and Eastern Siberia did overpopulation become a popular obsession. Foreign competitors returned from distractions of war to compete for markets; some Japanese industries had been over-expanded. Agreements on disarmament and naval limitation reached at the Washington Conference contributed to unemployment for the first time among skilled workers and laborers in the nation's heavy industries. The earthquake and fire of 1923 brought further misery and destruction of nearly an estimated five billion yen of
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