ideas.  They hope little from a Diet elected on a narrow franchise and supported by a strong Government machine backed by the Conservative farmer vote.  Although, however, there does not seem to be as yet a junction between the labour movement and the unions of the tenant farmers, who have their own interests alone in view, the future may present unexpected developments.  As I write, the labour movement is conducting a trial of strength with the great Mitsubishi and Kawasaki enterprises and is presenting a stronger front than it has yet done.

This Chapter would give an unfair impression of the relations of capital and labour in Japan if it included no reference to the well-intentioned efforts made by several large employers to improve the conditions of working-class life and labour.  Sometimes they have followed the example of philanthropic firms in Great Britain and America.  As often as not they have been inspired by old Japanese ideas of a master’s responsibilities.  Many leading industrials have believed and still believe that by the conservation and development of old ideas of paternalism and loyalty the trade-union stage of industrial development may be avoided.  This conviction was expressed to me by, among others, Mr. Matsukata, of the famous Kawasaki concern, who has made generous contributions to “welfare” work.  My own brief experience as an employer in Japan made me acquainted with some canons in the relationship of employer and employed which have lost their authority in the West.  Given wisdom on the part of masters, the prolonged bitterness which has marked the industrial development of the West need not be repeated in Japan, but whether that wisdom will be displayed in time is doubtful.  The Japanese commercial world has been commendably quick to learn in many directions in the West.  It will be a serious reflection on the intelligence of the country if the lessons of the industrial acerbities of Europe and the United States should not be grasped.  Meantime it is a duty which the foreign observer owes to Japan to speak quite plainly of attempts as silly as they are useless[155] to obscure the lamentable condition of a large proportion of Japanese workers, to hide the immense profits which have been made by their employers and to pretend that factory laws have only to be placed on the statute book in order to be enforced.  But if he be honest he must also recognise the handicap of specially costly equipment[156] and of unskilled labour and inexperience under which the Japanese business world is competing for the place in foreign trade to which it has a just claim.  Such conditions do not in the least excuse inhumanity, but they help to explain it.

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