T HE basic and overriding problem in Japan is still the problem of how a nation of 83 or 84 millions is to survive on rather crowded and not particularly productive islands. The present population problem is not merely the old one of natural increase but of a suddenly enlarged population, including several million persons who have returned from overseas, crowded into smaller space and denied the special sources of food and raw materials which Japan previously obtained from her Empire, and from Manchuria and north China. Long-term trends evidenced in the analysis of recent Japanese vital statistics suggest a tapering off of the population, but at a much higher total figure than the experts before the war predicted. Despite the earlier equivocal position taken by SCAP on the matter of birth-control, the Japanese Government is now permitting and, indeed, giving a good deal of tacit encouragement to birth-control teachings and clinics. Another fundamental problem is that the Japanese economy has still not been able to rebuild more than a small fraction of what used to be a very important, productive, and profitable merchant marine. Though Japan has made a remarkable economic revival largely due to the war boom, it is in many respects lop-sided and, because of Korean war requirements, has been particularly concentrated on heavy industry. The textile industry which used to be so important in Japanese economic life is not, nor do I think it is likely to be in the future, of such great relative importance as before the war.' Many people would say that this is a desirable development, on the ground that Japan has both the ability and the opportunity to specialize in, for example, machinery, metal goods, and small capital equipment, and that along those lines she can best fit into the other Asian economies. The United Nations Economic Commission for Asia and the Far East has been devoting a good deal of attention to this subject. The war boom is in many ways one of the reasons why Japan's basically precarious economic situation has not been more apparent. It has saved her from what might have been a very serious crisis and has to some extent, looked at from the American fiscal point of view, been an alternative to the former American policy of heavily subsidizing the Japanese economy. Japan has not only been a very large repair base for the whole American war effort in Korea but is now being linked in much more with the whole United States rearmament programme. Very considerable opportunities