2 PARIS, 1937: COLONIAL QUESTIONS AND PEACE 141avoided, was bluntly stated in a memorandum submitted by the RIIA
which noted that prominent among the claims of the dissatisfied states
was the ‘demand for colonial expansion’ and which affirmed that there
was ‘a growing consciousness that peaceful change is the alternative to
serious trouble’.^188 The memorandum cited as evidence of the potential
for serious trouble, Joseph Goebbels’s warning in a public speech to the
Berlin branch of the National Socialist Party on January 17, 1931, that it
was ‘dangerous for the world not to concede to such demands, because
some day the bomb will explode’.^189
Two Japanese observers attended the conference and when the ques-
tion of Manchuria was raised one of these observers, Yoshizaka Shunzo,
a former representative of Japan on the administrative council of the
ILO, pointed to the greater density of Japan as compared to European
countries of a similar size and its comparable lack of arable land.
Yoshizaka added that over-population was a problem that was ‘felt far
more forcibly among civilized nations than among uncivilized nations,’
his explanation for this being that education caused people to have
greater ambitions in life. In support of this explanation, Yoshizaka stated
that during Japan’s period of isolation the Japanese were ‘very easily sat-
isfied.’ Although conceding that Japan’s birth rate had declined in recent
times, Yoshizaka nonetheless insisted that Japan was unable to absorb its
surplus population. He explained that this was largely because Japan’s
industrial development had been hindered as a result of two factors: first,
with the exception of silk, Japan had had to import all its raw materi-
als and second, Japan faced barriers to trade in its goods. Yoshizaka
observed that Japan’s population had grown at a time when opportu-
nities for emigration were more restricted than they were in the past.
Singling out the United States in this regard, he observed that the very
same country which ‘opened... [Japan’s]...doors’ to international life
‘and whose climate is the one most favourable to the Japanese, very soon
closed its own doors to Japanese emigrants.’ It was fortunate, Yoshizaka
stated in concluding, that Japan now had in Manchukuo ‘an outlet for
(^188) Royal Institute of International Affairs, Raw Materials and Colonies, Information
Department Papers no. 18 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1936), 51. See also
Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 25n.
(^189) Joseph Goebbels, 1931, quoted in Royal Institute of International Affairs, Raw
Materials and Colonies, 58. See also in Chalmers Wright, Population and Peace, 25n.