(3 of 5)
"There is a Limit." Leg No. 3—domestic problems—was shot through with dry rot, termites, woodworms and every other agent of collapse. And this Japan was last week beginning to realize, talk about, tremble over.
> Fish, vegetables, rice—the staples of Japanese diet—were crucially scarce. The rice shortage was beginning to affect the supply of sake (rice wine). Enough rice had been plundered from North China, already hard up because of severe floods, so that in Tientsin the price of a sack of rice—two months' supply for one person—had gone up from $12 (Chinese) to $100. Food riots broke out in Tientsin and Peking. In Tokyo, according to the Agriculture and Forestry Ministry, so many Japanese were eating the bean curd waste usually fed to cattle that cows were giving only one-fifth of their usual milk supply.
> Charcoal, the national domestic fuel, was recently introduced as a substitute for precious gasoline in powering automobiles. Last week the fuel shortage was so grim that gasoline had to be used as a substitute for charcoal. Schoolchildren were sent into the mountains to cut wood and carbonate it for charcoal. A great scandal broke out when two 15-year-olds fell to their death in a charring pit.
> Labor was so scarce that a Diet member proposed forcibly repatriating all Japanese from the U. S. and Hawaii. Koreans and Chinese war prisoners were being drafted.
> Coal was desperately rare. Even before the shortage its price had been so high that mines found it cheaper to use water power than steam power generated on the premises by their own coal. The shortage was caused by lack of laborers, transport difficulties, and breakdown of the mining-equipment industry. One whole mine recently fell idle for want of a single bearing which could not be speedily replaced.
> Because of the coal shortage and a great drought all through 1939, electric power was so acutely inadequate that in some places (notably industrial Osaka) a 30% cut in consumption was ordered. Osaka was under virtual blackout. Most light industries were entirely shut down, and even war industries were last week being rationed.
> For over two years building trades have been curbed for the sake of war industries. By last week this had resulted in such a housing shortage that in Tokyo ten people were found living in many a six-mat room (nine by twelve feet).
> Last week the Diet's lower House passed the heaviest budget in Japan's history. Its ¥10,300,000,000 ($2,400,000,000) was more than one third of the entire national income of Japan, and more than three times the State's revenues. Nearly 70% of the budget was earmarked for military expenses.
> Most notable shortage was in self-restraint. All the material shortages had been long developing, but only recently have the Japanese begun howling about them. Not so long ago any statesman with the gall to criticize the Government as openly as Diet members have in the last month (TIME, Feb. 12) would have been obliged to commit honorable suicide. Newspapers have suddenly begun speaking out of turn. Said nationalistic Kokumin: