Opening the Door

Japan will be opened to private trade on August 15. So the War Department announced this week. But trade will be small at first. Only 400 businessmen will be admitted into Japan, under allocations to the Allied Nations by the Inter-Allied Trade Board of the Far Eastern Commission in Washington. And SCAP must approve the traders. To make sure that businessmen already in Japan do not jump the gun, no deals can be made until September 1.

Hotel accommodations, transportation, communications, etc. will be handled by the Japanese, though traders must pay for them. Businessmen will be able to travel freely, deal with any companies they please. But SCAP will continue a measure of control. At the beginning there will be no official exchange rate on the yen. A rate will be set by SCAP only when enough business has been transacted to make the rate realistic.

Traders were warned that there is no large quantity of manufactured goods available, that Japan is still critically short of raw materials and has no money to buy them. In short, trade must be developed. Before the war, in a typical year like 1938, Japan imported U.S. goods worth $260,667,000, sold the U.S. $123,836,000. How much of the prewar imports U.S. business could buy, or would want to, nobody knew. The market for silk was drastically reduced (TIME, May 26). For some time, at least, it looked as if trade in other items --fish, tea, cotton piece-goods, agar-agar, pottery, toys--would be small too.

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