The poetry of every nation and age is a complex expression of the history, spirit, and individual genius of a people; and, as each successive generation evaluates a native or an alien poetic tradition from its own historical and cultural vantage-point, it discovers meanings and values as well as limitations and weaknesses in the poetry it reads. Each generation must reassess for itself the glory that was Greece or the grandeur of Japan—so that the attempt to describe the formative elements which underlie Japanese poetic expression is more than a single essay, individual, or generation can accomplish. But the undertaking nevertheless seems necessary today, when we can no longer be satisfied with the older extremes of Victorian condescension towards “Japanese epigrams”; the exclusively historical or biographical treatment which evades direct analysis of the poetry; or that simple-minded exoticism which prefers ignorant rapture to the disciplined effort of literary criticism. For the Westerner as well as for the Japanese, poetry lives only as it is understood and felt, and our experience of Japanese poetry today must reflect contemporary critical standards and techniques of analysis—the means of understanding given us by our own age and culture.

Aside from its current significance, the recent report from Taiwan announcing the inauguration of a new urban land tax grogram based upon the teachings of Sun Yat-sen serves to reawaken interest in one of his most controversial doctrines—the min sheng principle. The use of Sun's pʻing-chün ti-chʻüan—“equalization of land rights”—as a specifically urban taxation device raises a question concerning the original scope and purpose of this major aspect of the min sheng program. Taken by itself, “equalization of land rights” has an agrarian land tenure reform connotation, and has often been associated with land redistribution, some of its alternative translations being “equitable redistribution of the land” and more recently “proportionalization of the land.” Yet a study of Sun's prolific expositions of this theme starting with the Tʻung Meng Hui manifesto of 1905 down through the first year of the Republic when he was most actively concerned with the promotion of min sheng fails to substantiate the agrarian reform interpretation. On the contrary, according to the available sources for this period, there are few explicit references to the excesses of rural landlordism and the maldistribution of landholdings which in 1924 finally prompted Sun publicly to declare a “land to the tiller” policy. During this formative period for Kuomintang ideology, Sun's use of “equalization of land rights,” and the Western doctrines from which it was derived, indicate a definite preoccupation with the potential problems of a future capitalist order rather than concern with the aberrations of China's current agrarian structure.

The 1953 Chinese census reported a total population on the Chinese mainland of 582.6 million. This figure came as a surprise to Western observers, since the population figures most frequently quoted for China during the preceding twenty years had been on the order of magnitude of “about 450 million,” the 1933 estimate of the League of Nations. Although the inadequacies of Chinese population statistics and their controversial nature are well known, some understanding of the latest figure is possible by viewing it in historical perspective. Such an analysis is here presented, and is confined to the 1953 census data referring to the size of the population and its distribution among the provinces.

The industrialization of Pakistan, which has proceeded at a fairly rapid pace in the decade since partition, has engendered new and growing problems for industrial labor. These problems have until recently received scant attention from either the Government of Pakistan or from scholars. Domestic and international political matters and concern for rapid industrialization have hitherto occupied government officials more than a rigorous analysis of the economic problems of the population. Even scholars concerned with economic problems may make only peripheral references to industrial labor, as does Dr. S. M. Akhtar in his fine new edition of Economics of Pakistan. Recently, with the growth of the industrial labor force and of trade unions, greater official and scholarly concern has been shown for industrial workers. Accurate information on Pakistan's labor problems and some suggestions for their solution may be found in three recent works dealing with different aspects of labor in Pakistan. Several other sources for a study of Pakistan labor now exist, and it is possible from these to assess the position of the industrial worker and the prospects for its improvement.

This year academic circles in the Netherlands are celebrating the centennial of the birth of C. Snouck Hurgronje; Arabist, scholar of Indonesian affairs, and formateur of Dutch colonial policy. Most Dutch scholars and many students of Indonesian affairs would readily agree that few men have had as intimate acquaintance with the Indonesian archipelago and its people and have had as wide a reputation as an expert on this part of the world as the late Snouck Hurgronje. Unfortunately his writings and policies are known to English-reading scholars only at second hand. Except for a few brief articles, only his books, Mekka and The Achehnese, and his lectures in Mohammedanism have appeared in English. Other important writings have appeared in German and French, but the great bulk are in Dutch. There are presently plans to translate some parts of Snouck Hurgronje's collected works and also to make available certain writings which were done after the collected works were published, but the publication plans for these translations and reprints are still indefinite.