5 FEBRUARY 1937, Page 36

JAPANESE TRADE AND INDUSTRY The Mitsubishi Economic Research Bureau, which

has compiled this ency- clopaedic volume (Macmillan, 21s.) is well known to students of Japan as a reliable source of information. Besides being the research auxiliary of the great Mitsubishi interests, it is almost a national institution making a scientific record of the economic condition of Japan ; and in this compendium of financial and industrial statistics, it has provided a contribution to which every. bank or firm or individual interested in Far Eastern affairs will constantly turn for instruction. But this is more than a mere collection of figures ; for, in addi- tion to nearly five hundred tables which supply the statistical record of practically every form of Japanese production, its chapters describe with an objective reliability the conditions sur- rounding the whole economic . activity. of the country. In -the real sense of a much-alused word, it is an indispensable book.