694.113Lumber/110
The Chargé in Japan (Neville) to the Secretary of State
[Received September 27.]
Sir: I have the honor to refer to the Department’s instruction No. 588 of August 1st last in which I was directed to take up informally with the Japanese Foreign Office the question of the apparent discrimination against American lumber caused by the revision of the Japanese lumber tariff in the last session of the Imperial Diet.
On the 30th August I had an interview with the Minister for Foreign Affairs and I enclose a memorandum of my conversation with him on that date.43 Baron Shidehara, it will be noted, informed me that the whole question of the tariff now in existence would be reconsidered with a view to submitting certain proposals to the Diet when that body meets next winter. In the meantime, there is nothing that the Government can do to alter the situation. I have requested the Commercial Attaché’s office to keep in close touch with the lumber import situation and to discuss the matter informally from time to time, as occasion may offer, with the Chief of the Commercial Bureau of the Foreign Office. I have adopted this course because I felt that discussions on the part of the Commercial Attaché would necessarily be of a more informal character than those that I might have with the Minister or Vice Minister for Foreign Affairs who have already told me that they would give the tariff question consideration. I shall undoubtedly have further opportunity to allude to this question in subsequent conversations.
[Page 268]The Acting Commercial Attaché has, since my interview with Baron Shidehara, had occasion to discuss the operation of the tariff and I enclose a copy of a letter which he has written to the Chief of the Commercial Bureau,44 giving him data as to imports of lumber into Japan, with particular reference to the position which American lumber occupies here. It will be noted that the Commercial Attaché’s office has been very careful to take up no controversial nor political aspects of the lumber question, confining itself solely to matters of fact. I shall continue to keep this matter before the Japanese authorities in an informal manner.
I have [etc.]