Sunday, 6 February

Fine, sun, warm

Yesterday the Soviet newspapers published the Japanese news, saying the Japanese Minister of Finance Kaya Okinori (賀屋興宣)[1] announced that the budget for this year should be 600 billion Japanese yen, and the Japanese people could only use 20 percent of their income, and would give 80 percent towards army expenses. Also he mentioned that Japanese people should be very frugal with time too. He even said that Japanese people should go to bed by ten at night.  This is not really the way to save time. So we can see our enemy is experiencing difficulties. Recently the Soviet Union has reported this type of thing repeatedly. They do it perhaps because they are not on good terms with Britain and the United States, and want to express their concern to us. (I am not sure.) So I reported to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

Today the Soviet Government announced that the former Foreign Minister’s First Deputy, Korneichuk was appointed Foreign Minister of the Ukraine Republic. If that post is centrally-appointed, then we can hardly say the Republics are independent. This type of action from the Soviet Union is unwise.

From today I started to learn Russian again. I have forgotten quite a lot of vocabulary, and I found it quite difficult.

[1] Kaya Okinori (1889-1977) was a Japanese politician.