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Show ALLIED SECURITIES POPULAR IN JAPAN Total Amount Invested During the Year 1917 Is Estimated at 8579,500,000. TOKIO, Dec. (By the Associated press.) Japan generally followed the plan of devoting the money obtained from abroad during the war to giving financial finan-cial support to her allies, either by sub- , scj-ibing to the loans issued by them or bv purchasing their bonds, says an official of-ficial report of the department of finance. fi-nance. The total amount Invested In all these securities reached about $573,500,000 at the end of 1317, Including $265,000,000 In British government bonds, $77,500,000 in French bonds and $127,000,000 in Russia Rus-sia n bonds. To this should be added ?1 10,000.000 representing Japanese foreign for-eign loan bonds and company debentures redeemed In foreign markets. Japan's seaborne trade was greatly affected af-fected at the beginning of the war, says tne report, but her export trade afterward after-ward became very brisk. There was a pronounced increase of Japan's shipments ship-ments to near-by markets and to the South Seas to take the place of commodities com-modities that had ceased to be shipped from Kurope. This was especially con-1 spicuous as regards China, where there' was a large demand for Japanese goods. Jarger shipments of munitions and food sent to the' allies increased the volume of exports. In 1!U7 these amounted to 801,500,000, an increase of ?C37,7U0,000 over 1916. Japan's Imports for 1917 were $517,900,000, $13,00t),000 more than In lflt; The excess of exports over import's im-port's in 1017 was ?S.l,500,000, an increase in-crease of 52 per cent over this balance of trade in 1916. Tins apparently has paved the way for an expansion of Japan's industries in-dustries and trade in the futuro, said tlrt: reporL |