A “CULTURE DRIVE.”

Auckland Star, Volume LXVI, Issue 236, 5 October 1935, Page 21

A “CULTURE DRIVE.”

JAPAN IN CHINA. NEW INVASION MOVE. SHANGHAI, August 30. After effectively defeating the Chinese by force of arms on the Manchurian issue and outmanoeuvring them on most other political and economic questions, the Japanese are now staging an extensive .campaign to convert the Chinese “culturally.” The Japanese do not specifically ask the Chinese to accept Japanese “culture,” but they base their appeal on the proposition that the two peoples should “consolidate their cultural ties as a foundation for closer economic and political relations in the future.” Along witli it is the suggestion that if China would only accept Japanese guidance, the two nations could not only dominate Asia, but make the rest of the world sit up and take notice. Japanese literature bearing on the so-called Oriental “bloc with its pooling of manpower, developed and undeveloped resources, has produced a profound impression in high political and economic circles in the Chinese Republic. The Japanese are financing their so-called “cultural drive” from the Japanese portion of the China Boxer indemnity, which the. various Powers assessed against the Chinese following the suppression of the rebellion of 1900. Many observers, aware of China’s absorption of past conquerors, are sceptical of Japan’s ability to convert China to Nippon’s way of thinking. But and Japanese have been thrown together logic, to the fact that the conquering Mongolian and Manchu tribes which were swallowed in the Chinese mass Were unlettered barbarians. They also point to the fact that while the Chinese and Japanese have been thrown toegther for many decades, there has been little inter-marriage. Finally, they show that intensive education, combined with military and police control in such places as Korea and Formosa, has caused the younger generations of tliose races to speak, dress and think like Japanese youngsters.

In the background of the Japanese scheme is a far-reaching plan to uproot idea's pertaining to Occidental culture which have been implanted in China, as a result of many decades of intensive missionary activity, not to mention long-standing commercial relations with Occidentals at the yarious Chinese ■ports, ' tn addition to the Japanese culture drive m China, the Japanese also are laying plans for a similar drive in North and South, America and Europe, the chief object being to convince Americans and Europeans that militarism and intensive industrialism are not the most important phases of modern Japanese life. Aside from the so-called China culture promotion board, which is connected with the Foreign Office in Tokyo,and which will have charge of the Japanese cultural drive in China, the Japanese also have established two other organs for the spreading of Japan’s culture in. Occidental hands. I irst there is the so-called culture department of the' Foreign Office wihch is headed by Kaneichi Okada, former Consul-General at Honolulu. This is still a small organ with a personnel of only three or four men, but Koki Hirofa, the present Foreign Minister, has plants to enlarge it into a • regular bureau ranking with other Departments of the Ministry. This •buHSSU has a Budget of- 1,000,000 yen this year, and it has begun to send lecturers abroad and distribute literatui e which has been prepared with the object of niaking Japan better understood in the/oqtside j • Of most importance, however, is a hevvly formed association for the encouiagemont of general cultural work, the Japanse name for which is Kokusai Buiika Shinko-kai.” This is ostensibly a non-official organisation headed by Prince Fumimaro Kanoye, president ot the House of Peers, and the chief director of which is Count AisukeKabayania.