WITHOUT PREJUDICE

Dominion, Volume 21, Issue 240, 11 July 1928, Page 10

WITHOUT PREJUDICE

NOTES AT RANDOM (By T.D.H.) River navigation has never amounted (o a great deal in New Zealand with its fast-running streams, but if Hie Wanganui River service is abandoned, as is now threatened, it will count for Jess than ever. In the old days there were hundreds of Maori canoes on this river, which was the great high road into the interior for the southern Maoris, but the canoes have long since vanished as have the little Maori villages perched on the hillsides of the river. In the missionary days it was estimated that there were from 25,000 to 30,000 Maoris, living in (he Wanganui vfllley. To-day there arejess than a thousand. Away back in 1880 the pakeha thought it would be a good idea to have steamers on the river. The Government bad the river snagged, and there was talk of Government steamers. The talk faded out, and a private company had a steamer called the Tuhua built, but tho undertaking was a failure, and the Tuhua eventually came to grief up the river, where her bones still lie.

Ten years after this first move Air. Hatrick offered to run a weekly steamer service from Wanganui to Pipiriki, about 60 miles upstream. A Government subsidy was offered, and the Wairere was b.uilt at a cost of £4500, and took up her running in the autumn of 1892. A road was immediately put iu hand from Pipiriki to Waiouru to join up with the Huhterville —Taupo road, which was opened iu 1893. and soon Peters’s coaches were 'taking tourists through from the Wanganui River to Taupo. A stillborn township was laid off at Pipiriki in 1897, a year or two after Raetihi had got itself on to the map. According to Mr. T. W. Downes’s handbook to the Wanganui River, there were no white settlers on the river beyond Raorikia, fourteen miles up from Wanganui, when the Wairere started- running in 1892. However, the traffic grew to such an extent that within a few years Messrs. Hatrick and Companj’ had a fleet of twelve steamers on the run.

By 1899 the river steamers were gating up as far as the Tangarak.au \ River, some twenty-five miles or so beyond Pipiriki, and some four years or so later it was decided tp extend the service right through to Taumaranui, 150 miles from Wanganui, to connect with the'trains which began running from that place to Auckland in December, 1903. There were no white settlers at all on this part of the river at the ’ time, and as the trip up would take two full days a stop-over place was required. To provide this the idea of building a houseboat was conceived, and this was duly constructed at Taumarunui, as Mr. Downes records, by Mr. A. S. Laird, and piloted thirty miles downstream to its present situation without mishap. About the same time a boarding-house, was opened at Taumarunui—then only a little Maori village with one store —and with a light motor-boat to cover the first thirty miles downstream, with its SO rapids to negotiate, the Wanganui River service reached its full development and became for many years one of the most popular tourist trips iu New Zealand.

All the way from Japan comes a little booklet about Mr. Seiji Noma. Mr. Noma began life as a schoolmaster, and later on had an idea that he would like to issue a magazine. He had no money, but he wrote out his magazine and took it around to the publishers in Tokio. None of them were interested in it, and day after day Mr. Noma got his bundle of manuscript back with refusals. Though downhearted, he still persevered, and looked in ■ the telephone list for the uaniOs of more printing firms. Selecting one at random lie saw its manager and talked with deadly earnestness, and at the end. expecting “Nd,” he heard “Yes.” In this way began the first of the nine monthly magazines now conducted by Mr. Noma Which are estimated to be read by 10.000,000 people in Japan every month. One of these magazines, the “King,’ has a circulation of a million and a half, and the total number of workers connected with the Noma enterprises is 46,960, while the magazines produced by them each month ar e enough to fill 200 big railway wagons.

Mr. Noma is now about 50 years of age, and says he got the idea of big circulations after hearing that an American publisher was getting out a million copies of a magazine. He could see no obstacle to doing this in Japan, and made it his objective. All that was needed Was to familiarise the Japanese people with the idea of reading tor amusement instead of a task. To-day he fills-every bookstall in Japan with', half its stock iu trade, and thinks little of spending £20.000 111 advertising a single issug of one ol his magazines. According to Mr. Akimdto, the writer of this little biography which appeared first in the “Japan Advertiser,” Mr. Noma has never once appeared at his office, but does all his work at his palatial homo iu Tokio, and most of it at night. Ho understands no foreign languages and what he knows of Western civilisation is through Japanese translations.

As to his objectives, Mr. Noma explained that be desired iu his magazines to make the y’oung people ot Japan strive.for greatness. The Japanese college boys of to-day seemed to him to be lacking in zeal and spirit. “Their only ambition.” he said, "secins to exist in their desire Io get whatever job they can, or rather to.get the salary of a Prime Minister with the work of an office boy: in short to get on under easy conditions seems to be their motto iu life.” Japan is not so very different from Europe when viewed by persons in the shady side of forty it seems.

New Zealanders will probably be .surprised to learn that over 10,000.1)90 copies of newspapers are sold iu Japan every day. which means a newspaper to every six people. The biggest t'iteulation is possessed by the "Osaka Maiuiehi” with 1.300.000 copies a day, and the same company runs the "Tokio Nichi-Nichi.” wijli a circulation of 800,000 copies a day. Only three newspapers in the world have greater circulations (han the Maiuiehi —the "Loudon Daily Mail,” the Paris "Journal.” and the "Petit Parisien.” The “M.'iinichi" lias a fleet of five aeroplanes. it issues a braille edition tor the blind, and it publishes a monthly index to its contents which is found invaluable by libraries. It has 405 men on its editorial staff, ami 2456 employees all told. Japans newspiiperiand certainly seems to hum.

Film Magnate (entering studio): Who’s Unit? Director: Why. that's Napoleon. . Film Magnate: Why did you gel such a little man to ulav sueli an important part?