JAPANESE “TALKIES”

Dominion, Volume 26, Issue 85, 4 January 1933, Page 3

JAPANESE “TALKIES”

Many Learn English "Japanese picture shows arc not very inferesting to an Englishman,” said Mr. O. W. S. Kohn, of Wellington, who has juBt returned from a business visit to the land of the East. "I went to a theatre in Tokio one evening, selecting an American talkie, but was surprised to find that down one side of the film a strip had been added to the picture on which was inscribed Japanese characters, telling the audience what the American talk meant. At the same time they cleverly subdue the actual talk so as not to confuse the Japanese mind. In some of the larger theatres there is, in addition to the Japanese characters, an interpreter who stands on the stage, and talks incessantly about the story, so as his audience will not by any chance miss any of its meaning. “I fancy the interpreter is needed,” confinucd Sir. Kohn, "because the Japanese are so slow at rending. You see thev have no alphabet as we know it. Instead they have thousands of characters; the exact meaning has to be ascertained by its relation to the general context. They cannot read their own writing nearly so quickly as we can ours, except of course the more everyday colloquial phrases, hence the value of the interpreter in the theatre. Incidentally the pictures begin at 6.30 p.m., and close at about 9-30 p.m. "In time there will be a very large proportion of the townspeople at all events who will be able to understand English,” said Mr. Kohn. “It is a compulsory subject in all the high schools and colleges, so that every year there are some thousands of young Japanese who are being let loose in trade, commerce. and the professions, who have at least a rudimentary idea of English, and who will be able to make everything easier for the English visitor, bo he tourist or business man, in the future. At present there is an interpreter for the English attached to every department in the big stores of Tokio, Yokohama, and Osaka.”