LAST PEEP AT JAPAN

Greymouth Evening Star, 6 March 1943, Page 6

LAST PEEP AT JAPAN

WAR-TIME CONDITIONS

[The author of this article in the “Sydney Morning Herald” recently arrived in Australia from Tokio via South Africa by one of the Diplomatic Exchange ships. He declares that diplomatic officials, including their wives and families, fared reasonably well. There was not a great variety of food, although it was plentiful. In fact, they were receiving more than officials in the German and Italian Embassies. About once a month they were allowed to go shopping in the company of a Japanese detective, but there wgs nothing to buy as the shops only contained a few odds and ends, and any obtainable material was of very poor quality.] To-day, living in Japan, even from a Japanese point of view, is far ’from easy; but it is important to bear in mind tha + the difficulties are designed and not of necessity. The Japanese are, in fact, undergoing a training for conditions which when they do come, will find the rank and file prepared. Thus the people will be let down lightly, and it will be the easier for the military caste which rules Japan to-day to control a populace traditionally known for many centuries as the most obedient in the world when faced with hardship. In this, as in aill things, the Japanese display foresight—but, be it noted, always foresight for victory; defeat does not enter into their calculations.

At the present time Japanese cities are very shabby and desolate in appearance. Tokio was never a place to compare with the glitter of New York or the more subdued radiance of London, although the name of their main thoroughfare in the shopping district, the Ginza, means Silver Way. The Japanese will always say that it is the most brilliant street in the world but to a man who has travelled even moderately the lights of Tokio have never gleamed brightly, and many a smaller city could easily put up a better show. The one-time busy Imperial Hotel, the Mecca of all tourists to Japan, which was built by the American Frank Lloyd Wright, can now show only a very scanty assemblage at dinner. At tea-time one very small cup of tea only is permitted, while it is out of the question to obtain anything to eat, even a small piece of pastry.

IMPERIAL HOTEL. ’

Hotel meals are at present very small and very expensive in Japan, and consequently the “Imperial” is now being frequented by Japanese, as it is another place where the well-to-do can obtain another meal. Very few Japanese actually live in this hotel, which at present is the home of nearly every German and Italian living in Tokio. Incidentally, the Germans and Italians never mix; they prefer to ignore one another. The Japanese have not for some years entertained in public, and, in fact, some years ago—before the occupation of Manchuria and the outbreak of the “China incident”—din-ing-out in the foreign fashion, with dancing and other Occidental accompaniments, was regarded as smacking of the unpatriotic, and it was by no means uncommon for gay Westernised public parties to be broken up bv scandalised “rightists.” "The spectacle of the Ginza of Tokio at the end of July, 1942, can only be described as melancholy. Furniture shops and optical stores were much the same; but outside vegetable and

provision shops there was invariably a queue of patiently waiting housewives. The same would be seen all over the city and in the country districts, lined along the pavements before chemists’ and butchers’ shops. Rice can be obtained, but only by order of the military Government. It must be unpolished and mixed with millet and other grain, which the Japanese hate, for it not only breaks the tradition of eating nativegrown rice, hut sacrilegiously impairs the purity of the native food offered to the gods on platters before the innumerable shrines of Japan. Japanese rice is peculiarly adapted for eating with chopsticks, as it turns out of the cooking-pot in a glutinous and quaggy condition. The rice from the temporarily-conquered regions is not liked by the Japanese, because it cooks in a drier form and the separate grains are difficult to eat with wooden chop-sticks.

ARMY TAKES ALL. The cement-paved surfaces of the ' Ginza, and, I think, of most other cemented roads throughout the empire, are in a state of upheaval. Potholes abound., and repairs are made with planks, bricks, and in some places straw sandals and such material as comes readily to hand. There is no money for repairs; it has all been appropriated by the Army. The rails of the tram-lines have not been renovated for a long time, and trams bang and jolt along the unrepaired ways; the discomfort of the occupants being increased by the overcrowded state of the interiors and running boards outside. It is only quite recently that trams have had a coat of paint—paint which has been acquired from recently-occupied British territory. Public conveyances all over the country have always been notoriously overcrowded, but conditions become worse and worse as the months go by. As is well known Japan has been collecting scrap from all parts of the world for a number of years, and she is now collecting all available scrap in her own coUmry for military purposes. The first railings to disappear

were those surrounding the Government ministrifes ;then followed those around Hibiya Park (opposite the Imperial .Hotel) and other public places. Iron gratings and gutters vanished, and now all balcony railings, however slender,, are disappearing. There was some agitation in the papers demanding that all public statues should be used as scrap, and it was only recently that several statues from Hong Kong were sent to Japan to be used in their war effort. The Japanese are, of course, moving all available scrap from the occupied territories to Japan. At one time they were dismantling the expensive machinery of the cotton mills and other factories throughout Shanghai and occupied China.

EMPEROR WORSHIP The only exception is the environment of the Imperial Palace, whose grounds and bridges and moats still boast their massive iron railings, while the approach to the Palace of the God-Emperor, the Nijo Bashi, or Double Bridge, before which. all Japanese visiting Tokio bow in worship, still retains its very artistic and solid iron balustrades. Behind these barriers, among the magnificent trees of the Imperial gardens, are seen powering the green copper temple-like roofs of the Palace, to which, after the American air raid last April, the) Cabinet Ministers flocked to offer congratulations on the escape from harm , of the sacred edifices.

Medicines and especially anaesthetics are very short in Japan, and it is interesting to note that when we arrived in Lourenco Marques we were instructed not to attempt to buy any clothing or medicines in the shops, as there was a shortage of stocks, due mainly to the fact that a batch of Japanese who were being exchanged with the Americans a month or two previously had practically cleared the place out. There is no doubt that returning Japanese subjects are officially instructed to buy as great a quantity as possible of any goods

short in Japan, such as footwear, leather, woollen goods, drugs, clothes, etc.

For at least two years now most Japanese have been clothed in what is known as “sufu,’/a product made of vegetable fibre and other ersatz materials. This is of very poor quality, and (a very surprising thing in Japan) housewives have met in indignation meetings to protest against material which wears into holes after one washing, so that they cannot send their children decently to school. Students have long since ceased for the' most part to wear leather footwear, and even in the cold Winter months go to school in “geta” (wooden sandals) or straw “zori.”

INDIVIDUAL INSPECTORS The Japanese have a genius for official matters. Thus the Government proclaimed that their rules could only be fully carried out if the peonle not only complied with them, but individually insisted that other people did the same. Thus, self-appointed inspectors constituted themselves as authorities to admonish people who wore too rich or showy clothes, and these were fond of posting themselves on busy corners of the Ginza, and tackling any unfortunate who seemed to them to be contravening the Government instructions. One lady of a

well-known family stopped another woman who was passing, and patriotically rebuked her. Said the culprit •‘.Madam, I am a weaver by profession. My clothes may be gayer than yours, but they cost far less than the sober but rich garments which now disgrace your honourable body.” Such stories have not been infrequent in the local Press, and they testify to a tendency, to criticise, even though very slightly, some edicts of an overpaternal Government.