IN FAR JAPAN

Grey River Argus, 12 April 1916, Page 2

IN FAR JAPAN

NEW ZEALANDERS IMPRESSIONS. THE MIKADO'S CORONATION. GREAT WAR BUSINESS BOOM. "I was' reminded on moi'e than one occasion of .Kipling's lines, which terminate -in the epitaph — Here lies a fool Who tried to hustle the East. |Itis no good. " The Aryan smiles and the Christian riles,' but you can never get tbeni to hustle' The speaker was Mr. C. A. Briggs, manager of E. W. Mills and *.■• who has been holiday-making in the East 'since September last, four months of which time was spent in Japan. "Docs that apply to the Japanese?' was asked. "Yes — the Japancscs arc just the same-, as the rest. They say that ' punctuality is the soul of business. If that is so the Japanese has no business soul, yet lie is doing very well in competition with the wdrld. He will cheerfully put off till toiuoi'orw what he could do to-day, and it is difficult to make him keep appointments. Anyhow, all the clocks in Tokio differ, so that he can always say that he had gone by ano ther clock. : That characteristic, and the fact that the country is j ovei'TUii Ayith orders, make the Japaneses of the present time a little difficult to do business with.' • ' := . v^ ■-• I 'm an Irishman ! " . * Mr. Briggs left here on August 26 last, and travelled north Avard by way of Northern Australian," B'atavia; and Singapore. At Sin'gapoiie he was -shown the scene of the tragic mutiny of over a year ago, when a Sepoy tegiment,'bi'ib

ed with German gold, ran amok and killed many Europeans before justice overtook them. . He was takan ut and shown the scrub flanked road by an officer— Lieut Kennedy — who told him that the Sepoys took cover on each side of the road, under instructions to shoot all English people that passed, and, as is known, several passing in motor-cars were shot down It is related that when a car came along the Sepoys held it up, and asked, "Are you English?' Scent in gdanger, one traveller replied, "No, I'm an Irishman!' And the Sepoys let him pass. They had never heard of an Irishman, and their instructions were only to shoot English. From Singapore Mr. Briggs tra veiled to Hong Kong and Bhang-" hai, and then crossed over to Japan, where his caravan rested for four delightful months. The Mikado's Crowning". " Mr. Briggs was fortunate enough to be in Kiota, the ancientcapital of Japan, at the time of the coronation of the. young Mikado. "Most of the foreigners had received their passes long before the British Ambassador . in Tokio, but having none, I applied to the Japanese Governor of Kiota, and was accommodated with a pass to view the official .entry of the Mikado into the Imperial Palace grounds, where there was a reservation for Europeans. There were some two million visitors to Kiota to witness the ceremonies, so you can imagine the crowds and the gorgeous procession which heralded the approach of the Mikado beggars description All sections of the comniu nity were represented in some way recognisable to the Japanese — big bearded Ainus of the extreme north, men from the inland sea soldiers, priests — the nation in procession. I had a good view of the Mikado, who under his gorgeous canopy appeared to be a nice-looking young fellow. A wonderful feature of the turn-out was that it was all conducted in absolute quietness. Everyone was instructed that no demonstration was to be made — all we were I to do was to bow the head as the Mikado passed, which we all did most religiously. Three Weeks of Joy. "Of course that was only tho start. Ceremonies and processions, and f eastings were kept up for three weeks. Sometimes 1 Vgould walk the streets for half a clay without seeing another European, and the crowds were so thick at times that the only way I could get along was to join in the procession, and shout "Banzai '.'.with the rest of them. At. night-time the streets were an astonishingly beautiful sight. Every j shopkeeper arid householder was I compelled to hang before his 1 place a big white Japanese paper | lantern, with the national Rising Sun device on it, and for miles one could soe these lines of lan. terns trailing away into the distance. Japanese Religion. "First lessons in Shintoism!" said Mr. Briggs, producing a photograph of a Japanese mother, her, holding her child up to enable it to throw its little firstful of rice into the receptacle in a wayside shrine. "Shintoism," said Mr. Briggs, "is a difficult thing to define. It is hardly a religion for it is not opposed in any way to Buddhism — that is to say, a per son can be a Shintoist and a Buddhist without the slightest inconvenience. There are no Shinto temples — only these shrines. The ceremonial religion of Japan is Buddhism, but Shintoism — the worship of- the Mikado and ono's ancestors is an elemental force in the nation which makes its people one cohesive whole — which means an intense patriotism. Here is a photo of a woman and her child. ■ Having visited the shrine they go over to a pole and ring a bedd suspended at the top, clap the hands three times, and pray silently for a few moments. The Buddhist temples, are beautiful in the purest artistic sense. Their altars are not garish with colours and jewels' like those of the Indian temples,. but are in their decorations refined and chaste to a •degree.