CURRENT LITERATURE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LVI, Issue 17151, 3 May 1919, Page 3 (Supplement)

CURRENT LITERATURE.

NOTES ON NEW BOOKS.

BY CRITIC.

To-day is an age of information desire for which is an ever-growing factor in the world's unrest. The more there is written the greater thu demand for reliable first hand facts about the various countries making their progress towards a recognised place in affairs and about those lands where our own people may find wide scope for their energies. Nor will .ien accept any longer the unauthenticateil, euphemistic description of places and peoplesSolid truth, with the note of comparison which enables them to judge the exact place of those written about, is the demand of to-day, and one of the most e.^ential needs of the world.

JAPAN AT FIRST HAND. " Japan at First Hand "—bv Jos.'.-.h I. C. Clarke (Dodds, Mead, New \ork; Champtaloup and Edminston, Auckland).— We have all read the " fairy tale " side of Japanese life: we are as tired as Mr. Clarke says " the man in the street " of Tokyo is of cherry blossom and wktaria : but there is still great room for such a bonk as this. Approaching the natter with the spirit of wanting to know more than a tourist sees on the surface, the r.uthor has searched very deeply into causes, has gathered figures and ha; succeeded in correcting many accepted but evidently erroneous impressions. He has lived in Japan during war time, so his observations deal very largely with the most I modern aspect of Japan. According to j him, Tsingtao will revert to China at the cost of an indemnity to Japan for the cost of it— the res', depends upon a " moderate self-respectintr Chinese Government, not jpen to the methods of Talleyrand Machiavelli, and Metternich."

' Farming and Fishing in Japan. It is to be noted that Japan is a land of small holdings. The peasant is harnessing the falling water to give him power and li'ght, but his estate is one which "s-arcely ever exceeds two and a-half acres "—littlo rice fields and little barley fields—the barley rows raised a foot or more above the rice field and picked clean of weeds, which they religiously save and bury as fertilisers. Running down the length of the patch, double rows of mulberries and a little sun-fronting knoll, the rounded green of a score or so of tea plants— farms ( are often only one acre and not always in one parcel Amid the little oblongs of rice and barley, some were sown with a clover-like plant full of blossoms of a bluish pink, very gay to the eye. No cattle are in sight, an ox at the plough perhaps in every three miles. Very few horses, but on every road and path, pea- ' sants, men women and sturdy boys, all carrying burdens to and from the fields, or drawing the univereal two-wheel cart, drawn or pushed by two or three. The fishing industry employs nearly a million men exclusively engaged in it, and a million and a-ha'lf partly engaged. There are hundreds of varieties of edible fish. The sea takes heavy yearly toll of the fishermen. Storms come up suddenly . and small boats are ewiimped and larger boats are engulfed wit.i all hands. In, drowned and missing, over a thousand perish each year. So fishermen's widows abound in fishing villages and orphans too. But with the latter the case is not so bad, they have "as large families as we can, because the boats must be manned, and when a. man is lost at sea, everybody wants to adopt bis children—we have pity on the misfortunes of our brothers."

Fish, both cooked and raw. is an important food element. This like nuso (a ferment of barley and beans) supplies the nitrogenous element. Living on these foods develops a liking, for daikon, the pickled white radish, containing a good deal of diastase, a peat aid in the digestion of starchy foods, which is very necessary when rice forms so large a part of their meals. Green twi is consumed at every meal and this (without milk or sugar) ia undoubtedly the purest and least "harmful form of tea. The writer deals with detail on the topics of silk and tea culture and his remarks upon the education and the athlete side of young Japan are somewhat in the nature of a revelation. It is more than worth while to read what he has to say of the Geisha, a class totally misunderstood the world over by the superficial reader. But his chance remarks point to " sweating " in the factories. Factories working double shifts in peace-time, dormitories doing double work like the machines, women working all night, tuberculosis lifting its "hideous white face or sunken cheeks." Japan's finance and banking are dealt with and a good chapter is devoted to her leading men, her religion, and her customs, and some charming pages on family life, make up an interesting and exceedingly instructive book, on the scheme and evident thoroughness of which the author is to be congratulated.

MODERN NOVELS. "The Maine"—by Edith Wharton (Maemillan, London).—This tale of the w-,r describes a young American who, too young to serve for the France which ha 'loves, offers his services as an ambulance driver. His impatience while watching America's delay and waiting for his own years to* pass, is veiy typical of ardent, Yank. He still desires to fight, and one day while waiting for repairs to his motor, he seizes a rifle and joins up with some troops going to the Front, is wounded and overwhelmed with shame at bis disloyalty and desertion, is delighted to find his companion driver who tells him that he has helped to win the battle of the Marne, and that he himself returned in time to lcok after the ambulance. So that no one knows of the lad's adventure. Mrs. VV barton has drawn a good type of loung "Tie Ooastlanders"— by Bernard Trunin (Hodder, Stoughton, London).-The story is told by a station " hand, Kerf Dawson. He works for a rough, hard Ta.smar.ian settler, Slump Ferguson, who has three vicious sons and whose language is ever lurid. Surveyors opening up the land have trouble with Ferguson, and a side romance runs along concerning Margaret Treherne. Bed Dawson is sent to bring her from the towMhip to work for Mrs. Ferguson, and he at once becomes her cavalier, on guard Mairirt the three bad sons. A surveyor, ' Big John, figures largely in the story, and an absconding hank cashier; and a pood deal of rough back-country life is depicted.