JAPANESE GUILE

Otago Daily Times, Issue 26114, 29 March 1946, Page 5

JAPANESE GUILE

FRIENDLY OVERTURES DOMINION SCENES PRODUCED CONVENIENT MENTAL LAPSE (N.Z. Official Correspondent with the J Force) (Rec. 11 p.m.)' OSAKA, Mar. 27. The Japanese are, beginning to show the same peculiar 'proclivity as I observed among other defeated Axis nations in the way of suffering a convenient mental lapse covering the past five years. The executive of the Osaka Mainichi, Japan’s largest newspaper, with a daily circulation of over 3,000,000 copies, showed me a beauti-fully-produced publication designed to encourage trade between Australia, and New Zealand. From the way it was shown to me I at first thought it was a new and brazen attempt to build up rather premature good relationships. On closer examination it proved to be 10 years old. In the light of more recent events, the publication had a certain degree of cynicism, and its exhortation to “ Come and see New Zealand, land of wonder, with manifold scenic beauty spots,” could hardly be reiterated. Under the flags qj three countries, the cover sported reproductions of scenes of N&v Zealand and Australian cities, including the harbours of Wellington and Auckland, Christchurch’s Cathedral Square, and the Dunedin Stock Exchange. Photographs of wool sales gave foreground prominence to Japanese buyers, while articles on the food production and potentialities of both dominions, read 10 years after their original publication, seemed to contain a distinct hint of hungry Japanese envy. Proud display of . the publication was, however, abruptly concluded when, with Occidental bluntness, I pointed out a lyric passage stating: “ The greatest Japanese hope is that she can always be a great Pacific neighbour to New Zealand and Australia. Mutual co-operation of our three nations is a symbol of the peace which the name of the mighty ocean in which all are situated implies.”