A VISIT TO JAPAN

Poverty Bay Herald, Volume LIX, Issue 17944, 23 November 1932, Page 10

A VISIT TO JAPAN

ENGLISH LADY’S OBSERVATIONS INEFFABLY OF THE EAST i FOREIGNERS NOT WELCOME I j Mrs. Cecil Chesterton, correspondent of the London Daily Express, wrote last; month recording her impressions of Japan, as follows: ; Internal conditions are not good. Unemployment is on the increase, ami , with it a growing labor unrest. Tho yen is falling, and juniors of a new and heavy taxation alarms hankers and business men.

The policy of the present Government, passionately ' supported by tho militarist party, is increasingly unpopular, though a strict censorship muzzles press comments. To the casual visitor, however, Japan —apart from the industrial centres —appears a contented as well as a most agreeable place. The rail ways, run by the State, are admirably managed. Fares are cheap, train meals well served, and the carriages comfortable, clean, and meticulously dusted. Motor-cOaches link up the interior with the large towns, and tlio road system is first class. Barbers and hairdressers wear celluloid shields to protect clients from respiratory infection, and loud-speak-ers in public places broadcast health hints daily. The general dentistry is excellent; gold teeth predominate in every class. But—and this is tin l key to the whole social fabric of Japan—though tho towns are clean in appearance and disinfectants spray the air, outside Tokio the re is no main drainage system, and in the large seaport towns and provincial centres the municipal refuse cart perambulates the streets at all hours. It is not lack of funds that is responsible. Every corporation has its own water, telephone and electric franchise which bring in enormous incomes. These advantages, however, leap to the eye. Sanitation, though essential, is subterranean! MAGICAL NIGHTS Meanwhile the narrowest alleyway has its standards, which, studded with lamps, curve like willow wands across the street. If you can lose your souse of smell, Japan at night is magical. From every hill and valley, from great cities and tiny hamlets, comes a stream of light. Elecptrieity, generated by water power, is extremely cheap. But although the ’Americanisation of some of life's necessities spreads continuously, Japan still keeps her national dress, food and dances in tho village districts. la Kyoto, the ancient capital, you rarely Hoc a woman in Western clothes. Along the cobbled streets little figures iii bright kimonos and wide sashes st ill clatter in wooden clogs, their black hair brilliant with colored combs or delicate blossoms. EXQUISITE SPOT At Kara of the hills, one of the most exquisite spots imaginable, I saw a panorama. combining silage artistry and natural beauty with marvellous effect. I looked down on a sea of light running in waves from a lake with illuminated fountains, through gardens of tall trees, flowering shrubs, little shrines, teahouses and kiosks to the pagoda of the great temple outlined against the sky. In an open booth geishas, swaying like leaves, with flower-like motions of the hands, were posturing. Gramophones tinkled from seductive little houses, street sellers peddled marvellously moulded masks cheek by jowl with clothing stalls, where every garment is enclosed in germ-proof paper! A COLOR BALLET A ballet of color and motion, perfectly produred, this sort of thing goes on all over Japan throughout the summer. ' A fairyland of a country, to the casual eye, with a simple if overserious people, the visitor feels, behind the kimonos and the landscape gardens, the relentless implacability of a rule against which individual choice beats in vain. He senses the pruning knife of regimentation even in those green isles gracefully set on, cool waters, woodland glades fashioned to tiouquets. It is lovely, but, like other and older fairylands, Japan to me .is not quite hu man.

The male population of the capital wears European dress except in long distance travelling, when coat and trousers arc methodically removed, and replaced by a grey or green kimono. The carriages hold 60 passengers, and it is an amazing spectacle to yatch serious business men of all ages get up and strip to the buff, with all the unconscious naivete of little children. GIRLS' WESTERN DRESS

The women still cling to their native dress ,in the city as well as the train, but already the change has begun. .Schoolgirls arc required to wear gym costume in order to benefit from the physical culture which everywhere is heavily stressed, and their sisters employed in ofticos ate following suit. The reason is economic as well as social.

Modern Japan will not, I think, be sorry when her women discard' their flowing draperies—in the capital at all events. In the country, however, time lags, which to those who love traditional delicacy and elegance is a consolation.

Neither English nor .American is spoken to the same extent here, as in China, though there is a sufficiency for the transaction of commerce. But while a perfect politeness is shown to eVery would-be purchaser, there is a definite psychological barrier against foreign contact.

1 am acutely conscious of unceasing surveillance. It exists in the' capital as in 'the seaports. Only on the countryside can you breathe freely aiul feel at' elise.

Foreigners are tolerated, but not welcome. Directly you try to explore beneath the surface' efficiency of everyday life you realise an imperious hostility. The .Monroe Doctrine, as applied to the East, is Japan’s slogan, and the belief that she* has a mission to the Orient, including India as well as China, and is destined to carry the torch of sanitated imperialism, .is implicit in her political genius. Japan has little understanding of other people's psychology, and reasons in a straight line regarding Western

countries. She cannot understand a nation making fun of its shortcomings, afnd is at it loss to realise why Britain placidly survives Japan’s athletic triumphs at Los Angeles. Like every one who assumes an evangelical robe, Japan sutlers from a deadly lack of humor. The Diet has just declared itself teetotal because til'd consumption of said led to unseemly’mirth in the Legislative Council. Painfully'exact ia detail, the face as a whole cannot think quickly or take swift control of an emergency. This, I suppose, accounts, for the high percentage of mortality among their air force. Accidents occur almost daily, though a strict prohibition exists concerning the publication of the news. < 1 The national press suffers more in this respect than the foreign, though both are under similar restrictions. Food I ,is a most important item in all the newspapers hero, largely because tlie Japanese middle classes are acquiring the restaurant habit niorC* 'anil more,’ ' find only fall back on national ‘‘chow’’ oil family and e’ercmonitil occasions.

This Westernisation extends even to the theatre, for so long I 'the home .of a lihe and traditionhl art.

But underlying this, as in other departments of*social life, the approach lo the Occident is but skin deep. 1 Their ethical standards, like their processes of thought, are fundamentally and ineradieably dissimilar, and there are moments when I feel that I could not be more isolated if 1 found myself among the* Martians. Europeanised in externals, Japan remains ineffably of the East. An autocracy with a thin democratic Veneer, her philosophy, morals, ' and entire viewpoint' ate diametrically opposed to our own.