THE JAPANESE.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 22, Issue 91, 24 November 1911, Page 2

THE JAPANESE.

IN THEIR HABIT AS THEY LIVE. "Home Life in Tokyo,” by Jukichi Inouye,, has a value and interest of its own. Its author (says Sidney Dark, writing in the "Express”) is a Japanese who has written of the small things of his natural home in the English language, and for the information of English and American readers. He writes, of course, with first-hand information, and with, it seems to me, a certain appreciation of the limitations of bis people. GROWING MATERIALISM.

We think of the Japanese as a na " tion with a great artistic sense and an overmastering love of the beautiful. But ugliness is the characteristic of the new Japan. Says Mr. Inouye

"The herculean task Japan has set herself leaves her little leisure to consider its artistic effects. She is too much iii ' earnest to waste a thought on the cut of the "habiliments she is donning ; and only when she has so adapted herself as to fit them exactly will she turn her attention to their frills and trimmings.” Here the author himself evidences profound ignorance of the essence of the beautiful. It is the oddest idea in the world ib.t “'frills and trimmings” can change that which is fundamentally ugly.

Japan is a disciple of Dr. Smiles. It does not yearn to dream or to think. It is eager to get on. “Nor is there a special room for books, for the library does not find a place as an important feature in a Japanese house. We Japanese are not a nation of readers.” It is indeed, an atmosphere of stolid materialism that appears to pervade the quaint little houses into which Mr. Inouye takes <us, and to envelop the little prettiness of manners and customs. CONFLICTING IDEALS. The Japanese are a secretive people. They know nothing of the charm of wearing their heart on their sleeves. “The truth la, we fear, that courtesy is with us, as with the French, a matter of education, and is to a great extent a mechanical ' habit which its enforcement from early childhood at home and at school has almost made a second nature with us. That self-control which we possess in common with other Asiatic nations from its having been instilled into us from generation to generation by the precepts of our sages, enables us to repress all expression of emotion whenever necessity arises, and even to wear a mask under the most trying circumstances.”

Does the man with infinite power for repressing emotion inherit the earth ? I believe history very emphatically declares that he does not, that he goes a long way, but that he does not gather in the* richest of the prizes. FAMILY LIFE. The Japanese home, at the present time of change, is inevitably the place of clashing theories. “In the present stage of Japanese society the lack of sympathy between a man’s wife and mother Is aggravated by the difierence in their education. The older woman, being separated from the younger by the yawning gulf which divides Old and New Japan, cannot conceive why the ideas In which she herself was brought up should not be good enough for the other, and finds fault with what are In her eyes outlandish ways introduced by the uew era.” The family life, with its clear commonsense, its hygenic diet, its stoical acceptance of dulness, Its carefully moderated affection, appears to me monstrously inhuman.