THE SHADOW OF JAPAN

Southland Times, Issue 23652, 29 October 1938, Page 14

THE SHADOW OF JAPAN

HUNGARIAN’S WORLD TOUR

MEN, ISLANDS AND OCEANS. By Edgar Lajtha. Robert Hale, Ltd., London, through Whitcombe and.

Tombs. Price 12/6 net.

“Picture-reporting” is one of the most important features of modem journalism. It began in Berlin in the nine-teen-twenties. People had lost faith in the printed word, so much of which was propaganda, but they thought that pictures could not lie. The art spread only recently to America where Life and Look have reached circulations of up to 2,000,000 copies. Edgar Lajtha, a young Hungarian journalist and picture reporter, visited the men, islands and oceans of the world with 2000 plates in his trunk and now gives us a vivid and compelling account of his studies illustrated by some 30 splendid photographs. Throughout he is dominated by the thought of Japan, which progresses step by step, never retreating, storming the walls which have been raised against her. After visiting Ceylon, Singapore and China, which ne thinks will eventually assimilate those Japanese who are attacking her, Mr Lajtha arrives in Manchukuo, where Japan is carrying out the same plan as she intends to use in China after the war. The Chinese of Manchukuo are being “civilized” which means being taught to like the Japanese and consume Japanese goods. In Manchukuo he travelled in a streamlined train with luxurious wagon-lits and observation cars and arrived at a city with palatial hotels, night clubs in the Parisian style, imported Geisha girls,. asphalted boulevards, modern buildings and parks. The Chinese are being taught to use Japanese suits, fountain pens and electric light bulbs. Free gramophones and records are supplied so that the illiterate can hear Government propaganda. The Japanese secretaries draft the orders which the Chinese Ministers sign. Great masses of the Manchukuo Chinese are glad to he under Japanese rule but the educated Chinese hate and despise the Japanese. Japan itself proved the greatest astonishment of the author's life. The keynote is tempo, energy, success—a victorious and violently progressive nation. The sense of duty and loyalty to their country and their employers, pervades the employees, making strikes impossible. This, and the synthesis of the most modern methods of mechanization and production, enable them to produce their universally hated cheap exports. . JAPAN’S FISHING INDUSTRY At the State fisheries at Hokkaido, fish from Alaska and California were bred from. Countless small fish were placed in the water to swim to the Pacific but inexorably to return in five years to lay their eggs where they began their careers. Great factory ships raise laden nets with donkey engines. On the conveyor band, the fish are automatically beheaded and gutted, pressed, salted, packed and sealed into tins labelled “Made in Japan.” The factory ship works day and night. Silver foxes and martens have been imported and breed on another island.

Can we compete with this vigorous nation with its annual million increase in births? Or will we be overwhelmed? Japan can never become a dictatorship because the Japanese could never allow their deified Emperor to be overshadowed. Contrary to general belief, the Japanese are a democratic nation and their Press is almost as free as that of France. The outcry of the Press against the Japanese-German antiComintern treaty caused the fall of the Hirota Cabinet.

Mr Lajtha next visited Hawaii, where widely different races live in amity, but he exposes Waikiki as a sideshow for tourists, with six hula lessons for 10 dollars. He visited Hollywood and met the incredible Aimee Semple McPherson, The cheap emotionalism of her broadcast temple service is reminiscent of, but far more picturesque than, New Zealand’s own radio personality. The accurate account of the evangelist’s career and the amazing story of the “abduction” and the prosecution which followed are alone well worth the price of the whole book. ACROSS AMERICA Travelling across the United States, which is as . long a journey as from London to Constantinople, but with no customs officials or passport control, Mr Lajtha. thought sadly of the foolishness of Europe. He was as struck by the freedom of America as he was by the national unity of Japan, but, when he states that there is no racial problem in America, he displays a superficial judgment which is in marked contrast to the accuracy and penetration of his other observations. After visiting England (whose character he has most difficulty in understanding until he is helped by a Chinese author), Ireland and the Isle of Aran, he returns to troubled Europe. Every Hungarian thinks of his country, which lost two-thirds of its territory and one-third of its inhabitants by the senseless Treaty of Versailles, as three times, as big as it is. The pre-war geography is taught in the schools. Maps on every railway station show the old boundaries. Four million Hungarians are under alien domination but the ceded territory is called “occupied territory.” A million Hungarians live in Transylvania. Their sons, compelled to serve in the Rumanian army, are beaten if they speak a word of Hungarian in their off-duty time. Letters from theii parents in Hungarian are torn up before their eyes and the recipients are punished. War will certainly return unless this problem is settled. Those readers who enjoyed Negley Farson’s “Way of a Transgressor” can be cordially recommended to read Mr Lajtha’s book, which is at least as in- i structive and which is more vividly written. I