UNDER THE KIMONOS

Waikato Times, Volume 94, Issue 14773, 12 October 1921, Page 3

UNDER THE KIMONOS

JAPAN AND ITS GARISH GAIETY. A remarkable novel of Japanese life has just been written, culled "Kimono"' W. Collins, sons, and Co., 7 s 6d nett). It is by John Paris, and is "a lirsl novel." There is much sensational incident in it, and it makes a good story. But the atmosphere of the t»ook and its .villi's arc greater and mure important than the story. It is a most sombie pb'ture of Japan, and fills one with forebodings. There is something ominous in it. The writer evidently knows his subject at first hand, and handles il bravely and without fear, lie effectively bursts tiie spurious glamour which certain of our musical comedies have thrown upon certain aspects of Japanese life, and shows it for the hideous thing it is. We would welcome from his pen a serious stud! of the Japanese temperament, and how it is likely to develop in these swift-changing days. The story centres round the marriage of an Englishman to a Japiaese girl who does not know" Japan. Here is a. description of their first visit to Tokio. Tho Japanese Capital. "They drove through Tokio. It was like crossing London for the space of distance covered; an immense city yet is it a city or merely a village prcponderously overgrown ? "There is no dignity in the Japanese capital, nothing secular or permanent, except that mysterious forestland in the midst of the moats and Hie grey walls, where dweil the Emperor and the Spirit of the Race. "It is a mongrel city, a vast eonseries of native wooden huts hastily equipped with a few modern conveniences. Drunken poles stagger down the streets waving their cobwebs of electric wires. Itickcly trams jolt past crowded to overflowing, so crowded that humanity clings to the steps and platforms in clots like flies clinging lo some sweet surface. "Thousands of iittlc shoos glitter, wink, or frown at the passer-by. . . "Everywhere the same crowds loitered along lite pavements. No hustle, no appearance of business save where a messenger boy threaded the maze on a breakneck bicycle, or where a dull-faced coolie pulled at an overloaded barrow. Grey and brown the crowd clattered by in their wooden shoes. . . .

"Tlie only bright notes among all these drab multitudes were the little girls in their variegated kimonos, who fluttered in and out of the entrances and who played unscolded on the footpaths. These, too, were the only notes of happiness, for their grownup relatives, especially the women, carried an air, if not an actual expression, of animal melancholy, the melancholy of driven sheep or of cows ruminant." A Temple in Japan. "A temple in .Japan is not merely a building; it is a site. These sites were most carefully chosen with the same genius which guided our Benedictines and Carthusians. The site of ikegami is a long abrupt hill halfway between Tokio and Yokohama, it is clothed with cryplomeriu trees. "These dark conifers, like immense cypresses, give to Ihc spot that grave, silent, irrevocable atmosphere with which Broecklin has invested his picture of the island of the Dead. These majestic trees are essentially a part of the temple. They correspond to the pillars of our Gothic cathedralsThe roof is the blue vault of heaven; and the actual buildings are but altars, chantries, and monuments. "A steep flight of steps is suspended like a cascade from the crest of the hill. Up and down these steps the wooden clogs of the Japanese people patter incessantly like water drops." The Crowd at the Temple. "The temple yard was an immense fancy fair. ... "The crowd was astonishingly mixed. There wore professors, merchants of Tokio, with their waives, children, servants, and apprentices. There were students with, their blue and white spouted cloaks, their kepis wilh the school badge, and their ungainly stride. There were modern young men in European dress with Panama hats, swagger canes, and side-spring shoes, supercilious in attitude and proud of their unbelief. There were troops of variegated children, dragging at their elders' hands or kimonos, or getling lost among the legs of the multitude like little leaves in an eddy. "There were excursion parties from the country, with their kimonos caught up to the knees and with baked earlhcrn faces stupidly staring, sporting each a red flower or a coloured towel for identification purposes." Our Divine Mission. Some of the thoughts moving in some of the minds of the Japanese are put in these words: —■ "Twenty years ago Japan defeated China and took Korea. Ten years ago we defeated Itussia and took Manchuria. This year we defeat Germany and take Tsingtao. In 10 years we shall defeat America and take Hawaii and the Philippines. In 20 years we shall defeat England and take India and Australia. Then we Japanese shall be Ihe most powerful nation in the world. This is our divine mission." Tho Change in Asia. "You must never forget your father's country, and you must never say bad things about Japan, even'if you have suffered here. Then the English people will love you. . . . "The English are a very great people, Ihc greatest of all: but Ihey know very little about us in the East. They think that because we are a. yellow people, therefore we are inferior to them. Perhaps when they set a Japanese lady as one of their peer's wives and a leader- in society, they will understand that the Japanese also are not so inferior, for the English people have, a great respect for peers. "Japan is proud lo be England's younger brother; but Ihe elder brother must not take all the inheritance. He must he content to share. For perhaps lie will not always be the strong one. This war will make England weak, and it will make Japan strung. It will make a great change in the world and in Asia most of all. Already the people of Asia are saying. 'Why should these while men rule over us".' They cannot " rule themselves. . . Disappointment with the East. The efforts of disappointment which come to the traveller in Japan is thus discussed by two Englishmen in that country "-one' a resident, and the other a traveller only: "Geoffrey, you have not boon in tho East long enough lo be exasperated by il. I have." "It's not what I thought it was going lo ne, I must admit. Everything is so much of n muchness. If you've seen one temple you've peon iho lot, and the same with everything here." "That is the first stage —disappointment. We have heard so much of Ihe Easl and it- splendours, Ihe gorgeous East, and Ihe v-sl of il. The reality is small and sordid, and like so much that is ugly in our own conn try." "Yep. Ihey wear shocking bad clothes, don't limy, direclly Ihey gel mil of Ilieir kimonos: and even Ihe kimonos look dincy and dirty." "They are." said llrggie. "Yours would be If you had to keep a wife

and eight children on 30s a month. - ' Tho Second Stago. Then he added: "The second stage to the observer's progress is Discovery. Have you read Lafcadio Hearn's books about Japan?" "Yes, some of them," answered Geoffrey. "It strikes me that he was a thorough-paced liar." "No, he was a poet, and he jumped over the first stage to dwell for some time in Hie second; probably because he was by nature short-sighted. That is a great, advantage for discoveries." "But what do you mean by the second stage'.'" "Tho Stage of Discovery!" "Have you ever walked about a Japanese city in the twilight when the evening hell sounds from a hidden temple'.' Have you turned into the by-streets and watched the men returning to their wise little houses, and the family groups assembled lo meet them and help them to change into their kimonos? Have you heard Ihe splashing and Hie clatter of the bath-houses, which arc the evening clubs of the common people and the great clearing-houses of gossip? . . . "Have you seen anything of this without a feeling of deep pleasure and a wonder as to how these people live and think, what we have got in common with them, and what we have got to learn from them? . . . The Dead Who Rule. " 'The dead are the real rulers of Japan,' says Lafcadio Hearn." Underneath the surface changing the nation is deeply conservative, suspicious of all interference and unconveutionali'ly —sullenly self-satisfied: and. above all, still as much locked in its primitive family system as il was a thousand years ago. You cannot he friends with a Japanese unless you are friends with his family, and you cannot be friends with his family unless you belong to il. This is Hie deadlock: and that is why we never get, any forwarder."