Draughty Japan.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XXXII, Issue XXIII, 4 June 1904, Page 9

Draughty Japan.

The war must certainly leave its mack on the intelligenee of our country. The present operations, for example, have entirely dissipated the very prevalent misconception that the Orient is favoured with endlessly sunny skies. Even Japan, in which some writers would have us believe life is one long dream, has its winter, and how the poor folks exist in their flimsy, draughty dwellings is past understanding. Earthquakes necessitate tightly-built houses, and the eold of these is said to be the cause of the prevalence of phthisis. The Japanese, while they undergo continuous open-air treatment, are the victims of draughts. We may, too, discover before hostilities cease war, rhe Japanese life that is usually depicted for ns is that of the parts which show the country at its worst. Perhaps, too, we may be able to think kindly of the Russians; at any rate we should not condemn them merely because of their bureaucrats and bombastic diplomatists. Our pro-Japanese enthusiasm will no doubt affect our everyday life in l a number of ways. Women's fashions, for instance, sensitive to every natural fad ami fancy, will, we may be sure, lay hands upon something Japanese. A modified kimono is not an

impossibility, but our fair sex will probably draw the line at the woodrn clogs hobble about. The work of transplantain which their Ear Eastern sisters tion Loss the Orient is somewhat delicate. and hitherto with the best intentions in the world, we have Misused what our travellers carried west. We have paper fans and paper lanterns amt lacquer work and pottery, but they Mre generally misplaced, looking sadly out of keeping with the western things that crowd them round. We shall never acquire the artistic simplicity of the Japanese, though that will not prevent us from trying. Then, despite the recent, aspersions on bathing, some portion <>f our populace might emulate the bodily cleanliness of the Japanese. We need not go quite so far as the man who apologised because he had only bathed three times that day, and none of us i< by any means likely to follow the example of the Chinese hill dweller, who spends four months of the year in a warm spring. Still —let us put it very mildly—comparing the nations as a whole, our Ear Eastern allies are a little ahead of us as regards bodily cleanliness. “Never the twain shall meet,” says Kipling of East and West. It is not an absolute dietrim. Japan is getting very western, and Europe might, without disadvantage, accept some lessons from the East.