How To Distinguish Men Of China From The Japanese

Bay of Plenty Beacon, Volume 13, Issue 40, 12 January 1949, Page 7

How To Distinguish Men Of China From The Japanese

To the average Westerner all Orientals look hopelessly alike, and Chinese and Japanese are indistinguishable. As the ability to tell them apart may be a matter of importance, it is not very reassuring to have Dr. Yui Ming, head of the Chinese Information Office in Canada, assert that he could distinguish a Chinese from a Japanese on sight in nine cases out of 10 only.Once the man opens his mouth, however, the rest is easy. The Chinese are unable to pronounce the letter “r”; the Japanese are constitutionally unable to deal with the letter “1.”

The average Chinese is a cheerful extrovert—tolerant, charming, reasonable and inefficient. The Japanese are industrious, subservient, humourless, and very, very efficient indeed. Japanese like games. The Chinese laugh at unnecessary exercise. .In China, men from the people could rise to highest hononrs through the Imperial examination system and there is a s strong tradition of local self-government. The Japanese, in the grip of a rigid class system, ruled from the top by an hereditary military caste, concentrated their attention upon the fate of the individual. And so, while old Chinese literature produced a classic of social revolt in' •the novel “All Men Are Brothers,” a Japanese woman, Murasaki Shikibu, wrote a thousand years ago the world’s first psychological novel “The Story of Genji.”