STEEL, CONCRETE, BAMBOO AND PAPER

Hawke's Bay Herald-Tribune, Volume 81, Issue 67, 11 December 1937, Page 15

STEEL, CONCRETE, BAMBOO AND PAPER

Every where in Japan the Clash of Eastern and Western Culture Has Given Birth toNew Impulses which Result in a Fanatical Determination to Maintain A National Existence i

^HE JAPANESE live in two worlds at the" same time, writes Edgar Lajtha, in the Strand Magazine. They live between iron, concrete and glass, and wood, bamboo and paper. Their double existence has arisen from the amalgamation of the Japanese and European modes of life. This constitutes the secret of modern Japan. Early in the morning the Japanese business

man leaves his little realm of bamboo, wood and paper for tho tram, bus or private car. He is transported thus to his Qffice, bank or factory. He lunches off European food, and all through the day xemains internationally minded. But in the evening at home he changes his suit for a kimono and his food is raw fish, rice and ^ chrysanthemum-petal salad. And then his thoughts are Japanese. In their system of work, and their private pleasures and recreations, there is reflected again and again the curious double-life of this nation. Everywhere the clash of eastern and western culture has given birth to new impulses. The modern Japanese loves playing baseball, golf, hoekey and football. But he is just as fond of sitting impassively for five solid hours on a straw mat, celebrating tea ceremonies; or he breeds little vermilion dragons from ordinary carp; or he spends years in composing an arrangement of an azalea twig and a blade of grass. The Japanese interest themselves enormously in the cultural life of other peoples. Their thirst for knowledge is insatiable. They want to know everything that is known in the East and West. They give their children both a national and an international education. Simplicity in living is the keynote of their existence. I saw how the Japanese worker lives on rice and fish, eating on meat, little milk and neither cheese nor butter. But I saw, too, that the Japanese workers bathed seven times a week. I saw ln the factories that the directors and higher employees wore extactly the same uniforms as the others and ate the same food. Work is regarded as a patriotic duty, and that is the secret of their low costs of production. Loyalty to one's country is the magic phrase which makes the Japanese worker give his services so cheaply. Should there be danger of a strike, the employers only have to mention this inspiring formula and the worker returns to his machine; and as he plies his tools he is convinced that he is fighting against a world engaged in an immense conspiracy against Japan. "For Nippon" is the magic formula. The wel-

fare of his country 1 This is the constanb thought of the Japanese worker. Packed in Japan. . . . Made in Japan. . . . the greater part of the world hates these words. The Japanese copy what they can. Their cheap wares swamp one market after another. Everywhere they are putting up a great fight against the competition pf the white races.

It is not difficult to recognise the factors ■ which are driving Japan with such brutal force into competition for the trade of the world. The annual increase of nearly a million in population, the absence of any unused land fit for cultivating, the bar against access to countries which might have played an important

part' in the solution of Japanese emigration — because of all these things the Japanese regard the rapid development of their industries as the only possible means of maintaining their national existence. In the country there is little outwardly to be seen of .this fanatical determination. One notices nothing of the convulsive efforts, of the sweat of laboux, of the droning power stations.

Life proceeds with the utmost piaciaity. xnere are no anxious or careworn faces; only peaceful, satisfied, confident people. Absolutely everyone in the country smiles. It is not the smile of hypocrisy, it is the product of oenturies of training. Japan's smile lightens her life and has come to regarded as a matter of course. The reaHsation that they are fated to live among active volcanoes has its effect on the character of the . apanese. Earthquakes and volcanoes are not only their constant companions, but also taeir teachers, teaching them the vital lesson of self-eontrol. These menacing phenomena of Nature train them to accept life as a gift of Nature and to surrender it as a gift. Under the repeated blows of Nature they have had to forge for themselves au iron-hard j philosophy. Bushido, the code of the samurai, the code of-the martial caste, for centuries ruled Japan, and still to-day bushido works as tho motive power of that nation. Behind the mask of the modern gentleman smiles tho faee of a medieval knight. Only through. busidoh — loyalty to ihe feudal lords, heroism, preseverance, the habit I of regardiug life as a gift, the willingness to surrender it at any time as a matter of course — | has the great onward march of the Japanese become a victory of mind over matter. As during tho feudal ora, the social structure of Japan is still founded on the duties of the individual: quite contrary to those European nations whose society is founded on individual rights. Loyalty towards superlors remains the leitmotiv of the Japanese character. Thanks to the family system Japan is a country without youthful unemployed. For the unemployed can always leave the towns for tne farms of their relatives. Also the organisations of the community encourage the family system. The factory is organised as a family, so also is the theatre, the confectione.ry shop, even the telephone exchanges in which the operators live and sleep. So modern industry lives and fights equipped with Japan's medieval morale.