JAPANESE MYSTICISM

Wairarapa Times-Age, 23 January 1942, Page 4

JAPANESE MYSTICISM

FOREIGN POLICY IN RECENT YEARS. The subterfuges, fallacies and hypocrisies that have become the earmarks of Japanese foreign policies during the last few years seem abundantly, even painfully, obvious to the American mind. We Americans marvel that the Japanese People, whose qualities and abilities had been given a high rating in the United States, can be so woefully misled, writes Mr Hallett Abend in his book, “Japan Unmasked.” This is because Americans credit the Japanese people with a degree of logic and a fund of information that they do not have and because we do not remotely begin to understand their deeply emotional loyalty to the Throne or the intensity of their pride and patriotism. It must not be forgotten that the Japanese Emperor—practically to the Japanese, a living deity because he is held to be a direct descendant of the Sun Goddess—has often and publicly blessed the war in China and has given his unqualified assent to all those policies and methods that Japan classes as following her “manifest destiny.” The Japanese people have been told repeatedly that their Empire is engaged in a “Holy War” American opposition to this “Holy War” is therefore interpreted as an insupportable national affront.