Japan

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 352, 22 March 1946, Page 5

Japan

HE purpose of the series of articles begun on Page 6 of this issue is to make our readers think about Japan. If they are male readers, single, and of military age, a further purpose is to suggest that they at least ask themselves whether they should not volunteer for service with the occupying forces, But Japan is a challenge to all New Zealanders and not merely to those young enough to bear arms. To begin with, it is crowded, and when its deportees return from Manchuria, Formosa, and Korea, there will be 70 or 80 million people living in a country not much bigger than New Zealand and originally no more productive; living there in an age that has abolished distance. But it is not the pressure of material things in Japan that it is most necessary for New Zealand to understand: it is the way of life, and the attitude of mind, that this pressure has produced in the course of centuries. It is not sufficient to say that the Japanese by our standards are poor or even very poor;. that we have never reached, or tried to reach, their standards of diligence; or that what we mean by frugality would to most of them be reckless luxury. All that would be true; but the foundation truth is that they are neither changed nor capable of change this year or next. They may be capable of changing themselves in a generation. But at present the great majority live as they have always lived, working from daylight till dark for food, clothes, and shelter. Defeat does nothing to people like that but change the direction and purpose of their labour. Even the destruction of their homes is an upset rather than a shock, and in a year or two is almost forgotten. The people themselves remain; their toughness and patience remain, and are even, in some respects, accentuated. When earthquakes devastated Japan a generation ago the survivors buried their dead, rebuilt their homes, and went on where they had left off. To-day they go on where the war left them mechanically but with the psychology that is the inheritance of ages.