THE CHEAPEST ANIMAL IS MAN

New Zealand Listener, Volume 14, Issue 353, 29 March 1946, Page 6

THE CHEAPEST ANIMAL IS MAN

THE second of a series of articles written by the Editor of "The Listener" about his recent visit to Japan. DON’T think there. was any member of our party — six Australians and five New Zea-landers-who was not disappointed with Japan at first sight. It was beautiful from the air when we were high up, but when we came lower and saw that the houses had no paint and the roof-tiles no colour, that no house had a garden, and that all the streets were drab and grey, the remark of one of the Australians went for us all: "What a bloody swindle. I bet we all thought we were coming to a flowergarden." We certainly should not have thought that in the first week in February, but it is true that everybody has been swindled who has been sold the Japan of the guide-books and musichalls. The pretty-pretty Japan does not exist, even in springtime when the plums and cherries are in blossom, or in autumn when maple leaves are yellow and chrysanthemums every colour under the sun. No country can be a garden of flowers and at the same time a ricefield and vegetable garden. Every Japanese loves flowers and grows them if he can; but he loves food more, and starves unless the earth is kept continually busy feeding him. I shall return to Japanese

food production in a later paragraph; but it is nonsense to perpetuate the flowery-land myth whether the country is Japan or China, and just as foolish, I think, to accept the suggestion of Japanese guide-books that the houses are not painted because the people prefer the natural colour of the wood. The houses are not painted because the people are poor, and I suspect that the tiles are grey-black because the weathered bamboo is grey-black which supports them and holds them together. So there is very little colour in the streets because people who work from daylight to dark in oily or dusty workshops, and as labourers on the roads or transport services, can’t be resplendent too; but you do see colour occasionally-a woman or girl in a kimono of such brilliance that you stop and watch her-and you do soon find yourself admiring the drab roofs, which make shacks into houses, and are far more than half the story of Japanese architecture. Pa * * 4

INDUSTRY ON TWO FEET

F Japan itself had not interested me it would have been worth while travelling 8,000 miles for the glimpses I managed to get of the Japanese people. I spent hours watching them in the streets, followed them on country roads, and saw as many as I could at work

on their farms. Of the industrial workers I saw little so far as I know, though all Japan was a

factory during the war, and thousands of the men and women the visitor now sees crowding into trains and streaming on and off railway _plat-

forms were munition workers a few months ago, with perhaps a_ million schoolchildren and at least one worker from every farm. Similarly, it is not easy for a stranger to judge how many of the thousands one passes on the roads outside the cities are farmers going to town to trade, or townspeople going into the country for food. -A~ considerable proportion of them are cultivators carrying home night-soil for fertiliser, though these are easily recognisable by what the Americans call their honey-pots-barrels on handcarts, pulled by a single horse (invariably thin and ill-groomed). a bullock or a bull, or three or four humans both pulling and pushing. Twice only in a range of about 600 miles I saw a man on horseback, but where he was going and what he was doing I was not able to discover. I did notice that the horses were spiritless and the riders ill-at-ease, which suggested a rich man riding for prestige or health. On the other hand, these were the only two horses I saw in Japan which were not being led. The cheapest animal in Japan walks on two legs, and Providence has seen to it that he also lives longest. So only the very rich, whom I neither met nor saw, indulge occasionally in such luxury as a ride in a horse-drawn carriage, and only the very thin trickle of radicals see anything incongruous in using most freely what is most readily available. But something has happened to the rickshaw. You see it everywhere, but you do not often see a human load in it. I watched at one railway station for half-an-hour and in that period did not

see a single passenger enter a rickshaw or leave one. The load in every case was luggage.

NO ESCAPE FROM POVERTY

T may of course be true, as the guidebooks say, that the rickshaw is now only a curiosity in the cities, or was becoming so before the war, but the rickshaw idea, that man-power is cheap transport, is accepted everywhere. The number of people you see carrying

burdens in the cities is probably, about one in 20, but when you include the women with their babies the impression

you get is that it is one in three or four. There is the fact, too, that a large proportion of people of all ages-the very young as well as the very old-carry wooden frames on their backs if they are not carrying babies, and even in the cities you will see them filing home at night, buried under loads of firewood or carrying what looks like half the contents of a home. Whatever the population of Japan is to-day — 60, 70, or 80 millions — you never escape anywhere from people. So you never escape from poverty and dirt. Half the population. by our standards are just destitute. They eat, work, mate, and sleep, but you wonder when and where. Three out of four of them have never used a handkerchief, or regularly changed their clothes, or kept their hands clean, or slept in aired beds. All those things are luxuries which they have never been able to pay for. I think their instinct is towards cleanliness, or they would never have achieved

| Opposite: "Waiting for a tram which about 10 per cent. would have a chance of entering" it in the higher layers of their society; but it is an instinct that millions can’t indulge. They smell-as individuals and as multitudes, and their habit of making urinals of public streets and highways does not make the atmosphere any sweeter. But it does not make the people sepulsive. Only the senile and depraved are offensive, and not so many of those would be seen if there were houses in which to hide them all. But the fact remains that very many streets in Japan, very many shops and railway stations, smell of water-closets and dried fish. The second no one can complain of: fish are life in Japan-the bridge between health and starvation. The first makes offensive nonsense of guide-books and tourist propaganda. * ve kh

CROWDS AND OUEUES

N spite of all that, and some worse things, a Japanese crowd is more interesting than any crowd I have ever seen. To begin with, it is a crowd-surg-ing forward at a half trot or queued up and stock still, Where the moving swarms come from and go was never

very clear to me, since | saw no_ great _ factories operating, no public works, and no_ warehouses filled

= with food or clothes. I saw food shops that one hungry labourer would eat out at a sitting, clothes shops that might fit out one family. I saw public markets that were just long lines of farmers and fishermen sitting on the frosty ground behind one little basket. I saw small driblets of all kinds of things that, added together, would amount to a considerable river, but nothing to explain a stream of people seven or eight deep moving on one side of the street and a reverse stream on the other side. Nor was it ever clear to me why hundreds of people would stand in a silent queue waiting for a tram which about 10 per cent. would have a chance of entering. But they did

stream along the streets, and they did stand and wait, and the longer I looked at them the more they absorbed and amazed me.

THE PEOPLE ARE PRIMITIVE

or As everyone knows, the Japanese are small-about six inches shorter than we are, and many pounds lighter. But it is only when you see them in the mass that you detect their anxiety over their size, and the devices they use to hide it-clogs two or three inches high. hats

with pushed-up crowns, gowns sweeping in an unbroken line from shoulders to heels. It is thea

also that you sense the desire of so many of them to be western, to escape from their past, and build a new personality on leather shoes and gilded teeth. I think every Japanese who can get them wears European clothes now and again; but at present about a quarter of the men are wearing uniforms, not because they have been soldiers or sailors, but because the Americans took over all military supplies at the surrender and handed back the food and clothes to the Ministry of Home Supply. So the women use cosmetics when they can get them, and it is clear from the faces in the street that cosmetics have already joined cigarettes as currency in the black market. But all that is sophistication. A majority of Japanese men, and an overwhelming majority of Japanese women, are not merely conservative still, but primitive. The men neither evade nor seek notice when they get rid of kody waste in public places, and a woman will suckle a baby on a doorstep, or sitting on a barrow in the street, with as little embarrassment as it gives a New Zealand girl to apply lipstick in a restaurant. a %* * a

THERE HAS BEEN NO SAROTAGE

WONDERED before I reached Japan what the attitude of the people would actually prove to be. I was not afraid that they would express hostility, but had difficulty in believing that they

would not feel it. I have difficulty still, but have almost persuaded mvself that

the optimists are nearer + the truth than the pessimists. I base this remark not so much on my own

fF. ti». arene observations, which were hurried and brief, as on the opinions of other people whose opportunities for finding out have been unusual: for example, an American colonel who arrived immediately after the surrender and has been working with and through Japanese labourers and contractors in restoring public services; a widely experienced Sydney journalist who has been four or five months in Tokyo, a scholarly naval officer who reads Japanese and has friends among the Japanese liberals. None of these would go so far as to say that. he felt sure of his ground, but there was something like agreement among them on these points: (1) That there has not been a single attack on any. member of the force of occupation. (There may have been drunken brawls or quarrels over women which have not been reported.) (2) That there has been no sabotage of transport or other essential services. (3) That tasks given to the Japanese to do-road-making, carpentering, airfield construction, and so onare being faithfully, if not always efficiently, carried through. (4) That although minority groups had planned to wage guerrilla war on the Americans, the public had not supported them, and they had now disintegrated and disappeared. ‘ (5) That many Japanese-it is impossible to say how many-feel the occupation as a relief (a) from repression of thought and speech, (b) from the ruthless demands of war. (6) That private families seem honoured by a visit from Americans or British.

(7) That democracy is a long way off, but not impossible if the seeds are sown now in the right places. we we +

CONQUERED BY CANDY

EDUCED like that to their bare bones, these agreements may not seem encouraging,*but it is better not to shout while we are still in the wood. If it’ were certain that the occupying forces would remain for two generations it could, I think, be said now that

Japan would then be completely changed; but it would require as much boldness to say how long

her conquerors will stay as to say how soon, if they go, their work will be undone. The signs at present are that the occupation will be continued for several years at least, and (continued on next page)

(continued from previous page) since the people are docile and cooperative, in the meantime it is perhaps more important to watch Washington than to try to read every sign in Tokyo. Washington of course lay outside my own field of inquiry, but I spent a good deal of time in the company of American soldiers, both officers and enlisted men, and they told me things like these: That the women and children took to the hills before the Americans arrived, but had now all returnedconquered by candy and kindness. That they have very few clothes and a great need of fuel, and just enough food to survive without assistance. That Japanese girls now walk out freely with American soldiers so far as their parents are concerned, but not always unchecked by General MacArthur. The official attitude to fraternisation seeméd to be that it was undesirable but impossible to stop. So commanding officers seemed reluctant to issue specific orders on the matter, The nearest thing to an order that came my own way was a ruling passed on by a Staff Officer that fraternisation was frowned on but not forbidden. I did not take this to mean that I should ignore courtesies and behave rudely, and I was pleased to notice that American officers returned salutes. When I asked one of them what their rule was I found that it was more or less the same as our own, and he added that he always-to their great astonishment-showed women in trams, trains, and lifts the same consideration as they received in the United States. I noticed; too, in. a hotel occupied by American officers that when a film was shown in the evening in the lounge the house-boys who were not on duty were invited to attend, and even given chairs. Next morning, when I was waiting in the vestibule for a jeep, a lad of about 12 sprang up from the seat he occupied by the door, ran across with it

and bowed me into it with a firmness and courtesy that had certainly not been acquired in five months.

"LET THEM TAKE 2 td

FOUND it difficult to discover what was happening to returned and returning prisoners-of-war. Of those who had gone to the Tokyo area I could discover nothing at all, but some had returned to Kure, and in one case at least had been roughly used by Koreans. We

were told at the time that what had occurred was not merely a brawl but a battle, and that

strong forces had been turned out to restore order. If that was the case the incident was soon over, since I saw no sign of conflict the next day and could not hear of any casualties. But the Koreans are certainly hostile, and as there are thousands of them still in Japan it will not be pleasant for prisoners who arrive on _ waterfronts operated by Korean labour. It is fairly clear on the other hand that treatment by the Japanese themselves will be better than it would have been if there had been no surrender and no revolution. As far as I could judge from casual conversations with Californian Japanese working as guides,and interpreters, prisoners are still dead in this sense, that no one wants to see them reappear. As long as they were dead officially their relatives received respect and pensions, and both of these disappear when they come back alive. But thousands of men are now returning who were unbeaten in the field, who surrendered only when the Emperor’s order reached them, and who were never prisoners while J apanese anywhere else were fighting. What is happening to them? I have no first-hand in- formation, and of course nothing official, but the Nisei (Californian Japanese) told

me that these are the most disappointed men in Japan. Instead of being welcomed as national heroes, they are ignored and cold-shouldered, partly because the army is blamed for the present calamities, partly because no one wishes to give the Americans the impression that soldiers are important any more. The public policy clearly is good-bye to all that and to hell with those who started it. Nor could I find any anxiety anywhere about the fate of those charged with war crimes. While I did not gather, when we attended a trial on Morotai, that the prisoners themselves were indifferent to their fate, no one seemed to be interested in them in Japan. Here is my diary note about them made an hour or two after we left the Court: Detected neither humiliation nor special hostility in any of the 81 prisoners, nor. any aggressiveness in their judges. A flutter of interest and some annoyance when our film operator took a few feet. One or two prisoners ‘embarrassed if looked at, one blinking like a nervous schoolboy. Most looked masters of themselves and of their fate. A captain under examination (since condemned to death) was perhaps .a: little nervous-not afraid, but il at ease-but there was no trace of panic in him and none of defiance. He was mote like an astute chess-player in difficulties-very utsure ‘of the result of the battle, but determined to fight to the last move. I noticed that he sat bolt upright in his chair with his tunic caught up in a bunch at the back, and that he never changed his position or relaxed the tension of his muscles, My impression was that they were all determined to live if they could, and anxious to slip back into civilian life without leaving any photographic traces behind them. But when I asked a Japanese policeman about them-the only Japanese I met, except a University professor, whose English was,sequal to all questions-his answer was, "Let them take it. They are making it harder for us." ' (To be concluded)