Golden Age, March 2, 1932

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The Golden Age

A JOURNAL OF FACT HOPE AND COURAGE

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in this issue

JAPAN TAKES MANCHURIA

DRUM BEATS

WHAT BECOMES OF OUR EARNINGS?

CARE OF THE FEET

"PROTECTS ART OF HEALING”

BLESSING TO ALL FAMILIES OF EARTH NEAR

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every other WEDNESDAY

five cents a copy one dollar a year Canada & Foreign 1.25

Vol. XIII No. 325

March 2, 1932

CONTENTS

LABOR AND ECONOMICS

AGRICULTURE AND HUSBANDRY

Cost of World War.....335

Sears Roebuck Christmas (lift . 335

Ridgetown’s New Year’s Gift . . 336

Good Plan to End Rent Frauds . 336

Kingsport’s Tax Collection Idea . 336

Wages of Chicago Employees Cut 337

Jacksonville’s Profitable Plant . 337

America’s Rude Awakening . . 338

Gravest Economic Disaster . . 338

What Becomes of Our Earnings? 341

Five Hundred Frog Farms . . 335

Winter Feeding of Birds . . . 335

Agricultural Crisis in Denmark 336

SCIENCE AND INVENTION

Photographs Through Ten Inches of Steel........

HOME AND HEALTH

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL

Japan Takes Over Manchuria . 323

Drum Beats........335

President May Not Violate Law . 336

Gumaan the Lightest Wood . . 336

Rileys Each Get Two Years . . 338

Policeman as Executioner . . . 339

Boon to the Sleepless .... 337

Wheat the Perfect Food . . . 342

Care of the Feet......343

“Protects Art of Healing” . . 346

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Value of Foreign Bonds . . .335

Criminal Syndicalism in Kentucky 335

Trains Twice as Long .... 337

Buses Knocking Railroads Out . 337

No Limit to Trade Decline . . . 337

British Financial Crisis .... 337 23 Nations Leave Gold Standard 337 Why the Small Banks Collapsed 339 No Money in Murder .... 339 Getting Ready for Big War . . 340

Scene in Municipal Building . . 342

Notes from Korea

Rebel India

Virginia’s Jail Record .... 346

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Easy Way to Make $11 . . .

Never Again!

Japanese and Chinese Rulers . .

0 Baal, Hear Us!

Blessing to All Families of Earth

Near

Radio Witness Work

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Golden Age

Volume XIII Brooklyn, N. Y., Wednesday, March 2, 1932 Number 325

Japan Takes Over Manchuria (in Two parts)

Part 1

SINCE the Kaiser Wilhelm promoted peace in the earth by stealthily crossing the Holland border at night and taking up his residence at Doorn, we have not heard so much about anyone endeavoring or any one nation offering to take over all the affairs of the world and running them according to his or its own pleasure or fancy. It is true that we have had fulminations from Mr. Mussolini about making the European skies black with airplanes, but thus far he is comparatively peaceable and still on his own side of the fence.

It is true that the Russians claim to expect that the whole world will go into the Soviet Union, but they are trying to bring this about by the radio and the printing press rather than by machine guns and poison gas.

On the mainland of Europe, France has taken the place of Germany as the nightmare of western civilization. What she proposes to do with great fleets of airplanes nobody knows for sure, but the British air force says that on the same day that London is attacked, Paris will be wiped off the map, and as that would dispose of both Britain and France, we are left with but two great militaristic powers in the world.

As we write, those two great powers, America in the Western world, and Japan in the Far Eastern hemisphere are glaring at each other and apparently almost ready to spring at each other’s throats. These two countries, Japan and America, have points in common. Between them they have two out of three biggest navies in the. world. They can each draw upon a reserve of millions of soldiers, and it is a curious fact that neither of these countries has ever sustained a military defeat or even been subjected to serious military reverses.

Japan's Idea of Its Destiny

It is difficult for a Western person to picture to himself the reasoning processes of an Oriental mind, but it is a fact that there are millions of people in Japan who honestly believe that their imperial family descended from God and that it is destined ultimately to have the whole world under its sway. With this thought in mind, consider the following statement which appeared in Niroku, a Japanese newspaper:

The Imperial Family of Japan is as worthy of respect as is God, and is the embodiment of benevolence and justice. The Imperial Family of Japan is parent not only over 60,000,000 people, but of all mankind on earth. In the eyes of the Imperial Family all races are but one and the same. It stands above all racial considerations. All human disputes, therefore, may be settled in accordance with its immaculate justice.

To a westerner such a statement seems laughable, but it does not seem so amusing even to a westerner when, as now seems to be the case, Japan reaches out and puts China in its lunch basket as easily as a boy picks apples off a tree and all the while protests that she has no intention whatever of doing the very thing she is actually engaged in doing.

We are not certain that there will be war between Japan and the United States. We earnestly hope that the secretary of state, Mr. Stimson, will back down and let the Japanese have their own way in China, for they will have it anyway until the. Lord himself gets ready to stop them; but as recent exchanges of notes have been of a very threatening nature, it seems quite in order for us at this time to present to our readers some idea of what Japan and the Japanese are like, so that if a crushing defeat should await Uncle Sam in a war in the Far East some of the people here at home would not be taken entirely unawares.

Japan Resembles British Isles

Many have noticed that the Empire of Japan, in its location off the coast of Asia, bears a striking resemblance to the British Isles located off the coast of Europe. They are about the same in area and about the same in population.

These two countries have two of the three largest navies in the world, and they are considered to be the two most aristocratic countries in the world.

As far as natural resources are concerned, Britain has much the advantage over Japan, but the latter has some offsetting advantages. Japan is a land of magnificent scenery. The sacred mountain, Fujiyama, sixty miles west of Tokyo, rises to an altitude of 12,425 feet, and there are several mountain ranges which rise to nearly 10,000 feet in height and exhibit landscapes of Alpine character.

Japan has no plains, and there are few places either far removed from the mountains or distant from the sea. The rivers are short, but as the rainfall is heavy the. streams are torrential. There are waterfalls providing scenic beauty as well as water power for industrial purposes. The “Splendor of the Sun” waterfall at Nikko makes an unbroken plunge of 350 feet.

One of the most beautiful bodies of water in the world is Japan’s Inland Sea, which opens both into the Sea of Japan and the Pacific. It is 255 miles long and 56 miles wide.

Every island is indented with innumerable bays and inlets surrounded by rocky bluffs and sandy beaches.

The total area of Japan, including colonies and mandated islands, is 261,567 square miles. At the far northern extremity of Japan there is a communistic district inhabited by some 7,500 people where for centuries the villagers have been accustomed to collecting their catch of fish and apportioning it communistically.

Worship of the Mikado

Nowhere, except perhaps in Vatican City and Japan, do people actually worship their fellow men, and in the case of that at Vatican City the worship is merely that of one who is supposed to be the vicar or earthly representative of another; but in Japan the mikado is actually worshiped.

Every year thousands of the school children of Japan are taken to worship at the shrine of the mikado; and not only are their school books carefully prepared by the Government to instill into their minds the conviction that the emperor is a god, but the theaters, story-tellers and motion pictures are all utilized to exalt the same idea.

When the crown prince enters the presence of the emperor he is compelled to enter the throne room through a side door and to crawl into the presence of the emperor on his hands and knees. It would be considered profanation by the Japanese to show the face of their emperor on a coin. Fifty years ago it was illegal for a citizen to look upon him at all. The emperor helps the program along by making a pilgrimage every little while to one of the shrines of Ise, or dispatches special messengers to pay respects to his ancestors and acquaint them with important affairs of state.

As a ruler the emperor has almost no actual power. The Government is really an oligarchy of Big Business, a group of professional rulers that use the mikado as a figurehead. In times of famine it is, theoretically, the emperor that comes forward with millions of dollars for the relief of the poor. Always he is set before the people in the best of light. Actually he is a slight, bespectacled young man in good health, now beginning his thirty-second year.

Hirohito, 124th occupant of the high seat reserved for ‘descendants of the sun goddess’, succeeded to the Japanese throne on December 25, 1926. He is not supposed to rule “by the grace of God”, but because Tie himself is a deity/. No law makes him an emperor, for in the eyes of the Japanese he is the law. He does not derive his power from the constitution of Japan, but he is the organized will of the state. No one may address the emperor directly. Even a cabinet officer can reach him only by arrangement with the imperial household.

Slowly the Japanese masses are emerging from the shadow of this colossal superstition. Formerly all street traffic was suspended for an hour before the mikado passed through the streets, and even then the passage was through cordons of troops drawn up the length of the route. Now this suspension has been reduced to fifteen minutes and the guard is merely a police guard.

Formerly the emperor traveled by special train, with the railroad lined on both sides by school children, compelled to stand for hours until the train passed. But now, in view of the very crowded condition of traffic, the emperor’s coach is occasionally attached to a regular train and the people need not, as formerly, leave the station when he alights. This gradual climbing down out of the clouds must seem like an odd business to the mikado, but he probably figures that it is better to climb down than to fall.

The mikado is said to be fond of horseback riding, tennis and golf, and to be one of the expert swimmers of the country. On his trip around the world he was baptized by the pope, but this should not be charged up against him. Every morning at six o’clock he prays to his ancestors before he has his breakfast and reads the morning paper. Here’s hoping that the ancestors or whoever gets the prayer knows what to do with it in view of the fact that Mr. Hirohito has been baptized by the pope.

Mr. Hirohito is said to be an intimate friend of the-prince of Wales. Why not? They are both in the same graft. It is like a couple of bootleggers making love to each other.

The Imperial Family

The royal family in Japan is the oldest existing royal family in the world. It has had one unbroken line of sovereigns for almost 2600 years. For 1200 years the imperial family has reigned but has not governed. When the noble families one after another within these later centuries took possession of the governmental power they all governed in the name of the emperor or some member of the emperor’s family.

There is not on earth another king or emperor or priest that has such enormous reverence and love of his subjects as the mikado of Japan. The people of Japan are exceedingly proud of the fact that the reigning imperial family has descended from time immemorial in an unbroken line of succession to the present. The imperial family stands in Japan as the emblem and symbol of national immortality.

While the constitutions of Europe and America were protests against the encroachment of a sovereign upon people’s rights, the Japanese constitution was a gift to the people in 1890 and was freely offered to them before they had ever dreamed of having a parliament of their own. But the mikado was wise in his day and generation.

He personally declares war, makes peace and concludes treaties, with the advice and assistance of the cabinet ministers whom he appoints and who are responsible to him. He has supreme command of the army and navy and determines the organization and personnel of both. Like the king of England, he has a privy council of elder statesmen, the decisions of which are above those of parliament and frequently contrary to the wishes of parliament.

No revolution has ever deprived a Japanese monarch of his throne. The Japanese people feel that if the politicians, soldiers and statesmen do make mistakes and exploit them and others to their injury, yet they are protected against these selfish men by the emperor’s exclusive power to decide when and how many of his subjects shall be used for war purposes outside the realm.

Through the ages occasional adopted sons have assumed their father’s titles. This has prevented the imperial family from running out, because in Japan an adopted child has the same rights as a natural child.

Now it happens that emperors of the imperial family are human, like the rest of us. They have their likes and dislikes, and when the crown prince who is now the emperor wanted to marry the girl of his choice in spite of the opposition of his elders, 15,000 men of Tokyo marched to a shrine to offer a prayer for the young man that he might have the girl of his choice. And so, for the first time in Japanese history, a crown prince selected his own bride.

A few years later, Hirohito’s brother, heir presumptive to the throne, fell in love with a girl who had no title, and in this case the objection was overcome by the young woman’s being adopted by her uncle, a viscount, so he could act as her father at the wedding.

When a child is born in the imperial family of Japan it is a time of great excitement. The priests and seers, and other dignitaries, who do not know any more what they are about than a cat on the backyard fence knows about astronomy, study the stars and the month of birth so as to try to fit the poor kid with a name which will be suitable to the high place it is supposed to occupy.

The Japanese Caste System

While the Devil did not push the caste system of Japan to anything like the extremes to which he pushed it in India, still up until less than a century ago there was a rigid division of society into four groups: soldiers, farmers, artisans and merchants, whose social standing was in the order named. Above the soldiers were the imperial family and the nobles in a class by themselves, and below the merchants were the outcasts : shoemakers, tanners, embalmers and grave diggers.

The castes have not been kept as rigidly separate in Japan as in India. While intermarriages between the castes have not been legal, yet concubinage has been very common and the children of these unions have frequently become the heirs of their fathers and thus the blood of the aristocracy of Japan has been enriched.

On the other hand, during the wars preceding the seventeenth century, many aristocratic families were ruined and forced into the lower classes, so that the common people received a perpetual influx of aristocratic blood. These facts explain why some Japanese aristocrats are very progressive, and why the common people of Japan are so aristocratic and love aristocracy.

Another curious principle operates to bring about a certain sympathy between the common people and the aristocrats. If the children of an aristocrat are lacking in intelligence and responsibility it is a common practice to adopt children who do have such characteristics, and upon adoption they have all the rights of natural children.

By these means the aristocrats of Japan have managed to keep about everything in the country in their own hands. Of the eleven multimillionaires in Japan, i.e., of those who pay more than 1,000,000 yen a year in income tax, six belong to the Mitsui family and two to the Iwasaki family. Formerly the people were in the habit of selling themselves for long terms of years into the service of the rich and ‘noble’. Sometime prior to the year 1872 the government limited the term of engagement of servants to ten years, and in 1872 cut the term down to one year.

A pathetic incident happened at Nagoya, in November, 1927, in connection with Emperor Hirohito’s review of the troops. A soldier, a member of the Eta, or outcast class, stepped from the ranks, knelt and tried to draw the emperor’s attention to a petition he held for intervention in favor of better treatment for the outcast class. He was immediately arrested and sentenced to a year’s imprisonment. As illustrating the abject submission of the Japanese people to their sovereign, all the officers of the regiment in which this poor man was serving tendered their resignations because of the “disgrace”.

Accustomed to Strict Discipline

The Japanese people are accustomed to a discipline that would be irksome to a Briton or an American. In Japan everyone must carry an identification disk of some kind, which disk is worn around the neck. Apart from the convenience in cases of accident, it is a safeguard against loss of memory.

Persons wishing to drive an auto down a street at night must ask the policeman on the corner for permission. Then follows a regular catechism. The policeman wants to know the name of the person, his address, where he is going and why, where he has been, and what he. is going to do when he leaves. Then he may or may not allow him to go down the street.

When persons actually living on the street come home late at night the policeman wants to know where they have been and why they did not come home sooner. When the information has been obtained, the late comer is generally given a lecture on going to bed early. A Japanese policeman may strike a man or woman of his own race who refuses to answer his questions, and nothing will be done about it.

The present regime is the most liberal that Japan has ever enjoyed, but it still leaves much to be desired by foreigners. No foreigner may open a law office in Japan, although there are. Japanese barristers in America and Great Britain.

No foreign ships are allowed to carry passengers or freight between ports of Japan, although Japanese boats ply between the. ports of other nations; and a foreigner in Japan may not even own a motor boat in his own name.

In recent years, political scandals in Japan have caused the people to lose all confidence in the political parties and yet when some so-called “radicals” issued circulars saying, “We must expose crimes of capitalists and landowners,” the mikado’s government put 1,000 of them in jail.

Communism is dealt with severely. Out of 173, all of whom were found guilty and punished, ninety-three were students and thirty-one were graduates of the Imperial University of Tokyo. Apparently the best minds in Japan believe what ?

In 1928 universal manhood suffrage went into effect and the number of eligible voters was increased from 500,000 to 13,000,000. A bill granting the municipal vote to women has passed the lower house.

Japan Bombarding Shanghai

We had gotten just this far with this article when the monthly fire drill ushered us all out into the street and there for the first time the news venders were in the streets hawking newspapers with the glaring headline “Japanese Bombard Shanghai”. This is just what we expected.

Apologists point out that, in the twenty-five hundred years in which it has existed as an empire, Japan has engaged in only three foreign wars, all of which have been within the last forty years; and that for two hundred years before Commodore Perry opened Japan to intercourse with other nations, in 1853, she had not had any kind of war, civil or foreign. However, this does not change the fact that the ancient heroes of Japan, the Samurai, so called, were all militarists, supposedly mighty with the sword.

As was somewhat similarly the case in Germany, it is still the rule in Japan, that the toys of the boy babies are military toys, tiny swords, spears, bows and arrows, sold on certain days at certain shrines as a part of the “worship”; and the boys wear caps of military form to impress upon them the idea that when they grow up they are to be soldiers of the mikado, fighting for the Japanese variety of the “Me und Gott” swindle.

With the exception of Germany in the days of the kaiser, there has never been a nation that has had the ‘glory of war’ drilled into them from earliest infancy the way it has been drilled into the Japanese. Stories of the Japanese war with Russia and of the exploits of military heroes of previous wars are taught and repeated by every child from the time he enters primary school. The typical movie usually involves sword play and fighting.

Japan has been under military instruction since 1870, and is saturated with the philosophy of “Kultur” that “might makes right”. During the war, although they drove the Germans out of Kiao Chau in accordance with their treaty with Great Britain, the people as a whole were fully in sympathy with Germany and fully expected her to win the war.

While in Japan, the German prisoners of war were treated with marked consideration, and when the German flag was again raised over the Yokohama consulate there was a public celebration of large proportions.

As was the case in Germany, so in Japan, there is an overbearing military caste, bent on committing the nation to great foreign undertakings. The men in charge of this machine are not, as was the kaiser, ordained ministers in the Lutheran church, nor in any church. They accept none of the principles of the Christian religion and literally fear neither God, man, nor the Devil. They admire frightfulness, too.

As was the case in Germany, so in Japan, the sword ciankers have been everywhere. It is scarcely ten years since railway officials and station masters ceased wearing swords, and military men keep coming and going constantly.

Among the great masses of the people is the settled conviction (due to belief in the military teachers and the successful prosecution of wars against China, Russia and Germany) that Japan holds the place she has among the nations because of her capacity for war. This is literally true.

The hyenas masquerading as Christian nations have all shown by their acts that their chief reliance is upon force, and this applies all the way from Great Britain, with her mighty battleships, down to the pope, with his machinegun battalion of Swiss Guards.

Selling the Idea of War

Militarism is said to be much less popular with the common people in Japan than it was some, years ago. The defeat of Germany was a setback for the militarists, and popular sentiment is against the extensive use of the Japanese army on the Asiatic continent. Applications for admission to the officers’ training schools have also fallen off materially.

Nevertheless, the mass of the people are still with the militarists; and the General Staff can and does undertake operations without the consent or even the knowledge of the premier, so that his most solemn promise on any subject affecting their movements counts for no more than did their own lightly-held promises.

Years ago, foreseeing the partial awakening of the people, the military party of Japan had the ministers of war and navy made responsible, not to the premier, but directly to the emperor, or those who represent him, so that any criticism of either army or navy becomes a criticism of the emperor ‘and thus of God’—a long-headed scheme to continue the time-honored policy of Satan to make independent thinkers guilty of blasphemy and sedition.

Americans well remember how they were sold into the World War. A group of men high up in the newspaper world made up a list of the twenty-five newspapers which control American public opinion. The editorial policy of those papers was bought, and when they began to churn for war the whole country went insane.

Something like that has been done in Japan. The newspapers began to carry large advertisements explaining Japan’s interests in Manchuria and how the Chinese were injuring them. These advertisements went over big, and today Japan is mad for another war of aggression against China.

The Japanese claim that their first suggestions of militarism came from the flags and glistening swords of French, British and German warships.

Japan has universal military service beginning at the age of twenty and lasting for sixteen months, but only one out of every seven eligible young men is called to the colors. First there are eliminations by physical examination, by exemption of those necessary for family support or enrolled as students, and finally lots are. drawn as to who will actually render army service.

Japan has been sending heavy gold shipments through San Francisco for months past. This indicated plainly her intention to buy in America the materials with which she would murder the Chinese in Asia; for gold is the money of the international murderer.

The Japanese government does not have the money to conduct a great military campaign, but always when there are wars to be fought the Devil will find some way to finance them, and we. have plenty of people here in America who will give the Japanese all the money they want for any purpose of that kind.

Secrets of Japan’s fortified airports are jealously guarded, not only from foreigners, but from the Japanese people themselves. It is only a few months since two American pilots who flew over fortified areas without permission, and took photographs, underwent a long examination and were heavily fined.

In a consideration of the warlikeness of Japan it cannot be too greatly emphasized that the Japanese government itself has no power or authority over the Japanese military forces. The Japanese, army and navy are responsible to nobody except the emperor, and that means they are responsible to nobody at all. The war minister (always a general) and the navy minister' (always an admiral) in the cabinet at Tokyo are merely the clerks of the General Staff.

The Chinese believe that before we get through with it we shall have to fight the Japanese as they have had to fight them, because, says Eugene Chen, Chinese foreign minister, “Japan, after an annexation of Manchuria, expects to dominate the entire. Asiatic mainland and to undertake the conquest of Australia.”

Many Japanese Are Peace-Loving

While the Japanese General Staff has the power to plunge the Japanese people into war at any time, and while they would not hesitate to avail themselves of that power and to make all of their warlike moves seem plausible and reasonable to the bulk of the people, yet it must not be supposed that the Japanese are a nation of fire-eaters any more than was the case with the Germans. In both instances the common people have been misled, mistaught and helped to choose a course contrary to their best interests and to the best interests of the world.

The General Staff is so far removed from the people that the Tokyo Government actually forbade the dispatch of troops to Manchuria and at the very same time troops and munitions were sent in transport to the scene of conflict.

A newspaper correspondent who spent ten years in Japan states as a result of his observations that the bulk of the people are at heart peace-loving, that military training is unpopular, and that in numerous instances boys mutilate themselves in some minor way in order to obtain military exemption. Out of 100 Japanese youths whom he questioned as to whether or not they wished to go into the army or navy7, only two answered yes. All the others answered no, but all acknowledged they were ready to serve in case of necessity.

Until the General Staff published its advertisements setting forth Japanese needs and rights in Manchuria, there were two papers, each with a circulation of more than a million, urging against war in Manchuria and declaring that Japan is not fighting and does not intend to fight China.

With the publication of these advertisements, however, in the month of August last, the tone of the papers and the attitude of the government and of the people underwent a great change, and an attempt at a pacifist demonstration in Tokyo was broken up by police and more than 200 participants were jailed.

An argument that Japan is not as militaristic as it is generally supposed in the. United States is that when Germany proposed a through air mail service via Singapore if the Japanese would operate the line from Singapore, the offer was declined.

Land of Heavy Rainfall

As would be expected of a kingdom surrounded on all sides by water, Japan has an abundant rainfall. The island of Formosa on the south is in the same latitude as Cuba, while the island of Saghalin in the north is in the same latitude as Newfoundland. There is therefore a wide range of climate; as in the British Isles, there is a succession of mists and gently falling rains, so much so that a carefully kept record showed 226 wet days out of 365.

In the winter the cold winds from the northwest bring the moisture of the Sea of Japan in the form of enormous deposits of snow on the northern coast of central Japan. Sometimes in the mountain districts these snows amount to more than ten feet during the winter season, and then whole towns and villages are nearly buried. These heavy snows are cleared away with great difficulty.

In the southern isles there are no snows, but the rains are excessive. In late summer and early fall, violent hurricanes called typhoons cause terrible damage, especially to rice crops.

Like the people of the British Isles, the Japanese have so much rain that they get used to it and apparently enjoy sloshing around in the cold and wet. People who have been in Tokyo or Kyoto, where until recently sidewalks were almost unknown, describe the streets as, during the most of the year, virtually seas of mud.

The Japanese names for spring, summer, autumn and winter are, respectively: the time of blossoms, the time of rain, the time of the moon, and the time of snow.

Dress and Housing

The ancient Japanese dress was exceedingly picturesque, and as uncomfortable as it was picturesque. Western clothes are now worn by the men, and as the children are being dressed in Western clothes it is probable that by the time they grow up the ancient customs of dress will be a thing of the past.

A traveler reports a happening on a railway train on a day in midsummer three years ago. A Japanese gentleman noticed that his silk shirt was wret with perspiration. He arose in his seat and removed it. Finding that his underwear was also wet with perspiration, he removed that, and from his suitcase produced clean underwear and a clean shirt, which he donned with entire unconcern. An occurrence like this would attract no special attention in Japan.

Until recently, at the public bathing resorts the men, women and children bathed together dressed entirely in the suits originally provided for Adam and Eve in the garden of Eden. When some westerners lifted up holy hands in horror at this procedure, the. Japanese rectified the matter by having the men and women bathe separately. A rope was stretched between the part where the men bathed and where the women bathed, but all were dressed as before.

Not long ago a group of twenty-four natives from the South Sea Islands paid a visit to Japan. When they first arrived in Tokyo they were barefooted and a shoe salesman got hold of the crowd and convinced them they must' be civilized and wear shoes. Within an hour every one of these natives had thrown away the new shoes and remained barefooted during the balance of their stay in Japan. How some of the rest of us would like to go back to the days when we were privileged to go barefooted, if only we dared!

Japan is without homes in the sense in which westerners understand the term. The houses are without solid walls, ceilings, doors or windows, tables or chairs, beds or cook stoves, pots or pans. They are of light bamboo construction. The partitions are mere sliding screens easily removed. In fine weather the outside walls are taken away during the day. Mats suffice for beds.

There are no home fires burning in the winter, and the people suffer terribly with the cold. The Japanese object to heat in their homes because it warps delicate wood and lacquer and furniture unglues, cups chip, beams split, paper rolls up, and family treasures wrinkle and crack.

Japanese families do not move from one house or apartment to another, but live in the same places year after year.

The Ghastly Ceremony of Seppuku

Up until 1868, when the ceremony was abolished, the mikado had a nice way of parting with friends that he had ceased to appreciate. Some fine morning a noble in the midst of his family would receive from the emperor a jeweled dagger accompanied by a courteously phrased note informing him that he had been assigned to the great honor of committing hara-kiri.

He was then supposed to erect a platform in the largest hall in his home. This was covered with red plush and he stood upon it, while his friends and the representatives of the mikado stood around in a semicircle.

When the dagger was presented to him it was then his duty to thrust it into his left side, draw it to the right and up. As he did this, one of his friends obligingly removed his head from his shoulders. In this way the mikado used to dispose of about 500 of the old-timers each year to create promotion for younger and more ambitious men.

In ancient Japanese anatomy the "solar” plexus was believed to be the seat of the “soul”, and the idea of carving up the matter in front of it was to give the “soul” ‘a chance to get out in a hurry, which it was no doubt glad to do’. Hara-kiri or seppuku is still sometimes practiced by women as well as men.

This diabolical device of the Devil to keep himself and his crowd in power has had much to do with making the Japanese a tragedy-loving people. No play is considered a success in Japan unless it makes the people weep. It is said that the American film comedies gave them their first good laugh. No doubt, too, the practice of seppuku has had much to do with making the Japanese ruthless in their treatment of others.

The Horrors of Jiu Jitsu

There are in the human body some thirty-four vulnerable points, any one of which if suddenly pressed or struck will render a person permanently helpless. Jiu jitsu, a Japanese art, is a scientific study of 160 movements or fouls by which the death or disability of an opponent may be caused.

A person of light weight and short stature who knows jiu jitsu is more than a match for a person of twice the weight who does not know it. One jiu jitsu movement is to rest the palm of the hand over the mouth of an opponent and push up on the nose with the forefinger on one side of the nose, and the middle finger on the other. It is said that no athlete is able to endure the pain that comes from such an attack upon the nose.

Jiu jitsu is not a system of muscle building by physical training, but rather a means of offsetting the effectiveness of powerful muscles, by performing the most skillful yet simple maneuvers. The United States government has recognized its importance as science by having it taught at West Point and Annapolis as a special training.

It is a scientific application of the knowledge of the weaker spots in the. human anatomy to offense and defense. Such spots as the “funny bone” are utilized to down an adversary; fingers are bent backward; an opponent's onward rush is utilized to trip him; he. is encouraged to uncover an armpit; he is pressed in the gland below and back of the ear; in short, every trick that would be accounted “foul” in wrestling and boxing is the height of excellence in jiu jitsu.

One who is expert in jiu jitsu, and most Japanese are thus expert, can strike a blow with the edge of the palm opposite the. thumb that will split the skull of an opponent or break his neck. The same kind of blow is used to break the bones in the forearm and in the legs. One of the horrible movements of jiu jitsu is to break the opponent’s elbow backward, leaving him in unspeakable agony and helpless for life.

At one time lessons were given to the police in New York in jiu jitsu, but it was finally concluded that when they lost their heads they would do less harm with their guns and clubs.

Japanese Characteristics

Without a doubt the Japanese are the most cleanly people in the world. A native who apologized to a westerner for bathing but twice a day in summer on account of being extremely busy, replied in answer to question that in winter he bathed four or five times daily. Compare this with the good old Saturday night bath of our ancestors!

The Japanese love sobriety and simplicity. They are by nature, disinclined to ostentation. Loyalty to the mikado or to any other master is believed to be the most deeply imbedded virtue of the Japanese race. What a wonderful people they will be when their loyalty is turned in the right direction.

Japan is ultra-patriotic, having 51 patriotic societies that are boosters of militarism first, last and all the time. Their fortitude in suffering and their loyalty to the mikado, coupled with their high intelligence, make the Japanese one of the strongest, most united nations of history.

Japanese fathers and mothers do not kiss their children, and yet there is no land where the obedience of children to parents is more marked or where ancestor worship has gone, to greater lengths.

They are severely anti-foreign, and yet they take instinctively to Western dress and ways. They have no swear-words in their language, and seldom give vent to words of anger or irritation; yet they have shown that they can be extremely vindictive and cruel.

During the recent fighting in Manchuria, in one place the Chinese shot down a Japanese plane. The Japanese planted explosives under it and then retired. When the Chinese approached, the Japanese exploded the mine and twenty or thirty Chinese were killed. This was reported as a typical Japanese procedure.

European and American music, including American jazz, is very much appreciated in Japan. The Japanese people not only sing the Western popular songs, but keep on singing them long after they have ceased to be sung in America or Europe.

Japan’s Wonderful Growth

Japanese population remained stationary for centuries, but about 1868, when the mikado’s new policy went into effect, large families were urged and large families there, were. The result is that in Japan proper, the area of which is 148,756 square miles, or a little more than that of California, the population in 1930 was 64,450,005. The population of the entire empire is estimated at about 90,000,000. In proportion to arable land, the Japanese population is the densest in the world.

Like the people of Great Britain, the Japanese love to remain in their homeland. They have been made unwelcome in New Zealand, Canada and the United States, but have colonies in Peru and Brazil, and there are thousands of Japanese in the Dutch East Indies. Emigration to Brazil has fallen off from 5,500 a year to a total of only 1,000 annually.

By agreement with Canada, Japan voluntarily restricts the number of emigrants into Canada to 150, exclusive of domestic servants. The. Cuban Government refused to allow a Japanese firm to establish a staff of rice experts in Cuba, on the grounds that it would not care to have a large Japanese immigration.

The birth rate in Japan is not going down, but it is still going up, and the population is increasing by nearly a million every year.

Japan and Hawaii

The population of Hawaii is 368,336, of whom 139,631 are Japanese. This large Japanese population was brought into Hawaii at the request of American sugar manufacturers, who persuaded the Hawaiian Government to solicit the Japanese Government to send them. The Japanese have found the climate congenial and evidently expect to stay.

Following the annexation of Hawaii many of the Japanese there came to the mainland, as they call the United States, attracted thither by the relatively high wages. In a few years they have, by their superior industry, ability and resourcefulness, taken over most of the hotel, wholesale grocery and movie business of Seattle, the Alaskan fisheries, a generous share of the Hood Biver apple district, 85 percent of the Rocky Ford melon business of Colorado, and are now in large numbers in the wonderful Imperial Valley of California.

Japan’s density of population as compared with her total area is nominally surpassed by England, Belgium and Holland, but there is very little land in any of those countries that cannot be cultivated; while the cultivable land in Japan is only about one-seventh of the total area.

We thus have in Japan a density of population of about 3,000 per square mile of cultivable land, a condition unlike that to be found elsewhere in the world, the inhabitants obtaining their food from less than a quarter of an acre per capita. This is three times the population density of Germany and India, and twelve times that of the United States.

The Japanese have enough cold weather in Japan without moving into the maritime districts of Siberia, where it is colder still, and as the Russians have not been very enthusiastic in encouraging Japanese immigration, there is no immediate likelihood of large Japanese, colonies in that portion of the Asiatic mainland.

As practically all the rest of the world is full, it has seemed inevitable to the Japanese that they should expand through Korea into Manchuria,. and that is just what they have done. The only other way out seems to be birth control, and that is now being widely discussed in the press and a government commission has been appointed to study it.

At present Japan is badly overcrowded. Every industry is overmanned, and every business enterprise overstaffed. Under the circumstances, it is believed that big business in the United States and Great Britain is really not averse to having the Japanese do with China what Britain and America have done all over the earth.

At the time the Japanese army made a drive into Manchuria, it was estimated that there were about a million Japanese out of work. Big business, at least in Japan, would have sense enough to figure that if they couldn’t do anything else with their surplus men they could use them for cannon fodder. Occasionally one hears that sentiment expressed here in America.

Japan’s Women

The doing of the work of the home in factories has done the same thing in Japan that it has done in every other country. It has driven the women into business, and as a consequence Japanese women are today acting as conductors, taxi drivers, stenographers, messengers, nurses, teachers, waitresses, clerks and mill operatives and there are some 6,000,000 women engaged in agricultural pursuits. Japan has 300 women who are doctors.

Two hundred thousand young girls a year are brought from the country into the textile factories. It is estimated that only eighty thousand of these ever return to the paternal roof, quite a few with consumption, due to long hours and insufficient food.

Japanese men are supposed to be very polite, but are reported as not hesitating to crowd working girls off the sidewalks, though they think more of their own women folk than of the women of other races and nationalities, and seldom marry white women or vice versa.

A poster published by women in Japan asked husbands to get up at the same time as wives; not to scold wives in the presence of visitors or children; to let wives know when they leave home, where they go, and when they will return; to fix sums for wives’ personal use; to refrain from demanding services which they can perform for themselves; to avoid setting children a bad example; to allow wives certain hours for reading and studying, and to avoid calling wives disrespectful names. The attention of American husbands is called to these suggestions. They will bear study.

The Japanese women are doing everything that other women are doing in the way of bobbed hair, modern dress, painted lips and cigarette smoking.

The movement for freeing the licensed women of Japan gained impetus by the Japanese earthquake. of 1923 because of sympathy aroused for the great numbers who died in locked rooms. In 1872 Japan officially freed licensed women, but vested interests have thus far successfully connived with corrupt police and judiciary in maintaining the status quo. Many women are still sold into professional vice, but are not now displayed in cages as was customary prior to 1872.

In August, 1927, the then Premier of Japan, Giichi Tanaka, celebrated the birth of his first son. The fact that the lady who presented him with this addition to his family was not his legal wife w’as not considered worthy of any particular comment in Japan, where concubines and mistresses are still permitted to the noble and the wealthy.

In each family there is a legally recognized head who has the reins of domestic government. Moreover, a council held by relatives is authorized and recognized by the law.

The average height of Japanese men is about five feet three inches, but within the past twenty or thirty years the stature has increased somewhat, due to the more natural lives of their mothers prior to the time of their birth. The shortness of the Japanese is not in the body, but in the legs. It is believed that the custom of squatting on mats instead of sitting on chairs is partly responsible for this. Japanese acrobats are famous throughout the world for their strength and skill.

Japanese Education

Education is compulsory between the ages of six and fourteen; and as children between these ages may not be employed to the neglect of their education, Japan is really occupying a higher educational plane than the United States. According to the latest statistics 94 percent of boys and 97 percent of girls of school age are studying in schools.

In the first seven books which the Japanese child uses in his studies there is but one reference to any foreign country, and that is an uncomplimentary one. Uniformity of thought is aimed at in art, literature, religion and politics, and that uniformity must be in line with the Government’s ideas. (America has had some of that in late years, too; so do not become too much excited over the way the poor Japanese have been hoodwinked.)

Multitudes of the children have been led to believe, and do believe, that the electric light, steamboat and street car are all Japanese inventions which have been copied by foreigners.

As students the Japanese are famous for their industry and ability. When at school, in their own country or abroad, they never allow athletics or social affairs to come, between them and their studies.

When a Japanese boy goes away to school in America or Europe he is conducted to the railway station by all his relatives and all their friends and acquaintances, and they bestow presents upon him according to their means and their intimacy of acquaintance. When he returns, the youth must remember each of these gifts appropriately, and woe betide him if the return gifts omit anybody or fail of substantially equaling in value those which he received at departure.

In 1924 Japan had five imperial universities and eleven other institutions of university rank.

In its issue of January 5,1930, the New York Times said concerning Japan, “The universities and colleges are wholly inadequate to meet the needs of the country.” On September 21, 1930, the New York Times Magazine said, “The chances for young men in Japan are narrow enough, and, as here, there are too many universities and too many graduates who have spent four years in unfitting themselves for work unsuited to their capacities and natural tastes.” Thus, if you are to believe the New York Times, Japan has not enough universities and has too many.

To straighten the matter out, let us explain that almost every young Japanese wants a university education, believing that thus he will stand a better chance in life. As a matter of fact, however, everything is overcrowded and fully half the graduates of universities find it difficult to secure employment.

The language of Japanese commerce is English, and it is a required study in the. secondary schools. In the high schools the Bible as an English textbook is included among compulsory studies. Japan has 3,000 men and women teaching English, and this has been going on for years. Many of the universities admit girls as “visitors”, but these “visitors” are not counted as regular university graduates even when they complete their courses with high standing.

The total enrollment in all schools and colleges of Japan is now about 12,000,000, and illiteracy has been reduced below 1 percent. In 1927 it was seven-tenths of one percent (.7%). The Japanese are greater readers than the Americans. Their bookstores abound and are filled with serious books. Teachers are under the control of the government, and their teaching is closely supervised. Some years ago, women teachers who bobbed their hair and wore too stylish clothes were dismissed from their posts.

The largest institution of learning in Japan is Waseda University, where several times in recent years as many as 13,000 students have gone on strike at one time. There is said to be a great deal of student drunkenness in Japan, there being several thousand bars in Tokyo alone which cater almost exclusively to student trade.

Newspapers and Radio

As in America, so in Japan, there is a press, engaged in doing about the same class of work that the American press did during the war. Many of these papers are largely devoted to fanning resentment against whatever people the Government is at the time fighting or planning to fight. There is a censorship, always in operation, controlling incoming and outgoing news to suit the purposes of the hour.

Broadcasting is controlled by a Bureau of Communications and supported by license fees on radio receiving sets. These fees amount to $9 a year on sets. It was estimated in 1929 that there were 550,000 receiving sets in use in Japan.

Throughout the year 1930 and perhaps until even now, the Japanese Government was disturbed by the daily broadcasting of radical teachings in perfect Japanese from some unknown and mysterious radio station. Quite probably this radio station was located somewhere on the Asiatic mainland, and quite probably there is somebody at Moscow who knows where the station is.

There is some radicalism in Japan, but the idea that the emperor has descended from the gods has such a hold upon the people’s mind that it does not make much headway. It is said that radical literature of all kinds is eagerly devoured and that magazines whose owners are not really radical print radical matter because of unprecedented demand for it.

Japanese Religion

As long as one gives the mikado the first place, he can believe almost anything else he likes, Buddhism, Shintoism, Confucianism or “Christianity”. Japan has twelve kinds of Buddhists, thirteen kinds of Shintoists, and twelve kinds of “Christians”. The Buddhists have the greatest number, 51,511,100. There are more Greek Catholics than Roman Catholics, Anglicans, Methodists and Congregationalists combined.

If one desires, in Japan, he may be a Shintoist, Buddhist and Confucianist all at the same time. Confucianism is regarded as largely a code of ethics, and Buddhism has accepted all the Shinto gods.

In Japan there is no conflict between state and church, because the state existed first. Every prominent religious body is given a kind of state patronage. Shinto is the religion of patriotism and has 171,725 shrines where the emperor and his ancestors can be venerated.

The New York Times Magazine says:

Every Japanese house contains a small shrine where the names of dead members of the family are displayed. Flowers are placed before it, and there every Japanese begins the day with a momentary act of worship in which he remembers the dead. On family anniversaries and death days there are more solemn observances. The reverence for ancestors is common in Japan among both Christians and non-Christians.

As missionary efforts in all eastern countries are largely along the lines of secular education, the Japanese apparently concluded that in some way the uniting of religion and education made for the prosperity of the white races, and have attempted, as in other lines, to steal the white man’s thunder. They have done this, in part, by printing Buddhist “Bibles”, many passages in which are copied from the Holy Scriptures, with the name “Buddha” inserted in place of the name “Jesus”. Little children are also taught to sing, “Buddha loves me, this I know,” etc., in place of “Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.

Once each year, in August, the Japanese have a feast in honor of the Devil. At that time everything is done to propitiate him, so as to induce him to favor relatives who are supposedly already in hell, as well as to make him good-humored toward themselves when they arrive.

It isn’t only the human ancestors that are remembered, but in 1927 a Japanese firm engaged in the pearl business erected a memorial “in memory of the oysters whose lives have been sacrificed for the pearls which have enabled the firm to prosper”. If this had happened a few years nearer the World War, we would have been inclined to think that this is where Big Business got the idea of erecting cenotaphs to mark the graves of the unknown soldiers.

Japan has adopted Christmas and Santa Claus, and they mean the same in Japan as they do in America; i.e., they have a purely heathen and purely commercial significance. At Christmas time Tokyo department stores announce Christmas sales and impersonations of Santa Claus are frequently seen on the streets.

The Japanese have adopted the Gregorian calendar, but their New Year’s celebration lasts for two weeks. Several of the old-time customs survive. One ceremony of the New Year festival is the scattering of parched beans in four directions with the words, “Out with the devils; in with the good luck.” In many doorways is seen the straw rope, hung ‘to keep the sun goddess in the household’.

On summer evenings, men, women and children engage in the sport of hunting fireflies. This is one of the few occasions when native conventionality allows men and women to mingle freely and informally. The insect, once captured, is carefully guarded from harm because supposed to be a reincarnation of a lovelorn spirit from the unseen.

(To be continued)

Notes from Korea By

THE daily income of the Japanese railway in Manchuria has increased by more than $25,000 in gold every day since the trouble began, and it is expected that the income will be increased much more when the farm products are on sale. The troubles have prevented the Chinese railways from running smoothly, and that is one of the principal reasons why the troubles have occurred.

Despite the hard times, the Japanese railway officials have postponed to an unknown date the dismissal of some of their officers. On the other hand, hundreds of Koreans were killed and hundreds were kicked out of employment by the Chinese, who were misinformed that the Korean armies (in reality the Japanese armies in Korea)

Our Korean Correspondent

had come to Manchuria and were killing their brethren.

The Government report shows that though there are but 500,000 Japanese in Korea, there are among them 4,431 prostitutes. Among the Koreans, with 20,500,000 population, there are 4,885 prostitutes. The total number increased 106 in the past year, the increase being charged to the world-wide depression.

A Korean, E. P. Kim, has broken the world’s marathon record, having reduced the time over the 26]-mile course from 2 hours 32 minutes 5-38/60 seconds to 2 hours 26 minutes 12 seconds.

It has been discovered that an element in oysters has the power to lessen the craving for nicotine.

Drum Beats

Five Hundred Frog Farms

IT IS estimated that there are now five hundred frog farms in the United States. Los Angeles eats three millions a year, Philadelphia four millions, and New York perhaps ten millions. It takes two years to raise a bullfrog.

The Bad Showing of Memphis

IN PROPORTION to its population Memphis has more than eight times as many murders as take place in New York city. The bulk of the killing is done by those who can neither read nor write. America has 5,000,000 illiterates.

Too Many Laws

FOR years the lawyers and others have been complaining that there are too many laws, and yet our new Congress made for itself a record by introducing more than 9,000 additional measures in the first two weeks of the present session.

Photographs Through Ten Inches of Steel

BY A NEW device radium’s penetrating rays pierce through ten inches of steel and show plainly any cracks that it may contain. The device is portable. Several hours are required to obtain good photographs where the metal is of so great thickness.

Value of Foreign Bonds

SINCE the war some $20,000,000,000 of foreign bonds have been sold in the American market, and it is said that these can now be bought for about one-third of their face value. Some of the foreign issues are not worth the paper on which they are printed.

Harbor Buoys Are Expensive

THERE are about 500 buoys in New York harbor, each weighing about eleven tons and worth about $4,300. The lantern alone in each buoy is worth in the neighborhood of $700, and burns without attention for four months. Once a year the buoys are brought in and overhauled.

The Godiva Parade in Brisbane

THE jobless women of Brisbane, Australia, have threatened that if not given work they will parade the streets of the city in the nude. Quite likely half the population of the city will watch the parade and the other half will watch the watchers.

Winter Feeding of Birds

AT VARIOUS places along Long Island there is more or less systematic winter feeding of birds. It is the contention of those who distribute the grain for their little feathered friends that this means fewer birds migrate south during the winter and there is more likely to be an abundance of birds throughout the year.

Cost of World War

Dr. John Maurice Clark, professor of economics, Columbia University, has figured that if the war debts are not collected the tangible costs of the World War will be increased from $52,000,000,000 to $90,000,000,000. The net benefits were probably somewhere about midway between 29c and 31c.

Hearst Newsprint Consumption

THE eleven publishing units owned by Hearst Consolidated Publications, Inc., use every year 18,207 carloads of newsprint paper. If laid page to page this paper would wrap around the world 24 times in a month, or in a year would form a path of white paper 5| feet wide and 3,436,136 miles long.

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