The Land od the Rising Yen

ambushed,
tortured, massacred; wives sell themselves to brothels to enable their husbands
to carry on the fight, etc. All because of the wrong pair of trousers. ‘Quaint,
quaint Orientals...’ I thought.
    And at that moment a horrible thought
occurred to me. They are not quaint. We are quaint. Quaint, quaint
occidentals.
    I thought of a Japanese humorist (in
itself a quaint, occidental idea) flying westwards — or perhaps eastwards — to
his own Far East, New York, and musing thus:
    ‘I quite like occidentals and their
quaintness certainly adds to their charm. I specially like those lovely, odd
Roman letters they insist on using, flashing with racy agility on the neon
signs of Times Square and Piccadilly. It’s rather exotic and gives one the
strongly pleasant feeling of being abroad. And their manners... their strange
ceremonies... Many of these were introduced by Louis XIV, or by other kings
about the same time (although the seeds had been sown much earlier). These
European kings (with numerous exceptions) were clever and cunning fellows who
knew that people busy with meaningless ceremonies had little time for intrigue
and conspiracy. Of course, some of these formalities were not so innocent and
meaningless. At least 47,000 people died in absolutely pointless duels. They
have a celebrated literary work — Cyrano de Bergerac it’s called — in
which a knight is killed because he made a remark about this chap Cyrano’s
nose. I shouldn’t be surprised to hear that a few of them died because — say — someone
gave them the advice to wear the wrong pair of trousers on some ceremonial
occasion. How stupid can one get? ... And those quaint occidental habits I...
The Central Europeans keep kissing women’s hands; the Germans keep clicking
their heels; the English jump up twenty-five times when the same woman returns
to the same table where they have been sitting together for hours. And they
don’t have the elementary good sense to exchange cards when introduced. The
result is that the English never know anybody’s name and when they do they
don’t know how to spell it; and the Americans are not above the extreme
rudeness of asking: “What did you say your name was?” And, good gracious I
don’t they have dirty habits? They wear shoes — the same filthy shoes they were
wearing outside in the street, treading in God knows what — inside their homes,
instead of changing into slippers. They don’t change into a comfortable yukata either, but keep on their silly clothes; they actually wash themselves in
the bath — instead of before getting into it — and then sit in their own
dirt, feeling proud of their cleanliness; also they have their soup at the beginning of a meal. They must be mad.’
     
    Before going to Japan I was warned by many people who know the country well that one should never ask a straight question
in Japan; if one does, one never gets a straight answer. Personal questions are
even more out than in Britain. One cannot form friendships, and one cannot even
get on reasonably close terms with a Japanese, and one cannot — most definitely
not — joke with them. A diplomat who had served in many oriental countries told
me that human relations were almost impossible. 'When I played golf with three
other men in Thailand, we were four people playing golf; in Japan I always feel this cannot be achieved; it will always be one European playing golf with three
Japanese.’ All these statements pleased me because they suited my image of the
Inscrutable Orient. Imagine, then, my disappointment when I kept finding
interesting, responsive people everywhere I went: open-hearted and broadminded
men and women, ready to discuss any public or private problem — so long as they
felt that my questions were prompted by real interest and not by idle or
offensive curiosity. And quite a few of them were amusing and witty. I found
the Japanese extremely scrutable.
    This seems to point to the fact that
the Japanese are human beings like the rest of us, but they will strongly
resent this insinuation. They want to be different. They are determined to be
puzzling, quaint, unfathomable and inscrutable; they insist on being more
Japanese than most of us. They don’t always succeed.
    Pachinko is one of the post-war manias of Japan. All large — and indeed all small — towns have several pachinko- halls. Pachinko is pin-balls, also called a pin-table: you push a button which sets a ball in
motion. If the ball falls