990
TO PUBLIC.
THE HONGKONG WEEKLY PRESS AND
UNFAIR TO JAPAN; UNFAIRER is being fast orushed out by the large. The Japanese ospitalist the writer condemns as the most remorseless devourer of little ones the world has known. " In other words, he is the most orual and heartless. War veterans are
walking the streets seeking | work and finding none, and the actual conditions of life for them could not be more vividly brought Lefore the reader than in what Mr. Kingsley calls "A Personal Histors of a returned soldier, once a rickshaw man, and his unavailing struggles. with other veterans and alone, for a bare livelihood. This part of the article, which is much too long to quote and would not bear entting. I recommend to the reader.
worse.
(Daily Press, December 14th.) The Blondins of the circus always take a look at the rope or wire on which they are about to perform their dangerous business. They look at its fastenings; test them carefully. This is sensible and right. Suppose they were, by some extraordinary means, prevented from taking these pre- cautions: would not their lot excite commiseration ? The reading public is in that unhappy position. On its path perilous in pursuit of information, it has to achieve the performance of acquiring its convictions on a tight rope or slack-wire of journalism. It cannot examine the apparatus, at least not with the ample knowledge necessary and it het o take its wires largely on trust. If they turn out defective, so much the It is fortunate for the public that journalism has its traditions, and that in the main the journalists who make all ready for their performance have sonie concern with honour in their workmanship. There are, however, members of the public who are far froni averse to the thrills of mishap, and workmen who, still to pursue the metaphor, deliberately "fake the wire." Which is responsible for which, it is hard to say. In plain language, journalism, is bere and there disgraced, and the public grievous ly misled, by men who do not value facts as a basis for argument, who care nothing about truth as an ingredient of the evidence which is to lead to a verdict. Public opinion grows uncannily because of the canker at its roots. A shameful instance of this is disclosed in the following abstract from an article about modern Japan, appearing in
the World's Work,
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[December 28, 1907.
Perhaps cuch a remark was made, but it The hasn't sufficient vraisemblance for us. next fragment is much neater.
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In a corner of the quadrangle stood a roughly- built shed, with light plank walls and lattic. work spertares; the floor was strown with think grass mats covered with canvas. It was the jia jitsu school, or place of exercise. Two of the college champions gave me sa exhibition-Į presume their rice was already digested —and I should be lo ho engage in a rough-and-tumble with either of those five-foot-nothing terrors, despite my six feet and 1851b. In one study sat He handed me the book and asked my opinion a round-faced, close-oropped youngster, reading.
about it. It was
The Simple Life, 'and that book was never read in more appropriate sur- roundings. The entire kit and equipment of the room might have cost 30s. The reader was in the commercial department, preparing to going to the Japanese every day at a tithe of take up one of those fat billets which are now
the remuneration bitherto paid to "foreigners.
After that we come to the part that seems really object onable, where Mr. KIRTON dwells on the " disguise.
spies' preparations for Their chief wickedness seems to
"
We recommend the reader quite other Wise. Those who want to know about the actual conditions in Japan are warned that rather impure, imagination. Mr. WALTER the matter quoted is a product of pure, or
with a history, who abandoned sailoring J. KINGSLEY is a gifted young American for journalism, with no qualifications other than a facile pen, a fertile imagination, a fund of cynical humour beyond all scruple. that would have brought him Kudos if put view to pigtails. and a fine command of the English languagee that they grow their hair long, with a There is a photograph to more honourable use. He is the same young man who, under the pen-name of costume or kimono " (!) which in the picture of a Japanese student in "bis national Stephen England," made the Daily Mail a is really the hakama and haori, and foreign laughing stock during the Russo-Japanese socks and shoes; and there is the statement months during the latter part of 1903, since distinguishable from a native and is able to He was in Japan for a very few that" dressed in Chinese costume he is in- when he has remained in America. He travel anywhere in China on his mission of has never been in Osaka, knows nothing of espionage." To fo eigners like Mr. KIRTON Tokyo but its railway station, and his he might be indistinguishable, but the personal history of a returned soldier Chinese themselves may not so easily be must have been concocted on an American deceived. As it is, if the disguise be so table with the usual American genius out of clever, it is odd we should hear so much of purely American material. The phrase Japanese spies inland. There are physical describes the feeling with which we make foreign observers which are ignored in the more in sorrow than in anger" accurately differences easily discerned by competent this exposure; and it is in the public following passage.
war.
#{
It
recommend to the reader" such a grossly misleading concoction.
interest that it should be done. The
Other students wore their hair in different egregious WILLIAM T. STEAD is the com-stages of length, they were on the "political" side, an · the hair is worn long with an object. On first e ering the college the political—and some of the commercial-students cultivate the growth towards the conclusion of their term, they stopt of their hair by every possible means. Then,
the queue of the Chinese, shaving their heads in the accepted manner and plaiting into their own property-if required-the easily-bought tails of human hair, with their silk contious- tions necessary to make a proper pigtail. The transformation is perfect and complete. The hair and eyes of the Japanese are Identiosl in every way with those of the Chinese; both races have black hair and brown eyes.
The
Another bad example, though not quite so bad as the foregoing, is provided by an illustrated article in the Daily Graphic,
by WALTER KIRTON. This second Walter tells of a discovery he has made at Shang-
Every steamer from Japan, Mr. Walter J. Kingsley says, bas its "Asiatic steerage full of men and women flying to other lands in the hope of earning a less starvation wage. Every-petent reviewer who takes upon himself to where in Japan now there is misery. Eren Japanese children, he says, "do not laugh as blithely as in the old days. Happiness was their heritage then, but now the nation demands that the little ones go to work at a time of life regarded in England as infancy. In the manufacturing cities like Oaks there are no longer seen thousands of boys and girls playing in dainty, many-coloured costumes like gor-hai, of a school for Japanese spies. We geons butterflies on the grass of temples. You wild them in coarse dull clothing, working nike pathetic dolls in the factories. These babes toiling for a few pennies a day form a vast and sorrowful army." Tokyo, says the writer, has slams whose poverty reaches the very lowest depths-slums worse than those of London, Paris, or East New York. Japan, however, decently veils her national sores. "Their existence is hidden from the foreign visitor, Rarely does a tourist 100 the slums, and specialists studying the city for precise information are sedulously kept out of the poorest quarters. The Kekumin newspaper instructed a representative to live the life of the lowest and poorest in Tokyo, and his articles dealing with life in the Shitaya district created an immense sensation. When translated into
"The
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believe that in this case the writer may know something about Shanghai, as he is still living there; but he does not know very much about the Japanese, if we may eyelids of both slant inwards, and the prominent judge by this article. The more he does cheek-bones and other racial characteristics are know of them, the more does this article identical among all these myriads, The Jap discredit him. "Armed with a card from student of to-day strips off his simple uniform or the Japanese Consul-General, he in. kimono - dons the dungaree garments of John genuously writes, he was admitted to the Chiuaman, strolls out to the furthest corner of school for Japanese spies. On the card, “a
the Celestial Empire-note-book in sleeve and- number of weird characters were scrawled,"
eyes open for anvthing usefni to his country—in and though the Consul may consider this vestigator" of to-morrow. It was from this college appearance a Chinese; in fact, the Japanese ** in« slight on his penmanship impolit, he will
that the Japanese spies, who did such grest woik probably chuckle at Mr. KIRTON's simpli- for their country during the recent war, wore city in supposing he would have given bim drawn. It is from this college that the Japanese cally above board. It was really the Japa-conquest of the Chinese Empire, Indistinguish- a card of admission to anything not politi Government recruits its Intelligence Depart. ment in its campaign of political and commercial nese school at Tung-wen, on the outskirts
able from any Chinaman, equipped with every of Shanghai, that Mr. KIRTON visited, and necessity and unhampered by any superfluity, we cannot object very much to his defini- the ex-student of Tun-Wen penetrates yamen tion of its object-" when all frills are
(official residence) and hong (merchant's "office) stripped away, the training of young on bis tour of investigation. Rice and water is Japanese in everything necessary to secure
his only ommissariat; the clothes of day are Japan's preponderance in the Chinese
likewise his bed at night. He is the penultimate Empire." If he had stopped there-but he didn't. He tells the British public that "a Chinese official," not identified in any way, made the following remark to him.
English in pamphlet form, the Government promptly bought up the entire edition and destroyed the plates." Nothing is wasted in Japan, for there is nothing to waste. poor devour every scrap of fish entrails from the markets, and eat with avidity rotten fruit, stinking vegetables, sour, spoiled rice, rancid grease and fragments of meat.
A corporation has been formed to control the collection of garbage and its distribution to the restaurants which make up their bill of fare from the filthy mess brought to them daily. There are horseflesh restaurants and cafes where spoiled rice and fish entrails are the stock-in-trade. Second-hand stores and pawnshops abound, for in Japan the pawnbroker will make an advance on any article that does not fall below a penny in value." Even the artistic pride of the Japanese artist is beginning to disappear: and the small shop ' rights."
He said: "It is the Franco- russian war over again. Then the Germans knew mores about France than the French did themselves These Japs are doing the same here, and can't stop them. They have their treaty
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practiti ner of the Simple Life, and, despite ali
uperation, this is one of the great facture be adoras, I came from Tun-Wen soll ge full to tue brim with food for thought.
The offensive solecism of referring to the people who admittedly treated him court- evusy as " Jape," and even of putting that expression into the mouth of “
Chinese official," is sufficient to tell the enlightened how Mr. KISTON habitually masticates his
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