Western oil -paintings and sculptures are all the rage in Japan to-day and works of the traditional school go begging although any art critic from the West will tell you that the Japanese will never amount to any= thing og imitators of Western art.
All of these phenomena and many others have produced effects "from which no one here has escaped.
Naturally there has been a reaction to such things. In many of the girls' school where the students all nowadays dress in Western clothes, an hour or two each week have been set aside for the purpose of teaching the students lessons in. proper behar viour as practised in olden Japan. Tt may astonish the Western reader to earn that a good number of high school girls in Japan do not know ly to dress themselves in for most of them never wear "kimonos" except during the New. Year holidays, Recently a school for brides was established in Tokyo. This was prin cipally because the girls of the present day, absorbed, as the girls of most other nations are, in romantic, thoughts, motion pictures, and outdoor sports know little about cooking. Proper Japenese deportment and filial piety. This school has been extreme ly popular and there are to-day scores throughout the country similar to it.
Hand in hand, however, with the movement to keep the girls from becoming over-Westernized has been the systematic training of these girls in such martial arts as rile practice.
Even in universities, he feels, there, is no need to teach English." What! [harm such a man, who is entrusted Jwith the task of educating the youth of he land of doing can be imagined.
True, the motive behind the actions of Mr. Matsuda and other followers, lof the nationalistic banner are understandable. No nation, these men feel, can attain to greatness in the art of either peas cor war without definite moral superiority. behind and above, the rise of Japan 1d. the successes gained by her in war and peace, is, moral force, a belief in destiny, which these ultra-patriotic fanatics lal beting shaken by the inside ous advances of the Oreident.
'Moral force, it ig declared, brought the Japanese from obscurity to power. the same impelling power will enable them. should it be necessary, to face unflinchingly sacrifices greater' than Jany in the past. Anything tending to weaken thi force must be combatied, it ts held, Sacrificing Spiritual Civilization Japan, the patriots agree, has bene-fAtted tremendously by the lessong she [has learned from the materi West.
In recent years, however, this thas been at the cost of sacrificing her spiritual civilization which mast Japanese believe is superior to that
which a. vigorous, " growin, the Wert, and something without lempira like Japan cannot ex Few take issue with this argument. But why, ask the liberal-minded, con-luck such ridiculous things as the papa and mama" campaign?
Stich things can only cause Japan to be ridiculed by the rest of the world, It is maintained, The answer to this may be. that [Japan is groping for a course. She is afraid to turn about face complete-Ly, cast aside benefits she has Jderived from the West and return to, the ancient civilization of the East. She is equally afraid that continuation of the policy of blindly following' the West may result in ultimate destruction of the nation. The old-timers have seen the people injudiciously take up almost every fad that has) [swept the West from such unimportfant, trivial and foolish customs as: young men going about without hats and girls smoking in public, to the more serious fads such as communism, fascism and nazism. At the moment ithe tendency ig to imitate the New [Deal policies of the American Gov-fernment. Brain Trusis have sprung up government circles, private institutions and in political pasties.
Ultra-Nallonalist Movement Hand in hand with this, however, has been the growing power of the ments. The organizations behind this movement sprang up like mushrooms during the hectic days of the military campaign in Manchuria. Ever since the League of Nations acted against Japan, these organizations have been making capital of the anti-Western sentiment and the belief that the question will decide the course Japan nations of the West are scheming to fs to take in the future. on October 1 was virtually assured to-day following the approval by the Cabinet of a draft ordinance providing for an expansion of the naval reservation there—Rengo, deprive her of what she regards as her just reward.
There are at present more than 500 patriotic organizations throughout the country. Some of them, true, have ess than a score of members, but others, like the Black Dragon Society wield considerable power. Many of these patriotic bodies have the dacking of the army. Their motive is to turn Japan away from the West and fo cultivate the spiritual culture of the East, To explain what is meant by the spiritual culture of the East is one Jot the most dim cult things. Tt has Probably never been satisfactorily explained. "Behind it is the principle of obtaining human satisfaction withe the ald of materialistic things. A true Japanese archer is to derive spiritual satisfaction. it the ceremony he has dondueted, his Posture and the handling of his bow and arrow have. been. correct, [Whether the arrow hire the torgot not is immaterial. To derive satlefaction merely because one has the bulls-eye is, according to ancient Japanese precepts, mere. materialism. the height of spiritual satisfaction comes when the archer draws his arrow back, takes sim and, because his posture has been perfect, his aim food and his mind a vacuum, the arrow leaves his fingere of ite' own Insidious Advances of Occidentallsm The old-timers and the militarists are striving to check all Western influences which tend to conflict with or demoralize thie spiritual culture. By propaganda and war talk they are endeavouring to combat what they term the insidious advances of Occidentalism.
While they grudgingly admit the necessity of accepting the eclentife achievements of the West, they would rather see the nation move backward than to absorb the free and easy thoughts which prevail particularly in the United States, The idea of the army, but not necessarily of the numerous patriotic organizations, is to combine the materialistic civilization of the West with the spiritual civilization of the East—a thing which has never been attempted and which many believe fo be impossible. This is plunging the country into a state of disorder. Whether order will ever emerge from Jsuch disorder is something. which most serious observers would like to know.
Actually the conflict which is taking place to-day is between modernism and the Old Japan. Can these precisely opposite elements be merged or witt they clash and cause a destructive [Social upheaval? The answer to this
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.