Vilas County news. [volume] (Eagle River, Vilas County, Wis.) 1896-1927, 1904-12-12
WHAT THE JAPANESE ARE
READING.

The first western novel translated
into Japanese was Ernest Maltravers,
by Bulwer Lytton. This was in 1879
1t was published under the poetic
title: A Spring Story of Flowers and
Willows. The latest fiction over
which Japan is poring-in stores,
banks. commission houses, railway
and steamship houses-is The Letters
of a SelfMade Merchant to His Son,
and pirated at that! The lack Of an
international copyright law and the
lax literary morality of the Japanese
has robbed Mr.. Lorimer of royalty
on more than two hundred thousand
copies which have been sold in the
Sunrise Kingdom. But MIR Lorimer
has some revenge the Japanese
clerks have to read it as a textbook.
I'm the Japanese appraisement OF the
book, says Harold Bolce in his enter
tanning article, What the Japanese
Are Reading, in the Booklovers Maya
zine, its humor was entirely over
looked The production was accepted
solely as a serious gospel to over-con-
ident young manhood" And yet
Japan is not so far astray in its est.
mate of the book which does preach
first-class business gospel in homely
language. But piracy and even plag-
iarism are not considered more than
veniaI offenses in Japan. Many a
hard-worked preacher or editor will
sympathize with the literary workers
of Japan who make nc bones about APP
propriating good thing when they
see it, without the formality of using
quotation marks Only we occidentals
are not so honest about it. The Japs
the little, brown polyglots," as Mr..
Bolce appropriately and picturesquely
calls them-look upon plagiarism ''as
an indication of extensive and tena-
cious memory" and regard the use of
questionable TASTE" American fiction
is not popular in Japan, but science,
philosophy and poetry are. The
writings of Ira Remsen, Simon New
comb, Edward Holden and David
Starr Jordan are we'll known and APP
preciated Emerson, Whittier and
Longfellow are enjoyed. Mark Twain,
so far, 'has failed in laughing his
way into Japan, whereas in Russia
he shares the honors with Grover
Cleveland! Japan is an empire of
poets. The present nlikado has writ
ten nearly fifty thousand odes, but
as a Japanese ode consists Of only
thirty-one syllables, and as rhyme,
reason and meter are alike ignored"
the imperial output may be reverently
discounted. The mass of the people,
however, like western nations, are
great newspaper and magazine read
ers. "More than a thousand news
papers and magazines are published
in the empire. The imperial public Ii
brary at Toxic has half million vol
umes, nearly one thousand of which
are printed in the language of Eu-
rope" Notwithstanding this avidity
to read, the daily press is not enter
prising. 1t does not push it's circula-
ton or sell it's wares on the streets.
To get copy you must go to the of
fee of publication. But Japan is
ahead of the west in that nearly every
has prison editor, whose
duties consist in going to Jail and
trial for any offense com
mitted by the journal. This represen-
tative of some of the more independ
ent papers spends a large portion of
his time in prison, either awaiting the
hearing of his case or in serving out
the term of his sentence. Even when
out of the tolls he has no editorial du-
ties to perform. His salary is larger
than that of most of his colleagues,
and his position is in demand. He en-
joys the sonorous title OF edltor-ln-
chief, and when he is behind the bars
the actual editor is classed by the
journal in question as merely con-
tributor!" No wonder the makers of
comic opera go to the east for their
ideas. The west cannot match its
serious whimsicality or it's sophistical
subterfuges!