The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1905-01-03

IN HAWAI-
EXTREMELY INTERESTING
LOS ANGELES DATE-DEALs WITH LIFE OF
LITTLE BROWN MEN IN HA wAn SPEAKS OF HAVING
BRACED CHRISTIANITY

the old Nipponese songs. The pipe and
snarl of the painted puppets of the
wretchedest of Japanese road shows
hold their attention for hours, while
the music of the Royal Band is throw
ing into ecstacies the last steamers
load of tourists in the square a block
away. At night, when they rest from
the arduous toll of mill and cane field,
it is not to pallet and pillow that they
resign their tired bodies, but to the old
mat pile and hard WOO IN makura that
have presided over-Or rather, under
the sIumbers of their ancestors since
the first of the race of mikados was
created from the loins of the Son of
Heaven. And finally, when-in the Ian
guage that has been evolved as COM
promise, common meeting ground for
him and his luna" or boss, the hodge
podge of a volapuk called "pidgin Eng
lish"-he goes mucky," it is not the
services of one of "the two and sew
enty Earring sects," which have con-
tended with each other during all the
time they have known him in his exile
for the honor of saving his soul from
heatherism, that is read above his
body. Instead, a priest of Shinto, in
which worship he has never wavered,
burns few sticks and ties a string Of
black-lettered prayers above his alien
grave. 1t is only the Chinaman and
the Japanese of wealth who insists on
his body going home for burial.
The reception by the Hawaiian Jap
anese of Christianity is somewhat re-
markable. In Japan, working under
conditions that can in nowise be called
favorable, the foreign missionaries
have converted to at least a profession
of Christianity over a million souls
between 2 and per cent of the total
population, while in the seventeenth
century the Catholics claimed that at
one time a full 100000 had taken up
their faith. In Hawaii with all the
faVoring elements of protection, pro-
pnquity and opportunity for specialize
alton, the work of the Christian mis-
sionaries has been practically nil as far
as the Japanese is concerned This re-
suit, or lack of result, may be trace
able to the uniformly low mentality
and comparative simplicity of their
subjects. Such a nature would find
more to stir it and more for it to I'M
derstand in the realism and physical
manifestations of the rites of Shinto
and Buddha than in those of the more
spiritual and less tangible of the
churches of Christ
The great bulk of the Hawaiian Jap
anese live in villages built for them on
the sugar plantations. The houses, tin
rooted and boarded, bear little resem-
blance from the outside to the huts of
Japan, but counterparts of their inter-
iors may be found all the way from
Kobe to the Kuriles. The cluttered
floor with its raised platform. the few
simple cooking utensils, a handful of
brass pipes, and a tobacco stand are
characteristic here as in Japan.
And at sunset. after the days work
is over, the stroller through the streets
of village will be startled by that
same sight which at first gave him
such turns when he CHANGED upon it
summer evenings in the poorer quar-
ters of Toxic and Osaka a sturdy,
round, brown little man, and an equal
ly sturdy and round little brown wo-
man, sans the least vestige of garment,
sitting side by side in a big tin basin
and scrubbing and rubbing as though
life depended on it, while a brace or
so of almond-eyed urchins scrub with
the same gustO and seriousness in the
overflow water. In Japan a newly
acquired modesty is forcing the bath
ers to coYer, but in Hawaii, at the
screech Of the sunset whistle, they turn
to the bath tub, as of old at the tinSle
of the Angelus men turned to prayer;
and at the signal the Japanese would
as little think of neglecting to bend his
back to battle as would the Flemish
peasant his knee to prayer.
L. r. FREEMAN,