The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-09-29
William Archer, in the London Dai

NeWS.
 K TR H. B Chamberlain tells of a |" traveller who maintained that
 \ eight weeks-neither more nor less was the time required to give one a complete mastery of things Japanese. As my own stay has lasted just two months, am encouraged to hope that, at least, am leaving with my sense of perspective unimpaired.
 And, truly, the remark of MT. Chamber lain's globe-trotter was not quite so fool ish as it seemed. Europeans who have spent years in Japan do, I cannot but think lose their sense of perspective. For one thing, it seems inevitable that they should become either sentimentally pro Japanese or cmphatically "anti-Japan- ese." The latter extreme is much the commoner of the two; and people have been known to pass from one to the other. Ant-Japanese feeling is largely, am con- vinced, a symptom of that homesickness which overtakes the European in so ut terly foreign a country. Europe-Eng- land-is seen in a roseate transfiguration. People forget how much there is to find fault with at home.
 It Is plain matter of fact, broobing no denial, that Japan is something of par venu among the nations. She has sud- denly emerged from a highly decorated and decorative barbarism into a con- spicuous place among the principal ties and powers of the world. Need we won- der that she should be little uncertain and i'll at ease in her new surroundings. a little self-conscious, perhaps even a little bumptious? If the last epithet be just, we westerners are as much to blame as she; for we have grotesquely over praised her. and made her out to be a
 portrait and a marvel.
 There is much that is creditable, but nothing in the least miraculous. in her 45 years of progress. Her people had from of old been nimble of wit and delft of finger. They had been artificially and forciby shut off from the world for two centuries and a half, during which they had continued to keep their brains and hands in training. When the barriers
 were suddenly removed, and the ring fence broken down, what wonder that they should prove themselves capable of utluSlnR loItlSn iHtthotot tNNh pie's iiiS with foreign ideas? What is really re- markable is the prompttude and resolu- ton they displayed in flying at the throat of an overweening and menacing neigh hor. In that there was a touch of genius not in their adoption of railways. tele- graphs, telephones flashlights, advertise ments, stiff collars, bowler hats and In- vernes capes.
 How far can Japan really claim to be civilized? That is the burning question, which is almost as hotly debated as in the days before treaty revision when many European regarded it as a question of life and death to them. The violent anti-Japanese of today derides as a ridicu- lous apeing of foreign manners every at tempt of the Japanese to approximate to
 western standards. It seems to me that
 in all essentials the Japanese are as near to civilization as most western peoples, with this reservation, that then manners
 are what may be called proletarian rather than aristocratic. They have, I suppose,
 a polished upper class. but 1t is numer-
 ically small. and It is very little in evil dence. Moreover, the attempts at social intercourse between this class and Euro peans are seldom fortunate. not because the Japanese are uncivilized, but because 1 there is an almost insuperable barrier of | language and of social tradition between the two races.
 In the main, however. the Japanese are
 what may be called lower and lower middle-class people, and cannot see that their manners are more open to criticism than those of people of the same social standing all the world over, for one thing, they are comparatively clean. Their meth ods of bathing may shock our preJudices little; but. anyhow. they do bathe. Japan is undeniably land of unpleas- ant odours, because all the farming is sewage farming: but. on the other hand. it is nowhere a land of intolerabie filth. like so many parts of Spain and southern Italy. In ail these respects t is admir-