The New York herald. [volume] (New York, N.Y.) 1920-1924, 1922-05-14
SUNNY-SAN. BY Onoto Watanna
George H. Doran Company.


A SIMPLE little story engaging
| ~ ly narrated. with a practiced
skill that makes much of
small things. A Japanese girl of
mixed bloods stands in the center of
interest. We see her first as novice
in tea house. trying her timid steps
with a saddened heart, for her be-
loved mother, the star of the estab-
lishment, lies dead in an upper room.
A patron, old and ugly, desires
| Sunny. She turns from him in anger
and thereby risks severe punishment
But four young Americans, travelling
| with tutor, save her by carrying
her off in dashing Western style.
Then they find themselves with a
ward on their hands. Being young
men of means they form the Sunny
Syndicate" finance her, and leave
her in charge of an American mis-
sionary. Sunny comes to America,
much to the embarrassment of the
four, particularly Jerry, the insti-
gator of it all. The embarrassment
at her coming turns to a contest for
the honor of housing her when they
see how very charming she is in her
smart American clothes. Jerry wins
out, by Sunny's own will. and she
stays with him in his studio.
But even in Bohemian New York
no young architect can share his
studio apartment with a particularly
pretty girl without some trouble
The trouble comes through Jerry's
aristocratic mother and the girl she
wants him to marry. Sunny leaves
the studio and learns something of
the seamy side of New York life. But
she finds a girl friend and finds also
her runaway American father. 1t all
comes right in the end, just as we
want it to come.
Japanese and American ideas of
politeness--and other matters-are
neatly differentiated, with fairness to
both. But it must be admitted that
the art of learning to please, which
is taught the geishas as their chief
life philosophy, has much to recon-
mend it.
And we all-except, possibly few
inveterate Broadwayites who cannot
live but in the midst of unseemly
noise-will sympathize with Sunny's
feelings as she wandered the streets
alone and disconsolate.
She sensed the fact that she was
in the Land of Barbarians, where
| every one was racing and leaping
| and screaming in an hysteria of
speed. Noise, noise, incessant noise
and movement that was
America! No one stopped to think;
no polite words were uttered to the
stranger. 1t was all a chaos, a
| madhouse, wherein dark figures
rushed by like shadows in the dark
and little children played in the mud
| of the streets.
And yet the difference between
the sweet, clean, quiet Oriental land
of her birth, where the beauty OF
orderly existence cloaks the cruelty
of one individual to another-and of
sex to sex-and the true kindness
of individual to individual that I'M
derlies the noisy, messy thing We call
life in America is well portrayed In
the incidents Of the story and the
bits of wisdom floating through it.
The four young men of the Sunny
Syndicate are quite real, more OF
less, and Katy Garry is a delight
Sunny herself is a novel little hero
inc and somehow quite believable'
even If we don't understand why ths
conscientious missionary who had
her in his charge all those months
did not teach her better English.
GRACE ISABEL COLBRON.