BOOKS OF THE DAY
Whither Japan ?
Japan Unmasked. By Hallett Abend. (The Bodley Head. I2S. 6d.) THAT any country should need unmasking is shocking in these days of excessive communications, unless it be that our propa- ganda and slogan-ridden minds are so confirmed in prejudices ready made for them that they are altogether unable either to see countries as they really are or to sift the good from the bad. Few countries have suffered more in this respect than Japan ; in Gilbert and Sullivan days the Japanese were quaint and picturesque ; later they were popularly viewed as charming and artistic, until, as our allies in the last war, the " gallant little Jap " became appreciated for his sterner virtues. When the Japanese, profiting from their position of security in the last war, dared to make cotton pants for South Sea Islanders at a cheaper rate than Lancashire could manage, the above set of prejudices was at once forgotten ; the quaint, artistic, gallant Jap became the Yellow Monkey, until—as the German Chargé d'Affaires in Nanking, forgetting the solidarity of the Axis, puts it—the China Incident has become a war between guerillas and gorillas.
Mr. Hallett Abend's book makes no attempt to remove the mask that slogan and prejudice have put over the face of Japan ; the startling dust cover does well to show the mask but not the face beneath, nor will the reader catch more than a glimpse of that face. What the reader will get, however, is a very fine picture of the dreary and dismal plight of those regions. of China occupied by a fanatical and inexperienced army, determined to control everything whether competent to do so or not. The chapter called " That Dreary Land " should be read and digested by all, and not least by the Japanese in japan, who are patiently bearing burden upon burden in order that their military may plunder, rape and carouse in the name of the greater honour of the Japanese Tribe. Seldom have pride and patriotism produced such squalor! The plight of the Westerners is poignantly put, and merits what attention can be spared to it from the worse plight of those in Europe.
The chapters on Hong-kong and Singapore will be of greater interest to Americans, but it is to be hoped that the next time Singapore's censors are " unmasked," pleasanter countenances will be revealed ; as seen by Mr. Abend, they would seem to bear an
unhappy resemblance to their Japanese counterparts! Lu: us hope, too, that Mr. Abend's moving plea for solidarity in the Far ,Fast between Britain, America and the Netherlands to avoid catastrophes due to disunity in Europe will bear effect ; this praise of the Netherlands East Indies is just and right, and would be echoed by all privileged to know them. japan Unmasked may safely be read by all who wish an all but up-to-date and fair account of events in the Far East. Those in search of a solution to the riddle of how a people so full of merit in their own country can behave so foully in China must look elsewhere.
Awn! WILSON.
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