"we have heard of you already from baron saiki," said kikuchi, shaking kent's hand firmly. "we shall be glad to become your good friends, if we may. in fact——" he glanced towards his chief.
the older man smiled. "yes, mr. kittrick, we had, in fact, thought of having one of our little tea parties as a welcome to mr. kent and for mr. jones, you know, who came a few weeks ago for the new york chronicle. to get them acquainted, just a few of us from the office here and the newspapermen. we have these little informal, friendly gatherings now and then, mr. kent. do you think you should like to come?"
[pg 26]
kent thanked him. they chatted for a while. kent was introduced to a few more officials, all pleasant, extremely urbane, fluent in english. then they came away.
"it should be pleasant to come here," commented kent. "they seem intelligent and friendly. i like them."
"they are pleasant," replied kittrick. "and clever too, though, queerly enough, it is the common thing for the japanese to regard the foreign office as a pretty stupid institution. although it has done mighty well, it seems to me, disentangling the foreign policy mess left by terauchi and his ilk, cleaning up the yap, shantung, chinese and siberian questions, the japanese people and press seem to think that they are a pretty poor lot. of course, they have had a fairly hard time of it with the war office, the general staff. many people think that they are unduly under the thumb of the militarists, but the very fact that the army and navy ministers are not responsible to the cabinet makes running the foreign policy harder, as the militarists have had the habit of letting the foreign office propose, and then doing the disposing themselves, and that seems to me to make what our diplomatic friends have done the more praiseworthy.
"yes, you will find the foreign office crowd pleasant," he continued. "but as a source of information you'll find them disappointing. like all the rest of the officials, they are obsessed with the national mania for secrecy. all the officials seem to think that they may get into all kinds of trouble by telling the press something; that they can never get into trouble when they tell nothing. the great cry of the japanese is constantly that they are misunderstood by the rest of the world, and still when we fellows who honestly want to bring about understanding try[pg 27] to help them along, they won't help us or themselves. say, for instance, that some fool report against japan crops up in washington, or london, or paris, and you come here to get the thing straightened out, to get japan's side; you will, as a rule, find it is like pulling teeth, and often, when you do get the story, they won't let you quote the foreign minister, or even the foreign office generally. they want you to cable that 'it is reported,' or 'it is said' or 'there are indications that,' taking all the value out of the statement. then, if you want to see one of the ministers or some other big gun, they will probably arrange that you see him—they are tremendously obliging, i admit—but it will take a week or more before the interview can be arranged, and in the meantime the harm has been done abroad. your story, japan's version, has become old as genesis, it has gone cold. and then they sit up and wail that the world misunderstands them. all this talk you hear about the infernally clever, insidious japanese propaganda is plain rot. if there is one thing they don't know a thing about, it is propaganda. they have their propaganda newspapers, it is true, particularly in china, but everybody knows them, and they don't count. this talk about the foreign office handing out huge sums to writers and others is funny. the war office people have the funds, and i daresay they spend them where they think it will do good. the general staff, that is the secret force in the japanese government, and you and i never hear what goes on in there. see its headquarters, that old, gray building with the green copper roof; that's the last remaining stronghold of militarism, in its good old form, on this earth; and general matsu, the chief, is the proper high priest, the simon-pure militarist, with ethics as primitive as those of a cave man. they are giving in now. they have to, for[pg 28] japanese public opinion about spending great sums on armies is the same as it is in the rest of the world, but they are clever. they feel—it is probably their sincere idea of patriotism—that japan can be great only by militarism, and where they reduce the army by two soldiers, they probably buy one machine gun, making up in strength in one way what they lose in the other. they probably feel that if they can't preserve japan's strength openly on account of public opinion, they must do it quietly, for japan's good. but there, under that green roof, lie the forces of old japan, and there, on the other side of the city, in the students' quarter in kanda, in the laborers' quarters of honjo and fukagawa, the forces of new thought are stirring and fermenting. it is medieval feudalism as opposed to modern industrialism, with a lot of more 'isms thrown in, socialism, communism, sovietism even, new ideas, half understood, misunderstood, but grasped at with passionate eagerness, the young generation and the workers seeking such morsels of new thought, often the worse thought, that they can find, and swallowing them, half digested, or not digested at all.
"there is danger in all this. there is a turbulence of too precipitate transition. it needs wise handling. there is good in it all, this passionate desire for making japan modern, but all these young, restless forces should be directed, led along wholesome paths, and all that the powers-that-be—the militarists, the capitalists, the police—seem to know is repression. i can see lots of good in both sides, the cautious conservatism of the old generation which clings desperately to the ancient virtues which it sees spurned; and which sees all that is bad, unwholesome, in the new movement; and the young generation which wants to create a new japan in a day, which wants to walk before it[pg 29] has learned to crawl, which is prone to discard the virtues and values of old japan before it has learned to understand and use modern, western civilization. it is a game for high stakes which is going on here under our eyes, where immeasurably precious values of an old civilization, unique, irreplaceable, are likely to be lost, to be thrown ruthlessly aside; and, on the other hand, there is loss every day that the intentness, the eagerness of the younger generation, of the masses in the cities where they have acquired zest for modernism, is suffered to waste itself in futile groping after lots of unwholesome stuff, which they think must be good fruit mainly because it is forbidden; especially when all this eagerness to learn, this ambitious energy might, with a little sympathy, a bit of understanding wisdom, be made into a tremendous power for constructive good. the longer you live here, kent, the more you will come to see that what japan needs to-day, what she must have, is another meiji, some strong, wise directing force, a truly big man—but there is no such man to-day."
