intimate 

 courtesies 



The Days of a Man ^igu 



cult vears of contact with the West. It was Kaneko, I 

 beheve, who said that "the ocean no longer divides, 

 it binds us together." 

 More Luncheon next day at the fine half-Japanese, half- 



European home of Baron and Baroness Rempei 

 Kondo was a delightfully intimate affair. There we 

 felt peculiarly at ease, as certain members of the 

 family have been educated in America and are per- 

 fectly familiar with the American background. This 

 was, of course, by no means an isolated case so far 

 as knowledge of America and Europe is concerned, 

 for nearly two thousand Japanese are graduates of 

 American and British universities. Those who have 

 studied in Germany are, as elsewhere implied, largely 

 of the militaristic class, and of them we met very few. 

 Perhaps the strongest impression we received in our 

 varied experiences was that of the basic unity of 

 Japanese psychology with our own in spite of the dif- 

 ferences in historic background. The social structure 

 of old Japan, however, was conditioned partly on 

 isolation and partly on concepts of honor and service 

 quite unlike those developed in the feudal system of 

 Europe. Fundamentally the Japanese, perhaps prim- 

 itively of the Aryan race, with large admixtures of 

 Chinese, Malay, and Manchu blood, are not so 

 different from the Western peoples. 

 Generous Dinner with the Asano family on our last evening 

 /njMj/t- jj^ Tokyo completed a busy round of international 

 amenities, pervaded by a spirit of generous friendli- 

 ness and hospitality. For whatever the surface eddies 

 of Japanese politics, the people themselves are sound 

 at heart, kind, helpful, and hopeful. And it would 

 be quite impossible to enumerate the multitude of 

 courtesies large and small extended to us, often by 



C 400 3 



