But there is a difference between the ballet and the
geisha dances, and it is so wide that there is no true comparison; for
whereas the ballet stimulates and excites, these Japanese movements
hypnotise and lull.
MANNERS
The public manners of the Japanese are not good. In all my solitary
walks about Myanoshita I met with no single peasant who passed the time
of day, and in the streets of Tokio English people were being jostled
and stared at and treated without respect. It was a moment when
Americans were unpopular, and the theory was broached that for fear of
missing the chance to be rude to an American the Japanese became rude to
all outlanders indiscriminately. One indeed gathered the impression
that, except in Kyoto, which is a backwater, foreigners are no longer
wanted. "Japan for the Japanese" would seem to be the motto: one day,
not far distant, to be amended to "The World for Japan." I shall never
forget the humiliation I suffered in a stockbroker's office in Tokio,
into which, seeing the words "English spoken" over the door, I had
ventured in the hope of being directed to an address I was seeking. Not
a word of English did any one know, but the whole staff left its
typewriters and desks to come and laugh. I was always willing to remove
the gravity of Japanese children by my grotesque Occidentalism, but I
have a very real objection to being a butt for the ridicule of grown-
ups.
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