Lost Japan, David Kidd & Some Thoughts on Japanologists & Sinologists

Alex Kerr’s Lost Japan was first published in 1996 – a love letter to a Japan that had changed and morphed, not always for the better in Kerr’s view, but always in ways fascinating to the observer. Kerr was mentored in his appreciation of Asian art by David Kidd, who ChinaRhymers will know for his book The Last Days of Old Peking. Kidd saw the last of the old traditions of China before the final communist clampdown and then moved to Japan. While Japan may have lost much of its traditional art and beauty in the last 50 years things could be worse. As Kerr notes: ‘…the problem is even more severe in in other Asian countries, such as China or Tibet, where ancient cultures have sustained near-mortal damage.’ Kidd’s continuing appreciation of Chinese arts and craftsmanship, as well as his knowledge of Japanese and other Asian arts comes shining through the book.

Kerr also has an interesting point to make on the difference between Japanologists and Sinologists, while accepting he’ll be criticised for his broad generalisations – I’d tend to agree with him:

‘Lovers of China are thinkers; lovers of Japan, sensuous. People drawn to China are restless, adventurous types, with critical minds. They have to be, because Chinese society is capricious, changing from one instant to the next, and Chinese conversation is fast moving and pointed. You can hardly relax for an instant: no matter how fascinating it is, China will never allow you to sit back and think, “All is perfect”. Japan, on the other hand, with its social patterns designed to cocoon everyone and everything from harsh reality, is a much more comfortable  country to live in. Well-established rhythms and politenesses shield you from more unpleasantness. Japan can be a kind of “lotus land”, where one floats blissfully away on the placid surface of things.’

Penguin have just reissued Kerr’s Lost Japan, with a new foreword by the author…The Last Days of Old Peking fortunately also remains in print for those who have not read it – the NYRB did a copy some time back and E-Land also have it as Peking Story.

Carl Crow’s The Great American Customer Armed Forces Edition

Back in America after the Japanese attack on Shanghai in late 1943 the great old China Hand Carl Crow published many of his thoughts on the origins and uniqueness of the American experiment in a book The Great American Customer, subtitled The Story of Invention, Mass Production and our Prosperity, which traced the development of manufacturing and marketing in the USA from independence to the production and sale of cameras by George Eastman. The first editions of the book published during the war were printed on rough paper in order to conform to government regulations for conserving paper. Crow felt that the book could help remind war weary American’s that their commercial history had provided them with both a freedom and degree of luxury and comfort that had never been known anywhere else before and were worth fighting for. He had long believed that American methods of scientific management were responsible for many of the country’s achievements from its growing industrial base to its success on the athletics track and in The Great American Customer he fleshed out this argument – this is the advert for the US Armed Services edition of the book available to soldiers…

Banned American Movies in China, 1931

If executives in today’s Hollywood think they’ve got problems getting their pictures released in China I can only offer them this…thus was it ever…In 1931 China took exception to two Hollywood movies – Noah’s Ark and The King of King’s – both were objected to on grounds of promoting religion superstition, Christianity obviously.

Noah’s Ark was a Curtiz/Zanuck production from 1928 with Dolores Costello, Noah Berry and George O’Brien – Zanuck wrote the screenplay and there is a reference at the start to the Bible story but it soon switches oddly to the Orient Express in 1914 France where the train is washed away after a bridge collapses. It then goes on through to America entering WW1. There are parallels to the Bible but it’s essentially contemporary Great War tale. It’s spectacular – three extras were drowned in the filming of the flood scenes (not fortunately one young extra – John Wayne) – and made a healthy profit, except in China!

The King of Kings (1927) is a more straightforward Bible picture – telling the story of Jesus Christ, directed by Cecil B Demille and with HB Warner as Jesus and Dorothy Cumming as Mary. Culver City stands in for the ancient Holy Lands! It’s pretty forgettable, Ayn Rand was an extra, Warner got stressed playing the son of God and took to the bottle (sadly any pictures of the son of God swigging from a gin bottle are lost).

Thanks Heywood Broun – Shanghai 1912 – “A Land Where Chop Suey is Unknown”

Heywood Campbell Broun, newspaper columnist, author, and one of the founders of the American Newspaper Guild, was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1888. In 1912 he visited Shanghai. He occasionally commented on China for the rest of his career after the trip. Edgar Snow thought him responsible for stopping Red Star Over China from being a book of the month club selection in the 1930s. He was supposed to be reporting on the new republic of Sun Yat-sen but mostly sent back flowery pieces to the New York Tribune, including this nugget of wisdom below…He reportedly made a small fortune playing poker in Shanghai while there. Most of his reporting was of the instant expert variety with conclusions drawn from a few meetings and the fly-in/fly-out (or rather sail-in/sail-out) variety – sort of a Thomas Friedman of his day….widely read and considered authoritative by some even less knowledgable but for no obvious reason!

Spraying Shanghai’s Beggars with DDT in 1945

Given China’s annoyance at the possible renaming of the Chinese Embassy’s address in Washington to 1 Lu Xiaobo Plaza perhaps they could bring up this old incident from 1945?

Shanghai was home to many American troops driving the Japanese out of the country at the end of WW2. Almost immediately relief efforts started by the US under the auspices of UNRRA. Medical aid to get the place cleaned up after the Japanese occupation was a priority. And so, it seems, US Navy medical personnel, concerned at the infestations of fleas and lice on Shanghai’s considerable beggar population, got to work spraying them all to kill the vermin. According to this story from the Nebraska State Journal in December 1945 they rounded them up, sprayed their clothing with DDT as “an experiment”.

Nowadays DDT – dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane – has a bad reputation but back then things were different. Invented in the 1870s DDT’s insecticidal actions were discovered in 1939 and used extensively by the US Military and others during the war to control malaria and typhus among the troops. After the war it became a staple insecticide in agriculture. Since the 1960s we’ve been aware of its possible negative effects, links to cancer and adverse effect on wildlife populations. The US imposed bans in the 1970s as did many other places but it’s still in use (not least in China which has limited it but not completely banned it) as its role in countering malaria is a trade off with its harmful health problems.

Who’s knows what effect it had on the 600 beggars who presumably had to put their sprayed clothing back on next to their skin. Probably killed the vermin, but what else…?

A U.S. soldier demonstrates DDT hand-spraying equipment used to control the spread of typhus-carrying lice.

Shanghai’s Foochow Road, 1912

Now of course Fuzhou Road…here’s Foochow Road in 1912…

Plenty Crowded: Hong Kong’s Population Density, 1932

In 1932 the newspapers thought Hong Kong’s population density worthy of reporting when it hit 2,187 persons per square mile – the most densely packed city on earth then. For the record today’s recorded population density is 6,735 people per square mile – three times as many. Makes 1932 Hong Kong seem relatively empty and care free!

The Howard Sisters Hit the ‘Hai, 1928

In 1928 the very flapperish Howard sisters of San Francisco set out to conquer the world with their song and dance act. First stop? Shanghai.

What happened to them? To be perfectly frank – I have no idea!