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experience than the average American. He is surely also
wrong about the Japanese unwillingness to learn English. I do not know
what’s happening ‘deep down’ but in certain circles the desire to speak English
has become a mania.
    These views reflect a clash not only
between Japan and the West but between the Japanese business-world and the
right-wing, anti-Communist intelligentsia. The latter feel that the businessmen
enjoy all the benefits of Japan’s boom but contribute little to world peace,
national culture and the true, spiritual interests of a reborn Japan.
Fascinating though these views are, deserving attention, they are hardly more
than a voice crying in the wilderness. They represent a nostalgic desire, a
rear-guard action and a warning which bustling, busy, thriving Big Business is
unlikely to heed. But it is a whisper which is going to persist; and, in the
end, it will either die out or become a battle-cry.
     
    I was sitting at the bar of a pub in Kyoto, off the beaten track, where a gaijin is still a rarity if not a sensation. I
was drinking beer when I became aware of being closely observed by a man
sitting next to me on a high stool. After a while he overcame his shyness
sufficiently to speak to me. He spoke in broken English. He had watched me
drink my beer with obvious enjoyment then asked: ‘Japanese beer good?’
    ‘Very good.’
    A happy grin.
    ‘Japanese beer better than English?’
    ‘Much better.’
    A still happier grin. I thought it a
shade too triumphant, so I added: ‘But German beer better still.’
    He was puzzled and taken aback.
    ‘You just said, Japanese beer better
than English.’
    ‘Yes. Japanese beer better than
English; German beer better than Japanese.’
    Long, thoughtful silence. Then a girl
came in and ordered whisky. He watched her drink it, then asked me: ‘Japanese
whisky better than English?’
    ‘Yes,’ I nodded, ‘much better.’
    Delighted grin. He was elated. Then I
said: ‘But Scotch whisky is better still.’
    Painful silence.
    ‘But Japanese whisky better than
English?’
    ‘Much better.’
    The dethronement of Japanese beer
obviously rankled more than the fall of Japanese whisky. He was still brooding
over it. He asked: ‘German beer best in the world?’
    ‘No,’ I replied, somewhat
sadistically. ‘Czech beer better still.’
    ‘Small country, Czechoslovakia.’
    ‘Tiny country,’ I agreed, ‘but
excellent beer.’
    This was hard on him.
    ‘German beer is not best in world but
better than Japanese?’
    ‘That is so.’
    He had a few more drinks, perhaps to
drown his sorrows. He examined my jacket.
    ‘Japanese textile — better than
English?’
    ‘No.’
    Painful surprise. This seemed unfair.
We had more or less agreed that everything Japanese was better than anything
English.
    ‘English textile better,’ I declared
firmly and by then with a great deal of nationalistic pride.
    He, anxiously: ‘English textile best
in the world?’
    ‘Yes. Best in the world.’
    Relieved sigh. That was different.
After all, the English who had recently ruled the mightiest empire man had ever
known, were entitled to one first.
    Someone ordered sashimi, raw
fish — unmarinated and untreated in any way. Just raw fish. The inevitable
enquiry followed.
    ‘English sashimi better than
Japanese?’
    ‘No.’
    He looked at me suspiciously,
obviously waiting for the blow to fall. But no blow fell. Not a word about
Scottish sashimi or Irish sashimi.
    I didn’t wait for his timid question,
but declared myself: ‘Japanese sashimi best in the world.’
    Up to now he had taken no notice of
the other people in the bar, but he translated my verdict on sashimi for
all to hear. National pride was satisfied. We parted friends.

MERE IMITATORS
     
    Yes: imitators. But not mere.
    The necessity to imitate the West was
born out of Japan’s former isolation. Once the Japanese, after the lesson
received from Perry, decided to become a modern, industrial nation, they had
only