Inside Japan

I

THE Japanese people enter a New Year weary of three and a half years of an undeclared war which their army calls holy, and irritated with the sacrifices and deprivations resulting from that struggle. Militarily, the campaign in China was won by Japan. But the real battle is with the millions of Japanese homes affected by death, disease, shortages of food and commodities, and the viciousness of uncontrolled inflation, which has become a serious social-welfare problem.

The Japanese, a regimented and orderly people at home, do not mind the 72-hour week, but they object to four fifths of a pound of sugar monthly, no pure butter, milk only in certain areas, four matches a day, and no cotton or wool for clothes. Rice is short. Wheat is gone. A few extra pennies in the housewife’s hand are no longer sufficient temptation to the bird of high cost of living, which has flown out of reach of millions of Japanese families.

Japan is overrun with economic police and thought police.

The first category includes the squads which in two years arrested 688,000 Japanese business men, suspected of bootlegging commodities: foods, metals, medicines, gasoline, leather, cotton, and even tires and tennis balls. The thought police imprison people by the scores — people suspected of not thinking in line with government decrees. If the Spiritual Mobilization Committee orders the people to endure personal sacrifices, the population grumbles, and the duty of the thought-police squads is to round up those who dare to think out loud, at dinner parties or in private group conversations. They have jailed over 1200 professors from colleges and universities. The seriousness of this situation is mirrored by the recent surprise appointment of a Lieutenant General as Minister of Justice and the appointment of Baron K. Hiranuma as Minister of the Interior, under whom the economic and thought police operate. This is part of the army’s move to prosecute more severely those who attempt to escape the emergency legislation.

Laborers in the giant war-industries plants are earning boom-time wages. The deprivation hits hardest at the whitecollar class — the doctor and his nurses, teachers, students, store clerks; their costs of living have mounted three to five times, with no adjustment in wages. The quality of their food has depreciated. The clothes they buy are made of staple fibre and last but a matter of months.

Epidemics are feared. Water is low in the two municipal reservoirs — feeding Tokyo’s 6,500,000 people. Scarlet fever, diphtheria, and dysentery are mounting. The water shortage is due to the enormous increase in building munitions, armaments, and heavy-industries plants which have mushroomed around Tokyo, Nagoya, and Osaka. Coming to work in these plants are hundreds of thousands of families. Their demands for water have added to the distress of city authorities in conserving the supply. The army blames the shortage on lack of rain. The public growls and does not believe this explanation. If a citizen grumbles too loudly, he will be summoned by the thought police. If he uses more than his ration of water or electricity, he is chastened by the economic police.

Farmers face the worst rice shortage in years. They blame the lack of rain for poor rice crops. Japan has had to ration rice, her main staple. All this, behindthe-scenes Japanese say, is due to the war in China, and not to a lack of rainfall.

Japanese prefer polished rice — its whiter, full-bodied kernels and flavor have more appeal. In polishing, the bulk content is reduced as much as 30 per cent. The government has decreed that in homes and restaurants at least 70 per cent of unpolished rice must be used with 30 per cent of the polished grain. This is an attempt to cover on fastdepreciating government stores and to meet the shortage brought on by lack of water from mountain reservoirs which feed the irrigation ditches. Heavier rice supplies are needed to send to China for Japan’s soldiers. More rice too is needed for army horses and mules. Farms are short of labor; wages in factories have drawn men and women to the urban industrial areas; less rice is planted and harvested. People dislike the 70-30 ratio, for the unpolished kernel produces a brownish rice less flavorful, although more nourishing.

Japan is forced to import rice from Burma and Siam (Thailand). To the Japanese the imported grain has not the accustomed taste; it is more costly, and this forces the government to release depleted reserves of foreign currency to help feed the people.

If the present season shows no improvement, there may be a rice famine in Korea and Japan proper this winter, duplicating the serious shortage in Manchuria last season.

Milk consumption in Tokyo has been reduced to 12,000 gallons a day for 6,500,000 people. Powdered milk, always a big item in the grocery stores, is scarce, in part because of the shortage of containers. Butter is a rarity, and the once fine Trappist cheese blocks have disappeared. In densely populated Tokyo, milk is at a premium. If once you had three bottles a day for your family of six, today your ration is half a bottle. The cows do not give as much milk as formerly, since the fodder, rice, and feed are being largely appropriated for army mules and horses. The dairy farmers are up against it: they are forced to pay higher prices for feed but must sell their milk at a government-controlled price; their gasoline is rationed, and in certain cases their trucks have been commandeered by the army.

Ice cream is fast disappearing, as is ice itself. Chocolate is no longer imported, and all the spices, oils, and condiments once in favor in so many Japanese homes are gone with China. Even the timehonored custom of serving wine at funerals has come under a ban. Village elders in some of the country districts have taken such action in the belief that no use is served by following this old custom when the nation’s way of living is being so drastically reformed.

The shortage of rice has cut down on the feed mixtures for chickens; the chicken gets even by producing fewer eggs. Pigs are being slaughtered because there is not enough feed for them. Farm horses suffer because of the feed reservations for the army horses.

II

Before continuing with this story of privation, one might pause to ask how the Japanese are taking this situation. The Japanese are a docile and patriotic people, and at first they accepted these economic sacrifices as a necessary makeshift. For months the National Spiritual Mobilization Committee sought to maintain the proper point of view among the people. But, despite the Committee, masses of the people have become pessimistic and all too questioning of the outcome of the war. Those who have money are beginning to hoard commodities. They participate in illegal transactions. They bootleg cotton goods, leather, and rice. Those who have less to spend eat porridge with sweet potatoes, do without medical supplies, thin their rice, and grumble under their breath. One housewife has developed what she claims is a military secret — a brew which looks and smells like coffee but which has actually been concocted from baked sweet potato.

In a year and a half, 200,918 persons were hauled in by the Japanese economic police in the city of Tokyo alone for illegal transactions. There are not sufficient jails in the city to hold the violators. Persons detained are finally placed on probation and repeat their offenses, knowing there is not enough cell space to house them if they are again caught. They deal in leather, cotton, woolens, silk, rice, wine, copper, iron, gasoline, lumber, sugar, and many food products.

American and European women left in Japan since the evacuation order their silk stockings from Wilshire Boulevard stores in Los Angeles or Market Street, San Francisco. At controlled government prices, Japanese silk manufacturers, in the land of silk, make no profit. Hence they do not manufacture stockings for local retail stores; they export what they make. The dearth of labor, shortage of electricity, and lack of permits for new machinery have combined to wreck the hosiery industry.

Japanese wives of business men and diplomats, and Americans returning to their homes in Nippon, stock up with a traveling grocery store before they leave Seattle or San Francisco. The quiet Mrs. Kensuke Horinouchi, wife of the former Japanese ambassador to Washington, reached her home in Tokyo in November with a Dutch oven, leather shoes, powdered milk in tins, canned butter, crates of canned goods, particularly tomato juice, cereals, cotton piece goods, clothing, woolens, stockings, frying pans, black tea, soap, cold cream, powders, sterilized cotton, gauze, medicines, sugar, and crates of lemons and oranges — a single orange brings one dollar and a lemon more than that on the bootleg market if it has an American label.

III

Japan’s present government could be labeled a ‘staple-fibre cabinet.’ In their first enthusiasm the people called staplefibre material ‘patriotic fibre.’ Then, as the novelty wore off, the Federation of Women’s Societies in Tokyo began to compile a list of defects in staple fibre. Japanese wear split-toe socks. Made of staple fibre, these fell apart after a few washings in boiling water. A cabinet minister complained that his children were buying too many socks, that the maidservant was extravagant in buying so much toweling; as a government official he found the ersatz policy had hit home. Staple fibre undoubtedly saves on importation of American cotton, but, as the women’s societies point out, to make the itchy and inferior ersatz material the manufacturer requires chemical, coal, water, and special machinery, which, in turn, are badly needed elsewhere.

The sale of cotton goods was prohibited over two years ago.¹ Now even cotton for medicinal purposes is procurable only with a ration ticket, the army and navy excepted. Hospitals have experienced a shortage of cotton gauze and bandages and materials for anæsthesia. The dearth of iodine, aspirin, and quinine makes the situation extremely serious.

Bare feet are encouraged. Imitation leather is expensive, and staple-fibre shoes last but a few months. In some prefectures, school children have gone barefoot. The army needs the leather on its long march through China. But, with fewer buses and streetcars, the populace must walk, and poorer-quality shoes deteriorate quickly under these conditions.

The once valuable foreign tourist trade is gone. In 1936, the year before the undeclared war on China, the famous Fujiya Hotel had 15,000 Americans and Europeans. The number has fallen to less than 4000. This coming winter, tourists to Japan will be inconvenienced by the shortage of sleeping and dining cars on the railways. The cars are needed for army hospital trains and military purposes, and there are insufficient steel and iron to build new rolling stock. Sightseeing parties and cherry-blossom excursions are frowned upon. Travelers must stay at home. This is hard on the Japanese, for, like the Germans, they are great hikers, tourists, and shrine visitors.

If you are a hotel manager, this is your dilemma: no more coffee, less tea, restrictions on milk, and no pure butter; steel beds are not manufactured; cotton sheets and towels are prohibited; and the porters and maids prefer to work in ammunition factories. The coal shortage causes guests to complain; elevators must not operate, and there is little profit in the depleted bars. No wonder hotels are being converted into office buildings.

Japan — as is true of all Europe — has a paper shortage. Candidates for election this year are in a fix — the ballot is shortened and the use of printed matter for campaign material is restricted. No more engraved wedding or engagement cards — that saves on paper, and prevents the use of copper plates needed in the munitions plants. Thinner postcards are being issued by the government to save paper and pulp. In one year Japan used 140,000,000 postcards. Three thousand newspapers and magazines have suspended publication, many under government compulsion, on the grounds that newsprint must be saved. Telegraph blanks have been reduced in size, and the government is campaigning to reduce greeting and condolence messages. In Korea, telegrams are accepted only two hours a day, which helps to discourage the number of messages sent. The acuteness of paper shortage affects school supplies, textbooks, paper towels and rolls, and paper windows in Japanese houses. Newspapers have but four pages in the evening and four in the morning. Extras are prohibited. Paper novelties are no longer on sale. New Year and Christmas greeting card sales were practically prohibited, the latter as part of a growing anti-Christian campaign.

IV

While the economic police seek out the hoarders, criminal police are looking for thieves in the metal market. People take in their pumps at night. Water thieves steal the water, and metal thieves steal the pumps themselves to sell for military scrap iron. Metal fences, manhole covers, doorknobs, kitchen utensils and gadgets, have a way of disappearing. The metal scarcity has hit the telephone business. No copper wire, and a lack of switchboards, have run the price of a telephone up to over $500, and you wait a year of Sundays to get it. Once you do get a telephone at this price, you can mortgage the instrument as you would an automobile or tractor, provided the economic policeman does not catch up with your transactions.

The Japanese have a policeman for everything.

The plain-clothes man wants to know what you are thinking. The specialist checks on how much water you use. Now comes the electric squad. In contrast to the service idea of American utilities, Japan does not want her people to use electricity, though they have had in use every type of electrical appliance known in America.

Electricity consumption was ordered voluntarily reduced 35 per cent. That failed to work, so the government in some areas turned off the current every other day. If you violate the electricity control law, you are liable to three years in jail and a fine up to $1200. Electric refrigerators, irons, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, beauty-parlor apparatus, and dentist’s drills are no longer manufactured. There arose the problem of power on off days for the armaments factories; the people would not turn off their meters voluntarily. New power lines had to be erected to run electricity exclusively into factories, as the public could not be trusted to keep their lights and fans turned off. The extra lines meant increased use of expensive and scarce copper wiring. Electric clocks would not keep time because the cycle of electric power was so reduced, and have had to be turned off. All such clocks have strips of paper pasted on their faces with the obituary notice ‘Not running.’ To overcome this predicament, millions of homes and business houses had to buy new clocks of wood frames and metal parts. For a people as prompt as the Japanese must have their clocks — if not electric, then the key winders.

Tokyo is a nine o’clock town — during shortages, the water is turned off at 9 A.M. and the electricity weakens at 9 P.M. If you must read in the evenings, 30-watt bulbs are permitted. Contrariwise, the Minister for Education wants better lighting to aid eyesight, and larger book and newspaper type so that the people can be better trained in reading propaganda. The eyesight gets worse, the newspapers cannot obtain larger type owing to a metal shortage, and the light bulbs are reduced in size, since the import of Chinese tungsten has been cut off by guerrilla activities.

Gas and gasoline are controlled. At 9 P.M. taxis are scarce. Fares are nearly doubled, and the number of taxis halved. After nine o’clock you bribe the driver, who takes you half the distance and then wants a new bribe to finish the trip. Taxis are not permitted to do business after midnight. You can, however, pay a dollar to sleep in the cab until 6 A.M., when the police will permit the vehicle to operate. If late at night you are seriously ill, you walk to the nearest police station, fill out a typical Japanese questionnaire, and, upon approval, are permitted by the police to have a taxi for a trip to a hospital — provided you can find a taxi with gasoline, and provided you have the necessary funds.

A Japanese friend remarked to me jokingly that sickness should be encountered early in the month. The gasoline ration is greater the first twenty days. From then on, the supply is less and the ambulance may be unable to make a trip until the first of next month.

To save gasoline, the government allots $500 for each bus and truck as a subsidy to use charcoal-burning apparatus. This is a costly saving. The engines choke, sputter, and stop on slight inclines. In winter they do not heat quickly. High-precision engines were not made to run on charcoal or corncobs. Everywhere on the streets and in the country you see buses and trucks stalled by the wayside. Passengers pick up their bundles and walk. Streetcars run on less power, so fewer streetcars operate. Going out tonight? Better plan to stay with your host and hostess. There will be few taxis or streetcars after you’ve finished your bridge game. Going to the movies? Remember the government has reduced the power and with it the sounds from the screen. Some people would call that a blessing.

Lack of coal has reduced the amount of gas available for heating, cooking, and industrial uses. No more can you get gas stoves, gas appliances, or even a small piece of lead pipe if you want the stove moved to another side of the kitchen. The lack of coal miners holds down the production of coal for the gas works. The lack of trains holds up delivery if the coal is taken out of the pits. To replace the men who are in the army or in factories, women and children are working in the mines of Western Japan.

An American business man, just returned from nearly thirty years in Japan, reported to the State Department that ‘Japan’s domestic situation is approaching hysteria. The commodity shortages and lack of war materials will become worse. The antiforeign campaign is an attempt by the government to divert the people’s attention from their insecurity and lower standards of living. People everywhere are asking, “Why should the war continue? When will it end?”’

People are lucky to get a Saturdaynight bath, and in Japan, where bathing is a national and almost daily custom, this is quite a blow. For a city the size of Tokyo — 6,500,000 people — 600,000 tons of water is not enough. School children bring water with them in little bottles. My wife was in a beauty parlor on the third floor of a downtown building. The women working there had to bring up water in small cans from downstairs to handle the shampoo work.

Japan is suffering a water drought, but one of the chief and unexplained reasons is the demand for water by factories and the hundreds of thousands of new homes in factory districts. Every plant needs tons of water in its storage tanks. Tons and tons more are required in the air-conditioned spinning industry, rayon factories, cement plants, leather tanneries, and chemical works. Tokyo itself has had a million people added to its armaments population. These people need water; so do their factories. Less than two weeks’ water supply is contained in the city’s reservoirs. When rain does fall, families turn on the faucets to fill wells or tubs. The water shortage has increased the fire hazard, and, with more combustible areas, the danger has increased.

If your house or office is on a hill, no more water comes through the pipes. You wait for the man with an oxcart to bring the neighborhood supply. Send your servant on her wooden shoes with her two bamboo pails to buy some water for today’s cooking. The city’s trucks cannot fetch water, for they have no gasoline available for the engines. Tires cannot be replaced, because rubber imports are for making tires for export. Metal containers for water are taboo; the government wants these for the armament industries.

Japan’s shortage does not portend collapse or famine, but it is very definitely a prelude to severe internal distress, rendering exceedingly difficult the government’s efforts to maintain public morale and support of the war in its fourth winter.

The shortage of common food products affects the masses at home and holds back the development within the occupied zones of China. The Chinese are not raising normal crops, and have only sufficient food for themselves — not for the invaders. This compels the great Japanese shippers to use most of their vessels for the transportation of food and clothing and medicine to China. Other ships must be diverted to bring maize and rice from Indo-China and Siam — an economic necessity which has seldom before arisen in Japan’s existence. As an inevitable consequence, there are fewer ships available for the overseas export trade. Shortages within Japan reflect the sacrifice essential if the troops in China are to be fed and clothed. And this drain is in turn intensified by the withdrawal of gold reserves for importing food from abroad to keep the home kitchens going.

Beyond this shortage (for which there is no Japanese solution at present in sight), just over the rim of the horizon, lie the threat of inflation and the economic consequences of demobilization, if and when the war ends. But that is another story.