Word: eta
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Dates: during 1920-1929
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...Eta Society will give a tea dance immediately following the game and a formal dance later in the evening, from 8 to 12 o'clock...
Says a Japanese proverb: Bow once to an Eta and you must not lift your head for seven centuries. This unfortunate class, numbering today more than 3,000,000 Japanese (1% of the population), is traditionally made up of the descendants of prisoners taken in battles now remote, forgotten, nameless. Gradually they have been declared "outcast," "defiled," "unclean" and "less than human...
During the Shogunate (1603-1867), while the Emperor's powers were subordinate to those of the Shoguns or Tycoons ("Great Princes"), the Eta touched bottom, groveled at the level of animals. Then the Restorer, the conquering and enlightened Emperor Meiji (1853-1912) recovered the Imperial Power; and, amid numerous reforms, raised the Eta to full status as ordinary citizens...
Since then (56 years) the Japanese people have been losing, ever so slowly, the disgust and loathing which they felt formerly for the Eta. In the Japanese army there are now two Generals who are said to be of the "unclean". Reputedly they dare not admit this stigma, and only speak to others of their class in secret places, usually at night. At the Imperial University of Kyoto only one instructor has admitted that he is of the "Defiled Ones." Each year he defiantly announces to his students: "I am an Eta. Let any who are revolted not seek...
Never has a Premier of Japan dined with an Eta until now. He who burst tradition, and performed this courageous act is General Baron Güchi Tanaka (TIME, May 2), who has been premier for barely three months. Baron Tanaka, picturesque, opinionated, vigorous is now striving to rally all possible support to his party, the Seiyuka. By the meal which he ate with three Eta, Premier Tanaka may well have won half a million Eta votes...