Word: japanism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Ambassador to Japan Joseph Clark Grew is such a skillful diplomat that every time he criticizes the Japanese, they like him better. He has virtually all the qualities which a foreign emissary to Tokyo needs: seven years' residence in the country, tall body, grey hair, dark mustache, spectacular brows, horn-rimmed glasses, sensitivity, firmness, a gentlemanly capacity for hard work and saki (rice wine), good clothes, a beautiful house filled with Oriental antiques, and one deaf ear, which he knows how to turn at the right moment...
Whenever a U. S. Ambassador arrives in Tokyo, whether for the first time or after home leave, he is tendered a dinner of welcome by the America-Japan Society, a frequent sounding board for the two countries' relationships. Five years ago Ambassador Grew returned to Tokyo after a furlough. The America-Japan Society's welcoming speech was made by suave, old Viscount Kikujiro Ishii, one of Japan's most subtle diplomats, then Privy Councilor. Viscount Ishii amazed everyone by saying that a war between Japan and the U. S. was remote unless "the U. S. ever attempted...
Last week Ambassador Grew was again back in Tokyo after four months at home. The America-Japan Society again gave the usual dinner. This time Joseph Grew made a speech which was not only unusual: it was virtually unprecedented in ambassadorial usage. The Ambassador gave his distinguished audience an earful which made many of them wish for deafness. He used an unofficial occasion to express an official, definitely controversial, exceedingly ticklish point of view. His words, he said, "came straight from the horse's mouth . . . and mind you, I know whereof I speak...
...body politic needs a good purgative once in a while, but last week Japan's nearly got an overdose. For three days it looked as if 113 members of the Foreign Office Staff-all but the Vice Minister, four bureau chiefs and a handful of clerks and translators-would pass out of the political bloodstream entirely...
...steelmen formed a committee of 1,000 scrap-buyers, resumed their 1937 agitation for stopping tonnage export of U. S. scrap (favored by American Iron and Steel Institute President Ernest Weir, who also favors the embargo on munitions exports). There is a genuine scrap squeeze, mostly because Japan, England and other foreign buyers have taken 16,700,100 tons of scrap out of the U. S. in the last decade...