Word: japanism
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...oddest diplomatic rituals in the world is the annual negotiation for fishery lease agreements between Japan and Soviet Russia. The talks begin in November. Everyone knows how they are going to come out-as they always have, with a compromise which two fishermen could reach in an hour's talk. But for as much as six months, representatives of the two countries bow deeply, sip tea, shake heads, pound tables, grin, frown, embrace, clench fists-throughout standing thunderously firm on impossible demands. Then, the day the first silvery smolts begin to run in the bitter waters off Sakhalin Island...
...when the annual talks began, there was a new, serious air about them. For one thing, Russia's new Ambassador to Tokyo Constantin Smetanin knew what he was talking about. He used to be a professor of ichthyology. Furthermore, Ambassador Smetanin was appointed to his post the day Japan agreed to a truce in the Outer Mongolian border fighting-after Russia had trounced the seatful pants off the Japanese Army. He was in a position to dictate...
Finis? To poor China, all this was gloomy news. For every step which brings Russia and Japan closer together hasten-China's fall. Soon and late, Russia has been China's best friend-more constant and generous than Britain, the U. S. or France. But no one knows better than the Chungking Government that the Russian bear has learned how to somersault...
...aims of Joseph Stalin are inscrutable, his route of procedure dark as the labyrinth. Most observers have thought that his Eastern interests could best be served by keeping Japan in a more or less permanent death-clinch with China. But on Russia's West a policy of friendship has lately done great things for Joseph Stalin's ego, area, attitude; and he may well have decided to train grins rather than guns on Japan as well. If he has, the last words of the last chapter of the story of free China were last week being written...
There has been plenty of political and picturesque U. S. journalism about Japan, but not many solid accounts of Japanese daily living. Suye Mura is such an account: some 300 pages of factual statement. With his wife, who speaks Japanese fluently, John Embree, a University of Hawaii anthropologist, lived a year in Suye Mura, a Japanese rice-farming village, population 1,663. His book tells more about modern Japanese farmers than any volume...