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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 22 October 2024
The Japanese Diet has made its first use of the power secured to it under the new constitution by selecting Mr Tetsu Katayama as Prime Minister. On Saturday, May 24th, he was formally invested in office by the Emperor and he had a 30-minute conference with General MacArthur. In a wireless address he appealed to the Japanese people for their help in the task of rebuilding the country. What most Japanese—rulers and ruled alike—desired, has more or less become a fact. They can now reconstruct their national life in their own way. MacArthur’s administration has partly come to an end. Now that we have arrived at this milestone in Japanese history, we may survey the hundred years of American-Japanese relations.
Twice in the course of history America has forcibly opened Japan to the world and has brought her into peaceful intercourse with other nations. Twice she has made the opportunity of exerting a tremendous influence on the history and development of the Japanese Empire and the Japanese people.
The first occasion was after her more than two centuries’ long seclusion, and was brought about through the mission of Commodore Matthew Galbraith Perry.
On 24th November, 1852, he sailed from Norfolk, Virginia, in the steam frigate Mississippi. His squadron was assembled in Shanghai, and on 8th July, 1853, he entered the Bay of Yedo with four ships of war. The Japanese were not completely unprepared for his arrival, for in 1844 William II, King of Holland, had addressed a letter to the Shogun warning him of the impossibility of maintaining any longer the policy of seclusion.
1 This adjective okashii and all the substantives and verbs related to it, like okashisa, okashigaru. are usually translated in dictionaries as ‘laughable’, ‘something comical’ and ‘to get fun out of’, respectively. These, indeed, are the true literal meanings, as the character for warau, to laugh, is in them. Yet, if I were to translate this often-used okushii merely as ‘laughable or ridiculous’, my translation would by no means convey the full strength of the word for the simple reason that being ridiculous in Japan is something awful, a tremendously humiliating thing. If somebody, after you have made a suggestion, asks you: ‘Sore wu okashii de la arimasen ka?’—‘Is that not laughable?’, you can be absolutely sure that such a thing will never be done. Therefore the English equivalent would probably be nearer to: ‘Is that not completely absurd?’
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