The Land od the Rising Yen

people who for a consideration — so many yen per hour — posed
as the bride’s family (her supposed father and mother got double fees). Today it
is the Japanese family’s darkest secret, a horrible skeleton in the cupboard,
that they have a Korean in the family.
    (2) The Etas. The Eta people were
defeated in the Heike-Genji war and became the untouchables of Japan, below the four classes: the samurai, the farmers, the manufacturers and the
merchants. (Note that professionals, artists, even priests had no class of
their own.)
    The Eta — now called the Buraku-Min —
were despised. Their births and deaths were noted in separate registers. The
situation was tolerable, however, as long as they stuck to their villages and
kept strictly to themselves. But they, too, started moving to the large towns
and there they met with grave difficulties. There is no official discrimination; the prejudice is purely social. Once, when I was travelling in
a car with a Japanese friend, four of us, his passengers, suggested that we
should stop at a roadside inn for a cold drink. He pretended not to hear us.
Later I found out that the inn belonged to an Eta man, which explained why my
friend, a broadminded and cosmopolitan chap in all other respects, could not
bring himself to stop there.
    The strongest resistance is to
marriage. The special registers are no longer kept but the old volumes still
exist and enquiry agents have mysterious access to them — although legally they
should not. This private investigation is a nasty feature of Japanese life; as
an angry Japanese friend remarked: ‘The last vestige of the prewar thought
police.’ If the girl turns out to be an Eta, the marriage is definitely off.
Not even fake relatives would do in this case.
    One interesting aspect: both Koreans
and the Eta got into their inferior positions because they were defeated in
war. They failed, so they must be inferior.
     
    I was walking in the Roppongi district
of Tokyo when I discovered a Jewish restaurant, run by a lady called Anne
Dinken. It was, as I found out later, the only kosher restaurant in Tokyo, perhaps in Japan.
    We were received and our orders were
taken by a pretty Japanese girl called Reiko who spoke fluent English with a
Yiddish accent. Then we witnessed an invasion by some Third Avenue and Bronx types, about six tall men, all looking like prize-fighters. Eventually Miss Dinken
herself appeared, wearing a slightly garish skirt and stockings. I do not mean
to be unkind, but Miss Dinken is a personality. Apart from being present in
real life, she also looks down upon her guests from a poster. Coy and a little
corpulent, she declares (on the poster): ‘I am no geisha girl ..and goes on to
recommend her gefillte fisch, salt beef and pastrami as well as the true
Bronx ambience of her establishment. A man came in and said: ‘Long time no
see.’ It turned out that he had left half an hour earlier. ‘Missed me, honey?’
— and he tried to kiss Miss Dinken, who pushed him away affectionately. Three
women tried to persuade a fourth to join them, but she preferred the company of
the virile prize-fighters.
    ‘I don’t blame you, honey,’ one of
the three shouted across the room.
    ‘Thank you,’ she replied venomously.
    I asked Miss Dinken whether Japanese
Jews ever visited her place.
    ‘That’s a myth, honey,’ she told me.
‘There are no Japanese Jews. Not a single one. Except the Emperor.’ 14
    I stepped out of the restaurant, and
was once again surrounded by the serious, ceremoniously bowing Japanese. That
one step covered more than 10,000 miles.
     
    When I talked to a friend about the
existence of racial tension in Japan, he protested vehemently. He assured me
that I was wrong and there was no trace of it.
    ‘Take my own case, surely it is the
best example,’ he said. ‘My family comes from China. Even my name is Chinese,
it means silversmith. We came over to teach the Japanese our craft. There is no
trace of prejudice against us; not a shadow of intolerance. We are accepted as
if we were Japanese.’
    ‘How long have you been here?’
    ‘Eleven hundred years.’

KABUKI REVISITED
     
    I shall start by recalling how Kabuki struck
me when I first saw it:
    A visit to Japan without seeing
Kabuki is like a visit to Paris without seeing the Louvre. The Kabuki programme
started at eleven o’clock in the morning with a seventh-century love-thriller
involving Prince O’ama and Princess Nukada. There were three more