The Land od the Rising Yen

complain that their
Japanese friends never invite them to their houses. They cannot. Quite
well-to-do people live in conditions of such overcrowding that no English or
Swedish labourer would put up with it for a day. In London the average living
space a person occupies is 9.2 square metres, in New York 119 square metres; in
Tokyo only 0.4 square metres. In other words, the average inhabitant of Tokyo lives in an imaginary room the dimensions of which are eight inches by eight inches.
But the trouble is not only lack of space. Forty-seven per cent of the houses
should be condemned for one reason or another. Only one quarter of them have
proper drainage, and sanitary conditions — to use the euphemism of the century
— are old-fashioned. The situation in the country is worse. Rents are
exorbitant. To pay £5,000 or £6,000 a year for a really good though not vast
flat in Tokyo is not unusual, and a reasonable room (called a bed-sitter) costs
Y 10,000 (£12 or $50) a week.
    Little wonder Japanese do not want to
invite people to their places. The idea has been generally accepted that the
proper place for entertainment is a luxurious restaurant, and that it would
even be discourteous to invite a friend to one’s humble home.
    Housing conditions do not improve
fast enough. Too many office blocks are being built and not enough dwelling
houses; and also too many garages. A Japanese cannot obtain a licence to buy a
car until he can prove that he has somewhere to put it off the street. So cars
are often housed before people.
    Having said all this, I must add a
word of qualification. While housing conditions are bad, often shocking, many
lucky people live very comfortably. And, much more important, do not suppose
that even the poorer — even the poorest — Japanese homes are places of
degrading squalor. With their inborn tidiness and exquisite aesthetic sense,
they make the best of their opportunities. Furniture is sparse even in the
richest Japanese house — Japanese houses do not need furniture — and it
is amazing what a difference a little taste, a little care and love and a few
freshly cut and decoratively arranged flowers can make. All the flats or houses
I saw were small; all were tidy, attractive and dainty. Even the poorest and
most modest place had a charm and dignity of its own.
    Due to the lack of space people go
out of their homes whenever possible. This habit adds yet another injustice to
the position of women. The old-fashioned Japanese man associates glamour,
happiness and the beauties of life with being away from his home; and
associates poverty, drabness and worries with his wife.
    There are 80,000 bars in Tokyo alone for people to escape to; one bar for every hundred and fifty persons,
including babies, children, the sick and aged.
     
    Hotels are very good. The rooms are
lovely, often spacious, and equipped with every kind of modern gadget, bells,
telephone, radio and television. Sheets are changed daily and a clean yukata — dressing-gown, as no doubt the reader remembers — is also provided every day.
One also gets, every day, a new toothbrush and toothpaste, and a brand new
little razor with a new blade. The only trouble with Tokyo’s excellent hotels
is that there are not enough of them. I arrived there about three weeks before
I’d planned to — in other words, naively and hopefully, without a hotel
reservation. But for my airline, Lufthansa, I would have slept under a tree in
one of Tokyo’s few parks.
    I feel the least I can do to make up
for the trials and tribulations I caused to Lufthansa is to pay a short tribute
to them here. That they are an excellent airline as far as flying is
concerned — perhaps a not altogether unimportant consideration — goes without
saying. The usual advertised amenities are all there (which is not always the
case with all famous airlines). But their service started long before take-off
and went on long after landing. They regarded me as their ‘charge’ — 1 was their charge, I suppose — and they
looked after me with avuncular affection. Not having finished my work in time
at one place, or having finished it earlier than I expected at another, I had
to change my bookings quite frequently, upsetting weeks of careful planning. I
arrived in Tokyo-Tokyo! — without a hotel reservation. I had all my mail sent
to their various offices and letters often had to be forwarded to new
destinations. I had to plan train and car journeys to, and needed