Honorable Enemy

HERE is a political, economic, psychological guide to Japan, written in readable and popular style and to some extent dramatized through the introduction of an imaginary character named Sato, who is supposed to represent the average Japanese. Mr. Hauser, who knows Japan both from study and from firsthand observation, contrives to convey a very considerable amount of information about Japanese tastes and habits in living, loving, eating, drinking, fighting, and all the other familiar activities of man. He possesses a knack for selecting the subjects best calculated to appeal to the American reader, such as a description of the personality of the Son of Heaven, the descendant of Japan’s long line of Emperors, whom he depicts as Japan’s last liberal. But, despite his exalted position, Emperor Hirohito is little more able to curb the Army than are those ‘die-easy liberals,’ to use the author’s felicitous phrase, the Japanese who liked to consider themselves liberals when this creed was generally accepted, but who lacked both the means and the inner strength of conviction to defend their ideas when these were seriously challenged. There is nothing startlingly new or original in Mr. Hauser’s book; but it is an able popularization of the views of most competent foreign observers of Japan, and it avoids the opposite mistakes of overrating or underrating our ‘honorable enemy.’ W.H.C.