 We must know them as they are. Here they are in Japanese prints, century maskers, kiyomasu, fukosai, Hiroshika. The people you see are like the rest of us, says the sociologist, trying to make ends meet and still get a little happiness out of life. No one can deny this truth about any human being anywhere on earth. However, differences crop up in human behavior the world over, and our immediate job is to uncover and interpret the Japanese differences, as well as the overall similarities as they appear in Japanese motion pictures made in the decade prior to 1941. These, as if you didn't know, are tanks. And these are the drivers of the tanks. Japanese going through the same motions as any GI tank driver from Maine to California. There's nothing oriental looking about these smokestacks. You'll find their duplicates in Pittsburgh, nor are they just standing there as symbols like the ancient torii or gateways which often lead nowhere. Their solid structural foundations house modern steel mills, machine shops, cotton mills. Factories of all kinds sprung from a mechanical age. The workers are Japanese, the men behind the men, behind the guns. Reverse the picture, and we have small home industry turning out parts for big industry. We also have the small peacetime craftsmen working in pottery, porcelain, lacquer and metal. They're turning out highly prized items for collectors just as their forefathers in feudal times turned out artistic pieces for the daimyo's and shoguns. Let's look at the city people crowded into half a dozen great metropolitan centers, more modern than anything their size in all Asia. We'll have to limit ourselves to a fairly fast look see. In movie lingo, we call them quick cuts. Just enough to glimpse the East meets West contrasts of what is sometimes called paradox aisle. Public thoroughfares in the Broadway manner. Take a good look at the contrast in dress. No slavish imitation here of the latest in fashions from the Hollywood salons. No fear of being out of date in the midst of modernity. It seems that these three girls just prefer the old style. For buildings as streamlined as these, you have to go to the newer sections of our own American cities. And here's a mixed group of citizens giving further evidence of the old and the new standing side by side, sometimes in the same person. Look at the kimono combined with the slouch hat. And here's another gentleman in evening attire. Wait, let's hold that frame. A kimono topped by a derby. To pursue the same line a little further, we follow a couple of young men in Western clothes right to their door and off they come. Entering the house, they sit down as is. In some cases, the Westernized gentleman may change from his office clothes to Japanese dress. And then he too performs the gymnastic squat. Well, how about the children? At school, and by the way, there's nothing Japanese about that schoolhouse, the youngsters are in uniforms as Western in style as California play suits. On the way home from school, this trio still looks like three kids out of the West. Under the family roof, however, and without benefit of Aladdin's lamp, we find ourselves transported back to an old Japanese custom, the boy wearing a kimono and a young girl fitted out with a kimono with an obi or a sash bowed at the back. Let's all take a train to the country and add a few more to the billion passengers who annually travel by rail. Not so much of Westernization in the rural areas, the farmers are so busy making a reluctant soil produce the essential foodstuffs that they haven't the time to keep up with their urban brothers. Still the ancient agricultural methods, the old hand plow the ox used as a draft animal, seeding and planting by hand and hoeing and threshing and harvesting by hand. The farmhouse has a thatched roof and inside there are the familiar paper walls, mats and charcoal brazier for cooking. The brazier also supplies warmth if they cover it with a blanket and hug it close enough to choke it. But lo and behold, electric light, one anyway. And if former Akata knows what's good for him, a radio by government request. To get back to the cosmopolitan crowd, the Japanese were wrestling fans even in ancient times. The professional wrestlers are invariably mountains of flesh. The traditional rules demand certain opening gestures which are said to have a religious significance. In any case, the boys have an opportunity to display their manly attractions. And then they go to it in what looks like the Battle of the Loyalty. It's so our judo is another time-honored contest, but brain counts more than brawn. This more aristocratic sport and fencing known as kendo are practiced primarily as exercises in mental and physical discipline. By contrast, Western sports had a terrific vogue in pre-war Japan. Horse racing drew great crowds to the tracks and the betting was heavy. Golf as well as tennis became very popular. And baseball was on the way to becoming a national game. Movies made in Hollywood were in great demand, especially in the big cities. Music made in Tin Pan Alley was all the rage. Nightclubs featuring hot bands had an enthusiastic following. This playboy is slightly confused. Will it be an American cocktail or Japanese sake? Would it be some hot licks from Dixieland or the plucked strings of a geisha's shamisen? Conflict, trauma. A night scene that could have been dreamed up on a Hollywood sound stage. Let's listen. Can't you just hear her heart going doki doki? Romance, Western style. Dance land, taxi dancers waiting for a come hit or nod from the stag line. Incidentally, in the early 30s, American girls wore dresses like that too. And now to put the accent on the obvious contradiction, there were, at the height of the craze for things Western, the old dance form. By Japan's foremost actor and dancer, Kikigoro. Booky theaters of the 16th century type popular drama. The no theaters of the 15th century type classical drama. Just was assigned the task of summarizing what we've seen so far in one symbolic drawing. Apparently he's confused. Not that I blame him. If we go back in history, we find that this seeming confusion is an old Japanese custom. Since 552 AD, Japan has periodically selected choice items from Chinese culture in the same way that she adopted the techniques of the Western world since 1868. It was always selection calculated to reinforce the main channel of Japanese thought and feeling, not to alter its direction. But now our East meets West cartoon is beginning to take shape. That's it. The Japanese designed for living. Old Japan remaining intact at its core, and new Japan supporting it with the latest technical devices for increased strength and control. Such internal resistance to change in the midst of innumerable external changes calls for a steady conscious plan shared by an entire nation. Let's look at this plan on Japanese film. Well, this is not the Garden of Eden, lush with the bodies of nature. This is a Japanese garden planned in every detail to the very size, shape, and color of the pebbles. The Westerner may criticize its artificiality. The Japanese finds in it an expression of his need for correct composition as in an art form. Pre-war visitors who held with Whistler that art is an improvement over nature invariably fell in love with the Japanese. Even the trees are molded to conform to the general plan. The limbs are bent and cut short. Roads constricted. Sometimes to create the impression of constantly blowing winds at other times to frame the passage of heavenly bodies. Each garden is the world in miniature with its hills, valleys, mountains, waterways, and bridges, a world neatly arranged and under control. Upon entering a house, we may find ourselves in a six or eight mat room, each mat or tatami being precisely six feet long and three feet wide. The room is as devoid of clutter as a hospital room and as clean. No heavy furniture or dust gathering, whatnot shelves loaded down with bric-a-brac and gougas. No framed photographs of Uncle John whom everybody loved or Aunt Jenny who thought she knew it all. Instead, a tidy alcove or tokenoma, one mat long with a raised shelf on which may rest a treasured object, perhaps a vase holding a bouquet of flowers or a spray of foliage arranged according to specific rules. On the wall above are hanging scrolls or cacamono on which a painting or artistic specimen of calligraphy may be mounted. Restraint, appropriateness to the point of displaying special flowers to conform with a flower calendar. Order of a kind prescribes for the dinner tray a particular dish for a particular food. This planning obsession is not a peculiar characteristic of Mr. Yamasaki of Cherry Blossom Lane or of his particular neighborhood. It's the fabric of Japanese life. And if Yamasaki becomes a little lax, he better watch out. The police will be around to inspect his dwelling for cleanness at least once a year. Good evening, Mr. Hayashi. Have a seat. Don't mind if I do. At his age, there's nothing to it. His shoes are outside in the vestibule. The floor cushion or zabotan marks the spot. And that ballet routine with the feet tucked under his nether extremity was knocked into him when he was knee-high to a right chute. Sitting just so, known as shanto, is only the beginning. And then comes the well-known tea ceremony. Both men and women indulge in this elaborate ritual for serving tea. It's a must for the well-brought-up Japanese girl. The ceremonial discipline is so exacting that the very sleeves of the kimono must move in the right way. Observe the delicate touch. The subtle wrist movement. One lukewarm tea coming up. Madam Chrysanthemum knows her peasant cues when she enters a room. She kneels, slides the door open, stands, passes through, kneels, slides the door shut, stands. Entrance music, she's in. Religious custom in Japan is seldom the devotional act that it's apt to be in the West. The Japanese wash their mouths and hands, approach the shrine. Either ring a bell or clap their hands to attract the guard's attention, make a statement of fact or intention, or at times, a specific request. The woman on view may merely be saying, I'm going to take a trip to Yokohama tomorrow. In the home, this boy is about to begin eating, but, reminded of his duty to his dead mother, he lays a food offering on the altar, bowels, and hastily gets back to his own rice. For the bath, the men join the ladies in the community bath where appropriate behavior calls for no clothes and no gags, please. The Japanese may have excellent eyesight, but he observes only that which is appropriate. The theater is often said to be a representation or imitation of life. If true, the Japanese theater gives every evidence that Japanese life is planned in the minutest detail. Each performance is a tour de force, a concert by virtual souls. The audience probably knows the plot by heart as we may know a symphony by Beethoven. The actor may adjust his kimono, and the audience in a fever of expectancy for this very movement goes into ecstasies over the perfection of the gesture. Masks fix the emotion portrayed by the actors, as well as experienced by the audience. When masks are not in use, the makeup is heavy enough to function as a mask. A man sitting in profile upstage is a property man. He and his aides are in constant attendance on both the actors requiring a change of costume and the business of the drama in the shifting of props. They are seen by the Japanese audience, but of course, not observed. With your kind indulgence, we shall now see, but not observe, a fade out and a fade in. You can look now on the Japanese version of Jacob's ladder. The legs on the top step belong to the emperor. The rest of them is hidden from profane eyes. Those pictured on the steps below him represent the 73 million. In addressing the emperor, that is a reasonable facsimile of same, the Japanese says haka, meaning beneath the throne, thereby placing himself visually on the ladder and leaving no doubt as to where he stands. Keeping this ladder relationship firmly in mind, let us dissolve to a more exact symbolic representation. The Mikado is still top man, but the pyramid of ladders coming together as one beneath the throne comprises as many ladder positions as there are Japanese. Every individual is above or below somebody else, who in turn has his own ladder position relative to other somebodies. Caught by public pressure from above and below, he does what the plan expects of him. And as a result, the whole ladder structure is kept in balance. This has been going on from generation to generation from the son goddess down to grandma, whose death automatically entitled her to join the march of gods. I could say take a bow, but that isn't the way the little folks feel about it. Child bows to adult. Woman bows to man. Farmer bows to his betters. Civilians bow to the military. Subjects bow to the emperor. If it's the honorable son of heaven driving by, all the upper floors of the buildings along the royal route are closed, and everybody comes down to make his obeisance below his exalted presence. This is literal ladder behavior.