Pacific Parley

To the "Paris of Japan' splendrous old Kyoto, still the citadel of Buddhist culture, came three smart sons last week. They were John Davison Rockefeller III; Malcolm MacDonald, scion of Britain's peace-potent, peripatetic Prime Minister; and Lady Nancy Astor's studious William. Came also some 200 other notables to the third biennial session of the Institute of Pacific Relations.

Sons Astor and Rockefeller made themselves obsequiously useful as assistant secretaries respectively to the British and U. S. delegations. Son MacDonald, himself a delegate, hobnobbed with the chief delegates: Jerome Davis Greene of the U. S. (partner, Lee, Higginson & Co.); Baron Hailsham of Britain (recently Lord Chancellor); Dr. Inazo Nitobe of Japan (onetime Under-Secretary of the League of Nations); Dr. David Z. T. Yui of China (confidential spokesman of the Nationalist Government).

These countries and in addition Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Hawaii and the Philippines were represented by delegations including historians, diplomats, bankers, educators, economists. Present were "observers" for France, Mexico, Soviet Russia. Though purely unofficial the Institute of Pacific Relations is Asia's nearest likeness to Europe's League of Nations.

Rockefeller Dollars. To help found the Institute in 1925. John D. Rockefeller Jr. gave $10,000; Julius Rosenwald $2,500; Lee, Higginson & Co. $1,000; International General Electric Co. $500; Thomas W. Lament $500. These and other donations from countries facing the Pacific Ocean reached a total of $90,000. The first Institute was held in Honolulu. So was the second Institute in 1927. Last week in Kyoto the third Institute met.

Chinese Dynamite. Instituters are fond of the words "dare" and "dynamite." They boast that at their round tables the unofficial delegates rush in where statesmen dare not, grapple with questions too dynamitey for diplomacy. Chinese Chief Delegate David Z. T. Yui took the Instituters at their word last week. At the first session, before formalities were even disposed of, he leaped up and shrilly accused Japan of using murder as an instrument of national policy. This accusation should have had special interest for John D. Rockefeller III. He had dined a few days before with the son of the murdered Chinaman in question.

On a railroad bridge near Mukden, Manchuria, which was guarded at the time by Japanese soldiers, the great, barbaric Chinese War Lord Chang Tso-lin died when his armored train was dynamited (TIME. June 11. 1928). Because he kept 20 wives, quaffed tiger's blood as an invigorant. and hewed off heads with a sort of Robin Hood justice, the world remembers Chang. Today his son, Marshal Chang Hsueh-liang, is the none-too-strong-or-smart Governor of Manchuria, but of course he had sense enough last week to banquet regally the Rockefeller scion who side-tripped to Mukden en route to Kyoto. No Chinaman doubts that Old Chang's death was ordered from Tokyo. Certainly it was opportune for the national policy of the then Japanese Prime Minister, General Baron Giichi Tanaka, who died last month (TIME, Oct. 7). Last week in Kyoto all the old circumstantial evidence of Japan's guilt was hashed up by shrill Chinese Delegate Yui until the Japanese delegates grew livid and U. S. Delegate Greene thought it best to push through a ruling that this particular dynamite should be exploded not in the open Institute session but at a secret round table.

Shibusawa's Broadside. Citizens of the U. S. would do well to heed Nippon's grand old philanthropist. Viscount Shibusawa when he speaks, even unofficially, for Japan. In business and socialite circles in Nippon his prestige is almost viceregal. Founder of many a ginko (bank), including Tokyo's Dai-ichi Ginko (First National Bank), he is "The Morgan of Japan." As Honorary Chairman of the Institute, though not present in person. Viscount Shibusawa caused to be read the following statement: "The controversy arising from American immigration legislation* is not closed. The wound so needlessly inflicted on our national honor is still open and will remain open until the matter has been rightly settled.

"I think it necessary to make this plain statement because there seems to be an impression in America that the incident is as good as forgotten in Japan. This erroneous impression is doubtless due to our courtesy and reticence on this subject in conversing with American visitors."

Soother Shotwell. When the say of China's Yui and Japan's Shibusawa had been said Instituters got down to discussing their first vital topic: whether or not industrialization of the Orient is leading to a decay of Eastern culture. It was soothing to hear Columbia University's stocky, broad-mustached, conciliatory Professor James T. Shotwell, Chairman of the Institute's Permanent Research Committee, proclaim: "Oriental culture is not in danger. . . . Science is the ART of the West."

Major proceedings of the Third Institute will focus on the economic, social and political aspects of the present unprecedented migration of 1,000,000 famine-stricken Chinese per year into bounteous Manchuria. On this subject alone Soother Shotwell and his researchers have compiled 17 volumes of spandy new statistics. Also there will be debated whether the Pacific Powers need a separate Peace Pact.

Tea Masters. Easily the most piquant subject before the Institute was Teaism. Explaining that Japanese use the expression "It isn't tea!" in exactly the same sense as Englishmen exclaim "It isn't cricket!" at any bounderish action, Professor A. L. Sadler of Australia's Sydney University launched into a spirited description of "Chanoyu, Teaism, or The Tea Philosophy of Japan.

" Said he: "For the last 400 years there has existed in Japan a very definite point of view, or way of life, associated with the ceremonial drinking of tea. It is called Cha-no-you, literally--Hot Water for Tea; or Chado, the Way of Tea; and its Masters are known as Chajin or Tea-men. ... It now seems to us perhaps the most Japanese of all institutions.

"Teaism is the art of making a house and living in it ... the Tea Master was the architect of older Japan in the widest sense of the word. . . . The Tea Masters . . . kept the national taste more healthy and sensitive and potent than that of any other country, and this I think is now being demonstrated in what is called 'Modernism' in Western art, architecture and interior decoration. . . . Since, even in its smallest details, this 'Modernist' work of today is identical with that long produced and regarded as ordinary in Japan, it would really only be a graceful compliment to the source of its origin to call it the Rikyu style. For Sen Rikyu [most famed Tea Master] did more than any other artist to stimulate and standardize that sort of architecture and interior decoration, and to expound the creed . . . that a house is a machine to live in and from which all superfluous and irritating ornaments should be banished.

"It does not seem to have struck many European observers that the Japanese house is a standardized one. . . . All rooms are multiples of one unit, the mat of six feet by three. . . . This standardization is not confined to the house but extends to clothes also. Just as a house is assembled of materials of fixed dimensions, and comparatively little labor is required, so also all kimonos are made of bolts of material of the same length and breadth, and so simple is the way of putting it together that every house as a rule makes its own dress. Hence it is not easy ... to dictate to the population . . . what kind of costume they shall wear. . . .

"In England the two Beaux, Nash and Brummel, are perhaps the nearest approach to a Japanese Tea Master, though their interests were far more limited and on the ethical side they fell very short. . , .

"It is very apparent from the various anecdotes of the great Japanese generals that they regarded their battles as won in the Tearoom both literally and figuratively, for not only was it a first-rate training place for the disciplined mentality and resourceful observation so needed in a strategist, but it was also the most convenient one for a quiet discussion of the very disingenuous plans of campaigns such as the decisive one of Sekigahara. No bunaga* had an almost uncontrollable enthusiasm for Tea, and he sprang upon a Tea-bowl or Kettle like a lion on a hare "

*Totally excluding Japanese classed as immigrants. Classed as "tourists," "students," "business agents," etc., they may enter and remain six-month periods indefinitely extensible.

*A famed 16th Century feudal Lord, Oda Xobunaga, dictated even to the Shoguns (who had made puppets of the Emperors).