Rising Sons

THE THREE BAMBOOS--Robert Standish--Macmillan ($2.75).

"Robert Standish" is a pseudonym for an Englishman about whom the publishers say they know nothing. The Three Bamboos is a novelized version of the history of Japan's famed House of Mitsui (Japanese for "The Three Wells"). It pictures that family as a succession of brilliant, cruel and profoundly devious fanatics, a power in Japan, dedicated for 50 years to a gamble for world conquest.

Standish's House of Fureno begins to rise through the prodigious exertions of Tenjo Fureno, sent by his samurai father to learn the secrets of the Western powers. In no time at all, Tenjo pumps an English missionary and a Scottish banker of everything they know, shocks the living daylights out of the missionary by unChristian, erotic behavior, hoodwinks a London shipping magnate, absorbs the lesson that finance and industry must be the sword of the new samurai. Small Tenjo also satisfies his hatred of white men--subtly by conquering a blonde and violently by beating up a big sailor.

This career sets the pattern for Japan's transformation into a world power. In Tokyo the Fureno dynasty holds power by bribes and terrorism. In China the Furenos profitably combine opium traffic and espionage. Throughout Asia their agents inflame resentment against the white man. As a great banking house, the Furenos finance the importation of Western technology into Japan's army and industry.

The code of Bushido Standish describes as a synthetic article, manufactured by the Furenos and friends to reconcile the old samurai code of honor with the dishonorable course they think Japan must pursue. Anything goes in Bushido. After the old generations of simple-minded warriors are dead, no one but the long-suffering Japanese women remain to oppose the treachery by which the brandy-bibbing, geisha-gluttonous Fureno circle plots to overwhelm Asia and fight it out with America.

It makes a good--not to say pointed--story for readers who like to take their fables neat. If they want a chaser, they might look into the real and more complex history of Japan.

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