Letters from China and Japan

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they are called red blankets, not greenhorns, because they wear in winter a red bed blanket gathered with a string, instead of an overcoat. Then at night it comes in handy. The stores are already displaying the things for the girls' festival though it doesn't come till early March--this is the peach fête, and the display of festive dolls--king and queen, servants, ladies of the court in their old costumes, is very interesting and artistic. They have certainly put the doll to uses which we haven't approached. Then we had lunch at the store, a regular Japanese lunch, which tasted very good, and I ate mine with chop sticks. Then they brought us back to the hotel, and at two a friend came and took me to call on Baron Shibusawa--I suppose even benighted foreigners like yourself will know who he is, but you may not know that he is 83, that he has a skin like a baby's, and shows all the signs of the most acute mental vigor, or that for the last two or three years he has given up all business and devoted himself to philanthropic and humanitarian activities. He does evidently what not many American millionaires do; he takes an intellectual and moral interest, and doesn't merely give money. He explained for about half an hour or more his theory of life (he is purely a Confucianist and not a religionist of any kind), and what he was trying to do, especially that it isn't merely relief. He is desirous to preserve the old Confucian standards only adapted to present economic conditions; it is essentially a morality of feudal economic relationships, as perhaps you know, and he thinks the modern factory employers can be brought to take the old paternal attitude to the employees and thus forestall the class struggle here. The radicals laugh at the notion here much as they would in the United States, but for my part if he can get in a swipe at the Marxian theory of social evolution and bring about another type still of social evolution, I don't see why he should not have a run for his money. According to all reports there is very little labor and capital problem here yet, though the big fortunes made by the war and the increased prosperity of the workingmen have begun to make a change, it is said. Up to the present labor unions have not been permitted, but the government has announced that while they are not encouraged they will not be any longer forbidden. But I must get back to the story. Another friend had asked us to go to the theater with him, the Imperial Theater, which has European seats and is a fine and large building, as fine as in any capital and not overdecorated like a New York one. The theater began at four, and, with about half an hour intermission for dinner, continued till ten at night; the regular Japanese theaters begin at eleven in the morning and continue till ten at night and you have your food brought to you; also they have no seats and you sit on your legs. None of the plays

John Dewey and Harriet Alice Chipman Dewey

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