what it is called in Japanese. There is a moment's grave discussion.
"I'm forget, Papa-san," Richi-san says. "Same kind have in States?"
"Yes—in California. Many of them. But I can't remember the name. It wasn't exactly an English name. More like Latin, I think. Spanish maybe. I can't seem to remember. Let's see ...."
"Oh, I know, Papa-san! Japanese word. Gladiolus!"
I chuckle. "Japanese word, eh? We have English word, too—gladiolus. But if you can pronounce the 'L's' in gladiolus, why can't you say 'tall'?"
"Oh, Papa-san—different! Gladiolus we always have!"
With some understandable concern, Papa-san drove out to his friends' neighborhood a couple of evenings later, hoping that either the housemaster or Goto-san had relented, and that the job remained in status quo. But nobody was in the small cottage, and Chako, the bobtailed cat, was nowhere around. A middle-aged neighbor woman, smiling and bowing, appeared, chattered volubly in Japanese, and made gestures indicating that I was to stay by the car.
Then she ran off through a narrow alley and skirted a small plot of rice about the size of a back-yard garden. Looking at this and hearing a rooster crow, I remembered that Richi-san had apologized on behalf of all the cousins for the neighborhood in which they lived; it was, she said, "verree countree"—when, in fact, the city of Tokyo extended for miles beyond it.
The neighbor woman, I learned later, was "verree kindness." She was, too, and it is unfortunate that I never learned her name. She became known to me as Other House Mama-san, and that she remained.
Other House Mama-san returned shortly, still traveling at a fast trot, and brought Richi-san. They conducted me to a place only a few blocks away, as we would measure the distance, to Goto-san's new quarters.
He was living in a small apaato, or apartment, where his drawing table took up at least a quarter of the entire living space. Yoshi-san was at home to serve us honorable tea, but Goto-san was working.
"Goto-san have new job, Papa-san. He's takushi du-river. First day, he's Number One du-river that takushi company, too muchee money making, new boss verree hoppee!"
Papa-san was verree hoppee, too, until he learned that Goto-san had driven his taxi a mere eighteen hours the day before, and planned to continue working that kind of shift—had to, it seemed, if he was going to keep out in front as the ichiban cab jockey in the transportation firm, which he was.
And he did. He drove the cab all over Tokyo, eighteen hours a day, for a couple of weeks. That kind of industry simply can't go unrewarded in a country which still regards democracy and free enterprise as something new.
He passed me one day on the street, tootling his horn as vigorously as only a Tokyo cab driver can do, and waved at me. The eighteen-hour day didn't seem to have worn him down.
The next time I saw him he was sporting a uniform with brass buttons and a visored cap, and I learned that he had just been promoted, within the company, to driving one of its big buses on a regularly scheduled route. In Japan that can be a career.
A few months later Goto-san had become a sort of trouble-shooter for the company and was driving a company car, which he was allowed to take home at night.
All of which proves that it's a ba-ad heart that bodes nobody good.
Driving Is
Justa Rittle
Different
THE red English sports car at the head of the line, waiting to buzz down the Tokaido—Japanese Route Number One Highway—bore a stranger device than anybody realized. Painted across the cover of its spare wheel was the word "HARE."
To you and me that is a reminder that the race is not always to the swift, a proverb especially applicable to sports-car rallies in a land where the speed limit is thirty-five miles an hour. But to the small Japanese girl who sat beside me as my guido, the label was only confusing.
"Papa-san?"
"Yes, Richi-san?"
"Papa-san, what meaning 'har-reh,' Engrish speaking?"
"Har-reh?" I puzzled, and then, when she pointed to the sign, "Oh, I see. That means rabbit—usagi. That car is usagi, and all these others, including ours, are inu. Rabbit and dogs—hare and hounds. Understand?"
She shook her head. "I don' sink usagi, Papa-san. I don' understand. Japanese speaking har-reh meaning justa rittle stomachy, and nice wezzer. I don' know!"
"I don't know, too," I muttered. The starter was about to give us the flag, but you can't start out on any kind of enterprise with such incongruities as justa rittle stomachy and nice wezzer left hanging in the air. I reached for the dictionary.
Sure enough, haré means "a stomach tumor," and a word spelled exactly the same means "clearing weather."
"You win," I told Richi-san. "Why have you people mixed up the language like this—haré and haré? I'll never learn Japanese! Japanese is taihen muzukashii— very difficult!"
"Engrish easy, Papa-san?"
"Of course, English is easy. Hare—we pronounce it hare, not har-reh. Same as the hair on your head—kami. However, it means usagi.
"Thirty seconds!" yelled the starter, meaning us. "Twenty... ten... five ... Go!"
We went—one of twenty-odd sports cars popped at timed intervals into the stream of traffic—to watch for special signs along the road indicating where numbered clues were hidden; to attempt to overtake the usagi, if we could; and to wind up about noon somewhere in the vicinity of beautiful Lake Hakone—where neither of us had ever been. Three blocks farther on, in a welter of bleating takushi-cab horns, Richi-san looked up at me and made the understatement of the year:
"Engrish anda Japanese, Papa-san, justa rittle different!"
Driving an automobile in Japan is justa rittle different, too, if you ask Papa-san. Driving in Japan will give you stomach ulcers, if not even a sizeable haré, or tumor. A day at the wheel leaves you weary, dusty, bewildered, and certain of only one thing—Japan is an ancient country, and its roads were here a long time before the automobile was invented. Japan will still be here, too, a long time after the last jidosha has rusted. That is, unless the Tokyo takushi-cab driver, who is the original Young Man With a Horn, blows it off the map.
It is true that some small improvement has been made in recent months, but only a year ago experts called Tokyo the world's noisiest city, and I doubt that it has lost the championship title. Factories do not create this pandemonium; they are mostly small, and the larger ones are located in outlying districts. Trains and streetcars contribute only a small share, although some of them are equipped with bugle-like horns operated by compressed air and can make the kami rise on the back of your neck at a distance of a quarter-mile when they let go a blast. Much of Tokyo's working population is whisked back and forth by subways, and the subways are not heard above ground.
It is true that during election campaigns hundreds of sound trucks shriek hysterical promises of a chicken in every nabé, and throughout every business day loudspeakers on any corner extol the virtues of products ranging from soap to TV sets. The geta's clack and the chindonya —a one-man band—plays bells and drum and samisen to advertise a new restaurant, or the bill at the corner movie theater. Rut day-in and night-out most of the bedlam can be blamed on Tokyo's thousands and thousands of small, scurrying, pomade-scented takushi-cabs.
Back in 1933 the following "Rules of the Road" were posted in Tokyo's Central Police Station, and it is reasonable to assume that the same chauffeurs' catechism was promulgated in Japanese:
1. At the rise of the hand policeman, stop rapidly.
2. Do not pass him by or otherwise disrespect