When a passenger of the foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him. Melodiously at first, but if he still obstacles your passage, tootle him with vigour, express by word of mouth the warning "Hi, Hi."
4. Beware the wandering horse that he shall not take fright as you pass him by. Do not explode the exhaust box at him. Go soothingly by.
5. Give big space to the festive dog that shall sport in the roadway.
6. Go soothingly in the grease mud, as there lurks the skid demon.
7. Avoid tanglement of dog with your wheel spokes.
8. Press the braking of the foot as you roll round the corner, to save collapse and tie up.
The Japanese were ever remarkably obedient to the law of the land. They are still tootling, with vigour. Tokyo is, without doubt, the tootlingest town in the world, and the practice has spread into Yokohama, Osaka, Sendai, Yokosuka, and Tachikawa, as well as into the more remote prefectures. Not only have the Japanese developed tootling into a fine art, but their mechanical skills have not been idle, and horns stamped "Made in Japan" can make a Detroit tootle sound like a confidential whisper.
A little of this frays the nerves of foreigners, who are more inclined to be high-strung than the Japanese. Especially did the din offend the auditory senses of the British, and some of them wrote long letters to the editor of the Nippon Times, complaining of the "excessive horning."
Papa-san's own reaction to the cacophony varies, depending on whether he is afoot or awheel. As a pedestrian, crossing a narrow, teeming street in Shimbashi amidst a babel of raucous, ear-splitting blasts, which appear to serve no useful purpose, the impulse is to flee up the nearest alley like a scared usagi and take refuge in some little four-mat restaurant that serves Chinese noodles. Behind the wheel of a car on which ¥6000 road tax has been paid, Papa-san has what is probably an average American urge—a strong desire to get out of the car and poke a cab driver in the puss. But he doesn't. After all, we are all goodwill ambassadors in this, a sovereign country, and what is more, somewhere an MP is always lurking, like the skid demon in the grease mud....
There has been some improvement in the noise situation, yes. But it will not get much better, and the general traffic problem would appear virtually insurmountable. Japan is a crowded country by either metropolitan or rural standards; and although Tokyo has many broad streets, you have only to turn a short distance from them to find yourself squeezed between narrowing, medieval walls, on a way that is hopelessly winding. There is barely room for the present traffic, and yet motor cars, like the population, are on the increase. The last figures available were for 1952, when there were 652,000 vehicles of all kinds registered in Japan. If you have driven a car in this country, you will not be surprised to learn that 320,000 of these were trucks—and I would estimate that 319,000 of them were driven by people addicted to a middle-of-the-road philosophy. In addition there were 22,000 buses, and I estimate that 21,364 of these were Diesel powered and gave off huge clouds of black smoke in the faces of those who had to follow because there was not room to pass.
About 39,000 automobiles belonged to us, the foreigners, and that left some 74,000 privately-owned cars for the Japanese. It will shock anyone who has driven in Tokyo to learn that there were only some 23,812 taxis—I, myself, have encountered at least 22,009 of these on a single drive down the Ginza.
Incidentally, it is interesting to compare the ratio of privately owned jidosha in Japan to that of other countries. There is one car for every four persons in the United States, and one for every twenty in the United Kingdom. But in Japan the ratio to the total population is only one car to every two thousand people. Japan manufactures more trucks, however, than Italy does. I suppose that figure includes the pack of small three-wheel jobs you meet at every turn—when you are going straight....
Stick your neck out—literally, if you are around six feet—and ride in one of the smaller ¥70 or ¥80 cabs. Signal from the curb by waving, as if you were waving goodbye—in Japan, that means "come here." Or merely appear on the curb. The takushi is an extremely mobile vehicle, and will veer from the middle lane of traffic on short notice or none at all, throwing half a block into confusion. Look in your conversation dictionary, speak the address, and then say, "Kono tokoro e imitai desu, o-negai," and you're off like a bat out of hell.
What you have just said, literally, is, "This place to, wish to go is, if you please." Don't brood about that, however, and don't look out the window unless you have a strong heart. The driver is proceeding on his embattled way, along the hidari side rather than the migi. He passes jam-packed, snorting, smoking buses, most of them bearing the warning THEN PROCEED WITH CAUTION, without advising what to do before THEN. He leans fondly on the horn, scatters a crowd patiently waiting to board a streetcar, breaks into an open stretch, and pushes the accelerator to the floor.
All hell has broken loose. Papa-san has to depend on the conversation dictionary, which is hard to read at such jiggling speed, but which contains a phrase that means "So much don't run!" You will be thankful when you can order, "That corner at stop." The ¥70 and Y80 cabs are cheap transportation, and not worth it.
Japan will have to do something about its traffic, if not about the tootling. The toll of deaths and injuries on Japanese roads in 1952 appears low, at first glance, in a country of eighty million population—4,696 dead and 43,234 injured. But this was an alarming increase of 41.2 percent over the figures for 1951, and on the basis of the total number of vehicles, it means that one out of every 138 vehicles has killed somebody. If we had a comparable death toll in America, which had more than forty-two million cars that same year, we should have killed off more than three hundred thousand persons on the highways.
But motoring in Japan can be takusan fun, and it is the best way to see the real country, away from downtown Tokyo. Road signs are bewildering, road maps scarce, and you should learn to convert kilometers into miles. As I have said before, you need a guido. Come back now with Papa-san, rolling down the Tokaido with what Richi-san calls the Su-ports Car Crub. The membership of this group is very cosmopolitan, and the same could be said of its membership card. The latter shows a torii gate, emblematic of Japan; it bears English text; and at the bottom, with a fine cosmopolitan flair, is printed: "Pour le Grand Sport."
We are now beyond Yokohama, and there are stretches of green countryside, colorful villages, rice paddies, and chuckholes in the pavement a foot deep. It is very nice wezzer, indeed, the kind of wezzer that brings Japanese out for "cherry-viewing," "moon-viewing," or a plain American-style pikunikku. It is top-down weather.
"Papa-san?"
"Yes, Richi-san?"
"Don' put on cover?"
She is asking if I am not going to put up the top. I say no, I wouldn't be caught dead with the top up on a day like this, and ask her if she is cold.
"Not cold, Papa-san. But hair bu-roke."
I tell Richi-san that a wind-blown bob is quite fashionable in the States, although I really don't know, because I've been away from there quite awhile now. And everybody knows how women's styles are—all time changee-changee.
"Papa-san, today morning I'm forget some'sing, ever'-sing. Ba-ad head, don' you?"
Richi-san never asks, "Don't you think?" but just, "Don' you?" The "think" is understood. I would be less than a gentleman if I told this small girl, "Yes, I think so." I insist that she has a very good head. She is learning English quite fast.
"No, Papa-san—ba-ad head! Today morning I'm forget sun gu-rasses anda camera. Engrish speaking, Papa-san, 'hat you say—somebody's house?"
"Somebody's house? I don't get the connection."
"Maybe anybody's house. Papa-san don' understand anybody's house?"
"No—I mean yes, I don't understand."
"Watsamatta you, Papa-san?" and she taps her forehead. "Somebody's house—anybody's