The New York Times from New York, New York • Page 64

1 12 Two Japanese Experiments in Stone and Brains -fir- IK -1 1 i it f' A 1 By OKACS THOMPSON SKTON BEFORE we landed, and while we were steaming up Yokohama Hay, I was asked by one of. the twenty enterprising Japanese reporters how I liked Japan. As my sole acquaintance with the country was the smell of Its docks, which seemed normal, and the medical and governmental Inspection, I replied, with equal gravity, that I had found Japan very buslnestillke and thorough. After a week of delightful but forcible feeding, a glorious Jumble of charming people, rickshas, palaces, temples, dances, dinners, more nice people, schools, great stretches of low-storied streets, a vaccination for smallpox that took," Inoculations for typhoid which are "doing nicely," movies, theatres and strange, good food, two things stand out like Woolworth towers on a Western prairie. They are the Nlshimura School for Girls, and the new Imperial Hotel at Toklo.

One Is purely Japanese with a foreign expression, the other Is a foreign expression on Japanese soil; although It must be said that its expression would be -foreign on any soil. The like of it has never been reared since man began to play with wood and stones. The architect Is Frank Lloyd Wright, an American. Terhaps never In the history of man has the imagination of one brain been allowed to crystallize its inspirations so concretely in non-plastic materials. The Japanese are proud of this strange structure, which has become almost a cult.

To paraphrase the great phrase maker. It Is a sermon In stones and good In everythingnearly. Either one does or one does not like It. It Is the most marvelous structure that has ever rambled over a five-acre lot, with ballroom, swimming pool, theatre and countless public rooms facing open courts of flowers and fountains; with Maxfleld ranish perspectives everywhere the eye glances, or but why give the reverse of the picture? There is one, as the guest realises all too quickly, when he, or she, seeks to organize an Occidental life In one of the Indirectly lighted and ditto heated bedrooms. But beauty has been caught 'and held, and we must ever drink of the twin cups of Joy and sorrow.

So for one, am glad that some man could spend seven years of his life making his dream come true and that there were enough hard-headed business men and Imperial Investors to produce 6,000.000 yen (13.000.000) for the glorification of the Ideal. Looking down upon It from the not-far-distant and very modern, many-storied Industrial Club where the Japan-America Society had lunched a few compatriots, the President, Viscount Kaneko, said: The Imperial Hotel Is our own. There Is nothing else like it, and we are-glad-to hare it; The Mea he was expressing is not unfamiliar to us. We would say It Is "different." The native Nikko stone, rough faced and porous, never before has been used In this fashion for a big structure. Scoffers say that it will crumble like cheese under the first of the earthquakes that periodically add spice to life at Nippon's capital.

This stone's light gray, mottled by holes, has been used to form a color contrast with the yellow, rough brick. Inside, as well as out, along strange winding passages that meander from one public room to another, up and down stone stairs, cabined by stone walls, along the bedroom corridors, stone appear in its naked, quarried state without any attempt at mollification by plaster or hangings. It grabs light fabrics with Its eager, tiny Angers, and many a time, as one turns a narrow corner quickly, the flowing silk or satin of one's attire sticks lovingly to the rough surfaces, which neither Improves the satin nor the temper of the owner. This Is also true of the lrrldescent rough plaster walls of. the bedrooms.

All "A foreign expreatioa on Japane toil or any other toil. Mais entrance, of Imperial Hotel, Tokio." 4 1 1 lines are angled, not curved, and the sharp corners on the specially designed furniture often leave warnings for more caution. The large tiles, everywhere used, are set roughly, likewise, and progress Is punctuated by the temporary catching of one's toe, which does not hurt the tiles, whatever might be said of the satin slipper. All this is a bit barbarous, but the result is sturdy and beautiful. There Is freshness and virility, and the points Just mentioned would not annoy a Japanese lady, for her kimona does not fly riotously, and the straw sandal would not be destroyed by the wide cracks and rough surfaces.

Again, the sunken bathtubs are made of big, rough mosaics, so loosely masoned as often to catch the fingernails, but this would be no Inconvenience to the Japanese, as their custom Is to do all their scrubbing before getting into the tub. One of the pleasantries Is the tele-phone. This hides awayin a little closet, which also has a tiny door opening Into the outer hall. Thus one's boots or letters and other ball-boy offerings become cozily en tangled with the telephone wire when one seeks to answer the muffled summons of the Imprisoned genii, which connects one, after truly Oriental delays, with the outside world. Incidentally, I am told that the private telephone here has to be bought, often for.

a sum the equivalent of $1,000, plus the yearly tax and usual service charges. Think of that. New Yorkers, when you grumble at Central." But to return to Toklo there Is a Waldorf Hotel chef and a Japanese manager. That men are trying to run this crystallized Idea as a hotel shows that there is a very lively national aspiration in the country of the Mikado and the Rising Sun. The other experiment is in the world of brains, Instead of stones, and equally expresses the sturdy manner in which the Japanese strive to put an aspiration Into a concrete form.

The story of Aya Nlshimura Is unique. Not many girls of any country have a school built around them. Yet Just this has happened to a little Japanese girl not yet fourteen years old, who has already published two books one at the ripe age of ten and the other when she had attained the advanced age of thirteen. These books are illustrated by the author. This fortunate young person not only has talents of unusual but she has a rich and adoring father who Is Imbued with the Idea of higher education for girls, as well as for boys.

He desired the best of all the world for his child, and as no school quite met his needs, with Aladdin-like prodigality he built a school along food-era lines, of concrete and In foreign style! He equipped It with seats and desks and foreign furniture, and selected an unusual Japanese woman for Its director. This was none other than a well-known poetess of progressive Ideas, Mrs. Akiko Yosano. Twenty thousand dollars was expended In the buildings by Mr. Isaku Nlshimura as a setting for this educational experiment, which is, after all, only a part of a big endowment of a million yen, half a million dollars, for.the promulgation of what has been translated to mean The Civilized Life." an effort to assimilate the best of foreign culture without slavish Imitation.

As It Is not -err 1 4 i i At the Doorway of the Niahisraa School for Girk Left to Right. Aya Niahiawra, Mm Yoaaao, Mr. Akiko You ao sad Baronet IJiuaoto. good for man nor woman to live alone, and Aya needed companionship In her upward educational way, the Yosano experimental school, when completed, was thrown open to the girls of those parents who thought aa Mr. Nlshimura did.

and two years ago the school started with sixty-five pupils. The Innovation consisted not so much In a new curriculum as In the way of teaching the usual three R's." which for girls, since they began to be educated at all In the last forty or fifty years, have; always been deep-dyed In the grays and browns of self-abnegation, filial reverence And masculine obedience. The Yosano method seeks to Instil spirit of mental and spiritual Independence. It teaches the necessity for self-expression, and that patriotism, while It reverences age, the Emperor and Nippon, Implies certain rights or privileges for the Individual who forms a part of the State. Very radical all this, and especially for girls.

Mrs. Yosano Is President of the Russian Famine Relief Society. There Is no busier nor more brilliant woman In all Japan than this author of many Tanks, or verses. Almost dally she criticises dotens of poems that are sent Into her from all parts of the country, for the Japanese are prolific poetize ra and expect much service from their great ones. She has also published The Sun and Rose" and "The Phoenix." These are Illustrated by herself with paintings of flowers and charming lining papers In the modern style, which Is neither Japanese nor European, and aa curious an accidental product as the Eurasian, whose blend of look Is bizarre, but usually beautiful.

The poem of Akiko Yosano here given is In the Uta form, which con-sists of thirty-one syllables, ino fusion of sound and meaning Is almost unattainable to the foreigner; only the Idea can be translated, and that la prose. We are told the flower of Japanese poetry Is to be found in the Uta. BkinuumL.no. Jfuno al tufforite AraUo no Aid no hajime no Ttuki noborikinu. The meaning seems to be that Above the wild shore the first moon of Autumn rose, clinging to a robe of white waves.

Natiuffumo no Kutuete ochUM no kethi HI no kata-hathi no Kurenal no kUM. The white popples seem like broken, fallen clouds of Summer, the red ones like fragments of the sun. The very cleverest in the land have been employed as teachers for this school. Athletic and Greek dancing Is taught by Yamato. Japan's greatest musician, for greater freedom of phylcal expression Is encouraged Instead of the usual repression of the Japanese girl.

Also the usual domestic science Is not taught, as the girl gets enough of that ordinarily In the household. A case In point, although I am told It Is sn un usual one. Is of a girl in a well-placed family whose father allowed 1.