Sir,--In last Monday's issue of the _Times_ there was a long letter
from the Right Rev. William Awdry, Bishop of South Tokio, Japan, in
which he says that 'in general a Japanese would value the promise of an
Englishman more than the bond of a Japanese'; and that the Japanese are
deficient in a certain group of qualities, including honesty in trade.
It seems to me that it would be unfair for the _Times_ to allow such a
charge against Japanese integrity, endorsed by a bishop, to go
unchallenged, when the _Times_ has, in its own office, records that
prove a promise made by a Japanese to be at least as trustworthy as a
promise made by an Englishman. During the past eight years the _Times_
has sold, in almost every country in the world, sets of the Encyclopædia
Britannica on the instalment plan, giving credit for periods of two,
three, and four years. The regularity with which such payments are made
is certainly a fair test of the average honesty of any nation, and a
much more severe test in the case of Japan than in the case of England,
because it is more difficult there than here to enforce payment by legal
proceedings. Ninety-five per cent. of the encyclopædias sold in Japan
were sold to Japanese, not to foreign residents, and the statements I am
about to make refer exclusively to purchases made by the Japanese
themselves. In Japan, as elsewhere, each purchaser, when he signs his
'order-form,' promises to pay, on certain dates, certain sums of money.
In Japan the monthly payment was 10 yen, equal to about a sovereign,
while in this country the amount was a guinea. In Great Britain less
than half the payments arrived on the day promised. In Japan less than 1
per cent. of the payments were even one day late, and more than one-half
of the payments were made the day before they were due, because the
Japanese did not like to run the risk of any accidental delay that might
make them even one day late. The cost of collecting these instalment
payments in Japan is less than half as much as in England, simply
because the Japanese are so punctilious that clerical labour and postage
are not expended in reminding them that their payments are overdue. They
seem to look upon every debt as a debt of honour, which must not be
forgotten for even a day. There is certainly no such delicacy of feeling
in this country about commercial transactions.
I find it difficult to believe that the Bishop of South Tokio is right
when he says that the Japanese do not trust one another; and I know that
he is wrong if he in himself believes, as he implies, that the Japanese
are not 'honest in trade.' But I quite admit that Englishmen who have
long resided in Japan did not believe that it would be prudent for the
_Times_ to adopt in Japan the instalment system of selling books,
previously unknown there. When the representative of the _Times_ arrived
in Japan to sell the _Encyclopædia_, he naturally asked English
residents there what they thought of the project. With one exception the
answer was: 'You cannot sell the _Encyclopædia Britannica_ here because
almost every English and American resident has already obtained a copy
from England, and, of course, the Japanese will not buy--fortunately for
you, because if they did they would not pay.' The only English resident
who did not say this said: 'Of course you can sell any number of
_Encyclopædias_ to the Japanese, but you will never be able to collect
the payments when they have once got the books. No Japanese will pay for
the _Encyclopædia_ when he finds he can get it without payment.' In the
face of this advice, the instalment plan of sale was adopted, with the
results above described. I many add that the Japanese bought five times
as many _Encyclopædias_ as were sold in France and Germany combined,
fifty times as many as in Russia, more than in any other country except
India, Australia, and the United States.
When I see a bishop of the Church of England, who has lived in Japan
since 1898, write with so little appreciation of the Japanese, I wonder
whether some of our countrymen are not as blind as the Russian statesmen
who, in the early days of the war, described the Japanese as 'yellow
monkeys,' and as blind as the Ambassador of the Tsar who made the
statement in Tokio, before the war, that the mobilisation of one army
corps in Russia would frighten the Japanese into immediate submission.
No one in the _Times_ office, at any rate, can doubt that the standard
of integrity among the Japanese is so high that when young men, who have
bought the Encyclopædia, abandoned their employment to go to the front,
their families promptly paid the instalments due, under circumstances of
the utmost difficulty.--I am, sir, your obedient servant,
The Manager of Your Publication Department.
Printing-house Square, E.C., _October 5_.
[1] _The Magazine of Commerce_, August 1905.
[2] See the note at the end of the volume.