There appeared an interesting letter, written by the Manager of the Publication Department of the Times, in the columns of that paper, October 7, 1905. As it has important bearing on the preceding subject, I take the liberty of subjoining it in full.—K.S.
THE CHARACTER OF THE JAPANESE PEOPLE
TO THE EDITOR OF THE "TIMES"
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.