Most Americans who go in and out of Japan get disgusted with the regulations that policemen impose upon them.
This is especially true of those Americans living in China who are compelled, for business reasons, to go in and out of Japan, for at every trip they are required to answer the same list of questions. I traveled from Korea into Japan with the Military Attaché of the Spanish Legation. When we landed a Japanese officer who had known him for many years insisted upon his answering the usual questions.
"I've been in this country for ten years and yet I never go out or in that they do not compel me to go through the same foolish police regulations which they have copied from Germany and haven't sense enough to give up!" he said indignantly.
I also traveled with a party in which there was a Methodist Bishop's wife. This Bishop's wife absolutely refused to give the Japanese policeman her age. Not that she had any reason to be ashamed of her age. In fact she could easily have passed for twenty years younger than she probably was, but she just had the average American woman's spunk and refused to give it.
For a few minutes it looked as if diplomatic relations between Japan and America might be seriously cracked, if not broken; for the Japanese officer had no sense of humor. That is one of the chief defects of the Japanese police and military system. It has no sense of humor. It takes itself too seriously. It does not know how to laugh.
To the eight or ten Americans in the party the whole matter was a huge joke and we admired the spunk of the Bishop's wife, but the poor Japanese police officer was facing what he thought was an international problem.
Need it be said that the whole matter was finally settled to the entire satisfaction; not of the Japanese officer, but to the entire satisfaction of the Bishop's wife.
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A friend of mine who happens to be in business in the Orient got so tried of being interviewed, trailed, and made to answer innumerable questions about his mother, grandmother, etc., that one day on landing in Yokohama, in a spirit of fun, he answered the officer's questions in this manner:
"How old are you?"