ABSTRACT
You read the label and you laugh uproariously at the Revolution, which has become an unconscious joke. The fact is, if you go about in Japan looking for this kind of thing, the Revolution becomes a perpetual joke, down even to the English of its bluest official notice papers, revised, it may be, by a Cambridge or Yale graduate. Judge it by its English and the Revolution is fit only for the comic papers ; it might have been inspired by the grand dames of our Caroline era, with whom it was a fine accomplishment to spell ill. In one respect Tokyo surpasses herself, that is, in the English of her shop signs. It is much funnier than is intended ; it is always more laughable than is hoped for. Of course the English shop signs of Tokyo, or of Japan, are not of the slightest importance to the present or to the future of Japan ; they have as little relation to the value, the success, or the failure of the Great Experiment as had Marlborough's original orthography to the progress and issue of the Flemish Campaign. A Revolution-what matters it how it spells in an alien tongue ; of what significance is it if it make chaos of a foreign syntax ?
