ABSTRACT
Kay and I flew off from New York for Japan on August 25, 1961. I wrote in my journal:
We came in from the airport by limousine through the deserted early Sunday morning streets of Tokyo. So familiar, the gray tile roofs, the wooden store fronts, the police boxes, the laundry hanging from second-story balconies. Kay and I pointed out memory-evoking sights. Smells, too, evoke memory—pickles, and very odorous fish.
We are impressed how extremely courteous everyone is, and also how purposive. In Takashimaya Department Store, the girls bow deeply to welcome you into the elevator, the clerks are unfailingly obliging. In the department store men’s room, clearly so marked, a young woman in a pink frock calmly walks in where men are standing at urinals and finds herself a booth toilet, seemingly quite unconscious of any incongruity. It’s really a quite refreshing lack of prudery on this matter of nature. Yet conventionally, the women are so socially shy, so artificial. Yet, by contrast with earlier decades they are, of course, very free. There seems a mixture of casualness and purposefulness in the people strolling or working this Sunday. Are the Japanese relaxing a bit? The courtesy is infectious—one finds oneself automatically and unconsciously being a little more polite than before.
