Show a ilk t A 1 auml sits J 4 41 4 I 1 I 1 idt i 40 4 A Z A sandal shop in tokyo prepared by the national society washington D C service OT many years ago it was held NOT up against the japanese that they never indulged in athletics today there are in tokyo two huge stadiums one orl originally 1 l seating people but enlarged in 1931 to accommodate the other 30 and on the days of baseball games there are few vacant sea seats Is with the exception of wrestlers wrest lers there are no professional athletes in japan teams are made up largely of undergraduates to in the various universities and it Is the Inter varsity games which draw the largest crowds baseball skillfully and intelligently played Is as popular in japan as in the united states but it Is not the only popular athletic sport hugger football Is played everywhere and played well As it Is part of the army training and as something like yol young ng men go through this training annually may well supersede baseball in popularity hockey and as association S alati 0 n football are lit played syed more and more and boxing Is bee becoming owing popular wherever there Is space in tokyo there Is a tennis court the Y M C A pool Is always full fall of swim mers iners as are the great outdoor pools to in summer and japanese swimmers hold some world records more and more rowing crews in racing shells are appearing on the lie rivers and likes lakes golf clubs are springing up and ns as in america the links are u used sed largely by business men at the army ma heuver field on the outskirts of the city you can see magnificent aldin riding so the old accusation of lack of interest in ath athletic letle sports can no longer be made these modern games have not entirely driven out the old purely jaw jar anese sports ports thousands gather as of old to watch the wrestling matches where the immensely fat men so well wel k known in japanese prints carry on their stran strange e matches mat cliPs under the ancient rules archery Is also popular among adiong the he chosen few and the great matches are almost always sponsored by some of the imperial princes it takes a strong man even to bend some of f the tough old bows athletics build up the race it would be impossible to estimate what athletics are doing for the jap anese as a race the bible says that no ronn man by taking thought can ad add a cubit to tits ills stature nrc but there Is no doubt that succeeding generations of japanese are taller when you meet young yoking wen men in tokyo dressed in gymnasium costume running through the streets ahen you see the finely pro portioned bodies of the boys in the Y st M 0 A pool when you go to a university graduation and see the students all together ou no imig longer ger think of the japanese as it particularly litlie litile people with a better regulated and better beller balanced diet und and with physical training from the earliest years through nil all grades of school the japanese anese are growing up physically they grew up or mentally a long iong time ago it Is said that the generation now reaching maturity Is 19 on an average an inch taller than the preceding gen era ration aeration tion As a generalization one should doubt this but at the same time one feels sure it Is true in the cities where modern ideas of exercise and filet diet are prevalent there Is probably no phase of life tokyo T ky 0 which more clearly shows the contrast between the old and the new than do the theaters you go to the kabuki za or to the splendid tokyo theater and there see ancient drawas given in the old style of acting or you go around the corner to a movie theater and see the latest hollywood production one seems just as lar as the other slid and just ns as crowded the Ral iffla and tokyo theaters are enormous enor nimis thoroughly too modern dern ban hand some buildings the orchestra seats seals are kllc those in an american thea ter ler except that they are arc lower the boxes have no seats because people seem cent to prefer to sit in n tile the floor in llie ile old syle the ilic plays begin there ire or four alv given n in urd taini bui trot i tiu until four in the afternoon and last until ten at night huge theater stage the stage Is enormous the lighting and scenic effects superb it Is arx probably true that the japanese were the first to have a revolving stage for quick shifts of scenery the actors strut in the ancient style and chant their lines in fact it if the lines are emotional they are sung by the musicians at the sides of the stage since it la IS not considered proper to show too great emotion but in spite of all this the actors men of course t take ake the parts and a japanese lady explained tills this as aa being necessary be because causie men are so much more graceful are really great and make a profound impression on any foreigner who has the intelligence to rise above the queerness of the performance it may be true as some have said that the livin living actors of the stage adopted their stilted style fro from the puppet shows of old but the style cannot hide bide their power of character portrayal you feel on leaving the theater heater that you have been lying living in all the color of past centuries and then the movies are just as crowded as the th c theaters there la Is a movie industry in japan but this does not detract from the popularity of the hollywood productions talking pictures were nvere hard bard to deal with nith at first but now a solemn individual sits at the side of the picture bad translates apparently to the lie satis satisfaction I 1 c of the audience as the play progresses the translators endeavors to koep kep up are more interesting to the 1 f tor 0 r elgner eigner than are some of the plays the contrat contrast between the two types of entertainment Is merely characteristic like all the other contrasts the japanese are arc voracious of newspapers newsboys run or bicycle throughout the city dropping their papers in every shop at important street corners stand women with bells which they ring continually to show that here bere fire news stands with the latest papers where fifty years ago the newspaper er was unknown they now are read fir far more generally than in the united states two of the great dailies having a larger circulation than any stardard sized papers in the ili united states these great papers are thoroughly up to date they have regular airplane services of their own to carry pictures from osaka to tokyo and transmission of pictures by wireless or by wire Is as much used as in the united states moreover the pipers carry on large humanitarian work in the maintenance of hospitals or welfare fare enterprises lots of gay cafes boyko Is full of cafes always crow I 1 oi ed modeled somewhat on the cafes of f paris in former days people gae geisha parties those r rather a titer solemn a tf f fairs at which geishas danced their symbolic lances dances they were very ec pensive pens lve and those who aoud not the expense contented themselves with picnics now the effes are crowder crowde 1 their principal patrons being perhaps tile the mo nabos bosl and ohp angas mn as the japanese more than any othor nation love to abbreviate and hobt Is the abbreviation for modern boy boj and moga Is the abbreviation fr fir fi r modern girl indeed these moans 1110 bris and an d mogas dressed almost abw always a y 9 I 1 in n I 1 kii clothes and trying to adopt arel the 1 I 1 freedom of european manners aie about the most modern aspect tf tokyo one might go on almost indefinitely in pointing IlnA out the various cont contrasts of this city where at every point tte tie contrasts between tile the old and new betA between een the occidental and the orl oil Is so striking it should nevor he be forgotten that both the old and ane new both the western and the castes castein it are real in tokyo somewhere in the fusion of the two lies the truth or tokyo when one remembers that alir ht western ideas have been natural zeil for less than a century one can tin under ler stand the inevitable Q qt or ai cental ideas |