At the small village of Lo-hu, where the Bamboo Curtain descends, a group of weary Japanese boarded a Kowloon-bound train on the last leg of a 15-day "study tour" that had taken them north to Peiping. It was the early afternoon of September 25. The Japanese travelers had taken longer trips before. But this journey seemed the longest of all. As they settled into their seats, their feelings emerged in sighs, yawns, and smiles of joy-summed up in exclamations of Yare! Yare!
Traveling on a Chinese mainland where the "great cultural revolution" was raging, these Japanese—commentators and journalists—had slept poorly. Red Guards were everywhere-outside the hotel windows of the Japanese even before dawn—singing, chanting, and spewing out slogans: "Down with capitalism! Down with revisionism! Down with this ... down with that ... " Mao Tse-tung's name was inscribed and pained everywhere. Finally sick of it all, the group reacted with "Mo-takusan-da!" which means "quite enough already" or, slyly, "too much of Mr. Mao". The characters for "Mao Tse-tung" are pronounced "Mo Taku-to" in Japanese.
Back in Tokyo, group leader Soichi Oya wrote for a weekly magazine that "in these 18 days we visited' such major cities as Canton, Shanghai, Wusih, Nanking, Tientsin, Peiping, Wuhan, and Canton again, but it was like viewing a single film without interruption, over and over again, for 18 days".
How Oya, a commentator well known for his sharp eyes and "poisonous tongue", had arrived at the figure "18" is not clear. Perhaps he included time spent in Hongkong. The group entered the Red-held mainland from the British colony about noon September 10. Fifteen days was the duration of the mainland trip. To Oya it must have seemed longer, much as does a nightmare. Ii was like a visit to another planet, he said. Others in the group said the trip was like "an endless penance" and like "visiting the Japan of World War II, then suddenly jumping back to the Japan of today".
Tokyo Discussion
Four other members of Oya's group are known for their independence and straight-forwardness. They are:
—Yonosuke Miki, economic affairs commentator.
—Kotatsu Fujihara, professor of Meiji University and political commentator.
—Minoru Omori, former foreign department chief of Mainichi Shimbun.
—Sueyuki Kajiyama, novelist.
These are samples of their biting comments on Chinese Communism as recorded in a Tokyo panel discussion:
Oya: The whole country is red—flooded with red flags and slogans in red paint.
Miki: But there is no sex appeal. I didn't see any woman wearing make-up. Just imagine that in a country of 700 million people, there isn't a single bar or cabaret! They even suppress sexual desire.
Fujihara: I asked many female Red Guards and other young women whether they had any sexual feelings. You should have seen their angry faces.
Moderator: I guess they weren't attracted by you. (Laughter)
Fujihara: I'm speaking in generalities.
They even got angry at questions like: "Don't you have any affection?" Their typical answer was: "If we had time for that sort of thing, we would rather read Mao Tse-tung's works."
Oya: It's a big nunnery—a monastery for 700 million people. You can't say a word against Mao. Not even to your wife. She will tell on you.
Miki: We were impressed at a factory because they didn't mention Mao Tse-tung. But at the last minute, they started drumming out the usual lesson. Pigs are perhaps the only creatures that don't speak of Mao. But people who raise pigs do.
Moderator: How were the factories? Miki: We saw a steel pipe plant. Extremely childish. They are completely disregarding the technological advances of the world in the last five or ten years.
Red Earthworms
Moderator: But they think they can de feat the United States.
Oya: The people are told that America is having trouble even in such a small country as Vietnam, that America was beaten in Korea, and that America is nothing but a paper tiger no matter what weapons it has.
Moderator: If the United States goes to war with Peiping, she will use nuclear weapons rather than ground troops. She can't be called a paper tiger.
Oya: Fighting the Chinese Communists would be like fighting earthworms. America would not use expensive nuclear weapons.
Miki: It would be foolish to fight an enemy like that.
Fujihara: But Peiping apparently is preparing for the worst...
Oya: Yes, everything is being sacrificed for Mao . . . even sexual desire.
Fujihara: And that accounts for the helpless spiritual "erection". (Laughter)
Oya (left) and others take pictures in Canton. (File photo)
Oya and the other key members of the group started planning the trip last spring when the "great cultural revolution" was just getting started. Except for Omori, who passed through the Chinese mainland on his way to Hanoi in September of 1965, they had no first-hand knowledge of conditions under the Peiping regime. So as to retain independence and objectivity, they paid their own way.
Two Japanese with first-hand knowledge of the mainland accompanied them. Masaichi Kotani, adviser of Japan's Dentsu Advertising Ltd., was moderator for tape-recorded reports of the five. Yutaka Hata, former reporter of the Asahi Shimbun, manned the recorder and took most of the pictures. Once he was nearly attacked by angry Red Guards who thought he was spying on them. The tapes and both color and black and white pictures were given wide dissemination by Japanese communications media.
Uninvited Guides
The seven wanted to see Red China for themselves and not as "invited guests". But as they crossed the border from Kowloon September 10, three Red Chinese journalists from Peiping and an interpreter from the (Red) Chinese Travel Bureau in Canton awaited them. The "guides" carried out their orders faithfully: they stuck with the Japanese throughout the tour.
Arriving in Canton by train at 3:10 in the afternoon, the group went to their hotel—the former Yang-cheng (Ram City) Guest House, now renamed the "Eastern Guest House". The Japanese then toured the city, met and talked with some 40 Red Guards, had dinner at the "Friendship Hotel", saw shows given by "liberation army" and cultural work teams, and returned to the hotel at 9 for their first recorded discussion. (Canton is known to Chinese as the City of Five Rams. This derives from the story of five immortals who rode into the city on five rams, which were turned to stone. The Red Guards have erased all such symbols in their massive attempts to do away with China's "four olds": old culture, old thinking, old customs, and old habits.)
People's Capitalists
At the first recorded session, Fujihara said: "Even though this is the first day of the trip, I feel that I have learned all there is to know about the great cultural revolution." The others agreed. On their way to Canton, a 32-year-old woman conductor-mother of three and chief of the 14 conductors-gave them a two-hour unsolicited lecture on anti-imperialism, anti-revisionism, Mao Tse-tung's line, the cultural revolution, labor problems, birth control, etc. Such unasked-for lectures were common in the days that followed.
The Japanese learned that most of the Red Guards in Canton were from the Shanghai area and had been in Peiping when Mao Tse-tung gave them his personal blessing at the first Guard rally on August 16. The Red Guards had been given free train rides to Canton and instructed to guide local Guard activities. The Japanese sensed the existence of powerful forces behind the youngsters. "It's a cunning trick, using kids to carry out dirty work," one of them said.
Miki, the economic affairs commentator, was interested in so-called "people's capitalists" who have been receiving payments on factories expropriated by the Reds. (One Red Guard demand is that such payments be terminated.) Miki asked one of the journalist escorts whether such "capitalists" could send their children abroad for advanced study. Miki knew the answer was negative. But instead of getting a straightforward answer, he was told that no one could entertain "such a disgusting idea".
Miki estimates that there are 170,000 to 180,000 "people's capitalists". His repeated requests to meet some of them were ignored.
During the morning of the second day—September 11—the group had a 90-minute recorded discussion with about a dozen Red Guards, all of them college students. The Japanese asked these questions:
—How many professors at your school do you think have to be purged?"
—What has happened to students whose parents were rich or landlords?
—Do students cheat in examinations?
'Paint Revolution'
None of the questions was answered. The Red Guards only parroted Mao-think. Eloquence was a matter of remembering the most quotations. The Japanese said the Red Guards resembled religious extremists and had not learned anything except Mao double-talk.
Poorly written characters read "Anti-Imperialism Hospital"—new name for a ransacked mission. (File photo)
By this time the Japanese had coined the phrase "paint revolution" to describe the Red Guard movement. Red paint was splashed everywhere. Canton was a "city of waste paper": walls were covered with dazibao—big-character posters and handbills. Middle school students from the countryside swarmed around university campuses, copying dazibao messages word for word. The Japanese were surprised by the poor calligraphy.
In the afternoon, the group flew from Canton to Shanghai aboard an Il-18 purchased from Russia about a year before. The plane was hot and stuffy. The stewardess had a permanent wave but wore no make-up.
Some of the women in Canton had been barefoot. Women in Shanghai appeared more attractive but their dress was stereotyped. Only one was seen wearing a red blouse. No permanent waves were to be seen. Women had short bobs or plaited their hair. The Japanese had expected to see some attractive girls in Shanghai. They were disappointed at the sight of women dressed like men—in patched and crumpled slacks as a result, they said, of "ideological castration".
Pictures of Mao
Early the morning of September 12, the second day in Shanghai, the Japanese were aroused by street noises. Hundreds of children and some adults had waited outside the theater across the street all night long to .buy badges bearing Mao's portrait. Kajiyama joked that he was beginning to taste the flavor of the Red "revolution".
Later that morning, the Japanese were taken to a commune on the outskirts of Shanghai. Communist guides insisted it was a "second-class commune". The visitors thought it was a put-up job intended to deceive foreigners.
Miki reported the farmers of the commune were leading a life far worse than that of Japan's lower middle class farmers. The farm houses had portraits of Mao but hardly any furniture.
The Japanese asked and were permitted to dine with four farm families. Kajiyama doubted that the food was regular fare. He asked an old farmer what he liked best. The answer was "JMP 20 cents (about 8 U.S. cents) worth of drink each day". When asked what other pleasures he had, the old man said he read Mao's works. A son told Kajiyama that the old man was illiterate. Kajiyama asked other members of the family what they liked. The presence of commune officers and interpreters prevented the farm people from speaking out.
Kotani said a relatively prosperous 38-year-old farmer estimated his family's total income last year at JMP2,600 (less than US$1,100) and his largest single expenditure this year at JMP163 (about US$70) for a bicycle. "What do you want to buy next?" asked Kotania. The farmer answered: "Clothes and a radio." "What will come next?" The answer was: "That'll be for the year after next—a watch."
Bicycles, radios, and watches are among the most coveted consumer goods.
Obsolescent Mill
In the afternoon, the Japanese visited a Shanghai textile mill that had belonged to the Shabo Company of Japan. Miki said the mill didn't seem to have made any improvements since he visited it in 1941. The factory was still at the level of Japan's oldest textile mills.
The following day, September 13, the group was taken to the Shanghai permanent industrial exhibition hall, which used to be called the "Sino-Soviet Friendship Building" and now is named the "Anti-Revisionism Building". Items exhibited were models or experimental products. Two sedans were on display but no production figures could be obtained. Fujihara said the traffic of Shanghai—with few cars—resembled that of Tokyo in the 1930s.
On September 14, the group boarded the 6 a.m. train for the lakeside city (population 600,000) of Wusih. The loudspeaker blared Mao Tse-tung messages throughout the two-hour ride. The Japanese were annoyed. Most of the Chinese passengers were not bothered. They were sleeping. The group wanted to stop off at scenic Soochow but was told that travel schedule changes were not possible upon notice of less than 24 hours.
At Wusih the Japanese took a boat ride and visited a sanatorium on an islet in the middle of Tai-hu lake. They concluded that it was another show window establishment designed for visitors. Later the group saw a 400-year-old clay doll plant and found it flooded with busts and statuettes of Mao. The sight prompted the Japanese to make these remarks:
Kajiyama: It was depressing.
Oya: It makes you belch.
Omori: What a mass production of Mao!
Fujihara: They took us there just to show us those busts and statuettes.
Miki: A 23-year-old female apprentice is getting JMP23 a month. An old man who has been working there for more than 40 years gets less than JMP70. These art workers aren't getting as much as industrial workers in Shanghai.
Land of One Star
Omori: At the show the other night (in Canton) I asked if the singer was a star. The answer was no. They just don't have stars in the art and cultural fields. There is only one star in this country.
Miki: A man was carrying a pail of paint at the entrance to the doll factory. He was painting Mao's words on the wall but stepped down from his ladder every few minutes for rests. He wasn't in a hurry at all. I thought I saw another face of Communism.
Wusih abounds in historic relics. The group saw Red Guards pasting posters on monuments and tablets. Oya said: "This reminds me of the postwar days when the Japanese were busy erasing passages from textbooks." Omori said the Red Guards were following in the footsteps of the First Emperor of Chin, who burned books and buried scholars alive in the third century B.C.
After a quiet night at Wusih, the group made the six-hour train trip to Nanking. To their astonishment some 800 Red Guards were at the railway station to meet them. At that time, Nanking had about 120,000 Red Guards —30 per cent of the city's student population of 400,000. Some came from as far north as Harbin. They were busy destroying traces of the old culture and covering all available wall space with posters.
Nanking formerly was the seat of the National Government. The Japanese entered the city with apprehension, fearing the Red Guards would be especially bellicose. But they received the impression that most of the youngsters were interested only in sightseeing. Sure enough, one poster addressed to the Red Guards said: "Those who are here for fun under the pretext of revolution should go home at once."
Afraid to Speak
Red Guards change signboard of a Shanghai store. (File photo)
Many Red Guards followed the Japanese, mostly out of curiosity. Fujihara said some girls seemed to understand English but were afraid to speak the "language of the imperialists". In a Nanking department store, Fujihara asked what the people wanted to buy. A woman in her early 20s said she was looking at sneakers. Apparently not everybody was there to buy. Fujihara observed that department stores may be considered typically "bourgeois". He asked why the Communists permitted stores to stimulate consumer desires when the public lacked purchasing power. The interpreter said: "Gradually they will be able to buy more things."
The Japanese discovered that the people must be careful how they spend their money. One is not supposed to spend lavishly, even if he has earned the money in approved ways. Those with higher incomes are supposed to save part of their earnings.
The morning of September 17, the group flew to Tientsin. They found the streets there dusty. Horse carts and a few trucks and motorcycles seemed to be the only means of transportation. Private telephones and cars are unknown on the mainland.
Priority to Guards
The Communists proudly showed the Japanese a shoe factory but failed to impress them. Miki had seen a number of shoe plants in Tokyo. He said the one in Tientsin was using too many workers for the small output of 15,000 pairs a month. Workers' pay was based on ideological background rather than skill.
The group was scheduled to take the 6:30 p.m. train to Peiping September 18 but their reservations were canceled. The train was usurped by Red Guards. After lengthy negotiations, two Polish-made microbuses were rented. During the three-hour ride, the Japanese saw a couple of patched-up tractors and half a dozen trucks. Many farmers were barefoot. They appeared even poorer than those of the Shanghai commune. After sunset, the road was dark all the way to Peiping. Electricity is scarce, too.
Miki recorded interviews with Red Guards outside the Gate of Heavenly Peace in Peiping the next morning. The Guards wouldn't say who they respected most after Mao Tse-tung, nor what they thought of "defense minister" Lin Piao and "president" Liu Shao-chi. "What if Mao dies?" Miki asked. No one answered.
Color Must Be Red
Female Red Guards in army uniform at Tsinghua. (File photo)
On the morning of September 20 the group had a two-hour discussion with some 60 youngsters, more than half of them girls, at the birthplace of the Red Guard movement—the middle school of Tsinghua University in Peiping. Most of the participants were middle school students. These are some of the questions and answers:
Miki: What have you been doing since the schools closed down as a result of the great cultural revolution? Are you studying by yourselves or doing nothing? (After the question was put by the interpreter, the students noisily exchanged remarks among themselves, then clapped their hands as a Red Guard stood up to speak.)
Red Guard: We are now putting our main stress on the great cultural revolution. As instructed by Chairman Mao, we must first revolutionize the people's thinking so that the nation will not change color.
Miki: Do you mean to say that you don't have to pay any attention to specialized knowledge?
Red Guard: We must first prevent the nation from changing color. When this is done, we can learn the lessons in our fields.
Hata: You have been reading excerpts from Mao Tse-tung's works. But how much do you know about the complete works?
Red Guard: Most students have read all four volumes. Some people read every day, others read occasionally, and still others read when they encounter problems.
Hata: That means Mao's works are a panacea to you.
Red Guard: That's correct. If we arm ourselves with Mao Tse-tung's thinking, we can always find solutions to our problems. (After some heated Red Guard remarks about "imperialism" and "revisionism", Oya interrupted.)
Opposition Widespread
Oya: We won't get anywhere talking like that. I want something concrete. I want to know why you cast aside your textbooks and joined the Red Guard movement, what has happened to scholars and bourgeois elements, and what anti-revolutionary and anti-people elements have done.
Red Guard: As I was saying...
Oya: Give me answers to the questions I just asked.
Red Guard: We are exposing (the conduct of those people) now.
Oya: What is wrong with them? (The Red Guards had a conference among themselves.)
Red Guard: Some people objected to our reading Mao Tse-tung's works and would not permit us to hang up Chairman Mao's portraits…
Oya: Are they professors?
Red Guard: There are reactionary professors at the university and some people in power at the middle school are treading the path of bourgeoisie.
Miki: What are their jobs? Are they people like directors?
Red Guard: Like principles.
Fujihara: Have any of you heard them criticize Mao Tse-tung? If so, what did they say?
Red Guard: Some people are speaking (against Mao) openly. They objected to our putting up posters of Mao Tse-tung's sayings ... They said such things may be necessary in the army but not at school...
Fujihara: Who are these masterminds of the revisionist, bourgeois, and feudalistic factions that you hate?
Red Guard: The faction in power that is leaning toward capitalism. We hate those who oppose Chairman Mao and his thinking.
Miki: What has happened to the school principals?
Red Guard: They are examining their deeds.
Miki: Where? At their homes?
Red Guard: At school and at home.
Miki: Do you see your principal?
Red Guard: We see him to find out how much he has repented of his anti-party, anti-socialist deeds.
Hata: Who has the right to say that the principal has repented sufficiently?
Red Guard: The revolutionary masses have the right.
Fujihara: In other words, you have changed places with your teachers. You teach them and they learn from you.
Red Guard: They oppressed us and taught us bourgeois stuff. We have to reform them.
Fujihara: How many teachers still need self-examination and how many can be considered dependable?
Red Guard: The majority are all right now.
The Japanese saw cluttered laboratories and disordered classrooms with piles of blankets and rolled-up cotton quilts. The Red Guards were sleeping in the school.
Army Unimpressive
The group stayed in Peiping five days. They had an unpleasant talk with Chao An-po, secretary general of the (Red) Sino-Japanese Friendship Association, and saw a division of the "liberation army" in training between Peiping and Tientsin.
Of Chao, a subversionist expelled from Japan years ago, Oya remarked:
"He used to operate a Japanese school in Yenan to brainwash Japanese prisoners-of war. The fact he was sent to deal with us—as if we were defectors—is disgusting."
Japanese opinions on the Chinese Communist troops differed. But there was agreement that weapons were obsolescent (the newest were of the mid-1950s) and that morale was low. At a political session, a cook was praised for the food he had prepared. The cook said he acted according to instructions he found in Mao's works.
The Japanese said the mainland atmosphere was stifling. The "cultural revolution" has created a vacuum in which only Mao's thinking is allowed. Communications media disseminate stereotypes of Mao's thought and not the news. Fujihara summed up the mainland as "a vacuum with a swish of red across it". The group had planned to get the facts. But they were permitted to see only the surface and failed to obtain any statistics.
On September 23, Oya, Miki, Fujihara, Kajiyama, and Hata flew to Wuhan. Omori and Kotani had left for Hongkong the day be fore. In Wuhan, a city of 1.3 million on the Yangtze, the Chinese Communists tried to show the group industrial and engineering installations. But the Japanese had lost their appetite for Red "salesmanship". They cut short a field trip and retreated to their hotel rooms.
One objective of the group was to determine the nature of Peiping's threat to Japan. "What would happen if Mao's faction and the Red Guards were to gain power over the Japanese?" they asked themselves. This was their conclusion after returning to Tokyo:
Politicians and capitalists would be the first purge targets. The Japanese Communist Party would not be excepted. Then cultural figures, including leftist writers, would be denigrated. The 100 million people of Japan would be compelled to wear dunce caps.
The Chinese Communist "cultural revolution", Oya said, is a "scallion revolution". "You peel the layers of skin one by one and find that in the end nothing is left."
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The Chinese say: ch'ien ch'e k'o chien
-- The wrecked coach in front should be a warning. Western equivalent: It is well to profit by the folly of others