Carrying the Alliance too far

Why is it that Japanese authors are allowed to write in English newspapers any sort of barbarous jargon they like? Mr. Yoshio Markino was the first to be licensed. To start with, one found his “delightfully quaint” English amusing in a mild way, but with repetition his sedulously cherished howlers became irritating. Still, he was only one; and primarily a painter at that. But now Mr. Yone Noguchi has turned up, and he is doing the same thing. Mr. Noguchi is considered in Japan—at least so his friends tell us—the first poet of the day. Those who remembered his last residence here assured us that on his return he would compel all men—like Helen of Troy or Mr. Tagore. He comes. One is prepared to be conquered. One turns to one’s Westminster Gazette to read his works; and one finds there columns of stuff, possibly inspired, but certainly written in such pidgin-English that one cannot bother to read it.

Mr. Noguchi’s pidgin-English is not of quite so curious a breed as Mr. Markino’s, but it is sufficiently bad. One does not blame him for that. He writes English a great deal better than I do Japanese. But why on earth cannot the newspapers who print his works translate them into normal English? Is it that their sub-editors shrink from the task? Is it that they fondly believe that we are all so fascinated by English of the Noguchi-Markinesque brand that we had much rather have it than any other sort; or is it that a tradition has been established that Anglo-Japanese articles are not to be altered? If this is true, it is a thousand pities that, for all their charm, Mr. Markino’s early productions were not unmercifully damned. What should we say if newspapers began printing in all their native crudity articles by Frenchmen and Germans imperfectly acquainted with the tongue of this country? Suppose some journal came out next week with an essay beginning:

“What sadly fall the leaves of automne! What of sadness tumble on the heart because that the winter put his snows on all the country. And sad also the spring, the spring who arouse the love in the soul, and who make to think to all the springs of the time past. My heart weep like a bird who have lose her companion.”

Or suppose a German were allowed by the Westminster to present its readers with a political article opening:

“No Dutcher has the by Mr. Gamaliel Zoop, Amerikansh postaltelegrafkommunikationdepartment minister on politishekonomy famose lecture to a at Manchester people-coming-together delivered recently without outerorderly pleasure read.”

Obviously we should not tolerate it. Can it be that, even after the war with Russia, even after Japanese professors have written works on sociology, the superstition lingers here that a thing cannot possibly be truly Japanese unless it has the odour of an old curiosity shop?

None of this, I may say, is meant to be discourteous to Mr. Noguchi. I merely suggest that it would be better for him if he vetoed every endeavour to print his English articles as he writes them. If he were the Japanese Homer—indeed, he may be that for all I know—I should say precisely the same thing. Can he be aware that even his faulty spelling goes uncorrected?