Foreign News: Black Rage

Ethiopians remained the rage in Tokyo last week but Japanese began to scan their credentials. The yellow Emperor’s subjects continued to lavish official hospitality on the chocolate Emperor’s envoy Daba Birrou (TIME, Sept. 30), but after elaborately banqueting a certain Mr. Thomas they found out that he fits only the fourth part of his description of himself: “I am an Ethiopian, a graduate of Cambridge University, a millionaire and desirous of taking a Japanese bride!”

Thomas turned out to be an African Gold Coast Negro who once spent six months in Addis Ababa, and had fled to the U. S. in a hurry to escape arrest for fraud. More quaint was the other “Ethiopian” exposed in Tokyo last week. On removing from his face a mixture of soot and cold cream, police discovered that they had a Japanese college student. Taro Yamada. No prankster, Mr. Yamada had turned himself from yellow to black because he believed that today an Ethiopian would prove irresistible to the Japanese waitress of his desires.