JAPAN: Takenoko

The Japanese put on their warmest tanzen (wool-padded kimonos) last week. Meteorologists had warned them to prepare for the coldest winter in 20 years.

Thanks to a bountiful autumn harvest, they would have from 1,500 to 1,700 calories a day (a little more than the U.S. zone of Germany). But housing would be as great a problem as it had been in the first confused winter of defeat. The work of rebuilding Japan from its rubble had barely begun. Reconstruction, hampered by lack of materials and tools, by strikes, and by requirements of the occupation force, stood at only 13%; industry at 30%. The occupation army required 90% of the cement and metal piping, much of the wiring, nearly all the tin and slate roofing. Allied dependents had taken over 6,000 of the best Western-style houses. But Japanese still respected the authority of their conquerors. Most blamed their pitiable condition on their own Government; few save the Communists held General MacArthur or the Emperor responsible for their plight.

Four million families needed a place to live. The Government, which had hoped to build 250,000 houses by the end of the coming winter, now felt it would be lucky to provide 40,000. Like Japanese everywhere, families were living chockablock; the average citizen had only six square feet of housing space. In Tokyo’s Ushigome ward, authorities held a lottery to determine which of 19,000 applicants would get the 416 new houses. About 2,000, including women with babies on their backs, slept in the subway; others grubbed for a roof in rusty tin sheds, converted barges, burned-out buses or the ruins of a temple. Curiously, the natives could scrape together enough lumber and rice straws to fashion a monstrous symbol: in the town of Sahara, a malevolently glowering American eagle was paraded in tribute to the new Japanese Constitution (see cut).

Game in a Temple. Even Japanese who found shelter had little warmth. American Army blankets sold for $66 on the Tokyo black market. Emperor Hirohito, democratically trying to get along on the same rations as his people shivered in his chilly palace, warmed only by a few small electric “bugs.” To save coal, railway officials planned to silence train whistles; more wistfulness than thermodynamics went into their estimate of 100 tons a day thus saved. Tokyo newspapers sadly reported a touching little story which underlined the clothing shortage: seven small children playing in a temple compound were approached by a middle-aged man who offered to teach them “a wonderful new game.” If they would take off their clothes, he said, they would be “children of the wind.” When they complied, he disappeared with the clothes under his arm.

On the terraced slopes of northern Japan, the snow was already deep. In Tokyo and to the south, an early frost sparkled on the richly tinted autumn leaves. But as the trees shed their leaves, Japanese shed their kimonos, one by one, to sell for food. They even devised an ironic name for their wretched existence: takenoko, after the bamboo sprout which peels, layer by layer.