We then had nearly an hour of discussion with questions on every conceivable subject. The most amusing question was from the representative of the Japanese Salvation Army who said she knew I had heard of the mother-in-law situation in Japan and what was my advice on it! Not being Dorothy Dix [well-known advice columnist], I got out of it by explaining that the background of our culture was so different you could not compare social customs and as a mother-in-law, I tried to give as little advice as possible.

In the evening we had another meeting with various men and women leaders, among them the editor of the Japanese edition of Reader’s Digest. I am surprised that the people of Japan read so avidly articles dealing only with American life and points of view, but I am told that they find these very helpful in trying to understand us and in finding out how we live and think.

We left the Imperial Hotel which I really feel is home over here, at 8:30 Sunday morning, and had a most beautiful train trip to Kyoto…

After lunch we met briefly with representatives of the women’s organizations who presented me with a petition asking that I convey to the women of American their hope and prayer that we join hands in working for peace in the world. In some ways they are as unrealistic as some of our women at home who do not seem to realize there is no way to reach the people of the Soviet Union and if a letter were to get to them, the first woman who raised her voice to criticize a policy backed by the Kremlin would really be in hot water.

After this meeting we spent an hour in Kyoto University, meeting with the acting president and the faculty and touring around the campus. There are eight separate colleges within the University and it is a big campus. There are nine thousand students but only 220 women which seemed to me a rather small proportion…

Professors were there from Kyoto and Doshisha University, and they tried to explain the many attitudes of the Japanese people, saying that here several cultures had been imposed one on top of the other yet they all seemingly lived together. Much of my thought was centered on eating Japanese food with chopsticks. I really liked the complete Japanese dinner and though you get very little of one thing you get such a variety that you can’t go on eating.

Unfortunately for us, many of the treasures from the Kyoto Museum are at present on exhibition in the US but some of the choicest treasures were put in a little office so that we could have time and leisure to examine them…

Afterwards, we went to visit two temples, the Honganji temples of East and West [East and West Buddhist True Sects]. At the first one I was pleased to meet aging the Abbot and Mrs. Otani [the True Sect featured a married priesthood] who, with their son who is at the college in the U.S., had come to see me last spring. Neither of us had expected to see each other again so soon.

A group of women waited here to see me. They had sent by Mrs. Otani a petition asking my help in the exchange of war prisoners [from the Soviet Union]. They are slowly being released but the mothers and wives are still very anxious…

Luckily I had been warned that we were to go in without our shoes in all the temples as well as at lunch. While it is easy to go without one’s shoes, I have not acquired the ease of sitting on a pillow on the floor which is essential to really enjoying a meal in a Japanese house. If I stayed here long enough, I am sure I could learn to kneel and sit back on my heels, but even the younger members of my party find that position a trifle wearisome as yet.

After lunch the head of a tea factory took us to see the picking of tea leaves… We went to the factory afterwards and I discovered that they shipped to America what they considered was an inferior brand of green tea, since we do not like the taste of the tea which they consider the best. They brew their finest tea in lukewarm water and it comes out very bitter and I found it very difficult to drink.

The factory was interesting and I was impressed by the fact that this community earns rather a good yearly income through combining tea growing and rice growing. Everyone works very hard at the time when the tea leave are picked in the spring and again for about a month in the autumn. The rest of the time they work hard on their rice or any other kind of farming they do. But for the time they work in the tea factory they get a rather high wage which I gather makes this community rather above the usual farm standards as to income.

I was half an hour late in getting back to the hotel from the tea plantation on Tuesday afternoon [June 2] and I found a group of representatives of the women of Kyoto waiting to discuss their problems with me. The same problems crop up over and over again—the economic and social position of women, the family unit system where the mother-in-law is supreme, a pattern which the young people might be glad to break but which the economic conditions make it difficult to interfere with the situation of widows with children to bring up and support, in fact all social services in the community, and labor conditions for men both industrially and on the farm. Here, I imagine because they were never bombed, nobody brought up the question of peace or the use of the atomic bomb.

This community [Kyoto, which did not experience fire or atomic bombs] is less touched by the war and therefore people are more conservative and changes are coming about more slowly in social and economic life …

[At dinner with local missionaries and Japanese Christian ministers] we had a discussion which confirmed many of the things which I have been discussing. One young man asked me whether a news analysis which he had seen quoted s coming from America on the last Japanese election, was really believed in the U.S. He said that the present government victory was attributed to the fact that the majority was accepting gradual rearmament, whereas, as a matter of fact, the present government had been very careful to say very little on the subject of rearmament. He asked me whether I realized that among Japanese there is a deep resentment because they feel the U.S. is using economic pressure at the time of elections in order to put people into office who will be favorable to U.S. policies. Therefore they consider that the U.S. was trying to make Japan economically a slave. In one form or another this crops up very frequently in talking to the Japanese.

I suppose any country is particularly sensitive to efforts directed at any kind of domination when it has so recently regained its freedom. The people of Japan, as a whole, never really had much freedom as we know it, but they have been trained to a nationalist spirit and they blame the last war upon this spirit. It looks today as though the majority would prefer to be invaded and occupied in preference to going through bombings and war in which people would die and much destruction would take place. This spirit may change but we have not yet found the formula for changing it among the people I am afraid.

Two weeks ago tonight I left NYC and I must say I feel as though I have traveled far and seen much and really lived in a different kind of a world in the last twelve days.

When we reach Osaka this evening I felt exactly as though I were driving into Chicago. So many smoke stacks were pouring smoke all over the City and I was told that’s was the industrial Chicago of Japan…

My last day in Kyoto [June 3] was a most interesting one. We started off by visiting the most famous handicraft shops, the Kawashima factory where they do Tsuzure embroidery. The most expensive thing about the Japanese women’s costume is the Obi [sash]. An Obi often costs fare more than a kimono. One very beautiful obi which we watched a man weaving, the head of the factory told me, would take a month and a half to finish. He showed us beautiful pieces of material all made by hand and worth 60 or 70 thousand yen, in fact that the simplest and cheapest kind of material in the room was 9 thousand yen. Afterwards they took us to a small family owned machine factory. They had four looms. The setting up was done by hand but the women or men just watched for broken threads, the machine did all the rest. Lovely material was being made for kimonos.

This factory was clean and neat and though the cooking arrangements for the workers were crowded into the same room as the looms they looked fairly adequate and there was a feeling of well-being in the house.

The last house we visited was very poor. There were only two looms not owned by the workers but rented so that their labor paid for the borrowing of the machines and the material which went into their work and left them little more than a bare subsistence. They had dug pits under the weaving machines because the ceiling was too low to set them up on the floor. The water came from a well in back of the house, which is used by farm families living right around, and three privies were within a stone’s throw of the well. They told me, however, that typhoid was not an illness that they really dreaded there. Tuberculosis was the one that took the heaviest toll.

Having to take off your shoes wherever you go keeps these homes cleaner than you would expect but there is no doubt about it that conditions such as these are not what you would call good working conditions and wherever they are in the world we should make an effort to eliminate them.

After the main ceremony, we went into the garden and met all the pupils and then we came back to see in another room two most beautiful screens which they had brought out to do us honor. Again they brought us food of a different kind and two geisha girls [Roosevelt too uses the term, “geisha girls”] appeared to give us some presents which had been prepared. Finally the time came when we had to leave to do some shopping before starting our drive to Osaka…

I keep feeling that everything is done on the surface to give the Westerner a feeling of being at home in Japan. There couldn’t, for instance, be a more comfortable hotel than the New Osaka, the one we are in. The service is excellent, the food is Western. In face every consideration is given to the foreigner. I wonder if it is really good for us and if it would not be better if we were given a chance to learn what makes the Japanese feel at home and what they really like in their daily home life.

One thing we foreigners do have to conform to is the removal of our shoes when entering Japanese houses. I wish I had brought the kind of shoes that slip on and off easily and still have heavy enough enough soles to walk in the mud. However, I like the Japanese habit of wearing heavy white cotton socks with felt soles, in the house and the different kind of sandals [zori] they put on for outdoors, which drop off so casually as they come in. It keeps the house clean and they seem to manage the slippers very well on the street. The clogs [geta] which are worn for really muddy weather lift one right out from the road and make quite a clatter when there are enough people in the street but, nevertheless, seem practical and the children even manage them very well.

In the silk weaving area where we were on Wednesday the rhythmic beat of the machines could be heard everywhere coming form the houses as we walked through the streets. I thought it was interesting because no one could mistake what area they were in.

We spent two hours on our first morning in Osaka, June 5th [June 4], visiting a most modern textile factory, the Kanebo factory at Yodogawa [Kanebo was initially famous for its fine silks]. It was interesting to me because on one side they still had some of their older machines and on the other side some modern machinery acquired from the DuPonts last year and this year. The modern machinery did the job in three hours which took the old machinery thirty-eight hours to do. This mill sells its cotton materials all over Asia, Africa and S. America.

They have about nineteen hundred employees and work on two shifts. There are boys dormitories and girls dormitories and a few apartments for married workers. This is the same system which I described before. Apparently it is rather rare to give work to people who live in surrounding cities or towns. The girls come from the farms hence the development of this dormitory system. In this particular factory, they give the girls in their leisure time classes in flower arrangement and the tea ceremony and they must dress in becoming kimonos for this though they wear overalls in the factory!

There are tennis courts and playing fields for both boys and girls and a wonderful swimming pool.

We saw some boys practicing Jiu-Jitsu and we found a kindergarten being carried on for the children of employees…

For two hours that afternoon I talked with some of the leading business men of the city in their very fine clubhouse.

This was one of the most interesting talks I have had, for basically the economic questions are at the root of many of the problems now facing Japan. These men are not very cheerful. Their imports mount; their exports drop; they have trouble between the dollar area and the sterling area; they wonder what will happen to them if a truce comes in Korea and American purchases in Japan drop for they were only able to balance their budget last year because of procurement of military supplies in this country.

One man even hinted that it might be a serious question, if aid was not forthcoming from the U.S., whether they would be obliged to turn to the Soviet Union or not. But the majority insisted that Japan knew they must be with the Western world. How could they meet a situation, however, where if they began to sell certain goods satisfactorily in the U.S., the tariff was immediately raised on those goods by the U.S.?

I think there will have to be an international commission to make a careful study of this whole question of production throughout the world and tariffs, since it is obvious that in the long run to starve a people out is no solution to their problems or to the problems of any of the other nations.

As usual, Roosevelt was kept busy meeting a variety of groups and persons: the women representatives of labor unions in the Osaka area; the American head of the National City Bank; the Osaka Rotary Club; an audience of 3000 people at the Central Public Hall; and a group of local women leaders and another of students. One of the highlights was a visit to the American Cultural Center run by the U.S. Information Service, State Department.

Friday morning, June 5th, I visited the American Cultural Center which is the U.S. Information Service run by the State Department. They have a library of some 16,000 books and students were already sitting at work at the various tables though it was quite early. They tell me about 1000 people a day use their facilities. These U.S. Cultural Centers are all we have to offset the Soviet subsidizing of books they wish to sell in the Asiatic areas. In India you could buy any number of Soviet books for a few pennies and all of us know that American books run into dollars and dollars are scarce anywhere outside of the U.S.

They have a good film library and advertise in the papers when they will show a documentary film.

I particularly liked a little children’s reading room where small children and their mothers can come and find American children’s stories with the Japanese translation. This room they told me had inspired many Japanese institutions to install a children’s reading room and was a much talked of feature.

They have conference rooms at the Center and carryon English classes and hold discussion groups of various kinds.

I heard the wish expressed by some Japanese that the Center might provide more translations but it costs money and the U.S. is not anxious to spend much money these days on providing information to the rest of the world about the U.S., so it leaves the field open to the Soviet Union.

One of these women asked me if I knew anything about certain conditions which existed for girls living on the very poor farms in the neighborhood. I had never heard about them but by dint of talking with a small group of gentlemen during the evening I think I learned more than I had ever known before about certain social questions which are being brought out into the open in Japan largely because of the changed position of the women who react less complacently to such moral situations and I think eventually may bring about some changes.

In every city I have been in so far you look out of your window between 7 and 8 in the morning to see streams of school boys going by all dressed in their uniforms and gold buttons and caps that designate the school they belong to, either by their shape or insignia. The girls always dress in the black skirts with the white middy blouses so you can spot the students quite easily, and the student group is a sizable one in the community.

Saturday morning [June 6] I had a visit from a woman pathologist in the Army hospital near Osaka. It is rather a new thing to have women in the Army medical corps and I was glad to have a chance to talk with Colonel Raven.

At ten o’clock I met with a considerable number of college presidents. It was a little awe inspiring and I think they were a little awed by each other for talk did not flow very freely. Perhaps my questions were rather difficult to answer but I wanted to know their opinion on whether the majority of students in the colleges were convinced Marxists and whether there were a considerable number of professors who went along in this ideology. I was told that in general both students and professors like to study thee theories but they doubted that there were more than a few really convinced communists but these few made a good deal of noise and were quite prominent because they all knew what they really believed in, whereas the others were groping their way. This is no new situation but I am inclined to think there is more real acceptance of Marxism as a theory among students in Japan than the college professors were willing to acknowledge in their discussion with me. They all agreed that democracy was not making headway and not being well taught…

On the way to Nara [June 6] we stopped at Horyuji temple, one of the oldest wooden structures in the world. It is a really beautiful temple with some of the most beautiful Buddhas I have ever seen.

After a thorough inspection led by the Abbot himself, which included a nunnery, we tore ourselves away and went to see some rice planting. We saw both men and women planting and then went through two farm houses. The lay out was interesting to anyone who has seen farms in other parts of the world. On the whole I thought these farmers were well educated and doing an intelligent job.

In the first village of sixty families several of the men in the village had been through agricultural school. The water was still carried by hand from the well but the well was not too near the privy and there was electric light though they told me it was much too expensive to use it for anything but the light. The woman told me she got up at 4:30 every morning and went to bed at ten p.m. Most of the women look old before their time because they work so hard in the fields as well as in their homes but on the whole the standard of living was not too low in this village and I am told that this is a good farming area…

The hotel at Nara was beautifully situated a little higher than the town with trees all around it and overlooking two ponds which they use for irrigation. It was quite and restful and I could understand why everyone talks about Nara as a place of peace and quiet. Like Kyoto it was not bombed during the war because of its art treasures. It was one of Japan’s earliest capitals.

On Sunday morning [June 7] we visited the Nara museum where many temples have their art treasures stored. These are really beautiful things to see. Afterwards we went to the temple Todaiji where the biggest Buddha is enshrined. It is a bronze figure which must be at least 50 feet high and a very interesting and beautifully executed figure.

The temple has twice been destroyed by fire since it was built about 750 AD but each time it has been rebuilt, the last time about 250 years ago. It is a marvel to me how this wooden architecture survives but they tell me the wood is preserved by the slow change of climate…

Japan, like practically every other country in the world has its problems in dealing with its minorities. The village that we walked through on Sunday afternoon [June 7] in the pouring rain was lived in by about two thousand people who belonged to one of these minorities. By law they are now equal citizens but old customs and habits are hard to break.

The latest study states that this minority is made up of the aborigines who were originally on this island and were conquered by the Japanese. To them, quite naturally, was given the lowest and most degrading work to do. They were the butchers. They tanned hides and made shoes. They were day laborers. Perhaps when Buddhism became strong, they were looked down upon more than ever.

The average income of a man in one of these villages is 13,000 yen a year as compared to the 300,000 thousand of the comparatively well-to-do farmers whom we visited yesterday.

There is no sewage system in the village. There are two public baths and since they have an increase in population they are planning to build a new bath house as the old one is dirty and small. The cost of a bath per person is only 3 yen, however, and all the people bathe. That is one of the really remarkable things about the Japanese.

In the better farm houses each family has its own bath. You get thoroughly clean first and then you go and sit in the tub which is filled with hot water which is heated by a charcoal fire underneath and it is dept constant very hot. According to the old fashioned custom the father goes first and then each member of the family according to precedence and age and sex.

There is no running water in this village and one well serves about ten homes and every drop of water is carried. Most of the houses have just two rooms, a kitchen with a mud floor and then the raised floor room. Sometimes there is a little space screened off where the shoemaking is carried on if the family makes shoes as well as doing farm labor. The average family is five people but as many as seven lived in one house we visited.

The head man of the village asked me if there were any comparable conditions in the U.S. and I had to confess I had seen similar conditions in some of our Indian villages and in some of our mining areas. I imagine bad conditions of living are pretty much the same throughout the world but it does not make them any pleasanter for the people who live in them.

I have a feeling that in this village, perhaps because the people are a minority group cut off from the Japanese people themselves, there was more cooperation among them and they certainly had a good man as head of the village. But what harm segregation does! These are some of the villages from which girls go to the cities and turn prostitutes and it isn’t hard to understand why.

Typescripts of draft columns, with corrections in Roosevelt’s handwriting, and final typescripts; Eleanor Roosevelt Collection, Franklin D. Roosevelt Library and Museum, Hyde Park, New York.