59 - Yokohama Ballads, c. 1890, 1-8
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 07 May 2022
Summary
OVER EDUCATED
ON THE BUND a few days ago a Japanese rickshaw-man called an English salt who failed to see the sweet reasonableness of paying him six times his legal fare a “ruddy-tinted fool.” A Chinaman thereupon walked up to him and remonstrated saying that such an expression was “belly rude.” A propos of this incident Fiasco da Gama, naturalized Britisher, delivers himself thusly: -
I’ve ran acrost some curious things, I guess
I’ve served beneath a score of different banners;
But I’ve never see’d the world in such a mess,
As when Chinks wire in to teach thim folkses manners!
For the Japanese is usually unconsciously perlite
‘Ceptin Yokohama coolies who seem conterary quite;
They cheat you an’ they chouse you, an’ they cheat with all their might
When you buck at overcharging o’ the morning
For a heathen man to name you names ain't proper.
Though he slangs you in a lingo of his own;
But when his oaths are in Hinglish, then a stopper
Must be put on stealing what's for bus alone;
For Japanesy cuss-words are puny weak an’ mild;
They’ve no bottom in them than a puling, teething child
It’d take a lot of peppering to drive a shell-back wild
Should the skipper chuck sich at ‘im o’ a morning!
The worstest that they can go is call you is baka·,
(The Chelsea sage says most are fools unmixed)
But I’ve dropped across a cuss who’d madden Shaka:
He called me fool with something strong prefixed:
An a Chinaman he ups an says that “ally fool” is bad
An that the cove who slings it round is just an ‘owling cad;
An its really, woefully, unutterably sad
To see Chinks a-teaching manners o’ a morning!
We’ve teached them folkses various kinds of stuff;
We’ve given ‘em trains, an’ telegraffs an’ rifles,
An’ dynamite an’ warships quantum suffi
Pot-hats an’ lamps an’ other sich like trifles
But let us keep our swearwords, they are our very own,
Of civilized nations they’re the very flower an’ crown;
Should the heathen get to play with ‘em, Hold Hingland ‘ull go down
Like dirt into the dustbin of a morning!
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Culture Power & Politics in Treaty Port Japan 1854-1899 Key Papers Press and Contemporary Writings , pp. 342 - 350Publisher: Amsterdam University PressPrint publication year: 2018