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Yankee Hobo in the Orient
John Patric wanders on a shoestring budget through Japan, Manchuria, and a bit of China as the Japanese empire is on the upswing. Afterwards, he tries to explain what he saw during his pennies-per-day journey, so that Americans can get a better idea of what they'll be up against in the coming Pacific war (or, in later editions, of what Japan was like before the war).
- GenresJapan
514 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1943
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September 12, 2011My wife and I became acquainted with the author's brother when we lived across the street from him.
Interesting cultural observations about pre-war Japan and Korea from the 1930s.
Interesting cultural observations about pre-war Japan and Korea from the 1930s.
August 19, 2023
John Patric's 1943 Yankee Hobo in the Orient, reprinted in an expanded and corrected seventh edition in 1945, covers the prewar journeys of a journalist--and traveling salesman, and former cemetery-lot salesman, then dishwasher (1945 Frying Pan Creek softcover printing, page 481), and of course Depression-era hobo--determined to experience the real Orient.
Patric's "boyhood thinking about travel in China and Japan had been of luxury and magnificence, like it told about in the wonderful steamship ads"--you know, being accompanied by "a beautiful geisha girl" while gazing "at Fuji through a torii in the water, as sampans sailed by into the sunset," or "rid[ing] past the sound of temple bells, in a junk down some Chinese river, as dawn broke blue around the bend, beyond the porcelain pagodas that were built so long ago" (page 19). But by the mid-1930s, "wanting even more desperately than ever to get to the Orient before War engulfed the world," this "unregimented individualist" was stony broke, with "not even one dollar in the bank" (page 20). And when he tells us that "[a]s [his] $75 suits wore out, [he] had difficulty replacing them with hand-me-downs at $18.75" (page 20), we should consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator online to discover that a dollar in 1934 would be worth nearly 23 times more in mid-2023.
In any event, Patric shifted from his years of "several thousand fifteen-cent cigars" (page 19) to a cheap pipe. Rather than staying in hotels, the rubber-stamp salesman slept in his Lincoln and "bathed in lakes or rivers of creeks" or took a washcloth spongebath in the gas station bathrooms where he shaved, thus saving $45 monthly (page 25), or close to $1,000 in our modern reckoning. By skipping restaurants except for a 5-cent coffee, instead "obtain[ing] one hot meal each day" from a 10-cent can of salmon or 5-cent can of beans warmed by the car's engine while driving or by a little roadside fire, he spent only 25 cents for food daily, saving another $30 per month (pages 25-26). He washed his clothing "in roadside creeks on Sundays" and dried it with the car's engine on a damp day or on the hood on a dry day, then used a flat iron and a towel across his running board to press his pants "and just the parts of [his] shirt that showed," and "[o]f course [he] shined [his] own shoes" (page 27). With "[s]uch valet-service economies" he "saved...another $5 a month; perhaps more" (page 27). Long story short--and I guess it had been be, or I'll never reach the "Orient" part of the book, which if by far its hugest part--after three months he had saved $385 (page 29), which would be much more like $8,000 or $9,000 today.
So Patric, who as a youth had groused, like many White Americans, about "the damned Japs" working so hard and succeeding on the West Coast (page 35)--until The Man in the White Packard sets him straight about honest work, and thriftiness, and chauvinism as well (page 36)--now takes a trip such as "none of the gay, well-dressed passengers who crowded the rail" of the Heinan Maru could imagine (page 31). At the same time that he marvels at the modern engineering of the ship (page 41), the author also explains the milieu of when "Made in Japan" was a joke rather than an indication of quality, for he notes that "[m]any of our customs and conveniences had been adapted to a degree, but always badly, crudely, and inefficiently," with "[r]arely...a food product, an item of wearing apparel, a confection, [or] household gadget...even [beginning] to approximate the quality of the original" (page 43).
Really, this dichotomy can be seen throughout the book. On the one hand, Patric admires the natural beauty of Japan--when not despoiled by industrialization or simply the trash of thoughtless sightseers--and admires the friendliness of the Japanese, and their work ethic as well. Yet on the other hand, he points out that the thriftiness and constant work are driven by grinding poverty. And the poverty, of course, is exacerbated by a militaristic government which spends and spends and spends on forces currently fighting a war of aggression in China. He abhors the militarism and chauvinism, and yet in his postwar additions he very open-mindedly suggests--wrongly, we know know--that most of the wartime atrocities publicized by the United States were propaganda bunk.
Of course, it is government, whether that of imperial Japan or Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union or even the United States--and somewhere there is a nice little dig against FDR's ballooning bureaucracy which unfortunately I no longer can find--that to Patric is the prime enemy. This thread runs throughout the book, with far too many iterations for me to bother trying to cite any. At one point early on, though, Patric does describe one sentence as being "the most important in this book": "There is only one thing a man can, and that is to reduce by however little, by whatever peaceful means his ingenuity may devise, the power of government--any government--to tell him what to do" (page 76).
This copiously illustrated self-published book is large and wide-ranging, and while I wish I could do it better justice with with more and more often-delightful pieces of evidence, this simply isn't possible without writing a huge research paper. Suffice it to say, then, that John Patric's Yankee Hobo in the Orient, though naturally dated, is idiosyncratic and colorful, sympathetic and tart, and always entertainingly written, a thoroughly enjoyable excursion across geography and culture and daily minutiae and even political philosophy, a 5-star read even a full lifetime after its first release.
Patric's "boyhood thinking about travel in China and Japan had been of luxury and magnificence, like it told about in the wonderful steamship ads"--you know, being accompanied by "a beautiful geisha girl" while gazing "at Fuji through a torii in the water, as sampans sailed by into the sunset," or "rid[ing] past the sound of temple bells, in a junk down some Chinese river, as dawn broke blue around the bend, beyond the porcelain pagodas that were built so long ago" (page 19). But by the mid-1930s, "wanting even more desperately than ever to get to the Orient before War engulfed the world," this "unregimented individualist" was stony broke, with "not even one dollar in the bank" (page 20). And when he tells us that "[a]s [his] $75 suits wore out, [he] had difficulty replacing them with hand-me-downs at $18.75" (page 20), we should consult the Bureau of Labor Statistics CPI Inflation Calculator online to discover that a dollar in 1934 would be worth nearly 23 times more in mid-2023.
In any event, Patric shifted from his years of "several thousand fifteen-cent cigars" (page 19) to a cheap pipe. Rather than staying in hotels, the rubber-stamp salesman slept in his Lincoln and "bathed in lakes or rivers of creeks" or took a washcloth spongebath in the gas station bathrooms where he shaved, thus saving $45 monthly (page 25), or close to $1,000 in our modern reckoning. By skipping restaurants except for a 5-cent coffee, instead "obtain[ing] one hot meal each day" from a 10-cent can of salmon or 5-cent can of beans warmed by the car's engine while driving or by a little roadside fire, he spent only 25 cents for food daily, saving another $30 per month (pages 25-26). He washed his clothing "in roadside creeks on Sundays" and dried it with the car's engine on a damp day or on the hood on a dry day, then used a flat iron and a towel across his running board to press his pants "and just the parts of [his] shirt that showed," and "[o]f course [he] shined [his] own shoes" (page 27). With "[s]uch valet-service economies" he "saved...another $5 a month; perhaps more" (page 27). Long story short--and I guess it had been be, or I'll never reach the "Orient" part of the book, which if by far its hugest part--after three months he had saved $385 (page 29), which would be much more like $8,000 or $9,000 today.
So Patric, who as a youth had groused, like many White Americans, about "the damned Japs" working so hard and succeeding on the West Coast (page 35)--until The Man in the White Packard sets him straight about honest work, and thriftiness, and chauvinism as well (page 36)--now takes a trip such as "none of the gay, well-dressed passengers who crowded the rail" of the Heinan Maru could imagine (page 31). At the same time that he marvels at the modern engineering of the ship (page 41), the author also explains the milieu of when "Made in Japan" was a joke rather than an indication of quality, for he notes that "[m]any of our customs and conveniences had been adapted to a degree, but always badly, crudely, and inefficiently," with "[r]arely...a food product, an item of wearing apparel, a confection, [or] household gadget...even [beginning] to approximate the quality of the original" (page 43).
Really, this dichotomy can be seen throughout the book. On the one hand, Patric admires the natural beauty of Japan--when not despoiled by industrialization or simply the trash of thoughtless sightseers--and admires the friendliness of the Japanese, and their work ethic as well. Yet on the other hand, he points out that the thriftiness and constant work are driven by grinding poverty. And the poverty, of course, is exacerbated by a militaristic government which spends and spends and spends on forces currently fighting a war of aggression in China. He abhors the militarism and chauvinism, and yet in his postwar additions he very open-mindedly suggests--wrongly, we know know--that most of the wartime atrocities publicized by the United States were propaganda bunk.
Of course, it is government, whether that of imperial Japan or Mussolini's Italy or Hitler's Germany or Stalin's Soviet Union or even the United States--and somewhere there is a nice little dig against FDR's ballooning bureaucracy which unfortunately I no longer can find--that to Patric is the prime enemy. This thread runs throughout the book, with far too many iterations for me to bother trying to cite any. At one point early on, though, Patric does describe one sentence as being "the most important in this book": "There is only one thing a man can, and that is to reduce by however little, by whatever peaceful means his ingenuity may devise, the power of government--any government--to tell him what to do" (page 76).
This copiously illustrated self-published book is large and wide-ranging, and while I wish I could do it better justice with with more and more often-delightful pieces of evidence, this simply isn't possible without writing a huge research paper. Suffice it to say, then, that John Patric's Yankee Hobo in the Orient, though naturally dated, is idiosyncratic and colorful, sympathetic and tart, and always entertainingly written, a thoroughly enjoyable excursion across geography and culture and daily minutiae and even political philosophy, a 5-star read even a full lifetime after its first release.
December 12, 2022
My Dad bought me this book for my birthday in 1955. The author knew my Dad. He wrote a 3-page typewritten letter to me in the front of this book which I will always cherish. I still pick it up once in a while and read parts of it. Much too long to read at any one sitting. Bravo.
June 2, 2012
Weird old book that stands in time because of its attention to detail. It's also a nice reminder of what you can make happen when you put your mind to it.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews