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despises, upon which it is always heaping insults? I did not understand. But I could sense that something was making the Europeans and their Mixed-Blood relatives very anxious.
    Mama had not been reading the newspapers over the last several days. She was still busy, and not paying much attention to her makeup and dress. Dark rings shadowed her eyes. She rarely spoke, rarely greeted me. When she wasn’t working, I usually found her lost in thought. I didn’t bother her with my questions.
    If I forced myself to understand what was going on—even with my current limited capabilities—I came to the conclusion that the colonials were frightened of their own imaginings, imaginings of things far away on the distant horizon. For me Japan still represented something abstract. My admiration of her was admiration of an abstraction. In my mind I could not yet feel Japan in its concreteness. It was different with the Chinese, who could be seen and met almost anywhere in the Indies, their bare feet tramping the highways and village lanes, their backs loaded with peddlers’ merchandise, their skin clear and clean. And they never complained! No one ever got to know them well because of their different language, their different habits and beliefs. But for methere was always something special about them. Without ever swinging a hoe or machete, without ever turning soil or planting seeds, they were able to eat and live better than most Natives. Nobody wanted to see this special achievement, but only to stare wide-eyed at their foreignness. If the Chinese had this extra ability, surely the Japanese would be even further advanced.
    Then an image of Maiko came to me—the one and only Japanese I’d ever seen and whom I met during the court trials. She was just one among so many Japanese prostitutes who had left the land of their birth, determined to accumulate some capital so that they could return and set up a business with their husbands. And how much capital had already been gathered by all these prostitutes throughout the world? How much had been taken back to Japan by people other than prostitutes? How many businesses had been set up in Japan by now? I could not even imagine—except for how busy that nation must be with every kind of business and enterprise.
    Even though I was a great admirer of Japan I had never dreamed that this people, who had never been conquered by Europe, could become so highly respected among the international community of advanced nations. Their warships patrolled all the world’s waterways. The mouths of their cannons gaped out at both sky and sea. How proud any Asian would be to be so respected, never having to crawl and kowtow to some foreign power.
    And then one day, quite unexpectedly, Maarten Nijman started a new controversy: “The Yellow Peril from the North.” In contrast to his earlier article, he gave the following warning: “Only one step away from Japan is China. A sense of restlessness has lately been in the air among all the peoples of the European colonies of Southeast Asia, from Cochin China to the Indies. The target of this restlessness has been colonial authority. And there’s another restlessness that is not so well known but deeper and more hidden—the restlessness of conquered peoples who have had enough, who are tired of satisfying the wants of those who have made themselves masters—all those who must be called Sir. This is the restlessness of the religious leaders of the people in the conquered areas. It has been there for a very, very long time. But an even more important source of restlessness, which hasn’t been recognized as such, is the ‘yellow peril from the north.’ The reformmovement, the renaissance in China, however small and meaningless it may seem, will, as time goes on, grow larger and larger.”
    I didn’t really understand what he meant by restlessness, so I made sure I remembered that word. Restless! restless!
    And it was none other than Herbert de la Croix