Anais Nin's Japanese publisher invites her to Japan to celebrate the publication of her novel, A Spy in the House of Love. She lands in Tokyo and visits the Imperial Hotel, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright. She has tea, lunch in a tempura bar, dinner in a geisha restaurant.
Anais says, "In Japan I had a weeping fit. The sweetness, kindness, consideration touched me. For once in my life I felt I was treated as I always treated people."
She also notes there are no homeless people, and "everybody is working, busy, disciplined. Cleanliness, being a religion, is practiced continuously."
Anais believes that Asia has discovered two remedies for the cruelty of man: art and religion. Without these, people are full of hate. There is a consideration for others that mitigates crime against others. Religion, she says, seems to be at the bottom of contentment.
She notes there is "no garbage on the floor, no defacement, no obscene scribblings as in New York's subways" on the trains in Japan. Everything is clean and cared for.
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