LEGITIMACY IN JAPAN—MARITAL AND POLITICAL 49

besieged with questions, as the affair may well have been served up
somewhat sensationally in the American press. I had coined the
phrase " photographic espionage " in my telegram, and of course
the press adopted it. After all, that is exactly what the charges
amounted to. The day after the telegram was published in the
Japan Advertiser an editorial appeared in Jiji saying that too much
had been made of the affair and that it regretted that I had made a
diplomatic incident of the matter by taking it up with Count Uchida,
which was considered an unfortunate indiscretion on the part of the
American Ambassador. Shiratori at first told the correspondents
that Count Uchida's promise to me to conduct an investigation was
merely the usual polite diplomatic reply to representations by an
ambassador and that no investigation would be made, but two days
later, evidently under instructions, he altered his tone and said that
Count Uchida would shortly reply to my representations and would
say that " the Japanese Government sees no irregularity, nor does it
attribute any impure motives to the action of the American bank.
Count Uchida is expected to inform the American Ambassador
that he sees no objection to having this information released to the
American press, but it is unlikely that he will make any statement
to the press in Japan." I presume that someone may have advised
the Foreign Office to watch its step a little with the American public,
but so far as the Japanese press is concerned, I am convinced that the
Foreign Office cannot control it and doesn't care to try. This lies
with the military who, in all probability, engineered the whole
campaign against the bank as another opportunity for stirring up
anti-American feeling in the country.

LEGITIMACY IN JAPAN—MARITAL AND POLITICAL

September 20, 1932

The following memorandum comes from a member of the Embassy
staff:

" The Japanese laws and customs governing the legitimating of
children born out of wedlock are much more lenient than those
of most countries of the world. In European countries and in
most states of the United States, an illegitimate child can only
be legitimated by the subsequent marriage of the parents, and even
in such cases there are usually obstructive conditions, such as that
both parents have been in a legal position to marry at the time of
the birth of the child. In Japan, a child of unmarried parents at
birth is a member of the mother's family; upon recognition by
the father, however (whether the father be married or not), the
child enters the father's family as a shosU9 or legitimated child, and
takes the father's name. He can succeed to the headship of the house
and inherit tfre family property—in fact, he becomes a full-fledged
member of society, with practically no stigma attached to him