SOURCE: "Picture Post Cards," in World Journal Tribune Book World, October 9, 1966, p. 8.

In the following review, Greenfield complains that in Buck's The People of Japan, she "mostly serves up the usual blend of picturesque pap and old saws."

Not the least of the effects of the American victory in the Pacific is that we were spared the back-breaking, mind-reeling chore of having to learn the Japanese language. Instead, the burden of language learning fell upon the vanquished: each Japanese student has to face six years of classroom English before he graduates from high school. And Americans in Japan, laughing lustily, rather than nervously, at this race of little Jerry Lewises, bespectacled and back-teethed, malaproping and mispronouncing our language, could lean back upon the counsels of experts if they wished insights into the "special" Japanese culture and character.

This was one of those unfortunate developments which result in our...