Foreign News: Do-se-do

• Share

The Japanese, who have always been good mimics (and want to be good democrats), were busily tilting at an old American folkway: the square dance. "Caller"* at an experimental hoedown in Nagasaki was Fred Niblo, an A.M.G. director who thought that a dash of do-se-do was just the thing for the community soul.

To 23-year-old Miwo Murakawa, the "square American dance" was the biggest thing to hit Nagasaki since the atom bomb (which missed Miwo by just a mile). She quoted a farm woman: "Why have we had to wait for Americans to teach us such pleasures? Why have not the Japanese taught us such things?"

Niblo, a former football coach from Denver, was so sure of success that he started this week to teach the Virginia reel to a group of Nagasaki physical-education instructors. "After all," mused Niblo, "the average Japanese has nothing to do in the evening."