"And do you know that the odd thing is that it's these very same poor people who are carrying the burden of maintaining the city. Tokyo collects less than four million yen a year from land and house taxes, and yet she is the sixth largest city in the world. The revenue is collected by indirect taxation, by the huge profits of the car system, by the imposts and stamp duties and licenses for every conceivable thing. The proportion of business tax paid by the magnates is infinitesimally small when compared with that wrung from the peddlers and small shopkeepers. So you see, the poor wretches who must cling to their walls like bats while the flood waters sweep over their floors, are at the same time paying for the boulevards and improving the property whose owners contribute almost nothing. Until a few years ago they did not think of that; they didn't know that things could be different. But now they're being taught, and they're beginning to figure things out. This is the kind of a place that breeds 'dangerous thoughts,' and, I tell you, when I am down here during flood time, I come pretty close to having 'dangerous thoughts' myself."
A few days later Kent was telling of this experience to a group of friends, Japanese and foreign, chance-met at the Imperial Hotel bar. "It's damnable. Of course, in every country we have rich rolling in luxury and poor ones groaning in misery, but in no place is the gulf between the classes so great, and nowhere else are the plutocrats so utterly unfeeling, so heartless; in no place are the poor ground so hard to make such absurdly high profits, your sixty and seventy per cent. dividends, your constant subsidies to giant companies and industries, your tariffs for protection of profiteers. I tell you, when I was mucking about down there in Fukagawa and heard of what it was like during the rains, and what it will continue to be like, I felt that I should like to meet these people, the Watanabes, the Inouyes, the Yamanakas, the Oharas, the lady with the blood-dyed silken shift of the song, you know, and I should like to kick the whole damned outfit, yes, the lady, too, by the gods."
"Look out, Kent, you're getting 'dangerous thoughts.'" They laughed and dismissed the subject, but one of them, Hata, leaned across the table to Kent.