American Wife Divorces Ito -- He Is 'Too Oriental'

[Photo caption]: Michio Ito and his wife, Hazel Wright Ito, are shown here in a step of their famous "Javanese Dance." -- (A.P. Photo.)

HOLLYWOOD, Calif. -- Friday, April 3. -- (AP) -- Blond, blue-eyed Hazel Wright, American by birth, Irish by temperament, and, until last Wednesday, Japanese by marriage, explained today what Kipling meant about "never the twain shall meet."

She divorced Michio Ito, internationally known Japanese dancer, Wednesday.

"When I married him, thirteen years ago, he was absolutely western in his ways," she said. "Now, as he grows older, he becomes more and more Oriental."

Readhered to Japanese Standard

The specific manifestation of this, she said, was Ito's gradual readherence to the Japanese "single standard," in which, she explained, there is no social disapproval for a husband who has steady feminine companionship outside the marriage relationship.

"That was the last straw," Mrs. Ito said.

"But, of course, there were other things, too. In the past few years, I noticed a tendency on his part to grow more Oriental. It appeared in his clothes, mannerisms, the food he wanted, and the companionship he sought.

"Nothing could have been more American than our early life. We were married at the City Hall in New York in 1923, lived in hotels, observed all the conventions of marriage as white races know them.

Each Follows Own Race

"Gradually, he changed."

And that, she said, was the usual fate of the mixed marriage. With the years, the Oriental becomes more Oriental, the Occidental becomes more Occidental.

She has two sons, 12 and 8 years old. One, she said, is calm, philosophical, intensely proud of his Japanese blood. The younger has the opposite attitude.

"I was 15, a student of dancing, when I met Mr. Ito," she continued. "He was the most fascinating, glamorous man I had ever seen. We built up an ideal that gave us courage to disregard our families, and society, on both sides of the ocean. It was worth it, to me, because of what he was.

"But I don't know him any more."

Charges that Ito was friendly with Japanese women were made in her divorce suit.