Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits 9781898823278

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BRITAIN & JAPAN:

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

In Celebration

On the occasion of the publication of the ninth volume of Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits the Japan Society and Publishers welcome this opportunity to celebrate the life and work of Sir Hugh Cortazzi, GCMG, in the year of his ninetieth birthday (2014) – this also being the fifth volume of the Britain & Japan series he has compiled and edited. Previously Britain’s Ambassador to Japan (1980-1984) and Chairman of the Japan Society (1985-1995), Sir Hugh has published extensively on Japan, including Isles of Gold: Antique Maps of Japan (1983), The Japanese Achievement (1990), his memoir Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere ( 1998) and The Thames and I: Two Years at Oxford (translation of Crown Prince Naruhito’s memoir, 2006). He has also recently published The Growing Power of Japan, 1967-1972: Analysis and Assessments from John Pilcher and the British Embassy, Tokyo, and is currently compiling Volume X of the Britain and Japan series.

BRITAIN & JAPAN:

Biographical Portraits VOLUME IX

Compiled and Edited by HUGH CORTAZZI

JAPAN SOCIETY PAPERBACK EDITION Not for resale BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS,VOL. IX Compiled and Edited by Hugh Cortazzi First published 2015 by RENAISSANCE BOOKS PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP Renaissance Books is an imprint of Global Books Ltd ISBN 978-1-898823-11-7 ISBN 978-1-898823-27-8 [eBook] © The Japan Society 2015 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reprinted, reproduced, translated, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior written permission in writing from the Publishers.

SPECIAL THANKS The Publishers and the Chairman and Council of the Japan Society wish to express their sincere thanks to the following for their support in the making of this book: The Great-Britain Sasakawa Foundation; Sir Hugh Cortazzi, GCMG; The Japan Foundation

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

Set in Bembo 11 on 11.5 pt by Dataworks. Printed and bound in England by CPI Antony Rowe Ltd.

Contents Introduction by Hugh Cortazzi List of Contributors Index of Biographical Portraits in Japan Society Volumes

xi xix xxii

PART I: JAPAN IN BRITAIN THINGS JAPANESE

1. 2.

3.

4.

5. 6.

The Great Japan Exhibition, 1981–1982 NICOLAS MACLEAN Haiku in the British Isles: A Tale of Acceptance and Non-acceptance DAVID COBB Japanese Gardens and the Japanese Garden Society in the UK GRAHAM HARDMAN Three Ages of British Kendo: The Introduction of a Unique Sporting and Cultural Activity PAUL BUDDEN The Nippon Club, 1881–2014 SETSUO KATO Japan and Ye Sette of Odd Volumes and London’s Thirteen Club in the 1890s HUGH CORTAZZI

1

15

28

39 54

66

PART II: BRITAIN IN JAPAN TRADE

7. 8.

British Week in Tokyo, 1969 BEN THORNE EXPO ’70 at Osaka: A British View JOHN PILCHER

v

77 89

CONTENTS

9.

The British Export Marketing Centre and the Promotion of British Exports from 1972 PAUL DIMOND 10. Scotch Whisky in Japan STUART JACK

95 110

BRITISH ACTIVITIES

11. Mountaineering in Japan: British Pioneers and the Pre-war Japanese Alpine Club HAMISH ION 12. Cricket in Late Edo and Meiji Japan MIKE GALBRAITH 13. Introduction of Football from Britain into Nineteenth-century Japan: Rugby Football and Soccer MIKE GALBRAITH 14. Freemasonry in Japan PAULINE CHAKMAKJIAN

123 135

148 161

MISSIONARIES

15. Christ Church, Yokohama, and its First Incumbent: Michael Buckworth Bailey, 1862–1872 HAMISH ION 16. British Bible Societies and the Translation of the Bible into Japanese in the Nineteenth Century HAMISH ION 17. Bishop Kenneth Sansbury (1905–1993): College Lecturer and Chaplain AUDREY SANSBURY TALKS

173

185

197

MUSIC, DRAMA AND FILM

18. John William Fenton (1831–1890) and the Japanese National Anthem Kimigayo AKIRA IMAMURA 19. Britain and Japan: Musical Exchanges before World War II AKIRA IMAMURA vi

207

226

CONTENTS

20. Kazuo Kikuta (1908-1973), Japanese Impresario and Lover of Charles Dickens: A Personal Memoir NOBUKO ALBERY 21. Kawakita Nagamasa (1903–1981) and Kawakita Kashiko (1908-1993): Film Ambassadors GORDON DANIELS 22. Sessue Hayakawa (1886-1973): International Film Star NORIMASA MORITA

236

245 258

EPISODE

23. The Return of Japan’s Lost Telescope after 400 Years SEAN CURTIN

271

PAINTERS

24. Ella Du Cane (1874-1943): Watercolourist TONI HUBERMAN 25. Alfred Parsons, RA, PRWS (1847-1920) and the Japanese Watercolour Movement TOSHIO WATANABE

277

284

JOURNALISTS

26. R.V.C. Bodley (‘Bodley of Arabia’) (1892-1970): Soldier, Adventurer, Journalist and Writer in Japan, 1933–1934 BILL SNELL 27. Norman Macrae (1921–2010): Pioneering Journalist of The Economist on Japanese Affairs BILL EMMOTT AND ADRIAN WOOLRIDGE

297

309

JAPANESE WOMEN PIONEERS

28. Yamamoto Yao (1875-1955) and Japanese Nursing GORDON DANIELS ¯ e Sumi (1875-1948) and Domestic Science in Japan 29. O HIROKO TOMIDA vii

319 331

CONTENTS

PART III: SCHOLARS AND WRITERS JAPANESE

30. Yanaihara Tadao (1893-1961) and His Tour of Britain, 1920-1921 SUSAN TOWNSEND 31. Ichikawa Sanki (1886-1970): Expert in English Philology and Literature SAITO YOSHIFUMI 32. Michio Morishima (1923–2004): An Economist Made in Japan JANET HUNTER 33. Honma Hisao (1886–1981): Expert on Oscar Wilde YOKO HIRATA 34. Shimamura Ho¯getsu (1871-1918): Pioneer of Shingeki (Western-style Theatre) in Japan NORIMASA MORITA 35. Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ (1881–1942), and A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations ELEANOR ROBINSON 36. Yanada Senji (1906–1972): Teacher of Japanese at SOAS SADAO OBA AND ANNE KANEKO 37. Sakurai Jo¯ji, (1858-1939): Leading Chemist and No¯ Drama Specialist YOSHIYUKI KIKUCHI

345

357

368 381

395

406

413

425

BRITISH

38. Edward Divers (1837–1912) and Robert William Atkinson (1850–1929): Influential Teachers of Chemistry in Meiji Japan YOSHIYUKI KIKUCHI 39. Edward Vivian Gatenby, CBE (1892–1955): Distinguished Teacher of English as a Foreign Language PAUL SNOWDEN 40. Wolf Mendl (1926-1999): Leading Scholar in the Field of International Relations IAN NISH viii

439

451

465

CONTENTS

41. John Sargent: Respected Geographer of Japan VARIOUS 42. Grace James (1882-1965) and Mrs T.H. (Kate) James (1845-1928): Writers of Children’s Stories NOBORU KOYAMA

469

472

PART IV: POLITICIANS AND OFFICIALS JAPANESE

43. Kato¯ Hiroharu (1870–1939) and Japan’s Last Foreign-built Cruiser IAN NISH 44. Fukuda Takeo (1905-1995): Japanese Prime Minister who Spent Three Years in London EIJI SEKI AND HUGH CORTAZZI 45. Shirasu Jiro¯ (1902–1985): A Complicated and Enigmatic Personality EIICHIRO TOKUMOTO [TR.HUGH CORTAZZI]

481

492

502

BRITISH OFFICERS

46. Sir Henry Keppel (1809–1904): ‘Probably the Most Universally Popular Naval Commander Ever Sent by England to the East’ ROBERT MORTON 47. Major C.A.L. Yate VC (1872-1914): A Gallant British Officer and Admirer of Japan YAHYA SHAIGIYA-ABDELSAMAD

513

524

BRITISH JUDGES AND A DIPLOMAT

48. Sir Nicholas John Hannen (1842-1900): Judge of the British Court for Japan CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS 49. Robert Anderson Mowat (1843–1925): Judge of the British Court for Japan, 1891–1897 CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS 50. Sir Francis Bertie (1844–1919): Key Figure in Framing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance THOMAS G. OTTE ix

531

544

555

CONTENTS

BRITISH POLITICAL FIGURES

51. Lord Granville (1815–1891): A Pragmatist at the Foreign Office ANDREW COBBING 52. Arthur Balfour (1848–1930): A Skilled Politician Managing the Emergence of Japan as a Great Power IAN NISH 53. Sir John Simon (1873–1959) and ‘This Manchurian Briar Patch’ ANTONY BEST 54. Lord Halifax (1881–1959): A Reassessment of British Far Eastern Policy, 1938–1941 ANTONY BEST 55. Sir Anthony Eden (1897–1977): Managing the Challenge of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1936–1955 ANTONY BEST 56. Ernest Bevin (1881-1951) and British Policies towards Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 ROGER BUCKLEY 57. Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013): Pragmatist Who Radically Improved Britain’s Image in Japan and Successfully Promoted Japanese Manufacturing Investment in Britain HUGH CORTAZZI Index

571

584

595

609

620

631

644

661

JAPANESE NAMES

Japanese names in the texts of biographical portraits are given in the Japanese order except where the English order has been used by authors of books or where the individual has become generally known by his name in the English order. Long vowels have been marked with a macron, except for common words, such as daimyo and place names such as Tokyo, which have entered the English language. x

Introduction

This is the ninth volume in the series Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits. The first volume so titled was published in 1994 and followed a volume entitled Britain and Japan 1959–1991, Themes and Personalities, published by the Japan Society to mark the Society’s centenary and the Japan Festival in the UK. Related volumes are British Envoys in Japan 1859–1971, Japanese Envoys in Britain 1862–1964 and Japan Experiences: Fifty Years One Hundred Views, Post-War Japan through British Eyes. All these volumes aim to shed light on aspects of the relations between Britain and Japan and the personalities who played interesting and significant roles in the relationship. The life and work of the men and women named in these volumes deserve to be recorded and remembered. When read together they give a picture, even if inevitably a partial one, of important facets of modern history and Anglo-Japanese institutions. They shed light on a number of controversial issues and remind us of the successes and failures of our fellow-countrymen. When as chairman of the Japan Society in 1990 I proposed the first of these volumes as part of the Japan Festival in Britain, designed to mark the centenary of the founding of the Society, I saw the volume produced at that time as a one-off memorial volume. But Ian Nish, to whose scholarship and enthusiasm I owe a real debt of gratitude, recognized, as I did, that there were other individuals and themes, which deserved to be described and discussed. The volumes grew out of our interest in the history of two countries so far apart but so closely interconnected. New names and themes kept on occurring to us. The problem was never one of shortage of people or themes. It was rather to find contributors with the time and willingness to do the necessary research and writing. We could not offer contributors anything except a promise of publication and a copy of the book when published. The large number of contributors, who continue to accept these ungenerous terms, shows how much interest these volumes have created. I am most grateful to David Warren, Chairman of the Trustees of the Japan Society and former British ambassador in Tokyo, for much valuable advice and assistance in the compilation and editing of this latest volume. xi

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

When I was reviewing the contributions which I had collected for this volume, I realized that there were still many gaps in our coverage and I had no difficulty in compiling a longish list of themes and people for a future Volume X in the series and perhaps for other volumes thereafter. …

Relations between Britain and Japan since the end of the war are of course very different from what they were between the 1858 Treaties and the end of the Pacific War. But there are many aspects of postwar relations, especially commercial, economic and cultural as well as political, which deserve study and comment. We can still learn from the mistakes, which we, our predecessors and successors, have made. An important element in our relations has been the Japanese presence here in Britain and Japanese influence on our culture. We had included in past volumes accounts of important Japanese companies, which had established branches in London in the early Meiji period such as the Yokohama Specie Bank, Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha and Mitsui and Company. We had also in Volume VI devoted space to Japanese entrepreneurs such as Morita Akio and Honda So¯ichiro¯ who had been pioneers of productive investment in Britain and to Nissan (and Toyota) whose investments in car production in Britain had a seminal effect on the British economy. But much more could and should be related about Japanese investments in Britain and in particular the contribution which Japanese banks and securities companies have made to the prosperity of the City of London in the last few decades. Accordingly, this volume begins in Part I with five essays devoted to some of the cultural elements and institutional aspects of what, for want of a better term, I have called ‘Japan in Britain’. The first chapter in this section is a description of the Great Japan Exhibition at the Royal Academy in 1980–1981. As Nicolas Maclean explains this was the most impressive exhibition of Japanese art ever held in Britain. It was difficult and expensive to organize but was deservedly popular and did much to spread appreciation of Japanese culture. Japanese poems are probably mainly known through the translations of Arthur Waley, but haiku, the short Japanese poem (5,7, 5 syllables), have a significant literary following here. Poets and others interested in this poetic form have established the British Haiku Society as David Cobb explains in an essay in this section. Another aspect of Japanese culture, which has aroused significant interest in Britain is the Japanese garden in its various forms and styles. As Graham Hardman notes in his essay a significant number of Japanese gardens are to be found in British towns and the countryside and the Japanese Garden Society, which produces an excellent xii

INTRODUCTION

quarterly journal entitled Shakkei, has branches in different parts of the country. Previous volumes have included accounts of the lives and contests of practitioners of the arts of Judo (Jujutsu). For this volume Paul Budden has contributed an account of the introduction and development of the Japanese martial art of Kendo. The Nippon Club, as Setsuo Kato explains in his account of its history, was established in 1881 and has provided the Japanese community in London not only with a place to meet and exchange views but has contributed significantly to the welfare of Japanese residents by making arrangements for medical treatment from Japanese doctors but also by organizing schools. This section ends with an account by me of two groups of British people in ‘Ye Sette of Odd Volumes’ and ‘The Thirteen Club’, who in the 1890s indulged their curiosity in things Japanese. Part II ‘Britain in Japan’ begins with a section devoted to aspects of post-war trade relations. This is a theme, which deserves further detailed study. In 1969 the British put a huge effort into an attempt to penetrate the Japanese market for British goods. The British embassy was the prime organizer with the full support of the Board of Trade in London and the British National Export Council in organizing a British Week in Tokyo. As Ben Thorne, who headed the British Week office in Tokyo, describes in his account of this major export promotion effort, this was the largest such British promotion ever staged. While EXPO ’70 was not a trade event it was an occasion in which participating countries could demonstrate their achievements and accordingly had an economic spin-off. The dispatch, which the then British ambassador to Japan, Sir John Pilcher, wrote about EXPO ’70 is a witty tour de force and includes some perceptive comments on Japan of that time. The British Week in 1969 required sustained follow-up action to ensure that Japanese companies and consumers were aware of the products which Britain was producing and that British companies were not deterred from trying to penetrate the Japanese market because of a perception of Japanese non-tariff barriers. This in due course led, as Paul Dimond explains, to the establishment in 1972 of the British Export Marketing Centre in Tokyo as a bridgehead into the Japanese market. One important British export, which faced various protectionist barriers, was Scotch whisky. Stuart Jack, who was an active participant in the struggles to ensure a ‘level playing field’ in Japan for Scotch whisky, outlines the problems and how they were eventually largely overcome. A section entitled ‘British Activities’ begins with an essay by Hamish Ion on Mountaineering in Japan in whose development British pioneers initially at least had a significant role. xiii

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Previous volumes have contained accounts of sports, which were imported into Japan, initially at least, from Britain. These included football, rugby and soccer, golf, tennis, rowing and horse racing, but not until this volume has anything been said about the quintessentially British sport of Cricket. As Mike Galbraith explains, cricket was a popular pastime for members of the British communities in Yokohama and Kobe during the Meiji period, although it was never really taken up by Japanese. Mike Galbraith has also discovered more information about the origins of football in Japan as he explains in another essay. Freemasonry was brought to Japan initially from Britain and, as Pauline Chakmakjian describes, a number of masonic lodges were established in Japan in the Meiji period. Protestant Christian missionaries who came to Japan in the Meiji era were largely from Britain and North America. While the number of their converts was limited their influence was significant. Essays on some of the British missionaries have appeared in earlier volumes. Here Hamish Ion, who has become the expert in this field of studies, writes about Christ Church, Yokohama and its first incumbent Michael Buckworth Bailey who was a very peculiar clergyman, and British Bible Societies and nineteenthcentury translations of the Bible into Japanese. The third item in this section is a biographical portrait of Kenneth Sansbury who was chaplain to the British embassy in Tokyo in the years leading up to the Pacific War. The next section headed ‘Music, Drama and Film’ begins with an account of the life of John William Fenton by Akira Imamura. Fenton came to Japan as a member of a military band and composed the music, or the first version, of the Japanese National Anthem Kimi ga Yo. The fact that the anthem owed so much to music by a British bandsman is not well known in either Britain or Japan. Akira Imamura has also contributed an account of musical exchanges before the Second World War in which he explains how some popular songs from Britain were adopted as Japanese lyrics. The next item, a personal memoir by Nobuko Albery, is a tribute to Kazuo Kikuta, who loved the novels of Charles Dickens and brought to Japan such musicals as Oliver. Two chapters are devoted to important figures in the history of cinema. The first by Gordon Daniels deals with Mr and Mrs Kawakita who made a major contribution to the promotion of Japanese films in Britain. The second is an account of Sessue Hayakawa, Japan’s first international film star who had many fans in Britain in his heyday in the 1920s. 2013 marked the 400th anniversary of the arrival in Japan of the first British trade mission to Japan led by John Saris who brought with him a fine hand-made telescope demonstrating the skills and xiv

INTRODUCTION

scientific knowledge of British craftsmen. Sadly, the original has vanished but a replica was made to mark the anniversary and presented to Japan to underline the importance of scientific exchanges between the two countries. A number of British painters visited Japan in the Meiji period and their paintings of Japan helped British people to appreciate Japanese scenery. One painter not covered in earlier volumes is Ella du Cane about whom Toni Huberman has contributed a portrait to this volume. Toshio Watanabe has written a study of Alfred Parsons who promoted watercolour painting and Western concepts of depicting nature, landscape and flowers. British journalists have reported on Japan over the years with varying degrees of perspicacity. Some like R.V.C. Bodley an ex soldier and adventurer about whom Bill Snell has written an account were ‘odd balls’. Norman Macrae of The Economist, whose portrait has been vividly drawn by Bill Emmott and Adrian Wooldridge, had a seminal influence on British attitudes towards Japan in the 1960s when Japan was racing to catch up with the advanced economies. Two Japanese women pioneers who had close connections with Britain before the Second World War are covered in the next section. Yamamoto Yao about whom Gordon Daniels has written was a leading Japanese nurse who was a member of a Japanese medical mission which came to Britain during the First World War and helped with some of the many wounded in the battles in France and at Gallipoli. Oe Sumi about whom Hiroko Tomida has contributed a portrait studied domestic science in Britain and pioneered the teaching of domestic science in Japan. Part III covers ‘Scholars and Writers’. The first section is devoted to Japanese scholars. Susan Townsend has contributed a portrait of Yanaihara Tadao, who became president of Tokyo University after the end of the Pacific War. He made an extensive tour of Britain in 1920–21 and became an expert on colonialism. Ichikawa Sanki, about whom Yoshifumi Saito has written, was one of Japan’s foremost English scholars who acquired a formidable knowledge of English literature. Michio Morishima, described by Janet Hunter as an economist made in Japan, became an eminent professor of economics at the London School of Economics. Honma Hisao, about whom Yoko Hirata has written, was the Japanese expert on Oscar Wilde. Shimamura Ho¯getsu who is portrayed by Norimasa Morita became fascinated with theatre in Britain and introduced into Japan what came to be called Shingeki. Muto Chozo, the subject of a portrait by Eleanor Robinson wrote the first history of Anglo-Japanese relations. xv

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Yanada Senji, about whose life and work in Britain Sadao Oba and Anne Kaneko have written, taught Japanese at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) during and after the Second World War. He was a conscientious teacher who faced the dilemma of choosing between the country of his birth and the country of his adoption. Sakurai Jo¯ji, the subject of a portrait by Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, was a pioneering Japanese chemist who became a leader in Japanese science in the years before the Second World War. The section devoted to ‘British Scholars’ begins with an account also by Yoshiyuki Kikuchi of two British chemists, Edward Divers and Robert William Anderson who taught in Japan in the Meiji period. They made a significant contribution to the study of chemistry in Japan as it began to adopt Western science. Edward Gatenby, about whose life Paul Snowden has contributed a portrait, was a pioneer in the teaching of English as a foreign language. He and A.S. Hornby, who also worked in Japan and whose portrait was penned by Paul Snowden in volume VIII in this series, were two of the three editors of the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary and carried forward the pioneering work of Harold E. Palmer whose life was described in Volume IV by Richard Smith and Imura Motomichi. Wolf Mendl and John Sargent were scholars whose contribution to our understanding of modern Japan should not be forgotten. Wolf Mendl, the subject of a portrait by Ian Nish, specialized in international relations. John Sargent was a leading geographer of Japan who taught and researched at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London. Grace and Kate James who are the subject of a study by Noboru Koyama were writers of children’s stories and popularized Japanese fairy stories. ‘Politicians and Officials’ have in the past been covered in the opening part of the volume. Here they have been moved to the final section. This is not intended to denigrate their importance, but rather to emphasize that the relationship between Britain and Japan was much wider than the sphere of politicians and officials. The first section comprises portraits of three Japanese who had close connections with Britain. Kato¯ Hiroharu, who is described by Ian Nish, was a Japanese admiral who served as naval attaché in London. His friendly feelings towards Britain were dissipated following the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. Fukuda Takeo, who is described by Eiji Seki and me, was a Japanese prime minister who spent three years in London during his time as an official of the ministry of finance. Like a number of other Japanese politicians of the late twentieth century he admired Margaret Thatcher. xvi

INTRODUCTION

Shirasu Jiro, whom Eiichiro Tokumoto describes as a complicated and enigmatic personality, enjoyed his time at Cambridge in the 1920s and took on some of the characteristics of the English pre-war upper class. He was a protégé of Yoshida Shigeru and pulled many strings in politics and commerce. In the next section two very different British officers are described. Sir Henry Keppel was a distinguished British Admiral. While his involvement with Japan was relatively short it covered the crucial years, which saw the end of the bakufu and the beginning of the Meiji period. Major Yate, about whom Yahya Shaigiya-Abdelsamad has contributed a portrait, was a British army officer who studied Japanese and was an observer in the Russo-Japanese War of 1904–5. Serving in France in 1914 he was awarded the Victoria Cross for conspicuous gallantry. He became a prisoner of war, but died in circumstances, which are clarified by the author. Sir Nicholas Hannen and R. A. Mowat were British judges of the consular courts, which operated under extraterritoriality until 1899. Their lives are described By Christopher Roberts who has become the leading expert on the operation of extraterritoriality in Japan. This volume contains a portrait of only one British Official, Sir Francis Bertie by Thomas Otte. Bertie never came anywhere near Japan but played an important role in the drafting of the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The seven ‘British Political Figures’ who feature in the final section of this volume span over a century from the early 1870s to the late 1980s. Lord Granville, whose work on Anglo-Japanese relations is described by Andrew Cobbing, was a conscientious foreign secretary who in relations with Japan relied on the advice of the British minister in Tokyo, Sir Harry Parkes. It fell to him to deal with the important Iwakura Mission, which Andrew Cobbing described in volume VIII in this series. Arthur Balfour, whose role in the Anglo-Japanese context is explained by Ian Nish, became a mediator in the fraught relations between Japan and China at the Versailles Peace Conference. He was content to see the Anglo-Japanese Alliance lapse in 1921. The next three portraits are by Antony Best who has made detailed studies of the events leading up to the Second World War. His first portrait is of Sir John Simon, to whom as foreign secretary the task of dealing with Japan over Manchuria inevitably fell. His failure to take effective measures to stem Japanese aggression tarnished his reputation. Lord Halifax is popularly associated with the appeasement policies of Neville Chamberlain but as Antony Best explains Halifax xvii

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

who took a highly moral approach to foreign affairs ‘was naturally disinclined to take a sympathetic view of Japanese aggression in China. Thus, the common themes of his time at the Foreign Office are his efforts to do more for China and to try to take as tough a stand as circumstances allowed during crises with the Japanese.’ Sir Anthony Eden’s ‘view of Japan was cold at best and overtly hostile at worst’. His son was killed while serving in Burma. Nevertheless, he realized that in the post-war world ‘Britain could not afford, against the background of the Cold War, to leave Japan isolated lest it fall into the communist orbit.’ It fell to Ernest Bevin as foreign secretary to deal with policies towards Japan in the occupation and the drafting of the Peace Treaty with Japan. Inevitably, as Roger Buckley in his essay in this volume points out, Japan could not be a top priority for the foreign secretary as the Cold War developed. Relations with the United States were of paramount importance. Nevertheless, Bevin and the foreign office ‘achieved some decent measure of success in their occupation policies’ but the war had fundamentally undermined British power and prestige in the Far East and Britain could no longer play an imperial role. The last chapter is an attempt by me to assess Margaret Thatcher’s role in the development of Anglo-Japanese relations in the 1980s. As I point out she ‘made a significant contribution to relations between Britain and Japan. She recognized Japan’s post-war economic achievements, urged the Japanese to open up their market and promoted British exports to Japan.’

xviii

List of Contributors Abdelsamad, Yahya Shaigiya, former research student in Japanese modern history at Kyoto University, Graduate School of Law and Letters, Internal Audit Analyst at Millennium Hedge Fund, New York. Albery, Nobuko, (Lady), writer and novelist, widow of the late Sir Donald Albery. Best, Antony, (Dr), senior lecturer in International History at the London School of Economics (LSE). Buckley, Roger, historian and writer, formerly Professor at the International Christian University, Tokyo. Budden, Paul, Kendo expert and teacher who has studied, researched and practised martial arts for over fifty years. Chakmakjian, Pauline (MA), an independent lecturer, member of the board of trustees of the Japan Society from 2008 to 2014. Cobb, David, educational writer of EFL books, founded the British Haiku Society in 1990. His own published haiku have been honoured with a variety of awards. Cobbing, Andrew, (Dr), Associate Professor in Japanese History, University of Nottingham. Cortazzi, Hugh, (Sir, GCMG) British ambassador to Japan 1980– 1984, chairman Japan Society 1985–1995. Curtin, J. Sean, commentator and writer on Japan, former academic with an interest in Sino-Japanese relations and Japanese politics. Daniels, Gordon, (Dr), former Reader in Japanese History, University of Sheffield. Dimond, Paul (CMG), former British ambassador to the Philippines and commercial counsellor in Tokyo. Emmott, Bill, former deputy editor of The Economist, author and journalist. Galbraith, Mike, President of Interworld Ltd, historian and writer covering Meiji Japan, especially early history of Western sports and info-communications technology. Hardman, Graham, garden designer, former chairman of the Japanese Garden Society. Hirata Yoko, (Dr), former professor at Chuo University, researching European influence on Japanese social and literary ideals during early twentieth century.

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BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Huberman, Toni, has written and researched on Anglo-Japanese personalities. Hunter, Janet, (Dr), Professor in economic history, London School of Economics (LSE). Imamura Akira, formerly Minister at the Japanese Embassy in London, now deputy Japanese Ambassador in Australia. Ion, Hamish, (Dr), Professor of History, Royal Military College of Canada. Jack, Stuart, (CVO), formerly Governor of the Cayman Islands and Minister in the British Embassy in Tokyo. Kaneko, Anne, translator, former editor of Japan Society Proceedings. Kato Setsuo, journalist, General Committee, Nippon Club. Kikuchi Yoshiyuki, historian of science, associate professor ‘Science and Society’ Program, The Graduate University for Advanced Studies (Sokendai), Hayama, Japan. Koyama Noboru, Head of Japanese Department, Cambridge University Library. Maclean, Nicolas, (CMG), businessman, former banker, co-chairman of Japan400. Morton, Robert, Professor at Chuo University, Tokyo and former President of the Asiatic Society of Japan. Nish, Ian (CBE, Dr), Emeritus Professor of International History at the London School of Economics (LSE). Oba Sadao, retired businessman who has researched Anglo-Japanese relations, author of The Japanese War, Japan Library, 1995. Otte, Thomas, (Dr), Professor of Diplomatic History, University of East Anglia (UEA). Pilcher, John (Sir, GCMG), deceased, British Ambassador to Japan, 1967–1972, twice chairman of the Japan Society. Roberts, Chris, (Dr), retired solicitor, author of The British Courts and Extraterritoriality in Japan 1859–1899, Global Oriental, 2014. Robinson, Eleanor, Associate Professor, Osaka University. Saito Yoshifumi, (Dr), Professor of Education at the University of Tokyo, has been working on a wide range of fields including English stylistics, literary theory, translation, and English language teaching. Sansbury-Talks, Audrey, author of A Tale of Two Japans: Ten Years to Pearl Harbor, Book Guild Publishing, 2010, Japanese edition Seikokai Shuppan, 2013. Seki Eiji, former Japanese Ambassador and historian. Snell, Bill, Private researcher and military historian. Snowden, Paul, Waseda University, Tokyo, lexicographer and author. Thorne, Ben (CMG, MBE), retired official of Board of Trade, diplomat and businessman. xx

LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS

Tokumoto Eiichiro, author and historian, former Reuters Correspondent. Tomida Hiroko, (Dr), lecturer at school of East Asian Studies, University of Sheffield, research fellow at School of Asian Studies, University of Edinburgh, currently teaching at Waseda University. Townsend, Susan, Associate Professor of Japanese History at the University of Nottingham, specializes in the intellectual history of Japan in the 1920s and 1930s, published monographs on Yanaihara Tadao and Miki Kiyoshi. Watanabe Toshio, Art historian, Professor of History of Art and Design at the University of the Arts in London. Wooldridge, Adrian, Schumpeter management columnist of The Economist.

xxi

Index of Biographical Portraits and Memoirs in Japan Society Volumes ABBREVIATIONS: Britain & Japan, 1859-1991: Themes and Personalities, Routledge, 1991 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume I, Japan Library, 1994 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, Japan Library, 1997 Britain &Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, Japan Library, 1999 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, Japan Library, 2002 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2004 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, Global Oriental, 2007 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VII. Global Oriental, 2010 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, Global Oriental, 2013 Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IX, Renaissance Books 2015 British Envoys in Japan, 1859-1972 Global Oriental, 2004 Japanese Envoys in Britain, 1862-1964 Global Oriental, 2007 Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views Post-War Japan Through British Eyes Japan Library, 2001 Abraham, Catain A.J. RN Adams, Sir Francis Ottiwell Alcock, Sir Rutherford Allen, G.C. Allen, Louis Anderson, William Anzai Tatsuo (in Three Great Japanese Translators of Shakespeare) Aoki Shu¯zo¯

xxii

Hugh Cortazzi Hugh Cortazzi Sarah Metzger Court Phillida Purvis James Rawlins Peter Milward Ian Nish

T&P I II III IV V VI VII VIII IX B.ENV J.ENV EXP EXP VII II and B.ENV T&P V and EXP V V J.ENV III

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Architecture, Changing Perceptions of Japanese Ariyoshi Yoshiya Armstrong Vickers Arnold, Sir Edwin Asakai Koichiro Ashton-Gwatkin, Frank Aso Kazuko Aston, W.G. Atkinson, Robert William Ayrton, Professor W.E. Baba Tatsui Baker, Kathleen Drew Baker, Kenneth Baker-Bates, Merrick Balfour, Arthur Barr, Dugald Barrett, Mike Barrington, Sir Nicholas Batchelor, John Bates, Paul Bates, Peter Baty, Dr Thomas Beasley, William Beatles in Japan, The Report on Beatles in Japan Bertie, Sir Francis Bethell, Ernest Thomas Bevin, Ernest Bickersteth, Bishop Edward (with Shaw, Alexander C.) Bird, Isabells Blacker, Carmen Blakiston, Thomas Wright Bland, J.O.P. Blunden, Edmund Blyth, R.H. Bodley, R.V.C. Bottrall, Ronald Bowes, James Lord

Anna Basham Hugh Cortazzi Marie Conte-Helm Carmen Blacker Tomoki Kuniyoshi Ian Nish Phillida Purvis Peter Kornicki Yoshiyuki Kikuchi Ian Ruxton Helen Ballhatchet John Baker and Frances Biggs

Ian Nish

Hugh Cortazzi

Martin Gornall Ian Nish Gordon Daniels, Robert Whitaker Dudley Cheke Thomas Otte Chin-Sok Chong Roger Buckley Hamish Ion Pat Barr Peter Kornicki Hugh Cortazzi Antony Best Adrian Pinnington Bill Snell Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere

Bownas, Geoffrey Boxer, Charles James Cummins Boyd, Sir John (with Julia, Lady Boyd)

xxiii

VII III I IV J.ENV I (also in EXP) III T&P, B.ENV IX IV T&P VI EXP EXP IX EXP EXP EXP II EXP EXP V VII and EXP VI

IX VIII IX III I VII and EXP III VII EXP I IX EXP VI EXP IV EXP

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Bradley, Clive Brammall, Edwin (Lord) Field Marshal Brangwyn, Frank Brinkley, Captain Francis Britain and Japan: Musical Exchanges before World War II British Bible Societies and the Translation of the Bible into Japanese in theNineteenth Century British Export Marketing Centre and the Promotion of British Exports from 1972, The British Week in Tokyo, 1969 Britten, Benjamin (Lord) Britton, Dorothy (Lady Bouchier) Britton, Frank Broughton, Captain Brown, Albert (in Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK)) Buckley, Roger Bull, George Bunting, Isaac Burton, W.K. Bush, Lewis Businessmen, Japanese, in the U.K. Busk, Douglas (in Memoir of Tokyo December 1941) Butler, R.A. (with Lord Hamkey) Byas, Hugh Calthrop, Lt. Col. R.F. Campbell White, Martin Cane, Ella Du Carter, Angela Casson, Sir Hugh Ceadel, Eric Chamberlain, Austen and Neville Chamberlain, Basil Hall Chichibu, Prince and Princess Chinda Sutemi Chino Yoshitoki and the Daiwa Foundation Cholmondeley, Lionel Berners

EXP EXP Libby Horner J.E. Hoare Akira Imamura

VII III IX

Hamish Ion

IX

Paul Dimond

IX

Ben Thorne Jason James

Dorothy Bouchier (Britton) J.E. Hoare Hiroyuki Takeno

Prue James Olive Checkland Sadao Oba

Antony Best Peter O’Connor Sebastian Dobson Toni Huberman Roger Buckley Peter Kornicki Antony Best Richard Bowring Dorothy Britton Ian Nish Nick Clegg Hamish Ion

xxiv

IX VIII See also EXP EXP VI III V EXP EXP VII IV EXP II VII V VI VIII EXP IX VI EXP V and EXP VII T&P V J.ENV V VI II

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Christ Church, Yokohama (18621872), and its First Incumbent Michael Buckworth Bailey Churchill, Winston Clark, Kenneth (Lord) Clive, Sir Robert Close, Reginald Comfort, Ernest Commercial Treaty, Anglo-Japanese

Hamish Ion

Eiji Seki Antony Best

J.E. Hoare Robin Gray and Sosuke Hanaoka Commonwealth War Graves Cemetery Len Harrop at Yokohama Conder, Josiah, (as architect) Dallas Finn Conder, Josiah, (on Japanese landscape Toshio Watanabe gardening) Connors, Lesley Conroy, Timothy or Taid or Taig Peter O’Connor Consular Service, Britain’s Japan J.E. Hoare Consular Service, British consuls in the J.E. Hoare Japanese Empire Conyngham Greene (see Greene) Corner, John Carmen Blacker Cornes, Frederick Peter. N. Davies Cornwall Legh, Mary Helena Shigeru Nakamura Cortazzi, Sir Hugh Cousins, James David Burleigh Cox, James Melville Hugh Cortazzi Craigie, Sir Robert Antony Best Cricket in Late Edo and Meiji Mike Galbraith Japan Crown Prince Akihito (in Britain) Hugh Cortazzi Crown Prince Hitohito (in Britain) Ian Nish (See also Showa Emperor’s state visit) Curzon, Lord Ian Nish Daniels, Otome and Frank Dean, Colonel Peter Dening, Sir Esler

Ron Dore

Dening, Walter Dickins, F.V. Divers, Edward Dore, Ronald Douglas, Archibald (Naval Mission) Duckenfield, Ron Dunn, Charles J.

Hamish Ion Peter Kornicki Yoshiyuki Kikuchi

Roger Buckley

Ian Gow Koji Hoashi Hugh Cortazzi

xxv

IX

VI EXP IV EXP VI II Appendix I (a) V T&P VIII EXP V II and B ENV VIII

V V VIII EXP VII VIII I and B.ENV IX V II V I EXP T&P and B.ENV VII III IX EXP III VIII VIII

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Dyer, Henry

Olive Checkland

III

Eden, Sir Anthony Edwardes, Arthur Eguchi Takayuki Eliot, Sir Charles

Antony Best Antony Best Edna Read Neal Dennis Smith

IX III III T&P and B.ENV EXP EXP EXP EXP EXP IV I

Ellingworth, Dick (R.H.) Elstob, Eric Elston, Chris Emery, Fre Emmott, W. G. Empson, William Engineers, Japanese, in Britain before 1914 Enright, Dennis Everest, Philip Ewing, James Alfred Exhibition, Japan-British, of 1910 Expo ’70, Osaka Fakes, Neville Faulds, Henry Fenton, John William Festing, Field Marshal Sir Francis W. Figgess, Sir John Fisher, Charles Alfred Fisher, Admiral Sir John Fleming, Ian Football (Soccer), British Links with Japanese Football (Rugby) (see Rugby) Forrest, Gail Forrest, Captain Mike R.N. Fortune, Robert (in Early Plant Collectors in Japan) Franks, Augustus Wollaston Fraser, Duncan Fraser, G.S. Fraser, Hugh Freemasonry in Japan Freeth, Florence May Fukuda Takeo

John Haffenden Olive Checkland Russell Greenwood Neil Pedlar Ayako Hotta-Lister John Pilcher

EXP IV IX VIII

Ian Nish Akira Imamura Yahya ShahgiyaAbdelsamad Hugh Cortazzi Gordon Daniels John Chapman John Hatcher Derek Bleakley

III and EXP VIII V VI VII

Amanda Herries

EXP EXP IV

Nicole Coolidge Rousmaniere Eileen Fraser Hugh Cortazzi Pauline Chakmakjian Rob Freeth Eiji Seki and Hugh Cortazi

xxvi

V and EXP EXP III I IX

VI EXP V and EXP IV and B.ENV IX VII IX

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Fukuda Tsuneari (in Three Great Peter Milward Japanese Translators of Shakespeare) Fukuzawa Yukichi (Finances of a Norio Tamaki Japanese Moderniser) Garden designers, Early Japanese…in Britain and Ireland Gardner, Kenneth Gascoigne, Sir Alvary Gatenby, Edward Vivian Gauntlett, G. E. L. Giffard, Sir Sydney Gintaro Gold Standard, Japan’s adoption of and London Money Markets, Golf (see Groom, Arthur Hesketh) Gomersall, Lydia (Lady Gommersall) Gordon, Elizabeth Anna Gorman, George Gowland, William Granville, Lord Graves, British in other parts of Japan

Jill Raggett Yu-Ying Brown Peter Lowe Paul Snowden Saiko Gauntlett Peter Brunning Norio Tamaki

Noboru Koyama Drborah MacFarlane Simon Kaner Andrew Cobbing Phillida Purvis

Great Japan Exhibition, 1981-82, The Greene, Sir W. Conyngham Grey, Sir Edward Groom, Arthur Hesketh Gubbins, J. H. Guest, Harry

Nicolas MacLean Peter Lowe Ian Nish Angus Lockyer Ian Nish

Haiku in the British Isles: A Tale of Acceptance and Non-Acceptance Halifax, Lord Hamilton, General Sir Ian Hand, Peter Hankey, Lord (with R.A.Butler) Hannen, Sir Nicholas John Hara Bushõ Harmswoth, Alfred (Lord Northcliffe) Hart, Ernest Hasegawa Nyozekan Hawley, Frank Hayashi Gonsuke Hayashi Tadasu Haylock, John Healey, Denis (Lord) Hearn, Lafcadio

David Cobb Antony Best Peter Kornicki Antony Best Christopher Roberts Hugh Cortazzi Peter O’Connor Noboru Koyama Ayako Hotta-Lister Manabu Yokoyama Harumi Goto-Shibata Ian Nish

Paul Murray

xxvii

V III

VII VII and EXP I and B.ENV IX VI EXP VII I

EXP VIII VIII VI IX Appendix II (c) V IX IV and B.ENV VIII VII II and B.ENV EXP IX IX VII EXP V IX VIII VII VIII V V J.ENV and V T&P and J.ENV EXP EXP II

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Heaslett, Bishop Samuel Heath, Sir Edward Hendry, Joy Henry, George Hewitt, Peter Hitch, Brian Hockney, David Hodgson, Ralph Holme, Charles Honda So¯ichiro Honma Hisao Hornby, Alfred Sydney Hornel, E.A. Horse Racing Horsley, William HSBC (Pioneers in Japan 1866-1900) Hudson, Sue Huish, Marcus Humphreys, Christmas Hunter, Janet

Hamish Ion Hugh Cortazzi Ayako Ono Merrick Baker-Bates

John Hatcher Toni Huberman Hugh Cortazzi Yoko Hirata Paul Snowden Ayako Ono Roger Buckley Edwin Green Hideko Numata Carmen Blacker

V VI EXP VIII IV EXP EXP V VI VI IX VIII VIII VII EXP V EXP V II EXP

Ichikawa Sanki Inagaki Manjiro Inoue Kaoru Inoue Masaru Inouye Katsunosuke Introduction of Football from Britain into Nineteenth-century Japan Ito Hirobumi (in Britain) Itoh Eikichi and Itoh Rosa Hideko Iwakura Tomomi

Saito Yoshifumi Noboru Koyama Andrew Cobbing Yumiyo Yamamoto Ian Nish Mike Galbraith Andrew Cobbing Keiko Itoh Andrew Cobbing

III VIII VIII

James, Grace James, John Mathews James, Mrs T.H. (Kate) James, Thomas (in Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK)) Japan and Ye Sette of Odd Volumes and London’s Thirteen Club in the 1890s Japan Chronicle Japan Society, History of Japanese Embassy in London and its buildings Japanese Gardens and the Japanese Garden Society in the UK Jenkyn, Patrick (Lord) Jerram, Admiral Sir Martyn

Noburu Koyama Sebastian Dobson Noburu Koyama Hiroyuki Takeno

IX VIII IX V

xxviii

Hugh Cortazzi Peter O’Connor Hugh Cortazzi Shozo Kadota Graham Hardman

John Chapman

IX VI VII II J.ENV V IX

IX IV T&P J.ENV IX EXP VII

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Johnson, Sarah Journalists, British, in Meiji Japan Judo Pioneers Kaneko, Anne Kano Hisaakira Kazuo Kikuta Kato Hiraharu Kato¯ Takaaki Kawakita Nagamasa Kawanabe Kyo¯sai Kawase Masataka Keith, Elizabeth Kennard, Edward Allington (in Japan Chronicle) Kennedy, John Russell Kennedy, Malcolm Keppel, Sir Henry Keswick, William Kikuchi Dairoku Killearn, Lord (see Lampson, Sir Miles) Kinch, Edward King, Francis Kirkup, James Kiuchi Kyo¯zo¯ (British training for Japanese engineers) Knott, Cargill Gilston Koestler, Arthur Koizumi Gunji Komura Ju¯taro¯ Ko¯ri Torahiko Kornicki, Peter Kurihara Chûji

J.E. Hoare Richard Bowen

Keiko Itoh Nobuko Albery Ian Nish Ian Nish Gordon Daniels Olive Checkland Ayako-Hotta-Lister Dorothy Bouchier Peter O’Connor

EXP III IX IX J.ENV, IV IX III J.ENV VI IV

Peter O’Connor John Pardoe Robert Morton J.E. Hoare Noboru Koyama

V T&P IX IV V

Erico Kumazawa

VII EXP VIII T&P

David Burleigh Janet Hunter Paul Kabrna Richard Bowen Ian Nish Norimasa Morita Libby Horner

Lampson, Sir Miles Large, Dick (Richard) Lascelles, Sir Daniel

David Steeds

Lawyers, British, in Japan 1859-99 Leach, Bernard and the Mingei Movement Lean, David Leggett, Trevor Price

Chris Roberts Hugh Cortazzi

Liberty, Lasenby Lindley, Sir Francis Littler, Sir Geolffrey

EXP I V

Hugh Cortazzi

Norimasa Morita Anthony Dunne and Richard Bowen Sonia Ashmore Ian Nish

xxix

VII EXP IV J.ENV and V VII EXP VIII VII EXP B.ENV (See also EXP) VIII I VIII IV IV IV and B.ENV EXP

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Lloyd, Arthur Longford, Joseph Lowe, Peter

Hamish Ion Ian Ruxton Ian Nish

MacDonald, Sir Claude MacDonald, Malcolm Macrae, Norman

Ian Nish John Weste Bill Emmott and Adrian Woolridge Janet Hunter Ian Nish Phillida Purvis Carmen Blacker Noboru Koyama

Maejima Hisoka Makino Shinken (Nobuaki) Malins, Philip Markino, Yoshio Marriages, Three Meiji Martin, Peter Maruyama Masao Matsudaira Tsuneo Matsui Keishiro Matsubayashi Tsuranosuke Matsukata Kõjirõ Matsukata Masayoshi (see Gold Standard, Japan’s Adoption of) Matsumoto Shunichi Maugham, Somerset Mayall, Sir Lees McCallum, Graham McCaul, Sister Ethel McGreevey,Adrian Mendl, Wolf Menpes, Mortimer Luddington Michio Morishima Minakata Kumagusu Minami Teisuke (in Three Meiji Marriages) Mingei movement (in Bernard Leach and) Missionaries, British, in Meiji Japan Mitford, A.B. Mitsui in London Miyazawa Kiichi Morel, Edward Mori Arinori Morita Akio Morland, Sir Oscar Morris, Ivan Morris, John (with Orwell, George and BBC) Morrison, Arthur

xxx

Rikki Kersten Ian Nish Tadashi Kuramatsu Shinya Maezaki Libby Horner

Takahiko Tanaka John Hatcher

Gordon Daniels Ian Nish Sonia Ashmore Janet Hunter Carmen Blacker Noboru Koyama Hugh Cortazzi Helen Ballhatchet Robert Morton Sadao Oba Arthur Stockwin Yoshiko Morita Anthony Cobbing Hugh Cortazzi John Whitehead Nobuko Albery Neil Pedlar Noboru Koyama

VII VI VIII I and B.ENV VII IX I VIII VII I IV EXP VI J.ENV I J.ENV V VIII VIII

J.ENV VI EXP EXP VII EXP IX VIII IX I IV I I VIII V VIII II J.ENV IV VI B.ENV and EXP IV III and EXP VII

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Morrison, G.E. Mountaineering in Japan Mowat, Robert Anderson Munro, Gordon Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ Mutsu Family Naish, John Nakai Hiromu Nakai Yoshigusu (see Gold Standard, Japan’s Adoption of) Nakamura Masanao (Keiu) Natsume Sõseki (see Sõseki) Naylor, Martin Neale, Lt Col St John Nichols, Robert Ninagawa Yukio Nippon Club, 1881–2014, The Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK) Nish, Ian Nishi Haruhiko Nishiwaki Junzaburo¯ Nissan and the British Motor Vehicle Industry Nissan: History of a Negotiation Nitobe Inazo Noguchi Yone Northcliffe (see Harmsworth, Alfred) Novelists, Japan’s Post-war Occupied Japan through the eyes of British Journalists O’Conroy see Conroy Odajima Yu¯shi (in Three Great Japanese Translators of Shakespeare) ¯ e Sumi O Ohno Katsumi Okada, Sumie Oliphant, Laurence O’Neill, Patrick Geoffrey Orwell, George (with Morris, John and BBC) Otsuka Hisao Ozaki Saburo (in Three Meiji Marriages) Ozaki Yukio

Antony Best Hamish Ion Christopher Roberts Jane Wilkinson Eleanor Robinson Ian Mutsu

VIII IX IX I IX II

Eleanor Robinson

EXP VII

Akiko Ohta

Hugh Cortazzi George Hughes Daniel Gallimore Setsuo Kato Hiroyuki Takeno Ian Nish Norimasu Morita Christopher Madeley Robin Mountfield Ian Nish Norimasa Morita

IV EXP B.ENV V III IX V EXP J.ENV V VI VI VI VIII

Sydney Giffard

II

Roger Buckley

I

Peter Milward Hiroko Tomida Eiji Seki Carmen Blacker Phillida Purvis Neil Pedlar Eiri Saitõ Noboru Koyama Fujiko Hara

xxxi

IV IX J.ENV (quoted in) EXP II VIII III VIII IV V

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Pakenham, Captain (later Admiral) W.C. Palmer, Harold E.

John Chapman Richard C. Smith and Imura Motomichi Jiro Higuchi Hugh Cortazzi Hugh Cortazzi Toshio Watanabe Ann Trotter C.Maddeley

Palmer, Henry Spencer Parker, Sir Peter Parkes, Sir Harry Parsons, Alfred Patrick, William Donald (Lord) Penniall, Albert James Perry, Sir Michael Pfeiffer, Susanne Piggott, Sir F.T. (and Maj. Gen F.S.G.) Piggott, Maj. Gen F.S.G. Pilcher, Sir John Pinnell, Alan Plant Collectors in Japan, Early Plomer, William Plunkett, Sir Francis Ponsonby-Fane, Richard Ponting, Herbert George Potter, Beatrix Powell, Anthony Powers, David Purvis, Christopher Purvis, Phillida

Carmen Blacker Antony Best Hugh Cortazzi Amanda Herries Louis Allen Hugh Cortazzi Dorothy Britton Terry Bennett George Wallace

Radbourne, Lew Rattler, HMS, Loss of Redman, Sir Vere Reed, Sir Edward Return of Japan’s Lost Telescope after 400 Years, The Riddell, Hannah Ridsdale, Sir Julian Ripley, Eddie Robertson-Scott, J.W. Robinson, Basil Robinson, Peter Roll, Eric Rosebery, Lord Rothschild, Edmund Rowing (as a sport-see Strange, F.W.) Royal Alliance: Court Diplomacy Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Period

xxxii

Hugh Cortazzi Hugh Cortazzi Hugh Cortazzi Sean Curtin Julia Boyd Dugald Barr Mari Nakami Yahya Abdelsamad Martin Gordon Ian Nish Jun Kochi Antony Best Hugh Cortazzi

V IV IV VI and EXP I and B.ENV IX VIII III EXP EXP T&P and EXP VIII III and B.ENV EXP IV T&P IV and B.ENV II IV VIII EXP EXP EXP EXP EXP V II (also EXP) VII IX II VII and EXP EXP II V EXP VI VII EXP VIII VI II

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Rugby Football in Japan Rundall, Sir Francis Russell Cotes, Sir Merton and Anne Russell, Bertrand Russo-Japanese War, British Naval and Military Observers

Alison Nish Hugh Cortazzi Shaun Garner Toshihiko Miura Philip Towle

Saitõ Makoto Saitõ Takeshi Sakurai Jo¯ji Salisbury, Lord Sameshima Naonobu in J.Envoys 1862-72 Sannomiya Yoshitane (in Three Meiji Marriages) Sansbury, Bishop Kenneth Sansom, Sir George

Tadashi Kuramatsu Hisaaki Yamanouchi Yoshiyuki Kikuchi Thomas. G. Otte Hugh Cortazzi

Audrey Sansbury Talks Gordon Daniels

Sargent, John Satow, Sir Ernest

Various Peter Kornicki

Satow, Sir Ernest as Minister in Tokyo (See also Japan Consular correspondence in Satow’s papers in supplement to bibliography in VIII) Scotch Whisky in Japan Scott, Sir Robert Heatlie Scott-Stokes, Henry Sempill, Lord Sessue Hayakawa Shakespeare, Three Great Japanese Translators of Shand, Alexander Alan

Ian Ruxton

Shaw, Alexander Croft (with Bickersteth, Edward) Shaw, George Bernard Shigemitsu, Mamoru Shimamura Ho¯getsu Shirasu Jiro¯ Showa Emperor (His State Visit to Britain) Simon, Sir John Sitwell, Sacheverell Sladen, Douglas Soseki, Natsume (and the PreRaphaelites)

Noboru Koyama

Stuart Jack Peter Lowe Antony Best Norimasa Morita Peter Milward Olive Checkland and Norio Tamaki Hamish Ion Bernard F. Dukore Antony Best Norimasa Morita Eiichiro Tokumoto Hugh Cortazzi Antony Best Hugh Cortazzi Sammy Tsunematsu

xxxiii

III B.ENV and EXP VII VII III

III VIII IX VIII J.ENV IV IX T&P and B.ENV IX T&P and B.ENV IV and B.ENV

IX VII EXP IV IX V II III VII J.ENV and II IX IX VI IX EXP VIII III

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Spender, Sir Stephen Spring Rice, Sir Cecil Stains, Ian, de Stephenson, Commander (later Admiral Sir Henry) in Loss of HMS Rattler Stopes, Marie Storry, Richard Strange, F.W (and the introduction into Japan of Rowing as a sport) Suematsu Kencho¯ Summers, James Sutherland, William B. Sutton, Frederick William Swan, Peter Swire, John Samuel Takahashi Korekiyo (see Gold Standard, Japan’s Adoption of) Takaki Kanehiro Taki Handa

Ian Nish Hugh Cortazzi

Carmen Blacker Ian Nish Jun Kochi Ian Ruxton Noboru Koyama Monika Bincsik Sebastian Dobson Charlotte Bleasdale

Jerry K Matsumura Jill Raggett, Yuka Kajihara-Nolan & Jason Nolan Tani Yukio (see Judo Pioneers) Richard Bowen Tatsuno Kingo Ian Ruxton Tattooists and the British Royal Family Noboru Koyama Tennis, (British contribution to Tennis Keiko Itoh in Japan) Terashima Munenori Andrew Cobbing Thatcher, Margaret Hugh Cortazzi Thorne, Ben Three Ages of British Kendo: The Paul Budden Introduction of a Unique Sporting and Cultural Activity Thurley, Keith Nicholas MacLean Thwaite, Anthony Tilley, Sir John Harumi Goto-Shibata Tiltman, Hessell Roger Buckley To¯go¯ Heihachiro¯ Kiyoshi Ikeda Tokyo, December 1941, a memoir Douglas Busk Tomimoto Kenkichi Hugh Cortazzi Tomlin, Frederick Toynbee, Arnold Louis Turner Toyoda Sho¯ichiro Toyoda Sho¯ichiro Tracy, Honor Trench, Hon. Henry Le Poer Hugh Cortazzi Trenchard, Hugh (Lord)

xxxiv

EXP VII EXP V

T&P V and EXP VIII V III VIII IV EXP IV

V VIII

V VII VI VIII J.ENV and V IX EXP IX

VII EXP IV and B.ENV V and EXP I VII VIII EXP VII VI EXP B.ENV EXP

BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS AND MEMOIRS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯ Tuck, Captain Oswald Tuohy, Frank Tyndale, Walter

Brian Powell Sue Jarvis David Burleigh Toni Huberman

Ueno Kagenori

Andrew Cobbing and Inozuka Takaaki Libby Horner Douglas Farnie Sebastian Dobson Hugh Cortazzi

Urushibara Mokuchu¯ Utley, Freda Utsunomiya Tarõ Uyeno Yutaka Van der Post, Sir Laurens Veitch, John Gould (in Early Plant Collectors in Japan) Waley, Arthur Warner, Simone (Lady Warner) Waters, T.P. Webb, Sydney and Beatrice Wedderburn, Gren Wells Coates Weston, Walter Whitehead, Carolyn (Lady Whitehead) Whitehead, Sir John Wilford, Sir Michael Wilkinson, Ann Wilkinson, David Wilkinson, Sir Hiram Shaw Williamson, Bill Wingate, Michael Wirgman, Charles Wood, Christopher Woolf, Virginia Wright, Sir David Wright, Edward William Barton (in Judo Pioneers) Yamamoto Yao Yamanaka Sadajirõ Yamanashi Katsunoshin (Admiral) Yamao Yo¯zo¯ Yanada Senji Yanaihara Tadao Yate VC, Major C.A.L.

Amanda Herries

Philip Harries Neil Jackson Colin Holmes Anna Basham Hamish Ion

Chris Roberts

John Clark Noriko Kubota Richard Bowen

Gordon Daniels Monden Sonoko Haruko Fukuda Andrew Cobbing Sadao Oba and Anne Kaneko Susan Townsend Yahya ShaigiyaAbdelsamad

xxxv

T&P V VI VIII J.ENV VII IV VIII VI EXP IV

T&P EXP VII T&P EXP VII T&P EXP EXP EXP EXP EXP VIII EXP EXP T&P EXP VIII EXP V

IX VIII T&P VII IX IX IX

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery Yokohama Specie bank in London Yoshida Ken’ichi Yoshida Shigeru Yoshida Shigeru, Visit to London as Prime Minister in 1954 Yoshimoto Tadasu Young, David (Lord) Young, Morgan (in Japan Chronicle) Young, Robert (in Japan Chronicle)

xxxvi

Geraldine Wilcox Keiko Itoh Norimasa Morita Ian Nish Hugh Cortazzi Noboru Koyama Peter O’Connor

Appendix II (a) V V VI J.ENV II VI V EXP IV IV

PART I: JAPAN IN BRITAIN sTHINGS JAPANESE s 1

The Great Japan Exhibition, 1981–1982 NICOLAS MACLEAN

INTRODUCTION

‘The Great Japan Exhibition: Art of the Edo Period 1600–1868’, held at the Royal Academy of Arts in Piccadilly from 24 October 1981 to 21 February 1982,1 was a significant and unprecedented event in UK-Japanese cultural relations. According to the Royal Academy’s Annual Report of 1982 it was the most comprehensive exhibition ever devoted to its subject, even in Japan itself. With a budget of over £2m in Britain alone, (much more including Japanese expenses), and installation costs of over £400,000, the exhibition was the most expensive ever organized by the Royal Academy. In spite of misfortunes such as transport strikes and serious disruption caused by snow, over 523,000 paid visits to the exhibition took place.2 This was one of the highest attendances ever achieved in the history of the Royal Academy. The exhibition, which attracted extensive media coverage, even achieved a small surplus for the Royal Academy of £18,000. 1

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Many observers had feared that because of the complexity and cost of the exhibition it could never be mounted. The economic climate in Britain at the time was particularly difficult. BACKGROUND

This was not the first exhibition of Japanese art in Britain. After the success of a small exhibition of Japanese arts and crafts at an exhibition in Pall Mall in 1854 Sir Rutherford Alcock, the first British minister to Japan, had arranged for some Japanese art objects to be displayed at the international exhibition held in London in 1862.3 The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910 displayed an extensive range of Japanese art as well as commercial and industrial products.4 The International Exhibition of Chinese Art at The Royal Academy (28 November 1935–7 March 1936) had proved so popular that several new China-focused faculties were established at British universities largely as a result. The Royal Academy had hoped to follow the success of the Chinese exhibition with a similar major Japan exhibition, but the deteriorating international situation put a stop to this. In 1973/74 the Royal Academy put on an exhibition focused on China’s early dynasties up to and including the Yuan Dynasty (The Genius of China: An Exhibition of Archaeological Finds of the People’s Republic of China, 29 September 1973–23 January 1974). This had proved very popular and led to discussions about holding a Japanese exhibition of comparable quality. In his preface to The Great Japan Exhibition’s catalogue Sir Hugh Casson, the president of the Royal Academy, wrote: It has long been the ambition of the Royal Academy to stage a truly worthy exhibition of Japanese art. The difficulties of realizing such a project have always been daunting and at times seemed almost insurmountable. In 1977 however, encouraged by the enormous success of the Chinese Exhibition held three years before, we decided to have a serious try to realize our dream. A meeting was called to discuss with Professor William Watson – who had masterminded the Chinese Exhibition – what was to be the concept and how it could best be achieved. The aim was quickly agreed. It was to be something more spectacular than just an exhibition of Japanese Art Treasures – but something of a quality and scale that had never been attempted before, even in Japan. With the help of our advisory scholars we decided to concentrate upon the art of the Edo period between 1600 and 1868 when Japan was closed to the outside world and developed a highly individual society of its own – shown in such a way that the fascinating development and characteristics of that society could easily be understood by the visitor.

2

THE GREAT JAPAN EXHIBITION, 1981–1982

Formal and successful contacts were established with the Japanese Ambassador in London and shortly afterwards I visited Japan with Professor Watson. Our proposals were received by our Japanese colleagues with the greatest interest, but also with some scepticism as to whether so ambitious a plan could ever be realized. The difficulties (not only financial) were immense. The Japanese guard their culture with an admirable jealousy and many of the greatest works of art, particularly the great paintings on screens and sliding doors, are of a fragility, which makes any Western painting seem hardy in comparison. Yet all were agreed that unless major masterpieces of Japanese painting could be obtained the essential point of the exhibition would be invalidated. Our hope after all was to make the names of the great painters of Japan, Korin, Sotatsu, Okyo, Rosetsu and others as famous in England as the great printmakers, Utamaro, Hokusai and Hiroshige. PLANNING AND PREPARATION

The Royal Academy wanted to achieve a significant artistic success, which would help it extend its coverage of the world’s great cultures. Professor Watson, director of the Percival David Foundation, University of London, who had been appointed as curator of the exhibition, determined to achieve the highest quality exhibits. He was assisted by a small academic committee consisting of Lawrence Smith, keeper of Oriental Antiquities at the British Museum and Dr Oliver Impey, assistant keeper, Department of Eastern Art, Ashmolean Museum, Oxford. They were later joined by Joe Earle, assistant keeper, Far Eastern Department, Victoria & Albert Museum.5 The committee wanted to be innovative in their exploration of Japanese history during the period of Japan’s virtual closure to the Western world from 1638 to 1853 and to explain the true roots of modern Japan, thus disproving the then prevalent myth that Japan had only succeeded in the twentieth century by copying. The most serious problem was funding. Both the private and public sectors were under great pressure and many academicians thought it unwise for the Royal Academy, which was proud of its tradition of not asking for, or receiving, a public subsidy, to contemplate trying to raise funds for such a blockbuster exhibition. The Royal Academy accordingly decided to set up a high-level policy committee, comprising some of the ‘great and the good’, including Sir Denis Hamilton, then editor-in-chief and chairman of Times Newspapers Limited, who had co-sponsored Professor Watson’s Chinese exhibition at the Royal Academy.6

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The academic committee prepared a wish-list including some National Treasures and many Important Cultural Objects, the top two categories listed in the inventory of Japan’s national heritage by the Agency for Cultural Affairs (Bunkacho), which was responsible to the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture. This list, which was presented to the Bunkacho through the Japanese embassy in London and the foreign ministry, was startlingly ambitious. At the same time the credibility of the British demands was called into question by the fact that Times Newspapers had turned down sponsorship, and no willing sponsors or donors had been identified. Although the Japanese economy was resurgent, the Japanese authorities remained cautious, and some doubted the benefit to Japan of portraying what seemed to them an old and hackneyed image rather than that of the modern high-tech Japan. They were not persuaded by the argument that the British public would be more interested in Japan’s rich and colourful cultural roots and that the new high-tech Japan could come later. The impasse was unblocked by the agreement of Midland Bank, which had taken over Samuel Montagu, a firm of merchant bankers, where I was then an assistant director, to act as prime sponsor of the exhibition.7 Midland Bank, now part of HSBC, became prime sponsor, underwriting the exhibition against any loss as lead underwriter to the tune of £125,000, although they insisted that everything possible should be done to ensure that the Royal Academy should at least break even. They wanted a sponsorship group of other British companies interested in Japan to be formed with £100,000 underwriting stakes. After other British sponsors proved reluctant to engage, Midland agreed to take the front-end risk, so that additional sponsors would only by drawn on if losses of over £125,000 were incurred. Midland Bank then made a further gesture, offering to pay £125,000 to the Royal Academy immediately on an interest free basis to assist the cash flow of the exhibition. The impasse had, however, still not been unblocked, as the Japanese had not yet accepted the British proposal. Geoffrey Taylor of Midland Bank and I were invited to join the policy committee and I was appointed coordinator8 for the exhibition.9 The then Japanese Ambassador in London, Kato¯ Tadao,10 was a firm supporter from the beginning and had been encouraged by the enthusiasm for the project shown by Hugh Cortazzi, (later Sir Hugh), then deputy under-secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and from 1980 to 1984 British ambassador to Japan. Showa Shell Sekiyu KK became the second sponsor. Other sponsors were John Swire & Sons, Overseas Containers Limited and The Observer, Britain’s oldest Sunday newspaper.11

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His Imperial Highness The Crown Prince of Japan and His Royal Highness The Prince of Wales agreed to become joint patrons. A Committee of Honour was also established and included the two Prime Ministers: Suzuki Zenko and Margaret Thatcher.12 Parallel policy and executive committees were formed in Japan. The Japan Foundation13 agreed to cover local costs in Japan and part of certain shared costs such as air transport. Some works of art were considered too fragile or too precious to be allowed to travel. The conservation sub-committee had to take important early decisions on the conditions of light, heat and humidity required to preserve the art objects and as far as possible to simulate Japanese conditions. Works on paper were especially fragile.14 As Japan tends to be much more humid than Britain, there were debates on ways to reproduce appropriately moist conditions.15 The British Government indemnified the exhibition under the National Heritage Act 1980, in case of claims by lenders. The Japanese insisted early on that 80% of the exhibits could only be displayed for two months due to conservation concerns. Losing over a week in late December for the changeover would add to costs and reduce revenue, although the Christmas period was normally one of the quietest. A few exhibits had to be changed each month. However, the Japanese insistence on having a permanent team of over ten Japanese curators meant that the specialist manpower was on hand for changing exhibits.16 A further issue was design. The Royal Academy had asked the Japanese side to provide a designer, and the Japan Foundation chose the renowned architect Kurokawa Kisho. He understood traditional Edo Japan well, but wanted to make a modernist statement.17 As Kurokawa was mainly an architect, he brought with him a designer, Awazu Kiyoshi. Together they put forward a nezu-iro scheme in grey felt as the background for all objects to be displayed.18 Some of Kurokawa’s more grandiose ideas were vetoed by the finance sub-committee. There was much concern that the exhibition might never be built on time, as Japanese architects usually draw specifications more broadly than British workmen were used to. So a leading British architect, Alan Irvine, was appointed by the Royal Academy in order to bridge the cultural differences. He got on well with Kurokawa, and with the help of excellent exhibition construction by the regular Royal Academy contractor Ivor Heal the exhibition was ready on time and looked magnificent. The Academic Committee were concerned by the lack of a really superstar item. At last a star item was found on a visit to Japan – a tiger painted by Nagasawa Rosetsu on sliding doors in a temple in Kushimoto at the tip of the Kii peninsula.

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This was designated as an ‘Important Cultural Property’ and therefore special permission had to be obtained for it to be exhibited.19 The Great Japan Exhibition’s ‘star’ exhibit, which was eventually displayed on merchandised mugs and thousands of postcards, was one of the exhibition’s most memorable and immediately accessible examples of the skill, humanity, and humour of Japanese art.20 Other ‘star’ items included eight vibrant and colourful paintings by Itõ Jakuchu, which were so striking that all eight were made into posters for the exhibition. These came from the Imperial collections. In the event merchandise yielded a significant profit for the exhibition budget of over £100,000.21 Costs inevitably rose for such a prestigious exhibition and there were repeated fears that the whole exhibition might have to be cancelled. The security and safety of the objects to be borrowed were paramount. Fortunately Dawson International, the Scottish cashmere company, agreed to pledge £100,000 in the name of their subsidiary Pringle of Scotland.22 British Airways agreed to take on the role of sole carrier, which reduced costs by some £60,000 while Grand Metropolitan Hotels agreed to accommodate all the Japanese curators and other visiting officials at the five star Britannia Hotel in Grosvenor Square saving about another £50,000. In the final year before the exhibition opened an excellent educational programme including school visits to the exhibition was planned.23 6

THE GREAT JAPAN EXHIBITION, 1981–1982

Two paintings by Ito Jakuchu: Domestic fowl and chrysanthemum by a stream

THE EXHIBITION

Exhibits included fine examples of painting, calligraphy, ceramics, embroidered textiles, sculpture, lacquer, armour, sword blades and mounts, furniture, even scientific and musical instruments. There were also good examples of the wood-block prints, books and albums, inro and netsuke typical of the Edo Period and already well known in Britain. These latter were described as the minor arts, and it was undoubtedly the major arts such as the paintings, ceramics and textiles that were to prove a revelation to the British public. The paintings in particular made the greatest impact and broke new ground in European consciousness. Leading art critics commented favourably on the way The Great Japan Exhibition portrayed room by room, in a logical, chronological sequence, the changing decades of artistic development during the Edo Period, following two introductory Momoyama period galleries (1568–1600). At the start was art strongly influenced by Confucianism and in part Chinese painting traditions, moving through the splendour 7

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of the Genroku period of the late seventeenth century, to examples of the impact of the Dutch learning (Rangaku) with Western style paintings and use of perspective. Galleries 3 and 4 focused on Early Edo (1600–1687), galleries 5 to 7 on High Edo (1688–1750), galleries 8 and 9 on Middle Edo (1751–1803) and galleries 10 and 11 on Late Edo (1804–1868). The lecture room had a special section on entertainment, including some erotica, and the architecture room covered the theme ‘town and country’. In the central hall the brilliant silk Noh costumes formed a pièce de résistance. The exhibition was opened by HIH Princess Chichibu and HRH Princess Alexandra. Princess Chichibu24 commented on the magnitude and beauty of the exhibition. In all, there were 112 different lenders, all but six from Japan. Great credit is due to the Bunkacho and their associates and to the Japan Foundation, who must have overcome countless hurdles in Japan to allow the historic success of The Great Japan Exhibition to be achieved.25 THE CATALOGUE

Every one of the 500 or so items had to be minutely described for the Catalogue. Despite the high-cost strategy ninety-six fine colour pages, printed in Italy, were included in the catalogue. The catalogue was published by the Royal Academy in association with Weidenfeld and Nicolson and remains a valuable introduction to the art of the Edo period. As well as all the exhibition’s art objects, the catalogue contained a number of prefaces and explanatory essays.26 The price of the catalogue was kept down to ensure that the exhibition had a long-term impact. This caused some problems.27 RELATED EVENTS: THE JAPAN IN BRITAIN PROGRAMME

A programme of roughly 300 events around the United Kingdom, linked to The Great Japan Exhibition, was organized28 both to help increase the focus on Japan during the exhibition and to maximize attendance. ASSESSMENT

The Japan Foundation had taken a far-sighted strategic decision to concentrate a disproportionate amount of its global 1981/82 budget on the United Kingdom and in particular on the exhibition project, in order to achieve a breakthrough in understanding. In his preface to the catalogue Hayashi Kentaro¯, President of The Japan Foundation, wrote that he had been deeply impressed to read of the great zeal with which British people had sought to understand 8

THE GREAT JAPAN EXHIBITION, 1981–1982

things Japanese over seventy years earlier through The Japan-British Exhibition of 1910, whose press coverage he had been reviewing. He hoped that similar enthusiasm would help the British people understand Japan better through the insights into a period in recent Japanese history when almost every phase of economic and cultural life was shaped by the values of the Japanese people themselves dominated by the two-and-a-half centuries of virtual isolation. It had been in the Edo Period that the foundations were laid for Japan’s later economic and technological development in the late nineteenth and the whole of the twentieth century. Many VIPs at national and local level visited the exhibition and were as moved by it as Kenneth Clark, the great art historian, had been by the 1910 exhibition. Former Prime Minister Edward Heath acted as tour guide round the exhibition for the weekly television arts programme presented by Barry Norman and watched by millions. The Mayor of Gillingham in Kent brought a delegation. His town had been the birthplace of William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan (Miura Anjin), in 1564. Princess Chichibu’s father, the then Ambassador Matsudaira Tsuneo, had unveiled a memorial clock tower to Adams in Gillingham in 1934.29 Press coverage was almost without exception laudatory, although some commentators inconsistently criticized the Japanese for leaving a huge burden of sponsorship on the shoulders of British companies when Japanese companies were displacing the British on many world markets. In their view The Great Japan Exhibition and related Japan in Britain Programme had transformed Japan’s previously negative image in Britain. They seemed generally unaware of the huge budget expended by the Japan Foundation on the exhibition’s many preparatory costs in Japan. Nor did they seem to recognize the value to Britain to be derived in the future from a more balanced partnership. The Great Japan Exhibition cannot claim all the credit for the improvement in the climate of opinion that followed nor for the increase in Japanese studies in Britain, including study in specialist areas such as arts education, but it undoubtedly made a difference and acted as a catalyst. The business sponsors had shown great courage and wisdom in backing the project at a time of rising unemployment at home and heightened economic woes. Yet in turn the change of atmosphere from one of complaining about Japan to one of learning about Japan and seeking partnerships laid useful cultural foundations for the significant increase in Japanese direct investment in Britain during the 1980s.30 It also provided cultural backing for the continuing efforts to expand British exports to Japan through, for example, the ‘Opportunity Japan’ and ‘Priority Japan’ campaigns. 9

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The Great Japan Exhibition opened many eyes to some of the great achievements of Japanese art and culture.31 ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

There was a break from 20 to 28 December when four-fifths of the objects were exchanged for similar pieces of comparable quality. (Some very fragile items had to be exchanged every four weeks.) Total attendance was considerably more thanks to multiple visits by Friends of the Royal Academy, who were not counted in that total. See chapter I in Japan in Late Victorian London: The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and the Mikado, 1885, Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Sainsbury Institute, Norwich, 2009. See for instance Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition: Centenary Perspectives, edited by Ayako Hotta-Lister and Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2013 Other important academicians involved in the project were Frederick Gore RA, Chairman of the Royal Academy’s exhibitions committee, and still more frequently since he was then treasurer of the Royal Academy and Roger de Grey RA, who later served as President. These were the academicians who served on the twenty-seven-man UK policy committee for the project, a top-level committee that met less frequently than the eighteen-person UK executive committee. The UK policy committee was chaired by Sir Hugh Casson, with Norman Rosenthal as secretary. The UK executive committee was chaired by Sidney Hutchison, with Annette Bradshaw, Norman Rosenthal’s chief assistant in the RA’s exhibitions office as secretary. The Japanese side later set up a fourteen-man policy committee and a thirteen-person executive committee. Other senior members of the Royal Academy’s staff who served on the executive committee, in addition to Sidney Hutchison, Norman Rosenthal and Annette Bradshaw, were Laurie Bray, registrar, Griselda Hamilton-Baillie, assistant secretary (public relations), Kenneth J. Tanner, comptroller, Trevor Clark, bursar, and Denis Serjeant, surveyor. Roger de Grey RA was the only academician to serve on the executive Committee In addition to the Royal Academy members mentioned above, the policy committee was expanded to include the Earl of Drogheda, Sir John Figgess, Sir John Keswick, Roderick MacFarquhar, Sir John Pilcher, Sir Julian Ridsdale MP, chairman of the British Japanese parliamentary group, Dr (now Sir) David Wilson, director of the British Museum, and Sir Philip de Zulueta. The policy committee was also joined by the head of Cultural Relations Department at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, John Morgan, later Sir John, succeeded by J.E.C. Macrae closer to the opening of the exhibition. Sir John Figgess, a member of the policy committee and a keen collector of oriental art, (see biographical portrait by Sir Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume III, edited by J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999) who had served as Britain’s Commissioner General for the Osaka World Exposition in 1970, spoke to me about the 10

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8

9

10

11

12

Royal Academy’s project. He said that he felt it shameful for Britain to keep going cap in hand to the Japanese asking for money. I was already involved in politics and in free-lance cultural and educational diplomacy outside my work in project finance as an assistant director at the investment bank Samuel Montagu. I had been interested in Japan since the 1960s and had travelled there frequently on business since 1976. I knew that Midland Bank, which had bought Samuel Montagu, had recently opened a branch in Tokyo, and I thought that there might be a mutual interest with the Royal Academy, if sponsorship could raise the bank’s profile in Japan and help build useful relationships. Figgess soon arranged an exploratory meeting with Sir Hugh Casson at the Royal Academy, after which I discussed the possibility of sponsorship with Geoffrey Taylor, Director and Deputy Chief Executive of Midland Bank Group and with Managing Director, John Harris. They quickly saw the potential business benefits of the proposal, but insisted that I should micro-manage the Midland Bank’s commitment. The bank had never before sponsored any similar project, let alone on that scale. Taylor’s adviser Brian Quinn, managing director of Visnews Limited, also joined the policy committee. Alan Macdonald, manager, press and external affairs at Midland Bank International, and I joined the executive committee. Sub-committees were formed for the catalogue, for conservation, for content and design, for finance, for merchandise, for publicity, and eventually for the sponsors, once the consortium was completed. Only Norman Rosenthal and I served on all of these, though not on the academic committee, which usually maintained fierce independence. Professor Watson chaired the sub-committees for the catalogue and for content and design, Lawrence Smith the sub-committee for conservation, Brian Quinn the sub-committee for finance, Laurie Bray the sub-committee for merchandise, Griselda Hamilton-Baillie the sub-committee for publicity, and Christopher Hammond, a director of Midland Bank International, the sponsors’ committee. Some academics wanted the dates 1600–1867 or 1603–1867 or 1615–1868. However, 1600–1868 won through on the third vote, as it sounded crisper and more memorable and 1600 marked the start of Anglo-Japanese relations. This was the year in which William Adams, the English pilot of the Dutch ship Liefde, arrived in Japan. Support was also given on the Japanese side by among others Hanabusa Masamichi, (later ambassador to Italy), Mrs Aso Kazuko and Nagayama Osamu. The policy committee was expanded to include Tom Ross for Shell, Graham McCallum, director of John Swire, Antony Butterwick, director of OCL, and Brian Nicholson, joint managing director of The Observer. Other members of the committee of honour were the two Foreign Ministers: Sonoda Sunao and Lord Carrington, the two Ambassadors: Fujiyama Naraichi and Sir Hugh Cortazzi, the Commissioner of the Bunkacho, Sano Bunichirõ, and Sir Hugh Casson, PRA, and the two principal funders: Hayashi Kentaro¯, President of The Japan Foundation, and Sir David Barran, Chairman of Midland Bank Limited. 11

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13

14

15

16

17

18

19

Its staff who steered through this decision and later implemented it included Date Kuniyoshi, managing director, Tanaka Tetsuo, executive director, Inoue Masaru, head, Arts Department, Iseki Masaaki, head, Exhibition Division, Amemiya Natsuo, director, London Office, Sue Henny, assistant head, London Office, and Ogo Hayato and Inai Miyoko, from the Arts Department. Some had to be exposed to no more than 50 lumen, compared to the maximum for others of 150 lumen. The British were used to silica gel and the Japanese to nikka pellets. Sensible compromises were generally agreed. Board and lodging for the curators had been estimated far too low in early budgets. Increasing numbers of budget items proved to have been under-estimated. The previous complex, blockbuster exhibitions co-sponsored by Times Newspapers turned out to have been managed by an outside specialist company, Carlton Cleve, rather than by the Royal Academy. When the British side explored the idea of having a traditional, red Shinto shrine gateway (torii) in the Burlington House courtyard (provided the learned societies who share that space agreed), Kurokawa insisted that it must be an avant-garde aluminium arch, squared off rather than gracefully leaning inward. The British side therefore restricted Kurokawa’s domain to the inside of the Royal Academy, and late in the day it was through a British initiative working through personal friends in Japan that stylish traditional temple lanterns with large Japanese characters painted on them were commissioned in Kyoto and flown to London in time to cover the whole of the Piccadilly façade. This persuasively advertised the attractions awaiting visitors to the exhibition, and these lanterns looked still more beautiful at night, being visible from Constitution Hill and Hyde Park Corner. Their presence contributed significantly to the attendance figures. There were disagreements as to the optimum height at which objects should be displayed, in the expectation that the exhibition might sometimes be very crowded. (On the last day there were 10,000 visitors and the daily average was often around 5,000.) Kurokawa had to be convinced to take into account that the average visitor in Britain would be taller than what he was used to. Another skirmish was when a British proposal to make the logo for the exhibition a traditional Edo Period mon or heraldic family crest was vetoed by Kurokawa as showing traditional Japan in a clichéd way. So Awazu cleverly took a detail from one ¯ kyo’s screens of the great paintings to be displayed, a sprig of pine from O of ‘Pines in Snow’, and that became the logo. The background to how this ‘star attraction was found is as follows. Lawrence Smith, Norman Rosenthal and I set out for Japan in ‘golden week’. Smith arranged for the group of three to stay with friends of his in the small town of Kushimoto in Wakayama Prefecture at the southern tip of the Kii Peninsular. Nagasawa Rosetsu had painted amazing sliding doors, for the local Zen temple of Muryõji. The three of us spent several days in Kushimoto. Our hosts, hereditary guardians of the temple, kindly showed us the sliding doors several times. 12

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20

21

22

23

24

25

26

The wonderful, playful and even cuddly tiger took our breath away. The tiger, an Important Cultural Property, had never travelled abroad, even to the great Berlin or Washington exhibitions, although it was undoubtedly one of Rosetsu’s masterpieces. On his return to London, Lawrence Smith tentatively raised with his friends in Kushimoto the possibility of the tiger becoming the star exhibit for the exhibition. With full support from its owners, who expressed their gratitude for the lighthouse built by the British at the tip of the Kii peninsula during the Meiji Period, which had saved many lives, the loan was agreed and approved by the Bunkacho. Because it had never travelled before and was not restrictively listed, the Royal Academy was allowed to display it for both halves of the exhibition, which made sound commercial sense. Lady Casson, Griselda Hamilton-Baillie and other members of the sixteen-person merchandise sub-committee were keen to achieve high sales revenues but in keeping with the prestigious image of the Royal Academy. Several potential suppliers of merchandise for the exhibition shop could only show the sub-committee samples of rather tacky, low grade goods, but Christina Smith, then known as ‘the Queen of Covent Garden’ and with a successful shop in that area selling Japanese goods, guided the Royal Academy and masterminded an outstandingly stylish retail operation for The Great Japan Exhibition. It was not only the mugs with Rosetsu’s lovable black and white tiger which became best-sellers. John Waterton, Group Marketing Director of Dawson International, joined the Policy Committee and Gordon Farquharson and Jeannie Fraser-Allen from Pringle of Scotland the Sponsors’ Committee. A children’s book linked to the exhibition Journey into Japan 1600–1868 was published by Paul Norbury publications. She asked me as exhibition coordinator for the sponsors ‘How did you all do it? It would have been impossible to bring all these different lenders together in Japan.’ The names of the main Japanese organizers should be remembered: Sasaki Johei, associate professor, Kyoto University (now head of the Kyoto National Museum), Suzuki Tomoya, director, restoration technique research department, Tokyo National Research Institute of Cultural Properties, (as many objects lent first had to be restored), and from the Fine Arts Division of the Bunkacho Hiroi Yuichi, chief researcher on applied arts, Washizuka Hiromitsu, chief researcher on sculpture, Shinbo Tohru and Yamamoto Nobuyoshi, chief researchers on Cultural Property, also at strategic level Nishikawa Kyotaro, director of the Fine Arts Division, Kitamura Tetsuro, councillor on Cultural Properties, Furumura Sumiichi, director-general, Cultural Properties Protection Department, Yamanaka Masahiro, deputy commissioner, all at the Bunkacho. The catalogue contained prefaces by the President of The Japan Foundation and the President of The Royal Academy, a foreword by me (then called Nicolas Wolfers) as exhibition coordinator for the sponsors, essays on ‘Edo Japan: politics and foreign relations’ by Professor W.G. Beasley, 13

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27

28

29

30

31

on ‘Society and economy in the Edo period’ by Professor Bito Masahide, and on ‘Art in Momoyama and Edo’ by Professor William Watson. It also had a table of Japanese Historical Periods and of Era Names (nengo) of the Momoyama and Edo periods, a bibliography, a glossary, an index of artists and an index of lenders. I was able to obtain a grant worth around £50,000 from the Osaka Banpaku Kinen, the Commemorative Association for the Japan World Exposition of 1970 (Expo’ 70). A further contribution to production costs was kindly made by the Metropolitan Center for Far Eastern Art Studies, as well as by the Yoshida Foundation. This was coordinated by Beth Borchardt of Midland Bank, and the RA printed linked programme leaflets. Twentieth Century Fox asked me to advise them on the promotion of Kurosawa’s new film Kagemusha, set in the Momoyama Period, whose launch coincided with the exhibition, as did that of the film of James Clavell’s Shogun, based on the arrival of William Adams in Japan in 1600 and his subsequent adventures in what was to become the first year of the Edo Period. With the help of Sir John Pilcher and others I was also able to arrange sponsorship by Robert Fleming of a gala week of Kabuki at Sadler’s Wells Theatre, coinciding with the opening of The Great Japan Exhibition. The star and director of the touring company, which visited Britain, was the leading Kabuki actor Ennosuke whom the Japan Foundation described to me as ‘the Robert Redford of Japan’. As a result of the visit to the exhibition Mayor Harry Blease decided to set up the first sister city links between Britain and Japan, which was carried through in April 1982 with the signature of twinning agreements in Yokosuka and Ito, and which are still actively sustained on both sides. This twinning provided a good model for others that have followed. On a micro-historical scale several schools, inspired by Mary-Anne Stevens’ Education Programme at the RA, established extra-curricular Japan Prizes in the wake of The Great Japan Exhibition in order to sustain interest among pupils in a major country too little covered in any regular part of the curriculum. This initiative was further expanded ten years later during the 1991/92 Japan Festival and through the Japan Festival Education Trust, now incorporated into the Japan Society. The BBC also decided to research and broadcast an excellent series for schools introducing Japan. There were even radio taster courses on the Japanese language. Some newspapers spoke of Japanophilia, Japanmania, or a new Japan Wave reminiscent of late nineteenth century and 1910 enthusiasm. Some British cartoonists illustrated this to good effect courtesy of Hokusai. The 1910 exhibition is commemorated by the almost full-sized gateway of the Imperial Messenger (chokushi-mon) in Kew Gardens presented by the Kyoto Traders Association. It would in my view be fitting if the Great Japan exhibition were one day to be commemorated by a traditional Edo style Shinto gateway or torii, nearby in Kew Gardens.

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Haiku in the British Isles: A Tale of Acceptance and Non-acceptance DAVID COBB

FIRST ENCOUNTERS WITH THE FORM

Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904, native of the British Isles who took Japanese citizenship) and Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935, English Japanese scholar), both writing around the turn of the twentieth century, are thought to be the first to introduce readers in the British Isles to the Japanese haiku. Both employed the older term hokku, rather than ‘haiku’; not a mistake, as the Japanese reformist Masaoki Shiki had only recently preferred the use of ‘haiku’. But they did miss a mark by describing the hokku as ‘the Japanese epigram’. Hearn offers ‘a small selection of hokku’ in his Kwaidan - Stories and Studies of Strange Things (1904); and it is very much as ‘strange things’ he presents these minimalist poems to us. He could use them, he thought, to illustrate ‘Japanese interest in the aesthetic side of the subject’ of butterflies. He has no real belief that the hokku might ever catch on as a form practised by Western poets:

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The taste for Japanese poetry of the epigrammatic sort is a taste that must be slowly acquired; and it is only by degrees, after patient study, that the possibilities of such composition can be fairly estimated. Hasty criticism has declared that to put forward any serious claim on behalf of seventeen syllables ‘would be absurd’.

A hundred years later, James Fenton, Professor of Poetry at Oxford, writing in An Introduction to English Poetry, was still finding the idea of assimilation absurd: The most familiar form of syllabic verse is the haiku, borrowed from the Japanese, in which the poem adds up to seventeen syllables divided into three lines of five, seven and five syllables respectively. To me this seems like an oriental tradition which, however enthusiastically adopted (particularly in schools, I find), is unlikely to have an equivalent effect in the West. A bit like the tea ceremony.

This essay will seek to convince the reader that Fenton’s opinion is far from the truth. Lafcadio Hearn’s versions take the form of a single sentence of prose, not formally presented as a monostich. The tone is distinctly elegiac and he uses conventions that today’s English haiku poet would consider bad taste: projection (pathetic fallacy); exclamation marks – Hearn even imposes them on his transliterations of Japanese haiku; capital letters at the start of each line; ‘stagey’ interjections such as ‘ah!’ and ‘oh!’ Kaga no tori Cho¯ wo urayama Metsuki kana! ‘Ah, the sad expression in the eyes of that caged bird! – envying the butterfly!’

Hearn interprets haiku for his readers, inserting extra information or syntactical devices that are not explicit in the Japanese originals. The following with an ‘open simile’ is an example: Nugi-kakuru Haori sugata no Kocho¯ kana! ‘Like a haori being taken off – that is the shape of a butterfly!’

We may find little in what Hearn and Chamberlain have to say that will enthuse or inform the contemporary writer of English-language haiku. Yet we may be grateful to these pioneers for distinguishing the 16

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worth of the form, as well as the ingenuity and sensitivity needed to compose haiku. INFLUENCES AT THE START OF THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

It is not clear whether Hearn’s and Basil Hall Chamberlain’s writings were known to Ezra Pound (1885–1973, American poet who became virtually an adoptive European). But, among his group of poetic friends in London, Pound heatedly discussed the virtues of the Japanese aesthetic and how they might reinvigorate English poetry. Pound made frequent trips to Paris, e.g. in 1910, and maybe it was there he discovered something of this aesthetic, perhaps intuiting it from Impressionist paintings. Japonisme was everywhere. As Vincent Van Gogh wrote to his sister (1888): ‘I have no need for Japanese art, for I always tell myself that I am here in Japan, and that consequently I have only to open my eyes.’ Pound’s enthusiasm was the impetus for the Imagist Movement. The movement was short-lived (its heyday 1912–1915) but left as its monument the Imagist Manifesto. Imagists signed up to these principles: 1. Direct treatment of the thing, whether subjective or objective. 2. Using absolutely no word that does not contribute to the presentation. 3. As regards rhythm, composing in the sequence of the musical phrase, not in the sequence of a metronome. 4. Choosing content freely. 5. Allowing images to speak for themselves, not ‘telling’.

These are principles today’s poets writing haiku in English have encapsulated in their own shorthand: ‘directness’, ‘brevity’, ‘presence’, ‘using the language and idioms of everyday speech’, ‘avoiding flagrant poetic expressions’, ‘showing, not telling’.

Ezra Pound 17

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William Carlos Williams

Pound also invented the term ‘super-positioning’; one imagines he had read somewhere about the Japanese technique of kireji. He was proposing a form of juxtaposition which allows two phrases, set side by side, to be appreciated not only in their own right, but also in tandem, when contact between them may yield other impressions, possibly as a result of ‘lateral intuition’. He illustrated his principle with a rare haiku that is now hallowed in English haiku history: In a Station of the Metro (1913) The apparition of these faces in the crowd; Petals on a wet, black bough.

Pound did not call this a haiku; today’s haiku poets might think it is in the spirit of haiku but not a model of how one should be made. They might convert it into a three-liner by incorporating the title as the first line (titles are anathema anyway); they would eliminate the punctuation. But the principle of ‘super-positioning’ is still inspirational. Pound found a disciple in William Carlos Williams (American, 1881–1963) with whom he discussed Imagism. By the early 1920s Williams was applying Imagistic principles, and adding his own maxims to the Manifesto: 1. No ideas but in things 2. The invisibility of the poet 3. Use of the ‘montage’ effect. A MISSED OPPORTUNITY?

It may surprise us that Imagism did not immediately result in a surge of haiku composition. The outbreak of the Great War in 1914 turned poets’ attention elsewhere. War poets found it appropriate to 18

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R.H. Blyth

demolish the inglorious idea of dulce et decorum est pro patria mori by employing the same metrical forms. The poet Edward Thomas, who owned a copy of Lafcadio Hearn’s Japanese Letters, and had published a memoir about Hearn, was one who fell in Flanders. When the war ended, T.S. Eliot ushered in Modernism with The Waste Land. We cannot name any poets of distinction in the British Isles who engaged seriously, or even frivolously, with haiku between the two World Wars. THE ‘DELAYED COMING’ AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

Reginald Horace Blyth1 (1898–1964) born in Leyton, England, known universally as R.H. Blyth, teacher of English literature in Japan from 1925 until his death) is likely to have attended the biweekly poetry readings at the Poetry Bookshop in London’s West End where the Imagists gathered. It is amazing that it was during Blyth’s captivity as an enemy alien during the Second World War that he wrote many of the books that refuelled interest in Japanese poetry in the 1960s. In 1942 Blyth had published Zen in English Literature and Oriental Classics. The same year he was interned, but allowed access to his library so that even in captivity he was able to continue work on his four-volume Haiku, which appeared in serial fashion 1949 to 1952. The two-volume History of Haiku followed in 1963. In the final chapter of its second volume Blyth mused; ‘the last development in the history of haiku is one which nobody foresaw – the writing of haiku outside Japan, not in the Japanese language.’ Though ‘the haiku form is a simple and yet deeply “natural” form’, he foresaw that, like other forms borrowed by English poetry in the past, it would necessarily undergo changes as it was indigenized. The need for this 19

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was finally recognized by the Japanese themselves, in the Matsuyama Declaration of 1999, signed by leading scholar-poets, including Arima Akito, sometime Japanese Minister of Education and Culture, himself an acclaimed poet; Kaneko Tohta, the ‘grand old man’ of Japanese haiku; and Ueda Makoto, Professor Emeritus at Stanford, USA. The Declaration begins: ‘Haiku is a part of world literature. It is now on the verge of broadening the possibilities of a rich array of poetic forms in the world.’ The authors of the Declaration actually envisage a situation in which haiku from other countries and cultures may help to rescue Japanese haiku from stagnation. In Britain, Blyth’s books were reviewed in a dignified way by The Times Literary Supplement. In North America, poets of the Beat Movement (1958–1962), foremost of all Jack Kerouac, embraced them as revelations of a new way of life. Blyth’s insistence on the connection between haiku and Zen Buddhism, first appearing in Zen in English Classics, had a powerful attraction for people already gripped by existentialism. Blyth prized ‘artlessness’, a quality he found exemplified by Wordsworth’s Lucy Poems. This proved to be a mixed virtue: artlessness has been confused with ‘action writing’ and ‘stream of consciousness’, with work left unpolished. As a British poetry critic put it, writing in a personal letter in 1988: At the time haiku was most popular in GB and the USA, the end of the 60s and start of the 70s, poets who weren’t poets really thought that the writer’s notebook … could be passed off as art if cropped down to seventeen-syllable lengths.

Yet even Kerouac is recorded as saying, ‘haiku is best reworked and revised’. (An opinion that Basho¯ shared, by the way.) It has taken some haikuists in the British Isles until quite recently to throw off the shackles of ‘first thoughts, best thoughts’, a belief that haiku should be left untouched just as they entered the consciousness. In 1964 the well-known English poet, W.H. Auden (1907–1973) also drew attention to the relevance of haiku as a literary expression of life in the post-Holocaust, post-Hiroshima world. He was entrusted by Swedish editors to make English versions of Vägmärken from the diaries of Dag Hammarskjöld, then late UN SecretaryGeneral, which had been published in his native Swedish just the year before. In his gratuitous foreword to the Faber edition (entitled Markings) Auden describes this collection as: An historical document of the first importance as an account – and I cannot myself recall another – of the attempt by a professional man of action to unite in one life the Via Activa and the Via Contemplativa. 20

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For Auden, as for many English poets since, form was the mainstay and essence of haiku: ‘… the number of syllables in any one line is optional, but the sum total of the three must always be seventeen.’ English lexicographers also have unfortunately concentrated almost exclusively on form, a typical definition being ‘Haiku: a poem in an unrhymed verse form of three lines containing 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively.’ If a lexicographer ventures further into saying anything at all about content and attitude, it is likely to be that haiku is ‘a form of nature poetry’, which is seriously misleading. Nowadays one finds a better understood description of haiku on Wikipedia. Having more lasting influence than Auden, one guesses, but not more than the dictionaries, were the series of poetry anthologies, Junior Voices and Voices, edited by Geoffrey Summerfield, published by Penguin between 1968 and 1970. These contained both haiku translated from Japanese and original English haiku and were popular in British schools. The passage of haiku into the British classroom was indeed facilitated by mention of haiku in the National Curriculum at the Keystage 3 level (roughly speaking, ten to thirteen year-olds.) The value of this was sometimes diminished by teachers introducing the haiku to much younger pupils, seizing on the opportunity to train them to recognize syllables. Still, most children do appreciate haiku and enjoy them. For many it proves to be their first successful attempt at creative writing and occasionally, despite the child’s lack of maturity, their haiku reveal the instinctive wisdom of a child’s mind. Awareness of haiku in the British Isles has undoubtedly increased decade on decade. Anyone who has any interest in poetry at all will have heard of haiku, though some may have an uncertain apprehension of its characteristics. Evidence of this assimilation of haiku into the poetic mainstream has been the frequency with which contemporary poets of different styles and intentions have found qualities in haiku that resonate with their own creative directions or have been used for their own purposes: its directness and brevity; as a starting point for experiments with syllabic poetry; using its three-line form as a template for short stanzas (‘building bricks’) to construct imagistic poems. In various ways haiku appear, which are not overtly haiku, while other poems, referring to themselves as haiku, are from most points of view not haiku at all. Poets as diverse as Tom Raworth, Anthony Thwaite, Ken Smith, Seamus Heaney, Thom Gunn, Paul Muldoon, Alan Brownjohn, Alec Finlay and many others have written poems with a clear and acknowledged relationship to haiku, whether in spirit or in form or both; though in many cases there has been an adaptation to serve the needs of their own creative intentions and style. In this respect the 21

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haiku is no different from the sonnet or ballad in being re-thought for different purposes or according to individual impulses. There are also poets who, less reverentially, have engaged with their understanding of some aspects of the qualities of haiku for humorous or satirical effect. The economy and terseness of haiku lends itself rather too conveniently to aphorisms, epithets and ironic observations. Gavin Ewart, with his often bawdy three-line squibs, published in The Complete Little Ones (1986), provides an example here: Creation Myth Haiku After the First Night the Sun kissed the Moon: ‘Darling, You were wonderful!’

And Wendy Cope, reputed to hold haiku in serious regard, is also facetious in her Strugnell’s Haiku of 1986: November evening: The moon is up, rooks settle, The pubs are open.

Such non-haiku in haiku form are typically written in strict 5–7–5 syllables so as to be recognized as haiku. However, most serious writers of haiku have felt that the attempt to find an equivalent of the 17-syllable form of the Japanese original is not the guiding principle of haiku and prefer to find compact and flowing solutions to writing a poignant poem, true to the haiku spirit and its traditions, but with the music and accented cadence that is native to English. Many thousands of haiku are written in the British Isles each year, varying from those published in specialised haiku hard-copy magazines to on-line sites and web outlets run by individual editors with varying backgrounds and commitments to haiku poetry. There are also those that have fallen into the contemporary domain of the ‘tweet’ and the ‘sound bite’ where it seems any random thought cut up into three lines gets to be called a haiku. The readiness with which the haiku has been taken up as a vehicle for very ephemeral sentiments, trivial witticisms and ironic comments is at least a testament to the degree to which public awareness, if not understanding, of haiku has spread. MOBILIZATION AND RESURGENCE

In an atmosphere of uncertainty about what haiku was and how an English language equivalent might be generated, a small group of 22

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enthusiasts gathered together in 1990. It was a correspondent in Japan, Nagayama Mokuo, who tipped the architects of this movement off that a Haiku Society had existed since 1968 in America (HSA); and was it not time for the British Isles to follow this example? So the HSA were asked whether they had any members living in the UK. Yes, they had one: Dee Evetts, British by birth, normally resident in North America, but just now on holiday in the UK. In a country pub (once again in Essex) Evetts met David Cobb, they grilled each other about their respective understandings of haiku, and agreed on a call to muster, via leaflets placed in the Poetry Library, London, and notices posted in various poetry journals. The response was startling. Within six months some forty or fifty persons had assembled as the ‘Haiku Interest Group’. Clearly, some more formal organization was called for; one with a constitution, financed by subscriptions, having charitable status so the public would know it was bona fide. And thus in 1990 the British Haiku Society (BHS) was set up. A quarterly membership magazine was launched – Blithe Spirit, so named by its first president for a mixture of reasons: a salute to R.H. Blyth; a salute to poetry via Shelley’s poem To a Skylark (‘Hail to thee, blithe spirit!); by inference proposing a cheerful season-word to characterise our activities. Blithe Spirit has since published twenty-five volumes of four issues a year. This first president of BHS (1990–1997) was James Kirkup,2 wellknown as a haiku-poet in Japan, where he taught English literature, but as we were shortly to learn, not highly regarded as a haiku writer anywhere else. ‘The only success I’ve had with haiku in England,’ he wrote, ‘has been in John Foster’s OUP children’s poetry anthologies.’ The reason Evetts proposed him for office was that he had recently read an article in a Tokyo newspaper, in which Kirkup asserted the British did not understand haiku and therefore would never form a haiku society. Evetts challenged Kirkup to prove himself wrong! Members of the fledgling BHS were a motley crew and so it has remained. Mark Rutter, writing as editor of Blithe Spirit in 2009, describes us well: English-language poets have come to haiku along different paths. For some the haiku is primarily a form of spiritual discipline, others come to haiku as a way of rejuvenating nature poetry. Still others are attracted to the brevity and down-to-earthiness of the form, or by the way it invites the reader to participate in the unfolding of meaning. Some prize the haiku for its attention to the momentary, or for the Zen-inspired ethos of the ego-less look. For others, the haiku movement is a kind of avant-garde, forging a new poetic language by adopting aesthetic ideas from another culture, and for still others haiku is an alternative to poetry altogether. 23

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From the outset it seemed necessary for the BHS to defend the borders of haiku from lack of sympathy and understanding. Some unifying description of haiku seemed desirable. Was this to follow the strict rules operating in yuki teikei circles? Or the much looser dispensation allowed by that Japanese friend of English haiku, Sato¯ Kazuo, who edited a weekly column for the English edition of Mainichi Shimbun newspaper in Tokyo? Understandably, any attempt to devise an absolute ‘consensus’ proved intractable, but after a number of revisions the Society arrived at a text that has broad agreement: English Haiku – a Composite View. (This may be read on the BHS website, www.britishhaikusociety. org.uk) The BHS has settled down to an average annual membership just in excess of 250 members, with some turn-over of new members replacing inevitable wastage. The total will have been thousands over twenty-five years. In addition, we have knowledge of a large number of haiku enthusiasts who feel no need to join the Society. The BHS constitution commits it to ‘the appreciation, creation and dissemination of the literary form known as haiku’, by means of publications, meetings, seminars, newsletters and public events, including contests; to researching the genre and its kindred forms (i.e. senryu¯, haibun, renga); and there is a commitment to reach out to similar haiku bodies, both at home and abroad. With the passage of time BHS has acquired functions well beyond serving its actual membership. It has become a resource of expertise, authority even, to which have turned editors of journals and newspapers, radio and TV presenters, librarians, organizers of festivals (e.g. matsuri ), publishing houses, museums and art galleries, individual artists, workers in glass and fabrics, calligraphers, paper makers, composers looking for texts to set to music, bookshops, the Embassy of Japan, staff and students of creative writing courses, carers for the mentally vulnerable, therapists. On one occasion it was asked by a magazine to introduce Americans convicted of murder and on ‘death row’ to haiku. In 2001, the Librarian of the Poetry Library, London, wrote that: The blossoming of haiku in Britain over ten years has got a lot to do with the work of the British Haiku Society and the influence of its magazine. It is the authority on haiku in Britain today and we constantly recommend it.

BHS has a policy of taking part in a number of joint ventures with haiku societies in other countries, and has welcomed participants from other countries as guests at events in the UK. Even so, to imply that the BHS has been the sole vehicle for the increased interest in haiku is incorrect. BHS members are scattered 24

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far and wide – one in seven does not actually reside in the British Isles – so requests are handled in a variety of ways: the BHS committee may call for interested volunteers to take them in hand. Individuals may approach the BHS with a proposal and the committee will endorse it, advertise it in its newsletter, perhaps give it some material support. The Society actively encourages individual members, or groups of members, to organize local readings or workshops; it may assist with a display of books, reference materials, audio-visual aids. A good example of BHS collaboration with an independent provider is the White Peak/Dark Peak project (2012–2013), billed as ‘Britain’s largest public artwork’, commissioned by Derbyshire Arts Development Group and realized by the independent artist, Alec Finlay. For this to succeed a very large number of haiku writers were required, each assigned to a particular location in the Peak District National Park where he/she was set to compose a solo renga based on experience of walking the terrain. Such a force might have been hard to mobilize if Finlay and BHS had not been intimate. A list of events and activities of BHS (examples only, not a full list) is contained in Appendix I to this paper. A selected list of relevant books and papers is contained in Appendix II APPENDIX I. EVENTS AND ACTIVITIES OF BHS

(a) Under BHS auspices -

-

-

information tents at Japan Festival events, also various national and regional festivals. readings and lectures: John Keats Bicentenary, including lecture by James Kirkup on Keats and Basho¯; jointly with SOAS, lectures celebrating 300th Anniversary of Basho¯’s death; Swansea Festival of Japanese Arts. contributions to National Poetry Day in the UK: international celebration, with Eurotunnel sponsorship, involving haiku poets from seven countries, reading on both sides of the Channel on the same day, also composing haiku ‘under the sea’. workshops at Ledbury Poetry Festival, Alnwick Cherry Blossom Matsuri. aids for teachers: The Haiku Kit, 1,500 copies supplied, two-thirds of them free of charge.. conferences, usually with public readings: contests: assistance with Japan Airlines schools contests; James W Hackett Haiku Awards, 1991–2008, Nobuyuki Yuasa International Haibun Contest, 2002–2004, BHS International Haibun Contest, 2005–2008, amalgamated in 2012 as British Haiku Awards. public exhibitions: Signposts to Haiku - poster display on loan to libraries, colleges, museums collaboration with haiku associations abroad: BHS participants at international conferences in Belgium, Germany, the Netherlands, Romania, Sweden, USA. The Haiku Kit (see above) adopted by Haiku Society 25

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-

of America as part of their package for teachers, also translated by local haiku associations in the Netherlands, New Zealand and Romania; Anglo-French Haiku Festival, Folkestone, with haiku banner display along the esplanade. consultations by media: BBC Radio 4 feature by Stephen Fry on Brevity; adjudication of entries to BBC World Service for haiku on the subject of ‘landing on Mars.’ cross-media collaboration: Haiku and Glass, BHS poets paired with glass artists to produce an exhibition seen at four museums across the UK.

(b) Involving individual BHS members or non-members. -

-

lecture for Scottish Japan Society. newspaper articles: to launch The Times national haiku contest, resulting in 7,500 entries. Also Daily Telegraph. workshops: Poetry School, London, weekend course led by David Cobb; Alec Finlay’s mobile ‘renga platform’. ‘haiku trail’ and associated workshops, Garden Festival Wales, also at Canterbury Matsuri. ‘haiku poet in residence’, King’s Lynn Festival, Bedfordshire Poetry Festival. aids for teachers: In the Moonlight a Worm, on-line teaching suggestions by George Marsh. media presence: programmes by Stephen Henry Gill for BBC Radio 3, illustrating the value of season words (kigo) in classical Japanese haiku; BBC Radio live recording of workshop by BHS North of England group.. cross-media collaboration: 36 Views of King’s College Chapel, Tony Eva’s photographs captioned with Graham High’s haiku. contests: Welsh Academy’s 1991 Cardiff International Haiku Competition (1,000+ entries, all winners members of BHS) special interest groups: Red Sangha, organisers Ken Jones & James Norton.

All of the above have made serious contributions to the indigenisation of haiku in the British Isles and the work goes one. In 2015, the British Haiku Society will celebrate its first quarter century. APPENDIX II SELECT RELEVANT PUBLICATIONS

(a) Published by BHS J. Kirkup et al. (ed.) The Haiku Hundred, Iron Press, 1992. (First ever haiku collection to be published in UK, selected from 5,000 entries to contest organised by BHS.) D. Cobb (ed.) with introduction by James Kirkup and bibliography by S.H. Gill: The Genius of Haiku - readings from R. H. Blyth, BHS, 1994. (Some 2,000 copies sold.) M. Lucas: Stepping Stones - a way into haiku (vol. 1 of BHS Literary Studies Series), 2007. G. High (ed.) Barbed Wire Blossoms - the Museum of Haiku Literature Award Anthology, 1992–2011. 26

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BHS, 2012. (b) Published by individual BHS members or non-members G. Bownas & A. Thwaite: The Penguin Book of Japanese Verse (anthology), Penguin, 1964. D. Cobb & M. Lucas: The Iron Book of British Haiku (anthology), Iron Press, 1998. N. Jenkins, K. Jones and L. Rees: Another Country: Haiku Poetry from Wales (anthology), Gomer, 2011. L. Stryk & K. Bailey (eds.): The Acorn Book of Contemporary Haiku (anthology), Acorn, 2000. A. Finlay (ed.) Atoms of Delight: an anthology of Scottish haiku and short poems, Pocketbooks, 2000. D. Cobb (ed.) The British Museum Haiku (anthology of Japanese haiku), British Museum Press, 2002. J. Barlow & M. Lucas (eds.) The New Haiku (anthology), Snapshot Press, 2002. J. Hardy (ed.) Haiku Poetry Ancient and Modern (anthology), MQP, 2002. D. Cobb (ed.) The Humours of Haiku (anthology), Iron Press, 2012. D. King and D. Webb (eds.) Time Haiku (magazine, founded by Erica Facey, 1994.) M. Lucas, F. Schofield et al. (eds.) Presence (haiku magazine, since 1996.) K. Bailey (ed.): Haiku Quarterly, later HQ, from 1990, evolving into a magazine of ‘short poetry. B. Tasker (ed.): Bare Bones (haiku magazine), 1992–1995. J. Barlow (ed.): Snapshots (haiku magazine), 1998–2006. F. Henderson (ed): Haiku Scotland newsletter and website (currently suspended.) Haiku Ireland (website newsletter at www.haikuireland.org since 2005.) C. Stewart Jones (ed.) Notes from the Gean (haiku website.) -----------------------------------------ENDNOTES 1

2

A biographical portrait of R.H. Blyth by Adrian Pinnington was published in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume I, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library, 1994. A biographical portrait of James Kirkup, by David Burleigh was published in Britain and Japan: Biographical Porraits, volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013.

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3

Japanese Gardens and the Japanese Garden Society in the UK GRAHAM HARDMAN

Japanese Garden at Tatton Park

INTRODUCTION

2013 was the 20th anniversary of the Japanese Garden Society. This biographical portrait describes the Society, the way the Society has developed and how it has increasingly sought to use gardens as a way of fostering and developing relationships between the UK and Japan and introducing the British public to Japanese culture through gardens. Now in its 21st year and with some 600 members, the Society is run entirely by volunteers and two years ago became a charity with the aim of providing education to the public on all aspects of Japanese gardens. The story of the Society is set against a brief history of Japanese gardens in the UK. THE JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY – ORIGINS

The idea came from a group of landscape architecture students at Manchester University in early 1993. One mature student in 28

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particular, Dr David Hackett had been fascinated by the Japanese Garden (with a capital ‘G’ to distinguish the art form from individual Japanese gardens). Following this interest and while based in Cardiff, he won a travelling scholarship from the Welsh Arts Council to study the dry gardens of Japan. With a base in the Department of Forestry at the University of Kyoto he worked with a Japanese Garden designer, visiting gardens in Tokyo, Kyoto and Nara. On return, and following a travelling exhibition of his photographic study of Japanese gardens, David enrolled on a post-graduate Landscape Design course at Manchester University to learn the techniques that would enable him to work in this medium. The tutor at Manchester, David Baldwin was also interested in Japanese gardens and used to take students to study the Japanese garden at Tatton Park. David Hackett had the idea of forming a society for anyone with an interest in Japanese Gardens, ably supported by David Baldwin and Sam Youd, Head Gardener at Tatton Park. After a series of exploratory meetings a notice was placed in an article in the Daily Telegraph for a meeting entitled ‘1993 Conference on Japanese Gardens’, to be held at Tatton Park on 3 July. There were over a hundred attendees from all over the country and the idea of forming a Society was given public approval. Interest in things Japanese and gardens in particular had grown partly at least as a result of the successful and wide-ranging Japan Festival in Britain held in 1991. As part of the festival a Kyoto Garden had been built in Holland Park. This had been sponsored by the Kyoto Chamber of Commerce and opened by the Prince of Wales and the Crown Prince of Japan who were the royal patrons of the festival. But this was by no means the only Japanese garden in Britain. Japanese gardens had been built in Britain in the Victorian era and had been popularized by the Japanese Gardens at the 1910 Japan British Exhibition at Shepherds Bush. One of the key decisions made at the launch meeting was that it should produce a Journal, the idea being proposed by Robert Ketchell. He also proposed the brilliant and very apt title ‘Shakkei’ – borrowed landscape. Prior to the launch meeting Sir Hugh Cortazzi was invited to become Honorary President. EARLY DAYS

For the first two years Society meetings were held in different locations around the country, but with relatively modest attendances due to the travel distances involved. Membership levels dropped, so in 1995 a significant change in organization was made. It was agreed 29

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Kyoto Garden, Holland Park

that meetings would be organized and run on a regional basis, leaving a national committee focussing on overall management of membership, finance and so on. Interest and enthusiasm ensured that the Society overcame these early difficulties. In 2014 there were six regional groups in the South East, Midlands, South West, North West, Yorkshire and Humber and Scotland.

30

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GOING PUBLIC

Perhaps the most significant, if gradual, change has been the way that the Society has engaged more with the general public. At first this was by volunteers mounting small exhibition stands and display gardens at Garden Shows and Japan Days. A step change came when Robert Ketchell built a large Show garden at the RHS Hampton Court Flower Show in 1996, constructed with the help of Japan Garden Society (JCS) members. This was followed in 2001 by a small garden at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show designed by the author, then by two Gold medal winning gardens designed by Maureen Busby at Hampton Court in 2002 and Chelsea Flower Show in 2004. As the Society became more prominent as a result of these Show gardens, particularly at Chelsea, closer links with other Japan-related organizations were developed, including the Embassy of Japan, the Japan Society and the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC), based in Norwich. The Society was granted Charitable status in 2010. This carried with it an increased responsibility to fulfil the aim of educating the public in all aspects of Japanese gardens. A travelling exhibition about Japanese gardens in the UK entitled ‘Visions of Paradise’, designed and curated by members of the Society was created. It has been shown at several significant locations around the UK, including the Embassy of Japan in 2010, followed by Tatton Hall in Cheshire, Norwich Cathedral, the Garden Museum in London, Chiddingstone Castle in Kent, and the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute. Further venues are being sought in order to reach a wider public. Coupled with the exhibition the Society produced an extensive catalogue, which acts as a stand-alone book on the subject of Japanese gardens in the UK, entitled Visions of Paradise (copies of this booklet can be ordered from the JGS). JGS GARDENS

One of the most significant elements of the work of members of the JGS has been the design and creation of new and permanent Japanese gardens in Britain. Some of these are in public places open all the time; others have been in places used by the public such as a Japanese centre in Cambridge, hospices and a nursing home. The Society decided in 2004 to assist Birmingham Botanical Gardens following a request from their Curator with the design and construction of a renovated Japanese Courtyard. This was a turning point for the Society as it signalled a shift from building Show gardens, ultimately rather ephemeral in nature, to permanent ones. Increasingly the committee of the Society felt that the time was right to develop its reputation as an authority on Japanese gardens. 31

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This would clearly take a number of years and would require significant voluntary effort from the membership, particularly from experienced designers. The garden at Birmingham Botanical Gardens was very well received and was opened by the Japanese Ambassador in May 2005. Following that a completely new garden was designed and constructed by members of Northwest region at Walkden Gardens in Sale (South Manchester). This was opened in 2006 by the Japanese Ambassador, hosted by the Mayor of Trafford. The Northwest team have gone on to build two gardens at Willowbrook hospice in St Helens and in December 2013 were constructing a garden for Bury hospice in Lancashire. In 2010 they formed the core of the team which built the garden at Norwich cathedral sponsored by the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC). Further gardens have recently been designed and constructed by the Society at the Kaetsu Centre in Cambridge and at Hatch Mill Nursing Home in Farnham, Surrey. JGS members have also become involved in the maintenance of public gardens, in the Midlands at Danescourt Cemetery in Wolverhampton and Hammersmith Park in London (originally built as part of the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition). They have also contributed to the maintenance of gardens constructed by the Society including the rooftop garden at Great Ormond Street Hospital, designed by Maureen Busby, although this is not open to the public. One of the ways the Society celebrated its 20th anniversary was the construction of a large garden at the RHS Tatton Park Flower Show (designed by the author and awarded a Gold medal). This was sponsored by Bury Hospice on the understanding that after the Show a Japanese garden would be built for them, re-using plants and materials from the Show garden. That work was due to be be completed in the spring of 2014. VISITING GARDENS IN JAPAN

One of the first actions of the newly formed Society in 1993 was to start planning for a visit to Kyoto. This took place in November 1994 with over thirty members in the party. This set the pattern for what has become a regular feature of the Society’s activities, a tour every eighteen months alternating between spring and autumn. To date thirteen tours have been organized, with increasingly ambitious itineraries. Some 200 gardens have been visited in places as far away as Chiran in the south of Kyushu and Nikko to the north of Tokyo and most areas inbetween. Increasingly the Society has been developing contacts in Japan to arrange visits to gardens unknown to the public in Britain, some of 32

JAPANESE GARDENS AND THE JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY IN THE UK

which require special permission to visit. The Society has been greatly assisted in this by Professor Fukuhara of Osaka University of Art and Design. He has been involved as a designer in several gardens in the UK, notably the landscape garden at Kew and the Chelsea Gold and Best-in-Show garden of 2001 which is now part of the National Botanic Garden of Wales. One of the Society’s aims is to introduce people not only to Japanese gardens but to the culture and people of Japan. EDUCATION AND PUBLICITY

For a number of years members of the JGS have been giving lectures on various aspects of Japanese gardens to public audiences. The author for instance gave a lecture in Tokyo in 2013 to the Asiatic Society of Japan on Japanese gardens in the UK. As well as a website (www.jgs.org.uk) the Society has a Facebook page which gives up to the minute information on Society activities and volunteer involvement in various gardens around the country. All Society meetings are open to the public, information being available on the website and Facebook. From its inception the Japanese Garden Society has produced a high quality quarterly journal, Shakkei. In recent years this has developed to cover all manner of Japanese garden related topics, with contributions from members and academics in the UK, the Netherlands and Japan. Copies are sent to members in other countries including the USA, Denmark, France, Australia and Japan. Back copies of the journal, including the Society’s 20th anniversary edition of Shakkei, covering the history of the Society and its development, are available from the Honorary Secretary of the Society. CONCLUSION

The Japanese Garden Society was formed at a time when Japanese gardens had become fashionable in the UK. Its continued existence and success is due to the energy and enthusiasm of its members. JAPANESE GARDENS IN THE UK

Early Gardens Japanese-style gardens have been built in Britain since shortly after the Meiji restoration. A boom in private garden building preceded the First World War but only a few of these gardens are still preserved and can be visited today. A few gardens were built after 1918 but interest declined and during the Second World War and afterwards many disappeared. 33

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Jill Raggett has written of this early period:1 There were a variety of motivations and influences in the creation of Japanese-style gardens in Britain, including new plant introductions and aspects of Japanese art; however, the major inspiration for these gardens came from travellers visiting Japan, and the desire for a garden as a fashionable addition to an estate or commercial enterprise.

Many of these gardens showed little clear understanding of the underlying principles of Japanese design and were more concerned with showing off exotic artefacts and plants. The demand for such items was met by enterprising Japanese companies which recognized the potential of a burgeoning export market. A good example is Compton Acres in Dorset, an interesting garden in a nice setting but full of all manner of Japanese and other Asian ornamentation. All these early gardens were privately owned and were not intended as public gardens. In 1893 Landscape Gardening in Japan had been published by Josiah Conder, a young Scottish architect, who had travelled to Japan to teach architecture at the Imperial University in 1877. This book, the first in English available to a western audience, soon became very popular and has had a seminal influence on garden designers in Britain. Toshio Watanabe2 in an article about Josiah Conder (1852–1920) declared: This book tries to introduce and analyse the Japanese garden, but at the same time it also acts as an introductory manual on how to design such a garden.

Many Japanese gardens built in Britain after its publication were to some extent inspired by Conder’s writings, although not necessarily the direct source of their design. Jill Raggett has written:3 Conder was an influential writer on Japanese gardens and though it is a challenge to find primary evidence for direct ‘cause and effect’, such evidence has been discovered for a number of early Japanesestyle gardens, either through the annotation of Conder’s work at Cowden [in Scotland], and copying at Newstead Abbey; or through the emulation of designs as at Bitchet Green, Kent; or as inspiration when his publications are to be found in the collections of those who created gardens such as the library of Tatton Park, Cheshire. THE GARDENS OF THE JAPAN-BRITISH EXHIBITION OF 19104

The Japan-British Exhibition at White City in 1910 attracted an impressive 8 million visitors in the six-month period of the 34

JAPANESE GARDENS AND THE JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY IN THE UK

exhibition out of a UK population of 42 million at the time. Within the exhibition site there were two large show gardens. This was the first time that the general British public had seen Japanese gardens.5 It is interesting to consider what visitors saw. Show gardens, we know from today’s RHS Garden Shows, do not necessarily represent real gardens. Postcards of the gardens from the exhibition suggest that to some extent they were being used as a marketing opportunity for Japanese garden products as they contained many lanterns, water basins, bridges, bamboo screens, tea houses and the like. Consequently these two gardens contained rather more artefacts than a garden in Japan, setting the scene for British interpretations of Japanese gardens along those lines for several years to come. JAPANESE DESIGNERS

Only a few wealthy patrons could afford to employ Japanese designers and a team of landscape gardeners who could ensure that the gardens with which they were associated reflected the Japanese spirit. Jill Raggett has noted:6 Some creators of Japanese-style gardens were keen to attempt the challenging task of making accurate representations of Japanese gardens and so there were opportunities for Japanese artists and garden designers to provide consultations and designs thus allowing the incorporation of symbolism and cultural references which many critics felt the gardens lacked.

She also commented:7 The work of Taki Handa (and later J. Suzuki) at Cowden Castle (1907), Perthshire; of Seyemon Kusumoto’s involvement, from 1923, at Cheynes (Cottered) (1906), Hertfordshire, and finally the designs of J. Suzuki at The Node (c.1930), Hertfordshire, and possibly at Trewince (1935), Cornwall, were examples of much stronger and convincing designs. RENEWED INTEREST IN JAPANESE GARDENS

In the latter part of the twentieth century interest in Japanese gardens and Japanese design in general began to re-emerge and became very fashionable. Robert Ketchell has commented:8 … as with the developing demand for stylish, low maintenance gardens, more and more garden creators began to incorporate ideas from Japan into Western gardens. 35

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Since 1990 many new Japanese-style gardens have been built in public places, some popular ones being the Kyoto garden at Holland Park in London, the Japanese landscape at Kew Gardens, the Zen garden at the Museum of Religion in Glasgow, all three designed by Japanese landscapers. The dry garden at Norwich Cathedral, designed by the author and Robert Ketchell and built in 2010 by members of the Japanese Garden Society for the Sainsbury Institute has been well received. In the opinion of the author the garden at Danescourt Cemetery in Wolverhampton, designed by Peter Bridge is particularly successful as a dry landscape garden. The Japanese Garden Society has added to this list of Japanese gardens (see above). Most of these recent public gardens are smaller and less ambitious than the earlier private gardens and often are built as ‘dry’ gardens in karesansui (literally dry mountain and water) style. Despite increased knowledge of Japanese culture and design, it has to be said that these recent gardens still show varying degrees of success in capturing the spirit of Japan. Many private gardens too have been built in recent years, often capturing the spirit of Japan more successfully than some of the gardens in public places. In many cases the owner had a particularly good knowledge of gardens in Japan and had the resources to ensure a high quality result. Increasingly, designers are creating gardens using Japanese design principles that are not intended to look authentically Japanese but nevertheless carry many of the characteristic feelings generated by a Japanese garden. The work of Robert Ketchell at the Momotaro garden at Spalding or the tea garden at Le Manoir aux Quat’Saisons are good examples. Interest in and awareness of Japanese gardens is probably stronger than ever and the number of Japanese style gardens in the UK is increasing all the time. CULTURAL BORROWING

Borrowing ideas from Japanese garden culture raises many interesting questions. Robert Ketchell has observed:9 Much of the development of a gardener in Japan, apart from basic horticultural skills, involves a training of the eye. To see plants and rocks as dynamic sculptural forms, to develop a sensitivity to the layout of the garden’s components is fundamental. This way of viewing the garden is one of the significant distinguishing features between the two garden cultures. 36

JAPANESE GARDENS AND THE JAPANESE GARDEN SOCIETY IN THE UK

In Japan, gardens are expressions of the notion of Paradise, manifested as idealized landscapes. As landscape gardens they are therefore quite different from most British gardens, where the focus may be on formal arrangement, displays of colourful flowers, or the informality of ‘cottage gardens’. Recreating this idea of Paradise, Japanese-style, in a UK setting is not as easy as it might seem. Our architecture is completely different so matching the garden to buildings becomes a challenge. Our climate is different enough from that in Japan to make using the same plant material difficult or sometimes impossible. Our nursery industry is not geared to producing large ready-shaped trees and shrubs as is the case in Japan. Equally important is that our cultural attitude towards garden maintenance differs greatly from that in Japan, not to mention our lack of specialist skills required. Japanese gardens, whether traditional or modern in style, are very dependent for their success on the meticulous maintenance that such gardens would receive in Japan. The experience of the Japanese Garden Society is that some public Japanese-style gardens suffer in this regard. This seems to be due in part to limited financial resources, but often a lack of understanding of the relevant skills required, resulting in a fear of doing anything in case it is the wrong thing. As a consequence some members of the Japanese Garden Society have been offering skilled maintenance advice and practical help to selected public gardens on a voluntary basis. The aim is to improve the garden’s appearance and to provide a learning environment for developing the skills of the garden staff concerned. An example is the garden at Danescourt Cemetery in Wolverhampton, which the local council found too daunting to maintain, so did very little other than keep it tidy. Shrubs and trees were left unpruned leading to a rather overgrown appearance after ten years, far from what the designer wanted. Over the last three years the garden has been transformed and has won several awards. By working in such gardens, the Society aims to help the local garden staff to develop appropriate skills and have confidence to use them, hopefully ensuring the garden’s longterm future. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits volume VII (Shadowy Figures: Japanese Garden Designers in Britain and Ireland; p. 501) Article about Josiah Conder (1852–1920) by Toshio Watanabe in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VIII, 2013. Shakkei, Volume 20 No 1 Summer 2013; Crushing Earthquake Demons and Inspiring Garden Makers – The influence of Josiah Conder (1852– 1920) and his writing; p. 29).

37

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

4

5

6

7 8

9

See article by Jill Raggett entitled ‘The Japanese Gardens: Stars of the Show’ in Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition Centenary Perspectives edited by Ayako Hotta-Lister & Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2013. See Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition, eds Ayako Hotta-Lister and Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2013. Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits VII; Shadowy Figures: Early Japanese Garden Designers in Britain and Ireland; p. 502 Visions of Paradise – the Japanese garden in the UK; Interpretations p. 42 Visions of Paradise – the Japanese garden in the UK; Decline and Resurgence – introduction; p. 50 Visions of Paradise – the Japanese garden in the UK; Cultural Borrowing (introduction); p. 56i

38

4

Three Ages of British Kendo¯: The Introduction of a Unique Sporting and Cultural Activity PAUL BUDDEN

Drawn by Samuel Begg for the Illustrated London News1

The ancient art of kendo¯ has been studied and practised throughout Japan for centuries and has spread worldwide. BEGINNINGS IN BRITAIN

The Royal armouries possess Samurai armours sent as gifts in 1613 by Tokugawa Hidetada to James I, via John Saris. However the first public reference to Japanese Kendo¯ armour was in a Liverpool Mercury Newspaper advertisement dated 12 December 1865:

39

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

WITHOUT RESERVE On Thursday next, the 14th instant, at Two o’clock, at the Brokers Office. Colonial-buildings 36, Dale-street, 200 Open Japanese FANS, A Quality IVORY CURIOSITIES, A Suit of Japanese FENCING ARMOUR, A Quality LEATHER, PAPER, Ac, Ac. For further particulars apply to MALCOM GREAME & C0., 36, Dale-street. In 1862 the Japanese had sent their first official representatives to Europe, since first contact in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. At the World Fair in Paris in 1867 the arts and artifacts in the Japanese exhibition aroused great interest. Fascination in things Japanese continued to rise culminating in 1885 with the opening of the Japanese village in Knightsbridge London.2 At Tannaker Buhicrosan’s Japanese Village in Knightsbridge, according to pictorial records and newspaper articles of the time, there were

40

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

daily demonstrations of ‘Kendo¯ often described as ‘Fencing and Single Stick Exercise’ (see image taken from a flyer for the village) and Sumo a form of Japanese wrestling. The London Standard Saturday 10 January 1885 Yesterday a numerous party were invited to a private inspection, and after lunch were entertained with an exhibition of Japanese fencing, wrestling, and dancing in the theatre attached to the Village. The fencing with bamboo canes, between two athletes, padded and wearing wire masks, caused considerable amusement and the performers certainly displayed considerable adroitness. The wrestling was rather slow and, according to English notions of the exercise, extremely Tame.

It is probable that there had been displays of kendo¯ at the International Health exhibition of 1884 as according to the BKA History ‘The fencing, as those who saw the display of masks, pads, gloves and bamboo swords sent from Tokyo gymnasium to the Health Exhibition’.3 ¯ IN BRITAIN THE DEVELOPMENT OF KENDO

According to a newspaper article of 23 May 1898, the crew of the Japanese imperial navy cruiser Takasago presented a Tyneside audience with an ‘entertainment’ that included kendo¯. British newspaper archives of the time report further displays of kendo¯ performed by crews of visiting Japanese ships. Many of Japan’s first naval vessels were built in British yards and a close relationship developed between the Royal Navy and the Japanese navy both before and following the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. In Victorian Britain fencing had fallen into decline. Killing someone in a duel was seen as murder; in 1844 an act of Parliament denied army widows a pension if their husband died as the result of a duel and it was only through the efforts of such people as Alfred Hutton and Egerton Castle that serious knowledge of British swordsmanship was retained. Japan was in a similar situation in that the long tradition of ‘the sword’ was being lost. The popularity of kendo¯ had declined in Japan after the Meiji Restoration in 1868 and the abolition in 1876 of the right of samurai to carry swords. The tradition was probably saved partly by Sakakibara Kenichi, who had formed a fencing company of redundant samurai and from 1873 had given exhibitions of swordsmanship and martial arts for the general public. Kendo¯ and fencing could no longer be regarded as utilitarian activities; so they had to become sport, entertainment or education. Kendo¯ was seen as contributing to the development of character and so used sporting type competition in order to assist the process. 41

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Prior to the formation in 1895 of the Dai-Nippon Butokukai as the main governing body for martial arts in Japan, Japanese swordsmanship was traditionally referred to as kenjutsu and the sporting form as gekken. The term kendo¯ was adopted in 1920. Similarly judo¯, another of the Japanese martial arts, had been called ju¯jutsu or jujitsu. Interest in judo¯ developed in Britain in the late nineteenth century and a judo¯ demonstration was given at the first dinner of the Japan Society in London in 1892. Kano Jigoro¯,4 who developed ju¯jutsu as judo¯, and his students at the Kodokan were active and effective in promoting judo¯ amongst non-Japanese. In 1909 Kano was appointed to the International Olympic Committee. The educational value of kendo¯ and judo¯ was eventually recognized and they became part of the Japanese school curriculum in 1911. Edward William Barton Wright,5 an engineer who, whilst working in Kobe in the mid eighteen nineties, had studied ju¯jutsu was instrumental in bringing the sport to London. Returning to England in 1898 Wright set up a School of Arms in Shaftesbury Avenue London where boxing, fencing, wrestling and savate (French kickboxing), were taught. With the arrival in 1900 of Tani Yukio, ju¯jutsu was added. Before Tani arrived Wright had developed a fighting system, which he called Bartitsu. This was actually no more than ju¯jutsu with a few added features. Bartitsu might have been forgotten had it not been for Conan Doyle writing about it in The Adventure of the Empty House, 1903, in which Sherlock Holmes explains his victory over Professor Moriarty in their struggle at Reichenbach Falls was by the use of ‘Baritsu’, a possible misspelling. Apart from teaching at his school, Wright wanted his Japanese employees to perform on the music hall circuit ‘taking on all comers’. Tani’s brother and Yamamoto S disagreed and returned to Japan. Wright then brought in Uyenishi Sadakazu, who had no objection to appearing on the boards. Together Tani and Uyenishi caused a sensation, beating those of any weight or ability. Uyenishi was trained in kenjutsu and ju¯jutsu, and in 1901 started the Anglo Japanese Ju¯jutsu and Martial Arts Association. After both he and Tani Yukio left Barton Wright in 1902 he opened his own club ‘the School of Japanese Self Defence’ in 1903 at 31 Golden Square, London. Uyenishi’s Anglo Japanese Associations continued and, although Uyenishi returned to Japan in 1908, it remains the oldest Ju¯do¯ and Martial Arts Association in the UK. He left his Golden Square club in the charge of his senior student, William Garrud, whose 1914 book The Complete Ju¯jitsuan became a standard reference book. His wife, Edith Garrud, went on to establish ju¯jutsu classes for members of the militant suffragette movement and for the personal bodyguard of Emily (Emmeline) Pankhurst, its leader. 42

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

Francis James Norman,6 a former British cavalryman, who taught at the Naval Academy in Etajima from 1888, studied ju¯jutsu and kenjutsu as well as sumo and Japanese military history. After his return to London in November 1905 he gave demonstrations of ju¯jutsu and kenjutsu at the Marlborough Hall Polytechnic in Regent Street. Instructors present included: ‘Kanaya, Tani, Miyake, Fujisake, Eida, Miss Roberts, F.J. Norman, Sergeant-Major Betts, and some pupils from the Japanese School of Ju-jitsu, 305 Oxford Street’. Ju¯jutsu and kenjutsu were expounded in Norman’s short book: The Fighting Man of Japan-the training and exercises of the Samurai, published in 1905, which records the time when kendo¯ and ju¯do¯ were still in their formative stages. Koizumi Gunji,7 who was to play an important role in promoting in Britain the Japanese martial arts of judo¯ and kendo¯, which he had begun at the age of twelve, arrived in Wales in 1906. On his arrival in England in 1909 Mishiku Kaoru quickly took over the running of the Anglo Japanese Ju¯jutsu and Martial Arts Association at its new venue in Strathmore Gardens, London. Mishiku, who was a graduate of the Sekai Butokukai (the premier Martial Arts University of Japan) and a master of ju¯do¯, ju¯jutsu and kendo¯, employed various Japanese teachers at the club. In 1918 Koizumi started the Budokwai Ju¯do¯ Club in London. He thought that the promotion of ju¯jutsu and kenjutsu might help his adopted country writing:8 I hope that rendering my service in promoting such training would be a means of pacifying my conscience, which was pricked by the fact that we Japanese, especially students, had been the recipients of the kindness, hospitality and generously bestowed by the people of this country, without making any tangible return.

Kendo¯ demonstrations were held at cultural evenings as well as at training sessions. At these evenings, in addition to kendo¯ demonstrations, lectures were given on Japanese poetry, Buddhism, history, wood block prints and exhibitions were held of paintings by resident Japanese artists such as Yoshio Markino.9 Because of the strange noises and crashes that came from the building, it became the custom to invite the neighbours to these lectures and other events to show how odd but harmless the members were. Many years later The Budokwai Bulletin describing the early days of the Society recorded an occasion when, ‘... anxious neighbours, horrified by the thuds and shrieks and fearing someone was being tortured, hastily summoned the police’. One lecture was devoted to the art of the kiai (a type of shout) used in kendo¯. The first Budokwai display was held at the club in Lower Grosvenor Place, Victoria in 1918. The second Budokwai demonstration took 43

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

place at the Aeolian Hall in London in 1919 and it became an annual event. The programme illustrated in the picture shows that the 1919 display was chaired by Gerald Ames, a well-known actor of the time and Olympic fencer. He had taken part in the 1912 Olympic Games in Stockholm and was described by Richard Bowen as ‘an international fencer, who seems to have taken an interest in the Budokwai, no doubt because of the Kendo¯’. Ames went so far as to urge the reintroduction of duelling: If you take a lady out to supper and some cad of a man takes it in his head to annoy her with insolent staring, she has no redress and you have no method of punishing him. If duelling were recognised and practiced in England today, that kind of thing could be stopped and a lady could walk out without fearing the insolent advances and attentions of the cads who infest our streets today.

Although one of the leading lights of British fencing at the outset of the twentieth century, Ames was better known on the stage and as one of the early stars of British cinema. He appeared in and directed over sixty silent movies. Visiting kendo¯ master Sonobe Masatada gave the opening address at Aeolian Hall in London on 31 May 1919, and demonstrated aspects of Kendo¯, nabebuta (the use of saucepan lids in self-defence), kusarigama (chain and sickle) and nito (the use of two swords). Sonobe was the husband of Sonobe Hideo a famous naginata (halberd), teacher. The naginata display at the Aeolean, however, was demonstrated by a Mme Hino Yoshiko who was in London with her husband at that time who also took part in the kendo¯ display. It is recorded that twenty-six shillings were spent on the saucepan lids used in the nabebuta versus sword display. Komai Gonnosuke10 gave a talk at the event on the Japanese concept of bushido (the way of the warrior). Komai, who arrived in 1913, married an Englishwoman, a classical dancer. Later he took up silk-screen painting but was best known as a poet and author. He was also a practising member of the Bu¯dokwai. Members of the Bu¯dokwai demonstrated ju¯do¯, the modernized form of Ju¯-jutsu. The first woman (shown in the Samuel Begg illustration) to join the Budokwai in April 1919 was Katherine Cooper-White, who became member number 60. G.G. Vereker,11 British Men’s épée Champion 1913 and Gerald Ames demonstrated foil and épée. In 1920 Kano Jigoro, who can be considered the founder of modern judo¯ visited the Budokwai and Koizumi and Tani agreed to change completely to the Ko¯do¯kan ju¯do¯ system. According to Budokwai records a number of kendo¯ displays by members of the 44

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

Anglo Japanese Ju¯jutsu and Martial Arts Association took place in 1923. In the following year the famous Japanese film star Hayakawa Sessue, best known in Britain for his performance in Bridge on the River Kwai,12 gave a display of kendo¯ at the Budokwai’s annual demonstration at the Stadium Club in High Holborn. In the following years up to the beginning of the Second World War the Bu¯dokwai and the Anglo Japanese Ju¯jutsu and Martial Arts Association, which was renamed the Anglo Japanese Ju¯do¯ Club by Mishiku in 1929, continued to promote ju¯do¯ and also teach kendo¯. Its kendo¯ instructor from 1931 was Okamoto Yoshitomo. In 1930 R.A. Lidstone, who had first seen a demonstration of kendo¯ in New Zealand by Japanese navy men, began to study kendo¯. As he made steady progress in 1936 he was promoted to the 6th grade (kyu¯). In 1937 he was selected to take part in a kendo¯ demonstration for Prince Chichibu13 at a garden party in his honour at the Hurlingham Sport Club, in Fulham London. Kendo¯ demonstrations in 1936 were filmed by Pathé News. Okamoto Yoshitomo and Kudzutani Arataro¯ demonstrated Japanese sword techniques at the Holborn Stadium. In the following year demonstrations of Japanese sword techniques were given at the Anglo Japanese Ju¯do¯ Club by Mishiku and Okamoto. The war years for the most part brought an end to the practice of Japanese martial arts at the clubs. Following the war Mishiku, who died in 1972, worked hard to rebuild the Anglo Japanese Ju¯do¯ Club, which moved to Sandycombe Road in Kew. The Budokwai also reconvened moving to its current location in South Kensington in 1954. ¯ EMERGES FROM THE SHADOW OF JU ¯ DO ¯ KENDO

After the War kendo¯ continued to be practised at the Judo¯ clubs but it lacked in any real structure. Most of the time it [kendo¯] was just the Ju¯do¯ guys putting on some kendo¯ armour to have a bash, According to renowned ju¯do¯ teacher Bill Stopps:14 I had started kendo¯ and bought a couple of kits from Harry Johnson, paying four pounds, I used to train in Kensington, probably the Evening Institute around Gorborne Road, but after a while the kendo¯ got boring and I used to get headaches.

This ‘loose tradition’ continued until Otani Tomio the eldest son of judo¯ master Otani Masutaro¯, who came to Britain in 1919, began to practise kendo¯ on a daily basis with martial arts master Abe Kenshiro¯ who had just arrived in England. In 1957 Roald Knutsen discovered three kendo¯ armours at the London Ju¯do¯ Society in Vauxhall, and begins to study kendo¯. A typescript copy of R. A. Lidstone’s book An Introduction to Kendo¯ the Art 45

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

of Japanese Swordsmanship was lent to him at the Royal Armouries, where he was studying, by a colleague Harry Russell Robinson. Robinson also introduced him to Lidstone. His initial interest in kendo¯ had been sparked by F.J. Norman’s book of 1905, which he had read when he was fourteen. Knutsen met R.A. Lidstone in the following year at the London Ju¯do¯ Society, now the ‘informal’ Shinto Ryu¯ Kendo¯ Club and they started to practise kendo¯ together. Ju¯do¯ was accepted as an Olympic sport in 1960 and the 1964 games were awarded to Tokyo. The first ‘kendo¯ only’ club in Britain opened in 1961. This was the Acton Kendo¯ Kyu¯shinkan, which was formed under the auspices of the British Kendo¯ Council. It had Otani Tomio as ‘National Coach’. Throughout the 1960’s Otani offered kendo¯ at locations around the country. He ran three clubs in London and provided information on kendo¯ through articles in various journals. One of these was in ‘The Japanese fighting arts’ edited by John Goodbody15 with photographs by Brendan Monks. This article, written when kendo¯ in Britain was still floundering in its infancy, demonstrates the depth of his understanding of kendo¯ and includes clear explanations of both the technical terms and kendo¯ philosophy. A rival organization, the British Kendo¯ Association (BKA), was set up in 1962. The BKA was developed through the persistent efforts of Roald Knutsen, his wife Patricia, R.A. Lidstone and others including Dr Benjamin H Hazard in America. Osaki Shintaro¯ arrived in England. A student of Dr. Itoh Kyoitsu, a prominent figure in the Zen Nippon Kendo¯ Renmei, the new authority for kendo¯ in Japan (now referred to as the All Japan Kendo¯ Federation). Staying with the Knutsen family whilst studying at college, he added greatly to the development of the BKA. A demonstration of kendo¯ was included in the opening ceremony of the Tokyo Olympics in 1964. Kendo¯ masters Saimura Goro¯ and Mochida Moriji performed Nihon kendo¯ no kata (Japanese sword techniques). The BKA was accorded a high level of support from the Zen Nippon Kendo¯ Renmei and the Japanese Embassy in London. R. A. Lidstone was appointed the first chairman of the associa¯ shu¯ Kendo¯ Renmei, the forerunner to tion. The statutes for the O the European Kendo¯ Federation, were formulated in 1966 and in the same year Roald Knutsen started the Nenriki Kendo¯ Club at the Elephant and Castle in London. The Nenriki Kendo¯ Club named by Dr Itoh Kyoitsu and endorsed by the Zen Nippon Kendo¯ Renmei was officially opened in 1967. Among the sixty or so who attended the opening were Sir Frank and Lady Bowden and Captain Yoshimura Goro¯, the Japanese Naval Attaché in London. R.A. Lidstone acted as master of ceremonies. 46

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

Prominent Japanese teachers of kendo¯ made official and private visits to London, some of whom have remained in Britain. The first meet¯ shu¯ Kendo¯ Renmei confirming the statutes of the assoing of the O ciation took place in Brussels in January of the same year. Sir Frank Bowden, who was greatly interested in Japan, became a future president of the BKA and a vice-president of the Japan Society; He was awarded in 2000 the Order of the Rising Sun, with Golden Rays and Rosette, by the Emperor of Japan. The previous year was also marked by separate visits from Japanese kendo¯ masters Ozawa Takashi, Ohtaki Goro¯ and Matsumoto Toshio to the Nenriki and Butokukan club in Brighton. In May1968 the first European Kendo¯ Championship was held in Paris. The following year an official delegation led by the kendo¯ master Takizawa Ko¯zo¯ came from Japan to Europe to discuss the European Kendo¯ Federation. The death that year of R.A. Lidstone sadly left a ‘power’ vacuum within the BKA. A British team took part in the World Kendo¯ Championships in Japan in April 1970. An official BKA delegation led by Roald Knutsen attended the Championship events. A schism among British kendo¯ enthusiasts occurred in 1973 culminating in Roald Knutsen resigning from the BKA. This was the result of differences of opinion and personality clashes. Following his resignation Roald Knutsen formed a new kendo¯ association called the BKR or British Kendo¯ Renmei with the aim of providing an alternative choice for kendo¯ students who were more interested in practising and developing their understanding of the traditional arts and ways of Japanese martial culture than in treating kendo¯ primarily as a competitive sport. The BKA remains as the governing body for kendo¯, iaido¯16 and jo¯do¯17 and is recognised by the All Japan Kendo¯ Federation as founder members of the European and International Kendo¯ Federations. Its objectives are: to foster and develop the practise and spirit of kendo¯, iaido¯ and jo¯do¯ on traditional lines; to organise, regulate and promote on a national and international basis; to represent the UK internationally; to regulate the promotion of members to higher degrees. The BKR, the Dai Nippon Butokukai and various other independent groups continue to follow similar objectives under their own autonomy. Every year a memorial competition is held in commemoration of R.A. Lidstone, who died at the age of seventy-four on 10 October 1969 whilst practising kendo¯ at the Nenriki Kendo¯ Club. The event both honours his great contribution to British kendo¯ and celebrates his lifelong dedication to his art. It is a fitting tribute to a remarkable man. I attach as appendices tributes to Roald Knutsen, in recognition of his great achievement in establishing kendo¯ in its own right, and to R.A. Lidstone, as the inspirational and guiding figure in the promotion of kendo¯ in Britain. 47

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

APPENDIX I

Roald Knutsen (1933) was born in Hertfordshire of Anglo-Norwegian parents. Educated at The Perse School, Cambridge and Watford Grammar School. After studying art and design he served as a regular in the Intelligence Corps This was followed by a successful career in graphic design, choreographing complex medieval combat sequences for a computer film project in England and the USA, studying arms and armour at the Royal Armouries and writing. For the past halfcentury he has practised traditional Japanese sword related arts under a succession of famous Japanese masters being awarded a senior master’s licence, the instructor status of Renshi and a commemorative Menjo - certificate marking the Meiji Centenary in 1968. He has researched and written extensively about the Japanese warrior traditions and aspects of Japanese history. Without his determination kendo¯ might not have emerged and be where it is today; the three kendo¯ armours might also still be sitting undisturbed in the cupboard at the London Jo¯do¯ Society. Books by Roald Knutsen: Japanese Polearms (1963) Rediscovering Budo (2004) Japanese Spears, co-authored with his wife Patricia (2004) Sun Tzu and the Art of Medieval Japanese Warfare (2006) Tengu (2011) Tales of Enshin, the Reluctant Samurai (2012) Tales of the Samurai (2012) APPENDIX II

Ronald Alexander Lidstone (1895–1969). 48

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

The New Zealand, Newspaper NZ Truth, Issue 1040, 31 October 1925: ‘A MAN in his time plays many parts’ said the poet. Such a one is Ronald Alexander Lidstone now at Auckland. Young in appearance, there’s many a man would give something to have seen what he has, or travelled as much. His pie of life is full of meat. Trained for mercantile marine at Osbourne and Dartmouth he became a Lieutenant in the Navy in the Big War, and was on the Marlborough in the Battle of Jutland. Later he went to ‘Gay Paree’, and followed the alluring profession of the light fantastic. Incidentally he polished up his knowledge of the fencing art. A master of the foil, sabre single stick and quarterstaff, he can hold his own with any man. In New Zealand’s first film, Rewi’s Last Stand, he took the part of Von Tempsky with singular success.

As a Naval Cadet aged sixteen, he was introduced to ‘swordplay’ and for the remainder of his life fencing, arms and armour were to be the greatest of his many interests. He competed three times at the Royal Navy and Military Tournament from 1911 to 1914. His books on fencing although out of print remain the authoritative treatise on the subject and his book, Bloody Bayonets became a handbook for the armed forces during World War II. He was also the author of the first book written in English on kendo¯. Lidstone first saw kendo¯ in Auckland, New Zealand, where he was living in 1926. The crew of the Japanese Naval ship Iwate put on a show of Japanese martial arts. He was impressed by the kendo¯ display and this would also have a lasting effect on him throughout his life. After the First World War, where he saw action at the Battle of Jutland, he taught fencing and acrobatics at the Old Vic and other theatres in and outside of London, making a name for himself as a director of stage and film fights. During this time he met his wife Isolde a professional dancer. Together they ‘trod the boards’ as the successful Adagio – (acrobatic) dancing duo ‘Isolde and Alexis’. In 1924 they emigrated to New Zealand on the chance of a position for R.A. running a Timber Mill. Unfortunately this came to nothing and struggling financially he took a job as a ‘Sports Master’ in charge of physical fitness. He also taught fencing, physical culture and dancing together with Isolde. They also toured again as ‘Isolde and Alexis’. He worked on the first silent film made in New Zealand Rewi’s Last Stand as fight Arranger and as the main character using the name Charles Alexis. This would also later be his ‘pen name’. In 1926 they moved to Sydney in Australia opening a dance and fencing studio. But their real dream was to return home and in 1928 when an aunt died leaving a small legacy they were able to book their passage ‘home’. 49

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

On their return R.A. took up kendo¯ at the Anglo Japanese Ju¯jutsu and Martial Arts Association in London, continuing to practise until the Second World War, when he was conscripted into the RAF and promoted to Squadron Leader. Towards the end of the war, he was concerned with the handing over to the British of a number of American Air Force bases, for which he was granted the temporary rank of Wing Commander. After the War R.A. retired from kendo¯ for some fifteen years, only restarting after meeting with Roald Knutsen in 1958. With the assistance of other kendo¯ students, they founded the BKA in 1964. R.A. Lidstone was awarded kendo¯ grades (kyu¯ and dan – student & master degrees) in 1936, 1962 and 1967. He was granted Renshi – ‘instructor status’ in 1969 by the Zen Nippon Kendo¯ Renmei, in recognition of his great contribution to kendo¯; this was to have been conferred in Japan, but his poor health made this impossible and it had to be awarded posthumously in 1970 following his untimely death. Books by R A Lidstone: STUDIES IN SYMBOLOGY: R A Lidstone (1926) The Symbology of the Crucifix & the Tarot Symbology & the Types of Man Symbology of the initiations & the Tarot Symbology of the Number 12 The Art of Fencing: A Practical Manual for Foil Épée and Sabre (1930) Bloody Bayonets: The Complete Guide to Bayonet Fighting (1942) Fencing: A Practical Treatise on Foil, Épée, Sabre (1952) An Introduction to Kendo¯ the Art of Japanese Swordsmanship: Charles Alexis. Photographs by Alan R. Menzies. (Drawings by Roald M. Knutsen). (1964) Schools and Masters of Fencing: From the Middle Ages to the Eighteenth Century by Egerton Castle. Edited and Forward: R.A. Lidstone (1969) R A Lidstone Filmography: 1925. Rewi’s Last Stand - Fight Director, 1953. Knights of the Round Table. Starring Robert Taylor & Ava Gardner. – Fight Director. 1954. Men of Sherwood Forest. Starring Don Taylor. – Fight Director. 1955. The Dark Avenger. Starring Errol Flynn. – Fight Director Acting: 1925. Rewi’s Last Stand. Character: Von Tempskey. Television: 1956–1957. The Adventures of Sir Lancelot. Starring William Russell. – Master at arms 50

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

1955–1959. Robin Hood. Starring Richard Greene. – Fight Director 1959. ITV Play of the Week – Stunt arranger. 1963. As You Like It – Wrestling coordinator Theatre: 1949–1963. The Old Vic, Saddlers Wells, Covent Garden, Citizen’s Theatre Glasgow, Saville Theatre – Fight Director. 1969. Founder member of the Society of British Fight Directors. Dance: 1919–1936. As half of the professional ‘Adagio’ dance duo ‘Isolde and Alexis’ Performances ‘Notwithstanding’ the Café de Paris in London, the London Coliseum and a tour of South Africa in 1923 REFERENCES AND BACKGROUND SOURCES

Alex Bennet: F.J. Norman. The Fighting Man of Japan: the training and exercises of the Samurai The BKA The BKR Douglas Lloyd Jenkins ‘Samuel Begg’ John Bowen, the personal records of his late brother Richard Bowen ‘Ju¯do¯ history’ The Budokwai ‘Ju¯do¯ history records’ Pathe News The British Library ‘Posters of the Japanese Village’ The British Newspaper Archive Wikipedia ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

Terry Holt, Roald and Pat Knutsen, the Lidstone Family, Ian Parker Dodd, Matsuda Kazuyo, For their invaluable information, generous assistance and great kindness. ENDNOTES 1

2

Samuel Begg, born in London 1854, emigrated to New Zealand. and spent much of the remainder of the nineteenth century, there as well as in Australia, before returning to England attaining a position as an illustrator for the Illustrated London News. Described as ‘perhaps the finest black and white artist of his age’ and yet also representing ‘the worst features’ of late nineteenth century illustrators, being perhaps too photographic in presentation. For a description of the village and information about Tannaker Buhicrosan see Japan in Late Victorian London: The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and the Mikado, 1885 by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC), Norwich, 2009

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BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

3

According to a ‘Catalogue with Explanatory notes of the Exhibits from the Department of Education, Empire of Japan, In the International Health and Education Exhibition, held in London, 1884. By order of the Minister of Education, SEICHI TEJIMA, Commissioner, Director of Tokio Educational Museum and Attaché Superieur of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. Department of Education, Tokio, Japan. London September 1884 Class XXXIX. Special Apparatus for Physical Training in Schools, Gymnasia, Apparatus for Exercise, Drill, etc. (15.) Set of Fencing Apparatus. (16.) Sketch, representing Fencing Exercises. (17.) Set of Apparatus for Archery Practice, (18.) Sketch, representing Archery Practice. (19.) Sketch, representing Exercises in ‘Jiujitsu’ (kind of wrestling).

4

5 6

7

8

9

10

These arts (Fencing, Archery and Jiujitsu) were considered as an essential part of military training for a samurai (knight). As they afford opportunities for splendid physical exercises, they have been revived in some schools. See Nos. 16, 18, and 19, to get an idea of exercises in these arts. No. 18 represents the Archery practice of olden times. It is possible that the equipment from the Health Exhibition ended up with Tannaker Buhicrosan who used it at the Japanese Village. See ‘Ju¯do¯ Pioneers’ by Richard Bowen in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume V, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2004. See ‘Ju¯do¯ Pioneers’ note 2. Alex Bennett is a scholar, teacher, translator, writer, coach and active competitor in the martial arts. He holds two PhDs in studies related to bu¯do, has achieved seventh dan in kendo¯ and fifth dan in naginata, lives in Japan and is the author of several books about kendo¯ including the reissue of FJ Norman’s book, The Fighting Man of Japan: the training and exercises of the Samurai, in which he did a new introduction in 2003. ISBN 9784907009045 See biographical portrait by Richard Bowen in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library 2002. The Budokwai Website: ‘Its Roots and Early History And Some Other Early Matters’. See also the personal writings of the late Richard (Dickie) Bowen, British Judo¯ pioneer, who was a 4th Dan and Vice-president of the Budokwai, e.g.100 Years of Judo¯ in Great Britain. There are further notes not included in the book, which are on file in the Richard Bowen Archive in Bath University. See biographical portrait of Yoshio Markino by Carmen Blacker in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume I, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library 1994. Mentioned on pages 317/8 of Richard Bowen’s essay on Koizumi Gunji (see note 4)

52

¯ THREE AGES OF BRITISH KENDO

11

12

13

14

15

16

17

Sir George Gordon Vereker was later to become British Ambassador to Finland 1940–1941. See portrait of David Lean by Norimasa Morita in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VIII, ed, Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013 See biographical portrait of Prince and Princess Chichibu by Dorothy Britton in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2004. Bill Stopps was a renowned ju¯do¯ teacher and the first personal assistant to judo¯ master Masutaro¯ Otani from 1947. The quote is from the ‘Judo¯ Forum’ and is based on a rough transcript from a tape received by the British Judo¯ Council from Bill Stopps in July 1993. John Goodbody was for many years chief sports writer for The Times and has covered every Olympics since 1964. The publication quoted is The Japanese Fighting Arts 1967, printed by the Garden City Press Ltd, Letchworth Herts. Library of Congress Catalogue Number: 69–12801. Brendan Monks is a photographer and sports picture editor at the Daily Mail. Iaido¯ is a modern Japanese martial art/sport. Iaido¯ is associated with the smooth, controlled movements of drawing the sword from its scabbard or saya, striking or cutting an ‘imaginary’ opponent, removing blood from the blade, and then replacing the sword in the scabbard Jodo meaning ‘the way of the jo¯, is a Japanese martial art using a short staff four feet two inches (1.27 metres) long or jo and is strongly focused upon defence against the Japanese sword.

53

5

Nippon Club (1881–2014) SETSUO KATO1

ORIGINS

The Nippon Club is almost certainly the oldest Japanese institution in London other than the Japanese legation which was established in 1872 by Terashima Munenori.2 The Nippon Club can trace its origins to 1881 when about twenty to thirty Japanese living in London gathered together monthly at a restaurant in the Strand. They discussed political and economic issues and helped each other to overcome the difficulties which they faced in a strange land. On some occasions they invited guests to speak. They called these meetings ‘London Nipponjinkai’ (London Japanese Club). There were three major players involved in establishing the Nipponjinkai and looking after Japanese interests in London. These were Mitsui & Co.,3 the Yokohama Specie Bank4 and Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK).5 These three trading, banking and shipping companies were Japan’s first major companies to establish roots in London. The three companies still chair the present Nippon Club in rotation. In 1888 the Japanese Consul in London Sonoda Kokichi and his wife invited Nipponjinkai members to their house (46 Holland Road W14) to meet there rather than in a restaurant. From then on the Nipponjinkai regularly met there until Ozaki Saburo’s6 wife offered her place in Bayswater. In 1893 there were aroud forty members of Nipponjinkai while there were 116 Japanese living in London at that time. Following the revision in 1894 of the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce 1858 (Nichiei-Tsu¯sho¯ J¯oyaku 1858) and the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895 Anglo-Japanese trade began to expand and following the conclusion of the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance (Nichiei Do¯mei) in 1902 relations between the two countries became closer while increased numbers of Japanese businesses became established in London. 54

NIPPON CLUB (1881–2014)

In 1904 the Nipponjinkai decided to establish a club house where members could meet fellow members at any time. With support from Japanese bankers, they leased a building in Covent Garden (39 King Street WC2) and opened their first club house with a lounge, meeting rooms, library and a restaurant. Genuine Japanese cuisine, such as special grilled eels, Dover sole sashimi, prawn tempura, pickled daikon were served in the restaurant. Although private, this must have been the first Japanese restaurant in London except one at the International Health Exhibition7 in 1884 where a temporary Japanese restaurant was staged during the exhibition. By now there were some seventy members of the club. Following the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905) Japan became increasingly recognized as an important world power and trade with Britain expanded significantly. In 1906 total trade exceeded 123 million yen which was four times the volume recorded in 1893. More Japanese banks, trading companies and shipping companies set up offices in London and the number of Japanese living in London reached 276. The Covent Garden club house soon became too small and in 1912 the club moved to new premises at 76–78 Mortimer Street W1. The premises were bigger and the rent was £500 a year for a seven year lease. By then, membership of Nipponjinkai had topped a hundred. On 21 July of that year the new club house was officially opened by Mr Kato¯ Takaaki, the Japanese ambassador8 who was also the honorary Chairman of the Nipponjinkai. The tradition of the Japanese ambassador being the honorary chairman of Nipponjinkai still continues to the present day. During the First World War between 1914 and 1918 there was a significant increase in Japanese exports to Europe. In 1919 trade between Japan and Britain had increased to 229 million yen. A GENTLEMAN’S CLUB

The premises at Mortimer Street subsequently became too small to house all the members and various activities. The general committee decided to seek bigger premises in central London. In 1919 they bought a building at No. 3 Cavendish Square, W1, just behind Oxford Circus, for £15,000 with a 999 year lease. It was a fourstorey building with a basement and attics. The club house consisted of a lounge, reading room, meeting room, games room, bar, dining room and billiards room. In addition there was guest and staff accommodation. On 20 October 1919 the club house was opened as the Nipponjinkai Club House but was usually called Nippon Club House. By then there were more than 1500 Japanese nationals living in London and membership of Nipponjinkai had risen to 400. 55

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

The club house was managed like an English gentleman’s club. Membership was strictly limited to top Japanese figures such as diplomats, professionals and businessmen. In order to become a member a Japanese had to be recommended by other members to

Nippon Club, 3 Cavendish Square 56

NIPPON CLUB (1881–2014)

join and although there were nearly 2,000 Japanese living in London in the 1920s membership was limited to 400. Non-members were only admitted when accompanied by a member. The club house was used for meetings, dining and pleasure. Many notable Japanese businessmen, diplomats, scholars, admirals, politicians and even a few prime ministers passed through the club when they were in London. The club house was open daily from 11 o’clock in the morning till midnight except on Mondays when the club was closed. Members were entitled to bring up to six guests at a time. They enjoyed Japanese cuisine in the dining room, playing billiards, reading Japanese books and newspapers. British guests were often invited for drinks and meals. However, there were strict rules about use of the club house. For instance it was not permitted to bring alcohol into the club. There was a bar in the house which was opened between 12 noon and 3 pm and again between 5 pm and 11 pm on weekdays and between 1:30 pm and 2:30 pm, 6 pm and 9 pm on Sundays and Bank Holidays. Tips for staff were not permitted. These rules ensured that the Nippon club house had a good reputation among British people. GOOD ANGLO-JAPANESE RELATIONS

After the First World War Anglo-Japanese relations were friendly and Japanese living and working in London had a good time. The Japanese community were proud of their Nippon club house. Bilateral trade flourished, the numbers of Japanese companies operating in Britain doubled and Japanese residents significantly increased in number. One resident at the time, Mr Taoka Yahei, commented ‘Anglo-Japanese relations have never been as good as at present and the British people are so friendly toward Japan and the Japanese.’ In May 1920 the Japanese Crown Prince Hirohito, during his official visit to Britain, visited9 the Nippon club house and donated £700 to the club. The Nippon club house was well-maintained because of donations from visitors and from members leaving London. THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The deterioration in Anglo-Japanese relation in the latter half of 1930s, the fears of Japanese competition in textiles and other manufactured goods and British concerns about Japanese advance into Manchuria and China complicated the lives of members of the Japanese community. When the Chinese Embassy in London began a campaign against Japan, Nipponjinkai members together with the Japanese Embassy set up a special committee to counter this campaign and explain Japan’s situation and intentions. 57

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Following the beginning of the Second World War in 1939 and Japan’s support for Germany, the Japanese community in Britain had a difficult time. Many Japanese businesses were closed and businessmen were sent home. By 1940 membership of the Nipponjinkai had dropped to 187. Following German air raids on London some Japanese families were evacuated to High Wycombe. In November 1940, the majority of Japanese residents (mostly businessmen and their families) left Britain by the Japanese evacuation ship Fushimi-Maru from Galway, Ireland, and only a handful of Japanese men were left in London to look after Japanese interests. In 1941 when Japan declared war against Britain the Nippon club house was seized by the British Government as enemy property. The club house was put under Swiss management. After the war, Japan was forced, in accordance with the terms of the San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951, to give up all its properties outside Japan. The Nippon club house, although it was not owned by the Japanese Government and was registered as a British establishment, was not exempted. There were two different Japanese societies in London before the War. One was the Nipponjinkai which was an elite Japanese society consisting of top businessmen, diplomats, scholars and professionals and the other was the Do¯ho¯kai (residents club). Dohokai was for Japanese nationals who lived and worked in Britain as permanent residents. Members were Ryokan proprietors, shop-owners and shop-keepers, chefs, gardeners, actors, hairdressers, wives of British husbands and others who were not sent by companies. They regularly met and helped each other. They looked after the Japanese graveyard in Hendon Cemetery which still exists today. Both groups ceased to exist and Japanese nationals living in Britain were interned on the Isle of Man. NEW NIPPON CLUB

The Japanese economy gradually recovered. In 1951 a Japanese Government office was set up in London and the Anglo-Japanese Trade Repayment Agreement was signed. In 1952 the Peace Treaty with Japan came into force and the Japanese embassy was re-established in London. Japanese nationals were once more allowed to visit Britain. NYK re-opened a European shipping route and the Bank of Tokyo in place of the Yokohama Specie Bank established a London branch. Other Japanese banks, trading houses and insurance companies followed. In 1955 there were 401 Japanese residents in London. They were mostly London representatives of Japanese companies. Because of Japan’s role in the war many of them encountered hostility from British people and had difficulty finding accommodation. 58

NIPPON CLUB (1881–2014)

Chinese restaurants sometimes refused to serve them when they found that their customers were Japanese. Mr Oba Sadao, businessman and historian, who came to London as a representative of a trading company in 1954 recalled that the atmosphere in London towards the Japanese was hostile and as a result Japanese living in London were keeping a low profile. There were no Japanese restaurants or food shops at that time and there was an obvious lack of premises where Japanese could go and relax. Mr Satake Tamekichi, who used to run a small hotel near Marble Arch for Japanese nationals before the war, returned to London and invited Japanese businessmen to his home in Belsize Park where they could enjoy home cooking. They talked about reviving the pre-war Nippon club house. Representatives from NYK, the Bank of Tokyo and Mitsui & Co. who had been the leading members of the pre-war Nipponjinkai, searched for a suitable building. In 1960 they found appropriate premises in Chelsea (13 Chelsea Embankment, SW3), a Victorian era building beside the Thames costing £50,000. The lounge, library, bar and office were on the ground floor. On the first floor there was a big dining room and on the third floor there were meeting rooms and private dining rooms. Mr Satake Tamekichi became the manager of the club house. Named the Nippon Club, the first chairman was Mr Matsudaira Ichiro¯ from the Bank of Tokyo and Ambassador Ohno Katsumi10 was the honorary chairman. The membership consisted of fifty corporate members and 250 individual members. There were hardly any Japanese restaurants in London at that time and the Nippon Club dining room was the place to enjoy Japanese cuisine. Mr Kondo Shigeru, who ran Momo restaurant in Ealing in 2014, was a manager of the Nippon club restaurant. He recalls: Nippon Club was a prestigious club and the atmosphere was elegant and dignified but at the same time relaxed and comfortable. There were three very good chefs, Mr Shibuya, Mr Watanabe and Mr Iwasa in the restaurant, which was always busy with members. Food was very good and very reasonable because the Nippon Club was not a profit-making organization. Many members entertained their business clients here and families dined at weekends. MEDICAL CLINIC

In 1961 the Nippon club set up a welfare committee with the aim of establishing various welfare services for members, including the provision of medical advice from Japanese doctors, children’s education in Japanese and some leisure activities. Four Japanese medical doctors who were researching at British universities at that time were asked 59

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

to give medical consultations to members. Those doctors were not allowed to practise in Britain, but they understood the differences in treatment between the two countries and gave valuable advice. The Japanese really wanted to have Japanese doctors in London not only because of the language problem, but because of the differences in treatment and medical practice. There had been a medical clinic with a Japanese doctor and even a Japanese dentist in London before the war. By now there were over 1,000 Japanese living in Britain compared with only a few hundred before the war. The problem of recognition of medical qualifications was not unique to Britain. There was a mirror problem affecting the British community in Japan. The basic issue was one of recognition of medical qualifications by the British Medical Association (BMA) in Britain and by the Japan Medical Association (JMA) in Japan. Both were essentially conservative organizations and in effect closed shops. They were determined to insist that only those who qualified under their rules and regulations should be regarded as qualified. The British and Japanese governments were eventually forced to confront this problem. Eventually after tortuous negotiations between the British Embassy in Tokyo and the Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Tokyo a compromise was reached in 1964,11 which set a precedent for the future. The JMA was induced to grant a licence to practice for foreign patients in the Kansai to a Dr Barraclough. In return a Japanese doctor was allowed by the BMA to treat Japanese patients in London. In 1965 the Nippon Club Clinic opened in Golders Green, North London, where a big Japanese community existed. Dr Asai Eiichiro¯ from the Japanese Red Cross Hospital was appointed as the first doctor. In the first year the clinic treated some 1,100 patients and did general medical check-ups on over 1,000 members and their families. In 1974 the number of Japanese residents in Britain exceeded 5,000 and the Nippon Club opened a second clinic in Sutton with another Japanese doctor. The Japanese clinics in London looked after Japanese patients living in Britain as well as Japanese living in the Middle East and Africa where the medical system was less advanced and there were no Japanese medical doctors. Dr Asai served for five years and Dr Ishii took over and worked till 1975. Both doctors were from the Japanese Red Cross Hospital, but in 1975 the Red Cross Hospital decided to expand its facilities in Tokyo and needed more doctors. As a result the Nippon Club had to look elsewhere for doctors. In 2014 the Nippon Club maintained two clinics, one in North London (St Johns Wood) and the other in South London (Wimbledon) staffed by three Japanese doctors from Jikeikai University. They were treating a total of over 10,000 patients every year. 60

NIPPON CLUB (1881–2014)

JAPANESE SCHOOL

The welfare committee of the Nippon Club was asked to investigate the feasibility of establishing a Japanese school in London. Some members were concerned that their children attending local schools would forget the Japanese language and also fall behind Japanese educational standards. In 1964 the Nippon Club conducted a survey of their members on whether a Japanese school was necessary. About half of those who replied seriously wanted to have Japanese education facilities in London. In 1965 the Nippon Club set up ‘Nihongokai’ (Japanese language club) with seventy-five members and started teaching Japanese language. Classes were held every Saturday morning for two hours in the Convent of Our Lady of Sion (Chepstow Villas, W11). The classes were divided into three groups, the first elementary school, the second elementary school and middle school. The classes were taught by Mr Nomoto Kikuo and others. The Japanese population in Britain and the number of children were growing. The Nihongokai had started with fifty-seven pupils in 1965 but increased to ninety-five in 1967 and 120 in 1968. Three classes became seven classes and the higher age classes moved to the annex of the Japanese embassy. Pupils numbers further increased from 125 in 1970 to 350 in 1973 and to 470 in 1974. Classes had to be held in many different schools and other premises. In 1975 the Nippon Club had applied to the Japanese Education Ministry and the British Ministry of Education for permission to open a Japanese day school in London. In 1976 Japanese School Ltd. was established and a school building (Gloucester Avenue, Camden NW1) was purchased. In October 1976 the Japanese day school and the Japanese Saturday school were officially launched. The headmaster and teachers came from Japan. In the 1980s the number of Japanese pupils increased still further and the Camden School became too small. In 1987 the Japanese School moved from Camden Town to Acton (Creffield Road, Acton W3). In 2014 the Japanese School had around 430 pupils in the day school and 1,200 in the Saturday schools. The Saturday schools were divided into three schools in Acton, Finchley and Croydon. The Nippon Club remains the key organization behind the Japanese School in London. Its management committee meets every month to discuss the arrangements for the school. NEWSLETTER BIG BEN

It is not clear whether the Nipponjinkai had any kind of bulletins or newsletters. When the Nippon Club started after the war, it published a small hand-written mimeograph newsletter edited by Jiji 61

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Press London. It reported the various activities of the club and had special feature stories, such as about the Hendon Japanese graveyard, the internment camp on the Isle of Man during the war and the opening of the Nippon Club clinic in Golders Green. In the 1970s Nippon Club Newsletters were published as a page in Living in Europe, the Japanese community newspaper published by OCS (Overseas Courier Services Ltd.). Unfortunately both the mimeograph bulletins and the Living in Europe have totally disappeared. However, in 1980 the Nippon Club started publishing an official newsletter called Big Ben. Big Ben covers not only the club’s activities, but various features and topics useful for Japanese residents in Britain, plus news of the Japanese society in Britain and various Japan-related events. Unlike its predecessors, the entire volumes of Big Ben were kept in the Nippon Club and in the Japanese Embassy Library. Big Ben is published every other month and celebrated its 200th issue in July 2012. Big Ben is in the Japanese language and originally was typeset by photo typesetter. As digital technology has advanced, many organizations including Big Ben have moved to online publishing. As a freelance journalist I have been involved in contributing articles to Big Ben since 1983 and have been the editor since 2003. Big Ben represents the Nippon Club and the Nippon Club reflects the Japanese community in Britain. NIPPON CLUB’S DIFFERENT PREMISES

When the post-war Nippon Club started in 1960, the only Japanese restaurant was that in the Nippon Club. However, as the number of Japanese in London grew in the 1970s, more Japanese restaurants opened and the Nippon Club restaurant began to face financial difficulties. New Japanese restaurants were concentrated in the City and West End near Japanese businesses. Chelsea was rather out of the way for the Japanese community and the restaurant gradually lost its customers. In 1977 the Nippon Club decided to close down the restaurant and in 1978, the club house in Chelsea was sold. The responsibilities of the Nippon Club for running the medical clinics, managing the Japanese school and for other activities, however, remained and office space was still needed. Mitsubishi Corporation accordingly gave the Nippon Club temporary office space in their building in the City. Later the Nippon Club had a small office in Royal London House (16 Finsbury Circus EC2), then in Hambro House (Vintners Place EC4) in 1981 and then in Prince Rupert House (64 Queen St EC4) in 1988. The monthly general committee meetings were held in the chairman’s company office while other committee meetings were held in the offices of member companies. In the 1990s the 62

NIPPON CLUB (1881–2014)

Lounge in Samuel House at 6 St Albans Street SW1 (1995–2014)

Japanese bubble economy had burst and Japanese companies were reluctant to spend money on non-profit making activities. Some members, however, wanted a club house with meeting rooms and a lounge where members could meet or learn languages and enjoy cultural events. They declared that without a club house it could not be called a club. In 1995 the Nippon Club moved to Samuel House (6 St Albans Street, Piccadilly SW1). Although it was not very large, Samuel House had three meeting rooms, a lounge and a library. Members could hire a meeting room, enjoy coffee and tea with friends, watch Japanese TV or read Japanese newspapers in their club. Samuel House was just three minute’s walk from Piccadilly Circus. All the committee meetings were held there. The Nippon Club organized its own English and French language courses and held seminars for members. The Nippon Club again functioned properly as a club from 1995 to 2014. But London property prices were rising and Samuel House cost £185,000 a year.12 Apart from paying for Samuel House the Nippon Club had to pay other big rents for the North Clinic (St. John and St. Elizabeth Hospital) and the South Clinic (Parkside Hospital). The club accordingly decided in 2014 to move out of central London. New much smaller premises were found in Southwark (5–11 Lavington St SE1) but the club could at least provide a lounge and meeting rooms. 63

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

The Nippon Club’s income is dependent on the membership fee. The club cannot expect in the future any significant increase in membership. The number of Nippon Club members has in fact hardly increased over the last decade. The membership mostly consists of Japanese corporations and Japanese businessmen. Although the number of Japanese living in Britain has been slightly increasing, the Japanese corporate sector may be decreasing. This is partly due to the Japanese economic recession and partly due to the shift of Japanese economic strategy toward Asia. The Nippon Club in 2014 maintains its traditional roles of promoting the welfare of its members, their health and the education of their children. It remains at the centre of the Japanese community in Britain. REFERENCE: London Nipponjinkai Album 1921 Mr. Sadao Oba ‘The 100th Anniversary of Nippon Club’ (Big Ben 1985– 1987) ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Setsuo Kato, journalist, member of general committee and editor of Big Ben, Nippon Club. See Japanese Envoys in Britain 1862–1964 ed. Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2007. See Mitsui in London by Sadao Oba in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, volume V, Global Oriental, 2004. See Yokohama Specie Bank in London by Keiko Itoh, in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, volume V, Global Oriental, 2004. See Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK) by Hiroyuki Takeno, in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, volume V, Global Oriental, 2004. See Ozaki Saburo¯ (in Thee Meiji Marriages) by Noboru Koyama in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, volume IV, Japan Library, 2002. See pages 7 and 8 of Japan in Late Victorian London: The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and the Mikado, 1885, by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Sainsbury Institute, Norwich, 2009. See biographical portrait by Ian Nish in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume IV, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library, 2002 and Japanese Envoys, ed. Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2007. Nipponjinkai made an official album to commemorate the Royal visit to the Club House. As there are hardly any documents or reference left about Nipponjinkai before the Second World War, this album is a rare and precious document. A portrait of Ohno Katsumi by Eiji Seki is contained in Japanese Envoys in Britain 1862–1964, ed. Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2007 64

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11

12

The account given here is based on the memory of Sir Hugh Cortazzi, the editor of this volume. He recalls meetings in Tokyo when he was first secretary in the British embassy in Tokyo with Yamazaki Toshio, later ambassador in London, but then head of the British Commonwealth Section (Eirempoka) in the Gaimusho. Yamazaki had to deal through the Ministry of Health and Welfare with the JMA. Hugh Cortazzi had to deal through the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Health with the BMA. He recalls that In Japan during the allied occupation between 1945 and 1952 a numnber of foreign doctors had been registered in Japan without having to pass Japanese medical examinations in Japanese. After the occupation ended these licences were not revoked, The Tokyo Medical Clinic in the Masonic Building at Shiba, which included a small number of foreign qualified doctors including a New Zealand doctor Dr Derek Fair and the American Dr Milton Morton and the dental surgeon Dr Besford, were allowed to continue to provide medical services to foreigners in Tokyo. There were also a few other qualified foreign doctors such as the German doctor Eitel who were also allowed to practise. But the JMA decided that in future only doctors, who had passed their qualifications in examinations written in the Japanese language would in future be allowed to practise in Japan. The American Seventh Day Adventists had their own hospital and as they trained staff in Japanese (including the Japanese scholar Dr Nelson) were willing to take examinations in Japanese. But, as foreign qualified doctors in Japan aged, the British communities in Japan were likely to face a situation in which they would not have adequate access to foreign qualified doctors. Comprising £93,000 Rent, £47,000 Service Charge and £45,000 Council Tax.

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6

Japan and Ye Sette of Odd Volumes and The Thirteen Club in the 1890s HUGH CORTAZZI

The Japan Society founded in 1891 was not the only organization which showed an interest in Japan in the 1890s. Ye Sette of Odd Volumes was much favoured by some of the founders of the Japan Society of London. It in turn may well have influenced the Thirteen Club of London to hold a Japan-themed dinner. YE SETTE OF ODD VOLUMES

‘Ye Sette of Odd Volumes’ was a late Victorian dining club with a whimsical name and to modern eyes a contrived set of ceremonies and titles. Members were called ‘His Oddship Brother’. Toni Huberman in her biographical portrait of Charles Holme (Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, p. 257) wrote: ‘One could say that without Ye Sette of Odd Volumes the Japan Society might never have existed. Ye Sette was ostensibly a gentleman’s club, without benefit of a club house. Originally founded by the publisher Bernard Quaritch and a group of friends in 1878, it seems to have been an excuse for a

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good dinner once a month, and the company of congenial friends.’ They were expected to contribute and read papers on topics of possible interest to other members. These were privately printed in a series called ‘Opuscula’. Ye Sette of Odd Volumes held a dinner on Friday 3 June 1892 at Limmer’s Hotel in London which had a Japanese theme. This was the 146th meeting of Ye Sette with His Oddship, Brother William Murrell, in the Chair. According to The Year-Boke [sic] of the Sette of Odd Volumes for 1892–1893 one of the guests invited by Edward Heron-Allen, ‘Vice-President and Necromancer’ was Oscar Wilde. The menu was:

The artist for the menu was said to be Issai. The versified chronicle of the evening began: Again the ODD VOLUMES assembled, Correctly got up to a man, Prepared to discuss, with hors d’oeuvres, THE ART OF OLD Japan. We drank to the Queen; we boasted What wonderful guests we had got; And then in a batch they were toasted, 67

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And served up, hot and hot. O, the Inros of Old Japan! Kakimonos [sic] of Old Japan! How instructive to hear the OLD VOLUMES, On the ART OF OLD Japan! His Oddship asked Captain Kawara (I’ve named him as near as I can), To respond for the civilization And Culture of newest Japan He spoke with aplomb and conviction, His speech very much seemed to please; But pray don’t ask me to report it, For I don’t understand Japanese. O, the Culture of newest Japan! Civilization of newest Japan! The Japs aere out-Europing Europe, I fear in their newest Japan!

One of the speakers was Marcus Huish (1843–1921), managing director of The Fine Art Society, a founding member of the Japan Society, art critic and historian.1 The chronicler wrote: Brother Huish lectured sagely On beautiful things Japanese, And told us our duffers in England Could never do things like these! He showed us wonderful pictures By artists of old Japan; Netsukas [sic], sword hilts, lacquered boxes, And, more than remember I can, O, those wonderful things Japanese! These beautiful things Japanese! We have wallowed in civilization Too long to make things like these.

Another verse read: Then there followed a learned discussion, Brother HOLME, Brother EAST, ERNEST HART, Like so many Japanese lanterns, Beamed softly on Japanese art, Alma Tadema, too, like a lighthouse, Stood up and declared that the Japs

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Had delivered our souls from convention, A very fine plume in their caps, But by this time the Brethren had fed, Drunk their wine, and were thinking of bed, And ‘twould take me too long at the end of my song, To chronicle all that was said.

The chronicler ended with these lines: And the ART OF OLD Japan, O, the ART OF OLD Japan! They dreamed that night, the ODD VOLUMES, Of curios, and Old Japan.

Brother Holme mentioned above was Charles Holme (1848–1923), the founder of the Studio.2 He had joined Ye Sette in 1886 and read a paper to the Sette at Willis’s Rooms on Friday, 6 January 1888 on the theme ‘New Year’s Day in Japan’. This was privately printed in the ‘Opuscula’ series in 133 copies and issued to the member of the society as No, XVII:

(Cover)

(Frontispiece)

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Holme began in non-PC terms as follows: ‘Show the niggers up’ said, some years ago, a wealthy English manufacture, when told that a party of Japanese gentlemen – members and servants of the Japanese Government – had called at his invitation to visit his factory; ‘show the niggers up,’ said he. The expression was certainly a significative [sic] one – significative of the state of ignorant indifference and gross selfconceit with which the Briton has so often, and with so much reason, been taxed. Everything that is strange and novel to John Bull he regards, at first, as outlandish and heathenish; and it is only after long years when the error of his views has, over and over again, been demonstrated, that he begins to shift his ground and to look with tardy respect on the subjects of his former ridicule. The introduction of young Japan to John Bull is, as we all know, comparatively a recent one. The remarkable Revolution which, but a short time ago, changed the conditions of life in Japan – overthrowing the exclusive system of feudalism which for so many years obtained here, and substituting a more liberal form of government – has led to a train of consequences by which the Empire of the ‘Rising Sun,’ with its quaint old-world customs, is brought into bonds of communion with the vaunted civilization of Europe and America.

After a ponderous introduction in similar vein Holme described some of the features of New Year festivities in Japan. He ended with some animadversions on drink: Although it is reported that one may get comfortably drunk on warm saki, the Japanese beer or spirit, I do not think that it turns out such thorough-going topers as does English beer or rum. Whether the Japanese are any the better or any the worse for this inferiority in food and drink, it is not necessary for me now to discourse upon; but it is quite certain that in all the most refined pleasures and customs associated with this time of year, they are our equals if not our superiors.

The end piece is this engraving:

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Charles Holme had given an earlier paper on Japanese games. I have not been able to trace this but it is mentioned in the Year-boke of the Sette, no. 3 (1890–1891), p. 23: His Oddship [Holme] read a paper on Indoor Games of Japan, illustrating his observations by showing some of the curious card games, the game of chess, the game of ‘Go’, and ‘Scent’ and ‘Shell’ games as played in that country.

There is a reference in the minutes of the meeting of 6 June 1890, when the paper was read, of permission being given for it to be published and ‘copiously illustrated’, but it never was. The minutes record: ‘It is not saying too much that this paper could not have been written by anyone else out of Japan. The President [Holme] was surrounded by most of the Japanese experts in this country.’ Charles Holme was not the only member of the club to read a paper on a Japanese theme. After dinner at Limmer’s hotel on the occasion of the Ladies Night on Friday, 1 November 1895, Paul Bevan, M.A. described as ‘READY RECKONER, Treasurer and sometime Secretary of Ye Sette of Odd Volumes’, read a paper on Harmonies in Japanese Music. This was printed as No XLI in 1898. He began by listing three reasons for his paper. The first was ‘the command of His Oddship – He who must be obeyed.’ The second was ‘the fascination of the subject for me, to whom the study of Japanese music has always been a source of unmixed pleasure’. Thirdly ‘The opportunity of trotting out a hobby before one of one of the most critical and distinguished audiences.’ His object was ‘to interest without instructing’ his audience. He compared the development of music in Japan and ancient Greece. He noted that ‘the musical scale in Japan consists of a minor scale with a flat second’, and added ‘This scale may not be the same as our system as far as vibrations are concerned, but it is identical with our diatonic and chromatic scale.’ He commented on ‘the similarity of scheme followed in the opera-dramas of Japan and the opera-dramas of Richard Wagner.’ At the end of his paper he introduced some Japanese music beginning with Kimi-ga-yo, the Japanese National Anthem.3 Another piece he included was Miya Sama ‘the war song of the Imperial Army (1867–1868), (not the song included with the same title in Gilbert and Sullivan’s operetta). A third paper entitled ‘Ye Magick Mirrour of Old Japan’ was read before the Sette on Friday, 2 December 1892 by Dr Sylvanus P. Thompson FRS described as ‘Magnetizer to the Sette of Odd Volumes’. Only ninety-seven copies of this volume were printed privately. The Year-Boke said of this lecture:

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It was a brilliant success, all the experiments excellently performed, and all the explanations lucid. Even the most recalcitrant mirrors were moved to repentance under the discipline of his ‘Knee-drill,’ and revealed their most secret designs in the beam of his lime-light.

Professor Ayrton,4 who had taught physics in Japan Gave an amusing account of his difficulties in passing the French Custom House with a batch of Magic Mirrours which he had bought from Japan. He was forced to appeal from the Custom House officials to the Minister; and only succeeded in escaping a heavy duty by assuring him that, instead of merely casting reflections upon a screen, he should have to cast reflections upon the French Government in the papers. He highly complimented Brother SILVANUS upon the success of his lecture and experiments, as also did Professor Anderson, Professor Robert Austin and Brother HOLME.

Ye Magick Mirrour of Old Japan No XXX privately printed Opuscula by Silvanus P.Thompson, Magnetizer to the Sette of Odd Volumes had this image next to the title page:

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The author began by noting that according to travellers to Japan ‘mirror-worship’ was ‘one of its forms of primitive religion’. The mirror was ‘the emblem of light’ and was enshrined at Ise. Japanese mirrors were invariably made of metal. Some Japanese mirrors were reputed to be, ‘capable of reflecting, in a beam of light that falls on their face, the pattern which they carry on their back.’ The ‘magical’ quality of Japanese mirrors was due to the fact that: The surface over the thick parts is flatter (less convex, or even actually slightly concave) than the surface over the thin parts. Using a large convex lens to converge sunlight that had been reflected from a mirror, they [the experimenters] showed that by merely altering the distance of the screen on which on which the image was received they could make the image either positive or negative at will; a result impossible on any other hypothesis than that of curvatures of surface.

Professor Ayrton as quoted by the author concluded that: The magic of the Eastern mirror results from no subtle trick on the part of the maker, from no inlaying of other metal, or hardening of portions by stamping, but merely arises from the natural property possessed by thin bronze of buckling under a bending stress, so as to remain strained in the opposite direction after the stress is removed.5

Arthur Lazenby Liberty6 was President of the Sette, ‘His Oddship, Craftsman to the Sette’, in the twenty-eighth year of the Sette 1905–1906. (See the Year-Boke [sic] for that year). Although he does not seem to have read a paper to Ye Sette, The Year-Boke included a copy of an ‘album’ of tributes to Liberty ‘in grateful remembrance of his genial reign’. This included contributions from Charles Holme described as ‘Pilgrim’, Arthur Diosy described as ‘Interpreter’ [Diosy claimed inaccurately that he had founded the Japan Society], Alfred East, described as ‘Landscape Painter’. THE LONDON THIRTEEN CLUB

The London Thirteen Club held its annual dinner in 1895 at the King’s Hall, Holborn Restaurant on 13 March 1895. It had a Japanese theme and after the toast to the Queen and the Royal Family a toast was proposed to The Mikado of Japan with the words ‘Nippon Kotei Heika no Gokenko to Banzai wo Shikushi Masu’:

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The programme was as follows:

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According to a note on the internet ascribed to ‘Sir Norris’ the London Thirteen Club was formed in October 1889 by a group of London journalists. ‘It’s one aim was to educate people against their “slavery to superstition”.’ At its annual dinners the guests sat at one of thirteen tables, each seating thirteen, in room number thirteen. The meal consisted of thirteen courses which were served by cross-eyed waiters. ‘Whilst the guests ate, they would liberally spill salt and continue to break as many superstitions as they could. This culminated in speeches and toasts and finally the guests would run around smashing mirrors and getting drunk.’ At its peak the club counted among its members numerous Members of Parliament and peers. Oscar Wilde and the Prince of Wales refused to join. Oscar Wilde wrote: ‘I love superstitions. They are the colour element of thought and imagination. They are the opponents of common sense. The aim of your society seems dreadful.’ After the beginning of the twentieth century the popularity of the club waned but ‘at least twenty-four annual dinners were held up to January 1906.’ The hall, where the ‘Japanese’ dinner on 14 March 1895 under the chairmanship of Mr Frank Williams was held, was, according to another report, ‘prettily decorated by Mr R. Isayama with Japanese lanterns and scrolls, peacocks’ feathers, counterfeit presentments of black cats and owls, and other things of evil omen’. On the tables there were miniature skulls and skeletons and saltsellars [sic] shaped to resemble coffins. In passing from the reception room to the dining room all had to walk under a ladder. A Mr R. Germain explained that ‘Japan was one of the most superstitious countries in the world.’ ‘However, to show that there was no international ill-feeling, the gathering cordially drank the Mikado’s health.’ ‘Towards the close of the feast the guests were offered glasses of “saqui” [sic]. But they did not all drink it, for “saqui” is an acquired taste.’ ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5

6

See biographical portrait by Hideko Numata in volume V of Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, edited Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2005. See biographical portrait by Toni Huberman in volume VI of Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. See chapter in this volume on Fenton by Akira Imamura in this volume. See biographical portrait by Ian Ruxton in volume IV of Britain and Japan: Biographical portraits, edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2002 A copy of the paper is held in the rare books section of Cambridge University Library (S718.01 See biographical portrait by Sonia Ashmore in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume IV

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PART II: BRITAIN IN JAPAN sTRADE s

7

British Week in Tokyo, 19691 BEN THORNE

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(Stills from a news reel produced by British Pathé)

INTRODUCTION

The British week held in Tokyo from 26 September 1969 was a successful example of official efforts to promote British exports to the growing Japanese market in the 1960s. The Week was the result of sustained cooperation and work in both London and Tokyo. In London the Board of Trade and the British National Export Council’s Asia Committee sought and obtained the cooperation of British firms who were already exporting to Japan and persuaded many others to try the market. In Tokyo the British embassy worked closely with the British Chamber of Commerce and Industry and with British and Japanese firms in Tokyo to make the week a success. The Board of Trade spent a large part of their budget for trade promotion in the preparation and organization of the events, which were held during British Week. They provided a British Week office under me to work with the commercial department of the embassy where Hugh Cortazzi was the commercial counsellor. The Queen’s sister Princess Margaret supported by her husband Lord Snowdon opened the Week with maximum publicity.

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LEAD UP

The British embassy in Tokyo, especially after the success of Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato’s successful double the Income policies in the late 1950s, had consistently drawn attention to the prodigious growth of Japanese industry and the increasing potential of the Japanese market. This coincided with a renewed emphasis on trade promotion work in the diplomatic service. Sir Francis Rundall, British ambassador from 1963 to 1967,2 recommended the strengthening of the commercial department and urged that greater resources should be devoted to trade promotion in Japan. His recommendations were endorsed in London and Hugh Cortazzi was appointed commercial counsellor in 1966 with a brief to expand trade promotion efforts in parallel with continuing attempts to persuade the Japanese authorities in the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to reduce obstacles to imports and liberalize Japanese trade in the wake of the revised Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty of 1962.3 Britain sought greater opportunities for British exports in both capital and consumer goods. Because the obstacles to imports of consumer goods were thought to be greater than for capital goods and because of the wide variety of potential exporters of consumer goods it was decided to concentrate some of the available resources on consumer products. One of the prime objectives in mounting British Week was to open a few more cracks in the protective structure in a way that could not be seen as hostile or offensive. The British wanted to provide a window of interest on both British products and way of life for ordinary Japanese people still starved of opportunities to travel. The main markets for foreign consumer goods at that time were the Japanese department stores, especially the huge stores in Tokyo and Osaka, which sold almost everything from household goods to foodstuffs and drink. The commercial department of the embassy had managed to persuade the rival Mitsukoshi and Seibu stores to hold simultaneous British promotions in 1967. These were considered to have been successful in developing awareness of what Britain had to offer over and above the staples of whisky and woollen cloth, which were still subject to quota restrictions. A successful British Week had been held in Hong Kong in 1967. This had been organized by a small staff and me. The Board of Trade in conjunction with the British embassy in Tokyo decided that the best way to expand interest in the Japanese market among British exporters and Japanese consumers would be to hold a British Week in Tokyo in 1969. The Board of Trade agreed to second me to Tokyo to run the British Week office there.

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I arrived in Tokyo in 1968. The British Week office, which was established outside the Embassy near Hibiya in central Tokyo, comprised Japanese speaking second secretaries from the embassy Bob Irving and John MacDonald plus Denis King, an experienced Board of Trade officer of equivalent second secretary rank. Several Japanese female staff were recruited to run the office and a couple of retired Japanese businessmen as interpreters and contact men. Later I was able to recruit a highly competent public relations manager, Tom Hara, who brought with him his own small team of staff. At the crucial final stages when the whole embassy became involved in the preparations for British Week two more young second secretaries from the Embassy (Prince William of Gloucester who was later killed in an aircraft accident and John Dearlove) were engaged almost full time on the vast complex of the royal programme. At that time the commercial department under Hugh Cortazzi comprised a section under John Whitehead, then first secretary, dealing with commercial and economic relations with the Japanese authorities and a trade promotion section under Alan Harvey, first secretary. PREPARATIONS

In Japan the embassy needed the cooperation of the Japanese authorities both in central and local government. The embassy worked hard to persuade them and Japanese business organizations such as the Keidanren that British Week deserved their active support. Prime Minister Satô Eisaku agreed to give the proposal his blessing and this helped to open doors. When it was announced that the Week would be opened by Princess Margaret, members of the Imperial Family, in particular Princess Chichibu, began to take an interest in what we were doing. As many of the products Britain wanted to sell especially woollen cloth, whisky and foodstuffs such as biscuits and cheese needed permits the economic section of the commercial department had to work particularly hard to get the necessary permits from MITI and the Ministry of Agriculture. In June 1969 ‘a bold and imaginative offer’ was made to the Japanese which provided for the freeing of all Anglo-Japanese trade in the early 1970s. Unfortunately the Japanese response was ‘dilatory, unimaginative and rather negative’.4 But we managed to persuade the Japanese to grant extra quotas which enabled the department stores to sell increased quantities of British goods still subject to Japanese import and tariff restrictions. The success of British Week depended on getting as many British exporters interested and involved. This task became the responsibility of the British National Export Council (BNEC)’s Asia Committee 80

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where Michael Montague (later Lord Montague), Chairman of Valor, was an enthusiastic and active chairman. He was at first suspicious of the diplomats who, he thought, lacked commercial experience. But the commercial department and the British Week office soon won his backing by outdoing members of the committee by their enthusiasm and dedication to the success of the project. Michael Montague was ably supported by Norman Wood, a director of Associated British Foods, who was chairman of one of the Committee’s sub groups, that for the large and diverse food and drink sector. In the year or so running up to British Week almost weekly trade missions organized by trade associations or chambers of commerce visited Japan under the auspices of the Board of Trade and BNEC. These had to be briefed and serviced by the embassy and the British Week office with tailored individual programmes especially for individuals and companies new to the market. Receptions to introduce British and Japanese businessmen to one another were organized and each mission was given a briefing about Japan by the ambassador Sir John Pilcher. As part of the necessary briefing the embassy and the Board of Trade put together a series of pamphlets published under the title Trading with Japan. These covered such diverse topics as how to do business in Japan, the role of Japanese department stores and trading companies and patents and trade marks. An essential part of the preparations was persuading the heads of the competing department stores to take part in what was to be a Tokyo wide promotion. Most preferred to go it alone and wanted exclusivity. This meant that Hugh Cortazzi and I had to undertake many time consuming and often frustrating rounds of calls to persuade them that it was in their interest to cooperate and to accept the exhibitions prepared for them and provided virtually free of charge by Fairs and Promotions branch of the Board of Trade. Having got the store’s agreement in principle to take part the various departmental buyers had to be persuaded to buy sufficient British goods to justify the expense of the exhibitions and to make a success of British Week. Their foreign goods buying arrangements were at this stage rather rudimentary. The so-called ‘Foreign Managers’ were in theory responsible for dealing with all foreign suppliers, but they had little authority and even less knowledge of the merchandise for which they were responsible. We had to get past these people to talk to the real decision makers. Gradually agreements were reached with each store for purchasing targets, exhibition themes and contents, supplies of point of sale material and a host of other details. In the end every major department store in Tokyo agreed to take part. Towards the end there was some quite vicious in-fighting over which store should have which 81

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exhibition and which store should receive the first royal visit since that would get most if not all of the TV coverage. Among the key stores in 1969 were Mitsukoshi and Seibu who had held British store promotions in 1967. The Embassy had developed a good working relationship with Sakakura, the president of Mitsukoshi and with Mori Takao the leading executive of Seibu. Two store presidents Itoh, president of Matsuzakaya, and Kosaka, president of the smaller but prestigious Komatsu store nearby on Ginza, had both lived in Britain (Kosaka had a British wife). The large and powerful Hankyu¯ Group, which has its main store in Osaka and was not then as prominent in Tokyo as it is now, did not learn of the bandwagon that was building up in Tokyo until almost all the negotiations including the schedules for the programme of store visits by Princess Margaret were complete. When President Noda of Hankyu¯ heard that his Tokyo branch would be the only major Store not to be visited by Princess Margaret he was very upset. It had to be explained to the store management that the visits were based on promises of additional buying. In order to save the face of the President and Hankyu¯ collectively, we were told that the sky was the limit. The only possible slot in the Royal programme was for about fifteen minutes on a Monday morning when Hankyu¯ were shut for their weekly closure. President Noda negotiated with his staff unions and decided to open the store on closing day. This must have been very costly for the store but face was saved and an excellent and productive relationship was developed with Hankyu¯ who later held annual British fairs at their main store in Osaka. CAPITAL GOODS

The embassy and the Board of Trade did not want Britain to be seen solely or primarily as an exporter of consumer goods. So the trade promotion section of the Commercial department of the Embassy, the Board of Trade and the scientific instrument manufacturers organized an exhibition of British medical and scientific instruments in the Science Museum in the Kita no Maru Park. SUPPORTING EVENTS

In addition to the exhibitions, which had to be put together for the different department stores competing for the most appealing attractions, designed to tempt customers into the stores a centrepiece exhibition was planned by the Central Office of Information (COI). It was called ‘Britain in Tokyo’ and was to be the flagship or centrepiece of the whole Week. For this event the Nihon Budokan, the headquarters and spiritual home of Japanese martial arts, especially judo, was selected. It is a fine building situated in the Kita no Maru 82

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Park, close to the Science Museum and the Imperial Palace. It took a great deal of effort to persuade the owners to allow their building with its hallowed and special floor (dohyô ) to be used for the first time for non-martial purposes. A temporary load-bearing floor had to be built so that nothing would touch the dohyô. That was very expensive but the end result was an exhibition, tracing Britain’s relations with Japan and including a scaled down replica of Nelson’s column and a Lord Nelson pub. The Budokan exhibition attracted large numbers of visitors including many members of the Imperial Family. A special visit was arranged for the Emperor. The PR spin-off was immense. With the aim of ensuring that the whole of Tokyo knew that the British were in town, the ‘star turn’ was intended to be the appearance on the streets of Tokyo of eight London buses. The famous double decker red Routemasters were then as they still are a tourist attraction. But they were not designed for operation in Japan as we soon discovered. The buses did not comply with any of the Japanese regulations for public service vehicles and we wanted them to trundle round Tokyo full of passengers. Worst of all, they were too high for a standard bridge and were liable to foul the tram power lines that were thick above Tokyo’s main thoroughfares in those days. Our special events manager, Denis King, trod every yard of the routes which the buses would travel including the journey they would have to make from Yokohama, where they would be unloaded, to central Tokyo, where they would be deployed, a matter of 20 kilometres or so. He marched with a carefully cut pole before him measuring the clearance under every obstruction until he had verified safe passage for all their movements.5 But there were other obstacles. Import clearance had to be negotiated with Japanese Customs who took up an uncompromising stance. They declared that the vehicles were illegal and could not be imported. Members of the British Week Office had a series of frustrating meetings with Japanese customs in an effort to persuade them to agree a special and temporary exemption for the buses. At one meeting they faced more than thirty customs officials who broke off for calisthenics at intervals signaled by the ringing of a bell. We were never quite sure whether their object was to help or obstruct. Finally a Japanese compromise was found. The Customs ruled that import could be permitted because these were not primarily public transport vehicles but mobile advertising units! Special banners were quickly devised and draped over the buses to justify this ruling. Much of the credit for the final successful outcome, not only on buses but on venues for the equally popular five military bands and on matters like street decorations, was due to Mr Ishikawa, the head of the external liaison office of Tokyo Metropolitan Government where the Governor Minobe was supportive of our efforts. 83

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The organization of a series of Fashion Spectaculars at Toranomon Hall on a paid basis also involved difficult negotiations. At that time in Japan such choreographed events were unknown and it was difficult to make the management see why they should alter time honoured procedures. For example they had seats in central positions that were always used for Imperial Family members but we knew that our Imperial guests would see next to nothing from there. It was not until a few hours before the dress rehearsal that the management said we could remove a section of the front row and install comfortable armchairs! We never did persuade them that the glittering reception planned for the premiere show should take place in the foyer and they forced us to move all of the guests up several floors in slow and cramped lifts, a most frustrating and temper-fraying experience. Notwithstanding these behind-the-scenes tensions the fashion shows were a huge success both with the audiences and with the media so that this week long series of shows was a launch pad for British fashion in Japan. Two Royal Navy Ships were anchored at Harumi pier in Tokyo during British Week. One HMS Stromness carried a defence sales exhibition open to invited guests. The Royal Navy hosted a grand party for selected VIPs. In all there were over sixty individual events ranging from a major Henry Moore exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art to a City of London Pavilion in Hibiya Park; a Highland Games jointly sponsored by McVitie’s biscuits and the Seibu department store (which helped to sell about a year’s stock of biscuits in ten days); soccer and rugby matches; major sales of fine art, antiques and jewelry (including the first Sotheby’s auction in Japan) worth some £2.5 million altogether; a Miss Tokyo Stores beauty contest (another first in Japan) allied to a visit by Miss London Stores; the premiere in Japan of the film Battle of Britain, a choice that raised some qualms but which was received uncontroversially; eight major and five lesser cultural exhibitions in the major Department Stores which were seen by some 2.5 million of the 12.5 million people who passed through those stores during the exhibition period. One near disaster occurred when one of Japan’s largest printers told us at the eleventh hour that they could not deliver the one million print run of the give-away public programme. However after a great deal of agro somehow face was saved and the programmes were delivered to the department stores and other outlets at the last moment. Without them nobody in Tokyo would have known where to go to see what. BRITISH WEEK AND THE ROYAL VISITORS

The opening ceremony was held at the National Theatre on Friday morning 26 September. The Princesses Chichibu and Margaret, 84

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Ohira Masayoshi, Minister of Trade and Industry, Dr Ryokichi Minobe, governor of Tokyo, Lord Snowdon, Sir John Pilcher, the British ambassador, Montague of BNEC and others were seated on the stage. After a few brief speeches of greeting Princess Margaret rose and declared British Week open. The Royal Marines played suitable music outside and the trumpeters blew a special fanfare inside. The eight London buses were drawn up with military precision on the forecourt ready to transport the several hundred core guests direct to the opening of the ‘Britain in Tokyo’ exhibition about a kilometre away. As the guests emerged they saw a huge model of our logo, the British Week box, open to allow 3,000 special balloons to soar into the sky. Then it was on to the Budokan where Princess Margaret performed another opening and toured the exhibition giving us some good TV coverage.6 Her next appointment was a luncheon at the Okura Hotel for members of the Committee of Honour for British Week (this was the only time they met formally). Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon kept up the pace working hard during nine frenetic days. Princess Margaret kept her promise to visit every department store that had pledged purchasing support. Altogether she visited fourteen major stores spending up to forty-five minutes in each and she and Lord Snowdon between them also spent time at some dozen or so speciality shops and various minor supporting exhibitions. In between, they managed to attend a lunch for the Japan British Society, a white tie dinner at the Embassy followed by a reception for 250 who could not be accommodated at the dinner, the Gala Fashion Show at Toranomon Hall and a Loyal Societies Ball with over 500 guests at the Hilton Hotel. Although this British Week officially opened on Friday 26 September Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon had arrived in Japan by normal BA flight on Saturday 20 September, being met by the Ambassador and Princess Chichibu and, after a day’s rest, embarked on a maelstrom of engagements, some British Week oriented and some more formal. On Monday morning they began by meeting the Embassy staff, then dropped into the Henry Moore exhibition for half an hour en route to the Palace where they made a formal call on the Emperor and Empress followed by a Court Luncheon attended by fifty guests. After a short pitstop at the Embassy to divest themselves of their formal clothes, they had tea with Princess Chichibu at the Akasaka Detached Palace before dashing back to attend an informal cocktail party at the Embassy where they were under the scrutiny of the Press. Then they dined formally with Prime Minister Sato¯ Eisaku at his official residence. Next day they were off to Kyoto by the ‘bullet’ train before 9.00 am where they did the statutory two days Sightseeing before, on Thursday, popping in to visit the British Pavilion on the Japan Expo site at Osaka which would, 85

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in 1970, be the next British venture in capturing Japanese hearts and minds. Then they travelled direct to Tokyo where that evening they attended the so-called ‘Principal British Week Reception’ at the Okura Hotel. There were 3,000 invited guests who had to fight to get there through traffic jams and several hundred gatecrashers mingled with long crocodiles of ticket bearers. It all worked out well enough. Finally, Princess Margaret and Lord Snowdon attended the Premiere of Battle of Britain before returning late to the Embassy. The ambassador and Lady Pilcher looked after the Royal Couple7 and their other VIP visitors with unfailing courtesy and urbanity. There was only one contretemps. This occurred after the Royal visit was over and was provoked by the pompous and self-important Lord Mayor of London who tried to throw his weight about without having done his homework. RESULTS

The short-term results obtained from British Week were impressive enough in terms of extra sales and new exporters introduced to the market. The following statistical summary illustrates the achievements: PARTICIPANTS /VISITORS/SALES

19 Dept. Stores, 12.6 million, Yen 1.86 billion 17 Supermarkets, N/a, 352 Specialty/Small Shops, N/a,

(£194m) N/a N/a

EVENTS/VISITORS

Dept. Store Cultural Exhibitions, Band Concerts, ‘Britain in Tokyo’ Exhibition, City of London Pavilion, London Bus Passengers, Hi-Fi/Home Appliances Show, Soccer & Rugby Games, Highland Games, Fashion Spectaculars, London Philharmonic/ Festival Ballet/ Julian Bream Concerts, Visitors to HM Ships,

2.5 million 150,000 120,000 90,000 56,000 50,000 40,000 30,000 25,000 18,000 10,000

PUBLICITY COVERAGE

Press Cuttings, TV News Items,

2,600 6

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The real impact, however, was in the long-term effect on commercial relations between our two countries. The policy makers in London became aware that there were solid business benefits to be obtained in Japan and when, in 1973, the time was ripe for a further effort to widen the breach in Japanese protectionist attitudes it was possible to wheedle funds out of them. British Week was a catalyst marking the beginning of a burgeoning business relationship that has grown steadily and metamorphosed several times. From simple uncomplicated roots largely in branded consumer goods sold through old-established merchant houses, both British and Japanese, and retailed almost entirely by the great department stores of Japan, the relationship expanded during the early seventies into technical and industrial trade as well as the arts. Exports of British consumer goods in the nine months up to British Week rose by about 52 per cent and total exports to Japan rose by 34.6 per cent in comparison with the same period in 19688. Although the British Week Office team was dismantled quickly as soon as the tidying of loose ends was done, much of its know-how remained available within the embassy commercial department. In particular the understanding of the inner workings of the department stores was a tool that could be used to construct an ongoing series of promotional partnerships for many years to come. The commercial department’s relationship with Fairs & Promotions Branch remained close and eventually led to expanded participation in Japanese trade fairs. At the time Japan’s trade fair sector was rather weak and there were many areas in which segregation was practised. A glaring example was for many years that imported vehicles could not be exhibited in the Tokyo Motor Show. And when, reluctantly, the curtain was lifted it was only to the extent of allocating one small and not very attractive hall to display imports. So the expansion of British participation in fairs of all kinds was a slow and irregular movement partly because of barriers and partly because the Japanese fairs mostly were not of international standard. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

See also despatch from Sir John Pilcher about British Week in The Growing Power of Japan, 1967–1972, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Renaissance Books, 2015. See portrait of Sir Francis Rundall by Hugh Cortazzi in British Envoys in Japan (1859–1972), Global Oriental 2004 See essays on the Anglo-Japanese Commercial Treaty by Robin Gray and Sosuke Hanaoka in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume II edited by Ian Nish, Japan Library 1997.

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4

5

6

7

8

British embassy Tokyo annual report for 1969 dated 1 January 1970 and signed by D. R. Ashe, minister in the embassy in the absence of the ambassador. The report commented that following the visit to Tokyo for British Week made by Anthony Crosland, President of the Board of Trade and the subsequent visit to Britain in October 1969 by Ohira Masayoshi, the Japanese Minister of International Trade and Industry, ‘The Japanese are beginning to recognize the psychological value of the proposed settlement with us.’ He did not speak a word of Japanese. So he was accompanied by one of the Japanese local staff who could explain what he was doing and was not completely mad. One unrehearsed incident occurred in the Lord Nelson pub where some unruly British journalists tried to get a picture of Princess Margaret drinking in the bar. Instead, they got a picture of me trying to stop them! It appeared as ‘Frock coated British diplomats interfere with journalists doing their job’ or some such caption although the Japanese papers took the line of criticizing the offending British journalists. The annual report from Tokyo (see endnote 3) commented that ‘The Week would have been a success in its own right, but the extent of the success would unquestionably have been much reduced but for the personality and charm of Princess Margaret and her husband.’ Tokyo annual report for 1969 paragraph 9 noted that these figures ‘compared with an increase in Japanese imports of approximately 14.2 per cent and brought our share of Japanese imports to 2.2 per cent’.

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EXPO ’70 at Osaka: A British View JOHN PILCHER

INTRODUCTORY NOTE BY HUGH CORTAZZI

I gave a brief account of British participation in EXPO ’70 in my biographical portrait of Sir John Figgess, the British Commissioner for the Expo, in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, edited by J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Some reminiscences of ladies, who helped in the British pavilion, (Lesley Connor, Lydia Gomersall, Janet Hunter and Anne Kaneko), and of Peter Martin, who was British Council representative in Kyoto at the time, were included in Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views, PostWar Japan through British Eyes, edited and compiled by me, Japan Library, 2001. The account, which Sir John Pilcher sent to Michael Stewart, the Foreign Secretary, in a despatch of March 1970, 89

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is reproduced below. It is perceptive and amusing and deserves to be preserved for posterity. Sir,

26 March 1970

OSAKA EXPO ’70: A FIRST IMPRESSION

I have the honour to record that the International Exhibition at Osaka, known as ‘Expo ‘70’, duly opened its doors on the gusty, snowy morning of Saturday, the 14th of March, 1970. 2. Its motto is ‘progress’ and ‘harmony’. The sententious, of whom there are many in Japan, maintain that this means the marriage of occidental progress with the oriental concept of harmony and are deducing great principles therefrom. To treat it thus, I submit, is to fall into the Germanic error of reading transcendental truths into Mozart’s ‘Magic Flute’ and of failing to recognize in it the inconsequential Viennese pantomime transformed by genius. This is basically a fun fair with touches of near genius. 3. From what I have so far been able to see, if there is progress to record at Expo ’70, it may perhaps be in the happy direction of humour. It forces the question: can it be that the Japanese are at last beginning to be able to laugh at themselves? That would indeed be progress and at a timely moment when their economic might is about to burst upon the world. 4. If there is any harmony to be descried, it seems to me to be found, not in any Confucian sense, but in its very reverse: namely in the remarkably high level of insanity, shown by all the best exhibitors. 5. Most surprising of all to me is that the Japanese themselves deliberately set the pattern of this lunacy. Their greatest architect Kenzo Tange, whose Roman Catholic cathedral in Tokyo is the masterpiece of contemporary Japanese building, combined with a roguish artist, Taro Okamoto, to create the central focal point of the whole exhibition: the Festival Plaza. 6. Here a giant rectangular roof, itself a tangle of contorted tubes, floats in the air: a fantastic structural achievement. There dangle from it – for shere [sic.] fun – useless gadgets, the very caricature and ‘reductio ad absurdum’ of contemporary factory contrivance. 7. Through this monstrous and intentional nonsense rises up and protrudes the Tower of the Sun. This strange conceit reveals on one side a grinning face of the sun in Aztec mood, set about with benign green rays; on the other side it shows a leering, lecherous grimace. The whole is topped askew by a brazen insect visage, by turns of surprised malignity or ingenuous vacuity. 8. This whole contraption has been held by the humourless to represent the vital principle and very spirit of the universe itself. 90

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Mercifully – and surprisingly – its author deflated this nonsense by stating roundly that he wished only to create something both ‘fabulous’ and ‘absurd’; something in short to cheer up this drab world. He has succeeded in his aim and to my eye, together with Tange’s mock factory roof, set the tone for the whole Expo. 9. The opening ceremony rubbed in the joke. Beneath the grinning face of the Tower of the Sun and staring at the jangled complexity of steel above their heads sat in solemn array – in the perishing cold – the entire establishment of Japan. It was perhaps kindly meant that the grinning rather than the leering face of the Sun should stare down upon her erstwhile (?) terrestrial progeny, His Majesty the Emperor. 10. Was it a coincidence that he in his turn, despite the illustrious ancestry here so mockingly portrayed, was precluded by the constitution even from opening the exhibition, since the experts decreed that to do so would have been a political act? In this scene of expectant hilarity His Majesty could only read therefore a message of goodwill; one sentence of Sitwellian [sic.] length. 11. The Crown Prince it was who pressed the button that set the lunacy in motion. No political act that, it would seem. Here symbolically enough the young took charge and filled the space with milling merriment. Even the ghastly robot with blinding electronic flashes disgorged from joints – from which belched clouds of sweet vapours – a girls’ band, a drum majorette. With deafening noise and cannonades and against a background of humour – of the fabulous and absurd – the huge fun fair burst into life. 12. Perhaps the designers of most nations almost sensed the juvenile spirit of fun that would prevail. Certain it is that so many of their creations are in harmony with the general mood. Thus to add a surrealist touch most seem, in order to oblige presumably the minority passenger by ‘plane, to have chosen some mythical spot in the air from which their creation should best be viewed. 13. From above in the sky I am willing to believe that the Japanese set of pavilions does look just like the the five petals of the sweet scented plum (prunus mume), which form the exhibition’s emblem. But ‘what heart could have thought you? – past our devisal (O filigree petal!)’. (Actually the petals were born of Tange’s exuberant sense of fun.) The mortal on the ground can see only five large gasometers, five giant drums or, if you will, five bandboxes suspended in the air. 14. True at night, illuminated in different colours, they have a certain charm and even gaiety. Moreover to shoot up into a bandbox by rapidly moving stair to the top is certainly an uncommon experience; to wander gently down inside the drum through static scenes of Japan’s past has merit. There, flourish for ever plastic gardens, where no leaf withers and no gardener treads. 91

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15. Even the Central Office of Information, from which no insanity could possibly – it goes without saying – emanate, have produced a sober contribution in nearly the same vein. Not a bandbox certainly, but a tailor’s flat cardboard box of considerable dimensions, suspended from four vermilion gantries. The squashed superstructure of some giant ship with cranes at rest? 16. No moving staircase rushes viewers up; they proceed appropriately by staid gangway as into the belly of some stranded dirigible. But here too the viewer is treated for good measure to a vast Union Jack atop the box. The terrestrial being, however, is at least led on by the splendid calligraphy from the hand of the erudite Governor of Osaka, proclaiming unmistakably in huge vermilion characters: ‘Britain’. 17. Even the Soviets follow the pattern. A gigantic swirling wall, white on one side and red on the other rises to a tower, which easily dominates the entire scene. Yet the purpose of the whole huge structure baffles the tripper on the land; it reveals itself at once to one aloft as no less than a blow-up of a giant’s hammer and sickle. 18. The United States, on the other hand, more sober even than ourselves, eschew the fashion altogether, but in their way they contrive to achieve the very ultimate in absurdity in an exhibition: they have no outward visible presence whatsoever, whether from air or land. Theirs is the flattened top of some vast, white mushroom, just ripe to burst up through the sod. An almost invisible rump to oppose to the sky-piercing Soviet flamboyance: the low posture with a vengeance. The mystery is how to delve down to the halls beneath this incipient fungus. Once below, all is sweetness and light and straight forward, static showmanship. 19. The Australians are unashamedly lunatic in more conventional, fun fair style, yet they pose a problem of interpretation: is their effort a vast, concrete kangaroo’s tail, holding, just clear of the ground, a dustbin lid? Not according to them: they prefer to interpret their curving concrete mass as the fine, lacy outline of Hokusai’s wave in the famous print. In this case, presumably, it is about to break and shatter the lid in its grip. 20. The French do their best with sparkling puffballs, but two countries easily oertop [sic.] the rest and come out joint first in the lunatic stakes: none other than the staid Swiss and our own worthy Canadian cousins. Both have cocked a snook at functionalism – indeed at any form of rationality. 21. The Swiss put their money on a vast, spreading metal tree, bearing as sole fruit an apparent infinity of electric light bulbs. Perhaps this may evoke to some the shimmering heights of snowy peaks. It has been held by the more fanciful to symbolize scientific precision. 92

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22. There can be little doubt that the Canadian contribution is a monument of some significance to delirium tremens. Four quadrilateral pyramids, cased on their three outer sides in looking glass, frame a pond, over which rotate glass parasols, streaked with waving bands of colours. On the drab, cold opening day, the psychodellic [sic.] reflections cheered the heart. The full effects of this inspired insanity must await the scorching rays of the July sun: the refractions then should awaken the dead. 23. As to the contents I have so far seen, these range predictably from surrealist juxtaposition (New England tomb stones and weather vanes with moon capsules and lunar rock in the American pavilion) to straight rollicking noisy show-biz (favoured by the Soviets). The terror of the ‘static’ and the ‘trad’ lead those with real treasures to offer (among them ourselves and the French) towards the original, the restless and the fussy – for fear of seeming corny and as old as they are? In the end, the pavilions with simple single intent (the Portuguese to show their historic ties with Japan; the Ceylonese to display one single sapphire; Hong Kong to attract tourists or the Nepalese to permit the viewer to contemplate in peace the majesty of the Himalayas), despite their lack of technique and perhaps dull approach, may come to please the most. 24. The Expo is vast. It embraces two museums of real significance; masterpieces (some from Britain) can there be seen in rare and illuminating company. Specialised pavilions, from electronics to pepsicola, may yield great revelations to the connoisseur. The full gamut would take ten days at least to evaluate. I have so far only seen what two exhausting days can disclose. 25. Much nonsense and a great deal of ‘high sentaunce’ [sic.] will be written about it all. It certainly marks a stage in Japanese rehabilitation in their own eyes. There will be much irritating selfcongratulation, even disquisitions on the essential supremacy of the oriental spirit (so disquieting to those who remember this Leitmotif of the fevered, mystic nationalism of the ‘30s). But pride is in place. 26. After my brief visits, it does represent to me a great achievement, from which some hope can be derived and, of course, some despair. The hope derives from the fact that their disciplined, serious, head-boy-in-the-class people have actually dared to create the fabulous and the absurd for their own entertainment and edification. The whole school and university population of Japan will see this and it will set a lighter trend. This might even result in a more balanced, more humourous [sic.] outlook. 27. The despair lies in the fact that the success of this gigantic fun fair will encourage those vulgar ‘disneylands’[sic.] and ‘paradises’, which are already eating up the fair face of the land, as disastrously as the economic miracle spawns corroding factories. An American 93

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lady of the blue-rinsed widow type, asked me in one of the most beautiful, secluded and rarefied of Kyoto gardens ‘don’t you just feel you are in Disneyland?’ She sensed more sooth than she knew; under the impetus of Expo, it may soon become a disneyland and in plastic at that. 28. There is little evidence throughout of that elegant synthesis of east and west, which has been the ideal of thoughtful Japanese and of which there are rare and beautiful examples even amid the brashness of modern Tokyo. At Expo, the traditional is too slavish; the much photographed pagoda an outrageous pastiche. Only Matsushita (the giant electric concern) dares to be ‘astringent’: the essential Japanese aesthetic quality. The tone is sheer enjoyment, the accent on the juvenile. I would not expect any profound influence on taste. Only with luck some wider appreciation of the outside world and a lighter, more healthy mood. 29. How do we come off in all this? It almost stands to reason that we are neither fabulous, nor yet absurd; but neither are we bold enough to adopt the simple, the straightforward and the static. The three that combine these qualities, the Japanese, the Americans and the Soviets, are likely to win popularity. Nor do we entice the greedy by inviting restaurants, like Belgium, Portugal or Hong Kong; there is not even a British pub. Perhaps in the long run our ‘architect’s building’, well seen from one of the main entrances, and our serious intent (normally so valued in Japan) will come to wear well. Staid? Respectable? Why not? We shall certainly get our fill of visitors (so far 16% of the total) and are popularly rated in the first five in point of interest. 30. In short, this is a fun fair with foreign peep shows of educative value for the Japanese young, now in unprecedentedly unbuttoned mood. One vast joke? Was it planned as such? As Arthur Waley might have said, I would suppose so: I would hope so. It would be rash to go further than that. I have the honour to be, With the highest respect, Sir, Your obedient servant, [signed] John Pilcher

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The British Export Marketing Centre and the Promotion of British Exports to Japan from 1972 PAUL DIMOND

FOUNDATIONS

This portrait is of the generation of individuals who built the structure for promoting British business in Japan in the early 1970s. Principal among them were a group of British officials in Tokyo and London, many motivated by their positive experience of working at the Tokyo embassy. But a number of inspired British businessmen (few British businesswomen in Tokyo in those days) and increasingly supportive Japanese businessmen and officials were much involved. Collectively they and their supporting teams, too many to mention here, left a legacy on which their successors built well into the twentyfirst century. This became a crossover time when the management of trade promotion gained British Government attention as a top priority alongside traditional, broader trade policy (much of which itself migrated to the European Commission after Britain’s joining the EEC in 1973). Through the increasing scale of its operations as well as innovation in its work, the commercial department of the Tokyo embassy over that period came to be recognized alongside the Foreign Office posts at Düsseldorf and New York as benchmarks for advancing trade promotion practice, combined with the emerging, further new focus on inward investment promotion. For much of the 1960s to 1980s protectionism and trade friction between Japan and the US and Europe meant that managed trade tended to dominate the bilateral trading relationships. Quotas, high tariffs and non-tariff barriers restricted Japanese imports from the UK and voluntary trade agreements limited Japanese exports. But from the mid-1960s the British embassy at Tokyo increased the pace and strength of effort to encourage British business to pay attention to 95

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the fast developing Japanese domestic market. Hugh Cortazzi (later Sir Hugh and ambassador to Japan) drove much of this as commercial counsellor in the second half of the 1960s. He had been recalled to Tokyo in 1966 by the ambassador, Sir Francis Rundall, after less than a year since he completed his assignment as head of chancery. Hugh Cortazzi was supported on the economic side of the embassy by John Whitehead (later Sir John) and David Wright (later Sir David), both also subsequent ambassadors at Tokyo, and on the commercial side by Alan Harvey and a growing number of Foreign Office former Japanese language students and locally engaged Japanese commercial officers and commercial assistants, many of whom went on to serve the embassy loyally for several decades. There was a massive effort in the full-scale and highly successful British Week in Tokyo in 1969 directed by Ben Thorne. He had been an early recruit in the post-War Board of Trade, served twice in India, then in the Gold Coast and Nigeria before successfully running an earlier British engineering exhibition in the 1966 Hong Kong British Week. He was appointed to run the Tokyo Week by Jasper Cross, the DTI under-secretary in charge of trade promotion. The British Week story has been covered elsewhere in this volume. Hugh Cortazzi has recorded in Japan and Back1 the support he received from Sir John Pilcher, Rundall’s successor, despite his unfamiliarity with trade and economic issues. After British Week, attention shifted to Expo ’70 in Osaka, where Sir John Figgess,2 former information counsellor at Tokyo, was commissioner-general at the highly effective British Pavilion, whose purpose was not primarily commercial but which served well to boost a modern and positive image of Britain. The deputy to Sir John was Bill Bentley (later Sir William) and Alex McMillan of the DTI was involved in the construction and operation of the pavilion. Building on the 1960s groundwork, the year from Autumn 1972 to Autumn 1973 saw momentum grow significantly through a new, formative period of closer British effort to grasp the opportunities. Much of the subsequent British export promotion towards Japan through the British Overseas Trade Board, British Trade International and UK Trade and Investment stems from this time and Ben Thorne was a key figure in this formative period. The early plans focused on the concept of a British trade centre in Tokyo. STRUCTURE

The idea of a British trade centre had however been discussed for some time in the British Embassy and the British Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo. A 1972 note by Alan Harvey, first secretary commercial of the British embassy, recalled his memorandum of February 1970 96

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recommending a down-town trade centre. Harvey’s memorandum demonstrates the forward thinking of the embassy’s commercial department over that period. Groundwork for the 1970 memorandum had also involved HRH The Prince William of Gloucester, then serving as second secretary at the embassy, before his tragic subsequent death in a flying accident. Tom Harris, a principal from the DTI (later Sir Tom), was also serving in the embassy and reporting to London on the model of the US Trade Center, seen as a professional organization focused on capital goods. The embassy did support UK firms at Japanese trade fairs, such as the machine tool fair in Osaka in 1971, but foreign participation in such fairs was still the exception. At the first meeting of the new British Export Board (soon after re-named the British Overseas Trade Board, BOTB) in January 1972, chaired by Lord Thorneycroft, Jan Lewando, chairman of Carrington-Viyella (and later Sir Jan), drew attention to proposals for such a centre. This was prompted by closer examination of the concept at the British Chamber of Commerce in Tokyo, who were in touch with the newly formed BOTB’s Japan Trade Advisory Board, led by Geoffrey Nichols of Rotaprint. Japan received much attention at further Board meetings in the first half of the year, with discussion of Japan’s own market-oriented export promotion methods, the work of the Japan Trade Advisory Group and the strengthening of the DTI’s own commercial relations and exports division through the bringing in of Tom Harris. DTI officials worked intensively on the concept of a trade centre over the year. Tom Harris wrote to Alan Harvey in August 19723 that there was a push for a rapid study for a centre, but despite a great deal of scepticism to be overcome in London he hoped that the BOTB would give its blessing (one senior DTI official later regarded the proposed expenditure as madness). Critical impetus to the concept was given after the first visit of a British Prime Minister to Japan in September 1972. He was under much political pressure at home to clamp down on growing imports from Japan. But he was accompanied on his flight to Tokyo by Peter Wakefield (later Sir Peter), the commercial minister in Tokyo, who used the opportunity to argue that such pressures were best met by a reinvigorated UK export promotion effort. During his visit Edward Heath4 focused closely on the state of commercial relations between the two countries, expressing to Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei the hope that, as Japanese commercial policy took effect on lines Tanaka had indicated, the Japanese ‘would be able to drink Scotch whisky as cheaply as Bourbon and other drinks, and that they would be able to clothe themselves cheaply in the best English woollens’5 (see footnote 3). The Japanese Prime Minister’s response was that this could be put into effect ‘step by step as appropriate’ (prompting the British note-taker to observe that the term 97

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used by Tanaka was ‘danteiteki’, hardly, it might have been thought, any sort of firm undertaking). Tanaka did however add that this was a ‘favourite Japanese dream and also the policy of the Liberal Democratic Party’. The British Prime Minister also referred to the Lockheed 1011, as he understood that Japanese airlines would need a wide fuselage aircraft and ‘Japan could help their British and American friends by buying this aircraft with the RB211 engine, the quietist in the world’. All Nippon Airlines did of course later buy the 1011, but a scandal of major proportions enveloped Lockheed, Marubeni, Prime Minister Tanaka and the Japanese and US Governments. Edward Heath’s meeting with a group of Japanese industrialists revealed Japanese business opinion at the time. Chairman Nagano of Nippon Steel proposed a Japanese purchasing mission to the United Kingdom, an idea welcomed by the Prime Minister. Chairman Hashimoto of Mitsui and Company suggested that British importers should look at the market among younger people in Japan, who did ‘not seem to be enthusiastic about British products. British channels of selling to the Japanese tended to be too rigid and not large enough, Mitsui would be glad to act as selling agents for British products.’ This view from a major Japanese general trading company reflected much discussion at that time about the success of the British trading companies that had a number of British principals among their brands. Reporting on the Heath visit, the Asahi Shimbun remarked that the Prime Minister had been a salesman for British products, even mentioning a number of specific company brands, and noted the astonishment (‘akiregao’) of some business leaders that the British Prime Minister should do this, reminiscent of President de Gaulle’s infamous quip about Prime Minister Ikeda as a transistor radio salesman. On his return to London, Heath maintained a close watch on developments over Japan. He told the House of Commons that he was convinced that the relationship between Japan and the other industrialized nations was of fundamental importance for world prosperity and stability. In a substantive discussion at the Board’s September meeting Sir Max Brown, the secretary for trade at the DTI (later permanent secretary) noted that MITI were putting pressure on Japanese trading companies to increase their imports of British goods. The Board saw success as more likely from direct involvement of British firms and thought that a trade centre in Tokyo would need considerable support from British industry and back-up organization within the DTI, Lord Thorneycroft summing up that while caution was needed an estimates provision for such a centre should be retained. A feasibility study on a trade centre was commissioned. Its authors were Tom Harris and Ben Thorne, working to Jasper Cross and 98

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representing the commercial relations and exports policy division and the fairs and promotions Branch respectively. Their study drew direct lessons from the US experience in Tokyo, Harris visiting Washington to hear from the American trade officials and visiting the US trade center in London. The study was completed in December. Having consulted widely among British businessmen and Japanese agents in Japan, trade associations and firms in Britain, as well as the ambassador and his staff at Tokyo, this highly focused study concluded though the cost of export promotion was high their survey had shown that British industry believed that a trade centre could help achieve more than doubling of UK exports from about £160m that year. The proposal outlined, modelled on the US experience, was for a centre as the venue for a series of eight to ten specialist trade shows annually, targeted on specific sectors. The thinking in the Embassy was that Japanese trade fairs, even if labelled as international, were not well enough developed as places for British industrial goods and high technology exporters. While the British Week had significantly boosted consumer goods, with a fair momentum of department stores wanting to hold their own regular British promotions (notably Mitsukoshi and Takashimaya in Tokyo, Hankyu¯ in Osaka), there was a concern that British industrial goods firms lacked the appropriate windows. Officials realized that to generate support from British business there would have to be an enhanced package of market information describing the opportunities as Japan began to open up her markets to foreign penetration. Preparation for each planned, specialist exhibition would therefore involve the commissioning of detailed market research. Outline costs were based on a leading candidate, the Pola Aoyama Building at Aoyama 1-chome, seen as a one of the best possible locations. The premises offered 1,175 sq metres of ground floor space at a rent of £100,508 a year, plus a repayable capital loan of £609,165. The official report to the BOTB recommending a centre rehearsed the argument that the equivalent of much of the cost would be spent anyway on an expanded trade promotion effort in Japan and the additional costs would be justified by the economic desirability of mounting a greater volume of exhibitions, with additional market impact and the psychological drive that a centre would implant on the export promotion programme as a whole. At its November 1972 meeting, Lord Thorneycroft told his BOTB colleagues that Edward Heath had asked about the appointment of a ‘Mr Japan’ to co-ordinate and promote UK trade with Japan. The Board view on balance was that an industrialist should be appointed rather than a civil servant but the important thing was to get the right man. The next month, the Board was told of the appointment of 99

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Peter Wakefield (later Sir Peter) in this role, on his return from his post as commercial minister at Tokyo. At the same meeting, Jasper Cross (secretary) presented the working party paper on the establishment of a British trade centre. The Board discussed the likely high cost but agreed that this had to be accepted if a serious effort was to be made in the Japanese market. It was noted that the Prime Minister was among supporters of the idea. The Board recalled the failure of the New York trade centre as a static exhibition, whereas Tokyo would be for a series of trade promotions targeted at different market sectors. The plan was endorsed. BOTB chief executive Jimmy Rooke added that the Board should be closely involved with arrangements for the proposed Japanese mission to be sent to the UK. Heath wrote a personal minute to the secretary of state for trade and industry in December emphasizing the essential nature of the UK effort to make progress in the Japanese market and again on 1 January 1973 asked to be informed at regular intervals. Heath was determined to see both the Tokyo and London ends of the operation established to his satisfaction and maintained strong interest in both Japan and China, ahead of his time at that level.6 In January 1973, the plans for the trade centre and for the appointment of Peter Wakefield as special adviser on Japan to the BOTB were announced to parliament and at a BOTB press conference given by Sir Geoffrey Howe, the minister for trade and consumer affairs and BOTB president, together with Geoffrey Nichols, who noted that apart from the Tokyo trade centre, sight had not been lost of the potential for Britain also in Osaka and traditional export promotion activity was also being stepped up. By the time of the February 1973 Board, the exports to Japan unit had been set up in the DTI, Harris as its first officer, terms had been agreed for Ben Thorne, nominated as the director-designate of what was to be called the British Export Marketing Centre (BEMC), Peter Wakefield was to take up his new post in London in April and the inward mission would arrive in March. MATSUO TAIICHIRO

In 1973 the key figure emerged on the Japanese side of Matsuo Taiichirõ, then Vice-President of the Marubeni Corporation. Matsuo had earlier served as an official at the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). In 1972 he had been deputy leader of a senior Marubeni mission sent to China, following the normalization of Sino-Japanese relations and an invitation from the International Trade Promotion Committee of China, so was a natural choice when the next year MITI decided to despatch its first import promotion mission to the United Kingdom. This large mission, comprising 100

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businessmen from the general trading companies, department stores, and industrial companies as well as MITI officials and Miyoshi Masaya of the Keidanren (Federation of Economic organizations), started in London and visited most major UK cities, delivering the message that the Japanese market was open for business. Following the Heath talks with businessmen in Tokyo the previous year, their expectation was to meet a wider range of competent British manufacturers and exporters wishing to market their products in Japan. The mission met chambers of commerce and was well feted at civic events in the Edinburgh and Cardiff castles. Before the despatch of the mission, Sir Fred Warner, ambassador in Tokyo, had warned the Foreign Office that its handling presented a tough assignment for the officials involved, as Matsuo himself started as a sharp critic of UK industry. There was a risk of harmful failure. The Mission’s consumer goods group reported that there was already quite good knowledge of British competence among the Japanese department stores and textile importers. The machinery group of general trading companies visited Leeds, Glasgow, Manchester and Birmingham as well as London. They reported good prospects for medical and anti-pollution equipment. They were disappointed by the apparent ignorance of the Japanese market shown by many of the firms they met. They were impressed by a number of medium-sized machinery manufacturers but felt that their representation in Japan needed improvement. No specific group covered motor cars, but Mission leader Matsuo saw British Leyland privately (Marubeni were distributors), Lord Stokes and the secretary of state for trade and industry. The mission were critical of the British performance exporting cars to Japan, as UK exports were falling as overall imports were rising. Matsuo identified supply problems, particularly of Jaguars, delivery delays and frequent price increases. On his return to Tokyo, Matsuo saw the ambassador, who immediately reported in a telegram to the foreign secretary that ‘a fantastic job’ had been done on the Mission and that its members’ attitude had become favourable and helpful. A Financial Times editorial on the mission concluded that British industry must be prepared to give Japan a much higher place in its order of priorities. The political nature of the mission justified a subsequent report from Sir Fred Warner in which he noted the mission’s conclusions of bright prospects for British consumer goods but the need for better market research and re-examination of agency arrangements by British manufacturers to expand sales of high technology and industrial goods. Sir Fred saw the mission’s final report as giving insight into Japanese attitudes towards British goods and as indicating Japanese understanding of the need to buy more from Britain. He described as unjustified Japanese criticism of the British trading houses in Japan, this reflecting 101

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rivalry between these Japanese and British commercial houses. He commented that ‘the British principal gets the agent he deserves’ and urged new examination of distribution arrangements by British firms seeking in-depth sales. The ambassador placed on record his impression that the opportunity afforded to Matsuo to explain his country’s trade policies and market conditions was highly appreciated and that Matsuo himself had returned well disposed. Those who knew Matsuo later saw him as an outstandingly good and a candid friend of Britain, with a loyalty to this special relationship that has proved a lasting legacy.7 Privately, the Japanese mission members may have been well impressed by evidence of increasing zeal around the UK regions for inward investment from Japan, more so than by any deeply convincing palette of a hitherto undiscovered British Mittelstand. But overall the Mission was a clear success in drawing British business attention to opportunities in Japan and in providing a backdrop to the later opening of the British Export Marketing Centre in Tokyo. Matsuo observed that contrary to what they had expected the Mission members had been convinced that the British economy was set for steady growth (this was of course before the global effects of the first oil crisis in the autumn of 1973). In his report to MITI Matsuo had quickly espoused the concept of the establishment of a permanent structure of Japanese businessmen in Tokyo who could advise and assist new-to-market British companies, all with MITI support. Thus was established the British Market Council (a translation from the Eikoku Shijõ Kyõgikai), a body that since served to encourage the trade promotion staff of the British embassy’s commercial department. Matsuo became its Chairman, a role he retained for many years. The BMC’s 40th anniversary was marked in 2013. THE BRITISH EXPORT MARKETING CENTRE AT THE POLA AOYAMA BUILDING

Intensive preparatory work for the British Export Marketing Centre was done in 1973 by Ben Thorne as centre director and commercial counsellor, responsible to Hamish McGhie, the new commercial and economic minister, strongly supported by Bill Pearce, the ex-Royal Navy head of the fairs branch. The Centre in Aoyamadori was opened by HRH The Duke of Kent in September 1973, with an initial programme of specialist exhibitions covering marine equipment, furniture and welding equipment. In its first year, other shows included metrology and tooling, medical equipment, food and drink and avionics. British industry responded to the opportunity with enthusiasm, despite the three-day working week and industrial 102

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slow-down in the wake of the oil crisis. The central role of the exports to Japan unit supporting Peter Wakefield in London was to stimulate business interest in Japan and support for the Centre programme. The Unit served as the back-up to the British Export Marketing Centre and counselled individual British firms. In the first year of the new structure, the Unit was central to over twenty major conferences and seminars on marketing in Japan, held in London but also around the country including industrial centres as varied as Newcastle and Solihull. A co-ordinated programme was developed based on initial discussion with the relevant trade association, the commissioning of market research from specialist research firms in Tokyo and then the planning of the exhibition. This pattern continued for several years. The exports to Japan unit was itself a unique, market-focused office within the DTI staffed by Japanese-speaking officers rotated from the Embassy’s commercial department, an unprecedented system for any overseas market, lending high credibility to the Government’s approach among exporters. It remained in place for many years and turned out to be a precursor to later market branches set up to support other key developing overseas markets. Under Ben Thorne’s direction, the operations of the Centre were run by his deputy, Alex McMillan, who had returned to Japan as principal information officer from the fairs and promotions branch of the DTI, with Lydia Parry (later Lady Gomersall), Jim Ivins and a small team of dedicated Japanese staff, one of whom, Hariyama Chieko, subsequently moved into the embassy’s commercial department as a trade fair specialist and commercial officer (Honorary MBE in 2001). The Centre’s publicity work was outsourced to Tom Hara, a former such contractor for the British Week. Sylvia Thorne characteristically supported the whole programme with hospitality for the endless stream of British exhibitors. Back in London, at a meeting with the minister for trade, Eric Deakins, in August 1974 to discuss export promotion, Lord Thorneycroft referred to various attempts made to address specific problems for industrial involvement ‘such as the Exports to Japan Unit which had been a great success’. In the BOTB promotional programme plan for 1975/76, £1m was allocated for promotional activity in Japan, 10% of the global total, compared with £2.5m for West Germany, £1.2m for the USA and £1.1m for France. Exports to Japan in 1974 reached £319m. The BOTB budget for 1976/77 showed Japan still at £0.86m, of a total of £12.1m, with the other three traditional markets at roughly the same level. In the ten years from 1973, the effort put into Japan in terms of ministerial and official time, and of tailoring initiatives to the particular needs of the market, was unique in the second half of the twentieth century. Notably after the change of government in 1974, UK-Japan 103

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trade relations were seen as of two inter-related halves of vigorous export promotion and the voluntary restraint on Japanese exports in sensitive areas. It was easier to persuade some ministers that the approach on Japan was acceptable when it contained both elements, this remaining true to some extent after Mrs Thatcher took over, until the inflow of inward investment from Japan gained traction. The game changed later with the weakening of the Japanese economy but the Japanese Government continued to promote imports and later direct investment into Japan to the present day. The Export Marketing Centre went on to run a series of professionally focused exhibitions for several years. It proved to be a unique instrument in the history of British trade promotion overseas. In the early years following the UK’s accession to the Treaty of Rome, there was much discussion at the department of trade about the lack of a common European Community policy towards Japan, the sense in 1975 being that the system of voluntary restraint agreements was the most effective way of coping with disruptive import difficulty, for other Member States as well as the UK.8 The focus for the Embassy at Tokyo in 1975 was the State Visit, during which HRH The Duke of Edinburgh visited the Centre during a marine equipment show. Reviewing that year, the new ambassador Sir Michael Wilford reported on the very great success of the State Visit. He also gave credit to British exporters for their effort in a difficult, recessional year for trade. In a separate report to London he also noted the determination, optimism and resilience of the British businessmen he met at the BEMC, who did not seem unduly worried by non-tariff barriers and just got on with the job. By 1977, Thorne reflected that there had been forty-one major exhibitions in the Centre since 1973, with 696 participating companies and 45,000 Japanese business visitors. Technical exhibitions included the aerospace, medical, oceanic and offshore industries, lasers and electro-optics, and consumer goods involved carpets, furniture, toys and audio equipment (as Japanese audiophiles in Akihabara took passionately to high fidelity British audio equipment, especially speakers). A year later, the embassy’s commercial department noted that fifty-two private British exhibitions had also been held. Over these years, some star products launched at the Centre included RollsRoyce’s Camargue, JCB’s excavator, Gordon Russell’s furniture. The value of products sold as a direct result of Centre exhibitions was difficult to assess, especially of technical, industrial goods, whose marketing campaigns by their nature took a long time to fruition. But in 1978, the Embassy assessed that 60% of the British exhibitors since the BEMC opening had sold £40m, as a direct contribution to British trade, with much more in indirect benefits. In 1977, UK exports of goods to Japan had reached £469m, a rise of 31% over 1976. 104

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Since the global oil crisis of 1973–74, Japan’s economy had been set back, but by September 1978 there were renewed signs of a wealthier Japan again under pressure to increase imports, as she had been in the early 1970s. Government-led export promotion was nevertheless far from easy: much of British industry was itself still badly managed and uncompetitive. Over these years, the work of the exports to Japan unit was closely integrated with the BEMC programme. Also in late 1976 the Japan task force, a result of a Keidanren mission earlier in the year, was established linking the Japanese business community in London with the British effort to promote exports and third country co-operation. A Task Force meeting in early 1979 co-chaired by John Field of the EJU (formerly in the Embassy and later minister there) and Mitsubishi representative Yamada noted the success of a further Matsuo mission to promote imports, including a very friendly meeting with the Prime Minister. The mission had reported that industrial relations in the UK were not as bad as they had feared, the UK was likely to become self-sufficient in energy and British technology was high in certain areas like medical equipment, some sectors of engineering and computer software. Later that year, officials in the CRE questioned the continuing value of the task force but John Field and Geoffrey Nichols argued forcefully that its abandonment would endanger UK interests. It continued into the early 1980s, chaired by John MacDonald (formerly in the Embassy and involved in the British Week) and Mitsubishi representative Morohashi (who also became a towering figure in bilateral relations as chairman of Mitsubishi and of the British Market Council after Matsuo). Ben Thorne remained in Tokyo until early 1979. After Hamish McGhie’s departure from Tokyo, Thorne had assumed more of the traditional role of managing the embassy’s commercial department, with McMillan running the Centre operations. Thorne was succeeded by his embassy deputy, Merrick Baker-Bates. The Japanese authorities had meanwhile taken some steps to open trade fairs at the Harumi fairgrounds to international participation. The BEMC became involved in supporting UK firms there, giving them the opportunity to compete directly with others in their sector. The US Trade Center moved to the newly built Japanese Governmentsponsored import promotion facilities at Sunshine City in Ikebukuro, organized by the (since renamed) Manufactured Imports and Investment Promotion Organization (MIPRO) set up by MITI and the private sector. The British decided to move too, closing the Aoyamadori Centre in 1980. Meanwhile, the bilateral trade deficit grew, a result of Japan’s phenomenal success in industrial quality. Soon after his return to Tokyo as ambassador, Sir Hugh Cortazzi sent to the Department of Trade in London new embassy papers on trade and commercial work, 105

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the result of analysis by John Whitehead, now minister, and Merrick Baker-Bates. Sir Hugh noted that pockets of protectionism still existed in Japan, even though the scene had changed since 1970, when large parts of the economy had been protected. By now, motor-cars and electronics had become super-competitive in Japan and there was less technology buying. The Embassy’s paper showed thirty-eight people engaged on export promotion work at the Embassy and the BEMC, at an overall cost of around £850,000 a year, with 5.3% of the BOTB’s budget. Japanese statistics showed that the UK share of the manufactured imports market had actually fallen. Sir Hugh noted that after the intensive years of trade promotion and missionary work there were fewer good, new-to-market firms to introduce and recruitment was harder. Better capital good companies had come to do well, ICI and Spirax Sarco, who had exhibited at the BEMC, reporting good business. The BEMC programme had become biased towards consumer goods and while every effort should be made to ensure maximum use, its activity should be reviewed in 1981. Replying to Cortazzi’s report, John Caines, chief executive of the BOTB (later Sir John), wrote that he had told John Whitehead, visiting London, that the BOTB accepted the embassy’s analysis and had to consider whether the Japanese market – political considerations notwithstanding – continued to merit a disproportionately large share of expenditure. He was clear that a decision to close could well eventually be economically right but would have political reverberations. He noted that the EJU work was in line with plans for a new Exports to Europe Branch. In October 1981 Japan sent a high level economic mission to Europe under Keidanren Chairman Inayama. Unable to meet him, Prime Minister Thatcher wrote to Inayama expressing the serious European concern over concentrated Japanese exports and low imports of manufactures, welcoming Prime Minister Tanaka’s earlier statement recognizing this. Minister of trade Peter Rees met Inayama, welcoming the latter’s perception of the need to resolve the issues through co-operation and referring to a list of twenty points to be addressed. Rees observed to Inayama that lest his mission feel that everything was being expected of the Japanese side ‘all of the diplomats in our Tokyo embassy’ spoke Japanese and the 1973 opening of the BEMC had been a venture unparalleled in any other industrial country. Interestingly, one of the twenty points requested Japanese companies to invest in European companies manufacturing high technology products to assist in their importation into Japan. END AND LEGACY

As foreshadowed in the 1980 exchange with the BOTB, the unique life of the BEMC in Aoyamadori and then at Ikebukuro came to 106

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an end in the early 1980s. It had served its purpose well, in the process raising the UK business image in Japan and setting the scene for a new era of export promotion activity driven by the embassy, together with the British Chamber of Commerce and with the back-up of the DTI’s exports to Japan unit and the Foreign Office. The success of the BEMC and EJU operations should not be exaggerated in any sense that they instantly re-doubled UK exports: UK visible exports to Japan in the years 1978 to 1982 averaged around £600m, reaching £800m in 1983, £925m in 1984 and £1,012m in 1985. Nor did the effort stop the UK from embarking on a policy of voluntary restraint by Japanese exporters over the next decade. But it helped a generation of British new-to-market exporters to grasp the challenges of marketing in Japan, recognizing that if they could meet the high quality of demand from industrial customers in Japan their products would be of world class. And it helped to avoid the worst protectionist politics of formal UK import quotas. The message conveyed to Japanese industry was that the UK was undertaking a serious effort. Sony’s investment in Wales9 was followed by the rest of the electronics industry that came to the UK. In the mid-1970s, the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA) visited the UK to inspect the British automotive parts industry. Despite the negative hangover of the earlier industrial turmoil they were impressed by what they saw on the factory floor. A follow-up exhibition at the BEMC was supported by JAMA. Nissan’s later decision10 to invest in British manufacturing sprang from this time, then came the Honda11 collaboration with British Leyland and Toyota’s12 decision to invest in Derby. The renaissance of the British motor-car industry was in progress. Subsequent ambassadors Sir Sydney Giffard, Sir John Whitehead, Sir John Boyd, Sir David Wright, Sir Stephen Gomersall, Sir Graham Fry, Sir David Warren and from late 2012 Tim Hitchens were unequivocal in their support for and engagement in trade promotion, making a unique story in modern British diplomacy (Fry and Warren had both been members of the Embassy’s commercial department). The detailed trade programmes were conducted by the subsequent commercial counsellors, James Hodge 1982–86 (later Sir James), Melville Guest 1986–89, Paul Dimond 1989–93, David Warren 1993–98 (later ambassador), Peter Batemen 1998–2002, Jane Owen 2002–06, David Cairns 2006–10 and Sue Kinoshita from 2010, the work of the commercial department maturing further through three successive, special campaigns on the Japan, Opportunity Japan, Priority Japan and Action Japan, leading to re-focussed policy under UK Trade and Investment. At the London end, the supportive role for many years of Sir Michael Perry, former chairman of Nippon Lever 1981–83, chairman of Unilever 1992–96 and chairman of the 107

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Japan Trade Group in London 1991–99, could not be overstated. In all over twenty Knights of the Realm were involved, a full set of Commanders, Companions, Officers and Members of the Orders. Many Japanese businessmen and officials who contributed outstanding service supporting the British export effort have also been recognized by HM The Queen through Honorary Awards. This portrait tells the collective case story of the people who created a unique structure in British commercial activity overseas. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5

Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere, by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 1998 A biographical portrait of John Figgess by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume III, ed. J.E Hoare, Japan Library 1999. National Archives, BT 241/2635 See also ‘Edward Heath (1916–2005): The First Visit of a British Prime Minister to Japan’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. Wool cloth had long featured in the British context of managed trade. The National Wool Textile Export Corporation of Bradford (NWTEC) was originally formed in 1941, confirmed by Parliament in 1950 with a statutory levy to support its trade promotion (the then Mr Harold Macmillan, MP for Bromley, supported the Government’s move with a tribute to the industry still ‘in private hands’). The UK was the world’s largest exporter of wool textiles in the late ‘50s. As early as 1957, the Corporation had complained to the Board of Trade about the Japanese Government’s dilatoriness in the renewal of bilateral trade agreements providing for the import licensing of wool cloth and yarn. British exports to Japan of all wool and worsted yarn and manufactures were worth nearly £7m then, Japan being the UK’s fourth market after Canada, West Germany and the US. Although the Corporation was expressing concern about the competitive impact of Italian and Japanese exports on the UK’s traditional markets, in Japan the UK was able to hold on to 90% of the import market on grounds of quality and what the Corporation described as ‘snob appeal’. In what was described as a gigantic exercise in public relations, the Corporation staged a major exhibit at the British Trade Fair in Tokyo in 1965, attended by HRH Princess Alexandra and Her Imperial Highness Princess Chichibu. By 1972, Japan had become easily the largest market for UK woven woollen and worsted fabrics, worth £9m. The Corporation undertook a TV advertising campaign with their partners, the Japan Textiles Importers Association (JTIA), reaching 23m viewers, and a survey indicated that 50% of professional and managerial Japanese men had suits made of British cloth. So it may not be so surprising that the Prime Ministers had focused on the subject. In 1973, such cloth exports to Japan rose to over £20m and this was now the dominant overseas market. In meetings with members of the Matsuo Mission however the Corporation 108

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6

7

8

9

10

11

12

had raised the continuing issue of a minimum specific duty in Japan that was an obstacle to increasing the UK performance in the medium and less expensive segments of the market. Availing itself of the BEMC, the NWTEC held a prestige exhibition in September 1974, following a national tailors’ competition for window dressing, a formula that lasted biennially for ten years. That year, the export figure reached £29m, declined to £15m in 1976, by 1978 rose again to £28m, to £38m in 1979, then levelled around £30m annually in the first half of the ‘80s before reaching £43m in 1985 and 1986. Peter Ackroyd had meanwhile become the Corporation’s Senior Promotions Executive, later Assistant Director and Director, finally leaving in 2008 after the ending of the industry levy. Over many of the earlier years Yagi Tsuruzõ was the JTIA President and a familiar figure to the visitors from Bradford. (OBE in 1977). In 1985, the JTIA was however voicing criticism of what it saw as falling standards in the UK performance in design and fashion image; the Italian suppliers were making strong inroads through their design flair and flexibility over order minima. Heath later became an adviser to the Praemium Imperiale in Japan. But, perhaps in contrast to some perceptions, he also had the human touch. During his 1972 visit he dropped by the desk of the youngest Japanese girl working at the British Embassy, Kon Kazuko (awarded an MBE in 2001), and shared part of her bento¯ lunch, a piece of Prince melon, learning about the bento¯ culture. They met again later at the BEMC. He became President of Marubeni in 1975 and Chairman from 1981 to 1987. In 1996 he was appointed an Honorary Knight Commander of the Order of the British Empire (KBE) in recognition of his exceptional role in supporting British-Japanese business relations. Miyoshi Masaya went on to become President and Director-General of the Keidanren. At Marubeni, Taida Hideya, head of the Corporation’s London company, followed dynamically in Matsuo’s footsteps, becoming Senior Vice-President at Marubeni, Executive Director at the Japan Foundation Center for Global Partnership and over many years a participant in the UK-Japan 21st Century Group, and receiving an Honorary CBE in 2002. BT 241/2511 Christopher Roberts, Department of Trade, letter to the FCO of 11 November 1975. A biographical portrait of Morita Akio of Sony by Hugh Cortazzi was included in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. A detailed account of the Nissan negotiations by Sir Robin Mountfield is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. A biographical portrait of Honda Sõichirõ by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. See memoir by Toyoda Shõichirõ ‘Toyota and Britain’ in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007.

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Scotch Whisky in Japan STUART JACK ‘Thae curst horse-leeches o’ th’ Excise, Wha mak the whisky stells their prize!’ ‘Scotch Drink’ by Robert Burns, 1786 INTRODUCTION

The Excise or the taxman has for centuries had an enormous influence over the fortunes of the whisky industry. Debates about the level of taxation continue to this day in Britain and elsewhere, although maybe not with the strength of feeling and vituperative language used more than 200 years ago by Robert Burns (who, ironically, was himself to become an excise man). Tax on alcoholic beverages is a major source of revenue for governments in both the UK and Japan. But people can and do argue how much that tax should be. Particularly difficult for industry to accept are discriminatory taxes which favour competing products. That was the situation Scotch whisky faced in Japan when this issue rose to prominence in the mid-1980s. This chapter1 charts the way this problem was tackled, with a large degree of success. It is a case study in how industry, the European Communities (EC as was, now the European Union) and individual member states can work together, and in how strong political leadership and day to day diplomacy can further commercial interests. It also demonstrates how the good underlying bilateral relationship between the UK and Japan, in particular at prime ministerial level, helped to provide a constructive framework within which a difficult issue could be resolved. THE POLITICAL AND ECONOMIC CONTEXT

After the Second World War ended British economic recovery was slow. British industries feared copying of designs and ‘unfair competition’ from Japanese firms, which were struggling to revive. 110

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Protectionist pressures were strong in both countries and British trade with Japan was impeded. But it became clear that, as Prime Minister Ikeda’s ‘double the income’ policies of the early 1960s looked likely to succeed, Japanese exports would grow quickly and Japan could become an important market for Britain. After eight years of negotiations Japan and the United Kingdom had concluded in November 1962 a revised Treaty of Commerce and Navigation. This came into force in 1963 and the principles of the GATT (the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) were to apply to trade between both countries, but two protocols attached to the treaty ensured that both sides could keep some restraints on imports. One of the products on which Japan continued to maintain a quota was Scotch whisky. This meant that until Scotch whisky imports were liberalized in January 1971 there had to be annual negotiations on quotas. Throughout the 1960s the British side pressed hard for increased quotas for Scotch, which was seen as a key product in penetrating and developing the Japanese market for British consumer goods (see separate chapter in this volume on British Week in Tokyo 1969). Japanese import quota restrictions on Scotch whisky were not, of course, the only obstacle which British industry faced in the Japanese market. But the problems facing Scotch whisky exporters came to dominate and symbolize British frustrations over the apparently closed nature of the Japanese market in an era of rising general concern about the economic threat from Japan.2 When I was first secretary (trade policy) in the British embassy in Tokyo from 1985 to 1989 unfair treatment of Scotch whisky was the most prominent trade issue facing British exports in Japan and the one which took up the most time of British ministers and the British embassy. At times it was occupying 30–40% of my time. Scotch was a product, which people in both countries could relate to, and it was deeply ingrained in the Scottish and British identity. Similarly on the Japanese side there were political and emotional connotations around sho¯chu¯, the native Japanese spirit, which was seen as threatened by any tax reform in favour of Scotch whisky. By 1985 the UK had three main trade issues with Japan (apart from voluntary restraint agreements on Japanese exports, which continued to expand in coverage): whisky, legal services (getting agreement for English law firms to operate in Japan), and financial services (in particular seats for British firms on the Tokyo Stock Exchange). During the 1980s there were four Japanese Prime Ministers from the Liberal Democratic Party, Suzuki Zenko¯, Nakasone Yasuhiro¯, Takeshita Noboru and Kaifu Toshiki. They had a good deal of respect for the British Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher. The major domestic issue in Japanese politics were plans to undertake major 111

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tax reform and in particular to introduce a consumption (sales) tax, which clearly also had implications for alcoholic beverages. There were signs, particularly under Nakasone, that Japan wanted to play more of an international role beyond just trade. Japan was already a major aid donor with some of it beginning to go to countries of strategic importance for the West. To the background of a difficult period of the Cold War, Western leaders, including Mrs Thatcher in Britain, welcomed a greater role for Japan. Another important factor, which influenced British policy towards Japan, was Japanese investment, particularly in the UK’s ailing car industry. But these considerations did not prevent British Ministers from taking a tough line on trade issues.3 WHISKY IN JAPAN

The relationship between Britain and Japan in respect of whisky goes back almost a hundred years. Millions of Japanese will learn of this history in 2014, as NHK’s popular daily drama series will be about the father of the Japanese whisky industry, Taketsuru Masataka4 and his Scottish wife, Jessie Roberta. By the 1980s Japan was of considerable importance for the Scotch whisky industry, and exports of whisky had a major place in UK trade with Japan. In 1985 the value of Scotch whisky exports to Japan was £59 million, making Japan the industry’s third largest export market and making Scotch whisky the second largest UK export to Japan. Around a third was bulk whisky sold to the Japanese industry, which blended it into Japanese whiskies. This continued to grow but the volume of bottled Scotch had declined by almost half since 1949. This was attributed, at least in part, to the discriminatory tax and duty regime which protected the Japanese whisky and spirits industries and prevented the growth of Scotch whisky’s market share. The Japanese industry was therefore both a major competitor and, for some parts of the Scotch industry, a major customer.5 There were two big companies (as still today), Suntory and Nikka, and a number of smaller producers who mostly made cheaper ‘whiskies’. THE ‘PARALLELS’ PROBLEM

Prominently displayed for many years in my Japanese brother-inlaw’s sitting room was a magnum of Johnny Walker Black received from one of his clients. This and other premium brands of blended scotch were seen as valuable gifts in the two gift-giving seasons in Japan. Standard blends were also used as gifts and had a major place in bars, but not in the take-home trade, which was dominated by cheaper Japanese ‘whiskies’ such as Suntory Red. It was important for the whisky producers and their approved importers to maintain the cachet, which went with a stable high price. 112

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Commercially the problem of most concern to the industry in the mid-1980s was not actually tax but parallel imports. Scotch whisky was reaching Japan via third countries and being sold at lower prices, undermining the market positioning of Scotch, taking free advantage of the advertising efforts of the official importers, and reducing the profitability of the product. The industry lobbied the British Government and the European Commission (who formally had responsibility for trade relations with Japan) to take this matter up with the Japanese. There was some sympathy in the Department of Trade in London and in the British embassy in Tokyo for the industry case, but not universally in Whitehall. The European Commission, however, would have no truck with it, seeing proposals for certificates of origin specifically for Japan, while supposedly aimed at counterfeit Scotch emanating from elsewhere in Asia (a real issue but not a significant one in Japan), as a ruse to suppress the parallel trade. In the eyes of both the Commission and the Japanese authorities any action against parallels would be anti-competitive. The industry had two other major issues with Japan: rates of import duty and liquor tax. A third, whisky look-alikes, was also to become important. IMPORT TARIFFS

The Japanese import tariff on bottled Scotch was over seven times the duty levied on Japanese whisky entering the EC. It was also significantly higher than the tariff on American and Canadian whiskies. Under pressure from the US and Europe to open up its market Japan undertook a series of reductions in import tariffs. That included Scotch whisky: the tariff was reduced in 1985 by between 18 and 26%, however still leaving a higher rate than for American bourbon and rye whiskies. LIQUOR TAX

Liquor tax had much more effect on the price of whisky than import duty and became the main focus of a campaign jointly conducted by the Scotch Whisky Association, The European Business Council in Tokyo (representing European businesses active in Japan), the British government, and the European Commission. A leaflet issued by the Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) in October 1986 sums up what is quite a complicated tax regime and its impact on the prospects for Scotch: ‘Whisky’ is taxed in Japan in a way, which is unique amongst all the developed countries of the world. Whereas in the EC ‘whisky’ 113

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(regardless of origin) is taxed on the basis of its alcoholic content, in Japan ‘whisky’ is divided into three ‘grades’. This generates three sharply defined product categories with very different tax levels and thus sharply different retail prices. Scotch whisky is automatically classified in the top ‘grade’. This means that it pays 7 times the rate of tax on Japanese ‘Second’ grade whisky and twice the rate on Japanese ‘First’ grade whisky. Moreover, Scotch whisky pays significantly more tax than other Japanese spirits. For example, the minimum tax rate for Scotch whisky is over 40 times the rate of tax on certain Japanese sho¯chu¯… [Together with the high import duties the effect is that] …Scotch whisky is denied (a) the opportunity to compete on equal terms with Japanese ‘First’ and ‘Second’ grade whiskies, which account for 50% of the Japanese whisky market, and (b) access to the valuable take-home market which accounts for 60% of consumption.

In addition to three grades of whisky with different rates of specific tax (based on volume) there was also an ad valorem tax (based on price), which applied to the more expensive whiskies.6 EFFORTS TO ADDRESS TRADE BARRIERS TO SCOTCH WHISKY UP TO EARLY 1985

British Ministers raised Scotch whisky with their Japanese counterparts on numerous occasions from 1968 onwards. Prime Minister Edward Heath brought up the subject with Prime Minister Tanaka Kakuei during his visit to Japan in 1972. In these contacts the focus seems to have been first on quota liberalization and then on import duty rather than liquor tax. The briefing for Mrs Thatcher’s visit to Japan in 1982 (see separate chapter in this volume on Margaret Thatcher and Japan) only mentions the issue in passing and she does not seem to have raised it. As late as early 1985 several other market access issues featured more prominently in British trade policy towards Japan (for example tobacco, pig meat). Visiting UK Cabinet Minister Norman Tebbit did raise the taxation issue briefly in April 1985, but it was not on his list of points to make when he saw the Japanese prime minister. But by May 1986 Mrs Thatcher was firmly focused on the issue, raising it with Prime Minister Nakasone. It was to remain in her sights for the next three years. THE CAMPAIGN GETS UNDER WAY

The Scotch Whisky Association decided to launch a campaign in 1985, supported actively by the liquor committee of the European Business Council in Tokyo, led by Mark Bedingham. They pursued their campaign with determination and skill and were prepared to 114

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devote considerable time and resources, including the employment of a public relations firm (Burson Marstellar). The EC and the British Government were ready to be firm with Japan on trade issues, and this was one issue which involved blatant discrimination and had media appeal (‘The Whisky War’ was an inevitable headline). The prospect of major tax reform in Japan also provided an obvious opportunity to improve matters but was also potentially a threat of an even worse regime. Although Japanese liquor taxation was essentially a one product (Scotch whisky) and one country issue (the UK) aspects of it affected cognac and Irish whiskey, and action to tackle the issue garnered wide support in the Council of Ministers of the EC, who shared a general frustration with the state of trade relations with Japan. The SWA were also able to mobilize support from the US and Canada through the International Federation of Wines and Spirits, and the SWA’s Director General, Bill Bewsher, led a lobbying mission to Japan in October 1986 which included representatives of the spirits industries of France, Germany, Italy, Ireland, Canada and the USA. The internationalization of the issue clearly had an impact in Japan. The starting objective set by the SWA and agreed by the British Government and the EC was a level playing field for imported and domestic spirits. This required abolition of the grading system for whisky, a single rate of tax for all domestic and imported spirits (as in the UK), and a single rate of import duty based on alcoholic content. The highest priority was a single rate of tax for all whiskies, and therefore abolition of the grading system and the mixture of specific and ad valorem taxes. HOW THE CAMPAIGN WAS PURSUED

The full toolkit of trade policy and diplomacy was used. The starting point was close coordination with the industry in the UK, Brussels and Tokyo. At times there were different views on tactics and even some in the industry who thought the whole focus wrong. But there was widespread agreement on both objectives and tactics. Much of our activity was aimed at, drip by drip, raising awareness of the issue in Japan and gaining acceptance that something had to be done about it. Whisky taxation became a fixture in virtually all high-level contacts, which the British Government and the European Commission had with Japan. That included Mrs Thatcher’s contacts with successive Japanese Prime Ministers through both face-to-face meetings and correspondence. The British ambassador, the economic counsellor (Stephen Gomersall, later ambassador) and I tracked Japanese thinking closely 115

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and sought every opportunity to explain our case for fairer treatment. This meant principally contact with Japanese officialdom, in particular the Ministry of Finance and its National Tax Agency (with whose Liquor Tax Division I developed a close working relationship) and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. We also spoke to the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) and the Keidanren (the principal business organization), getting across the point that the whisky issue had acquired a symbolic importance, which resonated across the whole of our bilateral economic relationship. We briefed the Japanese media, making good use of our Japanese language skills, and, together with representatives of the industry, succeeded in getting a lot of coverage.7 The EC delegation in Tokyo was also active and coordination with us worked well.8 The range of diplomatic and media-focussed approaches was to be used throughout the campaign with excellent support from the industry. JAPANESE ATTITUDES

We soon achieved a degree of understanding and even sympathy from Japanese officials. That was true even of the Ministry of Finance and the National Tax Agency, whose responsibilities included protecting tax revenue and the interests of the Japanese industry. But they, of course, had to be receptive to the countervailing pressures from the various sectors of the Japanese liquor industry and their political supporters. The situation with the Japanese whisky industry was complicated. The major producers, Suntory and Nikka, had a shared interest with us in some respects (abolition of the ad valorem tax, lower overall rates and a narrowing of the tax advantages of sho¯chu¯ would help them). But these companies were also the main competitors for bottled Scotch whisky in all sectors of the market, and might lose out if their dominance of the take-home trade was dented by more competitive Scotch. The smaller Japanese whisky producers who depended on the cheaper end of the market were certainly at risk. I saw no harm in talking with Suntory in particular, who sought contact with us. But Bill Bewsher of the SWA was against any dealings with them on the part of his association and we too felt constrained from much contact (we had some). While Saji, the Chairman of Suntory and of the Japanese whisky trade association, clearly had some influence with the Japanese Government, the main blockage to achievement of our objectives lay elsewhere. There was nervousness9 among the saké brewers about the possible implications of major changes to liquor tax, not that whisky was 116

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seen as a major competitor. This was an influential lobby, with close connections to a lot of Japanese politicians including in particular Takeshita Noboru, who was Minister of Finance and then Prime Minister at key stages in this saga. The real problem was the sho¯chu¯ industry and its formidable political protector, Yamanaka Sadanori. A single rate of tax for spirits or even a substantial narrowing of the differential in tax rates would hit the 600 small producers of B-type sho¯chu¯, mostly located in southern Kyushu and Okinawa. Yamanaka represented that part of Kyushu in the Diet. He had a key position as chair of the LDP Tax Affairs Council, and, while most policy was still made by officials, major tax changes were one area where the politicians and in particular Yamanaka (sometimes known as ‘Mr Tax’) held sway. On one occasion he told us bluntly to forget the National Tax Agency – he personally would decide the fate of liquor tax. My friends in the Agency confirmed that to be the case. We decided not to shun him but rather maintain contact. He eventually accepted that we had a genuine issue, which we had to address together, doubtless helped by his admiration for Mrs Thatcher and by what happened in the GATT. THE GATT

One development helped to bring the matter to a head and provide a powerful context in which we could lobby and negotiate a solution. The EC Foreign Affairs Council, at our urging, decided in 1986 to lodge a complaint with the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). The GATT, predecessor to the World Trade Organization, was the main multilateral trade body to which all major western trading nations were a party, including Japan. A GATT panel was set up to investigate, chaired by Ambassador Tello from Mexico. The panel’s report adopted by the GATT Council in November 1987 found that Japanese liquor taxation was ‘discriminatory and inconsistent with Article III of the GATT’ (which prohibits internal taxes that discriminate against imported products in favour of domestic products). Japan (including even Yamanaka of the LDP) accepted that the tax had to be changed. We inevitably wanted full implementation of the GATT findings as quickly as possible. For understandable reasons the Japanese Government wanted to make any changes to the Liquor Tax at the same time as the major reforms which would introduce a consumption tax. That is what was to happen on 1 April 1989. More important than timing was how far the GATT findings would be implemented, in other words the content of the new tax regime. Japan accepted quickly that there should be a single rate of 117

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tax for all whiskies despite concern for the smaller domestic producers of ‘Second Grade’. In December 1987 the ruling Liberal Democratic Party decided that the grading system for whisky and the ad valorem tax should be abolished; and, without specifying by how much, that differences in tax rates for different spirits should be narrowed, including through a rise in the tax on sho¯chu¯. The discussion turned to the precise tax rates and in particular the differential with sho¯chu¯, which a senior Japanese Ministry of Finance official described to us as a ‘terrible political issue’ for his Ministry. Japanese officials recognized that Japan had to respect the GATT finding but Japanese politicians were adamant that the differentials10 could not be abolished altogether, at least not quickly. In domestic political terms it was not possible to allow a lot of small sho¯chu¯ producers to go bankrupt.11 The British Government and the EC asked that they be consulted as Japan worked out the exact shape of the new tax regime. In January 1988 the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, raised the matter with every Minister he met during a visit to Tokyo. The Japanese were warned that Liquor Tax would be the top issue when Prime Minister Takeshita came to the UK in May; and that the matter would, if necessary, be raised in the Economic Summit in Toronto in June. The European Commission gave the Japanese similar messages. At this key stage contacts between the two Prime Ministers played a decisive role. Without revealing any details Takeshita gave a personal undertaking in London that he would find a satisfactory solution. This was followed by an exchange of letters between the two Prime Ministers. Takeshita conveyed his ‘personal decision’ later in May: there would be a 45% reduction in the rate of tax applicable to Scotch Whisky and a 75% increase in the rate for sho¯chu¯, reducing the whisky/sho¯chu¯ differential from 40:1 to 13:1 (or to 7.5:1 if the different alcoholic content was taken into account).12 Even this modest narrowing of the differential had clearly involved great efforts by Takeshita, including in particular with Yamanaka. Having consulted the SWA the British Government and the EC decided to welcome the Japanese plan. But they noted that it did not represent full implementation of the GATT finding and that the continuing differentials would need to be kept under review. With these caveats Mrs Thatcher told her Japanese counterpart that his plan was a ‘very positive response’, and the President of the European Commission Jacques Delors told Takeshita it was ‘a good step in the right direction’. The tax changes were passed by the Diet in November 1988 for implementation in April 1989. So in the end the Scotch Whisky Association, the British Government and the EC were prepared to compromise provided that a single rate of tax for all whiskies was adopted no later than the 118

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following tax year. A single rate for all spirits, including sho¯chu¯, would remain a longer-term aim. If the remaining differentials became a problem the issue could be sent back to the GATT. CIRCUMVENTION OF THE TAX CHANGES: WHISKY LOOK-ALIKES

Problems quickly arose. We had been concerned for a while that a new, fairer regime might be circumvented if Japanese companies launched whisky look-alike products which were classified as ‘other spirits’ or ‘sho¯chu¯’ and therefore benefited from much lower tax rates. I had conveyed this to the National Tax Agency, who had undertaken to prevent any circumvention. This concern nevertheless proved to be more than theoretical. In June 1988 a new sho¯chu¯ called Jun Legend came onto the market. The label was mostly in English and said that it was made from barley and aged in wooden barrels. In October another was launched called ‘Kami no kawa’, which, despite this time a Japanese name, was described as an ‘international spirit aged for 3 years in oak casks’. Both products lay midway between whisky and sho¯chu¯ in colour and taste. We made stronger representations at various levels, threatening to return to the GATT. I found myself having to negotiate official guidelines to be issued by the National Tax Agency, covering names, labelling and advertising. The most bizarre, if also one of the most important, parts of this was agreeing on an acceptable colour. The deputy director of the Liquor Tax Division and I sat around a table with several bottles of liquid with various shades of yellow and straw colours, haggling over which was the darkest acceptable. Not exactly very scientific, though what we agreed was later expressed more technically as a colour density of 0.19. It was lighter than Scotch whisky. Despite these guidelines more look-alike products appeared. One I recall was called Kentucky Age, presumably more aimed at American whiskey than Scotch. As I left Tokyo this issue was still rumbling on. Secretary of State for Scotland Malcolm Rifkind raised it in Tokyo in September and Mrs Thatcher did so with Prime Minister Kaifu in the same month. ENCOURAGING INITIAL EXPORT FIGURES

We had nevertheless achieved a much better tax regime for Scotch whisky. It was now for the individual companies to decide how to exploit that, whether by going for the mass market or concentrating on the premium gift market, in other words whether to go for volume or high profit margins. The first signs were good. According to 119

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SWA figures exports to Japan were up 39% in the first half of 1989, and according to Japan’s National Tax Agency imports were up 32% by volume and 68% by value. HOW DO THESE EVENTS LOOK NOW?

The Japanese liquor market has changed a lot in the last twenty-five years. The British Government and the British embassy in Tokyo kept on the case, and there were further improvements in the duty and tax regime13 (though the SWA still has some concerns about Japanese regulations14). But the market for Scotch whisky did not grow as hoped. This was in part due to Japan’s ‘lost decade’ of economic stagnation, to a drop in the gift-giving tradition, and to investment by sho¯chu¯ producers in new products, some of which still adopt some of Scotch’s clothes (if not as blatantly as the first look-alikes). Japanese whisky distillers have also gone for growth, and the share of the whisky market taken by imports has fallen in recent years.15 Exports of Scotch to Japan reached £177 million in 1990 but were down to £59.5 million in 2013. That said Japan still remains an important market (the 16th largest export market for Scotch whisky). Single malt whisky exports have risen 186% since 1990 to £18.9 million in 2013.16 THE WIDER SIGNIFICANCE

While the significance of Japan as an individual market for Scotch whisky has declined over the last twenty years the precedent set in the GATT case has had much wider-reaching effects. It has aided the industry in similar discriminatory cases with Korea, Chile and the Philippines and has established a basis for ensuring that fair treatment of spirits is included in future trading regimes such as Free Trade Agreements, which the EU might negotiate. ENDNOTES 1

2

I am grateful to the Foreign & Commonwealth Office for enabling me to refresh my memory and check my facts and to the Scotch Whisky Association for helping me to bring the story up to date and to understand the wider significance of what we did together in the 1980s. My thanks also go to Sir Hugh Cortazzi for his advice and in particular for his insights into the historical context. The ‘Japan problem’ – the fear that Japan would dominate many sectors of the world economy – seriously exercised governments and business organizations in the US and Europe. This led to protectionist moves and, in the case of the UK in particular, voluntary restraint agreements under which Japan agreed to limit exports of cars, machine tools, etc. But it also led to interest in lessons, which could be learned from Japan, 120

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3

4

5

6

7

8 9

10

11

12

including through inward investment by Japanese manufacturers. Both sides of this issue were captured in many books and articles, some of which made an impact on policy makers and wider opinion, notably Ezra Vogel: Japan as No.1, Harvard 1979. Others, some very alarmist, included Marvin Wolf: The Japanese Conspiracy, Their Plot to Dominate Industry World-Wide, Empire Books 1983; and Clyde Prestowitz: Trading Places, How America Allowed Japan to Take the Lead, Tuttle 1988. The British Government was unhappy with Japan’s approach to the Falklands Islands. But, when Mrs Thatcher visited Japan in 1982, she decided not to be publicly critical of the Japanese Government because she wanted to develop a closer political relationship. The Nissan investment was also a priority. But she still talked tough about the trade imbalance. See Olive Checkland: Japanese Whisky, Scotch Blend: The Story of Masataka Taketsuru, His Scottish Wife and the Japanese Whisky Industry, Scottish Cultural Press, Edinburgh, 1998 Japanese companies have also become significant investors in Scottish distilleries. The large Tomatin distillery near Inverness was purchased in 1985 by Takara Shu¯zo¯ and Okura & Co. Acquisitions by Nikka and Suntory followed. As of 1988, before changes were made, tax rates per litre were (Yen): premium special grade whisky 4057 (typically), standard special grade whisky 2098, first grade whisky 1011, second grade whisky 296, sho¯chu¯ A 79, sho¯chu¯ B 51, other spirits 362. Scotch whisky fell into the two higher tax brackets, as did some Japanese whiskies. An interview with me on the subject was even the lead item on the NHK TV evening news. We even had a campaign tie in EC blue with whisky bottles. It was not only the saké brewers who had a good deal of nervousness. That is how I felt when I was asked to address the annual convention of the Japan Saké Brewers’ Association. But I seemed to get across the point that we were not attacking them and to my pleasant surprise I got a warm reception. As well as whisky and sho¯chu¯ there was also a different rate for other spirits such as gin, which was also lower than for whisky. While these latter beverages were also competitors for Scotch whisky and the ultimate aim was a single rate of tax on all spirits based on alcoholic content, the SWA was not so immediately concerned about them as gin, vodka and rum were not widely drunk in Japan. A rise in the price of sho¯chu¯ would adversely affect consumers while a reduction in the price of scotch and higher grade Japanese whisky would benefit them. But I do not recall Japanese officials and politicians saying much about consumer interests; their concern was for producers. This was typical of the time. The tax on Scotch whisky was to be reduced from Yen 2098 or more to Yen 1150 a litre (the latter now becoming the single rate for all whiskies). Sho¯chu¯ A was to rise from Yen 79 to Yen 137; and sho¯chu¯ B from Yen 51 to Yen 89.

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13

14

15

16

In a quick survey on a visit to Japan in February 2014 I found standard Scotch generally priced competitively with a modest premium over rival Japanese whiskies. The SWA is calling for legislation requiring lot codes on goods as in the EU; is seeking recognition of Scotch whisky as a geographical indication; and has concerns about Japanese additives regulations. While Scotch whisky has remained a premium product with a global reputation some Japanese whiskies are now getting international recognition, winning two out of the six main categories in the 2013 World Whiskies Awards. When I was again in Tokyo, as minister in the British embassy, from 1999 to 2003 I observed these trends. I had by then myself acquired a taste for Scotch single malts and found Tokyo a good place to find rare ones. At one stage I had a collection of sixty, which was a draw for some of the Japanese I entertained.

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Mountaineering in Japan: British Pioneers and the Pre-war Japanese Alpine Club HAMISH ION

Okuhotaka-dake (ᅏⓄ㜞ጪ, 3190 metres) and other peaks taken from Taisho-ike (ᄢᱜᳰ), Kamiko¯chi (਄㜞࿾), 1 October 20131

INTRODUCTION

The famous Imperial Hotel at Kamiko¯chi (਄㜞࿾Ꮲ࿖ࡎ࠹࡞) opened in 1933 and like Banff Springs Hotel or Chateau Lake Louise in the Canadian Rockies was designed to allow guests to marvel at the mountains from a base of comfort. The opening of the Imperial Hotel also demonstrated to the foreign tourist or visiting dignitary that the appeal of Japan was not restricted only to its temples, gardens, geisha and modern cities but also extended to the beauty of its mountains and alpine flora. British mountaineers had a significant influence on the development of climbing as a leisure sport in Japan and on Japanese climbers associated with the Japanese Alpine Club (ᣣᧄጊጪળ, 123

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Nihon Sangakkai). The shadow of Walter Weston (1860–1940)2 looms large over the first years of the Alpine Club and the early Japanese leaders in it owed much to him not only in Japan itself but also in being a conduit for them to the British Alpine Club and the Swiss Alps. The direct influence of British climbers declined after 1923 but indirect influence continued. The ideas of John Ruskin (1819–1900) about the mountains struck a responsive chord with the Japanese. Walter Weston ended a newspaper article on ‘The Ascent of Kaigane san’ in November 1902 with a quotation from Ruskin: ‘The mountains seem to have been built for the human race, as at once their schools and cathedral: full of treasures of illuminated manuscript for the scholar, kindly in simple lessons for the worker, quiet in pale cloisters for the thinker, glorious in holiness for the worshipper.’3 Weston made many references to Ruskin in his writings on Japan. He even called Shiga Shigetaka (1863–1927),4 the author of Nihon Fukeiron (ᣣᧄ㘑᥊⺰, Japanese Landscape) and the second honorary member of the Japanese Alpine Club after Weston, the ‘Japanese Ruskin’.5 Kojima Kyu¯ta (Usui, 1873–1948), one of the founders of the Japan Alpine Club, was greatly influenced by an appendix to Nihon Fukeiron which led him to climb Yarigatake in 19026 (only to find that Weston had already climbed it as early as 1894). In 1918 Weston lamented that the writings of Shiga and Kojima were not translated into English for ‘the suggestive and poetic descriptions of Shiga “Juko¯” and the fascinating and artistic writings on mountain art and mountain ascents by Kojima “Usui,” should be hidden from the enjoyment of the English-speaking mountain-brotherhood is a deprivation as yet unrealized, it is true, but only too real.’7 The love of nature and the mountains was something that all could share and transcended cultural barriers. THE SHADOW OF WESTON

More than any one else in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century through his four books, many articles and presentations, Weston internationalized the Japanese Alps by bringing them to the attention of the Western mountaineering world and the general reading public. Weston’s own crowning feat in scaling the Ho¯o¯zan obelisk (㡅ಪጊ, 2841 m) in the summer of 1904 is captured in Fukada Kyu¯ya’s bestselling Nihon Hyaku Meizan (100 Mountains of Japan).8 Undoubtedly, such a mention also helps to account for Weston’s enduring fame in Japan and the appeal of his writings in translation to a Japanese audience who were flattered that the Japanese mountains were compared favourably with those of Europe. Weston’s appreciation of Japan, the beauty of its alpine nature, and its mountain people resonated with the 124

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early members of the Nihon Sangakkai9 who took advantage of the burgeoning railway network to escape into the mountains from their urban jobs or school studies on the weekends and holidays. Weston’s friendship with Okano Kinjiro¯ (1874–1958) and Kojima Kyu¯ta not only influenced them in the formation of the Nihon Sangakkai, but also led to the translation of Weston’s books, of which Nihon Arupusu To¯zan to Tanken (Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps) had an enormous impact on the mountaineering world of Japan.10 Although Weston was back in England at the time that the Nihon Sangakkai was formally created by seven Japanese friends in October 1905, Weston had had extensive conversations with Kojima, Okano, Takeda Hisayoshi (1883–1972) and others since 1903 about the formation of a Japanese Alpine Club based on the British Alpine Club model. Takeda pointed to the importance of one particular meeting that he, Kojima, Okano, and Takano Takazo¯ (1884–1964) had with Weston over a meal at the Oriental Palace Hotel in Yokohama in March 1905 prior to Weston’s return to England that coming May.11 Weston, once back in England, helped to introduce the Japanese Alpine Club to the leading figures of the British Alpine Club. Foreigners in Japan certainly welcomed the formation of the Nihon Sangakkai for within a year of its foundation there were eleven foreign members (not all of them English) of whom two Alfred E. Webb and W.T. Gray of St. Andrew’s Missionary Brotherhood were Anglican clergymen but the rest, apart from Louis Bridel and Henry L. Fardel who were university teachers, were businessmen in Yokohama, Tokyo and Kobe.12 Of the first eleven, two would be killed in the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake; Fardel and Rothwell C. Bowden of the Standard Oil Company died in Yokohama.13 Plenty of foreigners including Mrs Frances E. Weston, Mrs Emily S. Elwin, Miss N. M. Hall and Miss P. Bunscombe (the latter two women missionaries introduced by Kondo¯ Shigekichi (1883–1969) who had studied at Glasgow University and Takano Takazo¯) joined before 1923. In the twenty-two years between 1923 and 1945, the Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi points out that the period of militarism in Japan made the entry of foreigners into the Japanese Alpine Club rare.14 Only some thirteen new foreign members joined the Club between 1923 and 1941 of whom seven had British connections including C.H. Archer of the British Consulate in Tokyo and Herbert A. Macrae of the British embassy, C.R. Agar of the Yorkshire Insurance Company, and John Morris (1896–1980).15 In December 1942, two years after Weston’s death, the War did not prevent the Weston Relief from being put up at Kamiko¯chi, a place Weston had confidently predicted would become Japan’s Zermatt. Soon after the end of the War, on 14 June 1947 the first Weston Matsuri (⑂) was held in front of the Relief to mark the 125

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beginning of the climbing season in the Northern Japanese Alps, and two days later on 16 June the first Weston Memorial Lecture was given in Matsumoto.16 Weston’s writings, personal example, and the Japanese memory of him can be seen to transcend the bitterness of the war years and to link post-War Alpine Japan with the gentler and positive world of beginnings of Japanese mountaineering in the late Meiji and Taisho¯ eras. Weston represents the pinnacle of British influence on the development of Japanese climbing as a leisure sport. There could only be one Weston in the pantheon of climbing heroes and heroines in the history of the Nihon Sangakkai. He was not the first or the last Briton to influence Japanese climbing but the golden age of British mountaineering pioneers ended with the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake in 1923, although Walton17 was actively scrambling about the mountains in Japan and Taiwan into the early 1930s and its twilight perhaps continued until John Morris was evacuated from Japan in 1942. Valerie R. Hamilton has looked at the activities of British mountaineering pioneers before the foundation of the Nihon Sangakkai.18 The achievement of the early British pioneers is clearly seen in the first geological surveys, explorations, and travels of the interior of Japan including its mountains made by British officials like Sir Ernest Satow (1843–1929), and his friend and Royal Marine officer then in Japanese service, Albert George Sidney Hawes (1842–1897) or individual oyatoi like William Gowland19 (1842–1922), who is credited with giving the name Japanese Alps to the Japanese mountains,20 and was the first foreigner to climb Yarigatake (3,180 m) in 1877, John Milne21 (1850–1913), the mining engineer and seismologist, and Robert William Atkinson22 (1850–1929), who taught chemistry at the Kaisei Gakko in Tokyo. More than anything, it is the writings of the first British pioneers about the Japanese mountains that were important.23 Perhaps the most immediately influential of these, before Weston’s writings, were the guide books, which were not only useful to the peripatetic Westerner but also to urban Japanese in introducing the hinterland to them. The most important of these guidebooks is that associated with Satow and Hawes. This led to the ‘indispensable Murray’,24 which Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) and his best friend, William B. Mason (1853–1923) later edited and to which Weston began to contribute in the 1890s.25 If the guidebooks and other writings were an abiding legacy of the British interest in the Japanese Alps and mountaineering, one of the most important elements of the Nihon Sangakkai was its journal, Sangaku whose first issue appeared in April 1906. The journal carried a few English language articles including some by Weston, Murray Walton, T.H.R. Shaw of Butterfield and Swire, Shanghai, Oswald White of the British Consulate, Osaka and others associated with 126

MOUNTAINEERING IN JAPAN: BRITISH PIONEERS AND THE PRE-WAR

the Western climbing community in Kobe. After the First World War, H.E. Daunt, the self-styled ‘Bell Goat’, and leader of so-called Mountain Goats of Kobe, and editor of their journal Inaka, edited the English language supplement of Sangaku.26 Some of the Inaka climbing accounts were reprinted in Sangaku including those of J.G.S. Gausden, the self-styled ‘Flying Goat’, and the American, Otis Manchester Poole, the ‘Rocky Goat’. Walton and Daunt represent a second and younger generation of British climbers. Daunt knew Weston and re-climbed all the peaks in the Japanese Alps that Weston had earlier climbed and many more mountains including ones in Korea and Kamchatka. Daunt and the ‘Mountain Goats’ were clearly a very sporting and jolly group of people but they were serious about climbing and enjoying the alpine inaka, and they were pleased to be numbered among the members of the Nihon Sangakkai. The trouble was (and Weston and his fellow climbers were clearly aware of it) that the Japanese Alps were not as high as the peaks in Europe or even in the Canadian Rockies. Nevertheless, the challenge for climbers is not necessarily the height of the mountain but finding new and different routes up it. In March 1922 Maki Yu¯ko¯, Matsukata Saburo¯ and others from Keio27 and Gakushuin Universities climbing clubs made the first winter ascent of Yarigatake (3,180 m).28 This feat in itself showed that Japanese climbers were quickly advancing from leisurely climbs and hikes that characterized many of Weston’s early forays into much more challenging and technical climbing. Winter climbing with the added difficulties posed by cold, snow and increased darkness brought out the ‘samurai spirit’ among Japanese climbers, and set the Japanese apart from the early British pioneers in the Japanese Alps. This first winter ascent of Yarigatake also underlined the importance of University and school climbing clubs in the development of the sport in Japan.29 David A. Feldman has expertly described the dare devilish activities of Hokkaido¯ University Alpine Club in winter climbing in the mountains of Hokkaido¯ during the inter-war period.30 Winter climbing brought with it the combination of climbing and skiing,31 but also the other combinations of rock and snow climbing. As the example of Frances E. Weston who climbed with her husband in Japan after 1902 but also in Canada and the European Alps showed, mountaineering was not restricted to men. In the summer of 1915 the novelist Naito¯ Chiyoko (1893–1925) became the first Japanese woman in recent times to climb Yarigatake.32 By the 1920s the number of peaks in Japan, North and South America and Europe that had not been scaled were few, but Japanese climbers were already following in the toeholds of British and other Western mountaineers in those regions and would also become 127

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

involved in the conquest of the high Himalayan summits before the opening of the Second World War. Yet the explosion of Japanese interest in mountaineering which followed the formation of the Japanese Alpine Club in 190533 does not detract from the contribution made by Weston and early British pioneers who helped open the Japanese Alps and drew Japanese attention to the world’s alpine playgrounds during the golden age for British pioneers before 1923. This came to an end with the dislocation caused by the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake and the departure in 1924 of Daunt from Kobe, which meant an end to the publishing of Inaka and an end to the English supplement to Sangaku. It is true that some keen British climbers remained in Japan among whom Walton was one of the most prominent but their direct influence on Japanese climbing was on the decline. Japanese mountaineering had already reached such a stage of development and growing technical sophistication that such influence was no longer needed. BEYOND JAPAN INTO THE EUROPEAN ALPS AND THE ROCKIES

Even as Gowland, Satow, Hawes and the others were beginning to explore the Japanese Alps, Japanese climbers were beginning to venture into the Swiss Alps. As early as 1887 Tanaka Akamaru (1869–1944) who was studying at the University of Geneva at the time climbed the Pizzo Centrale (2,999 m) mastiff from St. Gotthard Pass.34 Among those foreigners who were familiar with climbing in this region of Switzerland were Alfred E. Webb, an SPG missionary who replaced Weston as the missionary attached to St. Andrew’s Church, Yokohama in 1905, and Louis Bridel, a French climber who later taught at Tokyo Imperial University Law Faculty. Both were among the first foreign members of the Nihon Sangakkai. In August 1909 Endo¯ Sho¯tsugi became the first Japanese to climb over 4000 m when he ascended Mount Rainier (4392 m) in the northwest United States. In August 1910 Kaga Sho¯taro¯ became the first Japanese to climb over four thousand metres in the Alps when he climbed the Jungfrau (4158 m).35 In January 1914 Tsujimura Isuke (1887–1923) climbed the Jungfrau and Mönch in wintertime, and in August together with Kondo¯ Shigekichi climbed Schreckhorn (4078 m) in the Bernese Alps but they were hurt in an avalanche on the way down.36 Tsujimura kept a diary of his Swiss climbs which was published in Sangaku. In 1919 Kojima climbed Mount Shasta (4317 m) in northern California. The Japanese were not alone in enjoying climbing in the Bernese Oberland. In 1920 Sangaku published an article, which described a climbing holiday Walter and Frances Weston had taken in Oberland in August and September 128

MOUNTAINEERING IN JAPAN: BRITISH PIONEERS AND THE PRE-WAR

1911 a ‘region already known to the J.A.C. through the travels of Messrs. Kondo¯, Tsujimura, Kaga and other Japanese climbers’.37 The Westons climbed Schilthorn (2973 m) and the Gspaltenhorn (3436 m) among other mountains in Bern canton. Walter Weston had provided introductions to the British Alpine Club to many of the first Japanese climbing in the Swiss Alps. After the First World War this included Maki Yu¯ko¯ (Aritsune, 1894–1989), who was helped by Weston when he came to London in 1919.38 In 1920 Maki climbed the Wetterhorn and Mönch. In September 1921 he made the first ascent of the Eiger (3975 m) by the Mittellegigrat (northeast ridge). In 1924 Maki together with J. Percy Farrar (1857–1929), a former President of the British Alpine Club and a member of its Everest Committee and Frank Smythe (1900–1949), who later make his name as Himalaya climber, made a critical appraisal of the unclimbed north face of the Fiescherhorn identifying a line which was later used by a Swiss group in 1926. In 1926 Maki climbed the Matterhorn, which had first climbed by a Japanese in 1920. Maki was not only well connected in terms of knowing British mountaineers but also Japanese ones for he climbed with Prince Chichibu39 (1902–1953). Maki’s climbing was not restricted to the European Alps because he led an important expedition to Canada. In July 1925 a Keio¯-Gakushu¯in climbing team led by Maki under the patronage of Prince Chichibu reached the summit of Mt. Alberta (3,619 m),40 the last major peak in the Canadian Rockies not previously scaled. The Japanese left an ice axe on the summit, which was retrieved when the second ascent of the mountain was made by a Canadian team in 1948. As well as European Alps and the Rockies, Japanese climbers were interested in climbing in Taiwan and Korea. In November 1926 the Taiwan Alpine Club was formed, and the high mountains on the Pacific side of the island, long neglected because of security concerns with aboriginal unrest, attracting climbers. In 1934 the Korean mountain Hakuto¯san (Paektusan, ⊕㗡ጊ, 2744 m) was ascended in winter. In November 1936 a Rikkyo¯ University team made the first ascent of Nanda Kot (6867 m) in the Himalayas.41 Interest in the Himalayas was sparked when John Morris with the help of the Japanese Foreign Office and Yoshida Shigeru came out in 1938 to teach English at Keio¯ Gijuku and at Dai Ichi Ko¯to Gakko¯. Morris had been a member of the 1922 and 1936 British Everest Expeditions involved in transport and logistics.42 In Japan he gave inspiring lectures on his Himalayan experiences according to Nakamura Junkazu, one of the contributors to the Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi who heard him speak on the Himalayas when he was a high school student.43 129

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

MANASLU AND THE HIMALAYAS

It was only after the Second World War and the end of the Allied Occupation of Japan that Japanese climbers came back to the Himalayas. In 1953 the Academic Alpine Club of Kyoto took on the challenge of Annapurna IV (7525 m). Just as British efforts in the Himalayas concentrated on Everest, Japanese efforts came to be concentrated on Manaslu (8125 m). As Fukuta Kyu¯ya points out ‘conquest of one of the Himalaya’s eight-thousanders was more than just a mountain-climbing feat that ranked with any in the world; it gave impetus to a series of Japanese mountaineering expeditions around the world that gradually increased in number and scope’.44 The first two Japanese expeditions to Manaslu in 1952 and 1953 failed to achieve success, but in 1956 a Japanese Alpine Club team led by Maki Yuko¯ reached the summit. This success gave Japanese climbers the confidence to take on all the great mountaineering challenges in the Himalayas and in other parts of the world in Peruvian and Bolivian Andes; in Alaska and New Zealand, and Oceania. The conquest of Manaslu demonstrated decisively that Japan produced world-class climbers equal to the best from any country. Before and after the 1930s, Matsukata Saburo¯ (1899–1973) who had been Vice-President of the Nihon Sangakkai during the early 1930s and became President in 1946 had been influenced by the example of the British Alpine Club, and after the War the British example continued to influence Matsukata’s policy for the Japanese Club.45 His successors as President, Takeda Hisayoshi, Ernest Satow’s botanist son and founder member of the Japanese Alpine Club,46 and Maki Yu¯ko¯, also tried to continue on Matsukata’s policy. The problem was that ‘Club Life’ had disappeared during the War, and was difficult to revive. The decline of British influence on Japanese mountain climbing can be illustrated by the fact in the first sixty years since the War of the seventy foreign members of the Japan Alpine Club only four have been British, while there have been twenty-five Americans, sixteen Koreans, five Taiwanese. Many of those foreigners who became members were important as leaders in climbing expeditions in the Himalayas and in Korea.47 Among the two post-War Italian members was Fosco Maraini (1912–2004), the photographer, writer and, like John Morris, a Himalaya climber who like Weston saw the mountains as part of Japan’s spirit. It is this appreciation and the emphasis on the importance of the role of nature in the life of Japan that remains one of the lasting legacies of contribution of the early British mountaineering pioneers. Be it watching the sunrise from the summit of Helvellyn (950 m) or the sunset over the Northern Alps at Kamiko¯chi, the mountains bring out qualities that transcend cultural and political differences between peoples and that is, perhaps, why Weston’s Relief at Kamiko¯chi has an understanding smile on its face. 130

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ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7 8

9

On 16 August 1918 W.H. Elwin, a Church Missionary Society (CMS) missionary working among the Chinese students in Tokyo, and W.H. Murray Walton (1890–1980), a CMS missionary specializing in newspaper evangelism, climbed from the peak of Yarigatake (᭶ࡩጪ, 3,180 m) to the Hotaka peaks in ten hours and twenty five minutes. See W.H. Elwin, letter 20 August 1918, in Sangaku (ጊጪ, Mountain): The Journal of the Japan Alpine Club (English Supplement), vol. XIII 1918 no. 1, p. 19. See also W.H. Elwin, ‘Peaks and Ridge Climbing in the Japanese Alps,’ in Sangaku ,Taisho¯ 7: 11 (1919), pp. 7–9; see also in the same issue, W.H.M. Walton, ‘From Yarigatake to Hodaka,’ pp. 9–12. Walter Weston was a Cambridge graduate and first proved his ability as an Alpine climber in the Swiss Alps, scaling the Matterhorn and other peaks between 1886 and 1887. He was in Japan between 1888 and 1895 as a Church Missionary Society (CMS) clerical missionary in Japan first at Kumamoto then Kobe, where his chief work was catering to the spiritual needs of the British community. He first climbed in the central Honshu¯ mountains in the summer of 1891. He was again in Japan between 1902 and 1905 as the missionary priest at St. Andrew’s Church, Yokohama (ᮮᵿ⡛ࠕࡦ࠺࡟ᢎળ). He returned to Japan for a third time in 1911, serving as chaplain to the English congregation at Christ Church, Yokohama and finally leaving Japan in 1915. For a short study of Weston, see A.H. Ion, ‘Mountain High and Valley Low: Walter Weston (1861–1940) and Japan,’ in Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, eds., Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities (London and New York: Routledge, 1991), pp. 94–106. See also Hamish Ion, ‘In The Mountain Greenery: Early Western Climbers in the Japanese Alps and Beyond,’ Japan Society Proceedings 2013, forthcoming. Walter Weston, ‘The Ascent of Kaigane San,’ The Japan Weekly Mail, 1 November 1902. For a study of Shiga Shigetaka, see Masako Gavin, ‘The Forgotten Enlightener Shiga Shigetaka(1863–1927): Educating for a New Japan,’ http://epublications.bond,.edu.au/hss_pubs/235. It is of interest that Shiga wrote the forward to Walter Weston, The Playground of the Far East (London: John Murray, 1918), pp. ix-x. Walter Weston, A Wayfarer in Unfamiliar Japan (London: Metheun &Co., 1925), p. 59. See also Miyashita Keizo¯, Nihon Arupusu: Mitate no Bunkashi (The Japanese Alps: The Opinion of Literary History) (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo, 1997), pp. 15–16, pp. 20–25. Ibid., p. 17. It is said that Shiga’s description of Yarigatake that so impressed Kojima owed much to a similar description in Satow and Hawes, Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan. Weston, Playground of the Far East, p. 320. Fukada Kyu¯ya, Nihon Hyaku Meizan (100 Mountains of Japan) (Tokyo: Shincho¯sha, 2004 edition), pp. 412–414. Okamura Yukiko has suggested four reasons why Weston’s memory has not faded in Japan. First, Weston was the pioneer in the mountaineering and exploration of the entire Japanese Alps. Second, he wrote the first 131

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

10

11

12

13

14 15

16 17

18

19

20

books in The Japanese Alps and Playground of the Far East that introduced the Japanese Alps to the world. Third, he introduced mountaineering as a sport into Japan. Fourth and finally, Weston had a special affinity with Japanese people. There were many foreigners who introduced things Japanese to the outside world, but Okamura thought that there were not many foreigners like Weston who truly liked Japan and Japanese people from beginning to end of his dealings with Japan. See Okamura Yukiko, ‘Yakusha atogaki [Translator’s Afterword]’ in Wesuton, Nihon Arupusu: Tosan to tanken (Mountaineering and Exploration in the Japanese Alps), (Okamura Yukiko, trans,) (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1997 edition) pp. 362–367, pp. 362–363. Mizuno Tsutomu, ‘Kaisetsu: Nihon kindai to¯zan no ishizue to natta yama koten’ (Commentary: The classic of the mountains which became the cornerstone of modern Japanese mountaineering) in Wesuton, Nihon Arupusu: Tosan to tanken, pp. 373–381, p. 374. Takeda Hisayoshi, ‘Nihon Sangakkai seiritsu zengo¯ (Before and After the Establishment of the Japanese Alpine Club)’ Sangaku, volume LXI, 1966, pp. 5–14, pp. 10–11. For a list of foreign members, their work affiliations, etc., see Nihon Sangakkai Hyakunenshi Hensan Iinkai Hen, Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi (Centennial History of the Japanese Alpine Club) (Tokyo: Nihon Sangakkai, 2007), 2 volumes, volume one, pp. 161–166. For the importance of the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake and names of foreign Japanese Alpine Club members killed, see ibid., volume one, p. 167. Ibid., volume one, p. 167. Ibid., volume one, pp. 163–164. An account of John Morris in Japan (together with George Orwell and the BBC) by Neil Pedlar is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Ibid., volume two, pp. A 28, A 30. Canon Murray Walton was in Japan from 1916 until 1932. See W.H. Murray Walton, Scrambles in Japan and Formosa (London: Edward Arnold, 1934). The book is dedicated to his children of whom one, Kevin Walton (1918–2009) used the climbing skills learnt in Japan to rescue a colleague in Antarctica in 1946 and received the Albert Medal as a result. Valerie R. Hamilton, ‘Nihon Sangakkai seiritsu zenshi: Gaorando, Shiga Shigetaka, Wesuton, Kojima Kyu¯ta,’ (Before the Formation of the Japanese Alpine Club: Gowland, Shiga Shigetaka, Weston, Kojima Kyu¯ta) in Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume two, pp. 55–76. For a useful study of early British writers on the Japanese mountains, see Sho¯da Motoo, ‘Ijintachi no Nihon Arupusu’ (The Japanese Alps of Foreigners), Sansho no Kenkyu¯, 35, 1990. A biographical portrait of William Gowland by Simon Kaner is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume Vi, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. In the 1881 Handbook for Travellers in Central & Northern Japan edited by Satow and Hawes, William Gowland who worked for the Imperial Mint in Osaka wrote a short account of some of the higher peaks of the Hida-Shinshu range and suggested that they ‘might perhaps be termed 132

MOUNTAINEERING IN JAPAN: BRITISH PIONEERS AND THE PRE-WAR

21

22 23

24 25

26

27

28 29

30

31 32

the Japanese Alps’. See Walter Weston, ‘Of the Origin of the Term The Japanese Alps,’ Sangaku: The Journal of the Japan Alpine Club: English Supplement, volume XIII, 1919, no. 2, pp.17–18, p. 17. When Weston came out to Japan for the second time in 1902 and began to explore with his wife, Frances Weston, the mountains of Shinshu and Koshu, he gave them the name ‘The Southern Japanese Alps’ to distinguish them from the ranges of Hida-Shinshu, which he began to call the ‘Northern Japanese Alps.’ See John Milne, Father of Modern Seismology by Herbert-Gustar and O.A. Nott, Paul Norbury Publications, Tenterden 1986 See separate biographical portrait in this volume by Y. Kikuchi. Among the earliest to go into some detail about the Japanese mountains is William Gray Dixon, The Land of the Morning: An Account of Japan and its people based on a Four years’ Residence in that Country; Including Travels into the Remotest Parts of the Interior (Edinburgh: James Gemmell, 1882), especially Chapter 14. Dixon in the summer of 1879 took a trip with R.W. Atkinson and a Japanese colleague, Nakazawa, to explore and climb Yatsuga-take (౎ࠤጪ, 2899 meters) Haku-san (⊕ጊ, 2677 meters) and Tateyama (┙ጊ, 3015 m). See Weston, ‘The Ascent of Kaigane San.’ Ernest Mason Satow and Lieutenant A. G. S. Hawes, Handbook for Trav¯ zaka, and ellers in Central & Northern Japan: Being a Guide to To¯ kio, O Other Cities: The Most Interesting Parts of the Main Island between Ko¯be and Awomori with Ascents of the Principal Mountains and Descriptions of Temples, Historical Notes and Legends (Yokohama: Kelly & Co., 1881); a second expanded edition was produced in 1884, the third edition came out in 1891 as one of the Murray handbook for travellers series with a new editor, Basil Hall Chamberlain, A Handbook for Travellers in Japan (London: John Murray, 1891) and reached its ninth edition in 1913. Daunt, an Anglo-Australian who worked for the Vacuum Oil Company in Kobe, lived in Japan, 1894–1896, 1904–1909, 1910–1924. He was an enthusiastic golfer and in the off-season a keen climber. Inaka or Reminiscences of Rokkosan and Other Rocks. Collected and compiled by the Bell Goat Member of the Alpine Club, Member of the Japan Alpine Club, Member of the Alpine Club of Canada, Member of the Ancient Order of Mountain Goats, etc. etc. etc. was published in Kobe between 1915 and 1924, 18 issues in all. Inaka carried accounts by Daunt and his Kobe friends of their ‘scalps’, successful climbs and even some articles of general interest. Keio¯ Gijuku Alpine Club was founded in 1915 with Maki as one of its founding members, see Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume one, p. 95. Ibid., volume two, A 18. For the development of university and school mountaineering clubs, see ibid., volume two, pp. 103–124. David A. Feldman, ‘Mounting Modernization: Itakura Katsunobu, the Hokkaido¯ University Alpine Club and Mountaineering in Pre-War Hokkaido¯,’ The Asia Pacific Journal, 42, (2009), 1–09. Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume one, pp. 94–95. Ibid, volume two, A 16. 133

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33

34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41

42

43 44 45 46

47

While seven had founded the Nihon Sangakkai, by the end of 1906 it had 390 members, and by 1926 a 1000, and in 1941 2000. In 2004 it had 14,000 members. Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume one, p. 158. For both Endo¯ and Kaga’s climbs see ibid., volume two, A 14. Ibid. volume two, A 16. Walter Weston, ‘In the Playground of Europe’, Sangaku, volume XV, 1920, no. 1, pp. 1–12, p.1. Ibid., volume one, p. 306. A biographical portrait of Prince and Princess Chichibu by Dorothy Britton is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2004. Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume two, A 20. Fukata (Fukada) Kyu¯ta, ‘After Manaslu: Postwar Japanese Mountaineering Expeditions, Sangaku, volume LXI, 1966, pp. 1–11, p. 1. See Wade Davis, Into the Silence: The Great War, Mallory, and the Conquest of Everest (Toronto: Vintage Canada Edition, 2012). Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume one, p. 168. Fukata, ‘After Manaslu,’ p.1. Nihon Sangakkai hyakunenshi, volume one, p. 121. Ibid., volume one, p. 154. Takeda shared with his father a love of climbing and flora. Ibid., volume 1, pp. 170–171.

134

12

Cricket in Late Edo and Meiji Japan MIKE GALBRAITH

INTRODUCTION

A cricket match, played in 1863 in ‘curious circumstances’1 in Yokohama is the first documented game of cricket in Japan. It is

Courtesy of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), London Photo 1: Yokohama team in Japan’s first ever cricket match in1863 135

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

also the first recorded game in Japan involving a major western team sport. The 1863 cricket match was played between a Yokohama team captained by a Scotsman, James Campbell Fraser, and a Royal Navy XI from the warships in the harbour including the flagship HMS Euryalus. The 16 April 1908 issue of the magazine Cricket2 has a lengthy account of the game. According to the article3 ‘a filled-in swamp at the back, but inside the settlement, furnished a mud cricket ground’. The article has lots of background but no scorecard and no information about the actual game except that the Navy gave Yokohama ‘a jolly good licking’.4 Photographs of the two 1863 teams show that there was no shortage of cricket bats. Most of the bats were probably supplied by the cricket-loving naval officers, who would have found it much easier to bring their cricket equipment with them to the Far East than any businessman or traveller. No date is given but Fraser refers to ‘a certain day’, which may well have been 25 June 1863. This was the date proclaimed in an order in the name of the shogun for the killing of foreigners who had not left the country before then. The expression ‘curious circumstances’ refers to the fact that marines guarded the ground and that the players carried guns.5 Fraser wrote that ‘they played with their revolvers on, ready for any emergency. It was a most novel sensation for the wicket keeper, as he carried his revolver backwards and forwards from wicket to wicket and placed it behind the stumps. Fortunately, no attack took place either on that day or afterwards.’ Tension was very high in Yokohama in 1863 and had been so since the murder of Charles Lenox Richardson a few miles outside of Yokohama while riding with friends in September 1862. The British government had demanded compensation for the attack on its citizens both from the Shogun and from the daimyo of the Satsuma fief whose samurai was responsible for the attack. Several warships had gathered in Yokohama to back up the demands with force if necessary but the shogun’s officials kept prevaricating while Satsuma flatly dismissed the demands. The Yokohama team included, in addition to Fraser, W.H. Smith – later well known as Public Spirited Smith – and Charles Rickerby, Yokohama’s first bank manager and afterwards a writer, editor and owner of newspapers. Cricketing officers from RN ships visiting Yokohama played a key role in Yokohama cricket life throughout the settlement’s first decades as a Treaty Port. Other cricket players came from the British garrison which was stationed in Yokohama between 1864 and 1874 and which numbered at one time over one thousand officers and men. They were divided between two camps on the Bluff 136

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above Yokohama. After the troops finally left in 1874, visiting ships provided teams or players to local teams. They were often supported by ships’ bands which greatly contributed to making cricket matches major social events. The first reference to cricket being played in Japan after 1863 is a newspaper report dated 12 November 1864, which starts: ‘The following matches have been played on the “Turf”, between the Camps of the XX and the Royal Marines.’ This playing space was also called the Valley. The first of the two matches was between ‘The officers of H.B.M.’s Fleet and the Garrison’ with the latter winning fairly comfortably while the second was between the ‘Garrison’ and the ‘Civilians’. The XXth regiment’s bowlers dispatched the fleet’s batsmen twice for a total just 62 runs. The army batsmen scored 116 in their first innings to win by 54 runs without having to bat again. The navy team included officers from HMS Euryalus and HMS Leopard (at least one had also played in the first match in 1863). The core of the ‘Garrison’ team came from the 2nd battalion of the XXth regiment. The main body had arrived 14 July 1864 to support the vanguard that landed in January. It included a number of good cricketers and their team proved to be difficult to beat. Playing under the name of the XXth or the ‘Garrison’ (when their number included RM (Royal Marines) and/or players from other units like the RE and RA), they seem to have usually beaten both the Royal Navy team and the civilian team. The XXth’s outstanding all rounder players were Captains John Aldridge, Charles Chatfield, and Charles Rochefort, and Lieut. Thomas Lakin. In the aforementioned game Lakin took five wickets in the first innings and Aldridge seven in the second innings while Rochefort scored the most runs. JAMES PENDER MOLLISON

The XXth left Japan in 1866 and were replaced by the IXth, which was in turn replaced by the Xth regiment in 1868. The Xth’s stay in Japan coincided with the earliest days of the Yokohama Cricket Club (YCC) which was established in mid-1868 with James Pender Mollison (1844–1931) being the main founder and driving force. Mollison6 was from the Glasgow area and he had played for the Caledonian Cricket Club before coming out to the Hong Kong in 1864. Within a short time he was working in Shanghai as a tea taster and played three seasons of cricket there with the highlight being Shanghai’s victory in the second ‘Interport’ match against Hong Kong in May 1867. In his article ‘Interesting Reminiscences’ (published in 1909), Mollison writes about cricket in Japan before his arrival: ‘My first question was, “What do you do in the way of cricket?” “Practically 137

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nothing,” was the reply, “because there was no ground.” Occasional matches had been played I was told, as far back as 1864, on the camp parade-ground..,’ he continued. ‘I have some recollections, too, of hearing that Hope’s Inlet was more than once made use of for a game, while it is certain that matches were played on what was known as the Swamp … with only a hardened footpath as the wicket pitch.’ In a speech given in 1909, Mollison said that one of his first thoughts on arriving in Yokohama to live was ‘the making of a cricket ground and the formation of a cricket club’. The young Mollison was determined to get the rights to a piece of land, turf it and try to create a real cricket ground to match those in Shanghai and Hong Kong. FOUNDING OF THE YOKOHAMA CRICKET CLUB

The meeting, which established the Yokohama Cricket Club (YCC), is said to have been held in Mollison’s dining room presumably at No. 48 Yokohama. Six people including Mollison are recorded as being present: E.D. Murray, a Scot, became the treasurer. The only Englishman present was Ernest Price, a tea taster at Walsh & Hall, who was made the secretary. The other three were Everett Frazier, a successful American businessman of Scottish descent, James Henry Scott from the famous shipbuilding family of John Scott & Co. based at Greenock near Glasgow and working for Butterfield & Swire and George Hamilton, also from near Glasgow, who worked with Mollison in J.C. Fraser & Co. Price proved to be Mollison’s ‘enthusiastic coadjutor’. ‘Together we obtained permission from the prefectural government (Kencho¯) to clear and turf some 60 yards square somewhere near 265, on the middle of what was known as the New Swamp,’ wrote Mollison. This ground was called the ‘Swamp Ground’. Two things that stand out about the people at the founding meeting are the strong Scottish, indeed Glasgow, connections, and the fact that they had nearly all lived or were living in Shanghai. It seems odd that Mollison invited none of the players from Yokohama’s 1863 team like Charles Rickerby, the banker turned publisher and writer, or W.H. Smith, to join that foundation meeting. Perhaps this accounts for the absence of any report about the founding of the cricket club. The first probable reference in the local papers to the YCC was a short article in October 1868 that ‘a cricket match between a local club and the officers of the garrison resulted in a draw, a fall of rain preventing completion of the match’. All the equipment for cricket matches was stored at, and had to be collected from, No. 48. After they finished playing, they carried everything back to No. 48 and then apparently drank ‘copious jugs of claret’. The games were usually two innings affairs lasting as long as two or more days and the matches were played on weekdays. ‘To begin 138

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with, we had no telegrams to worry us and only two mails a month,’ Mollison wrote around forty years later. In July 1869 HMS Rodney and HMS Ocean played two cricket matches during their stay in Yokohama. The first was between the gunroom officers of these two ships and HMS Ocean won by six wickets after two innings. Around two weeks later a remarkable cricket match was played between a naval eleven and the shore team, which included Mollison but relied heavily on the cricketing talent of the Xth regiment, which had just replaced the XXth regiment. The match ended up as a tie with the former team scoring 89 and 126 and the latter 127 and 88. The Japan Times commented that the shore eleven ‘ought to have won and would have done so had not their eagerness to secure the victory caused the last two players to attempt an almost impossible run’. The two last batsmen were run out. In September 1869 a Royal Navy squadron with Captain H.R.H. the Duke of Edinburgh7 – Queen Victoria’s second eldest son Alfred – serving on HMS Galatea visited Yokohama. The YCC played the Army and Navy with the core of the latter team being the cricketers from the Xth regiment. The YCC scored 110 in its first innings in reply to the opposition’s 155 and was 33 for 4 in the second innings chasing 195 to win when the match was declared over. In October 1869 HMS Ocean moved to Kobe, which had been opened to foreigners at the beginning of that year. While there the ship played a key role in the start of cricket in that port playing three matches and proving too good in the end for the Kobe team. Days after winning the first match, enthusiastic Kobe cricketers, including Arthur Hesketh Groom8 who was captain, rushed to found the Kobe Cricket Club but interest waned after they were well beaten in the last two games and failed to find a long-term ground. ‘We had some good cricket up to 1870–1871, chiefly against the officers of the Xth Regiment who were a keen cricketing lot,’ wrote Mollison. Detailed match reports survive relating to two games played between the YCC and the Xth in 1871 with both sides winning one game. Scoring runs does not seem to have been easy and bowlers bowled a lot of wides. After 13 overs of the first innings of the first game, the YCC had managed to score only sixteen runs and of those 10 were from wides and at least one a leg bye! Mollison9 appears to have been a good opening bowler taking many wickets. However, he did bowl a lot of wides although not as many as some of the Xth’s bowlers. In around 1872 the authorities decided to raise the level of the ‘Swamp Ground’ to develop the land and they asked the club to remove their turf. Fortunately, at about the same time the large park (now called Yokohama Ko¯en) was being laid out by Richard Henry Brunton,10 and the YCC managed to get permission to lay out a 139

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handsome 120 square metre cricket ground in the very centre of the park and to surround it by a fence. The Royal Marines, having been strengthened on the departure of the Xth regiment, had a good cricket team in the period up to their departure in 1874. The first match of the 1873 season was the Royal Marines vs The Settlement; the latter’s batsmen struggled against the good bowling and fielding of the Marines. In May 1873 HMS Iron Duke visited Yokohama and its cricketers participated in a match between the YCC and an Iron Duke and ‘Garrison Eleven’ on the new YCC ground. The newspaper report on a game in November, which also involved the officers of HMS Iron Duke, conveys the atmosphere at a typical game: At 10 o’clock this morning (11th last), the weather was so unpropitious that it almost seemed as though the return match – the second of the season – United Services vs. Settlement, would lapse for the day. Shortly after, however, the rain cleared off, and at 11.40 a.m. a start was made. The ground was in fair order, although very heavy, as might have been expected. There was but a small attendance of spectators, and at the commencement, no ladies. As the day wore on, however, the sky looked more promising, the marquee, which had been erected for their accommodation, was availed of by a few of the fair sex. The Band of the Iron Duke was not present until 5 o’clock.

A single storey clubhouse was built in 1875 and the club hired a Mr C. Yoshiwara, who was to work for the club for forty years, as the groundsman and manager. Until 1876 the YCC was simply managed by the honorary secretary with annual general meetings (AGM) held in the Grand Hotel each March. In the AGM for 1876 it was agreed that the club should henceforth be managed by a committee of five and the rules were altered to permit non-resident naval and military officers and visitors to be eligible to become honorary members Not long after this, annual awards started to be made at the AGM for those with the best bowling and batting averages. Most cricket matches consisted of the same YCC members divided into two teams in a variety of ways but the biggest games were against visiting Royal Navy ships and squadrons,11 and Tokyo plus visitors.12 An attempt to establish an independent cricket club in Tokyo in 1884 failed mainly due to the inability to find a ground. FROM YCC TO YC&AC

With the football, baseball and athletics clubs paying annual dues to use the cricket club’s facilities and members having to pay subscriptions 140

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to each club if they wanted to do all sports, it was inevitable that there should be a call to have a single club under one management charging a single subscription fee. In the 1883 season it was only possible to arrange five cricket matches suggesting that cricket was losing its popularity. The Yokohama Cricket & Athletic Club was created at a Special General Meeting of the Yokohama Cricket Club called on 7 April 1884 by the football club on an initiative led by Edgar Abbott. The incentive for the members to agree to the amalgamation was the promise of $310 in donations, which would be used to enlarge the ground and improve the pavilion. At the end of the meeting the Consular Court Judge Nicolas Hannen13 was elected president and a committee of ten was formed including Abbott who was the captain of cricket. YOKOHAMA-KOBE MATCHES

The first Interport14 cricket match took place in Kobe on 13–14 November 1884 was not a serious affair. A.H. Groom, who captained Kobe in at least one of their first ever matches, was now captain of the YC&AC team which had only five regular members – Groom, Duff, Murray, Griffiths and Kenny – and four who had barely seen a cricket bat. In the first match Kobe batted first and A.W. Gillingham was bowled by the first ball. One other batsman in each side was bowled first ball in both innings, but Kobe won by 7 wickets and won the second match by 77 runs. Finding eleven cricketers ready to play ‘away’ for several days was difficult and it wasn’t until 1888 that the next ‘Interport’ could be arranged – in Kobe. This time the YC&AC sent a full team including Mollison and Abbott and won both matches. The next year, again in Kobe, the KCC won the first match by a single run and the second by 49 runs.

Courtesy of National Diet Library, Japan Photo 2: Kobe batting in 1884 cricket ‘Interport’ with YC&AC players wearing heavy sweaters with matching peaked Pierrot hats due to the cold 141

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Courtesy of National Diet Library, Japan Photo 3: YC&AC ground and new pavilion decorated for ‘Interport’ Week in 1903

The Kobe Cricket Festival in 1893 included another ‘Interport’ match, which the YC&AC won by an innings and 124 runs, but this was only one element in the festival of which the main feature was participation of the Shanghai Cricket Club. The first ever international cricket match on Japanese soil then took place – Japan vs China. The result was declared a draw with Japan scoring 190 and 45 for 1 wicket and China 148. Capt. Dumbelton (76 not out) and C.M. Firth (26) were the only China batsmen to reach double figures and save the reputation of the team. In the final match, Kobe beat Shanghai by an innings and 7 runs. In the evenings two concerts and a dance were held making the festival a key social event rather than just a sporting occasion. A new two-storey pavilion was built and opened in spring 1899 but it was destroyed by fire on 14 February 1901. It was rebuilt and declared open at the annual meeting on 2 April 1902. The cricket festival in 1909, during which the 23rd cricket ‘Interport’ was celebrated, was probably the high-water mark of the club. The club’s pavilion and ground were decorated with flags and banners. The YC&AC team had only one player who had played in the first ‘Interport’ – the stalwart wicket keeper Charles Murray Duff – while the Kobe team fielded two players whose fathers played in the 1884 game. The YC&AC, the underdogs, batted first in 1909 and were shattered by the bowling of H.R. Nichols who became the first ‘Interport’ player to take 10 wickets in an innings. Kobe’s first innings started out well but then fell to pieces and they were all out for 97, only 12 more than the YC&AC. YC&AC didn’t fare much better in the second innings and reached 73 for 8 at the end of play on the first day. There was a final turn in fortune on the second day and, in the end the YC&AC was narrowly victorious by just 6 runs. The YC&AC had one of the finest cricket grounds in the East, but the YC&AC was facing the probability of imminent extinction. 142

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As the YC&AC cricketers played their matches, the world around them was changing. Two key developments were the end of extraterritoriality in Japan in 1899 and the growth in Yokohama’s population from around 30,000 in the mid-1870s to around 400,000 in 1909. More and more Japanese people were playing and watching sports, especially baseball, and joining sports clubs. J.P. Mollison and his colleagues believed that they had been granted the rights to use the cricket ground in perpetuity and didn’t pay much heed to the warning signs, such as the idea mooted in 1907 by the governor of Kanagawa prefecture, Sufu Ko¯hei, that the land should be turned into a public garden. Even when Sufu wrote to the club stating that the ten-year lease would not be renewed when it expired on 28 July 1909, Mollison thought the British government would sort things out for them. A protest15 against the proposal by the governor was delivered five days before the deadline, but had no effect.16 There was a growing feeling amongst both Japanese municipal officials and the Japanese public that the governor’s plan to spend over 20,000 yen to turn the beautiful well-kept cricket ground into a landscaped garden and to spend another 20,000 yen to create a new sports ground in another part of the same park was pointless, especially when the local government was short of funds. Club officials called for help from the British ambassador, Sir Claude MacDonald, who then visited Governor Sufu. The governor, perhaps feeling the heat a little, put forward the idea of creating a new sports field in a corner of Yokohama Park, which could be used upon request by Japanese and also foreigners, provided that the latter withdraw their protest. An extraordinary general meeting of some 200 club members was held on 1 November 1909 in the cricket pavilion with club president Dr Edwin Wheeler presiding. Wheeler read a letter from Sir Claude MacDonald in which the ambassador advised that the protest should be withdrawn.17 Mollison made a spirited speech emphasizing the heritage bequeathed to them by the early pioneers of the community. He said that ‘it was the bounden duty of every young man in the place to spare every effort to preserve it’. H.V. Henson in response argued that the club’s position on the lease was untenable and that the protest ‘would serve no useful purpose, but would cause considerable ill-feeling’. He urged that the protest be withdrawn. On a show of hands, 30 voted in favour of withdrawing the protest and 67 against, with the rest abstaining. A rising tide was, however, running against Mollison’s position. At a second extraordinary general meeting held on 22 November the decision of the earlier meeting was overturned by 104 votes to 48 despite an emotional last-ditch appeal by Mollison.18 143

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YC&AC IN LIMBO

After numerous meetings the municipal assembly finally adopted governor Sufu’s plan and the cricket ground was opened to the general public. While the club continued to use the old ground it had to apply for permission to do so on each occasion. The club had lost all its assets and its morale, prestige and membership were under threat.19 The consensus within the club was that it had to find a new ground for its exclusive use. The municipal government then agreed on a plan for the completion by the autumn of 1911 of a sports ground in the southern corner of Yokohama Park, but there were doubts about whether the area was adequate for use as a cricket ground. The YC&AC would still have to make applications every time it wanted to use the new ground, although fortunately the municipal authority decided against charging every time it was used. The first cricket match on the new recreation ground was played against ‘the Fleet’ on 10 October 1911. The Japan Weekly Mail described it as ‘the first indulgence in the sport which the local club has had for nearly two years’. On 22 and 23 October the final cricket ‘Interport’ match of the Meiji period was played there. Kobe batted first and managed only 89 runs. In its first inning Yokohama scored 139. Then F.S.G. Piggott20 took 6 wickets as he demolished Kobe in their second innings for just 35 leaving the YC&AC victors by an innings and 12 runs. The event21 was followed by the usual grand dinner at the Grand Hotel. In total, twenty-four ‘Interports’ were played between Yokohama and Kobe during the Meiji period with the YC&AC winning fifteen, the KCC seven and the other two matches being draws. In 1912 a suitable piece of land was found in Yaguchidai and Sigmund Isaacs, who was elected president at AGM held in April 1912, moved quickly to raise 65,000 yen in funds through donations, noninterest bearing debentures and a loan from the Hong Kong Shanghai Bank. At an Extraordinary General Meeting on 26 June the club was dissolved and a new legal entity, recognized under Japanese law, was created with a modified name – the ‘Cricket’ in the old name was changed to ‘Country’. The new YC&AC was registered on 4 July and the purchase and registration of the new ground was completed on 12 July. The new grounds were officially opened on 6 June 1914. CRICKET PLAYED BY JAPANESE

There is evidence of cricket being introduced to Japanese students by their foreign teachers during the 1870s but interest doesn’t appear to have lasted long. Physical exercise was compulsory for around one hour a day in several colleges but cricket doesn’t lend itself to such short sessions. The Imperial College of Engineering had what 144

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was called a ‘cricket ground’ in Toranomon.22 When Kaisei Gakko¯, which also became part of present University of Tokyo was first opened around 1877, cricket and baseball were both played but not for long.23 In the YCC’s accounts for 1878, there is a record of a payment from Captain Frank Brinkley24 for ‘sundry gear sold to the Naval College, Tokio’, which suggests Brinkley may have tried to promote cricket at the college. In the curriculum at the Imperial College of Engineering for 1879 cricket appears in a list of games to be introduced ‘at a later date’. It seems likely that even the cricketloving teachers, like F.W. Strange,25 judged that cricket matches lasted too long to incorporate into their curricula. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

These words come from the entry in the Harrow School Register for James Campbell Fraser: ‘captained the Yokohama side in a cricket match (Yokohama Vs. The Fleet), played under curious circumstances at Yokohama’. Article was based mainly on papers and photographs sent by Fraser to the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). The photographs in the possession of MCC today include a framed photograph of the Yokohama team with ‘First Cricket Match Played in Japan, 1863’ written on the mounting. The names of all the players are given and a photograph of each of the teams survives and even a third 1863 cricket photograph has also been found that may show the match in progress. These photos are the earliest photos of cricket in Japan and among the very oldest of cricket in Asia. The words of Admiral Sir Albert Hastings Markham, who played for the Royal Navy team in that match at the age of twenty-two. The article quotes Admiral Sir Albert Hastings Markham as writing ‘It is, I suppose, the only match on record in which the players had to be armed.’ Mollison first arrived in Japan in January 1867 and stayed a month apparently sorting out a job with J.C. Fraser & Co. This company was owned by the same Fraser who captained Yokohama in 1863 and was located at No. 48 just behind Yokohama’s Main Street. Fraser and his family left Japan in early March 1868 and Mollison is recorded as landing from Shanghai at the beginning of April after a nine-month visit to his home country. For an account of the visit by the Duke of Edinburgh see ‘Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Period’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library 1997. A biographical portrait of A.H. Groom by Angus Lockyer is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2010. Batting number four or five, Mollison doesn’t seem to have been a big-hitter like Evan James Fraser, the younger Rugby School-educated brother of J.C. Fraser but he was clearly difficult to get out. For the Xth, 145

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10

11

12

13

14

Captains Ernest Berger and Robert Stammers were both excellent with both bat and ball while Lieut. George Hood was a successful bowler. The YCC’s best bowlers besides Mollison during the 1870s and 1880s were Dr Edwin Wheeler and Edgar Abbott. Wheeler also usually opened the batting while Abbott recorded the highest individual score in the Yokohama – 146. Other long-term stalwart all-rounders were George Hamilton, James Dodds, Charles Murray Duff and William Sutter. See for instance Brunton, Richard Henry, Building Japan, 1868–1876, Japan Library, 1991 An example of the impact of one of the Flying Squadrons was the visit in October 1881 by HMS Inconstant, HMS Cleopatra, HMS Carysfort, HMS Tourmaline and HMS Bacchante on which Queen Victoria’s grandsons Prince Arthur and Prince George (later King George V) were serving as midshipmen. On 30 October the YCC beat the officers of the squadron in a one innings match with the latter scoring 73 runs to the former’s 95. On 1 November the squadron sailed to Kobe where its cricket team defeated the Kobe Cricket Club. Games in October 1881 between the YCC and ‘Visitors, Fleet and Tokio’ were notable for the participation of Isaac Donnithorne Walker (1844– 1898) who was the youngest of the famous seven cricketing Walker brothers and one of the most famous cricketers of his day. A newspaper report of the first match praised his ‘beautifully played innings’ of 56 not out and said ‘his cutting and the way he played the balls were a great treat to lovers of the game’. The Visitors score of 99 was not enough to overhaul the YCC’s earlier innings of 132 during which Walker also bowled without getting a wicket in his unique underarm style around half the overs from one end of the pitch largely due to his late arrival. Frederick William Strange also played well for the visiting team bowling throughout the innings and taking 6 wickets for 44 runs. If he hadn’t been run out for 7, his team might have prevailed. Another visitor player was F.H. Trevethick, the grandson of the famous Cornish inventor. Strange and Trevethick were keen and talented cricketers who often played for or against the YCC. Trevithick is recorded as making the longest hit on the cricket ground: a hit to pitch of 140 yards. I.D. Walker also played a second game called YCC vs Visitors and Navy in which the Tokio members like Strange and Trevethick did not play. Walker again opened the batting but was ‘singularly unlucky’ to be bowled out for a duck by W.B. Thomson who took 6 wickets in total. Remarkably, Walker was permitted to bat again at No. 7 as a substitute for a missing player but could only score 10 runs not out before his team were all out for 63. This time Walker’s bowling was effective and he took six wickets. Only C.M. Duff got to double figures but the YCC managed to scramble to 65 and win by 2 runs. A portrait of Hannen by Br Dr Christopher Roberts is contained in this volume. ‘Interports’ were played in a variety of sports between the main international ports in the Far East and began with the Hong Kong vs Shanghai cricket Interport of 1866.

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15 16

17

18

19

20

21

22

23

24

25

Proposed by J.C. Carey, then British consul-general in Yokohama. Mollison couldn’t describe his despair as eloquently as Waseda University professor Abe Isoo. ‘To turn a piece of ground which as the result of years of toil and care has been rendered into one of the finest cricket grounds in the East into a mere Public Garden would not only seem to be sacrilegious, it would be most unbusiness-like on the part of the Municipality.’ It also became known that J.C. Hall, then consul general in Yokohama, had been ordered by MacDonald to desist from advising the YC&AC. Mollison began his speech: ‘It is once more my privilege to endeavour to uphold what I honestly believe to be the rights to the use of the present cricket ground acquired by the early pioneers of the Settlement’ he began. Referring to the resolution calling for withdrawal of the protest he declared: ‘What shall we do with it, gentlemen? Throw it out, of course, and consign the list of adherents to the waste-paper basket, to which it rightly belongs – (applause) – rather than be handed down to posterity as evidence of one of the blackest incidents in the history of Yokohama.’ It was even difficult to get members to pay their dues, as many members doubted the value of being a member of a ‘club with no ground’. F.S.G. Piggott was the son of Sir Francis Taylor Piggott, who was legal adviser to the Japanese government. See ‘The Two Piggotts’ by Carmen Blacker in Britain and Japan 1859–1991, Themes and Personalities, ed. Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, Routledge, 1991 and biographical portrait of Maj. Gen F.S.G. Piggott by Antony Best in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013. According to the Japan Weekly Mail, ‘with the victory of the home side last Tuesday the clouds that have overhung Yokohama cricket for the last year or so may be said to have broken’. Kyu¯ Ko¯bu Daigakko¯ no Shiryo¯ (Documents relating to the Old Engineering College), 1955. Stated by Miyaka Setsu, one of Kaisei Gakko¯’s first students, in 1946 account mentioned in Kuriketo Kenkyu¯ Josetsu (Research into History of Cricket) by Professor Makoto Yamada of Kobe City University of Foreign Studies, 1982. Frank Brinkley played for Hong Kong in the 1867 cricket ‘Interport’ in Shanghai in which Mollison starred. A biographical portrait of Brinkley by J.E. Hoare is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, 1999. See ‘F.W. Strange and Rowing as a Sport in Japan’ by Jun Ko¯chi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013

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Introduction of Football from Britain into Nineteenth-century Japan: Rugby Football and Soccer MIKE GALBRAITH Rugby football and soccer/football have already been covered separately in this Biographical Portraits series, namely by Alison Nish’s ‘British Contribution to the Development of Rugby Football in Japan 1874–1998’ in Biographical Portraits volume III and Derek Bleakley’s ‘British Links with Japanese Football’ in volume VII. My research has revealed that versions of rugby football1 were being played regularly season after season by talented non-Japanese players in Japan from much earlier than was believed and that there were talented Japanese players playing in the UK before the sport was introduced to Keio¯ University students. For most of the period the sport being played in Yokohama and Kobe was simply referred to as ‘football’2 with its rules determined by the local club. Soccer3/association football as we know it today was still in its infancy and there is no evidence of it being played in Japan until the 1880s. Then in the early and mid-1890s it actually eclipsed rugby football – so much so that rugby stopped being played for a while and soccer itself was simply referred to as ‘football.’ ORIGINS OF RUGBY IN JAPAN

It is widely believed that rugby football4 started in Japan in 1899 when Tanaka Ginnosuke and Edward Bramwell Clarke introduced the sport to Japanese students in Keio¯ University. However, the reality is that rugby has been played in some form almost continuously for longer in Japan than in almost every major rugby playing country outside of the British Isles and Australia. The earliest evidence of football in Japan is in a 1908 Sydney newspaper article5 reporting how Admiral Sir Harry Rawson (1843–1910), then governor of New South Wales, ‘recalled play148

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ing in the first cricket match played in Japan in 1863, a remarkable feature of which was the fact that half the players were playing football’.6 One can only surmise that perhaps a number of batsmen on both sides were enthusiastically playing with a football when not actually batting or after the cricket match finished. The oldest reference to football in early Yokohama newspapers is dated 26 January 1866.7 In a multi-topic news section of the Japan Times called ‘THE WEEK’ the following appeared: More than forty names have been put down as willing to support a Foot ball Club and a meeting to arrange the ways and means will be held we are told this afternoon (Friday 26th Ins.) There will be no difficulty getting a ground to play upon and as we happen to have two or three Rugby and Winchester men in the Community, that we may be certain that we shall have really good scientific play. It has been objected that it is difficult for men to play the game with temper and without serious accident. We deny both positions. The game is played a good deal in the north of England by men and though we are inclined to think that ‘hacking’ should be interdicted, we see no reason why this fine, healthful game should not be played as well in Yokohama as in Yorkshire.8

At the bottom of the next column in a section called ‘LOCAL’ there is an independent story entitled ‘YOKOHAMA FOOT BALL CLUB’ describing what happened in the meeting starting at 2 pm: Captains Blount and Rochfort of the 2nd XX Regt., Lord W. Kerr, Mr Dare and Mr R.E. Price were elected to a Committee to determine the rules, Mr Baker was elected Honourary Secretary, and Mr Monk was appointed Honorary Treasurer. Asia’s first football club was thus founded not in Hong Kong, Singapore, Shanghai or India but in Yokohama which barely six years before was a small sleepy fishing village with no foreign residents. The reasons are Yokohama’s winter climate and the stationing of over 800 mainly young soldiers of the 2nd Battalion, XXth regiment together with several companies of marines and other units in three ‘camps’ on the Bluff above Yokohama in 1864 to protect the foreign community following the Namamugi Incident of 1862. The strong naval presence in those years meant that sometimes the number British military personnel in Yokohama temporarily more than doubled. Another key factor was the presence of many young officers educated at Britain’s football-playing public schools. This greatly helped to overcome the fundamental obstacle to starting a ‘football’ club – you needed forty men (later on thirty) to play a game. The sport was not an easy one for beginners to play and the rules differed from school to school back home. Hence the problem about deciding the rules. 9 149

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The rules committee of five formed in 1866 included Capt. Charles Rochfort and Capt. Richard Blount of the XXth regiment, and naval officer Lord Walter Talbot Kerr, son of the 7th Marquess of Lothian, who went on to become the last Naval First Lord of the Admiralty. Blount belonged to a leading English Catholic family while Rochfort inherited one of Ireland’s largest estates. Rochfort had been at Cheltenham College where he was in the ‘Classical Football XX’, while Blount and Kerr had been, respectively, at Downside and Radley schools. Unfortunately, not long after the high-powered foundation meeting, the XXth regiment was replaced by the 3nd Battalion, IXth, which in turn was replaced by the 1st Battalion, Xth regiment. It seems that football was not as popular with these regiments although the Royal Marines Light Infantry (RM), who outnumbered other units in the final period before they departed, formed their own football team. Meanwhile, Kerr’s ship left Japanese waters in mid-1866. One catalyst in the development of football in Yokohama was the arrival of George Hamilton (1845–1929) who had been at Rugby School, where, in 1823, William Webb Ellis supposedly first ran forward carrying the ball thus creating the sport of rugby. He might be the Old Rugbean referred to in the above-mentioned 1866 article but the first real evidence of him being in Japan is of his being a cofounder of the Yokohama Cricket Club (YCC) in mid-1868 with the principal founder being J.P. Mollison (1845–1931) (see article in this volume about ‘Cricket in late Edo and Meiji Japan’). Mollison and Hamilton were both from the Glasgow area in Scotland, the same age and both also good at cricket. Mollison described Hamilton as the ‘captain of the Yokohama Rugby Team’ and they both worked in the same company – J.C. Fraser & Co. Hamilton played football in Yokohama until at least 1884. Another Scottish Rugby School alumnus, Evan James Fraser, who was the younger brother of J.C. Fraser, joined them in 1870 staying for about eight years. Fraser, like Hamilton, was an excellent all-round sportsman.10 Another superb young sportsman, Englishman Edgar Abbott (1850–1890), who had been at Marlborough College, arrived in about 1869.11 These three young men formed the core of the football club alongside Mollison himself, Dr E. Wheeler, H.J. Abell, Capt. A. Hill RM, George Melhuish, J. Dodds, the Dare brothers, the Vivanti brothers, and the consular officials John Gubbins12 and Joseph Longford.13 Some continued playing for many years. At first the club’s games were played in the aforementioned camps on the Bluff, especially on the main Parade Ground, and also on the Swamp Ground at the back of the settlement. After the completion in 1873 of the park that is now Yokohama Ko¯en, the football matches were played on the cricket ground in the centre of the park during the football season. 150

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Mollison stated that in around 1870 ‘Racing, Rowing, Cricket, Football and Athletics all flourished like the proverbial baytree’ but no evidence has been found in the local newspapers that football was actually played until the start of the 1870 season, after which there are occasional and mostly brief stories about some of the football games being played. In December 1870 it was reported that ‘The dry and frosty weather having set in, football has been started, and promises to be fairly kept up during the winter.’14 The start (and end) of the football season were often recorded in such a way. On 20 February 1872 the ‘return’ match between the Services15 and the Settlement was played. ‘The sides were very fairly matched; but eventually the Services proved too heavy for the civilians, who were defeated by three goals to none.’16 In December 1872 there was a report that ‘A CHALLENGE has been received by the Yokohama Football Club from the foreign community in Yedo17 to play a match, on the Swamp. The challenge will be accepted, the date fixed being the 7th proximo.’ Later the same month the Royal Marines were reported to have defeated the same ‘Yedo team’ by three goals to zero on the Parade Ground. After the departure of the last of the marines in 1875, and the sharp reduction of the naval presence, games against ‘foreign’ teams were fewer. Club members divided into two teams based on different criteria. The Talls vs the Shorts and the Ojisans [oldies] vs the Wakaihitos [youngsters] are examples. However, the most passionately contested games were those invoking nationality like Scotland vs World and English vs Scots. The report on the first game of the 1873 season on 26 November offers the best evidence that the football played in Yokohama was being played at least partly according to Rugby School rules: ‘Mr. Abbott having caught the ball made a good run through his opponents and, with a fine drop kick, scored a goal for the Settlement.’ On 13 December 1873, the Japan Weekly Mail covered the drawn ‘English Vs the Scotch and Irish’ match played the previous day, reporting that: ‘Mr. Gubbins “dribbled” the ball capitally and Mr. Abbott played half-back in excellent form; Messrs. Hamilton, Abell, Hill and E. Fraser were conspicuous amongst the forward players; while Messrs. Melhuish, Dare and Wheeler were also equally most useful…’ It added that the next game would be ‘the return match of “The Services and The Settlement” the following Wednesday’ and contained a comment about how the game was played: ‘Of course with the rules of the game as played out here there were many scrimmages18 and consequently much time was lost.’ Two weeks later there was a similar match: ‘English (White jerseys) versus Scotch and Irish (Stripes) – resulted in a draw. Though 151

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Courtesy of Mike Galbraith: 1874 Illustration ‘Football in Yokohama’.

well-contested throughout, at the wind up neither side had succeeded in securing a score and it would be difficult to award the palm of excellence to the play of either.’19 The following illustration entitled ‘Football in Yokohama’, published in April 1874 in The Graphic magazine and later in Harper’s Weekly, was most probably based on one or both of these games. Indeed, the Harper’s Weekly caption states ‘this sketch represents a foot-ball match between Englishmen and Scotchmen near the city of Yokohama in Japan’. The accompanying paragraph in The Graphic ignores the actual game and focuses on the idea that ‘There is a British colony at Yokohama, Japan and they have introduced the mysteries of football to the Far East’ and called Yokohama’s multi-sports ground ‘a local Lillie Bridge,20 under the shadow of the lovely snow-mountain Fusiyama’. Five things stand out: (1) The flag with the letters YFC (Could a B be hidden by a furl?) clearly indicating the existence of the club; (2) Many spectators, including kimono-clad women; (3) Man wearing a tassled cap is surely the club captain – Hamilton. If that is so, then the team wearing striped shirts are the Scots; (4) In that case, the small man facing the viewer on the right is surely the English halfback – Abbott; and (5) A ‘scrimmage’ is taking place showing clearly this is not a soccer match. In 1874 a football match between the Royal Marines and the United Service was reported on, being played, most unusually, 152

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in the summer on 27 June. On 19 November of the same year twenty players21 held a meeting22 to form a ‘club’. Hamilton was voted to chair the meeting and J. Leckie proposed and Longford seconded the formation of the ‘Yokohama Foot-ball Association’. A committee of three was appointed to ‘draw up the necessary rules, etc.’. Perhaps most importantly, a subscription was then set ‘after some discussion’ at two dollars per year. The previous existence of the club is referred to in the abovementioned December 1872 article so why did they make a new club? It is possible that the YCC was requesting fees to use its new ground and that the football players decided that they too needed to be organized formally like the YCC and chose to start again from scratch. They may have chosen the word ‘Association’ because there was more than one team in Yokohama. Three of the founder members, Capt. Hill and Lieuts. Sandwith and Drury, were members of the Royal Marines team. For 1875 there is an announcement in the Japan Gazette on 29 November that the Yokohama Foot-ball Association will hold a meeting the next day at 5:30 pm in the United Club and not long after there is a report23 of a ‘football’ match – the Scotch vs. the World – played on the afternoon of 11 December, which was won by the latter with ‘Mr. Jeyes, by a good kick, securing the only goal of the afternoon.’ The same paper reports another game – ‘Residents vs. Non-residents’ – on January 8 1876. It ‘was won by the former, after the best-contested game of the season, by one goal to nothing. Mr. Hamilton made the successful kick.’ The 21 December 1876 issue of the Japan Gazette announces a ‘foot-ball’ game the following afternoon against ‘Yedo and H.M’s. S Modeste’ and lists the fifteen players on each side. 24 The 11 January 1877 edition of the same newspaper reported a return match that ‘resulted in favour of the latter, the Settlement thus suffering their first defeat of the season.’ The Japan Weekly Mail gave more coverage than usual to the 1878– 1879 season. In November 1878, it reported that ‘…football supersedes cricket on our recreation ground. One match, that of “Talls” versus “Shorts” came off on Saturday last. The game was well contested and ended in favour of the “Talls”, who scored one goal and a touch-down, to the “Shorts” one goal. Another, “Scotland” versus “The Settlement”, is being played on the Cricket Ground, this afternoon.’ The writer then describes how ‘the game as played here is of a very mild form’ and “tempting of Providence” for grown men to play’ and, furthermore, ‘appears foolhardy, and it is never a matter of surprise when we hear of a broken leg or collar-bone’. A match report25 for a Yokohama Vs. Tokio and the Fleet match played on the cricket ground at four o’clock on the afternoon of 153

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7 December of the same year is unique in the first half of the Meiji period for listing the shirts colours and the names of most the players.26 The article also describes how ‘The visitors got a goal in about a quarter of an hour, and the rest of the afternoon passing without any achievement on either side, victory remained with Tokio and the Fleet.’ The annual general meeting ‘with limited attendance’ held at the Grand Hotel on 10 November 1880 gives a rare insight into the rules they followed and the games themselves. Hamilton chaired the meeting and ‘said it was a matter of much gratification to learn from the report that the club was in a flourishing condition’. After the election of Dare, Maxwell and Wood to be the Committee ‘a discussion took place on the proposal by Mr. Wood to modify the rule that allows handling the ball as, last season, some of the matches were nothing but a series of dropkicks throughout the game. After the rejection of an amendment proposed by Mr. Dare, that running or drop-kicking should only be allowed in cases of a fair catch, the original proposal that drop-kicks should be allowable from a clean catch, or from the first bound of the ball, no handling or knocking on being permissible, was carried.’27 On 8 March 1884 the final rugby match of the season between the ‘Ojisans’ and the ‘Wakai-hitos’ was covered in the local press28 in a description that could almost fit present day games: ‘The former had the advantage of the wind during the first half of the game and scored a goal and two tries against one try obtained by the “Wakai-hitos” just before half time. Unfortunately for the latter, the wind somewhat dropped after ends were changed, and although they pinned their opponents at times, no further tries were scored by them. Just before time was called Durrant scored a third try for the “Oji-sans”, after taking the ball nearly the length of the ground. The game ended therefore in a win for the early settlers by one goal, dropped by Sutter, and three tries, obtained by Durrant (2), and Hamilton (1), to one try obtained by Baggallay.’ The article concluded: ‘The club may be congratulated on having had a very successful season, notwithstanding that no foreign matches could be arranged.’ The following month the football club, led by Abbott and supported by Hamilton, organized and led the initiative that merged the cricket, rugby, athletics and tennis clubs to form the YC&AC (Yokohama Cricket and Athletic Club) that survives today although the word ‘Cricket’ in the name changed to ‘Country’ in 1912. This also means that the club founded in 1866 is directly linked to today’s YC&AC rugby club. Football seemed to be flourishing but it was soon struggling as the long-term stalwarts began to retire and, partly as a result, the captain of football William Sutter had so much trouble gathering players that he decided to switch codes to association football as fewer players 154

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were required. It was in 1884 that Sutter, in collaboration with one of the Vivanti brothers (A. Vivanti?) first started to try to promote soccer. In 1885 a revised set of rules was issued based on Association Football ‘as only eleven players are required’. The March 1888 report on the state of ‘football’ presented at the YC&AC’s AGM was not optimistic despite the fact that the first soccer Interport had just been played the previous month: ‘This (“football”) seems to be dying out in Yokohama, and a challenge from Kobe was accepted more for the honor of the club of the Club than because of any real interest shown in the game by members; however, after strenuous efforts a team was got together and played well and was only beaten after a hardly contested game.’ The initiative for the first soccer ‘Interport’ came from Kobe. Although Kobe had a much smaller foreign settlement than Yokohama, the men there also seem to have liked football as the following comment in the Hiogo Shipping List in 1878 indicates: ‘Football continues to be a favorite game and the present season shows no falling off in the number of players. No serious accidents have occurred up to date.’ The first recorded games in Kobe were held in February and March 1871 when the Hiogo News mentions three games being played but comments that the first one, on 11 February, was not well attended. The first soccer ‘Interport’ was also the first real competitive soccer match in Japan. Its success led to regular soccer ‘interports’ and the near abandonment of rugby in Yokohama for several years. The report on ‘football’ in the 1889 YC&AC AGM illustrates clearly just how much both rugby and association football struggled at this time: ‘A good Match under Rugby Rules was played against the fleet at the beginning of the Season, but the old difficulty of getting men accustomed to the Rugby Game to play under Association Rules, and vice versa, then asserted itself, and coupled with the fact that there are really few keen football players among the Members, rendered it impossible for another Match to be got up.’ 29 In the 1897 YC&AC AGM the ‘football’ section reported that ‘Two Rugby Games against the fleet were played early in the season, the Navy, by their combined play proving stronger on both occasions. It must be added, however, that years have passed since Rugby was played in Yokohama, and the second game proved that Yokohama with more practice could soon hold their own.’ Meanwhile, the soccer team had played nine games against ships in the harbour (winning five and losing three) besides winning the ‘Interport’. These words are clear evidence that the football being played in Yokohama prior to the start of soccer was considered to be rugby rather than soccer by those living in Yokohama at the time. The late 1890s saw the revival of rugby in Yokohama although it was not until Xmas day 1902 that the YC&AC rugby team could 155

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start their own ‘Interport’ matches against Kobe. Rugby was not to be eclipsed again by soccer in Japan for nearly a century. JAPANESE WHO PLAYED RUGBY BEFORE 1899 IN THE UK

The magazine of University College School, London noted the following about a 3rd XV vs ‘any XV chosen from the School’ match played in October 1872: ‘Bell, Lindfield, Webster, and Kikuchi deserve mention for the School.’ The schoolboy Kikuchi grew up to become Baron Kikuchi Dairoku. From the following year both the Imperial Naval College and the Imperial College of Engineering (ICE) in Japan employed foreign professors and instructors, and there is evidence that football was played, especially in the latter which had a ‘football ground’ in Toranomon.30 ‘The frequency of sickness among the students and their generally delicate physique, demanded greater attention to outdoor exercise. For this end a football club was started. Different members of the foreign staff took part in the games…’ wrote William Gray Dixon,31 who taught at ICE in the late 1870s. Contemporary documents state

Dr Takaki Yoshihiro (front right) with St. Thomas’ Hospital Rugby Team mates, 1895 156

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that the ‘football’ was played according to simplified rules32 but do not mention any connection with ‘association football’ and since the Naval College and the Engineering College were not located far from each other, had numerous British staff, and started around the same time, it seems reasonable to suppose that the ‘football’ taught to the Japanese students in both institutions was similar. The Meiji period saw many Japanese studying in Britain and a few played rugby. Dr Takaki Yoshihiro,33 who studied medicine at King’s College, London from 1892 and then spent around five years at St. Thomas’s Hospital from 1894, stands out from the rest. The writer found some records for the year 1898 where he appears twice playing full games for the hospital’s 1st XV – once as full back and once as a forward. This was one of England’s oldest clubs and had two teams with many fixtures against leading clubs. Its 1898 squad included two England players. Dr Takaki later became the first chairman of the Japan Rugby Football Union (JRFU). The aforementioned Tanaka Ginnosuke played for both his school and Trinity Hall, Cambridge. His 1892 school report34 states: ‘Conscientious forward. At his best in the scrum. Struggled hard both in and out of touch [sic]. Should use his feet more.’ Nabeshima Naomitsu, the 12th head of the Saga clan, is said to have also played rugby while at Cambridge between 1895 and 1897. According to a 1905 Japan Society lecture35 in London ‘N. Nabeshima played half-back in the Rugby football team of Gonville and Caius College. His contemporaries tell of him that he was one of the nimblest and smartest of the “halves”, and threw into the game all the fierce zeal that its mimic warfare prompted. He would execute a little war-dance on his own account when his side scored a goal.’ Unfortunately, the college has no evidence of him playing rugby. ENDNOTES 1

What was simply called ‘football’ during most of this period in Yokohama in Japan would not have been recognizable as being clearly either rugby or soccer today. No version of the rules they played by has yet been discovered although a meeting held in 1880, when the rule regarding handling of the ball was modified, throws some light on the issue. In the UK both the games of rugby and soccer grew out of the sport called ‘football’ that developed in schools like Rugby School, Durham School, Charterhouse, Harrow, Eton and Winchester College with each originally having its own rules. When open clubs were formed, the biggest problem was to decide the rules to play by. It was to try to solve this problem that a group of the leading clubs in the London area met to form the Football Association (FA) in late 1863. In the final meeting to decide the rules the voting outlawed general handling of the ball 157

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2

3 4

5 6

7

8

whereupon those who considered handling the ball to be a key feature of the game quit the association leaving the name ‘football’ behind them. In this writer’s opinion the football games played in Yokohama were a version of the Rugby School rules that was modified from time to time, as in 1880, and that this version was simply called ‘football’. When association football appears in the 1880s, the newspapers refer to it with expressions like playing ‘football by association rules’ and when rugby union style football ceases for some years in the early 1890s, then soccer is simply referred to as ‘football’ until the time when rugby is restarted in the later 1890s and the words ‘rugby rules’ and ‘association rules’ have to be used to differentiate the two games. Accordingly, he believes there was no association football played in Yokohama (and possibly Kobe too) until the mid- to late 1880s. The word ‘soccer’ is derived from the word ‘association’. It was rare for reports in newspapers on football to give the sport a special box:

Sydney Morning Herald, 3 June 1908. This took place before the founding of the Football Association (FA) in Britain. This was six years and five days before the birth nearby of E.B. Clarke who is generally credited, alongside Tanaka Ginnosuke, with having introduced rugby to Japan – in 1899! The rules for football in any club in this period were decided by a committee of club members and this statement suggests that the rules of the Yokohama club were going to be based on either Rugby School rules or Winchester College rules or a combination of both. However, the committee members were alumni of Radley, Downside, Cheltenham 158

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9

10

11

12

13

14 15

16 17 18

19 20

21

22

College with the last playing Rugby School-style football. According to Simon Drakeford, author of a book on rugby in Shanghai called It’s a Rough Game but Good Sport (2014) about the Shanghai Football Club, established in 1867, alumni from Eton and Charterhouse strongly influenced the rules of football in the club with Charterhouse rules, which did not permit handling, ending up dominant so that the game played in Shanghai was closer to soccer. The reference to Yorkshire is worth noting because it was there that rugby football became very popular among ordinary factory workers and farm labourers for the first time – this led to the desire to pay the best players and ultimately to the schism between rugby union and rugby league in 1895. This was only a problem in rugby football because association football had one basic set of rules finalized in December 1863. Hamilton and E. Fraser attained sporting immortality in Yokohama in 1871 by rowing in the four that dramatically defeated the highly favoured Kobe four in the first ever ‘Interport’ in Japan. Hamilton was the stroke and in 1909 Mollison called him ‘The father of rowing in Yokohama.’ Nearly twenty years after Abbott’s death Mollison remembered him as excellent at all sports and thought ‘his name still holds the Yokohama record for the 100 yards’. ‘At football he was quite in the front rank, and first class at cricket,’ wrote Mollison in an article ‘Interesting Reminiscences’ (published in 1909). A biographical portrait of J.H. Gubbins by Ian Nish is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library 1997 A biographical portrait of Joseph Longford by Ian Ruxton is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, Global Oriental, 2007 Japan Weekly Mail, 24 February 1872 The Services team was made up of British military personnel and civil servants including diplomats such as Longford and Gubbins. Japan Weekly Mail Edo, now Tokyo Scrimmages were different from modern ‘scrums’. In a scrimmage each team tried to use its weight, power and technques such as hacking to move the ball forwards towards the goal line of their opponents. Japan Gazette, 23 December 1873 Lillie Bridge was a sports ground in London used between 1867 and 1888 for a number of major sports events including cricket, football and athletics. The second FA Cup final was played there in March 1873 after a competition involved just sixteen teams (only fourteen actually played games) and was watched by about 3,000. This offers a glimpse of the status of soccer in the same year. ‘The following gentlemen were present: Capt. Hill, Lieuts. Sandwith and Drury R.M.; Messrs. J.J. Dare, Tyler, C.P. Hall, A. Vivanti, H. Vivanti, F. Beato, J. Dodds, Melhuish, Abell, Longford, Davidson, Leckie, Hamilton, Barlow, Greey, and Jeyes.’ Japan Gazette, 20 November 1874. 159

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23 24

25 26

27 28 29 30

31 32

33

34 35

30 December 1875 issue of the N.C. Herald and S.C. & C. Gazette The Yokohama team included Hamilton and Mollison as well as F. Kilby, F. Vivanti, A.H. Smith, H.A. Touse, A.H. Dare, L.F. Lewis, J. Walter, C.P. Hall, J.D. Hutchison, H.O. Jeyes, H.B. Jones, Lilburne, and F. Walker. Japan Weekly Mail, 7 December 1878. ‘Tokio and Fleet – Blue and White – Messrs. Strange, Trevithick, Ward, McClatchie, Kuchler, Marrable, Claridge, A. Vivanti, Daniells, Brown, Stevens, Lieut. Bradley and others. Yokohama – Black and ScarletMessrs. Frischling, Haskell, Hall, Hutchinson, Lilburn, Milne, Playfair, Smith, Towse, F. Vivanti, Wood, Walter, Fraser, Powys, Suther, Snow., Henson and A. H. Dare.’ Japan Weekly Mail, 13 November 1880 Japan Weekly Mail. Ibid. Kyu¯ Ko¯bu Daigakko¯ no Shiryo¯ (Documents relating to the Old Engineering College), 1955. The Land of the Morning: an Account of Japan and its People. Kyu¯ Ko¯bu Daigakko¯ no Shiryo¯ (Documents relating to the Old Engineering College), 1955. He was son of Takaki Kanehiro who studied at St Thomas’s in the 1870s, For an account of him see Jerry Matsumura’s biographical portrait in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume V ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental 2004. Tanaka attended Leys School in Cambridge as did N. Nabeshima. Japan Society, London: Transactions and Proceedings 1906, Vol. 1.

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Freemasonry in Japan PAULINE CHAKMAKJIAN

Relatively little is known about freemasonry in Japan. Freemasonry is a fraternity that encourages moral improvement by introspection organized for its members through a hierarchy of quasispiritual rituals known as degrees. The British system of freemasonry has particularly emphasized charitable giving. THE EARLY HISTORY OF FREEMASONRY IN JAPAN

Freemasonry first came to Japan through the Dutch and the British. The first Japanese nationals to become freemasons were initiated in the Netherlands in 1864. Tsuda Shinichiro¯ and Nishi Shusuki, who later took the names Tsuda Mamichi (1829–1903) and Nishi Amane (1829–97), were two researchers from the Imperial School of Culture who came to the University of Leiden, to study political science, constitutional law and economics. Their tutor was Professor Simon Vissering, who was also a freemason, a member of La Vertu Lodge No 7 of Leiden. He encouraged Tsuda and Nishi to become freemasons, and they were initiated in La Vertu lodge late in 1864. At roughly the 161

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same time the first meetings of Masonic lodges in Japan were taking place in Yokohama. Sphinx Lodge No 263 (IC) was a travelling military lodge, associated with the 2nd Battalion of the Lancashire Fusiliers and warranted by the Grand Lodge of Ireland. From 1865 onwards, permission was given for other British lodges to be formed in cities such as Yokohama, Kobe and Osaka which, under the terms of the 1858 Treaties, were ports where Britain had extra-territorial rights. The first lodge founded under the English Constitution was Yokohama Lodge No 1092, which held its first meeting on 26 June 1866. Others, under both the English and Scottish constitutions, gradually followed, and in 1868, with the help of Sir Harry Parkes, the Japanese government granted a plot for the building of a Masonic Hall, which was completely destroyed by the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923. A new temple, on the Bluff in Yokohama, was dedicated on 12 February 1927. This was built with funds sent from the United Grand Lodge of England, on condition that the property should be owned and controlled by lodges working under the English Constitution. When extra-territoriality was abolished in 1899, according to the law freemasonry became technically illegal. However, a gentleman’s agreement was established by which the Japanese authorities would not interfere in the affairs of the freemasons on condition that Japanese citizens would not be recruited as members. In the few instances where initiations of Japanese nationals did occur during the existence of this informal arrangement, these took place outside Japan in countries where the individual Japanese had been posted. For example, early in 1903, Viscount Hayashi Tadasu,1 Japanese ambassador in London, was initiated in Empire Lodge No. 2018 during a meeting of freemasons in Piccadilly. While he was the first prominent Japanese in England to be initiated, he was not the very first. The first Japanese national to have been initiated in England was a Philip Takeichi Hayashi of the ‘Imperial Japanese Navy’ whose initiation took place on 6 February 1886 in the Percy Lodge No.1427 in Newcastle upon Tyne.2 In the 1930s freemasonry in Japan faced growing opposition as Japan became allied with Nazi Germany. When war broke out following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the Japanese authorities confiscated items belonging to the lodges which went into recess. The Japanese, like the Germans, took a keen interest in masonic activities because they viewed the organization as conspiratorial and suspicious. Indeed, some freemasons were arrested for spying, interrogated about freemasonry, imprisoned, tortured and tried.3 After the Japanese surrender in 1945 freemasonry in Japan was revived. General Douglas MacArthur, Supreme Commander of the Allied Armed Forces, who was himself an influential freemason encouraged freemasonry among the Japanese. 162

FREEMASONRY IN JAPAN

FREEMASONRY DURING THE ALLIED OCCUPATION OF JAPAN

General MacArthur’s entry into freemasonry was unusual. While the practice has had different prerequisites throughout the various jurisdictions of freemasonry, a procedure known as ‘making a mason at sight’ has occurred on occasions. This special dispensation was executed only in very exceptional circumstances during which a Grand Master, or occasionally a less prominent member within the masonic hierarchy, would grant automatic masonic membership to an outstanding man. Perhaps the best-known British example is that of Lord Brougham, the nineteenth century Lord Chancellor, well-known as a lawyer, reformer and politician, and a noted orator, wit and eccentric, who was granted this special masonic dispensation, albeit before he became famous. (During a youthful tour of the Outer Hebrides in 1799, Henry Brougham decided on a whim to attend a masonic lodge at Stornoway on the island of Harris and was effectively made a mason at sight by the Master of Fortrose Lodge No. 135.) MacArthur’s entry into Freemasonry was more formal but in much the same manner. He was made a mason at sight in the Philippines on 17 January 1936, and became a member of Manila Lodge No. 1. He also entered the Scottish Rite and eventually received the thirty-third-degree.4 A man with the psychological attributes of MacArthur essentially filled the chief masonic goal, which is the pursuit of greatness/perfection of the self in tandem with a strong sense of self and spirituality. The Great Architect of the Universe within freemasonry is not a composite or a pagan god, but a term applicable to the way in which each freemason interprets God. It is a symbolic representation of the ideal one aspires to of oneself following the example of the Supreme Being of one’s personal faith: i.e., it is a state of perfection that the freemason is attempting to emulate and come as near to as possible.5 For the more modest man yet unaware of this release of his own potential for greatness, the masonic goal is unknown to him and therefore, must be reached in slow steps through the degrees. MacArthur had no such qualms. It is the convergence of those masonic ideals innate in such a man as MacArthur that can have a significant influence on third parties. Sometimes this influence is bad as in MacArthur’s arguably poor command in the Philippines as a result of his inflated ego. However, at other times, it can be a source for good, as was the case of MacArthur’s hope to instill Western values as expressed through freemasonry in the hope that this would help in the rehabilitation of Japan followings its humiliating surrender in 1945. An important part of MacArthur’s plans for post-war Japan was to reconfigure the spirituality of the Japanese. The first step towards this goal was the nullification of the indigenous belief in the divinity of the Emperor. 163

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THE GRAND LODGE OF JAPAN

Following the Japanese surrender, some lodges slowly re-opened and MacArthur rescinded the ban on Japanese nationals becoming freemasons. The ideals of freemasonry have similarities with concepts such as democracy and the ethical teachings of Christianity, which MacArthur wished the Japanese people to adopt. MacArthur may not have been aware that when he convinced important Japanese to become freemasons he was copying the English eighteenth-century model by using elites in Japanese society to achieve his objectives. After the Showa emperor’s uncle, Prince Higashikuni, became Japanese prime minister, he was encouraged to become a freemason.6 After the war had ended the previously existing masonic lodges gradually resumed their activities. From 1950 onwards, a number of new lodges were founded by the Grand Lodge of the Philippines, some of which began to admit Japanese nationals. Then, in March 1957, a Grand Lodge of Japan was constituted under whose auspices most masonic activities in Japan are now conducted. PROBLEMS PREVENTING THE GROWTH OF FREEMASONRY IN JAPAN

Imperial Patronage: An Opportunity Lost. In England freemasonry was one of the most successful of the eighteenth-century clubs and societies which mushroomed during the pre-Enlightenment and the Enlightenment periods. This was primarily because its founders successfully used the patronage and leadership of aristocrats and princes to promote freemasonry.7 Hamill explains, ‘Desaguliers has been credited with introducing the aristocracy and men of intellect into the craft, and the presence of a nobleman as grand master brought freemasonry to the notice of the public.’8 The tradition continues today with HRH The Duke of Kent as Grand Master. When Prince Higashikuni and a few other Japanese were made freemasons in 1950, the Showa emperor became interested. Michael A. Rivisto, Master of Tokyo Masonic Lodge, who was largely responsible for purchasing the Suiko¯sha (Imperial Japanese Naval Officers’ Club) to establish a masonic headquarters in Tokyo (now the site of the Grand Lodge of Japan/Tokyo Masonic Building), was subsequently invited to the Imperial Palace to explain Freemasonry to the Emperor.9 Unfortunately, Rivisto was concurrently charged by the US military and the Japanese authorities with black marketing and illegal currency transactions. This resulted in the withdrawal of his invitation to the Palace, his deportation, and charges being preferred against him for un-masonic conduct, which 164

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eventually led to his expulsion from the Craft.10 Therefore, while the patronage of a member of the Imperial Family or the Imperial Household Agency would be most beneficial and greatly desired as a sign of imperial interest in the Craft in Japan, it is unlikely that as a result of this past scandal it will be forthcoming.11 Language Barrier: Slows or Prevents Japanese Participation Of the approximately 2,300 freemasons in Japan at present, the majority of members are Anglo-Americans or Europeans and there are only around 500 Japanese. This arises from the fact that masonic lodges in Japan were originally established to serve as meeting places for Westerners and later lodges were established predominantly on or near American air bases. The original lodges were subordinate to the Grand Lodges of England, Scotland and Ireland, and later American-controlled Grand Lodges, hence the lodge language was English. Although ritual books were translated into Japanese after the formation of the Grand Lodge of Japan, a systematic amalgamation of the use of the two languages never took place and the language barrier has continued. It is not clear to an outside observer whether the language barrier has been maintained in order to control the quality or calibre of the incoming Japanese members. It is noteworthy that many of the Japanese members are educated, prominent social figures including presidents of the Tokyo Lion’s Club and Rotary Club as well as a number of successful businessmen. The mixture of social classes amongst the Japanese members is not as great as in other countries. Of the approximately twenty masonic lodges under the Grand Lodge of Japan, only a few are Japanese speaking such as Tori Masonic Lodge No. 6 located in Nagoya, Tokyo Yuai Lodge No. 11 (‘Lodge of Brotherly Love’), which is based at the headquarters of the Grand Lodge of Japan located in Tokyo, Hokkaido Lodge No. 17 in Chitose, and Wakkanai Centennial Lodge No. 21 in Sapporo.12 This does not exclude other lodges, such as Kyoto Masonic Lodge No. 5 as being Japanese-speaking, but Yuai, for example, attracts a large number of ethnically Japanese members due to its emphasis on the use of the Japanese language. It might be sensible for the Grand Lodge of Japan to consider altering the primary lodge language from English to Japanese, or at the very least, to transform the lodges into bilingual entities. Any candidate for initiation probably experiences some degree of anxiety during the ritual at having to recall answers in the catechistic ceremony. A Japanese candidate, who must learn and recall such things in a language that is not his native tongue, faces a particular ordeal. If lodges were to become bilingual entities, freemasonry would be open to a larger number of Japanese men of good 165

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character since fluency in English is more familiar to Japanese who are either highly educated or engaged in commerce. The conversion of the primary lodge language from English to Japanese would not cause great inconvenience to non-Japanese freemasons as foreigners living and working in Japan ought to be able to speak and understand Japanese. Unfavourable Impression of Freemasonry Based on personal interviews I have the impression that freemasonry is regarded by those in Japanese society who have heard of the fraternity as an organization somewhat akin to a religious cult. Even today, there are perceptions within the Japanese public that the fraternity has some relationship with the Jewish people. It seems probable that this stems from the 1930s anti-masonic propaganda which alleged that freemasons were involved with a Jewish conspiracy to dominate the world. Far from being secretive, the Grand Lodge of Japan is remarkably open in nature. Its website provides information on freemasonry in general and freemasonry in Japan in great detail. Annual events, which are open to the general public, take place on its premises. The Grand Lodge of Japan is blessed with a small yet charming garden behind its premises where an annual hana mi is held at the end of March around the time of their Annual Communications meeting. This event is open to non-masons by leave of the events coordinator of Tokyo Masonic Lodge No. 2. Another event is the Grand Lodge of Japan’s annual Children’s Festival, usually held during the third week of May. This is a festival open to the general public, but specifically organized for children from various orphanages, child and maternal associations. I attended the thirtieth Masonic Children’s Festival on 22 May 2005 and noted that the event is American in nature with some masons dressed as clowns to amuse the children mixed with other various American and Japanese entertainments. Incompatibility with Initiation Requirements To become a freemason, a candidate must believe in a Supreme Being (The Great Architect of the Universe) and swear to this belief upon the Volume of Sacred Law of his individual faith. Due to the nature of belief systems indigenous to and adopted by the Japanese as well as the customs associated with them, the question of incompatibility with the fundamental initiation requirements for membership to freemasonry arises. This issue with ritual is the most serious problem not only to recruitment of prospective Japanese candidates, but also raises the question of whether initiations of such candidates are regulated in accordance with traditional, Western masonic procedure.

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Lack of Research-Orientated Freemasons & Non-Masons One of the strongest assets of the United Grand Lodge of England is the Library & Museum housed within its premises containing both well-preserved older documents concerning freemasonry in the whole of the United Kingdom as well as contemporary works on the subject. The United Grand Lodge of England has opened its doors to the wider public. It organizes guided tours, allows access to the library’s rich resources, and welcomes both masons and non-masons to participate in research into freemasonry. This has led to some useful academic research and intellectual exchanges. This openness was a response to public suspicion of the activities of freemasonry as a result of its perceived exaggerated emphasis on privacy. The freemasons of England are better able to pursue a policy of openness because they have been in existence far longer than the Grand Lodge of Japan and thus possess and generate literature on freemasonry. They also have a very much larger membership pool and have more resources which can be used for the maintenance of the cultural treasures in the Library & Museum. With the exception of a handful of freemasons falling under the jurisdiction of the Grand Lodge of Japan, the majority of members are not particularly interested in research into freemasonry. Freemasonry has existed in England for such a long period that individual freemasons, certain groups of freemasons such as Quatuor Coronati Lodge (AQC), and individual non-masons have developed a curiosity in both its history and historiography. By contrast, the history of the Grand Lodge of Japan spans only nearly sixty years and it is difficult to produce innovative research on its history and activities. Moreover, the possibilities of research into the history of freemasonry in Japan prior to the formation of the Grand Lodge are very limited since many records were lost during the Great Kanto Earthquake in 1923 and during the Second World War. The termination of the Chater-Cosmo Transactions has been most unfortunate for masonic research in East Asia. The just over a dozen volumes of this publication that were printed provide the reader with well-researched histories and wide-ranging essays on aspects of freemasonry in China, Taiwan, Japan and the several countries within South-East Asia. The publication used to be edited and printed in Hong Kong under the District Grand Lodge of Hong Kong and The Far East; it apparently ceased due to a lack of articles being contributed as well as financial constraints.

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¯ JIN TOKYO MASONIC ASSOCIATION (TMA) ZAIDAN HO

Objectives Zaidan Ho¯jin is the Japanese legal entity assumed by a charitable foundation, and the TMA is the charitable arm of freemasonry in Japan. The original body was founded as Shu¯kyo¯ Ho¯jin Tokyo Masonic Lodge Association in 1950 under the supervision of the Ministry of Education. According to the TMA Office Manager, there are no records for this original association and there appears to have been no meaningful activities during the period of its existence from 1950 to 1955.13 On 23 December 1955, this original association was approved to operate as Zaidan Ho¯jin Tokyo Masonic Association (TMA) now under the supervision of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. Since 1981, The Grand Lodge of Japan itself has been within the premises of the Tokyo Masonic Building. The body is now under the supervision of the War Victims’ Relief Bureau at the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare. TMA, a corporate body formed for charitable purposes, is solely responsible for the charitable work of freemasonry in Japan. The Grand Lodge of Japan itself was involved in charitable activities only between 1966 and 1975. A document has been preserved which provides a list of charitable causes and the expenditure on each for the years 1966, 1971, 1972, 1973, 1974 and 1975. The causes range from being medical in nature (particularly related to the eye and ophthalmology) to assistance for widows, orphans and handicapped children to donations to schools, scholarships and fire victims.14 Chapter 2, Article 3 of the ‘Act of Endowment’ for TMA states: ‘The object of this association shall be to promote, encourage and practise the true teachings of charity and benevolence, to assist the feeble, guide the blind, raise the downtrodden, shelter the orphan, support the Government, respect the principles and revere the ordinances of religion, inculcate morality, protect chastity, promote learning, love man, fear God and implore His mercy and hope for happiness.’15 Activities Between 1955 and 1981 before TMA was housed in the Tokyo Masonic Building, a number of sponsored or supported projects were established to coincide with the objective declared in The Act of Endowment. Though these are too numerous to describe here, they included donations to hospitals, orphanages, disaster-relief causes for both Japanese and overseas natural disasters, libraries and the Japanese Red Cross.16 Occasionally, certain activities would be reported in the press. From 1956 to 1958, The Japan Times reported the donations 168

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to the Hokkaido Cold Weather Damage Relief Fund (1956), the Children’s Milk Fund (1957) and the Flood Victims’ Winter Fund (1958).17 With the exception of 1961, during which the Ears for the Deaf Fund was reported, The Japan Times reported the annual donations to the Crippled Children’s Fund from 1960 to 1976 and from 1976 to 1981 it reported donations to the Wheelchair Fund.18 Moreover, between 1957 and 1965, the Asahi Evening News reported annual donations to the Christmas Cheer Fund in addition to a couple of other donations to flood relief and fire funds.19 Other regular annual donations by TMA are made to The Toy Library, the Christian Children’s Fund, and the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society. The Toy Library, a programme dedicated to helping retarded and handicapped children generally between two and ten years of age is operated by volunteer groups. Volunteer workers teach each child how to play with a particular toy, and if the child shows interest in the toy, they lend the toy to the child with the only obligation being that the parent and child return with the toy in about a month for another session.20 Since 1986, TMA has also worked closely with the Christian Children’s Fund not only to support one hundred children worldwide but also to participate in donating to several special projects such as slum clearance as well as water and agricultural development.21 Additionally, TMA is supportive of the Sri Lanka Eye Donation Society by sponsoring two eye collection centres with a target of 450 pairs of eyes per year.22 Since it has been in the Tokyo Masonic Building, the charitable activities of TMA between 1982 and the present have increased in terms of the depth and variety of donations to various causes in addition to the above mentioned annual programmes. TMA has expanded its support of handicapped persons to more aged people through more scholarships, summer camps, the Japan Guide Dog Association, and arts and sporting events. Within hospitals, TMA aids the work of ‘CliniClowns’. Originally started in Holland, CliniClowns are professional clowns who cheer up sick children. TMA is also supportive of programmes to help the handicapped open and operate small community shops and restaurants at local communities in Japan as well as women’s shelters to protect those who have suffered from domestic violence in addition to women from the Philippines, Thailand, etc. who had been coerced into prostitution. Of all these good works, perhaps the most praiseworthy are TMA’s donations for organ transplants. In Japan, organ transplants are not available for children between 0–15 years of age; it is necessary for them to travel overseas in order to receive transplants. Therefore, TMA makes donations for such children to travel to America and other countries in order to receive the transplants.23 Since 2004, the Board of Trustees has published semi-annual newsletters to provide 169

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information on the activities of the TMA. The types of activities to which TMA makes donations are: s Homes for handicapped individuals, child protection homes and youth support centres s Organizations that support and promote self-independence of the handicapped including: s small community workshops, work training centres, day-care centres, etc. s Independent living centres for the disabled s Masonic fund to donate welfare vehicles and automotive wheelchairs s Support of medical treatment fee for children suffering from difficult diseases s Support of charitable activities of masonic groups, for refugees and the feeble s Charitable projects overseas s Support of various NPOs and volunteer activities to promote the welfare of the handicapped, sports events for the disabled as well as a college scholarship fund for handicapped students and children in protection homes s Support of disaster relief victims.24 THE FUTURE OF TMA

In recent years, the annual amount of donations TMA provides each year has been approximately ¥120,000,000 ($1.2 million, or roughly £600,000) consistently ranking the Association around one-hundredth place amongst the 26,000 charitable foundations in the whole of Japan.25 TMA possesses an internal property business that generates revenue in order to accomplish this admirable performance. Due to very recent reforms of Japan’s public interest corporation system, TMA has had to plan some changes to maintain its status as a charitable foundation. It is interesting to note the apparent influence of the British charity system on Japanese society in that the outline of the PBC Reform Laws states: ‘…the Charitable Status Recognition Committee, which might be a Japanese version of the Charity Commission for England & Wales in [the] UK…’26 Thus, just as freemasonry was brought to Japan from the United Kingdom, so too shall its charitable aims and objectives be spread more throughout Japan. ENDNOTES 1

2

A biographical portrait of Hayashi Tadasu by Ian Nish is contained in Britain and Japan: Themes and Personalities 1859–1991, ed. Hugh Cortazz and Gordon Daniels, Routledge 1991 and in Japanese Envoys in Britain 1862–1964, ed. Ian Nish, Global Oriental, 2007. J.M. Hamill: ‘Attachment A’ (1996) of Y. Washizu: “Anti-Masonry in Japan – Past and Present”, in AQC vol. 107 (1994). 170

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3 4

5

6 7 8 9 10 11

12

13

14

15

16

17

For a full account see Washizu, op. cit. On 17 January 1936, General Douglas MacArthur was made a mason at sight in Manila by the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of the Philippines, MW Samuel Hawthorne. MacArthur joined Manila Lodge No.1 and subsequently entered the Scottish Rite. On 19 October 1937, he was coroneted Honorary 33rd Degree at the American Embassy in Tokyo. P. Chakmakjian: ‘Seeking Enlightenment: Initiation and Ritual of Oriental Candidates’, in The Canonbury Papers, vol. 4 (2007), p. 129. T.W. Fripp: Japan - History of Freemasonry (1961), p. 57. P. Clark: British Clubs and Societies (2000), p. 327. J. Hamill: The Craft, (1986), p. 42. J.L. Johnston: Japan’s Freemasonry (1990), p. 40. C. Haffner: The Craft in The East (revised edn. 1988), pp. 304–306. In contrast with Britain, where freemasonry retained the support of the nobility and royalty, and the Grand Master for England and Wales has been either noble or royal, the imperial family does not support Freemasonry in Japan. The Imperial Household’s roles and actions are of course more controlled by the Imperial Household Agency than their British counterparts. The imperial family cannot be openly associated with any religious organization and cannot extend patronage to any religious group except palace Shinto, which is defined as the private religion of that family. However, informal ties with various religious entities do exist and the Imperial Household Agency could be approached if the nature of Freemasonry - that it is not a religion, is sponsored by royalty in various countries, and engages in praiseworthy social and cultural activities - were to be clarified. Who would be best placed to approach the Imperial Household Agency? The Higashikuni family, one of the former ‘collateral families’ of Japan (from the system developed in the Kamakura period, and abolished after the Second World War, in which an emperor’s son not destined to succeed him was established as the head of a collateral princely family with the right to ascend the throne if the main line failed to produce an heir), were by 1945 the collateral family closest to the emperor, and the first Higashikuni Prince, Naruhiko, was the most senior Japanese to become a freemason. While the family is no longer under the jurisdiction of the Imperial Household Agency, it still has close relations with the imperial family, and might be well-placed to undertake this role. T. Wangelin: ‘Freemasonry and Modern Japanese History’, in Tokyo Masonic Lodge No. 2, paper 2 (2007), p. 4. H. Takenaka: Correspondence with the author, (Letter dated 10 April 2007). Document (A), TMA Office, Charitable activities of the Grand Lodge of Japan 1966–1975. Act of Endowment for Zaidan Hojin Tokyo Masonic Kyokai: Chapter 2, Article 3, p. 1. TMA: “Donations, since organization of Tokyo Masonic Association”, pp. 1–7. Ibid. pp. 1 & 2. 171

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18 19 20 21 22 23

24

25

26

Ibid. pp. 2–7. Ibid. pp. 1–3. Ibid. p. 10. Ibid. p. 12. Ibid. p. 14. H. Takenaka: Office Manager, TMA. Information on the charitable and financial aspects of TMA was obtained through personal interview and documents presented at the interview on 11 October 2007. While material in addition to the details presented in this paper was provided during the interview, the author cannot disclose certain information that is deemed confidential by the Board of Trustees. The Board has approved all information presented in this paper for publication. TMA: ‘Basic Principles of the Charitable Plan for the Fiscal Year of 2007 (Proposal), pp. 1–2. H. Takenaka: Office Manager, TMA. Personal interview, 11 October 2007. M. Miyakawa: The Outline of Three PBC Reform Related Laws (English Trans. Summary), p. 1. Mr Miyakawa is Executive Vice President of The Japan Association of Charitable Organizations.

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15

Christ Church, Yokohama, and its First Incumbent: Michael Buckworth Bailey, 1862–1872 HAMISH ION

Bailey and a group of yaconin

INTRODUCTION

The historical records of Christ Church,1 the first Protestant Church in Yokohama, which opened its doors on 18 October 1863 at no. 105 in the treaty settlement, have suffered2 from natural and man-made disasters. The Church has stood on top of Yokohama Bluff across the road from the main entrance of the Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery since 1901. This paper investigates the first ten years or so in the life of this Church when Michael Buckworth Bailey (1827–1899),3 was the British Consular Chaplain from his arrival in Yokohama in the summer of 1862 to his departure in March 1872.

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Bailey was a colourful, controversial and prickly character often at odds with other foreigners in Yokohama, but also a figure, flawed though he clearly was, who deserves greater recognition than he has received hitherto. Before discussing Bailey it is necessary to describe the efforts made to create Christ Church. ESTABLISHMENT OF CHRIST CHURCH

As early as the spring of 1860 when Bishop George Smith (1815– 1871) of Victoria (Hong Kong) was visiting, the British community in Yokohama had held a meeting and found that they had sufficient funds both to build a church and to pay a clergyman £600. They had asked for Smith’s help in obtaining ‘the usual assistance of [the British] Government’.4 Surprisingly, Smith did nothing to support this initiative. The real momentum for what would become Christ Church came at a public meeting chaired by William Keswick (1834–1912) of Jardine Matheson held on 28 August 1860, ‘to concert measures to obtain a place of public worship capable of accommodating the community of this Port’.5 A Yokohama Church committee was formed by Keswick and three others, which reported to a general meeting of the foreign community on 4 September 1860 that it was impossible to rent a suitable building and recommended the purchase of land in the New Concession and the building of a Church on it. Further, the committee thought, ‘the permanent requirements of the Settlement will be best met by the establishment of an Episcopal Chapel under the auspices of the Church of England and the British Government’. The Committee asked for the power to negotiate with the British consul for the purchase of a piece of land, and to raise a building loan of $3000 at an interest of 10% per annum, which was estimated to be the combined cost of the land and a Church building. The cost of the loan would be defrayed from the ordinary income of the Church, which would come from subscriptions, pew rents and the sale of sittings. The committee also estimated that the annual expenses of the Church would be $3000 including the salary of a regular chaplain and the interest on the building loan. It was understood that the British government would contribute half of those expenses. The other $1500 would be raised by subscription from among the British community (in its annual subvention to the Church, the British government would only match the amount of money subscribed by British citizens). There was no difficulty in raising the money for the building loan and some $1615 was quickly subscribed toward annual expenses. However, some initial difficulties had to be overcome. The British consul felt slighted because his cooperation had not been requested earlier, and declined to help the committee to make a 174

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formal application to the Japanese government for a piece of land. This quickly changed, however, when the British minister was approached. Lord John Russell at the foreign office was also seen to be in favour, and the Foreign Office organized the selection process for the chaplain whose salary would be £600 a year guaranteed for three years as well as a residence at a rent of £40 a year. The Yokohama Church Establishment Trustees also provided for the chaplain’s outfit and passage from England to Yokohama. 6 By late December 1861 Frank Howard Vyse (1828–1891), the British consul, had in his possession a sum of $1000 which belonged to the foreign community as it represented a surplus upon the receipt of sale of lots in the New Concession. This sum Vyse wanted to use to help build the Church.7 The American consul in Kanagawa, General Eben M. Dorr, objected to the use of such money to build a Church of England church as it would shut out any missionary or countrymen who were not British and of different religious persuasion from benefitting from this money. Dorr suggested that $1000 should be split into three equal parts and given to the three consuls (American, British and French) to allow them to erect a place of public worship of his own nationality.8 This was not viewed as a good idea. It took some time for the church to be built. It was not until 18 October 1863 that Christ Church was opened for church services. The chaplain, Michael Buckworth Bailey, arrived in the summer of 1862, and was among those who expressed thanks to Vyse for his actions in the aftermath of the Richardson Incident. 9 Before the opening of Christ Church, divine service was conducted every Sunday at eleven in the private parlour of Vyse’s residence or at other times in the courtroom of the British consulate.10 Bailey also performed other religious services. In October 1862 he married Augusta S. Fisher, the adopted daughter of Colonel George S. Fisher, the American consul, to John Allmand, Jr. at the American consulate.11 When completed, the church building lacked architectural beauty as a professional architect had not designed it, and the Japanese workmen had some difficulty in interpreting the Western-style plans. However, the nave was 46 feet long and 30 feet wide, the chancel was 14 feet, and it was large enough to accommodate a congregation of 300 to 350.12 Efforts were made to beautify the inside. Bailey himself had some skill as a carpenter. More importantly, in early 1864 at the first annual statutory meeting of the British Episcopal Church Society held at the British consulate, it was noted that visitors to Yokohama had donated a harmonium, and that Vyse had given the church stove, and two of his consular colleagues, Richard Eusden and Marcus Flowers, had provided the font and the lectern respectively.13 At Christmas time, it was decorated in a pleasing manner with flowers 175

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and greenery. In 1865 The Japan Times reported ‘Japan is singular rich in evergreens and its climate, comparatively mild, allows also the introduction into floral decoration of many plants which are exotic in England,’ and together with holly, ivy and fir, the bright berries of the Aucuba Japonica, the deep crimson of camellias and various colours of chrysanthemums and bamboo fronds were used to good effect.14 While it was well decorated at Christmas, the exterior of the church did not have an ecclesiastical appearance, and on entering the building it was reported at the end of 1870 ‘the feeling that it is a Church would hardly be aroused, were it not for the Church Furniture, showing that this latter and the fabric were not designed at the same time nor by the same individual’.15 Already in 1866 there had been talk of building a new church but the cost was estimated at $30,000. It was pointed out that ‘the experience so dearly purchased in Shanghai has taught Yokohama a lesson as to any speculative efforts in Church building, and though considering the number of Foreign Residents, our average congregation on Sundays equals that at Shanghai, we have been glad to find that in Yokohama there has been a decided reluctance in incurring in church matters expenses which could not be readily met, and which could not be expected to receive the sanction of the Home Government.’16 Those at Christ Church compared themselves to their Anglican counterparts in Shanghai. Yokohama, while not a colony, was still part of a British imperial maritime world, one of a network of British ports and garrisons that included Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, which connected East Asia to the other British interests in the Indian Ocean region, Australasia and beyond. At the end of 1870 The Japan Weekly Mail reported that there was a desire for expanding the church building.17 It was argued that the church had outgrown its accommodation, and with pews taken up by the diplomatic community and others set aside for visiting merchant marines, there was a shortage of pews and seats that could be bought by members of the congregation. An extension to the church could also be used to allow for some outside design changes to give Christ Church a more ecclesiastical look. However, the size of the Christ Church congregation became a matter of concern when it was announced that a Union Church for the foreign community in Yokohama was going to be formed. In late December 1871, The Japan Weekly Mail came out strongly against forming a Union Church on the grounds that there were already one Roman Catholic and three Protestant chapels in Yokohama. It feared that a new church would cause a further falling away of the congregation at Christ Church and so put its financial future in jeopardy. The newspaper reported that Christ Church was finding it difficult to make ends meet. The newspaper noted ‘while the Foreign Office 176

CHRIST CHURCH, YOKOHAMA, AND ITS FIRST INCUMBENT

has, we presume, no intention of withdrawing its grant, it assuredly will not increase it, and as its value depends upon the amount derivable from the pew rents, it is of great importance that these should not be allowed to fall off.’18 A new Union Church would draw members away from Christ Church. It was pointed out that the cost of living in Yokohama was very expensive and ‘none of us would wish to see our pastor in circumstances necessitating more attention to the petty cares of life than is compatible with the discharge of his pastoral duties towards his congregation.’19 It went on to argue that even though the Yokohama chaplaincy was not a rich prize, it still ‘should not be less than a comfortable and proper provision for a man drawn from that substantial class which chiefly supplies the clergy of the Church of England. We all look to our clergyman being a gentleman, it is more than probable that he will be a married man, and while we hold that prudence, frugality, and moderation should eminently distinguish a clergyman, it is quite inconsistent with the traditions of eastern settlements that their pastors should be in harsh and narrow circumstances.’20 While Bailey fitted the mould of being a university graduate and possibly able to pass as a gentleman, he was weighed down by the need to support a large family. MICHAEL BUCKWORTH BAILEY

Bailey came from a missionary family having been born at Cottayam, Travancore in India. He had attended school in Dewsbury, Yorkshire, and was admitted as a sizar at Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge in 1850, receiving his BA in 1854. He was ordained a deacon the same year, and elevated to priest by the Bishop of Rochester in 1856. From 1854 to 1856 he had been curate at St. Mary’s, North Mymms, Hertfordshire, and between 1856 and 1861 he had held other curacies.21 He was not a missionary to the Japanese and so is not included among the ranks of the first missionaries in Japan. Despite that, he was not only a Christian presence in Yokohama for a considerable number of years, but was also a colourful, if controversial, character in sharp contrast to many of his austere, if not drab, American non-Conformist counterparts. Harold S. Williams, the energetic Australian scribe of amusing and mildly indiscreet tales of foreigners in Mikadoland found that Bailey’s antics provided him with good copy.22 The response to Bailey, when he first arrived in Yokohama, however, was positive. In early August 1862 William Willis, then attached as a medical doctor to the British legation, wrote to his brother that Bailey had recently arrived and ‘he seems a good sort of unaffected man I heard him preach a short sermon last Sunday which I believe has pleased the community very fairly.’23 Mrs James Curtis Hepburn (1818–1906), the wife of the American Presbyterian lay 177

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medical missionary and lexicographer, did not care for the Episcopal form of worship, but she liked Bailey’s sermons, which she considered excellent and most evangelical.24 In his Christmas sermon in 1865 Bailey called on the Christ Church congregation ‘on behalf of distressed British subjects who find themselves at this far away point of earth, stranded without the means of livelihood or of returning to lands where work is to be got.’25 The Christ Church congregation showed their esteem for Bailey and his services in 1865 ‘by requesting his acceptance, on Christmas morning, of a substantial Christmas gift’, which The Japan Times thought ‘was well-deserved’.26 There was a difference, however, between Bailey the priest who gave good sermons and Bailey the private family man. Hugh Cortazzi has suggested, ‘Bailey seems to have been a difficult and unpleasant fellow’ who was known to have ‘whipped his servants and on one occasion put them in sacks to prevent them from running away. But the community seems to have put up with him perhaps out of pity for his wife and children.’27 At the time of their arrival, Willis noted Mrs Bailey was pregnant for the fourth time, and that the Bailey children ‘are noisy & ill-reared’.28 By the time the Baileys left they had nine children.29 In a community that relished scandal, Mrs Bailey, ‘the parson’s wife’ as Willis referred to her, describing her as ‘a good-natured cook like woman’ ran foul of the community in late 1863 when she touted the looks and artistic accomplishments of her sister, a Miss Davis, who was coming out to Japan, and in doing so ‘set all the ladies of the place dead against her before ever she arrived, and I assure you we have got some smart ones amongst us, and all the gentlemen of the place on the qui vive expecting a beautiful accomplished young lady with all the possible and impossible charms in the world.’30 Part of the problem for Bailey, his wife and family was that they lived a fish bowl existence under the scrutiny of a foreign community that seemingly loved to gossip. Arthur Collins Maclay (1853–1930), the son of an American Methodist Episcopal missionary, later noted the Westerners in Yokohama thought, ‘a bitter controversy between the chaplain and the community upon some trifling church affair, is an invigorating species of diversion that appears to have peculiar charms, and is devoutly encouraged on all possible occasions.’31 Yet Bailey is remembered for publishing a Japanese language paper, Bankoku Shimbunshi (ਁ࿖ᣂ⡞⚕ which aimed to ‘acquaint Japanese with the affairs of all nations’ and lasted for a full two years and five months after 1867.32 It was not altogether enthusiastically endorsed by The Japan Times’ Overland Mail, which noted perceptively ‘a newspaper was started in the spring by the Consular Chaplain, the Revd. M.B. Bailey, printed in the vernacular, from which we anticipated some good; but it is badly conducted and, however profitable 178

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its advertisements may prove to its proprietor, it appears to contain very little information likely to be of service to the Japanese’33 In 1867 the Bankoku Shimbunshi was running ten advertisements per issue.34 Given his large family, Bailey was probably motivated by the possibility of running the newspaper at a profit. Bailey was also known for his horticultural activities. Together with (Lt.) William H. Smith (who was an active member of the Christ Church congregation), he created a garden (eventually named ‘Bailey’s Garden’) in which varieties of European and American vegetables were introduced into Japan. Smith was involved in raising pigs with Bailey.35 With a growing family, it was understandable that Bailey would be interested in agricultural pursuits that would lessen his living expenses. As the consular chaplain Bailey’s spiritual responsibilities also extended to the British garrison in Yokohama. In late September 1865 the troopship HMS Adventure arrived in Yokohama from Hong Kong with an officer and 22 rank and file, 55 women and 78 children, dependents of members of the 2nd Battalion/XX Regiment (Lancashire Regiment), which had been part of the British garrison in Yokohama since January 1864 as well as well as 4 officers and 150 rank and file, 5 women and 8 children belonging to 2nd Battalion, 11 Regiment (Devonshire Regiment). 36 A considerable number of the new arrivals were sick because of the unhealthy conditions in Hong Kong. Apparently, little effort was made by the British military authorities in Yokohama to take care of the sick or even to see that transportation, comforts and rations were available for the newcomers when landed. For some three months during the summer, sickness and mortality had been very high among the Hong Kong garrison and its military hospitals and medical staff overstretched. While health conditions in Hong Kong were going from bad to worse, The Japan Herald was ‘astounded to find on enquiry, that during this state of things in Hongkong, nearly all the heads of departments are absent, and in Yokohama, grumbling at its dullness and enjoying the itziboo exchange.’37 The heads of department included the General Officer Commanding in China, and the Principal Medical and Sanitary Officer of HM forces in China. This was a serious charge because it suggested that these officers were in Japan because they could make a profit out of the exchange rate and were neglecting their professional responsibilities to the troops they commanded in Hong Kong. Bailey became involved because he defended the actions of Major-General P.M.N. Guy and other officers in looking after the sick when they arrived in Yokohama. The Japan Herald viciously attacked Bailey as misrepresenting the facts when he wrote to the Herald.38 At the time the XX Regiment was leaving Japan, General Guy ordered Dr Woodward, a military doctor in Yokohama, to read an apology 179

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

before the officers and heads of departments of the Garrison for unfounded charges brought by him against Bailey.39 Controversy followed him. He took R.P. Bridgens (1819–1891), the American building contractor to the American consular court over defamation of character.40 At another time, he was censored for not being present at burials. His relations with the Church committee and the organist were often not good. It would appear also that Bailey followed questionable bookkeeping practices, which contributed to his leaving Christ Church to return home. Bailey himself put a better face on his departure. In January 1873 Bailey, now back in England, explained that he had received a leave of absence from F.O. Adams, British chargé d’affaires in Japan, in late November 1871 to return to England after ten years of continuous service as consular chaplain in Yokohama because of ill-health.41 He had not been able to leave Yokohama until March 1872, however, because his wife was seriously ill, and, did not, in fact, reach England until November (having been delayed at one point six weeks after leaving Yokohama). Another reason for the sheer length of time that it took to get back to England was that the Baileys had been recommended for health reasons to return via the Cape.42 The Foreign Office was sympathetic to the extent that they awarded him a pension of £68 10s 11d per year.43 After he left Japan, Bailey was curate of Hampstead 1874 to 1875, and then curate of Stoke Newington between 1875 and 1898. In 1898 he became Rector of Cold Norton, Essex but he died on 6 December 1899. He published a hymnal and helped with the publication of a parishioner’s memoir of the hemp industry. The ten years that he had spent in Japan probably represented the most exciting years of his life. CHRIST CHURCH AFTER BAILEY

Bailey’s immediate successor was Edward Syle, who is better-known than Bailey as a result of his long and distinguished career as Protestant Episcopal missionary in China prior to coming to Japan, his teaching career at the Kaisei Gakko¯ (the forerunner of Tokyo Imperial University) in Tokyo after he left Christ Church, and his connections to the embryonic Asiatic Society of Japan. However, by the time Syle took up his post Christ Church was facing financial difficulties. In early January 1873 a Church Meeting learnt that 9 whole pews at $90 each and 128 sittings let at $20 had produced an income of $3370 ($2245.50 was deemed to come from British Residents’ subscriptions, but even so the British Government grant for 1871 was only $1513.41, $600 less than amount raised by those who were British subjects which it was supposed to match). As the chaplain’s salary in 1872 was $3,294.12, the Church was deeply reliant on the 180

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British government grant. There seemed to be little enthusiasm for an increase in the charges for pews and sittings. 44 It was the government grant that made Christ Church a viable institution. In early January 1874, The Japan Weekly Mail reported that the government had paid £800 (£400 per annum for 1873 and 1874) and given notice that its grant in aid would cease.45 With the end of the government support grant so went Syle. Syle had a one year contract as acting incumbent which ended on 31 March 1873, but he continued without a renewed arrangement at a rate of pay of $275 a month. Christ Church had only sufficient funds to pay him until the end of March 1874.46 After that the Church could no longer afford a permanent chaplain. William Frederick Henry Garratt served for a time as chaplain and in 1877 he performed a Japanese language marriage service between a foreigner and a Japanese woman. W.B. Wright, one of the two pioneer SPG missionaries, gave Japanese language services at Christ Church for the benefit of Japanese students. This latter activity is seen as the beginning of St. Andrew’s Church, Yokohama, which was a Church for Japanese, while Christ Church remained for foreigners.47 It was not until 1880 when Edward Champneys Irwine was appointed chaplain that Christ Church was able to find a permanent cleric, one who stayed for twenty-one years.48 Irwine was the last chaplain to preside over the original church in the Treaty Settlement. On Trinity Sunday, 2 June 1901, a new red brick Church was consecrated on the Bluff on a site just within the fence of South Camp and just within the Colonel’s Gate, one of the gates to what had been the barracks of the British forces guarding the Yokohama Settlement prior to 1875. In 1901 the Church moved to a new building designed by Josiah Conder at Yamate no. 234. That church was destroyed in the 1923 Earthquake.49 In May 1931 a new Christ Church built in the style of an English country church was consecrated but it was badly damaged in the bombing raid on Yokohama on 29 May 1945. During much of the War the church building had been used as a storage facility for the Japanese Naval Hospital in Yokohama.50 At Easter 1947 the restored church reopened for services as the Yamate Kyo¯kai with the English language Christ Church congregation holding their services in the now Japanese Anglican church building. And so it continues to the present. ENDNOTES 1

Eric Witham Casson, The Church on Colonel’s Corner: Christ Church, Yokohama, 1862–1962 (Yokohama: Christ Church, Yokohama, 1962). All filed records of the first sixty years of Christ Church in Yokohama were destroyed in the earthquake and fire of 1923. See acknowledgements. For a brief historical sketch of Yokohama Christ Church, see Nihon Kirisutokyô Henshû Iinkai, Nihon Kirisutokyô Rekishi Daijiten 181

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2

3

4 5

6

7 8

9 10

11 12 13 14 15

16 17

(Tokyo: Kyôbunkan, 1988) (hereafter cited as NKRD), p. 1466. See also Yokohama Yamate Seikôkai 50 Nenshi Henshû Iinkai, Shû ni kansha: Nihon Seikôkai Yokohama Yamate Seikôkai gojûnen shi Give Praise to the Lord: The Fifty Year History of the Nippon Seikôkai’s Yokohama Yamate Anglican Church) (Yokohama: Nippon Seikôkai Yokohama Seikôkai, 1998), p.19. Christ Church was the second Anglican Church in Japan, the first was the English Church at no. 11 (Higashiyamate) in the Nagasaki Treaty Settlement which was opened in October 1862. See Brian Burke-Gaffney, Nagasaki: The British Experience, 1854–1945 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2009), p. 33. See also Nippon Seikôkai Yokohama Kyôku Rekishi Henshû Iinkai, Mina ni yorite: Yokohama Kyôku 125 nen no ayumi In His Name: 125 Years of the Diocese of Yokohama) (Tokyo: Seikôkai Shuppan, 1998), (hereafter cited as Yokohama Kyôku 125 nen no ayumi) p. 28. Segawa Yoshio, ‘Yokohama no Seiko¯kai’, (Yokohama’s Seiko¯kai (Anglican Churches) in Yokohama Purotesutantoshi Kenkyu¯kai hen, Yokohama Kirsutokyo¯ Bunkashi, (The Cultural History of Yokohama Christianity) (Yokohama: Yu¯rindo¯, 1992), pp. 100–103, p. 100. For a brief biographical note on Bailey in Japan, see NKRD, p. 1267. See also Nippon Seiko¯kai Rekishi Henshu¯ Iinkai, Nippon Seiko¯kai hyakunenshi, (The Centennial History of the Nippon Seiko¯kai) (Tokyo: Nippon Seiko¯kai Kyo¯muin Bunsho Kyoku, 1959), p. 87. The Japan Herald (hereafter cited TJH), 22 November 1862. TJH, 25 January 1862. Unless otherwise noted, the information in the rest of this paragraph comes from this issue. TJH, 21 December 1861, see printed letter, Russell to Alcock, 26 June 1861. See also Foreign Office (hereafter cited FO) 46/26 Minutes on Summary of Letter from Rev. M. Buckworth Bailey to Hammond, 23 December 1861; FO 46/26 Hammond to Bailey, 9 January 1862. TJH, 21 December 1861. TJH, 21 December 1861. See printed letter, Dorr to Vyse, 24 November 1861. General Dorr was concerned with looking after the interests of American missionaries who were planning to build their own Chapel. See Hamish Ion, American Missionaries, Christian Oyatoi and Japan 1859–73 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), pp. 52–54. See supplement to TJH, 20 September 1862. See, for instance, notice in TJH, 8 February 1862, notice in TJH, 27 September 1862. See, married notice, TJH, 25 October 1862. TJH, 24 October 1863. TJH, 23 January 1864. TJT, 29 December 1865. TJWM, Church Accommodation, 3 December 1870. Unless otherwise indicated all quotations and information in this paragraph comes from here. Ibid. See, Church Accommodation, The Japan Weekly Mail (hereafter cited as TJWM), 3 December 1870. 182

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18 19 20 21

22

23

24

25 26 27

28

29 30

31

32

See, Union Church, TJWM, 23 December 1871. Ibid. Ibid. See J. A. Venn, Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Bibliographical List of All Known Students, Graduates and Holders of Office at the University of Cambridge, from Earliest Times to 1900, Part II From 1752 to 1900, volume 1: Abbey to Challis (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1940), p. 118. Harold S. Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland (Rutland, Vermont and Tokyo: Charles E. Tuttle, 1963), pp. 132–139. See also Neil Pedlar, The Imported Pioneers: Westerners Who Helped Build Modern Japan (Sandgate, Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library Ltd., 1990), pp. 85–87. Willis to George Willis, 4 August 1862, Willis Papers, Bun 44–2, Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan. See also page 56 of Dr Willis in Japan British Medical Pioneer 1862–1877, Hugh Cortazzi, Athlone Press, 1985. Ion, American Missionaries, p. 55, citing Clara Hepburn to Lowrie, 16 March 1864, Presbyterian Church Board of Foreign Missions Japan, microfilm reel 104. TJT, 29 December 1865. £40 to £50 was raised. Ibid. Hugh Cortazzi, Victorians in Japan: In and around the Treaty Ports (London: The Athlone Press, 1987), p. 78. See also Cortazzi, Dr Willis in Japan, 1862–1877: British Medical Pioneer (London: Athlone Press, 1985). Willis to George Willis, 4 August 1862, Willis Papers, Bun 44–2, Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan. FO 46/171, Bailey to Hammond, 6 January 1873. Willis to George Willis, 17 December 1863, Willis Papers, Bun 44–5, Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan. Cortazzi has pointed out that Miss Davis got drunk at a ball in 1865 and was sick over herself and other people. See Cortazzi, Victorians in Japan, p. 77. Arthur Collins Maclay, A Budget of Letters from Japan: Reminiscences of Work and Travel in Japan (New York: A.C. Armstrong, 1886), p. 29. James L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1997), p. 410, note 84. Peter Kornicki also noted that this newspaper ‘was produced by an English clergyman in 1867–69 and was widely distributed from Hakodate to Nagasaki’, but like Joseph Heco’s early Kaigai shinbun (ᶏᄖᣂ⡞, the first private Japanese language newspaper published between 1865 and 1866, it did not prove a success, Peter Kornicki, The Book in Japan: A Cultural History from the Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press Paperback, 2001), p. 66. Grace Fox goes into a little more detail about the content of the Bankoku Shimbunshi, see Grace Fox, Britain and Japan 1858–1883 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 440–41. See also James Hoare, ‘British Journalists in Meiji Japan’, in Ian Nish, ed., Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits (Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library, 1974), pp. 20–32, especially p. 30–31. Bailey’s newspaper should not be confused with John Reddie Black (1827–1880)’s Japanese language paper Bankoku Shimbun which was published briefly in 1876 and led to the British ban on British subjects publishing in Japanese.‫ޓ‬ 183

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33

34 35

36 37

38 39 40

41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50

The Japan Times’ Overland Mail (hereafter cited as TJTOM), review for the year 1867, 29 January 1868. Huffman, Creating a Public, p. 180. Bailey wrote about the garden in Bankoku Shimbunshi, vol. 3, 1867. In 1893 the garden was commemorated with the establishment at Yamate 52 of ‘Bailey’s Garden’. See Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯ Fukyu¯ Kyokai, Yokohama mono no hajime ko¯ (Thoughts on the Beginning of Things Yokohama) (Yokohama: Yokohama Shiryo¯kan Fukyu¯ Kyo¯kai, 2003) p. 20, pp. 52–53. These gardens provided the residents of the Yokohama Foreign Settlement with most of their European vegetables. See Williams, Foreigners in Mikadoland, p. 133. For W. H. Smith, ‘Public Spirited’ Smith, see Williams, The Foreign Settlements in Japan (Rutland, Vt.: Charles E. Tuttle, 1972), pp. 222–224. Smith also started a Western laundry, see TJT, 10 November 1865, advertisement Washing Establishment, no. 131 Lower Concession. TJH, 23 September 1865. Ibid. See also TJT, 22 September 1865. See also Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan, Shiryo¯ de tadoru Meiji Ishin ki no Yokohama Eibu chu¯ton gun (Materials tracing the British and French Occupation Forces in Yokohama During the Meiji Restoration Period) (Yokohama: Yokohama Kaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan Fukyu¯ Kyo¯kai, 1994), p. 61. TJH, 14 October 1865. TJT, 19 May 1866. See Williams, ‘The Energetic Rev. Buckworth Bailey’, pp. 134–36. For Bridgens, see Yokohama mono no hajime ko¯,p. 105. FO 46/171, Bailey to Hammond, 6 January 1873. Ibid. FO 46/171 Hammond to Bailey, 31 March 1873. See, Church Meeting, TJWM, 4 January 1873. See, Christ Church, TJWM, 3 January 1874. See, Episcopal Church Meeting, TJMl, 10 February 1874. NKRDJ, p. 1467. See also Yokohama Kyôku 125 nen no ayumi, p. 29. Casson, The Church on Colonel’s Corner, p. 8. Yokohama mono no hajime ko¯, p. 172. Shû no kansha: Nihon Seikôkai Yokohama Yamate Seikôkai gojûnenshi, p. 21.

184

16

British Bible Societies and the Translation of the Bible into Japanese in the Nineteenth Century HAMISH ION The cross-denominational British and Foreign Bible Society1 was founded in 1804 with William Wilberforce as its patron to promote the wider circulation of the Christian scriptures not only in England and Wales but also overseas. Its aim was to translate and distribute the Christian Bible without note or comment in as many languages as possible.2 In 1809 in response to the Scottish enthusiasm for the formation of the BFBS and the desire to maintain a Scottish identity, various local Bible societies north of the border came together to form their own separate National Bible Society of Scotland.3 These two Societies patronized by evangelical noblemen and endowed with Georgian and Victorian wealth quickly became multinational organizations establishing overseas territories and agencies and working closely with the burgeoning British missionary movement to spread the Protestant Christian message throughout the world. Using the latest technology in printing, the extent of Bible production was enormous. In China alone, in 1899 the year’s printing exceeded 1,000,000 copies.4 Writing about India, Eugene Stock, the historian of the Church Missionary Society (CMS), noted ‘the question is often and justly put. What would the Missionary Societies do without the Bible Society? Yet it would be equally just to ask. What would the Bible Society do without Missionary Societies, which provide the living men who are the translators and revisers [of the Bible]?’5 The Bible Societies were an essential part of the worldwide missionary effort. Clearly, the BFBS was the ‘valued fellow-worker of all missions’,6 and so it would also prove to be in Japan. The Bible Societies were engaged in both supporting the translation of the Bible and its distribution through the employment of colporteurs and Bible-women, which also supplemented and benefitted 185

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the work of missionaries in the field. From their headquarters in London and Edinburgh, the two Bible Societies worked through their own European supervising agents and local Committees made up of missionaries to undertake and supervise the work of the Societies in mission field. The Bible Societies followed in the wake of the major British missionary societies coming to Japan (the CMS in 1869 and the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (SPG) in 1873 and missionaries from the United Presbyterian Church of Scotland in 1874) with the NBSS arriving in 1875 with John Austin Thomson (1857–1897)7 as its first agent and the BFBS with Isaac John Taylor as its first agent in 1876. Playing a subordinate role to the Bible Societies were the London Religious Tract Society8 and the American Tract Society,9 organizations, which were also in the business of supporting the publication and distribution of Christian tracts but not involved directly in translation work. There was much overlap between not only the missionary personnel on Committees for the Bible Societies and the Tract Societies but also the supporters of those Societies and missionary societies. By the time the NBSS and the BFBS began work in Japan, much of the translation of the New Testament had been already undertaken10 and its translators were working closely with the American Bible Society (ABS),11 even though their first agent resident in Japan, Luther Halsey Gulick (1828–1891),12 only arrived in Japan at the beginning of 1876. Thus, the attention of the British Societies was directed toward the translation of the Old Testament. The independent work of the two British Societies only lasted a relatively short period because in 1890 the ABS joined with the BFBS and NBSS to form a representative Bible Societies committee to prevent friction and overlapping and to save the expense of separate independent establishments between the three Bible Societies. Henry Loomis (1839–1920),13 a former American Presbyterian missionary and since 1881 the agent of the ABS in Japan, was in charge of the ‘House’ in Yokohama, while the ‘Field’ with its colportage and correspondents was assigned to George Braithwaite (1861–1931),14 the BFBS agent and secretary of the new Bible Societies Committee, and to Annard, the agent of the NBSS.15 Also in the same year, the London Religious Tract Society joined forces with the American Tract Society to form a combined missionary membered Tract Societies committee to further their work in Japan.16 The translation of the Old Testament, which took place between 1876 and 1888, was completed before the triple union Bible Societies committee was formed and so allows the contributions of the two British Societies to be more clearly seen and appreciated. Furthermore, the support that the British Bible Societies gave to the Bible publishing efforts of individual British missionaries in Japan sheds 186

BRITISH BIBLE SOCIETIES AND THE TRANSLATION OF THE BIBLE

further light on missionary efforts to spread the Christian message to the Japanese. The BFBS was able to distribute 9280 copies of parts of the Bible in 1884 and this increased to 10,139 in 1886. It also bore its share of the cost of the publication of the various new portions of the Old Testament, of a pocket edition of the New Testament that was sold for 25 sen (8d), and of a corrected edition of the Standard New Testament, which was in romaji.17 Yet the effort to translate the Bible into Japanese had begun a long time before the NBSS and BFBS came to Japan. THE NEW TESTAMENT

The first steps to translating the Bible into Japanese had begun during the so-called ‘Christian Century’ in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries by Portuguese Roman Catholic missionaries and their converts.18 Yet the persecution of Christians in Japan and the maritime exclusion edicts enforced by the Tokugawa Shogunate meant it was not until the early nineteenth century that the next attempts at translation are made, these from outside of Japan. The first of these was a Japanese version of the Gospel of St. John, which was published by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (Congregationalist) in Singapore in 1837 by Karl Friederick August Gützlaff (1803–1851).19 Samuel Wells Williams (1812–1884), 20 a lay American Board missionary printer in Macao, with the help of stranded Japanese fisherman continued on this early attempt at Japanese translation and by 1839 had translated by 1839 Gospel of St. Matthew into Japanese.21 Further, Bernard Jean Bettelheim (1811–1870), the pioneer missionary of the Loochoo Naval Mission resident in Naha between 1846 and 1854, 22 who knew both Gutzlaff and Williams did manage to translate four chapters of the New Testament, the Acts of the Apostles and Romans into the Ryu¯kyu¯an languages.23 He also added a Japanese language appendix to the Chinese language translation of the Gospel of St. Luke. In 1858 this Chinese-Japanese version of St. Luke was published by the BFBS in parallel kanji and katakana in Hong Kong with 500 copies printed.24 Yet, it was the translation of the Bible into Chinese rather than these earlier attempts by Gützlaff, Williams and Bettelheim to translate it into Japanese that was more helpful to the first Protestant missionaries in Japan after 1859 as they struggled to learn Japanese, and to translate the Gospels into Japanese. The impetus for a Chinese Bible came with the formation of the British and Foreign Bible Society in 1804, and was seen as a necessary tool for missionary work in China. Robert Morrison (1782–1834),25 a Scotsman who joined the London Missionary Society and landed in Canton in 1807 began translating the Bible from 1810. As the 187

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Chinese prohibition of Christianity prevented him from propagating the Gospel among the Chinese, he worked in the translation bureau of the East India Company. By 1814 he had translated the four Gospels, and in 1815 with the assistance of William Milne (1785– 1822),26 he had begun to translate the Old Testament. In 1818 the English merchant ship, Gordon, had brought the Morrison Gospels close to Japan when it distributed copies of them to the two thousand fishermen that it came across off Uraga. In 1823 Morrison and Milne’s translation of the Old Testament was published in Malacca. When Gutzlaff visited the Ryu¯kyu¯s in 1832, he distributed copies of the Morrison translations. When Morrison died in 1834, the work of translating the Bible fell to Gutzlaff and William Henry Medhurst (1796–1857)27 for there was a need for an improved translation. In 1843 the Missionary Conference held in Hong Kong made a decision to form a translation committee chaired by Medhurst. In 1852 a full New Testament was published in Shanghai, but Bishop William Jones Boone (1811–1864),28 the Protestant Episcopal bishop, and Elijah Coleman Bridgman (1801–1861)29 both expressed their disapproval of this translation. This translation (the so-called Delegates’ Version) was challenged over the use of some terms (the so-called ‘term question’) most especially that of Theos (਄Ꮲ ) for God.30 From 1851 Bridgeman and Michael Simpson Cuthbertson31 worked on a new different translation with the New Testament published in 1861 and the Old Testament in 1863. The next year the combined edition of the New and Old Testament was published in Shanghai.32 It was the Bridgman and Cuthbertson version, which was the most influential Chinese Bible for those translating the Bible into Japanese in part because Hepburn and S.R. Brown who were the main early pioneers of New Testament translation in Japan had been China missionaries prior to coming to Japan and knew Bridgman.33 While this greatly aided Japan missionary translators to avoid much of the debate over what characters to use for God that had developed among China missionary translators by adopting the Chinese equivalent to God used by Bridgman and Cuthbertson for use in the Japanese Bible. Where the problems over terms arose was among Japanese converts because while the character for God (kami, ␹) was the same in Chinese and Japanese, its meaning was different across the cultural barrier.34 From the time that the first Protestant missionaries arrived in Japan in 1859, language study and Bible translation was a primary concern for them. In 1872 a translation committee for the translation of the New Testament was formed in Yokohama in order to coordinate inter-denominational efforts. The translation committee did not commence to meet until June 1874 by which time it included Hepburn, Brown, Daniel Crosby Greene (1843–1911), 188

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an American Board missionary, Robert Samuel Maclay (1824–1907), superintendent of the Methodist Episcopal mission, Nathan Brown (1807–1886), an American Baptist missionary, William Ball Wright (1843–1912) of the SPG and John Piper (1840–1932) of the CMS.35 Nathan Brown left the translation committee in 1876 to pursue his own independent translation,36 Maclay was absent from Yokohama for much of the latter part of the 1870s and both Wright and Piper were resident most of time in Tokyo, thus the major work of translation was carried out by Hepburn, Brown and Greene. The translation was published between August 1875 and April 1880 as various parts of the New Testament beginning with Gospel of St. Luke and ending with Revelations were completed.37 One of the difficulties that the translation committee faced was not only denominational preferences in terminology which had led to Nathan Brown’s withdrawal but also stylistic problems with the committee attempting to avoid ‘on the one hand, the quasi Chinese style, intelligible to the highly educated only, and, on the other, a vulgar colloquial, which, though easily understood (in the locality where it is indigenous), might make the Scriptures contemptible, we should choose that style which, while respected even by the so-called literati, was easy and intelligible to all classes. We thus adhered to the vernacular or pure Japanese, a style which may be called classical and in which many of the best books intended for the common reader are written.’38 What this meant, however, was there was a good deal of scope for the New Testament to be republished in different stylistic forms. In 1886 the BFBS, for instance, supported the publication in Yokohama of Hepburn’s rendering of the New Testament in romaji.39 Likewise, in 1886, the BFBS published a Baptist version of the New Testament, which had been completed by William John White (1848–1901),40 the English Baptist missionary. THE OLD TESTAMENT

In October 1876 a meeting took place in Tsukiji between four missionaries living in Tokyo, which decided that they should seek to cooperate with the translation committee in Yokohama to begin the translation of the Old Testament.41 In 1878 at a Missionary Conference held at the Union Church in Tsukiji, it was decided to form a ‘permanent committee’ with at least one member from each of the Missions operating in Japan. This permanent committee requested the BFBS and NBSS to contribute to the subsidization of the translation and publication of the Old Testament, and Isaac John Taylor, the BFBS agent in Japan, keenly supported this. The permanent committee included many of those from the New Testament translation committee including Wright, Piper, Nathan Brown, Greene, Maclay, 189

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Hepburn but also J. Hamilton Quinby (d. 1882) of the Protestant Episcopal mission, Waddell, George Cochran (1834–1901) of the Canadian Methodist mission, Jonathan Goble, the American Baptist and Frederick C. Krecker (1843–1883), the American missionary doctor.42 Hepburn was named the chairman of the Old Testament committee and Cochran, the corresponding secretary. Cochran was on the committee because of his considerable knowledge of Hebrew, and not for his knowledge of Japanese, which was not extensive. Like the earlier New Testament committee, the actual translation work devolved on a small number of members. The question of the language to be used in translation was a matter of some discussion outside of missionary circles for Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935) gave a paper on ‘Suggestions for a Japanese Rendering of the Psalms’ at a meeting of the Asiatic Society of Japan in April 1880, and he translated for this presentation twelve poems of the Psalms into the socalled ‘Archaic Tongue’ dating back to the eighth century or earlier.43 However, the BFBS and the Translation Committee were concerned with uniformity of language with the New Testament, and were not about to use archaic Japanese which only a few could read. As was the case with the New Testament, the brunt of the translation work was carried out by relatively few people: Hepburn, Philip Kimball Fyson (1846–1928),44 the CMS missionary, Verbeck of the Dutch Reformed mission and David Thompson (1835–1915)45 of the American Presbyterian mission. It is very probable that they represented the most able Japanese language scholars among missionaries at that time. Other missionaries also contributed to the translation process to a lesser or greater extent including Piper, Wright, Walter Dening (1846–1913), who left the CMS in 1883, Robert Young Davidson (1846–1909) of the Scottish UPS, Clement T. Blanchet (1845–1928) of the Protestant Episcopal mission and Channing Moore Williams (1829–1910), the Protestant Episcopal bishop.46 C.M. Williams who had utilized his knowledge of Chinese to make some Japanese Bible translations including the Gospel of St. Matthew in the early 1860s when he was a missionary in Nagasaki but by 1878 turned his attention was directed toward a Japanese language Book of Common Prayer in which he was assisted by Piper and Charles Frederick Warren (1841–1899) for the Anglican missions in Japan and away from Bible translation.47 As Williams’ case illustrates individual missions had their own denominational needs for Japanese language prayer books and hymns as well as the Bible, and had to devote attention to translating them. The Old Testament, like the New, was published as its various books were translated beginning in 1882 and continuing until 1888 when the complete Old Testament was finished. Both the BFBS and the NBSS were heavily involved with the ABS in publishing either in 190

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combination or alone the various books of the Old Testament as they were translated. William Canton, the historian of the BFBS, makes much of the celebration of the publication of the complete Bible at a public meeting at the Shin Sakae Kyo¯kai in Tokyo in February 1888 when Hepburn holding the New Testament in one hand and the newly published Old Testament in the other brought the two books reverently together and declared them a ‘loving gift to Japan’ from the whole body of missionaries in Japan and the whole of the Church of Christ in America and England.48 While the missionaries took most of the credit for the translation of the Old Testament, some outstanding Japanese assisted them. Of these, Matsuyama Takayoshi (1847–1935, ᧻ጊ㜞ศ) who had been baptized by Greene in Kobe in 1874 and Takahashi Goro¯ (1856–1935, 㜞ᯅ੖㇢) who had been taught by S.R. Brown in Yokohama in the early 1870s were the most prominent.49 Yet two figures who would later become influential Christian leaders, Ibuka Kajinosuke (1854–1940, ੗᫃ᷓਯഥ) and Uemura Masahisa (1858–1925, ᬀ᧛ᱜਭ) who like Takahashi had been baptized in Yokohama in the early 1870s, also helped in the translations.50 Without the assistance of these Japanese translators, the task of producing the Old Testament would have been much more difficult. In 1888 the BFBS printed over 65,000 volumes – editions of the Old Testament, small Reference New Testament and Psalms, a cheap New Testament published joined with the NBSS and ABS at a cost of ten sen (5d), the Gospel of St. John in raised type for the blind. The circulation of the BFBS stood at 37,703 copies, while the NBSS and ABS distributed between them over 111,000 copies more.51 As well as the Japanese Old Testament, the BFBS was also much involved with John Batchelor (1854–1944),52 the CMS missionary in Hokkaido¯, and published his Ainu translations of the Old Testament Book of Jonah and the New Testament Gospel of St. Matthew in 1889.53 In that year, the Bible Societies were distributing 44,785 copies of various parts of the Old and New Testament including a New Testament for the blind of which an estimated 150,000 copies were in circulation.54 While these figures were down from those of 1888, they were still a large number. The British Bible Societies were certainly making sure that the Christian Bible was circulating among the Japanese even if the British missionaries found it hard to convince many Japanese to become Christians. GLOSSARY OF JAPANESE TERMS:

British and Foreign Bible Society (ࠗࠡ࡝࠭⡛ᦠදળ, BFBS, the Bible Society) National Bible Society of Scotland (ࠬࠦ࠶࠻࡜ࡦ࠼⡛ᦠදળ, NBSS, Scottish Bible Society) 191

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Church Missionary Society (ࠗࠡ࡝ࠬᢎળትᢎળ, CMS) Society for the Propagation of the Gospel in Foreign Parts (ࠗࠡ࡝࠭ ᶏᄖ⑔㖸વ㆏ળ, SPG0 United Presbyterian Church of Scotland (ࠬࠦ࠶࠻࡜ࡦ࠼৻⥌㐳 ⠧ᢎળ, UPS) London Religious Tract Society (ࡠࡦ࠼ࡦትᢎળ) and the American Tract Society (☨࿖ትᢎᦠ㘃ળ␠) American Bible Society (ࠕࡔ࡝ࠞ⡛ᦠදળ, ABS) Gospel of St. Matthew (Matai fukuin den, 㚍ᄥ⑔㖸વ) Gospel of St. Luke (Ruka den fukuinsho, 〝ട⑔㖸ᦠ) The Acts of the Apostles (Shitogyôden, ૶ᓤⴕવ) and Romans (Romansho,ࡠࡑᦠ) ENDNOTES 1.

2

3 4

5

6 7

8

9

For a short description of the BFBS in Japan, see Nihon Kirisutokyô Rekishi Daijiten Henshû Iinkai, Nihon Kirisutokyô Rekishi Daijiten (ᣣᧄࠠ࡝ࠬ࠻ ᢎᱧผᄢ੐ౖ, Dictionary of Japanese Christian History) (Tokyo: Kyôbunkan, 1988) hereafter cited as NKRD, p. 94. See entry for British and Foreign Bible Society in Hans J. Hillerbrand, ed., The Encyclopedia of Protestantism (New York and London: Routledge, 2004), 4 volumes, volume 1, pp. 304–305. In 1804 the Bible was available in sixty-seven languages and by 2000 it has been translated into more than 2000. For a short description of the NBSS in Japan, see NKRD, p. 719. William Canton, A History of the British and Foreign Bible Society (London: John Murray, 1904–1910), 5 volumes, volume 5, p. 178. Eugene Stock, The History of the Church Missionary Society. Its Environment, Its Men and Its Work (London: Church Missionary Society, 1899), 3 volumes, volume 3, p. 478. Ibid., volume 3, p. 23. For Thomson, see NKRD, p. 853. Thomson would remain in Japan until 1889. He would later work in India. For a brief note on the London Religious Tract Society which began work in Japan in 1876 with John Piper (1840–1932), the CMS missionary and Hugh Waddell (1840–1901), the UPS missionary as the leading figures on its Japan Committee. See NKRD, p. 1532, for Piper, see NKRD, p. 1098, for Waddell, see NKRD, p. 1547. By 1874 The American Tract Society was giving money to support the translation of the New Testament. For a brief note on the American Tract Society, see NKRD, pp. 1257– 58. By 1874 The American Tract Society was giving money to support the printing and distributing of Christian literature in Japan. In the 1880s the ATS had two Committees (North and South Japan) of missionaries supervising its work in Japan, among those who were members of the 192

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10

11

12 13 14

15

16 17 18

19

20

21

North Japan Committee were Guido Verbeck (1830–1898), the American Dutch Reformed missionary, James Curtis Hepburn (1815–1911), the American Presbyterian lay missionary doctor, and Nathan Brown (1807–1886), the American Baptist missionary were actively involved in translating the New Testament and, in the case of Verbeck and Hepburn also the Old. For Verbeck, see NKRD, pp. 1246–47, for Hepburn, NKRD, pp. 1266–67, for Nathan Brown, NKRD, p. 1230. As might be expected, there was clearly overlap in personnel between missionary committees for the Bible Societies and the Tract Societies. For a brief study of the role of James Curtis Hepburn in the translation of the New Testament into Japanese, see Hamish Ion, ‘James Curtis Hepburn and the Translation of the New Testament into Japanese: A Case Study of the Impact of China on Missions Beyond Its Borders’, Social Sciences and Missions, volume 27 (2014), pp. 25–54. For a short description of the ABS in Japan, see NKRD, p. 59. The ABS was founded in New York in 1816. It had no agent in Japan until 1876 but it had already been funding the translation work of American missionaries in Japan. See also Nihon Seisho Kyo¯kai Henshu¯ Iinkai, Nihon Seisho Kyo¯kai Hyakunenshi (ᣣᧄ⡛ᦠදળ⊖ᐕผ, The Centennial History of the Japanese Bible Society) (Tokyo: Nihon Seisho Kyo¯kai, 1975), pp. 100–108, especially pp. 100–103. For Gulick, see NKRD, p. 376. For Loomis, see NKRD, p. 1510. For Braithwaite, see NKRD, p. 1248. Braithwaite, the son of Bevan Braithwaite one of the Vice-Presidents of the BFBS came out to Japan in 1886 at the age of twenty-five and would remain there for the next thirteen years. He initially came out as the assistant to Philip Kimball Fyson, the CMS missionary who was the corresponding secretary to the BFBS committee in Japan and deeply involved in the translation of the Old Testament. Canton, volume 5, pp. 200–201. See also H. Ritter, A History of Protestant Missions in Japan, translated by George E. Albrecht, revised by D. C. Greene under the editorial care of Max Christlieb (Tokyo: The Methodist Publishing House, 1898), p. 333. Ibid., p. 336. Canton, volume 5, p. 397. See Bernardin Schneider, OFM, ‘Bible Translations’ in Mark R. Mullins, ed., Handbook of Christianity in Japan (Leiden: Brill, 2003), pp. 205–226, especially pp. 205–206. For Gützlaff, see NKRD, p. 375. See Ebisawa Arimichi, Nihon no Seisho: Seisho wayaku no rekishi (ᣣᧄߩ⡛ᦠ㧦⡛ᦠ๺⸶ߩᱧผ, The Bible of Japan: A History of the Japanese Translation of the Bible) (Tokyo: Nihon Kirisutokyo¯dan Shuppan Kyoku, 2005 edition), pp. 107–108. For Williams, see NKRD, p. 156. In the late 1870s Williams would become the President of the American Bible Society. Ebisawa, p. 119. Samuel Robbins Brown (1810–1880), an American Dutch Reformed missionary who had lived in Williams’ home in Macao in 1839 obtained a copy of this translation from Williams when Brown on his way to Japan in 1859. See Nihon Seisho Kyôkai Hyakunenshi, p. 25. 193

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22 23 24

25

26

27

28 29 30

31

32

33

34

35

While Williams’ translation served as an aid to Brown in his own early attempts at translating Matthew’s Gospel, Brown’s copy of the Williams’ translation was lost when Brown’s house in Yokohama was burnt down in 1867. For Brown, see NKRD, pp. 1230–1231. Between 1874 and 1879 Brown was the chairman of the New Testament translation committee in Yokohama. For Bettelheim, see NKRD, p. 1262. Ebisawa, p. 126. Ibid., p. 128. See also Nihon Seisho Kyo¯kai Hyakunenshi, p. 28. When he visited Japan in 1860, Bishop George Smith of Victoria (Hong Kong) brought with him a hundred copies of Bettelheim’s Ruka den fukuinsho. See Ebisawa, p. 131. It was the general view of the American Protestant missionaries in Japan to whom Smith gave out copies of Bettelheim’s work that his translation was defective and unfit for distribution. See Ion, ‘James Curtis Hepburn and the Translation of the New Testament into Japanese’, p. 48. For Morrison, see NKRD, p. 1409. The BFBS worked closely with Morrison in publishing his Bible translation. The Shinten Seisho (␹ᄤ⡛ᦠ) translated by Morrison and Milne was published in Malacca in 1823, see NKRD, p. 703. For Milne, see NKRD, p. 1377. For Medhurst, see NKRD, p. 1396. As well as Chinese translation, Medhurst was interested in Japanese and as early as 1830 he had produced in Batavia an English and Japanese Vocabulary. For Boone, see NKRD, p. 1252. For Bridgman, see NKRD, p. 1242. Nihon Seisho Kyo¯kai hyakunenshi, p. 21. Bettelheim in his Ruka den fukuinsho had used the Delegates’ Version terms. In 1873 his revised versions of St. Luke and the Gospel of St. John were published posthumously in Vienna in hiragana, and in them God was translated as kami, see Ebisawa, p. 135. Eugene Stock points out that the ‘Term Question’ must have been one of the trials of Bishop John S. Burdon of Victoria’s episcopate during the 1860s and 1870s but even the Archbishop Tait of Canterbury could not find a satisfactory solution to the terminology problem. See Stock, volume 3, p. 776. See NKRD, p. 352, under kanyaku seisho (ṽ⸶⡛ᦠ, Chinese translated Bible). Ibid., p. 103. Bishop Boone went on to commission Samuel Isaac Joseph Schereschewsky (1831–1906) in 1862 to learn Beijing dialect and by 1875 Schereschewsky was able to publish the Old Testament and the Anglican Prayer Book in that dialect. For Schereschewsky, see NKRD, p. 601. Hamish Ion, American Missionaries Christian Oyatoi and Japan 1859–1873 (Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 2009), p. 30. See Saba Wataru, Uemura Masahisa to Sono Jidai (ᬀ᧛ᱜਭߣ౔ߩᤨ ઍ, Uemura Masahisa and His Times) (Tokyo: Kyo¯bunkan, 1977 edition), 8 volumes, volume 4, pp. 6–9. For Greene, see NKRD, p. 466; for Maclay, see p. 1313, for Nathan Brown, see p. 1230; for Wright, see p. 1482. 194

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36

37

38 39 40 41

42

43

44

45 46

47

48 49

50

51

Brown had disagreed with the translation committee over the use of terms especially relating to baptism. He had completed his own translation by 1879. See Ebisawa, pp. 286–294. His Baptist colleague, Jonathan Goble (1827–1896) had as early as 1871 begun to publish parts of the New Testament, see NKRD, pp. 536–537. See Saba, volume 4, pp. 103–110. In 1878 the ABS, for instance, produced a pocket sized volume one of the Scriptures in Japanese and Chinese printed in Yokohama, which received the recommendation of the leading Christian of the time, Nakamura Masanao (1832–1891), see volume 4, pp. 98–101. For Nakamura, see NKRD, p. 998. Saba, volume 4, p. 107. Ibid., p. 54. For White, see NKRD, pp. 1296–1297. See also Ebisawa, pp. 294–301. Ebisawa, p. 258. These missionaries were David Thompson (1835– 1915), the American Presbyterian missionary, Piper, Waddell, and George Cochran. For Thompson, see NKRD, p. 853, and Cochran, p. 518. See Nihon Seisho Hyakunenshi, pp. 52–53. For Quinby, see NKRD, p. 445, and for Krecker, p. 471. Yuzo Ota, Basil Hall Chamberlain: A Portrait of a Japanologist (Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1998), p. 45. See also Ebisawa, Nihon no Seisho, pp. 267–268. Fyson had been born in Bury St. Edmonds and had attended Christ Church College, Cambridge University. He had come out to Japan in 1874, and in 1875 had gone to Niigata as the resident CMS missionary and remained there until 1882. In that year, he was called to Tokyo to take part in the translation of the Old Testament. In 1897 he became the Bishop of Hokkaidô. See NKRD, p. 1185. For Thompson, see NKRD, p. 853. For Dening, see NKRD, p. 900 and biographical portrait by Hamish Ion in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2010; for Davidson, see p. 896, for Blanchet, see p. 1235, and for Williams, see p. 155. See also Ebisawa, pp. 273–274, and for a list of translators and dates of publication, see pp, 279–282. Grace Fox notes that Fyson prepared the translation of Joshua and the Ten Commandants with notes. Piper translated the books of Jonah, Haggai and Malachi, and separately wrote a Japanese Reference New Testament for the NBSS as well as a Life of Christ. Davidson prepared as translation of 2 Kings. Dening produced a Hymn Book of ninety hymns. See Grace Fox, Britain and Japan 1858–1883 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 527. Ebisawa, pp. 139–145, especially p. 144. The Nippon Seiko¯kai Prayer Book was published in 1888. For Warren, see NKRD, p. 1548. Warren also published a Scripture Catechism. Canton, volume 5, p. 199. For Matsuyama, see NKRD, p. 1333, and Takahashi, p. 827. See Ebisawa, Nihon no Seisho, pp. 212–220. For Ibuka, see NKRD, p. 130, for Uemura, see NKRD, p. 165. See also Ebisawa, pp. 274–277. Canton, volume 5, p. 401. 195

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52

53

54

For Batchelor, see NKRD, pp. 1117–1118. For Batchelor’s writings on Ainu language and vocabulary, see A. Hamish Ion, The Cross and the Rising Sun, Volume 2: The British Protestant Missionary Movement in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, 1865–1945 (Waterloo, Ontario: Wilfrid Laurier University Press, 1993), pp. 112–113. See also biographical portrait of John Batchelor by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library 1997. Ebisawa, p. 327. The Bible Societies committee after 1890 would continue to publish Batchelor’s Ainu translations of various Gospels through the 1890s culminating in the 1897 publication of the complete New Testament in Ainu. This had been translated by Batchelor out of the Greek for the Bible Societies Committee for Japan, and was published in Japan by Yokohama Bunsha, the Christian Publishing House. See also Canton, volume 5, p. 407. Canton, volume 5, p. 417.

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Bishop Kenneth Sansbury (1905–1993): College Lecturer and Chaplain AUDREY SANSBURY TALKS

BACKGROUND

Kenneth Sansbury was born in London and educated at St. Paul’s School, from where he won a Scholarship to Peterhouse College, Cambridge. For his first year he studied Classics before switching to Theology, in which he gained a double First. He went on to train for the priesthood at Westcott House in Cambridge. It was while he was still a student at Cambridge that he applied to the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel (SPG) to become a missionary in Japan. He was inspired to do this by attending a missionary rally at which Bishop Joseph Motoda, the first Japanese Bishop of Tokyo, was one of the speakers. Bishop Motoda made clear that while the expectation was that the Nippon Sei Ko¯ Kai (NSKK), the Anglican Church in Japan, would become independent of overseas support in due course, it was as yet a very young church and was not yet ready to stand on its own feet. He therefore appealed 197

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for missionaries to come from England and Kenneth responded to that call. Though Kenneth had been accepted for missionary work in Japan he could not set out until he had been ordained, first as a deacon and then as a priest, and had completed one curacy in England. He served his curacy at Dulwich Common between 1928 and 1931 and in July 1931 he married Ethelreda Wamsley, who was a fellow student at Cambridge and whom he had first met at a missionary breakfast there. Kenneth and Ethelreda expected to sail for Japan by the end of the year, but England came off the Gold Standard in the autumn of 1931 and Bishop Matsui, Bishop Motoda’s successor, sent a telegram to say that no further staff should come from England until that situation was resolved. So Kenneth was found a temporary curacy in Wimbledon and it was not until the spring of 1932 that Kenneth and Ethelreda set sail for Yokohama. It was as they passed through Shanghai that they saw some of the repercussions of Japan’s invasion of Manchuria, which had begun in the previous September. As they passed Woosung they saw the site of forts overlooking the bay, which the Chinese had built and which the Japanese had now destroyed, and in the crowded district of Chapei they saw the devastation caused by Japanese bombing. THE FIRST FIVE YEARS – 1932–1937

For their first two years in Japan they lived far from the centre of any military or political activity. The plan was that Kenneth should become a lecturer at the Shingakuin, a theological college for the training of Japanese priests to serve in the NSKK. But first both Kenneth and Ethelreda had to study the language, for the two principal Anglican missionary societies, SPG – more high church – and CMS (Church Missionary Society) – more low church – required their staff to reach an adequate standard in Japanese in order to serve in the country. One possibility would have been to attend a language school in Tokyo, but instead the Bishop of South Tokyo, Bishop Heaslett,1 proposed that they should go to Numazu, a coastal town in the Izu Peninsula, where there was a Japanese-style house available and where they could study the language with a tutor and absorb something of the culture around them. Their tutor announced: ‘I shall now teach you one daily manner.’2 So each day he would describe to them one Japanese custom and teach them the conversation used in that context. He also began to teach them the characters. Every few months they were examined. The exam papers were sent from a language school in Tokyo. There was also an oral exam, conducted jointly by their tutor and an external examiner. They began to make progress and after a few months 198

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Kenneth was asked to conduct a Japanese service in the church in Numazu. He attempted this with some trepidation, but afterwards their tutor wrote to Bishop Heaslett to say it was so well done he might have thought it was a Japanese taking the service. Kenneth sent a copy of this letter to his parents but urged them not to take this appraisal at face value.3 Meanwhile, almost from the beginning, Kenneth became chaplain to the English church in Tokyo, St. Andrew’s Church in Shiba. So Kenneth would go up to Tokyo for two weekends each month and Ethelreda would accompany him for at least one of those weekends. This was a congenial arrangement, for there were no other Westerners in Numazu and they were spending almost all their time in studying a difficult language. As Kenneth said: ‘It is going to be a long time before one is any real use in this land of involved sentences and complicated thought forms!’4 So he was glad to be given responsibility for a congregation where a lack of Japanese was no barrier. Moreover, the people who attended St. Andrew’s formed an interesting group. For the most part they were professional people and many had a wide experience of working and travelling in other countries. And though they were all English speaking, they were not all British citizens, but included, at one time or another, citizens of Japan, America, Holland, Denmark and former citizens of Russia. The Chairmanship of the Church Council was held in alternate years by the British ambassador and the minister of the Canadian Legation and in the church special services were held to mark state occasions. The first such service that Kenneth was responsible for was the Armistice Commemoration Service in 1932. But for services which attracted large congregations the English St. Andrew’s Church was really too small, so although the service to mark the death of George V was held there, those to mark George V’s Silver Jubilee and George VI’s Coronation were held in the Japanese St. Andrew’s Church which stood in the same compound and which was distinctly larger. In the spring of 1934 the time came for Kenneth to move to his new post as lecturer at the Shingakuin (the Central Theological College). So Kenneth and Ethelreda moved to Ikebukuro with their baby son. The Shingakuin was officially the theological department of Rikkyo¯ (St. Paul’s University) but in practice the Shingakuin was a separate college with a Japanese Principal and a staff of three Japanese and three Western lecturers. The other two Western members of staff were Larry Rose, an American, and soon Stanley Woodward, who was a second-generation CMS missionary, for his father had been a missionary in Japan before the 1914–1918 war. All three were married with young families. 199

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The Shingakuin was unlike theological colleges in England or America in one respect, for at the Shingakuin the students were all undergraduates. Kenneth believed this should be changed: I feel the theological college should be made postgraduate. It would mean a longer course, but it would mean less overwork. At present the students have about 26 hours of lectures a week and in addition go all over Tokyo and sometimes further afield on Sundays to help with the services. Is it any wonder that one or two break down every year and that more than one has had to go to a sanatorium, suffering from TB – that dreaded complaint that attacks so many in Japan?5

Kenneth found his early terms at the college very busy. He had nine hours’ lecturing a week and had to provide fairly detailed outlines of his lectures for the students, to help them over the difficulty of hearing the lectures in English. Three hours of lectures were on Greek: ‘Picture me an Englishman this morning helping Japanese lads to translate from Greek into their own tongue! It is a bit hard!’6 But he had other commitments as well as his work at the college: on Sundays he went to Shiba to take the English services at St. Andrew’s Church; once a month he made the three and a half hour journey to give oversight to a new Japanese church in Kofu; and always there was language study. By the summer of 1937 it was time for Kenneth and Ethelreda to return to England on furlough. The five years they had spent in Japan formed part of what has been called in Japan kurai tanima or ‘dark valley’, the ‘dark valley’ that was to lead from Japan’s invasion of Manchuria in September 1931 to the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941. They had sailed for Japan as a newly married couple just a few months after the invasion of Manchuria. Now, on 3 July 1937, they set sail for England with two small children and another on the way, and only four days later the first shots were fired in what was to be war between Japan and China. FURLOUGH AND BEYOND – 1937–1941

Kenneth was not always with the family while in England, for being on furlough did not mean having a year’s holiday but involved travel round the country on deputation work, speaking, preaching and attending conferences. Now that war had broken out in China, there was much hostile coverage of Japanese aggression in the English press. Audiences wanted to know how the Japanese themselves viewed events in China and whether they ever questioned the actions of their military. Kenneth explained that the Japanese public saw only a heavily censored press. They knew nothing of the unceasing provocation by their troops in North China, of the deliberate attempt to undermine 200

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China’s financial stability through smuggling, of the iniquities of the traffic in drugs. All they heard was of continual incidents in North China, for which the Chinese were always responsible, of the ‘insincerity’ of the Nanking government, of the ominous spread of Communism. For the Japanese people, therefore, the war was a holy war to rescue the suffering Chinese people from rulers so wickedly proCommunist and anti-Japanese and to bring the whole of Asia under the beneficent rule of their divine Emperor, ‘The Four Corners of the World under One Roof’. The Japanese government’s promotion of religious patriotism inevitably raised problems for Japanese Christians. Kenneth explained that Christians were a tiny minority – less than half of one per cent of the population – and that they were subject to all the same propaganda as their fellow citizens. They too felt loyalty to their country and found no conflict between their Christian faith and the idea of a special vocation for Japan in the twentieth century. They were ready to go to the utmost limit, therefore, in meeting government requirements, in bowing to the Emperor’s portrait and in attendance at Shinto shrines. In fact, there was a growing feeling among both priests and laity that it was possible to have a Japanese Christianity, a synthesis of all that was unique in the Japanese character with all that was most acceptable in the Christian religion.7 This nationalist spirit was leading in the churches to a reaction against Western influence and a desire for Japanese control. Although the majority of clergy might be Japanese, much church funding and leadership still came from the West. But now Western missionaries were finding doors closing against them. The leadership was passing into Japanese hands and the daily pastoral work was more and more being undertaken by Japanese clergy. The missionary as a foreigner was held to be unable to understand the present situation. His advice was not encouraged and his criticisms, if expressed, were bitterly resented. A few of the senior clergy – by reason of their long service and their personal and official authority – could exercise a little influence. But generally the power of foreign missionaries to alter attitudes within the churches was nil. In these circumstances should Kenneth return to Japan after furlough? And if he did so in what role? For the last three years his lecturing at the Shingakuin had been his primary work. In addition, he had taken the services at the English church of St. Andrew’s Church in Shiba, while once a month he had given oversight to the new Japanese church in Kofu. Now his principal work could no longer be among the Japanese. At this point a decision was taken to revive the position of chaplain at the British embassy in Tokyo and Kenneth was offered the post. This could be combined with his work as chaplain at St. Andrew’s 201

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Church in Shiba, so that his English chaplaincy work would become his principal role. Meanwhile his work as lecturer at the theological college could continue, although in a more limited way, while his oversight of the Japanese church in Kofu would cease altogether. Perhaps the position of chaplain at the British embassy was revived in order to give Kenneth an adequate reason to return to Japan, for there had been no such chaplain since 1922. Certainly Bishop Heaslett was eager that he should return and urged him to overcome his misgivings: ‘I hope you will remember that in your position as Chaplain to the Embassy you would be fully protected and be able to carry on your work under circumstances where it would be difficult for an ordinary person to work. You would have diplomatic privileges.’8 So Kenneth accepted these new conditions and returned to Japan with his family in the summer of 1938. Japan had now been at war in China for more than a year and was feeling increasingly isolated in the world. Two crises in the NSKK could already have led to missionaries having to withdraw from Japan. The first took place on 5 October 1937, when a meeting was held in the Royal Albert Hall to protest against Japanese bombing of civilian targets in China. The Archbishop of Canterbury took the chair and this was taken as proof that Britain favoured the Chinese cause and was hostile to Japanese aspirations in China. Bishop Matsui exploded: ‘This is the end of our connection with the English church!’ Bishop Heaslett calmed the atmosphere by saying: ‘We English missionaries are only here to help you. As soon as you wish it we will go.’ It seemed that day could not be long. The second was the Synod of the NSKK held in Kyoto in May 1938. The crucial business was the passing of a resolution in relation to the war. The first draft was for the NSKK to give a straight expression of gratitude to the troops for their actions in China. It became clear that this would not be accepted by the foreign bishops. Eventually all sections agreed on a resolution which expressed emotion at the gallantry of the Japanese troops, urged the need for increased loyalty to the Emperor and expressed sympathy with the Chinese people, and especially with Chinese Christians. It seemed that the time for a showdown was not yet, but in returning to Japan in August 1938, Kenneth and Ethelreda knew they were returning to a very uncertain future. The final blow for foreign missions in Japan came two years later, in August 1940. Kenneth wrote: ‘By the act of arresting and intimidating the Japanese leaders of the Salvation Army all mission work of all churches came, in mid-August, to the last scenes in the drama of Christian missions from foreign sources in Japan.’9 All Christian churches were now under suspicion. Anti-British and anti-Christian posters appeared outside churches and warnings to ‘Beware 202

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of silver-tongued Japanese, who are under the influence of foreigners. They may very easily be spies.’ Missionaries met with the same friendship as ever from their people, but were asked not to visit them, for every visit would be followed by a call from detectives and unpleasant questioning. The Salvation Army, with its military name and titles and uniforms, incurred special suspicion. It was compelled to change its name, forego foreign funding and dismiss its foreign workers.10 At the end of September Japan signed the Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy and the situation for foreigners in the country became increasingly precarious. It was clear that the NSKK would soon receive attention and so the Japanese bishops approached the authorities to ask on what terms it would be allowed to continue its work. The answer was that no foreigners should hold positions of authority in the church and no foreign funds should be accepted for its support. As a result all the foreign bishops resigned in October 1940 and oversight of the whole church was entrusted to five Japanese bishops. As for the foreign priests, some were retired, some kept on in very uncertain circumstances. The three foreign staff at the Shingakuin, Larry Rose, Stanley Woodward and Kenneth were told they could not remain after the end of the academic year in March 1941. For Kenneth’s part, he felt it was an act of grace that he, who was tarred with the embassy brush, was allowed to stay at all. Yet the scope of their teaching was now restricted, for new legislation stated that foreigners could no longer teach anything relating to thought and specifically not religion. Kenneth wrote: It must be recognized that while for us and the missionary societies the qestion of what place, if any, will be available for the foreign worker in Japan in the future is a matter of immediate concern, for most Japanese Christians it is already a closed issue. It was settled in August and we are little more, in their eyes, than the relics of an age that is now over, waiting only for the final adjustments before we disappear from the scene.11

Another matter of immediate concern was the official demand for a union of the Christian churches, to come into effect before 17 October, which marked the 2,600th anniversary of the founding of the Japanese Empire. Some of the Protestant churches were ready to unite rather than dissipate their resources as at present. The Roman Catholic and Orthodox churches would not, but what of the NSKK? They were small in comparison with the combined Protestant churches, but had a distinct, more Catholic, tradition. So they refused and tried to carry on as a hidden church without government permission. On 25 October 1940 all British subjects were advised by the Embassy that they should leave Japan as soon as possible, while they 203

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were still free to choose their own ship and destination. Meanwhile, there was less and less to do at the Shingakuin. This was partly because of the laws the government had passed preventing foreigners from teaching anything relating to thought and partly because the number of students was diminishing and would inevitably continue to diminish almost to nothing. So in December the Woodward family and the Rose family sailed for America, while Kenneth and his family moved away from the college into a house in the compound of St. Andrew’s Church. Kenneth continued to teach New Testament Greek at the Shingakuin but his relationship with the students could be little more than formal. His principal role was now to serve and help, as best he could, an anxious and unsettled British community. As Kenneth’s time in Japan drew to a close, a reception was held at the British embassy in Tokyo: ‘A Farewell Reception in honour of the Rev. C.K. Sansbury, Chaplain of H.B.M. Embassy and St. Andrew’s Church, Tokyo, and Mrs. Sansbury, on their departure from Japan, May 2nd 1941.’ A small book in the Japanese style commemorates the occasion. On the folding card pages are the signatures of all those present. On the first page is that of Sir Robert Craigie, the ambassador, and on the facing page the signatures of three bishops, Bishop Heaslett (British), Bishop Matsui (Japanese) and Bishop Reifsnider (American).12 So Kenneth and Ethelreda and their three children sailed from Yokohama for Seattle and Vancouver on the Hie Maru, the last Japanese ship to cross the Pacific in the summer of 1941. RETURN TO THE EAST

It would be eighteen years before Kenneth and Ethelreda returned to Japan. During the war Kenneth served as a chaplain in the Canadian Air Force and was posted to England, to bomber stations in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire. After the war he became Warden (Principal) of the Bishop’s Hostel, a theological college in Lincoln, and then of St. Augustine’s College, Canterbury, the Central College of the Anglican Communion. In 1959 the NSKK celebrated the centenary of the arrival in Japan of the first Protestant missionaries. Archbishop Geoffrey Fisher arranged to make a tour through Asian countries, culminating in a visit to Japan to attend the celebrations. As Kenneth was also invited to Japan, the Archbishop suggested that he should accompany him as his chaplain. So on 22 March, Archbishop and Mrs Fisher, together with Kenneth and Ethelreda, set off on a 20,000 mile journey through Pakistan, India, Singapore, Hong Kong to Japan and Korea. For the NSKK the destruction of war had been great, but now there were signs of recovery. Rikkyo¯ had survived, but the Shingakuin had been destroyed by bombs, as had the house where Kenneth and 204

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his family had lived. Now the Shingakuin had resumed its work in new premises. In Shiba both the Japanese and the English St. Andrew’s Churches had been burnt to the ground. Now a new St. Andrew’s Church for Japanese congregations had been built and St. Alban’s, a church for English-speaking, mainly American, congregations had been built. In his address, Bishop Yashiro, the Presiding Bishop of the NSKK, acknowledged the dark night through which both the Church and the nation had travelled: Now, as I stand here with you all to celebrate this great occasion of the Centenary of the commencement of Protestant missionary work in this country, on this day of April 8, in the year 1959, I should like to say with you, ‘Be thankful. Today I am still alive.’13

A new bishop was required for Singapore and Malaya. The position was offered to Kenneth and Archbishop Fisher urged him to accept. Kenneth agreed, though not without misgivings, as it seemed late to appoint an Englishman to that position. So Kenneth became the last English Bishop of Singapore and Malaya from 1961 until 1966. From Singapore he was once again able to visit Japan and to meet once more friends and former students, many of them now in senior positions in the Church. Kenneth returned to England in 1966 to become General Secretary of the British Council of Churches before finally moving to Norwich in 1973. Kenneth had gone to Japan as a young man in 1932 and might have expected to stay there for the rest of his career, but the war intervened and his life took a different course. Yet both Kenneth and Ethelreda retained a deep love of Japan. In his final report from Japan, written in October 1940, Kenneth reflected on almost eight years spent in the country: It has been a great privilege to serve in a land so beautiful, among a people so naturally kind and courteous…It is indeed a sad day for those who have admired Japan’s fine achievements to see the disastrous course she is now following.14

It was a great joy to both Kenneth and Ethelreda to return to Japan in 1959, to meet old friends, and to see both the church and the nation on the way to recovery. ENDNOTES All personal letters are in the keeping of the author. All letters and reports sent to SPG are in the SPG archives in the Rhodes House Library in Oxford. 205

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1

2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

11 12 13 14

A biographical portrait of Bishop Heaslett by Hamish Ion is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume V, Global Oriental, 2004. Letter of 11 June 1932. Letter of 22 September 1932. Letter of 3 November 1932. Letter of August 1934. Letter of 4 May 1934. SPG Archives 1938: (address at monthly meeting of SPG). SPG archives, CKS letter accompanying annual report to SPG 10 October 1940. Onward: ‘A survey of the mission field in war-time’ (SPG report for 1940, p. 20). CSK annual report to SPG 10 October 1940. In the keeping of the author. From the author’s typescript copy of Bishop Yashiro’s address. CKS annual report to SPG 10 October 1940.

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sMUSIC, DRAMA AND FILM s

18

John William Fenton (1831–1890) and The Japanese National Anthem Kimigayo AKIRA IMAMURA

INTRODUCTION

John William Fenton (1831–1890) was the bandmaster of a British Army regiment, stationed in Yokohama in the early Meiji period. He was the first person to teach wind instruments to a Japanese military band and is regarded in Japan as ‘the father of wind band’. Fenton continued his instruction as one of the many British advisers who were employed by the Japanese Imperial Navy. It was the beginning of the systematic education in Western music, and part of a wider effort to introduce the naval system modelled after the British. He even taught Western music to the musicians of the Imperial Court, who had played traditional court music for nearly a thousand years. Fenton is also known as a composer of the first version of the Japanese national anthem, Kimigayo. He brought to the Japanese the concept

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of a national anthem when the Meiji government was struggling to establish a centralized nation state. Fenton was the first person to teach the Japanese Western music in a systematic manner. He was a pioneer in musical exchanges between Japan and Britain and thus played a critical role in the introduction of Western music to Japan. A wind band arrived for the first time in Japan on board the Dutch ship Palembang in Nagasaki in 1844. It was followed by the band which accompanied Commodore Perry when he landed in Kurihama (approx. 30 km south of Yokohama) in 1853. Japanese artists made detailed illustrations of various Western wind instruments used by the band members. In the following year the first British naval flotilla under Rear Admiral Sir John Stirling arrived in Nagasaki; they made for the shore in six rowing boats, led by a band that played a medley of English airs, concluding when they finally landed with God Save The Queen. This was almost certainly the first time British music was played in Japan.1 Alarmed, by the increasing number of visits by foreign military vessels, the Tokugawa Shogunate (Bakufu) felt the need to modernize its own navy. The Naval Training Institute, with Dutch instructors, opened in Nagasaki in 1855. Signal calls, using military drums, were included in the curriculum. The Japanese trainees were said to have practised the instrument enthusiastically. Although the Institute was closed in 1859, this prepared the ground for the introduction of fife and drum bands attached to the armed forces. In the West, fife and drum bands were gradually being replaced by more sophisticated wind bands, but they were still in use in many regiments which were visiting Japan. Indeed, the instruments were easier for the Japanese to learn. Following the decision by the Bakufu to open Yokohama to foreign trade in 1859, samurai from loyalist domains such as Satsuma and Cho¯shu¯, who were opposed to the opening, made life hazardous for the expatriates stationed in a foreign trading community in the port. Hostility reached its peak in 1862, when a British merchant was killed by Satsuma samurai in the so-called Namamugi incident. In response, Britain and France established small garrisons in Yokohama to protect their citizens. Informal contacts with the foreign troops increased the pace of westernization of the armed forces in both Bakufu and various domains, including the spread of fife and drum bands. As one of the first British troops to be stationed in Yokohama a large group of Royal Marines arrived in 1864. It was accompanied by a fife and drum band. Contrary to their expectation the troops were met by friendly local people. An officer of the Marines described the landing scene: The landing was witnessed with great curiosity, and as we marched up to our future camp, headed by the drum and fife band, a large crowd 208

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of Europeans and Japs [sic], including many dear little musmees (girls), accompanied us, many of them afterwards to become good friends of the ‘danizans’ (masters).2

Later in the same year the 20th Regiment of Foot arrived in Yokohama as the first fully-fledged British ground forces. This time it was accompanied by a wind band. The Bakufu, initially reluctant to accept the presence of foreign forces, nevertheless, took the opportunity to seek military advice from the British. There is no record of any formal training in wind instruments but it is certain that members of Japanese fife and drum bands watched how wind instruments were played by the British. In 1866, in one of the first Japan-British joint exercises in Yokohama, both troops marched together with the Bakufu’s fife and drum band and British wind band playing in turn. In the following year the Bakufu made an official request to the British to send naval instructors including three buglers and drummers. The beginning of the civil war in Japan and collapse of the Bakufu in the beginning of 1868 thwarted this scheme.3 Meanwhile, in August 1863 HMS Euryalus led a British fleet to Kagoshima, the capital of Satsuma domain in the southern island of Kyushu, to demand compensation and the trial of the perpetrators of the Namamugi incident. The refusal to accept these demands led to the bombardment of Kagoshima by the British. Satsuma samurai had heard the band on board the Euryalus playing before the attack. After the battle Satsuma recognized British military superiority and decided to purchase battleships from Britain. They went on to model their troops, including their fife and drum band, after the British army. In January 1868 on the eve of the civil war which led to the overthrow of the Bakufu and the Meiji Restoration, the fifteen-year-old Emperor Meiji inspected his troops, assembled from loyalist domains, at the Imperial Palace in Kyoto. The Satsuma troops stood out in their British-style uniforms and paraded with their fife and drum band. During the civil war they were heard playing so-called Ishin Ma¯chi (the Restoration March) as they advanced eastwards after the Bakufu forces. The march had a uniquely Japanese melody, but a Western military rhythm. FROM DRUMMER BOY TO BANDMASTER

John William Fenton was born 12 March 1831, in Charles Fort in Kinsale, Ireland, to John and Judith Fenton.4 His father, a native of Brechin in Forfarshire (Angus), Scotland, was a colour sergeant of the 65th Regiment of Foot, stationed at the Fort. Fenton’s father remained in the Fort with the reserve company at the time of Fenton’s birth, but joined the rest of the regiment in the West Indies, later that 209

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year. He took his wife with him and probably his baby son. At this time colour sergeants were allowed to take their families abroad, but their new life in the Caribbean was suddenly disrupted. Fenton’s father died at Tortola, British Virgin Islands, in July, 1833. The cause of death is not known, but during this period the regiment lost about one quarter of its numbers from tropical fevers.5 The orphaned boy followed in his father’s footsteps. He enlisted in April 1842 in Winchester as a boy soldier in the 25th (King’s Own Borderers) Regiment of Foot; he was only eleven years old. In May, Fenton was transferred, on the ship Repulse, to Madras to join the regiment’s main unit, which was arriving there from Cape Colony. It was a widespread practice at that time for the military to enlist under-age boys especially from sons of soldiers. Since the widow of a soldier during these years did not receive a pension, regiments often felt a moral responsibility to look after the ‘sons of the brave’.6 A constant shortage of young soldiers was an additional reason for enlisting young boys. This may explain why, in Fenton’s military records, three years were added to his age, although drummers could be legitimately recruited at a very young age.7 In fact, Fenton was appointed as a drummer during 1844–45. ‘Drummer’ was a general name for a member of the band, no matter what instrument he played. So it is quite likely that Fenton learned not only how to play drums but also other instruments such as fifes and bugles. After being promoted to sergeant in 1854 when he was twentytwo, Fenton completed thirteen years of service in India and returned to England the next year. The regiment settled in Manchester and then moved to Dover. Fenton probably met his future wife during these years. A John William Fenton married Anne Maria Jewell in January 1858.8 If this record is correct, then it was a last minute marriage before Fenton left for his next posting to Gibraltar. Anne Maria would have been left behind as not all sergeants were allowed to take their wives abroad. Fenton spent four years in Gibraltar and then moved to Malta in 1862. During his tour in the Mediterranean Fenton was active in the regimental band and at the end of 1862 the regiment decided to send him to the Royal Military School of Music at Kneller Hall near London. The School was opened in 1857 after an embarrassing incident during the Crimean War, when a massed band played God Save The Queen in a variety of arrangements and in different keys. At Kneller Hall Fenton received intensive lessons for eighteen months. In those days pupils practised three-and-a-half hours in the morning and two-and-a-half hours in the afternoon followed by another practice until seven o’clock. At the end of the term they had to pass exams on sight-reading and sight-singing, harmonization and composition, instrumentation, conducting and had to be able to play 210

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every instrument in a wind band. The instructors were selected from first-rate performers with a strong background in classical music. At school concerts, students played familiar pieces by Mozart, Handel and other composers.9 In 1864 Fenton successfully graduated from the school and became a part of the new generation of specially trained bandmasters. In August he was transferred to the First Battalion of the 10th (North Lincoln) Regiment of Foot. Next month he was sent to Cape Colony, on the ship Copenhagen, to join the regiment. This time he took his wife with him. During their stay in Cape Colony the Fentons adopted Jessie Woods. Jessie, born in 1863, was probably the child of one of Fenton’s fellow soldiers. At the end of 1867, after an ‘uneventful’ three years in Cape Colony, the First Battalion was ordered to Yokohama. By this time Fenton was a well-experienced career bandmaster who would become an ideal teacher for the Japanese.10 FENTON MEETS THE SATSUMA BAND

In April 1868 Fenton and his family, along with twenty members of the band, arrived in Yokohama on HMS Tamar, together with his battalion, under the command of Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Radford Norman. The battalion was part of a British/French force sent to ensure the safety of the foreign settlement during the ongoing civil war. After landing, Fenton’s battalion settled in the barracks on the Bluff. The barracks could accommodate more than a thousand troops and commanded a view of the harbour. Fenton lived with his family in the married quarters. Fenton’s battalion, headed by his band, often paraded on the streets. The splendid sound of the wind instruments must have attracted local people’s attention. In a woodblock print by Hiroshige II British troops are depicted marching along the street at the foot of the Bluff where the residence of the British Minister also stood at that time. The man leading the band is thought to be Fenton. He was a tall man of 5 feet 11½ inches. A rare photograph from those years shows him with long and narrow sideburns and a small moustache on his square face.11 In addition to their military duties Fenton’s band performed for entertainment, reflecting the versatile nature of wind band. Twice every week they appeared in front of the Officer’s Mess house, and once a week at the bandstand in the Public Gardens on the Bluff. They also played during various events, such as the balls, amateur entertainments, horse races and regattas enjoyed by the foreign settlers. When the British Minister, Sir Harry Parkes, left Japan on home leave, they played ‘Home! Sweet Home!’ at the harbour to bid him farewell.12 211

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In April 1869, when the civil war was finally coming to an end with the victory of the new Meiji Government, a Satsuma samurai, Kimotsuki Kanehiro was sent to learn British military training methods from Lieutenant-Colonel Norman. One day Kimotsuki saw Fenton’s band playing during a local street parade. Kimotsuki said later in an interview: In those days our bands played drums and fifes that sounded like ‘hugh-don-don’. But theirs, using a number of instruments I had never seen, played cheerfully, interestingly and bravely. I felt that it brings a large benefit in raising the spirit of the troops let alone it establishes the pace. I could not resist the desire for seeing our troops to play like this. So with the introduction of the Commander I asked the bandmaster [Fenton] to provide instructions. We selected twenty [sic] young samurai with ‘even teeth’ from our domain’s regiments in Kagoshima […] led by Kawamura Yoju¯ro¯ [Kawamura Sumiyoshi, future Minister of the Imperial Navy] and Nozu Shichizaemon [Nozu Shizuo, commander of the battalion of the Satsuma band] […] and dispatched them to Yokohama.13

In September of that year thirty-two members of the fife and drum band of Satsuma, arrived in Yokohama and started practising at Myo¯ko¯ji Temple, which they used as a training camp. Without any wind instruments, Fenton began teaching movements in field exercises and signal calls for bugles. He also taught how to read and write Western music scores. It was the beginning of systematic education in Western music theory. On the other hand, their costume was still very Japanese; they no longer had samurai topknots but still wore a Japanese sword. According to one pupil they wore haori – a Japanese half-coat, with Western buttons, momohiki – a Japanese workman’s trouser rolled-up to the knee and zo¯ri, straw sandals.14 A local English magazine The Far East, dated 16 July 1870, published a photograph showing more than twenty members of the Satsuma band lined up at Myo¯ko¯ji Temple. In this picture they can be seen holding fifes and bugles and carrying drums. It was a group of very young men; the youngest was, like Fenton when he first enlisted, just twelve and the oldest was twenty-seven years of age. In the picture, they wear neat Western jacket, trousers and a hat. John Reddie Black, the editor of the magazine, wrote: […] these youths […] are living in this temple […] and receiving instruction twice a day from Mr. Fenton. They have made such progress already, that they read and write music well. Their books were shown to us, and the ruling and copying, all done by themselves, were equal to the best of our manuscript books. They play all the bugle calls, well. They play easy tunes on the fife remarkably well 212

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[…] The drummers were still better up to the mark […] some of the youth have quite the appearance of gentlemen, and all remarkably intelligent and good-humoured […] They ordinarily practise in their Japanese clothes; but the moment it was proposed by their master that they should dress themselves in their uniforms for a picture, than two of the buglers sounded the call to ‘dress’, and […] in ten minutes all were in their places […] playing away as cheerfully as possible […] For this band, instruments of all kind used in military bands, […] have been ordered from Messrs. Distin [a dealer], of London. They are daily expected. And within three months of their arrival, Mr. Fenton expects his pupils will be fit for public performances of easy music.15

The members of the band must have been excited to receive at the end of July brand new instruments made by Besson & Co. The instruments included cornet, euphonium, French horn, trumpet, trombone, B-flat bass and E-flat basses (tubas), alto horn, flügelhorn, piccolo, B-flat and E-flat clarinets and bass clarinets. It was a set of instruments for a fully-fledged military band. After the arrival of the instruments Fenton came to the temple to give lessons, twice in the morning and twice in the afternoon. The pupils practised very hard and quickly developed their skills. Already in September they played at ‘an evening fete’ in the Public Gardens on the Bluff.16 By October, as Fenton had predicted, they were good enough to play before the Emperor during a military exercise at Etchu¯jima Training Field; the piece they played was the new national anthem, Kimigayo, which Fenton had composed. Nishi Kenzo¯, the bandmaster of the Satsuma band said, in a later interview that, after the performance, in His Majesty’s presence, the whole band felt a sense of great joy and the commander of the Satsuma band’s battalion, Nozu Shizuo, was extremely satisfied.17 The band members returned to Kagoshima at the end of the year. They received an award from the daimyo of Satsuma, Shimazu Tadayoshi, on their ‘graduation’. The local people, who heard the sound of wind instruments for the first time, mimicked the sound ‘He-fu-ha ototon [papa], he-fu-ha okkahan [mama].’18 Young people were attracted by the band music and the membership doubled. However, without their instructor, they could only play, over and over again, the same four or five tunes that Fenton had taught them. Such songs as God Save The Queen, Lincolnshire Poacher (quick march of the 10th Foot) and Kimigayo, echoed throughout this rural town once bombed by the British.19 MYSTERY SURROUNDING THE FIRST KIMIGAYO

There are several contradictory stories about who chose the verse Kimigayo and when and how Fenton wrote the music for it. According 213

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to Kimotsuki Kanehiro he asked Fenton to teach the pupils music that ‘celebrates our Emperor’. Fenton told Kimotsuki that the verse should not be British, but Japanese. Then Kimotsuki remembered the old poem Kimigayo and explained the verse to Fenton. Fenton approved it, as it was a poem of celebration, and immediately set it to music.20 Kimigayo is a tanka poem consisting of thirty-two syllables by an anonymous author from the Kokinshu¯, a famous tenth century anthology. It was well known and was often cited in classical literature and sung to various melodies; it was regarded simply as a celebration of the long reign of the lord and not as a national anthem. Basil Hall Chamberlain, British scholar who was employed by the Japanese Imperial Navy and later became a prominent Japanologist, made the following translation. Thousands of years of happy reign be thine; Rule on, my lord, until what are pebbles now By ages united to mighty rocks shall grow Whose venerable sides the moss doth line.21

Kimotsuki’s account, however, has been disputed. If it is correct, then Fenton must have written the music to Kimigayo before November 1869, when Kimotsuki left Yokohama. This seems consistent with a document preserved in the Imperial Navy archives, which states that Fenton’s Kimigayo was performed for the first time in the presence of the Emperor in May 1870 in Komabano, Tokyo.22 However, Nakamura Suketsune, one of Fenton’s best pupils and future bandmaster of the Imperial Navy, asserted that Kimigayo was written by Fenton after the arrival of the wind instruments from London in July 1870. According to Nakamura, before the arrival of the instruments they had used scores for fifes for the performance in the presence of the Emperor.23 Fenton’s score of Kimigayo was written in the key of E-flat, which is out of the range of the fife, indicating that he intended the work for wind band. This raises serious doubts about the truth of Kimotsuki’s account; if it is incorrect, the score, used during the performance in May 1870, was most probably a melody for the fifes and not Kimigayo written for wind band. ¯ yama Iwao, who was the comGeneral of the Imperial Army O mander of the artillery of the Satsuma army at that time, was recorded by his adjutant as recollecting that Fenton had asked Egawa, one of his pupils, if Japan had a national anthem like European nations.24 When the pupil replied no, Fenton argued that a country should have its national anthem and told Egawa that, if he could bring him an appropriate verse, then he, Fenton, would write music for it. The ¯ yama, who was meeting with issue was brought to the attention of O 214

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the commander of the Satsuma band’s battalion, Nozu Shizuo, and ¯ sako Sadakiyo. Both told O ¯ yama that a counsellor of the domain, O national anthem should be based on an old song rather than a new ¯ yama said that a verse poem. Referring to God Save The King [sic] O which prays for the prosperity and long length of the Emperor’s reign should be adopted. Then he suggested his favorite poem Kimigayo. ¯ yama left for Europe at the end of August 1870, so this meeting O must have taken place by then. ¯ yama, Nozu, as a comIt seems likely that, after the meeting with O mander of the Satsuma band’s battalion, summoned the bandmaster, Nishi Kenzo¯. According to Nishi’s later interview, Nozu instructed Nishi to ask Fenton to write the music for Kimigayo.25 Nozu ordered Nishi to play the piece two weeks later during the exercise at Etchu¯jima Training Field. Nishi met Fenton with the Satsuma interpreter Harada Munesuke. Having listened to Nishi, Fenton told him that, if he could have studied Japanese music for a couple of months, then he could have composed a ‘well-tuned’ piece. As it was, there were only two weeks left, so Fenton, without any knowledge of Japanese music or language, told Nishi that he would simply arrange thirty-two notes in ‘an interesting way’. The exercise was held in early October 1870, so the meeting between Nishi and Fenton must have taken place some¯ yama’s time in September, which seems to have been shortly after O ¯ meeting with Nozu. Nishi’s story and the story of Oyama seem to match well with each other in terms of their sequence and substance despite the fact that they were told independently. Nishi was recalling events half a century after they had happened but, as a person who understood music, his account seems to capture Fenton’s embarrassment when he was told about this ‘mission impossible’. Another version of the story goes that, in 1869, Fenton asked the interpreter Harada what his band should play, as a Japanese national anthem, on the occasion of the visit of Prince Alfred, Duke of Edinburgh,26 to Japan, in August that year. Harada, who was helping the preparations for the visit, following the suggestion of one of his colleagues, sang in front of Fenton one of the traditional Japanese melodies of Kimigayo. It was often sung in his native Satsuma with accompaniment of the local version of traditional lute biwa. Fenton quickly transcribed it.27 This story does not seem credible, because the finished work, by Fenton, used the Western major scale and had no trace of Japanese traditional music. In addition, the music was too simple for Fenton’s experienced band. Fenton would have composed a more complicated piece for his own band. As a matter of fact, the piece consisted almost entirely of minims. Fenton’s harmonization was also simple. It may be a reflection of his limited ability, but most probably it was composed for his fledgling pupils. Fenton knew that they could not play difficult music with so little time for practice. 215

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Despite its simplicity it was a graceful piece of music. Critics pointed out that the words, the intonation, and the meaning of the verse did not sit well with the melody. This certainly came from Fenton’s lack of understanding of the Japanese language. However, as long as it was performed as an instrumental piece, it was acceptable, and it was in use until 1880, when it was finally revised. Fenton himself left no account of the circumstances in which he had to write this anthem. The only clue seems to be a score sheet of Kimigayo, hand-written by Fenton himself, which was found, almost fifty years later, in an archive of the Ministry of the Imperial Household.28 Fenton wrote ‘Japanese National Hymn’ on the top of the score sheet. It was a score for horn, which strongly suggests that it was written after the arrival of the wind instruments in the summer of 1870. FENTON AS AN ‘OYATOI GAIKOKUJIN’ OF THE NAVY

In March 1871, the Satsuma band, having been expanded into two groups, left Kagoshima for Tokyo. They accompanied the newly created Goshinpei, the guards of the Emperor who now resided in Tokyo. Fenton, being close by in Yokohama, must have been delighted to see his former pupils again. One of the few records of their public appearance during this period was the second performance of Kimigayo in the presence of the Emperor in August at the Hama Rikyu¯ Palace.29 The Meiji Government, accelerating reform, abolished the domain system and started to establish a centralized army and navy. This led to the disbandment of the Satsuma band and its reorganization into the army and navy military bands. Earlier, Kawamura Sumiyoshi, head of the Naval Academy at that time, asked Fenton to become an instructor of the navy band. Kawamura knew that the future navy would be in need of a number of British advisers as it was to introduce the British naval system (on the other hand, the army was to introduce the French system but the army band fell behind because for several years it could not find a French instructor). Fenton, aware that his battalion was soon to leave Japan, faced a difficult choice. To make matters worse, his wife Anne Maria died in May. She was buried in the foreigners’ cemetery in Yokohama. That summer Fenton was discharged from the British Army at his own request after twentynine years of service and signed a contract with the newly created Japanese navy becoming one of the ‘oyatoi gaikokujin’ (employed foreigners) of the Meiji Government.30 He would be followed by other British instructors, including thirty-four advisers led by a Royal Navy officer, Sir Archibald Lucius Douglas,31 who arrived in 1873 to teach at the Academy. 216

JOHN WILLIAM FENTON (1831-1890)

The new navy band consisted of forty musicians; ten came from his former Satsuma band, including Nakamura Suketsune, who was appointed as the bandmaster. By 1873 the number of his pupils had increased to about seventy and, two years later, numbered 150 players, including fife and drum band members of the Marines. Fenton wrote the scores by hand for each of his students, often working till late into the evening. Former pupils recalled that Fenton was shortsighted and had to bend over when he read a score. The noise the members made was so great that one of the foreigners employed by the navy, who lived next to the practice hall, complained to the Academy that he could not study because of the sounds they made ‘from early morning to late evening’.32 Owing to Fenton’s diligence, and the hard work of the pupils, the bands made significant progress and their repertoire expanded to include even some opera excerpts. The navy valued Fenton highly, and his contract was extended several times. His salary increased, as well. When he was in the British army he received 3s 5d per day, around $26 a month. In the Japanese navy his initial monthly salary was already $200 and later increased to $230. He was allotted government quarters, from where he commuted by horse. In 1872 Fenton married Jane Pilkington, an American musician, who came to Japan with her brother Albert, an English teacher, who was also employed by the navy. In 1874 when the Naval Academy had the honour to receive the Emperor, on the Naval Commemoration Day, both Fenton and his brother-in-law, together with Douglas and his team, were present.33 As modernization and Westernization of society advanced, requests to perform Western-style music increased. Military bands were still virtually the only source of Western music. Bookings included performances in front of the Emperor during the opening ceremony of the first railway between Shimbashi and Yokohama in 1872 and at the dinner reception, on the occasion of His Majesty’s Birthday, at the State Guest House, the following year. The latter occasion was especially significant because it was the first time the Imperial Court served Western food and played Western music. For nearly a thousand years the reijin musicians, attached to the court, had played gagaku, ancient music for the court rituals. In 1874 they were instructed to study Western music under Fenton and Nakamura. Among the young talented reijin pupils were Oku Yoshiisa and Hayashi Hirosue, who were to later revise Fenton’s Kimigayo. As professionally trained musicians, reijin quickly acquired the skill and played various Western tunes. They played Fenton’s Kimigayo regularly including a performance during the Emperor’s Birthday reception in 1879.34 In spring 1877 Fenton’s nine-year stay in Japan came to an end. Initially the navy wanted to extend his contract for another year. 217

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However, in the beginning of that year a rebellion, led by Saigo Takamori, a powerful figure from Satsuma, who left the Meiji Government over differences about modernization, broke out. Kawamura, now Vice Minister of the Navy, was at the battlefield commanding the government forces against the rebels. The navy, wanting to extend Fenton’s contract, telegraphed Kawamura, who unexpectedly said there was no further need for Fenton’s services. He might well have been too preoccupied with the war, or concerned about the contract’s financial implications. In March the navy and the Ministry of the Imperial Household invited Fenton and his family to a farewell dinner. They gave the Fentons, in thanks for all he had done, a porcelain vase and some lengths of silk.35 In April the Fentons left Japan for the United States, his wife’s home country, on the ship The City of Tokyo. He recalled his happy days in Japan in a moving letter he wrote to Kawamura the next year: Tiskilwa, Illinois United States of America July 19th, 1878 To His Excellency, Kawamura, (Sangi) [position higher than minister], and Minister of the Japanese Imperial Navy Dear Sir, It is now many months since I left Japan, and I long to hear all about my good friends there, especially my Band pupils. I learn by the Newspapers that the Civil War [the Satsuma Rebellion] has ended and I hope that none of my friends have suffered through its devastating effects. My health is now fully restored and I am quite ready to return to my duties, should your Government be willing to employ me. Should your Excellency see an opportunity of again making use of my service I shall be very glad to return to Japan where I spent so many happy days. My Wife and Daughter join me in kind remembrances to yourself and friends. Your Excellencies, obedient servant and friend John W. Fenton Professor of music36 Unfortunately, the navy, despite the end of the war, had to decline Fenton’s offer as it had already decided to employ a German teacher, Franz Eckert, as his successor. 218

JOHN WILLIAM FENTON (1831-1890)

In 1880 Fenton was back in Britain, serving once again in the military, as Sergeant Trumpeter, an equivalent of local bandmaster, in Forfar and Kincardine Artillery Militia (later the 5th Brigade of the Scottish Division of the Royal Artillery) stationed in Montrose, Scotland. It was the regiment in which his father once served in the early 1800s. The Militia was a non-professional army consisting of locally recruited temporary soldiers. In peace-time they were ordinary citizens except that they engaged in military training several weeks in a year. Fenton was one of a small number of permanent staff who trained them. Apart from official training Fenton’s band played during the sports day of the regiment as well as for military funeral processions. They also played during such social activities as the opening of an exhibition. Fenton volunteered to be one of the regular judges in a local band competition. Fenton seemed to be enjoying his retired life teaching young people while living with his family.37 Fenton was discharged in March 1883 and returned to the US. After a long illness he died in Santa Cruz, California, 28 April 1890. In a photograph, which was preserved at Kneller Hall and published for the first time for this book, he sits on a chair in a black coat with a small gentle smile on his face.38 FENTON’S LEGACY

Fenton’s activities in Japan had a wide and long-lasting impact on the introduction of Western music. First and foremost, he laid the foundation of the Western-style military band. Fenton’s bands fulfilled both military assignments and a social role successfully. The first overseas service of the navy band was in 1874 on board the battleship Ryu¯jo¯ when she visited China to negotiate a settlement of the Taiwan Expedition. It was sent to the battlefield for the first time on board the flagship Matsushima during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95. In 1902 after the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance the bandmaster Nakamura Suketsune led his band on a visit to Britain on the battleship Asama to participate in the Fleet Review on the occasion of the coronation of King Edward VII. His band played both European and Japanese pieces such as a march from Tannhäuser and Echigojishi, a song from kabuki.39 This was the first time that a Japanese military band was sent abroad on a peace-time mission. The bands expanded their repertoire further during these years to reflect the changing social life of Japan. They incorporated string sections into their line-up and began playing orchestral pieces at public events. Many people heard Western classical music for the first time played by musicians trained in military bands. For lighter entertainment, they transcribed various Japanese songs to Western scores and 219

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performed them for the military as well as the general public. After retirement some of the former band members started private bands, which performed at company and school ceremonies as well as at dance halls. Secondly, Fenton raised the first generation of composers of Western-style music in Japan. He was the first person to teach the Japanese Western music theory in a systematic manner. He drew on his Kneller Hall training, and used textbooks, including System of Music by Charles Mandel, professor of music theory and later music director of his Alma Mater.40 Mandel’s textbook, which was intended for military band beginners, covered Western-style notation, harmony, code progression and simple compositions of quadrilles, marches and waltzes. Several talented band members and reijin musicians, taught by Fenton, became composers of Western-style music with Japanese verses and themes. One of Fenton’s talented students Tanaka Hozumi, who joined the navy band in 1873, composed the first Japanese waltz Utsukushiki Tennen (Beauty of Nature), which became famous through performances by street musicians. Some of the reijin pupils, such as Ue Sanemichi, having studied under Fenton, participated in the work of the Music Research Institute of the Ministry of Education established in 1879. Ue wrote Western-style school songs such as Ichigatsu Ichijitsu (The New Year’s Day) which is sung to this day. Their songs were successful because they did not imitate Western music, but rather wrote melancholy melodies suited to Japanese sentimentalism using Western music vocabulary. Thirdly, Fenton brought to Japan the concept of the national anthem. Before the Meiji Restoration Japanese people had a strong sense of belonging to one’s domain rather than to the nation. Fenton’s initiative helped in its own way the government’s effort to transform people’s identity and create a new sense of the nation state. Fenton’s approval of the verse served the aim of national integration centred around the Emperor. Here the British national anthem was used as a reference. Although it was revised, Fenton’s Kimigayo, the first Western-style song ever written for Japanese verse, was used during the most critical years for the government to establish its legitimacy and authority. It is noteworthy that Fenton made the suggestion that a national anthem should be written in the style of traditional music of that country. Fenton might even have been willing to help the Japanese in revising his Kimigayo along these lines. As a matter of fact, when Nakamura Suketsune made a proposal to the navy in 1876, in which Fenton’s Kimigayo should be revised in the style of court music, Fenton was supposed to transcribe, for the verse Kimigayo, the traditional melody which two people from the navy would have learnt at the Ministry of the Imperial Household.41 By this time 220

JOHN WILLIAM FENTON (1831-1890)

Nakamura had become an instructor for court musicians to teach Western music, and it may have led him to consider the possibility of court music transcribed by a British bandmaster. Historians have regarded Nakamura’s proposal as a criticism of Fenton. But Nakamura must have consulted with Fenton when he included him in this revision process. Fenton probably agreed to Nakamura’s plan, because it was in line with his original idea of a national anthem based on a traditional melody; Fenton’s contact with the court musicians would also have led him to appreciate the need for the revision. Contrary to the conventional view that Fenton’s Kimigayo was totally discarded, as a result of the revision, recent research shows that the basic rhythm and part of its melody were preserved.42 Due to the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877 Nakamura’s proposal was implemented only in 1880 after Fenton had left Japan. Without him the revised version was written by Fenton’s former pupils from the court, Oku Yoshiisa and Hayashi Hirosue. This new version of Kimigayo used, as Nakamura suggested in his proposal, the ichikotsu cho¯ scale, typical of gagaku. At the same time, some of Fenton’s rhythm and melody can still be heard. The new version retained the predominance of minims and passages of Fenton’s original, where the word and the music matched. While being Fenton’s pupils, Oku and Hayashi played his version of Kimigayo on many occasions. They must have understood the process proposed by Nakamura as a revision rather than a creation. We do not know whether Fenton knew the fate of his Kimigayo or not, but the new version, ‘a joint work’ of the teacher and his pupils, was played in front of the Emperor, for his birthday reception, that year. Fenton’s Kimigayo is, however, not lost in oblivion. It is played every year at Myo¯ko¯ji Temple at a concert, commemorating the birth of Japanese band music. In 2008 his wife’s descendants were invited and the band of the Japanese Ground Self Defence Force performed the piece to pay tribute to ‘the father of wind band’ of Japan.43 ACKNOWLEDGEMNTS I wish to thank Akiyama Toshio, Honorary President of the Japanese Band Directors’ Association, Tsukahara Yasuko, Professor of Tokyo University of the Arts, Major (Retd) Roger Swift of Royal Military School of Music, Adrian Wilkinson of Lincolnshire Archives and Susan Jeffreys for their generous help and advice. The views expressed are my own and should not be taken as official Japanese government policy. BIBLIOGRAPHY

Abe Kan’ichi ed., Burasu Bando no Shakaishi (Social History of Brass Bands), Tokyo, Seikyu¯-sha, 2001. 221

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

Akiyama Toshio, Nihon Suiso¯gaku no Chichi William Fenton wo Otte (Following the Life of the Father of Japan’s Wind Band William Fenton), Ongaku Bunka no So¯zo¯, Vol.52, Tokyo, 2009, pp. 44–6. Black, John Reddie, Young Japan: Yokohama and Yedo Vol.1–2, London, Trubner & Company, 1881. Farmer, Henry George, History of the Royal Artillery Band 1762–1953, London, Royal Artillery Institution, 1954. Higgins, R.T. ed., Records of King’s Own Borderers or Old Edinburgh Regiment, London, Chapman and Hall, 1873. Holmes, Richard, Soldiers: Army Lives and Loyalties From Redcoats to Dusty Warriors, London, HarperPress, 2011. Imperial Navy records, K¯obun Ruisan, K¯obun Biko¯, K¯obun Gensho and H¯orei Zensho, The National Institute for Defence Studies, Ministry of Defence, Tokyo. Koyama Sakunosuke, Kokka Kimigayo no Yurai (The Origin of the National Anthem Kimigayo), Tokyo, 1941. Lee, Albert, The History of the Tenth Foot, Aldershot, Gale & Polden, 1911. Nakamura Rihei, Y¯ogaku Do¯nyu¯ Sha no Kiseki (The Paths of Pioneers in Introducing Western Music), Tokyo, To¯suishobo¯, 1993, pp. 67–126. The National Archives of Japan, Kaigun Gungakutai Enkaku Shiryo¯ (Materials on the History of Navy Band), Tokyo, 1887 (Japan Centre for Asian Historical Records (JACAR) Ref A07090089600). Odagiri Nobuo, Kokka Kimigayo Ko¯ wa (Discourse on National Anthem Kimigayo), Tokyo, Kyo¯eki-sho¯sha Shoten, 1929. Shinohara Hiroshi, Nihon Kaigun Oyatoi Gaikoku Jin, Tokyo, Chu¯o¯ko¯ronsha, 1988. Tsukahara Yasuko, Ju¯kyu¯ Seiki no Nihon ni okeru Seiyo¯ Ongaku no Juyo¯ (Introduction of Western Music in 19th Century Japan), Tokyo, Tagashuppan, 1993, pp. 160–240. Turner, Gordon and Turner, Alwyn, The Trumpets will Sound, the Story of the Royal Military School of Music, Kneller Hall, Tunfridge Wells, Parapress, 1996. Turner, Gordon and Turner, Alwyn, The History of British Military Bands, Vol.1 & 2, Staplehurst, Spellmount,1994. Wada Shinjiro¯, Kimigayo to Banzai (Kimigayo and Banzai), Tokyo, Ko¯fu¯kan Shoten,1932. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

Pamela Statham-Drew, James Stirling: Admiral and Founding Governor of Western Australia, Crawley, University of Australia Press, 2003, p. 475. William Henry Poyntz, Per Mare, Per Terram: Reminiscences of Thirty-two Years’ Military, Naval, and Constabulary Service, London, Economic Print. & Publishing Company, 1892, p. 214. For the joint exercise see Black, Vol.1, p. 413. For British advisers see, Grace Foxx, Britain and Japan 1858–1883, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1969, pp. 254–5 and Shinohara. Fenton’s date of birth 12 March 1831 was established by Akiyama through the inscription of Fenton’s grave in Santa Cruz, California. 222

JOHN WILLIAM FENTON (1831-1890)

5

6

7

8

9 10

11

12

13

14 15 16 17

18 19 20 21 22 23

There is a record of his baptism at St Multose church in Kinsale dated 10 April 1831, which seems to support the birth date on the inscription. I have found an entry in General Register Office Regimental Birth Indices (vol.1261, p. 1) indicating that Fenton was born exactly two years earlier (12 March 1829) and was baptized on 12 April 1829. However, I was not able to find the baptismal record that supports this. The fact that this GRO record was made several years after Fenton’s birth by an officer in the 25th foot suggests that Fenton already had certain connections with the regiment before he enlisted and the record may be distorted in favour of his early enlistment, although army pension record assumes that he was even born one more year earlier. See notes 6, 7 and 37 below. For the birth and death of Fenton’s father see The National Archives (TNA), WO12/7403. See also L.C. Broughton ed., Memoirs of the 65th Regiment 1st Battn., The York & Lancaster Regt., 1756–1913, London, William Clowes & Sons, 1914. The reason for joining the 25th foot is unclear but his mother might have received some kind of assistance from the regiment which was also in the West Indies when the father died. Another guess is that Fenton might have returned to Scotland where his father’s relatives lived and the 25th recruited regularly. TNA, WO12/4192–4212. Fenton’s pension record WO97/1954 treats him as though he was born in 1828. Marriage record of 13 January 1858 in Ashton under Lyne, Lancashire, England. England & Wales Marriages, 1538–1940 [in database on-line at Ancestry.com]. Fenton was allowed on the married role (married establishment) in July 1864 (WO12/2806). See Turner and Turner (1996), pp. 15–40. TNA, WO12/ 2800–2808. For Jessie Woods’ birth see GRO Regimental Birth Indices, Vol.970, page 1. Lincolnshire county council archives. Catalogue title Copy photograph of sergeants of the 1st Battn of the 10th Foot at the Bluff Camp, Yokohama, July 1871. The Far East, Yokohama, 1 July 1871 and The Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, 27 May 1871. Kimotsuki’s interview in Nisshu¯ Shimbun, 3 November 1905, quoted in Koyama, pp. 52–6. Author’s translation. Takasaki Yoshiyuki’s interview quoted in Odagiri, pp. 8–9. The Far East, 16 July 1870. Black, Vol.2, p. 293. Nishi’s interview in Kagoshima Shimbun, 8–11 January 1919, quoted in Koyama, pp. 38–44. Ibid. p. 41 The Far East, 1 July 1871. Kimotsuki’s interview in Koyama, p. 54. Quoted in Wada. Kaigun Gungakutai Enkaku Shiryo¯ . Nakamura’s letter to Koyama dated 20 October 1912 (?) in Koyama, p. 61, and his letter to Abe Sueisa (date unknown) in Odagiri, p. 17. 223

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24

25 26

27

28

29 30

31

32

33

34 35

36 37

38

39

40

41

¯ yama’s story recorded by his adjutant Hayashida Yoshitaro¯ in a letter O to Wada dated 9 October 1912 quoted in Wada, pp. 55–8. See also ¯ yama Iwao (Field Marshal O ¯ yama Iwao), Inotani So¯goro¯, Gensui O Tokyo, Senryu¯do¯, 1930, pp. 26–8 and pp. 35–51. Nishi’s interview quoted in Koyama, p. 40. For an account of the visit by the Duke of Edinburgh to Japan see ‘Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Period’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume II, ed.Ian Nish, Japan Library, 1997, pp. 80–4. Sawa Kannojo¯, Kaigun Nanaju¯-nen Shidan (Navy’s Seventy Years’ History), Tokyo, Bunseido¯shisha, 1942, pp. 339–43. Tamura Torazo¯, Kimigayo no Raireki oyobi sono Toriatsukai ho¯ (The Origin of Kimigayo and its Treatment), Kyo¯iku Kenkyu¯, 176, Tokyo, Dainippon Tosho, 1918. Nishi’s interview in Koyama, p. 41. For Fenton’s contract with the navy see JACAR Ref.C09090537000 in K¯obun Ruisan Vol.36, 1871. For an account of the naval mission led by Archibald Douglas see the chapter by Ian Gow in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume III, ed J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999, pp. 144–57. For Fenton’s hard work described in navy record on renewal of the contract see Kaigun Gungakutai Enkaku Shiryo¯ quoted in Wada, p. 146. For complaints by Dutch naval officer H.K. Koning see JACAR Ref. C09111258600 in Ko¯ bun Ruisan Vol.1, 1873. For Fenton’s marriage with Jane Pilkington see TNA FO345/34. For Naval Commemoration day see Ho¯ rei Zensho (7 January 1874) quoted in Wada, p. 146. Wada, p. 114. For Kawamura’s telegraph see JACAR Ref. C09112375500 in K o¯ bun Ruisan, Vol.25, 1877. For gifts to Fenton see JACAR Ref.C06090634900 in Ko¯ bun Biko¯, Vol. 24, 1877. JACAR Ref.C09101265400 in Ko¯ bun Gensho, Vol.62, 1878. TNA, WO16/672. For Fenton’s activities in Montrose see articles in Dundee Courie, 24 August 1880, 10 January and 23 July 1881, 21 April and 22 June 1882. Fenton lived with his wife Jane and two adopted daughters on 18 George Street. See 1881 census record in www. scotlandspeople.gov.uk. According to the record Fenton was fifty, which suggests that he was born in 1831. Photograph from a photo album preserved at Kneller Hall. Fenton’s photograph is used with kind permission of the School. His middle initial is misspelled. A British newspaper article quoted in Nakamura’s diary dated 18 June 1902 in Gakusui Kai ed., Kaigun Gungakutai (The Navy Band), p. 33, Tokyo, Kokusho Kanko¯ Kai, 1984. Charles Mandel, Mandel’s System of Music, London, Boosey & Co., 1869. Fenton donated four copies of this book to the Academy just before he left Japan. See JACAR Ref. C09100213700 in Ko¯ bun Gensho Vol.34, 1877. Koyama, pp. 123–7. 224

JOHN WILLIAM FENTON (1831-1890)

42

43

Herrman Gottschewski, Hoiku sho¯ka and the melody of Japanese national anthem Kimi ga yo, To¯ yo¯ Ongaku Kenkyu¯, no.68, Tokyo, To¯yo¯ Ongaku Gakkai (The Society for Research in Asiatic Music), 2003. Akiyama’s research on the fate of Fenton, after he left Japan, led to the contact with Fenton’s second wife Jane Pilkington’s descendants in the US, who helped Akiyama in his research. Akiyama’s interview in Daily Telegraph on 2 March 2006 ‘Japanese seek family of bandsman Fenton’, caught their eye. Akiyama invited the descendants to this concert.

225

19

Britain and Japan: Exchanges in Music before the Second World War AKIRA IMAMURA

INTRODUCTION

As related in my portrait of John William Fenton in this volume British music was first played in Japan by a military band, which arrived in Nagasaki in 1854. From then on the military became the main source of Western music in nineteenth century Japan. This was closely related to the modernization priorities of the Meiji Government. After the military the next priority for the Meiji leaders was education and schools. As they sought to create a national system of education, music was temporarily left to one side because of a lack of consensus on what should be taught. British vocal music provided a solution in a unique way. SCOTTISH FOLK TUNES IN JAPANESE SCHOOLS

During its visit to Britain in 1872 the famous mission led by Iwakura Tomomi made a stop at a school in London during a music lesson. The official record of the mission described in detail how children were learning the basics of music through the clapping of their hands under the teacher’s instructions.1 But this had little impact on music education in Japan. Luther Whiting Mason, an American music educator, who had been invited to Japan by Isawa Shuji, played a leading role in early music education in Japan. Isawa was one of Mason’s former pupils who had become head of the newly established Music Research Institute of the Ministry of Education. Isawa was looking for suitable songs for Japanese school children as his Ministry considered that most traditional Japanese songs were sung at drinking parties or theatrical performances and were thus ‘unhealthy’ for children. Mason and Isawa decided to include as many ‘healthy’ foreign songs 226

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as possible in their first music textbook published in 1882. Of its thirty-three songs five were British. They were Auld Lang Syne, The Bluebells of Scotland, Ye Banks and Braes, The Land o’the Leal and Glorious Apollo. With the exception of the last piece, which was written by an eighteenth century English composer Samuel Webbe, all the others were Scottish folk tunes.2 Mason proposed the inclusion of these Scottish folk tunes not only because he had been active in Boston, where British cultural influence was still strong, but also because he apparently found certain similarities between Scottish and Japanese traditional songs. The local English newspaper The Japan Weekly Mail wrote in 1880 when Mason first arrived in Japan: This gentleman [Mason] has already set to foreign music several of the Japanese national songs and has devoted some time during the last two years to the study of the sounds of the Japanese language and their adaptability to the foreign scale of music. […] Such foreign songs as may be found suitable will be translated into Japanese and the native repertory will also be drawn upon; and its best songs set to music on the European scale. The first work will be to find how many pure melodies exist in Japan, founded upon the five-tone scale (for Mr Mason has discovered that the Japanese scale contains five tones only, being deficient of the fourth and seventh of the Italian gamut).3

Mason noticed that the pentatonic scale consisting of C, D, E, G, A (later called in Japan yo-na-nuki scale or scale without the fourth and seventh notes) was often used in Japanese traditional folk tunes or children’s songs. It was also common in Scottish folk music and Mason may have thought it would sound familiar to the Japanese. In fact, these songs were very much in tune with Japanese sentimentalism and even after Mason left Japan, Scottish songs, which used this scale, such as Comin’ Thro’ The Rye and Annie Laurie were included in subsequent textbooks. Many of them indeed became part of the singing repertory of Japanese people. The Ministry saw music as a tool to teach children ethical values and employed famous writers to write ‘proper’ lyrics rather than directly translating the original text. Thus Auld Lang Syne was changed into a song about a farewell by schoolmates who had studied hard even under the light of fireflies in the evening. It was given a new title Hotaru no Hikari, or Glow of a Firefly and became a traditional song at graduation ceremonies in Japan. Comin’ Thro’ The Rye was transformed into a song about feeling homesick (the sentimental feeling of being far away from home and family). Glorious Apollo, a famous glee, was sung to Kimigayo, although it was soon discarded because there was already another melody written by court musicians 227

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to the same verse. At the same time other songs by English composers such as O Come All Ye Faithful and Home! Sweet Home!, which were included in the later textbooks, retained the original themes. Many of the songs remained popular even in the post-war period and Home! Sweet Home! Was selected in 2006 by the Agency for Cultural Affairs as one of the 100 Songs of Japan. Mason and Isawa’s eclectic experiment was less successful at this stage in producing new Japanese songs with proper lyrics set to a European scale. There were only two Japanese songs written in this way in the first textbook. The number of such songs, many of which were written by court musicians who studied Western music, increased gradually in subsequent years but with a few exceptions they are not sung nowadays. Songs with more enduring value began to appear in 1900s when a new generation of composers, such as Taki Rentaro¯ and Yamada Ko¯saku, who mastered Western music theory and classical tradition, emerged. ¯ AND JAPONISME IN MUSIC KAWAKAMI OTOJIRO

Japanese music at first seemed dissonant to the British. Ernest Satow in his A Diplomat in Japan gave one of the earliest accounts of the impression of Japanese music on Western ears. When he heard in 1867 the sounds of the shamisen, the traditional three string lute, which accompanied Japanese dance, he wrote; ‘it takes a long apprenticeship to accustom the European ear to music constructed with a set of intervals that are different enough from ours to make nine-tenth of the note seem out of tune’.4 People in London had a similar impression when they heard the music that accompanied one of the first shows by professional entertainers from Japan. While praising the performance by Matsui Gensui’s troupe of top spinners at St. Martin’s Hall in 1867, The Times wrote ‘the hilarity thus promoted was qualified only by a dismal accompaniment, played on the musical instruments of Japan’.5 After these first encounters there was a sharp rise of interest in Europe in Japanese culture. This came to be termed Japonisme. Although Japanese fine art and artifacts were the prime sources of Japonisme, music did have a part in its popularity through its role in the performing arts. When the Japanese Village was opened in 1885 in London there was a small theatre, which showed Japanese dance accompanied by shamisen music, probably similar to what Satow had heard, but this time the impression created was slightly better. The Illustrated London News wrote; ‘a sound of barbaric, but not discordant, music comes in single notes from the annexe, where vocal and instrumental performance is going on’.6 The famous operetta The Mikado, premiered in the same year was composed in the style of 228

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Western music but contained one Japanese song, Miya Sama Miya Sama.7 William Gilbert used it when the Mikado entered as if it were the Japanese national anthem.8 In fact it was a military song sung by the Emperor’s soldiers during the civil war in 1868. The similarly popular production of a Japanese theme play, The Geisha, A Story of a Tea-house by Sidney Jones also contained a Japanese song Chon Kina, which was often sung in Japan in those years during geisha parties. Despite their lack of authenticity as real Japanese music these works prepared audiences for hearing Japanese music played during professional theatrical performances by Japanese actors. In 1900 Kawakami Otojiro¯ (1864–1911) and his troupe came to London at the height of Japonisme in Europe. This was the first Japanese professional theatre company ever to visit Britain. After becoming famous in Japan by singing Oppekepe Bushi, a rap-like political satire, Kawakami launched his own troupe in 1891. He called his style Shinpa (the New School), as compared to kabuki, which according to him was the old school. Nevertheless during their first tour to the West they put on shows, which were in fact simplified kabuki derived from classical works with an emphasis on dance and action with limited dialogue. The music was the same as kabuki music nagauta, which used shamisen and Japanese drums, except that there were fewer musicians. At first the Coronet Theatre at Notting Hill Gate where they performed was half empty, but gradually they attracted the attention of theatregoers. One critic wrote; ‘[the public] became aware of the fact that a miniature comedy and tragedy of rare delicacy and charm, as naïf as they were beautiful, could be seen […] in the prosaic neighbourhood of Notting Hill’.9 The audience was charmed by the elegant dance of Otojiro¯’s wife and former geisha, Sadayakko, especially her death scene at the end of The Geisha and the Night based on the famous classics Musume Do¯jo¯ji and Saya-ate. Henri Louis Bischoffsheim, a wealthy banker living in Mayfair, wanted the troupe to perform during one of his receptions for London’s high society. Arthur Diosy, one of the founders of the Japan Society, acting as an intermediary, arranged this for one evening when the guest of honour was Edward, the Prince of Wales. There was thunderous applause after Sadayakko collapsed into her lover’s arm in the finale. Otojiro¯ and Sadayakko were presented to the prince and had a brief conversation.10 Many traditional genres in Japanese music, including nagauta, were incidental or narrative music, which can best be appreciated when played as an integral part of a play. After more than thirty years from the first encounters with Japanese music the British audience was finally given the opportunity to hear such music and enjoyed the experience. 229

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FREDERIC GAISBERG AND THE RECORDING OF JAPANESE MUSIC

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the emergence of sound recording technology suitable for mass production.11 Frederic William Gaisberg (1873–1951) of London’s Gramophone Company was the first recording engineer to make recordings of Japanese music using this technology. The earliest recording is of a performance by the Kawakami troupe during the Paris Exposition of 1900, which the troupe visited after London. The discs were sold in Europe until 1903 but were lost until they were rediscovered in 1995 in the EMI (successor of the Gramophone Company) archive. These oldest existing recordings of Japanese music were made into CD sets. They included not only a scene from The Geisha and the Night but also an adapted version of The Merchant of Venice, which they ‘improvised’ during the tour.12 Gaisberg’s visit to Tokyo in 1903 resulted in more extensive recording of Japanese music. He settled in a hotel room, which became his recording studio, with the equipment that he had brought from London. He wrote in his diary during the audition: Wed 4th [February, 1903]. […] We made some 54 records. Japanese music is simply too horrible, but funny to relate, Europeans who have been long in the country profess to really enjoy it, and say that there is more in the music & acting than casual observer would believe […] Friday 13th. I am beginning to like their music a little. Today we had a Geisha band, and to see these little women with big European band instruments was the funniest thing imaginable. This band plays both on Japanese & European instruments. I took a photograph of them.13

During his stay in Japan Gaisberg eventually recorded 273 discs covering the following genres: gagaku (court music) yo¯kyoku (music of no¯h theatre) kyo¯gen (comic theatre played between no¯h acts) tokiwazu, gidayu¯, kiyomoto (various sub-genres of narrative music jo¯ruri) nagauta (music of kabuki) dodoitsu, kappore (various sub-genres of zokkyoku music played for entertainment during drinking party and vaudeville) sankyoku (ensemble music played by shamisen, koto and shakuhachi) ro¯kyoku (narrative singing began in Meiji-era often accompanied by shamisen) rakugo (comical storytelling), kowairo (art of voice imitation), shigin (reciting of poems with distinctive intonation) Western-style band music. 230

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These were all traditional genres except for a geisha band. This was Azuma Fujin Ongaku Renchu¯, a women only Western-style wind band, which was still a rare phenomenon. Henry James Black, the son of John Reddie Black, a Scottish born publisher in Yokohama, assisted Gaisberg in selecting the traditional genres for recording. Henry Black was the first foreign rakugo-ka (comical storyteller) and Gaisberg made a recording of him performing in Japanese. Gaisberg’s recordings in Japan were successful in capturing Japanese traditional music and performing arts in their entirety just before Western influence started to be felt. This made the recordings of immense historical value. In 1907, production of disc and gramophone records started in Japan. The first record label Nipponophone Co. Ltd (Nihon Chikuonki Sho¯kai) was established three years later with technical assistance from UK Columbia Gramophone Company. With the advance of modernization the Japanese recording industry grew further creating a sophisticated and appreciative audience. Gaisberg himself never went back to Japan to see these developments, but reminiscing about his visit to Japan in his autobiography published in 1942 he wrote: I had already met signs of the great transition from Oriental to Western music that was to take place in Japan and surprise the world thirty years later. But I could hardly foresee that a European musician like Heifetz would one day give a series of twelve recitals in a month to sold out houses, or that 100,000 records of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony would be bought by Japanese gramophone enthusiasts.14 FUJIWARA YOSHIE AND CHANGING JAPAN-UK RELATIONS

According to one observer, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 was ‘the object in many quarters of music hall and comic opera jest rather than of serious political analysis’.15 Such attitudes changed when the Russo-Japanese War started in 1904. Leo Dryden, known as ‘Kipling of the Halls’, sang For Freedom and Japan in support of Britain’s ally Japan.16 Jingoism had become a favourite theme for some music hall singers like Dryden. As Japan emerged as the victor in the war the Japanese government sent a Western-style military band to the JapanBritish Exhibition in Shepherd’s Bush in 1910 to boost its image as a great power, although kabuki and other traditional entertainments were also brought to amuse the public.17 Meanwhile, British comic opera traditions influenced Japan in the first decades of the twentieth century. The American born impresario Maurice Bandmann (1873–1922) took his Bandman Theatre Company to Japan twelve times between 1906 and 1921. Based in Calcutta the company recruited artists from England and toured the Middle East, South-East Asia and the Far East. The Japanese audience 231

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Fujiwara Yoshie

enjoyed the latest works of Edwardian musical comedy such as A Chinese Honeymoon (1901), The Arcadians (1909) and Betty (1914).18 They made a significant impact on fledgling Japanese comic opera artists who initiated the Asakusa Opera Movement in Tokyo after the First World War. Fujiwara Yoshie (1898–1976) was a tenor who started his career in Asakusa during these years. He was the illegitimate child of Neil B. Reid, a Scottish merchant, and a geisha from Osaka. Reid was stationed in Shimonoseki as head of the subsidiary of Holme, Ringer and Company. Fujiwara’s early life was like a roller-coaster.19 After playing some minor roles in Asakusa, he went to Italy in 1920 to study opera. He quickly spent all the money his father had sent him and moved to his friend’s house in London. Earning a living by singing at cafés he was introduced to Yoshida Shigeru, the future Prime Minister, who at that time was a First Secretary at the Embassy of Japan. In 1921 Yoshida organized for Fujiwara his first recital at the Langham Hotel. His songs, including the masterpiece Ko¯jo¯ no Tsuki by Taki Rentaro¯, were well received by the journalists and music critics invited by Yoshida. After he returned to Japan Fujiwara became famous through his singing of both opera arias and popular tunes. As a successful singer he revisited London almost every two years during the 1920s. The following is an account by a journalist of his London concert in 1926: Though London has heard a Japanese prima donna admirably fill the role of Madam Butterfly, Japanese singers, especially men, who can make an appeal to Western ears, were very rare. The singer, Mr Fujiwara, had a very great success on this his first appearance in this country [sic]. He sang mostly Italian songs but gave several English songs with perfect sympathy.20

Although the journalist was not impressed by his Japanese songs Fujiwara knew that they always received the biggest applause from 232

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a British audience. In April 1928 Fujiwara sang seven Japanese songs at the Royal Albert Hall (the others were five Italian opera excerpts). Of these seven songs six were written or arranged by Taki Rentaro¯ and Yamada Ko¯saku, who both came from the Western classical music tradition.21 The only exception was a ryu¯ko¯ka song titled Hoko wo Osamete by Nakayama Shimpei. Ryu¯ko¯ka, literally popular song, was a new genre emerged in the late 1920s. While they were based on Western music theory many of them used yona-nuki scale to reflect the melancholic mood of ordinary people. Ryu¯ko¯ka songs were intended to achieve commercial success through mass sales of record discs. Hoko wo Osamete was one of Fujiwara’s hits of 1928. In the 1930s as American influenced jazz-style songs grew popular in Japan direct musical interaction with the UK weakened. This was compounded by the deterioration in political relations between the two countries. Even Fujiwara at the request of the authorities had recorded a song about the Japanese military action in Manchuria. In May 1938, one year after the war with China had started, he visited London and again met Yoshida Shigeru, who was then Japanese Ambassador in London. Yoshida invited Fujiwara to a reception at his residence, where Fujiwara sang nine songs to the five hundred guests, including six cabinet members and Mrs Chamberlain, the wife of the Prime Minister. Again his Japanese songs received the biggest applause. On the next day when Fujiwara came to bid farewell Yoshida told him ‘Your country will be in a big trouble if you continue what you are doing now.’22 The following year the Japanese Government commissioned Benjamin Britten to write a piece for the 2600th anniversary of Imperial Dynasty scheduled for 1940. We do not know why this pacifist composer was selected, but his Sinfonia da Requiem was turned down because its mood was considered inappropriate for the celebrations. This episode left bitter feelings on both sides.23 Several month after Japan declared war against the US and Britain in December 1941 Fujiwara and his opera colleagues were sent to the Chinese front to entertain Japanese soldiers. At home the authorities banned restaurants and shops from playing ‘enemy’s music’ and selling records imported from these countries. The 1943 decree banned more than one thousand records including such British titles as Londonderry Air, Sussex by the Sea, Lo! Hear the Gentle Lark and In a Chinese Temple Garden. Ironically, the fact that the decree complained about the continuous violations of previous bans showed that there had been strong demand for these records. Interestingly, the decree exempted Japanese versions of such songs as Home! Sweet Home! and Last Rose of Summer saying that they were ‘digested in a Japanese way in a long period of time and blended into Japanese life’.24 These songs had been first included in school textbooks in the 1880s retaining original themes and have been popular ever since. 233

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The Japanese version of Last Rose of Summer was apparently recorded twelve times between 1928 and 1940. The exemptions in the decree demonstrated that these songs had evoked much the same sentiments among Japanese and British people alike. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

¯ Kairan Jikki Dai Nihen, Kume Kunitake, Tokumei Zenken Taishi Bei O Tokyo, Hakubun-sha, 1878. (The Iwakura Embassy, 1871–1873 : A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary’s Journal of Observation Through the United States of America and Europe, Volume 2, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 2002, p. 96.) Ministry of Education, Sho¯gaku Sho¯ka Shohen (Elementary School Songs: Book One), Tokyo, 1882. Of thirty-three songs the number of British songs was the second largest after six German ones if we exclude thirteen elementary études Mason selected from the textbook he compiled in Boston. The Japan Weekly Mail, Yokohama, 6 March 1880. Ernest Satow, A Diplomat in Japan, London, Seely, Service & Co, 1921. (Reprinted by Stone Bridge Press, 2006, p. 200.) The Times, 14 February 1867, quoted in Andrew Cobbing, The Japanese Discovery of Victorian Britain, Oxon, Routledge, 1998, p. 111. The Illustrated London News, 21 February 1885, quoted in Hugh Cortazzi, Japan in Late Victorian London; The Japanese Village in Knightsbridge and the Mikado, 1885, Norwich, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures, 2009, p. 15. Michael Beckerman, The Sword on the Wall: Japanese Elements and Their Significance in ‘The Mikado’, The Musical Quarterly, Vol.73, No.3, Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989, pp.303–19. William Gilbert, The Story of The Mikado, London, Daniel O’connor, 1921, p. 92. Osman Edwards, Japanese Plays And Playfellows, London, Heinemann, 1901, p. 66. Lesley Downer, Madame Sadayakko the geisha who seduced the West, London, Review, pp. 166–8. In 1888 German-born American Emile Berliner invented flat record discs suitable for mass production and established the Gramophone Company in London in 1897. Gaisberg who initially worked for Berliner was sent to London to become a recording engineer of the company. J. Scott Miller, Dispossessed Melodies, Recordings of the Kawakami Theater Troupe, Monumenta Nipponica, Vol.53, No.2, Tokyo, Sophia University, Summer, 1998, pp. 225–35. Jerrold Northrop Moor, A Voice in Time: the Gramophone of Fred Gaisberg 1873–1951, London, Hamilton, 1976, p. 82 Frederic W. Gaisberg, The Music goes Round, New York, Macmillan, 1942, p. 61 David Steels, Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1902–1923: a Marriage of Convenience, The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000, Volume I:

234

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The Political-Diplomatic Dimension, 1600–1930, edited by Ian Nish and Yoichi Kibata, London, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000, p. 197. 16 Although I was not able to find the lyrics of this song there is a brief reference to it in Terry Hallet, Bristol’s Forgotten Empire, Westbury, Wiltshire, The Badger Press, 2000, p. 44. For the jingoism of some of the music hall songs see Chapter 7 of Dave Russell, Popular Music in England 1840–1914: A Social History, second edition, Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1997. 17 Official Guide, Japan-British Exhibition, Derby & London, Bemrose & Sons, 1910, pp. 84 and 92. 18 Masui Keiji, Nippon Opera Shi˜1952 (History of Japanese Opera up to 1952), Tokyo, Suiyo¯ -sha, 2003, p. 56 and pp. 456–61. 19 Fujiwra Yoshie, Uta ni Iki Koi ni Iki (I lived for art, I lived for love), Tokyo, Bungei Shunjyu¯, 1967. 20 Derby Daily Telegraph, 14 January 1926. The prima donna referred here was most likely Miura Tamaki. 21 The Royal Albert Hall archives. The six songs were Ko¯jo¯ no Tsuki by Taki Rentaro¯ , Kane ga Narimasu by Yamada Ko¯ saku, traditional folk tunes Oki no Kamome and Magouta arranged by Yamada and children’s songs Karasu to Suzume and Chidori also arranged by Yamada. 22 Fujiwara, p. 189. 23 See the chapter on Benjamin Britten by Jason James in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume VIII edited by Hugh Cortazzi, London, Global Oriental, 2013. 24 Cabinet Information Bureau, Shu¯ho¯ (Weekly Report), No.328, Tokyo, 27 January 1943, p. 16. (The views expressed are my own and should not be taken as official Japanese government policy.)

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Kazuo Kikuta (1908–1973), Japanese Impressario and Lover of Charles Dickens: A Personal Memoir NOBUKO ALBERY

Kazuo Kikuta was my boss at To¯ho¯ Theatre Company from 1963 till his death in 1973. I consider him an unsung hero, who helped to save Japan from urban unrest and the Japanese from despairing in those bleak post-war years, and also as someone, whose enduring love of Dickens – Oliver Twist in particular – paved the way for the later influx of the made-in-UK musicals to Japan. By the time I graduated from New York University’s theatre arts department in 1963, returned to Tokyo and asked for a job with To¯ho¯, Kikuta Kazuo had long been a national icon for the popular commercial theatre, as opposed to the state subsidized theatres; he was not only an implausibly prolific playwright (he is reputed to have written one thousand and several hundred original and adapted plays, in his prime ten full-length plays a year), theatre producer, director, infallible talent scout but also managing director of To¯ho¯’s Theatre Department, part of the colossal Hankyu¯-To¯ho¯ concern. 236

KAZUO KIKUTA (1908-1973)

Hankyu¯ owned numerous companies ranging from thriving Hankyu¯ Railways, Hankyu¯ department stores, an internationally known division for production and distribution of films, the world’s unique unmarried females only Takarazuka Revue Theatre with its ever increasing fanatic fans, a nation-wide chain of cinema houses, a music publishing house, costume and backstage production units, etc. Kikuta, who did not own a single share in To¯ho¯-Hankyu¯ concern, was a respected member of the Hankyu¯-To¯ho¯ board of directors. His position was secured solely by his inexhaustible talent and hard work. When he declared that he wished to buy the exorbitantly priced Japanese language rights to My Fair Lady, his conservative, risk-averse colleagues on the board were horrified and hostile; but the meek, diminutive man with a moustache, blinking his beady eyes behind mushroom-thick circular glasses stood firm. When the first ‘imported’ Broadway musical, directed by Kikuta, opened in late 1963, it was an instant, resounding success; people slept outside the box office to buy returned tickets. Had it not been for My Fair Lady’s impressive success and Kikuta’s determination to go on introducing Broadway plays and musicals, I would not have been engaged to represent him in New York at such a young age and so soon after my graduation. Citing the strict exchange control law then in force and the fact that his theatre department had no income in hard currencies as did the film department with a string of Kurosawa masterpieces, Kikuta offered me a monthly salary of 9,000 yen (at the time 25 US dollars), paid in yen to my father, adding: ‘Earn your living by arubaito (Arbeit) and work for us in your spare time. Now, get me Kiss Me Kate.’ Kiss Me Kate was followed by The Sound of Music, The King and I, Oklahoma, South of Pacific, Miracle Worker, Fiddler on the Roof, and others, (all in my spare time, for 9,000 yen a month which my father received). Then, hours after midnight in New York and late in the afternoon in Tokyo, Kikuta, whom everyone from stage-door keepers to every Minister of Culture addressed as ‘Sensei’, was on the line himself and said without preamble: ‘I love Dickens, you know?’ All Japan knew. Abandoned in Manchuria aged four months in 1908, he had led the most pitiably precarious childhood, passed on from one foster parent to another from Manchuria to Formosa and finally to Kobe, where from age twelve he had been sent to various shops as an apprentice and begun writing poems at night. When he was seventeen he fled to Tokyo and worked in a printer’s shop, where he had the luck of meeting a well-known poet, Sato¯ Hachiro¯, who saw the boy’s talent, took him in as an all-purpose house-boy, lodged and fed him, and found him a job as copier of scripts for a theatre company, who put on popular comedies, two new plays each month, 237

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in a now-defunct theatre inside Asakusa Park in Tokyo’s popular quarters. The war came, he went on writing, some seventy full length plays (several of his artistically highest quality works were written under the B29 air raids), many of which, inescapably, were to promote patriotic wartime fervour. After the defeat, fearing arrest and prison as a war criminal, he boldly reported himself to CIE (Civil Information and Education) instead of hiding in the remote countryside. To a certain Mr Keith in charge of performing arts he said: ‘I wrote on my own volition many pro-war plays. No one forced me. I wanted Japan to win. I’m asked to write new plays; I must know before accepting the offer if I’ll be arrested as a war criminal or not.’ Mr Keith slapped him on the back and said: ‘Go on writing. Good luck!’ Not the sort of reception imaginable from a Japanese military censorship officer. Kikuta later wrote that he had staggered out of the GHQ building with tears pouring down his face. CIE then asked him to write a nightly, prime-time 15-minute soap-opera. This was at a time when the CIE censorship was particularly vigilant; at the Kabuki theatre and elsewhere, revenge attacks, hara-kiri, and other scenes of atrocity every mention of the emperor, the occupation army, jeeps, GIs’ misconducts, etc. were strictly prohibited. But this new radio drama was intended to call the public’s charitable attention to the hundreds of thousands of war-orphans sleeping under the raised railway trucks in big cities and often turning into petty thieves and pickpockets. Kikuta wrote about a band of orphans and homeless men and women, the latter mostly ‘panpan’ – prostitutes – who survived the cruel daily hardship thanks to their optimism, comradeship and a tough but endearing insouciance. Each evening in those hungry, penurious years, every family lucky enough to still possess a functioning radio gathered round the radio, often inviting the neighbours whose radios like much else had been destroyed in the air-raids, and, so long as there was no electricity breakdown, listened. I can still recall the nightly expectant silence around the black Bakelite radio laid on the tatami floor, with my grandmother, mother, my younger sisters and myself. How we would listen, laugh, weep and at the end of the evening’s episode, feeling either cheered or mollified, hum the catchy theme music: ‘The bells are ringing, kin-kon-kaan!’ A perfectly Japanesey sentimental melodrama, you might say; and perhaps it was. But, whenever I read about savage looting and bloodshed in today’s European urban jungles on hot summer nights or in the aftermath of some anti-government uprisings in Africa, I recall my early childhood years and cannot help asking if the nightly fifteen minutes of kitschy but potent emotion we shared with Kikuta’s street urchins and kind-hearted panpans and their not-quite-so-evil under238

KAZUO KIKUTA (1908-1973)

world sweethearts did not contribute significantly to a relatively peaceful post-war transition in Japan. Returning to the midnight ‘phone call, after declaring point-blank his love of Dickens, Kikuta added: ‘I’m told there’s a musical based on Oliver Twist in London. I want it to open the new Imperial Theatre. Find the producer and ask him to send Oliver! with a British cast and staff to Tokyo.’ This was a tall order if there ever was one. In 1965, the new Imperial Theatre was still a huge, appallingly expensive building site not far from the Imperial Palace. The original West End producer, Donald Albery, reputedly haughty and difficult, did not reply to my repeated requests to consider our proposal – it was decades before the Japanese yen could win credibility and buy up Manhattan’s landmark buildings. Not only the Hankyu¯-To¯ho¯ executives but also even Kikuta’s devoted staff doubted if a musical spoken and sung in English with super-titles could attract enough audience to fill the 1900-seat house for a long-run of over two months. This had never been tried before in Tokyo, where the programme had always changed each month. His assistants and stage managers were worried, anxious about how to cope with some fifteen child-actors and their mothers or chaperons, let alone the adult cast of thirty-one, a musical conductor, a stage manager and a technical supervisor from London. Last but not least Oliver was not a Broadway musical comedy but a musical made in England and based on Dickens’ grim story about orphans, thugs and pickpockets. Kikuta took no notice. He took it for granted that his wish would be carried out, and went on writing, writing for both To¯ho¯’s and Takarazuka’s productions, incarcerated in a hotel room guarded by his faithful adjutants, each play lasting over three hours in order to satisfy the Japanese audience used to a Kabuki performance which lasts half a day, ‘Oliver! to Japan? Japan is too far away!’ was the unenthusiastic reaction from the original English producer, when he finally agreed to meet me on his brief visit to New York in order to buy Man of la Mancha for one of the five theatres he managed in London’s West End. I was not a little offended by his geographic imperialism as if Hong Kong were the last recognizable eastern limit, but with Kikuta’s dream depending on this snooty gentleman, I persisted with the tenacity of a bulldog. In the end, the producer, who had fought hard against the notoriously finicky British censorship and put on Waiting for Godot back in 1955, conceded: ‘I’m always more interested in a new venture…besides at present I’m asked to run a bankrupt ballet company (The Festival Ballet, now the National Ballet). But, if you and your boss can come to Venice in February, I am rather stranded there for a week putting on Swan Lake at the Fenice Theatre…’ 239

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Kikuta and I slept through most of the first-night performance of the Festival Ballet’s Swan Lake, to which we had been invited on our arrival, but wide awake during the lengthy meetings with the Albery contingent the next day, interrupted by frequent urgent calls from the Fenice’s antiquated backstage, and finally what we called ‘a package deal’ was in principle agreed upon. We then flew to Tel Aviv to obtain for free Sean Kenny’s most audaciously innovative stage set, which on the other hand required a nightmarish technical precision in building. The set had been built in London for Habima Theatre and shipped to Tel Aviv ‘bonded’ – meaning untaxed. Therefore after the run of the show the Israeli impresario of Oliver!, a famous war veteran was obliged to destroy it or throw it into the sea in the presence of the customs officers. Though the set was in the end built in Tokyo, the visit was memorable; for there we attended an emotionally charged Fiddler on the Roof performed in Hebrew, and afterwards we met Marlene Dietrich whose one-woman show was also being presented by the same Oliver! and Fiddler producer. Meanwhile, despite his deteriorating health due to diabetes and overwork, Kikuta was like an engine running at maximum revolutions. While he was overseeing the completion of the Imperial Theatre, he had another wild idea: to put Gone with the Wind on stage. I knocked on the door of Miss Kay Brown, the wiliest of the veteran showbiz agents in America, who to her lasting glory had persuaded David Selznick to turn Margaret Mitchell’s novel into a film and discovered Audrey Hepburn. She was also a lifelong trusted agent for Arthur Miller and Ingrid Bergman. She guffawed hearing my proposal. ‘Honey, the MGM contract is as tall as you. There’s nothing that isn’t covered, from lipstick to airplane. Stage rights? Forget it!’ Before giving up on Kikuta’s dream, I pressed for a response. Some days later Miss Brown rang to say: ‘Well, I never! Tell your Mister Kikoota the highest-paid Park Avenue lawyers forgot to include stage rights.’ Then, she asked: ‘But how are you going to burn Atlanta on stage, eh?’ Miss Brown did not know that To¯ho¯ Film owned four studios, which had produced the famous monster films with spectacular special effects, Gozilla and Mozilla monster series. To recreate burning Atlanta would pose no problem, especially with the latest state-of-theart technical equipment installed at the Imperial with many turntables and three stage-lifts. Kikuta, locked up in a downtown hotel room, produced the stage version of Gone with the Wind in two parts, each lasting over three hours, requiring a cast of 150, including children, on-stage musicians, horse riders and trainers. Before the opening on 3 November 1966 of Part One, which ended with Scarlett’s famous line in front of her beloved Tara in ruin: ‘I’ll never starve again!’ 240

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the entire run had been sold out, and at each performance the jam-packed audience cried copiously into their handkerchiefs, most probably thinking back on the war-devastated homes of their own in 1945. Obviously, Gone with the Wind’s run ought to be prolonged, but Oliver! had been contracted and scheduled to follow Part One. As Kikuta fretted and the box office telephone lines overheated with the calls for tickets, good luck would have it, Oliver! encountered a major obstacle and had to be postponed, allowing Gone with the Wind (Part 1 followed by Part 2, then the combined endurance performances of both 1 and 2) to become the unprecedented long run in the entire theatre history of Japan. The nightmare with any Oliver! production is its inescapable need for child actors; and for Tokyo it was the British labour law on children, which, even with the installation of classes by native Englishspeaking teachers inside the Imperial Theatre for the duration of the rehearsals and run, made it impossible to employ British children. At once both London and Tokyo told me to find two Oliver boys, one Artful Dodger and one Bet and a dozen Workhouse boys as quickly as possible in America! Even in America it was not simple: the Broadway agents specializing in child-actors could offer them, they said, but for some complex legal reasons, they ought to be auditioned and the finalists signed up in the State of New Jersey. After this major hiccup, another unforeseen event took place: November 1967, the pound sterling was devalued by 14.3%. Why did this affect the Oliver! production in Tokyo? While discussing the method of payments I suggested quite casually, almost flippantly, to both Donald Albery and his young lawyer: ‘It’s the first time our accountants have had to change yen into pounds sterling. Why don’t we put the agreed total amount into US dollars? No one wants yen, everyone wants dollars.’ ‘Well… why not, after all…?’ the two gentlemen said to each other lackadaisically, and soon with the final contractual sum expressed in US dollars, the contract was signed and sealed. Oliver! opened on the Boy’s Day holiday, 5 May 1968. The guest of honour was Prince Hiro, aged six, today the Crown Prince. As soon as the curtain rose on the Workhouse scene with the boys waiting for their watery soup, the then British ambassador, Sir John Pilcher, seated in the first row centre of the balcony beside the tiny boy-prince, whispered urgently to me, who had been told to sit behind the imperial group. ‘Cushion! He can’t see a thing!’ It took the whole scene of Food, glorious food to find one battered, not too clean cushion from the stage-door keeper’s cubby hole; it was quite a spectacle to see this filthy cushion passed from one reverential hand to the other till it satisfactorily settled under the imperial 241

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heir’s bottom. The little prince himself had asked to meet the two Oliver actor-boys after the show and their photographs were on the first page of all papers the next morning. This publicity coup, aided by the enthusiastic word of mouth, packed the Imperial Theatre at every performance; and with not a penny’s subsidy from any quarters, what everyone had predicted as a potential loss-maker broke even in the end. From this time on, Japanese impresarios began watching London’s West End as attentively as Broadway, and over a decade later a series of musicals created in London such as Cats, Les Miserables, Phantom of the Opera, and Miss Saigon began arriving in Japan. Simultaneous with the Oliver! triumph, after years of haggling and disputing, To¯ho¯ and Kikuta obtained from the brother of the author, Mr Stephen Mitchell of Atlanta, the world-wide exclusive rights to present Gone with the Wind as a musical, written by Kikuta himself and set to music by Harold Rome, entitled Scarlett. He ought to have been the happiest man, his career at its zenith – in truth he was wasting away: his diabetes was wreaking havoc with his already fragile health; sleepless nights locked up inside the Imperial Hotel room with his staff in order to finish the Scarlett script were followed by myriad duties and responsibilities as the head of To¯ho¯ Theatre during the day. He battled on, uncomplaining, though he appeared shrunken, his emblematic round goggles appearing too much of a burden to carry, and often slightly tottering. Scarlett the musical, opened at the Imperial Theatre on the auspicious second New Year’s Day of 1970. The high quality of the production, directed and choreographed by Joe Layton impressed both the critics and the audience. Despite the fact that the lengthy two parts had to be condensed into one evening of just over three hours, Kikuta’s version assisted by the music was both compact and moving. After the success in Tokyo of Scarlett Kikuta was no doubt dreaming of Broadway as its next venue… Unfortunately, the American producer who had planned to open Scarlett in Atlanta before bringing it to Broadway failed to raise the necessary funds. But a veteran London producer, Harold Fielding, came forward and signed the contract to present it at Drury Lane Theatre. Encouraged, Kikuta at once started working on his own grand musical on the life of the most celebrated ukiyoe painter of the eighteenth century, Utamaro. Scarlett with the English cast and staff opened on 3 May 1972, three days after his own Utamaro in Tokyo. A week later Kikuta arrived in London to see his baby at the legendary theatre. Accompanying Kikuta to the Drury Lane Theatre left me with one of the most painful memories of my life. He was disappointed by the London cast, especially the strident and tough leading actresses with no feminine tenderness. But this was nothing compared to 242

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the humiliation he had to suffer when he could not find in the programme his name as original book writer, whilst the English version, credited to Horton Foote, was exactly how it had been written by Kikuta, except for a few cuts made in some dialogues in order not to provoke racial friction. ‘Apparently,’ he said in a magazine interview shortly after his disheartening Drury Lane visit, ‘my name was eliminated at a meeting held in New York on the programme credits with all the agents and lawyers representing the creative team. In Japan, the matter would have been dealt differently, in a more conciliatory manner, striving for a consensus. Westerners are self-asserting, fighting tooth and nail for their rights and interests.’ Kikuta died just a year later, and when at last Scarlett was presented in America, his name was duly credited but he never saw it. The popularity of musicals, both imported and homemade, went on rising after Kikuta’s death. Our rival production company, Gekidan Shiki, produced Cats and made a huge success of it; it was only natural that they began negotiating the rights to Les Miserables with Cameron Mackintosh, who had also co-produced Cats. Just then, after a period of inertia following Kikuta’s death, To¯ho¯ suddenly woke up and wanted to present Les Miserables, exactly the kind of work Kikuta would have loved. I was asked to intervene and secure the Japanese right for To¯ho¯. Cameron, having started his career as an assistant stage-manager in the first provincial tour of Oliver! and who adored the work, had heard much about the immense success, both artistically and financially, of its British version at the Imperial Theatre in Tokyo in 1968; this helped the delicate negotiation to achieve its desired result. Cameron particularly appreciated To¯ho¯’s professional integrity, handed down by Kikuta, in never succumbing to the cost-cutting method of using taped music to accompany the singers and dancers on stage, which our rival Shiki invariably did. With months of painstaking preparations with a large team of British specialists in stage mechanism, sound and lighting engineering, costumes and wigs, all lavishly welcomed at To¯ho¯’s cost, Les Miserables opened at the Imperial in 1987 and has played to date over 2,000 performances, always to a packed, copiously weeping (Japanese spectators love weeping) and cheering house. The AngloJapanese working relationship on and off stage and the balance sheets on both sides having been so mutually pleasing and beneficial that when Cameron opened Miss Saigon in London, there was no question that To¯ho¯ should produce it in Tokyo and tour the production to Osaka, Fukuoka, Sendai, and farther on. Since then, whenever a new worthy production opens in the West End, either To¯ho¯ or another company puts it on in Japan, and the trend persists. 243

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What would Mr Kikuta have thought of the theatre in Japan today, I often wonder. He died before decades of recession sapped creative courage, forbade risk-taking and forced the producers to import tried-and-tested, safe products, which are mostly re-staged by the deputies of the original directors or choreographers, thus neglecting home-grown talent. The trend of reviving past successes denies young new playwrights the opportunity to have their work put on. No wonder the theatre-going public dwindles and as a result, desperate producers bring in ephemerally well-known stars and mini-talents onto stage, such as TV chat-show comedians, fashion models turned pop singers, and the like, only to further damage the level of the performance. The vicious cycle goes on. It was Mr Kikuta, who half a century ago opened the flood gates of Western musical theatre with My Fair Lady and avidly devoured and learned from presenting and directing Western musicals. But he would not have drowned himself in the sea of imported plays and musicals for so long. Moreover he never stopped writing his own original full-length straight plays, which, in the absence of good new plays, are often revived to popular acclaim. They have – what the young playwrights today whose claim to fame is shockability and novelty lack – human empathy between the audience and the characters on stage. One of his most beloved plays (four hours long with never a dull moment nor five minutes without roar of laughter or some lachrymal joy) Madam Greed has as its heroine the most niggardly and rapacious tough old hag who runs a dosshouse, peopled with a blind masseuse, a yakuza-gigolo, a well-born fortune-tellingprostitute, an ex-university professor fallen on hard times, a jobless Korean cook, a recently fired section-chief … the lower depth of Osaka. And yet, the audience goes home cheered, less stressed, feeling friendly towards the world and men. During his life he was affectionately likened to ‘Sincerity and Compassion wearing a moustache and round goggles.’ A befitting epitaph.

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Kawakita Nagamasa (1903–1981) and Kawakita Kashiko (1908–1993): Film Ambassadors GORDON DANIELS

INTRODUCTION

Before the Second World War no Japanese films were shown in British cinemas. At this time British connoisseurs of international cinema had only a single opportunity of seeing a Japanese production; when the London Film Society included Kinugasa Teinosuke’s ‘A Page of Madness’ (Kurutta Ippeiji) in one of its programmes.1 Between 1931 and 1937 a small number of British films were distributed in Japan but they were a minor presence amid the large numbers of American, German and French features which were seen in Tokyo. Following the Second World War major Japanese films finally entered Britain, and their high reputation, contributed greatly to the renewal of Japanese cultural prestige. High quality British films also re-appeared on Japanese screens.

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In the history of Anglo-Japanese film relations a single couple, Kawakita Nagamasa and his wife Kashiko, were outstanding intermediaries influencing Anglo-Japanese cinematic exchanges for half a century. KAWAKITA NAGAMASA (1903–81)

The Early Years Kawakita Nagamasa was born in Yotsuya, Tokyo on 30 April 1903. His father, Daijiro¯ , was an artillery captain in the Imperial Army, and his mother, Ko¯ , had been head of the Imperial Women’s College (Teikoku Joshi Senmon Gakko¯). In his life Nagamasa was to have many international experiences; the first was in 1906 when the whole family moved to Northern China. His father, who favoured Asian solidarity and admired Chinese traditional culture, had accepted a lecturing post at a Chinese military academy. Within less than a year the family returned to Tokyo, but Daijiro¯ soon travelled to Beijing alone to begin teaching at an elite Chinese officer training school. On 1 August 1908 the family received news that Daijiro¯ had been assassinated by elements in the Japanese Army, perhaps because he had developed close relations with his Chinese colleagues.2 These early associations with China were to remain influences on Nagamasa throughout his early adult life. In 1918 while still a middle school student, he visited China alone, and decided to begin the serious study of Chinese language and culture. In 1921 he graduated from middle school, and began studying Chinese in Tokyo; he then travelled to Beijing and made further study of Chinese, hoping to enter Beijing University. He was soon admitted, but in some respects University life proved a sad disappointment. Nagamasa had hoped to make a large number of Chinese friends but amid the anti-Japanese emotions which followed the Versailles peace settlement, this proved impossible. In Beijing he next formed links with a young German aristocrat Baron von Stettinkron who encouraged him to visit Germany to study German language and thought. It was a propitious time for a Japanese to visit Germany as high inflation and favourable exchange rates had made living costs low for foreign visitors. In April 1923 Nagamasa left Yokohama on a German cargo vessel, and with the Baron’s help found accommodation in Lingen near the Dutch border. His experiences of life in Germany were of sympathetic friendship, and this friendship had a lasting influence on Nagamasa’s links with Germany and German culture. One particular experience in Germany was to shape his international outlook and the direction of his future career. On seeing a production of the opera, Madam 246

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Butterfly in Hamburg he reflected seriously on Western perceptions of Japan. If the costumes, make-up and deportment of the performers were an indication of European views of Japan they were clearly inaccurate. Not only were such inaccuracies in need of correction, but also at a time when foreign travel could only be experienced by a small elite the new medium of film appeared the most effective means of promoting understanding between East and West.3 At the age of twenty-one Nagamasa returned to Japan to carry out his military service. He was posted to the Japanese colony of Korea where he enjoyed speaking Chinese to immigrants resident near his base. He left the army in 1926 as a corporal. Two years later aged only twenty-six, he took a major step towards his ambition of promoting international understanding through film. ¯ WA THE CREATION OF TO

In October 1928, with two employees and a small office in the Kaijo¯ Building in Marunouchi, Nagamasa established the To¯wa Trading Company to begin the import of foreign films, with an emphasis on films from Europe. He had conceived the name To¯wa (the characters for East [to¯] and harmony [wa]) to symbolize his ideal, and to provide a name which would be easy for foreigners to pronounce and remember. Soon the company’s correspondence with foreign countries required the appointment of a secretary familiar with Western typing. A press advertisement produced an outstanding candidate, already quite skilled in English, Takeuchi Kashiko, who Nagamasa later married on the anniversary of the company’s foundation (see below). Takeuchi Kashiko was already a committed film enthusiast. In March 1929 Nagamasa travelled to Germany on the first of what were to be frequent visits to Europe, to view and select films for showing in Japan. INTRODUCTION OF GERMAN, FRENCH AND BRITISH FILMS

By 1931 To¯wa was not only introducing films of high quality to Japan but one silent German film Asphalt became a popular hit in Tokyo.4 At this time Nagamasa visited Europe each spring, viewed and selected films, and each autumn launched his new selections in Japan. The first British film selected and shown by To¯wa was the drama The Informer, shown in 1931. However some fourteen German films were shown in the same season. So far Japanese diplomacy and politics had had no significant influence on To¯wa’s activities but Japan’s expansion in Manchuria in 1931 began to intensify domestic political controls and the fear of foreign spies. In March 1932 Nagamasa was suspected of spying and 247

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taken to Police Headquarters. His contacts with foreign countries and knowledge of foreign languages were probably the main source of suspicion. Finally after four weeks of questioning he was released. In view of the strain which his wife had suffered in these weeks she now began to accompany him on visits to Europe. In July 1934 they travelled to Berlin via Italy and then visited Paris, London, Budapest, Vienna and Prague. In forty-three days they viewed 171 films. For the first time a significant number of British films were selected. These reflected the Kawakitas’ broad ranging taste, which embraced popular musicals, such as Chu-Chin-Chow and Blossom Time, Hitchcock’s thriller The Man Who Knew Too Much, and Flaherty’s austere documentary Man of Aran. However in Japan none of these films received the high praise accorded to major French works. KAWAKITA AND INTERNATIONAL FILM PROJECTS

Parallel to Kawakita’s interest in European films was his wish to promote Japanese films in the West. To¯wa had largely failed in this endeavour so it was perhaps natural that Nagamasa saw a joint Japanese-German production as a means of bringing Japanese cinema to international attention. Japan’s anti-Comintern Pact with Nazi Germany, in 1935, and Nagamasa’s long standing connections with Germany also combined to draw him into this ‘national policy’ project. In early 1936 Kawakita helped to invite the successful German director of alpine films, Dr Arnold Fanck, to Japan to shoot a feature film to promote German-Japanese understanding.5 From the beginning the project was plagued with difficulties; more specifically the conflicting views of Fanck and his Japanese co-director Itami Mansaku were a constant problem. This friction led to two distinct versions of the film being produced. Nevertheless this production The New Land received great publicity and attracted large audiences in Berlin and Tokyo. Kawakita and his wife travelled to Berlin for the opening; and the Tokyo premiere was attended by many foreign diplomats in evening dress. But critics were far from impressed. The American Robert Florey wrote ‘If a Japanese producer as well educated and continental as Nagamasa Kawakita wants to produce a picture to be shown the world over he should choose either a .... Kabuki play....or a subject known to all countries.’6 Even Japanese critics were far from sympathetic. In 1937 the Japanese army’s advance across China led Kawakita to develop a new international project; a Sino-Japanese collaboration. Given the depth of Chinese hostility to Japanese expansion this was extremely difficult to realize. Distinguished Chinese actors were unwilling to cooperate, and to use Japanese actors to play Chinese roles was incompatible with the seriousness of Kawakita’s intentions. 248

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The film was directed by Suzuki Shigeyoshi and was entitled The Road to Peace in the Orient. Relatively unknown Chinese nationals played most of the leading roles. The film depicted the experiences of two Chinese farmers fleeing the dangers of the current war. Ultimately they discovered the kindly nature of Japanese soldiers, and their hostility to Japan was converted into respect and friendship.7 When the film was shown in Tokyo in March 1938 it proved a box office failure. The film may have been, as its publicity stated ‘The first motion picture under joint Japanese-Chinese sponsorship’ which combined ‘actual scenes taken during the fighting’ with ‘beautiful North China scenes and locations’ but it hardly suited the jingoistic atmosphere in Tokyo.8 In China anti-Japanese feeling was so potent that the film was virtually ignored. The failure of this Sino-Japanese venture probably shaped Kawakita’s attitude to cinema policy in occupied China. He believed in ‘a cinema of the Chinese, by the Chinese, for the Chinese’9 with no overt Japanese propaganda content. As a result he accepted the Japanese Army’s request for help on cinema policy, but only on condition that he had total freedom of action. Perhaps there was no other Japanese as well qualified as Kawakita for this role. He was fluent in Mandarin and had immense experience of Chinese attitudes and behaviour. In June 1939 he established a ‘national policy’ company – the China Motion Picture Company (Zhonghua), based in Nanking and Shanghai. This new agency would provide money and film stock to copy films, approved by Japanese censors, for showing in occupied areas. In 1940 following the creation of the pro-Japanese Chinese Government in Nanking, the company became a joint Sino-Japanese enterprise with Kawakita as de facto head. Criticism levelled at Kawakita at the Conference of Japanese Mainland Cinema in July 1942 sugests that he was thought to be over sympathetic to Chinese views.10 There were even rumours that hard line Japanese might assassinate him. Kawakita, his wife and daughter lived in Shanghai throughout most of the war and in September 1944 he was decorated by the pro-Japanese Nanking Government. However, with Japan’s defeat in August 1945 he was rapidly removed from his position of power and privilege. The Chinese Nationalists took over the company, which he had created and in April 1946 he joined vast numbers of Japanese in returning to Japan. POST-WAR

After Japan’s defeat the Allied occupation forces were determined to act against all who had played an important role in Japanese occupied areas, and in November 1947 Kawakita was purged from activity in the Japanese film industry. 249

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Although Kawakita had been absent from Japan throughout the war, German films, particularly the Nazi works of Leni Reifenstahl, had been imported until 1942.11 Now the importation of films from Germany was totally forbidden. Nevertheless Kawakita soon returned to political respectability. In October 1950 he was freed from the allied purge, and in March 1951 a new To¯wa company was formed with Kawakita as its head. Although Japan still remained under allied occupation, Kawakita was now able to re-visit the West for the first time since 1938. On this occasion he visited Los Angeles, New York, Paris and London. In London he was warmly received by Sir Alexander Korda of London Films. Kawakita was transported by Rolls-Royce and was the first Japanese to be allowed to stay at the Savoy Hotel after the Second World War. Finally he experienced the Cannes Film Festival, for the first time. This was perhaps the climax of his tour. British films constituted five of the eight films, which he selected for Japanese cinemas. These included The Jungle Book, The Thief of Baghdad, and the 1948 version of Anna Karenina starring Vivian Leigh and Ralph Richardson. In June Kawakita’s restored prestige was evident in his appointment to the film section of Ministry of Trade and Industry’s Industrial Rationalization Council. In the following year he became head of the newly formed Foreign Film Import Association, which determined the allocation of imported films among Japanese companies.12 Despite the misfortunes associated with Kawakita’s previous, international productions he remained committed to the concept of binational projects. In 1953 he invited Joseph von Sternberg, director of the legendary Blue Angel to Japan to direct a film based on a wartime incident The Saga of Anatahan. Like Kawakita’s earlier international productions it was scarcely an artistic success. Von Sternberg’s powers were failing and he could not communicate effectively with his Japanese staff. When complete, the film attracted few patrons and was soon forgotten. Two years later Kawakita participated in yet another international production; this was a film of the opera Madam Butterfly with Italian singers. It was certainly an improvement on the theatre production he had seen in his youth, but its success was limited. In addition to his role as a producer Kawakita continued to encourage the importation of European films. In pre-war years British films had had a minor place in To¯wa selections, but in the post-war years the works of Carol Reed and David Lean were seen as artistically important. The Third Man, The Fallen Idol, The Sound Barrier and The Man Between were all shown in Tokyo but in the mid-1950s To¯wa imported some British films of questionable quality; even Hammer Films Dracula reached Japanese screens.13 250

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By the late 1950s and early 1960s Kawakita had become a symbol of the internationalism of the Japanese film industry. He often headed Japanese delegations attending major film festivals in Europe and the Americas. In 1958, 1960, 1961, 1963 and 1966 he participated in the Venice festival and on other occasions led Japanese groups to Cannes and Acapulco. Later, as the cold war eased he was leader of the Japanese group at the Moscow Film Festival. In 1970 following a cultural agreement between Tokyo and Moscow he was the Japanese Government’s representative at a festival of Japanese films in the Soviet capital. Yet perhaps the most significant Kawakita initiative in these years was the creation in November 1961 of the Japan Art Theatre Guild Company (ATG). In a sense this new organization aimed to revive Kawakita’s pre-war ideals, the showing of European films of artistic quality. This was an important ambition, which was partially fulfilled. Films by Jean Cocteau, Francois Truffaut and Ingmar Bergman were distributed and pre-war Soviet films by Eisenstein were shown in Japan for the first time. ATG also encouraged the distribution of works by radical new Japanese directors such as Oshima Nagisa.14 As film festivals proliferated and became symbols of Asian states striving for cultural prestige, Kawakita had new opportunities to represent Japan. In 1972 he headed a delegation to Teheran and in 1973 to Singapore. Foreign governments and cultural agencies increasingly rewarded Kawakita with prizes, acknowledging his international cultural role. These included decorations from French, German, American and Italian organizations. Kawakita’s achievements were also recognized at home with prizes from the Japanese Film PEN Club and the Tokyo Film Journalists Association. Finally in January 1981 President Marcos of the Philippines rewarded Kawakita with the Golden Eagle as one of the ten world figures who had contributed most to the art and industry of film.15 On a visit to California in the spring of 1981 Kawakita became ill and cancelled a visit to New York. He died in Tokyo on 24 May. Kawakita had contributed significantly to the introduction of distinguished British films to Japan. In London The National Film Theatre’s January 1982 season of Japanese films was dedicated to his memory. KAWAKITA KASHIKO (1908–1993) Early Years

Kawakita Kashiko (née Takeuchi) was born in Osaka on 21 March 1908. Within three months her parents had moved to Tokyo. This was the beginning of a distinctly nomadic childhood. Her parents moved repeatedly and Kashiko was compelled to change school ten times. During these travels she experienced life in Yokohama, Dairen 251

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in Manchuria and Akita in northern Honshu. Despite the difficulties of adjusting to different schools, she enjoyed extensive travels with her parents. The great shrines of Izumo and Ise and the picturesque coastline at Matsushima remained long remembered features of these journeys. Finally in her sixth school year the family settled in Yokohama and Kashiko entered the Ferris Girls School, which had been founded by Canadian missionaries. Not only did the staff include numerous teachers from North America but also all the school’s textbooks were in English. At the age of fifteen Kashiko experienced the loss of her father in the Great Kanto Earthquake, but the head of the Ferris School and other teachers sympathized with her in this family crisis. When she entered the school’s advanced course the school head paid her fees, and helped her with additional English teaching, outside school hours.16 EMPLOYMENT AND MARRIAGE

Kashiko had literary and theatrical ambitions but as she was now responsible for supporting her mother and sisters these ideas had to be put aside. She taught English at the local YMCA and in return received instruction in English literature, shorthand and typing. When she was twenty a friend suggested a secretarial career, and a teacher passed her an advertisement from the English language newspaper The Japan Advertiser. This was for a position in the newly formed To¯wa Trading Company. Kashiko applied, was interviewed in the Yu¯sen Building in Marunouchi, and was appointed. In January 1929 she began work but had no clear idea of the scope of the company’s activities. A few days later she met the young head of the company, Kawakita Nagamasa. He was smartly dressed, but following his years abroad his Japanese was far from perfect. When she learnt that To¯wa imported films from Germany and France she was highly delighted, as she was already an enthusiast for European films. Among her favourites were Nanook of the North, Doctor Caligari and Hamlet. To¯wa had arranged to import Dr Arnold Fanck’s film of the 1928 Winter Olympics, and Lotte Reiniger’s silhouette feature The Adventures of Prince Achmed but it was still a very small enterprise. As a result Kashiko was not only Kawakita’s secretary; she helped with accounts, publicity and the transport of films. On some occasions she accompanied Kawakita to restaurants and cinemas and in October 1929 they married. From the beginning they worked long hours, and with their common devotion to the art of film they formed a remarkable partnership. At a time when American films were dominant in the Japanese market To¯wa’s enthusiasm for European films was somewhat adventurous, but the critical and popular acclaim for the silent German film Asphalt, in 1930, suggested a promising future.17 252

KAWAKITA NAGAMASA (1903-1981) AND KAWAKITA KASHIKO (1908-1993)

TRAVEL TO EUROPE

In 1932 the Kawakitas enjoyed a second honeymoon when they travelled to Europe together for the first time. Travelling by the Okazaki-maru they made tourist visits in Ceylon, Aden and Cairo. After disembarking in Naples they toured Pompeii, Venice, Florence and the Swiss lakes before arriving in Berlin for intensive work. Often they viewed eight films in a single day. On seeing the film Mädchen in Uniform, by a relatively unknown female director, she was profoundly impressed, while her husband remained indifferent. Although their assessments differed Nagamasa finally agreed that, as a ‘honeymoon gift’; the film would be shown in Tokyo. In February 1933 it proved an artistic and commercial triumph.18 Kashiko’s judgement had been proved to be remarkably perceptive. During their visit to Germany the Kawakitas attempted to promote Japanese films, but German audiences seemed insensitive when confronted with works from a distinctly different culture. On later visits to Europe Kashiko and her husband also visited Paris and London and jointly selected entertainment films such as The Congress Dances and more artistic works by René Clair, Julien Duvivier and Alfred Hitchcock. Their selections were often highly praised in Japanese film magazines. INTERNATIONAL PRODUCTIONS

In 1937 following the joint Japanese-German production of The New Earth the Kawakitas visited Berlin, with the film’s star Hara Setsuko, for its official opening. They attended other showings in Munich, Hamburg, Cologne, Dusseldorf and Leipzig before visiting Paris where Kashiko viewed and selected films. They crossed the Atlantic on the Queen Mary and strangely, saw Soviet films, for the first time, in New York. It was on their return journey to Japan that they learnt of the beginnings of Sino-Japanese warfare. By November Nagamasa had embarked on his Sino-Japanese reconciliation film The Road to Peace in the Orient and Kashiko travelled to China to help in the casting process. In 1938 they made their last pre-war visit to Europe. They hoped to promote their China reconciliation film, now re-titled Dawn. More importantly they presented the war film Five Scouts at the Venice Film Festival. It received the Minister of Education’s Prize, the first Japanese film to have success in an international festival.19 THE WAR YEARS

In 1939 Nagamasa moved to China, while Kashiko, now pregnant, remained in Tokyo. On 1 February 1940 her only child Kazuko was born in St. Luke’s Hospital. Kazuko’s name (based on the character for ‘peace’) was said to reflect a hope for peace in China.20 Soon 253

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after, Kashiko joined her husband in Shanghai. When her daughter reached the age to enter Kindergarten she was placed among Chinese children under a Chinese supervisor. As the war situation deteriorated Kashiko and her daughter were evacuated to Beijing. Even after Japan’s defeat Beijing citizens appeared to remain friendly, and in February 1946 Kashiko and her daughter returned to Japan. Two months later her husband followed. Of the journey Kashiko recalled ‘We were taken back by boat...there were a thousand people packed into an American landing craft...Kazuko was seriously ill as were a lot of the other children on board. I asked the Captain to let the children go up on deck. I think it saved their lives...The journey took four days but it felt like a year.’21 POST-WAR ACTIVITIES

The family now lived with Kashiko’s mother and sister in Kamakura. During the years when Nagamasa was purged from film activity their financial situation was difficult. Kashiko now tried to revive To¯wa’s activities and discovered their old film stocks, which she wheeled through the streets on a wooden cart to the re-opened office.22 In April 1952 the allied occupation of Japan formally ended, and in the following year Sir Alexander Korda, the head of London Films, sought to develop the personal and business relationship which he had already formed with the Kawakitas. He invited Kashiko and her daughter to London to enjoy the Coronation celebrations. Like other guests of London Films they watched the procession from a balcony in Piccadilly. Soon after they flew to Berlin to meet Nagamasa who was attending the film festival. As at Venice and Cannes a Japanese film won a major prize and Kashiko concluded that international film festivals were the best means of promoting the achievements of Japanese cinema. In 1955 Britain had a new significance for Kashiko and her family. After graduating from middle school in Tokyo, Kazuko wished to move to England to continue her education. This was far from easy as overseas education was not permitted without a guarantor in the country concerned. For a second time Sir Alexander Korda proved helpful, agreeing to act as Kazuko’s guarantor. Kazuko studied at the Legat School in Tunbridge Wells, a boarding school noted for its international character and the teaching of music and ballet. In April Kashiko and her daughter arrived at the school and Kazuko received intensive English language training. Soon after a friend declared that Kazuko spoke ‘snobbish Oxford English’.23 Kashiko wished to remain close to her daughter and collect information on the contemporary European film industry, so she rented a flat in London. This was an opportunity to view foreign films in 254

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London cinemas and use the research facilities at The British Film Institute. She also attended showings at the National Film Theatre. Kashiko quickly used the connections which she made at the British Film Institute to begin discussion of the promotion of Japanese film showings at the National Film Theatre. 1955 was the last year in which London Films issued the works of Carol Reed and David Lean and in January 1956 Sir Alexander Korda died ending an important relationship. Later in the year Kashiko attended the Venice Film Festival as films by Ichikawa Kon and Mizoguchi were being presented. European expressions of sadness at the news of Mizoguchi’s death indicated how much Westerners admired the outstanding work of major Japanese directors. From Venice Kashiko moved to festivals in Berlin and Cannes. For the first time Kashiko was selected as a festival judge. This was not only an indication of the high regard in which she was held, but from this time on she was appointed as a judge at virtually every significant film festival across the world. As a result her contacts with the most distinguished producers and directors became more frequent and significant. One English director whom she met frequently was the controversial innovator Lindsey Anderson. During her extended stay in London Kashiko frequently conversed with a series of important figures linked to The British Film Institute including Gavin Lambert, Lindsey Anderson and Derek Prowse, the Sunday Times film critic. They suggested more showings of Japanese films particularly of the works of directors who were highly regarded in Japan, but almost unknown in Europe. Following these suggestions Kashiko organized a season of Japanese films – ‘A Light in the Japanese Window’ at the new National Film Theatre. This season was later described as ‘one of the most important and influential seasons ever presented’ on the South Bank, ‘the first major presentation of Japanese cinema in Europe and one which helped to reveal to the West the vast riches of Japanese film art.’ This 1957 film season included fifteen works which Kawakita Kashiko had largely selected, and for the first time gave British audiences an opportunity to see Ozu’s masterpiece Tokyo Story, Ichikawa’s Burmese Harp and Mizoguchi’s Tales of Chikamatsu. The season was not only a critical success but it led to contracts being signed with British, French, German and Italian distributors. Kashiko later wrote that this was ‘the first attempt ever made for the Japanese cinema’. Many other similar seasons were to follow in the 1960s and 1970s but she continued to regard this pioneering event as a watershed in the European appreciation of Japanese films. In later years Ozu, Mizoguchi and others were given even more ambitious seasons and ‘Madam Kawakita’, as many Westerners termed her, was a crucial creative figure in all these events. Some later seasons were linked with the Japan Society of New York and the Cinématheque in Paris but the British Film 255

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Institute continued to have a major place in Kashiko’s affections and activities. However glamorous events in France and Italy might be, she always returned to the annual London Film Festival. What was the secret of Kawakita Kashiko’s broad ranging success in the field of cinema? Most remarkable was her interlocking concern for film in Japan and overseas. Her contacts with the British Film Institute and the National Film Theatre – with their excellent collections persuaded her that some similar film library was needed in Tokyo. Without such an institution, her plan to mount multiple Japanese film seasons overseas would probably have been rendered impractical. In 1960 she established the Japan Film Library Council, and as its chief executive led the movement to establish a national film centre. Using her excellent contacts with the film industry and government officials, in 1970, she succeeded in creating a national film centre linked to the National Museum of Modern Art.24 This was to give greater strength to the policy of using Japanese films to promote international cultural relations. Alongside her leadership of the film library movement she devoted considerable energy to her husband’s plan to establish the Art Theatre Guild (ATG) to encourage the showing of high quality films from abroad, and from independent Japanese directors. In some cases ATG provided significant funding for the production of films by Hani Susumu and Yoshida Yoshishige.25 From 1974 she cooperated with Takano Etsuko, manager of the Iwanami Hall to create the Equipe de Cinema, an organization to exhibit little known foreign films. Following the death of her husband in 1981 the Japan Film Library Council was re-named the Kawakita Memorial Institute. Kashiko also became head of the Kawakita Film Culture Foundation.26 Her achievements were recognized by the Japanese Government which awarded her both the Purple Ribbon Medal and the Order of The Sacred Treasure, Third Class. She was also decorated by numerous private organizations; receiving the Kikuchi Kan Prize, the Asahi Prize and the Mainichi Film Concours Prize. Her creative successes in Japan were particularly impressive as often she spent half a year abroad as judge and organizer at European film festivals. Her remarkable efforts overseas were acknowledged by private and government bodies in France, Italy and the Soviet Union. One particular feature of her international activity was her distinct visual identity, being always dressed in kimono, and manifesting the restrained manner of a Japanese of her generation.27 Her knowledge of foreign languages helped her to move smoothly among film specialists in both Europe and North America. In Britain as elsewhere experts admired her almost limitless knowledge of film, and her refined sense of judgement. Across the world she was appreciated as a totally reliable partner in many co-operative ventures. Above all it was her total 256

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commitment to the art of film which made her trusted and admired. Her activities enriched relations between Britain and Japan throughout the post-war years. She died in Tokyo on 27 July 1993. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4 5 6

7

8 9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16

17 18 19 20 21

22 23 24

25

26

27

The British Film Institute magazine Sight and Sound provided surprisingly detailed coverage of film developments relating to Japan in the pre-war and early wartime years. To¯wa To¯ho¯ Kabushiki Kaisha; To¯wa no 60nen sho¯ (hibaihin) Tokyo 1988. This publication reprints thirty articles by Kawakita Nagamasa – ‘Watakushi no Rirekisho’ which originally appeared in the Nihon Keizai Shimbun between 3 April and 2 May 1980. Article number 2 (4 April 1980) covers the assassination. ‘Watakushi no Rirekisho’ Article number 6, 8 April 1980. ‘Watakushi no Rirekisho’ Article number 9, 11 April 1980. ‘Watakushi no Rirekisho’ Article number 17, 19 April 1980. Kokusai Bunka Shinko¯kai: Cinema Yearbook of Japan, 1938 Tokyo, 1938, Robert Florey ‘Impression of Japanese Pictures’ p. 55. Peter B. High: The Imperial Screen, Japanese Film Culture in the Fifteen Years War, 1931–1945, University of Wisconsin Press, Madison and London, 2003 p. 277. Cinema Yearbook of Japan 1938 p. 75. Peter B. High The Imperial Screen p. 277. Poshek Fu, Between Shanghai and Hong Kong, The Politics of Chinese Cinemas, Stanford University Press, Stanford, California, 2003. p. 97. Poshek Fu, Between Shanghai and Hong Kong pp. 99 and 108. To¯wa no 60-nen sho¯ p. 188. To¯wa no 60-nen sho¯ p. 63. To¯wa no 60-nen sho¯ p. 188. To¯wa no 60-nen sho¯ p. 63. To¯wa no 60-nen sho¯ p. 64. Kawakita Kashiko; Eigahitosujini Nihon Tosho Centre Tokyo 1997. pp. 12–13 Eigahitosujini p. 23 Eigahitosujini pp. 29–31 Eigahitosujini p. 48 Eigahitosujini p. 52 Kashiko Kawakita Obituary by David Robinson. The Guardian 9 August 1993 Ibid. Eigahitosujini p. 68. Eigahitosujini pp. 259–64 and ‘Japan Film Library Council’ The Economist vol. 291 30 June 1984 p. 78. Donald Richie, A Hundred Years of Japanese Film, Kodansha, Tokyo and New York 2001. p. 212. Jasper Sharp Historical Dictionary of Japanese Cinema Scarecrow Press, Toronto and Plymouth UK 2011 p. 127. See Kinema Junpo No. 1514 August 2008. pp. 145–9 – appreciations of Kawakita Kashiko by Sato Tadao and Takano Etsuko. 257

22

Sessue Hayakawa (1886–1973): International Film Star NORIMASA MORITA

INTRODUCTION

Sessue Hayakawa was the first Japanese to become an international film star. He spent much of his life in the USA and France but he also lived in Britain between November 1923 and May 1924. During his stay he appeared at the London Coliseum and in a Royal Command Performance, made a theatrical tour in England and starred in two films. He became well known not only to British cinema fans but also to ordinary British people following his success with the film The Cheat (see below). On his arrival at Victoria Station he could not get into his Rolls Royce because the crowd of fans rushed onto the platform: the same happened in Liverpool when he arrived there on tour. His fans stalked him wherever he went in England. EARLY LIFE

Hayakawa Kintarõ was born on 10 June 1886 as the youngest of the six children of Yoichiro¯, a fishing fleet owner, and Kane, in a fishing village called Senda situated at the tip of the Bo¯so¯ peninsula 258

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facing the Pacific Ocean. After attending the local primary school in 1901 he entered Kaijo¯ School, a preparatory school for the Navy. He dreamt of one day becoming an admiral. After graduating from middle school Hayakawa took the examinations for the Japanese navy and passed in academic subjects. Just before the physical examination he had an accident. While playing dare with his friends during the school holidays, and diving deep in the sea, he split his eardrum. He did not see a doctor immediately, as his father thought it would be weak and effeminate for a man to seek medical assistance for a ‘minor’ injury; the ruptured eardrum suppurated badly. He failed the physical test and spent the next four years in despair. Kintaro¯ was an impressionable young man. The suicide of Fujimura Misao, a young philosophy student, who threw himself into the Kegon Falls, was sensationally reported in popular newspapers and his death was glorified and romanticized among young people. Hayakawa’s conservative father had instilled into him the concept of ritual suicide for any shameful act. One night Hayakawa entered the family warehouse with an ancestral sword, locked the door and tried to disembowel himself in front of a portrait of Admiral To¯go¯. The family dog noticed that something extraordinary had happened and howled and whined until members of the family rescued him. USA AND HOLLYWOOD

It is not clear why Hayakawa decided to go to the USA or what he wanted to do there. However, when an American steamship, the Dakota, went aground off the Chikura coast near Hayakawa’s hometown, he helped to rescue the crew and passengers. He then told his family of his intention of going to find work in the USA. His elder brother, who had worked in San Francisco, and a neighbour, who had returned from there, may have influenced his decision. As the youngest son, he had little prospect of taking over the family business and he had no concrete plans for the future after his hopes of joining the Navy had been dashed.1 Hayakawa set off from Yokohama for Seattle on 10 July 1907 despite strong opposition from his father. Without sufficient funds to enter university Hayakawa had to earn his living by menial work in and around San Francisco. Although he claimed in his autobiography and in interviews that he graduated from the University of Chicago, in fact he only took two courses at its Home Study Department, a correspondence department, between November 1908 and December 1909.2 During this time he was working as a waiter for a Southern Pacific Railroad restaurant. While living a hand-to-mouth existence in California for over six years Hayakawa became involved in theatrical activities, writing 259

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scripts for local Japanese theatrical troupes and appearing on stage as an actor. He was discovered by Thomas H. Ince, the head of the New York Motion Picture Co (NYMP), through the recommendation of Aoki Tsuru (his future wife and co-star in many films) and was employed as a scriptwriter for NYMP. His version of Melchior Lengyel’s Typhoon, a popular spy drama at the time of the ‘yellow peril’ had caught Ince’s attention. When the play was made into a film by NYMP, he played the lead role and was credited as Sessue Hayakawa, his stage name.3 Sessue Hayakawa’s first appearance as a leading actor was in a movie called The Secret Sin, but this was not released till after The Typhoon proved to be a success. During the filming of The Typhoon, Sessue married Aoki Tsuru, Kawakami Otojiro¯’s neice and a star actress of Thomas Ince’s NYMP. It was through Cecil B. DeMille’s The Cheat that overnight he became a movie superstar and one of the greatest matinee idols of the time. At the same time he came to be regarded as a national traitor among Japanese expatriates in the USA. In the film, Sessue played the role of a predatory art dealer who burns his brand on the shoulder of a society lady, Fannie Mae, when it became clear that she could not return the money she owed him. The enigmatic and sensuous beauty of this oriental actor violating and cruelly dominating a Caucasian woman mesmerized Western female audiences.4 Although it was only his second film for Famous Players-Lasky (later Paramount), he went on to become one of the best paid actors in Hollywood, along with Charlie Chaplin, Douglas Fairbanks Jr. and Rudolf Valentino, earning $5,000 a week by 1915. However, the film and the three Japanese actors who appeared in it, particularly Sessue, infuriated Japanese immigrants in the USA. Soon after it opened in Los Angeles, Japanese-language newspapers published in California accused Sessue of betraying his country and helping ‘to create the impression that the Japanese are an evil race’. The 24 December issue of the Rafu Shinpo¯ accused Sessue of ‘total stupidity or madness’ and branded him as a national traitor.5 Other Japanese language newspapers agreed that Sessue had disgraced the Japanese people by appearing in The Cheat and had heightened anti-Japanese feeling among Americans. They denounced Sessue not Cecil B. DeMille, the maker of the film. A ‘press conference’ was held on 27 December in which he tried to justify his decision by claiming: ‘He did complain that the Japanese character he played was too evil, but he was told not to worry because any scenes found excessively provocative, sensational, or immoral would be removed by the censor’; but ‘no scene was cut and as a result my reputation as a star actor was greatly defiled’.6 However, the criticism in the media did not abate and he had to write an open letter published in the Rafu Shinpo¯7 apologizing for his misjudgment. 260

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Despite this apology he remained very unpopular in the Japanese community and a series of boycott movements continued for months and several assassination groups threatened to kill him. The budget for The Cheat was a modest $17,000 and the box-office takings were expected to be around $100,000, but the actual boxoffice revenue from domestic sales alone reached nearly $1 million. In France, the film was received with enthusiasm and was regarded as a work of art. Colette, the famous French writer, was excited by the film and wrote: In Paris this week, a movie theatre has become an art school. A film and two of its principal actors are showing us what surprising innovations, what emotion, what natural and well-designed lighting can add to cinematic fiction. Every evening, writers, painters, composers, and dramatists come and come again to sit, contemplate, and comment, in low voices, like pupils.8

The film was not exported to Japan until 1923.9 Hayakawa became one of the highest paid actors in the United States, earning $1 million per year, and he appeared in a large number of romantic dramas. The castle, which he purchased at the corner of Argyle and Franklin Avenues in Hollywood and which was called ‘The Glengarry’,10 had thirty-two bedrooms and a hall large enough to accommodate 250 people for a dance party and 600 guests for a cocktail party. Sessue and Tsuru had large parties almost every weekend, inviting not only filmmakers and movie stars, but also artists, politicians and businessmen. Chaplin frequently dropped by on his way to his film studios and Valentino was also a frequent visitor.11 Despite the large salaries and bonuses he received Sessue did not renew his contract with Famous Players-Lasky. Instead he set up his own production company, Haworth Pictures, following an offer of an investment of $1 million from James Patrick Connery, a mining millionaire. He was fed up with being typecast as an exotic and mysterious oriental character. Haworth Pictures made distribution agreements with Robertson-Cole, an Anglo-American firm, and the French Pathé, and made films on Japanese and oriental themes for the international market. In four years the company made twenty-two films. Sessue managed the firm, which had a 300-strong workforce. He starred in almost all its films and occasionally supervised the editing.12 In 1911, the appendicitis from which he had been suffering for some time became acute and he was rushed to hospital for an emergency operation.13 A few days before he first noticed the pain in his appendix it had been wrongly reported in Japan that his wife, Tsuru, had attempted suicide out of jealousy and hysteria. The Rafu Shinpo¯ 261

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denied the reported suicide attempt, describing the Hayakawas as a happy family and suggesting that somebody must have sent the Japanese media a false story. Sessue had for some time suspected that someone in Robertson-Cole Co., which was then a main shareholder of his new company, Hayakawa Feature Play Co., was scheming to assassinate him so that Robertson-Cole Co. could take over the company as well as receive a massive insurance payout. In the climatic earthquake scene in The Vermillion Pencil a pagoda mined with dynamite had been designed to fall away from Sessue. However, during the filming, the pagoda fell on him. He only escaped from this life-threatening ‘accident’, because the set designer, who made the devices, had warned him to be careful about the pagoda tumbling down towards him.14 It is not clear whether this was really an attempted assassination or a story he invented. However, he was genuinely worried about the worsening racial discrimination and intensifying harassment of Japanese in the USA. New legislation restricting the rights of Japanese residents particularly upset him. In California Japanese were regarded as ‘aliens’, who were ‘racially’ ineligible for naturalization and denied the privilege of owning land.15 In an interview published in the January 1929 issue of the Motion Picture Magazine he explained that he had dropped out of pictures because of many ‘irritations’.16 These must have been the main reasons for his decision to close his company and leave Hollywood for the East Coast and then Europe. At a St. Patrick’s Day party in 1922, Sessue announced his departure from Hollywood: The Land Law has already been passed. A group of people had gone around my house shouting through a megaphone ‘pass the Land Law’. I still remember the roar. Japanese had tomatoes thrown at them in the street. I was almost killed during filming. In this kind of environment I cannot stay one more day. I am saying goodbye to Hollywood as of today.17

In the same year, for the first time since his departure fifteen years before, Sessue returned to Japan with his wife. The Japanese reception was a mixed one: for many it was a hero’s return as he was the first Japanese who had made such a success in Hollywood and had become a movie star considered as great as Rudolf Valentino and Charlie Chaplin; but for many Japanese he was a traitor and an instrument of racists because he appeared in The Cheat, the quintessential ‘anti-Japanese’ film. He had little intention of staying on in Japan for any length of time and soon returned to the USA, but not to Hollywood. He tried to be an actor on the stage in the East Coast. There was much less anti-Japanese feeling there than on the West Coast. 262

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Moreover Japonisme was a fad in New York and Boston and anything Japanese was sought after. Having started to work for the theatre, however, Sessue found it not as easy as he had expected to be a stage actor. He had little or no previous experience as a stage actor and he had not only to learn his part but also to speak his lines in English. Although Sessue later survived the transition from silent films to talkies, countless silent actors vanished, because their voices were not attractive, their English accents were not acceptable, or their acting style was not suitable for talkies. FRANCE AND BRITAIN

In 1923 Sessue jumped at the offer from the French Vandal-Delac Studios of a leading role in its film La Bataille, which was about the defeat of the Russian fleet by the Japanese Navy in the battle of Tsushima. Sessue arrived in Paris on 28 July 1923 to an enthusiastic welcome. He and his wife stayed for two years and during this time he appeared in six films in France and England. In Paris Sessue played the principal role in a short drama, or more precisely a vaudeville act, at the Casino de Paris, one of the well-known music halls. Although the drama in which he featured, The Knee of the God, was a trite one, it turned out to be very popular and became a long running piece in Paris. While Sessue was in Paris, a group of English theatrical notables visited him with a letter of invitation to appear in a Royal Command Performance. He was delighted, but he was still contracted to appear at the Casino de Paris. The English delegation managed to negotiate his release from the contract and the Hayakawas left Paris arriving in London via Dover on 12 November. Sessue was welcomed at Victoria Station by enthusiastic fans, who had come to know of him through his film performances. For the Command Performance, Sir William Archer, a Scottish drama critic, who was best known for his play, The Green Goddess, was commissioned to write a one-act play for Sessue, but it was not completed by the time he arrived in London. So for three weeks Sessue instead performed at the London Coliseum in Knee of the God, the piece which had been popular in Paris. The Command Performance was held on 13 December at the same theatre in the presence of King George V and Queen Mary. The acts included the Royal Albert Hall Orchestra, Bobbie Hind and his all-British Sonata Band, a performance of a single dramatic sketch, The Discovery Room, with Tom Walls, Ralph Lynn and Tommy Handley, a comic piece by Billy Merson and others, and Sir William Archer’s Samurai with Sessue, Lewis Gilbert, Ann Trevor, Lola Karsavina, and Dora de Winton.18 The setting for The Samurai is Russia after the Russo-Japanese War. A young Japanese man named Kamitani is hoping to avenge 263

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his father who was killed by a Russian military officer during the war. He is now a diplomat and comes to know a Russian count and general called Korsakov and falls in love with his daughter. Through their relationship Kamitani discovers that Korsakov was the man who had killed his father in a cowardly manner. On the night of a carnival he challenges Korsakov and in the duel he slays him. His lover Barbara tries to enter the room where the duel has taken place but the door is locked. Hearing her crying Kamitani commits hara-kiri. It is a silly story but such exotic motifs as revenge, a sense of filial duty, honour and hara-kiri interested audiences and Sessue’s kabuki-style performance and actions seem to have greatly entertained them. A reception was held on the day after the Command Performance and was attended by the Prince of Wales, later King Edward VIII. Sessue wrote in his autobiography that he was very much impressed with the Prince’s witticisms and sense of humour.19 When it became his turn to give an after-dinner speech, he tried to crack a joke following the Prince’s precedent by saying, ‘an optimist looks and sees the ring [of a doughnut] but a pessimist only sees the hole.’20 He was hurt that the room remained dead silent. He was later told that English doughnuts had no holes. Sessue stayed on in the UK for some seven months and took the play on tour as well as continuing to perform between tours in London. His British fans, dignitaries, socialites and Japanese expatriates welcomed him wherever he went. He was frequently entertained in clubs, invited to parties where he learned of the sexual and moral licentiousness of upper-class and upper-middle class British, taken to play golf in Scotland, and followed around by female fans. The Hayakawas rented a house in South Kensington and entertained guests living in the UK and visitors from Japan. Sir Oswald Stoll was an Australian-born British theatre manager and the co-founder of the Stoll-Moss theatre company; he also owned the London Coliseum and hosted the 1923 Command Performance. He ran Stoll Pictures; one of the leading British production companies in the silent era, and in 1920 had purchased an aeroplane factory in Cricklewood, which he converted into film studios. Sessue played a lead role in two films produced by Stoll Pictures, directed by A.E. Coleby and filmed at Cricklewood Studios. The Great Prince Shan is based on E. Philipp Oppenheim’s spy story. Sessue was cast as Prince Shan. An imaginary European nation, which fears an also imaginary Asian nation as a rising power, sends spies to the latter. Prince Shan’s man, Immelman, is one of these spies. The prince visits Europe for the negotiation of the treaty, which Immelman had drafted and which threatened to disturb international peace. During his visit he falls in love with Lady Maggie Trent, also a spy. La Belle Nita, Prince Shan’s dancer, played by Aoki Tsuru, becomes 264

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jealous of his liaison with Maggie and tries to separate them, but to no avail. Immelman presses his superior to sign the treaty but the prince discovers his plot and leaves Europe declaring that he has no intention of jeopardizing world peace and saying goodbye to Maggie. In the film Sessue not only played the title role, but also helped A.E. Colby in casting and costume. Rekishi Shashin, a photo magazine, printed in its May 1924 issue21 a picture of Sessue auditioning Japanese extras at Cricklewood Studios. He is said to have checked the kimonos for their authenticity and advised the director about how they should be worn. In Sen Yan’s Devotion Sessue played the title role of Sen Yan. It is an adventure film set in an exotic land. He is a young prince and the heir to the dying king, but has to prove his bravery by regaining the secret documents guarded by a multiple-limbed fire god. He sets off on his quest with his wife, played by Tsuru, and travels to the sacred temple to retrieve the documents. Sessue later wrote in his autobiographies that he did not remember these two films at all and misnames The Great Prince Shan calling it The Illustrious Prince. He also recorded some details of filming at Cricklewood noting that the English crew had to stop filming at four o’clock on the dot to drink tea, just as cricket players retire for tea and that thick fog frequently interrupted filming. After nearly a year in Britain the Hayakawas returned to France, where he starred in a film, J’ai tué!, and resumed his vaudeville act at the Casino de Paris. When the filming finished, they took a long holiday, travelling to Norway and then Southern Europe and Greece. At the end of their holiday they settled in the Hotel Negresco in Nice and Sessue drove to Monte Carlo every night for gambling. He claims in his autobiographies that one evening he played against the Duke of Westminster, Andre Gustav Citroen, the founder of the French motor company, a pair of wealthy Greeks and a South American Coffee King. He ended up playing only against the Duke. According to Sessue’s account, ‘the Duke was an inveterate gambler, and a shrewd one … played as if his life depended upon his winning’.22 By the time Sessue decided to call it a day his losses had amounted to five million francs, but he left the casino after buying a round of champagne. The following morning he was woken up by a phone call from the Japanese embassy in Paris: they had received news that the bruised and battered body of a Japanese had been found under the Monte Carlo high cliffs and feared that it might be his corpse. Some biographers dismiss this as fictitious. USA, JAPAN, FRANCE AGAIN

After the Hayakawas left France in July 1925 they settled in New York, renting a house in Long Island and an apartment near 265

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Broadway, from where Sessue went to the performance of Love City, a popular play transferred from Berlin. However, by this time, Sessue’s popularity and reputation were in steady decline. His theatrical career did not take off even after the minor success of Love City and he spent the next four years taking his shows on tour in the USA and Canada, writing a novel, and running a Kendo club in New York. The first Hollywood film in which he starred after he had left for Europe was a Warner Brothers short piece called The Man who Laughed the Last (1929), a twenty minutes film version of his vaudeville act. It was his comeback film and his first talkie. However, Sessue was already passé. He was forty years old and although he was still handsome he needed more than good looks to survive in Hollywood. It was not until 1931 that he returned to Hollywood. Thereafter he stayed away until after the Second World War. By the time he returned to Japan in the early 1930s, few Japanese knew that Sessue had once been seen as a Hollywood film star who had disgraced his own country by appearing in a notoriously racist film The Cheat. Instead he was now respected as a Japanese who became a superstar in the USA. Nevertheless, his popularity in Japan as a movie star did not rise as high as in the West. In the West his fame had been established by his performance in The Cheat but this film had aroused a furore in Japan. Accordingly he was happy to accept a foreign offer when he was invited to France to appear in Max Ophuls’ Yoshiwara. The film is set in the red light district of Tokyo, and it is a story about a woman who is forced to be a high-class prostitute to support her younger brother, and her relationship with a Russian naval officer. Sessue plays the role of the rickshaw driver and military spy, who is also in love with the heroine. The woman is arrested for hiding the secret documents, which are entrusted to her by the Russian officer because of a tip from the rickshaw driver. She is executed by firing squad despite the desperate efforts of the Russian to rescue her.23 This film upset the Japanese authorities and its screening was banned. The way in which the Yoshiwara was presented in the film was found objectionable. Life in the Yoshiwara is depicted as despicable and the women working in it were shown as virtual slaves.24 Sessue was yet again, along with Tanaka Michiko, a Paris-based opera singer, accused by the Japanese media of being a traitor and enemy of imperial Japan. Sessue did not return to Japan during the Second World War, seeing in Paris the German troops marching into the Champs-Élysées and the city being liberated; he left his wife, Tsuru, and three children in Japan. While he was in Paris, Tsuru was raising Sessue’s children in financial and psychological difficulties in pre-war and wartime Japan. She could speak Japanese but could not read and write well; 266

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the eldest son was the illegitimate child of Sessue and an American actress, and the two daughters had been born between Sessue and a geisha. It is not clear why he continued to remain in Paris without returning to Japan to join his family, especially when there was very little work for him there. He appeared in only nine films in twelve years while he was in France. POST-WAR

In 1949 Humphrey Bogart, who was a great fan of Sessue, invited him to Hollywood again and wanted him to co-star in a film, which he was producing. In the early morning of New Year’s Day 1949 he returned to New York for the first time in sixteen years and appeared in an American film after twenty years’ absence from the American screen. Tokyo Joe, a kind of sequel to Casablanca, is set in Tokyo but was shot in Colombia Pictures studios, with Sessue as Baron Kimura, the villainous former head of the Japanese secret police. He starred in one more film before returning to Japan playing in Three Came Home the role of Colonel Suga, the head of a Japanese PoW camp. After the filming, Sessue met Nagata Masaichi, the President of Daiei Picture Co., who later became the producer of Kenji Mizoguchi’s Ugetsu (Silver Lion at the Venice Film Festival) and Teinosuke Kinugasa’s Gate of Hell (Grand Prix at the Cannes Film Festival) and was invited to work for his studios as an actor. Although Sessue was an international star, he had featured in only a handful of Japanese films, which were made in the pre-war period. By the time he returned to Japan for good in 1949, he was already sixty-three years old. Accordingly the roles offered to him were minor ones. The only occasions, in which he shined as a movie actor, were when he worked for foreign film directors. He played the minor but interesting role of a police chief in Samuel Fuller’s House of Bamboo alongside Robert Stack, the later television star of the Untouchable series, Robert Ryan and another Japanese international star, Yoshiko Yamaguchi. The plot of The House of Bamboo is full of contradictions and the film is a mishmash of cultural misunderstandings. In the film a wooden bathtub is placed in the middle of a bedroom, nobody takes off shoes, and Japanese women show no sexual inhibitions. However, Sessue played the role with great dignity and authority. In 1957 Sam Spiegel, an Austrian-born independent film producer, gave Sessue the script for Bridge on the River Kwai to be directed by David Lean, but he did not like it because he had no sympathy for the role of Colonel Saito, whose part he was assigned to play. Fortunately his wife who saw great potential in the script induced him to change his mind. He later gave what was probably his best 267

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performance in his fifty-five year career in films. He was nominated for the ‘Best Supporting Actor’ award in the Academy Awards of that year despite the fact that David Lean found Sessue a hopeless actor and during filming in Sri Lanka reduced Sessue to tears.25 He survived Tsuru by twelve years and after her death married Azuma Hideo, thirty-eight years younger than himself. He carried on working even after he turned eighty, but he retired from acting in 1968. Sho¯hei Imamura’s Profound Desires of Gods was the last film in which he appeared. He died on 23 November 1973 at the age of eighty-seven. His name is now engraved on the Hollywood Walk of Fame. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6 7

8

9

10

11

12

Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed me the Way, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1961, p. 76. Toriumi Yoshiro¯, ‘Hayakawa Hayakawa,’ Sankei Shinbun, 22 July 1998, ¯ ba Toshio¯, Hayakawa Hayakawa: Bo¯so¯ ga Unda Kokusai Haiyû, NagarO eyama: Ron Shobo¯, 2012, p. 55. Sessue is a combination of setsu (snow) and shu¯ (sandbank) and he chose this name because Saigo¯ Takamori, a Japanese popular hero, had the pseudonym Nanshu¯ (southern sandbank). He initially wanted to use Hokushu (north sandbank), but as this stage name was already taken by somebody else, he went for Setsu (snow)-Shu¯ because it was associated with hoku (north) Miyao Daisuke, Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom, Durham: Duke University Press, 2007. Rafu Shinpo¯ (Los Angeles News), 24 December 1915. Quoted by Toriumi, ibid., p. 90. Ibid., p. 92. Rufu Shinpo¯, ‘I deeply regret that The Cheat in which I starred happened to hurt all my compatriots and I will do my best not to repeat the same mistake and implicate others in trouble.’ translation mine, 29 December 1915. Quoted by Toriumi, ibid., p. 93. Colette, ‘Cinema: The Cheat,’ Excelsior, 7 August 1916. Translated in Abel, French Film Theory and Criticism: A History and Anthology, 1907– 1939. Vol. 1: 1907–1929, ed. Richard Abel, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993. Murakami Yukiko, Yellow Face: Hollywood Eiga ni Miru Ajiajin no Sho¯zo¯, Tokyo: Asahi Shinbun, 1993. Cecilia Rusmussen, ‘Hollywood Castles and Curious “Cures”,’ Los Angeles Times, 18 March 1996. The millionaire doctor who originally built it, had had it copied from his wife’s ancestral home in Inverness, Scotland. Miyao Daisuke, Sessue Hayakawa: Silent Cinema and Transnational Stardom, Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007. The exact number of films produced by Haworth Pictures is not known, because some films must have been lost. 268

SESSUE HAYAKAWA (1886–1973)

13 14

15

16

17

18

19

20 21 22 23

24

25

Reported on the front page of the Los Angeles Examiner on 9 April 1921. Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed Me the Way: … to peace, happiness and tranquility, London; George Allen and Unwin, pp. 154–5. Dudley O. McGovney, ‘The Anti-Japanese Land Laws of California and Ten Other States,’ California Law Review, Vol. 35, Issue 1, March 1947, pp. 7–8. Kevin Brownlow, Behind the Mask of Innocence, London: Jonathan Cape, 1990, p. 351. One of the irritations he revealed was the racial insults he had received from the head of Robertson-Cole, who was the co-owner of Hayakawa Feature Play Co., and who owed him $90,000. Nakagawa Orie, Sessue!: Sekai wo Miryo¯ shita Nihonjin Star Hayakawa Sessue, Tokyo: Ko¯dansha, 2012, p. 165. The Royal Variety Performance homepage: http://www.eabf.org.uk/ royal-variety-performance/archive/1920s/1923 Sessue Hayakawa, Hayakawa Sessue: Musha Shugyo¯ Sekai wo Yuku, Tokyo: Nihon Tosho Centre, 1999, pp. 124–5. Sessue Hayakawa, Zen Showed me the Way, op. cit., p. 175. Rekishi Shasin, Rekishi Shashin Kai, May 1924. Zen Showed me the Way, op. cit., p. 178. Alexander Jacoby, ‘Yoshiwara: Max Ophuls in the Empire of Passion,’ CineAction, Spring, 2002. Cecilia Segawa Seigle, Yoshiwara--the Glittering World of the Japanese Courtesan, Honolulu: Hawaii University Press, 1993, p. 11. ‘Japanese authorities had objected to the film in 1937 because it displayed the Yoshiwara quarter at its worst before the eyes of foreign viewers.’ The details are discussed in my article on David Lean for Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits vol. VIII

269

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23

The Return of Japan’s Lost Telescope after 400 Years SEAN CURTIN

The world debut of the new telescope at Hatfield House

Four centuries ago King James I gave Japan its very first telescope; at the time this was a cutting-edge piece of technology. Sadly, the original telescope has been lost, but as part of the 2013 Japan400 celebrations to mark four centuries since the first official encounter, a new telescope was constructed using traditional methods and materials. The idea of restoring a lost symbolic artefact has deep cultural roots in English mythology and literature stretching back to the Arthurian legends. The story of the original telescope begins in April 1611, when the East India Company ship the Clove, under the command of Captain John Saris,1 left England and set sail for Japan. The mission was made up of three ships, of which only the Clove went all the way to Japan. Saris’ commission was to go to Yemen and the Spice Islands first, primarily to seek trade, and then to Japan, if possible. Because his first two ports of call were not especially successful, Saris had every incentive to go on to Japan. After a dangerous sea voyage lasting more than two years, the Clove arrived in Japanese waters in June 1613.2 271

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This was a daring mission to what was then the edge of the known world. It is believed that the Earl of Salisbury, a close adviser and Chief Minister to King James, supervised the complex task of sending the Clove, the first British vessel, to Japan and organizing the dispatch of the telescope, which was the most advanced scientific instrument on the planet at the time.3 After an arduous sea voyage, Saris eventually landed at Hirado, located in modern day Nagasaki Prefecture.4 Here he was warmly greeted by the local ruler, Matsura Ho¯in, the daimyo of Hirado. Matsura helped ensure the telescope’s safe passage to Japan’s ruler, Tokugawa Ieyasu. With the aid of William Adams, who had arrived in Japan in April 1600 as pilot on a Dutch ship, Saris was able to initiate the first official contacts. On 8 September 1613, Saris had an audience with Tokugawa Ieyasu, the influential retired Shogun. He handed over a letter from King James and several gifts, including Japan’s first ever telescope, a device, which had just been invented in Europe. The spyglass brought by Saris was the first to leave Europe for any destination, as well as the first ever sent to Asia. To the people of the time, the telescope was a fabulous piece of technology and an impressive gift. The surviving written Japanese texts describing the telescope are contradictory; so we have no real idea what it was actually like. As 2013 was the four hundredth anniversary of the first JapanBritish formal contacts it was decided that a new telescope should be made and presented to Japan to mark and celebrate the occasion.5 The new instrument was painstakingly created over a year by Ian Poyser, one of Britain’s foremost craftsmen in the field of traditional brass telescope construction. Having recreated such a potent historic symbol from the genesis of the Japan-British relationship, a fitting location and occasion had to be found for the presentation of the telescope. Monday 9 September 2013, almost four hundred years to the day from the original presentation, was selected. Hatfield House, built by the 1st Earl of Salisbury, who helped organize its dispatch to Japan, was chosen as the venue. Two direct descendants of key 1613 dramatis personae were present at the ceremony: these were the Marquis of Salisbury, descendant of the 1st Earl of Salisbury, and Mr Akira Matsura, descendant of the daimyo of Hirado, where the Clove had landed 400 year ago.6 At a lunch to celebrate the creation of the new telescope7 it was announced that the beautifully crafted instrument was to be a gift to the Japanese people from Japan400 as a symbol of Anglo-Japanese exchanges in culture, diplomacy and trade as well as the long-standing and mutual cooperation in science and technology. Later that same day, the telescope was exhibited at the Tower of London, where the Shogun’s gift to King James, a magnificent suit 272

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of Japanese armour, was also on display. This was a well-attended gathering and was comprehensively covered by the media. As there was still a good deal of work to be done to complete the telescope it was returned to the workshop of expert craftsman and telescope maker Ian Poyser, located in the Welsh hamlet of Ystrad Meurig. As many people wanted to see the instrument it was placed on display at the ‘Two Cultures United by Tea’ event organized by Japan400 and held at the Banqueting House in Whitehall on Sunday 15 September 2013.8 At this spacious location many people were able to admire it and the general impression of the gleaming brass device was very favourable. On 17 January 2014, Japan400 and the University of Cambridge organized a seminar entitled ‘From King James’s Telescope to the Present and the Future: the Japan-British partnership in science and technology’ at Jesus College, Cambridge.8 Among the distinguished academic participants was Lord Rees FRS, Astronomer Royal.9 The main focus of the day-long seminar was on Japan-British partnerships in scientific instruments and global science and technology over the 400 years since King James initiated official ties by presenting the original silver-gilt spyglass to Tokugawa Ieyasu.10 After the conference there was a dinner11 in honour of the departing telescope, which was placed in a prominent position. The meal was held in one of the oldest parts of the college, which was built on the site of a twelfth-century Benedictine nunnery.12 This ancient venue gave the proceedings an almost spiritual quality evoking the Bible passage, ‘Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost’ (St. Luke 15:9, King James Version). After its farewell party, the next phase of the telescope’s life began with its departure to Japan, arranged by Japan400. Once it arrived in Japan, it was initially put on display at the British embassy in Tokyo. It remained there for several months. It subsequently toured a number of Japanese cities with strong British historical connections, before finally coming to rest in Shizuoka City. The telescope will be a key part of the Ieyasu400 celebrations, which will commemorate the life of the great Japanese leader Tokugawa Ieyasu, who died in June 1616. The telescope will eventually be placed on permanent display in a specially reconstructed tower of Sunpu Castle in Shizuoka City. This impressive structure is being built for Ieyasu400 and should be ready by 2015. ENDNOTES 1

2

John Saris was Commander of the 8th East India Company voyage, and as such held a post much more senior than that of a ship’s captain. Saris’ journals were published in 1900, as ‘The Voyage of Captain John Saris to Japan, 1613’, edited by British scholar, diplomat and Japanologist 273

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3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Sir Ernest M. Satow. Saris died in 1643 and is buried at All Saints Church, Fulham, London. We assume Salisbury was involved with the Clove’s dispatch preparations, but there is no clear historic evidence to show this. The East India Company would have done a majority of the work, although Salisbury would have been the most likely person to have ensured the King’s cooperation as well as arranged the royal letter and gifts, which included the telescope. Saris opened a trading post and factory in Hirado, which he subsequently handed over to his colleague Richard Cocks upon departing in December 1613. Cocks managed the trading post for almost a decade before he was recalled by the British East India Company. Thanks to the vision of the Japan400 co-chairs, Professor Timon Screech and Nicolas Maclean CMG, along with the very generous funding for the project by Robin Maynard MBE who is a permanent resident of Japan and honorary member of the British Chamber of Commerce and Industry. When the two present day direct descendants of key 1613 dramatis personae met for the first time at Hatfield House, a brief silence spread across the crowded room until the Marquess of Salisbury warmly shook Mr Matsura’s hand and declared, ‘I think it’s about time we met.’ Mr Matsura responded, ‘I hope the next 400 years will be even more successful than the first.’ Those who also attended the celebratory lunch held at Hatfield House on Monday 9 September included Mr Miyajima Akio, Minister Plenipotentiary of the Japanese Embassy, Mr Hanyu Yuichiro, Director of the Japan Local Government Centre, Mr Hanaoka Takaaki, Secretary General of the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry in the UK, Professor Hiramatsu Ko¯zo¯, Director of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science, and Mr Sean Curtin, Director of the Japan Matsuri. The First Astronomer Royal, John Flamsteed, nominated in 1675, spent some time at Jesus College and his portrait is on display in the Master’s Lodge. In September 1670, Flamsteed entered his name as an undergraduate at Jesus College, but never appears to have taken up full residence. Speakers at the ‘From King James’s Telescope to the Present and the Future’ seminar held at the Jesus College, Cambridge on 17 January 2014 included Professor Roberto Cipolla, Fellow of Jesus College, Professor Eileen Reeves from Princeton University, Sir Peter Williams, former Chairman of Oxford Instruments, Professor Ian White, Master of Jesus College, Professor Paul Alexander of Jesus College, Professor Iida Fumiya from ETH, Zurich, and Professor David Cope of Clare Hall, and former Director of the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology. This conference was sponsored by the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and Toshiba of Europe. The conference sponsors were represented by Mr Noguchi Koshi, Vice President-Corporate Government and External Relations, Toshiba of Europe Limited, Dr Asai Hironori, Deputy Managing Director, Cambridge Research Laboratory, Toshiba 274

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11

12

Research Europe Limited, and Professor Roberto Cipolla FREng, Managing Director, Cambridge Research Laboratory, and by the Earl of St. Andrews, Chairman of the Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation and by Mr Stephen McEnally, Chief Executive, Great Britain Sasakawa Foundation. The dinner was attended by many of the conference speakers, representatives of the sponsors along with the generous funder of the restoration project Robin Maynard MBE and his wife Midori. Professor Lynn Gladden, the University’s Pro-Vice Chancellor for Research, gave the main after dinner speech, several others also spoke including Robin Maynard. This ancient venue gave the proceedings an almost spiritual quality evoking the Bible passage, ‘Rejoice with me; for I have found the piece which I had lost’ (St. Luke 15:9, King James Version).

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Ella Du Cane (1874–1943) – Watercolourist TONI HUBERMAN

INTRODUCTION

Ella Mary Du Cane was a watercolourist, most notably of flowers and gardens. Many of her paintings were used to illustrate the pages of A & C Black’s popular colour books, with text often written by her sister Florence. In particular, Ella was admired for her depiction of Japanese flowers and gardens, which she painted with great exuberance. She was an inspiration to others at a time when Japanese gardens were very fashionable in the West, and when not many westerners had actually been to Japan. She helped to popularize the Japanese garden, introducing it to a wider audience. She was born in Hobart, Tasmania, the third daughter of politician and then-Governor of Tasmania, Sir Charles Du Cane. Soon after she was born the Du Cane family returned to England, where Ella grew up in Braxted Park, Essex, the family estate. Ella’s mother was Georgiana Susan Copley, daughter of Lord Lyndhurst (1772–1863), three times Lord Chancellor under Prime 277

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Ministers George Canning, the Viscount Goderich, the Duke of Wellington and Sir Robert Peel. Her maternal great grandfather was the American portraitist John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). She had no formal training as a painter, apart from ‘a few lessons in drawing and perspective’ from her governess, and one or two lessons from the painter Sir James Linton (1840–1916),1 but her talent, and knowledge of, and enthusiasm for, gardens, together with her family connections, brought private commissions and invitations to visit the rich and titled, and with it came commercial success. EARLY CAREER

The Royal Family were early admirers, particularly Queen Victoria and the Prince of Wales. Between 1895 and 1898 the Queen herself commissioned and purchased no fewer than twenty-six watercolours, including paintings of the gardens at Windsor, Frogmore and Osborne. Several views of Osborne were given to the Empress Frederick (Victoria’s eldest daughter), the Queen referring to Ella as ‘a very talented young Lady’.2 Both the Queen and the Prince of Wales visited her exhibitions at Graves’ Galleries in Pall Mall, and later, when the Prince was king (Edward VII), he continued to purchase a number of paintings himself.3 Ella first exhibited at the Annual Exhibition of the Royal Institute of Painters in Water Colours in 1893, and appeared at regular intervals at the Graves’ Galleries, the Fine Art Society, and the Modern Gallery. By 1898 she was exhibiting her pictures of Leopold de Rothschild’s home at Ascott House in Buckinghamshire, his waterlily pond at Gunnersbury, and Lord Carrington’s seat at Gwydyr Castle. Commissions inevitably followed from other owners of stately homes: at Crichel, Broughton Castle, Blickling, Hinchinbrooke, Haddon Cottage, Cawdor Castle, Hartrigg, Carberry, Drummond Castle, and Lady Kenmare’s gardens near Killarney. Her paintings appealed to a romantic, late Victorian-early Edwardian sensibility. In 1908 she exhibited with Helen Allingham, and although Helen Allingham was the more established artist, one could say that Ella was the more adventurous in her choice of location. While Allingham painted the cottages and gardens of England, Ella Du Cane ventured overseas. After the death of her father in 1889, and from a very young age, Ella and one of her sisters, usually Florence, travelled abroad unchaperoned. This ‘wild and gifted pair’ not only explored the usual European destinations (Italy, Belgium, Holland, France), but ventured farther afield to Algeria, the Canary Islands and Madeira.4 She spent six months in the West Indies and made two visits to Japan, the first around 1904, and then again in 1907. Both visits to Japan resulted in exhibitions (at Graves’ Galleries and the Fine Art 278

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Society), and two books: the colour book The Flowers and Gardens of Japan and Peeps at Many Lands and Cities: Japan. TRAVELS

There is a considerable history of independent, wealthy British spinsters, unfettered by husbands and children, travelling the globe at this time. Many, like Isabella Bird (1831–1904), and Ella Christie (1861–1949) wrote about their experiences. Constance Cumming (1837–1924) and Marianne North (1830–1890) both wrote and painted. Ella Du Cane has left no written account of her travels. She painted, and left the writing to others. Her sister’s accounts are devoid of personal experience beyond the topographical. The only recorded account we have of her own adventures is of her encounter with Isabella Robertson Christie (known as Ella). Ella Christie was a formidable traveller. She was the first British woman to travel to Khiva (then semi-independent, now in Uzbekistan), and one of the first women to become a Fellow of the Royal Geographical Society (in 1913). Her book, Through Khiva to Golden Samarkand: The remarkable story of a woman’s adventurous journey alone through the deserts of central Asia to the heart of Turkestan, is an account of her journey across Central Asia.5 In 1907 Christie and her sister Lady Alice King Stewart visited Japan. They met the Du Cane sisters (‘so artistic and know exactly the places to take one to’) at Yaami’s Hotel in Kyoto, one of the popular meeting places for Europeans visiting Japan.6 Finding a kindred spirit in Ella Du Cane (‘one of the few women one can travel with’),7 the two Ellas, accompanied only by a ‘native boy’ (‘he comes for four shillings a day, finding his own food and lodging’), set out on a walking tour around Mount Fuji. 8 It is the only time when Christie is known to have trekked with a companion other than her maid. It bonded their friendship. As did Ella Du Cane’s ‘magnificent tea-basket’, which included a pan for making toasted cheese.9 The country appeared to be readying for war, with soldiers on manoeuvres, and Christie bemoaned the fact that they had to ‘sleep in a native inn full of noisy dirty creatures in Army uniform who fed like puppy dogs and joked with the maids’.10 Both Ellas were obviously prepared to put up with a great deal of discomfort for the pleasure of seeing enormous camphor trees, deutzias, camellias, hydrangeas, tiny roses, and bamboos. Their second night found them at a local inn in a room bare of furniture with only a brazier and a spittoon, the floor apparently heated by the bubbling waters of the sulphur springs – to a temperature of 107°F. But the mountain views were ‘quite superb’.11 279

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JAPANESE GARDENS

Inspired by the gardens she visited, and by Ella Du Cane’s paintings, Christie went home to Scotland and created her own Japanese garden. With advice from Josiah Conder, whose Landscape Gardening in Japan was then the bible of Japanese garden-lovers,12 she brought a Japanese gardener, Handa Taki, to create her garden at Cowden Castle, in the foothills of the Ochils.13 ‘For six weeks she toiled and planned, while [...] apparently shapeless mounds arose, and stones were sought for [...] and placed in the natural orthodox groupings.’14 The marshy field was drained and a lake formed. Cherry trees and azaleas were planted in the shadow of the ‘misty mountain’ beyond; stone lanterns and red lacquered torii were strategically placed. Du Cane visited and approved. The garden still survives today and is now on Historic Scotland’s Inventory of Gardens and Designed Landscapes. Du Cane created her own garden at Beacon Hill House, where she lived for many years, and she created her mother’s garden at nearby ‘Mountains’, the dower house of Braxted Park near Maldon where the family moved in 1919. The only Japanese garden she ever designed herself was in a ploughed field at ‘Mountains’. This she decorated with ornaments and plants brought back from Japan, including Iris ensata from the then-famous Hori-Kiri gardens in Tokyo. Kathryn Bradley-Hole, writing in 2004, noted that the Japanese garden, as such, no longer existed, although candelabra primulas, irises and knotweed (‘not so welcome’), all part of the original planting, had survived.15 It was remarked that ‘as a practical gardener, [Ella] has at least this much in common with her methods of painting, that she goes for the masses. Her plants are massed, her colours are massed. To that extent her garden is a painter’s garden’.16 And this exuberance of massed colour was what appealed to her many admirers. One such was Marguérite Mary Baroness Van Brienen van de Groote Lindt (1871–1939), who is responsible for the Japanese garden at Clingendael in The Hague. It still exists and is now a national heritage-listed garden. It was laid out around 1915, and has similarities with the ‘Peace Garden’ created for the Japan-British Exhibition of 1910. The Baroness visited the Exhibition in London, and travelled to Japan the following year in 1911. There she acquired many of the garden ornaments considered to make up a Japanese garden, including stone lanterns, a stone bridge, a standing and a sitting Jizõ, and two red bridges. And she knew the Du Cane sisters. They were frequent guests at Clingendael. There is a suggestion that the Baroness met the Du Canes some time after the garden was actually laid out, and that 280

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The Flowers and Gardens of Japan was used not to create the garden, but later to help evoke the right atmosphere.17 Her illustrations were more likely a source of inspiration rather than a source of practical advice. Much the same can be said of Leopold de Rothschild’s garden at Gunnersbury. James Hudson, considered one of the leading gardeners of his day, was responsible for overseeing the creation of the Japanese garden at Gunnersbury, the first de Rothschild garden in England, and considered one of the most celebrated ‘Japanese’ gardens in the country. The Japanese Ambassador when he visited is reported as saying, ‘Marvellous! We have nothing like it in Japan’.18 Hudson mentions going to see the exhibition of Ella’s Japanese paintings in 1904.19 Although the garden had actually been more or less completed several years before, Ella’s paintings may have inspired the later detailed planning of the garden. After Leopold de Rothschild died in 1917 the estate was broken up and later the local authorities purchased a large section which in 1926 was created into a public park. There is now a plan to regenerate the park, which includes restoring the Japanese garden. BOOK ILLUSTRATOR

Ella’s main claim to fame is through her book illustrations. She was one of many artists who illustrated the A & C Black colour books of the early twentieth century. Illustration was always regarded more highly than text, and for that Ella was well equipped to appeal to readers of the time. The Italian Lakes (1905) was the first, with text by Richard Bagot, a novelist better known for his many books and articles on Italy. Other A & C Black books followed her world travels: The Flowers and Gardens of Japan (1907), The Flowers and Gardens of Madeira (1909), The Canary Islands (1911), Banks of the Nile (1913), Great Steamship Lines: The P & O (1913), Lake Como (1915), The Nile Watercolours (1920), and Egypt (1931). Of these Japan was the most popular destination, and Ella’s slim volume on Japan (1907), with text by John Finnemore, in the ‘Peeps at Many Lands and Cities’ series, was by far the most popular. It was reprinted ten times between 1907 and 1930. While some were guarded in their enthusiasm for her efforts (the Manchester Guardian grudgingly suggested that her watercolours of the Canary Islands were ‘not unsuccessful’),20 The Observer described the book as ‘charming’ and Ella ‘fearless in the use of pure colour’.21 Her use of colour was often referred to. Of Italian Lakes it was said that: ‘her brightly coloured illustrations catch the warmth and charm of the scenery’, although adding the proviso ‘without perhaps capturing its grandeur’.22 And even when the subject was not botanical 281

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Ella saw vivid blooms. In the shoe bazaar in Cairo, she depicted red shoes hanging in cascades like so many heavily-laden branches of a flowering tree.23 JAPAN-BRITISH EXHIBITION OF 1910

In the early days of Europe’s love affair with Japanese gardens, architect Josiah Conder’s Landscape Gardening in Japan (1893) was one of the main sources of information. The 1910 Japan-British Exhibition was an opportunity for westerners to view the real thing. The two main, specially designed, landscape gardens, the ‘Garden of Peace’ and the ‘Garden of the Floating Islands’ were created by Ozawa Keijiro¯ and were the most authentic large-scale Japanese gardens seen in Britain by the general public up to that time.24 The Exhibition was intended to promote Japan’s public image in the west, promote greater understanding of its culture and traditions, increase trade and celebrate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, which had been signed in 1902. In the event it was an enormous success in Britain, with over eight million visitors in six months. And Ella’s painting of ‘Wistaria, Kyomidzu’ [sic], which had been the frontispiece of The Flowers and Gardens of Japan, illustrated the front cover of the official catalogue for the exhibition. The publisher A & C Black also produced four sets of full-colour postcards, twentyfour images in all, of Ella’s paintings from the book, which were sold at the exhibition. Without a doubt, Ella’s view of Japan reinforced the popular public image of how they saw the country. Ella once remarked that ‘one day I am going to write a book on gardens’.25 Sadly she never did. She died at Mountains in 1943, age sixty-nine, of unknown causes. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5 6

7 8 9 10

Alice Stronach, ‘A Painter of Gardens: An Interview with Miss Ella Du Cane’, The Girl’s Realm (August 1902), 775–81 (p. 777). Delia Millar, ‘Ella Mary Du Cane (1874–1943)’, in The Victorian Watercolours and Drawings in the Collection of Her Majesty the Queen (London: Philip Wilson, 1995), p. 284. Stronach, p. 780. Mark Griffiths, The Lotus Quest (London: Chatto & Windus: 2009), p. 93. (London: Seeley, Service, 1925). Averil Stewart, Alicella: A Memoir of Alice King Stewart and Ella Christie (London: John Murray, 1955), p. 203. Stewart, p. 206. Stewart, p. 203. Stewart, p. 207. Stewart, p.206. 282

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11 12 13

14

15

16

17

18 19

20 21 22

23

24

25

Stewart, p. 207. (Yokohama: Kelly & Walsh: 1893). Handa Taki is the subject of a biographical portrait by Jill Raggett,Yuka Kajihara and Jason Nolan in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi (Global Oriental, 2013). Ella Christie, Alice King Stewart, A Long Look at Life by Two Victorians (London: Seeley, Service: 1940), pp. 234–35. Kathryn Bradley-Hole, Lost Gardens of England: From the archives of Country Life (London: Aurum Press, 2004), p. 119. Christopher Hussey, ‘Country homes and gardens old and new: Beacon Hill, Essex. The residence of Miss Ella Du Cane’, Country Life, 2 May 1925, 692–98 (p. 692). Christopher Thacker, The History of Gardens (London: Croom Helm, 1979), p. 78, referred to in Wybe Kuitert, ‘Japonaiserie in London and The Hague: A History of the Japanese Gardens at Shepherd’s Bush (1910) and Clingendael (c. 1915)’, Garden History, Winter 2002, 221–38 (n. 23). Bradley-Hole, p. 90. James Hudson, ‘A Japanese Garden in England’, Journal of Royal Horticultural Society, 32 (1907), 2–10 (p. 2). Manchester Guardian, 19 December 1911. The Observer, 10 December 1911. Colin Inman, The A & C Black Colour Books: A Collector’s Guide and Bibliography 1900–1930 (London: Werner Shaw, 1990), pp. 36, 38. John A. Todd, The Banks of the Nile (London: A & C Black, 1913), frontispiece. Jill Raggett, ‘The Japanese Gardens: Stars of the Show’, in Commerce and Culture at the 1910 Japan-British Exhibition: Centenary Perspectives, ed. by Ayako Hotta-Lister & Ian Nish (Leiden, Boston: Global Oriental, 2013), pp. 177–88 (p. 177). Stronach, p 781. See also Alison Redfoot, ‘Victorian Watercolorist Ella Du Cane: A study in resistance and compliance of gender stereotypes, the professional art world, Orientalism, and the interpretation of Japanese gardens for British Society’ (unpublished master’s thesis, California State University at Long Beach, 2011).

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Alfred Parsons, RA, PRWS (1847–1920) and the Japanese Watercolour Movement TOSHIO WATANABE

INTRODUCTION

Alfred William Parsons was an English painter, illustrator and garden designer, who is now only marginally remembered in Britain, but played a catalytic role in the flowering of Japanese watercolour painting during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Parsons was born in Beckington, Somerset, in 1847.1 In 1862 when he was fifteen, he toured to France, Switzerland and Italy. Around 1865 he moved to London and attended South Kensington Schools in the evenings. Initially he worked as a clerk in the Post Office, but in 1867 gave up this post and concentrated on his career as an artist. He started to exhibit regularly at the Royal Academy from 1871 onwards. He became an Associate of the Royal Academy of Arts in 1897 and then a full Academician in 1911. In 1887 his 284

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Alfred Parsons, When Nature Painted All things Gay, oil on canvas, exhibited 1887, Tate Gallery

oil painting When Nature Painted All Things Gay was bought for the nation through Chantry Bequest2 selection. He painted a number of such oil paintings, but he was better known as a watercolourist. In 1914 he became the President of the Royal Watercolour Society, which was founded in 1804 and is the oldest watercolour society in the world. He continued in this post until his death in 1920. Apart from the Royal Academy and the Royal Watercolour Society he was a member of many societies and showed at numerous exhibiting organizations, among others the Art Workers Guild, Dudley Art Society, the Grosvenor Gallery, the Fine Art Society, Dowdeswell & Dowdeswell and the New English Art Club. He also exhibited internationally, e.g. in Tokyo (1892), St. Louis (1904), Christchurch (New Zealand, 1906–1907), Rome (1911) and New York (1916). 3 Parsons had an extensive network of friends and acquaintances,4 which included artists and designers, such as Sir Lawrence Alma-Tadema, Sir Edward Burne-Jones, Sir Luke Fildes, Paul César Helleu, Lord Leighton, William Morris, Arthur Rackham, Linley Sambourne, John Singer Sargent, Marcus Stone, James McNeill Whistler and William Robinson and writers such as Henry James, Vernon Lee and Okakura Kakuzo¯. He even carried out the floral decoration for the dinner given by the friends of Alma-Tadema in honour of Alma-Tadema’s knighthood in 1899.5 His network was unusually varied ranging from conservative painters such as 285

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Alma-Tadema or Fildes to radical designers such as Morris or Robinson. His activities included membership of the Alpine Club, the Arts Club, the Beefsteak Club, the Royal Horticultural Society, the Reform Club and the Athenaeum. Parsons was also successful as an illustrator and garden designer. As an illustrator his contributions to periodicals, such as the American Harper’s Magazine and William Robinson’s famous magazine, The Garden, are particularly important. Parsons also provided illustrations for books such as The Wild Garden (2nd ed. 1881) or The English Flower Garden (editions 1883–1933).6 Robinson’s writings were instrumental in moving British gardening away from geometrical regimented-type to a more irregular and natural look, such as the English cottage garden or the wild garden. It was Parsons who provided the crucial illustrations to Robinson’s writings, which directly visualized Robinson’s theory. Parsons knew a good deal about horticulture even before he met Robinson.7 So it wasn’t long before he tried his hand at garden design. Robinson said that Parsons’ dual interest in art and horticulture were the two skills required to be a landscape gardener. 8 He designed gardens 9 for a number of important clients, such as the garden at Clouds in East Knoyle in Wiltshire, which became a gathering point of the social group the Souls or the garden of the Arts and Crafts model house Whightwick Manor in Wolverhampton. VISIT TO JAPAN

Parsons traveled to Japan in 1892 staying some nine months from March to December. He published a travelogue in Harper’s Magazine, which then came out as a book Notes in Japan in 1896.10 This is a detailed day-to-day account of his travel,11 but compared to other books covering their travels in Japan by British authors of the time, Parsons devoted an unusual amount of space to Japanese plants. He did not seem interested in Japanese history or even art. Again and again he focused on plants. Once back in London in 1893 he showed the watercolours he had painted in Japan at the Fine Art Society. The exhibition Landscapes & Flowers in Japan included about a hundred paintings. Although he was well disposed towards the Japanese, he was not an outright Japanophile. Back in London, he counted among his friends such Japanophiles as Whistler and Alma-Tadema (a Vice-President of the Japan Society), but he did not seem to be greatly influenced by Japanese taste. In his book he does discuss at one point the nature of Japanese art, but the discussion gives the impression that Japanese art was not something he wished to emulate in any way. 12 When he was in Tokyo he had organized at the Tokyo School of Fine Art an exhibition of about a hundred watercolours. 286

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The paintings exhibited were probably more or less the same paintings as the ones he showed at the Fine Art Society. The Tokyo School of Fine Art at that time shunned Westernstyle painting and according to the art historian Tanita Hiroyuki,13 Okakura Kakuzo¯ (1862–1913), the scholar and art critic who had founded the school, may have intended by putting on the exhibition to mitigate the criticism levelled against the School that it ignored Western-style painting. NOTIONS OF ‘NATURE’ AND ‘LANDSCAPE’ DURING THE EDO PERIOD IN JAPAN

In order to understand the impact of Parsons’ art in Japan, it is necessary to examine the Japanese art scene at the time, in particular the development of notions such as ‘nature’ or ‘landscape’ in modern Japan and the role of watercolour painting in this debate. Terms such as ‘nature’14 are contingent on historical conditions.15 Shizen is now the usual translation of the English term nature, but this became common currency among the Japanese only during the second half of the nineteenth century and as such it is associated with modernity.16 Previously other terms, such as tenchi, banyu¯, banbutsu, shinrabansho¯, zo¯ka or tennen as well as shizen were used to indicate allinclusiveness, i.e. humans as part of and not separate from nature. In the West nature was often thought of, particularly by the Romantics, as being separate and in opposition to human activities. As Yanabu Akira has shown, such a seemingly simple and selfevident term ‘nature’ has an astonishingly complex history. He wrote a book on how this single term came to represent nature in Japan. From his and other studies it is clear that the term shizen existed earlier, but it was only during the Meiji period that it was accepted as the Japanese translation of ‘nature’. 17 The concept of nature in the Edo period has several strands. One strand focused on meisho, famous places. The concept of meisho is said to have originated in utamakura, places with poetical and also often with religious associations, where many poems were composed over many years.18 Though the focus of many of the poems may be nature itself, the main characteristic of meisho is their dependence on these poems, i.e. on human activities. A meisho cannot stand on its own as nature; it needs the involvement of a human hand, such as a poem or a painting. Another strand is what I might call anti-meisho, where nature and its depiction is not primarily related to cultural, especially poetic, associations, but is more scientific and often purely descriptive. Those who were supporters of this strand conducted scientific expeditions rather than visited meisho to wallow in poetic atmosphere. 287

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One Edo period debate crystallized the two contrasting approaches to nature and the meaning of ‘landscape’. Furukawa Kosho¯ken (1726–1807) was a widely travelled geographer, but disapproved of the Itsukushima Shrine being designated as one of the most famous landscapes in Japan.19 In his book Saiyu¯zakki (Travel Notes from Western Japan) of 1783, he agreed that the shrine was worthy of its designation. However, he asked what would happen if the shrine and the corridors were removed. Man-made elements, the shrine and the corridors, were major contributing factors for making Itsukushima one of the three most famous landscapes. But, if the main criterion was natural landscape without added human elements, he could cite on the basis of his journeys round Japan many more beautiful landscapes than the island of Itsukushima. Kosho¯ken questioned the theory of meisho ideology and excluded the human factor when judging landscapes. His thinking, which is more akin to the Western approach to nature, reflects a more scientific approach based on value judgments gained through first hand evidence. Another contemporary geographer, Sugae Masumi (1754–1829) presented an alternative view. In 1815 Masumi criticized Kosho¯ken as lacking in sympathy for the people living at these places and also lacking in cultural insight.20 Masumi’s point was that the human contribution was vital to any assessment of a place and a landscape. The folklorist Miyamoto Tsuneichi has made perceptive comparisons of the two Edo period geographers.21 Miyamoto regarded Kosho¯ken as a top-down, slightly cooler and detached but meticulous observer, whereas Masumi was a more hands-on person, mingling with local people.22 At this time Kosho¯ken’s concept of nature was clearly a minority view whereas Masumi’s wish to give due weight to human factors in evaluating a landscape was the majority view. The increasing ease of travel combined with the explosion of popular travel-related publications promoted meisho as one of the prime representations of nature and landscape in Edo Japan. However the achievements of prominent geographers, such as Ino¯ Tadataka or Mamiya Rinzo¯, show that scientific exploration of natural landscape was also growing rapidly. Precise scientific observation detached from human factors could also be found in many of the paintings of nature (hakubutsuzufu). The introduction of landscape painting (fu¯keiga) from the West during the Meiji period has been much discussed. Fu¯keiga differed from traditional types of Japanese landscape paintings such as, shiki-e or sansuiga. However, the less idealistic and more naturalistic landscape paintings of the Meiji period were not inspired solely by the European concept of landscape painting. The introduction of Western ideas of nature accelerated the development of what I have called the anti-meisho trend already existing in Japan. 288

ALFRED PARSONS, RA, PRWS (1847–1920)

NOTIONS OF ‘NATURE’ AND ‘LANDSCAPE’ DURING MEIJI PERIOD JAPAN

Antonio Fontanesi (1818–1882), appointed as Professor of Painting at the Ko¯bu Art School in 1876, was instrumental in promoting Western style landscape painting. Although he only stayed in Japan for about two years, his Japanese students endorsed the antimeisho agenda. Koyama Sho¯taro¯’s kanbun (Chinese text) manuscript ‘Yu¯kyo¯roku’ (A record of rambles in the valleys), which depicts a sketching trip he conducted with his fellow students including Asai Chu¯, one of the most gifted modern landscape painters of the Meiji period, shows the attitude of Fontanesi’s students towards nature.23 They spent their time wandering about admiring ordinary rural scenes. They were not sketching meisho and they almost seemed to be avoiding meisho. The attitudes of Fontanesi’s students to nature and landscape were ground breaking, but they were still within the anti-meisho tradition continued from the Edo period. Some of the Meiji Western-style painters displayed great interest in the Western way of depicting landscape. Painters, such as Takahashi Yuichi (1828–1894) or Kamei Takejiro¯ (d. 1879) experimented with a more objective type of landscape painting concentrating on weather, light and naturalistic clouds. Another clear sign in the pages of Koyama’s ‘Yu¯kyo¯roku’ of a more modern way of looking at nature was that climbing mountains was regarded as sport.24 Mountains were no longer to be seen as sacred places or inspirations for writing poems. They were places where young men from Tokyo could enjoy their leisure. Koyama’s manuscript indicates that the specific context of a particular place was not important. This was clearly an anti-meisho attitude. This way of looking afresh at the Japanese landscape was continued by the artists of the Watercolour Movement, many of whom were keen mountaineers and also belonged to the [Japan] Alpine Club founded in 1905. (Please see in this context the article by Hamish Ion in this volume on ‘Mountaineering in Japan: British Pioneers and the pre-war Japanese Alpine Club’.) One of the founders and the first President of this Club, Kojima Usui (1873–1948), was a close friend of many of the artists of the Watercolour Movement. He was also an admirer of the writings on nature of the famous British art critic and writer, John Ruskin (1819–1900) who had an extraordinary impact on Japanese cultural life at the time.25 The concept of nature propounded by Ruskin enchanted many Japanese artists and writers and introduced a new aesthetic vision of nature, which combined art, religious sentiment and science. It was different from either the transcendental and 289

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idealistic vision of the sansui painting or the popular meisho depiction of the ukiyo-e prints, but much closer to the anti-meisho tradition dating from the Edo period. As with many other cultural phenomena of modern Japan, the modern concept of nature is not a clear break from that of the previous Edo period, but rather a modified continuation. THE JAPANESE WATERCOLOUR MOVEMENT

Watercolour painting lacked the high status of oil painting both in Japan and the West. Even in Britain where it received the highest accolade as an art form compared to other Western countries, it had second-class status within art institutions and public exhibitions. Fontanesi was primarily employed to teach oil painting in Japan but he also taught watercolour painting. Fontanesi made another important contribution to the history of Western-style painting in Japan by bringing a large quantity of authentic painting material from Europe including watercolour materials.26 In 1877, however, Ito¯ Fujibei opened his shop Sairyo¯ho¯ selling Whatman paper and Winsor and Newton paints. The record of Fontanesi’s curriculum is patchy and it does not seem to have included watercolour painting as a distinct component. Some of his students such as Koyama Sho¯taro¯ and particularly Asai Chu¯ produced fine watercolours. However, for the Western-style painters of this generation watercolour painting remained secondary to oil painting. The situation changed radically with the publication of the 1901 book, Suisaiga no Shiori (A guidebook to watercolour painting), which was a ‘how-to’ book on watercolour and became an instant ¯ shita To¯jiro¯ (1870–1917), was an artist who bestseller. The author, O became the guru of Japanese watercolour. This book was highly ¯ shita user-friendly and was aimed at the amateur. Rather unwisely O wrote that anybody with problems could write to him personally and that he would give advice, an offer taken up by many from all over ¯ shita also started to publish a magazine, Mizue, literJapan. In 1905 O ally ‘water painting’, which became one of the most influential art magazines in Japan. At the time it was the most important forum for discussions of watercolour in Japan. Most of the paintings produced by the artists of the watercolour movement were landscapes. Many depicted the mountains of the Japan Alps and many were also members of the Japan Alpine Club. The significance of this lies in the fact that the new enthusiasm for mountaineering was part of the modern perception of landscape. The concept of mountaineering is fundamentally different not only from the view of nature as simply a locus for literary associations, but also as an objective 290

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of pilgrimage. Mountaineering as a recreational pursuit or hobby was a product of the modernization of Japan. The artists of the watercolour ¯ shita To¯jiro¯, Miyake Kokki, Maruyama Banka and movement, such as O Yoshida Hiroshi, provided a new vision of the Japanese landscape as peaceful alpine scenery devoid of literary or religious associations. They not only found new subjects for landscape painting, but also a refreshing naturalism. This attracted some contemporary writers who were also exploring a new vision of nature. Major writers, such as Shimazaki To¯son, Tokutomi Roka, or Kunikida Doppo were not interested in meisho, the famous places, but in a more anonymous landscape, observing the subtle effects of light, rain, mist, etc. on nature. IMPACT OF PARSONS’ WATERCOURS IN JAPAN

The Western-style oil painters in Japan also painted some landscapes, but these were mostly urban landscapes and often used just as a backdrop to figurative compositions, whereas for watercolour painters, landscape and especially rural and alpine landscapes were core subjects. A key reason for this was that their aesthetics were focused on British rather than French models. For the artists of the watercolour movement, England provided the authentic models, history and theory. Winsor and Newton paints were the best, Turner was the greatest watercolourist and Ruskin was the theorist who supported Turner and propounded the theory of nature, which became so influential in Japan. London now attracted Japanese painters, such as Miyake Kokki, Minami Kunzo¯, Shirataki Ikunosuke, Ishikawa Kinichiro¯ and Makino Yoshio. Towards the end of the nineteenth century, gradually two groups of Western-style painters were forming: one the Paris-oriented oil painters and the other the Londonoriented watercolourists. Since the mid-nineteenth century a number of amateur painters from Britain and North America had visited Japan showing varying degrees of competence in watercolour. Between 1889 and 1892 three British professional artists visited Japan: Alfred East (1849–1913) in 1889, John Varley Jr. (1850–1933) between 1890 and 1891 and Alfred Parsons in 1892. East, who was later knighted and became the President of the Royal Society of British Artists, is probably the best-known artist among these three. Varley Jr. is now more or less completely forgotten.27 East gave a major lecture at the Meiji Art Society, when he showed some of his own paintings. Varley Jr. and Parsons organized exhibitions and showed a greater number of examples of their watercolours. These exhibitions were of great importance for the Japanese watercolourists. The response was out of all proportions to the reputations of these British artists back home. Miyake Kokki (1874–1954), who 291

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later became a major watercolourist, gave his impression of Varley’s exhibition at Jikei Hospital, which he saw in 1891: When I saw this [exhibition], suddenly I felt that the entrance to the world I should be entering opened in front of my eyes. Varley’s paintings from nature consisted of watercolours and oil paintings, but, for whatever reason, for me it was the watercolour paintings which became glowing flames spreading to my heart.28

This was written when he was still an art student. It is clear that he had been tormented by the daily copying duties, which a strict art teacher had demanded. From this time onwards he secretly practised his watercolour skills. After this teacher died he studied under a more liberal teacher who taught him oil painting concentrating on figure paintings. However, he continued to practise plein air watercolours. In 1892 he learnt with excitement that an exhibition of watercolours by an Englishman was being held at the art school in Ueno. After seeing the exhibition he confessed that: I lost my interest in life drawing completely, was mostly absent from the morning [art] class and fervently immersed myself only in watercolours from nature. 29

He now clearly recognized the superiority of Parsons to Varley Jr. and praised Parsons’ watercolour skills as almost superhuman.

Alfred Parsons, Autumn Grass on the Hakone Hills, watercolour on paper, c.1892, Ko¯riyama City Museum of Art 292

ALFRED PARSONS, RA, PRWS (1847–1920)

An issue, which has not been discussed adequately, is Parsons virtuosity. His watercolours are highly finished compared to earlier ¯ shita’s comgeneration British watercolours. Tanita has referred to O ment that he was amazed that such fine work could be done even with watercolour.30 The crucial point here is the recognition by the future leader of the watercolour movement in Japan that watercolour could produce works, which compared favourably with oil painting. Parsons had shown by exhibiting his virtuoso watercolours what Japanese artists could aspire to produce. Tanita tended to underplay the importance of Parsons’ exhibition. However, he himself acknowledged that this exhibition did change the trend of watercolour from something light and witty to dense and detailed. Tanita also mentioned that the artist Nakamura Fusetsu wrote that as a result of Parsons’ influence painting trees and flowers became fashionable.31 Parsons’ impact continued even after his return to Britain as the translations of his book Notes in Japan published in 1896 was serialized in the art magazine Mizue from the first issue of 1905 to 1909. 32 This was the most important periodical for the watercolourists in Japan at the time and the prominence given to his writings in these pages further enhanced Parsons’ position within Japanese watercolourists. Tanita33 criticized previous scholarship as just repeating the memoirs of these Japanese watercolourists ad nauseam without checking what the British painters saw and painted in Japan and also what the Japanese artists actually saw in Parsons and gained from him. After tracing Parsons’ itinerary, Tanita stated that Parsons had no intention of depicting either exotic natural features or a modernizing Meiji Japan. He further contended that Parsons concentrated on flowers, but not with an emphasis on individual flowers but more on flowers within the context of a landscape. This was a crucial point. Tanita argued that Miyake agonized over how to copy nature as it is and that he found through Parsons’ examples a way to do this in watercolour, which was different from the technique used in oil painting. Tanita concluded that for Parsons the Japanese landscape provided an Arcadian dream, thus not the real nature. Oriental and occidental elements could be found in Parsons’ watercolours, but they never interacted with one other. Tanita’s conclusions while carefully considered seem unduly pessimistic. He contended that Parsons wanted to see in Japan an Arcadia which was still uncontaminated by the Western civilization. Many Europeans at that time indeed seemed to see Japan as a primitive paradise.34 However, what makes it more complicated is that Parsons applied the same Arcadian idealism to his paintings of British landscape. The novelist and friend Henry James even described Parsons’ paintings as representing ‘happy England’.35 293

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Miyake saw, in British landscape watercolours by Varley and Parsons, paintings, which depicted the landscape as it was in front of the artist. Miyake repeatedly wrote in his memoir that at this time what he really loved to do was ‘sketching’ landscapes. The Japanese word he used was ‘shasei’, which means literally ‘copying living’, i.e. plein air painting in front of the landscape. He contrasted this with that of figure painting, also ‘copying living’, but this time a human model not a landscape. The landscapes he painted were largely of the anti-meisho type. The focus was not on the features with cultural associations, but on the nature, which the artist with a brush in hand saw in front of him. This was the point when the Edo-period anti-meisho tradition and the Ruskinian landscape tradition came together. Miyake probably could not see the more or less escapist Arcadian inference in Parsons’ works,36 but his watercolours provided encouragement for the Japanese watercolourists by its virtuosity and as an independent medium, which was separate from the hitherto domineering oil painting. Thus Parsons made more or less inadvertently a major contribution to the modernization of Japanese landscape painting, which was pioneered by the artists of the watercolour movement. As a postscript it should be noted that this concept of modern landscape watercolour painting was exported by one of the most Anglophone watercolourists, Ishikawa Kinichiro¯ to Taiwan, which was incorporated into Japan after the Sino-Japanese War of 1894– 1895. Despite the colonial nature of his position, Ishikawa seemed to have been a benign teacher much loved by his pupils. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4 5 6

7 8 9

The most detailed account on Parsons is Nicole Milette’s PhD ‘Landscape Painter as Landscape Gardener: the Case of Alfred Parsons, RA’, University of York, 1997. She has kindly given me a copy of her threevolume thesis and I am indebted to her for most of Parsons’ biographical details. See also her website http://www.nicolemilette.com/alfredparsons.html. This was established in 1877 using funds bequeathed by Sir Francis Chantry for this purpose. Milette PhD, p. 403. Milette PhD, passim, esp. Appendix 7.29 Chronology, pp. 490–517. Ibid., p. 509. For a detailed list of Parsons’ contributions for this book see ibid., pp. 415–17. Ibid., 109. Ibid. Ibid., 237–41. This is for the partnership Parsons and Partridge. Milette’s list of landscape gardening commissions between 1899 and 1913 number as many as seventy. 294

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10

11

12 13 14

15

16

17

18

19

20

21 22 23

24 25 26

Alfred Parsons, Notes in Japan, New York: Harper and Brothers, 1896. A facsimile is available at . For a discussion of the detailed itinerary see Hiroyuki Tanita, ‘Ko¯sasuru ryo¯yo¯ no manazashi – Arufureddo Pâsonzu to Meiji no suisaiga’ (Crossed gazes of Orient and Occident – Alfred Parsons and Meiji watercolour painting). In Ko¯ji Kawamoto and Masaie Matsumura (eds.), Vikutoriacho¯ to Higashiajia (Victorian Britain and East Asia), Kyoto: Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2006, 75–84. This is the best and most thoughtful analysis of Parsons impact on the Japanese watercolour movement. Parsons, Notes in Japan, 101–103. Tanita, ‘Ko¯sasuru ryo¯yo¯ no manazashi’. See Toshio Watanabe, gen. ed., Ruskin in Japan 1890–1940: Nature for art, art for life, Cogito: Tokyo, 1997 and Toshio Watanabe, ‘The Establishment of the Concept of Nature in Modern Japan’, in Sensing Nature: Rethinking of the Japanese Perception of Nature, Tokyo: Mori Museum of Art, 2010, 185–182. The following three sections are a précis of the arguments expressed in these publications. Pamela J. Asquith and Arne Kalland, Japanese Images of Nature: Cultural Perspectives, Richmond, Surrey: Curzon, 1997, 7. Akira Yanabu, Honyaku no shiso¯ (The ideology of translation), paperback, ed. (1st ed. 1977), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯, 1995. Yanabu, Honyaku. Takahito Momokawa, ‘Kokugakusha no shizenkan’ (The idea of nature by Kokugakusha), in Shuntaro¯ Ito¯ (ed.), Nihonjin no shizenkan (The idea of nature by the Japanese), Tokyo: Kawade Shobo¯ Shinsha, 1995, 231–62; 234. Momokawa furthers the argument by highlighting shizen’s multiple meaning, which included that of ‘nature’, which led this term to be chosen to represent the translations of ‘nature’ in modern Japan. Sadami Suzuki, ‘Nihon kindai bungaku ni miru shizenkan ¾ sono hensen no gaiyo¯’, in Shuntaro¯ Ito¯ (ed.), Nihonjin no shizenkan (The idea of nature by the Japanese), Tokyo: Kawade Shobo¯ Shinsha, 1995, 371– 94; 382. Seiichi Hasegawa, Ushinawareta keikan ¾ meisho ga kataru Edo jidai (The lost landscape: Edo period through famous places), Tolyo: Yoshikawa Ko¯bunkan, 1996, 18–20. Ibid., 23. Here the source is given as ‘Kubota no ochiba’ (Fallen leaves at Kubota) but this should be ‘Kubota no ochibo’ (Gleanings of Kubota). Tsuneichi Miyamoto, Sugae Masumi, Tokyo: Miraisha, 1980, 93–120. Ibid., 97. Shigeru Aoki, Shizen o utsusu (To copy nature), Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1996, 53–4. Ibid., 54. See Watanabe, Ruskin in Japan. Masaaki Izeki, Gaka Fontanêji (The painter Fonatanesi), Tokyo: Chu¯o¯ko¯ron Bijutsu Shuppan, 1984, 159. Shigeru Aoki, Fontane¯ji to Ko¯bu Bijutsu Gakko¯ (Fontanesi and the Technical College of Art School), Tokyo: Shibunndo¯, 1978, 30.

295

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27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34

35

36

Hiroto Kan-no, ‘Three British Watercolourists in Meiji Japan’ (translated by Toshio Watanabe). In Watanabe (gen. ed.), Ruskin in Japan, 368–71. Kokki, Miyake, Omoiizurumama (As I remembered), Tokyo: Ko¯daisha, 1938, 58. Ibid., 70. Tanita, ‘Ko¯sasuru ryo¯yo¯ no manazashi’, 92. Ibid. For the details of the publication list in Mizue, see ibid., 109, note 8. Tanita, ‘Ko¯sasuru ryo¯yo¯ no manazashi’. This is in fact not an unusual viewpoint and was analysed by Elisa Evett in her book The Critical Reception of Japanese Art in Late Nineteenth Century Europe, Ann Arbor: UMI Research Press, 1982. Henry James, Picture and Text, New York: Harpers and Brothers, 1893, 79–91; 79. Parsons designed James’s gardens at Lamb House, Rye, East Sussex. See Milette PhD, 240. For the discussion of Parsons paintings as representing English characteristics, see Anne Helmreich, The English Garden and National Identity: The Competing styles of Garden Design, 1870–1914, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002, 31–8.

296

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26

R.V.C. Bodley (‘Bodley of Arabia’) (1892–1970): Soldier, Adventurer, Journalist and Writer in Japan, 1933–1934 WILLIAM SNELL

BEFORE GOING TO JAPAN

Ronald Courtenay Bodley’s father was the barrister and Oxford historian John Edward Courtenay (J.E.C.) Bodley (1853–1925), author of France (1898) and a descendent of Miles Bodley, brother of Sir Thomas Bodley (1545–1613), ambassador of Elizabeth I and founder of the Bodleian Library. Called to the bar at the age of twenty-one, John Bodley later became private secretary to the Liberal and reformist politician Sir Charles Dilke (1843–1911), although his career came to an end when Dilke was involved in a

297

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divorce scandal in 1885.1 In 1891 he married Evelyn Frances,2 the daughter of John Bell of Rushpool Hall, Yorkshire, and they had two sons: Ronald Victor Courtenay, and the future artist Josselin Reginald Courtenay Bodley (1893–1974), and a daughter, Ava (1896–1974).3 Ronald Victor was born in Paris on 3 March 1892. As the author himself put it: ‘I was born on a raw March afternoon in Paris, the city of the glorious unforeseen, the centre of beautiful nonsense and of the grimmest reality.’4 Educated at Eton,5 he was a contemporary of Osbert Sitwell and Aldous Huxley (and the Irish-born diplomat and writer Shane Leslie, later Sir John Randolph Leslie (1885–1971) who would subsequently write favourable reviews of his books). Instead of following in his father’s footsteps and going to Oxford he chose a military career, one which he himself acknowledged to have been against his temperament.6 After attending the Royal Military Academy at Sandhurst he was commissioned into the King’s Royal Rifle Corps and spent three years in India ‘where I played polo, and hunted, and explored in the Himalayas as well as doing some soldiering’ before the outbreak of the First World War. A lieutenant in the 60th Rifles in September 19147 he served in France where, in 1917, he suffered a breakdown as a consequence of being gassed.8 Bodley recorded this time in his memoir Indiscretions of a Young Man, published in 1931. He apparently reached the rank of colonel while in France, but in later life stylized himself as either ‘Major’ or ‘Colonel’ Bodley. Bodley married Ruth Mary Elizabeth Stapleton-Bretherton (15 March 1897–1956) in April 1917.9 However, the marriage later failed despite the birth of a son,10 Mark,11 later a Lieutenant in the Royal Armoured Corps Royal Scots Greys (2nd Dragoons) who was killed in Libya in December 1942, and to whom he dedicated what became perhaps his best known book, Wind in the Sahara (1944). After four years on the Western Front and the armistice in November 1918 Bodley was recruited for his French language skills12 as assistant military attaché at the British embassy in Paris, where he attended the Versailles Peace Conference.13 Following the signing of the eponymous Treaty he wrote that: …while Paris was dancing itself into a frenzy of unforeseeing merriment….I could not help feeling that out there to the north-east millions of men lay rotting beneath the mud of a great devastated area, and that reparations, to say nothing of the future of Europe, would not in any way be settled by a peace treaty which no government was strong enough to enforce. But no one thought of this, and we danced on, as it were, on a floor supported by corpses, but without hearing the crunching of bones.14 298

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It was at this point that Bodley’s cousin, the explorer and writer Gertrude Bell (1868–1926), apparently introduced him to ‘Ted’ (T.E.) Lawrence, later known as ‘Lawrence of Arabia’, who advised him to go and live with the Arabs. Thus began his self-confessed ‘long spell of vagabondage’.15 Bodley stayed in North Africa (mainly Algiers) for seven years, detaching himself completely from all ties with his homeland, making a Bedouin tent his home, wearing Arab clothes and practising the Moslem faith. Yet the actual truth behind his motivation for travelling to North Africa remains uncertain, as he gave a somewhat more prosaic account in Indiscretions of a Young Man16 of how he became a sub bank-manager at Barclays in Algiers, where he introduced his sister to her first husband Ralph Wigram (‘an Eton friend of mine’ who had been first secretary at the British embassy in Paris). Bodley settled down in Algeria (a place which became ‘a sort of spiritual home for me’17) and in 1927, at the oasis of Laghouat he entered into his second marriage,18 to an Australian woman called Beatrice (‘Betty’) Clare Lambe of Sydney, New South Wales, who happened to be touring North Africa and who is certainly the person referred to in the dedication to his 1934 book Indiscreet Travels East.19 The long interlude in Algeria gave Bodley the opportunity to pursue his ambition to pursue his career as an author. He had begun writing early in life, no doubt influenced by his scholar father,20 with poetry at Eton, writing for a cadet magazine at Sandhurst, and cowriting skits while in India. Encouraged by the publisher Michael Joseph he wrote Algeria from Within (1927) while ensconced at the oasis of Laghouat, the success of which astonished him: ‘I didn’t anticipate the reviews which the Press gave me’ he later recalled in Indiscretions of a Young Man. ‘I was compared with Lawrence and Doughty, my prose was unexpectedly likened to the paintings of Manet...’. The would-be author soon became disillusioned. Bodley’s first novel, Jasmina (1927), evidently sold well, going into a second edition, but he did not receive any remuneration from it. Opal Fire (1928, which had originally been titled The Sadist21) did considerably worse and was ‘hardly noticed at all’. This did not deter him: ‘I shall continue writing, in the belief that it is only by persevering that one succeeds and rises above the level of others.’22 BODLEY IN JAPAN

Perhaps one consequence of the popularity achieved by Algeria from Within was Bodley’s later employment as a journalist in the Dutch Indies, China and Japan, working as special correspondent 299

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for the London Sphere23 and the Australian Advertiser. In this capacity he travelled through the Japanese mandated islands of the Pacific, visiting the Mariana Islands, the Carolines, and the Marshall islands, which he recorded in Indiscreet Travels East. He arrived in Japan via China, and he remarked on the contrast between dirty and disorderly China and the ‘cheerful clockwork’ of Japan. The Gaimusho (the Japanese Foreign Ministry), operating under the guise of the Japan Tourist Bureau, knew in advance what Bodley and other foreign journalists intended to do. They were eager to pamper to him. The result was that he became an inadvertent apologist for the Manchurian invasion and occupation of Korea. In the 1930s, to reduce increasingly hostile suspicion surrounding the Japanese invasion of Micronesia and Japan’s intentions there, the government ‘if only to delay a buildup of American military and naval forces in the Pacific’,24 granted permission for foreign observers to visit the islands. ‘The Japanese expectation was that these persons would convey their impressions to reading publics in the West that Japan had undertaken no aggressive preparations in the Pacific.’ Bodley was not alone in being duped.25 During this time he visited Saipan and Tinian and other islands of the Japanese Mandates in a carefully orchestrated tour organized by the Gaimusho. In an article for the Central Queensland Herald he asserted that ‘no stretch of imagination would lead to the wildest scaremongering to suggest that there are naval bases here or at any other islands of the mandated territories’.26 After being shipwrecked on leaving Tinian, he was rescued and along with other survivors transported first to Yap and then Palau. ‘Those who believe the Japanese to be arrogant, foreignhating bullies,’ he commented, ‘have never taken the trouble to test the Japanese character and find out that it is just the opposite.’27 Bodley would later back-peddle on the stance he took as a journalist while in Japan. In The Quest (1947), which Bodley classified as neither ‘autobiography’ nor ‘travel’ literature but ‘Adventure…Mild adventure? Philosophic adventure?’,28 and in which he claimed to make ‘a deliberate attempt to explain the Chinese and the Japanese and the Malays and show them as I really believe them to be’ he refuted many of the previous assertions he had made in A Japanese Omelette (1933). This was published in Japan and was based on observations made during a year’s peregrinations there, in Korea, Manchukuo and the mandated islands of the South Seas. One reviewer, despite lauding Bodley’s enthusiasm for his topic, pointed out that the book ‘has not very much that is new to tell us’ and Bodley ‘too frequently mars his writing by carelessness in construction, faults in grammar and frequent labouring of the obvious’.29 300

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Regarding the invasion of Manchuria he now asserted that it was part of a ‘project of Asiatic domination’30 and that, having made up his mind to find out what was going on in the region, he persuaded the Japanese authorities to give him a permit to visit there. ‘After all, I was a correspondent of a reputable British weekly [The Sphere] and had a reasonable excuse to go where news was.’31 He went on to take a pro-Anglo-American stance: ‘I have no doubt that if, during this autumn of 1931, a strong Anglo-American fleet had appeared off Dairen, accompanied by a strongly worded Anglo-American protest to Tokyo, the Japanese would have climbed down… and renounced the Manchurian adventure…’32 Bodley also explained how the Japanese came via their inferiority complex to detest the white foreigner: ‘They had always felt the white man was looking down on them, was patronizing them, was thinking of them as a backward, uncivilized race, as a kind of ex-pupil. A desire had thus been bred for reprisal…’33 Bodley described how, while staying at the Imperial Hotel, ‘I know my room was searched every day while I was out, that every sheet of paper I tore up was pasted together and studied, and that my mail went through many hands outside the post office before it reached me. In fact, the Japanese made little pretence about it.’34 He suspected that the Japanese were suspicious that he was exchanging diplomatic secrets with his brother-in-law at the Foreign Office in 301

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London, but defended his former pro-Japanese journalism and the accusation that he was a dupe of the Gaimusho35 (which, alas, he undoubtedly was):36 By using a little tact I had succeeded where many journalists had failed. I had also made several enemies among the older reporters who had been long in Japan and never obtained any favours. A few of these tried to discredit me by suggesting that my articles were propaganda. Not one of them appreciated that, even in Japan, one did not catch flies with vinegar or obtain favours with sour looks and threats.37

However, one other significant consequence of Bodley’s sojourn in Japan was that he also found himself asked to teach at the oldest private Japanese university, where he was given the opportunity to ‘have a thorough insight into the methods of teaching the Japanese University student, which surprised me more than anything else in Japan’. In A Japanese Omelette, he wrote: A friend of mine who taught English at Keio¯ University in Tokyo wished to go home on holiday, but such an eventuality not being reckoned for in the terms of his contract and the authorized vacation not giving him sufficient time to make the journey there and back, he asked me to fill his place for five months.38

This ‘friend’, wanted to take a holiday but feared that his job would be at risk. ‘“But what do you teach?” I asked. I thought I had better find out if it was A B C or elegiac poetry.’ “English literature of the late eighteenth-century,” he replied. “I’ve left the books you’ll need at your hotel. And don’t fuss. All you’ve got to do is go to the university at eight o’clock tomorrow morning. The dean’ll tell you what to do”.39

Thus was Bodley thrust into the role of ‘professor’. He confessed that he found this ‘strange’ given his varied career thus far; but ‘being of an inquisitive nature and not suffering from self-consciousness’ he agreed to take on the request.40 He would stay at Keio¯ for nine months. After a brief summary of the education system in Japan, Bodley wrote: ‘I never discovered how the Japanese selected their foreign instructors. I suspect that it was done by personal recommendation. The competition for lectureships was fierce. And the most qualified to fill vacancies were not always appointed.’41 He went on to recount that: The dean told me nothing! He met me in the Common Room of the university, went through the usual formal Japanese greetings, took 302

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me to a classroom, and introduced me to forty young men in black uniforms. He said a few introductory words and left. Knowing not a word of Japanese, I had no idea whether he had told the class that I was an eminent professor, to be respected as a man of learning, or just another beachcombing English teacher from the bar of the Imperial Hotel. Neither did my pupils give any indications. They just sat there like a row of dummies.

Bodley observed that life at the university was ‘peaceful and, from my point of view, interesting…. My pupils had to wear this black uniform with the college crest engraved on brass buttons and embroidered on the front of the cap. The Keio¯ crest was represented by a pair of crossed pen nibs!’ He adds, ‘…on the whole, these young men were extremely apt pupils. I wished that I might have had their ability to stroll into foreign bookshops in Tokyo and browse through English and French and German literature with an occasional glance into Chinese classics.’42 Bodley remarked on the Spartan curriculum which meant that ‘My pupils had to devote their attention to sixteen different subjects a week, which included English, French, German, Chinese, Economics, Law or Literature, Logic, Mathematics, Philosophy, History of Europe, Asia and Japan, Ethics etc., so that by the end of a day’s work the muddle in the mind of a student, who had been, “learning” for seven consecutive hours, must have been as mixed up as eggs in an omelette.’43 He concluded: I shall always be glad that I had that experience at Keio¯. It taught me more about the Japanese than a lifetime of a businessman or diplomat or journalist in Japan. It taught me to like and to understand partially these Japanese young men. It again gave me the idea that if the General Koisos44 and company were liquidated and replaced by Dairen Rotarians and some of my professional colleagues at Keio¯ Japan might be a good place in which to live.45

Bodley also gave an account of having attended the funeral of Admiral To¯go¯, but makes no mention of his ‘authorized biography’ of To¯go¯ (Jarrolds, 1935)46 for the writing of which he was evidently allowed access to private as well as official records, and in which Bodley portrayed Japan as a first-class modern power. However, given that he admitted to having known no Japanese one wonders how much of the biography was actually written by Bodley? As he admitted, ‘I cannot read Japanese, I know little about Japanese literature but I have learnt much about this country and its people through conversation with men who could speak my language, and the teaching of English in Japan.’47 Apart from the biography of To¯go¯, Bodley also cooperated in the production of a minor textbook, a collection of stories by Conan 303

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Doyle called Round the Red Lamp; stories of medical life (Tokyo: Arai Sho¯ten, 1934) with Hori Eishiro¯ (1874–1963), professor of English at Keio¯ from 1916 on,48 who provided the notes. Bodley went next to America, travelling to San Francisco on the Chichibu Maru with author and journalist Virginia Cowles (1910–1983).49 Bodley ended his recollections of his stay in Japan ambivalently. He was ‘depressed’ at having to leave the country: ‘The taxi drivers who had exasperated me by their senseless driving, the coolies on the quay who exploited foreign visitors, the prying customhouse officials, and the insolent little policemen looked like familiar friends. I wanted to shake them by the hand and thank them for their hospitality…’50 He described the sendoff he received ‘one of those gusty, drizzling mornings of the Japanese autumn when the rain caresses the wayfarer with soaking kisses’ the decks ‘seething with damp men and women in kimonos and clogs, and I could hardly find the people who had come to see me go’ but they included his ‘three foreign colleagues from Keio¯’ and ‘a troop of Japanese from all walks of life’, ‘white-haired Mr Nakatsuchi’ of the Hokuseido Press who had been instrumental in the publication of A Japanese Omelette, ‘impassive Mr Takaku’ of the Gaimusho, ‘round-faced Professor Kodama’,51 the English-speaking Economics professor from Keio¯ who had befriended him, and ‘students who I had taught. All kinds of unexpected men and women were there to say sayonara.’ The siren of the Chichibu Maru gave a final blast as the vessel slipped her moorings and began easing away from the pier. ‘Banzai! Banzai!’ burst out menacingly exultant from serried ranks of Japanese on shore, as if they would force their personalities on me forever. The streamers were being played out. Soon they became taut and, one by one, broke. Professor Kodama’s face glistened behind his huge spectacles and faded with the crowd.52 AFTER JAPAN

Bodley was in California when war broke out in September 1939.53 Rejected as being too old for service (and having seemingly been sued for divorce by his second wife, Betty), when Britain declared war on Germany he was in Biarritz with Lorna Hearst,54 then wife of George Randolph Hearst, the eldest son of the businessman and publishing tycoon William Randolph Hearst, where they were working on a play together: ‘Whereas in 1914 every patriotic cell in me had sprung into action at the declaration of war and my only fear had been that I that I should not get to the front in time for the fighting, I now felt dull and dispirited. The whole thing seemed childish and futile…’55 When Germany invaded France, Lorna Hearst managed to get back to 304

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America by ship from Bordeaux56 while Bodley stayed for some time with his mother and American stepfather near Bayonne. They refused to leave and so Bodley, along with three British women, made their escape by car, and with the help of an old Etonian friend who worked at the British embassy in Madrid and was able to get them transit visas, they crossed the border into Spain. From there Bodley ended up in Lisbon, Portugal, eventually reaching the US where he began to make money as a lecturer and tried to kick-start his writing career. In October 1948 Bodley was in Hollywood, where he had ended up after the war working as a scriptwriter. Now known as ‘Ronnie’ to his friends he was among the thirty-five or so scriptwriters (including F. Scott Fitzgerald) who worked over three years on A Yank at Oxford (1938), one of a cycle of pro-British films produced in Hollywood before the United States’ entry into the war in December 1941.57 He was most definitely involved in the preliminary screen adaptation of Regency, the D.L. Murray novel about an independent British noblewoman, which was intended to be a showcase for Charles Chaplin’s protégée and later wife Paulette Goddard, her second starring role under Chaplin’s direction. It was around this time in an interview for the New Yorker magazine that he was perhaps first referred to as ‘Bodley of Arabia’.58 In addition, Bodley was involved in several literary projects, including one with Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, which alas, like other collaborations, came to nothing. 59 In November 1949 Bodley married an American divorcee, Harriet Moseley,60 but this marriage did not last either. He tried his hand at scriptwriting, playwriting and yet again as a novelist, but his book The Gay Deserters (1945), a satire on the foreign émigrés (‘war guests’) who escaped the war to live in the US, was not well received.61 It is not clear when Bodley returned to England. Apart from a 1969 article in the Sunday Times co-written with his brother, on his father’s connection with Dilke,62 it appears that Bodley wrote virtually nothing toward the end of his life. He died at the age of seventyeight on 26 May 1970, at Birtley House, a nursing home in Bramley, near Guildford, Surrey.63 ENDNOTES 1

2 3

R.V.C. Bodley, Indiscretions of a Young Man, (London: H. Shaylor, 1931), pp. 8–9 [hereafter cited as Indiscretions…]. See also ‘The Man who Insulted King Edward’ by J.E.C. Bodley and R.V.C. Bodley, The Sunday Times (London, England), Sunday, 5 January 1969; p. 21; Issue 7597. They divorced in 1908. Ava married first Ralph Follett Wigram (1890–1936) and after his death John Anderson, 1st Viscount Waverly (1882–1958) in 1941. He became Lord Privy Seal with responsibility for air-raid precautions in the Second World War, and the Anderson Shelter was named after him. 305

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4 5

6 7 8 9

10

11

12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19

20

21

22

Indiscretions…, p. 251. ‘I hated some of the time at Eton and I enjoyed most of the rest… The majority of the boys regarded me as a bit odd…’ Indiscretions…, p. 25. Indiscretions…, p. 46. The London Gazette Issue 29000, 8 December 1914, p. 13. Indiscretions…, p. 93. ‘Court & Society’, The Sunday Times (London, England), Sunday, 22 April 1917; Issue 4907, p. 10: ‘Major R V C Bodley, M.C. & 5th Rifles, and Miss Ruth Stapelton-Bretherton, daughter of Major F. Stapleton-Bretherton, of Wheler Lodge, Husband’s Bosworth, Rugby, are being married on the 30th, and the bride-elect and her mother are at 13, Park Place, St James’s. Major Bodley is son of a clever Oxford man, Mr. J. Bodley, author of a brilliant book on modern France. The Stepleton-Brethertons are a Catholic line, related to several families adhering to the Old Faith. An aunt of Miss Ruth Stapelton-Betherton is wife of count Gebhard Blücher-vonWalstadt, eldest son of the late Prince Blücher, who lived at Herm, Channel Islands. Her mother belongs to Lord Mowbray and Strouton’s family and as Major Stalepton-Bretherton is related to the Petres and the Granard Forbeses the marriage will be an important event in most Catholic circles.’ Clarice Stasz, The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour, and Tragedy (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p.336. See Indiscretions…, p. 103. David Dutton ed., Paris 1918: the war diary of the British ambassador Edward George Villiers Stanley Derby (Earl of), the 17th Earl of Derby (Liverpool University Press, 2001), p. 163. Bodley received the Croix de Chevalier (The London Gazette Issue 31222 (7 March 1919), p. 2) and had conferred upon him the Order of Carol I. by the King of Romania, (Supplement to the London Gazette Issue 31812 published 5 March 1920, p. 2874. Flight into Portugal (London: Jarrolds, 1941), p.14. Flight into Portugal, p. 17. Indiscretions…, p. 223 ff. Indiscretions…, p. 209. Indiscretions…, p. 241. ‘To BETTY, My constant companion during these three years of travel.’ See also The Singapore Free Press and Mercantile Advertiser (1884–1942), 2 May 1927, p. 9: ‘A marriage has been arranged between Major R. V. C. Bodley, M.C., late 60th Rifles, of Laghouat, Southern Algeria, and Miss Beatrice Clare Lambe, daughter of the late Mr. and Mrs. Harry Lambe, of Batavia, Java, and Sydney. New South Wales.’ Although In Search of Serenity is dedicated ‘To My Mother, whose encouragement when I was very young led me to become a writer.’ ‘The theory on which the novel is based is that many women…are Sadists by instinct, and that they deliberately and for their own pleasure make men suffer to a greater degree morally than if they employed instruments of torture.’ (!) Indiscretions…, p. 231. Indiscretions…, p. 236. 306

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23

24

25 26 27

28 29

30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38

39 40

The Sphere: The Empire’s Illustrated Weekly was a British newspaper, published by London Illustrated Newspapers Ltd. weekly from 27 January 1900 until the closure of the paper on 27 June 1964. It covered general news stories from the UK and around the world; much of the overseas news features were reported in detail as the title was targeted at British citizens living in the colonies. Mark R. Peattie, Nan’yo¯: the rise and fall of the Japanese in Micronesia, 1885–1945. (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1988), p. 245. Peattie, pp. 246–7. ‘From Our Canberra Correspondent’ (Thursday 1 March 1934), p. 21. In an earlier article for the Burra Record, dated 5 April 1933 (p. 4), he wrote ‘People talk a lot about the arrogance of the Japanese and his hatred of the foreigner, but I do not agree with this sweeping assertion. Personally I have always met with the greatest courtesy and consideration from the Japanese…’ The Quest, p. ix ‘New Books and Reprints.’ Times Literary Supplement [London, England] 12 April 1934: 263+. Times Literary Supplement Historical Archive. Web. 6 March 2014. The Quest, p. 206. The Quest, p. 207. The Quest, p. 213. The Quest, p. 216. The Quest, p. 231. See for example ‘Merrily through Manchukuo’ in Contemporary Japan, 1 no 5 (April 1933): 667–72, later recycled as a chapter in Indiscreet Travels East. Peattie, p. 209: ‘It is easy to criticize these writers for naivety or being duped, but…. there were several stages in the transformation of the mandates for military purposes.’ The Quest, p. 261. A Japanese Omelette: a British writer’s impressions on the Japanese Empire (Hokuseido, 1933), p.157. Who this colleague was remains a mystery but it may have been Oxford-educated John H. Burbank, who was professor of English Literature there from 1932 to 1934. In The Quest (p. 324) he writes: ‘I had a friend who was a professor of English at Keio¯ University in Tokyo, which was the second most important establishment of learning in Japan. The Imperial University, I believe, ranked first. This friend belonged to the better class of foreign professor in that he had degrees and every qualification to teach. This, however, did not make his job any safer than one held by an ex-gas-station employee, if he absented himself for any length of time.’ The Quest, pp. 325–6. In Indiscreet Travels East (1934) in a section on ‘Teaching English to Japanese University Students’ he repeats much of what he recorded in A Japanese Omelette (especially from Chapter XVI: ‘The Education of the Japanese with Special Reference to the Teaching of English’) of taking over for a friend at ‘a Tokyo university’ (which later became misunderstood as ‘Tokyo University’). 307

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41 42 43 44

45 46

47 48

49

50 51

52 53 54

55 56 57

58

59

60

61

62

63

The Quest, p. 323. The Quest, p. 333. A Japanese Omelette, p. 161. General Koiso Kuniaki (1880–1950) succeeded Genera To¯jo¯ Hideki as prime minister of Japan from July 1944 to April 1945. Condemned as a war criminal he died in prison. The Quest, p. 335. Translated into German: Admiral To¯go¯: Leben eines Helden, Aufstieg einer Nation von R.V.C. Bodley [deutsch von Theodor Lucke]. F. A. Herbig Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1936. A Japanese Omelette, p.169. See Koudansha Nihonjin Meidai Jiten ‫ ␠⺣⻠ޟ‬ᣣᧄੱฬᄢㄉౖ‫ޠ‬ (Tokyo: Kodansha 2009), p. 1696. ‘I have never known a way of thinking which appealed to me as much as Virginia’s. I often wish that my life had continued with hers. But it didn’t…. I have a suspicion that Virginia had a quest like mine.’ The Quest, p. 361. The Quest, p. 362. ‘...one of my ex-colleagues at Keio¯. He was a jovial professor of economics called Kodama who had travelled a good deal and spoke good English.’ The Quest, p. 347. The Kodama referred to is most likely the H. Kodama who provided the biographical and historical notes for Leaders of the Meiji restoration in America, edited originally under the title ‘The Japanese in America’, by Charles Lanman; re-edited by Y. Okamura (Tokyo: Hokuseido, 1931), but I have been unable to obtain any further information about him. The Quest, p. 364. Flight into Portugal, p. 13. With whom Bodley had collaborated on a biography of his cousin Gertude Bell. Flight into Portugal, p. 18. Flight into Portugal, p. 19. Mark H. Glancy, When Hollywood loved Britain: The Hollywood ‘British’ film 1939–45 (Manchester U.P., 1999), p. 83. The New Yorker: ‘The Talk of the Town’ talk story by Janet Flanner, Russell Maloney, and Eugene Kinkead, 27 February, 1943. Clarice Stasz, The Vanderbilt Women: Dynasty of Wealth, Glamour, and Tragedy (London: St. Martin’s Press, 1991), p.336. Portland Press Herald (20 November 1949), p. 46. She is mentioned in the introduction to his self-improvement book In Search of Serenity (1955)… Although I have not been able to ascertain when they divorced she seemingly remarried in 1969. ‘’Tempest-tost” Guests of U.S.A.: The Gay Deserters, by R.V.C. Bodley,’ by Robert Pick in The Saturday Review (24 November 1945), p. 32. ‘The Man who Insulted King Edward,’ J.E.C. Bodley and R.V.C. Bodley The Sunday Times (Sunday, 5 January 1969), p. 21; Issue 7597. See The London Gazette (26 November 1970) Issue 13034. He is described as ‘Colonel in H.M. Army (retired).’

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Norman Macrae (1921–2010): Pioneering Journalist of The Economist on Japanese Affairs BILL EMMOTT AND ADRIAN WOOLRIDGE

INTRODUCTION

When one of the co-authors of this essay1 was based in Japan as the Tokyo correspondent of The Economist during the 1980s, he would of course from time to time receive visitors from head office, and they would expect an itinerary of meetings to be laid on for them. There weren’t then as many visitors as a correspondent would receive today, for the appetite to fly via Anchorage in two lengthy legs was not strong, but the visitors did come, and it wasn’t always easy to arrange meetings as the appreciation at that time in Japanese institutions of this internationally minded but then fairly small-circulation British publication was limited. One visitor, however, needed no introduction and virtually no help in getting doors to open for him, beyond simply passing on the news that he was on his way. That visitor was Norman Macrae. He was deputy editor of The Economist but, unusually perhaps given Japanese protocols, the easy reception for him had little to do with his status or function. It was strictly personal. The best illustration of 309

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this came from the very top of the governmental ladder. During all this correspondent’s time in Tokyo, the then prime minister, Nakasone Yasuhiro, would understandably meet foreign correspondents in groups rather than singly. Except when Macrae visited. Suddenly, the doors of the Kantei (prime minister’s office) swung open, and your co-author was able to stride through them as Norman’s bagcarrier for a special interview with Prime Minister Nakasone. Why? Norman Macrae spoke no Japanese and had never lived in Japan. He wasn’t an easy person for even fluent English-speakers among Japanese officials to understand, for he tended to talk rapidly and had an endearing, but sometimes baffling, habit of laughing at his own, generally self-deprecatory, jokes part-way through telling them. And yet Japanese officials did want to listen to him, to meet him, but above all to help him. For in 1962 and repeatedly thereafter he had shown himself to be an extraordinarily shrewd, even pioneering western interpreter of what was going on in the Japanese economy, and through The Economist a powerful and influential communicator of the new Japanese reality to the rest of the world. And that reputation had turned also, among those senior Japanese who knew him well, into a reputation as an Englishman to listen to about what was really going on in the world. Macrae’s first journey to Japan for that pioneering interpretation took even longer than the flights via Anchorage did during the 1980s. He arrived by ship, having sailed from San Francisco, following a land journey through the United States. Indeed, he used to joke to colleagues that the ‘survey’, later published as a short book, called Consider Japan, which in 1962 sealed his global repute as a journalist and made him famous in Japan had in fact been written during the voyage across the Pacific before he even arrived, leaving him time simply to enjoy himself once he landed at Yokohama. It wasn’t true, of course, as a reading of Consider Japan immediately shows: the article is full of first-hand observations especially from factories and business generally. Most tellingly, in a Mitsubishi factory he came across a British machine-tool salesman who told him that Japanese workers were getting three times as much out of their machines as were their better paid British counterparts, a point which acted for him – or at least for his readers, for one suspects he already knew this before finding the anecdote – as a sort of ‘eureka’ moment. For his joke about writing the survey on the ship from San Francisco did contain a clue as to why Macrae was able to perceive what he did despite being neither a Japanologist nor even a resident. That clue lies in his combination of irreverent detachment and the greater faith he always had in data, especially comparative data, than in conventional wisdoms of any kind. He came from no club or alumni

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group, had no particular allegiances to any political party, and in fact throughout his journalistic career was never much of a person for making powerful friends or what is now called networking. What he will have done during that long voyage across the Pacific was to pore over statistics, and to read all the views and analyses he could find in print of what was going on in Japan. And on that basis he did what in subsequent decades he also did repeatedly on other subjects, which was to form a clear view of where he thought the facts indicated that Japan was heading – which, in 1962, was that a country most Westerners regarded as synonymous with making knick-knacks and knock-offs, as a country crushed by wartime bombing and defeat, would soon become an industrial power-house, one from which countries such as Britain needed to learn, rather than the other way round. To illustrate, here are some of his conclusions in Consider Japan, conclusions which shook the complacency of especially his British readers, living as they were in a period in which their then prime minister, Harold Macmillan, had five years earlier claimed that ‘most of our people have never had it so good’: Moreover, we are talking here not only of a trailblazing pioneer for Asia; we are dealing with a story that has by now deep implications for Europe as well. From the welter of remarkable sets of figures about modern Japan, British readers should first pick out two. First, of the babies who were born in the year after General Doolittle’s bombs first fell on Tokyo, so far as one can see from the available educational statistics, only just over 40% left school at the minimum leaving age of 15 in 1958; another 45 percent or so stayed on at high school until 18; and more than another 10 per cent are currently passing through college or university. The equivalent figures in Britain were over 60 per cent leaving school at 15, around 30% at 16 to 18, and only 7 per cent going on to college or university. Moreover the bias of later education in Japan is much more heavily technical, and their big firms train skilled workers more assiduously and deliberately than most of their rivals in Britain. Those Englishmen who think of Japan as a backward country of adaptable but unskilled labour are talking nowadays through their hats… Secondly, investment in productive capital equipment in Japanese industry in recent years…seems to have been about one-third larger than equivalent investment in Britain…This new generation of more skilled Japanese is moving into factories where entrepreneurs are currently putting behind each one of them in the larger factories a greater force of new and modern capital equipment per head than is being put behind their rather less educated and less well trained contemporaries in Britain; in a few years’ time, on present trends, logic would suggest that they could beat us competitively in a much wider field than most people in Britain at present begin to imagine…

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That article, together with a follow-up pair of long studies on the country’s progress published in The Economist in 1967 called ‘The Risen Sun’, made Macrae a celebrated figure in Japan, not so much in the wider public but rather among policy makers and senior officials. On his retirement from The Economist in 1988 it was fitting that, in a ceremony in London shared with Professor Ronald Dore, he was honoured by the emperor with the Order of the Rising Sun. WHO WAS HE?

In Japan he had become a celebrated figure. Yet when Norman Macrae died on 11 June 2010, aged eighty-nine, no major British newspaper published an obituary of him. You could blame The Economist’s tradition of anonymity; you could blame the extraordinary modesty of the man himself who, if you tried to take his photo, would duck down and giggle, convinced that no one could possibly be interested in him. It is, though, quite astonishing, for the truth is that Macrae was one of the intellectual giants of post-war Britain: one of the very few journalists who could bear comparison with the best brains of his time. Like Milton Friedman, he applied free-market principles to public services such as education and council housing. Like Daniel Bell, he charted the shift from the industrial to the post-industrial society. And like Peter Drucker he illuminated the internal workings of companies, the organizations that drove the West’s prosperity and guaranteed its freedoms. He kept the flame of free-market thinking burning during the long night of collectivism. He predicted the collapse of the Soviet Union, at a time when the CIA was obsessed by Russia’s growing strength, and foresaw the privatization of industry, when other intellectuals were celebrating the triumph of the ‘mixed economy’. Having been the first western journalist to ‘discover’ Japan and its post-war success, Norman was also the first journalist to ‘discover’ the Internet. In 1984 he wrote another survey arguing that life was about to be transformed by ‘terminals’, which would give users access to giant databases. He predicted that the 1973 energy shock would eventually lead to a surge in the supply of energy. He also dismissed the Club of Rome’s prediction that the world was about to run out of food as arrant nonsense. The Economist was fortunate that Norman decided to park his formidable intellect at 25 St James’s Street. During his almost forty years there – twenty-three of them, from 1965 to 1988, as deputy editor – he did more than anyone else to provide the intellectual originality of what he liked to describe as ‘the world’s favourite viewspaper’.

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He constantly enlivened editorial meetings with proposals to allow Disneyworld to run the West’s cities or to move the British government from London to York. Roy Jenkins, among the most intellectual of Labour Party cabinet ministers in the 1960s and 1970s, later Chancellor of Oxford University, rightly described him as the ‘epitome of the internal spirit of The Economist’. He could be a brutal editor and a savage critic of flabby ideas. He altered colleagues’ copy with abandon. But he was greatly liked, generous with his time and amiable in conversation. He was also a loyal company man, never allowing his growing renown to go to his head. He frequently slept in his office, his large frame heaped on the floor, and sweated blood to correct errant facts as well as to expunge creeping heresy. More than anyone else, he made sure that The Economist was not blown off course by the winds of ideological fashion or becalmed in routine reporting. But if The Economist was lucky to find Norman, he was lucky to find The Economist. His website poses a question at the end of each of his essays: ‘Brilliant? Batty?’ and invites readers to join the fray. His undoubted eccentricity was partly a matter of personal style. The words tumbled out in an incoherent jumble interrupted by heaving shoulders and gales of cackling laughter. His handwriting was such a scrawl that only one person in the world, his loyal secretary, Elizabeth Methold, could decipher it – and she could perform this miracle only by holding the script at arm’s length, half-shutting her eyes and (in her words) going into a trance. The eccentricity extended to his writing. As his writing on Japan had shown, Norman was a punctilious student of statistics. But he was quite happy to illustrate a 1969 article on American productivity with the assertion that a time-and-motion study of housewives at the kitchen sink would ‘almost certainly find’ that the average American housewife was twice as efficient as the average British one. Why? Because the American housewife was capable of instinctively working out in her head, for each chore, ‘some rough approximation of what modern businessmen call a critical path analysis’. The Economist provided him with the ideal mixture of freedom and discipline. He could travel to any corner of the world he fancied to produce lengthy reports on anything he wished, from the state of America to the future of mankind. Many of these special reports became books, just as Consider Japan had. But he was reined in when he got a bit too wild – as when he advocated writing a cover leader championing a nasal spray to ‘cure’ homosexuals (who, he thought, were driven that way by their aversion to the smell of their mothers). He was passed over three times for the editorship. But, in truth, he was in exactly the right position.

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THE CRYSTAL BALL

His greatest gift was his uncanny ability to predict the future. But the problem with the future is that it eventually arrives. Visions that are called from the ‘vasty’ deep become reality. Ideas that were once pooh-poohed as outlandish become commonplace, which means that people forget where they originated, or else start to claim them as their own. ‘Nobody listened, then everybody did,’ Norman wrote ruefully in a 1991 article called ‘A future history of privatization, 1992–2022’. To grasp his prescience, it is necessary to return to an era when today’s commonplaces were heresies. During much of the post-war period the market was ‘out’ and the benevolent state was ‘in’. Public intellectuals such as Kenneth Galbraith argued that the age of the entrepreneur had given way to the age of the giant corporation. Practical politicians poured money into British Steel and the Concorde project. The market meant chaos and unemployment; industrial policy meant smooth growth and jobs for all. Norman saw this as a recipe for flabby politics and failed economics. In 1954 he coined the term ‘Butskellism’ to describe the portmanteau politics of the Conservative British Chancellor of the Exchequer, R.A. Butler, and a Labour predecessor, Hugh Gaitskell. Throughout the Butskellite era he relentlessly documented the failures of industrial policy and government planning – and yet yelped with excitement when, in Japan, he found both planning and policy that worked, because, he felt, they were cases of the government working hand in hand with private initiative and the market, rather than trying to impose itself on it. This makes it sound as if Norman was nothing more than a prophet of the new right. But the truth, as his Japanese enthusiasm showed, is more complicated – and, as befits the man, more idiosyncratic. Even while he embraced the market on micro-economic policy, he remained more or less a Keynesian on macroeconomic policy until the late 1970s. He was a firm believer in pumping up demand with deficit spending and holding down inflation with incomes policy. No deficit was too big and no incomes policy too hopeless. He greeted the first macroeconomic flushes of Reaganism and Thatcherism with sceptical editorials before finally admitting that he had been wrong. It was perhaps the only time he was not ahead of the debate. Norman also had no time for social conservatism. He worried about broken families and out-of-wedlock births, but entirely from a utilitarian rather than a moral point of view. He dismissed the religious right as vigorously as he dismissed feminists and environmentalists (‘both simple and psychotic Americans have too often been dominated by religious liars’). He argued that one of man’s greatest problems in the coming years would be growing life-expectancy – 314

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and advocated a ‘system of planned death’ to deal with it. In a survey of America in 1975 he predicted that euthanasia would soon be as acceptable as abortion: ‘It will not be at all surprising if there is in some quite near decade-and-a-half a similarly swift and equally civilized dash to acceptance of killing off old codgers (by then, like me) as there has been, in so short a twinkling, towards the more emotive act of killing unborn babies.’ IN STALIN’S RUSSIA

Why did Norman think as he did? Why did he reject the post-war consensus about the virtues of government? And why did he keep his distance from a new right that embraced so many of his ideas? Part of the answer lies in his personality. Norman was, as previously observed, an extraordinarily self-contained figure. He seldom used his telephone to call people, preferring to sit in his office poring over statistics. He had few doubts about the rightness of his opinions. Once he had an idea in his head he pushed it to its logical conclusion – and if he was proved wrong he simply shifted to another idea, which he pursued with equal certainty. Richard Holt Hutton, an early editor of The Economist in Victorian times once wrote of his more famous successor, Walter Bagehot, and his ‘dash and doubt’. Norman was just dash. But his outlook was also shaped by his odd adolescence. His father was a British consul in Moscow in 1935–38, and Norman’s summer holidays from school were spent there at the height of Stalin’s purges. He saw members of the embassy staff – including maids his own age – disappearing, probably to be shot. Before and after his posting to Moscow his father also had jobs in Nazi-dominated Europe. Many of his family’s Jewish friends were terrorized and later slaughtered. When he left school in 1941, Norman wrote later: My first job was a public-sector one, with public-sector productivity, as a teenager supposed to throw bombs about as an RAF navigator, creating a slum in the heart of the continent. By the time I got there, the Russians were coming in from the other side. All the politicians, including Churchill and Roosevelt, told us these were fine liberating democrats. And of course I knew from those school summer holidays so briefly before that those were astonishing lies. That has given me one advantage in my 40 years as a newspaperman. I have never since then believed a word either politicians or public relations officers have said.

Norman’s early experiences did not just sour him to politicians. They soured him to collectivism in all its many varieties. He had no time for the government-worshipping intellectuals he found when he studied economics at Cambridge in 1945–47. He loathed the femi315

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nists and black-power activists he came across in America in the late 1960s and 1970s, smelling in their affection for group rights and their willingness to use intimidation the same intolerance he had smelt in Europe in the 1930s and 1940s. He took his children on trips to Eastern Europe in order to teach them the difference between freedom and tyranny. He seldom missed an opportunity to champion the ‘hard hats’ over the ‘soft heads’. Norman’s case for market capitalism did not rest merely on its ability to create wealth, but on its capacity to advance individual freedom. He was almost as critical of big-company capitalism as he was of big-government socialism. In a 1976 survey on ‘The coming entrepreneurial revolution’ he argued that big business was as doomed as big government. Hierarchical managers sitting in their skyscrapers could no longer arrange how brainworkers should best use their imaginations. The future lay with small firms that could exploit individual creativity and with bigger firms that could split themselves into small centres and encourage competition between them. Norman’s critique of the welfare state was inspired by a similar belief in individualism. He pointed out that the market had produced a remarkable equalization in people’s lives. Rich and poor had access to the same consumer goods – the same television programmes, the same comfortable armchairs, the same plethora of goods in supermarkets, which were spreading from the suburbs to the slums. As he wrote, in 1945 the average Englishman had only one pair of trousers; by the swinging 1960s he had access not only to lots of pairs of (tight) trousers but also to holidays in the sun and cheap mortgages. The great exception to this story of equalization was the state. The state distributed its largesse disproportionately to the rich – exactly the opposite of what was supposed to happen – allowing them to end up with better schools and better health services. It also trapped the poorest in poverty, in sink estates with lousy schools and soaring crime and in public-sector jobs with little prospect of long-term prosperity. Norman argued that the only way to change this was to empower individuals – to allow them to own their own homes, through privatization, and to choose their own schools, through vouchers. Give power to the state and you end up with self-serving interest groups. Give power to the individual and you apply the same creative ingenuity to public services as companies have long done to the invention of washing powder. Norman’s belief in individualism also drove his enthusiasm for technology. This enthusiasm provoked widespread mirth at The Economist. The man who predicted the rise of the internet in 1984 and preached the virtues of telecommuting in articles on almost anything was by far the most incompetent member of the staff when it 316

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came to using new (or not so new) inventions. In battles with the office fax machine he usually came off worse. It was rumoured that paper clips baffled him. The staff were amazed when the pioneering Atex computerized publishing system was introduced in 1982 and Norman revealed that he could actually type. But as a techno-visionary he had few equals. He predicted a world in which ‘books, files, television programmes, computer information and telecommunications will merge’ – in which people could explore the world’s knowledge repositories at a touch of a button, and in which readers would have access to custom-made newspapers paid for by targeted advertising (in typical fashion, he imagined this newspaper emerging from a fax machine at the back of the television). He saw that this revolution would have huge implications for the balance of power. Giant organizations such as governments and companies would lose their comparative advantage. Entrepreneurs would be empowered. Taxpayers would flee the coop and telecommute from rural villages – thus putting more pressure on governments to give up their powers and start serving people rather than bossing them about. The last clue to Norman was that he was a consummate newspaperman. In print – or indeed on the lecture podium – the cackling incoherence of his speech simply vanished, and he was invariably lucid and frequently amusing, even coruscating. (A similar stylishness could be seen on the tennis court, where the immobility of middle age did nothing to inhibit a well-aimed slice that flummoxed younger and nimbler players.) He was one of the best word-coiners of his generation, producing ‘intrapreneurship’ and ‘telecommuting’ (the coinage of ‘privatization’ and ‘Eurocrat’ is disputed). He littered his prose with memorable phrases. Milton Friedman was ‘the maddening gnome of Chicago’. American ghettoes exhibited ‘public squalor amid private non-affluence’. In diagnosing the failure of British firms to get the most out of computers, he likened them to ‘former slum dwellers who, when promoted into being council-house tenants, tended to keep coal in the bath’. In championing the virtues of entrepreneurship and people working in small teams, he pointed out that ‘Jesus Christ tried 12, and that proved one too many.’ Everything he wrote was compulsively readable – partly because he mixed battiness with brilliance and partly because he came at everything from such unexpected angles. His 1975 survey of ‘America’s third century’ started by posing a surprising public-policy quandary: Our children will probably ‘progressively’ be able to order their babies with the shape and strength and level of intelligence that they choose, as well as alter existing human beings so as to insert artificial intelligence, retune brains, change personality, modify moods, control behaviour. 317

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That raised troubling ethical issues, which would, he said, be best decided by a world that was shaped by America rather than ‘the inexperienced Japanese’. He was thus no sentimentalist: having ‘considered’ or ‘discovered’ Japan he did not become rosy-eyed about it, as so many Japan hands did. He admired it for what it had achieved, for how it had grasped the realities of the time, notably in the 1960s, 70s and 80s, but also saw it as it was: an economic powerhouse but not a political power-house, and moreover an economic power-house whose success depended on continued adaptation to how realities were changing. AN ETERNAL OPTIMIST

Even so, for all his interest in the rest of the world, Macrae was a very English figure. His ideas were rooted in the English liberalism of the nineteenth century – a liberalism that celebrated the individual over the collective, progress over reaction, free thought over superstition. This set him against both the ‘over-government’ that had triumphed in his youth and the religious conservatism that prospered under Reaganism. But it also turned him into an irrepressible optimist. Few people since Bagehot and Macaulay have been so convinced that life is getting better, and that it will get better still if only a few doltish politicians can be elbowed out of the way. This commitment to classical liberalism ensures that much of his work continues to sing. Norman devoted his energies to two of the most ephemeral bits of journalism – opinionated leaders and lengthy exercises in futurology. Yet a remarkable amount of what he wrote remains relevant today. His 1975 survey on America’s 200th birthday, in which he chastises the Democrats for flirting with the Fabian cult of government expertise, conservatives for flirting with religious extremism, and business for underinvesting in innovation, might easily be a portrait of Barack Obama’s America. Big government has been on the march for much of the past decade. The Beijing consensus celebrates the alliance of big government and big companies. Much of the public sector has resisted the power of vouchers and internal markets. The battle that Norman fought for so long has still not been won. ENDNOTES 1

This essay encompasses material from ‘The unacknowledged giant’ Adrian Wooldridge’s tribute to Norman Macrae, which appeared on 27 June 2010. This is reproduced with kind permission of The Economist

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Yamamoto Yao (1875–1955) and Japanese Nursing GORDON DANIELS

INTRODUCTION

In the late nineteenth century Japanese leaders often saw British power, technology and social organization as objects of admiration and emulation. However, in the field of Red Cross military nursing Japan could claim to have overtaken Britain by the first years of the twentieth century. In this process the career of a pioneer nurse, Yamamoto Yao, illustrates Japanese achievements, and the significant role of the Japanese Red Cross in Anglo-Japanese relations during the First World War.1 The Satsuma rebellion of 1877 was the final samurai challenge to the modern Japanese state. It also saw the beginnings of organized humanitarian activity, influenced by the Red Cross movement in Europe. During the Satsuma conflict the Saga statesman Sano Tsunetami, who had admired Red Cross displays at exhibitions in Europe, established

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the Hakuaisha (Philanthropic Society) to provide medical aid for the wounded of Government and rebel forces. In this he was supported by Imperial Prince Arisugawa, the commander of the Government army. After the defeat of the Satsuma rebels the Hakuaisha continued its activities, and in 1886 established a hospital and headquarters in Tokyo. In the same year the Japanese Government acceded to the Geneva Convention and a year later the Hakuaisha was renamed the Japanese Red Cross Society.2 In its early years the Hakuaisha had been an overwhelmingly male organization, but by 1890 the Ladies Volunteer Nursing Association had been established, and the Red Cross had begun an organized programme of professional training for female nurses.3 These developments represented a significant change in Japanese ideas of women’s possible role in time of war. As a result of the humane professionalism of Japanese nurses during the Russo-Japanese conflict the international reputation of the Japanese Red Cross rose rapidly. Many Japanese now realized the political gains to be made from international activity. Soon Japanese nurses began to participate in the meetings of the International Council of Nurses; a body created and dominated by female nurses from Europe, North America and Australasia. Two Japanese nurses, with male chaperones, attended the 1909 I.C.N. conference in Westminster, and presented a report on Japanese conditions.4 By this time the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was well established and it was relatively easy for these Japanese nurses to develop contacts with the British nursing profession. YAMAMOTO YAO – EARLY CAREER

Yamamoto Yao was born on 5 June 1875. Like many early nurses she came from a formerly samurai family, and in an atmosphere of national aspiration, sought a career combining patriotic and medical service. In January 1894 she entered the Red Cross Nurse Training Centre in her home city, Hiroshima. With the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in August large numbers of wounded were brought to the Army Reserve Hospital in Hiroshima and Yamamoto was transferred there to begin work. At this stage her training was far from complete, but in 1896 she was one of the first young women to be selected as an ‘exemplary student’ to continue her nursing studies at the main Red Cross Hospital in Tokyo. She graduated as a fully qualified nurse in April 1900. Yamamoto worked in Tokyo until the summer when she returned to Hiroshima to serve in a new emergency.5 During the anti-foreign Boxer Rebellion in North China significant numbers of Japanese and Europeans were wounded, and transported by Japanese Red Cross ships to hospitals in Hiroshima. Yamamoto played an outstanding role in their treatment, and following her skilled care of 320

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French citizens received a gold medal from the French Government. Four years later she treated large numbers of wounded during the Russo-Japanese War, and at the age of thirty became head nurse in the Hiroshima Army Reserve Hospital.6 In 1912 Yamamoto’s high reputation in Japanese nursing circles was evident when she was selected to head a small delegation, which attended the conference in Cologne of the International Council of Nurses. Yamamoto presented a report on ‘The past and present situation of nursing training in Japan’.7 Japanese participation in such international conferences may suggest that nursing leaders in Japan and the West had similar aims, but politically they had very different objectives. For Japanese nurses such as Yamamoto the aim of participating in conferences was the acquisition of knowledge and the promotion of national prestige. In contrast leading Western nurses saw nursing organizations and conferences as a new means to promote the cause of female suffrage. When delegates arrived at the Cologne conference building they received greetings from the German Women’s Suffrage Association, as well as medical societies. In addition the conference passed a resolution declaring ‘adherence to the principle of woman suffrage’.8 It seems certain that Yamamoto and her Japanese colleagues gave no support to such policies, as there was no significant government or popular support for female suffrage in Japan at this time.9 Following the Cologne conference Yamamoto and her colleagues travelled to England to meet British nurses and to study nursing training at the Nightingale House Training School at St. Thomas’ Hospital. However the visit to England had a further purpose, to publicize the Japanese Red Cross in a major allied country. During September they travelled with a journalist from The British Journal of Nursing to East Wellow in Hampshire, nominally to lay flowers on the grave of Florence Nightingale. At the grave they laid a ‘wreath of heather, white Mary lilies and asparagus fern’ and a ribbon with the words ‘Japanese Red Cross’ and the names Yamamoto, Hagiwara and Watatani. A Japanese male interpreter accompanied the three nurses so that they could easily convey information to British journalists. Miss Hagiwara, speaking for the group, mentioned nurses’ active service in the Sino-Japanese War, the creation of a Nightingale award for outstanding Japanese nurses and a Florence Nightingale memorial meeting in Tokyo attended by ‘Princesses of the Blood Royal, Peeresses, other members of the aristocracy and over 300 Red Cross nurses’.10 IN THE FIRST WORLD WAR 1914–1918

After returning to work in the main Tokyo Red Cross Hospital Yamamoto’s reputation continued to rise, and the outbreak of 321

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the First World War brought her greater influence and distinction. As Britain’s ally Japan declared war on Germany on 23 August 1914. Soon after the Okuma cabinet informed the Japanese Red Cross that it wished to send Red Cross Relief groups to the three allies Britain, France and Russia. Of these three Japan’s alliance partner, Britain was clearly the most significant. Each relief group would consist of approximately twenty female nurses, two male doctors, an interpreter and an administrator. Yamamoto was to be one of the two head nurses of the group, which was to serve in Britain.11 The second head nurse Kiyooka Shige, had had similar training in Tokyo and had treated wounded men during the Russo-Japanese War. In view of the major role, which the two head nurses were to play in England, it seems very likely that they had a significant influence in the choice of the remaining nurses. Great care was taken in the selection process, and nursing expertise, foreign language knowledge and strength of character were all evaluated in making the final choice. The selected group was broadly representative of Japan’s regions including nurses from Hokkaido, Honshu, Kyushu and Shikoku, as well as from national headquarters. The two male doctors were experienced and well qualified; the senior one, Tsuzuki Jiro¯ had served in the Imperial Navy while his deputy, Oshima Tsuneyoshi had studied at Kyoto Imperial University and in Germany.12 The great importance of the mission for Japanese prestige is clear from the detailed preparations, which were made for the enterprise. Among these perhaps the most revealing was the briefing speech given by Baron Ozawa, the Deputy Chairman of the Red Cross Society on 1 December 1914.13 Addressing the group who would travel to Britain he presented detailed information, much of which would have been familiar to Yamamoto, from her visit to London in 1912. Ozawa noted that the British Red Cross, unlike its Japanese equivalent, did not have a mass membership and that its recently recruited volunteer nurses were far less well trained than Yamamoto and her fellow professionals. Yamamoto already had considerable international experience and would certainly have agreed with Ozawa that it was important to avoid striking attitudes of Japanese superiority, or of teacher-like arrogance. Ozawa appears to have been aware of the impressive training of nurses at Nightingale House, which Yamamoto had witnessed, and both would have known of recent improvements in British Red Cross organization following the outbreak of war. Yamamoto would also have shared Ozawa’s assessment of the British women’s suffrage movement; in pre-war days it had been militant and violent, but since the declaration of war it had abandoned its attacks on museums and public buildings. With her closeness to the Red Cross leadership she would have endorsed Ozawa’s advice to nurses to beware of attempts by suffragettes to influence them, and, as Japanese women, 322

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to ignore their blandishments.14 Yamamoto and the entire group would have shared Ozawa’s hope that their mission to Britain would be a great success – not only for the reputation of the Japanese Red Cross but for that of Japan. Yamamoto’s awareness of the national and international significance of the mission would have been further reinforced on 11 December when the British ambassador Sir William Conyngham Green invited Yamamoto and other members of the Red Cross group to lunch at the British embassy in Tokyo.15 The mission travelled to Britain via the Pacific, the United States and the Atlantic, and throughout this lengthy journey the patriotic and international importance of its activities was repeatedly demonstrated. On their departure from Shimbashi station on 19 December the British ambassador, his wife, the leaders of the Japanese Red Cross, and many Red Cross employees waved farewell. From Yokohama they travelled by the NYK liner Shunyo¯-maru, and on arrival in Hawaii, they were greeted and entertained by the Japanese consul.16 The party arrived at San Francisco on 4 January 1914. Again they received special treatment and were met by the Japanese and British consuls, local Red Cross leaders, journalists and members of the Japanese community. The travellers only stayed one night in the city but they were taken on a tour of major hospitals and local beauty spots. It took Yamamoto and her colleagues a further six days to cross the continent by rail. They stopped in Omaha and Chicago and visited the Niagara Falls. At significant cities they were greeted by consular staff and representatives of Japanese clubs and societies. Yamamoto was an enthusiastic photographer and her album contains images of this trans-continental travel.17 On their arrival in New York both American and Japanese hospitality was grander and even more elaborate. During the two days the mission spent in the city it was taken to the Mount Zion Hospital, with its excellent nursing facilities, the headquarters of the American Nurses Association, and the Rockefeller Research Institute, where they met the distinguished Japanese bacteriologist Noguchi Hideyo. The Japanese consul general invited them to dinner and the Japan Society of New York organized a grand luncheon at the Astor Hotel. The executive director of the American Red Cross travelled specially from Washington to attend.18 The Japanese Red Cross and its humanitarian virtues were praised. American journalists visited the nurses at their hotel and took photographs; the appearance of the smartly uniformed nurses helped to reshape some journalists’ views of the contemporary Japanese woman. Although the European war was the essential reason for Yamamoto’s travels it had scarcely seemed a reality during most of her American experience. However, on 13 January 1915 the party boarded the White Star liner Megantic, and soon after the realities of war became apparent. The liner’s lights were blacked out to avoid possible attack. 323

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Yamamoto and her companions arrived at Liverpool on 22 January 1915.19 Here, for the first time the military nature of the mission became obvious. The most distinguished member of the reception committee was the Surgeon General of the British Army, Sir Benjamin Franklin. A secretary from the Japanese embassy was present as were representatives of local civic societies and journalists from The Times and local newspapers.20 Yamamoto and Kiyooka were presented with bouquets and the party’s interpreter, Otsuka Naotaro¯, spoke of the long professional training of Red Cross nurses and the personal sacrifices they were making in leaving Japan to work in Britain. On their arrival at Euston Station they were welcomed by Ambassador Inouye Katsunosuke, representatives of the British Red Cross and a large numbers of Japanese citizens. For the next few days the Japanese group were accommodated in the luxurious Russell Hotel in Bloomsbury. On their first evening a formal reception was held, and Mr Bonar, a Japanese speaking diplomat was introduced as the British liaison officer. He read an address of welcome from Lord Kitchener21 and arrangements for the coming week were explained. Before they left Japan the mission members had been informed that they were to work at the new prefabricated Red Cross Hospital at Netley near Southampton. Now it was announced that their accommodation at the hospital had not been completed. As a result they would spend the coming week enjoying a mixture of medical tourism, general sightseeing and aristocratic socializing; all to be financed by the British Red Cross. It is possible that facilities at Netley were not ready but perhaps the Japanese mission was of such importance that a grand gesture of hospitality was required. After all, the Japanese mission was to provide its medical services, and some medical supplies, free of charge. Yamamoto participated in numerous activities, which were organized for the whole group, but on some significant occasions she joined Kiyooka and the male members of the mission on special high level visits. On 23 January this inner group visited the Japanese embassy, the Japanese consulate, and the headquarters of the British Red Cross to report the mission’s safe arrival to London.22 When the entire party went to the Drury Lane Theatre to see the pantomime ‘Sleeping Beauty’ the orchestra played the Japanese national anthem and the audience rose to its feet. Among the busy visits to Windsor, Eton and major military hospitals, one social event had particular importance. On 29 January Yamamoto and the entire mission were invited to Marlborough House for an audience with Queen Alexandra, the President of the British Red Cross.23 Finally on 31 January 1915, after over forty days of travel and hospitality, the Red Cross mission proceeded to Netley to begin work. To aid smooth communication and efficient working Yamamoto 324

YAMAMOTO YAO (1875–1955) AND JAPANESE NURSING

and her companions were accompanied by the liaison officer Bonar who was to remain with them for several weeks. Although the Japanese nurses were warmly greeted at the Red Cross hospital they were soon put to work. Two wards were put under Japanese control but as the British lacked adequate numbers of fully trained nurses; it seemed best to distribute most of the highly skilled Japanese across the hospital. This also promoted a further objective – the integration of British and Japanese medical personnel. Yamamoto and all her colleagues were to take their meals in the dining hall with their British opposite numbers.24 Apparently there were no concessions to Japanese taste. Another aspect of Anglo-Japanese co-operation was the British attempt to improve the English proficiency of the visitors. Bi-lingual glossaries of important medical terms were presented to Yamamoto and her fellow nurses, and leisure hours were frequently used for language learning. With the passage of time the Japanese nurses were said to have become significantly more fluent in English. In medical work the Japanese followed English methods, but in one respect they added a particular Japanese skill. They often used massage – which was popular, and was often requested by patients. For Yamamoto the experience of treating large numbers of seriously wounded men was familiar, but the multi-national character of the patients at Netley may have come as a surprise. In addition to French speaking soldiers from Canada and Belgium there were also large numbers of Indian wounded.25 The stoicism of Indian patients was much admired but communication with them was often difficult. Japanese nurses were evidently surprised by the events, which the hospital authorities arranged to raise patient morale. Variety artists appearing in Southampton theatres often performed at Netley, something without parallel in Japanese hospitals. The Japanese had arrived in the midst of the English winter and British administrators feared that cold and damp might bring sickness to them. As a countermeasure they distributed winter boots to the visiting nurses.26 In the summer of 1915 Netley faced a major medical crisis. So far the Japanese had helped to treat a regular flow of patients from the battlefields of northern France. Now the allied landings in the Dardanelles produced a new flow of patients. These included not only wounded men but also significant numbers suffering with infectious diseases. On one occasion over two hundred wounded men arrived at very short notice. By late autumn these pressures had led to seven wards being placed under Japanese management. In view of Yamamoto’s status and experience it is likely that she was given a senior position in one of the Japanese controlled wards.27 One feature of the Netley Red Cross Hospital, which must have impressed Yamamoto was its great dependence on voluntary donations. Wards were often funded by donors in Canada and Australia, as 325

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well as by wealthy individuals and societies in Britain. This dependence led to a continuous stream of interested visitors, whose favourable reports helped encourage the donation of new funds for buildings and expensive equipment. There were also important Japanese visitors such as Ambassador Inouye whose appearance demonstrated the importance which the Japanese Government attached to the work of Yamamoto and her fellow nurses. Visits from members of the British royal family further indicated official support for the Japanese presence. Of all these visits perhaps the most significant was that of Queen Alexandra on 23 August.28 As a head nurse Yamamoto played a particularly prominent role on this occasion. The special importance of this visit is clear from the numerous photographs which were taken and the subsequent creation of an oil painting based upon them, still preserved in Red Cross Headquarters in Tokyo. When the Okuma Cabinet had decided to send medical aid to Britain no one could know how long the European war might last and how numerous British casualties would be. Furthermore the provision of medical services to Britain would be relatively costly. Initially no clear decision had been reached on the length of time the mission would remain in England. However, in 1915 the Japanese Red Cross had come to the view that the mission should return to Japan after six months service, i.e. at the end of July. When British Red Cross leaders learnt of this decision they were deeply unhappy and they suggested to the Foreign Secretary that the Japanese be asked to postpone their return. With the sympathetic assistance of Ambassador Inouye it was eventually agreed that the Japanese would remain until the end of 1915. Without doubt the care provided by Yamamoto and her colleagues was much appreciated by wounded men and their families. This was evident from letters of thanks and small gifts, which the nurses received. However Yamamoto appears to have been ever conscious of broader matters of public relations. She remained an enthusiastic photographer and passed photographs on to British officials in the hospital. Her high status and professionalism were also conveyed by the impressive printed name slips, which she used in sending short messages and greetings to others.29 Yamamoto and her fellow nurses had a surprising degree of contact with local people outside the confines of the Netley Red Cross Hospital. They were often invited to tea at prosperous houses in the locality. In 1915 the mission made two visits to the grave of Florence Nightingale where flowers were laid and photographs taken which were reproduced in the Japanese Red Cross Magazine Hakuai in Tokyo. The most striking Anglo-Japanese celebration took place on 15 November 1915, when what was inaccurately termed the ‘Coronation’ of Japan’s new Emperor (the Taisho Emperor) was 326

YAMAMOTO YAO (1875–1955) AND JAPANESE NURSING

commemorated at Netley.30 The British authorities cooperated fully in these festivities, which included the display of many Japanese flags in the public rooms of the hospital. There were also festive meals and musical events, and the Japanese nurses who were allowed a holiday were taken by car to visit Bournemouth. By December as the end of the mission’s service was approaching, the ceremonial aspect of its activities became increasingly prominent. On 15 December the two male doctors, along with Yamamoto and Kiyooka visited Buckingham Palace to be received by King George V and Queen Mary. In recognition of their services at Netley the two doctors were made Companions of the Order of St. Michael and St. George; the two nurses were awarded the Royal Red Cross first class. Yamamoto and Kiyooka were probably the first Japanese women to be decorated by a British monarch.31 On 17 December the whole mission visited Lady Wolverton, a member of the Netley Red Cross Hospital Committee, and were then taken to the Mansion House for a luncheon organized by the Lord Mayor, Sir Charles Wakefield.32 This was a large-scale event attended by the Japanese Ambassador, and leaders of the British Red Cross and the nursing profession. In his speech the Lord Mayor emphasized that the mission’s work, as well as a Japanese gift of medical supplies, was much appreciated. He added that men treated by the Japanese Red Cross nurses would have memories of kindness which would remain long after the mission had returned home. After lunch Yamamoto and her colleagues were taken to Marlborough House for a final audience with Queen Alexandra. The mission was presented with an illuminated address of thanks, framed in wood from HMS Victory.33 The nurses were presented with brooches in the form of a Red Cross. Yamamoto and the mission enjoyed further festivities in late December including a grand ‘At Home’ party for the Japanese on 30 December organized by the Commandant of the Red Cross Hospital, Sir Warren Crooke-Lawless. On this occasion appreciation of the nurses’ work was expressed in lines in a farewell song – ‘The sisters have endeared themselves to everyone in Camp. They are charming little followers of “The Lady with the Lamp”.’34 When they left Netley for the last time on 1 January 1916 they were cheered by a large crowd of hospital staff and patients, many waving hats and flags.35 During their final weeks in England they continued to receive official Japanese hospitality. Ambassador Inouye met them on their arrival, and they were invited to a farewell gathering at the embassy.36 Friends from the Netley hospital assisted them in making important visits to St. Thomas’ Hospital and the London Hospital, the latter already famous for its links with Edith Cavell. Their final public appearance was on 12 January when they were the focus of 327

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a meeting of the Japan Society. The mission’s interpreter Otsuka Naotaro¯ read a paper describing their work in England, noting that in total they had contributed to the treatment of 2,553 patients. The nurses gave a demonstration of their bandaging skills. In a discussion, which followed, Sir Wyndham Murray stated that after speaking to ‘five or six hundred men’ he had concluded that the Japanese nurses ‘were devoted in their care for the wounded’.37 The mission left London on the NYK liner Fushimi on 24 January. The serious war situation had led NYK to abandon the Mediterranean route, and the mission returned via Capetown, Colombo, Hong Kong and Shanghai. They finally reached Kobe on 21 March. Yamamoto’s experiences on arriving in Japan confirmed the highly official nature of the mission’s activities. Not only were the party met by Red Cross and military officials at the port, they were guided by members of the Kyoto Red Cross branch to the Emperor Meiji’s tomb to pay their respects.38 At each major railway stations en route to Tokyo Red Cross members assembled to show their support. When they arrived in Tokyo station they were greeted by the British ambassador, leaders of the Japanese Red Cross, and crowds of family members.39 Photographs were taken and the head of the Japanese Red Cross Viscount Hanabusa welcomed them. On the next day there were longer speeches and the mission was finally dissolved.40 CONCLUSION

In the years after her work in Britain Yamamoto continued to carry out major work and gain prestige for the Japanese Red Cross. In 1920 the headquarters of the International Red Cross in Geneva initiated the award of the Florence Nightingale Medal for distinguished nurses of any nationality. By this time Yamamoto was deputy head nurse in the Tokyo Red Cross Hospital, and she had an outstanding record of treating the wounded in four Asian and European conflicts. She had also established a network of contacts with leading nurses in the West. In view of these impressive achievements the Japanese Red Cross recommended her for the Nightingale award, and she was successful.41 She was one of the first three Japanese nurses to receive such international recognition. Throughout the interwar and wartime years she occupied leading positions in the Japanese Red Cross, rising to be the sixth woman to be head nurse at the Tokyo Red Cross Hospital. Yamamoto was renowned as an administrator and an educator, always seeking improved methods of treatment and training.42 During the Pacific War when resources were inadequate and Red Cross ideals compromised she remained an important advocate for Japanese nursing, calling for greater help and support. She died in 1955. Her grave is in Isehara near Tokyo. 328

YAMAMOTO YAO (1875–1955) AND JAPANESE NURSING

Yamamoto Yao (second from left) after receiving Nightingale medal.

Throughout much of her career Yamamoto was a leader in her profession. For a short time she was a significant figure in Anglo-Japanese relations. She treated large numbers of British and allied soldiers and was one of the first Japanese women to promote Japan’s reputation overseas effectively. Yamamoto symbolized the rise of modern nursing in Japan, but politically she remained distant from advocates of women’s suffrage both at home and abroad. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5 6 7 8

No biography of Yamamoto Yao exists but the following summaries are valuable – Yamamoto Yao ‘Keireki’ and ‘Suisen no Konkyo’ (undated). Japanese Red Cross Society Headquarters, Tokyo; and ‘Yamamoto Yao’ in Kango Kyo¯iku 41/8. 2000 p. 590. The early years of her career are described in Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1. (Tokyo. 1929) pp. 270–27. Nihon Sekiju¯jisha: Nihon Sekiju¯jisha So¯ritsu 125 Shu¯nen Kinenten 1877– 2002 (Tokyo 2002) p. 19. Ibid., pp. 23–4. Daisy Caroline Bridges, A History of the International Council of Nurses, 1899–1964 (London, 1967) p. 30. Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1 (Tokyo. 1929) p. 271. Yamamoto Yao ‘Keireki’ (undated). ‘Yamamoto Yao’ in Kango Kyo¯iku 41/8, 2000, p. 590. Daisy Caroline Bridges, A History of the International Council of Nurses, p. 37 and p. 41. 329

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

9

10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17

18

19 20 21 22 23 24 25

26 27

28

29

30 31 32

33 34

35 36 37

38 39 40 41 42

The Magazine Seito¯, founded in 1911, and seen as a key publication in the women’s movement took little interest in suffrage at this time. The British Journal of Nursing, 14 September 1912, pp. 213–14. see ‘Eikoku Kyu¯gohan...’ Hakuai No 330, 10 December 1914, p. 8. Ibid., pp. 4–5. Ibid., pp. 3–7. Ibid., p. 6. Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1, p. 409. Ibid p.411 and Hakuai No 334, 10 February 1915, pp. 12–13. Yamamoto’s photographic albums are available in the Japanese Red Cross Headquarters, Tokyo. A photograph of the Astor Hotel luncheon (12 January 1915) appeared in Hakuai No 335, 10 March 1915; see also Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1 p. 411. ‘Japanese Aid for Our Wounded’ The Times, 23 January 1915. Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1, p. 413. Ibid., p. 413. Hakuai No 335, 10 March 1915, p. 19. Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1, p. 415. Ibid., p. 418. ‘At present there are 145 British, 8 foreign invalids, 6 Belgians and 240 Indians at Netley Hospital’, The Red Cross, February 1915, p. 26. Nihon Sekiju¯jishashi Zokko¯ Vol. 1, p. 419. Dr J. Suzuki ‘The Japan Red Cross Mission to England’ Japan Society, London, Transactions and Proceedings Vol.14, 1915–1916, p. 3. Queen Alexandra’s engagement diary records a surprise visit to Netley Red Cross Hospital on Monday 23 August 1915 (Royal Archives, Windsor). See Lady Crooke-Lawless’s Scrapbook (Military Medical Museum, Aldershot). Hakuai No. 345, 10 January 1916, p. 12. Court Circular, 15 December 1915. ‘Programme of Reception of the Japanese Red Cross Mission by the British Red Cross Society, in London on Friday December 17 1915’ (Royal Archives, Windsor). Hakuai No 351, 10 July 1916, p. 10. Typescript in Lady Crooke-Lawless’s Scrapbook (Military Medical Museum, Aldershot). Hakuai No. 347, 10 March 1916, p. 5. Hakuai No. 347, 10 March 1916, p. 7. Dr J. Suzuki ‘The Japan Red Cross Mission to England’ Japan Society, London, Transactions and Proceedings Vol.14, p. 34. Hakuai No. 348, 10 April 1916 p.10 See photographs in Hakuai No. 348, and item on p. 10. Hakuai No. 348, pp. 10–11. Nihon Sakiju¯jisha So¯ritsu 125 Shu¯nen Kinenten, 1877–2002, p. 39. Yamamoto Yao ‘Keireki’, p. 2.

330

29

¯ e Sumi (1875–1948) and Domestic O Science in Japan HIROKO TOMIDA

INTRODUCTION

¯ e (née Miyakawa) Sumi was a pioneer in the field of modern O domestic science in Japan. After studying in Britain, she returned to Japan and became a professor at Tokyo Joshi Ko¯to¯ Shihan Gakko¯ (Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College). She laid the foundation of domestic science, further developed it, and finally established it as a significant aspect of education. She also published several textbooks, widely used in domestic-science classes in schools throughout Japan. In 1925 she founded her own private educational institution Tokyo Kasei Gakuin (Tokyo Home Economics Academy). In 1940 she was awarded the Indigo Ribbon (Ranju Ho¯sho¯) medal for her great service promoting women’s education. In the same year the Ministry of Education recognized her long service in the field of education and awarded her a prize. Although she died in 1948, her name continues to be well remembered in Japan. However, she is 331

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

not well known outside Japan despite having spent nearly four years in Britain as well as travelling to other European countries and the United States. EARLY LIFE IN JAPAN

¯e Miyakawa Sumi, subsequently known by her married name O Sumi, was born on 7 September 1875 in Nagasaki, as the third child of Miyakawa Moritaro¯ and his wife Kane. Although the Miyakawa family had been peasants for many generations, Moritaro¯ gave up farming in his youth and worked for the trading company Glover and Company founded by the Scottish merchant Thomas Blake Glover.1 Through his work Moritaro¯ became acquainted with a wide range of people who later became important government officials, includ¯ kuma Shigenobu. During the Civil War (1868–1869), Glover ing O and Company supplied arms to anti-Tokugawa samurai in Satsuma and Cho¯ shu¯, who planned to overthrow the Sho¯ gunate and restore the Emperor as sovereign. Glover and Company made a huge profit during this conflict.2 However, they went bankrupt in 1870 when they could no longer sell weapons as peace had been restored. Moritaro¯ then went to Tokyo to work first for the Department of the ¯ kuma Shigenobu he soon Navy, but having been recommended by O moved to the Imperial Household Agency, where he worked as a lower-ranking official. His wife and children moved to Tokyo to join him in 1880. Although he and his wife were uneducated, they had progressive ideas and became convinced that giving their children a good education in Tokyo would enable them to make their way in life. He became a great admirer of Fukuzawa Yukichi after reading Gakumon no Susume (An Encouragement of Learning), and sent his eldest son Hyo¯ichi to Keio¯ Gijuku Yo¯chisha (Keio¯ Gijuku Elementary School), although the school was hardly appropriate for a commoner’s son because the majority of its students were sons of millionaires and peers.3 Hyo¯ichi later proceeded to the Imperial Navy Medical School to become a navy surgeon.4 The rest of Moritaro¯’s children received a good education. Moritaro¯ and his wife tried hard to economize in their daily lives to help educate their children. Although few girls proceeded to secondary school at that time, her parents encouraged her to do so. She was born with a small dark blotch near her ear, which grew into a large black birthmark as she grew older.5 Her parents agreed that nobody would want to marry her because of the mark, so they wanted to give her the best education available to women, hoping this would enable her to find a secure job to support herself as a single woman. 332

¯ E SUMI (1875–1948) AND DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN JAPAN O

Sumi studied from 1880 to 1888 at Tomoe Elementary School in Shiba, Tokyo. In 1889 she entered To¯ yo¯ Eiwa Jogakko¯ (To¯ yo¯ Eiwa Girls’ High School), a mission school established in 1884 by Martha J. Cartmell, a Methodist missionary from Canada.6 Having been surrounded by pretty girls with expensive clothes from affluent families, Sumi, a commoner’s daughter, initially felt completely out of place, and became depressed and resentful. However, she soon began to enjoy her life because foreign teachers, as dedicated Christians, showed respect and sympathy towards her and treated her as the equal of other students. For a long time Sumi, who had had very low self-esteem and a negative attitude towards her life because of her birthmark, was stimulated by the Christian belief that in the eyes of God everybody is equal. She stopped thinking about her birthmark and adopted a positive attitude. She was christened in 1891 and became actively involved with charitable services at school.7 She made a serious effort to improve her English and mastered advanced-level English. Her close contacts with foreign teachers helped to broaden her outlook. She benefitted enormously from her education at this Christian school. She graduated from the school in 1894, and returned as a mathematics teacher for junior students in January 1896. Nevertheless, Sumi who wanted to be financially independent considered studying medicine, but her brother Hyo¯ ichi, a qualified medical doctor, advised against because all medical schools at that time were virtually closed to women in Japan. He recommended her to go to Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College founded in 1890, which was the only higher educational institution available to women. She was admitted to the college in 1897. Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College, the predecessor of the present Ochanomizu Women’s University, was a state-funded educational institution under the control of the Ministry of Education. Its main objective was to train female secondary school teachers. Academic subjects like mathematics, Japanese, Chinese literature and English were taught. In 1897 the college was divided into two departments – humanities and science – for training more specialized teachers.8 Sumi, who had become accustomed to the free atmosphere and education at her mission school, found the rules of the state-funded college far too strict, but she met three remarkable women who had positive influence on her. They were Yamakawa Futaba, Adachi Yasuko and Yasui Tetsu, who were all teachers. She was particularly influenced by Yasui, a senior graduate from the college, who had recently returned from her studies in Britain funded by the Ministry of Education.9 Yasui’s descriptions of her life in Britain led Sumi to contemplate possible study abroad. 333

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After Sumi graduated from the college in March 1901, she volunteered to go to Okinawa to teach at Okinawa Shihan Gakko¯ Joshibu (Okinawa Women’s Teachers’ Training College). Okinawa was remote from Tokyo and was notorious for having much lower educational standards. As a result, no other student in her year wanted to work there. Having gained confidence, she worked hard teaching and promoting the importance of good education. Her impressive efforts came to the attention not only of the Okinawa governor, but also of the principal and teachers of her old college and of the Ministry of Education. SENT TO BRITAIN

In the summer 1902 Sumi was sent to Britain for three years as a state-funded student to study domestic science. She was given 1,800 yen annually towards her tuition fees and 200 yen towards her preparations for the journey.10 This was a significant achievement for a woman as at that time it was extremely rare for the government to finance a woman’s study abroad. Indeed she was the only woman among forty-eight state-funded students who were sent abroad by the Ministry of Education in 1902.11 In her autobiography Sumi noted that she had not expected this scholarship, as her exam results, apart from English, at Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College had not been outstanding. The 60-year-history of Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ College since its Foundation (Tokyo Joshi Ko¯to¯ Shihan Gakko¯ 60-nen-shi) explained: Our college established a new department called ‘gikeika’ (the Department of Domestic Science) in March 1908, following the new educational guidelines introduced by the Ko¯to¯ Jogakko¯ Rei (The Girls’ High School Act) enforced in 1899. Regrettably the level of domestic science teaching here was very low. The teaching methods and curriculum needed to be considerably improved. Therefore our college recommended that our graduate, Miyakawa Sumi, should be sent as a state-funded scholar to Britain to study domestic science.12

Thanks to the outstanding English training given by native speakers of English at To¯yo¯ Eiwa Girls’ High School, Sumi had a good command of English and was by far the best student in her English classes.13 Yasui Tetsu supported Sumi as both were Christians and graduates from the same college. Other factors must also have been taken into account. Sumi had shown a good understanding of other cultures and knew how to develop relationships with Westerners, especially British people as many of her teachers were British. Her dedication to teaching, her strong will and her energy in attempting to improve her students’ manners and 334

¯ E SUMI (1875–1948) AND DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN JAPAN O

lifestyles had all been demonstrated during her sixteen-month teaching career in Okinawa, and must have been significant factors in her selection. Domestic science was a new academic subject in Japan. She was expected to master the subject and to play a significant pioneering role in developing and establishing it after her return to Japan. Sumi’s brother, Hyo¯ichi, a graduate from the Japanese Imperial Navy Medical School, who subsequently pursued medical studies in Britain for three years, was particularly helpful in providing her with essential information.14 He recommended her to contact Arakawa Minoji, the Japanese consul in London, who had looked after Hyo¯ichi. Yasui also wrote a letter of introduction addressed to Miss Hughes, the principal of the Cambridge Training College where Yasui had studied. On 18 October 1902 Sumi left Yokohama by ship. She arrived on 17 December 1902, and soon found lodgings at 21 Lexham Gardens, London. Although she wrote a short autobiography and several articles about her life, her recollections of her life in Britain were limited and incomplete. More information about her activities in Britain are contained in her official reports.15 All of these were addressed to the Minister of Education because at that time all state-funded students were obliged to write study-abroad reports regularly for their sponsor, the Ministry of Education.16 Although Sumi’s original reports have not survived at the Ministry of Education, copies survived at her old college, Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College, together with her letter sent to Takamine, its principal, dated 25 August 1906. Her reports were comprehensive and are the most reliable sources of information regarding her period overseas.17 According to her first report dated 24 October 1903, she entered Bedford College, a women’s college in the University of London, on 19 January 1903.18 She studied the teaching methodology of hygiene under the supervision of a female tutor until 28 June 1903. As the college did not teach domestic science, which she had been directed to study, she also attended training courses in laundry, cookery and sewing at Shoreditch Technical Institute in London twice a week between January and July 1903.19 Meanwhile she discovered that Battersea Polytechnic was teaching domestic science, so she enrolled on a course to train teachers at the department of domestic science there on 15 September 1903. A British acquaintance, who is believed to have been Miss Hughes, advised Sumi to study more important academic subjects such as education and psychology instead of domestic science. This acquaintance regarded domestic science as nothing but cookery. Although Sumi was tempted to follow this suggestion, she stuck faithfully to her official duty of studying domestic science. 335

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At this time Battersea Polytechnic was a kind of vocational college whose main objective was to teach practical skills to local people.20 Sumi soon discovered that domestic science was a relatively new subject even in Britain, and was not treated as a mainstream academic subject. Therefore the course she took was designed to teach women from the middle class and below useful techniques of household chores. According to her final official report, she studied cookery, needlework, laundry, housewifery, hygiene, chemistry, first aid and the theory of education.21 She recalled that her course consisted of 25 percent theory and 75 percent practice, and was intended to provide the students with much practical training. This curriculum was completely different from that in Japan, which mainly focused on theory. She found the British teaching method so beneficial that she adopted it in her later teaching in Japan. She was also impressed with the excellent facilities, which the department of domestic science at Battersea Polytechnic offered to students. She was convinced that it was vital for Japanese colleges to improve their facilities, which were much inferior to those in Britain. She was also certain that improvements in apparatus would upgrade the teaching standard of the subject. She passed all the examinations in the subjects, which she had studied there, and was awarded a graduation certificate in July 1905. Her studies at Battersea Polytechnic enabled her to understand how domestic science should be taught effectively, and to master all the practical skills required for teaching the subject. She began to have a much clearer idea of how to develop domestic science in Japan. As the Japanese Ministry of Education funded her for three years, she was expected to return to Japan in summer 1905. However, her stay in Britain was extended for another year because of the RussoJapanese War (1904–1905). Taking advantage of her extended stay, in September 1905 she decided to return to academic study at Bedford College, which was a more established academic institution. She was readmitted to the department of hygiene where at her own expense she studied the Public Health Acts, physiology, chemistry, physics and bacteriology.22 She also moved into a Bedford College dormitory because she wanted to investigate the students’ dormitory life. In her fifth report, she gave the following descriptions of students’ academic and dormitory life at Bedford College: College fees and dormitory fees here are both far more expensive than those in Japan. Therefore the facilities of the college used for teaching and living are fully equipped. Students are well nourished by college meals. Apart from lectures, the college entrusts the students with their own motivation and initiative to study. They are encouraged to attend 336

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any meeting, which is considered beneficial to expand their knowledge and to elevate their mind. The laboratories are also well equipped to meet the number of students enrolled in each course. Every student is expected to do experiments. The college provides services, which help to restore the students’ minds and bodies, so everybody here is in excellent health both physically and mentally.23

She was inspired by the high standard of teaching, students’ high motivation for their studies, their excellent academic performance and the outstanding quality of the dormitories. She was impressed by her most comfortable dormitory life to such an extent that she built similar dormitories when she later founded her own private school, Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, for her Japanese female students. She passed the examinations in all compulsory subjects and was awarded a diploma by Bedford College in July 1906.24 She also passed the examination to become an inspector of public hygiene in London and obtained the necessary certificate. Bedford College provided her with intellectual stimulation (which she could not obtain at Battersea Polytechnic) and scientific academic training. It also gave her the chance to reexamine the ways in which domestic science had been taught in Britain. She was dissatisfied with the prevailing narrow approach to the subject. She believed that domestic science was not a trivial subject, covering only the practical skills of housekeeping, but had the potential to develop into a mainstream subject, contributing to the fulfilment of people’s social lives and helping a country to prosper. She became convinced that to achieve this the subject should be explored from a much wider social perspective. Thanks to her academic training at Bedford College, she found real value in learning domestic science, and resolved to devote herself to the teaching, development and establishment of the subject in Japan. Apart from her studies at Bedford College and Battersea Polytechnic, she also attended summer training programmes at Oxford University in August 1903 and Cambridge University in July 1904.25 In addition, she participated in many conferences related to subjects such as women’s education, religious education, moral education and hygiene, held in London, York, Liverpool and Keswick. Miss Hughes suggested that Sumi should become acquainted with as many British people as possible, familiarize herself with their Western ways of thinking and living, and visit many schools to observe their lessons. Miss Hughes was confident that all these activities would be far more beneficial to Sumi’s future career as a teacher in Japan than academic studies such as attending lectures and reading books. Sumi took this advice and visited domestic science schools in Leeds, Shrewsbury and Ireland, and other educational institutions 337

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including infant schools, primary schools, secondary schools and universities.26 Her visits extended to social welfare institutions such as a nursing home for the aged, an orphanage and a workhouse. She also visited museums, art galleries, hospitals and factories. She stayed at the houses of British acquaintances in Leicester and Luton; this gave her the opportunity of observing British family life. Her detailed accounts and perceptive analyses of British households, especially women’s lifestyles, were published in her book Sanbo¯ Shugi (Three Key Components to Govern Japan: Wives, Religion and Weapons) in 1911.27 Sumi became convinced that Miss Hughes’ recommendation to visit British homes was the best way to study British society and culture. She was particularly impressed by the high educational level of upper or upper-middle class women and their household management, which helped their children to grow up to be assets to Britain. She was also moved by the significant role which Christian education played in their daily lives. A public lecture which she gave in London to a women’s society on women’s and family education in Japan, gave her an initial opportunity to examine Japan from an international perspective, and to discuss the pros and cons of Japanese family education and Japanese women’ roles at home, in comparison with their British equivalents. Her European tour between August and October 1905, visiting many educational institutions in Germany, Belgium, Holland and France, was also valuable for her future teaching career in Japan. Her visits to domestic science schools in Berlin and Amsterdam and Fröbel House in Germany, which was founded in honour of Friedrich Fröbel, the leading German educationalist, specializing in children’s education, were inspirational to her.28 This tour helped her to cultivate her international awareness and to broaden her understanding of European educational systems. After her four-year stay in Britain, she left London on 18 July 1906 for Liverpool from where she sailed to New York. She traversed America by train and returned to Yokohama by the Shinano-maru from Seattle arriving on 23 August.29 TEACHING CAREER IN JAPAN

Soon after her return to Japan, she was offered a teaching post at her old college, Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College. While she was away, there had been a sharp rise in the number of female students proceeding to higher education. As many of them wanted to become domestic science teachers, there was a serious shortage of lecturers who could train them.30 The popularity of the subject was closely related to the climate of the time. When Sumi left Japan, it was government policy to encourage the nation to adopt 338

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Western culture. However, during her absence this changed to the new strategy of returning to Japanese traditional culture and lifestyle. To accommodate the government’s new policy, many schools emphasized education aimed at producing ryo¯sai kenbo (a good wife and wise mother), thus making domestic science the most important subject in the curriculum for women.31 The Ministry of Education desperately needed an expert on domestic science teaching, who was capable of dealing with this demand and further developing courses, so it had high expectations of Sumi, who had studied the subject in Britain as a state-funded student.32 She noted numerous weaknesses in the condition of domestic science teaching in Japan. Compared to Britain, Japanese teachers in this field were under-qualified. Teaching in Japan was dominated by theory-based lectures with hardly any practical training.33 Consequently classrooms used for domestic science were badly equipped and were not designed for housekeeping exercises.34 She took the initiative in implementing a strategic plan to overcome these limitations. As she had found Battersea Polytechnic’s teaching methods, stressing practical training, very effective, she followed that example and insisted on considerably increasing practical training classes, which were far more useful to women’s daily domestic lives. She wanted to make the curriculum, which was very narrow in Japan, more diverse, like the British one. However, she soon noticed that the subjects offered in Britain could not be replicated in Japan.35 Japanese lifestyles were very different from European in housing, diet and dress. She had to choose subjects, which would meet a need among Japanese housewives. Some subjects such as cooking, washing, cleaning and sewing had to be modified. It became vital for her to master Japanese cuisine and Western dishes, which appealed to Japanese people, and how to wash kimono. Using her limited spare time, she went to famous restaurants and dry cleaners in Tokyo to learn such skills.36 She also saw the need for a domestic science textbook, which could become the handbook for teaching and raise standards. In 1910 she published her first textbook entitled Kaji Jisshu¯ Kyo¯kasho (Textbook for Housekeeping Exercises).37 It was solid and gave detailed instructions about cleaning, home furnishing, washing and other housework. The book marked a new era in establishing domestic science as an academic ¯ yo¯ Kaji Kyo¯kasho subject in Japan. In 1917 her second publication O (Textbook for Applied Housekeeping) appeared in two volumes.38 The book was comprehensive and was superior to her first work. It had a much wider array of topics including sewing, hygiene, cookery, clothing, home-making, childcare, household accounts, knitting, embroidery, first aid, and nursing for both sick and elderly people. She also gave many public lectures, and was a guest speaker for domestic science training programmes throughout Japan. She took 339

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up several government posts, acting as a schools inspector and a supervisor of educational programmes, and was on a certificate exam¯ e Genju, a ination board for schoolteachers. In 1915 she married O Christian widower and applied her own housekeeping theories as a married woman.39 She worked hard, and fulfilled the expectations of the Ministry of Education. Her astonishingly full activities were rewarded by unprecedented speedy promotion to a professorship at Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College in February 1907. This was followed by a decoration, which gave her the official title of josei hachii (josei ranking 8th) in September of the same year. When she retired in 1925 from Tokyo Women’s Teachers’ Training College after her nineteen-year service, she was raised to the josei 4th rank. In April 1925 she founded her own private school Tokyo Kasei Gakuin (Tokyo Home Economics Academy) to popularize domestic science. She believed this to be her final mission in life. Its main educational objectives were to provide women with an advanced level of both academic and practical domestic science training, to broaden their interests, to cultivate their minds and to make preparations for their marriage which would enable them to lead a happy family life as competent housewives.40 She believed that the prosperity of Britain stemmed from good family education and the impressive skills of British wives in managing their children and households, which she attributed to women’s education. She wanted Japan to follow the British example and establish an ideal educational system to produce enlightened women with practical domestic skills. She believed that as a result they would become good wives and wise mothers who would play a significant role in creating a stable and solid family life which would lay the foundations for the success and prosperity of Japan. She asserted that domestic science was an essential subject for Japanese society. Her outstanding administrative ability, careful planning of courses with a wide selection of subjects, and successful recruitment of well-qualified teachers, all contributed to the success and prestige of her academy. Many students entered her academy to study domestic science, and many became domestic science teachers. After her death on 6 January 1948 her academy was upgraded to university status, being called Tokyo Kasei Gakuin Daigaku (Tokyo Kasei Gakuin University) and developed into a fully established women’s higher educational institution with postgraduate courses.41 CONCLUSION

Sumi began her life with few marriage or career prospects, because of her birthmark. Nevertheless she had a happy marriage and many remarkable achievements as a teacher, as the founder and principal 340

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of Tokyo Home Economics Academy, as a founder of domestic science in Japan and as a promoter of women’s education. The key to her success was her education, her parents’ teaching of self-help and diligence and above all her Christian faith. After her conversion to Christianity she developed self-confidence and a readiness to sacrifice her own interests for the common good. Having studied domestic science as a state-funded student in Britain, she realized that her mission in life was to establish and popularize domestic science as a mainstream academic subject in Japan as it was indispensable to the creation of stable homes and a prosperous country. She had a strong sense of duty and wholeheartedly devoted herself to these tasks. She had a significant impact upon Japanese women’s education, ¯ e Sumi has come to symbolespecially domestic science teaching. O ize the establishment of domestic science in the Japanese educational system.42 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I wish to express my gratitude to the late Professor Yoshinaga Fumi who ¯ e Sumi at Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, Mrs Hazu Yoshie closely worked with O and Mrs Kawamura Kyo¯ko, for providing me with valuable sources written ¯ e Sumi. by and about O ENDNOTES 1 ¯ e Sumi, ‘Watashi no Ayunde Kita Michi’, in Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, O ¯ e Sumi Sensei, Tokyo: Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, 1974, pp. 1–2. So¯ritsusha O For details about the life of Thomas Blake Glover, see for instance, Scottish Samurai: Thomas Blake Glover 1838–1911 by Alexander McKay, Edinburgh: Canongate Press, 1993. 2 Matsumura Yoshimoto, Meiji Bunmei Kaika no Hanabana: Nihon Ryu¯gaku¯e sei Retsuden, in Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, Tokyo Kasei Gakuin So¯ritsusha O Sumi Sensei, Tokyo: Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, 2013, pp. 22–3. 3 Keio¯ Gijuku 150-nen-shi Shiryo¯shu¯ Henshu¯ Iinkai (ed.), Keio¯ Gijuku 150-nen-shi Shiryo¯shu¯, vol. 1, Tokyo: Keio¯ Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2012; Keio¯ Gijuku, Keio¯ Gijuku Nyu¯sha Cho¯, 1863–1901, Keio¯ University Archives, Tokyo. 4 Shimizu Shinta (ed.), Kaigun Eisei Seidoshi, vol. 2, Tokyo: Kaigun Gunikai, 1930, p. 40. 5 Personal interview with Yoshinaga Fumi, 24 June 2004, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa Prefecture; Miyakawa Sumiko, ‘Mi no Toge wa Ai no Muchi’, Shinjokai, 4:10, 1912, p. 35. 6 To¯yo¯ Eiwa Jogakuin 100-nen-shi Hensan Jikko¯ Iinkai (ed.), To¯yo¯ Eiwa Jogakuin 100-nen-shi, Tokyo: To¯yo¯ Eiwa Jogakuin, 1984, pp. 136–8. To¯yo¯ Eiwa Jogakko¯ was located in Azabu, Tokyo and its initial objective was to promote women’s education in Japan. As the foundation of the school coincided with the Westernization initiated by the Meiji government, this school became popular among the daughters of the new elite. 341

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7 8 9

10 11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19 20

¯ e, ‘Watashi no Ayunde Kita Michi’, p. 7. O Matsumura, Meiji Bunmei Kaika no Hanabana, p. 30. On Yasui, see Aoyama Nao, Yasui Tetsu Den, Tokyo: Tokyo Joshi Daigaku Do¯so¯kai Shuppan, 1949. ¯ e, ‘Watashi no Ayunde Kita Michi’, p. 23. O Watanabe Minoru, Kindai Nihon Kaigai Ryu¯gakushi, vol. 1, Tokyo: Ko¯dansha, 1977, pp. 105–107. Tokyo Joshi Ko¯to¯ Shihan Gakko¯ (ed.), Tokyo Joshi Ko¯to¯ Shihan Gakko¯ 60-nen-shi, Tokyo: Tokyo Joshi Ko¯to¯ Shihan Gakko¯, 1934, p. 85. ¯ hama Tetsuya, O ¯ e Sumi Sensei, Tokyo: Tokyo Kasei Gakuin Ko¯enkai, O 1978, p. 79. The record of issuing Hyo¯ichi’s passport to go to Britain by the Japanese Foreign Office survives. See Gaimusho¯, Ryoken Microfilm, 23, no. 1189, 5 September 1898, Gaiko¯ Shiryo¯kan Archives, Tokyo. Her reports on her studies written between October 1903 and August 1906 included her lengthy report and diary about her European tour dated 10 October 1905. Her travel record of her return from London to Tokyo dated 25 August 1906. Her final official report after her arrival in Japan, briefly outlining her academic achievements and other activities during her four-year stay in Britain. Miyakawa Sumi, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1903 to October 1903’, 24 October 1903; Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from November 1903 to July 1904’, 31 July 1904; Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from August 1904 to December 1904’, 31 December 1904; Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1905 to July 1905’, 31 July 1905; Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1906 to July 1906’, 25 August 1906; Miyakawa, ¯ shu¯ryoko¯ Ho¯kokusho’, 10 October 1905; Miyakawa, ‘O ¯ shu¯ Ryoko¯ ‘O Nikki’, 10 October 1905; Miyakawa, ‘Kicho¯ Ryoko¯ Nikki’, 25 August 1906; Miyakawa, ‘Ryu¯gaku Shimatsusho’, 25 August 1906. Copies of all these documents are kept at Josei Bunka Centre Archives, Ochanomizu Women’s University. Each report had to include the following: the name and address of his/ her educational institution, the list of subjects studied, the sums of his/ her enrolment fee and tuition fee, his/her examination results, the names of the degree and any prize awarded to him/her, any other important information and any urgent message which he/she wanted to convey to the Ministry of Education. Monbusho¯nai Kyo¯ikushi Hensankai (ed.), Meiji Iko¯ Kyo¯iku Seido Hattatsushi, vol. 4, Tokyo: Monbusho¯, 1938, pp. 462–4. Miyakawa Sumi, ‘Kicho¯ Ontodoke’, 25 August 1906, Josei Bunka Centre Archives, Ochanomizu Women’s University. Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1903 to October 1903’. The Bedford College student entry for Sumi simply gives her date of entry, date of leaving and date of death. Bedford College Students’ Records in 1903, Bedford College Archives. Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1903 to October 1903’. On Battersea Polytechnic, see H. Arrowsmith, Pioneering in Education for the Technologies – The Story of Battersea College Technology, Guildford: University of Surrey, 1966; Arthur Sowman, ‘The Battersea Polytechnic: Department of Domestic Science’, Education, 24 March 1904, p. 289. 342

¯ E SUMI (1875–1948) AND DOMESTIC SCIENCE IN JAPAN O

21 22

23 24 25 26 27

28 29 30 31 32

33

34 35 36

37 38 39 40

41

42

Miyakawa, ‘Ryu¯gaku Shimatsusho’. Ibid., Bedford College Students’ Records in 1903. On Bedford College, see Margaret J. Tuke, A History of Bedford College for Women, 1849–1937, London: Oxford University Press, 1939, pp. 158–60. Miyakawa, ‘Shinpo¯sho from January 1906 to July 1906’. Miyakawa, ‘Ryu¯gaku Shimatsusho’. Ibid. Ibid. ¯ e Sumiko, Sanbo¯ Shugi, Tokyo: Ho¯bunkan, 1911. In Sanbo¯ Shugi, O Sumi compared British households and lifestyles with those in Japan, and demonstrated her acute analytical skills which she developed thanks to her academic training at Bedford College. ¯ shu¯ryoko¯ Ho¯kokusho’; Miyakawa, ‘O ¯ shu¯ Ryoko¯ Nikki’. Miyakawa, ‘O Miyakawa, ‘Kicho¯ Ryoko¯ Nikki’. ¯ hama, O ¯ e Sumi Sensei, p. 102. O Matsumura, Meiji Bunmei Kaika no Hanabana, p. 42. ¯ e Sumi’, Nihon Kyo¯iku Yamamoto Takaya, ‘Kyo¯iku Jinbutsu Shiwa 73: O Shinbun, 13 January 1996. Miyakawa Sumiko, ‘Kijo¯ no Kaseigaku wa Yakuni Tatanu’, Taisho¯ Fujin, 1 January 1913, pp. 58–9. ¯ e, Sanbo¯ Shugi, pp. 99–105. O ¯ e, ‘Watashi no Ayunde Kita Michi’, pp. 26–7. O Yoshinaga Fumi, ‘Kaseigaku no Haha, Ko¯seki o Tsumugu’, Nihon Keizai Shinbun, 6 October 2000. Miyakawa Sumiko, Kaji Jisshu¯ Kyo¯kasho, Tokyo: Gen Gendo¯, 1910. ¯ e Sumiko, O ¯ yo¯ Kaji Kyo¯kasho, 2 vols, Tokyo: Jitsubunkan, 1918. O ¯ e Sumi, ‘Kajika no Shimei’, Kaji Kenkyu¯, 1:3, 1920, p. 25. O Miyakawa Sumiko, ‘Katei ni Okeru Seishin Kyo¯iku’, Shinjokai, 3:3, 1909, pp. 14–16. ¯ e Sumi Sensei o Seni’, in Tokyo Kasei Gakuin, Yamaguchi Takashi, ‘O ¯ e Sumi Sensei, Tokyo: Tokyo Kasei Tokyo Kasei Gakuin So¯ritsusha: O Gakuin, 2013, pp. 4–19. Tokyo Kasei Gakuin Ko¯enkai Azumakai (ed.), Tokyo Kasei Gakuin So¯ritsu 90-shu¯nen: Shashin de Tsuzuru Gakuin no Ayumi, Tokyo: Tokyo Kasei ¯ nishi Sechi, ‘Watashi no Sonkeisuru Joshi Kyo¯ikuka: Gakuin, 2013; O ¯ e Sumi Sensei’, Bunkyo¯, no. 8, 1979, pp. 62–70. O

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PART III: SCHOLARS AND WRITERS sJAPANESE s

30

Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) and His Tour of Britain, 1920–1921 SUSAN C. TOWNSEND

Yanaihara Tadao (1893–1961) is probably best known for his opposition to the so-called ‘China Incident’ in 1937 and has been described as a ‘scholar, teacher, Christian, and pioneer in Japanese colonial studies’.1 He occupied the Chair of Colonial Policy at Tokyo Imperial University from 1923 until he was forced to resign in 1937 after the notorious ‘Yanaihara Incident’ caused a scandal, which rocked the academic world.2 Yanaihara resumed his teaching after the war and taught international economics at the University of Tokyo. He served as president of the University from 1951 to 1957. Yanaihara’s study of Japanese and international colonialism was the most comprehensive of its kind before the Pacific War. His thought was profoundly influenced by the internationalist and educator, Nitobe Inazo¯ (1862–1933), and the founder of the mukyo¯kai or ‘Non-church’ Christian movement, Uchimura Kanzo¯ (1861–1930). It was Uchimura who persuaded Yanaihara to convert to Christianity and, after Uchimura’s death in 1930, Yanaihara became a leading 345

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light of the Non-church movement. His far-sighted, liberal critique of Japanese colonial policy was informed by Nitobe’s humanitarian and liberal ideals as well as by Uchimura’s Christian concepts of social and international justice. His ideas and principles, however, were also shaped by his travels through the British Isles from his arrival in London in December 1920 until his departure for a tour of Europe in September 1921. This chapter charts his impressions of Britain and examines the ways in which his studies influenced his thought. LONDON LIFE

A study-tour of Europe and the United States was an essential part of the training of young graduates destined for positions within Japan’s imperial universities, but it was less common for budding academics to be sent to Britain. One of the main reasons why Yanaihara found himself in London was that in the early 1880s J.R. Seeley, Regius Professor of History in Cambridge, was partly responsible for establishing the history of empire as a defined field of study. In addition, Nitobe’s economic theories were profoundly influenced by Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and, indeed, Yanaihara was tasked with cataloguing Adam Smith’s library after Nitobe had it shipped to Tokyo Imperial University.3 Yanaihara spent most of his time in London studying in the Reading Room of the British Museum. He also attended lectures at Toynbee Hall and the London School of Economics. However, he was also a keen tourist and traveller and his diaries record in meticulous detail many aspects of his life in London; visits to museums, churches, art galleries, concerts and public meetings, as well as his impressions of his tour of the Celtic Fringe; Wales, Scotland and Ireland. His interests provide further evidence of the continuing influence of his great teacher, Uchimura Kanzo¯, and to some extent Yanaihara’s physical tour of the British Isles becomes a continuation of his intellectual journey in Uchimura’s footsteps beginning with a Congregationalist connection through which he secured lodgings. Uchimura himself never visited Britain and, indeed, he once commented: ‘To be sure, my Christian faith comes from New England, the home of Puritanism.’4 However, during his studies at Amherst College in Massachusetts in the 1880s, he had been influenced by Congregationalists and had developed close connections with Congregational Church pastors in Japan such as Yokoi Tokio (1857–1927) and Ebina Danjo¯ (1856–1937). All were Kumamoto Band Christians converted by the American missionary Captain L.L. Janes in Sapporo. Ebina was minister at the Hongo¯ Congregationalist Church near Tokyo Imperial University where another of Yanaihara’s teachers, Yoshino Sakuzo¯ (1878–193), was a member of the congregation.5 On 4 December 1920, 346

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the day after arriving in London, Yanaihara secured lodgings at the home of Mrs Cook, ‘The Firs’, Woodford Green. Mrs Cook was the widow of a well-known Congregationalist minister and had been recommended to Yanaihara by his friend Inoue Kajiro¯ who was then stationed in the Japanese Consulate in London.6 Yanaihara quickly settled into the routine of the Cook household. Each day at 7.30 in the morning a maid would knock on the door to wake him and at 8 o’clock breakfast was served, after which Mrs Cook would lead family prayers and read from the Bible.7 Over the duration of his stay in London, Mrs Cook, her sons Arnold and Bernard, an assortment of grandchildren, friends and fellow Congregationalists treated Yanaihara as one of the family. Indeed Mrs Cook’s granddaughter, Jean, who was around four years old at the time, referred to him as ‘Uncle Hara’. Many years later Jean recalled that ‘Uncle Hara’ presented her with a Japanese doll and a card commemorating the anniversary of the founding of the Sunday Schools of Japan.8 Woodford Green is situated in the North East of London close to Epping Forest where he would often walk with Mrs Cook’s second son Bernard. One of Yanaihara’s first excursions was to the Whitechapel area in order to register at the Alien Registry as required by law. He entered St. Jude’s Church, and was struck by the memorial to its former vicar Ernest Courtenay Carter (1858–1912) and his wife Lilian (1867–1912), the daughter of Thomas Hughes, author of Tom Brown’s Schooldays. The couple met their death on the SS Titanic on 15 April 1912, Lilian famously refusing to leave her husband when offered a place on a lifeboat. Yanaihara painstakingly copied the words of the memorial in English in full, including the epitaph: ‘Loving and pleasant in their lives / In death they were not divided.’9 The fact that Yanaihara was recently married and was painfully missing his wife, Aiko, and their two-year old son Isaku [Isaac], perhaps explains the huge impression the memorial made on him.10 The church was also famous for G.F. Watts’ mosaic ‘Time, Death and Judgment’ (1866) then situated on the western exterior wall above a fountain and this work appears to have fuelled an interest in Watts’ other religious works.11 On recalling his first impressions of this part of London, Yanaihara noted that a great number of Jews resided in the East End. It is unsurprising that, coming from a country with no history of Jewish settlement, Yanaihara should find this noteworthy, although after Japanese troops took part in the Siberian intervention in 1917, so-called ‘Jewish experts’ in Japan began to circulate the notorious Protocols of Zion. He later visited Palestine and became a champion of the Zionist cause and the right of Jews to settle in Palestine. His stance on Jewish settlement, however, grew out of a wider theory about the right of abode of all peoples as a global principle. 12 347

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Yanaihara found it remarkable that London’s museums and galleries offered free admission even to foreign tourists. He frequently visited the Natural History Museum, St. Paul’s Cathedral and the National Gallery. He was particularly interested in works of art with a religious theme and he carefully recorded his impressions of paintings such as William Holman Hunt’s ‘Light of the World’ in St. Paul’s Cathedral, and Reynolds’ ‘Holy Family’ in the National Gallery. He noted how different Reynolds’ painting was to medieval depictions of Joseph and Mary as divine, and somehow ‘unhuman’. ‘In contrast’, he exclaimed, ‘look at this painting by Reynolds!’ Joseph here is robust, healthy, thoughtful and unmistakably human. Mary is more humble village wife than queen and the family is set within a natural landscape.13 From the fleshly ‘Holy Family’ he contemplated the deep blue of Watts’ ‘Hope’ and Turner’s simple yet ‘sublime’ ‘Evening Star’. He also visited the Royal Academy of Arts to see the Exhibition of Spanish Paintings, which included many works by Goya.14 On New Year’s Day 1921 he heard Handel’s Messiah at the Albert Hall featuring the famous tenor Ben Davies, the ‘beautiful’ contralto Phyllis Lett and the soprano Ruth Vincent: ‘Great music, great sermon, great worship’ he commented. He also attended a concert in Queen’s Hall featuring Beethoven’s ‘Mount of Olives’ and ‘Mass in D’ performed by the London Choral Society. He was clearly impressed not only by the music of the Messiah, but also by the English choral tradition in Church of England worship.15 One of his first purchases in London was a gramophone player and gramophone recording of the Messiah to take back to Japan.16 He was an avid theatre-goer often accompanied by Mrs Cook and her family and friends. He saw Alice in Wonderland at the Victoria Palace Theatre, Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Court Theatre, Sloane Square, calling it a ‘truly delightful comedy’, The Tempest at the Aldwych Theatre and Olivia a stage adaptation of Oliver Goldsmith’s The Vicar of Wakefield. He was thus very interested in the question of the Sunday opening of theatres when a discussion appeared in The Times with Canon Hon. James Adderley seeing no reason why going to theatre on Sundays should necessarily clash with Church services. On the other hand George Bernard Shaw vehemently opposed the idea. Yanaihara was surprised that a senior cleric would suggest that church services be moved so that people could both go to church and enjoy a play and suggested that it was a lazy compromise. ‘In the days before the coming of the steam train and in the age of the steam train’, wrote Yanaihara, ‘for a gentleman, Christianity is the backbone of English civilization. It is as true as ever. Ah! the Lord and the Lord’s name be praised, for his Kingdom cometh.’17 348

YANAIHARA TADAO (1893–1961) AND HIS TOUR OF BRITAIN, 1920–1921

THE LEAGUE OF NATIONS CELEBRATIONS

Yanaihara’s former tutor Nitobe Inazo¯ was appointed under-secretary general to the League of Nations from 1920 to 1926, thereafter to serve in the Institute of Pacific Relations. Yanaihara attended several meetings of the League of Nations Union while in London. On 10 January 1921 the League celebrated its first anniversary and on 12 January Yanaihara attended a mass meeting at the Albert Hall presided over by the Minister of Education H.A.L. Fisher with Lord Robert Cecil, Viscount Grey and George Barnes as the main speakers. Messages from the King and Prime Minister Lloyd George were read out to the audience to great applause. Yanaihara noted Cecil’s endorsement of the Prime Minister’s proclamation that the League proceedings should be public and transparent, and that its watchwords were ‘organize’ and ‘educate’; its task was to influence public opinion in the cause of peace. It was appropriate, therefore, that the meeting ended with a film of the Geneva Assembly showing the delegates and secretaries at work.18 However, The New York Times reported that objections to the filming on the grounds that it would be undignified had been overturned after publicity managers had pointed out that the League needed public support. While the newspaper considered the movie with its scenes of war-devastated France and armaments statistics ‘impressive enough’, the senior statesmen who were so obviously posing for the camera, clasping hands and waving hats, suffered at the hands of the cameraman.19 British newspapers such as The Times were less critical. Indeed, on the following day it reported that: ‘The film shows the outstanding delegates as they appeared while addressing the Assembly and while enjoying social intercourse in the gardens of the League’s headquarters.’20 The New York Times appears to reflect the relative distancing of the United States from the League. Yanaihara’s response was characteristically thoughtful and demonstrates his remarkable propensity for seeing beyond propaganda and questioning its meaning. He placed the League of Nations celebration within the context of events earlier in the day. In the morning he had been window-shopping in Oxford Street when an unemployed labourer approached him and asked for ‘some copper’. Having no small change apart from a shilling, he made the labourer wait in the street while he went into the Times Book Club to buy something to read so that he could give the man some change. He bitterly regretted the apparent meanness of his action: ‘What a miser I was! Loathsome! Shame!’ Afterwards he attended a lecture tour at the British Museum on Greek architecture and sculpture and then went to a performance of ‘The Beggars Opera’ at the Lyric Theatre, Hammersmith, before arriving at the Albert Hall. He wrote: ‘Unemployed – Greek architecture – “Beggars” – League of Nations 349

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– which of these is the more real in human life? Perhaps they are real or perhaps they are all vanity; castles in the air.’21 MARIE STOPES AND THE POPULATION PROBLEM

However, it was not only the cultural and spiritual dimensions of life that he was interested in. While admitting that he was an idealist, he also intensely practical and did not shrink from considering what he termed very ‘human’ questions. In 1921 Marie Stopes22 and Humphrey Verdon Roe established the first birth control clinic in the world. Shortly after arriving in London Yanaihara read three of Stopes’ books beginning with Married Love which was first published in March 1918. He was clearly fascinated by her endeavours to discuss publically what had previously been hidden. He went on to read Radiant Motherhood published in 1920 and had apparently spent New Year’s Day in the Reading Room of the British Museum reading Stopes’ manual on birth control Wise Parenthood: A Book for Married People (1918). He may have been aware that Stopes had studied at Tokyo Imperial University between August 1907 and January 1909 partly in pursuit of the first great love in her life, Fujii Kenjiro, a married botanist whom she had met while studying in Munich. Unfortunately for Stopes her love, recounted in the form of an epistolary novel Love-Letters of a Japanese (1911), was both unrequited and unconsummated.23 While Married Love provided advice on the most complete aspects of the pleasures of sexual union, Yanaihara suggested, it also emphasized that the enjoyment of pleasure came with responsibilities. In particular, he believed that we should approve of Stopes’ work because of its emphasis on the unity of the bodily and spiritual aspects of married life.24 Both before and after the war, Yanaihara was interested in women’s education and joined the Board of the New Life Movement, which was initiated in 1952 shortly after he became president of Tokyo University. The movement involved government and large economic corporations which aimed to improve the lives of ordinary people in a time of austerity and government demands for selfsacrifice as the country got back on its feet. Housewives were at the forefront of this movement and, in 1958, a special committee placed family planning at the top of a list of priority areas including ‘popularization of the ideology of family planning’ and ‘popularization of birth control and prevention of abortion’.25 For Yanaihara, while birth control was part of the solution to the jinko¯ mondai or population problem, even more important was the free movement of population which was central to his ideas about colonization.26 Although a vociferous critic of the exploitative nature of imperialism he also viewed empires more positively as a means of 350

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allowing the free movement of population, innovation and access to resources necessary for human survival.27 RACISM AND EMPIRE

Yanaihara was outraged, therefore, when on 26 January 1921 Australian journalist Keith Murdoch’s article ‘Australia Day’ appeared in The Times extolling the wide spaces and ‘national spirit’ of a land containing five million people of the ‘purest stock in the world’. According to Murdoch the notion of ‘White Australia’ and racial purity was more sacred even than its ties with Britain and the ‘White Australian Faith’ was now being threatened by Asia’s ‘teeming millions’ and Japan’s ‘constantly filling and refilling’ cradles. Murdoch asked whether Great Britain was ‘ready to stake all on the preservation of white civilization unmixed in Australia’.28 The following day The Times leader ‘Dominion Faiths’ answered: ‘If there is any doubt that Great Britain would be ready, in case of need to support Australia on this issue with all her strength, then we may say farewell, not only to Australia but also to the other Dominions; for New Zealand, South Africa, Canada, all hold the same belief with almost equal determination.’ The article chided the British people for not taking ‘the race question’ seriously since ‘we have no knowledge of the influence upon white civilization of a non-European population and no experience of the evils of mixed blood’.29 Yanaihara was naturally outraged by this last sentence. He hoped that the British Empire would not prevent the free movement of peoples from heavily populated regions into the Dominions on the grounds of colour. The notion of the ‘Australian Faith’, he remarked, turned ‘Christian Faith’ into ‘White civilization Faith’, corrupting the most basic principles of Christianity. Ideas of racial purity and talk of the evils of mixing whites and non-whites went against the Christian spirit which was based on the unity of all peoples. Talk of ‘white civilization’ was nothing more than ‘national egoism’.30 Yanaihara’s insistence on the free movement of people globally was one of the foundation stones of his theory of colonial settlement as seen in his major work Shokumin oyobi Shokumin Seisaku [Colonial People and Colonial Policy] which represented the fruits of his research in the British Museum’s Reading Room. It was largely based on the nineteenth-century classic works on colonization such as Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s View of the Art of Colonisation (1849), J.R. Seeley’s The Expansion of England (1883), George Cornewall Lewis’ Government of Dependencies (1841) and Albert Keller’s Colonization: A Study of the Founding of New Societies (1908), as well as Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations and On Colonies (1776). It is clear that Yanaihara did not see colonisation per se as a great or even necessary 351

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evil but as a valuable means of coping with the needs of an expanding world population. He argued that: Colonization not only increases the power to support the world’s population but also makes the economic life of humanity richer. That is to say that it extends the areas of natural resources which can benefit mankind, it increases the productive power of labour and capital and causes the development of international division of labour thus encouraging diversification both quantitatively and qualitatively in the human economy and its production and consumption.31

Yanaihara’s sensitivity to white racism echoed Uchimura’s own experience of anger and disillusionment with so-called ‘White Civilization’ during a visit to the United States in 1894. Before his departure, Uchimura stated, ‘my idea of the Christian America was lofty, religious, Puritanic. I dreamed of its temples, hills, and rocks that rang with hymns and praises.’ He dismissed tales of white racism as ‘utterly impossible’.32 He was truly appalled, therefore, when he saw at first-hand the racism of white Americans towards those he called the descendants of the ‘Hamites’ – African-Americans, and towards the Chinese who were busy building the continent’s railroads. He deplored the ‘cruel and inhuman means’ by which the land was wrested from the indigenous American population whom he called ‘the copper-colored children’.33 He found little evidence of the supposed superiority of Christianity over other religions or of American society over Japanese society. VISIT TO THE CELTIC FRINGE

On 12 July 1921 Yanaihara was clearly excited (exclaiming in English: ‘Merrily, merrily, shall I go now!’34) to leave London for a tour of Wales, Ireland and Scotland. He toured North Wales mostly by ‘motor charabanc’, which took him through the beautiful Welsh passes of Aberglaslyn and Llanberis. At the time he was reading From Workhouse to Westminster: The Life Story of Will Crooks MP (1907) an inspiring story of the Christian obligation to change the lives of others, which had been recommended to him by a Mr Goodwin of the London Missionary Society.35 Despite its legends and castles, Yanaihara was not sorry to board the ferry from Holyhead. He felt relief and freedom in leaving behind the Welsh hills, which had (unusually) been scorched red by a period of drought. ‘From the hordes of Lloyd George’s worshippers,’ he wrote, ‘I have come among Sinn Feiners and the difference is huge.’36 He arrived in Dublin on 19 July 1921 at a critical historical juncture just ten days after a truce between the IRA and the British Army temporarily ended the conflict known as the Anglo-Irish War, which had begun two years previously. The poverty he witnessed in the 352

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south prompted him to research British colonial policy in Ireland and, later, to compare British policies to Japanese colonial policy in Korea.37 After just two days he travelled from Dublin to Belfast and found the contrast between these two cities remarkable. At the docks he made a note of the memorial to the sinking of the Belfast-made Titanic, but he was struck by the contrast between the prosperouslooking shops and ‘splendid thoroughfares’ of Belfast and the impoverished streets of Dublin. The divide between the two halves of the country signified by the flying of Sinn Fein and Ulster Union flags was palpable. Despite the evident riches of its shops, Yanaihara found Belfast ‘commonplace’ and had to kill time by going to see a movie while he waited to board his return ship. He disliked the people of Ulster, surmising that, ‘they are the sort of people who become rich and though they own two jackets yet they would not give one to their neighbours in the south who have none’. 38 From Belfast he arrived in Glasgow on 22 July where he visited the Cathedral and the Necropolis to see the statue of John Knox. He then walked to George Square to see its rich heritage of statues, noting in particular, Sir Walter Scott, Robert Burns, James Watt, Gladstone, Thomas Campbell, Robert Peel and David Livingstone. He spent the next month savouring the glories of the Highlands staying for a while near the ‘romantic’ Loch Katrine and Stronlacher. There he was reminded of Psalm 23, ‘The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want/ He maketh me to lie down in green pastures.’ HOMAGE TO ENGLISH PURITANISM

He completed his tour of Britain by travelling south via the Lake District and then on to Oxford, visiting Rugby School to see the grave of Thomas Arnold and, as might be expected, also visiting Shakespeare’s Stratford-upon-Avon nearby. From Cambridge he went on what might be described as a ‘pilgrimage’ to Oliver Cromwell’s grammar school in Huntingdon, now a museum, and John Bunyan’s church in Bedford. As a young man Yanaihara had read John Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress. Perhaps he identified with Bunyan’s protagonist Christian who flees the city leaving his wife and children behind after reading that it will be burned to the ground. In embracing a new and uncompromising faith, the young Yanaihara had consigned his ancestors to the flames. Calvinism dominated mukyo¯kai thinking. According to Uchimura, ‘Calvinist’ personalities such as Cromwell, Milton, Rembrandt and the Pilgrim fathers represented ‘England at its best, and America at its purest.’39 Unlike Uchimura, Yanaihara was not from samurai stock and was proud of his commoner roots. In an essay entitled ‘Persons whom I Respect’ he drew attention to the ‘common people type’, which for him was charac353

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terized by the historical figure of Oliver Cromwell. A central feature of mukyo¯kai belief is the concept of mukyo¯kai-shugisha, which can be translated as ‘mukyo¯kai believers’, but in this context is more accurately rendered as ‘mukyo¯kai personalities’. Such charismatic personalities are provided by God at certain points in history because they are able to free His spirit and restore His eminence. While today Cromwell is associated with appalling cruelty during his campaigns in Ireland, even Nitobe, a Quaker rather than a mukyo¯kai Christian, appealed for a Cromwell personality to save Japan. In 1930 he wrote: A Cromwell is badly wanted here just now. We don’t want an armed Oliver with his Ironsides to come among us. We have no use for arms. But we do need a strong and seeing man of his calibre to scatter to the winds a body of chattering old men who like to sit in a long parliament, babbling forever and settling nothing.40

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) was another mukyo¯kai personality and, indeed, Uchimura Kanzo¯ was flattered to be called the ‘Carlyle of Japan’.41 Yanaihara read Carlyle’s biography of Cromwell, and Cromwell was later included in a series of essays published in 1949 entitled Zoku Yo no Sonkeisuru Jinbutsu [More Personalities Whom I Respect] which also included Isaiah, Paul, Luther, and Uchimura. Yanaihara returned to London on 27 August ‘having seen many people and visited many places associated with famous historical figures’.42 On 12 September he left Britain to begin his tour of Europe. His diaries demonstrate the vigour and flexibility with which he was able to absorb new experiences, philosophies and cultures at a critical juncture in Japanese history when intellectuals were challenged by new ideas and technologies. His faith was also a peculiar blend of Western individualism and traditional Japanese ethics mediated by Uchimura’s Calvinistic Christianity and Nitobe’s idealism and humanism. These influences allowed him to mount a critique of Japanese colonial policy, which transcended Japan’s narrow national interests and ultimately to resist the thought control of the 1930s in a way which very few Japanese intellectuals felt able to do. Ref. http://historyofchristianityinjapan.wordpress.com/tag/tadaoyanaihara/ ENDNOTES 1

2

‘Dedication’ in Ramon H. Myers and Mark R. Peattie (ed.) The Japanese Colonial Empire, 1895–1945, Princeton, N. J.: Princeton University Press, 1984 On 1 October 1937 in a lecture entitled ‘Kami no Kuni’ [The Kingdom of God] he took a pacifist stand against the undeclared war in China, 354

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3 4

5

6 7

8

9 10

11

12

13 14 15 16 17

18 19

20

21 22

entreating his listeners to ‘bury our country for a while so that her ideals may live’. The president of the university and colleagues in the Law and Economics Department put pressure on him to resign. For further details of the incident and Yanaihara’s colonial writings see Susan C. Townsend, Yanaihara Tadao and Japanese Colonial Policy: Redeeming Empire, Richmond: Curzon Press, 2000 Townsend, p. 40 ¯ yama Tsunao and Ray A. Moore, ‘Uchimura Kanzo¯ at Cited in O Amherst’, in Ray A Moore (ed.) Culture and Religion in Japanese-American Relations: Essays on Uchimura Kanzo¯, 1861–1930, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan, Center for Japanese Studies, 1981, 21–33, p. 21 John F. Howes, Japan’s Modern Prophet: Uchimura Kanzo¯ 1861–1930 Vancouver: University of British Columbia, 2005, pp. 76 and 272 Letter from Yanaihara Katsu dated 13 October 1996 Yanaihara Tadao ‘Diaries’, Yanaihara Tadao Zenshu [The Complete Works of Yanaihara Tadao] ed. by Nanbara Shigeru et. al., 29 vols., Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1963–5, xxviii, p. 521 I am grateful to Dr Clyde Binfield for sending me a photocopy of a letter sent to him by Mrs Jean Gill (née Cook) dated 4 April 1997. ‘Diaries,’ p. 522 Yanaihara received authorization from the university to extend his study tour until 3 March 1923 so that he could visit the United States. However, just after he arrived in New York his tour was cut short when he heard that Aiko was seriously ill in hospital. He arrived back in Tokyo on 9 February and Aiko died on 26 February 1923. ‘Nempu’ [Chronological Record], YTZ, xxix, p. 832 St. Jude’s Church has since been demolished and the Carter memorial can now be found in St. Mary the Virgin, Longcot, Oxfordshire and the mosaic in now in St. Giles-in-the-Fields church in London’s West End. See‘Shion Undo¯ nitsuite’ [On the Zionist movement], YTZ, i, pp. 541– 94. For further research on Yanaihara’s vision of global society see Nakano Ryoko, ‘Uncovering Shokumin: Yanaihara Tadao’s concept of global civil society’, Social Science Japan Journal, 9, no. 2 (October 2006), pp. 187–202. ‘Diaries,’ pp. 528–9 ‘Diaries,’ p. 523 ‘Diaries,’ pp. 583–4 Interview with Yanaihara Katsu 22 June 1995. ‘Diaries,’ pp. 553–4. ‘Sunday Opening Of Theatres’ Times [London, England] 25 January 1921: 8. The Times Digital Archive accessed 27 February 2014. ‘Diaries,’ pp. 545–6 ‘British Celebrate League’s First Year’ New York Times 13 January 1921. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html accessed 28 January 2014 ‘The League’s First Year,’ Times [London, England] 13 January 1921: 12. The Times Digital Archive accessed 28 February 2014 ‘Diaries,’ p. 545 For an account of Marie Stopes and Japan see chapter by Carmen Blacker in Britain and Japan, 1859–1991, Themes and Personalities, ed. Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, Routledge, 1991. 355

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23

24 25

26 27

28

29

30 31 32

33 34 35 36 37

38 39

40 41

42

‘Introduction’ Marie Stopes Married Love, ed. with an introduction and notes by Ross McKibbin Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, p. xi. ‘Diaries,’ p. 520 Takeda Hiroko, The Political Economy of Reproduction in Japan: Between Nation-State and Everyday Life London and New York: Routledge Curzon, 2005, pp. 130–2 See, for example,‘Jinko¯ Kajo¯ron’ [Overpopulation] YTZ, i, pp. 610–58 See, for example, ‘Sekai Keizai Hattenkatei toshite no Shokuminshi’ [The history of colonies as the development of world economies] in YTZ, iv, pp. 141–69. ‘Australia Day’ Times [London, England] 26 January 1921: 11. The Times Digital Archive, accessed 26 February 2014. ‘Dominion Faiths’ Times [London, England] 27 January 1921: 11. The Times Digital Archive, accessed 26 February 2014. ‘Diaries,’ p. 553 YTZ, i, p. 197 Uchimura Kanzo¯, ‘How I Became a Christian, out of my Diary’ in The Complete Works of Kanzo¯ Uchimura with notes and comments by Yamamoto Taijiro and Muto Yoichi, 7 vols. Tokyo: Kyobunkwan, 1971, vol. i, pp. 105–6 Uchimura, How I became a Christian,’ pp. 111–12 ‘Diaries,’ p. 629 ‘Diaries,’ p. 630. ‘Diaries,’ p. 633 For details of this comparison see Susan C. Townsend, Yanaihara Tadao and the Irish Question: a comparative analysis of the Irish and Korean questions, 1919–36,’ Irish Historical Studies, xxx:118, November 1996, 195–205 ‘Diaries,’ p. 634 Uchimura, ‘Alone with God and Me’, Complete Works of Kanzo¯ Uchimura vol. iii, p. 136 Nitobe Inazô, Editorial Jottings, vol. I, p. 98 ¯ ta Yu¯zo¯, ‘Uchimura Kanzo¯: The Carlyle of Japan’ in Ray A Moore O (ed.) Culture and Religion in Japanese-American Relations 55–69, p. 57 ‘Diaries,’ pp 649–55

356

31

Ichikawa Sanki (1886–1970): Expert in English Philology and Literature YOSHIFUMI SAITO

INTRODUCTION

Ichikawa Sanki is best known for his contribution to the development of English philology in Japan. Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯ [Studies in English Grammar], his most influential work published in 1912, is often eulogized as the first memorable landmark in its history. ‘Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯ marks the starting point of genuinely academic English philology in Japan. The latter half of the Meiji Era, in which the reputation of Saito¯ Hidesaburo¯ (1866–1929) as an English grammarian reached its peak, can be called the Saito¯ Era,’ Takanashi Kenkichi, historian of English studies in Japan, writes in his introductory review of English studies in the Taisho¯ Era, ‘so the Taisho¯ Era can be most aptly named the Ichikawa Era.’1 Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯ is Ichikawa’s first substantial work in the field of English philology, but the fact that it was published in the very first year of the Taisho¯ Era has tended to 357

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tempt many of his biographers to describe this small book as more significantly epoch-making than it really was, just as the symbolism of the figure 3 (san in Japanese), which recurs like a musical motif in the record of his family, has tempted some others to adopt a clear-cut tripartite structure in their accounts of his life.2 Ichikawa should be portrayed through a fuller account of the multifarious achievements he made in the fields of philology, linguistics, literary explication, specialist education, English language teaching (ELT) and translation. EARLY YEARS

Ichikawa Sanki was born in Tokyo in 1886, the second son of Ichikawa Sanken who had followed the family tradition of classical Chinese studies and calligraphy and established himself as a professional calligrapher. Sanki himself studied calligraphy and Chinese classics from early childhood under his father’s instructions and those of Sanyo¯, the eldest of the three Ichikawa brothers. He spent most of his time in this culturally refined ambience. During his elementaryschool days he gradually diverged from this family tradition to pursue his self-acquired interest in natural history by collecting plants and insects as well as in visiting museums. At the age of ten he started keeping a diary – a habit which, together with its purely descriptive style and positivist approach to facts, stayed with him for the rest of his life3 – and, at the age of eleven, he started learning English from the same elder brother. All these childhood interests, habits and pursuits by degrees moulded his scholarly character and brought him to set out on the quest for knowledge. Ichikawa’s substantial struggle with English started when he was a third-year student at the First Prefectural Junior High School, when he took to reading English books on natural history. Every Sunday he went to the Imperial Library in Ueno and borrowed such books as Insects at Home, Insects Abroad and Butterflies of North America, which he read closely, consulting a dictionary of poor quality every time he came across an unknown word. In the same year he also read Hooker’s Botany, which he bought at a secondhand bookstore in Kanda, and in his fifth year of junior high school Goodrich’s Pictorial Natural History. Thus, he was initiated into English studies through the study of natural history. This is also attested by his memory of the words he learned in those days, which include ‘petal’, ‘pollen’, ‘anther’, ‘stamen’, ‘pistil’, ‘calyx’, ‘style (in the sense of ‘a thin extension of a flower that bears the stigma’), ‘monocotyledonous’, ‘phanerogamous’ and ‘cryptogamous’.4 In March 1903, he graduated from junior high school and, in July, took the examination for entrance to the First High School, predecessor of the present College of Arts and Sciences, the University of Tokyo. Scoring rather poorly in mathematics, physics and science, 358

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but almost perfectly in English, he passed the examination. During the two-month summer vacation before entering high school, Ichikawa diligently attended Saito¯ Hidesaburo¯’s classes at his Seisoku Eigo Gakko¯ [Regular English School]. Such was his admiration for Saito¯’s elaborate system of grammatical analysis that he went so far as to copy by hand magazine articles by Saito¯ on English grammar. He continued to practise the same system, after entering high school, in analysing authentic texts in preparation for his reading classes, thereby always staying at the top of his class in English. The English books he read in class or self-study in these high-school days included J.K. Jerome’s Three Men in a Boat, Hamlet, Merchant of Venice, Yone Noguchi’s From the Eastern Sea, Blackie’s Self-Culture, Uchimura Kanzo¯’s How I Became a Christian and Japan and the Japanese, The Pilgrim’s Progress, The Bible, Max O’Rell’s John Bull and His Island, Historical Sketches, In Memoriam, David Copperfield, Richard III, and Gulliver’s Travels. He also took a foresighted interest in oral communication in English, which could be the germ of his later concern for the betterment of ELT in Japan, and tried to improve his spoken English by memorizing and reciting conversational phrases from Frederick W. Eastlake’s Anglo-Japanese Conversation and English magazines. One notable event that took place during his high-school days was his research trip to Cheju-do, an island in Southwest Korea, as interpreter to a young American naturalist named M.P. Anderson who had been involved in ‘the Duke of Bedford’s Zoological Expedition in Eastern Asia’ and commissioned to collect rare zoological specimens, mainly of mammals and birds, for the British Museum. He applied for the job in the hope of collecting insects as well as of practising oral communication in English, neither of which, however, was fully realized; bad weather and other adverse conditions prevented him from collecting as many insects as he had hoped, and the two fellow travellers were both of the same taciturn sort. At one point during the trip, Anderson said to Ichikawa, ‘You are a silent man. Worse than I.’*5 HIGHER EDUCATION AND ENGLAND

In September 1906, Ichikawa entered the College of Arts, the Imperial University of Tokyo. The reason why he chose to enroll in the Department of Linguistics, not in that of English as he had been planning, was that he felt it necessary to learn many languages in order to master the basics of language study before specializing in English. He was lucky to have John Lawrence (1850–1916) as his supervisor. He had been invited earlier the same year from the University of London to the Imperial University of Tokyo to teach English linguistics and literature at the Department of English. While belonging to the Department of Linguistics, Ichikawa was specially admitted to Dr Lawrence’s 359

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‘English Seminar’. Despite his working class background and late entrance upon an academic career, Lawrence was such a conscientious teacher and accomplished scholar, well versed in Anglo-Saxon, Gothic, Icelandic, ancient Greek and Latin, as to make Raphael von Koeber (1848–1923; philosopher), one of his colleagues at that time, say ‘it is a great credit to the College of Arts to have Dr Lawrence as a member of teaching staff’.6 In his brief memoir of Lawrence, Ichikawa asserts: ‘Among the foreigners who have ever come to Japan, no one excels him genuinely as a scholar, and it will be extremely difficult to invite a better foreign teacher to Japan in future’.7 Under Lawrence’s supervision he avowedly ‘outgrew’ Saito¯ Hidesaburo¯’s grammar study to adopt more scientific methodologies of such modern linguists and philologists as Mätzner, Stoffel, Sweet and Jespersen, and completed a graduation thesis entitled ‘A Monograph on the Historical Development of the Functions of “For”’. He was nominated as one of the honour students and awarded a silver watch from the Emperor. In 1909 he went straight on to the Graduate School of the same university, where he made remarkable progress in his language study, benefitting enormously again from Lawrence’s one-to-one tutorials. His greatest academic achievement in his postgraduate period is the publication of nineteen articles in Eigo Seinen [The Rising Generation] – ‘Such an one’, ‘The usage of “none”’, ‘Pluralization of “every”, “each”, etc.’, ‘It’s me’, ‘Split Infinitive’, ‘These kind of things’, ‘Ethical Dative’, ‘For + Accusative with Infinitive’, ‘Group Genitive’, ‘For = for want of’, ‘“whether or not” and “whether or no”’, ‘“not so … as” and “not as … as”’, ‘Intensives’, ‘Accusative of Quality’, ‘Notable usages of “and”’, ‘as still as still’, ‘In order to + substantive’, ‘The significance of “so much for”’, and ‘Ring again, etc.’ – which were later collected, with due additions and revisions, into Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯ (first published in 1912 by Eigo-kenkyu¯-sha and later revised by the same publisher renamed Kenkyu¯-sha). In this small book he refrained from applying the standard of prescriptive grammar to those phrases and expressions indicated by the titles of the above-mentioned articles (later the chapter titles of the book) and tried to accept and observe them purely as linguistic facts as well as to explain how they had come into being ‘with reference to the history of Old English, the comparative studies of English and other languages, or the psychology of language use’.8 To put it concisely, this book marks the shift from prescriptivism to descriptivism in the philological study of English grammar in Japan. Ten days after the publication of Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯, he left Japan in order to study in Britain and Germany. With the help of Dr Lawrence’s old friend W.P. Ker, an Oxford graduate and professor at University College, London, Ichikawa went to Oxford to pursue his language study. However, he was rather disappointed by the lectures he attended, as one of the letters he sent to Lawrence suggests: 360

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It is a very thankless remark, but I must confess, that Oxford lectures have begun to pall on me, inversely as Oxford is beginning to be brighter. I am fully aware of the special privilege accorded to me of studying in this historic seat of learning and as no words of mine can fitly express the delightful hours spent in the Bodleian library, but as for the lectures I think Prof Ker was after all right when he advised me not to attend lectures but rather spend my time in private study taking advantage of the special facilities elsewhere unobtainable than in England. For one thing there is no scholarly atmosphere among Oxford undergrads as you will well admit, the best part of their time being given to nothing but sports. Thus all lectures are calculated to this end, not to overtax them. As a natural consequence there is little for me to learn in the lectures.*9

While based in Oxford, later in Cambridge and London, he started actively travelling around, visiting places of interest as well as browsing among secondhand bookstores to make a good collection of language- and literature-related books and reading materials to be used in his future seminars. His concern for the prospect of future educational commitments can also be seen in one of his letters to Lawrence, written nearly a year after his arrival in England and sent from Cambridge: After a year’s stay here I can honestly confess that my practical command of the language remains the same as it was when I left Japan. If this is the case with a man who is pretty well grounded in the matter of language and who has tried his best to avoid the society of his compatriots, how much more so it would be with those who came out with but an inadequate knowledge of the language and who take their sole delight in one another’s company? Indeed the linguistic possibilities of the Japanese are very pitiable, if not entirely hopeless. The future of language teaching in Japan has many problems to solve, and I am afraid I shall have to devote much of my time and energy to making the way of English students plainer and smoother.*10

The outbreak of the First World War in 1914 prevented him from visiting Germany and forced him to rearrange his study plan. He prolonged his stay in England and, after travelling in the South of France, Italy, Greece and the United States, he returned to Japan on 25 January 1916. PROFESSORSHIP

On his return to Japan, Ichikawa was appointed to an assistant professorship in Course 2 (English literature) at the Department of English of the Imperial University of Tokyo. No sooner had he started working with John Lawrence now as his senior colleague, than the 361

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latter met with an untimely death in March that year. Ichikawa, suffering deep grief at the loss of this great mentor-colleague, had to take over all the responsibilities of the head of the department and undertake the first challenging task of examining twenty-four graduate students, among whom were Toyoda Minoru (1885–1972; historian of English studies in Japan), Kume Masao (1891–1952; novelist and dramatist) and Akutagawa Ryu¯nosuke (1892–1927; short-story writer). In the same year he married Hozumi Haruko,11 the third daughter of Hozumi Nobushige (1856–1926; jurist). He was promoted to professor in 1920. In 1923 he completed his thesis ‘On the Language of Robert Browning’s Poetry’ for which he was awarded a doctorate in literature. In the same year Saito¯ Takeshi12 joined the department as a member of the teaching staff in charge of Course 2, and Ichikawa moved to Course 1 (English philology and linguistics), in which the major subjects he taught were ‘An Introduction to English Philology and Linguistics’, ‘An Introduction to the History of English’, ‘An Introduction to English Grammar’, ‘A Seminar in English Philology and Grammar’ and ‘Reading Original Texts’. For another twentyodd years he was primarily committed to specialist education at the undergraduate as well as postgraduate levels as head of the department, while taking such important intramural posts, especially after 1935, as university senator, director of the university library, and deputy dean of the Faculty of Letters. In the classroom he was a stern teacher, quite often sharp-tongued, as is attested by some of the essays written in his memory, which tend to describe in some parts how frightening he was or how he became less so later in life. For example, Shumuta Natsuo (1906–1987; scholar of English literature), who once was his student, wrote: When I was a student, Professor Ichikawa was, above all, an extremely inapproachable, frightening teacher. Strictly speaking, the reputation of his being so had been so firmly established that I never brought myself to approach him from the beginning. When a student mispronounced a word, he had to confront the question which sprang to our professor’s lips, ‘Which high school are you from? Yamagata? Professor Katsuta [who was teaching English at Yamagata High School at that time] can’t have taught you such strange English, can he?’ After the interruption with such pungent remarks, what innocent students from local high schools could utter was just a weak quaver.13

On the other hand, some of the other memorial essays mention his quiet humour, fair treatment of students in helping them with job applications, and generosity in lending valuable books to students and donating a huge collection of books to the department, which 362

ICHIKAWA SANKI (1886-1970)

was later to be called the ‘Ichikawa Library’. Ichikawa also played a central role in establishing the English Literary Society of the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1917, which developed, as the members of its core group got their respective jobs as university teachers in many parts of Japan, into the English Literary Society of the Imperial Universities in 1926, and further into the English Literary Society of Japan in 1929 with Ichikawa as its first president. After working for the Department of English for thirty years, he retired as professor emeritus in 1946. Surprisingly little has been recorded about how his career was affected by the Pacific War (1941–1945). One of the rare pieces of evidence to suggest how he survived this national crisis was the magazine-based battle of words, which occurred two years after his retirement, between him and Nakano Yoshio (1903–1985; scholar of English and literary critic), one of his former junior colleagues, concerning the extent to which the profession of English was guilty in staying inert before and during the war. The trigger for the battle was Nakano’s essay ‘Eigo wo Manabu Hitobito no Tameni’ [For English Learners] in The Youth’s Companion published in February 1948, where he discussed the vital role English studies should play in opening Japanese peoples’ eyes to the world and at the same time denounced all the contemporary Japanese scholars of English literature and teachers of English including himself as ‘paltry, grovelling cowards’ who kept silent when they were expected to help the nation with their expertise to understand clearly what was happening. Two months later, Ichikawa published a brief essay entitled ‘Eigo-kenkyu¯sha ni Nozomu’ [Expectations for the Students of English] in Eigo Seinen with the primary intention of providing general advice about studying English. In one part of the essay, however, he criticized Nakano’s second point by writing ‘I would leave wise readers to decide whether those who did not resist an armed robbery should unexceptionally be called “paltry, grovelling cowards”.’ Nakano, ‘taking up the gauntlet’, launched a full ad hominem attack on Ichikawa with special emphasis on the latter’s professorial aloofness from the war: My request to Mr Ichikawa is (…) that he should subject to selfreflection and public inspection what he thought and how he behaved before and during the war. Every day we see no end of children and women suffering as war victims. Just a glance at any one of them will bring home to us how impudent it is to preach such an old sermon as our ‘expectations for the students of English’.14

Ichikawa did not respond, much less accede to this request. Five years later, Nakano, greatly disappointed by the authoritarian power 363

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structure and poor working conditions at the university, took early retirement at the age of forty-nine.15 EXTRAMURAL ACTIVITIES

One of Ichikawa’s three major extramural activities which his biographers never fail to mention is the huge project for publishing the annotated editions of English classics, which finally bore fruit as Kenkyu¯-sha Eibungaku So¯sho [Kenkyu¯-sha English Classics]. Its first series (sixty volumes, 1921–1926) ‘was brought out under the joint editorship of Okakura Yoshisaburo¯ (1868–1936; scholar of English; younger brother to Okakura Tenshin Kakuzo¯) and Ichikawa Sanki, both of whom not only supervised the whole series but themselves took their share of compiling books with masterly introductions and notes’.*16 Ichikawa took charge of the annotations of King Lear, Hamlet, Julius Caesar & The Tempest (annotated and published in one volume), Antony and Cleopatra, Macbeth, Othello, The Merchant of Venice, As You Like It, Henry IV, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Canterbury Tales, The Rivals & The School for Scandal (annotated and published in one volume), The Private Papers of Henry Ryecroft, and Plays by M. Synge. Another of his major concerns was the improvement of ELT in Japan. Since he was a young student of English, he was very much interested in the oral and practical aspects of English and eager, as his letter of 28 November 1913 to Lawrence suggests, to help Japanese students to develop their English proficiency in those aspects. Therefore, when the Ministry of Education invited Harold E. Palmer (1877–1949; phonetician) in 1922 as linguistic advisor and appointed Ichikawa as one of the committee members to work with him, he was enthusiastic about helping him to implement his ‘Oral Method’17 in Japanese classrooms. Four years later, however, after witnessing classroom realities of this pedagogical innovation, he was already sceptical about its effect. In his ELT-related talk at the Conference of the Teachers of English in Tokyo in 1926, he warned the conferees of the risk of putting ‘scientific teaching methodologies’ too rigorously into classroom practice, as seen in the disproportionate emphasis on oral-method training at the sacrifice of the development of reading skills, and on the other hand pointed out the importance of their improving their own teaching skills as well as English proficiency. In 1939 he became Director of the Institute for Research in English Teaching (IRET), which had been established in 1923 with Palmer as its first Director, entrusted the post to Ishibashi Ko¯ taro¯ in 1956 and stayed with the Institute as Chair of the Executive Board. It is open to doubt whether or not he retained his initial enthusiasm about the development of ELT in Japan all 364

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this time. In his essay in the Ichikawa Sanki Memorial Issue of Eigo Seinen, Ishibashi reminisced of the time when Ichikawa, called upon to help IRET later in his life, sighed to himself, ‘Well, English language teaching again …’. 18 He was also deeply committed to the promotion of a wider international readership of Japanese classics through translation. One of his professional ambitions was to motivate Japanese scholars of English to study Japanese literature in order that many of them should be able to ‘introduce Japanese culture in its true value to the world’.19 He practised what he preached by playing a central role, for seven years before his retirement and thirteen years after that, as head of the Japanese Classics Translation Committee of the Japan Society for the Advancement of Arts and Sciences in publishing many excellent translations of Japanese classics including The Manyo¯shu¯ (1940), Japanese Noh Plays (1955) and Haikai and Haiku (1958).20 CONCLUSION

Ichikawa became the youngest member of the Japan Academy in 1939. He was awarded the National Prize for Cultural Merit in 1959 and decorated with the Second Order of the Rising Sun in 1964.21 Just a fragmentary account of his glorious career and achievements would suffice to project the picture of a hugely successful scholar, ¯ mura Kiyoshi’s eulogistic remark that which perfectly agrees with O ‘he literally dominated the field of English studies in Japan’.22 It is also true, on the other hand, that his overwhelming success in the field seemed to verge on overbearing despotism, as Nakano’s polemic essay suggests. On retiring from the Imperial University of Tokyo in 1946, Ichikawa published a brief recollection of his thirty years of service as professor, in which he expressed a hope concerning how they should be evaluated: ‘If asked “What have you done [during your service]?”, I would point to my former students, instead of my humble academic achievements, proudly saying “Look at them!”.’23 There surely are an innumerable number of people to look at, dead or alive, who proved and will prove the great value of Ichikawa’s legacy. The English Literary Society of Japan still is thriving as the largest academic group in the English-related fields, and the other institutes and organizations he established or helped establish are also playing significant roles in their respective fields. ENDNOTES 1

Nihon no Eigaku 100-nen Henshu¯bu (ed.), Nihon no Eigaku 100-nen [Hundred Years of English Studies in Japan], Tokyo: Kenkyu¯-sha, 1968, p. 9. Since most Ichikawa-related books and documents are published in 365

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2

3 4 5

6 7 8 9 10 11 12

13 14 15

16

17

18

19 20

Japan and written mostly in Japanese, this chapter takes a citation policy of translating all the Japanese passages from them without any particular notes and, on the other hand, marking those passages originally written or quoted in English with an asterisk. See, for example, Shimmura Izuru, ‘Sanki ko¯’ [a title designed to be a double-entendre pun meaning both ‘on Sanki’ and ‘on three joys’] and Inui Ryo¯ich, ‘Ichikawa Sanki Hakase Ryakuden’ [A Short Biography of Dr. Ichikawa Sanki] in Saito¯ Takeshi (ed.) Essays & Studies Presented to Dr. Sanki Ichikawa in Honour of His Sixtieth Birthday, Tokyo: Kenkyu¯-sha, respectively in Vol. I, 1946, pp. 1–5 and Vol. VI, 1954, pp. 113–35. Ichikawa Sanki, Sho¯sanrindo¯ Zuihitsu [Sho¯sanrindo¯ Essays], Tokyo: Kenkyu¯-sha, 1949, pp. 270–71. Ichikawa, ibid., pp. 175–76. For the details of his trip to Cheju-do, see Ichikawa Sanki, Konchu¯, Kotoba, Kokuminsei [Insects, Languages, and Nationalities], Tokyo: Kenkyu¯-sha, 1939, pp. 336–78. Ichikawa, ibid., p. 100. Ichikawa, ibid., p. 101. Ichikawa Sanki, ‘Inroduction’ to Eibunpo¯ Kenkyu¯ [Studies in English Grammar], Eigo-kenkyu¯-sha, 1912. Ichikawa’s letter to Lawrence (1 May 1913). See Ichikawa, 1949, p. 337. Ichikawa’s letter to Lawrence (28 November 1913). See Ichikawa 1949, p. 344. Haruko died during the Pacific War, and Ichikawa took a new wife named Fujiko. For the biographical details of Saito¯ Takeshi, see the chapter by Professor Yamanouchi Hisaaki (Ch. 47) in Cortazzi, ed., Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, 2013, pp. 596–607. Shumuta Natsuo, ‘Danpen-teki Omoide’ [Fragmentary Memories], Eigo Seinen, July 1970. Nakano Yoshio, ‘Ichikawa Sanki-shi ni Kotaeru’ [In Response to Mr. Ichikawa], Eigo Seinen, June 1948. For further details of the Ichikawa-Nakano dispute, see Kawasumi Tetsuo, ed., Shiryo Nihon Eigaku-shi 2 – Eigo-kyo¯iku Ronso¯-shi [Selected Historical Materials Concerning English Studies in Japan: A History of ELT-Related Disputes] 1978, pp. 783–5; 819–28. Ishibashi Ko¯taro¯, et al., ‘Preface’ in The Institute for Research in Language Teaching (ed.), Collected Writings of Sanki Ichikawa, Tokyo¯: Kaitakusha, 1966. See Harold E. Palmer, The Oral Method of Teaching Languages, Cambridge: Heffer, 1921. A biographical portrait of Harold E, Palmer by Richard C. Smith and Imura Motomichi is contained in volume IV of Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library, 2002. Ishibashi Ko¯taro¯, ‘Ichikawa-sensei to Eigo-kyoiku’ [Professor Ichikawa and English Language Teaching], Eigo Seinen, July, 1970. For the details of Ichikawa’s relation to IRET, see also Ishibashi, et al., op. cit. Ichikawa, 1949, p. 302. See Ishibashi, et al., op. cit. and Mine Takuji, ‘Yo¯kyoku, Haiku no Eiyaku’ [Translating Noh Songs and Haiku Poems into English], Eigo Seinen, July, 1970. 366

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21

22

23

Inui (1954) further mentions the Honorary Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature as one of Ichikawa’s appointments, but neither is the date of appointment specified nor the fact attested by other Ichikawa-related documents published in Japan. ¯ mura Kiyoshi, ‘Eigo-kyo¯iku no Senkaku-sha’ [Predecessors of English O Language Teaching] in Takanashi Kenkichi, et al, Eigo-kyo¯iku Mondai no Hensen [The Transition of ELT Issues], Gendai-no Eigo-kyo¯iku [Contemporary ELT], Vol. 1, 1979, pp. 163–94. Ichikawa, 1949, pp. 259–60.

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32

Michio Morishima (1923–2004): An Economist Made in Japan JANET HUNTER

INTRODUCTION

In 1942 a young first year economics student at Kyoto University, Michio Morishima, was tasked by his teacher with reading and engaging with the substantive work Value and Capital, recently published by the British economist Sir John Hicks. Reading this work, an activity later described by Morishima himself as a form of passive resistance to the wartime regime, helped to fuel a lifelong commitment to economic ideas and theories that subsequently led to Morishima’s achieving celebrity status within Japan itself, becoming one of Japan’s few internationally renowned economists in the second half of the twentieth century, and probably the closest Japan has yet come to having a Nobel prizewinner in economics.1 Yet Morishima as a child wanted to be a novelist, and was never comfortable with any narrowly defined or rigidly applied economics approach.

368

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CAREER

Morishima was born in Osaka in July 1923. Graduating from elementary school in 1936, he progressed to high school, and from there to university, but in December 1943 he was conscripted into the Imperial Japanese Navy. After a year of training he was assigned to the communications section of a combat unit in Kyu¯shu¯, where he remained to the end of the war. Finding his way home amidst the disruption and despair of a defeated Japan, he was able to resume his studies in Kyo¯to, graduating with a Bachelor of Economics degree in 1946.2 It was apparent early on that his talents in the field of mathematics and economics were unusual. Working as research assistant, lecturer and then assistant professor at his alma mater in Kyoto from 1948, at a time when Marxist economics was particularly influential, ¯ saka University as assistant professor, subsehe moved in 1951 to O quently being promoted to full professor in 1963 at the age of forty. Although he had visited China, where his father was working, as a teenager before the outbreak of the Pacific War, chances for foreign travel in early post-war Japan were slim, but Morishima was given the opportunity to study abroad at a relatively early stage, spending the years 1956–1958 as a Rockefeller Foundation Fellow in Britain and the United States. He and his new wife, Yo¯ko (formerly Tsuda Yo¯ko), a mathematics graduate of Tokyo Women’s Christian University, who had been employed by the Economics Department at the University of Osaka, left for Europe by cargo ship, and following an adventurous time passing through Egypt in the wake of the Suez Crisis, took up his fellowship initially in Oxford, where he joined Sir John Hicks’ research circle. He studied for the second year at Yale. Residence in Oxford allowed him in 1957 to attend his first international conference, of the Econometric Society, in Luxembourg.3 He returned to Oxford 1963–1964 as a Senior Visiting Fellow at All Souls College. The years 1968–1970 were spent as Visiting Professor and then Keynes Visiting Professor at the University of Essex, one of the then ‘new’ universities, and a place where Morishima was struck by the uncharacteristic youth of many of the senior managers and professors, in strong contrast to the hierarchy of age that he had experienced in Japan.4 ¯ saka University, leaving He had already in 1969 resigned from O himself temporarily without a job, but subsequently took the seminal decision to pursue his career more permanently outside Japan, accepting the offer of a tenured post in the Economics Department at the London School of Economics, which he took up in the autumn of 1970. He regarded himself as extremely lucky in the appointment, particularly given the concerns expressed over his English.5 He stayed there until his retirement in 1988, and continued to live in his house 369

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in Shenfield (Brentwood) until his death in 2004, never returning to live in Japan. After moving to England Morishima also developed a strong connection with Italy, regularly teaching in Siena during the Easter vacation. His wife Yo¯ko would drive him out to his flat in Castelnuovo using a diversity of routes through France, Switzerland, Germany and Austria. Being the driver was only one of Mrs Morishima’s many skills. She was closely involved in Morishima’s academic work, and administered not only his financial affairs, but, as he later wrote, everything else as well. He was more than ready to acknowledge his lifelong debt to her, comparing his situation to that of Marx, who, while fighting against social exploitation, exploited his own family.6 Morishima’s international reputation rests first and foremost on his contribution to the discipline of economics, as both scholar and committed teacher remembered fondly by generations of students. He was, however, much more than an academic economist. He was also an institution-builder and a public intellectual in his native country. In all these capacities, it may be suggested he made a significant contribution in the context of Britain, Japan and the interaction between the two countries. MORISHIMA AS ECONOMIST7

Michio Morishima began to publish his scholarly work in Japanese in the early 1950s. His first major book, Do¯gakuteki Keizai Riron, published in 1950, and eventually appearing in English in 1996, was evaluated by one of Morishima’s colleagues as a ‘work of breathtaking scope not attempted during this century by many other economists…mathematically advanced and theoretically sophisticated. Had it appeared in English in the early 1950s we could all have saved a lot of time. But it was not to be.’ This publication, however, was the first step in a lifetime project to construct a grand theory of the working of the capitalist economy, a truly ambitious project on a scale matched only by theorists such as Marx, Hicks, Hayek and a handful of others. The publication of Equilbrium, Stability and Growth in 1964, as well as the appearance of articles in English in leading economic journals such as the International Economic Review and Econometrica, helped Morishima rapidly to establish an international reputation as one of the world’s leading economic theorists, and brought him in 1965 the presidency of the Econometric Society. As his early reading of Hicks foreshadowed, general equilibrium theory was at the core of his thinking, and his early books offered an innovative combination of general equilibrium theory, activity analysis and broader economics. His reputation was consolidated after joining LSE through the publication of three volumes on leading nineteenth century economic 370

MICHIO MORISHIMA (1923- 2004)

thinkers – Karl Marx, Léon Walras and David Ricardo – that sought to interpret their ideas in light of modern economic theories, in the process challenging both the standard interpretations of these authors and contemporary general equilibrium theory. 8 His analysis was supported by high level mathematics, and he became renowned as a very strong mathematical economist at a time when the discipline was becoming increasingly quantitative. The scholars whose theories Morishima evaluated were subjected to rigorous scrutiny, and he was reported to have commented when introducing his book on Marx that ‘Marx’s arithmetic may have been faulty, but his sense of algebra was excellent.’ 9 However, as Desai noted, his book on Marx ‘was the first book in English to introduce Marx to a new generation of economists using a language they would understand’. Morishima’s economics output, however, went far beyond reappraising the economic ideas of the nineteenth century. In a succession of highly respected individually or jointly authored works appearing from the 1960s through to the 1990s Morishima analysed a range of issues, including theories of economic growth, the working of econometric models, and ideas of demand, value and credit. Always much more than a narrow theorist, Morishima was, as one of his colleagues observed, a scholar who used economic analysis in a practical way in order to understand how economies and societies function.10 The desire to deliver on this objective, and to tether economics theory to an understanding of the real world in all its complexity, was shown in the appearance of books such as Economic Theory of Modern Society and Economics of Industrial Society.11 During these three decades the rate, breadth and depth of Morishima’s economics output was astonishing. His intellectual trajectory was appropriately marked by his appointment as the Sir John Hicks Professor of Economics in 1982, a post established following Hicks’ donation of his Nobel Prize money to LSE. Morishima’s early publications in English drew strongly on his Japanese academic background, and in the process he brought to the attention of Western economists the scholarly contributions of Japanese economists of the 1940s, contributions that had used the shared language of mathematics but had not hitherto been internationally known. In the 1960s, prior to settling in England, he was also closely involved in bringing Western economic ideas to Japan. The willingness to incorporate perspectives from other disciplines in order to understand how individuals and enterprises interacted with and related to the societies and economies in which they functioned generated a further intercultural contribution and took Morishima’s publications in some unexpected directions. In the 1990s he oversaw the publication of a number of seminal works that had never previously appeared in English, several of them by Japanese scholars. 371

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One was Power Theory of Economics by the sociologist and economist Takata Yasuma, referred to by one scholar as ‘the Marshall of Japan’, who had taught Morishima when he was a student at Kyo¯to University. Morishima’s contribution to the discipline of economics brought him many accolades. In the late 1970s he became Foreign Honorary Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Foreign Honorary Member of the American Economic Association. He was elected a Fellow of the British Academy in 1981, and became a member of the Academia Europaea in 1989. He received honorary degrees from the universities of Paris (X), Siena and London, as ¯ saka University and LSE. well as emeritus professor status at both O He became an Honorary Fellow of LSE in 1991. In Japan he was in 1976 awarded the Bunka Kunsho¯ (Cultural Order of Japan),12 and while he always asked himself beforehand what plaudits of this kind meant for academic freedom, he agreed to accept the honour, not least because it came with a substantial remuneration from the Japanese government that he could use to further his broader academic objectives. Sir John Hicks remained in many respects his ‘mentor’, and Morishima was particularly pleased when Hicks telephoned him following his election to the British Academy to tell him that he had not expected when they first met that Morishima would come so far.13 In summarizing his work in later life, Morishima noted that his work had consisted of three main, interconnected strands: economic theory, the synthesis of economics and sociology, and his project on the ideas of Ricardo, Marx and Walras. He continued, he wrote, to be a mathematical economist, but one who perhaps more than most others continued to believe in the importance of observation and empirical evidence.14 Despite his reputation in the economics profession, however, Morishima was never inclined to follow too closely the accepted dictates of his discipline, and could be highly critical of academic trends. Much of his later work appeared in books rather than in the journal article form that has come to dominate economics. This, he suggested, was because many journals increasingly favoured technical articles and deep ideas were not encouraged. He expressed concern that mathematical economics had gone too far in the direction of trying to accommodate reality to theory, rather than seeking to adapt their theories to reality.15 In an article published as early as 1984, Morishima was highly critical of the ‘overuse’ of mathematics, and the ever greater injection of mathematics into an ever narrower set of ideas that failed to take account of any institutional, national or historical context. Mathematical economics, he suggested, ‘has lost all sense of balance, becoming divorced from knowledge of economic systems and economic history. There is only one medicine which 372

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will cure this malaise, and that is for theorists to make a serious effort in the direction of the institutionalization of economics, in the sense of slowing the speed of all development towards mathematization and developing economic theory in accordance with knowledge of economic organizations, industrial structure and economic history.’ He was not, however, overly optimistic about this taking place, as it seemed likely that mathematical economists would continue to produce ‘quasi-scientific’ articles to maximize the rate of return on their own human capital. His conclusion was that ‘we have in our discipline been led up the wrong path by the invisible hand of the demon, and because it takes both time and money to make an engine we are producing on a large scale “aeroplanes” which have no engine’.16 What Morishima thought about the emerging field of the new institutional economics is not clear, but it seems likely that he would at the very least have approved of its recognition that institutions matter. MORISHIMA AS INSTITUTION BUILDER

Morishima’s qualities as an academic economist – his emphasis on rigour, his concern for the development and application of analytical techniques, his interdisciplinary and strongly international perspective – were the inspiration behind his major contributions to the formation of academic institutions. His interest in the promotion of institutions and organizations to achieve specific academic objectives came early with his leading role in the appearance of a new journal, ¯ saka the International Economic Review, in which Morishima, still at O University, worked with Professor Larry Klein of the University of ¯ saka University Morishima was a key player in Pennsylvania. At O the founding of the university’s Institute for Social and Economic Research, which looked to achieving a synthesis between economics and sociology along the lines suggested by Morishima’s teacher at Kyoto University, Takata Yasuma. The Institute was in many respects the prototype of the research centre that was to be Morishima’s lasting institutional contribution in Britain, what is now the SuntoryToyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines (STICERD) at LSE, an initiative which, Morishima noted, would almost certainly not have got off the ground in the absence of his receipt of the Bunka Kunsho¯.17 Morishima was closely involved with efforts to raise funds for library development at LSE in the early 1970s, at a time when raising money from the private sector, particularly in Japan, was in its infancy, initially approaching Japan Airlines.18 Other Japanese companies followed the lead of JAL, which also supported travel to London for students from Asia, and Morishima himself donated his Bunka Kunsho¯ 373

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annuity to support scholarships for graduate study. Morishima had grander plans, however, for the founding of a research centre at LSE in which researchers could work together on a range of fundamental issues related to theory, analysis and policy, and such a groundbreaking initiative required funds of a different order. This was a time at which British universities were feeling their way in the search for external philanthropic funding, and had far fewer pressures to seek such support than even ten years later. To seek such large scale funding, particularly from Japan, raised additional questions about academic independence and donor motivations. Nevertheless Morishima set off for Japan in the hope of securing donations to establish an endowment fund that would provide sufficient annual interest to support his proposed research centre. Although the Japanese economy had recovered relatively well from the Oil Shock of 1973, and was showing a good rate of growth, securing such funds was far from easy. Approaches to the Foreign Ministry and Keidanren proved fruitless, and as something of a last resort Morishima approached the president of Suntory, Saji Keizo¯, whom he did not know, but who had also been his senior at school, and had a reputation for charitable giving.19 Saji committed to ¥500 million on condition that the other ¥500 million needed was offered by another company. Morishima persuaded Toyota Eiji, the president of Toyota, to offer the other half, and the donation was formally handed over in 1978. Not all at LSE were convinced of the appropriateness of accepting such a donation, and some remained concerned about a potential threat to academic independence. Morishima was, however, highly persuasive in justifying acceptance of the donation at the School’s Academic Board, and, as noted by the then Director of LSE, Ralf Dahrendorf, addressed concerns about possible strings attached to the donation ‘by telling us that he had been to school with the donors and could therefore vouch for them. In any case, he would, if need be, keep them at bay. He commanded respect and confidence among his fellow academics and had little difficulty to persuade them.’20 Acceptance of the endowment money, which was channelled through the Japan Foundation, necessitated agreement over mission and organization. Conspicuously, the centre’s initial name was ICERD (International Centre for Economics and Related Disciplines),21 and the management board drawn from across the institution, giving public confirmation of a commitment to promoting multidisciplinary studies beyond economics alone. Significantly, too, Morishima had been explicit that the money was not being used to promote the study of Japan, although the centre has retained to this day a strong interest in Japan and a small Japanese Studies programme. The grounding belief remained, though, that any such study needed to be located in a rigorous disciplinary or interdisci374

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plinary context, and those principles have continued to characterize the research centre since its founding in 1978. Morishima acted as the first Chairman of STICERD, a role he continued to discharge until his retirement in 1988. It remained his LSE base for the rest of his life, and his frequent presence was a constant reminder of the origins of the research centre, as well as a source of pleasure to all within it. The strength of the yen in the 1970s enhanced the value of the endowment fund in the UK. Living off its interest, supplemented by other external funds and grants, and funding from Morishima himself, STICERD has consistently acted as an internal foundation for LSE research, and brought together researchers to work on a range of issues, particularly the early career scholars whom Morishima recognized were so important for the future of the universities. The many overseas visitors included a succession of top ranking Japanese economists. The work of the research centre is acknowledged to have been at the forefront of research into new concepts and theoretical approaches in economics and the social sciences more broadly, leading the way in comparative empirical studies of economies across Europe and beyond, and generating findings that have often had a major impact on policy decisions. In many respects Morishima’s example and ideals have continued to guide and permeate the work of his colleagues and successors within STICERD. BETWEEN BRITAIN AND JAPAN

Morishima’s decision at the age of forty-seven to pursue his career outside of Japan was a momentous one, and not lightly taken. It was not that he had been unable to achieve recognition in Japan. He had been appointed full professor at a top Japanese university, and had studied abroad on prestigious fellowships. He was intensely proud of being an economist ‘made in Japan’, unlike many of his contemporaries who had studied abroad, and proud of the record of many of Japan’s earlier economists. There is no doubt, however, that the decision was in substantial part associated with a degree of disillusionment with the establishment in Japan, and the limitations he felt he encountered in expressing his views. He was, in the Japanese metaphor, very much the nail that stuck up, and was unwilling to be hammered down.22 Morishima’s hallmark was his forthright expression of his opinions. He was committed to open debate and intellectual enquiry, and possessed enormous energy for scholarship and what he believed in. In later life Morishima was to comment that he felt that the main difference between Britain and Japan lay in the total freedom in Britain to express individual views, and the enjoyment of the dialectical process as a means to better outcomes. Such a freedom, he suggested, 375

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had never been established in Japan even after the establishment of a democratic system after the end of the Emperor system.23 Morishima continued, however, to visit Japan at frequent intervals, and his country of birth remained of fundamental importance to him, and in some cases a matter of profound worry. He was increasingly concerned to understand how Japan had reached what it had become, what was happening to it, and what might happen in the future. Living outside of Japan in fact stimulated him not only as an economist, but as a commentator on Japan for Western audiences, and as a commentator on both Britain and Japan for a Japanese audience. As a world-renowned economist awarded the Cultural Order of Japan (Bunka Kunsho¯) by the Japanese government, Morishima became in Japan a public intellectual whose often controversial views reached out to millions of Japanese. The range of Morishima’s more popular publications in Japanese was very wide. During the 1970s-1980s he produced comparative works on Britain and Japan, and a trenchant analysis of the Thatcher years, all of which became bestsellers. The impact of his writings was extended by his use of the radio to bring his ideas, especially on economics, to the broader public. Increasingly, though, he turned his publication activities towards an analysis of Japan and its current situation. When Morishima met the Emperor on the occasion of his receipt of the Bunka Kunsho¯, he said that while he had achieved fame as a mathematical economist, he had since his youth dreamed of being a novelist, and when the Emperor asked him what sort of a novel he would write, Morishima replied that he would write a historical novel in English on the successes and failures of Japan since the time of the Meiji Restoration.24 The book on modern Japan, when it came, however, was not fiction, but fact. The widely read Why Has Japan ‘Succeeded’?, which had started off as the Marshall lectures at Cambridge University, sought to identify the historical origins of Japanese economic growth, and the ambiguities that were often overlooked in the light of its obvious successes. It was translated into many European and Asian languages. Subsequent publications in both English and Japanese followed, showing the extent to which Morishima was highly critical of many trends in Japan’s politics and economy, profoundly concerned at what he saw as indications of a revival of militarism and right wing views, and believing strongly in the importance to Japan’s future of the broader Asian context, in particular the formation of a northeast Asian economic union. His writings and views won him both plaudits and criticism. Some applauded him for his willingness to take on accepted views and structures, and for questioning longstanding practices and assumptions. Others felt that such frank articulation of heterodox opinions in the service of open intellectual debate were at best unconstructive 376

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and inappropriate and at worst hostile and even ‘anti-Japanese’. The controversially entitled Naze Nihon wa Botsuraku Suru ka?, or Why Will Japan Collapse?, of 1999, with its depiction of a country that was collapsing from within and fated to be a third class power by 2050, seemed unlikely to find universal favour in a Japan already pessimistic in the wake of the bursting of the Bubble economy and the Asian financial crisis. MICHIO MORISHIMA – A JAPANEASE UNEASY IN JAPAN

Michio Morishima’s career trajectory after graduating was a highly unusual one for a Japanese of his generation. His extraordinary and widely recognized academic ability would seem to have naturally led to a lifelong career at one of Japan’s top universities, and the prestige and reputation that would have gone with it. Yet he not only ¯ saka universities, but subsequently took the moved from Kyoto to O unusual step of continuing his work outside Japan. At the root of these decisions were the frictions that emerged between Morishima and his teachers, colleagues and friends, frictions that in later life he admitted finding extremely difficult to write about.25 At the bottom much of this rested on disagreement over issues of principle, and how far individuals were willing to go for their principles. Morishima’s view was that individuals and societies should adhere strictly to clear principles, and act in accordance with those principles. However it was essential that individuals should have the freedom to espouse different principles. His view was that Asian countries such as Japan were inclined to push for some kind of guiding national principle that limited freedom of thought, and supported totalitarianism and the imperial regime that dominated Japan up to 1945. Not only was post-war Japan, he argued, lacking in principle, but the Japanese propensity for harmony (wa) in social interaction suppressed the open debate over issues of principle that allowed families and communi¯ saka Univerties to work properly.26 When Morishima moved to O sity, and established the Institute of Socio-Economic Research, his attempts to operate strictly in accordance with the principle of merit generated conflict with many of his colleagues. Conflict in turn made others uncomfortable, and led to Morishima’s feeling that some who agreed with him in public could then be found manoeuvring behind his back – no doubt, in many cases, in the traditional Japanese search for a workable compromise. ¯ saka UniverAs Morishima later acknowledged, the Institute at O sity was one of the most Westernized groups of academics in Japan, full of scholars who had achieved a reputation in America. If Morishima’s forthright pursuit of principle was to work anywhere, it should have been there. But the management and mode of working, 377

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he later commented, was ‘Japanese, all too Japanese’.27 At another Japanese university, he believed, it would be even worse. In general, commented the Japanese economist Suzumura Ko¯taro¯, Morishima’s consistent adherence to the principles of rationality led to his sharp criticism of fellow economists and colleagues who failed to adhere to such principles, contributing to conflictual relationships and his departure from deeply cherished institutions. ‘This also explains’, commented Suzumura, ‘ why he was much happier in England than in his own mother country.’28 Leaving Japan was not, however, by any means a straightforward decision for Morishima and provoked complex emotions. It was his country of birth, and his family was there. At the same time he believed that Britain would, by contrast with Japan, offer a more conducive environment in which he, as an individual, could stand up for what he believed in. Japanese politics, for example, he compared unfavourably with the recurrent conflict that characterized the British political system, conflict that he regarded as necessary for the finding of appropriate solutions. Although not uncritical of his country of adoption, he thought of himself as something of an Anglophile, and after more than two decades living in Britain took the view that, although the British economy had undoubtedly declined, Britain remained an advanced country in terms of welfare and the generosity shown by the country’s people towards others.29 Living in Britain, however, particularly prior to the age of the Internet, meant that Japan threatened to become progressively more remote. Books such as Britain and Japan and Thatcher’s Britain were in part an attempt to keep in touch, and after his retirement Morishima taught regularly at Japanese universities to give himself time in Japan and to maintain his knowledge of what was going on there.30 He remained committed to building bridges between the Japanese, Asian and European academic worlds, lecturing a number of times in China. His writings on Japan, while often critical, were driven in substantial part by the fact that he cared so much about it. Michio Morishima would have been the first to acknowledge that he was never an easy colleague, but he was capable of enormous kindness to individuals and unstinting generosity in supporting the careers of others. ‘Doing good for others,’ wrote one US colleague ‘was characteristic of Michio…. He gave advice and other assistance to Japanese visitors in London, extricating them from trouble that they may have encountered in a new and strange environment.’31 He could be unsparingly critical of others, but was also able to evaluate himself. He castigated academics he thought of as ‘dilettantes’, or the ‘vulgarians’ who spent their time on mundane work such as public outreach or fundraising, but later recognized that in writ378

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ing books such as Why Will Japan Collapse?’ and raising funds he himself was probably just as much of a dilettante or a vulgarian.32 He acknowledged his own impatience and the presence of an inner voice that limited his self-control.33 Nevertheless his intellectual ability and range of knowledge, as well as his commitment to principle and capacity to challenge, won him respect and affection from those who admitted that they found him at times infuriating. This respect and affection is well summarized in a comment from Ralf Dahrendorf, who worked closely with Morishima at LSE. ‘He has contributed to a subtle understanding of the culture of his country of origin as well as his country of choice. He has also been, and continues to be, a great friend, loyal and trustworthy, serious and yet always fun…. His influence extends beyond even the generously drawn boundaries of economics. He is a great social scientist, scholar, and man of culture.’ 34 As another friend, the Nobel prizewinner Amartya Sen, stated, Morishima was ‘an outstanding economist and the finest of human beings’.35 ENDNOTES 1 See e.g. the Open University of Japan’s open course video entitled ‘No¯beru Keizaigaku Sho¯ no Wasuremono’. 2 Morishima gives an account of these early years in the first volume of his autobiographical trilogy Chi ni Kokuriko no Hana Sakeba (Asahi Shinbunsha, 1997). 3 M. Morishima, Chi ni Hatarakeba Kado ga Tatsu (Asahi Shinbunsha, 1999), pp. 152–64. 4 M. Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi (Asahi Shinbunsha, 2001), pp. 30–2. 5 One supporter responded to these concerns with the reassuring statement that ‘Michio doesn’t speak English like we do, but he speaks English like a vicar’ (Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi p. 42). 6 Morishima, Chi ni Kokuriko no Hana Sakeba, pp. 14–16. Morishima, Chi ni Hatarakeba Kado ga Tatsu, p. 136. 7 An evaluation of Morishima’s contribution to economics can be found in Meghnad Desai, ‘Morishima’s Economics: an Appreciation’, in T. Atkinson, H. Glennerster & N. Stern (eds), Putting Economics to Work: Volume in Honour of Michio Morishima (London: STICERD, LSE, 2000). Much of the information in this section draws on this source. 8 Marx’s Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1973); Walras’ Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1977); Ricardo’s Economics (Cambridge University Press, 1989). 9 Reported in A. Sen, ‘The Discipline of Economics’, Economica vol.75 no.300, 2008, p. 618. 10 N. Stern, ‘Introduction’, in Atkinson et al. (eds.), Putting Economics to Work, p. 3. 11 Economic Theory of Modern Society (Cambridge University Press, 1976); Economics of Industrial Society (Cambridge University Press, 1984). 379

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12 The other 1976 recipient of the Bunka Kunsho¯ that year was the film director, Akira Kurosawa. 13 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, p. 235. 14 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, pp. 274, 287. 15 T. Negishi, ‘Michio Morishima and History: an Obituary’, European Journal of the History of Economic Thought, 12, 3, 2005. 16 Morishima, ‘The Good and Bad Uses of Mathematics’, in P.J.D. Wiles & G. Routh (eds), Economics in Disarray (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), pp. 51–73. 17 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, p. 113. 18 Morishima’s father had been an employee in the 1930s of the Japanese China Airlines, some of whose staff had subsequently been absorbed by Japan Airlines. The then president, Asada Shizuo, had graduated from Morishima’s high school a couple of years ahead of him. 19 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, p. 124. 20 Dahrendorf, ‘Preface’ in Atkinson et al. (eds), Putting Economics to Work, p. 1. 21 The names of Suntory and Toyota were later added to the title in acknowledgement of the donors, and it was renamed STICERD. 22 Deru kugi wa utareru. 23 Morishima, Chi ni Kokuriko no Hana Sakeba, p. 21. 24 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, pp. 105–106. 25 Morishima, Chi ni Hatarakeba Kado ga Tatsu, p. 1. 26 Morishima, Chi ni Hatarakeba Kado ga Tatsu, pp. 2–3. 27 The title of the section of Chi ni Hatarakeba Kado ga Tatsu in which he comments on this is entitled Nihonteki, amari ni mo Nihonteki (pp. 317ff.). 28 K. Suzumura, tribute at memorial meeting, December 2004. 29 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, pp. 311–48. 30 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, p. 361 31 Larry Klein, tribute at memorial meeting, December 2004. 32 Morishima, Owari Yokereba Subete Yoshi, p. 358. 33 Morishima, Chi ni Kokuriko no Hana Sakeba, pp. 16ff. 34 ‘Preface’, in Atkinson et al. (eds.), Putting Economics to Work, p. 2. 35 ‘The Discipline of Economics’, Economica vol.75 no.300, 2008, p. 617.

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Honma Hisao (1886–1981): Expert on Oscar Wilde YOKO HIRATA

INTRODUCTION

Honma Hisao (1886–1981), although little known in Britain, played an important role in transmitting English ideas of the late nineteenth century to Japan during the Taisho¯ Period (1912–1926). He had a long life and made important contributions in several fields. During the first half of his life, while serving as a lecturer at Waseda University, he was engaged in journalism. At one time editor in chief of Waseda Bungaku, he helped to form public opinion in social as well as literary matters. He prided himself as a translator and introducer of the thoughts of Oscar Wilde (1854–1900), Ellen Key (1849–1926) and William Morris (1834–1896). He was also a kabuki and art critic. After a one-year stay in England, he published his doctoral dissertation, Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯ (A Study of Aestheticism in Modern England) in 1934. He then turned to research in the nascent field of Meiji literature where his most important contribution was the five volume work, Meiji Bungaku Shi (A History of Meiji Literature). 381

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He was also one of the initiators of the study of comparative literature in Japan. During the latter half of his life, therefore, Honma as an academic looked first outward into fin de siècle English literature, then inward to Meiji literature, and finally tried to immerse himself in the comparative study of world literature. He remained active as a scholar until his death in 1981 at the age of ninety-four. This essay focuses on Honma Hisao’s lifelong association with Oscar Wilde. BACKGROUND AND EDUCATION

Honma was born in Yonezawa City in the To¯hoku region.1 During the Edo Period, the Yonezawa domain was ruled by the Uesugi family. Since the Uesugi fought against the Tokugawa at the battle of Sekigahara in 1600, they were given the small domain of Yonezawa instead of the large and rich Echigo plain which they had previously ruled. Since the Uesugi moved with all their retainers into the small Yonezawa district, the domain was always overpopulated and its inhabitants poor. Their domain was further reduced during the Edo Period. The Uesugi family was prestigious, but it played little part in the administration of the Edo Bakufu. During the civil war of 1868–1869, they once again fought on the losing side. Such a fate generated the Yonezawa spirit of ‘perversity’ conveyed in a regional vernacular expression sonpin which meant: Even with loss and poverty, do not swim with the current. Be tenacious in maintaining one’s own standpoint. Endure fate with perseverance. Honma was born into a family of Noh performers and educated in the rapidly changing Yonezawa City. They were low-ranked samurai. Although their art was highly appreciated and patronized by the ruling family, they did not take part in administration. Their income was small and they lived alongside merchants and craftsmen. Amid the dramatic political and economic changes of the early Meiji Period, Honma’s grandfather was among those who were forced into early retirement. He retained his interest in Noh, teaching children Noh songs and dances, while his son started a business. Methodist missionaries were active in the area and they founded a girls’ school a few blocks away from Honma’s house. English language education, for which the British teacher and scholar, Charles Henry Dallas (1842– 1894) had been the pioneer, played an important role at Yonezawa High School. Honma was inspired by a progressive teacher to become interested in literature. After graduation in 1904, Honma set off for Tokyo with his younger brother Honma Kunio (1889–1973) and his cousin Takahashi Satomi (1886–1964). Kunio wanted to be a painter, Satomi headed for Tokyo Imperial University. Honma chose Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯, later Waseda University, where Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯ (1859–1935),2 had founded the Department of Literature.3 382

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At Waseda, while Sho¯yo¯ was busily engaged in diverse activities, Shimamura Ho¯getsu (1871–1918) returned from his three-and-a-half-year stay in England and Germany.4 Ho¯getsu, who is known today as an initiator of modern drama in Japan and the first Japanese producer of Oscar Wilde’s Salome, was admired by students in the Department of Literature. Unlike the reclusive Natsume So¯seki (1867–1916),5 whose stay almost coincided with his own, Ho¯getsu, who was active in attending lectures at Oxford and plays in the West End, wanted to grasp ‘the essence of European culture’. Upon his return he spread what he had learnt through lectures and essays, particularly through Waseda Bungaku of which he was editor in chief. Honma was especially impressed by Ho¯getsu’s introduction to English aestheticism such as the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, the ideas of Oscar Wilde and Walter Pater (1839–1894).6 With Ho¯getsu as his supervisor, Honma wrote his graduation dissertation in which he compared the aesthetics of Oscar Wilde (1854–1900) with the social views of literary criticism promoted by Leo Tolstoy (1828– 1910). After graduating from Waseda in 1909, Honma started writing for Waseda Bungaku. He systematically introduced Wilde’s aestheticism, extracting key ideas from Wilde’s essays in English and explaining them in Japanese. The process culminated with his translation of De Profundis in 1911. INTRODUCTION OF WILDE’S AESTHETIC THEORY AND THE TRANSLATION OF DE PROFUNDIS7

In his first essay written for Waseda Bungaku in 1909,8 Honma discussed Wilde’s view of art and artists mainly through ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ and ‘The True Function and Value of Socialism’. Honma briefly introduced the life of Oscar Wilde who came to attract public attention through the publication of De Profundis five years after his death. Socialists contended that property should be owned not personally but communally in order to improve society. According to Wilde, however, social improvement is not the concern of socialism but of individualism, and ‘Art is the most intensive mode of Individualism ….’.9 ‘Art for art’s sake’ leads to the idea that ‘All art is immoral’10 and that ‘Aesthetics are higher than ethics’.11 Honma then introduced the characteristics of Wilde’s aestheticism, as expounded in ‘The Decay of Lying’.12 According to Wilde, ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’13 and ‘Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things, is the proper aim of Art.’14 Honma next translated the ‘Introduction’ to The Picture of Dorian Gray, a short but important piece of work in which Wilde defined the relationship between beauty and ethics. It ended with the sensational ending ‘All art is quite useless.’15 Wilde’s theory of aestheticism sug383

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gested a way out for Japanese, who were seeking a way out of the dead end of naturalism, and offered a spiritual antithesis for those who were weary of the slogan of the Meiji Period, ‘rich country, strong army’. In March 1911, Honma published the essay, ‘Osuka¯ Wairudo Ron’ (On Oscar Wilde),16 which is considered to be the first academic research paper on Oscar Wilde in Japan. Touched by Wilde’s tragic life and his extraordinary theory of beauty, Honma declared, ‘Among the modern writers, no one held such extreme and unconventional views of art and of life as Oscar Wilde. Moreover, no modern writer experienced such fluctuations of fate as Oscar Wilde. …. Wilde’s view of art and life can only be understood in relation to the vicissitudes of his fortunes.’17 The essay is divided into thirteen sections, each dealing with different aspects of Oscar Wilde. The first ten sections treated themes Honma had already touched on in his previous publications. The last three dealt with De Profundis, The Ballad of Reading Gaol and the last days of Oscar Wilde. Notably lacking is any discussion of Wilde’s children’s stories and society comedies. Before dealing with Wilde’s aestheticism, Honma briefly treated the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood, the beginning of the aesthetic movement in modern England. Wilde first made himself known as an aesthete by wearing ‘aesthetic costumes’. As such, he made a lecture tour in America, produced in association with Gilbert and Sullivan’s opera Patience, or Bunthorne’s Bride, which was intended to ridicule the aesthetes. After discussing Salome and The Picture of Dorian Gray which reveal the strong continental influence of decadence, Honma turned to Wilde’s theory of aestheticism, defined in ‘The Decay of Lying’. Beauty is the utmost goal of art. Art transcends life. Wilde upheld ‘Art for art’s sake’ and aesthetics before ethics. Honma then recounted the background to De Profundis, originally a letter addressed to Lord Alfred Douglas, written in jail just before Wilde’s release. The letter was submitted to the custody of Wilde’s friend, Robert Ross (1869–1918), who published it in order to pay Wilde’s debts and cover the expense of his sons’ education. Ross edited the original letter and removed much factual information to avoid the danger of libel. Free from excessive detail, De Profundis became an almost abstract piece of writing ready to convey Wilde’s innermost emotions as well as his philosophy of life. Due to the suppression of Wilde’s name and works in England, Honma surmised the cause of Wilde’s disgrace and wrote, ‘Being Irish Wilde was endowed with the so-called Celtic temperament. In addition to extreme emotional fluctuations, lacking balanced and even judgment, some kind of pathological fit attacked him. This was probably so.’18 Honma concluded that De Profundis was the consummation of Wilde’s aesthetic theory, that is, Wilde put into action what he had previously speculated about. Honma’s translation of De Profundis first 384

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appeared in Waseda Bungaku in October 1911, and two years later in book form. Whereas in England the publication of De Profundis led many to reevaluate Oscar Wilde, in Japan its translation and publication served to introduce him to many Japanese readers for the first time. In England Wilde’s fame as a playwright, his notorious lifestyle, his rift with the Marquis of Queensbury and his subsequent disgrace were well-known. In Japan, the innocent readers were presented with Oscar Wilde as a tragic hero, a champion of the philosophy of aestheticism. This pathetic work marked by sorrow and humility, which included Wilde’s view of Jesus Christ, caught the heart of many young readers including the writer Shimazaki To¯son (1872–1943) and the painter Sekine Sho¯ji (1899–1919). The question remained for Honma, however, to solve the mystery of Wilde’s fate in relation to his thoughts. He translated several other works relating to Oscar Wilde including The Picture of Dorian Gray, in 1913, ‘Pen Pencil and Poison’, in 1915, A House of Pomegranates, in 1915, and in 1917, Oscar Wilde and His Mother: A Memoir by Comtesse Anna de Brémont. By 1920, Oscar Wilde was among the most popular English writers in Japan and his collected works were published in Japanese translation. EDITOR IN CHIEF OF WASEDA BUNGAKU

Honma’s zeal in his attempts to understand Wilde’s thoughts and background receded for some time, after the dramatic death of his master, Shimamura Ho¯getsu in 1918. Honma succeeded Ho¯getsu as editor in chief of Waseda Bungaku, and started teaching at Waseda University at the same time. Honma’s important task for Waseda Bungaku was to improve the financial situation of the journal. Under the strong influence of Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, the founder and the first editor in chief of the journal, Waseda Bungaku changed its editorial direction.19 Unlike previous issues, which paved the way for the literary debuts of talented young writers, it carried further essays by Sho¯yo¯ which reflected his current interests. Issues were produced featuring themes of Japanese literature. Meiji Bungakugo¯, a series in seven issues published after the Great Kanto Earthquake of 1923, featuring testimonies of near contemporary literature, was highly evaluated. It is considered to be a starting point for later studies of Meiji literature. Besides editing Waseda Bungaku, Honma was active as a literary critic writing for other journals on contemporary literature, art and kabuki. He also wrote for journals like Chu¯¯o Ko¯ron in areas such as women’s issues. From the end of the Taisho¯ Era, Honma was one of the popular speakers on the newly introduced medium of radio broadcasting. In the history of social controversies, Honma is remembered as the 385

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initiator of the so-called minshu¯geijutsu ronso¯ (Controversy on ‘the art of the people’),20 which contributed to the emergence of proletarian literature in Japan. Through his involvement in this controversy, Honma became acquainted with William Morris and his aesthetic socialism.21 Around 1926, Honma considered adopting an academic career. Through lectures and compiling textbooks, Honma had gained systematic knowledge of modern English literature. His editorship of Waseda Bungaku had been criticized for failing to meet the expectations of students, who wished to pursue a literary career. As the First World War had ended several years earlier, newly published books on art and literature were once again generally available. Through such books as The Collected Works of William Morris and Holbrook Jackson’s The Eighteen Nineties,22 Honma learnt that aestheticism was the undercurrent connecting Oscar Wilde with William Morris. The time was ripe to launch a more comprehensive study of modern English aestheticism. ¯ EIKOKU KINSEI YUIBISHUGI NO KENKYU

In 1928, Honma set sail for London to gather materials for his doctoral dissertation dealing with the aesthetic movement in England at the close of the nineteenth century.23 In London, Honma met those who witnessed as well as helped create the fin de siècle atmosphere in London such as Arthur Symons (1865–1945), Max Beerbohm (1872–1956), and Gordon Craig (1872–1966). Honma visited places that were related to the Pre-Raphaelite Movement, such as William Morris’s factory at Merton Abbey. He also visited Florence and the River Arno and Campo Santo in Pisa. Particularly fruitful for his dissertation was meeting Oscar Wilde’s son, Vyvyan Holland (1986– 1967), and being allowed to use the unabridged version, that is the original letter, of De Profundis. Honma also succeeded in obtaining items from the former Stuart Mason Collection.24 During his stay in London, Honma learnt about current trends in English literature and drama. These made him realize the importance of comparing and contrasting aspects of English and Japanese culture. Honma published Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯ in 1934 and explained the aim of his research in the preface: It is very interesting for us to investigate the aesthetic movement in English literature in the latter half of the nineteenth century, because it was not only a literary, artistic movement, but also a realistic, moralistic movement concerned with modern views and ways of living. It was, moreover, because the whole movement was carried out by the cooperation of writers, painters, sculptors and others, all

386

HONMA HISAO (1886–1981)

the ‘spiritual aliens’ as Holbrook Jackson called them, who earnestly considered the problems of fine art and human life from the viewpoint of cosmopolitans, even though detested by their contemporary native Englishmen. It should be mentioned, in addition, that they were influenced by the Japanese works of art, evidently by woodblock prints.25

Part One of the dissertation discusses the origin and characteristics of the movement and Part Two, Oscar Wilde. The beginning of the Aesthetic Movement in England was the formation of the PreRaphaelite Brotherhood in 1848. The term ‘Aesthetes’ was first used by George du Maurier (1834–1896) in Punch around 1870–1880 to ridicule those artists who were devoted to aestheticism. Ironically, Punch, as well as Gilbert and Sullivan’s Patience, served to highlight aesthetes’ activities. In spite of the variety of their genre of expression, they had one thing in common: they were ‘true lovers of the ideal, the passionate, and the beautiful’. According to Honma, the three main features of aestheticism were a predilection for the Middle Ages, exotic taste, such as love of things Japanese and the association of beauty with daily life. These features were represented by Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1830–1893), James McNeil Whistler (1834–1903) and William Morris (1834–1896), to each of whom Honma devoted a chapter. Part Two focused on the aestheticism of Oscar Wilde. Honma briefly described the life of Oscar Wilde and then turned to his view of art. Although Wilde’s view of art changed as time passed, Walter Pater’s influence was predominant at all times. Wilde’s early view of art was developed in his lectures delivered during his American tour in 1882 and shortly after his return to England. While his basic theory of art was adopted from Pater, William Morris’s idea of aesthetic socialism, in which he related art with labour, was also dominant. Wilde’s later view was mainly developed in Intentions26 and ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’. While relying heavily on Walter Pater, Wilde developed his own theory of beauty and art, which was best expounded in ‘The Decay of Lying’. Honma extracted out of this work what Wilde had termed ‘The Doctrines of the New Aesthetics’.27 The first doctrine was, according to Wilde’s words, ‘Art never expresses anything but itself’. The second was ‘All bad art comes from returning to Life and Nature, and elevating them into ideals’. The third doctrine was that ‘Life imitates Art far more than Art imitates Life’. Underlying this doctrine was the idea of ‘Art for art’s sake’, which is based on the ideas that life is limited while there is no limit to the world of art, and that art is the only way to realize individualism, that is, the goal of life. ‘Art for art’s sake’ leads to two different directions: one, to escape from reality and the other to try to 387

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improve it. Each is represented by Walter Pater and William Morris, respectively. Both directions were the product of the time in which the two exponents were born. In this sense the English aesthetic movement represents the ethos of the time. The late nineteenth century was the time when people were active intellectually, imaginatively, and spiritually; frankly to solve the question of ‘how to live’.28 After devoting one chapter to Oscar Wilde’s relationship to Japanese art, Honma moved on to the decline of the aesthetic movement which was caused by Oscar Wilde’s disgrace. Honma recounted the details of Wilde’s disgrace and discussed the significance of De Profundis, using the full text made available to him by Vyvyan Holland. Honma concluded that, as Walter Pater wrote, ‘Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end’29 and that the doctrine of an aesthetic way of life was lived by Oscar Wilde. Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯ was highly praised and earned for Honma his Ph.D., Honma swiftly turned to Meiji literature.30 Already in 1935, he published the first volume of his five-volume work, Meiji Bungaku Shi. ‘History of Meiji Literature’ was soon added to the list of subjects he taught at Waseda.31 It was as if he had lost interest in the theme of the aesthetic movement, now that he had published the outcome of his research. Besides, the nationalistic ethos of the 1930s did not favour further research into such themes. Indeed, the years, which were wholly adverse to the free pursuit of literary studies, were about to begin. AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR

The American bombing and the subsequent fire that swept away the northwestern part of Tokyo on 25–26 May 1945, demolished one third of the Waseda University campus as well as Honma’s house packed with the research materials which he had collected over the years.32 After the War, Waseda University was busy reconstructing the destroyed buildings as well as organizing the new university system of education.33 This included the massive revision of the curriculum. Meanwhile, much of Honma’ s effort was devoted to filling the post-war intellectual vacuum for both students and the public. Free from military censorship, he swiftly compiled and revised his former works on women’s issues, on aesthetic ways of life, kabuki and Meiji literature. He was back again as a speaker on NHK. He continued his research on Meiji literature and became president of the newly established academic society, Kindai Nihon Bungakukai34 and published essays in every issue of the quarterly journal, Meiji Taisho¯ Bungaku Kenkyu¯. When the reorganization of the university curriculum was finalized in 1951, Honma, in his mid-sixties with a Ph.D. in English literature, 388

HONMA HISAO (1886–1981)

was mainly entrusted with courses pertaining to English literature, particularly for the newly created graduate school.35 Meiji literature was now a well-established discipline and had younger scholars specializing in it. Much of Honma’s research effort was focused on Meiji literature, at least until he completed his five-volume work, Meiji Bungaku Shi in 1964. His main teaching, however, was devoted to English literature. After he retired from Waseda University he taught English literature at Sho¯wa Women’s University, Jissen Women’s University and Rissho¯ University. Memories of Honma in his later years, gathered from his students and others, portray Honma as an elderly professor of English literature.36 A perfect gentleman and a fine educator, he was always well-groomed, well-dressed, gentle and kind to his students. He was a devout scholar, and accomplished lecturer, passionate in gaining new knowledge, taking great pleasure in appreciating art and beauty. With a strong To¯hoku accent based on the Yonezawa dialect, heavy in speech but eloquent once started, he enjoyed a wide circle of friends. Affected by the so-called Waseda spirit advocated by ¯ kuma Shigenobu,37 Honma emphasized the value of its founder, O standing in opposition to authority and maintaining a keen awareness of the issues involved. Honma held Walter Pater in great esteem, as a model of academic scholarship and lifestyle.38 Pater’s idea not to waste a moment and devote one’s life to art served Honma as a guide to life. In spite of his age-tamed gentleness of character, Honma at times betrayed a violent and obstinate temperament reminiscent of his earlier essays written as a critic of naturalism, attacking his opponents.39 OSCAR WILDE AND HONMA HISAO

Going through Honma Hisao’s bibliography, one finds no title relating to Oscar Wilde after the completion of Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯ in 1934. However, throughout the transition in time and ethos, shifts and changes of specialism and profession, Oscar Wilde remained an important theme for Honma. In class, Honma fondly talked about his acquaintance with Wilde’s son.40 He recounted De Profundis and proudly demonstrated his knowledge of Wilde’s trial.41 Honma’s last essay was ‘Wairudo no Menpisu-ate Shokan ni tsuite’ (On Oscar Wilde’s Letter Addressed to Menpes) written one year before his death in 1981.42 In this essay, Honma discussed aspects of the painter Mortimer Menpes (1855–1938)43 mentioned as ‘one of our most charming painters’ in ‘The Decay of Lying’. Reminiscing about his quest for the painter, unidentified at the time he had written his doctoral dissertation, Honma portrayed Menpes’s relationships with James McNeill Whistler and the Wilde family, his visit to Japan, life 389

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as a painter and compared his paintings with William Morris’s News from Nowhere. Honma filled in gaps in information on Oscar Wilde and recaptured the milieu of fin de siècle England and Japan. Honma, who started his career by introducing Oscar Wilde’s aesthetic theory, came back to treat his life in the wider context of history. One reason for Honma’s lasting interest in Wilde was his sympathy over the way in which Wilde had been treated. Coming from Ireland, he had rebelled against Victorian society with his pen and by his actions. He inevitably lost the fight, was disgraced and ended his life in exile. The spirit of being in opposition, and fighting against overwhelming authority was in tune with the Waseda spirit. Being from Yonezawa, Honma held deep sympathy for those who fought losing battles against dominating power. Moreover, for Honma, who came from a culture in which homosexuality was neither a moral nor religious offence, Oscar Wilde was like an innocent hero trapped into disgrace. Another reason, as Professor Emeritus at Waseda University, Nonaka Ryo¯, has pointed out, was Honma’s attraction to someone whose nature and lifestyle were opposite to his own. Despite brilliant talent and intelligence, Wilde suffered from a fatal weakness of character. His lack of self-control made him powerless against the temptations of his ‘friend’. He fell into heavy debt and made errors of judgment and gave society the opportunity to punish him. On the other hand, Honma’s lifestyle was flawless both at work and at home. Beneath the surface, however, Honma’s negative traits were concealed. Honma’s father had been a member of a family of Noh performers, who shared a liberal lifestyle and ethical code for the advancement of their art. He had been a licentious man, selfish and despotic at home. Honma’s mother was from an academic family, strict in morals. Between the two opposite traits, Honma tried to suppress his father’s qualities and enhance his mother’s.44 This was not without effort. By way of self-control, a precarious balance was kept between his violent and tenacious nature and a sincere scholar and a perfect family man.45 Honma’s approval or even admiration for Oscar Wilde in his last days was precisely for his renunciation of self-control. Wilde lived each moment as his nature dictated without being restrained by likely consequences and enjoyed ‘not the fruit of experience but experience itself’. CONCLUSION

In 1964, when Honma was seventy-seven years old, in spite of the advice from his friend to publish it as early in the year as possible,48 he finally published the last volume of Meiji Bungaku Shi in October.49 A celebration party was held and distinguished scholars from diverse fields gathered.50 Honma was very pleased to have completed his 390

HONMA HISAO (1886–1981)

book which was reviewed well in newspapers such as the Asahi Shinbun, but received no major publication prizes. He was decorated with the Order of the Sacred Treasure (third Class) in 1969 at the age of eighty. In his eighties, Honma composed a poem describing himself and his feelings: Yonitsurete Utsurusubenami Kunatabure, Hitotosakarite Warehitoriyuku.51 A stubborn man, Not knowing how to swim along with the tide, Climbing up the slope all on his own. In his last days, even in hospital, Honma’s mind was occupied with the study of comparative literature, juxtaposing ‘Lamia’ by Keats (1795–1821) with a short story by Ueda Akinari (1734–1809), which also dealt with the theme of the metamorphosis of a beautiful woman into a serpent.52 From the time he entered the Department of Literature at Waseda University, Honma always sought new ideas and themes. Did Honma at the end of his life wish to embark on a new comparative literature project if he had had the time? Or, if ‘not the fruit of experience, but experience itself’ was the end for Oscar Wilde, was ‘not the fruit of research, but the pleasure of research, itself, the end’ for Honma’? Oscar Wilde’s ideas of beauty coupled with his tragic death moved the young Honma to translate and introduce his ideas. Wilde’s theory of aestheticism instigated the scholarly Honma to research into its background. Wilde’s life. Walter Pater’s ideas as expressed in The Renaissance served as a guide for Honma on ‘how to live’ throughout his long life. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

On Honma’s early life, see Hirata, Yoko, Honma Hisao – Taisho¯ Jidai no Yo¯roppa Bunka Inyu¯ (Honma Hisao – The Introduction of European Culture during the Taisho¯ Period), Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu(Waseda University Press), 2012, pp. 3–34. For a portrait of Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯ see essay by Brian Powell in Britain and Japan 1859–1991 Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, Routledge, 1991 Of the three young men who came to Tokyo from Yonezawa in 1904, Honma Kunio,46 who inherited his father’s artistic talent and character, adorned magazines with his drawings during the first half of the Taisho¯ 391

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4

5

6

7

8

9

10

11 12

13 14 15

16

17 18 19

20

21

22

Period. Then he left Tokyo, spending years as a travelling painter in Manchuria and Korea. He created his own style and gained some fame as a local painter in Yonezawa. Honma’s cousin, Takahashi Satomi, graduated from Tokyo Imperial University with a degree in philosophy. He was admitted to Gakushi-in (The Japan Academy) and became president of To¯hoku University. Takahashi was selected Bunkako¯ro¯sha47 in 1958, six years before his death in 1964. On the relationship between Honma and Shimamura Ho¯getsu, see Hirata, Honma Hisao, pp. 90–122. See essay by Sammy Tsunematsu in Britain and Japan: Biographicall Portraits, volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Walter Pater was an Oxford scholar famous for The Renaissance: Studies in Art and Poetry. It exerted a strong influence on Oscar Wilde but invited criticism from conservative quarters. On Honma’s relationship with Oscar Wilde, see Hirata, Honma Hisao, pp. 125–61. Honma, Hisao,’Genjitsu o Hanarentosuru Bungei(Art which is about to Transcend Reality), Waseda Bungaku No. 49, 1909, pp. 26–37. Wilde, Oscar, ‘The Soul of Man under Socialism’ Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, 5th ed. Glasgow: Harper Collins Publishers, 2003, p. 1184. Wilde, Oscar, ‘The Critic as Artist’ Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, p. 1139 Ibid. p. 1154. Honma, Hisao,‘Jinsei mo Shizen mo Geijutsu no Moho¯ nari’(Both Life and Nature are Imitations of Art), Bunsho¯ Sekai, Vol. 5, No. 4, 1910, pp. 63–9. Wilde, Oscar, ‘The Decay of Lying,’ Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, pp.1071–92. Ibid., pp. 1081, 1085, 1091. Ibid., pp. 1091–2. Wilde, Oscar, “The Preface” to ‘The Picture of Dorian Gray,’ Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, p. 17. Honma, Hisao, ‘Osuka¯ Wairudo Ron’(On Oscar Wilde), Waseda Bungaku, No. 64, 1909, pp. 1–34. Ibid. p. 1 Ibid., p. 26 On Honma Hisao and Waseda Bungaku, see Hirata, Honma Hisao, pp. 41–53. Taisho¯-ki II (Kindai-bungaku Hyo¯rontaikei Vol. 5), Tokyo: Kadokawashoten, 1972, pp. 474–6, 480–1. Zenki Puroretaria-bungaku Hyo¯ronshu¯ (Nippon Puroretaria-bungaku Hyo¯ronshu¯ 2), Tokyo: Shin-nippon Shuppan, 1990, pp. 453–5. On Honma’s encounter with William Morris’s ‘the art of the people’, see Hirata, Honma Hisao, pp. 215–19. The Collected Works of William Morris: with introductions by his daughter May Morris, London; New York: Longmans, Green and Company, 1910–1915. Jackson, Holbrook, The Eighteen Nineties: A Review of Art and Ideas at the Close of the Nineteenth Century, First published 1913, published in Pelican Books 1939, reprinted in 1959. 392

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23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32 33 34

35

36

37

On Honma’s visit to England, Honma, Hisao, Taio¯ Insho¯ki (Impressions of Europe), Tokyo: To¯kyo¯do¯, 1929. see also Hirata, Honma Hisao, pp. 237–61. Stuart Mason (1872–1927), well-known for Bibliography of Oscar Wilde, made an extensive collection of items relating to Oscar Wilde. Upon his death in 1927, his collection was put on sale at Dulau & Co. on New Bond Street. See Honma, Taio¯ Insho¯ki, pp. 110–14. Honma, Hisao, Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯ (A Study of Aestheticism in Modern England) Tokyo: To¯kyo¯do¯, 1934, p. 1. See also p. 8. The collection of papers comprising, ‘The Truth of Masks’, ‘The Critic as Artist’, ‘Pen, Pencil & Poison’ and ‘The Decay of Lying’, published in book form. Honma, Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯, pp. 250–75. Cf. Wilde, ‘The Decay of Lying’, Collins Complete Works of Oscar Wilde, p. 1091. Honma, Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯, pp. 295–8. Cf. Jackson, The Eighteen Nineties, p.28. The Works of Walter Pater in eight volumes I: The Renaissance, Cambridge University Press, 2011 (the edition first published 1900), p. 236. Honma, Eikoku Kinsei Yuibishugi no Kenkyu¯, pp. 230, 241. In Japanese translation, p. 422. Meiji literature had not been established as an academic discipline and was outside the scope of traditional Japanese literature. It was often taken up by those who specialized in English literature, as late Meiji literature cannot be discussed without the influence of English literature and literature of other European countries which reached Japan through English translations. On the subjects Honma taught between 1920 and 1949, see Waseda Daigaku Hyakunenshi (One Hundred Years of Waseda University) Vol. IV, Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku Shuppanbu, 1992, p. 874. On the casualties in the area, see ibid., pp. 738–46. Regarding the creation of new university system, see ibid., pp. 891- 1095. Now Nihon Kindai Bungakukai(AMJLS, Association for Modern Japanese Literary Studies) http://amjls.web.fc2.com/amjls.html visited 21 August 2013. For courses Honma taught in the new system, see Waseda Daigaku Hyakunenshi, Vol. IV, pp. 1005–1021. On Honma’s place in the Department of Literature at that time, cf. O¯ kubo, Tsuneo. Sho¯wa Bungaku heno Sho¯gen (Some Testimonies on Sho¯ wa Literature), Tokyo: Ronso¯ sha, 2012, pp. 40–4. Okazaki, Hajime and Noguchi, Hajime, Kyo¯ikusha toshiteno Honma Hisao (Honma Hisao as an Educator), Tokyo: Bunkashobo¯ Hakubunsha, 2010, pp. 120–214. Most of the factual information on Honma in his later years was adopted from this work. ¯ kuma Shigenobu (1838–1922), the founder of Waseda University, was O a statesman of the Meiji Period who stood at some time in moderate opposition to the authoritarian tendencies of the Meiji oligarchy. One of the founding principles of Waseda University was ‘independence of learning’, which sometimes relates to standing in opposition to and fighting against authority. 393

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38

39 40 41 42

43

44

45 46

47

48

49 50 51

52

Okazaki & Noguchi, Kyo¯ikusha toshiteno Honma Hisao, pp. 128–129, 136–137, 149–150. Honma himself recounted his indebtedness to Walter Pater. Honma, Hisao, ‘Walter Pater and I’ in Meijibungaku: Ko¯sho¯, Zuiso¯ (Meiji Literature, Studies and Essays), Tokyo: Shinjusha, 1965, pp. 253–66. Okazaki & Noguchi, Kyo¯ikusha toshiteno Honma Hisao, pp. 149, 153–4. Ibid., p. 138. Hirata, Honma Hisao, p. 150. Honma, Hisao,’Wairudo no Menpisu-ate Shokan ni tsuite (2)’ (On Oscar Wilde’s Letter Addressed to Menpes (2)’ Jissen Eibungaku 16, 1980, pp. 1–7. See biographical portrait of Mortimer Menpes by Sonia Ahmore in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013. Honma, Hisao. ‘Watashi no Umareta Ie – Daidai Nohgakusha no Ie: Ho¯ju¯na Chichi to Genkaku na Haha’ (My Family: Generations of Noh Players: Licentious Father and Strict Mother), Bunsho¯ Kurabu Vol 3., No. 7, 1918, pp. 46–7. Cf. Okazaki & Noguchi, Kyo¯ikusha toshiteno Honma Hisao, pp.149–50. On Honma Kunio, see Honma Kunio Ten, Yonezawa shi: Uesugihakubutsukan, 2011. Bunkako¯ro¯sha is a person who has made outstanding cultural contributions. Professor Kawatake advised Honma to publish it early in the year to be considered for publication prizes such as Geijutsu-in Sho¯ or Asahibunka Sho¯. See Honma Hisao Nikki (A Diary of Honma Hisao), Hirata, Yoko, ed., Tokyo: Sho¯hakusha, 2005, p. 628. Ibid., p. 649 Ibid., p. 666. Okazaki & Noguchi, Kyo¯ikusha toshiteno Honma Hisao, p. 154. See also pp. 127 and 145. The English version is not a word-for-word translation. Ibid. pp. 126. 144.

394

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Shimamura Ho¯getsu (1871–1918): Pioneer of Shingeki (Western-style Theatre) in Japan NORIMASA MORITA

EARLY YEARS

Shimamura Takitaro¯ (Ho¯ getsu) was the eldest of four children. His parents were Sasayama Ippei and Chise. He was born in an isolated, impoverished village called Kuza (not pronounced as Kusa) in Shimane prefecture where his father was the manager of the ironworks. When their furnace was severely damaged by the 1872 Hamada earthquake, he had a new one built not far away from the old one.1 However, his father went bankrupt in 1876, when he was only five years old. The Sasayamas frequently moved house, but never far from where Ho¯ getsu was born. His father also changed jobs, running a sake shop, working for the village office, producing wax, selling everyday goods at the iron mines and ironworks, and polishing rice at a mill, but none of these jobs lasted long. When Ho¯getsu was ten years old, he entered Kuza’s local primary school. He was by far the most intelligent among its pupils, but because of his father’s bankruptcy and heavy drinking habit, 395

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the frequent visits of creditors, and the incessant quarrels between his parents he grew up to be a gloomy, melancholic, and quiet boy. The Sasayamas were too poor to send him to higher schools and he had to find a job. He was first an apprentice in the dispensary of a hospital in a larger town where he was allowed to attend school whenever he had any free time. He left the hospital after only one year and found another job as an office boy in the law court. Unlike the hospital dispensary, the law court closed at the fixed time in the evening, so the new job allowed him to attend private schools in the evening. In 1886 a new thirty-two-year old public prosecutor named Shimamura Bunko¯ was posted to the law court. He had no male heir and discovering that Ho¯ getsu came from an impoverished family, but had intellectual ability and ambition, he proposed to adopt Ho¯ getsu and fund him through university. Ho¯ getsu jumped at this offer, as otherwise he could not continue his studies, obtain a good post and escape from the poverty that had been haunting him. However, Bunko¯ ’s offer to adopt their eldest son infuriated Ho¯ getsu’s parents and despite repeated pleas, his father would not consent to the adoption of his son. Bunko¯ sent Ho¯ getsu to Tokyo with a monthly allowance of five yen on condition that the adoption procedure was completed within one year. Ho¯ getsu left Kuza on 6 February 1890 and was seen off by his mother, but not by his father who had disappeared before his departure. In Tokyo Ho¯getsu started to study English, mathematics and science at various schools in preparation for entering university. During ¯ gai to whom he had been introduced by this period he visited Mori O ¯ gai, who had been working in the law court a former classmate of O with him and who had inspired his interest in literature. Ho¯getsu ¯ gai’s advice about which university would best suit his litersought O ¯ gai was ten years older than Ho¯getsu. Both were from ary interests. O Iwami in the western part of Shimane prefecture.2 In June 1891 the adoption process was finally completed and his surname was changed to Shimamura. In October he entered Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯ (now Waseda University) to study aesthetics and literature in the department of literature, which had been created by Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯3 in 1890. Only two months after entering university, his allowance was cut off because his adoptive father wanted him to study political science in order to become a civil servant rather than literature. Ho¯getsu is said to have wanted to commit suicide by jumping into the Kandagawa River at Ochanomizu, but after wandering around for hours he gave up and returned to his lodgings. Throughout his time at university he was always short of money, but he had been very diligent and hardworking and became Sho¯yo¯’s favourite litera¯ nishi Hajime and ture student. He was also taught philosophy by O 4 in his graduation thesis explored the relationship between these two 396

¯ GETSU (1871–1918) SHIMAMURA HO

disciplines. His thesis scored an unprecedented 95 marks and was immediately published in the Waseda Bungaku magazine. In July 1894 he graduated with first-class honours and Sho¯yo¯ decided to make him his successor. When the Sino-Japanese War began in August Sho¯yo¯ employed Ho¯getsu as a writer and editor for Waseda Bungaku Co., a publisher whose office was in his own residence. He also let Ho¯getsu edit the Waseda Bungaku magazine and transcribe his lectures for publication. He appointed Ho¯getsu as an assistant in the English Department of the university responsible for recording lectures. In this way he tried to turn Ho¯getsu into a fullyfledged critic and academic. Although his work at the magazine office was demanding, Ho¯getsu’s salary was a meager 15-yen a month on which he found it difficult to survive. Despite his dire financial state a marriage to his father’s niece was arranged for him. Bunko¯’s brother, Takizo¯, was the head of the extended Shimamura family, but had no male heir and wanted to marry his only living child, Ichi, to Ho¯getsu in order to continue the family line. Their marriage seems to have been a part of the deal when Bunko¯ adopted Ho¯getsu. Ho¯getsu did not have any choice and agreed to the arranged marriage. His work for a few years after his graduation from university included the publication of his graduation thesis in the Waseda Bungaku magazine, a few pieces of fiction and many essays as well as literary criticism. In the year when his first child was born, he started with several young friends a new publishing firm called Teiyu¯bun Sha which published a literary journal Shincho¯ Gekkan (New Book Monthly), but this was discontinued after only fifteen issues. His family’s financial situation improved when he was appointed as the chief page three writer of the Yomiuri newspaper in 1898 and as a lecturer at Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯. He taught rhetoric, the history of Chinese literature and of Western aesthetics. When his second child was born in September 1899 he left the Yomiuri newspaper and found a job with the Sanseido¯ publishing company where he edited a dictionary, but in the following year he left the publisher and became a teacher of English and ethics at Waseda High School. From the end of the nineteenth century the Meiji government started to send talented young scholars to European countries to study recent developments in European arts and literature. In 1900 Natsume So¯seki was sent to England to study English and English literature, Haga Yaichi to Germany to study the modern methodology of literary studies, Asai Tadashi and Wada Eisaku to France to study fine arts, and in 1901 Taki Rentaro¯ to Germany to study music and music composition. They were all teaching at state schools. Private universities also started to send their teachers to Europe in competition with state universities. In the same year as So¯seki left for England, two former students of Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯ were sent to Germany. 397

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Ho¯getsu was chosen, probably on the recommendation of Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, for a three-year fellowship to study in England and Germany. Sho¯yo¯ had always thought that Ho¯getsu was best suited among his pupils to understand and absorb recent trends in literature, drama and the arts in Europe. Although the Meiji government were able to use part of the Sino-Japanese War reparations to send abroad specialists in the humanities, natural and social sciences, private universities could not afford to provide their teachers with sufficient salaries to enable them to live and study in Europe. Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯ had to rely on donations from its wealthy and charitable alumni to fund Ho¯getsu’s trip to England and Germany. This was made possible with generous help from Fujiwara Chu¯ichiro¯. Just before he left for London Ho¯getsu visited Fujiwara in Kyoto to thank him personally for his generosity.5 IN ENGLAND

When Ho¯ getsu arrived at Fenchurch Street Station on the afternoon of 7 May 1902 it was raining.6 Following his arrival he went to see his friend Watanabe Tetsunobu, a Buddhist priest and explorer, and moved into the lodgings at Torrington Square7 that had been found for him in advance. Like other Japanese students he visited the Japanese legation and bought an English dictionary. He deposited money at the Yokohama Specie Bank, wrote postcards, and ordered two suits, a frock coat, and trousers; these cost him seven pounds and fifteen shillings.8 He also bought a Kodak camera and a set of photo developing equipment, which cost four pounds and twelve shillings. This was a large purchase for him, as it was equivalent to four months salary. He must, however, have recouped, at least, part of his investment, because he sent the photos that he took to Japanese publishers with his essays and reports. Almost immediately after his arrival in London, he started going to evening classes in English conversation at the Metropolitan School. According to the entry in his diary for 9 June, he was offended by his teacher’s innocent question, ‘Do Japanese smoke opium?’9 Like Natsume So¯ seki, who was sensitive to the ways in which Japanese were treated in England, Ho¯ getsu too reacted sensitively to English racial attitudes towards Asians. His diary reveals some uncomfortable experiences: ‘it was unpleasant to see an English crowd staring at Indian soldiers camping at Alexandra Palace’;10 or ‘it was unpleasant to read a newspaper article in which fun was poked at Japan’.11 He moved to new lodgings at 4 Durley Road, Stamford Hill, in the house of Frederick Summers, a Unitarian minister. He seems to have been treated as part of the family and he enjoyed his few months with the Summers. Frederick Summers took him for a two-week holiday in the Lake District with his family and Unitarian followers. 398

¯ GETSU (1871–1918) SHIMAMURA HO

Frederick’s wife, Harriet, taught him to play the piano and took him to church every Sunday. Ho¯getsu moved to Oxford on 4 October 1902 and became an occasional student at Manchester College. He wanted to matriculate as a full-time student, but he could not afford the tuition and college fees. His lodgings were on Southmoore Road near Port Meadow. From there he attended lectures by George Stout on psychology, by Ernest De Sélincourt on Shakespeare and Milton, and by A.C. Bradbury on Othello. It is clear from his diary that he enjoyed being part of Oxford’s intellectual community. Stout, then a reader in psychology, invited him home for tea after his first lecture and Ho¯getsu took as a gift a copy of Kokka, a Japanese art magazine. He was invited for tea on a number of occasions and also to dinner at Corpus Christi College. He came under the intellectual influence of J. Estlin Carpenter, a theologian and religious scholar, and also the principal of Manchester College, who had translated the Lotus Sutra from Pali into English (and annotated it with Ray Davies). He also became friendly with the seventy-three-year-old philosopher and theologian, Emeritus Professor Charles Barnes Upton. After he had settled down in Oxford, he began to attend plays and concerts in Oxford and to travel to London’s West End. His specialty was aesthetics and literary criticism. Before he arrived in England he had had little interest in Western drama, but probably under the influence of Sho¯yo¯, who translated the entire works of Shakespeare into Japanese, he attended, while in London, Oxford and Berlin, every major play performed in the West End, often seeing the same drama twice or thrice if he was particularly impressed. For 763 days between 11 June 1902 and 14 July 1904, while he was in England, he saw 124 plays and operas. This means that on average he went to theatre at least once a week. He saw eight Shakespeare plays, The Merchant of Venice, Hamlet, Macbeth, Much Ado about Nothing, Merry Wives of Windsor, The Tempest, Richard II and As You Like It with great actors and actresses performing in them. He saw Ellen Terry playing Beatrice in Much Ado about Nothing and Portia in The Merchant of Venice.12 When Ho¯getsu attended The Merchant of Venice on 14 July 1903 at the Drury Lane Theatre during his summer holiday, Terry was already in her mid-fifties and her youthful beauty had gone, but he was still moved by her performance as Portia. Henry Irving was another famous actor whose performances he saw many times in the Lyceum Theatre. He saw his Faust three times, Dante twice and The Merchant of Venice once. He met Irving once in his dressing room. Wilson Summers, the son of Frederick, was a member of Irving’s company and introduced his father’s Japanese friend to the actor-manager, as he knew that Ho¯getsu was a theatre lover. Years later Ho¯getsu reminiscing about this meeting wrote: ‘Recalling from my faded memory, I think that Irving was 399

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already quite old and in fact he looked a lot older than his age … but he looked tasteful, sincere and respectable.’13 After returning to Japan, Ho¯getsu became a pioneer in the new Western-style theatre called Shingeki in Japanese along with Osanai Kaoru and translated and produced Western plays such as Ibsen’s Doll’s House and Tolstoy’s theatre version of Resurrection. It was a daunting task to transplant Western-style theatre into a Japanese environment where the only theatrical traditions known at that time were those of kabuki, noh, kyogen and bunraku with their highly stylized performing styles, stage sets, costumes, make-up and music, and non-realistic narratives. Only a few other Japanese before Ho¯getsu had actually seen the performance of modern dramas in Europe. Even Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, who introduced descriptive and psychological realism and simple colloquial style into Japanese literature in place of the traditional non-realistic narrative and ornate writing style of the Edo period, and advocated the modernization and Westernization of Japanese drama, had never been abroad, let alone seen Western productions on stage. Sho¯yo¯ had had to learn everything European from books, while Ho¯getsu had the advantage of seeing Western theatre in its home. In addition to modern acting styles in the Western style he learnt the modern way of producing and directing dramas. The production of The Vikings at Helgeland, which he saw at the Imperial Theatre, was a revelation for him. The play was directed by Gordon Craig, Ellen Terry’s son, and Ho¯getsu noted the ways in which he used the stage setting, stage lighting, and their colours to reflect the psychological states of the characters on the stage.14 During his Easter holiday in 1903, he saw Tolstoy’s Resurrection at His Majesty’s Theatre in London and ten years later this served as the basis for his production of this drama for his theatre company, Geijutsu Za, featuring his lover Matsui Sumako as its heroine. This became the greatest theatrical success in the history of Shingeki. Tolstoy’s novel was first turned into a French play through Henri Bataille’s translation. The English actor-manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree saw it in Paris and had it translated into English. Honma Hisao (see separate portrait in this volume), Ho¯getsu’s loyal disciple, later described Ho¯getsu’s attending this performance as a pivotal point for the development of the modern Japanese theatre: ‘… our master established his own theatrical company … and their performance of Resurrection became a landmark in the history of our country’s modern theatrical movements, but its foundation must be found in his attending the theatre on March 14th in Meiji 36 (1903).’15 During his stay in England his visits to the theatre became more frequent. When he was in London during university holidays, long or short, he went to see a show or sometimes two everyday:

400

¯ GETSU (1871–1918) SHIMAMURA HO

March 18th, Wednesday. In the morning, I visited Setsurei Miyake at 76 Gower Street and talked with him for a couple of hours. He gave me a Russian sketchbook but I have forgot it in his room. I wrote a letter to him at library and asked him to send it to my home address … I had lunch at library and went to Strand Theatre to see Chinese Honeymoon. It was a very lively performance. At night I saw Kipling’s The Light that Failed at Lyric Theatre. Robertson’s performance was very fine … This evening, however, I went into Apollo Theatre which was the next door to Lyrics’ by mistake. Though I came out of it quickly, I must have been tired with the theatre-going for many days in a row.16 March, 19th, Thursday. Fine. Windy and cold. I took a walk in the morning and then went to library and had lunch. I saw a circus performance at Hippodrome. A lion tamer from Germany dealt with thirty-one lions just like dogs. Very dangerous. On the way back from the circus, I bought a few used books at Charing Cross Road and two of them are about actors. At night I saw Wyndham at New Theatre and the title of the play was Rosemary. It was a pathetic story. Wyndham is the best when his role was a man of the world. The stage setting was very gay with red and white colours. This evening I paid this week’s rent, 1 pound and 13 shilling 6 pence.17

Ho¯getsu spent two happy years attending lectures at Oxford, reading books in libraries and frequently attending the theatre. Many Japanese friends and colleagues visited him in Oxford and he visited his friends and colleagues who were living in London. Most of them after returning to Japan came to have illustrious careers and remained his close friends. He spent his last year in Germany as planned, but his Berlin days were not as happy as his London and Oxford days. He had learnt German for many years, but quickly discovered that he could neither understand much of what Germans were saying, nor get himself understood. As a result he could not make good German friends like Frederick Summers and had to give up attending university lectures after one semester. His theatre going continued in Berlin and he went to see the legendary performance of Anton Chekhov’s The Bear with Max Rheinhardt’s direction and performance. He later added it to the repertoire of his Geijutsu Za company. However because of language problems he saw fewer plays in Berlin and instead went to more concerts. He went frequently to performances by the Berlin Philharmonic under famous conductors such as Hans Richter, Arthur Nikisch, Karl Munch and Richard Strauss. His Berlin life was made gloomier by the death by drowning of one of his English friends the day before his entrance to university, and later by the death of his real father.18 He found life in Berlin more expensive than in London and Oxford; in particular the rent was higher. When he

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moved into a new apartment, he had to cut his expenses and as dinner was not included, he had to make do with cold ham sandwiches between the acts of a play when he went to the theatre. He left Berlin on 7 June 1905 and made a ‘short grand’ tour of Europe visiting Austria, Hungary, Italy, France and England before he caught a boat at Southampton to take him back to Yokohama. His final stop was London where he had already spent two years. He stayed for two weeks meeting friends, packing, sending off his luggage and even saw three more plays. Frederick and Harriet Summers saw him off at Waterloo Station where he took a train to Southampton. ¯ GETSU, SUMAKO AND THE GEIJUTSUZA HO

Ho¯getsu arrived back in Japan on 10 September 1905 and was immediately appointed a lecturer in the literature department of Waseda University (Tokyo Senmon Gakko¯ had been renamed as Waseda University in 1902). He taught the history of modern English literature, modern European literature and arts, and an introduction to literature. He was commissioned to edit the Monday supplement for the Tokyo Nichi-Nichi Newspaper. The Waseda Bungaku magazine, which he used to help editing, had been suspended for publication since 1898, but he revived it and turned it into a forum for literary naturalism with contributions from himself, Masamune Hakucho¯ and Akita Ujaku. Reviving and publishing the magazine was one of the major activities of the Bungei (Literature and Arts) Association headed by Sho¯yo¯, but its new project was to establish a theatre company specializing in modern drama. Sho¯yo¯ had been eagerly awaiting Ho¯getsu’s return so that a theatre school and eventually a theatre company could be created with his help. When the theatre school was founded, Ho¯getsu was appointed as an acting instructor, while he was translating and writing plays for the company. A Doll’s House, which he translated, was first performed as an experiment on the stage built in the Bungei Association’s premises. It was later transferred to the Teikoku Theatre in November 1911 where it achieved great success. It was the first public performance of Ibsen’s A Doll’s House in Japan. He was now generally acknowledged as the founder of shingeki, one of the most advanced literary and dramatic theorists, and one of the most respected academics. The May 1909 issue of Taiyo¯ magazine chose him as the fourth most influential literary authority.19 It was at the peak of his fame that his torrid and tortured love affair with Matsui Sumako, the rising star of Shingeki and the drawing card of the Bungei Association theatre company, developed into one of the most infamous scandals in modern Japanese history. When their relationship started probably in 1911 she was still twenty-five years old, although she had been divorced twice, while Ho¯getsu was forty-two 402

¯ GETSU (1871–1918) SHIMAMURA HO

years old and had a wife, four sons and three daughters, although his third son had died at the age of four. She had little formal education and became a theatre actress through sheer will power (she was said to have received cosmetic surgery to her nose in order to pass the test to enter an acting school): he was a university professor and literary authority and had had no romantic relationship with a woman as he had had an arranged marriage. More importantly, the Bungei Association made it a rule that no member should have an amorous relationship with anybody in the association whether he or she was single or married. The Japanese traditional theatre companies were all male and single sex, and when the shingeki companies opened their doors to actresses, their directors including Sho¯yo¯ tried by prohibiting it to make sure that no such relationship turned into a scandal. Some twenty Bungei Association members had been expelled for that reason before Sumako and Ho¯getsu became intimate.20 By 1912 their liaison had become an open secret and Sho¯yo¯ consulted Takata Sanae, the first rector of Waseda University.21 Takata asked Ho¯getsu to go with him on a trip to Kyoto and in the inn where they stayed he strongly urged Ho¯getsu to give up his love affair.22 Sho¯yo¯, too, made great efforts to stop their relationship going any further.23 In 1913, however, Ho¯getsu resigned from the Bungei Association as well as from Waseda University, although he was the chair of its English department, and Sumako was expelled from the association. Now estranged from his old teacher and mentor, Sho¯yo¯, he established with Sumako and some of their colleagues and disciples the Geijutsu Za Company. Although the company’s performances were popular and well received the company suffered from financial troubles. Moreover, some leading actors left the company in protest against its operational policy that centred round their star, Sumako. Its financial problems were, however, completely resolved when Tolstoy’s Resurrection based on Ho¯getsu’s translation became one of the most popular shingeki plays in history. It first opened at the Teikoku Theatre in late March 1914 and was the centrepiece in the company’s repertoire. ‘The song of Katyusha’, which Sumako sang during the performance, was recorded in a Kyoto studio during the tour; twenty thousand records were reported to have been sold. Ho¯getsu died suddenly. Spanish flu was spreading among the actors and the staff in the Geijutsu Za Company and the flu that Sumako contracted was passed on to him. His condition did not look grave when she left her home cum office for a rehearsal at the Meijiza theatre. She later phoned from the theatre to check on his condition and was told that he was all right. However, soon after the phone call, his condition suddenly deteriorated and the doctor who was sent for immediately diagnosed pneumonia. He fell into a coma. Just before Sumako could reach him he died in the early hours of 5 403

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November 1918. Two months after his death on 5 January 1919, Sumako hanged herself in the property storeroom of the Geijutsu Za Company. One of her three suicide notes was addressed to Sho¯yo¯, her and her husband’s teacher and mentor. In this she said that because Ho¯getsu was the man she loved despite the opposition of her greatest benefactor and teacher, she had to join him in the other world now.24 She requested in all her three notes to be buried in the same grave with Ho¯getsu, but the request was never granted. ENDNOTES 1

2 3

4 5

6

7

8

9 10 11 12

13

14

15 16 17 18

19 20

Isawo Iwamachi, Hyo¯den Shimamura Ho¯getsu, Hamada: Iwami Kyo¯do Kenkyu¯ Konwa Kai, 1978, p. 288. Seiko Nakamura, Chu¯o¯ Ko¯ron, July 1911. A biographical portrait of Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯ by Brian Powell is chapter 18 in Britain and Japan 1859–1991, Themes and Personalities, ed. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, Routledge, 1991 Waseda University Library, catalogue no. Bunko 14, A 167. So¯shiro¯ Iwasa, Ho¯getsu no Belle Époche: Meiji Bungakusha to Shinseiki Europe, Tokyo: Taishu¯kan Shoten, p. 8. It is not dificult to trace his three years in England and Germany as he kept a diary (preserved in Waseda University Library). The square is now simply an extended concrete space surrounded by the Senate House of University of London, School of Oriental and African Studies and Birkbeck College and in name only. It is, however, known to some art lovers as it was in John Desmond Bernal’s flat at 22 Torrington Sq. that Picasso painted a mural. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, Waseda University Library, catalogue no. Bunko 14, A110. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, 9 June 1902. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, 14 June 1902. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, 16 June 1902. Oscar Wilde, ‘Portia: To Ellen Terry Written at the Lyceum Theatre’ declared ‘No woman Veronese looked upon / Was half so fair as thou whom I behold.’ Ho¯getsu Shimamura, ‘Gakuya de Atta Henry Irving’, Ho¯getsu Zenshu¯, vol. 8, Tokyo: Tenyu¯sha, 1920, p. 239. Ho¯getsu Shimamura, ‘Eikoku no Gekidan’, Ho¯getsu Zenshu¯, vol. 7, Tokyo: Tenyu¯sha, 1920 Hisao Honma, Bungaku to Bijutsu, Tokyo: Tokyo Do, 1942. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, 18 March 1903. Shimamura Ho¯getsu Too¯ Nikki, 19 March 1903. The only time Ho¯getsu mentioned his own father after he left his home was when he wrote an essay about his father as ‘Kokyo¯ no Chichi’, Ho¯getsu Zenshu¯, vol. 8, Tokyo: Tenyu¯sha, 1920. Taiyo May, 1909, Tokyo: Hakubun Kan, CD-Rom Version, 2014. Toita Ko¯ji, Matsui Sumako: Joyu¯ no Ai to Shi, Tokyo: Bungei Shunju¯, 1986, p. 115.

404

¯ GETSU (1871–1918) SHIMAMURA HO

21

22

23

24

Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, Kenpachi Oguri, ed., Sho¯yo¯ Nenpu, publisher unknown, 1976. Sanae Takata, ed. by Zan’un Usuda, Hanpo¯ Mukashi Banashi, Tokyo: Waseda University Press, 1927. Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯ Kenkyu¯ Shiryo¯, vol. 16, Tokyo: Shinju Sha, 1998. He wrote in his diary on 17 December, that he ‘remonstrated Masako Kobayashi [Sumako’s real name]’ to break up with Ho¯getsu. Ujaku Akita and Tei’ichi Nakagi, Sumako no Issho¯, Tokyo: Nihon Hyo¯ronsha, 1919.

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35

Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ (1881–1942), and A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations ELEANOR ROBINSON

Source: Nagasaki University Library (Economics Library)

INTRODUCTION

Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ was the author of A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations (1936), the first brief history of Anglo-Japanese relations. He came from Aichi prefecture1 but worked mainly in Nagasaki and is one of the three most prominent pre-war Nagasaki scholars. His name is not well-known these days in either Japan or Britain. However, his book was a pioneering work in its field and was considered a good introductory text for students new to the subject despite its somewhat antiquated style. It is inevitably out of date.

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¯ CHO ¯ ZO ¯ (1881–1942) MUTO

CAREER

Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ was born on 9 June 1881, in Umibe-gun, Tsushima-cho¯, which is now Tsushima city in Aichi Prefecture. He was the second son of Muto¯ Cho¯hachi. Cho¯zo¯ also had an older brother, Cho¯hei who, like Cho¯zo¯, had a scholarly bent and became a teacher at a high school in Hiroshima. In April 1893, Muto¯ entered the Nagoya Commercial High School in Nagoya city. He graduated in 1897, and went on to study at the Tokyo Commercial High School, which later became part of Hitotsubashi University. He graduated in 1905 and was appointed to teach at the To¯ado¯bunshoin (East Asian Literary School) in Shanghai, which later became the forerunner of Aichi University.2 This was the beginning of his lifetime career as an educator and a scholar. In 1907, Muto¯ was given the post of professor at Nagasaki Higher Commercial School, a post that he retained until his death in 1942. The school was eventually closed in 1951, and what has become known as the Muto¯ Collection (Muto¯ Bunko¯) of books and other resources were later incorporated into the library at the Department of Economics, Nagasaki University. Muto¯ was able to travel for his research. In 1909, he spent time once again in China and then in Korea. In 1910, when, the JapanBritish Exhibition was taking place in London, he was working between Tokyo and Nagasaki carrying out research. In 1911, the year in which the third Anglo-Japanese Alliance was signed, he went to the United States, Britain and Germany for a period of three years further study. At that time British attitudes towards Japan were generally positive. In Germany, Muto¯ studied at Freiburg University under economics scholars such as Gerhart Von Schulze-Gaevernitz (1864–1943) and Robert Liefmann (1874–1941). He also came to know the world historian, Georg Anton Hugo von Below (1858–1927) and philologist F. Kluge (1858) who is known for his etymological dictionary of German, Etymologisches W˝orterbuch der deutschen Sprache, published in 1883. Muto¯ became a relatively proficient German speaker. A number of the books in the Muto¯ Collection are in German and he wrote some of his own papers in German. In America, he met the American economist John Bates Clark (1844–1938) and his son John Maurice Clark (1884–1963). In Britain, Muto¯ became acquainted with the Irish philosopher and political economist, Francis Ysidro Edgeworth (1845–1926), and the economic historian, Sir William James Ashley (1860–1927).

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During this early period of his career, Muto¯ also came in contact with several distinguished Japanese including the Japanese economist, Koizumi Shinzo¯ (1888–1966) who had studied under Fukuzawa Yu¯kichi (1835–1901) and later became the President of Keio University. Apart from the publications, documents and other sources that Muto¯ used in his research, the vast Muto¯ Collection also holds some of his own personal items such as his personal seal, a number of letters, and some photographs. One of the photographs (believed to have been taken in May 1919) shows Muto¯ pictured with famed Japanese novelists Akutagawa Ryu¯nosuke (1892–1927), Kikuchi Kan (1888–1948) and the playwright, Nagami Tokutaro¯ (1890–1950).3 Another photograph shows him pictured together with the Japanese poet and psychiatrist, Saito¯ Mokichi (1882–1953). As a scholar specializing in Nagasaki Studies (Nagasaki-gaku), Muto¯ knew other scholars in this field. Although he was not a native of Nagasaki, he is recognized as one of the key members of the ‘triumvirate of scholars of Nagasaki Studies’.4 The other two key members were Satsuma-born historian, Nagayama Tokihide (1867–1935) who became the first head of the Nagasaki Prefectural Library in 1915, and local historian, Koga Ju¯jiro¯ (1879–1954) who had studied at the Tokyo School of Foreign Studies (now Tokyo University of Foreign Studies). Nagasaki Studies covers a wide area of research related to the study of Nagasaki and its history. The man-made island of Dejima, which is now part of Nagasaki city, is well-known for its historical connections to the world outside Japan. During Japan’s long period of isolation, it was the only place where foreign ships were officially allowed to berth. However, the Tokugawa government limited this to Chinese and Dutch ships only. Muto¯’s research was largely concerned with the early history of Japanese international relations. This is reflected in his book A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, and in The Muto¯ Collection of books and other sources in the Nagasaki University Economics Library. ¯ COLLECTION AT NAGASAKI UNIVERSITY THE MUTO

The Muto¯ Collection5 at Nagasaki University’s Faculty of Economics library is an impressive accumulation of documents, which include a number of rare books and documents. Of particular interest to scholars of historical relations between Britain and Japan are the ‘HIOGO DIPLOMATIC DOCUMENTS, 1869–73’. These are a collection of official correspondences originally sent to the British Consulate in Kobe (formerly known as Hyogo or Hiogo).6 Among the names to be found among the letters are those of the British traders, the Hooper Brothers, writing to James Joseph Enslie 408

¯ CHO ¯ ZO ¯ (1881–1942) MUTO

(first appointed in the consular service in 1861 to serve at ‘Yedo’, died 1896) who was Acting Vice-Consul at the time. There is also correspondence from the well-known British traders, the Glover Brothers, writing to the then British Consul, Abel Anthony James Gower (1836–1899), who had formerly been appointed Consul in Nagasaki in 1864 and transferred to the Consulate for Hyogo and Osaka in July 1868. The collection also contains a number of primary sources and other materials related to the study of Philipp Franz von Siebold (1796– 1866), the German doctor who travelled to Dejima to work under the auspices of the Dutch East India Company. Muto¯ had studied Siebold in great detail and published eight papers on the subject, including a paper in German entitled, Dr. Ph. Fr. Von Siebold und sein erstes Projekt einer Schule für Handelswissenschaften in Nagasaki Japan.7 A SHORT HISTORY OF ANGLO-JAPANESE RELATIONS

A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations by Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ was first published in 1936 by the Hokuseido Press in Tokyo.8 The original 1936 book has a foreword by Sir John Anthony Tilley (1869–1952) who had formerly been the British Ambassador to Japan from 1926 to 1931.9 There is also another foreword by the then British Ambassador to Japan and President of the Japan-British Society, Sir Robert Henry Clive (1877–1948).10 It is a small book of less than a hundred pages but it includes a relatively detailed discussion of early relations between Britain and Japan. In 1937, Muto¯ published a Japanese version of the book, entitled Nichiei Ko¯tsu¯-shi no kenkyu¯. In 1939, he submitted the Japanese version to Keio University and received a doctoral degree. The book contains nineteen chapters starting with a chapter on the Features of Japan’s Relations with Portugal, Spain, Holland and England and ending with a chapter on the Important Incidents of Anglo-Japanese Relations in the Meiji, Taisho and Showa (Current) Eras Relations between the English and Japanese Imperial Houses. This final chapter is not as detailed as the previous chapters and Muto¯ focuses particularly on the arrival of William Adams, whom he describes as the first Englishman mentioned in Japanese History. In the foreword to the 1936 publication, Sir John Tilley wrote: One of my own pleasantest recollections of Japan is the visit which I paid to Hirado in 1927 to unveil the monument which commemorates the brief existence of the English House in that place. Professor Muto was among the company, which attended the ceremony. The work which he has been doing fulfils the same object as the Hirado monument in helping us to remember the foundations which underlie our international friendship… 409

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Muto¯’s book and his extensive research into Anglo-Japanese relations and its history helped to maintain an element of friendly relations between the two nations at a time of growing tensions.11 Muto’s book was reprinted by Hokuseido Press in 1977. The publication of this post-war edition was arranged by Cho¯ zo¯ ’s eldest son, Muto¯ Kiichiro¯ . A foreword in Japanese to the postwar edition was written by Muto¯ ’s ‘lifelong friend’, Iwao Seiichi (1900–1988), who was a well-known professor of Japanese history at the University of Tokyo. Iwao noted that until Muto¯ ’s work had been published no introductory summary on the subject of AngloJapanese relations had existed: I found in it the pioneer spirit of the author in steering his study along the uncharted field of work. The handy volume, illustrated with rare pictures he obtained, was welcome by the public, including (sic.) foreign readers, and it was regarded as the best introductory to the subject. (Muto¯, 1977, p. vii)

Iwao also noted that it was a shame that the book did not include an up to date account of Anglo-Japanese relations in the twentieth century, but despite this and the fact that it has been forty years since the book was initially published, ‘…it still retains its value, as it used to 40 years ago.’(ibid.) The book is no longer in print, but copies12 may be found in second-hand books stores. One valuable discovery made by by Mutõ was a picture of HMS Phaeton, an English ship which arrived in Nagasaki in 1808 disguised as a Dutch ship in order to gain access to the island of Dejima. He identified it as the Phaeton because he had found a similar picture in Tohoku University. The book includes reproductions of several other historical documents such as the original Privileges granted to the English by Tokugawa Ieyasu in 1613. CONCLUSION

Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯ died on 27 June 1942 in the Higashi-Yamate area of Nagasaki city. The area is also home to the old British Consulate building as well as several other Western-style buildings. He was originally buried in the Nittaiji Temple cemetery precincts within the city of Nagoya, in Muto¯’s birthplace, Aichi Prefecture. The cemetery is now managed separately under the name of Kitayama Cemetery. However, the plot where Muto¯’s grave had originally been is currently empty13 (as of 2013). Muto¯’s book, A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, had been published in 1936, the same year that the famous February 26th 410

¯ CHO ¯ ZO ¯ (1881–1942) MUTO

Incident occurred in Japan. Just months before Muto¯’s death, in December 1941, the Asia-Pacific War had broken out with Japan’s attack on the United States’ naval base at Pearl Harbor and the invasion of Thailand and British Malaya. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

10

Aichi has long standing connections with Britain going back to the early seventeenth century with the arrival in Japan of William Adams who developed a good relationship with Aichi-born Tokugawa Ieyasu. History of Aichi University http://www.aichi-u.ac.jp/foreign/english/ history.html (retrieved 2013/07/15). Nagami Tokutaro¯, a native of Nagasaki, was also known as a collector of Nanban art works. Nanban translates literally as ‘southern barbarians’ and refers to Spanish and Portuguese Jesuit missionaries and traders who came to Japan during the Muromachi (1337–1573), Azuchi-Momoyama (1573–1603) and Edo (1603–1868) periods. Evidence of his work in this field can be seen in Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯, Yamada Kentaro¯ (ed.) Kaigai Bunka to Nagasaki, (Chikura Publishing Company, 1977) See Miyazaki S., ed. (1952) Muto¯-Bunko¯ Mokuroku, Nagasaki University Library Economic Branch, Nagasaki. The document can be viewed in full online, in four PDF files; although some of the handwriting is difficult to decipher as some of it has become very faded over time. The documents can be seen at the following URL addresses: http://www.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/search/ecolle/muto/eturan/180_1.pdf (retrieved 2013/07/08) http://www.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/search/ecolle/muto/eturan/180_2.pdf (retrieved 2013/07/08) http://www.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/search/ecolle/muto/eturan/180_3.pdf (retrieved 2013/07/08 http://www.lb.nagasaki-u.ac.jp/search/ecolle/muto/eturan/180_4.pdf (retrieved 2013/07/08) In Jubiläums-band herausgegeben von der Deutschen Gestesllschaft für Natur und Völkerkande Ostasiens anlösslich ihres 60 Jaährigen Bestehens, 1873– 1933. Teil II, Tokyo 1933. A full list of Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯’s published works can be found in, Muto¯ Kyo¯ju Zaishoku Sanju¯nen Kinen Ronbunshu published by Nagasaki Ko¯to¯ Sho¯gyo¯ Gakko¯ Kenkyu¯kan in 1945. Hokuseido Press has been in existence since 1914. The company continues to publish books particularly in the fields of English Studies and British and American Literature. It also publishes books on Japanese culture for an international audience. See: http://www.hokuseido.com/index2.html. Hugh Cortazzi, (2004) British Envoys in Japan 1859–1972, Global Oriental, pp. 123–31. Hoare, James, (1999) Embassies in the East: the Story of the British Embassies in Japan, China, and Korea from 1859 to the Present. Richmond, Surrey: Curzon Press. 411

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11

12

13

In 1936 Lieutenant Commander Ishimaru To¯ta’s incendiary work Japan Must Fight Britain was translated into Englishby G.V. Rayment and published by Hurst & Blackett. In Sasebo Shidankai’s local history journal entitled Danrin, No.28, Ide Ichiro¯ discusses a very special copy of Muto¯’s work, A Short History of Anglo-Japanese Relations. It is special because it was originally presented to the former Prime Minister of Japan, Yoshida Shigeru (1878–1967) upon his appointment as Japanese Ambassador in London. Like Muto¯, Yoshida was also a graduate of Tokyo Commercial High School, which later became Hitotsubashi University According to staff records at the cemetery, Muto¯’s son, Kiichiro¯’s family are now based in Tokyo. Although Kiichiro¯ has now also passed on, before he died he had the grave removed on 30 June 2007.

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36

Yanada Senji (1906–1972): Teacher of Japanese at SOAS SADAO OBA AND ANNE KANEKO

SOAS students in the late 1960s remember Yanada Senji as a mild-mannered man, always impeccably dressed in the style of a 1930s upper-class Englishman. His English was heavily accented but he smiled frequently. He taught grammar from the book Teach Yourself Japanese, which he had co-authored with Charles Dunn,1 in addition to essays and letter writing (required for the final exams) obviously relishing the formal set phrases. He himself was formal in the best possible way, where formality is really courtesy in visible form. He was a conscientious teacher, bordering on the pedantic, and some of his students had no inkling of his turbulent life and the identity crisis, which plagued him after the war. Others had heard that he had been a newspaper reporter who had stayed on in Britain when war began, who had been interned along with other enemy residents on the Isle of Man but subsequently recruited to aid the war effort, teaching Japanese at SOAS to young linguists 413

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who would serve as interrogators and translators in the field and later in occupied Japan. A TAISHO INTELLECTUAL ABROAD

Yanada Senji was born in July 1906 in the Ushigome area of Tokyo, north east of Shinjuku, a lively residential area, home to many literary and cultural figures. His father, Kyu¯jiro¯, was originally from Hiroshima, but had found employment in the lower house of the Diet (taking shorthand) to finance his studies at Senshu¯ University. In 1899 he joined the newspaper Chu¯gai Sho¯gyo¯ Shinpo¯ (forerunner to the Nihon Keizai Shimbun) and in 1926 rose to the rank of president.2 His eldest son Senji graduated in economics from Tokyo Imperial University in 1931 and like his father went into the newspaper business. In July 1932 he travelled to Los Angeles to cover the Olympics for his father’s paper and from there went on to London where he became London correspondent to Ho¯chi Shimbun. By 1936 he was a member of The Japan Society. In October 1938 he was recruited onto the London staff of the Yomiuri Shimbun. Two articles written by Yanada in 1934 for Ho¯chi Shimbun3 are articulate and well reasoned and present a vivid analysis of the political situation in Europe. In four articles under the headline ‘Confused Political Situation in Europe’ he described the twists and turns in international negotiations, which would lead to the Franco-Soviet Treaty of Mutual Assistance (concluded the following year), and warned that Russia had ambitions in the Far East. He concluded, ‘maintaining the status quo in Europe with its multifold irrationalities and contradictions is becoming increasingly difficult’. The long article ‘British Feelings towards Japan and Britain’s Economic Mission to Manchuria’ reported on Britain’s newfound enthusiasm for trade with Manchuria. He wrote about the twenty-page supplement issued by the Daily Telegraph with its photographs of the Imperial couple and messages from the great and good. But there was a sting in the tail of this paean to Manchuria. ‘The British dislike bloody events that disturb the peace. … If a country does business with them peacefully, and they get on well, the British will assist that country in various ways.’ From 1937 Japanese censorship escalated and foreign correspondents became increasingly nervous about what they wrote. Much of the material for this portrait of Yanada Senji comes from Oba Sadao’s book Senchu¯ Rondon Nihongo Gakko¯4 translated by Anne Kaneko as The ‘Japanese’ War 5. Let us take the next part of the story from that translation: Yanada probably made up his mind before the war to stay on in England in the event of hostilities. In fact the British government 414

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seems to have had him marked out for some time with the intention of having him aid the war effort. On 9 December 1941, immediately after Pearl Harbor, the Daily Sketch in its ‘Inside Information’ column reported that Britain and the US would soon announce an Army and Navy alliance … to coordinate operations against Japan … The article went on to say that, ‘One of the five Japanese journalists permitted to stay in London by the Ministry of Information sent a telegram to Tokyo last night resigning. He is very friendly towards Britain and it is likely that he will stay here to broadcast.6

Yanada did later work with the BBC so it was almost certainly he who sent the telegram to Tokyo. Records in the head office of Yomiuri Shimbun show that he was officially employed until August 1943. Yanada was interned in the detention camp for Japanese on the Isle of Man where he seems to have enjoyed special status among his compatriots. In later life his wife Cecily enjoyed telling people about his life there and how he had Japanese minions waiting on him. A Japanese ship that was in the port of London, when war was declared, was detained, and the sailors sent to the Isle of Man camp. Because of his background and education, Yanada immediately became the daimyo of the group, and they were courteous, deferential, and helpful to him.7 At any rate, he became librarian and enjoyed his enforced free time reading avidly. There was a successful lobby, however, for his release and he was freed along with another journalist, Matsukawa8 of Do¯mei Press. He returned to London and in August 1942 married Cecily Shimizu, the English widow of a Japanese antique dealer. Yanada began teaching on the wartime courses at SOAS in September 1942. THE WARTIME COURSES AT SOAS

Before the Second World War, the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London was the only institution in Britain teaching Japanese but student numbers had dwindled to a handful. As war clouds gathered over Europe and tension mounted in the Far East, the School repeatedly asked the War Office for funds to train linguists. But only after Pearl Harbor when Japanese forces swept through South East Asia occupying Hong Kong on Christmas Day 1941, Singapore on 15 February 1942 and Mandalay on 1 May were funds forthcoming – for the Japanese speakers in the Far East whom the War Office had hoped to mobilize had been either killed or captured. Clearly, if large numbers of linguists were to be trained to meet the need in India and the Far East, students with the potential to master Japanese in a very short time would have to be specially trained. So grammar school boys who had already mastered a ‘difficult’ language were recruited. Ronald Dore, later the eminent sociologist, was a sixth former at a grammar school in Poole: 415

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How soon after Pearl Harbor the need for interpreters and translators sank into the Whitehall consciousness I do not know, but the recruitment notices went out to the schools in February and thirty bright-eyed seventeen and eighteen year olds (most of whom had not made Japanese their first choice of ‘Oriental language to be learned for military purposes’) appeared on May Day 1942 … (it seemed) rather good fun and a splendid way of escaping the looming threat of the Higher National Certificate examination.9

This was the state scholarship course. Other famous alumni include Peter Parker10 (later Chairman of British Rail), John McEwan (later lecturer in Japanese at Cambridge), and Patrick O’Neill11 who went on to become professor of Japanese at SOAS. While the War Office dragged its feet, the School had had the prescience to appoint Frank Daniels12 as senior lecturer in Japanese in 1939. Daniels had gone to Japan in 1928 as assistant to the naval attaché in the British embassy and stayed on teaching English in Otaru and later in Shizuoka. Daniels was a committed teacher and an advocate of Ogden’s ‘Basic English’, which purported to express any concept using only 850 basic words. He arrived in England via America with the manuscript of his Japanese-English dictionary and his talented wife Otome. Daniels took up his position at SOAS in spring 1941. When those first students arrived in May 1942 their teachers were General Piggott (the Army’s Japan expert), Daniels, and the incumbent lecturer and scholar Yoshitake Saburo¯. Daniels needed more teachers and he directed his search towards the Japanese wives of British men and Japanese nationals who had stayed on in Britain. From these he appointed journalists Yanada and Matsukawa Baiken, Aiko Clark who later went on to broadcast with the BBC, a Taiwanese Presbyterian minister known as Ko Shoki, four second-generation Nisei from the Canadian army, and his wife Otome. Following on from the state scholarship course there were three services interrogators’ courses starting in August 1942, November 1943 and February 1944, all lasting fifteen months (alumni include the novelist Richard Mason, Charles Dunn later professor at SOAS and the diplomat Sir Hugh Cortazzi). Similarly there were five courses for translators (alumni include Douglas Mills later Cambridge University, Louis Allen13 later University of Durham, and Kenneth Gardner14 later British Library). Finally a services general-purpose course ran from June 1944 until December 1945. Between 1942 and 1947, 648 personnel learned Japanese at SOAS on the wartime courses. The services general-purpose course began by teaching basic conversation. Yoshitake would produce a list of sixty questions used in interrogations. The first was Anata wa dare desu ka (Who are you?). When they had been memorized, Yanada went on to explain the grammar. 416

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Richard Mason was a graduate of the interrogators’ course. For his first novel The Wind Cannot Read (1947)15 he is believed to have modelled the protagonist’s Japanese girlfriend on Aiko Clark and his teacher on Yanada: He planned his lessons with remarkable industry. Each day he would give us a list of new words, round which he had written sentences. These were inscribed in meticulous handwriting in his black file, the Japanese characters by the side of the English translation. Some of them showed a curious knowledge. ‘The sun is ninety-three million miles from the earth, but the moon is only two hundred and forty thousand miles away.’ ‘In England there are sixty-six varieties of butterflies.’ His information was always correct.16

In the next stage students were taught hiragana and katakana and were expected to learn 1,800 basic characters. General Piggott gave lectures on the –nari style which was used only in military communications and Otome Daniels taught them how to read the cursive style, so¯sho¯, so that they would be able to read handwritten letters. There were also supplementary lectures on aspects of Japanese culture and society and even visits to the Imperial War Museum to watch Japanese films from the archives. Yanada was a valuable member of the teaching team. He and Aiko Clark were the only two who spoke the Tokyo standard and in addition to giving instruction in the colloquial language, translation work and exposition of grammatical points, Yanada recorded twenty-seven gramophone discs for listening and use in pronunciation drill. The use of gramophone records for language training was a new innovation developed with enthusiasm by the department of phonetics and linguistics at SOAS with technical assistance from the Post Office research unit. The department commended Yanada in its 1944 report: ‘By arrangement with the Far Eastern Department, we have also had the inestimable benefit of Mr Yanada’s great understanding and skill.’17 It is hard to imagine how those young men after only fifteen months study of the language coped when they reached India, interrogating prisoners taken at Imphal and Kohima, or translating captured papers. Later graduates worked inside Burma following the retreating Japanese and at the South East Asia Translation and Interrogation Centre (SEATIC) in New Delhi. When war ended they continued to play an important role in the repatriation of Japanese soldiers and in the occupation of Japan. The work of the School was commended by British army intelligence in India.18 But what is perhaps most remarkable about the wartime courses at SOAS is that at a time when anti-Japanese propaganda was at its height, 417

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there was no such bias in class. The instructors, British scholars and educated Japanese such as Yanada, appealed to their students’ intellectual curiosity as they tried to get them to understand Japan’s complex language and culture. The atmosphere of the class was, as many of the graduates remembered with nostalgia, on the contrary pro-Japanese. That many of the graduates went on to advance Japanese studies in Britain or work with Japan in the public and private sectors, and spend lifetimes working to promote Anglo-Japanese relations is testimony to the work of the teachers on the wartime courses at SOAS. POST-WAR DILEMMA

During the war years Yanada had been a rigorous and confident teacher but when five graduates of the state scholarship course returned to SOAS four years later they found him a changed man, quiet and middle-aged. He had always been on the serious side, and had always been reserved. His teaching was not affected: his lessons in Japanese reading, writing and grammar could not be faulted. But somehow he was a shadow of his former self. Yanada had given up his Japanese nationality and acquired British nationality in 1947. His family in Japan wrote many times asking him to visit but he would not go. Instead he asked visiting colleagues to let his family know he was well. In 1951 Douglas Mills met Yanada Kyu¯jiro¯ who was delighted to have news of his son. But even when his father died in 1954, Yanada did not go to the funeral. It was not until 1963, more than thirty years after he left for the Los Angeles Olympics in 1932, that he eventually made the trip. Why was he so reluctant to go back? During the war, conversation, even between the Japanese staff at SOAS, tended to be superficial. However confident Yanada was about his decision to stay in Britain, he must have constantly worried lest the Japanese authorities discover he was collaborating with the enemy and carry out reprisals against his family. Indeed one of his colleagues at SOAS remembered that after the war Yanada received letters from Japan saying that stones had been thrown at the family home. In 1943 he had worked briefly for the BBC World Service to Japan although he had never been on air. William Joyce, better known as Lord Haw Haw, the Nazi broadcaster, was hanged in 1946. Although he was in no such danger, Yanada would certainly have felt uncomfortable visiting Japan and would have wanted to avoid questions about how he spent the war years, or how he had managed to acquire British nationality so soon after the war. Time heals and by 1963 he had established a position as an academic at a leading university, an image he would have been happier to promote in Japan both privately within his family and at large. 418

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Although he must have experienced great anguish with the news of the atomic bomb, the bombing of Tokyo and post-war deprivation, Yanada was a Taisho intellectual with deep-seated beliefs. Perhaps he needed to stick to his principles to justify his war work. Mallory Fromm recalls: I had two long one-on-one conversations with Yanada. The first was in late April 1970. The US military had just launched an incursion into Cambodia, and the SOAS student body, inflamed by that firebrand Gordon ‘Brixton’ Gillespie, dug out a Cambodian student and, placing him in a position of honor, blocked the entrance to the old SOAS building before marching to Grosvenor Square to give the US ambassador what for … I decided to breach the blockade and have a class with Yanada. I was the only student inside, and he the only teacher. I don’t remember his exact words, but I clearly remember their gist. He told me that when he left Japan in 1932, it was after the Manchurian Incident, which caused him grave concern about Japan’s future. It seems like the promise of the so-called Taisho Democracy was waning at the expense of militarism and authoritarianism. Yanada told me that he considered that he was entering into exile because, if the political climate continued in this direction, Japan would be an unhealthy place for him. He said that he had agreed to breach the student blockade and meet me because it reminded him of the old Japanese militarism, and he did not want anyone to be coerced or denied freedom for any reason.19

So Yanada seems to have decided on self-imposed exile early in life. He left the country with his Taisho ideals intact. He never had to compromise in order to survive like those he left behind. When he left Japan, his father Yanada Kyu¯jiro¯, president of Chu¯gai Sho¯gyo¯ Shinpo¯, was in a difficult position. The paper’s printing presses had sustained heavy damage in the Great Tokyo Earthquake of 1923 and Yanada had responded with an aggressive policy of investment in machinery and expansion of sales. But as revenues fell in the depression, servicing the debt threatened the future of the paper. Mitsui, the owners, stepped in and as part of the rescue package, Yanada resigned in 1933 and there was a total change of management in January 1934.20 Tellingly, the cost-cutting measures, which followed, and emphasis on the business community as its core readership, enabled the paper to carry on through the war years and emerge as the Nikkei we know today. Obama Toshie, the influential critic who worked with Yanada Kyu¯jiro¯ at Chu¯gai, later described him as an ‘old style reporter who went along with those in power’.21 So in 1932, a year before he is forced to resign, Yanada Kyu¯jiro¯ sends his son off to Los Angeles to cover the Olympics. Was he trying to protect his son from the harsh realities of life? Senji belonged to 419

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the elite: raised in a well to do household and with the opportunity to become a newspaper reporter, one of most fiercely contested jobs for graduates of Tokyo and Keio universities. He left Japan around the time of his 26th birthday, at the height of youthful idealism. Throughout his life he occupied the moral high ground but it was a solitary state of mind and he suffered for his principles. Mallory Fromm again: Our second chat was during the summer of 1970. He invited me and one other student to his home to have tea with him and his wife. His home was cozy, over-furnished and small. His wife was a sturdy middle-class woman with a hearty laugh … It was obvious that Yanada was very ill, and I think that I made the trip to his house because I did not know if I would see him again otherwise … His wife told me that Yanada had stomach cancer. I was only 21, and said that I was surprised anyone as mellow as he would get stomach cancer. She told me that he was not at all mellow. He was wound-up on the inside, always thinking and sometimes worrying. He told me that he came from a very traditional family. ‘My grandmother did o-haguro, that’s how traditional we were. My mother was more modern. It was funny to see one with black teeth and one with white teeth.’ He said he feared that at the time he left Japan, the nation was giving up its good traditions (art, culture, free speech) and promoting bad traditions (feudalism, faux bushido, blind devotion to authority). Yanada used the words ‘feudal’ and ‘feudalism’ quite a bit when he talked about the unpleasant side of Japan.22

It is evident that Yanada was constantly pulled in different directions, torn between the two countries and it is difficult to decide whether he liked, or loathed, Japan. Thankfully, he seems to have enjoyed the visit he eventually made to Japan in 1963 accompanied by his wife Cecily. They arrived at Haneda on 29 January, stayed at International House in Tokyo and on 3 February had lunch with a member of the ¯ shimo of Senshu¯ University, followed by Yanada family and Mr O memorial services at the Yanada family grave at Renko¯ji temple in Bunkyo¯ ward, Tokyo.23 While in Japan he wrote three articles for Asahi Shimbun on British perceptions of Japan.24 In the third article, he introduced the new ‘experts’ who, building on their experiences in the war, were trying to understand non-European cultures in Asia and Africa. Scholars in Japanese studies had mastered the language, immersed themselves in the culture and were trying to see things from a Japanese perspective. He praised the valuable work of these scholars in a growing range of disciplines and welcomed their outreach activities to secondary schools, which would not only foster the next generation of experts but also raise general awareness of Japan. 420

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After several stopovers, the couple returned to London and Yanada settled back into teaching at SOAS. A CONSCIENTIOUS TEACHER

During the 1960s Yanada met many visiting academics from Senshu¯ ¯ shimo Kanae University where his father had been chancellor. Mr O in a long letter to Oba Sadao describes these visits. Yanada seems to have been hospitable, giving the academics lunch in the SOAS refectory and conversing for many hours. The academics form a link with his father, and he seems more than happy to engage with them. ¯ shimo in August 1967 that Yanada Professor Sunada Takuji told O ‘seemed gentler than his father but wore his hair combed back in exactly the same way and one could see the resemblance’.25 By this time Yanada was teaching Japanese to a new generation of undergraduates. The wartime courses had provided the Far East Department with ‘the makings of a tested beginners’ language course’.26 Lists of vocabulary and kanji, built up by Daniels since the time he was in Japan, had been arranged in order of frequency and importance. Yanada had done much of the work in grading vocabulary and kanji according to difficulty and was quite ingenious in the task. After the war these lists were compiled into a dictionary and a graded course of exercises and reading texts for the general student. Over time these would become that yellow and black EUP classic Teach Yourself Japanese, written by Dunn and Yanada, first published in 1958 and reprinted at least eighteen times (1983). In 300 pages and 30 lessons, Teach Yourself Japanese set out to teach the student to speak Japanese. Each lesson was packed with grammar and translation exercises. Sometimes it got bogged down and all the 1960s students the authors contacted commented that actually it would have been very difficult to ‘teach yourself’ and they were glad to have the help of the authors to elaborate. Yanada was a conscientious teacher who was adept at explaining the basic principles of Japanese grammar. Admittedly some of the examples stretched the language to illustrate a certain grammatical point but in the main it gave a thorough grounding in modern Japanese grammar. Unlike Japanese language books these days, Teach Yourself Japanese was written in romaji: no characters were used. Moreover, the book has come under criticism for its use of the kunrei-shiki style of romanization (introduced by the Japanese government in 1937) as opposed to the Hepburn system, which is widely used today. So michi (road) in the Hepburn style is romanized as miti, and boshi (hat) as boosi. But the pronunciation was not so difficult to master and this romanization may have made some grammatical changes easier to understand.27 Certainly the doubling of the vowel to show a long vowel 421

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rather than using a macron is a more obvious way of demonstrating this important point of pronunciation. Yanada also collaborated with P.G. O’Neill in the writing of An Introduction to Written Japanese, which showed students how to write and use 680 basic Japanese characters. The list had its origin in a selection of 714 compiled for use by Daniels and introduced into the beginners’ course at SOAS in 1942. Since then the list had been continually revised by Yanada in the light of teaching experience and developments in Japan.28 The selection of these characters (out of over 1,800 in common use), the transcriptions and exercises made this a classic textbook for students beginning Japanese language studies. Yanada was the Japanese department’s in-house native speaker and with decades of experience he was an invaluable member of the team. He was likeable, easy going, and seems to have worked well with the other members of staff. Though never in the limelight, his contribution to the post-war teaching of Japanese, at that time a comparatively unknown language in Britain is beyond doubt. But certainly his language was formal. Dr Richard Sims, one of his colleagues at SOAS, recalls Yanada relating an anecdote (this would be before he left Japan) about trying to warn a mother that her child was in danger by saying ‘kiken desu’ and then having to add ‘abunai’ because she had not understood the more formal language. In the classroom Yanada was at his best teaching letter writing, and his letters, with their deferential language and polite turn of phrase, were a tour de force. In 1965 the Yanada’s moved to a country cottage in Oxted, Surrey, and in 1970, when the large garden got too much for them to a house on the High Street. He clearly loved his home and his pet animals. A student at SOAS recalls: He would describe the care that had to be taken in breaking the ice on his goldfish pond in severe weather. One must never use a hammer or anything of that sort – that could create a shock wave that could kill or injure the fish. So, one had to heat a saucepan full of water, turning the mizu into o-yu and gently place the said saucepan on the surface of the ice, so that it melted a hole, so allowing the fish to be fed, and allowing fresh oxygen to get in under the ice. He was a very approachable man who was happy to answer one’s difficulties and to help in whatever way he could.29

Yanada Senji was a good man: serious, conscientious, formal, polite, sensitive, kind. Caught up in the vicissitudes of history he responded with dignity, confident that he had made the right decision – though finding it hard to accept emotionally. He taught at SOAS until January 1972. In those last days he was, as always, impeccably dressed in dark 422

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blue three-piece suit, with his grey hair combed back – but jaundiced from the cancer. He died on 16 April 1972 and in accordance with his wishes, there was no grave: his ashes were scattered on British soil, in the crematorium’s rose garden. ENDNOTES 1

2 3

4 5

6 7

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A biographical portrait of Charles Dunn by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013. Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha-shi p. 33. ¯ shu Seikyoku, four articles 17 – 20 August 1934 and Eikoku Awatadashii O no Tainichi Kanjo¯ to Manshu¯koku Keizai Shisetsu, 18 September 1934. Oba Sadao, Senchu¯ Rondon Nihongo Gakko¯ Tokyo: Chuokoronsha, 1988. Anne Kaneko, The ‘Japanese’ War: London University’s WWII secret teaching programme and the experts sent to beat Japan, Folkestone, Japan Library, 1995. A. Kaneko, op. cit., p. 22. Dr M. Fromm, SOAS undergraduate and postgraduate student 1969– 1980, in conversation with Yanada, 1970, letter to A Kaneko, July 2013. Matsukawa also taught at SOAS during the war. Ed. Ian Nish, Folkestone: Japan Library 1994, pp. 272–3 A biographical portrait of Peter Parker by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. A biographical portrait of P.G. O’Neill by Phillida Purvis is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2013. A biographical portrait of Otome and Frank Daniels by Ron Dore is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume I, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library, 1934. A biographical portrait of Louis Allen by Phillida Purvis is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2004. A biographical portrait of Kenneth Gardner by Yu-Ying Brown is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2010. Norimasa Morita in his portrait of David Lean in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental 2013, comments on Richard Mason and his novel, see pp. 459–65. R. Mason, The Wind Cannot Read (1947), p. 34. SOAS Report of the Governing Body, 1944, p. 48. F. Daniels, War-time Courses (SOAS, 1945), Appendix F, p. 1. M. Fromm, op. cit. Senkanki Nihon no Shinbun Sangyo¯ (Japanese Newspaper Industry during the Interwar Period), ed. Kase Kazutoshi, Institute of Social Sciences Series No.48, The University of Tokyo, 2011, p. 24. Boku wa Nikumarekko, Obama Ritoku, Nihon Keizai Shimbunsha 1971, p. 87 quoted in Senkanki Nihon no Shinbun Sangyo op. cit. p. 24. 423

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22 23

24 25

26 27

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M. Fromm, op. cit. ¯ shimo Kanae, head of the secretariat Senshu University, to Letter from O S. Oba, October 1983 Igirisujin no Nihon oyobi Nihonjinkan, 3, 5, & 6 March 1963. ¯ shimo Kanae, head of the secretariat Senshu¯ University, In letter from O to S. Oba, October 1983. F. Daniels, Inaugural lecture, SOAS 1962. The authors thank K. van der Schyff for this point. ‘… the kunrei system automatically takes care of the changes in pronunciation that occur naturally in the language due to agglutination. For example, kasu – kasi (kunrei system) as opposed to kasu –kashi (Hepburn system) … matu – mati rather than matsu –machi and so forth.’ Preface to An Introduction to Written Japanese by P.G. O’Neill and S. Yanada, London 1963. K. van der Schyff, letter to A. Kaneko July 2013.

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Sakurai Jo¯ji (1858–1939): Leading Chemist and No¯ Drama Specialist YOSHIYUKI KIKUCHI

INTRODUCTION

Trained in Tokyo and London with two British chemists, Sakurai started his career as one of the first Japanese chemistry professors at Tokyo University in 1882.1 He then came to play a pivotal role in the promotion of scientific research in Japan in the twentieth century as a founder of: the Institute of Physical and Chemical Research (Rikagaku Kenkyu¯jo, or Riken, in 1917), the National Research Council of Japan (Gakujutsu Kenkyu¯ Kaigi, or Gakken, in 1921) and the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (Nihon Gakujutsu Shinko¯kai or Gakushin, 1931).2 He was also one of the authors of a pioneering study in English published in 19133 of the Japanese classical drama, No¯. Sakurai was a loyal friend of his co-author, paleobotanist turned birth control advocate, Marie C. Stopes (1880–1958).4 CHILDHOOD IN KANAZAWA

Sakurai Jo¯ji, or Jo¯goro¯ as he was called in his childhood, was born in 1858 as the sixth son of a samurai family of the Kaga domain in 425

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Kanazawa, the domain capital.5 Sakurai lost his father, Jintaro¯, in 1863 at age four, so he was raised by his mother, Yao, who played a role in determining his academic path. To put Sakurai’s early education into context, it is useful to compare it with the parallel case of the ‘first generation’ of Japanese physicists in the early Meiji period.6 It is characterized as a group of boys born in the 1850s, all from samurai families, who were trained in the Chinese classics up to age fifteen at a domain school. They were then chosen by their domains to pursue Western learning either in Japan or abroad according to the ko¯shinsei system of the Nanko¯ (the antecedent school of the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯). The ko¯shinsei literally meant the students offered to Emperor Meiji (1852–1912, r. 1867–1912) by domain lords. Though a son of samurai, Sakurai’s early educational background deviated from this pattern in several important ways. First of all, he entered the Nanko¯ in 1871 not as a ko¯shinsei, for which he was too young (the age range being sixteen to twenty), but under the new selection system by means of written and oral examinations in a Western language. Secondly, his elementary education as a samurai was not school-based and was brief: Sakurai learned calligraphy, Japanese and Chinese studies and swordsmanship between 1866 (aged eight) and 1869 (aged eleven) with private tutors before entering in 1870, on the advice of his mother,7 a domain school of English learning in Kanazawa. Sakurai therefore turned to Western learning at the relatively young age of eleven. Thirdly, during his year at the school of English learning in Kanazawa, he was sent with other pupils to Nanao, the remote naval port of the Kaga domain on the Noto Peninsula, to learn English, without an interpreter,8 for seven months directly from an English teacher called Percival Osborn, As Sakurai himself recalled, he had therefore a sound basis in English and easily passed the entrance examination. As a result unlike most other students,9 he easily adapted to the teaching environment of the Nanko¯, where all teaching was delivered by Western teachers in Western languages It was probably in Kanazawa that Sakurai developed his lifelong passion for theatre. In his school essay entitled ‘The Effect of Theatres upon the People of a Country’, submitted to one of his American teachers at Tokyo, William Elliot Griffis (1843–1928), he wrote: In Japan, the theatre serves not only as a means of popular amusement but also affords much assistance to the education of the people, especially the children, or those of the lower class or farmers, who cannot read. … When a countryman or a farmer, who first comes from a country, goes to theatre, he might possibly laugh at some very tragic stage, the people around him, thinking that ‘he is very foolish’ in 426

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their minds, will laugh at him. The second time when he goes there, he will not so much a foolish thing, but will understand when he ought to laugh or when shed tears. In this way, he will, little by little, pass from the state of ignorance to an educated man, learn morals and manners, and how all the good men spent their life and how all the bad men were punished.10

Occasional grammatical mistakes aside, this quotation shows the young Sakurai’s interest and experience in viewing theatrical performances, which proved important in his subsequent cultural life. SAKURAI AT TOKYO AS A STUDENT

Sakurai studied at the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ and its antecedents between 1871 (when he was thirteen) and 1876 (when he was eighteen). He attended the English division of the preliminary course for three years, mainly with Griffis, and the specialist course of the Chemistry Department for two years under the British chemist Robert William Atkinson (1850–1929) (see separate biographical portrait in this volume of Atkinson). Atkinson had the services of Masaki Taizo¯ (1845–1896), his laboratory assistant and a former samurai from the Cho¯shu¯ domain. Both had studied chemistry at University College London (UCL) with Alexander William Williamson (1824–1904) Sakurai did well at Tokyo. Atkinson’s first annual report submitted to the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ commented on his second-year chemistry students for 1875: The second-year students of this department showed a remarkable aptitude for chemistry through this year’s learning and began to do chemical investigations (kagaku shiken) on their own. From this I have to say that they take this science seriously and more and more aspire to study it.11

As Sakurai was at the top of Atkinson’s chemistry class in July 1875, it can be assumed that this comment referred among others to Sakurai.12 He was then selected as a government overseas student by the Ministry of Education and went to England in 1876 before entering the final, third year of the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯. Sakurai thus missed the opportunity, which Atkinson deplored,13 to do a graduation thesis under Atkinson’s supervision. This omission doubtless affected Sakurai’s development as a chemist. As I discussed in my portrait of Atkinson, his teaching programme at Tokyo was biased towards applied chemistry and integrated the Japanese scholarly tradition of jitsugaku, fieldwork on Japanese indigenous manufactures and networking with local manufacturers, 427

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especially in the final year devoted to graduation work. Sakurai completed his chemical studies quite differently. SAKURAI’S SCIENTIFIC AND CULTURAL TRAINING IN LONDON

Sakurai started his career as a ‘pure’ chemist with a focus on the emerging field of physical chemistry during his student years at UCL in 1876–1881 under Williamson’s direction. Williamson’s own penchant for chemical theories and physical chemistry had a tremendous impact on the curriculum of the Faculty of Science at UCL which he helped to frame.14 Of particular importance to Sakurai was the fact that science students at UCL, who wanted some kind of scholarship, had to turn to the Clothworkers’ Company Exhibition, which required them to excel in both chemistry and physics. This exhibition, instituted in 1875, was funded by the Clothworkers’ Company, but the choice of subjects was made by the UCL Senate. Although Williamson was not a member of the internal committee of the senate that discussed the scheme for the exhibition, it was on Williamson’s initiative that the senate appointed this committee, and he most probably exerted some influence through other committee members, such as Thomas Hewitt Key (1799–1875), his father-in-law, and George Carey Foster (1835–1919), his former student and assistant who had become his physics colleague in 1865. Sakurai chose to study chemistry and physics with Williamson, Foster and Oliver Lodge (1851–1940) in order to sit the joint examination for the Clothworkers’ Exhibition. In 1879 he obtained the scholarship that substantially supported his research, which was closely supervised by Williamson. However, as Sakurai himself explained in 1937, it was not the ‘scientific training’ alone that he received there: Having had the rare fortune of being in England at such a glorious time, I could not and would not confine myself to scientific studies alone, but wishing to look upon England with more widely opened eyes I studied something of English History, of English Literature, of English Art and, even, of English drama. At the same time, I had the great good fortune of making some very dear and life-long friends and, through them, of knowing something of English homes and of mixing more or less in English society, all of which combined in enabling me to get a fairly accurate idea of English culture, and it was this – the knowledge of English culture – which has proved to me to be of inestimable value throughout the whole of my later life.15

Sakurai’s reading included works by Charles Darwin (1809–1882), Herbert Spencer (1820–1903), Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892), 428

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John Ruskin (1819–1900), and George Eliot (1819–1880). He listened to the speeches of Benjamin Disraeli (1804–1881) and William Gladstone (1809–1898) in Parliament, and attended performances at the Lyceum Theatre where Henry Irving (1838–1905) and Ellen Terry (1847–1928) were playing Shakespeare. Sakurai thus underwent a process of indoctrination into British and more general Western culture, thereby laying the foundation of his later career especially as a ‘scientific diplomat’ developing sensibilities that charmed Marie Stopes, whom he met in 1907 in Tokyo. SAKURAI AS A CHEMISTRY PROFESSOR AT TOKYO

Sakurai’s combined training in physics and chemistry at UCL had an impact on his teaching activities at the Department of Chemistry of Tokyo (Imperial) University from the 1880s onward.16 Just like Williamson, Sakurai believed that ‘chemistry studies the changes caused by the vibration and motion of atoms’, and Sakurai tried to reform the chemical education of the Department of Chemistry at Tokyo University based on this conviction. It consisted of the rapid introduction of physics and mathematics into its curriculum and the emergence of favourable conditions for carrying out researches in physical chemistry. In comparison with the situation in Germany, for example, where organic chemistry with its emphasis on analytical and synthetic methods literally dominated the entire university training in chemistry, physical chemistry had a much stronger, if not dominating, presence at UCL’s and Tokyo’s Department of Chemistry.17 Important Japanese physical chemists trained by Sakurai include his brother-in-law, Ikeda Kikunae (1864–1936), of MSG (monosodium glutamate) and umami (flavour, taste) fame, and Katayama Masao (1877–1961) who published papers on chemical thermodynamics, colloid and surface chemistry in international journals.18 Katayama also published in 1915 a Japanese textbook of physical chemistry, Kagaku honron [Principles of Chemistry]. With clear natural prose in Japanese, this book brought chemistry and physical chemistry to a much wider audience in Japan than hitherto. Katayama was also the teacher of Mizushima San-ichiro¯ (1899–1983), a pioneer in physical organic chemistry and conformational analysis who discovered the gauche form of rotational isomers. These students or ‘grandstudents’ of Sakurai considered themselves as much physicists as chemists. Shibata Yu¯ji (1882–1980), another student of Sakurai who specialized in complex chemistry, thought that his elder brother, Shibata Keita (1877–1949), may have been much more like a chemist than he himself was. As a plant physiologist and biochemist, Keita was skilled in extracting and identifying chemicals 429

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(such as flavone and anthocyan) from vegetable tissues with the synthetic and preparative methods whereas Yu¯ji’s métier was to use physical instrumentation such as spectrometers for chemico-analytical purposes.19 In short, Sakurai significantly affected the disciplinary identity of the Department of Chemistry at Tokyo. Sakurai’s own research orientation was also in physical chemistry.20 Using the boiling point of a solution for the measurement of the molecular weight of the solute was pioneered by the French physical chemist Francois-Marie Raoult (1830–1901) and the German physical chemist Ernst Beckmann (1853–1923). Sakurai identified the fluctuation of temperatures by irregular boiling and bumping as the main difficulty in the measurement and devised a method for introducing ‘steam into the boiling solution from without’, so that ‘evaporation and condensation of steam in the solution can be readily and exactly counterbalanced’ and ‘its boiling temperature may be maintained constant for any length [of time]’, implicitly drawing on Williamson’s concept of dynamic equilibrium originally used to speculate on the reaction mechanism of his namesake’s ether synthesis. Sakurai then pointed out that Beckmann’s apparatus needed great care to prevent the flask from cracking and claimed that his own apparatus was ‘exceedingly simple and can be set up by anyone with materials commonly found in all laboratories’. He thought it simple enough to be used by inexperienced researchers, even students. Indeed, Sakurai’s idea was soon taken up and improved by other chemists, such as the German chemist W. Landsberger and the Scottish physical chemist James Walker (1863–1935) and was used widely to measure molecular weights until the advent of the mass spectrometer in the 1950s.21 Sakurai’s research was conducted in interaction with colleagues, not only with chemists such as Edward Divers but also with physicists such as Cargill G. Knott22 (1856– 1922), a Scot, and Yamagawa Kenjiro¯ (1854–1931) who had taken an interest in Sakurai’s work. SAKURAI AND STOPES

A turning point in Sakurai’s career as a chemistry professor probably came on 7 December 1907, when the jubilee celebration of the 25th anniversary of Sakurai’s professorship and of his marriage with Sanko was held at the Botanical Gardens of Tokyo University in Koishikawa. The collected volume published on this occasion included sixteen papers by Sakurai’s former students and three by his colleagues, meaning that he produced a small, but just enough, number of research chemists for the next generation of the colleges of sciences of imperial universities such as Kyoto (est. 1897) 430

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and Tohoku (est. 1907).23 From then on, he would focus more on university administration as a member of Tokyo Imperial University Council (1901–1907), Dean of the College of Science (1907–1919) and Acting President of the university (1912–1913) until his retirement in 1919. One of those who attended his jubilee celebration was Marie Stopes, who was then a visiting scholar at the Botanical Institute of Tokyo University. Marie Stopes was a pioneering woman British scientist trained at UCL and awarded a PhD in botany at the University of Munich in 1904. She stayed in Japan between August 1907 and January 1909 with a research grant from the Royal Society to study fossil plants in the rocks and coal-seams there. However, as Carmen Blacker made clear, ‘the determining drive which first directed her to Japan’ was her love affair with one of Sakurai’s colleagues and the professor of botany at Tokyo, Fujii Kenjiro¯ (1866–1952). Their relationship came to a sudden end when she arrived in Yokohama in 8 August and found Fujii’s letter making it clear that he had changed his mind.24 In the light of the psychological impact on her of this disappointment Sakurai’s friendship with Stopes was most important for her. His letter to Stopes on 14 November 1907 inviting her for tea in his house in Akebonocho¯, Hongo¯-ku (today’s Hon-Komagome, Bunkyo¯-ku), Tokyo, was the beginning of the long correspondence between Sakurai and Stopes spanning three decades with more than eighty letters (mostly his) preserved in the Marie Stopes Papers of the British Library.25 It is outside the scope of this study to give a full analysis of the Sakurai-Stopes correspondence, but the perusal of Sakurai’s letters to Stopes while she was in Japan shows that the person she referred to as ‘Professor S –’ in her A Journal from Japan (1910) was Sakurai.26 One factor in their friendship is their common alma mater, UCL, and Sakurai and Stopes joined together in establishing a London University Union in Tokyo in March 1908.27 Moreover, the following quotation from A Journal from Japan says a great deal about why Stopes struck a chord with him: Professor S – was very interesting, and we talked of nearly everything under heaven and earth but the more I see of him the less I think he is a typical Japanese; he is an exceptional one.28

Sakurai’s fluency in English (Stopes found his English ‘simply wonderful’)29 and elegant demeanour as an ‘English gentleman’ was well known among his students and colleagues. So few of them would disagree with her observation that Sakurai was ‘exceptional’ among other Japanese men.30 In addition, Stopes was impressed with 431

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Sakurai’s wide-ranging intellect, nurtured throughout his life thus far in Kanazawa, Tokyo and London. One of Sakurai’s wide-ranging interests was in the classical Japanese theatre, No¯, which he practised himself.31 Sakurai and Stopes went to a No¯ performance together on 24 September 1908 at the suggestion of his fellow chemist and Dean of Tokyo’s College of Agriculture, Matsui Naokichi (1857–1911).32 Later in November Stopes visited Sakurai’s house and heard him and his brother sing some No¯ songs. She commented that ‘everything was so harmonious, so lovely, so simply dignified’.33 These experiences doubtless served as the basis of Stopes and Sakurai’s collaboration in the pioneering English translation of four No¯ plays, published in 1913.34 SAKURAI’S ‘SCIENTIFIC DIPLOMACY’

Sakurai and Stopes’ No¯ book was published just before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914. It gave Sakurai a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity (‘a blessing from heaven’ according to him) to realize his long-cherished wish to promote scientific research in Japan.35 His tireless activities for this purpose until his death in 1939 made him the foremost institution builder and diplomat for Japanese science between the 1910s and 1930s. His ‘scientific diplomacy’ was centred on Anglo-Japanese relations and took a couple of forms. One was his firm commitment to the International Research Council (IRC), established in 1919 just after the First World War.36 This organization had its origin in the two Inter-allied conferences of Scientific Academies held in 1918 in London and Paris that discussed the post-war reconstruction of international scientific cooperation. The IRC and the National Research Council of Japan (Gakken, established in 1921) explicitly kept its pro-allied stance during the 1920s. He was occasionally accused by his domestic colleagues of politicizing international science. If this first form of Sakurai’s diplomacy was political in its nature, the second form, the establishment of the Japanese Ramsay Fellowship was much more personal.37 It was an institutional base for Anglo-Japanese scientific relations in the interwar period, and Sakurai’s long-term relationship with three successive professors of chemistry at UCL, Williamson, Sir William Ramsay (1852–1916) and Frederick George Donnan (1870–1956), made it possible to launch and maintain this institution. We have already seen Sakurai’s close relationship with Williamson. Sakurai also cultivated a friendship with Ramsay, starting correspondence with him in 1892. Sakurai visited Ramsay and his family during Sakurai’s inspection tour in the United States and Europe between 1901 and 1902, just before Britain and Japan concluded the Anglo-Japanese 432

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Alliance on 31 January 1902. Ramsay was particularly friendly towards Japan as an Asian independent nation-state, and he welcomed Sakurai on this basis as well as personally. As Ramsay put it: ‘You have made a most favourable impression on my women-folks, who have now the highest opinion of you as a nation.’38 In this context Ramsay accepted Sakurai’s former student, Ogawa Masataka (1865–1930), as a student at UCL in 1904, supported Ogawa’s research on new elements, and suggested naming the ‘element’ discovered by him ‘Nipponium’ after Nippon, the Japanese name for his homeland.39 At the suggestion of Ramsay, Sakurai undertook a wartime R&D project on tear gas during the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905).40 Sakurai’s later friendship with Donnan was closely connected with the institution of a Japanese Ramsay Fellowship as a part of the Ramsay Memorial Fellowships established in 1920. The money was raised by subscription from British chemical, steel and gas companies. However, foreign (Japanese included) Ramsay Fellows depended financially on endowment from their respective governments and their selection was entrusted to national advisory bodies. Their success was therefore dependent on Donnan’s close cooperation with his foreign colleagues. Sakurai skilfully performed the complicated and cumbersome job of mediating between the Chemical Society of Japan, the Japanese Ministry of Education and the Ramsay Memorial Fellowship Trust, which administered the fellowship scheme.41 Correspondence between Sakurai and Donnan in the Donnan papers of UCL Libraries Special Collections and the Sakurai correspondence with foreign colleagues at the Chemical Society of Japan functioned as letters of introduction for Japanese Ramsay Fellows. Records of the Ramsay Trust show the leading part Sakurai played in establishing and maintaining the Japanese Ramsay Fellowship based on their friendship. The Ramsay Fellowship Trust upon receiving the news of Sakurai’s death on 28 January 1939 declared: The Ramsay Memorial Fellowship Trustees have heard with the most sincere regret of the death of Baron Joji Sakurai and desire to tender to the Imperial Academy and the National Research Council of Japan their deepest sympathy. The Trustees recall with gratitude the leading part taken by Baron Joji Sakurai in the institution of the Japanese Ramsay Fellowship nineteen years ago, and the constant personal interest, which thereafter he took in the studies and welfare of every Japanese Ramsay Fellow.

The Trustees record also, with emotion, their sense of the loss which the world has suffered by the death of one who having attained the greatest distinction in science gave his unique gifts unreservedly to the development of friendship and goodwill between the nations.42 433

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CONCLUSION

Towards the end of his life, on 30 April 1937, Sakurai gave a speech at University College Fellows’ Dinner on the occasion of his receiving the title of Honorary Fellow. Both Donnan and Stopes attended. He first mentioned with fondness his student years at UCL43 and then explained in detail Anglo-Japanese cultural relations in the 1860s and 1870s, especially the roles of the overseas students in Britain from the Cho¯shu¯ domain and the British teachers in early Meiji Japan.44 Sakurai did so for a good reason. As the president of the Imperial Academy (Teikoku Gakushiin)and the National Research Council of Japan, and particularly as a privy councillor serving Emperor Showa (1901–1989, r. 1926–1989), he was very aware of the deteriorating relations between Britain and Japan in the 1930s. Although it is doubtful if he could influence the course of history in any meaningful way, Sakurai clearly wanted to remind the mostly British audience of earlier good relations between the two nations. It is perhaps fortunate, then, for Sakurai that he passed away in 1939, just two years before Japan entered the Second World War as Britain’s foe. Sakurai has the distinction of being featured twice in obituaries in Nature. One written by Donnan covered Sakurai’s career as a scientist, institution builder and as a ‘scientific diplomat’. It included lavish praise: ‘No one who had the privilege of meeting him ever failed to be deeply impressed and strongly attracted by his quiet dignity, his gentle and endearing modesty, and the warm glow of friendliness and high intelligence that shone from his eyes and suffused his every word.’45 The other was by Stopes. While endorsing Donnan’s praise, she added: However, no obituary would be complete without mention of his spiritual and literary sensibilities. These were partly revealed by his interest and proficiency in the profound medieval religious plays ‘The No¯’ which he and I translated together into English and published under the title ‘Plays of old Japan’. […] Prof. Sakurai, who was a most faithful friend, was in Great Britain for the Coronation of King George VI, and I had the privilege of viewing it with him. He was one of the few scientists who made one revere him.46

These double obituaries are a fitting tribute to Sakurai as a cultured scientist and to his unwavering friendship with Britain. ENDNOTES 1

Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry: The Lab as Contact Zone, New York and Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, chapters 4–6. Sakurai was first appointed lecturer in 1881 and promoted to a professor in 1882. 434

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Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘World War I, International Participation and Reorganisation of the Japanese Chemical Community’, Ambix 58 (2011): 136–49; and Yamanaka Chihiro, ‘Joji Sakurai’s Thoughts and Activities on the Promotion of Science in the Modern Era in Japan (in Japanese)’, Kagakusi kenkyu¯, Series 2, 51 (2013): 138–47. Marie C. Stopes and Joji Sakurai, Plays of Old Japan the ‘No¯’, London: William Heinemann, 1913. Carmen Blacker, ‘Marie Stopes (1907–1958) and Japan’, in Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, eds Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels, London and New York: Routledge, 1991, 157–65. Sakurai Jo¯ji, Omoide no kazukazu: Danshaku Sakurai Jo¯ji iko¯. Tokyo: Kyu¯wa kai, 1940, 1. This autobiography is hereinafter referred to as Omoide no kazukazu. For Sakurai’s life in general, see Sakanoue Masanobu, ‘A Father of Modern Chemistry in Japan, Dr. Joji Sakurai (in Japanese)’, Kagakushi 24 (1997): 157–68 and Wakabayashi Fumitaka, ‘National Museum of Nature and Science’s Collection of Historical Materials of Joji Sakurai (in Japanese)’, Bulletin of the National Museum of Nature and Science, Ser. E, 33 (2010): 21–35. Sakurai’s date of birth as recorded in Omoide no kazukazu is the 18th day of the eighth month of the fifth year of Ansei. Assuming that this date is based on the older lunar calendar (tenpo¯reki, officially used until 1872), it corresponds to 24 September 1858. Kenkichiro Koizumi, ‘The Emergence of Japan’s First Physicists: 1868– 1900’, Historical Studies in the Physical Sciences 6 (1975): 3–108, on 50 and 53. For the ko¯shinsei system, see Karasawa Tomitaro¯, Ko¯shinsei: Bakumatsu Ishin-ki no Eriito, Tokyo: Gyo¯sei, 1974. Sakanoue, ‘A Father of Modern Chemistry in Japan, Dr. Joji Sakurai’ (op. cit., n. 5), 157–8. Omoide no Kazukazu, p. 2. On Osborn’s life and his students, see Imai ¯ zubon kiko¯: Samurai no musume to musubareta eijin ikka o otte, Ichiryo¯, O Kanazawa: Hokkoku Shinbunsha, 1994. Omoide no Kazukazu, 7–8. W.E. Griffis Collection, Rugters University Library, New Brunswick, New Jersey. See also Wakabayashi, ‘National Museum of Nature and Science’s Collection of Historical Materials of Joji Sakurai’ (op. cit., n. 5), 29–32. My translation, in Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯’s annual report for 1875. Tokyo Daigakushi shiryo¯ kenkyu¯kai, ed. Tokyo Daigaku nenpo¯, 6 vols, Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1993–1994, vol. 1, 29. This source is hereinafter referred to as TDN. Sakurai’s certificate from the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ dated 19 August 1876 reads: ‘Sakurai Joji has been examined in the subjects taught in the second year of the Special Course in Chemistry and that he was placed first on the list.’ Joji Sakurai Archive (G-1), Ishikawa Prefecture History Museum, Kanazawa, Japan. TDN, vol. 1, p. 55. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 1), 66–7. Omoide no Kazukazu, 343–50, on 346. 435

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Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n.1), 83–8. Alwyn Davies and Peter Garratt, UCL Chemistry Department 1828–1974, London: Science Reviews 2000 Ltd, 2013. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 1), 140–1 and 145–8 (Ikeda) and 170–1 (Katayama). See also Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Mizushima, San-ichiro¯,’ in New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, ed. Noretta Koertge, 8 vols, Farmington Hills: Scribner’s/Thomson Gale, 2007, vol. 5, 167–71. Tanaka Minoru, Nihon no kagaku to Shibata Yu¯ji, Tokyo: Dai Nihon Tosho, 1975, 180–1. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 1), 142–4. W.A. Campbell, ‘Vapor Density, Boiling Point, and Freezing Point Apparatus’, in Instruments of Science: An Historical Encyclopedia, eds. Robert Bud and Deborah Jean Warner. London: The Science Museum, London and Washington, D.C.: The National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution, 1998, 643–4. See biographical portrait of Cargill Gilston Knott by Paul Kabrna in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VII, ed. by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental. Collection of Papers contributed on the Occasion of the Celebration of Professor J. Sakurai’s Jubilee, Tokyo: Tokyo Imperial University, 1908. Blacker, ‘Marie Stopes (1907–1958) and Japan’ (op. cit., n. 4), 157. Ibid., 161–3. Most of the sources in the Stopes papers pertaining to Sakurai are bound as MS 58467, Marie C. Stopes Papers, Manuscript Department, British Library, St Pancras, London. See also the postcards and letters from Sakurai and others in MS 58683, 58684, 58711 and 58719. Marie C. Stopes, A Journal from Japan: A daily Record of Life in japan as seen by a Scientist, London: Blackie and Son, 1910. It is hereinafter referred to as A Journal from Japan. Japanese translation: Marii Sto¯pusu (transl. Matsubara Tokuhiro), Nihon Nisshi/A Journal from Japan (Tokyo: Matsubara Tokuhiro, 2012). A Journal from Japan, 111. Cited in Noboru Koyama (transl. Ian Ruxton), Japanese students at Cambridge University in the Meiji Era, 1868–1912: Pioneers for the Modernization of Japan. Lulu, 2004, 120 and 200. A Journal from Japan, 156. Ibid., 233. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 1), 70, 108 and 208 (n. 4). Sakanoue, ‘A Father of Modern Chemistry in Japan, Dr. Joji Sakurai’ (op. cit., n. 5), 165. Two letters from Sakurai to Stopes, 18 and 21 September 1908, MS 58467, Marie C. Stopes Papers. A Journal from Japan, 233. Blacker, ‘Marie Stopes (1907–1958) and Japan’ (op. cit., n. 4), 163–5. Kikuchi, ‘World War I, International Participation and Reorganisation of the Japanese Chemical Community’ (op. cit., n. 2), 139. Ibid., 140–6. 436

¯ JI (1858–1939) SAKURAI JO

37

38 39

40

41

42

43 44

45 46

The following four paragraph are based on Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Joji Sakurai and His Connections with British Chemists (in Japanese)’, Kagakushi 31 (2004): 239–67. Ibid., 261. H. Kenji Yoshihara, ‘Nipponium as a new element (Z = 75) separated by the Japanese chemist, Masataka Ogawa: A scientific and science historical re-evaluation’, Proceedings of the Japan Academy, Ser. B, 84, no. 7 (2008): 232–45. Kikuchi, ‘Joji Sakurai and His Connections with British Chemists’ (op. cit., n. 36), 254 (n. 6). For a full analysis of Sakurai’s wartime research, see Kikuchi, ‘An Emperor’s Chemist at War and in Peacetime: Sakurai Jo¯ji during the Russo-Japanese and First World Wars’, in Crossing Boundaries, Crossing Cultures: Science, Technology, and Medicine in Modern Japan. eds David G. Wittner and Philip Brown. London and New York: Routledge, under review. Kikuchi, ‘Joji Sakurai and His Connections with British Chemists’ (op. cit., n. 36), 256 (n. 41). Ramsay Trustees Minutes, 27 June 1939, University College London Records Office. Skurai was raised to the baronage posthumously by the Japanese government. See n. 16 of this portrait. Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Samurai Chemists, Charles Graham and Alexander William Williamson at University College London, 1863–1872’, Ambix 56 (2009): 115–37. F.D. Donnan, ‘Baron Joji Sakurai’, Nature, 144 (5 August 1939), 234–5. M.C. Stopes, ‘Baron Joji Sakurai’, Nature, 144 (9 September 1939), 471.

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sBRITISH s

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Edward Divers (1837–1912) and Robert William Atkinson (1850–1929): Influential Teachers of Chemistry in Meiji Japan YOSHIYUKI KIKUCH

Statue of Divers at Tokyo University. Photograph of Atkinson (Courtesy of the Department of Chemistry, School of Science, University of Tokyo)

INTRODUCTION: BRITISH CHEMISTS IN JAPAN

Education in Western science at the tertiary level was an integral part of the industrialization policy of the Meiji government.1 Chemistry was widely regarded by Europeans and Japanese in the nineteenth century as the most practical and utilitarian of all scientific disciplines.2 This subject was therefore well represented in the teaching at both the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo (Ko¯gakuryo¯ or Ko¯bu Daigakko¯), and Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ (one of the antecedent schools of Tokyo University). They were both established in 1873 and were the two flagship institutions of early Meiji higher

439

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education. The National (Komaba) College of Agriculture, which opened in Naito¯ Shinjuku in 1877 and moved to Komaba in 1878, also attached importance to the study of chemistry. Despite the long-lasting image of German science as being the model for Japanese science from the Meiji period onwards, British and American teachers were dominant in Japanese higher education between the 1860s and 1880s, and many Japanese overseas students went to British and American universities and colleges to finish their training during this period.3 German presence in Japanese higher education (and in politics and administration) increased from the 1880s onward. In early Meiji, German influence had been largely confined to medical sciences as Dutch-style medical education, the strongest speciality of Dutch learning in Japan in the Tokugawa period, had been germanized in the early 1870s.4 Edward Divers and Robert William Atkinson were two of the most influential teachers of pure and applied chemistry in Meiji Japan.5 Divers, one of the major advocates of pure chemistry, taught at the Imperial College of Engineering, while Atkinson, who trained a sizeable number of Japanese industrial chemists, taught at the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ and Tokyo University. Divers and Atkinson belonged to different generations of British chemists. DIVERS AND ATKINSON’S BACKGROUNDS

Edward Divers was born in Newington, Surrey on 27 November 1837.6 His parents were Frederick Divers and Lucy Divers, née Chambers.7 Frederick’s occupation was recorded as ‘mariner’ on Edward’s birth certificate and ‘spirit merchant’ in his marriage certificate.8 It is unlikely that Divers could expect financial help from his family towards his academic education and he would have to earn his living. In 1850 Divers entered the City of London School where he was taught chemistry by Thomas Hall (1818–1877), who had studied at University College London (UCL) and the Royal College of Chemistry (RCC) in London. Hall sent several students, including Divers and William Henry Perkin (1838–1907), the inventor of the first synthetic dye ‘mauve’, to the RCC for further study. Divers spent 1852–1853 at the RCC, attending lectures by its professor of chemistry, August Wilhelm Hofmann (1818–1892), who had been trained by Justus von Liebig (1803–1873) at the University of Giessen. He also received laboratory training from Hofmann’s assistant, William Crookes (1832–1919). He worked at St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical School in London between 1853 and 1854 as junior assistant to the Giessen-trained John Stenhouse (1809–1880) and Frederick Augustus Abel (1827–1902), the 440

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RCC alumnus, who had examined Divers and Perkins while at the City of London School. Divers then moved to Galway in Ireland and with a scholarship became a medical student and assistant to the chemistry professor at the Queen’s College Galway (QCG), Edmund Ronalds (1819–1889), who had also been trained in Giessen and RCC. Ronalds was replaced in 1856 by yet another RCC alumnus and Giessen PhD, Thomas H. Rowney. Awarded an MD from the Queen’s University in Ireland in 1860, Divers stayed in Galway as the chemistry assistant until 1866 and undertook part-time teaching posts in a variety of fields, such as natural philosophy, materia medica and medical jurisprudence in London and Birmingham. In 1873, on the recommendation of Oxford chemist William Odling (1829–1921) to Alexander William Williamson (1824–1904), Divers was appointed to the post of chemistry professor at the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo, which had just been established by the Meiji government’s Ministry of Public Works (Ko¯busho¯). Williamson had been seeking candidates for teaching posts at the request of his former student at UCL, Ito¯ Hirobumi (1841–1909). Robert William Atkinson had a similar family background but followed a less circuitous path than Divers before going to Japan.9 He was born in Westgate, Newcastle-upon-Tyne on 12 April 1850.10 His father was Robert Atkinson, and his mother Sarah Atkinson, née Ross. Robert’s occupation was that of ‘hosier and haberdasher’. Atkinson attended University College School, a secondary school attached to UCL, before passing the matriculation examination of the University of London in 1867.11 Atkinson between 1867 and 1872 studied at both UCL, where Williamson was professor of chemistry, and at the RCC under the directorship of Edward Frankland (1825–1899). In 1872 Atkinson gained a first-class BSc degree and a two-year university scholarship in chemistry from the University of London.12 He then worked for two years at UCL as assistant to Williamson before being appointed, on Williamson’s recommendation, as professor of analytical and applied chemistry at the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯. Divers’ and Atkinson’s careers thus confirm Williamson’s important role as the chief advisor for the Meiji government in recruiting British scientists and engineers for its nascent higher education.13 Divers and Atkinson attended the same school, RCC, albeit at different times: Divers in the early 1850s and Atkinson in the late 1860s and early 1870s. This made a real difference. Because of financial difficulties, the RCC became the Chemistry Department of the Royal School of Mines (RSM) in 1853, just after Divers left the RCC. As a result, Divers’ brief education there was focused on chemistry.14 Atkinson, in contrast, took a variety of subjects such as physics, mechanical 441

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drawing, mineralogy, geology, applied mechanics, and metallurgy at the RSM together with mathematics, geology, mineralogy, physics, botany, physical laboratory and political economy at UCL. These are not engineering subjects per se but were considered auxiliary subjects underlying the teaching of mining engineering, which proved useful in Atkinson’s teaching at Tokyo.15 Timing was also important for Atkinson’s experience at UCL. He was taught not only by Williamson, who emphasized the importance of pure science in college education, but also came under the supervision of a new generation of chemists there, who were concerned with the teaching of chemical technology, such as Charles Graham (1836–1909).16 A student of Williamson himself, Graham tutored the Japanese overseas students at UCL in the 1860s, most notably those from the Cho¯shu¯ and Satsuma domains, who came to London in 1863 and 1865, respectively.17 After a three-year period working abroad as an analyst, Graham resumed tutorial work at UCL in 1870. While making his career as a consulting chemist specializing in fermentation industries such as brewing, Graham was appointed to the newly created chair of chemical technology at UCL in 1878 and retained this position until 1889. He became an important advocate of academic industrial chemistry in nineteenth-century Britain. Especially relevant to Atkinson was Graham’s lecture on the chemistry of brewing delivered at the Society of Arts and published in its journal in 1873 and 1874.18 Partly following in Graham’s footsteps, Atkinson would later develop his own teaching style in chemical technology and take up a similar research topic on the chemistry of sake brewing in Tokyo. DIVERS AND ATKINSON IN TOKYO

It is not surprising that chemistry teaching at both the Imperial College of Engineering and the Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯/Tokyo University was officially biased toward its industrial applications. Both Divers and Atkinson had the obligation to lecture on chemical technology in addition to chemistry lectures and laboratory training, especially in chemical analysis. Atkinson actually had to teach much more, including mining, metallurgy and geology and mineralogy, before experts in these fields, Curt Adolph Netto (1847–1909) and Heinrich Edmund Naumann (1854–1927), were hired by Tokyo University in 1877. This task Atkinson managed to carry out by drawing on his wide-ranged scientific and semi-engineering training in London. A major difference between Divers’ and Atkinson’s teaching methods is shown in their training of advanced students. For Divers, the purpose of advanced training in chemistry at college was to cultivate students’ capacity for ‘original observation’, which could 442

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be used in actual industrial situations after graduation.19 Although he believed that Japanese students were ‘gifted with this mental faculty [for originality] to much the same extent as other folk’, he asserted that they ‘above all required practice, working as an apprentice under a master engaged in the prosecution of original research’ because Japanese students lacked ‘the early associations and experience of the things told them by their foreign teachers’.20 In this conviction, Divers trained his advanced students such as Haga Tamemasa (1856–1914), Kawakita Michitada (1853–1925) and Shimose Masachika (1860–1911) through joint research in pure chemistry at the Imperial College of Engineering.21 Divers’ election as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London (FRS) in 1885 was a recognition of his achievements as a scientific researcher from the 1860s until the mid-1880s, most notable of which was the discovery of hyponitrites (compounds containing the atomic group ON=NO) and some of their reactivity.22 This pedagogical approach remained unchanged after Divers was transferred to the College of Science in the newly established Imperial University in 1886. Until his retirement in 1899 he trained a significant number of chemists such as Ogawa Masataka (1865–1930) and Chikashige Masumi (1870–1941).23 Divers also discouraged students from learning the industrial application of chemistry while at college. In his own words: They, for most part, show a desire to make practical applications of their knowledge as fast as they acquire it, and in accordance with this, a preference for knowledge capable of immediate appliance [sic] to manufactures. Though approving of this desire, I have felt it necessary at times to restrain it and to urge upon them, rather, the greater desirability of fitting themselves for better practical work afterwards, by devoting all their time while they are cadets [i.e. college students] to getting as comprehensive a knowledge of chemistry as possible.24

Indeed, officially from 1883, after Divers took over the job of the college principal from its founder Henry Dyer25 (1848–1918), chemistry students were partially exempted from factory pupillage, which had been made obligatory at its founding by Dyer for all students during their last two out of six years at college. It is important to note that training technologists by means of pure scientific training was exactly the pedagogical ideal prevalent at one of Divers alma maters, RCC, as well as at UCL’s Faculty of Science, of which Williamson was the first dean.26 It was also the kind of reasoning that Japanese in the Bakumatsu and early Meiji period found particularly difficult to understand.27 Simply put, their persistent question was: why train future technologists only in science instead of in technology (or ‘arts’ in contemporary usage) straight away? 443

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The secret of Divers’ success in transferring this ideal to the Imperial College of Engineering lay in its governance system, according to which the non-Japanese principal was responsible for the overall management of college education. The professor of each subject was granted full authority over their teaching and was answerable to the principal. Practically and physically, therefore, the predominantly British teachers were insulated from Japanese officials and, more generally, from the Japanese populace at large. According to Haga, Divers’ knowledge of the Japanese language remained poor in spite of his long stay in Japan until 1899, and he made few friends with Japanese people other than with his students and colleagues.28 Circumstances were quite different for Atkinson, who taught at Tokyo Kaisei Gakko¯ and Tokyo University between 1874 and 1881.29 The Japanese director was responsible for the management of both the administration and teaching at the school, and professors submitted the translation of their class report to the director every year to show that they had fulfilled their duties in accordance with their job titles, in Atkinson’s case as professor of analytical and applied chemistry. Partly because of the way the college was governed and partly as a result of his own training at UCL with Graham, Atkinson gave students a graduation assignment, whose purpose, according to him, was to ‘prepare students to improve the industries prospering in Japan’. With this aim in mind Atkinson integrated into his course student attachments to traditional Japanese manufacturers during the summer vacation. His students, most notably Kuhara Mitsuru (1856–1919), Takamatsu Toyokichi (1852–1937) and Nakazawa Iwata (1858– 1943), undertook fieldwork on the technicalities of manufacturing methods with the help of local manufacturers and of reference books on jitsugaku (real learning), the Chinese and Japanese indigenous scholarly tradition including honzo¯gaku (the studies of herbal medicine) and bussangaku, the studies of local products. They then embarked on laboratory work with collected samples on Japanese pigments, tea and tobacco, wax and vegetable oil, sweets, soy sauce, and lacquer under Atkinson’s supervision, although their names appear as the sole authors in the published work. For his own chemical and bacteriological research on sake brewing, Atkinson learned the technicalities of Japanese indigenous manufactures from his Japanese students who had access to reference books in the jitsugaku tradition and directly from local manufacturers in much the same way as his students learned chemistry from him. He was particularly impressed by the long held (Sino-) Japanese custom of hi-ire (heating) because it seemed very similar to, and to have much predated, pasteurization ‘invented’ in the early 1860s. Atkinson wrote:30 444

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The student of science in Japan has a wide field before him; that system of isolation which has prevented the introduction of Western knowledge till within the last quarter of a century has not been entirely fruitless, for it has resulted in the development of industrial process which are as novel and interesting to the European as those of the latter are to Japanese. The scientific students of the university and colleges of Japan need not, therefore, look very far in order to find subjects that require investigation and explanation, and this search will, without doubt, add largely to the sum total of existing knowledge.

While stressing the need for ‘investigation and explanation’ by scientific methods, he showed his respect for indigenous manufactures in Japan. ATKINSON AND DIVERS ON JAPAN

One important implication of Atkinson’s and Divers’ styles of chemistry teaching was that Atkinson had more opportunities than Divers to interact with Japanese people and to observe their lives outside of the college premises. Atkinson published the outcome of his observations in Nature and in The Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan (TASJ), which had been established in Yokohama in 1872. A majority of the titles of Atkinson’s articles in TASJ are related to chemistry-related industries such as porcelain, white lead (as cosmetics) and candy production, but he also wrote a brief article in Nature on Japanese ‘magic mirrors’.31 Perhaps his most interesting article was the record of his travel in summer 1879 to the Yatsugatake mountains, Mt Haku and Mt Tate in central Honshu¯ with Scottish English teacher at the Imperial College of Engineering, William Grey Dixon and Atkinson’s former student and assistant at Tokyo University, Nakazawa Iwata.32 Atkinson inserted into his description of the geography and vegetation of mountain ranges, his impressions of towns and villages through which they passed, of temples and shrines they visited, of inns in which they stayed and of local customs observed during his journey. Divers shared Atkinson’s cultural sensitivity and, according to Haga, loved ‘things Japanese’; and particularly admired ‘old civilizations in our country [Japan]’, believing that ‘if studied in details…, we will see that many Japanese indigenous things make more sense scientifically and are more valuable than the things recently produced in imitation of Western culture’.33 He also astonished his Japanese students by asserting that, in the Namamugi incident in September 1862, which triggered the British bombardment of Kagoshima in 1863, the British had been totally to blame because they ignored the Tokugawa custom of honouring a daimyo¯ lord’s procession by dismounting from a house giving way to the procession.34 445

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Divers would have met Sir Harry Smith Parkes (1828–1885), British Minister to Japan between 1865 and 1883, at meetings of the Asiatic Society of Japan and heard this story from him.35 Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843–1929), a founder of the Asiatic Society and British minister to Japan between 1895 and 1900, occasionally dined with Divers and his family.36 In January 1899 Satow attended the wedding of Divers’ daughter, Edith, with Capt. Vicomte de Labry, military attaché of the French legation, and signed the register as a witness.37 In addition to contributing a couple of short notes on the chemical analysis of hot springs and meteorites to TASJ, Divers was an active participant in the discussions and management of the Asiatic Society, first as an ordinary member from 1878 and later as a vice president (1879–1880 and 1890–1891), president (1880–1881) and councillor (until 1897).38 Among non-chemical topics on which Divers joined the discussion at the Asiatic Society were hydrophobia in Japan, cultural exchanges between Korea and Japan, Korean silver coins, Japanese education, Ainu legends, railway building, the food of the ‘aborigines’ in Formosa (Taiwan) and the origin of the Japanese ‘race’.39 In March 1892 Divers read a paper on Japanese philosophy written by Haga, who, as a son of a samurai, was versed in Chinese classics and Japanese neo-Confucian schools of philosophy.40 CONCLUSION: DIVERS AND ATKINSON RETURN TO ENGLAND

Atkinson’s life after returning to England in 1881 was not without challenge. He had difficulty finding an academic position in England and, after briefly working in Williamson’s chemical laboratory at UCL, became a self-employed consulting analytical chemist in Cardiff mainly serving the local coal industry. This job left little time for Atkinson’s own research, a situation that he deplored to his erstwhile student, Sakurai Jo¯ji (1858–1938).41 Divers enjoyed fame as a scientist and professor both in Japan and Britain.42 The Meiji government conferred the Order of the Rising Sun (Third Class) upon him in 1886, and the Order of the Sacred Treasure (Second Class) in 1898. In 1897, his old university, the Royal (formerly Queen’s) University in Ireland, conferred upon him an honorary doctorate in science. On retiring in 1899, he was granted the title of ‘emeritus professor’ by Tokyo Imperial University, and his memorial bust was presented to the university by his old friends and students to be erected in the university grounds. It was unveiled with due ceremony in 1900. Back in England he was President of Section B (Chemistry) of the British Association for the Advancement of Science (1902), vicepresident of the Chemical Society (1900–02), vice-president of the 446

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Institute of Chemistry (1905), and President of the Society of Chemical Industry (1905). However, these distinctions were overshadowed by the deaths of his son, Frederick, while in the service of the Maritime Customs under Sir Robert Hart (1831–1911) in Qing China, and of his Irish wife, Margaret Theresa in Tokyo in 1897.43 Neither Atkinson nor Divers regretted coming to Japan. Atkinson rather regretted ‘leaving Japan where I was just beginning to get into a research stride’. They kept in close contact with their former students and colleagues in Japan such as Haga, Sakurai and Ogawa.44 About a month after Divers’ death on 8 April 1912, a memorial service was held at Tokyo Imperial University on 10 May and was attended by more than fifty former students, colleagues and friends at the Imperial College of Engineering and Tokyo Imperial University.45 Their Tokyo years doubtless marked the highest points of their careers as chemists, and their modest contribution to and participation in Japanese studies in English arguably added an interdisciplinary character to this new field. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

Tessa Morris-Suzuki, The Technological Transformation of Japan: From the Seventeenth to the Twenty-first Century. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, pp. 71–104 David Knight, Ideas of Chemistry, London, Athlone Press, 1992, on European’s images of chemistry, and To¯go¯ Tsukahara, Affinity and Shinwa Ryoku: Introduction of Western Chemical Concepts in Early Nineteenth-Century Japan, Amsterdam, J.C. Gieben, 1993 for the introduction of chemistry into Japan and the image of chemistry for Japanese in the early nineteenth century. Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry: The Lab as Contact Zone, New York and Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013, 3. See also James R. Bartholomew, The Formation of Science in Japan: Building a Research Tradition, New Haven, Conn. Yale University Press, 1989, pp. 65 and 71f; Andrew Cobbing, The Japanese Discovery of Victorian Britain: Early Travel Encounters in the Far West, Richmond, Surrey, Japan Library, 1998, pp. 28 and 36; Noboru Umetani, The Role of Foreign Employees in the Meiji Era in Japan, Tokyo, Institute of Developing Economies, 1971; Hazel J. Jones, Live Machines: Hired Foreigners and Meiji Japan,Vancouver: University of British Columbia Press, 1980; and Olive Checkland, Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912. Basingstoke, Macmillan, 1989. See, for example, Nakayama Shigeru, Teikoku daigaku no tanjo¯: Kokusai hikaku no naka deno To¯dai, Tokyo: Chu¯o¯ Ko¯ronsha, 1978, pp. 46–9. For subsequent German impacts on Meiji Japanese medicine, with a particular focus on bacteriologist Kitasato Shibasaburo¯, see Bartholomew, op. cit. (n. 3). Two others are noteworthy. Edward Kinch (1848–1920) played a similar role of introducing agricultural chemistry, especially chemical anal447

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6

7

8

9

10

11

12

13

14

15

ysis, into higher agricultural education as the professor of chemistry at the Komaba Agricultural College between 1876 and 1881. William Gowland (1842–1922) was the chemist and metallurgist at the Imperial Mint in Osaka between 1872 and 1888, who also made his name as a pioneering mountaineer and archaeologist in Japan. For Edward Kinch see the biographical portrait of Eriko Kumazawa (trans. Ian Ruxton) in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2010. For Gowland see Roy Macleod, ‘“Instructed Men” and Mining Engineers: The Associates of the Royal School of Mines and British Imperial Science, 1851–1920’, MInereva 32 (1994): 422–439, on 435f; Victor Harris and Kazuo Goto¯, eds, William Gowland: The Father of Japanese Archaeology/Gaurando: Nihon ko¯kogaku no chichi Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, London: British Museum Press, 2003; and biographical portrait by Simon Kaner in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VI, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007. On Divers life before coming to Japan, see Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Crossnational Odyssey of a Chemist: Edward Divers at London, Galway and Tokyo’, History of Science 50 (2012): 289–314, on 291–7, unless otherwise indicated. Edward Divers, birth certificate 12 April 1850, Family Record Centre, London. Edward Divers and Margaret Theresa Fitzgerald, marriage certificate, 14 September 1865, Family Record Centre. On Atkinson’s biographical information and references, see Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), 43–4 unless otherwise indicated. Robert William Atkinson, Birth certificate 12 April 1850, Family Record Centre. University of London, The Calendar for the Year 1868, London: Taylor and Francis, p. 223. University of London, The Calendar for the Year 1873, London: Taylor and Francis, pp. 188 and 305. In 1871 Atkinson successfully sat the first honours BSc examination in chemistry and experimental physics (both second class). See University of London, The Calendar for the Year 1872, London: Taylor and Francis, p. 432. Alan J. Rocke, ‘Williamson, Alexander William (1824–1904)’, in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 59, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004, pp. 339–41. His brief study at RCC was later supplemented by a pre-med science and medical education at QCG, to say nothing of his on-the-job-training as a chemistry assistant. Strangely, well after obtaining an MD from the Queen’s University in 1860, Divers successfully sat the first BSc examination of the University of London in 1862. It is possible to construe it as part of his effort to raise his credentials as a science teacher. University of London, The Calendar for the Year 1868, London: Taylor and Francis, p. 209. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), pp. 191 (n. 74). 448

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16 17

18 19 20 21 22

23

24

25

26

27

28

29

30

31

32

Ibid., p. 26. Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Samurai Chemists, Charles Graham and Alexander William Williamson at University College London, 1863–1872’, Ambix 56 (2009): 115–37; Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), 11–26 Ibid., p. 45 Kikuchi, ‘Cross-national Odyssey of a Chemist’ (op. cit., n. 6), 299. Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 15, 1887, xiv Kikuchi, ‘Cross-national Odyssey of a Chemist’ (op. cit., n. 6), 301. Certificate of Election and Candidature of Edward Divers, elected 4 June 1885, in possession of the Royal Society. On Divers’ scientific work, see Desmond Reilly, ‘Edward Divers and the Chemistry of Nitrogen Compounds’, Journal of Chemical Education 30 (1953): 234–7. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), pp. 138–40. Imperial College of Engineering (Kobu-Dai-Gakko), Tokei, Class reports by the Professors for the period 1873–1877, Tokyo, 1877, p. 37. Cited in Kikuchi, ‘Cross-national Odyssey of a Chemist; (op. cit., n. 6), 299– 300, See biographical portrait by Olive Checkland in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Gerrylynn K. Roberts, ‘A plea for pure science’: The Ascendancy of academia in the making of the English chemist, 1841–1914, in The Making of the Chemist: The Social History of Chemistry in Europe 1789–1914, eds. David Knight and Helge Kragh, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998, pp. 107–19, on 108–109. Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), pp.20 and 33. Haga Tamemasa, ‘Daiba¯su sensei no den’, Tokyo kagaku kaishi 33 (1912): 1–26; on 15. The following three paragraphs are based on Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), pp. 45–52. Robert William Atkinson, ‘The Chemistry of Sake-brewing’, Memoirs of the Science Department, Tokio Daigaku no. 6 (1881): VIII and 63. Cited in Kikuchi, Anglo-American Connections in Japanese Chemistry (op. cit., n. 3), p. 47. Robert William Atkinson, ‘Japanese Mirrors’, Nature 16 (24 May 1877): 62; idem, ‘Notes on the Manufacture of Oshiroi (White-Lead)’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 6, 1878, 277–283; idem ‘The Chemical Industries of Japan. No. 2: Ame’, ibid. 7 (1879): 313–322; and idem, ‘Notes on the Porcelain Industry of Japan’ ibid. 8 (1880): 267–276. Atkinson was ordinary member of the society from 1875 (ibid. 3 [1875]: 101) and was appointed recording secretary for 1877–1878 (ibid. 5 [1877]: inside front cover). On Japanese magic mirrors, see, for example, Masao Watanabe, ‘The Japanese Magic Mirror’, Archives of the Chinese Art Society of America 19 (1965): 45–51. Robert William Atkinson, ‘Yatsu-ga-take, Haku-san, and Tate-yama’, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 8 (1880): 1–54. On Dixon’s experiences in Japan, see his The Land of the Morning: An Account of Japan 449

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33 34

35

36

37 38

39

40

41

42

43

44

45

and its People, Based on a Four Years’ Residence in that Country, Edinburgh, James Gemmel, 1882. My translation, from Haga, ‘Daiba¯su sensei no den’ (op. cit. n. 27), 15. Ibid. See also Kikuchi, ‘Cross-national Odyssey of a Chemist’ (op. cit., n. 6), 306 and 314 (n. 112) Ibid. See, e.g. the meeting minutes of 12 April 1882 in Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan 10 (1882): iii, where both Parkes and Divers attended. Ian Ruxton, ed., The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow, British Minister in Tokyo (1895–1900): A Diplomat returns to Japan, Tokyo, Edition Synapse, 2003, pp. 23, 34 et passim. Ibid., pp. 328f. Edward Divers, ‘Note on the Amount of Sulphuretted Hydrogen in the Hot Springs of Kusatsu’, Transaction of the Asiatic Society of Japan 6 (1878): 346–7; idem, ‘On two Japanese Meteorites’, ibid. 10 (1882): 199–203; and idem, ‘Note on the Hot Springs of Kusatsu’, ibid. 10 (1882): 204– 205. The record of Divers’ first participation in discussion is in ibid. 6 (1878): 189. About his vice-presidency, see ibid. 8 (1880): i; and 18 (1890): xx. About his presidency, see ibid. 8 (1880): xvi. The last record of his council membership is in ibid. 25 (1897): x. See ibid. 6 (1878): 220; 11 (1883): ix; 15 (1887): xiii-xiv and xv; 22 (1894): xiv-xv; 23 (1895): xl; 24 (1896): xxiii; and 25 (1897): vi. T. Haga, ‘Note on Japanese schools of Philosophy’, ibid. 30 (1893): 134–147 and ix (meeting minutes). See his acknowledgement to Williamson in Robert William Atkinson, ‘Some Compounds of Antimony and Bismuth containing two Halogens’, Journal of the Chemical Society: Transactions 43 (1883): 289–92, on 292; and his letter to Sakurai, 15 October 1919, transcribed in Yoshiyuki Kikuchi, ‘Joji Sakurai and His Connections with British Chemists (in Japanese)’, Kagakushi 31 (2004): 239–67; on 259. A.S. and Joji Sakurai, ‘Obituary Notice: Edward Divers’, Journal of the Chemical Society: Transactions 103 (1913): 746–55, on 749 and 754; Haga, ‘Daiba¯su sensei no den’ (op. cit. n. 27), 16–17. Ibid. See also Divers marriage certificate (n. 7) and Ruxton, The Diaries of Sir Ernest Satow (op. cit. n. 35), p. 220, which recorded Satow’s attendance of her funeral on 13 December 1897. See note 40 of this portrait, and Kikuchi, ‘Joji Sakurai and His Connections with British Chemists’ (op. cit. n. 40), 243–244. See Tokyo kagaku kaishi 33 (1912): 539–541.

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Edward Vivian Gatenby, CBE (1892–1955): Distinguished Teacher of English as a Foreign Language PAUL SNOWDEN

INTRODUCTION

Anyone who has had anything to do with teaching English as a foreign language is most likely to have seen the name E.V. Gatenby on the title page of OUP’s Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (OALD). He comes second in the list of three editors, the first being A.S. Hornby (for whom, and the OALD’S Japanese forerunner Kaitakusha’s Idiomatic and Syntactic English Dictionary (ISED), see Volume VIII of these Portraits), and the third, A.H. Wakefield. In his Foreword to the original Kaitakusha edition, Hornby acknowledges Gatenby’s and Wakefield’s contributions thus: Mr E. V. Gatenby undertook the second part of A (from archipelago) and the letters C, N, O, P, Q, R, V, J, X, Y, and Z. Mr A. H. Wakefield undertook the letters J, S, T, and U. For the rest of the 451

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Alphabet, many of the ‘heavy’ words (e.g. as, put, pull, set, so, take) and the chief determinatives, adverbial particles, anomalous finites and prepositions, I am responsible. The order of the editors’ names would appear to reflect the proportion of their respective involvement in the Dictionary. However, it would be unfair to brand Gatenby as in some way secondary to Hornby in all aspects of what was to become the field of EFL (English as a foreign language), although in this Portrait, comparisons between the two will be inevitable. BEFORE JAPAN

Edward Vivian Gatenby was born on 2 July 1892 (his grandfather’s 56th birthday) in the district of Leyburn in North Yorkshire, where his father Richard Fryer Gatenby (1861–1947) lived all his life. When Edward was born, his father ran the West Witton post office and a grocery and drapery business with his wife, Elizabeth, née Metcalfe, whom he married in 1886. Three children were born: John (21 August 1888; died 1891), Edward Vivian, and Bertha Alice (born 28 September 1902). The couple are recorded as running the West Witton business in the 1891, 1901 and 1911 censuses; Richard retired gradually in the 1930s. Richard wrote his own retrospective Family Chronicle between 1928 and 1933; it was edited and published by a local historian in 2008.1 Gatenby is a not uncommon name in North Yorkshire, and a historical connection with the village of Gatenby not far from Leyburn seems obvious. Edward Vivian first attended the Council School in West Witton,2 and then for two years was sent to Chesterfield Grammar School.3 In 1908 he entered Hymers College, Hull, where he stayed until July 1910, when he left for ‘Private Civil S. Coaching’.4 In the 1911 census he still appears as a ‘Student’ at age eighteen. Recalling July 1912, his father writes of him ‘having successfully competed in the Civil Service Exam. He commenced his duties at Liverpool in that service before the month was out.’5 I have been unable to discover whether he remained there until entering King’s College, London, or served for a while in the First World War6, but the student record entries for King’s College, London indicate him as enrolling there ‘firstly in 1916 and then again in 1919’,7 and living at 48 Wrentham Avenue, Willesden, NW10.8 According to the King’s College Calendar for 1921–1922, he is listed as having received a first class degree in English from the Faculty of Arts in 1920, and in the 1925–1926 Calendar as having received a Masters degree in English in 1925.9 Along with two fellow students, he won the Early English Text Society Prize in 1920, and the Jelf Medal for distinguished final-year students (from the Evening Department). Although other biographical works 452

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on E.V. Gatenby refer to a period teaching at KCL, a search of the calendars and staff slip books reveals no record of that. One person who knew him well in Japan indicates that he taught for a while at the Regent Polytechnic School.10 Indeed, since he arrived in Japan in 1923, it becomes obvious that some of his postgraduate work must have been done by correspondence. JAPAN

Though six years older than Hornby, Gatenby reached Japan in similar circumstances: a Northerner from a lower middle-class background having just completed his studies at London University (Hornby with a BA; Gatenby with a BA and an MA), recruited in the early 1920s to join the teaching staff of a newly founded Higher Commercial School. While Hornby was posted to Oita in the southwest, Gatenby found himself much farther north, in Fukushima. Unlike Hornby, who moved later to Tokyo, Gatenby stayed all of his time in Japan in the Northeast, later taking up an adjunct position at the more prestigious To¯hoku Imperial University in 1926. Planning for the Fukushima Higher Commercial School began in 1919; it was opened as the nation’s seventh Higher Commercial School, and the only one in the Northeast, in 1921. In 1922 it admitted its first students, who had to be aged seventeen or over and would follow a three-year course. The School was renamed Fukushima Keizai Senmongakko (Fukushima College of Economics) in 1944, and in the post-war education reforms of 1949 became part of the new Fukushima University. Gatenby was one of the first foreign lecturers employed there, but he was not alone. There was a Chinese colleague, Bo Dihua, who later quoted Gatenby as saying that the citizens of Japan were the best of people: it was the imperialistic government that was bad.11 Gatenby joined the Institute for Research in English Teaching (IRET) soon after his arrival, and indeed shortly after its establishment that very year by Harold Palmer,12 for he appears in the revised list of members published soon after the conflagration following the 1923 earthquake had destroyed IRET first records. Among his colleagues joining later in the 1920s was ‘Thomas, Mr Andrew Frank, Fukushima Commercial School, Fukushima Ken’, who appears in IRET Bulletin No. 30 (January 1927) and already in No. 49 (December 1928) has a lengthy article on his experiences published. Gatenby’s lengthy membership is acknowledged in the ‘Special Number commemorating our Hundredth Issue’ (January, 1934), since he is one of twenty persons, including the British, American and Canadian ambassadors in that order, who provide Congratulatory Messages. His comments include: ‘… I have always looked forward to receiving the joyous little monthly 453

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… I have had a ten years’ connection with it as a subscriber … Here in Fukushima I have been very favourably impressed by the wonderful results obtained in the Middle School ….’ The reference to the Fukushima Middle School concerns a lengthy project there to apply IRET principles to its English instruction. These attempts were frequently reported in the Bulletin; classes of pupils were even brought to Tokyo for demonstrations of the teaching methods. Gatenby writes, ‘… the year after next I hope to welcome some of the boys who have been taught English from the start according to the new methods … my own labours at the H.C.S. will be very much lightened.’ However, no article by Gatenby appears in the special commemorative booklet produced to celebrate that anniversary. Indeed, he seems to have submitted no articles or letters to the Bulletin before the late 1930s – unless he was one of the several pseudonymous contributors. Certainly, his name is absent from the list (in the ‘Postscript’ at the beginning of the work – perhaps not such a bizarre position as may at first appear) of those who ‘collaborated actively’ in preparing the highly significant Second Interim Report on English Collocations produced by H.E. Palmer in 1933.13 He did, however, participate in the summer gatherings by IRET teachers and other foreigners in Karuizawa. A.S. Hornby’s daughter Phyllis Willis writes: ‘In the summer, we used to go to Karuizawa, where a lot of foreigners congregated for the long holiday. … The work (and later, dictionaries) always went with him, interspersed with long walks which he would lead into the hills, with anyone interested welcome to join. The Gatenbys, in particular, were frequent companions.’14 Like Hornby, Gatenby had studied English literature, rather than language or language pedagogy; they were both to find their interests and skills in the linguistic side during their early years in Japan. Nevertheless, Gatenby’s first published book concerned not linguistic pedagogy but literature – and not English, but Japanese. The Cloud Men of Yamato – Being an Outline of Mysticism in Japanese Literature was published in London by John Murray in 1929. Its rather Hearnesque title is appropriate, since the book deals with ancient mystic writings from mediaeval Japan. Numbering only 128 pages, it has six chapters: I. Introductory; II. Early Pantheism; III. Buddhism and Nature; IV. Enlightenment; V. Kaibara Ekken and Muro Kyu¯so¯; VI. Conclusion. It shows assiduous reading of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century translations (William Aston, Clay MacCauley, Annie Shepley Omori, C.H. Page, W.N. Porter among others) of the writings of such mystics as Saigyo¯ Ho¯shi, Kamo Cho¯mei and Kenko¯ Ho¯shi as well as those named in the title of Chapter V. The rather Hearn-esque or Victorian tone is retained to the final sentence of the Conclusion: ‘But Enlightenment and Salvation are essentially the same – the entry of man into a conscious union with the rest of 454

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creation or with God which brings to the heart and mind peace.’ A reprint of the whole work was published in 2005 by Kessinger, who also extracted Chapter III, ‘Buddhism and Nature’, which they published as a separate slim volume under that title in the same year. Indeed, a list of articles produced by Gatenby over the next decade or so confirms that his initial non-linguistic or non-pedagogical interests remained with him longer, and that linguistic pedagogy did not monopolize his attention as it did for Palmer or Hornby. Six of his articles appeared in the respected series Studies in English Literature,15 and they deserve a brief mention each, to indicate the breadth of his interests and the depth of his research. ‘Notes on Mysticism’ (1928) reflects the spiritual contents of The Cloud Men of Yamato, on which it can safely be assumed he was working at the time, although this essay makes no mention at all of Japanese mysticism. It is a discourse on the search for ‘Truth’, prefaced by a brief quotation from Chaucer’s Miller’s Tale. It ranges widely over St Francis, Julian of Norwich, Paracelsus, Sir Thomas Browne, Bacon, Milton Pepys, Blake, Shelley, Keats, Browning, Swinburne and Kipling before reaching the conclusion that it is great literature that imparts the truth to us. It is certainly not a work on the English language pedagogy and lexicography that would later absorb him. ‘Johnson and Boswell in Scotland’ (1929) is both a summary and interpretation of Johnson’s own Journey to the Western Islands of Scotland, and a detailed review of similar works on Scotland by contemporaries of Johnson. A reference to a ‘correspondent in the Times Literary Supplement for Dec. 20th, 1928’ indicates regular and thorough reading of materials from home. ‘The Influence of Japanese on English’ (1931) represents Gatenby’s first published work on lexicography, and involves no half measures. It begins by taking the form of an exhaustive list of words from Japanese deemed by the New English Dictionary16 to have entered the English language: seventy items from ‘aucuba’ to ‘Yokohama’ with explanatory comments on their provenance and, in nine cases, the discovery of an earlier first appearance than the one given in the NED. There follows a small list of words not in the NED but in the COD. Then comes a list of words (fuji, habutae, happi-coat, judo, no or noh, ronin, tanka, tokonoma, ukiyoe, zen) ‘in fairly common use today, but not in our dictionaries’. A brief paragraph comments on how American dictionaries ‘exercise much less discretion … in their inclusion of Japanese words’. An even shorter paragraph gives examples of ‘a class of words used by foreigners in Japan’: an eclectic mixture of sixteen words, including furoshiki, gyu¯ nabe, sayonara. A whole page is given to listing examples of Japanese words with the ‘phonetic spellings’ (extreme example: Bongew for bugyo¯ ) as used by Cocks and Saris. Next, Gatenby discusses a few Oriental words in 455

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the NED whose Japanese origin cannot be attested, but which he attempts to justify. His Addenda lists seven more words for which he has found an earlier first appearance than the NED’s. All in all, a dozen pages of considerable erudition. ‘The Influence of Japan on English Literature’ (1933) returns Gatenby to a literary theme, still demonstrating industrious reading to find evidence of works in English influenced by Japanese persons, events or themes. He writes chronologically, beginning with the ‘earliest narrations by traders and travellers’, the first of which he mentions being Richard Eden (1577). Briefly mentioning Hakluyt, Purchas, Cocks, Saris and (a little less conventionally) Dryden, he then writes at length about Defoe’s choice of Japan as the background for some of Robinson Crusoe’s adventures. He makes no mention of Gulliver’s more or less contemporaneous brief visit to Japan. Praising the ‘excellent English’ of Lawrence Oliphant, he moves on to literary work, devoting several paragraphs to Stevenson on Yoshida Torajiro¯ (Sho¯in).17 His discussion on the basis of obvious wide reading of Kipling touches carefully on Kipling’s imperialistic views and excuses him for writing ‘at a time when the Japanese had not shown their true mettle’. Only half a page is devoted to Hearn, but some mild criticism creeps in: ‘There is no need … to make excuses for his slips of fact or exaggeration.’ Alfred Noyes, John Masefield, W.B. Yeats and H.G. Wells among others all receive attention, as do Gatenby’s contemporaries Edmund Blunden and Lawrence Binyon. ‘Additions to Japanese Words in English’ (1934) sees lexicography taking over again: already Gatenby is using the abbreviation OED, and in this article he essentially treats the Japanese words in the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary18 in the same way as before. This time, there are almost ninety entries, but around thirty of them are compounds or phrases containing the word ‘Japan’, which should surely not actually be treated as ‘Japanese’! ‘Korea’ and ‘Koreanize’ also are dubious entries here. Once again, he discovers earlier first appearances for some words. He adds a list of categories in which words have been adopted, pointing out that the ‘Art and Ornament group has so far supplied the largest number, followed by trees and plants’. He ends with a ‘suggested etymology’ for the English word ‘funny’ from the Japanese fune. Finally, ‘The Sermon in English Literature’ (1937) may be said to represent Gatenby’s final venture into literature rather than pedagogy, at least in the Kenkyusha series. It is a printed version of a lecture given at the To¯hoku Imperial University, and once again is a comprehensive historical review, quoting from and discussing sermons and preachers both renowned and obscure from Aelfric to more recent times. Only in one sentence is an attempt made to speculate on whether listeners with a Buddhist background might react 456

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differently to such sermons. Anyway, all of these articles reveal a far wider range of interest and research than Hornby’s, and even the ones on the English language give evidence of an attempt to study Japanese that Hornby never felt the need to make. Gatenby’s teaching at the Tohoku Imperial University was diverse in its subject matter, too. Examples from the University’s journal Bunka19 show him teaching ‘English Poetic Theory’ using Wordsworth’s Prelude as his text, and ‘Galsworthy’s Plays; The Silver Box, Joy, & Strife’ in 1934, and the following year ‘G.B. Shaw’s: Back to Methuselah’ and ‘Sir. A. Quiller-Couch’s: “The Art of Writing”’. A brief search reveals that he appears not to have contributed to the University’s journals, while a German colleague, Dr Hellmuth Sudheimer, did. Gatenby’s contributions to the IRET Bulletin became more frequent after about 1937, when Hornby had already taken over editorial work on it following Palmer’s return to England in 1936. In No. 138, 1937, there is a review20 of a text co-edited by Gatenby and Kobayashi Atsuo in ‘The IRET Selections from Standard Authors Series’ comprising excerpts from Seven Pillars of Wisdom, which is incidentally the only work bearing Gatenby’s name in the whole of the Kaitakusha catalogue for Showa 17 (1942), while there are numerous ones listed for Palmer, Hornby and several others. This once again shows that Gatenby was an independent scholar, not restricting his publishing to Kaitakusha, the official publishers for the IRET. His contributions to the Bulletin actually do not reach their most frequent until some of the last issues before Japan’s entry into the Second World War. In No. 177, September 1941, he has ‘The First English Account of Japan’, in which he gives a brief but thoroughly researched summary of works by Richard Willes and other early travellers or translators of real travellers’ works, with the closing remark about Hakluyt: ‘Mr Paske-Smith, recently H.B.M. Consul at Osaka’, had ‘edited a reproduction of the chapter on Japan … in 1928. As history, the book is of little value, but it is of great antiquarian and linguistic interest.’ In the following issue for OctoberNovember, he writes ‘A Few Words’, which actually stretch to an extravagant dozen pages of wide-ranging discussion that touches on the poetic strengths of Shakespeare, Blake, Tennyson and several others, the status of Latin, developments in the Japanese language, regrettable trends in modern English pronunciation and vocabulary and so on. In No. 179, December 1941, there is a note on other sources that might supplement Gatenby’s September article. AFTER JAPAN

With the beginning of hostilities, Gatenby must have been interned, like Hornby. Though there are no records, he too must have left Japan 457

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on the Tatuta-maru, the ocean liner which had been requisitioned in 1941 and was used for the diplomatic exchange voyage to return the British ambassador and other European diplomats which departed on 30 July 1942. The diplomatic exchange took place at Lourenço Marques in late August, whereupon the Tatuta-maru21 returned to Japan and the European passengers were transferred to British vessels. Gatenby eventually reached England, where both he and Hornby were soon taken on by the British Council. While Hornby was sent to Persia as a Linguistic Advisor, Gatenby was posted to Turkey.22 In Turkey, the energy with which Gatenby had succeeded in keeping two jobs in the Northeast of Japan, and simultaneously not only working on the ISED but also writing widely on literary and other linguistic topics, if not so much preparing textbooks, came to the fore again. Already in 1944, he had additional posts as Professor of Pedagogy and Head of the English Department at Turkey’s only teachers’ training college, the Gazi Educational Institute in Ankara. The following year, he was also appointed Professor of English at Ankara University. Like Hornby, he began English lessons by radio, and established a pedagogical bulletin. This was in Turkish for, unlike Hornby, he continued to show an active interest and involvement in the language that surrounded him. He contributed copiously to Hornby’s recently established English Language Teaching in London, beginning in 1947 with ‘Second Language in the Kindergarten’ and ‘English Language Studies in Turkey’.23 Ten articles on wide-ranging topics were to follow in the next five years, so that Gatenby became one of the journal’s most stalwart early contributors. In 1948, with the eminent pedagogue C.F. Eckersley he brought out Essential English for Turkish Students,24 which was supplemented with a further fivevolume course for Turkish students between 1949 and 1953.25 This led to a standard universal edition of A Direct Method English Course.26 During his years in Turkey, Gatenby also travelled widely for lecture tours and summer schools to countries as distant as Yugoslavia, South Africa and India. In India, he gave important advice on how, after Independence, the nation’s attitude to the English language would change. In 1954, the year he retired from the British Council, he returned to his old interest in loanwords that had entered English, this time from Turkish. In ‘Material for a Study of Turkish Words in English’27 he adopts a similar approach to the Japan articles described above, discovering early dates for first appearance, discussing variant spellings, speculating on the routes by which the Turkish words have reached English, arguing that many words given by the OED as originating further East in areas such as India or Persia probably entered English through Turkish, and so on. Not surprisingly, his list is much longer than the Japanese lists he discussed while in Japan. 458

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Japan is mentioned just once, in a quotation from Rudyard Kipling’s Abaft the Funnel (1909): ‘You must know that every Japanese carries a little belaiti made handbag with nickel fastenings.’ Gatenby connects belaiti with the Turkish word vilayet: (Turkish, from Arabic welâyeh, -yet district, dominion) 1869 See eyalet. A province of the Turkish empire ruled by a vali, or governorgeneral. The Arabic word went to India and produced belaiti, Englich [sic] BLIGHTY, the soldier’s word for “England”, and also in the First World War for a wound which would cause him to be sent home to England.

All of this tireless industry was rewarded by an OBE in 1953 in the new Queen’s coronation honours, followed by a CBE in 1955. Though he had been looking forward to retirement, he died after a very brief illness in 1955 at the age of sixty-three. His wife Lucy survived him for many years, passing away at a nursing home in Norfolk on 22 November 1981.28 ASSESSMENTS

Gatenby’s friend Vere Redman,29 who had been a fellow English teacher before the War, and returned afterwards as a diplomat, praised him copiously in a speech to the Central Asian Society that later became the article noted above. Claiming that ‘he developed into a first-class linguistician in his own right’, he states, ‘His book English as a Foreign Language30…puts him in the same class as de Saussure, Sapir, Jespersen, Bloomfield, Ogden, Richards, Jones, and Palmer himself.’ Later referring to Gatenby as a ‘linguistician plus’, Redman concludes by quoting ‘one who knew intimately his impact on the Middle East and who was later to benefit, indirectly, as British Council Representative in Japan, from his impact on that country, Dr Leslie Phillips. He writes of Gatenby: “Those who received instruction at his hands will never forget, I know, the gentleness of the man and the wisdom of his utterances”.’ This was L.R. Phillips, who had written sympathetic obituaries of Gatenby for both Hornby’s English Language Teaching31 and Gogaku Kyoiku, the journal of the IRLT – post-war successor of the IRET. The former included these words about his visit to India, quoted by Richard Smith: To that conference came Indian experts, many of whom were facing the problem of the teaching of English as a foreign language for the first time. For India has attained her excellence in English because she has used it. It has been the medium of instruction and the only means of communication between Indians whose mother tongues were different. It was for Professor Gatenby to explain that, with the 459

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ultimate relegation of English to the place of a subsidiary language in India, the methods of instruction in that language must be radically changed. I well remember the atmosphere of scepticism in which that conference started, and the way in which Professor Gatenby’s kindly informed insistence changed that atmosphere to one that was as friendly as it was sincere. The final speeches of the delegates, and their expressions of thanks were a very moving testimony to the influence that Professor Gatenby had spread over the whole conference during those very pleasant and rewarding days.

Smith adds: The conference ended with a list of ‘General recommendations’ which clearly owed much to Gatenby’s influence, including: the promotion of the direct method ‘as the only method calculated to give a sure foundation in the language, the occasional judicious use of the mother tongue being permitted during such language instruction’; the need to concentrate in the first years on ‘a mastery of the words and structures of a selected vocabulary’; and the establishment of an ‘Institute of Research in English Language Teaching’ (an echo, clearly, of the Tokyo Institute for Research in English Teaching).

A.P.R. Howatt32 echoes Redman, claiming that English as a Foreign Language, with its strong theme of ‘provision of practical classroom advice’, was an early work that contributed to what Howatt terms the period of ‘Consolidation’ in EFL, 1946–60. Howatt appreciates Gatenby’s ‘rather gentle approach’ to what should be a ‘natural approach’ to learning English. He acknowledges that the OALD ‘broke new ground in linking lexical and grammatical information in the same work’. A.P. Cowie,33 who assisted and later succeeded Hornby on the OALD, writes of Gatenby ‘having the greater interest in things Japanese and a better command of the language’ than Hornby. Though eclipsed in Japan, to some extent unjustifiably, by the especial brilliance of first Palmer and then Hornby, Gatenby certainly became celebrated in Turkey. He became known as the man who pioneered modern teaching of English in that country, and his name became a household word on account of his very successful textbooks. Ironically perhaps, those textbooks which had been initially so revolutionary later became the conventional norm. A recent article,34 entitled ‘The most popular exercise in Turkey: Learning English’ begins: ‘Half of Turkey is trying to learn English. And the other half is trying to raise the money needed for this. In fact, learning English is a lifetime exercise for most Turks.’ A little later, we read: 460

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In his column, ‘Why can’t Turks speak English?’ Güven Sak says: ‘Turkey’s problem with English is a structural one. The country lacks skilled and fluent English teachers and the programs to train them. It isn’t just the curriculum but the building blocks of English-language education that are missing.’ Does this ring a bell for you: Mr. and Mrs. Brown went to the seaside? Many people, a whole generation in Turkey, utter this sentence with mixed feelings. For the majority, they are a dreaded British couple from the textbook, ‘A Direct Method English Course’ by E.V. Gatenby. This hyperactive couple went on picnics, to the zoo, climbed mountains and, indeed, frequently went to the seaside. They even went to Mexico and brought back ‘sombreros’. At the end of all these activities, Turkish students still could not speak English…

Nor is Gatenby forgotten by more serious Turkish writers: in an article in 2012 on ‘Atatürk and the History of Foreign Language Education’,35 Gatenby is simply and clearly credited with having introduced the principles of the Direct Method into Turkey. Thus, like A.S. Hornby, E.V. Gatenby established his credentials as a progressive pedagogue in English while in Japan, and then developed and refined them to become fully acknowledged at home and elsewhere. ENDNOTES 1 David Kirby ed. (2008) Richard Gatenby’s Family Chronicle: Love, Marriage and Mortality in a Methodist Family in the North Riding 1764–1923, Summerfield Press. Birthdates here come from the editor’s Introduction; Richard’s text itself concentrates on previous generations, and Edward (called ‘Vivian’ by his father) appears briefly only three times. The book contains several photographs, in one of which Vivian is photographed in a family group while on a visit to celebrate his parents’ golden wedding in 1936. The portrait at the head of this article, from a Gatenby family album now in Bedale Museum, was kindly provided by David Kirby. 2 Built c. 1874, later West Witton Primary School, now converted to holiday cottages 3 Chartered by Elizabeth I in 1598, closed and subsumed into ‘Brookfield Community School’ in 1991; records now in Derbyshire County Archives. The admissions register shows Edward Vivian Gatenby with a Date of Entry in September 1906 and a Date of Exit on 28 July 1908 4 This information from the original roll book kept at the school. Hymers College opened in 1893 as a school for boys on the site of the old Botanic Gardens of Hull under the will of Rev. John Hymers, and still exists as one of the leading independent schools in Yorkshire. Edward Vivian entered in ‘Form VM’ on 15 October 1908 and left in ‘Form VI Mod’. Richard Gatenby (described in the roll book as ‘general dealer’) clearly had high ambitions for his children: Bertha, too, was enrolled in a private school, in Barnsley, and later became a schoolteacher in Leeds. 461

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5 Kirby, op. cit. p. 169 6 Another Edward Gatenby is listed as a military fatality in 1916, but this cannot be the same person. 7 Correspondence with KCL Archives, October 2013 8 Now given by estate agents as in Kensal Rise. The spacious terraced houses there were built around 1890. 9 Both degrees and dates being confirmed in the publication ‘University of London degrees awarded’. 10 Sir Vere Redman (1967) ‘Some English Teachers in the Far and Middle East’, Journal of the Central Asian Society, Vol. 54, Issue 2. For a portrait of Redman by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, who knew him, see Volume II of this series 11 Bo Dihua taught there 1924–44, according to reminiscences by his son Bo Jian, http://ameblo.jp/maiwayinchina/entry-11123896911.html (All websites noted here accessed 1 October-30 November, 2013) 12 quem vid., Volume IV of this series. The IRET went on to become an internationally significant centre for developing theories and practice of English language pedagogy. 13 Kaitakusha, 1933. The ‘First Report’ was a short typescript internally distributed; the Third was promised ‘in due course’, but never appeared. The active collaborators were: ‘Mr A.S. Hornby, Mr K. Takezawa, Mrs Hino, Miss S. Takazawa, and Mr P. Russo’. 14 Correspondence with Mrs Phyllis Willis, early 2012. I have been unable to find the date of the Gatenbys’ marriage. 15 Published by the English Literature Society of Japan since 1918. 16 Now known as the OED, Oxford, 1928. 17 In a footnote, he points out conflicting dates for the story’s first appearance in Cornhill and is frustrated by being so far away that it is ‘not easy to clear up discrepancies of this kind in Japan’. 18 1933. 19 i.e. Culture, published monthly from 1934 by Iwanami Shoten. 20 In Japanese: Under Hornby’s editorial policy, and/or the growing nationalist atmosphere, more and more space is devoted to submissions in the Japanese language. 21 Torpedoed and sunk with all hands by a US submarine in 1943. 22 See ‘E.V. Gatenby’s Life and Career’ by Richard Smith on the Warwick University website. http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/soc/al/research/ collect/elt_archive/halloffame/gatenby/life/. The Hall of Fame currently comprises fifteen entries. There is also a list of Gatenby’s main publications. 23 Vol. I, Issue 7 and Vol. II, Issue 1 respectively. 24 Longmans, Green. 25 A Direct Method English Course. A New Course Specially Designed for Turkish Students. Longmans, Green. 26 Longmans, Green, 1952–53. 27 http://dergiler.ankara.edu.tr/dergiler/26/1246/14245.pdf. 28 The London Gazette, 10 December 1981. 29 See note 10. 30 Longmans, Green 1944. 462

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31 Vol. X, Issue 3, April 1956. 32 A.P.R. Howatt (1984), A History of English Language Teaching, Oxford. 33 A.P. Cowie (1999), English Dictionaries for Foreign Learners: A History, Clarendon Press. 34 In the Hürriyet Daily News for 17 November 2012 35 G. & A. Sarıçoban in The Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 8 (1). Similar comments were made in 2010 by Zekariya Oszevik in an MA thesis for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign on ‘The Use of Communicative Language Teaching (CLT): Turkish EFL Teachers’ Perceived Difficulties in Implementing CLT in Turkey’. APPENDIX CITATIONS & ARCHIVES Occasionally, Gatenby’s Japan articles are still cited, and the Internet can be useful in tracing such instances. Doi Shun, in a BA thesis on ‘Borrowing of Japanese words into English’ for ICU, Tokyo (http://ir.nul.nagoyau.ac.jp/jspui/bitstream/2237/17714/1/ba.pdf), refers to his two articles on Japanese vocabulary in English in Studies in English Literature discussed above. In 2006, Fujii Tetsu includes Gatenby’s ‘Johnson and Boswell

in Scotland’ in a summary of how Johnson studies have developed over the years. (Fukuoka University Review, Series A: Humanities, Vol. 6 No. 4, Fukuoka University Central Research Institute.) A rare find appears in a meticulously researched Hungarian article (‘A bonc szó eredete és ami körülötte van a japán nyelvtörténet tükrében’ – ‘Origins of the word bonze and its environment as reflected in Japanese historical linguistics’ http://www.c3.hu/~magyarnyelv/08–2/sengatoru. pdf) in which Senga Toru refers to Gatenby’s work on early appearances of Japanese vocabulary in English. The Fukushima University Library already possessed over a dozen items of Gatenby’s lecture notes, when in April 2004, it received a donation of 103 items including both books owned by Gatenby and volumes of lesson notes prepared by him. A half-page article In Shoto No. 33, Fukushima University Library, October 2004 commemorating the donation mentions Gatenby’s educational contribution to the School, which included not only meticulous teaching but also English plays, debates and a magazine, as well as his influential work for Japanese education in general. His notebooks, are classified into the three categories of Japanese language study (romanized Japanese vocabulary with English meanings, including the words to Haru ga kita), English language teaching notes (simple dialogues, dictation passages, grammar items, tests and students’ grades) and notes on English literature (Shakespeare, Eighteenth Century prose). His meticulous script is said to reflect his teaching style, though the grades given his students suggest generosity rather than severity, according to newspaper reports of an exhibition of the donated items. Reminiscences by another alumnus, Yokomizo Ryuji, (http://jfn.josuikai.net/nendokai/dec-club/12tushi/hukusimayokomizo.htm) from the 7th class refer to the well-prepared, frequent foreign language plays in English, French, German and Chinese that attracted full-house audiences, despite the grow463

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ing political tensions and oppression of free speech of the 1930s that led to the dismissal of five teachers and a student occupation of a lecture hall. The Library of Yamagata University owns three German naval calendars from 1911, 1912 and 1913 that it claims may have belonged to Gatenby. According to the Fukushima University Library article, Gatenby taught at the Fukushima school for all of his 19 years in Japan, from Taisho 12 (1923) until after the outbreak of the Second World War, leaving in ‘March, Showa 17 (1942)’. This contradicts other reports that he left to become a Professor at Tohoku University in 1926. The Sudan Archive at Durham University possesses correspondence of J.A. Bright, Inspector at the Institute of Education, Khartoum, among which is an exchange of five letters with Gatenby in Ankara. Despite war, removals and changes in fortune, the Kaitakusha Company in Tokyo retains many original copies of books published for the IRET, including the one on which Gatenby cooperated, as well as the ISED, of course. Many University libraries in Japan possess early and subsequent editions of the ISED. The IRET also keeps some early publications, though its activities are no longer so central to the development of English pedagogy in Japan.

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Wolf Mendl (1926–1999): Leading Scholar in the Field of International Relations IAN NISH

Dr Wolf Mendl was a distinguished teacher in the field of international relations at Kings College, University of London for twenty-six years. He published several significant books on the subject of relations between Japan and China in the Cold War period and did much to encourage an interest in Japan in the contemporary period, being elected president of the British Association of Japanese Studies in 1989–1990. Wolf was of Austro-German extraction, leaving Berlin for England in 1936. Educated at Watford Grammar School, he went on to study history at the University of Cambridge. Wolf followed his mother into membership of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers) in 1946. He spent three years in Yorkshire teaching history at Wennington School, a progressive, co-educational independent school (1950–1953) and moved to a Quaker institution, Pendle Hill, outside Philadelphia, where he studied pacifism. 465

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The American Friends Service Committee asked him to organize international student seminars in Japan. From 1955 to 1957 he served in Tokyo as director of the Quaker Student Seminar. It was a significant time for Japanese university students many of whom had lost faith in their country and were attracted by communism. It was thought important, therefore, that they should have international contacts. Mendl’s administrative role was to provide the opportunity for them to have informal exchanges of views with foreigners. Wolf wrote of this period in his self-effacing way: ‘When I first set foot in the country my knowledge of it was sufficient to fill the back of the proverbial postage stamp. It had only just emerged from the isolation of the post-war occupation and was largely unknown in Europe.’ He quickly immersed himself in the country and was to marry a Japanese, Endo¯ Keiko, in 1959. This was a formative period in the development of Wolf’s thinking about Japan. In an article which comes close to being an autobiographical essay, he reveals: When I went there in 1955, I was inclined to be very sympathetic because I had been terribly shocked by the atomic bombs….. But after a period of falling in love with Japan, I came to a more detached view with the realization that, in a hidden way, what happened at Hiroshima and Nagasaki was often used to obliterate the shame of atrocities committed by the Japanese armies in Asia.

This was followed by four years spent in France, also in Quaker service. In 1961 Wolf returned to UK and became a research student at Kings College, London, under Professor Michael Howard. He obtained his doctorate in 1965 for a thesis on French nuclear policy which was relevant to him because of Quaker concerns about disarmament. It was ultimately published as Deterrence and Persuasion: French Nuclear Armament in the Context of National Policy, 1945–69 (1970). Wolf joined the staff of the pioneering War Studies department at Kings in 1965. Commenting on the apparent contradiction in employing a Quaker in a department of war studies, he wrote: Those who think I should have been in peace studies overlook the fact that war and peace are two sides of the same coin. Just as no one would accuse a medical scientist of wishing to promote the disease he is studying, a student of war is not necessarily in favour of it.

From this time Wolf’s interests increasingly turned towards the study of Japan where he had family ties. At Kings he taught a course on Japan and had an optional subject of ‘East Asian Security’. He brought to Japanese studies in Britain a special dimension: he saw himself as 466

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lecturing on military sociology with special reference to the political aspects of modern civil-military relations. Outside academia he was actively engaged in various Quaker bodies and became president of the British Association of Japanese Studies in 1989–1990. He was active also in the Royal Institute of International Affairs and was a frequent contributor to its journal, The World Today. He became a member of several Chatham House study-groups, one of which led to his publishing in 1978 Issues in Japan’s China Policy. While he denied that it written ‘from the standpoint of a Japanologist’, he tried to see Japan’s dilemmas through Japanese eyes. The book explores the diversity of trade and foreign policies of two neighbouring states separated by the ideology of the Cold War. His next book covers the time when Japan was trying to escape from too close a relationship with the United States and expand the scope of her foreign relations in Europe in the early 1980s. He published Western Europe and Japan between the Super-Powers (1984). It was natural that Wolf should apply his great facility in European languages to his existing Japanese expertise. In 1989, the year when the Showa Emperor died and the Japanese people were forced to reflect on the sixty-three years he had been on the throne, Wolf published in The Friend, the house-magazine of the Quaker movement, an important article about the strident reactions in parts of the British press: It was inexcusable (he wrote) that the gutter press and other organs of the media [in Britain] which should have known better used the occasion to insult the late Emperor and whip up anti-Japanese sentiment through distorted and tendentious reports…. Rather than harp on the past, we should encourage Japanese efforts to play a constructive role in international politics. (The Friend, 21 April 1989)

His Quaker approach was manifest in this article, but he was uncharacteristically indignant about the excesses of the British press. After twenty-six years he retired from Kings College in 1991 with the title of Emeritus Reader in the University of London. His links with Chatham House continued after his retirement when he was appointed as an associate fellow of the Asia-Pacific programme. During this period he published another study, Japan’s Asia Policy: Regional security and global interests (1995). This emphasized how, over the two decades of his writing career, the world and Japan had changed. Japan, in particular, was no longer a minor power disinclined to take initiatives and had become a country whose economic accomplishments (fragile as they were in the 1990s) forced her to play a constructive role in world politics as the majority of powers wanted. 467

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Wolf’s last years were clouded by illness. His first wife had died in 1971, leaving him with three small children. Troubled by bad eyesight from which he had suffered since his youth, he was nursed at the family home in Watford by his second wife, Takako Miyashita, whom he had married in 1972. Energetic to the end, he collected academic papers dealing with Japan’s relations with Southeast Asia from the Meiji Restoration to the end of the twentieth century. This collection was published posthumously by Routledge in two volumes in 2001. This seemed to complete the canon of his writings. [This leaves out of account his various Quaker writings.] Colleagues have written that Wolf was a warm-hearted and generous person. In discussion he was modest in presenting his own views and charitable in his judgment of others. He was a fine lecturer with a marked sense of humour and a painstaking and penetrating examiner. In addition, he was a lucid, scholarly writer, combining the insights of a sympathetic historian and the judgment of an expert in international affairs. If I have to be labelled (he wrote), it should be as a political scientist, though in whatever I write, the historical dimension always plays a part.

He was one of a small cluster of specialists in Britain who charted the sensitive changes in the story of regional conflict in east Asia, a subject which has long been neglected. The quotations in this article are taken from Wolf’s autobiographical essay, ‘A Slow Awakening’ in Peter Adler (ed.), Out of the Third Reich: Refugee Historians in Postwar Britain (London and New York: IB Tauris, 1998)

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John Sargent, Respected Geographer of Japan VARIOUS

In Japan John Sargent was known among geographical academics as the key geographer of Japan in Britain in his day. John who died of cancer in Trieste on 10 July 2012 taught the geography of Japan at School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, for three and a half decades. He first came to SOAS as a research student in 1962 after gaining a First in geography at Leeds University and embarked on the study of Japanese under Frank Daniels, Charles Dunn, Pat O’Neill, Stanley Weinstein and Yanada Seiji before spending more than a year in Japan collecting material for his Ph.D. thesis on the historical geography of Nagoya. During his final examinations at Leeds he had impressed the external Examiner, Professor Charles Fisher (see Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits volume VIII); and, when Fisher became the first head of the newly established Geography Department in 1965, John was appointed as Fellow in Japanese Geography. He became Reader in the 1970s and subsequently succeeded Fisher as head of department, serving in that 469

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capacity for seven years. He bore a heavy administrative burden, made all the more difficult by the changing character of the discipline of geography and the decline in popularity of regional geography. In the 1980s he acted as chairman of the Japan Research Centre. When he was less burdened with administration in the 1990s, he published Geographical Studies and Japan under the Japan Library imprint (1993). This volume which he co-edited with his SOAS colleague, Richard Wiltshire, drew on the papers presented by both British and Japanese scholars at three interlinked conferences held at SOAS, Sheffield and Durham in 1988. Outside SOAS, he was active in various fields. He served on the Japan Foundation Endowment Committee in the 1980s. Paul Norbury recalls that John was one of the mainstays among speakers at the Teaching About Japan workshops which he organized from 1978 to 1993 on behalf of the Japan Information and Cultural Centre (JICC). These took place at schools, sixth-form colleges and universities throughout the UK. John was a strong supporter of this programme, speaking for the first time in June 1978 at the University of Edinburgh on ‘Japan’s Modern Century: A 100 years of industrial and economic growth’ and latterly at a workshop in Cardiff in March 1991 on ‘Key areas of economic change in Japan and their geographical implications’. His talks were always structured to meet the level of awareness and perceived knowledge about Japan of the student audience he was addressing. He had a wonderful, humorous but trenchant manner, often enriched with anecdotes, and was invariably a pleasure to listen to. He also made valuable contributions to both the Japan Education Journal (that emanated from the Workshop programme) and also a series known as Perspectives on Japan, to which he contributed several papers – the last in 1998 entitled ‘Kyushu: Silicon Island or Silicon Colony?’ John was born and raised in Penrith. His good-humoured, downto-earth style and dislike of cant and pretentiousness may have owed something to his northern background. He was himself free of any sense of self-importance, as can be seen in the story he told of hearing a (past) Director exclaim, as he left the latter’s office after a meeting: ‘When is that man going to finish his thesis?’ He was an inveterate and unrepentant pipe-smoker at a time when pipe-smoking, now frowned upon, was regarded as a mark of academic distinction. This habit contributed to his avuncular manner. These characteristics remained constant throughout his teaching career. Almost the only respect in which he changed was his figure: having once been rather skinny, he filled out noticeably after his marriage to Maryam in 1971. Soon after his retirement John moved to Trieste where Maryam had family connections, and he found his new environment congenial. In a letter of January 2001 to Richard Sims he wrote: ‘Life here 470

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is gentler, more civilised, and far less stressful (as we found it anyway) than in England; the family, though weakening, remains a key institution; and people (with some notable exceptions) seem more considerate of one another’s feelings.’ In Italy John was able to pursue such hobbies as photography, food, art and music. Unfortunately the health problems which had begun to trouble him in his last teaching years increased but he maintained a link with Japan through translations for Japanese institutions and publishers. Paul Norbury, John’s publisher, writes: After John retired from SOAS in 1999 we rather lost touch until early 2011 when, out of the blue, he e-mailed me (now wearing my Brill hat) to ask if I would consider publishing the work of the Japanese scholar, Kanasaka Kiyonori, concerning Isabella Bird, John having agreed (in principle) to do the translation. It was indeed a most interesting project. But, sadly, after several exchanges that month, communications ceased following what I now realize was a severe deterioration in his health. In the event, I met Professor Kanasaka in Kyoto two years later and learned first-hand about the plans he had set in train with John. It was a sad moment when I broke the news concerning John’s death of which he was unaware.

Professor Kanasaka expressed enormous respect for John’s scholarship which evidently continued into retirement. He will be remembered as a dedicated scholar determined to take his message to a wider audience. NOTE

This essay is the work of several hands who wish to remain anonymous. Further information on John’s role within SOAS can be found in the more detailed obituary which Richard Sims contributed to the report of the Japan Research Centre of SOAS for 2012–13

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Grace James (1882–1965) and Mrs T.H. (Kate) James (1845–1928): Writers of Children’s Stories NOBORU KOYAMA

Grace James as a child

INTRODUCTION

Grace James (1882–1965) was a writer of children’s stories, such as the John and Mary series, Green Willow and Other Japanese Fairy Tales. She was also the author of Joan of Arc (a biography) and Japan: Recollections and Impressions. She was an active member of the Japan Society of London. She contributed to the Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London ‘Japanese Fairy Tales and Folklore’ (1933),1 ‘Early Recollection of To¯kyo¯’ (1934),2 ‘Basil Hall Chamberlain [obituary]’ (1935)3 and ‘Some Japanese Ghost Stories’ (1936).4 Her mother Kate (Mrs T.H. James) contributed half of the Japanese Fairy Tales series published by the publisher Hasegawa Takejirõ,

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GRACE AND KATE JAMES: THEIR LIVES AND WRITINGS

Grace James’ writings were greatly influenced by her mother, Kate James (1845–1928) or Mrs T.H. James, but above all by her own childhood in Japan. She was born in Tokyo 11 November 1882, the first child of Thomas Henry James (1850?-1910) and Katherine Margaret James (née Ranken or Rankin).5 Grace’s parents went to Japan in 1876 and stayed there until 1895). Grace James described her children experiences in Early Recollection of Tokyo and her book Japan: Recollections and Impressions. These early years were especially formative for a writer of children’s stories; Japan provided what she described as ‘the happiest possible childhood’.6 Her first memories were of her Chinese nurse, Ah Kai, and probably go back to 1885 when she was two years old. Both Grace and especially her mother Kate wrote children’s stories which were influenced by their reading of Japanese fairy tales. Hasegawa Takejirõ7 (1853–1938) began to publish the series Japanese Fairy Tales in 1885, in the form of chirimen-bon (or crepepaper books). By 1903 twenty-eight volumes of chirimen-bon had been published. Contributors to these volumes included Basil Hall Chamberlain (1850–1935), Lafcadio Hearn (1850–1904), David Thomson (1835–1916) and, James Curtis Hepburn (1815–1911), but by far the largest contributor to Japanese Fairy Tales was Mrs T. H. James, or Kate James. She wrote fourteen volumes, constituting half of all the Japanese Fairy Tales series and was the most important contributor to the series and author of chirimen-bon. Mrs T. H. James’ first book in the Japanese Fairy Tale series was The Matsuyama Mirror (1886). Lafcadio Hearn praised the work in a letter to Basil Hall Chamberlain as follows: DEAR CHAMBERLAIN, – I’m trying to write an essay – no, a fantastico-philosophical sketch – about Mirrors and Souls. Especially Souls. Which causes me to think about Mrs. James’s version of the ‘Matsuyama Kagami’. Who is Mrs. James? I have read her version about fifteen times, and every time I read it, it affects me more. And I can’t help thinking that the woman who could thus make the vague Japanese incident so beautiful must have a tender and beautiful soul, – whoever she is, – whether missionary or not.8

Grace James recorded that her father came from Deal, in Kent, and that her mother was Scottish and came from Old Deer, a village in Aberdeenshire.9 Kate met Thomas H. James in Constantinople (now Istanbul) and they married in the early part of the 1870s. James

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was then a sub-lieutenant in the Royal Navy. He was appointed as a member of the Naval Mission to Japan and he and Kate went to Japan in 1876. They lived in Tokyo until 1895. James worked as an instructor for Japan’s Naval Academy at Tsukiji in Tokyo from 1876 probably up to 1884.10 Basil Hall Chamberlain also taught at the Academy from 1874 to 1882 and was a colleague and friend. In her book, John and Mary’s Aunt, Grace James described him as ‘A friend of Father’s and Mother’s, called Mr Chamberlain’.11 Chamberlain describes Kate James in his letter to Lafcadio Hearn as follows: Mrs James is an excellent woman, and one of my earliest friends here, – true-hearted and well-read, though boasting neither beauty nor grace, but a typical Scotch-woman in appearance, hard-featured and high-cheek-boned. She was daughter to a rather eminent Scotch dean, which does not mean that she was reared in luxury, for the Episcopalian clergy in that country are miserably poor. She tells of how she and her sister used to take turns in sitting up at night with sick cow! Afterwards she lived at Constantinople as a governess, which is where she met her future husband, then a sub-lieutenant in the English navy, – also without a penny. However, they married, and now flourish exceedingly, he being adviser to the Nippon Yu¯sen Kwaisha.12

Kate Margaret Ranken (or Katherine M. Rankin or Catherine M Rankin) who was born in Old Deer, Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1845, was the youngest of the five daughters of Arthur and Anne Ranken (or Rankin).13 Her father, the Very Rev. Arthur Ranken (1806–1886), D.D., was Dean of Aberdeen and Orkney from 1880 to 1886. He was educated at the University of Aberdeen and held ministerial posts in the Episcopal Church in Scotland and was the author of Sketches of the Church of Scotland from the Reformation.14 Kate was probably educated at home like her sisters. After his employment with the Japanese Government had finished, Thomas H. James worked from 1889 onward (or possibly from 188515) for the Japanese shipping company, Nippon Yusen Kaisha (NYK), as a naval superintendent.16 Subsequently, he was appointed manager of NYK’s London office and took up the post in 1896 after returning to Britain,17 keeping it until his death in 1910.18 According to Chamberlain, Thomas H. James became relatively wealthy as a result of working for NYK. Chamberlain goes on to describe Kate James in the letter: After 11 years of childlessness, she [Kate James] suddenly gave birth to three children in rapid succession; and for them it was, in the first instance, that she took to story-writing. One of the little girls is among 474

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the most precocious creatures, especially in appreciation of humour, that I have ever seen, though unfortunately destined to be big and unwieldy, like her mother and aunt.19

Kate and Thomas had three children (two daughters and one son) in Tokyo. Grace (Grace Edith Marion) was born in 1882, Arthur (Ernest Arthur Henry) in 1883 and Elspeth (Elspeth Iris Fraser) in 1887. The age gap between Grace and Arthur was less than a year and they were treated like twins.20 Although Grace wrote that Kate’s favourite child was Arthur,21 given the ages of the three children, it is probable that Grace (the first child) played the most important role in motivating Kate to write Japanese Fairy Tales, and it was Grace who was most influenced by her mother’s writings. Grace recorded that Chamberlain gave her a humorous doll’s house on her birthday.22 Chamberlain cannot have imagined that this precocious girl would, some forty years later, go on to write his obituary for the Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London. In the literature about Kate James, her three children are quite often, incorrectly, described as three daughters. In fact Chamberlain mentioned three children rather than three daughters in the letter.23 Grace James described the three siblings as follows in John and Mary’s Aunt (one of her John and Mary series): I was born in Japan. There were three of us: myself, my brother Arthur, whom we always called Dumpy, and my sister Elspeth. We were all born in Tokyo, and lived there till I was twelve years old. 24

Grace’s brother, Arthur James or Ernest A.H. James (1883–1944), would go on to become an army Colonel. In 1895, a little over a year before his family had left Japan, he had been sent to England to study at ‘a prep school in Weymouth, Connaught House, kept by Mr and Mrs Morgan’. During the holidays he stayed with his ‘Uncle Jack and Aunt Rose who lived not far from London’.25 After leaving school he went to the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich in 1900 and was appointed to the Royal Engineers in 1901.26 He was a Lieutenant in the Royal Engineers when he married Edith Mary Cox in March 1910 in London.27 He became a member of the Japan Society of London in 1928. As Colonel Ernest A.H. James he was military attaché at the British embassy in Tokyo from 20 June 1932 to 17 May 1936.28 Grace James visited Japan in 1934. One of the reasons for her trip to Japan was to meet her brother. Their meeting is described in Japan: Recollections and Impressions. Ernest A.H. James died in Berkshire at the age of sixty in 1944.29 Grace’s sister, Elspeth James, married Henri Cavalletti in London in 1911.30 Grace James died at her sister’s home in Rome at the age of eighty-two in 1965.31 Elspeth Cavalletti died in Rome at the age seventy-eight in the following year (1966). 475

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Kate James (Mrs T.H. James) published The Matsuyama Mirror, The Hare of Inaba in 1886 and The Cub’s Triumph, The Princes Fire-Flash and Fire-Fade, The Wooden Bowel in 1887, Schippeitaro in 1888, The Ogre’s Arm in 1889, The Ogres of Oyeyama in 1891, The Enchanted Waterfall in 1892, Three Reflections in 1894, The Flowers of Remembrances and Forgetfulness and Wonderful Tea-Kettle in 1896, The Wonderful Mallet in 1899 and The Broken Images in 1903, all of which belonged to the first and second series of Japanese Fairy Tales. Since Kate James had left Japan in 1895, some volumes were published after she returned to Britain. Grace described her parents’ attitude toward the Japanese language and their ability in the Japanese language thus: My father and mother soon came into direct social contact with Japanese of all classes, and no doubt they found it difficult at first to establish relationships with persons of whose language they knew but a few words, but somehow or another it was done, and of course as time went on they acquired a certain facility in talking Japanese, though neither of them became really proficient. I think my father had lessons at one time, for he could write a little Kana − the simpler ‘ladies’ writing which is founded on syllables, and he even knew a few Chinese characters. My mother trusted to her wits, and as she had a fairly good ear she very soon learnt to understand some essential talk on everyday topics and was brave enough to speak, first to her servants, and then various Japanese visitors, acquaintances, and friends who were beginning to gather about her. Such Japanese as my parents spoke was colloquial and fairly correct.32

It seems clear that Mrs T.H. James could not have translated those Japanese stories directly from original sources, at least unaided. The stories were sometimes entitled ‘Told in English by Mrs. T.H. James’. She probably re-wrote the stories in English after reading them in books or being told them by Japanese acquaintances. Before she married, she had been a governess in Constantinople. Her elder sister ‘Aunt Bell’, who went to Japan to teach in a girls’ school as head mistress, lived with Kate’s family in Tokyo.33 They both taught Kate’s children at home. According to Grace, Aunt Bell ‘read books in French and German and even in Russian and Greek’.34 Kate probably learnt elements of these languages, although she only taught English to her Japanese students and acquaintances. Kawamura Tetsutarõ (1870–1945), a son of Admiral Kawamura Sumiyoshi (1836–1904) was one Japanese whom she taught. Grace James described her mother’s teaching of Kawamura: As a young woman, with a good deal of time on her hands, my mother gave some English lessons to young Tetsu Taro (son of an 476

GRACE JAMES (1882–1965) AND MRS T.H. (KATE) JAMES (1845–1928)

Admiral Kawamura), who later became Count Kawamura and holder of the high but almost too responsible post of Controller of the Crown Prince’s [Showa Emperor]’s household.35

Kawamura Tetsutarõ became a friend of the James family and stayed with them when he studied in England. Grace James met him and his family when she revisited Japan in 1934. Baron Kawamura (Tetsutarõ) devoted ‘much of his leisure to the study of the Chinese classics and to the arts’, and ‘he was particularly interested in the No¯ drama and in the ceremony of the Cha-no-yu’. He arranged for Grace and Arthur to attend No¯ and Cha-no-yu in Tokyo.36 Grace James devoted one chapter of her book, Japan: Recollections and Impressions to Baron K’s ‘Avocations of a Japanese Gentleman: Cha-no-yu−the Tea Ceremony, No Drama’. In Tokyo, Kate and Thomas James occupied five houses successively when they lived there from 1876 to 1895.37 These houses were Shiba Sannai Sanban (No.3), Shiba Sannai Hachiban (No.8), Azabu ([Azabu Nakamachi No.18]), Akasaka and No.41 (Azabu). The house in Akasaka was burnt down by fire and was also called ‘Burnt House’; the last house (No.41 in Azabu) had been used by Edwin Arnold. Grace could not remember her earliest days at Shiba Sannai Sanban (No.3) as she was too young to remember them, so she described her childhood in Japan, in her book, John and Mary’s Aunt, mainly at the following four houses (No.8, Akasaka, Azabu and No.41). Her memories, which became the main inspiration for the John and Mary series were inspired by these houses. In her preface to John and Mary’s Aunt she wrote: If you read it [John and Mary’s Aunt], I think you may see how I got ideas for some of the John and Mary stories. This book is true and the people in it are REAL. It is about the time when I lived in Japan and it ends when I was twelve years old and we all came to England.

Her happy childhood in Japan was the main source for her John and Mary series and for all her writings. John and Mary in Grace’s stories were modelled on her nephew and niece, Giovanni and Maria Cavaletti, who lived at their granny’s house in Abingdon, Berkshire. After her parent’s return to England, Grace James studied at Cheltenham Ladies’ College and was admitted to St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, in 1905 at the age of twenty-three, where she stayed for five terms until 1907 studying English Literature.38 In 1910, she published Joan of Arc and Green Willow and Other Japanese Fairy Tale. In the same year, her brother, Arthur married, and her father, Thomas, died. In the following year, 1911, her sister, Elspeth married. Grace James 477

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revisited Japan in 1934 and published Japan: Recollections and Impressions in 1936. She produced John and Mary in 1935 and published around twenty volumes as John and Mary series up to 1960s including John and Mary’s Fairy Tales, John and Mary’s Japanese Fairy Tales and John and Mary’s Aunt. We do not have much information about Kate after her family’s return to Britain in 1895. In April 1901, Kate and Thomas lived in Purley with her daughter, Elspeth James, who was then thirteen years old.39 When her husband Thomas H. James died in 1910, she probably lived in Trevereux, Edenbridge, Kent,40 where Grace also lived. Some time after Thomas H. James’ death, Kate and Grace James probably started to live at Stonehill House, Abingdon, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). Grace’s sister, Elspeth Cavalletti gave birth to her daughter Maria there in 1915. In Grace James’ John and Mary series, John and Mary lived at their granny’s house, ‘Smockfarthing’ in Berkshire. The character of Mrs Hawthorne, John and Mary’s granny, was modelled on Kate James and their aunt Push was a stand-in for Grace. ‘Uncle Jumpy’ was their uncle, ‘Dumpy’ (Colonel Ernest A.H. James). ‘Their mother [Elspeth] was English and their father [Henri Cavalletti] was Italian. So, sometimes they lived in England with their granny and sometime in Rome with their father and mother’.41 It seems clear from Grace James’ John and Mary series that Kate James lived at the Stonehill House, Abingdon, Berkshire, happily with her daughter, Grace, and sometimes with her grandchildren, and that her son, Arthur and another daughter, Elspeth, visited her from time to time at her home. Kate James (Katherine Margaret James) died on 29 December 1928 at Stonehill House, Sutton Wick, Abingdon, Berkshire, at the age of eighty-three.42 After her mother had died in Abingdon, Berkshire, Grace James moved to Cutts End, Cumnor, Berkshire (now Oxfordshire). When she became a member of the Japan Society of London in 1933, her address was Cutts End, Cumnor, Oxford. Grace James lived there until 1964 and died at the home of her sister, the Marchesa Cavalletti (Elspeth Cavalletti) in Rome on 6 February 1965.43 Grace ‘was for 30 years active in the life of her village and particularly in the affairs of the Women’s Institute’.44 CONCLUSION

Since the early part of the Meiji era, works by English language writers, such as Algernon B. Mitford’s Tales of Old Japan, William Elliot Griffis’ Japanese Fairy World, Matilda Chaplin Ayrton’s Childlife in Japan and Japanese child-stories, Hannah Riddell’s Iwaya’s Fairy Tales of Old Japan, Yei Theodora Ozaki’s Japanese Fairy Book and 478

GRACE JAMES (1882–1965) AND MRS T.H. (KATE) JAMES (1845–1928)

Hasegawa Takejiro¯’s Japanese Fairy Tales series, have helped to introduce Japanese fairy tales and children’s stories to English readers. Mrs T.H. (Kate) James and Grace James contributed significantly to the popularization of Japanese fairy stories and to British understanding of the culture of Japan. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9

10 11

12

13 14 15

16

17 18

19

James, Grace, ‘Japanese Fairy Tales and Folklore’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol.30 (1932–1933), London, Japan Society, 1933. pp. 29–38. James, Grace, ‘Early Recollection of To¯kyo¯’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol.31 (1933–1934), London, Japan Society, 1934. pp. 1–17. James, Grace, ‘Basil Hall Chamberlain [obituary]’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol.32 (1934–1935), London, Japan Society, 1935. pp. xi-xv. James, Grace, ‘Some Japanese Ghost Stories’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol.33 (1935–1936), London, Japan Society, 1936. pp. 65–82. ‘Miss Grace James [obituary]’, The Times, 13 February 1965. p. 10. ‘Early Recollection of To¯kyo¯’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, Vol.31 (1933–1934), London, Japan Society, 1934. p. 1. Images of Japan 1885–1912: Scenes, Tales and Flowers by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, Sainsbury Institute, Norwich 2011 contains a chapter on Japanese Fairy Tales and discusses the publications of Hasegawa Takejiro¯ and other publishers of chirimenbon. Bisland, Elizabeth, edited, The Japanese Letters of Lafcadio Heran, London, Constable, 1911. p. 277. James, Grace, John and Mary’s Aunt, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. p. 11. Shiryo Oyatoi Gaikokujin, Tokyo, Shogakukan, 1975. pp. 285–6. James, Grace, John and Mary’s Aunt, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. p. 104. Koizumi, Kazuo, comp., Letters from Basil Hall Chamberlain to Lafcadio Hearn, Tokyo, Hokuseido Press, 1936. p. 84. 1851 Scotland Census. ‘Obituary [Arthur Ranken]’, The Times, 25 September 1886. p. 9. Sharf, Frederic A., Takejiro Hasegawa: Meiji Japan’s Preeminent Publisher of Wood-Block-Illustrated Crepe-Paper Books, Salem, Peabody Essex Museum, 1994. p. 48. Nihon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha hyakunenshi, Tokyo, Nihon Yusen Kabushiki Kaisha, 1988. p. 42. Ibid. p.48. ‘Zen Yusen Riji Shikyo’, Asahi Shinbun, Tokyo, Asahi Shinbunsha, 11 April 1910. p. 2.; ‘Yusen Zen Shihainin Fu’, Yomiuri Shinbun, Tokyo Yomiuri Shinbunsha, 1910. p. 2. Koizumi, Kazuo, comp., Letters from Basil Hall Chamberlain to Lafcadio Hearn, Tokyo, Hokuseido Press, 1936. p. 84. 479

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20

21 22 23

24

25 26 27 28

29 30

31 32

33

34 35

36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44

James, Grace, John and Mary’s Aunt, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. p. 282. Ibid., p. 281. Ibid., p. 105. Sharf, Frederic A., Takejiro Hasegawa: Meiji Japan’s Preeminent Publisher of Wood-Block-Illustrated Crepe-Paper Books, Salem, Peabody Essex Museum, 1994. p. 48.; Ishizawa, Saeko, Chirimen-bon no subete: Meiji no Obun Sashie-bon, Tokyo, Miyai Shoten, 2004. p. 37. James, Grace, John and Mary’s Aunt, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. p. 9. Ibid., p. 281. The RMA Woolwich Cadet Registers (the Sundhurst Collection). Marriage certificate (Ernest Arthur Henry James and Edith Mary Cox). Kuwata, Masaru, The British Diplomats in Japan: 1859–1945, Kobe, Mirume Syobo, 2003. p. 145. Death Certificate (Ernest A.H. James). ‘Forthcoming marriages, Marquis Henri Cavaletti and Miss Elspeth James’, The Times, 16 January 1911. p. 11; Marriage Certificate (Henri Cavaletti and Elspeth James). ‘Miss Grace James [obituary]’, The Times, 13 February 1965. p. 10. James, Grace, Japan: Recollections and Impressions, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1936. p. 22. James, Grace, John and Mary’s Aunt, London, Frederick Muller, 1950. p. 129. Ibid., p. 131. James, Grace, Japan: Recollections and Impressions, London, George Allen & Unwin, 1936. p. 257. Ibid., p. 197. Ibid., p. 42. Information provided by the Archivist of St. Hilda’s College, Oxford. 1901 England Census. Death Certificate (Thomas H. James). James, Grace, John and Mary, London, Frederick Muller, 1935. p. 3. Death Certificate (Katherine Margaret James). ‘Miss Grace James [obituary]’, The Times, 13 February 1965.p. 10. Ibid., p. 10.

480

PART IV: POLITICIANS AND OFFICIALS sJAPANESE s

43

Kato¯ Hiroharu (1870–1939) and Japan’s Last Foreign-built Cruiser IAN NISH

INTRODUCTION

Admiral Kato¯ Hiroharu (sometimes Kanji), who liked England and enjoyed the company of English people in his younger years, gradually turned against Britain for understandable professional reasons and as a result of lifetime experiences. By the 1920s Kato¯ appears to have placed Japan’s naval interests, especially in the controversial context of naval limitation which Britain was promoting, ahead of any residual affection he had for that country. This essay deals with the early part of his career1 when he admired Britain and was able to play a significant role in Anglo-Japanese cooperation. Kato¯ Hiroharu (1870–1939) was born in Fukui city, a city in central Japan which provided the Imperial Japanese Navy with many prominent officers. His family which was of naval stock moved to Tokyo when he was six. After basic education there, Hiroharu entered the naval academy (kaigun heigakko¯) at Etajima in 1882. Graduating in 1891, he was evidently highly thought of and was 481

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sent in 1900 to St Petersburg where he picked up a good knowledge of Russian and made valuable contacts. He served during the RussoJapanese War on board the flagship of Admiral To¯ go¯ , the Mikasa. He was in charge of gunnery and this continued to be his specialism. He emerged from the war with a high reputation and became a sort of aide to Admiral Yamamoto Gombei, who had served as navy minister throughout the war and then resigned. When Yamamoto was chosen to join the Imperial Thanksgiving Mission to Britain in 1907, it was natural that Kato¯ should be invited to join the Japanese naval team.² The 1907 mission was in part a symbol of the ‘special relationship’ between the Royal Navy and the Imperial Japanese Navy. The latter felt a new confidence after their naval success at the battle of Tsushima (1905) and felt that their victory was more spectacular than the performance of the Cho¯ shu¯-dominated army in the land war. The leaders of the navy, feeling that their service had been held back during the Meiji period, wanted to capitalize on its success. They proposed a long-term plan for an 8–8 fleet, which envisaged the building of eight battleships and eight heavy cruisers. While this was only partially approved, it was reassuring that these vessels could now be built in the growing number of Japanese dockyards. But Japan faced financial difficulties after the war. She was confronted with a mountain of foreign debt needing to be repaid with interest and had not been able to recoup her expenditure by obtaining reparations from Russia which the Portsmouth peace treaty disallowed. There was also the technical naval problem: that Japan was confronted by a ‘first-rate Dreadnought revolution’, as Professor Ikeda calls it, whereby most global naval powers were embarking on the building of all-big-gun ships. The effect of this was to take the standard of battleships to a higher level of technology and sophistication and to make the older vessels outdated. Did Japanese dockyards have the capacity to build these giant ships? Japanese yards were certainly producing bigger vessels like the Aki (Kure) and Satsuma (Yokosuka) which took into account the lessons of their war. But these were Dreadnoughts in size but not in armament.³ The Dreadnought may not have been the brainchild of Admiral Sir John Fisher who became Britain’s First Sea Lord in October 1904. He believed that, if the Royal Navy was to meet the challenge presented by other building programmes, it had to rely on big-gun-ships like battle-cruisers specializing in firepower, speed and armour.4 While the Dreadnought was progressing swiftly in Britain and elsewhere after 1905, countries with naval aspirations like Japan had to address the problem or fall behind international standards. Japan’s victorious fleet and the ships she had captured from Russia were in danger of becoming obsolete.5 482

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FUSHIMI MISSION, 1907

The 1907 mission was a response to British initiatives. Proud of Japan’s performance during the recent war, Britain had raised the status of her Tokyo legation to an embassy. In 1906, King Edward VII had sent a mission to confer on the Meiji Emperor the Order of the Garter. It was now incumbent on the Japanese sovereign to send a reciprocal mission. This was the state visit to Britain by Prince Fushimi Sadanaru between 6 and 11 May 1907. Its stated purpose was to thank the British monarch for conferring the Garter on the Japanese Emperor but there was an underlying motive which was to implement article VII of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1905 which had prescribed that specialist talks between army and navy professionals on both sides should be arranged.6 This could have been done in Japan. Admiral Fisher whose presence as First Sea Lord was indispensable visited the Japanese ambassador in London to tell him that he could not leave Britain for the lengthy journey to Japan; but that the Japanese would be welcome to come to UK and visit British shipyards. For ambitious naval officers, this was an appealing prospect in ‘revolutionary times’. Associated with the imperial mission, there was a military mission led by General Nishi Kanjiro¯, one of the heroes of the late war. But Ambassador Sir Claude MacDonald commented disapprovingly, questioning why Nishi was sent since he knew no English.7 The military talks made little progress. The naval component of the mission was led by the former navy minister, Admiral Yamamoto Gombei, now gunji sanjikan. Yamamoto, sometimes called the ‘father of the Japanese navy’, was described by Britain’s naval attaché as ‘the admiral behind the Throne who pulls the financial strings’.8 The group reached Europe through Genoa and visited naval authorities in Italy and Paris for discussions. After arriving in London, it participated in the rituals appropriate to an imperial visit. The officers travelled around the various shipyards and eventually settled down to naval business. Yamamoto held private discussions with the First Sea Lord. According to Fisher’s letters these were ‘three long private interviews of 3 hours each, we two alone’.9 Since there was no other person present, we know little about the discussion. But Fisher later recorded the bizarre incident in which he enquired why Yamamoto had replaced his friend Admiral Hidaka Sonojo¯ as commander-in-chief in October 1903 some four months before war with Russia broke out. He had appointed Admiral To¯go¯ Heihachiro¯ instead of Hidaka who as head of the Standing Squadron ranked as high. All three came from the famous maritime precinct in Kajiya-machi in Kagoshima city and knew each other well. But Yamamoto deemed that To¯go¯, though quiet and unassuming, possessed an unexcitable personality required for supreme 483

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command in war. Evidently Fisher found Yamamoto’s brand of authoritarian decision-making to be of interest: he was intrigued by Japan’s concept of leadership, as scholars of Japan still are today.¹0 The two were probably not short of topics of conversation since the Royal Navy had much to learn from the experiences of the Japanese navy in the recent war. But the discussion must have had its paradoxical side. Though the Anglo-Japanese alliance of 1902 was widely lauded in naval circles as being a beneficial naval alliance, Fisher, in one of his letters, wrote – admittedly to a Russian statesman – that ‘the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was the very worst thing that England ever did for herself’.¹¹ If this was in fact his view – and he was well known for his idiosyncratic opinions – it was unusual for the two leaders to have such extended conversations. It was then left to junior members of the delegations to reach some understanding, implementing the thinking of their seniors. The idea was that it should be a meeting of professionals, away from the interference of politicians. The key delegates for Japan were Captain Takarabe Takeshi (Yamamoto’s son-in-law), Captain Tochinai Sojiro¯ and Commander Kato¯ Hiroharu (Kanji). Britain’s representatives were Captain Charles Ottley, director of naval intelligence, Captain Osmond Brock and Captain Thomas Jackson, who had been on board Japanese warships during the battle of Tsushima. Information on the outcomes from the British side is generally in line with the Japanese account of the proceedings. The Japanese in these highly speculative circumstances asked Britain for help with transport in the event of their having to undertake a further continental invasion as Britain had supplied during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894. But this time it was firmly refused. Yamamoto signed the Memorandum of Agreement with Fisher in the Board Room of the Admiralty on 4 June. The Japanese naval men left via Germany to hold further discussions there. It is important to remember that they were combining this imperial visit to Britain with naval business and inspections in other countries.¹² ¯ , NAVAL ATTACHE IN LONDON KATO

Two years later Kato¯ was to return to Britain. There were, of course, many Japanese naval officers on service in Britain at the time. Under a practice established well before the alliance came into being, young Japanese naval officers were invited for training. For example, Prince Fushimi Hiroyasu, son of the leader of the mission just discussed, was attached to the naval college at Greenwich. So too were the young Sato¯ Tetsutaro¯ and Hiraga Yu¯zuru (1878–1943), a promising young engineer who had completed his apprenticeship in Kure and Yokosuka and had been sent to Greenwich in April 1905. This gave him 484

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the chance to learn about the Dreadnought and the strides Britain had made in its development. He ‘graduated’ in June 1908 and is reported to have spent the next six months touring dockyards in Britain and on the continent. Returning to Japan in 1909, he became a professor at Tokyo Imperial University and served on the design team for new warships. After serving on the Fushimi Mission, Kato¯ returned to Japan and took up sea duties. But his linguistic and other talents had been spotted and he was soon recalled by the Navy Ministry and offered the job of naval attaché at the London embassy. He resented being switched from a sea assignment to an administrative one but reluctantly accepted. It must have been appealing for Kato¯ as a gunnery expert to go to a country where the technology was being swiftly developed and there was a remarkable amount of openness. When he reached London in 1909, he was given the twin tasks of embassy spokesman and supervisor of the various Japanese purchases of British naval equipment. This meant that he had to liaise with Britain’s shipbuilders and armament manufacturers, especially Vickers Sons & Maxim and Armstrong Whitworth. He became aware that the Lion, the prototype of a new class of warship, had been laid down in November 1909 and strongly recommended that a similar design should be adopted by Japan. Kato¯ had to take this through its various negotiating stages. The Japanese navy had already taken considerable steps in planning a Dreadnought cruiser of its own and made some progress; but it took the painful decision to scrap its own design and place an order for a modified Lion to be built in Britain. Kato¯ then had the uphill task of persuading the Japanese authorities of the benefits of fitting new guns. It required much persuasion because opinion was divided within the Japanese navy, as it was in the Royal Navy, and among party politicians who were ever-ready to grasp any way to cut costs. But eventually he was successful. Next he had to win the technical cooperation of the British Admiralty. Kato¯ played an important role in securing its agreement to equip this vessel with 14” guns. These were still at an experimental stage; and he had to try to persuade Britain to allow him privileged access to the test results. Since this armoury had not yet been fitted on Royal Navy vessels, Kato¯ was in effect asking for the new Japanese vessel to carry the guns before the British themselves had installed them. Only by approaching Admiral Fisher himself, was he successful in his efforts.¹³ Thus, it was during Kato¯’s watch that the Japanese entered into a contract for the building of a Dreadnought battle cruiser at Vickers yard in Barrow. This episode sounds like an illustration of beneficent technological transfer and suggests generosity on the part of Britain. But this pro-Japanese feeling was qualified and partial. In September 1909, 485

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the Royal Navy received adverse reports about the activities of the Japanese naval attaché. Kato¯ was a naturally hyperactive officer and had perhaps been over-zealous in his enquiries into Britain’s naval secrets, especially over the sensitive results of the gunnery tests. Because of his expertise in Russian naval vessels and procedures, he was courted in British naval circles and may have pushed his luck too far. The naval authorities issued an internal memorandum which provided guidelines about how much information should be supplied to Japan, in effect restricting the information given him to the minimum. British generosity existed side by side with distrust.14 Representing the Imperial Japanese Navy, Kato¯ played a considerable role during the Japan-British Exhibition which took place in London from May to October 1910. During the short visit of Prince Fushimi as royal patron of the Exhibition, Kato¯ had to look after him as he had done in 1907. He also had the great responsibility of dealing with the shore leave in London of the crew of the cruiser Ikoma which was sent to Britain in connection with the Exhibition as part of a world cruise. The Exhibition included some coverage of naval matters. The Admiralty devoted a gallery to British warships over the centuries, culminating in the Dreadnought. Vickers took space to exhibit a model of the Dreadnought; and their associates Maxim advertised the so-called ‘Maxim guns’. So there was a naval thread running through the Exhibition and Kato¯ had a modest role in it. It was appropriate, even if coincidental, that the contract for the new vessel was announced after the end of the Exhibition. In a speech, Britain’s foreign secretary, Sir Edward Grey, surprised his audience by praising the Exhibition saying that ‘Japan showed the desire to have increased business relations with us proved by the intimation that she had given orders for battleships to an English firm, notwithstanding that she could very well build them herself.’ In this way the news, which the Japanese had painstakingly tried to keep secret, was leaked to the British public. Ambassador Kato¯ Takaaki had indeed signed a contract between Japan’s Navy Department and Vickers for the building of a battle cruiser on 17 November. It was to be an armoured cruiser of the Dreadnought class, for completion within two-and-a-half years, at the cost of £2,500,000. That sum which warmed north British hearts was only the cost of materials; labour and production charges were separate. It was to be a first class cruiser to displace 27,000 tons, to steam at 27 knots and to have a main armament of twelve 14 inch guns. The Tokyo press announced the news proudly at the end of November. While Japan’s intention of building abroad had been known all year, the fact of signature was kept a guarded secret until Britain leaked the news.¹5 486

KATO HIROHARU (1870–1939)

Without delay Commander Kato¯ set off by Siberia for Tokyo and arrived on 15 December, bearing the plans of the ship in order that Japan might proceed with constructing a sister ship at Yokosuka. Shortly before his arrival he was promoted captain, surely a reward for the role he had personally played in this transaction. He was only thirty-nine at the time; and his promotion at such a young age was an unprecedented mark of distinction. Kato¯ gave press conferences in Tokyo but remained tight-lipped about the details of the vessel, saying that both governments had agreed to observe secrecy with regard to each other’s naval improvements. There was, therefore, an air of mystery, not to say secrecy, about the whole operation. Kato¯ did reveal that the first keel plate would be laid down in January and ‘she’ would be ‘finished’ by spring 1912. By his energetic travels Kato¯ had put on the drawing board the blueprint for two brand-new state of the art battle-cruisers. With that he returned to London to resume his attaché duties, doubtless well satisfied.16 Horace Rumbold, deputizing for MacDonald at the Tokyo embassy, wrote in his diary: Kato¯ ‘arrived here the other day with the plans of the cruiser being built for Japan by Vickers……He also hinted that our navy was not as efficient as it might be and that we were allowing Germany to gain on us too fast. All this was poured into the ears of Davidson whilst the two – after a Japanese dinner – were sitting under a quilt with a hibachi between them, Kato¯ every now and then cuddling a geisha.’ This is testimony to the fact that Kato¯ was used to enjoying rest and recreation with Britons, especially those like Colin Davidson, the consul at Yokohama. Belonging to the Japan consular service, he had a good knowledge of the Japanese language and was used to keeping Japanese company. Commenting on the attaché’s remarks about the Royal Navy, Rumbold added that ‘a good deal of what Kato¯ says is newspaper gossip’. The naval attaché had left London at the height of the anti-German naval scare but his judgment, even in informal circumstances, has to be respected.¹7 The ship given the name Kongo¯ was to be the last important Japanese warship built abroad. There were good grounds for building abroad. Vickers had a long record of supplying the Japanese navy with its ships, having built the Mikasa (1902) and the Katori (1906) and was known to be at the frontier of technology in respect of speed, gunnery and fuel. This was in some measure due to Britain’s making available the designs for the Kongo¯ prepared by Sir George Thurston, and P.G. Owens, outstanding naval architects of the time. It was important, said the politician Ozaki Yukio, that Japan should provide for her experts opportunities to inspect the methods of the leading naval Powers of the world. There is every reason to believe that Japan was satisfied with the outcome of buying abroad. And Music to British ears! Japan thought that British yards were cheaper 487

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and their delivery quicker and more reliable. Japanese newspapers recognized that it was epoch-making in their naval history. The mounting of the Kongo¯ with these guns made it for the time being, as Professor Gow points out, ‘pound for pound, more powerful than the British ships of that class’.18 But if the Japanese were initially reticent and secretive, they slowly became publicity-minded about it. Admiral To¯go¯, the victor of Tsushima, on the occasion of his visiting the UK for the Coronation of King George V in June 1911 inspected the ship at Barrow-in-Furness in the company of crowds of pressmen. He also dutifully visited Glasgow, Newcastle and Sheffield where the guns were made. Progress was inspected by the crews of IJN warships which came over to join the Coronation Naval Review. Moreover the construction of the Kongo¯ was supervised throughout by large teams of Japanese officers and seamen. The construction process attracted much publicity. On 18 May 1912 the Kongo¯ was launched at Barrow – of course on schedule – by Mrs Koike, the wife of the Japanese minister. It completed its sea trials in April 1913 and sailed out to Japan, reaching Yokosuka on 5 November. The authorities said that they were most satisfied with its performance, coal consumption on the voyage being much less than expected. Japan had come into possession of the largest warship afloat. The Times reported: ‘It surpassed in all its fighting qualities any warship yet laid down.’19 The significance of Kato¯’s action was that he had played a major role at an important turning-point in Anglo-Japanese relations. Britain had had a place in Japan’s naval growth for half a century, through naval construction at her shipyards and later politically through the alliance. The contribution by way of naval building continued up to 1913 through the Kongo¯ but Britain recognized that that role was about to stop. As Dr Kuramatsu puts it, ‘Kongo¯ signalled that the period of IJN’s tutelage under the Royal Navy was almost over.’20 Shipbuilding orders were reduced but Japan still continued to purchase naval equipment from British suppliers. There was not undue evidence of concern in Whitehall over Japan’s naval expansion in the short term. Nonetheless it is clear that Britain, ever nervous about the growth of other navies, was gathering information about Japan’s naval ambitions. THIRD ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE, 1911

Having completed his brief assignment in Tokyo, Kato¯ returned to Britain and was present in London when negotiation of the third Anglo-Japanese treaty began in the spring. Kato¯ Hiroharu may have been sent back without delay so as to ensure that naval interests were not neglected by the Japanese negotiating team which was led 488

KATO HIROHARU (1870–1939)

by Ambassador Kato¯. There was no question as there had been in 1902 and 1905 of Japan trying to get assurances by treaty about the numerical strength of the British squadron in eastern waters. Now the question which exercised naval opinion was how Japan was to be protected in any war which occurred with the US. Japan wanted assurances of naval protection. Britain, on the other hand, did not want to be drawn by reason of her alliance commitments into any confrontation between Washington and Tokyo. Nonetheless she felt that the alliance should be renewed without delay rather than letting the treaty run out in 1915. The advice of her main defence advisers, the Committee of Imperial Defence, was: We are secure while the Treaty lasts, and we shall not be confronted with a very powerful Japanese Fleet after the Treaty is over, an advantage of course which Australia and New Zealand can highly appreciate.²¹

Britain’s hope was that she could conclude an arbitration treaty with the US which would be outside the purview of this alliance treaty. The wording of the clause about excluding countries which had arbitration arrangements with the parties was studied by the Japanese in nit-picking detail and eventually agreed. The alliance was revised on 13 July 1911 with the strict reservation that Britain would not be involved in any fracas between US and Japan. It would not contain any army/navy clauses, only the usual provision for exchanges between the military and naval authorities in an emergency. The renewal would be for the same period of ten years, i.e. until 1921. Whether there was much input from Naval Attaché Kato¯ is lost in oblivion. He eventually left London on 7 August. Newspapers reported that this was ‘to take charge of the battleship’ but officially he was appointed commandant of the Naval Academy at Etajima. ²² Assessing the treaty, one scholar summarizes the benefits for London: In British policy the most important single element was undoubtedly the strategic value of the alliance… [Britain’s] shipbuilding programmes depended upon it and uncertainty on the future of the alliance could lead to great difficulty in naval policy.²³

On the other hand, Japanese naval lobbyists, immediately it was published, became disillusioned with ‘unreliable Britain’ which had chosen to favour the US rather than Japan and agitated for a large naval expansion scheme. Supporting newspapers argued that Japan had been left at the mercy of the US which was in the process of a huge naval building programme. This was to be the start of the 489

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big propaganda push for a sizeable expansion of Japan’s fleet. In the eight years after 1911, Japan spent a prodigious amount on her naval building. The designs and specifications for Kongo¯ which Captain Kato¯ had brought were ‘a quantum leap’ in battleship technology and immediately used for building another. Hiei was launched at Yokosuka Navy Yard on 21 November 1912. The 14-inch guns which had so attracted Kato¯ were produced by the Japan Steel Company at Muroran in Hokkaido, an important joint venture with the Vickers Company, the aim being to supply the accessories purely from Japanese materials. The Diet passed legislation authorizing construction of four battle-cruisers of the Kongo¯ class with 14-inch guns. Sister ships to the Kongo¯ were laid down by Mitsubishi at Nagasaki (Kirishima) and by Kawasaki at Kobe (Haruna). Kongo¯ class vessels (Haruna, Kirishima, Hiei) were modernized in the 1930s as fast battleships and fought in the naval actions of the Second World War. Kongo¯ was ultimately sunk in 1944. Thus, while these ships were not used in the First World War, they served after reconstruction in the 1930s in the Second World War.24 It only remains to describe briefly the later career of Kato¯ Hiroharu. He returned from his short stay as a naval diplomat in London to Etajima where he was appointed commandant of the Naval Academy (kaigun heigakko¯). He was then called on as captain of the cruiser Ibuki to protect the convoy carrying ANZAC troops to the European battlefields after war broke out in 1914 (Tokubetsu Nanken shitai). Later in 1917 his was to be the first vessel to proceed to Vladivostok to protect stores from passing into the hands of communists there after the Russian revolution. These two assignments included elements of international friction and may have lessened his enthusiasm for Things British. He was sent by the Ministry of the Navy in June 1919 on a wideranging inspection tour of Germany, Italy, France and Britain. His diary shows that he visited Plymouth, Osborne College, Portsmouth, Barrow (on the invitation of Vickers) and Rosyth, as well as consulting the top brass in the Admiralty. He looked up old acquaintances and surveyed familiar naval institutions to see how they had survived the war.25 But cordiality turned to distrust. Kato¯ ’s attitude seems to have been transformed by the international naval conferences of the 1920/1930s which led him to become an opponent of naval limitation by treaty as was being advocated by Britain and others in a way that did not accord with Japanese national interest. This put him at odds with international opinion. A stalwart of the Fleet faction, he was popular in Japan and a distinguished, if controversial, elder statesmen within the navy till his death in 1939. But that is another story.26 490

KATO HIROHARU (1870–1939)

ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4 5

6

7

8 9 10

11

12

13 14

15

16 17

18 19 20

21 22 23 24 25

26

For Kato¯’s later career, see Ian Gow, Military Intervention in Pre-war Japanese Politics: Admiral Kato Kanji and the ‘Washington System’, Global Oriental, 2004; and Sadao Asada, Culture Shock, University of Missouri Press, 2007 Kaigun: Kato¯ Hiroharu nikki (Ito¯ Takashi et al. eds) [zoku gendai shiryo¯, vol. 5], Misuzu shobo¯, 1994 Ikeda Kiyoshi, Nihon no kaigun, vol. II, Asahi, 1987, p. 27 A. J. Marder, Fear God and Dread Nought, vol. II, Cape, 1956, pp. 25ff Ikeda, Nihon no kaigun, II, 27–34. J. Charles Schencking, Making Waves, 1868–1922, Stanford U.P., 2005, pp. 116ff. Yamamoto to Kaigun, Hara Shobo¯, 1966, pp. 130–1. Nihon gaiko¯ bunsho, M39. The 1905 Anglo-Japanese Agreement laid down that naval and military authorities would from time to time consult fully and freely. On General Nishi, British Documents on Foreign Affairs, Part 1E, vol. 9, University Publications of America, 1989, p. 75. (hereafter cited as BDOFA) BDOFA, 1E, vol. 9, p. 288 Fisher to Leyland, 22 September 1907 in Marder, Fisher II, pp. 136–7 For Yamamoto’s preference for To¯go¯, see Ikeda, Nihon to kaigun, p. 115. Also Marder, Fisher II, p. 46 and p. 137 For Fisher’s negative views on the Japanese alliance, see Fisher to A. P. Izvolsky, 15 October 1908 in Marder, Fisher II, pp. 197–9; Fisher to Fiennes, 9 March 1911 in Marder, Fisher II, pp. 361–2 Meeting between British and Japanese representatives, 29 May 1907 in Foreign Office documents 800/87, # 107, 114. Yamamoto to kaigun, p. 233. Senshi sosho: Dai honei kaigunbu, pp. 90–7 Gow, pp. 49–50 John Chapman, ‘Secret Dimensions of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance’ in Phillips O’Brien (ed.), Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Routledge, 2004, pp. 90–1. Japan Weekly Mail, 26 November 1910 Japan Weekly Mail, 31 Dec. 1910, reports Kato¯’s arrival in Tokyo on 15 December. BDOFA, 1E, 9, p. 228 Yorozu choho¯, 21 May 1911 My thanks to Professor S. Naraoka of Kyoto University for this brief quotation from the Diary of Horace Rumbold. (Sir) Colin John Davidson (1878–1930), a member of Japan Consular Service, was consul in Yokohama in 1910 Gow, p. 49 (London) Times, 8 July 1911 Tadashi Kuramatsu, ‘Saito¯ Makoto and Anglo-Japanese Relations’ in J. E. Hoare (ed.), Biographical Portraits, vol. 3, Japan Library, 1999, p. 190 British Cabinet papers, CAB 38/19/46 BDOFA, 1E, 9, p. 294 Peter Lowe, Britain and Japan, 1911–15, Macmillan, 1969, p. 53 Ikeda, Nihon to kaigun, pp. 32–4 Kato¯ nikki, pp. 35–40. For Britain’s view on Vladivostok, see Blanche Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, vol. II, Hutchinson, 1936, pp. 258–61 Gow, op. cit.; Asada, op. cit.

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44

Fukuda Takeo (1905–1995): Japanese Prime Minister who Spent Three Years in London EIJI SEKI AND HUGH CORTAZZI

INTRODUCTION

Fukuda Takeo was Japanese Prime Minister for almost two years from 24 December 1976 to 7 December 1978. Like many other Japanese post-war politicians he began his career as a bureaucrat, only entering politics in 1952. He was a conservative who learnt to manage his way among the factions of the Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) which dominated Japanese politics for over half a century in the twentieth century. Fukuda spent three years in London before the war and was impressed by British political institutions. He became an Anglophile throughout his life, but recognized that Japan’s primary interests in the second half of the twentieth century depended on the successful management of its relations with the United States and Asian countries including China.

492

FUKUDA TAKEO (1905–1995): JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER

CAREER UP TO 1952

He was born on 14 January 1905 as the second son of Fukuda Zenji at Kaneko, Takasaki in Gunma prefecture northwest of Tokyo. His father was the mayor of the town. For generations the family was proud of its inherited social status and influence. As a school boy Fukuda commuted to the Takasaki junior high school walking every day eight kilometres each way. This was conducive to building up his physique and enabled him to live a long and healthy life. He was an exceptionally brilliant student and surpassed all his classmates through primary, middle and the high school in Tokyo before entering Tokyo Imperial University where he did equally well. He passed the higher civil service examination after graduation in autumn 1928 and, as he had hoped, was appointed to the prestigious and influential Ministry of Finance which controlled the Japanese budget. His professors would have liked him to remain at the University and become a member of the faculty. They were greatly impressed by the outstanding quality of Fukuda’s matriculation dissertation on the Constitution of Japan. Fujii Keinosuke (1892– 1959), a diplomat who came from Fukuda’s home, wished Fukuda to follow him into the Ministry of Foreign Affairs but later changed his mind and endorsed Fukuda’s joining the Ministry of Finance. Fukuda now belonged to a small elite group. He was well aware of the status he had achieved and he was proud of what he had achieved. He had a sharp logical mind. But he was easily approachable with personal warmth. These characteristics made it possible for him to be on good terms with all who came in contact with him throughout his life both as a civil servant and as a politician. When he joined the Finance Ministry in 1929, Japan was passing through a period of political, economic and social turbulence. At that time the Finance Minister was Mitsuchi Chu¯zo¯ (1871–1948) in the cabinet of Prime Minister Tanaka Giichi (1864–1929). The economic depression, triggered by a crash of share prices in the New York stock market, quickly spread from United States to the United Kingdom. Inevitably Japan and other countries were sucked into the maelstrom. In the four years following the collapse of free trade, protectionism grew and led to the shrinkage of world trade by as much as 40 percent while world GNP sank by 30 percent. In Japan the price of rice and raw silk, which constituted the two main pillars of agriculture, fell sharply and the small tenant farmers suffered such distress that many were forced to sell their daughters into prostitution. Social unrest, which spread throughout the country, fostered fascist and extremist movements especially among the younger echelons of military officers and civilian radicals.

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On joining the Finance Ministry Fukuda was assigned first to the documents division in the ministerial cabinet. While serving there, he accumulated knowledge and experience, which stood him in good stead in the policy work which he had to undertake in relation to Japan’s efforts to return to the gold standard,1 which Japan had joined in 1930 but which Japan had had to leave in the following year as a result of the world depression. At that time this was the most important issue for the Ministry under Finance Minister Inoue Junnosuke. The head of his division was constantly called by Minister Inoue. So Fukuda was able to follow the whole drama as it unfolded. In December 1929 he was assigned to the overseas service as a member of the Japanese financial delegations in London and Paris. In mid-February 1930 he departed from Yokohama for London aboard the Korea-maru by way of the United States. The voyage took some fifty days. While crossing the Pacific he heard the news of the resounding election victory of Hamaguchi Osachi in February 1930. In New York he was conducted on a sightseeing tour by a junior pacifist diplomat Terasaki Hidenari who later played a crucial role at the start of the Pacific War. Fukuda was amazed by the rush of automobiles in New York quite unlike Tokyo where motorcars were still few and far between. He crossed the Atlantic from New York aboard the world’s then largest steamship Majestic enjoying all the benefits of a first class passenger. The Finance Ministry’s travel allowance in those days was so generous that he was repaid any amount he spent as long as he could produce proper receipts. Fukuda remembers meeting an official from another Ministry far senior to him travelling in the lower class on the same ship. He had to look up to the upper deck in order to talk to Fukuda. He landed at Portsmouth early in April 1930 and took the train to Victoria station. The scenery he saw on the way must have been indelibly printed in his mind as later in his life he would talk fondly about the railway journey to London.2 In his autobiography he fondly recalls the three years he spent in the United Kingdom: ‘I seriously believe that my experience gained in London greatly affected my way of thinking in later years.’ He was keenly impressed with the way the two political parties competed over policy choices and electoral votes in Britain. He became convinced that Japan should take a leaf from the book of the British political system. During his stay in London, however, he was quick to notice the sinister signs of changes in the political and social currents in Japan and followed them with both keen interest and great deal of misgiving. In May 1932 he heard the shocking news of the assassination of Prime Minister Inukai Tsuyoshi by a group of young army officers in the so-called May 15 incident. He recalls in his autobiography that the incident put an end to parliamentary party politics 494

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in Japan increasing the influence of the army in politics following the same course as the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy. Fukuda returned to Japan in April 1933. After completing assignments as head of the taxation offices in Kyoto and Yokohama, he came back to the Ministry of Finance where he was in charge of the Japanese military budget for seven years. In that post he learned a lot about military affairs even travelling to Manchuria and China for inspection of the deployed forces and installations. In the meantime he had to try to formulate a military budget within the limited financial resources available to meet the ever-escalating budgetary demands from the military. In 1941 he was sent to China as a member of the Japanese Embassy in Nanking but his job was in fact that of financial advisor to the Government of China under the President Wang Zhao-Ming (1883– 1944) which had been established in March 1940 with the support of Japan during the Sino-Japanese conflict (1937–1945). Fukuda was recalled to Tokyo in June 1943. By that time the tide of the Pacific War was clearly turning against Japan and the Japanese mainland was threatened with air and naval attacks by the US and allied forces. Towards the end of the war in 1945 he was the chief of both the documents and the ministerial secretariat at the Ministry of Finance. In that capacity he was in charge of air defence at the Ministry. He lived daily in the Ministry while his family was evacuated for their safety to his home town in Takasaki. Life was becoming ever more uncomfortable and dangerous as the war came closer each day to the shores and airspace of Japan. On one occasion he escaped death by a hairbreadth when he was blown off balance, struck down onto the ground and caught fire on his back as a result of the incendiary bombs that fell on the residence of the former Finance Minister Tsushima Ju¯ichi (1888–1967) at Sanbanchõ Kõjimachi in one of the severest air raids by 325 American B29 bombers which started around nine o’clock in the evening of 25 May 1945. At that time he was visiting Tsushima for drinks with other colleagues. The air raid that night caused as much devastation as the extremely intensive one on 10 March in which over 10,000 people were killed and 270,000 houses were destroyed. Fukuda himself suffered rather severe burns and wounds on his head and back. He ran for safety but he did not feel pain and blood till luckily he was able to reach the residence of a business tycoon Ayukawa Gisuke (1880–1967) on the outer moat road of the Imperial Palace. There he was given first aid by Mrs Ayukawa. The sense of the folly of war and the importance of peace to all mankind never left ever afterwards. The wartime experience made him a firm supporter of Japan’s post-war constitution. After the war was over and during the Allied Occupation of Japan he continued to work at the Ministry of Finance becoming director 495

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of the banking bureau in 1946/1947 and director of the budget bureau from 1947 to 1950. He was implicated in the Showa Denko scandal3 and had to resign from his post as a senior official. He was later exonerated. POLITICAL CAREER

Fukuda entered politics as the protégé of Kishi Nobusuke (1896– 1987) who had also been a bureaucrat before he entered politics. Kishi, who had been tried as a war criminal, had nevertheless become Japanese Prime Minister in February 1957. He forced through the Diet in 1960 the revised Security Treaty with the US. There was rioting in Tokyo and the planned visit by President Eisenhower had to be called off. Kishi then resigned and Fukuda took over as leader of the Kishi faction. Fukuda became secretary general of the LDP in 1957. He served as Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries from 1959 to 1960, Minister of Finance from 1965 to 1966 and 1969 to 1971, Minister of Foreign Affairs from 1971 to 1973 and Director of the Economic Planning Agency and deputy Prime Minister from 1974 to 1976. He had been a candidate for Prime Minister in 1972, but lost out to Tanaka Kakuei, his long-standing rival. Fukuda was regarded as the natural successor to Prime Minister Satõ Eisaku, Kishi’s brother, but the party preferred the ‘earthy dynamism’4 of Tanaka. Fukuda eventually took over as president of the LDP and Prime Minister from Miki Takeo after the LDP’s poor performance in the 1976 elections. He remained in office for two years until the end of 1978, relying on the support of minor parties to maintain a parliamentary majority. In May 1980 Fukuda’s faction in the LDP (along with the much smaller Miki faction and that of Nakagawa Ichirô, a nationalist ideologue) abstained in a motion of no confidence proposed by the opposition parties. As a result, the government of Ohira Masayoshi was defeated and new elections had to be called. Ohira had a heart attack and died during the election campaign. Fukuda’s action seems to have been motivated by his desire for revenge for his own humiliation at the end of 1978.5 Although he owed his advancement to factional support he made efforts to abolish the factional system and with this aim he introduced a primary election system within the party. Ironically, in the first primary held towards the end of 1978, he was defeated by Ohira Masayoshi for the presidency of the LDP because of the votes of friends of his arch rival Tanaka Kakuei and was forced to resign as Prime Minister. This increased Fukuda’s bitterness and he determined to do all he could to rid the party of Tanaka’s influence under the guise of 496

FUKUDA TAKEO (1905–1995): JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER

party reform. To this end he formed the Inter Action Council with the aim of achieving political reform and reducing the influence of party factions. He remained in politics but out of power until 1990. After his retirement as Prime Minister he tried to play a role on the international stage through the summit meetings of international ‘Old Boys’ (OB) i.e. retired world leaders. This initiative was launched in Vienna in 1983. The purpose was to provide a useful forum through which the wise views and valuable experience of world leaders in retirement could be made available to the world at large. The summits were held annually till 1994. The 13th summit was scheduled to be held in Tokyo in May 1995, but unfortunately Fukuda was taken ill and passed away in July the same year. Koizumi Junichirõ, Japanese Prime Minister from 2001 to 2006, began his political career as secretary to Fukuda. Fukuda was also best man at Koizumi’s wedding. Fukuda’s eldest son,6 Fukuda Yasuo, was Prime Minister in 2007/2008. Fukuda died from chronic emphysema on 5 July 1995 aged ninety. FOREIGN POLICIES

Fukuda had the reputation of being a foreign policy hawk despite his strong anti-war sentiments following Japan’s suffering in 1945. His experiences in those days were probably why he gave in to a group of terrorists who hijacked Japan Airlines flight 472 and was reported as saying ‘A human life is more important than the earth’ (Jinmei wa chikyû yori omoi). This decision was condemned by other world leaders as a sign of weakness and as an encouragement to terrorists. Perhaps the most important accomplishment in foreign policy during his term as Prime Minister was the conclusion of the China-Japan Peace and Friendship Treaty in 1978. As Foreign Minister under Prime Minister Satô Eisaku he had supported Taiwan’s membership of the United Nations and had a good relationship with Taiwan supporters in the LDP. He used this relationship to get their agreement to the signature of the pact in Beijing by Foreign Minister Sonoda Sunao and the Chinese Foreign Minister Huang Hua on 12 August 1978. Fukuda invited Deng Xiaoping to Japan for the exchange of ratifications and arranged an audience for him with the Showa Emperor. Fukuda is also remembered as the author of the Fukuda doctrine setting out the parameters of Japanese policy towards Asian countries. This was announced in a speech which Fukuda gave in Manila on 17 August 1977 following a tour of other South East Asian countries. The three elements were firstly a rejection of any future military role for Japan, secondly the development of cooperation with ASEAN countries not only in political social and economic issues but also in 497

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the fields of culture, science, and technology and thirdly Japan sought to be an equal partner of ASEAN and its member countries. There was nothing particularly new in this, but the reiteration of Japan’s adherence to a pacific and positive role in the region gave a valuable reassurance to Asian countries. Fukuda was always conscious of the importance of Japan’s relations with the United States and maintained high level contacts with the US government. Another important development under Fukuda’s leadership was the establishment in 1972, when he was foreign minister, of the Japan Foundation for the development of cultural contacts with other countries and the promotion of Japanese culture abroad. DOMESTIC POLICIES

In economic policy he was a conservative believing in achieving equilibrium between production and consumption. At the same time he seized every opportunity to remind Japanese of the importance of preserving Japanese traditional values and culture. Thus he took a rather different line from his contemporary Ikeda Hayato (1899– 1965), who also came into politics from the Ministry of Finance and energetically pursued vigorous economic expansionist policies to improve the standard of living as shown by his so-called incomedoubling plan. Fukuda was keenly aware of the need for economic development of both urban and suburban areas not singly but in tandem. He would not accept that the cherished traditions and culture of Japan should be obscured by the life style of excessive spending which occurred during the early 1960s when Prime Minister Ikeda Hayato was at the helm. Fukuda was more concerned about the social conditions that had been brought about by prosperity and abundance. He called it ‘Showa Genroku’ comparing it to the lavish life style of the Genroku period under the Tokugawa regime of 1681–1711. Among other famous phrases which he devised were ‘kyôran bukka’ (unrestrainedly rampant changes of commodity prices), ‘shikai zero’ (sight zero), and ‘haeru ichigiseki’(a glorious one seat in parliament). When Japan faced severe economic problems in 1965, Fukuda, as Finance Minister in Prime Minister Satô Eisaku’s cabinet, promptly implemented the financial and economic measures which he thought appropriate. As a result he succeeded in bringing the Japanese economy for the next five years back to growth. At the time of the so-called petroleum crisis of 1973, when the world economy collapsed and Japan suffered a 30 percent rise in commodity prices and accumulated 13 billion dollar deficit in international payments, he once again rose to the occasion and in three years he was able to fulfil his promise of a return to steady economic growth. 498

FUKUDA TAKEO (1905–1995): JAPANESE PRIME MINISTER

FUKUDA AND BRITAIN

Fukuda had been invited to Britain in 1971 as Minister of Finance but he became Foreign Minister before the visit could take place. An earlier visit when Roy Jenkins was Chancellor of the Exchequer had not been a success. The atmosphere had, according to Treasury officials,7 been frosty possibly because of inadequate interpreting arrangements made by the Japanese embassy in London. Fukuda as Foreign Minister accompanied the Showa Emperor to London on his state visit in the autumn of 1971. During the visit he had friendly and substantive conversations with Mr Heath, who was then Prime Minister, at both the Lord Mayor’s banquet at the Guild Hall and at the state banquet at Buckingham Palace.8 As the minister accompanying the Emperor he seemed to enjoy the experience and was made an honorary KCMG. As Japanese Prime Minister he attended the G7 summit at No. 10 Downing Street on 7–8 May 1977 and had a separate meeting with Mr James Calleghan, then British Prime Minister. At this time almost all Japanese exports to sensitive sectors of the British market were covered by voluntary restraint arrangements. Mr Callaghan9 was briefed to tell Mr Fukuda that we were looking for an early and large increase in our exports, particularly of manufactured goods, to Japan. When Mrs Thatcher visited Japan as leader of the opposition in 1977 she called on Prime Minister Fukuda. They seem to have got on well and when Mrs Thatcher visited Tokyo in 1982 Fukuda asked to call on her. The meeting was friendly but lacked substance. ASSESSMENT AND CONCLUSION

Fukuda Takeo, like Kishi, Sato and Ikeda, had started his career as a civil servant before entering politics. He accordingly understood how the bureaucracy worked and could be manipulated. He was intelligent, forceful, urbane and a good mixer. He soon learnt how to control the levers of power within the faction-ridden Liberal Democratic Party of Japan, but soon ran up against the populist and corrupt Tanaka Kakuei with whom he competed for influence. Fukuda was at heart a nationalist and conservative, but he knew that if Japan was to succeed it had to play a positive role in the world. His wartime experience had taught him that there could be no going back to a militarist and expansionist role, but he wanted to preserve traditional Japanese values and did not want to see his country plunge into materialistic hedonism. His time in London before the war left him with a soft spot for Britain and he stood by Britain in the crisis over sterling in 1966. But while pro-Western in his general outlook, the British embassy in 198010 thought that he could ‘not be counted upon to be always 499

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sympathetic to Britain’. But he was one of the more pro-British postwar Japanese politicians. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6 7 8

For background on this issue see ‘Japan’s adoption of the gold standard and London Money Markets’ Norio Tamaki, Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume I, Japan Library, 1994. Professor Arthur Stockwin has commented: ‘The key factor was the extent of the world economic depression. In Japan it became an issue in party politics. When the Seiyukai was in power in Japan, the government gave priority to the economics of development and was averse to joining the gold standard as it would restrict expansionist policies. But when the Minseitô was in power, a tight money policy was the order of the day; so joining the gold standard made sense as a guarantee of financial discipline. This pont is brought out strongly in Chapter 6 of Banno Junji’s Nihon Kindaishi (Chikuma, 2012)’. When Eiji Seki was Minister Plenipotentiary in London and met him in 1985 at London’s Heathrow airport and he was waiting to change planes Fukuda appeared genuinely nostalgic about his stay in London so many years ago, as he reminisced about all his experiences there. The Showa Denko scandal involved the clandestine transfer of USsourced funds to a fertilizer firm and led to the fall of the government led by Ashida Hitoshi, Dictionary of Modern Politics of Japan, J.A.A. Stockwin, Routledge-Curzon, 2003, p.101 See J.A.A. Stockwin ‘Japan’s Political Crisia of 1980’, Australian Outlook, 35, 1 (april 1981), pp. 19–32. Fukuda Takeo had five children: three sons and two daughters. FCO 21/911, National Archives. Hugh Cortazzi acted as interpreter on these occasions and submitted a record of what he remembered of the conversations (see FCO 21/901 at the National Archives).Among the main points made by Mr Fukuda were the following: a) US economic policies. If the US surcharge continued for a lengthy period countries in Europe and Asia would e forced to take countermeasures. This could only result in stagnation of trade. b) Textile negotiations with the US. When negotiating one could not put all one’s cards on the table. Japan was bringing its cards out one by one. Textiles were a politically difficult subject for the Japanese. The Japanese textile industry w as fragmented and difficult to convince. Unfortunately the industry did not realise the pathological feelings of the Americans on this issue. c) (In response to a remark by Mr Heath that Japan should do more to relieve the pressure by greater capital investment abroad) Japan was helping the US by holding some 13 billion dollars. d) Trade negotiations. The Americans were trying to solve their difficulties by bilateral negotiations, but a multilateral world-wide solution was necessary. Japan must cooperate with Britain and Europe to find solutions which would prevent a trade war from developing. 500

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9 10

e) Defence and aid. Japan’s defence spending was low and Japan could not contribute to world peace by military means. Their aim was to devote what they saved on defence to economic aid to developing countries. Unfortunately the Japanese were insular and inward looking people. They had to be educated to understand the interdependence of peoples in the modern world FCO 21/1577 and 1578, National Archives. Leading personalities report from British embassy, Tokyo for 1980, FCO 21/1833, National Archives.

501

45

Shirasu Jiro¯ (1902–1985): A Complicated and Enigmatic Personality EIICHIRO TOKUMOTO1

INTRODUCTION

Shirasu Jiro¯2 was an able and influential Japanese who had studied at Cambridge in the 1920s when Britain and Japan continued to have friendly relations. He saw these relations deteriorate until Britain and Japan were at war. After his return to Japan, he became first a journalist and then a businessman involved in trade between Japan and Europe and Japan and America. After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the beginning of hostilities, he gave up business and spent the war years as a farmer, but maintained a close relationship with Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro¯ and Yoshida Shigeru. Following the end of the war, he became an important link between the Japanese government and the office of the Supreme Commander Allied Powers (SCAP). Shirasu was taller than the average Japanese and had a handsome appearance. He was regarded as ‘a perfect example of the Oriental gentleman’. At the same time he aroused the antipathy of some who 502

¯ (1902–1985) SHIRASU JIRO

saw him as an ‘eminence grise’ or Japanese Rasputin. Shirasu had a complicated and contradictory personality who played his part in both peace and war. CAREER UP TO 1941

Shirasu Jiro¯ was born on 17 February 1902 as the second son of Shirasu Fumihira, a wealthy industrialist, in Ashiya, a suburb of Kobe. Shirasu Fumihira as a young man had studied in America and Germany and had made a success of his cotton textile business. Shirasu Jiro¯ was sent to study at the Kobe First Middle School. He was then sent abroad and entered Clare College in Cambridge. According to his school friends, Shirasu had a violent temper. In later life he is reputed to have said: ‘I was such a bad boy that I was exiled to the island of Britain.’ According to Clare College records, Shirasu entered the college on 19 April 1923 where he read medieval European history. Among his fellow students were Anthony H. Milward, who later became chief executive of British European Airways, and Alfred W. Franklin, who became president of the British Society for Medical History. He also met Robert Cecil Byng who became the 7th Earl of Strafford and who became a life-long friend. His wife, the writer Shirasu Masako, wrote that Byng was the complete opposite of Jiro¯ and did all he could to avoid the limelight and that it would be no exaggeration to say that he exactly personified the English philosophy of life. He was restrained, cultured and the paragon of an English gentleman. Shirasu passed the heyday of his youth at Cambridge at a time when Anglo-Japanese relations were friendly although the Anglo-Japanese Alliance had ended. Shirasu returned to Japan in 1928 at the height of the financial crisis. His father Fumihira’s business had gone bankrupt. In the following year the New York stock exchange slumped and the world economy entered a period of great uncertainty. Shirasu, who could no longer rely on funds from his father, became a journalist and joined the staff of the English language journal The Japan Advertiser, which was run by Wilfred Fleisher, and provided news to the foreign community in Japan. Over the next two years Shirasu produced more than forty articles under the name Jon Shiras. These included travelogues and articles introducing Japanese literature. It is apparent from these articles that following his return to Japan, Shirasu had undergone a profound cultural shock. At this time American and European style cafes were thriving and this was the age of the ‘modern boy’. Out of curiosity, Shirasu and a friend visited a café in the Ginza in Tokyo and were introduced to a fifteen- or sixteen-year old waitresses. Shirasu exclaimed:3 503

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In a minute they would call me by my Christian name! To be introduced to waitresses! It was certainly my first experience! Such a thing has never been thought of, it has at least never occurred to me. One gets ‘introduced’ to the head waiters of the leading London hotels, such as Ritz, Carlton and Berkeley (pronounced Barkley please) but after all they go away in their luxurious Rolls-Royces after their serving and flattering ‘profession’ comes to an end for the day!

For Shirasu, who had mixed in upper-class society in London, the atmosphere of Tokyo cafes seemed grotesque and provoked manifestations of the snobbery, which he had acquired in England. In later life, when he was chairman of the famous Karuizawa Golf Club, he introduced a rigid English style management and insisted on proper behaviour by members on the course and in the clubhouse and reprimanded offenders. In a famous episode when the then Japanese Prime Minister came to play at the club, Shirasu would not permit the Prime Minister’s guards to go on to the golf course as they were not members of the club. This may seem rather extreme. But his attitude reflected the anger of a young man who had experienced European and American culture. The world situation had deteriorated. In June 1928 Colonel Komoto Daisaku and others from the Kanto army blew up the train carrying Zhang Zuolin. His assassination sparked the Manchurian ‘incident’ which began in September 1931 and led on to the war between Japan and China. Shirasu at this point moved from journalism to business. He worked briefly for the British owned firm of Sale & Co before becoming a director of Nippon Shokuryo¯ Ko¯gyo¯, Kyodo Gyogyo, Nippon Suisan and other companies, which were trying to export canned goods and fish oil to Europe and America. In this connection he was in touch with Sir Robert Craigie, the British ambassador in Tokyo, about the possibility of an exception being made in favour of canned marine products from Japan to the embargo on the import of Japanese goods, which had been applied as Anglo-Japanese relations deteriorated. In December 1939 Shirasu in his capacity as a director met Craigie and sought an exemption, which would allow the export to Britain of 20,000 cases of canned crab. He knew he was on weak ground and wrote to Craigie: ‘I realise I may be crying for the moon and I also realise the moon in time of war is not what it used to be!’4 Rather to Shirasu’s surprise, Craigie sent Shirasu’s letter on to London. Craigie who had been appointed to Tokyo two years earlier had recognized the existence in Japan of a group of moderates, mainly businessmen trading with Europe and America, who were afraid that Japan’s involvement in war with China would lead to a deterioration in Japan’s relations with Britain and America. One member of this 504

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group who was anxious to avoid confrontation was Shirasu’s fatherin-law Kabayama Aisuke who had graduated from Amherst College in the US and had also studied at Bonn University in Germany. In writing to the Ministry of Food in London, Craigie wrote:5 …Mr Shirasu is young, but quite a capable businessman. He is related by marriage to Count Kabayama (Member of the House of Peers), who is a member of the Council of the Japan-British Society, an old friend of many of us here, and an influential personage who assists in the promotion of good Anglo-Japanese relations. I hope you will be able to do something for Mr Shirasu.

Despite Craigie’s efforts Japan’s relations with Britain continued to deteriorate. The Tripartite Pact with Germany and Italy in September 1940 was followed by the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor leading to all-out war with Britain and America and the Japanese occupation of Hong Kong and Singapore. Shirasu gave up business and retired with his family to the village Tsurukawa in Kanagawa Prefecture. He spent the war years in farming. According to his friend the author Kon Hidemi, Shirasu from the beginning expected that Japan would be defeated. Having lived and studied abroad, he fully recognized the difference between the power of Japan and that Britain and America. While Japanese were rejoicing at the Japanese victory at Pearl Harbor, he foresaw that Tokyo would be devastated by fire and suffer major food shortages. His prophecy was fulfilled. POST-WAR CAREER

Following Japan’s unconditional surrender on 15 August 1945 and the Allied occupation, under the command of General Douglas MacArthur as SCAP, which lasted five years and eight months, Japan was demilitarized and democratized. The political, economic and educational systems underwent root and branch reform. Shirasu now emerged on the political scene and was appointed to the Central Liaison Office (CLO), which acted as the liaison organization between GHQ and the Japanese government. The Foreign Ministry (Gaimusho) having ceased to operate, the CLO took charge of Japan’s fate. Shirasu was chosen for this role by Yoshida Shigeru, then foreign minister in the government of Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯, Yoshida had known Shirasu from his time as Japanese ambassador in London and admired Shirasu’s linguistic abilities and judgment to help smooth out relations with the occupation authorities. Shirasu later became vice-president of the CLO and became fully involved with all aspects of SCAP’s policies. His involvement with the drafting of the new constitution became famous. MacArthur, as an essential part of his efforts to demilitarize 505

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and democratize Japan, had called for a thorough revision of the constitution, but the Japanese draft submitted to SCAP was a conservative document based on the Meiji constitution of 1889. On 13 February 1946 Yoshida and Shirasu had a meeting with Courtney Whitney, head of GHQ’s government section, and his deputy Charles L. Kades. The Japanese draft had already been submitted to the Americans and Yoshida had come to learn their reactions. However Whitney suddenly produced a new draft in English and said that SCAP could not accept the Japanese draft as it did not guarantee freedom and democracy. Yoshida and Shirasu were aghast. Two days later Shirasu sent a letter to Whitney requesting SCAP to reconsider. This came to be called ‘The Jeep Way Letter’. The GHQ draft had caused consternation on the Japanese side. Both the Japanese and the Americans had the same aims, but their ways to achieve these aims differed. Shirasu wrote:6 I must say your draft was more than a little shock to them…Your way is so American in the way that it is straight and direct. Their way must be Japanese in the way that it is round about, twisted and narrow. Your way may be called an Airway and their way Jeep way over bumpy roads. (I know the roads are bumpy!)…

In this letter he described the American approach as being like an aeroplane flying straight to its destination and compared this with the more indirect Japanese way, which was like a jeep on a montain road. The Americans were trying to democratize too fast. He thus indirectly criticized the way in which the Americans were pushing their draft too quickly. Despite Shirasu’s arguments, the American draft was translated into Japanese and duly published as a draft set of articles for a new Japanese constitution. If Shirasu had been a career diplomat he would not have written in these terms, but he felt that the way in which the Americans had forced the Japanese to accept the new constitution was insulting. Whenever he could, Shirasu resisted GHQ pressure, thus earning his reputation as ‘the most disobedient Japanese’. GHQ evaluated him in the following terms:7 (Shirasu) has a very good command of English, is a good golfer and a competent bridge and poker player. A moderate smoker and drinker. His education in England is reflected in his straight-forward and sometimes aggressive attitude, which is not infrequently resented by Japanese, who usually prefer more indirect or ‘diplomatic’ way of approach.

Despite the fact that Tokyo, as a result of the air raids, was a burnt out wasteland, Shirasu was always impeccably dressed in a well tailored 506

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suit and spoke English with a Cambridge accent. He perplexed the Americans at GHQ. His experience as a student abroad in the 1920s had given him self-confidence and when Whitney praised his command of English he replied: ‘If you practise a bit more you will become a good English speaker.’ No people want to be occupied by a foreign power and the Japanese felt humiliated by the occupation. Shirasu shared this view. Looking back over this time Shirasu said:8 In general I only have unhappy memories of the occupation. When I come to think about it I become depressed. We had been defeated in war and did not have to become slaves…

Ironically it was Japan’s defeat in war which brought Shirasu to power and became a turning point in his life. He built up wide and powerful connections that led him to become the ‘eminence grise’ of the Zaikai (business community). The American reporter Ray Falk, who was in Tokyo during the occupation, correctly analysed Shirasu’s role in the liaison world as one of Japan’s most influential figures, the shadow behind Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida. He wrote:9 With the surrender and the first Yoshida cabinet, the prime minister called on his friend of London days to run the vital central liaison office. All documents between general headquarters and the Japanese government passed over Shirasu’s desk. In those post-war years, when GHQ’s every wish could become an order, knowledge was power, and Shirasu sat at the central switchboard to the secrets of two governments. GHQ opinion on Shirasu appears to be divided. Some in the economic side got along with him fine. There seems to be little love lost between Shirasu and GHQ’s political sections. They have characterized him as being ‘too smooth for his own good’.

As Falk correctly pointed out Shirasu, thanks to his close connections with Yoshida, became one of the most influential figures in Japan. In December 1948 he became director of the Bo¯ekicho¯ (Trade Office) With a view to getting foreign exchange, he emphasized the importance of expanding Japanese exports and aimed to develop his office as soon as possible into a ministry of commerce, the forerunner of what became the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI). He also played an important role in the reorganization of the Japanese electricity industry and oversaw the conversion of the electricity generation industry in Japan into nine area companies. Shirasu became chairman of one of these companies, the To¯hoku Electric Power Co. At the same time Shirasu continued as a foreign affair adviser to the Japanese government. In April 1950 with the occupation approaching 507

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its end, he was sent as a special envoy to the US for talks with senior officials at the State Department about the Peace Treaty with Japan. He then attended the Peace Treaty Conference in San Francisco as an adviser to the Japanese delagation. Two years later in February 1953, Yoshida sent Shirasu as his special envoy to London with a letter of introduction to Winston Churchill, the Briish Prime Minister. On this occasion F.W. Marten,10 who was assistant head of Far East department in the Foreign Office at the time, appraised Shirasu in the following terms: Mr Shirasu finished his education at Cambridge and speaks excellent English. He is regarded by the Japanese as an expert on British affairs. He is a great friend of Mr Yoshida and still more of his daughter and hostess, Mrs Aso. He is, in general, unpopular with Japanese officialdom, who dislike his influence over the Prime Minister, and with the Japanese public because of his Westernized behaviour. It is rumoured that Mr Yoshida had intended that he should be the first Japanese Ambassador to the United States after the war, but that it was intimated to him that he would not be welcomed there.

During his stay in London Shirasu also had an interview with Robert H. Scott, Assistant Under-Secretary of State at the Foreign Office, who recorded as follows:11 (Shirasu) stayed with me for about an hour and we had a long rambling discussion… He went on to talk about Japan today. The Americans were extraordinary generous and warmhearted people – much more so, he thought, than the British – but extraordinary childish, and rather impractical. In many ways the occupation had brought great blessings to Japan but it had also saddled Japan with some very undesirable legacies. As examples, he cited the constitution, which was much too long, too detailed and out of line with Japan’s needs. Another example was the intensive propaganda drive under MacArthur to instill into all Japanese, including elementary school children, Pacifist tendencies. In six years of occupation the Japanese people and Japanese school children had been taught that weapons were unnecessary and to be avoided; that fighting and wars were evil; and that there should be no armed services. All this was even enshrined in the constitution. Now American spokesmen were telling Japan that she must arm to defend herself and that a defenceless Japan was committing suicide. This was an extraordinary inept remark to make in Japan and it bewildered the Japanese to hear things from Americans so different from what they had been told by other Americans, such a short time before.

When the occupation ended Shirasu became one of the most influential businessmen in the country. In addition to being chairman of To¯hoku Electric Power he became chairman of Osawa Sho¯kai, a 508

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trading company, external director of Nippon Television Network Corp (NTV) and held many other important positions. When the Japanese economy began to recover, S.G. Warburg, a British merchant bank, requested his assistance. The founder of the bank Siegmund Warburg and Shirasu established close relations. They first met in October 1962 when Siegmund Warburg visited Japan as a member of a British financial delegation. The introduction was effected by Andrew McFadyean, who wrote to Shirasu; ‘I knew you two were bound to get on well as you are both cranks.’ Warburg later replied to McFadyean:12 ‘Shirasu and I became real friends and I have learned a great deal from him as regards Japanese life in general, as regards politics and as regards business…I cannot thank you enough for your thoughtfulness in enabling me to meet Shirasu.’ Shirasu became both an official and personal adviser to Warburg on Japanese affairs and introduced Japanese contacts to him and the bank.13 He continued this role until his death in 1985. Influential Japanese whom he introduced to Warburg included Miyazawa Kiichi, Kono Ichiro¯, then minister of construction, and Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯, president of Toyota Motor Corp. Shirasu became the leading guide to Japanese politics, economy and culture for European businessmen. As a result of his help, S.G. Warburg were admitted to the Tokyo Stock Exchange in November 1985. Shirasu also developed close relations with Royal Dutch Shell, especially with John Loudon, Shell’s chairman. Shirasu assisted Shell to participate in the operations of the Yokkaichi oil refinery. This had been established to provide fuel for the Imperial Japanese Navy. It had berths where a number of tankers could dock at the same time. Miraculously the refinery had not been damaged during the war. When the war was over, every Japanese fuel company wanted to make use of its facilities. Shell had developed, with Shirasu’s assistance, a relationship with the Mitsubishi group and in 1955 ShowaShell Sekiyu was successfully established as a large-scale joint venture between Shell and Mitsubishi. In the light of Shirasu’s involvement with deals of this kind, he was accused of exercising too much influence on MITI and his machinations led some to refer to him as Japan’s Rasputin. Shirasu believed that foreign capital was needed for Japan’s economic recovery. In an article14 published in July 1959, Shirasu wrote; ‘Foreign capital was very beneficial for Japan’s post-war economic revival and its importance continues to grow.’ Another important British contact of Shirasu was Sir John Keswick of Jardine Matheson, with whom he developed a close personal relationship. A factor, which affects any assessment of Shirasu’s personality, was his apparent desire for financial gain.15 According to the British 509

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embassy in Tokyo, Shirasu received fees as an adviser to Shell of five million yen a year and a special bonus of seven million yen. Such retainers were not exceptional at that time, but the Shell management in Japan doubted whether his advice was worth what he was being paid. Neville Fakes, the then manager of Shell in Japan, was not in a position to terminate the contract. The British embassy, with which Fakes discussed the matter, reported in the following terms to London:16 [Fakes] would need to be extremely careful how he dealt with Shirasu. Shirasu could still be a dangerous enemy and if Shell could afford Shirasu’s fee for his sinecure they would, in my view, be wise to let sleeping dogs lie.’ CONCLUSION

Shirasu died in a Tokyo hosptal on 28 November 1985 aged eightythree. He had taken leave of his family and close relatives and, in accordance with his will, no funeral ceremonies were held. Shirasu remains an enigma not least because large quantities of his personal papers were destroyed, in accordance with his declaration that his papers should go with him to his grave. There is now no way of learning what was in these papers. According to his wife Masako, Shirasu, who had studied history at Cambridge, had come to doubt the validity of history believing that history only recorded what suited the government of the day. What sort of a man was Shirasu? There is no easy answer. He lived through some of the best and some of the worst times in AngloJapanese relations in the twentieth century and saw the destruction and revival of Japan. His life can be seen as a symbol of his time. Shirasu’s house has become a museum open to the public where objects dear to him can be viewed including an old Student Handbook to Cambridge 1924–1925 and a bottle of Macallan 1956, Glenfarclase Pure Malt Scotch Whiskey, which was his favourite drink. ENDNOTES 1 2

3

Translated by Hugh Cortazzi, editor, from original Japanese. Shirasu Jiro is particularly remembered in Japan for an incident in Christmas 1945 where he delivered a present from Emperor Hirohito to General Douglas MacArthur. When MacArthur told him to place it on the floor, he demanded a table to show respect. However the daily appointments log, the office diary and guest book for December 1945 held at MacArthur Memorial Museum in Norfolk, VA in the US do not record Shirasu’s name. This raises doubts about the credibility of this story. The docu-drama broadcast by NHK in 2009 included this episode. The truth of this story was questioned by the General MacArthur Honor Guard Association (GMHGA). Article by ‘Jon Shiras’ The Japan Advertiser, 3 April 1928. 510

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4 5

6 7 8 9 10

11

12

13

14 15 16

Letter from Shirasu to Craigie, 5 December 1939. FO371/24731, TNA Letter from Craigie to the Ministry of Food, 11 December 1939. FO371/24731, TNA Letter from Shirasu to Whitney, 15 February 1946. NDL GHQ document, 8 October 1947. GS(B)03517–03518, NDL Interview with the weekly Shincho magazine, 21 August 1975 Article by Ray Falk, the Milwaukee Journal, 4 March 1951. Foreign Office document by F.W. Marten, 24 February 1953. FO371/105374, TNA Foreign Office document by R.H. Scott, 26 February 1953. FO371/105374, TNA Letter from Siegmund Warburg to Andrew McFadyean, 29 October 1962. Warburg 11/217, LSE A detailed account of S.G. Warburg in Japan is contained in the contribution by Christopher Purvis to Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views: Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, 1945–2000, compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library, 2001, pp. 403–12 The Mainichi newspaper, 25 July 1959. Shirsasu also gave unpaid assistance to some companies. Foreign Office document, 5 April 1968. FCO54/13, TNA As I (Hugh Cortazzi, editor), was commercial counsellor at the embassy at this time I was closely involved in the discussions with Fakes. A detailed account of some of Shell’s activities in Japan and Shirasu’s involvement with Shell is given in the contribution by Neville Fakes to Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views: Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, 1945–2000, compiled and edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library, 2001, pp. 307–16.

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Sir Henry Keppel (1809–1904): ‘Probably the Most Universally Popular Naval Commander Ever Sent by England to the East’ ROBERT MORTON

INTRODUCTION

Sir Henry Keppel enjoyed an exceptionally long and distinguished naval career, which saw him rise to the rank of Admiral. His involvement with Japan was a relatively short part of it – just three years, from 1867 to 1869. However, those years saw the collapse of the Bakufu and the Meiji Restoration and were therefore a time of huge significance in the history of the country. Keppel was born the sixth son of the Earl of Albemarle, who held the prestigious position of Master of the Horse under the Whig Governments of 1830–1834 and 1835–1841. Henry would not inherit a title or a fortune, so he had to make his way in the world. When he was nine, his father told him to choose a career and he decided on the

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navy, entering it at the age of twelve. He would spend a good deal of it in the Far East, including China: he first went there in 1841, when he served during the First Opium War; he returned in 1856 as second in command on the China station for two years, and went back again in 1867, as commander at the China station. On this occasion, Japan, rather than China, demanded most of his attention because of the threat to British interests deriving from the instability there. Keppel was a very short, but strong, man, and judging by a series of photographs taken of him when he was around forty, unprepossessing: looking older than his years, with thin lips, sagging jowls, balding and slightly unkempt.1 However, old age suited him, and in photographs from that time he looks fully at ease with life and his position, the embodiment of the British navy – past its prime, but still just about ruling the waves. Keppel’s Dictionary of National Biography entry describes him as being ‘An officer of high social rank, great courage, and excellent seamanship… [but] too excitable and hasty to be a successful admiral in peacetime.’ This latter comment may have been true during other parts of his career, but in Japan (which, while not at peace, was not in conflict with Britain during his time there), he was the very opposite of excitable and hasty – rather, he was cautious and did everything he could to avoid getting Britain embroiled in any fighting. Keppel was well-connected as a result of his birth and he became intimate with the royal family when he served as a groom-in-waiting to Queen Victoria from 1858 to 1860. He was especially highly regarded by the Princess of Wales, who described him after his death as ‘my beloved little admiral, the best and bravest of men’.2 He was also close to her husband, whose mistress, Alice Keppel, was related to him by marriage. The Prince of Wales told him that he thought he had helped him get the China command – a position that Keppel had very much desired. Keppel wrote later, ‘The gratification this [appointment] afforded me I cannot well describe.’3 JAPAN AND SIR HARRY PARKES

Keppel first stepped foot in Japan on 18 June 1867 in Nagasaki. He reflected, ‘Japan is a new and interesting country, with – apparently – everything within itself, while the wants of the natives are few, and all appear happy and contented; a state of things to which the boasted superiority and civilisation of the European will speedily put to an end.’4 He was well aware of the hostility to foreigners there; he restricted the leave of his men and told his officers to carry revolvers. Nevertheless, on 5 August, two young British sailors from the ship the Icarus, went to an entertainment place in Nagasaki, got dead drunk, and while sleeping in the street outside, were killed by samurai. The 514

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British Consul there suspected that the men responsible were from Tosa, a powerful domain in southern Shikoku, on the basis that a Tosa ship had left Nagasaki the same day – he assumed that they had been spirited away on that ship back to Ko¯chi. The Bakufu wanted Tosa to be held responsible because they were being rebellious, so they accepted Britain’s very flimsy case that the murderers were from that area, although they did little to help the investigation. Keppel thought that the authorities could have found out who the murderers were had they wanted to, but lacked the power and the will to pursue the offenders in Tosa. He felt that the case was of symbolic importance; in December, soon after Tokugawa Keiki’s resignation as Shogun, he wrote ‘the first proof of the justice and friendship of the new Government will be the punishment of the murderers’.5 In this he was in agreement with Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister,6 with whom he had to work closely over Japanese affairs. Parkes did not work harmoniously with everybody, but with Keppel, he had an easy, mutually respectful relationship. They went back a long way, having first met twenty-five years earlier, when Parkes was only fourteen, in China. However, the style of their letters does not suggest great intimacy – both started them with the slightly chilly ‘Sir’ (Victorian men who were friendly with Keppel would usually have opened with ‘My Dear Keppel’ or, if even friendlier, ‘My Dear Sir Henry’). The formality probably mostly came from Parkes’ side, as Keppel’s compatriots in Japan all testified to his warmth. To A.B. Mitford, the Second Secretary at the Legation, he was ‘the dearest old man in the world and I, like every one else, am devoted to him’.7 The journalist, John Black, wrote that he was ‘probably the most universally popular naval commander ever sent by England to the East’.8 Keppel certainly seems to have been a particularly sociable and generous man, although he tended to be dismissive of anybody who was not British. He thought that America had ‘despotic governments’; France was ‘that “grand nation” governed by force of arms’ and the Dutch were ‘unable to compete with other nations in free notions of commerce’.9 The Japanese were ‘would-be exclusive people’, who, ‘with their splendid harbours, mineral wealth, and vast resources…ought to become a great maritime nation.’10 He thought they needed to ‘get up a respectable navy and make timely concessions’ to the Western powers.11 CURBING RUSSIA

The major strategic concern at the time for Keppel was not what would happen within Japan, but how to contain Russian expansionism, a cause for which Britain had fought the Crimean War in the 515

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1850s and nearly went to war again over in the 1870s. The British felt that Russia had to be contained wherever it was a threat – whether it was in the Balkans, where it was menacing Turkey, or Afghanistan, where it was a danger to India. It was therefore of great concern that Russia was taking advantage of Japan’s Civil War to make territorial gains in Sakhalin, the Southern Kuril Islands and possibly Hokkaido. In the spring of 1868, Keppel sent the Icarus to ‘observe, and if necessary, protest against the expected designs of Russia’ on Japanese territory, in particular Hakodate.12 The ship’s commander reported that there was no reason to believe that the Russians had designs on that city, which had only been visited once by a Russian naval vessel in the previous twelve months.13 Nevertheless, in the summer of 1868, Keppel himself went on an extended trip to the area in order to judge the danger to Japan for himself. He discovered that Russia had a formidable military presence around Vladivostok: ‘I was struck with the utter absence of trade and enterprise. The whole country is simply in military occupation.’14 In consequence, the area represented a large financial drain on Russia; ‘I…therefore…conclude the aim of Russia is to acquire territory to the southward, and steadily but surely advance on Japan and the Corea [Korea].’15 Keppel found evidence that territory which had been assumed to be Japanese in southern Sakhalin, was now Russian. In addition Russia had also occupied Etorofu and Kunashiri, the southernmost of the Kuril (Kurile) Islands, which were also considered to be Japanese.16 Japan would regain these islands in 1875, but lose them again in 1945 in the still bitterly-resented land grab by Russia at the very end of the Second World War. Keppel pointed to the treaty signed at Shimoda on 26 January 1855, by which it was agreed that Russia would take Urup and the rest of the Kurils to the north, while Japan would have Etorofu and Kunashiri. Keppel believed that having violated that treaty, there was nothing to stop Russia advancing south, the only question being whether she would advance to Hokkaido or Korea, or both. He thought that Korea was a more likely target; Russia would be able to maintain land communication with it and ports in Korea could be kept open throughout the winter. At the same time, he felt that the unsettled state of Japan made her vulnerable and that Russia wanted Hakodate. The mission to Russia had to be undertaken with care; as Keppel wrote when giving instructions for a similar voyage the following year, ‘It is of the greatest importance that Her Majesty’s Government should be acquainted with the designs of Russia in respect to Japanese territory, but it will be apparent to you that… [it] will require much tact to avoid cause of offence.’17 The purpose of his visit can hardly have been lost on the local Russians, but Keppel was warmly received by the wife of the local Governor, Johan Ham516

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pus Furuhjelm, in Nikolayevsk-on-Amur, which at the time was the main Russian port on the Pacific. Furuhjelm was from Finland, part of the Russian Empire, and his wife Anna was half-Scottish. In her letters home, she strongly criticized the Russian Empire and people, which probably explains why she received Keppel and his party unexpectedly warmly.18 Keppel believed that the British, working in concert with the other powers, could deter any further Russian incursions south: ‘if we maintain a proper position in Japan…England and other nations, not wishing to acquire territory, will always be in a position to preserve the integrity of Japan’.19 Soon after Keppel returned from Russia, he sent HMS Rattler, commanded by Henry Stephenson, his nephew, to establish whether the Russians had in fact taken possession of Kunashiri and Etorofu, and to find a port nearby that could be opened to foreign trade, the presence of which would help protect Hokkaido from Russian expansion by stealth. Although the Japanese seemed to favour the idea of such a port, nothing came of it. The Rattler ran aground near the village of Soya, off the coast of northern Hokkaido on 24 September.20 Keppel decided to give the stores that had been on board and the ship’s boats to the people of the area as compensation for the damage to their boats that was incurred while they were helping to recover goods from the Rattler. He also presented the Rattler’s guns to the Japanese Government, saying that they could ‘never be better employed than in the defence of the people who have shown such kindness to her crew’.21 However, in a letter to the Admiralty, which would have surely have questioned such largesse with navy property, Keppel wrote: ‘The Rattler’s guns are of an obsolete pattern and although useful to the Japanese are comparatively worthless to us.’22 A NARROW ESCAPE

The waters around Japan were dangerous, even those that were charted. Keppel discovered this from personal experience when, on 7 January 1868, he wanted to travel from Kobe to Osaka by boat. A gale was blowing but Keppel nonetheless decided to set off, in the steam-cutter of HMS Sylvia, towed by a steam-launch. Mitford who was with Keppel, later wrote that he had said they should not go out in such a storm, but that Keppel had ‘pooh-poohed the objections of a mere landsman’, telling Mitford that he ‘did not know what a steam-launch could do’.23 The sea was so rough that it became necessary to cast the cutter adrift. It could not get back to the Sylvia, but fortunately, a French man-of-war was nearby and they were able to shelter under its stern for several hours, before there was a lull and they could return to the Sylvia. The French lowered food and drinks, including mulled wine, to make them more comfortable, which they 517

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needed as they were drenched and freezing. The following day, Keppel’s American counterpart, Rear Admiral Bell, was drowned in the same place, along with ten of his men. POLICING THE SEAS

Britain’s policy during the Civil War in Japan was one of neutrality – laid down by the Foreign Office in London. Parkes asked Keppel to have at least six effective vessels to maintain this stance, apart from gunboats, and keep an eye on the critical points: Edo (Tokyo), Yokohama, Hakodate, Osaka, Hyogo (Kobe) and Nagasaki. They needed to prevent British merchant ships breaching the neutrality, which could have dragged Britain into the conflict. They were also there to keep Japan pliant; Keppel observed that a naval show of force at Hyogo in December 1867 would ensure ‘respect for our treaty rights, and save the necessity for enforcing the same’.24 The British ships were spread thinly, even though they were much the biggest force in the area – in March 1868, Keppel writes of only having five or six effective vessels at his disposal, yet they had a variety of tasks to accomplish: deter Russia, impress the Japanese, transport men and protect British commerce.25 Ultimately, as other powers became stronger, Britain could no longer afford to try to control the seas around East Asia and needed an alliance with another naval power in the area – Japan – to protect its interests there. Even before the Meiji Restoration, the British were interested in helping Japan improve its navy. When the ro¯ju¯ (the Shogun’s Council) asked Parkes for a British naval teaching mission in July 1866, he willingly complied, and a carefully selected group arrived in Japan in October 1867, under Keppel’s command. Keppel kept a close eye on the work of the mission and expressed admiration for the aptitude of the Japanese men. However, once the Civil War started, the scheme was stopped, because it gave the impression that Britain was supporting the Bakufu, and eventually it was abandoned altogether. In London, the cost of maintaining a fleet in every part of the world was a matter of sharp debate. Hugh Childers, who, in December 1868, became William Gladstone’s cost-cutting First Lord of the Admiralty, had complained a year earlier, ‘We appear to have taken on ourselves the quixotic duty of being sole protectors of the commerce of every civilized nation, and of carrying out the police of the seas for the rest of the world.’26 Henry Lowry-Corry, the First Lord of the Admiralty for most of the time Keppel was commanding the China station, believed that naval strength had to be maintained. He pointed out that in 1867, the thirty-six ships in the seas around China had been protecting more than £40 million in trade – as well as all the lives of those engaged in it. When, in 1868, the fleet was 518

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reduced to thirty-four ships, Keppel, observing that the British had nineteen treaty ports in China and Japan to defend, commented, ‘We have either too few ships or too many open ports where our Consuls require protection.’27 Both the Admiralty and the Foreign Office were hawk-eyed with regard to expense and Parkes and Keppel were always mindful of the fact that their masters liked to hear that they had saved money. Coal was a luxury, and on non-urgent missions, ships were expected to use the wind when they could, or else the minimum amount of coal possible (which meant travelling slowly). Keppel was wrapped over the knuckles for spending £84,141 on coal during the years 1867–1868. He replied that a lot of the expenditure was the result of frequent requisitions made by Parkes, who was in turn informed that such requisitions should be confined to cases of ‘urgent necessity & great political importance’.28 Parkes’ modus operandi was to gain as much first-hand information as possible, meaning that he and his staff were often on the move. The result was that he was much the best informed of the foreign Ministers in Japan, but this came at a cost. Also expensive was showing off British power, which Parkes felt was essential on special occasions, such as when he was to present his credentials to the Emperor on 22 May 1868 in Osaka. He told Keppel that he wanted to impress on ‘the mind of the young Mikado…a just sense of the rank and dignity of the Queen and also of the power of the nation [Britain]’.29 Ernest Satow thought that the ships were to ‘assist in glorifying Parkes’.30 Certainly an unstated reason for requesting them was that Parkes wanted to outshine the other foreign Ministers, especially the French. Keppel responded by reminding Parkes that he needed to leave at least two ships at Yokohama, but would oblige him by sending six vessels, including two of the larger ships, in addition to his flagship, the Rodney.31 The presentation of the credentials took place at Higashi Honganji Temple in Osaka and the British party was big: Parkes and his staff; Keppel and the officers commanding his ships, along with 160 marines. The following day, Keppel gave a lunch on board the Rodney for Prince Yamashina, and several officials and daimyo¯. The Prince unexpectedly offered a toast to Queen Victoria on her birthday (a day early), which seemed a very clear sign of improving relations, as well as of the Japanese spontaneously starting to adopt European usages.32 Keppel had to write ‘State of Affairs’ reports to the Admiralty, which largely duplicated despatches Parkes sent to the Foreign Office. There was potential for confusion here, but they exchanged information and opinions beforehand, and presented a united front to London. Keppel showed a clear understanding of the state of play in Japan in his letters; for example, he made a good prediction on 25 February 1868 when he wrote, ‘I believe that the present Civil War 519

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will open a brighter future for Japan. Although there is still a fanatical party opposed to Western intercourse, they are weak in comparison to the present Rulers who…can only support the expenses of their ships and army, by throwing up their territory to [foreign] trade.’33 COMBATING THE SPREAD OF VENEREAL DISEASES

The issue that concerned Keppel most with respect to his men was the prevalence of venereal diseases among them. He wrote, ‘We are losing many men, invalided and with constitutions ruined…The disease appears to be more than ordinarily rife and virulent.’34 William Willis, the doctor at the Legation, had complained in 1863 that at the garrison in Yokohama, the ‘whole, young and old, go with Japanese women of the lowest class, who are diseased as a rule…’ and that the men took the resulting disease ‘as the most natural thing in the world, and neither see the shame or disgust of it’.35 Keppel was less judgmental than Willis – he tended to think that ‘boys would be boys’ – but he was equally clear that something had to be done to break the cycle of Japanese prostitutes becoming infected, passing the infection on to his men, who then would infect other prostitutes. In order to tackle the problem, Keppel offered the Japanese Government the services of the naval surgeon, Dr Newton, if they would build a Lock Hospital (in other words, one specifically for women with a venereal disease) and make periodic examination of the prostitutes mandatory.36 Keppel advocated an arrangement be made with certain brothels that ‘dependent on their women being inspected weekly, such as were diseased being at once discharged, our seamen and soldiers would be instructed to visit those houses exclusively’.37 In addition, Keppel realized the necessity of stopping his men spreading the diseases after he noticed the ‘excessive increase’ of cases in Hong Kong following the arrival of his own ship there.38 Clearly his men were infecting prostitutes wherever they went. Therefore, he decided that before men moved, they would be subjected to a medical inspection. These measures were effective and on 10 September 1868, Keppel was able to report to the Admiralty that a Lock Hospital had been built by the Japanese authorities, along the lines the British had been proposing, that street prostitution had been supressed, and that the system of periodic inspection of prostitutes was in ‘good working order’, adding, ‘I am confident that a marked decrease will be observed in the rate of sickness and invaliding from the Japanese Division.’39 This was a considerable achievement during a time of Civil War, although the change of regime had facilitated the process, Bakufu officials having been opposed to attempts to control the diseases.40 520

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LEAVING JAPAN

In August 1869, Keppel received the news that ‘he had been dreading for a year’ – that he was to be moved – and promoted to Admiral.41 Just before he left, the Duke of Edinburgh, Queen Victoria’s second son, visited, the first time a member of a foreign royal family had come to Japan.42 Keppel was to keep the Duke company and answer any questions he had about naval matters – the Duke was himself a young naval officer. He also had the headache of finding souvenirs for him; in one expedition Keppel records spending $800 on bronzes on his behalf. Mitford found two swords for the Duke that cost £80 which he thought were authentic because they had certificates – Keppel thought these were no proof that he had not been taken in. Keppel gave up his command of the China station at the time the Duke left and the Duke attended his farewell. When Keppel had to speak, ‘His feelings’, he said, ‘in parting from so many good fellows were too much for him’; he sat down, rubbing his forehead, and said ‘What a damned old fool I am.’43 Parkes told him he thought he would never have another naval chief who would ‘so cordially cooperate with him’. Keppel wrote, ‘Our friendship of long standing; his friendly grasp at parting was touching!’44 CONCLUSION

Keppel gave many more years of service to the navy – as his name was retained on the active list until his death, at the age of ninetyfour, his career lasted more than eighty years. At the end of his life, he was often described as the ‘Father of the Navy’ in the newspapers. He did not stop sailing – at ninety, he visited Singapore, Borneo and Sarawak and during this trip, the New Harbour in Singapore was renamed ‘Keppel Harbour’ in his honour, the name it is still known by. Remarkably, this was not his last visit – he went again three years later. He ascribed his fitness in old age to climbing eighty steps (the number of steps to his room), taking a cold bath every day and always sleeping with a window open.45 Keppel was not hugely important to Japan, but without his support, Parkes’ management of the British response to the events surrounding the Meiji Restoration would have been more difficult, and could perhaps have resulted in a different outcome. ENDNOTES 1

2

These photographs are kept at the National Portrait Gallery, and may be viewed online at www.npg.org.uk/collections/search/portrait/. The Age, 23 January 1904. 521

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3

4 5

6

7 8

9

10 11 12

13

14

15 16

17

18

19

Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, London: Macmillan, 1899, Vol III, p. 113. The Prince told Keppel, ‘I am only too happy if I have in any small way been the means of getting…you this command. (Prince of Wales to Keppel, 12 December 1866, ibid., p. 113.) Ibid., p. 146. Keppel to the Admiralty, 20 December 1867. FO46/101/137. There was an assumption that there was more than one murderer, but when the crime was finally solved, in December 1868, it turned out that there was just one, and that he was from the Chikuzen domain, which was part of what is now Fukuoka prefecture in Kyushu. A biographical portrait of Sir Harry Parkes by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume I, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library, 1994, and in British Envoys in Japan, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2004. A.B. Mitford to H.R. Mitford, 9 August 1867. John R. Black, Young Japan. Yokohama and Yedo, A Narrative of the Settlement and the City from the Signing of the Treaties in 1858 to the Close of the Year 1879 with a Glance at the Progress of Japan During a Period of TwentyOne Years. New York: Baker, Pratt & Co., 1883, Vol. II, p. 123. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol. III, p. 155. It perhaps seems strange that Keppel describes the United States as having despotic governments, but many in Britain felt that because the entire US government was elected, that it was a despotism of the people. They felt that Britain’s mixed system, of Monarchy, Lords and Commons, made despotism impossible, because all the branches had to agree on legislation for it to be passed (of course, the US system of President, Senate and House was in fact very similar in this respect). It should be remembered that the Civil War and the assassination of President Lincoln were very recent – events that were not great advertisements for American democracy. Ibid., pp. 155–6. Ibid., Vol. III, p. 156. Keppel to the Admiralty, 9 March 1868. FO46/101/253. Hakodate was the main port in Hokkaido. Extracts from a letter of Sir H. Keppel to the Admiralty, 2 May 1868, No. 181. FO46/102/195. ‘Report on Russian Resources in Tartary. Acquisition by Russia of Saghalin Island and the Southern of the Kuril Group’ by Sir Henry Keppel, 23 August 1868. FO 46/96/77. Ibid. ‘Etorofu’ and ‘Kunashiri’ are the Japanese names for the islands – in Russian they are ‘Iturup’ and ‘Kunashir’. Undated sailing orders by Keppel (sometime after 4 September 1869). FO46/112/110. For more on Anna Furuhjelm’s views, see Susanna Rabow-Edling, ‘From the Baltic Sea to the Pacific Ocean: Three Governor’s wives in Russian America’, History of Women in the Americas 1:1 (April 2013), p. 36. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol. III, p. 191. 522

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20

21 22 23 24 25

26

27

28

29 30 31 32 33 34 35

36

37 38 39 40

41 42

43

44 45

The loss of HMS Rattler off Cape Soya in September 1868 was the subject of an article by Hugh Cortazzi in chapter 16 (pp. 167–73) of Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2005. Keppel to Parkes, 3 November 1868. FO46/98/278. Keppel to the Admiralty, 2 November 1868. FO46/103/215. Lord Redesdale, Memories, Vol. II, London: Hutchinson, 1915, p. 419. Keppel to the Admiralty, 4 December 1867. FO46/101/41. Extracts from a letter of Vice-Admiral Keppel, dated 10 March 1868. FO46/101/247. Hansard, 11 May 1868, CXCII, col. 43. Corry was quoting this remark of Childers’, which had been made a year earlier. Ibid. Corry was quoting Keppel here. It should be added that this did not result in a reduction in power, because the thirty-four ships included a large ironclad, the Ocean, in addition to the Rodney flagship, and that the manpower was almost the same as it had been before. Draft note to Parkes, No.83, 9 July 1869. FO46/105/13. Parkes made a robust defence of his actions in a letter to Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, of 18 September 1869. FO46/112/44. Parkes to Keppel, 29 April 1868. FO46/98/Inclosure 1 in No. 93. Diary of Ernest Satow, 17 May 1868. PRO/30/33/15/2/. Keppel to Parkes, 30 April 1868. FO46/98/Inclosure 2 in No. 93. Parkes to Stanley, 30 May 1868. FO46/98/108 Keppel to Admiralty, 25 February 1868. FO46/101/219. Keppel to Parkes, 13 April 1868. FO46/97/190. Hugh Cortazzi, Dr Willis in Japan, 1862–1877: British medical pioneer, London: Athlone, 1985, p.60. These hospitals originated from leprosy hospitals, and got the name from the ‘locks’, or rags, which covered the lepers’ lesions. Keppel to Parkes 13 April 1868. FO46/97/190. Keppel, General Memorandum No. 24, 14 March 1868. FO46/97/195. Keppel to the Admiralty, 10 September 1868. FO46/97/212. Newton to Keppel, 10 September 1868. Dr Newton told Keppel, ‘The [Bakufu] officials of Kanagawa…refused to do anything in the matter, but after the arrival of the Mikadoe’s [sic.] officials I was enabled on the 1st of May to report to you that the Japanese authorities had fitted up a dispensary for me in the Yoshiwara…and that I had undertaken to treat all the diseased females and instruct the native doctors appointed by the Governor. The daily attendance at the dispensary had the beneficial effect of overcoming the prejudices of the people and gaining the confidence of the…women, of whom 336 came voluntarily.’ FO46/97/216. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol. III, p. 279. An account of British Royal Visits to Japan in The Meiji Period by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, ed. Ian Nish, Japan Library, 1997. Algernon West, Memoir of Sir Henry Keppel. London: Smith & Elder, 1905, p. 148. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol. III, p. 297. Algernon West, Memoir of Sir Henry Keppel, p. 175. 523

47

Major C.A.L. Yate VC (1872–1914): A Gallant British Officer and Admirer of Japan YAHYA SHAIGIYA-ABDELSAMAD

The Award of the VICTORIA CROSS London Gazette Wednesday 25 November 1914

His MAJESTY THE KING, had been graciously pleased to approve of the grant of the award of the Victoria Cross to the under mentioned Officers, Non-Commissioned Officers and Men for conspicuous bravery whilst serving with the Expeditionary Force: ‘Major Charles Allix Lavington Yate (deceased), 2nd Battalion, The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, commanded one of the two companies that remained to the end in the trenches at Le Cateau on August 26, and when all other officers were killed or wounded and ammunition exhausted, led his 19 survivors against the enemy in a charge in which he was severely wounded. He was picked up by the enemy and he subsequently died as a prisoner of war.’

2014 will be the 100th anniversary of the death of this gallant British officer. Major Charles Allix Lavington Yate, VC admired the 524

MAJOR C.A.L. YATE VC (1872–1914)

Japanese in his all too brief but eventful life. His connection with Japan is largely forgotten today. EARLY LIFE

A branch of the Yate family moved to Madeley Hall from Berkshire in the eighteenth century. Charles Yate was born in 1872 in Mecklenburg, Germany. When he was two years old the family returned to England where his father, George, became the vicar of St. Michael’s Church, Madeley; his mother, Louise Caroline, who was George Yate’s second wife, was German. This may explain why Charles was born in Germany and became a fluent German speaker in addition to French and later Japanese. He was the only son of his father’s five children and was christened Charles Allix Lavington Yate (Allix and Lavington being family names) and was known as ‘CAL’ throughout his life. Charles was educated at Weymouth College until 1890 when he entered the Royal Military College in 1891 at Sandhurst. On completion of the two-year course he passed out 9th out of 1,100 cadets. INDIA AND SOUTH AFRICA

He was gazetted into 2nd Battalion, The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in 1892 and joined the Regiment on 5 October 1892 when the Battalion was the foreign service battalion of the Regiment in Bombay. He first saw action on the North West Frontier, for which he was later awarded the 1895 Indian Service Medal with the clasp Punjab Frontier 1897–98. In 1899 he was promoted to captain and entered the staff college. On the outbreak of the Boer War the 2nd Battalion KOYLI were sent to South Africa. At the Battle of Graspan in 1899 he was badly wounded and returned to England to convalesce. He was mentioned in dispatches for his conduct by General Buller commanding the British forces in the war. According to a contemporary account in the Shropshire Star the local miners met Captain Yate’s train at Madeley Market Station and pulled his carriage through the streets of Madeley to his home as an act of recognition for his bravery. He recovered from his wounds and returned to the conflict. At the end of the war he received the Queen’s South African Medal with four clasps. On 17 September 1903 he married Florence Helena Brigg, from Greenhead Hall, Yorkshire. There were no children from this marriage. JAPAN

Soon after his wedding in 1903 Captain Yate was sent to Japan as a member of the British Army mission to observe and report on the military tactics used by the Japanese in their war against Russia. He remained there for three years. He wrote a full report of the 525

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conflict from the Japanese side entitled, ‘Operations in the Kuangtung Peninsula from 26th May to 31st July 1904.’ According to the WO 76/473 Officer’s records of Captain Yate qualified as a 1st Class interpreter in 1906. He must have attained a very high level of Japanese to understand the Japanese news briefings to file such a report. At the end of the war in 1904, Captain Yate was awarded two medals, Russo-Japanese War Medal and the Japanese Order of the Sacred Treasure. During his time in Japan, like other subsequent Japanese language officers such as M.D. Kennedy and Arthur Hart-Synnot, he absorbed elements of Japanese culture. Captain Yate seems to have come to feel strongly that as a soldier he should not be taken alive on the field of battle. CAREER 1906–1914

On his return from Japan in 1906, Captain Yate served on the staff in South Africa and later on the General Staff as GSO 2 in London at the War Office. In 1912 he was promoted to Major and in 1913 was passed for promotion to Lieutenant Colonel once a vacancy became open in the Regimental lists. When war with Germany was declared on 4 August 1914 Major Yate who had recently been summoned to the War Office to take up a staff appointment immediately telegraphed Lieutenant Colonel R.C. Bond DSO asking to be restored to the establishment of the 2nd Battalion. The 2nd Battalion1 required several officers to complete the establishment and Yate’s request was duly granted. He became the commanding officer of B Company and the senior major in the Battalion. The 2nd Battalion, The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry, in the 13th Infantry Brigade (Brig.-General C.J. Cuthbert) of 5th Division (Maj-General Sir Charles Fegusson) in II Corps (Lieutenant General Sir Smith-Dorrien DSO) disembarked at Le Havre. They had their baptism of fire on the retreat from Mons where Major Yate had command of B Company, which was not seriously engaged in the retreat. However due to the strong pressure exerted by Von Kluck’s Corps, the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) continued its retreat until it reached Le Cateau where Lieutenant General Sir Smith-Dorrien elected to stand and ‘give the Germans a bloody nose’ before slipping away to continue the retreat and protect Paris. With Von Kluck on Smith-Dorrien’s heels, it was very hard for the latter to break clear, hence his stand. So, at first light on 26 August 1914 the Battle of Le Cateau began. The 2nd Battalion had only been in France for ten days, having landed at Le Harve on 16 August. Major Yate and his B Company was very soon to be in the thick of it as the official history explains: 526

MAJOR C.A.L. YATE VC (1872–1914)

…..the Brig-Gen…..sent the following message to the OC 2/KOYLI: ‘Orders have been changed. There will now be NO retirement for the fighting troops, fill up your trenches water, food, and ammuntion, as far as you can…’ For the last hour of the fight, so far as they could see, the KOYLI were alone in the line to stem the German advance; it was conceived that their duty lay in blocking the great high road and in denying it till the last possible minute to the enemy…… Major Yate had with him in his trench Captain Keppel. The left companies’ trenches were already overrun; and the whole countryside as far as the eye can reach to left and right were alive with Germans. Major Yate shouted to his men to charge, but was instantly afterwards struggling in the hands of the Germans who had approached the trench from behind.

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Major Yate’s capture and subsequent death in Germany as a prisoner of war had not attracted public attention until the Queen visited Major Yate’s grave in Stahndolf, near Potsdam, on 4 November 2004, ninety years after his death. War historians noticed that the London Gazette citation had recorded that he was severely wounded in action, but this was not confirmed by the Official History of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry written by Colonel Bond who was Yate’s CO at the battle and witnessed Yate’s capture. The following photograph also shows that he was not wounded. Another mystery lies in the account of his death while attempting to escape. The National Archives contains correspondence about his death including affidavits from the German Camp Commandant and from Lieutenant Breen who was in the POW camp with Yates. Their evidence was suppressed and not taken seriously. It seemed that no-one wanted to accept that Yate had committed suicide. Major Yate, along with his CO, Lieutenant Colonel Bond, were sent to a POW camp in Torgau, Germany where on arrival Yate was immediately interrogated by German Officers from Berlin. It was known that before the war Major Yate was at the War Office and visited Germany several times and that he knew German fluently. He was interrogated in the commandant’s office where he was asked searching questions, especially about whether he was engaged in espionage work. Yate was mystified by this line of questioning and became very agitated. A Lieutenant Breen (not of his Regiment), who shared Yate’s hut and whose post-war testimony is all we have, was the last British Officer to see Yate alive. He recorded that Yate did not feel safe in the camp and that he couldn’t trust the Germans to observe his status as a POW; so he resolved to escape immediately and try to get to Switzerland where due to her illness his wife was living. Breen tried to talk him out of this, but reluctantly gave up when he saw that Yate was determined to escape. As it was the beginning of the war, security at the camp was still quite lax. With remarkable ease Yate was able to acquire workman’s clothes and with the aid of Lieutenant Breen and Captain Roche on the night of 19 September 1914 he leapt over the wall, escaped detection and walked as far as he could that night. He escaped with only an open razor and had no papers on him. He knew that his chances were slim. But if he was caught and asked for his papers, he would run away and try to evade his pursuers. However the next day, as he had feared, he was challenged by a Herr Brottwitz, who was the manager of an estate that Major Yate was crossing and happened to be cycling in Torgau. Yate excited his suspicions and he asked workmen in the vicinity, who were on the way to work, to apprehend the Major who was walking like a ‘Gentleman with gentlemanly features…his hands showed no features of manual labour and looked too distinguished for a mere labourer’: 528

MAJOR C.A.L. YATE VC (1872–1914)

The workmen pointed to his hands, which were small and obvious unused to hard work. I asked the man whence he came, he replied, ‘Schleswig Holstein’. I asked for his papers, he said he had none. You know you cannot travel without papers in wartime. The workmen removed his cloak and were proceeding to unfasten the rather rough haversack, when he suddenly took the razor from the inner pocket of his inner vest and drew it several times across his throat and we all drew back in dismay….

Twelve hours later Yate’s bloodstained body and clothes were brought back to the camp. The senior British officer was refused permission to confirm the identity of the body and the senior British Medical was also not allowed to see the corpse. The Germans buried Yate’s body the next morning at 5 am with honours but with no British officers or men present. According to Lieutenant Breen’s affidavit Major Yate, having spent some time with the Japanese and having much admired their country and martial prowess, was determined not to be taken alive if he was captured. Once the official Red Cross communiqués became available in March 1915 the British government protested and demanded an explanation. The Germans replied that Major Yate chose his own manner of death and that they had nothing to be guilty of. Given Herr’s Brottwitz’s testimony, the affidavit of the Camp Commandant, plus, Breen’s account, there seems no reason to doubt how he died. But Yate’s death led to a triangular row between the War Office, his cousin Colonel Yate and Yate’s widow concerning her official pension, which amounted to a paltry 70 sterling per annum. There are some twenty pages of memos and letters in the National Archives on this distasteful affair. Both Colonel Yate and the Major’s widow protested to the Widows Pension committee that this sum was inadequate. Colonel Yate complained to the War Office that the pension scales which had not been changed for a hundred years should be revised The War Office noted that if her husband’s death were to be regarded as suicide she would be denied a pension but if his death were to be recorded as ‘died on active service’ a pension would be payable. This is probably the real reason for the official reluctance to accept his death as suicide. Final probate granted in 1924 on Major Yate’s estate came to 2117 pounds. During the 1914–18 war, no less than twenty former Japanese language officers fought for ‘King and Country’. Among the most notable were General Sir Ian Hamilton of Gallipoli fame, General Sir James Haldane (also a Gordon Highlander), and Admiral Sir Ernest Troubridge, who sufffered the ignominy of letting the SMS Goeben and SMS Breslau escape to Turkey in 1914. Another was Admiral Sir William Pakenham, who had sat calmly in his white uniform on 529

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the quarterdeck of the IJN Asahi throughout the battle of Tsushima observing the fall of shot and the deportment of the Japanese and Russian fleets. He later commanded HMS New Zealand at the battle of Jutland in 1916. Brigadier Arthur Sybnot-Hart lost both his legs in 1917 when his Brigade HQ on the Western Front was shelled: he lost his Japanese son as a POW in Manchuria in 1945. Major Yate was the only one to be awarded the highest decoration of the Victoria Cross. This list shows that some of the ablest officers in Royal Navy and the British Army were selected for service in Japan and underlines the importance attached to Japan by the Admiralty and the War Office in the first decade of the twentieth century during which the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance was concluded SOURCES: WO76/473 Record of Officer Records (1908) Major CAL Yate Officer services record. Major CAL YATE Papers WO 76. The King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the Great War, Lieutenant Colonel Reginald Bond DSO, 1929. Meeting the Enemy, The Human Face of the Great War, Richard Van Emden, 2013. ENDNOTE 1

The Regimental History of the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry in the Great War (by Lieutenant Colonel R.C. Bond who was Yate’s Commanding Officer commanding the 2nd Battalion at Le Cateau where Yate was awarded the VC) records that Yate was permitted to rejoin the battalion as senior major a few days before embarkation.

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48

Sir Nicholas John Hannen (1842–1900): Judge of the British Court for Japan CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS

INTRODUCTION

Sir Nicholas John Hannen was the first professionally British qualified judge based full-time in Japan and was involved, in one way or another, in British legal affairs there from 1871 until his death in 1900.1 He was in charge of the Yokohama Branch of the Supreme Court from 1871 to 1874; Crown Advocate for China and Japan from 1879 to 1881; Judge of Her Britannic Majesty’s Court for Japan (HMCJ) from 1881 to 1891; and, thereafter, Chief Justice of the Supreme Court for China and Japan until his death in 1900. Born on 21 August 1842, he was the 13th child and sixth son of a London wine merchant, James Hannen2 and Susan (née Lee and originally from Nayland, Suffolk).3 In becoming a barrister, he followed

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in the footsteps of his eldest brother, James, who went on to become a Law Lord. Hannen was educated at the City of London School and St. Servais College in Liège before graduating 8th in his class from University College London in Logic and Moral Philosophy in 1865.4 He was admitted as a student of the Inner Temple on 5 November 1863 and was called to the Bar on 6 June 1866.5 SHANGHAI, 1868–1871

In 1868, he emigrated to Asia where he was admitted to the Hong Kong Bar on 2 March 18686 before, almost immediately, moving to Shanghai where he established a practice. In 1869, he married Jessie Maria Harriette Woodhouse, the eldest daughter of James Woodhouse of Henley on Thames.7 Two of his early cases in Shanghai had a Japanese connection. In 1868, in one of the first cases in Shanghai arising out of Japan-based facts, he acted for the Chief Engineer of the Osaka in prosecuting, under the Merchant Shipping Act 1854, the master for assault and refusing to allow him and several other engineers ashore in Hakodate to see the consul. The next year before the Supreme Court, Hannen questioned the legitimacy of a five-man jury in the courts in China and Japan – arguing that the Crown had no power to make regulations at variance with the laws of England and limiting jury numbers to five was unconstitutional. Although the court rejected his contention, the point was not to be forgotten in Japan for Edith Carew sought to rely upon this very point in her unsuccessful appeal to the Privy Council against her conviction for murder in 1897. ACTING ASSISTANT JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT BASED IN YOKOHAMA, 1871–1874

By 1869, the work-load in the Yokohama consular court was greater and of a more important nature than expected and a Bar developed locally after 1868 so it was decided to appoint a legally qualified judge to sit permanently in Yokohama as part of the Supreme Court (the Yokohama Court). This judge – technically, an Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court – remained subordinate to the Judge in China and had no supervisory role over the other consular courts in Japan. The principal difficulty was finding a suitable judge for the Yokohama Court: Hornby, the head of the Supreme Court, wanted someone about thirty-five who was a thorough, practical commercial lawyer but no one fitted this bill. In the end, the Foreign Office appointed Goodwin, the Assistant Judge; but, for the moment, he remained in Shanghai as Deputy Judge during Hornby’s leave and then took home leave himself. Therefore, an interim acting Assistant Judge was required. 532

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We do not know why Hannen was preferred for this appointment over Richard Temple Rennie, who was of nine years’ call and had practised in Shanghai since the Supreme Court’s establishment. Possibly, Clarendon, then Liberal Foreign Secretary, had picked up on an earlier suggestion of Hannen’s name by Hornby, who was friendly with Hannen’s brother (by then a judge of the Queen’s Bench Division), or, as must have been conceivable in an age of patronage, Hannen’s brother (who had earlier stood for Parliament as a Liberal), or others, had lobbied on his behalf in London. It may also have been that the other Shanghai barristers had established practices which they refused to give up for a mere temporary appointment. In any event, Hannen was appointed acting Assistant Judge of the Japan Branch of the Supreme Court and empowered to hear all civil and criminal (except capital) cases arising at Yokohama. He arrived in Yokohama to take up this position early in 1871. The absence of any legislative backing for the Yokohama Court arrangements created a jurisdictional and procedural morass. It fell to Hannen to identify these deficiencies and, in conjunction with the Supreme Court, establish workable solutions. The deficiencies ranged from the mundane, where the Yokohama Court had no separate seal, to the more substantial. For instance, Hannen simply assumed he had jurisdiction to hear Admiralty cases although he recognized that this was not beyond question. On the criminal side, only the Law Secretary – based in Shanghai – could issue indictments and nominate a prosecutor: this meant first completing depositions and sending them to Shanghai before the prosecution could commence. Even then, there was no extant jury list when he arrived in Yokohama. As an immediate solution to the first problem, the Law Secretary sent pre-signed blanks to Hannen for him to complete on an as needs basis. Pre-signed blanks were also used in the case of deportation orders as these required the Judge’s signature – which, again, would have meant delays whilst Hannen communicated with Shanghai. An early problem for Hannen involved Japanese plaintiffs and prosecutors before the Yokohama Court and the question of court fees. By concession, Hornby had sanctioned arrangements whereby Japanese and British litigants were excused payment of court fees in each other’s courts but he had neither briefed the Supreme Court officials on this concession nor promulgated an official Rule on the matter.8 When Hannen established the Yokohama Court, he sought to levy court fees upon the Japanese. He explained his actions by reference to the Rules and argued that there was no reason why Japanese suitors should be treated differently from others when the beneficiaries of this concession were certain Yokohama merchants with large claims in the Japanese courts against Japanese subjects whereas the 533

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taxpayers at home would bear the costs. He worried that, if no fees were charged, the Courts would be flooded with Japanese claims. Hannen’s actions triggered a swift response from the chikenji (public prosecutor) of Kanagawa who threatened reciprocal fees on British claims before the Japanese courts. It took Adams, the chargé d’affaires, to persuade Hannen to drop his attempt and the result was that the arrangement was later formalized at an inter-governmental level. By far the most important issue facing Hannen was the question of appeals from his decisions: did appeals lie to the Supreme Court (like all appeals from the consular courts) or direct to the Privy Council in London (as the Yokohama Court was a branch of the Supreme Court)? Hannen wrestled with this issue almost from his arrival in Yokohama (without receiving much guidance from Goodwin, in temporary charge of the Supreme Court during Hornby’s absence in England) and it came to a head in 1872. In response to an unsuccessful litigant’s application for leave to appeal to Shanghai, Hannen explained that, as the Yokohama Court was a branch of the Supreme Court, no appeal to Shanghai was possible but only to the Privy Council. The local press went into uproar as it complained of the loss of an effective right of appeal. When Hornby visited Yokohama later that year, he upheld Hannen’s decision but patched up a workable solution to the Yokohama Court’s status so that appeals might lie to the Supreme Court. Hornby re-designated Hannen as hearing all cases – except Admiralty cases – within the Kanagawa consular court and, for prosecutions, attached the Kanagawa consul to the Supreme Court as Law Secretary so as to obviate any delays for prosecutions; and appeals would lie, as from the other consular courts, to the Supreme Court. In Admiralty matters, where jurisdiction was reserved to the Supreme Court, Hannen continued to sit as acting Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court but, here, appeals would lie direct to the Privy Council. Hannen stayed in Yokohama until 1874 when Goodwin returned from leave and assumed charge of the Yokohama Court. Soon after his arrival at Yokohama, Hannen urged that a proper residence and facilities be constructed for the court and all staff. He said that the unheated buildings had contributed to the chief clerk’s needing to take home leave. Initially, security was also an issue and the Yokohama Court’s registry was burgled during his time there. Eventually, proper facilities were constructed with formal courtrooms and judges’ private chambers. He also supervised the legal studies of the junior consular staff. This included setting exam-type questions and marking them – although we may wonder at the relevance of a knowledge of scutage and the abolition of military fees under Charles II. He could be a 534

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hard task-master and told one student that his six line answer to a question concerning a man’s rights to carry arms in England, whilst ‘very good and very accurate,’ was ‘not sufficient ground gone over for four months reading’!9 By the time he left in 1874, he had established the Yokohama Court’s role in Japan and put British justice in Japan on a firm practical footing. More generally, he had also established the practice whereby the judge in Japan acted as the Minister’s principal legal adviser. In this area, he assisted Adams and Parkes in relation to British claims against the old han (fiefs). In one case, Adams sought his advice as the ‘exorbitant interest quite frightened’ him and he was reluctant to present the claim in its current form.10 Hannen also sat with a Japanese assessor in an arbitration involving several such claims. In 1873, he arbitrated a dispute between the Japanese government and Tombrink (qua Trustee of Glover & Co.’s estate). Private parties also sought him as an arbitrator and, 1871, he arbitrated a dispute between Campbell and Davison (qua administrator of R.B. Scotland’s estate). That he quickly developed a standing in the local community may be seen by his involvement by other countries such as when, in 1873, he tried a case before the Dutch court in Yokohama. In the diplomatic sphere, the Japanese authorities consulted him privately over the Maria Luz affair.11 Even the local newspapers, which thought the amount of judicial business had not been large, conceded that his advice had been sought under a variety of circumstances – not all of which came into the public eye. When he left Yokohama, R.G. Watson, the chargé d’affaires, declared that Hannen’s detachment to Yokohama had benefitted both the community and the consulate and, contrary to the newspaper reports, asserted that the court’s business had been sufficiently large to fully engage him. SHANGHAI, 1874–1883

When Goodwin finally took charge of the Yokohama Court, Hannen returned to Shanghai where he resumed his private practice and he was instructed in a number of Supreme Court appeals from Japan. The China and Japan Order in Council of 14 August 1878 abolished the Yokohama Court and created HMCJ at Yokohama, with a Judge and an Assistant Judge, which assumed the Supreme Court’s previous jurisdiction over Japan and supervision of the consular courts. The Judge of the Supreme Court was re-styled the Chief Justice and the Law Secretary’s post was abolished and his duties divided between the new Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court and a newly established position of Crown Advocate for China and Japan. 535

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The Foreign Office instructed the Chief Justice, French, to offer Rennie first the choice of the post of Judge of HMCJ or, if he did not wish to lose his remunerative practice in Shanghai, Crown Advocate. Whichever post Rennie accepted, the other was to be offered to Hannen. In the event, Rennie took the Japan post and Hannen was appointed the first Crown Advocate for China and Japan. The Crown Advocate’s role was similar to that of attorney general in a British possession and encompassed being the government’s legal adviser and acting as prosecutor for serious criminal offences. It was not a full-time appointment and Hannen remained in private practice with liberty to conduct cases in which the Crown was not involved and, where the Crown instructed him in civil cases, he could charge separately. As with the judicial appointments in Japan, the position was held ‘during Her Majesty’s pleasure’. Despite the terms of his appointment – which envisaged his advising also in relation to Japan, it was soon decided to appoint a separate Crown Prosecutor for Japan and, in 1880, John Joseph Enslie was appointed acting Crown Prosecutor, thus reverting to the previous practice of an official having charge of prosecutions and Hannen’s prosecutorial role became restricted solely to China When French fell seriously ill in 1881, Hannen was appointed acting Chief Justice in Shanghai in the October12 to handle the increasing backlog of appeals that had built up. French died shortly afterwards whereupon Rennie was promoted to be Chief Justice and Hannen was appointed Judge of HMCJ on 21 December 1881. However, as Rennie was still absent on furlough, Hannen continued to act as Chief Justice until January, 1883, when he relocated to Yokohama. One of his first tasks as acting Chief Justice was to advise Aston that, although French had died and made his will in Kobe, his fixed place of abode was clearly Shanghai and so Aston should send the will to Shanghai for probate.13 He went on to hear thirteen appeals in 1881 and 1882 from Japan relating to cases heard before the Yokohama Court in 1877 or 1878 or HMCJ after 1879: he allowed the appeal in five cases, upheld the lower court’s judgement in six cases and two appeals were withdrawn. JUDGE OF THE BRITISH COURT FOR JAPAN, 1883–1891

This period was the longest spell of any Judge – even allowing for Hannen’s taking twenty months leave from March 1888 to November 1889. Originally, his leave was meant to be twelve months, but he obtained a six month extension and, then, a further two month extension so as to ‘avoid the excessive heat’ travelling back through the Red Sea in August and September. He was presented by Salisbury to the Queen at a Levée in June 188814 before spending part of 536

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this leave in Paris. He travelled back through Italy to Naples from where he and his whole family caught a liner to Yokohama.15 He originally planned to go to America for two months in 1891 for his daughter’s wedding to her cousin, Edward Charles Hannen, but, in the end, the fiancé came to Yokohama for the wedding16 which was held in Yokohama’s Christ Church on 4 April. When the Foreign Office and the Treasury looked to cut the overall cost of the British establishment in Shanghai by amalgamating the positions of Chief Justice and consul-general, Rennie indicated that he was prepared to retire as from 1 April 1891 when the amalgamation took effect. The new, combined post was offered to Hannen who accepted but asked if he could delay his transfer to Shanghai until the Autumn as he wanted a final Summer in Japan and to avoid starting his new role in Shanghai just as the hot weather arrived.17 CASES, APPEALS AND COURT ADMINISTRATION

As Judge, Hannen wore a wig and robes for formal court hearings. One of the more famous jury trials over which he presided was the Normanton case in which the Japanese authorities prosecuted its master for manslaughter after it sank in 1886 with the loss of twenty-three Japanese lives. The jury convicted the master and Hannen sentenced him to three months’ imprisonment. He also travelled on circuit as necessary – although we have no records of his going other than to Kobe where he tried both criminal and civil cases. In 1886, he heard Whymark’s petition there that Whymark be appointed to administer the affairs of William Lees, a local pilot who had become deranged. The next year, he tried Edward Woodward before a jury on charges of forging his employer’s signature on a cheque for $1,850 and a further charge of embezzling $67.61 – the charges were unproven or dropped. 1888 again saw him in Kobe, this time for a manslaughter trial. There were only three appeals from Hannen’s judgements in the Yokohama Court and nine in HMCJ. Of these, just two were allowed: one in 1871 and one in 1884. His judgement in the case arising out of the collision between the ss. Glamorganshire and the Clarissa B. Carver, an American sailing vessel, off Kobe triggered the first case which was appealed all the way from HMCJ to the Privy Council which upheld his judgement on all counts. Hannen not only dealt with the court cases but also administered the courts and supervised the staff. In 1884, he insisted upon the need for a Registrar and pushed for McClatchie’s appointment.18 Shortly afterwards, he reported the collapse of the Oriental Banking Corporation – which lost the court some $1,200 on deposit – and requested the Foreign Office’s permission to advance a further $20 to the court 537

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constable, Hodges, who had failed to cash his salary cheque on the bank before it suspended payments.19 Hannen was also responsible for the court’s accounts and settled the system for accounting for copying costs.20 As Judge, Hannen needed to consider the implications for practice in Japan of regulations made locally by the Minister and laws made in London. His status as a government official did not prevent his declaring that regulations made by Parkes (and approved by the Foreign Secretary) governing the registration of mortgages and bills of sale were ultra vires and invalid. When the British government remedied this situation retrospectively by the China and Japan Order in Council 1881, which also included the troublesome section 47, he sought guidance from the judge of the Supreme Court in Constantinople on implementing that section as it was based on similar provisions applying to the consular courts in the Ottoman Empire.21 In 1885, at his request, Granville ordered that HMCJ be substituted for references to the Board of Trade in Japan in relation to bankruptcy legislation, which, otherwise, would be unworkable. THE ENDING OF EXTRA-TERRITORIALITY

Besides his judicial work during this period in Japan, Hannen resumed the advisory role to Ministers to Tokyo that he had performed when running the Yokohama Court and it became the practice for the Judge to take the important cases only – leaving all the routine work to the Yokohama Consul (as Assistant Judge). By far the most important area in which Hannen advised was the Treaty renegotiations. A conference had been called by Japan to discuss revision in Tokyo in 1882 but it ended inconclusively and a second International Treaty Revision Conference in Tokyo was convened from 1886 to 1887. Hannen was closely involved in the discussions ahead of this conference and, in December 1886, was appointed the UK’s second delegate to the conference. By now, Britain had no wish to perpetuate extra-territoriality and the conference concerned the timing, transitional arrangements and the quid pro quo to be obtained from Japan in terms of commercial advantages for the abolition of extraterritoriality. By July 1887, a draft treaty had been agreed in principle and the conference stood adjourned until 1 December 1887. However, internal dissensions broke out quickly on the Japanese side and wrecked any chance of further progress. Early in 1889, the Japanese chargé d’affaires in London tabled new proposals and Hannen, then back on leave, was heavily involved in reviewing and commenting upon the new Japanese proposals.22 Ultimately, Hannen suggested that, rather than proceeding 538

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with transitional arrangements, extra-territoriality should be simply abolished at the end of ten years, if, in the meantime, Japan dealt with codification of its laws and the training of an independent judiciary. Salisbury took the cue and, in 1890, submitted to Japan the draft of a new treaty prepared by Hannen along these lines. However, no progress was made; but, when Japan proposed re-opening negotiations in London in the autumn of 1893, the bulk of its proffered draft new treaty was based upon that drawn up by Hannen. However, he played no direct role in the London based negotiations for the 1894 Treaty which ended British extra-territoriality as from 17 July 1899. CHIEF JUSTICE 1891–1900

Hannen finally left Yokohama for Shanghai on 10 October 1891.23 As Chief Justice, his direct involvement with the administration of justice in Japan ceased and was confined to hearing appeals from HMCJ. There were just four such appeals; he upheld two and dismissed two. The most famous was P&O’s appeal in the Chishima case24 that he and Jamieson heard in October 1893. Interestingly, one of the only two relevant Supreme Court precedents was an 1875 case in which Hornby had rejected Hannen’s attempt, as defence counsel, to bring a counter-claim against the Chinese plaintiff. Hannen, in allowing P&O’s appeal on a number of grounds, not only triggered a Japanese appeal to the Privy Council but also a formal protest from Japan to the Foreign Office against his ruling that the Inland Sea was part of the Highway of Nations, and not Japanese territorial waters. When the Privy Council heard the Japanese government’s appeal from the Supreme Court’s judgement, it not only allowed the appeal but described his propositions on the Inland Sea as ‘obviously open to serious controversy’. The last appeal from HMCJ was William H. Macy v. Isis in 1896 after which Hannen had no further involvement with the consular courts in Japan although, after the 1894 Treaty came into force, one of the loose ends that remained was the Supreme Court’s name. The Japanese consul-general in Shanghai complained to Hannen about the continued use of the title ‘Supreme Court for China and Japan’ but the Foreign Office considered that no immediate action was necessary as the Japanese government had not complained. As Chief Justice, Hannen was twice called upon to give his opinion as to appointments to HMCJ. When Mowat went on leave in 1894, the Minister proposed that Troup (despite not being legally qualified) should become acting Judge whereas Mowat favoured Wilkinson’s appointment. Hannen’s views were sought. Although he had supported Troup’s appointment as Yokohama consul – and thus Assistant Judge – back in 1888,25 he now decisively recommended 539

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Wilkinson. Similarly in 1897 when Mowat retired, Hannen strongly backed Wilkinson’s substantive appointment as Judge of HMCJ. As consul-general, Hannen was instrumental in ensuring the neutrality of Shanghai and the Yangtze region during the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–1895.26 After the war, he helped persuade the British government to assist in arranging a £16 million loan for the Imperial Chinese Government to enable it to pay the final instalment of the war indemnity to Japan.27 Hannen was knighted at Windsor Castle on 18 July 1895. In 1897, the positions of Chief Justice and consul-general were split as the amalgamation had never worked satisfactorily. Hannen continued as Chief Justice and retained his precedence as the senior British official in Shanghai whilst his deputy, Jamieson, became consul-general. At the end of 1897/early 1898, he went to Bangkok as arbitrator in a dispute between the American and Thai governments. Due to retire as Chief Justice in May 1900 to his home at Lake Lodge, Wargrave, Berkshire, Hannen died, aged fifty-eight, in post – on 26 April 1900 – from congestion of the lungs and heart failure following influenza.28 His funeral on 29 April was attended by the whole Bar and consular corps plus representatives of all the public bodies in Shanghai.29 His body was cremated and his remains brought back to England where, in 1906, they were placed in a family columbarium, designed by Lutyens (in whose office his son, Nicholas James, was then working as an architect),30 at St. Mary’s church, Wargrave. He left an estate valued at £6,200.31 His wife survived him and died in March 1907. REMUNERATION

Quibbles over remuneration and allowances ran like a thread through all Hannen’s appointments. Any reader interested in details of these quibbles will find a summary in endnote.32 CONCLUSION

Although Hannen had started out as a practitioner in Shanghai before his initial appointment to the Bench, he exemplified Hornby’s idea of a career ladder of judicial service in Asia climbing from the position of Crown Advocate through that of Judge of HMCJ to the Chief Justice-ship. Of the six judges who were responsible for the administration of British justice in Japan, Hannen had the longest tenure of some twelve or so years (allowing for absences) but, despite this, it is not clear to what extent he spoke Japanese. In his first tour of duty in Japan, he established the Yokohama Court as Britain’s principal judicial and legal centre in Japan and set the foundations for HMCJ; in his second tour, he operated and supervised the entire Court structure 540

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in Japan subject only to general instructions from the Foreign Office and appeals to the Supreme Court. He also played an important role in the lead-up to, and preliminary drafts of, the 1894 Treaty which abolished extra-territoriality and set in train the process for the 1902 Anglo-Japanese alliance. Outside the law in Shanghai, he was an active member of the Amateur Dramatic Club, president of the football club and also keenly interested in cricket.33 At his death, his estate included two debentures for the Lyceum theatre in Shanghai and shares in the local Swimming Club.34 ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4 5 6

7 8

9 10 11

12 13 14 15

16 17

For an overview of British extra-territoriality in Japan, see Christopher Roberts, The British Courts and Extra-territoriality, 1859–1899 (LeidenBoston: Global Oriental, 2013); Matters which are referenced in this book are not referenced again in this article. See also Christopher Roberts ‘British Lawyers in Japan, 1859–1899’ and ‘Sir Hiram Shaw Wilknson (1840–1926)’ in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2012. Joseph Foster, Men-at-the Bar (London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Limited, 1885, reprinted by Cornell University Library, 2003); p. 201; and ‘Sir James, Baron Hannen (1821–1894)’ published by the Friends of West Norwood Cemetery, May 2008. Obituary, The Times, 28 April 1900. The Times, 11 May 1865. Foster, 1885. James William Norton-Kyshe, History of the Laws and Courts of Hong Kong (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1898; reprinted by Nabu Public Domain Reprints), Appendix III. Foster, 1885. See Hornby to Granville, 28 October 1871; FO46/146. Hornby complained about Hannen and Goodwin’s having departed from his practice without consulting him. FO656/235; pp. 405–43. Adams to Hannen, 15 November 1871; FO656/235. For an account of this case see pp. 70–2 of biographical portrait of F.V.Dickins by Peter Kornicki in Britain and Japam: Biographical Portraits, volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Hannen to Wade, 31 October 1881; FO656/236. Hannen to Aston, 20 November 1881; FO656/235. The Times, 9 June 1888. Foreign Office to Hannen, 16 August 1887; FO46/373 and 8 January and 5 August 1889; FO46/390 and Hannen to Salisbury 2 August 1889; FO46/390. Hannen to Salisbury, 6 October 1890; FO46/402. Hannen to Sanderson (private), 11 February and 7 March 1891; FO46/412. 541

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18 19 20 21

22

23 24

25 26 27 28 29 30 31

32

Hannen to Granville, 4 April 1884; FO46/306. Hannen to Granville, 7 May 1884; FO46/323. Hannen to Granville, 16 January 1884; FO46/323. Hannen to Fawcett, 28 February 1882; FO656/236. A brief description of the problems thrown up by section 47 is given on p. 174 of my article on ‘Sir Hiram Shaw Wilkinson’ in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2012. Pauncefote to Hannen and his reply 26 and 31, respectively, January 1889; Sanderson to Hannen 30 May, 2 and 8 July and 13 August and Hannen’s reply 10 July 1889; FO46/390. Mowat to Salisbury, 10 October 1891; FO46/412. For an account of the Chishima case see p. 174 of my article on ‘Sir Hiram Shaw Wilkinson’ in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, vol. VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental 2102. A brief account on p.159 in my article on ‘British Lawyers in Japan,1859–1899’, in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, volume VIII, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2012. Hannen to Currie 12 June 1888; FO46/383. Obituary, 2 May 1900; North China Herald. The Times 28 December 1897. Bourne to Salisbury, 30 April 1900; FO17/1432. Ibid. Obituary of Nicholas James Hannen, The Times, 27 June 1972. By his Will, executed in 1896 and proved in the Supreme Court, he made Wilkinson his executor and left all his personal effects to his wife and his house at Wargrave to his wife for life with the remainder over to his son. The residue he left to provide his wife with an income for life before being divided as to 40% to his son, 40% to his unmarried daughter, Jessie Susan, and the final part to his married daughter, Mary Fanny. See FO 917/881. Summary of Hannen’s quibbles over salary and allowances. When the Yokohama Court was established, there had been a misunderstanding between the Foreign Office/Treasury (who envisaged a salary of £1,000, i.e. £200 less than the assistant judge’s) and Hornby (who assumed it would be at least £1,200 plus accommodation in the legation’s No.2 house). Hornby said no Shanghai barrister would accept £1,000 and Hannen only reluctantly settled for £1,200 per annum. When appointed Crown Advocate on an annual retainer of £500, he enquired whether it was pensionable only to be rebutted by the Treasury as it was a part-time post. When he acted as Chief Justice before French’s death in 1881, correspondence dragged on between Hannen, the Foreign Office and the Treasury well into 1883 over the Treasury’s refusal to allow him fourteen day’s housing allowance (worth £11/2/2 (£11.11)) at the same time as French was claiming that allowance. Even after the Foreign Office wrote firmly saying that Granville’s decision was final and he would not reconsider, Hannen did not drop the matter until the Treasury again refused to revisit the question: it said he had no right to complain ‘of the liberal rate of remuneration with which his temporary services at Shanghai were recognized.’ 542

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33 34

In 1887, Salisbury allowed him to retain the fees payable under a commission from the Chancery Division in England to conduct a witness examination as this was not part of his normal job. But, in 1891, the Board of Works required him to pay personally the cost of replacing four safe keys in HMCJ – the Board of Works accepted that Hannen had never taken possession of them but said he had responsibility for them as Judge. Appointment as judge of HMCJ carried an annual salary of £1,500 (plus housing allowance of £250) and an outfit allowance of £500. But, in 1886, he was complaining to Rosebery that the government told Parliament that he cost £1,750 annually whereas, due to the rate of exchange it fixed for Dollars, the government’s effective cost was only £1,620 when it paid him in Dollars. As a result of his – and others’ – complaints on this subject, the Foreign Office brought officials in Japan and China into line with those elsewhere and allowed them to elect to receive a fixed portion of their salary in Sterling in London. As Chief Justice, he received £2,100 (plus an accommodation allowance of £350) and an initial outfit allowance of £465. He clearly complained about this (for Rennie had received £2,500 and £416 salary and allowance) but Sanderson told him that there was no chance of getting an increase out of the Treasury. However, Hannen retained the whole salary even when he ceased to be consul-general. When the posts were separated in 1897, he offered to retire if given a Compensation Allowance – an offer which Salisbury side-stepped. Sources for the above include: Hornby to Granville, 31 March 1871; FO46/146. Foreign Office to Hannen, 4 May 1883; FO46/306. Treasury Note on Foreign Office letter, 26 October 1883; T1/15202. Hannen to Salisbury and reply 2 July and 18 August, respectively, 1887; FO46/373. Sanderson to Hannen, 14 August 1886: FO46/412 Hannen to Rosebery, 9 April 1886; FO46/355. Sanderson to Hannen, 22 July 1891; FO17/1119. Obituary, North China Herald. Probate.

543

49

Robert Anderson Mowat (1843–1925): Judge of the British Court for Japan, 1891–1897 CHRISTOPHER ROBERTS

INTRODUCTION

Robert Anderson Mowat was one of six judges responsible for the administration of British justice in Japan during the period of British extra-territoriality from 1859 to 1899. Born in Edinburgh in 1843, the only son of Joseph Mowat,1 he was educated in Edinburgh and at University College, London.2 From 1860, the British government built up a cadre of linguistically trained consular officers. Appointment to any consular position involved patronage and candidates, aged eighteen to twenty-four, being recommended to the Foreign Secretary who then nominated those of whom he approved for examination by the Civil Service Commissioners who, as needs arose and budgets permitted, held competitive examinations on an irregular basis to recruit Student Interpreters for the Consular Service in China and Japan. In 1864 there were five vacancies. Mowat (recommended by London University) came second in the examinations held that year – behind William George Aston, who went on to be a consul in Japan, and ahead of Hiram Shaw Wilkinson and George Jamieson, both of whom also played contemporaneous roles in the administration of British justice in Japan and China. Upon passing his Student Interpreter-ship examinations, he joined the China Consular Service. At the same time, the British government had induced Sir Edmund Hornby to supervise the consular courts, through which British extra-territorial jurisdiction was exercised in China and Japan, from a newly established Supreme Court based in Shanghai.3 The Supreme Court establishment consisted of a Judge (Hornby), an 544

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Assistant Judge (Charles Wycliffe Goodwin) and a Law Secretary (John Fraser). While the Judge and the Assistant Judge needed to be legally qualified, the Law Secretary could be unqualified. LAW SECRETARY, 1868–1878

When Fraser died in 1868, Mowat was appointed Law Secretary in his place. In 1869, when he was entitled, having been in China for five years, to leave, he applied for a year’s home leave. Mowat explained that his chief purpose in doing so was to read law in order to qualify himself for his duties. His application was supported both by Hornby and by Sir Rutherford Alcock, then Minister in Beijing, who both favoured consuls obtaining a legal qualification. During his furlough, Mowat was replaced by Jamieson, as acting Law Secretary. In London, Mowat was admitted to the Inner Temple on 2 November 1869 and, a year later, was permitted a year’s extension of leave in order to continue his studies. He was called to the Bar on 6 June 1871,4 after which he returned to the Supreme Court in Shanghai. Whilst at home, he married Jessie Clarkson, the daughter of Thomas Clarkson of Edinburgh.5 During the time that Mowat was in London, Hornby and Sir Harry Parkes, the British Minister in Tokyo, decided to establish a permanent branch of the Supreme Court in Yokohama (referred to as the Yokohama Court) to be presided over by a legally qualified judge in view of the increasing amount of complex legal work being handled by the consular courts in Japan. But; who was to head up the Yokohama Court? Hornby questioned whether Goodwin would want the post or be as fitted for it as a younger man but considered Mowat to be too young. The Foreign Office simply decided to give Goodwin no choice and notified him that he, as Assistant Judge, should henceforth reside at Yokohama. However, for the moment, he remained in Shanghai as Deputy Judge during Hornby’s leave and the question of an interim acting Assistant Judge of the Yokohama Court arose. The Foreign Office asked Hornby in 1870 whether Mowat would be a fit candidate – if he were ordered to return – regardless of his not then being qualified and Hornby’s already having expressed his doubts but, in the event, Nicholas Hannen, who was only a year older than Mowat (but already qualified and in practice), was appointed.6 In 1871, Mowat, having qualified as a barrister, returned to Shanghai where he resumed his post of Law Secretary. With Goodwin either on leave or in Yokohama, Mowat was, effectively, deputy to Hornby until Hornby retired to England in 1876 when Mowat ran the Supreme Court in an acting capacity until Goodwin returned from Yokohama later that year. During this time, Mowat was assisted 545

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in Shanghai by Wilkinson – who had qualified in 1872 – before Wilkinson returned to take over the Yokohama Court from Goodwin.7 When Goodwin died in January 1878 before the new Judge, Sir George French, arrived in Shanghai, Mowat became acting Judge until French’s arrival in mid-1878. When telegraphing news of Goodwin’s death to the Foreign Secretary, Earl Granville, he asked for the acting appointment to be telegraphed by return. This was not a ‘grab for power’ on Mowat’s part but, as he explained in a followup letter, a necessary step to avoid complications over appeals and he could not communicate with the Minister in Beijing (who would usually appoint an acting Judge) in under six weeks in the absence of telegraph communications with Beijing. While Law Secretary and acting Judge, Mowat had an administrative and oversight relationship with the British courts in Japan; but the connection was not extensive. As Law Secretary, Mowat was responsible – in formal terms – for authorizing all prosecutions upon indictment and, at first after the Yokohama Court’s establishment, Hannen had been powerless to try prisoners on indictable offences without depositions being completed and sent to Shanghai for Mowat to issue indictments and nominate a prosecutor. Mowat solved this temporarily by sending blank instructions for Hannen but was reluctant to appoint someone to represent the Law Secretary permanently because communications between Shanghai and Yokohama were so regular. However, Hornby, in 1872, settled the issue by appointing the Kanagawa Consul as acting Law Secretary. In 1878, when the Japanese government by-passed the Supreme Court and appealed direct to the Privy Council against Wilkinson’s legal rulings in the Hartley cases, Mowat questioned the regularity of such process but nothing came of his questioning. There is no evidence that Mowat, as acting Judge, heard any appeals from Japan. ASSISTANT JUDGE OF THE SUPREME COURT, 1879–1891

Upon Hornby’s sudden retirement in 1876, the British government began considering afresh the court set-up in East Asia8 but was finally prompted into action by the Japanese government’s appeals in the Hartley cases. As from 1 January 1879, the British government established Her Britannic Majesty’s Court for Japan (HMCJ) at Yokohama with a Judge and an Assistant Judge which replaced the Yokohama Court and assumed responsibility for the consular courts in Japan. In Shanghai, the Judge of the Supreme Court was now styled the Chief Justice and the Supreme Court’s remaining role in respect of Japan was restricted to being the appellate body for HMCJ. 546

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The new arrangements also abolished Mowat’s post of Law Secretary and split its functions between a new Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court and the newly established post of Crown Advocate. Mowat was appointed Assistant Judge of the Supreme Court on a salary of £1,200 per annum plus a housing allowance. The Judgeship in Japan was given to Richard Temple Rennie. Whilst Mowat went on home leave from April 1879 to the Autumn of 1880, Wilkinson transferred from Yokohama to replace him as acting Assistant Judge. Shortly after Mowat’s return to Shanghai, French became ill and Mowat again acted as Chief Justice; but, this was a short-term temporary appointment only and Hannen soon replaced him as acting Chief Justice. This arrangement continued when French died in November 1881: Rennie was appointed to replace French with Mowat kept on as Assistant Judge in Shanghai whilst Hannen was not only appointed Judge in Japan in succession to Rennie but also continued to act as Chief Justice until Rennie returned from leave in early 1883. JUDGE OF HER BRITTANIC MAJESTY’S COURT FOR JAPAN, 1891–1897

Upon Hannen’s appointment as Chief Justice in 1891, the Judge-ship of HMCJ was offered to Mowat on a salary of £1,500 (plus £250 in lieu of accommodation) per annum and a one-off outfit allowance of £335.9 He accepted the offer and the appointment took effect from 1 April 1891; but, as Hannen did not wish to move back to Shanghai during the hot summer, Mowat continued in Shanghai as acting Chief Justice and Consul-General in place of Hannen.10 Hannen, when asking to be allowed to spend the summer in Japan, doubted that ‘Mowat will object to remaining as acting Chief Justice and Consul-General.’11 Mowat remained at Shanghai until October 1891 when he moved to Yokohama and took over running HMCJ from Hannen on 10 October.12 As in his other appointments – but unlike judges at Home and in the colonies – he was appointed ‘at Her Majesty’s pleasure’ and, like the British consuls, was a Crown servant under the Foreign Office. Mowat was evidently an uncomplaining individual for, despite most consuls and legal officials in Asia griping about their remuneration, there is only one record of an issue being raised by him.13 Perhaps because of the press of Hannen’s other duties and Mowat’s increasing nervous illness, it became the practice for the Judge to take the important cases only – leaving most of the routine cases to be handled by the Yokohama Consul (as Assistant Judge) but Mowat did preside over what were, probably, the two most publicized and lengthy trials in HMCJ’s history: the Chishima case 547

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and the Carew murder trial both of which went on appeal to the Privy Council. There was never any judicial determination of the facts surrounding the Chishima case but the initial interlocutory proceedings raised an issue which went to the heart of Britain’s extra-territorial jurisdiction in Japan: namely, could a British defendant raise in the British courts a counter-claim against a suit initiated by a Japanese plaintiff or must the British defendant bring its claim as an original action in the Japanese courts? The preliminary hearings were held in the full glare of publicity before a packed courtroom. However Mowat decided the question, he would incur the odium of either the Japanese (with all its negative political, commercial and diplomatic consequences) or the majority of the British community in Japan (which backed extra-territoriality). So, he dodged the legal issue by holding that, as the disaster occurred within Japanese territorial waters, Japanese law applied. Under Japanese law, the Emperor was above the law and could not be sued. Accordingly, P&O could bring no counter-claim against the Japanese government. P&O immediately appealed to the Supreme Court which over-turned Mowat’s decision whereupon the Japanese government appealed to the Privy Council. While the case rumbled on in the background, Japan negotiated the 1894 Treaty with Britain to abolish extra-territoriality. However, unlike Hannen, Mowat played no role in the negotiations – because they were suspended between 1891 and 1893 after which their locus moved to London. After the 1894 Treaty, the Chishima case came before the Privy Council which upheld Mowat’s original decision – if not his reasoning. With the interlocutory point settled, the way was clear for a full trial on the substantive question of liability. This trial had been set down for what looked a lengthy hearing before HMCJ in October, 1895. Before this, however, Mowat went on home leave from 1 April 1894 to 31 May 1895. He explained that his health was such that a change of climate was absolutely necessary.14 He was, doubtless, greatly relieved, on his return, when the Chishima case settled just before it came on. The last case over which Mowat presided was so stressful that it triggered his nervous collapse. This was the Carew murder trial in which Edith Carew was accused of murdering her husband by arsenic poisoning. The case was a cause célèbre and divided the foreign community into pro- and anti- Edith Carew followers. In the end, a jury found Mrs Carew guilty so Mowat became the only British judge in Japan to don the black cap and pass the death sentence. Shortly after the Carew case ended, the friends of Arthur Norman, the owner and editor of The Rising Sun and Nagasaki Express, petitioned 548

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that he be restrained as a lunatic incapable of managing his own affairs. As jurisdiction in lunacy was reserved to HMCJ, Mowat went to Nagasaki to hear the Petition. However, upon arrival in Nagasaki, he broke down as a result of stress and nervous exhaustion and was ordered, on medical advice, to Shanghai for rest and recuperation. Wilkinson, who had only left Yokohama at the end of the Carew case some three weeks earlier, was summoned back to act for him as Judge. Besides the Chishima cases, just two of Mowat’s judgements were appealed to the Supreme Court and both appeals were dismissed. Mrs Carew, however, applied direct to the Privy Council for leave to appeal to it but, despite there being questions about Mowat’s handling of the case and his summing up, her application was refused. Other high profile cases over which Mowat presided include several involving the North Pacific sealing trade. This trade was a source of diplomatic problems with Russia as British sealers went on illegal sealing expeditions in Russian waters. On one occasion, the British schooner, Arctic, escaped from Russian captivity and HMS Leander was dispatched to bring her into Yokohama. The incident took a twist when the US partner in the sealing venture sued the Arctic’s owner in HMCJ for his share of the profits. The Russian Minister protested about HMCJ’s hearing the case. This caused Mowat to expostulate that the Russians had no business to interfere in a case before HMCJ. After the Behring Sea Award at an international arbitration in Paris, Russia was obliged, in future, to deliver captured British vessels to Yokohama where Britain should enforce the Behring Sea Acts. However, Parliamentary Counsel’s inattention to HMCJ’s status meant that Mowat was unable to order the Maud’s forfeiture when she was brought into Yokohama by a Russian cruiser as Mowat held that the Acts applied, by their express terms, only to courts ‘within Her Majesty’s dominions’ whereas Japan was clearly not such a dominion. As to cases outside Yokohama, Mowat went on circuit as the need arose: he went to Kobe in 1892 for the Hiogo Hotel case – a corporate dispute, described as ‘stirring and exciting’ involving allegations of fraudulent misrepresentation surrounding the hotel’s sale and, in 1896, Playfair, the vice-consul, was compelled to summon Mowat to Kobe at short notice to hear a case for which counsel had already been arranged when Enslie fell fatally ill. The next year, it was while Mowat was on circuit in Nagasaki to deal with Norman’s lunacy that he collapsed. COURT ADMINISTRATION

Court administration appears to have been fairly routine during his tenure of the Judge-ship. In 1892, he arranged for W.J. Kenny’s 549

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appointment as acting Registrar of HMCJ to be made substantive.15 As acting Judge of the Supreme Court and as Judge of HMCJ, he was responsible for admitting lawyers to practice before HMCJ. In 1878, he admitted the American, Henry Willard Denison, after he had resigned a vice-consulship for the USA. No officials of any country were permitted to practise before HMCJ or the consular courts; and this applied equally to British officials. In 1896, Satow required Mowat to explain why he had been reported in the Press as having admitted H.A.C. Bonar to practise when the Foreign Office would not allow consular officials to practise and retain their appointments. Mowat explained that Bonar had – like Wilkinson and Enslie before him – simply ‘signed the Roll’ (as opposed to being admitted to practise) but the Press, when reporting the concurrent admission of Professor Terry to practice, had not appreciated the distinction.16 Mowat had allowed Bonar to sign the Roll so that he could represent (pro bono) a Chinese defendant on a manslaughter charge. Mowat, like Hannen before him and Wilkinson after him, also acted as legal adviser to the Minister; but, some of the correspondence between Satow and Mowat suggests a slightly tetchy relationship between them. In 1895 Satow sought Mowat’s opinion on whether to press the Japanese government for compensation for the Turbo’s owners following a collision between that vessel and the Naniwa kan.17 Mowat explained he would need to interview the pilot before advising.18 The next year, Satow asked whether he should lobby the Japanese government on behalf of Pears & Co. in respect of alleged counterfeiting of their soap products by a Japanese manufacturer – Satow considered there were no grounds for such a complaint but Mowat argued that a complaint should be made.19 Mowat advised Satow, informally, ahead of the Carew case to instruct Wilkinson on behalf of the Crown. In sending Satow that day’s newspaper coverage of the trial, Mowat reported that John Carey Hall, who was conducting the Inquest, said it was ‘very bad.’ Even though the Treasury would be ‘dead against all extra expense,’ Mowat argued that the Crown should have two barristers and it would be unfair to deprive Lowder of taking the only other junior in Yokohama – Walford – by instructing him. When Mrs Carew was committed for trial and Mowat had refused her bail, he again urged Wilkinson’s appointment and said that Litchfield, the Crown Prosecutor in Japan ‘would concede’ to being led by Wilkinson.20 In 1897, Mowat advised Satow that he, as Judge, had sufficient authority to transfer Mrs Carew to gaol in Hong Kong and that the transfer would have been effected earlier but that Mowat’s illness in Nagasaki and Shanghai had delayed his signing the Warrant for her transfer.21 Just before Mowat retired, he asked Satow to exercise the Minister’s power to remit the remainder of the sentence of one Dawson 550

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– who had been convicted of theft of treasure the previous year from the Saikio Maru – as Longford, in Nagasaki, was struggling to find a person to accompany a lunatic (presumably, Norman) to Hong Kong and Hodges, the Yokohama Gaol warder and constable, recommended Dawson as a suitable person. Satow initially agreed but, in a buck-passing attempt, said he was acting purely ministerially upon Mowat’s advice whereupon Mowat explained that, although he could make a recommendation, it was Satow’s own executive decision. Satow then sought to withdraw his agreement but Mowat explained that, after receiving Satow’s initial telegraphed approval, Dawson had been spoken to and it would now be unfair for Satow to resile from the decision to remit the remainder of Dawson’s sentence – added to which there was really no one else to act as the lunatic’s warder to Hong Kong. Satow eventually conceded.22 Other minor disagreements occurred in late 1896/early 1897 over Satow’s proposal to abolish the Tokyo vice-consulate and transfer its case-load to HMCJ. Mowat objected but Satow insisted that the work could be handled by HMCJ as there had only been fourteen sittings over the last ten years in the Tokyo court – and five of those had been testamentary cases.23 Mowat and the Ministers did not always see eye-to-eye over judicial appointments. In 1893, when Mowat was planning to go on leave the following year, he and Wilkinson had clearly agreed between themselves that Wilkinson would be prepared to act as Judge and, conveniently, would take over Mowat’s house in Yokohama. When Mowat recommended Wilkinson’s appointment as acting Judge to the Foreign Office, Fraser, the Minister, counter-suggested that James Troup, the Assistant Judge, should have the acting position. Troup was legally unqualified so the Foreign Office asked Hannen his opinion. Hannen replied simply that Wilkinson’s appointment was ‘most advisable.’24 Similarly, over the question of Enslie’s replacement in Kobe, Mowat wrote to Bertie in the Foreign Office privately in support of Hall’s application for the post as – at least until the end of extraterritoriality – the judicial part of the Kobe consul’s duties were significant and two English barristers were based there and Hall was legally qualified. Satow had already proposed to transfer the unqualified Quin from Nagasaki to Kobe and had told Quin that if the Foreign Office wished to depart from the principle of seniority they ‘must do it on their own responsibility.’ When Mowat backed Hall, Satow backed down and agreed to Hall’s appointment.25 RETIREMENT

Whilst recuperating in Shanghai in March and April 1897, Mowat was advised by his doctors to take two months leave and to retire. 551

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Wilkinson told Satow that ‘Mowat is very much pulled down…[and hoped that]…he would be allowed to retire.’26 The Foreign Secretary could allow judicial staff to retire if ill, when they would be entitled to a pension. The pensions could be generous – especially for long serving officials. When computing superannuation payments, two years’ service in an ‘unhealthy place’ counted as three years so Mowat’s nearly thirty-three years in Asia accrued him some forty-eight years pensionable service. The Foreign Office acceded to Mowat’s request to be allowed to retire and recommended to the Treasury that he be allowed the highest possible pension. He was authorized to leave his post as Judge of HMCJ as of 17 June 1897 when he handed over to Wilkinson as acting Judge. He reached the UK on 24 July.27 CONCLUSION

Mowat was very much a contemporary of Hannen and Wilkinson and involved, in one way and another, with the administration of British justice in Japan from 1868 to 1897 but, unlike them, had no experience of private practice. He comes across as a professional and considerate individual in all his writings. Certainly, the Press in Japan, which could be highly critical of individual judges and consuls when it wished, described Mowat, in 1897, as ‘a good and painstaking man.’ After his retirement, Mowat and his wife returned to Britain where they finally settled in Hove. He was a member of the Reform Club in London. He also maintained an interest in East Asia and was a steward at a grand dinner organized in 1899 and presided over by Joseph Chamberlain in support of the establishment of the London School of Tropical Medicine.28 Like several of his colleagues, Mowat enjoyed a long retirement and he died, aged eighty-two, in Hove in 192529 – the same year as James Troup and a year before Wilkinson. His wife pre-deceased him in 1922. ENDNOTES 1

2 3

4 5 6

Joseph Foster, Men-at-the-Bar (London: Hazell, Watson, and Viney, Limited, 1885; reprinted by Cornell University Library, 2003). Obituary, The Times, 9 June 1925. See Christopher Roberts, ‘The British Courts and Extra-territoriality in Japan, 1859–1899’ (Leiden-Boston: Global Oriental, 2013) for a fuller description of the development of the British court system in Japan. Matters referenced in that book are not referenced in this article. Foster, 1885. Obituary. See Christopher Roberts ‘Sir Nicholas John Hannen, 1842–1900’ in this Volume. Matters referenced in that article are not referenced again in this article. 552

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7

8

9 10

11 12 13

14

15

16

17 18 19

20

21 22

23

24

25

See Christopher Roberts, ‘Sir Hiram Shaw Wilkinson (1840–1926)’ in Sir Hugh Cortazzi ed., Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Vol. VIII (Leiden-Boston, Global Oriental, 2013). Matters referenced in that article are not referenced again in this article. Pauncefote produced a lengthy memorandum on the matter in September 1877; FO881/3482. Salisbury to Mowat, 1 April 1891; FO46/412. The Minister in Beijing appointed him acting Chief Justice while the Foreign Office effected the acting appointment as Consul-General, in which capacity he was also authorized to solemnize marriages; Mowat to Salisbury, 1 April 1891; FO17/1119 and Sanderson to Mowat, 7 April 1891; FO17/1117. Hannen to Sanderson (private) 7 March 1891; FO46/412. Mowat to Salisbury, 10 October 1891; FO46/412. He requested some compensation for the fact that, while acting as Chief Justice in 1891 before Hannen moved to Shanghai, he had continued to be paid at the lower, Assistant Judge’s salary of £1,200 rather than the higher salary of £1,500 per annum as Judge of HMCJ: had he been expected to remain on the lower salary, he argued that the Foreign Office should have made this clear to him in its offer of the HMCJ Judge-ship. The point was quickly accepted – especially as he had been asked to delay taking up the HMCJ appointment – and the Foreign Office agreed to pay him at the higher rate as from 1 April, 1891 – being the date of his formal appointment to HMCJ (see note 14). Mowat to Rosebery, 20 July 1897; FO46/432. Mowat left on 1 April 1894 and went via Suez. He was allowed a wine allowance of 1/9 (9p) a day for himself and a further 8d (3p) a day for Mrs Mowat. In total, £7/9/10 (£7.49). See Mowat’s expsense claim to the Chief Clerk: 2 July 1898; FO46/443. Mowat to Salisbury, 31 May 1892 and Foreign Office to Mowat 1 August 1892; FO46/423. Satow to Mowat and Mowat’s reply, both of 17 January 1896; PRO30/33/6/5. Satow to Mowat, 11 September 1895; PRO30/33/6/5. Mowat to Satow, 13 September 1895; PRO30/33/6/5. Satow to Mowat 22 February 1896 and response 27 February 1896; PRO30/33/6/5. Mowat to Satow, 24, 26 and 27 October and 18 November 1896; PRO30/33/6/5. Mowat to Satow, 4 February and 13 April 1897; PRO/30/33/6/5. Mowat and Satow correspondence, 7, 8, 9 and 10 April 1897; PRO30/33/6/5. Mowat to Satow and response 25 November 1896 and 29 March 1897; PRO33/30/6/5. Mowat to Sanderson, 4 August 1893; Wilkinson to Sanderson 5 August 1893; Fraser to Foreign Office, 18 September 1893; and Hannen to Foreign Office on 3 October 1893; PRO30/33/6/5. Mowat to Bertie (private), 22 June; Satow to Bertie 20 August; Quin to Crowe 5 and 17 September; Quin to Salisbury 12 September; Crowe 553

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26 27

28 29

to Quin (private) 19 September 1896 (and various internal notes on the same by Crowe and Bertie); FO46/476. Bertie minuted that Satow ‘ought to have known better’ than to say what he had to Quin! Wilkinson to Satow, 5 March 1897; PRO30/33/6/5. Bertie and Crowe to Mowat, 15 April 1897; Mowat to Salisbury 17 June 1897; FO46/491. The Times, 5 May 1899. Obituary.

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Sir Francis Bertie and Japan (1844–1919): Key Figure in Framing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance THOMAS G. OTTE

Francis Bertie (later Viscount Bertie of Thame) never visited Japan; nor is he known to have shown any particular interest in the country, its history or its culture. To include him in the series of Anglo-Japanese biographical portraits might therefore appear quixotic. It is not. For Bertie helped to shape Britain’s dealings with Japan more than many others who occupy a more prominent place in the history of the relations between the two countries. As Assistant Under-secretary (AUS) at the Foreign Office between 1894 and 1902 he was instrumental in preparing the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, thereby establishing the broad parameters of British policy in East Asia for the next two decades, and perhaps even beyond. ‘THE BULL’ IN WHITEHALL

There was little in Bertie’s early career to indicate his later role in Anglo-Japanese relations. Born in 1844 as the second son of the Earl 555

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of Abingdon, he eschewed the army or the church, the traditional destinations for the younger members of the aristocracy, neither of which suited his caustic and cynical temperament. Instead he opted for a career in diplomacy. On leaving Eton, he spent two years at Bonn to perfect his language skills. In 1863, as a callow youth of nineteen, he took the Foreign Office entrance examination, which he passed with flying colours, coming top of his cohort.1 Thus began a career at the Foreign Office that lasted until early 1903, when Bertie secured an appointment in the then still separate diplomatic service first as ambassador at Rome, before being transferred to Paris two years later, in which post he was to remain until 1918. His early years at the Foreign Office were spent on the humdrum duties that were the preserve of junior clerks in those days – ‘largely mechanical, but at the same time confidential’ – copying despatches or encyphering and decyphering telegrams.2 Bertie acquired a reputation as a diligent and efficient official, so much so that, in 1874 – his family’s Tory ties no doubt aiding him – he was appointed private secretary to the Hon. Robert Bourke, Parliamentary Under-secretary in the incoming administration of Benjamin Disraeli, a position which Bertie held until the fall of the ministry in 1880.3 His first exposure to international diplomacy abroad came in 1878, when he was a junior member of the British delegation at the Berlin Congress that was to settle the outcome of the latest Russo-Turkish war. Indeed, for much of this time Bertie was concerned with the affairs of the Ottoman Empire and the Near East. In 1880, he returned to the Turkish (since 1882, Eastern) Department, where he remained until 1894, except for a brief interlude in the American and Asiatic Department between 1887 and 1889. He continued to impress his superiors, who could not ‘speak too highly of his services’.4 In temporarily taking charge of the Eastern Department, Bertie had shown ‘remarkable ability and untiring energy with which he has conducted the labors [sic] of that Department during a long and troublesome period’.5 Thus he steadily advanced up the career ladder. In 1890, he was made senior clerk of the Eastern Department, before being appointed one of the two AUS on 1 January 1894.6 Part of Bertie’s remit in his new role was to supervise the work of the American and Asiatic Department. Over the next few years he would come to wield considerable influence over the framing of British policy in East Asia. His own forthright manner aside, two factors combined to elevate his position at the Foreign Office. For one thing, successive foreign secretaries proved receptive to Bertie’s sharpeyed and shrewd advice. Bertie was ‘a man of the world’, observed the parting Permanent Under-secretary (PUS), Sir Philip Currie, in 1894; the newly installed Foreign Secretary, the Earl of Kimberley, would be well advised to seek the AUS’s advice: ‘You may rely on his giving you honest opinions.’7 The two marquesses who followed on Kim556

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berley took a very similar view of Bertie’s merits. If his relations with Lansdowne (1900–1905) were often a little distant, he found Salisbury (1895–1900) usually receptive to his ideas. The second factor that helped to turn East Asian affairs into Bertie’s bailiwick was his intense personal rivalry with Currie’s successor as PUS, Sir Thomas Sanderson, a more conventional and methodical man than Bertie ‘The Bull’. The latter combined ‘impeccable official precision and extremely able superintendence of public affairs with a crudity and licence of expression... which lifted the hair of the newly joined’, reflected a diplomat who had served under Bertie in the 1880s.8 Bertie was an odd mixture of an overgrown schoolboy, who delighted in impish pranks, and an atavistic throwback to Regency days, who bucked at the straight-laced proprieties of the Victorian era and revelled in crass vulgarities: ‘A dying world breathed through his dilated nostrils; Society meant much, art nothing, to him. Snobbish, sternly practical, resolutely prosaic, he knew no arabesques of humour or irony, but only hard straight lines.’9 At the Foreign Office, no-one suffered more from his barbs than Sanderson. Bertie was wont to ‘indulge in... free and easy language about “Bossy” [his nickname for Sanderson]’ in front of junior clerks, and lost no opportunity to denigrate the PUS.10 In this he went as far as suggesting to King Edward VII that Sanderson was ‘so susceptible to the effects of wine’ and so liable to spill state secrets.11 Their different personalities aside, there was quite possibly also an element of frustrated personal ambitions at the root of Bertie’s dislike of Sanderson. Three years the latter’s junior, he was too close to him in age to stand a chance of succeeding the last of the ‘superclerks’ to the PUS-ship – and, in part, this explains Bertie’s eventual departure for an embassy abroad. Significantly, Bertie’s frustration did not merely exhaust itself in colourful language. He also manipulated the flow of information so as to limit the PUS’s ability to interfere in departmental affairs. ‘Bertie’s disposition does not tend to excessive communicativeness’, as Sanderson himself put it a little more delicately.12 Conversely, for his part, the PUS refrained from challenging Bertie in his departmental fiefdom, thus leaving him considerable latitude not merely in superintending its work but also in shaping for himself a prominent role in policy-making. The creation, in 1899, of a separate Far Eastern Department by dividing the old American and Asiatic Department into two separate entities, reflected the growing international importance of Asia, but it also further cemented Bertie’s influential position in Whitehall. ‘A BRITISH WORLD-POLICY’: BERTIE’S VIEWS OF EAST ASIA.

Bertie’s superintendence over British policy in East Asia coincided with a crucial period in the politics of that region. Two historic events 557

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stand at either end of his tenure as AUS. He had scarcely taken up his new post when the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, in July 1894, ushered in a period of considerable instability and uncertainty in East Asia. Following Japan’s victory over the erstwhile regional hegemon, the ‘China Question’ appeared to enter its most acute phase yet. Bertie’s involvement with the region came to an end not long after the conclusion of the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1902. In framing his policy advice, Bertie was guided by what he considered to be British interests in the Far East. During one of the many Great Power crises that followed the Sino-Japanese conflict, Bertie offered a succinct definition of the principal object of Britain’s regional policy: ‘our permanent interest is unrestricted trade everywhere and therefore we should discourage spheres [of influence] as long as possible, and only take a position commanding the Yangtsze River when we see that we are to be placed at a disadvantage in other parts of China commercially or that France is on the move to take something’. In securing these interests, Bertie relied on Britain’s naval strength in the China Seas, the Royal Navy’s China Station serving as the armed wing of British diplomacy: ‘A squadron to deal with a Russian-German-French combination would be our best security.’13 Bertie’s comments of late 1897 are indicative of his understanding of British East Asian policy. At its core lay China and the commercial ties with her. Britain’s chief political concern, however, was with the ambitions of the other Powers, primarily Russia and France, both established Asiatic Powers and Britain’s traditional rivals in the region, but increasingly also Germany, whose trading presence had begun to make itself felt more especially in China. It was thus in the broader strategic context of the ‘China Question’ and the international tensions surrounding it that Bertie considered Japan an increasingly important factor in regional politics. Bertie represented the views of his political generation. He looked askance at international alliances, and was reluctant to countenance any move that might entail a ‘sacrifice of our liberty to pursue a British world-policy.’ Instead he preferred ‘the middle position of “tertius gaudens”’.14 Bertie’s conceptualization of foreign policy was a form of British neo-Bismarckianism. He wished for Britain to remain ‘the country holding the balance between the [Franco-Russian] Dual and the Triple Alliances’.15 ‘GOOD TERMS WITH THE RISING POWER OF THE FAR EAST’

In Asian affairs, Bertie’s stance initially reflected Britain’s traditional leaning towards China. His attitude towards Japan was characterized by a degree of wariness tempered by the essential pragmatism of a ‘man of business’. 558

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The prolonged negotiations on revising the so-called ‘unequal treaties’, which guaranteed foreigners residing in Japan substantial extra-territorial judicial rights and commercial and tax privileges, illustrated this dynamic tension in Bertie’s thinking. At the turn of 1893–1894, the government of Itõ Hirobumi had come under strong domestic pressure on account of the lack of progress in the matter. The Japanese foreign minister, Mutsu Munemitsu, sought to convert some of that pressure into diplomatic leverage by hinting to the British minister, Hugh Fraser, that Tokyo might in future simply ignore the irksome obligations imposed on it by the ‘unequal treaties’. Bertie was not amused. He drew the attention of Viscount Aoki Shu¯zõ, Japan’s envoy in London, to the ‘tall talk’ at Tokyo. If, he warned the minister: Japan desired to enter the ‘Comity of Western Nations’ the Japanese Gov[ernmen]t must realize that one of the first principles of those States is the respect for Treaties, which cannot be revoked because the Treaty Provisions happen to be distasteful to it. We could not start negotiations for revision with a more or less veiled threat from Japan that if we did not liberate her from her engagements she would free herself.16

For all his seeming firmness of language, this was mere posturing before any talks commenced. For Bertie understood well enough that the Japanese desire for change had better be accommodated. Insisting on the unadulterated status quo, he reasoned, was likely to produce an anti-foreign backlash in Japan: ‘If we refuse to negotiate or leave unanswered the Japanese proposals, a strong anti-English movement, encouraged by the Japanese Gov[ernmen]t, may ensue.’ Even if the government at Tokyo did not feel strong enough unilaterally to revoke the treaties, its hand might be forced by its domestic opponents. In that event, he warned, Britain would find herself ‘with no trade advantages and without extra-territorial jurisdiction’. Given the recent expansion of the Japanese navy and the strengthening of the country’s coastal defences, moreover, Britain would be unable to enforce her treaty rights. Whatever the short-term ructions in Anglo-Japanese relations caused by the proposed treaty revision, the two countries shared a common strategic goal, Bertie observed: ‘The great object which Japan & China have in common, & which is also an English interest, is to keep Russia out of Corea, as if that Power establishes herself at Port Lazareth [recte Lazarev (now Woˇnsan, North Korea)] she will be in a position of continual menace to Japan & China.’ There were therefore sound strategic reasons for accommodating Japan. Besides, the readier Britain showed herself to negotiate, the less exacting the price for a final settlement was 559

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likely to be. Indeed, Bertie thought that, given the internecine nature of party warfare in Japanese politics at the time, there was every chance of a draft treaty not being ratified by the Lower House of the Japanese diet, in which case the ‘unequal treaty’ rights would remain intact at no cost to British diplomacy.17 The argument Bertie advanced on this occasion revealed something of the essence of his political thinking. At its core was a strong element of suspicion of foreign nations, leavened by a strong dose of cynicism, and all wrapped up in political pragmatism in pursuit of Britain’s wider strategic goals. That pragmatism always prevailed. Such considerations also informed Bertie’s attitude during the SinoJapanese conflict. He supported the efforts of Rosebery and Kimberley to encourage a negotiated settlement before the two rivals for predominance over the Korean peninsula came to blows: ‘The important thing was that negotiations should begin at once so as to obviate Russian intervention.’18 This was sensible advice, but matters had already gone too far for British mediation to prevent a war, as Bertie realized. Neither Tokyo nor Peking was prepared to withdraw their forces from Korea, nor were any of the European Powers prepared to throw their weight behind Lord Kimberley’s initiative. Japan, Bertie reasoned, wished to come to a regional arrangement with China to secure ‘their respective interests as against Russian designs’. In the absence of foreign support, the ‘power of China to turn Japan out of Corea is doubtful’. It was therefore for Peking to seek terms with Japan ‘on the basis suggested by the latter’.19 This was not to be; nor was it possible later, in October 1894 after the tide of war had shifted in Japan’s favour, to mediate a settlement. For his part, Bertie ‘regard[ed] with [the] gravest apprehension the continuance of the war’.20 A comprehensive Japanese victory, he suspected, would trigger Russia’s intervention in the conflict, and this would exacerbate the situation. Under the circumstances there was nothing for it but to await the outcome of the war, and to protect Britain’s regional interests as best as possible. If Bertie’s advice prior to the outbreak of the war was suggestive of a leaning towards Japan, in his defence of British interests he was even-handed. When, in September 1894, Mutsu sought to soften Japan’s commitment to respecting neutral shipping along the maritime approaches to Shanghai, the principal entrepôt for foreign commerce on the China coast, Bertie advocated a firm line: ‘we should certainly “lose face” with the Chinese, we shall let Japanese vessels up the Yangtze river unless the Chinese blocked it’. If that were to happen, Britain’s lucrative trade with the Yangtze provinces would be disrupted; if, on the other hand, Japanese forces pushed upriver, ‘there will probably be risings, massacres of foreigners & total destruction of our trade and consular establishments’.21 British naval reinforcements off Shanghai acted as a 560

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sufficient deterrent, and with the main theatre of the war remaining in the north, Mutsu yielded. Following Rosebery’s failed attempt to mediate a settlement in October 1894, Bertie supported the government’s policy of studied neutrality in the Sino-Japanese conflict. Japan’s victory and the subsequent intervention by the Russo-French-German triplice profoundly altered the strategic landscape of East Asia. It was now, Bertie observed, ‘very desirable [for Britain] to be on good terms with the Rising Power in the Far East’.22 This last consideration became more important, the more disturbed the politics of the region became. The growing encroachment of the other Powers, presaged by the triple intervention of 1895, increased the potential strategic value of Japan to Britain. When, at the turn of 1897–1898, Germany and then Russia seized ports along the northern Chinese coast to establish their naval and political presence there – in the case of the former at Kiaochow, in the latter’s case at Port Arthur – Bertie suspected Russo-German collusion.23 He regarded the territorial presence of other European Powers in China as inimical to Britain’s commercial interests. But whilst Bertie instinctively preferred informal means of preserving British influence, the traditional tools of British imperialism, he concluded that London would now have to make a ‘claim for compensation’.24 This was the more pressing as the power of the Royal Navy to deter the expansionist designs of others was limited. A flying squadron permanently operating in Northern Chinese waters, at a considerable distance from Hongkong, was fraught with practical difficulties. There was also the danger that the establishment of a Russian presence at Port Arthur might persuade St Petersburg and Tokyo to set aside their differences and to arrive at a regional modus vivendi. With a view to such scenarios of future developments, Bertie supported suggestions that the British government ought to secure some countervailing concession. Ultimately, this led to the acquisition of the Wei-hai-Wei, on the northern side of the Shantung promontory, until the 1894–1895 war the base of the Imperial Chinese Navy in the Gulf of Pechili and since then under temporary occupation by the Japanese. The latter, reported the British minister at Peking, Sir Claude MacDonald, were ‘much perturbed over the occupation of Kiaochow’.25 Japan, observed his colleague at Tokyo, Sir Ernest Satow, ‘would do anything asked of her at the present moment to gain her friendship’.26 Bertie therefore advocated the acquisition of the northern naval base as a counterpoise to Russia and Germany, by force if necessary.27 Such a move would prevent ‘our trade gradually [being] squeezed out of North and South China’, he averred. If Britain did not acquire the place, then Japan ought to be made to stay, in case ‘it would be necessary to promise to back her up in refusing 561

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to leave if called upon to do so by Russia, Germany, and France’.28 Whatever precisely Bertie had in mind, this was the nucleus of some form of regional Anglo-Japanese security pact. An en passant remark to the British ambassador at Berlin underlined the growing importance of Japan in Bertie’s thinking. The Far Eastern triplice no longer regarded Britain as a first-class Power in the Asia-Pacific region, ‘even if we had little Japan with us’.29 Japan had clearly become a potential strategic partner in East Asia. THE LONG ROAD TO 1902.

The events of 1900 sharpened the focus of Bertie’s thinking on the Japanese factor. As China appeared to descend into internal turmoil following the outbreak of the ‘Boxer Rebellion’, Bertie accepted that the ‘China Question’ had entered its most critical phase. If the rumours of the wholesale massacres of the besieged foreigners at Peking were true, Bertie concluded, ‘the integrity of China is at an end; if the Russians occupy Peking we must give up the North and establish a scion of the Mings in the S[outh]’. The Powers, Bertie was certain, would coerce the Peking authorities, and so ‘will bring China to the ground & hasten on partition’.30 Against the spectre of a ‘scramble for China’, with all the international complications that would attend to it, Japan acquired a new significance for British diplomacy. Throughout 1900–1901, Bertie was haunted by the spectre of a reconstituted Far Eastern triplice. Since nothing was likely to shake the Franco-Russian alliance, in existence since 1894,31 it was important to keep on good terms with Germany and Japan. For that reason, Bertie advised Lord Salisbury to accept the German proposal to appoint the Prussian field marshal, Count von Waldersee, as the commander of the international force then being assembled to relieve the besieged foreign community in the Chinese capital. London’s refusal would furnish ‘a pretext for a renewal of the German-Russian-French alliance as regards China’.32 His own reservations notwithstanding, Salisbury fell in with his AUS’s counsel. Bertie himself was sceptical of the material value of closer ties with Germany. Given China’s weakness, British policy had to protect its regional interests as best it could, and that now meant securing a sphere of influence. Germany’s cooperation could be had, he noted, but Berlin would seek to ‘exact... [a] high price for any recognition by them of [the] British Yangtze sphere of influence’.33 In Bertie’s analysis any arrangement with Germany would merely serve ‘to tide over the present crisis’, caused by the implosion of the central Chinese government and the uncertainty over Russia’s designs on the Asian mainland. But Britain had already recognized 562

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Germany’s privileged position in Shantung province in 1898. For Berlin, then, there was little to be gained from an agreement that merely confirmed this, and Bertie reasoned that the Wilhelmstrasse would demand further concessions beyond Shantung. This, he speculated, would entail control over ‘a sufficiently large tract of territory’ between the Yangtze and Hwang-ho rivers. But he warned against pinning any hopes on the idea of using a German-controlled area as a buffer between Britain’s sphere of interest in the Yangtze region and whatever niche Russian would carve out for herself in the northern portions of the Chinese Empire. On the contrary, given Germany’s exposed position in Europe, she was not likely to sacrifice the proverbial ‘Pomeranian grenadier’ for the protection of British interests in East Asia. Indeed, Bertie warned, ‘if Peking remain[ed] then the real capital of China, Russia and Germany will in combination control the Chinese Government to our detriment’. Any agreement with Germany would produce ‘continual friction’ with her about concessions to the north of the Yangtsze ‘and to the South of the River we should have to fight it out with the French who have never recognized our Yangtsze claims’.34 In the face of the persistent antagonism with the Franco-Russian group, and given that Germany’s support was, at best, uncertain or, worse, to be had only at an unacceptable price, Japan hove further into view as a potential strategic partner in East Asia. For now, Bertie’s forceful arguments failed to have any effect on the cabinet, with the result that Salisbury was forced to negotiate the Anglo-German agreement of 16 October 1900, a ‘scrap of paper’ that contained commonplace ‘Open Door’ sentiments but little of any real substance.35 Bertie’s warnings of the limited value of an agreement with Germany, however, were soon to be borne out. In early 1901, a leaked Sino-Russian agreement, the ‘Ts’eng-Alekse’ev’ treaty, seemed to presage the absorption of Manchuria by Russia, and for several weeks the diplomatic dovecote was aflutter with rumours of an imminent Anglo-Russian war. For Bertie the crisis represented an opportunity to obtain clarity on German policy in Asia. The new Japanese minister at London, Baron Hayashi Tadasu, had suggested joint Anglo-Japanese representations at St Petersburg, a scheme supported by Bertie but blocked by the new foreign secretary, Lord Lansdowne.36 Bertie persisted, and repeatedly suggested that Berlin be invited to join Britain and Japan in making formal enquiries at the Russian foreign ministry. This, he observed, ‘may elicit from the German Government a disclaimer of the Anglo-German Agreement having any meaning in regard to such proceedings on the part of the Russians; and it is just as well that we should know the value to be attached to it as regards the German attitude towards Russia’.37 563

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As the tensions mounted in northern China – at one point Russian cossacks and British sepoys faced each other across barbed wirecrowned trenches at Tientsin – the situation arose that Bertie had predicted earlier. Berlin denied that the Anglo-German Agreement extended to the northern portions of the Chinese Empire. German support for some démarche at St Petersburg was not be had; the idea of a tripartite intervention was dead. Bertie felt vindicated: ‘The honest broker sitting on the fence’, he minuted wryly.38 Ultimately, the international tensions over Manchuria dissipated. Russia was not yet ready to push matters to extremes. But for Britain the situation remained fraught with risks. The next Russian attempt to have a bite at the Chinese cherry was merely a question of time. Whilst the events of early 1901 had proved beyond doubt that a reliable agreement with Germany, in opposition to Russian ambitions in East Asia, was not to be had, this still left the matter of Britain’s relations with Japan. Throughout the Manchurian crisis Bertie had warned that, unless Britain unmistakably indicated her willingness to resist Russian expansionism in Asia, Japan would make terms with St. Petersburg.39 In the aftermath of the crisis, Bertie emerged as the chief proponent of a formal Anglo-Japanese arrangement in Whitehall. In a series of memoranda in June and July 1901, partly written off his own bat, partly composed at Lansdowne’s instruction, the AUS sketched the outlines of a combination between the two island Powers. An agreement, pledging London and Tokyo to coordinate their policies in East Asia, would help to stabilize the region, he argued. Indeed, he also suggested that such an understanding be complemented by a secret defence pact. Under its terms, Britain would offer naval support to Japan in defence of her interests in the Korean peninsula in return for Japanese assistance for British efforts to maintain the status quo in the Yangtze and southern provinces of China. In substance, Bertie’s scheme of a consultative and naval defence agreement encapsulated the idea of an Anglo-Japanese regional entente, which Lord Salisbury had suggested somewhat tentatively in February 1901. But Bertie gave it a more definite shape and a broader geographical remit.40 It was imperative, Bertie warned, to signal to Tokyo Britain’s willingness to come to an understanding ‘and so keep them from gravitating towards our rivals’.41 The brittle state of Japanese finances might compel Tokyo to come to an arrangement with the Franco-Russian bloc, combining a loan to Japan with a scheme for the neutralization of Korea. The emergence of such a new Far Eastern triplice, Bertie argued, could not be prevented by ‘general expressions of goodwill’ by Britain. This consideration gained greater urgency because the representatives of the Powers in Peking had settled with the postBoxer Chinese government on the payment of a war indemnity in 564

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the form of bonds. But the Treasury now resisted purchasing Japan’s share of the indemnity bonds at face value, which made a loan raised on the Paris bourse, where money was readily available, more attractive to Tokyo. Under these circumstances, Bertie suggested moving beyond the issue of financial assistance, and reiterated his earlier idea of a reciprocal, regional defence pact. Britain would ‘undertake to give Japan naval assistance in resisting any foreign occupation of Corea provided that Japan will promise to give us... military and naval aid in resisting foreign aggression in the Yangtze region and the South of China’.42 In a second memorandum of 22 July 1901, Bertie elaborated further on the situation in East Asia. Germany had proved unreliable – his favourite theme by now. A modus vivendi with Russia would be of limited practical value, if indeed it could be obtained, since St Petersburg ‘would probably not adhere to the spirit of any agreement’. On the other hand, he noted a commonality of Anglo-Japanese interests. Neither Power could tolerate Russian control over Korea. In an obvious nod to Treasury concerns, Bertie argued that a defence pact with Japan would reduce the strains on Britain’s defence expenditure, caused by French and Russian naval expansion and exacerbated by the ongoing conflict with the Boers in South Africa. He concluded that an Anglo-Japanese combination would act as a powerful deterrent on Russia’s ambitions in Asia. Bertie’s two July memoranda lent a sharper focus to British strategic thinking in the Far East. In them, he developed a way forward that would allow British diplomacy in the region to overcome the current financial and naval constraints under which it had to operate. For his part, Bertie did not envisage anything other than a reciprocal defence arrangement. He did not advocate an alliance: ‘an alliance with anyone would be dangerous’.43 Lansdowne took up Bertie’s scheme in his conversations with Hayashi later in the month, but the matter was left hanging fire for much of the summer. Not the least important reason for the delay on the British side was a clash in the cabinet between the two armed services ministers and the chancellor of the exchequer. At Lansdowne’s instruction, Bertie now refined the arguments he had developed in his July memoranda, weaving together diplomatic calculations, naval considerations and financial factors into a powerful argument in favour of an alliance with Japan. Such a combination, he pointed out, would not only materially strengthen Britain’s naval position in East Asia, without the need to increase the number of ships on the Royal Navy’s China Station, it would also strengthen her diplomatic clout there. The agreement would provide for closer coordination of the policies pursued by the two Powers, and pledged them not to conclude separate agreements with the Franco-Russian group. The force and cogency of Bertie’s arguments enabled Lansdowne to persuade a 565

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largely sceptical cabinet of the merits of this new departure in foreign policy.44 Initially, Lansdowne and Bertie remained wedded to the idea of an entente with Japan, rather than a full alliance. However, as the foreign secretary’s negotiations with Hayashi gathered pace, it became clear that Tokyo would settle for nothing less than an alliance. It was no obstacle for either Lansdowne or Bertie. British diplomatic strategy had evolved so much since the Manchurian crisis earlier in the year that London was ready to contemplate an alliance with a non-European Power, as long as that combination did not affect Britain’s position in Europe. The events of 1901 had confirmed Bertie in his conviction that ‘[w]hatever hope may be held out to England & Japan of support from Germany[,] no effective aid will be forthcoming from the quarter in opposition to Russia unless there is a general conflagration & Germany finds herself obliged from European considerations to take part in the war’. Germany was all in favour of maintaining the ‘open door’ in China, ‘and relie[d] on England, Japan & America to keep it open but she will never use force when she may come into collision with Russia’, Bertie observed. Freed from the incubus of Russia’s descent on Peking and free from binding obligations towards any of the European Powers, Britain could now ‘hold the balance between the Triple and the Dual Alliances’. Combining with Japan would not entail a ‘sacrifice of our liberty to pursue a British world-policy’.45 To no small degree, the conclusion of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902 owed something to Bertie’s persistent pressing for such an arrangement. But in doing so he was guided by what he perceived to be British interests. He was not minded to make undue concessions to Japan. When, for instance, the Rothschild banking house approached the Foreign Office, in September 1902, about plans for a £5 m loan, Bertie refused to be drawn. Writing in Lansdowne’s name, but expressing his own sentiments, he noted that the foreign secretary had ‘formed a high opinion of the energy and enterprise of the Japanese and he is convinced of their desire to introduce some sound methods of administration’. But this was not sufficient reason for deviating from London’s established practice of not vouching for the credit worthiness of foreign governments.46 There were to be no special concession for the Japanese ally. Bertie’s role in the internal discussions about a Japanese alliance marked the zenith of his departmental influence. And yet, wearied by the constant grind of official business, he now sought release from his Whitehall post, and when the ambassador to Italy retired at the end of 1902, he succeeded in mobilizing Royal support to secure the embassy appointment for himself.47 Bertie’s involvement with Anglo-Japanese relations thus came to an end.

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CONCLUSION.

Francis Bertie was no Japanophile. Indeed, it is difficult to establish with any degree of certainty what he thought or felt about that country. His contacts with it were entirely formal and confined to political business. There is no indication in any of the extant correspondence that he took a particular interest in Japanese art or culture, which enjoyed such a vogue in the 1890s. His interests in Japan were rooted solely in politics and strategy. The country mattered only in relation to Britain’s wider strategic priorities in East Asia; the country’s significance increased in relation to the further encroachment in the region by the other Great Powers. Bertie’s thinking thus reflected the growing strategic importance of Japan. Indeed, from his Far Eastern bailiwick at the Foreign Office, Bertie articulated a clear strategic argument for an alliance with the other island Power. It was he who brought together the diplomatic, financial and financial strands of British policy and wove them into coherent case for diplomatic action that convinced Lansdowne’s cabinet colleagues, wary of the novelty of an alliance. Success will always attract rival paternity claims. Historians rightly take a more sceptical view of such pretensions. Francis Bertie was not the father of the Japanese alliance. But he most certainly was its midwife, and that may have been the more important role. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8

9 10

K.A. Hamilton, Bertie of Thame: Edwardian Ambassador (Woddbridge, 1991), 4 et seq. For some impressions see A.H. Hardinge, A Diplomatist in Europe (London, 1927), 32–9. Bertie’s political leanings were certainly towards the party, see Satow diary, 28 June 1895, Satow MSS, The National Archive (Public Record Office), Kew, PRO 30/33/15/17. Pauncefote to Salisbury, 15 May 1885, TNA (PRO), FO 366/760; also Hamilton, Bertie, 6. Min. Pauncefote, 15 August 1885, FO 366/724. Min. Rosebery, 1 January 1894, FO 366/760; R.A. Jones, The Nineteenth Century Foreign Office: An Administrative History (London, 1971), 81. Currie to Kimberley (personal), 11 March 1894, Kimberley MSS, Bodleian Library, Oxford, Ms.Eng.c.4397. Currie and Kimberley were cousins. J.R. Rodd, Social and Diplomatic Memories (3 vols., London, 1922–5), i, 41; Z.S. Steiner, The Foreign Office and Foreign Policy, 1898–1914 (Cambridge, 1969), 34 n. and 70–1. R. Vansittart, The Mist Procession (London, 1958), 54. Rumbold to father, 17 January 1903, Rumbold MSS, Bodl., Ms.Rumbold dep. 11. The stories about Bertie’s rude and lewd behaviour or his extensive pornographic print collection are legion; for a flavour see Hamilton,

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11

12

13

14

15

16

17

18

19 20

21

22

23

24 25

26

27

Bertie, 6–8; also G.W. Antrobus, King’s Messenger: Memories of a Silver Greyhound (London, 1941), 91. Bertie to Lady Bertie (private), 3 August 1902, Bertie MSS, British Library, Add. MSS. 63011. Sanderson to Scott (private), 9 December 1900, Scott MSS, BL, Add. MSS. 52298. Sanderson’s taking over the Eastern Department from Bertie in 1885 may not have helped matters, min. Pauncefote, 15 August 1885, FO 366/724; see also T.G. Otte, The Foreign Office Mind: The Making of British Foreign Policy, 1865–1914 (Cambridge, 2011), 246–8. Memo. Bertie, [23?] December 1897, TNA (PRO), FO 17/1330 (original emphasis); for the context see T.G. Otte, The China Question: Great Power Rivalry and British Isolation, 1894–1905 (Oxford, 2007), 96–7. Quotes from memo. Bertie, 9 November 1901, G.P. Gooch and H.W.V. Temperley (eds.), British Documents on the Origins of the War, 1898–1914 (11 vols., London, 1926–1938) ii, no. 91; and Cranborne to Bertie, n.d. [but 12 April 1903], Bertie MSS, Add. MSS. 63015. Bertie to Spring-Rice, 26 December 1902, Spring-Rice MSS, Churchill College Archive Centre, Cambridge, CASR I/1/2. Min. Bertie, 3 April 1894, on Fraser to Rosebery (no. 23), 29 February 1894, TNA (PRO), FO 46/435. Aoki was known in London and Tokyo as ‘your [Bertie’s] admirer’, Spring-Rice to Bertie (private), 17 August 1897, Bertie MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/170. Min. Bertie, 12 January 1894, FO 46/445. The Earl of Rosebery accepted the AUS’s advice: ‘This seems to me to sum up our policy at this moment’, min. Rosebery, n.d., ibid. Bertie to Kimberley, 8 July 1894, Kimberley MSS, Ms.Eng.c.4380; Otte, China Question, 33–8; M. Munemitsu, Kenkenroku: A Diplomatic Record of the Sino-Japanese War, 1894–5, ed. and transl. by G.M. Berger (Tokyo, 1982), 46–8. Memo. Bertie, 12 July 1894, FO 46/446. Tel. Bertie to Rosebery (secret), 23 October 1894, Rosebery MSS, National Library of Scotland, Edinburgh, MS 10134; for some of the context see Otte, China Question, 41–3. Bertie to Kimberley, 29 September 1894, Kimberley MSS, Ms.Eng.c.4380. Min. Bertie, 1 December 1895, on tel. Satow to Salisbury (no. 106), 30 November 1895, FO 46/460. Min. Bertie, 17 January 1898, Bertie MSS, Add. MSS. 63013; see also K. Neilson, Britain and the Last Tsar: British Policy towards Russia, 1894–1917 (Oxford, 1995), 187. Min. Bertie, 20 November 1897, FO 17/1314. MacDonald to Bertie (private), 1 December 1897, Bertie MSS, FO 800/162. Satow to Salisbury (private), 30 December 1897, Salisbury MSS, Hatfield House, 3M/A/126/34. Bertie to Salisbury, 30 December 1897, Bertie MSS, FO 800/169; for Bertie’s advocacy of force, see Bertie to Balfour, 17 March 1898, Balfour MSS, BL, Add.MSS. 49746. 568

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28

29 30

31

32

33

34

35 36

37

38

39

40

41 42

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44

45

Memo. Bertie, 14 March 1898, BD i, no. 24; for the discussions in London prior to the acquisition of Wei-hai-Wei see T.G. Otte, ‘Great Britain, Germany and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1897–8’, English Historical Review cx, 439 (1995), 1157–79; and for further observations id., ‘”Wee-ah-wee”?: Britain at Weihaiwei, 1898–1930’, G. Kennedy (ed.), British Naval Strategy East of Suez, 1900–2000 (London, 2005), 4–34. Bertie to Lascelles (private), 16 March 1898, TNA (PRO), FO 64/1437. Satow diary (on conversations with Bertie), 22 June and 31 May 1900, Satow MSS, PRO 30/33/16/3. The Russian chargé d’affaires at Peking somewhat indiscreetly that the French ‘were “very obedient[;] they always did what they were told”’, MacDonald to Bertie (private), 28 February 1898, FO 17/1333. Bertie to Salisbury (private), 8 August 1900, FO 64/1496; for some of the background see L.K. Young, British Policy in China, 1895–1902 (Oxford, 1970), 153–5. Tel. Bertie to Lascelles (unnumbered), 11 September 1900, FO 244/585; for the pressures on Salisbury from within the cabinet, spearheaded by Joseph Chamberlain, to negotiate an Anglo-German China agreement, see T.G. Otte, ‘”A Question of Leadership”: Lord Salisbury, the Unionist Cabinet and Foreign Policy, 1895–1900’, Contemporary British History xiv, 4 (2000), 16–24. Quotes from memo. Bertie, 13 September 1900, BD ii, no. 12; and Bertie to Lascelles (private), 12 September 1900, Lascelles MSS, TNA (PRO), FO 800/6. See Otte, China Question, 208–15. Min. Lansdowne, n.d., on Bertie to Lansdowne, 12 January 1901, FO 17/1499. Memo. Bertie, 13 January 1901, ibid.; a month later, he raised once more the idea of a formal Anglo-German-Japanese démarche, min. Bertie, 17 February 1901, FO 17/1487. Min. Bertie, n.d. [22 March 1901], on tel. Lascelles to Lansdowne (no. 22), 21 March 1901, FO 64/1524; Otte, China Question, 266–7. Memo. Bertie, 13 January and 11 March 1901, FO 17/1501; min. Bertie, 17 February 1901, FO 17/1500. Memo. Bertie, 20 June 1901, FO 46/547; for Salisbury’s scheme see Salisbury to Lansdowne, 16 February 1901, FO 17/1500; also Young, British Policy, 295, and Otte, China Question, 242–4. Memo. Bertie, 2 July 1901, FO 17/1506. Memo. Bertie, 22 July 1901, FO 17/1507; I.H. Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance: The Diplomacy of Two Island Powers, 1894–1907 (Westport, CT, repr. 1976), 154–6. For Japan’s financial vulnerabilities see also Satow to Bertie (private), 6 July 1901, Satow MSS, PRO 30/33/14/2. Memo. Bertie, ‘Anglo-Japanese Agreement’, 22 July 1901, FO 46/547; Hamilton, Bertie, 27. Memo. Bertie, 22 September 1901, and marginal notes by Lansdowne, n.d., FO 17/1507. For Lansdowne’s request see Lansdowne to Bertie (private), 27 August 1901, Bertie MSS, FO 800/163; on the link between the July and September memoranda, see Nish, Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 177–8. Draft memo. Bertie, Nov. 1901, FO 64/1539. 569

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46

47

Bertie to N.M. Rothschild (confidential), 22 September 1902, FO 46/560; see also D.C.M. Platt, Finance, Trade, and Politics in British Foreign Policy, 1815–1914 (Oxford, 1968), 262–307. Bertie to Lansdowne, 19 December 1902, and Balfour to Bertie, 7 January 1903, Bertie MSS, Add. MSS. 63014 and 63015; see K. Neilson, ‘”Quot homines, tot sententiae”: Bertie, Hardinge, Nicolson, and British Foreign Policy, 1906–1916’, T.G. Otte (ed.), Diplomacy and Power: Studies in Modern Diplomatic Practice. Essays in Honour of Keith Hamilton (Dordrecht, 2012), 25.

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Lord Granville1 (1815–1891): A Pragmatist at the Foreign Office ANDREW COBBING

INTRODUCTION

In the course of a long political career as a prominent Liberal statesman the second Earl Granville was best known for his service in the Foreign Office, where he won a reputation for his pragmatic approach to international affairs. Granville George Leveson Gower, to give his full name, was still in his thirties when he was appointed under-secretary during the first Opium War, and he went on to serve as Foreign Secretary three times. The first occasion was in his midforties when he very briefly took charge of the Foreign Office from December 1851 to February 1852. He never visited East Asia himself, but during his second and third terms as Foreign Secretary he often encountered Japan in a professional capacity. Moreover, he was in office during some key episodes in Japan’s campaign to revise the 1858 Ansei Treaties, among them the visit to Britain of the Iwakura Embassy in 1872, and the preliminary conference on treaty revision held in Tokyo a decade later. 571

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The question of treaty revision, and relations with Japan more broadly, were important topics but not always the most pressing concerns at the Foreign Office. Granville’s years there were punctuated by international conflicts such as the Franco-Prussian War and the aftermath of the Russo-Turkish War, while Britain’s armed forces were kept preoccupied by campaigns stretching from Egypt to the Transvaal and Afghanistan. It was also a time of transition as Britain’s relations with the European Powers moved into a new phase, notably with Russia as the Great Game expanded across Asia, besides growing concern over the emerging power of now unified Germany. Britain’s relations with Japan in these years were often framed within this wider context. Indeed, in the substantial two-volume Life of Granville written by one of his former staff, Sir Edmund Fitzmaurice, and published in 1905, Japan is mentioned just once, and even then only in the context of narrowly avoiding war with Russia in 1885. This was the occasion when, ‘on April 26 the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Governments were notified that the British had occupied Port Hamilton off the southern coast of Korea’.2 Nevertheless, the ‘Granville Papers’ held at the National Archives demonstrate that in his second and third tenures as Foreign Secretary this Liberal statesman handled a substantial volume of material relating to Japan. Besides the usual official files of Foreign Office correspondence between Whitehall and Her Majesty’s representatives overseas, Granville arranged for dossiers to be compiled so that he could make informed judgments for himself. When he took office in 1870, for example, he was in a position to wade through a series of reports prepared by diplomats such as Ernest Satow, which gave him details on the recently concluded Bo¯shin Civil War and the emergence of the new Meiji regime.3 Similarly, on taking office a decade later in 1880, he could review some recent developments in the negotiations to revise Britain’s treaty with Japan, at the time a topical issue as arrangements were then being put in place for a preliminary conference in Tokyo. These documents underline Lord Granville’s management style. Such was his consultative approach that his own views or personal opinions rarely shine through in Foreign Office records. As a former member of his staff pointed out, ‘one who had served under him for many years in a confidential post, and had had a long and varied experience of the heads of great Government affairs, said of him that “he was an excellent administrator”; chiefly because when in office if “he had a good man under him, he trusted him while holding all the threads in his own hands”.’4 Granville cultivated a team of administrators to whom he delegated the routine chores of daily management. When appointing a new undersecretary during his first term as Foreign Secretary, 572

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for example, ‘he made a noteworthy selection in the person of Mr Henry Layard, who in 1848 had become famous by the publication of his discoveries [on] the site of ancient Nineveh, and possessed an unrivalled knowledge of the East’.5 Layard went on to play a prominent role in the Foreign Office’s dealings with Japan over the next two decades. During Granville’s last term this post was filled first by Sir Charles Dilke and then the same Sir Edmund Fitzmaurice who would subsequently write up his biography. Other officials he worked with included Sir Edmund Hammond, who was permanent under-secretary for nearly two decades until 1873. To replace Hammond he then chose Charles Abbott, also known as Lord Tenterden, who had won praise for his handling of the arbitration case on the Confederate cruiser Alabama following the American Civil War. And on Tenterden’s death in 1883 he appointed Sir Julian Paunceforte in his place. Finally, there were men like Philip Currie, who after decades in various Foreign Office posts served as clerk on Eastern affairs before becoming assistant-undersecretary in 1882, and eventually permanent under-secretary himself. Discussions on British policy often feature in Foreign Office documents as a running dialogue between these trusted advisors. Suggestions or recommendations were put forward for Granville’s consideration or approval. And if the matter required further guidance from the ‘man on the spot’, in the case of Japan he invariably referred the matter to Sir Harry Parkes, Britain’s resident minister in Tokyo for most of his two later terms as Foreign Secretary. Parkes epitomized the ‘good man under him’ who could be trusted, even if his abrasive style meant that he Granville sometimes had to employ all the tact at his disposal. It was thus no coincidence that in his last term two of the longest-serving diplomats at the British legation in Tokyo should receive official recognition, reflecting his sense of gratitude for their counsel. On 2 December 1881, Granville informed Parkes that on his recommendation he had been appointed ‘a Knight Grand Cross of the Most Distinguished Order of St, Michael and St. George’.6 In July 1883 Ernest Satow was received into the same order as a Companion in the order just as he happened to be in Britain and assisting the Foreign Office with preparations for the second Tokyo conference on treaty revision.7 AS FOREIGN SECREATARY 1870–1874

In the House of Lords on 11 July 1870, the newly appointed Foreign Secretary Lord Granville reported that Hammond, the long-serving permanent under-secretary ‘had never known so great a lull in foreign affairs’.8 No doubt this opinion included a measure of relief that the Bo¯shin War in Japan had now come to an end, but within 573

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days of this announcement news arrived of hostilities closer to home with the outbreak of the Franco-Prussian War. By extension this would destabilize relations farther afield in Europe as the Eastern Question loomed back into view when Russia responded by rejecting the Black Sea clauses in the 1856 Treaty of Paris. Russian designs on territory in Central Asia also posed an increasing threat to the security of British India. As far as Japan was concerned, Granville was content to support Parkes’s agenda of reaffirming Britain’s close relations with the new Meiji regime by encouraging trade and nurturing its growing appetite for ‘civilization and enlightenment’. On a practical level this often took the form of securing contracts for foreign oyatoi experts such as Henry Dyer9 in 1873, and making arrangements for the large number of Japanese students now based in Britain to gain permission to visit industrial and military establishments such as Woolwich Arsenal and Portsmouth Naval Dockyard. Granville’s habit of following the guidance from the British legation in Tokyo led to friction at times. It was on the advice of Parkes that early in 1871 he questioned the credentials of Sameshima Naonobu, the first Japanese resident diplomat sent to Europe, following his arrival in London. As the son of a doctor and still in his twenties, Parkes considered him too junior a figure to merit the post of chargé d’affaires. When Granville made it clear that he could only be recognized as a ‘commissioner’, Sameshima crossed the English Channel and set up in Paris where he enjoyed a more favourable reception.10 The Foreign Office had no such doubts ahead of the arrival of the Iwakura embassy the following year. Instead, the first question lay over when this high-ranking mission would actually reach Europe, as Iwakura Tomomi and his vice-ambassadors were held up by protracted negotiations in Washington DC. This caused some suspicion among Granville’s staff that the Americans were trying to exert their influence over Japan at Britain’s expense. There was particular alarm at a rumour that Charles de Long, the US Minister to Japan, might accompany the ambassadors to Europe.11 Partly to address these concerns Granville seemed anxious to welcome the delegation. In response to an enquiry from Iwakura transmitted through Sir E. Thornton, the British minister in Washington DC, he declared that he was happy for a conference on treaty revision to take place in Europe, ‘perhaps in Belgium or Switzerland’.12 It was the opening salvo in a dialogue that would feature large in Granville’s experience of diplomacy with Japan. The Ansei Treaties13 signed in 1858, including the Treaty of Yedo with Britain, were due to expire in 1872, so the previous year the Meiji government had declared its desire to revise those terms which, in the light of experience, proved in need of modification, or in the words of the treaty, 574

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‘such amendments as experience shall prove desirable’.14 When Sir Harry Parkes had then canvassed the opinion of British consuls and merchants in Japan, it became clear that the foremost desire of foreign residents was to promote trade by gaining access to the interior beyond the designated limits around the treaty ports. For Granville and the Foreign Office, therefore, such preliminary talk of a conference on the subject was largely based on the assumption that it would grant British subjects more privileges in Japan, not less. By the time the Iwakura embassy finally set foot on British soil in August 1872 the dynamics had changed considerably. Stung by the fiasco of negotiations in Washington DC where Japanese ignorance of protocol had exposed them to a ‘catechism of Western diplomacy’, Iwakura and his vice-ambassadors were now more guarded.15 Treaty revision was off the immediate agenda and any related discussion was to serve only as preparation for further talks at some later date. Moreover, there was little opportunity for foreign office staff to even meet their honoured guests; there was a welcome dinner at Granville’s London residence on 16 August, but after that the Japanese ambassadors spent much of their four-month stay touring Britain’s industrial heartland.16 It was not until late November that they finally engaged in talks with the Foreign Secretary during the course of three interviews, with W.G. Aston in attendance as interpreter. These were held on 22 November, 27 November, and 6 December, the day after Iwakura’s audience with Queen Victoria.17 The initial meeting was essentially a courtesy call, but both sides then drew on reinforcements as Granville relied to no little extent on the assistance of Parkes, while Iwakura was accompanied by Vice-Ambassador Yamaguchi Masuka and also Terashima Munenori, Japan’s new resident minister in Britain. The tone was cordial but sharp. On each occasion preliminary salutations were punctuated with mutual assurances of the unrivalled goodwill that existed between Britain and Japan. At the same time, Granville lost no opportunity in pointing out the unequal nature of the dialogue that Iwakura proposed. After all, the ambassador was only there to elicit Britain’s opinion on the matter of revising the Treaty of Yedo, as his instructions explicitly prevented him from disclosing Japan’s own position. Granville was less than pleased at providing information for little in return, but this did not stop him from holding forth on the key features that Britain might wish to see included in any revised treaty. One was access to the interior following on the responses to Parkes’s circular, for he insisted that ‘if Japan wished to assimilate herself with foreign countries, the country must be thrown open more freely’. Another was a guarantee of religious toleration, following on the disquieting reports that the Meiji authorities had exiled and interned numerous Japanese Christians from the 575

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Urakami district near Nagasaki. As Granville explained, ‘in England and America, and in an increasing degree in continental countries, the policy of religious toleration was everywhere accepted’.18 During the second interview five days later, Iwakura put forward a host of reasons why it might be difficult to grant foreigners access to the interior at this stage. Parkes was unimpressed by some of the practical obstacles suggested, insisting that ‘these difficulties were in great part the creation of the Japanese Government themselves’, but succeeded in eliciting the underlying grievance behind such reticence. This was the system of consular jurisdiction then operating in the treaty ports that denied the Meiji authorities full sovereign powers in their own land. As Iwakura put it, ‘if…foreigners were amenable to Japanese law, he saw no reason why the same facilities for trade and intercourse should not be granted as exist in England’. Granville responded by pointing out that ‘in all such cases the policy of the British Government was to yield the local authorities jurisdiction over British subjects in precise proportion to their advancement and civilization’.19 At this juncture the Foreign Secretary creatively suggested a compromise solution of mixed tribunals including both native and foreign judges, along the lines of an experimental system then being considered for Egypt. It was not entirely Granville’s idea as Parkes had previously experimented with mixed courts in China, at Guangzhou during the second Opium War, and at Shanghai from 1864.20 Following Parkes’ arrival in Japan mixed tribunals had also appeared at Yokohama since 1866, and they featured among the themes listed in his circular to British consuls in 1871. Iwakura seemed interested, but given that he was unable to speak for his government, all he could promise was to report this proposal on his return to Tokyo. This did not stop him from despatching one member of his retinue, Fukuchi Genichiro¯, to Egypt to investigate in 1873, and the theme would resurface during the Tokyo conference on treaty revision a decade later.21 For the time-being, however, only incremental progress was made on the question of access to the interior, with Parkes managing to secure the introduction of a limited system of passports for travel inland in 1874, although categorically not yet for commercial purposes. Religious toleration was also difficult to realize immediately, Iwakura explained, due to the historical circumstances surrounding its prohibition several hundred years before. Rather imaginatively, he claimed that ‘the introduction of Christianity into Japan was the occasion of a great national disaster. It was the cause of a civil war.’ He must have known that religion alone could hardly account for the Era of Warring States or, on a smaller scale, even the Shimabara Rebellion. Nevertheless, he and his vice-ambassadors were increasingly 576

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aware that no other issue damaged Japan’s claims of ‘advancement and civilization’ more. Together with the advice they received from other European diplomats on their subsequent tour of the continent, Granville’s remonstrations had an immediate and apparently tangible effect. In March 1873, R.J. Watson, Parkes’s deputy in Tokyo, was able to report by telegraph: ‘The Japanese Government announce to Foreign Representatives that Proclamations prohibiting Christianity are withdrawn. All banished Christians are to be restored to their homes.’22 Long-held prejudices were not removed overnight, however, as in practice it would take time for discrimination to disappear, and it was not until the 1889 Meiji Constitution before religious toleration was enshrined in law.23 Having listened and responded to Granville’s two points in the second interview, Iwakura ventured a request of his own by calling for the removal of the British garrison that had been stationed at Yokohama since 1863. Guided by Parkes, Granville would acknowledge in the next meeting that there was no longer a need for a large force there, but pointed out that their numbers were so reduced that it had become little more than a ‘guard of honour to the Legation’. Nevertheless, Iwakura insisted that ‘the presence of these troops was injurious to the Mikado’s Government’. In the event, after a strenuous campaign by Terashima in his new role as Minister for Foreign Affairs, the last remnants of this British garrison finally embarked from Yokohama in 1875.24 In another development just before the close of the second interview, Terashima suddenly produced a memorandum on the Shimonoseki indemnity. This issue dated back to 1864 when the British had negotiated terms with the Cho¯shu¯ domain after an allied squadron silenced the guns overlooking the Shimonoseki Strait, reopening access to the Inland Sea for foreign shipping. As part of the agreement a sum of $3,000,000 in damages was to be paid by the Tokugawa bakufu, half of which remained outstanding when the Meiji government took power four years later. Not yet having had a chance to study the document, Granville observed that ‘it was usual when an agreement was made that it should be adhered to’, but he was placated by Terashima’s assurance that it did at least suggest ‘an equivalent for the three instalments remaining due’. In the last interview, however, Granville questioned Terashima’s claim, although he did agree to defer the next demand for payment until the embassy had returned to Japan. As he put it, this would give Iwakura the opportunity to convey his wish for ‘the removal of restrictions on intercourse and commerce, which was all that was asked for’.25 At this juncture Granville even seems to have been offering to waive part or all of the indemnity in return for some concession on access to the interior. At the same time he took pains to claim the 577

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moral high ground by insisting that ‘the British Government would not haggle about a sum of money’, and ‘had no wish to drive a bargain’.26 Unwilling to be drawn, Iwakura insisted on decoupling these issues by pointing out that ‘the indemnity was a question quite distinct from that of the revision of the treaty’. Ultimately, the Meiji government would continue to pay off the indemnity in instalments, finishing off in 1874. For Granville, however, this was not quite the end of the matter, for in 1883 US President Chester Arthur would pay back the Americans’ share, a sum of $785,000.87. This sum had been sitting in an American bank account accruing interest for several years, and the US ships and men had suffered relatively little damage at Shimonoseki anyway. Nevertheless, it won the Americans a measure of popularity in Tokyo, particularly as the interest was then used to pay for the construction of new docks in Yokohama. It was an offer that the foreign secretary could not match. The third interview held on 6 December 1872 was the last time Granville met the visiting Japanese officials before the Iwakura embassy left for France on the next stage of their global tour. As his secretary told Parkes in a note five days later, ‘Lord Granville thinks you had better put off saying anything about the leave taking till after tomorrow evening, when he will have gone out of town. He sends a photograph of himself and Lady Granville, which he begs you to present to the Ambassadors, in his name, with such pretty speeches as you think suitable.’27 AS FOREIGN SECRETARY 1880–1885

Granville was faced with a complex international scene from the outset when he took charge of the Foreign Office for the third time in 1880. The recent Russo-Turkish War had brought the Eastern Question back to the centre-stage of European diplomacy, and debate raged over the future of the Balkan Peninsula. Rebellion against the Khedive in Egypt was causing unease over the security of the Suez Canal, leading to British military intervention in 1882. Quite apart from the question of Irish Home Rule, the outlook was also unsettled on the fringes of Britain’s colonies. The second Afghan War was drawing to a close, but plans to annex the Transvaal would soon provoke the first Boer War. Moreover, France was now showing more ambition in North Africa, and there was concern that Germany might yet have colonial aspirations as well. Back at the Foreign Office, Granville’s first decision relating to Japan was on the symbolic question of what to call the capital city of the Meiji state. As Undersecretary Sir Julian Paunceforte explained, ‘the Japanese are annoyed at our not using the new name of Tokio’. Parkes, he noted, had always attached particular importance to the 578

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old name of Yedo since the treaty of that name signed in 1858 remained in force. Nevertheless, he persuaded the Foreign Secretary to accept Japan’s request by advising that ‘the ground put forward for not accepting the new name of Tokio, in my opinion, cannot be sustained’.28 Granville could reflect with some satisfaction on the fact that the key issues in his interviews with Iwakura eight years earlier had now been largely resolved. Religious tolerance was acknowledged by the Meiji government, if not yet by the population at large. The British troops stationed at Yokohama had long since left. The Shimonoseki indemnity had been paid in full, even if US President Chester Arthur was to revisit the case two years later by returning the American share. The question of access to the interior, however, remained a point of controversy, as British residents in Japan still railed against the restrictions imposed by the system of limited passports introduced in 1874. Moreover, the attendant issue of consular jurisdiction loomed larger than ever, and with it the privilege of extraterritoriality that the British (and Parkes in particular) held almost sacrosanct, despite growing calls from the Japanese to reclaim full sovereign control. Granville instructed Paunceforte to draw up a report tracing the background to negotiations on treaty revision over the past decade.29 This showed how his predecessor the Marquess of Salisbury had agreed to a preparatory international conference to be held in London, before conceding to a Japanese request for it to be held in Tokyo instead. Before long, Inoue Kaoru, the new Japanese minister for foreign affairs, set out a concrete set of proposals for a revised treaty. Parkes produced a damning verdict on this draft, however, insisting that ‘the Japanese do not contemplate “revision” of the existing Treaty and Convention of 1858 and 1866 respectively, but their total abrogation and the substitution of two entirely new Treaties’.30 Despite the intransigence of Parkes, by this stage the Foreign Office could not entirely discount a growing swell of opinion in favour of treaty revision. In Tokyo this was articulated forcefully in a series of articles that appeared in the Ho¯chi Shimbun newspaper, and there were some reservations in British circles as well.31 Some feared, for example, that German, Russian and American diplomats might seek to undermine British influence in Japan by offering more concessions than the Foreign Office would contemplate. In the words of one Member of Parliament, ‘it seems a thousand pities to see a government and people like those of Japan pushed into the arms of Russia and Germany’.32 The first preliminary conference opened in Tokyo in January 1882 and weekly meetings ran for six months until July. No resolutions were reached, although Inoue surprised the foreign representatives on one occasion by announcing that Japan might accept a system of mixed tribunals in exchange 579

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for the eventual abolition of extraterritoriality. The compromise solution that Granville had once proffered to Iwakura now seemed to hold the key. Based on a report by Sir Richard Rennie (who was Chief Justice of the British Supreme Court for China and Japan until 1891), however, Parkes remained unconvinced of the competency of Japanese courts, and Britain was still unwilling to surrender the most favoured nation clause in the existing treaties. Agreement was at least reached on the need for a fresh round of talks, and all the powers now accepted that treaty revision was inevitable at some point. As preparations for further negotiations took shape, Granville turned to Sir Francis Plunkett,33 the man due to take over in Tokyo now that Parkes had won promotion to the post of British minister in Beijing. On one occasion in May 1883 he also held an interview with Ito¯ Hirobumi who, as he explained to Parkes, was ‘visiting this country for a short time on his way to the coronation of the Emperor of Russia at Moscow, as Special Representative of the Mikado’.34 Meanwhile, Mori Arinori, the Japanese Minister in London sometimes pushed his case too forcefully for the liking of even his own ministry for foreign affairs. Inoue had to apologize to Granville for his excesses, and as Parkes pointed out on one occasion: ‘language of paragraph 9 of Japanese Minister’s memorandum [is] unauthorized by [the] Foreign Minister’.35 Ernest Satow was also now in Britain on leave, helping the Foreign Office with preparations. When a British proposal met with only a lukewarm response from the other treaty powers, for example, he reassured Plunkett that a rival German proposal, initially welcomed on the continent, did not offer substantially any more concessions than their own.36 On his arrival in Tokyo early in 1884, Plunkett was able to strengthen his government’s negotiating hand by preparing a more conciliatory British proposal. At this stage there was growing optimism that a resolution was in sight. As Plunkett informed Granville, ‘I concur in Sir Richard Rennie’s view, that a good system of mixed courts will possibly form the best stepping-stone from the present to the future in Japan.’37 Such was the divergence of opinion among the foreign representatives, however, that preparations for the next conference were considerably delayed. In the event, it was not until 1886 that formal negotiations got underway in Tokyo based on a jointly devised Anglo-German proposal involving mixed tribunals. These would ultimately produce a draft revised treaty, only for the Japanese public to then turn against Inoue when news emerged about his covert strategy of introducing foreign judges into Japanese courts. By this time, however, Granville had retired from the Foreign Office. Faced with the growing challenge of Germany, his conciliatory approach and receptivity to new ideas such as Home Rule were increasingly viewed as a liability within the Liberal Party. Particularly 580

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damaging was his failure to uphold British claims to Angra Pequena in Southwest Africa, which Bismarck managed to secure as a German Protectorate in 1884. When the Conservatives took power in 1885, Granville was replaced by the Marquess of Salisbury and, ever faithful to his old friend William Gladstone, when a new Liberal Government was formed the following year, he bowed out gracefully as Lord Rosebery was preferred to the post of Foreign Secretary in his place. CONCLUSION

Granville died in 1891 at the age of seventy-five, and so did not live to see the end of the treaty ports. Nevertheless, his time at the helm of the Foreign Office spanned an important phase in Anglo-Japanese relations. In the early Meiji years the prospect of placing treaty relations on a more equal footing seemed a distant prospect, not least due to Sir Harry Parkes’s vigorous defence of British privileges in Japan. In the event, the compromise solution of mixed tribunals that Granville once suggested to Iwakura in London would prove unworkable, given the rising tide of popular nationalist sentiment in Japan. Within diplomatic circles, however, his more conciliatory style certainly enabled dialogue to progress and help chart a course towards a future agreement. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6

7

8 9

10

Granville George Leveson Gower, 2nd Earl Granville, KG, PC, FRS (11 May 1815 – 31 March 1891), styled Lord Leveson until 1846. Sir Edmund Fitzmaurice, The Life of Lord Granville George Leveson Gower Second Earl Granville, Vol. II (London: Longmans, Green, and Co., 1905), p. 440. For example, Inclosure 7 in No. 13. Memorandum by Mr Satow on the present State of Affairs, 5 January 1868. PRO 30/29/250. The Life of Lord Granville, p. 450. This former confidential advisor is identified as Sir Robert Meade, 1891. Ibid., Vol. 1, p. 47. Granville to Parkes, 2 December 1881. FO 46/270 To Mr. Kennedy and Sir H. Parkes, January to December 1881. Granville to the Chancellor, 20 July 1883. FO 46/307 Consular Domestic 1883. Hansard 3, 203, 1870, 3. A biographical portrait of Henry Dyer by Olive Checkland is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, ed. J.E. Hoare, Japan Library, 1999. Sir Hugh Cortazzi, ‘Japanese Envoys in Britain, 1862–72’ in Ian Nish (ed.), Japanese Envoys in Britain, 1862–1964 (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2007), p. 18. 581

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11

12

13

14 15

16

17

18 19 20

21 22

23

24 25 26 27 28 29

30 31

32

Parkes to Hatakeyama Yoshinari (Soogioora), 20 January 1872, FO 46/151. Sir E. Thornton to Earl Granville (telegraphic confidential). 18 March 1872. PRO 30/29/250. Plans for a conference in Europe were promptly quashed by US Secretary of State Hamilton Fish. Marlene Mayo, ‘A Catechism of Western Diplomacy: Japan and Hamilton Fish 1872’, The Journal of Asian Studies, vol. 26, no. 3, May 1967, p. 404. See Britain and the Re-Opening of Japan, The Treaty of Yedo and the Elgin Mission by Sir Hugh Cortazzi. Japan Society, 2008. Parkes to Granville, 22 May 1871. PRO 30/29/312. See Mayo, ‘A Catechism of Western Diplomacy: Japan and Hamilton Fish 1872’, pp. 389–410. Kume Kunitake, The Iwakura Embassy, 1871–73: A True Account of the Ambassador Extraordinary & Plenipotentiary’s Journey of Observation Through the United States of America and Europe (Tokyo: The Japan Documents, 2002), p. 54. W.G. Aston’s memoranda of interviews between Granville and Iwakura, 22 November, 27 November, 6 December 1872. PRO 881/2138. Ibid. Ibid. Par Kristoffer Cassel, Grounds of Judgment: Extraterritoriality and Imperial Power in Nineteenth-Century China and Japan (Oxford University Press, 2012), pp. 58, 66. Ange-Maxime Outry, former French Minister to Japan, also suggested waiving the Shimonoseki indemnity for access to the interior just three weeks later in a memorandum drafted on 17 December 1872. Richard Sims, ‘France’, Ian Nish (ed.), The Iwakura Mission: A New Assessment (Folkestone: Japan Library, 1998), p. 78. Ibid, p. 154. FO 46/165. From Sir H. Parkes & Mr Watson, January and February 1873. John Breen, ‘Earnest Desires: The Iwakura Embassy and Religious Policy’, Japan Forum, vol. 10, no. 2, 1998, pp. 153–4. W.G. Aston’s memorandum. 6 December 1872. PRO 881/2138. Ibid. Ibid. J.F. Wetherall to Parkes, 11 December 1872. PRO 30/29/113. Paunceforte to Granville.15 May 1880. FO 46/255. Sir Julian Paunceforte Memorandum, 13 January 1881. FO 46/279 Revision of Treaties, January to April 1881. Ibid. ‘These articles, taken as a whole, form an ably-written treatise, from a Japanese point of view, of treaty revision. They furnish a clear and accurate record of the past twenty years…there is no doubt that these articles… have attracted much notice, and have greatly influenced public opinion in Japan.’ Kennedy to Salisbury, 22 February 1880. PRO 30/29/312 Granville Papers – printed for the use of the Foreign Office, July 1881. E.J. Reed. M.P. to Sir Charles W. Dilke. 30 December 1883. PRO 30/29/313. 582

LORD GRANVILLE (1815–1891)

33

34 35 36 37

A biographical portrait of Sir Francis Plunkett by Hugh Cortazzi is contained in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, ed. Hugh Cortazzi, Japan Library, 2002. Granville to Parkes, 30 April 1883. PRO 30/29/313. Parkes to Granville. Telegraph, 10 May 1883. Ibid. Satow to Plunkett, 6 January 1884. Ibid. Plunkett to Granville, 17 October 1844. PRO 30/29/313.

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Arthur Balfour (1848–1930): A Skilled Politician Managing the Emergence of Japan as a Great Power IAN NISH

Arthur James Balfour (1848–1930) had a parliamentary career which spanned half-a-century. Educated at Eton, he went on to take a degree in philosophy at Trinity College, Cambridge. He entered the House of Commons in 1874. For the next thirty years he rose in the ranks as a Conservative party politician, gradually gaining government responsibilities. From 1895 he was nominally First Lord of the Treasury but in fact acted as deputy foreign secretary. This was followed by five years as prime minister. Then there was the gap of a decade when the Liberal party was in the ascendant. But, when there was a call for politicians to put aside party differences on the outbreak of the First World War, he emerged from the opposition and agreed to act as First Lord of the Admiralty and later as Foreign Secretary in ‘a coalition cabinet’. Even as he retired in the 1920s, he

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still commanded much respect and served as Lord President in the cabinet of Stanley Baldwin (1925–1929). As the Japanese diplomat Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯ said of him, Balfour was ‘embarrassingly eminent’. He had acquired so much experience in those years that he was a difficult person with whom to negotiate or argue. He was both clever and articulate, a born orator and an incisive composer of closely argued minutes. He was a philosopher-statesman, even if, as someone said, he was only ‘an amateur philosopher’. To many he was a tall, shuffling figure, slightly remote and absent-minded but elegant. Definitely not a minister to run a department of state unless he had massive support. Moreover he made mistakes and misjudgements as is inevitable during half-acentury in public life. He had his critics among his contemporaries and later among historians. As Balfour was pursuing his political career, Japan was coming on to the international map. Indeed the period from 1895 to 1930 was one in which Japan was growing fast industrially and commercially and was gaining wide acceptance in world affairs. She moved from being militarily successful but politically unsuccessful in 1895 to the days of the Manchurian Crisis when she was strong enough to hold her own against the Powers and the League of Nations. Balfour’s career reflects this change in Japan’s stature. In early days he could afford to give Japan a low priority. But by 1919 and 1921– the years in focus in this essay – Japanese affairs had to be given high priority. Because Britain was probably the closest of world powers to Japan in those years, Balfour took a broadly charitable attitude towards this up-and-coming country with high aspirations. But it was doubtful if he formed an intimate relationship with any Japanese like Lord Grey of Fallodon.¹ There was no sign of him showing any interest in eastern culture. He was deferential to the eminent Japanese statesmen that he met in the course of business but he held that Britain had to look at Japan with the same natural scepticism as a normal Great Power relationship – a mixture of trust and distrust. EARLY PERIOD

Balfour was closely connected with foreign affairs while he served as assistant to his uncle, the Marquis of Salisbury. Salisbury acted as prime minister from 1895 to 1902, combining it with the foreign secretaryship. But Salisbury was frequently absent because of old age and illness and was often found to be abroad when global crises arose as in the East Asian crisis of 1898. As a member of the House of Commons, Balfour had to justify government policies and played an important role in decision-making.²

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When the cabinet was considering the nature of a possible entente with Japan which was under negotiation in the autumn of 1901, those in favour found that heavy-weights like Salisbury and Balfour had reservations about it. The deputy prime minister in particular thought the dangers of entering an alliance with Japan greater for Britain than with a European country because it covered a region where Britain had little control. He continued to stress the riskiness of Britain’s commitments until the last minute. But, after the treaty was signed on 30 January 1902, it was his task as leader of the House of Commons to defend it, which he did with conviction. Clearly the alliance was not entered into lightly.³ After Salisbury’s retirement, Balfour was chosen as Conservative prime minister in July 1902. His was an unstable Tory administration divided over the issue of Free Trade and suffering from the consequence of failures in the South African war. In foreign affairs it was the period of the honeymoon of the first Anglo-Japanese Alliance and important military/naval talks were held. Balfour who was much influenced in his thinking by defence and security issues kept a close eye on developments and took a more pragmatic view of the alliance as it took shape. His strategic thinking affected his judgment over the war which was looming between Japan and Russia and Britain’s likely role in it. Some cabinet members tried to persuade the prime minister that Britain should mediate between the two parties. But Balfour’s response was negative: if Britain were to intervene, he argued, ‘we should be giving diplomatic assistance to Russia in her attempt to weaken Japan’s position in Corea; we should profoundly irritate the sentiments of the Japanese people; and we should transfer to ourselves the unpopularity which they now very justly lavish upon their own unpopular Government….. If Japan asks for our mediation with a view to a settlement, I would do all that I could to help her. But I certainly would not thrust myself into a quarrel not my own.’ So war came without intervention by outside parties. And Balfour summed up his ministry’s view that the alliance could not be ‘so stretched as to imply something like a moral obligation [on Britain] to help Japan whenever she seems likely to be beaten by Russia’. By and large Britain followed the course of what has been described by historians as ‘benevolent neutrality’, content to observe the progress of war from a distance.4 In August 1905, Balfour’s ministry concluded the second alliance with Japan, by this time a militarily successful Japan. He himself was convinced that the new alliance proposed would impose increased responsibilities on Britain in going to the aid of Japan if attacked. He argued that Britain should be compensated for this. It was at Balfour’s prompting that a provision was included that Japanese armies should go to the aid of India in any emergency on the northwest frontier. 586

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The implication was that Balfour wanted the alliance to be recognized as an alliance between equal parties, not one where a Great Power conferred favours on a lesser partner. He may have kept his administration going because of the alliance which was to become an important part of the manifesto for the general election due in January.5 Balfour announced his resignation in December and the divided Conservative party was heavily defeated by the Liberals. Balfour himself lost his seat in Manchester East but returned to the House in February 1906 for the City of London. The party entered a decade in opposition.6 Balfour himself, swayed by a BMG [Balfour Must Go] campaign in the Westminster village, resigned as leader of the Unionist party in November 1911. But he was by no means idle in retirement. Indeed by sitting on some sub-committees of the Committee of Imperial Defence which he had set up while he was in power, he continued to have some say in defence and security issues even when he was in opposition.7 WARTIME OFFICES

The onset of war in 1914 and the stalemate which resulted in the first few months forced the Liberal Party administration to look for allies among the political opposition. Balfour became a member of the War Council. In May 1915 when Prime Minister Asquith decided to form a coalition government of both the Liberal and Conservative parties, he faced the problem of who would succeed Winston Churchill at the Admiralty in the aftermath of the Gallipoli crisis. Balfour agreed to take office in the new administration as First Lord of the Admiralty, the most senior post held by a Conservative minister. He had always taken an interest in Britain’s naval position and it was appropriate that he should be appointed. But it proved to be an onerous task for the next eighteen months: Germany was adopting a more aggressive naval policy in the North Sea and was using her submarines in the Atlantic to disrupt food supplies on which Britain depended. When Balfour became a departmental minister, his contact with Japan became more prominent than when he had been prime minister. In desperate straits, the Admiralty suggested to Japan the sale of her old battle cruisers or the participation of new ones in the North Sea. But these requests were turned down by Japan.8 When in December 1916 Balfour became foreign secretary, appeals were made to Japan for the loan of light cruisers for South Africa and destroyers for Malta.The problem for Britain was to know what concessions Japan would ask in return. It was on Balfour’s watch that the Anglo-Japanese secret agreements were eventually signed on 14 February 1917. According to these agreements, it was laid down inter alia that ‘Britain will support Japan’s claims in regard to the disposal 587

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of Germany’s rights in Shantung and possessions in Islands North of the Equator on the occasion of a Peace Conference.’ The countries of the British Empire were to claim islands in the south Pacific but, while these were comparable, they were hardly equivalent. There was a note of resignation and inevitability about this appeal; but at the same time there was a recognition that times had changed. Japan was in a strong bargaining position while Britain was in a weak one. In speaking to the War Cabinet, Balfour showed his long-term thinking. There is in every quarter of the Eastern world a certain uneasiness as to whether Japan is in future going to try and play a part in those regions….. A nation of that sort [Japan] must have a safety-valve somewhere; and although I think Lord Grey [of Fallodon] carried his doctrine to excess, I think there is something in it.9

After the US entered the First World War in 1917 it became essential for the British government to make urgent contact with President Wilson’s administration. It was decided that Balfour should head a mission to Washington. He was able on 30 April to discuss a host of issues with the president. One of his most immediate tasks was to acquaint him rather discreetly with the various secret agreements to which Britain had recently subscribed, the Japanese being among the more important. Because of the hostile views which Americans held about Japan’s wartime activities, it was essential to explain Britain’s position towards her ally. When the US asked for copies of these secret undertakings, Balfour could not supply them and had to contact London. Whitehall commented: The trouble is that there is absolutely no record here of what documents were taken by Balfour or what were subsequently sent to him… It is simply a question of memory, in which… Balfour is not particularly strong.10

Nonetheless there was a general consensus that the Balfour mission had been a success both with the administration and the general public to whom he gave many speeches. Not least significant was Balfour’s attempt to impress the president and his sceptical entourage with an account of Japan’s good faith towards the allied cause in spite of her blatant incursions into China – such as the 21 Demands. This was a tricky task but Balfour, having experienced Britain’s naval dilemma and her dependence on such outside help as she could get, portrayed Japan in the most positive light. Was he genuine here or was it a bit of special pleading? There are grounds for believing that Balfour had gone some way towards 588

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respecting Japan’s new standing in the world and sympathizing with her ambitions. In the confidential confines of the Imperial War Cabinet, Balfour told his colleagues: Japan with an eye to her own interests is quite genuinely helping the Allies, and helping them to the best of her ability. She is making money so, unlike the rest of us, she is doing well; but I do not think we ought to underrate the services she has given, or the services she is giving.¹¹

So it seems that the sentiments he expressed in Washington were not special pleading. In other words, he was trying to build bridges between the new allies, arguing that Britain’s survival depended on US entry into the war but also security in the Mediterranean depended on naval assistance from Japan. These two countries should somehow try to reconcile their differences. Balfour’s approach was reminiscent of his famous quip: ‘I never forgive but I always forget!’¹² PARIS PEACE CONFERENCE, 1919

Balfour had an important role at the Paris Peace conference over the affairs of Japan and China. He attended Paris in his capacity as British foreign secretary but was second in the British delegation to Prime Minister Lloyd George whose place he had to take whenever duty called the Welshman back to London. He also played a large role in steering the British Empire delegation. It is not possible here to undertake an examination of the complex issues of that conference or even the tricky far eastern issues that it raised. The Japanese delegates, Makino Nobuaki and Chinda Sutemi, had been given certain targets to aim for: the Shantung peninsula, a racial equality clause in the covenant of the League of Nations and the retention of the Pacific Islands she had occupied. The first two were left undecided in the initial phase of negotiations and were still on the agenda by the middle of April 1919 when delegates were exhausted and the European settlement had been broadly arranged (despite the departure of the Italians). Japanese let it be known that they would not sign the treaty until it was clear what was to happen to the Shantung province where their armies had been in occupation since 1914. The Council of Three (Council of Four less Italy retired), which was divided between President Wilson who was sympathetic to China and Britain and France which were committed to Japan by their wartime treaties, called in a committee of experts to work out a solution on 25 April. After they had reported, it was necessary to see whether a compromise could be reached and the Council called on Balfour. It was a tribute to Balfour’s placid temperament that he was still able to approach 589

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the issue sensitively after three solid months of negotiation. Balfour had a rapport with the Japanese which none of the US representatives had. The Chinese, of course, knew that he had as foreign secretary agreed to the secret understanding of 1917 which Britain was determined (like France) to uphold. In spite of this, he seems to have been acceptable to the Chinese. This was a testament to the respect with which he was regarded by both sides. The critical meeting took place between Balfour and Makino on 26 April. The proposal made was to restrict Japan only to the economic rights which Germany had formerly enjoyed in Shantung, including Tsingtao, German railways and associated mines. It was understood that Japan for her part would be prepared to hand back political control of the occupied area to the Chinese government shortly. Moreover the Japanese delegates stated that their country was agreeable to restore the province of Shantung to China ‘on the conclusion of the peace’. The Council endorsed the undertakings given.¹³ A deal to transfer Shantung to Japan made Wilson squeamish, the European leaders less so. But Wilson rejoiced that Japan agreed not to pursue the racial equality clause in the League covenant if she was given these assurances. In a formal declaration to Council on 30 April, it was announced that: The policy of Japan is to hand back the Shantung Peninsula in full sovereignty to China retaining only the economic privileges granted to Germany and the right to establish a settlement under the usual conditions at Tsingtao14

The validity of the ‘promise’ made to Balfour to hand back its concessions in Shantung, which the Chinese did not believe, was marred by the reservation that it refused to define the time-scale in which that would be achieved. The idea of an exclusive Japanese settlement at Tsingtao was, notwithstanding considerable protest in Japan, dropped by Prime Minister Hara once the peace has been signed.15 We are concerned only with the narrow issue of Balfour’s role, not the overall justice of the Paris settlement. A member of the Chinese team, Dr G.E. Morrison, thought that the Chinese were more angry with Wilson than with Balfour, because they looked upon Britain’s foreign secretary as a cat’s-paw [puppet]. If the ‘ultimate solution’ tilted towards Japan, that was not really Balfour’s doing. The Japanese had played their cards skilfully and achieved their aim by inducing this international forum of the practicalities of their case in spite of all the pious talk about self-determination. In a revealing report to London on his mediation efforts, Balfour revealed that ‘my sympathies up to this point … were entirely with the Japanese...’.16 The implication of this statement surely is that Balfour found the Japanese delegates had become intractable at the last stage of these negotiations. 590

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WASHINGTON CONFERENCE, 1921–1922

Over the Washington Conference (November 1921-March 1922), Balfour was the trouble-shooter once again, but this time as leader of Britain’s delegation. In any case, Balfour and Curzon had changed places in October 1919, Curzon taking over the Foreign Office while Balfour became Lord President of the Council. It might have been the expectation that the British prime minister and foreign secretary would attend this first international conference hosted by the United States. But the US-imposed agenda was lengthy and Lloyd George and Curzon professed they could not be spared for an extended period. The former showed willingness to go over to Washington for brief sessions with the leaders of the new Republican administration to smooth over some of the ruffled feathers. But the Irish question and unemployment situation made even this suggestion impossible. So they called in Balfour following the Paris session of the League of Nations in September. Despite his age of seventy-three and his bad health, he accepted and set off by sea in the first week of November for the so-called Disarmament Conference.17 Japanese issues were bound to arise. In general the cabinet gave no instructions except the rather vague ones that the Anglo-Japanese Alliance should be preserved and global naval disarmament was essential for Britain. The delegates, therefore, enjoyed a considerable measure of discretion over how to secure their objectives. They knew that China hated the alliance and the Republican administration now in power supported them. As Balfour and his party formulated their views on board ship, the reality was that it was a question of finding a formula which would be acceptable to the United States. In actual fact Balfour and his team sketched out a draft arrangement for a tripartite agreement including the United States which read in part: …any two of the HCP shall be at liberty to protect themselves by entering into a military alliance provided (a) this alliance is purely defensive and (b) it is communicated to the other HCP…

This suggests that Britain was initially trying to preserve some of the basic ingredients of the old alliance, while tempting the US to participate. That was a desideratum common to both Britain and Japan. With all the information which Balfour received about American attitudes on arrival in Quebec, he found it impossible to propose this sort of solution. He seems to have been more apprehensive about the opposition from Washington to the continuation of the alliance than about the reactions of the Japanese. He was so preoccupied with American officials that there were cries of Anglo-Saxon collusion from the Japanese press. His problem was that, if the alliance were to be continued, the US would not agree to naval limitation and there might be 591

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financial consequences for Britain. This was in fact not too dissimilar to the Japanese position. One of its delegates, Ambassador Shidehara, was more anxious to repair fences between Japan and the US than keep up the traditional friendship with Britain. The other delegate, Admiral Kato¯ Tomosaburo¯, was well aware that Japan was inferior to US in funds and resources and had to respect the American line over naval limitation and political issues connected with it. Whatever their differences, the British and the Japanese were happy to be able to prevent the alliance issue appearing on the open conference agenda.18 Finally after secret discussions a four-power treaty was forged on 10 December which united the US, Japan, Britain and newcomer France in a replacement for the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. The alliance treaties were to lapse as soon as the Washington treaties as a whole were ratified by participating states in 1923. Sir Maurice Hankey who had been in charge of British secretarial arrangements both in Paris and Washington described it as a diplomatic triumph for Balfour and himself. Certainly the idea of increasing the number of participating powers had its attractions, but the resulting treaty was at most a consultative document and contained no teeth.19 How does one sum up a many-sided conference? In the main it was a triumph for Balfour and for Britain. Balfour had played a major role even over the naval negotiations where naval limitation suited the British government. More generally, it was saluted as another major achievement for the elder statesman on a prominent global stage. As the recessional on the alliance began, Balfour was conscious that he had to mollify Japanese opinion. In his famous valedictory speech he argued that ‘the only way out of this impasse was that we should annul, merge, destroy as it were, this ancient and outworn and unnecessary agreement, and replace it with something new, something effective, which should embrace all the Powers concerned in the vast area of the Pacific.’ For the Japanese this was harsh. In stressing the ‘effectiveness’ of the new treaty Balfour who boasted of always taking a strategic view revealed that he was in idealistic mood as were the other delegates. In a more rigorous appraisal, Balfour reported to the cabinet: [The Anglo-Japanese Alliance] which was originally designed to secure stability in the East had, with changing circumstances, lost its value for that purpose; and, being out of relation to the existing condition of affairs, had become the cause of misunderstanding rather than a guarantee of peace.20

The Conference ended on 6 February; and Balfour returned home, having spent a ‘working Christmas’ across the Atlantic. He was rewarded by a grateful government with a peerage. 592

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Strictly speaking, this was the end of Balfour’s encounter with Japanese issues. East Asian crises did crop up during the 1920s but they were no longer Balfour’s primary responsibility except for the summer of 1922 when he deputized at the Foreign Office for the ailing Lord Curzon. He continued with his enthusiasm for the Committee of Imperial Defence and soldiered on at the periphery of government until 1929.²¹ +

+

+

How did the Japanese get along with Balfour? Those who knew him were impressed by his height, dignity and attractive personality. The head of Japan’s Washington delegation, the president of the House of Peers, Prince Tokugawa, continued to send him Christmas cards. Ambassador Shidehara wrote that he was a world figure, a person of embarrassingly great prestige and character. Admiral Kato¯ acknowledged his experience and authority and admonished those Japanese who criticized the ‘Anglo-American collusion’ at Washington. Kato¯ especially valued Balfour’s assurance that ‘friendly relations between Britain and Japan would become more and more consolidated even after termination of our alliance.’ Among Japanese negotiators at Paris, Chinda knew him best from the three years he had spent at the London embassy and spoke of him as legendary. The Japanese representative at the Paris and later European conferences, Matsui Keishiro, got to know Balfour well and described him as fair-minded and hard-working.²² Though no Japanese knew him intimately, he was respected and regarded as a friend. How did Balfour view Japan? As prime minister from 1902, he was in charge of a government which was trying to make the new alliance relationship with Japan more friendly and natural. Yet one is reminded how far Balfour was essentially a European politician, like his uncle, Lord Salisbury. He rated the Entente Cordiale reached with France (1904) as highly as the Japanese treaty. Yet his career at the top of British politics was bound up with the Anglo-Japanese Alliance. He was in the cabinet which signed it in 1902 and, paradoxically, he was directly responsible for it being allowed to lapse. In the final phase of his career, he was unexpectedly thrust into problems between Japan and China. At Paris in 1919 he was called in to handle the Shantung problem and had the task of reconciling China’s rights, Japan’s treaty rights and the interpretation of Germany’s rights. The failure to resolve the Shantung issue at Paris meant that, with the influence of the China lobby in the US, the whole subject had to be revisited at Washington. Although he was not physically present at the sessions devoted to reconciling Chinese and Japanese positions over Shantung, Balfour became involved in his capacity as the head of the UK delegation when he had to have private discussions with both Chinese and Japanese delegates before a final settlement could 593

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be reached. Thus Balfour played a part in Japan’s destiny and had a special role in addressing what turned out to be the major issue of East Asian history in the first half of the twentieth century: the SinoJapanese dispute. Balfour slipped languidly into the prickly role as international mediator for his relative success in the short term must surely rank as one of the great statesmen of the century. ENDNOTES 1.

2.

3. 4.

5. 6. 7. 8.

9.

10. 11.

12.

13.

14. 15. 16.

17.

18.

19. 20.

21. 22.

Nish, ‘Edward Grey’ in Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Biographical Portraits, vol. VIII, Global Oriental, 2013, pp. 77–8 T. G. Otte, ‘Lord Salisbury’ in Hugh Cortazzi Biographical Portraits, vol. VIII, Global Oriental, 2013, pp. 77–8 R. Mackay, Balfour: Intellectual Statesman, Oxford: University Press, 1985 Nish, ‘Could the Russo-Japanese War have been prevented by British diplomacy?’ in STICERD pamphlet IS/08/534 [International Studies] Nish, The Anglo-Japanese Alliance, Athlone, 1966, pp. 345–67 Kenneth Young, Arthur James Balfour, Bell, 1963, pp. 313–14 Nish, Alliance in Decline, Athlone, 1972, pp. 201–203 Imperial War Cabinet, 22 March 1917 in Austen Chamberlain papers (University of Birmingham Library), 20/77 Foreign Office 800/158 [Curzon], Campbell to Tyrrell, 4 November 1915. Minute by Balfour on Greene to Balfour in FO371/3233[330807], 7 January 1918 Imperial War Cabinet as 8 above Balfour gives an account of his US mission in his memoir, AJB: Chapters of Autobiography, Cassell, 1930 Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: Paris Conference of 1919 and its attempt to end war, John Murray, 2001. Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, Routledge, 1998 R.H. Fifield, Woodrow Wilson and the Far East, Archon, 1965, pp. 270–1. Yoshiro¯ Unno, Kokusai remmei to Nihon, Hara Shobo¯, 1972, pp. 18–19 Fifield, Wilson, p. 279 Nihon gaiko¯ nempyo¯ narabi shu¯yo¯ bunsho Balfour (Paris) to Curzon, 8 May 1919 in Documents on British Foreign Policy, 1919–39, first series, vol. 6, HMSO, 1956, pp. 563–4 Blanche E. C. Dugdale, Arthur James Balfour, Hutchison, 1936, vol.II, pp. 315–17 James Tomes, Balfour and Foreign Policy, Cambridge: University Press, 1997, especially ch. 18 on the Washington Conference. A recent short work is E.H.H. Green, Balfour, Haus, 2009 Stephen Roskill, Hankey Man of Secrets, vol. 2, p. 251 Nish, Alliance in Decline, p. 376. Documents on British Foreign Policy, vol. 14, 1966, doc. 585 Roskill, Hankey, vol. 2, pp. 391–2, 419–20 Sadao Asada, From Mahan to Pearl Harbor, Naval Institute Press, 2006, pp. 81, 88. Matsui Keishiro jijoden [autobiography], pp. 103–104. Ishii Kikujiro¯, Gaiko¯ yoroku, Iwanami shoten, 1936, pp. 186–8

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Sir John Simon (1873–1954) and ‘This Manchurian Briar-Patch’ ANTONY BEST

INTRODUCTION

Of all of the Foreign Secretaries who have served in modern times, Sir John Simon is the only one whose political reputation has been strongly tarnished by his association with Japan. This is largely due to the unfortunate fact that his tenure at the Foreign Office coincided with one of the most difficult conundrums that ever dogged a British government in regard to East Asian politics – the Manchurian crisis of 1931–1933. For left-wing contemporaries and post-war critics of appeasement, the failure of the British government to stand up to Japanese aggression in Manchuria in these years and Simon’s refusal to contemplate the use of sanctions against Japan marked a fateful initial step on the road that led to Munich. Furthermore, his central place in this indictment is under-scored by the fact that the American Secretary of State at the time of the crisis, Henry Stimson, later claimed 595

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to have wanted to take multilateral coercive action against Japan but that Simon had turned down all his requests for joint action. Simon, though, also has his defenders. They have emphasized that the strategic circumstances that existed in the early 1930s made it impossible to apply pressure on the Japanese. Accordingly, the Foreign Secretary was faced with the well-nigh impossible task of navigating the crisis without alienating Japan or undermining the League of Nations and that, given these circumstances, Simon succeeded in defending British interests to the best of his abilities.1 CAREER AND PERSONALITY

Sir John Simon was one of the most senior Liberal figures of his generation. A lawyer by training, he served in the Asquith government as first Solicitor-General, then Attorney-General and finally Home Secretary before resigning in 1916 over the introduction of compulsory conscription. Between 1927 and 1931 he chaired the Simon Commission on Indian constitutional reform, which paved the way for the India Act of 1935. His prominence might have ended there, but for the economic and political storm that hit Britain in the summer of 1931 and led to the collapse of the second Labour government under Ramsay MacDonald. In this turbulent period Simon emerged as the head of a group of Liberals who were prepared to accept a move towards protectionism in order to uphold the British economy. As such, Simon was prepared to support the National Government that MacDonald formed in August 1931 and in early November, following the previous month’s general election, the Prime Minister offered him the post of Foreign Secretary. For MacDonald, Simon’s presence in the Cabinet was important as it helped to negate the impression that the National Government was really Conservative in all but name. Whether Simon was personally suited to the job of Foreign Secretary is, however, a matter of debate. Many contemporaries and later critics argued that his lawyer’s inclination to see every side of every question and his tendency only to be able to argue to a brief were unfortunate weaknesses in a job that required the ability to lead. In addition, much has been made of his cold manners and austere image, which did little to win him the support of his colleagues or his civil servants. To quote but one example, the always astute wife of one of his closest colleagues noted of him: ‘His ability is fully recognized, but his lack of decision, his rather sickly sweetness of manner gave an impression of insincerity which is extremely unfortunate.’2 These faults have been singled out as indicating that he was simply not up to his job. However, his biographer, David Dutton, makes an important point when he asks if anybody could really have dealt with the challenges posed to 596

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British interests in the early 1930s when the country was financially weak and ill-placed to defend itself due to the disarmament measures passed up until 1930.3 In addition, it is important to note that he was serving under a Prime Minister who had once held the same post and who still took an active interest in foreign affairs and such situations are never easy. THE MANCHURIAN INCIDENT

There is nothing in Simon’s life or career that suggests that he had any great interest in or knowledge of East Asian affairs prior to his tenure at the Foreign Office. What is clear, however, is that on coming to power he had to learn fast as he was immediately thrust into what he called ‘this Manchurian briar-patch’.4 By early November, when he took office, the Mukden incident of 18 September, in which Japan’s Kwantung Army had sabotaged the South Manchurian Railway and then used this as an excuse to seize the cities of south Manchuria, had expanded into a Japanese military campaign that threatened to reach into the west and north of the region. Moreover, the Chinese decision in late September to appeal to the League of Nations for help had made this much more than a bilateral dispute; it had now become a test case for the principles of collective security.5 Simon’s predecessor, Lord Reading, had in his two months at the Foreign Office been keen to work through the League to solve the dispute. Simon was, however, inclined towards a more cautious policy. Conscious that American non-membership restricted the League’s ability to project power into the Pacific, he tried to reduce the possibility that the organization might take precipitant action, which it could not back up with real force. Thus in his first report to the Cabinet on 11 November he noted the importance of being realistic about what Geneva could achieve and the necessity of not allowing the Chinese to invoke Article XVI of the League Covenant and thus start a debate about sanctions.6 Underlining this attitude was also his strong belief that Britain must not allow the crisis to compromise its relations with Japan. His policy therefore was to try to use the League only as a means to achieve reconciliation between the two protagonists, thus avoiding any recourse to coercion and, in turn, any long-term damage to Anglo-Japanese relations. It might be argued that this brought a useful measure of realism into British thinking, in contrast to those enthusiasts for the League who called for decisive action without considering how practically this might be achieved against a strong naval power such as Japan. This would be, however, to ignore the fact that there was a dangerous strain of naivety in Simon’s belief that conciliation was possible and that Britain could avoid having to take sides. This tendency is 597

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illustrated in a letter that he sent to the journalist and internationalist Evelyn Wrench at this time in which he noted that ‘we should show that we are friends of all nations’.7 A further unfortunate and ultimately unrealistic trait was his desire to ensure that if the League did engage in any criticism of Japan that Britain should not take the lead in these proceedings, which was an abnegation of responsibility and a recipe for drift.8 Working on the lines set out above, Simon worked hard in late November and early December to organize a League Commission of Inquiry that would travel to East Asia to report on the situation on the origins of the crisis and make recommendations for its solution. At the same time, believing that it was still necessary for the League to reaffirm that no state had the right to take unilateral military action, he privately pushed the President of the League Council to make a statement upholding this principle, but simultaneously made it clear to his Cabinet colleagues that he had no intention of Britain unilaterally asserting this opinion lest Japan take offence.9 With the League Commission established under the chairmanship of Lord Lytton in December 1931, Simon hoped that tempers would subside and circumstances improve, leading to the possibility of an eventual solution. This outcome was disturbed by two factors. First, in early January 1932 Stimson, having learnt that President Hoover was irrevocably opposed to economic sanctions against Japan, decided to increase the international pressure on Japan by instead invoking the diplomatic policy that the United States had adopted at the time of the twenty-one demands in 1915, namely to announce that it would not recognize the transfer of sovereign territory through the use of force – the non-recognition doctrine. In order to make this initiative as effective as possible, Stimson was keen for Britain to take parallel action, hoping that this would lead to its wider adoption among the international community.10 For Simon, this was an inconvenient overture, as it was felt that any such action risked alienating Japan without any certainty that it would have a deterrent effect. Moreover, it would mean Britain taking action independent of the League. The Foreign Office therefore decided not to take any action on this proposal aside from issuing its own statement that it believed that Japan would adhere to its past promises to uphold the NinePower Treaty of 1922 which committed its signatories to respect the ‘open door’ in China.11 Meanwhile, an editorial in The Times, criticized Stimson’s grandstanding, which was extremely unfortunate considering that many people outside Britain saw this newspaper as the mouthpiece of the British government.12 The second blow to Simon’s policy came in late January when, following the steady escalation of tensions between Japanese and Chinese forces in Shanghai, the former launched an offensive against 598

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the suburb of Chapei, which even involved the use of bombers against built-up areas. For Britain, this was a much more profound threat to its own interests than the fighting in Manchuria, for it had a substantial commercial presence in Shanghai. Its priority therefore was to try to bring the hostilities to an end as quickly as possible in order to forestall any long-term threat to its position. Clearly it was easier to achieve this in cooperation with the League and the other Great Powers, which once again raised the possibility of having to work with the United States. At the same time, however, Simon still wished to avoid jeopardizing Anglo-Japanese relations and was therefore opposed to any overt coercion. The situation therefore finally forced Simon to recognize that it was not easy to be a ‘friends to all nations’ and that, as he observed to MacDonald on 29 January, ‘we are in grave danger of falling between two stools – offending Japan without completely satisfying America.’13 To identify the problem, though, was one thing; to find a practical way through the jungle was another. At first Simon found it possible to cooperate with the Americans in dealing with the Shanghai fighting. However, the evasive negotiating stance of the Japanese government and its apparent willingness to escalate the conflict soon led Stimson to call for firmer action. On 9 February the Secretary of State informed the British ambassador in Washington, Sir Ronald Lindsay, that the time had come for ‘a very strong indictment’ to be sent to Tokyo and that this could be based on the terms of the Nine-Power Treaty of 1922, which committed its signatories to respect Chinese sovereignty and the ‘open door’.14 Despite strong opposition within the Foreign Office to any such move, over the next few days Simon held a number of transatlantic phone calls with his American opposite number to try to come to some mutually agreeable initiative. However, once again the problem was that Simon was averse to acting separately from the League. Moreover, the Foreign Office believed that any attempt to link the fighting in Shanghai with events in Manchuria would be entirely counter-productive. The result, after a series of delays and requests to tone down his demands, was that Stimson finally decided that the British government would not be forthcoming and thus opted to take independent action by writing his own criticism of Japan in his famous open letter to Senator Borah of 23 February.15 Simon’s apparent failure to cooperate with Stimson over the Nine-Power treaty demarche is one of the chief cases cited by the prosecution in their attacks on his stewardship of the Foreign Office. Certainly he does not come out well from this episode, for his initial willingness to consider Stimson’s overture only helped to raise false expectations. However, it is also important to observe, as Christopher Thorne has noted, that the final decision to go ahead with a 599

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League statement rather than associating Britain with Stimson’s initiative lay with a meeting of the Cabinet’s China sub-committee.16 In the end, therefore, the problem was not that so much that Simon misled Stimson, but that the former was typically trying to keep all his options open until given a definite steer by his senior colleagues within the Cabinet. This, in turn, goes to the heart of the problem of Simon’s tenure at the Foreign Office, his inability to give a lead and to state clearly his preference for a particular policy. This, it should be noted, was not just a problem in connection with the Cabinet but also affected his civil servants at the Foreign Office; one of whom noted in March 1932 that Simon’s behaviour, ‘practically brings the whole machinery to a standstill, and his staff are getting practically nearly desperate.’17 The unfortunate irony of the situation in the winter of 1932 is that, in the wake of the Anglo-American disagreement, Britain did finally take more decisive action; in early March Simon went to Geneva and took a leading role in getting the League Assembly to affirm its own version of the non-recognition doctrine. This was not, though, a tougher line that was entirely of Simon’s making, for the Prime Minister was now insisting on a more assertive policy that would bring Britain and the League closer into line with the United States.18 However, even at this point Simon was careful to ensure that the League’s non-recognition pronouncement was not formally aimed against Japan, although the inference was clear. The problem, though, was that this announcement had come too late in the day and clearly could not have the impact that a simultaneous parallel statement to that of the United States might have had. In the spring of 1932, with Japan and China having settled the Shanghai incident, less attention was paid to events in East Asia, but this was merely a lull before the next storm, for in the region the Lytton Commission was working busily to diagnose the origins of the crisis and find a cure. The Lytton report was published on 2 October. It concluded that the crisis had come about in part because of Chinese provocation, but that Japan had also over-reacted. It asserted that the new state, Manchukuo, which had been founded in March 1932, had no basis in self-determination and called for renewed Sino-Japanese talks under League auspices to decide the future of the region.19 While the report strove to be fair and impartial, it was clear that its terms would be unacceptable to Japan, which had formally recognized Manchukuo even before Lytton had presented his conclusions. For Simon, this was a cause for great concern, for if the League adopted the report in the face of Japanese protests, this could lead Britain into uncharted and potentially dangerous territory. The problem, though, as ever, was how to placate both Japan and the League. Unfortunately, while Simon once again was very good 600

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at describing the problems that might emerge, he had few practical ideas about how to handle the situation except to say that Britain should try to maintain a low profile at the League and that ‘we must not involve ourselves in trouble with Japan’.20 Nor did it help that, even though he had been at his post for over a year, he still felt the need to please his colleagues; he observed to his Liberal colleague Sir Walter Runciman at this time that ‘Ramsay [MacDonald] has been very good to me, & feels happily in his own mind about me, I believe’, which is a statement that hardly strikes one as the epitome of self-confidence. Adhering to his essentially passive stance Simon once again travelled to Geneva in December 1932, but soon found that the torrent of anti-Japanese sentiments from the smaller League members required him to make a stand. He therefore on 7 December made a speech in which he admonished those who were rushing to judgement to read the Lytton report carefully and to recognize that China too had been at fault. To those at Geneva who were looking to Britain for leadership this speech was a grave disappointment and did great damage to what remained of Simon’s reputation, for, instead of coming over as impartial, he appeared for many observers to be pro-Japanese.21 Nor did it help that his words were followed by an injudicious speech by the head of the Canadian delegation, C.H. Cahan, which cast doubt on whether China could even be considered to be a modern state.22 Simon, it should be said, had read and approved this speech before it was delivered.23 The all too predictable result of this perceived tilt towards Japan was that it led to an outburst of protest from the Chinese. Thus one more problem was now added to Simon’s in-tray, the possibility that British inaction might provoke a Chinese boycott of its goods. Boxed in by his desperate attempts to please everyone and to be all things to all people, by the end of the month Simon was reduced to explaining rather forlornly to the Conservative leader and Lord President of the Council, Stanley Baldwin, that, ‘My own hope would be that by handling the Japs nicely they could be kept in the League without an explosion.’24 On the same day, he also drafted a note for his Foreign Office staff, which observed that, ‘We should keep out of the limelight, take no unnecessary responsibility, & let the whole thing drag on till the end of January.’25 But this was an attitude, not a policy. If Simon’s hope was that buying time would prove useful, he was sorely mistaken, for January 1933 saw instead a continued Japanese unwillingness to make any concessions, and, moreover, the outbreak of renewed fighting with Japan’s advance into Jehol. These events clearly demonstrated the futility of Simon’s policy. Moreover, the fact that Japan could not accept even so patently fair an assessment of the situation as the Lytton report meant that opinion at home and 601

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abroad was shifting towards upholding the League’s principles. The moment of truth was therefore fast approaching when Simon and the government would be forced to take the decision they had struggled so long to avoid – at the last, should they back the League or their former ally Japan. Knowing the significance that the public attached to the Covenant and jealous to maintain Britain’s international prestige, this was, in reality, no choice at all; it had to be the League. Thus when the question of whether to adopt the recommendations of the Lytton Report came before the League Assembly on 24 February 1933, Britain voted for the motion. The British government’s desire to be even-handed had not, however, disappeared and in one of the most farcical foreign policy episodes of the 1930s Simon announced three days later that Britain would introduce an arms embargo of both Japan and China and asked other members of the League to consider adopting this policy. The origins of this idea lay with Simon’s link to Sir Gilbert Murray, one of the leading lights in the League of Nations Union. Originally the idea, which was not popular in Foreign Office circles, was that it should be aimed simply at Japan, but typically after Simon consulted with his Cabinet colleagues it transformed itself into its new and even less defensible guise.26 This led to despair within the Foreign Office, with one diplomat complaining in his diary, ‘Hear Simon has announced embargo on arms to both China and Japan. Quite insane as it can’t do anybody any good – ourselves least of all – and contrary to our advice.’27 Not surprisingly, no other state was willing to sign up to this dog’s breakfast of a policy and Britain within a month consigned it to an ignominious death.28 Meanwhile, Japan showed its contempt for the League by announcing its withdrawal from the organization. The Manchurian crisis thus came to an end in March 1933 with Britain having finally been forced to make a stand against Japan and committing itself not to recognize Manchukuo. This was clearly not the outcome that Simon had been seeking. In attempting to please everyone, he had, in fact, strained relations with all of the main players and brought into question Britain’s loyalty to the League. He could, however, claim some measure of success in having managed to prevent the crisis from turning into a much larger conflict, but the questions remained of at what cost had this been achieved and whether any lessons had been learnt from what in the end was still a humiliating reverse for the principles of collective security. Simon had indicated before the vote was taken at Geneva that he hoped that Japan would understand that any such action was, in the end, only designed to uphold the League and was not intrinsically anti-Japanese.29 However, by the end of 1932 a new threat to Britain’s policy of neutrality began to emerge, namely that the Chinese 602

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boycott of Japan and the latter’s recent depreciation of the yen had led to a sudden surge of Japanese exports to British possessions in Asia including India. Coming at a time when Britain’s economy was already in a desperate state, the Colonial Office and the Board of Trade argued that it was essential for this issue to be addressed, preferably by asking Japan to limit its exports.30 Simon, fearing that this trade dispute might tarnish his impartiality in Japan’s eyes, pushed for the issue to be put aside for two months or at least until the League vote had been taken.31 While this line was logical enough, it was, however, just postponing the inevitable with the result that by March 1933, when it was finally placed before the Cabinet, the President of the Board of Trade, Sir Walter Runciman, was adamant that action be taken and in this he received strong backing from Sir Philip Cunliffe-Lister and Sir Samuel Hoare, respectively the secretaries of state for the colonies and for India.32 Consequently, Simon’s efforts to patch together Anglo-Japanese relations received a further blow when in the spring and summer Britain removed its colonies in West Africa from the ambit of the commercial treaty of 1911 and India increased the tariff on Japanese cotton textile imports. Thus instead of the ending of the Manchurian crisis leading to an amelioration of tensions, Simon was now faced with a situation in which Anglo-Japanese relations were worsening by the day. His ability to rectify this situation was hampered not only by his perennial indecisiveness but also by his steadily declining reputation, which was by the autumn of 1933 so bad that some officials and politicians were referring to him as the worst ever Foreign Secretary and calling privately for his dismissal.33 Even the Prime Minister himself had affirmed to the visiting Stimson in July 1933 that, ‘Simon had never understood the Far East.’34 However, his most significant critic was Neville Chamberlain, the ever-ambitious and self-confident Chancellor of the Exchequer, who was exasperated by Simon’s policy of drift towards East Asia and thus felt obliged to make his first fateful forays into the murky waters of East Asian politics. Chamberlain’s interest was stimulated by his conviction that Britain could only afford limited rearmament, that it had to focus on the German menace, and that this meant that the potential threat from Japan had to be neutralized through some kind of rapprochement. The result was that from October 1933 Chamberlain began to press with ever greater force for a concerted effort to be made to offer an olive branch to Japan.35 Never the strongest of men, Simon for the rest of his period at the Foreign Office down to June 1935 gives the impression of a straw man being buffeted by the sharply contrasting views of Chamberlain and his pro-Japanese acolytes and the much more cautious advice put forward by his Foreign Office subordinates and not being able to decide on which side to come down. Thus, in Cabinet meetings, 603

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such as those in March 1934, Simon would wilt under Chamberlain’s fire and appear to preach the cause of rapprochement, but the memoranda that he would then circulate to his colleagues after returning to the safety of the Foreign Office would backtrack, noting all of the problems that such a radical turn of direction might generate.36 Naturally the result of this unedifying spectacle was that policy continued to drift, but, even more dangerously, Simon’s inability to win Cabinet backing for a policy of caution or to bring the Foreign Office to heal and dictate a clear policy of rapprochement meant that the Chancellor and his backers began to be tempted to start their own amateur efforts at diplomacy. This was a serious problem because 1934 saw an important issue come to the fore, namely the future of the naval arms limitation process that had begun at the Washington Conference of 1921–1922. In this field Japan and the United States were entirely at odds over the issue of quantitative limitation and both countries looked to Britain to support for their respective views. On the Japanese side this involved vague hints from the Gaimusho¯ that it might be possible to negotiate an Anglo-Japanese non-aggression pact, which, of course, came as manna from heaven to Chamberlain. As usual, Simon indicated initial interest in this idea, but then, under pressure from his advisers, rapidly backtracked and produced memoranda that exhaustedly outlined the obstacles to any such arrangement. Chamberlain’s pained response was to observe in a letter to his wife that Simon’s draft was ‘one of the most miserable documents I have ever seen’ and to lament about the Foreign Secretary himself that, ‘It is maddening to have to use instruments so blunt and soft.’37 Furthermore, while having given Chamberlain to understand that he was sympathetic to his ideas, Simon wrote to the pro-American MacDonald noting that, while the Prime Minister had been away on an extended break, he had authoritatively noted to his Cabinet colleagues all of the problems that a non-aggression pact might generate.38 With Simon continuing his impersonation of Janus, the pro-American lobby in British politics decided that it was necessary to take the defence of the link with Washington into its own hands and launch a public campaign to ward off the flirtation with Japan. Thus in November 1934 The Times, The Observer and The Economist published speeches and ran a series of special articles and editorials that stressed the significance of British ties with America and statesmen such as the South Africa Jan Smuts and the former Prime Minister David Lloyd George rallied to the cause. This intervention came at an important time, for it helped to reassure the Roosevelt administration, which had begun to express serious doubts about British policy and Simon’s position at the Foreign Office.39 By the time that Simon left the Foreign Office in June 1935 Anglo-Japanese relations were in a confused and uncertain state. 604

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The haemorrhaging of his authority had led to a dangerous situation where the Treasury felt emboldened to try its own hand at diplomacy and this would soon reach its apogee with the Leith-Ross mission.40 Moreover, relations with the United States were strained as he had come to be seen as a problem in his own right. Much of this was clearly the result of the flaws in Simon’s character, most notably his seeming refusal to give a lead or to defend his authority as Foreign Secretary. It should, however, be noted that he was also not well advised during these years. The senior Foreign Office experts on East Asia during these years such as Sir Victor Wellesley, Sir John Pratt and Charles Orde were themselves not dynamic figures with a clear vision of how British interests in the region needed to evolve and adapt but were instead cautious and even out-dated in their attitudes. Only Sir Alexander Cadogan, the minister in Peking, gave any real sense of what Britain should be striving to achieve. AT THE TREASURY

After leaving the Foreign Office, Simon went on to become Home Secretary; he was, after all, still the leading National Liberal figure and thus had to hold one of the main offices of state. In this capacity he had little input on East Asian policy, but he once again become a prominent voice in foreign policy when in May 1937 Chamberlain as Prime Minister moved him to the Treasury. As Chancellor of the Exchequer Simon clearly had an important role to play in regard to the granting of foreign loans and this brought him back into contact with East Asian affairs. The occasion arose in the summer of 1938 when the Foreign Office argued that Britain should provide a currency loan to China or at the very least underwrite the efforts of the Hong Kong and Shanghai Banking Corporation in this field. The Treasury, which was still suffused with pro-Japanese sentiment from Chamberlain’s time as Chancellor, was vociferously against this proposal, as it feared that any such move would alienate Japan. It is little surprise that this was also the view of Simon himself, who argued strongly in the Cabinet’s Foreign Policy committee and before the Cabinet itself that such a loan would be unwise.41 At least initially, with Chamberlain’s support, he was able to defeat this measure, but in the spring of 1939, with the United States having announced its first sizeable loan to China, he reluctantly removed his objections. And with this his link to East Asia and Japan was finally broken. ASESSMENT

The problem in coming to any assessment of Sir John Simon as a political figure is that he is somewhat of a chimera. He produced many memoranda for the Cabinet and wrote fairly frequent letters 605

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to his colleagues, but there is always a sense in these communications that he was more interested in producing ideas for an audience and seeking their approbation rather than in providing a clear direction with the qualities of leadership that that would imply. In other words, it is not easy to know what he actually believed. This difficulty in coming to a clear understanding of the man provides an insight into why, in the end, he must be judged to have been a poor Foreign Secretary. As can be seen during the Manchurian crisis and after, Simon’s desire to ingratiate himself, with Stimson, MacDonald and Chamberlain, and his chronic indecision meant not only that he did not provide the leadership required from the head of the Foreign Office but that he encouraged expectations in others only for them to be dashed when he did not deliver. Simon was, to a degree, culpable in creating the split with the United States that developed in 1932 and would come back to haunt Anglo-American relations intermittently during the 1930s. In addition, he helped to engineer the conditions that led from 1933 to 1935 to the development of a dangerous ‘dual diplomacy’ in Whitehall where the Treasury pursued its own foreign policy out of exasperation with the Foreign Office. One can therefore, while still accepting David Dutton’s judgement that the challenges that emerged in the early 1930s would have taxed any politician, lament that Britain at this crucial time possessed a Foreign Secretary who was inclined him to be paralysed in the face of complexity and who, through his own desire to please, only sowed further complications of his own making. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5

6

For Simon’s contested reputation as Foreign Secretary, see David Dutton, Sir John Simon: A Political Biography (Aurum Press, London, 1992) pp. 117–24. Runciman papers, Robinson Library, University of Newcastle, WR Add.9 Hilda Runciman diary December 1934. I would like to thank the Librarian at the Robinson Library, University of Newcastle, for permission to use material from the Runciman papers. Dutton, op. cit., p. 121. Cecil papers, British Library, London (BL), Add.Mss.51082 Simon to Cecil 10 November 1931 ff. 63–4. For the international history of the Manchurian crisis, see Christopher Thorne, The Limits of Foreign Policy: The West, the League and the Far Eastern Crisis of 1931–1933, (London: Hamish Hamilton, 1972) and Ian Nish, Japan’s Struggle with Internationalism: Japan, China and the League of Nations, 1931–33, (London: Kegan Paul, 1993). The National Archives, Kew (TNA) CAB23/69 75(31) Cabinet Conclusions 11 November 1931. See also PREM1/116 Simon to MacDonald 17 November 1931.

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7

8

9

10 11 12 13 14

15 16

17

18

19 20

21

22

23

24

25 26

27

28 29

30

31

32

Wrench papers, BL, Add.Mss.59544 Simon to Wrench 14 November 1931. TNA CAB24/224 CP294(31) ‘Manchuria’ Simon memorandum 23 November 1931. TNA CAB24/224 CP294(31) ‘Manchuria’ Simon memorandum 23 November 1931. Thorne, op. cit., pp. 210–11. Ibid., p. 211. The Times, 11 January 1932. TNA PREM1/116 Simon to MacDonald 29 January 1932. TNA FO371/16147 F1156/1/10 Lindsay (Washington) to Simon 9 February 1933 tel.99. Thorne, op. cit., pp. 247–66. Christopher Thorne, ‘The Shanghai Crisis of 1932: The Basis of British Policy’, American Historical Review, 1970, vol. 75, p. 1638. Pratt papers, SOAS Library, PPMS 5, file 53, Pratt to ‘Edith’ 5 March 1932. MacDonald papers, TNA, PRO30/69/295 MacDonald note undated [7 March 1932?], and Bland (FO) to Hankey 10 March 1932. Thorne, Limits of Foreign Policy, pp. 283–4. TNA CAB24/235 CP404(32) ‘The Lytton Report. Japan and the League of Nations’ Simon memorandum 19 November 1932. Runciman papers, Newcastle University Library, WR254 Simon to Runciman 24 December 1932 ff. 171–2. F. H. Soward, ‘Forty Years On: The Cahan Blunder Re-Examined’, B.C. Studies, 1976–77, no.32, pp. 126–38. Bennett papers, Library/Archives Canada, Ottawa, MG26-K microfilm c,1094, Cahan to Bennett 9 December 1932 (272783). See also TNA FO371/16183 Price (DO Geneva) to Clutterbuck (DO) 5 December 1932. Baldwin papers, Cambridge University Library, vol.118, Simon to Baldwin 20 December 1932. TNA FO371/16185 F8695/1/10 Simon note 20 December 1932. Simon papers, TNA, FO800/288 Simon to Murray 1 February 1933, TNA FO371/17146 F1210/923/61 Eden (Geneva) to Simon 23 February 1933 tel.119 LN, and Wellesley minute 24 February 1933, and CAB23/75 12(33) Cabinet conclusions 27 February 1933. Cadogan papers, Churchill Archives Centre Cambridge (CACC), ACAD1/1 diary entry 27 February 1933. TNA CAB23/75 17(33) Cabinet conclusions 13 March 1933. TNA CAB24/235 CP404(32) ‘The Lytton Report. Japan and the League of Nations’ Simon memorandum 19 November 1932. TNA FO371/16250 F8773/8773/23 Cunliffe-Lister to Runciman 18 November 1932, and Runciman to Simon 19 December 1932. TNA FO371/16250 F8773/8773/23 Simon to Runciman 20 January 1933. TNA CAB23/75 15(33) Cabinet conclusions 8 March 1933 and 22(33) Cabinet conclusions 29 March 1933.

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33

34

35

36

37

38

39

40

41

Cadogan papers, CACC, ACAD1/1 diary entry 5 July 1933; diary entry 20 October 1933, in J. Barnes and D. Nicholson (eds) The Empire at Bay: The Leo Amery Diaries, 1929–1945 (Hutchinson, London, 1988) and MacDonald papers, TNA, PRO30/69/1753/1 diary entry 11 December 1933. Henry L. Stimson, Herman Kahn, Bonnie B. Collier, and Pauline Goldstein, (eds), The Henry Lewis Stimson diaries in the Yale University Library microfilm edition (New Haven, 1973), Micr.246/5, vol.26, diary entry 15 July 1933, Oxford, Vere Harmsworth Library. TNA CAB23/76 57(33) Cabinet conclusions 26 October 1933, and CAB2/6 Committee of Imperial Defence 261st meeting 9 November 1933. See, for example, TNA CAB23/78 9(34) Cabinet conclusions 14 March 1934, and CAB24/238 ‘Imperial Defence Policy’ Simon memorandum 16 March 1934. Neville Chamberlain papers, Cadbury Research Room, University of Birmingham, NC1/26/502 Neville Chamberlain to Anne Chamberlain 11 October 1934. MacDonald papers, TNA, PRO30/69/680 part 2, Simon to MacDonald 3 October 1934. See Antony Best, ‘“A Trumpet Blast of Sanity in a Mad World”: The Smuts Speech, the ‘Cliveden Set’ and Anglo-American Relations, 1934–35’, forthcoming ‘The Leith-Ross Mission and British Policy towards East Asia, 1934– 37’, International History Review, 2013. Vol. 35, no. 4 TNA CAB27/623 FP(36) 30th meeting 1 June 1938 and CAB23/94 31(38) Cabinet conclusions 6 July 1938.

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Lord Halifax (1881–1959): A Reassessment of British Far-Eastern Policy, 1938–1941 ANTONY BEST

INTRODUCTION

In accounts of the life of Edward Wood, the first Earl Halifax, it cannot be said that his thoughts on the subject of Anglo-Japanese relations loom large as a subject.1 However, considering the fact that he was the Foreign Secretary between February 1938 and December 1940 and then the ambassador in Washington during the time of the Hull-Nomura talks in 1941, it is clear that he was an important figure during this difficult time when the ties between Britain and Japan became increasingly frayed. The question therefore arises of what attitude he took towards Japan and what role he played in this period of increasing tension. Considering that Lord Halifax’s historical reputation rests largely on the fact that he served under Neville Chamberlain during the period when the latter was determined to reach an accommodation with Hitler, it might be thought likely that he, as with the Prime Minister, was 609

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sympathetic towards the idea of appeasing Japan. Certainly, this was the view of the man who was the Japanese ambassador in London for most of the time when Halifax was at the Foreign Office, Shigemitsu Mamoru. In his post-war memoirs Shigemitsu described Halifax as one of what he called the ‘orthodox faction’ within the Conservative Party, which he saw as pro-Japanese in its outlook.2 However, the historical record presents us with a far more complex figure than this simple classification would have us believe. Even in regard to Germany, Halifax’s views were subject to great change; he realized a long time before Chamberlain that Hitler could not be appeased. In particular, it needs to be recalled that his biographer has put much emphasis on the impact that the events of Kristalnacht (9–10 November 1938) when the Nazis’ anti-Semitism exploded into overt attacks on Jewish lives and property, had on toughening his stance towards Germany.3 What this reveals is that there was a strong moral core to Halifax, based on his devout High-Church Christianity, and that he felt distinctly uneasy about interaction with regimes that he found morally repugnant. It was this outlook that coloured his attitude towards the Japanese government, for in his time as Foreign Secretary, contrary to Shigemitsu’s belief, he consistently pushed for a hard-line towards Japan in the face of opposition from his fellow Cabinet ministers. AS FOREIGN SECRETARY

That Halifax was unlikely to take a sympathetic line with Japan as Foreign Secretary was evident almost as soon as the Sino-Japanese War began in the summer of 1937, for in late September he wrote a short exasperated note to the then incumbent at the Foreign Office, Anthony Eden, about Japan’s war conduct, observing: I am terribly shocked with the Japanese indiscriminate bombing – Can we – with the USA – do anything more effective than protests ? Trade ? Withdrawal of Craigie It does seem to me to be the worst thing – for morality and civilization – that we have yet seen!4

By the time that Halifax succeeded Eden in February 1938 the question that he had raised about whether Britain could coerce Japan into adopting a different policy had been thoroughly investigated only to be dismissed. The fact of the matter was that, with little likelihood of American cooperation, Britain was in no position to bring pressure to bear on Japan unilaterally, largely because of the perilous state of affairs in Europe. However, in the last days of Eden’s tenure, Foreign Office thinking had shifted to a new policy, which, while accepting that direct coercion of Japan was impossible, noted that this did not 610

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rule out providing assistance to the Chinese as long as the aid was not provocative enough to ensure a hostile Japanese response.5 This then was the thinking on East Asia that Halifax adopted when he took up the reins of the Foreign Office in late February 1938. Clearly, there was a potential difficulty when putting this policy into practice, namely judging the degree to which Japan would perceive any act of support for China as being provocative. It did not take long for this problem to manifest itself, for one of the issues that arose in the spring and summer of 1938 was whether Britain should provide China with a £15–20 million loan that would help to stabilize its currency, the fapi. Coming at a time when tensions were rising in Europe over the future of the Sudetenland, this question led to heated debate in London. The Treasury, which was now led by Sir John Simon, was bitterly opposed to any such loan being offered, for it believed that nothing should be done that might alienate Japan at such a critical juncture. In addition, it thought that in any case a Japanese victory over China was inevitable and that Britain therefore needed to be ready for that eventuality. This view was also shared by Sir Robert Craigie, the British ambassador to Japan. The Foreign Office thought very differently; it did not believe that Japan would vanquish China any time soon or perhaps ever, and accordingly argued that it was worth assisting the Chinese to contain Japan. At the same time it also saw the loan as being a useful means of aiding the hard-stretched British business community in Shanghai and the other treaty ports.6 Halifax backed this policy.7 In the Cabinet’s Foreign Policy Sub-Committee in June and at the Cabinet in July he spoke up strongly for a loan and made it clear that he did not agree with Craigie’s gloomy prognosis.8 Indeed, to make his point he went as far as to circulate to his Cabinet colleagues a report from a Red Cross official in China which provided information about recent Japanese casualties and falling morale.9 In the end he did not win this battle, for Chamberlain shared Simon’s sense of caution, and, in the light of the steadily worsening international situation, Halifax agreed to drop his proposal.10 However, what does clearly emerge from this debate is that Halifax was not by inclination an appeaser when it came to Japan. Furthermore, in November 1938 Halifax returned to the fray with a new plan for a British loan to China that would be put at the disposal of a currency stabilization fund. The sum on this occasion was not as great as it had been in the summer and Halifax therefore argued that it would not be too provocative an act.11 Despite continued opposition from the Treasury, this time Halifax’s efforts bore fruit and in March 1939 a loan of £5 million was made.12 In addition, in the face of the recent Japanese advance into the South China Sea and its alliance talks with Germany and Italy, Halifax raised with 611

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his colleagues the prospect of Britain’s introducing some measures of economic coercion against Japan.13 This was, however, strongly opposed by the Treasury and the Board of Trade and the idea subsequently dropped, but it is interesting that Halifax even agreed to these fairly radical views being circulated to his fellow ministers in the form of a Cabinet memorandum. In June 1939 Halifax was faced with his first really serious crisis in Anglo-Japanese relations when the Japanese army blockaded the British concession at Tientsin. The Foreign Secretary had little to do with this crisis erupting because ever since mid-March and the German seizure of Prague his attention had been squarely on Eastern European affairs.14 At first he was reluctant to admit how serious the situation was, noting on 14 June at the Cabinet that, ‘his impression was that it was unlikely to that there would be any catastrophic events in Tientsin’. In addition, in keeping with his persistently uncompromising attitude towards Japan, he was reluctant to give in to the latest Japanese demands believing that any concessions now would mean that ‘we should be subjected to increasing pressure throughout the Far East’.15 Halifax proved, however, to be too sanguine, for by 19 June with a full blockade of the British and French concessions at Tientsin having been introduced, it was clear this was a major crisis. The Foreign Secretary’s natural inclination was for Britain to stand firm as he feared that any climb-down would be humiliating. However, at the same time he agreed with the Chiefs of Staff that, if American support were not forthcoming, Britain’s strategic situation was too perilous to risk war. He therefore proposed that Craigie should be given the chance to break the deadlock by opening negotiations in Tokyo, but was insistent that simultaneously preparations should be made for retaliation should these talks fail.16 The latter prospect worried some of his Cabinet colleagues, but Halifax, on the basis of advice from the Foreign Office’s greatest expert on Japan, Sir George Sansom, who had just returned from Tokyo, felt that the Japanese might be bluffing and that, if so, Britain could take action in the economic field.17 To enable this to happen, he therefore pressed a reluctant Board of Trade to prepare legislation that would allow for the abrogation of the Anglo-Japanese commercial treaty of 1911.18 Over the next few weeks Tientsin came to dominate Halifax’s time as much as any other issue. Indeed, in early August he admitted to his Cabinet colleagues that the situation in Tientsin was ‘causing him more anxiety than the position in any other part of the world’.19 By this stage, Craigie had managed to concoct with the Japanese foreign minister, Arita Hachiro, a formula on how the British concessions in north China should conduct themselves. Halifax was not averse to this compromise, but he still held that there were limits 612

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to how far he was prepared to go over the more substantial issue of the fate of the silver that the Chinese government had deposited in the concession. Thus, in early August when Craigie proposed that Britain should allow the silver to be handed over either to a Japanese bank or one controlled by the local puppet regime, Halifax baulked at the suggestion. His new harder line did not though just arise from the belief that Craigie was too willing to compromise, for it was influenced by other factors. These included the fact that in late July the Roosevelt administration had announced its own intention to abrogate its commercial treaty with Japan and that Sansom once again acted to stiffen the Foreign Secretary’s backbone. In a minute for Halifax on 3 August Sansom was dismissive of the idea that shortterm concessions would lead to long-term gains and of the chances that Japan would risk going to war with Britain.20 Armed with this advice, Halifax’s stance notably hardened. In response to Sansom’s views, he observed to his staff, that, ‘There is a point beyond which we cannot go – and the dangers of what would be generally regarded as surrender on vital principles are not less great than the danger of breakdown of conversations.’21 Accordingly, he wrote to Chamberlain on 16 August opposing Craigie’s proposal, noting that Britain would ‘get very little positive result [from the Japanese] in exchange for the great worsening of our present position vis-à-vis the United States and China’.22 Whether he would have continued to hold this stance if relations had continued to worsen is unknown, for in late August the signing of the Ribbentrop/Molotov Pact and flooding around Tientsin left the crisis in abeyance. With the start of the European War in September 1939 Britain clearly had to adjust its foreign policy to suit the new circumstances. In regard to Japan, this meant that Halifax was keener than before on keeping relations on an even keel, although not to the extent that Britain was prepared to sell out China or offend the United States.23 Indeed, as early as 4 September he told the Cabinet that a new AngloJapanese alliance was not on the cards.24 In real terms what this policy meant was that Halifax supported the renewal of talks to reach an agreement at Tientsin and was open to the idea of negotiating a war trade agreement that would set quotas for Japanese imports from the British Empire. In addition, he was keen to ensure that the British blockade of Germany did not put too great a strain on relations with Japan, although on occasions his efforts to restrain the belligerence of Churchill’s Admiralty were overruled.25 However, in a sign of his burgeoning commitments now that war had broken out, it is notable that he handed over the day-to-day supervision of policy towards East Asia to the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State, R.A. Butler. This was an interesting decision, for Butler was close to Chamberlain, had a reputation as a keen proponent of appeasement, and 613

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had cultivated quite close relations with Shigemitsu.26 It therefore reinforced the impression that Britain was keen to retreat from the tensions that had marked relations in the summer of 1939. By the spring of 1940 there were some signs that Halifax’s new policy was paying dividends, for Japan agreed to a settlement over Tientsin and gave the green light to trade talks in London.27 However, while the prudent attitude that he had taken suited the period of the Phoney War, it was ill-equipped to deal with the rapid shifts in the world situation that were sparked by the German assault on Western Europe that began on 10 May 1940. The rapid collapse of French resistance to Germany and the seemingly inevitable defeat of Britain stimulated profound changes in Japanese thinking. They could see that the new situation meant that the European hold over the colonies of South-East Asia was now extremely fragile. Japan was therefore faced with the possibility that it could carry out two initiatives that might well transform its strategic situation. First, it could put pressure on Britain and France to close their colonial borders with China, thus denying Chiang Kai-shek vital resources including munitions. Second, it could put pressure on the imperial powers to increase Japan’s access to raw materials, such as oil, rubber and tin. Consequently, in late June, the Yonai government put the first of these options into action, asking France and Britain to close their borders with China. The French quickly acquiesced and Craigie telegraphed to London urging the Foreign Office to agree to the Japanese demand and close the Burma Road and to use the present moment to come to a fuller agreement with Japan. As in the Tientsin crisis, Halifax realized that something needed to be done to assuage Japan’s ambitions, but he was loath to go as far as closing the Burma Road altogether. Instead, he proposed to the Cabinet in early July 1940 that Britain should only agree to put a ceiling on trade with China that would keep it at the level set in 1939.28 With Churchill now having replaced Chamberlain as Prime Minister, one might expect that on this occasion Halifax would have received full support from No.10 or even been criticized for being too soft. The opposite was the case; Churchill, on the basis of advice from the Chiefs of Staff, was highly averse to taking any risks in Asia. The Prime Minister therefore overruled Halifax’s proposal and instead accepted an idea that had originated with Craigie under which Britain would close the Burma Road for three months during which time Japan would purportedly try to reach a fair peace with China. Halifax was not at all pleased at this turn of events. His belief was that the Japanese were bluffing and when he finally agreed to follow Churchill’s lead, he noted afterwards in his diary, ‘I think it may be necessary, but it is very distasteful to me to give way to Japanese threats.’29 In a number of private letters around this time, he also made the same point. For example, in a letter to 614

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his former Cabinet colleague, Sir Samuel Hoare, who had now been ‘exiled’ to the embassy in Spain, he observed: I wanted to call the Japanese bluff and tell them to go to the devil, but the Chiefs of Staff were greatly alarmed and Winston was not prepared to take the risk. The United States, as usual, said they would do nothing and Menzies [the Australian Prime Minister] was very much disturbed, especially as we told him we could no longer promise a fleet for Singapore.30

Thus when Halifax received letters of protest about recent Far Eastern policy, including one from the Archbishop of York, William Temple, all he could do was to answer with platitudes while silently sympathizing.31 Halifax’s distaste for the Burma Road agreement contrasts sharply with that of his deputy, Butler. While Halifax regretted the agreement’s terms might not have been necessary and regretted its terms, Butler believed, as did Craigie, that it might now be possible to turn over a new leaf in Anglo-Japanese relations. Accordingly, Butler took it upon himself to force the Far Eastern Department at the Foreign Office to look into the possibility of reaching a comprehensive settlement with Japan and to consult about this more widely in Whitehall. These eventually fruitless consultations and the worsening situation in East Asia with the arrival of the Konoe government in Tokyo soon put paid to this idea. In late September Halifax reviewed the situation and concluded that no settlement was possible as the only concessions that Britain could usefully make to Japan would interfere with the war effort against the Axis Powers.32 Indeed, Halifax was so frustrated by Japan’s recent behaviour that his inclination was to move in the opposite direction. On 28 September he wrote to Churchill recommending that Britain should give early warning of its intention to reopen the Burma Road and on 3 October this line of action was accepted by the Cabinet.33 From this point on British policy notably hardened. Over the next few months, Britain collaborated with the Dominions and the Dutch government-in-exile to cut raw material exports to Japan and also began preparations for top-level military talks with the United States. Halifax oversaw the start of this process but was soon on the move himself. In late December 1940 Churchill took the opportunity provided by the death of the British ambassador to the United States, Lord Lothian, to move Halifax to the United States as his successor, with Eden resuming his previous role as Foreign Secretary. AS AMBASSADOR AT WASHINGTON

Halifax’s exile did not mean that his connection with policy towards Japan was now broken, for clearly the Japanese loomed large as a 615

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threat to the Americans as well as to the British and there was a need for increasing cooperation to contain the potential menace in the east. Consequently, one of Halifax’s first tasks in Washington was to relay to President Roosevelt and his Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, the ‘straws in the wind’ that led Britain in February 1941 to believe that war with Japan might be imminent. He handled this delicate task with considerable skill, with the result that the United States proved to be more amenable than hitherto to consultations about Far Eastern policy. Indeed, Halifax was moved to write to Churchill on 21 February that, ‘I feel there has been a considerable movement of opinion in the direction of recognizing how closely the Far Eastern business may react upon our present efforts.’34 Despite his presence in Washington, Halifax played little role in the famous Hull-Nomura talks that dragged on from March to November in an always doomed attempt to reach a mutually acceptable American-Japanese settlement. On one occasion in late May, on instructions from the Foreign Office, he tried to elicit some information from Hull about their progress, only to find himself at the end of a tirade from the Secretary of State about Britain’s lack of trust in his judgement.35 Taking this lesson to heart, he was henceforth careful to express an interest in the talks only when Hull wished for consultation. For the rest of the year the most notable aspect of Halifax’s thinking was his sanguine attitude in regard to Japan’s future intentions, which probably reflected his years of service in the Foreign Office, which generally held a similar view. On 10 July, as news filtered through from intelligence sources about Japan’s latest intentions, he observed in his diary that the Japanese were ‘cautious people’, and that he was disinclined to think that they would any dramatic move.36 Further comments in the same vein were made in October and November, as tensions were clearly escalating. Indeed, on 19 November he bet his wife Dorothy that Japan would not be in the war by 1 January 1942.37 These doubts about Japan’s bellicosity did not mean, however, that he was averse to a negotiated settlement. When on 22 November he learned from Hull about the possibility of a modus vivendi proposal being put to the Japanese, he reported back to Eden his belief that, ‘if we can … get the Japanese out of Indo-China without giving away too much on the line of economic relief, we should be wise to take it.’38 This was not, though, the view adopted in London and over the next few days as Halifax made clear British misgivings he once again became an object of Hull’s ire. Despite Hull’s breaking off of the talks with Japanese on 26 November, Halifax continued to remain optimistic, noting on the following day, ‘It remains to be seen what they [the Japanese] do 616

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now. If I had to bet, I would bet nothing.’39 It was only on 4 December, when faced with evidence that the Japanese embassy in Washington was burning its ciphers, that he accepted that war might be a possibility.40 By this stage, this news was not as disturbing as it might once have been, for he was also privy to the most important information he could have – Roosevelt’s promise that the United States would stand by Britain in the face of a Japanese attack.41 ASSESSMENT

Despite Shigemitsu’s belief that Halifax was an orthodox Tory with pro-Japanese sympathies, it is clear from his record as Foreign Secretary that he was no such thing. Armed with a highly moral, if still pragmatic, view of world affairs, Halifax was naturally disinclined to take a sympathetic view of Japanese aggression in China. Thus, the common themes of his time at the Foreign Office are his efforts to do more for China and to try to take as tough a stand as circumstances allowed during crises with the Japanese. As such, any study of Halifax’s tenure as Foreign Secretary must raise doubts about whether Britain had a determined policy of appeasement towards Japan during these years. The fact that Halifax supported appeasement of Germany up until the autumn of 1938 should not be read necessarily as indicating that he felt likewise about Japan. If he did agree to compromises being made, these were usually short-term measures or ones of limited utility, such as the Craigie-Arita formula. The more important long-term trends during his years at the Foreign Office were disapproval of Japan’s intentions and the collection of the information about its economy that would later be used as the foundation of Britain’s sanctions policy. Indeed, if anything, Halifax’s diary entry entries from 1941 reveal not that he was an appeaser, but that he was too sanguine about the prospect of war with Japan. ENDNOTES 1

2

3 4

5

6

For a biography of Lord Halifax, see Andrew Roberts, The Holy Fox: A Life of Lord Halifax (Macmillan, London, 1991. Shigemitsu Mamoru, Gaiko Kaisoroku [Diplomatic Memoirs], (Mainichi Shimbun, Tokyo, 1978) p.192. Roberts, op. cit., pp. 128–9. Avon papers, Cadbury Research Library: Special Collections, University of Birmingham, AP20 38/46 Halifax to Eden 27 September 1937. Documents on British Foreign Policy, Second Series, vol.XXI doc.517 (F1788/78/10) Interdepartmental meeting 11 February 1938, pp. 659–60. Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia 1936–41 (London, Routledge, 1995) pp. 52–5. 617

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7

8

9

10 11 12 13

14 15 16 17 18 19 20

21 22 23

24 25 26

27 28

29

30

31 32

33

34

35 36

See Harvey diary entry 5 June 1938, in John Harvey (ed.), The Diplomatic Diaries of Oliver Harvey 1937–1940 (Collins, London, 1970) p. 149. The National Archives, Kew (TNA) CAB27/623 FP(36) 30th meeting 1 June 1938, and CAB23/94 31(38) Cabinet meeting 6 July 1938 and 32(38) Cabinet meeting 13 July 1938. TNA FO371/22044 F6706/2/10 Halifax minute undated [20 June 1938?]. TNA CAB23/94 32(38) Cabinet meeting 13 July 1938. TNA CAB23/96 57(38) Cabinet meeting 30 November 1938. Best, op. cit., pp. 65–6. TNA CAB24/284 CP76(39) ‘The Situation in the Far East’ Halifax memorandum 30 March 1939. Roberts, op. cit., pp. 142–63. TNA CAB23/99 32(39) Cabinet meeting 14 June 1939. TNA CAB27/625 FP(36) 52nd meeting 19 June 1939. TNA CAB2/9 CID 362nd meeting 26 June 1939. TNA FO371/23438 F6279/44/10 Halifax minute 6 July 1939. TNA CAB23/100 40(39) Cabinet meeting 2 August 1939. For Sansom’s views, see TNA BT11/694 CRT65/39 Ministerial meeting 31 July 1939 and FO371/23529 F8502/6457/10 Sansom minute 3 August 1939. TNA FO371/23529 F8502/6457/10 Halifax minute 11 August 1939. TNA PREM1/316 Halifax to Chamberlain 16 August 1939. For a clear statement of Halifax’s views, see TNA CAB99/1 DMV(39) 1st meeting 1 November 1939. TNA CAB65/1 WM2(39) War Cabinet meeting 4 September 1939. TNA CAB65/2 WM115(39) War Cabinet meeting 14 December 1939. For Butler, see Antony Best, ‘Lord Hankey, R.A. Butler and Japan’ in Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits vol.V, (Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2005) pp. 107–16. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, pp. 88–110. TNA CAB65/8 WM189(40) War Cabinet conclusions 1 July 1940 and WM194(40) War Cabinet conclusions 5 July 1940, Earl Halifax papers, Borthwick Institute (BI), University of York, Halifax/A7/8/4 diary entry 15 July 1940. For the comment about Japan’s bluffing see the diary entry for 6 July 1940. Halifax to Hoare 17 July 1940, cited in David Day, Menzies and Churchill at War (Angus & Robertson, London, 1985, p. 76. Halifax papers, TNA, FO800/310 Halifax to Temple 16 July 1940. TNA FO371/24710 F4772/193/61 ‘The Possibility of a General Far Eastern Settlement’ Sterndale-Bennett memorandum 25 September 1940. This was written following consultation with Halifax. TNA FO371/24670 F4646/43/10 Halifax to Churchill 25 September 1940, and CAB65/9 WM265(40) War Cabinet meeting 3 October 1940. TNA PREM4/27/9 Halifax (Washington) to Churchill 21 February 1941. TNA FO371/27908 F4430/86/23 Halifax to Eden 24 May 1941. Halifax papers, BI, Halifax/A7/8/19 secret diary entry 10 July 1941. 618

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37 38

39

40

41

Halifax papers, BI, Halifax/A7/8/9 diary entry 19 November 1941. TNA FO371/27912 F12654/86/23 Halifax to Eden 22 November 1941. Halifax papers, BI, Halifax/A7/8/19 secret diary entry 27 November 1941. Halifax papers, BI, Halifax/A7/8/19 secret diary entry 4 December 1941. TNA FO371/27912 F13114/86/23 Halifax to Eden 1 December 1941.

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Sir Anthony Eden (1897–1977): Managing the Challenge of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1936–1955 ANTONY BEST

INTRODUCTION

In the period between 1936 and 1955, when Anglo-Japanese relations suffered their deepest ever blows, Anthony Eden acted as the British Foreign Secretary on three different occasions (1935–1938, 1941–1945 and 1951–1955). While Eden is not often associated with policy towards Japan, the fact that he was in office for these years does beg the question of what attitude he took towards Britain’s former ally and contemporary adversary. Considering the events that he faced as Foreign Secretary over this period, it should come as no surprise that his view of Japan was cold at best and overtly hostile at worst. He was though a politician and had to approach the making of policy in a pragmatic manner that would benefit British interests. As such, in his last period in office he tried, despite the bitter legacy of the Pacific War, to rebuild relations with the Japanese in the realization 620

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that Britain could not afford, against the background of the Cold War, to leave Japan isolated lest it fall into the communist orbit. FIRST PERIOD AS FOREIGN SECRETARY, DECEMBER 1935-FEBRUARY 1938

Anthony Eden was appointed Foreign Secretary in December 1935 following the resignation of Sir Samuel Hoare over the signing of the Hoare-Laval Pact. He entered office with the reputation as being one of the Conservative Party’s leading experts on foreign policy. He had, after all, already acted as the private secretary to Austen Chamberlain in the 1920s, then been promoted to the post of the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for the years 1931 to 1934, and finally been elevated to the position of the Secretary of State for League of Nations Affairs from May 1935 until Hoare’s resignation. During this long apprenticeship, Eden had acquired a reputation as a keen enthusiast for the League and, accordingly, was seen by many of his peers and the public as someone who was perhaps more in tune with the spirit of the age than most of his elders.1 His elevation was therefore not particularly good news for Japan, which had, after all, been the first of the Great Powers to throw down the gauntlet to the League of Nations. However, up to the point at which he came to lead the Foreign Office Eden had had little to do with British policy towards East Asia and it was therefore not entirely clear where he stood on the Sino-Japanese divide, even if it be might be inferred that his sympathies would probably lie with the Chinese. Eden’s lack of direct exposure to the complexities of East Asian affairs would not though last long, for December 1935 witnessed two important events that affected the region. The first was the Japanese Army’s efforts to establish an autonomous regime in north China. Herein lay the immediate origins of the war that was to break out in China eighteen months later. The other event was the holding of the second London Naval Conference in which Britain and the United States forlornly attempted to persuade Japan to continue to accept limits on naval armaments. His first month in office thus presaged the difficulties to come. However, for the first half of 1936 it was to be the crisis in Ethiopia and the disturbance to the European states system created by Hitler’s reoccupation of the Rhineland that was to occupy most of Eden’s time and he accordingly did little in terms of shaping a new policy towards East Asia. Eden only began to deal with Japan on a day-to-day basis with the arrival in the summer of 1936 of the new Japanese ambassador, Yoshida Shigeru. The catalyst for this change came from Yoshida, who claimed that he had arrived in Britain with a remit to bring about a rapprochement in Anglo-Japanese relations. 621

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The result was that in the autumn the new ambassador held a number of meetings with Eden in which he advanced a variety of ideas about how the bilateral relationship might be put back on track. The problem for Eden, as his civil servants made clear to him, was that in these conversations Yoshida was largely speaking for himself rather than acting on instructions from the Gaimusho¯; a fact that was confirmed by the Foreign Office’s access to intercepts from the Japanese Tokyo-London telegram traffic.2 Despite this problem, Eden was sympathetic in general to the idea that relations with Japan needed to be improved. After all, following the Ethiopian crisis, the declaration of the Axis in October and the signing of the Anti-Comintern Pact in the following month, it was clear that Britain was faced with three potential enemies who were already in contact with each other, and thus any diplomacy that could reduce this threat was welcome. Moreover, Eden did not believe that Japan had been irretrievably lost to the Axis camp. For example, his reaction in November 1936 to the Anti-Comintern Pact was to note that news of the latter had received a cool reception in Japan and that accordingly the Foreign Office ‘must be active and not lament’.3 The result was that, while Yoshida’s initiative ran out of steam in the early months of 1937, Eden remained keen to see if something could be done. He was therefore encouraged by the arrival of the Hayashi government in February 1937 and the subsequent appointment of the moderate and pro-Western Satõ Naotake as Foreign Minister. Eden’s sense of optimism is evident in a Cabinet sub-committee meeting in May 1937 in which he stated that, while he recognized that there was no chance of going back to the alliance, he did believe that it might be possible in the new circumstances to arrange an agreement that ‘rested on a community of interests as regards the joint policy of England and Japan towards China’.4 In order to achieve this goal he was willing to look at a number of ways in which Britain could actively display its goodwill. One field, which he saw as important, was that of court relations. He was determined to ensure that the visit to Britain in the spring of 1937 by Prince Chichibu, who was to represent Japan at King George VI’s coronation, was an unqualified success. As such, he demanded that the prince, who was the only representative from a monarchical Great Power, should be at the top of the order of precedence for foreign guests and resisted all attempts by the minor European royals to plead their respective cases.5 Meanwhile, in the field of commercial and imperial policy he was a keen advocate of the idea of introducing an ‘open door’ for trade in Britain’s African colonies, as he believed that providing Japan with overseas markets for its flourishing export sector would reduce its need to expand its influence in China.6 In late May and early June of 1937 he brought this desire for a new agreement into the Imperial Conference that took place in London. 622

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Indeed, when discussing the plan put forward by Australian Prime Minister Joseph Lyons for a Pacific non-aggression pact, Eden indicated his approval with the telling words that, ‘It did … seem that the present was the psychological moment for a détente in the Far East.’7 There were though obstacles to achieving such an outcome. Within Whitehall, one problem was that, while Eden supported the idea of the ‘economic appeasement’ of Japan, many of his fellow Cabinet ministers felt the need for caution lest such concessions enrage the electorate at home and undermine the system of imperial preference.8 In addition, in the face of hostile questions from the Labour benches in the House of Commons, he was forced to give an assurance that any forthcoming talks with the Japanese would not involve the sacrificing of Chinese sovereignty or interests.9 Despite these parameters being placed on his work, by the start of July 1937 it had been agreed, through Yoshida, that talks should open with Japan in London in the next few days and a long Foreign Office memorandum, which had gone through a number of drafts since the winter, was prepared for circulation to the Cabinet.10 But at this late juncture, the most serious of all obstacles reared into view, for on 7 July fighting broke out between China and Japan at the Marco Polo Bridge south-west of Peking. At first Eden’s reaction to the Sino-Japanese War was to see if it was possible to work in parallel with the State Department to prevent the fighting from escalating into a full-scale conflict. However, by the end of July it was clear that the fighting was expanding in both its geographical scope and intensity. At this point both sides were escalating and thus it was not possible to single out one as the aggressor and the other as the victim. That position changed in August when the fighting spread to Shanghai, for, while the Chinese proved amenable to the British plan for both sides to pull back their forces, the Japanese rejected this proposal on the grounds that only they could defend their own nationals. At the same time the Japanese also announced their intention to blockade the Chinese coast, thus threatening the smooth operation of British trade, and a few days later some of their pilots shot at a car containing the British ambassador to China, Sir Hughe Knatchbull-Hugessen, almost killing him. As if these issues were not enough, the end of August and into September saw Japanese bombers unleashed on a number of Chinese cities, including not just Shanghai, but also Nanking and Canton. Not surprisingly, this series of events placed Japan in the dock of world and British opinion.11 Eden was therefore faced with a restive British public, and there were calls for the government to express its disapproval of Japan’s actions, perhaps even going as far as to introduce sanctions. In addition, he also received a number of letters from his Cabinet colleagues 623

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expressing their own sense of outrage and wondering what could be done to bring pressure to bear on Japan.12 Eden’s own reading of the situation was along similar lines. He clearly saw Japan as the aggressor and believed that Britain should do what it practically could to aid China. Indeed, on one occasion he noted that many believed ‘that Japan was going to her “1812” in China’ and that Britain’s role was to ‘do what we cautiously can to make it possible’.13 His inclination in this regard was to work for cooperation with the United States and in this he was greatly encouraged by Roosevelt’s ‘quarantine speech’ of 5 October, which appeared to indicate that there was a limit to American patience with Japan. His efforts to move in this direction were, however, frustrated by the Roosevelt’s administration’s frustrating tendency of never living up to its rhetoric and the lack of backing he received at home from the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain. Thus, although Eden represented Britain at the Brussels Conference of the Nine-Power Treaty signatories in November 1937, nothing came of this venture. Moreover, at the end of the year his hopes were once again raised and then dashed by Roosevelt’s musings on the need for an Anglo-American naval demonstration against Japan. With the complicated situation in Europe meaning that the Royal Navy could not afford to take unilateral action against Japan, Eden was therefore limited to arguing that Britain should do what it could to assist China in material terms. At a meeting of 9 February 1938 he accordingly won agreement for the idea that Britain should finance a road linking China with Burma. He was not, though, able to persuade the Treasury to agree to provide a currency loan to China, as it was felt that this might be too provocative a move.14 SECOND PERIOD AS FOREIGN SECRETARY: JANUARY 1941 TO JULY 1945

As is well known, the month of February 1938 saw Eden’s resignation as Foreign Secretary due primarily to his disagreement with Chamberlain about the latter’s desire to engage in the appeasement of Italy. For the next three years, both out of and in office, Eden’s career did not bring him into much contact with Japan, and there is little evidence that he was much concerned about affairs in the east. However, in January 1941, following Churchill’s decision to send the Foreign Secretary, Lord Halifax, to Washington as the new British ambassador, Eden once again assumed responsibility for the Foreign Office. He did so, of course, at a very tense time for AngloJapanese relations, as Japan was now seeking to use the eclipse of the Western colonial powers to advance its interests in South-East Asia.15 Indeed, almost immediately on re-entering office he was faced 624

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in early February with rumours that Japan, prompted by Germany, might be about to launch a strike against Singapore. Despite concern about Japan’s intentions, Eden was not very much involved in the day-to-day running of policy towards Japan. His attention was taken up by events in North Africa and the Balkans, to which areas he undertook a month-long visit in the late winter of 1941. Instead, he left the job of looking after Japan in the hands of his Parliamentary Under-Secretary, R.A. Butler, who had also acted in this capacity during Halifax’s tenure at the Foreign Office.16 From July 1941, however, with Butler having moved on to a post in the Cabinet and with Japan threatening to occupy southern Indochina, Eden had to pay closer attention to events in the East. One of his key considerations, as had been the case in the autumn of 1937, was that Britain should stay in close contact with the United States. This was necessary not just for the defence of British interests against Japan, but also because of the broader need to do nothing that might imperil American aid to the war effort in Europe, as symbolized by the Lend-Lease scheme. When therefore in July 1941 he learnt that the United States intended to go as far as introducing an oil embargo against Japan, he argued to the Cabinet that Britain had to follow suit even if felt that this was too provocative to move.17 This desire to stay in step with the Americans also influenced the cautious attitude that he and his officials took towards the Hull-Nomura talks that intermittently took place in Washington from the spring of 1941, which can be summed up as only offering opinions when invited to do so. The British ambassador to Japan, Sir Robert Craigie, felt very differently about these talks. He believed in the autumn of 1941 that the Japanese wanted a settlement and that if none was forthcoming they were prepared to go to war. He therefore argued that Britain should put pressure on the State Department to be more open with the Japanese. Eden declined to follow this advice, fearing that any such intervention would prove unwelcome and unproductive.18 Underlying Eden’s view of affairs was also the belief that Japan’s aggression was essentially based on a policy of bluff, which was an impression that he, in part, obtained from Britain’s ability to read the main Japanese diplomatic cypher. In one note that he sent to Churchill in September 1941 he even went as far as referring to Japan as ‘this probably over-valued military power’.19 Based on this reading of Japan, his contention was that the latter could be deterred from entering the war if Britain and the other interested powers made clear their intention to defend their interests. Most importantly this meant publicly demonstrating their collective willingness to reinforce their military and naval power in South-East Asia and the Pacific. His response therefore in mid-October 1941 to the fall of the Konoe Cabinet was to argue to Churchill that the time had come to revive 625

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an idea that had been first mooted two months earlier of sending a number of capital ships to the region.20 This was the germ of the fateful decision to dispatch HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse to Singapore. In the final days of peace, Eden continued to take a relatively hardline towards Japan. While Churchill was initially enthused about the ‘modus vivendi’ proposal that the Japanese made to the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, in late November, Eden was more circumspect and, on the advice of his officials, instructed Halifax in Washington to tell the State Department that he did not think Japan’s scheme went far enough. He insisted that if Japan meant to withdraw from southern Indochina then it could not merely remove its forces from Saigon to the north of the country but had to withdraw them completely so that its garrison in Tonkin returned to its preJuly level. In addition, he insisted that Britain and the United States should only give minimal economic concessions in return. Moreover, it appears from Eden’s diary that he played a crucial role in the dispatching of Churchill’s note to Roosevelt on 26 November in which the Prime Minister expressed his concern about the effect that any deal might have on Chinese morale.21 Eden thus continued to the last to underestimate the likelihood and impact of Japan’s entry into the Second World War, but in this he was hardly alone. He was also not alone in another way, namely that his response to the news that Japan had attacked after all was not to engage in pained introspection, but rather to feel that Britain’s victory was assured for the Americans were now finally in the war, for this was Churchill’s reaction too.22 Once the war began day-to-day policy towards Japan rested primarily with the service departments and the Foreign Office retreated into the background. The major role that Eden was to play over the next three and a half years was discussing with the United States and other allied nations broad strategic issues on how to pursue the war, but not to reflect much on Japan itself. He did, though, have one important public responsibility; he was the main figure who revealed to the British public what was known about the condition of British prisoners-of-war (POW) in Japanese custody. His first statement to Parliament in this regard came in March 1942 when he publicized the atrocities that had been committed following the fall of Hong Kong. He did not mince his words, but rather stated that the evidence before him demonstrated that, ‘The Japanese claim that their forces are animated by a lofty code of chivalry, Bushido, is a nauseating hypocrisy.’23 In January 1944 he made a further statement on the position of the POWs in South-East Asia, revealing on this occasion that the Japanese had engaged in large-scale ill-treatment of the men, including using some of them as forced labour on the Burma 626

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Railway.24 This experience was hardly likely to have endeared the Japanese to him, and it is probable that the loss of his son Simon, an RAF pilot, missing in action over Burma in the summer of 1945, only reinforced this sentiment. THIRD PERIOD AS FOREIGN SECRETARY: OCTOBER 1951 TO APRIL 1955

In July 1945 Eden left government after the general election of that month and remained in opposition until the Conservative victory over Labour in October 1951 at which point he returned to the Foreign Office. Much, of course, had changed in the interim. In regard to Japan, it had undergone the Allied occupation and had only recently, in September, taken its first major step towards the regaining of its sovereignty at the San Francisco peace conference. In the run-up to the signing of the peace treaty the two main political parties in Britain had taken a broadly bipartisan approach towards Japan. This involved agreeing with the United States on most of the essential issues, such as limited Japanese rearmament, but arguing for some protection of British trade, compensation for POWs, and for Japan to be able to decide its own future course over relations with China. The latter point was important because in January 1950 the Labour government had decided, in stark contrast to American policy, to recognize the newly established People’s Republic of China (PRC) and break off all links with the rump Kuomintang (KMT) regime in Taiwan.25 It was this issue of the future of Sino-Japanese relations that was the first to arrive on Eden’s desk on his return to office. In December, under pressure from the Senate, the American official responsible for the peace treaty, John Foster Dulles, arranged for the Japanese Prime Minister, Yoshida Shigeru, to send him a letter in which he committed Japan to recognizing the KMT government. Dulles did this without consulting the Foreign Office, and Eden naturally reacted with fury once this subterfuge was revealed. Eden’s anger arose primarily from the fact that he had been misled rather than that Japan had been forced to take sides between the two Chinas.26 In the years to come he largely followed the American lead in regard to Japan. What this meant in policy terms is that he accepted the argument that Japan was an important player in the Cold War in East Asia and that Britain should cooperate with the United States in ensuring that it remained in the ‘free world’ camp. In practice this meant that he became an advocate within both Britain and the Commonwealth of the need for Japanese rearmament. In addition, he argued within the British government for a relatively lenient policy to be adopted towards the revival of Japan’s overseas trade on the 627

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grounds that its prosperity would help to keep it out of the Soviet orbit. This latter line was not, however, an easy one to hold, for British public opinion was clearly not happy at the prospect of jobs being lost in the textile sector in order to accommodate exports from a former wartime enemy. The public controversy over this issue peaked in February 1954 when the latest Sterling Payments Agreement, which regulated trade between the Sterling Area and Japan, came before the House of Commons and led to heated criticism of the government from both the opposition benches and Conservatives from constituencies in Lancashire and other affected areas.27 In the end the Government won the debate, but the fact that this issue had caused such a furore led Eden to put before the Cabinet a memorandum that laid out the Foreign Office’s thinking on Japan. This document noted the vital importance of keeping Japan onside and argued that all government policy towards the country should be framed with that goal in mind. Moreover, it argued that an effort should be made to re-educate the public in order to reduce its natural disinclination to trust the Japanese.28 The Cabinet agreed to accept this recommendation, but in the months that followed Eden found it difficult to make his colleagues live up to their promise.29 In part, it was the Japanese government itself who created difficulties, for their failure in the summer of 1954 to agree on a sum to be paid as reparations to the POWs did Japan no favours. In addition, however, there was the problem that a new election was looming on the horizon and that no ruling party could afford to stand on a platform of sacrificing British jobs to the Japanese. Thus, while Eden did his level-best in the autumn and winter of 1954–1955 to argue against the Board of Trade’s policy of not extending full tariff privileges to Japan when Japan entered the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (GATT) in 1955, he did not prevail.30 Eden’s willingness to take a relatively moderate line towards Japan does not mean, however, that he saw the country through rosetinted spectacles or believed that it had made amends for its wartime behaviour. In a letter that he sent to Malcolm MacDonald, the Commissioner-General for South-East Asia, in May 1952 approving the latter’s idea of visiting Japan, he did so with the words, ‘It is not easy to like the Japanese, but clearly they count for a great deal and will count for more.’31 His attitude towards the Japanese in regard to court relations between the two countries also showed that he was wary of showing too welcoming a face. When in 1952 some of his officials began to speculate about the need to restore the Emperor to the Order of the Garter, he abruptly intervened, informing his civil servants that ‘I think all this is going a good deal too fast … I feel pretty sure that … the Emperor’s Garter restoration [would be] 628

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resented. Cabinet would have to see.’32 In addition, in contrast to his position in 1937, he argued in 1953 that the Japanese should be dropped down the order of precedence at Queen Elizabeth II’s coronation by stipulating that only royal families linked to the monarch through blood ties should receive special treatment.33 CONCLUSION

For a man who was at the head of the Foreign Office for so many of the dramatic events that shaped Anglo-Japanese relations in the mid-twentieth century, Anthony Eden has left relatively little trace of his views of Japan. The reality of the situation was that he had so many other issues to address and that East Asia was often no more than a distraction to him compared to Europe and the Middle East. What does emerge from the records is that he was generally sceptical about Japan. One can, for example, find no trace in his thoughts of the yearning for the days of the Anglo-Japanese alliance that one sees in contemporaries such as R.A. Butler. Eden was aware that Japan, even if it was of little interest to him, was an important player in international politics and in general he followed a policy of trying to cultivate good relations in the cause of regional stability and keeping the Japanese away from enemy camps. The only time he showed real enthusiasm about policy was in the early days of the Sino-Japanese War when, within the bounds of practicality, he argued that Britain should do all it could to support China and thus erode Japan’s power. Eden thus was no friend to Japan, even though he was forced so many times to adjudicate on Anglo-Japanese relations. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5 6 7

8

9

10

The best biography of Eden is David Dutton, Anthony Eden: A Life and Reputation (Edward Arnold, London, 1997). Antony Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor: Avoiding War in East Asia, 1936–41 (Routledge, London, 1995) p. 23. The National Archives, Kew (TNA) FO371/20285 F7223/303/23 Eden minute 29 November 1936. TNA CAB16/181 DP(P) Defence Plans (Policy) Sub-committee meeting 2nd meeting 11 May 1937. TNA FO372/3234 T6849/1/379 Bland minute 30 April 1937. TNA FO371/21246 W7323/393/98 Eden minute 24 April 1937. TNA CAB32/128 E(PD) (37) Imperial Conference 11th meeting 2 June 1937. TNA CAB27/622 FP(36) Foreign Policy Cabinet Sub-committee 12th meeting 11 June 1937. Hansard, 5th series, House of Commons (HC), vol.325, 25 June 1937 cc.1601–2. Best, op. cit., pp. 31–2.

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11 12 13

14 15

16

17 18 19

20

21 22

23 24 25

26

27 28

29 30 31 32

33

Ibid, p. 39. Ibid, p. 42. Documents on British Foreign Policy, series two, volume XXI, doc.326, F8982/9/10 Eden minute 7 November 1937, p. 418 footnote 3. Best, op.cit., p.52. Antony Best, ‘Britain and the February 1941 War Scare in East Asia’, Diplomacy and Statecraft, 1994, vol.5, no.3, pp. 642–65. See Antony Best, ‘Lord Hankey, R.A. Butler and Japan’ in Hugh Cortazzi, (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Vol.V, (Global Oriental, Folkestone, 2005) pp. 107–16. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, p. 164. Ibid., pp. 172–3. TNA FO371/27981 F9615/1299/23 Eden to Churchill 12 September 1941. TNA FO371/27096 F10942/33/23 Eden to Churchill 16 October 1941. Best, Britain, Japan and Pearl Harbor, pp. 182–3. Lord Avon, Memoirs: The Reckoning (London, Cassell, 1965) pp. 285–6, and Winston S. Churchill, The Second World War: The Grand Alliance (Book Club Asoocates, London, 1985) p. 539. Hansard, 5th series, HC, vol.378, 10 March 1942, c.932. Hansard, 5th series, HC, vol.396, 28 January 1944, cc.1029–33. For British policy towards the peace treaty, see Peter Lowe, ‘Uneasy Adjustment, 1945–58’, in Yoichi Kibata and Ian Nish (eds), The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000, vol. 2, The Political-Diplomatic Dimension, 1931–2000 (2000) pp. 181–6. For the ‘Yoshida letter’ crisis, see Noriko Yokoi, Japan’s Postwar Economic Recovery and Anglo-Japanese Relations 1948–1962 (London: RoutledgeCurzon, 2003) pp. 43–6. Ibid, p. 95. TNA CAB129/66 C(54)92 ‘British Policy Towards Japan’ Eden memorandum 8 March 1954. Yokoi, op. cit., p. 96. Ibid, pp. 110–13. TNA FO800/781 Eden to MacDonald 23 May 1952 no.FE/52/33. TNA FO372/7133 TD10051/2 Eden minute undated [November 1952]. TNA CAB129/59 CP(53)61 ‘Coronation of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II: Precedence of Special Representatives from Foreign States’ Eden memorandum 16 February 1953.

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Ernest Bevin (1881–1951) and British Policies towards Occupied Japan, 1945–1952 ROGER BUCKLEY

INTRODUCTION Mr Bevin has not, in directing foreign affairs, been ruled by the party, but has been trying to do what he thought was right in the great stream of history, of which he had a deep consciousness. (Sir Oliver Franks to Secretary of State Dean Acheson1)

Ernest (better known as Ernie) Bevin (1881–1951) remains the first and only post-war British foreign minister with substantial claims to the title of statesman. His achievements are widely recognized and stand in contrast with both the decidedly greyer, smoother personalities of the majority of his successors and the ice-cold reality of the ever diminishing assets at their command. Bevin’s lengthy years in office mark an attempt to protect and promote the concept of Britain as a great power with substantial global political, strategic and economic interests. Central to Bevin’s stance was the determination that Britain should be seen as 631

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a victor nation that could stand up to and deal from a position of strength, though rarely full equality, with the United States and the Soviet Union. Yet even as the Labour government gained power at what proved to be an unexpectedly swift end to the war in the AsiaPacific, American commentators were confidently predicting that it was ‘clear, first of all, that there are now only two nations – America and Russia – of really predominant power. They alone possess the resources to wage war on a global scale... most of the lesser nations are now being drawn by a sort of Law of Political Gravity into the orbits of one or the other of the two Super-Powers.’2 The overwhelming importance of preparing appropriate policy in the deteriorating atmosphere of what was already being defined as ‘an armed truce’ and would soon be dubbed the Cold War inevitably left the foreign secretary with relatively little time to supervise the secondary field of Japanese business. THE OCCUPATION OF JAPAN – BRITISH POLICY AND THE AUSTRALIAN DIMENSION

British occupation policy was handled by Bevin’s Foreign Office officials. When challenges from the Board of Trade, the Treasury and the Dominions Office (later renamed the Commonwealth Relations Office) emerged these were met and generally rebuffed as likely to jeopardize the overall thrust of British policy. The Foreign Office reckoned it knew best and was able to count on the support of its experienced master in cabinet and through his substantial influence in the Labour party and his decades-long domination within the trade union movement to maintain control. Given the unenviable succession of international crises that Bevin struggled with during his tenure from 1945 to 1951 this was the only possible working arrangement. Bevin had to wrestle – the list is almost endless – with Greece, Berlin, German rearmament, Palestine, Egypt, the birth of NATO and finally Korea, to say nothing of bitter antagonism from Moscow and uncertainties over the extent of Washington’s commitment to Europe. By contrast business over occupied Japan was handled relatively smoothly and silently by officials keen both to rebuff rival departments and conscious that public opinion was ever wary of even hints of possible reconciliation with Tokyo. Since Bevin rarely put his thoughts on paper (when he did the resultant hand writing might charitably be described as a scrawl that required careful translation by his minions) it is only possible to gain glimpses of what he may have intended for Japan. Central to his views on how Japan should be handled appears to have been, first, a determination that no other power, aside obviously from the United States, should gain a greater role than that claimed by Britain and, 632

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second, that nothing be done to damage the overriding importance of the wider Anglo-American international relationship. Any positive assessment of how well Bevin and the Foreign Office managed to follow these guidelines needs, however, to recall the generally tense half decade of smouldering ties with Australia and the failure to establish a less frigid atmosphere with Tokyo. Ministers from the Attlee years (and long after) refused to explain to the wider public at home that the constant harking back on pre-war fears of Japanese competition and wartime brutalities was only part of the story. By failing to suggest why post-war attitudes needed also to incorporate the more positive shifts associated with the major reforms of the occupation, the government and much of Fleet Street lessened the prospect of genuine reconciliation in some indeterminate future. Britain was associated to a degree with the establishment of new institutions and new behaviour during MacArthur’s occupation, but the public was rarely encouraged to reckon with Japan’s new deal. It was only selective injustices of the past that seemingly mattered – Japan would never change its spots. Talk of Britain’s ‘Forgotten Armies’ in South East Asia needs to be balanced by long-remembered improper trading practices and POW scars. Bevin’s personal interventions concerned the big picture. He took no more than casual note of specific constitutional or socio-economic programmes for occupied Japan. When he did get involved, at the very outset in the autumn of 1945 and again towards what would become the endgame, his interest was in seeing how he could protect Britain’s corner as it negotiated at the highest level with the other Pacific powers. Bevin played a considerable role in both the discussions over the initial control arrangements for Japan and in pressing for a belated Japanese peace settlement. In both instances his concerns were with regional and global factors that carried weight and had important consequences for Britain and its rivals. It was the international context that mattered. Once Bevin was appointed, in a last minute change of plan that had Attlee switching round Hugh Dalton, intended for the Foreign Office, and Bevin, almost made chancellor of the exchequer, in order to keep Bevin and his arch-rival Herbert Morrison out of each other’s hair on the domestic front, the new foreign secretary was faced with what to do over Japan. The surrender and early days of the occupation had caught Whitehall out both through a general lack of information on what the United States had long been preparing for the post-surrender period and more importantly by the lack of clarity on British policy. As a result Bevin and his advisors had to struggle to make up for lost time on answering two key issues: what should be the roles of the powers in running the occupation and what British military commitment should or should not be made to the overall venture. 633

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Yet the United States, by having largely won the war in the AsiaPacific and by taking the surrender of Imperial Japan through a massive show of naval strength in Tokyo bay, had effectively pre-empted moves by its Allies to demand more than a thin slice of the pie. What worried Bevin was less the position of the United States, quickly confirmed by British consent to General MacArthur’s appointment as vice-regal supreme commander for Japan, than how to fend off other nations equally eager to stake out claims to a share in the occupation. By 10 September 1945 Bevin was already noting that it was ‘important that we should not play a lesser part in the control of Japan than Russia and China, as otherwise our prestige and standing as one of the Big Four Powers might suffer damage’.3 This would prove heavy going and it was only after months of strenuous negotiations at the highest international level that a rough and ready compromise was achieved. The outcome required a nominal reduction in what had begun as an American monopoly of power in August-September 1945 through the eventual establishment of two international supervisory bodies, the Far Eastern Commission due to meet in Washington DC, and the merely advisory Allied Council for Japan (ACJ) that was to be based in Tokyo. In all this Bevin found he had to fight on two fronts. The opposition of the Soviet Union to the United States and Britain can hardly be said to have come as much of a surprise, but differences within the Pacific Commonwealth revealed major challenges that would long persist with regard to what might be termed a ‘friendly foe’ for British officials involved with the occupation. From the outset Bevin and the Foreign Office had also to row along with the United States and tread carefully when it came to offering criticism of what frequently turned out to be American unilateralism – issues of greater import beyond Japan were judged to demand a softly-softly approach to the occupation.4 British policy towards post-surrender Japan clearly faced constraints. Churchill might sound off about American deviousness in not having come clean over what its ambitious planners had in mind for the occupation but Bevin and his officials had to work within current realities. Diplomats attached to the UK Liaison Mission in Tokyo did not need to be instructed to develop cordial relations with MacArthur and his headquarters; this was a given that would only be risked at rare moments over the next six years. The paramount importance of the United States to overall British foreign policy was not to be jeopardized by local Anglo-American differences other than on rare occasions during the occupation. To underline the importance of this connection the wartime procedure of appointing a prime ministerial representative to General MacArthur was continued with General Sir Charles Gairdner working ably in that position until 1948. SCAP’s 634

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dealings with Sir Alvary Gascoigne, who was appointed as Gairdner’s successor with the rank of ambassador, were also initially cordial, though this changed later with MacArthur ‘displaying fits of temper’ as he found fewer effective Allied constraints on his behaviour. In Gascoigne’s final report of February 1951, MacArthur was seen for all of his dictatorial ways to have achieved a great deal with an increasingly self-confident Japan about to gain a non-restrictive peace and reckoned at least potentially to be ‘a most useful ally’ at ‘a time of world crisis’. While the Allied control arrangements were slowly being worked out the cabinet was faced also with a strong challenge from Australia on a host of political and military issues. Rather perhaps to their surprise Bevin and his officials found that Australia was determined to gain both a more substantial say on occupation affairs and a wider wish to represent the Pacific Commonwealth in Japan and beyond. Although these differences were partly papered over by arrangements whereby Australia represented the Commonwealth on the ACJ and an Australian general headed what was to become known as the British Commonwealth Occupation Force (BCOF) the underlying competition between London and Canberra persisted. No clear-cut resolution of differences from the initial surrender and control processes to the final peace settlements proved possible. By 1946 the idea of British leadership of the Commonwealth in the region was under severe challenge, while the initialling of the ANZUS pact in 1951 that saw both Australia and New Zealand relying on Washington for future security to the exclusion of Britain, finally buried for good the idea that London had much to offer to the politics and the defence of the south Pacific. British military failures in the early days of the Asia-Pacific War and the key role played by the United States in the gradual advance of MacArthur from his Melbourne headquarters to Tokyo, in addition to challenging speeches, such as the one made by Australia’s Minister for External Affairs Vere Evatt to an audience in California in March 1945, ought to have provided warning bells aplenty that major change could not be long delayed.5 Given these tensions with Canberra, Bevin had little choice but to take a personal interest in Commonwealth affairs for occupied Japan and the region. Clearly Britain was in retreat, though attempts to maintain its position in Japan were more successful than some have suggested. Australia did not always get things its own way, thanks both to the cultivation of cordial personal relations between senior British officials and MacArthur and through a less than whole-hearted welcome for Australian claims within SCAP GHQ, The British position in Japan, working to disown the reputation that MacMahon Ball, the somewhat egocentric Australian representing the Commonwealth on the Allied Council for Japan, had acquired, rightly or wrongly, may 635

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also have been assisted somewhat fortuitously by a rather hesitant recognition by officials within SCAP of the extent of Australia’s role. For example, American organization charts depicting how the occupation was to be run had the Commonwealth’s seat on the Allied Council for Japan being designated as in British rather than Australian hands. Britain may not have been alone in only slowly adjusting to what Canberra at least hoped would be new realities in this sphere. Later clues from the Dean Acheson papers suggest that Truman’s secretary of state too could be taken aback to hear claims from Evatt that Australia should always be present when the United States discussed Japanese peace proposals and far eastern affairs with interested parties in Washington. Acheson explained politely but firmly to the Australian ambassador that Evatt’s insistence was ‘a most surprising one, and that I was not at all sure that I understood it’. Acheson told a ‘somewhat apologetic’ Norman Makin, the Australian ambassador in Washington, that his master should be ‘under no illusion about the matter but to understand that we would continue to proceed as we had’. The United States would not shift from its existing view that it ‘must, of course, continue to have the most complete freedom to discuss these and other matters with other Governments’.6 No special relationship here. The control arrangements agreed to at the Moscow conference reflected both Bevin’s wish to gain a position of some strength for Britain, while at least outwardly working to ensure that Australia too had a voice in how the occupation might be overseen. The eventual Moscow deal saw an acknowledgment by the Truman administration that it could not have affairs entirely its own way, though it was highly reluctant to grant anything that might give the Soviet Union an opening to do mischief in Tokyo. (The number of personnel formally attached to the USSR’s mission was extensive, thanks to the fact that Moscow had been neutral until the fag end of the AsiaPacific War thus allowing its former embassy staff to stay on in Japan as the occupation began.) The difficulty, of course, from the British point of view was how to agree with the sidelining of the Russians, while still pressing simultaneously for a voice for London that would place it above all other Allied powers both through formal institutional arrangements and, more importantly, via informal contacts with MacArthur and SCAP GHQ. Bevin’s policy concerns remained to work for strong AngloAmerican ties internationally and resist attempts by parties on all sides who wished to downgrade the global position of post-war Britain with its claims to great power status. Japan was one area where this strategy generally worked out. Personal dealings with key American figures certainly helped in this regard. Secretary of State Dean Acheson, for example, treated Sir Oliver Franks as a conduit for 636

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personal communications with Bevin that on occasion were sent outside official lines. There was far less success though in dealings with Canberra. Hints of the problems appear even before Japan’s surrender when Alanbrooke, if his diaries are any guide, spoke of plans for what he called ‘our Imperial Expedition for the invasion of Japan with a corps of 1 British, 1 Canadian and I Australian Division’.7 Following Japan’s surrender, however, he noted in the penultimate entry to his massive diaries that on 30 August: ‘This morning we had representatives from the Dominion Office in whilst we discussed Australia’s latest claim to run an occupational force quite separate from ours in Japan. We were recommending another attempt to try and get Australia to join with our Commonwealth united force. They are trying to run out on their own. Dominion Office are not showing much guts in returning to the attack.’8 PEACE TREATY WITH JAPAN

Bevin’s main personal initiatives for Japan concerns the linked issues of Commonwealth cooperation and the road to the peace conference that soon after his death would be formalized at San Francisco. He was already seriously ill by 1949 but made substantial efforts to attend, discuss and gain approval for a joint Commonwealth approach, while working at the same time with Secretary Acheson to rekindle a peace process that MacArthur, for one, had first urged upon his nominal masters in 1947 in a very public, on-the-record, press conference in Tokyo. In all this Bevin wished to see Japan within an American-led regional order – there was already much talk in the State Department and the Foreign Office of an ‘arc’ stretching from Hokkaido to South East Asia and a ‘line’ from California to Tokyo. Bevin took a personal role in working with and around Australia, although his influence on the United States over the possibility of a Japanese peace was harder going. This proved to be a slow and tortuous affair thanks both to the situation in East Asia where it was clear long before 1949 that the Communists in China were eventually going to win power and because of skirmishes within the American bureaucracy over how best to aim for a pro-Western Japan and yet maintain an American military presence in the post-occupation era. The temptation was to continue to postpone any decision over peace until the China scene was played out and to underline that any agreement on a peace treaty with Tokyo simply did not exist as long as the Soviet Union insisted on Allied unanimity on the provisions of the treaty by all the powers nominally involved in the occupation. Resolving issues such as the substantial Pentagon-State Department differences and the near certainty of a Soviet veto appeared to leave the situation in limbo. The reformist vein of MacArthur’s rule in 637

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Japan had ended by 1948 but the occupation would have to continue until there was resolution on what to do next. It was a recipe for drift. The delay in working towards an agreed approach by the Truman administration towards the ending of the occupation had repercussions on Bevin’s dealings with the Commonwealth. Secretary Acheson was well aware that hopes of a joint Anglo-American front would be impaired by an inability to present at least the outlines of probable US peace policies to Canberra. The difficulties that this presented to Bevin were fully recognized by Acheson who, while wanting Britain to be on-side, appreciated too ‘the undesirability of Mr Bevin becoming at the Ceylon Conference the spokesman of the American point of view’.9 Despite his doctor’s advice Bevin was determined to attend the Colombo Commonwealth conference of January 1951. Since it was judged too risky for Bevin to fly, he went slowly by sea to recuperate. The journey certainly did him good, though not without its share of setbacks when he overdid the brandy on his now less than robust frame. Once there he alternated bouts of dozing at the sessions with sharp professorial interventions. His biographer sees Bevin’s promptings over the beginnings of economic and technological cooperation in the region that would lead shortly to the Colombo Plan as being comparable to his role in the formation of the Marshall Plan for Western Europe. (In truth, much of the actual financing of the Colombo Plan would come from first American and later Japanese sources; an indication of the economic difficulties that beset all British governments for much of the initial post-war decades.) British earlier involvement on the ground centred on military contributions to BCOF, some reform initiatives of varying degrees of success, a role in the International Military Tribunal for the Far East and important trade and financial agreements that were initialled at the very end of the occupation. In most of these instances Bevin played little or no role, either because he was not foreign secretary at the time or through the inevitable delegation of business. When he did hold a personal interest, however, he could have an impact on British approaches to the Commonwealth and the issue of belated peace terms for Japan. Yet this should not be exaggerated as Bevin hoped for more unity than proved possible with Australia, at least in the 1945–1947 period, and his efforts to galvanize the Truman administration over terminating the occupation were only a part of a campaign led by the State Department. The last months of Bevin’s tenure at the Foreign Office were a disappointment. Sir Oliver Franks in a blunt discussion with Dean Acheson in April 1951 stated that ‘the Foreign Office had been practically leaderless’ as a result of Bevin’s final illness and a series 638

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of almost weekly crises that included both the question of German rearmament and the highly divisive issue of the recognition of Communist China. Franks also felt that both the State Department and the Foreign Office had been guilty of digging in their heels over their own Japanese peace treaty drafts and that ‘pride of authorship’ was part of the problem. Acheson’s record of the meeting reports Franks as saying that ‘So far as British policy was concerned, he thought it was a matter of their not having any.’10 Over Japan, Acheson stressed to Ambassador Franks that ‘only American and Japanese power – the latter potential – existed in the Far East. Japan was now a primary end in itself. We had to move and move fast. We could not be paralyzed by looking only at all the difficulties.’11 Franks is said then to have ‘agreed and thought that there would be no difficulty in London.’12 All roads to Tokyo were apparently to be via Washington. BEVIN’S FAILURES

In addition, it may be useful to look at areas where Bevin failed. This can tell us something both about the limits of London’s influence vis-à-vis the United States and also over the highly controversial debate on the lack of what would later be termed an industrial policy for post-war Britain. The contrast between Britain’s swift slippage down the economic league tables and the continuingly impressive performances of Germany and Japan, at least until recently, has its origins over what the Attlee government did and did not attempt to do with regard to domestic reconstruction and foreign policy after 1945. Bevin’s trade union background led him to press for detailed reform legislation in occupied Japan that would have substantially altered the relative power of unions against management at a time of bitter struggles between the two sides. His officials pressed MacArthur’s staff to give a far larger role to Japan’s large and influential leftwing public sector unions than SCAP GHQ was prepared to grant with the result that the right to strike of these newly formed and militant unions was forbidden.13 The British model did not carry the day, though Bevin could at least point to his experiment of introducing labour attachés to the UK Liaison Mission in Tokyo and selected other British posts overseas. A wider flaw concerns the unwillingness of Bevin and the cabinet in general to consider some measure of protection during the stopstart, protracted negotiations over the peace treaty that could have been beneficial to a number of British industries. What is surprising is that the extensive lobbying from the textile, shipbuilding and pottery sectors was met with such a generally unsympathetic response from a government that relied heavily on the finance and votes of 639

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its northern constituents. The explanations for this rejection appear to have been three-fold: none of the three industries was subject to nationalization, the economic situation for each particular sector was not judged to be particularly dire as post-war reconstruction got underway and lastly the Foreign Office emphasized that the United States would be unlikely to agree since it was determined to help restore the Japanese economy as a key part of its Cold War strategy for East Asia. All three factors left important British industries out in the cold. Of course it is impossible to demonstrate that both greater domestic state-private intervention by the Attlee government would have necessarily worked to rebuild out of date factories and encourage more modern work practices or that competition from a revitalized Japan could have been met any more successfully but, to give one illustration of the speed of Tokyo’s own more cooperative policies, its shipbuilding industry would become the largest in the world by as early as 1956. Even the liberal trade practices of the United States during the initial post-San Francisco years would gradually be bent, particularly after Richard Nixon used the southern strategy behind his 1968 presidential campaign to call for restrictions on Japanese textile exports.14 Britain’s contribution to BCOF fails on a host of accounts. If it was judged to be politically necessary to underline the nation’s war efforts in the defeat of Imperial Japan then its deployment in the distant Chugoku-Shikoku regions can hardly be said to have greatly underlined any such contribution, while the fact that its components were withdrawn so quickly indicates a lack of real commitment to the intended task. BCOF in the last resort did little to enhance British prestige; neither SCAP GHQ nor other Allies could take it too seriously. To arrive late on the scene and disappear so rapidly impressed few observers. At least some of the Foreign Office’s BCOF-watchers were sceptical from the outset, claiming that the troops had little to do and noting like everyone else that its command was in Australian hands, though Bevin, of course, went along with his cabinet colleagues in agreeing to the despatch of British ground and air contingents to Japan. TRADING LINKS

One, perhaps, indirect linkage to BCOF’s political influence was pressure from Britain to gain the restoration of private trade and the return of its traders to occupied Japan. Here progress was slow largely due to General MacArthur’s wariness over what he dubbed ‘carpet-baggers’ of all nationalities whom he held more likely to exploit rather than to contribute positively to Japan’s hesitant recovery. When permission was eventually granted the numbers of British and 640

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Commonwealth individuals eager to restart their businesses surprised the British mission in Tokyo and some foundations at least were in place by the termination of the occupation for banking, shipping and import-export trade. The 1948–1949 sterling-area agreement and subsequent renewals, including one initialled moments before the peace conference, can be seen as a positive move indicating that Japan’s economic future might not have to depend exclusively on support from the United States. American business interests irate at the red-tape holding back their own opportunities plus Congressional and press disquiet over the scale of disbursements to Tokyo probably helped smooth the passage of the Japan-Sterling area agreements, though the issue of whether Tokyo ought to use dollars for at least partial reduction of its balance of payments deficits had to be conceded. BRITAIN AND JAPAN

Unfortunately there were few other signs of any improvement in Anglo-Japanese ties. Here the fault surely lies with Westminster as Prime Minister Yoshida went out of his way to encourage ties through seemingly meeting each and every British diplomat, businessman and journalist who requested an interview. Japan might be changing but the British public recalled only the humiliation of early defeats in Asia, the treatment of POWs and the conviction that occupation-imposed reform would not last once the ink on the peace treaty was dry. In retrospect, as with the lack of any substantial wish by the Attlee government to support industries likely to face intensive Japanese competition in the future, there was a general unwillingness to think positively. Collective memory overruled reconciliation. Politicians during the first two post-war decades of first Labour and then Tory rule much preferred to do as little as possible to mend fences with Tokyo, while failing to overhaul the British economy when it still had a brief opportunity to outperform its industrial rivals in Japan and West Germany. Too little was done to reconstruct clapped-out industries (or to sponsor new hi-tech ones) which, in turn, ensured that renewed competition in export markets only added to the political difficulties of repairing troubled relations with Tokyo. With the historian’s twin luxuries of hindsight and the release of fresh archival material, it is surely clear that insufficient attention was paid by Attlee and Bevin to getting British industries more ready and more able to contend with old rivals in third markets overseas, while simultaneously taking a highly ambitious approach to foreign policy. Within a generation Britain’s international and economic decline would be all too obvious and London would soon be joining its Western European and North American partners in demanding a 641

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raft of official and unofficial restraints, gentlemen’s agreements and protective quotas in the face of Japan’s economic onslaught. The jeremiahs, who had got short shrift when Japan’s reconstruction was still in its infancy, had indeed been proved right. Britain’s ‘Years of Recovery15 only lasted in the immediate aftermath of the war when there had been a lucrative seller’s market in export trades; once its traditional rivals had successfully reorganized their politico-economic systems the familiar calls for assistance began to be heard again in the land. This time Westminster took the demands far more seriously. CONCLUSION

Bevin played his hand in the traditional manner. Throughout his tenure he aimed to maintain British global power and prestige, much to the disquiet of those on the vocal left of his party who wanted a break with the past – it was no wonder that he was personally close to Anthony Eden and the Tories’ vision of the world. (Bevin might address his officials as ‘m’boys’ in contrast to Eden’s equally archaic ‘my dears’ but such legendary differences in style hardly begin to disguise similar approaches to international relations.) Yet for all the undoubted ambition, British contributions to the occupation provide something of a case study in many of the traits of external relations that would receive criticism in later years: initial determination to stay everclose to Washington, large troop deployments abroad, relatively little organized support for what would soon prove to be declining industries either through state-subsidized reconstruction and/ or protective measures plus a widely shared determination to maintain London’s position in the world, despite the substantial costs of global involvement and major problems of reconstruction at home. It is also necessary to add a factor specific to British approaches to post-surrender Japan. The Attlee government was clearly wary of doing overmuch to confront the public’s antipathy to post-surrender Tokyo. If the phrase ‘Bad Haters, Good Losers’16 can be used to describe how the United States and Japan generally approached each other during the occupation, it is surely true that for many in Britain (and the Pacific Commonwealth) it would long-remain a case of ‘Good Haters, Bad Losers’ when it came to viewing their exenemy after what would shortly be dubbed the war of the British succession in Asia. Prospects for genuine friendship were slim, given that Anglo-Japanese ties had to restored against the backcloth of renewed industrial competition, the question of Tokyo’s possible rearmament and the stability or otherwise of occupation-era political reform. Yet at the elite level it was different and in the short-term it can be said that Bevin and the Foreign Office achieved some decent measure of success in their occupation policies: Anglo-American ties between 642

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the UK Liaison Mission in Tokyo and General MacArthur and his men were particularly strong for most of the period, the challenges from Australia were frequently met and substantial sterling-area trading links with Tokyo were restored, even if events quickly overtook any hopes of a sustained role for Britain in both Japan and the Asia-Pacific region. It soon proved impossible, however, to build the New Jerusalem at home and maintain a major role overseas on the old brokenbacked industrial system. The revisionists are correct: recollections of past military prowess and skilful diplomacy rarely provide much of a substitute for underlying economic weakness. There is no disguising the structural faults that continue to constrain all serious bids for power. ENDNOTES 1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8 9 10 11 12 13

14

15

16

Memorandum of meeting, 2 April 1951, Acheson papers, box 68, Truman Presidential Library. Franks was ambassador to Washington. John Fischer ‘Odds Against Another War’, Harper’s Magazine, August 1945. Seen and commented on by the Foreign Office. FO memorandum, cited in John Charmley ‘Churchill’s Grand Alliance: The Anglo-American Special Relationship 1940–57’ (London, 1995) p. 185. See Buckley ‘Occupation Diplomacy : Britain, the United States and Japan, 1945–1952’ (Cambridge, 1982). Bevin’s biographer has little to say on his hero’s dealings with Japan. See Alan Bullock ‘Ernest Bevin : Foreign Secretary’ ( Oxford, 1985 ). Evatt ‘The Future of the Pacific’, The Pacific Historical Review, June 1945. Dean Acheson, 21 September 1949, Acheson papers, memo of conversation, box 65. Danchey and Todman (eds.) Alanbrooke War Diaries, 1939–1945, diary entry for 2 August 1945, pp. 714–15. ibid. Diary entry for 30 August 1945, p. 721. Acheson memorandum, 24 December 1949, box 65, Acheson papers. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. See Buckley ‘The British Model: Institutional Reform and Occupied Japan’, Asian Studies, April 1982. See Buckley ‘US - Japan Alliance Diplomacy, 1945–1990 ‘, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 122–6 See Alec Cairncross ‘Years of Recovery : British Economic Policy, 1945–51’, (London, 1987) Martin Wiener ‘English Culture and the Decline of the Industrial Spirit, 1850–1980’, (Cambridge, 1981) and the four volumes of Correlli Barnett’s ‘The Rise and Fall’ series. For Bullock's robust defence of Bevin’s foreign policy see Bullock op. cit. pp. 843–8. See Buckley introduction to ‘The Post-War Occupation of Japan, 1945–1952, Selected Contemporary Readings’, vol. 1, (Leiden, 2013 )

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Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013): Pragmatist Who Radically Improved Britain’s Image in Japan and Successfully Promoted Japanese Manufacturing Investment in Britain HUGH CORTAZZI

INTRODUCTION

Margaret Thatcher made a significant contribution to relations between Britain and Japan. She recognized Japan’s post-war economic achievements, urged the Japanese to open up their market and promoted British exports to Japan. The reforms, which she instituted in the British economy, ensured that Britain was no longer seen as suffering from what the Japanese called eikokubyo¯ (the English disease). But her most long-lasting and important success was in promoting Japanese manufacturing investment in Britain. Edward Heath in 1972 had been the first British Prime Minister while in office to pay an official visit to Japan. Mrs Thatcher (as she 644

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then was) paid two official visits to Japan in 1982 and 1989. She first visited Japan as leader of the opposition in 1977, attended the Tokyo Economic Summit in 1979 and the G7 summit meeting in Tokyo in 1986. She revisited Japan on a few occasions after her retirement either to give lectures for which she was well rewarded by her Japanese admirers or for ceremonies such as the launch in Kobe of a giant Taiwanese container ship in 1994 or as the guest of Kawasaki Heavy Industries in 1996 for their centenary celebrations. She also met Japanese leaders at intenational conferences elsewhere and received at No.10 Downing Street leading Japanese politicians visiting London. As a result she came to know and was respected by top Japanese politicians including Nakasone Yasuhiro, Takeshita Noboru, Kaifu Toshiki, Fukuda Takeo and Miyazawa Kiichi as well as outstanding Japanese businessmen such as Morita Akio, PART I OVERVIEW Margaret Thatcher. On Japan

Mrs Thatcher in her memoir The Downing Street Years1 included some seven pages of observations about Japan (pages 495–501). She saw Japan as ‘a great economic power and a leading democratic nation’. She noted that: … the main subject of (often difficult) negotiations during my time as Prime Minister was trade. We pressed the Japanese to open up their markets to our goods, to liberalize their financial and retail distribution systems and to work towards the reduction of their huge and destabilizing balance of trade surpluses with the West.

She saw two big obstacles to expanding British exports: The first was that their distribution system was inefficient, fragmented and overmanned and their administrative system was difficult to get around. The second was a cultural difference. For example Japanese consumers automatically prefer to buy home-produced goods: government action can do little to change that.

She thought that: Much of the criticism of the Japanese was unfair. They were everybody’s scapegoat. The Japanese should not have been blamed for prudently saving more…Nor should the Japanese have been blamed for producing first-class cars, cheaper video recorders and advanced cameras, bought eagerly by British consumers…The fact that… much Western criticism is unfair does not, however, mean that we should be anything other than tough-minded and realistic in dealing with Japan. 645

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But the Japanese must also be treated with genuine (and deserved) respect and their own sensitivities understood.

She also included just over twenty pages about Japan in her book Statecraft, Strategies for a Changing World, published in 2002. In this she seems to have drawn substantially on studies made by others, but some assertions have a distinctly Thatcherite flavour especially her comments on Japanese capitalism. After analysing what seemed to her the key features of Japanese capitalism she noted that Japanese ‘government interventions often contrived to limit competition, which, as always, resulted in inefficiencies’. She thought that too much government involvement in the selection of strategic industries was unwise. Noting that ‘once profit ceases to be the driving force, companies become dependent not upon satisfying the customer but rather upon satisfying the government and the banks’. She praised the Japanese workforce although some Japanese work practices e.g. joint singing of company songs, grated with her.2 In Statecraft3 she reiterated: During my time as Prime Minister, I tried repeatedly to persuade the Japanese that opening up their markets made sense for them as well as for us. But at the time this was met with polite scepticism JAPANESE INVESTMENT IN BRITAIN

In their book The Blunders of our Governments4 Anthony King & Ivor Crewe list some stupendous and costly blunders made by British governments, Labour and Conservative. Among successes they draw particular attention to the successful efforts to persuade Nissan to invest in production facilities in the UK. They note that: Thatcher, her ministerial colleagues and the DTI officials involved sought to create jobs at a time of high unemployment, to improve the economic prospects of the North East of Emgland, to curb trade union power in the heavily unionised motor industry and to use Nissan as a demonstration project, showing other UK car manufacturers what could be achieved if they adopted Japanese methods and a Japanese style of management. They were succesful on most counts if not all.

These successes could not have been achieved without Mrs Thatcher’s personal involvement. Even before Mrs Thatcher came to power, the British embassy in Tokyo and the Department of Trade and Industry together with regional development agencies had for some time been doing all they could to induce Japanese manufacturers to invest in Britain and had had significant successes especially in the electonics industry. Manufacturing 646

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plants had been established in Britain by a number of leading Japanese electronics manufacturers including Sony, Toshiba, Hitachi, Mitsubishi Electric and Sharp, but while these were valuable investments they did not have the same multiplier effect as investments in the car industry. The story of the Nissan investment and of Honda and Toyota’s investments in Britain was set out in volume VI of Britain and Japan:Biographical Portraits5 and need not be repeated here, but the role played personally by Mrs Thatcher must not be underestimated. TRADE ISSUES

Trade issues featured high on Mrs Thatcher’s agenda when dealing with Japanese ministers. She gave strong backing to British efforts to expand exports to Japan. She made sure that on her visits she met members of the British business community in Japan and was ever ready to take to task British businessmen who in her view were not trying hard enough. But her main fire was directed at Japanese bureaucratic regulations and unfair taxes which restricted and frustrated British efforts to expand trade. She took every opportunity to press the British case against the discriminatory Japanese tax on imported spirits which limited Scotch whisky exports and when this was eventually achieved drew Japanese attention to the way in which Scotch imports were being limited by other unfair measures. (See separate essay by Stuart Jack in this volume on Scotch Whisky.) She criticized, to Japanese ministers and in speeches to Japanese businessmen, the way in which Japanese distribution systems tended to restrict imports and urged reforms of the Japanese distribution system. Before and during her second official visit in 1989 she pressed for the opening of the Tokyo Stock Exchange to British brokers who were applying for membership. Her efforts were finally succesful, but the bursting of the Japanese bubble in the 1990s reduced British interest in the Japanese stock exchanges and this issue has now been largely forgotten. POLITICAL ISSUES

Mrs Thatcher did not overlook in her talks with Japanese ministers the important political issues of her time. The changing scene in the USSR under Gorbachev interested Japanese ministers who wanted to learn her views. China and Hong Kong were very much in her mind during both her official visits. Indeed duriing her 1982 visit she was preparing for crucial talks in Beijing with the Chinese leadership over the future of Hong Kong.6 She attached importance to the maintenance of close relations between Japan and the United States and made clear to Japanese 647

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leaders her support for the US-Japan Security Treaty. The Japanese were conscious of and rather envious of her special relationship with President Reagan. Mrs Thatcher backed close political relations and diplomatic exchanges with Japan on a broad range of issues and generally took a favourable view of Japan as a world power.7 But she was frustrated by what she saw as the vapid nature of many Japanese ministerial responses. She was irritated though not surprised by the failure of the Japanese to support Britain at the United Nations over the Falklands.8 REPUTATION IN JAPAN

Although one or two Japanese male chauvinists referred to her as ano onna (that woman) her reputation at least in the business community and the Japanese establishment was high. Indeed she was, many observers noted, more respected and popular in Japan than at home. The fact that she, a woman politician, had managed to be selected as prime minister astonished many and added to her prestige. Japanese did not always like her forthright way of speaking which was so different from their own, but many found it refreshing. Her confrontational approach was also alien to Japanese ways, but was usually accepted as part of the British tradition. They took her hectoring generally in good part and although it rarely led to Japan making immediate concessions, it ensured that the message conveyed by other British ministers, diplomats and officials was effectively registered. It was often the final bang on the stone door of Japanese bureaucracy. HER ATTITUDE TO JAPAN

Mrs Thatcher admired Japanese achievements and said so publicly. She was particularly impressed by Japanese technology and wanted to see Japanese research and development transferred to Britain. She noted Japan’s success in producing and training engineers and was impressed by the number of engineers who had become CEOs of major Japanese companies. She wished that Britain could emulate these developments. She was not really interested in Japanese art and culure.9 She was not culturally illiterate and gave appropriate official backing to UK 90 in Japan and the Japan Festival in the UK in 1991. But her interests were primarily material ones. She was like some of her Japanese hosts a work-aholic and was determined that her visits not only were but were seen to be working ones. For someone with Mrs Thatcher’s character and single-minded puirsuit of what she saw as the national interest it is probably inappropriate to ask if she ‘liked the Japanese’. It is doubtful if she ever thought about such a question. Did she understand the Japanese char648

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acter and approach? Probably not, but many of us who have lived and worked in Japan and studied Japanese culture might also have difficulty in giving a simple affirmative reply to such a question. Did she trust Japanese ministers to deliver what they seemed to promise? Probably not, but nor did her officials who knew Japan pretty well. Robin Harris, one of Mrs Thatcher’s policy advisers, in his recent book10 about Mrs Thatcher wrote: If you asked Margaret Thatcher what she thought of the Japanese, she would initially dwell on their ‘infinite courtesy’, though what she really meant was formality. She also had a high view of their industrial and engineering capacity. Beneath the surface, though, she was distrustful. She did not launch into attacks on Japan’s wartime conduct in the way she did in respect of Germany. But she was quite open in saying that she did not think that Japan should be given a permanent seat on the United Nations Security Council.

Since Mrs Thatcher’s time as prime minister the British policy on this issue has changed and Britian now gives full support to Japan’s request for permanent membership of the Security Council. PART II DETAIL Visit to Japan as Leader of the Opposition

Mrs Thatcher with Prime Minister Suzuki reviewing guard of honour September 1982 649

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Mrs Thatcher visited Japan in 1977 as leader of the opposition. She had originally planned to go only to China, but was persuaded to include Japan. The Conservative Party at the time were much concerned about Japanese competition and there was presure for the adoption of protectionist measures. Mrs Thatcher returned much impressed by Japanese industry and believed that a firm approach to Japan rather than protectionism was needed. TOKYO SUMMIT 1979

‘Mrs Thatcher was pleased with Tokyo because she was the centre of vast media attention’.11 But she was not amused when the Japanese proposed to provide her with twenty ‘karate ladies’ to guard her and she was ‘particularly impatient of the Japanese fondness for platitudinous communiqués’. OFFICIAL VISIT TO JAPAN IN 1982

The visit was carefully prepared. A detailed programme was agreed with Mrs Thatcher’s staff and full briefs were produced. Mrs Thatcher, unlike some ministers, studied her briefs carefully and mastered the arguments. She was a stickler for detail and had an insatiable appetite for statistics. She was not the easiest of guests as I have related in my memoir Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere,12 but as I reported in my despatch of 4 October 1968 her visit was a success and left some important and clear messages for her Japanese hosts. The discussions with the Japanese Prime Minsiter and other leaders were ‘warm, constructive and potentially useful’. But much depended on follow through. Mrs Thatcher told her hosts about the efforts of her administration to change attitudes in Britain and in particular the climate for British industry, but she said on several occasions that fair words were not enough; ‘we must look at the figures’. If the figures showed real improvements in industrial production, a reduction in days lost because of strikes and in inflation and in due course unemployment. the despatch noted, British stock in Japan would rise and the climate for Japanese investment in Britain would turn fair. Mrs Thatcher’s overall message on trade was tough. World recession and high unemployment would produce protectionist pressures which would be hard to resist unless the trend in visible trade between Britain and Japan were reversed and unless industrial collaboration (Japanese investment in the UK and tie-ups between Japanese and British firms) produced results. She also emphasized that Japan should shoulder more of the responsibilities of her economic success. These messages ‘were received loud and clear’, but Japanese responses ‘were for the most part guarded without appearing nega650

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tive’. Mr Suzuki Zenko, the colourless Japanese prime minister, with whom she had to deal, ‘was quick to emphasize the importance of the free trading system but had nothing to say about the prospect of a $17 to 20 billion surpus on visible trade next year. None of the Japanese Ministers suggested that they were prepared to embark on a policy of stimulating domestic demand to any noticeable extent, preferring to concentrate on the importance of reducing the budget deficit and public expenditure.’ Mr Suzuki wanted to promote joint research and development in advanced technology as well as investment and industrial collaboration in third countries. Mrs Thatcher, who had used her time before the talks to visit a factory making robots, the Tokai atomic reactor, with whose construction Britain had been closely involved, and the Tsukuba science complex, was also keen to further technological cooperation. She announced that Britain would participate in the Tsukuba ’85 Exposition and agreement was reached to go ahead with some form of Anglo-Japanese technology agreement ‘provided that it led to tangible results’. She was unstinting in her praise for Japanese efficiency and research but reminded her hosts of Britain’s ‘long and distinguished record in research’. On bilateral issues the Japanese described the measures which the government had recently taken ‘to ease the import regime’. They agreed that ‘inter-industry contacts were valuable in dealing with particular sectoral industry problems’.13 Mrs Thatcher regretted having to raise the problem caused by Japanese exports of numerically controlled machine tools as she had been most impressed by her visit to the Fujitsu-Fanuc factory on the slopes of Mt Fuji manufacturing robots. But, ‘Japanese penetration of the UK market in these tools had risen from 1 per cent in 1977 to 60 percent in 1981 and it was clearly impossible to allow the market for our UK firms to be destroyed in this way.’ She also mentioned ‘one or two other areas of concern, including fork-lift trucks’, The Japanese government agreed to welcome a proposed mission from the British machine tool industry. Mr Suzuki reminded Mrs Thatcher of the measures which the Japanese government had already taken to ease trade. They had implemented two years in advance reductions in tariffs agreed at the GATT Multilateral Trade Negotiations and had proposed the abolition of tariffs on ninety-six products including high technology items. An ombudsman had been appointed to deal with complaints over nontariff barriers. Mr Suzuki had personally made a statement urging Japanese business to welcome foreign products and overseas investment. On Japanese investment in Britain Mr Suzuki said that the Japanese government attached importance to the UK as a location for further Japanese investment ‘while making it clear that this was essentially a matter for commercial decision’. 651

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The Japanese response on industrial collaboration, technical tieups and joint ventures ‘was somewhat less positive than had been expected’. Mr Suzuki had invested a good deal of political capital in this topic, but his brief was ‘querulous and defensive, concentrating too much on apportioning blame for the slow progress so far’. The Japanese government were aware of the political importance of the issue but said while they could encourage Japanese industry it was up to the latter to reach commercial decisions. Japanese industry were ‘less inclined in general to see commercial and technical advantage to themselves in joint ventures with foreign companies’. Of the eighteen specific project proposals from the British side Mr Suzuki said that six ‘were agreeable to the Japanese, covering robots and other electronic projects. Five cases were not agreeable and the rest were still under consideration. The Japanese had proposed three project proposals, on which they were still awaiting a response.’ In the discussions on political matters both prime ministers agreed that they should meet more often and that there should be more contact at ministerial and official level. Mrs Thatcher invited Mr Suzuki to visit London. China was discussed at some length. Mr Suzuki ‘urged the UK, US and other Western countries to cooperate with the modernization policies’[of the Chinese government]. In the light of Mrs Thatcher’s forthcoming visit to Bejing they discussed Hong Kong. Mr Suzuki advised Mrs Thatcher to deal directly with Deng Xiaoping on the matter. They also discussed the situation in the Lebanon. On the Falklands Mrs Thatcher referred in passing to ‘a misunderstanding between Britain and Japan in the past, but said she wished now to concentrate on the future. She put the Japanese clearly on notice that Britain would not find it possible to negotiate with Argentina over sovereignty and would resist presure at the UN to do so.’ Mrs Thatcher’s dinner with Japanese businessmen at the embassy was a particularly important engagement. It gave her the opportunity to stress Britain’s welcome to Japanese manufacturing companies wanting to invest in Britain. Among those she met was Mr Ishihara Takashi, President and later Chairman of Nissan, which was then investigating the advantages to them of setting up manufacturing facilities in Britain. ‘Coverage14 of the visit by the Japanese media was extensive and almost entirely laudatory’. In particular the Prime Minister’s fortyfive minute interview on NHK made a major impact on Japanese in almost all walks of life: the reaction could be summed up in the comment ‘that is how a Prime Minister should be’. A picture of Mrs Thatcher with Sumo champions was captioned ‘Iron Lady meets Man Mountain’:

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OFFICIAL VISIT TO JAPAN IN 1989

In the seven years between Mrs Thatcher’s first visit in 1982 and her second in 1989 much had changed. Exchanges between ministers and officials had become more regular and frank. On many international issues Britain and Japan took similar positions although Britain would have liked to see Japan take a more positive and active position on international issues such as developments in the Middle East. The UK-Japan 2000 group, which had been established with Mrs Thatcher’s blessing, held annual meetings for frank discussions on topics of interest to both countries.

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Senior politicians, businessmen and representatives from academia and the media, attended these meetings, Japanese manufacturing investment in Britain had grown substantially. The Nissan plant at Sunderland had been opened in 1986. Honda’s cooperation with Rover had led in 1986 to the Rover 800 and Honda Legend being jointly developed and Honda had expanded their manufacturing facilities at Swindon. In April 1989 Toyota decided to construct a vehicle manufacturing plant at Burnaston and an engine plant at Deeside. These investments had induced Japanese car parts manufacturers to set up their own facilities in Britain. By 1989 more than one hundred Japanese manufacturing companies had established facilities in Britain. The Japanese bubble economy had not yet burst and Japanese banks and securities companies were increasingly active in the city of London. Japanese regional banks were demanding licences to operate in the London market. British exports to Japan had grown thanks to officially sponsored efforts such as ‘The Opportunity Japan’ campaign, but the imbalance in visible trade was as wide as ever and there was continuing frustration among British exporters over the perceived difficulty of the Japanese market because of non-tariff barriers and bureaucratic obstruction. Japanese restrictive practices also greatly hampered British lawyers and other professionals working in other service sectors. British stockbrokers who wanted a share in the expanding Japanese stock market were frustrated by the refusal of the Tokyo stock exchange to alter its restrictive practices and two British firms still awaited agreement to their admission to the exchange. The stock exchange problem may seem esoteric now but it was very much a hot Anglo-Japanese topic in the late 1980s. Sir John Whitehead, then British ambassador in Tokyo, thought in early 1987 that ‘there was some reason to believe that the Japanese might be brought to move on some points’, provided the British were persistent and consistent. When the issue came before the cabinet Mrs Thatcher spoke in favour of accepting Sir John’s advice and it was decided to send out to Japan Michael Howard (later Lord Howard), then parliamentary under-secretary in the Department of Trade and Industry. He helped to put pressure on the Japanese to get some movement on the stock exchange issue, but it had not been fully solved by the time of Mrs Thatcher’s 1989 visit. Sir John Whitehead in his telegram of 25 September 1989 summing up the visit said that it ‘had carried Anglo-Japanese relations a significant step forward. A vista of the 1990s as a “decade of unprecedented partnership and friendship between Britain and Japan” had been opened up.’ ‘The key long term themes were the need for

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MARGARET THATCHER (1925–2013)

further effort by the Japanese to open up their economy and the importance of developing a closer political relationship.’ The programmes in 1982 and 1989 inevitably had similarities. For Sir John the centrepiece of the visit was the dinner given for Mrs Thatcher in the embassy ballroom for some sixty Japanese VIPs. Mrs Thatcher in her speech to Japanese businessmen on 20 September 1989 praised Japanese design, research and development and high technology against a background of low inflation, high savings and prudent fiscal policies. She emphasized the importance of the free trade system and the single market in Europe, but she criticized Japanese protectionist policies for agriculture and service industries and stressed the need for structural reforms. Japan required ‘more open unrestricted competition’. Mrs Thatcher’s visits to Jaguar Japan, Laura Ashley and a bank dealing with BT and Reuter’s equipment earned her the title from one Japanese paper of the ‘Iron Saleswoman’. She took every opportunity to draw attention to British efforts to encourage British businessmen to take advantage of the opportunities in the Japanese market. Mrs Thatcher had become aware of the dangers of climate change and she emphasized the need for cooperation and research on the environment. This was a central theme in a joint television broadcast, which she undertook with Prime Minister Kaifu. In her talks with Mr Kaifu and other leading politicians she took up ‘three specific areas where bilateral problems persist’. On the Tokyo stock exchange, she received useful assurances that a successful conclusion would be achieved. On whisky look-alikes too, she was assured that the Japanese government saw the need to ensure that whisky and ‘new spirits’ were perceived as different and said that they would continue their efforts to ensure that this did not become a serious issue. On air services, the Prime Minister pressed for progress on deregulation at the official-level talks to be held that October 1989. The political discussions with Prime Minister Kaifu and Foreign Minister Nakayama covered a wide range of international topics, including East-West relations, China after the Tien An Men massacre, Hong Kong, Vietnamese boat refugees and Cambodia. On Hong Kong Mrs Thatcher urged action including Japanese investment to help restore confidence in the territory. Nakayama raised the issue of Japan’s dispute with the USSR over the northern territories. On this point Mrs Thatcher reiterated that we supported the principle that no one should gain territory as the result of war. Mrs Thatcher in her speech at the dinner at the embassy summed up her aim in making the visit to Japan by reiterating:

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BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

I want my visit to Japan to demonstrate beyond all doubt Britain’s determination to have the best possible relations with Japan at every level: trade, political, cultural, investment. RELATIONS WITH INDIVIDUAL JAPANESE Nakasone Yasuhiro

The Japanese prime minister with whom Mrs Thatcher developed the closest relationship was Nakasone Yasuhiro. At the Williamsburg summit in June 1983 where he put a great deal of effort into developoing a good personal relationship with President Reagan he met Mrs Thatcher and recognizing her prestige in Japan and her resounding victory in the general election that year he decided to work towards a closer relationship with her.15 On 10 June 1983 in congratulating her on her election victory Nakasone expressed his admiration for ‘the correct judgements and the firm views’ which she had expressed at the Wiilliamsburg summit. This was not just diplomatic flattery. When Nakasone visited Britain in June 1984 he had constructive talks with Mrs Thatcher. She felt that she ‘was dealing with a Japanese leader who understood and sympathized with western values and had shown that he was prepared to make steps in the right direction on economic policy’.16 The two prime ministers’ talks on 11 June in London covered a wide range of international issues including relations with China and the USSR, but Mrs Thatcher toook the oportunity to stress the welcome which Britain gave to Japanese investment.17 When Mrs Thatcher visited Tokyo for the G7 meeting in 1986 she and President Reagan: … were keen that it should be a success for the Japanese. The President was a strong supporter of Prime Minister Nakasone and was rather more inclined to be optimistic about the changes which had been promised in Japan’s economic policies than I was. But I had to agree with him that Mr Nakasone had the right instincts in international affairs and it was important not to endanger his position.18

But trade issues were still very much on her mind. British efforts to open up Japanese markets had achieved little. Whisky exports were still constrained by ‘the heavy discriminatory tax on imported liquor’. Japan’s trade surplus was sharply up and the yen had risen in value. However there were by then ‘forty Japanese manufacturing companies operating in the UK, creating over 10,000 jobs’. Unfortunately as she noted:

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MARGARET THATCHER (1925–2013)

Japanese politics are sui generis…And in spite of his achievements in establishing Japan as a major player on the international stage. Mr Naksone was unable to buck the convention by which the nominees of other factions in the governing Japanese Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) must have their turn in office. TAKESHITA NOBORU

Prime Minister Takeshita who came to London in 1987 and met Mrs Thatcher was the Japanese leader ‘who took the most important decisions to make structural changes in the Japanese economy’. From the British point of view she thought that the most important decisions were those that removed the discrimination against Scotch Whisky and ‘opened up the Japanese Stock Exchange to two of the best known British stockbrokers’. When he saw Mrs Thatcher she told him that he was the fourth prime minister with whom she had raised the issuee of the Stock Exchange. Mrs Thatcher had a brief meeting with Mr Takeshita on 21 September 1989 on the occasion of her second official visit to Japan. They discussed briefly the problems which had been raised in London. In Statecraft19 she described him as ‘a party boss, who though very successful in his own culture would probably never have risen to the top in a Westerrn Country’s political system’. SUZUKI ZENKO

Mr Suzuki Zenko was Japanese Prime Minister at the time of the Falklands war and of Mrs Thatcher’s first visit as Prime Minister iin 1982. In her memoir she does not mention him by name, perhaps because he was one of the least impressive Japanese politicians she had met and because he had singularly failed to respond to her appeals for support over the Falkland Islands issue.20 KAIFU TOSHIKI

Kaifu Toshiki was Japanese Prime Minister in 1989 when Mrs Thatcher made her second official visit to Japan. She found him ‘sincere, serious and well-intentioned if rather light-weight’.21 She wrote of him later22 that he was ‘a breath of fresh air in Japanese politics’. ¯ KOIZUMI JUNICHIRO

Although Koizumi became Japanese prime minister after Mrs Thatcher’s time they met on various occasions and he admired her greatly.

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MORITA AKIO

Mrs Thatcher devoted two pages of Statecraft23 to Morita Akio24 whom she met at the dinner which I gave on her 1982 visit. She regarded him as ‘the outstanding Japanese businessman of modern times’. She noted that he was not only cosmopolitan and an internationalist, but also ‘lively, individualistic, direct and much more outspoken than the great mass of his countrymen’. She thought that ‘Japan desperately needs more like him.’ CONCLUSION

No other British politician has so far been as influential in terms of British relations with Japan as Mrs Thatcher. Some of her comments on the need for structural reforms in Japan are still valid a quarter of a century after they were made. ENDNOTES 1 2

3

4 5 6

7

The Downing Street Years by Margaret Thatcher, Harper Collins, 1993. Statecraft, Strategies for a Changing World, (hereafter Statecraft), Harper Collins 2002, pp. 132–137. Her summing up on Japanese capitalism was as follows: 1. So we should be wary of oversimplifications: Japan was never quite as successful, nor is it now as successful, as we are often led to believe. 2. Japan’s economic success owed more to capitalism without adjectives (‘Japanese’, ‘Asian‘, etc.) and less to government than many pundits suggested. 3. But Japanese management techniques have been exported to good effect and should continue to be so. 4. Japan’s underlying strengths are unchanged and will help ensure that its mighty economy rises again. 5. And as the younger generation of Japanese brings in new thinking to leaven old ways the economic results may again astound us. In Statecraft, page 140, Mrs Thatcher added: ‘More recently, however, Japan has somewhat reluctantly undertaken reforms along similar lines to those which Britain undertook in the 1980s.’ On page 141 she wrote: ‘I am more sceptical about the fiscal measures that have been taken, especially the public spending packages. While it is true that these helped produce a resumption of growth, I am not at all sure that they will make it sustainable – quite the opposite, in fact.’ Published by Oneworld, 2013. Global Oriental, 2007. She summoned HM Ambassador in Beijing Sir Percy Cradock to Tokyo to brief her personally. For a summary of her mature reflections on Japan’s position in the world see pages 144–148 of Statecraft. Her summing up made the following points:

658

MARGARET THATCHER (1925–2013)

8

9

10

11

12 13

14

15 16 17

18 19 20

1. We should welcome Japan’s strengthening of its armed forces, which should continue. 2. Japan has a vital role in counterbalancing China. 3. Japan will remain America’s principal strategic partner in Asia and should be treated accordingly. 4. Japan must know that she is able to rely not just on the American nuclear umbrella, but also on the shield of ballistic missile defence. 5. The Japanese could undoubtedly fulfil more international roles, and this should be encouraged. 6. But it is neither in their nor our interests that Japan should become a Permanent Member of the United Nations Security Council. For a personal account of this episode see Hugh Cortazzi’s Japan and Back and Place Elsewhere, Global Oriental, 1998, especially p.144. In her comments in Statecraft she refers in one sentence on page 130 to ‘the quasi-mystical attitude towards the Japanese landscape that echoes through Japanese poetry’. But that is all. Not for Turning: The Life of Margaret Thatcher, Robin Harris, Transworld, 2013. Margaret Thatcher, The Authorized Biography, Volume I, Charles Moore, Allen Lane, 2013, pp. 416–417. Global Oriental, 1998, pp. 186–188. In 1982 there was still much discussion in Britain of how to deal with the increasing waves of Japanese exports, often referred to as ‘concentrated and torrential’ (shu¯chu¯ go¯uteki) and there was considerable protectionist pressure from some British industries, but the government’s response had to take account of British obligations under the GATT and Mrs Thatcher was an advocate of free trade. A way round was found in inter-industry arrangements despite the fact that these were in contravention of rules governing free competition and at the very least the spirit of GATT rules. Mrs Thatcher at least toyed with the possibility of giving government backing to stricter limits on imports of Japanese cars (see page 187 of my memoir Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere, Global Oriental, 1998). With the agreement of Mrs Thatcher’s press secretary Bernard Ingham we arranged for a photograph to be taken of Mrs Thatcher with Takamiyama, the huge Hawaiian sumo wrestler. This evoked the caption ‘Iron Lady meets Man Mountain’. Tokyo telegram to FCO number 311 of 10 June 1983. The Downing Street Years, p. 497. Ibid p. 498. When Nakasone said that half of the Japanese companies established within the European Community were in the United Kingdom Mrs Thatcher replied: ’Not enough. I would like two dozen more.’ The Downing Street Years, p. 498. Statecraft, p. 128. For an account of this saga see Hugh Cortazzi’s memoir Japan and Back and Places Elsewhere, Global Oriental, 1998, especially pages 158–160.

659

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME IX

21

22 23 24

Reporting letter dated 20 September 1989 signed by Charles Powell, FCO private secretary to the prime minister. Statecraft p. 128. Statecraft, pp. 137–139. See biographical portrait by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, edited by Hugh Cortazzi, Global Oriental, 2007.

660

Index

Abbott, Charles, 573 Abbott, Edgar, 141, 150, 151, 152, 154 Abel, Frederick Augustus, 440 Abell, H.J., 150, 151 Abingdon, Earl of, 555 Acheson, Dean, 631, 636, 637, 638, 639 Adachi Yasuko, 333 Adams, F.O., 180 Adams, William, 9, 272, 409 Adderley, Canon Hon. James, 348 Adler, Peter, 468 Agar, C.R., 125 Akira Matsura, 272 Akita Ujaku, 402 Akutagawa Ryu¯nosuke, 408, 362 Albemarle, Earl of, 513 Albery, Donald, 239, 240, 241 Alcock, Sir Rutherford, 2, 545 Aldridge, Captain John, 137 Alexandra, HRH Princess, 8 Alexandra, Queen, 324, 326, 327 Alexis, Charles, 49 Alfred, Prince (Duke of Edinburgh), 215 Allingham, Helen, 278 Allmand Jr, John, 175 Alma Tadema, 69 Alma-Tadema, Sir Lawrence, 285, 286 Amartya Sen, 379 Ames, Gerald, 44 Anderson, Lindsey, 255 Anderson, M.P., 359 Anderson, Professor, 72 Aoki Shu¯zo¯, 559 Aoki Tsuru, 260, 264 Arakawa Minoji, 335 Archer, C.H., 125 Archer, Sir William, 263

Arima Akito, 20 Arita Hachiro, 612, 617 Arnold, Thomas, 353 Arthur, Chester, 578, 579 Asai Chu¯, 289, 290 Asai Eiichiro¯, Dr, 60 Asai Tadashi, 397 Ashley, Sir William James, 407 Asquith, Prime Minister, 587, 596 Aston, William George, 454, 536, 544, 575 Atkinson, Robert William, 126, 427, 439–47 Atkinson, Robert, (father of Robert William), 441 Atkinson, Sarah (née Ross), 441 Attlee, 633, 639, 640, 641, 642 Auden, W.H., 20, 21 Austin, Professor Robert, 72 Awazu Kiyoshi, 5 Ayrton, Matilda Chaplin, 478 Ayrton, Professor, 72 Ayukawa Gisuke, 495 Azuma Hideo, 268 Bacon, 455 Bagehot, Walter, 315, 318 Bagot, Richard, 281 Bailey, Michael Buckworth, 173–81 Baker-Bates, Merrick, 105, 106 Baldwin, David, 29 Baldwin, Stanley, 584, 601 Balfour, Arthur, 584–94 Ball, MacMahon, 635 Bandmann, Maurice, 231 Barnes, George, 349 Barraclough, Dr, 60 661

INDEX

Basho¯, 20, 25 Bataille, Henri, 400 Batchelor, John, 191 Batemen, Peter, 107 Beckmann, Ernst, 430 Bedingham, Mark, 114 Beerbohm, Max, 386 Beethoven, 231, 348 Begg, Samuel, 39, 44 Bell, Daniel, 312 Bell, Evelyn Frances, 298 Bell, Gertrude, 299 Bell, John, 298 Bell, Rear Admiral, 517 Below, Georg Anton Hugo von, 407 Bentley, Bill, 96 Bergman, Ingmar, 251 Bergman, Ingrid, 240 Bertie, Sir Francis, 551, 555–67 Bettelheim, Bernard Jean, 187 Betts, Sergeant-Major, 43 Bevan, Paul, 71 Bevin, Ernest, 631–43 Bewsher, Bill, 115, 116 Binyon, Lawrence, 456 Bird, Isabella, 279, 471 Bischoffsheim, Henri Louis, 229 Bismarck, 581 Black, Henry James, 231 Black, John Reddie, 212, 231 Blacker, Carmen, 431 Blake, 455, 457 Blanchet, Clement T., 190 Bleakley, Derek, 148 Blount, Captain Richard, 149, 150 Blunden, Edmund, 456 Blyth, Reginald Horace, 19, 20, 23 Bo Dihua, 453 Bodley, Ava, 298 Bodley, John Edward Courtenay, 297 Bodley, Josselin Reginald Courtenay, 298 Bodley, Miles, 297 Bodley, Ronald Victor Courtenay, 297–305 Bodley, Sir Thomas, 297 Bonar, H.A.C., 550 Bond, Lieutenant Colonel R.C., 526, 528 Boone, Bishop William Jones, 188

662

Bourke, Hon. Robert, 556 Bowden, Rothwell C., 125 Bowden, Sir Frank, 46, 47 Bowen, Richard, 44 Boyd, Sir John, 107 Bradbury, A.C., 399 Bradley-Hole, Kathryn, 280 Braithwaite, George, 186 Breen, Lieutenant, 528, 529 Bridel, Louis, 125, 128 Bridge, Peter, 36 Bridgens, R.P., 180 Brigg, Florence Helena, 525 Brinkley, Captain Frank, 145 Britten, Benjamin, 233 Brock, Captain Osmond, 484 Brottwitz, Herr, 528, 529 Brougham, Henry, 163 Brown, Miss Kay, 240 Brown, Nathan, 189 Brown, S.R., 188, 191 Brown, Sir Max, 98 Browne, Sir Thomas, 455 Brownjohn, Alan, 21 Brunton, Richard Henry, 139 Bunscombe, Miss P., 125 Bunyan, John, 353 Burne-Jones, Sir Edward, 285 Burns, Robert, 110, 353 Busby, Maureen, 31, 32 Butler, R.A., 314, 613, 615, 625, 629 Byng, Robert Cecil, 503 Cadogan, Sir Alexander, 605 Cahan, C.H., 601 Caines, John, 106 Cairns, David, 107 Callaghan, James, 499 Campbell, Thomas, 353 Cane, Ella Du, 277–82 Cane, Sir Charles Du, 277 Canning, George, 278 Canton, William, 191 Carew, Edith, 532, 548, 549, 550 Carlyle, Thomas, 354 Carpenter, J.Estlin, 399 Carter, Ernest Courtenay, 347 Cartmell, Martha J., 333 Casson, Sir Hugh, 2, 10

INDEX

Castle, Egerton, 41 Cavalletti, Elspeth, 475, 478 Cavalletti, Giovanni, 477 Cavalletti, Henri, 475, 478 Cavalletti, Martha, 477 Cavell, Edith, 327 Cecil, Lord Robert, 349 Chamberlain, Austen, 621 Chamberlain, Basil Hall, 15, 16, 17, 126, 214, 472, 473, 474, 475 Chamberlain, Joseph, 552 Chamberlain, Neville, 603, 604, 605, 606, 609, 610, 611, 613, 614, 624 Chaplin, Charlie, 260, 261, 262, 305 Charles II, 534 Chatfield, Captain Charles, 137 Chekhov, Anton, 401 Chiang Kai-shek, 614 Chichibu, HIH Princess, 8, 9, 84, 85, 108, 118 Chichibu, Prince, 43, 129, 622 Chikashige Masumi, 443 Childers, Hugh, 518 Chinda Sutemi, 589, 593 Christie, Ella, 279, 280 Churchill, Winston, 315, 508, 587, 613, 614, 615, 616, 624, 625, 626, 634 Citroen, Andre Gustav, 265 Clair, René, 253 Clarendon (Liberal Foreign Secretary), 533 Clark, Aiko, 416, 417 Clark, John Bates, 407 Clark, John Maurice, 407 Clark, Kenneth (art historian), 9 Clarke, Edward Bramwell, 148 Clarkson, Jessie, 545 Clarkson, Thomas, 545 Clive, Sir Robert Henry, 409 Cobb, David, 23 Cochran, George, 190 Cocteau, Jean, 251 Colby, A.E., 265 Coleby, A.E., 264 Colette, 261 Conan Doyle, 42, 303 Conder, Josiah, 34, 181, 280 Connery, James Patrick, 261 Connor, Lesley, 89

Cook, Arnold, 347 Cook, Bernard, 347 Cooper-White, Katherine, 44 Cope, Wendy, 22 Copley, Georgiana Susan, 277 Copley, John Singleton, 278 Cortazzi, Hugh, 4, 29, 78, 79, 80, 81, 96, 105, 178, 416 Cowie, A.P., 460 Cowles, Virginia, 304 Craig, Gordon, 386, 400 Craigie, Sir Robert, 204, 504, 505, 610, 611, 612, 613, 614, 615, 617, 625 Crewe, Ivor, 646 Cromwell, Oliver, 353, 354 Crooke-Lawless, Sir Warren, 327 Cross, Jasper, 96, 98, 100 Cumming, Constance, 279 Cunliffe-Lister, Sir Philip, 603 Currie, Sir Philip, 556, 573 Curzon, Lord, 591, 593 Cuthbert, Brig.-General O.J., 526 Cuthbertson, Michael Simpson, 188 Dahrendorf, Ralf, 374, 379 Dallas, Charles Henry, 382 Dalton, 633 Daniels, Frank, 416, 417, 421, 422, 469 Daniels, Otome, 416 Dare brothers, 150 Darwin, Charles, 428 Daunt, H.E., 127, 128 Davidson, Colin, 487 Davidson, Robert Young, 190 Davies, Ben, 348 Davies, Ray, 399 Deakins, Eric, 103 Dearlove, Johm, 80 Delors, Jaques, 118 DeMille, Cecil B., 260 Deng Xiaoping, 497, 652 Dening, Walter, 190 Denison, Henry Willard, 550 Dickens, 236, 237, 239 Dietrich, Marlene, 240 Dilke, Sir Charles, 297, 305, 573 Dimond, Paul, 107 Diosy, Arthur, 73, 229 Disraeli, Benjamin, 429, 556

663

INDEX

Divers, Edith, 446 Divers, Edward, 430, 439–47 Divers, Frederick, 440 Divers, Lucy (née Chambers), 440 Divers, Margaret Theresa, 447 Dixon, William Gray, 156, 445 Dodds, J., 150 Donnan, Frederick George, 432, 433, 434 Doolittle, General, 311 Dore, Professor Ronald, 312, 415 Dorr, General Eben M., 175 Douglas, Lord Alfred, 384 Douglas, Sir Archibald Lucius, 216, 217 Drucker, Peter, 312 Dryden, 456 Dryden, Leo, 231 Duff, Charles Murray, 141, 142 Dulles, John Foster, 627 Dumbelton, Captain, 142 Dunn, Charles, 413, 416 Dutton, David, 596 Duvivier, Julien, 253 Earle, Joe, 3 East, Alfred, 68, 73, 291 Eastlake, Frederick W., 359 Ebina Danjo¯, 346 Eckersley, C.F., 458 Eckert, Franz, 218 Eden, Richard, 456 Eden, Simon, 626 Eden, Sir Anthony, 610, 615, 616, 620–9, 642 Edgeworth, Francis Ysidro, 407 Edinburgh, HRH The Duke of, 104, 139, 215, 520 Edward VII, King, 219, 278, 483, 557 Edward VIII, King, 264 Edward, Prince of Wales, 229 Eisenhower, President, 496 Eisenstein, 251 Eliot, George, 429 Eliot, T.S., 19 Elizabeth II, Queen, 629 Ellis, William Webb, 150 Elwin, Mrs Emily S., 125 Endo¯ Keiko, 466 Endo¯ Sho¯tsugi, 128 Enslie, James Joseph, 408

664

Enslie, John Joseph, 536, 549, 550 Eusden, Richard, 175 Evatt, Vere, 635, 636 Evetts, Dee, 23 Ewart, Gavin, 22 Fairbanks Jr, Douglas, 260 Fakes, Neville, 510 Falk, Ray, 507 Fanck, Dr Arnold, 248 Fardel, Henry L., 125 Farrar, J. Percy, 129 Feldman, David A., 127 Fenton, James, 16 Fenton, John, 209 Fenton, John William, 207–21, 226 Fenton, Judith, 209 Field, John, 105 Fielding, Harold, 242 Figgess, Sir John, 89, 96 Fildes, Sir Luke, 285, 286 Finlay, Alec, 21, 25, 26 Finnemore, John, 281 Firth, C.M., 142 Fisher, Admiral Sir John, 482, 483, 484, 485 Fisher, Archbishop Geoffrey, 204, 205 Fisher, Augusta S., 175 Fisher, Colonel George S., 175 Fisher, H.A.L., 349 Fisher, Professor Charles, 469 Fitzgerald, F. Scott, 305 Fitzmaurice, Sir Edmund, 572, 573 Fleisher, Wilfred, 503 Florey, Robert, 248 Flowers, Marcus, 175 Fontanesi, Antonio, 289, 290 Foote, Horton, 243 Foster, George Carey, 428 Foster, John, 23 Frank, Andrew, 453 Frankland, Edward, 441 Franklin, Alfred W., 503 Franklin, Sir Benjamin, 324 Franks, Sir Oliver, 631, 636, 638, 639 Fraser, Evan James, 150, 151 Fraser, Hugh, 559 Fraser, James Campbell, 136, 150 Fraser, John, 545

INDEX

Frazier, Everett, 138 Frederick, Empress, 278 French, Sir George, 546 Friedman, Milton, 312, 317 Fröbel, Friedrich, 338 Fromm, Mallory, 419, 420 Fry, Sir Graham, 107 Fry, Stephen, 26 Fujii Keinosuke, 493 Fujii Kenjiro¯, 350, 431 Fujii Tetsu, 463 Fujimura Misao, 259 Fujiwara Chu¯ichiro¯, 398 Fujiwara Yoshie, 231–4 Fukada Kyu¯ya, 124 Fukuchi Genichiro, 576 Fukuda Takeo, 492–500, 645 Fukuda Yasuo, 497 Fukuda Zenji, 493 Fukuhara, Professor, 33 Fukuta Kyu¯ya, 130 Fukuzawa Yukichi, 332, 407–408 Fuller, Samuel, 267 Furuhjelm, John Hampus, 516 Furukawa Kosho¯ken, 288 Fyson, Philip Kimball, 190 Gairdner, General Sir Charles, 634, 635 Gaisberg, Frederic William, 230–1 Gaitskell, Hugh, 314 Galbraith, Kenneth, 314 Galbraith, Mike, 152 Galsworthy, 457 Gardner, Kenneth, 416 Garratt, William Frederick Henry, 181 Garrud, Edith, 42 Garrud, William, 42 Gascoigne, Sir Alvary, 635 Gatenby, Bertha Alice, 452 Gatenby, Edward Vivian, 451–61 Gatenby, Elizabeth (née Metcalfe), 452 Gatenby, Richard Fryer, 452 Gaulle, President de, 98 Gausden, J.G.S., 127 George V, King, 199, 263, 327, 488 George VI, King, 199, 434, 622 George, Prime Minister Lloyd, 349, 589, 591, 604 Germain, R., 75

Giffard, Sir Sydney, 107 Gilbert, Lewis, 263 Gilbert, William, 71, 229, 384, 387 Gillingham, A.W., 141 Gladstone, William, 353, 429, 518, 581 Gloucester, Prince William of, 80, 97 Glover brothers, 408 Glover, Thomas Blake, 332 Goble, Jonathan, 190 Goddard, Paulette, 305 Goderich, Viscount, 278 Gogh, Vincent van, 17 Goldsmith, Oliver, 348 Gomersall, Lydia, 89, 103 Gomersall, Sir Stephen, 107, 115 Goodbody, John, 46 Goodwin, Charles Wycliffe, 534, 535, 545, 546 Goodwin, Mr, (London Missionary Society), 352 Gow, Professor, 488 Gower, Abel Anthony James, 409 Gower, Granville George Leveson, 571 Gowland, William, 126, 128 Goya, 348 Graham, Charles, 442, 444 Granville, Earl, 546 Granville, Lady, 578 Granville, Lord, 538, 546, 571–81 Gray, W.T., 125 Green, Sir William Conyngham, 323 Greene, Daniel Crosby, 188, 189, 191 Grey of Fallodon, Lord, 585, 588 Grey, Sir Edward, 486 Grey, Viscount, 349 Griffis, William Elliot, 426, 427, 478 Groom, Arthur Hesketh, 139, 141 Groote Lindt, Marguérite Mary Baroness Van Brienen van de, 280 Gubbins, John, 150, 151 Gulick, Luther Halsey, 186 Gunn, Thom, 21 Gutzlaff, Karl Frederick August, 187, 188 Guy, Major-Genral P.M.N., 179 Hackett, Dr David, 29 Haga Tamemasa, 443, 444, 445, 446, 447

665

INDEX

Haga Yaichi, 397 Hagiwara, Miss, 321 Hakluyt, 456, 457 Haldane, General Sir James, 529 Halifax, Lady Dorothy, 616 Halifax, Lord, 609–17, 624, 625, 626 Hall, John Carey, 550 Hall, Miss N.M., 125 Hall, Thomas, 440 Hamaguchi Osachi, 494 Hamill, J.M., 164 Hamilton, General Sir Ian, 529 Hamilton, George, 138, 150, 151, 152, 153, 154 Hamilton, Sir Denis, 3 Hamilton, Valerie R., 126 Hammarskjöld, Dag, 20 Hammond, Sir Edmund, 573 Handa Taki, 35, 280 Handel, 211, 348 Handley, Tommy, 263 Hani Susumu, 256 Hankey, Sir Maurice, 592 Hannen, Edward Charles, 537 Hannen, James, 531 Hannen, Sir Nicholas John, 141, 531–41, 545, 546, 547, 548, 550, 551, 552 Hannen, Susan (née Lee), 531 Hara Setsuko, 253 Hara, Prime Minister, 590 Hara, Tom, 80, 103 Harada Munesuke, 215 Hariyama Chieko, 103 Harris, Robin, 649 Harris, Tom, 97, 98, 99, 100 Hart, Ernest, 68 Hart, Sir Robert, 447 Hart-Synnot, Arthur, 526, 530 Harvey, Alan, 80, 96, 97 Hasegawa Takejiro¯, 472, 473, 479 Hashimoto (Chairman of Mitsui), 98 Hawes, Albert George Sidney, 126, 128 Hayakawa Kane, 258 Hayakawa Kintaro¯, 258 Hayakawa Yoichiro¯, 258 Hayakawa, Sessue, 45, 258–68 Hayashi Hirosue, 217, 221 Hayashi Kentaro¯, 8 Hayashi Tadasu, Baron, 563, 565, 566

666

Hayashi Tadasu, Viscount, 162 Hayashi, Philip Takeichi, 162 Hazard, Dr Benjamin H, 46 Heaney, Shamus, 21 Hearn, Lafcadio, 15, 16, 19, 456, 473, 474 Hearst, George Randolph, 304 Hearst, Lorna, 304 Hearst, William Randolph, 304 Heaslett, Bishop, 198, 199, 202, 204 Heath, Edward, 9, 98, 99, 100, 101, 114, 499, 644 Heifetz, 231 Helleu, Paul César, 285 Henson, H.V., 143 Hepburn, Audrey, 240 Hepburn, James Curtis, 188, 189, 190, 191, 473 Hepburn, Mrs James Curtis, 177 Heron-Allen, Edward, 67 Hicks, Sir John, 368, 369, 370, 371, 372 Hidaka Sonojo¯, Admiral, 483 Higashikuni, Prince, 164 Hill, Captain A., 150, 151, 153 Hind, Bobbie, 263 Hino Yoshiko, Mme, 44 Hiraga Yu¯zuru, 484 Hiro, Prince, 241 Hirohito, Crown Prince, 57 Hiroshige, 3, 211 Hitchcock, Alfred, 253 Hitchens, Tim, 107 Hitler, 609, 610 Hoare, Sir Samuel, 603, 615, 621 Hodges (constable), 538 Hodge, James, 107 Hofmann, August Wilhelm, 440 Hokusai, 3 Holland, Vyvyan, 386, 388 Holme, Charles, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 Honma Hisao, 381–92, 400 Honma Kunio, 382, 390 Hooper brothers, 408 Hoover, President, 598 Hori Eishiro¯, 304 Hornby, A.S., 451, 452, 453, 454, 455, 457, 458, 460, 461

INDEX

Hornby, Sir Edmund, 532, 533, 534, 539, 544, 545, 546 Howard, Michael, 654 Howard, Professor Michael, 466 Howatt, A.P.R., 460 Howe, Sir Geoffrey, 100, 118 Hozumi Haruko, 362 Hozumi Nobushige, 362 Huang Hua, 497 Hudson, James, 281 Hughes, Miss, (Cambridge Training College), 335, 337, 338 Hughes, Thomas, 347 Huish, Marcus, 68 Hull, Cordell, 616, 626 Hunt, William Holman, 348 Hunter, Janet, 89 Hutton, Alfred, 41 Hutton, Richard Holt, 315 Huxley, Aldous, 298 Ibsen, 400, 402 Ibuka Kajinosuke, 191 Ichikawa Kon, 255 Ichikawa Sanken, 358 Ichikawa Sanki, 357–65 Ikeda Hayato, 79, 98, 111, 498, 499 Ikeda Kikunae, 429 Ikeda, Professor, 482 Impey, Dr David, 3 Inayama (Keidanren Chairman), 106 Ince, Thomas H., 260 Ino¯ Tadataka, 288 Inoue Junnosuke, 494 Inoue Kajiro¯, 347 Inoue Kaoru, 579, 580 Inouye Katsunosuke, 324, 326, 327 Inukai Tsuyoshi, 494 Irvine, Alan, 5 Irving, Bob, 80 Irving, Henry, 399, 429 Irwine, Edward Champneys, 181 Isaiah, 354 Isawa Shuji, 226 Isayama, R., 75 Ishibashi Ko¯taro¯, 364, 365 Ishihara Takashi, 652 Ishikawa, Mr, 83 Ishikawa Kinichiro¯, 291, 294

Itami Mansaku, 248 Ito¯ Fujibei, 290 Ito¯ Hirobumi, 441, 559, 580 Ito¯ Jakuchu, 6 Itoh (president of Matsuzakaya), 82 Itoh Kyoitsu, Dr, 46 Ivins, Jim, 103 Iwakura Tomomi, 226, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 580, 581 Jackson, Captain Thomas, 484 Jackson, Holbrook, 386, 387 James I, King, 39, 271 James, Katherins Margaret (née Ranken or Rankin), 473 James, Arthur (Ernest Arthur Henry), 475 James, Elspeth (Elspeth iris Fraser), 475 James, Grace, 472–9 James, Henry, 285 James, Mrs T.H. (Kate), 472–9 James, Nicholas, 540 James, Thomas Henry, 473 Jamieson, George, 539, 540, 544, 545 Janes, Captain L.L., 346 Jenkins, Roy, 312, 499 Jerome, J.K., 359 Jesus Christ, 317, 385 Jewell, Anne Maria, 210 Johnson, Harry, 45 Joji Sakurai, Baron, 433 Jones, Sidney, 229 Joseph, Michael, 299 Joyce, William (Lord Haw Haw), 418 Julian of Norwich, 455 Kabayama Aisuke, 505 Kades, Charles L., 506 Kaga Sho¯taro¯, 128, 129 Kaifu Toshiki, 111, 119, 645, 655, 657 Kamei Takejiro¯, 289 Kamo Cho¯mei, 454 Kaneko, Anne, 89, 414 Kaneko Tohta, 20 Kano Jigoro¯, 42, 44 Karsavina, Lola, 263 Katayama Masao, 429 Kato¯ Hiroharu, Admiral, (aka Kanji), 481–90

667

INDEX

Kato¯ Tadao, 4 Kato¯ Takaaki, 55, 486 Kato¯ Tomosaburo¯, Admiral, 592, 593 Kawakami Otojiro¯, 228–9, 260 Kawakita Daijiro¯, 246 Kawakita Kashiko, 246, 251–7 Kawakita Ko¯, 246 Kawakita Nagamasa, 245, 246–50 Kawamura Sumiyoshi, Admiral, 212, 216, 218, 476, 477 Kawamura Tetsutaro¯, 476, 477 Kawamura Yoju¯ro¯, 212 Kawara, Captain, 68 Kazuo Kikuta, 236–44 Keats, John, 25, 391, 455 Keller, Albert, 351 Kenko¯ Ho¯shi, 454 Kennedy, M.D., 526 Kenny, Sean, 240 Kenny, W.J., 549 Kent, HRH The Duke of, 102, 164 Kenzo Tange, 90 Keppel, Captain, 527 Keppel, Sir Henry, 513–21 Ker, W.P., 360, 361 Kerouac, Jack, 20 Kerr, Lord Walter Talbot, 149, 150 Keswick, Sir John, 509 Keswick, William, 174 Ketchell, Robert, 29, 31, 35, 36 Key, Ellen, 381 Key, Thomas Hewitt, 428 Kikuchi Dairoku, Baron, 156 Kikuchi Kan, 408 Kimberley, Earl of, 556, 560 Kimotsuki Kanehiro, 212, 214 King, Anthony, 646 King, Denis, 80, 83 Kinoshita, Sue, 107 Kiyonori Kanasaka, Professor, 471 Kinugasa Teinosuke, 245 Kipling, Rudyard, 455, 456 Kirkup, James, 23, 25 Kishi Nobusuke, 496, 499 Kitchener, Lord, 324 Kiyooka Shige, 322, 324, 327 Klein, Professor Larry, 373 Kluge, F., 407 Knatchbull-Hugessen, Sir Hughe, 623

668

Knott, Cargill G., 430 Knox, Johm, 353 Knutsen, Patricia, 46 Knutsen, Roald, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50 Ko Shoki, 416 Kodama, Professor, 304 Koeber, Raphael von, 360 Koga Ju¯jiro¯, 408 Koike, Mrs, 488 Koizumi Gunji, 43, 44 Koizumi Junichiro¯, 497, 657 Koizumi Shinzo¯, 407 Kojima Kyu¯ta, 124 Kojima Usui, 289 Komai Gonnosuke, 44 Komoto Daisaku, Colonel, 504 Kon Hidemi, 505 Kondo¯ Shigekichi, 125, 128 Kondo Shigeru, 59 Kono Ichiro¯, 509 Konoe Fumimaro¯, 502, 615, 625 Korda, Sir Alexander, 250, 254, 255 Kosaka (president of Komatsu), 82 Koyama Sho¯taro, 289, 290 Krecker, Frederick C., 190 Kudzutani Arataro¯, 45 Kuhara Mitsuru, 444 Kume Masao, 362 Kunikida Doppo, 291 Kuramatsu, Dr, 488 Kurokawa Kisho, 5 Labry, Capt. Vicomte de, 446 Lakin, Lieut. Thomas, 137 Lambe, Beatrice (Betty) Clare, 299 Lambert, Gavin, 255 Landsberger, W., 430 Lansdowne, Lord, 557, 563, 564, 565, 566, 567 Lawrence, John, 359, 360, 361, 364 Lawrence, Ted (T.E.), 299 Layard, Henry, 573 Lean, David, 250, 255, 267, 268 Leckie, J., 153 Lee, Vernon, 285 Lees, William, 537 Leigh, Vivian, 250 Leighton, Lord, 285 Lengyel, Melchior, 260

INDEX

Leslie, Shane (Sir John Randolph Leslie), 298 Lewando, Jan, 97 Lewis, George Cornewall, 351 Liberty, Arthur Lazenby, 73 Lidstone, R.A., 45, 46, 47, 48–50 Liebig, Justus von, 440 Liefmann, Robert, 407 Lindsay, Sir Ronald, 599 Livingstone, David, 353 Lodge, Oliver, 428 Longford, Joseph, 150, 153, 551 Loomis, Henry, 186 Loudon, John, 509 Lowry-Corry, Henry, 518 Luther, 354 Lyndhurst, Lord, 277 Lynn, Ralph, 263 Lyons, Joseph, 622 Lytton, Lord, 598, 600 MacArthur, General Douglas, 162, 163, 164, 505, 508, 633, 634, 635, 636, 637, 639, 640, 643 Macaulay, 318 MacCauley, Clay, 454 MacDonald, John, 80 MacDonald, Malcolm, 628 MacDonald, Ramsay, 596, 599, 601, 604, 606 MacDonald, Sir Claude, 143, 483, 487, 561 Mackintosh, Cameron, 243 Maclay, Arthur Collins, 178 Maclay, Robert Samuel, 189 Macmillan, Harold, 311 Macrae, Herbert, A., 125, 309–18 Maki Yu¯ko¯, 127, 129, 130 Makin, Norman, 636 Makino Nobuaki, 589, 590 Makino Yoshio, 291 Mamiya Rinzo¯, 288 Mandel, Charles, 220 Maraini, Fosco, 130 Marcos, President, 251 Margaret, Princess, 78, 80, 82, 85, 86 Marten, F.W., 508 Maruyama Banka, 291 Marx, Karl, 370, 371, 372

Mary, Queen, 263, 327 Masaki Taizo¯, 427 Masaoki Shiki, 15 Masefield, John, 456 Mason, Luther Whiting, 226, 227, 228 Mason, Richard, 416, 417 Mason, William B., 126 Masamune Hakucho¯, 402 Matsudaira Ichiro¯, 59 Matsudaira Tsuneo, 9 Matsui Gensui, 228 Matsui Keishiro, 593 Matsui Naokichi, 432 Matsui Sumako, 400, 402 Matsui, Bishop, 198, 202, 204 Matsukata Saburo¯, 127, 130 Matsukawa Baiken, 415, 416 Matsumoto Toshio, 47 Matsuo Taiichiro¯, 100–102, 105 Matsura Ho¯in, 272 Matsuyama Takayoshi, 191 Maurier, George du, 387 McEwan, John, 416 McFadyean, Andrew, 509 McGhie, Hamish, 102, 105 McMillan, Alex, 96, 103, 105 Medhurst, William Henry, 188 Meiji, Emperor, 209, 328, 426 Melhuish, George, 150, 151 Mendl, Wolf, 465–8 Menpes, Mortimer, 389 Merson, Billy, 263 Methold, Elizabeth, 313 Michio Morishima, 368–79 Michio Yo¯ko (née Tsuda Yo¯ko), 369 Miller, Arthur, 240 Mills, Douglas, 416 Milne, John, 126 Milne, William, 188 Milton, 353, 399, 455 Milward, Anthony H., 503 Minami Kunzo¯, 291 Mishiku Kaoru, 43, 45 Mitchell, Margaret, 240 Mitchell, Stephen, 242 Mitford, Algernon B., 478, 515, 517, 521 Mitsuchi Chu¯zo¯, 493 Miyakawa Kane, 332

669

INDEX

Miyakawa Moritaro¯, 332 Miyake (kendo instructor), 43 Miyake Kokki, 291, 293, 294 Miyamoto Tsuneichi, 288 Miyazawa Kiichi, 509, 645 Miyoshi Masaya, 101 Mizushima San-ichiro¯, 429 Mollison, James Pender, 137–8, 139, 141, 143, 150, 151 Monk, Mr, (football), 149 Monks, Brendan, 46 Montague, Michael, 81, 85 Moore, Henry, 84, 85 ¯ gai, 396 Mori O Mori Takao, 82 Moriarty, Professor, 42 Morita Akio, 645, 658 Morohashi (Mitsubishi), 105 Morris, William, 285, 286, 381, 386, 387, 388 Morris, John, 125, 126, 129, 130 Morrison, Dr G.E., 590 Morrison, Herbert, 633 Morrison, Robert, 187, 188 Moseley, Harriet, 305 Motoda, Bishop, 197 Mowat, Robert Anderson, 539, 540, 544–52 Mozart, 90, 211 Munch, Karl, 401 Murdoch, Keith, 351 Murray, D.L., 305 Murray, E.D., 138, 141 Murray, Sir Glbert, 602 Murray, Sir Wyndham, 328 Murrell, William, 67 Muto¯ Cho¯hachi, 407 Muto¯ Cho¯hei, 407 Muto¯ Cho¯zo¯, 406–10 Muto¯ Kiichiro¯, 410 Mutsu Munemitsu, 559, 560, 561 Nabeshima Naomitsu, 157 Nagami Tokutaro¯, 408 Nagano (Nippon Stel), 98 Nagasawa Rosetsu, 3, 5 Nagata Masaichi, 267 Nagayama Mokuo, 23 Nagayama Tokihide, 408

670

Naito¯ Chiyoko, 127 Nakagawa Ichiro¯, 496 Nakamura Fusetsu, 293 Nakamura Junkazu, 129 Nakamura Suketsune, 214, 217, 219, 220, 221 Nakano Yoshio, 363, 365 Nakasone Yasuhiro, 111, 112, 114, 309–10, 645, 656 Nakayama Shimpei, 233 Nakayama, Foreign Minister, 655 Nakazawa Iwata, 444, 445 Natsume So¯seki, 383, 397, 398 Naumann, Heinrich Edmund, 442 Netto, Curt Adolph, 442 Newton, Dr, 520 Nichols, Geoffrey, 97, 100, 105 Nichols, H.R., 142 Nightingale, Florence, 321, 326 Nikisch, Arthur, 401 Nish, Alison, 148 Nishi Amane, 161 Nishi Kanjiro¯, General, 483 Nishi Kenzo¯, 213, 215 Nishi Shusuki, 161 Nitobe Inazo¯, 345, 346, 349, 352 Noda (Hankyu¯), 82 Noguchi Hideyo, 323 Nomoto Kikuo, 61 Nonaka Ryo¯, 390 Norman, Arthur, 548 Norman, Barry, 9 Norman, Francis James, 43 Norman, Lieutenant-Colonel Henry Radford, 211, 212 North, Marianne, 279 Noyes, Alfred, 456 Nozu Shizuo, 212, 213, 215 O’Neill, Patrick, 416, 422, 469 O’Rell, Max, 359 Oba Sadao, 59, 414, 421 Obama Toshie, 419 Obama, Barack, 318 Odling, William, 441 ¯ e (née Miyakawa) Sumi, 331–41 O ¯ e Genju, 340 O Ogawa Masataka, 433, 443, 447 Ogden, 459

INDEX

Ohira Masayoshi, 85, 496 Ohno Katsumi, 59 Ohtaki Goro¯, 47 Okakura Kakuzo¯, 285, 287 Okakura Tenshin Kakuzo¯, 364 Okakura Yoshisaburo¯, 364 Okamoto Yoshitomo, 45 Okano Kinjiro¯, 125 Oku Yoshiisa, 217, 221 ¯ kuma Shigenobu, 326, 332, 389 O Oliphant, Lawrence, 456 Omori, Annie Shepley, 454 ¯ mura Kiyoshi, 365 O ¯ nishi Hajime, 396 O Ophul, Max, 266 Oppenheim, E. Philipp, 264 Orde, Charles, 605 Osaki Shintaro¯, 46 ¯ sako Sadakiyo, 215 O Osanai Kaoru, 400 Osawa Sho¯kai, 508 Osborn, Percival, 426 Oshima Nagisa, 251 Oshima Tsuneyoshi, 322 ¯ shimo Kanae, 421 O ¯ shita To¯jiro¯, 290, 291 O Otani Masutaro¯, 45 Otani Tomio, 45, 46 Otsuka Naotaro¯, 324, 328 Ottley, Captain Charles, 484 Owen, Jane, 107 Owens, P.G., 487 ¯ yama Iwao, 214 O Ozaki Saburo, 54 Ozaki Yukio, 487 Ozaki, Yei Theodora, 478 Ozawa Keijiro¯, 282 Ozawa Takashi, 47 Ozawa, Baron, 322, 323 Page, C.H., 454 Pakenham, Admiral Sir William, 529 Palmer, Harold E., 364, 453, 454, 455, 457, 459, 460 Pankhurst, Emily (Emmeline), 42 Paracelsus, 455 Parker, Peter, 416 Parkes, Sir Harry Smith, 162, 211, 445, 514–15, 518, 519, 521, 535, 538,

545, 573, 574, 575, 576, 577, 578, 579, 580, 581 Parry, Lydia, 103 Parsons, Alfred William, 284–94 Paske-Smith, Mr, 457 Pater, Walter, 383, 387, 388, 389, 392 Paul, 354 Paunceforte, Sir Julian, 573, 578, 579 Pearce, Bill, 102 Peel, Sir Robert, 278, 353 Pepys, 455 Perkin, William Henry, 440 Perry, Commodore, 208 Perry, Sir Michael, 107 Phillips, Dr Leslie, 459 Piggott, General, F.S.G., 144, 416, 417 Pilcher, Lady, 86 Pilcher, Sir John, 81, 85, 89, 96, 241 Pilkington, Jane, 217 Piper, John, 189, 190 Playfair, 549 Plunkett, Sir Francis, 580 Poole, Otis Manchester, 127 Porter, W.N., 454 Pound, Ezra, 17–18 Poyser, Ian, 272, 273 Pratt, Sir John, 605 Price, Ernest, 138 Price, R.E., 149 Prowse, Derek, 255 Purchas, 456 Quaritch, Bernard, 66 Queensbury, Marquis of, 385 Quiller-Couch, Sir A., 457 Quinby, J. Hamilton, 190 Rackham, Arthur, 285 Raggett, Jill, 34, 35 Ramsay, Sir William, 432, 433 Ranken, Very Rev. Arthur, 474 Raoult, Francois-Marie, 430 Raworth, Tom, 21 Rawson, Admiral Sir Harry, 148 Reading, Lord, 597 Reagan, President, 647, 656 Redman, Vere, 459, 460 Reed, Carol, 250, 255

671

INDEX

Rees FRS, Lord, 273 Rees, Peter, 106 Reid, Neil B., 232 Reifenstahl, Leni, 250 Reifsnider, Bishop, 204 Reiniger, Lotte, 252 Rembrandt, 353 Rennie, Sir Richard Temple, 533, 536, 537, 543, 547, 580 Reynolds, 348 Rheinhardt, Max, 401 Ricardo, David, 371, 372 Richardson, Charles Lenox, 136, 175 Richardson, Ralph, 250 Richter, Hans, 401 Rickerby, Charles, 136, 138 Riddell, Hannah, 478 Rifkind, Malcolm, 119 Rivisto, Michael A., 164 Robinson, Harry Russell, 46 Robinson, William, 285, 286 Roche, Captain, 528 Rochefort, Captain Charles, 137 Rochfort, Captain Charles, 149, 150 Roe, Humphrey Verdon, 350 Rome, Harold, 242 Ronalds, Edmund, 441 Roosevelt, President, 315, 604, 613, 616, 617, 624, 626 Rose, Larry, 199, 203 Rosebery, Lord, 543, 560, 581 Ross, Robert, 384 Rossetti, Dante Gabriel, 387 Rothschild, 566 Rothschild, Leopold de, 278, 281 Rowney, Thomas H., 441 Rumbold, Horace, 487 Runciman, Sir Walter, 601, 603 Rundall, Sir Francis, 79, 96 Ruskin, John, 124, 289, 291, 294, 429 Russell, Gordon, 104 Russell, Lord John, 175 Rutter, Mark, 23 Ryan, Robert, 267 Ryokichi Minobe, Dr, 85 Sadayakko, 229 Saigo Takamori, 218 Saigyo¯ Ho¯shi, 454

672

Saito¯ Hidesaburo¯, 357, 359, 360 Saito¯ Mokichi, 408 Saito¯ Takeshi, 362 Saji Keizo¯, 116, 374 Sak, Güven, 461 Sakakibara Kenichi, 41 Sakakura (president of Mitsukoshi), 82 Sakurai Jo¯ji, 425–34 Salisbury, Earl of, 272, 536, 539, 543, 557, 562, 563, 564 Salisbury, Marquess of, 581 Sambourne, Linley, 285 Sameshima Naonobu, 574 Sanbancho¯ Ko¯jimachi, 495 Sanderson, Sir Thomas, 557 Sano Tsunetami, 319 Sansbury, Bishop Kenneth, 197–205 Sansbury, Mrs, 204 Sapir, 459 Sargent, John Singer, 285 Sargent, John, 469–71 Sargent, Maryam, 470 Saris, 455, 456 Saris, Captain John, 271–2 Saris, John, 39 Sasayama Chise, 395 Sasayama Ippei, 395 Satake Tamekichi, 59 Sato¯ Eisaku, 80, 85, 496, 497, 498, 499 Sato¯ Hachiro¯, 237 Sato¯ Kazuo, 24 Sato¯ Naotake, 622 Sato¯ Tetsutaro¯, 484 Satow, Sir Ernest Mason, 126, 128, 228, 446, 519, 550, 551, 552, 561, 572, 573, 580 Saussure, de, 459 Schulz-Gaevernitz, Gerhardt Von, 407 Scotland, R.B., 535 Scott, Robert H., 508 Scott, Sir Walter, 353 Seeley, J.R., 346, 351 Sekine Sho¯ji, 385 Sélincourt, Ernest De, 399 Selznick, David, 240 Setsurei Miyake, 400 Shakespeare, 348, 353, 399, 429, 457 Shaw, George Bernard, 348, 457

INDEX

Shaw, T.H.R., 126 Shelley, 23, 455 Shibata Keita, 429 Shibata Yu¯ji, 429 Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯, 505, 585 Shidehara, Ambassador, 592, 593 Shiga Shigetaka, 124 Shigemitsu Mamoru, 610, 614, 617 Shimamura Bunko¯, 396 Shimamura Ho¯getsu, 382, 385 Shimamura Takitaro¯ (Ho¯getsu), 395–404 Shimamura Takizo¯, 397 Shimazaki To¯son, 291, 385 Shimazu Tadayoshi, 213 Shimizu, Cecily, 415 Shimose Masachika, 443 Shiras, Jon, 503 Shirasu Fumihara, 503 Shirasu Jiro¯, 502–10 Shirasu Masako, 503 Shirataki Ikonosuke, 291 Siebold, Phiipp Franz von, 409 Simon, Sir John, 595–606, 611 Sims, Dr Richard, 422, 470, 471 Sitwell, Osbert, 298 Smith, Adam, 346, 351 Smith, Bishop George, 174 Smith, Ken, 21 Smith, Lawrence, 3 Smith, Richard, 459 Smith, W.H., 136, 138, 179 Smith-Dorrien, Lieutenant General Sir, 526 Smuts, Jan, 604 Snowdon, Lord, 78, 85, 86 Sonobe Hideo, 44 Sonobe Masatada, 44 Sonoda Kokichi, 54 Sonoda Sunao, 497 Spiegel, Sam, 267 Spencer, Herbert, 428 St Francis, 455 Stack, Robert, 267 Stalin, 315–18 Stapleton-Bretherton, Ruth Mary Elizabeth, 298 Stenhouse, John, 440 Stephenson, Henry, 517 Sternberg, Joseph von, 250

Stettinkron, Baron von, 246 Stevenson, 456 Stewart, Lady Alice King, 279 Stewart, Michael, 89 Stimson, Henry, 595, 598, 599, 600, 603, 606 Stirling, Rear Admiral Sir John, 208 Stock, Eugene, 185 Stoll, Sir Oswald, 264 Stone, Marcus, 285 Stopes, Marie, 350–1, 425, 429, 430–2, 434 Stopps, Bill, 45 Stout, George, 399 Strange, F.W., 145 Strauss, Richard, 401 Sudheimer, Dr Hellmuth, 457 Sufu Ko¯hei, 143 Sugae Masumi, 288 Sullivan, Arthur, 71, 384, 387 Summerfield, Geoffrey, 21 Summers, Frederick, 398, 401 Summers, Harriet, 398, 402 Summers, Wilson, 399 Sunada Takuji, Professor, 421 Sutter, William, 154, 155 Suzuki Zenko¯, 5, 111, 649, 650, 651, 652, 657 Suzuki, J., 35 Suzuki Shigeyoshi, 249 Swinburne, 455 Sybnot-Hart, Brigadier Arthur, 530 Syle, Edward, 180, 181 Symons, Arthur, 386 Takahashi Goro¯, 191 Takahashi Satomi, 382, 391 Takahashi Yuichi, 289 Takaki Yoshihiro, Dr, 156, 157 Takako Miyashita, 468 Takamatsu Toyokichi, 444 Takamyama (sumo wrestler), 653 Takanashi Kenkichi, 375 Takano Etsuko, 256 Takano Takazo¯, 125 Takarabe Takeshi, Captain, 484 Takata Sanae, 403 Takata Yasuma, 372, 373 Takeda Hisayoshi, 125, 130

673

INDEX

Takeshita Noboru, 111, 117, 118, 645, 657 Taketsuru, Jessie Roberta, 112 Taketsuru Masataka, 112 Takeuchi Kashiko, 247, 251 Taki Handa, 35 Taki Rentaro¯, 228, 232, 233, 397 Takizawa Ko¯zo¯, 47 Tanaka Akamaru, 128 Tanaka Giichi, 493 Tanaka Ginnosuke, 148, 157 Tanaka Hozumi, 220 Tanaka Kakuei, 97, 98, 106, 114, 496, 499 Tanaka Michiko, 266 Tani Yukio, 42, 43 Tanita Hiroyuki, 287, 293 Taoka Yahei, 57 Taro Okamoto, 90 Taylor, Geoffrey, 4, 11 Taylor, Isaac John, 186, 189 Tebbit, Norman, 114 Tello, Ambassador, 117 Temple, William, 615 Tennyson, Alfred, 428, 457 Tenterden, Lord, 573 Terashima Munenori, 54, 575, 577 Terry, Ellen, 399, 429 Thatcher, Margaret, 5, 104, 106, 111, 112, 114, 117, 118, 119, 376, 499, 644–58 Thomas, Edward, 19 Thompson, David, 190 Thompson, Dr Sylvanus P., 71, 72 Thomson, David, 473 Thomson, John Austin, 186 Thorne, Ben, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 105 Thorne, Christopher, 599 Thorne, Sylvia, 103 Thorneycroft, Lord, 97, 98, 99, 103 Thornton, Sir E., 574 Thurston, Sir George, 487 Thwaite, Anthony, 21 Tilley, Sir John Anthony, 409 Tochinai Sojiro¯, Captain, 484 To¯go¯ Heihachiro¯, Admiral, 259, 483 Tokugawa Hidetada, 39 Tokugawa Ieyasu, 272, 273, 410 Tokugawa Keiki, 515

674

Tokugawa, Prince, 593 Tokutomi Roka, 291 Tolstoy, Leo, 383 Toshio Watanabe, 34 Toyoda Minoru, 362 Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯, 509 Tree, Herbert Beerbohm, 400 Trevor, Ann, 263 Troubridge, Admiral Sir Ernest, 529 Troup, James, 539, 551, 552 Truffaut, Francois, 251 Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, 382, 385, 396, 397, 400 Tsuda Mamichi, 161 Tsuda Shinichiro¯, 161 Tsujimura Isuke, 128, 129 Tsushima Ju¯ichi, 495 Tsuzuki Jiro¯, 322 Turner, 291, 348 Uchimura Kanzo¯, 345, 346, 352, 353, 354, 359 Ue Sanemichi, 220 Ueda Akinari, 391 Ueda Makoto, 20 Uemura Masahisa, 191 Valentino, Rudolf, 260, 261, 262 Varley Jr, John, 291, 292, 294 Vereker, G.G., 44 Victoria, Queen, 278, 514, 519, 575 Vincent, Ruth, 348 Vissering, Professor Simon, 161 Vivanti brothers, 150, 155 Vyse, Frank Howard, 175 Wada Eisaku, 397 Waddell, Hugh, 190 Wagner, Richard, 71 Wakefield, A.H., 451 Wakefield, Edward Gibbon, 351 Wakefield, Peter, 97, 100, 103 Wakefield, Sir Charles, 327 Waldersee, Count von, 562 Wales, Prince of, 5, 29, 75, 229, 264, 278, 514 Wales, Princess of, 514 Waley, Arthur, 94 Walker, James, 430

INDEX

Walls, Tom, 263 Walras, Léon, 371, 372 Walton, Murray, 126 Wamsley, Ethelreda, 198 Wang Shao-Ming, President, 495 Warner, Sir Fred, 101 Warren, Charles Frederick, 190 Warren, Sir David, 107 Watanabe Tetsunobu, 398 Watson, Professor William, 2, 3 Watson, R.G., 535 Watson, R.J., 577 Watt, James, 353 Watts, G.F., 347 Webb, Alfred E., 125, 128 Webbe, Samuel, 226 Webster, 156 Weinstein, Stanley, 469 Wellesley, Sir Victor, 605 Wellington, Duke of, 278 Wells, H.G., 456 Westminster, Duke of, 265 Weston, Mrs Frances E., 125, 128, 129 Weston, Walter, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130 Wheeler, Dr E., 143, 150, 151 Whistler, James McNeill, 285, 286, 387, 389 White, Oswald, 126 White, William John, 189 Whitehead, Sir John, 80, 96, 106, 107, 654 Whitney, Courtney, 506, 507 Whitney, Gertrude Vanderbilt, 305 Wigram, Ralph, 299 Wilberforce, William, 185 Wilde, Oscar, 67, 75, 381, 382, 383, 384, 385, 386, 387, 388, 389–90, 391 Wilford, Sir Michael, 104 Wilkinson, Hiram Shaw, 539, 544, 546, 547, 549, 550, 551, 552 Williams, Channing Moore, 190 Williams, Frank, 75 Williams, Harold S., 177 Williams, Samuel Wells, 187 Williams, William Carlos, 18 Williamson, Alexander William, 441, 427, 428, 429, 432, 442, 443 Willis, Phyllis, 454

Willis, William, 177, 178, 520 Wilson, President, 589, 590 Wiltshire, Richard, 470 Winton, Dora de, 263 Wood, Edward, 609 Wood, Norman, 81 Woodhouse, James, 532 Woodhouse, Jessie Maria Harriette, 532 Woods, Jessie, 211 Woodward, Dr, 179 Woodward, Edward, 537 Woodward, Stanley, 199, 203 Wordsworth, 20, 457 Wrench, Evelyn, 598 Wright, David, 96 Wright, Edward William Barton, 42 Wright, William Ball, 181, 189, 190 Yamada Ko¯saku, 228, 233 Yamagawa Kenjiro¯, 430 Yamaguchi Masuka, 575 Yamakawa Futaba, 333 Yamamoto Gombei, Admiral, 482, 483, 484 Yamamoto S, 42 Yamamoto Yao, 319–29 Yamanaka Sadanori, 117, 118 Yamashina, Prince, 519 Yanabu Akira, 287 Yanada Kyu¯jiro¯, 414, 418, 419 Yanada Seiji, 469 Yanada Senji, 413–23 Yanada, Cecily, 415 Yanaihara Aiko, 347 Yanaihara Isaku (Isaac), 347 Yanaihara Tadao, 345–54 Yashiro, Bishop, 205 Yasui Tetsu, 333, 334, 335 Yate, George, 525 Yate, Louise Caroline, 525 Yate, Major C.A.L., 524–30 Yeats, W.B., 456 Yokoi Tokio, 346 Yone Noguchi, 359 Yoshida Hiroshi, 291 Yoshida Shigeru, 129, 232, 233, 502, 505, 506, 507, 508, 621, 622, 623, 627, 641 Yoshida Torajiro¯, 456

675

INDEX

Yoshida Yoshishige, 256 Yoshiko Yamaguchi, 267 Yoshimura Goro¯, Captain, 46 Yoshino Sakuzo¯, 346 Yoshio Markino, 43, 291

Yoshitake Saburo¯, 416 Yoshiwara, C., 140 Youd, Sam, 29 Zhang Zuolin, 504

676