BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI Sir Winston Churchill saying goodbye to Crown Prince Akihito, the present Emperor of Japan, after lunch at No 10 Downing Street on 30 April 1953. (See Ch. 1) Courtesy Mainichi. BRITAIN & JAPAN: Biographical Portraits

VOLUME VI

Compiled & Edited by HUGH CORTAZZI JAPAN SOCIETY PAPERBACK EDITION Not for resale

BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS Volume VI Compiled & Edited by Hugh Cortazzi

First published in 2007 by GLOBAL ORIENTAL LTD PO Box 219 Folkestone Kent CT20 2WP UK www.globaloriental.co.uk

© The Japan Society 2007

ISBN 978-1-905246-33-5 [Case]

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without prior permission in writing from the publishers.

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

SPECIAL THANKS The Chairman and Council of the Japan Society together with the Editor and Publishers of this volume wish to express their thanks to the following organizations for their support: The Daiwa Anglo- Japanese Foundation, The Great Britain-Sasakawa Foundation.

Set in Bembo 11 on 11.5pt by Servis Filmsetting Ltd, Manchester Printed and bound in England by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham, Wilts Table of Contents

Introduction by Hugh Cortazzi xi Alphabetical List of Contributors xv Index of Biographical Portraits in Japan Society Volumes xvii PART I: POLITICIANS 1Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and Japan 1   2Prime Minister Yoshida in London 1954: The First Visit to Britain by a Japanese Prime Minister 15   3 Edward Heath (1916–2005) and Japan: The First Visit of a British Prime Minister to Japan in 1972 23   4 Nitobe Inazo¯ in London 34   5 Inagaki Manjiro¯ (1861–1908): A Diplomat who Recognized the Importance of the Asia-Pacific Region to Japan 44  

PART II: ROYAL MATTERS 6 The Sho¯wa Emperor’s State Visit to Britain, October 1971 53   7A Royal Alliance: Court Diplomacy and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1900–41 63   8Japanese Tattooists and the British Royal Family during the Meiji Period 71   PART III: BUSINESS FIGURES The Japanese car industry and Britain 9Toyota and Britain 81     10 Nissan and the British Motor Vehicle Industry (Prior to the Nissan Investment in the UK in 1984) 94   11 Nissan Investment in Britain: History of a Negotiation 1980–84 107   12 Honda So¯ichiro¯(1906–1991) and Honda Motors in Britain 122   Other Business leaders 13 Morita Akio (1921–99), Sony and Britain 133   14 Sir Peter Parker (1924–2002) and Japan 145   15 Lord (Eric) Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005), S.G. Warburg and Shirasu Jiro¯ 158   16 Chino Yoshitoki (1923–2004) and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation 167   17 Frank Guyver Britton (1879–1934), Engineer and Earthquake Hero 174   18 Ernest Cyril Comfort: The Other British Aviation Mission and Mitsubishi 1921–24 182 ..  19 Uyeno Yutaka (1915– ) 191  -

PART IV: LITERARY FIGURES 20 Yoshida Ken’ichi (1912–77), Anglophile Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic, Translator and Man of Letters 200   21 Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), Novelist, Playwright, Essayist and Traveller 212   22 Ian Fleming (1908–64), Novelist and Journalist 221   23 Frank Tuohy (1925–99): The Best is Silence 234   24 Angela Carter (1940–92): Disorientations 245  

PART V: ART COLLECTORS, AN ARCHAEOLOGIST AND AN ARTIST 25 Charles Holme (1848–1923), Founder of The Studio and Connoisseur of Japanese Art 250   26 Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–97) and James Lord Bowes (1834–1899): Collecting Japan in Victorian England 262    27 William Gowland (1842–1922), Pioneer of Japanese Archaeology 271   28 Elizabeth Keith (1887–1956): A Marriage of British Art and Japanese Craftsmanship 281  

PART VI: A JOURNALIST, A TEACHER AND THREE SCHOLARS 29 Hugh Fulton Byas (1875–1945): ‘The fairest and most temperate of foreign writers on Japan’s political development’ Between the Wars 287  ’ 30 Edward Gauntlett (1868–1956), English Teacher, Explorer and Missionary 299   31 Joseph Henry Longford (1849–1925), Consul and Scholar 307   32 Kathleen Mary Drew Baker, British Botanist whose Studies Helped to Save the Japanese Nori Industry 315  .   .   33 Maruyama Masao (1914–96) and Britain: An Intellectual in Search of Liberal Democracy 322   ENVOI 34 The Beatles in Japan 1966 333      Report (facsimile) from the British Embassy, Tokyo, on the Beatles’ visit to Japan 336  

APPENDIX Course of the Nissan Negotiation 1980–84 343  

Notes 365 Index 412 For Phillida Purvis Acknowledgements

The editor is most grateful to all the contributors who have received no remuneration for their efforts.

Orthography

Japanese names are given in the Japanese order of surname followed by the given name with the exception of Japanese contributors whose names are given in the English order of given name followed by the surname.

x Introduction

HUGH CORTAZZI

I 1991, to mark its centenary, the Japan Society sponsored the pub- lication of Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities. When, as Chairman of the Society’s Council I proposed that we should mark the occasion with a volume of this kind, Ian Nish, a member of the Council, strongly supported the proposal and was a contributor to the volume which I edited together with Gordon Daniels. Ian also backed the idea of a follow-up volume, which we decided to call Britian and Japan: Biographical Portraits.He agreed to edit this volume, which was published in 1994, as well as Volume II, which appeared in 1997. Jim Hoare undertook to edit Volume III, which fol- lowed in 1999. I was keen to see the project continue and have edited the three subsequent volumes IV (2002), V (2004) and VI (2007). I also edited another volume on British Envoys in Japan 1859–1972, published in 2004, which incorporated some already published bio- graphical portraits and a good deal of new material. Ian Nish has since edited a companion volume on Japanese Envoys in Britain (2007). I want to thank both Ian Nish and Jim Hoare not only for all their contribu- tions to these volumes but also for their enthusiastic support for the whole project. I also want to express my particular thanks to Phillida Purvis, to whom this volume is dedicated, for her help and advice over the present volume. Volume V, published in 2005, contained an index of biographical portraits published in previous volumes. This index, incorporating the portraits in Volume VI, is reproduced in this volume. Volume IV, pub- lished in 2002, included a list of individuals about whom monographs had been published. The present volume contains thirty-three bio- graphical portraits and relevant essays and brings the total in the volumes listed above to nearly 250 essays. The coverage has been wide. We have already covered adequately British and Japanese diplomats, but I have included some portraits of important British and Japanese politicians who have played significant roles in our relationship. The first essay in this volume by Eiji Seki explores Sir Winston Churchill’s interest in, and his dealings with

xi BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Japanese affairs. Although Churchill never visited Japan he played a crucial role in many issues affecting Japan. The first British Prime Minister to visit Japan was Sir Edward Heath and the first Japanese Prime Minister to visit Britain while in office was Yoshida Shigeru; both are the subjects of a biographical portrait by me. Other politi- cians who are commemorated in this volume are Nitobe Inazo¯(by Ian Nish) and Inagaki Manjiro¯(by Noboru Koyama). The next section continues our coverage of royal and imperial per- sonalities and events. Antony Best in his essay on court relations in the first four decades of the twentieth century underlines the political aspects of royal exchanges. Noboru Koyama’s essay on Japanese tat- tooists and the British royal family draws attention to a feature which will be new to most readers. Economic and trade relations have been particularly important, especially in the second half of the twentieth century. So it is right that almost a third of the chapters in this volume deal with businessmen. The first section on the Japanese car industry and Britain begins with a memoir by Toyoda Sho¯ ichiro¯, Honorary Chairman of Toyota, and ends with a biographical portrait by me of the charismatic and eccen- tric Honda So¯ichiro¯. The Nissan investment in Sunderland in 1984 was of great significance for Britain and the negotiations leading up to it are covered in a comprehensive and unique account by Robin Mountfield who was the senior official in the Department of Industry leading the negotiations. The earlier relationship between Nissan and the British motor industry is covered in an essay by Christopher Madeley. The second section begins with portraits by me of Morita Akio of Sony and Sir Peter Parker. In their very different ways and roles they were outstanding figures in the business relationship between our two countries in the last decades of the twentieth century. The subjects of the next two portraits of Eric Roll by Martin Gordon and of Chino Yoshitoki by Nick Clegg were important not only for the friendships which they developed in Japan and Britain but also for the establish- ment of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation which has made a significant contribution to the cultural relationship. Frank Britton, another British businessman who is the subject of a portrait by his daughter, played a brave role during the great Yokohama earthquake of 1923. Ernest Comfort, the subject of a biographical portrait by Jim Hoare, is interesting for the light which it sheds on the assistance which British engineers gave to the development of the Japanese avi- ation industry. Our essays are usually written posthumously, but, in addition to Toyoda Sho¯ ichiro¯, we have made an exception in the case of Uyeno Yutaka because of his long association with Shell1 in Japan and his contribution to Anglo-Japanese friendship.

xii INTRODUCTION

In previous volumes we have tried to trace the early history of British firms in Japan. Unfortunately, material could not be found for Volume V about Dodwell and Company which have traded in Japan since the latter part of the nineteenth century. However, I recently came across a book entitled The House of Dodwell; A Century of Achievement 1858–1958, edited by Edward Warde and produced by Dodwell and Company Limited, 24 St Mary Axe, London EC3 in 1958.2 Portraits of British poets who lived in Japan3 were included in pre- vious volumes. In this volume the emphasis has been on novelists. John Hatcher has contributed portraits of Somerset Maugham in Japan and of Ian Fleming. Both should interest Maugham and Fleming fans. David Burleigh writes about Frank Tuohy and Roger Buckley about Angela Carter. The only Japanese writer portrayed in this volume is Yoshida Kenichi, the eccentric Anglophile, son of Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, who is the subject of an essay by Norimasu Morita. The section devoted to figures in the field of art begins with a por- trait by Tony Huberman of Charles Holme, one time chairman of the Japan Society, editor of The Studio and an influential figure in the Japonisme movement. The next essay provides portraits by Nicole Rousmaniere of Franks and Bowes, important British collectors of Japanese art in the latter part of the nineteenth century.William Gowland, a pioneer in the study of Japanese archaeology in the nine- teenth century, is the subject of a biographical portrait by Simon Kaner who has specialized in the study of Japanese archaeology. Dorothy Britton has contributed a portrait of Elizabeth Keith whose sketches and prints of Japan and Korea have delighted many. The final section is devoted to a journalist, a teacher and scholars. Peter O’Connor’s portrait of the British journalist Hugh Byas, whose book Government by Assassination gave its name to the pre-war decade in Japanese politics, opens this section. Edward Gauntlett, portrayed by Saiko Gauntlett, was an outstanding example of the many English teachers who came to Japan in the final years of the nineteenth century. Joseph Longford, the subject of a portrait by Ian Ruxton, was a Japanese scholar who graduated from the British Japan consular service to become Professor of Japanese at King’s College, London. Kathleeen Drew Baker, portrayed by her children, John Baker and Frances Biggs, was a scientist who never went to Japan, yet is revered in Japan for her research which probably saved the Japanese nori (seaweed) industry from extinction. Maruyama Masao, the subject of a portrait by Rikki Kersten, was outstanding as a political philosopher critical of Japanese ultra-nationalism and militarism. I decided to end this volume on a lighter note by including an amusing account of the visit to Japan by the pop-group ‘the Beatles’in 1966.

xiii BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Volume V was the largest volume to date. I had feared that this might be the last volume in this series and wanted to cover as wide a field as possible. Even so, I realized that there were still some import- ant omissions and I am grateful to Paul Norbury for agreeing to publish this sixth volume. I never like to use the word ‘final’ but real- istically I think that this is likely to be the last volume in this series, although this is not ‘the end of history’and in years to come there will, I am sure, be individuals whose contribution to Anglo-Japanese rela- tions deserve to be recorded and remembered. One of the most important areas in Anglo-Japanese relations to which priority should be given in future studies and publications is that of Japanese investment in Britain. A start has been made in this volume with the section on the Japanese car industry and Britain and through the portraits of figures such as Morita Akio and Sir Peter Parker. But there is much more work to be done regarding the personalities involved and the problems encountered by Japanese firms. Such studies could bring out the lessons to be learnt in future. There should also be parallel studies of British investment in Japan and of technological and scientific exchanges and collaboration between the two countries. Another aspect of Anglo-Japanese relations which has not been ade- quately covered in our volumes, and which surely merits coverage at a future date, is that of British artists in Japan and Japanese artists in Britain.

xiv Alphabetical List of Contributors to this Volume

B, Dr John R., retired senior lecturer in veterinary pathology, University of Liverpool. B, Antony (Dr), Department of International History at the London School of Economics. B, K. Frances, horticultural consultant. B, Dorothy (Lady Bouchier), author, poet and composer. B, Roger, professor at Temple University, Tokyo, historian and writer. B, David, associate professor at Ferris University, editor of Helen Waddell’s Writings from Japan, (2005). C, Dudley (CMG), late HM Diplomatic Service. C, Nick, chairman of the trustees of the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation and formerly co-chairman of Daiwa Europe Ltd and chairman of Daiwa Europe Bank plc.. C, Hugh (Sir, GCMG), British ambassador to Japan 1980–84. D, Gordon (Dr), former Reader in Japanese History, Sheffield University. F Yu ko Yamagata-Footman, journalist and researcher. G, Saiko, member of Historical Society of English studies in Japan. G, Martin (OBE), former banker with S.G. Warburg and UBS and founder of the Barry and Martin Trust.. H, John, a professor of English at Fukuoka University in Kyushu, author of Laurence Binyon: Poet, Scholar of East and West, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1935. H, J.E. (Dr), consultant on East Asia and research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS). H, Toni, editor and researcher. K, Simon (Dr), archaeologist and deputy director, Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures (SISJAC) in Norwich. K, Rikki (Professor), dean of the College of Asia and the Pacific at Australian National University (ANU), Canberra, specializing in the history of political thought in Japan. K Noboru, librarian for the Japanese collection at Cambridge University library. M, Christopher (Dr), historian, lecturer and administrator at Chaucer College, Canterbury. M, Norimasu (Dr), professor, Waseda University, Tokyo. M, Robin (Sir, KCB), former permanent secretary at the cabinet office, previously under-secretary and later deputy secretary in the Department of Trade and Industry.

xv BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

N, Ian Professor (CBE), professor emeritus LSE, historian. O’, Peter (Dr), professor at Musashino University, Tokyo, series editor of the ongoing collection, Japanese Propaganda: Selected Readings (2004, 5) P, Phillida (MBE), Links Japan. R, Nicole Coolidge (Dr), Director of SISJAC, Norwich. R, Ian, associate professor, Kyushu Institute of Technology, researching the papers of Ernest Satow and making them available to scholars in published book format. S Eiji, former Japanese ambassador and historian. T Sho¯ ichiro¯, (Dr, Hon. KBE), Honorary Chairman, Toyota Motor Corporation. W, Robert, professional photographer.

xvi Index of Biographical Portraits in Japan Society Volumes

Abbreviations: Britain and Japan, 1859–1991:Themes and Personalities, Routledge, 1991. T&P Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume I, Japan Library, 1994. I Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, Japan Library,1997. II Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume III, Japan Library, 1999. III Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, Japan Library, 2002. IV Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2005. V Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume VI, Global Oriental, 2007. VI British Envoys in Japan, 1859–1972, Global Oriental, 2004. B.ENV Japanese Envoys in Britain, 1862–1964, Global Oriental,2007. J.ENV

Akihito (see Crown Prince) Alcock, Sir Rutherford Hugh Cortazzi II, B.ENV Allen, G.C. Professor Sarah Metzger-Court T&P Allen, Louis Phillida Purvis V Anderson, William John Rawlins V Anzai Tetsuo (in ‘Three Great Peter Milward V Japanese Translators of Shakespeare’) Aoki Shu¯zo¯ Ian Nish J.ENV, III Ariyoshi Yoshiya Hugh Cortazzi III Armstrong’s, Vickers Marie Conte-Helm I Arnold, Sir Edwin Carmen Blacker IV Asakai Koichiro¯Tomoki Kuniyoshi J.ENV Ashton-Gwatkin, Frank Ian Nish I Aso Kazuko Phillida Purvis III Aston, W.G. Peter Kornicki T&P, B.ENV Ayrton, Professor W.E. Ian Ruxton IV

Baba Tatsui Helen Ballhatchet T&P Baker, Kathleen Mary Drew John R. Baker and K. Frances Biggs VI Batchelor, John Hugh Cortazzi II Baty, Dr Thomas Martin Gornall V Beatles, The, in Japan 1966 Gordon Daniels and Robert Whitaker VI Beatles, The: British Embassy Dudley Cheke VI Report

xvii BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Bickersteth, Bishop Edward (with Hamish Ion III Shaw, Alexander Croft) Bird, Isabella Pat Barr I Blakiston, Thomas Wright Hugh Cortazzi III Blyth, R.H. Adrian Pinnington I Bowes, James Lord Nicole Rousmanière VI Boxer, Charles James Cummins IV Brinkley, Captain Francis J.E. Hoare III Britain’s Japan Consular Service Hugh Cortazzi II British Commonwealth War Len Harrop Appendix I (a), V Graves, Yokohama British Graves Phillida Purvis Appendix I (c), V Britton, Frank Dorothy Britton VI Broughton, Captain J.E. Hoare III Brown, Albert (in Nippon Yu¯sen Hiroyuki Takeno V Kaisha (NYK) Burton, W.K. Olive Checkland IV Businessmen, Japanese, in the U.K. Sadao Oba II Butler, R.A. (with Lord Hankey) Antony Best V Byas, Hugh Peter O’Connor VI

Carter, Angela Roger Buckley VI Ceadel, Eric Peter Kornicki V Chamberlain, Basil Hall Richard Bowring T&P Chichibu, Prince and Princess Dorothy Britton V Chinda Sutemi Ian Nish J.ENV, V Chino Yoshitoki and the Nick Clegg VI Daiwa Foundation Cholmondeley, Lionel Berners Hamish Ion III Churchill, Winston and Japan Eiji Seki VI Clive, Sir Robert Antony Best B.ENV, IV Comfort, Ernest J.E. Hoare VI Commercial Treaty, Anglo-Japanese Robin Gray and Sosuke Hanaoka II Conder, Josiah Dallas Finn T&P Conroy, Timothy (Taid or Taig), Peter O’Connor IV Consular Service, Britain’s Japan, J.E. Hoare B.ENV, II Conyngham Greene (see Greene) Corner, John Carmen Blacker V Cornes, Frederick Peter N. Davies IV Court Relations (see Royal Alliance) Craigie, Sir Robert Antony Best B.ENV, I Crown Prince Akihito (in Britain) Hugh Cortazzi V Crown Prince Hirohito (in Britain) Ian Nish II,VI (see also Sho¯wa Emperor’s State Visit) Curzon, Lord Ian Nish V

xviii INDEX OF BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Daniels, Otome and Frank Ron Dore I Dening, Sir Esler Roger Buckley T&P, B.ENV Dickins, F.V. Peter Kornicki III Douglas, Archibald (Naval Mission) Ian Gow III Dyer, Henry Olive Checkland III

Edwardes, Arthur Antony Best III Eguchi Takayuki Edna Read Neal III Eliot, Sir Charles Dennis Smith T&P, B.ENV Empson, William John Haffenden IV Engineers, Japanese, in Britain Olive Checkland I before 1914 Enright, Dennis Russell Greenwood V Ewing, James Alfred Neil Pedlar III Exhibition, Japan-British, of 1910 Ayako Hotta-Lister I

Faulds, Henry Ian Nish IV Figgess, Sir John Hugh Cortazzi III Fisher, Admiral Sir John John Chapman V Fleming, Ian John Hatcher VI Fortune, Robert (in ‘Early Plant Amanda Herries IV Collectors in Japan’) Franks, A.W. Nicole Rousmaniere VI Fraser, G.S. Eileen Fraser V Fraser, Hugh Hugh Cortazzi IV, B.ENV Fukuda Tsuneari (in ‘Three Great Peter Milward V Japanese Translators of Shakespeare’) Fukuzawa Yukichi (in ‘Finances of Norio Tamaki III a Japanese Moderniser’) (also in ‘Japanese Envoys, J.ENV 1862–1872’)

Gascoigne, Sir Alvary Peter Lowe I, B.ENV Gauntlett, Edward Saiko Gauntlett VI Gowland, William Simon Kaner VI Graves, British in other parts Phillida Purvis Appendix I (c) V of Japan Greene, Sir W. Conyngham Peter Lowe IV, B.ENV Gubbins, J. H. Ian Nish II, B.ENV

Hankey, Lord (with R.A. Butler) Antony Best V Harrington, Ernest John (in Richard Bowen V ‘Judo Pioneers’) Hasegawa Nyozekan Ayako Hotta-Lister V Hawley, Frank Manabu Yokoyama V

xix BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Hayashi Gonsuke Harumi Goto-Shibata J.ENV, V Hayashi Tadasu Ian Nish T&P, J.ENV Hearn, Lafcadio Paul Murray II Heaslett, Bishop Samuel Hamish Ion V Heath, Edward Hugh Cortazzi VI Hewitt, Peter Merrick Baker-Bates IV Hirohito (see Crown Prince and Showa Emperor) Hodgson, Ralph John Hatcher V Holme, Charles Toni Huberman VI Honda So¯ichiro¯ Hugh Cortazzi VI HSBC (Pioneers in Japan 1866–1900) Edwin Green V Huish, Marcus Hideko Numata V Humphreys, Christmas Carmen Blacker II

Inagaki Manjiro¯ Noboru Koyama VI Inoue Masaru Yumiyo Yamamoto II Inouye Katsunosuke Ian Nish J.ENV, V Ito¯ Hirobumi (in Britain) Andrew Cobbing III

James, Thomas (in Nippon Yu¯sen Hiroyuki Takeno V Kaisha (NYK)) Japan Chronicle,The Peter O’Connor IV Japanese Tattooists and the British Noboru Koyama VI Royal Family Journalists, British, in Meiji Japan, J.E. Hoare I Judo Pioneers Richard Bowen V

Kano Hisaakira Keiko Itoh III Kato¯ Takaaki Ian Nish J.ENV, IV Kawanabe Kyo¯sai Olive Checkland III Kawase Munetaka Ayako-Hotta-Lister J.ENV Keith, Elizabeth Dorothy Britton VI Kennard, Edwin Allington (in Peter O’Connor IV ‘Japan Chronicle’) Kennedy, John Russell Peter O’Connor V Kennedy, Malcolm John Pardoe T&P Keswick, William J.E. Hoare IV Kikuchi Dairoku Noboru Koyama V Kikuchi Kyo¯zo¯ (‘British training Janet Hunter T&P for Japanese engineers’) Koizumi Gunji Richard Bowen IV Komura Ju¯taro¯ Ian Nish J.ENV, V

Lascelles, Sir Daniel Hugh Cortazzi B.ENV Leach, Bernard and the Mingei Hugh Cortazzi I Movement xx INDEX OF BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Leggett, Trevor Price Anthony Dunne and Richard Bowen IV Liberty, Lasenby Sonia Ashmore IV Lindley, Sir Francis Ian Nish IV, B.ENV Longford, Joseph Ian Ruxton VI

MacDonald, Sir Claude Ian Nish I, B.ENV Maejima Hisoka Janet Hunter I Markino Yoshio Carmen Blacker I Marriages, Three Meiji Noboru Koyama IV Maruyama Masao Rikki Kersten VI Matsudaira Tsuneo Ian Nish J.ENV, I Matsui Keishiro¯Tadashi Kuramatsu J.ENV, V Matsukata Masayoshi (in ‘Japan’s Norio Tamaki I adoption of the Gold Standard’) Matsumoto Shunichi Takahiko Tanaka J.ENV Maugham, Somerset John Hatcher VI Minakata Kumagusu Carmen Blacker I Minami Teisuke (in ‘Three Meiji Noboru Koyama IV Marriages’) Mingei Movement (in ‘Bernard Hugh Cortazzi I Leach and’) Missionaries, British, in Meiji Helen Ballhatchet I Japan Mitsui in London Sadao Oba V Morel, Edward Yoshiiko Morita II Mori Arinori Anthony Cobbing J.ENV, IV Morita Akio Hugh Cortazzi VI Morland, Sir Oscar John Whitehead B.ENV Morris, Ivan Nobuko Albery IV Morris, John (with Orwell, George Neil Pedlar III and BBC) Munro, Gordon Jane Wilkinson I Mutsu Family Ian Mutsu II

Nakai Yoshigusu (in ‘Japan’s Norio Tamaki I Adoption of the Gold Standard’) Nakamura Masanao (Keiu) Akiko Ohta IV Neale, Lt Col St John Hugh Cortazzi B.ENV Nichols, Robert George Hughes V Ninagawa Yukio Daniel Gallimore III Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK) Hiroyuki Takeno V Nishi Haruhiko Ian Nish J.ENV Nishiwaki Junzaburo¯ Norimasu Morita V Nissan and the British Motor Christopher Madeley VI Vehicle Industry Nissan: History of a Negotiation Robin Mountfield VI

xxi BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Nitobe Inazo¯ Ian Nish VI Novelists, Japan’s Post-war Sydney Giffard II

Occupied Japan through the eyes Roger Buckley I of British Journalists O’Conroy see Conroy Odajima Yu¯shi (in ‘Three Great Peter Milward IV Japanese Translators of Shakespeare’) Ohno Katsumi Eiji Seki J.ENV Oliphant, Laurence Carmen Blacker II Orwell, George (with Morris, Neil Pedlar II John and BBC) Ozaki Saburo¯ (in ‘Three Meiji Noboru Koyama IV Marriages’) Ozaki Yukio Fujiko Hara V

Pakenham, Captain (later John Chapman V Admiral) W.C. Palmer, Harold E. Richard C. Smith and IV Imura Motomichi Palmer, Henry Spencer Jiro Higuchi IV Parker, Sir Peter Hugh Cortazzi VI Parkes, Sir Harry Hugh Cortazzi I, B.ENV Penniall, Albert James Christopher Madeley III Piggott, Sir F.T. and Maj Gen F.S.G. Carmen Blacker T&P Pilcher, Sir John Hugh Cortazzi III, B.ENV Plant Collectors in Japan, Early Amanda Herries IV Plomer, William Louis Allen T&P Plunkett, Sir Francis Hugh Cortazzi IV, B.ENV Ponsonby-Fane, Richard Dorothy Britton II Ponting, Herbert George Terry Bennett IV

Rattler, HMS, Loss of Hugh Cortazzi V Redman, Sir Vere Hugh Cortazzi II Riddell, Hannah Julia Boyd II Robertson-Scott, J.W. Mari Nakami II Robinson, Basil Abdelsamad Yahya V Roll, Lord (Eric) Martin Gordon VI Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Hugh Cortazzi II Period Royal Alliance: Court Antony Best VI Diplomacy Rugby Football in Japan Alison Nish III Rundall, Sir Francis Hugh Cortazzi B.ENV Russo-Japanese War, British Naval Philip Towle III and Military Observers

xxii INDEX OF BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS IN JAPAN SOCIETY VOLUMES

Saito Makoto Tadashi Kuramatsu III Sameshima Naonobu (in ‘Japanese Hugh Cortazzi J.ENV Envoys 1862–72’) Sannomiya Yoshitane (in ‘Three Noboru Koyama IV Meiji Marriages’) Sansom, Sir George Gordon Daniels T&P, B.ENV Satow, Sir Ernest Peter Kornicki T&P, B.ENV Satow, Sir Ernest, as Minister Ian Ruxton IV, B.ENV in Tokyo Sempill, Lord Antony Best IV Shakespeare, Three Great Japanese Peter Milward V Translators of Shand, Alexander Alan Olive Checkland and Norio Tamaki II Shaw, Alexander Croft (with Hamish Ion III Bickersteth, Edward) Shigemitsu, Mamoru Antony Best J.ENV, II Sho¯wa Emperor, State Visit to Hugh Cortazzi VI Britain in 1971 So¯seki, Natsume (and the Sammy Tsunematsu III Pre-Raphaelites) Stephenson, Commander (later Hugh Cortazzi V Admiral Sir Henry) in Loss of HMS Rattler Stopes, Marie Carmen Blacker T&P Storry, Richard Ian Nish V Suematsu Kencho¯ Ian Ruxton V Summers, James Noboru Koyama III Sutton, Frederick William, Sebastian Dobson IV Swire, John Samuel Charlotte Bleasdale IV

Takahashi Korekiyo (in ‘Japan’s Norio Tamaki I adoption of the Gold Standard’) Takaki Kanehiro Jerry K. Matsumura V Takenouchi Yasunori (in Hugh Cortazzi J.ENV ‘Japanese Envoys, 1862–72’) Tani Yukio (in ‘Judo Pioneers’) Richard Bowen V Tattooists, Japanese, and the Noboru Koyama VI British Royal Family Terashima Munenori Andrew Cobbing J.ENV, V Tilley, Sir John Harumi Goto-Shibata IV, B.ENV Tiltman, Hessell Roger Buckley V To¯go¯ Heihachiro¯ Kiyoshi Ikeda I Tokugawa Akitake (in Hugh Cortazzi J.ENV ‘Japanese Envoys, 1862–72’) Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯Toyoda Sho¯ ichiro¯VI Toyota and Britain Yoyoda Sho¯ ichiro¯VI

xxiii BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Trench, Hon. Henry Le Poer Hugh Cortazzi B.ENV Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯Brian Powell T&P Tuck, Captain Oswald Suzette Jarvis V Tuohy, Frank David Burleigh VI

Ueno Kagenori Andrew Cobbing and J.ENV Inozuka Takaaki Utley, Freda Douglas Farnie IV Uyeno Yutaka Yuko Footman VI

Veitch, John Gould (in ‘Early Plant Amanda Herries IV Collectors in Japan’)

Waley, Arthur Philip Harries T&P Webb, Sydney and Beatrice Colin Holmes T&P Weston, Walter Hamish Ion T&P Wirgman, Charles John Clark T&P Wright, Edward William Barton Richard Bowen V (in ‘Judo Pioneers’)

Yamanashi Katsunoshin (Admiral) Haruko Fukuda T&P Yo k ohama Foreign General Geraldine Wilcox Appendix II (b),V Cemetery Yo k ohama Specie Bank in London Keiko Itoh V Yoshida Ken’ichi Norimasu Morita VI Yo shida Shigeru and Madame Ian Nish J.ENV, II Yoshida in London Yo shida Shigeru, Visit to London Hugh Cortazzi VI as Prime Minister in 1954 Yoshimoto Tadasu Noboru Koyama V Young, Morgan (in ‘Japan Chronicle’) Peter O’Connor IV Young, Robert (in ‘Japan Chronicle’) Peter O’Connor IV

xxiv PART I: POLITICIANS

1

Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and Japan

EIJI SEKI

Sir Winston Churchill saying goodbye to Crown Prince Akihito, the present Emperor of Japan, after lunch at No 10 Downing Street on 30 April 1953. (Mainichi archive photo)

INTRODUCTION Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) was born six years after the Meiji Restoration (1868). The politically active part of his life almost coin- cided with the emergence, decline and rebirth of modern Japan. In 1900, he had been elected as a member of parliament and he took part in the vote on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902. He followed with close interest the 1904–5 war, which Japan narrowly won against Russia under the aegis of the Alliance. As First Lord of the Admiralty before, and at the beginning of, the First World War he strongly advo- cated extensive naval collaboration with Japan. Initially, Japan was not a major focus of interest for him, but Anglo- Japanese relations came to demand his attention increasingly as he climbed the ladder in politics and government. Through the years, he 1 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI acquired enormous knowledge and information about Japan. He had an insatiable intellectual curiosity and carefully followed political trends in Japan through the statements and writings of Japanese leaders and military officers. The extensive information he accumu- lated is reflected in his numerous speeches and articles. In this respect he was singularly different from other world leaders like Roosevelt and Stalin. Churchill’s exposure to Japan was negligible until his parents went on their long tour of Japan in 1894, the year in which Japan went to war with China. The impressions of Japan, which his mother con- veyed to him, appear to have left indelible marks on Churchill. He was then twenty years of age and emotionally attached to his mother whom he ‘loved dearly though at a distance’.1 Lady Randolph Churchill’s intelligent, unbiased and aesthetically active mind enabled her to have penetrating views of ‘Things Japanese’ as amply demon- strated in her excellent article ‘A Journey in Japan’.2 Churchill never visited Japan but maintained a friendly, under- standing and compassionate attitude toward the country. He once con- templated a visit in conjunction with his lecture tour in the United States in 1933 but in the end did not go there.3 Anglo-Japanese rela- tions were far from agreeable at that time and it is debatable whether his sympathetic attitude towards Japan would have changed, if the visit had taken place. He wrote for Collier’s Magazine in 1936:

I am one of the dwindling band of Members who voted for the ratification of the original Anglo-Japanese Alliance. I watched with enthusiasm the loyal co-operation of Japan in the Great War. The impression left on my mind by many years of working with the Governments of the Mikado has been that the Japanese are sober, steady, grave and mature people; that they can be trusted to measure forces and factors with great care, and that they do not lose their heads, or plunge into mad, uncalculated adventures. But of late years we have been con- fronted with a somewhat different Japan. The elder statesmen and their sagacious power seem to have dispersed. For the last four or five years the political movement of Japan has seemed to effect itself through the murder of statesmen who were deemed too prudent or circumspect, or in other ways were objectionable to secret societies of Army officers. Great and honourable Japanese leaders have fallen in a swift succession to the sword or bullet of honourable assassins.4

His view of Japan was based on up-to-date knowledge. He was harsh when he felt it appropriate and necessary in the cause of justice to chastise Japan’s unacceptable behaviour. However, he was always fair and sincere in his comments:

2 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965)

It will be better if we all treat each other with justice and mutual respect, and with an earnest desire to find out, not how we can gratify our own ambitions, but how we can meet the reasonable grievances of others.5

ANGLO-JAPANESE ALLIANCE The Anglo-Japanese Alliance was generally accepted in Britain as likely to contribute to peace in the Far East, although some feared that it would have the opposite effect. One of these was Lt Colonel A.G. Churchill, a former military attaché in Tokyo, who wrote: ‘Japan was an aggressive Power’ as demonstrated by her history since the Sino- Japanese War (1894–5), and that in ‘a country like Japan, still partially civilized, the preservation of peace for its own sake is not an end in itself and the opportunity of entering a war with a good chance of success would be an irresistible temptation outweighing all other considerations’.6 The alliance was basically for co-operation at sea rather than on land. The Royal Navy was generally in favour of the alliance in spite of its scepticism towards international co-operation.7 It was Japan that reaped handsome dividends from Britain’s benevolent neutrality in the Russo-Japanese War. Though it ought to have been Britain’s turn to benefit from the alliance when the First World War began in 1914, Foreign Secretary Sir Edward Grey wavered as to how and when Japanese assistance should be sought. He tried to restrict the areas of Japanese naval operations because of the fears in Commonwealth countries and the United States of Japanese expansionism. Neither did he want British interests in China disturbed by Japan coming into the war. Grey’s vacillations and lukewarm response to the Japanese offer of help alarmed Churchill who was then First Lord of Admiralty. He rebuked Grey, writing:

I think you are chilling indeed to those people. I can’t see any half-way house myself between having them in and keeping them out. If they are to come in, they may as well be welcomed as comrades. Your last telegram to Tokyo is almost hostile. You may easily give mortal offence – which will not be forgotten – we are not safe yet – by a long chalk. The storm has yet to burst.8

The severity of his rebuke must have come from his self-confidence as one of the few leaders with any real knowledge of military matters. He was energetic and completely absorbed in his work as First Lord of the Admiralty. 9 He was resolved to put the Japanese naval co- operation to the best use in winning the war. As he predicted, Japanese co-operation soon proved indispensable in dealing with the German

3 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI menace in Asia and the Pacific and protecting ANZAC troopships through the Indian Ocean and the Mediterranean. By the end of May 1915, he had resigned from the Admiralty finding solace in painting, but he felt ‘like a sea-beast fished up from the depths, or a diver too suddenly hoisted, my veins threatened to burst from the fall in pressure. I had great anxiety and no means to relieving it. . .’10 He returned to the cabinet as Minister of Munitions in 1917, Secretary of State for War and Air in 1919 and Colonial Secretary in 1921. In July the same year, he drastically shifted his posi- tion on the Anglo-Japanese Alliance arguing against its extension. In a memorandum which he circulated to the Imperial Conference, he warned: ‘Japan was the only real danger to Imperial interests in the Pacific.’ He further wrote: ‘Getting Japan to protect you against Japan is like drinking salt water to slake thirst.’His action hugely irritated the Prime Minister Lloyd George and the Foreign Secretary Lord Curzon.11 They took it as interference in foreign policy matters and formed a common front against him on the issue. Undaunted, Churchill retorted: ‘In these gt [sic] matters we must be allowed to have opinions.’12 In June 1921, he lost his mother who ‘had already become a rather minor figure in his life compared with her role as his central confidante around 1900’.13 He spoke as if he had been released from the spell of his mother’s attachment to Japan. He may have felt it necessary or politically obligatory for him to look after the interests of the Dominions which increasingly influenced British foreign policy. Or he could have been wary of the imperialist trends of Japanese policies which became more pronounced during the war as shown by the notorious Twenty-One Demands to China of 1915. But, it is not easy to justify the diametrical change in his position because, in the early 1920s, Japan was actually pursuing enlightened and co-operative foreign policies, unprecedented in her history. Prime Minister Hara Takashi, who was assassinated on the eve of the Washington Conference in the autumn of 1921, and Minister of the Navy Kato¯ Tomosaburo¯ were exerting themselves to adopt diplomatic positions accommodating to Britain and the United States in support of the Washington Treaties. Whatever the real intentions of Britain, Japan and the United States, the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was finally laid to rest in Washington and replaced by the Four Power Pact (United States, Britain, Japan and France) for security and friendship in the Far East and Pacific which was ‘more suited to the international climate of opinion of the 1920s’.14 In 1923, Churchill was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer by Stanley Baldwin in the Conservative Cabinet. He was to reverse again his views of Japan in the following year when he was faced with the

4 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965)

Admiralty’s demands for a substantial increase in the Naval Estimates. He wrote to the Prime Minister Stanley Baldwin: ‘A war with Japan! But why should there be a war with Japan? I do not believe there is the slightest chance of it in our lifetime.’ He continued:

Japan is at the other end of the world. She cannot menace our vital secu- rity. – The only war it would be worth our while to fight with Japan would be to prevent an invasion of Australia, and that I am certain will never happen in any period, even the most remote, which we or our children need foresee.

He was once again representing his departmental interests. He stated in his book The Second World War:

The United States made it clear to Britain that the continuance of her alliance with Japan, to which the Japanese had punctiliously conformed, would constitute a barrier in Anglo-American relations. Accordingly, this alliance was brought to an end. The annulment caused a profound impression in Japan, and was viewed as the spurning of an Asiatic Power by the Western world. Many links were sundered which might after- wards have proved of decisive value to peace.. . .Thus conditions were swiftly created by the victorious Allies which, in the name of peace, cleared the way for the renewal of war.15

He repeated a similar line in his speech at the dinner for Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru on 27 October 1954:

Here I do not want to argue the merits or demerits of the termination of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, but the world situation would have been greatly different if the Anglo-Japanese Alliance had continued. And he added: I was not in the government at that time.16

This was not correct, but his listeners probably did not realize this. Churchill’s views are shared by some writers such as G.P. Gooch who pointed out that the termination of the alliance with Japan was one of the two major post-war decisions of British policy along with Britain’s entry into the League of Nations. He wrote:

Influential British voices argued that we should be guilty of gross ingrat- itude in dropping our partner when we no longer required her services, and that the wounded pride of a Great Power might ultimately prove a danger in the Far East. . . A difficult corner had been turned at the cost of weakening our position in the Far East; for Japanese sentiment could hardly be expected to remain as Anglophile as it had been for twenty

5 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

years. The temperature fell still further with the decision to create a naval base at Singapore, which was rightly regarded in Tokio [sic] as a token of mistrust. Henceforth she showed scanty consideration to the interests of her old ally.17

The demise of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was not solely due to policy decisions taken by Britain and the United States. The alliance began to lose its intrinsic value soon after it was concluded through the imperialist and colonial designs which Japan started to pursue after the Russo-Japanese War. By 1920, the Alliance had become ‘hollow’ or ‘empty letters (ku¯bun)’ as admitted by both British and Japanese diplomats. There was no way in which the alliance could be kept alive in spite of the good intentions of its supporters on both sides.

1930–45 From the early 1930s onwards, Churchill’s attention was focused on German rearmament, in particular the rapidly expanding German air force. In 1934, he warned: ‘Germany has already created a military air force which is now nearly two-thirds as strong as our present home defence air force.’At the same time he was not oblivious to the ominous situation caused by Japanese military aggression in Manchuria since 1931. Eventually, in 1933, Japan withdrew from the League of Nations after she rejected the Lytton Report. Yet Churchill had sympathetic words for Japan:

I hope we should try in England to understand a little the position of Japan, an ancient state with the highest sense of national honour, and patriotism and with a teeming population and a remarkable energy. On the one side they see the dark menace of Soviet Russia. On the other the chaos of China. . ..18

He even showed a degree of understanding of Japanese colonial rule in Korea and Manchuria, writing:

I have admiration and long-founded regard for the empire and people of Japan. I recognize the expansion needs of their teeming, vigorous and adventurous population. We have seen their work in Korea. It is stern, but good. We have seen their work in Manchuria. It is also good, but also stern.19

He did not regard Japan as a military threat to Britain in view of her weak economic and industrial capacity. Unlike Germany she had no means of ‘striking at the heart of the Empire and destroying its power

6 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965) to wage war’.20 His view inevitably changed as Japan drew closer to Nazi Germany under increasing pressure from militarist and national- ist extremists. What alarmed him was the Germany-Japan Anti- Comintern Pact of 1936, which, in his view, was nothing but a military alliance against Russia. He followed with misgivings about Japan’s degeneration into a totalitarian fascist state ‘where every voice of moderation is silenced by death; where the murder of political opponents has been for some years the accepted practice’.21 But he still hoped that wisdom and sanity would prevail one day. In fact, he had not given up hope of keeping Japan away from Germany. It was not easy as Anglo-Japanese interests in China had clashed more sharply since the Japan-China Incident. He commented on the Incident: ‘Japan has done for the Chinese people what they could, perhaps, never have done for themselves. It has unified them once more.’22 His perception was correct. He could also have said that Japan was the chief culprit in bringing the communists into power in China by her long harassment of Chiang Kai-shek. Japan’s infatuation with Nazi Germany culminated in the Axis Treaty of September 1940 when she aligned herself with Hitler’s Nazi Germany. It turned out to be the biggest diplomatic blunder Japan ever committed. It severely reduced the diplomatic leeway for the modus vivendi which the Japanese Ambassador to Britain (1938–41) Shigemitsu Mamoru was trying to reach with Britain on China and other Far Eastern issues. But the chance of achieving anything was extremely remote as no significant change could be expected in Japan’s confrontational foreign policy and in Japan’s militarist and totalitarian regime, which was obsessed with fantasies such as Asian Brotherhood (Hakko¯ Ichiu) or the self-appointed master of Asia (Daito¯a Kyo¯eiken). Moreover, there was no possibility of Britain devi- ating from her policy of supporting the League of Nations and the Washington Treaties as well as that of strengthening her relations with the United States and China. In spite of the hopeless situation, Shigemitsu kept up his dialogues with Churchill and Foreign Secretaries Eden and Halifax. Maurice Hankey, the linchpin of the Whitehall administrative system, R. A. Butler, one of the Chamberlain loyalists and appeasers in the Foreign Office, and their friends helped to ease the way.23 Churchill responded to Shigemitsu’s démarche. Their interests coincided in that, if the impending crisis were averted, it would gain time for Churchill. He took pains to explain why he believed it would really be in the interest of Japan to stay out of the European war. He also made it clear that there was no chance of Japan and Germany winning the war. In early 1941, he even hinted at his willingness to co-operate with Japan in friendship with regard to post-war world politics.24

7 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

When Foreign Minister Matsuoka Yo¯suke was on a trip to Moscow, Berlin and Rome in the spring of 1941, Shigemitsu wished to convey personally his assessment of the situation in Europe, i.e. Japan should steer her course with the greatest caution as the war in Europe was not progressing in Germany’s favour. It was already clear to observant eyes that Germany was the loser in the Battle of Britain and that dark days were in store for her. Churchill, too, wanted to take advantage of the chance to deliver his personal message to Matsuoka in an effort to lessen the effect of one-sided German propaganda which the latter had swal- lowed. He tried to arrange for a seat on flights to Switzerland for Shigemitsu, although the plan was aborted because Matsuoka abruptly cut short his trip. The letter handed to Matsuoka in Moscow by the British ambassador Sir Stafford Cripps on 13 April 1941 contained eight questions. Churchill ended the letter by stating that the avoidance by Japan of a serious catastrophe and a marked improvement in the rela- tions between Japan and the two great sea Powers of the West might spring from the answers to these questions.25 These poignant but perti- nent questions fell on deaf ears on the part of Matsuoka and other Japanese leaders. Towards the end, Shigemitsu26 cut a poor figure as he spent more time explaining the fait accompli forced upon him by the mil- itary control of Japan’s foreign policy. In practice, there had been little room for his diplomatic overtures. He left London greatly disappointed. In his post-war memoirs Churchill confessed:

Very few among our experts could form any true impression of the Japanese mind. It was indeed inscrutable. It had seemed impossible that Japan would court destruction in war with Britain and the United States, and probably Russia in the end. A declaration of war by Japan could not be reconciled with reason. I felt sure she would be ruined for a genera- tion by such a plunge, and this proved true. But Governments and peoples do not always take rational decisions. Sometimes they take mad decisions, or one set of people get control who compel all others to obey and aid them in folly. I have not hesitated to record repeatedly my disbelief that Japan would go mad. However sincerely we try to put ourselves in another person’s position, we cannot allow for processes of the human mind and imagination to which reason offers no key. Madness is however an affliction which in war carries with it the advantage of surprise.27

In their last meeting on 16 June, Shigemitsu was deeply moved by Churchill’s sincerity when he noticed tears in his eyes as he expressed his firm determination to lead the nation through the war, and assured Shigemitsu that he desired fundamentally to improve Anglo-Japanese relations under his guidance in the future. Then he shook hands with Shigemitsu wishing him good luck and God’s protection.28 It seems that

8 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965) through these personal contacts Churchill had come to confide in Shigemitsu. In one of his secret session speeches at the House of Commons in the same month, Churchill described him as ‘a man most friendly to peace between our countries’.29 When Shigemitsu was added to the list of Japanese A-class war criminals at the insistence of the Soviet Union and indicted in April 1946 at the International Military Tribunal at Tokyo, his British and American friends tried to introduce Churchill’s speech as evidence in support of their plea for Shigemitsu’s acquittal. But the Russians were determined to ensure that Shigemitsu was convicted as a war criminal for his known stand against communism. In spite of Churchill’s attestation to Shigemitsu’s bona fides, he was sentenced to seven years’ imprisonment in November 1948.30 On 2 July 1941, the situation in the Far East and the Pacific took a fatal turn towards final catastrophe when Japan decided to deploy her armed forces to the southern part of Indochina. This constituted a serious direct threat not only to the Philippines but also to Malaya and the Dutch East Indies. The United States quickly responded by freez- ing Japanese assets and this was followed by Britain and The Netherlands. These measures and the Anglo-American policy decla- ration in the Atlantic Charter of 1 August 1941 failed to bring Japan to her senses. Sending troops to southern Indochina was another grave mistake by Prime Minister Konoe Fumimaro who panicked and turned pale when he was warned by Baron Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯, a former Ambassador to Washington, that this action would definitely lead to war.31 The antagonistic relationship between Japan and the Allies had become irreversible. In what was considered his last peacetime warning to Japan, deliv- ered at the Lord Mayor’s Day celebration on 10 November 1941 at the Mansion House, Churchill was again fair and frank in expressing his true feelings:

I must admit that, having voted for the Japanese alliance nearly forty years ago, in 1902, and having always done my very best to promote good relations with the Island Empire of Japan, and always having been a sentimental well-wisher to the Japanese and an admirer of their many gifts and qualities, I should view with keen sorrow the opening of a conflict between Japan and the English-speaking world.

At the same time, he made it clear that Britain would declare war on Japan within the hour should the United States become involved in war with Japan. He went on to say:

Viewing the vast sombre scene as dispassionately as possible, it would seem a very hazardous adventure for the Japanese people to plunge quite

9 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

needlessly into a world struggle in which they may well find themselves opposed in the Pacific by states whose populations comprise nearly three-quarters of the human race. If steel is the basic foundation of modern war, it would be rather dangerous for a power like Japan, whose steel production is only about 7 million tons a year, to provoke quite gratuitously a struggle with the United States, whose steel production is now about 90 million; and this would take no account of the power- ful contribution which the British Empire can make. I hope therefore that the peace of the Pacific will be preserved in accordance with the known wishes of Japan’s wisest statesmen.

Churchill’s words to the leaders of Japan were more in the nature of pertinent and even friendly advice rather than a warning. But they were not heeded at all.32 In the autumn of 1941, Britain was determined to resist Japanese armed intrusions against Thailand or Malaya. Churchill was seriously worried whether, because of domestic politics, United States support would be immediately forthcoming. He had to exercise caution not to give the impression that Britain was trying to drag the United States into war. Churchill wrote: ‘If Japanese aggression drew in America I would be content to have it.’33 The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December made all his worries vanish in an instant. He quoted Cromwell’s words: ‘The Lord hath delivered them into our hands.’34 No wonder he ‘slept the sleep of the saved and thankful’ after he heard the news. He wrote: ‘I expected terrible forfeits in the East; but all this would be merely a passing phase.’35 While Britain was in the thick of the Battles of Britain and the Atlantic, she was militarily ill-prepared for hostilities with Japan. Her policy was to try ‘our best to avoid war with Japan by both conceding on points where the Japanese military clique can perhaps force a rupture, and by standing up where the ground is less dangerous’.36 Archival evidence indicates that Churchill endeavoured to keep the Japanese armed threat away from Malaya and Singapore, rather than scheming to entangle Japan in hostilities with the United States. Now that ‘the United States was in the war, up to the neck and in to the death’ fighting Japan shoulder to shoulder with Britain and the Commonwealth nations in the Far East and the Pacific, he could continue to concentrate on Germany as his first priority.37 No doubt the loss of Singapore was a terrible blow to Churchill’s pride. He called it ‘the worst disaster and the largest capitulation in British history’, but it did not disturb his global strategy of war. In less than four years, British forces were poised to drive the Japanese out of Malaya and Singapore after Burma had been retaken. President Franklin Roosevelt first broached the concept of ‘uncon- ditional surrender’ to Churchill at the Casablanca conference in early

10 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965)

1943. Though supporting the idea, Churchill was more flexible about its actual application than Roosevelt who refused to change his posi- tion. In discussion with President Harry Truman at Potsdam about various possible measures for dealing with the Japanese military clique who were still determined to fight to the bitter end, Churchill sug- gested that they should be allowed ‘some show of saving their military honour’. Truman rejected this outright declaring that the Japanese had no military honour left after Pearl Harbor.38 Churchill’s voice already tended to carry less weight among the Great Powers because his domestic political position had weakened and because of the fact that, with the war in Europe coming to an end, the main theatre was shift- ing to the Pacific and Japan, where the Americans were preponderant and the Soviet Union was emerging as another key player. Japan’s surrender was not in reality ‘unconditional’ being accompanied by various conditions set out in the Potsdam Declaration. ‘Unconditional surrender’ was demanded only of the Japanese armed forces. The dropping of the atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki was the coup de grâce for Japan. The Japanese Navy had already been deci- mated and her air force was unable to put up any meaningful resistance against Allied aircraft. It was estimated on the basis of the casualty rates of the Iwo¯jima and Okinawa campaigns that the offensive against the mainland would cost more than one million American and British lives. The foremost concern of the Anglo-American leaders was how to avoid the huge human cost expected if war had to be waged on the Japanese mainland. Churchill wrote:

At any rate, there never was a moment’s discussion as to whether the atomic bomb should be used or not. To avert a vast, indefinite butch- ery, to bring the war to an end, to give peace to the world, to lay healing hands upon its tortured peoples by a manifestation of overwhelming power at the cost of a few explosions, seemed, after all our toils and perils, a miracle of deliverance.39

It was agreed that cities and urban areas should be given prior warning by leaflets scattered by bombers.

AFTER THE SECOND WORLD WAR The first major event in Anglo-Japanese relations after the war was Crown Prince Akihito’s visit to attend the coronation of Queen Elizabeth II in 1953. An account of this visit was given in ‘Crown Prince Akihito in Britain’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2005. I do not want to repeat here the details given in this essay, but the initiative taken on this occasion by

11 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Churchill demonstrates his continuing interest in Japan and sympathy for the Japanese. The atmosphere was far from auspicious. Asakai Ko¯ichiro¯, Minister at the Embassy, warned Tokyo:

The feeling towards Japan has not changed from what I described pre- viously. It would be incongruous with the climate here to equate the visit directly with the improvement of Anglo-Japanese relations as some Japanese celebrities are already doing.40

Churchill, being informed of official concern about the security of Prince Akihito at his landing at Southampton on 28 April, decided per- sonally to host lunch at 10 Downing Street two days later in order to introduce him to prominent British leaders. He also arranged for the Crown Prince’s audience with the Queen on 5 May to take precedence over all other foreign representatives. He approached leaders in the media asking for their co-operation. Thanks to these steps there was a definite improvement overnight in the atmosphere.41 Immediately he learnt that prince Akihito was fond of horses, he had a pair of bronze horses placed at the centre of the table. Churchill conversing with the Prince was heart-warming to the Japanese as if an old grandfather was talking to his young grandson.42 Sports and horses were the main sub- jects. Churchill said that he was too old to play his favourite game of polo, and mentioned that his horse Colonis II would be racing that afternoon adding that it would be the winner.43 Asakai later recalled that the speech which Churchill delivered at the luncheon contained all the necessary elements such as courtesy to the Crown prince, talks on the unique features of British political institu- tions imbued with his political instructions for the young prince, and that he dispelled all the uneasiness and awkwardness entertained by the Japanese because of the hostile atmosphere in their host country. Asakai believed that no other leader could have achieved all this just by one brilliant stroke.44 To the great relief of the Japanese, there was a marked abatement in the intensity of anti-Japanese reports following the lunch. It was indeed Japan’s good fortune that Winston Churchill had been at the helm of the British Government at a crucial period in Anglo-Japanese relations. Yoshida Shigeru met Churchill when Yoshida was the ambassador in London 1936–38 but it did not develop into a close relationship. It was only after Yoshida’s visit to Britain in 1954 that their friendly contact started.45 Yoshida was impressed by the warm and hospitable personality of Churchill and felt as if he had known him as a friend for many years. Hearing Churchill reminisce about the beauty of Mt Fuji as heard from his mother in childhood, Yoshida in 1956 presented a painting of the mountain which he had commissioned from the

12 WINSTON CHURCHILL (1874–1965) famous Japanese painter Yasuda Yukihiko.46 Churchill who loved ‘the classic purity and colour’ of the painting had it hung in his house at 28 Hyde Park Gate and it gave ‘pleasure to all who see it’. When Matsumoto Shunichi accompanied Prime Minister Kishi Nobusuke to the same house in 1958, he recalls seeing Churchill tell with tears that he had longed to see Mt Fuji but it would now sadly be difficult for him to do so.47

CONCLUSION Churchill is widely admired in Japan as the greatest statesman of the twentieth century. The Japanese feel far closer to him than to any other world leader not only because of his personal interest in Japan but of his dramatic life which contains all the human elements: literary and artistic talents, ambition, determination, defiance, adventure, success, failure, impetuosity, gallantry, egocentricity, compassion, loyalty, impatience, affection, generosity, magnanimity, resolution, goodwill and all the rest. The adoration or fascination the Japanese show for Churchill is sincere and genuine, transcending national boundaries. When he died, Yoshida said in a condolatory contribution to the Asahi newspaper of 25 January 1965 that the world had lost the greatest statesman of the twentieth century and the large footprints he left would remain forever in the mind not only of the British people but of all the people of the world. The leading newspapers joined the nation with editorials eulogizing in superlative terms the man and his great achievements.48 To prove Churchill’s popularity among the people in Japan, several Japanese famous writers and actors got together in a restaurant in Ginza, Tokyo, in 1949 and organized themselves into a ‘Cha¯chiru-Kai’ (Churchill Association) for promoting painting as a pastime. They were encouraged by Churchill’s words about the excellent value of painting as a pastime: ‘Just to paint is great fun. Try it if you have not done so – before you die.’49 The association expanded and there are now more than fifty ‘Cha¯chiru-Kai’ throughout Japan with 2,000 members representing all walks of life. Each year they hold exhibitions of their works for charity. In the 1970s, the Japanese National Institute of Defence Studies carried out a comprehensive joint research project on Churchill’s wartime leadership. Churchill’s personality, his gifts and shortcomings as well as the political, social, military, historical and family back- ground were analysed in depth.50 The conclusion was:

Japan must find a Japanese Churchill in the event of national emergency and the people ought to support and follow his leadership in national

13 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

unity. The Japanese must remember that the foremost reason for the victory of the Allies was that their wartime leaders, namely Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin, were far superior to the leaders of the Axis nations.

For the Japanese it has been their ill fortune that they did not have leaders of such calibre as to enable them to deal with the problems that confronted them in the 1930s and 1940s. It is beyond doubt that Konoe, Matsuoka, Tojo¯ and other Japanese leaders miserably failed in their responsibilities by inviting catastrophe to the nation. The Japanese should bear in mind that the history, culture, political institutions and the people of Britain produced Winston Churchill.

14 2

Prime Minister Yoshida in London 1954:The First Visit to Britain by a Japanese Prime Minister

HUGH CORTAZZI

Yoshida Shigeru

INTRODUCTION MrYoshida Shigeru, who had become Japanese Prime Minister for the second time in 1948, resigned at the end of 1954. He had wished to visit Britain and other European capitals in 1953 but the British Government had not been keen to receive a visit from Mr Yoshida at a time when Japan’s application to join the GATT was causing controversy. Sir Winston Churchill, as Prime Minister, in a minute dated 31 August 1953, disagreed: ‘I see no objection to his coming to England. I would rather have him here than in GATT.’ In fact, because of the political situation in Japan, the visit was first post- poned to the early summer of 1954 and then again until October that year. British opinion towards Japan in 1954, if not hostile, was not friendly. Memories of the maltreatment of prisoners of war still rankled and British expulsion from East Asia by Japanese forces in 1941–2 had not been forgotten. Japanese copying of British designs

15 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI aroused fears about unfair Japanese competition. The British textile industry had not yet fully recovered from the war and felt threatened by sweated labour, living in Japanese factory dormitories on low wages. All this meant that Mr Yoshida could hardly expect a warm welcome in London. Sir Esler Dening, British Ambassador in Tokyo, in a telegram1 dated 12 October 1954, shortly before Mr Yoshida was due to arrive in London, suggested that the best approach might be to suggest to him that:

Any real improvement in Anglo-Japanese relations depends upon Japan’s ability to restore British confidence which was shaken by her commer- cial practices before the war and by the events of the war itself. The commercial practices of which we now complain merely renew the doubts of British industry, while the failure in two-and-a-half years to implement Article 16 of the Peace Treaty2 has the same effect upon British public opinion.

Dening was concerned that we were not proposing to ‘sugar’our com- plaints and urged that British ministers should not ignore the Japanese political situation which was moving towards a serious political crisis. In his view, there was no prospect in Japan of a better government than that led by Mr Yoshida, ‘many though its faults undoubtedly are’. If Mr Yoshida returned from the United States ‘empty-handed’ that might well be the end of him. (In fact, he had to resign before the end of the year, but his visit to Britain did not make his position any worse.) The Foreign Office’s general briefing for the visit stressed that the British objective was ‘to show Mr Yoshida as much consideration as possible in order to strengthen his position in Japan and to help towards keeping Japan aligned with the West’. The visit was a goodwill one and there was no intention of conducting any negotiations. ‘Sir E. Dening has said that the Japanese are badly in need of guidance and would like to feel that we are a helpful influence.’ Colin Crowe, then head of the Far Eastern Department in the Foreign Office, noted that Mr Yoshida’s English was not very good.3 A separate personality note described Mr Yoshida as ‘shrewd and jolly with aristocratic connex- ions and appropriate tastes’. It added that Mr Yoshida had ‘not hesi- tated to criticize the policies of HMG with frankness and even bitterness. But he is fundamentally well disposed towards us.’ The Japanese Ambassador Mr Matsumoto Shunichi, clearly on instruc- tions, gave to the Foreign Office in advance of the visit a copy of the Japanese brief prepared for Mr Yoshida’s visit. This did not add any- thing significant to what the Foreign Office already knew.

16 YOSHIDA SHIGERU (1954)

THE PROGRAMME Mr Yoshida arrived from Rome by air on 21 October 1954 and left from Southampton by the Queen Mary for New York on 28 October. He was accompanied by among others Mr Matsui Akira,4 his Private Secretary, Mr Sato Eisaku, who became Japanese Prime Minister from 1964 to 1972, Mr and Mrs Aso Takakichi,5 and Mr Asakai Ko¯ichiro¯, who had opened the Japanese mission in London after the war. Mr Yoshida, who stayed at Claridges, was not a guest of the government and his expenses were paid by the Japanese. Mr Yoshida’s programme included an audience and lunch with the Queen, dinner given by Sir Winston Churchill, the Prime Minister, a reception given by Sir Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, lunches with Lord Hankey and Mr R.A. Butler,6 meetings with Sir Robert Craigie,7 Mr W.J. Keswick,8 members of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU), the Federation of British Industries and the Association of Far East Prisoners of War. There was also a formal session of talks with British Ministers at the Foreign Office and a press conference.

SIR WINSTON CHURCHILL’S DINNER Sir Winston Churchill gave a black tie dinner on 27 October 1954 at No. 10 Downing Street in honour of Mr Yoshida. Sir Winston was in benign mood and the atmosphere was friendly throughout.9 After the toasts, Sir Winston gave a short speech of welcome in which he referred to his interest in Japan and said that one of his earliest mem- ories was of a story by his mother following a visit by her to Japan at the end of the nineteenth century. A Japanese nobleman had asked about European values in assessing countries. Japan had a long history of culture and art but in the middle of the nineteenth century was regarded as a barbarian country. As soon as she had a few battleships, however, she was accepted as one of the great civilized powers. Sir Winston had recalled Japanese assistance in the First World War, particularly in the hunt for the Emden. He then referred to the Anglo- Japanese Alliance which had ended at US insistence at the naval disar- mament conference in 1921. He had been a member of the cabinet at that time and he looked back upon the decision with much self- questioning. He paid tribute to Japanese courage during the war and ended by saying that one good thing about war was the chance of making friends again afterwards. Mr Yoshida who replied in halting English thanked the prime minister for his welcome. The main purpose of his tour was to find a way to detach China from Russia. He referred to the Sino-Soviet peace offensive and to the danger of communist underground movements.

17 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

During dinner, Sir Winston had emphasized his abhorrence of dic- tatorship. Mr Yoshida said that dictatorship was foreign to the Japanese people and he did not think there would be another dictatorship in Japan. Sir Winston also reaffirmed his faith in constitutional monar- chy and told Mr Yoshida that the Queen had said how pleased she had been to meet him. Mr Yoshida replied that he, too, believed in constitutional monarchy: ‘the trouble in Japan was the lack of experi- ence’. He had thanked the Queen for the reception given to the Crown Prince in 195310 and said that he ‘had been very impressed by the extent to which the Crown Prince had grown up as a result of his tour’. Sir Winston noted that all three British parties were represented at the dinner. Mr Yoshida commented that unfortunately in Japan there was instability in both the political and business world. There was a communist underground and there was pressure from conservatives for him to resign. He wanted on his return to unite the conservative parties. China was also discussed during the dinner. Mr Yoshida under- stood that there had been great improvements in China under the communists, that corruption had been eradicated, crime greatly reduced and efficiency established in all spheres. Sir Winston com- mented that what the Chinese communists had achieved had been at the cost of murdering two million people. Mr Yoshida stressed the importance of detaching China from Russia and seemed to think opening China to trade with the Western world might help. He intended to discuss this in Washington and sought British support. Sir Winston expressed sympathy with Mr Yoshida’s general aim. After dinner, Mr Yoshida asked Mr Attlee, the leader of the opposi- tion, about his recent visit to China. Mr Attlee noted the ruthless- ness of Chinese communist methods but thought the present Chinese leaders were more reasonable men than the leaders of the Soviet Union. Mao Tse-Tung was a ‘fairly reasonable man’and Chou En Lai ‘more so’. ‘There were other non-communists in the gov- ernment and private enterprise continued.’The Chinese communists had cleared up the criminals in Shanghai. There followed a discus- sion of land reform in Japan. Mr Yoshida also had a brief discussion about Trade Unions with Mr Herbert Morrison who stressed the importance of free and healthy trade unions. Mr Yoshida was not forthcoming. The Japanese govern- ment’s powers had been too greatly reduced by the occupation. They could not even control teachers. The Japanese trades unions were pri- marily interested in politics. He did, however, suggest that British trades unions should send out experienced trade union officials to help and guide their Japanese counterparts.

18 YOSHIDA SHIGERU (1954)

MEETING AT THE FOREIGN OFFICE ON 27 OCTOBER 1954 The only formal discussions during the visit were held at the Foreign Office on 27 October 1954. In the first part of the meeting, Sir Anthony Eden, Foreign Secretary, was accompanied by Lord Reading, Minister of State. Mr Yoshida said he wanted to raise two questions, China and Japanese war criminals. On China, Mr Yoshida said he wanted some day to reopen the ques- tion of detaching China from the communist alliance and hoped that the United Kingdom and the United States ‘would take action to achieve this and also to reopen the Chinese market’. He would be dis- cussing this subject with Mr Dulles, the US Secretary of State, and sought British advice on tactics in his talks in Washington. He could not see what difficulties the Americans saw in the way of negotiations for the re-entry of China into the free world. Sir Anthony Eden agreed on the desirability of detaching China from the communist alliance, but this would not be easy to achieve. ‘Our present trade policies towards China were not perhaps altogether wise.’ He thought that the Americans could not move on this issue until after the elections on 2 November 1954. Personally, he would like to see trade between Japan and China start again. He had not found the Chinese ‘at all easy to deal with’. On the subject of war criminals, Sir Anthony Eden said that ‘there could be no question of making a political bargain on what was purely a judicial issue’. He would review individual cases again and see if any reductions in the sentences could be made on the merits of each case. Mr Yoshida said that he was not speaking from a legal point of view, ‘but only from the point of view of national feeling, which was very sensitive on this issue’. On Article 16 of the Peace Treaty, Mr Yoshida said that his gov- ernment was ready to take action. As financial problems were involved ‘this question had been diverted to the Japanese Ministry of Finance’ and he had only heard of it just before his departure. ‘As soon as the necessary financial measures had been taken, the question would be settled.’ Sir Anthony Eden then spoke about South East Asian questions including Indo-China before they were joined by Mr R.A. Butler, Chancellor of the Exchequer, Mr Peter Thorneycroft, President of the Board of Trade and Mr John Boyd-Carpenter, Minister of Transport and Civil Aviation. Mr Thorneycroft said that Anglo-Japanese trade was not itself unsatisfactory. In 1954, it would probably be in rough balance, but trade relations ‘could never be entirely happy unless something were done about unfair trade practices in Japan such as copying, barter

19 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI agreements, the link system and other export incentives and the sub- sidization of shipping’. Mr Yoshida said that he had received com- plaints from the Japanese side as well ‘and would do what he could to put a stop to the offending practices. In principle, he thought that the industries in the two countries should do what they could to iron out their respective differences; only if they failed should governments intervene.’ Mr Thorneycroft also referred to the Japanese application to join the GATT11 and obliquely to the British position on Article 35.12 Mr Yoshida replied that he understood ‘very little of the detailed working of the GATT and did not wish to discuss the subject further at present. Discussion could be left to experts.’ Mr Boyd-Carpenter said that Japanese shipping practices were a further irritant in Anglo-Japanese commercial relations. Mr Yoshida replied that the Japanese were not now subsidizing ship-building. After Mr R.A. Butler had thanked Mr Yoshida for making £20 million available to the Bank of England in 1952, Mr Yoshida com- plained about the economic difficulties facing Japan. Japan had had to adopt austerity policies.

OTHER MEETINGS Mr Yoshida’s meeting with the Inter Parliamentary Union (IPU) did not go well.13

Mr Yoshida read his speech in bad English so that few could hear him and his manner and the views he expressed, particularly about the release of war criminals and Japan’s entry into GATT provoked a series of aggressive questions. He refused to answer Dr Edith Summerskill’s14 questions about what the Japanese Government proposed to do about bad conditions in Japanese mills. Although at least one Member of Parliament came to his rescue he had rather a rough passage. But he did not seem to have been unduly ruffled by it.

His meetings with representatives of the Federation of British Industries and the Far Eastern Prisoners of War Association were reported to have been reasonably friendly and ‘seem to have been useful in clearing the air’.15

THE PRESS In general, the press gave Mr Yoshida a cordial reception.16 Much of this warmth was accorded to Mr Yoshida as a person rather than to Japan. The public were reminded of Mr Yoshida’s age, courage, dignity, intelligence and statesmanship. The Daily Herald headed a

20 YOSHIDA SHIGERU (1954) photograph of him ‘Winston of Japan’. However, The News Chronicle noted his quick temper with opponents and his ‘undemocratic’ atti- tude towards the Japanese Diet and press. Mr Yoshida’s request for the early release of war criminals, on the grounds that Anglo-Japanese relations would be greatly improved were the whole business speedily forgotten, did not go down well. The press noted the urgent Japanese need for sympathy and support in its economic difficulties and Mr Yoshida’s own precarious position as prime minister. Newspapers in the Midlands understandably emphasized Japanese unfair trade prac- tices, but ‘surprisingly few of the newspapers were unsympathetic to the Japanese request for greater economic co-operation’. When Mr Yoshida first arrived, The Times said that Mr Yoshida was seeking ‘an understanding of Japan’s present needs, both moral and material’. ‘In general, and this largely due to Mr Yoshida’s personal success, these aims were surprisingly well achieved.’ Mr Yoshida’s press conference was not ‘a striking success’.17 According to The Manchester Guardian, Mr Yoshida started off by saying that he had not been anxious to come to London, first because the reception of the Crown Prince in 1953 had not been very cordial and second because as Japanese Ambassador between 1936 and 1938 he had failed to prevent war breaking out between our two countries. The first statement, it was later explained, referred only to certain newspaper articles, but The Daily Mirror picked on this piece of frank- ness and on Mr Yoshida’s plea for clemency to war criminals as an excuse to attack the Japanese attitude towards former prisoners of war.

CONCLUSION The Foreign Office concluded that, on the whole, the visit had been a success considering that Mr Yoshida did not seem to have set himself any particular objectives. Mr Yoshida had arrived looking tired and depressed. He left ‘in high good humour’. The Foreign Office did not think that the visit had in any way diminished his warm regard for the United Kingdom. They thought it had been useful for ‘Mr Yoshida to encounter Western opinion and see conditions in the West after so long an absence. Whether his visit will have any more lasting effect on Anglo-Japanese relations remains to be seen and will depend upon what happens over the various concrete issues outstanding between us.’

ASSESSMENT Unfortunately, Mr Yoshida was forced to resign in December 1954 soon after he returned home and the bilateral issues discussed in

21 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

London remained troublesome for many years. Mr Yoshida was insen- sitive towards British opinion over war criminals and on outstanding commercial issues. He also failed to realize how important a settlement under Article 16 of the Peace Treaty was for the British and how resentment had been exacerbated by Japanese bureaucratic shilly- shallying over the arrangements for realizing Japanese assets as specified in Article 16. Japanese delaying tactics and their insistence on sticking by the letter of Article 16 meant that former prisoners of war had to wait not much less than ten years from the end of their incarceration for the payments of £76 each, which came due to them from the funds made available from the International Red Cross and which many of them thought derisory. Their resentment was eventually assuaged by the announcement on 7 November 2000 of ex gratia payments of £10,000 each from the British government. Japanese fears that any offer of a special payment to the British prisoners of war would open the floodgates to demands for compensation from other people who had suffered and Japanese concern about their economic situation and balance of payments problems were understandable, but the legalistic and unsympathetic line taken by the Japanese at the time caused lasting resentment. Mr Yoshida should have recognized this and at least have tried to be more sympathetic to the plight of the former prisoners of war. He should also have recognized that British fears about unfair competition and trading practices were not groundless. On the other hand, we need to bear in mind that when Yoshida came to London he was preoccupied with his domestic difficulties and with relations with the United States, which was the dominant power for Japan. His attitude towards Britain was coloured by his recollec- tions of his time in London before the war. He remembered old friends such as Butler and Hankey and was inclined to take Britain for granted. His primary concern was how to revitalize the Japanese economy and he was unwilling to commit Japan to pay more com- pensation than was specified in the Peace Treaty which had been gen- erous to a defeated enemy. The visit did not show Yoshida at his best. It was a pity that he only came to London when his time as prime minister was coming to an end. Yoshida was one of Japan’s most influential and able post-war prime ministers. He was an outstanding personality capable of showing personal charm and using wit and humour even if his temper was uncertain and he could be very obstinate. He was intensely devoted to the reconstruction of Japan and groomed Ikeda Hayato and Sato Eisaku for their future roles as prime minister of Japan.18

22 3

Edward Heath (1916–2005) and Japan:The First Visit of a British Prime Minister to Japan in 1972

HUGH CORTAZZI

Edward Heath

INTRODUCTION Mr Edward Heath (1916–2005),1 who was the British Prime Minister from 1970 to 1974 and Leader of the Opposition from 1974 to 1975, had a distinguished career in politics, which he described in his autobiography The Course of My Life, published in 1998. He was an accomplished yachtsman and musician. This essay focuses on his visit to Japan in 1972 and covers briefly his later involvement with Japan pri- marily as a member of the advisory council of the Praemium Imperiale Awards.2 In 1998, he was awarded the Grand Cordon of the Rising Sun by the Japanese government in recognition of the contribution he had made to deepening and developing Anglo-Japanese relations.

OFFICIAL VISIT TO JAPAN Preparations and background Mr Heath had been Prime Minister at the time of the state visit to London of the Japanese Emperor in the autumn of 19713 and had had 23 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI a lengthy discussion over dinner at the Guildhall with the then Japanese Foreign Minister Mr Fukuda Takeo, largely about US-Japan economic relations and Japanese exports of textiles. Mr Heath in his autobiography4 simply recorded that in September 1972 he had been the first British Prime Minister to visit Japan. In a telegram to President Nixon on 11 September 1972, he said that he had begun to think that he should go to Japan after talking with the President in Bermuda in December 1971, but he had no doubt realized before then the growing importance of Japan and the need for Britain to pay greater attention to relations with such a significant economic power. The visit took place at a time when economic relations with Japan were strained and there was a significant imbalance in trade between the two countries. In his meeting in Tokyo on 18 September 1972 with Mr Tanaka Kakuei, the Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Heath said that he could not understand why none of his predecessors had come to Tokyo before. There had been a steady increase during the 1960s in British inter- est in Japan. It had been agreed in principle that the two Foreign Ministers should meet annually but more often than not these meet- ings had been postponed. The commercial department of the British Embassy, with the backing of the Board of Trade and the Asia Committee of the British National Exports Council, had stepped up efforts to penetrate the Japanese market. These had culminated in a major ‘British Week’in Tokyo in 1969 involving all the main Japanese department stores in Tokyo who were persuaded to put on promo- tions of British consumer goods. There had also been an exhibition of British scientific and medical equipment in the Science Museum. But it was recognized that much more needed to be done to promote British exports to Japan. In 1972, there were major monetary issues which involved Japan. There were fears in Japan that the European Economic Community, to which Britain would accede from 1 January 1973, might become too inward-looking. President Nixon in the United States faced major trade and monetary problems. Japan was looking to develop its relations with the People’s Republic of China. There was much to discuss and a prime ministerial visit was overdue. A great deal of effort was put into preparing the briefs which included voluminous submissions on trade and financial issues. The steering brief was the subject of many redrafts. The purpose of the visit was described as being ‘To make clear in public the importance which the government attaches to the consolidation of close and friendly relations between the United Kingdom and Japan in the political, economic, monetary and consumer fields.’ The confidential aims were:

24 EDWARD HEATH (1916–2005)

(a) ‘To encourage Japan to play a part on the world stage in keeping with her economic strength and to assume the responsibilities appropriate to a nation playing this part.’ (b) ‘To exchange views with the Japanese (i) about the prevailing international situation and to obtain from them an account of Japan’s interests and objectives, (ii) about the enlargement and development of the European Economic Community (EEC), (iii) about the prevailing international monetary situation and seek their cooperation in working for international monetary sta- bility and the long term reform of the monetary system;’ (c) ‘To encourage Japan to pursue policies which would prevent the disruption of the British market by Japanese exports and which would give British firms a better opportunity to sell to and invest in Japan’; (d) ‘to encourage Japan to work for an improvement in the quantity and quality of Japanese aid to developing countries’.

The steering brief also emphasized that we regarded ‘Japan as one of the chief centres of power in the contemporary world’. On trade, the prime minister was asked to point out that American restrictions on imports from Japan had led to an increase in Japanese exports to Europe. At his briefing on arrival in Tokyo, Mr Heath asked officials at the British Embassy for their advice about what should be done about the trade imbalance.5 Officials pointed out that the options were limited. We could put up barriers to Japanese exports, but this would be con- trary to our international treaty obligations and to our general policy of moving towards freer world trade. It would also damage relations with an important power. Officials suggested instead that the Japanese would be prepared to consider temporary ‘voluntary’ restrictions on some products. At the same time, we should take further steps to increase our exports to Japan. We should press the Japanese to allow freer access to the Japanese market where high tariffs and non-tariff barriers hindered our exports. We should also mount a determined campaign to persuade British business that there was a lucrative market for their products in Japan. British companies were sending missions to China where at that time there were few chances of success and neglecting the more open and richer Japanese market. The commercial department of the embassy was frustrated by the bureaucratic approach of officials in the Department of Trade through which they had to operate. A specialized unit was needed in London staffed by officials with experience in the Japanese market and knowl- edge of Japanese ways of doing business. The head of the unit should

25 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI be sufficiently senior to enable him to approach companies at a high level. Before his departure for Japan, Mr Heath in his personal and confidential message to President Nixon of 11 September referred to above, said that Mr Tanaka’s recent appointment as Prime Minister made ‘this a logical moment to talk over our problems with him’. Mr Heath thought that the problems in Britain’s bilateral relationship with Japan were ‘not unlike those which face the United States’. But there were also ‘broader multilateral problems concerning Europe as a whole. European countries must strive to promote a sensible relation- ship with the Japanese which protects the interest of the Europeans and Japan in a manner which will contribute to stability for us all.’ In a despatch dated 31 August 1972, Sir Fred Warner, the recently arrived British Ambassador in Tokyo, described Mr Tanaka, Mr Heath’s Japanese opposite number. After giving a brief account of Mr Tanaka’s rise to power from his first appointment as the youngest ever Minister of Posts in 1957, through other party and cabinet posts, Warner noted that Mr Tanaka had become very rich with the expansion of his private construction company. After the Nixon shocks, including the Nixon visit to China, Tanaka had played his political cards well and had arranged matters so that he rather than Mr Fukuda Takeo ‘the heir apparent’ should replace Mr Sato Eisaku as prime minister. Tanaka had let it be known that he favoured the normalization of relations with the PRC and had produced a best-selling book explaining his ideas for decentralizing Japanese industry. Although Mr Tanaka’s cabinet was ‘disappointingly elderly’ he had made a good start and was popular. Mr Tanaka was described as:

. . . not at ease at Western social functions and speaks practically no English. He has energy and a good brain and a reputation for being deci- sive. He is also good at personal relations and has a sense of humour. His sincerity comes across, with no chip on his shoulder. To sum up, he is a refreshingly new type of political leader in Japan. He will defend Japan’s interests and will not be bullied, but one can do business with him.

Programme for the visit The programme was shorter than originally intended because of time pressures on Mr Heath. He had a packed schedule which ‘called for the Prime Minister’s most resolute endurance’. His party, including private secretaries and officials, arrived by air on Saturday, 16 September, in tor- rential rain. The Japanese Prime Minister was there to great him. On Sunday, 17 September, a quick visit was made to Nikko where he was able to observe Japanese traditional dances and listen to classical Japanese Gagaku music. Back in Tokyo, the prime minister was entertained to

26 EDWARD HEATH (1916–2005) dinner in a high-class Japanese restaurant by Mr Ohira Masayoshi, the Japanese Foreign Minister, with geisha in attendance. On 18 September, after a round of talks with Mr Tanaka, he met members of the Federation of Japanese Economic organizations (Keidanren) and the Japanese Chamber of Commerce and Industry.He then had an exchange of views with the Japanese Foreign Minister, attended a reception given by the Japan British Society and had dinner with the Japanese Prime Minister. Tuesday, 19 September, was equally busy. After meeting with members of the British Chamber of Commerce in Japan, he gave an interview to NHK, the Japanese Broadcasting Corporation. He was received by the Emperor at the palace where he was entertained to lunch.6 A further round of talks was held with Mr Tanaka in the afternoon followed by a press conference. In the evening, after giving a dinner for Mr Tanaka at the embassy and attending an after-dinner reception given by the ambas- sador at the residence Mr Heath and his party left for the airport for a night flight home by an RAF VC10 via Anchorage.

How the visit went Sir Fred Warner, in his despatch of 28 September 1972, described the visit and gave his assessment of it. ‘The visit was’ he wrote, ‘undoubt- edly a great success and should yield valuable results.’ Mr Heath had managed ‘through a veil of interpreters to establish firm relations with Mr Tanaka during three-and-a-half hours of talks’ and by sitting next to one another during ‘a rather oppressively formal dinner at Mr Tanaka’s house and a much more lively meal to which Mr Heath invited Mr Tanaka in return’. Mr Tanaka ‘was clearly very interested in what the Prime Minister had to say’ and had accepted an invitation to visit London. ‘The political discussions with Mr Tanaka, and also with Mr Ohira, showed no real difference of views between us.’ Mr Tanaka said that he would carry through to its conclusion his policy of establishing rela- tions with communist China, although he was troubled over how to deal with Taiwan. After going to Peking ‘he would hope to conclude a peace treaty with the Soviet Union’, but he had no intention of making concessions over the disputed northern islands. Mr Tanaka and Mr Ohira made it clear that ‘whatever the development of relations with China and the Soviet Union’ Japan ‘would continue to have the closest possible relationship with the US’. Mr Tanaka ‘asked for British help to get permanent membership of the Security Council for Japan. Mr Heath promised to consider this sympathetically but drew atten- tion to the very serious obstacles.’ Mr Tanaka ‘showed great interest in British views on international monetary reform’, but Mr Heath ‘turned aside a question on whether the pound would be devalued on our entry into Europe’.

27 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Mr Tanaka’s main economic preoccupation and that of most other Japanese to whom Mr Heath spoke ‘was to know what would happen to the European Community after 1 January [1973] and whether Britain was prepared to play an active part in preventing it from becoming an inward-looking protectionist bloc’. Mr Heath stressed that he could not speak for Europe but the steady increase in Europe’s foreign trade and its performance in giving foreign aid made it clear that Europe had not been ‘inward-looking’. When oil supplies were discussed, Mr Tanaka made it clear that Japan was considering large oil investments in Eastern Siberia and the Middle East. Mr Heath ‘pointed out the dangers of competition between the major oil-importing countries if they allowed their inter- national companies to bid each other up’. Bilateral trade issues were an important subject for discussion not only with Japanese ministers but with Japanese and British business- men. There had recently been talks between British and Japanese industries about man-made fibres, ball-bearings and television sets as well as talks between British and Japanese officials. Mr Heath hoped that the understandings reached in these talks ‘would be honoured by the Japanese; he pressed hard for the liberalization of Japanese imports and foreign investment in Japan; and he spoke of the merits of Concorde, of British Government backing for Rolls-Royce RB-211 aero-engines and of the British nuclear achievement. He asked for an end to high tariffs on British whisky and wool.’ Mr Tanaka responded by saying that ‘the Japanese economy was growing too fast and this caused a most difficult problem of how to dispose of the products. Much more Japanese investment must go into the social infrastructure instead of productive industry. Japan should and would become a major importing country and liberalize foreign investment.’ Japan would increase aid to developing countries. ‘The specific matters raised by Mr Heath were all under consideration.’ At the lunch with Japanese businessmen, Mr Nagano Shigeo, President of the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry, said ‘the Japanese business community intend to spare no efforts for voluntary control of exports of the products in question (polyester fibres, ball- bearings and colour televisions) so that the (British) market will not be disturbed. On the other hand, we will try to take concrete steps for the promotion of manufactured goods from your country such as by despatching a Buying Mission to England.’ Another group of Japanese businessmen who saw the prime minister separately said that ‘British businessmen must make more effort to seize opportunities open to them in Japan’. British businessmen ‘drew much comfort’ from Mr Heath’s interest in their affairs’ and the opportunity he had given them ‘to air their favourite project for a British Trade Centre’ in Tokyo.

28 EDWARD HEATH (1916–2005)

Mr Heath’s television interview and press conference ‘were most successful and ensured, together with much firm guidance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a highly friendly and favourable reporting of the visit’. Sir Fred Warner in his conclusion to his despatch noted that there was now ‘a link of understanding, trust and interest’ between the two prime ministers and the ‘channel of communications opened.... must yield valuable results’. He thought that there was ‘a much surer understanding of British views and aims and a feeling that to say that Japan and Britain have much in common is not just politeness but a valuable and significant truth’.

AFTERMATH On 21 September, almost immediately after his return from Tokyo, Mr Heath sent a minute marked secret to the Foreign Secretary Sir Alec Douglas Home, recording some of the conclusions he had formed about British trade and investment in Japan. This was copied to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Secretary of State for Defence, the Lord Privy Seal, the Secretary of State for Trade and Industry and the Chief Secretary to the Cabinet. It was, in fact, primarily intended for action by the Department of Trade and Industry. It reflected closely the briefing given him on his arrival by officials of the British Embassy. Mr Heath said that the Japanese Prime Minister and his colleagues were:

. . . well aware of the problems caused by the size of their trade surplus and the risks of increasing protectionist reactions if the surplus is not reduced . . . But they will not be prepared to reduce their surplus by restricting their rate of growth . . . by artificially limiting their exports. They prefer to operate on the surplus by improving the standard of living of their people, by increased Government spending on infra- structure projects in Japan, by increasing imports and by liberalizing inward investment.

Mr Tanaka had told him that Japanese tariffs were coming down and they were ready to consider further reductions in tariffs and non-tariff barriers and further liberalization of rules governing inward invest- ment. But ‘there remain formidable difficulties for potential British exporters to Japan to surmount: notably the geographical remoteness of Japan, the language barrier, and the complexity of the Japanese dis- tribution system’. Mr Heath proposed firstly that ‘in advance of mul- tilateral trade negotiations in the GATT we should maintain pressure on the Japanese Government to make unilateral reductions in tariffs

29 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI and other barriers to trade’. Secondly, ‘we should do more to promote British goods and services in Japan’ and he urged that proposals for a British Trade Centre in Tokyo for a series of specialized exhibitions should ‘be energetically examined’. Thirdly, more should be done to ‘bring the opportunities of the Japanese market to the notice of British industry and to encourage and help British businessmen to surmount the difficulties’. Mr Heath went on to say:

In the short term we may be able to achieve voluntary limitations on Japanese exports to this country of particular ranges of goods where the exports are clearly threatening the existence of an important domestic industry, as we have done with ball bearings and polyester fibre. In the longer term, however, I am sure that we must make a determined and sustained effort to redress the trade balance by increasing our exports of goods and services to Japan.

Mr Heath had been much impressed by the knowledge and compe- tence of the commercial staff in the British Embassy in Tokyo and he commended proposals under consideration enabling staff ‘to come back more often to this country, to try to interest firms in opportuni- ties [in Japan] and to keep up to date their own knowledge of the capacities of British industry’. He also thought that a full-time appointment might be made in the Department of Trade and Industry of someone (businessman or member of the diplomatic or civil service) ‘whose business it would be to encourage and help firms to enter the Japanese market’.7 Mr Heath also urged that discussions be held with British banks already established in Japan or/and with banks about to open offices in Japan about ‘what more they can do to help their clients to export to or invest in Japan’. He also suggested that consideration be given to the establishment of ‘an institution on the lines of the US Export- Import Bank’. Finally, Mr Heath urged investigation of what more the British Government ‘could do to encourage Japanese purchases of British goods in fields where the Japanese Government is closely concerned with purchasing policy’ e.g. ‘equipment for the Japanese self-defence forces and commercial aircraft’. He added that while his minute was written in terms ‘of visible trade’there was, he thought, ‘scope for fur- thering our invisible exports to Japan, particularly in the fields of insurance and investment services’. On 22 September, Mr Heath sent a secret and personal message to President Nixon about his visit to Japan. In this he said that he was ‘more than ever convinced that the relationship between Japan and the

30 EDWARD HEATH (1916–2005) other industrialized free nations is of fundamental importance for the stability and prosperity of us all’ but ‘there may well be difficulties ahead, for example in our bilateral economic relations, since instinc- tive caution and domestic pressures may combine to prevent the Japanese moving ahead to relax their existing restrictions sufficiently fast to meet our real needs’. Mr Heath said ‘it was evident that they [Japanese ministers] intend to abide by Japan’s existing security arrangements with the United States.... The future external policies of Japan are nevertheless at an interesting moment, and I doubt if we shall be able to determine their likely course until we see the outcome of their negotiations with China and the Soviet Union.’Mr Heath also mentioned Japan’s wish to obtain a permanent seat on the Security Council. Something he ‘was not opposed to in principle’ and would like to talk to the President about it at their next meeting. Tanaka himself struck Mr Heath, ‘as a highly intelligent leader.’

A RE-ASSESSMENT The visit clearly helped to ensure that ministers and officials in Whitehall gave greater attention to Japan and recognized the increased importance of co-operation with Japan. It also ensured that British trade promotion in Japan shifted up a gear. A British Trade Centre was established in Tokyo and a series of specialist exhibitions of British products were held in the centre up to the beginning of the 1980s when it was decided that it was no longer needed as British firms were increasingly taking part in Japanese trade fairs. Mr Heath’s words on Japanese tariffs and non-tariff barriers were pointed and no doubt registered with his interlocutors, but the problems persisted into the 1980s and 1990s and it is doubtful whether they had much effect on speeding up the far too gradual moves by the Japanese authorities towards the liberalization of trade and investment. Mr Tanaka did not last as long as Sir Fred Warner thought likely. He was too much mired in corruption. He did carry through normaliza- tion of Japan’s relations with communist China, but he did not succeed in breaking the deadlock with the Soviet Union over a peace treaty and the northern islands and the issue still stands as an obstacle to improved relations with Russia. Japan has still not achieved its aim of becoming a permanent member of the UN Security Council although Mr Heath’s cautious endorsement of this aim is now accepted by the British Government and British representatives co-operate with Japan in trying to achieve the necessary reform of the United Nations’ con- stitution and structure.

31 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

HEATH AND JAPAN 1975–2005 After he ceased to be Leader of the Opposition Mr Heath remained active in politics until he retired from the House of Commons in 2001. He had, however, more time in these years for other activities. He was soon on the Japanese lecture circuit where lectures by world statesmen commanded substantial fees.8 He also visited Japan twice as an orches- tral conductor.9 His lecture in 1986 was on the theme of ‘Enjoying music as part of everyday life’. Two of his lectures entitled ‘The Growing Role for Japan and Europe in our Changing World’and ‘a A Life of Many Interests’deliv- ered at the third Ishizaka Memorial Lectures in September 1979 were published by the Ishizaka Foundation in December 1980.10 In the first of these lectures, Heath drew attention to weaknesses in relations between Japan and Europe.11 ‘Both Western Europe and Japan are’he said, ‘still far too inclined to see their world view and their relations with each other in terms of their respective bilateral relations with the United States.’ He also said that ‘our relationship has suffered from a great deal of misunderstanding on both sides about each other’s attitudes, intentions and decision-making processes’. He deplored the slowness of Japanese decision-making through consensus. He urged Japan12 to do more to contribute towards a more balanced trade rela- tionship with Europe especially through removing non-tariff barriers and by ‘modifying its export propensity from one which concentrates massive flows of a few products to particular countries to one which involves a more even development of export potential’. He urged greater cooperation in energy policy and in direct investment into Japan and into Europe. He advocated13 an increase in Japanese self- defence efforts and closer coordination in defence policy between Japan and the West. His comments generally reflected the messages being conveyed by other European politicians at the time, but he was ahead of his fellow Europeans in advocating a greater Japanese defence effort and of many British politicians by his advocacy of a European rather than a national policy towards Japan. His main involvement with Japan in his later years was through his involvement with the Praemium Imperiale Awards. These were founded by the Japan Arts Association14 to replicate in the arts the Nobel Prizes in the sciences and literature. The awards sought ‘to extend the same principles into the realm of artistic attainment by recognizing and rewarding international contributions to the arts’.15 Sir Edward Heath was one of six international advisers to the committee16 which selected winners each year of prizes worth $100,000 in the categories of music, architecture, film and theatre, painting and sculpture. Every year after they were established Heath went to Japan for discussions on the

32 EDWARD HEATH (1916–2005) awards and greatly enjoyed the lavish way in which he was treated by the organizers. It fell to him to organize the celebration of the winners every fifth year in London. In 1990, the celebration dinner was held at Hampton Court Palace and, in 1995, at the Royal Naval College in Greenwich. One important Japanese businessman with whom Heath struck up a friendly relationship during these years was Mr Saba Shoichi, former President and Chairman of Toshiba Corporation, who was the chair- man of the Japan Committee for the Japan Festival in the UK in 1991. They would invariably meet when he came to Tokyo in the 1990s and Saba would take Heath to his favourite tempura house and enjoy a free-ranging conversation and a glass or two of malt whisky.17 Saba visited Britain specially to attend Heath’s eightieth birthday party. Ted Heath, as he was generally known, thus contributed in various ways to the development of Anglo-Japanese cultural relations.

33 4

Nitobe Inazo in London

IAN NISH

Nitobe Inazo

INTRODUCTION Nitobe Inazo (1862–1933) was a notable Japanese of the twentieth century who distinguished himself in three spheres: as educationist; as author; and as Japan’s first international civil servant at the League of Nations. This essay deals with Nitobe’s experiences in the secretariat of the League during its early days in London. Born in Morioka of samurai stock, Nitobe was sent to a private English school in Tokyo. After graduating from Sapporo Agricultural College, he moved to Tokyo Imperial University but withdrew in order to enter Johns Hopkins University for a post-graduate course in l884. He joined the Society of Friends and embarked on further study at the universities of Bonn, Berlin and Halle. Returning to the USA, he married an American, Mary Powell Elkington, in 1891. He then returned to Japan to become a professor at his alma mater, Sapporo Agricultural College, but resigned in 1897 because of ill health. Nitobe spent his convalescence in California where he wrote and published in 1900 Bushido:The Soul of Japan, a book which had great international appeal. It immediately ran to countless editions and was translated into twelve languages. He then worked for the Taiwan colonial government as director of agriculture, specializing in sugar.

34 NITOBE INAZO (1862–1933)

He combined it with a professorship of agricultural economics and colonial administration at Kyoto University. From 1906 until 1916 he acted as headmaster of Ichiko, the prestigious private school in Tokyo. After retirement from this post, he was appointed professor of law at Tokyo Imperial University where he already had connections. Throughout this varied career his literary output in both Japanese and English was considerable. He had acquired a great deal of experience of the world by the time he approached the third phase of his career at the age of fifty-seven, that of an international civil servant.

NITOBE JOINS THE LEAGUE SECRETARIAT In the spring of 1919, Nitobe Inazo was touring the United States and Europe as escort and interpreter for Baron Goto Shimpei.1 They had known each other since Goto had been Governor-General of Taiwan in 1901–3 and Nitobe had served as an adviser on agriculture there while acting as professor of colonial policy at Kyoto Imperial University. Goto had since advanced in political circles to become the most talented member of the Terauchi cabinet (1916–18). He had held the portfolios of Home Minister and, after the death of Motono Ichiro, of Foreign Minister also. Having been replaced by Hara when he became prime minister in September 1918, Goto decided to go on an extended Grand Tour round the world and survey the state of post- war affairs. The group set off on 4 March, reaching San Francisco at the end of the month. It was not unnatural that Goto should include a number of linguists in his party and that Dr Nitobe should be chosen to accompany him. They were joined in California by Mary Nitobe, his American-born wife, for the journey through the United States. They left Mrs Nitobe at her home on the east coast. The party reached London on 8 June for a stay of three weeks during which they had an audience with King George V at Buckingham Palace and an interview with the acting foreign secretary, Lord Curzon of Kedleston. Nitobe dutifully prepared a letter of thanks to Curzon on 27 June 1919. The party reached Paris as the deliberations on the German peace treaty were at their height. Of the many issues which this generated, we need only consider the origins of the League of Nations, the cre- ation of which had been approved in principle on 25 January 1919. A commission was set up to consider the drafting of the covenant and was eventually presided over by President Woodrow Wilson. Its rele- vance for Japan was over the subject of racial equality about which she wished to insert a clause in the covenant of the League. While this was out-voted in the commission, it was suggested that it could be worked on after the League came into being. On 28 April, the draft of the covenant was adopted by a majority vote.2

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Once the League had been agreed in principle, much of the initia- tive would depend on the speedy establishment of a permanent secre- tariat and the selection of its personnel. Soundings were made for the post of secretary-general from February onwards. The appointment of Sir Eric Drummond, a former British diplomat who had been in Paris for the negotiations, was made in April in a rather cavalier manner. Accounts differ. Nitobe himself thought that it was the choice of Wilson while some attributed the selection to Arthur Balfour, the British Foreign Secretary whose private secretary Drummond was and others to Georges Clemenceau.3 After this appointment there was a sense of urgency to get things under way in view of the difficulties which President Wilson was already facing from a hostile American Congress. An organization committee (soshiki iinkai) was set up with Baron Chinda Sutemi as Japan’s representative. At its second meeting, on 9 June, Drummond put forward proposals for the structure of the secretariat. He assumed that the posts of under-secretary-general would be drawn from among the nations which had participated in the Big Five deliberations at Paris; but that, since most of the League’s business would be ‘European’, representation would be from the countries of Europe. Drummond approached the Japanese represent- atives suggesting that they should put forward names for the post of director (bucho¯ in Japanese) rather than under-secretary-general. Chinda and his colleagues felt that in these circumstances Japan would be isolated from decision-making on world affairs and asked that Japan should have an appointment as under-secretary-general. As a result, Drummond amended his proposal to include a Japanese at the higher level. It had in any case come to be accepted in Paris that Japan should be allowed to sit on all conference committees ‘whenever questions particularly affecting her were under consideration’.4 After winning this behind-the-scenes battle for recognition, the Japanese plenipotentiaries, who were in Paris for the German peace treaty, came under pressure to put forward a name urgently in order to ensure that Japan was given a role commensurate with her standing at the Paris conference. They had to bear in mind that the person should be a person of distinction and should ideally be available in Europe for immediate appointment without having to travel from Japan and arriv- ing when the groundwork had been completed. They were anxious to appoint someone with good linguistic skills and a good knowledge of world affairs.5 Nitobe’s name was mooted for the post some weeks before the Goto¯ party turned up in Paris on 30 June. He himself understood that the first step had been taken by Viscount Chinda Sutemi, one of the plenipotentiaries. But it appears to have been done without consulta- tion with the nominee. From an international standpoint, Nitobe was

36 NITOBE INAZO (1862–1933) ideally suited for the job. He was not a politician or a diplomat. He was an accomplished linguist in English and French. He was fairly well-known in the English-speaking world for his books on Bushido¯. He was recognized as a liberal internationalist, although he had not taken a strong position on the various League issues which had arisen in the early months of 1919. In religion, his Quaker beliefs made him very suitable for an institution which was aiming at preserving world peace. Dr Nitobe had been a professor at Tokyo Imperial University, Japan’s most prestigious university, since 1909 and had the high status of a senior academic with official experience. He seemed likely, there- fore, to be acceptable to those who had to be entrusted with making the appointments. It was still assumed that the United States would take a large role in the League so the fact that he had been educated there and had married an American wife would count in his favour. In Japanese eyes also he was an ideal candidate. Makino Nobuaki who was the de facto head of the Japanese delegation and was an enthu- siastic supporter of Japan belonging to the League had known Nitobe when he was minister of education in 1906. It was he who had then successfully persuaded Nitobe to accept the post of principal of Ichiko, the prestigious First National College in Tokyo. The most influential plenipotentiary in Paris, Ambassador Chinda, was also in favour. Needless to say, Goto¯ when he was consulted was also in favour. This was important for the success of the appointment since Goto¯ had good contacts with the military in Japan. So the recommendation from Japanese quarters in Europe was unanimous. Strangely enough, the procedure in Tokyo was not entirely clear. The process of making a League of Nations appointment was a deli- cate one. It was not a matter where the Tokyo government selected its nominee. The appointment was to be made by the League but discreet enquiries were to be made to establish that it was acceptable to the home government of the candidate. Japan’s delegates asked Tokyo for extreme urgency. Apparently, Nitobe’s name was deemed acceptable for the post on 19 May. It appears to have leaked out in the Osaka Mainichi newspaper on 28 May that Nitobe had been appointed to the post of under-secretary-general and director of the international bureau of the League, while continuing for the time being on the establishment of Tokyo Imperial University. In fact, this announcement was premature since the Paris commit- tees had still to make the appointment and offer the post to the nominee. It was only after further travels on the continent and the return of the party to London on 17 July that Chinda informed Goto¯ three days later that Nitobe’s name had been officially approved and asked him to encourage the candidate to accept. Nitobe was initially guarded in his response, claiming that he was ill-qualified for the

37 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI post. But eventually, after receiving strong recommendations that Drummond would be easy to work with, Nitobe public-spiritedly took on the job but added that his vision was to be ‘a bridge over the Pacific’. The Treaty of Versailles was signed on 26 June. During the follow- ing month Drummond formed his permanent international secre- tariat. The newly created posts of under-general-secretary were assigned to Jean Monnet (France), Inazo Nitobe (Japan), Raymond B. Fosdick (USA) and Italy which did not put forward a nominee until January 1920. It was hoped that, by appointing an American to high office, the United States could still be induced to become a founder member of the League. When it refused to join, the incumbent ulti- mately resigned in April 1920.

THE LONDON INTERLUDE The covenant which was approved as an attachment to the treaty laid down that the seat of the League would be established ‘at Geneva and that the permanent secretariat would be located at the seat of the League’ (Articles 6 and 7).6 The secretariat could now proceed to the next stage. The League established its secretariat temporarily in London in mid-summer, in spite of opposition from the French ‘who felt that the world’s political leaders had been located in Paris for the previous six months and that Paris was a more natural’home until the headquarters moved to Switzerland as the covenant laid down. Japan was a signatory to both the treaty and the covenant and thus a founder member of the League. Although it was a considerable disruption to his family and academic life, Nitobe settled in the British capital to take up his duties under Sir Eric Drummond without delay. He was inspired by the thought of taking on an international role and decided to forego the possibility of returning to Japan to tidy up his affairs. Instead his wife Mary who had been left in the States under- took the journey to Japan to settle family affairs in preparation for a prolonged absence. She found the task a hard one and the prospect of continued separation even harder. She was sympathetic, however, to his accepting the post and joined him in London as soon as she could. The League secretariat set up its temporary headquarters in Sunderland House, 117 Piccadilly, W1 (an address sometimes described as ‘Curzon Street’). It is described as a large but uncongenial house at the corner of Piccadilly and Down Street.7 Coincidentally, it stands close to the present Japanese Embassy at 101 Piccadilly. Of course, London was only a makeshift headquarters for the organiza- tion. As early idealism wore off and the prospect of American financial

38 NITOBE INAZO (1862–1933) largesse did not materialize, the League leaders had to cut their coat according to European measures of cloth. Accordingly, the headquar- ters were transferred to Trafalgar House in Waterloo Place, Lower Regent Street, SW1, in 1920. Nitobe himself took up his personal residence at 66 Holland Park. Switzerland commended itself to the delegates in Paris as the home for the League because it was a neutral country and the home of the International Red Cross. After considering and rejecting Lausanne, its government had selected Geneva; but it had found that Geneva was not as yet equipped to accommodate such a large and growing inter- national institution as the League. So the secretariat stayed in war- ravaged London for over a year as arrangements were made to find suitable premises in Geneva. The League could not be formally inaugurated until January 1920 when the Versailles treaty came into force. But there was plenty of preparatory work to do. The problem for the newly appointed officials was that they were breaking new ground and had no prototype on which they could rely. Nitobe was able to play his part in planning the general affairs of the organization.8 It was during this time that Nitobe, who confessed to being lonely in London, seems to have formed a cordial relationship with Eric Drummond. He fitted in well with the concept of international civil servants which Drummond was forming in his head, that is, of a body of men who were devoted to the League and prepared not to be browbeaten by pressure from their home country. Whereas others among the League officials were very con- scious of their national affiliations, Nitobe was appreciated by Drummond for steering clear of this. The Drummond team settled down to the task of building an administrative structure, a novel experience but one for which Nitobe with his educational back- ground had some past experience. By contrast, Drummond, coming from a Foreign Office career, had less background about office orga- nization and office discipline (hours of work, etc.).9 It was necessary for the League to sell itself in advance of its inau- guration. Dr Nitobe increasingly took on the lecturing mantle on behalf of the League of Nations team, both in Britain and on the con- tinent. It has to be remembered that the atmosphere in Europe gen- erally was one of scepticism, firstly, about the Versailles treaty and, secondly, about the potential of the League. Even Britain, in spite of the fact that she was to be the leading member of the League Council, had many cynics. The reasons were that the League was showing more evidence of idealism than of realism; the covenant did not please the pragmatists; the conservatives felt that it was better to leave post-war problems to be solved by existing experienced bodies. Thus one British critic wrote:

39 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

The Secretariat is merely an international Foreign Office and presents most of the ideas to the Council instead of making the Council do the work. . . . Our Foreign Office is jealous and refuses to have anything to do with the League.10

So there was a case for defenders of the League to answer and it was recognized that the members of the secretariat would have to travel around and speak convincingly to audiences. Like Drummond, Nitobe had to try to clear away the common misconception that the League was a type of super-state with a domineering bureaucracy, whereas in fact it was an association of countries trying to build on international cooperation. It was in this context that Dr Nitobe pre- sented one of his earliest lectures, ‘What the League of Nations has done and is doing’. This was given several times but most memorably at the International University in Brussels on 13–14 September 1920. Even by that date the League had already dealt with a number of inter- national trouble spots such as the Saar Basin, the Free City Danzig, the Aaland Islands and general items like opium traffic, the spread of disease and reparations.11 Nitobe was much sought after as a lecturer in English. His name was already familiar in London because his books were well-known. His presence was valued by the Japanese Embassy, where Chinda remained the ambassador until August 1920. In some of his initial lectures Nitobe concentrated on Japan. 1919 had been a bad year for Japan’s reputation in Britain, particularly over her treatment of Korea and China. There had been sustained criticism on these topics both from the Foreign Office and from the British press. He spoke to the Japan Society of London on the subject of ‘Japanese Colonization’ (17 December 1919). He described the wide range of Japan’s colonial enterprises ‘whether it be in tropic Formosa, or temperate Korea, or half-frigid Sakhalin’. While economic factors were the immediate reasons for Japan’s national expansion, ‘her chief motive was national security’. A major concern was that ‘with the steady advance of Russia southwards from Siberia the necessity of protecting Japan’s northern frontiers became urgent’. It began in the 1870s the colonization of Hokkaido (Yezo). Sakhalin, a bone of contention between Russia and Japan, was exchanged for a group of thirty-one Kurile islands. He remarked of Japan’s efforts in Korea that it would be highly interest- ing to compare them to developments in Wales – or Ireland! 12 In short Nitobe’s standpoint could be described as apologetic but also conser- vative and defensive. It was therefore, a bold topic for him to choose even for an audience as pro-Japanese as the Japan Society of London. His address was obviously popular with his audience as he was invited back to give the main toast ‘Success to the Japan Society’ at the

40 NITOBE INAZO (1862–1933)

21st annual dinner of the society, on 18 May 1920 at the Princes’ Restaurant. On this occasion he was accompanied by his wife.13 He also spoke to the ‘British Budokwai’ at its headquarters in Grosvenor Place on 13 October 1919. His subject was ‘the Japanese concept of loyalty’. His argument was that, with the disappearance of Japan’s feudal system, ‘the Emperor took the place of the feudal lord as the object of devotion of the Japanese people’.14 Apart from these lectures about his home country, Nitobe was a stout defender of the League in general and of (what he called) ‘the permanent international secretariat’ in particular. He was insistent that the secretary-general should be respected and seen as sitting alongside the president in a place of honour. As under-secretary-general he was proud of his special role in charge of the League’s international bureaux. But he had in fact a much broader remit. Describing his work, he wrote:

I am rather busier with other matters, a rubbish heap as it were, for problems which did not properly belong in any of the other sections all come to me. . . . I am the most easily found out person in the Secretariat.15

For example, educational problems had no special section within the League bureaucracy and landed on his desk. He claimed that he was much busier than other officials whose homes were more accessible and who were inclined to be absent from headquarters. Because he could not readily escape to Japan, he was the official who had to take on emergency duties.

TRANSFER TO GENEVA On 10 January 1920, the Versailles Treaty came into force; and the League started officially. By this time there was some reluctance on the part of officials in London to move to Geneva and transfer all the archives which had hitherto been lovingly accumulated. Who would bear the expenses of League officials who moved their households there in the new climate of economy? Out of the eleven meetings of the council held in 1920, only the last two were held in Geneva. They had all been held in various capitals where satisfactory meeting facilities were available. Nonetheless, the leaders were firm about the transfer; and the secretariat made the move early in October in order to prepare the way for the inaugural Assembly of the League which was due to take place in the Salle de la Reformation, Geneva, on 15 November.16 Eventually, Nitobe moved to Geneva though he had like most members of the secretariat been travelling backwards and forwards to

41 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI the continent for some time. What his particular views on the move were cannot be found. But he seems to have settled into a comfort- able family life there beside the shores of Lake Leman. The Japanese government, unlike some others, decided to establish a permanent delegation to the council with Ishii Kikujiro¯, the ambassador in Paris, in nominal charge. It would have an office (kokusai remmei no jimukyoku) with Sugimura Yo¯taro¯ as the diplomat in charge. This gave Nitobe some interesting Japanese companionship. He and his com- panions were hoping to confirm the image of Geneva as the symbol of world peace the ‘spirit of Geneva’ (Geneva no ku¯ki).17 From the start, Nitobe had been concerned with international and social matters. Now he became more specialized in taking on the work of the committee on International Cooperation to which such present day institutions as UNESCO and semi-government bodies like the British Council and the Japan Foundation trace their origins. In other words, he and his committee of scholars had to assess the role of culture in international relations. In this connection, Nitobe wrote a number of reports, including that on ‘The language question and the League of Nations’ dealing with the question of an international lan- guage and also ‘The Intellectual Life of Various Countries’. Much positive work had been done in London in the early days of the League and Nitobe had assisted Drummond greatly to lay its found- ations. He had the seniority which gave it prestige. When Nitobe was appointed he was fifty-seven years of age and was older than Drummond (aged forty-three) and most of the other officials like Jean Monnet (aged thirty-one). Moreover, his modesty and his pleasing per- sonality attracted those around him. Through his presence, he ensured that Japan had the standing in the League to which it was entitled. Nitobe was a symbol of his country’s commitment to the peaceful res- olution of the conflicts of the immediate post-war period which mainly affected Europe and the Middle East; Japan was called on to play her part. Nitobe was at one level an international civil servant but at another level he was a custodian of Japanese interests and a nationalist. There could not fail to be an element of disappointment for Dr Nitobe in the way the League developed. When he accepted the appointment in mid-1919, he must have thought that he would be near the centre of an organization in which the United States would lead the rest of the world. Nitobe had always been inclined to believe in the notion of the ‘Americanization’ of the world which seemed to come to realization with Wilson’s appearance in Paris. Initially, he had said that his acceptance of the League appointment was in order to build a bridge across the Pacific. But disillusion was bound to set in after the American Senate refused to ratify the terms of the peace treaty and the covenant of the League in 1920. Thus he wrote:

42 NITOBE INAZO (1862–1933)

A League minus the US loses more than one-half of its value in the estimate of Japan. . . . A general treaty of which neither Russia nor America is a signatory has very little use for Japan.

These were strongly expressed views which probably reflected Tokyo’s standpoint. For Nitobe personally also American withdrawal was regrettable. Still he was loyal to the League institution without America and was able to adapt to its less idealistic European demeanour. There is no evidence that his period in Britain was any- thing other than pleasurable for Nitobe. He valued his cordial rela- tionship with Eric Drummond and British officials. As a member of the Quaker movement, he may have felt some rapport with a country which had given birth to the Society of Friends in the seventeenth century. Even after President Wilson, the arch-idealist, had departed from the scene, there was still enough residual idealism left in League circles in Britain to make Nitobe’s task a satisfying one.

RETIREMENT Nitobe retired from the League of Nations in 1926 at the age of sixty- four. He was awarded many honorary degrees by universities around the world. The government appointed him a member of the House of Peers. Nitobe became a senior member of Japan’s League of Nations Association and of the Foreign Affairs Association of Japan. He was naturally much sought after as a speaker on international affairs. He became chairman of the Japanese branch of the Institute of Pacific Affairs, an important forum for the interchange of ideas relating to the Pacific. In that capacity, he attended the biennial conference held at Shanghai in the autumn of 1931, inopportunely at the start of the Manchurian Crisis. World opinion was moving in favour of China; and these meetings which were intended to consider areas of conflict dispassionately inevitably turned into occasions for Sino-Japanese dis- agreement. At the succeeding conference in August 1933 in Banff, Canada, he was leader of the Japanese delegation. But he died shortly after in hospital in Victoria, British Columbia, in October. Nitobe’s direct connection with Britain was limited to the years 1919 and 1920. But his writings testify to the fact that he was deeply versed in English Literature. He was already well known when he came to Britain and during his brief stay in London he was able to establish ties in intellectual circles and make contacts with many cul- tural and religious groups.

43 5

Inagaki Manjiro¯ (1861–1908): a Diplomat who Recognized the Importance of the Asia-Pacific Region to Japan

NOBORU KOYAMA

Inagaki Manjiro¯ (Photo from the National Diet Library, Tokyo)

INTRODUCTION Japanese nationalist sentiment grew rapidly in the final decades of the nineteenth century as a reaction to the rapid Westernization of the early part of the Meiji period (1868–1912). It led in turn to the devel- opment of Japanese imperialism. Inagaki Manjiro¯, who received his university education in England, emphasized the importance of Asia and the Pacific for Japan and advocated the expansion of Japanese power towards these regions. Inagaki combined both the desire to embrace Western ideas, characteristic of the early Meiji period, and the imperialist ambitions of the middle and later Meiji period. He returned to Japan from England at the time when Japanese national- ism was developing into imperialism. 44 INAGAKI MANJIRO¯ (1861–1908)

HIRADO AND THE SATSUMA REBELLION Inagaki Manjiro¯ was born on 22 September 1861 in Hirado (Nagasaki Prefecture, Japan) the second son of Amano Yu¯ei, a financial official of the Hirado fief.1 Hirado was a port, north of Nagasaki City in Kyushu¯, where the English ‘factory’ (trading post) had been between 1613 and 1623. The feudal lord of Hirado was a member of the Matsura family.2 Inagaki changed his family name from Amano to Inagaki which had been his ancestral family name after the Meiji Restoration in 1868.3 When he was three years old, his father died at the age of forty and his family’s fortune declined. So he and his elder brother, Yu¯taro¯, were adopted by their uncle, Motozawa Goro¯.4 In the following year, Inagaki caught smallpox, and although he survived, his face remained pockmarked.5 Inagaki entered a primary school in Hirado, which had been estab- lished by the new government in the early years of the Meiji period. Later, he heard about the reputation and popularity of the private schools (Shigakko¯) which Saigo¯ Takamori (1827–77) had established in Kagoshima, the capital of the former Satsuma fief in Kyushu¯. Saigo¯ Takamori had been one of the outstanding leaders of the Meiji Restoration in which the Satsuma fief had played a leading role. He returned to Kagoshima from Tokyo after he had lost the argument in the so-called ‘Seikanron’ (Conquer Korea Debate) within the Meiji Government in 1873. He then became the symbol of the discontented former samurai class and his schools were at the centre of the move- ment against the new Meiji Government. Although most of leaders of the Meiji Government came from the samurai class, the moderniza- tion policies of the government had brought financial ruin to the samurai and a loss of status. Saigo¯ was induced to become the leader of the Satsuma Rebellion (the Seinan war) of 1877, the largest and last revolt against the Meiji Government. Probably sympathetic towards Saigo¯, Inagaki and his brother went to Kagoshima to study at Saigo¯’s schools.6 But the students were then showing signs of rebellion against the government and, perhaps for this reason, Inagaki and his brother were forced to return to Nagasaki where they lodged with another uncle, Yamakawa Kagenori, who was the head of police in Nagasaki.7 The Satsuma Rebellion started in February 1877. The rebels, who were captured by the government forces, were imprisoned in Nagasaki. O¯ yama Tsunayoshi (1825–77), who had been governor of Kagoshima prefecture, was arrested in Kobe and sent to Nagasaki in June 1877 where he was executed. Inagaki’s uncle, Motozawa Goro¯, and Inagaki’s brother, Yu¯taro¯, were employed as policemen under Yamakawa Kagenori. Inagaki himself could not be employed because,

45 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI at seventeen, he was too young. However, at his earnest request he was employed as a prison guard.8 Inagaki looked after the prisoners in his care and some of Saigo¯’s followers, including O¯ yama, considering him a promising youth, taught him about politics and encouraged him to be ambitious.9 When some prisoners were sent to Tokyo, he asked to be allowed to accom- pany them. In return for performing this important duty he received an unexpectedly large sum of money which became his education fund in Tokyo.10

TOKYO AND CAMBRIDGE After studying at Nakamura Masanao’s private school,11 Inagaki enrolled at Tokyo University in 1882.12 In 1883 (Meiji 16), there was the so-called ‘Meiji 16 Incident’ at Tokyo University on graduation day.13 This incident was the first student disturbance in Japan. The cause of the disturbance was indirectly related to the customs associ- ated with Cambridge University’s degree ceremony. Kikuchi Dairoku,14 Professor and Dean of the University and also a Cambridge graduate, had told his students of Cambridge’s customs on graduation day.15 As a result, Japanese students thought that they were allowed to go wild on graduation day. Before 1883, graduates and students con- tinuing their studies had celebrated graduation day by eating and drinking and playing sports and games. But under the new regime introduced in 1883 they were no longer allowed to enjoy themselves in this way; so the frustrated students on graduation day 1883 ram- paged through the University destroying buildings and facilities. This led to the expulsion of 146 students. Among them were a number who later became prominent as politicians and scholars, such as Okuda Yoshito (Minister of Education and Mayor of Tokyo), Hiranuma Kiichiro¯ (Prime Minister), Soeda Juichi (banker), Matsukata Ko¯jiro¯ (businessman and art collector) and Inagaki Manjiro¯. Although those students were allowed to re-enrol at the University six months later, Inagaki and Matsukata did not return to Tokyo University. After the Meiji Restoration, a number of sons of former daimyo were sent abroad to study Western sciences and culture. They were often accompanied by talented youths of the same fiefs. Matsura Atsushi (1864–1934), the heir of the former daimyo of Hirado, was sent to England to study and Inagaki was asked to accompany him.16 Matsuura joined Trinity Cambridge and matriculated at the university in 1890, but he did not graduate. Inagaki matriculated at the univer- sity, at first as a non-collegiate student in 1886 and subsequently, in 1888, was admitted to Gonville and Caius (Caius College)17. His tutors at Caius were E.S. Roberts and J.S. Reid. He passed the Previous

46 INAGAKI MANJIRO¯ (1861–1908)

Examination Parts 1 and 2, but unfortunately he failed the Historical Tripos (honours degree) and was granted a BA (ordinary degree) immediately after the Tripos Examination in 1889.18 At that time, about one third of Cambridge undergraduates took honours degrees after passing the Tripos Examination, another third took ordinary degrees and the other third left Cambridge without any degree. Inagaki belonged to the second group and Matsuura to the third group.

ACHIEVEMENTS AT CAMBRIDGE At Cambridge, Inagaki achieved three things – the first was his cam- paign for the replacement of Greek in the Previous Examination (‘Little-Go’) by English. The second was his founding of the Japanese Club at Cambridge and the third was publication in 1890 of his book, Japan and the Pacific: and a Japanese View of the Eastern Question.19 In 1878, the Board of Oriental Studies at Cambridge (forerunner of the Faculty of Oriental Studies) had proposed that Indian students should be allowed to take Sanskrit or Arabic in the Previous Examina- tion instead of Greek or Latin.20 In 1886, the Board of Oriental Studies formally proposed the modification of this regulation.21 Inagaki, who had joined the University in the same year, realized that as this special regulation had been adopted for students from Asia it might be possible for him and other Japanese students to be examined in Chinese Classics (Kanbun in Japanese) in the Previous Examination instead of in Greek or Latin, but at that time there were no suitable examiners in classical Chinese at the university. Thomas Wade (1818–95), the first Professor of Chinese, was only appointed in 1888. It is likely that Inagaki consulted Donald MacAlister (1853–1934), a lecturer of medicine and a fellow of St John’s, who was a friend of Kikuichi Dairoku, the first Japanese graduate at Cambridge. MacAlister introduced a motion that Japanese students be examined in English instead of Greek at the Council of the University Senate in March 1887. His motion was amended so that it applied also to Indian students and it was adopted in June 1887.22 As a result, students from Asia were allowed to take an examination in English instead of Greek at ‘Little-Go’ as the Previous Examination was popularly called. Inagaki was one of the first beneficiaries of this change. Inagaki also organized the Japanese Club at Cambridge.23 The first meeting of the Club was held in November 1888. At this meeting, Donald MacAlister, who was the Honorary Vice-President, took the chair and Professor Wade gave a talk on the character of the English gentleman.24 The Japanese Club seems to have held fifteen meetings until 1895. Apart from Japanese students, prominent academics in

47 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Cambridge were involved, such as C.E. Searle, Master of Pembroke and Vice-Chancellor of the university, Henry Montague Butler, Master of Trinity, John Seeley, Professor of Modern History, F.W. Maitland, Professor of Laws, W.F. Moulton, Headmaster of the Leys School in Cambridge. The success of the club seems to have been largely due to the efforts made by Inagaki. At the meeting of the Japanese Club at Cambridge in December 1890, which was the last one held before Inagaki left Cambridge, C.E. Searle, the Master of Pembroke, described Inagaki’s contribution in the following terms:

This departure of Mr Inagaki is a real sorrow to me. I tell you without affectation, Mr Inagaki, we shall really all miss you. I think the children will miss you most, and children are not bad judges of men. You know my children always run to you when they see you, and they would as soon have you take them by the hand as anybody in Cambridge. You must have developed that character I have been speaking about, that affability, kindness, and courtesy, in a very high degree so as to have won their hearts and Mrs Searle’s, and mine.25

Inagaki’s first and only English language book is Japan and the Pacific: and a Japanese View of the Eastern Question (London: 1890). It is proba- bly his most important work. His major Japanese books, To¯ho¯saku (Parts 1 and 2), are a Japanese translation of this work. Japan and the Pacific consists of two parts. Part 1 which emphasizes Japan’s role in the Pacific, particularly in the context of struggle for hegemony by Britain and Russia in Asia, is probably the more important. The book was dedicated to John Seeley, the author of The Expansion of England26 and Professor of History at Caius in Cambridge. Inagaki acknowledged in the preface of the book the help of Donald MacAlister, Oscar Browning, historian and fellow of Kings, and G.E. Green who had been Inagaki’s private tutor, This dedication suggests that the influence of Seeley’s work was critical to the view which Inagaki developed of Japan’s role in Asia and the Pacific.

TO¯ HO¯ SAKUSHI After graduating from Cambridge and publishing Japan and the Pacific in London, Inagaki returned to Japan in 1891 via the United States. He took temporary professorial posts at Gakushu¯in (the Peers’ School) and the Higher Commercial School (the forerunner of Hitotsubashi University) in the same year.27 The Japanese translation of Inagaki’s English book was published under the title To¯ho¯saku (Eastern policy) in two volumes.28 It is

48 INAGAKI MANJIRO¯ (1861–1908) reported that more than 10,000 copies were sold. The publication of To¯ho¯saku in Japan established his reputation and earned him the appel- lation To¯ho¯ Sakushi (Tactician of Eastern Issues). He later published Shiberia Tetsudo¯ ron (Essay on the Trans-Siberia Railway),29 Taigaisaku (Foreign policy) in 1891,30 Sho¯-ko¯gyo¯ taigaisaku (Foreign Policy for Commerce and Industry),31 Kyo¯iku no ¯motoo (Basis of Education),32 To¯ho¯saku ketsuron so¯an (Draft of a Conclusion for Japan’s Eastern Policy) part 1 in 1892,33 Nan’yo¯cho¯seidan (Stories of Expeditions to the South Seas) in 1893,34 Gaiko¯ to gaisei (Diplomacy and Foreign Expeditions) in 1896.35 The titles of his Japanese books indicate the areas in which Inagaki was interested. He paid particular attention to Japan’s foreign policy towards Asia and the Pacific and to the best way to develop commerce and industry in Japan. In the year that Inagaki returned to Japan, To¯ho¯ Kyo¯kai (the Eastern Association) was founded. Soejima Taneomi (1828–1905), former Foreign Minister, became the President of the association while Inagaki took the post of Secretary-General.36 The purpose of To¯ho¯ Kyo¯kai was to study geography, commerce, military systems, colo- nization, diplomacy, history and statistics related to Asia and the Pacific. It was a kind of Japanese think-tank for foreign policy for Asia and the Pacific. The association published, as reports of the associa- tion, the results of studies made for it, including those written by Inagaki. Shokumin Kyo¯kai (the Association of Colonists) was estab- lished in 1893 at the instigation of Enomoto Takeaki (1836–1908) and Inagaki joined it as a Councillor. In 1892, Inagaki undertook lecture tours throughout Japan in order to propagate his views. He claimed that thousands of people gathered to listen to him.37 He then travelled to South East Asia and Australia.38 He left Nagasaki in October 1892 and sailed to Saigon and Singapore via Taiwan and Hong Kong on his way to Australia where he visited various cities. From Australia he went on to Indonesia and returned to Nagasaki via Macao and Taiwan. The purpose of his trip was to assess the importance of the area he visited to Japan and to find suitable des- tinations for Japanese emigrants.

DIPLOMAT IN SIAM Siam (Thailand) had not at first been a subject of particular interest to Inagaki. His attention later turned to Siam, because two colonial powers, Britain and France, were trying to expand their spheres of influence there. He paid particular attention to France’s aggressive behaviour in the region. In 1895, To¯ho¯ Kyo¯kai in the name of the President, Soejima Taneomi,39 drew attention to the need for a commercial treaty

49 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI between Japan and Siam. The proposal was probably instigated by Inagaki, the Secretary-General of the organization. He had visited Siam in the previous year, and had met Prince Thewawong, the Foreign Minister, obtaining the Prince’s support for a treaty between the two countries which would give Japan representation in Siam together with extra-territorial jurisdiction.40 Following his campaign for a treaty with Siam, Inagaki was appointed in 1897 as the first Japanese Minister Resident to Siam. Inagaki had become acquainted with Matsukata Masayoshi (1835–1924), Prime Minister, and O¯ kuma Shigenobu (1838–1922), Foreign Minister. In 1903, he was promoted to be Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Siam. He remained there for some eight years until he was appointed to be Minister in Madrid in 1905. As he died prematurely after only two years in Spain, Inagaki’s career was dominated by his stay in Siam. Inagaki’s most important contribution to Japanese relations with Siam was the conclusion of Japan’s treaty of friendship and commerce concluded in 1898. This included provisions for Japanese extra- territorial jurisdiction, although these were limited and conditional as the Japanese government promised to abandon them as soon as Western countries gave up their extra-territorial jurisdiction or when Siam’s legal system became modernized. In this context, Inagaki offered the services of a Japanese legal expert to help Siam. This expert, the American-educated Masao To¯kichi (1871–1920), who contributed to the modern legal system in Siam has been called father of modern law in Thailand. The main aim of Japanese diplomacy after the Meiji Restoration had been the revision of the ‘unequal treaties’ which gave the treaty powers extra-territorial jurisdiction in Japan. It was ironic that Japan followed the example set by Western countries when it concluded treaties with other Asian countries, such as Korea and Siam, and induced them to sign unequal treaties.41 Siam, which like Japan had been forced to conclude unequal treaties with Western countries and was seeking to revise these treaties, had hoped to make the proposed treaty with Japan the beginning of the end of unequal treaties with foreign powers. Although we do not know the date of their marriage it seems that before starting to work in Siam as a diplomat Inagaki had married Yamaguchi Eiko, a daughter of Yamaguchi Naoyoshi (1839–94).42 Inagaki, with the help of his wife Eiko, developed good relations with the members of Siam’s royal family as well as with the upper echelons of society in Bangkok. Eiko’s father, Yamaguchi Naoyoshi, who came from the Saga fief in Kyushu like Soejima Taneomi (the President of To¯ho¯ Kyo¯kai) and O¯ kuma Shigenobu (Foreign Minister) had held the

50 INAGAKI MANJIRO¯ (1861–1908) posts of Deputy Foreign Minister, Deputy Ambassador of the Iwakura Mission in 1871–2 and Director of Board of Audit. One of Inagaki’s contributions in Siam was to attract experts from Japan to help in the modernization of the country. In addition to Masao To¯kichi, Yasui Tetsu (1870–1945), one of the pioneer female educators in Japan, was invited to Siam. Yasui43 and two other female teachers worked for three years from 1904 for the newly opened Queen’s School in Bangkok. While Inagaki was Minister to Siam, Japan received from Siam in 1900 the ashes of the Buddha (Busshari in Japanese), which had come originally from Budda Gaya in India. In 1904, Nisshinji44 (Japan-Siam Temple) was established in Nagoya in order to enshrine them.

MINISTER TO SPAIN Inagaki was appointed Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Spain in February 1907. He feared that he was being sent into obscurity. He felt that in Spain he could not play an important role as a diplomat because he did not have the status of ambassador like the representatives of some important countries. Moreover he was only there for a relatively short time. He became ill and died in San Sebastian on 25 November 1908.45 He was just forty- seven years old. Official diplomatic relations between Japan and Spain had been established at the beginning of the Meiji period, but for many years there was neither a Japanese legation in Madrid nor a Spanish legation in Tokyo. After the Sino-Japanese War in 1895, Taiwan fell under Japan’s rule and Spain which controlled the Philippines became Japan’s neighbour. Japan accordingly established a legation in Madrid in 1900. Akabane Shiro¯, the first resident Japanese Minister in Madrid and also concurrently Japanese Minister to Portugal, opened the legation in Madrid in the beginning of 1901.

ASSESSMENT In his writings Inagaki appears fearless and bold. In person he was very meticulous in his attention to detail.46 He did not smoke, stopped drinking after his marriage and led a well-regulated life. His main hobby was reading and he was always buying new books. Some said that he was miserly, because he disliked waste and was frugal. However, when necessary he spent money without hesitation. While Inagaki was alive Aoki Shu¯zo¯ (1844–1914), then Foreign Minister called Inagaki an ‘ogre’s dead body’(meaning useless), but this was not fair.47 At the beginning of his career he did not understand

51 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI diplomatic procedures and protocol and he may have made minor mis- takes from the viewpoint of experienced diplomats. According to Matsura Atsushi, who had been a kind of patron to Inagaki, he had been a capable diplomat while in Siam and his achievements as Minister there had been considerable, but he was regarded as having gone too far, because his policies were more advanced and ambitious than those of the Government.48 Inagaki personified a number of important features of Meiji Japan. He studied abroad, espoused Japan’s national ambitions and repre- sented Japan successfully in Siam. He is one of a number of successful Japanese graduates from Cambridge.

52 PART II: ROYAL MATTERS

6

The Sho¯wa Emperor’s State Visit to Britain, October 1971

HUGH CORTAZZI

Sho¯wa Emperor in the 1970s

INTRODUCTION The Sho¯wa Emperor (Hirohito) of Japan and the Empress made a state visit to Britain 5–8 October 1971. The visit was not only the first Japanese state visit to Britain but was also the first time that a reigning Emperor had ever made visits abroad. It helped to reaffirm relations between the British Royal and the Japanese Imperial families and underlined the British government’s wish to end the hostility towards Japan which had continued in some parts of the media and among former prisoners of war since the end of the Second World War.

BACKGROUND The first visit by a member of the British Royal family to Japan after the war was made by Princess Alexandra of Kent in the autumn of 1961. The visit was proposed by the British but was taken up with enthusiasm by the Japanese who accorded her almost the status of a head of state. They made a special train available for part of her visit and put her up in Kyoto in the Sento¯ palace. She was entertained by

53 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI the Emperor and Empress and it was intimated from London that there would be no objection to his wearing the insignia of the Garter although his name and banner had been removed from the chapel in Windsor following the outbreak of war with Japan. Princess Alexandra revisited Japan in 1965 to open the British Trade exhibition and although she was not the guest of the Japanese on this occasion she was warmly received by members of the imperial family. Princess Margaret, accompanied by Lord Snowdon, visited Japan in 1969 for the ‘British Week’, which was held in Tokyo that autumn. British Week included exhibitions and sales of British Consumer Goods in all the main department stores as well as exhibitions in the Budo¯kan and the Science Museum. In 1970, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, visited Japan to attend the Osaka Exposition (EXPO 70). The Crown Prince (Akihito, later the Heisei Emperor) had attended the Coronation in 1953.1 Princess Chichibu2 visited Britain as a guest of the British Government and came again in 1967 to attend the 75th anniversary of the establishment of the Japan Society in London. Prince and Princess Hitachi on their honeymoon in 1965 were made official guests of the government. In April 1966,3 Sir Francis Rundall, the British Ambassador at Tokyo, who was on home leave had asked about the possibility of the Queen making a state visit to Japan and this immediately raised the question of the Emperor responding by visiting Britain. Arthur de la Mare, assistant under-secretary in the Foreign and Commonwealth Office who had served in Japan both before and after the war, thought it quite out of the question that the Emperor would be allowed to leave the country. It was nevertheless decided to make it clear to the Japanese authorities that a visit by the Emperor as part of an exchange of state visits would be welcomed. This message was passed by Sir Francis to Mr Harada, the then Grand Master of the Ceremonies in the Imperial household on 18 August 1966.4 Rundall reported that this news was received with ‘considerable gratification but it did not appear that the Imperial Household. . .had begun to contemplate the Emperor making a trip abroad’. The ambassador was told ‘a great deal about the age old tradition’ that the Emperor did not travel outside Japan. However, it was reported in the English lan- guage papers in Japan that on 31 August 1971 the Emperor had said that he would like to visit Europe and the Household began to think about the possibility. In October 1970,5 it was agreed that the state visit would be part of an exchange of royal visits. There were some doubts in Britain about the wisdom of issuing an invitation in the light of continuing anti- Japanese sentiments as a result of Japanese maltreatment of prisoners of war, but these were not allowed to prevail.6

54 SHO¯ WA EMPEROR’S STATE VISIT (1971)

The formal invitation7 from the Queen, dated 8 February 1971, was handed by Sir John Pilcher to the Japanese Foreign Minister. It was recognized in London that the visit would be soured if the Emperor was not formally restored to the list of members of the Order of the Garter and the Queen so instructed in May of that year.8 No action was taken to restore the Emperor’s former rank of Field Marshal in the British Army as this would have been inappropriate not least because of Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution of 1947. The invitation from Britain was an important factor for the Japanese government in deciding to allow the Emperor to travel abroad. But Sir John Pilcher9 thought that the visit to Europe ‘was basically inspired by the desire of the Emperor to relive happy moments10 he recalled from his only other journey abroad as Crown Prince in 1921’.11 That he had particularly warm memories of King George V and of Prince Edward, then Prince of Wales and briefly King Edward VIII, was shown by his request for a meeting in Paris with the Duke and Duchess of Windsor on whom he made an unprecedented call at their mansion in the Bois de Boulogne on the day before he flew to London. The Imperial Household Agency ‘favoured the project because they wished their Majesties to see how other royal families tackled the prob- lems of the contemporary age’.12 Pilcher also thought that the trip had been encouraged by forward thinking Japanese who wanted Japanese leaders to become more international in outlook. He noted that the right-wing disliked ‘the idea of this manifest divinity and repository of all the Japanese virtues and traditions leaving the Empire of the Gods’. Conversely the left-wing ‘saw in the trip a nefarious plot on the part of the Imperial Household Agency, in league with reactionaries and militarists, to enhance the position of the Emperor in the eyes of his subjects and pave the way for a recrudescence of the manic national- ism of the past’. The Japanese government in planning the tour saw this as an oppor- tunity to return state visits from Belgium and West Germany and royal visits from the Netherlands. So within the short space of seventeen days the Imperial party met US President Nixon at Anchorage, paid state visits to Brussels, London and Bonn, made unofficial visits to Copenhagen and Amsterdam and private visits to Paris and Geneva.

THE EMPEROR In two despatches, Sir John Pilcher described for the benefit of the Emperor’s hosts in Britain the Emperor’s position in Japan and his per- sonality. His despatch of 3 March 1971 was headed: ‘The Emperor of Japan; Human or Divine?’ He answered this question in the following words:13 ‘Officially he is human; in practice his divinity such as it was –

55 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI and not to be confused with the Christian (or Islamic) concept of one transcendental Godhead – remains. . .He carries out in private innu- merable rites and ceremonies in his priestly role. . .He remains the living link with the past, the unbroken thread in Japanese history (adoption notwithstanding).’ The question of the Emperor’s divinity and his denial of it never became an issue on his trip14 but, following the Emperor’s return to Japan, Sir John Pilcher commented in his report15 on the way the timetable had been ‘dictated by the Imperial priestly functions. He had to be back in time to reap symbolically the rice in the special field in the Imperial palace. Such consummation of the ties between a manifest divinity and the force of nature could not be delegated even to the Crown Prince.’ Sir John Pilcher in his second despatch,16 after explaining the his- torical background, noted that the development of personality had never been an aim of Japanese education and that the Emperor Hirohito, having been moulded by men like General Nogi and Admiral Togo, ‘was never allowed to develop as an individual as a result of the policy of the military to emphasize the mystique and seclusion of the living divinity’. Pilcher rejected the view that ‘the stuffy courtiers of the Imperial Household Agency prevent members of the Imperial Family from making due impact upon the people, because they remain petrified in the tradition of the divinity hedging them around, which they wish to preserve’.17 He believed that Household were ‘longing to discover how best to organize an Imperial life in tune with the times’. The ambassador pointed out that, unlike his grandfather, the Emperor was not given to amorous pursuits. He was not a ‘leader on a white horse’. Instead, perhaps partly as a result of his myopia, he had developed an enthusiasm for science and in his preferred subject of marine biology and to a lesser extent botany he had built a reputation as a scholar. ‘Much mystification surrounded his publications on these subjects until recently, but now they are published openly.’ Sir John described the Emperor as:

. . .by temperament and inclination essentially the mild, but dedicated professor. No extrovert he: knowledge must be prised out of him. Words come hardly to him, though his delivery is emphatic. Timid reserve characterizes him; the ambiguity of silence would be more his forte than the withering rebuke. He is essentially a man of peace, diffident and almost humble about his own role, sceptical probably about its holy attributes. He was thus the least endowed by nature and upbringing to stand up to the pretensions of his turbulent military subjects and both physically and morally unequipped to cut them down.’

56 SHO¯ WA EMPEROR’S STATE VISIT (1971)

Pilcher thought that the Emperor’s finest hour came in August 1945 when:

. . . he brought himself to the point of commanding the unthinkable: surrender. This required a toughness of fibre which events had hitherto not revealed in him. . .The shameful rape of Nanking, the disgraceful treat- ment of prisoners of war and fellow Asians may have moved him, but not to the point of the expression of horror they should have evoked. He confined himself, it seems, to disapproval, which his nearly culpa- ble meekness did not let him turn into action.

The Empress, Sir John wrote, ‘smiling and good humoured, accom- modates herself to the Emperor’s scientific pursuits, while attending to her own love of painting and music’ noting that her favourite com- posers were Beethoven and Chopin. The ambassador stressed that the Emperor’s constitutional duties were ‘entirely ceremonial and clerical’. During Expo 70 in Osaka, he had given twenty-one formal banquets for important foreign visitors (including the Prince of Wales). He noted that ‘almost the sole vesti- gial survival of the former role of the Court as arbiter and dispenser of culture is the annual Imperial poetry party’. Having described the newly built Imperial palace he noted that ‘Their Majesties in practice live a very homely life in their private residence’ where he spent the evenings watching television, enjoying serials and sumo. The ambas- sador concluded that the Emperor ‘who neither smokes nor drinks’ and whose existence is dominated by duty led ‘a life of bourgeois respectability and tranquillity’. Sir John accompanied a BBC television journalist at an audience on 8 June 1971.18 ‘The Emperor was very ill at ease to begin with and at first had some difficulty in getting any words out at all. . .A prodigious number of “er”s and “ah”s went on before His Majesty brought himself to offer some words of greeting.’ Pilcher noted that the Emperor ‘is nearly always obliged to end up with “I remain with this hope”, whether it follows on logically or not’. At the subsequent luncheon, ‘Nobody made any attempt to converse and the Emperor had the usual difficulties before bringing himself to use “the voice of the crane” at all.’ However ‘Their Majesties exuded kindness and consideration throughout.’ Pilcher commented that ‘the art of con- versation as such has never been generally practised in Japan. . . Silence is the correct refuge when in doubt and embarrasses nobody.’ The picture painted by Sir John ensured that his hosts knew what to expect.

57 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

THE VISIT The official programme included all the usual ceremonial occasions of other State visits, but there were some special features designed to cater for the Emperor’s particular interests. The Japanese were pleased by the fact that Their Majesties were invited to spend three nights at Buckingham Palace instead of the usual two. They were met by Princess Margaret on their arrival on the morning of Tuesday 5 October at Gatwick airport. They then trav- elled by special train to Victoria station where they were greeted by the Queen, the Duke of Edinburgh and other VIPs.19 From Victoria, the Queen and the Emperor, the Duke of Edinburgh and the Empress proceeded by horse-drawn carriages up Victoria Street, Whitehall and the Mall to Buckingham Palace. ‘The flags flew, the bands played; and the crowds remained silent.’20 The only overt protest came when a man with a personal grievance,21 which had nothing to do with Japan, threw his coat towards the carriage in which the Emperor was travelling. After a private luncheon at Buckingham Palace the Emperor laid a wreath on the tomb of the unknown warrior in Westminster Abbey. (The decision to include this in the programme aroused some contro- versy.) The Emperor and the Empress called on Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother at Clarence House. On his way by carriage to Clarence House a single demonstrator used abusive language. Later the Emperor received addresses from the Chairman and Members of the Greater London Council and from the Lord Mayor, Aldermen and Councillors of the City of London. That evening Their Majesties attended a state banquet given in their honour at the Palace. The Queen in her speech referred briefly to the bad relations of the past.22 The Emperor in his speech did not respond to this point. There was some criticism in both Japan and Britain that the issues had not been faced but ‘the Imperial Household Agency declared that His Majesty could not have done so because that would have been a political act, from which he is precluded by the Constitution’.23 The second day of the visit (Wednesday 6 October 1971) began with the Emperor receiving heads of diplomatic missions24 in London. The Emperor then visited the Royal Society where he was formally admitted as a Fellow, having been elected on 13 May 1971, by the President, Professor A.L. Hodgkin, and signed the Charter book. A special exhibit was arranged for this occasion.25 The Emperor was clearly delighted by this recognition of his scholarly achievements. The Emperor and Empresses were then entertained to luncheon by Sir Alec Douglas Home, the Foreign Secretary, in the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace. They went on to Kew Gardens where the Emperor

58 SHO¯ WA EMPEROR’S STATE VISIT (1971) planted a cryptomeria tree which was sadly destroyed soon after by a protestor, much to the chagrin of the Japanese. That evening, Their Majesties attended the Lord Mayor of London’s banquet at the Guildhall where the Queen was represented by the Duke and Duchess of Kent. Edward Heath, the Prime Minister, was able to have a lengthy conversation26 at the dinner with Mr Fukuda Takeo, the Japanese Foreign Minister, who accompanied Their Majesties on their tour. The morning of the third day (Thursday 7 October) of the visit began with a visit to the Linnaean Society where the Emperor was received by the President, Professor A.J. Cave, and autographed the page in the Roll and Charter Book where he had signed during his visit as Crown Prince in 1921. They then visited the London Zoo ‘where the antics of Chi-Chi, the giant panda, appeared to divert the Emperor, more than other events of the visit’.27 In the afternoon, the Emperor visited the Natural History Museum while the Empress went to the British Museum to view a collection of calligraphy and prints. They then attended a reception at Claridges hosted by Japan-related organizations in London where a speech of welcome was given by Sir Norman Brain, then Chairman of the Japan Society. The day ended with a return banquet at the Japanese Embassy hosted by Their Majesties. On Friday, 8 October, the Emperor and the Empress left for Amsterdam for an unofficial visit to the Netherlands where there were more signs of anti-Japanese feelings28 than there had been in London. Although in 1971 the Emperor was only seventy years old he seemed an old man. He shuffled when walking and some observers thought that he might have suffered a slight stroke.

THE PRESS The Japanese media reported in detail on the tour. The large number of Japanese press representatives (some 150) caused difficulties not least because facilities for press coverage were restricted at many of the places visited by the Emperor and Empress but also because of ‘the excessive, often frantic involvement of the Japanese Embassy in the shape of a team of eight to ten officers’.29 Sir John Pilcher reported that:

. . .the Imperial progress was followed ardently on television30 and was seen as a splendid series of theatrical occurrences, among which the events in Britain, because of the pomp and circumstance and the bril- liance of the weather, very markedly stole the show. Only the Japanese flag floating above the Lorelei during the Imperial progress on the Rhine came near to evoking the enthusiasm which the carriage procession

59 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

immediately called forth. . .What most touched Japanese viewers on television and readers of the copious accounts in the Press was the enor- mous trouble taken by Her Majesty The Queen, His Royal Highness the Duke of Edinburgh and the Royal Household in making flawless prepa- rations. This more than outweighed any shock of realization that the misdeeds of the past still remain alive.

The British media which had experienced many State Visits inevitably did not pay as much attention as the Japanese to the details of the visit. The Times in a measured leader on 5 October 1971 headed ‘A Very Special Visit’ said: ‘The Emperor’s present visit to western Europe is a voyage of exploration to see where Japan might find firm ground else- where outside her own unsettled region.’ After discussing the Anglo- Japanese Alliance, the writer referred to the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki which ‘had left a residue of pacifism which is still strong’. The Economist in a leader in its issue dated 2 October 1971 concluded that: ‘If the emperor’s trip abroad is an attempt to pull down some of the psychological barriers it must be welcomed. The Emperor Hirohito in his own person is a symbol of the fact that the past need not be irrevocable.’ The Guardian in a leader on 8 October marking the end of the visit concluded that ‘By his visit the Emperor has tried to secure a better working relationship between Japan and the countries on his itinerary. It is understanding that is still lacking.’ The Daily Telegraph on the same day sounded a sourer note: ‘Silent streets and noisy arguments, curiosity and angry controversy – such has been the reception of the Emperor of Japan here. . .His utterances have been platitudinously bland, as though our two countries had enjoyed unbrokenly good relations during his long reign. . .the controversy really centres round the personality of the Emperor himself.’ This last comment was probably inspired by the publication that year of David Bergamini’s book Japan’s Imperial Conspiracy. By and large the British media and public were not hostile. The Foreign Office noted that:

Much credit is due to the responsible attitude taken by the Executive Council of the Federation of Far Eastern Prisoners of War, who made it known publicly once the State Visit was announced that, as an expres- sion of respect to the Queen, the Council did not wish to be associated with any demonstrations which might take place during the Emperor’s visit and that the Federation’s name was not to be used in any sensa- tional press features. The extent of the Executive Council’s control over the activities of its members can be gauged from the fact that the Federation’s annual reunion was held at the Festival Hall only three days before the Emperor’s arrival. There were no formal demonstrations.31

60 SHO¯ WA EMPEROR’S STATE VISIT (1971)

ASSESSMENT The Foreign Office noted that the public attitude towards the visit was marked by coolness. ‘The routes were only fairly well lined with onlookers but there was no applause.’ The conclusion as set out in the official report on the visit sent to Tokyo on 9 November 1971 was:

The relative coolness of public reaction to the visit did not prevent it from being a success. In fact there were only three individual public demon- strations throughout the stay [as mentioned above]. When we recall the number of placards outside Claridges Hotel for virtually any distin- guished foreign visitor I think we have done very well. It was perhaps a good thing that the Japanese should realize that it will take some time yet to work themselves back into favour. In retrospect perhaps the best thing about the visit was that it took place at all. A precedent has been created: never again will it be the first time the Emperor has travelled abroad.

This view was largely shared by Sir John Pilcher, Her Majesty’s Ambassador at Tokyo, who had accompanied Their Majesties to London. In his despatch of 5 November 1971, which crossed with the despatch from the Foreign Office, he concluded that

The visit gave immense pleasure but it has administered a jolt to the memory. It was a certain shock to the Japanese to find that Europeans had not quite forgiven them for the humiliations to which they were exposed. The Japanese are used to resentment for a variety of political reasons, but the American example had led them to suppose that the last war had been forgiven and largely forgotten. . .In these circumstances it strikes me as commendable that the Japanese Press and people took as calmly as they did the incidents which occurred.

Sir John thought that the Japanese people were relieved to find that Their Majesties had returned from their strenuous journey in more relaxed form than before their departure. ‘They were delighted to learn that the beaming face of the Empress had broken through to some extent the barriers of race, culture and education. The impassive myopia of His Majesty, which may have been the real cause of the lack of enthusiasm of the crowds, was not commented upon.’ The visit had taken place when Japan was reeling from what were called the Nixon shocks.

The American ascendancy has lost its magic. . .China and South East Asia have long memories and have not forgiven past Japanese misdeeds.

61 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Now Europe reveals itself to be equally resentful. If this realization leads to redoubled efforts to gain the fair opinion of the world, no harm will have been done. It should not, however, be allowed to make the Japanese turn in on themselves. . .It would not be wise to cold shoul- der the world’s third economic power. . .If the Visit encourages the healthy outward-looking tendency of young Japanese, it will have made a real contribution. It may help to diminish Japanese insularity and egocentricity.

CONCLUSION Nothing that has happened since has undermined the assessments made by Sir John Pilcher and the Foreign Office. The Sho¯wa Emperor’s visit was returned in 1975 when the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh paid a successful state visit to Japan. On this visit the Queen invited the then Crown Prince and Princess [Michiko] to stay at Windsor Castle during Ascot week in 1976 and the British Government made the Imperial couple guests of the government.32 The friendly relations re-established by these contacts facilitated the decision to send Prince Naruhito, later Crown Prince, to study at Oxford.33 There have been many other Royal visits to Japan and visits by members of the Imperial family to Britain including the State visit by Emperor Akihito (the Heisei Emperor) in 1998. State visits in the modern world are largely symbolic. This is espe- cially so in the case of Japan where under Article 1 of the Constitution the Emperor is defined as ‘the symbol of the State and of the unity of the people’. The State visit in 1971 could not by itself heal the wounds in the relationship between Britain and Japan, but it marked a significant step towards reconciliation and renewal of old friendships.

62 7

A Royal Alliance: Court Diplomacy and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1900–41

ANTONY BEST

Left to right, Crown Prince Hirohito, Edward Prince of Wales, Prince Kan-in, Duke of Connaught

In the first half of the twentieth century probably the most import- ant royal relationship that Britain had was the one with Imperial Japan. This might seem a strange comment, but it should be recalled that after the collapse of empires of the Romanovs, the Hohenzollerns and the Hapsburgs in 1917–18 only Britain, Japan and Italy remained as monarchical Great Powers. The royal relationship with Japan was important, because in contrast to the Italian case, the relations between the two courts clearly had an overt political purpose. During the years of the alliance, in an attempt to signify mutual respect, the very highest decorations were exchanged and royal princes from both countries set out on formal visits that took them to the other side of the world. Moreover, even after the alliance ended these ties continued into the inter-war period and were still used as a way of indicating that close 63 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI ties of friendship still existed. To look at why this royal relationship with Japan became so important to Britain is therefore a useful way of comprehending the nature of the larger Anglo-Japanese relationship.1 In order to understand why royal diplomacy came to play such an important role, one has to begin in the late nineteenth century. During this period Japan was engaged in a major effort to modernize itself. As well as engaging in industrialization and the construction of a modern state apparatus, this also meant turning away from the ceremonial prac- tices of the Sino-centric world. Accordingly, the Japanese monarchy sought to co-opt some of the customs and rituals of the courts in Europe. Thus, the Emperor began to wear Western-style military dress, which emphasized his link with the newly formed conscription army, while the nobility was organized into a British-based order of precedence.2 These efforts to make Japan the equal of the Europeans were, however, compromised by the patronizing treatment that the Japanese court received at the hands of the West. A particular sinner in this respect was Britain. For example, in 1887, when Queen Victoria marked the fiftieth anniversary of her accession to the throne, the Japanese representative at the celebrations, Prince Komatsu, felt insulted by the inadequate welcome he received at British hands.3 The result of these perceived slights was that Japan developed a great sensitivity where royal relations were concerned. For example, in 1897, the Japanese only agreed to send a representative to the Queen’s diamond jubilee once Britain had guaranteed that he would be given the same treatment as European royalty.4 Thus, even before the alliance was signed in January 1902, it was clear that one criterion by which Japan would judge foreign countries would be how the latter treated the Emperor and his family. The obvious corollary to this was that if a Western country sought to develop a close relationship with Japan, it had to be aware that extraordinary scrutiny would be applied to the formal aspects of diplomacy to ensure that relations were being carried out on the basis of equality. At the same time, however, this also implied that Japan might be susceptible to flattery and that stressing royal ties might be a way of cementing the political relationship. Certainly it seems that even when the alliance was being negotiated, Britain was aware of the importance of using the Court as a symbol of its good intentions. Moreover, this task was made considerably easier by the fact that King Edward VII was broadly favourable to the alignment with Japan.5 Thus, when the leading Japanese politician, Ito¯ Hirobumi, came to Britain in December 1901, he was invited for an audience with the King and was presented with the Knight Grand Cross of the Order of the Bath (GCB).6 In the following year, at the time of the King’s coronation, the Japanese representatives were treated with considerable attention in order to ensure that their amour propre

64 A ROYAL ALLIANCE (1900–41) was not disturbed in any way. For example, the royal suite was housed in Claridges at the Foreign Office’s expense, even though this was con- siderably more expensive than other hotels.7 The early years of the alliance were, however, still marked on the British side by continued ambivalence about what attitude to take towards non-European monarchs. For example, in 1902–3 those closely involved in diplomacy with Japan called for the Order of the Garter to be presented to the Meiji Emperor.8 This request could not have come at a worse moment for the whole issue of whether this most esteemed decoration could be presented to non-Christian monarchs was in the balance in the summer and autumn of 1902 due to what became known as ‘the Shah and Garter’ episode. The question of whether the Shah of Persia should be made a Knight of the Garter was finally settled in favour of his sponsor, the Foreign Secretary, Lord Lansdowne, but the price Edward VII demanded for his acquiescence was that no further requests were to be entertained.9 Thus the Meiji Emperor was denied. This situation only changed when Japan, through its defeat of Russia in the war of 1904–5, unequivocally demonstrated that it was no mere Oriental potentate. In January 1905, as Japanese victory over Russia appeared ever more likely, the issue of whether the Garter should be presented to the Meiji Emperor was raised again.10 At this point ministers approved the idea in principle but it was only at war’s end in September 1905, and with the alliance just renewed, that the idea was put to the King. This time Edward VII proved more amenable and agreed that a Garter mission led by Prince Arthur of Connaught should travel to Japan in the following year.11 With Prince Arthur’s mission the royal relationship between the two countries entered a new stage, for this began a tradition of high- ranking official visits that would continue into the inter-war period. The result was that, although the two royal houses did not share any dynastic links or even the same religion, a special bond began to develop, which was not seen in the British court’s ties with any other non-European dynasty. That is not to say, however, that the relation- ship evolved smoothly eschewing all difficulties, for there was a wide geographical and cultural divide that had to be bridged. Geography was important because the most significant type of state visit, one by the reigning monarch, could not be contemplated. Thus all missions had to be carried out by princes representing the sovereign. This created problems because the royal houses of Europe had developed very particular codes of conduct and precedence in their dealings with each other. How a royal prince was to be treated when on an official visit to another country was seen as entirely dependent on his status within his own court. However, these gradations of ceremony and

65 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI ritual were sometimes lost on the Japanese, leading to embarrassing incidents. This trait first manifested itself in Prince Arthur’s visit to Japan in 1906, when the Japanese decided to assign its most senior military figures to his suite as a sign of respect for their ally. However, as Prince Arthur was only the King’s nephew this was clearly inappropriate for someone of his standing. Yet no complaint or correction was made, for fear that this might appear ungrateful. The consequences became clear the next year when the Emperor’s representative, Prince Fushimi, came on an official visit to London to express the Emperor’s gratitude at receiving the Garter. Fearing that offence would be given if the pre- vious year’s practice were not reciprocated, those responsible for rela- tions with Japan decided to provide Fushimi with a reception that strictly speaking was too grand for someone of his rank. For example, Field Marshal Lord Roberts and Admiral of the Fleet Sir Edward Seymour were attached to his suite, and he was awarded the distinc- tion of an official welcome to the City of London. This break with European precedence created unease at court, for the King was a stick- ler for protocol and let it be known that ‘a regular day in the city with troops lining the streets etc., is too much for Prince Fushimi’.12 Thus, officials were forced into the unenviable task of charting a course between a suspicious Japan and a disgruntled King. Moreover, Japan’s continuing sensitivity about how it was perceived by the West also led to other difficulties. A notable example during Fushimi’s visit was that, to their horror, officials at the Japanese Embassy in London learnt shortly before the prince’s arrival that a new D’Oyly Carte production of The Mikado, was about to open. Briefed on the offence that this would give, the British Lord Chamberlain’s Office promptly moved into action to suppress the production. Further panic ensued when it was realized that the conductors of mili- tary bands might well think that tunes from The Mikado might provide an appropriate welcome to the Japanese prince. A hint to the contrary was therefore urgently conveyed to the Services.13 Despite these problems, the rise of political and commercial dis- putes between Britain and Japan in the late 1900s and into the 1910s meant that if anything the relationship between the two courts became even more important, because they acted as a useful means of ameliorating tension. This was aided by circumstance, for this difficult period coincided with the deaths of the two monarchs. The relatively short space of time that elapsed between the death of Edward VII in 1910 and that of Meiji in 1912 created in the form of funerals and coronations a number of ceremonial occasions in which Britain and Japan could demonstrate their mutual respect.14 The frequency and grandeur of these events meant that the royal relationship now

66 A ROYAL ALLIANCE (1900–41) came to be seen as the personification of the close ties that existed between the two countries. The start of the Great War at first reduced contact between the courts to telegraphic communications of goodwill, but because the conflict also led to political tensions arising, it was still necessary to play the royal card. The ultimate use of the court as a method for signalling continued friendship in the midst of trouble thus came in 1918 when the British decided to honour the Taisho¯ Emperor by making him a Field Marshal, the first non-European to be honoured in such a manner. This plan originated with Major F.S.G. Piggott, who had pre- viously received language training in Japan. Piggott was concerned that there had been little acknowledgement of Japan’s help in the Great War and feared the effect that this might have on the alliance. He therefore argued that a gesture was urgently needed to make the Japanese feel appreciated.15 Indeed, this suggestion came at a crucial point during the conflict, for, by the end of 1917, Britain, despite its disappointment at the lack of Japanese assistance to the point, hoped that Japan might send forces to help bring stability to post-revolution Siberia. At first, there was some talk of sending a political mission at the same time as the military mission that would carry out the field marshal’s baton for Taisho¯. However, after a long debate, it was decided to rely on a military mission alone, led once again by Prince Arthur. Very deliberately, all the officers chosen for the mission, including the prince himself, had served on the Western Front and during the visit, in order to emphasize this point, they wore khaki rather than cere- monial dress. The effect was profound. Immediately after the visit, the British ambassador in Tokyo, reported to the Foreign Office that:

. . . it seems to me that the Prince’s visit has been the very best kind of propaganda, because it made people think well of Britain, and yet made them do so unconsciously . . . it has . . . given British and Japanese alike an opportunity of drawing closer together, and of thus re-forging links which the wear and tear of warfare had perhaps tended to impair.16

The visit thus underlined the power of royal symbolism as a tool in this relationship. The Japanese again reciprocated, this time with a visit to London by Prince Higashifumi in October 1918. This, however, was low-key compared to Japan’s next gesture, for in 1921 the Japanese court sent the young Crown Prince, Hirohito, on a European tour with Britain as his main port of call. The decision to send Hirohito to Britain was in part for educational reasons and also perhaps reflected tensions at court about his choice of bride.17 However, it is also difficult not to believe that his tour was intended to have a political purpose, for his

67 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI arrival coincided with a prolonged debate in London about whether or not Britain should renew the Anglo-Japanese alliance. Certainly officials in Whitehall interpreted the visit as being political in nature, and as the future of the alliance was very much in doubt, they responded by doing their best to de-politicize the visit. For example, great care was taken to ensure that the British speeches of welcome from that by the King down to addresses by municipal mayors lauded the alliance’s past but did not predict the future.18 In the end, a decision to terminate the Anglo-Japanese Alliance was made at the Washington conference of 1921–22. This did not, however, lead to any substantial diminishing of the role played by rela- tions between the two royal houses. The end of the alliance was not, after all, supposed to indicate a parting of ways brought about by pro- found differences over policy, but rather was presented as merely an acknowledgement that defence pacts were anachronistic in the age of ‘new diplomacy’. Britain and Japan, it was emphasized, were still friendly powers, and to prove that this was indeed the case, the royal relationship had to continue to prosper. The post-alliance era thus began with as clear a signal as could be made – a reciprocal visit by the Prince of Wales to Japan in 1922. The visit was an interesting affair because the Prince of Wales brought with him a very new image of what royalty could be. The young energetic prince had already shown a gift for informality, and he demonstrated it on this tour by, in one well-publicized incident, riding a bicycle in front of an adoring crowd.19 This kind of behav- iour was accepted, within limits, by British court officials for it helped to humanize the royal family. This, after all, was an important task in an age of democracy and mass media, particularly when one recalls that most of the major royal houses in Europe had been extinguished at the end of the Great War. Some of the Japanese court could also see potential in such an image and as a result Hirohito, who was only seven years younger than the Prince of Wales, was encouraged to join in a game of golf with the British visitors. Moreover, to add an extra popular touch the media, whether spontaneously or as the result of a briefing is unclear, talked of the supposed friendship that had devel- oped between the two heirs to the throne. The result was that the royal visit proved to be marked success. Moreover, it even raised the prospect, as one British newspaper put it, of Britain acquiring a new responsibility, namely teaching the Japanese house how to act as a constitutional monarchy, which was surely a fitting role in this demo- cratic post-alliance era.20 The reality of the tour, however, was somewhat different. In truth the Prince of Wales thought that Hirohito, whose golfing skills were negligible, was ‘dippy’ and told the British ambassador in Tokyo,

68 A ROYAL ALLIANCE (1900–41)

Sir Charles Eliot, that the Japanese royal family were ‘a queer set of creatures’, whose only role seemed to be to act as national mascots.21 The prince’s sharp tongue appears to have been precipitated by his resentment of the stuffy formality of the Japanese court, which he had found impossibly over-prescriptive. One of the prince’s suite, Lord Louis Mountbatten, observed on leaving Japan that he felt that had regained his ‘freedom of speech’; the Prince of Wales was blunter, for according to one source, his last words on departure were ‘Thank God that’s the last of the bloody Japanese!’22 Problems arose out of this discrepancy between the media image and the actual sentiments of the prince, for once the myth of friend- ship had been invented it had to be perpetuated. The difficulty here was that with the alliance now a thing of the past, both the prince and his father, King George, proved to be less willing than before to put themselves out for the sake of Anglo-Japanese relations. For example, in 1924 Hirohito’s long-delayed wedding finally took place. In accor- dance with the previous stress on the importance of the royal rela- tionship, Eliot recommended that a royal prince should attend, but George V promptly vetoed the idea, and then, to Eliot’s consternation, even proved sticky on the question of whether he and the Prince of Wales should send presents.23 Moreover, neither side showed any enthusiasm for the idea that the British court should teach the ways of constitutional monarchy to their Japanese counterparts. The lull in the royal relationship was, however, short-lived, for from 1925 to 1930 it revived in a new burst of activity. As with prior periods of frequent contact the reasons for this were essentially political. In 1925, the international order in East Asia that had been created at the Washington conference was challenged by the rise of Chinese nation- alism. Britain and Japan, who both suffered at the hands of the Chinese nationalists, showed great uncertainty during these years about the atti- tude of the other. Both hoped that the other could be persuaded to co- operate in resisting the Chinese, but felt no confidence that this aspiration would come to fruition. In such an atmosphere, making overt calls for assistance was unrealistic, for there was fear of rejection, and as a result both sought to use the royal relationship as a means of indicat- ing their continuing favour. This manifested itself most obviously in the decision by the British government in 1929 to send a Garter Mission to Japan, where it made a considerable impact on public opinion. In return, Emperor Hirohito in the following year despatched one of his younger brothers, Prince Takamatsu, to Britain to convey his gratitude to King George. Accompanying these visits, decorations and presents were liberally distributed among court officials in order to oil the waters and, of course, due attention was paid by the British to royal protocol to ensure that nothing was done that might cause offence.24

69 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

In the end, however, this effort to use the royal channel as a means of signalling the desire for closer ties produced no substantial results, apart from a general sense of goodwill. This is not surprising, for the political and economic interests that the two countries had in China were by this time beginning to diverge, and no mere act of politesse could change that fact. However, it is an interesting comment on the role of royal relations that such an effort should even have been made, for it implies that officials were still apt to believe that the court rela- tionship could continue to play a political role. This perhaps was a reflection of the fact that by the middle of the 1920s some commen- tators, including on a number of occasions the Prime Minister, Stanley Baldwin, began to talk about the alliance being dead but its spirit living on.25 If that was taken on trust, then it surely followed that this spirit dwelt above all in the royal relationship, which had never been sullied by the expediency that had affected political ties and, moreover, that any resurrection of the alliance would have to begin in the royal sphere. Following the flurry of activity in the late 1920s, political events in the 1930s, such as the Manchurian crisis of 1931–33, pushed the rela- tionship into the doldrums. However, it is noteworthy that, when in 1936–37 there was again some hope of rapprochement, the pattern that had appeared in the late 1920s repeated itself. Beginning with the memorial service for George V in February 1936 and running on until the coronation of King George VI in May 1937, the Japanese began to signal through royal diplomacy that they were prepared to enter into closer relations if Britain was willing to reciprocate. Recognizing the signals emanating from Tokyo, the British responded in kind and tried to provide as warm a reception as possible to the Emperor’s brother, Prince Chichibu, when he arrived to represent Japan at the corona- tion. Again, these efforts failed to bring about any substantial results, for the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War in July 1937 created a momentum that pushed Britain and Japan towards a sundering of rela- tions rather than their repair.26 The royal relationship was not, of course, strong enough to prevent Britain and Japan from going to war, but that does not mean that it should be treated as playing an insignificant and peripheral role in the ties between the two countries. From the signing of the alliance in 1902 until Chichibu’s attendance at the coronation in 1937, royal diplomacy was used by both states as a means of communicating good- will. Politicians, court officials and diplomats all recognized its import- ance and allocated much time to ensuring that the royal channel was working smoothly. In a relationship full of crises, it is easy to overlook what might seem to be mere arcane protocol, but the world of court relations has much to tell us about the nature of Anglo-Japanese rela- tions in their most dramatic years.

70 8

Japanese Tattooists and the British Royal Family During the Meiji Period

NOBORU KOYAMA

Prince George (later King George V) being tattooed by Hori Chyo (Chiyo) (Reproduced from George Burchett’s Memoirs of a Tattooist, London, 1958)

INTRODUCTION During the Meiji period (1868–1912), five members of the British Royal family visited Japan.1 At least four of them were tattooed in Japan. Techniques of tattooing developed in Japan during the Edo period (1600–1868), particularly in the last years of the Tokugawa Government, 1853–67. Over the course of time, Japanese tattoos became an elaborate art form. Woodblock artists were often involved in tattooing. This association was so close that both tattooists and woodblock engravers shared the same name, horishi. Tattooing was banned intermittently during the Edo period. The new Meiji Government, which regarded tattooing as an uncivilized custom, banned it completely in 1872, tightening the ban first in 1880 and again in 1908. Although tattooing was prohibited, Japanese tattooists 71 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI developed their skills during the Meiji period. After the re-opening of Japan in 1853 the reputation of Japanese tattoos spread among for- eigners who visited Japan, particularly seamen. In this essay, I focus on the British Royal visitors who were tattooed in Japan and on the Japanese tattooists themselves, particularly the legendary tattooist, Hori Chiyo (1859–1900), who was apparently associated with the tat- tooing of some royal visitors.

TATTOOING IN MEIJI JAPAN There are very few works in Japanese about tattooing during the Meiji period. The most important is Tamabayashi Haruo’s Bunshin Hyakushi (One hundred shapes of tattooing) which gives the names of prom- inent tattooists of the Meiji period;2 but only the names of the tattooists who were active from around the Tenpo¯-Ansei periods (1830–59) onwards are recorded. The first generation of famous tattooists included Karakusa Gonta, Daruma-kin, Chari-bun, Iku, and Yatsu- hei. These tattooists are also referred to in Tanizaki Junichiro¯’s famous novel Shisei (Tattoo).3 Among them, Karakusa Gonta was regarded as the ablest. He had tattoos of karakusa (arabesque) from his wrists to the tips of his feet. He was particularly good at adding shu (cinnabar). He lived in Asakusa in Tokyo and died in 1884 or 1885. Daruma-Kin was a hairdresser and was known to be good at bokashi (shading off). Following this first generation of tattooists, a tattooist called Hori Iwa became particularly famous in the years from 1868 to 1887. He was particularly good at drawing. From around 1877 to 1882, the best tattoos were produced in the following way: an outline was done by Hori Iwa, then a bokashi by Daruma-Kin and finally shu was added by Karakusa Gonta. After Hori Iwa, Hori Kane was regarded from around 1887 to 1902 as the best tattooist. Then, from around 1902 up to the beginning of the Taisho¯ period (1912–26), Hori Uno (1st) (1843–1927) was particularly highly regarded. Tamabayashi listed three prominent master tattooists during the Meiji period, namely Hori Iwa, Hori Kane and Hori Uno; of these Hori Uno was the best.

THE TATTOOS OF MEMBERS OF THE BRITISH ROYAL FAMILY The first British Royal visitor to Japan was Prince Alfred, Duke of Edingurgh and Saxe-Coburg and Gotha (1844–1900), the second son of Queen Victoria (1819–1901), who landed in Japan in 1869. Then, in 1882, Prince Albert Victor, Duke of Clarence and Avondale (1864–92), and Prince George, later King George V (1865–1936), visited Japan together. The two princes were the first and second sons of the then Prince of Wales, later King Edward VII (1841–1910). In

72 JAPANESE TATTOOISTS

1890, Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught and Strathearn (1850–1942), the third son of Queen Victoria, visited Japan. He was followed in 1906 by his son and namesake Prince Arthur of Connaught (1883–1938), who brought the Order of the Garter to the Meiji Emperor in 1906 and later represented King George V at the Emperor’s funeral in 1912. Prince Arthur, Duke of Connaught (father), is the only prince for whom there is no definite evidence that he was tattooed in Japan. Some Japanese sources imply that he did receive a tattoo, but the fact cannot be confirmed as there is confusion about the two Prince Arthurs (father and son) in Japan. In Britain, the practice of tattooing was usually undocumented, and it is hard to estimate how widespread the practice was during the nine- teenth century; in general, the groups involved appear to have been criminals, sailors and soldiers, and fashionable members of the upper classes.4 Although tattooing already existed in Britain prior to the late eighteenth century, it spread rapidly among seafarers including members of the crews of Royal Naval ships subsequent to Captain James Cook’s voyages through the Pacific islands in 1768–71. Both sailors and officers of the Royal Navy were tattooed in the nineteenth century and Japan became the most popular destination for them. According to one observer in the early part of the twentieth century, ‘All British sailors practically are tattooed.’5 The interest taken in Japanese tattoos by members of the British Royal family is less sur- prising when seen in this context as the British Royal family had close associations with the Royal Navy. According to George Burchett (1872–1953), ‘King of Tattooists’, and author of Memoirs of a Tattooist, ‘King Edward VII acted as the curtain-raiser to the golden age of tattooing when he acquired his first tattoo design in Jerusalem in 1862.’6 This does not seem to have been public knowledge at the time.7

PRINCE ALFRED’S VISIT IN 1869 As the first member of the British royal family to visit Japan and also the first official guest of the new Meiji government, Prince Alfred arrived at Yokohama on 29 August 1869.8 The voyage was part of the long cruise of HMS Galatea. Prior to the arrival of the Galatea at Yokohama, Admiral Henry Keppel (1809–1904), Commander-in- Chief China Station, had travelled to Japan from China to welcome Prince Alfred. Prince Alfred, Henry Keppel and their staff stayed in Japan for nearly a month until they left Nagasaki on 27 September 1869. Charles Beresford (1846–1919), one of Prince Alfred’s lieu- tenants, was also on this voyage. Beresford was famous for having tattoos, particularly that of a hunting scene on his back.

73 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

The new Meiji Government gave Prince Alfred a cordial reception9 despite the revolutionary chaos of the Meiji Restoration. For the stay of Prince Alfred, the Government transformed a mansion inside the Hama Goten – a summer palace of the Shogun – into the first official palace for foreign guests, renaming it Enryo¯kan, and refurbishing it with Kano¯ Masanobu’s new paintings.10 Prince Alfred was the Enryo¯kan’s first foreign guest. Keppel mentioned ‘Suites of apartments completely furnished in European style, while the walls were covered with curiously painted Japanese paper.’11 Keppel’s account is the only source for the following incident at the Enryo¯kan. A ball had been held on 10 September 1869 at the British Legation then in Yokohama in order to welcome Prince Alfred. On the following Sunday, Keppel noted that ‘HRH took a quiet breakfast with us this morning [12 September], approving of our curry, and then went home to be tattooed.’12 There is no information about who tat- tooed Prince Alfred. Beresford described the tattoos, which he had in Japan, and recorded his opinions on Japanese tattoos in his memoir. In this he pointed out the significant differences between Japanese and English tattoos:

[In Tokyo] I was tattooed by the native artificers, to the astonishment of Japanese officials and nobles; for in Japan none save the common people is tattooed. The Japanese artist designs in white upon dark, working upon the skin round the chief ornament in his scheme; whereas the English tattooer designs dark upon white, using the natural skin as a background. Both methods are beautifully illustrated upon my person.13

Beresford did not mention the names of his tattooists: nor did he mention that the prince also received a tattoo in Japan at the same time.

THE TWO PRINCES ARE TATTOOED Prince Albert Victor and Prince George visited Japan in the autumn of 1881 and stayed for over three weeks as part of the cruise of HMS Bacchante. They arrived at Yokohama on 21 October 1881 and left Kobe on 12 November 1881. The details of the cruise were described in The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship “Bacchante” 1879–1882.14 Two descriptions were included of the tattoos the princes received in Japan. On at least two occasions, 27 and 28 October 1881, they were tat- tooed at their guest house, the Enryo¯kan in Tokyo. The Meiji Emperor invited the two princes to the Imperial Palace on 25 October and two days later he himself visited the princes at the Enryo¯kan. The two

74 MEIJI PERIOD (1868–1912) princes had themselves tattooed just before the Emperor’s arrival on 27 October 1881.

Oct. 27th. . . . We came back quite hungry for breakfast, after which we were tattooed on the arms. At 9.30 a.m. we got into uniforms, and the Mikado came to call at the En-riô-kwan.15

On the following day, the two princes were tattooed again after breakfast.

Oct. 28th. . . . Back to breakfast at 9.30 and then the tattooer finished our arms. He does a large dragon in blue and red writhing all down the arm in about three hours.16

According to the account in the book there were two tattooists who visited the Enryo¯kan that morning, namely the man who tattooed the princes and the person who mixed the colours for tattoos.

The man who did most of our party was beautifully tattooed over the whole of his body, and the effect of these Japanese drawings in various colours and curves on his glistening skin was like so much embroidered silk. Like so many of their old customs tattooing has been abolished by law, but these two artists were allowed to come to us in our own room here.17

The princes did not mention the name of the tattooist in the book. According to Tamabayashi Haruo’s Bunshin Hyakushi, the tattooist who tattooed them in Tokyo was Karakusa Gonta who tattooed ascending and descending dragons on the arms of the two princes.18 Karakusa Gonta was regarded as the best tattooist when the two princes visited Japan in 1881 and it makes sense that he was chosen to tattoo them. Afterwards, different tattooists tattooed the officers and sailors of the Bacchante.

Two others went on board the Bacchante, where they took up their quar- ters for two or three days, and had their hands full with tattooing different officers and men.19

The Bacchante was escorted by other ships and probably the officers and sailors of these ships also had tattoos in Japan. The Illustrated London News carried an article on tattooing in Japan by an officer serving on board HMS Inconstant, one the ships escorted the Bacchante.20 The officer of the Royal Navy wrote: ‘some of the young men on board

75 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI had chosen to undergo the operation of tattooing when they were in the ports of Japan’.21 Members of the crew of the Inconstant were also tattooed in Nagasaki though the Bacchante did not stop there. The Bacchante arrived at Kobe on 4 November 1881. The two princes travelled to Kyoto from Kobe and enjoyed their stay in the old capital. It seems likely that they also had tattoos in Kyoto. The Times reported that ‘the Princes went up country [from Kobe] for a week, as a souvenir of which they now bear on their arms a specimen of Japanese tattooing’.22 Unlike Prince Alfred’s tattooing in Japan in 1869, the tattooing of Prince Albert Victor and Prince George was reported in the Japanese press. The To¯kyo¯ Yokohama Mainichi Shinbun reported ‘the two princes invited a tattooist into their hotel when they stayed in Kyoto and Prince Albert Victor had a tattoo of a dancing crane which is around two sun [over six centimetres] long on his upper arm and Prince George a similar size of ascending dragon on his upper arm’.23 In an article in a Japanese journal published in the 1920s, the fol- lowing story appeared.24 One member of the crew of the Bacchante was a cousin of the two princes. He had been tattooed in Yokohama and he showed his tattoo to other officers including the two princes. As a result the princes asked to have tattoos in Tokyo. Their request was turned down three times by Japanese officials. Finally, they accepted the request of the two princes, but they could not find tattooists who could tattoo the princes in Tokyo, because tattooing was banned in Japan and government officials did not have any contacts with tat- tooists. Only when the princes went to Kyoto, could Japanese officials find Hori Kuma, a tattooist from Osaka, who tattooed a dancing crane on Prince Albert Victor, and two ascending and descending dragons on Prince George. The influential ‘cousin’ of the princes was Prince Louis of Battenberg (1854–1921) and he ‘sported the massive tattoo of a dragon across his chest and down his legs’.25 It is very likely that he received the tattoo in Yokohama in 1881. After their visit to Japan, Prince Albert Victor and Prince George were also tattooed in Jerusalem in April 1882. Francis Souwan, the same tattooist who tattooed Edward VII in 1862, painted the same designs on the two princes. Prince George wrote to their mother Princess Alexandra that:

We have been Tatoed by the same old man that tatoed Papa & the same thing too the 5 crosses [the Jerusalem Crosses]. You ask Papa to show his arm.26

Ernest Satow (1843–1929), a member of staff of the British Legation, who looked after the two princes when they visited Japan in 1881,

76 MEIJI PERIOD (1868–1912) recorded the following in his diary when he met Prince George in London in 1897:

Duke of York very affable. Asked after Laurie. & talked a good deal about his visit to Japan. He does not seem to have liked Japs. He took off his coat and showed us his tattooing.27

THE LEGEND OF HORI CHIYO In Britain, it is usually claimed that the tattooist who tattooed the two princes was Hori Chiyo.28 Even Prince Alfred, who visited Japan earlier was said to have been tattooed by him. Hori Chiyo was the most famous Japanese tattooist outside Japan during the Meiji period. He was regarded as the ‘emperor’ among the various ‘kings’ of tattooing’.29 Albert Parry mentioned him as the Shakespeare of tattooing in his book Tattoo ‘because none other approaches him’, citing a newspaper, the New York World.30 Burchett wrote: ‘I knew that Western tattooists, however skilled and gifted, were only imitators of an art which had been cultivated in Japan for 200 years. Hori Chyo was the inheritor and custodian of this tradition’.31 The reputation of Hori Chiyo was always linked to the tattoos of the royal princes and this link with the British royal family contributed to his fame. For example, Gambier Bolton (1854–1928), author of Pictures on the Human Skin and A Tattoo Artist wrote:

One is bound to admit that there is more or less of Art in the work done by Hori (i.e., the tattooer) Chyo, of Yokohama, who had the honour of placing several designs on the late Duke of Clarence, and his brother, the Duke of York.32

George Burchett’s book contains an illustration which showed Prince George receiving a tattoo on his left arm from Hori Chyo (Chiyo) [see illustration under the title of this essay].33

He [Hori Chyo] had tattooed many royal personages, including the Duke of Clarence and the Duke of York, who later became King George V, when the two brothers served as midshipmen aboard HMS Bacchante which visited Yokohama in 1882 [1881].34

Even the advertisement of Arthur & Bond’s Fine Art Gallery in Yokohama which appeared on the well-known guidebook for Japan, Handbook for Travellers in Japan (3rd. ed.) mentioned the incident:

77 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

TATTOOING. Hori Chiyo.– The celebrated tattooer, patronized by TRH Princes Albert Victor and George, and known all over the world for his fine and artistic work, is retained by us; and design and samples can be seen at the Tattooing Rooms.35

It was further claimed that Hori Chiyo tattooed Nicholas II of Russia (1868–1918) when he visited Japan with his cousin Prince George of Greece in 1891.36 In actual fact he did not tattoo these princes. This and other stories were all part of the fabricated legend of Hori Chiyo.

THE REAL HORI CHIYO Hori Chiyo was famous in the West as the most important Japanese tattooist, but he was not well known in Japan, and the information on him in Japanese sources is very limited. Among the sources available, the most important is a work of fiction titled Hori Chiyo, written by Arishima Ikuma (1882–1974), a painter and novelist, published in the women’s monthly magazine Fujin Sekai as a series of eight articles from January to October 1924. The series was discontinued after October 1924. Although Arishima Ikuma published Hori Chiyo as fiction, it contained genuine biographical information about him. In particular, the last two articles of Hori Chiyo contain interesting information including details of his family registration and a photograph. Hori Chiyo’s real name was Miyazaki Tadashi.37 He was born in Shizuoka-city on 20 April 1859 as the second son of a samurai Miyazaki Shunji. Charles Taylor, an American journalist who visited Hori Chiyo, ‘the greatest tattooer in Japan’, in Yokohama in 1896 quoted Hori Chiyo’s ‘card’ which described his youth:

I [Hori Chiyo] had a taste of drawing from a very young age. I entered the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy, and after graduating in the drawing course, I studied assiduously the art of tattooing. Being not satisfied with common crude works of the profession, I devised various new methods, and attained to the highest degree of profession, as to the minuteness and artistic effects, which will delight and surprise to behold.38

This ‘card’39 appears to have been a poster or advertisement in his studio. According to Gambia Bolton, Hori Chiyo learned tattooing from Hori Yasu of Kyoto.40 Hori Yasu’s master was Hori Kuma who tat- tooed the princes.41 This suggests that Hori Chiyo learnt tattooing in the Kansai region rather than in Tokyo and Yokohama area. It is also

78 MEIJI PERIOD (1868–1912) suggestive of the source of the stories connecting Hori Chiyo with the earlier Royal tattoos. Hori Chiyo was only ten years old when Prince Alfred visited in Japan in 1869; so he cannot have been the tattooist. When Prince Albert Victor and Prince George had tattoos in Japan in 1881, he was twenty-two years old and was still in all likelihood too young to be the tattooist for the British Princes since he could hardly have attained sufficient experience by then to be allowed to undertake the tattooing of such important visitors. He had run away from home in 1878, just three years earlier, and after that, he claimed to have had studied drawing first and only then tattooing. Hori Chiyo or his employer probably used the tattooing of the two princes as an advertisement for the tattooing services at Arthur Bond’s Fine Art Gallery. Nicholas II of Russia and Prince George of Greece visited Japan in 1891; they were tattooed, but not by Hori Chiyo. When they landed at Nagasaki in April, the Japanese authorities spied on them. According to the report compiled on them, they had tattoos in Nagasaki. The names of the tattooists were recorded as Nomura Ko¯zaburo¯ and Matasaburo¯ (his family name was not known).42 Hori Chiyo died in Hokkaido in 1900, perhaps in a suicide pact.43 A Japanese expert on tattooing who saw Hori Chiyo’s works did not rate his workmanship highly, although he admitted that Hori Chiyo was famous.44 Probably Hori Chiyo was better at designing tattoos rather than their execution. The famous painter Fujita Tsuguharu (1886–1968), who was interested in tattooing and had been tattooed, collected Hori Chiyo’s sample patterns of tattooing.

THE FINAL ROYAL TATTOO AND AFTER The last Royal visit during the Meiji period was made by Prince Arthur of Connaught. Representing King Edward VII, he arrived at Yokohama on 19 February 1906 to invest the Meiji Emperor with the Order of the Garter and stayed in Japan for about one month, leaving Yokohama on 17 March 1906. The details of his stay in Japan were described by Lord Redesdale (Algernon Bertram Freeman-Mitford) (1837–1916) in his book, The Garter Mission to Japan.45 Lord Redesdale accompanied Prince Arthur throughout the Prince’s stay in Japan, except for one night when the Prince went to Nikko¯ on 14 March and stayed at the Kanaya Hotel in Nikko¯, while Redesdale remained in Tokyo. Hori Uno (1st), a tattooist was called in to the hotel to tattoo the Fudo¯Myo¯-o¯ (the God of fire) on Prince Arthur.46 As a result, the account of the prince’s tattoo was not recorded in Redesdale’s book or in any other English source.

79 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Hori Uno (1st) was probably the best Japanese tattooist and Japanese tattooing reached its highest artistic level in his work. Hori Uno (1st)’s real name was Kamei Unosuke. He was born in Tokyo in 1843 as the son of a lower class samurai and died in 1927. He always conceived of tattoos in three dimensions paying attention to the balance between tattoo designs and body shapes. Koizumi Matajiro¯ (1865–1951), former Prime Minister Koizumi Jun’ichiro¯’s grandfather, was called a ‘Tattoo Minister’ as he was famous for having tattoos; it is said that Hori Uno (1st) tattooed him. King Edward VIII (1894–1972), eldest son of King George V visited Japan as Prince of Wales as part of the cruise of HMS Renown in 1922. He was accompanied by Lord Louis Mountbatten (1900–79), a son of Prince Louis of Battenberg. The tour by the Renown was part of the prince’s education. There was one experience in Japan which he missed. That was being tattooed in Japan in the tradition of the British Royal family. The prince wrote to his father, King George V, as follows:

My chief disappointment is not being able to get tattooed in Japan; but it seems that it’s been made illegal, though I can’t think why. Still, under these conditions, I’ve left it severely alone!!47

The unusual association between Japanese tattooists and the British Royal family had now come to an end. The episode is indicative of one aspect of Anglo-Japanese cultural relations during the Meiji period: the British were fascinated by this example of Japan’s unique and traditional culture which had developed over 200 years of isola- tion while the Japanese Government considered it uncivilized and an obstacle to modernization. Nowadays, tattoos are the distinctive emblems of Japanese gangsters (Yakuza) who continue to boast of the elaborate tattoos which often cover the whole of their bodies.

80 PART III: BUSINESS FIGURES

9

Toyota and Britain

MEMOIR BY TOYODA SHO¯ ICHIRO¯

Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯

The United Kingdom has been one of the countries most closely associ- ated with Toyota in the past century.I am convinced that this relationship is unlikely to change in the future, and that we must not allow it to change. The roots of Toyota Motor Corporation of today go back to Toyoda Sakichi, my grandfather. Wanting to turn Japan into a rich country akin to Western nations, Sakichi worked and studied hard and devoted his life to inventing and improving weaving machines; afterwards, he was even called ‘Inventor-king of the world’. One of the books that Sakichi read and re-read many times was Self Help by Samuel Smiles, a famous British polemicist. This book, translated into Japanese by Nakamura Masanao1 in the Meiji era, was read widely by young people in Japan. I also read Self Help when I was a youngster and was inspired to my own ‘self-help’efforts. Sakichi invented a wooden Toyoda hand-loom in 1890 and obtained his first patent on it; later, in 1896, he developed a power loom, the first such machine in Japan. On his study tour to Europe in 1910, he visited Manchester, the industrial centre of the world at that time, and spent a full month there studying a wide variety of machin- ery. He must have called upon Platt Brothers & Co. Ltd., known as the top textile-machine manufacturer in the world, which was located in Oldham just outside Manchester.

81 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Toyoda Kiichiro¯, my father, also was invited by Platt Brothers & Co. in 1922 to undertake operational training on textile machines for about a month. In 1924, about thirty years after Sakichi’s invention of the power loom, Sakichi, together with Kiichiro¯, completed the Toyoda Type G Automatic Loom, a machine considered by many to produce the best results in the world. The Type G Automatic Loom has been one of the permanent exhibits at London’s Science Museum since June 2000, alongside James Watt’s steam engine and many other machines that epitomized the Industrial Revolution. Having one’s own invention exhibited at this museum is an honour coveted by every inventor in the world. The patent on the Type G Automatic Loom was later conveyed to Platt Brothers and Co for £100,000 and Kiichiro used part of the proceeds to fund his automo- bile research and development. That was the beginning of today’s Toyota. Toyota’s association with the United Kingdom has remained very close to this day. On its sales front, for instance, since its first shipment in 1965 of seventy-five Corona passenger cars to the UK. Toyota has now grown to the point of having about 350 dealerships selling approximately 140,000 Toyota vehicles each year. In addition, we started manufacturing cars in the UK in 1992, enabling us to export our products to the EU markets as well as to Japan. This shows that Toyota is now solidly accepted into British society. Shirasu Jiro¯, who was famous in Japan as an ‘English gentleman’, having spent some years of his youth at Cambridge University, lived his life by ‘principles’ he had learnt there. His wisdom and support were immensely valuable and we owe him a great deal. In his Cambridge days, Shirasu was a car-racing aficionado; he drove around in his Bentley and Bugatti at weekends and was an ‘oily boy’ through and through. We benefited greatly from his advice and ideas on ‘car making’ when, in 1981, we introduced our sports specialty model, the Soarer, which we were determined would be the best of its kind in the world. As our relationship grew stronger, Shirasu was kind enough to introduce me to his close friend Sir Sigmund Warburg, and I was for- tunate enough to be able to send my eldest son Akio (currently, an Executive Vice President at Toyota), after he had graduated from Keio University and completed his MBA at Babson, to work for a while at S. G. Warburg, the merchant bank, under the tutelage of Lord Roll, its chairman, and Sir David Scholey, its president. When I watched the Type G Automatic Loom actually operating in the Science Museum, and it emitted all sorts of noises as if it had just been invented, I was deeply moved and reflected upon the close

82 TOYOTA AND BRITAIN relationship which had grown up between Toyota and the United Kingdom.

MY FATHER KIICHIRO¯ ’S DREAM I was born in 1925 in Nagoya as the first son of Toyoda Kiichiro¯ and Hatako. At the time, my father was engaged in research on automatic looms at Toyoda Spinning & Weaving Co. (established in 1918). I was born a year after the invention of the Type G Automatic Loom. Subsequently, in 1926, the weaving-machine business was separated out into a new entity, Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, Ltd., forming a second pillar of the Toyota operations. My father had an ideal, ‘For the purpose of building up a rich nation, we must try to develop Japanese industry by fostering car- making, since this is a sector which encompasses a wide range of industrial activity and is supported by many “foothill” industries.’ His determination was unwavering, ‘We must direct Japanese brains and skills to car making.’ This ideal and resolve helped him embark on car making, an enterprise that even the Zaibatsu or old-style business con- glomerates were reluctant to undertake. I do not know exactly when my father started thinking about and studying cars or when he made up his mind to move into car manufacturing. In 1930, a year after returning from his second European study tour, Kiichiro¯ succeeded in building a small engine; I therefore suspect that the sight of motor vehicles driving around everywhere in Europe and the presence of a wide variety of industries dependent upon motor- ization must have given him visions of a more developed future for his country. My father was often heard to say that he gave ground to no-one in the building of automatic looms; nevertheless, in the initial period of his car-making efforts, he seemed to have spent countless days and months, tormented by indescribable difficulties thrown up through endless cycles of trial and error. In 1933, a plaque inscribed with ‘Automobile Division’ was hung inside Toyoda Automatic Loom Works; the division’s assembly plant started making trucks and passenger cars, and sales of vehicles began. Later, in 1937, Toyota Motor Manufacturing Co. was formed, inde- pendent of Toyoda Automatic Loom Works, and in 1938 its own plant was completed and came on line (today’s Toyota headquarters plant). Kiichiro¯ intended to start making motor vehicles in the new plant by ‘building what is needed, when it is needed, and as many as are needed’, an approach later to be called ‘just in time’. In the period after the Second World War, this production methodology was developed

83 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI by Kiichiro¯’s followers in into the Toyota Production System, now widely known across the world as the lean production system.

GROWING UP My father worked very hard from early in the morning until late in the evening in the period when he was trying to start the car business, and I do not recall many occasions that he played with me. I remember my father was fond of building ponds, and as soon as I and Tatsuro¯, my younger brother (formerly, president of Toyota; cur- rently, its Senior Adviser) were old enough to help our father tinker with pond-building, he often asked us to work with him. My brother and I soon learned the proper ratio of cement and sand and the right amount of water to be added. We were told that concrete forms had to be wetted before pouring in the cement-gravel mixture. He showed us how to keep the pond water clean. We learned all these things from him first-hand. To keep the water clean, we had to draw the water upstream, build a filter with cedar leaves, sand, and gravel, and guide the water over the filter. Our father demonstrated these processes himself for us to watch and then told us to repeat them on our own. He always tried to show us how things should be done and let us imitate them so that we might learn what to do by actually doing it. I can now understand clearly that by doing a job himself first, he intended to show us the way it should be done. What he tried to teach us was something that we highly value in Toyota today – it is the approach that Toyota wants its people to follow as they learn their jobs, namely, ‘learning by doing’. Toyota describes this method as genchi gen- butsu ‘grasping problems and analysing their root causes by ascertain- ing the facts’. When I became an adult, my father used to tell me, ‘No matter how much sophisticated academic knowledge you acquire, it means nothing if it has no practical application.’ ‘That may be a viable choice if you stay within the confines of academia, perhaps’ he continued, ‘Our job, in contrast, is to apply ourselves to “mono-zukuri” or making things, day in and day out. You can tell your people “I am an engin- eer.” “I am a plant manager”. But, so long as you keep wearing spot- less suits and show up with hands which are not work-worn, they won’t do what you ask them to do.’He went on, ‘The essence of being a practical engineer lies in “learning by doing” .’ Perhaps, because I heard this from my father so often, I feel this precept is deeply ingrained in me. As my father practised what he preached in his organization, his lessons have been inherited and put into practice one generation after another in Toyota, as part of its corporate culture, and to this day they

84 TOYOTA AND BRITAIN constitute one of the important pillars of the Toyota Way which is globally admired and applied.

LIFE BEFORE JOINING TOYOTA I studied mechanical engineering at Nagoya University and To¯hoku University and completed my academic work in 1947. After consulta- tion with my father, I worked for two years at a sea-food processing plant producing various fish-paste products, run by a distant relative in Hokkaido. While working there, I designed and built processing machinery for greater efficiency replacing traditional manual processes. In 1949, I returned to Nagoya and worked at a company making pre- cast concrete products. Thus, my early work experience covered two basic necessities of human life, food and shelter. Toyota was faced with a crisis of life-or-death proportions in the period from 1949 to 1950. The so-called Dodge-line economic policy introduced to combat inflation had resulted in business stagnation, making it next to impossible for Toyota to collect payments for vehi- cles, most of which were sold on monthly instalments; some people were saying that it was only a matter of time before Toyota went bankrupt. Bank loans were procured for corporate rehabilitation on condition that the manufacturing and sales entities of the company were sepa- rated and that measures were taken to cut back employment. My father resigned as president by way of taking responsibility for having to release workers. Circumstances were indeed unfavourable for the family and Toyota, but hardship failed to weaken my father’s mettle. Leaving Toyota, he moved to Tokyo and worked on a plan for a new vehicle with a small air-cooled engine and resolutely continued his research on a jet-powered helicopter. Later, partly aided by increased demand generated by new military procurements for the Korean War, Toyota’s corporate health was restored, and it was decided that my father should be reinstated as pres- ident. Shortly before this happened, however, in March 1952, my father fell ill and unexpectedly passed away. In July 1952, I was suddenly summoned by Ishida Taizo¯, the President. There and then, the decision was taken that I should join Toyota Motor Manufacturing. Five years after finishing school, I was set to follow in my father’s footsteps.

JOINING TOYOTA Working in Toyota I was helped by the principle of ‘learning by doing’ which had been imbued into me by my father since childhood. After

85 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI joining Toyota, I focused hard on learning. Having quickly been appointed as a member of the board, I was able to learn generally about various areas of expertise, including personnel, finance, and sales, in addition to engineering, my basic profession. In 1955, I was awarded a doctorate by Nagoya University for my ‘Study on injection valves for internal combustion engines’. As a member of the Toyota organization, I was helped by mentors in all the jobs which I did. On the engineering side, I relied, among others, on Toyoda Eiji, my uncle (currently, Honorary Adviser), Saito¯ Naokazu (formerly, Chairman), and Ohno Taiichi (formerly, Executive Vice President), who worked with my uncle and Saito to formulate The Toyota Production System. Besides being invaluable mentors for me, all three displayed exceptional leadership, running Toyota from then on, inheriting the spirit of the founder Kiichiro¯. I was most fortunate in being able to move smoothly into the engi- neering division, the unit at the very core of Toyota. For one thing, I was an engineer myself and I also had benefited from my father’s instruction; in addition, Toyoda Eiji who was the commanding general, so to speak, of engineering had been a close friend of mine since my childhood. Though reticent by nature, Eiji-san is the type of person who, like my father, wants to ‘do things by being an exemplar’ himself. In particular, Eiji often told me to ‘go to the customer com- plaint office and study closely any products that had been sent back to us by customers’. Thus, he reinforced the same principle of ‘learning by doing’ that my father used to teach me. By looking at the examples of those who were senior to me and learning from the advice of mentors, I really grew up.

LESSONS LEARNED ON ‘CROWN’ I would like to dwell on some of the things that happened during my career since I joined Toyota Motor which I now vividly recall. First comes the first-generation ‘Crown’. My father’s dream about ‘passenger cars built in Japan by Japanese brains and skills’ did come true finally with the birth of ‘Crown’ in 1955 made by the hands of his followers who had worked with him since pre-war days. The first- generation ‘Crown’ was not as large as American cars, but not much smaller than European mass-market models. Its character and style were liked by Japanese people and it was a comfortable ride, as a pas- senger car should be. These were some of the parameters we kept in mind since the start of ‘Crown’ development. We had thoroughly canvassed our customers, that is dealerships and taxi companies, before we decided on the character of the car and, for example, the centre-opening doors. Meanwhile, we tried out many

86 TOYOTA AND BRITAIN passenger cars from many countries and decided to use independent suspension and three-ply leaf springs for passenger comfort. We also used hypoid gears and all of the developments were radically new or ground-breaking technology and systems at that time in Japan. The ‘Crown’ was warmly received in Japan; but, in 1957, two years after its introduction, I took a sample ‘Crown’to the United States and it was a miserable failure, especially in terms of its performance. American drivers were known to drive their cars at speeds of over 100 km per hour for sustained periods; we brought our car there without carrying out full running tests under simulated American conditions. This was the main reason why we were not successful. Even though we had no test course for running tests over extended periods of time, our failure to conduct adequate operational tests before bringing a product to the US was an important lesson for us at the time. This bitter experience again reminded us of the importance of the rule of ‘Customer First’, of the principle of ‘learning by doing’ and of ‘quality’. Since then, we have never forgotten this precious lesson and have always employed it in all of our efforts to make cars. From this perspective, the first-generation ‘Crown’, therefore, represents the origin of passenger-car development in Toyota.

THE MOTOMACHI PLANT The second important memory has to do with my work as chairman of the committee on the construction of the Motomachi Plant, the first facility in Japan devoted solely to passenger-car manufacture. This assignment was given to me by Ishida, the President, in 1958, in my sixth year in Toyota when I was thirty-two. The Motomachi Plant was designed for a production capacity of 60,000 cars a year on one shift and 120,000 units on two shifts. ‘Motorization’ was not yet a house- hold word at the time in Japan, and the size of the entire Japanese domestic market was a combined total of about 200,000 units of buses, trucks and cars. The passenger-car market was 50,000 to 60,000 units at most, and Toyota’s sales came to about 20,000 units a year. It was against this background that Ishida decided on the plant construction. Construction of a plant, which involves large sums of money, requires the input of many businesses and individuals and that every- one combines their capabilities and pulls in the same direction towards construction; it also calls for efficient and exact scheduling and precise execution of all the work that has to be done within the time limits set up for the project. Such is the essential key to success in a large project like the Motomachi Plant. Skimping on sleep and leisure on many occasions I worked feverishly all through the project and almost neared desperation as the deadline

87 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI approached. However, thanks to the efforts of many people, including the members of the construction committee, the plant was completed in ten months, in August 1959. I will never forget the excitement I felt on that occasion. The experience, knowledge, and personal contacts with many people that I gained through this project remain invaluable and irreplaceable assets in my career. To put it somewhat grandiosely, this construction project helped me become aware of the art of management. Meanwhile, after our passenger-car plant at Motomachi came on line, the first wave of motorization swept through the country, accel- erating the pace of Toyota’s growth. I admire foresight in any business executives. In the Japanese auto industry, Toyota was able to move ahead of its rivals by a head because of the Motomachi Plant. The stories of Crown and the Motomachi Plant construction project rep- resent significant milestones in the first half of my life.

‘LEXUS’ – TOYOTA’S FLAGSHIP CAR On the subject of car manufacturing, I also experienced an unforget- table event in the period when I was the President; the introduction of the Lexus model. Among the Toyota cars marketed in the US in those days, ‘Cressida’ (or ‘Corona Mark II’ in Japan) was the luxury model. Dealerships started insisting, ever more urgently, that they needed larger models or up-market passenger cars comparable to those offered by Mercedes-Benz and BMW in the luxury-car market. We obliged by starting up a new development project. We embarked on the project with eagerness and determination, wanting to build a new prestigious car that we could proudly present to the world. As long as we were aiming at the luxury market, we thought, it would be only right for us to ‘muster the finest technology at Toyota and make unique efforts beyond those that Mercedes-Benz or BMW were capable of in car making’. Thus, the goals set up for the project exceeded the performance parameters of our competition, for instance in terms of the speed, fuel economy, quietness, drag coefficient and gross weight. We strengthened working relations among our work units by elim- inating sectionalism, and reviewed and tightened up tolerances of machine tools, so that we could resolve difficulties one by one through the united effort of everyone in engineering, production technology and in the production plants. As a result, for example, by relying on production-line robots, we achieved levels of fit and finish that were better than those obtained by skilled manual workers at Mercedes- Benz and BMW.

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The Lexus was introduced into the US market in August 1989, and was exhibited at the London Motor Show in September 1990, to mark the start of its sales in the European market. Subsequently, Toyota was recognized as a top car manufacturer in Europe where automobiles were invented, and representatives of European rivals started to visit us in Japan to study our operations. In 1995, we were fortunate to have a cut-out model of the Lexus on display in the Science Museum for a few months.

JAPAN–UK 2000 GROUP The Japan–UK 2000 Group gave me an opportunity to get to know more closely many people in the political, business and academic fields in the UK, broadening the scope of my human network. These per- sonal links are valuable assets and the source of happy friendships for me. The Japan–UK 2000 Group was launched in 1985 as a result of an agreement between Margaret Thatcher (then Prime Minister) and Prime Minister Nakasone Yasuhiro, comprising primarily business persons and parliamentarians of the two countries, for the purpose of promoting mutual understanding. I have had the honor of serving as a committee member since its first meeting. Committee meetings were held once a year alternately in Japan and the UK, providing us with the opportunity to discuss a variety of topics including the promotion of mutual awareness between the two nations, the roles to be played by Japan and the UK, and developments in the international arena. The results of our discussions were com- municated to our two prime ministers in the form of committee rec- ommendations. At the fifth committee meeting held in March 1989, we discussed the matter of capital investment between Japan and Europe, and I dis- closed Toyota’s intention of giving priority to the UK as the site of its local production in Europe in a plan then under study at Toyota. When I was the president of Keidanren (the Federation of Economic Organizations) from 1994 to 1998, Japan was in the throes of a protracted economic recession and the nation was beset with loss of confidence and inability to find directions for progress. As a result, we published the ‘Creation of an Attractive Japan’, (officially, ‘An Attractive Japan – Keidanren’s Vision for 2020’), pointing out the path that Japan should follow. In this vision statement, the Keidanren tried to outline the type of structural reform required to make Japan an attractive country that is open to the world in an era of accelerated globalization. I also put this vision on the table at a meeting of the Japan–UK 2000 Group. I was and am convinced that the vitality of a

89 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI nation derives from the vitality of its private sector. I explained at the meeting our proposals for deregulation to revitalize the private sector, which had been submitted to the Japanese government as well as Keidanren’s agenda for structural reform. I solicited the candid views of other committee members and gained their understanding and support. That the members of the committee spent many hours together discussing, face to face, a variety of issues of mutual interest was, I believe, very meaningful for Japan and the UK. In March1995, I had the honour of being made an honorary Knight of the British Empire (KBE) for my contribution to Japan–UK rela- tions, through the activities of the Japan–UK 2000 Group and the investment made by Toyota in the UK. I expressed my gratitude at the committee meeting in 1995 by saying, ‘This KBE medal has not been awarded just to me personally, but rather it should be shared by all of you on the committee who contribute to mutual understanding between Japan and the UK.’ This statement represents my true senti- ment to this day.

LOCAL PRODUCTION IN THE UK I want to comment briefly on our local production in the UK. In the 1970s and 1980s, trade friction between Japan on the one hand and Europe and the US on the other intensified, causing the Japanese car manufacturers to implement voluntary trade restraints on exports of completed vehicles from Japan to the US and EC markets. Being con- vinced that only the maintenance and strengthening of the free trade regime could contribute to the growth of the world economy, I believed in the principle of ‘competition and collaboration’ and seriously explored the feasibility of local production by Toyota in overseas markets. For this purpose, various matters had to be examined and acted on: they included, for instance, the feasibility of transplanting the Toyota Production System, a source of our business strength, to other coun- tries; the expansion of local procurement; and different labour prac- tices. In the US we established New United Motor Manufacturing, Inc., a joint venture with General Motors, in 1984 for our first local production there. American workers, accustomed to labour practices different from those in Japan, understood and accepted the Toyota Production System as a mechanism enabling human beings to demon- strate their capabilities to the fullest extent. Later, in 1988, we started local production at Toyota Motor Manufacturing, USA, Inc. in Kentucky, an entity owned and operated by Toyota, proving that our local production plans were now on the right track. Under these circumstances, European distributors and dealerships started asking, ever more insistently, for local production there, and we

90 TOYOTA AND BRITAIN began studying the possibility from various angles. The UK proved to be a good candidate site and as a result we adopted a plan to go there for local production. We decided to construct a plant in Burnaston, South Derbyshire District, Derbyshire, in April 1989. We also decided to build an engine plant in Deeside, Flintshire in Wales, in July of that year and established TMUK (Toyota Motor Manufacturing, UK) in December; starting plant construction soon afterwards. Local produc- tion was begun in December 1992. First and foremost, we are grateful that the UK government and local people welcomed us and firmly supported us in our efforts for local production. When I went to see Prime Minister Thatcher to report on our decision to go to the UK, she encouraged me by saying that she much respected Japanese businesses; that she would therefore welcome us very much; that we could do our work as we saw fit because we would be given a truly ‘free hand’ and that our production plant was a ‘British company’. I was moved and excited by her words. The opening ceremony of the vehicle plant in June, 1993, was graced by the presence of His Royal Highness, The Prince of Wales. Our local operations have kept on growing smoothly up to now. The size of vehicle production grew from 36,000 units in 1993 to 240,000 units in 2005, and the rate of local procurement reached over 80 per cent by 1994. Employment was expanded from 1,700 workers in 1993 to nearly 5,000 today. I hope that our operations are con- tributing to the growth of the UK economy. Meanwhile, a British businessman has served as president at TMUK since 2001, running Toyota’s business by relying on local expertise and the input of local people. What Toyota aims at, I believe, is to be a truly local entity with its roots grounded deep and wide in local soil, contributing to the growth and progress of local industry and society. For us to enjoy full citizen- ship as a good corporate citizen it is important that we pay full atten- tion to the issues and problems that confront communities and regions in the UK and try to work with them to find solutions. As part of our efforts, for example, we meet twice a year with rep- resentatives of six villages around our Burnaston plant in the Community Liaison Committee, a forum established for exchange of information, for discussing various local issues and seeking solutions. The key to nation building and community building, I believe, lies in human-resource development to equip people with a desire for self improvement and a sense of ethics. We formed the Toyota Science and Technology Education Fund in 1992 and also provide assistance for science education in primary and middle schools, in conjunction with Business in the Community (BITC). In addition, we have had the pleasure of helping the campaign for the prevention of child abuse.

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I dream of the day when TMUK has grown to the point where a large number of British people consider it to be valuable to the UK and would take pride in it.

EXPO 2005 AICHI JAPAN Finally, I wish to comment on Expo 2005 Aichi Japan, held for six months from 25 March to 25 September 2005. The Expo enjoyed par- ticipation from more than 120 countries and international organiza- tions, the largest number ever for an expo held in Japan. A total of 22,050,000 people visited the exhibition, well over our target of 15 million admissions, making the event very successful. The UK partici- pation was, I believe, very helpful to the Expo. I was appointed chairman of the Japan Association for the 2005 World Exposition in November 1995. Expo 2005 Aichi was to be the first expo held in the twenty-first century. The Association tried to formulate its plan to make the Expo not an occasion for the exhibi- tion of national prestige and power, but rather an opportunity to make proposals for the peace and prosperity of mankind. For this purpose, we in the Association decided we should adopt a certain way of life that would help us overcome the negative global inheritance of the twentieth century, a century of science and technology, which included environmental problems on a global scale, energy issues, food shortages, and poverty. Thus, ‘Nature’s Wisdom’ was chosen as the theme of the Expo; we aimed to organize an expo that would be full of proposals of models for all societies to make them capable of sustained growth through the coexistence of mankind with earth and Nature. For this purpose, we emphasized the 3R approach (Reduce, Re-use and Recycle) and the state-of-the-art technology for recycling and re-circulating resources, in preparing the Expo sites, exhibits, and events. This was all in the interest of making the entire Expo friendly to the global environment. I visited the Eden Project at St Austell in 2002 and found there a magnificent and ambitious project to attain sustainable growth by improving the fertile soil of a former pottery clay mining site and fos- tering new ecological systems there. I am fond of English gardens as they are good models of the symbiotic existence of man and nature. The Eden Project and English gardens would be highly suitable fea- tures at Expo 2005 Aichi, I thought. In July 2004, Prime Minister Blair communicated formally to Prime Minster Koizumi the British intention of participating in Expo 2005 Aichi, helping to convince many other countries, who had been hesitant until then, in quick succession, to join the Expo. I am very grateful for the British decision.

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The UK pavilion at the Expo displayed a garden, arts and innova- tive technology created by making full use of nature, and it was well received by visitors. The UK National Day on 22 April was graced by the presence of His Royal Highness The Duke of York, Prince Andrew, which heightened the excitement of the occasion. The splendid English garden shown in the Expo has since been transplanted to Kuragaike Park in Toyota City, a friendship city with the UK during the Expo, for public enjoyment. Expo 2005 Aichi Japan is now history, but the ideals we pursued and the efforts we expended at the Expo to face new tasks before us must not be discarded as being only transient; rather, they may be built upon, I hope, by the next expo to be held in Shanghai in 2010.

93 10

Nissan and the British Motor Vehicle Industry (Prior to the Nissan Investment in the UK in 1984)1

CHRISTOPHER MADELEY2

Datsun/Austin Cambridge A50 19563

INTRODUCTION Nissan and its predecessors have a longer history of informal and formal links with Britain than any other Japanese motor vehicle manu- facturer, and were influential in forming British perceptions of the Japanese motor vehicle industry during the 1930s. The relationship dates back to 1912, when Kaishinsha first began assembling cars using chassis and components imported from Swift of Coventry. Then, in the 1930s, it was alleged that the Austin Seven was copied in the manu- facture of the Datsun. A formal relationship was re-established in December 1952 with the licensing and sales agreement between Austin and Nissan under which Austins were produced in Japan until 1959.

94 NISSAN AND THE BRITISH MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY

KAISHINSHA AND SWIFT British motoring publications offer glimpses of Japan in the early twentieth century, though their contents inevitably reflect the inter- ests and preoccupations of their authors, contributors and readers. They also reveal an awareness of, and interest in, Japan among the motoring fraternity in Britain at that time. Judging from a report in The Motor-Car Journal in July 1901, conditions facing motorists seemed hardly conducive to the establishment of a motor vehicle industry in Japan:

The streets of many of the cities and towns are too narrow for motor- vehicles, and, although there is no law prohibiting the machines from entering the streets, the drivers usually steer clear of them. Some of the streets are laid with rounded and pointed stones, which are disastrous to rubber tires, and drivers of automobiles avoid these as much as possible.

The number of motor vehicles in Japan was initially very low. In May 1906, The Autocar was able to count just four privately owned cars in Tokyo and two in Yokohama. By August 1911, the British acting com- mercial attaché reported that ‘there was an astonishing increase in the number of motor cars in use during last year, and at the end of December there were over 100 cars in Tokyo alone’. The British acting vice-consul at Yokohama gave a breakdown by country of origin of the cars imported into that city. ‘In 1911, the United States took the largest share of the trade, sending 67 cars out of a total of 100. Of the remainder 13 cars were British, 6 cars French, and 14 cars German.’ Interest in motor vehicles developed in military circles in Japan, and this was paralleled in government circles. The Automotor Journal reported in September 1909: ‘The Japanese Government have under consideration the question of establishing a motor mail van service with the object of connecting up the principal towns in Japan.’ The Japanese Imperial family also took an early interest in motor vehi- cles. According to The Autocar in July 1905:

Messrs. A. Darracq and Co.’s representative, Mr P.C. Beardwood, had the honour of waiting upon Prince Arisugawa at St. James’s Palace on Saturday last with a 30 h.p. car. The Prince expressed his satisfaction with the car, and after a trial run purchased it.

In 1912, The Autocar noted that further vehicles were ordered.

Quite a fleet of cars is now being finished for the Imperial Household of Japan, and comprises a 57 h.p. Daimler for the Emperor’s own use, a

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50 h.p. Mercédès for the Emperor’s guests, two 35–50 h.p. FIATs and two 38 h.p. Daimlers for the Imperial Household, two 30 h.p. FIATs for use as baggage vans, and one 40 h.p. Mercédès to be used as a shoot- ing brake.

Japan’s first automobile club was established in October 1911. Its members comprised both Japanese and resident foreign motorists, the words of one of whom are reported thus:

‘We cannot help but feel,’ said Mr. Frazar (one of the leading partici- pants), ‘that the first club run could have been no more successful. It shows what enthusiasm exists over motoring here, and prophesies great things in the future for the automobile in Japan.’

In 1913, Japan acquired its first specialist magazine entitled Jido¯sha, covering cars, motor boats and aircraft. It is against this background that the establishment of Kaishinsha, the forerunner of Nissan, by Hashimoto Masujiro¯ in 1911 must be seen. Hashimoto Masujiro¯, founder of Kaishinsha, was born into a family of landowners in what is now Okazaki city, Aichi prefecture, in 1875. He progressed through Japan’s newly established compulsory educa- tion system, and in 1891 entered Tokyo Ko¯gyo¯ Gakko¯ (Tokyo Industrial School, now Tokyo Ko¯gyo¯ Daigaku – Tokyo University of Industry). He graduated in 1895, and in 1896 joined the Japanese Imperial Army, completing his period of military service in 1899. He then worked for Sumitomo, but in 1902 was sent to study in the United States as an overseas business practice student of the Japanese Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce on the recommendation of the headmaster of Tokyo Industrial School. In the United States, he entered the McIntosh and Seymour Company of Auburn, NY, manu- facturers of stationary steam engines, where he remained until he was called up to join the Japanese Imperial Army again in June 1905. He worked on the manufacture of machine guns, but the Russo-Japanese War came to an end and his call-up was annulled in September 1905. Hashimoto then agreed to work as head of engineering for the Etchujima Company which was in difficulties, and when this company was bought out by the Kyu¯shu¯ Colliery Company, he was sent to one of the company’s coal mines in Nagasaki prefecture, where he became head of the colliery workshop. His real interests and ambitions lay else- where, however, and he resigned in June 1911. In the same month, Hashimoto Masujiro¯ founded the company Kaishinsha with a view to entering the field of car manufacture. In addi- tion to his own capital, he obtained financial backing from Den Kenjiro¯, a former classmate Aoyama Rokuro¯, and Takeuchi Meitaro¯. The name

96 NISSAN AND THE BRITISH MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY

DAT was based on the first letters of the surnames of Hashimoto’s three financial backers, as was the slogan ‘Durable, Attractive, Trustworthy’. Hashimoto’s company was one of five car companies in Tokyo listed by The Motor in 1913. It was difficult for Kaishinsha to establish itself by car manufacture alone, so the company acted as a repair garage for imported cars. According to the recollections of one former Kaishinsha employee, the repair of British cars was the main activity of the company. In this way Hashimoto and his employees, initially seven in number, became familiar with the design of British and other foreign cars. Hashimoto purchased two Swift passenger car chassis from a company named Swift Sho¯kai in the Tsukiji district of Tokyo that imported and sold Swift bicycles and cars from England. These were assembled, fitted with bodies, and were the first cars to be sold by Kaishinsha. It is surprising that Hashimoto should choose British cars in view of his background of study in the United States, and in view of the preponderance of American cars in Japan at that time. While there are no records of Swift production and sales, a Swift publicity booklet refers to the exploits of one Thomas Bates Blow with his 1904 Swift car in Japan, and it is possible that these exploits enhanced the company’s reputation in the Japanese market. However, writing much later in 1930, Blow shows no awareness of the developing Japanese motor vehicle industry:

Motor vehicles seem to be the only machinery that the Japanese them- selves have been shy to tackle. It has been left to Ford and General Motors to fit up in Japan enormous plants turning out some thousands of cars per month.

Kaishinsha engaged in the manufacture of a light car of its own design, and though the first design was not successful, a second chassis was completed at the end of 1913 and test-driven. A body was then fitted, and the completed car was exhibited at the Tokyo Taisho¯ Exhibition in the spring of 1914. This was the first car to carry the name DAT. A third type of car was subsequently designed which was designated the DAT 31 Type. Six cars of this type were manufactured. This was fol- lowed by a fourth type of car, the DAT 41 Type. A DAT car exhibited at the Tokyo Peace Memorial Exhibition in 1922 was awarded a gold medal. DAT car catalogues issued in 1915 and 1921 are written pre- dominantly in English, though there is no indication of whether this was with a view to sales to foreign residents in Japan, exports to English-speaking countries, or to give DAT cars the cachet associated with foreign products. In March 1918, the Japanese government announced the promulga- tion of the Military Vehicle Subsidy Law, under which manufacturers

97 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI of trucks to a given specification would be eligible for subsidies, as would the purchasers of the trucks. Hashimoto began the construction of a vehicle to meet this specification, and in October 1924 the Kaishinsha DAT Type truck gained approval. Nonetheless, it was difficult for the company to stay in business during the slump follow- ing the boom years of the First World War in Japan, and matters were exacerbated by the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake of September 1923. In 1925, Kaishinsha Company Limited was dissolved and replaced by DAT Jido¯sha Sho¯kai, in which Hashimoto Masujiro¯ became a senior partner. The company tried to base its business on the manufacture and sales of the subsidy truck, and established an office in Osaka. This prob- ably brought Hashimoto into contact with the Jitsuyo¯ Jido¯sha Seizo¯KK of Osaka which manufactured cars. After talks with Jitsuyo¯’s president Kubota Gonshiro¯, the two companies merged in 1926 to become DAT Jido¯sha Seizo¯ KK. Kubota Gonshiro¯ was the president of this new company, and Hashimoto the Tokyo managing director. The company manufactured the DAT Type truck, and developed a new vehicle, the 61 Type truck, which also became eligible for the subsidy. In this way the company was able to stay in business, and was able to undertake the development of a new small passenger car with a 500cc engine to replace the previously manufactured DAT cars. The prototype was completed in 1929. It was intended to call it the Datson – son of DAT. However the word son means ‘to make a loss’ in Japanese, so the name was thus changed to Datsun. The Datsun was manufactured with a variety of body styles, and with several changes in the cubic capacity and power output of the engine during the 1930s. In 1931, DAT Jido¯sha Seizo¯ KK became affiliated with Tobata Iimono KK, and Hashimoto Masujiro¯ resigned. He had no further involvement in the car manufacturing industry, and passed away in January 1944. Jido¯sha Seizo¯ KK was established in 1933 when the car manufacturing division of Ishikawajima purchased the car manufacturing section of Tobata Iimono KK. However, Jido¯sha Seizo¯ KK intended to concentrate on the manufacture of large-size vehicles, and had no intention to con- tinue production of the Datsun. In 1934, therefore, Nissan Jido¯ sha KK was established and took over production of the Datsun. The name Nissan is formed from Nippon Sangyo¯ KK, which financed Nissan Jido¯sha KK.

THE DATSUN AND THE AUSTIN SEVEN The World Engineering Congress took place in Tokyo from 25 October to 22 November 1929. It was attended by nearly 600 people from twenty-six countries, including fifty-seven from Great Britain. A.H. Wilde, chief engineer of the Standard Motor Company Limited

98 NISSAN AND THE BRITISH MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY in Coventry, contributed a paper entitled ‘The British Light Car’which included the makers’ specification of the Austin Seven, and was pub- lished with a number of figures showing details of the Austin Seven chassis, engine, clutch, gearbox, rear axle, suspension, steering and power output in the proceedings of the Congress. A copy of the volume of proceedings containing Wilde’s paper is among Hashimoto’s books presented to Toshima Historical Museum in 1998. In addition, Austin Sevens were imported into Japan, both complete vehicles and chassis which were fitted with bodies produced locally by Japanese coachbuilders. According to a pictorial history of Datsun published in 1995, the light car market in Japan in the 1920s and early 1930s was nearly dominated by British imports headed by Austin Sevens, with some Morrises and small French cars like 5 CV Citroëns and Renaults. Thus, there was no lack of information concerning the Austin Seven in Japan. The Datsun, on the other hand, was brought to the attention of British readers in The Motor in April 1934 under the headline ‘The Japanese Baby Car – A Similarity to the Austin Engine’. Two days later The Daily Mirror carried an article under the headline ‘Japan’s Cheap Cars Plan to Flood World. Another Menace to Britain’s Most Promising Overseas Markets’. This article noted numerous similarities between the Datsun and the Austin Seven, and predicted that the Datsun would be sold for £50. According to the article, ‘a “big push” has already begun in South Africa – London campaign being organ- ized’. In addition, ‘unless drastic steps are taken to meet the threatened “big push” by Japan, our most promising overseas markets such as India, Africa and Australia will be flooded with cheap motor-cars’. It was noted that ‘descriptive literature of the new Japanese car has already reached this country and it is printed in English, thus showing quite plainly the marketing intentions behind its production’. The writer stated that ‘the specification of the Datsun – except that it has a scuttle-type fuel tank – conforms in every way to the best British and Continental automobile practice’. The low price was attributed to ‘cheap labour’ and the article ended with the question ‘how will Britain meet this new menace to her most flourishing industry?’Other writers gave similar reports. In a book called Made In Japan, published in 1935, G. Stein noted that ‘the first cheap motor-cars entirely built in Japan have found buyers in the world-markets, and a large expansion is already planned’. He, too, attributed the low price of Japanese goods in part to low wages. ‘In view of the great number of unemployed who would be willing to work in the factories for almost any wage, it is surprising not that wages are as low as they are in Japan, but that they are not lower.’Not all observers supported this viewpoint, however. Mr James,

99 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI chairman of the Kobe and Osaka Foreign Chamber of Commerce, predicted in 1934 a decline in Japanese competition, due to ‘a rise in the wage level, increasing costs of imported raw material, and heavier taxation’. A 1936 British Empire report on international trade in motor vehicles focused on the six main vehicle-exporting countries; the United States, the United Kingdom, Canada, France, Germany and Italy. The report also devoted attention to Russia and Japan, however. Of the latter, it stated ‘the development of exports at present depends mainly on the “Datsun”car, a “baby-car”type of 8 h.p. which is making steady progress in Japan’. The Imperial Economic Committee’s report concluded:

Although not yet a serious competitor in the world market, and although dependent on imports for the bulk of the raw materials, Japan may be a factor to be reckoned with, particularly in the light car class and in markets in the Far East.

A similar comment was made in the course of preparing a wartime study with the cooperation of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. The writer predicted that the world market for motor vehicles would be divided into five spheres of influence, including ‘Japan, exporting to the Far Eastern Area, and perhaps Australia’. Actual exports figures for the Datsun in the pre-war period are given as follows:

1934: 44 vehicles; 1935: 53; 1936: 87; 1937: 230; 1938: 347.

The countries of destination included Manchuria, China, Spain, Portugal, India, Chile, Brazil, Australia, Malaya, French Indo-China, the South Pacific Islands and America. What was Austin’s reaction to allegations that the Datsun was a copy of the Austin Seven? It is evident that Sir Herbert Austin took these reports seriously, as he instructed his representative in Australia to pur- chase a Datsun which was shipped to England for evaluation. A former Austin employee states ‘unlike the European and American versions of the Seven it was a badly finished vehicle and the ride most unstable’. According to some accounts, Austin and Nissan entered into an agree- ment under which the Austin Seven was manufactured under licence in Japan, but this is a matter of considerable dispute. The Austin Seven Clubs’Association Magazine wrote in 1986: ‘It hardly seems credible that Austin would have missed an opportunity to exploit the publicity value of operating a licence scheme with Datsun. . . It looks as though the alleged copy was a logical develop- ment of a Japanese small car and its similarity to the Austin 7 was coin- cidental.’ Gotoh Noriyoshi, the designer of the Datsun prototype, was

100 NISSAN AND THE BRITISH MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY asked in a 1962 interview whether he was influenced by any particu- lar car when designing the Datsun. He was quite frank and he admit- ted there was one. ‘It was not the Austin Seven, however. There was a Benjamin in nearby Kyoto. It was an unique 750cc French car with a gearbox in unit with final drive. Having examined it closely we purchased it in the end.’ In addition, any link between Austin and Nissan in the 1930s has been refuted, albeit belatedly, by Nissan. ‘Nissan did not use any Austin engines, chassis or other mechanical parts in pre-war Datsuns. Nor did Nissan have any kind of licensing agreement with the Austin Motor Company before the Second World War.’ Moreover, the Heritage Motor Centre at Gaydon has no record of any pre-war agreement between Austin and Datsun. But they do have records of all agree- ments entered into for the Austin 7 variants such as the Rosengart, BMW/Dixi and the American Austin/Bantam. The car imported for evaluation is currently in the collection of the National Motor Museum at Beaulieu, and is described as a 1935 Datsun Type 14. The information panel accompanying the car states, ‘this car was imported by Sir Herbert Austin in 1935, to study for pos- sible patent infringement. Austin took no action and it was relegated to storage, never registered for the road.’ The Minute Books of the Austin Motor Company Limited for 1919–29 and January 1930–December 1942 make frequent reference to the company’s licensing agreements with its partners in Germany, France and the United States, but there is no mention of Japan. This might be taken as conclusive evidence that there was no licensing agreement between Austin and Nissan during the 1930s. However, nor does the February 1943–December 1958 Minute Book make any mention of the 4 December 1952 licensing and sales agreement between The Austin Motor Company Limited, Nissan Motor Company Limited and Nisshin Automobile Company Limited. While the recent consensus is that there was no licensing agreement during the 1930s, there was certainly an agreement during the 1950s.

NISSAN AND AUSTIN The Second World War had a profound influence on both the Japanese and British motor vehicle industries. In both countries the production of passenger cars was limited or suspended in favour of war materiel. Nissan manufactured army trucks based on a design it had purchased from the Graham-Paige Company of Detroit in 1936, and was obliged to halt production of the Datsun. Thus the predicted ‘big push’ into Britain’s home and overseas markets did not materialize at that time. Japan became isolated from Western technological development, and

101 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI after the war Japan faced a huge backlog of technologies to be imported. Moreover, the production of passenger cars in Japan was forbidden by the occupation authorities until June 1947, and restricted until October 1949. Britain on the other hand had to pay off war debts, and needed to expand its exports in order to do so. The motor vehicle industry was identified as a potential revenue earner. While British and other overseas firms wanted to sell their cars in Japan, Japanese manufacturers needed to update by entering into agree- ments with overseas firms. The Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) wished to avoid a repetition of the condi- tions which had prevailed during the 1920s and 1930s, however, when Japanese domestic motor vehicle manufacturers had faced stiff compet- ition from vehicles assembled by Ford and General Motors in Japan. It thus imposed a series of conditions in June 1952; overseas firms were only allowed to enter the Japanese market through agreements with existing Japanese chassis makers, small European cars were preferable to large American cars, foreign currency allocated for the import of cars should be used for the import of parts instead to build up to a limit of 1,200 cars per company, Japanese companies should seek to obtain the right to sell cars assembled under licence from overseas firms in South East Asia, and imported parts should ultimately be replaced by domes- tically manufactured parts. It was against this background that the agreement between Austin and Nissan was entered into. After Nissan decided in 1952 to enter into an agreement with an overseas firm to raise its level of technology, it carried out research into the best partner to select. Nissan says Austin was chosen for the fol- lowing reasons:

• It was an English car with one of the longest histories and was reli- able. • As of March 1952, a total of 1,288 Austin cars were in use in Japan, and they enjoyed the confidence of their owners. • The Austin had the best engine. • From the point of view of engineering, the Austin was suited to Japanese national conditions. • Austin enjoyed a reputation as the number one European car among Americans at that time.

Following a series of meetings and negotiations, an agreement for the assembly and manufacture of Austin motor vehicles in Japan was signed on 4 December 1952 between The Austin Motor Company Limited and Others, Nissan Motor Company Limited, and Nisshin Automobile Company Limited. This was accompanied by a distribu- tor’s agreement between the Austin Motor Export Corporation

102 NISSAN AND THE BRITISH MOTOR VEHICLE INDUSTRY

Limited and Nissan Motor Company Limited. The Austin Motor Corporation Limited was the manufacturer of the cars initially sup- plied, A40 Somerset saloon cars supplied in completely knocked down kit form, to be assembled by Nissan. The agreement forbad the sale of Austins produced by Nissan outside Japan without the written per- mission of The Austin Motor Export Corporation, and was for a term of seven years. Nissan was to seek from MITI permission to import and the necessary sterling to pay for at least 2,000 cars per year, or the maximum permitted by the MITI, should this be a different figure. Nissan was to pay both the cost of the completely knocked down cars supplied by Austin and royalties on a sliding scale calculated as a per- centage of the retail price of the completed cars, no royalty in the first year, 2% royalty in the second year with a minimum payment of £10,000, 3.5% in the third year with a minimum payment of £20,000, and 5% in the fourth and subsequent years with a minimum payment of £30,000. As parts produced in Japan became available, these could be incorporated into the Austin vehicles, subject to Austin’s approval. Conversely, Nissan had the right to use parts of Austin design in its other products, once again subject to Austin’s approval. The signing of the agreement and its potential benefit were reported in the British press. The Times reported that during the next seven years under the agreement Austin business with Japan was likely to be increased tenfold. The agreement also attracted official approba- tion. The Board of Trade wrote to the Austin Motor Export Corporation: ‘This agreement could substantially increase your Corporation’s exports to the Japanese market and I should like you to know of the Board of Trade’s interest and its hopes that the agreement will prove of considerable advantage to this country and Japan.’ Fears of Japanese competition were expressed when the bill for the ratification of the Peace Treaty was read in the House of Commons on 27 November 1951, and a contemporary report in The Times said the President of the Board of Trade was ‘very frank about the difficulties facing British industry from the threat of great and growing Japanese competition’. Britain opposed Japan’s entry to the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT) in the early 1950s for the same reason. Yet no objections seem to have been raised against the Austin-Nissan agreement, even though it provided for the cars to be ultimately manufactured completely in Japan. Perhaps this was because British businessmen who had learnt to fear Japan as a competitor in pre-war days rated her chances of recovery low and even as late as the middle 1950s thought little of her prospects. Japan’s post-war export potential was regarded by many as being limited to labour-intensive speciality goods, artistic wares, fishing tackle, binoculars, cameras and

103 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI so on. No one predicted the triumphs that would come later in steel, shipbuilding, electronics, man-made fibres and motor vehicles. It seems that the prospect of increased Japanese competition in the motor vehicle industry as a consequence of this and other licensing agreements was not considered, despite the predictions of the 1930s and 1940s. In any case, if Austin had not entered into an agreement with Nissan, it is probable that another firm would have done so. In addition to the four licensing agreements in the motor vehicle indus- try which were concluded between Japanese and overseas firms in the early 1950s – Nissan and Austin (UK), Isuzu and Rootes (UK), Hino and Renault (France), and Mitsubishi and Willys Overland (USA) – there were a further seven proposals that did not come to fruition. Moreover, when industry as a whole is considered, 3,200 licensing agreements were concluded between Japanese licensees and foreign licensors in the period from 1950 to 1964. The agreement and subsequent events were reported in the Austin Motor Export Corporation Limited’s monthly magazine Worldwide. A group photograph of the signatories appeared in January 1953, while the May 1953 issue devoted several pages to the work of Austin Production Engineers Herbert Bailey and Brian Bayliss, who were seconded to Japan to supervise the assembly of the first vehicles. In July 1954, the completion of the Nisshin Automobile Company’s new showroom in Tokyo was reported, and in March 1955 the change over from production of the Austin Somerset to the Austin Cambridge. The July 1955 issue featured Austin’s display at the Tokyo Motor Show, while in June 1956 the visit of Herbert Morrison MP to the Nissan factory as part of his tour of the Far East was shown. Thus while the agreement is not recorded in the Austin minute book there does not seem to have been any desire on the part of Austin to conceal the agreement. Components manufactured in Japan were progressively substituted for ones imported from Austin. In private correspondence, Dick Williams, the Austin Export Sales Representative for the Far East 1953–9, described the finished complete car as ‘far superior to the original Longbridge build’. A total of 20,855 vehicles were produced under the licensing agreement between 1953 and 1959. According to one account, Nissan engineers realized after the tie-up ended that they had not acquired any technology from Austin that was unavailable through indirect methods – copying from foreign firms, or studying literature that was publicly available. The engine design licensed from Austin stood Nissan in good stead, however. Nissan employed an American engineer called Donald Stone who suggested changes to the Austin design, initially reducing the size and power output so the engine could be used in a smaller car.

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Between 1955 and 1972 Nissan powered part of its range with almost two million B-series-derived engines in four sizes. Kume Yutaka, who was responsible for the process of substituting Japanese parts in the construction of the Austins, subsequently became chairman of Nissan, and his evaluation of Austin’s contribution to Nissan’s development is positive. According to Kume, Nissan’s former link with Austin was a factor in the decision to locate Nissan’s European plant in Britain. ‘At the back of our minds was the fact that Britain was the country where Austin was and it had taught us how to make cars in the first place. I know that we had that in our hearts.’

DATSUN AND NISSAN IN BRITAIN Datsun cars were first exhibited in Britain at the London Motor Show of 1968. At that time, the post-war licensing agreement between Austin and Nissan was reported in the specialist press. The Autocar emphasized the benefits of the licensing agreement for Nissan. ‘Datsun engineers learnt a lot about car manufacture from the British quality- control engineers sent to vet the products and Japanese engineers studied the Longbridge factories closely.’ By the mid-1970s the UK had become Nissan’s largest export market in Europe. Indeed, by 1975, imports of Japanese cars had come to occupy a 9% share of the UK car market, and the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) was demanding controls on car imports from outside the European Community. The ‘big push’ predicted in 1934 had finally come to pass, and Japanese car manufacturers were obliged to consider manufacture in their overseas markets to counter demands for protec- tion by local manufacturers. When an agreement was reached between Nissan and the British government in February 1984, The Engineer commented as follows:

In the 30 years since BMC set up mass manufacture of cars for Nissan in Japan, that company has shown itself quite capable of looking after itself. By handing it anything up to £100 million in grants, Britain is further exposing the position of BL whose powers to invest new capital are puny in comparison with its rivals. When BL is denied access to gov- ernment support by privatization, Nissan is quite likely to repay the favour of the Fifties and help itself to total control of the remnants of car-making in Britain.

The formal opening ceremony of the Nissan factory took place on 8 September 1986. This could have been an occasion to remember the role of Austin in Nissan’s development, particularly as the then president of Nissan, present at the ceremony, was Kume Yutaka.

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There seems to have been no mention of the link between Austin and Nissan at the opening ceremony though the history of links between Japan and the north east of England was evoked, and the Sunderland and Washington Times noted that ‘Nissan has had a long connection with the British motor industry, first signing a production licensing agreement with the Austin Motor Company in 1952’. The opening of the Nissan factory was a direct challenge to other car manufactur- ers in Britain, in particular Austin Rover. The Today programme on Radio 4 commented: ‘Last year Austin Rover produced 475,000 cars with a workforce of 38,000. Nissan plan to build 100,000 with only 2,500’. In this context it was perhaps not expedient to mention the role of Austin in Nissan’s development.

106 11

Nissan’s Investment in Britain: History of a Negotiation 1980–84

ROBIN MOUNTFIELD

Mrs Thatcher and Ishihara Takashi, then chairman of Nissan, at the opening of the Nissan plant in Sunderland in 1986

INTRODUCTION On 29 January 1981, an oral statement in the House of Commons announced Nissan’s intention, warmly welcomed by the Government, to undertake a feasibility study on a car assembly plant in the UK. The proposed plant would have capacity rising to 200,000 cars a year at 80% local content. It was a statement I had had a great deal to do with, and I was in the Officials’ Box behind the Speaker’s chair to hear it. As I emerged from the cramped cupboard with its uncomfortable green leather bench, Mrs Thatcher was leaving the Chamber. She gripped my elbow, and said in a low and vibrant tone ‘That went splendidly.’ I can feel now, as I felt then, the hairs rise on the back of my neck. The previous day, another statement had been made on which I had pleased her less: the decision she had hated to make, to give British Leyland its ‘final billion’ of state support. But that is another story. 107 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

The negotiations that followed the January 1981 statement went on for over three more years before the deal was done. But that statement was important for several reasons. It was only a feasibility study; yet in practice given the numbers – 200,000 cars a year, 80% local content – it engaged Nissan’s reputation to an extent the company probably did not realize at that time. How did this all come about? This account does not set out to be a rounded history; it is a per- sonal memoir from just one perspective. In case it is not obvious from what follows, I and my colleagues formed a huge respect for Nissan, and a curious affectionate camaraderie with the people with whom we wrangled for over three years.

THE EARLY HISTORY It was not until the1970s that thoughts began to turn to Nissan invest- ment in Europe. This is hardly surprising. The Japanese car industry was undergoing a period of dynamic domestic growth. The UK car industry was still large – in 1972 the UK industry produced its peak output of 1.8 million cars a year, from which it fell within ten years to under half that level. UK interest in Japanese inward investment was only just beginning to stir. In 1972, there was serious discussion within the Department of Trade and Industry (DTI) about attracting Japanese investment to the UK. There were rumours that Nissan wanted to establish a car and truck assembly plant in Eire or Belgium. A paper to DTI Ministers in January 1971 said that the Japanese generally wanted to get an EEC base for exporting to EEC countries, but were deterred by cultural barriers. If Nissan were to build such a plant, it would be better to have it here, exporting to other EEC countries, rather than see it established elsewhere and exporting to the UK. But the paper acknowledged that labour relations in the UK might deter Japanese companies, especially in the motor industry. Moreover, there was likely to be a strong reaction from UK manufacturers, trade unions and the public at large, and strong criticism if it were known that the government had gone out of its way to attract such investment. Nothing came of these discussions. As late as 1977, Nissan dismissed the possibility of siting a plant in the UK. A DTI official met Mr Okuma, an Executive Vice-President of Nissan who later was closely involved in the UK project, at dinner in Tokyo. Okuma said that even if the Japanese car sales in the EEC became sufficient to justify local manufacture, the appalling record of the UK in car assembly made it unlikely that any plant would be created there.

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1980 By 1980, the UK was becoming more interested in the potential of inward investment from Japan. Already investments had been made in the electronics area, with varying degrees of success. Greatly impressed by the Japanese economic miracle, UK policy-makers looked at Japanese investment as a source of jobs, a stimulus to innovation, and an example of modern production techniques and labour practices that might help to break the industrial relations deadlock of that period. About this time, in early 1980, the idea of an investment by Nissan in the UK appears to have emerged in three separate places – Datsun UK, the Department of Industry (DoI) (successor to the DTI), and Nissan itself. Datsun UK was owned by Octav Botnar, a Central European immi- grant who had made himself very rich from his exclusive franchise for selling Nissan cars in the UK. (Botnar himself – a philanthropist who later fled to Switzerland to escape tax evasion litigation – was an uneasy interlocutor for the DoI, and an uneasy partner for Nissan who later terminated the exclusive arrangement with him.) Botnar made an approach to the DoI through an intermediary, reporting an alleged interest by Nissan in buying a British Leyland plant in Belgium, Seneffe, which BL wanted to close. The DoI’s Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph, was shown a letter in February 1980 from Okuma, which said that ‘one of the key issues you [the intermediary] raised was whether our company is prepared to study the possibility to extend, if requested, some kind of assistance to help restore the Austin-Morris Ltd of British Leyland . . . our company is most willing to conduct such a study’. Nothing came immediately of this approach. However, DoI’s inward investment division thought it was worth pursuing and arranged for one of its staff to call on Nissan in the course of a routine visit to Tokyo. He expected to be seen at junior level by Nissan, but was whisked into the presence of Okuma, and given what he inter- preted as red carpet treatment. After probing possible objections and difficulties, Okuma mentioned positive points in favour of a UK investment – North Sea oil, a big market, a strong component sector, and a big EEC member capable of resisting opposition. Okuma said the UK ‘was a highly suitable location for Nissan to set up manufac- ture within the EEC’. He asked about investment incentives, and said that Nissan might want to send a small team to the UK. In the event, Okuma himself came to London in July 1980 and opened discussions with Ministers and senior officials. This was actively pursued by the DoI, and one of DoI’s Deputy Secretaries visited Tokyo and persuaded

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Nissan to undertake a feasibility study about a plant with an eventual capacity of 200,000 cars a year with 80% local content. In retrospect the visit represented a considerable coup: by persuading Nissan to put figures on what they had in mind, he established a base from which the DoI subsequently was able to negotiate for a more favourable deal than perhaps Nissan intended to commit their public credit to. But did these approaches – by Botnar or by the DoI – cause Nissan’s interest in investment in the UK, or did they merely coincide with an existing interest within Nissan? I think the latter is the most likely explanation. Each of the three parties – Datsun UK, the DoI and Nissan – had its own reasons for being interested in a possible invest- ment in the UK. Datsun UK was profitable, but constrained by growing pressures from the vehicle industry in the UK (as in other EEC countries) to limit Japanese imports. There was, since 1977, a ‘voluntary restraint arrangement’ (VRA), negotiated between the trade associations in the UK and Japan, effectively limiting direct imports to 11% of the UK market. From the British Government’s point of view, the VRA approach avoided offending GATT rules; the Japanese government, like its own industry, no doubt reluctantly accepted that ‘voluntary’ restraint pre-empted the risk of more Draconian official measures (the French effectively limited Japanese cars to 3% at the time). So Datsun UK saw investment within the EEC as a way of breaking the VRA’s limitation on its growth. For the DoI, Japanese investment looked a desirable prize. In the early 1970s, there had been less clarity about this. Japanese cars were still seen at that time as cheap and cheerful. Japan itself was still con- solidating its domestic strength; and the scale of its industrial miracle had not yet become fully clear in the UK. Moreover there was still fear, especially by the politicians, of opposition to investment by a country still reviled by some for its war-time record. This fear was still discussed in 1980, but in practice it was never a significant factor. I recall one or two enraged ex-colonels objecting, but in general the attitude of the British public, and the unions, was at worst neutral and more usually favourable. Indeed the strongest opposition came not from the public but from within the UK industry, especially from Ford and Lucas. But the DoI saw a potential stimulus to the UK industry by demonstration of modern production techniques; and jobs flowing from import substitution and from exports, both in the assembly plant itself and the component industry. By 1980, imports – mainly from Japan, the EEC and EFTA – were already well over 50% of the UK market. For Nissan, the case for investment in the UK was similar to the case seen by Datsun UK. But there was no unanimity within Nissan. There

110 NISSAN’S INVESTMENT IN BRITAIN were three main factors working against the UK. The first was a view, championed by Nissan’s chairman Mr Kawamata, that the company’s investment resources should be concentrated on production within Japan. Against this was a faction within the company, championed by Ishihara Takashi (who had succeeded Kawamata as President), in favour of overseas investment: but its main focus was the USA. The third factor was scepticism about the UK economy, and especially its labour relations – as Okuma’s remarks in 1977 indicated. Indeed, shortly before the January 1981 statement, an aide to Okuma told me that many in Japanese business circles thought Nissan had ‘gone crazy’ about overseas activities; and that a body of opinion within the company was opposed to the UK venture, with particular reference to ‘the English disease’, but that Ishihara and Okuma were personally committed.

THE COURSE OF THE NEGOTIATIONS 1981 Despite these doubts, Nissan began serious work on the feasibility study soon after the January 1981 statement. The feasibility team was headed by Kawai Isamu, a short, thick-set man who seemed initially an inflexible negotiator. But we all came to respect his straightfor- wardness and to admire his willingness to take us at our word when he believed us to be at the limit of our negotiating freedom. The feasi- bility study team came to London in March, in April and in May, vis- iting suppliers of components and plant, construction companies, the TUC and others, and looking at possible sites. By July, they were back to begin substantive talks with the DoI. It was clear Nissan were trying to move away from the project description in the initial announcement; they proposed an initial build-up stage in which, to develop their market, Nissan would be allowed an extra 100,000 cars a year for two years outside the VRA, followed by a period of kit assembly with only 30% local content. We replied very negatively, but offered to visit Japan to pursue discussions. The offer of a visit was well received; and I headed a team to visit Tokyo in September 1981. In addition to lengthy discussions on local content etc., Nissan laid out the red carpet, with visits to three of their plants and to three major component suppliers, all intended to demon- strate the main features of their manufacturing process, notably the short supply lines for components. However, when Nissan returned to London in November 1981 with a project plan, many aspects of it fell short of our understanding of the January statement. The talks were ‘strained and difficult’, and ended ‘at stalemate’.

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1982 Nevertheless, talks resumed in Tokyo in January 1982, and appeared then to be going well. Press reports from Tokyo recorded Ishihara as having said that the feasibility study showed the project in a favourable light, and Nissan returned to London the following month. Again things went well, with some movement on the issue of timing. By this time we were discussing an actual text of what was formally called a Memorandum of Understanding, but informally referred to as a ‘gentlemen’s agreement’ – a recognition by both sides that much of what was being discussed could not be legally binding. Nissan sought for Selective Financial Assistance (SFA), in return for which some con- ditions could be imposed. But some of these conditions were not legally enforceable. One factor pointing to a more informal approach was the ostensibly ‘voluntary’ nature of the VRA, which was one of the main drivers of the investment. For its part, Nissan – conscious perhaps of residual post-war hostility – wanted to be sure the project would be ‘welcome’ in the UK, and needed an explicit agreement with the government to demonstrate this. This formed part of the government’s bargaining power in the negotiation, along with SFA and the VRA itself. The eventual documentation consisted in part of legally binding conditions for the SFA, and the more declaratory pro- visions of the Memorandum of Understanding on the wide range of ‘best endeavours’ issues that for both sides formed the essential basis of the project. But instead of progressing smoothly to a conclusion, the talks now appeared to hit the buffers. Okuma returned to London in July 1982, to report what amounted to an indefinite postponement of a decision. The main reason given was the world economic recession which had forced a re-assessment: changes in the world economy and car market meant that ‘a more cautious view was now being expressed by some within the Nissan management team in relation to the enormous investment requirement for the UK project’. Okuma mentioned the second oil crisis of 1979 and the Iranian revolution, which meant that for three consecutive years (1980, 1981 and 1982) world demand for cars had fallen. Much was also made of the need, in these circum- stances, to protect Nissan’s stake in the US market by concentrating available investment resources there.

1983 Desultory talks continued after this, to keep the project alive. However, by early 1983 it seemed the mood might have changed and Nissan were willing to talk more openly about volumes, timing and local content levels. We ourselves were more prepared to be flexible on timing, though not on local content. But messages from Tokyo

112 NISSAN’S INVESTMENT IN BRITAIN indicated that there was still a battle going on within Nissan, and Kawamata’s doubts had not been resolved. By June, it appeared that Kawamata had been sufficiently galvanized to try to bring things to a conclusion: informal indications from Nissan suggested that this was in part because the Japanese Prime Minister, having been approached by Mrs Thatcher at a G7 summit, appeared to be putting pressure on Nissan; and partly because Kawamata – a fervent fan of Mrs Thatcher – was impressed by her substantial victory in the 1983 general election. The result, presented at talks in London in early July 1983, was the tabling of two alternative plans. Plan A – Kawamata’s plan – was for a ‘pilot plant’ with low local content, and only a contingent decision thereafter to proceed to a bigger plant at 70% local content. Plan B – Ishihara’s plan – was for a full-scale project, but starting below 60% and reaching only 70%, and with 35% SFA compared with the 10% we had offered. In response to this Hobson’s Choice, we tried to secure the best bits of both. We indicated a willingness to accept the concept of a ‘pilot plant’ (essentially kit assembly), but only on the basis that its output, whose local content would be well below 60%, would count as imports for the purposes of the VRA. While we would be less insis- tent on the 200,000 units originally intended for the eventual size of the full project (if it went ahead), the 60%/80% formula would be sacrosanct. We proposed keeping the original idea of 200,000 units alive by defining the full project as ‘Phase 2’ with a stated output of 100,000 units a year, but with a possible further Phase 3 at 200,000 units. And SFA would not be paid on the pilot plant unless the full project (Phase 2) went ahead. Kawamata responded badly to this; he wrote what was described as a ‘shirty’ letter to the Prime Minister. She replied that only ‘presenta- tional’changes had been made to Kawamata’s Plan A to make it appear attractive in the UK – returning to an old theme, that Nissan had always said they would only proceed if they had a clear welcome in the UK. Talks resumed in Tokyo in late July 1983. Kawamata was still unhappy: he wanted there to be no implication that Nissan would be morally bound to proceed to Phase 2 if Phase 1 went badly. Halfway through these talks, I was packed off to an evening at the Kabuki theatre with Lord Marsh (who had been retained as an adviser to Nissan), while a critical late-night internal meeting took place between Kawamata and Kawai, and the following morning with Ishihara. From this, the deal emerged – not in every detail, but in its essentials. The decision whether to move from Phase 1 to Phase 2 would be ‘for Nissan alone on their commercial judgment’. There would be no mention of a Phase 3 of 200,000 units, though vaguer

113 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI mention might be made of possible further expansion. 80% local content would be reached at the end of Phase 2, subject only to force majeure. SFA would be at 10% on the whole project, to be paid only if they proceeded to Phase 2. It now looked as if both parties were down to the small print. Talks resumed in September in London, focusing on the text of a short Heads of Agreement, a fuller Memorandum of Understanding, and contractual offer letters for SFA and Regional Development Grants (RDGs). There were still more talks in Tokyo in November on fine details. But a further hurdle now appeared on the track. Shioji, the head of Nissan’s internal labour union and a long-standing ally of Kawamata from the 1960s, had been known to be resistant to the UK project, partly to protect Japanese jobs. It was understood that Shioji would need to accept the deal; but since Kawamata had accepted it, this was assumed to be a formality. It was not. Getting Shioji to withdraw his objections delayed the announcement from the time of the effective deal in July 1983 until February 1984. Possible dates were fixed and re-fixed repeatedly as Nissan’s talks dragged on. In October, the British Embassy in Tokyo asked Nissan ‘if we could regard the present situ- ation as falling within the normal bounds of Japanese consensus- making. They said it was quite exceptional’, and linked to a power struggle between Ishihara and Shioji about the management of the company and its union relations, not directly about the UK project. Kawamata himself was sufficiently embarrassed to write to the Prime Minister to confirm that the negotiations with the Government were concluded and that the delay was not part of a Japanese ploy.

1984 Eventually Shioji withdrew his opposition. The statement of final agreement, and the signing of the documentation, took place on 1 February 1984 – three years after the 1981 statement about a feasibil- ity study and four years after messages first began to pass between Nissan and the Government about a possible investment. The agreement provided for a pilot plant to start production in 1986 at 24,000 cars a year from imported kits, treated as imports within the VRA; after that, Nissan were to decide no later than 1987 whether to proceed to Phase 2. Phase 2, if it went ahead, would be for 100,000 units a year, beginning in 1990 at a lower output but at 60% local content, and reaching full production in 1991 at 80%. Thereafter, Nissan would decide ‘solely on the basis of its commercial judgment’ whether to go for ‘a substantial further expansion’. The Government would provide RDGs (a statutory entitlement) together with SFA of £35 million to be paid if Nissan proceeded to Phase 2, equivalent to

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10% of the combined costs of Phases 1 and 2. The Government also promised its good offices in all respects, including ensuring that the cars from Phase 2 would be treated as UK production (a promise to fight Nissan’s battle within the EEC against any opposition to exports of these cars from the UK). An R and D centre in the UK was promised. The Bank of England would use its good offices if requested to assist in a leasing package as part of the financing. In Tokyo, Kawamata himself said that if all went well, further expansion after Phase 2 could reach 200,000 units. At this point, no final choice of site had been made. It was import- ant for the Government, to avoid antagonizing any of the UK’s Development Areas, to leave this choice to Nissan provided the site was in a Development or Special Development Area (the level of RDGs varying as between the two). Nissan by this time had narrowed the choice to Washington in County Durham or Shotton on the North Wales/Merseyside boundary. The Regional Development Agencies and other regional and local bodies played a constructive part, and eventually Nissan settled on the Washington site; and the unions accepted single-union recognition.

NISSAN’S INTERNAL DEBATE It had been an agonizingly protracted negotiation – mainly because of the titanic struggle within Nissan itself between Kawamata and Ishihara, and the parties which each had built around them and their approaches to the project. Kawamata, born in 1905, was revered as the man who had saved the company in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, there was some feeling in the company that he had had his day (it was already a decade since he had moved up from the post of President, or chief executive, to the more honorific though still powerful Chairmanship). He had a repu- tation as a determined, even obstinate, man happy to impose his will even in small matters. It was said he personally chose the names of several Nissan cars, including the Cedric (named after the hero of Little Lord Fauntleroy), the Laurel (after Laurel and Hardy), and the Gloria (after Gloria Swanson): his resistance to Western influences was clearly not unrelenting. Ishihara Takashi was always associated with Nissan’s overseas expan- sion. Well over six feet tall, he was a former rugby player. Born in 1912, Ishihara was a lawyer by training, and joined Nissan in 1937. Initially, he specialized in finance, and helped to sort the company out in the post-war period. From 1960, he headed Nissan’s US subsidiary – cannily, he ran it from Tokyo in order to maintain a power base at head office. He made a major success of the US, and, thereafter, it was

115 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI in the overseas markets that he established his reputation for greater risk appetite than the more cautious Japanese norm. It was plain to us from an early stage that there was little love lost between these two, though each clearly had to have regard to the other’s views. It was also clear that the company was to some extent split between two parties who allied themselves with one or other of the two great men. At one stage, in March 1983, the usual negotiat- ing team (all Ishihara’s men) was augmented by an extra member who was described to us as ‘Kawamata’s representative’. Some members of the team became so enthusiastic about the project that they were visibly crestfallen when obstacles or delays arose from their own side, and in one case one of them took the opportunity of a car journey to whisper, in broken English, his advice on how we might break the negotiating deadlock by building on the concept of the pilot plant. It was the same man who, at an earlier point of difficulty, had taken me aside – having assured himself that there was no one else in sight or in earshot – and said with evident emotion that the feasibility team were strongly in favour of the UK project; he went on to give shrewd tac- tical advice. In a sense the final hurdle – Shioji’s objections – was also a reflection of the split within the company: his long-standing alliance with Kawamata may well have been the origin of his hostility to the UK project. On the other hand, Kawamata’s embarrassment at the final delay reinforces the view that Shioji was fighting another battle, against Ishihara, for influence within the company. Either way, it hardly con- forms to the stereotype of the consensual Japanese company. But although the negotiation was immensely slow because of this internal struggle, it had one significant benefit: once the deal was finally struck the company was ready and able to move with extraor- dinary speed to implement its plans.

THE VRA Of those factors pushing Nissan towards the UK investment, the main one was the existence of the VRA and similar constraints elsewhere in the EEC. The principal driver of Japanese business at that time was volume rather than return on capital, and an increased share of the large EEC market was a highly desirable prize. No doubt Nissan would have preferred to feed that increased market share from Japanese pro- duction (though in the event, the UK plant has proved at least as pro- ductive as the Japanese plants). But that option was firmly closed, and looked as if it would stay closed indefinitely. In open market theory and GATT theology, the VRA was hardly less objectionable than formal quotas or tariff barriers; and it would be unthinkable today. But

116 NISSAN’S INVESTMENT IN BRITAIN in the circumstances of a quarter of a century ago, the plant would not have been built without the VRA.

OTHER FACTORS FAVOURING A UK LOCATION Another factor favouring the UK was language (though language had not prevented Nissan’s investment in Motor Iberica in Spain and col- laboration with Alfa Romeo in Italy and VW in Germany). There was also perhaps a degree of emotional sympathy for the UK. I recall paying a courtesy call on the Chairman of Mazda in Hiroshima during our September 1981 visit. The Chairman, a man over eighty, had just visited Britain and had met Mrs Thatcher whom he admired enor- mously. How was it, he asked, that anyone could vote against her? I summoned all the gravitas available to a bearded Under-Secretary in his early forties, and referred to the shared belief of our two great countries in the virtues of democracy. The Chairman gazed at me through his pebble glasses for many seconds, and then said, with evident sincerity, that ‘Japanese of my generation look back with great nostalgia to the days of the alliance’. He meant the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, when Vickers still built battleships for the Japanese Navy to use against the Russian fleet. Within Nissan, people several times mentioned the company’s sense of debt to Britain for the fact that its post-war reconstruction had been based on an Austin model built under licence. The Thatcher factor was also significant. Although in 1980–81 this was perhaps not as strong a factor as it later became, I must objectively recall that frequent reference was made to the veneration in which she was held and her effectiveness in converting the hostile manufacturing environment Nissan had observed in the 1970s into a more favourable one in the 1980s. Kawamata conducted a private correspondence with her, initially unknown to the Nissan negotiating team, following a courtesy meeting while she was in Tokyo in September 1982. This (about leasing) was not significant in its substance, but the link she established was clearly flattering to him and may have helped to convert him to a more positive approach. Financial support was also a factor – though alternative sites in the EEC would almost certainly have been as generously supported. Some have commented in recent years that Nissan was ‘bribed’ to come to the UK, unlike Toyota and Honda who both subsequently came with no central Government financial support. But Nissan got no more generous support than another company, British or foreign, would have received for establishing a similar plant in a Special Development Area. The negotiation was certainly quite tough on both sides on the level of support; but at no point did it appear to be a make-or-break

117 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI issue. Indeed, we were prepared to go to 12% SFA instead of the 10% at which we actually settled. Only at one point were we seriously con- cerned: changes in the RDG regime were planned affecting both the total level of grant and the tax treatment, and alterations were made to allow Nissan, and any other company in a similar position, to be pro- tected from the adverse consequences. In the event, SFA and RDGs combined amounted to some £135 million.

FACTORS WORKING AGAINST THE UK AS LOCATION But there were also factors working against a UK location. The most important was concern about Britain’s labour relations and productiv- ity climate. This had been seen in the 1970s as ruling out a UK site for any investment. This was hardly surprising: the UK-owned industry was progressively destroyed in the 1970s by two related things – the industrial relations chaos and attendant low productivity and poor quality, and the low quality and unreliable supply of UK components. The Conservative Government’s legislation to roll back the power of the trade unions was at an early stage; British Leyland was fighting the final stages of its battles against ‘Red Robbo’, the militant shop steward who led the wild-cat strikes in the company in the 1970s and early 1980s; and though the components sector was working hard to over- come its weakness it still had a long way to go. Inter-union battles in particular were a concern from the start – hence the company’s deter- mination, eventually successful though against initial TUC advice, to have a single-union recognition agreement. (On productivity, it should be recalled that, even if productivity was low, the UK was a cheap labour source: the yen was then at 530 to the pound, and even at that level Nissan told us UK wages were significantly lower than Japan’s.) In the event, the Washington plant proved to be Europe’s most productive plant, and one of Nissan’s own best. Another important adverse factor was competition for Nissan’s investment resources, not only within Japan but also in the USA. The postponement of the negotiation in 1982, because of the world eco- nomic recession, highlighted the priority that the USA had over any European adventure if investment resources were strained and market risks high. Finally, the demands we made over local content were a major difficulty for Nissan. They were of crucial importance for us to ensure benefit for the component and supplier industries, to ensure access to EEC markets, and for wider economic benefit. But they were hardly less significant for Nissan. As they perceived it, the higher we drove the required percentage, the bigger the economic penalty and the risk to quality and design integrity. They tried not only to reduce the

118 NISSAN’S INVESTMENT IN BRITAIN percentages or the dates by which certain levels would be reached, but also to soften the definitions (for example to have the post-tax profit margins treated as UK content – a point we eventually conceded in the final agreement). But our insistence on high levels (higher than was sought in the USA, for example) had a double benefit for the UK, which in the long term was possibly one of the greatest benefits of the whole project: in order to tolerate very high local content, Nissan had to satisfy itself of the technical quality and production reliability of UK components. To do so, they established close and demanding links with UK suppliers, sometimes requiring joint ventures with Nissan’s established Japanese suppliers, and in some cases with plants established close to the Nissan site to assure continuity of delivery. The discipline imposed on the UK components sector created, in my judgment, a rare virtuous circle: in order to meet Nissan’s requirements, the sup- pliers had to be efficient, and having become efficient at last they were able to meet the needs of the other UK assemblers (Ford, General Motors and Peugeot) who would otherwise probably have decamped. It is also important that, having established the 80% requirement in the case of Nissan, we were able to impose it also on Toyota, Honda and several smaller commercial vehicles projects. One other aspect of local content is worth mentioning. For legal reasons, local content requirements had to be expressed in terms of EEC content. It was always clear to Nissan that we expected this to be overwhelmingly UK content. At the end of the negotiation, Kawai and I discussed this and he agreed that the 80% would be overwhelm- ingly UK content; we literally shook hands on this ‘gentlemen’s agree- ment’. For many years, I believe, Nissan observed this as strictly as if it had been a binding legal requirement.

THE NEGOTIATING TEAMS The negotiation was a triumph for the DTI: for three years it had been on a knife-edge and only patience and persistence had brought it to a successful conclusion. A key factor in this was the high quality of the UK negotiating team, together with the contribution from the out- standing Tokyo Embassy.1 For myself, I learned many lessons from this long negotiation. Perhaps the most important was that to succeed, as I believe we did, in securing something of major advantage there has to be a clear negotiating brief and a genuine conviction on the part of the nego- tiators that beyond a certain point the negotiation should be aband- oned: ‘thus far and no further’. In our case, local content was the key issue, and we stuck to it through thick and thin. I believe the negoti- ation would indeed have been abandoned if that had not been

119 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI secured; the negotiating team would certainly have advised that, and I think it would have been endorsed by Ministers. Without that degree of determination, which conveyed itself to the company, I am sure that the other side would have detected wobble and taken full advantage of it. Over the long course of the negotiation, a considerable camaraderie grew up between the two teams. We became conscious that – as is natural in such situations – they had collectively become enthusiasts for the project. That did not compromise their loyalty to their company or their objectivity, but it formed an intriguing part of the dynamics of the negotiation.

THE FINAL BALANCE SHEET I cannot claim that when we started in 1980 we had much idea of the potential benefit of a Nissan investment. Looking back with the per- spective of nearly a quarter century and a degree of personal bias on my part, I think it was of major industrial significance. First, it secured a substantial volume of UK car assembly, drawing on a higher local content than some of the established foreign-owned car assemblers, and permitted a substantial level of exports and import substitution. Even after the pilot phase, it was not a foregone conclu- sion that Nissan would proceed to full production of 100,000. Yet the plant was developed to make 330,000 vehicles a year. Second, it secured high-value employment in the depressed area of the North-East, which has had continuing cause to acknowledge the benefits to the region. Though extremely high productivity means the numbers employed in the plant are smaller than in longer established assembly plants of comparable size, the associated component suppli- ers, many of them close to the plant, enhanced the benefit. Third, Nissan’s insistence on quality and reliability from suppliers were the primary influence in restoring the competence of the UK components sector. That in turn attracted Toyota, increased commit- ment by Honda, and secured for a time the continued UK operations of Ford and GM (though recently much reduced so far as final car assembly is concerned). Through this multiplier effect, the investment was influential in restoring UK vehicle assembly towards the 2 million mark which was approaching in 1972 before falling back to half that level by the early 1980s. Fourth, the Nissan operations set a gold standard for productivity, labour relations and product reliability, influencing not only the rest of the UK vehicles industry but a wider spread of engineering and assem- bly industry. A generalization like that is hard to prove, but I have little doubt of its truth.

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The green-field plants of the 1960s – Ford at Halewood, Vauxhall at Ellesmere Port, Standard at Speke, Rootes at Linwood, Leyland at Bathgate – all went sour (though Halewood and Ellesmere Port have each now undergone a welcome transformation). I have often reflected since 1984 why it is that Nissan, and similarly Toyota and Honda, have each from the start made a success of their green-field operations in the UK, while those of the 1960s did not. There are several reasons – weakened union militancy; better supply chains; great skill on the part of UK managers. But the successful transplant and adaptation of Japanese values into the UK industrial context remains to me a pleasing mystery.

121 12

Honda So¯ichiro¯ (1906–1991) and Honda Motors in Britain1

HUGH CORTAZZI

Honda So¯ichiro¯

INTRODUCTION Honda So¯ichiro¯ was an exceptionally talented engineer and entre- preneur. He was also an eccentric. Together with his close associate Fujisawa Takeo, without whose business acumen the enterprise could not have succeeded, he founded what became Honda Motor Company Ltd. For Honda Motors, Britain became the key to expan- sion in Europe. Honda’s personal association with Britain began as a spectator of motor cycle racing on the Isle of Man.

EARLY CAREER Honda So¯ichiro¯, who was born in a village in Shizuoka in central Japan, was the eldest of nine children, born to Honda Giichi, a black- smith. From a very early age he was fascinated by machines and, as soon as he had finished his compulsory eight years of school, he started in 1922 as an apprentice in Tokyo at Art Sho¯kai (Art Automobile Service Station), which despite its grandiose name was an auto repair shop. His first job at the firm was looking after the owner’s child, but

122 HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO¯ (1906–1991) after some six months he was able to begin his apprenticeship proper by working in the garage. The garage was, however, destroyed in the devastating Kanto¯ earthquake of 1923 and all but Honda and one other apprentice returned to their homes. The proprietor Sakakibara Yu¯zo¯, who was a car racing enthusiast, re-established the business and encouraged So¯ichiro¯ to use his free time to build a racing car. He managed to get hold of an old aircraft engine and made all the rest of the car himself, including the components and wooden wheel spokes. The car was fast and Honda won a number of races. After working in Tokyo for six years, Honda was given permission to open a branch office of the firm at Hamamatsu where he contin- ued to devote his energies to building racing cars. This presented him with many mechanical and engineering problems which he tackled with much ingenuity. He was anxious to test his design of a racing car and had the opportunity of doing so at a race in Tokyo in July 1936. He was in front and nearing the finishing line when he had a serious crash which left him with permanent scars to his face. In 1937, Honda launched out on his own and set up To¯kai Seiki Heavy Industry to manufacture piston rings, but although he tried very hard he could not achieve the right quality and feared that his enterprise would fail. Hitherto, he had been contemptuous about book learning, but he now realized the need for expert help. He was introduced to Professor Tashiro Takashi of the Hamamatsu Tech- nology High School who diagnosed that Honda’s piston rings were failing because they did not contain enough silicone. Honda realized that he needed to study technology and he became a pupil of Tashiro although both were much the same age. Following the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, To¯kai Seiki’s business prospered and they began to supply piston rings to Toyota Motors. They also made parts for the Japanese navy and for the Nakajima Aircraft Company. Honda developed machinery to make piston rings and machine tools to produce aircraft propellers. The Honda factory, which was near the Hamamatsu airbase, was bombed by American aircraft. It was then destroyed in a devastating earthquake in January 1945. Honda sold the remaining stock in To¯kai Seiki to Toyota and decided to take a year off. He bought a drum of medical alcohol from which he made his own whisky and spent the next months partying with his friends and playing the shakuhachi.

HONDA MOTOR COMPANY Honda So¯ichiro was still only thirty-nine in 1945. Petrol was in very short supply in post-war Japan. So he decided to make turpentine oil to mix with petrol and for this purpose bought a pine forest. But he

123 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI could not forget his old love of machines and, in October 1946, he established in Hamamatsu the Honda Technical Research Institute which in 1948 became the Honda Motor Company. The company’s first project was to recycle small engines which the Japanese army had used for communication purposes. The engines, which had been bought cheaply, were attached to bicycles and sold at a high profit. When supplies of war surplus engines ran out Honda began to make his own engines and as there was very little public transport in Japan at the time there was a significant demand for motor-powered bicycles. Honda needed a financial backer. In August 1949 he was introduced by a mutual friend to Fujisawa Takeo who was four years younger and had business experience. They immediately liked one another and agreed to work together as a team combining Honda’s technical exper- tise with Fujisawa’s business acumen. They seemed to understand by some kind of empathy what the other was thinking and rarely needed to thrash out their decisions by argument. Already in 1947, Honda had been joined by a brilliant young engineer Kawashima Kiyoshi, another ‘speed demon’ who wanted to design a high performance engine and was later to become President of Honda Motors. Honda’s first prototype motorcycle was completed in August 1949. The company then had only twenty employees. They decided to call the motorcycle, which was powered by a 98 cc, 2-stroke engine with a maximum output of 3 horsepower, the Dream Type D. They were also producing a 50 cc engine which was fitted to bicycles made by Kitagawa and Company. Friction which developed between the two companies was solved by Fujisawa who reorganized Honda’s distribu- tor network. In March 1950, Honda Motor opened a sales office in Tokyo and in the autumn bought a sewing machine plant in Tokyo and turned it into a motorcycle factory. The Type D had serious lim- itations; mud tended to clog up the space between the wheel and the mudguard. On Fujisawa’s prompting Honda developed the type E, a 4-stroke, with a revolutionary overhead valve (OHV) engine displac- ing 146 cc and an output of 5.5 horsepower. The prototype was tested in July 1951. The machine was immediately popular and soon the Tokyo factory was producing 900 machines each month. The Type F engine was then developed as a successor to the 50 cc engine for fitting to bicycles and was called the Cub. Another factory in Saitama was opened in 1952. But the Honda Company was short of trained staff and new employees would sometimes find themselves on the production line in a couple of days and soon teaching the ropes to newcomers. Honda and Fujisawa knew every one of their employees and would person- ally tell them what to do. Honda would often come down to the factory floor, wrench in hand, to help tighten bolts. At the Tokyo sales

124 HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO (1906–1991) office, Fujisawa was virtually the only trained salesman. Honda was still very much a hands-on small enterprise despite its expansion. The company needed finance if it was to grow, but finance was very short in the immediate post-war years and Fujisawa was at first only able to persuade a Japanese bank to lend them 2 million yen out of the 5 million which they sought. The problem was mitigated in various ways including setting up separate dealer networks for different models, insisting on the deposit of promissory notes with Mitsubishi Bank for motorcycles sold on consignment, and demanding guarantee money from exclusive distributors. But the company had to undergo some lean and difficult times before it established itself as one of Japan’s leading motor manufactur- ers. In 1953, at a time when there was a good deal of labour unrest in Japan a Honda company union was formed. Honda and Fujisawa had no experience of dealing with a union, but Fujisawa determined that they must seek to come as close as possible to the workers and create a human relationship of mutual trust. A much greater problem for Honda was to produce machines which their customers wanted. They were no longer satisfied with the type E whose cylinder capacity had been increased to 225 cc. Honda’s young engineers thought the latest increase had been a mistake for an engine of this size. Honda So¯ichiro¯, however, stuck stubbornly to his view that the problem lay in the carburettor (he was proved right). In 1954, turnover fell drastically and Fujisawa even thought that the company would have to become bankrupt. The union, learning of the company’s plight, determined to work with the management to pull the company through the crisis. Fujisawa led the talks with the union and met with Honda subcontractors asking for deferment of payments due to them. The subcontractors reluctantly collaborated and with financial help from Mitsubishi Bank the company managed to pull through. Honda left negotiations with the union to Fujisawa but he recog- nized that the aim must be to create a workshop where everyone would enjoy working and that Honda workers did so for their own benefit not that of the company. Even so the company did not escape unscathed from union troubles. In 1957, union members at two Honda plants went on strike and the management locked out the machine section on the grounds that the strike had been instigated by outsiders and four union leaders were dismissed. Honda had a long way still to go. Better motorcycles had to be designed, produced and sold not only in Japan but also abroad. Honda was a racing fan and in 1954 he went to Britain to examine the Isle of Man TT (Tourist Trophy) races. He found that foreign motorcycles were three times more powerful than Honda’s. How were they to

125 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI increase engine speed without destroying the motor? One problem which Honda So¯ichiro¯ discovered was a design fault in Honda’s flywheels. Then some young Honda engineers, including Kume Tadashi, later to be a president of Honda, designed an engine for racing motorcycles, but it was too heavy. Honda So¯ichiro¯ found a way of overcoming this problem enabling Honda to compete successfully in the TT races. Eventually, in 1961, Honda Motor won the first five places in the 250 cc and 125 cc categories. Honda had considerable difficulty in persuading the Japanese Ministry of Finance to allow the company sufficient foreign exchange to establish subsidiaries abroad. In 1959, an American subsidiary was established in Los Angeles and another in Belgium in 1962. The Belgian factory produced Honda mopeds but for the first ten years the company was in the red. It was not until September 1965 that Honda (UK) was established in London. Honda and Fujisawa were determined that Honda Motors would become a manufacturer of motor cars as well as motorcycles. Their young engineers were particularly keen for Honda to take part in Formula 1 Grand Prix motor racing as well as in Formula 2. A deci- sion was made to compete in Formula 1 and Honda competed for the first time in Germany in 1964 and won the F-1 Grand Prix in the 1,500 cc class in Mexico in the following year. The next step in the expansion of Honda Motors was to manufac- ture passenger cars. This entailed competing with Toyota and Nissan, Japan’s two largest automobile manufacturing companies, and the decision was taken despite strong efforts by the Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) to impose an artificial divi- sion of labour on the car industry. MITI feared that unregulated expansion of the industry and consequent excess competition would harm Japan. They wanted Japan to have three groups of motor man- ufacturers, a mass-production group, a minicar group and a special purpose vehicle group. No newcomers would be allowed to produce motor cars. Toyota and Nissan saw that the new system would strengthen government control of the industry and were opposed to the scheme but they wanted protection until they were strong enough to compete internationally. So they did their best to delay the plan. Honda So¯ ichiro¯ was enraged and vehemently denounced the scheme which MITI had hoped to impose through legislation (a draft bill was presented to the Diet in 1963) and through ‘administrative guidance’. But strong criticism of the scheme and the opposition of the car man- ufacturers forced MITI to shelve their proposals. One unintended effect of MITI’s scheming was to bring forward Honda’s plans to man- ufacture four wheel vehicles. A lightweight truck and a small sports car were launched in 1962.

126 HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO (1906–1991)

Honda’s experience in making racing cars provided valuable engi- neering experience, but also generated much controversy between Honda So¯ichiro¯ and his young engineers at the R and D centre. Honda So¯ichiro¯ was keen to develop an air-cooled engine, but the engineers strongly backed development of water-cooled engines because these gave off less noise and vibration and because they caused much less air pollution, an issue which was coming to the fore at that time, particularly in the USA. The quarrel between Honda So¯ichiro and his engineers had to be settled by Fujisawa who persuaded Honda reluctantly to allow development of water-cooled engines. Honda Research and Development was then set up as a separate company with Honda So¯ichiro¯ as its president. Honda Motors was badly hit in the late 1960s and early 1970s by the detection of design faults leading to the recall of vehicles on safety grounds. Honda recovered from this set-back and went on to become the third largest motor manufacturer in Japan and a major exporter. By the second half of the 1970s the turnover in Honda cars exceeded that of motorcycles. In 1979 Honda produced 706,375 cars and Honda’s new Tochigi plant was completed. It continued to be a significant innovator in motor manufacturing and in engine production. Among its many products Honda Motors became well known for making small engines for horticultural and agricultural purposes. Honda So¯ichiro¯ retired in 1973, but stayed on as a director. In 1983 he was appointed ‘supreme adviser’ to the company.

HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO¯ – THE MAN So¯ichiro¯ was small in stature, bespectacled and with a scarred face. He had an impish smile and great vivacity as well as a broad sense of humour. His laugh often turned into a guffaw.2 He did not like pom- posity and believed strongly in equality. He was rather proud of his own lack of book learning. So¯ichiro¯’s main interest from boyhood onwards was in machinery.3 His nickname as a schoolboy was ‘black nose weasel’ because his nose was always dirty from helping his father at the forge and from playing with bits of machinery. He could not put up with sloppy workman- ship and would attack any employee who failed his high standards. He would shout in rage at an employee who made a mistake and often throw a spanner at him or even hit him with any tool in his hand. ‘Shouting in public was his way of education, and everyone became nervous at the mere sight of Honda holding a wrench.’4 His employ- ees, who were mostly young, certainly tried hard to meet his expec- tations.5 Although Honda was a brilliant and inventive engineer he could sometimes be very obstinate and difficult to deal with.

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So¯ichiro¯ liked to play the fool and clown. There were many stories about his unconventional behaviour. In December 1950,6 Honda and Fujisawa invited a foreign visitor to Hamamatsu to visit their factory. In the evening they held a party for him. Their guest drank too much sake and was sick in an old fashioned Japanese toilet where he lost his false teeth. When Honda heard of this he immediately agreed to retrieve them, took off his clothes and climbed into the filth, found the teeth and washed them and himself in the bath. Honda then held a celebratory party with geisha and more sake. With the false teeth in his mouth he did a dance. He sometimes overdid the clowning. In the autumn of 1952,7 Honda Motor wanted an injection of capital. So they asked a Japanese bank for a loan of 5 million yen mortgaging all their facili- ties. Honda and Fujisawa decided to chat up the bankers in advance. ‘Half-intoxicated the two put on an impromptu comic show includ- ing dances and songs which Honda had learnt from his geisha friends. . .The show was by all accounts hilarious.’Unfortunately, the bankers told them the following day that they could only borrow two million yen ‘because we cannot trust a company run by a couple of clowns’. But as his success demonstrates he had his serious side and as an engineer and entrepreneur there was an element of genius in him.

HIS MANAGEMENT PHILOSOPHY At first when Honda was a small company there was no need for organization and a management philosophy. When these became nec- essary they were largely supplied by Fujisawa, but Honda and he agreed on some important principles. They believed in delegating responsibility as far as possible and on equality between members of the staff. They wanted to avoid a hierarchical structure. They were also determined that there would be no nepotism in the company. Both Honda and Fujisawa agreed that their children should not work for Honda and in due course this principle was extended to all board members. They also insisted that they did not own Honda Motors. The company was not their personal or family property. Among So¯ichiro¯’s sayings were: ‘I’ve failed 99% of my trials, in order to succeed in the remaining 1%’ and ‘Action without philosophy is a lethal weapon; philosophy without action is worthless.’ He empha- sized his belief in developing original technology and in innovation in the following two statements: ‘Honda has been choosing the hardest way, pursuing original technologies. I believe technologies borrowed from others will never become our flesh and blood.’ ‘When the Emperor asked about innovation, [he replied]: “It’s like falling in love.

128 HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO (1906–1991)

If you think it’s distressing, it’s unbearably distressing. If you think it is joyful, it is of supreme joy.” ’ On his retirement he set up two foundations. One of these, which was jointly funded by Honda and Fujisawa personally, was the International Association of Traffic and Safety sciences to conduct research on traffic safety problems worldwide. The other was the Honda Foundation funded primarily by Honda So¯ichiro¯.8 ‘The activ- ities of the Honda Foundation are called “Discoveries” which rep- resents the initials of “Definition and Identification Studies on Conveyance of Values, Effects and Risks in Environmental Synthesis”. The basic theme is Honda’s thought that “science and technology have contributed greatly to the happiness of mankind, but at the same time have brought about many miseries” .’ The first head of the Honda Foundation was former Ambassador Shimoda Takezo¯. The Foundation established a prize for excellence in engineering; one of the first awards was made in 1982 to Professor Cole of Cambridge University.

HONDA IN BRITAIN Honda So¯ichiro¯ first went to Britain in June 1954 to make an on the spot study of the TT races on the Isle of Man. He was disappointed to find that British sentiment towards Japan was not at all favourable ‘and he especially disliked being called “a Jap” ’.9 In addition to finding that European made motorcycles were much faster and more power- ful than any of Honda’s machines he found that components, such as tires and chains, were far superior to those made in Japan. But Honda was no defeatist and what he saw inspired him to innovate and improve Honda’s motorcycles. Honda began to export vehicles to Britain soon after their sales office was opened at Chiswick in London in 1965. The first Honda car to be exported to Britain was the S800 which was exhibited at the Earls Court motor show in London in 1966. The 1970s were difficult years for Japanese automobile makers. European manufacturers recog- nizing that they were no longer competitive in price and quality were pressing for protection. The lead in Britain was taken by the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT) who held discussions with the Japan Automobile Manufacturers Association (JAMA). The British realized that they could not successfully invoke escape clauses either under the GATT (General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade) or the Anglo-Japanese Treaty of Commerce and Navigation and that even if the British government could be persuaded to impose unilat- eral restrictions on Japanese car imports, which they were very reluc- tant to do, there would be a major and generally damaging trade

129 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI dispute. The Japanese side for its part also wished to avoid serious damage to the international trade system. As a result, the two organ- izations, closely watched and chivvied by government officials, agreed on a series of ‘Voluntary Restraint Arrangements’ (VRAs) which limited the growth in imports of Japanese motor vehicles into the UK. Unfortunately, British manufacturers of vehicles (essential BL, for- merly British Leyland) but also American firms such as Ford and GM who manufactured vehicles in Britain, made inadequate efforts to improve their productivity and competitiveness and there were strong pressures to extend the VRAs pending the adoption of a European- wide scheme to cope with imports from Japan. British restrictions were far less stringent than those imposed by the French and the Italians and they permitted Japanese companies to increase their margins, but they were a major factor in inducing Japanese companies to invest in manufacturing in Britain. Honda responded to this situation, with official British encourage- ment, by concluding an agreement with BL in 1979 to collaborate in the joint development of new models. The agreement was worked out by Sir Michael Edwardes for BL and Kawashima Kiyoshi for Honda. ‘A near moribund Rover [as BL renamed itself later] seemed an unlikely partner for vigorous and expanding Honda, yet. . .coopera- tion of this sort was expedient and made good business sense.’10 The first fruit of this agreement was the production by BL of the Triumph Acclaim which was based on the Honda Ballade which was in turn derived from the Honda Civic. It was a front-wheel-drive car with a 1.3 litre, four-cylinder, transverse engine with 70 bhp. It was a car of good quality at a reasonable price. ‘The significance of the Acclaim was to show that high-quality production was possible in a European factory’.11 The Acclaim was made with 80 per cent British parts and was a striking success. Disappointingly, when Rover’s next model, the Rover 200, appeared it had a number of design faults, although it remained dependable and had a good finish for a mid-sized car. The design faults were largely overcome in subsequent versions and ‘Rover recovered its place in the market faster than anyone dared hope thanks largely to the stimulus from Honda.’12 Honda’s cooperation with Rover in what was called Project XX led in 1986 to the ‘Rover 800 and continued into the 1990s with the second generation 200 and 400, the joint Concerto programme and the Rover 600/Honda Accord. The mechanically similar cars were made at Longbridge, Birmingham, but it soon became evident that Honda’s expansion warranted a factory of its own, first for engines and pre-delivery checks to bring Rover-made Hondas up to scratch, and in due course for new Accords and the Civic 5-door.’13 ‘In June 1986, the launch of the Rover 800 and Honda Legend marked a new phase

130 HONDA SO¯ ICHIRO (1906–1991) in the Honda-Rover relationship. . .It was not long before the Legend moved ahead relinquishing the Rover ingredients. . .Rover remained Honda’s European foothold until its manufacturing facility at South Marston, near Swindon, came into production. By the early 1990s, the first of three joint ventures, code-named Synchro, were produced in Swindon. The Honda versions replaced a number of Japanese-built imports. . .’14 In April 1990, Honda and Rover reached an agreement which gave Rover a 20 per cent holding in Honda UK Manufacturing (HUM), while Honda took 20 per cent of Rover’s shares and paid £30 million in cash to bring the value of the shares exchange to the same level.15 Car production at Swindon picked up quickly and by 1995 100,000 cars had been produced there. Honda’s cooperation with Rover was criticized by some in Honda, but it benefited both the Japanese and the British in the short run. Kume Tadashi said: ‘Our objective from the start was to engage in pro- jects where we might find mutual benefit while keeping our separate identities. There was never a grand strategy or plan. Each step was taken on its merits and we never quite saw Austin Rover as a Honda Factory in Britain. While it gave Honda access to assembly facilities in Britain, that was not all there was to it. Building cars in Britain with a local content gave us access to the European market, but that was not our sole strategy for Europe.’16 Unfortunately, when Rover which had been taken over by British Aerospace (BAe) was sold on by them to BMW in 1994, the close rela- tions between the two companies lapsed, although ‘Cooperation con- tinued in body production and Honda used Rover diesel engines, but reciprocal model development ceased.’17 Some observers in Britain wondered in 1994 whether Honda had been given the option to buy Rover before the offer from BMW was accepted. It was reported that Honda were furious that they had not been told in advance of the plan to sell Rover to BMW and that some Honda executives felt that the British had behaved treacherously. Some British observers thought that Honda with its experience of working with Rover would have made a better owner of Rover than BMW and that if Honda had owned Rover the Japanese owners might have found ways of avoiding the ultimate closure of Longbridge. It was also suggested by some at the time that Honda was inhibited from making an offer because of fears that they would be rebuffed and a belief that the British authorities would never permit a Japanese takeover of the last purely British motor car manufacturer. Perhaps, if Honda had felt able to bid, such opposition, as there might have been, would have quickly evaporated. But there may also have been real doubts within Honda about whether, even with their experience of working with

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Rover, they could make a success of plants such as Longbridge with its record of union militancy.18 By the end of the twentieth century, Honda (UK) like Nissan and Toyota had become a major and respected British motor manufacturer. It has also contributed to Britain in other ways. The Honda Foundation19 set up an Ecotechnology centre at Cranfield University and has since also provided funds there jointly with IBM for research into developing innovative technologies and business and manufac- turing practices. A wind tunnel was established in 1985 in the Aeronautical Engineering Department at Imperial College in London through a joint programme with the research and development divi- sion of Honda Motor Company. The aim was to investigate road vehicle aerodynamics. It has been used for the design of Formula One racing cars, a subject close to So¯ichiro¯’s heart. Honda’s investments in Britain are one of the many legacies of Honda’s joint founders Honda So¯ichiro¯ and Fujisawa Takeo.

132 13

Morita Akio (1921–99), Sony and Britain

HUGH CORTAZZI

Morita Akio

INTRODUCTION Morita Akio, the co-founder with Ibuka Masaru of Sony Corporation, was one of the outstanding personalities of post-war Japan. He was the main driving force behind the creation of one of the most successful companies in the Japanese electronics industry. But he was much more than this. He understood better than almost all his contemporaries in the business world that Japan’s national interest demanded that Japan had to work with, rather than in confrontation with, the outside world. He was an internationalist even if at heart he remained very much a traditional Japanese. Japanese politicians listened to him and outside Japan he had a wider circle of friends and acquain- tances than almost any other Japanese of his generation. He spent a great deal of time in the United States and devoted much energy to developing ties between Japan and the United States. Britain was prob- ably the country in Europe to which he was most drawn. He respected German economic success and was irritated by French posturing. Morita is a towering figure about whom much has been written and

133 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI more will be written. This essay,1 after briefly outlining his career and character, concentrates on his relationship with Britain.2

CAREER Morita Akio was born in Nagoya in 1921 and was the eldest son and heir to an old established saké brewer. His father was devoted to his business and expected Akio to succeed him. ‘As a young boy in middle school, my holidays were consumed by business, business, business’, he wrote and this was to be the pattern for the rest of his life as even his sports and his hobbies were part of business for him. One of these, col- lecting old gramophones, was inspired by the electric phonograph which his father bought. He taught himself to make electric devices and while still a boy managed to make a crude electric phonograph and radio receiver. After a struggle with the other subjects he had to master he was accepted by Osaka Imperial University to study modern physics. When war broke out, he joined the navy and was assigned to supervise a special unit working on thermal guidance weapons and night-vision gun sights. It was at this time that he first came in touch with Ibuka Masaru, whose father-in-law was Maeda Tamon an influential politician, and whose company ran a factory making small mechanical elements for controlling the frequency of radar devices. After the war ended Ibuka set up his own small firm (Tokyo Telelecommunications Engineering Corporation) with seven employees in an empty building in the rubble of Tokyo. They first attempted to design a simple rice cooker which did not work. Ibuka, recognizing that there was a real demand for short-wave radios in post-war Japan, then designed a short-wave adapter unit. Morita had been asked to take up physics teaching, but his interests were more practical than theoretical. He got in touch with Ibuka and for a time combined teaching with working with Ibuka. They were very short of financial resources and it became a major task for Morita to assemble the finance they needed to expand. They were also very short of the materials needed to make products and many of these had to be found through the black market which flourished in Japan after the war. In April 1946, Ibuka and Maeda persuaded Morita’s father to allow him to go into business with Ibuka. Their first product in 1950 was a bulky tape-recorder. Morita recounts how the first tapes had to be made by hand. ‘In those early days, the tape was the key to the future of our business.’3 The first machines were too heavy and expensive. Morita realized that unique technology and unique products were not enough to keep a business going. The products had to be sold. This was where he came into his own. He learnt not only how to sell but

134 MORITA AKIO (1921–99) to organize and run the business. The tape-recorder became an essen- tial tool replacing stenographers in the Japanese courts. But the company needed more than a single product for the Japanese market. In 1952, Ibuka visited the USA and learnt that it might be possible to buy a licence from Western Electric to make transistors in Japan. He and Morita were not at first sure how they would use the new tech- nology but a licence was negotiated and signed by Morita on his first visit to the USA in 1953. The Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) were most reluctant to allow the company to remit the cost of $25,000 as Japan was then very short of foreign exchange. While MITI were deliberating, Morita made his first visit to Europe. In Germany, he was depressed by the slowness of Japan’s economic recovery as compared with the rapid progress made by the German economy and disheartened when an ice cream which he ordered in a restaurant came with a tiny Japanese paper parasol suggesting to him that this was typical of Japan’s image in Europe. He went on to Holland and visited Philips at Eindhoven. The success of this company in the rural Netherlands made him write to Ibuka: ‘If Philips can do it, maybe we can, too.’4 Back in Tokyo, the company’s engineers worked hard to improve the transistor and turn it into the high frequency device for which they were looking. They produced their first transistorized radio in 1955 and their first ‘pocketable’ radio in 1957. Morita realized that the company’s name was clumsy and lacked international appeal. Eventually, he and Ibuka came up with the SONY name which they began to use in 1957. In 1958 Sony was listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. They had at first used dilapidated premises in Gotenyama on the outskirts of Tokyo. They were now able to build and occupy better premises at Gotanda nearby. ‘In the beginning, when our track record for success was not estab- lished, our competitors would take a very cautious and wait-and-see attitude while we developed and marketed a new product.’5 But the founders were determined and put significant resources (6–10%) into R and D. Morita was inspired to design the ‘Walkman’by seeing Ibuka with a pair of headphones and a portable tape recorder. At first, nobody liked the idea and thought that they could not sell the product. Morita persisted and, despite protests from the accountants, insisted on keeping the price down. He was right and the Walkman was a runaway success for Sony. Morita’s choice of Sony as the name for the company and ‘Walkman’ for one of Sony’s most successful products showed Morita’s understanding of the importance of catchy names and the fer- tility of his imagination. Even before Sony was a commercial success Morita determined that he would not produce OEM6 products, despite tempting offers from

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US companies. The USA became the major overseas market for Sony and Morita, who was executive vice-president while Ibuka was presi- dent, soon found himself virtually commuting between Tokyo and New York. To establish Sony firmly in the US he needed to get to know the country and the people better. Sony Corporation of America was established in 1960 and in 1963 Morita moved his family (Yoshiko, his wife, and three children) to New York where, in his apartment on Fifth Avenue, they cultivated leading Americans. Yoshiko developed into an excellent hostess and Akio managed to impress all who met him. Their English improved quickly. Morita was ‘a believer in the total immersion theory’7 and within a week of their arrival the two boys, Hideo and Masao, had been packed off to summer camp in Maine. He had intended to remain in New York for two years but the death of his father meant that he had to return earlier than intended to Tokyo. Morita had, however, to keep on travelling both within Japan and abroad visiting Sony’s production and research facilities. In the 1980s a trip from Tokyo to New York, to London, from London to Los Angeles and then to Hawaii, back to LA then Paris and back to Tokyo ‘was not unusual’ for him.8 Fortunately, he had no difficulty in sleep- ing on aeroplanes. In 1971, Ibuka became chairman of the company and Morita took over as president. In 1976, he became chairman and chief executive officer (CEO). Ohga Norio, whom Morita had personally selected to be his successor, became president in 1983, but Morita did not hand over the reins as CEO until later when his other preoccupations outside Sony increased. Despite his phenomenal energy and drive it was not all plain sailing. Sony set the pace with new products and Morita saw that they were sold, generally seeing off the competition, but while his intuition was generally good his obstinate attachment to Sony products sometimes led to near disasters. The most serious of these was over Betamax which was the first truly portable VCR. It resulted from the ingenu- ity of Kihara Nobutoshi. But Sony failed to get the Betamax accepted in the 1970s as the standard for all VCRs. Instead, the bulk of the industry opted for the VHS format developed by Matsushita, an arch- rival of Sony, and by JVC. The Betamax had some technological advantages over VHS but there was less room for the further develop- ment of Betamax. Perhaps Morita should have been realistic enough to admit defeat sooner than he did. Certainly, the comparative failure of Betamax cut into Sony’s profits at this time. There were fortunately other new products coming on stream in the late 1970s and early 1980s including CD players and camcorders. The importance of software to go with Sony’s new hardware led to another

136 MORITA AKIO (1921–99) near disaster. In 1968, CBS/Sony Records had been established with Ohga Norio as chief executive officer. This led in due course to the acquisition in 1989 of Columbia Pictures and Sony’s disastrous flirtation with Hollywood. Many argue that Sony paid too much for its purchase and was taken for a ride by some of the American nego- tiators and lawyers and by the American managers who consistently lost money for Sony. On 17 November 1994, Sony announced that it was writing off $2.7 billion of its investment in Columbia Pictures. The loss of an additional $510 million of operating losses at the studio was also announced. At the time of the purchase Morita was chairman of Sony and has to bear a share of responsibility for the purchase and its terms. Ohga, then president, was cautious and Morita appeared to share his caution, but Morita nevertheless seemed to want it to go ahead.9 He was by this time very much involved in work for Keidanren (the Japanese Federation of Economic Organizations) where it was said he was being groomed by Hiraiwa Gaishi, the then chairman, to take over. But this was not to be. In 1993, while playing tennis he suffered a debilitating stroke and had to retire from Sony and public life, He spent his final years largely at his villa in Hawaii. Ibuka died in 1997 and Morita two years later.

THE MAN Morita Akio was elegant; some regarded him as a dandy. With bluish eyes, rare for a Japanese, he had a good appearance. In his later years his full head of white hair made him look distinguished. But he did not just look a very successful businessman; he stood out in any group of Japanese or foreigners. He undoubtedly had that indefinable quality called charisma. He lit up any conversation with his almost electric vivacity. In company he was jovial and talkative. Unlike many Japanese, he did not opt for silence in difficult situations. Some described him as ‘incandescant’. He knew how to charm men and women alike and was something of a ladies’ man. He understood the niceties of Japanese manners and eti- quette. But he could also be brusque and sharp when he was crossed. He was impatient with anyone who made a mistake10 or failed to appreciate the importance of quality and practicality. At heart very much a Japanese, Morita quickly adapted himself to American manners and responded by adopting a directness which does not come easily to most Japanese. Sometimes, however, he failed to appreciate foreign sensitivities as, for instance, when he tried to prevent the publication of the English translation of the book which he had co-authored with the nationalist Ishihara Shintaro¯ entitled The Japan that can say ‘no’. The Economist magazine in its obituary of him

137 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI said that he ‘gave the impression of being a contradiction’ both a Japanese nationalist and an internationalist. In his own family he was very much the pater familias and he expected his children to conform to Japanese traditions of respect for the head of the family. He recognized and respected the qualities of loyalty and willingness to adapt shown by his wife Yoshiko. He saw Sony as an extension of his family. Anglo-Saxon ideas on corporate governance might be alright for other companies but not for Sony. While Sony was one of the first Japanese companies to have outside directors on its board, Morita believed in keeping the strate- gic decisions firmly under his control, operating through a small exec- utive committee, although he expected issues to be thrashed out and did not demand instant consent to his point of view.11 The Economist also described him as a ‘tinkerer’. This does not prop- erly convey his fascination for machines and gadgets. His house was full of all the latest electronic products which he was happy to take to pieces with a view to finding a way to improve the product. He was interested in music although not to the same extent as Ohga Norio whom he appointed as president of Sony. One of his hobbies was collecting old gramophones, phonographs and musical boxes. He had very much the collector’s instinct which also came out in the way in which he cultivated leading personalities the world over. There was hardly anyone from President to Prime Minister and Royalty whom he did not know.12 From the beginning, Morita Akio was driven by ambition. He was determined to succeed first in his studies and then in business. In later life, his ambitions expanded and he sought the power which came through his work with business organizations. But while his ambition was intensely personal it was also directed at protecting and promot- ing Japanese interests which he could see were being ‘crabbed, cribbed and confined’ by the protectionist attitudes of elements in the business and political world. His determination to succeed extended to everything which he took up. He began to play tennis when he was fifty-five and drove himself hard to improve his stroke. He was a capable golfer and insisted on playing hard even if he was tired by travelling. He was a good skier and enjoyed long-distance skiing. When the company became sufficiently wealthy to own helicopters he learnt to fly them.13 It was almost certainly the strain of so much air travel, com- bined with his devotion to sport, which eventually led to his debili- tating stroke. His son Hideo aptly described his father as a ‘consummate per- former’. Indeed, he had a first-class act and did it extremely well, but he was more than that. He was one of the outstanding Japanese

138 MORITA AKIO (1921–99) personalities of the second half of the twentieth century. Some thought him vain but he had much to be vain about.

HIS ‘PHILOSOPHY’ It is not possible to summarize here all Morita’s ‘philosophy’ of man- agement and his views on the direction which Japan should take. These were, in my view, best summed up in an article which Morita wrote for the influential Japanese monthly Bungei Shunju in 1992.14 This article aroused much controversy in Japan and attracted a good deal of attention in the West.15 Morita who had just been on a Keidanren mission to Europe began by rebutting attacks on Japanese industry. He had been shocked by the protectionist attitude of European car manufacturers who argued that ‘Japanese automobiles, whether imported or manufactured in Europe, were threatening the European auto industry.’ Morita stressed that Japanese manufacturers had concentrated on developing technologies and products and on increasing productivity and quality control in order to catch up and surpass their European and American competi- tors. These efforts had made Japanese products strongly competitive. Japan was a very competitive market in electronic goods. ‘Japanese goods sold very well abroad because consumers overseas really wanted them.’ When the Europeans complained about Japanese exports of VCRs starting to pour into the European market he had pointed out that Japan had been developing VCRs for over a decade and were the only companies that could offer VCRs at reasonable prices in response to the demands of the European market. European complaints had led to the establishment of the EC-Japan Business Round Table on Consumer Electronics. Morita had taken note of European concerns ‘that dominantly competitive Japanese industries are a concern to Europe’ and the European urge that Japanese companies ‘coexist and mutually prosper with European companies’. Morita went on to defend Japan’s life-time employment system which led to all involved working ‘together to hone technologies, increase productivity and improve quality’. He accepted, however, that while competitiveness had been raised as a result ‘Japanese com- panies may have sacrificed consideration for their employees, share- holders and local communities in the process.’ There were real concerns ‘over limited natural resources, energy and environmental pollution’. These considerations led him to propose six points for Japanese business to consider:

1. Allowing employees more holidays and fewer working hours.

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2. Offering salaries sufficient to provide employees with a good quality of life’. 3. Increasing the payout ratio [i.e. dividends] to a level comparable with European and US companies. 4. Treating their vendors better in terms of conditions like purchase price and delivery time. 5. Actively contributing to the local communities as concerned citi- zens. 6. Giving sufficient consideration to issues of environmental protec- tion and resource conservation.

He felt that Japanese people should be able to improve their lifestyles and noted that changes were already taking place within Sony. ‘To conserve natural resources, our product development is now aimed at developing products with higher added value and durability rather than depending so much on frequent model changes for profits.’ Japan needed to commit itself to the innovative spirit of its predecessors. Japan’s national goal should be, as the then Prime Minister Miyazawa Kiichi had defined it in the Diet, ‘to turn Japan into a country where each citizen can truly enjoy life’. Morita was a firm advocate of free trade and the market economy, but as the above summary shows he was very conscious of the social dimension. He was perceptive about the need for changes in Japan and if he had lived he would surely have supported the efforts which have been made to liberalize the economy and privatize governmental cor- porations. He would also have had many pertinent points to make about current issues facing Japan such as relations with China, the aging society and Japan’s demographic problems.

MORITA AND BRITAIN As chairman of the Japan Society, I invited Morita Akio to be guest of honour at the Japan Society’s annual dinner held on 22 March 1989.16 His speech was entitled ‘No Nation is an Island’. In this he said:

I personally look on the UK as a great repository of those qualities which set truly civilized people apart: an inherent generosity, an unquestioned kindness toward others, a respect for language and for history, and yes, a sense of fun! My wife and I decided to send both our sons17 to boarding schools in the UK because we felt that the educa- tional establishment in our own country has lost its sense of the purpose of discipline, and has become too concerned about preparing students merely to take examinations. Our eldest son, who entered his boarding school speaking minimal English, one year later was head boy. I find it

140 MORITA AKIO (1921–99)

ironic that in this position he was expected to uphold British tradition, to enforce discipline, and be a model for those younger than he – British and non-British both – ironic, but wonderful!!18

Morita, as a physicist, had ‘an enormous amount of respect for British science and technology, and the importance given to manufacturing and quality-consciousness. The world would be a very different place without your contributions.’ He went on to speak about the imbal- ance in trade and the Japanese response of investing in manufacturing facilities in Britain. He told his audience not to be afraid of a Japanese economic invasion. He stressed that Japanese businessmen were ‘extremely concerned about being good citizens in the UK. He was grateful for the support of the British government in rejecting Italian complaints about TV sets made by Sony in Wales. He supported the ‘Opportunity Japan’ campaign in trying to convince British firms that they could ‘sell their products in Japan if their products fit the market and are generally competitive and attractive’. He went on to argue, as he so often did, that ‘The foundation of any economy is a healthy manufacturing base, an industry that pro- duces value-added products. We delude ourselves if we think that somehow a new-age economy is emerging which is service-based. With no industry to service there is nothing to service. Similarly, it is dangerous to think that the furious activity in the money markets of London, New York and Tokyo is productive in any real sense.’19 (If he had lived to see so much of the world’s hardware now being manu- factured in China he might perhaps have modified this view.) He did not on this occasion stress another of his favourite themes, namely the importance of engineers. In his Bungei Shunju article out- lined above he recalled a ‘spirited’ conversation that he had had with Margaret Thatcher the previous autumn, At one point she had asked him if he had any advice for Britain. Morita had replied that she should make her society one that respects engineers. ‘It is not realistic to expect true industrial development in a country where engineers are not highly valued.’ He thought that engineers in Britain received far less respect than scientists.

SONY IN BRITAIN ‘Getting our operation going in the UK was not very simple.’20 Their distributors initially were the Debenham Group ‘a fine old firm, but not one that could service a company like ours with our big hopes for the future’. Namiki Masa, whom Morita sent to Britain, found that Debenhams could only assign three agents to Sony and they had to cover about six hundred dealers. ‘Unlike our experience in dropping

141 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI our French agent, the termination with Debenham was gentlemanly; they offered us all sorts of help. . .’ At that time Sony were making a small number of transistor radios at Shannon in Ireland, but they were not getting good quality. Local content laws required Sony to incorporate thirty per cent locally made parts and ‘we could not get quality parts’. The Shannon factory was closed and Sony started its UK sales company in 1968 with a tiny office in the Wigmore Hall in London. Namiki had seven other staff, but quickly expanded. Regional sales offices and a distribution and service centre at Slough were established and the office moved to Hounslow. ‘Learning to work with the English was quite a problem at first. Namiki assigned one of his salesmen to be district manager in Kent, but the salesman refused the appointment graciously because he could not bear to leave his rose garden in Surrey. Namiki didn’t understand it at first; to turn down such an offer would be unheard-of in a Japanese company.’ In another context,21 Morita noted a significant difference between British and Japanese approaches. At one Sony conference held in Japan the British staff ‘came up with a theoretical idea on digital video tape recording. Six months later. . .a Sony engineer. . .showed up with a working model of the British design. . .“We could wait ten years to do something like that”said a British staff member. “This would never happen in Britain.” ’ But Morita saw that Sony could be profitable in Britain and deter- mined to build a manufacturing facility which remains the most important proof of his commitment to Britain. In his memoir,22 he notes that whenever, as Prime Minister, Margaret Thatcher had ‘the chance, even during summit meetings, she would promote England [sic], asking when Nissan Motors or some other company was going to build a factory in Britain’. In our case even the Prince of Wales was involved in the promotion. He came to Expo 70 [in Osaka] and I had been asked by the British Ambassador23 to put Sony TV sets in the living room of his suite at the British Embassy in Tokyo. Later, when I was introduced to the prince at a reception in the embassy residence, he thanked me for providing the TV sets and then asked me if we had any intention of building a plant in the United Kingdom. We didn’t have any such plans yet I told him, and he said with a smile. ‘Well, if you should decide to put a plant in the UK don’t forget my territory.’ ‘When we did go into the UK, it seemed reasonable to take a look at Wales, but we looked at many other areas as well, covering all the possibilities. We finally did decide on Wales on the basis of our needs for location, convenience, and so forth.’ When Sony were ready for the dedication of the factory at Bridgend in 1974 Morita contacted the British ambassador to see if the prince would accept an invitation

142 MORITA AKIO (1921–99) to be present at the opening. The prince accepted and Morita reminded him of their conversation in 1970. The prince later told the South Wales Echo that he was surprised when ‘the smile on the face of the inscrutable Japanese chairman turned into an actual factory in South Wales’. Morita commented: ‘I never thought I was inscrutable.’ When the Queen visited Japan, in 1975, she asked him if the story about Prince Charles’s recommendation for the plant’s site was true. Morita said it was and this pleased the Queen. When the plant at Bridgend was expanded in 1981 to include a picture tube factory the prince could not attend but Princess Diana, although then pregnant with Prince William, came and toured the plant wearing a hard hat with Sony on it in large letters. Morita wrote24 that he was, of course worried about strikes in the UK and in particular a transport strike. So they made sure that Sony employees got to work by using their own buses. They ‘did away with all notions of hierarchy at the plant’. There was some resistance at first to everyone wearing a Sony jacket, but soon almost every employee was ‘proud to be wearing a jacket’. Morita told the Japan Society that he was ‘proud’that Sony had been awarded the Queen’s Award for Export Achievements in 1980 and again in 1987 emphasizing that they were ‘British exports by Sony UK, not Japanese exports.’

THE ALBERT MEDAL Morita was also ‘terribly proud’ of the prestigious Albert Medal awarded to him in 1982 by the Royal Society of Arts, Manufacturers and Commerce ‘for outstanding contributions to technological innov- ation and management, industrial design, industrial relations and video systems, and the growth of world trade relations’. He felt humbled to realize that among other recipients of the medal had been such renowned scientists as Thomas Edison, Marie Curie and Louis Pasteur. After receiving the medal, he gave25 a reception for his hosts. On this occasion, he said that he not only innovated products but even made innovations in the English language reminding them of the ‘Walkman’ and ‘Sony’. He was then given an Honorary Certificate in Advanced Spoken English. Immediately after his arrival back in Japan he visited me at the British Embassy to show me the medal.

UK-JAPAN CULTURAL RELATIONS Morita took a real interest in various aspects of Anglo-Japanese cul- tural relations. He backed the efforts of British and Japanese circles to open the Japanese gallery at the British Museum. He attended and

143 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI supported Japanese exhibitions at the Victoria and Albert Museum, including the Japan style exhibition where he again met the Queen. He gave his personal support to our efforts26 to make the Japan Festival in the UK in 1991, which marked the Japan Society’s centenary, the success it undoubtedly was.

UK JAPAN 2000 GROUP Morita supported the establishment and work of the UK Japan 2000 Group and was one of the Japanese participants in 1990, 1991 and 1993. He did all he could to persuade Yoshitoki Chino (see bio- graphical portrait in this volume by Nick Clegg), the Chairman of Daiwa Securities, to put up the funds to establish the Daiwa Anglo- Japanese Foundation.

HONORARY KBE27 If ever an honorary knighthood was fully deserved it was the honorary KBE awarded to Morita Akio in 1992. When he received the insignia at the British Embassy in Tokyo in October 1992 two English tabloids reported it under a headline reading ‘Arise Sir Sony Walkman’.28

144 14

Sir Peter Parker (1924–2002) and Japan

HUGH CORTAZZI

Peter Parker

INTRODUCTION Sir Peter Parker made an outstanding contribution to Anglo- Japanese relations in the final decades of the twentieth century. He was a successful businessman and a man of wide culture with a large circle of friends and admirers. Japan was only one of his many interests and concerns but it was an important factor in his life. This essay concen- trates on Peter Parker and Japan and is not intended to be a full biog- raphical portrait. His life story until 1989 is contained in his memoir For Starters1 which provides essential background about him. His rela- tionship with Japan is the subject of two pieces by him in Japan Experiences.2 I have drawn on both of these and on personal memories and letters and contributions from his many friends.

CAREER Peter Parker was the youngest of three sons of a British engineer who in 1931, when Peter was seven, was made redundant from his job in the French docks at Dunkirk. Peter and his brothers had been brought 145 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI up as French boys living by the sea which always meant a great deal to him. His father managed to get a job in Shanghai where he became resident engineer overseeing the construction of a research institute. The boys attended the Shanghai Public School in the International Settlement where they remained until, in 1937, the Japanese occupied the Settlement and the family had to leave for home. Back in England the boys went to Bedford School. Peter’s two elder brothers were both tragically killed in action during the Second World War. Peter was among seventy boys recruited in 1941 to undertake a cramming course in oriental languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) while living at Dulwich College. Peter was one of the thirty selected to study the Japanese language. In 1943, he was called up for the army and sent out to India by troopship. When he reached Delhi he was commissioned as an intelligence officer and linguist and later posted to Burma. From there he was transferred to Washington to work in the Central Intelligence Group (later the CIA). When the war with Japan ended Peter was sent to Tokyo where he stayed until April 1946 when he returned to Washington. At the age of twenty-three in 1947 he was a Major and as he said ‘in urgent need of education’.3 Peter Parker found a place at Lincoln College, Oxford, where he read history and plunged into university life. He enjoyed rugby and was active in politics where he was chairman of the Oxford University Labour Party. He was fascinated by the stage and had a considerable talent as an actor.4 He played Hamlet under the direction of Kenneth Tynan and acted as King Lear with Shirley Williams (later Baroness Williams) as Cordelia. But the world was to be his stage and he won a Commonwealth Fund Fellowship enabling him to study manage- ment at Cornell and Harvard Universities. In October 1951, he stood as the unsuccessful Labour candidate at Bedford. He remained a Labour supporter, being always sympathetic with the underdog, until the party split. He then followed his friends such as Shirley Williams and became a Social Democrat, later a Liberal Democrat when the parties merged. He remained keen on politics throughout his life and advocated the adoption in Britain of some form of proportional rep- resentation. He would have made an effective cross-bencher or Liberal Democratic Party peer, but he was sadly never elevated to the peerage as he deserved to be. At Oxford, he had fallen in love with Gillian Rowe-Dutton who was a medical student and whom he married in December 1951. Gillian became a general practitioner and supported Peter throughout his life visiting Japan with him on a number of occasions. Peter’s first job in industry was in the personnel department of Mullard’s valve factory at Mitcham. In 1953, he joined the Industrial

146 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002)

Welfare Society as head of its overseas department. In this capacity he became secretary and organizer of the commonwealth study confer- ence on human problems of industry in July 1956 under the auspices of Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh. For his services Peter was made an LVO.5 The conferences have continued ever since, taking place in different commonwealth countries on each occasion. He was then employed by Booker Brothers McConnell. His entre- preneurial and managerial ability soon led to promotion, becoming chairman of Bookers Engineering and Industrial Holdings Ltd from 1966–70, Rockware Group (1971–76) Associated British Maltsters (1971–73), Curtis Brown, Literary Agents (1971–76), Dawnay Day Group (1971–76), Mitsubishi Electric UK (1984–96), and Whitehead Mann (1984–2000). He continued to maintain contacts with Labour Party leaders and worked with his friends in the run-up to the nation- alization of the steel industry where he argued for competitive rates of pay for the chairmen and senior managers of nationalized industries. In 1967, he was offered the chairmanship of British Rail but had to refuse because the principle of competitive rates was not accepted by the then Labour government. Finally, he did accept the post of chair- man of British Rail although it meant a reduction of two thirds in his earnings. He held the post until 1983, during which time he had a rough ride having to confront the militant rail unions; but he earned the respect of all sides in a very difficult job. His career between 1983 and his death in 2002 was a busy one. He became chairman of a number of companies (see above), and he was also active in the fields of education, serving as chairman of the council of the London School of Economics (LSE). He worked hard for the National Theatre and for the Globe. But he still found time for numerous activities con- nected with Japan (see below). He died suddenly at the age of seventy- eight from a heart attack while on holiday with his wife in Turkey in 2002. He had by then given up most of his posts and was looking forward to retirement and to writing.

PERSONALITY Peter had a good appearance, great charm and charisma. He made friends wherever he went or worked. He had outstanding qualities of leadership knowing how to get the best out of people, although he did not lack the necessary steel to succeed in business. He recognized the importance of networking at which he was adept. He remained very busy up to the time of his death, but however busy and hard to get hold of he was always able to give his full attention to the person he was dealing with at a given moment. He loved to talk and did so with panache and humour. He read widely and was a particular devotee of

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William Blake whom he liked to quote. He enjoyed Japanese haiku and would often bring one or more into his speeches. He was an out- standing amateur actor and could have been professional if he had not become involved with management. He was very energetic and full of enthusiasm, but he tempered this with sound common sense.

EARLY CONTACTS WITH JAPAN Peter gave a brief account in his memoir of his time studying Japanese at SOAS and at Dulwich. There is no doubt that he was an outstand- ing member of what was an elite group. Despite having to study hard he managed to find time for rugby; he played in the three-quarter line and one of his contemporaries described him as the speediest.6 He also organized dramatics and play-readings, taking parts with great verve. He showed his flair for acting; in the Christmas pantomime7 Peter did a take-off of the Dulwich headmaster ‘giving a sanctimonious sermon and making great play of the man’s habit, whenever his sentences got into difficulties, of pulling a large coloured handkerchief from his breast pocket, stuffing it up his sleeve after a few flourishes and then reversing the process’. His leadership qualities were noted by his fellow students and by those in charge of the course. He quickly became the leader of the boys in negotiations with the authorities and won con- cessions over their treatment. He learnt Japanese quickly, having a good ear and having learnt French as a child. He was obvious officer quality and was a natural choice to join the first batch of students to be called up and sent to India. He had indeed argued with the authorities that some of the stu- dents at least were ready to play an active role and did not need a few more weeks of language training followed by a square-bashing infantry course. He clearly made a very favourable impression on his superiors in India and Burma as, after a few months, he was chosen to join the British liaison mission in Washington. This brought him to Japan in October 1945 and made him one of the first Japanese-speaking British officers in Japan after the end of the war. Peter has briefly described his first experience in Japan8 and his impressions of the Occupation. Japan clearly made a deep impression on him, but it was not as strong as it undoubtedly was on some other war-time students of Japanese, and he did not have the urge to return soon and pursue his studies of Japan and Japanese. He has mentioned the Azuma family whom he and his American friend got to know. Mrs Azuma (Mutsuko) was deeply attached to Peter of whom she spoke in the warmest terms to all the other young British students of Japanese whom she befriended. She enjoyed flirting with them and mothering them.

148 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002)

VISITS TO JAPAN Once he was established in business, Peter found opportunities for occasional short business trips to Japan for instance to attend the launching of a ship for a British company at one of Japan’s successful shipyards at Nagasaki. He also managed a visit to Japan9 when he was chairman of British Rail for talks with Takagi Fumio, then head of Japan National Railways despite the difficult time he was then having with the rail unions.

SPEAKING FOR THE FUTURE In 1985, after he had retired from the Chairmanship of British Rail, Peter was able to give more time to other public matters. The gov- ernment, or rather the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, rightly turned to him in May 1985 to lead a new study into provision for ori- ental studies in Britain when Sir James Craig, an Arabist and former Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, persuaded the office that if the study was to carry any weight with trade, industry and finance a business figure was needed to head the enquiry. His report was completed by the spring of 1986 and sent by him on 18 February 1986 to Professor Sir Peter Swinnerton Dyer, Chairman of the University Grants Com- mittee. Peter noted that the decision to entrust the Enquiry to one man rather than to a commission10 with a proper budget and secre- tariat meant that his report was more judgemental than ‘a systematic and comprehensive survey on the lines of the 1947 Scarborough Commission and the 1961 Hayter Sub-Committee’. Peter noted that the picture revealed was ‘more disturbing than any of us . . . had antic- ipated’. They had found ‘no national policy for Oriental and African Studies, nor any effective system of coordination between those insti- tutions engaged in them’. This contrasted with the efforts being made in the United States. ‘Urgent action at the Government level’ was needed. Swinnerton Dyer, in thanking Peter Parker warmly for his report, observed that the conclusions seemed both sensible and con- vincing. Geoffrey Howe, then Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, wrote to Peter in March 1987 congratulating him on the report. Peter acknowledged the invaluable help in drawing up his report which he had had from the enquiry panel drawn from academia and the diplomatic service. The report described the written submissions received from many universities and other higher education institu- tions. The enquiry also heard oral evidence over two days which Peter chaired. Richard Tames,11 then head of external relations at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), had been deputed by Professor Jeremy Cowan, director of SOAS, to assist Peter. His job was

149 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI to trawl through the submissions and draft the report. ‘Peter read every word of it and rewrote it.’ He cut out purple passages in which Richard’s ‘rage at the self-evident folly of what was being proposed spilled over’. ‘He also imparted that crispness and gracious consistency of style which was characteristic of his writing.’ One of the diplomats who worked with Peter on the enquiry was Sir Michael Weir. He accompanied Peter on some calls on captains of industry such as Sir John Harvey Jones, then Chairman of ICI. Michael noted12 that ‘what impressed – and depressed – us about these interviews was the overwhelmingly short-sighted view taken by our business witnesses. . .almost no companies were prepared to make special provision for language and area expertise in their recruitment policies. As I recall not one would contemplate recruiting a graduate in oriental languages for the sake of his expertise, but would prefer to “buy it in”, operating in a phrase in Peter’s covering letter, unmistak- ably his own, -“per ardua ad hoc”.’ The panel had no difficulty in persuading Peter to ‘quietly reverse the priority in our terms of reference – “provision which is required to meet the demands of com- merce and diplomacy . . .”to “. . . the requirements of diplomacy and commerce”.’ Michael argued and Peter endorsed his arguments ‘for a much wider interpretation of diplomacy to cover the whole range of British interests overseas rather than just the concerns of the FCO’. In Michael Weir’s view, which all who knew Peter in this context would endorse, the success of the report can largely ‘be attributed to Peter’s breadth of vision and balanced judgement’. Another diplomat closely involved with the enquiry who assisted Peter was Juliet Campbell,13 then head of training department in the FCO; she remembers how Peter ‘operated through energy, charm and charisma. He was remark- ably good at prevailing on people to do things!’ ‘His personal touch was certainly one of his ways of getting things done. He made it all rather fun.’14 The Government duly endorsed the conclusions of the report and funds were made available through the University Grants Committee for a series of new posts at various universities including institutions in Scotland and Wales. Peter kept a watchful eye on this process.15 Sadly, since Peter’s death, there have been some serious reductions in provi- sion for oriental studies and there have been signs that insufficient emphasis is still being placed on the teaching of ‘difficult’ or ‘minor- ity’ languages. If Peter had been alive I am sure that he would have pressed for his review to be updated. In an article which he wrote for Insight Japan in February 1995, when he was Chairman of ‘Languages for Export’, he emphasized that ‘the road to the heartland of another culture starts with language learning’. ‘The adventure of entering another culture is a necessary

150 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002) journey . . . for an international business.’ In the same article, he argued strongly that while the number of applications to study Chinese was welcome it was ‘dangerous nonsense’to neglect the study of Japanese. The stagnation of the Japanese economy should not lead us to underestimate ‘the sheer resilience of Japan’. In another article, in May 1995, he noted that ‘Japan’s domestic policies are now matters of world concern.’

UK-JAPAN 2000 GROUP16 In 1984, a number of political and business figures, supported by senior diplomats both British and Japanese, decided that there was a need for a forum where there could be an informal exchange of views between a select group of senior British and Japanese figures much on the lines of the Anglo-German Königswinter conferences. Peter was active from the beginning in working to establish the annual confer- ences which have taken place alternatively in Britain and Japan and attended every conference until his death. He often presented papers and on almost every topic under discussion he would make valuable comments, arguing with invariable courtesy and good humour as well as common sense. David Howell17 who was the UK Chairman for many years recalls that Peter was often very amusing about our Japanese interlocutors noting ‘their long silences’.

1991 JAPAN FESTIVAL IN THE UNITED KINGDOM When the late Sir Ian Hunter and Martin Campbell White18 of Harold Holt, concert promoters, discussed with me in 1987 the idea of putting on a series of Japan-related events we soon agreed that we should ask Sir Peter Parker to chair our organizing committee. Peter readily accepted and threw himself with his usual enthusiasm and energy into the task. One of the first requirements was to get Japanese government endorsement of the proposal. He and I worked hard on the then Japanese Ambassador to London, Yamazaki Toshio, at a meeting in England of the UK-Japan 2000 Group. We also worked closely with Yamazaki’s successor, Chiba Kazuo, who gave us his enthusiastic support. A Japan committee was established in 1988 under the Chairmanship of Saba Sho¯ichi19of Toshiba, with whom Peter established a close rapport. The Festival received no direct grants from either the Japanese or the British government and was a British initia- tive which won support from private funds. In Britain, Peter oversaw the setting up of the necessary organiza- tion to run a festival which grew hugely as the year 1991 approached. An office headed by David Barrie and a series of committees covering

151 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI the various types of activities which were to be part of the festival were set up. Martin Campbell White and Jasper Parrott provided much valuable support. Peter, with the backing of Graham McCallum, ensured that all expenditure was carefully accounted for and that we did not take on commitments for which we did not have the neces- sary resources. ‘He was ubiquitous and indefatigable . . . He galvanized us . . . when economic problems were weighing us down . . . He cer- tainly led from the front.’20 He worked assiduously to persuade leading British businessmen to back the festival and kept the peace good humouredly between the various individuals vying for the limelight or for their pet projects. He noted in an article in Insight Japan, in August 1996, that we who had worked for the festival were lucky to be part of such an enjoyable enterprise, but also lucky in our timing. If we had been trying to organize such a festival a year later we should not have succeeded in the way we did. The world and Japan were by then in recession. Peter was an enthusiast for the proposed Sumo basho21 in October 1991 at the Royal Albert Hall, which Martin Campbell White and others had laboured long to bring to fruition. Peter had to give the opening speech from the dohyo¯.22 He recalled in his Insight Japan article that he had had to call on his experience as a hurdler to surmount the steep sides of the platform in time for his speech. The occasion was one of the highlights of the festival for him.23 Peter delighted in the formal occasions involving the two patrons, the Prince of Wales and the Japanese Crown Prince, and always managed to produce just the right speech for each occasion, usually throwing in an appropriate haiku. One of his favourites was:

Hito kaeru, People going home Hanabi no ato After the fireworks, Kuraki ka na Darkness.

This emphasized the wish of all involved that the festival should not be just a one-off affair. The Kyoto Garden in Holland Park would, of course, remain as a memorial to the centenary of the Japan Society but we all wanted to ensure that the interest in Japan aroused by the Festival would continue. Japanese funds left over from the festival amounting to £1,000,000 were made available through the good offices of Saba Shoichi to help with educational and other cultural projects.

FESTIVAL AWARDS AND JAPAN FESTIVAL EDUCATION TRUST The funds were channelled under Peter Parker’s guidance into the Japan Festival Fund with Lydia Gomersall as Executive Director to administer

152 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002) the proposed Japan Festival Awards, which were decided by a commit- tee on which Peter served. The awards, which were made annually until the year 2000 to organizations and individuals who had made a significant contribution to promoting interest in Japanese culture, were handed over at either a luncheon or a reception at which Peter gener- ally presided. His words of encouragement and praise were much appre- ciated and helped to bring publicity to these events. In his Insight Japan, article, after one award ceremony, Peter quoted a haiku by Kikaku (1661–1707) to underline the changing new balance of East and West:

Inazuma ya Summer lightening Kino wa higashi Yesterday in the East Kyo wa nishi Today in the West

He recalled some of the award-winners, including the Burma Campaign Fellowship Group of which he was a member,24 for the ‘brave idea of a special service of reconciliation in Westminster Abbey during the VJ celebrations’ and the Royal Institute of British Architects for its exhibition of ‘Emerging Japanese Architects’, as well as the British Haiku Society. He quoted, in concluding this article, the haiku by David Cobb reading:

In the dark garden From a distance lightening on The track of a snail.

The festival organizers had from the beginning attached importance to the educational aspects of the festival, but at the end of the festival it was feared that the work would have to cease. Peter saw the value of what was being achieved and with his help and backing the Japan Festival Education Trust was established. Peter was convinced that young people in Britain needed to know about Japan. His favourite scheme set up by the trust was ‘Japan in Your Classroom’.25 Both organizations were in due course absorbed into Japan 21 following the Japan 2001 celebration. Peter was awarded the high Japanese honour of the Grand Cordon of the Sacred Treasure for all he had done in the Japan Festival. His work for Anglo-Japanese relations was marked by the British award of Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE) in 1991. He had been knighted in 1978.

WRITING ABOUT JAPAN Peter was much in demand as a speaker and writer about Japan in the 1990s. He was asked by George Bull of the Anglo-Japanese Economic

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Institute, which had been set up by Japanese government funds, to contribute a series of articles to Insight Japan, some of which I have already quoted. These articles, imaginatively written, revealed not only his wide reading but also the breadth of his mind and experience. The name of William Blake was often mentioned. A recurring theme was the need for reconciliation. He hoped26 that the Second World War would ‘come to be celebrated as the end of a war to end imper- ial wars’. In a ‘Letter to the latest grandson’27written on VJ day 1995, fifty years after the end of the Second World War, he expressed the hope that when VJ day 2045 came round the ‘V’ would stand for ‘Victory of Peace’ and ‘J’ for ‘Jubilee’. He told his grandson that ‘the Japanese, like all interesting people, take some understanding. They make the best of friends and the fiercest of enemies. They are sensi- tive and stubborn, amazingly active and passive, courageous and hard on themselves to the point that they can be indifferent to one another, let alone anybody else. And they keep changing.28 I do hope you will live to see one particular change and that is in their attitude to their women . . .’ Peter was optimistic that Japan would not revert to mili- tarism but he was wary of historical revisionism and stressed the importance of internationalism. In doing so he did not29 ‘mean to knock pride in one’s country . . . But in gardening our patch, we do well to remember shakkei,30 the technique developed in the Edo period of designing one’s own garden, as part of the larger design, using the surrounding landscape.’ In the Foreword to Richard Tames book Encounters with Japan31 Peter stressed that ‘Understanding Japan is as potent a priority for the West as “catching up with the West” once was for the Japanese.’ He reminded readers of ‘the importance of the frankness of friendship. And above all of keeping friendships in good repair.’

ZEN AND ART Peter greatly admired the work of the Zen artist Hamano Toshihiro¯ whose works were exhibited during the 1991 Japan Festival. In February 1993, Peter and his wife Gill visited Hamano in Japan where they admired32 some of his screen paintings, particularly the screen Hajime (Beginning) as well as other murals of ‘Flying Angels’ and ‘Sea of Clouds with Mountains in the Distance’. Peter, Gill and Hamano while looking at the paintings had a discussion33 about the meaning of art during which Hamano expressed his interest in the paintings of Turner and Blake. Peter, who was always an enthusiastic admirer of William Blake, stressed that, for Blake, imagination not nature was the beginning. There was, Peter felt, too big a gap between art and the working life of people. Work and art or imagination had to be brought

154 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002) together. Hamano later designed the Japanese garden at Westlakes Research Institute in Cumbria in 1995 which was formally named by Peter and opened by the Japanese Ambassador Fujii Hiroaki. On this occasion, Hamano34 ‘gave one of his thrilling performances of callig- raphy using a broom-sized brush to write the kanji on a six panelled gold screen. For him art is both reflection and action . . . I love Hamano’s work. It is wonderfully wide-ranging; huge symbolic sculp- tures; abstract paintings unique in modern Japanese art . . . In all his amazing life so far, his art is deeply rooted in Japanese values of Zen, setting Zen ideas against the essential dualism of Western thought: God and man, imagination and reason, the artist and the model, object and subject.’ Hamano wanted to see a UK-Japan Art Centre. Peter, who backed the idea, attached importance to international exchanges in art and culture. ‘My own dream for the future’, he said, ‘is to feel the idea of one world internationally . . . .The environment, technology, diseases such as AIDS, and poverty – all these things bring us together . . . yet do not necessarily bring us close. Only art can do that; it can make us friends.’When Hamano came to Britain again in 1998 he visited Peter and Gill at their home at Minster Lovell in Oxfordshire and Peter took him among other places to the Globe Theatre in London with whose construction Peter had been so closely connected.

THE SIR PETER PARKER AWARDS FOR SPOKEN BUSINESS JAPANESE In 1989, Moromi Akira, then deputy director of JETRO’s London office suggested to Alan Pinnell, JETRO’s PR consultant and a former Japanese speaking officer in the British Embassy in Tokyo,35 that it would be a good idea to organize a Japanese speech contest to encour- age the use of Japanese among business people, British and European, as distinct from academics. JETRO wanted to encourage the greater use of practical Japanese in business dealings between Japan and the EEC. Alan discussed the idea with Richard Tames at SOAS, who had worked with Peter on the report ‘Speaking for the future’ (see above) and who suggested that Peter was the obvious choice to become patron. Peter readily agreed and the awards were named after him. The first awards were held in February 1990, organized by JETRO and SOAS. Initially, they were aimed solely at business people, but in 1993 a second category was introduced for undergraduate students of Japanese. This well matched Peter’s own wish to encourage Japanese study at British universities. The basic format for the awards, with some changes over the years, was that contestants had to give a speech in Japanese and then answer questions in front of a panel of judges of

155 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI which, for the first ten years, I was the chairman. As patron, Peter took a close interest in the awards, and his speeches at the prize-giving cere- monies each year were gracious and witty, complete with his trade- mark haiku. After his death, his family agreed that the awards should continue to be named after him.

MITSUBISHI ELECTRIC (ME)36 Peter’s most important Japan-related post was that of Chairman of Mitsubishi Electric (ME) in the UK to which he was appointed in 1984. He later became global adviser to the company. Tominaga Yu¯zo¯, who was managing director of ME (UK) in 1983, recalled37 that when he saw Peter on TV making a speech at the end of his time as Chairman of British Rail he was so impressed that he decided to get in touch and ask him to take the chair at ME (UK). To Tominaga’s surprise Peter not only agreed to meet him at British Rail’s head office, but also to consider his proposal. In his essay in Japan Experiences,38 Peter wrote that his decision to take on the job was ‘a controversial surprise all round in my business circles . . . Some condemned me as a turncoat. I was switching sides.’ There was still a great deal of suspicion and prejudice in British industry towards Japan. Peter, who felt that he had largely lost touch with Japan, flew to Tokyo to decide and immediately ‘clicked’ with Yufu-san of Mitsubishi Electric. As he said in his memoirs,39 he had ‘three aims in taking the job; to establish more high-tech investment and more jobs in Britain; to encourage more collaborations in joint ventures, in research and exports, and to close the cultural gap between our two peoples’. Tominaga said it had given him great pleasure to give Peter his first contract with the company. Peter had responded with a charming smile that this was the first time that he had received his contract from one who was to be his subordinate, adding that many of his British friends regarded him as a Trojan horse. Tominaga thought that because of Peter’s role with the company they had been able to recruit high ranking British people. Peter had often said to him that Japanese busi- nessmen only seemed to want to talk about golf and women. If they wanted to be successful in Europe they had to be able to discuss any subject for up to three hours! Iinuma Takeo, who also worked with Peter at Mitsubishi Electric, said that in the period up to the early 1990s Peter had concentrated on bringing together the managers of various Mitsubishi Electric enter- prises, enhancing cooperation between them, raising the level of British staff and extending localization. In 1984, Peter and Katayama, then President of Mitsubishi Electric, opened the VCR factory at Livingstone in Scotland where Noguchi

156 SIR PETER PARKER (1924–2002)

Yoshio was the manager. In a way which was typical of him, Peter went round the shop floor chatting with the boys and girls who had just been recruited as operatives. He recounted to Noguchi40 with a broad smile that they had said to him: ‘If you want money, why don’t you come and join us here, it’s good pay . . .’ In 1988, when the company was listed on the London Stock Exchange, Peter played a key role in talking with investors and jour- nalists and every year thereafter he took part in meetings with investors in the company. He also played a valuable part in the company’s take- over of Apricot Computers and became chairman of the company. He also tried hard to open up channels of cooperation with other com- panies in Britain.41 In pursuing his aim of bridging the cultural gap, Peter organized Chairman’s lunches to bring together leading figures in industry, banking, the civil service and academia to meet Japanese businessmen. He also worked hard to get increased sponsorship of the arts particu- larly the National Theatre which was so close to his heart. Peter saw the value and importance of the European Community and urged Mitsubishi Electric to develop its presence in Europe and set up a European advisory committee. His task was far from easy and on his visits to Japan he used to say that there seemed to be a thirty- centimetre-thick pane of bullet proof glass between him and Japanese executives! In 1998, he was instrumental in the setting up of an international advisory group for Mitsubishi Electric’s worldwide activities. He used his charm and humour to ensure that the discussions in the group were productive. Indeed, his charm and common sense were unfailing and impressed all the Japanese who worked with him at the company. All his colleagues there mourned his untimely death.

157 15

Lord (Eric) Roll of Ipsden (1907–2005), S.G.Warburg and Shirasu Jiro¯

MARTIN GORDON

Eric Roll. Portrait by Tetsuko Suzuki, 1994

When Lord Roll died in 2005 at the age of ninety-seven, he had completed three full careers, and he was working actively until the day of his death – at his office at UBS Investment Bank and at the House of Lords. He had behind him first his career as a professor of econom- ics, second his career as a civil servant – rising to ‘Vice Minister’ rank as permanent secretary of the Department of Economic Affairs – and third his final and longest career as an investment banker at S.G. Warburg & Co., which in his last ten years was subsumed under the Swiss bank, UBS. In all Eric Roll’s careers he had relations with Japan. As an econo- mist, his oldest friend in Japan was Professor Tsuru Shigeto of Hitotsubashi University, and Eric’s economic textbooks, especially his History of Economic Thought, left him with many disciples in the Japanese business and academic communities. As a government official, his 158 LORD (ERIC) ROLL OF IPSDEN (1907–2005) strongest contact with Japan had been when he negotiated the International Sugar Agreement in 1958, and he was at the right hand of the Chancellor of the Exchequer Reginald Maudling at the IMF Meetings in Tokyo in 1964. But in his final career at S.G. Warburg he had his most detailed and long-lasting relationship with Japan, and it is for this reason that I have referred in the title to S.G. Warburg (both the bank itself and its founder Sir Siegmund G. Warburg) and to Siegmund Warburg’s and Eric Roll’s best friend in Japan – Shirasu Jiro¯. Siegmund Warburg had formed his special attachment to Shirasu Jiro on his first visit to Japan in 1962, and through Jiro¯ to Miyazawa Kiichi, then a member of the House of Councillors, and subsequently Foreign Minister, Finance Minister and Prime Minister of Japan. When Eric Roll joined S.G. Warburg in 1967, he was introduced by Siegmund Warburg at an early stage to Shirasu Jiro¯ and Miyazawa Kiichi, and they remained his own closest contacts in Japan until Shirasu died in 1985 – and the relationship with Miyazawa continued into the present century. Eric Roll was fond of telling the story of how Siegmund Warburg and Henry Grunfeld persuaded him to join S.G. Warburg & Co. As Eric’s official career was coming to an end on the approach of his six- tieth birthday, he was being invited by numerous firms to join them, including Lazard Brothers and ICI. Siegmund told Eric that these were excellent firms where he could undoubtedly make a strong contribu- tion, but the same would be true at S.G. Warburg and he would prob- ably ‘have more fun with us’. The atmosphere at S.G. Warburg when Eric joined in 1967 was cer- tainly hard-working, perfectionist and competitive – but it was also ‘fun’: it was enjoyable and it was intellectually stimulating to work with the brilliant group which dominated the bank at that time, including Siegmund himself, Henry Grunfeld, Eric Korner and others. It was among these people that the Eurobond market was invented. This was to be the ‘glory’ of S.G. Warburg over the next thirty years; and it was among these people that the post-war M&A market in the United Kingdom took shape. It was in these two areas of business that S.G. Warburg became a dominant force in the sixties and beyond, and Eric Roll became part of this development – especially with the inter- national capital market. From 1962 onwards, S.G. Warburg was actively extending its Eurobond business into Japan, and its earliest transactions in the 1963/64 period were for borrowers like Tokyo Metropolitan Government and Toray Industries (then known as Toyo Rayon). Shirasu Jiro¯ was constantly telling his friends in Japan that S.G. Warburg was a more powerful and reliable force than more established merchant banks, which had helped Japan before the war, such as

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Baring Brothers, NM Rothschild and Schroders. Moreover the bank cooperated closely with the strongest Japanese financial firms, such as Bank of Tokyo, Industrial Bank of Japan, Nomura Securities, Nikko Securities and Daiwa Securities, and these firms actively introduced their good Japanese clients to S.G. Warburg & Co. When Eric Roll joined the bank in 1967, he was immediately swept up in these activities and these relationships. This was helped by his old friendship with Horie Shigeo, former president of the Bank of Tokyo, and a succession of Bank of Tokyo chairmen and presidents became Eric’s friends, including Yokoyama So¯ichi, Kashiwagi Yusuke and Takagaki Tasuku. In the case of Yokoyama, Eric and he shared a passion for Shakespeare and their meetings were interspersed with Shakespearean quotations and allusions. In the case of Kashiwagi, there was the common background as ‘Vice Ministers’ or ‘Permanent Secretaries’ of Finance – as well as a common interest in China, where Kashiwagi had been born. In the case of Takagaki, this was the longest and most continuous relationship between Bank of Tokyo and S.G. Warburg. Takagaki was the last president of Bank of Tokyo, and the first president of Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, since he had had the pre- science to see that Bank of Tokyo’s prosperity needed the strong alliance of Mitsubishi Bank. Of all S.G. Warburg’s financial relationships in Japan, that with Bank of Tokyo was always the most harmonious and symbiotic. Both Bank of Tokyo and S.G. Warburg were small compared with their peers in their home markets, but both were at the same time the strongest of their peers internationally. Bank of Tokyo inherited the traditions and connexions of the Yokohama Specie Bank – and our friend Shirasu Jiro¯’s grandfather Shirasu Taizo¯ had been the third governor of the Yokohama Specie Bank in 1883. Bank of Tokyo was entirely in the private sector, but many of its presidents came from the Ministry of Finance and this gave the bank a quasi-governmental image, and indeed Bank of Tokyo’s own international bonds (many of them issued through S.G. Warburg) had a special cachet amongst investors. As Eric Roll’s career had spanned the public and private financial sectors, he was well attuned to Bank of Tokyo’s way of thinking. Takagaki Tasuku, an anglophile from his pre-war childhood days when his father ran Mitsubishi’s London office, describes Eric Roll and Gordon Richardson (former Governor of the Bank of England) as his two ‘mentors’ in international finance. During most of his S.G. Warburg career, Eric Roll represented the senior connexion between his bank and the Japanese people and banks and industrial companies with whom we did most of our business. Shirasu Jiro¯ and Miyazawa Kiichi were of course the leading connex- ions, followed closely by Nagayama Tokio of Sho¯wa Shell, Governor

160 LORD (ERIC) ROLL OF IPSDEN (1907–2005)

Morinaga Teiichiro of the Bank of Japan and Suzuki Hideo, whose wife Tetsuko painted the portrait of Eric illustrated at the beginning of this article. Beyond them, Eric Roll and the bank kept close connexions with all the major banks, insurance companies and brokers. Special friends included Kurosawa Yoh at Industrial Bank of Japan, Aida Yukio and Egashira Keisuke of Nomura and, until his untimely death in a Paris air crash, Tohyama Gen-ichi of Nikko. At Sumitomo, meetings with Hotta Sho¯zo¯ were always crisp and stimulating. Among the old ‘Big Four’ securities companies, S.G. Warburg did much business with all of them – and of course Nomura was nearly always the most powerful. But there was an internationalism, consis- tency and aggressiveness at Daiwa which appealed to the S.G. Warburg team, and Eric Roll formed a special relationship with Daiwa’s inter- nationalist Chairman Chino Yoshitoki, whom he met when Daiwa and S.G. Warburg cooperated on the Eurobond issue for Mitsubishi Electric in 1969. As a result of their friendship, it was Eric Roll whom Chino approached when he wanted to start the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation in 1988. This has remained the biggest Anglo-Japanese educational benefaction of all time, and Eric was chairman from its beginning until he relinquished his position in 2001. Eric Roll was fifty-nine when he started to work at S.G. Warburg – an age at which many people retire – and he stayed with the company for a thirty-eight-year period until his death – a longer career than many people have in a lifetime. As he continued to work into his sev- enties, eighties and nineties, it was a matter of wonderment that he remained so effective. In Japan, however, people were less surprised, since senior executives at Japanese banks often continued to have influence long after retirement. In dealing with these firms it was always necessary to bear in mind, and if possible have access to, these old and decisive people, and an elder statesman like Lord Roll was in a good position to achieve this. Moreover ‘respect for the aged’ was an aspect of banking life that young executives at S.G. Warburg understood. The bank’s founders, especially Siegmund Warburg, Henry Grunfeld and Eric Korner, watched closely, advised and warned. These older bankers had lived through the German inflation and interwar depression, as well as the war itself and the catastrophe for Jewish people, and their long experi- ence was vital guidance to the younger people – and this strength of the S.G. Warburg bank was appreciated by our Japanese friends. Other Warburg qualities were also appreciated in Japan, including meticulous attention to detail; willingness to keep in touch with financial and other authorities in order to preserve the spirit as well as the letter of the law; general courtesy and good manners and ‘haute

161 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI banque’ behaviour; consistency in client coverage in good times and bad – with old clients always served ahead of new clients; written records prepared quickly and communicated to those involved – indeed we were told that Kurosawa of IBJ used to circulate letters from S.G. Warburg around his bank as examples of correct banking corre- spondence. In all these areas, Eric Roll was a past master, not least with his civil servant and academic background, and his love of literature, especially Shakespeare and Goethe, and his deep-seated internationalism, which made him understand the points of view, and feel at home, in so many countries and societies including Japan. Indeed Japan, which seemed so ‘foreign’ to many bankers and business people from Europe and the USA, never felt like a foreign country to Siegmund and Eric and their colleagues, not least because Shirasu Jiro¯ was always telling his friends in Japan that S.G. Warburg should not be treated as foreign, and Kashiwagi of Bank of Tokyo was telling everyone in Japan that the pre- eminent banks of the world were Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan and S.G. Warburg. Before Shirasu Jiro¯ died S.G. Warburg was granted the first licence to a foreign firm to have a seat on the Tokyo Stock Exchange. Eric Roll was a man of exceptional intellect and perception, which fitted well with the sensitivity, creativity and deep psychological thought of Siegmund Warburg and Henry Grunfeld. He was a medi- ator, conciliator and negotiator. He applied patience, quiet persuasion and meticulous knowledge of his brief – and with that the ability to answer unexpected questions. These abilities were most effective in his wartime role with the British Food Mission in Washington and his post-war role in the administration of the Marshall Plan. He also earned fame for his role as one of the ‘flying knights’ accompanying future Prime Minister Edward Heath in the UK’s negotiations to join the European Community – until the talks were aborted by General de Gaulle in January 1963. It was said of Eric at the time that he could lip-read in French and German, as well as in English. When Eric joined S.G. Warburg he soon put his mediating skills to good use, and his ability to see other points of view, especially across national borders, gave him an ability to achieve compromises and modus vivendi which had seemed impossible. At some times he seemed almost too willing to accept an opposing point of view, but this was simply his skill, which did not impinge on his fundamental beliefs to which, along with his general intellectual rigour, he adhered at all times. Eric referred in his autobiographical Crowded Hours to the Austrian virtue of ‘biegen nicht brechen’ – bend not break – and this often epitomized the success of his negotiation. Eric Roll’s internationalism, and his horror of insular and domestic attitudes in any country, goes back to his early life. Eric came from

162 LORD (ERIC) ROLL OF IPSDEN (1907–2005)

Czernowitz, the most easterly province of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and a young man making his way from Czernowitz to the glit- tering capital of Vienna in the early years of the twentieth century would encounter there the most sophisticated international society. All the countries of central Europe, now newly renascent as members of the European Union, were represented there. A young and brilliant scholar like Eric would have been unforgettably impressed, and throughout Eric’s career – at Harvard and in Washington, and in London and at the universities of Birmingham and Hull – one can trace the intellect, urbanity, humour and cosmopolitanism of the Habsburg Empire. This old Viennese internationalism contributed to the attitudes to which he subsequently adhered, including his transatlanticism devel- oped in Washington in wartime; his fervent Europeanism which blended precisely with the views of Siegmund Warburg and his col- leagues; and his openness and sympathy to the post-war development of Japan and other Asian countries, including the rise of China fol- lowing the Cultural Revolution. Siegmund and his colleagues were at the forefront of European cooperation and saw its necessity in order to overcome the strife of centuries, which had produced the World Wars. Both Siegmund Warburg and Eric Roll were close friends of the founding fathers of new Europe, especially Jean Monnet. Siegmund was present at the founding of the European Coal & Steel Community in 1952. S.G. Warburg as a bank was involved at all stages of the devel- opment of the European Community, and was a sometimes lonely voice from the City of London recommending UK adhesion to the European Community. S.G. Warburg devised the first multi-currency clause for an international bond – for the Republic of Austria in 1958, and the first dual currency bonds, in sterling and deutschmarks, in 1964. It was an article of faith within old S.G. Warburg that everything should be done to promote European cooperation and a European currency, and the insular Euro-scepticism of so many in England was repugnant to all the Warburg people. When Eric joined S.G. Warburg, the Europeanism of the bank was one of its attractions to him, and he never abandoned this philosophy. At his ninetieth birthday party in 1997, hosted by David Scholey at the Bank of England, and attended by former and serving Prime Ministers, Finance Ministers and Central Bank Governors and leading bankers and industrialists, Eric spoke about his continued respect for the European ideal, and the reasons he believed it was to the UK’s advantage to join the Euro and to use our country’s influence to make the Euro most effective. The international attitudes at S.G. Warburg undoubtedly appealed to the bank’s friends in Japan and contributed to its business. Eric found

163 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI himself welcomed not only by government and financial leaders, but also by S.G. Warburg clients like Morita Akio of Sony, Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯ of Toyota Motor, Morohashi Shinroku of Mitsubishi Corporation, Ishihara Takashi of Nissan Motor, Tashiro Shigeki and Koyasu Taro¯ of Toray, etc. It was also through Eric that S.G. Warburg was able to act for Merck in the acquisition of Banyu¯ Pharmaceutical in 1983, one of the earliest major ‘M&A’ transactions into Japan. Eric’s internationalism extended to many countries where his con- tacts and understanding were always impressive. He was one of the ear- liest bankers to go to China after the Cultural Revolution and to establish links with top leaders. This led to S.G. Warburg doing the first Eurobond in London for Bank of China. As an economist, and as an expert on Karl Marx, he was able to confound Chinese experts on Marx with the depth of his knowledge. Elsewhere in Asia he was a regular visitor to Jakarta where S.G. Warburg was adviser to Bank Indonesia, and he was always received warmly in Singapore by Lee Kuan Yew and in Malaysia he was a close friend of Governor Tun Ismail of Bank Negara and through him with Prime Minister Mahathir. Eric’s contacts in Europe were even stronger, especially in Italy, Germany, Scandinavia, Ireland, France and – given his background – most particularly in Austria; and his contacts in the United Kingdom were unequalled, at all levels of government and business. Among other appointments, he served as a Director of the Bank of England from 1968 to 1977. He was also familiar with senior bankers and officials in the USA, especially in Washington, New York and Boston, where his fellow economist and diplomat J.K. Galbraith and his wife Kitty were lifelong friends of Eric and Freda. The executives of S.G. Warburg – and subsequently of UBS – com- peted to persuade Lord Roll to join them on visits to the countries they covered, since a visit by Lord Roll to any country resulted in great goodwill with concomitant business potential. Indeed, in some coun- tries the issuers found it difficult to refuse a mandate when Lord Roll requested it, because they were so conscious of Lord Roll’s relation- ships at head of state and prime ministerial levels that they felt they had to accede. In many ways, Eric Roll’s most impressive appearance would be at the IMF meetings which would take place twice every three years in Washington in the autumn. Eric knew Washington well from his wartime experience and from his period as UK Director of the IMF and World Bank. He was intimate with successive Chairmen of the Federal Reserve, especially Paul Volcker and Alan Greenspan, and vis- iting Finance Ministers and central bank governors would all be wel- coming to him. Eric used always to travel with his wife Freda, and her

164 LORD (ERIC) ROLL OF IPSDEN (1907–2005) white-haired presence was everywhere appreciated. The business con- vention, of course, is that spouses do not attend business meetings – but there was an exception to this in China where top Chinese officials would not hear of excluding Lady Roll and she attended all meetings with her husband. Eric’s last years were golden. S.G. Warburg was acquired by Swiss Bank Corporation in 1995, and Eric Roll and Henry Grunfeld main- tained their daily presence at the bank, giving guidance and example to their younger colleagues many of whom were confused and disap- pointed at the bank’s loss of independence. The example set by Eric and Henry greatly contributed to the success of the merger, and ensured that the Warburg franchise and methods survived and flourished, and that Warburg people rose to influential positions in the larger bank, which became UBS. Eric lost Freda in 1998, and his health deteriorated, especially his back and his eyesight – but these difficulties were met by him as a challenge to greater activity (or ‘occu- pational therapy’, as he called it after he lost Freda). He spent his morn- ings at UBS and his afternoons at the House of Lords, and he maintained his travel programme, including Japan and China, the USA and France, Germany, Italy, Scandinavia and, of course, his beloved Austria. He kept himself informed on all the investment banking activities of UBS, and was ready with advice and introductions for the younger people. As examples of his industry during this latter period, I could mention first a banking conference, which UBS organized in Tokyo in 2000. Eric Roll chaired the conference and invited old friends like Paul Volcker to participate, alongside Minister Yanagisawa Hakuo. Some people were surprised that UBS would ask a ninety-two-year old banker to take the chair – but they were confounded by his bril- liant and succinct handling of the affair. As another example, I accom- panied Lord Roll on his last visit to China in 1999, and a programme of visits to the Prime Minister and senior financiers had been arranged. After a dinner with the EU Ambassador, Eric tripped and fell flat on his face in a cobbled courtyard. Ambassador Endymion Wilkinson hastily summoned a doctor to Eric’s hotel, and in spite of some cuts and bruises he attended all his meetings on the following day. The day after that he flew back to London – and one day later he was on his feet in the House of Lords making a forty-five-minute speech on monetary policy. It was a great honour to Eric and his bank that he received the Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure from the Japanese government in 1993. Siegmund Warburg had received the same honour in 1978. This highest of Japanese decorations has never before come to two people representing the same foreign firm. This honour

165 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI in Japan complemented similar honours from the Austrian, Italian, Danish and French governments, and, of course, his English peerage. The portraits of Siegmund Warburg and Shirasu Jiro¯ are hanging in the main reception area at UBS Investment Bank in Tokyo – and I would like to think that Eric’s portrait could hang there also.

166 16

Chino Yoshitoki (1923–2004) and the Daiwa Anglo-Japanese Foundation

NICK CLEGG

Chino Yoshitoki

INTRODUCTION ChinoYoshitoki was undoubtedly one of the most charismatic and forward-thinking leaders in the Japanese securities industry. Chino was born in 1923 and after graduating at Keio University joined Daiwa in 1946 at a time when the Japanese Stock Exchange was still a closed shop. He was a prolific contributor to the debate on post- war Japanese economic development and at the young age of thirty- eight was elected a director of Daiwa. He worked as a general manager of the headquarters’ sales department, the foreign department and the foreign stock department. In 1966, he became a managing director and, in 1972, an executive director. In 1981, he was appointed vice- chairman and, in 1982, chairman. He was never president but his part- nership with Doi Sadakane was a powerful one. In 1991, he became honorary chairman, a position he held until 1997. In his time he served as chairman of the Japanese Securities Dealers Association, honorary member of the Keidanren, adviser to the Japanese Association of Corporate Executives. He was a counsellor for Keio University. He also served as chairman of the Japan Hong Kong 167 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Business Co-operation Committee and chairman of the Japanese ASEAN Committee.

CHINO, THE MAN Chino was slight in build and his hair sometimes a bit untidy and askew. He could not see properly in one eye and in his old age not at all. He had a slight malfunction of his legs probably as a result of polio in his youth. For such a slight man he had large, broad hands, almost as if they had been used in rough work as a young man. He had an immensely powerful presence and far from being impassive – which he could of course assume with ease – his facial expressions mostly spoke volumes about his emotions. He was a prolific writer and con- tributed for twenty years a bi-weekly column to the Asahi Shimbun, which was widely read in the financial and business community. He was without question an orator and to see him address the assembled ranks of Daiwa management at their annual managers’ meeting was impressive. The drama of his entry, the power and vari- ation of his speech and tangible effect of his words on his audience were testament to his ability to motivate people. He was a family man. Unlike many Japanese in his position he always tried to arrange for his wife to accompany him on business trips as much as possible. When I visited Tokyo he would sometimes invite me to dine together with her and there was no doubt of the deep affection, which they felt for each other. I always had the impression that he shared much with his wife that not all husbands, Japanese or nationals of other countries, normally do. He was proud of his chil- dren and spoke about them often.

CHINO IN DAIWA SECURITIES I had met him a number of times at formal occasions since I first col- laborated in international financing with Daiwa in the early 1970s. Already then as an outsider one could sense his feel for the rapidly developing international business and financial world through the senior people to whom he assigned the leading roles in developing Daiwa’s international business. The Daiwa team were different to their competitors – not harder working and not necessarily more intelligent (although they might dispute that!), but they were more individualistic and conveyed a sense of curiosity and flexibility in their approach to their clients and their markets. They looked for innovation and they had a sense of humour. As one senior member of Chino’s staff once said to me ‘I am not a normal Japanese, you will see.’ Perhaps Chino, too, was an unusual

168 CHINO YOSHITOKI (1923–2004)

Japanese in some respects. He often said that perhaps, because he had never lived abroad, his interest in Japan’s place in the world was the stronger, less burdened by the prejudices that can sometimes come from too much travel. He was a voracious reader and follower of world affairs since his conviction was that the future of Japan lay in a significant involvement with the outside world. He was convinced that the Daiwa Group had to spearhead its overall expansion through its international involvement and he understood well that expanding abroad would inevitably lead to new and power- ful influences on Japan. To cope with these, Japanese had first to experience life outside their country and he was committed to making it possible for young foreigners in return to visit Japan. He once told me that Daiwa had received over the years as many as 300 young Chinese on short stays. He had the instinct of an adventurer and without question courage. Maybe his sense of fearlessness was a result of a near fatal attack of meningitis when he was young. One of his friends once told me that it had made him a man without fear which he used to explain by reminding them, ‘I was once dead.’ In the aftermath of the 1989 year of revolution in Europe, he immediately took steps to form contacts in Russia, still then the USSR. At the time, this was bold since his- torical relations between the two countries had always been strained and the Russian occupation of the Sakhalin Islands was an important, unresolved issue. However, he saw Japan’s strategic interest in improv- ing relations with Russia and I was privileged with other colleagues to visit Moscow with him and help sign an advisory contract with the Government in the Kremlin, which, I believe, was the first such arrangement made between a Japanese securities house and the new ‘Russia’. Later, his interest turned to India and with his full support and prompting the company opened offices in India and he threw his energy into trying to help major infrastructure developments in and around Bombay. He also initiated studies and proposals for the creation of an offshore financial centre based on Indian territory and enjoyed discussing these ideas with both the regional Governments and the Federal Authorities in Delhi. In Italy, too, he made a significant contribution as co-Chairman with Giovanni Agnelli of the Italy/Japanese Business Group and his work was recognized by the bestowal of the highest civilian decora- tion which the Government could grant, ‘Commendatore del’ordine al Merito della Repubblica Italiana’ in 1994 and ‘Grande Ufficiale’ in 1995. He arranged for Daiwa to form a project team to participate in the studies for the building of the tunnel to link Italy and France. Despite this wide international involvement, it was from the UK that Chino believed Japan had most to learn. In particular, he studied

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British Imperial history and thought that Japan could derive great benefit from observing British behaviour in the past in managing its economic and political influences in the world. He warned the Japanese miracle would be short lived, partly because he thought the Japanese would have difficulty in undertaking the right kind of invest- ment abroad and also because he was sceptical about the durability of the property and stock market bubble. He thought too that Japanese culture needed to learn from nineteenth century Britain and one of his favourite books was ‘Self Help’ by Samuel Smiles1 from which he would often quote in particular passages from the chapter on Money and Responsibility. He was a great admirer and friend of Morita Akio at Sony2 (see sep- arate biographical portrait of Morita by Hugh Cortazzi in this volume) and regularly lunched and dined with him and other leading figures. He was an admirer of former Prime Minister Takeshita Noboru and perhaps, unsurprisingly, of Mrs Thatcher. One of the proudest moments of his life was when he received his Honorary Knighthood (KBE) at the British Embassy in Tokyo in the presence of both Mr Takeshita and Mrs Thatcher. It was my good fortune to have served under Chino. There was no doubt that he was an exceptional man, widely read, inquisitive, deci- sive and a natural leader, and a man ready and enthusiastic to explore new thoughts and opportunities. He had a delightful sense of humour and would slap his knee with pleasure at a joke that appealed to him. He was probably ahead of his time. But when it became clear that the Japanese bubble had burst and that the country faced a long hard period of adjustment, like many of his countrymen, time for Chino was not such an urgent matter as it is to Westerners. Whilst I believe he could see for himself the need for significant change in his indus- try, like many in his field he was not persuaded that immediate radical action as proposed by some, mostly from outside Japan, was the route to take.

DAIWA FOUNDATION It was in 1987 that I received a call from Head Office in Tokyo asking me to meet Chino at his hotel for breakfast two days later. I was told the matter was of the utmost secrecy and should be divulged to no one. Intrigued, I duly met him and he told me that he had decided that he wished Daiwa to make a public gesture of gratitude to the UK for the hospitality and the welcome afforded to Japanese companies, in particular by the City, and that this should mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Daiwa’s involvement in Europe. It is worth recalling that, at the time, Daiwa Securities was the second largest securities

170 CHINO YOSHITOKI (1923–2004) company in the world and the property and stock market bubble was at its height. He told me that he wished to acquire a significant building in London to create a Japan Centre imitating to some extent what had been created in Paris. However, he was adamant that this initiative should have nothing to do with government and be entirely under- taken by the private sector. Following this meeting, we spent several months looking at a variety of major buildings. On our visits, we talked about the potential use to which a new Japan Centre could be put until one day, sitting on a park bench in Regents Park having a cup of coffee, we abandoned the idea of a Japan Centre and decided to fund a Foundation which would invest in people rather than bricks and mortar. He returned to Japan with the idea and was, I understand, actively encouraged by Morita and others to switch to the idea of a Foundation. It was one he understood well having twice won a Fulbright Scholarship, which he had been unable to take up on both occasions, the first because of illness and the second because of his marriage. Once the decision to proceed was made (at the time one of our present trustees, Mr Do¯zen Masahiro, was President of Daiwa) he asked me to assemble a group of British Trustees. We were extremely fortunate when I visited Lord Roll on behalf of Chino that he immediately agreed to act as Chairman. Lord Roll had had years of experience in Japan and was known and, above all, liked and trusted by Chino. Thereafter, when Lord Carrington and Lord Adrian also agreed to serve, it was clear that the Foundation was well and truly launched. When we discussed the nature of the board of UK trustees we hoped to attract we had decided that most important of all was distinction through achievement in the fields of international relations, science, business and education rather than an in-depth knowledge of Japan. On the Japanese side, Morita from Sony was a founding trustee and, until ill health prevented him, he was enthusiastic and generous with his time in supporting the Foundation’s work. Subsequently, we were fortunate that former Japanese Ambassador to Britain Fujii Hiroaki also agreed to join us. It was written into the Foundation’s charter, drafted by Richard Hanby Holmes who had been Daiwa’s trusted legal adviser for many years, that there should always be a majority of trustees who were British citizens to reflect the fact that the new institution was to be a British charity governed according to British law and steered pre- dominantly by British citizens. Despite this, the interest and support from the Japanese Trustees and the ongoing support provided by Daiwa Securities have been crucial in enabling the Foundation to flourish.

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The Foundation was initially endowed with £10 million in 1988. There were two subsequent benefactions each of £5 million in 1989 and 1990. In 1990, we managed to engage Christopher Everett as our first director general and it was he who launched the Daiwa scholar- ship programme with the first group being chosen in 1991. By then, the Foundation had already given pump- priming grants to British universities to help extend the scope of Japanese language teaching stimulated by cognizance of the Parker Report in 1986. Under Christopher Everett’s guidance the Foundation developed rapidly. The Scholarship programme had a very successful start and we believe that this success has been maintained to the present day. In 1993, on the initiative of Lord Adrian, the Foundation established a Special Award for scientific collaboration, now known as the Daiwa Adrian Prizes in memory of Lord Adrian’s great contribution. In 1994, Daiwa Foundation Japan House was formally opened by the then Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs, The Hon. Douglas Hurd, in the hope that we could provide a centre open to all for seminars, meetings and other Anglo-Japanese-related activities. It, too, now has an established presence. In 1994, Phillida Purvis joined as deputy director general of the Foundation and, although only on a part-time basis, with huge energy, was responsible for initiating a series of new programmes leading to an increased promotion of art through exhibitions and lectures, new meeting pro- grammes and other lecture programmes. The House had begun to fulfil its potential. In Japan, the Foundation’s activities were led by Mark Nakamura. His exceptional enthusiasm for the project and his own deep personal commitment to international relations were cri- tical in enabling the Foundation to achieve such a successful start. Indeed, the combination of Chino and Nakamura formed an irre- sistible force in the establishment and continuing support within Daiwa of the Foundation’s work. Writing in 2006, the Foundation under the stewardship of its current director general, Professor Marie Conte-Helm, with the important support of the office in Tokyo, can look back to its first eighteen years with some pride. It has just sponsored its one- hundredth Daiwa scholar; it has given away nearly £9 million in prizes, awards and grants as well as separately having funded the schol- arship programme. It continues to offer the community with an inter- est in Anglo-Japanese relations a space to meet. It has been immensely fortunate to have been supported, encouraged and guided by such an exceptional group of distinguished Trustees3 and it has resources now totalling nearly £40 million which are soundly based. When I visited Chino in 2004, a few weeks before his death in Tokyo, we spent an afternoon discussing the future of the Foundation.

172 CHINO YOSHITOKI (1923–2004)

He said to me that he thought the broad direction of the Foundation’s programme should be maintained and, in particular, that the scholar- ship programme should only be judged over the very long term. He believed in the motto ‘et nova et vetera’ – the Trustee body should con- tinue to have the best of both the young and the old. Up to the end of his life, even after his retirement from Daiwa, he retained an active interest in the Foundation’s work. He loved meeting the scholars and spending time with them in Japan. During Trustees’ meetings he con- tributed challenging and penetrating thoughts and questions. I have no doubt that he regarded the Foundation as perhaps his finest legacy. I am sure that Suzuki Shigeru was right when he said in his closing remarks in September 2004, at ‘The Farewell Meeting for Mr Chino’ that his ‘numerous contributions will keep glowing in the history of Daiwa stretching over a century’.

173 17

Frank Guyver Britton (1879–1934), Engineer and Earthquake Hero

DOROTHY BRITTON

Frank Britton

INTRODUCTION Frank Guyver Britton was born on 10 May 1879 in Liverpool, but moved quite soon to Elmdon, near Thaxted in Essex, when his father John inherited the family inn with a farm. Frank thrived amid the beautiful natural surroundings, happily climbing trees and collecting bird’s eggs. But his real love was music. As a very small boy he helped the organist at church by working the bellows, in the course of which he managed to figure out how to play the instrument, and by the age of twelve he was regularly filling in for the organist. Frank was only just thirteen when his mother ‘Lizzie’ died. Elizabeth Sarah was one of the three Daniels sisters of Littleton Drew in Wiltshire. Her elder sister Amelia Jane (‘Millie’) decided that living in a country inn that was also a public house, with a yeoman farmer father who probably drank heavily, and certainly disapproved of Frank’s cultural bent, was no place for her young nephew, so she took him off to London. Millie Daniels was married to Alfred James Bannister, whose ances- tor Captain Samuel Wallis of Corsham Court, near Bath, discovered 174 FRANK GUYVER BRITTON (1879–1934)

Tahiti in 1767. Alfred Bannister, artist and calligrapher, was an import- ant influence on Frank’s upbringing. Alfred was the son of a cellist and member of the Sacred Harmonic Society, who had sung in the first performance of Mendelssohn’s Elijah at the Exeter hall in London, conducted by the composer himself. Their house in Sydenham, near the Crystal Palace, had a fine library. Frank devoured the books and set about learning to play Alfred’s father’s cello that stood in one corner, as well as the piano which was also there. It was an environ- ment much to his liking. As a child in the organ loft in Elmdon Frank had been intrigued by the mechanics of the instrument, and it was not long before he took the piano apart in Sydenham and taught himself how to tune it. He graduated as a mechanical engineer in 1904 from the City College of London, and later became a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers and the Institute of Metals.

THE RUSSO-JAPANESE WAR Frank enjoyed books on history, exploration and travel, and was intrigued by what he learnt about Japan, especially about William Adams, the first Englishman in Japan who came in 1600. When he heard that the Japanese Shipping line NYK (Nippon Yusen Kaisha) were looking for engineers, he decided to try his luck with them. The Russo-Japanese War was in full swing, which whetted his youthful eagerness for adventure. He set sail for Japan in 1904, via the Cape of Good Hope, in the Sado Maru, under sealed orders. Captain O.A. Cowin, its skipper, became a dear friend and later his daughter’s godfather. The Chief Engineer was also an Englishman, by the name of Kerr. But when they reached the port of Shimonoseki in Japan Frank was transferred to the Shinano Maru as Chief Engineer. The skipper was Captain John Salter. Frank was lucky to have left the Sado Maru for she was torpedoed the very next day. Kerr and three other British officers were rescued, but spent eighteen months in Moscow as prisoners of war. The Shinano Maru had been converted to act as an auxiliary cruiser, or large merchant ship scout, and played a crucial role in the famous Battle of Tsushima. Captain Narukawa of the Imperial Japanese Navy was put aboard as naval liaison officer, and together with fifteen other similarly converted merchant vessels, she was assigned to a numbered square within the Tsushima Straits between Korea and Japan, with orders to report any sighting of the Russian Baltic fleet to Admiral Togo on his flagship, the Mikasa. It was the Shinano Maru that subse- quently made history by its signal on 27 May, at 4.45 a.m.: ‘Enemy is in Square 203’.1 The Shinano Maru was capable of speed, and possessed powerful wireless apparatus. Afterwards, Captain Salter and Frank

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Britton both received the Asahi Medal for their part in the Russo- Japanese War.

THE BONIN ISLANDS After the end of the war, Frank made seven voyages to the Ogasawara islands, known then as the Bonin Islands. In a letter to his uncle in Sydenham, Frank wrote that the Bonin Islanders – descendants of early Western whalers – ‘will be very sorry when we are taken out of the ship as we are the only fresh (Western) faces they see . . . and we always do our best to cheer them up. One trip we brought down a gramophone and another time a magic lantern . . . They are a very good-hearted lot of people . . . One old man . . . seventy years of age remembers Commodore Perry calling at the islands some fifty years ago.’2 Once, on the outward voyage, Frank’s ship dropped off a census- taker on a small island and when they went back to collect him, the island was nowhere to be found. There was only a huge mass of floating pumice surrounding a few rocky outcrops. The island which the unfortunate census-taker visited may possibly have been one of the ‘short-lived islands’ comprising the tip of the undersea volcano called Myo¯jin-sho¯, (aka Bayonnaise Rocks, which was designated ‘Izu Islands No. 81’in a 1925 survey). It erupted again in 1952.3

BABCOCK AND WILCOX Frank Britton finally decided to give up seafaring and remain in Japan. Engineers were in great demand. The NYK had been the only source of supply and Frank was the last non-Japanese engineer to be engaged by them, and only a few chiefs were still left in their employ, and no juniors.4 After leaving NYK, Frank first accepted a position as manager of the Yokohama Engine and Iron Works in the centre of Yokohama, beside one of the creeks, set up by an Irishman named Edward Kildoyle. But, in 1906, Britton resigned to become manager of Zemma Works built in 1900 in the village of Zen-ma in Isogo, on Tokyo Bay on the out- skirts of Yokohama.5 The shareholders planned to reclaim land and enlarge the operation, and began negotiations with Babcock and Wilcox, the world’s fore- most maker of ship’s boilers, to make boilers there instead of import- ing them, in view of the coming 1911 revision of the Tariff Treaty which would put prohibitive duties on foreign goods.6 The upshot was that in 1910 Babcock’s took over the Zemma Works, and Frank even- tually became Managing Director, Far East, of what was then the

176 FRANK GUYVER BRITTON (1879–1934) biggest foreign business in Japan. Due to Frank’s foresight, in 1930 they merged with Mitsui Bussan to become To¯yo¯ Babcock, leading to the post-war Babcock Hitachi which it is today. In his younger days, Frank Britton took long walking trips, became fluent in the spoken language, and came to have a great faith and belief in Japan, for whose people and culture he developed a deep and sym- pathetic understanding. Frank was very conscientious and worked tirelessly, all the rest of his life, for Babcock, England and Japan. His 600 workers adored him. He knew the names of each one personally, and they came to him with their problems and looked upon him as a father. He never uttered a word of anger to his men. The secret of his remarkable forbearance is revealed in a letter to his uncle in 1909 when Babcock & Wilcox were first considering taking over Zemma Works. He wrote:

If B&W bring out their own men it is doubtful if they can get on with or even stand the ways of the Japanese. I am irritated sometimes to such a point that I feel like giving them a good English thrashing, and to ensure keeping my temper I always keep cigars on me, and when I feel I cannot control myself any longer I light a cigar and reflect that if one lives in a foreign country one must put up with foreign ways. A cigar is the finest thing in the world to soothe the nerves, and I am quite sure cigars have saved my life many times over, for without them I should have struck some of the workmen with the result that the whole works would have been on to me like one man – not an uncommon occur- rence in Japan.7

When the First World War broke out in 1914, he was one of the first at the British Consulate wanting to enlist, but he was ordered to stay and make munitions for the war, in which Japan was an ally. He ran the works day and night, contenting himself ‘with getting at the Boches indirectly if not with cold steel’.8 He did not forget the need for good public relations.9 Skilled at designing, he was also an inventor. He registered many patents. When gramophones were introduced, he did much for the local industry, devising improvements.10 The home he designed facing the works was not only pleasing in shape, but had unique features, and it is sad that it has not been pre- served. When the Shinano Maru was decommissioned he bought the teak decking, and covered the walls of the house with shingles made from it, shaped like fish scales and dyed in persimmon juice – a colour- fully decorative preservative.11 The mantelpiece in the living room was teak from the same nostalgic deck, as are the mantelpiece and veranda in Hayama, where I now live. When he designed this seaside cottage

177 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI he combined Japanese and Western features, with extra pillars for strength as in kura, Japanese storehouses. And the house is fastened to the rock with anchor bolts in case of a tsunami.

MARRIAGE Two years after the end of the First World War, Frank married, after a whirlwind courtship, Alice Van Winkle Hiller, granddaughter of Count Johann Friedrich von Hillerscheidt of Prussia, who had emi- grated to the United States in 1847. Alice passed through Yokohama in 1920 on the way to China to study Chinese art, and met Frank during the ship’s three-day stay. It was love at first sight. Frank and Alice were both amateur musicians, and had read many of the same books, including Lord Roberts’ Forty-one Years in India. He proposed, as they picnicked in Kamakura, after having spent less than four hours in her company.12 She postponed her departure for a fortnight – in spite of a cable from her elder brother saying: ‘Are you out of your mind, marrying a foreigner in a heathen land?’ – and Frank followed Alice to Shanghai, where they were married in the cathedral, before returning together to Yokohama. They had a son, but he was stillborn. And then they had me, whom they named Dorothy after Alice’s much younger sister, who had come from San Francisco to keep Alice company.

THE GREAT KANTO¯ EARTHQUAKE OF 1923 Having estimated that a big earthquake was due, Frank carefully studied the effects of small ones. He had particularly noted their whiplash effect on a brick wall. So he strengthened his factory build- ings and chimneys with steel bolts and bands, as well as the chimney of his home so it would not fall and injure the neighbours. I was seventeen months old when the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake struck on Saturday 1 September 1923. Frank and Alice had been plan- ning to leave Yokohama that day on a sort of delayed honeymoon. But the previous night, after dining with friends at the ill-fated Cherry Mount Hotel on the Yokohama Bluff, they were sipping their coffee and liqueurs on the terrace facing away from the harbour towards the hills, when a strange phenomenon caught Frank’s attention. The distant fork lightning was upside down! Instead of forking down in the usual manner, it was coming up out of the earth and branching out into the sky, like trees. Its strangeness worried Frank so much that he insisted they leave, although it was still early. At home, their bags were already packed and ready at the front door for the early morning start they intended to make, but he cancelled the planned trip.

178 FRANK GUYVER BRITTON (1879–1934)

Next day at ten minutes to twelve, earlier than usual, Frank and Tom Chisholm, his accountant, were together in the office closing the books and putting them in the safe. Noon was the normal time for this, and consequently most firms in Yokohama lost their documents in the fire. After they had firmly closed the safe Frank said: ‘When the earthquake comes that is going to destroy Yokohama, I’ve decided that what we should do is go and hang on to the gantry crane, for the stairs will go but the crane will stand.’ The words were no sooner out of his mouth than the shaking began, with a great roaring, at exactly two minutes to twelve. ‘I didn’t know it was coming so soon’ said Chisholm, ‘I’m going while the stairs last.’ Frank lost faith in his own plan and followed suit, more or less thrown down the stairs, for it was impossible to stand. Once down, they could only crawl. At the gate Frank turned and saw that a cornice had landed over their path like a protective cover from the flying debris, placed by a guardian angel. They carried on across the road to Frank’s house and stood up, facing each other. ‘There goes Yokohama!’ said Frank looking across Tom Chisholm’s shoulder at the great cloud of dust. ‘And there goes Yokosuka!’ said Tom, looking in the opposite direc- tion. Chisholm hurried off on foot towards Negishi and the Bluff to see what had happened to his wife and young son. They were killed, and his home demolished. Frank went into his house to see if Alice and the baby were all right. Alice had been in the kitchen where the stove had broken apart, setting fire to nearby dish-towels. They put out the fire as soon as she and the cook could stand, and Alice struggled up the stairs to the nursery, which was a shambles, with globs of wall plaster jumbled in a heap where the baby’s high chair had been. To her great relief she heard the voice of Kin-san, the nanny: ‘We’re here, under the bed.’ Kin said she could see out into the garden as the space between walls and floor kept opening and shutting. The frame of the house had stood, thanks to Frank’s reinforcing. As aftershocks kept coming, Alice’s first words to Frank were a frantic: ‘Find sister Dorothy!’ Frank disappeared. There was a strong wind, and soon Alice was aware of an ominous crackling as a high wall of smoke and flames headed their way. It was terrifying, and she wondered if it was the end of the world. Fires had broken out all over the city. It was lunchtime, and thousands of broken charcoal- burning stoves had set the wooden houses alight. After what seemed an age, the wall of fire miraculously stopped coming. Eventually, Frank returned, exhausted, singed and reeking of smoke, too tired to explain. It transpired that by Frank’s courageous example and efforts, the fire had been brought under control and finally put out after only fifty houses had burned. He had climbed up himself onto burning roofs and organized bucket brigades with water from the nearby canal, and

179 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI they had managed to demolish enough houses to make a wide path across which the fire could not leap. Almost the whole of Yokohama burned to the ground, but thanks to Frank, Isogo was saved, and became a place of refuge for thousands. Later, the grateful citizens got together a petition to have his efforts appropriately recognized, but he was so modest that he stopped them, saying: ‘I did no more than any Englishman would do.’ After spending a few nights in the garden, Frank hired a fisherman to row his family around the headland of Honmoku into Yokohama harbour, where several steamships were standing by. The P&O Dongola was just about to pull up her anchor. Frank called up to a man in the bow: ‘Can you take us aboard?’ They agreed, and we managed to climb up the narrow gangway. We found that they mainly had the most badly injured foreigners on board, but Alice’s sister was not among them. He hoped to find Alice’s sister on board, but she could not be found. Landing at Kobe, Frank settled his family at the Miyako Hotel, in Kyoto and returned to Yokohama by train with medical sup- plies and food for his men. He rapidly got the factory going again so the workmen could have employment. He also persuaded the Japanese navy to bring up lumber by destroyer from Shizuoka; with this he organized the speedy building of a temporary British Consulate.13 He never stopped looking for his sister-in-law. After weeks of har- rowing and gruesome search, Frank finally found her barely recogniz- able remains – together with those of her friend Edith Lacy – crushed flat in a rickshaw under tons of masonry.14 By December, Frank found a house to rent not too far away and we returned from Kyoto.15

ADVISER TO YOKOHAMA CITY Frank Britton was liked and highly respected by not only the foreign residents, but also the Japanese leaders of the community. Mayor Ariyoshi Chuichi16 (later Governor of Kanagawa Prefecture) became one of his best friends, and, after the earthquake, appointed Frank as Honorary Adviser to the City. His major contribution to the City of Yokohama was a state-of-the-art refuse destructor, the finest, it was said, in the whole Far East. He travelled to England and throughout America in 1925 making a thorough study before designing what would be most effective and suitable for Yokohama. Completed in 1929 his incinerator was capable of burning 91,000 tons of garbage per year, while at the same time contributing 12,500 kilowatts of elec- trical power to the city. Its design would still be called progressive today. It was moved to Hodogaya in 1942.17

180 FRANK GUYVER BRITTON (1879–1934)

While in America, Frank was impressed by the ingenuity of design of the cement bags made by the Bates Valve Bag Corporation of Chicago, and he introduced production of these bags into Japan, setting up a factory adjacent to Zemma Works. He appointed Dennis Kildoyle, the son of his early employer, as manager. Asano So¯ichiro¯ of the Asano Cement Company became one of its principal shareholders.18 Overworked and overstressed for many years, Frank Britton died of a heart attack in 1934 at the age of fifty-five.19 He had longed for a holiday in England with his family, but had never been able to afford the time. His only relaxations were his cello, his study of astronomy, his collection of woodblock prints of old Yokohama and the days he managed to spend in Hayama – where he flatly refused to install a telephone. Frank Britton was a Rotarian and embodied its motto: ‘Service Above Self’. He was a man of wisdom, justice, infinite kindness, and the soul of integrity and honour.20 In The Hundred-Year History of Hitachi Boilers, Arai Koichi and Tachibana Keitaro¯ wrote:

He was an important bridge between our nations, and with his early death Japan lost a true friend who in his quiet way exerted enormous influence and forged a deep bond in Anglo-Japanese friendship.21

181 18

Ernest Cyril Comfort:The Other British Aviation Mission and Mitsubishi 1921–241

J.E. HOARE

Ernest Comfort

INTRODUCTION The end of the 1914–18 war saw Britain at the forefront of aircraft developments. Under the stress of war, the new science of aviation had developed at breakneck speed, and the quality of aircraft, pilots and engineering staff had improved beyond all recognition. Despite these advances, the end of the war removed the need for the large air forces that then existed, and the successful pilots, designers and engineers found themselves out of work in their own countries. But the devel- opments had not gone unnoticed elsewhere, and there were soon opportunities overseas. Thus Cecil Lewis, a noted British fighter pilot, found himself recruited by the Vickers Aircraft Company, which had secured a contract with the warlord government based in Beijing, and spent two years trying to teach Chinese officers to fly. 2 Japan too was eager to capitalize on British wartime experience. The 1921 unofficial British aviation mission to Japan led by the Master of Sempill (Colonel William Forbes-Sempill) is well-known, not least 182 ERNEST CYRIL COMFORT because many see it as a foretaste of Sempill’s later alleged leanings towards the Axis powers in the Second World War.3 Far less known is the presence of another, also unofficial yet arguably equally important, British aviation delegation in Japan at the same time. John Ferris hints at its presence in a reference to the British government allowing ‘air- craft manufacturers’to go to Japan in 1921, though that is not an accu- rate description.4 As we shall see, this was not a group sent by British manufacturers, but one recruited from redundant staff from the Sopwith Aircraft Company. This group arrived earlier than the Sempill mission and stayed longer. It was based at the Mitsubishi factory at Nagoya which would become the centre, first of the Mitsubishi Aircraft Company, and later of Mitsubishi Heavy Industries. It was then the headquarters of the Mitsubishi Internal Combustion Engine Company, established to make aero engines.5 The Sempill mission, which was a substitute for the official delegation that the Japanese had sought, had close contacts with the British embassy, and the ambassador’s annual reports for 1922 and 1923 noted its presence and its problems. Yet, although the reports also reported the existence of the Mitsubishi factory, describ- ing it as having ‘the largest actual and potential output [of aircraft] in Japan’, the British staff who had helped make this possible went unmentioned. 6 Ernest Comfort, whose oral memoirs form the basis of this paper, makes no reference to any embassy visits or other display of interest in their activities. Sempill knew of the group, however, and apparently tried to exercise some control over their activities, without success.7 According to Comfort, Sempill and his colleagues were not pleased to find that Smith and his group were already established when they arrived and had designed an aircraft. Sempill may have tried to assert some control over those at Mitsubishi, demanding to inspect the aeroplane that they had built. The Mitsubishi leader, Herbert Smith, who had been designing aircraft for ten years by 1921, would have none of this, and the two teams continued to work separately. This lack of coverage is surprising since both groups were recruited around the same time through the offices of the Japanese embassy in London,8 though the Mitsubishi mission was perhaps less grand than that led by Sempill. Sempill was an aristocrat – he would become Lord Sempill on the death of his father in 1934 – and although his team included some technical staff, it consisted mainly of ex-officers from the Royal Naval Air Service. The group to which Comfort belonged also included ex-officers, but mainly consisted of former technical staff of the Sopwith Aviation Company of Kingston-on-Thames. Sopwith’s founder was Thomas Octave Murdoch Sopwith, a well-known sports- man and yachtsman who was also interested in motor racing. In 1912, he opened his first factory in a disused ice rink. Early designs produced

183 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI by Sopwith himself and his former personal mechanic, Fred Sigirist, were not very exciting, but the company flourished with the advent of war. In total, Sopwith’s company made 16,000 aircraft, and many more were made by subcontractors. Designs seem to have improved after Herbert Smith was appointed chief engineer in 1916. Smith’s designs, which included both the Sopwith Pup and the now better remembered Sopwith Camel, became household names.9 Despite the company’s wartime successes, it was soon in difficulties after the war, as the demand for aircraft dropped sharply. Attempts to develop new aircraft for the fledgling civil aviation market failed; there were just too many surplus aeroplanes available. Staff were laid off, and the technical teams built up during the war were dispersed. Even these measures could not save Sopwith. A merger in 1919 with the ABC automobile manufacturing company, which made engines, proved a failure, and, when Thomas Sopwith became bankrupt, the company was sold, eventually becoming part of Vickers.10 Ernest Comfort, born in Shepherds Bush in west London on 4 September 1895, had been a draughtsman at the Kingston works, and was one of those who found themselves out of a job. When he learnt that Herbert Smith, his former colleague at Kingston, was trying to organize a technical team to go to Japan, he put his name down. Having heard nothing for some time, however, he signed up to work with an ex-military officer who was introducing modern road con- struction methods to France.11 He had scarcely begun work on this project, which was based on Versailles, when Smith contacted him. Mitsubishi, well on the way to becoming one of Japan’s biggest zaibatsu, and already developing auto- mobiles, wanted a team to design aircraft. During the war, Mitsubishi had built French aircraft under licence, but now the company wanted to develop its own models.12 Comfort was in a dilemma. He clearly wanted the chance to practise his drawing skills again, and was also keen to see Japan, but he had just signed a contract to work in France. After some debate, he laid the proposal before his new employer and asked what he should do. Captain Briggs replied that if he were in Comfort’s position, he would go to Japan. Released from his French obligations, Comfort signed up for three years in Japan in November 1920. The team would leave before Christmas, somewhat to the chagrin of Comfort’s mother since his father announced that he, too, would be leaving before Christmas, to take a job in Singapore with a steamship company.

IN JAPAN Smith’s party of nine departed for Japan in mid-December 1920, on board the SS Cap Finistere, a former German vessel that had passed to

184 ERNEST CYRIL COMFORT

Japan as reparations. The ship was a large one, with winter gardens and a gymnasium – ‘for the children’, Comfort noted – and since they were travelling first class, and had plenty of money, they were very comfortable. To those who had just come through the austerity of the war years, and the uncertainties of the immediate post-war period, the voyage out seemed like paradise. Comfort enjoyed the various stops on the way, but was glad to reach Yokohama in February 1921. Going ashore for a brief period before catching the train for Tokyo, they were met by an American newspaperman, who quizzed them about their jobs. Comfort noted that the Japanese consulate in London had warned them that this might happen, and so they ‘politely told him it was our business’, and moved on. But Comfort would be scathing about Americans and American manners in all future encounters. Their visit to Yokohama was brief, and they had to shake off a tailor who wanted to measure their suits so that he could market the latest London fashions, in order to catch a train for Tokyo and then on to Nagoya. Comfort would not see Yokohama or Tokyo again until September 1923 immediately after the Kanto earthquake. In Nagoya, they stayed at first in the Nagoya Hotel. They found the rates high and the hotel a ‘bit primitive’, though it is not clear whether this was because ‘few white men were seen in Nagoya’or because they had grown used to the sybaritic life on board ship. Eventually, however, they moved out of the hotel and began to mess together, rather like their predecessors had done in Meiji days. On arrival, they were met by Mitsubishi officials, who took them to the new engineering works some miles outside the town. These would later become very extensive, but in 1921 were only just begin- ning to be developed. Power came from a series of diesel engines. The buildings were on reclaimed land, and the process of reclaiming more land for the aerodrome was still going on when they arrived. This would cause problems. On one occasion, a fire broke out in the work- shops and the large, heavy British-made fire engine set out to tackle it, only to sink through the thin layer of asphalt into the saturated land beneath. Other works under way included the building of erecting sheds, where the aircraft would be assembled. But the design offices were ready, and the new team were soon at work, under the guidance of Dr Ito, the managing director of the aircraft works. Not that the design offices were ideal. They had a galvanized iron roof, and if the temperature reached 85º F outside, it would be at least 95º F inside. Before long, Herbert Smith had produced his first design. A visit- ing ‘high admiral’ looked at the design, announced that it was just what was wanted, and promptly ordered a hundred to be made. This, Comfort noted, was a bit of a gamble, since until the new machine was constructed, there was no means of knowing if it would even fly.

185 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Nevertheless, that night the admiral entertained the foreign design- ers and draftsmen, plus another hundred or so, to dinner. The centre- piece was a model of the Nagoya coastline made entirely from rice, which spread along the centre of a fifty foot long table. Comfort, who would frequently comment on the skills of the Japanese, described it as ‘marvellous work [showing] intricate workmanship’. They had a raucous evening, ‘drinking only little cups of sake, but when you had 200 of them, it was one big cup of sake!’ Perhaps the amount grew in the telling, but it was clearly an occasion to remember. Work proceeded both on developing the site and the new aircraft. The team helped with both, and Comfort, at least, developed a healthy respect for Japanese working methods and Japanese (sometimes Korean) workers. He noted how heavy machinery came from Kobe by rail, and that the railway extended right into the factory buildings. There were no cranes; heavy girders and other items were manhan- dled by large gangs of coolies. To facilitate building, the Japanese had established a cement works nearby. Korean women mixed and laid the cement by hand. Comfort noted further evidence of Japanese resourcefulness when the party experienced their first typhoon in mid-1921. A cloudless sky at four o’clock in the afternoon gave way as the evening progressed to strong winds and heavy rain. By morning, there was much destruction. Several buildings collapsed, there was no electricity, two inches of water covered most of the site, and a quan- tity of large logs had been scattered all about. To the foreigners, it looked as though major rebuilding would be required. Yet soon gangs of labourers set to work to clear the damage and make good the site. The coolies pulled the main workshop back into shape; Comfort thought that in the West, it would have been pulled down but here it was saved and was soon functioning again. What also struck him was that Mitsubishi sent wireless messages to inform their families that all the foreigners were safe. By the end of the first year, the team and their Japanese colleagues had succeeded in building their first fighter aircraft. This seems to have been the Mitsubishi No. 1. On completion, Captain William Jordan, one of the team, flew it and found it satisfactory. It then went into pro- duction. The embassy noted this development, but the ambassador’s annual report for 1922 was dismissive, and made no mention of the British involvement:

The latest machine produced in Japan is the Mitsubishi No. 1, a one- seater scout, 300 h.p., 145 miles an hour speed, two guns, and perhaps six hours’ duration. It is said to be an unpleasant machine to fly; but the Japanese seem well satisfied with it.13

186 ERNEST CYRIL COMFORT

After the Mitsubishi No. 1, the team moved on to other designs, including a two-seater aircraft, designed for reconnaissance work but with a rear seat for a gunner. Comfort recalled many flights in this air- craft, piloted by Captain Jordan, who had been in the RNAS. On one flight, they reached 18,000 feet, without oxygen. Comfort wore his suit, overcoat and goggles, but Jordan ‘did not even have an overcoat’. At 120 mph, it was ‘a bit fresh’, but for Comfort, there was nothing like open cockpit flying, with the smell of castor oil, the flames from the exhaust below, and the aircraft’s fabric flapping in the slipstream. They also built a trainer, called the Swallow, another fighter and a triplane torpedo bomber, the IMT two-seater torpedo-bomber. Smith had designed the very successful Sopwith Triplane in 1917 but triplanes went out of fashion soon after.14 This Japanese version proved too large and heavy for carrier operations, and only a small number were built.15 Smith then produced a biplane torpedo bomber, the Mitsubishi 2MT1, which flew for the first time in December 1923. Various versions were produced, and it remained in service with the Japanese naval air force until the 1930s.16 Comfort recalled a demon- stration flight before a large group of Japanese dignitaries early in 1923. The aeroplane was loaded with a dummy torpedo of the required weight. Comfort says that it weighed about one ton, but this seems unlikely, since the Japanese Navy’s first successful torpedo weighed only 331 pounds, and the Sempill mission had to use wooden torpe- does because the aircraft could not carry metal ones.17 Captain Jordan took off and successfully dropped the torpedo, which dutifully slid along the runaway, parallel to the VIP stands. Unfortunately, it struck an object, swivelled through 90 degrees and began rolling at a fast pace towards the assembled Japanese, who had to run for their lives. Although Comfort thought that if the torpedo had hit the stand, there might have been loss of life, it was all treated as a great joke, and, as usual with the completion of a new project, there was another cele- bratory party. Comfort claimed that they had grown weary of the regular geisha parties, though they were too polite to say so. At the same time, a Japanese engineer was busy developing a Japanese engine, but as both Comfort and the embassy noted, this indigenous engine was actually based on a number of existing engines collected from all over the world. Nevertheless, it was a sign of the Japanese determina- tion to develop their own designs. The Japanese were also interested in the process of flying off battle- ships, the forerunner of the aircraft carrier. Although this had been practised towards the end of the First World War, with the Royal Naval Air Service flying Sopwith Pups off platforms mounted above the guns of big battleships, Comfort felt that the Royal Navy had not been very interested – indeed, he claimed that the Royal Navy had generally not

187 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI seen the potential of aircraft until the Second World War. But the Japanese took a great interest in this development, and eventually approached Captain Jordan about flying off a Japanese battleship. He agreed, but demanded £1000 as payment (perhaps £160,000– 170,000 in contemporary terms). The Japanese paid and the flight duly took place successfully from a platform built over the 14-inch guns of a battleship. Later, Major Brackley, who was a test pilot with the Sempill mission, repeated the experiment for free. The British embassy referred in passing to these developments, but again was somewhat dismissive of the Japanese interest in naval aviation. The 1922 annual report commented that, while a Japanese aircraft carrier, HIJMS Ho¯sho¯ existed, ‘Very few officers realize that the proper place in which to carry ‘planes is a carrier, not the decks or turrets of capital ships and cruisers’.18 A year later, however, the embassy noted that a Mitsubishi No.1 aeroplane had landed on the Ho¯sho¯ (the flight took place on 24 February 1923 and Jordan was again the pilot), and that this development was likely to give the Japanese greater confidence in developing this new technology.19 There was no mention of how the Mitsubishi aeroplane had come to be developed, yet, according to one historian, this was the real beginning of Japanese naval flying. Jordan having shown the way, Japanese pilots followed.20 The group was due to leave in December 1923, but were asked to stay another six months. By March 1924, Smith, Comfort and John Bewsher, another member of the team, had began preparations to leave, but another of their number, Bert Venn, agreed to stay for two years longer, provided his wife and two sons could join him. The Japanese readily agreed, and, according to Comfort, for the next two years the two boys were allowed to do anything that they wanted. It was a further sign of the welcome that they had received. Looking back many years later, Comfort had only positive things to say about his time in Japan. From the very start, they had been made welcome. He recalled the attention that they had received in the early days by curious people in Nagoya. Anything up to twenty people would follow them into shops and elsewhere. Though this could become wearisome, Comfort noted that it was a good guarantee against being cheated by shopkeepers, since the self-appointed entourage would carefully check the foreigners’ change and swiftly point out any discrepancies. But in general, he found that the shops were generous with gifts and reductions. Mitsubishi not only enter- tained them, but made sure that Western festive occasions were not overlooked. When John Bewsher got married, Mitsubishi laid on a large wedding party. On 22 December 1923, the general manager of the company wrote to Comfort (and one assumes on similar lines to the others):

188 ERNEST CYRIL COMFORT

It is with our most sincere friendship to wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year you are meeting again in this country abroad. We are, however, as you know, quite strangers to your customs and can not think of anything better than to show our best compliments in sending you a Turkey-bird, which please accept in its real meaning of our expression of kindness.21

No doubt the said bird was cooked by Johnny the cook, a former ship’s cook, who by that time must have been well-trained in the curious eating and drinking habits of his British charges. They had after all, early on, persuaded him that it might be best to brew tea each time they asked for it, rather than preparing a large pot and regularly re- boiling it during the day. When they left, Mitsubishi gave them tor- toiseshell dressing table and other items, and a cheque. The Imperial Japanese Navy gave them cloisonné vases. Mitsubishi also packed and transported all their goods for free. Comfort became friendly with a younger son of Iwasaki Koyata, then head of Mitsubishi, and was invited to stay with him in Tokyo. Like his father, the younger Iwasaki spoke good English, as did his mother and sisters. The friendship was cemented when Comfort managed to design and construct a streamlined body for the younger Iwasaki’s 1912–14 vintage Napier chassis. Motor cycling also brought Comfort into contact with the Japanese. He had ordered a Rudge motorcycle through his brother in Britain, without really taking into account the state of the roads, which barely existed outside the city centre. One day, he smashed the crankcase on an out of town tramline, which was raised above ground like a railway. A Japanese bicycle shop owner said he could mend it, but also offered to buy it. Comfort then bought an American motorcycle with higher clearance, and thus began the Mitsubishi Motorcycle Club, a mixed Japanese and foreign group. They mainly rode around the city, but occasionally ventured on to the To¯kaido¯, –(Comfort mistakenly called it the Hokkaido) – the main east-west road since Tokugawa days, which was ‘just wide enough for a cart and a motorbike’. And in another generous gesture, his machine was always filled up free of charge with aero spirit. Comfort and his colleagues did not feel threatened in Japan, except in the aftermath of the Kanto earthquake. He and a colleague visited the devastated area a week after the earthquake, and found nothing but desolation. But on return to Nagoya, they became worried by the numbers of refugees who had fled to the area and by the fears among the Japanese that Koreans or others would attack them – Comfort noted rumours about the killing of large numbers of Koreans who were blamed for the earthquake. So they applied to the police to carry

189 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI revolvers, which they did until they left, though they never had need of them. Comfort’s admiration of the working methods at Mitsubishi was paralleled by admiration for Japanese working methods and style in general, and contrasts with the dismissive attitude so common among his contemporaries. He compared the brilliant floodlighting of build- ings in Nagoya and the electric lights in the market with the dingy paraffin lamps that were used in Kingston. He expressed admiration for a system that could produce lawnmowers for the British market retailing at thirty shillings (£1–50 in decimal currency), which no British company could match. He thought that the Nagoya tram system, with sunken rails in the city and railway-like arrangements outside – despite what it had done to his motorcycle! – could have been copied with advantage in Britain. As he summed it up, ‘it all gave food for thought’. Certainly, there was none of supercilious dismissal of the Japanese abilities as engineers and pilots which others have noted in the embassy and services’ view of the Japanese right up to 1941.22

AFTERWARDS After leaving Japan, Comfort continued to work in the aviation field. He worked for a time at Saunders Roe on the Isle of Wight. Later, he and John Bewsher joined Vickers Aviation as senior designers. From 1930, Comfort was at Weybridge, working on flying controls which would feature in all the well-known Vickers’ aircraft, including the Wellington bomber, the Viscount, the VC10 and, after Vickers became part of the British Aircraft Corporation, the BAC One- Eleven.23 In retirement, he retained happy memories of Japan and the Japanese until his death in Avalon, New South Wales, Australia, on 8 July 1992. Mitsubishi, of course, went on developing aircraft. The factory at Nagoya remained the largest centre for aircraft manufactur- ing in Japan until destroyed in the Second World War. Like other zaibatsu, Mitsubishi was dissolved in 1946 during the occupation, but the name and something of the ethos has since re-emerged. And Mitsubishi once again makes aircraft.

190 19

Uyeno Yutaka (1915– )

YUKO YAMAGATA-FOOTMAN

Uyeno Yutaka

ESTABLISHMENT OF THE FAMILY BUSINESS IN 1858, when Uyeno Yutaka’s grandfather Kinjiro¯ (1841–1905) was sent as a samurai from the Matsuyama fief to act as a guard at the newly opened port of Yokohama, it was still a small fishing village. In 1869, after the Meiji Restoration, Kinjiro¯ moved permanently from his hometown of Uyeno Village, Shikoku, to Yoshida in Yokohama, where he opened an inn and shipping agency. Kinjiro¯ laid the foun- dations for the sea transportation business which expanded rapidly over subsequent decades. As Yokohama was located along a canal con- necting the O¯ ka River to Tokyo Bay, the port soon prospered. Kinjiro¯’s business, Maruiya, transported passengers and cargo between the Bo¯so¯ peninsula and Yokohama, and later became an agent for one of the largest coastal steamship companies operating at that time around Tokyo Bay, the Uraga Channel and Sagami Bay. Kinjiro¯’s son, Kametaro¯ (1874–1973), took over the company around 1904, a year before his father’s death. Kametaro¯’s son, Yutaka, became president in 1966, and, since 1987, the position has been held by Yutaka’s son, Takashi.

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OIL TRANSPORTATION In 1875, Samuel Trading Company was established. This was renamed The Rising Sun Oil Company in 1900 (and, in 1948, Shell Sekiyu K.K.), and was a member of the Royal Dutch Shell Group. In 1900, Rising Sun started importing kerosene into Japan. The company which Kinjiro¯ had founded, then operating under the name Uyeno Kaiso¯ten, was employed to transport the kerosene drums from their offshore position on Rising Sun ships to a warehouse in Yokohama. Kametaro¯, who attached great importance to ensuring customer satis- faction, developed a new method for transporting kerosene drums, dramatically decreasing the loss to Rising Sun. Kametaro later expanded the business to include a land transportation section by investing in three horse-drawn carts. This enabled him to transport Rising Sun oil from Yokohama to the company’s Tokyo depot in Fukagawa, which was built in 1909. Rising Sun moved its headquar- ters to Yamashita in Yokohama in 1911.

YUTAKA’S YOUTH Yutaka was born in the family house in Kaigan-do¯ri, Yokohama, in November 1915. He was the fifth child of Kametaro¯ and Tami (née Hataya), who had married in 1904. In 1917, the family moved to Honmoku, Yokohama. Yutaka attended a local primary school and secondary school before completing a course at a Tokyo School. He was an able and enthusiastic student. He entered the highly competi- tive Yokohama Commercial College in 1934 where the principal emphasized the importance of becoming ‘an individual whom people could trust’. On graduating three years later, Yutaka joined his father’s company, which in 1927 had been renamed Uyeno Unyu Sho¯kai and began by managing the Aikoku Oil Company account. This entailed coordinating the delivery of oil to various gas stations around Tokyo in specialized tankers. From the outset Yutaka was actively involved in every aspect of the business, thus enabling him to understand the workings of the transport industry. In January 1938, he had to join the army and did not return to the company until after the end of the Second World War.

WAR AND MARRIAGE After coming top in the officer cadet examination in May 1938, Yutaka entered the Army Air Defence School in the following September. Despite sustaining a serious injury during training, he was promoted to the rank of Sergeant in 1939. Yutaka’s first overseas

192 UYENO YUTAKA (1915- ) posting was in Hankou, China, in 1940 as a member of the 22nd Anti- aircraft Artillery Regiment. A year later, Yutaka, now a first lieutenant, was appointed leader of the first company of the 2nd Ship Anti-air- craft Artillery Regiment. In August 1942, the ammunition convoy ship on which he had been serving as artillery leader was torpedoed by an enemy submarine. Before the ship sank, Yutaka was able to retrieve its confidential documents, before swimming from the burning ship for over three hours. He was finally rescued and returned with his unit to Osaka, where he taught at a training unit. While he was there a marriage was arranged between him and Ishizawa Misao. They were married in March 1943 at the Iseyama Shrine in Yokohama. In August that year, Yutaka was transferred to the Artillery Education Regiment in Hiroshima, where he moved with his now pregnant wife. Their first son Takashi was born in their house in Hiroshima in December 1944. When the atomic bomb was dropped on Hiroshima on 6 August 1945, Yutaka’s family was inside a bomb shelter and escaped with relatively minor injuries. Yutaka himself suffered from fever and memory loss as a result of his exposure to radi- ation. After the war ended on 15 August 1945 Yutaka was discharged from military service on 8 September 1945.

GRADUAL RESUMPTION OF BUSINESS Yutaka and his family first moved to Doicho on Shikoku, near Kinjiro¯’s hometown, Uyeno Village. In the spring of 1946, Yutaka made contact with ex-employees of the company and business was resumed. The company’s base was temporarily re-established in Kobe where they were employed by the Osaka Fishery Association in transporting fish in tugboats which had escaped damage during the war. The company gained a reputation for trustworthiness by refusing to trade on the black market despite the strict impositions placed on trade by post-war food rationing.

POST-WAR OIL RESTRICTIONS With the outbreak of the Pacific War in 1941, The Rising Sun Oil Company had been forced to cease business in Japan, and its assets had been placed under the control of the Enemy Assets Administration. In November 1945, an official Petroleum Advisory Group was estab- lished as a subsection of the Oil Distribution Corporation. Restrictions on the oil market were lifted by the Corporation in 1947. This enabled Yutaka’s company to resume its old trade, in the sur- rounding area of Itozaki in West Japan. One month later, the company was commissioned, with government funding, to help salvage Rising

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Sun and Standard Oil ships that had been sunk during the war in Tokyo and Yokohama Bay. During the war, Uyeno Unyu had been allocated oil barges belonging to both Rising Sun and Standard Oil which had been seized by the Enemy Assets Administration. These were restored to the original owners and then leased back to Uyeno Unyu, which, in 1952, moved its headquarters back to Yamashita-cho, Yokohama,

UYENO UNYU AND SHELL SEKIYU In May 1948, Kametaro¯ and Yutaka had a meeting with the president of Shell Sekiyu, which appointed their company as Shell’s sole bunker fuel supplier in Japan. In September that year, they received their first bunker order from Shell Sekiyu and delivered 415 kilotons of oil to a ship anchored in Yokohama Bay, owned by the long-established British company, Jardine Matheson. About a year after entering into the chartered agreement with Shell, Kametaro¯, wishing to concentrate on the contract with Shell, wrote a letter to the president of Standard Oil, formally and politely declining to do any future business with them. Uyeno Unyu transported oil for Shell Sekiyu in the Tokyo, Yokohama, Kansai and Chugoku districts.

EXPANDING THE BUSINESS Owing to the shortage of serviceable ships after the war it had been difficult to expand the business. Yutaka, however, seized every oppor- tunity open to him, whenever possible purchasing ships from Shell that had previously been leased. By the early 1950s, the company owned twenty coastal tankers, twenty-one barges in Yokohama, ten in Osaka, six in Mo¯ji, and eleven tugboats in each port. The company trans- ported by sea diesel oil from Tsurumi in Yokohama to storage tanks in Yanagishima. It also resumed its land transportation business, trans- porting oil to Yanagishima over land in tankers. Although unable to acquire new tankers which were allotted by the government, Yutaka bought old vehicles, which ran on charcoal and modified them. In response to Shell’s increased demand for land transportation, the company gradually acquired more vehicles and by the beginning of the 1960s owned more than one hundred.

CONSTRUCTION AND USE OF COASTAL TANKERS After the war, the government provided funds to aid the reconstruc- tion of industrial enterprises. In 1947, Uyeno Unyu applied to the Reconstruction Finance Bank in Tokyo, which managed the

194 UYENO YUTAKA (1915- ) government funds, for help in constructing its own coastal tanker. The tugboat Nikoh-maru, which had carried the family to Doicho at the end of the war, and subsequently been used as a vessel to transport cargo, was now too small to cope with the increased demand. The applica- tion was successful, and, in 1955, the largest coastal tanker in Japan since the war, the Atagai-maru (with an 1850 kilolitre capacity), was com- pleted. Two years later, an even larger coastal tanker, the Kurogai-maru (with a capacity of 4000 kilolitres), was put into service. The Kurogai- maru was used to transport oil products for the US Navy between Sasebo, Kyu¯shu¯, and Pusan in South Korea. After completing five hundred crossings, Uyeno Unyu ended its contract with the US Navy in order to focus on transporting heavy oil to domestic power plants.

FAMILY LIFE At the end of 1952, Yutaka moved with his wife, father, Kametaro¯, and three sons, Takashi, Makoto and Tadashi, to live in Nikaido¯, Kamakura. The following year, his first daughter Mami was born; a fourth son, Zen, was born in 1955, and finally his younger daughter, Emi, in 1959. In the mid-1950s, the Kamakura Trust was established by local residents to preserve Oyatsu Forest, when construction com- panies threatened to cut it down. Their efforts were successful, and the forest became Japan’s first National Trust site. Yutaka assumed the post of chairman of the Trust in 1983.

THE PETROCHEMICAL INDUSTRY In the 1960s, rapid economic and technical progress in Japan called for changes in the country’s infrastructure. The demand for both coastal and land transportation of petrochemicals increased in line with the demand for asphalt. This necessitated the development of specialist chemical and asphalt tankers. Research into asphalt tanks had been started by the Shell Group, whose technical manager came to Japan in 1960 from the head office in London to conduct joint research. Yutaka greeted the many Shell executives who arrived in Japan around this time of high economic growth, establishing a personal as well as busi- nesslike relationship with them. The research led to the storage and transportation of asphalt in steel tanks lined with stainless steel (to prevent rusting), rather than in oil drums. The first chemical tanker of this design was completed later that year and belonged to Uyeno Unyu. The company’s use of such technically innovative equipment added to its reputation as a modern and progressive enterprise. In July 1962, the company’s chemical tanker transportation division was renamed Uyeno Chemical Unyu. In 1963, tankers were designed that allowed the

195 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI transportation of liquid asphalt from offshore locations to construction sites. This method involved enclosing a tank of liquid asphalt within a system of heated pipes, which regulated the temperature. This vacuum flask heating method was developed in time for the increased demand for asphalt occasioned by the 1964 Japan Olympics.

SALE OF PETROLEUM PRODUCTS When Shell Sekiyu built its first petrol station near Uyeno Unyu’s head office in the late 1950s, Yutaka requested that his company be employed to manage the station. Shell’s business policy specified, however, that its transportation agencies must focus only on the busi- ness of transportation. When the sale of petroleum products to retail- ers became more competitive, this restriction was lifted, and Uyeno Unyu became a dealer for Shell. In September 1961, Asahi Tsu¯san was established for this purpose, and in May 1965, it opened its first petrol station in Kamakura. Gradually, more stations were built in Yokohama, Tokyo, Nagoya and Sendai.

CELEBRATING TWO CENTENARIES Uyeno Kametaro¯ stepped down as president of Uyeno Unyu Sho¯kai two years before the company celebrated its hundredth anniversary. In 1966, Kametaro took the position of chairman, while Yutaka took on the role of president. At the centenary celebration held at the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama, Mr N.L. Fakes,1 President of Shell Sekiyu, addressed the company as a ‘Partner in Progress’, commemorating the many years of business the two companies had completed. In 1971, Uyeno Kametaro¯ was awarded a silver cup by the Sho¯wa Emperor for services within the sea transport industry and two years later he cele- brated his own hundredth birthday. Shell Sekiyu published an article entitled ‘A century with Shell in Japan’, an account of the many trans- actions that had been conducted between Shell and the Uyenos. Much later, in 1986, Yutaka was awarded the Order of the Rising Sun with Gold and Silver Star in recognition of his dedication to the promotion and furtherance of industry and youth education. In June of the fol- lowing year, Yutaka resigned as president after twenty-one years and Yutaka’s eldest son, Takashi, assumed the role.

ENVIRONMENTAL CONCERNS AND INTERNATIONAL STANDARDIZATION When a Shell Sekiyu tanker leaked oil in Niigata port in 1971, Uyeno Unyu offered practical support in preventing the spill from spreading.

196 UYENO YUTAKA (1915- )

This incident led Yutaka to set up the company’s own marine pollu- tion prevention scheme in addition to the government’s already strict regulations. Between 1971 and 1974, three sections were established, which are still functioning today and which focused on disaster pre- vention, tank cleaning and escorting ships. In the mid-1970s, the International Maritime Organization (IMO) set international standards for the restructuring of chemical tankers to reduce the risk of spillage. In order to obtain the required documentation to gain access to foreign ports every company had to meet these standards. Since the sea trans- portation industry in Japan was made up of many small, independent companies, however, the cost of upgrading threatened to jeopardize these businesses entirely. In order to avoid this, IMO in 1981 granted Japan a fifteen year grace period for their chemical tankers. As president of the Japanese Coastal Tanker Association between 1983 and 1997, Yutaka represented 695 smaller shipping companies, as well as Uyeno Unyu at international meetings aimed at standardiz- ing freight rates and tonnage adjustment. Yutaka campaigned for ratio- nalization within the coastal tanker industry to avoid excess tonnage after the 1973 oil crisis. He argued for a policy of deregulation to re- vitalize economic activity by allowing coastal shipping companies greater flexibility in tonnage adjustment. The Japan Federation of Coastal Shipping Associations, for which Yutaka acted as director from 1979 to 1983, and as vice-chairman thereafter, campaigned alongside the Coastal Tanker Association. In 1996, their bid to allow the pur- chase of excess tonnage was successful. The massive 1989 oil spill from an Exxon Valdez tanker off the coast of Alaska caused widespread damage, and the attempt to deal with the subsequent pollution cost Exxon several billion dollars. In response to this disaster, IMO reassessed its safety standards, this time making it mandatory for both ocean and coastal tankers to install a double hull to prevent leakages. This specification posed particular problems for coastal tankers, which required shallow hulls to enable them to enter ports. As president of the Japanese Coastal Tanker Association (which had been inaugurated in 1964), Yutaka collaborated with both the Ministry of Transport and the Foreign Ministry to find a solution to this problem. Since Japanese coastal tankers had been built with par- ticular attention given to environmental issues, they were all already installed with double-layered bottoms and so Japan was exempted by IMO from the new double-hull rule.

SUBSIDIARY DIVISIONS During his time as president of Uyeno Unyu, Yutaka founded many peripheral business ventures. In 1967, Uyeno Sekiyu So¯ko Yu¯so¯was

197 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI established after Uyeno Unyu had been entrusted with the manage- ment of a number of Shell Sekiyu oil storage tank terminals. This department managed warehouses, harbour transport, and dealt with customs. Another subsidiary was set up in 1981 to represent the company’s land transportation division, called Uyeno Yu¯so¯ K.K. The Uyeno company worked in partnership with Stolt-Nielsen of Norway to found Uyeno-Stolt one year later. This alliance facilitated the oper- ation of ocean chemical tankers between Asia and Oceania.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO SOCIETY Both before and after his retirement in June 1987, Yutaka played an influential role in a wide variety of cultural and social projects, both local and international. He became a member of the Yokohama Rotary Club in 1958, and its president in 1972. Three years later, he was invited to sit on the committee for Rotary International, and he attended conferences in the USA as a member of the Asia Consultative Group. He also joined the Governor of Kanagawa’s friendship delega- tion in 1979. This society promoted economic, cultural and citizen exchanges between Japan and other countries. With the delegation, he travelled to the USA, China, Germany and Korea. In 1967, Yutaka became a councillor for the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce and Industry, an organization dedicated to serving the local community. He became chairman in 1979, a post which he held until 1994. During this time, Yutaka was involved in many projects, such as the establishment of the FM Yokohama radio station in 1985. He was also involved in the Minato Mirai 21 urban redevelopment programme, which aimed to urbanize and modernize the area con- necting Yokohama Bay and Sakuragicho, now a thriving business and retail centre attracting local people and tourists. In 1991, Yutaka col- laborated with Sir Hugh Cortazzi, former British ambassador to Japan, to commemorate the one-hundred-and-fiftieth anniversary of the birth of Richard Henry Brunton, the British civil engineer hired by the Meiji government in 1868 to urbanize Yokohama. The anniver- sary was celebrated simultaneously in Yokohama and West Norwood in South London, Brunton’s birthplace. For the occasion, Yutaka erected a monument beside Yoshida bridge in Kannai, which had been designed by Brunton and was the first steel truss bridge in Japan. A bust of Brunton was also placed in Yokohama Park, and a third mon- ument was placed at the engineer’s grave in West Norwood. Yutaka’s public services2 were recognized by a number of prestigious awards. These included a Medal of Honour with a Dark Blue Ribbon for his welfare work for the elderly in 1974; the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in 1979 for his contribution to the development of

198 UYENO YUTAKA (BORN 1915) economic ties between England and Japan and among others the Yokohama Cultural Award in 1994.

RETIREMENT AND ‘THE MIDNIGHT PAINTER’ Yutaka has been a keen painter since his secondary school and college days; one of his paintings was displayed at the Yokohama Art Association Exhibition in 1936. At the suggestion of friends, Yutaka held his own one-man art exhibition in 1971, donating the proceeds to social work through the Yokohama Rotary Club. He was described as the ‘Midnight Painter’, since he had done so much of his painting at night after work. Yutaka held a second exhibition in 1972, and then two more in consecutive years. Halfway through his first term as chair- man of the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce and Industry in 1981, it was decided that Yutaka’s paintings be used on the covers of the Chamber’s monthly periodical. An exhibition of these paintings was held in 1995 at the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama. In 1994, Uyeno Yutaka and Misao celebrated their Golden Wedding Anniversary at the Hotel New Grand, and in November 2002, Yutaka celebrated his eighty-eighth birthday. He remains inde- fatigable and his company continues to develop and prosper.

199 PART IV: LITERARY FIGURES

20

Yoshida Ken’ichi (1912–77), Anglophile Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic,Translator and Man of Letters

NORIMASU MORITA

Yoshida Ken’ichi

INTRODUCTION Yoshida Ken’ichi called himself throughout his literary life bunshi, a man of letters. The term bunshi does not simply mean writer: it describes someone for whom writing is his vocation and who is willing to devote his entire life to literature. After his death, the word became obsolete as there were no bunshi left. In his literary career span- ning over forty years Yoshida never stopped writing and left a phe- nomenal amount of work. When he died in 1977, at the age of sixty-five, his wife, Nobuko, asked Kawakami Tetsutaro¯, Yoshida’s mentor and life-long friend, who was present at his hospital death bed, ‘Why did he die?’ After a moment’s pause, Kawakami replied: ‘Maybe because he wrote too much.’Soon after his death, his works were pub- lished in thirty-four volumes. Yoshida’s literary career could be divided into three phases. Roughly between 1931 and 1945, which may be described as his apprentice 200 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77) period, he was mainly translating English and French literary works, writing articles whose main purpose was to introduce both new and old European literature and literary trends to the Japanese reader, and running and editing a literary magazine. After the war, his name came to be known more widely because his literary criticism and essays began to appear in various well-known magazines and newspapers and his books were published by large prestigious publishing houses. Nevertheless, his reputation was not entirely due to the literary merit of his works. Most of his readers and his publishers were less interested in his writings than in his background as a ‘returnee’from England, his reputation as an eccentric, and the fact that he was a son of the charis- matic Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru. Most of his best works were produced in his last ten years. He turned out one masterpiece after another: Yo¯roppa no Seikimatsu (European Fin-de-siècle) in 1969 is a full survey of the decadent literature at the turn-of-the-century Europe; Jikan (Hours) in 1976 is a two-hundred page contemplation on time; Gareki no Naka (Among the Ruins) in 1970 is a semi-autobiographi- cal novel on the life in Tokyo immediately after the end of the war; and Kanazawa in 1973 is a novel about the man who loves this remark- ably aesthetic city.1

EARLY LIFE AS A DIPLOMAT’S SON Yoshida Ken’ichi was born on 1 April 1912 at one of the official res- idences of the Imperial Household Agency as the eldest son of Yoshida Shigeru and Yukiko. Shigeru was at that time in Rome as Third Secretary in the Japanese Embassy and Yukiko returned to Italy soon after Ken’ichi’s birth to join her husband leaving behind her new-born baby in Japan. In September, Shigeru was transferred to the consulate in Andong (now Dandong) in China and Ken’ichi was brought up in the house of his grandfather, Makino Nobuaki, who was the second son of Okubo Toshimichi, the elder statesman and one of the pillars of the Meiji government. Ken’chi did not see his father till November 1916 when he was granted leave from China. He was spoilt by his grandfather to whom he remained very close throughout his life (perhaps closer to him than to his own father). Many who knew Ken’ichi remember that he resembled his mother much more than his father. He inherited from his mother large eyes, pale skin, slender body, thin arms and long feminine fingers. At the age of six, Ken’ichi was admitted to Gakushu¯in Primary School, but left after only one term to join his father, who was now consul at Quingdao where he was privately taught by a British tutor. Later when he had become a writer Ken’ichi recalled the city which the Germans had just left after the First World War:

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The fortresses by which Germans had defended the city were in ruins. Quindao was, however, a beautiful city surrounded by the blue sea and the land covered with green. As it was a leased territory governed by Germany, you could say that my first encounter with the West took place in Quindao.2

This was one of Ken’ichi’s earliest childhood memories. Later in the same year, Shigeru was recalled from China and appointed a member of the staff of the Japanese delegation to the Peace Conference at Versailles. The party was led by his father-in-law, Makino Nobuaki, who arranged for Shigeru’s inclusion in the delegation. Shigeru had been frustrated that he had so far only been appointed to posts in China. After some months, and towards the end of the conference, Shigeru brought his family to Paris. The Japanese delegation had already left France by the time his family, including Ken’ichi, arrived at Marseilles. The Yoshidas took up residence in a rented apartment in the Rue Montaigne in Paris.3 After Shigeru was recalled to Japan the family remained in Paris until he was posted to Europe in 1920 as first secretary at the Japanese embassy in London. The Yoshidas lived in Crowborough Road, Tooting, and Shigeru commuted to the embassy in Grosvenor Square by train, while Ken’ichi went to school in Streatham Hill. According to Kazuko, the four Yoshida children had a British nurse. ‘She said that she was not a nurse but a tutor, and was very strict perhaps in a British way. Whenever we did what we were not supposed to do, she repri- manded us by telling that we would have no tea.’4 The Yoshida chil- dren began to talk to each other in English and even after they were grown up, they quarrelled in their acquired language except when they used the Japanese term of abuse bakayaro¯. The most important event for Shigeru in his service in London and even for his children was the visit of the Japanese Crown Prince, Hirohito, to Britain. Ken’ichi and his brother and sisters were invited to the reception given at the Japanese embassy and received the young prince at the steps. Two years later, in 1922, the Yoshidas moved back to China as Shigeru was appointed as Consul General in Tianjin. Ken’ichi’s British education was not interrupted because he was sent to the British school and the family lived in the British quarter. The request for his admission to the school was at first refused on the ground that he was an oriental. Shigeru himself went to the school and after a long nego- tiation with the headmaster obtained permission for both Ken’ichi and Kazuko to attend the school. His eldest daughter, Sakurako went to the Japanese school in Tianjin and his second son, Masao, was still too small for primary education. Ken’ichi remembered the consulate building:

202 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77)

The Japanese Consulate in Tianjin towered over the high street of the town like a castle. The galleries surrounding its courtyard were so wide that you could almost have a cycle race in them. We placed partitions there and created my study room.

After the Yoshidas returned to Japan in June 1925, Ken’ichi was transferred to Gyo¯sei High School. Shigeru’s next post was that of Consul General at Shenyang for which he left in October that year, but his family stayed in Tokyo. By then China was not a safe place for Japanese families. The country was in the state of virtual civil war with incessant conflicts among powerful warlords and a series of coups d’eétat. When Shigeru and his family were still in Tianjin, Puyi, the last Emperor of the Quin Dyansty, was expelled, after the brief period of restoration, from the Forbidden City by the warlord, Feng Yuxiang. The emperor on the run was received in Tianjin by dozens of officers and soldiers of the Japanese garrison and the Consul General and his staff. While Puyi was in Tianjin, Shigeru, who was a good rider, sometimes took him out for a ride despite the appre- hensions of his senior retainers.5 From this time to the outbreak of the Sino-Japanese War, Shigeru was working hard to contain the expansionism of the Japanese Armies and was sometimes at logger- heads with army officers. In the meantime, Ken’ichi and the other children of Shigeru were living peacefully in Tokyo far away from the upheavals in China. Ken’ichi turned out to be a bright pupil at school winning various aca- demic honours but he was not athletic like his father and was indifferent to sport. He was often seen with his hands in his pockets watching other students playing in the school grounds. He confessed that the people he feared most were policemen and soldiers. Ken’ichi was an avid reader of all sorts of books and read them in Japanese, English and French. His taste for books and literature was cultivated by his literary and artistic mother, who studied Japanese poetry (tanka) under the great modern poet, Sasaki Nobutsuna, and wrote a book, Whispering Leaves in English.

CAMBRIDGE DAYS In March 1930, Ken’ichi graduated from Gyo¯sei High School and during his spring holiday made a journey with friends to Nara. This was inspired by one of his favourite books, Robert Louis Stevenson’s Travels with a Donkey. They cycled the 500 kilometres to this ancient Japanese capital. This was the hardest physical exercise he ever took in his lifetime. Keni’ichi and his friends stayed in Nara for three days and visited many of the famous sites.

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Shigeru wanted his son to study engineering while Yukiko wanted him to study abroad, possibly in England, as he was nearly bilingual.6 He followed his mother’s advice, but chose to study English literature rather than engineering. Towards the end of March 1930, shortly after he returned from the trip to Nara and just before his eighteenth birth- day, he set off from Kobe for England. One of his fellow passengers was Oscar Morland, then third secretary in the British embassy and later British ambassador to Japan. He arrived in England in May and on arrival he began to study for the matriculation test for Cambridge. In one of his essays he recalled that he locked himself away in the room he rented in the English countryside and learnt Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night by heart as a preparation for the exam. He entered King’s but could not get a room in college and had to stay in lodgings some way from King’s. His tutor was Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson, a classicist, essayist and pacifist, who was a fellow of the college. E.M. Forster, one of Dickinson’s former students, described him as ‘the best man that ever lived’. Dickinson commis- sioned Forster to edit Virgil’s Aeneid for his Dent’s Classic series and later his sisters asked Forster to write his biography. Ken’ichi, too, admired Dickinson though not to the same extent as Forster and became a frequent visitor to his rooms in Gibbs Building. When Ken’ichi wrote his book about his friends entitled Ko¯yu¯ Roku (Records of My Friends) in 1974 only a few years before his death, Dickinson appeared as his second oldest friend after his grandfather.7 Dickinson was connected through Forster to the Bloomsbury Group and delighted to talk with a student from Japan about Arthur Waley’s six-volume translation of The Tale of Genji, which was then being pub- lished. The tutor and Ken’ichi often had tea together, went for a walk in Cambridge, or visited the Fitzwilliam Museum.8 On these occa- sions Ken’ichi impressed Dickinson by quoting from memory passages from Shelley and Tennyson. At the Fitzwilliam they saw the manu- script of Thomas Hardy’s The Dynasts, the oil paintings of Claude Romain and Poussin, and Rosetti’s pencil sketch of the face of his dead wife. Rosetti’s haunting drawing on which his dead wife’s strand of hair curls round into her mouth left a particularly strong impression on Ken’ichi. He later visited the museum many times on his own to see this fascinating drawing. After returning to Japan, he mentioned in one of his letters to Dickinson how much he was drawn to the piece. On the reception of this letter, Dickinson went to the museum to get a photographic copy of the drawing made and sent it to Ken’ichi. Though Ken’ichi and Dickinson shared the same passion for beauty, art, literature and ideas, Ken’ichi found his tutor too political. Dickinson protested against English military involvement when the Great War broke out, published an essay on the Covenant which

204 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77) helped move public opinion towards the formation of the League of Nations and wrote a booklet attacking the Western military interven- tion in China. Ken’ichi was indifferent to politics and current affairs and was not enthusiastic about discussing such matters with Dickinson. It may have been due to this difference in their political attitudes that their relationship ended on a slightly sour note. In 1931, the Manchurian Incident took place and Dickinson wrote to Ken’ichi to the effect that the Japanese military expansionism was a betrayal not only of the Chinese but also of humanity. Ken’ichi did not feel like either replying or offering his own apologies. Letters from Dickinson stopped arriving and he died in the following year. Ken’ichi’s supervisor at King’s was F.L. Lucas, a literary critic, essay- ist, and poet, who was then in his early thirties and became famous for his scathing attack on the poetry of T.S. Eliot. Though, like Dickinson, Lucas kept his office in Gibbs building, which he adorned with a large photograph of the three headless goddesses of destiny in the Elgin Marbles, he sometimes invited his students to his house which was a converted cricket pavilion located on the other side of the river from the college. Lucas’s specialty was Elizabethan tragedy, but he inspired Ken’ichi’s love for European writers such as Ronsard, Dante, Leopardi, Baudelaire and Proust. Ken’ichi admitted his indebt- edness to Lucas for expanding his interest in literature:

Through talking to Lucas, my eyes were opened for not only the English literature that I had not known but also European literature. It was from Lucas that I heard the name of Catullus for the first time. I had known Sappho but Lucas told me that Catullus compared a beautiful girl without a lover to an apple left on the branch after harvest.’9

Lucas also inspired Ken’ichi to be a writer. While studying in Cambridge, he was wondering whether he should be a scholar or a writer. His supervisor looked as if he were comfortably wearing two shoes as he was both an academic and a poet. Ken’ichi was particularly influenced in his decision to become a writer by Lucas’s book of poems, Time and Memory. The third important person in Ken’ichi’s Cambridge days was George Rylands whose lectures he frequented. He thought Rylands a dapper figure who impressed female students with his good looks and sartorial elegance. Ken’ichi seems to have liked his lectures:

I found his lectures on John Donne’s love poems fascinating. I forgot its title but he once lectured on Donne’s poem ending with ‘. . . applying worm-seed to the Tail’. It is about what you should do when you want to have a clear break with a girl to whom you are still attached. We did

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not know what ‘worm-seed’ was and what it stood for as a metaphor. I was listening to his lecture without understanding the meaning of the line, but just before time was up for his talk he suddenly made a serious face and said, ‘. . . and worm-seed, of course, . . . is an, an anti-aphro- disiac’. He was putting away his notes before he finished his sentence.10

Ryland’s words were quoted in English. Rylands was also fond of Paul Valéry and referred in his lectures to his most recent poems. Ken’ichi had known Valéry’s other poems through Horiguchi Daigaku’s trans- lations in Gekka no Ichigun and he felt particularly pleased that Rylands confirmed his belief that first rate literary intellectuals should not only read all the classics written in their native tongue, but also be well versed with the literature of other countries. During the Christmas holiday, after his first term in Cambridge, he made a trip to Paris where he had lived with his mother more than ten years before. His purpose was to immerse himself deep in the artistic treasures that Paris offered. While in Paris, he went to the Louvre every morning and sat in front of Venus de Milo for hours. He was par- ticularly fond of eighteenth-century French paintings by artists such as Antoine Watteau and Claude Lorrain. His passion for Baudelaire was rekindled during this holiday when he saw Rodin’s sculpture, to which a passage from Baudelaire is attached as a title, Je suis belle, ô mortels! Comme un rêve de Pierre. He then rushed to a bookshop, bought a copy of Les Fleurs du Mal and read it sitting on a cold bench in a park called Cours la Reine between the Champs-Elysées and the Seine. Being admitted to King’s, mixing with top intellectuals, finding lectures stimulating and making a holiday trip to Paris, he seemed to be enjoying his time in Europe. If so, why did Ken’ichi leave Cambridge after completing only one term and return to Japan? He offers various versions of his reasons in his writings but the clearest and most convincing one can be found in his essay on Dickinson:

. . . Before I went to England, I had already decided to become a bunshi after I returned to Japan. Then, I began to wonder how useful it was to spend my teens and early twenties studying English literature in England.11

Dickinson listened attentively and understandingly and consoled him by saying that it was extremely difficult to write in a foreign language and even Conrad’s novels were full of mistakes. Ken’ichi was relieved that his tutor was sympathetic. Lucas was not particularly surprised to hear Ken’ichi’s decision as he had suspected from their conversations what his real thoughts were. When they met several days after this meeting, Lucas told Ken’ichi that he looked much better. In fact, he

206 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77) could not read or sleep before he came to his final decision about leaving Cambridge. However, this may not be the only reason for his abandoning Cambridge. By the time Ken’ichi was admitted to King’s he was not as happy as he should have been. Many years later he recollected the psychological state he was in:

When I left for England in the early Sho¯wa period, I honestly could not stand the country called Japan. However, after I left Japan, I began to hate the country called England.12

There were no good reasons for his sudden dislike of England and, in fact, England later became his favourite country which he visited every year until his death. He did realize that it was a beautiful country, but he refused to admit this because of his romantic agony and liter- ary asceticism:

I reached England in summer and it soon turned to autumn. If now, I would definitely enjoy the English seasons, but for a young man who started thinking that there was no music but Beethoven, loved Buddhist statues in Nara and paintings of Leonardo da Vinci simultaneously, there was no logical reason for being intoxicated with English summer. More prosaically I did not have time for appreciating it because I had to prepare for the exam. Then by the time I entered university, it was already winter. For young men like me who believed Dostoevsky was the greatest writer, the barren English winter had to be the perfect back- drop for reading his novels. However, the dark English winter too per- fectly fit to the psychological state I was in . . . Then I began to wish that the sun would come out from behind the thick cloud.13

The only way to get out of this kind of mental state was to leave. Dickinson helped Ken’ichi sort out the procedure for leaving the college and took him to Queen’s Hall in London to listen to the BBC Symphony Orchestra playing Beethoven’s ninth symphony. They dined together in Paganini’s but this was the last time Ken’ichi saw Dickinson.

LUGGAGE WITHOUT A TAG Before Kenichi returned to Japan he went to Rome to see his parents. Shigeru who had been appointed ambassador to Italy arrived in Rome with his wife and two children in mid-March. Ken’ichi quit Cambridge without his parents’ consent and his father who was furious about his son’s ‘selfish and silly’ move desperately tried to

207 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI persuade him to go back to college but Ken’ichi refused and returned to Japan on his own, telling his father that he would be a writer in Japan. This was, however, only the beginning of the strange and strained relationship between father and son. Shigeru’s disappointment and anger was such that he did not forgive his son’s action for a long time to come. Makino Nobuaki’s diary suggests that Ken’ichi was vir- tually disowned by his father. It seems that even Makino could not appease Shigeru’s anger.14 On returning to Japan, Ken’ichi rented a house in Setagaya and started a new life with an aged maidservant. One of his cousins who learnt of his wish to be a writer introduced him to Kawakami Tetsutaro¯ a well-connected literary critic. In one of his numerous essays he described how Ken’ichi descended on him out of the blue:

Iju¯in Seizo¯ [Ken’ichi’s cousin and Kawakami’s friend] brought a young man who aspired to be a man of letters. He left it with me like luggage without a tag. He was slightly humpbacked and moved his wrists like women did. My first impression was that he was extremely sensitive to the cold. He curled up his torso over the stove and smoked his cigarette savouring it to its end. He kept on sitting there for hours contentedly.15

As he was a student of French literature, Kawakami advised Ken’ichi to learn French at Athénée Française. He was also introduced by Kawakami to his young protégés such as Kobayashi Hideo, Aoyama Jiro¯, Yokomitsu Ri’ichi and, slightly later, Nakamura Mitsuo, who were soon to become outstanding figures in the world of Japanese lit- erature and formed a literary circle around Kawakami. The first two up-and-coming writers did not show much interest in Ken’ichi but the latter two became life-long friends of this ‘returnee’ who was ‘Westernized’ more than anybody they knew and who cackled in an indescribable tone. Yokomitsu described Ken’ichi:

[He] belongs to a kind of strange race which is neither Japanese nor Western: he looks at a loss in making his own decisions in his daily life; his spirit is restless like a feather floating in the air; he is known for bizarre actions.

Nakamura had the same impression of Ken’ichi:

[He] was struggling to keep mental equilibrium in the reality of Japan, which is a foreign country for him.16

From around 1935, Ken’ichi began to publish his translations starting with Edgar Allan Poe’s Marginalia. It was not uncommon in Japan to

208 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77) start a literary career by translating European literature (Akutagawa Ryu¯nosuke and Nakajima Atsushi were prime examples) and it was a natural course for linguistically talented writers like Ken’ichi to take. A little later, he began to write literary criticism on French rather than English literature for Bungakukai which was a magazine, although a commercial one, run virtually by writers of Kawakami’s literary circle. The reason why Ken’ichi wrote more about French than English writers was that literary criticism in Japan was dominated by specialists of French literature with Kawakami and Kobayashi as typical examples. Until Ken’ichi started mixing with these writer friends he hardly touched alcohol and drinking was like French literature which he learned from them. Kawakami boasted that it was he that introduced the joy of drinking to Ken’ichi by taking him around famous bars and tea houses in Akasaka and Asakusa. Shikiba Toshizo¯ was greatly sur- prised that Ken’ichi ordered cream cake at Shiseido¯ Tea Room in the evening, because none of his friends would dare to order sweets just before they went out for serious drinking. Ken’ichi was twenty-four years old at that time. Alcohol did not really agree with him at first and some of the scenes he made were most embarrassing. However, he eventually became a legendary drinker. There were countless anec- dotes related about his drinking. One time, he was drinking with a friend in a beer restaurant in Kanda and a fire started in the neigh- bourhood. Customers began disappearing, the restaurant staff went out to inspect the fire, and fire engines arrived. However, Ken’ichi and his friend carried on drinking until they realized there was nobody in the restaurant apart from themselves and water from the fire engine was coming down from the ceiling. When his writer friends Kubota Mantaro¯ and Hayashi Fusao became judges for a beer drinking com- petition, they invited him to participate. He passed the preliminary round but fell short of being awarded any prize in the finals. Afterwards he guzzled down a large quantity of brandy to prove that he could still drink and he was taken to hospital after spitting blood the day after. Just before he died, he was admitted to St Luke’s hospital because of his ill health. He refused to eat anything despite his doctor’s strong advice but kept on drinking bottled Guinness. However, it would be a mistake to regard him simply as an alcoholic. According to his daugh- ter, Akiko, Ken’ichi lived a simple and orderly life when he did not drink. He kept to a strict routine for getting up, eating breakfast and lunch, taking an afternoon nap, a little shopping in the neighbour- hood, a walk with the dog, and tea with his wife after his children went to bed. He drank only when he met his friends and publishers, was invited to a party, or somebody visited him. After his return from England his sole interest was in reading, writing, drinking and meeting friends, but Japan was slowly but surely

209 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI heading for a disaster. His father on the other hand devoted himself almost entirely to diplomacy and politics. He sensed that Japan and some European countries were going in a wrong direction vaguely at first and very clearly when the Japanese military involvement in North East China escalated.17 While Shigeru retired from the foreign service for a brief period (he was recalled within a year and appointed ambas- sador to Britain), the Ni-ni-roku Incident of 1936 occurred. In this incident Makino Nobuaki was nearly assassinated by the young army officers involved. When they stormed into a resort house in Yugawara, Makino was with Ken’ichi’s younger sister, Kazuko. They killed one of the policemen who were guarding the house but Makino and Kazuko managed to escape from the house unhurt. In his writings Ken’ichi preferred to avoid any discussion of the private and public dangers of his situation, concentrating instead on his favourite writers such as Laforgue and Valéry. In the year when the Second World War began, Ken’ichi’s first major literary essay was published in Bungakukai and he started a liter- ary magazine with Ito¯ Shinkichi, Yamamoto Kenkichi and Nakamura Mitsuo. He described the operation on his nose as if it were the great- est event in 1939:

There is a hospital on the top of the hill in Ko¯jimachi and Doctor Kurosu, a reputed otolaryngologist, did an operation on my nose for emphysema. This was the real beginning of my youth . . . I was prob- ably twenty-seven or eight that time. The difference between before and after the spectacular success of the operation was like the one between an overcast day in early spring with fragments of snow coming down from the sky and the fine ideal day for seeing cherry blossoms under the blue sky.18

His relationship with his father remained strained after he abandoned his studies at Cambridge. He barely stayed in his parents’ house apart from a very short period, preferring to rent humble lodgings with his brother and met his father Shigeru on only intermittent occasions. Although he was fortunate in having generous friends who were willing to help him, his literary career had just begun. It took another thirty years till he started producing his masterpieces, for instance, Jikan whose fluid style Shinoda Hajime, one of the greatest critic of his generation, described as most moving, and Kanazawa, which the same critic praised as ‘one of the examples of the most beautiful and perfect expression in the Japanese language’.19 Yoshida Ken’ichi was one of the very few Japanese writers of his time to be bilingual in English and Japanese. Donald Keene once praised his English by saying that no young British person could speak

210 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77) the language better. He made a great contribution to the Japanese lit- erary world by introducing many works of English literature, particu- larly contemporary novels and poems, which had tended to be overshadowed since the 1920s (the early Sho¯wa period) by French lit- erature. He was the translator of D.H. Lawrence, T.S. Eliot, Evelyn Waugh, E.M. Forster and Graham Greene, writers who now form the core of the canon of modern English literature, and through his trans- lations he attracted to these writers a tremendous number of readers in Japan. Ken’ichi was also a professor of English literature in both the undergraduate and post-graduate schools at Chu¯o¯ University and he left a large number of works on English literature. Eikoku no Kindai Bungaku (Modern Literature in Great Britain), which covers writers from Wilde and Symons to Waugh and Joyce, is considered one of the classic works on English literature in Japanese. He exerted a huge influence on the appreciation of English literature in Japan, but he could not possibly have done this without his education in English and his encounters and friendships with intellectuals at Cambridge such as Dickinson, Lucas and Rylands.

211 21

Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), Novelist, Playwright, Essayist and Traveller

JOHN HATCHER

Somerset Maugham in Japan, 1959

EARLY VISITS Somerset Maugham’sfirst visit to Japan in 1917 was made under very special circumstances. Travelling undercover as a writer and journalist, he was in fact on a highly secret mission for the British government that, had it been successful, might have changed the course of twentieth-century history. He was bound for Russia, in turmoil following the revolution in March and the abdication of Czar Nicholas II. The socialist Alexander Kerensky headed a provisional government facing increasingly intractable problems ranging from the ongoing war with Germany and severe food shortages to the threat of the Bolsheviks, bolstered by the return that spring of Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin. Maugham’s mission was to support the Kerensky government and help prevent a Bolshevik takeover, thus keeping Russia in the war against Germany. 212 SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874–1965)

The safest route into Russia being via Japan, in late August 1917 Maugham arrived in Yokohama on a Japanese boat from San Francisco. With the situation in Russia increasingly desperate, he had no time for sightseeing or gathering material for stories, but ten years later he sketched the journey in his autobiographical short story ‘Mr Harrington’s Washing’, where his secret agent alter ego William Ashenden arrives in Yokohama only to hear that in Russia ‘the sol- diers, completely out of hand, would rob him of everything he pos- sessed and turn him out onto the steppe to shift for himself. It was a cheerful prospect’.1 Undaunted, Maugham made his way via Tokyo to the port of Tsuruga (Tsuruki in the Ashenden story), from where he sailed across the Japan Sea to Vladivostok, where he took the Trans- Siberian Railway to Petrograd. Ten weeks later, carrying an urgent message from Kerensky to Lloyd George requesting aid, he would leave Russia via Finland two days before the October Revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power and with it, had he still been in the country, his execution as an imperialist shpion.2 Despite the fact that it was the first Asian country he had ever visited, Japan did not make a deep impression on Maugham, nothing like his first experiences of the Pacific islands or South East Asia, both of which inspired a torrent of fiction and non-fiction writings. His long-distance travels had begun a few months before his Russian adventure, with his 1916–17 journey to Hawaii, Samoa and Tahiti, on which he drew for the stories later collected in The Trembling of a Leaf (1921). After the Great War, he resumed his travels in 1919–20, including a four-month journey in China, which resulted in the travel book On a Chinese Screen (1922) and the novel The Painted Veil (1925). It was towards the end of this journey, in April 1920, that he made his second visit to Japan. He planned to return to England via Suez and so the most direct route would have been to sail home from Hong Kong, but instead he chose to travel to Mukden and thence to Japan. He may also have visited Japan, primarily to catch boats, on his jour- neys to Hawaii, Australia, Malaya and Borneo in 1921 or Burma, Siam and Indochina in 1922–23. During these journeys he visited Kobe, Kyoto, Yokohama and Tokyo, but almost forty years later he remem- bered nothing but strolling in the park across the street from the Imperial Hotel in Tokyo and seeing ‘some good-looking people, some awful policemen’.3

JAPAN IN MAUGHAM’S FICTION Reading through Maugham’s novels, short stories, travel writings and other writings, one finds very little indeed on Japan.4 The fragment- ary journal Maugham kept from 1892 to 1944, published as A Writer’s

213 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Notebook in 1949, includes copious notes on his time in revolutionary Russia in 1917 but nothing of the Japan he passed through to get there. Later sections explore travels in Malaya, Burma, India and other parts of Asia but not Japan. Maugham, who in 1948 would assert that he had used fictionally virtually everything he had experienced in his life,5 was not one to let his travels go to waste, which suggests both that he spent little time in Japan and that he did not find it conducive for fictional purposes. For a start, Meiji Japan was neither tropical nor romantically seedy enough; it was, he recalled, ‘too neat for me. I like places with a bit of mess, you see.’6 More significantly, it had never been colonized. What Maugham found endlessly fascinating in his travels were the expatriates he encountered in remote outposts of the British Empire and beyond its fringes. His core subject was the effect – often though not always corrosive – of living in an alien culture, wrecked lives lived amid a tropically beautiful but brutally indifferent natural world. The expatriates he met in Japan were of a different breed from the despairing planters and lonely colonial officials who populate his Far Eastern fiction. Maugham’s sole story set in Japan focuses on a British expatriate who lives in one expatriate city, Kobe, and meets Maugham’s narrator in another, Yokohama, and tells him about another, more Maughamesque expatriate. The seed of ‘A Friend in Need’ (1926) was planted while Maugham was waiting for a boat in Yokohama. Like his narrator, Maugham stayed at the Grand Hotel, which would be destroyed in the Great Kanto¯ Earthquake in 1923. The story, a sardonic meditation on the layered complexities of human character, concerns Edward Hyde Burton, a British merchant living in Kobe, whom Maugham’s narrator met at the British Club in Yokohama:

I think the chief thing that struck me about Burton was his kindliness. There was something very pleasing in his mild blue eyes. His voice was gentle; you could not imagine that he could possibly raise it in anger; his smile was benign. Here was a man who attracted you because you felt in him a real love for his fellows. . . . You felt that he could not bear to hurt a fly.

This seemingly benevolent sixty-year-old businessman tells the narra- tor about a fellow Briton living in Kobe, a gambler and ladies’ man, who had appealed to him for a job after losing all his money. On being informed that his only real skill was swimming, he told the younger man that he would give him a job if he undertook a dangerous three- mile swim from the Shioya Club to Tarumi creek. Desperate, he had accepted the challenge and drowned. The story ends:

214 SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874–1965)

‘When you made him that offer of a job, did you know he’d be drowned?’ He gave a little mild chuckle and he looked at me with those kind and candid blue eyes of his. He rubbed his chin with his hand. ‘Well, I hadn’t got a vacancy in my office at the moment.’

Like a Browning dramatic monologue, Burton’s recounting of this anecdote reveals dark drives of which he himself is partly unconscious. ‘A Friend in Need’ is a wholly expatriate story and could as easily have been set in Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai. Indeed, Maugham’s description of Yokohama harbour as seen from the lounge of the Grand, while classic Maugham and marvellously evocative, is tinged with the generic, the ‘junks’ and ‘sampans’ seeming to belong to other great Far Eastern great harbourscapes:

From the windows you had a spacious view of the harbour with its crowded traffic. There were great liners on their way to Vancouver and San Francisco or to Europe by way of Shanghai, Hong Kong and Singapore; there were tramps of all nations, battered and sea-worn, junks with their high sterns and great coloured sails, and innumerable sampans. It was a busy, exhilarating scene, and yet, I know not why, restful to the spirit. Here was romance and it seemed that you had but to stretch out your hand to touch it.7

Japan itself has no presence in the story, not even filtered through the characters’ sensibility, as in Maugham’s Malayan and Pacific island stories. Japan in the early 1920s – rapidly transforming itself into a modern industrial power on Western models, not only uncolonized but itself an emerging colonial power – offered little scope for the lit- erary and psychological concerns that impelled and determined the course of Maugham’s travels. He probably came across in Japan stories he might have used – he recounted to his nephew an ‘astonishing story I was told when I was in Japan’ about a European banker forced by scandal to end his homosexual relationship with a young Japanese man, who promptly disembowelled himself, which Maugham con- sidered an act of ‘true love’8 – but he chose not to, in this case perhaps because he had no wish to draw public attention to his own homo- sexuality. Japan thus existed on the periphery of Maugham’s attention, forming the eastern border of his fictional world of ‘the East’, the east- ernmost stop on the great shipping route running from ‘Port Said to Yokohama’, whose staging posts he lovingly intones like a mantra in the story ‘A Marriage of Convenience’:

215 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Aden, Bombay, Madras, Calcutta, Rangoon, Singapore, Penang, Bangkok, Saigon, Huë, Hanoi, Hong-Kong, Shanghai, their names roll on the tongue savourily, crowding the imagination with sunshine and strange sounds and a multicoloured activity.9

The narrators of Maugham’s short stories occasionally sail to and from Japan, as in the 1936 story ‘Mr Know-All’, set on a liner from San Francisco to Yokohama, as well as occasionally sailing in Japanese ships, like the Shika Maru tramp from Sydney to Thursday Island in ‘French Joe’. In ‘Mabel’, Yokohama is one of the places where George seeks haven (staying at the Grand Hotel, of course) while fleeing from his relentlessly resourceful fiancée across the Far East from Burma to the Tibetan border. There are British expatriates, mainly old China hands, who take their leave in Japan, and a number of characters who have lived in Japan, including Cameron, one of Philip Carey’s teachers at St Luke’s Hospital in Of Human Bondage, who ‘had lived many years in Japan, with a post at the University of Tokyo’ and who ‘flattered himself on his appreciation of the beautiful’.10 Several Japanese appear briefly in Maugham’s fiction, but they are always travellers or expatriate Japanese, such as the kimono-clad pros- titutes in a Singapore brothel in ‘Neil MacAdam’ or the diver on a pearling schooner in the 1932 novel The Narrow Corner. The 1923 story ‘P & O’ is notable for two unusually negative references, perhaps influenced by the ominous atmosphere of the story, which is set on a ship sailing from Yokohama to Europe and whose central character, Mrs Hamlyn, has lived in Yokohama for twenty years with her silk merchant husband. When the ship stops at Singapore, ‘the meeting place of many races’, the ‘sly and obsequious Japanese’ are described as seeming ‘busy with pressing and secret affairs’.11 Later on the voyage two ‘little Japanese gentlemen’ are described playing deck quoits:

They were trim and neat in their tennis shirts, white trousers and buckram shoes. They looked very European, they even called the score to one another in English, and yet somehow to look at them filled Mrs Hamlyn at that moment with a vague disquiet. Because they seemed to wear so easily a disguise there was about them something sinister. Her nerves too were on edge.12

Other references to overseas Japanese are scattered thinly through the stories. In the 1925 story ‘The Portrait of a Gentleman’, set in Korea, annexed by Japan as a colony fifteen years earlier, the Japanese are seen as ‘astute’, while in ‘Neil MacAdam’ Captain Bredon praises Japanese women as the most attractive in Asia:

216 SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874–1965)

‘Give me Japs,’ said the Captain. ‘They’re fine. My wife’s a Jap, you know. You come along with me and I’ll take you to a place where they have Japanese girls, and if you don’t see something you like there I’m a Dutchman.’13

FINAL VISIT If Maugham had neglected Japan in his passion for other Asian coun- tries during his prime, he set this to rights towards the end of his life. Although his name is indelibly associated with the Far East, his last journey there had been in 1925–26. Thirty-five years later in 1959 he was invited to Japan for the opening of an exhibition in his honour in Tokyo. Increasingly frail at eighty-five years old, tired and embittered, Maugham still retained his passion for travel, though now it sprang less from wanderlust and story-seeking than a desire to escape the demons of depression and lonely introspection that besieged him at home. Drawn once more by the lure of the East and sensing that this would be his last chance ‘to see . . . before I die the countries I visited thirty- five or forty years ago’,14 he embarked on a nostalgic final voyage. The major difference this time was that his primary destination was Japan, where he would spend a month. The renowned Tokyo University scholar Nakano Yoshio had trans- lated The Moon and Sixpence and Rain in 1940, but they had inevitably been swallowed up in the maelstrom of the war, and so Maugham did not find popular acclaim in Japan until the 1950s, when publishers began issuing his Selected Works from 1950 and his Collected Works from 1953. According to another of his eminent translators, Namekata Akio, Maugham’s fiction – with its unsentimental exploration of the com- plexities and contradictions inherent in human nature, its refusal to see human life in terms of absolutes – struck a chord with post-war Japanese, many of whom felt betrayed by their wartime leaders. Some turned to Maugham in their search for new ways of living and finding existential meaning in the drastically changed conditions of post-war Japan.15 For many young Japanese, moreover, his writings were syn- onymous with English, as his stories were a staple in university English language textbooks. Thus, Maugham became a literary icon in Japan just as his critical reputation was declining back home, and his 1959 visit coincided with the peak of his fame. When the French liner SS Laos docked at Yokohama on 8 November – after a nostalgic voyage that took him briefly through all his old haunts, stopping at Aden, Bombay, Colombo, Singapore, Saigon, Manila and Hong Kong – Maugham found thousands of admirers, journalists and officials gath- ered to welcome him. Forty thousand people visited the ten-day exhibition of photographs and manuscripts in Maruzen, Tokyo’s largest

217 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI bookstore. At the opening ceremony on 17 November, Maugham made a short speech, relayed across the nation by television, in which he said he was delighted to learn that his books were so popular in Japan and hoped they read them for pleasure as well as for learning English.16 The huge crowd was so eager to catch a glimpse of the aged novelist that the British ambassador was accidentally knocked to the ground in the melee, and a planned book signing session had to be cancelled. That was the only official function Maugham attended, as he was adamant that his visit be kept strictly private. To a Tokyo scholar who wrote that Maugham should be decorated by the emperor, his secre- tary and companion Alan Searle tactfully replied that due to his age and health condition Maugham wanted to make the visit as restful and unofficial as possible.17 However, these efforts could not turn the clock back forty years to the days when Maugham had wandered around Asia unnoticed and unrecognized. He stayed at the Imperial Hotel, his old haunt, but this time there was no strolling anonymously in the nearby park. Wherever he went he was subjected to the relentless attentions of fans, scholars and other well-wishers. A rumour was abroad that Maugham intended to base a novel on this last great Asian journey, which, despite the fact that he declared himself an ‘extinct volcano’, gave an added frisson to his visit.18 He visited some of the main Tokyo tourist sights and made an excursion to Nikko. He shopped, buying a brocaded smoking jacket and a lacquer dish and nearly acquiring an Utamaro ukiyo-e woodblock print until he discov- ered that the asking price was ¥140,000. Nevertheless, at times, his refuge in the Imperial felt like a gilded prison. When Life magazine phoned asking for his impressions of Japan, telling him he could name his own price, Maugham refused, muttering ‘My impressions of Japan. . . . I don’t have any, shut up here like this.’ He went in fear of one earnest young woman in particular, who waited outside his hotel room ‘For hours. Waiting, dumbly. An autograph did not satisfy her. She wanted to talk about souls.’19 Maugham had not come to Japan to hobnob with other writers, but he did meet Mishima Yukio, who gave him a copy of his Five Modern No Plays with a flattering inscription. He also had spent an afternoon with a very different novelist, Ian Fleming. The fifty-one-year-old Fleming hero-worshipped Maugham and had been thrilled when he had praised his first James Bond novel, Casino Royale, six years earlier.20 They shared not only a restless passion for travel but also their back- ground in wartime intelligence work. Maugham’s Ashenden stories, which had helped establish the twentieth-century genre of the spy novel, were one of Fleming’s many literary sources, though the gen- tlemanly Edwardian Ashenden was a secret agent of very different era from that of James Bond. They enjoyed an ‘excellent luncheon’ at the

218 SOMERSET MAUGHAM (1874–1965)

Imperial, during which Maugham ‘alternately crackled with malice about our friends in London and purred with pleasure at his first visit to the East in thirty years’. 21 When Fleming took him to watch judo classes at the Ko¯do¯kan, Maugham was delighted with this glimpse of a more traditional, soulful Japan than he had seen so far in Tokyo, which he found ‘completely Americanized’.22 When he travelled south to Kyoto and Nara, Maugham’s spirits revived, for here he found in abundance the natural and artistic beauty he told journalists he had come to Japan to re-experience. His main contact in Kyoto was the novelist Francis King, who was Director of the local British Council. They had never met but Maugham had taken an avuncular interest in the younger novelist’s career since he was awarded the Somerset Maugham Award seven years earlier for his Florentine novel The Dividing Stream. Helping to usher Maugham around the ancient capital’s temples, shrines, gardens and museums, King was impressed by the fact that his ‘powers of observation were working even when he was very old and very tired and not feeling very well’ and by ‘his desire for information about Japanese life and culture even at that advanced age. He still felt he had something important to learn. . . . He was often almost dead from exhaustion but he was deter- mined to see all that he could.’23 When he took Maugham to the Noh theatre, King was gratified and moved by his response:

Later he told me that it had been one of the most remarkable experi- ences of his whole life. Wrinkled and bowed, the great writer had sat watching while the great actor had prepared himself for his role: being sewn into his robes; applying wet white with infinite care; then taking a hand-mirror and staring into it for minutes on end, as though by doing so he could leave his own body and enter an alien one. Although we had to sit on the floor during the long performance, Maugham betrayed no sign of weariness or discomfort.24

Like Fleming, King saw through Maugham’s half-ironic, curmud- geonly-old-man protests at the ‘universal adulation’ that followed him everywhere he went in Kyoto, as it had done in Tokyo:

Maugham put up some pretence of wishing to be free of the crowds, many of them students, who gathered around him in any temple, garden or museum which we visited; but it was easy to see that all this clam- orous attention, as to some pop star, secretly delighted him.25

Though still one of the world’s most famous living novelists, his crit- ical reputation had long been in decline at home, but, as we have seen, in Japan he was not only enormously popular but also the subject of

219 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI intense scholarly interest, translation and research. Even now a group of scholars were in the process of establishing a Maugham Society of Japan to commemorate his visit. According to King, Maugham found most of his academic admirers ‘terribly tedious, even though he was always courteous to them, taking pains with the most idiotic of their questions’.26 He could hardly complain since, as he ruefully remarked to King, ‘University professors queue up each morning in my hotel to get me to sign copies of my books. But when I stay in London, no one cares a damn that I’m there.’27 One particularly persistent enthusiast, Tanaka Mutsuo, a professor of English literature at Aoyama Gakuin University, had followed him down from Tokyo. He acted as Maugham’s occasional guide and inter- preter, noting his interest in Japanese religion – he was particularly absorbed watching a service in Higashihonganji – and his admiration for certain gardens, which seemed to him unique in their loveliness.28 Tanaka also accompanied Maugham to a geisha party in a Kyoto ryokan arranged in Maugham’s honour by Life magazine in exchange for being allowed to take photographs. Life’s captioned photographs, pub- lished under the excruciatingly alliterative headline ‘Geisha Gambol for Mr Maugham’, corroborate Tanaka’s account of the evening, showing Maugham watching the dance of the Four Seasons of the Capital and, initially baffled by the intricacies of chopstick technique and having to be fed by his geisha, finally managing to spear a tempura prawn and triumphantly slide it into his mouth.29 According to his secretary, this final thirty-day sojourn in Japan was the greatest triumph of Maugham’s career. The Maugham Society of Japan was inaugurated in January 1960, with 1,200 members headed by his most eminent Japanese champion, Nakano Yoshio.30 On Maugham’s departure, Professor Tanaka assured him that his name would remain immortal in Japan,31 and so, to some extent, it has. Most Japanese still have a nodding acquaintance with Maugham’s name at least, and, though his stories are no longer a staple of Japanese English education textbooks, they still appear fairly often in university English readers. Changing aca- demic fashions took their toll and the Maugham Society lasted only a few years, but by then Maugham himself was past caring. In Japan his ego – large, vulnerable and well bruised – had received one final massage and for that he remained grateful. And if, despite his own scepticism, there is an afterlife, he will have been gladdened by the fact that in April 2006 the Maugham Society of Japan was re-established under the pres- idency of University of Tokyo Emeritus Professor Namekata Akio, who as a young man had been among the crowds struggling for a glimpse of the novelist at the Maruzen exhibition in 1959.

220 22

Ian Fleming (1908–64), Novelist and Journalist

JOHN HATCHER

Fleming at Yugawara hot spring in 1959

1959 TOKYO VISIT When Ian Fleming arrived in Japan in November 1959 dressed in his habitual lightweight dark blue suit, polka dot bow tie and moccasins, an ebony cigarette holder clamped between his teeth, he was only just coming into the first flush of his success as the creator of James Bond. Since Casino Royale (1953) he had published six Bond novels, with Goldfinger having been published a few months earlier. Film companies were sniffing around – Fleming himself favoured James Stewart or Richard Burton for Bond, with Hitchcock as director – but the world- wide Bond cult would not really take off until the first Bond movie in 1962. In any case, James Bond was far from Fleming’s mind. After churning out a book a year since 1952, he was growing weary of his hero, who seemed to be taking over his life. He was in Tokyo on an all- expenses-paid escape and escapade: the Sunday Times had dispatched him on a five-week tour of his personal canon of ‘the thrilling cities of the world’ – Hong Kong, Macao, Tokyo, Honolulu, Los Angeles, 221 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Las Vegas, Chicago, New York.1 Unlike his friend Somerset Maugham, who had arrived by boat from Europe days earlier, Fleming was emphatically a post-war traveller, revelling in the speed of air travel, having arrived in the Far East on a BOAC Comet that took twenty-six hours from London to Hong Kong via Zurich, Beirut, Bahrain, New Delhi and Bangkok armed with a £803 19s. 2d. round-the-world ticket, one suitcase and his typewriter. He had enjoyed Macao and loved Hong Kong (‘the most vivid and exciting city I have ever seen’), but he flew on to Tokyo ‘full of reser- vations about Japan. Before and during the war they had been bad enemies, and many of my friends had suffered at their hands.’2 As a Naval Intelligence officer in 1941 he had been involved in a clandes- tine night-time mission to break into the Japanese Consul-General’s office in New York to microfilm codebooks. Fleming embroidered this experience in Casino Royale, where we learn that the first man Bond had killed was a Japanese cipher expert, and that this, plus the assassination of a Norwegian double agent in Stockholm, had earned him his 007 rank and ‘licence to kill’:

The first was in New York – a Japanese cipher expert cracking our codes on the thirty-sixth floor of the RCA building in the Rockefeller Center, where the Japs had their consulate. I took a room on the forti- eth floor of the next-door skyscraper and I could look across street into his room and see him working. Then I got a colleague from our organ- ization in New York and a couple of Remington thirty-thirtys with telescopic sights and silencers. We smuggled them up to my room and sat for days waiting for our chance. He shot at the man a second before me. His job was only to blast a hole through the window so that I could shoot the Jap through it. They have tough windows at the Rockefeller Center to keep the noise out. It worked very well. As I expected, his bullet got deflected by the glass and went God knows where. But I shot immediately after him, through the hole he had made. I got the Jap in the mouth as he turned to gape at the broken window.3

Now here was Bond’s creator landing in a Japan that was no longer a wartime enemy but a valued ally. He was prepared for mixed feelings, culture shock and ‘a great deal of hissing and bowing’,4 but not for what actually happened: his being so enthralled by Japan that after this brief visit to Tokyo he would be back within three years and would not only send Bond to Japan in his last completed novel but have him father a half-Japanese child. His guide and ‘comprador’ was the Australian Richard ‘Dikko’ Hughes, the Sunday Times’s tough, ebullient Far Eastern correspon- dent, who had first worked in Japan in 1940 and returned after the war

222 IAN FLEMING (1908–64) in 1945. A flamboyant, Hemingwayesque character, Hughes knew everyone who was anyone in Japan, from Richard Sorge, the wartime Soviet spy who had been hanged in 1944, to Prime Minister Yoshida Shigeru, a fellow Sherlock Holmes enthusiast.5 Hughes enlisted the help of one of his closest Japanese friends, Saito ‘Tiger’ Torao, an ex- war correspondent, architect and editor of Asahi’s annual This Is Japan.6 With the big hotels full of GATT conference delegates, Hughes had booked Fleming into the traditional Fukudaya inn between the New Otani Hotel and Sophia University, telling him it was much ‘better than those ghastly Western hotels. You’ll really be seeing the Japanese way of life’.7 Shocked at first by its delicacy and seeming fragility, Fleming grew to like his ‘idiotic, damnable pretty little room’, from which he sallied forth to see the sights of Tokyo. These were not the usual tourist sights, however, since, as he had warned the Sunday Times, he prided himself on being ‘the world’s worst sightseer’ and ‘had often advocated the provision of roller-skates at the doors of museums and art galleries’.8 His instructions to Hughes were explicit:

There would be no politicians, museums, temples, Imperial palaces, or Noh plays, let alone tea ceremonies. I wanted, I said, to see Mr Somerset Maugham, who had just arrived and was receiving a triumphal welcome; visit the supreme judo academy; see a sumo wrestling match; explore the Ginza; have the most luxurious Japanese bath; spend an evening with geishas; consult the top Japanese soothsayer; and take a day trip into the country. I also said that I wanted to eat large quantities of raw fish, for which I have a weakness, and ascertain whether sake was truly alcoholic or not.9

With Hughes and Saito’s help, Fleming managed to cram all of these activities into his three days, except the sumo tournament, which, being held in Kyu¯shu¯, he had to content himself with watching on tele- vision. His account of his stay in Tokyo – first published in the Sunday Times on 17 February 1960 and then in Thrilling Cities (1963) – can still be read with pleasure today, even the outdated tourist information appendix covering hotels, restaurants (‘For the truly adventurous, the ancient and famed Momonjiya restaurant still serves roast monkey, monkey brains, and wild boar’), nightlife and the definitely-not- outdated ‘Hints for sake-drinkers’.10 Offering quirky, superficial, jet- age glimpses of the world, Thrilling Cities belongs to a different generation from Maugham’s travel writing of the 1925s, similar only in being filtered through the observant eyes and sardonic, man-of-the- world persona adopted by both travellers. As we will see, Fleming occa- sionally revels, albeit with tongue in cheek, in geishas, alluring masseurs

223 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI and other orientalist exotica, but he is at his best when recording the subtler, profounder and cheaper pleasures of simply walking and looking, as here where he strolls along the Ginza, ‘one of the great plea- sure streets of the world’:

The first thing that struck me was how gay and purposeful the young Japanese are and how healthy a rice diet must be. They move at an aston- ishing speed compared with the easy stroll you will normally see in the comparable Piccadilly or Champs-Élysées crowds. And how bright all their eyes are. . . . The men and women are specklessly clean and so are their houses and belongings, though how they manage it in Tokyo, amidst the blown dust of the ubiquitous construction work, I cannot imagine.11

The same benign clarity characterizes his description of his visit to the Ko¯do¯kan, the ‘supreme judo academy’, where he took Maugham after lunch at the Imperial Hotel. Fleming had experienced judo at Eton and a secret Canadian training camp during the war, which inspired him to have the young Bond establish a judo club at his school, ‘the first serious judo class at a British public school’.12 Among the hun- dreds of individual bouts and classes in the vast upper hall of the Ko¯do¯kan, Fleming was deeply moved watching a:

. . . wise old red-belt teaching leg and kick routines to a tough, lively little boy of ten. Between these two all the traditions were strictly adhered to – the courteous bow before the lesson and after each sur- render, and the smiling concentration. For perhaps ten minutes the red- belt tried to teach the little boy one particular backward hack which sweeps the legs of the opponent from under him and can only be defeated by various counter-moves. Again and again the red-belt swept the little boy’s legs from underneath him, while holding the lapels of his wrestling robe, collapsed him gently, but not too gently, on the floor. And again and again the little boy was up and trying again, hacking bravely at the back of the red-belt’s bulging calves with the inside of his own small leg. At last he got it right and, in acknowledgement and by no means with false theatricality, the red-belt measured his length, got to his knees, bowed to his vanquisher, and they started again. What was so splendid about this scene was its entire seriousness. The old champion, without mockery, fell to the ground because the little boy had got the gambit absolutely right. . . . It was an exquisite scene.13

Fleming was also fully alive to Japan’s rapid technological progress, which made Britain, rather than Japan, seem quaint. On his only trip outside Tokyo Fleming rode one of the forerunners of the Shinkansen bullet train:

224 IAN FLEMING (1908–64)

. . . the most beautiful train I have ever travelled in – a streamlined alu- minium affair in bright orange that looked as if it belonged to Mars, but in fact was operated by the Odakyu Private Railway Line, a private enterprise which, with its soft, piped music and its pretty girls in claret uniform dispensing tea and Japanese whisky (very good, though I, a Scot, say it), could teach British Railways a thing or two.14

1962 TRIP: TOKYO During his brief 1959 trip Fleming had consulted the eminent fortune-teller Seki Ryu¯shi, who ‘looked far too happy and well-fed for a man who should be in communion with the spirits of darkness’.15 Studying his face minutely through a magnifying glass, Seki had pre- dicted that Fleming would be back in Japan within six months. He was out by two and a half years, but he had rightly sensed Fleming’s fasci- nation with Japan, for in the autumn of 1962 Fleming returned for a more intensive exploration. By this time the cult of James Bond was really taking off, boosted by the immediate success just a few weeks earlier of the film version of Dr No with Sean Connery as Bond. Whereas in 1959 Fleming had been glad to escape from his creation, this time it was Bond that had brought Fleming back. His offhand remark during his 1959 Tokyo trip that ‘I felt I must try and keep up with my hero’ was actually a complex, covert confession.16 By 1962 it is sometimes difficult to dis- entangle Bond and his creator, especially as regards their travels. Bond provided Fleming with a compelling reason for travelling, while at the same time enabling him to see the world afresh through Bond’s younger eyes, re-imagining what he saw and experienced in the light of what Bond would feel and do in the same circumstances. This reached its apotheosis in Fleming/Bond’s travels in Japan. Fleming had already sketched out the plot of You Only Live Twice. Dikko Hughes and Tiger Saito were not only to be his guides and companions again on this trip but co-opted into Bond’s fictional world as characters in the novel. Hughes would become Dikko Henderson, Australia’s Intelligence chief in Tokyo, while Saito – whom Fleming had described as ‘a chunky, reserved man with considerable stores of quiet humour and intelligence, and with a subdued but rather tense personality. He looked like a fighter – one of those war-lords of the Japanese films’ – would become Tiger Tanaka, head of the Japanese Secret Service. For the opening scene of the novel Fleming drew on a geisha party to which he, Hughes and Saito had treated themselves, at the SundayTimes’s expense, in a Shinbashi fish restaurant in 1959. Fleming’s attendant geisha, Masami, who would become Trembling Leaf in the novel, had

225 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI been ‘an enchanting girl of about thirty with straightforward good looks lit with that sincere delight in your presence and in the evening that . . . one finds in eastern girls’. They exchanged witticisms and Fleming read her palm. She painted a flower picture for him adorned with the ‘pretty, if rather forward conceit: “My garden faces East but is open to all.” ’17 The novelist in Fleming, however, was more taken with Saito’s geisha:

She was perhaps forty years old, with an oval, heavily made-up face and the tower of black hair one knows from Japanese prints. She had a queenly poise, hooded eyes, and features of almost reptilian impassivity which occasionally dissolved into expressions of surpassing wit and malice. She was the most formidable feminine personality I think I have ever encountered. One’s eyes were constantly attracted away from one’s more conventional neighbour, for all her pretty ways, to this glittering she-devil across the table. She spoke no English, although she seemed to understand it, and I suspect that most of her rapier-like sides to Tiger, which always dissolved him in laughter, consisted of scathing comments on the boorish manners, uncultured habits, and loathsome appearance of the two hulking, red-faced pigs on the other side of the table.18

This formidable woman reappears virtually unaltered as Grey Pearl in You Only Live Twice. In You Only Live Twice, Bond is warned by Dikko Henderson that ‘geisha parties were more or less the equivalent, for a foreigner, of trying to entertain a lot of unknown children in a nursery with a strict governess, the Madame, looking on’, and he does indeed find his jaws aching after two hours of ‘unending smiles and polite repartee’.19 Fleming had felt the same in 1959, but whereas he had been a jour- nalist on an expense account jaunt, Bond is here in the service of a Britain increasingly marginalized in the Cold War world. At the end of his 1959 travels, Fleming had mourned the rapid shrinkage of British presence and influence in a world it had once dominated.20 A major sub-theme of You Only Live Twice, expressed in different idioms by Bond’s boss M, Tiger Tanaka and the villain, is the erosion not only of the British Empire but also – in the wake of the Suez fiasco and the Burgess, Maclean, Philby and Profumo scandals – of the integrity and ‘moral fibre’ of post-war Britain itself.21 As a result, Bond is in the ignominious position of having to come cap in hand to Britain’s erst- while defeated enemies, dispatched by M on the ‘impossible’ diplo- matic mission of trying to persuade Japanese Intelligence to share top-secret Soviet communications data they have decrypted with their advanced MAGIC 44 code-breaking technology. The geisha party is one of a series of tests devised by Tanaka to dis- cover whether Bond is worthy of his trust. For a later outing with

226 IAN FLEMING (1908–64)

Tanaka, Fleming again drew on his 1959 trip, this time to the Tokyo Onsen. Here he had been bathed and massaged by ‘the prettiest Japanese girl I was to see during the whole of my stay. Her name was Kissy and she was twenty-one. She had the face of a smaller, rather neater, Brigitte Bardot, with black hair in a B.B. cut’. Despite the fact that ‘in the East sex is a delightful pastime totally unconnected with sin – a much lighter, airier affair than in the West’, Kissy had deftly deflected Fleming’s hinted inquiry as to whether more intimate forms of massage might be available by informing him that, although there were such establishments on the Ginza, the clientele of the Tokyo Onsen consisted solely of ‘gentremen’. Fleming had found it ‘a remarkable experience’, ‘really rather like going to the dentist. Pleasanter, of course.’22 This scene is recreated in You Only Live Twice, with the difference that, unlike Kissy, Bond’s masseuse has no qualms about fulfilling the ungentlemanly desires of Fleming’s younger, more virile alter ego:

Mariko smiled and bowed. She unhurriedly removed her brassiere and came towards the wooden box. . . . he reached for Mariko’s helping hands and watched her breasts tauten as she pulled him out and towards her.23

This might well give the impression that Fleming’s travels in Japan and the novel that resulted from them were mere exercises in male orien- talist wish-fulfilling fantasy, but, while this is a major strand in the weave, the pattern in the carpet was more complex. Fleming’s brief 1959 visit had sown the seeds of a genuine interest in Japan, albeit one skewed towards the bizarre. His sought advice from his editor and close friend, the novelist William Plomer, who had lived in Japan in the 1920s,24 and read up on the country, including books by Fosco Maraini, Alexander Campbell and the poet James Kirkup, whom he had met in a surreal encounter in a London pub during the war.25 Hughes and Saito were impressed by Fleming’s persistence, attention to detail and disciplined powers of observation. The routine for the entire trip was set immediately he arrived in Tokyo. After a day of trav- elling and constant questioning, Fleming would retire to his room for a couple of hours before dinner to write up his notes of the day’s obser- vation and inquiries. By the time they left Tokyo he had filled two notebooks in his meticulous longhand. The results of this study and field research are evident – for readers expecting an all-action Bond thriller, perhaps all too evident – in You Only Live Twice. Never having been further east than Hong Kong, Bond knows nothing about Japan and Fleming assumes that his readers don’t either, so the first 112 pages (out of 212) at times read more like a hybrid travelogue/sociology

227 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI textbook than a James Bond novel.26 Like many another western writer before and since, Fleming felt compelled to explain Japan in a way that he had never explained previous unfamiliar locations in his novels, as if it were less a country to be experienced than a set of nested paradoxes to be decoded. Chapter 9 is entitled ‘Instant Japan’ and that is how the first half of the novel reads, as mini-treatises on Japanese customs and concepts such as face, on (obligation) and seppuku are woven – skilfully but by no means seamlessly – into the narrative of Bond’s drinking bouts with Dikko and his slow bonding with Tiger Tanaka. As a result, You Only Live Twice is a comprehensive anthology of Western tropes and stereotypes about Japan.27 With Hughes and Saito’s help, in Tokyo Fleming met politicians, businessmen, journalists, bar girls and policemen, anyone and every- one who could give him the information and local colour he was seeking. He interviewed one of Tokyo’s leading gangster bosses, just in time as he was murdered six months later. Fascinated by the mys- tique surrounding the sumo world, Fleming cornered the sports editor of the Asahi and other Tokyo journalists in the lounge of the American Club and questioned them on the minutiae of wrapping the wrestlers in their mawashi girdles. Fleming was particularly enthralled by the idea that at puberty young sumo wrestlers were trained to reabsorb their testicles back up the inguinal canal. Though his informants laughed this off as a sumo myth, Fleming would have Tanaka describe the process to Bond as fact (‘My God, you Japanese!’said Bond with admi- ration. ‘You really are up to all the tricks’).28

FLEMING/BOND’S TRAVELS Mirroring his creator’s own ill health and growing melancholy, the James Bond of You Only Live Twice is a very different man from the hero of Casino Royale or Moonraker. Psychologically scarred from his ‘dark, dirty life’ as a secret agent, he has suffered a nervous breakdown after his wife’s murder by Ernest Stavro Blofeld in the novel Fleming had just finished writing, On Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Bond is so sick of his old life that he muses on his flight to Tokyo:

. . . whatever happened on this impossible assignment, he would put up no resistance to his old skin being sloughed off him on the other side of the world. By the time he was admiring the huge stuffed polar bear at Anchorage, in Alaska, the embrace of JAL’s soft wings had persuaded him that he didn’t even mind if the colour of the new skin was to be yellow.29

This is precisely what happens. After testing Bond’s mettle in the opening chapters, Tanaka decides to grant the British government’s

228 IAN FLEMING (1908–64) request in return for Bond agreeing to assassinate Dr Shatterhand, a ‘mad foreigner in an old Japanese castle’ in Kyu¯shu¯. For this he must assume a new identity: Todoroki Taro¯, Kyu¯shu¯ coalminer. Tanaka has Bond’s skin tinted ‘light brown’ to help him blend in and drills him in the minutiae of Japanese culture, including its rituals of masculinity: ‘First lesson, Bondo-san! Do not make way for women. Push them, trample them down’.30 You Only Live Twice may be wish-fulfilling fantasy, but it is one that goes beyond dreams of exotic sexual trans- gression, dominance and submission to imagine the possibility of shedding one’s past and living inside a different racial and cultural skin. The second section of the novel has Tanaka take the disguised Bond down through Honshu¯ via the Inland Sea to northern Kyu¯shu¯. One of Fleming’s principle aims in his 1962 trip was to travel in advance along Tanaka and Bond’s projected route. He wanted to experience what Bond would experience, which in turn coincided with Fleming’s own enthralled, macabre vision of Japan. He had outlined his desired itinerary in a letter to Hughes: ‘After perhaps a couple of days in Tokyo, I would like us to take the most luxurious modern train down south to the Inland Sea and beyond to whatever bizarre corner of Japan you and Tiger can think up. I have in mind somewhere like Fukuoka.’31 Hughes cheerfully organized with Saito a ‘James Bond itinerary’ that he wrote later he could ‘warmly recommend to visitors to Japan’. The ‘evangelic group’ travelled for two weeks by car, steamer, train, hydrofoil, funicular, sedan chair and riverboat, drink- ing copious amounts of sake without a single hangover between them (field-testing Fleming’s ‘Hints for sake-drinkers’), and achieving, according to Hughes, ‘a near-miracle for three men in their middle years, travelling together in unbroken company for two weeks: we never quarrelled once’.32 From Tokyo they followed the autumn colours southwestwards, taking the early morning express down to Gamagori, from where the next morning they caught a hydrofoil across the bay to Toba on the Ise peninsular, and then the ferry to Mikimoto Pearl Island. Fleming’s interest here was not Mikimoto Ko¯ichi and his cultured pearls but the demonstrations of traditional ama pearl diving. He had already decided that his heroine would be ‘a beautiful ama girl who has learned to speak English working on an underwater film in Hollywood,’ named Kissy Suzuki after his masseuse at the Tokyo Onsen in 1959. According to Hughes, Fleming startled everyone by pushing ‘gently through the crowd of sightseers and, clinically but tenderly, placed one hand on her bare shoulder as she emerged. ‘You must touch to get the precise texture of wet feminine skin,’ he explained, adding absently that wet Oriental skin certainly had a different feel from Caucasian.’33

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Hughes saw this as another example of Fleming’s ‘insatiable’ curios- ity and ‘abiding passion for detailed accuracy and precision in the Bond adventures’, which characterized their entire two-week journey. Similarly when, after visiting the Grand Shrines of Ise (where Fleming, like Bond later, learnt how to pray in Shinto fashion), they drove on by hired car to Matsuzaka, where, not content with watching the beer- fed cows being massaged, Fleming tried his own hand at blowing mouthfuls of sho¯chu onto the cow’s back – ‘Better for a cow’s rump than a gentleman’s belly’ was his verdict on the sho¯chu – and massag- ing it in to marble the fat through the meat, just as he would have Bond do at Tanaka’s bidding in You Only Live Twice:

Bond guessed that Tiger hoped he would swallow some of the gin and choke. He closed his throat but lustily filled his mouth with the stuff, compressed his lips and blew hard so that the vapour from the stuff would not go up his nostrils. He wiped his hands across his lips that were already stinging with the harsh spirit and scrubbed energetically at the rough pelt. The cow bent her head in ecstasy . . . Bond stood back. ‘Now what?’ he said belligerently. ‘What’s the cow going to do for me?’34

Unlike Bond and Tanaka, who would spend the afternoon visiting the Japanese Secret Service’s ninja training school in the nearby mountains, Fleming, Hughes and Saito drove on via Iga Ueno and its ninja museum to Kyoto, where they put up at the Miyako Hotel. Fleming passed up Kyoto’s great temples, shrines and gardens and insisted instead on exploring two lesser-known places that appealed more to his vision of the erotic, violent and macabre underside of Japanese culture: the ancient Shimabara brothel area, which Bond would visit with Tanaka, and the Nijo Jinya. Hughes found the latter ‘evil. . . . one of the most sinister and haunting houses I have ever entered’, but Fleming absorbedly studied its trapdoors, false walls and ceilings, sliding panels, listening-post, death-drop and nightingale floor. Despite remarking ‘I wouldn’t dare write this for Bond. . . . There must be some show of plausibility,35 he would borrow from the Nijo Jinya a nightingale floor for the Japanese Secret Service’s Tokyo HQ and an oubliette for Shatterhand’s castle in Kyu¯shu¯. From Kobe they took a steamship through the ‘endless horned islands’of the Inland Sea, perhaps lunching, like Bond and Tanaka after them, on ‘hamlets’ (ham omelettes) and sake.36 Arriving in Beppu on the northeastern coast of Kyu¯shu¯, Fleming was enthralled by the ‘hells’, the jigoku hot springs, geysers, fumaroles and boiling mud pools. Drawing towards the climax both of his two-week journey and of his still-to-be-written novel, Fleming was entering a Kyushu of his

230 IAN FLEMING (1908–64) own macabre imagining. In his letter to Hughes he had told him he wanted to see ‘hot baths, a live volcano for suicides, and any terrify- ing manifestation of the horrific in Japan’.37 Like many Western writers before and since,38 Fleming was fascinated by what he saw as the Japanese cult of death and obsession with suicide. Eight years earlier, Japan had climbed above Denmark, Switzerland and Austria to claim the world’s highest suicide rate, something of which Tiger Tanaka, who had undergone kamikaze pilot training during the war, is quietly proud: ‘25,000 Japanese people commit suicide every year. Only the bureaucrats regard that as a shameful statistic.’39 The fact that by 1962 the Japanese suicide rate was falling rapidly from its 1955 high did not deter Fleming from making it the core element in the climax of You Only Live Twice, where Bond’s clandestine mission on behalf of the Japanese government is to kill the mysterious Dr Shatterhand and destroy his ‘Garden of Death’, a lethal paradise of poison plants, geysers, fumaroles and piranha-infested lakes he has created to lure Japanese from all over the archipelago to end their lives in myriad grue- some ways. When Bond realizes that this man who ‘collects death’ is in fact his arch-nemesis Blofeld, the murderer of his wife, everything falls into place: ‘Japan, with the highest suicide statistics in the world, a country with an unquenchable thirst for the bizarre, the cruel and the terrible, would provide the perfect last refuge for him.’40 The cheerily hedonistic Beppu was as unsuitable for Blofeld’s ‘Garden of Death’ as the kitsch tourist haven of Mikimoto Pearl Island was for his remote pearl-diving island, and so for these two climactic locations Fleming travelled north-east, via the active volcano Mt Aso, to the city of Fukuoka, the ‘bizarre corner of Japan’he had mentioned in his letter to Hughes. Fukuokans would have been surprised to hear their city thus described,41 and Fleming himself was disappointed to find it less remote and certainly less bizarre than he had expected. Sticking to his original plan, however, he did his homework for Bond’s briefing in the Kyu¯shu¯ HQ of the Sosaka, the CID, by visiting the main Fukuoka police station, much to the consternation of the inspec- tor he would transform into Superintendent Ando:

We took tea with the perplexed local police inspector, who never really understood Tiger’s explanations and, after Fleming’s searching questions and voluminous notetaking, was left, I still feel, with the haunting fear that we were actually Interpol cops investigating a fantastic local crime which had escaped his attention.42

Since Bond would eat fugu in Fukuoka as his final initiation in the Japanese fascination with death, Fleming not only ate the ‘deadly but delicious Japanese blowfish’ in a Fukuoka restaurant but afterwards

231 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI detachedly applied a hot match end to his own lips to confirm that it ‘does temporarily deaden the lips of the eater’.43 Fleming went down to ‘the beautiful bay’ of Hakata to look across at the islands, but he did not travel further west along the Genkai coast to find prototypes for the settings of the climax of You Only Live Twice – Shatterhand/Blofeld’s castle and Kuro island – for these places belong not in Kyushu but in a Japan purely of Fleming’s own imagining. He had everything he needed to furnish these fantasies: Beppu’s geysers, fumaroles and boiling mud pools for Blofeld’s surreally macabre Garden of Death; the ingenious death traps of Kyoto’s Nijo Jinya for his castle; the ama pearl divers for Kuro island, where, unlike the demurely white-clad divers Fleming had seen on Mikimoto Pearl Island, the beautiful young divers dive almost naked;44 and where – in a reversal of the usual fantasies of domination and submission involv- ing Japanese women in western fiction – Kissy Suzuki will rescue the badly injured Bond at the end of his mission and nurse him back to health. Amnesiac, his Western identity and ‘dark, dirty’ past (and ini- tially his sexuality) erased, Bondo-san will spend many months here, believing himself to be a Kuro fisherman, happier perhaps than he has ever been, except for his troubling dreams. Fleming could follow Bond on these climactic adventures only in imagination, and so he, Hughes and Saito returned by the late night express to Tokyo, concluding what Hughes described as ‘the most instructive, enjoyable, crowded, leisurely, lively and hilarious trip I ever made in thirteen long and happy years residence in Japan’.45 After a sayonara banquet where Fleming drank turtle blood with members of the ‘Japan’s new secret police’, who, according to Hughes, were ‘respectful’ towards the creator of James Bond,46 Fleming flew back to London with his precious notebooks and a few weeks later used them to write You Only Live Twice at Goldeneye, his winter retreat in Jamaica. The title comes from a mock-Basho¯ haiku Fleming wrote in Japan and which he has Bond improvise on his voyage through the Inland Sea with Tanaka:

You only live twice: Once when you are born And once when you look death in the face.47

An autobiographical haiku, this. His health undermined by alcohol and tobacco, having already suffered a heart attack, Fleming had been facing death for some time. You Only Live Twice was the last novel he would fully complete and he was ill while he wrote it. Even as they caroused their way down through autumnal Japan, Hughes had both marvelled and worried at Fleming’s consumption of saké, bourbon, his

232 IAN FLEMING (1908–64) beloved Morland cigarettes, every stimulus that came to hand or mouth. At their last meal together in the Prunier restaurant in Tokyo Fleming had ‘established an all-time record in Tiger’s and my awed experience by devouring in rapid succession four one-dozen plates of the full-bodied Hiroshima oysters’.48 It was if he was desperately grab- bing at life, devouring the very things that were devouring him. Nobody seeing Fleming and the frail eighty-five-year-old Maugham lunching together at the Imperial in November 1959 would have imagined that the younger man would die first, but whereas Maugham would cling on until December 1965 Fleming died little more than eighteen months after leaving Japan.

233 23

Frank Tuohy (1925–99): The Best is Silence

DAVID BURLEIGH

Frank Tuohy

INTRODUCTION The novelist and short-story writer Frank Tuohy lived in several different countries, on three continents, but it was in Japan that he spent the longest time. It comes as a slight surprise to realize this, since only a small part of Tuohy’s fiction is actually set there. Born in Uckfield, East Sussex, in 1925, Frank Tuohy was educated at Stowe School, and then at King’s College, Cambridge, where he read Philosophy and English, taking a B.A. with first-class honours in 1946. Thereafter he would live for long periods abroad. He described his family origins in a talk called ‘Some Thoughts in Exile’, delivered later in his life in Tokyo:

My father was the son of an Irish Roman Catholic doctor who worked in India; my paternal grandmother died of plague when my father was three: he was brought up by an Indian ‘ayah’(nurse) and spoke Hindi until he was sent back to Ireland and later brought up by a bigoted but intel- ligent aunt. My mother was Lowlands Scottish, of Episcopalian back- ground, which meant, by Scottish standards, she was upper class. Always 234 FRANK TUOHY (1925–99)

conscious of social conflicts as a child, even though both sides of my family belonged to the secure professional class, I think this was because I realized that my mother never understood my father’s family. . .

Most of Tuohy’s stories describe what happens when the solid mass of one class or culture collides with another, the little quakes and erup- tions that then occur. One of the reasons he went abroad was purely pragmatic: born with a hole in the heart, he was not expected to be long-lived, and was not easily employable. In 1947 and 1948, he was guest lecturer at Turku University in Finland, although this left no trace upon his writing. It was rather the period he spent living in South America in the 1950s that gave him the subject matter that he needed.

BRAZIL Two of the three novels that he published have settings in Brazil. It might be said that Tuohy’s residence in Brazil determined the course of both his writing and his life. From 1950 to 1956 he was Professor of English Language and Literature at the University of São Paulo, and drew on this experience for his first two novels, The Animal Game (1957) and The Warm Nights of January (1960), as well as a number of short stories. Although he seems never to have returned there, one of the friends that he made in Brazil accompanied him to Europe, and he remained in touch with at least one other throughout his life.1 The rich tapestry of Brazilian life seems to have supplied not only the mate- rials for his early books, but also to have engendered the travels that produced his later fiction. After teaching at the Jagiellonian University at Kraków in Poland from 1958–60, he wrote what is generally con- sidered his best novel, The Ice Saints (1964). Just as that book was coming out, he took up an appointment in Japan, as Visiting Professor at Waseda University in Tokyo, a post he held from 1964 to 1967. Tuohy told me once in interview that he chose to go to Poland, and also to come to Japan.2 In the morally uncertain and predatory South American world in which Tuohy places his characters, there are immigrants from both Poland and Japan. In The Animal Game, when the leading characters are on an outing to the seaside, a man emerges from the undergrowth nearby: ‘The man, a Japanese, was carrying a swordfish he had caught – a long strip of dusty aluminium, with the frayed tail dragging in the sand.’ The man soon understands the reason for the others’ presence:

‘Picnic?’ The Japanese indicated his son. ‘I will bring him to see it. But a lot of them are making a film. It’s a great thing.’ He smiled with two fangs. ‘Yesterday they photographed me and the boy.’

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Preparations for the meal are made:

The Japanese knew he was being spoken about and smiled. The child stepped forward and stared at Mrs Newton. For him, she was by far the most interesting and extraordinary of the group. He had chosen rightly, for she welcomed him with open arms. In a moment she had begun a game with him, which he watched with fascination, his eyes full of laughter.3

Mercedes Newton, a doctor and exile from her native Paraguay, is an outsider in the story, but here is in her natural element. A few minutes later, after their short walk-on part, the man and his son go away. This incident is recalled later by Celina Camargo, the Brazilian woman at the centre of the story, when, during a long unhappy drive, she halts her car:

Footsteps sounded on the road behind her, hesitated and stopped. Celina put her head out, and saw a string of Japanese children, wooden- faced and prickly-haired, staring back at her. She called to them, but they kept an unmoved silence; in all probability they still only under- stood Japanese. The round heads gazed blankly, as owls do, and exchanged no look of comprehension with her. They live here, she thought, where I have lived all my life, and I know nothing about them, nothing whatever. [. . .] A moment of horror at her own loneliness took control of her. Then she remembered Mrs Newton on the beach the day before. That absurd idiotic woman possessed some power of attrac- tion, some animal magnetism which had brought the Japanese child to her. Celina herself had none.4

The presence of the silent, staring children has revealed something to Celina about herself. It has also, one feels, piqued the author’s inter- est, though his exploration of it would come later.

JAPAN The Japanese Tuohy encountered in Brazil would have been those who emigrated there in the 1950s. Yet his curiosity about them did not produce another novel, despite his extended visit to the country that they came from. His experience of Japan was, however, fruitful in a variety of ways. He received, during his stay, a lucrative commission to visit China and write articles about it for a newspaper, and expressed reservations about the Maoist regime. He also wrote some brief travel pieces about Japan, such as a description of a Naked Festival,5 as well as an account of his residence at Waseda University during the time of his employment there. This last, broadcast on BBC radio and then published in a book, was called Three Windows on Japan:

236 FRANK TUOHY (1925–99)

When I first arrived in Tokyo, I was rather disappointed when I saw the house that had been allotted to me. It jutted from the end of an unin- teresting concrete building which contained the University Club [. . .] In the end, I got to like my house, even though I slept in an American bed and my bath, unlike Japanese baths, had room for only one person. The windows were large and steel-framed, and my sitting-room had three of them. . .6

Tuohy makes a shrewd narrative observation of life in Japan from what he could see outside these windows, but has no illusions about his own awkward place in this setting:

[F]or me, at any rate, many experiences were altered or completely spoiled by the everlasting presence of a clumsy, ill-mannered figure with a protuberant face and hairy wrists – my own self. I’m not being unnec- essarily modest. . .7

As elsewhere, he made a number of friends, mainly Japanese and American, and, as in Brazil, had one particular friendship. Probably he missed the intense human relations that he had known in Poland. The deprivation, and emotional intensity, of Polish life, had much engaged him. I felt myself when I got to know him later that a certain kind of shared discomfort, like that of boarding school, was something that he quite enjoyed.8 Like Graham Greene, Tuohy could beautifully capture and evoke the atmosphere of different places, but was not essentially a travel writer: the travel pieces that he did were usually commissioned. Nor did he generally write about himself. Unlike, say, Christopher Isherwood, he was not interested in the self as subject, in recounting the tale of his own life.9 Other, mainly technical, considerations went to the making of a successful story, even though the materials were taken from what he found around him. Books about Japan abounded already in the 1960s, and the only ‘travel’ book that Tuohy wrote was one on Portugal: essentially an essay to accompany some photographs, though it is written in his individual style. By the time Portugal appeared in 1970, he was just taking up the post of writer-in-residence at Purdue University in Indiana. He stayed there for two years, and returned to America twice, in 1976 and 1980, for a year each time.

PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST Frank Tuohy was a slow and meticulous writer, who set the highest standards for himself and others. If the work did not seem good enough, he either abandoned or rewrote it. Abandoning a story might

237 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI mean, as his friend John Haylock records, completely discarding it, rather than setting it aside.10 Tuohy’s manuscript archive, however, contains no less than three substantial versions of a novel he had begun to work on after his first stay in Japan. It is not, strictly speaking, a novel ‘about’ Japan, but one which features someone who has recently returned from there. It has no title, but can be identified by the names of its two main characters, Libby and Mark. I have obtained copies of this unfinished work from the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University, where Tuohy’s papers are now held.11 When Libby and Mark opens, Mark Cotton is in a car with his wife Libby, and they are driving down to the West Country to stay with an old school-friend of Mark’s, Richard Winter. We learn from the con- versation that the Cottons have just come back from Japan where Mark, a minor poet, had held a teaching position at a university in Kyoto. Richard, who is unmarried and lives alone in a large house in the country, has offered part of it to the Cottons for their use. The completed portion of the book ends more or less with Libby attempt- ing some redecoration while she also learns to drive. The manuscript includes some dated notes that, rather atypically, describe the compo- sition of the book, or at any rate the writer’s struggles with it. In its earliest version, the main character seems to have been called Richard Winch, and the story to have been fairly autobiographical in outline. Although the scattered passages of this more personal story have been set aside, the remaining situation still draws on Tuohy’s own circum- stances. The house in the country vaguely resembles a property that he owned and shared with his school-friend James Farmer and his wife Deborah (the dedicatees of his first novel). But Mark is a poet, not a painter, as Farmer was, and Richard Winter (as he has now become), though unmarried like the author, is presented as a reformed alcoholic, like the author’s other old school-friend, later his editor, Alan Maclean.12 Mark and Richard are both about forty, and one note says: ‘This is a story about middle age.’13 It is not really a story about being in Japan, but one aspect of it is, more unusually, about having been there. The return to Britain has been unsettling for the Cottons: ‘Libby and Mark had got used to being regarded as rather splendid and heraldic curiosities.’14 Mark especially finds the language all around him, like printed signs in public places, strange at first, while Libby comes to feel that the opportunities she had found in Japan for her modest abilities (writing for tourist publications, ink-painting) may not be available here. Both are uneasy and perplexed, but for Mark the approaching crise d’un certain âge is focused on his poetry. When the couple’s possessions are retrieved from storage and delivered to the house, they include two boxes of Mark’s own books. Tuohy has melan- choly fun with this:

238 FRANK TUOHY (1925–99)

Mark made his preparations for heaving the tea-chests upstairs to the small room he had chosen to work in. The element of pointlessness in the exercise, involving as it did moral strain as well as physical effort, had dissuaded him. What he was going to hump up two pair of stairs was his own failure and his own responsibility: the boxes contained all the remainder copies of his two books, First Poems and The White Designs. They were his only children so far; malformed perhaps, but after all their christening had been blessed (he had reviews to prove it). Their pres- ence, after so many years in a warehouse, filled him with a kind of sadness which was not entirely unpleasant, since it pertained only to himself. This sadness was quite distinct, for instance, from the pang of melan- choly, a sensation like the sudden descent of an elevator, which he had experienced on seeing a copy of The White Designs in Tokyo, at the British Council Library, where it was shelved with all the other spent rockets of a decade or so ago. In Kyoto his anguish has been still further increased by the sudden manifestation of Okamoto Kazuo, who was working on a post-graduate thesis on ‘Theme and Imagery in the Poetry of Mark Cotton’. Okamoto, a protégé of Professor Koroko, Dean of the Literature Faculty, reappeared at intervals in Mark’s office. He hovered, he plunged into silences, he blushed frequently, damson- coloured and steaming up his spectacles as though in a hot bath of embarrassment. His persistence had been heroic, since Mark was ill- equipped for dealing with admiration, and the elucidation of poems written when he was an undergraduate was painful to him.

After moving one chest upstairs, Mark turns to the other:

The second of the two chests was a good deal heavier, The White Designs having failed even to repeat the muffled impact of First Poems. At the first turning of the second stair, he was completely in agreement with Libby. Of course she was right; she would win in the end. What he was lifting from step to step was a coffin: had he dared to open the lid, it would have been to a smell of rot and a shine of bones. What was alive was always elsewhere. Yet at the same time the unusual physical effort was setting brain and solar plexus free again to perform their two- handed collaboration. His mind went into over-drive. It raced through unsolved problems of idea and language. In one so elderly and unsuc- cessful, this facility must be wrong. When ability and facility get indis- tinguishable, the best is silence.15

The portrait of the poet (and there have been many attracted to Japan) is splendid, and may itself suggest why the novel was abandoned. Dated notes on the manuscript put the time of composition in late

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1969 and early 1970. It is plain from the completed portion that the young Japanese scholar Okamoto is to come and visit. A query at the bottom of one page says: ‘How can I get the Japanese as a psycholog- ical force?’ This may be the problem on which the story ultimately foundered, but this was not the end. Three excellent short stories, and a television play, would eventually issue from this material, once it had turned over in its sleep.

STORIES AND A PLAY The first of these, two years later, was the television play. Recorded for BBC2 in November 1972, and broadcast for ‘Thirty-Minute Theatre’ the next year, The Japanese Student takes place in the home of Captain and Mrs Redfern in an unnamed seaside resort in the south of England. The Redferns’ daughter Joanna arrives home with a Japanese student, Yoshi, who is enrolled at the same university. She tells her parents that she has brought him along as part of a ‘project’, to introduce foreigners to English homes, but it is soon revealed that they are lovers. Captain Redfern attacks the conformity of Japan, and is sour about its economic success, partly because he fought against the Japanese during the war. His daughter, by contrast, is taken with the traditional culture, which she only half-understands. The dramatic turn comes near the end, when Yoshi tells Joanna that he must return to his home in Fukuoka, because his father has died. There is a sug- gestion that the father may have committed suicide following a busi- ness failure. Joanna reproaches her friend for not telling her earlier; his reaction is to sit on the floor silently arranging flowers. Tuohy allows him to make a dignified response:

joanna: I don’t know what to say. yoshi: You don’t need to say anything. This is my fault. I did not intend for you to know. joanna: That sounds like a brush-off. yoshi: I am very sorry. I am Japanese. When something like this happens, this is how I am. joanna: What do you mean? yoshi: I must not think about myself. I must think about my family, my brother, my sisters and my mother. I am head of family. I must be strong. My father failed because he was weak. He trusted too many people. I must go back and make things right. . .

Yoshi rejects the freedom that Joanna urges him to claim. ‘I am not like you,’he tells her. ‘I am not like the other students at the university. I am

240 FRANK TUOHY (1925–99)

Japanese.’ She is shocked at his hidebound attitudes to women and to marriage, but reconciles herself to his deeply-held ideas. The explana- tion for them, ‘I am Japanese’, is seriously treated. The author’s pre- sentation of the young man in the play is both intelligent and notably respectful, like William Plomer’s treatment of the eponymous hero of his early novel Sado (1933). Tuohy was only disappointed that the actor who took the part of the student was not Japanese but Chinese. Three Japanese tales begin Tuohy’s third collection of short stories, Live Bait (1978), and make up the first quarter of the book. In the opening story, ‘A Summer Pilgrim’, a Japanese professor is attempting to contact ‘one of our best minor poets’ while on a visit to England. The professor decides instead to send his assistant, Miss Hitomi, whose spoken English is much better than his own, and Tuohy has great fun with the consequences of this. The young woman is overwhelmed by the intimate manner of the poet’s second wife, while also receiving unwonted attentions from the poet. The professor, meanwhile, has allowed himself to be dispensed with. It is clear that some of the details of this story – literary adulation, linguistic stops and starts – have been carried over and developed from the portrait of a poet in the aban- doned novel. The delightfully absurd description of the proxy pilgrim’s encounter with the ageing bard reveals a lot about certain types of writers in England and Japan. ‘A Summer Pilgrim’ has been recorded and anthologized, which is one indication of its appeal.16 While Tuohy’s fictional poet has lived in Kyoto, the other two Japanese tales are set in Tokyo, where he lived himself. ‘Nocturne with Neon Lights’ begins with an English businessman called Prescott seeing his wife off at the airport: she has hated her six months in Japan, and is leaving him to finish out the year’s residence alone. He, mean- while, is delighted at her departure, which leaves him free to continue an affair with their former maid. After a couple of stiff drinks, he sets off on a search for an address that is finally impossible to find. Tuohy’s rueful observations on the situation are what make this light-hearted tale enjoyable and interesting. Anger and indignation only make everything more difficult, till Prescott is left stranded, unsure how he has been defeated in his quest. An experience familiar to newer resi- dents has been well encapsulated in this episode, but it is the third story which is probably the best. ‘The Broken Bridge’is a first-person narrative, told by someone like the author, and relates a series of events that take place on the campus of a university, with disastrous consequences. With subtle brilliance, Tuohy goes right to the heart of cultural misunderstanding in this story, in which an American teacher foists his own vision of the world on his students, causing one of them to die. We do not learn quite what has happened until the very end, but the shock is immediate, and

241 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI the effect complete. The conversational tone belies the wily construc- tion of this piece. At one level it seems a ‘purely Japanese-American situation’,17 but the baffled speaking voice in which events unfold enables Tuohy to revolve a whole world of different relations: male and female, young and old, Japanese and foreign, British and American.18 The author-narrator’s comment on his student’s essay – ‘There is no verb in the Japanese language for “hope”’ – has poetic truth, but is not literally true.19 Nevertheless, this is a superb tale, and it is not at all sur- prising that it would head and give the title to an anthology of ‘expa- triate fiction’ published in 1997.20 While another literary text (a play by Arthur Miller) lies at the heart of ‘The Broken Bridge’, this serves largely as a hinge for the action, and is not central to its meaning. A line of poetry by W.B. Yeats that crops up in a digression on Kabuki theatre in the story has more telling significance for Tuohy’s own connection with Japan. During his stint at Waseda, Tuohy helped to edit W.B. Yeats and Japan by Sho¯taro¯ Oshima, a book based on the Japanese professor’s correspondence with the Irish poet.21 Tuohy’s contact with Oshima, a pioneering scholar of Irish studies, re-awoke his interest in the poet, and he wrote a bio- graphical study of Yeats after he had returned to England. In fact his Yeats (1976) came out before the stories about Japan appeared in book form. Residence in Japan thus helped the writer rediscover Ireland, where his father’s family had come from, and his book on Yeats was well received there. His interest in Irish literature received further stimulus on his second visit to Japan.

RETURN TO JAPAN In what he called his ‘reincarnation’, Tuohy served as Visiting Professor at Rikkyo¯ (St Paul’s) University in Tokyo from 1983–89. It was during this time that I got to know him. We sat together at the inaugural conference of a new Japanese branch of what is now the International Association for the Study of Irish Literatures, at Waseda University in 1984. Frank gave a paper on Irish lady novelists.22 At another conference later he talked about short stories, and humorously referred to his ‘cousin Joyce’, since he was distantly related to James Joyce. For the next few years we generally had dinner together on Tuesday evenings and most often Frank would do the cooking. The same academic comedy continued for him more or less unchanged at the university. His approach to teaching was a pragmatic one. I remem- ber him once being irked by the missionary attitude of an American colleague, with whom he lost his temper. ‘We’re here to dig the drains!’ he announced in no uncertain terms. When The Collected Stories of Frank Tuohy came out in 1984, it received wonderful reviews

242 FRANK TUOHY (1925–99) and people came to interview him. D.J. Enright described the three Japanese tales as ‘first-rate’, despite the fact that ‘in this line of country Tuohy faces stiff competition from Francis King’.23 A handful of later stories followed, but none about Japan. Apart from his admirable reviews in literary journals that sometimes dealt with Japanese subjects, there was only one further piece of inde- pendent prose about Japan. ‘Tokyo: A Morning Walk’ was again written for broadcast on BBC radio, and Tuohy’s updated account of the ‘notoriously ugly’ city to which he had returned, has some inter- esting comments. On his meditative stroll to work, he notes changes in the urban environment: the prosperity of shoppers, the presence of other races, for this was the time of the economic bubble. He admires the ‘spectacular breakthrough into the modern world’ by the Japanese over the preceding century. ‘Yet I feel that nothing they have achieved has been regarded with affection,’ he thinks as he looks around. Considering the educational setup, he dolefully observes: ‘It could be that a high level of mediocrity is what the post-industrial world requires.’ Most disappointing of all, to someone as attentive to the natural world as Tuohy was, is the lost awareness of it: ‘Outside the window where I teach, there is a magnificent Magnolia grandiflora. None of the students I asked knew what it was.’ There is one late novel among Tuohy’s papers, a substantial manu- script, nearly but not quite complete. It begins in England, but ends mid-sentence, during a remarkable scene in Portugal. He had been working at it, with pills and difficulty, for several years. Frank’s concise and entertaining letters were always composed on aerogrammes: ‘It’s like writing a sonnet,’ he would say; there is a precise weight to every word. After retiring, he went to live in the West Country again, but continued to travel. I sometimes shared excursions with him myself, in the Philippines and northern Thailand. Honours came to him in later years, mainly from the United States, to which he was invited in order to collect them. He also went back once to Poland, but there were no further invitations from Japan. Frank Tuohy died, after a holiday in Cyprus, in 1999, at the age of seventy-three. Obituaries appeared in all the major British papers. If you crossed Graham Greene with Chekhov, you would get Frank Tuohy, someone once remarked.24 There is a good deal in the settings of some of Tuohy’s fiction that would not be out of place in Greene- land, though his moral relativity differs from Greene’s Catholicism.25 The concentrated close-up of Tuohy’s shorter fiction beautifully dis- plays his diagnostic skill. ‘Prose expression of poetic truth,’ was, he once told me, the essence of a good short story. ‘I dislike the factitious element in novels,’ he added, ‘including the three that I wrote long ago.’26 In his later work, he tended more and more towards shorter

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fiction. Francis King has suggested that Maupassant might be a better comparison than Chekhov,27 but the diverse influences probably included Henry James. Certainly the three short stories that Frank Tuohy wrote about Japan show how he had made himself an absolute master of the form.

244 24

Angela Carter (1940–92) and Japan: Disorientations

ROGER BUCKLEY

Angela Carter

INTRODUCTION Angela Carter (1940–92) is the subject of immense posthumous fame. Conferences, scholarly theses and literary celebrations ensure that her experimental works are widely known and carefully scruti- nized. After starting out as a journalist in Croydon, she married Paul Carter, read English at Bristol University, began writing novels (start- ing with Shadow Dance, 1965 and The Magic Toyshop, 1967) and then came to Japan as the recipient of the Somerset Maugham prize. Thereafter she divorced, remarried in 1977, taught in the United States, Australia and at the University of East Anglia, while continu- ing to publish novels, short stories and articles at a frenetic pace. Angela Carter’s growing bands of admirers view her work as a heady blend of magic realism, fantasy and purple prose. It is hardly surprisingly, they maintain, that she never won the Booker. Beachcombing for books is its own reward. So the collector patiently tells himself until he spies a nugget in the prospector’s pan and then attitudes suddenly shift. It happened when the library of my University in Tokyo was going through one of its frequent discard sales 245 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI and I found myself paying a hundred yen for a first edition of Angela Carter’s The Magic Toyshop. So far, so ordinary. Yet when I looked a little more carefully three cherries registered on the fruit machine’s screen; the literary equivalent of a jackpot sent silver dollars cascading onto the casino floor. On the inside cover of my purchase the inscription read ‘For Becky and Suzy from Angela, with love’: on the back dust cover, immedi- ately underneath the publisher’s description of the author, Angela Carter had written in ink: ‘This is circa 1966, before I committed adultery or went to Japan or anything’, and to make the message absolutely clear she had underlined ‘anything’: lastly, there was an undated handwritten letter tucked inside the book that Angela Carter had sent to her two friends on her return from Japan to Britain. Nearly forty years after the event, there remains very little in print on Angela Carter’s years in Japan beyond her short stories, some jour- nalism and a few comments that she made in interviews. Basic biog- raphical information is missing, though her second husband is said to possess material and others may yet be persuaded to be more forth- coming over their own recollections.

ANGELA CARTER IN JAPAN Angela Carter’s involvement with Japan matters because it has been frequently seen as a dividing line in her life and career. It is, though, subject to various interpretations, not least because of the striking absence of reliable information on which to build a verifiable thesis. Those that have attempted to look at these years have very little to go on, beyond stating that she spent over two years there in the early 1970s. Professor Sarah Gamble noted in 1997 that Carter had already written three novels before the award of the Somerset Maugham Prize permitted her to travel to Japan. It was, as Gamble writes, a major shift: ‘Instead of capitalizing on her burgeoning reputation, however, she did the unexpected – she removed herself from both a failing marriage and the British literary scene. The Somerset Maugham Award for Several Perceptions gave her the money to travel, so, believing that a writer should get “out and about and around”, she went to Japan and remained there for two years.’1 Yet what she did there and what the impact of Japan may have been on her subsequent writing is controversial. The late Lorna Sage, whose own compelling autobiography surely deserves a prominent place in any decent curriculum on post-war British society, is quoted by Gamble as remarking that Japan was ‘the place where she lost and found herself’.2 All that is certain is that Angela Carter left a collapsing

246 ANGELA CARTER (1940–92) marriage and the prospect of securing a name for herself in Britain for the opportunity to live abroad in a most different society. What happened next is unclear. We simply do not know much more than that she had a younger Japanese or Korean lover, lived at various times in Tokyo and on the coast, worked in a club and wrote both fiction and journalism. It is not much to go by, particularly as commentators have often suggested that Angela Carter was deliber- ately cautious about letting on about her past. Looking for Angela Carter is likely to prove an arduous task for any future biographer, but given the extraordinary interest in her works and the praise she continues to receive it is something that undoubt- edly will be attempted. Scores of doctoral students are presenting theses on aspects of her novels and tributes are forthcoming that cele- brate ‘her life and writing with contributions from those who knew and dreamed with her’.3 Claims are being made that her ‘novels, short stories, criticism and essays revolutionized the British intellectual and literary landscape in a way that dizzied her critics and liberated her contemporaries’.4 Speakers at a major commemoration in the summer of 2006 were to include Ali Smith and Tariq Ali. Such literary events and the many recent literary assessments can only spur on researchers to provide biographies that might slake the public’s interest in her life. Once the sparseness of first-hand evidence is admitted, then would- be biographers will have to fall back on the, doubtless dangerous, option of examining Angela Carter’s writings during these years. The key has to be Fireworks: Nine Profane Pieces, published in 1974. She explained in her afterword to these writings that: ‘I started to write short pieces when I was living in a room too small to write a novel in. So the size of my room modified what I did inside it and it was the same with the pieces themselves. The limited trajectory of the short narrative concentrates its meaning. Sign and sense can fuse to an extent impossible to achieve among the multiplying ambiguities of an extended narrative.’ She concluded that ‘though the play of surfaces never ceased to fascinate me, I was not so much exploring them as making abstractions from them, I was writing, therefore, tales’. These tales were to be understood as separate from the conventional natural- ism of short stories; they were deliberately unconventional, ‘derived from subterranean areas behind everyday experience’.5 ‘The tale’, Carter insisted, ‘has relations with sub-literary forms of pornography, ballad and dream, and it has not been dealt with kindly by literati. And is it any wonder? Let us keep the unconscious in a suitcase, as Père Ubu did with his conscience, and flush it down the lavatory when it gets too troublesome.’6 Angela Carter’s experiences in Japan, if we may judge from her tales, hardly fitted into the standard suitcase she had brought with her.

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Yet many will probably be wary of references to any excessive uncon- ventionality – there is little after all that does not fit into the mould of other young expats and their personal memoirs. Angela Carter had close Western and Asian friends, met Donald Keene and Kawabata Yasunari,7 worked as a hostess and at NHK but so did many others. It is only when contrasts are made with the Britain of the early 1970s that the picture changes. Thirty-five years ago, as her former editor Paul Barker noted in January 2006, ‘Japan was then an unknown land to most Westerners’.8 The contrasts between Japanese society with post-austerity, pre-affluent, Britain were far greater than they may appear today when social mores, youth culture and technology know far fewer boundaries. The novelty value of stuff on gangsters and manga and tattoos is near zero now, but the editor of New Society in 1970 understandably welcomed such copy. Barker notes how Angela Carter ‘mailed back to me essays on Tokyo’s blend of sadism and masochism, especially in comics’. ‘Why isn’t this girl fighting back against gang rape?’ she wrote. ‘Because they have thoughtfully dis- located all her limbs first.’9 Alternative articles on the contemporary plight of ‘salarymen’ and suburban housewives would hardly have stood a chance against Carter’s themes. Take, for example, A Souvenir of Japan. It remains a brief, powerful account of a failing affair against the backcloth of a rented room in a downtown slum in Tokyo. It is clearly autobiog- raphical and very deliberately links social commentary to private life. Angela Carter, we can assume, went through similar waitings and protestations and saw that ‘we lived under a disorientated moon which was as angry a purple as if the sky had bruised its eye, and, if we made certain genuine intersections, these only took place in darkness’. Mutual expectations and required roles are scaled down to brief momentary experiences. By the end wariness is wheeled out as the only compromise as ‘His contagious conviction that our love was unique and desperate infected me with an anxious sickness; soon we would learn to treat one another with the circumspect tenderness of comrades who are amputees, for we were surrounded by the most moving images of evanescence, fireworks, morning glories, the old, children.’10 The personal touch is apparent once more in both The Smile of Winter and Flesh and the Mirror. The assumption, until we learn differently, that Angela Carter is writing directly or indirectly from her own experi- ences leaves the reader sensing her isolation. In the first story she is iso- lated from the fishermen’s wives, who ‘stare at me with open curiosity tinged with hostility’and in the latter it is a case of ‘shipwreck’, as quar- rels and self-acting premised by the conviction that the Tokyo of outward appearances represents the whole truth eventually fades.

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Carter’s image of the East changes. The seeming fantasy of the ubiq- uitous mirror in the love-hotel ends up as a mere nothing: ‘Then the city vanished; it ceased, almost immediately, to be a magic and appalling place. I woke up one morning and found it had become home. Though I still turn up my coat-collar in a lonely way and am always looking at myself in mirrors, they’re only habits and give no clue at all to my char- acter, whatever that is.’ And she concludes: ‘The most difficult performance in the world is acting naturally, isn’t it? Everything else is artful.’ Perhaps it was after this epiphany that her thoughts turned homeward; once Japan was seen as no longer the other and the mirror without import it may have lost its appeal. (Since Carter states in the afterword that the stories ‘were written between 1970 and 1973 and are arranged in chronological order, as they were written’, this may have been the case.) One final snippet. After leaving Japan, Angela Carter wrote from Bath to two Western friends she had apparently made there. In her letter she described recent travels and then her present circumstances: ‘Central Asia was tremendous; the rest of Russia a bit less sumptuously beautiful, but very cozy. I came home to find my house looking quite different – and incredibly filthy, all the detritus of the builders who’ve been working on it. I’ve been painting it all this week. (I never thought emancipation would be like this.)’11 What Angela Carter was discov- ering is the fate surely of most who escape from Europe when young and unattached to a society such as Japan’s. Her years proved to be simultaneously novel, alien, exhilarating and difficult. For Angela Carter it forced her to rethink ‘home’ and ‘emancipation’, conformity and liberation, leaving her conscious that Japan had changed her but uncertain as to what might follow as she returned to England and ‘found myself in a new country’.12 She never went back to live in Tokyo again.

249 PART V: ART COLLECTORS, AN ARCHAEOLOGISTBRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL AND PORTRAITS AN VOLUME ARTIST VI

25

Charles Holme (1848–1923), Founder of The Studio and Connoisseur of Japanese Art

TONI HUBERMAN

Portrait of Charles Holme by de Laszlo

INTRODUCTION CHARLES HOLME was the founder of The Studio, an illustrated magazine of fine and applied art, the first international arts magazine; a magazine which actively promoted Japanese art in its pages. He was, together with his business partner, the designer Dr Christopher Dresser, a leading importer of Japanese art works into Britain in the late nine- teenth century and a founding member of the Japan Society, playing a significant role in that society, being at one time Secretary, Chairman of Council and Vice President.

EARLY DAYS Born in Derby in 1848, the younger son of a Derby silk manufacturer, Holme began his career in Bradford around 1868, as an agent for his 250 CHARLES HOLME (1848–1923) father’s business, gaining experience in the silk, cotton and wool industries. In 1873, he heard Robert Barkley Shaw, oriental traveller and merchant, speak at the Chamber of Commerce in Bradford on the trading possibilities with Central Asia. Shaw had been a tea planter in the Kangra Valley in the foothills of the Himalayas. In 1869, he set out over the treacherous Karakorum Pass from Ladakh into Eastern Turkestan, to be the first Englishman to visit Kashgar (in present-day Sinkiang Province, China). Eastern Turkestan was virtually unknown territory to Europeans at that time, but Shaw believed that a profitable trade could be established there and was keen to find supporters. He failed to persuade either the British government or Kashgar’s poten- tate, Yakub Beg, that trading links could be advantageous, but when Yakub Beg signed a treaty with the Russians in 1872, ‘Great Game’ paranoia changed all that; fear of the encroachment of Russia into British India helped to sway government opinion. Suddenly it was seen as advantageous to have a British presence in the area and British traders doing business. And so, in 1873, Shaw was able to travel around England enthusing about trade with Eastern Turkestan with tacit gov- ernment approval. In Bradford the only one to take up the challenge was Charles Holme. As an ambitious younger son who was not going to inherit the family business he had a career and a reputation to make. Through Shaw he was introduced to, and invested in, the Central Asian Trading Company. Fellow investors were mainly officers in government service and officials in India, and also the Prime Minister to the Maharajah of Jammu and Kashmir. He therefore participated in the first British trading venture into Eastern Turkestan, trading British goods for rugs, silk, embroideries and pashm (the raw wool from which pashmina shawls are woven). The venture failed to make a profit, but Holme was sufficiently inspired to take on a further expedition of his own. This time 400 pack animals crossed the Karakorum Pass and a ‘small profit’ eventually resulted.1 This was the defining moment in Holme’s life and led eventually to his all-absorbing interest in Japan. It also illustrates the character of the man. He was not an adventurer; he did not travel into uncharted ter- ritories himself, but he had the vision and the ambition to succeed in a new area of enterprise, and the business sense to make sure he made a profit. He was in fact the archetypal Victorian entrepreneur. Holme made no further direct forays into the Eastern Turkestan trade. In 1877, Yakub Beg was murdered and the Chinese took pos- session of the region. Local trade continued but Westerners were not encouraged. Over the following years Holme developed trade in Ladakh, profiting from the caravans that gathered at Leh from Yarkand and Tibet, and he soon expanded into India, particularly the Punjab.

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His major interest was in fine goods as well as profit, and finding ‘native’ works that would appeal to Western buyers. He had enormous respect for native craftsmanship and abhorred the fashion for ‘Europeanizing’ native designs. One of his contacts in India was Lockwood Kipling (father of Rudyard), who was Principal of the Mayo School of Art and Curator of the Lahore Museum, and with whom he was in great sympathy. ‘It was Lockwood’s task to foster the decaying arts and crafts of India, and to oppose the tendency of Indian craftsmen to copy all that was worst in Victorian commercial art.’2 This was a tendency that he would later discover in Japan and would decry.

DRESSER AND HOLME It was during these formative years when he was learning about the Eastern trade that Holme developed not only his business acumen but his artistic sensibilities. It was also at this time that he met Arthur Lasenby Liberty (founder of Liberty’s department store and later a founding member of the Japan Society) and the designer Dr Christopher Dresser. It is not known when they actually met, but they certainly knew each other prior to the 1878 Paris Exhibition, in which all three participated, and Holme and Dresser were well enough acquainted by 1877 for Dresser to propose him as a Fellow of the Linnean Society. For Holme, his relationship with Dresser would bring him in contact with things Japanese for the first time. Dresser had already been greatly influenced by Japanese design, and was among the first to champion Japanese art in the West. He had seen Rutherford Alcock’s Japanese ceramic collection at the International Exhibition in London in 1862 and his subsequent lecture and articles ‘constituted some of the first critical assessments of Japanese art in the West’.3 Dresser had made an official visit to Japan in 1877, and according to Mrs Holme, ‘He was much impressed with all he saw [..] and Charles Holme was soon as great a ‘‘devotee’’ of that country as Dr Dresser.’4 One result of this visit was Dresser’s much respected book, Japan: Its Architecture, Art and Art Manufactures (eventually published in 1882).5 Another was his association with Charles Holme. In 1879, Holme moved from Bradford to London to set up in business as wholesalers with Dresser, and on 21 June 1879 ‘a new and very extensive empo- rium of Oriental manufactures’ opened in Farringdon Road: Dresser and Holme. ‘Sir Rutherford and Lady Alcock, Sir Louis and Lady Pelly and members of the Japanese Legation, and many well-known artistic, literary, and scientific gentlemen’ attended the private view. According to The Furniture Gazette:

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From the moment we entered the hall [of the warehouse] we seemed to have left England and to have been transported to Japan, so com- pletely Orientalized was everything around; the building, with its inlaid tiles of various colours and exquisite design completely covering the walls, the ceilings picked out with appropriate colours, the plants in large pots, the carpets and cane easy-chairs, all gave a cheerful, home- like effect.6

The shop was divided into three departments: popular items that were available in large quantities and were seen in retail shops everywhere; rare goods of ‘special artistic merit’; and ‘curios’: including ‘goods of ancient manufacture’. They concentrated on artistic wares from Japan, China and India, with Dresser’s sons acting as agents in Japan where they had warehouses in Kobe and later in Yokohama. Unfortunately, the company records for Dresser and Holme no longer exist, but we do know they supplied Liberty’s and Dresser’s short-lived enterprise, the Art Furnishers’ Alliance. They also acted as sole agents for Linthorpe Art Pottery, which had been set up by Dresser and John Harrison, and for which Dresser designed. Ironically Linthorpe was very popular with Japanese collectors, and years later when pieces began to turn up back in Britain they were sometimes wrongly identified as ‘Japanese’. The extent of Holme’s enthusiasm for Japanese art can be illustrated by one enterprise they undertook. They were commissioned by the Superintendent of Chamba (a district in the Punjab bordering Kashmir) to design and fit out rooms for the local twelve-year-old Raja. This was a part of the world as yet untouched by the then current fashion in Aesthetic design and Japonisme, and so the reaction to the final result was somewhat muted. The dado was lovely, wrote the Superintendent, the Aesthetic-style wallpaper very handsome, the glass and china ‘nice but hardly what I wanted [and] I should have liked fewer and more showy things and no Japanese or Chinese articles’(my italics).7 But Holme was not discouraged. When Dresser was forced to give up the business because of ill health, he continued on his own as Holme & Co. until, at the age of forty, he sold up and retired. After years of trading in, collecting and studying Japanese art, Holme at last had the opportunity to visit Japan himself.

VISIT TO JAPAN In December 1888, Holme, the artist Alfred East and Arthur Lasenby and Emma Liberty8 departed from Tilbury on board the SS Chusan en route to Nagasaki via Egypt, Ceylon (Sri Lanka) and China. Liberty’s

253 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI account of the journey begins in London and ends as they leave Ceylon. East’s diary covers his time in Japan.9 He had been commis- sioned by Marcus Huish,10 Managing Director of the Fine Art Society, to spend six months in Japan to produce a series of paintings of its land- scape and people, and he stayed on for another two months to com- plete his commission after the others had departed. Holme’s diary covers the three months they spent in Japan, and is a unique account of their experiences, written at a time when Japan was hardly known to the West, and by a man who had studied and was familiar with Japanese art and culture from a distance and was eager to experience the reality close up. It begins in Kyoto on 28 March 1889, two and a half weeks after their arrival in Japan, and ends in Winnipeg, Canada, on 7 July 1889, and covers the period in Japan and their return to Britain via San Francisco, Seattle, Vancouver, the Rocky Mountains and points east on the Canadian Pacific Railroad. The account of the first few weeks in Japan was probably included in a previous diary which no longer exists. Liberty carried on business while they were in Japan, and although Holme had apparently ‘retired’, he also at times seems to have been involved in commercial affairs. They were privileged with introductions to high-ranking Japanese officials. Viscount Sano Tsunetami, whom Dresser had also met on his visit to Japan in 1877, entertained them on a number of occasions, and arranged visits, including one to a govern- ment paper factory and another to the Museum of Arms in Tokyo where Holme marvelled at the quantity and variety of the weapons on display (‘everything one ever saw in Japanese drawings connected with the military are represented here by the actual object’).11 Among the European residents whom they met Frank Brinkley and Josiah Conder stand out. Brinkley was proprietor and editor of the Japan Mail and, more importantly to Holme, a connoisseur of Japanese and Chinese porcelain (‘his house is quite a museum of beautiful things’).12 Conder was an architect, artist and academic.13 They also had encounters with fellow foreign visitors. At Nikko, Holme met the German Consul for Hong Kong and his party and was invited to join them on an excursion to the extinct volcanoes near Lake Chuzenji – a hair-raising adventure on horseback, with Holme riding a timid and stumbling steed who threatened to bring him face to face with doom at any moment. Staying at the same hotel was the young Rudyard Kipling, the son of his old correspondent from Lahore: ‘He is writing for one of the Indian papers, and I take him round to see some of the sights.’ In Kipling’s own account of that visit to Japan, however, he makes no mention of Holme.14 The party did not always travel together. Holme appears to have visited many of the places Dresser had seen twelve years before, many

254 CHARLES HOLME (1848–1923) of which were on the itinerary for most tourists (Yokohama, Kobe, Nara, Kyoto, Osaka, Otsu, Nagoya, Nikko), and he met some of Dresser’s old friends and acquaintances, and while Liberty was engaged in official business he often accompanied Mrs Liberty on excursions and adventures. East spent a good deal of time travelling on his own, painting and often having a much more hands-on experience of local people. They often went their separate ways, converging, sometimes unexpectedly, or revisiting places for the pleasure of sharing a parti- cular experience. On one occasion Holme records that he had just said goodbye to some acquaintances at Hakone and was feeling a little lonely when he saw ‘a tall figure in a big hat and a large portfolio under his arm [. . .] it was East’. In his diary Holme describes, often in meticulous detail, things that have enchanted him – or not. Inevitably ‘curios’ were at the top of his list of delights. Years later he commented that he had spent ‘a great deal of time in the shops of curio dealers, and there he nearly always met Mr Walter Behrens, who had mostly picked up the best things before he got there’.15 But perhaps he was being too modest. Holme was something of a magpie, buying ephemera and all sorts of curiosities along with more serious works of art. Every encounter seems to have touched his imagination and curiosity. He bought Japanese chess sets and children’s games and learnt how to play them, and later wrote a paper for the Sette of Odd Volumes about them (see below). He added butterflies to his already substantial collection (having taken the precaution of bringing his own butterfly net from England); lantern slides and crystal, lacquer trays and fur slippers. In the interests of art photography he assisted Mrs Liberty in rearranging the potted bonsai, those ‘curious dwarf trees’ at the gardener’s house at Shiba, and the photographs later appeared in the Libertys’ book, Japan:A Pictorial Record.16 The bonsai were obviously a novelty and an enduring passion: there is a sketch of one in Holme’s diary together with detailed notes on their cultivation, and his grandson later recalled seeing numbers of bonsai flourishing in many of the rooms of the family house at Upton Grey, over thirty years later. The party visited various exhibitions and fairs and was invited to examine various production methods. Holme was appalled to see an exhibition of Western-style colour sketches ‘in which all the faults and none of the virtues of the European method were shown’. Later he and Mrs Liberty visited the Kyoto Art School where one class was learning to paint in the European style – though the colours and values were all wrong: ‘I long to talk Japanese so I might pitch into the system’, he commented. Years later he was still lamenting the sight of Japanese pupils learning to draw in lead-pencil, and hoped that ‘the methods and traditions of Japan’s past great artists might not be

255 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI altogether thrown aside in her chase after the butterfly of European novelty’.17 From art they turned to industry. On a visit to a cotton mill he enthused, ‘The whole place was built in the most approved Lancashire style and I doubt if one could find a neater better built mill in England’– high praise from someone who knew that industry well. At a government factory where banknotes, postage stamps and leather paper were made, the highly embossed wallpapers particularly inter- ested them and they lingered some time studying the processes of soaking, drying, lacquering and stencilling, and he later wrote about them at length in his diary. When the party braved their first Japanese meal Holme was rather embarrassed that they were not up to it. He noted that only the bread and beer (‘to suit our insular prejudices’) were welcome. The raw fish, chopsticks and fresh water snail soup were too much (‘Mrs Liberty was hors de combat [. . .] at the first mouthful of soup’). But at a tea-drinking ceremony he decided ‘the beverage [is] a trifle bitter – though by no means, to my thinking, bad’; and a few days later he was referring to it as ‘most refreshing’, so his palate was beginning to adjust to the unfa- miliar flavours. But if the food was not to his liking, he acquired a taste for the hot baths (‘I am getting quite into the Japanese system of taking quite hot baths’), and the ‘blind shampooers’. These were masseuses, usually blind, who were available at hotels, and who could also be heard going about in the street blowing their distinctive whistles, touting for trade. Holme describes an embarrassing moment with one such ‘shampooer’:

An old woman came into my room – the shampooer of the establish- ment [. . .]. She was an old hag very thin and wrinkled and looked about ninety years old. I lay on my bed with my kimono (dressing gown) on and the old lady knelt on the bed and began softly kneading and rubbing one’s face and limbs. While she was engaged in the oper- ation, an Australian gentleman who had just come up from Yokohama, and had a letter of introduction to me from [my former agent], came to my room. He was fresh to Japan and Japanese ways and the sight of the old lady kneeling on the bed rubbing me about seemed to astonish him [and] a word of explanation seemed necessary to calm his scruples.

Whose embarrassment was the greater, Holme’s or the visitor from Australia? Having lived so long with the images of Japan Holme was in danger of seeing everything as if preserved in aspic – like a living museum. The peasants carrying their wares in carts or on bamboo poles over their shoulders, and women with loads of twigs ‘look like living

256 CHARLES HOLME (1848–1923) netsukes’ – this from a man who had probably one of the largest col- lections of netsukes in the world. And when he visited the area around Mount Fuji he was looking for the perfect view to paint, to replicate images with which he was already familiar. The perfect view was said to be from the sea, only it was foggy and the view was obscured. But he spent several days alone, or with East, attempting to paint that ‘bright, pinkish white shining cone’. Holme had just sold his business before embarking on the trip to Japan, but still seems to have been engaged in commercial dealings. He refers to business discussions with his former agent, George Sale, who was then employed by Mawe & Co, who had bought Holme’s company in London. Sale was there to lend a helping hand, acting as guide, friend, occasional provider of frock coats and hats for an unex- pected social event, and part-time unofficial banker for East. Later he became a member of the Japan Society and there is evidence that he was a guest at Holme’s house in Bexleyheath, so the association con- tinued for many years. Within a few months of his return from Japan Holme was embark- ing on the next phase of his life. He had bought and moved into William Morris’s Red House in Bexleyheath; he also found the time to put together a small collection of Japanese bamboo implements he had collected, which was then displayed at the Warrington Museum. In 1891, Holme became a Master of the Glass-Sellers Company; he was presented with the ‘Freedom of the City of London’; he was coming to the end of his year as President of the Sette of Odd Volumes; and he was about to become one of the founding members of the Japan Society.

JAPAN SOCIETY One could say that without Ye Sette of Odd Volumes the Japan Society might never have existed. The 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 good dinner once a month, and the company of con- genial friends. Holme joined in 1886, and Liberty and East followed soon after. Not all its members could be called Japanophiles, but among them can be numbered many future members of the Japan Society. In years to come some of these men would also play a part in Holme’s great enterprise, The Studio magazine (see below). Holme was Honorary Secretary (1892–1904) of the Japan Society, Chairman of Council (1904–07), and Vice-President (from 1907). He also contributed various papers to the Proceedings: ‘The Uses of Bamboo in Japan’, ‘Some Aspects of the Technique of Japanese

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Painting’ and ‘The Pottery of the Cha-no-yu’. ‘Uses of Bamboo’, which was read at the second meeting of the Japan Society, was an introduction to his collection of items made from bamboo which had been previously displayed at Warrington Museum for a year, and was subsequently presented to the Royal Museum of Economic Botany at Kew Gardens. It included over one hundred well-designed and func- tional items, each intended for a very specific purpose, and illustrating Holme’s passionate belief that useful objects could also be beautiful. There were implements used in rice cultivation and the silk industry; baskets individually designed for specific purposes, domestic utensils, flea-traps, flutes and whistles, umbrellas, fans, combs and hairpins. ‘From this,’ Holme said:

It may be inferred that the Japanese are truly lovers of the bamboo [. . .] for their artists are never tired of depicting its graceful forms, nor their poets of singing its praises; while their lacquerers, metal workers and potters often fashion their wares in imitation of it.18

This sounds a little too lyrical for our taste today, but for Holme bamboo illustrated the Japanese ability to combine beauty and func- tion, or what he later referred to, in another context, as ‘use and beauty’. The period during which Holme was Chairman of Council was a particularly important one. The first Japanese ambassador to Great Britain, Baron (later Count) Komura, arrived in 1905. A garden party was held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Regent’s Park, for the visiting Prince and Princess Arisugawa in June that year. Nearly three thousand people attended, and the couple were mobbed. There were luncheon parties: in July 1907, Sir Benjamin Stone MP hosted one for the Japanese Ambassador, the former Prime Minister, Arthur J Balfour, and Samuel Clemens (Mark Twain) in the House of Commons. This was followed soon afterwards by the Council of the Japan Society luncheon at the Whitehall Rooms. The following year Count Komura was appointed Foreign Minister and returned to Japan, but by this time Holme had retired as Chairman. In 1909, he received the Order of the Rising Sun from the Emperor of Japan. It was an award he cherished most highly, and it is mentioned in his will.

THE STUDIO In 1893 Holme launched The Studio, an illustrated magazine of fine and applied art, with a cover designed by the then unknown artist, Aubrey Beardsley, and featuring articles about Beardsley and the young Frank

258 CHARLES HOLME (1848–1923)

Brangwyn.19 It was an immediate success. Holme had expected to run it at a loss initially, but it made a profit the first year. It was the first arts magazine to gain an international reputation, and later overseas editions were published in France, in translation, and in the USA, where it was called Studio International. Intended to appeal to both professional and amateur artists, with an emphasis on the applied arts, the readership was inevitably middle class. For most, it was the voice of the arts and crafts movement. It also provided Holme with a forum for disseminating Japanese art. There were many features on Japanese art, and innumerable references to its influence on European artists. One of the innovations that made The Studio such a success was the look of the magazine. Holme was able to take advantage of the new print technology. Instead of reproductive wood engraving, where illus- trations and photographs were first engraved onto a piece of wood, photomechanical reproduction meant that illustrations, whether photographs, drawings, lithographs or etchings, could be printed along with the letterpress type. This was a cheaper process but the quality of reproduction was much better. Colour plates were also included, thus surpassing in quality any other magazine published at the time. Another innovation was the introduction of competitions with the intention of promoting good design in industry. Competitions began with the first issue and were initially open only to students studying industrial design or fine art at a public or private school. This was amended soon afterwards to include all bona-fide amateurs. The com- petitions were set and judged by the manufacturers who sponsored them, and prizes awarded by Holme. At first there was only one cat- egory, design for industrial purposes, but others were added later. A winning entry could be purchased by the sponsor for a small fee and manufactured. Many winners went on to various degrees of success, most notably the architect M.H. Baillie Scott, who often featured in the magazine in later years.20 Paul Bevan, a founding member of the Japan Society, once remarked that the alliance of those two great though secret powers, Ye Sette of Odd Volumes and the Japan Society, could easily place a thousand men – and a company of irresistible women – in the field. This cross-fertil- ization between the Odd Volumes and the Japan Society also extended to The Studio. Holme was a member of both, as were others, and many Japan Society members contributed to The Studio or were featured in it, including Williams Anderson, first Chairman of Council,21 Marcus Huish, Josiah Conder, Mortimer Menpes, Siegfried Bing (who was a corresponding member), and of course Alfred East and Arthur Lasenby Liberty. The publisher John Lane, who was a member of the Odd Volumes, introduced Holme to the art editor C. Lewis Hind, who had

259 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI put together a dummy for an art magazine he had hoped to launch himself but for which he didn’t have funds. It exactly suited Holme’s purpose. He had been wanting to publish just such a journal and Hind, briefly, became its first editor, followed by Gleeson White, who was a member of the Japan Society. Articles on Japanese art and applied art appeared in the magazine regularly, with subjects including netsukes, photographs, stencil plates and colour printing, lacquer-work, contemporary Japanese art, fans, flower arrangement, and an ‘experiment in the application of Japanese ornament to the decoration of an English house’. Holme, himself, contributed to the The Studio, often on Japanese subjects and often anonymously, although he did put his name to ‘A Japanese Course of Instruction in Wood-Carving’, which was so popular that it was later expanded into a Studio Handbook. He also wrote on ‘Artistic Gardens in Japan’, ‘Japanese Tobacco Boxes’, ‘The Potter’s Art: Object Lessons from the Far East’ and ‘Japanese Flower Painting’. The artist R. Isayama featured in the first issue. ‘One of our Japanese brethren of the brush’, as Holme described him, had settled in Chelsea and was studying European portrait-painting. The Japan Society had commissioned him to produce work for the first volume of their Transactions and Proceedings but, Isayama said, ‘the drawings must be purely Japanese, and so I have made them – just as if I had never seen a European picture’.22 Other artists featured included Utamaro, Hokusai, So¯bun Morikawa, Sho¯tei and Kawanabe Kyo¯sai. When Holme met Josiah Conder in Japan, he had described Kyo¯sai as ‘perhaps the cleverest living Japanese painter’, who did his best work when he was drunk. Conder had studied under Kyo¯sai and knew him well. He told Holme about a Japanese friend who had commissioned Kyo¯sai to decorate the panels of some doors, but Kyo¯sai had arrived drunk and refused to proceed until he had been given more sake. The friend was not impressed with the final result, considering under what conditions the panels had been painted. But when Conder then offered to buy them the friend changed his mind, and the panels became his prized possession. As well as Japanese art, and particularly the applied arts, there were articles on Western artists visiting Japan – there was in fact a steady of stream of Western artists visiting Japan, doing the equivalent of what one could call an academic ‘year abroad’ in Japanese art (among them notably Mortimer Menpes). But what Holme saw as the principles of Japanese art were the cornerstone of the magazine’s ethos – ‘use and beauty’. He wanted to create a magazine that would reflect these ideals. Philip de Laszlo, the Hungarian painter who had painted his portrait in 1909, a portrait that illustrates almost every publication that refers to Holme, wrote that Japanese art and craftsmanship:

260 CHARLES HOLME (1848–1923)

. . . were examples of an aesthetic principle which [Holme] believed was of immense potential value in the West. In Japan, he pointed out, everything was made or designed by artists.23

The Studio was meant to provide an antidote to the ugliness of industri- alization in the nineteenth century. Holme wanted to bring good design (beauty) into industry, which is also why he admired Christopher Dresser. Dresser was the first industrial designer. Holme founded The Studio in 1893; two years later he took over as editor. He had always been an interfering proprietor, with strong opin- ions about the content of the magazine, as he had about everything else, but from 1895 he was totally in charge. The heyday of The Studio was in fact the period up to the First World War. During the war it struggled to survive, having lost its European market and with the shortage of paper the magazine was slighter and printed on less sub- stantial paper. John Lane, who was then publishing Studio International from New York, complained bitterly that it was difficult to sell in its present reduced state; Holme complained that Lane was being unreal- istic in wartime. But it survived. In 1919, ill health forced Holme to retire and his son, Geoffrey, suc- ceeded as editor. Holme died in 1923, having outlived his great friends Liberty and East, and his one-time partner, Christopher Dresser. The magazine still carries on today, published in New York as Studio International, but it is no longer in family hands. Finally, Holme was at the forefront of those bringing Japanese art to Britain, first as an importer of Japanese art, and later through the pages of The Studio. Even today, volumes of The Studio, from its heyday in the 1890s up to the First World War, are a source of inspiration and information for art students and historians – a legacy he would have been proud of.

261 26

Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–1897) and James Lord Bowes (1834–1899): Collecting Japan in Victorian England

NICOLE COOLIDGE ROUSMANIERE

A.W. Franks James Lord Bowes

INTRODUCTION This chapter focuses on two British contemporaries, Sir Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–97),1 Keeper of the British Museum from 1866 to 1896, and James Lord Bowes (1834–99), a wool merchant from Liverpool, who founded the first museum dedicated to Japanese art in the UK. While ostensibly from different circles, their early inter- est in Japanese art makes a comparison possible. Their strongly con- trasting collections of Japanese ceramics assembled from the 1860s to the 1890s can be seen as a fascinating case study in Anglo-Japanese interaction during the High Victorian era. A.W. Franks played a seminal role in establishing what is now an impressive collection of over 30,000 Japanese art objects at the British Museum. Franks’s long tenure of over forty years at the museum

262 A.W. FRANKS (1826–1897) AND J.L. BOWES (1834–1899) during the nineteenth century, the formative role he played in devel- oping and recording his collections, and his voracious appetite for acquiring ever more examples in a specific field makes him an ideal focus of study. Although he played an important role in forming many of the British Museum’s collections, ranging from prehistoric Britain to Islamic art, Franks has been largely ignored by academics. A former Director of the British Museum sought to place Franks into the pan- theon of major donors to the nation and titled his book The Forgotten Collector and labelled him the second founder of the British Museum (after Sir Hans Sloane).2 His services to the Museum were recognized by the award in 1894 of a K.C.B. (Knight Commander of the Bath), an award given to distinguished civil servants. Recently there has been renewed interest in Franks. Nevertheless, this interest has focused mostly on his work in prehistory and on Europe and has generally neglected the significant impact Franks had on the formation of the East Asian collections of not only the British Museum but also the Victoria and Albert Museum.3 His collection of Japanese ceramics remains intact at the British Museum and is a lasting testimony to his deep interest in the field. James Lord Bowes’s reputation has swung distinctly in several direc- tions in the last century. However, a few of his books continue to be reprinted, with his Marks and Seals most recently issued in 2003 by Weatherhill.4 While Bowes’s original collection of Japanese art objects have been largely dispersed, his many publications on various topics of Japanese art and the fact that he created the first Museum dedicated solely to Japanese art in Europe have marked him as an important his- torical figure in the field of Anglo-Japanese relations.5

AUGUSTUS WOLLASTON FRANKS Franks had an unusual childhood as the only son of a well-to-do British family. His father’s first wife died suddenly after only a year of marriage and when the widower quickly married his dead wife’s sister, the family was compelled to move out of Britain for a substantial period of time. Augustus was born 1826 in Geneva, and grew up speaking fluent French, German and Italian. As a youth he lived in Rome (1828–33) and late in 1843 moved for the first time to London. Augustus attended Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge. By the time he graduated, he had already published a book on medieval glazing patterns and was aware of the typological approach just starting to become popular with natural scientists. He chose his second name, Wollaston, himself taken from his godfather’s last name William Hyde Wollaston, a natural scientist and an important influence on young Franks. For his entire professional career Franks was known as Augustus Wollaston Franks or A.W. Franks.

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In 1851, the year of the Great Exhibition at Crystal Palace, and still a few years prior to the arrival of Commodore Perry’s black ships in Japan, Franks was appointed to the staff of the British Museum. He was a gentleman of substantial means and it was somewhat unusual at that time for a man of his stature to take a salaried job, but he applied himself wholeheartedly to the post, at which he stayed until the year before his death. Franks soon displayed a wide breadth of interests, and he published on topics ranging through Indian sculpture, Roman pottery, stone implements, heraldry, seals, pilgrim badges, ivories, Anglo-Saxon rings, and Chinese painting. In 1868, the year of the Meiji Restoration and an entire decade prior to the American ‘father of Japanese prehistoric archaeology’ William Sylvester Morse’s initial visit to Japan, Franks even lectured and wrote on the Japanese Stone Age at the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology in London.6 In contrast to this formidable collection of scholarly achievements little is yet known about Franks as a person, with the minor exception of one statement by the daughter of his close friend the famous pre- historian Sir John Evans7. Dame Joan Evans wrote:

He was a grey dreamy person, with an unexpected dry humour and an incurable habit of addressing himself to his top waistcoat button. These buttons, indeed, served as a barometer of enthusiasm. If he were looking at an antiquity, which he liked very much indeed, he fingered the top one; if very much the next, if moderately, the next and so on down the scale. There were few objects of antiquity which failed to evoke a response of some sort for his knowledge was incredibly wide.8

We know Franks was a member of the Athenaeum club, and ate lunch there almost every day. He entertained a great deal and was acquainted with Darwin, Christopher Dresser, Lord Leighton, and General Pitt- Rivers. Franks grew a beard after a bout of small pox as an adult, and while this may explain his apparent camera shyness – only two pho- tographs are known of him – he is easily identifiable in prints of con- temporary events. For example, in one famous picture in the Illustrated London News Franks can be identified as the man with the long beard standing directly behind the archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, who was speaking at the Society of Antiquaries, London about his discov- ery of Troy in 1874.9 Franks died on 21 May 1897, just one year after retiring from the British Museum and after a forty-six-year career during which he was awarded a string of scholarly titles.10 It is as if his existence had dwin- dled without the daily support of the institution he quite literally lived for. He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery, London. Franks never

264 A.W. FRANKS (1826–1897) AND J.L. BOWES (1834–1899) married, and upon his death bequeathed all his belongings, including his personal collection of Japanese ceramics, to the British Museum. Many of his papers and notebooks were destroyed by his personal assis- tant and successor, Charles Hercules Read, who in turn had his papers destroyed after his own death. Franks may have wanted to cloak his persona both physically and institutionally, but he carefully ensured for himself another type of legacy, through the many thousands of sys- tematically collected objects which he helped acquire for the British Museum and his studies of these objects. In a document owned by his descendents which only came to light in 1983, Franks wrote an ‘Apology for my life.’ He began the letter with the statement, ‘Collecting is an hereditary disease, and I fear I am incurable.’ He concluded by saying:

So much for the Museum and its collection. I think I may fairly say that I have created the department of which I am now Keeper, and at a very moderate cost to the country. When I was appointed to the Museum in 1851 the scant collections out of which the department has grown occupied a length of 154 feet of wall cases, and three or four table cases. The collections now occupy 2250 feet in length of wall cases, 90 table cases and 31 upright cases, to say nothing of the numerous objects placed over the cases or on the walls.11

Franks justified his legacy in terms of the overall mass of objects which he had collected. He collected in a systematic, typologically disci- plined, fashion, influenced perhaps by his friendship with Charles Darwin and the archaeological studies popular in Scandinavia and in northern Europe. Franks started acquiring Japanese art by assembling netsuke (toggles) in the 1860s. By the end of the decade he had 1,400 examples. He acquired 700 tsuba (sword guards), and then went on to ceramics. He helped acquire several important collections assembled in Japan by expatriates, including the William Anderson12 collection of Japanese paintings and books and the William Gowland13 collection of archae- ological objects mostly from the Kofun period (third-sixth century AD). Whenever possible, Franks appears to have tried to consult Japanese sources, books or manuscripts on the subject or Japanese nationals mostly studying at or affiliated with Cambridge University, his Alma Mater. The Japanese Section of the Asian Department at the British Museum has a notebook with Japanese and English translations that Franks had commissioned with his own accompanying copious notes and drawings and attempts at Chinese characters based on the Soken kisho¯, written by Inaba Tsu¯ryu¯ in 1781.

265 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Mere accumulation does not seem to have been of much interest to Franks: he always attempted to be systematic in his collecting and rigorous in his approach. There is no better illustration of this than his own catalogue (subsequently issued in a revised edition a few years later) of his East Asian ceramic collection. In 1876, Franks wrote Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery14 for an exhi- bition held at the Bethnal Green Branch Museum (part of the Science and Art Department of the Committee of the Council of Education, South Kensington). This was a display of the ceramic pieces which he personally collected and owned, and Franks himself wrote the catalogue. All of the objects shown at Bethnal Green later entered the British Museum’s collection. In the preface to the first edition of the catalogue he was uncommonly modest. Franks wrote: ‘The collection now exhibited to the public has been gradually brought together in a somewhat desultory manner during a period of years.’ The purpose, he continued, was to illustrate fully the different historical varieties of Japanese ceramics, adding common- place and modern examples. In pursuing his collecting, he stated that he had not been particu- larly interested in rare or fine specimens, but rather in accumulating broadly. In the first edition of Franks’s catalogue there were 115 entries for Japanese porcelain and only nine entries for Japanese pottery. In his revised second edition of 1879 (finished in fact in November 1877),15 the emphasis of his Japanese ceramic collection was shifted from porcelain (which Franks now considers by 1877 to be export examples) to pottery, which he felt was more to ‘domestic’ Japanese taste. In a new preface to the second edition he writes: ‘Since the pub- lication of the first edition of this catalogue I have endeavoured to render the collection more complete, especially in the Japanese sec- tions, which were far from illustrating in a satisfactory manner that important branch of ceramic art.’ Franks went on to state:

Much light has been thrown on these subjects by the numerous import- ations of old and curious specimens, accompanied by explanations, more or less correct of their origin. The report, however, which accom- panied the Japanese collection exhibited at Philadelphia, and acquired by the South Kensington Museum, has furnished the most trustworthy and valuable information as yet obtained, and I am indebted to the kind- ness of the Director of that museum for the use of the documents, which has enabled me to verify or correct the data obtained by other sources and add considerably to the usefulness of this catalogue. With regard to the marks on Japanese porcelain, I have received the assistance of several Japanese gentlemen, especially B. Nanjo, K. Kasawara and their English friend David Hare and Mr T. Baba.16

266 A.W. FRANKS (1826–1897) AND J.L. BOWES (1834–1899)

In the second edition he included a total of 1,700 East Asian speci- mens. He had added in the space of just one year 205 newly purchased examples of Japanese porcelain, and 327 examples of Japanese pottery. Many of these ceramics appear to have been purchased in Europe, but through dealers and friends, such as Ernest Satow, working in Japan. He further noted in the new edition:

With regard to both porcelain and pottery it may be well to remark that the taste of the Japanese is quite different from that of Western nations. While lacquer of the highest finish and perfection of manufacture is desired, in the ceramic production, a rough artistic specimen is far more valued in Japan than one of those marvels of finish admired in Europe. Most of the large and highly ornamented specimens are in fact made for exportation not for home use.

Franks had found through contemporary sources, such as the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition of 1876, a new area of material culture to explore; one that was unfolding before his very eyes and that was still, to Europeans and Americans, uncharted territory. Franks devoted much of the later 1870s to the assembling of a systematic col- lection of Japanese ceramics. Many of the porcelains which he pur- chased are excellent examples that would be hard to acquire today; others are less interesting or not even Japanese. But what is most telling is the sheer range of examples that reflects a fastidious nature in his character that has been of exceptional benefit to the British nation.

JAMES LORD BOWES AND HIS CERAMIC COLLECTION James Lord Bowes was a Liverpool textile merchant and a passionate collector of Japanese ceramics, enamels and other Japanese forms of art. He co-authored one of the early books on Japanese ceramics in English, in 1879,17 and opened the first museum in the United Kingdom dedicated solely to Japanese art. Bowes was nothing if not passionate about Japan. He was also passionate about his specific inter- pretation, which he defended vigorously, even going so far near the end of his life to publish privately a lavishly produced book entitled, A Vindication,18 to defend his position on the interpretation of Japanese ceramics and their place in Japanese art history. While Bowes and his legacy are entwined with Liverpool, one of the nation’s busiest ports at the period, he was in fact born in Leeds. He attended Liverpool College and worked in Liverpool as a wool broker, starting the firm JL Bowes and Brothers in 1857.19 He even- tually moved with his family to 5 Princes Road, which he named ‘Streatlam Towers’in reference to Streatlam Castle in Durham, the seat

267 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI of the original Bowes family. He was a patron of the arts in Liverpool and became a member of many societies. Liverpool had a growing relationship with Japan and hosted three Japanese ambassadorial visits in 1862, 1872 and 1886. Bowes met the Japanese officials on at least the later two occasions. In 1891, Bowes who became the first honorary consul for Japan in Liverpool in 1888, was awarded the Imperial Order of the Sacred Treasure, hosting a Japanese fancy fair for charity at his home in that same year that raised over 6,000 pounds. His energies were focused towards the end of his life on his Museum which he built at his house on Princes Road and which opened on 19 June 1890. Within the museum’s first five days of opening, 11,229 people visited it. Bowes continued to publish and defend his ideas on Japanese art and its interpretation. He controversially wrote in his book Japanese Pottery:

I am aware that the rude objects which come within the first category [undecorated wares] have exercised a strange and, to others beside myself, an unaccountable fascination over the minds of certain American collectors, who have become so absorbed in the contemplation of these early chajin wares that they are apparently unable to see any beauty in the artistic works produced during the past two centuries, when Japan, secure in peace and closed to foreign influence under the able rule of the great Tokugawa family, made such wonderful advances in every branch of art. . .[They are the] disciples of the late Mr Ninagawa, admirers of the undecorated wares, . . .[but] I hope. . .that the potters of England and America will not believe that the beautiful keramic art of Japan is fitly represented by such unsightly wares as those I have referred to. . .But seriously, the subject is not worth a moment’s discussion, for the objects are devoid of beauty and interest to sensible people, whether they be Japanese or otherwise, and although such wares may be of value from an ethnological point of view, they are altogether of secondary interest to the decorated wares of the 17th and 18th centuries, or even to export wares, whether as examples of technical skill and decorative art, or as models for our potters and decorators of to-day. Shades of Kakiyemon, Ninsei and Morikage! May these departed spirits be spared the knowledge that the rude chajin wares are preferred by your review as models for the artist potters of this 19th century to their beautiful works, which with others of almost equal merit, he so cavalierly dismisses as worthy only of a place in an ‘industrial museum’.20

Bowes, a passionate collector, believed that other scholars such as A.W. Franks and, even more so Edward Sylvester Morse, had not recognized the true genius of Japanese design which he had discovered in the

268 A.W. FRANKS (1826–1897) AND J.L. BOWES (1834–1899)

International Expositions and examples of which he had included in his own collection. Bowes died on 27 October 1899 and was buried at Smithdown Road Cemetery, Liverpool. A year after he died his family decided that they could no longer maintain the Museum and auctioned the mate- rials in May 1901. The auction lasted nine days. Unfortunately the Bowes collection is now dispersed as a result, but his legacy lives on mostly through his publications and in his passion for Japan, which must have been intimately tied to Liverpool, its wool trade and the shipping routes which seemed promising for trade with Japan in the second half of the nineteenth century.

FRANKS’S AND BOWES’S LEGACY The different styles of collecting Japanese ceramics in Victorian Britain reveal more about the collectors and their sense of both per- sonal and national identity than they do perhaps about Japan and tra- ditional Japanese aesthetics. These collections do however graphically illustrate that Franks and his Japanese ceramic collection at the British Museum and Bowes’s from Liverpool were already very much engaged with Japan and its aesthetics by the later 1870s and were already pub- lishing and attempting to engage in scholarly and popular debates about Japan and the nature of its art historical heritage. Although Franks in particular had an unquestionable impact on the contemporary scientific community in Britain, he was rapidly elimi- nated from intellectual discourses after his death. It is significant that recent years have seen a revival of interest in these influential Victorian pioneers who shaped the British national collections of East Asian art. This new interest reflects the repositioning of national collections in the context of the reordering of global geopolitics, leading to a new set of circumstances in which cultural artefacts once again take on an important new agency, as they did in Victorian times.

REFERENCES Ahrens, H. and Co. (eds), Kwan-Ko-Dzu-Setsu, Historique et Descriptive sur les Arts et Industries Japonais par Ninagawa Noritane. Tokio, 1877, 1878. Alcock, Sir Rutherford, International Exhibition 1862,Catalogue of Works of Industry and Art sent from Japan, London, 1862. Anderson, William, Descriptive and Historical Catalogue of a Collection of Japanese and Chinese Paintings in the British Museum, London: Longmans and Co., 1886. Audsley, George Ashdown and James Lord Bowes, Keramic Art of Japan, 1879. Baird, Christina, ‘Japan and Liverpool: James Lord Bowes and his Legacy’, Journal of the History of Collection 12, no. 1 (2000), pp. 127–137.

269 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Bowes, James Lord, Marks and Seals, London, 1882. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Enamels, London, 1886. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Pottery, London, Edward Howell, 1890. Bowes, James Lord, A Handbook of the Bowes Museum, Liverpool, 1897. Bowes, James Lord, A Vindication of the Decorated Pottery of Japan, Liverpool, privately printed, 1891. Bowes, James Lord, The Gardens of Yueno and Asakusa Yedo, Liverpool, 1894. Bowes, James Lord, Notes on Shippo, London, 1895. Caygill, Marjorie, and John Cherry (eds), A.W.Franks: 19th-century Collecting and the British Museum, London, British Museum Press, 1997. Faulkner, Rupert and Anna Jackson, ‘The Meiji Period in South Kensington: The Representation of Japan in the Victoria and Albert Museum, 1852–1912.’ Treasures of Imperial Japan (The Khalili Collection, Volume One: Selected Essays), London: The Kibo Foundation, 1995, pp. 152–195. Franks, A.W., Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, Lent and Described by A.W. Franks, London, South Kensington Museum - Bethnal Green Branch, 1876. Franks, A.W., Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, Lent and Described by A.W.Franks, 2nd edition, London, privately printed, 1878. Morse, Edward Sylvester, The Studio (10 January 1891). Morse, Edward Sylvester, Catalogue of the Morse Collection of Japanese Ceramics in the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston: Museum of Fine Arts, 1901. Ninagawa tsuboroku, Tokyo, 1931, written for private distribution by Ninagawa’s grandson Ninagawa Daiichi. Takeuchi Jun’ichi, ‘Nihon to¯ji kenkyu¯shi josetsu (7), soto kara no shiten’, To¯setsu 576 (March 2001), pp. 60–63. Wilson, David, ‘Introduction: Augustus Wollaston Franks-Towards a Portrait,’ in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds), A.W.Franks, pp. 1–5. Wilson, David, The Forgotten Collector. London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. Wilson, Richard, ‘Tea Taste in the Era of Japonisme: A Debate,’ Chanoyu Quarterly no. 50 (1987), pp. 23–39.

270 27

William Gowland (1842–1922), Pioneer of Japanese Archaeology

SIMON KANER

William Gowland

INTRODUCTION1 A study of William Gowland entitled William Gowland: the Father of Japanese Archaeology, edited by former Keeper of Japanese Antiquities at the British Museum, Victor Harris, and retired Asahi journalist, Goto¯ Kazuo, was published in 2003.2 This book published, for the first time, the remarkable glass photographic plates made by Gowland of the hundreds of mounded tombs, dated between the third and seventh centuries AD, which he investigated during his sixteen-year sojourn in Osaka, advising the Osaka Mint.3

GOWLAND: A SUMMARY OF HIS LIFE William Gowland was born in Sunderland, County Durham, in 1842. Although he had originally intended to study medicine, he enrolled at the Royal College of Chemistry in London and subsequently at the Royal School of Mines. In 1869 he was made an Associate of the Royal School of Mines. Between 1870 and 1872 he worked as chemist and metallurgist at the Broughton Copper Works, before leaving for 271 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Japan at the age of thirty to work at the Imperial Japanese Mint in Osaka. Arriving in Osaka in 1872, Gowland worked as Chemist and Metallurgist at the Imperial Japanese Mint, becoming Chief Metallurgist in 1878, and adviser (Metallurgy) to the Imperial War Department of the Japanese Government. These official appointments put him in a key position and ensured that he was able to collect from his colleagues and contacts important historical documents. Many of these now form part of the Gowland collection today at the British Museum. While in Japan, Gowland explored widely, contributing to the Handbook for Travellers in Central and Northern Japan edited by Ernest Satow and A.G.S. Hawes.4 He is credited with coining the term ‘Japanese Alps’.5 His interest in mountaineering and exploration was doubtless encouraged by his work at the Osaka mint, advising on the sourcing of metals as necessary components of the coinage which the mint was producing. Gowland returned to the UK in 1889, taking up the position of Chief Metallurgist at his old employer, the Broughton Copper Works. Between 1902 to 1909 and again from 1913 to 1914, Gowland was Professor of Metallurgy at the Royal School of Mines in South Kensington. He variously served as a member of the council of the Japan Society, President of the Royal Anthropological Institute and Vice-President of the Society of Antiquaries of London.

JAPAN’S ARCHAEOLOGICAL SITES Gowland arrived in Japan in 1872, thirteen years after Charles Darwin published the Origin of Species which set out the theory of evolution. At about the same time, the geological antiquity of the human species had been demonstrated by Edouard Lartet and Henry Christy with archaeological excavations at sites including Massat and Les Eyzies in France. In 1865, five years before Gowland arrived in Japan, John Lubbock (later Lord Avebury) published Prehistoric Times, the first synthesis of world prehistory. The next year, 1866, a figure who was to become instrumental in confirming Gowland’s role in Japanese archaeology, Augustus Wollaston Franks,6 displayed archaeological materials at the British Museum for the first time employing the so- called ‘Three Age’ system, a technology-based chronological system of classification, designed by renowned Danish archaeologist C.J. Thomsen that was to be the standard method for many decades. Around that time, Machida Hisanari, a liberal minded samurai, studied in England for two years, visiting the British Museum and attending the Fourth World Fair in Paris in 1867.7 Machida was to head the

272 WILLIAM GOWLAND (1842–1922)

Museums Bureau which oversaw the establishment of the Tokyo Imperial Museum in 1872, and acquired many important objects for its collections. In short, the later years of Gowland’s studies were taking place in an intellectual environment where archaeology and human antiquity were among the foremost subjects of debate. In 1868, the year of the Meiji Restoration, A.W. Franks was sug- gesting at the third Prehistoric Congress in Norwich and London, in front of an audience containing many of the major figures of European archaeology, that Japan too had had a stone age. One of the by-products of the Meiji Restoration was the destruction of many Buddhist temples and the sale and export of their art treasures. There was even talk of selling off the Great Buddha of Kamakura for the value of the metal.8 These developments caused considerable concern, and in May 1871, one year prior to Gowland’s arrival in Japan, the ‘Plan for the Preservation of Antiques and Old Properties’ was promulgated. 1873 was a significant year for archaeology. Great public interest around the world was raised by the discovery of Troy by Heinrich Schliemann. Within Japan, local residents unearthed a gold crown and an inscribed sword from the Eta Funayama tomb in Kyu¯shu¯, objects subsequently acquired by the Tokyo Imperial Museum which had been established in the previous year. Objects with a similarity to arte- facts excavated from Eta Funayama were to turn up in collections outside Japan, for example at the Museo d‘Eduoardo Chiossone9 in Genoa. The discovery of Troy went a long way to giving a firmer his- torical status to hitherto mythical people and places, such as those referred to in the Iliad and the Odyssey. In Japan, the new importance placed on the imperial mythologies contained in the Nihon Shoki (Nihongi10) led to the designation of ‘tombs’ for the three generations which were believed to link the founding Japanese Emperor Jimmu with the Sun Goddess Amaterasu:11

According to myth, Amaterasu dispatched her grandson, Ninigi no Mikoto, down from the Plain of Heaven so that her descendants would rule the Japanese islands in perpetuity. Alighting in the westernmost island of Kyu¯shu¯, Ninigi’s line remained there until his great grandson Jimmu determined to journey east and quell Yamato, where he ascended the throne as the first earthly emperor. In deference perhaps to the dubious nature of the myth, none of the ‘tombs’ designated for the three generations prior to Jimmu can be considered real tombs on archaeological grounds, but are rather natural features (two mountain tops and a cave).

Concern about the actual sites of the burials of imperial ancestors led to further action on the part of the Ministry of Education:

273 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

With regard to ancient imperial tombs whose locations are as yet unde- termined, in other words those still under investigation, when unculti- vated lands in various districts are developed. . .for places which appear to be ancient mounds. . .reckless digging is not to be permitted, and if such has already occurred, reports accompanied by drawings must be submitted to the Ministry of Education.12

In 1876, the ‘Law Discovering the Disposition of Lost Property’ was enacted. This recognized the state’s claim to items whose original ownership could not be established.13 In the same year, Gowland undertook what was probably his first archaeological excursion in Japan, an overnight visit to Tondabayashi in Osaka Prefecture. Gowland investigated tombs of the kofun period, including burial mounds and cave burials. Romyn Hitchcock, a researcher from the Smithsonian Institution provides a vivid account of what conditions were like with Gowland:

The caves vary greatly in size, but they never reach very large propor- tions. . . . They contain no remains whatever except the fragments of coffins. If they ever did enclose articles of pottery or treasure interred with the dead, the vandalism of the peasants has robbed every one of them. I have crawled on my hands and knees into many of these gloomy recesses, inhabited by bats which fly unpleasantly near one’s face, and searched by the light of a candle for what might be found, but with no further reward. I well remember one occasion when Mr Gowland and I were long entombed in the close, damp, atmosphere of a cave, not far from Kokubu. We proposed to photograph the interior with the flashlight. To place our two cameras at the mouth of the cave required several hours of hard digging with hammer and knife, and the contor- tions required in focusing were too wonderful for description. We focused on a burning candle held at different points to outline the field of view. Finally the light flashed; and if the spirit of the departed ancient still hovered around its tomb, as the people believe, and if it had pro- gressed far enough in the transcendant thought of the western world to grasp the fantastic idea of a bodily rising from the dust, I think it must have believed the resurrection day had come’.14

Although Hitchcock’s report was published several years before Gowland delivered his paper to the Japan Society, Hitchcock was under no illusions as to the value of his report in comparison to Gowland’s awaited contribution to the field. Hitchcock fully acknow- ledges his debt to Gowland, as well as providing a glimpse of life in the field, a situation which was presumably all too familiar to many Meiji period travellers in Japan:

274 WILLIAM GOWLAND (1842–1922)

The observations here brought together are the result of considerable travel and intimate association with Mr W. Gowland, formerly chemist of the Imperial Mint at Osaka. Mr Gowland has spent several years in the study of the Japanese mounds, and he is the only person who pos- sesses sufficient accurate and valuable information upon the subject to prepare a comprehensive monograph. It is to be hoped that the results of his years of labour and observation will be published. His fine col- lection of relics from the tombs, now in the British Museum, is unique and of great value. It can never be duplicated. Many a day we have tramped together on the rough mountainsides, searching for tombs or sepulchral caves, and at evening compared notes and recounted experi- ences in Japanese hotels. I recall the cozy comfort of these neat matted floors, the bronze hibachi with its steaming kettle, the savoury and unsavoury dinners, both varieties of which are furnished in Yamato, and many other incidents familiar to the traveller in the interior of Japan.15

At about the same time as Gowland was undertaking his first archae- ological excursions, in Kanto, the American zoologist Edward Sylvester Morse had arrived in Japan, and discovered the shell middens at Omori, which he proceeded to excavate in 1877. Although best known in archaeology for his work at Omori, Morse also published briefly on kofun which, along with Gowland, he termed dolmens.16 When Morse returned to the USA, he left behind in Japan a number of students trained in the excavation of the shell middens at Omori and elsewhere. The publication of a report on his investigations at Omori within two years of the excavations themselves secured his place in the history of Japanese archaeology.17 Tsuboi Shogo¯ro¯ (1863–1918) is another figure whose relationship with Gowland is of interest. In 1884, as an undergraduate student in the Faculty of Science at Tokyo Imperial University, Tsuboi estab- lished the Anthropological Society of Tokyo. In 1886, Tsuboi inves- tigated two burial mounds in Tochigi Prefecture. Walter Edwards18 notes that Tsuboi ‘carefully observed the structure of the tombs and the manner in which objects had been laid’ suggesting that this proved that he was ‘well ahead of his time in his first real test’. Gowland had been investigating burial mounds in Kansai for a decade prior to this, and his use of a gridded excavation method ensured the accurate recording of the location of features, finds and debris within the tombs. The best example of this approach was Gowland’s investigation of the Shibayama tomb. Tsuboi’s investigations of mounded tombs were somewhat curtailed by an incident around 1890 recounted by Torii Ryu¯zo¯, as translated by Walter Edwards:

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While still a graduate student, the Professor [Tsuboi] went to Kyushu and excavated a certain tomb, which caused him immediate trouble as it was one with ties to the Imperial Household Ministry. Tsuboi accord- ingly apologized profusely, tendering a written promise never to exca- vate again a tomb having such a connection, and the matter passed without consequence. But from that time on he would even turn visibly pale whenever Kofun period topics came up.19

Tsuboi spent the next three years studying in Britain where he may have re-established contact with Gowland, who had returned to the UK in 1888. The difficulties Tsuboi encountered in his investigations into mounded tombs represent a shift in attitudes towards the burial places of imperial ancestors and Japanese cultural heritage generally which occurred in the later 1880s. Following its origins under the enlightened tutelage of Machida Hisanori, the Tokyo Imperial Museum was increasingly coming under the direct control of the Imperial Household Ministry. As Tanaka Migaku points out, again in a translation by Edwards, from 1886 the Museum:

. . . was increasingly transformed into a private treasure house of the imperial family. By the time its name was formally changed to Tokyo Imperial Household Museum in 1900, it had already become so noto- riously closed that it drew criticism in the Diet for its lack of concern to provide the larger society with access to its holdings.20

A year after Gowland’s departure from Japan, ‘laden with a precious treasure trove of archaeological knowledge acquired during his stay’,21 the designation of imperial tombs was completed, just in time for the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution in 1889. In 1892, Kume Kunitake (1839–1931)22 was forced from his post for statements con- sidered to be disrespectful to the Imperial institution.23

GOWLAND IN ENGLAND William Gowland returned to the UK in 1888 and was awarded the honour of Chevalier to the Imperial Order of the Rising Sun, with Third Order of Merit, for his services to the Osaka Mint. Back in London, Gowland returned to work at the Broughton Copper Works before becoming Governor of the Institute of Metalliferous Mining and President of the Royal Anthropological Institute. He actively maintained his interests in Japan, giving a paper on the Maruyama Shijo¯ school of painters about which he became something of a spe- cialist, subsequently published in the Proceedings of the Japan Society as ‘The Naturalistic Art of Japan’. Minakata Kumagasa24 (1867–1941), a

276 WILLIAM GOWLAND (1842–1922) botanist and ethnologist, who served on the research staff at the British Museum around 1897, described how impressed he was by Gowland’s extensive knowledge. Gowland also successfully brought together his professional back- ground as a metallurgist with his passion for archaeology, publishing a series of papers on early metallurgy which remain important contri- butions to the field today.25 He combined his knowledge and experi- ence of metallurgical processes in Japan with analyses of excavated materials from sites such as the great Roman city of Silchester.26

GOWLAND AND STONEHENGE On New Year’s Eve 1900 one of the trilithons, the distinctive archi- tectural features each made up of three massive stones, at Stonehenge, the famous prehistoric stone circle in Wiltshire, collapsed. The owner of the site at that time, one Sir Edmund Antrobus, undertook to restore the collapsed stone and set it in concrete to ensure no repeats of this unfortunate episode. Following public pressure and a letter to The Times by William Flinders Petrie, the pioneering archaeologist of ancient Egypt, under whom another major figure in early Japanese archaeology Hamada Ko¯saku (1881–1938) was to study at University College London, Antrobus agreed that the stones should be re-erected under archaeological supervision so that records could be made of the below-ground archaeology. William Gowland was asked to take on the commission and undertook what is still regarded as one of the best investigations at Stonehenge to date (see below).

CONTRIBUTION TO JAPANESE ARCHAEOLOGY Most histories of archaeology to date consider that Gowland had a much lesser contribution to the development of the discipline in Japan than did Edward Sylvester Morse. For example, Paul Bahn27 wrote of the early history of East Asian archaeology in the Cambridge History of Archaeology:

In Japan, for instance, W. Gowland published a series of mounded tombs he investigated during the time he was adviser to the Imperial Japanese Mint. Because these earth-mounded tombs of the late fifth and sixth centuries AD contain huge stone chambers, with ceiling blocks of up to 70 tonnes, Gowland drew, quite inappropriately, on European analogies and referred to them as ‘dolmens’. ‘In the mound-covered dolmens’ he wrote ‘a relationship is also seen between those of Brittany and Scandinavia, in the passageway generally opening towards the south or east and never to the north’. Of all resident foreigners, only the

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American zoologist Edward Morse in Japan and the Swede Johan Gunnar Andersson in China were to have a profound influence on the development of archaeology in the Far East.

Gowland’s contribution was overlooked by other eminent luminaries, which has led to the continuing under-estimation of his work and the significance of his collection now housed in the British Museum. Paul Bahn wrote:28

Japan was the first Far Eastern country to adopt Western-style archaeol- ogy. Antiquarianism was established on a national footing in 1876 by the first cultural properties protection law, and the following year saw Japan’s first excavation, conducted by the American Edward Morse. . .As Charles Darwin commented loftily in 1880, ‘several Japanese gentlemen have already formed large collections of shells of the archipelago, and have zealously aided [Morse] in the investigation of the prehistoric mounds. This is a most encouraging omen of the future progress of science in Japan.’

This ignorance of the significance of Gowland’s work has also coloured understanding of his investigations at Stonehenge in 1901 and subsequently published in Archaeologia.29 In his comprehen- sive summary of work at Stonehenge, Christopher Chippendale wrote:

Gowland was a Fellow of the Society [of Antiquaries of London], and an expert on early metal working, but Stonehenge seems to have been his first attempt at excavation. Perhaps that explains why his work was so good. . .In two important ways, Gowland’s work maintained new and rare standards. He planned each trench with a rectangular measur- ing frame, marked off in 6-inch intervals, and measured the depth of each find from a fixed datum; so the exact location of every object within each trench was recorded to an accuracy of a few inches. And all of the material dug out was sifted through meshes. . .in order that no object, however small, might be lost.30

To those with a familiarity with Gowland’s investigation of the Shibayama and other tombs, these meticulous field methods come as no surprise. In his report on his investigations at Stonehenge, Gowland referred to Japanese analogies illustrated with woodblock prints to discuss how the heavy sarsen stones might have been moved and to explore the possibility of the stone circle being used for sun worship, a point he illustrated with a print of the ‘wedded rocks’ at Futami-ga- ura near Ise.

278 WILLIAM GOWLAND (1842–1922)

William Gowland died at his home in Kensington on 10 June 1922. He was buried on 14 June at St Marylebone Cemetery. Obituaries fol- lowed on 15 August in the Asahi Shimbun, under the title ‘The Late Gowland and his Achievements at the Osaka Mint’ and on 21 August, ‘Gowland the benefactor of Japanese archaeology’, penned by Hamada Ko¯saku, who returned from his studies with Flinders Petrie in 1915 to establish the first Department of Archaeology in a Japanese University, at Kyoto University.

CONCLUSIONS Gowland left behind a very significant contribution to Japanese archaeology. His two reports on the 406 mounded tombs he investi- gated, over 130 of which he examined in detail, provided the first syn- thesis of these important monuments. His reports were published only in English and, unlike Edward Morse who produced his report on Omori within two years of completing the investigations, he waited until he had thoroughly assimilated all the information available to him before publishing in 1897. Walter Edwards picks up leading kofun- period archaeologist Shiraishi Taichiro¯’s point that:

Gowland’s investigations involved no participation from Japanese schol- ars, his results were not published until long after his return to England, and they appeared only in English. Hence his work had little impact in Japan.31

Even if there was little participation by Japanese scholars in Gowland’s work it is clear from the quality of the materials in his archive that Gowland received a great deal of assistance from Japanese government officials. His collection of Japanese archaeology, acquired for the British Museum by Augustus Wollaston Franks, the man who in 1866 had suggested that Japan had had a stone age, comprises perhaps the finest collection of kofun-period material outside Japan, including the objects and records from the Shibayama tomb which Gowland excav- ated in 1878 and the collection of hundreds of glass photographic plates which form the focus of Harris and Goto¯’s comprehensive survey. In his publications, he often drew on Japanese analogies, and his paper on ‘Metals and Metalworking in Old Japan’ continues to be a classic in the history of metallurgy. The portrait we have of Gowland is of an assiduous, meticulous scholar-surveyor, his curiosity fuelled by the intellectual debates of the time, who made extensive use of the opportunities and contacts afforded to him. He took the time to weigh

279 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI up the significance of his discoveries while ensuring that his collection was curated for the future, along with the important paper archive he had accumulated. When his archaeological papers were finally pub- lished, they demonstrated a thoroughness and rigour that did full justice to the sensitivity of the material they were presenting. In this, he was truly a benefactor not only to Japanese archaeology, but to the study of Japanese archaeology beyond Japan itself.

280 28

Elizabeth Keith (1887–1956): A Marriage of British Art and Japanese Craftsmanship

DOROTHY BRITTON

Elizabeth Keith – By Ito¯ Shinsui, a wood-block artist noted for his prints of beautiful women (From the collection of Mr Watanabe Shasaburo)

INTRODUCTION Elizabeth Keith was tall and fair. Her striking features were her heavy coils of hair tinged with a glitter of burnished gold, and her hands – large, white and able. She always had a sketch book, and paints and gum-drops in her old bag.

Elizabeth Keith was as free as a bird – no situation was too difficult to be dealt with. She had practically no knowledge of Japanese but she went everywhere – winning all by her gracious eager smile, and her delight in loveliness and beauty – and found a welcome in temples, farm houses, with rich and poor alike. Japanese all enjoyed seeing her at work, lost in the study of her subject, and she could persuade the shyest or the busiest to pose for her. To keep the children still she had learned some children’s songs, and would rattle them off without knowing what it was she was

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singing, completely distorting them by her English accent. Her audience would stare transfixed by her lively performance. When further encour- agement was needed out came the gum-drops. At times the children shoved and pushed each other and blocked the view of her subject, and she would come out with a phrase which she uttered with startling sever- ity: ‘Gakko¯ no sensei!’ whereupon all dispersed in terror. (We often won- dered why the words ‘school teacher’ should have such an effect, as children appeared on all occasions devoted to their teachers.)

Elizabeth painted the watercolours from which her prints were exe- cuted, but did not attempt to cut the wood blocks or print them herself. Like Hiroshige and Hokusai, she followed the old Japanese tradition of turning her designs over to craftsmen for block cutting and printing, supervising the work so as to obtain the effects she wanted. She used the shop of Mr S. Watanabe – a shop still to be found at Nishi Ginza. When printing time came, she would sit on the floor with the artisan for hours on end, day after day, superintending the effects of shading or mixing colors. (One block is needed for each of the colours used in a print – for some prints as many as 15 or 20 blocks are used.)

This marvellous description of an unusual artist was written by Noémi Pernessin, the French wife of the Czech-born American architect Antonin Raymond (1888–1976) who collaborated with Frank Lloyd Wright in building the celebrated Imperial Hotel between 1915 and 1922. The Raymonds, who stayed on in Japan, became good friends with Elizabeth Keith, as well as with my engi- neer father, Frank Britton,1 who worked with Antonin Raymond regarding boilers for the hotel. The four of them saw a lot of one another, and my mother always marvelled that her husband, Frank, had not married Elizabeth. But obviously she would not have wanted to give up being ‘free as a bird’, having just embarked on her artistic career. She remained, however, a dear family friend, who often stayed with us together with her sister Jessie. The Raymonds returned to Japan after the Second World War and Noémi wrote the above for the catalogue of a 1956 exhibition of Keith prints in Tokyo, illustrating it herself with a comic drawing of Elizabeth seated on a stool with her easel, singing to a group of Japanese children. Elizabeth was not at the exhibition. She died, alas, that same year, at the age of only sixty-nine.

BACKGROUND Elizabeth Keith was born in Aberdeenshire, Scotland in 1887 but the family moved to London when she was eleven years old. Besides a

282 ELIZABETH KEITH (1887–1956) brother, she had two sisters – Jessie who, like herself never married, and Elspet who married J.W. Robertson Scott.2 While Elizabeth had no formal training in art, she was born with great natural ability. I have a photograph she gave me of a painting she made as a young girl – a finely detailed rendering of her brother relax- ing in an armchair of the elegant sitting room of their ancestral home. It seems that Elizabeth had not sought art lessons simply because of lack of interest in the local scene. Familiarity evidently bred contempt. That interest was not aroused until the artist laid eyes upon Japan. At the time of the First World War, journalist John W. Robertson Scott – who later became proprietor and editor of The Countryman – was in Japan writing a book on its rural life and agriculture.3 In 1916, the British embassy asked him to produce a monthly review in both English and Japanese, of thought and achievement in the Eastern and Western worlds. Japan and Britain were allies in the 1914–18 war, the twenty-one years of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance were drawing to an end and the question was whether to renew it or not. The British government hoped the high-quality publication called The New East would not only make readers of both nations feel good about each other, but help to counteract the new pro-German trend in Japan.4

ELIZABETH KEITH IN TOKYO While John and his wife Elspet – who was also a writer – were living in Omori, Tokyo, Elizabeth Keith visited them in 1915. She was fas- cinated by the country and its people, so much so that she decided to stay awhile, and promptly cashed in her return steamer ticket. She had come to just the right place: Japan gave her the inspiration she needed to start painting in earnest. Elizabeth began by providing illustrations of life in Japan for a special issue of The Times, and then after that, as war work to raise money for the Red Cross, she published a brilliantly witty book of humorous coloured sketches entitled Grin and Bear It. It consisted of seventy car- icatures of popular local foreigners of various nationalities and was an instant success. Her primary desire, however, was to depict the life of Japanese of every description, and her special gift lay in her ability to portray them as real people, not just quaint and exotic natives of a foreign land. She herself never felt as if she were a foreigner, wherever she was – even among the Ainu of Hokkaido. ‘I have to drink it all in first,’ she once wrote. ‘No, drink it in is not the phrase I want. I bathe in it. I feel as if I melt into the scene and become dissolved. Then follows the ago- nizing process of resurrecting and getting it all on paper.’5

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She excelled in portraits and scenes of human activity: Noh actors on stage, women sewing, musicians playing their instruments, wedding processions. One of my favourite pictures, simply entitled ‘Blue and White’, is a seemingly static scene of a Japanese lady in a blue-and-white summer kimono, holding a blue-and-white paper- and-bamboo parasol, looking in the window of an antique shop in Kyoto. Hokusai’s famous ‘Wave’ is displayed, with some blue-and- white porcelain dishes; while a gardener in an indigo work jacket fastens blue morning glories to a shop-front trellis. Tree shadows seem to tremble in the summer breeze. As in all her compositions one is conscious of action. After Elizabeth had carried her easel hither and yon throughout Japan, Elspet suggested they go and take a look at Korea. It was a Japanese province, annexed in 1910 after five years occupation as a protectorate. Elizabeth was even more enthralled by Korea than she had been by Japan. ‘What enchantment there is in this land,’she wrote to her sister Jessie in England, ‘the very stars have a new quality’.6 The country was so bright and colourful – the buildings and what the people wore. She liked the way the white baggy trousers and jackets of the men, with their tall black horsehair hats, contrasted with the variegated diaphanous skirts of the women and children. It was an artist’s dream. When Elizabeth Keith held an exhibition in Tokyo of the paint- ings she had done so far, people were enchanted by her style and sensitivity to colour, and many were amazed to see for the first time what daily life was really like in barely-known Korea. The master- piece of the collection was deemed to be her watercolour of the East Gate, Seoul,7 by moonlight (a copy is now in the British Museum) and one man was so impressed that he made her an offer that changed her life. Watanabe Sho¯zaburo¯ (1885–1962), whose shop is mentioned above was not only a well-known dealer of Edo period ukiyoe to foreigners, but was one of the leading publishers of modern wood-block prints, as well as of reproductions of the classics. Just as authors normally do not print their own books, the work of Japanese genre artists was trad- itionally handled by firms that employed expert carvers and printers. Watanabe was a brilliant entrepreneur who saw a great future for Japanese wood block prints, and instituted the shin hanga, or modern print movement. For these he enlisted leading contemporary artists such as Ito¯ Shinsui and Kawase Hasui– and decided to include Keith, whose superb depictions of oriental life he considered eminently suited to the medium. As a result, Elizabeth stayed on after her sister and brother-in-law had gone, and worked in Japan for nine years. During that time, she

284 ELIZABETH KEITH (1887–1956) visited China, the Philippines and Malaya as well as making several more trips to Korea. Watanabe published over a hundred wood block prints of her watercolours, and her close collaboration with the arti- sans produced ever more sophisticated effects.

BACK IN LONDON Elizabeth returned to London in 1924 after a successful tour of America. Two of her watercolours were hung at the Royal Academy that year, and in 1926 she held an exhibition in Paris. Then she decided to take a course of lessons at London’s Central School of Arts and Crafts in etching and colour printing from copper plate, pro- ducing many successful works such as ‘Court Musicians, Korea’, and ‘The Flautist’ in that medium, which encouraged her to try carving and printing her own wood blocks as well. When Elizabeth returned to Japan twice in the thirties, Watanabe ‘looked upon them at first incredulously, but then accepted them as a kind of honourable eccentricity’.8

KOREA During the Second World War, Elizabeth Keith and Elspet Robertson Scott collaborated on a book called Old Korea:The Land of Morning Calm published at war’s end in 1946.9 ‘My desire,’ wrote Elizabeth in the Preface, ‘was to bring the sympathetic eyes of the world to this little known land.’ The book is illustrated with sixteen colour repro- ductions of her prints and etchings, and she apologized for the twenty- four which had to be printed in monochrome, saying: ‘Korea demands colour.’ Her lively, vivid explanations of each of the pictures make a fascinating read. Elspet’s text consists of their impressions of Korea. Expecting to find that the Japanese – whom they had already come to like and admire – were also good colonizers, the Keith sisters were aghast at the tales of Japanese cruelty told them by the Methodist missionaries among whom they boarded. It was in 1919, the time of the independence movement, when repression was particularly grim. Back in Japan, the sisters were relieved to hear disapproval of the way the Koreans had been treated expressed by many liberal-minded Japanese they knew, such as the pacifist folk-art historian Yanagi So¯etsu, as well as someone Elspet describes as ‘a Japanese of influence, a relative of a previous Governor-General of Korea,’ who had tears in his eyes as he listened to her stories, and said: ‘Our militarists are mad dogs!’ Now the Japanese yoke is lifted, but Elizabeth’s ‘land of enchantment’ is tragi- cally rent in two.

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Ito¯ Shinsui (1888–1972), whose portrait of Keith is at the head of this article, must have met Elizabeth at Watanabe’s workshop, and wanted to add her to his portfolio of beauties. She was indeed a beau- tiful lady, and hers was a marriage of British art and Japanese crafts- manship that has left a beautiful and important historical legacy.

Top: ‘Japanese dress-making’; above: ‘Ainu man’. From Eastern Windows by Elizabeth Keith

286 PART VI: A JOURNALIST,A TEACHER ANDHUGH THREE FULTON BYAS SCHOLARS (1875–1945)

29

Hugh Fulton Byas (1875–1945): ‘The fairest and most temperate of foreign writers on Japan’s political development’ Between the Wars

PETER O’CONNOR

Hugh Byas

INTRODUCTION IN 1975, thirty years after Hugh Byas’s death, the late Nicholas Tomalin offered ‘ratlike cunning, a plausible manner and a little liter- ary ability’ as ‘the only three qualities essential for real success in jour- nalism’. The journalist Tomalin cited as the originator of ‘ratlike cunning’ was Murray Sayle, like Byas, a long-serving Japan corres- pondent, who in 2005 returned to his native Sydney after thirty years’ incisive correspondence from Tokyo.1 Hugh Byas seems at different times in his twenty-seven years report- ing from Tokyo to have exercised most of the qualities on Tomalin’s list. The depths of his cunning are hard to plumb, but his manner must have been more than a little plausible for he inspired trust and enjoyed lasting friendships with a wide circle of people, most of whom had little else in common. Byas also enjoyed more than his fair share of 287 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI literary ability. He was quite as scrupulous and elegant a stylist as his fellow Scot, Robert Young of The Japan Chronicle of Kobe, but he was innately less inclined to polemics than Young or his feisty successor, Arthur Morgan Young (1922–36).2 As one who was always employed by others, Byas had to negotiate the limitations and prejudices both of his proprietors and the editor- ial staff under him, and had to operate under the closer scrutiny that was the price of editing East Asia’s foremost American newspaper, The Japan Advertiser in the periods 1914–16, 1918–22, and 1926–30. Although he became strongly identified with the Advertiser, Byas’s real flowering as a journalist may have come with his appointment, in 1926, as The Times correspondent in Tokyo. For a while he combined this task with the editorship of the Advertiser but in 1929, he was appointed Tokyo correspondent for The New York Times and in 1930 he resigned from the Advertiser to concentrate on his work for what were arguably the two premier national dailies in Britain and the US. In ‘the devil’s decade’of the 1930s, a flood of local news and a con- siderable tightening of official screws on Western correspondents seem to have brought out the best in Byas. In June 1940, a Time magazine correspondent wrote that ‘He is besides generally considered the most reliable foreign correspondent in Japan.’3 Between leaving the Advertiser in 1930 and, with considerable regret, leaving Japan in 1941, Hugh Byas became the best known and longest-serving journalist in Tokyo and earned the ‘Dean of the Tokyo press corps’ tag that is still used in discussions of his role in pre-war journalism in East Asia. Over twenty-seven years, 1914–41, Byas managed the difficult task of retaining both his professional integrity and the trust of many in official Japan. In the few years left to him after his departure for the US, he remained one of only a handful of wartime commentators to employ tact and urge respect for Japan’s national integrity and exercise restraint at a time when drum-beating and officially-sponsored racism were the order of the day. Thus even today his journalism and his books on Japan, especially Government by Assassination (1943) remain a fresher read, at the same time more focused and more detached, than the work of most of his contemporaries. Hugh Fulton Byas was born in 1875, either on a farm in Scotland, according to The New York Times, or in Glasgow, according to The Times of London, to Thomas and Jane Fulton Byas.4 His speech retained a ‘Scottish burr . . . thick as haggis’ that did not lessen with time.5 Byas did not attend university but went straight into reporting on the Scottish provincial press until, aged twenty-three, he was taken on by a Glasgow newspaper, where he remained for two years. In 1902, Byas moved to Johannesburg to write for The Rand Daily Mail, an interesting choice of employer, for the Mail advocated an

288 HUGH FULTON BYAS (1875–1945) independent South Africa run by the Boers and most of Byas’s readers were in a state of open rebellion against the British Empire. Shortly after his arrival, the Mail sent its new recruit to report on the Boer War in the Transvaal and the Orange Free State, both recently conquered Boer republics.6 In South Africa, Byas probably witnessed the world’s first ‘concentration camps’, in which the forces of Empire held enemy families in harsh conditions, regardless of age or infirmity. According to his New York Times obituary, Byas also gained his first glimpse of East Asia when he reported clandestine efforts to bring Chinese sweated labour into the gold mines. In 1909, Byas returned to London to take a position on the staff of The Times. In 1911, he married Joan Macmillan, beginning a lifelong partnership that seems to have been harmonious and, for Byas at least, conducive to the sudden requirements of his profession, although the couple had no children. In the same year, Byas was appointed London correspondent of The China Press.7

TO JAPAN Following heavy losses on the US stock exchange in the early 1900s, B.W. (Benjamin Wilfrid) Fleisher, had suffered a nervous breakdown and left his native Philadelphia for a world cruise.8 Stopping off by chance in Yokohama in 1907 he had stayed and begun selling adver- tising space in the port city for a local paper, The Japan Advertiser, ‘because it offered him relief from the pressures and failures that had overwhelmed him at home’.9 Fleisher prospered, found that Japan suited him, mounted a successful takeover bid for the Advertiser in 1908 and, in 1913, relocated the business to Tokyo. Together with his son Wilfrid, he ran the paper until late 1940, when he was bought out, under pressure, by The Japan Times. In 1914, at B.W. Fleisher’s invitation, Hugh Byas left London and The Times for the editorship of The Japan Advertiser. With breaks in wartime and in London (as its London correspondent and a frequent contributor to The Times, 1922–26), Byas would edit the paper until 1930, playing a considerable role in establishing the authority and credibility of the foremost American organ in East Asia. In 1916, during the First World War, Byas left The Japan Advertiser to engage in functions deemed essential to the maintenance of good relations with Japan, Britain’s ally since 1902. He became Business Manager on a new, bilingual British propaganda journal, The New East/Shin To¯yo¯, then starting up under the editorship of J.W. Robertson-Scott.10 Scott was a gifted and inspired journalist but he was highly-strung and did not take criticism lightly, a considerable disadvantage in Tokyo where the New East drew a great deal of adverse

289 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI comment when it appeared in the summer of 1916: not only for its content and ideals, but for Scott’s woolly and grandiose notions of its potential as a forum of amity between the two partners in the Anglo- Japanese Alliance. Among Scott’s sharpest critics was Robert Young of The Japan Chronicle, but he also fell foul of most members of a com- mittee set up to supervise The New East in Tokyo. Byas did his best to guide Scott’s enterprise through the thickets of local interest, but it seems he gave his employer too blunt an estimate of his failings, for in 1918 Scott suggested that Byas seek other employment, whereupon Byas resigned. In June 1918 long afterwards, without Byas to protect his flank or rein in the journal’s finances and with the prospect of victory in the war against Germany, Scott closed down The New East with a mawkish farewell. Byas’s other wartime venture came on a new periodical, The Herald of Asia, where he was taken on as a general consultant and Business Manager by Zumoto Motosada, one of the founders of The Japan Times. In working with Zumoto, Byas moved into circles preoccupied with the task of improving Japan’s international image, although when Byas joined the Herald, much of the responsibility for this task had passed from Zumoto to John Russell Kennedy, the main foreign archi- tect of Japan’s early propaganda programmes, for whom neither Zumoto nor Byas felt much goodwill.11 In 1922–26, when Byas was in London as the Advertiser correspond- ent, he maintained these connections to semi-official journalism, advising John Russell Kennedy’s former office boy, and a future direc- tor of the Do¯mei Tsu¯shinsha (Do¯mei News Agency) Furuno Inosuke, in choosing articles to send back to Japan in his role as the London correspondent for the Reuters Agency partnership with the Kokusai Tsu¯shinsha. In the 1930s, some of Byas’s writing and broadcasting on China found its way into propaganda booklets edited by Zumoto and pub- lished by his Herald Press.12 However, such was Byas’s credibility as a correspondent that this was not held against him, just as their largely unwitting ventures into propaganda were not held against others in Byas’s circle such as his friends Malcolm Kennedy,13 Vere Redman14 and Lewis Bush,15 of whom the last two were both imprisoned by those whose cause they had championed.16 Byas, like Kennedy and unlike many correspondents at The Japan Advertiser and its sister papers in China, was always earnest and con- structive, rather than pedantic, in his criticisms of Japan. However, alongside many lesser Western writers in Japan and China, during his long inter-war tenure in Tokyo Byas’s stock rose steadily in the eyes of many Western readers, who began placing their confidence in the views expressed by critical correspondents ‘on the spot’ and less

290 HUGH FULTON BYAS (1875–1945) on officially-subsidized commentators such as the American George Bronson Rea (1869–1936), a trend with negative consequences for the Western idea of Japan.

PROFESSIONAL, SOCIAL AND DIPLOMATIC LIFE IN TOKYO During most of his time in Tokyo, the Fleishers, father and son, were central figures in Hugh Byas’s professional and private life. B.W. Fleisher opened doors for him both in Tokyo and, later, the United States. In Tokyo, Fleisher, his French wife Simone, his journalist son Wilfrid (1897–1976) and their families lived next door to the US embassy. By the mid-1930s, the Fleishers had grown so close to Joseph Grew and his family that rather than use the front entrance of the US embassy, the Fleishers were able to visit by using ladders placed either side of the wall between their adjoining gardens. Inevitably, as B.W. Fleisher and then his son Wilfrid’s confidant, Byas came to share in this intimacy and was as frequent a visitor to the US embassy as he was to the British. This closeness did not go unnoticed. In November 1941, one of the policemen who interrogated Otto Tolischus, Byas’s succes- sor as The New York Times Tokyo correspondent, told him, ‘You have been doing Intelligence work for the Embassy. Byas, your predecessor, was [Joseph] Grew’s outside Intelligence man for years, and you have done the same kind of work.’17 Byas was welcomed at both the US and British embassies, but for most of the interwar period the personal connections between British officials in Tokyo and London and the foreign managers and writers employed by Japan’s semi-official propaganda programmes were closer than the links between British officials and journalists on more out- spoken organs, such as The Japan Chronicle. In the 1910s and 1920s, the British embassy was on far better terms with John Russell Kennedy,18 master builder of Japan’s propaganda network, and with correspond- ents of The Times, most of whom were taking subsidies from the Japanese foreign ministry, than it was with the outspoken editors of The Japan Chronicle and other critical observers whose editorials, although independently produced, were seen as a hindrance to Anglo- Japanese relations. Thus while the Chronicle editors kept to their Kobe fastness, well away from embassy circles and interests, Hugh Byas had the ear of most British ambassadors19 in Tokyo, from Conyngham Greene, who in 1918 took a hand in returning Byas to the editorial chair of the Advertiser, to the last before the outbreak of war, Robert Craigie.20 Hugh Byas was unusual both in gaining the trust of senior figures in the Japanese foreign ministry and of British officials, both in Tokyo and in Whitehall. His foreign ministry connections would stand him

291 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI in good stead: Byas’s long-serving assistant, O¯ fusa Junnosuke believed that Byas’s long friendship with Makino Nobuaki, Lord Privy Seal from 1925 to 1935, who in conversations over many years helped Byas understand and report the political scene in Japan, may have protected him from arrest in the late 1930s when many of his journalistic col- leagues were incarcerated.21 Even provincial officials, constitutionally more suspicious of foreigners than their superiors in Tokyo, were con- vinced of Byas’s goodwill. A 1921 Nagasaki police record noted, ‘[Byas’s] understanding is both pro-Japanese and anti-Japanese. He made a good impression on our staff’.22 In 1930, when Byas left the Advertiser to concentrate on his foreign correspondence, his departure may have left the paper more vulnerable to official pressure. Overall, the inter-war years saw a degree of frigidity between British officials and the staff of British-owned newspapers in Japan and China that only became a feature of the press relations of American officials, particularly in China, in the late 1920s.23 The willingness of some in Washington to encourage American journalists in East Asia to adopt a critical editorial line on Japanese ambitions in China and Korea, when compared with the more cautious approach to the local press adopted by British officials, marks an important difference between the two governments. This difference was neither consistent nor long term, but it would become a significant factor, at least in Japanese eyes, during the campaign to renew the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, and would in any case rebound on most foreign journalists, whatever their origins, in the late 1930s, when Japanese suspicions of American collusion in ‘anti-Japanese’ journalism and the ‘coloniza- tion’ of East Asian news broadened to a view of the local English- language press and most Western correspondents in Asia as the forward scouts of Western encirclement. Such suspicions were particularly focused on B.W. Fleisher,24 the Advertiser’s proprietor since 1908. Fleisher and his son Wilfrid took a far less confrontational stance in reporting Japan than any of the Chronicle editors, but the senior Fleisher was not trusted in official Japanese circles and in the early 1920s was seen as an active impedi- ment to the work of the foreign ministry’s flagship news agency, Kokusai.25 As the Scots editor of an American paper largely staffed by young men from the mid-West, but with good contacts with Japanese jour- nalists capable of writing in English, Byas trod the same fine line as the Fleishers, between publishing relatively mild critical comment in Japan, often written by Japanese contributors, while Fleisher’s press network in China, headed by Thomas Millard, Carl Crow and J.B. Powell, harried Japan and its interests from the safer base of the International Settlements in Shanghai, and later from Nanking.

292 HUGH FULTON BYAS (1875–1945)

On the face of it, Byas had little in common with the youthful edi- torial staff Fleisher recruited, many of them from the School of Journalism at the University of Missouri, but under his editorship the Advertiser staff seem to have rubbed along quite cheerfully. His own writing, if not his international journalism, became closer to the infor- mal style favoured by these young mid-westerners, When the time came to leave Japan, his destination was not Britain, where he was offered work in war information at the BBC, but the United States.

AS AN INTERNATIONAL CORRESPONDENT, 1930–41 Hugh Byas may have convinced many Japanese of his impartiality because on a number of contentious issues in Japan’s relations with the West, he was willing to examine the merits of Japan’s case. Although, more often in The New York Times than in The Times of London, he lamented the style of Japanese diplomacy and highlighted what he saw as blind spots in Japanese perceptions of foreigners, particularly other East Asians, in despatches to both papers Byas tended to give Japan the benefit of the doubt when the nation’s credibility was most at stake. In September 1931, his reporting of the Manchurian Incident supported the Japanese version of events at a time when a consensus was hard- ening among most journalists and other observers that the incident was the result of considerable long-term planning by, at best, rogue ele- ments in the military and, at worst, the foreign ministry in Tokyo. In the 1930s, a group of journalists associated with The Japan Advertiser became the predominant influence on news coming out of Tokyo.26 However, there was no great distinction in being the pre- dominant influence on news emanating from a city that lay under an information blackout. An important early feature of the press controls operating in Japan in the 1930s is what appears to have been an official effort to keep newspaper readers, Japanese and foreign, from gaining knowledge of the extent of Japan’s involvement in the establishment and organization of the new state of Manchoukuo. Possibly with the intention of forestalling any adverse reaction among liberal elements in Japan or in the armed forces, press restrictions imposed between September 1931 and March 1932 seem to have been designed to avoid giving the least hint that the establishment of Manchoukuo was any- thing but the expression of the spontaneous will of the people of Manchuria.27 Gags were also placed on reporting the establishment of a permanent Japanese army in Manchuria.28 Similar restrictions on reporting civil disturbances, for example, were in place in Japan, but as far as the world and Byas’s employers in London and New York were concerned, the biggest, most dramat- ically developing story during his tenure in the 1930s was unfolding

293 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI in China. Collecting and despatching the China story from Tokyo was no easy task. In July 1932, Joseph Grew was informed that most of the bans applied to the press published in Japan, which included the English-language newspapers, but not to despatches sent abroad. This meant that Hugh Byas could send to The New York Times information that Wilfrid Fleisher, as its new editor, could not print in The Japan Advertiser but could despatch to The New York Herald Tribune, as its Tokyo correspondent. However, the restrictions in place in Tokyo meant that Byas, Wilfrid Fleisher and most of the Tokyo press corps could find little of substance to report. As a result, Byas’s Tokyo despatches to The New York Times often contradicted his colleague Hallett Abend’s despatches to the same newspaper from China, while Fleisher told Tribune readers no more than he could tell Advertiser readers (who included many Japanese) in Japan.29 All Japanese newspapers, including those in the foreign ministry’s propaganda network, suffered from strict metropolitan police restric- tions on the press between the Manchurian Incident and late June 1932. Even the most experienced journalists in Tokyo were hampered by information gaps and delays on the China story. Most despatches from the Tokyo press corps were a patchwork of foreign ministry informa- tion bureau briefings, facts and commentary translated by Rengo¯ and, after 1936, by Do¯mei, and whatever might be picked from close read- ings of the local English-language newspapers, which were often just as much in the dark. As a result, even seasoned observers like Wilfrid Fleisher, Hugh Byas and James R. Young tended to report the official view of events in China. When they were not similarly hampered by Kuomintang (Guomindang) press restrictions, Western correspondents in China were able to wire their stories direct to the US and elsewhere, an imbalance that did not help Japan’s international image. In the summer of 1931, tension was building in Manchuria between Japanese troops along the South Manchuria Railway line and the forces of the ‘Young Marshall’, Chang Hsueh-liang (Zhang Xueliang). In late June, the execution of Captain Nakamura Shintaro¯ by Chinese troops was one source of tension. In August, a Japanese ban on publishing details of the incident was lifted and both The Manchuria Daily News and The Japan Times ran articles demanding compensation and apologies by the ‘Mukden [Shenyang] authorities’.30 A mass meeting of Japanese settlers was held in Dairen (Dalien).31 In late August and early September, there was increasing evidence of a build-up of Japanese troops in the area.32 Hallett Abend, The New York Times Shanghai correspondent, got wind of Japanese plans to occupy Manchuria in early August, but his foreign editor in New York ignored Abend’s requests to go to Manchuria and ordered him to ‘Stick with Lindbergh’ and stay put in Nanking to await the more newsworthy arrival of the aviator Charles

294 HUGH FULTON BYAS (1875–1945)

Lindbergh and his wife on a round-the-world air trip. As a result, Abend was cooling his heels in Nanking when the Manchurian Incident hit the front pages of the world’s press on 18 September. During these first few crucial days of the crisis, The New York Times either spiked or gave little prominence to Abend’s more accurate cables because they contradicted the story coming from Hugh Byas in Tokyo.33 From about 22 September through January 1932, as Abend’s reports were confirmed in rival newspapers, The New York Times squared the circle by running Abend’s Shanghai and Nanking cables and Byas’s Tokyo cables in parallel columns.34 However, The New York Times went on to provide impressive coverage of both the Manchurian and the Shanghai Incidents, printing 1,707 columns of news between 1 September 1931 and 28 February 1933. Overall, in the early 1930s, the differences in Western newspapers between the accounts of reporters on the ground in China and from Hugh Byas and the foreign press corps in Tokyo could serve as classic case studies of the ‘fog of war’.35 For example, on 22 September 1931, Hugh Byas’s despatch to The New York Times prevaricated: ‘. . .the Japanese military plans were executed with a precision which plainly suggests long preparation for the event, but this does not in itself prove any aggressive or sinister designs’, whereas the same day’s Peking & Tientsin Times was far less accommodating:

Kirin, September 22. – It was on Saturday evening that we first heard from Chinese sources of the coup carried out in Mukden and Changchun by the Japanese troops. . . The Chinese authorities, realiz- ing the futility and danger of any resistance, rather than risk any unto- ward collision that would either give the Japanese excuse for more drastic action or put them wrong in the eyes of the world, are acting with the greatest possible caution and restraint.

Again, on 2 December 1931, Byas participated in a JOAK network radio broadcast to the US in which, as the transcript shows, he gave his unqualified support to the Japanese version of the Manchurian Incident.36 For most Japanese, events in China raised the issues that most stirred the nation from early Sho¯wa until the conflict broadened in 1941. Chinese exigencies hastened the rise of military influence, the retreat of party politics and a concomitant inhibition of critical comment in the public sphere. And just as China dominated the public sphere in Japan, so Japan’s presence in China came to dominate perceptions of Japan received in the West. Hugh Byas reported not far from the centre of this maelstrom, and his voluminous scrapbooks and despatches, microfilmed but sadly

295 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI destroyed by their depository, Yale University Library,37 show a fair- minded, immensely shrewd observer trying hard to get to grips with a fast-changing situation whose most pertinent facts were deliberately clouded not only by foreign ministry propaganda but by relatively independent Japanese reporters despatching to the mainstream Japanese press. In the mid-thirties, as part of a war of attrition against the foreign press, an outbreak of what the foreign press called ‘spionitis’ broke out in Japan and in those parts of China under Japanese control. Holidaymakers who took photographs in controlled areas or asked questions about their surroundings were detained incommunicado. The newspapers worked these incidents into major scares and, as so often, Byas’s account served up the mot juste: ‘The Police find a Molehill and the Press Makes a Mountain Out of It’.38 Around this time, sharpening and reorganizing his view of events through diligent research and enquiry across a long-nurtured network of sources, the ‘genial, red-faced, slow-moving’ Byas began sending increasingly illu- minating and pointed despatches from Tokyo.39 For example, in August 1937, Byas wondered aloud why the Japanese seemed so out of touch with the events for which they were responsible:

Incredible as it may seem, the Japanese are permeated with a belief that they have received nothing but rebuffs and insults from the Chinese. . . Japan’s view is that she wants to be a friend to lead, develop and defend China, and so Japan is humiliated by China’s hostile refusal. The Chinese masses’ deep fear of and animosity towards Japan are treated as if they were noxious products of the Kuomintang propaganda. Not a single Japanese statesman, publicist or newspaper has ever suggested that the Manchurian affair, the Shanghai bombardment, the Jehol campaign, the creation of the East Hopei regime, the orgy of smuggling associated with that regime and other events may have been responsible for Chinese fears.40

Such blind spots were not so much ‘incredible’ as the predictable con- sequences of a tightly rationed information supply, but such com- mentary was telling and sincere. Nevertheless, Byas had his critics, one of the most surprising being his old friend, Morgan Young, ex-editor of The Japan Chronicle who in August 1937 had been barred by the Japanese authorities from returning to Japan as The Manchester Guardian correspondent and may have been influenced by stipends from the Nanking regime. Early in 1938, Morgan Young sent a letter to The Times bluntly correcting a 20 January despatch from Byas in Tokyo because it ‘so well sets forth the Japanese point of view that there is some danger of less-informed

296 HUGH FULTON BYAS (1875–1945) readers accepting it as proper’. Young agreed with Byas’s statement that ‘When the Japanese papers declare with pathetic daily insistence that what Japan seeks is China’s friendship they are not being hypocrit- ical’.41 However, he maintained that for Japan, ‘ “friendship”today, like “sincerity” yesterday, means unquestioning submission’ and concluded that ‘Japan has always been ruled by soldiers’ and that ‘So long as sol- diers rule there must be war.’42 In early June 1940, consistent with his earlier analysis of blind spots in official Japanese perceptions of the outside world, Byas reported foreign minister Arita Hachiro¯ telling his staff in Tokyo that the war in Europe would ‘terminate soon’ in victory for Germany and that although:

. . . there is no immediate risk of American interference in East Asia, it is possible that this fall will witness an important liquidation, the world over. Japan will therefore face a very important situation, which will determine the success or otherwise of the New Order in East Asia. In dealing with this situation special efforts are necessary and much will depend on the alertness and ability of the Japanese Foreign Service.43

The following month, the war of attrition against the foreign press in East Asia stepped up sharply. Numerous foreign journalists were picked up and imprisoned in Tokyo, while in Shanghai some English- language newspaper offices were bombed and journalists tailed and threatened. In October 1940, Wilfrid Fleisher finally negotiated the sale of The Japan Advertiser to The Japan Times. The transaction was financed by the foreign ministry where the recently installed Matsuoka Yo¯suke may have hoped to set up the amalgamated papers as an internationalist foil to more aggressive tendencies at the ministry (which he, looking both ways as ever, had done so much to encourage).44 The Fleishers left Japan that December. Hugh Byas hung on until the following April, when he and his wife Joan sailed from Yokohama for the United States. They were preceded by the accumulated paperwork of nearly thirty years, which Byas got past the authorities ‘by a ruse’that has never been made clear, but certainly shows that, when the situation called for it, he was not short of cunning, ‘ratlike’ or otherwise.45 Later in 1941, following a break in the West Indies, Hugh and Joan Byas settled in New Hampshire, near Yale University, where Byas had secured a lecturing post. In 1942 he published his best-known book, Government by Assassination, which analysed the patriotic movements of the 1930s in the context of Japan’s lurch towards militarism.46 As the microfilmed notes and clippings on Japanese patriotic groups and related subjects in the Byas Papers at Yale show, this was a subject he

297 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI had been researching in depth since the early 1920s. In the same archive, his lectures on Japan show him, in the midst of war and in failing health, still struggling to perceive Japan and the Japanese people outside the dominant frames of the day, ‘not as aliens without standards nor followers of demagogues thrown up by the depths of society’, but by reaching for the inner coherence of Japan’s case, trying to grasp the situation as many thinking Japanese saw it.47 In 1933, a terrible year both in East Asia and Europe, Byas was described by the journalist Ukita Heisuke as ‘by far the fairest and most temperate of foreign writers on Japan’s international political development’.48Anyone reading Hugh Byas’s despatches and other writings today will see that, in March 1945, when he died in New Haven, Ukita’s judgement stood up to the end.

298 30

Edward Gauntlett (1868–1956), English Teacher, Explorer and Missionary

SAIKO GAUNTLETT

Edward Gauntlett

INTRODUCTION Edward Gauntlett was an outstanding teacher of English who spent over sixty years in Japan. George Edward Luckman Gauntlett was born in Swansea in 1868. He came to Japan in 1890 and taught at various Japanese colleges and schools.1 He devoted himself principally to teaching English concentrating on commercial English, penmanship and illumination. He also taught Latin and Esperanto. He did much to enhance interest in music (organ), shorthand (both in Japanese and in English), Braille, missionary work, exploration and geography. For his distinguished service to English language education, he was awarded the Fifth Class Order of the Rising Sun in 1909, Fourth Class Small Cordon of the same in 1925 and Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure in 1953. In 1898, he married Yamada Tsune who later became known as a pioneer femi- nist, and social and religious worker in Japan. They had two sons and four daughters. After the Second World War, Gauntlett taught English at the Gaimusho’s training institute. He died in 1956 at the age of eighty-seven. 299 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

1890–1900 Gauntlett was the second son of John George and Frances Gauntlett. As he was born in Swansea, he felt a special attachment to Wales and used to describe himself as Welsh by reason of his birth in the Principality. There were many church musicians in his family.2 Both Gauntlett’s elder and younger brothers were Doctors of Music perhaps as a result of the musical training which his father gave to his children. When Gauntlett was born, his father was an acting curate but later became a vicar. The last position he held was that of canon of St David’s Cathedral. His mother died while he was still a boy and the brothers were sent to a boarding school in Brighton. His father then married Elizabeth Stroud, a daughter of Admiral Stroud who also lived in Swansea. Gauntlett stayed at his school at Brighton for four to five years. He then studied architecture, engineering and art during his employment with Messrs. Bucknall & Jannings, Architects and Engineers, of London, Bristol and Swansea. He studied at a branch school of the South Kensington Science and Art School and acted as a manager for the science and art section of the company. During this time, he took correspondence courses at Chicago University and as a result became an assistant instructor of the branch school. His elder brother went to Oxford and his younger brother to Cambridge but there was no money to send Gauntlett to university and he had to cope on his own resources. In 1889, when Gauntlett was between twenty and twenty-one, he went to the United States despite the opposition of his parents but was nevertheless given part of the family savings to cover his costs. This decision was probably made because of his thirst for new knowledge and his adventurous spirit.3 According to the autobiography of Tsuneko, Gauntlett’s wife, Lord Amherst, a cousin of his stepmother was in the United States as a banker, and this had been a factor in his decision to go to the US. Initially, he went to San Francisco but could not find work because of the severe economic conditions prevailing there. Then he went to Seattle where as many buildings had been burnt down in a recent major fire he hoped to find a job. However, his health deteriorated and he was advised to stay away from building work. With his slight build and sensitive character he may also not have found the United States congenial. When his health improved he learnt that English teachers were needed in Japan. He was also asked to join a programme organized by the missionary, C.S. Eby of the Methodist Church of Canada.4 It is not clear how Gauntlett travelled from the United States to Canada but he came to Japan by way of Toronto. In August 1890, he landed in Yokohama where Lafcadio Hearn had arrived in Japan in April of that year.

300 EDWARD GAUNTLETT (1868–1956)

In 1890, C.S. Eby founded the central tabernacle (Hongo Chu¯o¯ Kaido¯) in Tokyo and this became the headquarters for missionary work aimed at converting members of the more educated Japanese and of students of Tokyo University to change their way of life. Before coming to Japan, Gauntlett had already been assigned the role of direc- tor of music at the central tabernacle. He not only dedicated himself to performing music but was instrumental in introducing the pipe organ to Japan for the first time.5 Gauntlett apparently financed from his own resources the expense of importing and installing the organ. He was also deeply involved in church activities as a deacon and instructor at the church school and involved himself deeply in church functions headed by Eby while simultaneously teaching English at Tokyo Higher Commercial School, Chiba Middle School and To¯yo¯ Eiwa College.6 On 5 May 1892, he was responsible for the functioning of a magic lantern at a show for the Meiji Emperor.7 He also at one time served as an acting secretary in the American legation. At this period, he lived in the house provided for Eby and Coates or occasionally in a small upstairs room at the central tabernacle.

MARRIAGE WITH TSUNEKO In 1898, Gauntlett married Yamada Tsune. At that period it was difficult for a Japanese to marry a foreigner.8 Tsuneko Gauntlett (1873–1953) was a social reformer and an elder sister of the composer Yamada Ko¯saku. She came from a samurai family and was born in Aichi Prefecture. At the age of nineteen she entered WCTU (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) and worked hard through the WCTU for an improvement in the posi- tion of women in Japanese society. After the Second World War, Tsuneko was the sixth chairwoman of the WCTU. Tsuneko’s father Kenzo¯ was an intemperate man and caused much anxiety to her mother who sought solace in her Christian faith and who brought up Tsuneko in that faith. Her uncle Otsuka Seishin was a doctor and pastor who with his wife Kane devoted their life to helping lepers. They were an inspiration to Tsuneko. On her uncle’s recommend- ation, Tsuneko entered Sakurai Girls’ School (later Joshi Gakuin). She was taught there by Yajima Kajiko to whom Tsuneko felt greatly indebted. She went on to Kyo¯ai Girls’ School in Maebashi to teach English and supported her family, which was poverty stricken as a result of her father’s illness, by acting as interpreter in her missionary work for H.F. Parmelee (1852–1933), an American missionary and Tsuneko’s colleague at Kyo¯ai Girls’ School.9 During this time her Christian faith strengthened.

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Tsuneko at this time came to know Gauntlett who worked for To¯yo¯ Eiwa College, the American legation and the central tabernacle. Mrs Coates, a Canadian Methodist missionary, had built a summer house for single people in Karuizawa. One summer, when Parmelee was vis- iting Karuizawa, Gauntlett had come along with the Coates and thus met Tsuneko. Two-and-a-half years later Gauntlett proposed to Tsuneko who stipulated that she should be able to devote herself to the cause of women’s liberation. Eventually after another year and a half a full understanding was reached between them and they were married.10 The marriage ceremony took place on 26 October 1898 at St Andrew’s Church in Shiba, Tokyo. They then went to the ward office to register the marriage. But the ward office did not know how to process the registration. There were legal problems as the revised treaties abolishing extraterritoriality for foreigners and thus granting the same status to foreigners as to Japanese did not come into force until 1899. A lawyer who was consulted proposed that Tsuneko’s name be withdrawn from the family register as a result of her parents reporting to the authorities that she was missing. At the same time an application was made to the British authorities that she should be granted British nationality. In three months this application was approved and her marriage was legally recognized.

1900–15 During these years the family lived outside Tokyo and Gauntlett held teaching posts at the Sixth High School in Okayama, the Fourth High School in Kanazawa and Yamaguchi Higher School of Commerce. In Okayama, Gauntlett inspired Tsuneko’s younger brother, Yamada Ko¯saku (1886–1965), who was thirteen years younger than her, to develop his interest in music. During his life he composed a prolific amount of music which employed variations of tone and pitch, char- acteristic of Japanese music. He composed songs in the classical style, children’s songs, an opera, symphonies and a symphonic poem. He also created the first orchestra in Japan and worked hard to familiarize the Japanese public with Western music. Ko¯saku had not been in very good health and Tsuneko thought that his health might be better in Okayama than in Tokyo. Gauntlett organized a choir and a brass band in Okayama. When he played the pump organ, Ko¯saku always assisted him by pumping the wind into the organ and turning the pages for him. In his autobiography Ko¯saku wrote:

My brother-in-law, Gauntlett loved music and played the organ as proficiently as a professional. He had a diploma in church music which

302 EDWARD GAUNTLETT (1868–1956)

he received when he was in England. When I first heard pieces by Beethoven, Mozart and Mendelssohn, I was not able to suppress my excitement and could not go to sleep. I was so caught up in some melodies that my pleasure sometimes nearly turned to mental suffering.11

Later, Ko¯saku went on to Tokyo Music School (now Tokyo Geijutsu Daigaku, Tokyo National University of Fine Arts & Music). At first Tsuneko did not approve of her younger brother devoting himself wholly to music but Gauntlett subsidized part of or all of Ko¯saku’s tuition. While Gauntlett taught at the Sixth High School (1900–1906) he started teaching Esperanto to people in Okayama and at the same time began a nationwide correspondence course. In 1906, the Japan Esperanto Association (now Institute) was established. Gauntlett who was one of those instrumental in spreading Esperanto in Japan had spent his summer vacation in 1903 with the family of his friend D.R. McKenzie who was a missionary working in Kanazawa. At that time McKenzie was reading a text for students in Esperanto. Gauntlett, when he read the text, was inspired to learn Esperanto and soon began a correspondence with Esperantists in Europe. Many rushed to contact Gauntlett with the wish to exchange correspondence because of their interest in Japan. One of his first pupils was his brother-in-law Yamada Ko¯saku. He set aside a room in his house as a classroom for Esperanto students and later organized classes in Esperanto at the Sixth High School. A total of 677 students enrolled in the programme.12 In 1907, Gauntlett transferred from the Sixth High School to the Fourth High School but the climate of Kanazawa did not agree with him and he suffered from tuberculosis. On medical advice, after a year, he obtained a transfer to Yamaguchi Higher School of Commerce.

IN YAMAGUCHI In Yamaguchi, Gauntlett explored Akiyoshi Cave13 and Cho¯mon Gorge which as a result of his work are now well known tourist attractions Gauntlett, not long after his arrival to Yamaguchi, began a series of geographical investigations of Akiyoshi and became the first man to explore that part of Akiyoshi Cave called ‘Takiana’, penetrating to its innermost part where no one had ever set foot before. He found that in its grandeur it could be compared with the greatest stalactite caves in the world. He descended by rope to the bottom of some of the holes called jigoku no ana (hell holes). He also made suggestions about the provision of facilities needed to attract tourists and as a result of his

303 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI survey the number of visitors and explorers in the area gradually increased.14 Gauntlett was a member of the Royal Geographical Society in London and submitted his reports to the Society. On a visit to England, he delivered a lecture on Japan at a meeting of the Society.15 Gauntlett also lectured to the general assembly of the Yamaguchi Prefectural Educational Association in August 1912 describing the fas- cinating beauty and charm of Cho¯mon Gorge. He subsequently advo- cated that it should be developed as a Prefectural Park, following the example of the National Park system of the United States.16 At a ceremony held in Tokyo, in 1954, the governor of Yamaguchi publicly recognized Gauntlett’s accomplishments in promoting the tourist industry in Yamaguchi and, in 1956, the board of education in Yamaguchi published a booklet entitled ‘Mr Edward Gauntlett and Yamaguchi Prefecture’. In 1960 a bust of him was unveiled in the Akiyoshidai Science Museum of Shu¯ho¯-cho, Yamaguchi Prefecture. In January 1994, a tributary of a cave newly discovered was named Gauntlett Cave.

1916–56 In 1926, Gauntlett transferred from Yamaguchi Higher School of Commerce to Tokyo University of Commerce (later Hitotsubashi University) and he and his family returned to Tokyo. They rented a house17 in Takadanobaba, Totsuka, Tokyo. Although the initial plan was to use the house as temporary living quarters, the family resided there for nearly thirty years until they retreated to Karuizawa during the war. The house was burnt down during an air raid in 1945. Upon returning to Tokyo from Yamaguchi, Gauntlett taught at Tokyo University of Commerce (1916–35), at Rikkyo¯ Gakuin and Rikkyo¯ University (1919–36 concurrently), as a teacher at Rikkyo¯ middle school until about 1940, at Bunka Gakuin until about 1927, at Jiyu¯ Gakuen (1938–44), and at Yokohama Higher School of Commerce (present Yokohama University). Tsuneko wholeheartedly devoted herself to the activities of the WCTU. She attended the International Meeting of the WCTU in London in 1920. She attended other inter- national meetings in subsequent years and developed relations with British and American people through the activities of the WCTU.

THE GAUNTLETT FAMILY DURING THE SECOND WORLD WAR Since Tsuneko held British nationality and she was a member of the peace movement, the Japanese Kempeitai (military police) and Tokko¯

304 EDWARD GAUNTLETT (1868–1956)

(special police organization) kept a close eye on the family from around the time of the Manchurian incident in 1931 and they had a difficult time. Tsuneko, who had become British through marriage, Gauntlett and their youngest son, Trevor, became naturalized Japanese citizens in May 1941. Since his arrival in Japan in 1890, Gauntlett had returned to England only a few times and except for one brother, nearly all his relatives and acquaintances in Britain had died. Tsuneko and Gauntlett had two sons and four daughters. The eldest daughter Frances retained British nationality and was working in Canada during the war. The second daughter Kathleen was a teacher working in the school attached to a monastery of Church of England and was in England. Their eldest son Owen had British nationality and was in Japan with his family, their third daughter Winifred married a Japanese and became a Japanese national, while their fourth daughter Amy married Percy Luke, a missionary from South Africa, and lived in Japan. As Gauntlett did not write his memoirs we do not know how he felt about the war, but it is clear that he and his family suffered depri- vation and hardship. Tsuneko and Gauntlett moved to Karuizawa from the autumn of 1944 to the autumn of 1945, where there were a number of Japanese and foreigners living with whom they were friendly. Inevitably they were, like all Japanese at that time, short of food. While they were living in Takadanobaba, the Gauntletts had begun to use a Japanese name Ganto. In the autumn of 1945, the family moved first to a house in Setagaya, Tokyo, and later to a small house built on land belonging to the WCTU in Okubo, Tokyo, but they had to live a very frugal life as food remained in short supply. Tsuneko remained very much occu- pied with WCTU activities. Gauntlett worked for the training insti- tute of the Japanese Foreign Ministry located at Myogadani, Tokyo, and taught English to budding diplomats. He finally retired from work in 1953 when he was eighty-four. Tsuneko died when she was eighty and Gauntlett died when he was eighty-seven on 29 July 1956 at his house in Hyakunin-cho, Okubo, Tokyo. The funeral took place at the chapel of Rikkyo¯ University. Tsuneko and Gauntlett were both buried in Tama Cemetery, Tokyo.

CONCLUSION Gauntlett arrived in Japan when he was twenty-one and stayed for sixty-six years. When he first contemplated going abroad, his eyes were set on the United States not Japan. On arriving in Japan from Canada he felt a great attraction to Japan where he was particularly impressed by the beauty of nature. Gauntlett married a Japanese and had many Japanese students. However, his life in a different culture was

305 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI not always easy. Gauntlett twice faced serious health problems. And, in the provinces especially, conservative people did not respond posi- tively when he tried aggressively to promote Christianity. As an English teacher, Gauntlett introduced teaching methods emphasizing practical English, especially through the courses which he organized in commercial English, shorthand and English penmanship. He was very careful and exacting in his teaching. When awarding marks to students, he devised his own detailed grading and classification system. Various symbols were used to group the types of mistakes made into different categories. To ensure that there was no error in how he graded a student, he often asked his own children to confirm the grades he had given. He also took infinite trouble in preparing his lessons. In teaching bookkeeping, Gauntlett planned a year long programme in advance and printed cheque books and receipts to use during the course. He spent as long as seven years in revising a shorthand system based on Pitman’s method. Apart from English penmanship Gauntlett had outstanding skill in illumination.18 He also worked to promote the Braille system of writing in Japan. He developed his interest in Braille when he was in his fifties and it is said that he was the first to produce a Bible in Braille for the Japanese people. In those days Japan was behind in typewriter technology and Gauntlett made various suggestions about user- friendly typewriter design. He had specialist expertise in adjusting organs and tuned and played the organ. At Rikkyo¯ Gakuin he became the first choir master and organized a choir which consisted of family members and university students. Hymns were sung on Holidays in the chapel. Gauntlett’s son Owen recalled that ‘When my father played, even an ordinary reed organ, the whole instrument would come to life.’ ‘There was nothing flashy about his music, for his was in the classical English Style.’ Although Gauntlett married a Japanese and appreciated the Japanese way of life and the spiritual climate of Japan, his life style remained that of an Englishman as shown by the importance which he attached to punctuality and by his sense of humour.

306 31

Joseph Henry Longford (1849–1925), Consul and Scholar

IAN RUXTON

King’s College London

INTRODUCTION Joseph Henry Longford was born on 25 June 1849, the son of Charles Longford of Blackrock, County Dublin. He was educated in Belfast and earned a degree at Queen’s University, of which he became a D. Litt. many years later. He was appointed a student interpreter in the Japan consular service on 24 February 1869, after passing the examination and served there for thirty-three years in several import- ant consular posts. In many respects, Longford is one of the forgotten scholars of the Japan service, eclipsed by better-known men such as Sir Ernest Mason Satow (1843–1929), William George Aston (1841–1911), John Harrington Gubbins (1852–1929) and Sir George Sansom (1883–1965). Yet while Longford was certainly not the most dazzling star in the narrow but bright firmament of ‘old Japan hands’, he was a talented and capable man, qualified as a barrister, who after retiring from the consular service at the age of fifty-three had a significant second career as a Professor of Japanese at King’s College London from 1902 to 1916 and thereafter as Professor Emeritus of the University of London. 307 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Longford produced a number of informative and readable books about Japan during this period. He also was deeply involved in retire- ment with the Japan Society, something which Satow steadfastly chose to avoid in his retirement years, preferring the relative seclusion of Ottery St. Mary in Devon over the bustle of the capital.

LONGFORD IN THE JAPAN CONSULAR SERVICE (1869–1902) The Foreign Office List of 1921 records that Longford ‘passed a com- petitive examination’and ‘obtained an honorary certificate’on entry to the service as Student Interpreter in 1869. He started out at Tokyo, but was soon ‘Acting 3rd Assistant’ at Kanagawa (Yokohama) in 1871, gaining promotion to second class assistant on 1 June 1872. From there he seems to have gone briefly to Nagasaki before returning to Kanagawa in 1874. He alternated between there and Tokyo until attaining promotion to 1st Class Assistant at the latter on 1 April 1882. Further promotion made him provisional Vice-Consul on 9 September 1884 and he was confirmed in that post on 20 May 1886. He appears then to have taken a long leave in England which allowed him to study law. He was admitted to the Society of the Middle Temple on 5 April 1878 at the age of 28. He was called to the bar at the Middle Temple in absentia on 15 May 1889.1 (This was something which Ernest Satow had achieved with distinction a few years previously, while complain- ing that the Foreign Office did not show much interest or offer any support for this effort.) On Longford’s return to Japan he was evidently trusted to move further afield than the Tokyo-Yokohama area, serving first as Acting Consul at ‘Hiogo’ in 1889 and 1890 (note the quaint persistence in refusing to call the post Kobe, despite that port opening in 1868!), then at Hakodate from November 1890 to April 1892. Thereafter he apparently returned to Tokyo as Vice-Consul, though the F.O. List is silent on this point. He wrote to Satow, then British Minister to Japan and accordingly his superior, from Hakone on 9 August 1895:

We have had a fairly fine week, though last night we got utterly lost for a couple of hours on the lake in a thick fog . . .Our friend the Rev. J. Francis – the rector of the Church in Tsukiji [foreign settlement, Tokyo] . . .intends to call on you . . .I am sure you will like him. He is both a nice fellow and an accomplished scholar.2

Before alluding to preparing the trade returns which seem to have been one of his favourite topics and (self-justifying) occupations, he continues with – surely unintended – irony about the need to follow

308 JOSEPH HENRY LONGFORD (1849–1925) the German example of sending a consul to Formosa after Japan’s gain of that territory in the Sino-Japanese War. This was in fact Longford’s next posting as a full Consul at Tainan on 4 February 1896. Perhaps his most memorable letter preserved in the Satow papers was a confidential one written to Satow, again from Hakone, on 14 September 1895 in which he enclosed a protest from the Yokohama branch of the China Association about the Anglo-Japanese Treaty abolishing extraterritoriality five years later, signed on 16 July 1894 together with a memorandum written by himself. In the latter he dis- sects the Treaty carefully, and concludes:

The whole Treaty contains scarcely one redeeming clause. Its supposed advantages are believed to be thoroughly illusory by the oldest and most liberal minded foreign residents in Japan, and even from the missionar- ies . . .it has hardly obtained one word of approval. On the other hand, the injury that it may cause to trade, navigation and residence are con- sidered to be both apparent and real.3

Needless to say the complaints were ignored, and the net result of such moaning after the event can only have been to damage Longford’s rep- utation in Satow’s eyes, and perhaps also at the Foreign Office. Unfortunately worse was to come: it is clear that Taiwan was not an agreeable posting for Longford, and he made his feelings plain in increasingly lengthy epistles to Satow, who carefully filed them for posterity with his other letters. A typical example is the following dated 20 April 1896:

. . . I have found a good carpenter, but otherwise the place does not improve on further acquaintance and my earnest desire will always be to get out of it on any terms at the earliest possible date. I find the heat terribly trying, the want of water, ice, decent food are hard to a man accustomed to abundance of all three, expenses are very high owing to the demand for everything by the Japanese, and the loneliness will be terrible. The condition of the house is shocking, and I do trust you will say something to [R.J.] Marshall [Office of Works, Shanghai] about it. The rains might come on any day now with the change of the monsoon . . . For a man who could live on splendid sunsets, the place would be very attractive, but there can not be much attraction in it for those of less aesthetic tastes.4

On 13 July 1896, Longford wrote to Satow from Anping that he ‘should infinitely prefer Nagasaki, with even £800 a year, to either Tamsui or Tainan with £900, and equally infinitely, Tamsui to Tainan’. He added that he thought the Taiwan posts should be filled

309 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI by younger men. By 28 July, he was writing that the Consulate’s medical officer, Dr Wykeham Myers, had advised him to leave. Eventually Myers wrote to Satow on 18 October that ‘Mr Longford has for some time been suffering from increasing mental depression’ and that he was also afflicted with ‘a lowering attack of boils over the greater part of his body’. Myers recommended six weeks minimum leave. Satow, showing a degree of sympathy which might surprise some of his harsher critics, answered Myers on 3 November:

The mental depression you speak of I can well understand in the case of a man of warm family affections separated for the first time from his wife and children. I am telegraphing to him today to the effect that he will be relieved by his successor about the 20 December.

Longford had a wife (Alice) and young family and clearly missed them. He left Taiwan for Amoy on mainland China in November. His obser- vations of the lawlessness and disorder (including some massacres by Japanese troops) in Japan’s first ever colony had been of value, despite his mental state. Officially he was transferred in accordance with his wishes to Nagasaki on 28 December 1896 and a fresh commission was issued to him on 28 July of the following year. On 2 January 1897, Longford wrote from Tsukiji that he had ‘not at all regained strength as I hoped’, expressing anxiety and enclosing some notes about the Nagasaki consulate. The main points were the increase in shipping work and the large number of warships which ‘gives risk of disturbances on shore’. Longford noted that ‘naval courts have been more numerous at Nagasaki than any other port’ and that there was a burdensome custom of consuls calling on ‘all men of war’ (warships). He added: ‘This service requires a great deal of time, and if dropped might occasion offence.’5 On arrival in Nagasaki, Longford complained again, opening his first letter of 1 February 1897 with: ‘It is hopeless, or almost so, to get any temporary clerical assistance in the Consulate here.’ Thomas Glover went to Satow on 13 February to appeal on Longford’s behalf for a clerk but Satow was unmoved. 6 On 26 April 1897, Longford sent a ‘rough memo’ of his day’s work. Eventually he did get a clerk. On 29 July1898, Longford wrote to Satow to complain of a decrease in pay. Satow was not sympathetic this time as no salary reduction was contemplated, and he told Longford:

The duties of a consul are I take it in the first place to render what ser- vices he can to his countrymen . . . to smooth over difficulties between shipmasters and their crews, to cultivate friendly relations with the local authorities and to keep the Minister informed . . .

310 JOSEPH HENRY LONGFORD (1849–1925)

This elicited another long and relentlessly analytical response on 13 August from the aggrieved Longford who took each of the four points in turn and stated how he believed he had complied with them. Again, on 18 April 1899, Longford wrote to complain of an insult- ing offer for his work as Austrian chargé d’affaires:

Forty pounds a year is a good deal of money to me personally . . . but it becomes little short of offensive when given to H.M. Consul as a rec- ompense for 18 years representation of Austrian interests, and two years very considerable work.

Satow’s answer on 22 April recommended Longford to accept the money. Nevertheless, on 30 June, Satow wrote to F. Villiers at the Foreign Office on behalf of Kobe consul J.C. Hall and Longford:

Hall has been here since he last came out over 8 and a half years, Longford over 10. The former has 6 children, the latter 4. Consequently, having no private means at all, and quite unable to put by a penny, they cannot go home on leave. I think it is bad for men to be here for such long periods. Their health deteriorates and their minds get narrow . . .They are both poor men.

Satow passed on a request from the two long-serving Consuls to rec- ommend personal allowances of £100 a year each, but this was turned down.7 Despite his allegedly limited means, it is interesting to note that in later years Longford apparently lived comfortably enough in Chiswick and was a member of the Reform and the Royal Irish Yacht Clubs. A sociable man, his modest interests were boating, walking, watching cricket and playing bridge.8

LONGFORD AT KING’S COLLEGE, LONDON (1902–16) AND THEREAFTER In August 1902, Longford was ‘in attendance on H.I.H. Prince Akihito, of Japan, at the Coronation of King Edward VII’.9 For this service, he was awarded the Coronation Medal and retired from the Japan Consular Service on a pension on 15 August 1902. He was ‘appointed almost immediately to the chair of Japanese at King’s College, London’.10 There should have been a considerable demand for a man with Longford’s experience of Japan following the signing of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance on 30 January 1902 when, as the Times wrote, ‘public interest in our new ally was naturally keen’. Longford had accumulated a great amount of information on Japanese history,

311 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI culture and customs, and he proceeded to lay it before the public in a variety of publications. As early as 1877, Longford had written a legal work entitled The Penal Code of Japan,11 but his first published work at his academic post was entitled simply Japan in a series called Living Races of Mankind. This was followed by an important contribution to The Cambridge Modern History entitled ‘The Regeneration of Japan’ (1910). Thereafter, in short order, the following books appeared under Longford’s name: The Story of Old Japan (1910); The Story of Korea (1911); Japan of the Japanese (1911); The Evolution of New Japan (1913); Japan (Spirit of the Allied Nations series, 1915); Japan (Harmsworth Encyclopedia, 1920); Japan (Nations of Today, 1923). In addition he contributed to the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan and The Proceedings and Transactions of the Japan Society and wrote frequently to The Times, not only about Japanese matters but also about Irish politics and other topics. In the preface to Japan of the Japanese, Longford begins: ‘Books on Japan are as plentiful as primroses in April, but the majority are equally evanescent . . .’ He nevertheless claims, with good reason, to have been ‘painstaking’ in his study of the Japanese people over the greater part of his life and so justifies his own publication. The second edition was published in 1915 after the death of Emperor Meiji. Of General Nogi’s junshi12 (loyally following a master in death) he says it is a samurai custom which has survived despite repeated legal prohibition. He continues:

In Japan neither suicide nor assassination can, even at the present day, be judged by the ethical codes of Christian Europe . . .Both [Nogi and his wife] are now no less remembered as the devoted servants whose souls attended that of their beloved master [Meiji] to the land of spirits, than is the husband as the brave and capable captor of Port Arthur and the wife as the mother who gave her only sons to die in that Master’s cause.

In 1919, Longford was interviewed by the then Australian Prime Minister W.M. Hughes about a possible appointment as Professor of Japanese Studies in Australia, but by then he was too old and the pro- posal was not pursued.13 Longford’s Japan (Nations of Today, 1923) was part of A New History of the World, a series edited by the great novelist John Buchan. It was described in the Times obituary as one of his best books. Longford dedicated it to his wife ‘who lived seventeen years and my daughters who were born and passed their childhood in Japan, none of whom can recall one unhappy day that was due to either the country or its

312 JOSEPH HENRY LONGFORD (1849–1925) people’. In the preface he mentions the various histories of Japan by Brinkley, Murdoch, Griffis, Murray, Kaempfer, Satow, Aston and Chamberlain. He indicates that all contain ‘ample information . . .but some of them are no longer available . . .and most demand a degree of attentive or even analytical reading . . .’ In contrast, Longford says he ‘has already provided, in three distinct works, popular histories of both Old and New Japan and of Japan’s relations with Korea . . .’ This fourth work is ‘written in a similar style’, and aims at ‘giving a succinct narrative of the epochs of Japanese history and concise descriptions of their most striking events and most remarkable personages’. He describes Japan as ‘a rising commercial and industrial Power’ albeit far behind Britain in this regard. Still, ‘Great Britain may contemplate Japan as a commercial rival (in all corners of the globe) that cannot be indifferently regarded in the present day and who, in a future that is not very remote, may be found a competitor that will test her indus- try, ingenuity and enterprise to the very utmost.’ On the other hand, Japan is ‘in the very front rank of the great military Powers’and (rather ominously) ‘saturated with the spirit of militarism’. No doubt Longford had the Russo-Japanese War (1904–05) in mind, but he was again eerily prophetic:

Great Britain now holds her Far Eastern colonies, the great commercial depots of Hong Kong and Singapore, entirely on the sufferance of Japan. From either she could be ousted as speedily as were the Germans from Kiaochow [in 1914].

Writing in April 1923, soon after the ending of the Anglo-Japanese Alliance in 1922, to which he devoted Chapter XIX, he continued:

. . . while Japan is to-day our firm and trusted friend . . .[i]t behoves Great Britain to retain her goodwill and to that end to neglect no means of acquiring a knowledge of Japan . . .no less exact and extensive than that which Japan has already acquired of Great Britain and is now daily using to the fullest extent.

In 1925, Longford, described as an Emeritus Professor of King’s College and Vice-President of the Japan Society, revised and edited the immense three-volume history of Japan by the late James Murdoch (1856–1921), and he was presumably the author of the entertaining introduction of the Scottish radical scholar and historian whose feats of memory as a child were astonishing, and who taught at Nakatsu Middle School (Kyushu) and at Kagoshima. Longford praised his teaching methods which encouraged independent thinking, and indeed Natsume So¯seki also remembered Murdoch as his teacher at

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Tokyo University with affection. Longford himself died before the work was published in 1926, though he added many footnotes.

CONCLUSION If J.H. Longford’s Japan-oriented scholarship was not cutting-edge or pioneering Japanology, his compendious written work had the great merit of readability. It is less demanding of readers in vocabulary and syntax than that of, for example, J.H. Gubbins or G.B. Sansom, and he performed a very useful service in editing and tidying up, so to speak, after the likes of the adviser to the Japanese Minister of Education David Murray (author of Japan which was first published in 1894) and James Murdoch. It is clear that he had twin passions both for writing (first cultivated in the consular service) and for Japan and its people. Imbued with a sense of mission, he laboured long and hard to introduce an exotic country on the other side of the world to a British audience in an era when visits to Japan were still mainly the preserve of wealthy globetrotters and seamen. Longford’s breadth of vision and foresight are shown in the follow- ing quotation:

Friendship with the United States is the cardinal element in Great Britain’s foreign policy. Friendship with Japan, firm, fast, continuing, is little less necessary to her for the preservation of her Eastern Empire and her Far Eastern trade, and if it is not maintained Japan may . . . accept from a restored Germany what she has sought in vain from Great Britain . . .14

Longford clearly saw that international diplomacy is a zero-sum game, where one country’s loss is often another’s gain, and rightly feared the consequences of a decline in Anglo-Japanese relations. It seems appro- priate that he should have his reputation restored in the present day when his views have increasing relevance.

314 32

Kathleen Mary Drew Baker, British Botanist whose Studies Helped to Save the Japanese Nori Industry

JOHN R. BAKER AND K. FRANCES BIGGS

Kathleen Mary Drew Baker

LIFE AND WORK Kathleen Mary Drew was born on 6 November 1901 at Leigh, Lancashire, the eldest daughter of Walter Drew, an agricultural machinery manufacturer and his wife Augusta. Both her mother and father were originally of Devon farming stock. Kathleen had two sisters and a brother none of whom showed a scientific bent. Shortly after her birth, the family moved to Salisbury where she was educated at Bishop Wordworth School where she won several prizes and was usually top of the class. At the school, botany was a valued and well- taught subject and this may have influenced her career in this field. She was awarded a County Major Scholarship against strict competition and this entitled her to free university study, which she took up in 1919 at Manchester University. She remained there for the rest of her life apart from a two-year period in the USA. 315 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

On starting her university botanical studies, she was such an out- standing student that she was exceptionally excused the intermediate science examination. In her first year she was also awarded the Lily Spence Prize in Botany, only awarded for exceptional levels of achievement. She used the extra time available to her, because she had been excused the examination, to start work on Chara, a seaweed. Why she chose to study seaweeds then and for the rest her life is not known; perhaps it was because this was a little-studied field at the time. On graduating in 1922, with a first class honours degree in botany, she was immediately awarded an Ashburne Hall Research Scholarship. She moved to Ashburne Hall, a hall of residence for women students. Her love of and loyalty to Ashburne was shown in her later work as repre- sentative of the Ashburne Association on the Ashburne Hall Commit- tee and in her presidency of the Association for several years. After her work, this was her only other major interest. During this time she attended a summer school with Professor Chodat in Geneva at Bouvy St Pierre. During this visit an outing was made to the Great St Bernard pass where red snow and red lakes (due to red algal growth) attracted her attention and may have been a stimulus to work mainly on red algae which she did for the rest of her life. In the following year, Kathleen Drew was awarded an M.Sc. degree in the Department of Cryptogamic Botany where for two years she was an assistant lecturer on the staff. In 1925, she was awarded a Commonwealth Fellowship, one of the first women to have this award. She took up the fellowship at the University of California with periods at the Friday Harbor Laboratories in Washington and the Marine Biological Laboratory at Woods Hole, Massachusetts. One of the requirements of the fellow- ship was that during vacations recipients were expected to travel and on this basis she also spent some time in Hawaii. On 8 August 1925, in California, she collected two specimens which were the start of an herbarium which eventually included 2,949 specimens. Little in the way of detail survives of this period.1 Before she left for the States she had met Henry Wright Baker (later to become Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology). They wanted to become engaged, but her family disapproved, largely it would seem, on religious grounds, as they were high Anglicans and he was a Quaker. She was told that the engagement could only go ahead if this was what she still wanted after two years overseas. On her return they became formally engaged and were married in 1928, when she also became a Quaker. The marriage led to a change in her work as at that time the University at Manchester, to which she had returned, would not

316 KATHLEEN MARY DREW BAKER employ both a man and his wife even in separate departments on different campuses nearly two miles apart. She was thus unemployed but she still managed to continue with some work and published at least one scientific paper a year. She was made a University Research Fellow at some time in the 1930s which gave her space in the univer- sity to continue her researches although there was apparently no salary attached to this post which also involved giving occasional lectures to the honours botany students and some supervision of post-graduate students. Their son John was born in 1939 and their daughter Frances in 1940. Kathleen Drew and her husband were both awarded the degree of DSc in 1939 and Wright Baker was appointed Professor. During the war years, her work was mainly devoted to the life history of red algae which had become her main interest. Some of this work was carried out at home where her husband built experimental tanks for her with simulated tides and facilities to vary the lighting and the tem- perature. These were apparently not very successful. Later, after the war, a tank, also built by her husband, was established in the univer- sity and this seemed to work much better. The war years from 1940 to 1943 were the only years when no specimens were added to her herbarium. She was still publishing frequently, but her efforts to try to establish the life history of Porphyra presented her with a major problem as it had to many previous workers. There were many the- ories as to how this group of algae reproduced. She could gather the spores but could not get them to grow in spite of years of attempts. On one occasion a shell (probably an oyster shell although reports vary and cockle shells and egg shells were also used) was added to the medium as a possible site for the young Porphyra plants to attach them- selves. Totally unexpectedly growth did occur but not as Porphyra but as a minute red thread-like growth which invaded the shell and grew inside it for a time before coming to the surface and producing spores. Prior to this study such growths were considered to be a totally different species of seaweed called Conchocelis. Her work was pub- lished in 1949 as a very short paper of just one-hundred lines in the journal Nature. This had been referred to by Michanek (1996) as ‘100 lines which should change the world’. It certainly did so for the Japanese nori fishermen (see below). She also discovered that the spores of the ‘seaweed’ stage of Porphyra were dense and settled quickly to the sea-bed thus coming into contact with shells there. On the other hand, the spores of Conchocelis are light and float to the surface and are thus deposited on rock (and bamboo poles) at about half tide height. After the war, her work continued and a more detailed report and short paper were published on the life history of Porphyra, both in 1954.

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At about this time, Kathleen Drew was the prime mover in setting up the Phycological Society (phycology is the study of algae) and once it was formed she was, reluctantly, elected as its first president. This brought together many people working on seaweeds and also brought her a large number of new contacts many of whom became close friends. During the last four working years of her life, she produced many new studies leading to twenty-four papers some of which were pub- lished posthumously. This compared with the twenty-seven papers which had appeared in the preceding thirty years. She was also plan- ning the publication of a book but this never got beyond the very early stages. In 1957, she became ill with cancer. In April, she took a group of students to the Isle of Man, but was unwell. She died on 14 September 1957. Her scientific papers were always published under her maiden name of Drew; since her death she has generally been referred to as Drew Baker.

INFLUENCE ON JAPANESE NORI STUDIES AND INDUSTRY She never went to Japan although she was in correspondence with marine botanists there and her work had a significant influence on the development of Japanese studies of nori. Nori (Porphyra) has a long history in Japan going back at least 2000 years. It was initially thought of as a sacred medicine used to cure shark bites. In 701, a tax was imposed on its production. Areas in which it could be grown were selected and these were designated solely for nori production in a Japanese administrative code of 927. Nori was not, however, cultivated until about 1640 when it was grown in many inlets and estuaries around the coast. Even then nori was still regarded more as a medicine than a food. It was considered particularly therapeutic for skin com- plaints and the purging of evil spirits and it was customary to make a present of nori to relatives on New Year’s Day to wish them good health. In order to promote the growth of nori in the 1940s, and prob- ably much earlier, long bamboo poles were stuck in the bed of the shallow waters of the Ariake Sea and other shallow sheltered bays and estuaries around the coast of Japan so that the centres of the poles on which it was hoped that nori would grow were at about mid-tide level. This was a very hit and miss method as it depended on the poles being naturally seeded with Porphyra; sometimes there was a reasonable harvest and sometimes there was none. In the late 1940s the harvest was poor over several years. A massive typhoon in 1951 sank most of the small boats of the inshore fishing fleet so that fishing on a commercial scale was not possible for some years and there was no nori to harvest that year. The cultured pearl industry also collapsed as a result of the use of a new chemical by the rice farmers to keep their

318 KATHLEEN MARY DREW BAKER waterways open and weed-free. Unfortunately, this was washed out to sea and killed off the oysters in which the pearls were grown. The increased use of artificial fertilizers and industrial pollution added to the problems which coastal fishermen faced and many were forced to seek work outside the industry. The majority moved to mining areas and worked in the pits; those that remained were destitute. In late 1949, or early 1950, Professor Segawa Sokichi, a marine botanist at Kyu¯shu¯ University at Fukuoka, became aware through a letter from Kathleen Drew Baker of her findings. At first he found it difficult to believe her findings of the life history of Porphyra with its typical ‘seaweed’ stage and then the stage as a very different alga in the shells of dead marine molluscs. However he experimented with the Porphyra species from Japan and found that it worked. One evening over dinner at his house Professor Segawa is reported to have explained his conclusions about the life history of Porphyra to his assistant, Dr Ota, who was greatly surprised and impressed. Dr Ota who was based at the Kumamoto Prefecture Fisheries Experimental Station took over the work from Professor Segawa and, in 1953, finally succeeded in growing nori artificially. One evening, three starving fishermen dressed in rags and almost too weak to stand knocked on Dr Ota’s door and begged for help. To their surprise, and no doubt relief, they were recruited for a strange new task, that of assisting in making the laboratory findings work in practice. The initial task was to secure piles of oyster shells around the poles on which the nori grew. When the Conchocelis was about to spore the shells were recovered, ropes were drawn through the shells and suspended between poles at the mid-tide level. Two months later an excellent harvest was obtained. The method employed today is a little different; nori plants are harvested when they are sporing and are vigorously stirred in drums of seawater. This water is then used to seed shallow but long tanks the floor of which is coved with a layer of oyster shells. The water is changed periodically taking great care to avoid contamination and in about eight months the shells are covered in red patches of the Conchocelis phase. The spores are liberated by stirring the shells vigor- ously in seawater; this seawater and the final water from the tanks is used to seed nets of string or plastic by slowly drawing them through the water containing the spores. The nets are then suspended at half tide height at sea from poles; two months later the nori is harvested and usually processed to make dark brittle squares; a small proportion is also pickled while still wet. The nori industry today is far more valu- able than the in-shore fishing industry, and is probably the world’s largest marine industry offering reliable employment to thousands of people. Many billions of sheets of dried nori are made annually. Not only does this satisfy the Japanese market at a reasonable price but

319 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI allows a thriving export trade to Japanese expatriates and Japanese markets world wide. One problem was that the seas around Japan did not produce the large quantity of oyster shell required; so shells were imported mainly from South Korea. Nori is also cultured by the same method in China, Taiwan and South Korea. Kathleen Drew Baker’s discovery of the life history of Porphyra made all this possible. The work of Professor Segawa and Dr Ota in develop- ing her studies further in the field was also of great value. Japanese fishermen, in appreciation of her work, decided that a memorial to her should be put up in Japan. Money was collected and the memorial was constructed on a pleasant wooded headland, Sumiyoshi Hill, overlook- ing the Ariake Sea near Uto City. It consists of a column of polished grey granite inserted into which is a bronze portrait of Kathleen Drew. There is an inscription in English on the front with a Japanese transla- tion on the back. Close by is a stainless steel plaque bearing a Japanese explanation of the monument’s significance. Nearby are two sacred bushes. The memorial was unveiled on 14 April 1963, a day considered propitious by the priest from the local Shinto shrine. Professor Baker and Mrs Segawa were both able to attend the unveiling. It was then decided that a ceremony should be held at the memorial once a year.2 Professor Baker, shortly after the unveiling ceremony, wrote:

‘To me the ceremony will be memorable for three things, the deep knowledge and utter devotion to her work which led Kathleen Drew to unfold one of nature’s strange secrets; the skill and energy of those who applied what she had revealed; and the grace and sincerity of those who acknowledge so beautifully the debt to the one called The Mother of the Sea.’

SOURCES We were both teenagers when our mother died and while we remember her and her work we did not ask her about her life. While a number of articles have appeared about her over the years some are basically correct but are embellished with items from the author’s imagination. Ones which are correct and from which we have gleaned information are obituaries in the Phycological Bulletin, No.6, 1958, and the Guardian Newspaper. Our father wrote a moderate amount about his wife but concentrating on her discoveries rather than about her as a person. Dr Goramn Michanek wrote a chapter about her work in Prominent Phycologists of the 20th Century, published by the Phycological Society of America in 1996 edited by D.J. Garbury and M.J. Wynne. Miss M. Mama wrote an undated undergraduate dissertation about Kathleen Drew and while it contains a few inaccuracies it does include information not

320 KATHLEEN MARY DREW BAKER available elsewhere. In recent years, Kathleen Drew has come more to the fore with the opening of a gallery on Manchester Scientists at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester which features her. This led to a good short paper about her in the New Scientist magazine.

Additional references K.M. Drew, 1949, Nature, Vol. 164, p. 748 K.M. Drew, 1954, Annals of Botany, Vol. 55, p. 183 K.M. Drew, 1954, Nature, Vol. 173, p. 1243

321 33

Maruyama Masao (1914–96) and Britain: An Intellectual in Search of Liberal Democracy

RIKKI KERSTEN

Maruyama Masao

SEARCHING FOR THE SOUL OF LIBERAL DEMOCRACY On the front cover of Dorothie Storry’s biography Second Country, is a photograph of two friends standing together, both sporting spec- tacles and wide beaming smiles, arms around each other’s shoulders, the very image of friendship.1 The one wearing the kimono is Maruyama Masao (1914–96), whose dazzling intellect and penetrating analysis marks him out as one of modern Japan’s greatest thinkers. The one in the tweed coat is Richard Storry (1913–82), one of Britain’s leading historians on Japan, whose book A History of Modern Japan introduced the post-war English-speaking world to an understanding of Japanese history that was not characterized by malice or prejudice.2 Between them, these two scholars would engage in pioneering analy- sis of the past war and its implications for the future of Japan, produc- ing seminal works on Japanese fascism and nationalism. Rooted in friendship, it is important to remember that this Anglo- Japanese embrace was both personal and intellectual. When we 322 MARUYAMA MASAO (1914–96) examine the lives of these two men, we can quickly discern the common threads of their life experiences, and more importantly, iden- tify a certain ethical and spiritual affinity that informed their charac- ters. It was this essential personal bond that paved the way for Maruyama to both influence, and be influenced by, the constellation of ideas and expertise that centred on St Antony’s College, Oxford, notably the Far Eastern Studies Centre (later the Nissan Institute of Japanese Studies). Although Maruyama only visited England twice, his friendship with the Storrys was sustained through several visits the Storrys made to Japan. It was a friendship forged during animated debates between Storry and Maruyama in the pubs of England and the hot springs of Japan, and one which made a formative impression on the intellectual output of them both. Maruyama Masao is known to the international community of Japan scholars as a formidable intellectual whose name was synony- mous with democratic thought in Japan, especially during the first fifteen years following Japan’s defeat in 1945.3 When we examine Maruyama’s copious writings on this subject,4 we learn that his concept of democracy was liberal in hue, influenced chiefly by the British articulation and enactment of liberal democracy. Moreover, Maruyama’s analysis and deconstruction of fascism and nationalism as they appeared in his lifetime were informed by his understanding of the fundamental dynamics of a truly liberal democracy. It was not structures or institutions that fascinated him, but the ghost in the machine, the intangible yet powerful forces that manifested themselves as observable (but not necessarily rational) political behaviour. This was the philosophical and normative yardstick by which he judged the political history of his country, and for this reason alone it is import- ant that we understand the key factors, experiences and thought systems influencing his approach. Britain and British thought are central to this endeavour. Maruyama’s contemporaries and critics castigated him for the per- ceived extraordinary sway that ‘foreign’ ideas had on his intellectual assessment of Japanese political thought and history. For instance, one of Maruyama’s most influential works, Nihon no shiso¯ (Japanese Thought),5 drew the ire of many because of what some saw as his apparently uncritical advocacy of Western intellectual history and development as the correct model for Japan. People’s historian Irokawa Daikichi attempted to counter the impact of Maruyama’s influential thesis on Japan’s so-called Emperor System fascism by noting Maruyama’s European proclivities: ‘His is a purely European ideal that, when treated as a universal, leads to a negative view of the diverse pat- terns of traditionalization that existed in China and Japan, and for that matter, in Europe as well.’6 In effect, he was accusing Maruyama of

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finding Japan to be insufficiently European. Thus, in Maruyama we confront the apparent incongruity of an academic specialist in Japanese political thought whose intellectual orientation was supposedly utterly ‘European’. While Maruyama’s writing style in his native Japanese was Germanic in the complexity of his expression and the lengthy cir- cuitousness of his lines of thought, his heart and mind were oriented towards the task of facilitating the indigenization of liberal democracy into Japan. On the other hand, we can agree that in depicting the context for this indigenization process, Maruyama saw inadequacy and incompleteness in Japan’s achievement of modernity as the most significant obstacle to Japanese society’s ability to withstand or turn back the fascist tide in the 1930s. Through the rubric of history and modernity, Maruyama sought with his work on fascism in particular to create a valid foundation for Japan and Britain to be com- parable as like to like in their capacity to procure and nurture a liberal- democratic soul.7

PARALLEL LIVES AND INTERSECTIONS: MARUYAMA MASAO AND RICHARD STORRY Maruyama Masao was born in Osaka-fu in 1914, marking the begin- ning of a life filled with historical coincidence and what historians call ‘congruence’. Born in the year when the Great War began to tear through the fabric of Europe, Maruyama’s life thereafter was littered with turning points of global significance: he entered high school as the 1931 Manchurian Incident heralded the beginning of Japan’s aggression into China; in his second year Prime Minister Inukai was assassinated; and he completed high school as the Nazis came to power in Germany. Towards the end of his first year at university in 1935, Maruyama witnessed the intellectual witch-hunt that ensued when Minobe Tatsukichi elaborated his ‘organ theory’ of the imperial con- stitution, which led to accusations of treason. Most poignantly, Maruyama belatedly learned that his mother had died on 15 August 1945 as he absorbed the dual shocks of the aftermath of the bombing of Hiroshima (where he had been assigned to an intelligence unit) and Japan’s capitulation in the war. Maruyama’s acute sensitivity to his socio-political environment was enhanced by his upbringing in a family where his father was a noted liberal (read ‘radical’in the context of 1920s Japan) journalist, and his home a crossroads of progressive and liberal opinion in the short-lived era of Taisho¯ democracy (1912–26). When Maruyama apparently turned his back on contemporary com- mentary upon his retirement at age fifty-seven from Tokyo University, many observers saw this to be out of character.

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The date 15 August 1945 would become an intellectual touchstone in Maruyama’s writings on democracy, as he interpreted this moment as one of democratic reorientation and autonomous social renewal for Japan. He would wield this date as a weapon in the midst of the tumult surrounding the revision of the security treaty between Japan and the United States in 1960, demanding that the symbolism of 8.15 (as it was known in Japan) be activated consciously in the maelstrom of protest and political manoeuvring that was 1960. In a speech given on 24 May 1960, to a protest group that was on the brink of marching on parliament, Maruyama recalled the importance of 8.15 for those present: ‘The principles and ideals that have been scattered through- out the democratic movement in the ten or so years since the war have all at once become concentrated in our hands.’8 He believed fiercely that it was only with the historical perspective of defeat and its intrin- sic democratic opportunity that those engaged in popular protest could comprehend fully the historical significance of their protest, namely as the time when the people of Japan grasped the democratic opportunity of autonomous decision-making and action in the face of the government’s authoritarian demeanour and indifference. It was eerily significant that Maruyama’s own death also occurred on that date of 8.15 in 1996. We pause for thought when we realize that news of his death was kept quiet for three days at his own request; Maruyama hated being extolled as what he disparagingly referred to as ‘The Maruyama’, and he knew that his ideas continued to attract con- troversy, including unpleasant attention from the radical right, even at the end of his life. The manner of his passing and his anticipation of probable reactions to it speak of an aching insufficiency in the fulfilment of Maruyama’s democratic ideal in post-war Japan, one that his written works are left to confront minus the spark and intensity of his personal presence. War was a defining experience for both Maruyama and Storry, and it was unquestionably a vital element that drew them together. Storry had been called up late, and like Maruyama, ended up performing an intelligence function. Storry was a step ahead of Maruyama though, in that he had taken the opportunity to teach in Japan before the out- break of war.9 Storry thus had had the chance to see for himself the world that Maruyama and his generation were about to lose. Maruyama was called up late in 1944 by virtue of his elite status as a junior academic at Tokyo Imperial University, where he had enrolled in the elite Faculty of Law in 1934, later becoming an assistant pro- fessor and then professor. His mentor and supervisor, Nanbara Shigeru (1889–1974), encouraged Maruyama to specialize in the history of political thought in Japan. In retrospect, it is ironic that Maruyama felt such an intense reluctance to focus on his own country’s thought,

325 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI because he felt there was so much to read in the worlds of German and French philosophy.10 In the end it was his attention to his nation’s political ideas that defined him as well as his country. What most astonishes people who encounter Maruyama’s work is the fact that his most spectacular essay, ‘The logic and psychology of ultra nationalism’,11 was written in the immediate aftermath of Maruyama’s personal experience of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. Intensely self-critical and highly original in its search for a political pathology for wartime Japan, Maruyama made his country- folk sit up and engage in critical questioning of their country with his opening query: ‘What was the main ideological factor that kept the Japanese people in slavery for so long and that finally drove them to embark on a war against the rest of the world?’12 Like Maruyama, Storry would upon repatriation enter the academic world, similarly inspired by his fascination with explaining Japan’s war, to research and write a study of Japanese nationalism in the 1930s.13 We should take note that both men, having lived war and then painstakingly analysed it, held a common fear that fascism was not necessarily a phenomenon of the past for Japan. Maruyama and Storry shared both a life experience and a subject that would drive their research and teaching for the rest of their lives. Moreover, they did so with an intensity and passion that their con- temporaries and acquaintances frequently commented upon.14 This unity of purpose and personality drew them together again in 1962, when Maruyama embarked on his first trip abroad and went as a senior associate member to St Antony’s College and the Far Eastern Studies Centre, where Storry awaited him.

MARUYAMA AT OXFORD Maruyama two visits to Oxford, in 1962 and in 1975, came at crucial times in his career and his intellectual production. The timing of these visits from the perspective of Maruyama’s ideas makes us pay particu- lar attention to his Oxford experiences. The Maruyama that appeared in Oxford during what Dorothie Storry described as ‘the coldest winter of the century’in October 1962 was at the height of his fame. He had been at the fulcrum of public intellectual activism in Japan since 1946, featuring in groups such as the Seinen Bunka Kaigi (Young Person’s Culture Conference), Shiso¯ no Kagaku Kenkyu¯kai (Science of Thought Research Group), the Heidankai (Peace Problems Discussions Group), and the movement against the revision of the Japan-US security treaty in 1960. Following on from his Logic and Psychology essay, Maruyama had penned several provocative analyses of Japan’s fascism, combining his articulation of a

326 MARUYAMA MASAO (1914–96) post-war democratic ethic with insights into its fascist antithesis. His work Japanese Thought would appear in a popular format in 1961, becoming a catalyst for intense debate concerning Japan’s modernity, and Maruyama’s ‘European’ fixation. A sign of his status by the early 1960s was his invitation as a visiting professor to Harvard University in October 1961, from where he toured Europe over the summer of 1962 before settling in for Michaelmas term at St Antony’s College. It is no mere coincidence that the first English translation of his work was his essay collection Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, which appeared under the imprimatur of Oxford University Press. In his introduction to this edition (dateline St Antony’s College), Maruyama notes his embarrassment at ‘writing a preface for a reading public whom he never anticipated when writing these essays, and whose cultural tradition has been very different from his own’.15 He also invited the reader to share the conundrum confronted by Japan’s post-war intellectuals such as himself, who, in 1945, looked back at recent history and wondered how they who ‘believed themselves more familiar with Western than with Japanese or Asian tradition’could pos- sibly have fallen for the distorted mythology of Imperial Japan. Interestingly, he credits his father with setting him an example by refusing to entertain ‘any attempt to order the intricate detail of the events of history into the conceptual straitjacket of any grand theory’. He concludes with a telling statement concerning his starting point for the appraisal of liberalism and its spirit: ‘[the fact that] the acting indi- vidual was the ultimate reality in society seemed to [my father] a self- evident truth’. He goes on to admit that he had always been most attracted by those in the middle ground between German ‘historicism’ and English ‘empiricism’.16 At last we begin to understand the sub- stance of Maruyama’s ‘Europe’. We understand the locus of Britain still better when we elaborate Maruyama’s views on liberalism. While at Oxford on this first visit Maruyama had extensive conversations with, amongst others, Isaiah Berlin, Christopher Hill, Bill Deakin, James Joll and, of course, numerous debates with his friend Dick Storry. The significance of British political thought for Maruyama’s work is manifested most strongly in Maruyama’s conception of autonomy as the linchpin of freedom.17 Echoes of Berlin’s Four Essays on Liberty appear repeatedly in Maruyama’s work in the first couple of post-war decades, notably in his writings on modernity and modernization in the 1950s. The idea of the individual as focal point, autonomous in terms of value- definition and self-determination, likewise echoes John Locke in delineating the meaning of ‘freedom’ or ‘liberty’. Maruyama invoked the active interpretation of freedom in his own reformulation of Locke, saying freedom is more than the mere lack of restraint, but is

327 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI instead ‘the ability reasonably to decide for oneself’. The emergence of a new normative consciousness was the prerequisite in Maruyama’s view for the development of the kind of modern consciousness where freedom could be accorded its true worth at the foundation of society. Active autonomy, the kind needed in post-war Japan, depended on the desire of individuals to act on the basis of values that were not imposed from above or from outside.18 It is this intellectual dimension of Maruyama’s work that ties him most closely to a British as opposed to a broadly ‘European’ perspective on liberalism and liberal democracy. By the time Maruyama visited Oxford again in May and June of 1975, his situation had altered dramatically. Not only had he retired from the University of Tokyo, but he had done so in the aftermath of the deeply traumatic university disturbances of 1968–69. Like several other countries (we think immediately of the barricades in Paris and the campus at Berkeley in California), at the end of the 1960s Tokyo became an epicentre of violent, anti-establishment protest led princi- pally by students. By then, Maruyama represented everything that carried the label ‘Establishment’: he was a distinguished professor at the most prestigious faculty in the most elite university in Japan. His post-war intellectual influence and reputation in Japanese society and academe rebounded on him with a vengeance, as he personally became the target of mob attacks, intimidation and physical bullying at the hands of students in the lecture room. Graffiti mocked him as he entered the hallowed blue gates of Tokyo University’s Hongo campus, and he was so concerned that mobs would desecrate the archives of the Historiographical Institute that he spent several nights sleeping in the Institute’s basement. In an infamous confrontation with students at the entrance to the Law Faculty, he asked the helmeted mob whether they intended to do what even the fascists in wartime Japan had never attempted. His rage upon discovering after the barri- cade lifted that his books and his study had been ransacked speaks of his bewilderment at what post-war Japan had become.19 The strain of these events worsened what had always been a fragile state of health for Maruyama. His early retirement in 1971 was officially on medical grounds, and Maruyama spent many months post-retirement recuperating at home. During this time, Maruyama entered wholeheartedly into what many observers perceived as a com- pletely new research direction. No longer overtly concerned with the contemporary world, Maruyama apparently ‘retreated’ to the distant past of Japanese political thought, embarking on research into the ‘ancient layers’ (koso¯) or ‘basso ostinato’ of Japanese historical culture. While commentators continue to debate Maruyama’s ‘change of direction’, we can also discern essential continuity. Maruyama was trying to identify and deconstruct the intellectual currents, habits and

328 MARUYAMA MASAO (1914–96) thought patterns that influenced the process of indigenization of imported thought in Japan. This had been the underlying enquiry behind his controversial 1961 book Japanese Thought. Now retired, somewhat shell-shocked and intellectually rejuvenated, Maruyama returned to Oxford to share his new research with his British colleagues. Maruyama presented his Oxford seminar on ‘The structure of mat- surigoto: the basso ostinato of Japanese political life’ at the Far Eastern Studies Centre, where Dick Storry was now Director. This lecture would subsequently become the lead contribution to the festschrift for Storry.20 This remains the only English translation of Maruyama’s work on ‘deep layers’, and its presentation to a British audience occurred at a time when Maruyama was exploring and outlining this new research. Once again, the Oxford experience would be intellec- tually pivotal to Maruyama’s scholarly development. In his presentation, Maruyama defined the basso ostinato as the recur- rent pattern of indigenizing and in the process modifying imported thought systems, meaning ‘the original is transformed, but in a pre- dictable way’.21 Through the analysis of ancient political terminology, Maruyama attempted to reveal a ‘structure of political consciousness in ancient Japan’,22 with the implicit premise that this structure could help explain political thought in Japanese history more generally. His earlier insightful studies into the pathology of ultra-nationalism and fascism found an echo here too, as Maruyama’s etymological analysis identified inherent understandings of power relations embedded in ancient political terminology. His finding that ‘in ancient Japan gov- ernment was defined not so much in terms of the rulers, as in terms of the subordinates’23 underlined his belief that power is essentially relational, and those removed from it possess their own peculiar responsibility for how they allow it to be packaged, legitimized and exercised. Effectively, those removed from power are complicit in its utility. Once more we see threads of consistency here, when we recall Maruyama’s stark assessment in 1956 of the responsibility that accrued to the ordinary people of Japan for ‘welcoming’ the wartime fascist regime: ‘Can people absolve themselves from the moral responsibility of having followed fascism?’24 Maruyama drew attention to the significance of the ‘bass note’ that emanates from this conclusion, namely that it demonstrated a separa- tion between the locus of political power and political legitimacy. We come full circle, to his first post-war essay on ultra-nationalism, when we read that in Maruyama’s view ‘these bass notes. . .were bound to obscure the locus of ultimate responsibility concerning matters gov- ernmental’.25 His concluding words were a clarion call to democratic activism and autonomy: ‘the one who offers service, is the actual

329 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI wielder of power’.26 The centrality of the autonomous individual as a political actor outside of politics remained at the centre of Maruyama’s own system of thought. But how did Maruyama ‘indigenize’ this notion? Many would assume that individualism is an essentially Western conception. Maruyama frequently lamented the nature of Japan’s fascism and ultra-nationalism as a condition that involved the ethical and spiritual subjugation, even the absorption, of the individ- ual into the State. Japan’s fascism is often depicted as particularistic and culture-bound to such a degree that arguments continue to rage in academia over whether ‘Emperor system fascism’ can be compared with the fascisms of Europe. Maruyama may have written of thought and behaviour patterns that were culturally embedded, but he never doubted the essential universality of liberal democracy and its enemy. To come closest to his thought concerning liberal autonomy and the individual, we need to consider Maruyama’s writings on fascism.

FASCISM AND THE UNIVERSALITY OF LIBERALISM In his writings on fascism, Maruyama focused on invisible forces, such as thought, spirit and psychology, which had facilitated the fusion of self and state. While the timing, pace and manifestation of this phe- nomenon may have differed with each national and historical context, for him the reality of this common intangible dynamic remained. To argue that Japan’s fascism was a culturally-determined, alien essence that was not amenable to comparison with European versions was unthinkable for Maruyama. The reason for this is that he saw the fascist dynamic as the antithesis of the liberal democratic one based on indi- vidual autonomy. If fascism wasn’t universal, then neither was the spirit of liberal democracy. This is what drove Maruyama to restate in many essays why the superficial structures and institutions of fascism did not constitute the full story of fascism as a movement. In The ideology and dynamics of Japanese fascism,27 Maruyama enu- merated the things that seemed to set Japanese fascism apart from those in Europe. The ideology of the ‘family state’ centred on the Emperor, the idealization of agrarianism as something ‘Japanese’ as opposed to the grasping opportunism and urban-centred capitalism of Europe, and the mission to liberate Asia from Western imperialism painted a very particularistic picture. Yet all of these aspects could also be taken as opportunistic devices to underscore Japanese cultural exceptional- ism and supremacy per se, and not as a fundamentally different polit- ical beast. Japan’s fascism did differ in the momentum behind it, admitted Maruyama, but the lack of a deified leader and a mass-based party such as with Nazism did not deny the label of fascism to Japan. Instead, Maruyama argued that Japanese fascism emanated ‘from

330 MARUYAMA MASAO (1914–96) above’ rather than ‘from below’. This was more a consequence of the relative strength and maturation of democracy and modernity in each society, than of cultural predilection. Regardless of the disparity in attributes, argued Maruyama, what mattered in the end was that the power of fascism lay in its ability spiritually to inspire, direct and control society. Instead of attributes, Maruyama therefore looked for the patterns of ‘fascization’ in society. Maruyama urged his readers not to categorize fascism in a particu- laristic manner:

It is dangerous to think in a fixed manner of fascism as something specific to a certain period in history or to a particular region. . .we should not just look at the system or social forms taken by monopoly capital or the military or a right wing political party, but we should also look at the political function of fascism and the process by which it is universalized.28

When an authoritarian, totalitarian regime was engaged in closing the social pathways that nurtured alternative collectives and autonomous value definition, it was engaged in the business of fascization. The result, to use Maruyama’s terminology, was the ‘cementation’ of society into an amorphous, compliant monolith. In Maruyama’s view, it had been England’s happy historical destiny to develop modern nationalism concurrently with the development of democracy. In place of the fusion of self and state that occurred in Japan’s extreme manifestation of nationalism, this meant that English nationalism ‘did not appear as a conceptual opposite to individualism and universalism, rather it fused somewhat naturally with them’.29 Maruyama saw in this ‘healthy’concurrence of democracy and nation- alism an aspiration for post-war Japan. This only made sense if liberal autonomy, like its opposite fascism, could be accepted as a universal force, an attainable ideal, and an accessible identity.

THE JOY OF ARGUMENT After his sojourn in Oxford, Maruyama went as a visiting scholar to Princeton before returning to Japan. It would be his last trip abroad. Despite his precarious health, Maruyama would produce some significant works in his final years, including a three-volume study of Fukuzawa Yukichi’s Bummeiron no gairyaku (An Outline of a Theory of Civilization), and a study of political compliance and resistance, Chu¯sei to Hangyaku (Loyalty and Rebellion). He also grabbed the opportunity to debate with great thinkers of his era such as Claude Levi-Strauss, Michel Foucault and Ralph Dahrendorf. Even the

331 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI oncologists who treated Maruyama’s liver cancer had to joust with his feisty intellect, as he tried single-handedly to overturn the Japanese taboo on informing cancer patients about the actual nature of their condition. True to character, Maruyama would have none of it. At the end of his life, Maruyama turned his hand to editing and correcting the proofs for his Collected Works (he refused to allow them to be called ‘Complete Works’). While his editors and former students, many of them now senior academic figures in their own right, may have rued his insistence on checking and arguing the fine details of each chapter in each volume, I have no doubt that they each will have mourned the silence that accompanied his passing.

332 ENVOI

34

The Beatles in Japan 1966

The Beatles arriving in Japan

A report on the Daiwa Foundation’s Daiwa House event marking the 40th anniversary of the Beatles visit to Japan, comprising a talk by GORDON DANIELS and an exhibition of photographs by ROBERT WHITAKER

IN NOVEMBER 2006, Daiwa Foundation Japan House in London held an exhibition of photographs of the visit by the Beatles to Japan in 1966 by Robert Whitaker, their official photographer. This marked the fortieth anniversary of the visit. More than a hundred Beatles fans and people interested in modern Japan attended the opening of the exhibition. It began with a talk by Gordon Daniels, reader emeritus in Japanese history at the University of Sheffield, on the scene in Japan in 1966. Robert Whitaker then gave an account of the visit as it had appeared to him as their official photographer. Gordon Daniels explained that he had gone to Japan in 1965 to study Japanese for a year at the International Christian University. He recalled the left-wing atmosphere at Japanese universities at that time when the Vietnam War remained a highly controversial issue and led to continuing street protests. Japan had suffered three disastrous airliner crashes in 1966; this had forced the authorities to improve landing facilities and plans to build what became Narita International Airport were made. The Japanese standard of living was still relatively low and although there had been some spectacular achievements, not least the

333 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI bullet train and the successful Tokyo Olympics of 1964, the Japanese infrastructure remained inadequate. Gordon Daniels drew attention to a despatch from Dudley Cheke, the British Chargé d’Affaires at the time of the visit, which gave an interesting account of the visit (see below). Daniels had been amused to read some comments on the despatch by Foreign Office officials. The Far Eastern Department thought the despatch worth printing for general circulation but did not recommend this because of a cost- cutting economy drive. However, when the despatch was submitted to the assistant-under secretary Arthur de la Mare, he overruled the department and the despatch was printed. Arthur de la Mare com- mented that there were still people in Whitehall who had out-dated opinions about the Japanese and did not recognize that Japanese were human beings like other people. Dudley Cheke had contributed a signed message in English and Japanese to the glossy programme for the group’s concerts. Cheke wrote:

There is no need to introduce the Beatles. They have already achieved a fame, which is world wide. Records and films have made them and their music very familiar in this country and this visit, so eagerly awaited, will bring unbounded pleasure to their many fans. I have great pleasure in welcoming the Beatles to Japan. British ‘pop’ music is enjoying an unprecedented boom throughout the world. For this success the Beatles must take much of the credit. We have had the Gay Nineties and the Roaring Twenties. Surely the sixties will for ever be remembered as the Beatles’ decade. I wish the Beatles a most successful and enjoyable visit to Japan.

Daniels noted that while the embassy had given the visit a warm welcome and reported fully on it, E.W.F. Tomlin, the British Council representative at the time, had merely recorded that the Beatles had performed in Tokyo. Daniels explained that the Beatles had refused an invitation to the British embassy, because of their unfortunate experience at a party at the British embassy in Washington, when they had been forced to give large numbers of autographs and Ringo Starr had had a lock cut from his hair by a hysterical fan. Robert (Bob) Whitaker recalled that he had flown ‘with the Beatles to Tokyo for the group’s one and only series of concerts in Japan.’ It was to be the Beatles’ penultimate tour. They had flown to Tokyo by Japan Air Lines. The trans-Siberian route had not yet opened and they had had to go via the polar route involving a stop in Anchorage, There they had been delayed as Tokyo airport (Haneda) had been temporar- ily closed by a typhoon. The Beatles had enjoyed the luxury comforts

334 THE BEATLES IN JAPAN 1966 provided by JAL and were therefore in a relaxed mood on their arrival, though inevitably jet lagged. They did not realize that the mobs of fans, who were awaiting them, would be so overwhelming. On arrival in Tokyo in the early morning they were whisked away from the airport in large limousines and the only memorable view which they had of Tokyo was of the sun rising over Tokyo bay. They were driven to the Tokyo Hilton (later the Capital Tokyu hotel) and escorted to their luxury suites. The only time they left the hotel was to go to the Budo¯kan for their concerts and to go out to the airport for their depar- ture. Between their performances at the Budo¯kan they were ‘incar- cerated for three days and nights, for their own safety’ in their hotel. Bob wrote:

They were anxious to take back souvenirs of Japan and all manners of tradesmen were shown into their rooms with objects for the Beatles to buy. While confined there they embarked on a unique collaboration. They ordered up paints and brushes, each too a corner of a large sheet of Japanese hand-made paper, and together they worked on a four-man painting. As they painted, the acetate of Revolver played constantly; they lis- tened and sang along to it, deciding on the final positioning of the tracks on the album, which was released six weeks later.

Bob Whitaker commenting on the picture, which they had painted, said that; ‘Other than their music this painting was the only creative enterprise I saw the Beatles undertake as a group. I had never seen them so happy – no drink, no drugs, no girls – just working together with no distractions.’ The picture was given to a Japanese charity, which had later sold it. Bob thought it sad that the Beatles had no chance of savouring Japanese life as they would have liked. They could not even get out to visit the Shinto shrine next to the hotel or to visit a Japanese department store, although John Lennon had managed to get out incognito on one occasion and buy a few antiques. When this photograph appeared the Japanese caption read: ‘John has arrived. For this reason there are yells and tears flow in torrents’. The Beatles’ reception at the Budo¯kan had indeed been rapturous. Too rapturous perhaps as Bob Whitaker noted that, when he heard the tapes, the Beatles seemed because of the hubbub to be singing out of tune. His photographs leading up to, and during, the concerts ‘brilliantly encapsulate the pace and excitement of a Beatles gig, and highlight the expectations and hysteria their performances generated.’1

335 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI Report from the British Embassy, Tokyo, on the Beatles visit DUDLEY CHEKE

336 THE BEATLES IN JAPAN 1966

337 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

338 THE BEATLES IN JAPAN 1966

339 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

340 THE BEATLES IN JAPAN 1966

341 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

342 APPENDIX Course of the Nissan Negotiation 1980–84

ROBIN MOUNTFIELD

EARLY HISTORY As early as 1972, there were rumours that Nissan wanted to establish a car and truck assembly plant, in the Irish Republic, and Ron Dearing (then the DTI’s Director in the North East and later Lord Dearing) tried to persuade DTI head- quarters to seek to deflect to this to Teesside. Early in January 1973, a submission was made to DTI Ministers on the general subject of Japanese investment in the UK, noting that the previous Secretary of State (John Davies) had favoured not going out of the way to encourage Japanese investment, and comparing this with the view of the present Secretary of State (Peter Walker) who was in favour of inward investment. The submission noted that the Japanese generally wanted to get an EEC base for selling in EEC countries, but that they were deterred by cul- tural barriers. The submission went on to note that Nissan were interested in establishing EEC capacity to manufacture 200,000 cars a year, and that both the Irish Republic and Belgium had been mentioned as possible locations. If such a plant were to be established in the EEC, it would be to the UK’s economic advan- tage to have such a plant here, exporting to other EEC countries, rather than to see it established elsewhere and exporting to the UK. On the other hand, it noted that labour relations in the United Kingdom might deter Japanese companies, especially in the motor industry. Moreover, there was likely to be a strong reac- tion from UK manufacturers, trade unions and the public at large and there was likely to be strong criticism if it were known that the Government had gone out of its way to attract such investment. The discussion was complicated by some talks at that time between Nissan and BLMC (later renamed British Leyland) about potential collaboration in sea transport and collaboration on marketing outside the UK. These talks came to nothing; and the idea of pursuing a poten- tial Nissan investment was also dropped. In late 1976, Sir Peter Thornton (the Permanent Secretary of the Department of Trade) met the Chairman of Nissan, apparently during a routine visit to Tokyo. He reported that Nissan were planning a major initiative to explore the scope for buying British motor components. This was thought sufficiently important to be reported by the Secretary of State to the Prime Minister, but nothing appears to have come of it. A more significant contact took place in November 1977, when Ken Binning, the Department of Industry (DoI) Under-Secretary in charge of inward invest- ment policy, had dinner in Tokyo with Sir Charles Villiers, the Chairman of the

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British Steel Corporation, and Masataka Okuma, the Nissan Executive Vice President in charge of exports. Okuma said the British Government should leave any question of restriction of car imports to the two trade associations, JAMA and the SMMT; the Government was trying to protect an inefficient British Leyland and to correct the Japanese/British trade imbalance. He went on to say that the volume of Japanese car sales in Europe was still insufficient to justify local manu- facture, but that some Japanese car manufacturers might nevertheless be tempted to respond to economic and political pressure by beginning manufacture in Europe. If that happened, Nissan would have to consider responding. However, the appalling record of the UK in car assembly made it unlikely that any such plant would be created here. In reporting this, Binning commented that the pos- sibility of Japanese car investment elsewhere would need to be watched carefully; it was not too soon to think about the response: ‘Do we, for example, make a great effort to attract them to the UK, with the obvious political consequences, or will we be content to try, in competition with our European counterparts, to become suppliers to the Japanese assembly industry?’. It should be noted that the question of voluntary restraint was topical at this time. In September 1977, talks between the SMMT and JAMA led to a joint communique which obliquely accepted the reality of voluntary restraint: JAMA ‘expressed the view that there will be no possibility of any significant rise in the share of Japanese made cars in the UK this year. . . .SMMT explained that the British motor industry is still in the stage of reconstruction and is confronted with various difficulties, on which JAMA expressed its understanding’.

1980 Early in 1980, Mr Brocklebank-Fowler MP reported to Sir Keith Joseph, the Secretary of State for Industry, that Nissan were interested in acquiring BL’s plant at Seneffe in Belgium: it was known that Seneffe was due to be closed as part of BL’s reconstruction. Mr Brocklebank-Fowler appears to have been retained as an adviser to Datsun UK, the independent company owned by Mr Octav Botnar which had exclusive distribution rights for Nissan cars in the UK. Mr Botnar was keen to increase the volume of cars he could sell, and saw investment in the UK as a particularly desirable objective given the voluntary restraint arrangements limiting imports of Japanese cars (though no doubt imports from Seneffe would have met his objective). In February 1980, Mr Brocklebank-Fowler showed Keith Joseph a letter from Okuma about visit he had paid to Japan with Botnar. In this, Okuma said ‘among other things, one of the key issues you raised was whether our company is prepared to study the possibility to extend, if requested, some kind of assistance to help restore the Austin-Morris Ltd of British Leyland. In answer to your question, I informed you as you would recall that our company is most willing to conduct such a study.’ It should be remembered that at this time BL was on its knees; Nissan’s interests in helping to reconstruct the company was probably with an eye to a potential takeover of some or all of the company if it collapsed, as an entry point into a European market bedevilled by import restraints. It should also be remembered that at this time BL was negotiating a deal 344 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 with Honda which later led to a major collaboration, ended only when BL was sold to BMW some years later. Brocklebank-Fowler was referred by the DoI to the Chairman of BL, Michael Edwardes, but Richard Bullock, the DoI Deputy Secretary, noted that since BL was engaged with Honda, a Nissan link was unlikely. In April, John Cammell (an Assistant Secretary in DoI’s Vehicle Division) was invited to visit Datsun UK. Botnar told him that Nissan were anxious to invest in the UK, but were politically naive and needed an invitation from HMG. Cammell said that HMG’s general policy was to welcome inward investment on the right terms, and that in this case such a welcome would probably depend on the use of UK components. It would be for Nissan to approach HMG with a concrete pro- posal, after which the DoI would be ready for informal discussion at the shortest possible notice. Botnar undertook to pass this message on to Nissan. Cammell’s position does not appear to have been based on Ministerial consideration of a specific possibility, but was an on-the-spot response to a question about inward investment. Whether it was interpreted in this way is a different matter. Datsun UK telephoned a week or two later to say they had had a response from Okuma to this report, saying that he was ‘highly interested’. DoI were sent a copy of a letter from Okuma proposing that HMG and Botnar should collaborate to prepare an analysis of the British car industry scene for Nissan: Okuma wrote that ‘in any case our concrete proposal to your government will be made only after this analysis is completed on our part’. Nissan were ‘highly interested. . .[and] feel quite encouraged to learn from you that your Government is prepared to listen to us if we submit our proposal in some concrete form’. Ken Binning told the Secretary of State in the middle of May 1980 that the Brocklebank-Fowler proposal had faded away, but that ‘we are left with the pos- sibility that Nissan may still be interested in UK vehicle assembly as a way round the voluntary restraint arrangements. . . the signal in this case has come through an intermediary who is by no means an uninterested party – Datsun UK’. He proposed to make informal contact with Nissan to get a clearer assessment of their intentions, through a routine visit Robin Hope, the director of the Invest in Britain Bureau, was due to pay to Japan in June. Binning was sceptical whether anything would come of it, given that Nissan were negotiating a potential col- laboration with Alfa-Romeo and a potential acquisition of Motor Iberica in Spain, but there was no harm in seeing whether Nissan had anything in mind. Robin Hope visited Tokyo at the end of June, and paid a call on Nissan expect- ing to be received at low level. Unexpectedly he was received by Okuma, together with a Managing Director, Kume. It was clear, he reported, that Nissan wanted to demonstrate a welcome for the visit. Okuma said that the Alfa-Romeo deal would be only a 50/50 collaboration, that it still faced Italian doubts and French opposition, and in any case would be of small volume. The Spanish acquisition, of 36% of Motor Iberica, was only for commercial vehicles. As regards the UK, Okuma asked for an HMG view of potential investment by Nissan, mentioning the initial hostility to Sony’s investment which had turned later to warm approval, even a Queen’s Award for Exports. More directly, he asked why HMG would back both a BL recovery and an investment by Nissan, to which Hope responded

345 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI that at 56%, car imports were at an unhealthy level. HMG wanted both a re- invigorated BL, on which there were good signs, and new inward investment. Okuma asked about the form of investment that HMG would favour; Hope responded that the UK had five Japanese television manufacturers, some of them joint venture and some not – that was a matter for the companies. Okuma then mentioned potential EEC opposition: would HMG respond robustly, as distinct from the weak Italian attitude? Would a single union be possible? On the latter, Hope mentioned this had been arranged for NSK, YKK and Sony. Okuma then mentioned positive points in favour of the UK investment – North Sea oil, a big market, a strong components sector, and a big EEC member capable of resisting opposition. ‘In his view it was a highly suitable location for Nissan to setup manu- facture within the EEC.’ Finally, he asked for more details of investment incen- tives, and said that Nissan might want to send a small team to London. In the event, Okuma himself came to London in July 1980. Within the Department, some favoured an unequivocal welcome; others were concerned about the impact on BL. The Embassy in Tokyo stressed the need to avoid ‘another Hitachi’ – i.e. an initial welcome followed by difficulties. Okuma sought meetings with the Minister of State, Lord Trenchard, and with Richard Bullock. Briefing for these meetings suggested that the proposal raised complex issues: the impact on BL, and on the components sector who were an important part of the Government’s reason for supporting BL; what would happen if Nissan went else- where in the EEC; the European reaction to a Trojan horse, and the risk of pre- cipitating anti-Japanese measures by the EEC; and the effects on employment, trade, etc. It was noted that Nissan were still negotiating a potential deal with BL about Seneffe. On BL, it was noted that the Prime Minister would expect that in any serious discussion about entry to the UK the question should be raised whether Nissan would be interested in a major deal involving BL. But the brief urged that they should be raised very delicately, and not so insistently as to imply that was what we wanted, since such a deal would raise more problems than a greenfield site: it should be raised ‘in a spirit of ground clearing rather than in a spirit of invitation’. As to Nissan’s broad approach, Nissan had previously been regarded as naive in international matters (a view ascribed to the Boston Consulting Group), but were now very interested: a recent reorganization had concentrated Nissan’s overseas operations under Okuma, and the possibility of a UK investment ‘arguably fits into this pattern of greater overseas orientation’. As for the line to be taken with Nissan, it was proposed that we should respond that we were seriously interested in the possibility of investment by Nissan, but that we needed to know more about it. We should extract as much information as possible on what they had in mind, as regards timing, scale, model range, whether collaboration or a stand-alone investment was intended, whether it should be by greenfield development or by takeover; the effect on the existing imports by Datsun UK; whether Nissan were willing to enter into agreements on local content, etc. HMG should consider what Nissan told them and offer to respond within a couple of months. At the meetings, Okuma made it clear that Nissan had not made a decision but were certainly interested in investment in the EEC, and the UK was certainly the

346 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 front runner. It would take three months to decide whether to proceed to a detailed study of UK options (a concept that we interpreted as the stage at which a decision in principle would have been reached). The UK side placed emphasis on local content as being a condition of a positive UK and EEC response. Okuma talked of eventually reaching 120,000 cars a year; he was anxious that a plant’s output should be seen as of EEC origin, but it would nevertheless be necessary to import power-trains, etc. initially. Okuma expressed a preference for a greenfield site. In the margins of the meeting, Botnar urged Richard Bullock to press for a bigger plant. Keith Joseph reported to the Prime Minister early in August. He said we should look at the proposal pragmatically, but noted that there were other Japanese expressions of interest in the UK, notably the suggestion that Toyota and Aston Martin should jointly acquire BL’s MG facility at Abingdon as the first stage of a larger operation. The Prime Minister responded that ‘she agrees very strongly about the need to use an agreed proportion of British components in any assem- bly operation in this country’. Richard Bullock wrote to Okuma enclosing a record of the meeting, and sending information about employment and labour relations policies which Okuma had asked for. He offered to visit Tokyo if that would be helpful, and offered some initial thoughts on local content saying that 40–50% was a minimum to establish EEC origin (Cammell wrote later in August to Okuma explaining that this was a matter of definition, and that 60% was really a minimum for EEC origin purposes) . In September Okuma sent a message inviting Richard Bullock to visit Tokyo. There is a gap in the files at this point, until early January 1981. My recollec- tion is the Richard Bullock did indeed visit Tokyo and came back with the bones of the proposal which was much more favourable than any of us had expected: a 200,000 unit plant starting at 60% local content and rising to 80%. How Richard Bullock achieved this is not clear: nor, in the light of subsequent events, whether Nissan realized what they were letting themselves in for. It may be that they con- ceived this as no more than a rough description of the kind of plant that they might conceivably be interested in. But between September and the Parliamentary announcement that followed in January 1981, they came to accept a public state- ment that implied at least a provisional commitment, and from which any with- drawal would imply a loss of face.

JANUARY 1981: THE INITIAL STATEMENT The pace was now accelerating. On 21 January, Jim Prior, the Secretary of State for Employment, accompanied by Norman Tebbit, held a meeting on ‘Privy Councillor terms’ (i.e. in strict and trusted confidence) to tell Len Murray, the General Secretary of the TUC, of the negotiations and the impending announce- ment. Len Murray asked questions about the displacement effects, but gave his general view that Japanese investment should be welcomed. The announcement was now planned for 29 January, and Okuma, accom- panied by Kume, arrived for final discussions ahead of the announcement. 347 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Okuma met the Secretary of State (Keith Joseph) and Norman Tebbit on 27 January, the day following the announcement in the House of Commons of substantial further financial assistance for British Leyland – a decision which Conservative Ministers had found much less palatable. Okuma questioned whether, in the light of this continued support for British Leyland, there was room for the additional production envisaged by Nissan; Tebbit responded that there was plenty of room: UK production had been falling for many years – car production in 1980 had been 924,000, the lowest for twenty-three years and half the 1972 level. At a meeting the following day with me, Okuma’s aide Mihara expressed the hope that emphasis could be put on the fact that Nissan were conducting a fea- sibility study (i.e. not announcing a go-ahead), because many in Japanese business circles thought that Nissan had ‘gone crazy’ about overseas activities. He also said that ‘there was a body of opinion within the company opposed to the UK venture, with particular reference to ‘the English disease’, but that Ishihara and Okuma were personally committed. The announcement was made in an oral statement in the House of Commons by Norman Tebbit (then Minister of State in the Department of Industry) on 29 January; little hostility was evident. The statement said that Nissan had approached HMG to seek its views on the company’s intention, subject to a fea- sibility study, to establish a substantial car manufacturing operation in the UK, and that the Government warmly welcomed the proposal. The proposal was to build, in a Development Area or Special Development Area, a plant reaching 200,000 units by 1986, with local content ‘involving UK and other EEC suppliers’ starting at 60% with the objective of increasing this to 80% ‘as soon as practicable after full production’. Both parties were confident of a high level of exports. Matters of special importance in reaching a decision after the feasibility study would be Nissan’s judgment of the competitiveness of local component manufacturers, and the prospects of establishing a good structure for industrial relations. More revealing, perhaps, was a press conference which followed immediately afterwards. Norman Tebbit introduced Okuma as the ‘guiding spirit’ of the pro- posal, along with his own predecessor Lord Trenchard (who to the best of my knowledge had very little to do with it). Questions were asked about location, about the level of grants and about local content. Okuma said ‘we are going to build a manufacturing plant in Britain’ (answering the suggestion that they would be merely assembling imported parts) and that therefore local content level would be substantial, ‘around 60%, eventually reaching 80% when perfected’. When asked why Nissan had chosen Britain, he mentioned the Datsun dealer network and the ‘good components industry’; and, revealingly, he said that ‘besides, Japan and United Kingdom have excellent historical relationships’ (a point which recurred often in subsequent negotiations and which I came to believe was indeed an important part of Nissan’s motivation). ‘Also I have confidence in the long- term economic strength of the UK, but also I would like to emphasize that we have been mostly welcomed by the British public and it is right to say that we should go to places where we are welcome.’ ‘Grant is not the major reason for us to choose the UK’; he stressed again the importance of the British Government

348 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 welcome, which is why they had approached us before announcing the feasibil- ity study. Before the statement was made, I and others notified the foreign owned assem- blers and the major component manufacturers of the impending announcement. Most were philosophical, but strong objections were raised, and would continue to be argued for many months thereafter, by Sam Toy of Ford and Sir Bernard Scott of Lucas, the latter representing also the Society of Motor Manufacturers (though officials of the SMMT made plain to me privately that they thought Scott had gone overboard in his opposition to the project: that was certainly our view).

FEBRUARY–AUGUST 1981 Early in February, Sir Hugh Cortazzi (Ambassador in Tokyo) informed me that Mr Kawai, a Managing Director of Nissan (i.e. the same level as Kume and a two levels below Okuma), had been appointed to take charge of the feasibility study. Hugh Cortazzi also told me that Nissan had engaged McKinsey; initially we were told to our surprise that they had been appointed to take charge of the feasibility study, but Nissan quickly corrected this misapprehension and made it clear that they were merely helping Nissan who would remain fully in charge particularly on questions of supply and production. In March, the Nissan team returned to begin the feasibility study, led by Okuma and with Kawai making his first visit. The team had a early meeting with the TUC, inquiring about Nissan’s objective of a single union, but were told that this would be ‘very difficult indeed’. At the first meeting with the DoI, we tabled a list of the main items which we would wish to consider; this ‘caused little short of consternation on Okuma’s part’. Okuma said that Nissan could not accept conditions, in the sense of liabilities as distinct from targets, on local content or exports, and demanded that Nissan should be treated in the same way as Ford or Vauxhall. He warned that there was disagreement within Nissan on the project (a fact which had already been reported to us by Octav Botnar) and urged us not to raise these issues during the feasibility study stage to avoid frightening those ‘back in Japan’. To this we responded that – as Okuma himself had said at the time of the announcement – HMG had agreed to defend the project; but we could do so only on the basis of clear understandings including the definition of local content. At this stage a list of ‘points for clarification’ which we tabled included a proposed definition of local content: this should be by value added, as a per- centage of ex-factory costs; it should not include semi-manufactured items from outside the EEC; and transfer prices should be at arms length. However, the March meetings were not part of the substantive negotiations: the feasibility study was still in progress. Indeed Kawai and his team were in London again in April, and then paid a series of visits to potential sites accompanied by DTI officials from the regional side of the Department. Kawai returned again in May, and reported that his team had met suppliers both of components and plant, and potential construction companies, as well as visit- ing sites. He said the team would return to Tokyo to analyse the results of the fea- sibility work before returning for substantive discussions to start perhaps in July. 349 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

We stressed that protectionist pressures in Europe were growing and that Nissan should take this into account; conversely, they repeated than HMG had promised to support Nissan in gaining access to EEC markets on the basis that output from a UK plant would be UK and therefore EEC production. Another point made for the first time at these meetings was that we would not be seeking a legally enforceable contract, but a ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’, though this would need to be clear. We also offered to visit Japan – a proposal that was well received by Nissan as indicating continued seriousness our part. In reporting to Norman Tebbit after this visit, I said that it was clear that Nissan would not be thinking of investing in Europe at all if it did not fear trade restrictions: there was no cost reason for them to come. The decision would rest on the balance they drew between their fear of restrictions and the cost disadvantage, which was being played up by Nissan just as we would have to play up the risk of restrictions. Both parties were stuck on 60%/80% formula: we could not accept less, in view of the initial announcement, and Nissan could not accept more. What was essential in our interest, therefore, was to establish definitions which maximized the effect of the 60%/80% formula. The Kawai team was back in London again in July for further talks with me, Michael Cochlin and the rest of our team. At this stage, they were floating the idea that we should allow Nissan to import 100,000 cars from Japan outside the Voluntary Restraint Arrangement between 1982 in 1984 in order to build their market share so they could absorb the output of the UK plant; thereafter they envisaged a low-volume CKD (knock-down kit) assembly with about 30% local content between 1984 and 1986, with a new car (a successor for the Stanza model being built in Japan) to begin production from 1986 at 61% local content, with a possible second model in 1988 when content might reach 80 percent. On this basis, output would reach 150,000 in 1989 (of which 50,000 would be for export) with a further 50,000 of the possible second model. We told Nissan that this ‘differed substantially’ from the project discussed at the time of the announce- ment. Not only was it a three-stage instead of a two-stage project, but the pro- posal for ex-VRA imports was very unattractive; local content could not start below 60%. A note on local content definitions was handed to Nissan. They were also told that their request for £160 million in Selective Financial Assistance and Regional Development Grants could not be justified by the present proposal. At this stage there were long faces all round. Mr Ariga, a key member of the negotiating team who, in addition to his pro- fessional duties, acted as interpreter for the Nissan team, phoned me from the airport as the team left at the end of July to say that Nissan were withdrawing their proposal for 100,000 extra imports outside the VRA: they accepted that this would be too disruptive to the SMMT/JAMA talks on the Voluntary Restraint Arrangement. Assessing the results of this visit, we considered whether the three-stage pro- posal was no more than a way of saying that the Nissan did not want to proceed; but we concluded that it was more likely to be a way of explaining themselves to the Nissan board, given that they felt committed to the concept of a 1984 start. I wrote to Kawai early in August responding negatively to the three-stage pro- posal, and enclosing notes on local content definitions (which we had already

350 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 given them), cooperation with the components industry including homologation of parts inside the UK; the licensing of Japanese components for UK manufac- ture by British component firms; and the need for a UK research and develop- ment facility. The local content note (which was, and continued to be, the subject of detailed work by the DoI’s economists led by Alan Whiting) was based on the percentage of the ex-works price, including Nissan’s profit margin, that was rep- resented by the components and material purchases within the EEC, services pro- curement on the same basis, labour costs, depreciation of land, buildings and plant, leasing costs, and UK corporation tax, but excluding post tax profit from local content. This line had been approved, before I wrote, by the Prime Minister in response to a submission from DoI Ministers. At around this time, Nissan in return replied to our proposal for a DoI visit to Japan with an invitation for late September. It was settled that I would lead this team, with Michael Cochlin, Alan McFetrich, Alan Whiting, Frank Munns and Tim Holmes. Before this visit, Norman Tebbit approved the line we should take during the September visit. This should include a cautious acceptance of a later start, perhaps 1985, but only on the basis that Nissan dropped the proposal for a CKD production stage. On Selective Financial Assistance, etc, instead of Nissan’s demand for over £80 million in addition to Regional Development Grants, we would say that the SFA was normally below the 10–15% range especially for a large project, and even then would be contingent on specific advantages, for example reaching 80% local content as soon as full production was reached, rather than ‘as soon as practicable thereafter’ which had been the basis of the February statement. Just before our September visit, the Secretary of State, Sir Keith Joseph, met Ishihara in the course of a visit to Japan, though this was no more than a cour- tesy meeting. Also at this time, Norman Tebbit was replaced as Minister of State at the DoI by Norman Lamont, Tebbit being promoted to Secretary of State for Employment.

SEPTEMBER 1981 On our arrival in Tokyo, I met Okuma. He stressed the need for Nissan to be satisfied on local content, relations with the trade unions and location. On pro- cedure, he asked whether Ministers would be content for Nissan to give HMG a basic decision in confidence in early 1982, leaving the company free to negotiate with the trade unions and local authorities before a public commitment; I said I was sure they would be. Our visit included tours of the assembly plants at Zama and Oppama; the engine plant at Yokohama; and Nissan’s subsidiary or associated component com- panies of Atsugi, Kanto Seiki and Nihon Radiator. We arranged to go on sep- arately, by way of gaining perspective, to two of Nissan’s rivals – Toyota at Toyota City and To¯yo¯ Ko¯gyo¯ (Mazda) at Hiroshima. At the end of our visit, I reported that the warmth of reception went well beyond politeness; we were, for example, shown secret research and development work which some of the Nissan negoti- ating team themselves were not aware of. I reported that the idea of imports outside the VRA had now been explicitly dropped. Local content was the really 351 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI major problem, and this would be discussed further in the next round of London talks. On SFA we had done no more than try to wind down expectations. As to procedure, Nissan’s plan was to pay a further visit to the UK in November, reach and convey a confidential decision in March 1982, and (if favourable) to proceed to try to reach agreement with the unions and with local authorities on location, with an announcement in mid-1982. My assessment at this stage was that the situ- ation was more favourable than we previously thought, and that an acceptable deal was achievable, but that we should not seek one regardless of cost.

OCTOBER–DECEMBER 1981 In October, Kawamata was in London as part of a Keidanren delegation, and paid a courtesy call on Keith Joseph. The record is intriguing, given Kawamata’s known reluctance to proceed with the UK project: ‘Kawamata was generally inscrutable. He referred to Nissan’s debt to BL from the immediate post-war period, expressed pleasure that BL and Honda had found a worthwhile collabo- ration, and said he very much wanted to be able to support the UK investment. The implication, however, was that he was by no means sure yet whether he would be able to support it.’ The Nissan negotiating team returned as planned in November, and presented a massive ‘Pro Forma Project Plan’. This envisaged production beginning in 1986 at a level of 30,000 units, reaching 200,000 (including a second model) by 1990, of which 40,000 would be exported. Trial production with imported parts would take place in late 1985 and early 1986. On local content, they put forward a counter proposal: the measure shoud be the ex-works price less components imported. On this basis they would do their best to start at 60 percent and reach 80 percent in 1990. On grants, they demanded, in the form of SFA and RDG combined, the maximum possible within EEC rules. Long meetings took place, at the end of which we asked Nissan to consider speeding up both the start-up and full production dates; accelerated introduction of the engine plant; our own local content formula; and grants at much lower levels than their target of £185 million in SFA and RDG combined. The meetings were described as ‘strained and difficult’; ‘with the talks at stalemate, it was agreed to conclude and recon- sider positions on both sides’. The UK side offered to visit Tokyo for further talks in January 1982. A note went to the Prime Minister reporting on the November talks; it said that ‘Nissan’s response was uncompromising. As seen by them the project had been initiated by HMG and not by Nissan.’ The Prime Minister’s office replied that ‘the Prime Minister would like to have a brief word with your Secretary of State as to whether the line we are currently taking on Nissan is too tough; or whether it is not. On this, the Prime Minister has commented “Nissan causes problems either way”.’ Early in December, Ariga telephoned me to announce the appointment of Lord Marsh (the former Labour Cabinet Minister Richard Marsh, ennobled by Mrs Thatcher) as an ‘adviser’ to Nissan on the UK project. Dick Marsh visited Tokyo later that month and told Hugh Cortazzi and John Whitehead (then 352 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84

Minister at the Tokyo Embassy, later Ambassador) that Nissan’s ‘mood had been angry. Okuma had spent the dinner fulminating about the way in which Nissan had been misled. . . the attitude of HMG had changed. . . Nissan are getting tired of talking.’ Meanwhile back in London, Ministers had been seeking more detail on the employment effects of the project. Alan Whiting, the DTI economist who was part of the negotiating team, summarized detailed work that had been done on this question. He said that if 80% of components and materials were purchased in the UK, and on stated assumptions about displacement of existing UK output, level of exports, etc, the project could yield net job creation of 10,000 (not including the construction phase). Alan Whiting noted that the SMMT and Ford disagreed with this – Ford in particular were much more pessimistic, not least because they apparently regarded displaced German-built Cortinas as being ‘UK output’, and because they argued that the UK assemblers would be forced to import Japanese components in order to stay competitive with the new Nissan plant. Alan Whiting estimated that if only 45–55% of components and materials were bought in the UK, the employment effects would be neutral. One Junior Minister responded that he thought we were underestimating the dynamic effects of a Nissan investment, implying that we might be pressing Nissan too hard. In response, I said ‘we must approach both the negotiations and a final decision in a very hard-nosed way. I do not myself believe that what Nissan have so far pro- posed yields a favourable balance of advantages and disadvantages. We need to make some advances on local content and timing, and hold the line on selective assistance, to secure a project which has a useful, if not necessarily a wide, margin of advantage.’ Meanwhile, attention had turned to the question of grants. At this time, changes to the Regional Development Grant regime were being considered which would greatly reduce the amount Nissan would receive. They had been led to expect that in a Special Development Area, RDG’s would be 22% and that, on conditions, a further 8% in SFA could be available. That was already regarded as unsatisfactory by Nissan; the RDG changes if implemented would make the gap between availability and expectation even wider. Put another way, the add- itional SFA which would be needed, on a discretionary basis, to provide the same total amount as Nissan had been led to expect – i.e. 30% of total cost – would be very substantial: RDG’s would fall from about £78 million to about £8 million, so SFA would need to rise by a similar amount. But this in turn produced difficult tax implications for Nissan as well as reducing significantly the public expenditure savings the Treasury was expecting from the RDG changes for which they were pressing. In the end, partly for this reason, the RDG changes were dropped.

JANUARY–MARCH 1982 The talks resumed in Tokyo in the middle of January 1982. Kawai began by saying that Nissan had no intention of going on for ever: the January talks were a last opportunity for a substantive discussion. In response, I stressed that the UK atti- tude had not changed; both sides needed to be able to demonstrate that the 353 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI project would yield significant and clear overall benefits to the national economy, and that it was a genuine manufacturing operation which could ensure its accept- ability both domestically and in Europe, meeting Nissan’s own requirement of a ‘warm welcome’. The talks appeared to go well. With the prior approval of the new Secretary of State, Patrick Jenkin, I had proposed to Okuma that the way out of the local content difficulty was for Nissan to express ‘a firm intention’ of reaching the 60%/80% levels, with a further ‘best endeavours’ commitment to reach 65%/85%. Okuma ended the discussions by saying ‘he had the feeling this discussion would prove to have been a fruitful one’. Dick Marsh reported that the atmosphere was much improved, and that paranoia had been dispersed on Nissan’s side. A few days after the meetings ended, the Press Association reported Ishihara telling reporters in Osaka that a company feasibility study had put the project in a favourable light, and that Nissan would return to London the following month for more talks. In DoI, we thought things were moving to a favourable conclusion – so much so that a preliminary paper on the project was put to the Industrial Development Advisory Board whose agreement to SFA would be required in due course. The IDAB took a favourable view of the project as it then appeared. Meanwhile, Hugh Cortazzi wrote to Sir Peter Carey, the DoI Permanent Secretary, to say that if the Nissan project went ahead we could hope for the pace of Japanese investment generally in the UK to speed up. Conversely, failure would have an adverse effect. The Nissan team returned to London in February 1982. In preparation for this I had arranged for a draft ‘Gentlemen’s Agreement’, also now referred to as a Memorandum of Understanding, to be prepared in the form of a letter from Nissan to HMG, and we handed this draft to Nissan. They in turn tabled a list of ‘prerequisites’, of which the most important was that HMG should accept respon- sibility to resolve any problems in Europe over the acceptance of cars produced at the plant as being of British make and excluded from any voluntary restraint arrangements; and that financial support would be available. Nissan accepted the concept of an MoU. They confirmed their intention to bring forward the start of production to the end of 1985 instead the beginning of 1986, and bring forward the engine sub-assembly plant from 1989 to 1988, but would not change the 1990 date for full production of 200,000 units. Most serious, they demanded grants of a level of 50% of cost, on the basis of their assessment of the amount permitted under EEC rules for a Special Development Area – a difference of some £135 million compared with our own provisional offer of 30% for a plant costing a little over £600 million. The Secretary of State, Patrick Jenkin, held a final meeting with the team and agreed to consider how far we could go to meet Nissan’s requirements on SFA and on the words to be used on local content. It also seemed that Nissan had got wind of possible RDG changes; Patrick Jenkin agreed that assurances could be given that RDG levels would be protected by some means for Nissan. As a result, a new draft of the MoU was tabled for Nissan to take back. This offered SFA up to 10%, with assurances about RDG continu- ity, and expressed the local content target as being ‘at least’ 60%/80% rather than the earlier formulation of a firm commitment at that level with best endeavours beyond. The new draft MoU was taken back for the Nissan Board to consider.

354 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84

Patrick Jenkin reported to the Prime Minister after these meetings, warning that he might need to go as high as 12% SFA to clinch a deal, and at the beginning of March the Prime Minister agreed to this proposition provided the plant was in a Special Development Area. [There is a gap in the files at this point between March and July 1982.]

JULY–DECEMBER 1982 Okuma returned to London at the end of July 1982 ‘to give Nissan’s response to HMG following the last round of discussions’, apparently following a Nissan board meeting in the middle of July. Before the Nissan Board meeting, Okuma had told Whitehead in early July that the Board would either decide positively in favour of the plant (whether the original plan or a smaller plant at 100,000 units); or abandon it; or postpone a decision. He would himself advise postponement because of the adverse world economic situation, and the uncertainty whether EEC countries would accept UK-built Nissan cars. Whitehead reported that Ishihara and Okuma had held out until now for a positive decision, but a recent visit to the US, where protectionist pressures were growing, might lead them to give priority to building further capacity in the US. Alternatively, Whitehead speculated whether they were internal managerial or financial considerations of which we were not aware. On Whitehead’s advice, Norman Lamont (Minister of State) wrote in advance to Ishihara stressing HMG’s warm welcome (citing concern in the UK, and even in the House of Commons, at the possibility of cancellation); expressing confidence in the UK economy; recalling that the plant would not reach full capacity until the end of the 1980s, by which time the present world slowdown would be history; asserting confidence about facing down any EEC difficulties; and stressing the implications of any adverse decision for Japan in the EEC. Patrick Jenkin also wrote to the Japanese Minister for International Trade and Industry stressing the adverse effects for UK/Japanese relations if the project were dropped. It was clear that something had substantially changed in Nissan’s view of the project, though this appeared to be more about world economic conditions than about the detailed negotiations on the shape of a UK project. Messages to this effect kept coming in. Kawai told the Embassy early in July that there was a fear that US protectionist legislation would force Nissan to concentrate investment there, and that this would be an adverse factor for the UK project; so too was the high level of the pound which would make exports from a UK plant harder. Dick Marsh, after a visit to Tokyo, reported to me that Okuma would tell Ministers that a further three months would be needed before a decision. He said that ‘the real reason (which could not be disclosed) was that the Chairman of Nissan and the leader of Nissan’s union were opposed to the project, and it was therefore blocked at Board level. The Chairman represented the major Japanese banks, and the leader of Nissan’s union was also the leader of the Japanese trade union move- ment as a whole. At the last Board meeting, the Chairman had pressed for the project to be terminated, but Ishihara had refused to this. . . . Ishihara, Okuma and Kawai were all committed to going ahead with the project, but it was possible 355 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI that if the Board approval were obtained later in the year, it would be for a scaled- down project.’ In the same vein, Kawai had told Whitehead in Tokyo before leaving for London that a postponement was likely. When Kawai arrived in London towards the end of July, he told me that the high degree of investment risk, in current conditions for the international economy and the car industry, made it impossible to reach a consensus within the company, and that therefore Nissan wished to postpone their decision. There was no question of the delay for as long as one or two years, but nor could he say when a decision might be reached. It was important that any state- ment should not imply disagreement between the company and HMG. When the talks in London began in the last week of July 1982, Okuma told Patrick Jenkin that discussions with officials had led to a consensus within the Nissan management team on the terms of a deal. But the changes in the world economy and car market meant that ‘a more cautious view was now being expressed by some within the Nissan management team in relation to the enor- mous investment required for the UK project’. He mentioned the second oil crisis in 1979 and the Iranian revolution, which together meant that the first time since the Second World War, world demand for cars had fallen for three consecutive years, 1980, 1981 and 1982, a circumstance which no one had expected. This explained the caution by ‘some in the Nissan management team’. Patrick Jenkin reported to the Prime Minister after this meeting that Okuma had said the post- ponement was because of dissension on the Nissan Board. Any statement would attribute the postponement to the uncertainty prospects for the world economy and the motor industry, making a decision inappropriate to this time; and it would stress that there was no question of the terms being offered being responsible for the delay. Indeed he would say publicly that a broad measure of agreement had been reached with the Government and that this was a matter of postponement not of shelving. At the end of the talks it was agreed that discussions should continue ‘over the next few weeks’. One member of the team – who in a quiet way was always an enthusiast for the project – came up to me, having assured himself that there was no one else in sight or in earshot. He said, as I recorded at the time, ‘with evident emotion, that a feasibility team was strongly in favour of the UK project’. He urged that the Prime Minister should use her visit to Japan due in September to persuade Kawamata. The brief for the Prime Minister’s visit, prepared by the Embassy, had this to say about Kawamata: ‘Although there is a feeling within some sections of Nissan that Kawamata has had his day, he still retains wide respect as the saviour of the company and the man who revitalized its fortunes during the difficult period of the 1960s. . . a determined, even obstinate, man.’ On Ishihara, the brief said that he ‘may well be regarded by the traditional factions within Nissan as being too ready to take risks’, especially overseas. (The brief noted that Ishihara, an ex- rugby player, was seventy-one in 1982. Kawamata, who was seventy-seven, had been responsible personally for the choice of the name of several Nissan cars – for example the Cedric, after the hero of Little Lord Fauntleroy; the Laurel, after Laurel and Hardy: and the Gloria, after Gloria Swanson!)

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At the Prime Minister’s meeting with Kawamata in Tokyo in September, she approached the matter delicately and indirectly, saying that protectionism would be harder to resist if Japan did not create jobs in the UK. Kawamata, expressing his appreciation of the honour of the meeting with the Prime Minister, spoke about the importance of industrial relations and the need for a single union agree- ment. He also raised – an entirely new point – the possibility of the Government building the factory at its own expense and renting it to Nissan. She agreed to consider this. It was made plain privately by Goto¯, who was Kawamata’s inter- preter and very close to him personally, that any reply should go direct to Kawamata and not to Ishihara, implying that this was a personal initiative by the Chairman. In fact, as emerged a few weeks later when he visited London in con- nection with the SMMT/JAMA talks and called on the Prime Minister, Ishihara did know of the proposal though it was not more widely known in the company. This initiative did, however, lead to some further action: the Prime Minister wrote to Kawamata in January 1983 saying that it would be very difficult for the Government to finance the building of the factory and impossible for it to provide finance for its equipment, but that the finance leasing market was now an estab- lished form of financing in the UK and she would be happy to use her good offices with the Bank of England to have this examined by the company. Discussions did indeed take place along the lines in early 1983. Despite the dispiriting postponement in July 1982, discussions did continue periodically thereafter. Nissan appears to have reached a more favourable view of the prospects early in 1983. What had been expected to be a small-scale routine visit in March 1983 turned out to be a much fuller programme of talks, includ- ing Kawai and his team but also Goto¯ who came, according to an Embassy telegram, ‘as Kawamata’s representative’. Following the Prime Minister’s meeting with Kawamata in Tokyo, he wrote to her in December 1982 saying that Nissan’s studies showed that leasing was no more favourable than a conventional investment with 30% subsidy. It was plain to HMG that he had not appreciated that financial assistance would still be available in combination with leasing; this was pointed out in reply by the Prime Minister to Kawamata. About the same time, Goto¯ (presumably on Kawamata’s behalf), raised with the Embassy the idea of using BL’s Solihull plant instead of a greenfield plant; a discouraging reply was given.

JANUARY–JUNE 1983 In January 1983, Gordon Manzie (Deputy Secretary in DoI) was in Tokyo with Patrick Jenkin, the Secretary of State, and raised with Okuma the possibility of arranging for Shioji to be talked to by UK trade unionists. Okuma thought that might be helpful – Shioji was not totally opposed to an investment in the UK. Okuma again raised the idea of Nissan using BL facilities; Manzie said that this was unlikely as the BL/Honda link was now firmly established. About the same time, Patrick Jenkin met Kawamata in Tokyo; in a ‘friendly’ meeting, Kawamata, at Ishihara’s prompting, asked Jenkin to assure the Prime Minister that Nissan and he himself were continuing their studies on the project and that he looked 357 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI forward to opportunities for further discussions. The Embassy judged at this point ‘there is still a great deal of enthusiasm within the company for the UK invest- ment’. Following his January visit, Manzie wrote a detailed letter on leasing, and the related question of the exchange risk if the borrowing underlying the lease were in foreign currency, together with the tax implications. He was told in response that Kawai would be visiting London in March to discuss the leasing question. Manzie encouraged Nissan to combine the Kawai visit with the next regular quarterly meeting on the project itself. At about this time, the DoI took steps to try to limit the number of approaches to Nissan from local authorities, etc. in areas which regarded themselves as can- didates for a Nissan project. In particular the Humberside County Council and the North West Industrial Development Association, who planned to visit Tokyo to lobby Nissan, were told it would be counter-productive both for themselves and for the UK to do so at the time. Despite this, Nissan continued to receive approaches from a large number of such bodies. In February 1983, Okuma was in London as part of a Keidanren mission and called on Jenkin. He said that Kawamata was worried about the profitability of an investment in the UK which would take ten years to amortize: was there any chance of more selective financial assistance? A negative response was given. Kawamata also wanted to know about the mechanics that would be needed if Nissan, having invested in the UK, had to withdraw if the project were a failure: Okuma was told that Regional Development Grants would be repayable in this situation. Okuma said that Kawamata was ‘very cautious about the risk of the UK project, and therefore needed something tangible to justify changing his mind’. Okuma acknowledged, in the light of the Prime Minister’s letter, that leasing looked a favourable route, involving less capital injection by Nissan and slightly better profitability; but by implication this was not enough for Kawamata. Kawai visited as planned in March 1983. I cleared our objectives for the visit in advance with Ministers: we should be aiming for a minimum output of 100,000 cars by 1987; a minimum local content for each of two models of 80% by 1990, with best endeavours to go further; and best endeavours to reach 200,000 units by about 1994. Kawai began the meetings by saying that the financial assistance offered was not enough. As to scale, Nissan now proposed an initial project of 100,000 units with no commitment as to the date for a second stage, which would not be part of the initial project. No date was proposed for an engine plant, which was essential for reaching 80% local content. I responded that while the smaller plant could be considered, anything less than 80% would be ‘extremely difficult’. Kawai said it would be easier to get an internal consen- sus for a two-stage deal, i.e. an initial project 100,000 with a second stage reach- ing 200,000. 80% was essential, and this was linked to the question of a firm commitment to the larger project. Moreover, the 10% SFA which had been pro- visionally offered was based on an especially favourable deal, which was not what was now proposed. There was some discussion of the word ‘commitment’, and whether this could be changed to ‘commitment to use best endeavours’. After reporting to Ministers on these lines, I repeated this message to the re-convened

358 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 meetings after the weekend, and mentioned four points justifying a project on more ambitious lines than Nissan were talking of. These were: the Prime Minister’s good offices to help Kawamata over leasing; the fact that the world recession was beginning to lift; the hardening position of the EEC on Japanese cars; and the huge change in currencies since the project was first discussed (the yen was now 360 to the £ compared with 530 two years before. I added that any- thing over 10% SFA would be extremely difficult. A written statement on these lines was handed over. After these meetings, I reported that Nissan seemed willing to consider delivering 80% local content by 1990 on a 100,000 unit plant, which was surprising since they had previously insisted that 80% required an engine plant, which could only be justified on the higher output. I recalled Dick Marsh had indicated beforehand that Nissan intended this round of talks as ‘a serious attempt to bridge the gap and help in achieving a consensus within Nissan’; the presence of Goto¯, known to be Kawamata’s man, indicated that some of the points raised indicated Kawamata’s active involvement. The Tokyo Embassy reported after these meetings that Kozai and Ariga had told them privately there had been discussion at the Nissan Board at the end of April, where the consensus continued to be that no decision could yet be taken: the leasing option had not been enough to overcome Kawamata’s reservations, though the signs were that he had moved from abandonment to postponement. At about this time, we heard that Okuma was retiring as Executive Vice President (though in fact he stayed around as adviser for some time); and that Kawai was being promoted to Executive Managing Director with responsibility for the domestic Japanese market, though he would remain in charge of the UK negotiation. The first sign of what was to become a major change came at the end of June 1983 when the Tokyo Embassy reported that Dick Marsh had told them the board appeared to have decided to move by putting forward two alternative plans. Kawamata was now clearly in charge.

JULY–DECEMBER 1983 Further talks in the quarterly sequence took place in London in early July 1983. I sought authority to say that 80% local content by 1989 was a sine qua non, but that a later or slower build-up might be possible; that a brownfield project was unattractive; and that 10% SFA was the maximum. This was agreed, though one Junior Minister commented that ‘Mr Mountfield’s note is far too negative. . . in the final analysis I think we should be prepared to the flexible . . . Nissan is poten- tially a great prize’ which could revolutionize the motor industry. Before the main talks began, I was invited to a private meeting with Ko¯zai, Ariga and Marsh at the Westbury hotel: there were ‘delicate’ matters which could not be discussed in the official talks. The position had changed in several respects. First, the Prime Minister had spoken at the Williamsburg Summit to the Japanese Prime Minister, Nakasone, who had in turn spoken to Ishihara; he had empha- sized that this was a commercial matter for Nissan, but by implication had put pressure on Nissan to reach a deal (it was evident from later comments by 359 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Kawamata that this was how the Prime Minister’s meeting with Nakasone had been interpreted by Nissan). Second, the Prime Minister’s ‘triumphant victory’ in the 1983 election was seen as helpful. As a result, Kawamata and Ishihara had met and agreed that an early decision was needed to avoid Nissan’s getting caught up in a ‘political whirlpool’. It was well known that Kawamata and Ishihara had conflicting views – Ishihara very keen on a manufacturing stronghold in Europe, Kawamata fearing that if the project failed ‘the survival of Nissan itself might be at stake’. Accordingly, two alternative plans had been prepared, each favoured by one of them, and they had both agreed to support whichever of the two received HMG’s backing. Of these:

Plan A (Kawamata’s plan) involved a Phase 1 CKD operation whose output would be regarded as Japanese imports for the purposes of the voluntary restraint arrangements. This would be a ‘pilot’ plant; Nissan would not reach a decision on whether to move beyond it to a full plant until 1987. This pilot plant would have only 25% local content. Phase 2, if proceeded with, would reach 70% local content by 1990 though this was not necessarily a ceiling. 10% SFA would be needed for the pilot plant.

Plan B (Ishihara’s plan) was for a full-scale project from the start, though local content would be below 60% in year 1. The engine plant would be intro- duced later, with local content reaching 70% in 1990; for this plan, 35% SFA would be required.

I responded, in this private meeting, by saying that 80% local content was a fixed point; that there could be no SFA for a CKD plant; and the 35% SFA for Plan B was quite impossible; but that we would not necessarily rule out an initial CKD operation if its output fell within the voluntary restraint arrangements. In report- ing on this meeting to the Secretary of State, I stressed the importance of the 80% local content figure. By this time we had used it successfully with BL/Honda; with GM/Isuzu; with GM/Suzuki; with ERF/Hino; with Lotus/Toyota; and with Mitsubishi/Colt; the 80% requirement had been accepted in all these cases and actually announced in the cases of GM and ERF. I also reminded the Secretary of State that anything beyond 10% SFA had already been blocked by the Treasury. In the main meetings with Kawai a couple of days later, I expressed great dis- appointment at the turn of events; what was proposed was very different from the project we had been discussing the last two or three years; at first sight neither project was acceptable. It would take us a little time to consider things, and we should aim for a final round in Tokyo or London in two or three weeks time. Following this meeting, one of the Nissan team telephoned sounding ‘somewhat nervous’ from his hotel bedroom; he said that at the previous week’s board meeting, Kawamata had said ‘I will accomplish the UK project of the work of my final years.’ In the light of this, some of the Nissan team had come to the view that Plan A was the best way forward, as, if successful, the pilot stage would change the opposition of the Nissan union under Shioji and demonstrate that the UK labour situation was workable.

360 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84

The new Secretary of State, Cecil Parkinson, called on the Prime Minister between the first session and the second; he said that Plan B was unacceptable, with only 70% local content and 35% SFA, and was probably meant to be unac- ceptable. He was inclined on the other hand to back Plan A on the basis that, once here, Nissan were very likely to expand. The Prime Minister agreed. At the second session, we tabled a proposal (whose general lines we had cleared with the Secretary of State) which we described as being essentially Plan A. This proposed, after the pilot plant, an expression of intent to proceed to a decision in 1987 to a full plant with 100,000 units by 1990 and 80% local content, and referred also to a possible phase 3, with a planned output of 200,000 units, to be decided by 1990. We said that, in order to ensure a public welcome, this plan would need to be announced as a full manufacturing plant, though with an option not to proceed beyond the pilot plant if Nissan were not satisfied at that stage. The pilot plant could not attract SFA. We proposed that we should resume talks in Tokyo at the end of July. Following this, the Secretary of State sought and obtained the Prime Minister’s agreement to negotiate for a 200,000 unit three- phase project, with no SFA for Phase 1 but up to 12% SFA for Phase 2 in com- pensation, and with 80% local content by 1991 at the latest. Kawamata and Ishihara reacted badly to this proposal, and a ‘shirty’ letter from Kawamata to the Prime Minister was received, to which she replied that only ‘presentational’ changes had been made to Plan A to make it appear attractive in the UK. But the talks in Tokyo at the end of July began badly. It emerged that Kawamata had ‘harangued’ Kawai for giving a mild reaction to our proposal, which he characterised as a reversion to the original plan, under which Nissan would be ‘morally’ bound to proceed after the pilot plant stage since the detailed scope of Phase 2 was so tightly described. We responded that unless Phase 2 was well defined, HMG could make no commitments on RDG or SFA, quite apart from the need for satisfaction of local content question. The key question, there- fore, was how to describe the link between the pilot Phase 1 and Phase 2 in a softer away. The discussions seem to be going quite well on the afternoon of 27 July, when the Nissan team received a message that Kawamata was unhappy with the direction they were taking. Kawai was called to a meeting with Kawamata that evening. Dick Marsh and I were packed off to the Kabuki Theatre while this meeting took place. The Embassy’s telegram the following day reported the conclusion of the talks, ‘with provisional agreement on the main elements’ of a deal which would be rec- ommended to the Nissan Board and Ministers, and with Kawai expressing a degree of confidence that the Nissan side would finally accept the deal. There was clear evidence of a critical late-night session between Kawai and Kawamata, and a further meeting with Ishihara the following morning, resulting in the ‘final’ set of proposals with a ‘substantial’ move towards the UK position. The deal was on the following lines: the decision to move from the Phase 1 ‘pilot plant’to Phase 2 would be ‘for Nissan alone’ on their commercial judgment, with discussions between Nissan and HMG if any changes were needed in the light of Phase 1. Reference to a Phase 3 was dropped though there would be reference to the pos- sibility of further eventual expansion towards 200,000 units. In Phase 2, local

361 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI content would reach 80% by mid-1991 subject only to force majeure. SFA of 10% would be payable on the whole project (Phases 1 and 2 combined) but payable only if they proceeded to Phase 2. Further the talks would take place in September to finalize the deal. The only point on which doubt remained was whether Kawamata would be difficult about the SFA arrangements. At this time we ourselves had an internal difficulty in the form of a renewed proposal to reduce the general level of Regional Development Grants. There were difficulties about making special arrangements for Nissan to increase the amount of SFA to compensate both for the reduction in RDG’s and for the adverse tax effects of the changes; and eventually it was decided that the previous level of RDGs should be continued for Nissan and other companies with exist- ing agreed projects, and that Nissan should be given assurances to this effect. This potential time bomb was thus defused so far as the Nissan talks were concerned. Talks resumed in London in September 1983. It was clear there still remained some second-order substantive issues, but we drew comfort from the fact that Nissan brought with them one of their PR specialists and a lawyer, both of which appeared to indicate that we were nearing a conclusion at last. The September talks were concerned with a range of mainly detailed issues on the draft docu- mentation of the agreement. After these talks, the Secretary of State wrote to the Prime Minister that ‘it now looks as if we have full agreement with Nissan on the details of the deal’, the only difference being that there was no specific reference to 200,000 units after Phase 2: it was to be ‘a substantial further development’. The 80% commitment, and the fact that of 800 acre site was being bought, clearly implied that output of that order was intended. Documentation had been in draft on our side for a long time and this was now the subject of detailed exchanges by telegram with Nissan. They wanted full par- allel Japanese and English texts of the Heads of Agreement (to be signed by the Secretary of State and either Kawamata or Ishihara), though they were content for a more detailed Memorandum of Understanding, the offer letters for SFA and RDG’s and various side letters (to be signed by Kawai and me) to be in English. Although we were irritated by what we considered ‘continued salami-slicing’ by Nissan (and conveyed this irritation to Nissan) there was in truth nothing of real importance. Further talks were held in Tokyo in November to tidy up the docu- mentation and deal with such matters as claw back of financial assistance should Nissan withdraw, and the way in which the local content timing commitments would work if Nissan decided to accelerate Phase 2 at a later stage (by implica- tion, once Kawamata had departed from the scene). Meanwhile we ourselves completed the formality of getting the Industrial Development Advisory Board’s agreement to the offer of SFA, which was secured at the beginning of October. However, a much more serious cause of delay now emerged, to our annoy- ance and Nissan’s acute embarrassment. This was Nissan’s internal need to get Shioji and the Nissan Union to accept the deal. Given Kawamata’s support for the deal we had thought this would be a mere formality; but in the event it caused a delay of nearly six months between the effective deal in July 1983 and the announcement in February 1984. Possible timetables for announcement

362 COURSE OF THE NISSAN NEGOTIATION 1980–84 were proposed, agreed and discarded on several occasions because of Nissan’s failure to bring their negotiation with Shioji to a conclusion. [As British Ambassador in Tokyo, I invited Shioji to lunch and did my best to persuade him to support Nissan’s investment in Britain.] In October, the Embassy asked Nissan ‘if we could regard the present situation as falling within the normal bounds of Japanese consensus-making. They said that it was quite exceptional’, and caused by the earlier lack of consensus within the Nissan board; it had become inextricably linked with the power struggle between Ishihara and Shioji, a struggle which was not directly linked to the UK project. In December, Kawai told the Embassy that the talks with the union were not concentrated on the UK project but upon ‘the broader question of management and union rela- tions’. Kawamata was sufficiently embarrassed to write the Prime Minister to confirm that negotiations with HMG were concluded, and that the delay was not part of a Japanese ploy. Nissan admitted to the Embassy that ‘it was a highly unusual situation’.

1984: THE FINAL AGREEMENT At last, at the end of January 1984, Kawai told the Embassy that agreement had been reached with the union. Plans were made for the announcement to be made in the House of Commons on 1 February; this was done by Norman Tebbit. Kawamata had planned to come to London, but in the event his health prevented this and Ishihara arrived to sign the Heads of Agreement along with Norman Tebbit, who had replaced Cecil Parkinson as Secretary of State in October. Kawai and I signed the rest of the documentation. In summary the agreement was as follows:

• A pilot plant to begin assembly in 1986 of 24,000 cars a year from imported kits, treated as imports within the voluntary restraint arrangements. • Within this pilot phase, Nissan would gain experience of UK operating con- ditions, in the light of which they would decide, no later than 1987, whether to proceed to Phase 2. • Phase 2 would provide for 100,000 fully manufactured units a year. If they decided to proceed with this, car production would begin in 1990 at 60% local content on an ex-works price basis; full production would be reached in 1991 with 80% local content from 1991. • In addition to RDGs, the Government would be ready to provide SFA of £35 million if Nissan proceeded to Phase 2, which was equivalent to 10% of the combined costs of Phases 1 and 2. • Employment would be 4–500 in Phase 1, and 2,700 in Phase 2. • Nissan’s statement said that on completion of Phase 2 (if they decided to go as far as that) then ‘solely on the basis of its commercial judgment” they would decide whether to go for “a substantial further expansion’. • HMG confirmed that if the local content requirements were met, the cars would be regarded as a genuinely British make. • Nissan expressed their intention to collaborate with UK suppliers. 363 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

• If conditions changed, Nissan and the Department of Industry would consult to achieve a mutually acceptable conclusion. • The local content levels were ‘Nissan’s firm intention’, and they intended ‘even higher levels of local content whenever feasible’. • DoI would use its good offices to the maximum practical extent to facilitate the project in all respects. • Nissan would use UK machinery and equipment to the maximum practical extent. • Local content was defined as ‘the ex-works price of the vehicle minus the value of components and materials originating outside the EEC, as a proportion of the ex-works price of the vehicle’. • Both parties would seek local homologation of components to avoid delay. • Nissan would establish an R and D centre in the UK. • Nissan would seek to maximize exports from the plant. • The Government promised the good offices of the Bank of England to assist in arranging a leasing package if requested.

In general the announcement was well received both in London and in Tokyo. Kawamata himself gave a press conference in Tokyo and said that if all went well an expansion to 200,000 units was conceivable.

Finally, at the end of March 1984, Nissan announced the final choice of site in favour of Washington, County Durham; a site at Shotton in the North Wales, not far from Liverpool, had been the next most favoured candidate.

364 Notes

Introduction

1. A major British personality in the development of British business relations with Japan who has not been included in our biographical portrait’s series is that of Marcus Samuel who, with his brother Samuel Samuel, established the Rising Sun Oil Company of Japan, the forerunner of the Shell Transport and Trading Company. But he was the subject of a full length biography by Robert Henriques, London, 1960, under the title Marcus Samuel, First Lord Bearsted, Founder of Shell Transport and Trading Company. 2. This contains in chapter XII an account of ‘Early Days in Japan’and in chapter XIII ‘Dodwells in Modern Japan’. If space had permitted I would like to have included a summary of these two chapters. I shall donate my copy of this book to the Japan Society Library where it can be consulted by anyone interested. 3. In putting this volume together I wanted to ensure that the main British lit- erary figures with Japanese connections had been covered either in biographical portraits in our volumes or in some other way, e.g. by what they had themselves written about their connections with or experiences in Japan. Some of their accounts were included in chapters 4, 5, and 6 of Japan Experiences: FiftyYears,One HundredViews, Post-War Japan through British Eyes 1945–2000, which I compiled and edited and which was published by Japan Library in 2001. These included pieces by Edmund Blunden, George Fraser, Dennis Enright (about whom a sep- arate portrait was included in Volume V), Ronald Bottrall, Francis King, Stephen Spender, Sacheverell Sitwell, Arthur Koester, Anthony Powell, Anthony Thwaite, Harry Guest, John Haylock and Peter Robinson.

These chapters did not, however, include British writers whose experiences in Japan were confined to the years before the Second World War. So it may be helpful to readers if I list some other writings about Japan which give an account of experiences in pre-war Japan:

Peter Quennell’s A Superficial Journey Through Tokyo and Peking, which was pub- lished by Faber and Faber in 1932, gives an account of his fourteen months in Tokyo. He was ‘Glad to be leaving Tokyo and Japan; mournful because a year, however unpleasant, is a year which one can ill afford to lose.’ Sherard Vines wrote Yofuku: Japan in Trousers published by Wishart and company in 1931. Previously he had published in 1928 Humours Unreconciled, an account, in the form of a novel, of Japan as he saw it at that time. Aldous Huxley gives a very brief account of a visit to Japan in his book Jesting Pilate:The Diary of a Journey, first published in 1926 by Chatto and Windus. 365 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Helen Waddell’s experiences of Japan have been covered in Helen Waddell’s Writings from Japan, edited and introduced by David Burleigh, published in 2005 by Irish Academic Press. David Burleigh has also done a study of James Cousins (1873–1956) under the title Rumours of the Infinite:An Irish Poet in Japan. This was published as Ferris Studies No. 28 in March 1933. If there had been space I would like to have included here a reprint of this essay. Another essay I would like to have reprinted was that by Bernard F. Dukore about George Bernard Shaw on Japan, 1934, printed in Asian Affairs, the Journal of the Royal Society of Asian Affairs, Vol XIX Part I, February 1988. The poet George Barker (1913–91) was recruited to succeed Ralph Hodgson (see portrait by John Hatcher in Volume V) as a lecturer in English poetry at Tohoku University in Sendai in 1940. He spent a few brief unhappy months in Japan. Robert Fraser’s The Chameleon Poet:A Life of George Barker (Jonathan Cape, 2001, Pimlico 2002) describes his experience in Japan. James Murdoch (1856–1924) may be classified as Australian rather than British. He was a colourful character who wrote the first three volumes of History of Japan. He is the subject of a paper by D.C.S. Sissons in TASJ 4th series, 2:157. Sumie Okada in her book Western Writers in Japan, published by Macmillan in 1999 comments on William Plomer (see essay by Louis Allen in Themes and Personalities, Routledge, 1991), William Empson (see portrait by John Haffenden in Biographical Portraits, Volume IV), George Fraser, James Kirkup, Dennis Enright, Anthony Thwaite, Stephen Spender, Peter Quennell, George Barker, Ronald Bottrall, Francis King, Dennis Keene, Harry Guest, Peter Robinson, Iris Murdoch and Laurens van der Post. Of course, more could be said about many of these writers especially Iris Murdoch, but this area of Anglo-Japanese relations has been quite well covered.

1EIJI SEKI Winston Churchill (1874–1965) and Japan

1. Roy Jenkins, Churchill A Biography, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2001, p. 8. 2. Churchill Papers, CHAR 28/85/46–52, Churchill Archives Centre (CAC), Churchill College, Cambridge (CCC). Lady Randolph Churchill’s travelogue in the Pall Mall Magazine of July 1904 makes an interesting reading even to the Japanese today retelling the customs and social conditions now almost forgotten. She was shocked to see married women with ‘shaved eyebrows and blackened teeth, in which hideous custom they indulge in order to remain faithful to their husbands’, but she ‘feared it might have the reverse effect on the husbands’. The beauties of Tokugawa Ieyasu’s temple in Nikko far surpassed her imagination whilst Yokohama was a town ‘where they try to please foreign taste by forcing themselves to forget all that is best in Japanese art, producing vulgar atrocities’. When she left Kobe, she was ‘more than sorry to leave Japan – restful country of enchantments, land of courteous men and soft-voiced women’. Her ears were ‘still listening for the two most characteristic sounds in Japan – the tap-tap of the little pipe as it is emptied before being refilled, and the mournful notes of the reed

366 NOTES lute which the blind masseur plays as he walks through the village street’. These sentiments were later often to echo in her son’s words and deeds. 3. Churchill’s letter to Louis F. Alber of 11 August 1933, Winston S. Churchill by Martin Gilbert, Companion Volume Part 2: 1929–1935, p. 643. 4. Churchill Papers, Japan and Monroe Doctrine, CHAR 8/545, CAC:CCC, p. 16. 5. Churchill Papers, ibid., p. 17. 6. Lt Colonel A.G. Churchill, Letter to the Director of Military Intelligence, 18 March 1902, The National Archives/The Public Record Office (TNA/PRO), F.O. 46/563. He further said, ‘It should not be an impossible task for Japanese diplomacy to entangle a third Power in any quarrel she might pick with Russia’, i.e. to get Britain involved, and that it would be wrong to expect much of the Japanese army, as it was overrated compared to European troops. 7. Ian H. Nish, Alliance In Decline:A Study In Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908–23, University of London, The Athlone Press, 1972, p. 47. 8. Martin Gilbert, Winston Churchill, Vol. III 1914–6, London: Heinemann 1971, p. 43. 9. Juliet Gardiner (ed.), The History Today Who’s Who in British History, Collins & Brown, 2000, p. 180. 10. Winston Churchill, Painting As A Pastime, from Thoughts and Adventures, 1932, CHAR 8/319, CAC/CCC, p. 307. 11. Ian Nish, ‘Lord Curzon and Japan’ in Biographical Portraits, Volume V Folkestone: Global Oriental 2005. 12. Gilbert, op.cit, Vol. IV, 1917–1922, pp. 258–259. 13. Jenkins, op. cit., p. 243. 14. Nish, op. cit., p. 396. 15. Churchill, The Follies of The Victors, 1919–1929, The Second World War, Abridged Edition, Pimlico 2002, p. 9. 16. Yoshida So¯ri O¯ beiho¯mon Kankei Ikken (Prime Minister Yoshida’s Visit to Europe and the United States), Résumé of Churchill’s Speech, reel No. A’-0136, Diplomatic Record Office (DRO), Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA). 17. G.P. Gooch, Studies in diplomacy and statecraft, London, New York: Longmans, Green, 1948, pp. 165–6. 18. Gilbert, op. cit., Vol. V, p. 457. 19. Churchill, ‘Defense in the Pacific’, Collier’s, 17 December 1932, CHAR 8/318, CAC:CCC, p. 43. 20. Gilbert, op. cit., p. 105. 21. Churchill, ‘Germany and Japan’, The Evening Standard, 27 November 1937, CHAR 8/543, CAC:CCC. 22. Churchill, ‘An “Incident” In China’, The Daily Telegraph, 27 May 1938, CHAR 8/611, CAC:CCC. 23. ‘Lord Hankey (1877–1963), R.A. Butler (1902–82) and the ‘Appeasement’ of Japan, 1939–41’ by Antony Best in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005. 24. Shigemitsu to Acting Foreign Minister, Nichi-Ei Gaiko¯ Zassan (Anglo- Japanese Diplomatic Relations, Misc.) A134–1, 4 April 1941, DRO/MOFA.

367 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

25. FO 371/27889, TNA/PRO. 26. ‘Shigemitsu Mamoru, 1887–1957 and Anglo-Japanese Relations’by Antony Best in Biographical Portraits Volume II, Folkestone: Japan Library, 1997. 27. Churchill, The Second World War, Volume III The Grand Alliance, London: Cassell & Co. Ltd, 1950, pp. 516, 536. 28. Shigemitsu Mamoru, Gaiko¯ Kaiso¯roku (Diplomatic Memoirs), Mainichi Shinbun, 1978, p. 243. 29. Churchill, The Battle of The Atlantic, June 25 1941, Robert Rhodes James’ edition of Churchill’s speeches, CAC:CCC, p. 6443. 30. Lord Hankey, Politics,Trials, and Errors, Oxford: Pen-In-Hand, p. XII. 31. Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯, ‘Gaiko¯ 50nen (The Fifty Years Diplomacy)’, The Yomiuri Newspaper, 1951, pp. 202–4. 32. Churchill Papers, Warning to Japan, WSC: Complete speeches, R. Rhodes James Edition vol. VI, CAC:CCC, p. 6504,. 33. Churchill, The Second World War, op. cit., p. 530 and p. 522. 34. Ibid. p. 536. 35. Churchill, The Second World War, Abridged Edition, Pimlico, 2002, pp. 492–493. 36. Prime Minister to Prime Ministers of Australia and New Zealand, CAB 65/14, TNA/PRO. 37. Churchill, The Second World War, Abridged Edition, op. cit. p. 492. 38. Churchill, ibid., p. 942. 39. Churchill, ibid., p. 941. 40. Asakai to Matsui Akira, Counsellor at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Correspondence, 9 February 1953, L’-005/9/3, DRO/MOFA. 41. Matsumoto, Cha¯chiru no Nihonjin eno Aijo¯ (Churchill’s Love for the Japanese), Bungei Shunju¯, May 1967, p. 98. Also Asakai, Tsukasacho¯ Kanwa-Ichi Gaiko¯kan no Kaiso¯ (A Diplomat’s Memoirs), O¯ bayashi Gumi Ltd., 1986, p. 170 and Takanobu Mitani, Kaiso¯roku (Memoirs), private edition, 1980, p. 268. 42. Matsumoto to Okazaki, Cablegram No.269, 1 May 1953, L’-005/9/ 3DRO/MOFA. 43. The Mainichi Shinbun (Newspaper), 1 May 1953, evening edition. 44. Asakai, op. cit., pp. 173–5. 45. Hugh Cortazzi ‘Yoshida, first Japanese Prime Minister to visit Britain in 1954’ in this volume. 46. Shigeru Yoshida, Kaiso¯ no 10nen (Memoirs of Ten Years), Chu¯o¯Ko¯ronsha, 1998, pp. 181–4. 47. Churchill, Letters to Yoshida, 11 August 1956 and 14 August 1957, CHUR 2/439, CAC:CCC. Also Matsumoto, op. cit., p. 98. 48. For example, the Asahi and the Nikkei newspapers, 25 January 1965. 49. Churchill further wrote: ‘The colours are lovely to look at and delicious to squeeze out. Matching them, however crudely, with what you see is fascinating and absolutely absorbing.’ ‘This heightened sense of observation of Nature is one of the chief delights that have come to me through trying to paint.’ ‘Try it, then, before it is too late and before you mock at me. Try it while there is time to over- come the preliminary difficulties. Learn enough of the language in your prime to

368 NOTES open this new literature to your age.’‘Painting is complete as a distraction. I know of nothing which, without exhausting the body, more entirely absorbs the mind. Whatever the worries of the hour or the threats of the future, once the picture has begun to flow along, there is no room for them in the mental screen.’ ‘When I get to heaven I mean to spend a considerable portion of my first million years in painting, and so get to the bottom of the subject. But then I shall require a still gayer palette than I get here below.’, Painting As A Pastime, op. cit., pp. 309–10, 313 and 318. 50. Churchill’s wartime leadership has also been the subject of a lecture series at the Maritime Defence Forces Staff College for more than ten years. It is still on the curriculum of the Staff College. (See National Institute of Defence Studies, Lecture Syllabus 74 Lo Gun-9 1974, Churchill’s Wartime Leadership, National Diet Library, GK421-E19. Also Kawai Hidekazu, Churchill,Chu¯o¯Ko¯ron Shinsho, 1998, p. 343.) The emphasis the Japanese place on Churchill’s wartime leadership is interesting when one considers the view of Basil Liddell Hart who said: ‘In that dark time of disaster, Winston Churchill shone by his fighting spirit. But although full recognition should be given to the example he set, it would be a mistake to equate this, in a historical judgment of events, with its influence on the situation. The British have always been less dependent than other people upon inspiring leadership. Their record embraces relatively few spectacular victories, but they have a unique record in winning “soldiers’ battles” .’ (Liddell Hart, Encounter, vol. 26, No. 4, 1966, pp. 17–18.) The point made by Liddell Hart may be a moot question for the British people themselves.

2HUGH CORTAZZI Prime Minister Yoshida in London 1954:The First Visit to Britain by a Japanese Prime Minister

Foreign Office papers in the National Archives are FO 371/110496/7/8 and PREM 11/3852 1. No 550 2. Article 16 of the Peace Treaty with Japan provided that ‘to indemnify those members of the armed forces of the Allied Powers who suffered undue hardships while prisoners of war of Japan’ Japanese assets in neutral and in other countries which had been at war with the allied powers would be transferred to the International Committee of the Red Cross for the benefit of former prisoners of war and their families. 3. ‘It seems that his mind often moves too fast for his command of the language with the result that he is apt to be unintelligible at times.’Memo dated 23 October 1954. 4. Matsui had accompanied the Crown Prince to London for the Coronation in 1953 (see chapter 4 of Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005). Matsui, a career diplomat later became Japanese Ambassador to the UN. 5. Mrs Aso Kazuko was Mr Yoshida’s daughter (see biographical portrait by Phillida Purvis in Biographical Portraits, Volume III, Folkestone: Japan Library, 1999.)

369 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

6. An essay on ‘Lord Hankey (1877–1963), R.A. Butler (1902–82) and the ‘Appeasement’ of Japan’ by Antony Best is chapter 10 in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005. 7. A biographical portrait by Antony Best of Sir Robert Craigie, the British Ambassador to Japan at the outbreak of the war, is contained in Biographical Portraits, Volume I, Japan Library, 1994 and British Envoys in Japan, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2004. 8. Of Jardine Matheson and company. 9. I was present as interpreter on this occasion and made an informal record, a copy of which remains on file. I had been called in at the last minute as Sir Winston had heard that Mr Yoshida had had difficulty in dealing with questioners at the meeting earlier in the day with the IPU. At the dinner Sir Winston said to Mr Yoshida that he hoped he had not been worried by the way in which he had been questioned at the IPU meeting. Mr Yoshida had replied that he was used to this sort of thing in his own country. My task as interpreter was not an easy one, not least because both prime ministers were hard of hearing and Mr Yoshida was inclined to use old-fash- ioned language. Questions and answers across the table were also difficult to hear. 10. See ‘Crown Prince Akihito in Britain’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005. 11. General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade. 12. The British proposed, if Japan became a party to the agreement, to invoke Article 35 allowing for continued discrimination against Japan. 13. Letter from Denis Allen, Assistant Under-secretary, to Sir Esler Dening in Tokyo, ref. FJ 1631/101 14. Dr (later Baroness) Edith Summerskill (1901–80), a leading member of the Labour Party. 15. According to Japanese records consulted by Ambassor Seki Eiji (e-mail of 6 April 2006) the representatives of the former prisoners of war asked if the issue could be solved within a few months as Yoshida had indicated to Members of Parliament on the previous day. They said that the existing ill-feeling in Britain towards Japan would not be perpetuated if this question was resolved. They stressed that it was a matter of principle not money. As long as the issue remained unre- solved it would continue to be a severe obstacle to closer Anglo-Japanese relations. Yoshida is said to have replied: ‘I feel sorry that a solution to the question has not so far been reached. I thought that it had already been solved, I was a chief dele- gate at the Peace Conference. I shall never fail to carry out the obligations under the treaty. I assure you that necessary payments will be taken up in the next budget.’ 16. Note dated 3 November 1954 by Ronald Higgins of the Far Eastern Department, FO. 17. Dennis Allen to Dening (see note 7). 18. Seki Eiji, a former Japanese ambassador, commented on Yoshida in the fol- lowing terms in an e-mail of 4 April:

Yoshida and his wife Yukiko were both Anglophiles as seen inter alia from the long history of their association with Britain (c.f. essay by Ian Nish in Biographical Portraits, Volume II (Japan Library, 1997) entitled ‘Yoshida

370 NOTES

Shigeru and Madame Yoshida at the London Embassy’ and an essay by Phillida Purvis in Biographical Portraits, Volume III (Japan Library, 1999) on ‘Kazuko Aso’). He tried to live as a proud gentleman/samurai often away from the madding crowd. I remember seeing him leaving his official resi- dence in Meguro with his two small terriers besides him in his car for week- ends at Oiso, looking pleased and happy. He was fond of dogs. Some said he was emulating the life-style of Churchill. Two Japanese diplomats, who later became ambassadors, told me that they were asked to take to Tokyo Yoshida’s underwear, which he normally bought at Harrods. He was generous with money. During his years with the Gaimusho, he spent all the family money which he had inherited from his father-in-law. I heard that Yoshida looked after penniless Japanese artists, painters and others in London out of his own pocket during his two postings to London. One recipient was the Japanese famous opera singer Fujihara Yoshie so that he would be properly dressed when he came to London for a recital in 1921. Again in London, Ambassador Yoshida would often return to the Embassy with a number of books under his arm which he had apparently purchased with his own money. He distributed them among young officers telling them to read the books and report to him in the morning. He took a keen interest in the training of diplomats: The Foreign Service Training Institute was started by him soon after the war. By the time he retired to Oiso, he had not much money left. But he would not change his way of life, continuing to entertain foreign visitors with excellent food and wine and more importantly with his witty talk. An invitation to dinner at his villa at Oiso was much coveted by foreign visitors. Ikeda Hayato and Sato Eisaku, both his protégés, may well have picked up Yoshida’s bills. No Japanese would make a fuss about official funds being used for the purpose, namely bona fide and effective diplomatic activities by Yoshida in retirement.

3HUGH CORTAZZI Edward Heath (1916–2005) and Japan:The First Visit of a British Prime Minister to Japan in 1972

1. His full title was the Right Honourable Sir Edward Heath KG, MBE. He became a Knight of the Garter in 1992. 2. Known in Japanese as the Sekai Bunkasho. 3. See separate account of this visit in the present volume. 4. The Course of My Life by Edward Heath, London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1998, p. 495. 5. I am indebted for the information in this paragraph to Sir Peter Wakefield, who was Minister (Commercial) in Tokyo, at the time. 6. Sir Fred Warner (despatch of 28 September 1972) noted that ‘By the end of the meal the habitually silent and constrained atmosphere of the court when for- eigners are present was lifted and an unwonted cheerfulness prevailed.’ 7. Mr Heath explained that: ‘Drawing on the information available to the

371 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Embassy and to British business concerns already in Japan, he would be able to devote all his time to the domestic side of the job. He could, for example draw the attention of firms to the size and rate of growth of the Japanese market to put them in touch with British concerns already in Japan who would be willing to provide Japanese speakers as interpreters, to help them to understand and satisfy Japanese Government regulations and controls, to indicate possible openings for joint ven- tures, and to guide them on the complexities of the distribution system in Japan.’ 8. According to a note about his career provided by the Japanese Embassy in London He lectured in Japan in 1980, 1981, 1984, 1985 and 1990. 9. According to the note referred to 7 above he did a recording in Japan in 1983 and conducted in 1986. 10. With a foreword by Mr Inayama Yoshihiro, Chairman of the Foundation. 11. Section 7. 12. Section 11. 13. Section 20. 14. With funds provided by the Shikanai family and the Fuji Sankei group. 15. The Course of My Life, p. 688. 16. The others were Dr Helmut Schmidt, the former German Chancellor, Professor Amintore Fanfani, former Prime Minister of Italy, Mr Nakasone Yasuhiro, former Japanese Prime Minister and David Rockefeller Jr. A sixth was to have been Jacques Chirac but as President of France he did not have the time to participate. 17. Email from Saba Shoichi of 3 March 2006 who added that Heath could be very generous with his time and once visited the Toshiba headquarters to observe a rehearsal by the Toshiba Philharmonic Orchestra, which was a symphony orchestra formed by employees of the corporation.

4IAN NISH Nitobe Inazo in London

This portrait was adapted by Professor Ian Nish from an essay by him which was originally published as ‘Nitobe and the Secretariat in London 1919’ in Nitobe Inazo: From Bushido to the League of Nations, Sapporo: Hokkaido University Press, 2006. It is reproduced here with the permission of the publishers. 1. On Goto¯’s journey, see Tsurumi Yusuke, Goto¯ Shimpei, 4 vols, Tokyo, 1937. Fujiko Hara, The Autobiography of Ozaki Yukio, Princeton: UP, 2001, pp. 323–24. We learn from Kobayashi Tatsuo (ed.), Suiso nikki: Ito Miyoji bunsho, Tokyo, 1966, that Goto¯ absented himself from the gaiko¯cho¯sakai deliberations from March 1919 until January 1920. General studies of Dr Nitobe and the League include Unno Yoshiro¯, Kokusai remmel to Nihon, Tokyo: Hara Shobo, 1972; and Thomas Burkman, ‘Nitobe Inazo as Under-Secretary General of the League of Nations, 1920–6’ in Journal of International Studies [Sophia University, Tokyo] 14 (1985), pp. 77–93. 2. Peter Beck, ‘Introduction’ to British Documents on Foreign Affairs, University Publications of America,1992, Part II, series J, vol. I, pp. xiii–xviii. Naoko Shimazu, Japan, Race and Equality, London: Routledge, 1998. R. H. Fifield,

372 NOTES

Woodrow Wilson and the Far East, Hamden, Conn.: Archon, 1965. 3. Marle-Renee Mouton, La Societe des Nations et les Interets de la France, 1920–4, Bern: Peter Lang, 1995, pp. 14–15; Margaret Macmillan, Peacemakers: Six months that changed the World, London: John Murray, 2001. Unno, op. cit, p. 16. 4. Fifield, op. cit, p. 307. Unno, op. cit., pp. 19–20. 5. Quite properly, there is little evidence of how Japanese leaders approved the nomination of Nitobe.Nihon gaiko¯ bunsho and Hara nikki say nothing. Suiuso nikki suggests that members of gaiko¯cho¯sakal were nor consulted either. Seki Shizuo, Taisho¯ gaiko¯, Kyoto: Minerva, 2001. 6. Ruth B. Henig (ed.), The League of Nations, Edinburgh: Oliver & Boyd, 1973, appendix I. 7. George Scott, The Rise and Fall of the League of Nations, Glasgow: Hutchinson, 1973, p. 67. 8. Unno, op. cit., p. 20. 9. Nitobe, ‘A typical British gentleman: Sir Eric Drummond’. 10. Hankey diary, 13 June 1920, quoted in Stephen Roskill, Hankey: Man of secrets, 3 vols, London: Collins, 1972, vol. II, p. 165. 11. The lecture was later published from Harrison (London, 1920, 21pp.). 12. As reported in the Morning Post. ‘The Japanese Colonization’, The Collected Works of Inazo Nitobe, vol. 23: 111–120, 13. Japan Society of London, Proceedings, 1920, p. 186. 14. The Times [of London], 19 October 1919. 15. From ‘Activities of the League’. 16. Speaking in Brussels on 13 September 1920, Nitobe confirmed that ‘Its headquarters are at present in London; but they will be removed to Geneva within a few weeks.’ 17. This phrase is used by Ishii Kikujiro¯ (ambassador to Paris) in Gaiko¯ yoroku, Tokyo: Iwanami, 1930, ch. 7/1. Surprisingly he makes no mention of Nitobe. On Sugimura, Ian Nish, ‘A Japanese diplomat looks at Europe, 1920–39’ in Nish and Dunn (eds.), European Studies on Japan, Tenterden: Paul Norbury, 1979, pp. 134–39, Gaimusho no 100-nen, vol. 2, Tokyo: 1969.

5NOBORU KOYAMA Inagaki Manjiro¯ (1861–1908): a Diplomat who Recognized the Importance of the Asia-Pacific Region to Japan

1. Gonville & Caius matriculation book 1887–1897 64: Manjiro Inagaki; Nagasaki-ken jinbutsu den, [reprint ed.], Kyoto, Rinsen Shoten, 1973, p. 859. The latter indicates Inagaki’s date of birth was 26 September Bunkyu¯1. 2. The characters use for Matsura are ‘matsu’and ‘ura’and are generally roman- ized as Matsuura, but the Kyu¯shu¯ family omitted the second ‘u’. 3. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi: Nagasaki jinbutsu den, Nagasaki, Nagasaki Kyo¯iku Iinkai, 1969, p. 215; Hirado shishi, Hirado, Hirado-shi, 1967, p. 186. 4. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi, p. 215; Nagasaki-ken jinbutsu den, p. 859; Hirado shishi, p. 186. 5. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi, p. 215; Yadoumaru Hiroshi, Hirado shiwa, revised

373 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI ed., Sasebo, Shinwa Ginko¯ Saibikai, 1964, p. 390. 6. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi, p. 216; Hirado shishi, p. 186. 7. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi, p. 216; Hirado shishi, p. 186. 8. Kyo¯do no senkakusha tachi, p. 216. 9. Ibid., p. 216. 10. Ibid., p. 216. 11. See biographical portrait of Nakamura Masanao by Akiko Ohta in Biographical Portraits, Volume I, 2002. 12. Kyo¯do no senkakushatachi, p. 216. 13. To¯kyo¯ Daigaku hyakunenshi, Tsu¯shi, Vol. 1, Tokyo, To¯kyo¯ Daigaku Shuppankai, 1984, pp. 633–643. 14. See ‘Kikuchi Dairoku, 1855–1917: Educational Administrator and Pioneer of Modern Mathematical Education in Japan’ by Noboru Koyama in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, 2005. 15. Tanakadate Aikichi, ‘Kikuti Sensei no omoide’, Taiyo, Vol. 23, No.12. 16. Matsuura Atsushi Haku den shibunsho¯, Tokyo, Matsuura Hakushakuke Henshu¯jo, 1939. p. 11. 17. Gonville & Caius matriculation book 1887–1897 64: Manjiro Inagaki 18. Ibid. 19. T. Fisher Unwin, London. 20. Cambridge University reporter, 11 June 1878. 21. Ibid., 7 June, 1886. 22. The minute book of the Council of the Senate [the University of Cambridge], 7 March and 30 May 1887; Cambridge University reporter, 14 June 1887. 23. H.J. Edwards, ‘Japanese undergraduates at Cambridge University’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London, London, Japan Society, 1908, p. 48. 24. The Japanese Club at Cambridge, [No.1 ]. 25. The Japanese Club at Cambridge, [No.2 ]. 26. The Expansion of England:two courses of lectures by J.R. Seeley [Sir John Robert Seeley 1834–95], London, 1883 27. Nihon kin-gendai jinbutsu rireki jiten, Tokyo, To¯kyo¯ Daigaku Shuppankai, 2002, p. 57. 28. Inagaki Manjiro¯, To¯ho¯saku, Tokyo, Katsusekaisha, 1891. 29. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Shiberia Tetsudo¯ ron, Tokyo, Tetsugaku Shoin, 1891. 30. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Taigaisaku, Tokyo, Hakubundo¯, 1891. 31. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Sho¯-ko¯gyo¯ taigakisaku, Osaka, Tosho Shuppan Kaisha, 1892. 32. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Kyo¯iku no ¯motoo , Tokyo, Tetsugaku Shoin, 1892. 33. Inagaki Manjiro¯, To¯ho¯saku ketsuron so¯an, Tokyo, Tetsugaku Shoin, 1892. 34. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Nan’yo¯cho¯seidan, [Tokyo], Yasui Hedema, 1893. 35. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Gaiko¯ to gaisei, Tokyo, Min’yu¯sha, 1896. 36. Tanaka Yaju¯ro¯, ‘Inagaki Manjiro¯ to Taikoku’, Kokusai hyo¯ron, Vol. 8, No.4. 37. Iida Junzo¯, Nichi-Tai jo¯yaku kankei no shiteki tenkai katei ni kansuru kenkyu¯, Hachioji, So¯ka Daigaku Ajia Kenkyu¯jo, 1998, p. 23. 38. Inagaki Manjiro¯, Nan’yo¯cho¯seidan, pp. 2–3.

374 NOTES

39. To¯ho¯Kyo¯kai kaiho¯, No. 16. 40. Iida Junzo¯, Nichi-Tai jo¯yaku kankei no shiteki tenkai katei ni kansuru kenkyu¯, p. 25. 41. Nigel Brailey, ‘Sir Ernest Satow, Siam and early Japanese Pan-Asianism’, Japan – Thailand relations, London, STICERD, 1991, p. 15. 42. Nagasaki-ken jinbutsu den, p. 895; Nihon kin-gendai jinbutsu rireki jiten, p. 57. The latter indicates the name of Inagaki’s wife was Yoneko. 43. Yasui later became the first Dean and the second President of Tokyo Women’s Christian University. 44. The name of Nisshinji was later changed to Nittaiji (Japan-Thailand Temple) when the name Siam was changed to Thailand. 45. Nagasaki-ken jinbutsu den, p. 895. 46. Asahi shinbun, 27 November 1909. 47. Ibid. 48. Asahi shinbun, 27 November 1909.

6HUGH CORTAZZZI The Sho¯wa Emperor’s State Visit to Britain, October 1971

1. See ‘Crown Prince Akihito in Britain’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Biographical Portraits Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005. 2. See ‘Prince and Princess Chichibu’by Dorothy Britton in the same volume. 3. FJ 1941/1 of 1966 in the National Archives (NA). 4. The words used were: ’The Queen would be happy to receive the Emperor as a State guest if he should wish to visit the United Kingdom.’ 5. On 14 October 1966 the Royal Visits Committee looked at, but shelved, the idea of the Queen visiting Malaysia, a visit which Arthur de la Mare suggested might be combined with one to Japan. De la Mare wrote: ‘In present circum- stances a visit to Japan would probably have a greater and better effect than a visit to any other country.’ 6. Sir Stanley Tomlinson, Deputy Under-Secretary in the FCO at that time, in a letter to Sir John Pilcher headed ‘Strictly personal and confidential’and dated 5 Feb 1971 [folio 13a in FCO 57/330] referred ‘to a degree of reserve – I might almost say petulance – in certain circles about this visit. . .It is partly based on residual prejudice against the Japanese. This is a factor in this country which we cannot ignore. . .It would be wrong to exaggerate the strength of anti-Japanese prejudice in this country. . .All this is nothing more than a faint shadow in the background. . .I do not think that the Queen is affected in the slightest degree by the sentiments discussed.’ 7. The Queen’s invitation began with the words ‘My Good Brother’. The Emperor’s reply began ‘Madam My Sister’. 8. The Emperor was restored to the Order of the Garter on 22 May 1971. 9. Despatch from Sir John Pilcher dated 5 November 1971 (FEJ 26/4). 10. In a letter of 12 March 1971 to John Morgan in the FCO, Pilcher wrote: ‘Naturally, our friends tell us that it was his moments in England and Scotland

375 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI that stick out in his memory: they tell us that his memories of Britain are the real moving factor. The Belgians are persuaded that it was the gentle charm of their King and Queen who moved him to venture again on foreign travel.’ 11. See ‘Crown Prince Hirohito in Britain’ by Ian Nish in Biographical Portraits Volume II, Japan Library, 1997 12. In his despatch of 19 May 1971, Sir John Pilcher wrote that it was ‘to the British monarchy (and perhaps to a lesser extent to the Belgian example) that the Emperor and his advisers look for guidance on how to orientate their behaviour and attitude’. 13. For a fuller quotation from this interesting despatch see ‘Sir John Pilcher’ by Hugh Cortazzi in Biographical Portraits, Volume III, Japan Library, 1999 and British Envoys in Japan, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2004. 14. But it did perplex foreign correspondents in Japan and, according to Sir John Pilcher’s letter of 12 March to John Morgan, the Grand Master of the Ceremonies Mr Shima Shigenobu found some difficulty in answering questions at the International Press Club on 10 March 1971 about the Emperor’s role in Shinto. 15. Despatch from Tokyo of 5 November 1971 16. Entitled ‘The Emperor of Japan: The Man and His Life’ and dated 19 May 1971. 17. Sir John Pilcher noted, however, in his letter of 12 March 1971 (see note 9) that Shima, the Grand Master of the Ceremonies, displays ‘a feeling of “awe” when dealing with imperial matters. . .[this] upsets him still and he is obsessed with the idea of not taking liberties’. 18. Mr Athony Joly de Lotbinière. See letter from Sir John Pilcher to Sir Denis Greenhill, the Permanent Under-Secretary at the FCO, dated 23 June 1971. 19. I acted as interpreter on their arrival at Victoria Station. 20. FCO despatch dated 9 November 1971 to Tokyo and signed by John Morgan for the Secretary of State. 21. He was protesting at the shortage of housing in Stoke-on-Trent. 22. The Queen said: ‘We cannot pretend that the past did not exist. We cannot pretend that the relations between our two countries have always been peaceful and friendly. However, it is precisely this experience which should make us all the more determined never to let it happen again.’ 23. Despatch from Sir John Pilcher dated 5 November 1971. 24. As the Japanese government had not yet established relations with the PRC, the Chinese Chargé d’Affaires had had to be told that he was not invited. 25. Professor E.J.H. Corner (see ‘John Corner, 1906–1996: Controversial Biologist and Friend of the Showa Emperor’ by Carmen Blacker in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005) wrote the biographical memoir of the Emperor Hirohito in Biographical Memoirs of Fellows of the Royal Society, Volume 36 (December 1990) and was an advocate of electing the Emperor to a Fellowship. 26. Much of this conversation was, I recall as the interpreter on this occasion, taken up with a discussion of the US-Japan textile issue which was then a serious problem. On 7 October, Mr Fukuda had a meeting of one-and-a-half hours with the Foreign Secretary when topics included US economic measures, textiles,

376 NOTES expulsion of Soviet spies, China and the UN, Rhodesia and the Gulf. 27. FCO despatch of 9 November 1971 reporting on the visit. 28. The burning of the Japanese flag by protesters was thought by many Japanese to be insulting. 29. FCO despatch to Tokyo of 9 November 1971. 30. A letter dated 1 December 1971 from John Morgan in the FCO to Hugh Howse at the BBC said that the fact Britain received far more coverage in the Japanese press than the visits to other countries ‘was very much due to the efforts of the BBC’. 31. FCO despatch to Tokyo of 9 November 1971. The fact that Earl Mountbatten of Burma was absent from the State Banquet was interpreted by some as a deliberate snub, but the Earl called on the Emperor at the Palace and had a reportedly cordial conversation. 32. See endnote 1. 33. See The Thames and I by Crown Prince Naruhito, Hugh Cortazzi (trs.), Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2006.

7ANTONY BEST A Royal Alliance: Court Diplomacy and Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1900–41

1. This study draws on material previously published in two of the author’s recent articles: see Antony Best, ‘Race, Monarchy and the Anglo-Japanese Alliance, 1902–1922’, Social Science Japan Journal, 2006, vol.9/2, pp. , and idem, ‘ “Our Respective Empires Should Stand Together”: The Royal Dimension in Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1919–1941’ Diplomacy and Statecraft, 2005, vol.16/2, pp. 259–79. Other relevant articles in Biographical Portraits are Volume II ‘Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Period’by Hugh Cortazzi and ‘Crown Prince Hirohito in Britain’ by Ian Nish, Volume V ‘Crown Prince Akihito in Britain’ by Hugh Cortazzi and ‘Prince and Princess Chichibu’ by Dorothy Britton, Volume VI ‘The Sho¯wa Emperor’s State Visit to Britain, October 1971’ by Hugh Cortazzi and ‘Japanese Tattooists and the British Royal Family’by Noboru Koyama. Major Piggott became Major General Piggott and was the subject of a biographical por- trait together with his father Sir F.T. Piggott by Carmen Blacker in Britain and Japan: 1859–1991:Themes and Personalities. See also Mitford’s Japan: Memories and Recollections 1866–1906, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.) which includes extracts from Mitford’s The Garter Mission, of 1906. 2. See T. Fujitani, Splendid Monarchy: Power and Pageantry in Modern Japan, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1998. 3. M. Yoshimura, ‘Nichi-Ei kyu¯tei ko¯ryu shi no ichimen: sono seijiteki seikaku to hisei- jiteki seikaku’[One Face of Anglo-Japanese Imperial Court Relations: Their Political and Non-Political Character] in Y. Kibata, I. Nish, C. Hosoya and T. Tanaka (eds), Nichi-Ei ko¯ryu shi, vol.1, Seiji-Gaiko¯ [The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations: Politics and Diplomacy], Tokyo: Tokyo University Press, 2000, pp. 309–14. 4. The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), FO83/1567 Salisbury to Satow (Tokyo) 2 April 1897 (tel.).

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5. Lansdowne papers, British Library (BL), Lans (5) vol.4, Knollys to Lansdowne 6 November 1901. 6. N. Kimizuka, ‘Ito¯ Hirobumi no Roshia ho¯mon to Nichi-Ei do¯mei: Igirisu seifu shuno¯bu no taio¯ o chushin ni’[Ito Hirobumi’s Visit to Russia and the Anglo- Japanese Alliance: Concentrating on the Response of the British Government] Kanagawa-ken ritsu gaigo tanki daigaku kiyo, no.23 (2000) pp. 39–41. 7. TNA FO83/1982 Synge (Treaty Dept) minute 23 January 1902. 8. Lansdowne papers, TNA, FO800/134 MacDonald (Tokyo) to Barrington (FO) 9 April 1902. 9. For the ‘Shah and Garter’ episode, see S. Heffer, Power and Place:The Political Consequences of King Edward VII, London: Wiedenfeld and Nicolson, 1998, pp. 141–53. 10. Balfour papers, BL, Add.49747, Percy to Balfour, 13 January 1905. 11. Balfour papers, BL, Add.49729, Lansdowne to Balfour, 8 October 1905. 12. TNA FO37261 12308/962/323, Ponsonby to Davidson, 10 April 1907. 13. TNA HO45/10533/150939/1 Lampson (FO) to Boyd (HO) 4 April 1907. 14. I.H. Nish, Alliance in Decline:A Study in Anglo-Japanese Relations 1908–1923, London: Athlone, 1972, p. 84, and Yoshimura, op.cit., pp. 318–19. 15. Balfour papers, TNA, FO800/210, Piggott memorandum, 11 November 1917. 16. Balfour papers, TNA, FO800/203, Greene (Tokyo) to Balfour, 3 July 1918. See also Yoshimura, op.cit., pp. 321–3. 17. See M. Hatano, ‘Taisho¯ju¯nen ko¯taishi hoo¯ – sono kettei e no porosesu to seika [The Crown Prince’s visit to Europe in Taisho 10 – the process and result of the decision], Ho¯gaku Kenkyu¯, 1993, no. 66, pp. 305–9, and Nish, op.cit., pp. 321–4. 18. Best, ‘Our Respective Empires’, p. 262. 19. Yoshimura, op.cit., pp. 324–9. 20. Daily Chronicle, 18 April 1922. 21. R. Colvin, The Memoirs of Sir Ragnar Colvin KBE CB 1882–1954, Durley: Wintershill Publications, 1992, p. 86 and Curzon papers, India Office Library and Records (IOLR), BL, Mss.Eur.F112/224a Eliot (Tokyo) to Curzon 23 May 1922. 22. Mountbatten diary 9 May 1922, in The Diaries of Lord Louis Mountbatten 1920–22:Tours with the Prince of Wales, P. Ziegler (ed.), London: Collins, 1987, p. 299, and Colvin, op.cit., p. 86. 23. Best, ‘Our Respective Empires’, p. 263. 24. Ibid., pp. 268–9. 25. TNA FO371/13250 F6235/6235/23, Saburi (Japanese embassy) to Cushenden, 13 November 1928. 26. Best, ‘Our Respective Empires’, pp. 272–4.

8NOBORU KOYAMA Japanese Tattooists and the British Royal Family During the Meiji Period

1. An essay on ‘Royal Visits to Japan in the Meiji Period’ by Hugh Cortazzi was contained in Biographical Portraits, Volume II, Japan Library, 1997.

378 NOTES

2. Tamabayashi Haruo, Bunshin Hyakushi, Tokyo, Nihon Shisei Kenkyujo¯, 1987, pp. 222–52. 3. Tanizaki Jun’ichiro¯, Tanizaki Jun’ichiro¯ Zenshu¯, Vol. 1, Tokyo, Chu¯o¯ Ko¯ronsha, 1966, p. 63. 4. James Bradley, ‘Body Commodification? Class and Tattoos in Victorian Britain’, Written on the Body: the Tattoo in European and American History, Jane Caplan (ed.), London: Reaktion Books, 2000, p. 137. 5. A.T. Sinclare, ‘Tattooing-Oriental and Gypsy’, American Anthropologist, Vol. 10 No. 3 (Jul.–Sep. 1980). 6. George Burchett, Memoirs of aTattooist: from the Notes,Diaries and Letters of the late ‘King of Tattooists’, (comp. and ed.), Peter Leighton, London: Oldbourne, 1958, p. 26. 7. The tattoo of Edward VII, then Prince of Wales, was probably reported for the first time in a French journal in 1881 when Gabriel Charmes visited Francis Souwan, a tattooist in Jerusalem, and saw the certificate which described how Souwan had tattooed the Cross of Jerusalem on the arm of the Prince of Wales on 2 April 1862. Gabriel Charmes, Voyage en Syrie, Revue des Deux Mondes, 15 June 1881, p. 771. 8. An account of this visit can be found in Mitford’s Japan, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), new edition, Japan Library, 2002. 9. In his memoir, Henry Keppel wrote as follows: ‘Japs making great prepara- tions to receive the Duke of Edinburgh’ (Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol III, London: Macmillan, 1889. p. 278.) 10. ShinbunShu¯sei MeijiHhennenshi, 2nd ed., Vol. 1, Tokyo: Shinbun Shu¯sei Meiji Hennenshi Hanpukai, 1965, p. 198. 11. Henry Keppel, A Sailor’s Life under Four Sovereigns, Vol. III, p. 286. 12. Ibid., p. 295. 13. Charles Beresford, The Memoirs of Admiral Lord Charles Beresford, Vol. 1, London: Methuen, 1914, p. 101. 14. Prince Albert Victor et al., The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship “Bacchante” 1879–1882, Vol. II, London: Macmillan, 1886. 15. Ibid., p. 41. 16. Ibid., p. 46. 17. Ibid., p. 46. 18. Tamabayashi Haruo, Bunshin Hyakushi, p. 222. 19. Prince Albert Victor et al., The Cruise of Her Majesty’s Ship “Bacchante” 1879–1882, Vol. II. p. 46. 20. ‘Tattooing in Japan’, Illustrated London News, 2 December 1882. Japan and the Illustrated London News, T. Bennett (ed.), Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2006, p. 256. 21. Ibid. 22. ‘The cruise of the Bacchante’, The Times, 5 August 1882. 23. To¯kyo¯ Yokohama Mainichi shinbun, 18 November 1881. 24. Tanii Motojiro¯, ‘Nihon bunshin ko¯’, Gurotesuku, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1928). 25. Hugo Vickers, Alice: Princes Andrew of Greece, London: Hamish Hamilton, 2000, p. 8. 26. Harold Nicolson, King George the Fifth: His Life and Reign, London: Constable, 1952, p. 29.

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27. PRO.30:33/16/1. 28. In the Roman alphabet, Hori Chiyo has been alternatively translated as Hori Chyo or Hori Tchio as well as Hori Chiyo. According to Chamberlain (Things Japanese, 5th ed.) Hori Chiyo may have had a successor who called himself Hori Chiyo II. It is possible that Hori Chiyo II was in fact Hori Sei, the disciple of Hori Chiyo. 29. Stephan Oettermann, ‘On display: tattooed entertainers in America and Germany’, Written on the body: the Tattoo in European and American History, Jane Caplan (ed.), London: Reaktion Books, 2000, p. 204. 30. Albert Parry, Tattoo:Secrets of a Strange Art, New York: Simon and Schuster, 1933, p. 99. Reprinted by Dover, 2006. 31. George Burchett, Memoirs of a Tattooist, p. 47. 32. Gambier Bolton, ‘Pictures on the human skin’, Strand magazine, Vol. 13, No. 76 (April 1897). 33. George Burchett, Memoirs of a Tattooist, facing p. 48. 34. George Burchett, Memoirs of a Tattooist, pp. 50–51. 35. Basil Hall Chamberlain and W.B. Mason, Handbook for Travellers in Japan, 3rd ed., Yokohama Kelly & Walsh, 1891, advertisement. 36. Albert Parry, Tattoo, p. 100 and Donald Richie and Ian Burma, The Japanese Tattoo, New York: Weatherhill, 1980, p. 32. 37. Miyazaki Tadashi (Hori Chiyo) and his family were registered in the family registration (koseki) under his father’s name. Hori Chiyo disappeared from his family home in June 1878 when he was nineteen years old, and he did not return home until August 1890 when he was thirty years old. His return was apparently connected with the registration of his daughter and his wife. His daughter Shizu who was born in October 1891 was registered as Miyazaki Tadashi’s shoshi (a child born out of wedlock). However Shizu does not appear to have been his real daughter. Rather, she was the illegitimate child of Watanabe Fumi, the woman who became Hori Chiyo’s wife. According to Arishima’s Hori Chiyo, Hori Chiyo worked at Arthur Bond’s Fine Art Gallery as a tattooist, and Watanabe Fumi was the mistress of Horace Frank Arthur, a British citizen and the owner of Arthur Bond’s Fine Art Gallery, when they met. Later Hori Chiyo and Fumi became lovers and got married. When Hori Chiyo married Fumi, he registered Shizu as his daughter in his family registration, but biologically Shizu was a daughter of Fumi and Arthur. Probably, Hori Chiyo and Fumi married in 1891 or 1892 and at that time, Fumi was just twenty or twenty-one years old and Hori Chiyo was thirty-one or thirty-two years old. When Hori Chiyo got married, he set up his own bungalow apart from the tattoo studios at Arthur Bond’s Fine Art Gallery. We do not know what Hori Chiyo did from 1878 when he was nineteen years old to 1890 when he was thirty-one. 38. Charles M. Taylor, Vacation Days in Hawaii and Japan, Philadelphia: George W. Jacobs & Co., 1898, p. 140. 39. According to his card, Hori Chiyo studied drawing at the Tokyo Fine Arts Academy at first, and then subsequently acquired the skill of tattooing. This is probably a reference to the To¯kyo¯ Bijutsu Gakko¯ (Tokyo Fine Art School). But the To¯kyo¯ Bijutsu Gakko¯ only opened in 1889, by which time Hori Chiyo was

380 NOTES already thirty years old and too old to enter the School, although it is possible that Hori Chiyo might have learned drawing at one of the forerunners of the To¯kyo¯ Bijutsu Gakko¯. 40. Gambier Bolton, ‘Pictures on the human skin’, Strand magazine, Vol. 13, No. 76 (April 1897). 41. Tanii Motojiro¯, ‘Nihon bunshin ko¯’, Gurotesuku, Vol. 1, No. 1 (1928). 42. Iizawa Tadasu, Ishi Meiji Tenno¯ den, Tokyo, Shincho¯sha, 1988, p. 222 ; Yoshimura Akira, Shijitsu o aruku, Bungei Shunju¯, 1998, pp. 119–120. 43. His family registration recorded that he died 17 March 1900 and that his death was reported to the local office in Sapporo (Hokkaido¯). We do not know the detailed cause of Hori Chiyo’s death, but it was certain that he died in Hokkaido¯ in 1900. Arishima’s Hori Chiyo suggests that Hori Chiyo’s death was part of a double suicide pact made with a lover. According to Basil Hall Chamberlain’s Things Japanese 5th edition (1905), Hori Chiyo killed himself for love in 1900. A Japanese article suggests Hori Chiyo committed double suicide with a prostitute in Hakodate (Hokkaido¯). Arishima’s Hori Chiyo even suggests the cause of Hori Chiyo’s suicide might be connected with a love affair between his wife and his disciple, Hori Sei. 44. Tani Motojiro¯, ‘Bunshin no kenkyu¯’, Edo jidai bunka, Vol. 2, No. 2 (February 1928). 45. Lord Redesdale, The Garter Mission to Japan, London, Macmillan, 1906. 46. Tamabayashi, ‘Bunshinshi Kamei Unosuke’, Denki, Vol. 2, No. 7 (1935). 47. Duke of Windsor, A family album, London, Cassell, 1960, p. 90.

9MEMOIR BY TOYODA SHOICHIRO Toyota and Britain

1. Nakamura Masanao was the subject of a biographical portrait by Akiko Ota in Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005

10 CHRISTOPHER MADELEY Nissan and the British Motor Vehicle Industry (Prior to the Nissan Investment in the UK in 1984)

1. This paper was published under the title ‘The Automobile in Japan’ by the London School of Economics STICERD in International Studies Discussion Paper No IS/05/494, July 2005. The editor is grateful to LSE for permission to publish this edited version. 2. Christopher Madeley contributed a related article to Volume III of Britain and Japan Biographical Portraits, Japan Library, 1999 entitled ‘Albert James Penniall: Pioneer of the Japanese Motor Vehicle Industry’. He also contributed an essay entitled ‘A Case Study of Anglo-Japanese Cooperation in the Motor Vehicle Industry: Ishikawajima, Wolseley, Isuzu and Rootes’ to Volume IV Economic and Business Relations, Janet Hunter and S. Sugiyama (eds), Palgrave Macmillan, 2002 of the History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000, Chihiro Hosoya and Ian Nish (eds).

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3. This images is of the Datsun/Austin Cambridge A50 1956 it has certain Japanese features e.g. rear view mirrors on the side above the front wheels. The Datsun version of the Austin 1498cc 4cyl. engine began as a straight copy but was soon improved dramatically. They were more efficient and powerful due to better balancing and greater precision in manufacture.

11 ROBIN MOUNTFIELD Nissan’s Investment in Britain: History of a Negotiation 1980–84

1. Although some capable members came and went, I should pay tribute at DTI/DoI especially to Alan Whiting, who provided much of the economic thinking on local content and manpower implications; and above all to Michael Cochlin, who was Assistant Secretary in DTI’s Vehicles Division. Michael Cochlin had a meticulous command of detail and wide knowledge of the indus- try, but most of all calm and wise judgment in the long tactical game of negoti- ation. Although he has received too little of the credit, it was also he who, as my successor as Under Secretary in charge of Vehicles Division, secured Toyota’s investment, following Nissan’s decision to come to the UK, and did so on tough terms without having to spend government money. Other important contributors to the eventual successful outcome were Michael Cochlin’s predecessor, John Cammell, who from the start was an advo- cate of pursuing Nissan to come to the UK and instrumental in the early response made to the company; Ken Binning and Robin Hope who made some of the initial approaches to Nissan in 1980; and Richard Bullock and Sir Gordon Manzie, successively the Deputy Secretaries in DTI concerned with project. We also drew great strength from the Embassy in Tokyo, much enhanced by the strong Japanese language skills among its staff. Sir Hugh Cortazzi and Sir John Whitehead especially, and several members of their staffs, including Sir David Wright, who acted as advisers, reporters and interpreters, were key contributors. A number of ministers were also closely involved: Patrick Jenkin and Norman Tebbit especially were closely involved at key stages and gave the negotiating team vital support and guidance.

12 HUGH CORTAZZI Honda So¯ichiro (1906–1991) and Honda Motors in Britain

1. I have drawn freely on Honda Motor, the Men, the Management, the Machines by Tetsuo Sakiya, translated by Kiyoshi Ikemi, Kodansha international Ltd, 1982. I have also drawn on Honda, the UK Story by Eric Dymock, Dove Publishing, 1995, and on information available on the internet. 2. I recall doing an interview with him in Japanese in 1987 for a magazine called Will (1987–4) which appeared with the title ‘Cultural Friction brings forth national wealth (bunkamasatsu ga k¯okufu wo umu): Symbol of friendship brought about by Japanese and British manufacture of motor cars (Nihon to Eikoku no kuruma tsukuri

382 NOTES ga unda shinzen no sho¯cho¯)’. We had a good laugh together on this occasion. I recall that when I was British Ambassador to Japan Mr and Mrs Honda used to hold parties for members of the diplomatic corps at their residence when their guests could enjoy saké and could fish for ayu in the artificial stream running through their gardens. 3. Geoffrey Bownas in his book Japanese Journeys: Writings and Recollections, Global Oriental, 2005, pp. 110–111 recorded how he met Honda So¯ichicho for the first time in 1966 at the Honda Research Institute. He was wearing a peaked Honda cap and white overalls with a long black grease stain down the back. Honda stressed that there was no posh director’s suite in the institute. He knew every oper- ation and test. One employee was making a gasket. Honda ‘eased him gently aside, and proceeded to finish the work. “It was a beauty” said the displaced person.’ Honda told Bownas that he was the son of a country blacksmith and proud of it.’ 4. Honda Motor, the Man, the Mangement, the Machines, p. 72. 5. Dr Clive Bradley, British Embassy Science and Technology Counsellor in the early 1980s, remembers watching Honda assembly workers ‘literally sprinting to keep up with the production line as it was going so fast’. E-mail of 4 March 2006. 6. Ibid., p. 69. 7. Ibid., p. 81. 8. Ibid., p. 190. 9. Ibid., p. 111. 10. Honda,The UK Story, p. 61. 11. Ibid., p. 61. 12. Ibid., p. 65. 13. Ibid., p. 67. 14. Ibid., p. 69 15. Ibid., p. 74. 16. Ibid., p. 68. 17. Ibid., p. 68. 18. This portrait was written before I had seen the book The Honda Myth:The Genius and his Wake by Masaaki Sato, New York, 2006, pp. 405–6, which gives a different picture. According to Sato, Honda which owned a 20% stake in Rover was approached by British Aerospace when it decided to sell all its shares in Rover. Honda offered to increase its stake to 47.5%, but British Aerospace rejected the offer. It was determined to sell all its shares. Some in Honda thought that their company had missed a significant opportunity to become a multi-national corporation. In Sato’s view one reason for Honda’s failure was shortage of capital, but the failure may also have been because ‘they weren’t confident in their ability to manage Rover’. 19. Information provided by Dr Clive Bradley, former Science and Technology Counsellor, British Embassy, Tokyo.

13 HUGH CORTAZZI Morita Akio (1921–99), Sony and Britain

1. I have drawn extensively on Morita’s own account of his life in Made in Japan, New York: Dutton, 1986 and have found much of interest in Sony the Private Life by John Nathan, Harper Collins, 1999.

383 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

2. I met Morita Akio on many occasions and have drawn on personal memo- ries. I make no apology for devoting two-thirds of this short piece to Morita’s career and only a third about his connections with Britain. Morita was an inter- national figure and to devote more space to his relations with Britain would be disproportionate. 3. Made in Japan, p. 57. 4. Ibid., p. 67. 5. Ibid., p. 78. 6. Original Equipment Maker. 7. Made in Japan, p. 101. 8. Ibid., p. 118. 9. It is not possible to say whether Sony, whose profits were dented in the 1990s, would have avoided some of the mistakes which were made in these years, e.g. eschewing the development of plasma and liquid crystal flat screen displays. They achieved considerable success with their PlayStation, but lost out to Apple over the iPod music player. They took a lead in developing standards for digital television which was one of Morita’s interests. 10. Although he is quoted as saying in an e-mail to a friend: ‘Don’t be afraid to make a mistake. But make sure you don’t make the same mistake twice.’ 11. In Made in Japan, p. 147, he recounted an altercation which he had had with Tajima Michiji, a former Director General of the Imperial Household Agency. At one time when he was vice-president and Tajima was chairman of the board, Tajima had taken amiss the way in which Morita disagreed with him. Morita had then said to Tajima: ‘Sir, if you and I had exactly the same ideas on all subjects, it would not be necessary for both of us to be in this company and receive a salary. . . It is precisely because you and I have different ideas that this company will run a smaller risk of making mistakes.’ 12. In Made in Japan, p. 123, he recorded how in Vienna he had met the con- ductor von Karajan who had arranged an introduction to Max Grundig. He noted that von Karajan was a frequent guest in his home. 13. We were once invited by the Moritas to spend a night with them in their villa at Karuizawa and were flown both ways from Tokyo by helicopter. 14. Bungeishunju, 1992, No. 2, 10 January 1992. A translation appeared in Japan Scope under the heading ‘Sony’s Morita sets the agenda for Japanese Business’ although the title of the original could be translated ‘Japanese style management in danger’. 15. I recall giving a speech in Japanese in November of that year to an audience in Tokyo on the theme Bunka Masatsu (Cultural Friction) inspired by Morita’s article. 16. Japan Society Proceedings, No. 113 for 1989 contains the text of Morita’s speech. He was accompanied by Mrs Morita. His guests included Lord Shawcross and Lord Roll. 17. Hideo went to a small boarding school at Colchester which ran two year courses for fifty pupils. Morita had wanted to send him to Atlantic College in Wales, but he was too old for the prep school. Instead he sent Masao there. On p. 109 of Made in Japan, Morita recounts how this came about. Admiral Hall, the

384 NOTES headmaster was visiting Japan and had been referred to him when the school was seeking funding. He noted that his wife Yoshiko had visited more than a dozen boarding schools in Britain before deciding where the two boys should be sent. They chose to send them to Britain as most American schools seemed too per- missive to him. 18. Another motive was his wish that all his children could ‘speak English and work under strong self-discipline’. Made in Japan, p. 107. 19. Morita preferred not to see the irony in this context of Sony’s investment in Columbia pictures. 20. Made in Japan, p. 297. 21. Ibid., p. 251. 22. Ibid., pp. 125–127. 23. Sir John Pilcher. 24. Made in Japan, p. 298. 25. Ibid., p. 127. 26. I recall his personal intervention with To¯ho¯ on our behalf at the request of his old friend from New York days Nobuko Albery. 27. Morita who had been decorated by both the Japanese and French govern- ments very much wanted this recognition. I should have pressed for an award to him while I was British Ambassador in Tokyo, but he had just received the Albert Medal and there were others who needed to be recognized. After my retirement I did all I could to get backing for this well-deserved award. 28. Sony:The Private Life by John Nathan, p. 155.

14 HUGH CORTAZZI Sir Peter Parker (1924–2002) and Japan

1. For Starters:The Business of Life, Sir Peter Parker, London: Jonathan Cape, 1989. 2. Japan Experiences,Fifty Years,One Hundred Views,Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, Hugh Cortazzi (comp. and ed.), Japan Library, 2001. 3. For Starters, p. 40. 4. Peter’s sons Nat (Nathaniel) and Oliver became professional actors. 5. Licentiate of the Victorian Order 6. E-mail from Sir Michael Weir, KCMG, former British Ambassador to Egypt. 7. Professor Ronald Dore CBE. 8. In his memoir For Starters. 9. I was British Ambassador in Tokyo at that time. 10. Juliet Campbell in the FCO email of 12 March 2006 recalls that there was interdepartmental agreement that there should be a government funded and staffed enquiry, but when this proposal was referred to No. 10 Mrs Thatcher vetoed it. She did not want another quango. 11. E-mail from Richard Tames of 8 March 2006. 12. E-mail from Sir Michael Weir of 23 February 2006. 13. E-mail from Juliet Campbell of 12 March 2006.

385 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

14. Ibid., Juliet remembered how after a brain-storming session at his office he swept them all to dinner at the Garrick. 15. I was a member of a sub-committee of the University Grants Committee chaired by Professor Martin (later Sir) Harris on provision for Japanese studies. 16. Renamed at the end of the century UK-Japan 21st Century Group, 17. Lord Howell of Guildford, former Secretary of State for Energy 1979–81, Secretary of State for Transport 1981–3, Chairman of 2000 Group 1990–2000. 18. Martin Campbell White contributed an account of the Japan Festival in Britain in Japan Experiences, p. 248–253. 19. Saba Shoichi in an e-mail of 3 March 2006 said of Peter that ‘he brought to this demanding role [As chairman of the Festival Committee] strong powers of leadership derived from years of success in business and deep understanding of Japanese culture. The more I got to know him, the more the festival preparations continued, the more I, as chairman of the Japan-side committee, was won over by his charm and good humour.’ 20. Martin-Campbell White in an e-mail of 14 March 2006. 21. Tournament. 22. Sumo ‘ring’. 23. Martin Campbell White recalled in an e-mail of 14 March 2006 that at a lunch at the Savoy Hotel for the top brass of the Sumo Association, which was in danger of becoming too formal, he jollied the party along with his wit and humour. He explained that he had been a boxer at Oxford and was deeply impressed by the eye contact that champions used in their bouts. He had used the same techniques in his boxing days. David Barrie remembered another occasion when at the end of their visit he hosted a dinner for the rikishi (sumo champions) which ended with the Japanese guests singing in his honour in their deep bass voices one of their favourite sumo songs. 24. He was also a member of the Burma Campaign Society. 25. Heidi Potter recalled in an e-mail of 1 June 2006 how Peter frequently rem- inisced ‘about watching the Japanese volunteers in action in a school. He was par- ticularly struck by their patience and courtesy – and innate skill – in teaching the class . . . Seeing children practising Japanese phrases and numbers after the lesson and excitedly explaining what they had learned to their friends and parents’, had also impressed him. 26. Insight Japan, May 1995, ‘Brow-beating most stylish’. 27. Insight Japan, September 1995, ‘The New Floating World’. 28. Peter rightly stressed the capacity of the Japanese to change, to adapt and to adopt new technologies. 29. Insight Japan, September1995, ‘The New Floating World’. 30. Shakkei is the title of the quarterly of the Japan Garden Society in Great Britain which developed after the 1991 Festival. 31. Stroud Alan Sutton; New York: St Martin’s Press, 1991. 32. At the Kyuwa-den of the Chu¯guji, Ikaruga, Nara. 33. Text of this discussion sent to me by Hamano Toshiro in May 2006. 34. Insight Japan, February 1996, ‘Un-Japanese activities and the high-flying bore.’

386 NOTES

35. While I was Ambassador in Tokyo he was first secretary for information work. I am grateful for his input into this section of this essay. 36. I am grateful for information provided by e-mail from Tominaga Yu¯zo¯ and Iinuma Takeo. 37. E-mail to Hugh Cortazzi March 2006. 38. Japan Experiences, pp. 357–361. 39. For Starters, p. 308. 40. Letter from Noguchi Yoshio, dated 5 March 2006. 41. Including Plessey on intelligent communications systems, British Rail, the London Underground, Metro Camel and BREL.

16 NICK CLEGG Chino Yoshitoki (1923–2004) and the Daiwa Anglo- Japanese Foundation

1. Self Help was translated into Japanese by Nakamura Masanao (1832–91) about whom Akiko Ohta wrote a biographical portrait in Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Japan Library, 2002. 2. See separate biographical portrait by Hugh Cortazzi in this volume. 3. Current Trustees: Mr Nicholas Clegg, Chairman and Managing Trustee Mr Masahiro Do¯zen, Vice Chairman Lady Adrian, Managing Trustee Lord Broers, FREng FRS Sir John Gurdon, FRS Lord Carrington, KG Mr Yoshinari Hara Mr Christopher H.D. Everett, CBE Ms Merryn Somerset Webb Mr Hiroaki Fujii Sir John Whitehead, GCMG CVO

Past Trustees Mr Yoshitoki Chino, KBE, Lord Roll of Ipsden, KCMG CB Mr R.J. Hanby Holmes, Lord Adrian FRS, Mr Akio Morita, KBE, Mr T. Kusuda Sir David Wright, GCMG LVO

Current Director General: Professor Marie Conte-Helm Past Director General: Mr Christopher H.D. Everett, CBE

17 DOROTHY BRITTON Frank Guyver Britton (1879–1934), Engineer and Earthquake Hero

1. Stephen Howarth, Morning Glory: A History of The Imperial Japanese Navy, London: Hamish Hamilton, 1983. 2. FGB letter to uncle Alfred Bannister, 13 March 1906. 3. http://www.google.com. 4. FGB to uncle 19 April 1909.

387 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

5. Typescript copy of biographical sketch. Author unknown, possibly T.W. Chisholm, ca. 1934, referred to in these notes as Chisholm bio. 6. FGB to uncle Alfred Bannister, 13 March 1906. 7. Ibid. 8. FGB to uncle 28 April 1916. 9. I have a photo of a large group of men from Zemma Works taking part in a parade dressed as torpedoes! The costume was designed by Frank. 10. I remember as a child seeing his popular brush-like mudguard that cars used to hang at the side of their tires on rainy days to prevent pedestrians being splashed. Ladies in kimono were particularly grateful! 11. Hitachi no boiraa Hyakunenshi. Babcock-Hitachi, Tokyo, June 2000. 12. FGB to aunt Millie Bannister, 8 January 1921. 13. Chisholm bio. 14. Dorothy Hiller had taken a job as a YWCA secretary, and although it was her day off, they had telephoned her that morning and asked her to go into town and send an important cable. 15. My earliest recollection is of our trip in the back of a lorry to Hayama to stay until the Zemma house was repaired. 16. He was the father of Ariyoshi Yoshiya, long-time President of NYK and subject of a biographical portrait by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume III, Japan Library, 1999. 17. Hitachi no boiraa. 18. Chisholm bio. 19. He died June, the same day as Admiral of the Fleet Heihachiro¯ Togo, whom he had greatly admired. 20. Over a thousand mourners paid their respects at the impressive Buddhist ceremony at the Zemma Works, followed by a service at Christ Church on the Bluff, and finally, enshrinement of his name in the Shinto Yawatabashi Jinja. Chisholm bio. 21. Hitachi no boiraa.

18 J.E. HOARE Ernest Cyril Comfort:The Other British Aviation Mission and Mitsubishi 1921–24

1. This paper is largely based on the oral reminiscences of Ernest Cyril Comfort, a draughtsman, which were kindly made available to me by his son, Roland Comfort, of Avalon, New South Wales, Australia. I am also grateful to Ann Overstall, of Luxembourg, and niece of Ernest Comfort, who first told me about the memoirs. I am also grateful to Roland Comfort and to Ann and John Overstall for comments and corrections on a draft of this paper in October 2006. 2. Cecil Lewis, Sagittarius Rising, London: Corgi Books, 1969, pp. 183 et seq. 3. For example, see Mark R. Peattie, Sunburst:The Rise of Japanese Naval Air Power, 1909–1941, London: Chatham Publishing, 2002, pp. 17–20, which reproduces a fine picture of Sempill and his wife in Japanese costume; Antony Best, ‘Lord Sempill (1893–1965) and Japan, 1921–41’, in Hugh Cortazzi (ed.)

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Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Vol. IV, London: Japan Library, 2002, pp. 375–77. See also John Ferris, ‘A British “Unofficial” Aviation Mission and Japanese Naval Developments, 1919–1929, Journal of Strategic Studies,V, 416–39. For Sempill’s own account, see The Master of Sempill, ‘The British Aviation Mission in Japan’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society of London, XXII. 4. John Ferris, ‘Double-Edged Estimates: Japan in the Eyes of the British Army and Royal Air Force, 1900–1939’, in Ian Gow and Yoichi Hirama, with John Chapman, (eds.), The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000, Vol. III, The Military Dimension, p. 100. 5. See www.speedace.info/automotive_directory/mitsubishi.htm, accessed 13 September 2006, and Peattie, Sunburst, p. 24. 6. Annual Report 1922 (Sir Charles Eliot to Lord Curzon no. 188, conf. 26 March 1923) in Japan and Dependencies: Political and Economic Reports 1906–1960, vol. 1, 560, and Annual Report 1923 (Eliot to Mr Macdonald, no.164, conf. 19 April 1924), Vol. 2, 35–37. 7. Comfort tapes. 8. Norman A. Barfield, ‘British pioneers of the Japanese aviation industry’, Airframe, October 1976, p. 6. 9. ‘Sopwith Aviation Company’, from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sopwith, accessed 17 September 2006. 10. ‘Sopwith Aviation Company’; Barfield, ‘British pioneers’. 11. Comfort tapes. Much of what follows is drawn from this record. 12. See US Centennial of Flight Commission at www.centennialofflight.gov/ essay/Mitsubishi/Aero58.htm , accessed 20 September 2006. 13. Annual Report 1922, in Japan and Dependencies, Vol. 1, 560. This became the main Japanese carrier aircraft, remaining in service until 1932, Peattie, Sunburst, pp. 24, 265–66. 14. Robert Guttman, ‘The Triplane Fighter Craze of 1917’, Aviation History March 2001, at www.historynet.com/air_seaaircraft3032441.html?page=4&c=y, accessed 20 September 2006. 15. Daniel H. Jones, ‘IJN Hosho and her aircraft’, Plastic Ship Modeller, (1995), No. 2, and at www.smmlonline.com/articles/hosho/hosho.html, accessed 20 September 2006. 16. ‘Mitsubishi B1M/2MT, torpedo-bomber, 1923’, at http://avia.russian.ee/ air/japan/mitsubishi b1m.html, accessed 20 September 2006. 17. Peattie, Sunburst, pp. 35, 36. 18. Annual Report 1922, in Japan and Dependencies, Vol. I, 560. 19. Annual Report 1923, in Japan and Dependencies, Vol. II, 35. The Ho¯sho¯, which was laid down in 1917, was formally commissioned on 27 December 1922. She saw service in China and in the Second World War. After the war, she was used to repatriate Japanese, and was scrapped in 1947. She thus became the first and the last Japanese Imperial Naval aircraft carrier: Jones, ‘IJN Hosho and her aircraft’, accessed 20 September 2006. 20. Peattie, Sunburst, p. 20. 21. Reproduced in Barfield, ‘British Pioneers’.

389 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

22. Ferris, ‘Double-Edged Estimates’, pp. 100–106. 23. Barfield, ‘British Pioneers’.

19 YUKO YAUAGATA-FOOTMAN Uyeno Yutaka (born 1915)

1. C.f. Chapter 18 ‘British Businessmen in Japan: Some Memories of the Shell Oil Company’ in Japan Experiences: Fifty Years, One Hundred Views:Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, Hugh Cortazzi (comp. and ed.), Japan Library, 2001. 2. He was made director of the Yokohama Tourist Association, and vice- president of the Kanagawa Chapter of the Japanese Red Cross in 1979. He played a significant, on-going role in the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry; became chairman of the board of directors of the Hotel New Grand in Yokohama in 1984; chairman of the Yokohama Fashion Association in 1986; a trustee for Kanagawa University in 1991; and vice-chairman for the board of the Yokohama Cultural Foundation, also in 1991.

20 YOSHIDA KEN’ICHI (1912–77), Anglophile Novelist, Essayist, Literary Critic,Translator and Man of Letters

This essay by Nori Morita concentrates on Kenichi’s early life. Morita would have liked to write more but space was unfortunately limited.

Other relevant articles are ‘Crown Prince Hirohito in Britain’by Ian Nish in Britain and Japan Biographical Portraits, Volume II, Japan library, 1997 as well as, ‘Yoshida Shigeru and Madame Yoshida’by Ian Nish in the same volume. For a portrait of Oscar Morland see ‘Sir Oscar Morland, Ambassador to Japan 1959–63’ by Sir John Whitehead in British Envoys in Japan 1859–1972, Hugh Cortazzi (comp. and ed.), Global Oriental, 2002. For reminiscences of Yoshida Ken’ichi by Honor Tracy, Lees Mayall and Antony Powell see pages 207–210 of Japan Experiences, Fifty Years, One Hundred Views, Post-War Japan through British Eyes Hugh Cortazzi (comp. and ed.), Japan Library, 2001. Whispering Leaves in Grosvenor Square 1936–7 by Yuki Yoshida was published privately in 1938 but was republished by Global Oriental in 1997. Ken’ichi Yoshida’s book Japan is a Circle,A Journey Round the Mind of Modern Japan was published in English by Paul Norbury Publications in 1975.

1. Yoshida was a great translator as well. The works that he translated include: D.H. Lawrence, Sons and Lovers (1950), T.S. Eliot, The Waste Land (1954), William Shakespeare, Poems (1956), Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited (1963), E.M. Forster, Howard’s End (1965), and Charlotte Brontë, Jane Eyre (1968) among others. 2. ‘Tabemono Are Kore’(Various Thoughts on Food), Collected Works of Yoshida Ken’ichi, Supplement II, Shu¯eisha, Tokyo, 1981, p. 354. CW hereafter. 3. Ken’ichi’s sister Kazuko in her book about her father Chichi Shigeru Yoshida, Ko¯bunsha, Tokyo, 1993, p. 42 describes the apartment as being on the third floor of a heavy, stone building with faint green wallpaper.

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4. Ibid., p. 61. 5. ‘Horses and My Dictatorial Father’, O¯ ru Yomimono, August, 1959. 6. In a published conversation between the father and the son, Shigeru men- tioned, ‘That [studying abroad] was my wife’s idea rather than mine. But I am not sure that was successful.’ Ken’ichi responded to this by saying, ‘It was a success. Thanks to that, I am earning my living by writing.’ ‘Oyako Taidan’ (father-son conversation), Yoshida Ken’ichi Taidan Shûsei (Selection of Conversations with Yoshida Kenichi), Ozawa Shoten, Tokyo, 1998, p. 11. 7. ‘G. Lowes Dickinson’, CW, Vol. XXII 8. Dickinson once invited Forster and Ken’ichi to dinner at King’s College. However, Ken’ichi does not write much about the occasion for some reason. 9. ‘F.L. Lucas’, CW, Vol. XXII, p. 43. 10. ‘Igirisu no Daigakusei’, (University Students in England), CW, Supplement, I, pp. 17–8. 11. ‘G. Lowes Dickinson’, op. cit., p. 37. 12. ‘Ryu¯gaku no Koro’, (My Overseas Student Days), CW, Vol. XXVIII, p. 204. 13. ‘G. Lowes Dickinson’, op. cit., p. 37. 14. ‘Makino Nobuaki Nikki’ (The Diary of Makino Nobuaki), Ito¯ Takashi and Hirose Yoshihiro (eds), Tokyo: Chu¯o¯Ko¯ron, 1991. 15. Kawakami Tetsutarô, ‘Yoshida Ken’ichi’, Yoshida Ken’ichi Shusei (Selected Works of Yoshida Ken’ichi), Supplement, Tokyo: Shincho¯sha, 1994, p. 318 16. Both are quoted by Shimizu Tôru, Yoshida Ken’ichi, Tokyo Shincho¯sha, 1995, p. 45. 17. Yosida Shigeru got his first intuitive inkling of what fascism, dictatorship and extreme militarism might bring to the world in the near future when he met Benito Mussolini. His dislike of the Italian dictator was immediate and complete. When he paid a courtesy visit to inform Mussolini that he had been appointed Japanese ambassador in Rome, he was forced to walk quite a distance to the far end of a narrow and long room where Mussolini was sitting, a custom to demon- strate his false superiority and to humiliate his guests. 18. Sanmon Shinshi (A Three Penny Gentleman), Tokyo: Ko¯dansha, 1991, p. 63. 19. Shinoda Hajime, Yoshida Ken’ichi Ron (On Yoshida Ken’ichi), Tokyo: Chikuma Shobo¯, 1981, pp. 9 and 24.

21 JOHN HATCHER Somerset Maugham (1874–1965), Novelist, Playwright, Essayist and Traveller

1. Complete Short Stories of W.Somerset Maugham (London: Heinemann, 1951) 2: 850. 2. See Ted Morgan, Maugham: A Biography (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1980) 226–32; Jeffrey Meyers, Somerset Maugham: A Life (New York: Knopf, 2004) 121–31. 3. Donald Richie, Japan Journals 1947–2004 (Berkeley: Stone Bridge Press, 2005) 102.

391 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

4. Samuel J. Rogal’s exhaustive A William Somerset Maugham Encyclopedia has entries on Malaya, Burma, Indochina, China and India, but not on Japan. 5. In Maugham’s spoken introduction to Quartet (1948), a film version of four of his short stories. 6. Richie, 102. 7. Complete Short Stories 2: 962. Compare the description of Singapore in Complete Short Stories 3:1190. In a 1922 journal entry, Maugham wrote: ‘That is what these Eastern cities can best offer you, their harbours with shipping, tramps, passenger-boats, schooners with an exotic air (something in them still of the galleons which first entered those distant waters) and fishing-smacks; that, the sunrise and the sunset’. A Writer’s Notebook (1949; London: Penguin, 1984) 207. 8. Robin Maugham, Somerset and all the Maughams (London: Longmans, Heinemann, 1966) 206. It seems likely that he heard this story during his later visit in 1959. 9. Complete Short Stories, 3: 1383. 10. Of Human Bondage (1915; Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1963) 261. 11. Complete Short Stories, 3: 1188. 12. Complete Short Stories, 3: 1204. 13. Complete Short Stories, 3: 1475, 1536. 14. Life Magazine, 14 December 1959: 133. 15. ‘S. Maugham to Nihonjin’ [Somerset Maugham and the Japanese], Tokyo Shimbun, 25 July 2006: 7. 16. Mainichi Shinbun, 18 November 1959: 9. 17. See Morgan, 587. 18. Tatsunokuchi Naotaro¯, ‘Tabe ni kakeru jo¯netsu: rainichi no Somerset Maugham’ [Passion for Travel: Somerset Maugham comes to Japan] Asahi Shimbun, 7 November 1959: 6. 19. Richie 102. In his journal Richie described Maugham as a ‘very old man, neck corded, skin leathery and wrinkled, nose like a beak, sunken eyes that seemed to be gazing at the distant past’ (101). 20. See John Pearson, The Life of Ian Fleming (1967; London: Arum Press, 2003) 264. 21. Fleming, Thrilling Cities (New York: New American Library, 1964) 49. See my essay on Fleming in this volume. 22. Tanaka Mutsuo, Waga Maugham [My Maugham] (Tokyo: Tarumishobo¯, 1967) 138. 23. Quoted in Meyers, 317. 24. King, Yesterday Came Suddenly (London: Constable, 1993) 183. 25. King, 182. 26. Quoted in Myers, 317. 27. King, 182. 28. Tanaka, 142–43. 29. Life, 14 December 1959: 133–34; Tanaka, 174–78. 30. Personal communication from Professor Nametaka Akio, 4 June and 2 August 2006. Morgan (587) wrongly thought that the Maugham Society of Japan

392 NOTES was already in existence by the time of Maugham’s visit and that Tanaka Mutsuo was its head. 31. Morgan, 588.

22 JOHN HATCHER Ian Fleming (1908–64), Novelist and Journalist

1. Fleming, Thrilling Cities (New York: New American Library, 1964) 4. 2. Thrilling Cities, 11, 45. 3. Casino Royale (1953; London: Penguin, 2002) 158. See John Pearson The Life of Ian Fleming (1967; London: Arum Press, 2003) 134–45. 4. Thrilling Cities, 45. 5. Born two years before Fleming in 1906, Hughes would outlive him by almost twenty years, dying in 1983. In addition to Hughes’s own books, see Norman Macswan, The Man Who Read the East Wind:Richard Hughes,Extraordinary Correspondent (Kenthurst: Kangaroo Press, 1982). 6. This Is Japan was a glossy, large-format annual published by the Asahi Newspaper group for foreign residents and visitors between 1954 and 1971. 7. Thrilling Cities, 46. 8. Thrilling Cities, 3. 9. Thrilling Cities, 48–49. 10. The latter begins: ‘Don’t be fooled by the apparent mildness of good sake. Sake has an alcohol content of twenty per cent. It should be drunk warm, with food, and is much better for serious drinkers when poured into no-nonsense thick china mugs instead of the conventional porcelain thimbles, which smack of the tea ceremony to good flagon-men’. Thrilling Cities, 62–63. 11. Thrilling Cities, 55. 12. Fleming, You Only Live Twice (1964; London: Penguin, 2004) 201. 13. Thrilling Cities, 49–50. 14. Thrilling Cities, 59–60. 15. Thrilling Cities, 51–52. 16. Thrilling Cities, 51. In a characteristically tongue-in-cheek interview during his 1962 trip (Asahi Shimbun, 16 December, 1962: 3), Fleming maintained that Bond had already accomplished his mission in Japan and that he was merely a faithful biographer doggedly retracing 007’s journey. He employed the same conceit in an unpublished ‘Author’s Note’ to the novel (see note 25). 17. We glimpse the edgier side of Fleming’s erotic sensibility in his joking request to Masami to write a poem on another sketch ‘in your own blood. . .. The red will complement the black.’ Thrilling Cities, 58. Both sketches are pre- served in the Fleming archive, Ian Fleming Publications, Ltd., box FB20/003/E/009. I am grateful to Zoë Watkins for enabling me to examine these and other Fleming papers. 18. Thrilling Cities, 57. 19. You Only Live Twice, 5. 20. This could only be halted, he felt, ‘if the spirit of adventure which opened the Orient to us can be rekindled and our youth can heave itself of its feather-bed

393 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI and stream out and across the world again’. Not having met ‘a single Briton all the way from Hong Kong to New York’, his advice to British youth was ‘Go East, young man!’ (Thrilling Cities, 135). Hence, in You Only Live Twice Fleming sends his hero and alter ago out East in the service of the crumbling British Empire. 21. Fleming puts his own ‘feather-bed’ image in Tanaka’s mouth in his tirade against post-war Britain: ‘This feather-bedding, this shirking of an honest day’s work, as sapping at ever-increasing speed the moral fibre of the British, a quality the world once so admired. In its place we now see a horde of vacuous, aimless, seekers-after-pleasure’(80). On the political attitudes expressed and implied in the novel, see Jeremy Black, The Politics of James Bond: From Fleming’s Novels to the Big Screen (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2005) 60–69. 22. Thrilling Cities, 53–54. 23. You Only Live Twice, 85. 24. See Louis Allen, ‘William Plomer and Japan’, Britain and Japan 1859–1991: Themes and Personalities, Hugh Cortazzi and Gordon Daniels (eds), (London: Routledge, 1991). 25. Fleming intended to preface You Only Live Twice with an ‘Author’s Note’, in which, as well as thanking Hughes and Saito, he recommends four recent books on Japan: Kirkup’s These Horned Islands; Meeting With Japan and Hekura: The Diving Girls’ Island, both by Fosco Maraini; and The Heart of Japan by Alexander Campbell. The note was omitted from the book, but is preserved the original typescripts kept in the Fleming Archive, Ian Fleming Publications, Ltd and in the Lilly Library, University of Indiana. 26. Fleming’s original ‘Author’s Note’drew attention to this aspect of the novel, which is probably why it was omitted from the published version. 27. On Western images of Japan, including Fleming’s, see Ian Littlewood, The Idea of Japan:Western Images,Western Myths (London: Secker & Warburg, 1996). 28. You Only Live Twice, 110. 29. You Only Live Twice, 31, 141. 30. You Only Live Twice, 87. 31. Richard Hughes, Foreign Devil: Thirty Years of Reporting from the Far East (London: Andre Deutsch, 1973) 258. 32. Foreign Devil, 258. 33. Foreign Devil, 258, 260. 34. You Only Live Twice, 98. Described to Bond by Tiger as ‘a very raw gin’, shu¯chu is a fiery distilled liquor made from sweet potato, barley or sugar cane. 35. Foreign Devil, 262. 36. You Only Live Twice, 108. Fleming borrowed the ‘hamlets’, as well as other phrases and ideas, from Kirkup’s These Horned Islands. See the 2 April 1965 letter from Kirkup to Plomer quoted in Sumie Okada, Western Writers in Japan (London: Macmillan, 1999) 29. 37. Foreign Devil, 258. 38. See Littlewood, 35–43. 39. You Only Live Twice, 74. 40. You Only Live Twice, 127. 41. And equally surprised at Bond’s reaction to the name: ‘in the morning as

394 NOTES they would have to start early for Fukuoka, their final destination. Bond shivered slightly at the name’ (111). 42. Foreign Devil, 260; You Only Live Twice, 119–26. 43. Foreign Devil, 261; You Only Live Twice, 112–14. 44. This was not in fact wishful fantasizing on Fleming’s part. The photographs in Fosco Maraini’s Hekura: The Diving Girls’ Island (1962) of ama divers on Hekurajima in Ishikawa-ken, who continued to dive clad only in loincloths into the 1960s, inspired Fleming to create his own fictional ama island in Kyu¯shu¯. 45. Foreign Devil, 257. 46. Foreign Devil, 257. 47. You Only Live Twice, 109; Foreign Devil 263. 48. Foreign Devil, 265.

23 DAVID BURLEIGH Frank Tuohy (1925–99):The Best of Silence

1. They were the models, more or less, for the two main characters in his second novel. 2. Interview with David Burleigh, Mainichi Daily News, Tokyo, 18 March 1985. 3. The Animal Game by Frank Tuohy (London: Macmillan, 1957), p. 70. 4. Ibid., pp. 98–9. 5. ‘Naked Festival’ in Encounter (UK), Vol. XXVI, No. 2, February 1966, pp. 50–52. 6. Good Talk:An Anthology from BBC Radio edited by Derwent May (London: Gollancz, 1968), p. 161. 7. Ibid., p. 162. 8. For an account of his time in Poland, see ‘Frank Tuohy: Setting up in Kraków’, in Cold War, Common Pursuit: British Council Lecturers in Poland, 1938–1998, Peter J. Conradi & Stoddard Martin (eds), (London: Starhaven, 1999), pp. 25–34. 9. I once said to him, ‘Why don’t you write an autobiography? You’ve had an interesting life.’ He replied, ‘It doesn’t interest me!’ 10. See Eastern Exchange: Memoirs of People and Places by John Haylock (London: Arcadia Books, 1997), p. 160. 11. Tuohy’s archive is held at the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University. I am extremely grateful to them for providing me with copies of the unpublished materials quoted in this essay, and also for allowing me to quote from them. Anyone interested in examining the papers should direct their enquiries to Boston University, Special Collections, 771 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, Massachusetts 02215, USA (e-mail: [email protected]). 12. See No, I Tell a Lie, It Was the Tuesday:A trudge round the life and times of Alan Maclean (London: Kyle Cathie Limited, 1997) There are some references to Frank Tuohy in this autobiographical sketch. Alan Maclean also had a share in the property near Bath. 13. These notes are taken from handwritten foolscap pages in the Tuohy archive.

395 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

14. This typewritten version is headed ‘(Draft of First Chapter: New Version)’. Subsequent quotations are from the same manuscript unless otherwise specified. 15. I have not included handwritten alterations to the typescript. This is a little unfair to the author, who would undoubtedly have made further revisions. 16. It was included in the English Short Stories 1950 to the Present Day selected by Paul Bailey (London: Penguin Audiobooks, 1998), and read by Samantha Bond. 17. The Collected Stories of Frank Tuohy (London: Macmillan, 1984), p. 302 18. It is curious that the unfortunate Japanese character is called Taizo Hitomi, giving him the same family name as the young woman in ‘A Summer Pilgrim’. There is also a young man called Yoshi, as in the play. 19. The Collected Stories, p. 304. Tuohy spoke (and corresponded in) both French and Portuguese, but knew very little Japanese. 20. The Broken Bridge: Fiction from Expatriates in Literary Japan edited by Suzanne Kamata (Stone Bridge Press: Berkeley, California, 1997). In the Introduction, Donald Richie refers to the ‘Madame-Butterfly variation’ of Tuohy’s story, ‘the title of which serves as emblematic title for this collection,’ p. 14. 21. The author expresses ‘special thanks to Mr Frank Tuohy’ in the Preface. See W.B.Yeats and Japan by Sho¯taro¯ Oshima (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1965), p. ix. Tuohy contributed two poems written in Japan to a festschrift for Oshima on his seventieth birthday. See Tributes in Verse and Prose to Sho¯taro¯ Oshima by various authors (Tokyo: Hokuseido Press, 1970), pp. 26–27. Tuohy made a reciprocal acknowledgment to ‘my friend and former colleague. . .Professor Sho¯taro¯ Oshima, author of Yeats in Japan (sic),’ in his own book. See Yeats by Frank Tuohy (London: Macmillan, 1976), p. 6. The confusion over the title may be because Tuohy had lent his copy of the Oshima book to someone at his publishers who did not return it. 22. ‘Five Fierce Ladies’ by Frank Tuohy, in Irish Society and Writers at Large, Masaru Sekine (ed.), (Gerrards Cross, Bucks: Colin Smythe, 1985), pp. 199–206. 23. Review of The Collected Stories by D. J. Enright in Times Literary Supplement, 21 December 1984, p. 1465. 24. I have been unable to find the source of this remark, which has certainly appeared on a bookseller’s catalogue, and may in fact have originated there. 25. Greene himself esteemed Tuohy’s writing. The Australian writer Shirley Hazzard describes a conversation with him: ‘Finding that we knew the novelist Frank Tuohy, who had for a time fallen silent, Graham asked, with indignation, “And what about Tuohy? Where is Tuohy? Tuohy’s good.” His own productiv- ity, almost unbroken till the end, made him impatient of the lapses of others.’ Greene on Capri: a memoir by Shirley Hazzard (London: Virago, 2000), p. 45. 26. Burleigh, ibid. 27. ‘Frank Tuohy’, obituary notice by Francis King, The Independent, 15 April 1999.

After Frank Tuohy’s death, an envelope labelled ‘Verse’ was found among his papers. The poems that this envelope contained were edited by his niece, Julia Rowlandson, and printed privately as a tribute to his memory. Verse by Frank Tuohy appeared in 2003. The archive was then lodged with the Special

396 NOTES

Collections at Boston University. I am grateful to the estate of Frank Tuohy for permission to quote from his work in this essay.

24 ROGER BUCKLEY Angela Carter (1940–92) and Japan: Disorientations

I am grateful to the librarians of Temple University Japan, the Foreign Correspondents’ Club of Japan and Oxford’s English faculty for secondary material. The most recent and ambitious attempt to place Angela Carter in context is Sarah Gamble’s Angela Carter:A Literary Life (Basingstoke, 2006). She notes that ‘[i]n spite of the fact that Carter has been repeatedly defined as one of the most important British authors of the second half of the twentieth century, there are no collection of letters, diaries or memoirs in the public domain, and no detailed biographies have as yet been published’. Critical com- mentary can also be found in Gamble’s Angela Carter:Writing from the Front Line (Edinburgh, 1997), Lorna Sage (ed.), Flesh and the Mirror: Essays on the Art of Angela Carter (London,1994), Linden Peach’s Angela Carter (Basingstoke, 1998), and Joseph Bristow and Trev Lynn Broughton (eds), The Infernal Desires of Angela Carter:Fiction,Femininity,Feminism (London, 1997). It deserves to be stressed that since so little can be demonstrated with any degree of certainty over Angela Carter’s years in Japan, much will have to be reworked once more solid evidence becomes available. Obtaining first-hand impressions though can only become increasingly difficult; attempts, for example, to trace Becky and Suzy have failed. Readers’ suggestions or personal reminiscences of Angela Carter and the early 1970s would be most welcome; at least one documentary film is believed to be in the making.

1. Sarah Gamble: Angela Carter: Writing from the Front Line, Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 1997, pp. 15–16. 2. Ibid., p. 16 3. A Tribute to Angela Carter, Royal Festival Hall, 11 June 2006. 4. Ibid. 5. Afterword to Fireworks, as an appendix in Angela Carter Burning Your Boats: Collected Short Stories, London: Vintage Classics, 2006. 6. Ibid. 7. Winner of the Nobel Prize for literature. 8. Paul Barker: ‘Angela Carter: Clever, sexy, funny, scary’, The Independent, 22 January 2006. He notes that ‘[m]uch of Angela’s three-year stay in Japan remains a mystery. Throughout her life she made use of her own experiences in her fiction. But, like an alchemist, she also transmuted them. Some eventual bio- grapher will have to disentangle this.’ 9. Ibid. 10. ‘A Souvenir of Japan’ in Fireworks, (London 1974, revised ed. 1987). 11. Angela Carter from 5 Hay Hill, Bath, to Becky and Suzy, dated merely 14 May, (author’s possession). It is clear that her divorce had been finalized by the time of writing.

397 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

12. Afterword to Fireworks, op cit. See also the comments on Angela Carter by Donald Richie, my colleague at Temple University, Japan, in his ‘The Honorable Visitors’ (Tokyo, 1994). I am grateful too for his personal recollections of those years.

25 TONI HUBERMAN Charles Holme (1848–1923), Founder of The Studio and Connoisseur of Japanese Art

1. Biographical notes on Charles Holme written by his wife, Clara Holme, in author’s possession. 2. Charles Carrington, Rudyard Kipling his life and work, London: Macmillan, 1955, p. 11. 3. Widar Halén, Christopher Dresser: A Pioneer of Modern Design, Oxford: Phaidon, 1990, p. 188. 4. Clara Holme. 5. Japan: Its Architecture,Art and Art Manufactures, London: Longmans, 1882. 6. The Furniture Gazette, 12 July 1879, p. 22. 7. Charles Holme papers, Victoria and Albert Museum: Archive of Art and Design, AAD/2003. 8. See ‘Lasenby Liberty (1843–1917) and Japan’ by Sonia Ashmore in Britain and Japan: Biographical portraits, Volume IV, Japan Library, 2002. 9. A British Artist in Meiji Japan: Sir Alfred East, Sir Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Brighton: In Print, 1991). 10. See ‘Marcus Huish (1843–1921) and Japan’ by Hideko Numata in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume V, Global Oriental, 2005. 11. Charles Holme papers, Victoria and Albert Museum: Archive of Art and Design, AAD/2003/10/37 (this and subsequent quotes in the text, unless otherwise indicated, are from the Japan Diary). Tsunetami Sano (1833–1902) helped to found the Japanese Navy and was responsible for founding the Japan Red Cross. He was Minister of Finance, Minister of Commerce and Minister of Agriculture at various times. He was responsible for putting together a collection of Japanese porcelain and pottery for the international exhibi- tion in Philadelphia in 1876, which is where he first met Dr Christopher Dresser. 12. Frank Brinkley (1841–1912) purchased the Yokohama newspaper, Japan Mail, in 1880; he was also Tokyo correspondent for the London Times (1897–1912), and author of a number of books including An unabridged Japanese- English dictionary and the 12-volume Japan and China: their history,arts and literature. See J.E. Hoare, ‘Captain Francis Brinkley (1841–1912): Yatoi, Scholar and Apologist’, in Britain and Japan Biographical Portraits, Volume III, J.E. Hoare(ed.), Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1999, pp. 99–107. 13. Josiah Conder (1852–1920), British architect and Professor of Architecture at the Imperial College of Engineering, Tokyo, from 1876, he was responsible for teaching the first generation of Japanese architects in the Western tradition. He designed a number of public buildings in Japan, none of which now survives. A

398 NOTES biographical portrait of him by Dallas Finn was published in Britain and Japan 1859–1991,Themes and Personalities, Routledge, 1991. 14. Kipling’s Japan: Collected Writings, Hugh Cortazzi and George Webb (eds), London: The Athlone Press, 1988. 15. Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, Vol. 5 (1898–1901), p. 267. 16. Japan:A Pictorial Record, edited and supplemented with text by Mr Lasenby Liberty, London: Adam & Charles Black, 1910. 17. Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, Vol. 2 (1892–93), p. 99. 18. Charles Holme, ‘The Uses of Bamboo in Japan’, in Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, Vol. 1 (1892–93), pp. 23–47 (p. 43). 19. Sir Frank Brangwyn RA was the subject of a Japan Society lecture in September 2005. 20. For an assessment of the competitions see Barbara Morris, ‘The Studio Prize Competitions: The early years 1893–1900’, in High Art and Low Life: The Studio and the fin de siècle, Studio International Special Centenary Number, 201 (1993), pp. 80–84. 21. See ‘William Anderson (18742–1900): Surgeon, Teacher and Art Collector’ by John Rawlins in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2005. 22. The Studio, Vol. 1, 1893, p. 34. 23. The Studio, Vol. 105, 1933, p. 212.

26 NICOLE COOLIDGE ROUSMANIERE Augustus Wollaston Franks (1826–1897) and James Lord Bowes (1834–1899): Collecting Japan in Victorian England

1. The photograph of A.W. Franks is courtesy of the British Museum. It is published in Wilson, David, ‘Introduction: Augustus Wollaston Franks - Towards a Portrait,’ in Marjorie Caygill and John Cherry (eds), A.W.Franks, pp. 1–5. 2. Wilson, David, The Forgotten Collector, London: Thames and Hudson, 1984. 3. Caygill, Marjorie, and John Cherry (eds), A.W.Franks:19th-century Collecting and the British Museum, London: British Museum Press, 1997. 4. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Marks and Seals, Weatherhill, Floating World Editions, 2003. 5. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Enamels, London, 1886. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Pottery, London: Edward Howell, 1890. Bowes, Jamese Lord, A Handbook of Bowes Museum, Liverpool, 1897. Bowes, Jamese Lord, A Vindication of the Decorated Pottery of Japan, Liverpool, pri- vately printed, 1891. 6. Transactions of the Third Session of the International Congress of Prehistoric Archaeology, London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1869. 7. Sir John Evans (1823–1908) was the father of the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans famous for his discoveries in Crete. 8. Caygill, Marjorie, and John Cherry (eds), A.W.Franks:19th-century Collecting and the British Museum, London: British Museum Press, 1997, pp. 53.

399 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

9. Wilson, David, The Forgotten Collector, London: Thames and Hudson, 1984, pp. 18. 10. He had been elected a Fellow of the Royal Society (FRS) in 1874. He received honorary doctorates from Cambridge in 1889 and from Oxford in 1895. In 1894 he had been appointed the ‘antiquary’ of the Royal Academy. 11. Caygill, Margorie, and John Cherry (eds), A.W. Franks: 19th-century Collecting and the British Museum, London: British Museum Press, 1997, pp. 318–324. 12. See James Rawlins, ‘William Anderson, 1842–1900: Surgeon, Teacher and Art Collector’ in Britain and Japan, Biographical Portraits, Volume V, Global Oriental, 2005. 13. See biographical portrait of William Gowland by Simon Kaner in this volume. 14. Franks, A.W., Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, Lent and Described by A.W.Franks, London: South Kensington Museum-Bethnal Green Branch, 1876. 15. Franks, A.W., Catalogue of a Collection of Oriental Porcelain and Pottery, Lent and Described by A.W.Franks, 2nd edition, London, privately printed, 1879. 16. Ibid., p. 5. 17. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Pottery, London: Edward Howell, 1890. 18. Bowes, James Lord, A Vindication of the Decorated Pottery of Japan, Liverpool, privately printed, 1891. 19. Baird, Christina, ‘Japan and Liverpool: James Lord Bowes and his Legacy’, Journal of the History of Collection 12, no. 1 (2000), p. 127. See Baird for a com- prehensive treatment on Bowes and his relationship with Liverpool society and for his relationship with Japanese art. 20. Bowes, James Lord, Japanese Pottery, London: Edward Howell, 1890, pp. 4. See also Wilson (1987), pp. 23–29.

27 SIMON KANER William Gowland (1842–1922), Pioneer of Japanese Archaeology

1. Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to Victor Harris and Goto¯ Kazuo for their inspiration to continue researches into William Gowland; to Tim Clark of the Japanese Section, Department of Asia, The British Museum for allowing access to the Gowland Collection and the remarkable paper archive that accompanies it; to Professor Walter Edwards of Tenri University for his insights into the history of Kofun period archaeology, and for making available the key translations of the Japanese texts referred to in this paper; to the Society of Antiquaries of London for allowing access to the Gowland papers held in their Library; to colleagues at the Sainsbury Institute for the Study of Japanese Arts and Cultures; to my teacher Professor Gina Lee Barnes and to Professor Masaaki Okita of Tenri University for introducing me to Kofun period archaeology; and especially to Sir Hugh Cortazzi, for his unstinting encouragement and patience with this project and careful editing of the text. Any errors, of course, remain the responsibility of the author.

400 NOTES

2. Bibliography Bahn, P. 1996. The Cambridge History of Archaeology. Cambridge: University Press. Chippendale, C. 2004 (4th edition). Stonehenge Complete. London: Thames and Hudson. Edwards, W. 2004. ‘Japanese cultural properties management to 1945: the role of imperial ideology and its effects on kofun period archaeology’. Paper presented at Asia Foundation sponsored conference on Tainted Treasures – in search of solutions. Korean cultural objects in Japan and art related disputes in postwar Europe, 27–29 November 2004. Tokyo, The Asia Foundation. —2005. ‘Monuments to an unbroken line: the imperial tombs and the emergence of modern Japanese nationalism’ in Kane, S. (ed) The Politics of Archaeology and Identity in a Global Context. Boston: Massachusetts, Archaeological Institute of America: 11–30. Failla, D. 1996. Edoardo Chiossone:un collezionista erudito nel Giappone Meiji. Genoa and Rome: Servizio Beni Culturali Comune di Genoa and Istituto Giapponese di Cultura, Roma (The Japan Foundation). Fujioka, N. 2002. ‘Vision or creation: Kojima Usui and the literary landscape of the Japanese Alps’, Comparative Literature Studies 39.4: 282–292. Gowland, W. 1892. ‘The naturalistic art of Japan’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London I: 72–110. —1895. ‘Notes on the dolmens and other antiquities of Korea’. Journal of the Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 24: 316–330. —1898. ‘The dolmens of Japan and their builders’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London IV: 128–184. —1899. ‘The early metallurgy of copper, tin and iron in Europe, as illustrated by ancient remains and the primitive processes surviving in Japan’. Archaeologia 56: 267–322. —1901a. ‘The early metallurgy of silver and lead. Part I. Lead’. Archaeologia 57: 359–422. —1901b. ‘Remains of a Roman silver refinery at Silchester’, Archaeologia 57: 113–124. —1915. ‘Metals and metalworking in Old Japan’, Transactions and Proceedings of the Japan Society, London XIII: 20–99. —1918. ‘Silver in Roman and earlier times I: prehistoric and protohistoric times’, Archaeologia 69: 121–160. Gowland, W. and Judd, J.W. 1903. ‘Recent excavations at Stonehenge. With a note on the nature and origin of the rock fragments found in the excavations’, Archaeologia 58: 37–118 Harris, V. 2003. ‘Works of William Gowland in Japan’, in Harris and Goto: 18–24. Harris, V. and Goto¯, K. 2003. William Gowland:The Father of Japanese Archaeology. London and Tokyo: The British Museum and Asahi Newspapers. Hitchcock, R. 1891. ‘The ancient burial mounds of Japan’, Annual Report of the U.S. National Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington: 511–523. Morse, E. 1879. ‘Shell Mounds of Omori’. Memoirs of the Science Department, University of Tokio, Japan Volume 1 Part 1.

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—1880. Dolmens in Japan. The Popular Science Monthly 16(5): 593–601. Otsuka, H. 2003. ‘Burial mound research and William Gowland’ in Harris and Goto: 173–178. Shiraishi, T. 1993. Kofun jidai kenkyushi [History of research on the kofun period] In Ishino, H. (ed.) Kofun Jidai no Kenkyu [Research on the Kofun period] Volume 1: 139–165. Tokyo, Yuzankaku. Tanaka, M. 1982. Iseki ibutsu ni kansuru hogo gensoku no kakuritsu katei [The process of establishing the principles of preservation regarding archaeological sites and artefacts]. In Kobayashi Yukio Hakase Koki Kinen Ronbunshu Kanko Iinkai (ed.) Kokogaku Ronso [Treatises in Archaeology]: 765–783. Tokyo, Heibonsha. Torii, R. 1932. Kofun no tatari [A tomb’s curse], Dorumen 1: 4 [In Japanese]. Ueda, H. 2003. ‘William Gowland’s footsteps in Japan: a photographic docu- mentation’ in Harris and Goto: 159–172. Wigen, K. 2005.’Discovering the Japanese Alps: Meiji mountaineering and the quest for geographical enlightenment’, Journal of Japanese Studies 31:1–25. 3. The Osaka mint was established in 1868 with machinery purchased through Thomas Glover in Nagasaki and the Hong Kong mint. In 1869, this mint was destroyed by fire, but the building of a new mint was completed in the autumn of 1870. Major William Kinder, former master of the Hong Kong mint was appointed as the first director of the mint on a five year contract. (For background on the mint please see Britain and Japan, 1858–1883, by Grace Fox, Oxford University Press, 1969, pp. 402–411) 4. Second edition, revised, was published in 1884 by John Murray in London, Kelly in Yokohama and Kelly and Walsh in Shanghai and Hong Kong. 5. Fujioka 2002, Wigen 2005 6. A.W. Franks is the subject of a separate biographical portrait in this volume by Nicole Rousmaniere. 7. Edwards 2005: 39 8. Edwards 2005: 39 9. Edoardo Chiossone (1832–98) was an Italian artist and copperplate engraver employed by the Japanese government from 1875 to 1891. See Failla 1996. 10. The Nihon Shoki (Nihongi) was, according to its sequel Shoku nihongi, com- pleted in 720. 11. Edwards 2005: 41 12. Quoted in Saito 1993: 149, Edwards 2004: 8 13. Edwards 2005: 39 14. Hitchcock 1891: 513 15. Hitchcock 1891: 512 16. Morse 1880 17. Morse 1879 18. Edwards 2005: 37 19. Torii 1932, Edwards 2004: 10 20. Tanaka 1982:768, cited in Edwards 2004: 11 21. Otsuka 2003: 173 22. Edwards 2005: 43.

402 NOTES

23. Kume who accompanied the Iwakura mission to the USA and Europe in 1871/2 compiled a five volume account of the journey. 24. A biographical portrait of Minakata Kumagusu by Carmen Blacker appeared in Biographical Portraits, Volume I, Japan Library, 1994. 25. Gowland 1899, 1901a, 1915, 1918 26. Gowland 1901b 27. Bahn 1996: 174 28. Bahn 1996: 175 29. Gowland and Judd 1903 30. Chippendale 2004:167 31. Shiraishi 1993, Edwards 2005:37

28 DOROTHY BRITTON Elizabeth Keith (1887–1956): A Marriage of British Art and Japanese Craftsmanship

1. See portrait of Frank Briton in this volume. 2. See Portrait of J.W. Robertson Scott by Mari Nakami in Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits Vol. II (referred to after this as Britain & Japan) 3. Later published as The Foundations of Japan, London: John Murray, 1922. 4. Mari Nakami in Britain & Japan Vol. II, pp. 170–2 5. Quoted by Carolyn Staley in Fine Japanese Prints. On-line. 6. From Eastern Windows (a collection of her letters published by Houghton Mifflin in 1928) quoted by Malcolm C. Salaman in Masters of the Colour Print: Elizabeth Keith, London: The Studio Ltd, p. 4. 7. During the Korean War I was in the Information Section of the British embassy and one of my tasks was to obtain from GHQ photographs of British participation. I came across a photo showing the East Gate and sent it to Elizabeth Keith in Idbury. She was happy to see that the gate was safe in spite of being sur- rounded by buildings and tanks and military personnel. 8. Malcolm C. Salaman, p. 8 9. Old Korea: Land of Morning Calm by Elizabeth Keith and E.K. Robertson Scott, London: Hutchinson, 1946. Passim.

29 PETER O’CONNOR Hugh Fulton Byas (1875–1945): ‘The fairest and most temperate of foreign writers on Japan’s political development’ Between the Wars

1. Tomalin, Nicholas (1975) Nicholas Tomalin Reporting (London: André Deutsch), p. 77. 2. See O’Connor, Peter (2002) (2002) ‘The Japan Chronicle and its three editors, 1891–1940’. In Hugh Cortazzi (ed.) Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume IV, (Folkestone: Japan Library), pp. 334–347. 3. Time magazine: 10 June 1940. 4. Hugh Byas obituaries: New York Times,The Times: both 7 March 1945.

403 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

5. Time magazine: 10 June 1940. 6. In another journalist covering the Boer War, Thomas Fairfax Millard (1868–1942), the conduct of the war and the treatment of the Boers engendered a lasting animus for the British as a people and a lofty distaste for the British Empire, against which Millard would campaign in Shanghai during most of the years that Byas spent in Tokyo. Although Millard and Byas held contrasting views, it could be argued that their careers ran on lines that developed from their common experience in South Africa. Both operated on the same Shanghai- Tokyo-New York-Washington axes of affiliation and purpose, but whereas Byas became a trusted insider at embassies, foreign ministries and in newsrooms on all sides of the Japanese spectrum, Millard became Japan’s bête noir, to many there and in China the unacceptable face of foreign complicity with the ruthless corrup- tion of the Nationalist regime in Nanking (Nanjing) and Chungking (Chongqing). 7. Newly established in Shanghai by a consortium of interests that included his fellow reporter in South Africa, Thomas Millard (see note 6 above), The China Press was bankrolled by Charles R. Crane, an industrial tycoon with strong con- nections to Washington, and by a Philadelphian, B.W. Fleisher (1870–1946), who became its Business Manager. Crane, Millard and Fleisher would all loom large in Byas’s future although all three were determined to advance American inter- ests in China, primarily by undermining British and Japanese influence through the promotion of Chinese nationalism. 8. See note 7 9. Rozanski, Mordechai (1974) The Role of American Journalists in Chinese- American Relations,1900–1925, Ph.D. dissertation: Pennsylvania University, p. 20. 10. See biographical portrait of J. W. Robertson-Scott by Mari Nakami in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume II, Ian Nish (ed.), Japan Library, 1997. 11. For more on Kennedy and his relationship with Byas, see O’Connor, Peter (2005) ‘John Russell Kennedy, 1861–1928: Spokesman for Japan and Media Entrepreneur’. In Cortazzi, Hugh (ed.) Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, Volume V, (Folkestone: Global Oriental), pp. 383–398. 12. See O’Connor, Peter (ed.) (2005) Japanese Propaganda:Selected Readings.Series 2: Pamphlets, 1891–1939 (Folkestone, Kent: Global Oriental). Vol. 4: Lytton Commission on China and Manchuria, pp. 409–434. 13. See biographical portrait of Malcolm Kennedy by John Pardoe in Britain and Japan 1859–1991,Themes and Personalities, Routledge, 1991 14. See biographical portrait by Hugh Cortazzi in Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Volume II, Ian Nish (ed.), Japan Library 1997. 15. See chapter I of Japan Experiences: Fifty Years, One Hundred Views, Post-War Japan Through British Eyes, Hugh Cortazzi (comp. and ed.), Japan Library, 2001. 16. See O’Connor, Peter (ed.) (2005) (op. cit.), Vol. 6, TheTruth Behind the Sino- Japanese Crisis:Japan Acts to Keep Eastern Civilisation Safe for theWorld (Tokyo: Japan Times & Mail, November 1937) pp. 317–470, and Vol. 8, North China as Seen by Foreigners (Tokyo: Bunka Jo¯ho¯ Kyo¯ku [Cultural Information Bureau] 1938), pp. 255–342.

404 NOTES

17. Tolischus Otto D. (1943) Tokyo Record (New York: Reynal & Hitchcock) p. 339. 18. See O’Connor (2205) biographical portrait of John Russell Kennedy, op. cit., note 11. 19. See British Envoys in Japan 1859–1972, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Global Oriental, 2004. 20. Public Record Office files at the National Archives, Kew, UK [PRO]: FO 371/17073 [F 122/33/10]: Lindley, Tokyo, to FO, 10 December 1932. 21. O¯ fusa Junno¯suke (1981) A Journalist’s Memoir: 50 Years’ Experience in an Eventful Era (Tokyo: privately printed), pp. 21–24. 22. Tokyo: Gaimusho¯ gaiko¯ shiryo¯kan: gaikoku shinbun, tsu¯shin kikan oyobi tsu¯shin- in kankei zakken, tsu¯shin-in no bu eikokujin no bu: (Foreign Ministry records: Miscellaneous matters relating to foreign newspapers, communications agencies and correspondents, correspondents section: British correspondents) 1 1/3/2 50–2–2, May 1921. 23. Beginning with Paul Reinsch (1869–1923), the US minister to China in 1913–19, US officials cultivated contacts with American journalists and media entrepreneurs in China and Japan. The warmth of these contacts had its darker side in the shared, almost visceral, distaste some well-placed Americans in Washington, such as the tycoon Charles R. Crane and American journalists such as Thomas Millard, felt and expressed towards the Japanese as a race. 24. Fleisher’s association with V.S. McClatchy, editor of California’s notoriously anti-Japanese newspaper The Sacramento Bee, in a news agency project in 1919–23 confirmed these suspicions, especially in the wake of the 1924 Exclusion Act. 25. Tokyo: Gaimusho¯ gaiko¯ shiryo¯kan: gaikoku shinbun, tsu¯shin kikan oyobi tsu¯shin- in kankei zakken, tsu¯shin-in no bu, Beikokujin no bu: (Foreign Ministry records: Miscellaneous matters relating to foreign newspapers, communications agencies and correspondents, correspondents section: American correspondents) 1 1/3/2/ 50–2–2, August 1921. 26. Hugh Byas was the longest-serving ex-editor of the Advertiser and would be The Times and New York Times correspondent for the next decade; Wilfrid Fleisher was the managing editor of The Advertiser and The New York Herald Tribune corre- spondent until October 1940; James R. Young was an Advertiser journalist and the American Hearst chain’s International News Agency (INS) Tokyo correspondent until his arrest in 1940; R.O. Matheson was an ex-Advertiser staff writer and The Chicago Tribune correspondent; Frank Hedges was an ex-Advertiser editor who moved over to The Japan Times in the mid-1930s and wrote The Christian Science Monitor, Washington Post and Daily Telegraph correspondence until his sudden death in April 1940. 27. Restrictions announced on 26 September and 13 November 1931, and 19 February and 13 March 1932. 28. Restrictions announced on 13 March, 27 May and 30 May 1932. 29. National Archives and Records Administration, Washington DC. USA: Record Group 59, Records of the Department of State [USDS]: USDS 894.918/7: Grew to State Dept., 9 July 1932.

405 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

30. Manchuria Daily News: 17, 18 August, 8 September 1931; Japan Times, 18 August, 13 September 1931. The Manchuria Daily News was based in Dairen but it seems to have observed press restrictions current in Japan. 31 . Lee Bing-Shuey, Edward (1933) Two Years of the Japan-China Undeclared War And the Attitude of the Powers (Shanghai: Mercury Press), p. 31. 32. In 1933, the JC found retrospective evidence of a compact between ‘certain southern Chinese leaders’ to obtain Japanese support for a rebellion against Nanking. The China Weekly Review speculated that ‘this intrigue may have had considerable to do in precipitating the Japanese intervention’. See also: ‘A south- ern Chinese’, Japan Chronicle, 6 May 1933 and ‘Nanking-Canton Politics and the Japanese Menace’, China Weekly Review, 13 May 1933. 33. Abend, Hallett (1943) My Life in China, 1926–1941 (New York: Harcourt, Brace), pp. 148–154. 34. May, Ernest R. (1973) ‘U.S. Press Coverage of Japan, 1931–41’. In Borg, D. and Okamoto S. (eds.) Pearl Harbor as History: Japanese-American Relations, 1931–41 (New York: Columbia University Press), p. 517. 35. Current History, Vol. XXXVIII, No.1, 11. 36. The transcript of Byas’s broadcast is given in Zumoto Motosada (ed.) 1932; reprinted in Peter O’Connor (ed.) (2005) (op. cit.), Vol. 4, pp. 435–483. 37. The essential source for Byas’s life and work is the Hugh Byas Papers, Manuscript group No.121 (Hist. Mss. Film 95) Manuscripts and Archives, at Yale University Library, New Haven, Connecticut, consisting of scrapbooks, writings, notes, research files, photographs and letters running from 1914 to 1941, with the earliest material dating from Byas’s early years at the Japan Advertiser to the lectures he gave at Yale University between 1942 and his death in 1945. In February 1980, the entire Byas archive was microfilmed and the original material destroyed to save space: citations to this archive are therefore all to material arranged themat- ically on microfilm reels numbered 1–11. 38. ‘Nervous Japan Gripped by Spyphobia’ by Hugh Byas: New York Times Magazine, 10 February 1935. 39. Op. cit., Time magazine: 10 June 1940. 40. ‘Japan Feels Aggrieved: Cannot Understand View That She is Not Entitled to Lead China’ by Hugh Byas: New York Times, 4 August 1937. Byas Papers, Yale, Reel 11. 41. This statement clearly softens Byas’s more critical approach of 4 August 1937 (op. cit.). 42. ‘A Great Eastern Empire: Reply to Japanese Aims’: letter from Morgan Young to The Times, 26 January 1938, in response to a Hugh Byas report from Tokyo of 20 January 1938. 43. Op. cit., 10 June 1940, Byas report to the New York Times, cited in Time mag- azine. 44. USDS 894.911/84: Stanley Hornbeck, USDS, to Under Secretary of State Sumner Welles, 5 June 1941, regarding a letter from Thomas Millard in Manila, dated 21 May 1941. Millard died in Seattle in September 1942. 45. Byas, Government by Assassination, (London: Allen and Unwin, 1943), p. vii. 46. First British edition published by George Allen & Unwin in 1943, who

406 NOTES chose to trumpet the book as ‘A scathing exposure of the methods of the Japanese Government’ although this was a distortion of its contents and purpose (adver- tisement in The Times: 25 January 1944). 47. Byas, Government by Assassination, p. vii. 48. Bungei Shunju¯, August 1933.

30 SAIKO GAUNTTLETT Edward Gauntlett (1868–1956), English Teacher, Explorer and Missionary

1. Tokyo Higher School of Commerce, Chiba Middle School, Toyo Eiwa College, Sixth High School (Okayama), Fourth High School (Kanazawa), Yamaguchi Higher School of Commerce, Rikkyo Gakuin, Rikkyo University, Tokyo University of Commerce, Bunka Gakuin, Jiyu¯ Gakuen, and Yokohama Higher Commercial School. 2. On his father’s side there was Henry John Gauntlett (1805–76). On his mother’s side there was William Henry Monk (1823–89), who was also a com- poser. Both are listed in the Dictionary of National Biography, vol. VII, pp. 953–955, vol. XIII, p. 623, London: Oxford University Press, 1917. 3. According to Gauntlett’s fourth daughter, Beatrice Amy Luke, he solved the question of financing the needed expense by working and not receiving anything from his parents. (Beatrice Amy Luke, Abundant Grace The Autobiography of Beatrice Amy Luke, Tokyo: New Life Publishers, 1990, p. 12.) 4. The Mission was seeking young people in Canada to work in schools located in Japan as English teachers who would find time for missionary work, too. From around 1887 to 1891, twelve people responded and came to Japan as members of the self-support group. Gauntlett was one of these and his acquaintance with Coates and McKenzie in the same group lasted for many years in Japan. 5. Fifty years anniversary of Central Terbernacle, edited by Central Terbernacle, 1940, pp. 246–248. 6. Monthly Bulletin of Central Terbernacle, 1893–1900. 7. The Imperial Household Agency, Chronicle of Emperor Meiji, Issue No. 8, Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kobunkan, 1973. 8. Cf. ‘Three Meiji Marriages’ by Noboru Koyama in Biographical Portraits Volume IV, Hugh Cortazzi (ed.), Japan Library, 2002. 9. Tsune Gauntlett, Nanaju-nana nen no omoide (Memory of Seventy-seven years), Tokyo: Uemura Publishers, 1949, pp. 39–44. 10. Tsune Gauntlett, pp. 47–55. 11. Yamada Ko¯saku, Jiden wakakihi no kyoshikyoku(Autobiography, a Rhapsody of My Young Age), Tokyo: Chuko Bunko, 1996. 12. Japan Esperanto Society, History of Japan Esperanto Movement, 1998, p. 16. 13. Akiyoshi Plateau, under which is located Akiyoshi Cave, has an area of 250 square kilometres. It is the largest limestone plateau in the world. By the erosive action of rain and subterranean water, it has the peculiar features of what is geo- logically called a karst plateau. On its perimeter are found a number of stalactite caves including Akiyoshi Cave. However, because of its vast area and the lack of

407 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI convenient means of access the magnificent spectacles on the plateau and the exquisite beauties within the stalactite cave did not, for many years, arouse the atten- tion of the general public. The plateau itself was used by the army for manoeuvres. 14. The Board of Education Yamaguchi Prefecture, Mr Edward Gauntlett and Yamaguchi Prefecture, 1956, pp. 3–9. 15. In 1909, Gauntlett’s report appeared in the Yorkshire Rambler’s Club Journal under the title of ‘The Caves of Yamaguchi’. His report was accompanied by a survey map. 16. Yamaguchi Prefecture is known for its many scenic spots. The Miharado and the mountain stream of Abu River are particularly beautiful in the spring around May and in the autumn when the leaves become yellow. The flowers in their various colours and fragrance, the rocks in various shapes and the leaves mirrored on the surface of the water are particularly impressive to Japanese and foreigners alike. 17. The plot was about 1,000 square metres and the two-storied Japanese style house was about 500 square metres in size. 18. Gauntlett excelled in drawing letters with fine decorations that surrounded the letters and colourful designs with fine brush strokes. Illumination requires fine technique and patience and illumination with elaborate designs may take as long as a year to complete. After coming to Japan he completed at least forty but few still exist. Three illuminations were given to the Emperor Taisho¯.

31 IAN RUXTON Joseph Henry Longford (1849–1925), Consul and Scholar

1. E-mail from Hanna Baker, archives assistant at the Middle Temple, dated 6 June 2006. 2. Satow Papers, PRO 30/33 5/5 reproduced in I. Ruxton (ed.), The Correspondence of Sir Ernest Satow,British Minister in Japan, 1895–1900, Lulu Press Inc., 2005, p. 165. (See http://www.lulu.com/ianruxton) 3. PRO 30/33 5/5. (Ruxton, 2005, p. 177.) 4. PRO 30/33 5/11. 5. PRO 30/33 5/10. 6. Satow’s diary, Ruxton, 2003, p. 161. 7. PRO 30/33 14/11. Villiers’reply is in PRO 30/33 5/2 (Ruxton, 2005, p. 28). 8. Entry in Who Was Who, 1916–1928. 9. F.O. List, 1921. 10. The Times obituary, 14 May 1925. 11. Who Was Who, 1916–1928. 12. The main shrine commemorating General Nogi is that in Tokyo by his res- idence at Nogi-saka. There is also one in the samurai residential area of Cho¯fu in Shimonoseki, as Nogi Maresuke was from the Cho¯shu¯ fief. 13. Article on James Murdoch by David Sissons, Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan, 4th series, Volume 2, 1987, p. 45. (With thanks to Professor Nish for this reference.) 14. Japan (Nations of Today, London, Waverley Book Co., 1923) p. 246.

408 NOTES

32 JOHN R. BAKER AND FRANCES BIGGS Kathleen Mary Drew Baker, British Botanist whose Studies Helped to Save the Japanese Nori Industry

1. Shortly before her death she burnt almost every paper, letters, both personal and scientific, school documents, diaries, notes and drafts; only letters to and from Ditha Jackson, a close friend and fellow student, a few lists to do with house- keeping and the family’s photograph albums escaped the conflagration. Almost the only way now available to track her life and visits both in the UK and over- seas is to consult her herbarium currently in the National Herbarium at Kew. Each specimen is labelled with the date and place of collection, this has been referred to as her secret diary. She never talked much to her children about her time in the States, indeed it was only a few years ago that the family learned she had been to Hawaii. 2. Both of us were invited, with our spouses, to the ceremony in 2001 to mark one-hundred years since her birth and it was both an interesting and moving experience. Mrs Segawa was again able to be present along with the local digni- taries and a crowd of several hundred, mostly nori fishermen. Dr Ota was too ill to attend but we did visit him briefly and found him still working on his herbar- ium of seaweed specimens. He died shortly after our visit. After the ceremony, some elderly nori fisherman made a point of thanking us personally for our mother’s work. They were old enough to remember the bad times before her findings were put into practice. This was a particularly moving and humbling experience.1

33 RIKKI KERSTEN Maruyama Masao (1914–96) and Britain: An Intellectual in Search of Liberal Democracy

1. Dorothie Storry, ‘Second Country’: The Story of Richard Storry and Japan 1913–1982 (Kent: Paul Norbury, 1986). 2. Richard Storry, A History of Modern Japan (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1960). 3. This period in Maruyama’s life is elaborated in Rikki Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan: Maruyama Masao and the Search for Autonomy 1945–1960 (London: Routledge, 1996). 4. Maruyama’s collected works feature 17 volumes. See Maruyama Masao Shu (The Collected Works of Maruyama Masao), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1995–97). There are also published collections of his lectures delivered at Tokyo University, transcribed round-table discussions, and selected correspondence. 5. Maruyama Masao, Nihon no shiso¯ (Japanese Thought), (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho No. 439, 1961). 6. Irokawa Daikichi, The Culture of the Meiji Period (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1985), p. 262. 7. Dorothie Storry recalls Maruyama expressing precisely this wish. See Dorothie Storry in Misuzu (ed.), Maruyama Masao no sekai (The World of Maruyama Masao), (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo¯, 1997), p. 72.

409 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

8. Maruyama Masao, ‘Sentaku no toki’ (Time for Choice), Tokyo Daigaku Shimbun 11 July 1960, p. 2. 9. For background on Richard Storry see Ian Nish, ‘Richard Storry, 1913–82: a life-long affair with Japan’, in H. Cortazzi (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits Vol. V (Folkestone: Global Oriental, 2005), pp. 327–336. 10. Maruyama feared this subject would be ‘boring’. See ‘Fuhenteki ishiki o kaku Nihon no shiso¯–Maruyama Masao o kakonde’(Japanese thought lacks a universal con- sciousness–speaking with Maruyama Masao), in Hitotsubashi Shimbun 15 July 1964, p. 2. 11. This 1946 essay appears in English translation as ‘The theory and psychol- ogy of ultranationalism’ in Maruyama Masao, Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1969, expanded edition, pp. 1–24. 12. ‘Theory and psychology of ultra-nationalism’, p. 1. 13. This appeared as Richard Storry, The Double-Patriots: A Study of Japanese Nationalism (London: Chatto and Windus, 1957). 14. See, for instance, Ronald Dore’s recollection of Maruyama in Misuzu (ed.), Maruyama Masao no sekai, p. 76. 15. Thought and Behaviour, p. xi. 16. Thought and Behaviour, p. xv. 17. For detail on Maruyama’s ideas on autonomy see Kersten, Democracy in Postwar Japan, pp. 78–108. 18. See, in particular, Maruyama Masao, ‘Nihon ni okeru jiyu¯ ishiki no keisei to tokushitsu’ (The Construction of a Liberal Consciousness in Japan and its Peculiarities), in Senchu¯ to sengo no aida (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo¯, 1976), pp. 297–306. 19. For a brief description in English of Maruyama’s experience of the univer- sity disturbances see R. Kersten, ‘Maruyama Masao and the dilemma of the public intellectual in postwar Japan’, in Gerrit Steunebrink and Evert van der Zweerde (eds), Civil Society, Religion and the Nation: Modernization in intercultural context: Russia, Japan, Turkey (Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2004), pp. 117–134; see also Maruyama Masao, Jikonai Taiwa (Internal conversations) (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo¯, 1998). 20. Sue Henny and Jean-Pierre Lehmann (eds.), Themes and Theories in Modern Japanese History: Essays in Memory of Richard Storry (London: Athlone, 1988), pp. 27–43. 21. ‘The structure of matsurigoto’, p. 28. 22. Ibid. 23. ‘The structure of matsurigoto’, p. 33. 24. Maruyama Masao, ‘Nihon shihaiso¯ no senso¯ sekinin’ (The war responsibility of the ruling stratum), in Gendaishi taikei geppo¯, Shinju¯wan e no michi (Tokyo: Misuzu Shobo¯, 1956), p. 1. 25. ‘The structure of matsurigoto’, p. 39. 26. Ibid., p. 41. 27. Maruyama Masao, ‘The ideology and dynamics of Japanese fascism’, in Thought and Behaviour in Modern Japanese Politics, pp. 25–83.

410 NOTES

28. Maruyama Masao, ‘Nashonarizumu, gunkokushugi, fashizumu’ (Nationalism, militarism, fascism), in Gendai Seiji no Shiso¯ to K¯do o ¯ (Tokyo: Miraisha, 1964), expanded edition, p. 296. 29. Maruyama Masao K¯giroku o (Lecture Notes of Maruyama Masao), Vol. II (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1991), p. 44.

34 The Beatles in Japan 1966

1. The subsequent visit to Manila was a disaster. Their hotel was very poor and they did not like what little they saw of the city. Unfortunately, they upset the Philippine authorities by refusing to take tea with Imelda Marcos, the wife of the then president. When they were leaving Manila their plane was delayed by the tax authorities, who refused to allow them to leave until a huge sum had been paid in cash to settle the tax, which had been assessed on their performance fees. 2. The grand-daughter of Prime Minister Yoshida was probably Nobuko, the daughter of Mr Aso Takakichi and Mrs Aso Kaziko. Nobuko (now Princess Nobuko) married Prince Tomohito of Mikasa.

John Lennon plays with Japanese mask, Tokyo, June 1966. (Photo by Robert Whitaker/Getty Images) © 2006 Getty Images

411 Index

Abdelsamad, Yahya, xxii Asakai Ko¯ichiro¯ xvii, 12, 17, 368 Abend, Hallett, 294, 295, 406 Ashmore, Sonia, xx, 398 Adams, William, 175 Ashton Gwatkin, Frank, xvii Adrian, Lord, 171, 172, 383 Aso Kazuko, xvii, 17, 202, 210, 369, Agnelli, Giovanni, 169 390, 411 Aida Yukio, 161 Aso Takakichi, 17 Akabane Shiro¯, 51 Aston, W.G., xvii, 307, 313 Akihito, see Crown Prince Akihito Attlee, Clement, 18 Akihito, Prince (at coronation of King Austin, Sir Herbert, 100, 101 Edward VII), 311 Ayrton, Professor W.E., xvii Akutagawa Ryu¯nosuke, 209 Azuma Mutsuko, 148 Albert Victor, Prince, Duke of Clarence and Avondale, 72, 74–9, 379 Baba Tatsui, xvii, 266 Albery, Nobuko, xxi, 385 Bahn, Paul, 277, 278, 401, 403 Alcock, Sir Rutherford, xvii, 252, 269 Baird, Christina, 400 Alexandra, Princess, 53, 54 Baker, Henry Wright, 316, 317 Alexandra, Queen, 76 Baker, John R., vii, xiii, xv, xvii, 315, Alfred, Prince, Duke of Edinburgh and 317, 320, 409 Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, 72–4, 76, Baker, Kathleen Mary Drew, vii, xii, 77, 79 xvii, 315–21, 409 Allen, Dennis, 370 Baker-Bates, Merrick, xix Allen, Professor G.C., xvii Baldwin, Stanley, 4, 5, 70 Allen, Louis, xvii, xxii, 366, 394 Balfour, Arthur, 36, 258, 378 Amano Yu¯ei, 45 Ballhatchet, Helen, xvii Amherst, Lord, 300 Bailey, Herbert, 104 Anderson, William, xvii, 259, 265, 269, Bailey, Paul, 396 399, 400 Bannister, Alfred James, 174, 175 Antrobus, Sir Edward, 277 Barfield, Norman A., 389, 390 Anzai Tatsuo, xvii Barker, George, 366 Andrew, Prince, Duke of York, 93 Barker, Paul, 248, 397 Aoki Shu¯zo¯, xvii, 51 Barnes, Professor Gina Lee, 400 Aoyama Jiro¯, 208 Barr, Pat, xvii Aoyama Rokuro¯, 96 Barrie, David, 151, 386 Arai Ko¯ichi, 81 Batchelor, Dr John, xvii Ariga (Nissan), 350, 352, 359 Baty, Dr Thomas, xvii Arishima Ikuma, 78, 380, 381 Baudelaire, Charles, 206 Arisugawa, Prince, 95, 258 Baylis, Brian, 104 Arita Hachiro¯, 297 Beardsley, Aubrey, 258 Ariyoshi Chu¯ichi, 180, 388 Beardwood, P.C., 95 Ariyoshi Yoshiya, xvii, 388 Beatles, The, viii, xiii, xvii, 333–42 Armstrong’s, Vickers, xvii Beck, Peter, 372 Arnold, Sir Edwin, xvii Behrens, Walter, 255 Arthur, Prince, of Connaught, 65–7, Bennett, Terry, xxii 73, 79 Beresford, Charles, 73, 74, 379

412 INDEX

Bergamini, David, 60 Bronte, Charlotte, 390 Berlin, Isaiah, 327 Broughton, Lynn, 397 Best, Dr Antony, vi, xi, xv, xviii, xix, Broughton, Captain, xviii xxii, 63–70, 367, 370, 377, 378, Brown, Albert, xviii 388 Browning, Oscar, 48 Bevan, Paul, 259 Brunton, Richard Henry, 198 Bewsher, John, 188, 190 Buchan, John, 312 Bickersteth, Bishop Edward, xvii Buckley, Professor Roger, vii, xiii, xv, Biggs, K. Frances, vii, xiii, xv, 31, 317, xviii, xxi, xxiii, 245–9, 397, 398 409 Bull, George, 153 Bing, Siegfrid, 259 Bullock, Richard, 345–7, 382 Binning, Ken, 343–5, 382 Burchett, George, 73, 77, 379, 380 Bird, Isabella, xvii Burkman, Thomas, 372 Black, Jeremy, 394 Burleigh, Professor David, vii, xiii, xv, Blacker, Dr Carmen, xvii, xviii, xxiii, 234–44, 366, 395, 396 xx–xxii, 376, 377, 403 Burton, Richard, 221 Blair, Tony, 92 Burton, W.J., xviii Blake, William, 148, 154 Bush, Lewis, 290 Blakiston, Thomas Wright, xviii Businessmen, Japanese in the UK, xviii Bleasdale, Charlotte, xxiii Butler, Henry Montague, 48 Blunden, Edmund, 365 Butler, R.A., xviii, 7, 17, 22, 367, 370 Blow, Thomas Bates, 97 Byas, Hugh Fulton, vii, xiii, 287–98, Blyth, R.H., xviii 403–407 Bolton, Gamber, 77, 78, 380, 381 Bond, Arthur, 380 Caedel, Dr Eric, xviii Borg, D., 406 Cammell, John, 345, 347, 382 Botnar, Octav, 109, 110, 344, 345, 347, Campbell, Alexander, 227, 394 349 Campbell, Juliet, 150, 385, 386 Bottrall, Ronald, 365 Campbell-White, Martin, 151, 152, 386 Bowen, Richard, xix, xx, xxiii Carey, Sir Peter, 354 Bowes, James Lord, vii, xiii, xviii, 262, Carrington, Charles, 398 263, 267–70, 399, 400 Carrington, Peter (Lord), 171, 387 Bownas, Professor Geoffrey, 383 Carter, Angela, vii, xiii, xviii, 245–9, Bowring, Professor Richard, xviii 397, 398 Boyd, Lady Julia, xxii Catullus, 205 Boyd-Carpenter, John, 19, 20 Cave, Professor A.J., 59 Boxer, Professor Charles, xviii Caygill, Marjorie, 399, 400 Brackley, Major, 188 Chamberlain, Basil Hall, xviii, 313, 380 Bradley, Dr Clive, 383 Chang Hsueh-liang (Zang Xueliang), Bradley, James, 379 294 Brailey, Dr Nigel, 375 Crow, Carl, 292 Brain, Sir Norman, 59 Chapman, Dr John, xix, xxi, 389 Brangwyn, Sir Frank, 258, 259, 399 Charles, Prince of Wales, 54, 91, 142, Brinkley, Captain Francis, xviii, 254, 143, 152 313, 398 Checkland, Olive, xviii, xix, xx, xxii Bristow, Joseph, 397 Cheke, Dudley, viii, xv, 333, 334, Britton, Dorothy, vi, vii, xv, xviii, xx, 336–42 xxii, 174–81, 281, 375, 387, 388, Chekhov, 243, 244 403 Cherry, John, 399, 400 Britton, Frank Guyver, vi, xii, 174–81, Chiang Kai-shek, 7 282, 287, 388, 403 Chiba Kazuo, 151 Brocklebank-Fowler, M.P., 344, 345 Chichibu, Prince and Princess, xviii, Broers, Lord, 387 375, 377

413 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Chichibu, Princess, 54 Court Relations (see Royal alliance), Chinda Sutemi, xviii, 36, 37, 40 xviii Chino Yoshitoki, vi, xii, xviii, 144, 161, Cousins, James, xviii, 366 167–73, 387 Cowan, Professor Jeremy, 149 Chiossone, Eduoardo, 273, 401, 402 Craig, Sir James, 149 Chippendale, Christopher, 278, 401, Craigie, Sir Robert, xviii, 17, 291, 370 403 Crane, Charles, 404, 405 Chirac, Jacques, 372 Cripps, Sir Stafford, 8 Chisholm, Tom, 179, 388 Crowe, Sir Colin, 16 Chodat, Professor, 316 Crown Prince Akihito (Heisei Cholmondeley, Lionel Berners, xviii Emperor), xviii, 1 11, 12, 18, 21, Christy, Henry, 272 56, 62, 370, 375, 377 Churchill, Lt. Col., A.G., 3, 367 Crown Prince Hirohito (see also Showa Churchill, Lady Randolph, 2, 4, 366 Emperor), xviii, 55, 63, 67–9, 202, Churchill, Sir Winston, v, xi, xviii, 376, 377, 390 1–14, 15, 17, 18, 366–9, 371 Crown Prince Naruhito (Prince Hiro), Clark, John, xxiii 62, 152, 377 Clegg, Nick, vi, xii, xv, xviii, 167–73, Cummins, James, xviii 387 Curie, Marie, 143 Clemenceau, Georges, 36 Curzon, Lord, xviii, 4, 35 Clive, Sir Robert, xviii Coates, Mrs, 302, 407 Dahrendorf, Dr Ralph, 331 Cobb, David, 153 Daniels, Dr Gordon, viii, xi, xxii, 333, Cobbing, Andrew, xx, xxi, xxiii 334 Cochlin, Michael, 350, 351, 382 Daniels, Otome and Professor Frank, Cole, Professor, 129 xviii Colvin, R., 378 Daruma-kin, 72 Comfort, Ernest, vi, xii, xviii, 182–90, Darwin, Charles, 264, 265, 272, 278 388–90 Davies, John, 343 Comfort, Roland, 388 Davies, Peter N., xviii Commercial Treaty, Anglo-Japanese, Dearing, Ron (Lord), 343 xviii de la Mare, Sir Arthur, 54, 334, 375 Commonwealth War Graves in Japan, Deakin, Bill, 327 xviii Den Kenjiro¯, 96 Conder, Josiah, xviii, 254, 259, 260, Dening, Sir Esler, xviii, 16, 370 398, 399 Diana, Princess of Wales, 143 Connaught, Prince Arthur, Duke of, Dickins, F.J., xviii 63, 73 Dickinson, Goldesworthy Lowes, Connery, Sean, 225 204–207, 211, 391 Conrad, Joseph, 206 Dobson, Sebastian, xxiii Conroy, Timothy (Taid or Taig), xviii Dodwell and Co, xiii, 365 Consular Service, British Japan, xviii, Doi Sadakane, 167 Conte-Helm, Professor Marie, xvii, Donne, John, 205 172, 387 Dore, Professor Ronald, xviii, 385, 410 Conyngham Green, see Greene Dostoevsky, 207 Cook, Captain, 73 Douglas, Archibald, xviii Corner, Professor John, xviii, 376 Douglas-Home, Sir Alec (Lord), 29, Cornes, Frederick, xviii 58 Cortazzi, Sir Hugh, v, vi, xi, xii, xv, Do¯zen Masahiro, 171, 387 xvii–xx, 15–33, 53–62, 123–57, Dresser, Christopher, 250, 252–4, 261, 198, 349, 352, 354, 365, 368–72, 398 375–9, 382–7, 388, 390, 398–400, Drummond, Sir Eric, 36, 38–40 42, 43 404, 405, 410 Dukore, Bernard, 366

414 INDEX

Dunne, Anthony, xx Fleischer, Wilfrid (son of, above), 289, Dyer, Henry, xviii 291, 292 Dymock, Eric, 382 Fleming, Ian, vii, viii, xix, 218, 221–33, 393–5 East, Alfred, 253, 255, 257, 259, 398 Footman, Yuko Yamagata, vi, xv, xxiii, Eby, C.S., 300, 301 191–9 Eden, Anthony (Earl of Avon), 7, 17, 19 Forster, E.M., 204, 390 Edinburgh, Prince Philip, Duke of Fortune, Robert, xix Edinburgh, 58, 60, 147 Fosdick, Raymond B., 38 Edinburgh, Prince Alfred, Duke of Foucault, Michel, 331 Edinburgh and Saxe-Coburg and Francis, Rev. J., 308 Gotha, see Alfred, Prince Franks, Sir Augustus Wollaston, vii, xiii, Edison, Thomas, 143 xix, 262–70, 273, 279, 399, 400 Edward VII, King, 64–6, 72, 73, 311, Fraser, Eileen, xix 379 Fraser, G.S., xix, 365 Edward, Prince of Wales, later Edward Fraser, Hugh, xix VIII, King and Duke of Windsor, Fraser, Robert, 366 55, 57, 63, 67–9, 80, 381 Fujihara Yoshie, 371 Edwardes, Arthur, xix Fujii Hiroaki, 155, 171, 387 Edwardes, Sir Michael, 130, 345 Fujioka, N., 410, 402 Edwards, H.J., 374 Fujisawa Takeo, 122, 124, 125, 127–9, Edwards, Walter, 279, 400–402 132 Egashira Keisuke, 161 Fujita Tsuguhara, 79 Eguchi Takayuki, xix Fujitani, T., 377 Eliot, Sir Charles, xix, 69, 389 Fukuda Haruko, xxiii Eliot, T.S., 205, 309 Fukuda Takeo, 24, 26, 59, 376 Emperor Hirohito, see Sho¯wa Emperor, Fukuda Tsuneari, xix also Crown Prince Hirohito Fukuzawa Yukichi, xix, 331 Empson, William, xix, 366 Furuno Inosuke, 290 Engineers, Japanese, xix Fushimi, Prince, 66 Enomoto Takaaki, 49 Enright, Dennis, xix, 243, 365, 396 Galbraith, J.K., 164 Evans, Sir Arthur, 399 Gallimore, David, xxi Evans, Dame Joan, 264 Gamble, Professor Sarah, 246, 397 Evans, Sir John, 264, 399 Gascoigne, Sir Alvary, xix Everett, Christopher, 172, 387 Gauntlett, Amy, 305, 407 Ewing, James Alfred, xix Gauntlett, Edward, vii, xiii, xix, Exhibition, Japan-British, of 1910, xix 299–306, 407, 408 Gauntlett, Frances, 300, 305 Failla, D., 401 Gauntlett, Henry John, 407 Fakes, N.L., 196 Gauntlett, John George, 300 Fanfani, Amintore, 372 Gauntlet Kathleen, 305 Farmer, James, 288 Gauntlett, Owen, 305, 306 Farnie, Douglas, xxiii Gauntlett, Saiko, vii, xiii, xv, xix, 299, Faulkener, Rupert, 270 407, 408 Faulds, Henry, xix Gauntlett, Trevor, 305 Feng Yuxiang, 203 Gauntlet, Winifred, 305 Ferris, John, 183, 389, 390 George V, King, 35, 55, 67, 69–80, 379 Fifield, R.H., 372 George VI, King, 70 Figgess, Sir John, xix George, Prince, of Greece, 79 Finn, Dallas, xviii, 399 Giffard, Sir Sydney, xxi Fleischer, Benjamin Wilfrid, 289, Gilbert, Martin, 367 291–4, 297, 404, 405 Glover, Thomas Blake, 310, 402

415 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Gomersall, Lady Lydia, 152 Harris, Victor, 271, 400, 401 Gooch, G.P., 5, 367 Harrison, John, 253 Gordon, Martin, vi, xii, xv, xxii, 158–66 Harvey Jones, Sir John, 150 Gornall, Martin, xvii Hasegawa Nyozekan, xix Goto¯ Kazuo, 271, 400, 401 Hashimoto Masujiro¯, 96–9 Goto¯ Mitsuya, 357, 359 Hatano M., 378 Goto¯ Shimpei, 35 Hatcher, Professor John, vi, xii, xiii, xv, Gotoh Noriyoshi, 100 xix, xxi, 212–33, 316, 391–5 Goto-Shibata, Harumi, xix, xxiii Hawes, Lt. A.G.S., 272 Gow, Professor Ian, xviii, 389 Hawley, Frank, xix Gowland, William, vii, xiii, xix, 265, Hayashi Fusao, 209 271–80, 400–403 Hayashi Gonsuke, xix Graves, British in other parts of Japan, Hayashi Tadasu, xix xix Haylock, John, 238, 365, 395 Gray, Robin, xviii Hazzard, Shirley, 396 Green, Edwin, xx Hearn, Lafcadio, xix, 300 Green, G.E., 48 Heaslett, Bishop Samuel, xix Greene, Sir Edward Conyngham, xix, Heath, Sir Edward, v, xii, xix, 23–33, 291 59, 162, 371, 372 Greene, Graham, 211, 237, 243, 244, Hedges, Frank, 405 396 Heffer, S., 378 Greenhill, Sir Dennis, 376 Henig, Ruth, 373 Greenspan, Alan, 164 Henny, Sue, 410 Greenwood, Russell, xix Henriques, Robert, 365 Grew, Joseph, 291, 294 Herries, Amanda, xix, xxiii Grey, Sir Edward, 3 Heweitt, Peter, xix Grundig, Max, 384 Higashifushimi, Prince, 67 Grunfeld, Henry, 159, 161, 162, 165 Higgins, Ronald, 370 Gubbins, J.H., xix, 307, 314 Higuchi Jiro¯, xxi Guest, Harry, 365 Hill, Christopher, 327 Gurdon, Sir John, 387 Hiller, Alice van Winkle (Mrs Britton), Guttman, Robert, 309 178–80 Hiller, Dorothy, 388 Haffenden, John, xix, 366 Hind, C. Lewis, 259, 260 Halen, Widar, 398 Hiraiwa Gaishi, 137 Halifax, Lord, 7 Hiranuma Kiichiro¯, 46 Hall, J.C., 311 Hirohito, Emperor, see Sho¯wa Emperor Hamada Ko¯saku, 277, 279 and Crown Prince Hirohito Hamano Toshiro¯, 154, 155, 386 Hitachi, Prince and Princess, 54 Hanaoka So¯suke, xviii Hitchcock, Alfred, 21 Hanby Holmes, R.J., 171, 387 Hitchcock, Romyn, 274, 401, 402 Hankey, Lord, xix, 7, 17, 22, 367, 368 Hoare, Dr J.E., vi, xi, xii, xv, xviii, xx, Hara Fujiko, xxi, 372 182–90, 388–90, 398 Hara Takashi, 35 Hodgson, Ralph, xix, 366 Hara Yoshinori, 387 Hodgkin, Professor A.L., 58 Harada, Grand Master of the Hokusai, 282, 284 Ceremonies, Imperial Household, Holme, Charles, vii, xiii, xix, 250–61, 54 398, 399 Hardy, Thomas, 204 Holmes, Colin, xxiii Hare, David, 266 Holmes, Tim, 351 Harries, Philip, xxiii Honda Giichi, 122 Harrington, Ernest John, xix Honda So¯ichiro¯, vi, xii, xx, 122–32, Harris, Martin, 386 382, 383

416 INDEX

Hope, Robin, 345, 346, 382 Ishihara Takashi, 107, 111–16, 164, Hori Chiyo, 71, 72, 77–9, 380, 381, 348, 351, 354–63 Hori Iwa, 72 Ishii Kikujiro¯, 42, 373 Hori Kane, 72 Ishizawa Misao (Mrs Uyeno Yutaka), Hori Kuma, 76 193 Hori Uno, 72, 79, 80 Ismail, Tun, 164 Hori Yasu, 78 Ito¯ Hirobumi, xx, 64, 378 Horie Shigeo, 160 Itoh Keiko, xx, xxiii Horiguchi Daigaku, 206 Ito¯ Shinkichi, 210 Hornbeck, Stanley, 406 Ito¯ Shinsui, 281, 284, 286 Hotta-Lister, Ayako, xix Hotta Sho¯zo¯, 161 Jackson, Ditha, 409 Howarth, Stephen, 387 James, Chairman of Kobe and Osaka Howe, Sir Geoffrey (Lord), 149 Foreign Chambers of Commerce, Howell, David (Lord), 151, 386 100 Howse, Hugh, 377 James, Henry, 244 HSBC (Pioneers in Japan), xx James, Thomas, xx Huberman, Toni, vii, viii, xv, xix, Japan Chronicle, xx 250–61, 398, 399 Jarvis, Suzette, xxiii Hughes, George, xxi Jenkin, Patrick (Lord), 354–8, 382 Hughes, Richard, 222–33, 393, 394 Jenkins, Roy (Lord), 366, 367 Hughes, W.M., 312 Joll, James, 327 Huish, Marcus, xx, 254, 259, 398 Jones, Daniel H., 389 Humphreys, Christmas, xx Jordan, Captain William, 186–8 Hunter, Sir Ian, 151 Joseph, Sir Keith, 109, 344, 347, 348, Hunter, Professor Janet, xx, 381 351 Hurd, Douglas (Lord), 172 Joyce, James, 242 Huxley, Aldous, 365 Judo Pioneers, xx

Ibuka Masaru, 133–7 Kamata, Suzanne, 396 Iinuma Takeo, 156, 387 Kamei Unosuke, 80 Iizawa Tadasu, 381 Kaner, Dr Simon, vii, xiii, xv, xix, Iju¯in Seizo¯, 208 271–80, 400–403 Ikeda Hayato, 22, 371 Kannin, Prince, 63 Ikeda Kiyoshi, xxiii Kano Hisakaira, xx Ikemi Kiyoshi, 382 Kano¯ Masanobu, 74 Imura Motomichi, xxi Karajan, von, 384 Inaba Tsu¯ryu¯, 265 Karakusa Gonta, 72, 75 Inagaki Manjiro¯, v, xii, xx, 44–52, Karasawa K., 266 373–5 Kashiwagi Yu¯suke, 160, 162 Inagaki Yu¯taro¯, 45 Katayama Nihachiro¯, 156 Inayama Yoshiro¯, 372 Kato¯ Takaaki, xx Inouye Katsunosuke, xx Kawabata Yasunari, 248 Inoue Masaru, xx Kawai Hidekazu, 369 Inozuka Takaaki, xxiii Kawai Isamu, 111, 113 119, 349, 350, Inukai Ken, 324 353, 356, 358–63 Ion, Professor Hamish, xvii–xix, xxii, Kawakami Tetsutaro¯, 200, 207, 209, 391 xxiii Kawamata Katsuji, 111, 113–17, 352, Irokawa Daikichi, 323, 409 355–62, 364 Isayama R., 260 Kawanabe Kyo¯sai, xx, 260 Isherwood, Christopher, 237 Kawase Hasui, 284 Ishida Taizo¯, 85, 87 Kawase Munetaka, xx Ishihara Shintaro¯, 137 Kawashima Kiyoshi, 124, 130

417 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Keene, Dennis, 36 Kurosawa Yoh, 161, 162 Keene, Professor Donald, 210, 248 Kusuda T., 387 Keith, Elizabeth, vii, xii, xx, 281–6, 403 Keith, Elspet, 283–5 Lamont, Norman (Lord), 351, 355 Keith, Jessie, 283, 284 Landsdowne, Lord, 378 Kennard, Edward Allington, xx Lane, John, 259, 261 Kennedy, John Russell, xx, 290, 291, Lartet, Edouard, 272 404, 405 Lascelles, Sir Daniel, xx Kennedy, Malcolm, xx, 290, 404 Lawrence, D.H., 211, 390 Kent, Duke and Duchess of, 59 Lazlo, Philip de, 260 Keppel, Admiral Sir Henry, 73, 73, 379 Leach, Bernard, xx Kerensky, Alexander, 212, 213 Lee Bing-Shuey, Edward, 406 Kersten, Professor Rikki, vii, xiii, xv, Lee Kuan Yew, 164 xx, 322–32, 409–11 Leggett, Trevor Price, xx Keswick, William, xx Lehmann, Jean-Pierre, 410 Keswick, W.J., 17 Leighton, Lord, 264 Kihara Nobutoshi, 136 Lenin, 212 Kikaku, haiku poet, 153 Lennon, John, 335 Kikuchi Dairoku, xx, 46, 47, 324 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 331 Kikuchi Kyo¯zo¯, xx Lewis, Cecil, 182, 388 Kildoyle, Dennis, 181 Liberty, Lazenby, xx, 252–7, 259, 398, Kildoyle, Edward, 176 399 Kinder, Major William, 402 Liberty, Mrs Lazenby, 255, 256 King, Francis, 219, 220, 243, 244, 365, Liddell Hart, 369 392, 396 Lindbergh, Charles, 294, 295 Kipling, Lockwood, 252 Lindley, Sir Francis, xx Kipling, Rudyard, 254, 398, 399 Littlewood, Ian, 394 Kirkup, James, 227, 366, 394 Lloyd George, 4, 213 Kobayashi Hideo, 208, 209 Lloyd Wright, Frank, 282 Kobayashi Tatsuo, 372 Longford, Alice, 310, 313 Koestler, Arthur, 365 Longford, Joseph Henry, vii, xiii, xx, Koizumi Gunji, xx 307–14, 408 Koizumi Junichiro¯, 80, 92 Lotbinière, Anthony Joly de, 376 Koizumi Matajiro¯, 80 Louis, Prince of Battenberg, 76, 80 Komatsu, Prince, 64 Lowe, Peter, xix Komura Ju¯taro¯, xx, 258 Lubbock, John (Lord Avebury), 272 Konoe Fumimaro, 9, 14 Lucas, F.L., 205, 211 Korner, Eric, 159, 161 Lytton, Lord, 6 Kornicki, Professor Peter, xvii, xviii, xxii MacAlister, Donald, 47, 48 Koyama Noboru, v, xii, xv, xx–xxiv, McCartney, Paul, 333 45–52, 71–80, 374, 375, 378–81, McCallum, Graham, 152 407 McClatchy, V.S., 405 Koyasu Taro¯, 164 MacDonald, Sir Claude, xx, 378 Ko¯zai Eiichiro¯, 359 Mcfetrich, Alan, 351 Kubota Gonshiro¯, 98 Maclean, Alan, 238, 395 Kubota Mantaro¯, 209 Macmillan, Joan (Mrs Hugh Byas), 289, Kume Kunitaka, 276, 403 297 Kume Tadashi, 126, 131 Macmillan, Margaret, 373 Kume Yutaka, 105, 345, 347, 349 McSwan, Norman, 393 Kuniyoshi Tomoki, xvii Machida Hisanari, 272, 276 Kunizuka N., 378 Madeley, Christopher, vi, xii, xv, xxi, Kuramatsu Tadashi, xx, xxii xxiv, 94–106, 381

418 INDEX

Maeda Tamon, 134 Mingei movement, xxi Maejima Hisoka, xx Missionaries, British, xxi Mahathir, 164 Mitford A.B. Freeman (Lord Maitland, P.W., 48 Redesdale), 79, 377, 381 Makino Nobuaki, 37, 201, 202, 204, Mitsubishi, vi, 182 208, 210, 292, 391 Mitsui, Early History of, xxi Mama, M., 320 Miyazawa Kiichi, 141, 189 Manzie, Sir Gordon, 357, 358, 382 Miyazaki Tadashi, 78, 380 Mao Tse-tung, 18 Monk, William Henry, 407 Maraini, Fosco, 297, 394, 395 Monnet, Jean, 38, 42, 163 Margaret, Princess, 54, 58 Morel, Edward, xxi Markino Yoshio, xx Morgan, John, 375–7 Marriages, Three Meiji, xx, 407 Morgan, Ted, 391 Marsh, Richard (Lord), 113, 352, 354, Mori Arinori, xxi 355, 359, 361 Morinaga Teiichiro¯, 161 Marshall, R.J., 309 Morita Akio, vi, xii, xiv, 133–44, 164, Maruyama Masao, vii, xiii, 322–32, 170, 171, 383–5 409, 410, 411 Morita Hideo, 136, 138, 384 Masami, a geisha friend of Ian Fleming, Morita Misao, 136 225, 226, 392 Morita Norimasu, vi, xiii, xvi, xxi, Masao To¯kichi, 50, 51 xxiii, 200–11, 390, 391 Matasaburo¯, 79 Morita Yoshiko (Mrs Akio), 136, 138, Matheson, R.O., 405 384 Matsudaira Tsuneo, xx Morita Yoshiko, xxi Matsui Akira, 17, 368, 369 Morland, Sir Oscar, xxi, 204, 390 Matsukata Masayoshi, xx, 46, 50 Morohashi Shinroku, 164 Matsumoto Shunichi, xx, 16, 368 Moromi Akira, 155 Matsumura Jerry K., xxiii Morris, Barbara, 399 Matsuoka Yo¯suke, 8, 14, 297 Morris, Ivan, xxi Matsura Atsushi, 46, 47 Morris, John, xxi Maudling, Reginald, 159 Morris, William, 257 Maugham, Robin, 392 Morrison, Herbert, 18, 104 Maugham, Somerset, vi, xiii, xxi, Morse, William Sylvester, 264, 268, 212–24, 233, 245, 346, 391–3 270, 275, 277–9, 401, 402 Maupassant, Guy de, 244 Motono Ichiro¯, 35 May, Ernest R., 406 Motozawa Goro¯, 45 Mayall, Lees, 390 Moulton, W.F., 48 Meiji Emperor, 64–6, 71, 73–5, 301, Mountbatten, Lord Louis, 60, 80 312, 407 Mountfield, Sir Robin, vi, viii, xii, xvi, Menpes, Mortimer, 259, 260 xxi, 107–22, 343–64, 382 Metzger-Court, Sarah, xvii Mouton, Mark-Renée, 373 Meyers, Jeffrey, 391 Munns, Frank, 351 Michanek, Dr Goramm, 317, 320 Munro, Gordon, xxi Mihara (of Nissan), 348 Murdoch, Iris, 366 Mikimoto Ko¯ichi, 229 Murdoch, James, 313, 314, 366, Millard, Thomas, 292, 404–406 408 Miller, Arthur, 242 Murray, David, 313, 314 Milward, Peter, xvii, xix–xxii Murray, Len (Lord), 347 Minobe Tatsukichi, 324 Murray, Paul, xix Mishima Yukio, 218 Mussolini, Benito, 391 Minakata Kumagusu, xxi, 276, 277, Mutsu Family, xxi 403 Mutsu Ian, xxi Minami Teisuke, xxi Myers, Dr Wykeham, 310

419 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Nagano Shigeo, 28 Ofusa Junnosuke, 292, 405 Nagayama Tokio, 160 Ohga Norio, 136–8 Nakai Yoshigusu, xxi Ohira Masayoshi, 27 Nakajima Atsushi, 209 Ohno Katsumi, xxi Nakami Mari, xxii, 403, 404 Ohno Taiichi, 86 Nakamura, Mark, 172 Okada Sumie, 366, 394 Nakamura Masanao, xxi, 46, 81, 374, Okamoto S., 406 381, 387 Okita Masaki, 400 Nakmura Mitsuo, 208, 210 Okubo Toshimichi, 201 Nakamura Shintaro¯, 294 Okuda Yoshito, 46 Nakano Yoshio, 217 Okuma Masataka, 108–12, 344–9, 351, Nakasone Yasuhiro¯, 89, 359, 360, 372 353–9 Nametaka Akio, 217, 220, 392 Okuma Shigenobu, 50 Namiko Masa, 141, 142 Oliphant, Lawrence, xxi Nanbara Shigeru, 325 Orwell, George, xxi Nanjo B., 266 Oshima Sho¯taro¯, 242, 396 Narukawa, Captain, 175 Ota Akiko, xxi, 374, 387 Natsume So¯seki, xxii, 313 Ota, Dr, 319, 320, 409 Neal, Edna Read, xix Otsuka H., 402 Neale, Lt. Col. St John, xxi Otsuka Kane, 301 Nicholas II, Czar, 78, 79 Otsuka Seishin, 301 Nichols, Robert, xxi Overstall, Ann and John, 388 Nicolson, Harold, 379 Oyama Tsunayoshi, 45, 46 Ninagawa Yukio, xxi Ozaki Saburo¯, xxi Nippon Yu¯sen Kaisha (NYK), xxi Ozaki Yukio, xxi, 372 Nish, Alison, xxii Nish, Professor Ian, v, xi, xii, xvi–xxi, Pakenham, Captain (later Admiral) xxiii, 34–43, 367, 372, 376–8, W.C., xxi 390, 404, 410 Palmer, Harold E., xxi Nissan, vi, xii, xxi, 94–122, 343–64, Palmer, Henry Spencer, xxi 381, 382 Pardoe, John, xx, 404 Nishi Haruhiko, xxi Parker, Gillian (Lady née Rowe- Nishiwaki Junzaburo¯, xxi Dutton), 146, 154, 155 Nitobe Inazo¯, v, xii, xxi, 34–43, 372, Parker, Nathaniel, 385 373 Parker, Oliver, 385 Nitobe Mrs (Elkington, Mary Powell) Parker, Sir Peter, vi, xii, xiv, xxii, 34, 35 145–57, 385, 387 Nixon, President Richard, 24, 26, 30, Parkes, Sir Harry, xxii 31,55, 61 Parkinson, Cecil (Lord), 361–3 Nobuko, Princess, of Mikasa, 411 Parmelee, H.F., 301, 302 Nogi, General, 56, 312, 408 Parrott, Jasper, 152 Noguchi Yoshio, 156, 157 Parry, Albert, 77, 380 Nomura Ko¯zaburo¯, 79 Pasteur, Louis, 143 Norbury, Paul, xiv Peach, Linden, 397 Novelists, Japan’s Post-War, xxi Pearson, John, 392 Numata Hideko, xx, 398 Peattie, Mark R., 388, 389 Pedlar, Neil, xix, xxi Oba Sadao, xviii, xxi Pelly, Sir Lewis, 252 O’Connor, Peter, vii, xiii, xvi, xviii, Penniall, Albert James, xxii, 381 xix, xxiv 287–98, 403–407 Pernessin, Noémi, 282 O’Conroy, see Conroy Perry, Commodore, 176, 264 Odajima Yu¯shi, xxi Petrie, William Flanders, 277, 279 Oettermann, Stephen, 380 Piggott, Sir Francis Taylor, xxii

420 INDEX

Piggott, Major General F.S.G., xxii, 67, Roll, Eric (Lord), vi, xii, xxii, 82, 377, 378 158–66, 384, 387 Pilcher, Sir John, xxii, 55, 59, 61, 62, Roosevelt, President F.D., 2, 10, 11 375, 376, 385 Rosetti, Dante Gabriel, 204 Pinnell, Alan, 155 Roskill, Stephen, 373 Pinnington, Adrian, xviii Rousmanière, Dr Nicole Coolidge, vii, Pitt-Rivers, General, 264 xiii, xvi, xviii, xix, 262–70, 399, Plant Collectors in Meiji Japan, xxii 400 Plomer, William, xxii, 227, 241, 366, Rowlandson, Julia, 396 394 Royal Alliance (Court Diplomacy), xxii Plunkett, Sir Francis, xxii Royal Visits, xxii Poe, Edgar Alan, 208 Rozanski, Mordechai, 404 Ponsonby-Fane, Richard, xxii Rubinstein, Arthur, 341 Ponting, Herbert George, xxii Rugby Football in Japan, xxii Post, Lawrens van der, 366 Rundall, Sir Francis, xxii, 54 Potter, Heidi, 386 Russo-Japanese War, British Naval and Powell, Anthony, 365, 390 Military Observers, xxii Powell, Brian, xxiii Ruxton, Ian, vii, xiii, xvi, xviii, xx, Powell, J.B., 292 xxii, 307–14 Prior, Jim (Lord), 347 Rylands, George, 205, 206, 211 Purvis, Phillida, ix, xi, xvi–xix, 172, 369, 371 Saba Sho¯ichi, 33, 151, 152, 372, 386 Puyi, Emperor, 203 Sage, Lorna, 397 Saigo Takamori, 45 Quarritch, Bernard, 257 Saito¯ Makoto, xxii Queen (Elizabeth II), 12, 17, 18, 55, Saito¯ Naokazu, 86 58–60, 62, 143, 144, 375, 376 Saito¯ Torao (‘Tiger’), 223, 225–33 Queen Mother (Elizabeth), 58 Sakuya Tetsuo, 382 Quennell, Peter, 365, 366 Salaman, Malcolm, 403 Salter, Captain John, 175 Rattler, HMS, xxii Sameshima Naonobu, xxii Rawlins, Admiral Sir James, xvii, 399, Samuel, Sir Marcus, 365 400 Sannomiya Yoshitane, xxii Raymond, Antonin, 282 Sano Tsunetami (Viscount), 254, 398 Rea, George Bronson, 291 Sansom, Sir George, xxii, 307, 314 Read, Charles Hercules, 265 Sasaki Nobutsuna, 203 Reading, Lord, 19 Sato¯ Eisaku, 17, 22, 26, 336, 371 Redesdale, Lord, see Mitford A.B. Sato¯ Masaaki, 383 Redman, Sir Vere, xxii, 290 Satow, Sir Ernest, xxii, 76, 267, 307–11, Reid, J.S., 46 313, 375, 408 Reinsch, Paul, 405 Sayle, Murray, 287 Richardson, Gordon (Lord), 160 Schliemann, Heinrich, 264, 273 Richie, Donald, 391, 392, 396, 398 Schmidt, Dr Helmut, 372 Riddell, Hannah, xxii Scholey, Sir David, 82, 163 Roberts, E.S., 46 Scott, Sir Bernard, 349 Roberts, Field Marshal Lord, 66 Scott, J.W. Robertson, 283, 289, 290 Robertson-Scott, J.W., xxii, 403, Scott, M.H. Baille, 259 404 Searle, Alan, 218, 220 Robinson, Basil, xxii Searle, C.E., 48 Robinson, Peter, 365 Seeley, John, 48 Rockefeller, David, junior, 372 Segawa Sokichi, Professor, 319, 320, Rodin, 206 407 Rogal, Samuel J., 392 Seki Eiji, v, xi, xvi, xviii, xxi, 1–14, 370

421 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Seki Ryu¯shi, 225 Stephenson, Commander (later Admiral Sekine Masaru, 396 Sir) Henry, xxii Sempill, Lord, xxii, 182, 183, 187, 188, Stevenson, Robert Louis, 203 388, 389 Steunebrink, Gerrit, 400 Seymour, Admiral Sir Edward, 66 Stewart, James, 221 Shakespeare, 162, 204, 390 Stone, Sir Benjamin, 258 Shakespeare, Japanese Translators of, Stone, Donald, 104 xxii Stopes, Dr Marie, xxii Shand, Alexander Alan, xxii Storry, Dorothie, 322, 323, 326, 409, Shaw, Alexander Croft, xxii 410 Shaw, George Bernard, 366 Storry, Professor Richard, xxii, 322–7, Shaw, Robert Barkley, 251 329, 409, 410 Shawcross, Lord, 384 Stroud, Admiral, 300 Shidehara Kiju¯ro¯, 9, 368 Stroud, Elizabeth, 300 Shigemitsu Mamoru, xxii, 7–9, 367, Suematsu Kencho¯, xxii 368 Sugimura Yo¯taro¯, 42 Shikiba Toshizo¯, 209 Sugiyama S., 381 Shima Shigenobu, 376 Summers, James, xxii Shimazu Naoko, 372 Summerskill, Dr Edith, 20, 370 Shimizu To¯ru, 391 Sumner Welles, 406 Shimoda Takezo¯, 129 Sutton, Frederick William, xxiii Shinoda Hajime, 210, 391 Suzuki Hideo, 161 Shioji Ichiro¯, 114, 116, 355, 357, 360, Suzuki Shigeru, 173 362, 363 Suzuki Tetsuko, 161 Shiraishi Taichiro¯, 279, 402 Swinnerton Dyer, Sir Peter, 149 Shirasu Jiro¯, vi, 82, 158–60, 162, Swire, John Samuel, xxiii 166 Shirasu Taizo¯, 160 Tachibana Keitaro¯, 181 Sho¯riki Matsutaro¯, 337 Taisho¯ Emperor, 67, 408 Sho¯wa Emperor, v, xxii, 23, 27, 53–62, Tajima Michiji, 384 375–7 Takagaki Tasuku, 160 Sigrist, Frea, 184 Takagi Fumio, 149 Sinclair, A.T., 379 Takahashi Korekiyo, xxiii Sissons, David, 366, 408 Takaki Kanehiro, xxiii Sitwell, Sacheverell, 365 Takamatsu, Prince, 69 Smiles, Samuel, 81, 170 Takeno Hiroyuki, xviii, xx, xxi Smith, Ali, 247 Takenouchi Yasunoru, xxiii Smith, Dennis, xix Takeshita Noboru, 170 Smith, Herbert, 183–5, 187, 188 Takeuchi Meitaro¯, 96 Smith, Richard C., xxi Tamabayashi Haruo, 72, 75, 379, Snowdon, Lord, 54 381 Soane, Sir Hans, 263 Tamaki Norio, xix–xxiii Soeda Ju¯ichi, 46 Tames, Richard, 149, 154, 155, 385 Soejima Taneomi, 49 Tanaka Kakuei, 24, 26–9, 31 Sopwith, Thomas Octave Murdoch, Tanaka Migaku, 276 183, 184 Tanaka Mutsuo, 220, 392, 393, Sorge, Richard, 223 402 Souvan, Francis, 76, 379 Tanaka Takahiko, xx Spender, Stephen, 365 Tanaka Yajiro¯, 374 Staley, Caroline, 403 Tanakadate Aikichi, 374 Stalin, 2 Tani Yukie, xxiii Starr, Ringo, 334 Tanii Motojiro¯, 379, 381 Stein, G., 99 Tanizaki Junichiro¯, 72, 379

422 INDEX

Tariq Ali, 247 Ueda H., 402 Tashiro Shigeki, 164 Ueno Kagenori, xxiii Tashiro Takahashi, 123 Ukita Heisuke, 298 Tatsunokichi Naotaro¯, 392 Unno Yoshiro¯, 372, 373 Tattooists, xxiii, 71–80 Utley, Freda, xxiii Taylor, Charles, 78, 380 Uyeno Emi, 195 Tebbit, Norman (Lord), 347, 348, 351, Uyeno Kametaro¯, 191, 192, 194 363, 382 Uyeno Kinjiro¯, 191, 192, 196 Terashima Munenori, xxiii Uyeno Makoto, 195 Terauchi, 35 Uyeno Tadashi, 195 Tetley, Sir John, xxiii Uyeno Takashi, 191, 193, 195, 196 Thatcher, Baroness Margaret, 89, 91, Uyeno Yutaka, vi, xii, 191–9 107, 113, 171, 141, 142, 170, 347, Uyeno Zen, 195 352, 355–7, 359, 361, 362 Thewawong, Prince, 50 Valéry, Paul, 204, 205 Thomsen, C.J., 272 Veitch, John Gould, xxiii Thorneycroft, Peter (Lord), 19, 20 Venn, Bert, 188 Thornton, Sir Peter, 343 Victoria, Queen, 64 Thwaite, Anthony, 365 Vickers, Hugo, 379 Tiltman, Hessell, xxiii Villiers, Sir Charles, 343 Togo Heihachiro¯, xxiii, 56, 175 Villiers, F., 311, 408 Tohyama Genichi, 161 Vines, Sherard, 365 Tokugawa Akitake, xxiii Volker, Paul, 164, 165 Tokugawa Ieyasu, 366 Tolischus, Otto, 291, 405 Waddell, Helen, 366 Tomalin, Nicholas, 287, 403 Wade, Thomas, 47 Tominaga Yu¯zo¯, 156, 387 Wakefield, Sir Peter, 371 Tomlin, E.W.F., 334 Waley, Arthur, xxiii, 204 Tomlinson, Sir Stanley, 375 Walker, Peter (Lord), 348 Torii Ryu¯taro¯, 402 Warburg, S.G., vi, 82, 158–66 Towle, Philip, xxii Warde, Edward, xiii Toy, Sam, 349 Warner, Sir Fred, 26, 27, 29, 31 Toyoda Akio, 82 Watanabe Sho¯zaburo¯, 282, 284–6 Toyoda Eiji, 85 Watkins, Zoe, 393 Toyoda Kiichiro¯, 82, 83 Waugh, Evelyn, 211, 390 Toyoda Sho¯ichiro¯, vi, xvi, xxiii, 81–93, Webb, George, 399 164, 381 Webb, Merryn Somerset, 387 Tracy, Honor, 390 Webb, Sydney and Beatrice, xxiii Trench, Hon. Henry Le Poer, xxiii Weir, Sir Michael, 150, 385 Trenchard, Lord (Minister of State), Weston, Walter, xxiii 346, 348 Whitaker, Robert, viii, 333–6 Trotsky, 212 White, Gleeson, 260 Truman, President Harry, 11 Whitehead, Sir John, xxi, 352, 355, Tsuboi Sho¯goro¯, 275, 276 356, 382, 387, 390 Tsubouchi Sho¯yo¯, xxiii Whiting, Alan, 351, 353, 382 Tsunematsu, Sammy, xxii Wigen, K., 402 Tsuru Shigeto, 158 Wilcox, xxiii Tsurumi Yu¯suke, 372 Wilde, A.H., 98, 99 Tuck, Captain Oswald, xxiii Wilkinson, Endymion, 165 Tuohy, Frank, vii, xiii, xxiii, 234–44, Wilkinson, Jane, xxi 395–7 Williams, Dick, 104 Twain, Mark, 258 Williams, Shirley (Baroness), 146 Tynan, Kenneth, 146 Wilson, David, 270, 399, 400

423 BRITAIN & JAPAN: BIOGRAPHICAL PORTRAITS VOLUME VI

Wilson, President Woodrow, 35, 36, 42, Yeats, W.B., 242 43, 372 Yokohama Foreign General Cemetery, Windsor, Duke of, see Edward VIII, xxiii King Yokohama Specie Bank in London, Wirgman, Charles, xxiii xxiii Wollaston, William Hyde, 263 Yokomitsu Riichi, 208 Wright, Sir David, 382, 387 Yokoyama Manabu, xix Wright, Edward William Barton, xxiii Yokoyama So¯ichi, 160 Yoshida Akiko, 209 Yajima Kajiko, 301 Yoshida Kenichi, vi, xiii, xxiii, 200–11, Yakub Beg, 251 390, 391 Yamada Kenzo¯, 301 Yoshida Nobuko, 200, 202 Yamada Ko¯saku, 301–303, 407 Yoshida Shigeru, v, xii, xxiii, xxiv, 5, Yamada Tsune (Tsuneko) married to 12, 13, 15–22, 201–203, 207, 208, Edward Gauntlett, 299–305, 407 210, 223, 368–71, 390, 391 Yamada Yukihiko, 13 Yoshida Yukiko, 201–204, 207, 208, Yamaguchi Eiko, 50 370, 371, 390 Yamaguchi Naoyoshi, 50 Yoshimoto Tadasu, xxiv Yamakawa Kagenori, 45 Yoshimura M., 377, 378 Yamamoto Kenkichi, 210 Young, James R., 294, 405 Yamamoto Yumiyo, xx Young, Morgan, xxiv, 288, 296, 297, Yamanashi Katsunoshin, Admiral, 406 xxiii Young, Robert, xxiv, 288, 290 Yamazaki Toshio, 151 Yufu Shinichi, 156 Yanagi So¯etsu, 285 Yanagisawa Hakuo, 165 Zumoto Motosada, 29, 406 Yasui Tetsu, 51 Zwerde, Eric van der, 410

424