Foreign News: Priceless Gifts

A well worn button, a lock of hair, a bit of bedraggled gold braid, and a wedding ring—such are four relics beyond price which were presented to the Japanese Empire, last week at Tokyo, by the U. S. Ambassador, that puissant, cultured and droopy -mustached Manhattan lawyer Charles MacVeigh.

Each relic nestled in a case of gold, each case was enclosed in a sturdy wooden box, and Tiffany & Co. of Manhattan was the firm which was chosen to envelop the button, hair, braid and ring in suitable magnificence. Last week Japanese were pleased & honored to receive these four gifts, be cause all are authentic mementoes of intrepid U. S. Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry (1794-1858), who opened up Japan to Occidental influence in 1854.*

In 1853 the Commodore had sailed into Japanese waters with a U. S. fleet of four warboats; and a year later he returned to conclude the first treaty ever signed by a Japanese Government with an Occidental power. Prior to Perry’s first visit the attitude of the Japanese Shoguns or Tycoons

(“High Princes”) toward the Western nations had been maintained for centuries in accordance with the following typical Shogun’s proclamation: “So long as the sun warms the earth let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan. Let all know that if King Philip † himself or even the very God of the Christian contravene this prohibition they shall pay for it with their heads. Let them think no more of us, just as if we were no longer in the world.”

Tokugawa. To accept the Perry relics in behalf of Japan, last week, there came to the U. S. Embassy the great Prince Iyesato Tokugawa. Since 1903 he has been President of the House of Peers, but that is relatively unimportant. The unique distinction of Prince Tokugawa is that he is the heir of the last dynasty of Japanese Shoguns who ruled from 1603 until the last Shogun, Yoshinobu Tokugawa, voluntarily renounced his powers in 1867, and permitted restoration of the authority of the Japanese Imperial Dynasty.

Therefore it was appropriate in the extreme, last week, that the Perry relics should have been accepted by Shogun-descended Prince Tokugawa, and not by the present Sublime Emperor of Japan, Hirohito, whose ancestors never so much as laid eyes upon Commodore Perry, or his button, braid, hair, ring.

The extremely simple presentation ceremony took place, last week, over a luncheon table at the U. S. Embassy. Present were Prime Minister General Baron Giichi Tanaka, and moon-faced Viscount Shibusawa, “The Morgan of Japan.”

Said Prince Tokugawa in his brief speech of acceptance: “The peaceful diplomacy of the late Commodore Perry enabled the United States to accomplish more in opening up the Orient to trade than other nations could achieve by force.” The Perry relics, promised Prince Tokugawa, will be cherished and displayed in the Imperial Museum at Tokyo.*

Tycoon. Guests at the Ambassadorial luncheon beheld in Prince Tokugawa a smart, potent, cultured gentleman, in every sense entitled to the smart, modern courtesy title of tycoon. †

The Prince was born at Tokyo, in 1863, and was adopted five years later as the son and heir of his kinsman Prince Yoshinobu Tokugawa, who had just relinquished the Shogunate. Soon afterward the newly-made-potent Emperor Mutsuhito appointed 5-year-old heir Tokugawa to be Governor of Shidzuoka Province, as a mark of the esteem in which the House of Tokugawa was, and still is, held by the Imperial House of Japan.

Presently the Child-Governor was sent to school in England, where he quickly became Occidentalized, even to the extent of always using by preference an “underground” or subway when one is available. He has not, however, become a Christian.

Returning to Japan the Prince took his seat in the House of Peers in 1890, and in 1903 succeeded his brother-in-law as President. For two decades and a half he has held that post with a royal aloofness from party squabbles, yet with an extraordinary democracy in private life. Such is his prestige that he was chosen without demur or question to represent Japan at the vital Washington Conference in 1921-22.

Because Prince Tokugawa’s philanthropy is greater even than his great wealth the grounds and exteriors of his numerous palaces are habitually in disrepair, but within all is sumptuous, as befits the great patron of the arts who founded Japan’s first symphony orchestra.

Finally the heir of the Shoguns retains a point of view at once smartly cosmopolitan and yet fundamentally Oriental. To a fellow tycoon of London he has dreamily and devastatingly remarked: “I have walked for an hour through your great city, this morning, without once seeing a flower in the hand of a human being.”

*Smart persons do not confuse Commodore P-e-r-r-y with Rear Admiral Robert Edwin P-e-a-r-y (1856-1920), discoverer of the North Pole (1909) and father of the “Snow Baby,” Marie Ahnighito (“Peaked Mountain”) Peary, once famed as the Farthest-North-born white infant, later the daughter-in-law of Judge Wendell Philips Stafford, Associate Justice of the Supreme Court of the District of Columbia.

† Phillip IV of Spain (1621-65).

* Narrowly speaking, Ambassador MacVeigh made the presentation from the U. S. on behalf of three descendants of Commodore Perry who contributed the relics. The donor of the button and the braid was great-granddaughter Mrs. Henry Bartol, and the hair (set in a diamond brooch) & ring respectively by granddaughters Mrs. Charles E. Lewis and Miss Jane Perry Tiffany. The Commodore had four sons, six daughters. Consequently his descendants are now numerous, widely scattered.

† I. e., Henry Ford is a motor tycoon, Harvey Firestone a tire tycoon, etc.