Who Was Nitobe Inazô?

John HOWES

For almost 20 years every ¥5,000 bill printed in Japan has contained a likeness of Nitobe Inazô. It portrays a man with lively eyes peering out through spectacles over a well-clipped moustache. A wing collar and cravat above a finely tailored suit mark him as a man of importance, but hardly as important as Fukuzawa Yukichi and Natsume Sôseki, both icons of modern Japan, whose likenesses appear on the other bills. Because Nitobe is so little known, commentary on the photograph concentrates on how Nitobe was chosen. When one focuses instead on what Nitobe accomplished, one finds a man of rare talents and unquestioned patriotism who personified the Japanese who bridge the gulf between their land and the rest of the world.

At the time of his death in 1933, Nitobe was the best known Japanese outside of Japan. Within a few days of his death, 750 people attended a memorial service in Vancouver, Canada, a few miles away from Victoria, where he had died. After his ashes returned to Japan, Emperor Shôwa (Hirohito) sent personal condolences to members of the family. The next day, 3,000 other Japanese paid their respects. The crush was so great that one of Nitobe’s students, himself dressed formally for the obsequies, had to direct the traffic as mourners came and went. Both within Japan and throughout the world, Nitobe was considered extremely important.

How did this man, born in 1862 in the remote northern city of Morioka, become so famous?

EDUCATION AND EARLY CAREER

Nitobe’s father and grandfather had been deeply involved in the economic development of northern Honshû. Sensing how the world was changing, they trained Inazô to mingle easily with Westerners, a task for which Japan at the time had almost no able individuals. The training started with early intensive instruction in English, the beginning of the long road to a mastery unrivaled by anyone in Nitobe’s generation and few in the 70 years since his death. His early ability enabled him to enter in 1877 the new Sapporo Agricultural College in Sapporo. There, students received all instruction, except for mathematics and classical Chinese, in English. The handsome allowance in addition to full board, tuition, and clothing relieved him of financial concerns.

Upon graduation, he proceeded to graduate work at Tokyo University.* There, he recalls, he boldly declared that he wanted to become a bridge across the Pacific. For that he needed study abroad. In 1884 he entered Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, then the leading American university for advanced study. There he entered the famous seminar led by Herbert Baxter Adams. Adams’s training introduced Nitobe to new techniques of instruction brought in from Germany, the world leader in higher education at the time. Others among Adams’s students included Woodrow Wilson and John Dewey, who would become, respectively, the president of the United States and a famous philosopher. At Johns Hopkins, Nitobe received the best in contemporary training and got to know some future world leaders.

In addition to this formal training, other activities in Baltimore would greatly affect his life. He had become a Christian as a student in Sapporo, and in Baltimore he joined the Quakers (Society of Friends). Their Sunday worship services taught them to listen for the word of God in quiet meditation. This form of worship would not have seemed strange to one acquainted with the Buddhist tradition of meditation. And the unobtrusive desire of the Quakers to help those in need appealed to all Christians who sought universal social justice. A Quaker women’s group in Philadelphia invited Nitobe and his friend Uchimura Kanzô to speak to their members about Japan. Afterwards, they asked Nitobe and Uchimura what Quakers could do to help Japanese women. Their guests suggested women’s education, for which at the time there was little provision in Japan. The resultant Friends Girls School (now Friends School in Tokyo) continues more than a century later the tradition suggested by Nitobe and Uchimura.

In Philadelphia Nitobe also found his bride, Mary. The daughter of a wealthy businessman, Mary dedicated herself to furthering her husband’s work as an active partner with him. The full story of her experiences, as yet little studied, promises to become a fascinating chapter in the history of Japan’s integration into the Western world.

Upon his return in 1891, Nitobe’s alma mater in Sapporo welcomed him as a professor of agricultural economics. For the rest of his life he would continue as a civil servant, for the most part in the employ of the national government. Before him, his grandfather and father had developed an upland irrigation system that converted grassland into rich rice paddies. In his turn, Inazô continued their tradition of economic development. At the Sapporo Agricultural College, he managed the school’s student dormitories and founded a night school for those whose families could not afford the loss of the earning power required by formal advanced education. Mary and he lost their only child, a son, a few days after his birth. The strain proved too much for Nitobe. He suffered a nervous breakdown.

He left Sapporo in 1897 to restore his health at a Japanese hot-spring resort and then traveled to Monterey, California, for further recuperation. During his long period of slow improvement, he found time to write two books, the first a study in Japanese on the bases of agriculture, and the second, in English, on the philosophical underpinnings of Japanese society. He called these “Bushido” —the way (dô) of the samurai (bushi)—and the resultant slim volume titled Bushido: The Soul of Japan became the all-time most popular introductory book on Japan. Numerous translations and countless reprintings continue to make it available a century after it first appeared. We are told that each morning over breakfast Nitobe discussed with Mary what he planned to write. Then he dictated the text to a friend of Mary who took it down in shorthand. She later reported that Nitobe hardly ever made corrections in her transcription. Still in his thirties, Nitobe had already developed the distinctive rolling phraseology of Victorian prose that marked the rest of his career. So as he “recuperated,” he in fact established the basis for his later career as a representative of Japan to the West and the embodiment of the Western gentleman within Japan.

AGRONOMIST AND EDUCATOR

Back in Japan in 1901, Nitobe was recruited by Gotô Shinpei of the Japanese colonial government in Taiwan to oversee the improvement of the island’s economy. Taiwan had recently been ceded to Japan as part of the settlement of the Sino-Japanese War of 1894–95, and the Japanese were finding its administration costly. Because of his studies published on agricultural development, Nitobe had been awarded a doctor’s degree in agronomy. Gotô recruited Nitobe to stimulate Taiwan’s agricultural productivity. During the three years Nitobe served there, he introduced sugar-cane production along with other more general changes in such matters as education. The success of the new cash crop changed the colony from a drain on Japanese finances to a source of profit. Until then, sugar had been imported. Now Japan had plenty of it without the need to use any of its slim supply of foreign exchange.

Until the end of World War I, Nitobe would continue his research on agronomy and educate young men to become the Japanese equivalent of English gentlemen. He established Japan’s first program in colonial administration in Kyoto and then moved to Tokyo University, where he established a similar course. Japan’s takeover of Taiwan and Korea as the initial move in its increasing influence over China gave it colonies that shared the same problems as those of England with its much larger empire. It made sense to Nitobe that Japan, once it had joined the ranks of those nations with colonies, should develop a rational and humane system for colonial governance. This was an important research contribution to prewar society. Although this achievement in itself was both innovative and valuable, Nitobe is best remembered during this period for his contribution to the education of young men before they entered universities.

In 1906, concurrent with his appointment to Tokyo University, Nitobe also became the headmaster of the First Higher School, known familiarly as “Ichi Kô,” the most prestigious training institution for those who had finished middle school. Nitobe considered proper training for young men who would go on to further Japan’s research and mingle as Japanese with people of other nations to be even more essential. The students, in their late teens, had already clambered into the top of Japan’s educational system. Graduation from the First Higher School almost guaranteed admission to and graduation from Tokyo University or any one of the other imperial universities. Important as the specific curriculum was to the future of these young men, Nitobe considered the inculcation of ethical and moral values even more essential. His homilies bored many students less inclined to philosophical speculation but enthralled those concerned with how to make the most of their lives. Among them, those who showed interest in religion were introduced by Nitobe to his friend from Sapporo days, Uchimura Kanzô. Uchimura taught the relevance of the Bible to modern life in his home close to the school. A number of those who accepted the twin inspirations from Nitobe and Uchimura went on to become influential leaders in the new culture of Japan after 1945.

REPRESENTING JAPAN TO THE REST OF THE WORLD

Nitobe’s dedication to young men’s education ended shortly after World War I when he accepted a new position as one of the four under secretaries general in the League of Nations. The League of Nations came out of the negotiations that brought the war to an end. Because of its assistance to the Allies in the war, Japan demanded an important role in the new organization to prevent future wars. Nitobe’s patron from his first employment in Taiwan, Gotô Shinpei, asked Nitobe to accompany him for a visit to Europe. Gotô wanted to observe for himself the devastation caused by the conflict. He took Nitobe along to interpret and place what they saw in context. When Japan’s request was granted and a place for a Japanese set up within the Secretariat of the League, Gotô suggested Nitobe’s name for the position. Nitobe resigned his post at Tokyo University and moved his family to the League’s headquarters in Geneva, Switzerland. They stayed there until 1926 when Nitobe retired to Japan.

During this period, Nitobe started the activity that marked the rest of his life: representing Japan to the peoples of other lands, and in particular those that used the English language.

For all its pretensions to represent everyone in the world, in fact the League of Nations centered its activities on the problems of Europe. The League had grown out of the idealism of Nitobe’s acquaintance, Woodrow Wilson, as president of the United States, but the American Congress had refused to approve joining the League. The lack of participation by the United States weakened the League in the daunting days ahead. An important reason for the location of the United Nations, successor to the League, in New York City was to assure the participation of the United States.

Within a League otherwise dominated by European concerns, Nitobe had a double role. He represented all the nations outside Europe at the same time as he came from a nation little concerned with Europe’s problems. As a result, as an under secretary general, he agreed to serve the League in a capacity much closer to his heart: the role of culture in the preservation of world peace. He felt that war resulted from the actions of politicians and military men. The responsibilities of both groups of leaders restricted their activity to the concerns of the nations they represented. When they erred, there was no countervailing force that spoke to the common interests of all humankind and so overarched national borders. If those interested in shared individual humanism could meet and talk with others in the same profession from other countries, their common interests could become a strong force for peace. Nitobe called his organization to provide such a forum the International Committee for Intellectual Cooperation. Its successor continues in the many works of UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization.

In addition to his primary work in the field of cultural relations, Nitobe played a pivotal role in settling a nagging boundary dispute within Europe. Sweden and Finland both claimed sovereignty over the Aland Islands in the Baltic Sea between them. During the preceding century, local rivalries of this sort throughout Europe had quickly expanded into large-scale conflicts. Nitobe’s plan settled the issue to the satisfaction of all parties.

A DISAPPOINTING END

Nitobe’s service in the League ended in 1926, when he retired and returned to Japan. Here, widely acclaimed for his contribution on Japan’s behalf, he turned to a number of other tasks that would draw on his unique abilities.

First, he became more active in Tokyo Woman’s Christian University, a joint endeavor between Japanese and Westerners. Nitobe had become its first president in 1918 before he went to Geneva. Now he returned more actively to an interest he had shared with Uchimura Kanzô since their time together in America.

Next, he became head of the Japanese Council of the Institute of Pacific Relations. The institute had been founded in 1925, largely by Americans interested in Asia, to stress impartial research on Asian issues in the recognition that Japanese expansion might prove an increasing problem. It was strictly nongovernmental and received its support from private groups, mostly businesses. There were branches in most of the countries that bordered the Pacific. The IPR, as it was known, published research and sponsored biennial conferences. Nitobe took on the leadership of the Japan branch when the incumbent joined the government as a cabinet minister and so became ineligible to continue. Under Nitobe, Japan became very active in three of the biennial conferences: those held in Kyoto in 1929, in Shanghai in 1931, and in Banff, Canada, in 1933. Before World War II, when surface transportation meant arduous and lengthy travel for delegates, international conferences were rare. The biennial meetings of the IPR attracted great media attention. Nitobe as a result designed Japan’s contribution to the IPR’s program of research and international meetings under intense scrutiny. Like many others, he hoped his acts would lead to continuing peace in the Pacific.

His efforts ended in tragedy as the Japanese army plunged farther into China. Nitobe died in 1933 shortly after his valiant attempt to gain support for the Japanese army’s invasion of China in 1931 failed. In no way could others at the conference agree that such a naked power play would help the Chinese people. The other nations of the world in fact understood all too well how little the Japanese army in China cared for any interests but their own.

Nitobe died a broken man. Everything he had hoped to accomplish as a bridge across the Pacific seemed to have failed. One can only feel gratitude that he died before the awful extent of the resultant damage became clear 12 years later.

The Japanese people have never since understood the pain caused to men of great intelligence like Nitobe who foresaw the important role that Japan could play among the nations and yet had to stand by as its government squandered any chance of such contribution. One incident shows how this dilemma affected Nitobe.

In 1932 he traveled to the distant provincial capital of Matsuyama to speak on Japan’s position in the world. His frequent appearances of this sort garnered support for Japan’s role in the League of Nations. Many Japanese worried about the effect of the army’s takeover of northeastern China, then called Manchuria, in autumn of the previous year. After his speech, Nitobe met privately with a number of newspaper reporters. They asked him for his personal opinion of Japan’s future. On the understanding that his comments would be off the record, he said that Japan faced two dangers: international communism, then very active in Asia, and Japan’s own army.

The next day everyone in Japan learned what he had said. Someone had broken the vow to keep Nitobe’s views off the record. The immediate reaction throughout Japan to Nitobe’s words reflected intense concern over the issue.

Because of the resultant opinions attributed to him, Nitobe lost his ability to act on the basis of his conscience alone and increasingly had to follow the orders of the government. The veterans’ organization led the attack. They forced Nitobe to apologize in front of everyone at their national meeting. Nitobe’s granddaughter remembers that when she went to school in the morning she passed policemen stationed outside Nitobe’s house to protect the family. And Nitobe, ever the patriot, could not resist the demands of the government, now dominated by the army, to try through personal diplomacy to get the United States’ government to agree about Manchuria. Nitobe met with President Herbert Hoover, spoke to the whole nation on the first coast-to-coast radio broadcast, and attended numerous conferences on international relations. All to no avail.

A final area in which Nitobe acted during these busy months was English-language journalism through short columns to an English-language newspaper in the Kansai region. Sometimes written as he rode through the streets in a jinrikisha, they charmed readers when they dealt with common perplexities of life and clearly reflected his own dilemma when he turned to Japan’s current policies.

Knowing he had failed either to change those policies or gain acceptance of them from other governments, he had to prepare the Japan delegation for the 1933 meeting of the IPR in Banff, Canada. Along with the many administrative details, he prepared the keynote address that opened the conference. His many friends could see in his actions and hear in his voice the strain his attempt to represent his government’s policies put on him. Japan failed completely in Banff. A few weeks later Nitobe died a broken man in Victoria, the capital of British Columbia, on Vancouver Island.

One can only imagine what was going on in his mind those final days. His diary, penned in English from the time he finished the Sapporo Agricultural College until his death, promises to give researchers a chance to understand his inner thoughts. The family has decided not to release it for the time being in the interests of what it may say about Japanese contemporaries of Nitobe.

Nitobe’s death coincided with the onset of the long darkness that ended with Japan’s defeat in 1945. His friend Uchimura Kanzô had died in 1930, a year before the Japanese military takeover of Manchuria. Nitobe may well have envied Uchimura’s peaceful end in bed after a generation of stolid antigovernment pacifism.

THE PLACE OF NITOBE’S ACCOMPLISHMENTS

As the Japanese moved to piece back together their lives after the defeat, Nitobe’s accomplishments seemed little worth remembering. Those who had agreed with his attempts to justify Japanese international developments from 1931 to 1933 had been completely discredited by events. Those who had admired his many accomplishments before 1931 were saddened by his final cooperation with the militarists. One suspects that too many had themselves vacillated between international cooperation and enthusiastic narrow patriotism as Japan’s friends seemed to desert her. They could appreciate all too well the dilemma of Nitobe’s final days. Any attempt to remember him brought to mind their own silent complicity in Japan’s road to defeat.

The group that did not forget Nitobe included the very important students of his who had accepted his idealistic view of Japan’s future. They enthusiastically turned to develop new institutions in line with the postwar Constitution of 1947 and succeeded beyond anyone’s wildest dreams. In their busy success, they did not even have time to consider whence their ideas came. Now that 70 years have passed since Nitobe’s death, we have at last the perspective to locate his accomplishments in the stream of history.

Certainly his major claim is his introduction of Japan to those in other countries, and particularly the world leaders of his generation. It began with his mastery of the English language and the image he formed of Japanese ethics. Westerners at the time could not understand the concept of a nation so civilized and yet not Christian. Nitobe in his Bushido described a society linked by a common culture that enabled its members to live in civilized peace with each other. Scholars later would define the virtues he described as descended from the influence of Confucianism that Japan shared with China. Nitobe’s identification of the military ethics of his own class, the samurai, provided a convenient vehicle for millions throughout the world who sought a simple explanation that at once answered how such a civilized people could at the same time become such effective warriors. It located the image of Japanese culture in its military virtues. Nitobe’s numerous other works in English dealt with more mundane aspects of Japanese society, but none addressed the desire felt by Westerners to understand Japanese ethics.

Nitobe also personified the elegant grace of Japanese diplomats, excellently trained in the nuances of Western international relations. He took what could have become a very routine posting at the League of Nations and invested it with a distinctive high purpose. With the grace of Mary’s hospitality and their beautiful home by Lake Leman, he invested the field of cultural interchange with all the trappings of relaxed formal entertainment. Perhaps the image that best captures this is the description of a summer tea party on the lawn overlooking the lake. Here the German scientist Albert Einstein, the Polish-French scientist Marie Curie, and the British classicist Gilbert Murray could discuss common interests, such as pacifism. Just four years earlier their nations had been locked in mortal combat.

It is ironic that the Japanese, who have so enthusiastically embraced the ideas of UNESCO since World War II, have no knowledge that this organization results from the genius of one of their own. The appointment in 1999 of Matsuura Kôichirô as director general brought the organization back to its roots. He accomplished something the prewar League could never achieve: the full cooperation of the United States.

Of at least equal importance with Nitobe’s establishment of an organization to deal with common human problems across national borders was his plan to lessen tensions over who owned the Aland Islands. His solution consisted of four points: Sovereignty remained with Finland; the unique culture of the islands would be preserved and the official language would be Swedish, since it was common to the vast majority of the inhabitants; they would enjoy self-rule with the exception of international relations and defense; and, in the event of hostilities, the Aland Islands would remain neutral. Nitobe is still remembered in the islands for his contribution. Uchikawa Eiichirô, an opinion leader from Nitobe’s native region of northern Honshû and currently director of the Nitobe Foundation in Morioka, feels that a similar set of measures could help solve the present impasse over the islands to the northeast of Hokkaidô claimed both by Japan and Russia.

NITOBE’S CONTRIBUTIONS TO JAPAN

In addition to his contributions to international understanding of Japan, Nitobe made major contributions within Japan itself, though most of these have flourished since the end of World War II. In the first place, he exemplified the patina of accustomed life in the style of contemporary Europe and America. His gracious Tokyo home, embellished by Mary’s welcoming warmth, enjoyed the space and furnishings that enabled him to host as equals the most important guests from abroad. Separate facilities provided other amenities that enabled the Nitobes to entertain also in traditional Japanese style. The two cultures were seen as completely separate, in keeping with the Japanese understanding of their indigenous culture and its relation to the rest of the world.

In this home one frequently encountered students of Nitobe almost as if they were members of the family. Twenty years later, one of them in his own living room with obvious relish served his American guests cinnamon toast with afternoon tea.

This is not to say that Nitobe’s contribution to Japan ended with tea and crumpets. Far from it. During his many years in the employ of the Japanese government, he typified the loyal civil servant he so admired in the English tradition. And he had to know Western etiquette to do his job. His counterparts, particularly in Britain, quickly noted any deviations from their private codes of behavior and chalked them up to incompetence. And when they considered these infractions of their own rules, they could easily retreat into the stereotypes criticized with Rudyard Kipling’s words “For East is East and West is West / and never the twain shall meet.” Few remembered the following lines that predicted equality when “two strong men stand face to face.” No matter how well a non-Westerner like Nitobe adopted and deployed Western social skills, he had to face the stereotypes of dichotomy even as he tried to disprove them.

Nitobe’s true contributions in the delicate balancing act between two worlds became apparent after World War II, long after his death. Then, for reasons apparently not connected to him, the Japanese found themselves in a society much more in line with Nitobe’s aspirations. The new freedoms insured in the Constitution of 1947 symbolized the extent to which the prewar constraints had disappeared and allowed people to think about the future. In these circumstances, Nitobe’s students developed institutions in line with what Nitobe had taught them. Nitobe’s greatest contribution to Japan came about in this way when his name itself had disappeared from the public mind. The changes were attributed to his followers.

In the first place, the ideals of Nitobe continued into the postwar period through the work of his close associates in the tiny Japanese Quaker community. In 1946, Quakers took the lead to establish the Licensed Agencies for Relief in Asia. Its Tokyo staff of three served as the medium through which Christians, primarily American and Canadian, expressed their concern for the terrible suffering of individuals in Japan. LARA delivered truckloads of clothes and food particularly to schools and orphanages. Such distribution used slim resources for the greatest effect. Nitobe would have approved. Yet the whole operation depended in large part on individuals who attended the Quaker Sunday meetings Nitobe had attended. The same group produced two of the English-language tutors to the young prince who would become the present Emperor Akihito.

Quakers also sponsored reconciliation seminars. The main ones brought university students together from countries in Southeast Asia. Here young Japanese could meet individuals of their own age whose lives had been shattered by acts of the Japanese occupation forces. The second type of seminar brought together young diplomats from various embassies in Japan. The Quakers who organized these seminars acted on the assumption that ambassadors enjoyed numerous social contracts with other ambassadors and so could enter into necessary and sometimes difficult formal contacts that rested on cordial personal ties. Younger members of their various embassies enjoyed very little contact with those from other countries, yet they were essential to the preparation of positions later presented by the ambassadors. At these seminars the young staff members developed for themselves personal contacts with those from other nations. They would come in handy with the passage of time as their careers continued. All of these programs required few resources but brought significant benefits to participants and, by extension, to Japan.

As Japanese society in general struggled to its feet, Nitobe’s students fleshed out reforms made possible under the new Constitution. Nanbara Shigeru and Yanaihara Tadao, as successive presidents of Tokyo University, began to introduce into the university and through it into higher education in general changes that would enable students better to become members of the greater world. As early as 1947, Nanbara recruited young members among the Occupation forces to make friends with Japanese students through language sessions. Yanaihara as his successor introduced more general humanitarian content at the beginning of university training. Students received these values before they went into narrowly defined areas of research. And the professor of American studies under Nambara and Yanaihara, Takagi Yasaka, concerned at the hysteria caused by allegations that communists had controlled American attitudes toward Asia through the IPR, saw a parallel with the witch trials in seventeenth-century Salem, Massachusetts. The Tokyo University library assembled the best collection of materials on this part of America’s past outside Salem itself. Tanaka Kôtarô, as the first chief justice of the new Supreme Court, presided over decisions that would align Japanese institutions more closely with those of other nations.

Modest contributions taken by themselves perhaps, but important in their implications. Nitobe would have agreed with the changes in student life brought about by Nanbara and Yanaihara, with Takagi’s sophisticated understanding of the importance of communal hysteria in politics, and with Tanaka’s concern for the centrality of the Constitution in the new Japanese society.

That none of these individuals attributed their acts to Nitobe is represented in how the International House of Japan (Kokusai Bunka Kaikan) in Roppongi took shape. The I-House, as it is known, originated in 1953 under the leadership of Takagi and his student Matsumoto Shigeharu, to provide comfortable physical surroundings in which individuals from all nations interested in Japan could reside and exchange views. Matsumoto was one of Takagi’s students in the tradition of Nitobe. A well-selected library in English afforded the space and materials for sustained research. The I-House continues with these objectives a half century later.

Although a description of the I-House makes it look as if it might have been planned by Nitobe, Matsumoto was unaware in 1984 of the apparent connection. When a Western scholar of Japanese history pointed out that almost the entire membership of the founding board of directors were students of Nitobe, Matsumoto reacted with surprise. Someone should point this out, he mentioned to an aide.

IN MEMORIAM

Japanese society in general is quick to mark and remember intellectual influences, yet in the case of Nitobe this general cultural trait has not been operative. Nitobe’s own unassuming ways along with the convulsions of World War II and its aftermath have conspired with the general ambivalence of Japanese toward their own role in World War II to erase his memory. Now, over two-thirds of a century later, it is time to give him his due.

Few memorials draw attention to Nitobe’s memory. His hometown of Morioka preserves a portion of the land where his family’s home stood as a tiny open space and commemorates his life with a statue in the city park. A museum in Towada, the city far to the north founded by his father and grandfather, centers on their work but also notes Inazô’s achievements. But the greatest memorial to his work exists on the campus of the University of British Columbia a few miles from where he died. Here one enters a quiet traditional Japanese garden. Japanese who stroll through it find themselves talking of Kyoto. Authorities on Japanese gardens proclaim it to be the best example of Japanese garden architecture outside Japan. The story of how it got there tells us about Nitobe’s influence abroad.

Shortly after Nitobe’s death, the Japanese in Vancouver erected a large stone lantern to his memory. In the passions of the war, it was toppled over by hooligans. A new president took over the university in 1945. Larry Mackenzie had attended the IPR meeting of 1931 in Shanghai and knew Nitobe. Every day Mackenzie passed by the remains of the lantern en route to his office. He felt his friend deserved a better memorial and suggested a Japanese garden. Three groups cooperated to implement his dream. The university provided the land. The Japanese enlisted Japan’s most famous designer of traditional gardens, and the Japanese Canadians, newly returned from wartime internment inland, provided other technical assistance and funds. And the designer appears to have woven into his blueprints numerous references to Nitobe. Mori Kannosuke had come as a student to Tokyo from Kyûshû around the beginning of World War I. There in bookstores he would have found Nitobe’s works of advice to young men as they planned their futures. Mori never said so, but his design seems to include a quiet requiem of thanks to someone of world renown who had helped him at an important time in his own development. Mori’s own bridge reflected how well Nitobe had succeeded in his earlier resolve to serve the same ends.

Written in English for Japan Echo.

*Tokyo University was later renamed Imperial University and then, when other imperial universities were established, Tokyo Imperial University. After World War II the “Imperial” was removed and it became known in English as the University of Tokyo. For convenience I have used the name “Tokyo University” throughout this article.

© 2003 Japan Echo Inc.