Monument of Moment

"So long as the sun warms the earth let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan. Let all know that if Kin? Philip* himself or even the very God of the Christians 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."

With edicts couched in such terms as these the Shoguns of Japan banished, not quite three centuries ago, the Jesuit missionaries and Occidental traders who had flocked to Nippon a century earlier, when it was "discovered" by the Portuguese.

Not until Commodore Perry appeared off the Japanese coast in 1854 with ten battleships were the Shoguns or Tycoons ("High Princes") intimidated back into contact with the world. Not until two years later did Townsend Harris, as U. S. Consul General, raise at Kakisaki, near Shimoda, the first consular flag ever unfurled in Japan. Despatches told last week that many a parchment skinned workman is chipping with light mallet and fine chisel at a granite memorial to be unveiled on completion at the spot where Mr. Harris raised his standard.

The Monument. Japanese hearkened with approval last week as the great Viscount Shibusawa, "the Morgan of Japan," founder of the Dai-ichi Ginko (First National Bank) of Japan, organizer of the world spanning Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Mail Line), financier, industrialist, philanthropist, first "businessman" ever to be created a Japanese peer, announced at Tokyo that he will unveil the Harris Monument in the presence of U. S. Ambassador Charles MacVeagh.

One third of the memorial's cost will be borne by the estate of the late U. S. Ambassador to Japan, Edgar Addison Bancroft at whose instigation it is being constructed. His friend and fellow Chicago attorney Henry M. Wolf (of Judah, Willard, Wolf, and Reichmann) has contributed another third. Viscount Shibusawa having made up the rest, the monument partakes of a binational character soothing to the feelings of Japanese unfriendly to the U. S. The present U. S. Ambassador Charles MacVeagh moreover greatly resembles his very generally popular predecessor, Ambassador Bancroft. The names of both men are identified with culture and position more than politics, characteristics to which Japanese have been quick to react with favor.

*Philip IV of Spain (1621-1665).