Distant Visions

When Teddy Roosevelt decided it was high time to put an end to the Russo-Japanese War and intervened in 1905,* indignant citizens of Tokyo poured into the streets and burned down buildings to show their displeasure with the peace terms. Yukio Ozaki, then mayor of Tokyo, felt differently; grateful for the U.S. mediation, he sent a thank-you gift of 2,000 Japanese cherry trees to the city of Washington in 1909. When the trees reached the U.S., however, the Department of Agriculture looked the gift trees in the bark and found they were heavily infested with the San Jose and the West Indian peach scale, Oriental moths, earwigs, and thrips. The Department had them destroyed.

Yukio Ozaki persisted. He had shoots taken from cherry trees near Tokyo and grafted on wild cherry roots. Set out in disinfected ground, the new trees grew pest-free and in 1911 Ozaki shipped 3,000 of them to Washington. This time the trees were found acceptable and planted along Washington's Tidal Basin.

Ninety-one-year-old Yukio Ozaki's stubbornness and his disagreement with his countrymen have not been confined to the cherry tree incident. All his life Ozaki has been a democrat, pacifist and internationalist in a land primarily dominated by soldiers and all-out nationalists. Paradoxically, Ozaki's heresies have won him wide respect and an unparalleled political career. Mayor of Tokyo for nine years and twice a cabinet minister, he was elected to the first Japanese Diet in 1890 and has been a member of every one since. Says his daughter, "Voting for father is a habit passed from one generation to another. It's like a faith."

Last week Yukio Ozaki was once more showing gratitude toward the U.S. Wispy but indomitable, he had flown the Pacific to thank Americans for their postwar aid. Brandishing a tulip-shaped ear trumpet, he told New York reporters, "If you think Japan is [now] becoming a democracy, you are mistaken. Japan is getting worse . . ."

Then Yukio Ozaki announced, "Americans have been wonderfully kind, but the Japanese do not understand . . . It is my task to make them understand." The comparative failure of his earlier efforts had not dimmed Ozaki's interest nor killed his hope. "I am thinking," the erect oldster said serenely, "of more distant, important visions in the world."

* In a peace treaty signed at a conference of the two powers at Portsmouth, N.H.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.