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Million thanks for your generous birthday messages! Sorry I’m terribly late to write you back, for this year’s birthday week was full of events: get-togethers with current & ex-colleagues, final Headmaster’s Book Club meeting, Athletic Day 2, Japan-US Cultural Exchange reception at the Consulate General of Japan in New York, etc.

I’m very pleased that this hectic week concluded with Dr. Keiko Itoh’s “Tricultural” lecture entitled “Being Tricultural: A Personal Journey” with special emphasis upon the making of her books: The Japanese Community in Pre-War Britain: From Integration to Disintegration (Routledge, 2001) and My Shanghai, 1942-1946 ( Renaissance, 2015) .This lecture is also the grand finale of Season Four of Omnibus “Tricultural” Lecture Series.

I came to know her work and visited her house in London in the summer of 2014; my grandfather Konojo Tatsumi and Dr. Keiko Itoh’s grandfather Viscount Hisaakira Kano were colleagues at the London branch of Yokohama Specie Bank more than a century ago. They shared the sense of “noblesse oblige” (obligation of honorable, generous, and responsible behavior associated with high rank or birth) peculiar to the London branch that supported talented young intellectuals from Japan such as Minakata Kumagusu, Natsume Soseki, Noguchi Yonejiro, Koizumi Shinzo, Minakami Takitaro, Ishibashi Kazunori and others. This sensibility undoubtedly helped strengthen the bond of the Japanese community in London. Now I and her nephew Dr. Kohei Itoh, great grandson of Viscount Kano and current president of Keio University, are working together to make Keio Academy of New York much better. For more detail of the “Hundred years of solidarity,” please see Headmaster’s Voice #22: https://www.keio.edu/about-us/headmasters-voice

Let me conclude this short note with Viscount Kano’s recollection of my grandfather quoted by Dr. Keiko Itoh herself in her book. I think you will quickly understand what Dr. Itoh meant by the concept of “Noblesse Oblege”:

 …He [Tatsumi] socialized extensively with westerners, but was also very kind and supportive to the Japanese community.  Not only did he buy a building for the Nihonjin Kai, but also ensured that it was properly looked after.  … His stay in London extended from immediately after the Sino-Japanese War to about 1920.  He was one of the Japanese representatives to the Paris Peace Conference after the war. Mr.Okubo succeeded Mr Tatsumi as the general manager in 1920, by which time Japan’s position in the world had risen and business for the bank had expanded.  The Japanese living in London at the time were able to enjoy a comfortable life and become ever more familiar with English life.  They became relaxed and refined, and spent their leisure time going to concerts and the theatre and mixing socially with their English counterparts. So much of this cultural pursuit among the Yokohama Specie Bank employees, I believe, is due to Mr Tatsumi’s legacy.  (Keiko Itoh, The Japanese Community in Pre-War Britain, Chapter Two “Japanese ‘Expatriate’ Businesses in Britain”)

You will find Viscount Kano’s representation of his senior colleague in complete harmony with Fukuzawa sensei’s ideas like “the source of honorable character” and the “paragon of intellect and morals for the entire nation.” Given that it is Fukuzawa sensei who proposed the idea of creating the first ever international foreign exchange specialist bank, Yokohama specie bank could well be considered as the matrix of the Keio spirit.