JAPAN 3: Still more of the Harvey Phillips letter.

“On the 30th we left Yokohama for Tokyo, staying at the Imperial Hotel. At Tokyo we hired a car at the Hotel and with a Russian emigre driver made a tour of the city, seeing the Meiji Shrine, the outside walls of the Imperial Palace, the Prince Regent’s palace, which gives one a terrible shock as you suddenly come upon this imitation of Versailles, General Nogi’s home, Shiba Park and the Asukasa or theater district.

“What made our trip to Tokyo well worthwhile was our visit and dinner with Count Kabayama. No sooner had we asked the managers at the Hotel how we might get in touch with him than we became very important. They couldn’t do enough for us.

“The Count called on us one afternoon and invited us to have dinner with him early that night (New Year’s Eve) as he was returning to his seaside home for the New Year holidays. In Japan almost everything is closed for five days.

“The dinner was held at the Tokyo club, a sort of Cercle Interallie as in Paris. From what we gathered from the manager of the hotel and others we talked to, Count Kabayama rates about like this — he is the Colonel House of Japan, unofficial advisor to the Emperor, a member of Parliament, President of the largest steel works in Japan, President of the Associated Press which sends all Japanese official and government news abroad for foreign press, an admiral in the navy and one of the richest man in Japan as well as one of the influential. He is an Amherst graduate and lived 20 years in the states.”