|
Changes in the political attitudes of countries sometimes
lead to the closure of Rotary Clubs for a period of time. Clubs in Japan,
for example, were among the earliest to be created in Asia, but during the
second world war closed down. Their story is typical.
In 1918 Umekichi Yoneyama from Tokyo had met up with a
fellow Japanese, Kisaji Fukushima, of the Dallas Rotary Club during a visit
to the United States. Returning home, he began to plan a Rotary Club for his
own city, and on October 20, 1920, the Rotary Club of Tokyo was organised
with 24 charter members under the Presidency of Yoneyama. The Club received
its charter in April 1921 and others followed in Osaka, Kyoto, Yokohama and
several of the other principal cities in Japan. Yoneyama himself
subsequently became a Director of RI in 1926. By 1928, the Tokyo Club was
big enough and strong enough to host the Second Pacific Regional Conference,
and clubs continued to be formed even as late as 1940 when the Niigata Club
was chartered .
In the Spring of 1935 Paul and Jean Harris made a major
journey to the Pacific region visiting Hawaii, China, the Philippines,
Australia and New Zealand, as well as Japan. They arrived at Yokohama on the
'S.S. President Coolidge' with a party of 15 Rotarians and their wives,
among them Tsunejiro Miyaoka, a Director of RI from the Tokyo Club and
President of RI, Robert E Lee Hill from Missouri. The group were on their
way to the Regional Conference to be held that year in Manila, the oldest of
the rotary Clubs in Asia. On February 9, 1935 in the grounds of the Imperial
Hotel in Tokyo*, then as now the meeting place of the Tokyo Club, Paul and
Bob Hill planted a
'Friendship Tree'. A photograph of this
is on show in Evanston in the Paul Harris Gallery, item 104. Later in the
Maple Club they met Yoneyama again who taught Paul how to use chopsticks.
Harris was unable to attend a normal meeting of the local
Rotary Club, but instead went to a splendid special banquet , presided over
by Yoneyama, and there Paul was given the honour of proposing the toast to
the Emperor. Then it was off to Kyoto and to Osaka where he met Shozo
Murata, the Governor of District 70 which comprised all the 22 Japanese
clubs.
|
In Osaka the party went to a lunch meeting attended by
Rotarians from most of the Japanese Clubs, and there to Harris' surprise,
he was presented with a bust of himself for which he had sat months earlier
in New York. (Is this perhaps the bust on display in the
Paul Harris Gallery
in Evanston, item 21?) From there, the group travelled to Kobe where they
rejoined the 'S.S. President Coolidge' for the next stage of their voyage,
this time to Shanghai........but
that's another story!
With the change in political attitudes and against the
background of the coming war, pressure was brought to bear on Japanese
Rotary and the clubs were disbanded in 1940, the Tokyo Club, 214 members
strong, closing on September 11. However, the spirit of Rotary did not
disappear altogether and members organised a 'Wednesday Club' in December
1940 to keep alive the ideals of the movement.
On March 29, 1949, the Rotary Club of Tokyo was revived
officially by RI and was allowed to keep its old charter number of 855.
Clubs elsewhere in Japan were progressively reopened. By 1961 the Tokyo area
was sufficiently strong that it was able to host the Annual Convention of RI
and in the past 40 years, the number of clubs throughout the country has
grown enormously. Metropolitan Tokyo with over 140 clubs is now, with Seoul
in Korea, the most populous Rotary city in the world. A handful of clubs in
Tokyo, including the original one, provide a helpful simultaneous
translation of all business into English.
*The present hotel replaced the original designed by Frank
Lloyd Wright, the foyer of which can still be seen in Meiji Mura near
Nagoya, where it has been re-erected.
A full account of the above story appears in a history of
the Tokyo Club published in 1991 for the club's 70th anniversary. The
details of the Paul Harris visit can be found in 'Peregrinations 2'.
Basil
Lewis |
