191 iH ''Hear/: to Heart''' Talks 



impression as to Japanese in general. As a matter Umdu- 

 of fact, most of those who have come to Cahfornia '^'^'^'^^^*- 



c ^ -i -I 1 1 grants an 



smce 1900 were lormerly laborers on the sugar plan- obstacle 

 tations of Hawaii. Drawn away from their native 

 land while still young and before the establishment 

 of compulsory education there, they knew nothing 

 at all of Japanese culture and gained nothing of 

 American culture as serfs or half-slaves in Hawaii. 

 Practically all were from the neighborhood of 

 Okayama, Hiroshima, and Yamaguchi along the 

 Inland Sea, homeless ''farm hands" without land 

 or inheritance. 



The baron illustrated his point of view by a story. 

 An American lady, arriving, was much surprised to 

 find tall pines in Japan, and giant cryptomerias. 

 Japanese forests, she had thought, were made up of 

 those remarkable dwarfed trees a foot or two high 

 such as the Japanese affect both at home and abroad. 

 In much the same way Americans who do not know 

 Japan judge the nation by the Japanese they have 

 seen, illiterate people by no means typical of the race 

 as a whole. 



Baron Takahashi is a well-known banker, a sub- 

 stantial gentleman with a high reputation for skill in 

 the floating of national loans. My talk with him 

 chiefly concerned the financial outlook, a discussion 

 in which he naturally took the lead. 



Shibusawa himself was not worrying about im.mi- 

 gration or finance, but seemed disturbed over a sug- 

 gestion then lately made by Secretary Knox, that the 

 Chinese might borrow money in America to purchase 

 the Manchurian railway from Antung to Harbin, the Manchu- 

 lease of which (running until 1923) Japan had taken ^i^^^^'^- 

 over from Russia. The chief product of the region 



C 367 1 



