The first, a group of five newspapermen, traveled to Manchester by train on August 21, 1905 as the guests of the Manchester Union’s chief reporter at Portsmouth, W.H. Topping. 



Kiyoshi Kawakami reported on the visit in a letter published in that paper (which they visited as the guests of the owner, Woodbury.)

As John Clayton reported in the Union Leader in 2005, there was more to the story. After a three hour tour of Manchester in City Councillor Charles M. Floyd’s auto, the group enjoyed lunch with Manchester businessmen at the Topping home.

  
Stoneacres c. 1905                                          Stoneacres site, April 2010.

After lunch, the journalists traveled to Auburn to “Stoneacres” the summer home of Walter Parker, president of the Manchester National Bank overlooking Lake Massabesic.

The journalists, pictured above with Parker and his guests, his daughter (front row, right) and her friend, included:

Kaju Nakamura (front row, second from left) would later be recognized as the author of the definitive biography of Count Ito) 

Jihei Hashiguchi (front row, third from left), Russo-Japanese War Bureau of Information in New York and correspondent for World’s Work. According to that publication, "Just as THE WORLD'S corps of veteran and skilled correspondents at the front kept its readers just a little in advance of other people in the news of what was transpiring between the opposing land and marine armies of the Russian and the Japanese while the fighting was in progress, so…THE WORLD was "first with the news" from Portsmouth. …Alongside the graphic portrayals of the carnage of battle afield and on the sea, THE WORLD presented splendidly instructive articles daily by Russian and Japanese men of letters throwing a flood of light on the warring peoples and the European and the Oriental view of the conflict as affecting the geography of the East and the politics of the earth. Among those who contributed to this symposium were Jihei Hashiguchi. who wrote of "The Yellow Peril" as seen by Japanese eyes.” His articles for The World included “Japan’s Terms of Peace and Her Negotiators.” 

M. Fukutomi (center), correspondent of the Osaka Asahi Shimbun.

Shiro Fujioka, (front row, third from right), special correspondent of the Nippon of Tokyo.

Kiyoshi Kawakami, (front row, second from right) The Daily Yorozu, Tokyo and The Daily Asahi, Tokyo (8 August 1873 - 12 October 1949) whose biographical sketch says was a "Japanese Christian journalist" who published several books in the US and Great Britain. Educated in law in Japan, he travelled to the US in 1901 and studied at the Universities of Iowa and Wisconsin. In 1905, he traveled extensively in China, Siberia and Russia as a correspondent for leading newspapers in Tokyo and was a frequent contributor to American magazines and newspapers. 

Another Japanese journalist of note who did not accompany the group was Yasuhiro Ishikawa, editor, Hochi Shimbun, Tokyo. After arriving in Portsmouth, he was part of the group of Japanese to attend services at Christ Church on Sunday, August 20th and also was reported to have visited Frank Jones Brewery. On September 10th, Ishikawa accompanied Rev. E.W. Clark to Green Acre, where he was the first Japanese to comment publicly on the Treaty. 

Baron Komura Visits Amoskeag Mill

The second Manchester trip was an official visit by Baron Komura, who accepted NH Governor John McLane's invitaiton to both delegations to tour Amoskeag Mills, the largest textile mill in the world at the time.