NORTH CHURCH & REV. E. WARREN CLARK
Promoting Japan in America: The Life Work of E. Warren Clark (1849 – 1907)
by Richard M. Candee
Edward Warren Clark (left) was a nineteenth century American educator, journalist, amateur photographer, Episcopalian minister, cultural entrepreneur and self-promoter. His life’s work began when he was hired from 1871-75 by the Japanese government to teach thousands of young Japanese students the rudiments of modern science. Japan remained at the center of his life and dreams for the next thirty years.
He was born in 1849 in the old Mark Hunking Wentworth mansion on Daniel Street, Portsmouth, N.H. and lived there until he was six. His father, Rufus W. Clark, was the anti-slavery Congregational minister at North Church. When the family left for East Boston in 1855 that “fine old mansion,” with its spacious and “aristocratic” rooms, was deemed “dull and gloomy” and razed to build a new High School. An accident in boyhood severely damaged Edward’s eyes, requiring surgery. This handicapped Clark “all his life and caused much retardation to an otherwise energetic person.” In 1860 New York City the 11-year-old saw the pioneering Japanese Embassy ride up Broadway in a dazzling procession with 7,000 welcoming troops that left a lasting impression.
Clark would graduate from what is now Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1869 with a degree in Chemistry and Biology. While there he gained the lasting friendship of several prominent Japanese students, a son of province Governor Okubo Ichio, and Iwakura Tomomi. These students and other Japanese visited his home in Albany and attended his father's church.
by Richard M. Candee
Edward Warren Clark (left) was a nineteenth century American educator, journalist, amateur photographer, Episcopalian minister, cultural entrepreneur and self-promoter. His life’s work began when he was hired from 1871-75 by the Japanese government to teach thousands of young Japanese students the rudiments of modern science. Japan remained at the center of his life and dreams for the next thirty years.
He was born in 1849 in the old Mark Hunking Wentworth mansion on Daniel Street, Portsmouth, N.H. and lived there until he was six. His father, Rufus W. Clark, was the anti-slavery Congregational minister at North Church. When the family left for East Boston in 1855 that “fine old mansion,” with its spacious and “aristocratic” rooms, was deemed “dull and gloomy” and razed to build a new High School. An accident in boyhood severely damaged Edward’s eyes, requiring surgery. This handicapped Clark “all his life and caused much retardation to an otherwise energetic person.” In 1860 New York City the 11-year-old saw the pioneering Japanese Embassy ride up Broadway in a dazzling procession with 7,000 welcoming troops that left a lasting impression.
Clark would graduate from what is now Rutgers University in New Jersey in 1869 with a degree in Chemistry and Biology. While there he gained the lasting friendship of several prominent Japanese students, a son of province Governor Okubo Ichio, and Iwakura Tomomi. These students and other Japanese visited his home in Albany and attended his father's church.
After a post-graduate summer in Switzerland with Rutgers classmate William Elliott Griffis (1842–1928) Clark, who stayed on to study for the ministry, joined Griffis as the first Americans to introduce western science and technology to the Japanese classroom. When Clark arrived in October 1871, Okubo, Tomomi, Admiral Katsu Kaishu (whose name Clark wrote as Katz Awa) and other prominent officials welcomed him. (By December Tomomi left to lead the Japanese embassy to the United States.) Correspondence between "Clarkie" and "Griff" -- who later taught at Cornell as one the first American academic Japanologists -- as well as the memories of Clark's man-servant Sentaro (nicknamed Sam Patch) add perspective and detail to Clark's own published work about his life. Clark’s letters to his friend “Griff” are a major source of information about his life and beliefs.
Clark taught first at a large school in Shizuoka (that he spelled Shid- zu-oo-ka), where he trained students to become science teachers. A devout Christian, Clark introduced the Bible and established Sabbath Schools for his Japanese students. An occasional journalist, Clark served as Japan correspondent for his college paper, the Rutgers Targum, and religious newspapers like the New York Evangelist and The Child’s Paper.
In 1873 he was transferred to the Imperial University (later Tokyo University), to help found the chemistry department, one of the first of its kind in Japan. Griffis, too, was in Tokyo and wrote his magnum opus The Mikado’s Empire [1876] in Clark’s Tokyo home. Clark, as a scientist and explainer of western technology, took and developed photographs of Japan and later, scenes from his 1875 return trip to the United Stated by way of China, India, and Palestine. He presented a special illustrated lecture for the Mikado at the emperor’s palace in Tokyo.
Clark taught first at a large school in Shizuoka (that he spelled Shid- zu-oo-ka), where he trained students to become science teachers. A devout Christian, Clark introduced the Bible and established Sabbath Schools for his Japanese students. An occasional journalist, Clark served as Japan correspondent for his college paper, the Rutgers Targum, and religious newspapers like the New York Evangelist and The Child’s Paper.
In 1873 he was transferred to the Imperial University (later Tokyo University), to help found the chemistry department, one of the first of its kind in Japan. Griffis, too, was in Tokyo and wrote his magnum opus The Mikado’s Empire [1876] in Clark’s Tokyo home. Clark, as a scientist and explainer of western technology, took and developed photographs of Japan and later, scenes from his 1875 return trip to the United Stated by way of China, India, and Palestine. He presented a special illustrated lecture for the Mikado at the emperor’s palace in Tokyo.
MINISTRY AND MARRIAGE
Back in the US, Clark combined his old published stories and personal photographs into Life and Adventure in Japan, published by the American Tract Society in 1878. A second volume, From Hong-Kong to the Himalayas: or, Three thousand miles through India appeared in 1880. Japan, the Orient, the Holy Land, and “Around the World in Eighty Minutes," soon became the subjects of hundreds of popular lectures that Clark offered 1876 to 1878 while he studied for the ministry in New York and Philadelphia.
In 1879 while serving the Church of the Ascension in Steven’s Point, Wisconsin, he married Louise McCulloch, the daughter of successful local businessman and banker. In 1883 he was assigned to Tallahassee, Florida where his wealthy father-in-law McCullough purchased a 900-acre plantation that Clark and a Philadelphia partner bought and renamed “Shid-zu-oo-ka” after the town in Japan where he first taught.
Over the 1890s he transformed the plantation into an unsuccessful dairy farm and later opened it as a game preserve. For the next six years he fulfilled ministry assignments in Philadelphia, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas while also dabbling in real estate. In the summer of 1893 he was also involved in exhibiting the famous captured Confederate locomotive, “The General” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
In 1891, he started to plan a return to Japan, leading a group tour of a dozen people to cover all his travel costs. In July 1892, Clark presented a series of illustrated lectures at the Rockford, IL Opera House, beginning with "The Mikado's Court" about his four years in Japan. In March 1894 he invited a “Prof. Satoh,” (who according to the Rockford Daily Register and Gazette was a Japanese representative with the Exposition in Chicago), probably the Aimaro Sato who later served as press secretary to the Japanese delegation attending the peace conference in Portsmouth, to speak in Rockford on “Social Life in Japan.”
In 1879 while serving the Church of the Ascension in Steven’s Point, Wisconsin, he married Louise McCulloch, the daughter of successful local businessman and banker. In 1883 he was assigned to Tallahassee, Florida where his wealthy father-in-law McCullough purchased a 900-acre plantation that Clark and a Philadelphia partner bought and renamed “Shid-zu-oo-ka” after the town in Japan where he first taught.
Over the 1890s he transformed the plantation into an unsuccessful dairy farm and later opened it as a game preserve. For the next six years he fulfilled ministry assignments in Philadelphia, Alabama, Tennessee and Texas while also dabbling in real estate. In the summer of 1893 he was also involved in exhibiting the famous captured Confederate locomotive, “The General” at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago.
In 1891, he started to plan a return to Japan, leading a group tour of a dozen people to cover all his travel costs. In July 1892, Clark presented a series of illustrated lectures at the Rockford, IL Opera House, beginning with "The Mikado's Court" about his four years in Japan. In March 1894 he invited a “Prof. Satoh,” (who according to the Rockford Daily Register and Gazette was a Japanese representative with the Exposition in Chicago), probably the Aimaro Sato who later served as press secretary to the Japanese delegation attending the peace conference in Portsmouth, to speak in Rockford on “Social Life in Japan.”
CLARK'S "ORIENTAL TOURS"
In 1894 Clark got a new passport; it shows the clergyman as 45 years old, 5 foot 8 inches high, with blue eyes, auburn hair, and a round face, high forehead and straight nose. When he, one Rockford widow and seven “eastern people” left Chicago for Hawaii, the Philippines, and Japan, his hometown paper said, “It would be difficult to find a better guide through Japan than Prof. Clark, as he was in the Mikado’s service for four years, and has traversed the empire . . . , being better acquainted than many of us are with the United States.” He led another tour to Japan the next year.
While revisiting Japan with his 1894 tour, he met with a man he pronounced “Katz Awa” [now Katsu Kaishu] (1823-1899), who had founded the modern Japanese Navy, and he returned to the U.S. with his brief autobiographical memoir. He later tried to interest Harper Brothers in publishing the memoir, but they felt it was too short for a full book.
While revisiting Japan with his 1894 tour, he met with a man he pronounced “Katz Awa” [now Katsu Kaishu] (1823-1899), who had founded the modern Japanese Navy, and he returned to the U.S. with his brief autobiographical memoir. He later tried to interest Harper Brothers in publishing the memoir, but they felt it was too short for a full book.
TRAVEL & TRAGEDY
Meanwhile, the Clark family’s home life was devastated by the drowning of their 11-year-old son, Henry (in photo, left). To recover, he spent two months in the Bible Institute (Evangelic) in Chicago. While there, Louise Clark wrote to him that two other small boys had died while on an Episcopal Sunday School picnic on the Rock River. Clark’s later appeals on behalf of the widows and orphans of the Russo-Japanese War may have echoed this personal loss.
In December 1899 the local paper announced “two Japanese, Ishida and Kimura” were “in Rockford on invitation of Rev. E. Warren Clark” to “provide a pleasing entertainment at the State Street Baptist Church” with the familiar “stereopticon views of Japanese scenes, moving pictures, tableaux of the Mikado’s court, sword dance and other features.” Yet, it was also said that one was a lawyer and that Mr. Clark brought him here to use his best endeavor to persuade Mrs. Clark to sign certain legal papers, preliminary to a separation from his wife.” In 1900 his wife successfully sued for separate maintenance over of lack of support and two years later Clark sued in Florida for divorce.
In the summers of 1902 and 1903, he ministered in Saratoga, New York and offered lectures to paying summer hotel audience, meeting the rich and famous. In the winter Clark returned to Shidzuoka Plantation near Tallahassee where he experimented with good works and cultivating famous men. Meanwhile he dreamed he might get “Congregationalized” (avoiding Bishops) in a little New England town, “and then be transferred to the doshisha in Japan. I would be glad to spend my few remaining years there.”
Suffering from “La Grippe” over the winter of 1904 Clark found himself the guest of Mr. James M. Munyon, a homeopathic patent medicine tycoon from Philadelphia (often found guilty of fraud for his unsubstantiated claims for his medicines). Munyon exacted a testimonial from him for his Paw-Paw elixir. This advertisement appeared in newspapers across the country in December 1903 and continued to be used as late as August 1904.
But in 1904, the Russo – Japanese War was bringing greater interest in Japan from Americans and Clark tried to lure Griffis into joining him on another round-the–world trip through Japan. But before he could arrange it, Munyon offered to take Clark to Europe with all expenses paid. He apparently hoped to set Clark up as his European agent in London, Paris or Geneva. Instead, Clark used the free trip around European capitals to collect images of the Russo-Japanese War that he could make into magic lantern slides.
As he wrote on his return trip in Sept. 1904, "I have made a SUPERB collection of War Views and reliable photographs in Europe, showing the Progress of the War, and the 'Pictorial Spirit of the European Press.' The London Graphic Illustrated, Black and White; Sphere; Cassells, and the French and German Papers are infinitely ahead of the American Press in this matter. It has taken me three months to select this splendid material, and it required five hours for me to arrange and systemize the pictures… This war is not of mere ephemeral interest but is a Lesson to all Nations of what awful results the implements of Modern warfare can accomplish."
In December 1899 the local paper announced “two Japanese, Ishida and Kimura” were “in Rockford on invitation of Rev. E. Warren Clark” to “provide a pleasing entertainment at the State Street Baptist Church” with the familiar “stereopticon views of Japanese scenes, moving pictures, tableaux of the Mikado’s court, sword dance and other features.” Yet, it was also said that one was a lawyer and that Mr. Clark brought him here to use his best endeavor to persuade Mrs. Clark to sign certain legal papers, preliminary to a separation from his wife.” In 1900 his wife successfully sued for separate maintenance over of lack of support and two years later Clark sued in Florida for divorce.
In the summers of 1902 and 1903, he ministered in Saratoga, New York and offered lectures to paying summer hotel audience, meeting the rich and famous. In the winter Clark returned to Shidzuoka Plantation near Tallahassee where he experimented with good works and cultivating famous men. Meanwhile he dreamed he might get “Congregationalized” (avoiding Bishops) in a little New England town, “and then be transferred to the doshisha in Japan. I would be glad to spend my few remaining years there.”
Suffering from “La Grippe” over the winter of 1904 Clark found himself the guest of Mr. James M. Munyon, a homeopathic patent medicine tycoon from Philadelphia (often found guilty of fraud for his unsubstantiated claims for his medicines). Munyon exacted a testimonial from him for his Paw-Paw elixir. This advertisement appeared in newspapers across the country in December 1903 and continued to be used as late as August 1904.
But in 1904, the Russo – Japanese War was bringing greater interest in Japan from Americans and Clark tried to lure Griffis into joining him on another round-the–world trip through Japan. But before he could arrange it, Munyon offered to take Clark to Europe with all expenses paid. He apparently hoped to set Clark up as his European agent in London, Paris or Geneva. Instead, Clark used the free trip around European capitals to collect images of the Russo-Japanese War that he could make into magic lantern slides.
As he wrote on his return trip in Sept. 1904, "I have made a SUPERB collection of War Views and reliable photographs in Europe, showing the Progress of the War, and the 'Pictorial Spirit of the European Press.' The London Graphic Illustrated, Black and White; Sphere; Cassells, and the French and German Papers are infinitely ahead of the American Press in this matter. It has taken me three months to select this splendid material, and it required five hours for me to arrange and systemize the pictures… This war is not of mere ephemeral interest but is a Lesson to all Nations of what awful results the implements of Modern warfare can accomplish."
relief effort & SCANDAL
Returning to the U.S. he stayed in New York City because he had received an urgent appeal from Japan for help in raising funds for the Japanese widows and orphans created by the war. By December 1904 he had pulled together a group of prominent American religious leaders under the nominal chairmanship of the former Columbia University president and past mayor of New York, Seth Low, to lend their names to a “Japan Relief Fund.”
The New York Sun quoted the “Rev. E. Warren Clark, treasurer” of what had now become “the Young People's Relief Fund” for the suffering and orphaned children of Japan. “In the town of Sendai, a place, I suppose, of some 60,000 inhabitants, there were 2.000 families made destitute by the war. The same proportion holds good all over the country. No matter how great the exertions of the Japanese charitable societies and the Japanese authorities, it is impossible to keep up with this rising tide of misery.”
In December Clark also produced his small book, Katz Awa, the Bismarck of Japan. Clark wrote all 94 pages in 6 days, drawing on the rediscovered “historical gold mine in the personal sketch of his life, a translation of which Katz presented me in 1896 in Tokio.” Published by B. F. Buck & Co., the sales receipts were to have benefited a separate “Katz Awa” charitable fund, sometimes called the “little fund” to differentiate it from the larger relief effort. “In the first six weeks,” he wrote Griff, “We have sold 9,836 copies of Katz Awa, and have taken in, in cash, over $3,442.60.”
Every cent was intended for the cause, as was over six months of Clark‘s unpaid time. Meanwhile, a published appeal for “the big fund” was sent to 33,000 churches and Sunday schools across the country in the two weeks before Christmas. According to the appeal, those funds would be “cabled for distribution to Bishop Harris,
Methodist Bishop of Japan and Korea, who is now on his way to Japan.”
A letter to the New York Times by S.P. Franks criticized the appeal, noting there “is no reason the Russians starving do not deserve the help of the Americans as much as the Japanese do. . . .. Let the many benevolent Christian organizations of this country do the same for their Russian fellow Christians.” So on December 20, a revised appeal in the Times noted the group now sought “contributions in aid of the sick and wounded of both Japanese and Russian armies and of widows and orphans in Japan.”
On January 20, 1905 Charles Cuthbert Hall, president of the Union Theological Seminary, wrote Griff that, “The Japanese Relief Fund has been a little slow but I think is going to be started in a day or two and will be effective.” The Rector of New York’s Grace Church, the Rev. W. R. Huntington, also apologized for not getting the circulars in the mail before Christmas. “The one thing that reconciles me to the delay, “ he wrote, “Is the intelligence from the east with respect to the Russian soldiers surrendered at Port Arthur. The fact that so many of them are going to Japan will lend weight to the appeal with those who are sensitive about helping one side.”
In February Clark received a letter from Mrs. Clara Whitney Kaji (wife of Katz Awa’s son) promoting the idea that he offer a paying lecture at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, with “Tableaux-Vivante, war pictures and Bioscope Motion-Pictures.” His title was “From Shidz-u-o-ka Feudalism to the Fall of Port Arthur.” Just before Easter, an appeal went out to churches across the land offering his Katz Awa book. The money was mailed to the publisher, with “checks, money orders or remittances independent of the booklet” to be sent to the Orphan Fund in Japan." Unfortunately mismanagement of that intent proved heavily damaging to Clark's reputation.
Benjamin F. Buck, whom Clark met through Larry Chittenden (the Texas poet-cowboy then in New York), though rumored to be a “grafter,” had a publishing company that produced Katz Awa as a fund-raiser for Clark’s project. Unfortunately, Buck arranged that the charitable donations to both the Katz Awa fund and the larger relief fund went to himself, with Clark listed as Auditor and Treasurer, and thus held accountable.
According to Clark, four thousand dollars in donations went into Buck’s private bank account while “not a dollar of which, for four months, was I able to see or control.” It was only after Clark threatened to go to the District Attorney that Buck “did run to his Lawyer…and turn over to me the little he had left.” This was $389.98 plus some 10,000 unbound copies of Katz Awa.
Then Buck turned to the ‘Big Fund,’ naming himself as secretary of the Executive Committee and luring George Southard of the Franklin Trust Co into the same impotent role of “auditor and Treasurer.” On June 6, 1905 Clark wrote the editor of the New York Herald, that Bishop M. C. Harris, in Korea, “who helped to organize two of the relief funds with the writer before leaving for Japan, and to whom about $15,000 or $16,000 in cash has already been sent.”
Ten days later a Sun headline screamed “Jap Relief Fund Friction” with a long story of outlining Clark’s concerns. Newspapers in New York and elsewhere were filled with accusations and recriminations as Clark and Buck presented their conflicting versions of the story. Soon “members of the financial and auditing committee had withdrawn the use of their names,” a planned benefit at the Academy of Music was postponed and ultimately, Japanese Consul General Uchida went to the police, who turned the case over to detectives.
Meanwhile theatrical agent Mortimer Kaphan, sued Clark for the $500 he was out for the Academy benefit. A second suit was brought by Eugene H. Tower over “$200 for printing some of the circulars the clergyman has been sending out for months past regarding his Japanese Orphan Relief Fund” and for printing several thousand copies of Katz Awa (despite Buck being its publisher).
Buck presented his version in a long story in the Sun, to which Clark responded by opening his bankbook “to show that all the money be ever got for the fund was $886.38, of which he says about $500 was sent to Japan and about $400 is left in the Union Exchange Bank, where the account is in his own name and not in the name of the fund.”
The New York Tribune called Clark the “fleeing philanthropist;” and the resulting and very public controversy made Clark anathema to Japanese officials who were just then in the middle of negotiating with President Roosevelt for a peace conference. When Clark sent his Japanese contacts an inscribed copy of Katz Awa and a circular on the benefit at the Academy of Music (with “Postponed until September” on the back), it was reported that “Mr. Sato said he would pay no attention to the communication. He added that last December Mr. Clark asked him for the autograph of the Emperor and that he refused to give it to him, fearing that it would be used as an endorsement of the benefit scheme.”
Clark returned from the New Jersey shore with his Texas poet friend, Larry Chittenden and approached the district attorney about suing the Sun for libel but was told that the suit would be very hard to win. He hoped the State of New York would indict and try Buck, as the “Law is too expensive.”
The New York Sun quoted the “Rev. E. Warren Clark, treasurer” of what had now become “the Young People's Relief Fund” for the suffering and orphaned children of Japan. “In the town of Sendai, a place, I suppose, of some 60,000 inhabitants, there were 2.000 families made destitute by the war. The same proportion holds good all over the country. No matter how great the exertions of the Japanese charitable societies and the Japanese authorities, it is impossible to keep up with this rising tide of misery.”
In December Clark also produced his small book, Katz Awa, the Bismarck of Japan. Clark wrote all 94 pages in 6 days, drawing on the rediscovered “historical gold mine in the personal sketch of his life, a translation of which Katz presented me in 1896 in Tokio.” Published by B. F. Buck & Co., the sales receipts were to have benefited a separate “Katz Awa” charitable fund, sometimes called the “little fund” to differentiate it from the larger relief effort. “In the first six weeks,” he wrote Griff, “We have sold 9,836 copies of Katz Awa, and have taken in, in cash, over $3,442.60.”
Every cent was intended for the cause, as was over six months of Clark‘s unpaid time. Meanwhile, a published appeal for “the big fund” was sent to 33,000 churches and Sunday schools across the country in the two weeks before Christmas. According to the appeal, those funds would be “cabled for distribution to Bishop Harris,
Methodist Bishop of Japan and Korea, who is now on his way to Japan.”
A letter to the New York Times by S.P. Franks criticized the appeal, noting there “is no reason the Russians starving do not deserve the help of the Americans as much as the Japanese do. . . .. Let the many benevolent Christian organizations of this country do the same for their Russian fellow Christians.” So on December 20, a revised appeal in the Times noted the group now sought “contributions in aid of the sick and wounded of both Japanese and Russian armies and of widows and orphans in Japan.”
On January 20, 1905 Charles Cuthbert Hall, president of the Union Theological Seminary, wrote Griff that, “The Japanese Relief Fund has been a little slow but I think is going to be started in a day or two and will be effective.” The Rector of New York’s Grace Church, the Rev. W. R. Huntington, also apologized for not getting the circulars in the mail before Christmas. “The one thing that reconciles me to the delay, “ he wrote, “Is the intelligence from the east with respect to the Russian soldiers surrendered at Port Arthur. The fact that so many of them are going to Japan will lend weight to the appeal with those who are sensitive about helping one side.”
In February Clark received a letter from Mrs. Clara Whitney Kaji (wife of Katz Awa’s son) promoting the idea that he offer a paying lecture at the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Science, with “Tableaux-Vivante, war pictures and Bioscope Motion-Pictures.” His title was “From Shidz-u-o-ka Feudalism to the Fall of Port Arthur.” Just before Easter, an appeal went out to churches across the land offering his Katz Awa book. The money was mailed to the publisher, with “checks, money orders or remittances independent of the booklet” to be sent to the Orphan Fund in Japan." Unfortunately mismanagement of that intent proved heavily damaging to Clark's reputation.
Benjamin F. Buck, whom Clark met through Larry Chittenden (the Texas poet-cowboy then in New York), though rumored to be a “grafter,” had a publishing company that produced Katz Awa as a fund-raiser for Clark’s project. Unfortunately, Buck arranged that the charitable donations to both the Katz Awa fund and the larger relief fund went to himself, with Clark listed as Auditor and Treasurer, and thus held accountable.
According to Clark, four thousand dollars in donations went into Buck’s private bank account while “not a dollar of which, for four months, was I able to see or control.” It was only after Clark threatened to go to the District Attorney that Buck “did run to his Lawyer…and turn over to me the little he had left.” This was $389.98 plus some 10,000 unbound copies of Katz Awa.
Then Buck turned to the ‘Big Fund,’ naming himself as secretary of the Executive Committee and luring George Southard of the Franklin Trust Co into the same impotent role of “auditor and Treasurer.” On June 6, 1905 Clark wrote the editor of the New York Herald, that Bishop M. C. Harris, in Korea, “who helped to organize two of the relief funds with the writer before leaving for Japan, and to whom about $15,000 or $16,000 in cash has already been sent.”
Ten days later a Sun headline screamed “Jap Relief Fund Friction” with a long story of outlining Clark’s concerns. Newspapers in New York and elsewhere were filled with accusations and recriminations as Clark and Buck presented their conflicting versions of the story. Soon “members of the financial and auditing committee had withdrawn the use of their names,” a planned benefit at the Academy of Music was postponed and ultimately, Japanese Consul General Uchida went to the police, who turned the case over to detectives.
Meanwhile theatrical agent Mortimer Kaphan, sued Clark for the $500 he was out for the Academy benefit. A second suit was brought by Eugene H. Tower over “$200 for printing some of the circulars the clergyman has been sending out for months past regarding his Japanese Orphan Relief Fund” and for printing several thousand copies of Katz Awa (despite Buck being its publisher).
Buck presented his version in a long story in the Sun, to which Clark responded by opening his bankbook “to show that all the money be ever got for the fund was $886.38, of which he says about $500 was sent to Japan and about $400 is left in the Union Exchange Bank, where the account is in his own name and not in the name of the fund.”
The New York Tribune called Clark the “fleeing philanthropist;” and the resulting and very public controversy made Clark anathema to Japanese officials who were just then in the middle of negotiating with President Roosevelt for a peace conference. When Clark sent his Japanese contacts an inscribed copy of Katz Awa and a circular on the benefit at the Academy of Music (with “Postponed until September” on the back), it was reported that “Mr. Sato said he would pay no attention to the communication. He added that last December Mr. Clark asked him for the autograph of the Emperor and that he refused to give it to him, fearing that it would be used as an endorsement of the benefit scheme.”
Clark returned from the New Jersey shore with his Texas poet friend, Larry Chittenden and approached the district attorney about suing the Sun for libel but was told that the suit would be very hard to win. He hoped the State of New York would indict and try Buck, as the “Law is too expensive.”
clark & the portsmouth peace conference
In July 1905 Clark learned from Mrs. Helen C. Knight, his former Sunday school teacher, still in Portsmouth, that the peace conference between Russia and Japan would be held there. Mrs. Knight was the recipient of Clark’s earliest letters from Japan and in 1873 scattered them as stories throughout The Child’s Paper, a New York religious monthly published by the American Tract Society that she served as long-distance editor for nearly 45 years while living in Portsmouth. She also may have been the person who recommended that the Society publish Clark’s memoir of Japan in 1877.
The 1870 U.S. Census for Portsmouth lists not only the widowed Mrs. Knight at her Islington Street home, but Edward’s oldest brother, the Rev. Rufus W. Clark (then Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church) as her boarder. Clark also ended his first “Round the World” trip back from Japan in 1875 at Portsmouth. On August 2, 1905 he wrote to Griff, “I expect to go to Portsmouth next week. Are you coming? . . . I could meet you in my old birthplace. I gave an address on ‘Japan’ in the old North Church (Congl.), Father’s old church, in Portsmouth last Fall which was well received.” He gave what the newspaper called “a deeply interesting address on Japan” there on October 30, 1904.
Initially he planned to take his “War Pictures” there for a lecture the next year. “I have written Mrs. Knight to get the church for me one or two nights during the convention,” he told Griff, “But my effort at the Conference will still be for the Benefit of the Orphan Relief Fund.” As it turned out, he did not bring the War Lectures to Portsmouth. He wrote Griff, “It would have appeared too partial & of ‘favoritism’ while the Russians (with whom I greatly sympathize) are on neutral territory.”
A few days later he wrote, “I am stopping with my dear old friend Mrs. H. C. Knight, who is 91 years old.” In fact, he arrived at Mrs. Knight’s a day or more before the peace delegates arrived, for he wrote that he “saw Komura as he came up in the launch from the [USS] Mayflower” on August 8th. He “recognized him immediately” as Komura’s carriage passed by in the parade through the City’s streets that welcomed the delegates, but told Griffis, he had “changed much in appearance since I used to see him daily in the class.” Clark also said that he photographed Komura that first day “as he entered the Court House at Portsmouth with Takihira,” another of Clark’s students.
A Rockford, Illinois newspaper reported the Portsmouth activities of its former resident, telling its readers, “Clark Taught Baron Komura . . . Peace Envoy then a Lad.” The paper quoted Clark at length about services in Christ Church with the Russian delegation on August 13: “I was very much interested in the Russian party Sunday morning, because the Episcopal service is very different from the Greek church which the Russians attend.” Witte seemed to feel “his party was about to be surrounded when the suppliced choir came in and I noticed he watched closely while Baron Rosen never turned his eyes from the altar.” The collection was “something new for them,” too, “and sitting in the front pews was a little embarrassing for several members of the party.”
The next day Clark was awaiting the arrival in Boston of Methodist minister “Mr. Y. Honda, Bishop Harris’ assistant” in Tokyo who had been to an international YMCA Conference in Paris. Clark said it was Honda “who wrote the original letter of appeal sent out from Mr. Buck’s office” and had written that he had some money for the cause. “I want him to join me in asking an accounting of all the Funds” Clark said, hoping that if Honda could get the district attorney to indict Buck, all expense would fall to the State of New York.
Arriving from Paris, Rev. Honda must have taken the train directly to Portsmouth, for later that week Mrs. Knight hosted her houseguest, Clark, and two Japanese visitors, the Rev. Y. Honda and Yasujiro Ishikawa, editor of the Hochi Shimbun, for supper. She served expensive Japanese tea that had been sent from Shidzuoka as a present from Clark (nearly 30 years before) that she still had on hand. The local newspaper reported that “This ‘Shidzuoka tea’ was served in Japanese style, from a Japanese teapot and the Tokio guests pronounced it the genuine article, having lost but little of its flavor by being kept a full generation in a Portsmouth climate.” While reported merely as a pleasant “tea party” this may actually have been more of a strategy session for the relief funds and the message of the peace conference.
On Sunday evening, August 20, Rev. Mr. Honda spoke at the Methodist Church on State Street and “recapitulated the work of the Christian Missions” in Japan, ending with “a graphic account of the welcome work of the Y.M.C.A in the armies of Manchuria, the free tents and reading rooms of which the soldiers call the ‘Mother of the Army’.”
That same Sunday, Minister Takihira and Mr. Sato attended the services at the Christ Episcopal. At the conclusion of the service, on the steps of Christ Church, Clark greeted Minister Takahira. As they shook hands “for the first time in 27 years,” Clark asked Takahira “if he remembered when he was his student” at the Imperial University in Tokyo. Takihira “replied in the affirmative,”Clark said authoritatively that after the conference was done Komura would be made a Count and Takahira a Baron for their service.
That week Griffis essay, “First Envoy to Japan,” that had been published in the New York Times before the conference, appeared in the Portsmouth Herald. He reminded readers that in 1832 Portsmouth resident Edmund Roberts was the first diplomat America sent to Japan. Unfortunately Roberts died in China before presenting his credentials, but he was memorialized in Portsmouth in the first stained glass window added to St. John’s Episcopal Church in 1885 by a bequest of Mrs. Mary Pruyn of Albany, NY.
This Mrs. Pruyn, author of Grandmother’s Letters from Japan in 1877 was a widowed member of Roberts’ father’s Albany Dutch Reform Church and ran the American Mission Home in Yokohama (below). She acted like a mother to the young Professor Clark, who photographed her in front of the Japanese mission and described her in his Life and Adventures in Japan.
While Griffis predicted “the Japanese envoys will doubtless visit St. John’s Church, so rich in Oriental mementos, to look upon the noble stained glass window in memory of this first ambassador accredited to Japan,” it was the Russians who actually did so.
The local Herald reported that on Sunday, August 27, Clark, whom they described as the “brother of Rev. Rufus W. Clarke, former rector of St. John’s Church, now a professor in the University of Japan” officiated at St. John’s Church. As Clark reported to Griff “ I preached in the old St. John's Church, Portsmouth (with the Russians in front of me) & your old stained glass window friend ('Edmund Roberts!) looking at me sideways from the window.”
By then the delegates were locked in a battle between their own judgment and the instructions of their government, and formal negotiations had stalled. During this critical moment the US State Department representative in Portsmouth, Third Assistant Secretary Herbert Pierce and his wife encouraged friends to entertain both delegations until efforts to revive negotiations could bear fruit.
On August 28th, the Japanese government decided that, since the key problems relating to Manchuria and Korea –the Japanese objectives of the war -- had already been settled to Japan’s advantage, it was absolutely necessary to make peace even if it meant renouncing the two major claims for financial reparations and the ceding of Sakhalin Island to Russia.
Clark went out to the Wentworth Hotel in New Castle that day to speak with the Japanese delegates. “Komura looked pale and thin, but grim & determined, as if a breath would blow him away,” he reported. “The Japs were in a panic that fatal afternoon, when the order came from Tokio to 'make peace' on any terms. The Japs cried! & I sat by Ishikawa as he wrote a 6-page letter to Baron Komura (upstairs at the Wentworth) begging him to 'resign' --rather than 'capitulate'!”
Peace was declared on August 29th. By September 4, when negotiations had been concluded “Komura was very genial the night of the final Japanese reception when I introduced a lot of beautiful ladies to him. ”Clark later told Griff that Baron Komura, who “remembered you very well, … added with a funny smile, 'Mr. Clark taught us inorganic chemistry, & electricity' and 'Mr. Griffis taught organic chemistry & LAW,' & then he laughed outright at the queer mixture of subjects!!"
The 1870 U.S. Census for Portsmouth lists not only the widowed Mrs. Knight at her Islington Street home, but Edward’s oldest brother, the Rev. Rufus W. Clark (then Rector of St. John’s Episcopal Church) as her boarder. Clark also ended his first “Round the World” trip back from Japan in 1875 at Portsmouth. On August 2, 1905 he wrote to Griff, “I expect to go to Portsmouth next week. Are you coming? . . . I could meet you in my old birthplace. I gave an address on ‘Japan’ in the old North Church (Congl.), Father’s old church, in Portsmouth last Fall which was well received.” He gave what the newspaper called “a deeply interesting address on Japan” there on October 30, 1904.
Initially he planned to take his “War Pictures” there for a lecture the next year. “I have written Mrs. Knight to get the church for me one or two nights during the convention,” he told Griff, “But my effort at the Conference will still be for the Benefit of the Orphan Relief Fund.” As it turned out, he did not bring the War Lectures to Portsmouth. He wrote Griff, “It would have appeared too partial & of ‘favoritism’ while the Russians (with whom I greatly sympathize) are on neutral territory.”
A few days later he wrote, “I am stopping with my dear old friend Mrs. H. C. Knight, who is 91 years old.” In fact, he arrived at Mrs. Knight’s a day or more before the peace delegates arrived, for he wrote that he “saw Komura as he came up in the launch from the [USS] Mayflower” on August 8th. He “recognized him immediately” as Komura’s carriage passed by in the parade through the City’s streets that welcomed the delegates, but told Griffis, he had “changed much in appearance since I used to see him daily in the class.” Clark also said that he photographed Komura that first day “as he entered the Court House at Portsmouth with Takihira,” another of Clark’s students.
A Rockford, Illinois newspaper reported the Portsmouth activities of its former resident, telling its readers, “Clark Taught Baron Komura . . . Peace Envoy then a Lad.” The paper quoted Clark at length about services in Christ Church with the Russian delegation on August 13: “I was very much interested in the Russian party Sunday morning, because the Episcopal service is very different from the Greek church which the Russians attend.” Witte seemed to feel “his party was about to be surrounded when the suppliced choir came in and I noticed he watched closely while Baron Rosen never turned his eyes from the altar.” The collection was “something new for them,” too, “and sitting in the front pews was a little embarrassing for several members of the party.”
The next day Clark was awaiting the arrival in Boston of Methodist minister “Mr. Y. Honda, Bishop Harris’ assistant” in Tokyo who had been to an international YMCA Conference in Paris. Clark said it was Honda “who wrote the original letter of appeal sent out from Mr. Buck’s office” and had written that he had some money for the cause. “I want him to join me in asking an accounting of all the Funds” Clark said, hoping that if Honda could get the district attorney to indict Buck, all expense would fall to the State of New York.
Arriving from Paris, Rev. Honda must have taken the train directly to Portsmouth, for later that week Mrs. Knight hosted her houseguest, Clark, and two Japanese visitors, the Rev. Y. Honda and Yasujiro Ishikawa, editor of the Hochi Shimbun, for supper. She served expensive Japanese tea that had been sent from Shidzuoka as a present from Clark (nearly 30 years before) that she still had on hand. The local newspaper reported that “This ‘Shidzuoka tea’ was served in Japanese style, from a Japanese teapot and the Tokio guests pronounced it the genuine article, having lost but little of its flavor by being kept a full generation in a Portsmouth climate.” While reported merely as a pleasant “tea party” this may actually have been more of a strategy session for the relief funds and the message of the peace conference.
On Sunday evening, August 20, Rev. Mr. Honda spoke at the Methodist Church on State Street and “recapitulated the work of the Christian Missions” in Japan, ending with “a graphic account of the welcome work of the Y.M.C.A in the armies of Manchuria, the free tents and reading rooms of which the soldiers call the ‘Mother of the Army’.”
That same Sunday, Minister Takihira and Mr. Sato attended the services at the Christ Episcopal. At the conclusion of the service, on the steps of Christ Church, Clark greeted Minister Takahira. As they shook hands “for the first time in 27 years,” Clark asked Takahira “if he remembered when he was his student” at the Imperial University in Tokyo. Takihira “replied in the affirmative,”Clark said authoritatively that after the conference was done Komura would be made a Count and Takahira a Baron for their service.
That week Griffis essay, “First Envoy to Japan,” that had been published in the New York Times before the conference, appeared in the Portsmouth Herald. He reminded readers that in 1832 Portsmouth resident Edmund Roberts was the first diplomat America sent to Japan. Unfortunately Roberts died in China before presenting his credentials, but he was memorialized in Portsmouth in the first stained glass window added to St. John’s Episcopal Church in 1885 by a bequest of Mrs. Mary Pruyn of Albany, NY.
This Mrs. Pruyn, author of Grandmother’s Letters from Japan in 1877 was a widowed member of Roberts’ father’s Albany Dutch Reform Church and ran the American Mission Home in Yokohama (below). She acted like a mother to the young Professor Clark, who photographed her in front of the Japanese mission and described her in his Life and Adventures in Japan.
While Griffis predicted “the Japanese envoys will doubtless visit St. John’s Church, so rich in Oriental mementos, to look upon the noble stained glass window in memory of this first ambassador accredited to Japan,” it was the Russians who actually did so.
The local Herald reported that on Sunday, August 27, Clark, whom they described as the “brother of Rev. Rufus W. Clarke, former rector of St. John’s Church, now a professor in the University of Japan” officiated at St. John’s Church. As Clark reported to Griff “ I preached in the old St. John's Church, Portsmouth (with the Russians in front of me) & your old stained glass window friend ('Edmund Roberts!) looking at me sideways from the window.”
By then the delegates were locked in a battle between their own judgment and the instructions of their government, and formal negotiations had stalled. During this critical moment the US State Department representative in Portsmouth, Third Assistant Secretary Herbert Pierce and his wife encouraged friends to entertain both delegations until efforts to revive negotiations could bear fruit.
On August 28th, the Japanese government decided that, since the key problems relating to Manchuria and Korea –the Japanese objectives of the war -- had already been settled to Japan’s advantage, it was absolutely necessary to make peace even if it meant renouncing the two major claims for financial reparations and the ceding of Sakhalin Island to Russia.
Clark went out to the Wentworth Hotel in New Castle that day to speak with the Japanese delegates. “Komura looked pale and thin, but grim & determined, as if a breath would blow him away,” he reported. “The Japs were in a panic that fatal afternoon, when the order came from Tokio to 'make peace' on any terms. The Japs cried! & I sat by Ishikawa as he wrote a 6-page letter to Baron Komura (upstairs at the Wentworth) begging him to 'resign' --rather than 'capitulate'!”
Peace was declared on August 29th. By September 4, when negotiations had been concluded “Komura was very genial the night of the final Japanese reception when I introduced a lot of beautiful ladies to him. ”Clark later told Griff that Baron Komura, who “remembered you very well, … added with a funny smile, 'Mr. Clark taught us inorganic chemistry, & electricity' and 'Mr. Griffis taught organic chemistry & LAW,' & then he laughed outright at the queer mixture of subjects!!"
clark at green acre
Between August 29th and the formal Treaty signing on September 5th Clark brought some of the Japanese diplomats and newspapermen to Green Acre, Miss Sarah Farmer’s spiritual retreat in Eliot, Maine. Here, for several years, Farmer and participants in her annual retreats had erected a huge PEACE flag, so large that it was said it could be seen from the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard.
On Thursday August 31, at the conclusion of closing exercises, three “stirring addresses” to an audience of 300 people celebrated the recently agreed upon terms of peace. Here diplomat Takahira gave his first public utterance about the concluded peace negotiations in a “short but fervent address.” His remarks were followed by editor Ishikawa, who paid a graceful tribute for President Roosevelt as the “greatest peacemaker” of modern times. “He dwelt n the sacrificing character of the Japanese women, who had sent their husbands and sons off to war, without a murmur.” [Japanese guests pictured at left with Mrs. William E. Hoehn at far right.]
Then, Rev. E. Warren Clark was warmly thanked for his successful efforts in bringing the Japanese to Green Acre. According to an unidentified reporter for the Portsmouth Times, he began his address with a comparison of the recent events and the that other “Green-hill, far away, where . . . the darkening sun, the rending rocks, and the earthquake tremors emphasized the moral crisis on Calvary. He showed that Japan had fought the fight of humanity for the Russian peasantry and for the oppressed Jews, as well as for herself … [and said] we should add to our applause for Japan’s costly sacrifice, the practical aid and sympathy that will help her now to care for the thousands of widows and orphans of her soldiers killed in the war.”
Clark continued in evangelical language: “All sacrifice is costly, and this last sacrifice of Japan is the most costly of all, and yet the most glorious, of the entire campaign…In the flush of victory it is a full surrender of pride, prestige and money, to the interests of peace… what is that Christian world going to do, when the echo of fulsome applause dies faintly away? Is it willing to contribute its share to the attainment of peace? This could not be more appropriately done, than by responding to appeals recently sent out by Christian workers in Japan, in behalf of the destitute families of the slain, and by helping those who are suffering in silence, the widows and orphans, in the land of the Rising Sun.”
“In response to this appeal,” the newspaper reported, “The conference adopted a unanimous (standing) vote [for] a “Christian Peace offering for the destitute families killed in the war.” According to Ali-Kuli Khan, an eminent Iranian Baha'i who was in attendance, the day "was the most important day Green Acre has had in her whole history."
On Sunday September 10, a final peace celebration was held at Green Acre, with its founder, Sarah Farmer, presiding. Mr. Isakawa, Tokio correspondent, and Mr. Kawakama, a special correspondent for a Japanese newspaper were the principal speakers. Clark again spoke “of the widows and orphans of the island empire” and told of the proposed plan of Bishop Harris to collect funds for their relief. A poem, “The Children of Japan” in support of the Japanese Orphan Relief Fund, that Clark had brought from Larry Chittenden was read and published Sept. 1.
The next day, as the government began to sell off furniture and other memorabilia from the room where the peace had been negotiated, Clark and Sarah Farmer were reported among the those who “purchased several valuable pieces of furniture” as a memento of the summer's events.
After the Peace Conference
Clark’s little-known role in recognizing the importance of Japanese newspapermen and introducing them to the influential members of the Green Acre summer community suggests prior familiarity with Mr. Ishikawa. On October 1st the New York Herald reported visitors to The Old Perry Home at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island included, “Mr. E. Warren Clark, of Florida … and Mr. F. Ishikawa, an editor from Tokio, Japan, who been attending the peace conference…The object of their sojourn here was to visit the birthplace of Commodore M. C. Perry, who opened the ports of Japan."
By November 1905 Clark had returned to Tallahassee, Florida, where he welcomed a Japanese family of four named Okniski to settle on his Skidzuoka Plantation as tenants. He seems to have brought home some of the 10,000 remaining copies of Katz Awa to give or sell to those who made the trek to find him. One inscribed copy of his small book says: “Clark lives in the woods 7 miles north of Tallahassee. We visited him there yesterday 11/9/1905. He is an erratic genius.”
The “erratic genius” died less than two years later on June 5, 1907, at the age of just 58 in Kingston, New York. Former Portsmouth Y.M.C.A Secretary, William F. Hoehn, who had relocated in Kingston was among those who had “made his last days pleasant.” In 1905 Hoehn, then director of the Portsmouth Y.M.C.A. and his wife Grace were photographed with the Japanese visitors accompanying Clark to Green Acre. That he and Clark first met at that time is almost certain, although they could also have been introduced through Rev. Honda.
Brought low by death and divorce, financial insecurity, and an undeserved media scandal, E. Warren Clark was brilliant but, as one Stevens Point, Wisconsin editor had said, “embittered by his erratic temperament.” Both as a Christian evangelist and cultural interpreter, he had devoted the greater part of his life to building a bridge between his countrymen and the Japanese people.
On Thursday August 31, at the conclusion of closing exercises, three “stirring addresses” to an audience of 300 people celebrated the recently agreed upon terms of peace. Here diplomat Takahira gave his first public utterance about the concluded peace negotiations in a “short but fervent address.” His remarks were followed by editor Ishikawa, who paid a graceful tribute for President Roosevelt as the “greatest peacemaker” of modern times. “He dwelt n the sacrificing character of the Japanese women, who had sent their husbands and sons off to war, without a murmur.” [Japanese guests pictured at left with Mrs. William E. Hoehn at far right.]
Then, Rev. E. Warren Clark was warmly thanked for his successful efforts in bringing the Japanese to Green Acre. According to an unidentified reporter for the Portsmouth Times, he began his address with a comparison of the recent events and the that other “Green-hill, far away, where . . . the darkening sun, the rending rocks, and the earthquake tremors emphasized the moral crisis on Calvary. He showed that Japan had fought the fight of humanity for the Russian peasantry and for the oppressed Jews, as well as for herself … [and said] we should add to our applause for Japan’s costly sacrifice, the practical aid and sympathy that will help her now to care for the thousands of widows and orphans of her soldiers killed in the war.”
Clark continued in evangelical language: “All sacrifice is costly, and this last sacrifice of Japan is the most costly of all, and yet the most glorious, of the entire campaign…In the flush of victory it is a full surrender of pride, prestige and money, to the interests of peace… what is that Christian world going to do, when the echo of fulsome applause dies faintly away? Is it willing to contribute its share to the attainment of peace? This could not be more appropriately done, than by responding to appeals recently sent out by Christian workers in Japan, in behalf of the destitute families of the slain, and by helping those who are suffering in silence, the widows and orphans, in the land of the Rising Sun.”
“In response to this appeal,” the newspaper reported, “The conference adopted a unanimous (standing) vote [for] a “Christian Peace offering for the destitute families killed in the war.” According to Ali-Kuli Khan, an eminent Iranian Baha'i who was in attendance, the day "was the most important day Green Acre has had in her whole history."
On Sunday September 10, a final peace celebration was held at Green Acre, with its founder, Sarah Farmer, presiding. Mr. Isakawa, Tokio correspondent, and Mr. Kawakama, a special correspondent for a Japanese newspaper were the principal speakers. Clark again spoke “of the widows and orphans of the island empire” and told of the proposed plan of Bishop Harris to collect funds for their relief. A poem, “The Children of Japan” in support of the Japanese Orphan Relief Fund, that Clark had brought from Larry Chittenden was read and published Sept. 1.
The next day, as the government began to sell off furniture and other memorabilia from the room where the peace had been negotiated, Clark and Sarah Farmer were reported among the those who “purchased several valuable pieces of furniture” as a memento of the summer's events.
After the Peace Conference
Clark’s little-known role in recognizing the importance of Japanese newspapermen and introducing them to the influential members of the Green Acre summer community suggests prior familiarity with Mr. Ishikawa. On October 1st the New York Herald reported visitors to The Old Perry Home at Narragansett Pier, Rhode Island included, “Mr. E. Warren Clark, of Florida … and Mr. F. Ishikawa, an editor from Tokio, Japan, who been attending the peace conference…The object of their sojourn here was to visit the birthplace of Commodore M. C. Perry, who opened the ports of Japan."
By November 1905 Clark had returned to Tallahassee, Florida, where he welcomed a Japanese family of four named Okniski to settle on his Skidzuoka Plantation as tenants. He seems to have brought home some of the 10,000 remaining copies of Katz Awa to give or sell to those who made the trek to find him. One inscribed copy of his small book says: “Clark lives in the woods 7 miles north of Tallahassee. We visited him there yesterday 11/9/1905. He is an erratic genius.”
The “erratic genius” died less than two years later on June 5, 1907, at the age of just 58 in Kingston, New York. Former Portsmouth Y.M.C.A Secretary, William F. Hoehn, who had relocated in Kingston was among those who had “made his last days pleasant.” In 1905 Hoehn, then director of the Portsmouth Y.M.C.A. and his wife Grace were photographed with the Japanese visitors accompanying Clark to Green Acre. That he and Clark first met at that time is almost certain, although they could also have been introduced through Rev. Honda.
Brought low by death and divorce, financial insecurity, and an undeserved media scandal, E. Warren Clark was brilliant but, as one Stevens Point, Wisconsin editor had said, “embittered by his erratic temperament.” Both as a Christian evangelist and cultural interpreter, he had devoted the greater part of his life to building a bridge between his countrymen and the Japanese people.