JAPANESE TEA

City’s Oldest Resident Is Hostess

Teas Used That Cost Seven Dollars a Pound

Guests Present from Tokio — Some Things They Have Seen While Here

Among the social events of interest during the week past was an informal Japanese Tea given by our “oldest resident” Mrs. Helen C. Knight, of Islington street, to Rev. Y. Honda, president of the Aoyama Gakuim of Tokio; Mr. Yasujiro Ishikawa, editor of the “Hochi Shimbun,” of Tokio; and Prof. E. Warren Clark, formerly of the Japanese Imperial University of Tokio.

A somewhat novel feature of the supper served, was the use of tea (costing seven dollars a pound at Shidzuoka, Japan, in 1871) which Prof. Clark had sent as a present (over 30 years ago,) to Mrs. Knight, and some of which the hostess still had on hand. This “Shidzuoka tea” was served in Japanese style, from a Japanese tea pot 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.  

Rev. Mr. Honda is making a Round the World trip, and has just attended the International Y. M. C. A. Conference in Paris, — where he says the proceedings had to be translated into French, English, and Dutch.  It was at this conference that Mr. Wanamaker donated $100,000 for Y. M. C. A. to work in Pekin, Kioto and Seoul (Korea.)  Mr. Honda is the colleague of Bishop M. C. Harris (of the Methodist Episcopal church,) in Tokio, and it is a letter of appeal which Mr. Honda wrote last November from Tokio, in behalf of the widows and orphans of Japanese soldiers killed in the war, that led Bishop Harris and Prof. Clark to organize a “Japanese Relief Fund” movement. Mr. Honda praises the work of the Okayama Orphanage to which the Emperor yearly contributes, and to which a portion of the first one thousand yen, sent by Prof. Clark was given from the sale of the booklet, “Katz Awa”.  So greatly has this work of relief been appreciated in Japan, that the Mikado (acting on the suggestion and recommendation of Baron Komura,) has recently decorated Bishop Harris with the third order of the “Sacred Treasure”.

Mr. Y. Ishikawa, who is stopping at the Hotel Wentworth, is a graduate of the famous Fusikawa school in Tokio, Fusikawa being the associate and contemporary of “Katz-Awa,” the (Paul Jones) or, Father of the Japanese Navy.  Ishikawa is editor of a paper having a circulation of 250,000 daily.  It is this paper that his reports of the proceedings of the Portsmouth conference are printed.  In sipping the Shidzuoka tea at MRs. knight’s table, Ishikawa noted the fact that the year it was sent to Portsmouth (1871) was the year before he was born. During his visit to Portsmouth Ishikawa inspected the famous Frank Jones Brewery and he found that “age” had also something to do with its product.  At least he thought so after “sampling” a couple of glasses!  He wonders how the Wentworth and the Rockingham could have been built on such a “shaky” foundation, but was deeply impressed with the machinery and appliances capable of producing ale enough to float a battleship.

Sunday evening Rev. Mr. Honda delivered an address at the Methodist Church.  he recapitulated the work of Christian Missions in Japan, attributed his country’s wonderful progress to the Tokugawa era (of two centuries) of “Great Peace” preceding the advent of Commodore Perry, and gave 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.” 

Sunday evening, Prof. Clark (for the first time in 27 years) shook hands with Minister Takahira, on the steps of Christ Church and asked him if he remembered when he was a student at the “Kai Sei Gakko” in Tokio. He replied in the affirmative.  But he is feeble, walks with a cane, and has aged more than his former instructor; who left Portsmouth as an infant, the year (1854) that Perry “opened” Japan.