Other coins, even including the copper coinage, were tampered with, and in order to correct this state of affairs the Japanese Government had bought up Hongkong's old minting machinery which together with other machinery imported from Europe was set up in national mints, under foreign supervision, and from 1871 the new yen coinage was issued.
In 1937 when the Japanese Army entered upon their undeclared war in China, they financed their operations with ordinary paper yen, which they forced the Chinese and others to accept for services and provisions purchased, but as such yen could not be brought back to Japan, unless smuggled in, a huge quantity accumulated in China, especially in Shanghai, and the price fell to around 8 cents U.S. per yen, whereas the official rate was set as high as 22 cents. With such a difference prevailing no amount of vigilance could prevent those cheap yen notes from being smuggled back into Japan from China.
This was the state of affairs when Serge Rubinstein was in Japan. At a later date the Japanese Army commenced using special military yen, which were not legal tender in Japan, but by then much cheap yen had been bought up in China and smuggled into Japan.
Dmitri Rubinstein was a moneylender to the Czar of Russia, and upon the outbreak of the Bolshevik revolution in 1917 he wisely decided to get out of Russia, and cut his losses—except for the jewels and securities which were sewn in the family clothing. He tried in the Balkans to rebuild the family fortunes but instead died there a bankrupt.
As Serge, the youngest son, showed unusual promise in the ways of making money, his elder brother Andre sent him to England where he graduated at Cambridge University with honours. Later in life Andre sued Serge on behalf of their mother for defamation of character because Serge, in connivance with someone in the Portuguese consular service, obtained a Portuguese passport by claiming that he was the illegitimate son of a Portuguese nobleman, and with that passport was able to gain entry into the United States.
In this article we are however only interested with his life in Japan, or at least a small part of it—and none of his Tokyo love life, which, owing to considerations of space, will be omitted entirely.
After Serge had laid the foundations to his fortune by making in France a profit of close on a million dollars in a slick deal in Chinese bonds, he turned up in London attracted by the scintillating financial deals of Mr. Martin C. Harman, a plausible British company promoter who had gained control of the Chosen Corporation Ltd., a holding company owning three gold mines in Korea. When Harman subsequently went to jail, Rubinstein stepped forward and snatched the baton, as it were, from the falling Harman and proceeded to control the Chosen Corporation. He was then a busy man. Later an investigator for the British Board of Trade examined the books of the corporation and found a tangled mass of transactions between the Chosen Corporation, four Delaware, four New York, three Texas and four British companies, and in addition one Japanese company. Even chartered accountants became dizzy as they skidded around those tangled trails. One fact at least emerged—somewhere along the line a cool $5,-900,000 of the Chosen Corporation had disappeared.
Rubinstein, in control of the Chosen Corporation, had the authority to dispose of its valuable properties in Korea and this he proceeded to do, selling two of the mines in Tokyo to the Nippon Kogyo Co., Ltd., for thirteen million yen of which six million or £350,-000 was to be paid in sterling. It must be remembered that in prewar days these yen figures represented very large sums. The sale price was a good one, because Rubinstein had driven a hard bargain. The fact is that Japan was in great need of gold, and the military clique was willing to pay a high price to get it.
It is not a pun but a plain statement of fact that Rubinstein's assistant in this transaction was Mr. Konrad Sztykgold, which name, out of consideration for the difficulties of the foreigners and Japanese of Tokyo, was simplified to Sticgold!
When the Tokyo transaction drew to a close there were three million yen in cash and a draft for Yen 1,192,647 still in Rubinstein's control in Tokyo, but later when the Japanese Government discovered that the three million yen had disappeared they impounded the draft, thus adding another complication to a very tangled affair. It has been alleged that those three million yen were smuggled out of Japan hidden in personal baggage; another story is that the notes were hidden in the folds of habutae shipped out of Japan as export orders. Quite apart from the fact that such a sum of money in one hundred yen notes, then the highest denomination, would have represented a lump of nearly two cubic feet, it is difficult to imagine that a man such as Rubinstein would have risked his money or his reputation for "smart" deals in any juvenile act of smuggling. At that time there were plenty of yen to the to be picked up in Shanghai at about eight cents to the yen as against the official rate of twenty-two cents in Japan. The yen notes in Shanghai were waiting to be smuggled into Japan, while Rubinstein had yen notes in Japan that he wanted to smuggle out. Not unlikely he swapped his yen in Japan for yen in Shanghai at a favourable rate to himself. Certainly it is a fact that just about that time one of Serge's lieutenants (although he usually preferred to act as a lone wolf both in his love and business affairs) travelled from Shanghai to Honolulu and the Pacific Coast of America on a "President" liner that touched at Japan, and he was known to have several large wardrobe trunks in his cabin. At Yokohama he was invited by the police to step ashore and view the cherry blossoms, an opportunity he had to pass up as he had confined himself to his cabin with a sick headache.
How Rubinstein actually got his three million yen out may never be known, but it was significant that shortly afterwards yen notes were being hawked throughout Hawaii and California to Japanese residents there who reckoned that they were obtaining a bargain in buying Bank of Japan notes at 25% under the official rate. At the same time other lots were being sold over the counter in scores of banking institutions throughout the length and breadth of South America, and were even being peddled around the coffee plantations in central Brazil.
Once again Serge had found where he could sell at a satisfactory price those things that he had acquired cheaply. Serge had an uncanny instinct for finding the best markets on which to work off his crooked deals.
However, all Serge's knowledge of mathematics and the theory of probabilities did not prevent him from making a very simple miscalculation when he handed out his door key to one inamorata too many. As is well known, he was found one morning in a New York apartment in blue silk pyjamas, bound, gagged, strangled and dead.
PHOTOGRAPH
ALBUMS
Of days that used to be....
A photograph or two....
Among my souvenirs....
EDGAR LESLIE—Song Lyric
The most important book in the old-fashioned Victorian home after the family Bible and the thick tome of medical lore that was hidden away on the top shelf of the bookcase, was the family album. Unfortunately family albums suffered from the defect that the photographs were generally unlabelled, a common failure in photographic collections to-day, with the result that much historical material is lost. Nobody saw the necessity of writing Aunt Eliza's name under any of her photographs—she always made her presence felt anywhere—and how many wives would identify the photographs of their mothers-in-law so that they might not be forgotten? Nevertheless aunts and mothers-in-law do at times become famous, and the world is poorer for the failure to have labelled family albums in the past.
To meet the needs of the family photograph albums, foreign portrait photographers established themselves in Yokohama from about 1860 and in Kobe from 1868. In addition to family portraits, wedding groups, and other celebrations, many photographs of street scenes and the surrounding countryside found their way into the family albums. I have a number of such collections but more often than not the photographs of Japan of the last century are not labelled and it is now impossible to identify the places.
One of the treasures in my photograph album is a photograph of folio size which my wife discovered some fifteen years ago whilst rummaging in a secondh
and junk shop in Melbourne and which she instantly recognized to be a photograph of Kobe taken from the hills in the early days of the Foreign Concession. As she showed some interest in it, the junk-man gave it to her as a present. It shows fields where now are Yamamoto-dori and Kitano-cho and barren hills where now are the pine-clad Kobe hills. Around Sannomiya Station, then located exactly where Motomachi Station stands to-day, can be seen a number of foreign-styled wooden houses that were built by the Railway Bureau as residences for the foreign employees of the National Railways. Some of those wooden buildings, which had always been painted green, were still standing before the war in or near the Hanakuma geisha quarter. All were destroyed by fires during the air-raids of the war.
Later photographs show the foreign residences of the taipans who were beginning to change their places of residence from the Foreign Concession to stately houses that they had commenced building in Yamamoto-dori and Kitano-cho, each house set in a large shady garden. Several decades later, advances in land prices and higher taxation led to the inevitable subdivision of the land and the construction of about five houses where only one had existed previously.
Before the beginning of the century some foreigners were beginning to move further afield to out-of-town houses extending from Suma in the west to Sumiyoshi in the east, those with something to hide often going still further afield! The most fashionable out-of-town place of residence was then Ichi-no-tani in the hills beyond Suma beach, where a number of attractive houses were built, each with a large garden and set among narrow lanes bordered with hedges rather reminiscent of the English countryside. It was in fact here that the scion of the New York Morgans spent some happy times with O-Yuki-san, his geisha friend.
By the nineteen-thirties, when Mr. E. W. James was levelling the tops of mountains and filling in valleys at Shioya, preparatory to building his remarkable Estate, the houses at Ichi-no-tani were falling into decay. To-day little remains of the Ichi-no-tani settlement except in photograph albums, but instead further west the park-like James Estate stands where once were barren and eroded hills that had lain useless for centuries.
Among the photographs in my collection are a number of groups of athletic young men of some seventy years ago, most of whom are adorned with sideboard whiskers and moustaches of varying degrees of density. They are standing in the awkward poses of that period much like so many Grecian gods.
As the conventions then decreed that even athletes should not show too much flesh, they were clad in long-sleeved singlets and short trousers, long enough to come about two inches below the knee, or to be more precise, the exact length of a decent woman's bloomers. It seems clear that those three-quarter-length trousers, or so-called "shorts" of the Victorian age, must have inspired that amazing male garment to which Japanese gentlemen of mature age and substance were addicted. I refer of course to han-zubon of the walking-out variety which may still be seen occasionally in the skittish springtime.
Bermuda shorts would have been considered immodest, if not downright immoral, in those early days and only suitable for the Parisienne stage. Perhaps it is this feature of modesty and morality that accounts for our American male friends taking about thirty years to catch up with us Britishers in the wearing of above-the-knee shorts! By the same token it might be imagined that in Japan in about one decade hence the one-time fashionable han-zubon for walkers will have crept upwards and the original half-way-to-the-heels variety will then be as great a rarity in Japan as is to-day that one-time essential appendage of a well-dressed Japanese in his native costume—the bowler hat, about fifty-four different varieties of which appear in my photographic collection.
Included in one album in my possession, compiled by some student of the past, are a number of early photographs in the Yumoto district beyond Nikko, of small shrines adorned with emblems in stone clearly illustrating the original naturalistic worship that so quickly vanished in most places after the country was opened to western ideas nearly a century ago. To the student of anthropology, or just to the observant person, there are still examples in a camouflaged form to be seen in some shrines and in some old gardens.
Recently in a prewar millionaire's garden in which a great deal of money had been expended on very old stone lanterns and other such ornamentations, I detected hidden among the trees several such old stone objects showing clear traces of such early worship.
"Isn't it lovely?" enquired my foreign hostess as she conducted me around the garden of which she had become the proud tenant.
"It is indeed beautiful and it is twice as interesting as it is beautiful," I replied.
"What do you mean?" she enquired.
I found myself mumbling something about the origins of some aspects of Shintoism and wishing I could remember the exact number of the volume of the Transactions of the Asiatic Society of Japan to which I might refer her for more information, and so escape the embarrassment in which I had placed myself. Others before me had found themselves in a similar predicament and one was no less a person than that great authority on Japan, Basil Hall Chamberlain, but he had wit enough to extricate himself. The incident probably occurred at some embassy reception in Tokyo, for that great scholar usually moved only in exalted circles.
In a letter written to Lafcadio Hearn in 1894 he described the incident, how one day in mixed company a young lady suddenly enquired of him: "Oh! Mr. Chamberlain, you know everything. Do tell me what phallic means." Hoping to escape he professed complete ignorance.
"But," retorted the young lady "it is in your book. You must know it."
"Ah," flashed Chamberlain "You see I'm only responsible for half of Murrays' Handbook for Japan. It must be in the other half which Mr. Mason wrote."
If we accept the angry words of the first British Minister to Japan, the foreign mercantile community then comprised "the scum of the earth," but his Excellency spoke in anger and was exaggerating. Included in the first arrivals were undoubtedly some of the dregs from the China ports, but they were in the minority. Many of the oldest and most respected foreign firms in the Far East such as Jardine Matheson & Co., had come in with the first arrivals. The latter firm has in fact been trading in Japan since the Treaty Ports were first opened and in early years was interested in a greater variety of activities than in later years.
Indeed, in the year 1890 outside their Kobe Office there were hanging three brass balls—the sign of a pawnbroker's establishment—and an announcement that loans were granted on any reasonable security. To make the meaning clearer, a battered bowler hat and an old pair of trousers were on display.
In case the management of that esteemed company may consider my statement libellous, I do declare that I have truthfully described an authentic photograph in my possession. It has taken me some time to discover the story behind it. It now appears that the Trust & Loan Agency Co., a bank of a special type established to make advances against property, was represented in Kobe by Jardine Matheson & Co. One morning soon after the agency opened, it was found that some youthful wags of the foreign community, considering that the name Trust & Loan Agency Co., rather suggested a pawnbroker's business, had during the night time erected over the door the three brass balls and the announcement regarding the granting of loans, and had hung out the old clothing. In those days the foreign community had to find its own amusement and such pranks were not unusual.
It had been hoped that the Trust & Loan Agency Co. would develop into a banking institution, but it never counted among the banks of Kobe.
Among the most interesting photographic collections that I have there is one—and it is my own—that is meticulously labelled with names, places and dates, the kind of record which in other circumstances divorce court lawyers dream of but seldom meet. It is now open before me. As I turn its pages and look again at some of our present-day worthy but rather stuffy pillars of the foreign community as they appeared twenty-five years ago, with one arm clutching a tankard of beer and the other supporting the waist of Skinny Lizzie or some other notable
young lady of the period, I do imagine that some of them were more human then than now. Certainly they were more trim amidships.
There comes a time in men's lives—it generally occurs a few days, weeks or months before their wedding day—when they have a grand spring cleaning, and the skeletons in their cupboards are taken out and hurled into the dust bin. I went through the same period but after a mental struggle between what I deemed to be a course of safety and an historian's urge to preserve records of the past, my photograph album remained intact. Years later this circumstance used to worry some of my friends a great deal especially perhaps on the occasion of a visit to my home with their wives, because it was known that my children, who were much younger then, gained some amusement from turning the pages of this amazing album, and might at anytime pop a question such as:
"Daddy, where is the Cozy Corner Cafe? And did Uncle know Skinny Lizzie too?"
JAPAN'S
NATIONAL
ANTHEM
....and making musique after the
Countrey fashion, although harsh
to our hearings.
Capt. SARIS' Diary, 1613
Arising out of the desire in some quarters of recent years that the Kimigayo—the national anthem of Japan—be outlawed because of the manner in which the ultra-nationalists exploited it in prewar days, there have of late been a number of references to it in the English language newspapers in Japan. Most of the articles have been sketchy and some entirely inaccurate. In some, credit for composing the Kimigayo has been given to a Japanese musician, in some to an English bandmaster, in others to a German.
Shades of the Past Page 19
