Annual Report of the ASJ Council for 1994

The year 1994 will surely be remembered firstly for the wide range of countries and cultures covered in the lectures, extending over Sumeria, the Arctic, Thailand and Mongolia, as well as Japan. Another outstanding feature was the number of special occasions at which refreshments were served after the meeting, apart from the regular festivities after the Annual General Meeting. In March we were honoured to have as our guest speaker HIH Prince Mikasa, and in April our former President Sir Hugh Cortazzi took advantage of one of his visits to this country to address us. On both of these occasions members were given a chance to talk to the speakers afterwards over refreshments. Then in May Amway Japan Ltd. provided a banquet to honour the speaker, Dr. Christopher D. Stephens of Cambridge University, whom they had flown over specially to address the Society as a prelude to the series of exhibitions "Masters of the Arctic Art in the Service of the Earth", of which he was the curator and Amway the sponsors; in recognition of their generosity, the Society decided to name Amway a Corporate Patron. Finally, in December, the Canadian Embassy held a reception following the meeting in the embassy's auditorium, at which the speaker was Canadian Japanologist Dr. John F. Howes; then in the same month the Dutch Ambassador, Mr. Roland van den Berg, invited members to the Netherlands Embassy for a special lecture given by a noted scholar from the University of Jerusalem, Professor R.J. Zwi Werblowsky, which was followed by a reception.

ASJ members were also specially invited to attend a number of meetings organized by sister associations: an OAG meeting on February 2nd, at which Mrs. Teiko Utsumi spoke on "Japanese Traditional Workwear (Noragi)"; a meeting of the Japan-British Society on February 4th, at which Mr. Motoo Shiina and Mr. Tadashi Yamamoto reported on the work of the UK-Japan 2000 group; a special lecture given at the Finnish Embassy on February 16th by one of our Council members, Dr. Jason Roussos, who took as his subject the opera "The Damask Drum"; a special lecture meeting held by the Japan-Netherlands Society on March 22nd at OAG House, at which an ASJ essay prize winner Dr. Reinier Hesselink spoke on "The Assassination of Henry Heusken"; and a joint meeting with the ASJ organized by the OAG for May 11th, at which the Chairman of our Organization Committee, Mr. Aaron Cohen, spoke on "Germany and Japan as they were in Tsingtao". We were also greatly indebted to Dr. Hiroko Nishida, curator of the Nezu Museum, who kindly gave special guided tours for our members on March 19th, June 4th and October 22nd, and to Miss Terhi C. Tausti, cultural attache at the Finnish Embassy, who conducted a party around the exhibition of Finnish art at the Azabu Museum of Arts and Crafts on December 17th.

Other activities saw Vol. 9 of the "Transactions" in the final stages of preparation; this volume is to contain the essays by the winners of the 1993 essay prizes, whose names were announced early in the year. The first prize went to Andrew Maske for an essay "The Continental Origins of Takatori Ware", and the second to See Heng Teow for an essay "The Origins of Japanese Cultural Diplomacy: A Study of Japan's Cultural Policy Toward China, 1917-1923". It was decided not to offer any prize this year. As foreshadowed in last year's Annual Report, the Society's Constitution was rewritten to bring it into line with present practice, and printed during the summer with the help of a grant from the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corporation, Ltd., Tokyo, whom the Society also named a Corporate Patron in recognition of their services. This year also saw the completion of another undertaking announced last year, the publication by Yokohama City University of an abridged translation of the history of the Society compiled by Dr. Douglas Kenrick which originally appeared as Vol. 13 of the Third Series of the "Transactions"; the title of the Japanese version is "Nippon Ajia Kyohkai Hyakunenshi".

The general meetings were all held in the great hall of OAG House, except for the December meeting, which took place in the auditorium of the Canadian Embassy, by kind invitation of Mrs. Catherine Campbell, the wife of the ambassador.

The total membership stood at 442, as of December 1st, as compared with 580 the year before. This is a big drop, but it must be borne in mind that the figures always contain a number of persons who are due to be cut off for failure to pay their dues for that year; this proportion was particularly high in 1993, so that the figures for December 1994, compare favourably with the number of members in good standing at the beginning of the year. Nevertheless, this points to a need for all of us to be active in recruiting new members. The numbers of new members in 1994 did in fact show an increase over the preceding year: 55 individual members and two institutional members as compared with 47 and one respectively.

We were once again sadly robbed by death of a number of our members, and notably two who had played a great part in the life of the Society. Thomas L. Blakemore was one of our early postwar members, and, along with Richard W. Rabinowitz, served for many years as honorary auditor of the Society's annual accounts and also played a major role in writing the Constitution of 1960, which, with slight modifications, is the one still used by the Society today. Alfred Smoular joined the Society in 1959, and served on the council for nearly twenty years, from 1976. Others were Dr. Ferdinand Mauser and Canon Paul Masahiko Sekiya, who were faithful attenders at meetings, and Professors Penelope Mason and John Newman. On the happier side, we rejoiced with Joy Lee Fossett and Yuko Monika Tolle on the births of daughters, and congratulated Dr. Jason Roussos on being made a Knight First Class of the Order of the Lion of Finland, and Dr. George Akita on receiving the Order of the Rising Sun, Gold Rays with Rosette.

There were a certain number of changes in the composition of the Council. We were joined by the Polish Ambassador, Mr. Henryk Lipszyc, who had previously served as a special adviser, Mrs. Yuko Monika Tolle, who replaced Dr. Ulrich Pauly as Assistant Treasurer and liaison officer with the OAG, and Dr. Charles De Wolf. Incumbent member Professor Barry R. Duell took over the position of Recording Secretary. The New Zealand Ambassador, Mr. David McDowell, left us in April to take up a new appointment, and Mrs. Tolle also left shortly before the end of December, while Mr. Smoular passed away at the end of November. All the senior diplomats who have been our special advisers consented to go on serving, and they were joined by the Greek Ambassador, Mr. George Sioris, through whose good offices we were able to forge links with the Siam Society in Bangkok and exchange publications. The Council meetings were held the first Monday of the month, except for the May meeting, which was brought forward to April 25th, to avoid Golden Week. The place of meeting in each case was OAG House, apart from December, when we enjoyed the warm hospitality of the Greek Ambassador and his gracious lady.

As in previous years, we were the happy and grateful recipients of generous grants from three bodies towards the expenses of publishing the "Transactions". From the Tokyo Club, thanks to the efforts of Dr. Kenrick (whom we were happy to see in circulation again in the autumn, after suffering a stroke earlier in the year) and Dr. Hiroshi Kida, we received 2,000,000 yen, from the Japan Foundation 480,000 yen, and from the Ministry of Education a grant-in-aid of 500,000 yen. We would like to take this opportunity to express our heartfelt gratitude for this most welcome assistance.

Finally, the members of the Council would like to place on record the debt we owe to our President, Dr. Ronald Suleski, who is now planning to take a back seat after having served a record term of nine consecutive years in office. Not only has he ably guided the meetings with a sure but light hand, but he has launched new initiatives and also personally attended to a hundred-and-one details without which the affairs of the Society would not run smoothly.