SHIGEHARU MATSUMOTO was born into a prominent family of imperial Japan. His grandfather, Jutaro Matsumoto, was a financial magnate during the Meiji era, and his father was a senior business executive. The second child and only son of Matsuzo and Mitsuko Matsumoto, SHIGEHARU was born on October 2, 1899 in Osaka. He attended the Suwayama Elementary School in Kobe and Kobe First High School. Continuing his education in Tokyo he graduated from the First College in 1920 and from Tokyo Imperial University (Law Department) with a Bachelor of Law in March 1923. He enrolled in the Graduate School of Law at Tokyo University, but his studies were interrupted by the great earthquake which struck Tokyo in September 1923 and destroyed his family home, his library and the research facilities at the university.

He decided then to pursue his education in the United States and entered Yale University in February the following year. He spent two years in graduate school there, specializing in economics, and took summer courses at the University of Wisconsin. While at Yale MATSUMOTO followed his father's advice to cultivate Chinese students as friends, and he "was impressed by their hard work, scholarship, and fine character. It seems odd," he said later, "that my interest in Chinese affairs started on the campus at Yale."

MATSUMOTO was greatly influenced by Professor Charles A. Beard under whom he studied American history. Beard's thesis, "that the central problem in Japanese-American relations was a conflict of interest in the China market," impressed MATSUMOTO and had an impact on his own thinking in later years. Beard, and later Yasaka Takagi, "the father of American studies in Japan," were his mentors and were important influences on his academic and professional careers.

While in the U.S. MATSUMOTO contributed several articles and essays to The Nation and other American periodicals. These were well received and "made me interested in going into journalism in the future," he wrote. During this time he was also "deeply impressed by the building of International House in New York City," and dreamed of having a similar institution in Japan. "Looking back on those two years," he later remarked, "I cannot help realizing that they constituted the major determining factor in my way of thinking during the rest of my life."

After a summer at Wisconsin MATSUMOTO sailed to Europe where he enrolled at the University of Geneva for the academic year 1926-27. May and June found him attending lectures and taking private lessons at the University of Vienna, but a financial crisis at home badly crippled his family's business interests and forced him to return to Japan in the late summer. In Paris he joined his cousin and fiancée, Hanako Matsukata, who returned with him. They were married in October, shortly after their homecoming.

Settling down to life in Japan, MATSUMOTO became an assistant of Professor Takagi, who held the American Chair in the Faculty of Law at Tokyo Imperial University, and helped him with his "Lectures on America" between January 1928 and March 1930. In April 1929 he also became a lecturer at Chuo, Hosei and Japan Women's universities. He continued these multiple lectureships until December 1932 when he switched careers from academe to journalism.

In 1929 MATSUMOTO assisted Takagi at the third conference of the Institute of Pacific Relations (IPR) which was held that year in Kyoto. Takagi was the key member of the Japanese delegation, MATSUMOTO a "very junior staff member." At the conference he met delegates from seven Pacific countries, including John D. Rockefeller 3rd, who was an equally junior delegate from the United States. Their paths were to cross in a very meaningful way over two decades later. At the same conference he met Yukichi Iwanaga, an executive of Shimbun Rengo-sha (Rengo News Service), the government press service that in 1936 became the Domei News Agency. This meeting, too, was to have profound professional consequences.

The following year MATSUMOTO was selected to go to the United States to lecture at the University of California as an unofficial ambassador of goodwill. Several internationally minded Japanese hoped thereby to counter the rampant anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S. which had reached such a point that the Japanese immigration quota had been reduced to zero. However, the project was turned down by the university's Board of Regents and did not materialize.

Therefore when Iwanaga asked him in 1932 if he would be willing to head the Shimbun Rengo-sha's branch office in Shanghai, MATSUMOTO accepted. Like the U.S., and with better reason since Japan had invaded Manchuria the previous year, Shanghai was a "hot-bed of anti-Japanese sentiment." Before taking up his assignment MATSUMOTO consulted veteran journalist Inosuke Furuno on how to proceed in his new line of work. Furuno gave him three principles to remember that made a lasting impression. First, Furuno said, reporting "is a give-and-take proposition. If you want information from someone, you must be prepared to give him information in return. In the second place, always keep in mind that it is of prime importance for a reporter to keep faith with his resources. No matter how badly you want to file a story, if your source says no, you must not file. In the third place, a reporter must create news. Make it your business to know important people, and arrange for them to get together from time to time. You will thus be making your own news."

MATSUMOTO sailed for Shanghai in December 1932. Three months later his wife Hanako followed, with their son Hiroshi and their daughter Misao. Their second son Ken was born two years later in Shanghai. MATSUMOTO set about cultivating as many Chinese and members of the foreign community as possible and, as he said, "attempted to form personal ties with them that went beyond the usual relationship between reporter and sources."

The policies of the Japanese toward China during the next few years were inconsistent because of a struggle in Japan between the civilians and the military for the control of the government. While the foreign office sought through diplomatic channels to achieve closer cooperation between Japan and China, the Kwantung Army in Manchuria as MATSUMOTO has written, was "not only opposed to a policy of conciliation, but downright contemptuous of it." MATSUMOTO believes that in spite of the repeated attempts by the Chinese and by two Japanese ambassadors to find a peaceful compromise, the complete lack of understanding or sensitivity on the part of the Japanese military toward the Chinese, led inevitably to all-out war.

MATSUMOTO's own contribution to the peace-seeking process was not inconsiderable. As one American scholar has stated, "around MATSUMOTO revolved a brilliant circle of Chinese and Japanese intellectuals who sought a basis for understanding and cooperation between the two countries." Kao Tsung-wu (a confidant of Chinese President Chiang Kai-shek), Yoshio Ito, Tung Tao-ning (ex-section chief of Japanese affairs, Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Nationalist Government in Nanking) and Yoshiaki Nishi (the bureau chief at Nanking of the South Manchurian Railway Company) formed a "third force" with MATSUMOTO "to work for the emergence of progressive forces among the Japanese and to mediate for peace." It was MATSUMOTO, according to this author, whom Kao really respected, and "more than anything else it was Kao's trust in MATSUMOTO" that encouraged him to continue to seek meaningful talks with Colonel Kagesa Sadaaki and other moderates in the Japanese War Ministry. For example, when Kao visited Japan in 1938 it was Colonel Sadaaki and MATSUMOTO who "arranged through their wide acquaintance in the political world that Kao meet important and congenial people upon whom he might have the greatest effect."

MATSUMOTO was a key figure in these attempts during the 1930s to bring the Japanese and Chinese together, not only because of his own dedication to a peaceful solution to the war, but because Yukichi Iwanaga introduced MATSUMOTO to Prince Fumimaro Konoye, the prime minister from June 1937 to January 1939. Konoye sought to stem the rise of militarism and the intervention of the military in politics even though his office had no constitutional right of intervention whereas the Chief of General Staff had recourse to the Emperor with the imperial prerogative of supreme command. It was clear that at times MATSUMOTO was coordinating his peace efforts through Konoye and his office.

The peace plan the "third force" proposed was for Japan to withdraw north of the Great Wall in return for tacit recognition by China of Japan's suzerainty over Manchuria. Since President Chiang was considered by the Japanese military as a major enemy, the "third force" discussed the possibility of Chiang temporarily resigning in favor of Wang Ching-wei.

In spite of the continuing activities of those seeking peace, the Japanese army was ranging across north China. As it advanced on Shanghai in August 1937 MATSUMOTO successfully used his influence in a humanitarian cause that saved the lives of more than a quarter million Chinese. He conveyed a proposal, put forth by a Catholic missionary who had lived for 20 years in China, to declare an area of south Shanghai as a haven for refugees. He relayed this suggestion, he said, to a "Japanese consular official whom I trusted, and the plan was accepted by the army commanders." Even Chinese soldiers, once they were disarmed, were accepted within the zone of sanctuary.

Still living and working in Shanghai and also covering Hong Kong, MATSUMOTO fell ill with typhoid fever in September 1938. When he finally was able to leave the hospital in December, events had occurred that in his words, "boded ill for the future of the peace movement." Wang Ching-wei had broken with Chiang Kai-shek, but the Japanese had not responded with an offer to withdraw behind the Great Wall. At that point MATSUMOTO decided to return with his family to Japan.

Back in Tokyo MATSUMOTO became Editor-in-Chief of Domei News Agency—as the government press service Shimbun Rengo-sha, was now called. In 1940 he became concurrently Managing Director. In 1943 owing to pleurisy he resigned the editorship but remained in the latter post until the end of the war. He left the agency after the Japanese surrender to become founder-publisher of Minpo (Peoples Daily), a small daily newspaper which he published until 1947 when he was "purged" by the Allied Occupation for his role as former head of Domei; as such he was considered to have been a major participant in the war effort. With a career in journalism now closed to him, he opened the law firm of Matsumoto, Kojima and Matsukata which specialized in cases of technological induction. Among the firm's clients were such companies as Inter-Chemical Corporation, pigment manufacturers, wanting a Japanese license for imports, and Coca Cola requiring a special license. In this work his fluency in English and his experiences abroad proved highly useful.

In 1951 MATSUMOTO was officially "depurged" and permitted to engage fully in political activities. He was offered, and he turned down, the position of spokesman for the Japanese delegation at the San Francisco Peace Treaty Conference. He was to refuse subsequent offers of ambassadorships to the United States and Great Britain. Instead he devoted his attention to organizing, with Count Aisuke Kabayama, what was to become The International House of Japan.

Kabayama, like the younger MATSUMOTO, had a lifelong devotion to promoting understanding between peoples and nations. These two distinguished Japanese and several of their friends approached John D. Rockefeller 3rd during his October-November 1951 visit to Japan (his second that year) to discuss proposals to establish a cultural center for international seminars and the housing of foreign guests and scholars. They stressed the particular need for such a center for cultural exchange because Japan had been isolated from the rest of the world by war and occupation for the preceding decade.

At the suggestion of Rockefeller—who assured them funds from American foundations would be forthcoming if they organized themselves and found sufficient public interest and financial support—they set up a Cultural Center Preparatory Committee of 35 members with Kabayama as chairman and MATSUMOTO and Sterling Fisher, Managing Director of Reader's Digest, Tokyo, as executive secretaries.

At first the Preparatory Committee devoted most of its time to program planning, but as soon as feasible turned over these responsibilities to the Plans and Program Committee. The Plans and Program Committee included MATSUMOTO among its 17 members. Also serving on this committee was Seiichi Tobata, Professor of Agricultural Economics at Tokyo University (1968 Ramon Magsaysay Public Service Awardee "for incisive contributions towards modernization of Japan's agriculture and the sharing of its experience with developing nations"). The committee undertook to define the purpose, structure, functions and organization of the new institution. Its responsibility was also to find a suitable location and to determine building costs.

The Building and Facilities Subcommittee had concluded that because of prohibitive rents the proposed center could not possibly achieve its objectives without its own building. After considering six possible sites the subcommittee recommended the former estate of the late Baron Koyata Iwasaki because of its size, location and reasonable cost. Consisting of 3,048 tsubo (about 1.5 acres) and owned by the Japanese Government, the property was already landscaped with a beautiful Japanese garden and was located in the Azabu Toriizaka area within walking distance of many embassies and legations and only 20 minutes by bus from the heart of Tokyo.

The International House of Japan (Kokusai Bunka Kaikan) was incorporated on August 27, 1952 with 49 founding members, 36 of whom were Japanese. Of the 13 foreigners, 9 were American. (A decade later its members numbered 2, 143, of whom 1,419 were Japanese, 562 American and 162 of other nationalities; in addition, there were 308 corporate members.) A total of ¥203,116,600 (US$564,210) was required for site purchase and building; the Preparatory Committee raised two-fifths of this from Japanese contributors in order to receive the matching three-fifths from the Rockefeller Foundation.

Ground was broken for the physical plant on March 1, 1954 and the building was officially opened on June 11, 1955. The neat three-story structure with a half basement had an inviting lobby, a library, dining hall, meeting rooms and offices. On the upper floors simple study-bedrooms, in both Japanese and Western style, afforded comfortable lodging for members and guests from outside of Tokyo and abroad. Two separate houses provided living quarters for Managing Director MATSUMOTO and the foreign scholar serving as Associate Managing Director, or later as Executive Associate. The south side of the main building and the houses faced the fine Japanese garden—with a pond, pebbled paths, stone lanterns and stone bridges over a stream, pine and flowering trees on a surrounding hill and a spacious lawn banked with flowering shrubs. All blended to lend an atmosphere of serenity amidst the bustle of the burgeoning metropolis.

In time activities outgrew the first building, and in late 1972 MATSUMOTO and his associates began a campaign to raise ¥1,500,000,000 for a new structure. This time 92 percent of the contributions were from Japanese, evidence of an acceptance in Japan of the value of the cultural center and its program. In 1975, with plans made by Kunio Maekawa, one of the architects of the first building, International House was expanded to its present size. The new four-story wing provides more commodious and better furnished guest rooms with improved soundproofing, offices and meeting rooms and a larger library. The well-kept garden continues to give a sense of space and peace to the environment.

The purpose of International House as expressed in the Articles of Endowment is "to promote cultural exchange and international cooperation between the people of Japan and the peoples of America and other countries and thereby to contribute to the cultivation of international friendship and understanding" This aim is approached by: 1) promoting international exchange of intellectual leaders and creative artists, 2) assisting other organizations with cognate purposes, 3) conducting seminars and public lectures, 4) developing a library, 5)engaging in a research and publications program and 6) maintaining International House as a physical plant where senior students and scholars could stay, meet with one another and with Japanese in their fields of interest, and hold seminars and lectures.

Two fundamental programs were Intellectual Interchange and Distinguished Visitors, under which participants visited for one or two months. Programming afforded the broadest possible contact, and left ample time for observation of social, cultural, political and economic life; it also provided leisure and opportunity to ponder, discuss or write. Public lectures were to be kept to a minimum. Interpreters were provided whenever needed.

The Intellectual Interchange Program was administered by an autonomous committee with Takagi as chairman and MATSUMOTO and Gordon T. Bowles, an American, as executive secretaries. A matching American committee was headquartered at Columbia University in New York City. The American committee was autonomous and separately funded. It helped select American visitors to Japan and programmed Japanese visitors in the United States. In 1961 Takagi resigned as chairman of the Japanese committee and was succeeded by MATSUMOTO.

The program began early in 1953, long before ground had been broken for the building. The first visitors to Japan were Dr. and Mrs. Charles W. Cole, who arrived on January 27 and stayed until March 10. Dr. Cole was president of Amherst College in the United States and was a noted economic historian and educator. His wife was a writer on Tolstoy. They toured educational centers throughout Japan, meeting with colleagues in small groups or on a one-to-one basis. At the end of his tour Cole and Yoshishige Abe, president of Gakushuin University, Tokyo, who had just returned from the United States under the reverse exchange, gave the first public lecture under the Intellectual Interchange Program. Cole spoke on "Where Is America Headed?" and Abe responded with "The America I Saw."

The first Japanese visitors in 1952 to the United States were Abe and Fusaye Ichikawa, a prominent woman political leader and member of the Japanese Diet (Ramon Magsaysay Community Leadership Awardee in 1974 for "advancing with exemplary political integrity her countrywomen's public and personal freedom"). Other visitors were agricultural economist Seiichi Tobata, novelist Yoshiro Nagayo, and economist Shigeto Tsuru. During the first decade 12 Japanese visited the United States.

Over the next 10 years Intellectual Interchange brought to Japan such notables as Eleanor Roosevelt, who arrived for a month in May of 1953 at the conclusion of her term as chairman of the United Nations Commission on Human Rights. She gave two public lectures and held more than a dozen round table discussions with business and labor leaders, politicians, professors, women leaders, writers and farmers. Paul Tillich, theologian and later professor at Harvard University, and Mrs. Tillich were in Japan in 1960 and met spiritual leaders and philosophers and lectured on the relationship of religion to socialism and democracy. J. Robert Oppenheimer, Director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton Unversity, followed later and discussed the place of science in modern civilization. Apart from this program other visitors to Japan who spoke at International House included Prime Minister of Burma U Nu; Ralph J. Bunche, Undersecretary of the United Nations; Jawaharlal Nehru, Prime Minister of India; and David Marshall, Ex-Prime Minister of Singapore.

The first person to come to Japan under the Distinguished Visitors Program was Walter Gropius, U.S. architect, who was greatly interested in the housing problems faced by postwar Japan. He spent two and a half months in 1954 traveling throughout the islands, meeting with architects, public housing officials, the press and the public. Arnold J. Toynbee, British historian, came for two months in the fall of 1956. In 1958 P.C. Mahalanobis, Director of the Indian Statistical Institute and architect of India's Second Year Plan, spent a month in Japan. All met with colleagues and gave public lectures at the House which by then had been completed and had living, study, seminar and lecture facilities. In 1960 Chintaman Dwarkanath Deshmukh, economist and former Minister of Finance of the Government of India (1959 Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for Government Service "for exemplary performance in the service of his government characterized by government service as a public trust"), came with his wife, who was well known in her own right for work with women and labor. She spoke on the status of women in India and he talked with economists and discussed with MATSUMOTO the setting up of an international center in India.

During the first decade six specialized lecture series were established. Japanese Studies was set up (January 1958) to discuss current Japanese problems. The lectures, delivered in English for the benefit of foreign members and guests, dealt with a broad range of topics—land reform, revision of the constitution and reaction to hydrogen bomb experiments by the superpowers. In November 1955 the Foreign Relations Dinner Addresses were begun, at which the speakers' comments were always off-the-record. In February 1957 an India Study Group was inaugurated but was dissolved four years later because of lack of such specialized interest. The Seminar on International Economic Affairs was instituted in November 1957 and appealed in particular to corporate members. Occasional Meetings were held beginning in 1952 whenever suitable speakers were available, and Monthly Lectures for members were instituted on a regular basis in 1955; their purpose was to elucidate Japanese political and cultural values. In December 1956 the International House opened a Liaison Office in Kyoto.

Early on, the International House began to help foreign scholars not under its auspices to meet and relate to Japanese (and vice versa), by making living and meeting space available to them. Between 1955 and 1978 SHIGEHARU and Hanako MATSUMOTO provided "all but parental care for the members of this unique residential club."

By 1967 need was felt for a specific Asian orientation since, "in spite of geographical proximity, Asian intellectuals have taken little action to encourage a free and wide exchange of opinions and ideas on the numerous common problems facing Asia today." With the help of the JDR3rd Fund, and financed and administered by the International House, an autonomous three-man Asian Intellectual Cooperation Committee was set up in 1968 with MATSUMOTO and Ichiro Nakayama, President of the Japan Institute of Labor as cochairmen and Saburo Okita, President of the Japan Economic Research Center (1971 Magsaysay Awardee for International Understanding for "his sustained and forceful advocacy of genuine Japanese partnership in the economic progress of her Asian neighbors"). All three were also on the Board of Directors of International House.

Asian Intellectual Cooperation parallels the broader goals and programs of International House but is limited to Asia. Visitors to Japan, or Japanese to travel in Asia under program auspices, are chosen from scholars in "social sciences and the humanities, writers, journalists, and public opinion moulders in their respective countries, who have national and international reputations or have the potential to achieve such." The selection is made annually by the committee with the advice of informed sources in Japan and the visitor's country. The itineraries and programs in Japan allow for a broad range of contacts, while Japanese visit several Asian states in as great depth as possible, given the lack of counterpart organizing committees. The committee also promotes Asian studies in Japan and Japanese studies abroad. The program is actively supported by numerous Japanese universities and research centers, as well as by similar institutions in other Asian nations.

In 1976 MATSUMOTO visited Moscow and Leningrad at the invitation of the Institute of Oriental Studies, Soviet Academy of Science, and in 1979 he visited Beijing and Shanghai at the invitation of the China-Japan Friendship Association. Exchange of persons projects are now being carried out between the International House of Japan and the Soviet Institute and Chinese Social Science Academy, respectively.

To implement its commission to engage in a "research and publications program" International House began in 1958 to conduct a "Survey of International and Area Studies" in Japanese colleges and universities. With a 1959 Ford Foundation grant, it organized a Supervisory Committee consisting of Yoichi Maeda, Michio Royama and others, under whose auspices questionnaires were sent to 1,000 scholars and 100 institutions. The findings were published in 1962 and made generally available. Takagi and MATSUMOTO served also on the Advisory Committee of the "Research Project on Japan-U.S. Relations" that undertook to analyze the "wellsprings and mechanism of action and response in the relations between Japan and the United States."

The U.S.-Japan relationship was suddenly strained due to the bombing of North Vietnam in the spring of 1965 and MATSUMOTO was asked to address the 28th American Assembly Meeting at Arden House, Harriman, New York, in October 1965 on the subject of the U.S. and Japan. He suggested two causes for strains in the relationship: 1) the different responses of the two countries toward China, with the U.S. refusing to recognize the PRC regime and Japan feeling a positive relationship with China was essential to its well-being; and 2) the deep seated anti-war sentiment of Japan, encouraged by the Allies during the Occupation, which expressed itself in a strong anti-Vietnam War attitude. This address was later printed in the International House Bulletin.

From the beginning the International House has assisted and cooperated with other organizations with similar interests. It worked with the International Law Association of Japan on a study of public perception of the United Nations. It aided a group of economists in preparing a study of small and medium-scale industries in Japan for the use of academics and government officials in developing countries. In 1957 it helped set up the English Language Exploratory Committee (ELEC) whose aim was to improve the methods of teaching English in Japan. MATSUMOTO became a director of ELEC in 1957 and chairman of the board in 1981.

Keyed to the needs of both Japanese and foreign members and visitors, the International House library is a major collection of books and periodicals chosen to advance understanding of the contemporary world. It works closely with other libraries.

MATSUMOTO considers that the library and the publications program contribute in a major way to international understanding. As a former journalist he believes the printed word is the best way to propagate ideals. Publication began with the semiannual Bulletin of International House of Japan (in English) in January 1958. Significant addresses were printed in Japanese in Kaiho (Annual Report). The results of surveys and studies were released and collections of lectures by a single visitor, or by several visitors with similar interests, were published in book form.

MATSUMOTO himself edited and translated into Japanese the lectures of Toynbee, Rekishi no Kyokun (Lessons of History) published in 1957; Indo no Kokoro (The Mind of India), lectures by Nehru and nine other Indian visitors, 1962; Gendai Bunmei to Ningensei (Lectures on Aspects of American Culture) delivered by David Riesman, 1962; and Amerika Gaiko no Kihon Mondai (Basic Problems of U.S. Foreign Policy), talks by George Kennan, 1965.

Besides translating the public lectures of guests of International House, MATSUMOTO has translated or co-translated numerous volumes, notably in the field of American studies. In 1929 he co-translated Three Representative Americans by S. Johnson; he translated and published in 1948 and 1949 the two-volume Republic by Charles A. Beard, his professor and mentor, and co-translated with Takagi The American Spirit by Charles and Mary Beard in 1954. In collaboration with K. Kishimura he translated the two-volume Basic History of the United States by Charles, Mary and William Beard, 1954-56, and the Beard's updated New Basic History of the United States, 1964. He coedited the six volume Genten Amerika Shi (Documentary History of the American People), published between 1950 and 1958, and coauthored Kindai Nihon no Gaiko (Modern Japanese Diplomacy), 1962.

After the death of Kabayama, the co-founder of International House, in 1956 MATSUMOTO edited and International House published a tribute to him, Kabayama Aisuki O (Recollections of Aisuki Kabayama). Most recently MATSUMOTO completed his own memoirs, Shanhai Jidai (My Shanghai Period), published in 1975.

In addition to his writing, editing and work with International House, MATSUMOTO and his wife traveled frequently to the U.S. and Europe in behalf of International House and to exchange views with important personages in world affairs, acting, as one colleague said, "as a nongovernmental ambassador, with the mission of mutual understanding." He also found time to serve as President of the Institute of National Economy (1951-1961) and Director of Nippon Light Metal Company (1957-1975) and Dentsu Advertising Ltd. (1961 to date). He has been Vice President of the National Committee of Japan for UNESCO (1957-1963); Counsellor of the Institute of Asian Economic Affairs (1960 to date); Member of the Board of Governors of Japan Broadcasting Corporation (1961-1965); Chairman of the Grew Foundation (1971 to date); and Chairman of the Bancroft Educational Aid Fund (1971 to date).

MATSUMOTO has been honored both at home and abroad for his work in bringing people together to promote an exchange of ideas and mutual understanding and appreciation. He received an honorary Doctor of Laws from Rutgers University in the U.S. (1966) and an honorary Doctor of Letters from Sophia University, Tokyo (1976). In 1969 his government awarded him the First Class Order of the Sacred Treasure and in 1976 the Ministry of Education named him a Person of Cultural Merit.

In December 1979 MATSUMOTO was presented with the Japan Foundation Award, given by a corporation under the Japanese Foreign Ministry which honors individuals and groups which have "rendered distinguished services in introducing Japanese culture abroad." MATSUMOTO was recognized as "a representative internationalist of Japan who has consistently contributed to the promotion of cultural exchange and mutual understanding with various foreign countries throughout the pre-war and post-war periods." In accepting this honor MATSUMOTO expressed a certain discouragement, noting that in the 27 years since International House had been established, "the people on the International House staff were working in the full knowledge of how little appreciated—and underpaid—they really were." He added that he was still afraid that "the importance of this work is not very widely recognized in Japan and consequently the financial support for it in the private sector has been sadly insufficient."

Besides public recognition, MATSUMOTO was blessed by a long, happy and supportive marriage and three children, Hiroshi, aged 50, his eldest son who has followed in his father's footsteps and is engaged in the work of international cooperation; a daughter Misao, 48, and his youngest son Ken, 45.

In 1980 MATSUMOTO was again presented with an honorary Doctor of Laws by an American institution, Earlham College in Indiana. He had come to know this institution through Gordon Bowles who had served with him on the Intellectual Exchange Committee and was the first Associate Managing Director of the House (1952-1957). The college cited him as "Journalist, diplomat, educator, world citizen, wise counselor of governments and individuals. Respected mediator and warm friend." Perhaps no better tribute could be made.

September 1980 Manila

REFERENCES:

Asian Intellectual Cooperation Program. Brochure. Tokyo: International House of Japan, Inc. N.d.

Bunker, Gerald E. The Peace Conspiracy: Wang Ching-wei and the China War, 1937-1941. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard university Press.1972.

``Honorary Degree Presentation for Shigeharu Matsumoto, Tokyo, Japan, Office of the President, Earlham College, Richmond, Indiana. April 23, 1980.

International House of Japan, Inc.: Challenge, Response, Progress, 1952-1962 Tokyo: International House. 1962.

"Japan Foundation Awards and the Japan Foundation Special Prizes for 1979." F.P.C. Press Release No. 307 (A). (Mimeographed.)

Matsumoto, Shigeharu. "Japan and America," International House of Japan Bulletin. No. 16. 1966.

______. My Shanghai Period. (English abstract.) Tokyo: Chuo Koron-sha 1975.

______. "Response," in connection with the presentation of an Honorary Doctor of Laws by Earlham College. April 23, 1980. (Mimeographed)

______. "A Word on Receiving the Japan Foundation Award." December 1979.

"Twentieth Anniversary of International House of Japan, 1952-1972." November 14, 1972.