Button Menu

Newspaper Marks 100th Anniversary of Visit by Japanese Ambassador & 1881 Graduate Sutemi Chinda

Newspaper Marks 100th Anniversary of Visit by Japanese Ambassador & 1881 Graduate Sutemi Chinda

December 19, 2014

sutemi chinda2A feature in Pennsylvania's Scranton Times-Tribune notes that 100 years ago today, Viscount Sutemi Chinda, the Japanese Ambassador to the United States and 1881 graduate of Indiana Asbury University (now DePauw), visited Scranton. Chinda attended the annual dinner of the New England Society as a guest of Congressman W.D.B. Ainey.

The paper notes, "Doing a little research,  it turns out the he attended and graduated from DePauw University in  Greencastle, Ind. He would go on to serve in the Japanese foreign service serving as ambassador to Great Britain, Germany and the United States. Only being in the post of Ambassador to the United Sates few weeks in 1912, Viscount Chinda and his wife, the Viscountess Iwa, were on hand in Washington, D.C. for the planting of the Cherry Trees along the Tidal Basin.  The Viscountess Iwa and First Lady Helen Taft planted the first two trees that have now grown into the National Cherry Blossom Festival in our nation’s capital. The trees were a gift to Washington D.C. from the Mayor of Tokyo, Yukio Ozaki."

Read more at the Times-Tribune's website.

The article which was published on December 19, 1914 appears at left.

A March 2010 Washington Post story detailed the role of Sutemi Chinda in creating what is now known as the National Cherry Blossom Festival.  

Ambassador Chinda, who also earned a master's degree from DePauw in 1884, died in 1929.

Learn more about the University's first Japanese students in DePauw: A Pictorial History.

Back