SEE: Peace Treaty Events
Ryuichi Otsuka examined the wide-brimmed white bowl with a reporter’s careful
eye. For a long time his spoon hovered just above the surface of the thick gray
mixture flecked with pink. As the New York bureau chief of Yomiuri Shimbun --
"the world’s largest newspaper" – Otsuka had traveled far and experienced much.
But he had never tasted clam chowder.
"Good!" he said at last, nodding in approval. "It is like an entire meal."
"When you come back," I told him, "I will make you the best clam chowder in New
England myself."
This first trip was a fact-finding mission. Otsuka came to check out the buzz
on the Portsmouth Peace Treaty celebration and report back to his 10 million daily
readers in Japan. That’s a lot of newsprint. Every day Yomiuri sells as many newspapers
our local daily distributes in two years. Otsuka is taking the pulse of Portsmouth
now, and hopes to return to cover the key centennial festivities in August and
early September.
One hundred years ago the Russo-Japanese War ended here. Some 600,000 men died
in that conflict, nearly equal to our losses in the Civil War. For brokering the
treaty, President Theodore Roosevelt earned the Nobel Peace Prize. The whole world
watched the month-long negotiations play out in the newspapers of 1905.
Today, except in Japan and Portsmouth, the war and its treaty are largely unknown,
eclipsed by two world wars. This year Portsmouth has gone slightly mad with nostalgia
for what was, arguably, the best publicized event in the city’s history. The Japanese
are curious about our little obsession with their war. There is a new theatrical
play here about the Treaty of Portsmouth, four separate museum exhibits, a concert
series, a fancy dress ball, a bell ringing ceremony and a gun salute, a formal
tea and lots of lectures. I just finished writing the script for a walking tour
and a bus tour sponsored by the chamber of commerce. There is a new map of key
treaty sites, a treaty book, a treaty logo and two official treaty web sites.
Although Teddy Roosevelt never came to Portsmouth in 1905, a guy dressed up like
him will speak to crowds under a tent at the annual Chautauqua lecture series.

You can run from the treaty this summer, but you can’t hide. Five years ago it was a very different story. I got my first call from Yomiuri Shimbun back in 2000 after someone there Googled
my web site. Then-bureau chief Masaomi Terada made a preliminary pilgrimage to
Portsmouth to see how we were honoring the memory of this historic event. I toured
him around town. We stood in the rain outside the ruins of the Wentworth by the
Sea Hotel where both the Russian and Japanese delegates had stayed in 1905. The
place was then a wreck. We found a few old books on the war in the attic of the
Portsmouth Athenaeum. The only official notice of the event was a battered plaque
high on the wall of the Piscataqua Savings Bank. With the exception of a small
exhibit in the "Peace Building" at the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard where the Treaty
was signed in September 1905, it was a paltry showing. Since 9-11, the shipyard
has been pretty much off-limits to outside visitors.
But back to reporter Otsuka who, by now, has polished off his first-ever bowl
of chowder, plus a portabello mushroom sandwich, and is taking notes. I am rambling
on about Jutaro Komura and Sergei Witte, the two foreign ministers who worked
out the historic compromise. It was a cliff hanger, and the treaty very nearly
failed.
CONTINUE with PEACE TREATY article
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