BEFORE TELLING YOU about these two remarkable Australians, I should explain that around a hundred and ten years or so ago, quite a number of foreigners came to Japan from Australia, or via Australia. They had been attracted to Australia by the boom on the newly-found goldfields, or the prospects of establishing themselves in business in that colony. But when the boom came to an end, many of them decided to try their luck elsewhere. They looked around and moved on to Japan, which had by then been opened to foreign trade.

Some became very successful businessmen. For example, to name only one, E. H. Hunter came to Japan via Australia, and, as you may know, he established, among other enterprises, the Osaka Iron Works which eventually grew into the great Hitachi Dockyard.

But of the two remarkable persons of whom I am going to speak tonight, one was a natural-born Australian. The other had lived in Australia for forty-five years. We may therefore fairly claim them as Australians. One, a boy, was brought to Japan by his parents at the age of about five years, and subsequently became a famous professional Japanese story-teller. The other a widow came to Japan at the age of fifty-eight with the determination to support herself, teaching music, singing, dancing and deportment.

First I shall tell you about the boy.

Around fifty years ago at the time of his death in 1923 at the age of sixty-five, obituaries appeared in some of the newspapers in Japan and later there were occasional magazine articles in which he was erroneously referred to as having been an Englishman or a Scot. I have therefore taken the precaution of bringing with me tonight a photostat copy of the registration of his birth. I received it through the courtesy of Dr D. C. S. Sissons of Canberra. It is dated at Adelaide, South Australia, on 1 February 1859. The details of his birth were declared to be true by Anna Burnett, who presumably was the family servant or the midwife. It is interesting to note that she could not write, and therefore affixed her mark, an ‘X’, instead of a signature to the Birth Register.

It declares that Henry James Black, for such was his name, was born at North Adelaide on 22 December 1858.