GARDEN PARTY AT TOKYO PALACE

Press, Volume XC, Issue 27405, 19 July 1954, Page 8

GARDEN PARTY AT TOKYO PALACE

UNUSUAL ATTIRE OF JAPANESE RECALLED The _ visit of a young Japanese student to New Zealand recently has recalled to Mr F. W. Gresham, of Heaton street, an invitation he received 48 years ago to attend a garden party in the grounds of the Royal palace at Tokyo. Mr Gresham hopes to get a literal translation of the invitation, for he has forgotten the exact wording of it. Mr Gresham was married in 1906, and spent part of his honeymoon in Japan. In Tokyo he and his wife had been invited to attend a Royal garden party, but because the weather was unpleasant, the Emperor had appeared only on a balcony. At this time, Mr Gresham says, the Japanese were copying Western manners and dress with more zeal than accuracy, and at the garden party many of the very correct looking striped trousers had green or brown coats above them. The attendants were unhappily attired in silk stockings, buckled shoes, and most of what went with them. The liveliest recollections of their progress to the garden party are held by Mr Gresham. A carriage with six white horses had been sent to his hotel, and as he and Mrs Gresham drove to the palace, they went through huge crowds of cheering people. The same sort of thing occurred on the return journey. In the palace gardens the New Zealand visitors saw a chrysanthemum bush 16 feet wide, with 955 magnificent blooms on it. Even more wonderful, they thought, was a chrysanthemum bush 12 feet wide, with only 35 blooms, but each was a different colour and had been budded to the tree.