JAPAN’S RICHEST BACHELOR IN LONDON.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17780, 25 February 1926, Page 6

JAPAN’S RICHEST BACHELOR IN LONDON.

STUDYING WESTERN HOTELS. SAYS ENGLISH BUTLER IS AN INSTITUTION. LONDON', December 14. Wearing a fawn-coloured kimono, Mr Tokuzhiro Fukuda, a handsome, athletic young man, who is said to be the richest bachelor in Japan, looked on London, yesterday, from the windows of the Savoy Hotel. It was too cold to go out. “ You see, I’ve been working in kitchens for the last 12 months, and kitchens arc warm places,” declared Mr Fukuda to a reporter in a quaint, Japanese-Anglo-Ajmerican accent.

Mr Fukuda and his family—his faitiler is one of the richest business men in Japan—are interested in hotels, and in order to learn everything about the American and European hotel industry he has been working in every phase of hotel life. He has just spent a year in a New York hotel, working his way from the job of kitchen scullion to an important position on the staff.

In London Mr Fukuda has decided to become an hotel guest, contenting

himself with a walk round to meet everybody, particularly the chefs. „ Having talked for a little while, Mr Fukuda confessed that he was feeling the strain of an English conversation. J he fact is, ’ he said, “ I have got to start learning English all over again. People don t understand my American; I know too much slang. Now I’m reading Dickens.”

Mr Fukyda’s admiration of England and English things centres largely at the moment on the English butler. The English butler, he says, is one of the world’s institutions, worth ever}' bit of his weight in gold, and there never has been and never will be anything like him.