A JAPANESE ORATOR.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XVLI, Issue 13, 27 September 1911, Page 7

A JAPANESE ORATOR.

A PEACE EMISSARY FOR NEW ZEALAND.' KIYO IN UI AND HIS WORK. LONDON. August 18. New Zealand is to receive a visit, about April of next year, from a man of un usual and interesting personality—Kiyo Sue Inui, a young Japanese orator, who is making a life work of the study aiid practical working of peace. He undertakes the present world's tour as a delegate from the Japanese Peace Society and the Great Lakes International Arbitration .Society, which has its headquarters at Michigan. Of the latter he is vice-presi-dent.

Mr. Inui, who graduated in literature from the University of Michigan, and then took up the study of law, anil who was the winner in 1906, of the great National Contest that is held every year in the united universities of America, has attained his ambition by no easy methods. He was born near a small town called Kiobc, in Southern Japan, and received Lis education at a missionary school. There he became interested in Western culture, and decided by hook or by crook to finish his education in America. At 17 he set out on his quest, determined to earn his way through college. His first position was that of an office boy. From that he received a place in a university man’s household, still as a servant, and from there he took up lecturing, being mainly interested all the time in instituting closer relations and better understanding between the East and West. When he had made sufficient money to enable him to take up a university course and had won the oratorical contest, the young Japanese was made a members of the Board of Lectureship of the American Peace Society.

Later he became the first secretary of a movement that to-day has grown to unexpectedly" enormous proportions, viz., the Association of Cosmopolitan Clubs, an institution supported mainly by university- students in several parts of the world, with the object of furthering peace and good fellowship between men of all countries. So well supported is this society in America that two giant club houses have recently been built 1 y the students—that at the University of Illinois costing £16,00C. and that at Cornell University £10,090.’

There is a chapter in connection with the movement at Oxford University. Debates and lectures dealing with relations between the Occident and Orient take place at the various university centres on such questions as colour and race problems, etc., with an idea of starting practical work on the subjects, and separate nights are given to various conn tries. There is, for instance, an English night, a Chinese, American. Japanese, etc.

After attending, as a delegate, the Peace Conference to be held in Rome next month, Mr. Inui leelures in this country, then on the Continent, before going to Japan, and after Japan he proceeds to the Philippine Islands. In Australia and New Zealand he hopes to spend April, May, and possibly June of next year.

In person the young orator—Mr. Inui is now 28 years of age—is small and boyish-looking, with a strong and pleasant voice. He is full of humour of a droll, yet vivacious llavour, and has U, grasp of the Eastern question, with its economic. religious, and educational problems, that is both comp.rehens : ve and accurate, and that will undoubtedly win him many friends in New Zealand. He greatly looks forward to visiting the Dominion and studying at first hand its advanced legislation.