"Thirteen years later, when I called upon him at his home at Oyster Bay, he took up the conversation where we had left off.
"'The last time I saw you,' he said, 'I did not ask you about banking in Japan. Now I want you to tell me all about it.'"
As I was leaving the bungalow in the garden late in the afternoon of the second day spent in interviewing the Viscount, the thought came to me that probably I should never again talk with a man who had lived through such transitions. I wanted a souvenir, and I wished it to be something emblematic of the changes witnessed by those shrewd, humorous old eyes.
Therefore, not without some hesitation, I asked the Viscount if he would be so kind as to put on his two samurai swords and let me take his photograph.
He dispatched a servant who presently returned from the house bearing the weapons. The Viscount tucked them through his sash, and I snapped the shutter, hoping fervently that the late afternoon light would prove to have been adequate.
Viscount Shibusawa, one of the Grand Old Men of Japan, consented to pose for me, wearing his samurai swords
As the reader may see for himself, the picture turned out well. Indeed it turned out better than I myself had anticipated, for besides the swords and silken robes of Old Japan, there may be seen in it a very modern note.