Plum Blossom Fêtes and Japanese Lantern Balls: Narcissa Cox Vanderlip and 1920s US-Japan Cultural Exchange

Abstract

Plum Blossom Fêtes and Japanese Lantern Balls:Narcissa Cox Vanderlip and 1920s US-Japan Cultural Exchange Linda L. Johnson (bio) In the summer of 1924, a crowd gathered on Fifth Avenue, staring as New York socialite, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip, led a parade of brightly-costumed Japanese women, one of whom was conveyed in an ornate rickshaw borrowed from the Metropolitan Opera House. Vanderlip paused theatrically to release a flock of carrier pigeons to deliver invitations to the US Secretary of State and Japan's Ambassador to the United States for a Japan-themed garden fête to be held at her Hudson River estate. A prominent philanthropist and political activist, Vanderlip's fête was to be a fund-raiser for the victims of Japan's Great Kantō Earthquake of 1923 and an expression of opposition to the Immigration Act of 1924 that prohibited immigration from Japan. Vanderlip had honed her skills in events planning, fundraising, and publicity in settlement house work, the New York women's suffrage campaign, the World War I mobilization of Westchester County, and the New York League of Women Voters. Following the war, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip used the skills she had developed in New York political and social activism to promote world peace by leading humanitarian and philanthropic projects to improve the lives of women and children. Her engagement in private diplomacy, sparked by her participation in a 1920 cultural exchange tour of Japan, culminated in a public relations campaign to influence a more favorable view of the Japanese in American public opinion. This study builds on the 1982 biography, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip: Chairman, New York State League of Women Voters, by Hilda R. Watrous.1 While Watrous focused on Vanderlip's role in the New York women's [End Page 409] Click for larger view View full resolution Narcissa Cox Vanderlip Image Source: Hilda Watrous, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip (New York, NY: Foundation for Citizen Education 1982, originally published 1982), 1–13. [End Page 410] suffrage campaign and the early work of the League of Women Voters, I make the connection between Vanderlip's New York political experience and her later internationalist campaigns. Scholarship on post-World War I, US-Japan cultural exchange has addressed only men's participation; it has not included consideration of Vanderlip as a participant who broadened cultural exchange to include women's issues and philanthropic initiatives.2 I use reports of Vanderlip's activities, as chronicled in New York publications, and her unpublished papers, which include texts of her speeches and editorials, as well as her Japan-related correspondence.3 While legislation prohibiting Japanese immigration signaled the failure of cultural exchange diplomacy, as has been represented in the scholarship, Vanderlip presented an alternative, positive narrative, emphasizing the role that educated Japanese women would play in promoting peace between the US and Japan. "Let's Get Through with It Now": Developing Public Relations Skills in New York Political Campaigns With intelligence and enthusiasm and backed by considerable wealth, Narcissa Cox Vanderlip was a stalwart in the New York campaign for women's suffrage and the legislative initiatives to benefit women and children that followed. Reporters for New York newspapers described Vanderlip as "attractive and athletic," with "a crisp and robust manner," observing that she "rode horses and played politics with equal joy and intensity."4 She radiated vitality and enthusiasm, with a direct manner of speaking that instilled confidence and respect.5 An admiring New York Journal interviewer effused, "Her tireless, boundless energy is a constant source of amazement. She reads incessantly … and has a great intellectual [End Page 411] curiosity about things. … There's no denying that the good works she accomplishes are boundless and that she's a champion of the 'underdog.'"6 Born in Quincy, Illinois in 1880, Narcissa Cox entered the University of Chicago in 1899, studying sociology, to which she attributed her interest in human relations and perhaps more broadly, her intellectual approach to social problems.7 Typical of the ability she later demonstrated in juggling multiple projects, while at the university she managed the women's basketball team, belonged to the...