RECOLLECTIONS OF FULL YEARS
McIvor had been American Consul General, but when we met him we was engaged in a private law practice, representing the American Tobacco Company and other large foreign concerns. As Consul General he had taken care of the Chinese during the Japan-China War and had sent about eight thousand of them out of the country. He was now representing the foreign business community in its dispute with the Japanese government as to whether or not the property known as the Foreign Concession, or The Settlement, was taxable. This area had been granted by the Japanese government on perpetual lease at the time the first treaties with Japan were made, and the holding of it by foreigners was conditioned on the payment of a ground rent to the government which, it was provided, should never be increased beyond a certain amount. But now Japan was greatly in need of money, was taxing its own people in every way possible, and eventually decided to levy a tax on the houses and improvements upon this land, on the theory that improvements on land are not a part of the land itself. But by the Civil Law and the Common Law the provision in the treaties that no tax should be paid on the property greater than that fixed in ground rent would have prevented the levying of any tax on the buildings because, by such laws, improvements are considered to be a part of the land. But in Japanese law it is said they were not so regarded and the question was whether the treaties were to be construed according to Japanese law or according to the laws of foreign governments. The subject was one of endless discussion while we were there, and Minister Buck had already referred the question to the State Department at Washington.
We also dined with Mrs. Scidmore, whom I was to meet many times in after years. Mrs. Scidmore is the mother of Eliza Ramaha Scidmore, the well known writer about Far Eastern countries, and is, I suppose, the most notable foreign figure in the Orient. She had lived in Japan since the early
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