The correction: The train trip that produced the wonderful little graphics featured here yesterday was in September 1936, rather than 1937, according to several letters written by Professor Carey D. Miller during and after the trip.
The addition: Three more of those wonderful advertising cards, including the one shown here, turned up yesterday as I made another pass through several file folders of miscellaneous materials. I’ve added them to yesterday’s image gallery. Just click on the image to see all twelve images. Hopefully, a helpful reader will step forward with quick translations of the latest three.
The handwritten letters from Professor Miller fill in the background of the flyers and the trip.
The first letter is dated September 11, 1936, “Enroute Morioka-Tokyo”, written on stationary of the Sapporo Grand Hotel.
We are returning from a 2 day visit to Sapporo in Hokaido where we went to see the university and experimental work they are doing & to see the type of country as compared with the southern part that we shall see later. We haven’t been here a week yet but feel that we have seen quite a bit of Japan.
Miller was traveling to Morioka and then on to Tokyo.
She went on to describe the little information cards.
I thought you and the other girls who read Japanese might be entertained with these little slips that the girls from the dining car handed out to us on the way to Sapporo from Hakodate. I think they are very artistic & even if we couldn’t read them we managed to get some good.
Miller wrote another note after arriving in Tokyo.
We had a thrilling time in Morioka. Mrs. Sugino took us out to a country village. We met a number of interesting people & many fascinating things we could not have seen without the entries which her work and acquaintances there afforded.
I previously had posted photographs Miller took while in Furudate Village near Morioka, mistakenly dated 1937. Now I’ll have to go back and correct the dates based on this additional information.
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The card in today’s post seems to be one that would be handed to someone when a table becomes available in a train dining car. It’s from the Mikado Shokudo, or Mikado Dining Hall (or Room) and is written in a rather inexperienced hand.
It says that a table is ready now, and directs the customer to the dining car in the middle of the train. The right side is all the polite stuff one has to say in Japanese before saying anything of substance. For example, it says, Sorry to have kept you waiting, even though the customer may not have been waiting at all. It’s formulaic.