6 thoughts on “Heber J. Grant’s Japanese Business Card, 1901”

1. That is cool. I never thought of putting my picture on a business card.Can anyone here read the text?

2. I wrote most of this on Facebook already, but here goes:

   In the upper left is the name of the church, with “Jesus Christ” written in Kanji and “Latter-day Saints” written phonetically, sort of.

   In the center is Elder Grant’s title: Senkyoshi, or missionary. And then his name written phonetically.

   On the right is his hometown, Salt Lake written phonetically followed by “shi”–the word for city. And then what seems to be the “United States of North America”–literally North Rice United States Country.

   Even now the Japanese call the US Beikoku–Rice Country. Apparently, that has nothing to do with rice, and a lot more to do with the way the character is pronounced. Back in the olden days, the Japanese were more likely to write out some foreign words, such as names of countries, using kanji, rather than katakana, the phonetic script that is used more often today for foreign words. The second syllable of America, written out that way, was “mei,” another reading of the character for rice. Once they started shortening things, they chose that character to stand for the whole word, and we became “Beikoku.” Don’t ask me why they changed from the “mei” to the “bei” reading–that’s well above my pay grade.

3. Thank you, Mark, and thanks for transferring your comment from Facebook to Keepa where more people can see it and where I have more confidence that it will be saved

4. That is fantastic! My great-grandfather Daniel Woodland served in Japan in that era and I’d love to find a card of his like that.

5. anita, I ran a search of my database, and while I don’t have any letters written by your Daniel P. Woodland, he is mentioned in several letters from Japan. Looks like he made a trip back home in the middle of his mission, because most of the references are about his return. There’s this enthusiastic one from Alma O. Taylor dated 11 July 1906:

   “A letter came yesterday from Elder Daniel P. Woodland in which he states that you have decided for him to return to his work in this Mission as soon as some young men can be found to accompany him. This is the VERY BEST news.”

6. This is great. I actually came across this very same card when I was going through the papers of Richard W. Young this last summer. Young was in command of the Utah volunteer batteries in the Philippines during the Spanish-American and Philippine-American Wars. After the Utah units were sent back to the states, Young was sent to China briefly as an advisor during the Boxer Rebellion. After that, his ship stopped over in Japan before sending him back to the states. When I saw this card in his papers, I thought it was cool. Nice to know what it says! Looks like they either met up at some point or he found some other missionaries while he was laid over there.

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