The Tigers in Japan

The only Japanese graduating in Princeton's class of '25 was a short, bespectacled cherub whose classmates all called him "Seaweed." Yoshio Osawa pinned the nickname on himself, because whenever he was asked about the exotic tidbits he was often seen munching, he invariably made a kelpish response (actually the goodies were tiny ricecakes sent from Japan by his mother). Gregarious Seaweed won mentions in the senior-yearbook voting for the lad having the Biggest Drag with Faculty and being the Most Frequent Weekender, ran third in the Finest Legs category. After graduating, Osawa went back to his homeland, prospered as a businessman, headed a movie company during World War II. He thrice topped all his classmates as the alumnus traveling farthest for a '25 reunion.

Sis-Boom-Bah! A fortnight ago, nearly 31 years and some 7,000 miles from Princeton, 18 college boys in their mid-50s, headed by Princeton's head football coach and Class of '25 President Charles Caldwell, got out of a plane at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. With this orange-jacketed contingent were 13 wives, a departed User's widow, two classmates' sons. Instead of traveling farthest to his class's 1956 reunion, Seaweed Osawa, Mohammed-like, had persuaded part of the reunion to come to him. He had sent invitations to more than 500 '25ers.

With a rip-roaring locomotive that dumfounded onlookers and customs men, the greying junketeers began their reunion with a rousing "Tiger, tiger, tiger, sis-boom-bah!" Then, starting out in Tokyo (where they lunched with onetime Japanese Ambassador to the U.S. Eikichi Araki, a Princeton graduate school student in 1923), the visitors set out to see Japan. Amidst a profusion of potent Japanese beer, sake, bourbon, Scotch and all manner of native dishes, they saw Fujiyama mantled in unseasonable snow, famed shrines and spas, one geisha dance so laden with obscure symbolism that Host Osawa told his mystified buddies: "If you can understand either it or the program notes, you're a better Japanese than I am!" At the Nagoya railroad station, the Princetonians were greeted by employees of Seaweed's big Osawa Trading Co. They waved a streamer proclaiming: "Welcome Princeton, Orange and Black Brothers."

Brass Whistle. The pace of the tour was killing. Panted Furnitureman Herbert Osgood of Youngstown, Ohio: "The hours aren't long enough." Puffed Wall Streeter Franklin McClintock happily: "We don't even have time to brush our teeth!" Host Osawa lost his voice trying to shepherd his guests; all but mute, he finally bought a little brass whistle to signal moveon times. The week's entertainment cost Yoshio Osawa a cool $10,000. Last week, as the diehard Tigers prepared to return to the U.S. by a globe-girdling route, Charlie Caldwell announced that he and his fellow travelers had anted up more than $8,000 to set up "the Yoshio Osawa, 1925, Scholarship Fund." It will be used to send Japanese boys through Princeton. To generous Osawa the fund was a wonderful surprise. Said he hoarsely: "I was merely trying to repay the kindness shown me in America. Now my American classmates are repaying me for my kindness."

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