Mr. Buck to Mr. Hay.
Tokyo, November 29, 1901.
Sir:* * * I have the honor to inclose a copy of the note of the minister for foreign affairs of this date, in reply to my note to him of the 21st instant, a copy of which accompanied my dispatch of the 22d instant.
In a conversation with the minister to-day, before the receipt of his note, he assured me that in event, though improbable, that the Japanese Government should at any time in the future change its views and find that taxes had erroneously been paid, they would be refunded, and I had supposed his reply to my note would so state, which it fails to do, though the law, I understand, in such cases requires repayment.
The attitude assumed by the representatives of Great Britain, France, and Germany in opposition to the “house tax,” so called, is still adhered to notwithstanding the decision of the Government, and many of their people subject to the tax in Yokohama, as also some of our people, still refuse payment. The representatives of those countries still protesting against the tax has caused a stronger feeling of opposition among some American leaseholders in that city than has [Page 695] heretofore been manifested, though there are a portion of our people who take a different view—that the tax is not violative of treaty provisions—and who have willingly paid the tax. No protests or other manifestations of opposition to the position taken by the Japanese Government, that I am aware of, have been made by our people in Nagasaki, Kobe, or Tokyo, the only cities where there were foreign settlements, though some persons in Tokyo have expressed to me their opinion that the tax was unjust.
I have, etc.,