Japanese Open Tea Pavilion in Seattle

Hundreds of Seattle residents responded yesterday afternoon to invitations from the Japan Central Tea Association to attend the opening of the Japanese Tea Pavilion at Fifth Avenue and University Street. Among the distinguished Japanese guests was Gohei Matsuura, M.P., of Tokyo, and special commissioner of the association to America.

Matsuura made Seattle the objective point of a tour at this time in order to be present at yesterday's opening ceremonies, it being the policy of the Japan Central Tea Association to erect one of these pavilions in some large American city each year. This is the third consecutive year that the Pacific Coast has thus been favored.

Seattle's Japanese tea pavilion occupies a ground space of 153 by 73 feet and a basement space of 118 by 23 feet in the Women's University Club Building. The buildings, designed and constructed wholly by Japanese, express artistic ideas of the Orient in simple lines and harmonious colors, which, with native serving maids in rich Japanese costumes, brings to the heart of busy Seattle a breath of the land of perpetual blossom and sunshine. The grounds are laid out in a miniature park and water garden, garnished with Japanese shrubbery.

The object of this tea pavilion is to serve as an exposition of Japanese teas, and the association promoting it is formed of all the tea growers and merchants of Japan, operating under auspices of the Japanese government. It is an exact duplicate of the one operated at San Francisco during the exposition by this association, and is open to the public at all hours of the day. Iwao Nishi, a Japanese of high attainments in English education, is the manager.