::WORKS::

THE BAKUFU ABROAD

"You have to deal with barbarians as barbarians."

Senator William Mangum of North Carolina, on the Perry Mission

The following notes are simply an introduction to perhaps the best example of the Tokugawa’s effort to communicate with the west. Many know of the Iwakura Mission during the Meiji Era, however this mission in 1860 was in fact the very first and one of the most well documented by parties on both sides of the Pacific.

Often Seen Innaccuracy…
I have encountered the statement that the bakufu mission was the first attempt in pre-modern history by an Asian nation to send diplomats abroad.

The following is a summary of Siam's Mission to Great Britain from pages 632-639 of Hasip Kasat Thai

Actually, in 1857, King Rama IV of Siam (1804-1868, reigned 1851-1868) sent a team of 16 ambassadors and 11 of their servants to London. Although the Siamese wished to send a mission to France, they felt that because the British , represented by (Sir) John Bowring, had entered the country first on a formal basis, it was more appropriate to establish diplomatic relations with the British monarchy.
Queen Victory had sent a warship “Encuonte” (I cannot make out the name from the Thai) to receive and return the travellers. They departed the kingdom on July 24th (July must be a typographical error) and traveled past Singapore and the Suez Canal, arrived at Windsor Palace December 18th and returned home May 21, 1858. Amongst this group were 2 young men, ages 16 and 17 who were supposed to stay and study in England, however their plans fell through and they returned with the elders. The most famous account was written in poem form known as Niraat London (Niraat means to travel from, or journey) by one of the translators who was also the student of Sunthorn Phu (or Siam’s “Shakespeare”). The poem seemed to have been composed well after the completion of the journey.

The Powhatan and the Kanrin Maru
There is much confusion over the Bakufu Mission and the Kanrin Maru, both of which departed in the year 1860! The Bakufu Mission departed aboard the USS Powhatan while the Kanrin Maru was a “ship which had been built for the Tokugawa by the Dutch” (Beasley 67).
The Powhatan departed on -------and the Kanrin Maru followed on-----…..
The Kanrin Maru’s purpose was to carry Kimura Yoshitake a man who could substitute for Shimmi and Muragaki on the Powhatan (mentioned later) should either fall ill on the important journey.
The Kanrin Maru overshadowed the 1860 mission because of its large crew of nine-six men and important personages. Katsu Awa, the “most able [graduate] from the Nagasaki training school.” (Beasley 67), commanded the ship, Nakahama Manjiro the former castaway, was their interpreter and lastly Fukuzawa Yukichi a major social figure in the Meiji era who advocated western learning.
Katsu Awa became ill and did not in fact take the controls thus, Fukuzawa Yukichi’s words that the Pacific crossing was completed ‘without help form foreign experts’ (Kiyooka 110-111) is inaccurate. This was not the first time Fukuzawa would write from the “nationalist euphoria of the 1890s” rather than the “realities of 1860” (Beasley 68).
The Kanrin Maru sailed to San Francisco and headed back to Uraga Bay on May 9 via Honolulu without foreign help this time around.

Reasons for the Mission
“Article XIV of the treaty which Townsend Harris signed in 1858 stipulated that ratifications were to be exchanged in Washington…” (Beasley 56)

Harris wanted the Japanese to see with their own eyes the prosperity and the “might” of the United States so “it would make his task of promoting American interests that much simpler.” (Beasley 57)

“Seventy-seven men strong, the mission’s ostensible goal was to exchange ratifications of the 1858 commercial treaty between Japan and the United States, but the real prupose was to show respect to the nation that had prompted Japan’s reentry into the broader world.” (Huffman 31)

The Travellers
“The men chosen to go were cautious bureaucrats, not obviously smitten by the ‘the Dutch disease’; they were furnished with a staff of inspectors (metsuke), whose duty it was to ensure that the bounds of political wisdom were not exceeded…” (Beasley 57)

“Few of the embassy’s members held important posts back home; half a dozen were teenagers, and most were younger than forty. Lacking many diplomatic responsibilities, the ambassadors were free to do all manner of sightseeing and to engage in social activities. And their American hosts were free to gawk: at their impassive faces, their curious gifts of silk and folding screens, the samurai robes, the swords (two per man), the straw sandals, and the leaders’ stern dignity.” (Huffman 31)

Shimmi Masaoki (senior envoy appointed Oct 8, 1859), Chinese Scholar with no diplomatic experience
Muragaki Norimasa (deputy) former governor of Hakodate Yokohama
Oguri Tadamasa (third in command) was also a metsuke thus he was not to “encourage risk or innovation” (Beasley 58)
11 lesser officials “drawn from departments of foreign affairs, finance and inspectorate; two interpreters, Namura Motonori and Tateishi Tokujuro” (Beasley 58) and his nephew Tateishi Onojiro.
3 doctors (2 from Edo and one from Hizen)
attendants
samurai from non-Tokugawa domains: Choshu, Hizen, Kaga, Higo (Kumamoto), Tosa, Sendai and Morioka

Kawasaki Domin was the embassy physician

“Tommy” the Superstar: Tateishi Onojiro Noriyuki (later Nagano Keijiro)
“The visitor who drew the most attention was Tateishi Onojiro Noriyuki, a teenaged interpreter-trainee nicknamed ‘Tommy’ by the press, who wrote love letters to American suitors and awed reporters with his good looks and irrespressible personality.” (Huffman 31)

“Tateishi Onojiro, acquired a reputation as the darling of the ladies at official receptions and became famous in American newspapers…His willingness to ride on railway engines, or to take over one of the hoses during firefighting demonstrations, was in marked contract to the behaviour…”(Beasley 59) of the others.

“Tommy kept reappearing in [House’s] stories. In Washington, the young heart-throb confided to House his ‘earnest desire to discover a suitable wife in this country,” but the reporter’s story pointed out that when older women thrust themselves at Tommy, he was ‘generally taken with a fit of business.” Two weeks later the inevitable report came from New York: Tommy had “come to grief” he had become ‘the victim of a hopeless passion.’ What came of that passion, House never related.” (Huffman 33)

An Uncommon American Reporter
Edward H. House (1836-1901) or Ned, a musical prodigy turned reporter was not only captivated by the seventy-seven samurai he was the reporter who gave American readers a straightforward and fair introduction of Japan.
“When he learned that the mission had been dispatched, he immediately began work on a twelve-page essay introducing Japan to the readers of The Atlantic Monthly. Drawing heavily on Japn as it Was and Is, published five years earlier by his friend Richard Hildreth.” (Huffman 30). Decades later, the most famous interpreter of Japanese culture, Lafcadio Hearn would find that very article by House in a second hand store and praised this gem which sought to differentiate the Chinese from the Japanese. House’s “facts were generally accurate, and his tone differed from that employed by most Western writers on Asia. Although he assumed that American civilization was superior, he avoided condescension and eschewed that era’s typical depiction of the Japanese ‘as a dishonest, childlike and backward people in need of moral and technological instruction’.” (Huffman 31).

House’s coverage of the 1860 Bakufu mission, would change his life forever. He would later move to Japan, edit the influential Tokio Times newspapers and form lasting friendships with key Japanese and American figures. He moved in many circles in Japan such as education, politics, theatre and music.

What they learned…
The travellers were exposed to not only a different land and culture but also its stereotypes. They “derived from statements by their hosts,” (Beasley 66) the opinion that “blacks are inferior as human beings and extremely stupid.” (Beasley 66).
“What we have in the mission’s records, in fact, is what could most readily be learnt: notes about the size and shape of buildings, an account of life in hotels, some practical information about material things like ships, fire engines, street lights, military technology. There is little about the abstract and the theoretical.” (Beasley 66)

Meeting President Buchanan
House writes, “The dresses of the Japanese were much more gorgeous than any they had previously appeared in. The first Embassador wore robes of blue and purple crape, with richly embroidered trousers of silk.” (Huffman 33)

The Samurai in New York
“New York City gave them a parade with 7,000 military escorts, and 10,000 New Yorkers attended a ball in their honor.” (Huffman 31)

Walt Whitman
Over the Western sea hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the swart-cheek'd two-sworded envoys,
Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive,
Ride to-day through Manhattan.

Sexuality
Miyoshi lists the numerous gifts the abmassadors carried to give to strangers, officials and anyone who rendered them assistance. "The individual men, too, were personally prepared with fans and woodcut prints and sundry items in return for expected acts of hospitality...[footnote] Katsu Awa-no-Kami Kaishu's reminiscence, some sail ors of the Ka nrin Maru took along pornographic prints as possible presents for their America n h osts. Katsu recalls that he was requested one day to appear at the "Consulate" (court?) in San Francisco, where he was told about one of his sailors forcing obscene pictures on a lady...the judge then invited Katsu to a dinner with two or three other judges...the...judges wondered if they, too, could all have a few speciments of the oriental fine art...Katsu reaidly complied with their request. " (Miyoshi 48) To confirm Katsu's story, the Daily Evening Bulletin March 29 , 1860 noted that the sailors were exhibiting books "full of villainous obscene pictures, very poorly engraved at that."

Fukushima Keizaburo Yoshikoto "April 10...we took a walk...we came to a six-storeyed house. It sold liquor, and there was a big portrait of a woman in front. The keeper of the house waved his hand and invited us in...we noticed on the upper floors women of somewhere around sixteen to twenty-three years...the women were singing. They looked somehow mor euncouth in manners than ordinary women. Thus we began to wonder about the place and asked the man who invited us in. He said it was a whorehouse." (Miyoshi 39)

Venereal disease dorve away crew members however Tamamushi Sadayu Yasushige listed the prices of prostitutes in cities like San Francisco and New York "without once confessinga personal verification of such research" (Miyoshi 39). A laborer claimed to have heard from other young men who had sought Chinese prostitutes that "they were no different in character and temperatment from the Japanese whores." (Miyoshi 39)

The Trip Home and the Future of Japan
With their gifts of books, modern weapons, a printing press, seeds books, stereoscopic viewer, a sewing machine, several playing cards and a set of gold teeth they left New York aboard the USS Niagara on June 29th. It was their trip home which exposed them to the plight of China and Britain’s newly acquired colony of Hong Kong. Thus, the travelers saw the real threat, at the time, presented by western powers. Almost prophetically, Muragaki, after passing the coast of Taiwan noted that it should annexed by Japan in the future. While the western powers actually abandoned plans of direct colonization and governance of Japan by the 1870s, Japan did acquire Taiwan after the Sino-Japanese war in1894-1895 .

Bibliography
Beasley, W.G. Japan Encounters the Barbarian: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995.

Huffman, James L., 1941- A Yankee in Meiji Japan : the crusading journalist Edward H. House. Lanham, Md. : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, c2003.
I highly recommend this outstanding book which I still consider to be my key to the Meiji era.

Miyoshi, Masao. As We Saw Them. Philadelphia: Paul Dry Books, 2005.

Pramuanwit, Udom. Hasip Kasat Thai. (Fifty Thai Kings) Phranakhon : Odian sato (Odian Store) Buddhist Era 2508 [1965]

Online
http://www.news.harvard.edu/gazette/2004/02.26/11-japan.html
http://www.cgj.org/en/c/vol_11-3/title_01.html
www.photographymuseum.com/japaneseembassylg.html

Avenues in Research
Etsuko Taketani Samurai Ambassadors and the Smithsonian Institute in 1860 Journal of the American Oriental Society, Vol. 115, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1995), pp. 479-481
doi:10.2307/606225

LT James D. Johnston, U.S.N. (1860) by Kenneth Dobyns
James D. Johnston, lieutenant, U.S. Navy, executive officer of the Steam-Frigate Powhatan, wrote an account of the trip of the Powhatan to open diplomatic relations with China and to transport the first Japanese ambassadors to the United States less than seven years after Commodore Matthew C. Perry forced his way into Japan in 1853.
http://www.myoutbox.net/cajhome.htm

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