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Lot 115
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The First Japanese Mission to the US in 1860 - Fascinating Collection
The First Japanese Mission to the US in 1860 - Fascinating Collection
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Description:

Japan

The First Japanese Mission to the US in 1860 - Fascinating Collection

 

Collection of Autographs, in both Japanese and English of Members of the 1860 Japanese Mission to the United States. Collection includes separate sheets with signatures of the three principal envoys, a single sheet with autographs of the same three envoys, and separate slips with the autograph of the Secretary of the Embassy and “Tommy.” Also includes an 1873 Autograph Letter Signed by Count di Cesnola and the 1911 signature of “Count Togo,” the hero of the Russo-Japanese War, 1860-1911. 7 pp., 5" x 8" to 6" x 8.875", minor browning. Letter and three slips pasted to backing pages from autograph volume.

 

Excerpts:

“Autographs of the members of the Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860. Written for this book, when the Embassy was at Philadelphia.”

“Autograph of the Secretary of the Embassy.”

“Autograph of ‘Tommy’, who accompanied the Embassy.”

[Beneath Autograph Letter Signed, January 31, 1873: “Count di Cesnola, General in the American Army during the War of Rebellion; Consul at Cyprus; Explorer of the antiquities of that island and founder of the Cesnola Collection. Written to C.E.S.”

[Beneath autograph of “Count Togo / August 14th 1911”: “The hero of the Russo-Japanese War. Written for Margery A. Stevens on his way home to Japan from George V’s Coronation. Given at Hotel Knickerbocker N.Y. Admiral Togo.”

 

Historical Background

The United States and Japan signed a Treaty of Amity and Commerce in July 1858 on the deck of the USS Powhatan in Tokyo Bay. The treaty was the work of U.S. envoy Townsend Harris, who had negotiated with the Tokugawa shogunate. The treaty opened the ports of Kanagawa and four other cities to foreign trade and allowed U.S. citizens to reside in those cities.

 

The Tokugawa shogunate dispatched the Japanese Embassy to the United States in 1860 to ratify the treaty. The delegation consisted of three samurai officials—Ambassador Shimmi Buzen-no-Kami, Vice-Ambassador Muragaki Awaji-no-Kami, and Observer Oguri Bungo-no-Kami—and more than seventy others, including treasury officers, foreign affairs officers, inspectors, secretaries, interpreters, physicians, and servants. Accompanied by the Japanese warship, the Kanrin Maru, the embassy traveled aboard the USS Powhatan, which the Kanrin Maru escorted. After a stop in Hawaii, the delegation arrived in San Francisco, where they stayed for one month before traveling to Panama, where they crossed the isthmus to the Atlantic Ocean. The USS Roanoke took the delegation of seventy-seven to Washington, D.C., where they met President James Buchanan several times between May 17 and June 5. They also visited Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York City before leaving on June 30 aboard the USS Niagara, which crossed the Atlantic and Indian oceans to return the delegation to Tokyo Bay on November 8, 1860, completing their circumnavigation of the world. Despite rising sectional differences, Congress appropriated $50,000 for expenses in hosting the visiting Japanese envoys.

 

Among the most popular of the delegation was seventeen-year-old interpreter Tateishi Onojiro, who became known popularly as “Tommy” (after his childhood name of Tamehachi). Unlike most of the delegation, who remained expressionless, “Tommy,” the youngest member, waved and blew kisses to the crowd, making him a particular favorite. Groups of women gathered outside Willard’s Hotel in Washington, chanting “Tommy, Tommy,” until admitted to the envoys’ suite, where Tommy entertained them with simple magic tricks. In New York City, Walt Whitman penned a poem about the visit, and someone composed a “Tommy Polka.”

 

Luigi Palma di Cesnola (1832-1904) was born near Turin, Italy and joined the Sardinian army at age 15 to fight in the First Italian War of Independence. He later served with the British Army in the Crimean War before immigrating to the United States in 1858. After teaching Italian and French, he married Mary Isabel Reid in February 1861 and opened a private military school for officers. He became a colonel in the 4th New York Cavalry and was wounded and taken prisoner battle in June 1863, for which he later received the Medal of Honor. Released from Libby Prison early in 1864 in a prisoner exchange, he went on to serve in the Wilderness and Petersburg campaign. After the war, he served as U.S. consul at Larnaca in Cyprus from 1865 to 1877. He carried out excavations there and discovered large numbers of antiquities, which the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York purchased in 1872. Di Cesnola served as the first director of the Museum from 1879 until his death and wrote books about the collection and Cyprus.

 

Togo Heihachiro (1848-1934) was born in Kagoshima, Japan, to a samurai and district governor. Educated as a samurai warrior, Togo enlisted in the navy at the age of 17. He served in the Boshin War, a civil war in Japan between supporters of the Tokugawa shogunate and those favoring a return of the Imperial Court. After the war, Togo studied English in the port city of Yokohama. After studying at the Imperial Japanese Navy Training School, Togo was one of a dozen officer cadets to travel to Britain for further study. He lived and studied there for seven years. He returned to Japan in 1878 and commanded ships in the First Sino-Japanese War of 1894-1895. At the beginning of the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905), the Navy Minister appointed Togo as Commander-in-Chief of the Imperial Japanese Navy. In May 1905, he commanded the Japanese forces that destroyed the Russian Navy’s Baltic Fleet at the pivotal Battle of Tsushima. In 1907, he was given the title of hakushaku (Count) under the Kazoku peerage system. In 1911, Togo returned to England for the first time in more than thirty years for the coronation of King George V. A series of awards and titles made him Japan’s most decorated naval officer ever.

 

It is unclear who collected the original signatures in 1860, but the 1873 letter was written to the Rev. C. Ellis Stevens, and his daughter Margery A. Stevens added the “Count Togo” autograph in 1911.

 

C. Ellis Stevens (1853-1906) was born in Boston and studied at the University of Pennsylvania and at Yale University. He graduated in 1875 from the Berkeley Divinity School in Middletown, Connecticut. He served as pastor of two Protestant Episcopal parishes in Brooklyn, and from 1890 to 1904, was the rector of Christ Episcopal Church in Philadelphia. Stevens was an expert in constitutional law and wrote several books on the subject and was an active member of the New York Historical Association.

 

Margery A. Stevens (1879-1956) was born in Brooklyn, New York, the daughter of Rev. C. Ellis Stevens. In September 1913, Margery Stevens married Albert E. Taylor in Connecticut.

 

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