Comment on "Ambassadors of Exchange: The 1860 Japanese Mission to the US" article

The article "Ambassadors of Exchange: The 1860 Japanese Mission to the US" by Benita Stambler was both interesting and informative. It also provided many useful applications for integrating this historical event in the classroom curriculum. Stambler notes that "the official purpose of the event was to ratify the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce." This treaty had many "unequal" provisions that favored the United States, including forcing Japan to open more foreign ports, extraterritoriality, and fixed tariffs. In my U.S. History class, this would be fertile ground to discuss such topics as US imperialism and foreign policy, and students might also benefit from linking this topic to Social Darwinism and the White Man's Burden or cultural imperialism (Yes, I know Rudyard Kipling didn't write the poem until 1899). Stambler goes on to point out that the social implications of the Japanese mission overshadowed it's official purpose. The Japanese were received with much fanfare and treated like like rock stars or a circus sideshow attraction, depending on your interpretation. If you look at some of the personal accounts of the Japanese delegates, there is evidence to support both views. Nonetheless, because the mission could be interpreted in a variety of ways, educators can take a number of approaches to infuse this event into their curriculum. Suggestions include:
1. "Casting the Japanese delegation as contestants on a Survivor: Washington, 1860 episode using excerpts from the diaries of some of the Japanese visitors."
2. Utilizing Masao Miyoshi's As We Saw Them to consider issues of race, gender, and politics that were addressed in the memoirs of the Japanese delegates.
3. Utilizing Yasuhide Kawashima's "America Through Foreign Eyes" article in the Journal of Social History to use diary excerpts from the Japanese delegates to discuss a variety of topics.
4. Robert Sandow, of Lock Haven University of Pennsylvania, has a website that details the 1860 Japanese mission. This website is a useful introduction to this topic.
5. The Visualizing Cultures website, which is useful for introducing "cultural stereotyping and intercultural relations" by comparing American political cartoons and Japanese woodblock prints that that convey each nation's perspective on the other.
6. A teaching unit for middle and high school students from SPICE, Japan Meets the West, which also looks at "cross-cultural misperceptions."
7. A look at the differing attitudes of Americans toward the Japanese and the Chinese, as detailed in an article "Samurai in San Francisco: The Japanese Embassy of 1860" by George Hinkle in a 1944 issue of the California Historical Society Quarterly (CHSQ). The CHSQ is a useful resource on a variety of topics linking Asia with California.
8. The Museum of the City of New York devotes a part of its website to the relationship between Japan and New York City, which started with the 1860 Japanese mission.
9. "The American Museum of Photography has an online exhibition as well, Cross-Cultural Camera: How Photography Bridged East and West, that presents lovely tinted photographs of the members of the embassy, as well as explanatory text."
10. Walt Whitman, in his Leaves of Grass, includes a poem called "A Broadway Pageant" that captures the excitement generated by the Japanese visit to New York in 1860. (Wake up English teachers) English and Social Studies teachers might use this as an opportunity to plan a common lesson or possibly even a unit.
11. The White House Historical Association produced Guests of the Nation: The Japanese Delegation to the Buchanan White House by Dallas Finn. Finn characterized the Japanese mission as "a foreign-language film without subtitles" to capture the disconnect between the two groups. There are various ways to incorporate this theme into an instructional strategy.
12. Stanford University issued several publications, including Early Encounters: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860 which presents a cross-cultural themed lesson plan for secondary students, and Episodes in the History of US-Japan Relations: Case Studies of Conflict, Conflict Management and Resolution, which is a lesson plan grounded in a political and historical approach.
13. "The San Francisco Unified School District created an 1860 Japanese Embassy Project in which students created blog posts" based on the voyages of the two ships (Kanrin Maru and Powhatan) that were part of the mission. Students love to be online and blogs based on the diaries of Japanese delegates would provide ample information.
14. The New York press made the youngest member of the group, seventeen-year-old translator Tateishi Onojiro (Tommy), a media sensation and a song, the "Tommy Polka" was made in his honor. Yes music teachers, even you can infuse this historical event into your curriculum.

Keep in mind that this was a transitional period in both Japan and the United States. The United States was embarking upon a Civil War and Japan was transitioning from the Tokugawa period (1603-1868) to the Meiji period (1868-1912). The Tokugawa shogunate saw the mission as a way "to impress the Japanese people with the government's modernity."
edited by straylor on 1/2/2012