Townsend Harris, an obscure 19th century American diplomat who not only was portrayed by John Wayne in 1958 and was a character a satirical Japanese manga-based anime, but also founded what became the City College of New York and is the namesake of a well-known New York City public high school, is the unlikely focus of today’s #stampoftheday, a 4-cent stamp issued in 1960. The stamp – which features cherry blossoms and the Washington Memorial – commemorates the landmark “Treaty of Amity and Commerce” between the United States and Japan, which signed on July 28, 1858 (and ratified two years later).
The treaty was the culmination of a five-year effort to “open up” Japan, which had cut off nearly all outside contact and trade in 1639 after several efforts by Europeans to colonize the country and convert its residents to Catholicism. As I wrote in a post earlier this month, in 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry led a fleet that forced Japan to agree to negotiations to open up the country. He returned six months later and reached an agreement that granted coaling rights for US ships, allowed for a US Consul, and provided for care of shipwrecked foreign sailors.
Perry’s agreement, however, did not touch on the key question of trading rights with Japan which had coal deposits, good harbors, and a prime location on the trading routes to China. These factors led then US Secretary of State Daniel Webster to contend that the coal was “but a gift of Providence, deposited, by the Creator of all things, in the depths of the Japanese islands for the benefit of the human family.” Moreover, American missionaries were eager to come to Japan. Samuel Wells Williams, a leading 19th century linguist, Sinologist, and missionary, for example, noted: “I have a full conviction that the seclusion policy of the nations of Eastern Asia is not according to God’s plan of mercy to these peoples, and their government must change them through fear or force, that his people may be free.” Those views were echoed in 1852, by the secretary of the Navy who wrote that Japan must recognize “its Christian obligation to join the family of Christendom.”
The responsibility for creating these openings fell to Harris, who was President Franklin Pierce’s interesting but not inappropriate choice to be the first U.S. Consul General to Japan. Born in rural New York State, by the early 1840s he was a successful merchant and civic leader in New York City. In 1846, he founded the Free Academy of the City of New York, which later became the City College of New York. In 1848 he went to California and over the next six years he made several trading voyages to China and the Dutch and British Indies.
In July 1856, he arrived in Japan (having been delayed for a month because he went to Bangkok to negotiate updates to the U.S.’s 1833 treaty with Siam). Things didn’t get off to a good start because, in accordance with standard diplomatic practices, Harris refused to deliver the letter from Pierce confirming his appointment to anyone but head of the government, the ruling Shogun in Edo. The problem was that there were deep divisions in the governing Tokugawa Shogunate, whose leaders knew about the forced opening of China by the British after the Opium War of 1840. Given this, most agreed that the country had to open up to western powers. But while some key officials favored opening to the West immediately, others favored a more limited approach that would preserve Japanese culture and influence until the country was better prepared to resist the military threat posed by western powers.
After 18 months of negotiations, Harris finally received a personal audience with the Shogun in the palace. Negotiations then began over the treaty. Harris pressed his case by emphasizing (and perhaps even threatening) that if the parties did not reach an agreement, the Japanese were likely to be forced (by the Americans or by the British or by the French) to open their country.
As a result, the final treaty, which took only four months to negotiate, included virtually all of what the Americans sought. Most notably, it opened six ports to foreign trade, gave U.S. citizens the right to permanently live in those cities and allowed them to own property and lease land within defined parts of those cities. In addition, Harris, who argued that laws of Japan were “very peculiar” and it would be unfair for foreigners to live under such rule, got the Japanese to agree to a system (similar to those put in place by western powers in China) in which Americans were not subject to the Japanese legal system (and instead had to follow the laws of their own consular courts). The treaty also gave Americans the freedom to worship as they saw fit, including the right to build churches for U.S. nationals. The agreement served as a model for similar treaties signed by Japan with other foreign countries in the ensuing weeks.
Taken together, these conditions curtailed Japanese sovereignty for the first time in its history. The recovery of national status and strength became an overarching priority for the Japanese, with the treaty’s domestic consequences being the end of the Shogunate control, the establishment of a new imperial government, and an ambitious effort to modernize and industrialize the country.
Somewhat surprisingly, Harris, who remained in Japan until 1861, earned the respect of key Japanese officials. When he left, a senior Japanese diplomat wrote: “You have been more than a friend. You have been our benefactor and teacher. Your spirit and memory will live forever in the history of Japan.” And Harris seemed to have respected the Japanese in turn. When he left, he wrote: “The people all appeared clean and well-fed…well clad and happy looking. It is more like the golden age of simplicity and honesty than I have ever seen in any other country.” Indeed, on his return to New York City, he continued to live a simpler life, which led one scholar to later conclude that the experiences in Japan “had forever molded the opener of Japan into a hermit” until he died in 1878.
There may be a darker side, to Harris’ story. According to a persistant but never proven legend, he adopted a 17-year-old geisha who supposedly was heavily pressured into the relationship by Japanese authorities and then ostracized after his departure, eventually committing suicide in 1892. The relationship (as well as the treaty negotiations), was immortalized in “The Barbarian and the Geisha,” a 1958 movie directed by John Huston that starred John Wayne as Harris.
And that’s not Harris’ only turn in popular culture. He also was the main character of several episodes of the satirical Japanese manga-based anime, “Gag Manga Biyori,” which ran from 2000 until 2014. These usually portray him as a desperate man with a thick accent attempting to finalize the treaty. In addition, Harris (who is buried in Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetary) is the namesake of a public magnet high school for the humanities in Queens that is consistently ranked as one of the country’s 100 top high schools. (An earlier public high school with the same name existed in Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood from 1904 until 1942).
And that’s the fun of the #stampoftheday project. Until yesterday, I had never heard of this fascinating and clearly talented man who clearly led a fascinating life and had long-lasting, and generally positive impacts, on a host of people from New York to Tokyo. Not a bad lesson for a wickedly hot afternoon.
Be well, stay safe, fight for justice and work for peace.