Ohio’s John A. Bingham in Meiji Japan: The Politician as Diplomat

Ohio’s John Bingham was a well-known and successful political figure at the middle of the nineteenth century.¹ Despite losing his congressional seat in the wave of Democratic victories in 1862, he was reelected two years later and became a prominent participant in prosecuting Lincoln’s assassins and in drafting the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. Moreover, 2018 marked the 150th anniversary of his role in the impeachment trial of Andrew Johnson.

Yet Bingham, who served eighteen years in Congress, also had a notable diplomatic career that lasted a full dozen years, two-thirds as long as his better-known political one. In this regard, his career would anticipate a number of later ambassadorial postings of prominent politicians to Tokyo such as Mike Mansfield (1977–88), Eugene Mondale (1993–96), and Howard Baker Jr. (2001–5). Bingham’s nomination to the Japanese post, however, was obtained in the casual manner of America’s nineteenth-century nonprofessional diplomacy as he unsuccessfully sought to trade another nominee, John Watson Foster, the Tokyo assignment for one of equal significance and compensation in Mexico City.²

As minister to Japan from 1873 to 1885, Bingham proved a spirited representative of American interests, yet one with a pronounced empathy for the nation to which he was credited.³ In particular, his support for a restoration of Japanese sovereignty in renegotiating earlier treaties was based on and reinforced by other issues. Guns were one, though far less important than the right for Japan to determine how best to cope with deadly cholera epidemics. On the issue of disease, Bingham brought to bear personal experience, bitterness toward British policy, and a deep admiration for the Japanese as he argued for an independent American policy that promised fairness for the nation he quickly came to admire.

Of the issues that helped strengthen Bingham’s advocacy for treaty fairness, two proved crucial, although historians have largely ignored his efforts in these regards. The first involved gun and hunting rights, an issue on which American diplomats were remarkably sensitive to Japanese feelings. Nor were there any domestic organizations, such as the later National Rifle Association, to lobby congressmen. The second and even more pronounced issue focused on the need for medical quarantine in the face of deadly cholera outbreaks. Notable in both instances was the fact that Bingham’s efforts would face significant, if not united, opposition from other members of the small but feisty diplomatic community in Tokyo. Yet his views were unwavering, and his efforts on behalf of Japan’s viewpoints supported the idea of Japan as a nation of equal standing in international dealings.

In truth, the issue of hunting regulations and gun use arose fairly early in the history of nineteenth-century Western residence in Yokohama and had already been a point of considerable tension prior to Bingham’s arrival in Tokyo. Writing home in March 1871, his predecessor as minister, Charles De-Long, had reported on a meeting with other diplomats on the issue of game laws in Japan. Japanese officials had complained about the manner in which foreigners had casually come to discharge their firearms in Japan and wished to prohibit such practices on temple grounds and burial sites. Moreover, they objected to the carrying of guns in cities. DeLong, a product of frontier California and Nevada in the late 1850s and early 1860s, might have been expected to reject such ideas out of hand, especially since he himself was known at times to carry a weapon.⁴ Yet his response reflected a belief that such objections provided a good example of the kinds of questions “that almost daily arise for some legislation for the government of our people in Japan.”⁵

To a degree, an armed population of foreigners may have stemmed from the rash of assassinations and attacks about which every foreign resident of Japan was familiar, episodes largely from the early years of Japan’s “opening.” They had been especially concentrated in the years 1859–62, when assassins had felled even the popular Japanophile Dutch interpreter at...