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13 Chapter 1 Meiji Machines First Machines In 1841 five fishermen were caught in a storm and shipwrecked on a small island more than two hundred miles from their home in Japan. Close to starvation, they were rescued six months later by an American whaler and brought to Hawaii.The youngest of the group, age fourteen and possessed only of the given name ManjirO, stood out as curious and smart. He was befriended by the ship’s captain, and in the spring of 1843 he was brought for a proper Christian education to Fairhaven, Massachusetts , next to the whaling port of New Bedford, and renamed John Manjiro . After his schooling, this extraordinary young man embarked on a three-year voyage on a whaling ship, followed by a gold-rush journey to California, before he returned to Japan in 1851.1 In the early years of Japan’s famous“opening”to the West in the 1850s and ’60s, Manjiro’s mix of experience and talent allowed him to play a fascinating minor role in Japan’s relations with the United States. His facility with English and his knowledge of American customs and technology won him a position as advisor-interpreter on the first official Japanese mission to the United States, undertaken in 1860 by the Tokugawa regime to ratify the trade treaty earlier negotiated by the American envoy Townsend Harris. One episode in that journey neatly represents the spirit of an era of extraordinary fascination (mixed, to be sure, with fear) about the outside world, especially the world of the “barbarians” from across the sea. Several members of the mission found their way to the laundry room of their hotel in Washington, D. C. A drawing in Frank Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper (figure 1) captured the “curiosity of the Japanese at witnessing the girl working one of Wheeler and Wilson’s sewing machines in Willard’s Hotel laundry,” vividly depicting a time when even proud samurai were willing to poke around the backstage of their lodgings, and when Americans were no less curious about their visitors . The accompanying article noted that “their curiosity was greatly excited, and their inspection was close and minute into the modus operandi of that wonderful machine, . . . and it was understood that one of Wheeler and Wilson’s sewing machines would be prominent among the most valued articles they would take back with them to Japan.”2 Manjiro was not among these men.After crossing the Pacific, his compatriots grew suspicious that Manjiro was spying for the Americans, and they left him in San Francisco when they continued east. It is not known whether any of these curious travelers actually brought home a sewing machine, but we do know that Manjiro was no less excited by this mechanical wonder; while awaiting the delegation’s return to San Francisco, he bought a sewing machine to bring home to his mother.3 Contrary to popular belief in Japan, this was probably not the first sewing machine to enter the archipelago. Documentary evidence suggests that Townsend Harris presented a sewing machine as a gift to the shogun’s wife early in 1858.4 It is virtually certain that some of the Westerners coming to Japan in 1859 to take up residence in the treaty ports brought the machine with them as well.Woodblock prints from the early 1860s that depict treaty-port life show large-nosed Western seamstresses serving the foreign community with sewing machines (figure 2). But Manjiro ’s sewing machine was certainly the first to find its way into an ordinary Japanese home. (More precisely, it was the first to be turned away from a home.) Manjiro’s extraordinary story helped to establish a narrative of Japanese -American relations as a history of uplift and enlightenment featuring generous American tutors and eager Japanese tutees. It also exempli fies a process explored throughout this book: the transport, together with goods and technology, of new ways of life—and new ideas about daily life—in a world of two-way but asymmetrical exchange. Why did Manjiro bring back this machine? At first glance the answer is simple: filial piety. But while such a sentiment was surely part of the story, a fuller and more interesting answer must recognize the modern spin he would have given to this time-honored concept. Manjiro returned from the United States in 1851 with a deep understanding of industrial 14 | Singer in Japan [18.118.200.136] Project MUSE (2024-04-20 01...

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