The Best Course Available: A Personal Account of the Secret U.S.-Japan Okinawa Reversion Negotiations

Afterword

The history of the Japanese-American friendship, which has gone through many changes, stretches back over 150 years. As is well known, relations between the two countries began in 1853, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry, at the head of an American expedition, arrived in Edo (Tokyo) harbor with his four “Black Ships” and at gunpoint forcibly ended 250 years of deliberate isolation under the Tokugawa regime. It is interesting to note that Perry first landed at Naha (the current capital of Okinawa) in the Ryûkyûs, and when he experienced difficulty during his negotiations, he would frequently retire to Okinawa , from where he would apply pressure on the Japanese authorities in an effort to secure concessions. A year after his first encounter with Japan, Perry was able to reach an agreement establishing relations between the two countries—the Kanagawa Treaty (U.S.–Japan Treaty of Friendship).1 As a result, the first diplomatic negotiations were held between America’s first consul general, Townsend Harris, who took office in Shimoda on Izu, and Shimoda magistrate Inoue Kiyonao, representing the Japanese. In 1858 the U.S.–Japan Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed. This agreement, the result of pressure from the American government, became the model of an entire series of equally Afterword unfair treaties unilaterally imposed on Japan by the European powers. Japan’s entry into the modern world, driven by the principle of “survival of the fittest,” gradually became complete. Two years later, in 1860, the bakufu (the shogunal government), in order to exchange the treaty ratification papers, dispatched a group of about eighty emissaries to the United States, with Shimmi Masaoki as chief ambassador. Japan’s decision to send its first official delegation to the other side of the Pacific to the “New Power of the New World,” rather than either to Asia (to which Japan had long been tied) or to Europe (the cradle of Western civilization) was of major historical significance and had a critical impact on the development of JapaneseAmerican relations. James Buchanan, America’s fifteenth president, welcomed the Japanese envoys in Washington, D.C., as official guests of the U.S. government . With great dignity, Shimmi and the other leaders, clad in ornate silk garments and carrying their traditional, long swords, solemnly marched from the Willard Hotel (one of the capital’s leading hotels) to the White House and participated in an official audience with the American leader. Following the exchange of treaty documents, the Japanese group was enthusiastically received in Baltimore and Philadelphia by a public eager to see these unusual visitors from the Orient. Popular excitement reached its peak in New York, the mission’s final destination, where large numbers of people crowded the streets, cheering loudly. Walt Whitman famously and vividly described this dramatic event: Over the western sea, hither from Nippon come, Courteous, the swart-cheek’d two-sworded envoys, Leaning back in their open barouches, bare-headed, impassive, Ride to-day through Manhattan. Libertad! I do not know whether others behold what I behold, In the procession, along with the nobles of Asia, the errandbearers , Bringing up the rear, hovering above, around, or in the ranks marching; But I will sing you a song of what I behold, Libertad.2 Japan’s proud samurai representatives, despite the coercive character of the very first encounter with America, had responded with dignity and courtesy. Their manner and spiritual outlook was succinctly and Afterword 333 accurately described in the late nineteenth-century work Bushidò: The Soul of Japan, written by Nitobe Inazò, a former samurai and professor at Kyòto University.3 According to Nitobe, the “Japanese spirit” is allpervasive , both in time and in space. Having been opened to the rest of the world, Japan, although a small island-nation, rapidly modernized in keeping with the slogans fukoku-kyòhei (rich country, strong army) and shokusan kògyò (increasing industrial production), and following its military victories over both China (in 1895) and Russia (in 1905), it rapidly attracted considerable attention from the rest of the world. However, modernization did not require the sacrifice of Japan’s distinctive cultural traditions, and given the foreign interest in this unusual, new international power, Bushidò was very soon translated into several languages. In 1905, thanks to the mediation of Theodore Roosevelt, America’s twenty-sixth president, the Russo-Japanese Peace Conference was held in the American city of Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The...