1910.] DUBOIS— JAPANESE EMBASSY OF i860. 265 



But we in this day know that the Japanese were not so simple 

 in their natures, not so sleepy and feeble, as the New York editors 

 supposed. Neither did they go away as ignorant as they came. 

 Nor were they so ignorant when they came. Long before Perry's 

 day Japan had had her martyrs to progress and reform. News 

 from the outside leaked in and shadows of western mechanism and 

 methods fell on the isolated empire. Men like Fujita Toko and 

 Sakuma Shuri had telescopic vision and sensitive hearing. So the 

 envoys of the Tycoon knew that there were advantages to be 

 improved in going to the United States over and above that of 

 signing the Harris treaty. They had the penetration to see that a 

 sound currency and facilities of finance were the pivot of inter- 

 national commercial relations. They were impressed with the fact 

 that international confidence rested chiefly on that scientific accuracy 

 which they saw in the operations of coinage and especially those 

 that guarded the integrity of the standards of fineness. The prob- 

 lem which ]\Ir. Greeley saw as insoluble, was gradually worked out 

 by Ito and Matsukata until Japan possessed a system of coinage 

 modeled on and comparable with that of the United States, and 

 resting on a gold basis. 



A letter written to President David Starr Jordan by the dis- 

 tinguished Japanese scientist. Dr. Mitsukuri, in 1900, confirms the 

 trend of this paper as a contention for an unbroken continuity of 

 influence on the development of Japan — in spite of the dismal de- 

 liverances of these American prophets of i860. 



Dr. Alitsukuri says : 



The history of the international relations between the United States ami 

 Japan is full of episodes which evince an unusually strong and almost ro- 

 mantic friendship existing between the two nations. In the first place, Japan 

 has never forgotten that it was America who first roused her from the 

 lethargy of centuries of secluded life. It was through the earnest representa- 

 tions of America that she concluded the first treaty with a foreign nation 

 in modern times, and opened her country to the outside world. Then, all 

 through the early struggles of Japan to obtain a standing among the civi- 

 lized nations of the world, America always stood by Japan as an elder brother 

 by a younger sister. It was always America who first recognized the rights 

 of Japan in any of her attempts to retain autonomy within her own terri- 

 tory. A large percentage of foreign teachers working earnestly in schools 

 was Americans, and many a Japanese recalls with gratitude the great efforts 

 his American teachers made on his behalf. 



