4 INTRODUCTION. 



Amid sucli a diversity of pursuits as we have enumerated, a common interest unites all in 

 a common sympathy ; and lience, the divine and the philosopher, the navigator and the natu- 

 ralist, the man of business and the man of letters, have alike joined in a desire for the thorough 

 exploration of a field at once so extensive and so inviting. 



With so much to allure, it is not at all wonderful that the attempt to explore should have 

 been repeatedly made. Scarce a maritime nation in the civilized world has been wanting in 

 effort. The Portuguese, Spaniai'ds, Dutch, English, French, and Kussians have, each in turn, 

 sought to establish commercial relations with Japan. The Portuguese and English have both 

 so far succeeded, that, but for themselves, they might permanently have retained their posi- 

 tions. The first were expelled ; the latter voluntarily abandoned the field. The Dutch alone, 

 of all Christian nations, were allowed to remain for purposes of traffic, and they purchased the 

 privilege at the price of national humiliation and personal imprisonment, for which all the 

 profits ■■>'' gainlul barter offer but an inadequate compensation. 



Limited, however, as have been their sources of information, it is to the Dutch chiefly that 

 the world, until within a very recent period, has been indebted for the knowledge it has had of 

 the Japanese. Nor is that knowledge quite as circumscribed as has sometimes been supposed. 

 Kpempfer, Thunberg, Titsingh, Doeff, Fischer, Meylan, Siebold, and others, have. certainly 

 told us something about Japan. But they could not tell us all it is desirable to know. All 

 were connected with the factory at Dezima, and were watched, of course, with suspicious jeal- 

 ousy. Their only opportunities for seeing anything beyond the town of Nagasaki were afforded 

 at their periodical visits to the court ; and Kfempfer, the first in the list, has so fully related 

 all that an European could learn from this source, that very little has been added to our stock 

 of knowledge by his successors, with the single exception of Siebold. He has collected new 

 facts and materials, and the result of his observations and researches has been given to the 

 world in his "Nippon, Archiv sur Beschreibicng von Japan," (Nippon, an Archive toward the 

 Description of Japan.) While, therefore, it is not quite correct to say that the civilized world 

 knows nothing of Japan, it may truly be asserted that what is known is very much less than 

 what is unknown. 



Notwithstanding, however, the national efforts at exploration to which we have alluded, it 

 was reserved for our own, the youngest of the nations, to break down at last the barriers with 

 which this singular people had surrounded themselves ; and to be the first, in modern times, 

 to establish with them a treaty of friendship and trade which (already copied as far as was 

 possible by other governments) is to form, as we hope, the initiatory step in the introduc- 

 tion of Japan into the circle of commercial nations. 



May we not be permitted here to add that it seems not altogether inappropriate that the 

 United States should be the instrument of breaking down these barriers, and of opening Japan 

 to the rest of the world. 



When, in 1295, Marco Polo returned to Venice from his long sojourn in Asia, he spake to Euro- 

 peans, among other marvels which shocked their credulity, but which have since been fully verified, 

 of the existence of a large island oS the coast of Cathay, (China,) which he called Zqxingu. That 

 island is the modern Nippon of the Japanese Kingdom. He told, also, the story of the indomit- 

 able courage of the people of Zipangu, and related how they had successfully resisted the armies 

 of the powerful Kublai Khan, the conquerors, at that day, of all Asia, and the terror of Europe. 

 He laid before them the ma^.;; which he had made and brought home, with an inscription written 



