Townsend Harris — The Consul Who Negotiated Where Perry Had Threatened

Perry opened the ports with warships. Harris moved into a temple and talked. Two Americans, two completely different operations.

Contents

Who Was Townsend Harris?

Townsend Harris was the first United States consul general to Japan.

What he did is easy to state: he negotiated the Treaty of Amity and Commerce, signed on 29 July 1858. It was a trade treaty, and it went well beyond the 1854 convention Perry had extracted — this was the opening of the country in earnest.

To get it he lived in a temple at Shimoda from 1856, with his interpreter and a few servants for company, and negotiated for close to two years.

He was born in New York State on 3 October 1804 and died in New York City on 25 February 1878, aged seventy-three.

Perry and Harris — the Difference

The two are constantly confused. Side by side, the division of labour is clear.

Perry forced the door; Harris walked in and sat down at the table. From the black ships to the commercial treaty took five years.

Townsend Harris the Educator

Before Japan, Harris was not a diplomat at all.

He was a New York china merchant and largely self-taught. As president of the city's board of education he pushed hard for a free institution of higher learning, and the Free Academy that opened in 1847 became the City College of New York.

One of the starting points of American public higher education runs through this man. A public high school in Queens still carries his name.

He later went to Asia in trade and was appointed consul at Ningbo in 1854. He is said to have asked to join Perry's expedition and been turned down.

Townsend Harris's Two Years at Gyokusen-ji

Harris landed at Shimoda on 21 August 1856 and made the temple of Gyokusen-ji his consulate.

The conditions were poor. The shogunate had not wanted a resident consul in the first place and worked to keep him out of Edo. Beyond his interpreter Heusken and a few servants, he had nobody to talk to.

He stayed anyway. And on 7 December 1857 he entered Edo Castle and presented the president's letter to the thirteenth shogun, Tokugawa Iesada.

The argument he pressed on the shogunate was the Opium War. Britain and France would come with force; better to sign something moderate with the United States first. Councillors including Hotta Masayoshi were moved by it.

On 29 July 1858 the Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed. The decision to sign was taken by the regent Ii Naosuke — without the emperor's sanction, a choice that tore Japanese politics apart for the next decade.

How Much of the Okichi Story Is True?

Harris is bound in popular memory to Tojin Okichi — Saito Kichi, a Shimoda geisha said to have become his mistress.

What can actually be documented is far narrower. Kichi was sent by the Japanese side to nurse him during an illness and was dismissed after a short time.

Harris never married and had no children. The mistress story grew in later novels, plays and films; it is not a relationship contemporary records support.

Townsend Harris's Last Years and Grave

In 1859 Harris was raised to minister resident and established the legation at Zempuku-ji in Azabu, Edo.

The anti-foreign violence only intensified. In January 1861 his interpreter Heusken was cut down in Edo. Other ministers withdrew from the city; Harris remained.

In 1862, with his health failing, he took his leave and sailed home after about five and a half years in Japan.

He died in New York on 25 February 1878, aged seventy-three. He is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, where a stone lantern sent from Japan stands by the grave and cherry trees have been planted. Having never married, he left no direct descendants.

Townsend Harris Timeline

For the officer who came first see Perry; for his counterparts in the shogunate, Hotta Masayoshi and Ii Naosuke; for the diplomacy that followed, Ernest Satow.