77 Samurai Japans First Embassy to America by Lewis Bush 1968 First Edition Illustrated Hardcover in Original Dust Jacket with Map Endpapers

77 Samurai Japans First Embassy to America by Lewis Bush 1968 First Edition Illustrated Hardcover in Original Dust Jacket with Map Endpapers

<Condition is Good+ as Pictured> (normal wear with markings, age appropriate toning to interior pages, a few page corners were folded, slightly bumped/rubbed corners, visible edge-wear) size is approximately 8.5” x 6.25”

—BASED ON THE BOOK BY ITSURO HATTORI—

—In 1860 the Japanese shogunate took the unprecedented step of sending an embassy to the United States. Its purpose was the exchange of ratifications of the treaty of amity and commerce that had been signed two years earlier between the two powers and that finally opened Japan to the rest of the world after over two centuries of self-imposed isolation. The embassy of seventy-seven persons was drawn from Japan's samurai class and headed by two principal ambassadors, Shinmi and Muragaki, and a high-ranking censor, Oguri.

The period was marked by internal turbulence in both America and Japan. The early 1860's were to see the domestic crises that preceded Lincoln's election to the presidency and the secession of the southern states, while in Japan the civil conflicts that were to set the stage for the overthrow of the Tokugawa shogunate, continued unchecked, For the American people, however, the embassy afforded a chance to lift a corner of the veil of mystery that had shrouded Japan from the West-the first of a series of encounters that was to have a profound influence on the course of American history. And what an encounter it was!

Contemporary newspaper accounts reported the envoys' visit to New York as "a scene of festivity altogether unparalleled in the history of the city." The reaction was much the same at every stage of the embassy's triumphant progress; the rituals the Japanese were subjected to inspired Muragaki at one point to note in his diary that "these foreigners did not earn their name of barbarians for nothing." This book is the first comprehensive reconstruction of this important incident in the relations between Japan and the United States. The authors have drawn heavily upon Muragaki's diary-without doubt the most interesting of the journals kept during the trip—and the Japanese and American official reports. But 77 Samurai is more than a record of the embassy alone. Lewis Bush has researched and written an introductory chapter and has included other material heretofore available only in the rare pamphlets and newspapers of the day, providing a penetrating, often amusing, yet always authoritative account of those first important years when the peoples of two such differing cultures struggled to find a common meeting ground. Accompanying the text are numerous illustrations that graphically recall this interesting period in the annals of both nations.

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