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Diplomats and Poets: "Power and Perceptions" in American Encounters with Japan, 1860
DAVID SCOTT
Brunel University
Over sea, hither from Niphon come,
Courteous, the Princes of Asia, swart-cheek'd princes,
First-comers, guests, two-sworded princes,
Lesson-giving princes, leaning back in their open barouches,
bare-headed, impassive,
This day they ride through Manhattan.1
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| With these words, Walt Whitman's "A Broadway Pageant" started its description of the Japanese embassy, then visiting the United States in 1860. For Americans, Japan indeed represented "a civilization profoundly unlike their own."2 Charles Haswell later recalled "the novelty to [Americans], in that day, of things Japanese and the first appearance here of representatives of that ancient empire ... the sense of absolute strangeness which this meeting with Japanese civilization imposed upon our most accomplished citizens in 1860."3 Whitman's literary style was typically soaring and multilayered, but it is not the focus of this study, which instead looks at two connected themes applicable to the 1860 events highlighted by him and others. One is the role of perceptions (also misperceptions) and "images" between countries. This has become a general concern of international relations "constructivism" theory.4 It has also been stimulated by scholars such as Akira Iriye and his "inner history" of "relations ... across the Pacific."5 Second is civilizational encounter, a theme made famous elsewhere by Samuel P. Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations (1997) thesis. In 1860, the Pacific was the avenue bringing the East (Japan) to the West (the United States) and with it, issues of "geopolitics and geoculture," international relations "culture and identity."6 |
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Whitman's observations in "A Broadway Pageant" followed the envoys ("guests," verse 3) from Japan headed by Shimmi Masaoki, Lord of Bujen. They had just crossed the Pacific in the USN Powhatan (skippered by James Johnston) and in their own vessel the Kanrin Maru to formally seal the 1858 "Harris" Treaty at the White House. The subsequent Japanese processional "pageant" on 16 June down New York's Broadway formed the other ceremonial high point of their visit to America. Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper (23 June) matched Whitman's verses with its own visual portrayal of the massed ranks of that parade. The New York Times (16 June) forecast that it would "probably form one of the most novel and imposing spectacles ever witnessed in this City." Its front page (18 June) proclaimed, "the procession was one of the finest displays of the kind ever witnessed in the City," a "sea of humanity" of around half-a-million New Yorkers. For Whitman, "million-footed Manhattan, unpent, descends to its pavements ... I too, arising, answering, descend to the pavements, merge with the crowd, and gaze with them" ("A Broadway Pageant," verses 11, 22). |
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