A ceremony at the White House in May 1860 produced unusual attention and approval for its occupant, President James Buchanan, and inspired massive displays of patriotism and hospitality in America’s major cities. The occasion for the ceremony was the arrival of a diplomatic delegation from an obscure Asian nation, its members clad in native dress, baffled by Western ways but determined to fulfill their mission. The military ruler of Japan, the shogun, had ordered them to present their credentials to "his Majesty, the President of the United States," thus formally opening relations between the two countries, and exchange the Japanese copy for the American copy of their new Treaty of Commerce and Friendship. The treaty, the first Japan had made with any Western nation, was a diplomatic triumph for the United States and an unavoidable concession for the Japanese. But the three Japanese "ambassadors" who led the delegation, disciplined samurai, accepted their task with impassive dignity. Little did they, or President Buchanan, suspect that they would become the stars of the American scene.

From the perspective of American politics in 1860, the Japanese had come at a bad time, rather like houseguests arriving when the host is trying to put out a fire. President Buchanan, a veteran Democrat from Pennsylvania, had accumulated problems starting with his narrow election victory in 1856. The next year brought the Supreme Court’s Dred Scott decision, divisively favorable to slave owners, a bitter dispute over making Kansas a free state, and financial panic. In 1858, Buchanan’s party lost control of the House of Representatives. In 1859 the abolitionist John Brown’s abortive raid on the federal arsenal at Harpers Ferry sharpened the already intense national disagreement over slavery. Buchanan’s pleas for compromise between North and South fell on deaf ears, and his position that slavery was morally wrong but constitutionally permissible-states had the right to choose it-pleased neither side. Politically paralyzed, the president probably turned to foreign affairs, and his Japanese visitors, with relief.

Diplomacy was a field in which James Buchanan had long experience and a sure grasp of what his ambitious nation wanted: westward expansion, a stronger international role, and the economic advantage of new markets. As an American envoy, Buchanan made the first commercial agreement with Russia and later in London settled old misunderstandings with Britain. As his political career advanced from congressman to senator, and from chair of the Foreign Relations Committee to secretary of state, he consistently supported opening relations with tightly sealed Japan. This popular policy began with a House resolution in 1845. President Millard Fillmore approved Commodore Matthew Perry’s expedition in 1851. Following Perry’s dramatic opening of Japan in 1854, Townsend Harris, President Franklin Pierce’s envoy, scored the ultimate diplomatic success in 1858. Harris, after negotiating all the way up to the shogun, won Japan’s consent to a treaty of "commerce and friendship." The enterprising New Yorker, convinced like most Americans that to see the United States is to love it, even persuaded the Japanese to include a clause providing for Japanese officials to visit Washington to exchange ratifications of the treaty. As soon as the Japanese named three envoys, Harris, eager to give his achievement the highest possible gloss, reported to Secretary of State Lewis Cass that all three were "princes."

The Buchanan administration did not question their importance. It raised Harris from consul to American minister to Japan (then the highest U.S. diplomatic rank) and offered transportation for the mission from Yokohama to Washington on U.S. Navy warships. On February 13, 1860, the ambassadors and their staff sailed from Yokohama with 50 tons of Japanese baggage (including the treaty in its special box), 100,000 readily negotiable Mexican dollars, and a large supply of Japanese food. Appropriately, perhaps, the vessel that carried them from Japan to San Francisco was the navy frigate Powhatan, one of the steam-powered paddle-wheelers Perry had employed in "opening" Japan.

The Japanese, of course, had no warships, and their envoys were in a position of helpless dependency, but despite this obvious disparity Japan and the United States were equal in their deep ignorance of each other. Consequently, the treaty celebration unreeled for both sides like a foreign-language film without subtitles. The Japanese envoys would interpret what they saw in the United States in terms of their own history and society, the Americans in terms of theirs. The physical distance between the two countries, enhanced by Japan’s rigid isolation since 1639, guaranteed that even in translation the best result would be good-humored puzzlement.

The envoys had only the sketchiest knowledge of U.S. government, much less of the crisis facing Buchanan. The Americans, for their part, did not understand that the military shogun in Edo (now Tokyo) ruled Japan in the name of an emperor in Kyoto. Often they mistook or commingled the two, with the result that they sometimes called the shogun "the emperor" and at other times "the tycoon." Nor was Buchanan’s State Department aware of the deepening crisis facing the shogunate. The "tycoon" Harris had met died before the treaty was approved, and, while the regent for the 12-year-old new shogun persuaded him to sign it, the emperor opposed it. The high-handedness of regent Ii Nosuke and demeaning treaty provisions, which gave foreigners self-government in five ports and regulated Japanese tariffs, kindled deep resentment toward Westerners and the government in Edo. Consequently, the cautious shogunate did not appoint princes as ambassadors but three of its own officials and gave them strict marching orders. They were to present their credentials to the American president, exchange the treaty texts with Secretary Cass, and return home as quickly as possible. To reinforce this narrow objective, the government made one of the three ambassadors, Oguri Tadamasu, the official inspector for the mission-in other words, its watchdog.

Oguri’s task could not have been easy for, to enhance respect for the mission, the government inflated its number to 77. Accompanying the ambassadors were 11 lesser officials and aides, two interpreters and their assistant, three doctors, 51 servants and guards, and six cooks. Curiously, they were a very literate group. Even some of the foot soldiers and cooks were from Japan’s top samurai class and therefore well educated. Though it was risky, many members kept diaries about the unique experience of being the first Japanese (except for a few shipwrecked sailors) to visit the West in more than 200 years.

Thirty accounts still survive in a seven-volume Japanese collection. Since the writers were severely handicapped by their ignorance of English and foreign customs, many of them simply described, or sketched, physical wonders like gaslights, steam engines, and water closets. A few, however, probed deeper and so provide an exotic outsider’s assessment of America in 1860-the president, the government, social customs, architecture, cooking, music, and other aspects of the mysterious West.

Unfortunately, the senior ambassador, Shimmi Masaoki, a high-ranking chamberlain without diplomatic experience, was a scholar of Chinese literature and something of a poet, so his reminiscences are heavy on waka poems but light on substance. But the second ambassador, Muragaki Norimasa, seasoned as governor of one of the ports opened to foreigners by the Harris treaty, wrote a detailed, critical, but often insightful, account of his American experience. Younger men, less conservative and often menial, saw sights the ambassadors missed, and some questioned their government’s view that the Americans, like all Westerners, were "barbarians."

The long voyage from Yokohama to Washington hardly prepared the Japanese for the surprises waiting for them on shore. Once settled aboard and adjusted to how naval officers ate and drank, though not necessarily to what, they found themselves in a congenial environment-the orderly world of military men. Their boredom was relieved by short stops in Hawaii and San Francisco and their first train trip, across Panama to the Atlantic. (They pronounced the three-hour ride swift, loud, and extremely uncomfortable.) Then they boarded a third American battleship, the Roanoke, for the final lap of their journey. On April 9 the Roanoke stood off Sandy Hook waiting to enter New York harbor. Just in time, the captain received strict orders from the secretary of the navy to turn back to Chesapeake Bay. The president and his advisers had decided the capital, not New York, should be the first to receive the ambassadors. To the relief of the Japanese-eager to get to work in Washington-and the disappointment of the crew-eager to relax in New York-the frigate headed for a rendezvous off Newport News, Virginia.

Meanwhile official Washington prepared to receive the Japanese in proper fashion. On April 3, Congress appropriated $50,000 for the expense of their visit. Sailors at the Navy Yard whitewashed the road from the dock to the main gate. As for the president, it is not clear whether he solicited advice from the distinguished American scientist, Joseph Henry, director of the Smithsonian Institution, but in any case Henry wrote Buchanan on May 4 suggesting how to handle the Japanese. Judging from the way Buchanan subsequently handled them, the president was in complete accord with Henry. First, the scientist urged, every effort should be made to impress the visitors favorably and respect their dignity, advice the courtly Buchanan hardly needed. Then, Henry added, we must convince them of "the superiority of our civilization and institutions" by showing them "our science, arts, our arms and our government."

This program blended well with the views of Townsend Harris and the New York business community that once the Japanese saw the progressive United States they would become lucrative trading partners. Thus there was general agreement that the Japanese visit should be more than a courtesy call. It should also be a learning experience. Buchanan acted swiftly on Henry’s recommendation that escorts chosen for the three ambassadors should be "persons of polished manners, of good address and high social and official rank." With the agreement of the Navy, Buchanan chose three men who seemed to fill the bill.

The commission, as it was called, would be headed by Captain Samuel Francis Du Pont, son of a diplomat, descendant of the founders of the government’s chief source of gunpowder, a hero of the Mexican War, and recently returned from the China Seas. He was also tall and personable. The second escort, Commander Sidney Smith Lee, was the son of Henry (Light-Horse Harry) Lee of Virginia, the brother of Robert E. Lee and a former member of Perry’s expedition to Japan. The third was Lieutenant David D. Porter, commended by the late Commodore Perry himself for bravery and zeal.

On May 10, in fine weather, the three escorts sailed down the Potomac on the Philadelphia, a small but luxurious paddle-wheeler, to meet the Roanoke and its passengers. Accompanying them were 16 members of the Marine Band in their red uniforms, Henry Ledyard from the State Department, and the newly rehired interpreter from the Perry expedition, A. C. Portman. Portman was destined to work hard for his $8-a-day. For political reasons, Dutch was the only Western language pursued in Japan, and, since it was the only one the Japanese interpreters knew, Portman would perform the delicate task of translating Japanese Dutch into American English for the next six weeks. When the Roanoke was finally sighted off Hampton Roads, American officials were not the only ones to greet it. The press had arrived. And so began the public success of the Japanese mission. The American newspapers, and especially the new illustrated magazines, seized upon the visit of the ambassadors with their quaint ways, exotic clothes, and association with the rich and the powerful as a story to delight-and increase-their readership.

At Norfolk, the New York Daily Tribune led the way by providing details of how the Japanese left the Roanoke with fond farewells, tons of baggage, and the treaty box. The box would become one of two favorite subjects for the press, the other being a minor member of the mission, the 18-year-old relative of one of the Japanese interpreters, Tateishi Onojiro, or "Tommy." The Tribune correspondent spotted him unerringly. The engaging teenager had charmed the crews on the navy ships. Now he would charm the press and subsequently the American public. He already spoke a bit of colloquial English and had had his picture taken in San Francisco. After formalities of introduction and the transfer of important baggage, including the shogun’s gifts for President Buchanan, the ambassadors, certainly without Tommy, were ensconced in the flower-filled Philadelphia, where they were served champagne and a splendid luncheon ending with a dessert the Tribune reported they ate with relish-ice cream molded in the shape of a reclining woman.

The next morning the Philadelphia proceeded toward the Potomac, and the serious lessons to teach the Japanese about American civilization and institutions began. After a stop at Fort Monroe, where an artist on Ambassador Oguri’s staff quickly sketched the cannons and the battlements, the riverboat stopped briefly at Mount Vernon. The Marine Band played a dirge, the Japanese artists sketched the landscape, and the ambassadors were shown George Washington’s tomb. He was important to the Americans, the Japanese concluded. Pushing on, the Philadelphia arrived promptly at noon, May 14, at the Washington Navy Yard. The band struck up "The Star Spangled Banner," and a 17-gun salute was fired. Then Washington mayor James G. Berret came aboard and led the ambassadors off to meet Captain Franklin Buchanan, commander of the Navy Yard. He welcomed the trio in the name of the commander in chief.

Captain Buchanan, no relative of the president but another veteran of the Perry expedition, was not alone. Since early morning the gates of the Navy Yard had been thrown open to the public, and by now the spectators numbered at least 5,000. Among them in the bright sun stood many members of Congress, both houses having adjourned for the day to see the spectacle. Mathew Brady had set up his camera, and illustrators from Harper’s Weekly and Leslie’s Illustrated Newspaper were waiting to capture Japanese robes, military epaulets, and "the box." Soldiers cleared the envoys’ path to the street, where two four-horse carriages awaited Shimmi, Muragaki, and Oguri along with Captain Du Pont and Mr. Ledyard, son-in-law and assistant to Secretary of State Cass.

Lesser officials took two-horse carriages. The clerks and servants took omnibuses. The treaty box, normally carried by poles on the shoulders of bearers, was hoisted to the top of an omnibus. Then the procession took off for Willard’s, the luxury hotel chosen for the mission, led by the president’s mounted guard and the Marine Band. Members of the Washington Light Infantry, the National Guard, Georgetown College’s cadet corps, the Georgetown Light Infantry, and Wither’s Band brought up the rear. Church bells pealed, and, as the ambassadors passed, Washingtonians lined the streets. Men and boys climbed trees for a better view, and from the crowded second-story windows the "ladies" tossed flowers into the carriages. Curiously, women were among the most enthusiastic onlookers although, as the newspapers frequently observed, there was little in the appearance of the three ambassadors to attract the opposite sex.

Shimmi, the youngest at 35, was dignified but slight, with a beaklike nose. Muragaki, 47, was marred by bad teeth, while 40-year-old Oguri, though bright and lithe, had a pockmarked face. The Japanese were not deceived as the cheering crowd increased to, some said, 20,000 (Washington’s population was then 75,000). It is not our prestige that attracts them, Muragaki reflected; it is our novelty. We are the first Japanese (he could have said Asians) these Americans have ever seen. Under the circumstances, crowd control proved difficult, and urchins swarmed around the carriages demanding handshakes. Though unused to shaking hands, the Japanese obliged over and over. It took two hours to reach the hotel located, like the modern Willard, two blocks from the White House.

Soldiers guarded the hotel to keep out the crowd while the Japanese and their baggage entered. "Let the doggie out," wags shouted, as servants wedged the treaty box through the front door. Made of latticed wood and roughly the size of a doghouse, the box would not always receive respectful attention. But Henry Willard lavished special attention on his guests, giving large suites to the ambassadors, a floor of rooms to their aides, bunks in the chapel for their servants, and the ballroom for their voluminous baggage. The ambassadors took swift action on two fronts. They ordered that the presents for President Buchanan be unpacked immediately and, surprised to learn that the president planned to receive them personally at the White House, sent a note to Secretary Cass asking when this momentous event would take place. The press acted quickly, too. The next day artists from the weekly magazines arrived to sketch the unpacking of the presents while Mathew Brady took pictures. Unfortunately, Brady’s photographs have disappeared, and the newspaper woodcut that survives showing the famous photographer at work gives only vague outlines of the presents, a hazy cabinet here or a bolt of silk there.

Without leaving the hotel, the Japanese were assailed by surprises. Some, physical or mechanical, delighted them: the large, clear, plate-glass mirrors, running water and toilets, a piano, and especially the gaslights that dispelled night in their rooms and the streets outside. But sleeping and eating American style challenged them. How to preserve their tonsure without a proper wooden pillow distressed them. Their hairdo, already much remarked upon, required a shaved pate except for the side hair, which was drawn up over the top of the head and tied in a forward sweeping lock. Food was another problem. The diarists mourn plates piled with meat, rare in the Japanese diet, and, worst of all, rice topped with sugar or butter, or both.

American manners also disconcerted them. When Vice President John C. Breckinridge walked over to Willard’s the next day to invite the ambassadors to visit Congress, they were shocked that the president of the Senate would arrive without a retinue or even a guard. And, though the meeting on May 16 with Secretary Cass went well, they were astonished at the old man’s affable informality. It was as if we had come from the next town, Muragaki wrote, and been friends for years. They were also surprised to learn that the president would meet them the very next day. Their experience with Cass did not dissuade them from thinking the occasion would be much like an audience with the shogun. They were anxious to be received as deferentially by Buchanan as Townsend Harris had been received by the shogun but to deliver no more deference than had Harris.

Still, Japanese tradition demanded a meticulous performance in the presence of power, so they begged Du Pont for a White House rehearsal. (Harris had been offered a rehearsal at Edo Castle but scorned it.) Baffled, Du Pont assured them the United States did not have any court etiquette, and it would be hard to arrange a rehearsal. So the ambassadors rehearsed their performance before him in their hotel room. Together, the three men bowed deeply at the door, advanced three paces, bowed, advanced again and made a final deep bow. This was exactly the way Harris had saluted the shogun. Du Pont, who had no idea what Harris had done, approved. Since Harris in his norimono, a kind of Japanese palanquin, had been allowed to ride deep into Edo Castle to a point usually reserved for imperial princes, the ambassadors worried how closely they could approach the White House in their carriages. Right up to the steps, Du Pont assured them. But, the Japanese asked, if Buchanan did not have a court, could they wear court dress? Yes. Even with hats? Yes.

On the morning of May 17, the procession to the White House formed along 14th Street with 30 members of the Marine Band at the head. Twenty soldiers lined up behind them, followed by mounted cavalry. Next, Japanese bearers in parade dress (the Japanese dress code extended down to the lowest level) shouldered the box containing the shogun’s letter. Next, cheered by the crowd, the ambassadors and officials boarded their carriages. As in high-ranking processions in Edo, a pike-bearing attendant preceded each carriage, and a spear-bearer, several retainers, and foot soldiers, one designated a "sandal-bearer," followed it.

The ambassadors rated more retainers and soldiers than Morita Kiyoyuki from the treasury or Naruse Masanori from foreign affairs. But a colorful flock of Japanese foot soldiers and menials remained to march at the end. This assemblage attracted a crowd as enthusiastic and dense as the one that had greeted the envoys’ arrival-but better behaved, since soldiers and sailors guarded the route. As the ambassadors rode down 14th Street, turned into Pennsylvania Avenue and then up 15th Street toward the White House, Washingtonians cheered and shouted and spectators seemed to be bursting out of every window in the imposing Treasury Building. Even the hard-headed Muragaki was deeply moved, remembering perhaps that the crowds in Edo had watched Harris in stony silence. It was like a scene from fairyland, he wrote. We could not help but be proud to be the first envoys sent here to represent our country.

After descending from their carriages at the North Portico, the three ambassadors were escorted to the Blue Room to wait for Secretary Cass to take them to the president. The room was "handsomely furnished," Muragaki reported, with large mirrors, a bright blue carpet in a beautiful pattern on the floor, and draperies to match it on the three large windows. Also Japanese gifts from the Perry expedition, some, he noted, of gold-decorated lacquer, were displayed around the room. Unfortunately, since neither the Japanese nor earlier visitors to the White House described these gifts in much detail, confusion arose later over which gifts came from Perry’s trip and which from the 1860 mission. One thing is certain. The Blue Room did not display the shogun’s liveliest 1854 gift, four Chin dogs. Perry kept a pair of the tiny dogs and gave two to President Pierce, who passed one on to his good friend, the secretary of war, Jefferson Davis.

Promptly at noon the doors of the East Room swung open, and the Japanese entered, escorted by Cass. On the left and right stood senior officers of the army and navy in dress uniform. Buchanan in plain black stood in the middle of the room, flanked by his black-clad cabinet. The room was extremely crowded. The president, who liked order and propriety, would have preferred fewer guests, but members of Congress, though not in recess, begged to come. They also begged, as did cabinet members, to bring their wives and daughters, additions Buchanan found hard to refuse. Buchanan, a bachelor, may also have deferred to the wishes of the pretty, young hostess of the White House, his niece, Harriet Lane. As promised, the ambassadors came forward bowing, and at the last obeisance Naruse undid the scarlet cords on a black lacquer dispatch box, took out a second box of delicate paulownia wood, and presented it to Shimmi.

The ambassador removed the shogun’s gold-flecked letter and read its message wishing eternal peace and friendship to "his majesty, the President of the United States." As interpreter Namura Motonori translated the letter from Japanese to Dutch and Mr. Portman translated the Dutch to English, the spectators pressed forward to examine the extraordinary outfits of the Japanese. Their court dress consisted of voluminous, pleated trousers, a short jacket with kimono sleeves, and over it the kataginu, a vestlike garment stiffened with whalebone to project like wings over the shoulders. The materials were the brilliant silks reserved by law to the samurai class. Shimmi wore purple brocade, while Muragaki and Oguri wore green. All three carried short, gold-decorated swords instead of their usual pair of plain ones. On their feet were silk sandals, and on their heads little hats called eboshi, tied under the chin with silk cords. The onlookers lost all restraint. The ladies stood on the East Room chairs and sofas. Two women shared their chair with a gentleman, and an agile young woman climbed up to the marble shelf of a mirror for the best view of all. Meanwhile artists from Harper’s Weekly and its rival Leslie’s Newspaper sketched the solemn moment when Shimmi gave the shogun’s letter to the president and Buchanan accepted it with a gracious bow.

Suddenly, the Japanese were gone. They had forgotten to tell Du Pont, or the matter had been lost in translation, that after delivering the letter they would back up and bow three times and leave the room. The president had been about to reply to the shogun’s message. Officials scurried to the Blue Room to retrieve the Japanese, who assured Du Pont that this was the end of the Japanese ceremony and they would gladly return. Thereupon Buchanan gave a short speech thanking "his imperial majesty, the Tycoon" and celebrating the treaty and the arrival of Japan’s first envoys. Afterwards he shook hands with the surprised ambassadors and led them off to meet cabinet members, high officials, congressmen, General Winfield Scott, and scores of others. Lesser Japanese were admitted to the East Room. Soon the ambassadors, according to Muragaki, were eager to leave. Before they could, however, they were led back to the Blue Room, where Buchanan introduced them privately to the vivacious Harriet Lane.

Reactions followed swiftly from the American side and the Japanese. The newsmen, also part of the crowd in the East Room, generally praised the poise and dignity of both the Japanese and the president. Harper’s wrote one article to that effect but also ran a comic piece in which a country bumpkin compared the ambassadors to "little old ladies dressed up to kill with queer little things tied on their heads." One New York paper remarked that the Japanese would be handled far better in New York. To enhance that possibility, a delegation from the city attended the ceremony along with August Belmont, the Wall Street banker married to Commodore Perry’s daughter. The president himself must have rejoiced at the favorable publicity inspired by the East Room ceremony, but he did confess, according to the New York Tribune, that he found the Japanese rather reserved and precise about things. On the other hand, he added, he could not complain when they called him, a devout believer in the republic, "your highness."

The Japanese reaction was more critical. Yanagawa Masakiyo, a clerk to Shimmi and an amateur artist, declared everyone was disappointed at the small size of the White House, its lack of armed sentries, watchtowers, or a moat, its absence of magnificent decoration-in other words, its contrast to Edo Castle. He did, how-ever, admire and draw in annotated detail the large gas chandeliers in the East Room. Kimura Tetta, artist and clerk to Inspector Oguri, drew the first floor of the White House in the manner of a battle plan. The ambassadors themselves took a more nuanced approach as they retired to Willard’s at the end of the day. They were relieved that their presentation had gone well and that they had nearly completed their mission. Buchanan, they agreed, was kindly and dignified. They made no mention of his physical quirk of turning the right side of his face toward listeners to hide a defect in his left eye. But they did deplore that he and his cabinet members wore drab black suits. Only the military with their swords and uniforms had the trappings of authority. They were also puzzled by Buchanan’s family and political status. How could a ruler be unmarried and without an heir? Wasn’t he only temporary and not a king at all? In that case, Muragaki declared, they should not have worn their court clothes. Anyway, it made no difference. The Americans lacked respect for the essentials of cosmic and political order-ceremony and hierarchy. In Muragaki’s Confucian worldview, the United States could not long endure. (Of the looming Civil War they had no inkling.) Finally, they deplored the curious custom of allowing women to attend serious ceremonies of state.

As the three Japanese ambassadors saw it, they had only one more duty to discharge before they could go home-deliver the Japanese copy of the treaty to Cass and pick up the American copy. An appointment was quickly arranged, and Du Pont, Lee, and Porter led the trio, and the guards carrying the treaty box, to the State Department, a red brick building just east of the White House. The ambassadors sat at stiff attention while an aide extracted a gold-lacquer box containing the shogun’s copy from the treaty box and presented it to Cass. He, in turn, presented them with the American copy nested in a rosewood box with silver fittings. Solemnly, the Japanese put it in the treaty box and would have left immediately if Cass had not sprung up, seized their hands, and introduced them to his granddaughter.

The ambassadors were far too optimistic about their departure. Not only did Buchanan and his government have assignments for them; they had become magnets for public attention. Important people wanted to meet them, ordinary people wanted to see them, promoters wanted to display them. The Japanese presumed this phase would be short since the navy promised them return passage soon, from New York, on the new battleship Niagara. So they accepted the invitation to visit the city, little dreaming they faced six more weeks of instruction and socializing.

Immediately Cass and his wife Belle, Washington’s senior hostess, invited the ambassadors to a banquet and ball in their honor. At first the Japanese declined, explaining that, alas, they could not go out after 6:00 p.m. (Oguri had imposed a curfew to keep drunken servants from brawls or hot-tempered samurai from drawing their swords.) But then, fearing to offend a high official, they accepted. The evening was an experience that would be repeated many times in many places, but their reaction would be much the same. As they entered the drawing room filled with powerful Washingtonians, they were assailed by the din. There was no order, no plan, just confusion. Champagne corks popped. The banquet food was mysterious, and afterward they were led to a large room with a bare wooden floor. Suddenly musicians began to play very loud music, men put their arms around bare-shouldered women, and the couples hopped around the room, as nimbly, Muragaki wrote, as white mice. The performance grew stranger as the full skirts of the women in their crinolines billowed to the proportion of temple bells. Never before, the Japanese wrote, had they seen or even imagined such things. Properly, men should not dance, and dancing should be done by professionals. Later they would adjust to the fact that all Americans, young and old, high and low, loved to dance. But, seeing them do so for the first time, the Japanese begged to leave early.

By contrast, the ambassadors readily accepted and seemed to enjoy invitations to the White House. Buchanan, though they did not know it, disapproved of dancing at the president’s house. On Saturday May 19, he asked the Japanese envoys to a band concert on the White House lawn. It was open to everyone since it was a regular weekly event, usually held on Capitol Hill. Buchanan greeted the Japanese warmly and offered them a tour of the mansion. They particularly admired the white marble busts of Washington and Americus Vespucius, and the statue of Jefferson outside the north entrance. Sculpture in Japan was largely confined to sacred images. They noticed that the Perry gifts had been removed from the Blue Room, presumably to make way for their gifts still on display at Willard’s. Then Buchanan led them out to the South Portico to watch the performance and be watched.

The president liked to emphasize the Japanese were the guests of the American people. Stepping down among them, Shimmi, Muragaki, and Oguri were immediately surrounded by women eager to inspect their clothes and ask questions. Harriet Lane, confident from her schooling at Georgetown’s convent and life in London with her uncle, asked to see Oguri’s sword. He obliged with a smile, and she held it horizontally for some time for close inspection. When she returned the sharp blade, Oguri sheathed it with another smile.

The final White House entertainment for the envoys and their senior staff was a banquet on May 29 with cabinet members and their wives. Muragaki lavished praise on the affair for its dignity, friendly atmosphere, and the banks of flowers in huge golden urns at either end of the long table. The press reported the Japanese relished the meal of turtle soup, halibut, pigeon, roast chicken, lobster, ham, and ice cream. What Muragaki and the others probably did not relish was the strange American deference to women. "Good Captain Du Pont" helped them through the business of escorting a female partner to the table. But he could not protect Muragaki from the ordeal of answering questions posed by the hostess. How many ladies, asked Miss Lane, were in the Japanese court? How did they dress? What did he think of American women? Muragaki did not record his answers.

Afterward the guests moved to the East Room to see the new Japanese presents, so numerous the Blue Room could not hold them all. In describing these presents, guests and newspapers were lavish in praise but skimpy in detail, often uncertain what the glorious objects were. Most often mentioned were a pair of screens, porcelain dishes, bolts of silk, swords, and various gold-decorated lacquer pieces like a low table, small boxes, saddles, and a particularly fine "cabinet," or maybe it was a "bookcase." Anyway, it was open on four sides, had shelves, and was decorated with images of birds and flowers. Could it be the handsome gold-sprinkled chigai-dana, still in the White House, which President William McKinley kept what is now the Lincoln bedroom and Theodore Roosevelt in the Green Room?

If American women distressed traditionalists like Muragaki, they delighted Tommy, who, like the younger Japanese, were not invited to parties but saw far more of ordinary American life. He enjoyed the popularity of a present-day rock star. When throngs of young women gathered outside Willard’s calling "Tom-ee, Tom-ee," he would invite them in and entertain them for hours with his broken English and parlor tricks. Young Japanese staffers enjoyed shopping, especially for shoes to replace their straw sandals. They soon discovered Mathew Brady’s studio only a few blocks from the White House and submitted enthusiastically to having their pictures taken. Two servants broke Oguri’s curfew one night in search, they said, of a sleeping place more comfortable than the hotel’s chapel. They found another hotel, but it was, unfortunately, full of women. A young guard had a more elevating experience when Naruse asked him to accompany him to the White House. The president wanted to know how to use one of the lacquer saddles. The young man slipped it deftly on the president’s horse and rode around the grounds, to the delight of Buchanan and Harriet Lane.

Meanwhile, the ambassadors visited the kind of institutions Buchanan and Joseph Henry thought likely to convince them of the superiority of American civilization. On May 23 they went to Congress to observe the Senate and House in session and sit briefly on the floor of both. Knowing little English and even less about representative government, the Japanese were impressed largely by the shouting and arm waving. Some enjoyed Congress as good theater, but Muragaki compared it to the bedlam of the Edo fish market. The New York Tribune reported the Japanese had been "much edified by the proceedings," adding that when they left the House the members guffawed.

The Smithsonian, however, was a success all around. Joseph Henry was happy to give the ambassadors a tour, and many of the Japanese down to the cooks visited the Castle, as imposing to them as a temple. Henry showed the envoys novelties like the operation of electricity, a live alligator, Egyptian mummies, and, Yanagawa swore, 700 kinds of snakes. By now most of Perry’s gifts had been transferred to the museum, so the Japanese knew Buchanan was expected to send their gifts here, too. Only one exhibit dismayed Muragaki-locks of hair clipped from the heads of the last 14 presidents. Afterward the ambassadors took refreshments at Henry’s small house in the museum garden with-as usual with Americans-his wife and children.

The most completely successful and meaningful visit was to the Navy Yard. Here Oguri shone. He knew weapons and, in fact, had recently met with Samuel Colt, who visited Washington in the hope the Japanese would buy more weapons like the Colt guns Perry had given the shogun. Muragaki, too, thought Japan should learn to make shells and howitzers like those Captain Buchanan, commander of the Navy Yard, showed them. Best of all, Captain Buchanan arranged for them to see a demonstration of the new, long-range Dahlgren guns. As the large group of Japanese and their escorts sat outside waiting for the guns to strike a target a mile away, Mathew Brady took their picture, now a classic.

By May 28 the Japanese should have been on their way to New York to board the Niagara, but it had just suffered grave damage on a trial run and would not be able to sail before July 1. The hitherto patient envoys were as indignant as courtesy allowed. They urged Du Pont to get them transport back to Panama and across the Pacific. Du Pont said it would be impossible. They must stay on at least another month. The president and Cass seized on the delay as a good opportunity to publicize their diplomatic success as well as to advance the education of the Japanese. Cass presented the ambassadors with a new route to New York via Baltimore, Philadelphia, Cleveland, Buffalo, Niagara Falls, Albany, and Boston. Du Pont, though well aware of the president’s eagerness, compromised, and the Japanese did, too. They agreed to visit Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York-if they could be spared balls and spectacles.

The crisis surmounted, the ambassadors went to the White House for the last time on June 5 to say farewell to the president. Buchanan, though surely distracted by the Republican Party’s recent nomination of Abraham Lincoln and the splintering of his own party, received the Japanese in the Blue Room in a relaxed, jubilant way. He was delighted, he told them, that a great historic event like their visit had taken place in his administration. The Japanese assured him they would report his friendship and kindness to the shogun. Buchanan then produced a personal gift to all the members of the mission: three gold medals for the ambassadors, five silver ones for their deputies, and copper ones for everybody else. The medal showed Buchanan’s profile on the front and, on the back, lines commemorating "the first embassy from Japan/1860."

Before leaving, the Japanese thanked the president for their wonderful escorts. Buchanan replied that he had picked them, "from the flower of the navy." The escorts did not wilt. Through the early summer heat Du Pont, Lee, and Porter guided the Japanese, as the president ordered, until they sailed from New York on June 30, on the Niagara. The curriculum was light in Baltimore, which presented a demonstration of steam-driven fire fighting. At the conclusion the municipal fire chief slammed his helmet down on the head of Ambassador Shimmi, who managed to look as impassive as ever. Philadelphia, more serious, offered its waterworks, opera at the Academy of Music, Independence Hall, the U.S. Mint, a balloon ascent, and, for the three doctors, who knew only Japanese medicine, an operation in which the celebrated Dr. W. T. G. Morton demonstrated the use of ether.

As the Japanese proceeded north, the size of the crowds, parades, banquets, and municipal budgets increased, rising to record heights in Manhattan. There, 500,000 spectators watched the Japanese arrive, and 7,000 troops, including the famous Seventh Regiment, escorted them up Broadway. (The samurai asked themselves if these soldiers could really fight, being only volunteers and their officers not permanent warriors.) The city appropriated $30,000 to entertain the Japanese, and 10,000 citizens sponsored a public banquet and ball in their honor, with five bands. The rich and famous showered them with gifts and invitations. Fittingly, press mogul James Gordon Bennett, publisher of the New York Herald, gave the newsworthy Japanese a garden party for 1,000 at his country estate. Other New Yorkers peddled "Japanese" cakes, cocktails, and "Hari-Kari" cigars. Christie’s musicians performed a show called "The Japanese Treaty." Only a little time was left to visit the public library, city hall, and, guided by Frederick Law Olmsted, Central Park.

Thus, more than celebrating the treaty and impressing the Japanese with American "civilization," the big cities made the Japanese mission an excuse for civic display, salesmanship, and summer diversion. Watching the "swart-cheek’d" envoys" (as poet Walt Whitman called them) drive by, along with Tommy and the treaty box, was better than a circus parade. New York mounted the box theatrically on a "pagoda" float, decorated with flags, flowers, and the Rising Sun. The Japanese gamely smiled and waved, though Muragaki confessed New York entertainment was "far from being to our taste." Still he agreed with more sympathetic fellow diarists that the Americans were an uncommonly generous and hospitable people. What the ambassadors enjoyed most in New York was their visit to the home of Jane Perry, widow of the commodore.

It seemed miraculous to them that after only six years Japan and America had grown so close. Mrs. Perry and her children received them warmly, and the two Chin dogs, gifts from the shogun, bounded across her living room and sat in their laps. The Japanese concluded they liked Washington best. Tommy, though he bought a broadcloth suit in New York, told the press he cried when he left the capital. Muragaki summed up the general approval. Though Washington is a very small town, he wrote, and people only stay there a short time, it is an ideal seat of government. Life is simple there, even high officials have few retainers, and it is free from the luxury and vice of big cities. The three envoys were delighted with the farewell present Captain Du Pont gave them to take to the shogun-a gold medallion portrait of James Buchanan from Tiffany’s. Embarrassed again at the American government’s refusal to accept payment for their costly upkeep, they gave Du Pont a fine sword. As they sailed out on the Revenue Marine Cutter Harriet Lane to board the Niagara, they passed the 32,000 ton Great Eastern.

The new British Royal Mail Steamer, the largest ship in the world, had just reached New York. The city and its newspapers leaped to welcome a new sensation. Fate has not been kind to the memory of the first Japanese mission, its Japanese and Americans participants, or its mementos. The Civil War, beginning the following spring, erased foreign affairs from American minds. After Lincoln’s inauguration, President Buchanan, discredited, retired to Wheatland, his home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Captain Du Pont became the admiral in charge of blockading southern ports but was later blamed for the Union’s worst naval defeat-a frustrated offensive against Charleston in the spring of 1863. Lee and Captain Franklin Buchanan became admirals in the doomed Confederate Navy. Only David Porter came out well, as a victorious Union admiral on the Mississippi. Townsend Harris lost his diplomatic post with the new Lincoln administration. And when the Japanese reached home after a four-month voyage via the Cape and China, the shogunate received them coolly. In their absence Ii Nosuke, the regent who had promoted the treaty and appointed them, had been assassinated by anti-Western zealots.

With such threats and increasing opposition from the imperial court and militant provinces, officials did not want to seem friendly to the West. They did not ask what the Japanese had learned in the United States, and the envoys did not tell them. Shimmi and Muragaki received promotions but soon retired. Oguri rose to become an important military leader but met a sad end. He continued to foment armed resistence even after the defeated shogunate surrendered to the imperial forces in 1868 and was therefore executed, along with his son, by the new regime. But Tommy did well, becoming an English teacher and later a minor government official. The treaty, too, survived, lasting until nearly 1900, when a fairer one was devised.

As for mementos, some of the 1860 gifts to the White House are still stored at the Smithsonian, to which Buchanan dutifully consigned them. A saddle is there, along with a black-lacquer shelf-cabinet decorated with a pattern of silver and gold plum tree blossoms and branches enlivened by red-crested cranes. Such a shelf-cabinet, often called a sho-dana, is much like a small Victorian "whatnot," with shelves for artworks and little drawers for papers. Only one shelf-cabinet is listed in the 1860 mission’s inventory of gifts.

Fortunately, since the inventory gives no details and contemporary observers only said the cabinet was very beautiful, an 1860 newspaper illustration shows President Buchanan and Harriet Lane in the White House admiring the mission’s presents. The cabinet pictured is clearly the one now in the Smithsonian. So the shelf-cabinet that remains in the White House today, the elegant chigai-dana decorated with golden plum blossoms, cranes, and peonies, must be a gift Perry sent back to President Pierce in 1854. In his journal, the commodore listed "1 gold lacquered book case" among the "emperor’s" gifts to the president along with "1 gold lacquered paper box," meaning one to hold paper, and "1 lacquered writing table." Presumably, the box and the table are the ones that accompany the shelf-cabinet in the White House today. Unlisted in Smithsonian storage, these three gifts apparently never left the White House. Since they are the nation’s earliest Japanese artworks, long admired by presidents and in good condition, they surely deserve to stay there. Sadly, the 1860 shelf-cabinet, debatably finer but missing several panels, belongs in storage.

After James Buchanan left the White House in March 1861, he was pursued by criticism, much of it false and petty, including the charge that he had taken the Japanese mission’s gifts back to his home in Pennsylvania. He wrote an indignant letter denying the accusation, which was, of course, refuted by government records. It was permissible, of course, to leave gifts in the White House, as Pierce had evidently done with some of his Japanese gifts, and so it was that the largest present from the ambassadors stayed on in the White House. It was an enormous porcelain "fishbowl," which guests and reporters admired (it was generously filled with champagne punch) at a reception given by the Lincolns on February 6, 1862. Today the 170 pound bowl is in Buchanan’s family home in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. How did it get there? The explanation is clouded by the confusion that overtook the White House after Lincoln’s assassination on April 14, 1865. For the next five weeks Mary Todd Lincoln, prostrate with grief, took to her bed on the second floor while the state rooms below were so open to outsiders and badly guarded that curtains were cut, furniture removed, and artworks carried off.

Did some muscular thief or servant carry off the bowl? Or did it move with Mrs. Lincoln’s consent to the I Street mansion of the wealthy banker, George Washington Riggs, as his granddaughters reported? According to Riggs family legend, Mrs. Lincoln, still in the White House and known to be deeply in debt, sent a message to Mr. Riggs asking if he would like to buy the bowl "the emperor of Japan had given to her husband." When Mr. Riggs replied the bowl belonged to the White House and she should not sell it, Mrs. Lincoln reportedly said she was determined to do so. Thereupon Mr. Riggs bought it, and "the Mikado’s bowl" became a much-admired family treasure. There is no doubt that the bowl was on view in the Riggs mansion by mid-May 1865. If such a furtive transaction took place, neither party left a paper trail of bills and receipts, certainly not Washington’s leading banker. Other explanations offer themselves. Riggs might have bought the bowl from someone who had taken it from the White House, but would he have dealt with a thief or a fence?

The rest of the bowl’s history is unambiguous. In 1930, when George Washington Riggs’s oldest granddaughter, inheritor of his mansion and the bowl, died, she left both to her maid, Mary McMullen. Later the bowl passed to McMullen’s brother, Dysart McMullen, who offered to sell it to the White House in 1960 for $5,000. Whether its size or its price dissuaded the White House is unclear, but in any case a willing buyer appeared, Wiley Buchanan, no direct descendant of James Buchanan but a wealthy Republican and former chief of protocol in the Eisenhower administration. Mr. Buchanan, doubtful, perhaps, that the White House wanted the bowl, decided to give it to President Buchanan’s Wheatland. There it stands today, amid antique American furniture in a handsome Federal setting. It was well described by the Japanese in their 1860 inventory. "A large water bowl," they wrote, to paraphrase their Japanese, "22 inches high, 37 inches across, on a small base, decorated on the outside with white cranes embossed on an azure sky over pond grasses, the interior showing long-haired tortoises." The cranes and the hirsute tortoises were symbols of longevity, an unintended prediction of the bowl’s fate. Not only is it well-preserved; it is one of the few physical remnants of the 1860 Japanese visit to the White House on view today.

It seems fitting that the cobalt blue bowl has come to rest at Wheatland. James Buchanan treated the Japanese envoys with great kindness and never coveted or received any of their gifts. Surely he deserved one a century later. The claim that this showpiece of Japanese design and technology belongs in a museum is easy to refute. It would be a minor trophy elsewhere. Here it evokes the summer of 1860 when the United States and Japan, each fascinated, confused, but convinced of its own superiority, opened diplomatic relations to the strains of marching bands. Such naive diplomacy would not survive the civil wars that soon followed in both countries, but it delighted Americans at the time and inspired enough Japanese memoirs to fill a flock of lacquer cabinets.