1860: Japanese Embassy to America Visits Hawaii

In 1860 the Tokugawa government in Japan sent ambassadors to the United States of America to exchange of ratifications covered in the Treaty of Peace and Amity negotiated with U.S. Consul Townsend Harris, and to formalize relations between the U.S. and Japan. Two ships carrying Americans and the Japanese ambassadorial delegation embarked on a journey that would change history. One of the ships, the U.S.S. Powhatan, stopped in Hawaii with the Japanese Embassy for about ten days.

Friday, January 7, 2011

Pacific Commercial Advertiser Reports: 'The Japanese laugh at our trial by jury...'

Pacific Commercial Advertiser: March 22, 1860:

Under Foreign Summary:

“The Japanese laugh at our trial by jury, and declare that none but idiots would have a system that was chiefly valuable to the rogue and villain! It is hardly necessary to add that there is not a lawyer in the whole empire –that is, if we may believe a letter in the New York Herald, which says that Japan is the home of justice and equal rights.”