Markerless Quest: Samurai in the White House

I have returned from Zenkaikon and am, however reluctantly, taking up my real-world activities once again. (But I have no reluctance about returning to the blog! On our way home, Kevin and I took a detour to the city of West Chester to collect some markers, so I've got plenty of Chester County content for a while.) Our anniversary was very pleasant and the convention was a lot of fun - the entire week's vacation was a great time in so many ways.

If you're visiting this blog after meeting me at Zenkaikon, hi! Thank you so much for coming to see what I do here! And if you aren't familiar with Zenkaikon and are wondering what exactly it is, here's a video explanation. This documentary was created for the con's 20th anniversary, but I wasn't involved; my contributions to being on the anniversary committee involved the museum and the trivia game we held on Friday night. I was there for the documentary debut on Saturday evening, though, and it's beautifully made.

My presentations all went extremely well, and the one on which I got the most feedback was the one which had a tenuous connection to Lancaster. As you probably know, President James Buchanan was a native of Lancaster. But what you probably don't know is that during his presidency, the White House welcomed a delegation of visitors from Japan, including three actual samurai warriors. Several of the people who attended this presentation mentioned wanting to share it with others, so I thought I'd make it the final blog post of March. This one didn't get filmed; instead, I'm sharing the write-up I used to narrate the slide show, as well as the pictures which appeared in the slides. At least this way I don't have to worry that I'm mangling the pronunciation of Japanese names or words, as I did when presenting.

Also, to make a blog-ish version of my perennial con presentation joke, if you're not completely satisfied with this post, please return the unused portion for a full refund.

Okay, so the story that I'm sharing here is that in 1858, Lancaster’s very own James Buchanan was President of the United States. His presidency is not very fondly remembered for a number of reasons, some of which were his own fault and some of which were outside of his personal control. He did, however, have an extremely popular First Lady in the person of his beloved niece, Harriet Lane - Buchanan was our only bachelor president, and he had adopted his niece after her parents died when she was eleven, so she was the natural choice for White House hostess. She was actually the first person to officially be called the First Lady. Both before and after his presidency, Buchanan and Harriet lived here in Lancaster in a beautiful Federal-style mansion known as Wheatland, which is across town [from the convention center] and which you can still tour today, and if you enjoy American history I definitely encourage you to check it out. Anyway, one of the better events to take place during the Buchanan presidency was the first official visit of Japanese citizens to the United States, including a trio of samurai. 

In the interest of being thorough, I thought we ought to really quickly go over what samurai are. From the 11th century onward, the samurai were military nobles. It was a hereditary title, passed from father to son; being inducted into the samurai class if you weren’t born into it was extremely rare. I’m not sure if it was impossible, but at the very least it was definitely not common. They were part of the ruling class, so to be a samurai was effectively to be a warrior prince. They were identifiable by their armor, which consisted of iron or leather plates joined together with silk or leather, and by the fact that they were the only warriors permitted to carry two swords instead of one. These swords were called the katana, which is the one we usually picture when thinking of samurai, and the wakizashi, which is a shorter sword. Samurai were experts in swordsmanship, archery, and horseback riding, and they were also highly educated and well read. The samurai held themselves to a special code of conduct called bushido, which placed emphasis on honor, courage, discipline, and loyalty to the masters they served. The samurai as a warrior class was abolished in 1868 during the Meiji Restoration, but many families today are still quite proud of being descended from samurai lineages, and of course there are people who still teach samurai disciplines.

So why did the samurai come to the White House? Well, for centuries, Japan had maintained a strict policy of sakoku, which means ‘locked country’, and kept their people completely isolated from the outside world. That’s how Japan’s traditions remained unchanged for so long. But in the 1850s, they made the decision to end sakoku and start trading and interacting with other countries, so in 1858, they entered an agreement with the United States called the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. Japan sent a bunch of gifts to the United States as part of that, and they sent three of their samurai and an entourage of guards and translators and diplomats to deliver them. 

These are the samurai, in their traditional formal costumes. On the left we have Muragaki Norimasa, the deputy envoy. He was an Oniwaban, which was a kind of ninja, and performed secret investigative missions for the Shogun. His success in that caused him to be promoted to diplomat and administrator. The man in the center is Niimi Masaoki, who was the senior envoy due to his high rank in the Shogunate. On the right is Oguri Tadamasa, who was the most famous of the three. He was said to be a brilliantly intelligent man with excellent bureaucratic skills and he was instrumental in preparing Japan for its eventual industrialization. The samurai and their entourage left Japan in February of 1860, and a United States frigate carried them across the Pacific Ocean to San Francisco. They then crossed the entire country - people were fascinated by the coming of these foreign warriors and they turned out in droves just to get a look at them as their procession made its way across the states. One of the things they brought with them was a big lattice-wood box, which held the actual treaty documents, and for some reason people were also really fascinated by this. Of course the visit received extensive news coverage in the papers, since we didn't have CNN yet, and one reporter noted with disgust that when some kids tried to reach into the carriages to actually touch the samurai, the police, "whose business it was to prevent such an insult," couldn't be bothered to intervene.

The Japanese delegation reached Washington on May 14, 1860, and this is a painting commemorating their arrival at the White House. That's President Buchanan with the white hair, and Harriet Lane in the blue dress, and the samurai are depicted standing between them. The artwork is called Visitors from the East: President Buchanan Greets Visitors from Far Away, 1860. It was painted by Peter Waddell, and it's the only picture in this slideshow that isn't contemporary to the Buchanan presidency - Waddell is a modern artist who specializes in historical paintings of Washington, D.C., so this was painted from the imagination rather than by someone who actually witnessed the event. Hopefully he doesn't mind my borrowing his work.

So… did the samurai like us? Eh… not much. They didn’t think the White House was very impressive, because it didn’t have any towers or a moat, but they did think the furniture was nice. They were also not impressed with our manners. Apparently, Vice-President John Breckinridge walked over to their hotel personally to invite them to visit Congress, which shocked them because he didn’t send someone on his behalf, and Lewis Cass, the Secretary of State, talked to them like they were old friends rather than visiting dignitaries. This was entirely too unreserved for the formal Japanese warriors. However, they found President Buchanan to be appropriately respectful and genteel, and they thought Harriet Lane was charming and beautiful. They were also not fans of some of the food they were given, and particularly disliked a serving of rice flavored with butter and sugar, which frankly doesn’t sound like something I’d want to eat either. Some things they did like included the gas streetlamps, pianos, and indoor plumbing. On the whole they thought American society was inferior to Japanese society and probably wouldn’t last all that long. That sounds mean, but considering that we were less than a year away from the outbreak of the Civil War at the time of their visit, it could be argued that they had a point. 

This is a drawing of Buchanan and Harriet looking at the gifts brought by their visitors. As you can see, the gifts included traditional Japanese weapons, tapestries, furnishings, clothing, and tools. In particular, the cabinet you see on the right is called a sho-dana, and it was intricately carved from wood and covered in a shining black lacquer. Since they were gifts to the United States as a whole and not to Buchanan personally, most of them are now found in museums, though I think one or two are still on display in the White House. The bulk of them are in the Smithsonian collection. In return, Buchanan sent Japan various pieces of technical equipment and goods manufactured in the United States. He also presented the samurai themselves with specially struck gold medals featuring his own likeness, which were designed by the Secretary of State. 

Of course, the samurai didn’t speak English, so as part of their entourage, they brought along three translators. Here they are in their own traditional costumes. Left to right, they are Tateishi Onojiro, Tateishi Tokujura, and Namura Moronoi. You'll notice that the one on the left is smiling - he was just seventeen years old. The American people nicknamed him Tommy, because the newspapers showed that he'd had a similar nickname as a child and it was easy for them to pronounce. He became kind of an instant celebrity, and they would chant "Tommy, Tommy" at him. He absolutely ate up the attention, waving and blowing kisses to the crowds. As a teenager on an international tour, I think he must have almost certainly been having the time of his life. Women would stand outside the hotel where the Japanese were staying and chant "Tommy, Tommy" until he let them in, and then he'd entertain them with little magic tricks. He and the others would throw Japanese candy out of the windows for the children that would gather. My favorite part of the whole thing is that it's also surmised that Tommy developed an immediate crush on Harriet Lane. After the envoys were formally presented at the White House, Tommy told a reporter:

"I saw the President - splendid gentleman, and I saw Miss Lane - ahhh!"

 

Harriet was thirty years old at that time, not yet married, and almost universally considered to be extremely attractive, intellectual, and socially gifted, so it's not surprising that a young man would be enchanted by her.

During their visit, the Japanese were given a tour of the White House conducted by Buchanan himself. They also attended a session of Congress, toured the Smithsonian, and visited the Navy Yard. By the time they left us in June, they were bona fide celebrities who had completely fascinated the capital city, and the treaty which had been ratified during their visit endured for the next forty years.

So that was the first official visit of Japanese ambassadors to the United States. I have here a list of some of the websites I used to craft this presentation, so if you’d like to learn more about the event, you can check those out. 

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Sources and Further Reading:

WhiteHouseHistory.org

LancasterHistory

Assorted newspapers at Newspapers.com

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Except where indicated, all writing and photography on this blog is the intellectual property of Laura Klotz. This blog is written with permission of the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission. I am not employed by the PHMC. All rights reserved.