Edo Period

Japanese Embassy to the United States
Kanrin Maru (circa 1860) ©Image Attribution forthcoming. Image belongs to the respective owner(s).
1860 Jan 1

Japanese Embassy to the United States

San Francisco, CA, USA

The Japanese Embassy to the United States, Man'en gannen kenbei shisetsu, lit. First year of the Man'en era mission to America) was dispatched in 1860 by the Tokugawa shogunate (bakufu). Its objective was to ratify the new Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the United States and Japan, in addition to being Japan's first diplomatic mission to the United States since the 1854 opening of Japan by Commodore Matthew Perry.


Another significant facet of the mission was the shogunate's dispatch of a Japanese warship, the Kanrin Maru, to accompany the delegation across the Pacific and thereby demonstrate the degree to which Japan had mastered Western navigation techniques and ship technologies barely six years after ending its isolation policy of nearly 250 years.


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