Japan's re-birth, in this our day, challenges the attention of the historian and philosopher. In the story as told from the outside by foreigners, there is a great blank between Commodore Perry and Lord Elgin. Especially in the works of English writers are there profound ignorance and misapprehension of what Mr. Townsend Harris did. This volume aims to fill a gap in history.
The opening of the long-sealed Empire of Japan to foreign trade and commerce was a decisive event in the history of Eastern Asia and of the world. For such a work, the American envoy was prepared as few men could have been. After fourteen years in a village in the Empire State, thirty-two in the metropolis of the continent, six on the Pacific Ocean and in far-Oriental lands, Townsend Harris, when fifty-two years of age, became, like the great Yoritomo, a lonely dweller in rocky Idzu. There both were exiles, and thence both emerged victorious to re-make Japan.
