page_title: Japanese Embassy to the United States
section_title: Washington, D.C., New York, and the return
hierarchical_section_title: Japanese Embassy to the United States / Destinations / Washington, D.C., New York, and the return
caption_attribution_description: President Buchanan welcoming the Japanese Embassy.
context_page_description: The Japanese Embassy to the United States was dispatched in 1860 by the Tokugawa shogunate. 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.
context_section_description: When the Kanrin Maru returned to Japan, the Powhatan continued with the Embassy to Panama, where its members crossed the isthmus to the Atlantic via the recently opened Panama Railway. Changing ships for the USS Roanoke, the 72-man diplomatic mission then proceeded to Washington, D.C..  Numerous receptions were held in its honor, including one at the White House, where the diplomats met President James Buchanan. Buchanan presented them with a gold watch engraved with his likeness as a gift to the Shōgun.
  The Japanese delegation traveled north to Philadelphia.  Their attention to activities planned by local officials was distracted by the news of what became known as the "Sakuradamon incident" in Tokyo. The Tairō Ii Naosuke had been assassinated on March 24; and accounts of the event were sped by pony express across the American continent. This murdered official had been the highest ranking signer of the Japanese-American 1858 "Harris Treaty", which was a follow-up to the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa.
  The delegation continued on to New York City, where their procession up Broadway from the Battery was a grand parade.
  From New York, they crossed the Atlantic and Indian Oceans, all on board the USS Niagara, thus completing a circumnavigation. After leaving New York on June 30, the Niagara reached the harbor at Porto Grande, Cape Verde Islands, on July 16.  Other ports on the voyage back to Japan included São Paulo-de-Loande (now Luanda), Angola; Batavia (now Jakarta), Java; and Hong Kong. The frigate finally sailed into Tokyo Bay on November 8 to disembark her passengers.
caption: President James Buchanan receiving the Embassy.
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