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For this reason, they were eventually transferred to Kagoshima and personally questioned by feudal ruler Shimazu Nariakira, who was greatly interested in the technology of the West. Nariakira questioned Nakahama, in particular, about steamships, trains, telegraphy, and photography and treated the three young men as his guests.
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The next round of interrogation would be far less friendly. For ten months the young men were imprisoned and repeatedly questioned. The samurai worried that they were enemy agents and had been converted to Christianity, a crime punishable by execution under Japanese law. Returning to their home in Tosa Province, the three young men were held for 70 more days while clan leaders subjected them to a final round of interrogation.
In October of , their patience was rewarded and the three young men were released. Nakahama returned to his village, almost 12 years after leaving home, shocking his mother, who had long assumed he was dead. After a reunion lasting three days, he was summoned to the city of Kochi by the regional lord of Tosa, a clan ruler who desired him to teach English to young samurai and other government officials at the clan castle.
Because it was not fitting that a peasant teach such a high-ranking person, Nakahama was made a low-ranking samurai. So began his career as a teacher, and many of his students went on to become leaders of modern Japan.
In July of , four dark-hulled U. Commodore Perry carried a letter from U. President Millard Fillmore requesting that Japan open its ports to foreign trade. This forceful request threw Japan very rapidly into the modern age, causing a national emergency and the arming of the Bay of Edo. Conflicts soon broke out between those who wanted to modernize and engage with the wider world and those who wanted Japan to remain isolated.
The next few decades saw many changes, and Nakahama was called on to play multiple roles: advisor, translator, teacher, innovator, designer, whaling captain, and more. Now a new fight broke out as some government officials argued against allowing him to translate for the Americans. There were accusations that Nakahama had been a plant all along and he would translate to the Americans' advantage.
After the modernists prevailed, he was made a full samurai and allowed to translate and advise at the highest levels of government. He was also allowed to adopt a family name, Nakahama. However, to appease traditionalists, Nakahama was ordered to take a behind-the-scenes role and remain out of sight of the Americans. He proved himself very useful nonetheless, and a treaty between Japan and the United States was signed at the end of March Over the next several years, Nakahama designed ships and taught navigation so that Japan could also engage in global trade.
Under orders, he translated into Japanese a classic navigational textbook he had brought back from the United States. He also wrote a textbook for English learners. There is a musical about Manjiro in Japan. It is called The Dream of John Manjiro. It was first done in June, John Manjiro was the first Japanese man to set foot on the contintental United States , to take a train , to ride a steamship , and to wear a necktie.
John Manjiro talked about world views with Ryoma Sakamoto , a famous Japanese statesman and general.
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Contents move to sidebar hide. Page Talk. Read Change Change source View history. Tools Tools. In other projects. Wikimedia Commons Wikidata item. In this Japanese name , the family name is Nakahama. Nakahama "John" Manjiro. Life in the United States [ change change source ]. Return to Japan [ change change source ].
It was therefore not until Manjiro served as a Samurai to the Shogun that he was permitted to take a surname. He chose Nakahama himself, honoring his hometown by doing so.
Manjiro continued to serve the shogun, and later the restored imperial government, in various capacities and also expanded his own knowledge and education to that end. Following an educational mission to Europe, Manjiro visited the east coast of the United States and Captain William Whitfield for the first time in 21 years. Although there were Japanese that immigrated to the Hawaiian Islands in the late s, often to work on sugarcane plantations, Hawaii was still an independent nation at the time.
Some of these sugarcane workers later migrated to the Mainland U. Also in the s, a few immigrants made their way directly from Japan to California, but their numbers were so low that their presence went largely unnoticed at least in terms of being an independent ethnicity. This was due in large part to the influx of immigrants from other parts of Asia, particularly China in the late s and s.
In fact, by , there were still fewer than 25, Japanese nationals living in the entire United States.
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Image at right: Manjiro Nakahama, ca. The Millicent Library Fairhaven, Massachusetts , Keith Whitfield. He also studied surveying the Bartlett School of Navigation, and became familiar with Bowditch's American Practical Navigator, which he later translated into Japanese. He was apprenticed to a cooper, and learned to make barrels to hold whale oil.
Three years after arriving in Fairhaven, with Captain Whitfield's help, John Manjiro signed on to the whaler Franklin under Captain Ira Davis, bound for the rich fishing waters off Japan. After whaling in the South Seas, Franklin put into Honolulu in October , where Manjiro again met his four friends. None had been able to return home, because leaving Japan was an offense punishable by death.
When Captain Davis became ill and was left in Manila , the crew elected a new captain and Manjiro was made First Mate. Manjiro promptly set out by sea for the California Gold Rush. He arrived in San Francisco in May , and took a steamboat up the Sacramento River, then a train into the mountains.
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He decided to make a personal appeal directly to the Shogun. Manjiro arrived in Honolulu and found two of his shipwrecked companions who were willing to go with him. With the help of Reverend Damon, he purchased a whaleboat, the Adventure, which was loaded aboard the bark Sarah Boyd Captain Whitmore along with gifts from the people of Honolulu.
They sailed on December 17, , and reached Okinawa on February 3, The three were immediately arrested for violating Japan's exclusion law, and were taken to Kagoshima for questioning by Lord Shimazu, the daimyo of Satsuma. Curious about their travels, Lord Shimazu protected them and saw that they were treated with courtesy. After months of interrogation in Satsuma and Nagasaki, they were released and returned home to Tosa where Lord Yamanouchi Toyonobu questioned them further before awarding them pensions.
Manjiro returned to his village of Naka-no-Hama and was reunited with his mother on October 5, Yamanouchi Yodo, the Lord of Tosa, prohibited Manjiro from ever leaving his home town "for travel abroad, needless to say, and for ocean-bound fishing journeys. Manjiro detailed his travels in a report to the bakufu , which is kept today at the Tokyo National Museum.
Manjiro nakahama biography examples pdf: Nakahama Manjirō (中濱 万次郎, January 27, – November 12, ), also known as John Manjirō (or John Mung), [1] was a Japanese samurai and translator who was one of the first Japanese people to visit the United States and an important translator during the opening of Japan.
After Commodore Matthew Perry's Black Ships arrived to force the opening of Japan, Manjiro was summoned to Edo now known as Tokyo in September , questioned by the national government, and made a hatamoto a samurai in direct service to the shogun and a government adviser. As a token of his new status, he was allowed to wear two swords and adopt a surname; he chose Nakahama, after his home village.
Manjiro, though unseen and unknown by the Americans, became an interpreter and translator for the Tokugawa shogunate and was instrumental in negotiating the Convention of Kanagawa. He told the shogunate, "America greatly hopes to enjoy a deep and abiding friendship with Japan.