Princeton Weekly Bulletin October 19, 1998
Translators and Japanese colleagues retrace route
of 19th-century delegation
Record of a journey
By Caroline Moseley
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Written by Kunitake Kume, a member of Iwakura's retinue, the narrative offers Western scholars a wealth of commentary and observation from an Asian perspective. Unfortunately, the five-volume Record is little known in the Western world, because only excerpts have been translated into English -- until now.
Martin Collcutt, professor of East Asian studies and history, and director of the Program in East Asian Studies, is translating the first volume of Kume's work, "America," which deals with the Japanese embassy's transcontinental trip from San Francisco to Washington, D.C. Working with him as co-translator is Akiko Collcutt, his wife. (Other scholars are translating the four volumes that deal with the embassy's subsequent European travel and homeward voyage through Asia.)
"The Iwakura embassy steamed out of Yokohama on December 19, 1871," says Collcutt. "The purpose of the expedition was to gather information about the West -- its technology, industry, political organizations, legal institutions, science and medicine; indeed, everything useful for national development."
Among the 105 Japanese officials and attendants was the 30-year-old Kume, a former Samurai, a specialist in classical Chinese and Japanese literature. Neither he nor the ambassador spoke English, though one of the vice-ambassadors did, says Collcutt. Charles De Long, American minister to Japan, accompanied the group as guide and interpreter.
Kume's task was to maintain a log of the ambassador's official activities -- visits to schools, factories and government offices, for example. However, says Collcutt, "He apparently felt free to make his own observations on what he saw as well."
When the Japanese arrived in San Francisco Bay on January 15, 1872, Kume noted the event. He also observed:
"The whole deck was enshrouded in a watery mist. With the first gleam of dawn, as the sun slowly rose, the mists began to clear, and we could see the mountains of California rising ahead of us. Directly to the east, two mountain peaks opened up to make a great gate. ... This was the famous Golden Gate, or kinmon in Japanese. In 22 days, crossing the ocean, this was the first land we had seen east of Japan. There are no words to express our joy as we gazed at it."
Salvos from Fort Alcatraz
The Japanese group was well-received: "The steamer America arrived in port at 9:35 yesterday morning and was saluted with salvos of artillery from Fort Alcatraz," according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Collcutt notes, "The Japanese were welcome wherever they went because they were understood to be on a diplomatic and trade mission that would open their country. They did not represent a labor threat, as did Chinese and Irish immigrants."
After two weeks in San Francisco, the embassy traveled by special train to Sacramento. Then, says Collcutt, "They boarded Pullman cars" for a journey across country.
Passing through Laramie, Wyo., Kume saw "20 or 30 houses comprising Laramie village. The houses were all substantial in scale and gave the appearance of a town." Beside the tracks at Sherman Summit, "A stunted pine tree grew crookedly among the rocks. It made an extremely elegant and tasteful wooded scene."
And approaching Cheyenne, he observed, "This rough, deserted plain goes for 1,000 miles without inhabitants. There are no green trees in sight. Not even the shadows of any flying birds. In such places, they laid railroad tracks at an early state of development, and subsequently the railroad encouraged the profits of development. We should pay heed to this long-range view of development."
The group reached Washington, D.C., on February 29 and visited everything there was to visit, including Ford's Theater, the Smithsonian, the Government Printing Office and Mt. Vernon. They also engaged in long -- and fruitless -- discussions with Secretary of State Hamilton Fish and President Grant aimed at renegotiating the 1854 U.S.-Japan treaty made by Commodore Matthew Perry.
Admiring but not dewy-eyed
During the six-month-long American experience, Kume proved himself "a shrewd observer," says Collcutt. "He admired Western civilization and American ingenuity, but wasn't dewy-eyed about it. When he saw Native Americans, he thought they looked downtrodden and miserable. In Washington, where he saw a large black population, he talked about the horrendous nature of slavery. He said education is the key to elevating depressed populations -- he saw nation-building as a matter not of race but of education."
And everywhere, says Collcutt, "Kume observed and commented on the infrastructure as well as the institutions of the United States. He talks about the railroads, the canals, transportation on the Great Lakes, farming techniques, education, postal services, markets and distribution, museums and theaters." Kume was also aware that "The railroad they were riding on was built in great part by Chinese labor. He talks about immigration and resistance to immigration in the U.S."
126 years later
One hundred twenty-six years after the embassy ended its transcontinental journey in Boston and sailed for Europe, the translators of "America" decided to make the same trip across the United States.
Kume's Record is very well known in Japan, says Collcutt, and he was not surprised when four Japanese colleagues consulted him about the possibility. "They asked if I knew a graduate student who would drive them. I thought, 'Why not do it myself?'"
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Along the route, they accumulated as much information as possible about the 1872 embassy. "We met many local historians who were extremely helpful. For example, in Battle Mountain, Nev., we found the Museum of the Immigrant Trails, near a truck stop. They have a small archive, and in it was microfilm of an 1872 newspaper reporting that the embassy passed through Reno. The article spoke of
'De Long and his Mongolians.'"
The Collcutts and colleagues also saw many of the same sights described by Kume. Says Collcutt, "At Sherman Summit, Wyo., I think we saw the pine tree in the rocks that Kume described. Just as he said, it 'grew crookedly among the rocks.' At least, it could be a descendant of Kume's tree."
Back at work in Princeton, Collcutt says, "You can certainly translate a language without having seen what is described. However, we felt that if we hadn't seen Alcatraz, the Nevada desert, the Salt Lake flats, the Sierras and the Rockies, the slowly winding Platte River or the Chicago water system -- we couldn't produce a translation that would truly communicate Kume's experience."
Collcutt had another reason for wanting to make this particular journey. Born in England, a U.S. resident since 1969 and a Princeton faculty member since 1975, he is about to become a U.S. citizen.
"This is my country now," he says, "and I thought I should learn more about it. At least I know a sliver of its geography and a bit about its history for six months in 1872."