Page:A handbook of modern Japan (IA handbookofmodern01clem).pdf/151

This is the era which was opened by Commodore Perry, and was almost entirely devoted to the persevering attempts of Perry, Harris, Curtius, Lord Elgin, and others to negotiate treaties, first of friendship and amity, and afterwards of trade and commerce, with Japan. It is rather interesting that the only events chronicled above, besides treaty-making, are terrible catastrophes, which the superstitious conservatives believed to have been visited upon their country as a punishment for treating with the barbarians! It is again a matter of peculiar pride to Americans that the first treaty of friendship and amity was negotiated by Perry; that the first foreign flag raised officially in Japan was the Stars and Stripes, hoisted at Shimoda by Harris on September 4, 1856; that Harris was the first accredited diplomatic agent from a foreign country to Japan; that he also had the honor of the first audience of a foreign representative with the Shōgun, then supposed to be the Emperor; and that he negotiated the first treaty of trade and commerce.