On Thursday December 1st, 1857, having been at last received at the Shogun’s palace at Edo (and accommodated for the occasion in the “Office for the Examination of Barbarian Books”), the American Consul General Townsend Harris made the following notation in his journal:
When I reached my private apartments, the present was brought in. On opening it, it was found to contain four trays of Japan bonbons, made of sugar, rice flour, fruit, nuts, etc. They were arranged in the trays in a beautiful manner, and the forms, colors, and decorations were all very neat. The quantity was about seventy pounds of weight. I am sorry I cannot send them to the United States, but they will not keep for so long a voyage.
Accompanied by a retinue of 350 officials, guards, carriers and servants, Harris had left the remote outpost of Shimoda eight days earlier for the 200 kilometer trip to the capital city of Edo. Finding the norimon with twelve bearers that had been placed at his disposal to be awkward and uncomfortable, the rotund consul made most of the trip on horseback. Every evening along the route, accommodations were provided to Harris and his sidekick Heusken, and the senior diplomat recorded with evident relish the various signs of respect and courtesy that were extended along the way.
This was the crowning moment of his career as a diplomat, the sudden and unexpected breakthrough in the negotiations he had been waiting for during the long solitary months at the temple in Shimoda. Harris’s journal noted that, as his party approached the city of Edo, a “vast multitude” bore silent witness to the ceremonial entrance into the capital of the first foreign diplomatic envoy to Japan. He estimated the size of the crowd at around one hundred and eighty five thousand – a gathering of positively staggering proportions.
“The people all appeared clean, well clad and well fed,” Harris noted appreciatively.
On the morning after their arrival at the castle of Edo, Harris and Heusken were paid a visit of ceremony by the eight commissioners who had been appointed by the Shogun’s government for the purpose of receiving the American diplomat. They arrived in great pomp and circumstance with retinues that numbered in “some hundreds”. Much bowing and formal speeches ensued: this was the “horrible reception” that the travel-weary Heusken commented on in his own journal. In the afternoon, there was more ceremony as a prince who was identified as “the Ambassador” came bearing a lacquered box some three feet high, tied with a “broad, green, silk braid.” Harris bowed in the direction of the box to acknowledge receipt of the gift. Once it had been carried back to his quarters, he opened the box and discovered the contents: these were the seventy pounds of bonbons. Whether the box of candies would truly “make ill an infinite number of children” – as the young Heusken went on to note somewhat ungenerously – history has not recorded what actually became of the heavy, calorie-laden gift to Japan’s first visiting diplomat.
The “disconnect” between the accounts of the two diplomats speaks to more than just the difference between the sensibilities of the older, wiser and more understanding Harris and the younger, impetuous and more callous Heusken. As he considered that his journal was tantamount to an historical account, Harris on many occasions tended to “sugar-coat” his observations, and his report on this particular Japanese diplomatic offering was no exception; it was vital for the record to show that the United States had been a gracious recipient of the gift. Heusken on the other hand had no such niceties in mind and his jocular comments were not only more spontaneous and unadulterated – they may also have represented the true feelings of the elder statesman as well. The importance the Japanese attached to a gift of sugary confectionery – which for the Western participants seemed quaint and perhaps somewhat derisory – again highlights the cultural divide that existed, that still exists, between the two nations.
