Our First Glimpse of Japan: Prominent American Visitors to Japan in the 1870s

Less than 20 years after Herman Melville in Moby Dick called Japan "That double-bolted land," American tourists were arriving at Yokohama from San Francisco on the first leg of a globe-circling adventure. Our First Glimpse of Japan collects original accounts from four prominent Americans of their visits. These accounts reached a broad readership, forming impressions and opinions of Japan that continue to influence American attitudes today. The earliest of the visitors, in 1871, former Secre...