JAPAN: Reception at Uraga

On a summer day in 1853, the port of Uraga was decked in holiday style. Brightly painted, flag-festooned screens lined the shore of lower Tokyo Bay. Soldiers paraded in burnished armor. Elegant emissaries of the Mikado in exquisite brocades, and velvets turned out to greet Commodore Matthew Perry as he debarked from the U.S. man-o'-war Susquehanna.

Last week a drab and depressed Uraga had a harbor reception of a different kind. The arriving travelers were 336 Japanese men, women & children—diplomats, businessmen and newspapermen returning home with their families from foreign posts. From the decks of the rusty old Tsukushi...

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