Triumphant Nature, sculptor without peer,

Has moulded you her Wingèd Victory.

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AMERICAN MAKERS OF THE NEW JAPAN

BY WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS

Author of “The Religions of Japan,” “The Japanese Nation in Evolution,” etc.

ALL the world knows that Commodore Matthew C. Perry “opened Japan,” very much as one opens an exposition. He touched the button that set in operation the waiting wheels of a century or more of interior, intellectual preparation. It is not so well known that to President Millard Fillmore belongs the credit of organizing the expedition sent out in 1852, although it was William Alexander Graham, Secretary of the Navy, who brought up the subject in cabinet meeting.

Other American makers of Japan lived before Perry. Our flag, covering Dutch ships, was mirrored in Nagasaki Bay in 1798. In 1837, S. Wells Williams, printer and diplomatist, who, in the American ship Morrison, fitted out by Mr. Charles W. King, sailed from Hong-Kong to return shipwrecked Japanese, was driven away from Uraga with cannon-fire and balls. From these waifs, by word of mouth, he learned the spoken language; he then translated the gospels into Japanese, and in 1852 acted as Perry’s interpreter and proposed “the favored nation” clause in the treaty.