Papers Relating to Foreign Affairs of the United States, 1868 and 1870: Japan
Dispatches of the American ministers in Japan on the treatment of the Christians of Urakami. They enclose, in English translation, the Japanese government’s decree of 1868, its letters of 1870 and the Nagasaki authorities’ own count of those deported.
Read the text at history.state.gov ↗1868, part 1, document 349 ↗1870, document 284 ↗
The dispatches were written by R. B. Van Valkenburgh in 1868 and C. E. De Long in 1870, from Yokohama. What makes them useful is what they enclose: a decree of the emperor’s council ordering the people of Urakami to be placed in the charge of the daimyos, letters of the Japanese ministers for foreign affairs explaining the measure, the protests of the foreign consuls at Nagasaki, and a report of the Nagasaki authorities listing how many Christians were sent to each province.
The Japanese documents are given in translations made for the legation, and the ministers’ own comments are those of foreign diplomats. De Long remarks that the Nagasaki report was probably prepared to allay feeling abroad. The documents are cited for what the Japanese government said and ordered, alongside the missionaries’ account in Letters and Journal of Bernard Petitjean.
Cited in
- 17 March 1865, firm date