Civil War samurai : the 1860 Japanese Embassy and Tateishi Onojirō in Antebellum America / Natalia Doan

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Doan, Natalia, author.

Series:

Critical, connected histories

Critical connected histories

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Tateishi, Onojirō, 1843-1917.

Tateishi, Onojirō.

Samurai--Biography.

Samurai.

Japan--Foreign relations--United States.

Japan.

United States--Foreign relations--Japan.

United States.

Physical Description:

1 online resource : illustrations

Other Title:

1860 Japanese Embassy and Tateishi Onojirō in Antebellum America

Place of Publication:

Leiden : Leiden University Press, [2026]

Summary:

"In 1860, seventeen-year-old samurai Tateishi Onojirō, nicknamed “Tommy,” made headlines across America for his real and imagined adventures as part of the 1860 Japanese Embassy, the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States. The perception of Tateishi’s interracial romantic encounters with American women opened up to controversy and questioning the hierarchies of race and culture fundamental to many antebellum American concepts of civilization. This book reveals how Tateishi and his fellow samurai diplomats sparked a whirlwind of national optimism and cultural fantasy within the United States that challenged linked conceptions of race, masculinity, and power. After returning to Japan, Tateishi fought in Japan’s civil war and contributed to many of the defining cultural and national endeavors of nineteenth-century Japan. Civil War Samurai discloses the influence of samurai on antebellum American identity formation and the incredible life of a samurai celebrity and civil war survivor"-- JSTOR

Contents:

Samurai and Southern belles : “Prince Tommy” and Southern representations of the 1860 Japanese embassy

Writing to “Tommy” : samurai celebrities and American transnational engagement with the 1860 Japanese embassy

“Negroes from Japan” and the antebellum African American press

The origins and adventures of young Tateishi

Civil War survival

“Tommy” on trial : the Iwakura Mission and Nagano’s return to America

Nagano in Hawai‘i, Russia, and Hokkaido

Conclusion : the legacy of “Tommy”

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index

Online resource; title from PDF title page (JSTOR, viewed March 26, 2026)

ISBN:

9789400605312

9400605315

9789400605329

9400605323

9780197679289

0197679285

OCLC:

1573062911

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license