Their business at Washington, Philadelphia and New York finished, the embassy did not go back the way it had come. On the morning of 30 June 1860 — the twelfth day of the fifth month by the Japanese calendar — the United States Navy's Niagara left the port of New York quietly and headed east, into the Atlantic. For four and a half months after that the ship went on round the globe without turning west again, and the embassy became the first body of Japanese to travel around the world.
The ports of call
Sakamoto Fujiyoshi's Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai follows the homeward passage with dates, by the Western calendar.
16 July Across the North Atlantic at the height of summer, closing Cape Verde at the western end of Africa. Entered the Portuguese port of Porto Grande.
29 July Into the eastern hemisphere. Crossed the equator the next day, the thirtieth.
6 August Landed at Luanda in the Congo — Portuguese territory, in what is Angola today — and spent about ten days there.
26 August Passed the Cape of Good Hope at the southern end of Africa, and afterwards called at St Paul Island and Amsterdam Island, near the Antarctic.
27 September North to Christmas Island, west of Australia. Entered Batavia (Jakarta) in Java on 30 September.
10 October Sailed from Batavia. Reached Hong Kong on 21 October, and Taiwan ten days after that.
4 November Passed off the Ryūkyūs. On the eighth, Mount Fuji under white snow was in sight from the deck.
9 November (the twenty-seventh day of the ninth month by the Japanese calendar) The ship entered Edo Bay quietly and anchored off Shinagawa.
Oguri's own record
Oguri's own record gives the same course by the Japanese calendar. On the twenty-ninth day of the fifth month they reached the British island of “Shintōkinsento” and bought water and coal, sailing again on the second day of the sixth month. On the twenty-fourth day of the sixth month they anchored at a port in Africa called “Roanda” and stayed seven days. It was Portuguese territory, a place where coral and the like were got in quantity — and:
It lies under the equator and is a hot country. They say a raw hen's egg buried in the sand will cook.
They sailed on the first day of the seventh month, and on the eleventh day of the seventh month “passed the Cape of Good Hope, on the southern side of the country of Africa”. Hereabouts, he noted, the southern pole star can be seen just as the north star is seen in Japan. On the fifteenth day of the eighth month they were at Cape Shiwa, and on the twenty-first they anchored at a port of the country of Jagatara and landed at Batavia. This was Dutch territory, with a population of 118,300, and the houses used tiles much as in Japan, he observed. They took on coal, water and provisions and sailed north on the twenty-seventh day of the eighth month.
The names of the ports, the days spent in each, the population, the material of the roofs. The character of what he wrote down shows where Oguri's eye went.
What the ports of call taught them
At Batavia the party received a piece of news: the British army, infamous from the Opium War, had now entered Peking in China. It cast them down. Oguri went over to Onrust Island here and inspected the Dutch shipyard.
As the ship drew nearer to Asia they met British ships more often. Oguri marked that and grew more wary, Sakamoto Fujiyoshi writes. What had not been visible on the outward passage across the Pacific stood in a row along the homeward ports of call. Java, Hong Kong, Taiwan — all were places already deep under European and American influence. The route itself taught where a Japan newly opened stood within Asia.
In those four and a half months aboard ship Oguri put together his long report on the exchange negotiation and the currency question, working up into a document on the voyage home the problem that had been put to him at Washington.
Home, and commissioner of foreign affairs
They had left Shinagawa in the first month and came back in the autumn; the seasons had turned twice. On his return Oguri's stipend was raised by two hundred koku, to 2,700. As one of the few shogunal officials who had seen the world, his turn came at once: he succeeded the commissioner of foreign affairs Hori Oribe-no-shō, who had taken his own life, and became commissioner of foreign affairs in the eleventh month of that year. To every eye he was the leading candidate.
In the month after he took office, on the fifth day of the twelfth month, Heusken, secretary to the American minister Harris, was cut down at Furukawabashi in Azabu. The foreign ministers blamed the shogunate, closed their legations in Edo and withdrew to Yokohama. That was the work waiting for Oguri when he stepped off the ship.
The moment they anchored off Shinagawa, though, the party was met by an unaccountable feeling that something was wrong — because of an event that had taken place in Japan while they were in America.
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Oguri Nikki (the Oguri diaries), Gunma Prefecture Historical Materials vol. 7; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941
→ Coming home without knowing of the killing at the Sakurada Gate ／ The argument on exchange, written up aboard ship ／ On to the work of a commissioner of foreign affairs