The embassy's next destination after San Francisco was Washington. There was no railway across the continent then: to get from the Pacific side to the Atlantic meant going south by ship to Central America, crossing the Isthmus of Panama by land, and taking another ship from there. The Panama Canal was more than half a century away.
An attendant's diary sets down the impression of the place they came to: “This Panama lies in the country of New Granada in Central America. It is eight degrees north of the equator, and the heat is severe; the country has many mountains and many islands, grass and trees grow thick, and there are many venomous snakes and savage beasts.” The position, eight degrees north of the equator, is given exactly.
The canal they could not yet dig
The same diary has a passage on the plan for a canal. Britain and the United States had joined forces to cut through between this place and Aspinwall on the Atlantic coast, “to bore through the mountains and join the waters of east and west to make a passage”, but a great range of mountains ran across it and the thing could not be done; and so a road for the steam carriage was laid instead. The party learned on the spot how a railway came to be built where a canal had failed.
Seventy-odd men aboard a steam train
Leaving the Powhatan at Panama, the party crossed the isthmus by this railway. Seventy-six took the train — one fewer than had left Japan, because a man fell ill in California and went home.
The claim that they were the first Japanese to ride a steam train is not exact. The first was probably John Manjirō, who rode one in October 1849 on his way west in the middle of the gold rush. The embassy came just ten years later. It was certainly the first time more than seventy Japanese rode as a party, though, and the first time any rode “officially”.
The vice-envoy Muragaki Awaji-no-kami put his astonishment in his diary.
Presently the steam came up strong and it was about to start, and as I had heard beforehand that it would make one's eyes swim, I was wondering how it would be … when with a terrible noise of wheels it ran off. … The roar of the carriage was like thunder rolling, and looking to left and right, even the blades of grass three or four shaku away looked like stripes, and the eye could not hold them.
A noise like rolling thunder; outside the window, grass three or four shaku off streaming past like stripes, too fast for the eye to follow. It is the record of men who had known no speed beyond a palanquin and a horse, meeting speed for the first time.
Katō Somō, one of the party, even drew the train in his Niyo-gatari (talks of two nights). In his drawing two tall poles stand at the front of the locomotive, with the Japanese sun flag and the Stars and Stripes flying at their tops. In the margin of the diary he added this.
For the Japanese envoys' steam train they are said to have had many new curtains with the sun disc made up, and to have run it so; this should be added to the account.
A steam locomotive hung with the sun flag ran across the American continent for the first time on that day.
Who paid for the railway
One man in the party wrote down not the scenery or the speed but the cost and the way the money was raised: Morita Kiyoyuki. His diary has this.
The steam carriages and the iron road cost seven million dollars in all. There are promoters throughout the United States, and the money was got by borrowing dollars from men of standing, with a yearly return paid out in proportion to the sum lent — so Captain Garnay told us.
Seven million dollars in all; promoters across the United States; money put up by men of established standing, with a yearly distribution in proportion to the amount — what he took down from the officer escorting them was a description of a joint-stock company. The founding of companies was something of a boom in the America of the day, and the railways drew the most of it. Share subscriptions for railways became a boom in Japan too after 1868; in this the east and the west ran along the same lines.
On the same journey the embassy also visited the mint at San Francisco. Morita's Akō Nikki records that the works “spends no manpower at all, but uses steam machines; water is drawn up to the second, third and fourth storeys by a leather pump, and whenever fire is needed it is all taken from gas. Its convenience and speed are beyond description.” The party admired the speed of a machine that struck seventy-two coins a minute. The machines that make speed, and the way of raising the money to install them: they saw the two one after the other.
To the Atlantic coast
At Aspinwall on the Atlantic coast — Colón today — the party transferred to the Roanoke, the ship waiting to carry them on: three hundred and sixteen shaku long, nine ken in the beam, with a complement of five hundred and eighty from the captain down and fifty-four guns on two decks. She went north through the Caribbean, in sight of Cuba, with Cape Florida in the distance, and further north along the east coast. On 14 May 1860 the embassy reached Washington at last.
In later years, as commissioner of finance, Oguri set about bringing the joint-stock company into Japan as early as he could. Behind the word “company” as it appears in his memorial on the Hyōgo Shōsha lies the working of this railway, taken in during the few hours of a crossing of the isthmus. That he turned his attention not only to the speed of the locomotive before his eyes but to the machinery that made it run says a good deal about where Oguri's interest went.
Sources: Sakamoto Fujiyoshi, Oguri Kōzukenosuke no Shōgai (the life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke), Kōdansha, 1987; Abe Dōzan, Kaigun no Senkusha Oguri Kōzukenosuke Seiden (a true life of Oguri Kōzukenosuke, pioneer of the navy), Kaigun Yūshūkai, 1941; Ōtsubo Sadakata and Hozumi Odoroki, Oguri Kōzukenosuke, Oguri Kōzukenosuke o Shinobu Kai, 1975; Tatsunami, the journal of the Oguri Kōzukenosuke memorial society
→ The audience with the President at Washington ／ The first joint-stock company in Japan, the Hyōgo Shōsha ／ What he saw at the mint