[Japan]:

$4,500 · Offered by William Reese Company · No longer available

[NICHIBEI SHUKO TSUSHO JOYAKU. TREATIES OF AMITY AND COMMERCE]. An attractive set of the "Ansei Five-Power Treaties," the formal diplomatic engagements between Japan and the United States, United Kingdom, France, Russia, and the Netherlands, ending Japan's 250 years of seclusion and opening its ports to worldwide commercial trade (so named for their signing in the fifth year of the Ansei era). The first treaty, also known as the Harris Treaty, was signed by the U.S. on the deck of the U.S.S. Powhatan in Edo (now Tokyo) Bay on July 29, 1858. It opened the ports of Shimoda, Hakodate, Kanagawa, and Nagasaki to foreign trade effective July 4, 1859, and then Niigata and Hyogo on January 1, 1860 and January 1, 1863, respectively. In addition to extensive trade and consular provisions, the treaty also established the rights of U.S. citizens to reside permanently, lease property, purchase real estate, and construct residences and warehouses; established a system of extraterritoriality whereby U.S. residents were subject only to the laws of their own consular courts and not the Japanese legal system; and established freedom of religious expression and the right to construct churches to serve the needs of U.S. residents within the confines of designated foreign settlements. The treaty followed the Convention of Kanagawa, signed under threat of force in 1854 after Commodore Matthew Perry's aggressive visits to the Shogunate in 1853 and 1854. The Convention had granted coaling rights for

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