When Yoshikawa Kōjirō 吉川幸次郎 (1904–1980), a prominent scholar of Kyoto University known for teaching Chinese literature in spoken Mandarin, was writing a critical biography of the Sinologue Ogyū Sorai 荻生徂徠 (1666–1728), he commented that Sorai was a linguist when he was young, a literary man in his middle ages, and a philosopher in his later years. After three decades of research, I found the comment to be a great inspiration, reminding me that I should now try to be a bit more philosophical so as to refine and sublimate my scholarship and share my experience with students in an memorable way. In this spirit, I developed the following four-line instruction set that I call “Shihai shibei” 史海拾貝 (Collecting shells from the sea of history), based mainly on my research about the 1854 Shōin-Perry encounter at Yale, the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA), based in Washington, D.C., and Tokyo. This instruction set incorporates several wellknown Chinese and Japanese proverbs:

Naito Konan visited China for nine times.And his visits in 1899 and 1902 played an important role in forming his conception of progressive history.Especially in the autumn of 1902,he was able to read Zhang Xuecheng's works.From the theory of social evolution,he made his own interpretation of Zhang Xuecheng's Wenshi tongyi.

In the negotiations between the United States and Japan that resulted in the treaty that marked the end of Japan's policy of seclusion (1854), not only the Japanese and English languages but also Chinese and Dutch were recognized for official communications. The chief U.S. interpreter, S. Wells Williams, had long experience in China and expertise in the Chinese language but not in Japanese. For preparation of written documents and participation in "brush conversations," he required the assistance of an educated Chinese assistant, and for Perry's second voyage to Japan in 1854 he engaged the service of Luo Sen. Luo kept a journal of his visit to Japan and the Ryukyus that was published soon after his return to Hong Kong in both Chinese and English; the English version was included in the official record of Perry's mission, published in 1856-57. Since then almost forgotten in the West, Luo's journal merits rediscovery for the insight it affords into cultural relations between Japan and China in the bakumatsu period, mutual understanding and misunderstanding among Japanese, Americans, and Chinese, and the status of Chinese as a negotiating language in the communications of two non-Chinese speaking nations.

The 150th anniversary of Commodore Matthew C. Perry's 1853 visit to Japan, commemorated on both sides of the Pacifi c with conferences, symposia and museum exhibitions, was a signal moment for refl ection on the complex bonds between Japan and the United States over a century and a half. NHK, the public broadcasting giant, produced a special television program on Perry; the Constitution Memorial Museum, 1) as well as a number of local museums, mounted special exhibitions; several municipalities held special festivals, and scholars such as Mitani Hiroshi published new books to commemorate this historical event. 2) Quite coincidentally, reports of the (re) discovery of secret letters from Yoshida Shōin (1830�1859) , focused new attention on his failed attempt to steal out of Japan through Perry's fl agship during the Commodore's return visit in 1854. A dozen of newspapers across Japan reported the fi nd. 3)