Harry Smith Parkes - Japan (1865-83)

Japan (1865-83)

In May 1865, during a trip to the Yangtze ports, he received the notification of his appointment as "Her Majesty's Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary and Consul-General in Japan", to succeed Alcock.

He held the post for 18 years, and throughout that time he strenuously used his influence in support of the Liberal Party of Japan. He was friendly toward the Bakufu's rivals and had some influence in the Meiji government as a result. So earnestly did he throw in his lot with these reformers that he became a marked man, and incurred the bitter hostility of the reactionaries, who on three separate occasions attempted to assassinate him. He ran the British mission in a way that encouraged the junior members to research and make deep studies of Japan: in particular Ernest Satow and William George Aston benefited from this to become great scholars of Japan and Japanology. But generally Parkes was not an easy man to work for, nor was he popular with the Japanese officials or common people.

While in Japan, Lady Parkes became known, in 1867, as the first non-Japanese woman to ascend Mount Fuji. Lady Parkes fell ill and died in England in November 1879, while there to make a home for the returning family. Though urgently summoned by telegraph, Sir Harry did not reach London until four days after her death. "She hoped to the last that I should have reached in time. I have now six children to take charge of," he wrote to Frederick Victor Dickins, "and feebly indeed shall I replace her in that charge, while the Legation will have lost that bright and good spirit to which it owed whatever attention it possessed."

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