Historical Dictionary of United States-Japan ... - Bakumatsu Films

HEPBURN, JAMES CURTIS • 103
ties. As Hay himself put it, the Open Door policy asked for a fair field
and no favor for all traders.
HEARN, LAFCADIO (ALSO KNOWN AS YAKUMO KOIZUMI;
1850–1904). An educator and author of several books and essays on
Japan, Hearn was born in Greece, studied in England, Ireland, and
France, and emigrated to the United States in 1869. He worked as a
translator and journalist before moving to Japan in 1889 to become an
English teacher in rural Matsue. He later taught at a college in Kumamoto,
and afterward obtained a position at the University of Tokyo.
Despite his partial blindness, he wrote several widely read works on
Japan, including Glimpses of an Unfamiliar Japan and Japan: An Attempt
at Interpretation. He married Setsuko Koizumi, and took her
family’s name upon becoming a Japanese citizen in 1894.
HECO, JOSEPH (ALSO KNOWN AS HIKOZO HAMADA;
1836–1897). As a young boy, Heco was on a coastal trade ship between
Edo and Kobe blown into the open Pacific Ocean by a storm
and eventually rescued by an American ship returning from China to
San Francisco. Assisted by American benefactors, especially the
sailor Thomas Troy and the politically well-connected businessman
Beverly C. Sanders, Heco remained in the United States until 1859.
He went to school in San Francisco and Maryland, worked at a commercial
trading firm, converted to Catholicism, met Presidents
Franklin Pierce, James Buchanan, and, on a return trip to the U.S.,
met President Abraham Lincoln. He adopted the name “Joseph
Heco,” and, in 1858, became the first Japanese granted American citizenship.
He returned to Japan in 1859, and worked as an interpreter
and secretary for American charge d’ affaires Townsend Harris. He
made friends with several Americans in Japan, including Francis
Hall and Eugene Van Reed. Although Heco worked with the American
and Japanese governments from time to time, including two
years in the Japanese Finance Ministry (1872–1874), he spent most
of life back in Japan as a commercial agent and business entrepreneur.
See also CASTAWAY SAILORS, JAPANESE.
HEPBURN, JAMES CURTIS (1815–1911). A medical doctor and
American missionary, James Curtis Hepburn and his wife, Clara,
lived and worked in Japan from 1859 to 1890. Dr. Hepburn provided