Gary Mukai

First Encounters: The First Japanese Embassy to the United States, 1860 is a graphic novel that tells the story of the first Japanese diplomatic mission to leave Japan after over two centuries of isolation under the Tokugawa Shogunate. On a mid-March day in 1860, the Kanrin Maru, a steamship manned by a Japanese crew, sailed through the Golden Gate after more than a month at sea. It was a remarkable event. Not only was it the first Japanese vessel to make a Pacific crossing, but many Japanese had gotten their first glimpse of a steamship only seven years earlier. Astonished then at the sight of a ship that could move without wind in its sails, the Japanese now proudly demonstrated that they could navigate such a vessel themselves.

Secondary Students. This curriculum module introduces students to the study of migration, including a brief overview of some categories of migration and reasons why people migrate. In this introductory study, the Japanese migration experience in the Americas is used as a case study. Students will be introduced to categories of migration such as rural-urban migration, urban-urban migration, cyclical migration, forced migration, return migration, remigration, and U-turn migration. Case studies of migration will be drawn from the Japanese experience in the United States, Peru, Brazil, Canada, Mexico, Argentina, Bolivia, and Paraguay. A brief history of the Japanese experience in each of these countries will be presented to students, and students will engage in small group activities that focus on a migration-related event. These activities are structured around the theory of multiple intelligences. —SPICE website