In 1860, seventeen-year-old samurai Tateishi Onojirō, nicknamed “Tommy,” made headlines across America for his real and imagined adventures as part of the 1860 Japanese Embassy, the first Japanese diplomatic mission to the United States. The perception of Tateishi’s interracial romantic encounters with American women opened up to controversy and questioning the hierarchies of race and culture fundamental to many antebellum American concepts of civilization. This book reveals how Tateis...