Episode 1 of 2

Signing of the Harris Treaty

Name: Signing of the Harris Treaty
Start: 1858-07-29
Location: Edo Bay

When: July 29, 1858
Where: Edo Bay
Part of: United States and Japan sign Treaty of Amity and Commerce

The Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed on July 29, 1858, on the deck of the USS Powhatan in Edo Bay, formalizing trade relations.

Negotiated by Townsend Harris, the treaty opened specific ports to trade and granted extraterritoriality. The signing occurred on the USS Powhatan in Edo Bay, marking the culmination of two years of negotiation with the Tokugawa Shogunate.

Sources

Treaty of Amity and Commerce (United States–Japan) Wikipedia, revision of 2026-08-29

Machine-drafted from the cited Wikipedia passages and checked by a reviewing model, not by a human editor. Every passage cites the revision it was written from; dates and places follow those passages.