Working For The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs
In November 1883, Stevens entered the service of the Japanese Government as English Secretary to the Imperial Legation at Washington, a position which he obtained thanks to the influence his former superior Bingham had with the Japanese government. In 1884 he was ordered to Tokyo for service in the Foreign Office. In the winter of 1884–85 he accompanied Count Inoue Kaoru to Korea to assist in negotiations related to the murder of several Japanese citizens on Korean soil; for services rendered on that occasion, the Emperor Meiji awarded him with the Third Class of the Order of the Rising Sun. He was Bureau du Protocole of an 1885-87 Tokyo conference aimed at the renegotiation of unequal treaties imposed on Japan by Western countries; following the conference, he returned to Washington, D.C. with the rank of Honorary Counsellor of Legation. He served under Count Mutsu Munemitsu, then-Minister at Washington; during that time, he assisted in the negotiation of the treaty with Mexico, which was the first treaty made by Japan fully recognizing her right to exercise all the sovereign powers of an independent state.
Soon after the start of hostilities in the First Sino-Japanese War, Stevens published an article in the North American Review, in which he sought to justify the war by asserting that the "dry rot of Chinese conservatism" blocked Korea's development, and that a reduction of Chinese influence in Korea and a corresponding increase in Japanese power would result in social and commercial reform. For services rendered during the war, he received the Second Class of the Order of the Sacred Treasures. He travelled twice to Hawaii to represent Japanese interests there, once in 1901 and again in 1902. He was also decorated two more times by the Japanese government, the third time receiving the Second Class of the Order of the Rising Sun, and then in October 1904, the fourth time, being awarded the Grand Cross of the Sacred Treasure.
Read more about this topic: Durham Stevens
Famous quotes containing the words working for, working, japanese, ministry, foreign and/or affairs:
“Land is the only thing in the world that amounts to anything, for ‘tis the only thing in this world that lasts.... ‘Tis the only thing worth working for, worth fighting for—worth dying for.”
—Margaret Mitchell (1900–1949)
“Asking a working writer what he thinks about critics is like asking a lamp-post what it feels about dogs.”
—Christopher Hampton (b. 1946)
“I am a lantern—
My head a moon
Of Japanese paper, my gold beaten skin
Infinitely delicate and infinitely expensive.”
—Sylvia Plath (1932–1963)
“The State has but one face for me: that of the police. To my eyes, all of the State’s ministries have this single face, and I cannot imagine the ministry of culture other than as the police of culture, with its prefect and commissioners.”
—Jean Dubuffet (1901–1985)
“The whole object of travel is not to set foot on foreign land; it is at last to set foot on one’s own country as a foreign land.”
—Gilbert Keith Chesterton (1874–1936)
“All a man’s affairs become diseased when he wishes to cure evils by evils.”
—Sophocles (497–406/5 B.C.)