Masaoki Shinmi

Masaoki Shinmi was born in 1822 into the Miura family and adopted by his uncle Shinmi Masamichi. He entered shogunate service as a page and rose through household and administrative appointments. In 1859 he became a foreign affairs magistrate, concurrently responsible for Kanagawa, and was selected to head the mission carrying Japan’s treaty ratification to the United States. ¹

Shinmi travelled with deputy envoy Norimasa Muragaki and inspector Tadamasa Oguri aboard the American warship Powhatan. Their journey brought them through Hawaii, San Francisco, and Panama to Washington in May 1860. The delegation completed the exchange of ratifications of the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce and visited American cities and institutions. Its members observed the Washington Navy Yard’s workshops before proceeding to Baltimore, Philadelphia, and New York and returning home by way of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. ^{2, 3}

After the mission, Shinmi remained a foreign affairs magistrate and later served close to the shogun as a sobashu, or personal attendant. He withdrew from service in the final years of the shogunate. Following the Meiji Restoration he lived at Shimo-Okutomi in Musashi before returning to Tokyo for medical treatment. He died in 1869. ^{1, 3}