Townsend Harris (October 3, 1804 – 1878) was a successful New York City merchant and minor politician, and the first United States Consul General to Japan. He negotiated the "Harris Treaty" between the US and Japan and is credited as the diplomat who first opened the Empire of Japan to foreign trade and culture in the Edo period. He gained the respect and affection of the Japanese people, and is honoured to this day in Japan.

In New York

Harris was born in the village of Sandy Hill (now Hudson Falls), in Washington County in upstate New York. He moved early to New York City, where he became a successful merchant and importer from China.

In 1846 Harris joined the New York City Board of Education, serving as its president until 1848. He founded the Free Academy of the City of New York, which later became the City College of New York, to provide education to the city's working people. A city high school bearing Harris's name, Townsend Harris High School, soon emerged as a separate entity out of the Free Academy's secondary-level curriculum; the school survived until 1942 when Fiorello La Guardia closed it because of budget constraints. Townsend Harris High School was re-created in 1984 as a public magnet school for the humanities.

In Japan

President Franklin Pierce named Harris the first Consul General to the Empire of Japan in July, 1856, where he opened the first US Consulate at the Gyokusen-ji Temple in the city of Shimoda, Shizuoka Prefecture , sometime after Commodore Perry had first opened trade between the US and Japan in 1853.
After two years of negotiation marked by deadlock and cultural clashes, he successfully negotiated the "Treaty of Peace and Commerce," or the Harris Treaty, in 1858, securing trade between the US and Japan and paving the way for greater Western influence in Japan's economy and politics. He returned to the US in 1861.

Harris was favorably impressed by his experiences in Japan at the end of its self-imposed period of isolation. He wrote: "The people all appeared clean and well fed... well clad and happy looking. It is more like the golden age of simplicity and honesty than I have ever seen in any other country".

Returning to New York

As reported in the New York Times, when he was interviewed in 1874 by someone recently returned from Japan, his first question was, "What do the Japanese think of me?" New York Times Magazine. December 28, 1919.

Harris is buried in Green-Wood Cemetery in Brooklyn, New York.

In popular culture

Harris was portrayed by John Wayne in the 1958 movie The Barbarian and the Geisha, directed by John Huston. Its plot, dealing with a love affair between Harris and a Japanese woman, is substantially fictional.

Harris also appears as the main character of several episodes of the satirical Japanese manga-based anime, Gag Manga Biyori as a desperate man with a thick accent attempting to outshine Commodore Perry's arrival in a black-hulled ship in 1853, while making preparations for finalizing the Treaty of Peace and Commerce.

Harris was mentioned by a visiting Japanese dignitary in The Rifleman, in the episode "The Sixteenth Cousin".

Harris is seen in the 47th NHK Taiga Drama Atsuhime. He is played by Blake Crawford.