- Here's the real-life scoop on what happened to Manjiro after returning home.
- He became a teacher.
- Then Commodore Matthew Perry and his American ships entered Edo Bay in July 1853 and asked for access to Japan's ports.
- Manjiro was asked to go to Edo and turned into a samurai for his knowledge and expertise about America.
- Manjiro eventually advised the ruling government to end its isolationist policies and open itself up to America—after all, it wasn't like they had any weapons that would scare America off.
- On March 31, 1854, Japan and the U.S. sign a treaty of peace and friendship, thereby ending Japan's isolationism.
- Even though Manjiro was so influential with the shogun, for the rest of his life, people were suspicious of him; he even hired a bodyguard due to the threats against his life.
- Even so, he achieved many things: He wrote and translated some major books; he taught math, English, and sea navigation.
- He began the whaling industry in Japan and served as an interpreter for the first embassy to the U.S.
- He also managed to visit the Whitfields again, when he was forty-three years old.
- He was married three times and had three kids.
- He wore a hybrid of Western and Japanese fashion, and he always had a breakfast of toast and coffee.
- The friendship between the Whitfields and Manjiro lives on in a broader context through the Japan-America Grassroots Summit. Fairhaven and Tosashimizu (a city near Manjiro's hometown) are also sister cities.