Background
Hikozō Hamada was born in 1837. He was a son of a farmer of the province of Harima; his youthful name was Hikotaro, and he also went by the name Joseph Heco.
Hikozō Hamada was born in 1837. He was a son of a farmer of the province of Harima; his youthful name was Hikotaro, and he also went by the name Joseph Heco.
In 1850 he set out by ship for Edo but was shipwrecked in a typhoon. He was rescued by an American trading ship and taken to San Francisco, where he was educated and baptized a Catholic. In 1858 he acquired US citizenship, becoming the first Japanese American; he went by the name Joseph Heco. In 1860 he accompanied Dorr, the newly appointed US. consul in Kanagawa, to Japan, serving as his interpreter, and was also active in affairs pertaining to the United States, England, Russia, and other foreign countries. But antiforeign feeling ran high in Japan at this time, and since he was regarded as a foreigner, he began to fear for his safety and resigned his job as an interpreter. For a while he returned to the United States and at that time had an opportunity to meet with President Lincoln.
He went to Japan once more in 186'2, and in 1863, when the domain of Choshu opened fire on the vessels of England, America, France, and Holland in the Shimonoseki Straits, he was aboard the American ship. The same year, he resigned the position in the American consulate that he had previously held and opened an import-export business in Yokohama. He also published an account of his shipwreck in Japanese. In 1864, he began publication of a Japanese language newspaper called the Kaigai Shimbun in Yokohama, printing it from woodblocks. Later he engaged in import-export business in Nagasaki, where he became friendly with Ito Hirobumi and Kido Takayoshi, both leaders in the Meiji government. In 1872 he took a position in the Finance Ministry of the newly founded Meiji government, where, under the direction of Shibusawa Eiichi, he worked in cooperation with an Englishman named Alexander Allen Shand to draw up regulations for banks in Japan. He resigned his position in 1874.