Terashima Muneuori to John A. Bingham , Envoy Extraordinary and, May 31, 1876

Sir: I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your excellency’s communication dated the 4th April, 1876, in which your excellency inquires, by instruction of your Government, whether new conditions were entered into during the last and the present year between our government and that of Lew Chew Islands; and, if so, whether anything has been done which changes in anywise the subsisting compact between your Government and the Lew Chew ban, which was concluded on the 11th of December, 1854.

I beg leave, in reply, to inform your excellency that Lew Chew was made a ban under the Japanese government in the ninth month of the fifth year Meiji, (September, 1872.) Since the seventh year Meiji, (1874,) some officials of Naimusho (interior department) reside there who are authorized to manage all the matters which concern foreign countries. In the same year a mail-steamer began to ply between Tokio and that han. In the next, eighth, year Meiji, (1875,) an information was made to that han that a military station will be established there for its protection. I also beg to state that an information will be made to you whenever we have anything which would necessarily cause changes in the compact existing between your Government and the Lew Chew han, as further changes are intended to be made in that han. This government has not at any time interfered with the rights of the United States, as secured by its subsisting compact with the Lew Chew Islands, and before taking such action this government will confer with the Government of the United States.

With respect, &c.,