Robert Walker Irwin

Born: 1844
Died: 1925

Robert Walker Irwin was a prominent figure in relations between Japan, the United States, and Hawaii in the 1880s, serving for a time as acting Hawaiian Consul in Japan.^[1], succeeding Harlan P. Lillebridge in that position.^[2] A businessman descended from Benjamin Franklin^[3] and involved with the Mitsui Trading Company, he was one of the first Americans to obtain Japanese citizenship, and married a Japanese woman named Takechi Iki. In 1885, he played a prominent role in negotiating agreements related to the beginning of Japanese immigration to Hawaii.

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References

John Van Sant, et al, ”Irwin, Robert Walker,” Historical Dictionary of United States – Japan Relations, The Scarecrow Press (2007), 117.

↑ David Kalakaua, in a letter to John Owen Dominis, governor of Oahu, May 12 1881, as reproduced in Richard Greer (ed.), "The Royal Tourist - Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London," Hawaiian Journal of History 5 (1971), 82.
↑ Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom 1874 - 1893: The Kalakaua Dynasty, University of Hawaii Press (1967), 155.
↑ Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912, Columbia University Press (2002), 791n7.

[1] David Kalakaua, in a letter to John Owen Dominis, governor of Oahu, May 12 1881, as reproduced in Richard Greer (ed.), "The Royal Tourist - Kalakaua's Letters Home from Tokio to London," Hawaiian Journal of History 5 (1971), 82.

[2] Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom 1874 - 1893: The Kalakaua Dynasty, University of Hawaii Press (1967), 155.

[3] Donald Keene, Emperor of Japan: Meiji and His World, 1852-1912, Columbia University Press (2002), 791n7.

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