S. Wells Williams

S. Wells Williams was the Chinese & Japanese interpreter and translator on Commodore Perry's voyages to Ryûkyû and Japan.

Williams was a Protestant missionary based in China, and had been to Japan once previously, in 1837 aboard the Morrison. He was hired by Perry's mission in China, along with Anon L.C. Portman, a Dutch language interpreter. While his Chinese-language reading and writing abilities were valuable for reading and constructing official documents, it is said that his spoken Japanese was insufficient; in their respective diaries, Williams and Bernard Bettelheim, a missionary the mission met in Ryûkyû, are harshly critical of one another's language abilities, manner, and approach.

At Uraga, the Americans were able to communicate well enough with Dutch-speaking Japanese, via the Dutch interpreter Portman, as well as in English at times, and Williams took a secondary role.

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References

Mitani Hiroshi, David Noble (trans.), Escape from Impasse, International House of Japan (2006), 119-120.