Click here to go to the YouTube video The first American consul and minister to Japan, Mr.Townsend Harris described a small village near Shimoda in his journal in 1856. “Kakizaki is a small and poor fishing village, but the people are clean in person and civil in manner. You see none of the squalor which usually attends poverty in all parts of the world. Their houses are as clean as need be.” During the more than 200 years of isolation, Japan’s economy did not expand. Most people were poor except for a few wealthy merchants and feudal lords. Despite their poverty, people lived with cleanliness, courtesy, and a spirit of…