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While I cannot, and would not even try to, compete with this site's Mr. Science, or any of the professional, professorial historians here, I think I can chip-in some useful, if eclectic, information here and there.
This diary is actually a teaser of sorts. It's an abbreviated version of two (2) rather involved my-blog entries posted back several months ago. The topic: Satsuma in America, especially in Alabama (but they're all over the Gulf Coast). Alabama is home to one of several Gulf Coast towns named for an ancient Japanese Province. How weird is that?
The full tale involves a Civil War Union General, the opening of Japan to international commerce in the second half of the 19th Century and a love of citrus that spans hemispheres.
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The follow is excerpted from the two (2) above referenced blog posts, Satsuma I and Satsuma, Part II. I hope you'll find the narrative below interesting enough to want to click on S, Part I and S, Part II to see the whole thing (and all the links and pics and such).
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How does a small, southwest Alabama town come to be named after a defunct Japanese feudal province? Easy: take a real, physical, tangible part of that province and relocate it to across the wide Pacific, then the North American continent, to cleared land just north of Mobile Bay.
First a little review. Satsuma, Japan, is the name of a peninsula at the extreme south of Kyushu, the southernmost of Japan’s 4 main islands. Up until the latter part of the 1800′s it was also the name of a feudal domain that — after an 1877 rebellion against the recently-formed, reform-oriented central government — was broken up.
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Saigo Takamori & other leaders of the Satsuma Rebellion.
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Satsuma is also the name of a particular style of porcelain ware (occasionally derivative from the more famous Imari ware, also from Kyushu), first crafted (as all the first porcelain ware in Japan) by Korean artisans in the early 1600s. And, Satsuma is a type of Mandarin Tangerine, first cultivated in China.
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Judge Robert Van Valkenburgh
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It’s worth noting that the Satsuma Rebellion was, indeed, crushed in 1877, because it was in 1878 that the locals of Satsuma, Alabama, say that former Union Army General (and U.S. Minister to Japan) Robert Van Valkenburgh imported and introduced satsuma trees to north Mobile County, Alabama (for more on Van Valkenburgh, please see Satsuma, Part I). Van Valkenburgh had returned from his post in Japan in 1869. We know that when Van Valkenburgh returned to the U.S. he settled in Suwannee County, Florida and, in 1874, was appointed to the Florida Supreme Court, in which he served until his death in August 1888. I highly recommend your following this link to a bio on Van Valkenburgh, which mentions his second wife’s, (first wife Catherine died in 1863), Anna’s being instrumental in introducing satsumas to the Florida Panhandle. Although some local, Satsuma, Alabama, lore suggests that Van Valkenburgh introduced satsumas to that part of the state, I can find no record of his having a direct hand in that.
Be that as it may, there is no question that Robert and Anna Van Valkenburgh were the link tying Sastuma, Japan to the Southeast United States and, ultimately to Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas where satsumas are still grown.
In 1959 a Town Charter for "Satsuma, Alabama" was presented to, and approved by, Mobile County and State of Alabama officials and, thus, 2009 marked Satsuma’s 50th Anniversary. It has a population of about 6,000. It a particularly pretty little town in the spring, when the azaleas and dogwoods are in bloom.
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Picking satsumas in J.Lloyd Abbot's grove, Mobile County, Alabama November 1925.
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The foregoing constitutes about 20% of the entire Satsuma Story (as told by me on my blog, letsjapan.wordpress.com). I again invite you to click the links for the entire -- if I may say so myself -- fascinating, and ongoing, tale (Abita Brewing Company now puts out a seasonal Satsuma Beer).
Additional plug: my site also features Photo Galleries and Non-Fiction Tales from Asia. Enjoy / 楽しんで下さい!
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