East met West for the first time in San Francisco in 1860 - latimes.com

A group of Japanese samurai arrived to begin a three-month U.S. tour.

Reporting from San Francisco - America's first fascination with Japan flared -- and disappeared -- like fireworks. Before J-Pop, or the American discovery of Zen, or even the reshaping of Impressionism by the Japonisme aesthetic in the late 1800s, the United States was seized by a wave of Japan mania that started in California 150 years ago this month and that is barely remembered today.

Anniversary events in San Francisco and on the East Coast are commemorating a strange East-plops-into-West odyssey that began when a large group of Japanese samurai stepped out of more than two centuries of cultural seclusion, boarded two ships and steeled their courage to make history's first official Japanese visit to America.