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Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan

© John Walsh

When Tokugawa Ieyasu became the shogun of Japan in 1603, he established a dynasty that proved itself to be amongst the most durable and powerful in history. European colonizers and traders had already made themselves well-known in East Asia and, secure in the virtue of their own country and its people and aware of the dangers of interaction with outsiders, the Japanese elite chose a policy of isolationism. At times, this extended to a ban on all imports, the forbidding of any interracial relationships and the permanent exiling of any Japanese who did happen to venture overseas. From a western perspective, isolationism seems to be a policy doomed to failure - after all, without external stimulation and the exchange of ideas, how can there be progress? However, when compared to the depredations visited on the people of Indonesia or Vietnam by colonists, for example, then the isolationism practiced by Japan and Korea and attempted by China does not seem such a bad option.

However, by the middle of the nineteenth century, it had become clear that isolationism was no longer a sustainable policy. In addition to the European powers who had crossed two oceans to reach East Asia, American ships now too were becoming prominent as the USA sought to establish itself as a power in the Pacific. Under Commodore Matthew Perry, a flotilla of American ships entered Japanese harbours wielding more firepower than was available to the Japanese throughout their country. The Americans wished to establish treaties with Japan along the lines of the unequal treaties already enforced upon China by Britain and other western powers. However, Japanese government was divided between the imperial court, the shogun - the descendant of Tokugawa Ieyasu who had wielded executive authority for two hundred and fifty years, and the powerful provincial daimyos who were bound to the imperial throne but who acted as if they were at least semi-autonomous much of the time. Indeed, skirmishes between daimyo troops and overseas forces almost led to war between the foreign power and Choshu or Satsuma provinces on some occasions.

The Japanese ruling classes were thrust into confusion as they sought methods of dealing with the outsiders, knowing that they were technologically outmatched. Traditional Samurai ideals led many of the conservative faction to think that superior military technology was just as devilish as all other western institutions and must be resisted. Old-fashioned Samurai heroism, combined with superior strategy and tactics, would be sufficient to drive off the invaders and any losses must be accepted as sacrifices for the sake of the nation. More modern thinkers accepted the need for trade and for import of western technology but argued over ways that it could be managed such that it need not be accompanied by the missionaries that had done so much damage to traditional power structures throughout East Asia.

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