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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