The Opening of Japan (1853-1860)

With the changing balance of power in East Asia in the wake of Britain’s victory over
China in the Opium Wars, Japan’s policy of relative isolation from the outside world was
successfully challenged by American gunboat diplomacy. The initial concessions gained
by Matthew Calbraith Perry’s diplomatic mission were later followed by successful
efforts to bring Japan into a series of treaties that brought it into a global trading
economy. The humiliation of ending a policy of over 200 years of seclusion weakened
the prestige of the Tokugawa Shogunate, eventually culminating in the success of
Emperor loyalists in its overthrow and commenced the beginning of a period of
modernization that would lead Japan down the path of industrialization, colonialism, and
militarism ending in an unsuccessful challenge against the United States’ position as an
Asian Pacific power.

Japan’s policy of isolation (sakoku) began under the Shogunate of Tokugawa Iemitsu
(1604-1651) and involved a series of edicts written from 1633-1639 to control Japanese
interactions with foreigners. The edicts governed trade agreements limiting interactions
with Europeans to the Dutch, but also governed trade with Korea, China, and the Ainu in
a similarly restrictive manner. During this time, commercial contacts were limited to
Nagasaki for the Dutch, Chinese, and Koreans, and Matsumae Domain on Hokkaido for
the Ainu. Besides the above-mentioned trading relationships, Satsuma Domain managed
trade with the Ryukyu Kingdom. The edicts provided for the death penalty for foreigners
coming to Japan and Japanese leaving Japan in violation of the stipulated regulations. In
1825 the edicts were interpreted in a more aggressive manner when the Shogunate issued
orders to repel foreign ships as they approached Japanese shores, but this policy was
relaxed in 1842 to make allowances for provisioning and refueling foreign ships.

American interest in Asia is as old as the founding of the American republic.

Northeastern merchants sought wealth in China’s markets and Yankee whalers tracked
their prey into the waters around Japan. During the Napoleonic Wars, American ships
conducted trade for the Dutch with Japan, but in general, American efforts to further
relations with Japan ran unsuccessfully into the isolation edicts. Charles King’s attempts
to return three Japanese castaways aboard the unarmed American merchant ship
Morrison in 1837 met with cannon fire. In 1847, the Manhattan, an American whaling
ship under the direction of Captain Mercator Cooper, succeeded in returning 22
shipwrecked Japanese sailors and received several gifts but was instructed never to
return. In 1846, Captain James Biddle, after concluding a successful trade agreement
between the United States and China, failed to establish a similar agreement with Japan.
The shipwreck of the whaling ship Lagoda in that same year laid the foundation for the
first successful negotiation with the Shogunate. In 1849, Captain James Glynn of the USS
Preble forced his way into Nagasaki Bay and negotiated with the aid of the Dutch
delegation the release and return of the Lagoda’s crew. Upon returning to the United
States, Glynn would advocate for the United States to establish diplomatic relations with
Japan and suggested that force may be an important part of such negotiations.
In 1852, President Millard Filmore (1800-1874) commissioned Commodore Matthew
Perry (1794-1858) to open Japan to trade with the United States. Perry arrived in Uraga
Harbor with four American warships, the Mississippi, the Plymouth, the Saratoga, and
the Susquehanna, known by the Japanese as Black Ships, on July 8th, 1853. When
confronted by demands that he proceed to the port of Nagasaki, Perry refused. He
steamed past a line of Japanese ships in Uraga Harbor and threatened to use force if they
interfered with his vessels’ movements and his mission to present a letter from President
Millard Filmore to the Japanese Emperor. By sending two white flags and instructions
how to use them to get the Americans to cease bombardment of the shore, Perry made it
clear that he was willing to use devastating violent force to back up his mission. The
shelling of some buildings in the harbor reinforced the impression that his ships’ Paixans
guns would be able to back up his threats effectively.

Under duress, Japanese officials agreed to receive the letter. On July 14th, 1853 Perry
delivered the letter with full pomp and ceremony to impress upon the Japanese the
importance of his person and mission. He departed for the coast, promising to return.
Abe Masahiro (1819-1857), chairman of the Shogunate’s advisory council, entered into a
complex balancing act of addressing this threat to national security. Abe was faced by the
problems of an inadequate military to meet the threat posed by Perry, conservative
daimyo (feudal lords) dedicated to waging war against the Americans to preserve the
honor of the Emperor, the Emperor’s resistance to opening the country, and weak
leadership in transition within the Shogunate. Using great diplomatic skill, Abe
maneuvered toward an acceptance of Perry’s demands while committing the nation to an
effort to strengthen its military capabilities through the Ansei Reforms.

When Perry returned with twice the number of ships with which he originally arrived in
February 1854, negotiations began that ended the over 200 year old policy of seclusion
that had defined Japanese foreign policy to that point. Hayashi Akira (1800-1859)
represented the Shogunate and concluded an agreement that opened the ports of Shimoda
and Hakodate to the United States for refueling and provisioning its ships, guaranteed the
safety of shipwrecked American sailors, and allowed for the establishment of a
permanent American counsel in Shimoda. These concessions that came to be called the
Kanagawa Treaty (March 31st, 1854) led some Japanese conservatives to call for the
ritual suicide of the negotiators.

Perry’s vision of the United States’ increasing profile in Asia led him to advocate for
bringing the Ryukyu Islands and Formosa under American protection and occupation to
better manage American trading interests within the region. The American President,
Franklin Pierce (1804-1869), far more concerned with American domestic issues
including the pressing issue of slavery and deterred by the potential costs of such
enterprises, rejected the Commodore’s suggestions. Nevertheless, Perry’s ambition
demonstrated the potential for the United States to be engaged in a pursuit of its manifest
destiny in Asia.

Despite his diplomatic success, Perry had failed to initiate a normalized trading regime
with the Empire of Japan. The first Consul General of the United States to Japan,
Townsend Harris (1804-1878), managed the negotiations that would bring Japan
reluctantly into the world of western commercial relations. Harris first challenge when
he arrived in Japan involved an 18-month negotiation to meet the Shogun. After
overcoming this obstacle, Harris engaged in a strategy where he used the Second Opium
War then raging in China and the forceful and successful actions of European colonial
powers as a goad to get the Japanese to negotiate and accept American efforts to establish
peaceable trading relations with the Empire of Japan. The Treaty of Amity and
Commerce of 1858 also known as the Harris Treaty contained within it provisions
providing for the exchange of diplomatic representatives, the opening of Kanagawa,
Kobe, Nagasaki, Niigata, and Yokohama to foreign trade, the right of American citizens
to be reside in these ports and to be tried by American as opposed to Japanese law,
externally set low tariffs, an obligation of mutual religious toleration, the ability for the
Japanese to purchase American weapons and ships, and a most favored nation provision
giving the Americans any concessions made with any other power. Harris’s treaty was
far more humiliating than the conditions imposed by Perry, but the Shogunate feared
imitating the fate of China more than the domestic ramifications of making obnoxious
concessions to the Americans. Similar concessions were later made to the Dutch,
Russians, English, and French.

The effects of the American opening had a tremendous impact on the domestic politics of
the Shogunate. Initially, Abe Masahiro and his successor, Hotta Masayoshi (1810 –
1864), pursued a policy where they attempted to bring great lords from outside the
traditional Shogunate into an alliance to strengthen the regime and its policy toward
foreigners. The failure of this policy led to efforts by Ii Naosuke (1815-1860) to crush
dissent, resulting in his assassination by those professing loyalty to daimyo determined to
resist foreign incursions. Ii’s policy of trading with the foreigners and building military
strength would become the policy Japan would eventually adopt toward the West after
substantial political turmoil and eventual regime change during the Meiji Restoration of
1868. Ando Nobuyuki, Ii’s successor, temporarily was able to pursue a strategy of
reconciling the Shogunate with the Court of the Emperor and some of the great daimyo
and pursued a failing strategy of delay with the European powers, but a failed
assassination attempt crippled him, preventing the Shogunate from exerting anything but
a regional influence until its final demise during the Boshin War (1868-1869).

Violence against foreigner punctuated the Shogunal policy of appeasement. As ports

became open to foreigners, clashes with samurai multiplied resulting in the deaths of
Russian, Dutch, French, American, and English citizens as well as Japanese working with
foreigners. These attacks were fueled by both economic disruption that produced a large
number of impoverished samurai and the sonno joi ideology, an ideology that focused on
revering the emperor and expelling the barbarians as they key to solving Japan’s
economic, social, and political problems. The Emperor Komei (1831-1867) issued an
order to Expel the Barbarians even as the Shogunate refused to support this policy.
Confronted by hostility to commercial treaties, the European and American powers
undertook punitive expeditions against the great daimyo that appeared to embrace this
hostile stance toward treaty obligations. In the end numerous rebellions and European
interventions produced a complicated network of alliances among the daimyo of Choshu
and Satsuma domains that would eventually prove decisive in taking power and authority
away from the Tokugawa Shogunate and shifting it towards the Emperor Meiji and his
allies.

The race towards modernization, industrialization, and military reform that occurred as
Japan confronted the tensions unleashed by the breaking of seclusion propelled Japan to
become the first non-European power to join the ranks of great powers and eventually led
Japan to imitate the strategies that the Americans used so skillfully against Japan. In
1875, Ganghwa Island incident and the successful use of force by Captain Inoue Yoshika
(1845-1929) would open Korea to trade as Commodore Perry had opened Japan to trade
with the United States. Japan would go on to defeat China in the Sino-Japanese War
(1894-1895) and Russia in the Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905). In consequence of these
conflicts, Japan would claim Formosa and Korea as formal colonies.

With the United States’ determination to play a prominent role in Asia with its
acquisition of the Philippines, Guam, and Hawaii, a clash with Japan became a major
possibility. When tensions between the countries rose to a boiling point as the United
States opposed Japanese expansion in China, banishing the evil spirits of Commodore
Perry’s Black Ships played a role in inspiring the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The
eventual military defeat of the Empire of Japan by the United States and the imposition of
an American Shogun on the island has continued the drama of a nation forced to submit
to superior might, and this special relationship is an important part of understanding why
the world views the United States as an imperial power.

See Also: Bakumatsu; Gunboat Diplomacy; Manifest Destiny; Sakoku

Todd Eric Myers

Further reading

Auslin, Michael Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of
Japanese Diplomacy. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2004.

Feifer, George Breaking Open Japan: Commodore Perry, Lord Abe, and American
Imperialism in 1853. New York: Harper Collins Books, 2006.

Totman, Conrad The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu 1862-1868. Honolulu: The
University Press of Hawaii, 1980.