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On the 8th of July, 1853, four American warships steamed
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into a bay in Japan, and the people on the
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shore had never seen anything like them. Black hulls, smoking funnels,
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guns run out and loaded. The Japanese called them the
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Black Ships, and in two visits, without firing a single shot,
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they ended two centuries of isolation.
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This is the story of Commodore Matthew Perry and the
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opening of Japan. For more than 200 years, Japan had
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been closed to the outside world. Under the Tokugawa shogunate,
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which had ruled since the early 1600s, almost all foreign
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contact was forbidden. The only Westerners allowed in were a
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handful of Dutch traders, confined to a small man-made island
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in the port of Nagasaki. Foreign ships that approached the
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coast were turned away, and shipwrecked sailors were imprisoned, sometimes killed.
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The Americans had reasons to want the door open. Their
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clipper ships raced across the Pacific to China, carrying tea, silk,
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and porcelain. Their whaling fleets hunted in the northern Pacific,
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and their new steamships, burning coal, needed coaling stations on
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the long voyage west. Japan sat directly on the route,
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but Japan would not even sell them coal or water
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or food.
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There was another reason, darker and closer to home. Shipwrecked
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American sailors kept washing up on Japanese shores, and the
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stories that came back were grim. Men held in cages,
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men beaten. The American government wanted a treaty that would
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protect its sailors, and it wanted Japan open to trade,
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and it was willing to send warships to get it.
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The man chosen for the job was Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry,
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59 years old, a veteran of the Navy, a man
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of enormous dignity. and, by many accounts, enormous pride. He
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was the younger brother of Oliver Hazard Perry, the hero
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of the Battle of Lake Erie in the War of 1812.
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Matthew Perry had spent his career studying naval gunnery, steam power,
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and the Far East. He understood the assignment perfectly. He
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was not being sent to negotiate as an equal. He
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was being sent to deliver a demand, backed by guns.
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Perry's squadron arrived at the mouth of Edo Bay, the
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bay of the capital, on the 8th of July, 1853.
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Four ships, two steam frigates, the Mississippi and the Susquehanna,
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and two sailing warships, the Plymouth and the Saratoga. They
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steamed into the bay at eight knots, guns loaded, smoke
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pouring from their funnels, and anchored in line of battle,
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30 miles from the capital city of Edo, modern Tokyo.
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Thousands of Japanese lined the shore to watch. Most had
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never seen a steamship. The ships moved without sails, against
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the wind, trailing black smoke. To the watchers, they looked
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like burning ships, monsters from another world. And that was
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exactly the effect Perry wanted.
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The Japanese officials who came out to meet him told
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him to go to Nagasaki, the usual port for foreigners.
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Perry refused. He believed he would present the Emperor of
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the American President Miladere militarily appointed a temporary of the
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American Empire to Teddy Nicholson and Nagasaki. The Japanese officials
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who came out to meet him told him to go
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to Nagasaki, the usual port for foreigners. Perry refused. He
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believed he would present the emperor of the American president
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militarily appointed a temporary of the American Empire to Teddy
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Nicholson and Nagasaki. The Japanese official who came out to
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meet him told him to go to Nagasaki. He carried
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a letter from the President of the United States, Millard Fillmore,
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and he would deliver it to the Emperor himself or
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to the highest officials in Edo. He would not be
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sent away to a distant port like a beggar. He
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moved his ships closer to the capital as a show
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of force and the Japanese gave in.
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On the 14th of July, Perry landed at the town
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of Uraga with 400 sailors and marines in a ceremony
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designed to overwhelm. Military bands played. Officers marched in full
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dress uniform. Perry, in his splendid uniform, presented the president's letter.
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It requested friendship, humane treatment for shipwrecked American sailors, and
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permission for American steamships to buy coal, food, and water
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in Japanese ports. It was polite. It was also an ultimatum.
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And then Perry did something clever. He told the Japanese
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he would leave and return in a year for their answer.
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He gave them time to argue among themselves, and time
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to understand that the next fleet would be bigger. He
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sailed for China, and Japan held its breath.
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The shogunate was in crisis. The shogun himself, Tokugawa Ieyoshi,
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was old and ill, and he died within weeks of
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Perry's departure. The government debated furiously. Some wanted to fight,
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but the more clear-eyed officials knew the truth. Japan's coastal
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defenses were centuries out of date. Its guns were old,
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and its armies had not fought a foreign enemy. In
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two centuries, the world had now seen the world without him.
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With his presence beyond his will, the And China, the
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great empire next door, had just been humiliated by Britain
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in the Opium Wars, forced open at cannon point. Japan
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could see its own future in China's fate.
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Perry returned on the 13th of February, 1854, earlier than promised.
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And this time he brought 10 ships and about 1,600 men.
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He sailed further into the bay than before, anchoring close
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inshore where everyone could see the guns. The message was unmistakable.
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Negotiate or face what China faced.
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The negotiations took weeks. There were formal meetings, banquets, and ceremonies.
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and a great deal of careful posturing on both sides.
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The Americans showed off their technology, a telegraph, a quarter-scale
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steam train complete with track, locomotive, coal tender, and coach, clocks, stoves,
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and firearms. The Japanese gave gifts in return, gold lacquered furniture,
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bronze ornaments, delicate porcelain, and a collection of seashells. It
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was diplomacy as theater, and both sides played their parts.
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On 31 March 1854, the two nations signed the Convention
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of Kanagawa. Japan agreed to open two ports, Shimoda and Hakodate,
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to American vessels. It promised humane treatment and supplies for
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shipwrecked sailors, and it accepted a resident American consul at Shimoda.
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The treaty contained no full trade agreement. That would come
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four years later, with the Harris Treaty of 1858. But
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the door was open. Two hundred years of isolation were over.
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Perry did not live to see the consequences. He died
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in 1858, four years after the treaty, worn out by
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the expedition. But the consequences were enormous, and they unfolded fast.
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Within fifteen years, the Tokugawa shogunate, which had ruled Japan
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for two and a half centuries, collapsed. The young Emperor
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Meiji took power. and Japan began a deliberate, astonishing transformation,
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building railways, factories, a modern army and navy, schools and universities,
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all modeled on the West, all driven by a single determination,
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never to be bull.
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That transformation, the Meiji Restoration, made Japan the first non-Western
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nation to industrialize. It also set Japan on a path
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that led, within a lifetime, to empire, to war with
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China and Russia, and eventually to Pearl Harbor in 1941.
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The historian Walter Laffer put it plainly. After two centuries
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of dealing only with the Dutch, the 250-year-old shogunate opened itself, carefully, narrowly,
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and fearfully, to the United States.
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And there is an irony that is hard to miss.
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Perry never fired a shot. His whole mission was the
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threat of force, not its use. The Japanese called his
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ships the Black Ships, and they remembered the smoke and
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the guns. But what really opened Japan was not the cannon.
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It was the knowledge, spreading through the shogunate's councils, that
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the world had changed, that steam and steel had made
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the old walls useless, and that isolation was no longer
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a choice, only a delay.
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92 years after Perry sailed into Ito Bay, American ships
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returned to the same waters. In September of 1945, the
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battleship Missouri anchored in Tokyo Bay, and the Japanese surrender
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that ended the Second World War was signed on her deck,
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under the same flag Perry had carried. The circle closed
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where it had opened.
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The black ships arrived as a threat. They left behind
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a treaty, a consul, and a question that Japan spent
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the next century answering. How does a nation stay itself
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while the whole world comes knocking? Japan's answer changed the world,
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and it began on a summer morning in 1853, when
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four smoking ships appeared on the horizon, and a closed
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country discovered that it could not stay closed any longer.