U.S. Expedition to Japan: Commodore Perry and John Sewall

Since the beginning of the seventeenth century, the Tokugawa shogunate pursued a policy of isolating the country from outside influences. Foreign trade was maintained only with the Dutch and the Chinese and was conducted exclusively at Nagasaki under a strict government monopoly. This policy had two main objectives. One was the fear that trade with western powers and the spread of Christianity would serve as a pretext for the invasion of Japan by imperialist forces, as had been the case with most of the nations of Asia. The second objective was fear that foreign trade and the wealth developed would lead to the rise of a daimyō powerful enough to overthrow the ruling Tokugawa clan. This isolationist policy was enforced by draconian measures, including the imprisonment or execution of foreigners who landed on Japan's shores.

By the early nineteenth century, this policy was increasingly under challenge. President Millard Fillmore, in his State of the Union Address of 1852, announced his intention to get Japan to relax the "antisocial system which it has pursued for about two centuries." The U.S. wanted not only to secure the safety of American prisoners, but also to reopen trade, driven in part by demand for coal (to fuel new steam-driven ships) and a sense of manifest destiny to expand in the Pacific.

Fillmore selected Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry for the job. Perry was given power to negotiate a treaty with Japan, through gunboat diplomacy if necessary. When Perry's naval squadron arrived, the Japanese were horror-stricken by the huge, alien, steam-driven warships which they dubbed "kurofune" ("black ships"). His intimidation tactics succeeded--spoiling Ishmael's prediction (with due credit to Manjiro and MacDonald) that "If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due"--and Perry became both a national hero in the U.S. and a key agent in shaping Japan's future. Today, Perry can be identified by 90% of Japanese school children, although few in the U.S. still recognize his name.

On his return home in 1854, Perry visited Nathaniel Hawthorne to invite him to edit the forthcoming account of his historic voyage. Hawthorne declined the offer, but recommended Herman Melville instead. Hawthorne's journal entry for December 28, 1854 notes Perry's refusal: "I spoke of Herman Melville, and one or two others; but he...did not grasp very cordially at any name that I could think of.... It would be a very desirable labor for a young literary man, or, for that matter, an old one; for the world can scarcely have in reserve a less hacknied theme than Japan." Nevertheless, Perry's eventual three-volume Narrative of an Expedition of an American Squadron to the China Seas and Japan ranks with Richard Henry Dana's Two Years Before the Mast as a classic tale of nineteenth-century American sea adventure and exploration. An abridgment was published in 1857 as The Americans In Japan.

The lives of Melville and Perry intersected in other ways. Melville's cousin, Lt. Guert Gansevoort, was aboard the U.S.S. Somers at the time of the famous Somers mutiny. The ship itself had been built under Perry's supervision, and its mutiny may have helped inspire "Billy Buddy."

For this meetup, we will read the following selections:

• "With Perry In Japan" by John Sewall - https://drive.google.com/file/d/10VeNBCEoMCjfk3CzPDNwLxRCOEkfsKDV/view?pli=1
• The Americans In Japan, Chapters 7, 10, 11 - https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Americans_in_Japan/xY8xAQAAMAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=0

Supplemental:

• Pacific Overtures (a musical): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MQ546PASgHI
• Perry In Japan: A Visual History: https://library.brown.edu/cds/perry/
• "The Great Wave by Hokusai (Explained)": https://youtu.be/IBcB_dYtGUg

Extracts:

"If that double-bolted land, Japan, is ever to become hospitable, it is the whale-ship alone to whom the credit will be due; for already she is on the threshold."

"The same waves wash the moles of the new-built California towns, but yesterday planted by the recentest race of men and lave the faded but still gorgeous skirts of Asiatic lands, older than Abraham; while all between float milky-ways of coral isles, and low-lying, endless, unknown Archipelagoes, and impenetrable Japans."

"The land is hundreds of leagues away, and locked Japan the nearest."

"... Fighting beside Perry, Hull, Porter, and the rest." ("Bridegroom Dick")

This meetup is part of a series on Japan Unbolted.