Black Ships, Earthquakes, and the Dutch: the Beginning and End of Japan’s Isolationist Period
From 1192, Japan was ruled by a shogun, a dictator-like ruler who held true power in the country, with the Emperor cloistered and ruling merely as a figurehead. Below the Shogun lay about 180 daimyo. Daimyo were the mob bosses and mafia dons of the day, who controlled samurai and autonomous realms and provinces. After a victory at the 1600 Battle of Sekigahara, Tokugawa Ieyasu, a powerful daimyo, established the Tokugawa Shogunate. From the time of Emperor Meiji’s 1852 birth, the country had been ruled for over 250 years by the Tokugawa Shogunate. Due to the cloistered practices of many emperors, nearly all of Meiji’s predecessors are forgotten. His father, Emperor Komei, however, is distinctly important.
Tokugawa Ieyasu, founder of the Tokugawa Shogunate.
The more Japan became an increasingly exotic destination for foreigners, the more European traders, missionaries, and explorers visited the islands. Though there were some positive side effects, such as the introduction of gunpowder, arquebuses, or Chinese silks, most traders tried too much to force their religion upon the Japanese. The Shogunate, though, had no desire to adopt Western religions. Eventually, it became compulsory for all foreigners entering Japan to tread across a fumi-e (literally: stepping-picture), a bronze or wooden picture of Mary or Jesus. The Tokugawa, in fact, were so wary of ardent Christians that many who refused to tread on the fumi-e were boiled alive, shot, or burned at the stake. The Portuguese contingent, an especially pious bunch, were especially disliked, though they had introduced matchlock firearms to Japan as early as 1543. In 1635, the shogun issued an edict of sakoku, that started a roughly 200-year period of Japanese seclusion. The country was completely shut off from the West, guarded by its cobalt seas.
The few Europeans that could stay, though, were the Dutch. Nagasaki, then famous as a trading port, was a glimmering jewel in the crown of the Dutch East India Company. Through rangaku, Japanese for “dutch learning” (though hilariously direct in its literal translation: “red-haired barbarian studies''), the Japanese would absorb much of the European academic world through Dutch traders. The Dutch were granted a small, artificial island directly off of the port of Nagasaki, known as Dejima. Dejima was a sanctuary of European learning, and, in turn, a great source of invention. The Dutch, brimming with new technologies and discoveries from the contemporary scientific revolution, helped Japanese scholars develop clocks, agricultural methods, telescopes, globes, and books. Traders even helped spread the semi-recent discovery of electrical phenomena and hot air balloon flight.
Japanese text detailing anatomy and bone structure. Sciences such as physiology were brought to Japan through rangaku.
The Dutch were able to trade with the Tokugawa because of their comparative apathy towards conversion. The Dutch, unlike many of their neighbors, were more interested in trade than they were in forcing Christianity upon “uncivilized” Asian peoples. In fact, the Japanese, as evidenced by their name for them, found the Dutch to be just as foreign or “barbaric” as any European nation might have found the Japanese. During the struggle of the Protestant Reformation, the Dutch remained theologically tolerant, taking in the likes of Descartes and others, while producing minds such as Baruch Spinoza and Desiderius Erasmus. The Netherlands, fresh off of a victory in the 80 Years’ War, were arguably the most intellectually and technologically advanced of all European nations, a fitting European ambassador to Japan.
On July 8th, 1853, however, after a period of nearly 220 years, Japanese isolation would come to an end.
American whaling vessels had hunted whales near Japan ever since the beginning of the 19th century. Japan, though endowed with relatively poor natural resources, was a land rich in coal deposits, a vital resource to fuel the navies of Europe and the United States. A growing trade relationship with Japan’s neighbors—coupled with the imperialist sophism of manifest destiny—led United States Commodore Matthew Perry, on orders from then-incumbent President Millard Filmore, to voyage to Japan in 1852, tasked with “opening up” Japan to the world, by force, if necessary. Knowing the stingy isolationist policies of the shogunate, the United States knew that force would be an inevitability. Perry left the United States with an impressive fleet, armed to the teeth with new technology. Among Perry’s biggest assets were his 73 Paixhans guns. The Paixhans gun was no normal cannon. Designed by French artillery officer Henri-Joseph Paixhans, they stood 9 and a half feet long, weighing at nearly 7,500 pounds. When Paixhans reportedly first tested the gun of the coast of Nantes, France, he successfully broke up a wooden ship, the French Pacificateur, in only a few shots. The gun was the first ever to fire explosive shells, ushering in the age of the ironclad. Wooden ships simply could not compete with the powerful new weapon.
It would be these new, advanced weapons, coupled with a strongman-like display of U.S. naval might, that ultimately begin our story.
As Perry steamed brusquely into Edo Bay, outside of Tokyo, on July 8th, 1853, the weak, unadvanced Japanese ships were no match for his new Paixhans guns. Perry ordered that his fleet cruise directly through Japanese lines, and directly into the harbor. Once his fleet arrived, he ordered his ships to fire one blank for each of their cannons, 73 blank shots in total.
Perry’s flagship, the USS Susquehanna.
Aboard just one ship in his squadron, the USS Mississippi, there lay 10 Paixhans guns in total. Months after Perry’s arrival, the Japanese were again shocked by a foreign expedition. This time, though, it was not the "black ships" of the uncompromising United States that would come knocking.
On August 12th, a Russian delegation of schooners arrived in Nagasaki harbor. Acknowledging the punctiliously respectful nature of Japanese politics, the leader of the expedition, Vice Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin, ordered his flagship, Pallada, to land at Nagasaki, the city designated for Japanese discourse with foreigners, a choice in stark contrast with Perry’s brazen voyage to Uraga. Under orders from Tsar Nicholas I, the Russians gave the local bugyo, or governor, a note. Given Perry’s arrival, the Japanese initially hesitated, though they accepted the letter. It contained a polite message, written by Russian Foreign Minister Carl Nesselrode, expressed immense respect for Japanese custom and government, and hoped to establish peaceful, equal trade relations between the two nations, along with a clarification of the borders on the disputed island of Sakhalin. The note expressed Nicholas’ fervent desire to maintain true peace and amity between his southeastern neighbor and Russia. While the letter was sent up to Edo (later renamed Tokyo), Putyatin left Nagasaki briefly to refuel.
Admiral Yevfimiy Putyatin.
As the note reached Edo, it was initially ignored by the top brass of the Shogunate. Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi had died earlier that July, meaning that his son, Tokugawa Iesada, assumed power. The sickly, young boy, though, was in no position to make such a potentially momentous decision, leaving true power in the hands of the council of elders, or roju. Led by Hotta Masayoshi, the roju was plagued by indecision. Many of the higher-ups in his court were faced with other, more pressing matters, namely the threat of the United States. Knowing that such a border dispute would require intense negotiation and create a potential new enemy for Japan, the roju decided that it would be best to delay by any means possible. Their answer to Nicholas was simple, yet intentionally useless and vague. Tokugawa Iesada, under the aegis of the roju, sent officials Kawaji Toshiakira and Tsutsui Masanori to report that such a shift in Sakhalin’s borders would be a laborious process, and a proposal would be ready in about three to five years. Disappointed, Putyatin again left, promising to return in the spring of 1854.
Despite Russia’s polite attempts, Perry’s gunboat diplomacy ultimately succeeded in legally opening up Japan to the world. In late March of 1854, Perry returned to Japan, this time with more gunboats. Upon reaching Uraga, a port city just outside of Edo, he forced the Japanese dignitaries to sign the Convention of Kanagawa. Official U.S. records, though, view Perry’s work as a diplomatic mission, and nothing more: the official name of the agreement is the “Treaty of Peace and Amity.” Though not, as the name may suggest, in an amicable fashion, Perry had achieved the goals of the United States, establishing trade relationships, opening ports at Shimoda and Hakodate, and ensuring that assistance was to be provided for shipwrecked American sailors. Fully functional trade with Japan would later be sanctioned by the United States’ ratification of the “unequal” Harris Treaty, signed in Edo Bay onboard the deck of the USS Powhatan in July of 1858.
Meanwhile, in Europe, the Russians were engaged in the Crimean War against the forces of the British Empire, another frequent visitor to the Japanese home islands. As Putyatin returned to Nagasaki from his hiatus in November of 1854, he was faced with multiple problems. The news that the Japanese failed to adequately answer the Tsar’s demands, coupled with British raids on his vessels, ignited a deep sense of frustrated urgency within him. Turning a blind eye to his once respectful ways, Putyatin sailed to the city of Shimoda. The ensuing treaty, signed in 1855, was the product of an event fortunate and timely: the 1854 Tokai earthquake.
As many who are in touch with Japanese current events know, tsunamis are nothing new to Japan. The earthquake, an 8.4 on the Richter scale, triggered a tsunami that sank Putyatin’s fleet. The waves of the same tsunami were reportedly seen in San Francisco, though at a height of only 0.3 meters. His new flagship, Diana, had an especially odd demise. Spinning violently from the force of the wave, Diana spun around its mooring 42 times before later sinking.
The Sinking of the Diana, 23 December 1854.
Stranded in Shimoda, the Russians eased the tensions with the Japanese. Putyatin’s crew was full of some of Russia’s brightest minds: Alexander Mozhaysky, an engineer, showed Japanese dignitaries a working model of a steam engine, pre-empting Tanaka Hisashige to invent the first Japanese steam locomotive. Funnily enough, Tanaka would go on to found the corporation that is now known as Toshiba, the Japanese tech giant. Putyatin became increasingly close with Tsutsui due to the disaster, and the Japanese who knew him realized Putyatin to be a civilized and righteous man. Putyatin remarked to Tsutsui, “If we would compare our age, you have the wise age of my father for I only have the age of your son. I offer my hand so I can serve my father and this way will not lose the way of trust.” Putyatin’s dignified style of diplomacy surely helped the Russian effort—his poised manner showed many Japanese that even the foreign barbarians could be capable of the humanity proprietary to Japan.
On February 7, 1855, at the Buddhist Choraku-Ji Temple, a formal treaty between the Russians and the Japanese was finally signed. Putyatin’s terms were much kinder than those of the British and Americans, and peaceful relations were sustained. The dispute over Sakhalin, however, was left undetermined, and the treaty’s decision led to issues between Japan and Russia still relevant today. Putyatin, though, was able to leave Japan on honorable terms. With the salvaged plans from the sunken Diana, the Russian sailors banded together with the Japanese and built the ship, Heda, in honor of the town where the new schooner was constructed.
As the Russians left aboard the Heda on April 14th, 1855, Japan was, for all intents and purposes, opened up to the world. Japan, one of the last Asian countries to remain untouched by the rapacious hand of imperialism, was forced into similar trade agreements and “unequal treaties” by the French, British, Portuguese, and Prussians. Japan’s sakoku period had officially come to an end.
