In 1854, the American Commodore Perry famously forced open the gates of Japan,
coercing the Tokugawa Shogunate to end over two centuries of their nations’ near-total
isolation from the outside world. However, while Commodore Perry was the first to succeed,
he was not the first to try. Throughout its 264 years of isolation, many actors
attempted to open up Japan’s markets, only to have the symbolic door slammed in their faces.
In this video, we will explore the various interactions that Edo-era Japan had with
outsiders before Perry’s fateful expedition, and cover said outsiders’ failed attempts to
either convince or coerce the Japanese of this period to open themselves up to the world.
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Before we talk about how foreigners attempted to break Japan’s policy of isolation,
it is necessary to contextualize why the island nation withdrew from the world in the first place.
In 1543, Japan was introduced to the western world when three Portuguese traders arrived aboard some
Chinese war junks on the island of Tanegashima. This eventually evolved into a trading
relationship between the Iberian Union and Japan . Although principally concerned with commerce,
the deeply Catholic Portuguese imported more than just Chinese silks to Japan. As Jesuit priests
arrived on Yamato shores, many Japanese began converting to Catholicism, a trend which quickened
when high-ranking natives, like the Daimyo Omura Sumitada , embraced the Christian god in 1570.
As the “Kirishitan ” movement grew, particularly in Kyushu, they became victim to intermittent
persecution by the ruling Tokugawa Shogunate, who saw them as a looming threat to its power and
the old world order . This led to the Shimabara Rebellion of 1637-1638 where many local Catholic
Japanese, in league with local Ronin, rose up against the Shogunate . Luckily for the Shogun,
he managed to put down this rebellion. Back in 1600, trader-privateers from another nation,
the Netherlands, had arrived in Kyushu under the leadership of a certain English pilot who we
talked about in a previous video. Since then, the Protestant Dutch, fierce rivals of the Iberians,
had become a counterbalance to the influence of the Catholic Portuguese on the islands.
The Dutch provided advanced gunpowder and cannons to the Shogun to help put down the Shimabara
rebellion, with the Dutch ship de Ryp joining the battle firing an estimated 426 rounds at the rebel
stronghold at Hara Castle . After the Catholic rebels had been defeated, the Shogunate forcefully
expelled the Portuguese from their lands, believing that their proselytizing influence
had been behind the uprising in the first place. Meanwhile, the Dutch had assured the Japanese that
their form of Christianity was not the same as their Iberian rivals and that they sought only
trade, not conversion. Consequently, the Dutch were rewarded with limited trade privileges,
but were consigned to the small island of Dejima, where the Shogunate aimed to
quarantine their Christian influence from reaching the rest of Japan.
In Dejima, the Dutch were charged a yearly rental and held a few warehouses that housed
20 or so Dutch residents alongside quarters for Japanese interpreters and guards. Wary of outside
influence, the Shogunate implemented many policies which kept the Dutch at arm's length. Hollanders
were forbidden from studying Japanese, lest the foreigners learn too much about the country.
All Dutch ships that entered Dejima had to undergo a rigid system whereupon they were required to
unload all guns and hide any Christian-related materials. All crew members were required to walk
over images of Madonna and the child to prove they were not Catholics before setting foot on Dejima.
All in all, between 1641 to 1847, around 606 Dutch ships would make the trip to Dejima.
Alongside banishing the Iberians, the Tokugawa Shogunate enacted the “Sakoku” policy in 1639,
banning nearly all foreigners from entering Japan and forbidding all Japanese from leaving.
Sakoku was largely enforced so the Tokugawa Shogunate could restrict the Daimyo from trading
with foreigners, thus ensuring none would become powerful enough to challenge their supremacy.
However, this did not mean the nation was completely isolated. During the Sakoku period,
there were 4 domains that were allowed limited trade with foreigners . The Japanese gradually
imposed restrictions on the Dejima trade, banning the export of silver and increasing restrictions
on the export of copper, the commodities the Dutch sought the most. Despite this, Dejima remained
open and the Dutch continued its trade because it was still profitable for their colony in Batavia.
For the Japanese, the Dutch provided something more valuable than goods, intelligence about
the outside world. Each arriving captain was obliged to submit a “fusetsugaki ”, a document
relaying information about developments in the broad world. In particular, the Japanese sought
information on China, the sun around which the rest of the east asian world orbited.
So, in summary, the Portuguese were the first to open Japan to trade, only to set off a chain
of events that would restrict everyone but the Dutch from setting foot on its shores.
This near-total isolation would continue for some time, but during the 18th century,
serious challenges to Japan's seclusion emerged. The northernmost feudal vassal of the Tokugawa
was the domain of Matsumae, their northern climate made rice cultivation impossible, so the Matsumae
began to trade with the Ainu for pelts and fish . If you wish to learn more about the
Ainu don’t forget to check out our episode on the Ainu people, we know you will absolutely love it.
This trade was carried out in special spots called “basho” where Ainu came to barter. The trade
eventually drew more Japanese into the fishing industry further north, while at the same time,
Russians were probing southward from their pacific bases as they expanded across north-central Asia.
Russian exploration in Central Asia began in the Urals and ultimately led them to
North America. The Russian pioneers reached Kamchatka and the Northern Kurils where they
traded with the Ainu for pelts of sable and fox. In 1728 a 1000 Koku grain ship bound for Osaka
from Satsuma was driven off course and shipwrecked on the southern point of Kamchatka. 15 of her crew
of 17 were killed by a troop of Cossacks, but a single merchant and 11-year-old boy were spared .
They were brought to St.Petersburg for 5 years and interrogated by Empress Anna about their country.
Then in 1738, a Russian naval squadron led by a Danish naval Lieutenant named Martin Spangberg
surveyed the coasts of Sakhalin, Japan, and the Kuril islands eventually discovering the
sea route to Japan. Later, the Russian merchant Paval Lebedev-Lastochkin met with the lords of the
Matsumae clan in 1778 . His party bestowed their gifts and asked to trade, but the Samurai informed
Lastochkin they did not have the authority to make trade agreements on behalf of the Shogun,
but that he should try to return the following year at Nagasaki. Ultimately a tsunami in 1779
tossed Latoschkins' boat inland at Uruppu and this convinced him to give up seeking trade with Japan.
In 1799 the Russian-American company, the principal authority in the Russian colony
of Alaska, authorized an expedition commanded by Nikolai Rezanov carrying a letter from Alexander
I to ask for trade privileges with Japan. Rezanov made it to Nagasaki in 1804, but was kept waiting
for over 6 months, only for the Bakufu officials to return from Edo with a flat no. Furious at
his shabby treatment, Rezanov authorized two of his subordinates to stage nuisance raids
on Japanese settlements in the southern Kurils and Sakhalin between 1806 and 1807 as revenge.
As a result the Japanese became more vigilant and in 1811 they captured a Russian survey vessel
and its commander, Basillii Golovinin, whom they held for 2 years in Nagasaki.
They interrogated him about the raids, but he made it clear that Russia only sought trade.
Russia would not be the only nation to influence isolationist Japan.
Remarkably, the flames of conflicts as far away as the French Revolution would also reach
Japanese soil. In 1795, the Netherlands fell to the French revolutionary armies, and as a result,
Britain seized Holland's colonial outposts in South Africa and Indonesia.
The Dutch tried to hide these facts at Dejima, the last outpost that flew the Dutch flag. Between
1797 and 1817, Dejima was minimally supplied by chartered ships from neutral countries,
8 of which were American. In each case, the Dutch instructed the captains to fly the Dutch flag
and pretend everything was normal. The Nagasaki authorities pestered them for accounts of the
outside world and were fed stories that, other than some riots in Paris, all was in good order.
However, this did not dissuade the Japanese, who began asking harder questions. Eventually,
Henrick Doeff, Chief of Dejima Post was interrogated, and forced to spill the beans of all
that had been going on in the western world in the last decades, from the American Revolution, French
Revolution, and Napoleonic chaos which followed. In response to these concerning discoveries, the
Bakufu were took up “Rangaku” , western knowledge as a project, hiring and co-opting specialists.
They got their hands on a Dutch translation of the French scholar, Noel Chomel’s encyclopedic work,
learning much about manufacturing, merchandising, household management, and personal health. By 1846
they had translated 164 Japanese volumes of such works. Dejima became the transmission
point for a rudimentary study of French, Russian and English. However, the Japanese soon realized
these western people were all alike, they wrote horizontally and not vertically, they dressed
similarly unlike the Chinese, Koreans and Japanese themselves. All of them worshiped Christianity,
a wicked and prohibited cult! This led the Bakufu to issue an edict in 1825 making no distinction
among Westerners and expelling them all at once . In 1838 an American Charles King aboard the
merchant ship Morrison arrived in Japan with 7 shipwrecked Japanese he had found in Macau.
He hoped to win trade privileges in return for a demonstration of compassion.
As soon as his ship approached, shore batteries from the Miura Peninsula
opened fire on him. King took the Morrison to a safe distance, and to his surprise,
several Japanese in small fishing boats boarded Morrison sharing sake and cookies. The next day,
cannons were brought closer to fire upon the ship and hundreds of small boats began to surround it.
King took Morrison to Kagoshima where he met some officials who immediately seized 2 of the
castaways. The next day he was warned to leave as Kagoshima’s cannons began to fire upon his ship.
King had finally had enough and left with the remaining castaways for Canton .
In 1838 the First Opium War broke out and ended in 1842 with the signing of the treaty of Nanking.
China was humiliated and forced to sign Unequal treaties. China had long been the center of the
East Asian world, and when the Japanese found out about their humiliation, they were shocked.
At this time, the “Roju”, chief senior councilor Mizuno Tadakuni wrote “this concerns a foreign
country, but I think it should provide a good warning for us”. Bakufu officials supplemented
reports they received from China with a questionnaire addressed to the Dutch at Nagasaki.
From the Dutch they learned the size of the British force in China and what their advanced
warships were capable of. “Why have the Tartars lost? Since they are said to be brave enough?”
“Bravery alone is not sufficient, the art of war demands something more. No outlandish power can
compete with a European one, as can be seen by the great realm of China which has been conquered by
only four thousand men” . This led the Bakufu to abandon the “don't think twice” edict of 1825,
and allowed foreign ships to refuel in Japan . In 1844 a formal proposal addressed to the Shogun
by King William II of the Netherlands was brought to Nagasaki. The letter expressed the King's
appreciation for the Bakufu’s repeal of the “don’t think twice” edict and warned Japan that all the
world powers sought trade and that Britain's war with China as a result of it not allowing trade.
William ended the letter by stating Japan faced similar danger now. The Bakufu replied that what
King William was suggesting was impossible and to not write again. However, by the time the Bakufu
had made the response, more foreign ships had come ashore at several places in Japan.
On April 28th, A French naval expedition led by Captain Fornier-Duplan came ashore
at Naha harbor in Okinawa demanding trade, which the Japanese authorities denied.
But a priest among them, Father Theodore-Augustin Forcade was allowed to remain in Japan alongside a
Chinese translator named August Ko. The next year an American whaling ship, the Manhattan rescued
22 shipwrecked Japanese and showed up to Edo Bay where her captain Mercator Cooper met with the
Bakufu officials before being told to never return to Japan. The following year the United States
sent Captain James Biddle to open trade with Japan and he arrived in Edo Bay on July 20th of 1846
with 2 ships , but the Bakufu officials told him they only dealt with the Dutch, that all foreign
affairs were conducted in Nagasaki and that he must leave. Biddle got into a minor altercation
with a Samurai guard and took his leave. Just 4 days later, the French Admiral Jean-Baptiste
Cecille showed up to Okinawa offering the Japanese protection against British expansionism,
but was denied to come ashore, so he sailed to Nagasaki, but was denied there also.
In Canton, the Americans learnt from the Dutch consul that 15 American sailors from the Whaleship
Lagoda that had shipwrecked in Yeso on June 7th of 1848 and were imprisoned in Nagasaki. James
Glynn was ordered by David Geisinger to sail for Nagasaki where he arrived on April 17th of 1849.
The Japanese tried to block Glynn’s ship, but he forced his way and anchored in the middle
of Nagasaki bay. Glynn demanded the release of the prisoners and threatened an intervention
of the United States. With help from Dutch negotiators the surviving prisoners were
handed over by April 26 . Following his voyage, Glynn proposed to the United State Congress
that they should open Japan through diplomacy and if necessary utilize a show of strength.
The last major attempt before Japan opened was when the Russian embassy of Yevfimy Putyatin
came to Nagasaki on August 12th of 1853.
The Russians had learnt America planned to send its envoys to open trade with Japan. The embassy's
engineer, Alexander Mozhaysky demonstrated a steam engine which would enable the Japanese inventor
Tanaka Hisashige to reverse engineer the device and create the first Japanese steam locomotive.
The negotiations were protracted by Japanese indecision and this led Putyatin to depart
Nagasaki to survey the coasts of Korea, until the frigate Diana arrived on July 11th
giving news about the Crimean War, forcing Putyatin to transfer his flag
as his hip was being hunted by the Royal Navy. He only made it back to Japan at the port of Shimode
on November 22nd 1854, by which the Americans had already succeeded in opening Japan to trade.
Ultimately it was to be the famous expedition of commodore Matthew Perry on July 8th of 1853,
and his follow-up expedition on the 31st March 31st 1854 upon which the Shogun signed the
Treaty of Peace and Amity, establishing formal relations between Japan and the United States.
Other nations later would establish their own relations with Japan, which would ultimately send
the ancient land of the rising sun rocketing into the modern world. More videos on Japanese history
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