Commodore Perry as White Phantom: Moby-Dick in the Context of the Modern Age

Commodore Perry as White Phantom: Moby-Dick in the Context of the Modern Age ARIMICHI MAKINO Meiji University I n “The Advocate,” Ishmael declares 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.”1 Certainly American whale-ships were already “on the threshold” of Japan. But the actual “opener” of Japan’s bolted door, in the eyes of the Japanese of late Edo Period, that is to say, in the Bakumatsu era (1853-1867), was the “white phantom” personified by Commodore Perry. I propose that Perry can be interpreted as the threatening figure of the Modern Age looming over Bakumatsu Japan. In “Loomings,” Ishmael mentions Narcissus in discussing “the image of the ungraspable phantom of life.” He goes on to say, “this is the key to it all” (NN MD 5). Certainly the Narcissus myth plays a key role throughout MobyDick . It suggests, first of all, the fate of monomaniac Captain Ahab. But more important is that the reflected images in the narcissistic mirror are all projected from one’s mind. In other words, the images are created as products of one’s self-reflection. Therefore, Ishmael (and possibly Melville) is here expressing a series of ambiguous images emerging from the depths of his own mind. If this “phantom of life”—we should notice the significant word “life”—beyond its illusory images connects with Melville’s consciousness of the physical and historical world, we can also presume that the word “phantom” projects Melville’s sense of the impending modern age. Ishmael closes Chapter 1 with more references to “phantom,” in particular , “one grand hooded phantom, like a snow hill in the air” (NN MD 7). Needless to say, this “white phantom” is a prefiguration of the awful White Whale. From this moment on, Ishmael’s narcissistic mind begins expanding upon the mysterious White Whale. Likewise, in the mind of Captain Ahab, the same White Whale appears as “some unknown but still reasoning thing [that] puts forth the mouldings of its features from behind the unreasoning mask” (NN MD 164). C
2006 The Authors Journal compilation C
2006 The Melville Society and Blackwell Publishing Inc 1 Herman Melville, Moby-Dick or The Whale, ed. Harrison Hayford, Hershel Parker and G. Thomas Tanselle (Evanston and Chicago: Northwestern University Press and The Newberry Library, 1988), 110; hereafter cited as NN MD. L E V I A T H A N A J O U R N A L O F M E L V I L L E S T U D I E S 19 A R I M I C H I M A K I N O Captain Ahab poses for us a serious question about what this “unknown but still reasoning thing” is. And he asserts that this ambiguous thing exists even in “the undoubted deed.” But the “undoubted deed” might be regarded as undoubted only by white Christian society in the mid-nineteenth century. If we take a multicultural viewpoint, this “unknown thing” can be defined more clearly. In order to analyze it, let us first notice the whiteness of the white phantom, for it seems to me that the color white is deeply related to the ambiguous thing. In his meditation on “the whiteness of the whale” (NN MD, Ch.42) Ishmael introduces the positive meanings of the color white, a proliferation of emblems to be admired: the innocence of brides, the benignity of age, as well as the celebration of Christ’s passion. But he also supplies a negative side— from the white shark to the white polar bear. His meditation then accelerates and expands until he arrives at an appalling extremity where even un-Christian or anti-Christian ideas like “the thought of annihilation” and “a colorless, allcolor of atheism” are projected (NN MD 195). In this perplexing extremity, however, we can assume that Melville’s perspective ranges into the most sacred ideas of Christianity. We should also note Ishmael’s insertion of the following observation: “though this pre-eminence in it [whiteness] applies to the human race itself, giving the white man ideal mastership over every dusky tribe...