Breaking Open Japan: Commodore Perry, Lord Abe, and American Imperialism in 1853 (review)

Commodore Matthew Perry commanded a squadron of US Navy ships that sailed east from Norfolk in November, 1852, carrying a letter from PresidentMillard Fillmore to the Japanese Government. In it, the USA asked Japan, which had been essentially closed to westerners formore than two centuries, to provide for the humane treatment and return of US seamen—mostly whalers—shipwrecked in Japanese waters, to open Japanese ports to US ships for provisioning and refueling, and to establish trading relationships—Perry at least pushed for that—with US merchants operating in Asian markets.

Perry's "black ships," well armed, some steam powered, and considerably larger than any the Japanese possessed, arrived from China in the summer of 1853. Initially, the Japanese told Perry to go away, but when he stood firm they received the letter. Perry left, stating he would return for an answer in some months. He did, with an even larger squadron, in February, 1854. At the end of March, the Japanese agreed to most of theUS requests, but delayed on establishing trading relationships. No shots were fired in anger by either side.

Why Perry? Why the USA? Why the early 1850s? Since Britannia supposedly ruled the waves, one might have expected the British to pull off the feat. The answers are mostly hinted at in George Feifer's book. Feifer notes that more US ships than those of any other western nation (probably excepting the Dutch, whom the Japanese had allowed a small trading outpost) had entered Japanese waters during the previous 75 years, with Russia second and Britain a distant third, and that Americans had captured virtually the entire fur trade with China. Analysis of the sources of specie flows into China indicates that US, not British, merchants dominated western trade with China during the first half of the nineteenth century. Feifer is clearer on the timing. By the early 1850s, steam was replacing the sail in powering ships. Japan had some coal deposits and was positioned on trade routes to China from the recently acquired west coast of the USA, and US steamships could carry more cargo and less fuel provided they could refuel in Japan.

Feifer's engagingly written account of the Perry mission differs from most previous accounts in English [an exception is Peter Wiley, Yankees in the Land of the Gods (1991)] by examining the events in considerable detail from the Japanese point of view. He makes something of a hero of Abe Masahiro, the Chief Senior Councilor in the gravely ill Tokugawa Shogun's bakufu government. It was Lord Abe who initially had ordered Perry to "leave immediately," a bluff Perry called. Then, when Japanese leaders were divided between those who wanted to fight the Americans and those who wanted to entreat with them, it was Abe who oversaw negotiations, effected compromises, and tried to pursue what he considered to be in Japan's best interests given the facts of the situation.

Unfortunately, Feifer's attempt to provide a balanced account of the Perry mission is hardly balanced. Although there is a suggestion or two that the mission may have made some positive contributions to Japan's development, there is no follow-up to them. Instead, the commodore is consistently portrayed as an out-and-out imperialist, a "bullying . . . naval chauvinist" (p. 334) threatening the use of force if the Japanese did not give in to his demands (or requests). He came from a commercial background and did the bidding of US merchants. The Japanese, on the other hand, are portrayed as a peace-loving people of one mind, which was simply to be left alone. Were there no conflicts—political, economic, and social—within Japanese society before the black ships of the Americans appeared in 1853? Can we lay all of Japan's turmoil in the decades that followed Perry's mission—the toppling of the Shogunate, the Meiji revolution, the...