Commodore Perry Enters Tokyo Bay and Opens Japan

Context

For over two hundred years Japan had maintained the sakoku policy, restricting most foreign contact to limited Dutch and Chinese trade at Nagasaki while expelling missionaries and other outsiders after earlier conflicts over religion and commerce. By the mid-nineteenth century, American merchants and whalers operating in the Pacific increasingly encountered shipwrecked sailors on Japanese shores and sought reliable coaling stations for the growing fleet of steam-powered vessels plying routes between California and Asia. The U.S. government, motivated by commercial opportunity and a sense of national expansion across the ocean, decided that a formal naval mission offered the best chance to secure safe harbors and regular diplomatic relations.

What Happened

On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry arrived at the entrance to Edo Bay near the village of Uraga with the steam frigates Susquehanna and Mississippi and the sailing ships Plymouth and Saratoga. The Japanese, who had never seen vessels propelled by steam and smoke, referred to them as the “black ships.” Perry refused to follow the customary procedures that confined foreign vessels to Nagasaki and instead advanced his squadron closer to the shogunal capital while firing blank salutes. Local officials, led by the Uraga magistrate Kayama Eizaemon, boarded the flagship to negotiate; after several days of tense exchanges Perry agreed to hand over President Millard Fillmore’s letter on July 14 at the nearby beach of Kurihama.

Aftermath

Perry withdrew his squadron to the Chinese coast for the winter, leaving the Tokugawa authorities to debate how to respond to the unprecedented demand. When he returned in February 1854 with a larger force, Japanese negotiators concluded that resistance risked military confrontation similar to recent events in China. The resulting Treaty of Kanagawa, signed on March 31, 1854, opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships for supplies and permitted a U.S. consul to reside in Shimoda.

Legacy

The 1854 treaty marked the first breach in Japan’s seclusion and paved the way for fuller commercial agreements, most notably the 1858 Harris Treaty. Within fifteen years the internal strains created by foreign pressure contributed to the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the Meiji Restoration of 1868, which launched Japan’s rapid industrialization and military modernization. Historians view Perry’s expedition as a classic example of gunboat diplomacy that simultaneously ended Japanese isolation and accelerated the country’s emergence as a major power in East Asia.