The Perry Expedition was a United States naval mission to Japan in 1853 and 1854, led by Commodore Matthew C. Perry on the orders of President Millard Fillmore. Using the threat of force, Perry obliged the Tokugawa shogunate to accept a letter from the president and, on his return, to sign the Convention of Kanagawa, ending more than two centuries of Japanese seclusion from the West. The Japanese remember the episode as the arrival of the "black ships", and it set in motion the events that brought down the shogunate.
Why America came
By the mid-nineteenth century American trade with China was growing, American whaling ships worked the waters off Japan, and steamships needed coaling stations across the Pacific. Under its policy of sakoku, Japan admitted almost no foreigners, and shipwrecked Western sailors could be harshly treated. Between 1790 and 1853 at least 27 American ships had visited Japan and been turned away, and in 1844 the Dutch king had warned the Japanese that change would be forced on them if they did not open up themselves. In 1851 the American government prepared a presidential letter asking for "friendship and commerce", and when the first commander chosen was relieved, the task passed to Perry, a senior officer with diplomatic experience.
The black ships arrive
Perry sailed from Virginia in November 1852 aboard the paddle steamer Mississippi, travelling by way of the Atlantic islands, Cape Town, Ceylon, Singapore, Hong Kong and Shanghai, and calling at the Ryukyu Islands, where he pressed the local authorities for trading rights. On 8 July 1853 he anchored at Uraga, at the entrance to Edo Bay, with four warships. He refused to deal with minor officials or to go to Nagasaki, the port reserved for foreign contact, and threatened to land troops and march on Edo if a suitably senior official did not take the president's letter. His squadron fired blank rounds and sent boats to survey the bay.
The government was in difficulty: the shogun, Tokugawa Ieyoshi, was ill, and the local magistrate reported that his defences could not resist the Americans. The senior councillor Abe Masahiro decided that merely receiving the letter would not breach Japanese sovereignty. On 14 July Perry landed at Kurihama with about 250 sailors and marines and handed it over, then left, promising to return for an answer.
A divided government
Ieyoshi died soon afterwards and was succeeded by his sickly son Iesada, leaving power with the council of elders led by Abe. Unsure what to do, Abe took the unprecedented step of consulting the daimyo, the feudal lords. Their replies were split, roughly equally for and against accepting the American demands, and the only point of agreement was that coastal defences should be strengthened at once. The consultation made the shogunate look weak and indecisive.
The Treaty of Kanagawa
Perry returned earlier than promised, having learned that a Russian admiral, Yevfimiy Putyatin, had been at Nagasaki seeking a treaty and that the British and French intended to follow him there. He arrived on 13 February 1854 with eight ships and some 1,600 men. Weeks of negotiation followed, with an exchange of gifts that included a miniature steam locomotive and a telegraph from the Americans and lacquerware, silks and porcelain from the Japanese. On 31 March 1854 the two sides signed the Convention of Kanagawa. It opened the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships, guaranteed help for shipwrecked sailors and allowed an American consul to live at Shimoda.
Consequences
The expedition led directly to diplomatic relations between Japan and the Western powers. The shogunate's inability to resist foreign pressure undermined its authority, and within fifteen years it had collapsed in the Boshin War, giving way to the Meiji Restoration and the rule of Emperor Meiji. Wider contact also spread Japanese art abroad, inspiring the vogue for Japonisme in Europe and America. Perry returned to the United States in 1855, received a reward of $20,000 from Congress, and died in New York in 1858.
On our maps
Our 1815 map shows Japan still closed to the outside world under the shogunate, and the 1878 map shows the modernising Empire of Japan that emerged after its fall.