A History of Japan: From Stone Age to Superpower (37 page)

By extension the samurai, who were in most cases one and the same as the officials, also lost respect. This added to their earlier frustrations about being deprived of their role as warriors. And even their military competence was now being called into question.
⁵⁰

Matters were brought to a head by the visit in July 1853 of US Commodore Matthew Perry (1794–1858), who sailed – or more exactly steamed – into Edo Bay with four ships. Perry had official orders to request three things: more humane treatment for castaways, the opening of ports for provisions and fuel, and the opening of ports for trade. He was a determined man, prepared to use force if necessary, and he made sure the Japanese were aware of his determination and the potential of his weaponry, even presenting them with white flags to facilitate their surrender.
⁵¹
Having then also presented them with a letter from the American President to the Emperor of Japan, he left, promising to return the following year for an answer.

There was much confusion and argument after Perry’s departure. The sh
gunate even took the unprecedented and humiliating step of
requesting advice from the
daimy
. However, it was effectively powerless to resist. When he returned in February 1854, with a larger fleet of nine ships, the sh
gunate agreed to a treaty. In the Treaty of Kanagawa of March 1854 the sh
gunate accepted American requests, including the right to station a consular official in Japan. The first consul, Townsend Harris (1804–78), duly took up his post in the port of Shimoda in 1856. The doors of the closed country had been forced open.

Similar treaties with other powers followed rapidly, with Britain in October 1854 and Russia in February 1855, and France and Holland soon after. Further concessions to any one power brought similar concessions to the others, for all were granted ‘most favoured nation’ status. Japan lost control over its own tariffs. These ‘unequal treaties’ won by ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ were humiliating to the Japanese. One particularly galling concession was the right of extraterritoriality, by which foreign nationals who broke the law were tried by their consul rather than the legal authorities of the host nation. This was a clear relegation of Japan to ‘uncivilised’ status, and it hurt Japanese pride and sensibilities greatly, for it was the western devils – not the Japanese – who were supposed to be the barbarians.
⁵²

Western traders and adventurers also arrived in numbers.
⁵³
They were not always the best behaved or the most politically correct of diplomats, but some nationalists – particularly among the samurai – needed little or no provocation to attack them.
⁵⁴

The inability of the sh
gun to deal effectively with the foreign ‘threat’, despite his supposed role as military protector of Japan, sounded the death knell for the sh
gunate. Opposition to it mounted, its opponents representing a mixture of political opportunism and genuine concern for the welfare of the nation.
⁵⁵

Not surprisingly, major opposition came from
tozama
domains, especially Satsuma in southern Ky
sh
and Ch
sh
at the western tip of Honsh
. Satsuma and Ch
sh
were large and powerful domains, sharing a bond of antipathy towards the sh
gunate though traditionally they were not well-disposed towards each other.