The Influence of the Black Ships essay
The fleet of warships, later called “black” by the astonished Japanese due to the color of coal smoke used by the US steam navy, first entered Uraga Harbor near Edo (early Tokyo) on July 8, 1853. Led by Commodore Perry, “the Black Ships” were to become a significant factor in the negotiations and the subsequent signing of the agreement on trade between Japan and the United States, thus effectively ending Japan’s more than two hundred years long self-isolation policy. In this paper, we claim that these events have drastically changed the subsequent history of the country, forcing it to introduce transformations in the political, economic, and military sphere it never thought it would tolerate. However, the opening of Japan to the world has hugely influenced both local and global balance.
To prove the argument, it is necessary to start with the general political and economic environment which took place in those days. After some excursions into history, we will directly move on to a rather ambiguous event – the arrival of the black ships followed by the signing of Kaganawa Treaty. Finally, trying to stick to a neutral point of view, we will focus on the effects these event had on Japan, its partners and victims,
The Black Ships: Background
At the beginning of the 18th century, the Japanese economy entered a systemic crisis caused by the collapse of the natural economy. As Sansom (223) states in his research, despite the reforms in the first half of the 19th century, Japan was struck by a severe famine which occurred because of the persistent crop failures. The political course directed at the return to the traditional methods of economy management only exacerbated the situation, as proved unpopular among the Japanese and hurt the prestige of the shogunate. The country’s economy was weak and unprepared for a crisis, and being exhausted by the recent wars gradually fell into the abyss of new troubles. The internal situation was complicated by the policy of self-isolation sakoku adopted by the Tokugawa shogunate in 1641, in order to protect the country from the influence of Christianity and possible colonization, as well as in an attempt to prevent the growth of layers of rich seaport citizens and thus preserve the foundations of the feudal system (Samson 237). For two centuries, Japan was maintaining trade only with China and Holland. However, the combination of external factors in mid-19th century resulted in the growth of interest from European countries, and especially the United States, in the opening of trade with Japan (basing on Tyler 365-69; Williams 115-123; and Treat 49-55):
1) The opening of Qing China for trade with Europe and the United States in 1842, coupled with the accedence of California to the United States in 1850, has created a steady flow of maritime traffic between North America and Asia. Additionally, the whaling industry is the United States, successfully deploying its operations in the North Pacific with the middle of the 18th century, needed a safe haven, assistance in cases of shipwrecks and reliable refueling stations;
2) The transition from sailing ships to steamships based on the combustion of coal led to an increase in the needs of American merchants in the intermediate bases where merchant ships could load coal and provisions during the long way from the US to China. The combination of favorable geographical position almost in the same latitude as San Francisco and rumors on significant reserves of coal in Japan made the opening of Japanese ports to trade a priority task US of the US government;
3) A constant flow of American sailors stuck on the shores of Japan due to shipwrecks and subjected to ill-treatment by the Japanese, urged the US government to achieve the ratification of nonaggression pacts.
4) Finally, the increasing competition among colonial powers, and especially the success of France and Great Britain in Qing China forced the US to search for new trade markets.
All this led to the decision of the US government to send the US Navy expedition to Japan in 1853, under the lead of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, who had the ambition to establish direct diplomatic relations with Japan.
The Arrival of the Black Ship and the Convention of Kanagawa
On July 8, 1853, Matthew Calbraith Perry ported his Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna ships in the Bay of Uraga, near the city of Edo, which was the administrative center of the Tokugawa shogunate. The squadron was armed with about a hundred of the latest Paixhans guns firing explosive bombs and 2,000 sailors (Perry et al. 232). The immediate negotiations were impossible due to the 12th shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi illness, and thus the Americans promised to come back in a year. However, when the shogun died by the end of July, Perry decided to take advantage of the chaos in Japan and exercise real pressure and demonstration of US military power. Thus, on February 11, 1854, Perry’s squadron lined up in battle formation and turned their guns towards the town of Uraga, demonstrating a willingness to take the capital city of Edo in the event of failure of Japan to sign the agreement (Perry et al. 336). Unable to resist, Japan had to sign the Convention of Kanagawa on March 31, 1854 despite the unequal terms it offered.
In particular, under this treaty, the Japanese side was obliged to provide fuel and food to the US ships if necessary; to save the US ships and their crews in the event of an accident; to open the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate to trade with the United States, where Americans would have the right to build their consulates; to provide the US with the most favored trade regime (Select Documents on Japanese Foreign Policy 165). Soon after that, a wider 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce was signed, which allowed the creation of foreign concessions, extra-territoriality for foreigners and the reduction of import duties (Treaties and Other International Acts of the United States of America 191). Similar treaties were soon concluded with the Netherlands, Russia, Britain and France (Williams 198).
Thus, despite the general hostility towards foreigners and strong nationalism, the supreme rulers of Japan were aware of their impossibility of resistance to Western aggression. Commodore Perry’s Black Ships, or kurofune, has gained a notorious fame in the Japanese history as the nominal image symbolizing a “threat imposed by Western technology” (Corenza 121) and associated with the “opening” of Japan to foreigners and the start of the US-Japanese relations, bringing both mutual benefit and numerous conflicts and wars.
The Consequences of the Kanagawa Treaty
With the arrival of the Black Ships, the period of Bakumatsu started signifying the end of the shogunate (Sansom 316). The conclusion of unequal treaties with foreign powers; shogun’s death; economic crisis and epidemic of diseases as a result of country’s opening to international trade – all together led Japan to the deep political crisis and bloody civil war (1868-1869), in which the supporters of modernization, rallying behind the return of the Emperor defeated supporters of the shogunate.
Indeed, shogunate’s huge concessions to foreigners split the country into two camps: some thought the opening of borders would encourage the development of Japan, the others believed it would destroy the national way of life and unique culture. Moreover, as Kennedy (118) states, nationalistic and xenophobic clashes were intensified by the military support from of Britain and France, helping the conquering clans to modernize their army, supplying with modern European weapons, and selling warships which would later become the basis of the Japanese navy. Generally, the leading role in trade with Japan and most significant economic benefits were captured by the British with their vast experience in the development of colonies. According to Dower (179), already in 1859, the first year of Japan’s official trade with foreign powers, there were two American companies in Yokohama, four British, one Portuguese and one Swiss. In 1867, the number of British companies has grown to 48, while the United States were represented by only seven (Williams 219; Dower 181). From 1859 to 1866, Japanese imports increased from 150 thousand up to 11.4 million dollars, and exports grew from 400 thousand to 14.1 million dollars, with about 80% of all trade operations were with the United Kingdom (Dower 183-86; Tyler 394-95; Williams 223-25).
At the same time, for several reasons, it can’t be said that trade developed too rapidly. Above all, the Japanese had no experience in running large-scale trade. They had a vague idea of the customs policy, tariffs and taxes which, as Dower (213) notes, was shamelessly used by foreigners. For instance, in Japan, the ratio between gold and silver was 1 to 5, while outside Japan it made 1 to 15, which led to the purchase and vast export of Japanese coins, and this had a critically negative effect on the financial position of Japan (Williams 231). Thus, unemployment was growing fast, together with the cost of rice and other food prices which by 1867 increased by more than 10 times compared with the period before the Black Ships arrival (Sansom 251; Kennedy 129; Corenza 141). Together with political repressions against the supporters of revolution, these factors radically reduced shogunate’s prestige. After the final defeat of the government troops, the shogun abdicated from office and passed the state power back to the Emperor, which enable the start of the Meiji Restoration, a period of destroying the feudal structure and transition to the capitalist path of development.
In this period, the relations between Japan and the “civilized” world were characterized through two main features. First, we should agree with Kamikawa (50) that it was a clash of two completely different civilizations at their levels of social and technological development. Second, these relations are built on a background of a serious political crisis in Japan, which resulted in the total change of the political system and the beginning of transition from feudalism to capitalism. However, less than two decades passed since the moment when Perry showed the Japanese on the Kanagawa beach the achievements of the Western technical thought and in 1869 telegraph started working, and in October 1872, the first railway was opened between Tokyo and Yokohama (Jansen 58). Generally, after the Meiji Restoration in 1868, the new Japanese government adopted the policy of modernization and, above all, removed all the restrictions of sakoku (Huffman; Kamikawa 67). Relations between the countries entered a new period and quickly began to move from the “student – teacher” stage to a more equitable, however, more complex ones.
New Japan strongly started catching up the West in social, economic and military spheres; radical reforms were taking place across the country (basing on studies by Corenza; Huffman; Jansen; Kennedy; and Treat). New government wanted to make Japan a democratic country with universal equality. Thus, the boundaries between social classes introduced by the Tokugawa shogunate were erased. In order to stabilize the new government all the old daimyo feudals had to return all their lands to the emperor. The reforms also included the support of human rights, such as adoption of the freedom of religion in 1873 and the introduction of compulsory education. For faster conversion of Japan from agricultural into an industrial country, many Japanese students were sent to the West to study science and languages. Japan also invited foreign teachers. A lot of money was invested in the development of transport and communication means. The government supported the development of business and industry, especially the large companies zaibatsu which soon formed the basis of country’s economic power. Copying western experience, Japan also received its first Constitution in 1889, established a parliament and formed political parties.
The growth in military terms in the era of European nationalism was also a high priority for Japan. Universal military obligation was introduced; the new army was formed by the example of the Prussian one, and the fleet was built following the pattern of the British fleet. Since the end of the 19th century, Japan has sought to become a leading power in the Far East. With this goal, Japan initiated aggressive wars against China in 1894, and the Russian Empire in 1904. As a result of these wars, Japan acquired its first colonies – Korea, Manchuria, the Kuril Islands together with the southern Sakhalin. These military successes led to an unprecedented increase of nationalism in Japan, other Asian countries followed this trend of growing national pride. Tokyo considered these conquests as a test of strength before the large-scale colonial policy, aimed at establishing the so-called Greater East Asia Co-prosperity Sphere in the Asia-Pacific region (Kennedy 156). This Japanese colonization system was supposed to include a vast territory from Australia to Vladivostok and from the countries of Indochina to Hawaii.
Like Kamikawa (79) rightfully marks, forcibly opening Japan, Washington wanted to make this land of rising sun its ally in the neo-colonization policy in the Asia-Pacific region, however, after the First World War Japanese ambitions began to get beyond the control of the United States. The administration of Woodrow Wilson, and later Herbert Hoover did not pay much attention to the growing power of the ally (Kennedy 145). Loyal to the traditions of isolationist policy, the US government did not prevent Japan’s aggression against northern China, considering that its further development would lead to a clash with the Soviet Union and distract Japanese militarism from the Pacific (Treat 309). In turn, Britain and France carried out a similar policy toward Japan hoping to continue the unpunished robberies of China under the guise of opposition to aggression (William 199). In fact, the ruling circles of the USA, the UK and France saw Japan as the vanguard in the struggle against the national liberation movement in the Far East.
However, when at the beginning of the 1932 Japanese troops occupied the South Manchuria, Japan’s actions in China were condemned by the League of Nations, which led to Japan’s withdrawal from the organization. This meant, actually, that the Japanese aggression in the Far East broke the balance of forces, posed a threat to peace and opened up the option of a new war. Moreover, foreign policy plans included in the Konoe Doctrine required Japan to have allies, and Japan found them in the face of fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, moving on to deliberate conquer the world, which resulted in a disaster for the conquerors themselves and the new world order. Atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, millions of victims of this monstrous act, the occupation of Japan by the US military, the collapse of the economy – these were the consequences of the policy of “gathering all eight corners of the world under one roof” (Kamikawa 111), catalyzed by the Convention of Kanagawa.
Conclusion
Summing up the critical period in the history of Japan when from 1853 to 1868 under the pressure of the US, and then the other Western powers it made the decision to step on the path of modernization, which at the time was equivalent to Westernization, it is interesting to consider several issues. Could Japan make a step towards the West without American pressure? Obviously, this would have happened anyway, but the Americans undoubtedly hastened these changes. Modern Japanese political lexicon includes a long established term of gayatsu, which can be translated as “external pressure” or “foreign pressure” (Corenza 184). Its roots lead to the period of the “Opening” of the country, when the beginning of modernization, the need for which was felt by many but was not yet perceived at the mass level, was initially framed as a concession to American pressure. And even today the Japanese system of decision-making often uses requirements coming mostly from the United States as a justification for certain political or economic steps. Notably, it is not explained that these steps completely comply with the vital interests of the country understood by the leadership of the state but not yet supported by a large part of public opinion. Such a decision is virtually attributed to impossibility to resist foreign pressure, which in the eyes of the public removes much of the responsibility from the state.
“Opening” of Japan was largely held by the pattern. By the early 1850’s, the shogunate felt the need for change but at the same time was under pressure from conservative stereotypes and fears of the unknown. The advent of the Americans became a catalyst for changes that already matured in the Japanese society. After the Meiji Restoration in 1868, authority in Japan fell in the hands of people who had experience of communication with the Americans and Europeans, and a good understanding of the need to modernize the country. Perhaps at first they considered modernization as a prerequisite for “expulsion of barbarians,” but this goal quickly changed to the slogan “rich country, strong army,” and later to the desire to be in line with the major imperialist powers.
Becoming the first Asian state to step on the path of construction of industrial civilization along with Germany, the US, Britain, the Soviet Union, and Italy in 1930-1940’s, Japan actively involved in the struggle for a new division of the world. However, in an attempt to become a state, whose opinion is counted instead of using military diplomacy, Japan was defeated. And though the old wounds still cause pain resulting in difficult political and economic relation with the victims of Japanese aggression, like China, Korea and Russia, contemporary Japan lives under the pacifist Constitution of 1947, focuses on liberal democracy, and has achieved record economic growth, having increased its influence on the world stage now through drastically other methods, in particular, technological and scientific advance, large manufacturing facilities and high market capitalization.
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