Ch 20 - The Awakening of Japan

Nakahama Manjiro

A fourteen-year-old fisherman from southwest Shikoku became the first Japanese to set foot in the United States. After receiving an American education and discovering just how irrational and inhumane Japan's isolation appeared to the western world, John Manjiro's determined efforts to enlighten the Japanese about the West laid a foundation for Commodore Perry's successful visits to Japan in 1853 and 1854.

Europe's maritime powers had taken over much of Southeast Asia and completed their subjugation of the Indian subcontinent by the mid-nineteenth century. China's once impenetrable Bamboo Curtain fell to opium smuggling, gunboat diplomacy and the imposition of a semi-colonial treaty system. Russia extended its hold over all of Siberia and pushed southward onto the Kurile Islands north of Japan, an island nation that remained virtually closed to western traders, western warships and western civilization. For nearly two hundred years, the Japanese had closed their doors to the western world so successfully that many nations simply accepted Japan's inaccessibility as a matter of political geography. They regarded Japan as little more than a poor, remote country of little interest.

The United States was the last of the great seafaring nations to venture into Japanese waters. Lured by the rich fishing grounds of the North Pacific, ships from New England's whaling fleet began hunting the coastal waters north of Japan as early as 1791. The increased volume of shipping in the Pacific and the South China Sea brought American merchant ships into the waters between Japan and China with increasing frequency. Their presence led to an increase in the number of shipwrecks in the area and brought a rise in the number of ships visiting the shores of Japan in search of food and water.

Japan's leadership was greatly concerned with the intrusive nature of the West and many daimyo voiced their opinions on how to deal with what they saw as Western affronts to Japan's national dignity. In 1825, the Mito scholar Aizawa Seishisai wrote a powerful and influential document entitled Shinron, "New Proposals," that warned that Japanese weakness for "novel gadgets" could "lure ignorant people" to the spell of "treacherous foreigners." It also urged the Shogun to "smash the barbarians whenever they come in sight." He argued that foreign trade was injurious to Japan and that contacts with foreigners would undermine Japanese morale or worse, lead to outright foreign conquest. The only sound defense, he said, would be to build national strength through greater unity and the judicious use of Western techniques while excluding Westerners themselves.

The central government of the Tokugawa Shogunate, the bakufu, responded by issuing an edict in 1825 that ordered the forcible ejection of all foreign ships from Japanese coastal regions and the destruction of foreign intruders with "no second thought." As a result, when a foreign ship attempted to return shipwreck victims to Japan, the government would either shell the vessel and attempt to drive it away, or accept the survivors and punish them as criminals for violating the national ban on foreign travel. The effectiveness of the Shogun's edict was demonstrated in 1837, when a small group of American Protestant missionaries based in Canton attempted to make contact with the Japanese. The missionaries chartered the small, unarmed whaler Morrison, and tried to repatriate seven Japanese fishermen to Japan;  if a chance for a little trade happened to present itself, so much the better. When the Morrison reached the entrance to Edo Bay, gun batteries at Uraga immediately opened fire and forced the ship to withdraw. The missionaries tried a second landing at the port of Kagoshima in southern Kyushu, but received a similar reception. The unwelcome Morrison returned to Canton with its seven Japanese castaways still aboard. Fukuzawa Yukichi, a Japanese intellectual and educator, harshly criticized the government's inhumane policy by stating, "This cannot be described as the way a government ought to treat its own citizens."

The "closing of Japan" is commonly understood as a deliberate bakufu policy, but the bakufu never intended to shut Japan off from the rest of the world. The prohibition of Japanese travel overseas, restrictions on weapons, bans on Christianity and restrictions on the travel of Catholics to Japan were put in place largely to restrict Japan's relations to carefully controlled contact with only those considered to be compatible foreigners. They were never conceived as either national seclusion or isolation.

Engelbert Kaempfer, the German medical officer at the Dutch factory at Nagasaki from 1690 to 1692, collected an astonishing amount of information on Japan during two extensive trips around the country in 1691 and 1692. Using many of the details gathered from travelers' accounts and the reports of previous trading delegations, Kaempfer wrote "The History of Japan," the first scholarly account of Tokugawa Japan seen in the West. First published in London in 1727, it became an instant best-seller and greatly influenced the European view of Japan throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

The term sakoku, or "closed country," was not used to describe Japan until 1801, when Nagasaki Dutch interpreter Shizuki Tadao first used it in the title of a privately circulated essay:

"An inquiry, whether it be conducive to the good of the Japanese Empire to keep it shut up as it now is, and not to suffer its inhabitants to have any commerce with foreign nations, either at home or abroad."

The title came from Shizuki's translation of the Dutch translation of an English version of an appendix in Kaempfer's history. There is no equivalent for the expression "to keep it shut up" in Kaempfer's original German, so Shizuki translated the expression into Japanese as, sakoku, or "closed country." Thus, the concept of Japan as a "closed country" was born, not as a matter of bakufu policy, but as the mistranslated perception of Engelbert Kaempfer's observations of Japan in the 1690s.

Only by overlooking Japan's Asian relations and emphasizing its European relations could one argue that the bakufu intentionally "closed Japan" to the outside world. Despite the so-called "Seclusion Edicts" issued between 1633 and 1639, Japan continued to maintain political, diplomatic, intellectual, cultural, national security and defense, intelligence, trade and economic ties with its Asian neighbors throughout the Tokugawa shogunate's entire two hundred year history. Japan remained an integrated part of East Asia's vast trading and cultural exchange system and remained receptive to proposals for foreign relations. In 1674, for example, the bakufu reopened relations with Siam. The Tsushima daimyo maintained a permanent trading factory in Pusan from 1611 well into the Meiji period. As a result, there was considerable traffic between Tsushima and Choson. There was also considerable movement between Satsuma and the Ryukyu Islands and the Chinese traded at Nagasaki. Holland was the only western power to enjoy an exclusive trade concession in Japan.

The isolated trading factory of the Dutch East India Company sat perched like a pest house on Deshima Island, a small rocky speck of land in Nagasaki Bay. Not only did European goods trickle into Japan through Deshima, but information about the country trickled out. If, as the West believed, Nagasaki was the lock on Japan, then Deshima was the keyhole. It was through this portal that Japan saw world events and got its first glimmer of western science and military technology. For years, high-ranking Japanese had demanded and received numerous books and newspapers from agents of the Dutch East India Company. The Shogun Tokugawa Iesada was a regular subscriber to the Illustrated London News, from which he and his advisers kept up with the latest western developments. For example, after learning of China's defeat in the Opium Wars, the bakufu began strengthening its military and realistically softened its position regarding the treatment of foreigners. To avoid violence, in 1842 local daimyo were permitted to provide foreign ships with food, water and fuel as they felt necessary.

Borrowing Western military techniques to strengthen his own army, the scholar Fujita Toko started vigorous reforms within his own domain and became somewhat of an expert on Western-style artillery. Fujita coined the slogan "Eastern ethics and Western science," a concept that, like its counterpart in China, later proved comforting to a whole generation of Japanese modernizers .

Except for a few alert individual traders, America displayed little interest in Japan. The only reason for America to even consider a treaty with Japan was to provide supply bases and shelter for the whaling ships that roamed the North Pacific and to safeguard the occasional shipwrecked sailors who found repatriation difficult after falling into Japanese hands. Though several American representatives engaged in Eastern Asia had been commissioned to negotiate a treaty with Japan, none had actually visited the islands.

Shortly after the United States acquired California and Britain gave up the Oregon territory in 1846, America became aware of the great potential for future trade in Asia. In 1852, the influential southern journal De Bow's Review predicted a potential annual trade market in Japan worth $200 million. Thanks in part to the construction of a railroad across the Isthmus of Panama and the growing prospect of someday building a canal, manufacturers in the eastern United States, particularly textile manufacturers, were eager to grab a share of this commerce. American interest in Japan soon began to supersede its interests in China.

Japan had only closed its borders to the West, not closed its mind, and the Japanese knew far more about the outside world than the outside world knew about Japan. Thanks to the remarkable adventures of a young Japanese fisherman named Nakahama Manjiro, by the time the United States physically reached Japan, news of American intentions had already reached the ears of Shogun Tokugawa Ieyoshi.

Nakahama Manjiro was born in a fishing village in southwest Shikoku (modern Tosashimizu) in 1827. He lost his father when he was just eight years old and, like many of his friends, became a fisherman. Perhaps the greatest hazard faced by Japanese seamen was getting caught in a storm that could blow their small vessel far from Japanese waters. Unable to return to Japan, they experienced indescribable hardships isolated on the shores of the Kamchatka Peninsula, the Aleutian Islands, or points as far east as the North American coast. Those who drifted south ended their journey on Taiwan, Luzon, Annam, or some South Pacific island. Few survived the ordeal. Those lucky enough to be rescued by a foreign ship had no assurance they would get home safely.

In 1841, the fourteen-year-old Manjiro and four of his fellow fishermen were caught in a strong Pacific storm off Cape Ashizuri at the southern tip of Shikoku and shipwrecked on Torishima Island, an uninhabited speck of land just west of Okinawa. Nearly six months later, the American whaler John Howland, sailing out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, happened upon the island and rescued the stranded fishermen.

The American whalers and commercial vessels that had been rescuing shipwrecked Japanese seamen since the 1820s were microcosms of life in an international society. Each rescue brought the Japanese into contact with foreigners, exposed them to a different culture and provided them an opportunity to learn a foreign language. The five Tosa fisherman aboard the John Howland gradually abandoned the daily customs of Japanese feudal society and began to live as members of that international society. Manjiro easily adapted to the American way of life, began to learn English and even managed to imitate whaling skills over the next six months as the Americans continued hunting whales in Japanese waters. Captain William Whitfield took a strong liking to the eager and able youth, who was given the name "John Manjiro," and decided to take the young boy to American to educate him. After leaving the other four Japanese fishermen with officials in Hawaii, Captain Whitfield, John Manjiro and the crew of the John Howland set sail for the United States, finally reaching New Bedford in May 1843.

The first Japanese to set foot on American soil received a warm welcome from the citizens of New Bedford. John Manjiro moved into the Whitfield family's single-story home in Fairhaven at Number 11 Cherry Street, where Captain Whitfield affectionately raised John as he would have raised his own son. John attended the Old Oxford School in Fairhaven, where he became the first Japanese student to receive an American elementary, intermediate and high school education. He learned how to read and write English and studied mathematics, history and geography. He also attended the Bartlett School of Navigation, where he studied surveying and became familiar with Bowditch's American Practical Navigator, which he later translated into Japanese. He even learned shipbuilding and mastered the skills required to make barrels to hold whale oil. All the while, Captain Whitfield personally cultivated John's independent spirit and taught him that all men were equal.

In accordance with Captain Whitfield's plans, three years after arriving in Fairhaven, John Manjiro boarded the whaling ship Franklin, bound for the rich fishing waters off Japan. John readily agreed to the voyage, hoping he could return to his homeland and see his mother again. He never got to Japan. He was elected First Mate aboard the Franklin, an experience that filled him with the self-confidence and assurance that he could support himself independently as a whaler in American society. John Manjiro had bigger dreams. After three years and four months sailing around the world, he became painfully aware of just how irrational and inhumane Japan's isolation appeared to the western world. He decided to make it his personal mission to appeal directly to the Shogun to open a Japanese port in Satsuma Province in southern Kyushu or in the Ryukyu Islands to accommodate American whaling vessels. John knew this would mean abandoning the wealth and security of his life as a whaler and putting his own life at great risk. He believed that success would repay Captain Whitfield, who saved his life, and the American whaling industry, which provided him a good living. It would also serve Japan's best interests. Before John Manjiro returned home, Japan's interests faced yet another challenge from the West.

As a result of its war with Mexico, the United States had recently acquired the California territory and with it a vastly increased concern with the Pacific. The development of steam-powered ships further intensified this newly discovered American concern. The arrival of steamships brought the need for fuel, and with that came the need to establish coaling stations and ports-of-call in foreign lands. A coaling station in the North Pacific would not only be handy, but would be an essential aid to America's rapidly increasing trade with China. For America, world geography pointed to Japan. On June 4, 1845, the flagship U.S.S. Columbus, commanded by Captain Thomas Wyman, and the war-sloop U.S.S. Vincennes, under the command of Captain Hiram Paulding, sailed from San Francisco, California, bound for Canton, China. Aboard the Columbus, Commodore James Biddle, Commander of America's East Indies Squadron, carried the ratification documents for the American Treaty of Wangxia signed a year earlier in Macao by Commissioner Caleb Cushing. He also carried a letter to Caleb Cushing from Secretary of State John C. Calhoun authorizing Cushing to proceed to Japan to make the first official contact with the Japanese Government.

The two ships reached Macao late in the year, when Commodore Biddle discovered that Cushing had already left for home and that his successor, Alexander H. Everett, was too ill to make the trip to Japan. After formally exchanging ratified copies of America's commercial treaty with China at Macao, the Columbus and Vincennes sailed for Japan on July 7, 1846, where Commodore Biddle was determined to conduct the negotiations himself in an attempt to open Japan to American commerce.

The two American ships dropped anchor off Edo on July 19 and were quickly surrounded by Japanese vessels. The Japanese treated the visitors with courtesy, but no one was permitted to go ashore. Over the next week, Commodore Biddle made numerous attempts to discuss whether Japan would like to enter into a treaty and open its ports to the United States. At one point during these talks, the Commodore was either struck or pushed by a Japanese samurai. Unsure about how to react and anxious about provoking hostilities, Commodore Biddle chose not to respond at all. Biddle's failure to avenge this "insult" inadvertently conveyed the impression that all Americans were weak. The Japanese politely rebuffed every attempt to discuss opening Japan to foreign trade and concluded their talks with a single word - no. The Columbus and Vincennes weighed anchor on July 29 and left Japanese waters.

As a people, the Japanese have been described by foreigners using the greatest string of "but also's" ever applied to any nation on earth. Anthropologist Ruth Benedict, in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, provided perhaps the clearest diagnosis of the Japanese character:

An observer describing people, other than Japanese, as being "unprecedentedly polite," is unlikely to add, "but also insolent and overbearing." A description of the people of some nations as being "incomparably rigid in their behavior," does not include, "but also they adapt themselves readily to extreme innovations." To call a people "submissive" does little to explain that they are also "not easily subservient to control from above." To describe them as "loyal and generous," does not include the statement, "but also treacherous and spiteful." With the Japanese however, all these contradictions are true.

To James Biddle and those who followed him into Japan, it became evident that chivalry alone was not enough to impress the Japanese. Chivalry had to be accompanied by a display of force and a convincing readiness to use it.

In late November 1849, just over three years after Commodore Biddle left Japan, twenty-four-year-old John Manjiro left New Bedford, Massachusetts, for Sacramento, California. He earned $600 working as a "Forty-Niner" in the booming California Gold Rush before sailing from San Francisco to Honolulu, Hawaii, where he persuaded the four men shipwrecked with him in 1841 to return to Japan. With help from Reverend Damon, the five Japanese men set sail for home, arriving in the Ryukyu Islands on February 3, 1851, a full ten years after they were shipwrecked. Just as he expected, Manjiro and his companions were promptly arrested and charged with violating Japan's exclusion law. The men were taken to Kagoshima for questioning by Lord Shimazu, the daimyo of Satsuma. It was only the daimyo's interest in his travels that prevented John Manjiro's head from being taken on the spot. After months of being repeatedly interrogated in Satsuma, at Nagasaki and finally in Tosa, John Manjiro was finally permitted to return to his home town of Nakahama on October 5, 1852, where he and his mother had a joyful, emotional reunion after a twelve year separation.

Yamanouchi Yodo, the Lord of Tosa, forbid Manjiro from ever leaving his home town for travel abroad or ocean-bound fishing journeys. The harsh detention crushed Manjiro's dream of appealing directly to the Shogun and becoming an agent to open Japan to the world. These were urgent times in Japan however, and Nakahama Manjiro's knowledge of America was quickly seen in a new light. On October 8, Lord Yamanouchi called on Manjiro to teach at the Tosa School, where he lectured on American democracy, the independent spirit of the American people, social life, science and technology, freedom and equality, and on his travels around the world. He served an invaluable role as a teacher and interpreter and left his mark on a number of Japanese leaders.

During the first half of the nineteenth century, most attempts to open Japan were somewhat half-hearted. Soon after Commodore Biddle's visit however, a representative of an American trading concern in East Asia induced Secretary of State John Clayton to consider a treaty with Japan modeled after America's 1844 Treaty of Wangxia with China. President Millard Fillmore's administration and Washington D.C. were seized by a virile determination to expand American commerce worldwide. President Fillmore expressed the opinion that steps should be quickly taken that "...would enable our merchants to supply the last link in that great chain which unites all nations of the world by the establishment of a line of steamers from California to China." The whole question of a treaty of friendship and commerce with Japan assumed an increased significance.