Perry’s service in Russia, Egypt, Italy, Africa, the West Indies, and Mexico was, however, but a preparatory course for the great adventure on which he was destined to embark, for, as a result of the extraordinary fund of experience and information he had gained on foreign seaboards, he was selected to command the expedition which the American Government had determined to send to Japan in an attempt to open up that empire to commerce and civilization. Now, you must not lose sight of the fact that the Japan of sixty years ago was quite a different country from the Japan of to-day. The Japanese of 1853 were as ultra-exclusive and as pleased with themselves as are the members of the Newport set. They wanted no outsiders in their country, and they did not have the slightest desire to play in any one else’s back yard. All they asked was to be let alone. But no nation can successfully oppose the march of civilization. It must either welcome progress or go under. For three centuries every maritime power in Europe had attempted to open up Japan, and always they had met with failure. But about the middle of the nineteenth century the United States decided to take a hand in the game. With the conquest and settlement of California; the increase of American commerce with China; the growth of American whale-fisheries in Eastern seas, in which ten thousand Americans were employed; the development of steam traffic and the consequent necessity for coaling stations, it became increasingly evident to the frock-coated gentlemen in Washington that the opening of the empire of the Mikado was a necessity which could not much longer be delayed.
Thus it came about that the morning of July 8, 1853, saw a squadron of black-hulled war-ships—the Mississippi, Susquehanna, Plymouth, and Saratoga—sailing into the Straits of Uraga and into Japanese history. And on the bridge of the flag-ship, his telescope glued to his eye, was our old friend, Matthew Calbraith Perry. The Straits of Uraga, I should explain, form the entrance to the Bay of Tokio, whose sacred waters had, up to that time, never been desecrated by the hulls of foreign war-ships. But Perry was never worried about lack of precedent. At five in the afternoon his ships steamed in within musket-shot of Uraga, and, at the shrill signal of the boatswains’ pipes, their anchors went rumbling down. A moment later a string of signal-flags fluttered from the flag-ship in a message which read: “Have no communication with the shore, have none from the shore.” Perry, you see, had spent the three preceding years in preparing for this expedition by learning all that he could of the Japanese character and customs, and he had not spent them for naught. He had determined that, when it came to being really snobbish and exclusive, he would make the Japanese, who had theretofore held the record for that sort of thing, look like amateurs. And he did. For when the captain of the port, in his ceremonial dress of hempen cloth and lacquered hat, put off in a twelve-oared barge to inquire the business of the strangers, a marine sentry at the top of the flag-ship’s ladder brusquely motioned him away as though he were of no more importance than a tramp. Then came the vice-governor, flying the trefoil flag and with an escort of armored spearmen, but he met with no more consideration than the port-captain. The American ships were about as hospitable as so many icebergs. Indeed, it was not until he had explained that the governor was prohibited by law from boarding a foreign vessel that the vice-governor was permitted to set foot on the sacred deck-planks of the flag-ship. Even then he was not permitted to see the mighty and illustrious excellency who was in command of the squadron; no, indeed. As befitted his inferior rank, he was received by a very stiff, very haughty, very condescending young lieutenant who interrupted the flowery address of the dazed official by telling him that the Americans considered themselves affronted by the filthy shore boats which hovered about them, and that if they did not depart instantly they would be fired on. After the vice-governor had gone to the rail and motioned the inquisitive boats away, the lieutenant informed him that the illustrious commander of the mighty squadron bore an autograph letter from his Excellency the President of the United States to the Mikado, and that he proposed to steam up to Tokio and deliver it in person. When the vice-governor heard this he nearly fainted. For a fleet of barbarian war-ships to anchor off the sacred city, the capital of the empire, the residence of the son of heaven, was impossible, unthinkable, sacrilegious. The very thought of it paralyzed him with fear. When he carried the news of what the Americans proposed doing to the governor, that official changed his mind about the illegality of his setting foot on a foreign ship, and the following morning, with a retinue which looked like the chorus of a comic opera, he went in state to the flag-ship to expostulate. But the commodore refused to see the governor, just as he had refused to see his subordinate, and that crestfallen official, his feelings sadly ruffled, was forced to content himself with a brief conversation with Commander Buchanan, who told him that, unless arrangements were made at once for delivering the President’s letter to a direct representative of the Mikado, Commodore Perry was unalterably determined on steaming up to Tokio and delivering the letter to the Emperor himself. From beginning to end of the interview, the American officer, who, I expect, enjoyed the performance hugely, resented the slightest lack of ceremony on the governor’s part and did not hesitate to give evidence of his displeasure when that bedeviled official omitted anything which the American thought he ought to do. At length the now deeply impressed Japanese agreed to despatch a messenger to Tokio for further instructions, and to this the Americans, with feigned reluctance, agreed, adding, however, that if an answer was not received within three days they would move up to the capital and learn the reason why.
The appearance of American war-ships in the Bay of Tokio was a mighty shock to the Japanese. What right had a foreign nation to impose on them a commerce which they did not want; a friendship which they did not seek? The alarm-bells clanged throughout the empire. Messengers on reeking horses tore through every town spreading the astounding news. Spears were sharpened, and ancient armor was dragged from dusty chests. Night and day could be heard the clangor of the smiths forging weapons of war. Away with the barbarians! To arms! Jhoi! Jhoi! Buddhists wore away their rosaries invoking Kartikiya, the god of war, and Shinto priests fasted while they called on the sea and the storm to destroy the impious invaders of the Nipponese motherland. The hidebound formality of untold centuries was swept away in this hour of common danger, and for the first time in Japanese history high and low alike were invited to offer suggestions as to what steps should be taken for the protection of the nation and the preservation of the national honor. It didn’t take the wiseheads long, however, to decide that compliance was better than defiance; so, on the last of the three days of grace granted by the Americans, the governor in his gorgeous robes of office once more boarded the Susquehanna and, with many genuflections, informed the officer designated to meet him that the letter from the President would be received a few days later, with all the pomp and ceremony which the Imperial Government knew how to command, in a pavilion which would be erected on the beach near Uraga for the purpose, by two peers of the empire who had been designated by the Mikado as his personal representatives.
On the morning of July 14 the squadron weighed anchor and moved up so as to command the place where the ceremony was to be held. Carpenters, mat makers, tapestry hangers, and decorators sent from the capital had been working night and day, and under their skilful hands a great pavilion, as though by the wave of a magician’s wand, had sprung up on the beach. When all was in readiness the governor and his suite, their silken costumes ablaze with gold embroidery, pulled out to the flag-ship to escort the commodore to the shore. As the Japanese stepped aboard, a signal called fifteen launches and cutters from the other ships of the squadron to the side of the Susquehanna. Officers, bluejackets, and marines in all the glory of full dress piled into them, and, led by Commander Buchanan’s gig, they headed for the shore, the oars of the American sailors rising and falling in beautiful unison. As the procession of boats drew out to its full length, the bright flags, the gorgeous banners, the barbaric costumes of the Japanese, the leather shakoes of the marines, and the scarlet tunics of the bandsmen, with the turquoise sea for a foreground and the great white cone of Fujiyama rising up behind, combined to form a never-to-be-forgotten picture. When the boats were half-way to the landing stage, a flourish of bugles sounded from the flag-ship, the marine guard presented arms, and Commodore Perry, resplendent in cocked hat and gold-laced uniform, attended by side boys and followed by a glittering staff, descended the gangway and entered his barge, while the Susquehanna’s guns roared out a salute. On the shore a guard of honor composed of American sailors and marines was drawn up to receive him. As he set foot on the soil of Japan the troops presented arms, the officers saluted, the drums gave the three ruffles, the band burst into the American anthem, and the colors swept the ground. Nothing had been left undone which would be likely to impress the ceremony-loving Japanese, and the effect produced was spectacular enough to have satisfied P. T. Barnum. The land procession was formed with the same attention to ceremonial and display. First came a hundred marines in the picturesque uniform of the period, marching with mechanical precision; after them came a hundred bluejackets with the roll of the sea in their gait, while at the head of the column was a marine band, ablaze with gold and scarlet. Behind the bluejackets walked Commodore Perry, guarded by two gigantic negroes—veritable Jack Johnsons in physique and stature—preceded by two ship’s boys bearing the mahogany caskets containing Perry’s credentials and the President’s letter, the delivery of which was the reason for all this extraordinary display.
As the glittering procession entered the pavilion the two counsellors of the empire who had been designated by the Mikado to receive the letter rose and stood in silence. When the governor of Uraga, acting as master of ceremonies, intimated that all was ready, the two boys advanced and handed their caskets to the negroes. These, opening in succession the rosewood caskets and the envelopes of scarlet cloth, displayed the presidential letter and its accompanying credentials—impressive documents written on vellum, bound in blue velvet, and fringed with seals of gold. Upon the master of ceremonies announcing that the imperial high commissioners were ready to receive the letter, the negroes returned the imposing documents to the boys, who slowly advanced the length of the hall and deposited them in a box of scarlet lacquer which had been brought from Tokio for the purpose. Again a frozen silence pervaded the assemblage. Then Perry, speaking through an interpreter, paid his respects to the immobile functionaries and announced that he would return for an answer to the letter in the following spring. When some of the officials anxiously inquired if he would come with all four ships, he sententiously replied: “With many more.”
Although he had announced that he would not revisit Japan until the spring, when Perry learned that the French and Russians were hastily preparing expeditions to be sent to Tokio for the purpose of counteracting American influence, he decided to advance the date of his return, entering the Bay of Tokio for the second time on February 12, 1854, thus getting ahead of his European rivals. This time he had with him a really imposing armada: the Susquehanna, Mississippi, Powhatan, Macedonian, Southampton, Lexington, Vandalia, Plymouth, and Saratoga. On this occasion he refused to stop at Uraga and, much to the consternation of the Japanese, steamed steadily up the bay and anchored off Yokohama, within sight of the capital itself. The negotiations which ensued occupied several days, during which Perry insisted on the same pomp and ceremony, and took the same high-handed course that characterized his former visit. Noticing that the grounds surrounding the treaty house had been screened in by large mats, he inquired the reason, and upon being informed that it was done so that the Americans might not see the country, he said that he considered that the nation he represented was insulted and ordered that the screens instantly be removed. That was the sort of attitude that the Japanese understood, and thereafter they treated Perry with even more profound respect. The negotiations were brought to a conclusion on the 31st of March, 1854, when the terms of the treaty whereby the empire of Japan was opened to American commerce were finally agreed upon. Thus was recorded one of the greatest diplomatic triumphs in our history. As Washington Irving wrote to Commodore Perry: “You have gained for yourself a lasting name and have done it without shedding a drop of blood or inflicting misery on a human being.”
But Perry’s accomplishment had a sequel, and a bloody one. The treaty which admitted the foreigner precipitated civil war in Japan. Although for two hundred and fifty years the Japanese had been at peace and their sword-blades were rusty from lack of use, the embers of rebellion had long been smouldering, and the act that admitted the alien served to fan them into the flame of open revolt. The trouble was that the tycoon—the viceroy, the mouthpiece of the Mikado, the power behind the throne—had become all-powerful, while the Mikado himself, as the result of a policy of seclusion that had been forced upon him, had become but a puppet, a figurehead. As the treaty with the United States had been signed under the authority of the tycoon, the rebels took up arms in a double-barrelled cause: to restore the Mikado to his old-time authority and to expel the “hairy barbarians,” as the foreigners were pleasantly called. The insurrectionists, who represented the powerful Choshiu and Satsuma clans, induced the Mikado to issue an edict setting June 25, 1863, as a date by which all foreigners should be expelled from the empire. The tycoon, though bound to the United States and the European powers by the most solemn treaties, found himself helpless. He promptly sent in his resignation, but the Mikado, coerced by the rebellious clansmen, refused to accept it and left the unhappy viceroy to wriggle out of the predicament as best he could.
Meanwhile the leaders of the Choshiu clan seized and proceeded to fortify and mine the Straits of Shimonoseki, the great highway of foreign commerce forming the entrance to the inland sea, which at that point narrows down to a channel three miles in length and less than a mile in width, through which the tides run like a mill-race. On June 25, the eventful day fixed for the expulsion of the barbarians from the sacred dominions of the Mikado, the American merchant steamer Pembroke, with a pilot furnished by the Tokio government and with the American flag at her peak, was on her way northward through the channel when she was fired on by the clansmen though, as luck would have it, was not hit. But peace which had existed in Japan for nearly two centuries and a half was broken. A few days later a French despatch-boat was hit in seven places, her boat’s crew nearly all killed by a shell, and the vessel saved from sinking only by a lively use of the pumps. On July 11 a Dutch frigate was hit thirty-one times, and nine of its crew were killed or wounded, and a little later a French gunboat was badly hulled as she dashed past the batteries at full speed. It was evident that the Japanese had acquired modern guns in the ten years that had passed since Perry had taught them the blessings of civilization, and it was equally evident that they knew how to use them.
News is magnified as it travels in the East, and by the time word of the Pembroke incident reached Commander David McDougal, who was cruising in Chinese waters in the sloop of war Wyoming in pursuit of the Confederate privateer Alabama, it had been exaggerated until he was led to believe that the American vessel had been sunk with all hands. Though possessing neither a chart of the straits nor a map of the batteries, McDougal ordered his ship to be coaled and provisioned at full speed (and how the jackies worked when they got the order!), and on July 16, under a cloudless sky, without a breath of wind, and the sea as smooth as a tank of oil, the Wyoming, her ports covered with tarpaulins so as to make her look like an unsuspecting merchantman, but with her crew at quarters and her decks cleared for action, came booming into Shimonoseki Straits. No sooner did she get within range of the batteries than the five eight-inch Dahlgren guns presented to Japan by the United States as a token of friendship, opened on her with a roar. It was not exactly a convincing proof of friendship. The Japanese batteries, splendidly handled, concentrated their fire on the narrowest part of the straits, which they swept with a hail of projectiles, while beyond, in more open water, three heavily armed converted merchantmen—the steamer Lancefield, the bark Daniel Webster, and the brig Lanrick, all, oddly enough, American vessels which had been purchased by the clansmen for use against their former owners—lay directly athwart the channel, prepared to dispute the Wyoming’s passage, should she, by a miracle, succeed in getting past the batteries. As the first Japanese shell screamed angrily overhead, the tarpaulins concealing the Wyoming’s guns disappeared in a twinkling, the stars and stripes broke out at her masthead, and her artillery cut loose. It was a surprise party, right enough, but the surprise was on the Japanese.
As McDougal approached the narrows, sweeping them with his field-glasses, his attention was caught by a line of stakes which, as he rightly suspected, had been placed there by the Japanese to gauge their fire. Accordingly, instead of taking the middle of the channel, as denoted by the line of stakes, he ordered the Japanese pilot, who was paralyzed with terror, to run close under the batteries. It was well that he did so, for no sooner was the Wyoming within range than the Japanese gunners opened a cannonade which would have blown her out of the water had she been in mid-channel, where they confidently expected her to be, but which, as it was, tore through her rigging without doing serious harm. There were six finished batteries, mounting in all thirty guns, and the three converted merchantmen carried eighteen pieces, making forty-eight cannon opposed to the Wyoming’s six.