Matthew Calbraith Perry: A Typical American Naval Officer

by William Elliot Griffis

Only the stern discipline to which they were accustomed, and the suspicion of possible need for powder and ball, in case of treachery, kept grim the faces of marines and sailors. The whole tableau seemed to the officers a well-sustained joke from the pages of Gulliver’s Travels. To Jack Tar, it looked as if a pack of euchre-cards had come to enlarged life. The gay-costumed figures and bronze visages moved before him like the flesh-and-blood originals of the kings, jacks, and knaves on his favorite pasteboards. Can we doubt but that more than one Japanese now saw himself in a new light?

With five hundred men landed in twenty-seven boats, each one, including musicians, thoroughly well-armed, the marines forming a hollow square, the three bands discoursing music, the Paixhans on the Macedonian, and the howitzers in the boats, making fire, flame, thunder, and echoes; with all possible fuss, parade, shine and glitter, the sailor-diplomatist made disembarkation at noon, in his white gig from the Powhatan. With due deliberation and stately march, he entered the treaty-house, where negotiations began. The Commodore knew as he confesses, “the importance and moral influence of such show upon so ceremonious and artificial a people as the Japanese.” Without being at all anxious to imitate or copy them, he yet impressed them amazingly. How he came to know so much about etiquette and propriety, without having lived in Kiōto, or studied Confucius or Ogasawara (the Chesterfield of Japan) strained their wits to discover. Perhaps they noticed that while “the emperor,” that is the chief daimiō of Yedo, and the Mikado’s lieutenant styled “Tycoon,” (as Koku-O, king of a country) received a salute of twenty-one guns, and his hatamoto Hayashi, officer of the sixth rank seventeen guns, the first salute was from the heavy ordnance on the Macedonian, while the others were from boat-howitzers. The Powhatan hoisted at the masthead the striped pennant, which the Americans innocently supposed was the national emblem.

The tedious business of diplomacy began by interchange of notes and answers. Then Hayashi remarked that attention would be given to the supply of wood, coal, and water for needy ships, and to the care of shipwrecked sailors, but that no proposition for trade could be allowed. To this Perry made no reply, but spoke up suddenly upon the question of burial. A marine on the Mississippi named Williams, had died two days previously, and it was proposed to bury him on Matsu-shima (Pine Isle) or Webster’s Island. After private conferences by the Japanese in another room, exchange of much sentiment on both sides, and an exposition of Japanese law and custom by Hayashi—during which Perry intimated his readiness to stay in the bay a year or two if necessary—permission was granted to bury in one of the temple-grounds at Yokohama. Thus began with Christian ceremonies, under the very shadow of the edicts promulgated centuries before, denouncing “the Christian criminal God,” with offer of gold to informers against the “outlawed sect,” that God’s acre now so beautiful. Its slope was to fatten with many a victim by the assassin’s sword before Japan should become a Land of Great Peace either to the alien or the Christian.

The native scribe adds in a note to his Record, “This subject was brought up suddenly, as if the American wished to find out how quickly we were in the habit of deciding questions. Hence the commissioners made their decision promptly. Thereupon Perry seemed to be very glad and almost to shed tears.” In response to the Commodore’s assertion that to esteem human life as very precious was the first principle of the United States government, while the contrary was the case with that of Japan, Hayashi answered, warmly defending his countrymen and superiors against intentional cruelty, but denouncing the lawless character of many of the foreign sailors. Like all Japanese of his school and age, he wound up with a panegyric of the pre-eminence of Japan above all nations in virtue and humanity, and the glory and goodness of the great Tokugawa family which had given peace to the land during two centuries or more.

“The frog in the well knows not the great ocean,” say his countrymen of to-day.

In the further negotiations, the Japanese official account of which agrees with the details given in Perry’s own narrative, the Commodore made wholesome use of the fears of the islanders. The reputation of American ships, ordnance, and armies had preceded him. The invaders of Mexico were believed fully when the wealth, power, and rapidity of movement possessed by the United States were dilated upon. Perry threatened to make use of “the resources of civilization,” if the plain demands of humanity were ignored. It is more than probable that cold statistics would not have justified his glowing vision of fifty or a hundred war steamers, full of soldiers, coming from California to make war on Japan, in case her government refused to help shipwrecked Americans. Yet, of his patience, persistency, and resolve neither to provoke nor to take an insult, there can be no question. Perry, in person, impressed the Japanese commissioners as much as by the fleet itself. They noted, as the Record declares, that Captains Adams, Abbot, and Buchanan, as shown by their uniform and epaulettes, were of the same rank, “so that if Perry were killed, either of the others could command,” and continue the matter in hand.

The Record also reflects the character of Perry as a man of kindly consideration. His friendly regard for and sympathy with a people of high and sensitive spirit, which had been weakened by centuries of enforced isolation, is also witnessed to. In one sense the Japanese feel, to this day, proud to have been put under pressure by so true a soldier, and so genuine a friend.

Between ship and shore, during the blustery March weather, the Commodore made many trips in his barge, accompanied by chosen officers. One day, with Pay-director J. G. Harris, who relates the incident, Perry and his companions entered the treaty-house. Their boat-cloaks, which they had worn to protect the “bright-work” of epaulettes, buttons and belts from the salt spray, were still over their shoulders. One of the first questions asked the Japanese commissioners was, whether they had favorably considered the proposition of the day before, that certain ports should be opened.

Hayashi replied that they had pondered the matter, and had concluded that Shimoda and Hakodaté should be opened; provided that Americans would not travel into the interior further than they could go and return the same day; and provided, further, that no American women should be brought to Japan.

When the translation of Hayashi’s reply was announced, the Commodore straightened up, threw back his boat-cloak, and excitedly exclaimed: “Great Heavens, if I were to permit any such stipulation as that in the treaty, when I got home the women would pull out all the hair out of my head.”