Radical face the road to nowhere5/6/2023 ![]() ![]() Perry carried with him a letter from US President Millard Fillmore demanding an end to such outrages. A recent series of disturbing incidents had taken place, in which foreign ships had put into Japan due to storms, were seized, and their crews killed. Rather, he had sailed across the vast Pacific to force Japan to open trade and commercial relations.īy now, the western world was doing a booming trade with China, and isolated Japan now sat directly on some of the busiest trade routes in the world. He hadn’t come on a campaign of conquest, but he wasn’t exactly on a goodwill mission, either. Against all Japanese law and tradition, Perry’s little fleet sailed into the harbor off the coast of the capital city, Edo. Leading the way was a squadron of US Navy vessels, “black ships,” the Japanese called them, commanded by Commodore Matthew Perry. This was precisely the reason why July 8 was such a shock: the day that Japan came face to face with the modern western world. This was serious business-punishable by imprisonment or even the death sentence. Foreigners were not permitted into Japan otherwise, and Japanese, likewise, were not permitted to travel abroad. Officials of the shogun allowed a single Dutch ship per year to put into port on the artificial island of Deshima, near Nagasaki. Japan did not trade with outsiders, it did not exchange ambassadors, it hadn’t fought a foreign war in centuries. It was able to stay that way because of one other unique attribute: centuries before, it had isolated itself from the rest of the world. Japan was, in other words, a unique land, one that was out of step with the times. Shifting alliances among them were common, as was the occasional falling out and even assassination. Dominating Japanese political life were eight to 10 powerful clans. ![]() Japan was living much as Europe had in the Middle Ages, in other words. Indeed, according to Japanese religious belief, the Emperor was divine, the direct lineal descendant of the celestial goddess of the sun, Amaterasu Omikami. There was a higher power, the Emperor, but his functions were largely ceremonial and religious, and he played no part in governing Japan. The rest of the population, the vast majority, were serfs, peasants tied to the land, and thus subject to the power of their local daimyo. The land was ruled, theoretically, by a great warlord, or “Shogun.” Power on the local level, however-real power, that is-lay in the hands of the large landholders, the “daimyo.” Each daimyo had his own band of armed men, knights known as samurai who were sworn to serve him. This was a symbolic earthquake, one that rocked the very foundations of Japanese life, traditions, and society, and in many ways, Japan still deals with the aftermath today. Not the seismic variety, the kind that shakes the ground under your feet. The date is July 8, 1853, and an earthquake is about to hit Japan. To understand this world-historical event, you have to travel backwards in time-pretty far back, in fact, to the middle of the nineteenth century. Sure, you can always find near-term factors that explain an event, but it is equally important to study the “long fuse”-the long-term causes that extend back into the past.Īnd so it is with Pearl Harbor. They’ve often been months, years, even decades or centuries in the making. Roosevelt told the American people that the Japanese attack was an act of “infamy,” a crime, and that was a compelling explanation for most of his listeners, enough to lead his country to war.Īsk any historian, and they’ll usually tell you that historical events don’t just come out of nowhere. What made Japan decide to strike? What were relations between the two countries like at the time? How had things gotten to this point? President Franklin D. In 75 minutes, more than 2,400 Americans are killed and 19 US Navy vessels damaged or destroyed.Įver since that day-announced to a shocked listening public back home via the magic of radio, Americans have been trying to make sense of it. The attack comes, for most Americans, like a bolt out of the blue, early on a Sunday morning. A surprise attack by aviators of the Imperial Japanese Navy hits the unprepared US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor, Hawaii. ![]()
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