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  The report said Japanese officials had told the imprisoned whalemen that Christ was “the devil of Japan.” And when a whaleman asked his jailor for a Christian Bible, “his keeper told him angrily, ‘Don’t speak of the Bible in Japan—it is not a good book.’” The senators were further outraged that one of the “common prisons” used to confine the whalemen was a former church and that the Americans had been made to “trample on [a brass crucifix] by putting the left foot on the cross and then the right foot.”

  And besides demeaning the Christian God, the Japanese claimed superiority for gods of their own. An American prisoner had complained of his mistreatment and threatened that the U.S. Navy would come to punish Japan. Upon hearing this, a Japanese official laughed and said that if American ships came, the kamikaze “would blow them away by aid of their priests.”

  Kamikaze means “god” (kami) “wind” (kaze). The kamikaze / god winds were central to Japan’s self-conception as a divine, unconquerable land. The kamikaze was Japan’s protective angel force. In 1274 and again in 1281, Kublai Khan had led his Mongol armies across the Sea of Japan on an amphibious invasion of Japan. Khan’s forces were superior and Japan feared it would be conquered. But both attacks were repelled by the kamikaze / god winds, in the form of fierce typhoons, which sank Mongol vessels and drowned more than 150,000 invaders. These miracle winds, appearing at just the right providential moment, convinced the Japanese that their country enjoyed unique spiritual protection and was thus impervious to foreign attack.

  After a whipped-up congressional hearing on the treatment of the whalemen, Fillmore ordered Secretary of State Daniel Webster to dispatch a squadron of warships. Commodore Matthew Perry was appointed commander of this historic presidential mission to bring civilization to Japan. Perry was America’s preeminent navy officer, with a tall, commanding presence. His mouth was stern and he had a luxuriant head of hair without a hint of gray despite his fifty-nine years of age. Perry agreed to go along with the cover story that the mission was about the mistreatment of American whalemen and that the “real object of the expedition should be concealed from public view.” But once Perry was at sea and “free of Washington and the controversy surrounding steamship lines, he could state his objectives clearly: ports of refuge for whalers might be the ostensible reason for the Japan expedition, but the United States’ global rivalry with England and the need to secure ports on a Pacific steamship line were its real raisons d’être.” Perry made a beeline to Chichi Jima via the British route to the Orient.

  Fifty-eight-year-old Nathaniel Savory must have been amazed when the belching steamship Susquehanna, towing the schooner Saratoga, sailed into Chichi Jima’s harbor on June 15, 1853. Life on Chichi Jima had been a quiet affair for Savory and the thirty-nine other hardy colonists remaining from the original group that had sailed from Pearl Harbor twenty-three years earlier. The colonists had erected thatched-roof cottages and hollowed out logs for canoes; they planted crops and mended the nets used to catch fish and turtles. The weather was fairly constant year round—bright and sunny—with the summer months slightly hotter and more humid. The big event for the islanders was the arrival of whaling ships, which called for fresh water, supplies of fresh turtle and fish, vegetables, fruits, liquor, and occasional sexual services.

  Perry beheld a beautiful mini Maui, a tropical slice of green jade in the Pacific. The commodore described Chichi Jima as “high, bold, and rocky, and . . . evidently of volcanic formation. [It is] green with verdure and a full growth of tropical vegetation, which is, here and there, edged with coral reefs.” Chichi Jima, just twice the size of New York’s Central Park, had “two prominent peaks . . . one which reaches an elevation of a thousand feet, the other eleven hundred. . . . They are clearly seen on entering the harbor.”

  On the morning of June 16, 1853, Perry and a contingent of sailors rowed ashore. No nation had exerted authority over Chichi Jima, so Perry proceeded to lay his claim. The commodore appointed Nathaniel Savory an agent of the U.S. Navy and formed a governing council with the delighted Savory as chief. On the island where navy Flyboys would later die, this navy commander then anointed Chichi Jima a key Pacific outpost for American power. On behalf of the United States, he purchased fifty acres of land from Savory for a price of fifty dollars, four cattle, five Shanghai sheep, and six goats. This historic transaction was proudly reported in the Herald Tribune of New York as representing the “first piece of land bought by Americans in the Pacific.”

  After a stay of three days, and confident that America now had a firm foothold in the North Pacific, Commodore Perry bid adieu to his new agent Savory and steamed away to continue his journey to mainland Japan.

  Two weeks later, on Friday, July 8, 1853, four U.S. Navy ships bristling with civilization and sixty-one state-of-the-art cannon entered Tokyo Bay. Atop their masts flew the American flag, with thirty-one stars on a blue field.

  Martians landing in spaceships with gamma-ray guns would not have caused more of an uproar.

  Fishermen in the bay were the first to behold the huge, noisy, black-cloud-belching monsters. These men were not even aware of the existence of steam engines and suddenly there they were in front of them—giant dragons puffing smoke! A general alarm spread across the land. Temple bells rang as fleet-footed messengers spread out to warn that “the Black Ships of the Evil Men” had descended on the land of the gods.

  The story grew as it spread. The word was that “one hundred thousand devils with white faces” were about to overrun the country. The world’s largest city lay defenseless before alien guns. People panicked. Families ran from their homes with their valuables on their backs. Japanese newspaper artists sailed out to make sketches of the strange ships and the gaizin. Readers scooped up special editions with pictures of the “hairy barbarians” and their machines. Samurai who had never dressed for warfare worked to scrape rust from their spears. Throngs packed the shrines and temples praying to the gods for deliverance. People trembled and beseeched the gods to once again blow the gaizin away with another kamikaze.

  In the drama that unfolded over the next few days, Commodore Perry played his role masterfully. He remained mysteriously secluded in his cabin like an Oriental potentate, refusing to reveal his august presence to the Japanese negotiators. He rebuffed all entreaties to go away or to retreat to Nagasaki.

  Perry’s ships, just thirty miles away from the capital, presented an insoluble dilemma for the Tokugawa shogunate. Japanese government dealings with barbarians had previously been small private affairs in Nagasaki, with only a few officials even aware of the gaizin’s presence. Now the entire nation knew. Commodore Perry with his steam engines and powerful cannon had more mechanized firepower on his four ships than was possessed by the entire nation of Japan. The shogun could not force the gaizin to leave. And if they ignored Perry’s requests, would he bombard the capital? Were there more such powerful ships coming after these? Would the Japanese people take matters into their own hands and revolt? Ieyasu Tokugawa’s descendant Shogun Ieyashi Tokugawa—the “barbarian-expelling generalissimo”—could not live up to his title.

  Finally, after days of negotiating, Japanese authorities agreed to Perry’s demand that he be allowed to come ashore to deliver a letter from President Fillmore.

  On Thursday, July 14, 1853, two hundred and forty Americans—one hundred Marines, one hundred sailors, and forty musicians—all heavily armed and snappy in their blue-and-white dress uniforms—came ashore on fifteen launches. Commander Franklin Buchanan was the first out of the lead launch, making him the first American military man to set foot on the Japanese mainland.

  Debonair Commodore Perry, who realized pageantry would impress his hosts, choreographed a fantastic spectacle. Stiff-backed Marines formed a smart honor guard as the navy band belted out martial tunes. Natty U.S. sailors paraded sprightly behind. When Perry disembarked, ships’ cannon boomed and the band struck up “Hail Columbia,” the expansionists’ favorite tune. Two tall, handsome black Mari
nes flanked Perry and caused a sensation—the Japanese didn’t know black men existed. Thousands of civilians craned their necks for a look at the gaizin.

  For the Americans, it was a trip back in time. The samurai—their hair pulled back in topknots—wore silk dresses and sandals and two dangling swords signifying their rank. Thousands of armor-encased soldier-archers with eight-foot longbows and pikes stood by. It was one of history’s most extraordinary encounters. Two highly civilized cultures that viewed the other as uncivilized meeting for the first time.

  Commodore Perry and his entourage sauntered into a grand reception hall specially built for the occasion. Unbeknownst to Perry, armed samurai crouched below the false floor in case the barbarians became violent. Perry was the first foreign ambassador received in Japan in two and a half centuries. The Japanese were not taking any chances.

  With great ceremony, the commodore turned over a custom-made gold box in which lay President Fillmore’s letter to the emperor. Upon receiving it, the Japanese hoped they were now finished with this foreign nuisance and presented Perry with a written response. Perry was taken aback when the last sentence was translated for him as, “Your letter being received, you will now leave.”

  Commodore Perry interpreted this last blunt line as a diplomatic slap at the United States—the country that had just acquired an independent base of power only six hundred miles due south of Tokyo. The commodore ordered his ships not to sail away but rather to go farther inland, up Tokyo Bay toward the capital. Perhaps, Perry thought, when the Japanese saw four American warships plumbing their channel depths and surveying their shore defenses, it “would produce a decided influence upon [the] government and cause a more favorable consideration of the President’s letter.”

  A Japanese launch was hastily rowed out to confront the Evil Men in their belching Black Ships. A frantic representative of the shogun called out to Commander Buchanan that the Black Ships must turn back. “It’s against Japanese law,” the official pleaded. From the deck of his mighty steamship, the bemused commander looked down at the nervous official in his small launch. Clearly the Japanese were unschooled in the ways of foreign relations where might determined what was right.

  Commander Buchanan called back to the official, “The United States Navy operates under American law wherever we go.”

  The next day, Commodore Perry did sail away from Japanese waters, promising to return the next year for a response from the emperor. His historic visits would have lasting repercussions in Japan. For almost two decades, controversy swirled regarding the best ways to deal with the dreaded barbarians and the new world that had been thrust upon the land of the gods.

  But with the Civil War brewing back home, America lost interest in Pacific steamship lines and seizing territory in the North Pacific. Even Nathaniel Savory’s written pleas to the State Department requesting annexation of No Mans Land by the U.S. fell upon deaf ears.

  Eight and one half years after Perry’s visit, Japan dispatched a warship on a foreign mission of its own. On January 17, 1862, a shocked Nathaniel Savory watched as a ship bristling with cannon, flying the Rising Sun flag, anchored in Chichi Jima’s harbor. Diplomats rowed ashore and claimed all of No Mans Land for Japan. Savory tried his best to argue the case that Japan had no right to his little island. But glancing at the armed warship in the harbor, he realized they had the might and therefore possessed the right.

  No Mans Land was Japan’s first overseas conquest. Isolation and peace were now part of her past.

  The Japanese had learned the lesson well.

  Through Perry, Japan experienced the outside world primarily as a military threat. And a glance across the Sea of Japan made it obvious there was much to worry about. Once-proud China had been dismembered and was being sucked dry by western merchants who used gunboats to foist opium upon the populace. Farther south, the Dutch had conquered Indonesia; the French ruled Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, while the acquisitive British held vast colonies in Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaya, Burma, and India. To its north, Japan saw the marauding Russian bear subjugate all within its path. Across the Pacific, energetic Americans had slaves working their land, were digesting the spoils of their invasion of Mexico, and were continuing the nasty campaign of ethnic cleansing against the native Indians. And on November 15, 1884, German chancellor Otto von Bismarck opened a grand international conference in Berlin to carve up pagan Africa. Not surprisingly, Japanese leaders felt their first priority was to build a strong military. All sectors of society had to serve that goal.

  From the Japanese perspective, the distinguishing characteristic of rich countries with strong militaries was that they were religious. They believed in a god and this belief unified western countries from within and justified their forays against unbelievers. But Japan did not have one such god. So one would have to be created.

  The new leaders of Japan—samurai who filled the vacuum when the shogunate fell—dusted off the emperor institution and placed it front and center in Japanese national life. They plucked the young emperor from obscurity in Kyoto and installed him in the shogun’s former Tokyo palace. He was named Meiji, which means “enlightened rule.” A renovated emperor system would serve as a counterpart to western Christianity. Meiji would be the symbol to ideologically unite the nation, though he had little actual power. Former samurai pulled the strings from behind the throne.

  On February 11, 1889, Emperor Meiji, dressed in a western-style military uniform, stood before Japanese government officials dressed in their western-style military uniforms, with ladies of the court in western-style dresses, and announced a western-style constitution. But it was western in name only.

  In the West, a constitution is written “by the people, for the people” and defines citizens’ rights and sets limits on government power. Meiji’s constitution was just the opposite, a top-down document. It was a “gift of the emperor,” which he “bestowed upon the nation.” The emperor was declared “sacred and inviolable,” “head of the empire,” supreme commander of the armed forces, and superintendent of all the powers of sovereignty. Emperor Meiji was the very source of law and he transcended the constitution. He could issue ordinances in place of laws and appoint and dismiss all officers of the government and even the Imperial Diet, Japan’s parliament. The purpose of this constitution was not to place limits on his powers but to ensure that he was above the government, with authority unimpeded by limits. There was no bill of rights, since the Japanese people were not even considered citizens—they were the emperor’s subjects, shinmin. Shinmin meant “people who obediently comply with their orders.” Indeed, the motive for establishing a constitution was not to satisfy an intrinsic need of the populace but to show foreign observers Japan was a civilized country with a body of law. It was a response to external rather than internal forces.

  To guarantee the primacy of the warrior class, a clause in the constitution allowed a direct connect between the emperor and the military. The heads of the army and navy could bypass the civilian rulers, in effect acting as a second shadow government. The army and navy would report directly to the emperor. This direct connect with the emperor imbued the military with a mystical aura as special servants of the divine.

  With almost all of Asia and Africa under western colonial control, Japan sought to emulate the imperialists and exploit its weaker neighbors across the Sea of Japan.

  China was a hopeless mess, unable to oust the Europeans and Americans who were, as my former professor John Dower has put it, “slicing the Chinese melon.” Korea was backward and was not civilizing quickly along western lines like Japan. “We cannot wait for neighboring countries to become enlightened and unite to make Asia strong,” the influential scholar Yukichi Fukuzawa wrote. “We must rather break out of formation and join the civilized countries of the West on the path of progress. We should not give any special treatment to China and Korea but should treat them in the same way as do the Western nations.” As a popular Japanese children’s song of the era p
ut it:

  There is a Law of Nations

  It is true.

  But when the moment comes, remember

  The Strong Eat up the Weak.

  As the Japanese studied the ways of the westerners, they could plainly see that successful nations were rich ones. And it was clear that rich nations got that way by subjugating non-Christian countries, enslaving their peoples and appropriating their resources.

  China was Korea’s traditional protector and had tried to prevent Japanese encroachment on the peninsula. So Japan focused its Hakko Ichiu manifest destiny by targeting China. In traditional samurai fashion, the Japanese army invaded China without a declaration of war, which it later issued on August 1, 1894. In the western tradition, the Japanese press called the conflict “a religious war” fought “between a country that is trying to develop civilization and a country that inhibits the progress of civilization.” Newspapers serialized accounts of the fighting and sold out every edition. Woodblock prints depicted Japanese army men in heroic poses, looking suspiciously western with handlebar mustaches, as they gallantly fought the inferior Chinese.

  Few thought the small island nation would prevail against the continental giant, but Japan’s victories stunned the world. On April 17, 1895, in the Treaty of Shimonoseki, China conceded defeat to its smaller rival. China was forced to cede Taiwan, the Pescadores Islands, and the strategic Liaodong Peninsula in southern Manchuria to Japan. China paid a large indemnity, accepted the full independence of Korea, and accorded the Japanese the same unequal diplomatic and commercial privileges the westerners had extorted.

  To the Japanese man in the street, the startling triumph over China swept away the humiliation of the Black Ships and proved that Japan was a great country. The United States, far from condemning Japan for its aggression, initially complimented it for so quickly grasping the West’s lesson. As one Japanese writer proudly noted, the West now realized that “civilization is not a monopoly of the white man” and that the Japanese too had “a character suitable for great achievements in the world.” Japan was bursting with patriotic pride. It was the only nonwhite member of the civilized imperialist club.