Fictional Depictions
- The story of the opening of Japan was the basis of Stephen Sondheim & John Weidman's Pacific Overtures.
- Actor Richard Boone played Commodore Perry in the highly fictionalized 1981 film The Bushido Blade.
- The coming of Commodore Perry's ships was indirectly part of a plot in one of the arcs of the anime series Rurouni Kenshin, and in the first episode of Hikaru no Go. Another anime series in which Perry briefly appears is Bokusatsu Tenshi Dokuro-chan. The manga Fruits Basket also refers to the event while the main character is studying. The anime Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei also depicts Commodore Perry as a "troubled foreigner who isn't satisfied by opening ports and needs to open everything".
- The anime series, Samurai Champloo, in an episode entitled "Baseball Blues", depicts a fictional character named 'Admiral Joy Cartwright' who challenges the Japanese locals to a baseball (Yakyū) game in order to establish trade relations. The character is named after Alexander Joy Cartwright ("the father of baseball") and obviously modeled after Commodore Perry.
- Perry's visit is also mentioned in the 1965 Hideo Gosha film Sword of the Beast.
- Popotan has several references to Perry throughout the series.
- The 2010 NHK Taiga drama Ryōmaden, which deals with the Bakumatsu period, portrayed Perry as a menacing, steadfast military commander who was able to subjugate the then-seemingly invincible Bakufu through blunt negotiation. He was played by Timothy Harris.
- Perry is the main antagonist in the Code Geass alternate universe manga "Tales of an Alternate Shogunate". He uses Geass to force Japan to open its ports, but does so on unequal terms and oppresses Japan, much like Britannia did in the original series. He faces opposition from Zero and the Black Knights, as well as from Princess Euphemia and Suzaku after they realize that he is trying to make Japan his own property, and he is ultimately defeated and forced to surrender. He pilots the "Black Ship" a flying ship that can transform into a combat robot.
- Two designers, Charles and Ray Eames, made a short film titled The Black Ships (1970). It depicts the opening of Japan with Japanese prints and drawings from the time.
Read more about this topic: Matthew C. Perry
Famous quotes containing the words fictional and/or depictions:
“One of the proud joys of the man of letters—if that man of letters is an artist—is to feel within himself the power to immortalize at will anything he chooses to immortalize. Insignificant though he may be, he is conscious of possessing a creative divinity. God creates lives; the man of imagination creates fictional lives which may make a profound and as it were more living impression on the world’s memory.”
—Edmond De Goncourt (1822–1896)
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—Angela Carter (1940–1992)