Sakoku - Challenges To Seclusion

Challenges To Seclusion

Many isolated attempts to end Japan's seclusion were made by expanding Western powers during the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. American, Russian and French ships all attempted to engage in relationship with Japan, but were rejected.

• In 1647 Portuguese warships attempted to enter Nagasaki. The Japanese formed a blockade of almost 900 boats to stop the ships. After the event, the Japanese added more security to Nagasaki as fears rose that other countries would challenge the new seclusion policy and attempt to enter through Nagasaki.
• In 1778, a merchant from Yakutsk by the name of Pavel Lebedev-Lastochkin arrived in Hokkaidō with a small expedition. He offered gifts, and politely asked to trade in vain.
• In 1787, Jean-François de Galaup, comte de La Pérouse navigated in Japanese waters. He visited the Ryūkyū islands and the strait between Hokkaidō and Sakhalin, naming it after himself.
• In 1791, two American ships commanded by the American explorer John Kendrick—the Lady Washington, under Captain Kendrick, and the Grace, under Captain William Douglas—stopped for 11 days on Kii Oshima island, south of the Kii Peninsula. Kendrick was the first known American to have visited Japan. He apparently planted an American flag and claimed the islands, although accounts of his visit in Japan are nonexistent.
• In 1792 the Russian subject Adam Laxman visited the island of Hokkaido.
• From 1797 to 1809, several American ships traded in Nagasaki under the Dutch flag, upon the request of the Dutch who were not able to send their own ships because of their conflict against Britain during the Napoleonic Wars:

• In 1797 US Captain William Robert Stewart, commissioned by the Dutch from Batavia, took the ship Eliza of New York to Nagasaki, Japan, with a cargo of Dutch trade goods.
• In 1803, William Robert Stewart returned on board a ship named "The Emperor of Japan" (the captured and renamed "Eliza of New York"), entered Nagasaki harbour and tried in vain to trade through the Dutch enclave of Dejima.
• Another American captain John Derby of Salem, tried in vain to open Japan to the opium trade.

• In 1804, the Russian expedition around the world led by captain Adam Johann von Krusenstern reached Nagasaki. The Russian envoy Nikolai Rezanov requested trade exchanges. The Bakufu refused the request and the ships had to leave in spring 1805. The Russians attacked Sakhalin and the Kuril islands during the following three years, prompting the Bakufu to build up defences in Ezo.
• In 1808, the British frigate HMS Phaeton, raiding on Dutch shipping in the Pacific, sailed into Nagasaki under a Dutch flag, demanding and obtaining supplies by force of arms.
• In 1811, the Russian naval lieutenant Vasily Golovnin landed on Kunashiri Island, and was arrested by the Bakufu and imprisoned for 2 years.

• In 1825, following a proposal by Takahashi Kageyasu, the Bakufu issued an "Order to Drive Away Foreign Ships" (Ikokusen uchiharairei, also known as the "Ninen nashi", or "No second thought" law), ordering coastal authorities to arrest or kill foreigners coming ashore.
• In 1830, the Bonin Islands, claimed by Japan but uninhabited, were settled by the American Nathaniel Savory, who landed on the island of Chichijima and formed the first colony there.
• In 1837, an American businessman in Guangzhou named Charles W. King saw an opportunity to open trade by trying to return to Japan three Japanese sailors (among them, Otokichi) who had been shipwrecked a few years before on the coast of Oregon. He went to Uraga Channel with Morrison, an unarmed American merchant ship. The ship was fired upon several times, and finally sailed back unsuccessfully.
• In 1842, following the news of the defeat of China in the Opium War and internal criticism following the Morrisson incident, the Bakufu responded favourably to foreign demands for the right to refuel in Japan by suspending the order to execute foreigners and adopting the "Order for the Provision of Firewood and Water" (Shinsui kyuyorei).

• In 1844, a French naval expedition under Captain Fornier-Duplan visited Okinawa on April 28, 1844. Trade was denied, but Father Forcade was left behind with a translator.
• In 1845, whaling ship Manhattan (1843) rescued 22 Japanese shipwrecked sailors. Captain Mercator Cooper was allowed into Edo Bay, where he stayed for four days and met with the Governor of Edo and several high officers representing The Emperor. They were given several presents and allowed to leave unmolested, but told never to return.
• On July 20, 1846, Commander James Biddle, sent by the United States Government to open trade, anchored in Tokyo Bay with two ships, including one warship armed with 72 cannons, but his demands for a trade agreement remained unsuccessful.
• On July 24, 1846, the French Admiral Cécille arrived in Nagasaki, but failed in his negotiations and was denied landing. He was accompanied by two priests who had learnt the Japanese language in Okinawa: Father Forcade and Father Ko.
• In 1848, Half-Scottish/Half-Chinook Ranald MacDonald pretended to be shipwrecked on the island of Rishiri in order to gain access to Japan. He was sent to Nagasaki, where he stayed for 10 months and became the first English teacher in Japan. Upon his return to America, MacDonald made a written declaration to the United States Congress, explaining that the Japanese society was well policed, and the Japanese people well behaved and of the highest standard.
• In 1848, Captain James Glynn sailed to Nagasaki, leading at last to the first successful negotiation by an American with "Closed Country" Japan. James Glynn recommended to the United States Congress that negotiations to open Japan should be backed up by a demonstration of force, thus paving the way to Perry's expedition.
• In 1849, the Royal Navy's HMS Mariner entered Uraga Harbour to conduct a topographical survey. Onboard was the Japanese castaway Otokichi, who acted as a translator. To avoid problems with the Japanese authorities, he disguised himself as Chinese, and said that he had learned Japanese from his father, allegedly a businessman who had worked in relation with Nagasaki.
• In 1853, the Russian embassy of Yevfimy Putyatin arrived in Nagasaki (August 12, 1853). The embassy demonstrated a steam engine, which led to the first recorded attempts at manufacturing a steam engine in Japan, by Hisashige Tanaka in 1853.

These largely unsuccessful attempts continued until, on July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the U.S. Navy with four warships: Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna steamed into the Bay of Edo (Tokyo) and displayed the threatening power of his ships' Paixhans guns. He demanded that Japan open to trade with the West. These ships became known as the kurofune, the Black Ships.