Meiji Japan and post-Soviet Russia · 1859
How did the unequal treaties weaken Japan most?
The seminar question: “Did the unequal treaties weaken Japan more through their economic terms or through the political crisis they caused?”
On 8 July 1853 Commodore Matthew Perry anchored four US warships at Uraga and asked Japan to open its ports. The shogunate signed the Treaty of Kanagawa in 1854, opening Shimoda and Hakodate, and in 1858 Townsend Harris won a commercial treaty whose terms and politics shook the shogunate.
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The United States wanted Japan to serve ships crossing the Pacific. Steamers bound for China needed coal, American whalers worked in nearby waters, and Washington wanted safety for their crews as well as trade. Perry refused to take his request to Nagasaki, the usual place for receiving foreigners. His guns did not fire in anger, but their presence near Edo forced the shogunate to decide how to respond. A month later Admiral Putyatin’s Russian squadron reached Nagasaki, shown by the arrow from the west. The American request was only one of the demands confronting Japan.
The short answer
- Steam and the Pacific brought America to Japan. After gaining California in 1848, the United States sought coaling stations for steamships traveling across the Pacific to China. Its whalers also worked off Japan, and wrecked sailors were sometimes imprisoned there. Japan became a stop on a commercial highway for the first time. Perry’s two steamers could move against winds that had long left sailing ships at the mercy of its coast.
- A government without a navy could only delay. Chapter 1’s divided state had neither a fleet nor a national army, and could not quickly pay for them. Abe’s officials built batteries on artificial islands in Edo Bay after 1853, but knew that ships like Perry’s had destroyed Chinese forts. They faced a choice over how much to concede and how to explain it: refusal threatened war against a power they expected to defeat them.
- Consultation widened the circle of decision-makers. Abe asked the daimyo and court for advice in 1853 partly to share responsibility for an unpopular choice. In doing so, he invited the outer lords and court to exercise a voice in national policy that they had been denied since 1600. The court’s refusal in 1858 therefore carried weight. An effort to support the government helped establish an alternative authority that would replace it.
- A succession quarrel turned diplomacy into a feud. The succession to the heirless Iesada split the elite in 1857–58. Shimazu Nariakira of Satsuma and Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito were among the reforming lords who favored Hitotsubashi Yoshinobu. Conservatives around Ii Naosuke supported a twelve-year-old from the Kii branch. These men also disagreed about the treaty. Ii’s victory in both disputes made rivals over policy and succession enemies of the shogunate itself.
THE TURNING POINT
The Harris treaty signed, 29 July 1858. On 29 July 1858 Ii had the Harris treaty signed despite the emperor’s refusal. The shogunate claimed to govern in the emperor’s name; defying him made the concession a dispute over its right to rule. Ii then used the Ansei Purge against his critics, confining great lords and executing young activists including the Chōshū teacher Yoshida Shōin. On 24 March 1860 samurai, most from Mito, killed Ii outside Edo Castle’s Sakurada Gate. The shogunate never recovered the authority spent in this struggle.
What it changed
Terror entered politics. After Ii’s assassination, political violence continued for a decade. Young samurai calling themselves “men of high purpose” (shishi) killed officials and foreigners in the emperor’s name, trying to force decisions on governments unable to keep order. Many came from Chōshū, Tosa and Satsuma, the domains that would lead the next stage.
Kyoto became a second capital. Lords and activists went to Kyoto after 1858, turning a court that had been powerless for two and a half centuries into a center of decision. The shogunate sought to repair relations by arranging the marriage of the emperor’s sister to the young shogun in 1862. Policy now needed approval in two places, with the emperor’s carrying moral weight.
Open ports remade prices and livelihoods. The new trade changed both places and livelihoods. Yokohama grew from a fishing village into Japan’s main trading port, and raw silk became the country’s largest export. Silk districts prospered, while inflation harmed urban workers and samurai. Merchants and officials also gained a close view of Western commerce; the Meiji state would later use that knowledge to build industry.
Russia’s advance redrew the north. Russia acquired Chinese land north of the Amur under the Treaty of Aigun in 1858 and east of the Ussuri under the Treaty of Peking in 1860. It founded Vladivostok, a name meaning “ruler of the East.” In 1861 a Russian warship occupied part of Tsushima for six months. Fear of Russia shaped Japanese strategy for half a century, through Korea to the war of 1904.
The full answer, argued
The treaties imposed serious economic costs. Fixed tariffs limited customs revenue and protection for new industries until 1911; the gold drain and export boom drove inflation; and extraterritoriality put foreigners beyond Japanese law. Yet Japan’s economic losses were manageable compared with China’s, and merchants and silk districts gained from trade. The political effects were faster and larger. The shogunate signed without imperial approval, making it appear disloyal to the authority in whose name it ruled. The ensuing purge turned some of the most capable lords into enemies, and within ten years the shogunate was gone. Historians such as W. G. Beasley therefore see the treaties above all as a political catalyst, while recognizing their real economic harm. Their terms set Meiji Japan on a long campaign for equality; the crisis helped decide who would lead that campaign. Outside pressure can weaken a government most sharply by damaging belief in its right to rule.
An interesting fact
The delegations used gifts and demonstrations to show one another their capabilities. In 1854 Perry’s party laid a circle of track near Yokohama and presented a working miniature steam railway, complete with engine and carriage. The carriage was made for children, so Japanese officials trying it clung to the roof, robes flying, at about twenty miles an hour, as Perry’s official narrative recorded. The Americans also strung a telegraph line about a mile long. Their hosts offered silks and lacquer and staged a display by sumo wrestlers, who carried heavy rice bales with ease.
This is the study layer of Black Ships and the opening of Japan, chapter 2 of Remaking the State: Meiji Japan 1600–1912 and Post-Soviet Russia 1964–2000; the full index of the atlas is here.
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