Breaking Open Japan

"On July 8, 1853, the four warships of America's East Asia Squadron anchored at Uraga, twenty-seven miles south of the Japanese capital, then called Edo. The ships had come to pry open Japan after her two-and-a-half centuries of isolation and after years of intense planning by Commodore Matthew Perry, the squadron commander. Unabashedly imperialist, Perry, his vision grounded in the certainty of American good, was determined to get his way - largely by prompting fear of his very big guns." "Perry's cloaking of imperial impulse in humanitarian purpose was fully matched by Japanese…