Meiji Restoration

17 Pages 4282 Words

ed from their coal engines. They sent a clear message. If the Japanese didn’t open up their country, Perry would open it by force. Most Japanese had never seen a westerner. In the first portraits of Perry and his men, they marveled at the strange-looking barbarians from across the sea. On shore, Perry showered his hosts with gifts, including a toy locomotive which the Japanese studied with fascination.
The impact of Perry’s visit was extraordinary--all those strange, huge black ships and strange people, red-faced foreigners. It was as if they came from Mars. Of course they brought machines with them. Japanese had never seen technology like this toy train before. They were fascinated.
The British, Russians, French, and Dutch quickly followed Perry into Japan. Overrun with strange foreigners, the Shogun government opened the Institute for the Investigation of Barbarian Books.
To some, the arrival of the westerners was a direct attack on the values of traditional Japan. In southwestern Japan--the remote provinces of Satsuma and Choshu--were centers of anti-western thought. Their Samurai called Shi-Shi, or men of high purpose, believed that Japan was sacred ground and that the emperor, now a figure-head in the ancient capitol of Kyoto, was a God. The Shi-Shi were furious that the Shogun had signed an agreement with the foreign barbarians without the emperor’s consent.
The initial Japanese response to the west was xenophobic, anti-western. The great slogan of the time was "Revere the Emperor and Expel the Barbarians." Japan was understood as sacred territory and these fools were not to be allowed in, regardless of Perry’s show of force. This was not just talk. Shi-Shi murdered prominent foreigners--a translator for the Americans, a British diplomat. Other Shi-Shi attacked western ships. The response from the west was immediate and devastating.
With modern canon, they bombarded home capitols of the Shi-Shi in Satsuma and Choshu...