The opening of Japan

Magazine Antiques, May, 2004 by Allison Eckardt Ledes

The drama and historical significance of Commander Matthew Calbraith Perry's entrance into Edo (now Tokyo) Bay in 1853, some two centuries after Japan had become isolated, has overshadowed the fact that in the interim American whaling ships did land on Japanese shores, albeit infrequently and always uninvited. While foreigners were for the most part banned from Japan, a few Chinese and Korean vessels and one Dutch ship were permitted to dock at Nagasaki each year.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of Japan to the West with the signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa. An exhibition organized to celebrate this event concentrates on the maritime industries that brought Americans to Japan, namely whaling, and on Manjiro, said to be the first Japanese-born individual to live in the United States. The show, entitled Pacific Encounters: Yankee Whalers, Manjiro, and the Opening of Japan is on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts until April 2005 and includes some fifty objects associated with whaling and Manjiro.

Manjiro, called John Mungero or Mung in this country, is referred to in Japan as the man who discovered America. In fact in 1841, when he was fourteen, he and four men were rescued on a Pacific island by William Whitfield, the captain of the whaler John Howland. The four older men disembarked in Hawaii, but Manjiro continued on to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, at Whitfield's invitation. Once in the United States, where he remained for ten years, Mungero attended school, learned English, was apprenticed to a cooper, and studied navigation. He was a harpooner on the New Bedford ship Franklin, and, after a stint in California during the gold rush, he returned to Japan by way of Hawaii. Once home he told his story and was made a samurai and renamed Nakahama. He served as an adviser at the proceedings that resulted in the opening of Japan to trade and diplomatic relations with the United States and later was a member of an official delegation to the United States in 1860 and to Europe in 1870. His story was the subject of a Japanese book entitled Hyoson Kiryaku (Drifting toward the Southeast), which was the first publication to introduce the Japanese to the West.

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The exhibition includes documents, objects, and works of art that pertain to historical events, such as the landing in 1791 of the American fur trader John Kendrick in Wakayama prefecture, where he attempted unsuccessfully to trade with locals. A group of watercolors that depict the landing of the Manhattan at Uraga, Japan, in 1845 in order to unload castaways and obtain provisions is also on view. Souvenirs collected by those who had been to Japan before it was opened to visitors or shortly there-after complete this intriguing look at a country that was largely unknown and therefore utterly fascinating to Westerners.