JAPAN Commodore Perry

Kyle Ward, co-author of the well received History Lessons, a study of American history as seen from different countries, comments on the posting about the difference of `perspective on Commodore Perry in American and Japanese textbooks:  You are exactly right in that each nation looks at history from their own unique perspective.  In the case of Japan and Commodore Perry, US high school history textbooks emphasis how Perry "opened" Japan, which allowed the US to enhance its Asian trade as well as convincing Japan to "modernize."

Although we did not look at every single Japanese textbook in our research,  what we did find was the following.  Japanese high school history textbooks are not necessarily concerned with Perry and his "Black Ships" (I believe they feel this process of being "opened" and "modernized" would have eventually happened), but rather spend most of their time debating the issue of the Unequal Treaties that were signed with the US and how unfair they were.

In History Lessons you can find a Japanese text which states, "[T]hese unequal treaties also gave foreigners extraterritorial rights in Japan and robbed Japan of tariff autonomy, thus standing in the way of total Japanese independence and the expansion of Japan's industries and economy."  Instead of helping with modernization this Japanese text argues that they were actually a hindrance.

Steve Torok describes the Japanese viewpoint on Comodore Perry's visit to Tokyo: The part of the population that judged it as naked aggression supported the slogan "sonno jyoi" meaning honor the emperor and expel the foreigners. Others wanted to learn everything from the visitors  and thus wanted quick modernization. Since there was no democratic political process at the time, the question could not be decided by elections, thus terrorism and counter terrorism through political assassinations was the only means of political expression. The hero of Shiba Ryotaro's best-selling novel Rypomaga Yuku managed to combine these two streams through timing and diplomacy and good luck since he was, of course, the target of assassination attempts, but as Japan's champion sword fighter he survived, sometimes by unorthodox means, such as shooting the first dozen of some two hundred attackers in a room and then escaping through the back window and hiding until in the night when his friends rescued him. As a sword fighter, the attackers never expected him to have two colts that were given to him as a present shortly before ... He was a modernizer, the founder of Japan's Navy as a merchant marine (private) that he used to defeat the Shogun's ships using small, fast ships against slow and clumsy ones...The novel would be worth translating, Donald Keen or Ed Sidensticker could,do it. Donald Keen had a recent review in English of some of Shiba Ryotaro's work in his book on Japanese Literature.

negotiate123, a consultancy by Steve and Sandy Torok

--- On Mon 10/04, Ronald Hilton < hilton@stanford.edu > wrote:

From: Ronald Hilton [mailto: hilton Shiba Ryotaro, in his best-selling novel Rypomaga Yuku, which has sold 17 million copies in Japan. Unfortunately no English translation exists, though it would be desirable, since the novel covers the turbulent years of the Meiji restoration, triggered by Commodore Perry's visit. It is also a story with many applications to current times, since the society in Japan after Perry's visit was plagued by terrorism and counter-terrorism, that was resolved by the Meiji Restoration, miraculously engineered by Sakamoto Ryoma, the hero of the novel. RH: Can Steve tell us how the novel judges the exploit of Commodore Perry?

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