Perry In Japan

The Bad Old Days: The Unbounded Feelings Which the Artist Put into "The Miniature Train" [Scroll 7]

Kazuma Mizokoshi, The University of Tokyo (Spring 2009)

[The miniature train]

Generally speaking, Perry's arrival is considered as a beginning of many cultural exchanges between Japan and the United States. Especially, the miniature steam locomotive is the most famous souvenir of Perry and often appears in textbooks on history. Therefore, this drawing is assumed to represent the first scene of friendly cultural interchanges. Indeed, this picture shows many friendly contacts through the miniature train. At the same time, however, in this panel there are some Americans and Japanese who look quite indifferent to the main event. Why did the Japanese painter go out of his way to depict these men? I believe this is because he did not think that there had been a real cultural interchange between America and Japan in this first contact. Indeed, he tried to criticize both American and Japanese attitudes in this panel.

Surely, after seeing this panel, the impression remains that the train produced an initial friendship between the two countries. A samurai riding the miniature train seemingly symbolizes a profound impression that Japanese gained from the experience. At the foot of a chimney next to the hut, an American explains the mechanism of a steam engine to two Japanese men.

However, other details show us some scenes of a different kind. An American in the shed, for example, is drinking sake by himself, and a Japanese man at the lower left is turning his back to the train. In the further background, two Americans are chatting, with their arms on each other's shoulders. Why were they doing such things? To begin with, did they really exist there?

Certainly I think there were some Americans inattentive to the exhibition. For most Americans, the expedition to Japan was not very interesting. What they were interested in were only political and economic problems. Commodore Perry himself wrote that the gifts from Japan were "of little value" (1968, p. 194). He also complained that a commanding officer had to "venture into expenses in which he could have no private interest" but the U.S. government would not permit "any allowances for such extra expenses" (1968, p. 196). In other words, he reluctantly arranged presents and entertainments as responses to Japanese gifts in order to carry on the political and economic negotiation smoothly. Moreover, Americans at that time believed in the Manifest Destiny, which meant that God assigned the U.S. to expand its territory in order to spread American spirit to uncivilized areas. In this case, the Americans at the leading edge of civilization were going to enlighten Japanese as the youngest children in the civilized world. Accordingly, their display of the Western technology was one-sided and Americans were not interested in cultural interactions.

But Japanese people did not necessarily think that the Western technology was excellent and should be introduced to Japan. Samuel Wells Williams, who accompanied Perry, noted in his diary that "[t]he Japanese are more pleased with this thing than anything else we have given them" (1973, p.143). But from the Japanese point of view, it was nothing more than a show. In the 250-year isolation, the idea that Japan would open itself to a foreign country did not exist in most people's minds at all. They went to see the Western products only because they were curious about unknown things. We can presume this from what happened in Japan at that time. On the news of the appearance of black ships, Edo city plunged into chaos at first. But once people realized that there would not be a war, they forgot fear. As the report spread by newssheets and word of mouth, people in turn rushed to take a look at the unprecedented monsters (Koutoku, 2006, p.125-6). Although there are only shogunate officials in this panel, a historical material says that many common people came there prior to this formal exposition, too. "A large party came from Yedo and Kanagawa to see the locomotive" and "they were not of any higher rank," writes Williams (1973, p. 143). They exultantly spread rumors about the steam locomotive, and many newssheets describing it were printed.1 The Western technology may have been surprising and interesting to many people, but they were more like an entertainment than a cultural threat. Consequently, I think it is also true that there were some Japanese who were satisfied only by having a look at the exhibit and their curiosity suddenly subsided.

Now we know that there were indeed some Americans and Japanese unconcerned with the main event. Then, what did the painter mean by depicting them? Before thinking of the reason, we need to think about the historical background of this scroll. According to "about this project" by Brown University, this panel was painted sometime between 1854 and 1906. This was contemporaneous with the age of imperialism, when the Western powers invaded non-Western areas and established colonies. Witnessing the misery in China and forced to conclude unequal treaties, Japanese were also afraid that their own country would be invaded. A countermeasure that Japanese selected was to reorganize their country into a modern nation-state. After the Meiji Restoration, Japanese modern government often looked at the Edo period critically. It abolished feudalism, and reorganized the administrative and economic structures. Japanese thought light of their traditional culture, and intently introduced the Western technology. It was 1911 when the last unequal treaty was annulled and Japan finally joined the great powers.

Given this background, I believe that the Japanese painter criticized not only Americans' arrogant attitude but also the Japanese who had been too ignorant of the external world by depicting both American and Japanese people's lack of attention to the train exhibition. As a citizen of the new Japan, he must have attributed the desperate situation of Japan to both Americans and old Japanese. If the Japanese painter wanted to emphasize the friendly cultural interchanges, he could have ignored the people apathetic to the miniature train. But he chose to depict the scene as it was. To his eyes, two different cultures, American and Japanese, did not mingle but only passed each other in 1854. This is also proved by the fact that many of other panels include some who are not concentrating on the main event, too. After all, the artist did not think that Perry brought a real cultural exchange over the ocean.

References

http://www.geocities.jp/kyo_oomiya/kawara.html
Perry, Matthew Calbraith. The Japan Expedition, 1852-1854: the personal journal of Commodore Matthew C. Perry/ edited by Roger Pineau. Washington: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1968.
Williams, Samuel Wells. A journal of the Perry Expedition to Japan, 1853-1854. Wilmington: Scholarly Resources, 1973.
Koutoku, Shousuke. Kurofune to Nippon kaikoku: Ibunka kousaku no geki-kuukan [Black Ships and the Opening of Japan: The Complication between two different cultures]. Toyama: Toyama University Press, 2006.