The Best Adventure and Exploration Stories Ever Told

by Stephen Brennan

  THE FAMOUS PERRY EXPEDITION TO JAPAN

  JOHN S. SEWALL

  At last, on the second of July 1853, four of the fleet got underway for Japan. The Saratoga took her place in tow of the Susquehanna as before, and the Plymouth in tow of the Mississippi. The Supply storeship was left for the time at anchor in Napa harbor, and the Caprice, under command of Lieutenant William L. Maury, was sent to Shanghai. Our course followed the chain of island groups that extend to the northward and eastward from Lew Chew over to Nippon— some of the time in sight of them. One of the last we passed was Ohosima, a well-bred volcano that was enjoying a nice quiet smoke all by itself. It may wake up someday and start its furnaces, as its fiery neighbor Torisima has been doing while these pages have been in process of incubation. There is plenty of time; geology will furnish all it wants. And it may yet make its record in history and hold up its head with Vesuvius and Krakatoa and Mont Pelée. They are uncertain characters, these volcanoes; you can never be quite sure when any given island is preparing to burn out its chimney. The safest plan is to follow Confucius’s advice about the gods—“Respect them, and keep out of their way.”

  We made moderate speed and reached Japan on the eighth of July. It was Friday, a memorable day in our calendar. That morning the lookouts at the masthead echoed through the fleet the rousing call, “Land ho!” We rushed on deck. There it was, at last. There it was, a dark silent cloud on the northern horizon, a terra incognita still shrouded in mystery, still inspiring the imagination with an indefinable awe, just as it had years ago in the studies of our childhood at school. We came up with it rapidly. But the rugged headlands and capes still veiled themselves in mist, as if resolved upon secrecy to the last. About noon the fog melted away, and there lay spread before us the Empire of the Rising Sun, a living picture of hills and valleys, of fields and hedges, groves, orchards, and forests that tufted the lawns and mantled the heights, villages with streets just a trifle wider, and houses a little less densely packed than those in China, defended by forts mounted with howitzers and “quakers,” and fenced with long strips of black and white cotton, which signified that the fortifications were garrisoned and ready for business. On the waters were strange boats skimming about, impelled by strange boatmen, uncouth junks wafted slowly along by the breeze, vanishing behind the promontories and reappearing in the distance, or lowering their sails and dropping their four-fluked anchors in the harbours near us. And towering above all, forty miles inland, like a giant man-at-arms standing sentry over the scene, rose the snowy peak of Fusiyama, an extinct volcano fourteen thousand feet high, one of the most shapely cones in the world and well named “the matchless mountain.”

  Our squadron comprised, as already noted, two steam frigates and two sloops of war. For equipment we mustered sixty-one guns and 977 officers and men—a respectable force for the times, but soon eclipsed and forgotten in the vaster armaments of the Civil War and of our late scrimmage with Spain. Such a warlike apparition in the bay, small as it was, created a powerful sensation. A Japanese writer informs us that “the popular commotion in Yedo . . . was beyond description. The whole city was in an uproar. In all directions were seen mothers flying with children in their arms and men with mothers on their backs. Rumors of an immediate action, exaggerated each time they were communicated from mouth to mouth, added horror to the horror-stricken. The tramp of war-horses, the clatter of armed warriors, the noise of carts, the parade of firemen, the incessant tolling of bells, the shrieks of women, the cries of children, dinning all the streets of a city of more than a million souls, made confusion worse confounded.

  Of all this we were quite unconscious. We had no idea that we had frightened the empire so badly, the capital being some forty of fifty miles away from our anchorage. But that the town near us was thrown into convulsions by the big “black fireships of the barbarians,” as the Japanese called us, was sufficiently evident. Before our anchors were fairly down, a battery on Cape Kamisaki sent a trio of bombshells to inquire after our health, or perhaps to consign us to perdition. But they exploded harmlessly astern, and we sent no bombshells back to explain how we were, or whether we intended going in the direction indicated. Our friends on shore knew something of guns and gunnery—that was plain. How much, we could not tell. But our glasses showed us that not all the black logs frowning at us from their portholes were genuine. Some at least were “quakers,” that could not be fired except in a general conflagration; like the battery of a native guard boat in the harbour of Nagasaki that once upon a time capsized in a squall; various things went to the bottom, but most of her guns floated!

  By the time we were well anchored and sails furled and men piped down, swarms of picturesque Mandarins came off to challenge the strange arrival and to draw around the fleet the customary cordon of guard boats. This looked like being in custody. The American ambassador had not come to Japan to be put under sentries. He notified the Mandarins that his vessels were not pirates and need not be watched. They pleaded Japanese law. He replied with American law. They still insisted. Whereupon he clinched the American side of the argument with the notice that if the boats were not off in fifteen minutes, he should be obliged to open his batteries and sink them. That was entirely convincing, and the guard boats stood not on the order of their going but betook themselves to the shelter of the stone.

  I well remember that still starlit night that closed our first day in Yedo Bay. Nothing disturbed its peaceful beauty. The towering ships slept motionless on the water, and the twinkling lights of the towns along the shore went out one by one. A few beacon fires lighted upon the hilltops, the rattling cordage of an occasional passing junk, the musical tones of a distant temple bell that came rippling over the bay at intervals throughout the long night—these were to us the only tokens of life in the sleeping empire.

  A sleeping empire truly; aloof from the world, shut in within itself and utterly severed from the general world-consciousness, not awake to the opportunities and privileges it was later so suddenly and so brilliantly to achieve as one of the world’s powers, not even conscious that there was any such high position to be attained. While the expedition is resting at its anchors, and the empire around is asleep, let us take the chance to paint in a bit of the background. An historical reminiscence or two will enable us more fully to appreciate the aim and the ultimate success of the enterprise.

  The Sunrise Kingdom, like the telescope, was discovered by accident. In 1542, when Henry VIII of England, Charles V of Germany, Knox, Calvin, and Luther were the chief characters on the European stage, a Portuguese vessel bound to Macao in China was driven by storms into Bungo, a port of Kiusiu. It was the first meeting of Japanese and Europeans. It seems to have been mutually agreeable. The accidental visitors were dazzled with the riches of the oriental paradise they had found, and the natives were pleased and entertained with their outlandish guests. When the news reaches Europe, it started a crusade of adventurers to the eastern seas. There was gold fever; all the commercial nations of the West had even caught it. The flags of Portugal, England, Holland, France, and Spain soon waved in succession over the waters of the newly discovered empire. The Japanese were amiable, and a busy barter was maintained for some scores of years.

  Traders and speculators were not the only visitors in that distant mart. Some ten years later the Jesuits resolved to signalize the beginnings of their new order by converting those rich and dissolute Gentiles. Their crusade, like many others, was successful. It is related that when the first missioners, as they were called, reached the field of their operations, some of the countries desired an edict against the propagation of the new faith. “How many religions have we now?” asked the emperor. “Thirty-five,” was the answer. “Very well,” said the tolerant monarch, “One more will hurt nobody—let them preach.” And they did preach. And Xavier, the renowned Jesuit apostle and saint, though within the year he returned to China to die, lived long enough to baptize multitudes of the penitent pagans, grandees as well as commoners and
peasantry. Other missioners flocked to the harvest. The Jesuits were then followed by Dominicans and Franciscans. The splendid robes and ritual of the church proved attractive and large numbers of the people were gathered into the Roman fold. Shrines were deserted and priests found their custom wasting away.

  This was a result not entirely palatable to either the priesthood or the court. Several of the emperors recalled their apostate subjects to the mourning gods. Persecutions began. The foreign monks and friars were accused of political intrigue. The story is a bloody one and covers a whole generation of tragedy and horror. Let us turn the page and simply record the fact that Christianity was expunged from Japan.

  The final catastrophe occurred in 1637 at the fall of Simabara and the massacre of some forty thousand Christians. The histories tell us that the bodies of the martyrs were tumbled together into one vast pit and over it was raised this defiant inscription: “So long as the sun shall warm the earth let no Christian be so bold as to come to Japan; and let all know that the King of Spain himself, or the Christian’s God, or the most great God of all, if he violate this command, shall pay for it with his head.” Then the murderous empire wiped its sword, shut its gates, and barred itself in against all the world. One of the precautions by which it protected itself against Christianity and the civilization of the West was the famous ceremony of trampling on the cross; the astute pagans rightly divining that no foreigner would consent to such a sacrilege who had enough of the Christian religion about him to disturb the empire.

  The ceremony was performed every year, as methodically as taking the census or collecting the taxes, and was only abolished as late as 1853, after our first visit to Japan. Once a year, officers went to every house with boxes containing the crucifix and images of the Virgin. These were laid on the floor, and all the household from octogenarians to infants in arms were required to tread upon them as a proof that they were not Christians. This law was enforced among the Dutch, the only western nation that maintained its foothold in the hermit land during all those darkened centuries. It is said that the cross was carved into the stone thresholds of their warehouses so that they could neither go nor come without trampling upon it. The placid Hollanders do not seem to have been much distressed by the requirement; their convenient religion was easily detached and left in Europe. One of them, we are told, one day wandered away from the warehouses on the island of Dezima across the bridge into the streets of Nagasaki and was suddenly halted by a Japanese patrol. “Are you a Christian?” was the challenge. “No, I am a Dutchman!” He was allowed to pass.

  It is time to return to the ships. We left them sound asleep at anchor off Uraga the night of our arrival in Yedo Bay. Yet not all sound asleep, for a more vigilant watch has rarely been kept than was kept that night on board that fleet. Nothing happened however—except a brilliant display of meteoric light in the sky during the midwatch, an omen that terribly alarmed our friends on shore as portending that the very heavens themselves were enlisted on the side of these foreign barbarians. The commodore alludes to the phenomenon in his narrative and adds the devout wish, “The ancients would have construed this remarkable appearance of the heavens as a favourable omen for any enterprise they had undertaken; it may be so construed by us, as we pray God that our present attempt to bring a singular and isolated people into the family of civilized nations may succeed without resort to bloodshed.” In spite of the menacing sky we all survived, Yankees and natives, and in the morning were all alive and ready for business.

  During the day, our new friends came off to visit the ships and some were admitted on board. These first interviews were a constant surprise to us; we found them so well-informed. They questioned us about the Mexican War, then recent; about General Taylor and General Santa Anna. On board the Susquehanna one day, a Japanese gentleman asked the officer of the deck, “Where did you come from?” “From America,” the officer replied. “Yes, I know,” he said, “Your whole fleet came from the United States. But this ship—did she come from New York? or Philadelphia? or Washington?” He knew enough of our geography not to locate our seaports on our western prairies or up among the Rockies—a pitch of intelligence not yet too common among even our European friends. One of them asked if the monster gun on the quarter-deck was a “paixhan” gun. Yes, it was, but where and how could he ever have heard the name? When two or three midshipmen were taking the sun at noon, one of them laid his sextant down and a Japanese taking it up remarked that such instruments came from London and Paris and the best were made in London. How could a Japanese know that?

  Our colloquies were carried on in Dutch through our Dutch interpreter, Mr. Portman, the educated Japanese being then accustomed to the use of that language somewhat as we use French. We naturally supposed, therefore, that all their information had come through the Dutch, the only nation beside the neighboring Chinese and Koreans that had for the last centuries kept its hold upon the good graces and the commerce of Japan. But we afterwards found that the Japanese printers were in the habit of republishing the textbooks prepared by our missionaries in China for use in their schools. The knowledge of America which we found thus diffused in Japan had come straight from Dr. Bridgeman’s History of the United States, a manual written and published in China, which also had, what the good doctor never dreamed of, a wide circulation in the realm of the Mikado. That book had already prepossessed its readers in our favour. The following winter it was my privilege to make the acquaintance of the author at his home in Shanghai and to sit often at his genial board. It has been one of the regrets of my life that I could not tell him and his accomplished wife that his little textbook was speeding its way within the Empire of the Rising Sun. But at that time, alas, none of us knew it. They have both long since gone home to the heaven they loved and probably never learned in this world of the good they had thus unconsciously done.

  The next day was Sunday. According to custom, divine service was held on board the flagship. The capstan on the quarterdeck was draped with the flag and the Bible was laid open upon it. Chaplain Jones took his station beside it. I do not know that any record was made of the service; presumably the chaplain followed the usual liturgical form and preached a brief sermon. But the hymn sung on the occasion has become historic; it was Watts’ solemn lyric:

  Before Jehovah’s awful throne,

  Ye nations, bow with sacred joy.

  It was sung to the tune of “Old Hundred” and was led by the full band. The familiar strains poured in mighty chorus from two hundred or three hundred lusty throats with a peal that echoed through the fleet and wafted the gracious message to the distant shore. The Japanese listened with wonder; and their wonder deepened into amazement when they found that the whole day was to be observed as a day of rest and none of them could be admitted on board.

  On Monday the secular tide was turned on again and diplomatic overtures began in good earnest. In their official dealings with us it was interesting to see how the authorities clung to their time-honored policy of exclusion. It was a curious contest of steady nerve on one side, met by the most nimble parrying on the other. First they directed the commodore to go home; they wanted no letters from American presidents, nor any treaty. But the commodore would not go home. Then they ordered him to Nagasaki, where foreign business could be properly transacted through the Dutch. But the commodore declined to go to Nagasaki. If then this preposterous barbarian would not budge, and his letter must be received, they would receive it without ceremony on board ship. But his Western mightiness would not deliver it on board ship. Then they asked for time to consult the court at Yedo, and the commodore gave them three days— days big with fate; but exactly what happened at court we may never know. This much is certain, that our reluctant friends yielded at last; that pestilent letter would be received, and commissioners of suitable rank would come from court for the purpose. Even after all preliminaries had been settled, they begged to receive the letter on board ship, not on shore. But the Rubicon had been passed.

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sp; Some three miles below our anchorage a little semicircular harbor makes in on the western side of the bay, and at the head of it stands the village or hamlet of Kurihama. That was the spot selected for the meeting of the Western envoy and the imperial commissioners, and there the Japanese erected a temporary hall of audience. It was a memorable scene. The two frigates steamed slowly down and anchored off the harbor. How big, black, and sullen they looked, masterful, accustomed to having their own way, full of pent-up force. Our little flotilla of fifteen boats landed under cover of their guns. We were not quite three hundred all told, but well befeathered in full uniform and armed to the teeth; a somewhat impressive lot, and yet of rather scant dimensions to confront five thousand native troops drawn up on the beach to receive us, with crowds of curious spectators lining the housetops and grouped on the hills in the rear. However, we were ready for anything and had no fear of treachery. The emblazonry of those Japanese regiments surpasses any powers of description that have been vouchsafed to the present deponent. Their radiant uniforms and trappings and ensigns must have been cut out of rainbows and sunsets; and the scores of boats fringing the shore heightened the effect with their fluttering plumage of flags. There was one thing not lively; the officers of these gorgeous troops sat in silent dignity on campstools in front of the line—a kind of military coma that the hustling regiments now tackling the great Northern Bear in Manchuria evidently have not inherited and could not comprehend.