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notadev
LarryMullins
What boggles my mind is that less than 100 years after this happened, the Imperial Japanese Navy was able to give the US Navy a serious run for their money. The rapid industrial and technological development of Japan is hard to comprehend. Medieval feudalism to an industrial powerhouse in just a few decades.
benzofuran
Dan Carlin's Hardcore History (episode 1: https://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-62-supern...) recently did a great series "Supernova in the East" on the modernization of Japan and the internal politics. If you've got some time (drive or such), it's well worth the listen and there's a great diversity of sources.
benzofuran
Book list: https://www.goodreads.com/list/show/177152.Dan_Carlin_s_Hard...
For some reason it didn't get appended to the podcast descriptions
caycep
does he have a book list for that period?
JoeDaDude
Not to mention giving China and Russia a run for their territory, first in the 1894 Sino-Japanese war, only some 40 odd years after opening up to world trade and rapidly industrializing.
hangonhn
IIRC, Japan had a very robust banking system by the time this happened so were able to finance a lot of the capital intensive developments and industrialization necessary for them to quickly catch up.
Maursault
> the Imperial Japanese Navy was able to give the US Navy a serious run for their money.
Sure, but not before taking out half the US Navy's battle fleet and leaving them out of commission for nearly half a year. Eventually, most damaged vessels were returned to service, but with escorts needed in the Atlantic, the Fleet was spread thin facing an opponent with more battleships with better torpedos, more carriers with better trained pilots flying (in a lot of ways) superior aircraft. Against the advice and strong objection of many high ranking naval officers, President Roosevelt's "eggs in one basket"-strategy ordering the Fleet to and to remain at Pearl Harbor as a show of force was a disastrous blunder that ultimately ensured the US would be dragged into the War under-prepared. Had Roosevelt not subsequently ordered Yamamoto taken out in 1943, the Pacific may very well have been lost.
wkat4242
The Japanese navy was pretty weak which was the main reason for this sneaky Pearl Harbor attack. In a direct conflict they'd have had no chance and they tried to take out as much of the fleet off the board as they could.
Of course they failed miserably by hitting the legacy battleships and missing the carriers which fit better with modern doctrine.
marcusverus
> The Japanese navy was pretty weak which was the main reason for this sneaky Pearl Harbor attack.
Weak isn't the right word. The Japanese navy was world class as far back as 1905, when they crushed the Russians at Tsushima. It's true that the Japanese navy wasn't on par with the US Navy, but then the US Navy was more powerful than all other navies combined by the end of the war.
chanandler_bong
Their biggest miss was not hitting the fuel dumps and repair facilities. Taking out a few ships, even carriers, would be easy to replace. Wiping out the logistics support capability would mean that ships would have to return to the US west coast to refuel/repair.
That would have been a major disaster. Pearl Harbor was just an irritant and catalyst.
cafard
The Japanese navy did not have industry comparable to the US's behind it, which is why Yamamoto said that it was win in a hurry or lose.
However, they entered the war with better tactics and training, vastly better torpedoes, and superior fighter planes.
senthil_rajasek
"If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down."
I am originally from India. There are still monuments commemorating British kings ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gateway_of_India) personally I want them to be torn down.
I am not comparing Japan with Colonial India but I know that in 2023 colonialism and imperialism should not be celebrated.
rayiner
I’m from Bangladesh. If it wasn’t for British colonialism, both of us would be subsistence farmers right now instead of on HN.
That’s not any knock on the people of the subcontinent. It’s just math. The transition from subsistence agriculture to industrial society is an inflection point, like a lightning strike, and there’s no reason to believe it would’ve happened in India any time near when it happened in Britain out of thousands and thousands of years of history.
The British themselves were colonized repeatedly, by the Romans, by the French. You don’t see them tearing down statutes or rejecting that history.
senthil_rajasek
I can't speak for Bangladesh.
Also, I won't argue against colonialism apologists on this thread.
Tor3
The Meiji restoration, as this was called, removed the Shogunate (=top dog warlord) which had ruled for a good couple hundred of years and re-inserted imperial rule (i.e. the Japanese emperor was again the ruler). This was done by the Japanese themselves (a bit of civil war took place for this to happen[0]). There was no external rule forced on Japan after Perry's black ships. No colonialism or external imperialism involved, so it's not really comparable to anything else.
rippercushions
> re-inserted imperial rule (i.e. the Japanese emperor was again the ruler)
Eh, not really. The real military power behind the restoration was the Satsuma-Choshu Alliance, the Emperor was mostly[1] a convenient figurehead, and many of the Shogun's retainers transitioned smoothly into nobles and bureaucrats in the new system.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meiji_oligarchy
[1] It's complicated though, and reams of paper have been written about eg. Hirohito's actual responsibility for WW2.
senthil_rajasek
My comment was about Perry, who used violent threats to open trade with Japan, still being celebrated in Japan.
SkyMarshal
One major difference is that Japan managed to open to trade while keeping control of their country, benefitting from the former and using it to rapidly develop and modernize, while not losing autonomy and sovereignty, across the entire colonial era, at least up until they lost WWII. India obviously had a very different experience with colonialism.
valarauko
As an Indian, I find the mention of the Gateway of India in this context odd, since it's the least egregious of the lot. Nor has there been any mainstream demand to tear it down. Locals don't treat the site with any tangible connection to the British Raj, and are at best indifferent to it. There is the plaque, but nobody seems to care.
Contrast with the Victoria Memorial, the largest memorial to any monarch anywhere, the site is replete with statues of British monarchs and Governors. Bengal as a province has the longest history of British colonialism, and probably had suffered the most of any Indian region the ills of colonialism. Despite that, there hasn't been any mainstream demand to tear the place down, or even the statues. The locals are very knowledgeable about their colonial history, but seem fine with the statues and enjoy it as a place to hang out.
Spooky23
I’ve noticed in conversations with my Indian friends, in general they seem very pragmatic with respect to the British Colonial era. Personally, I expected an outlook closer to my Irish relatives, which usually were more negative.
That’s not to say that I’m projecting the feelings of a billion people from a sample of a handful of folks, and my family certainly had some strong bias wrt the Brits. My academic exposure of Indian history basically consisted of a reading about the Indian Mutiny, a bit about Ghandi, and casual mention of partition. It’s a story and history that should be told.
hef19898
If the statutes of british monarchs were raised during their reign, or shortly after, those statues now represent history. A bad bit of history, but history none the less. If they were erected way later, they celebrate this bad pit of history and can be torn down.
History does not have to be celebrated, it definitely has to be remembered so.
senthil_rajasek
If walls can become memories, statues and monuments can be torn down without losing their place in history.
vore
Well, Nazi monuments erected during Nazi Germany are pretty taboo but we still have other ways of remembering the history. I'm personally not sold that we have to preserve giant monuments to loathed people for the sake of remembering history.
agileAlligator
I am Indian and I want them to stay. I would go so far as to say that colonial era structures are the only beautiful buildings that have been built in India in the last 100-200 years.
senthil_rajasek
India has great pre-colonial era architecture.
There is no Indian architecture in the last 100-200 years because of the brutal british colonialism.
fomine3
Moreover, US nuked Japan twice and bombed civilians but there have been military alliance and good feelings (at least JP to US).
People know that beating closed Tokugawa shogunate and pre-WW2 regime were finally somewhat good thing so they don't blame them so much.
idiocrat
Interestingly, during the isolation there was not a complete informational blockade. The progressive Japanese knew what is going on in Europe and how China/Asia is suffering from European colonization.
So to preempt being colonized they worked on the Japan's opening and planned a rapid industrialization. (The Meiji Revolution)
The Perry's conquering of Japan is a concession to the West by Japanese.
wrp
> If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated...
The context you are missing is that the forcible opening of Japan led to the overthrow of the Shogunate and advent of the Meiji era, which was/is seen by most Japanese as a very good thing.
linksnapzz
The Japan-American Society of RI has a complementary Black Ships festival in Newport & Bristol; not a huge show but there's usually a formal dinner & taiko concert with representatives from the City of Yokohama and the JMSDF.
zizee
> If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down
I'm not much of a history buff, but the UK has been subject to invasions/colonialism multiple tines in tbeir history, and there are statues and events to commemotate these events.
I haven't much time, but here is an example, commemorating the Battle of Hastings:
https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-england-sussex-37649912
I'm sure there are many other and better examples to be found.
dekhn
Don't forget- the Dutch and Porteguese both had limited trading outposts (basically monopolies, but incredibly restricted). See https://iisg.nl/exhibitions/japaneseprints/ships.html and https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima
user982
22 years later, Japan copied this gunboat tactic closely to force the opening of Korea, taking the first steps toward annexation and empire (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japan%E2%80%93Korea_Treaty_of_...).
BitwiseFool
Reminds me of that anti-drug commercial from the 80's.
>"Who taught you how to do this?"
>"You, dad! I learned it from watching you!"
tkgally
An American journalist named Bayard Taylor was in Shanghai in 1853 when Perry stopped there on his way to Japan. Taylor enlisted in the U.S. Navy so that he could join Perry’s expedition as a clerk [1], and the notes he kept were later incorporated into the official U.S. report of the expedition [2]. Taylor’s own later account of their arrival in Japan makes good reading [3].
More Western writing about Japan in the 19th and early 20th centuries is collected in my Japan As They Saw It [4].
[1] https://archive.org/details/cu31924031232360/page/360/mode/2...
[2] https://archive.org/details/narrativeofexped00perr/page/n5/m...
[3] https://archive.org/details/cu31924031232360/page/410/mode/2...
labrador
I almost know how they felt because the first time I saw a US aircraft carrier up close I felt a similar sense of awe and curiosity at this immense machine and it's operation.
xrd
It's really fascinating to think about isolation and what that does to a culture. The almost two hundred years in which Japan implemented self ordered isolation is important to consider when comparing their modern culture to other, especially Asian, nations.
I feel like Brazil, being the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese, is a similar case study.
Being different and not following the herd is a strength.
Someone
> The almost two hundred years in which Japan implemented self ordered isolation
_Almost_ isolation. They traded with the Portuguese and, later, the Dutch at Dejima (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dejima)
Reading that article, I also think it was almost 300 years, from 1570 to 1854.
xrd
Yes, you are right. But that trade was the exception and there was almost no contact with westerners at all inside the country.
boomboomsubban
>They traded with the Portuguese and, later, the Dutch at Dejima
They also traded with China and Korea.
CogitoCogito
> I feel like Brazil, being the only country in South America that speaks Portuguese, is a similar case study.
I find it hard to understand why this would isolate Brazil. Portuguese and Spanish are very similar as far languages go. I’d presume natural barriers would play a much higher role.
rippercushions
Is it? That hasn't worked out great for Brazil so far.
xrd
IMHO Brazil has a thriving tech scene that outperforms other Latin American countries. It's a complicated country for sure, but I think it is a success. As they say, "Brazil is the country of the future and always will be."
billfruit
Guyana speaks English.
totetsu
You can go sit under the (regrowth of) the original tree that these treaties were signed next to near Yamashita park in Yokohama. Also the wifi password for a public event venue on the waterfront there is something like Perry1854
totetsu
Actually the wifi password is 'perry0602' which seems to correspond to "June 2 Fleet moves from Shimoda to Naha." .. so its commemorating the the day Perry left the mainland X'D
DoreenMichele
Dozens of different kawaraban were published after Perry’s fleet arrived, with each one said to have run to around 1,000 copies. This is a tiny number compared to newspaper circulation today, but the total printed in a short period was unprecedented in the Edo period (1603–1868), and they gave people a detailed picture of the treaty negotiations.
I found the section about the kawaraban especially interesting. The above detail captures some sense of how newsworthy these events were and the scope of the impact it had on Japan.
ekm2
Obligatory quote from Asimov's "The Gods Themselves":
about two and a half centuries ago, the American naval commander Matthew Perry led a flotilla into Tokyo harbor. The Japanese, till then isolated,found themselves faced with a technology considerably beyond their own and decided it was unwise to risk resistance. An entire warlike nation of millions was helpless in the face of a few ships from across the sea.Did that prove that Americans were more intelligent than the Japanese were, or merely that Western culture had taken a different turning? Clearly the latter, for within half a century, the Japanese successfully imitated Western technology and within another half a century were a major industrial power despite the fact that they were disastrously beaten in one of the wars of the time.
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croes
> persuaded by force
Or simply forced
blackflame7000
[dead]
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In short, Commodore Perry wanted to trade with Japan. Being isolationist they declined. So Perry believed they would have to be persuaded by force. He launched a barrage of cannons while anchored in Tokyo Bay. Supposedly they were just gunpowder explosions celebrating US Independence Day, but it was likely a show of force that eventually persuaded the Japanese to open trade relations.
If this were in the US or UK, Perry would likely be hated for whatever and his statue torn down. In Japan, they have multiple statues and celebrate Perry’s opening of trade relations every year with the Black Ship festival in Shimoda, Japan. The festival includes food stalls and even a parade. I’ve gone a few times, it’s nothing particularly interesting but a good experience overall.