The Black Ships Shock: A Historic Encounter That Changed Japan
nippon.com
nippon.com
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.
For some reason it didn't get appended to the podcast descriptions
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.
Of course they failed miserably by hitting the legacy battleships and missing the carriers which fit better with modern doctrine.
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.
Vaguely related - the Russian journey to Tsushima [1] is quite interesting (in the sense of watching a train wreck occur). It includes the Dogger Bank incident [2] which nearly incited war with Britain. Fascinating stuff.
[1] https://web.archive.org/web/20220312131211/https://www.hullw...
That would have been a major disaster. Pearl Harbor was just an irritant and catalyst.
First of all, take a look at the map [1] of Perl Harbor from wikipedia. The oil storage tanks are listed as A, and you'll notice that they formed two different groups. By my count each had 27 tanks. If you take a look at [2], you'll see that these tanks were well separated, with an earth wall between them. It is clear that when they were built precautions were taken to prevent the spread of (accidental of intentional) fire.
So, taking out the oil tanks was not as simple as dropping one bomb. You probably needed multiple passes. After the first successful pass, all others had to deal with the smoke, and more or less guess where their targets were. Of course, they would have to deal with the anti-air defenses. The second wave already took quite heavy losses, the third wave was guaranteed to incur much heavier ones.
Let's say in the best case scenario, the hypothetical third Japanese wave would have destroyed half of the 54 oil tanks. It would not have made a difference. Only a success rate of 90% would have, maybe.
In any case, that third wave was never planned. See [4] (written by one of hte co-authors of Shattered Sword) for convincing evidence that only 2 waves were planned, and Admiral Nagumo carried them as per the plan.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attack_on_Pearl_Harbor#/media/...
[2] https://pearlharbor.org/pearl-harbors-third-strike-what-coul...
[3] https://medium.com/war-stories/the-one-key-thing-not-destroy...
[4] https://digital-commons.usnwc.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?articl...
However, they entered the war with better tactics and training, vastly better torpedoes, and superior fighter planes.
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.
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.
Also, I won't argue against colonialism apologists on this thread.
As an analogy: I grew up in NW England during the troubles, and the nearest big city was Manchester. After the IRA blew up the city centre, the rebuilt version was much much nicer and attracted substantially more commerce. That can be true without in any way having any interest in defending the IRA's explosive terrorism and extrajudicial murders (possibly my favourite exchange on twitter was Gerry Adams posting about feeling like the grinch going around his house turning off all the christmas lights before he went to bed and somebody replying "surely you know somebody who can fit a timer.")
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.
[0] https://education.nationalgeographic.org/resource/japans-nat... (which should probably be taken as seriously (or not) as the foundation of Rome in 753 BC)
The current arrangement isn’t imposing on or extracting anything from Japan, just protecting it, mostly for free.
Not that I’m saying this is unfair to America either; it’s mutually beneficial for both nations, which is why everyone has kept this happy arrangement for so long.
The latter mostly concerns itself with trade treaties, however lopsided, whereas the former also involved a lot more meddling in the culture, the power structure, and the internal structure of the economy.
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.
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.
(that's kinda the ISO standard joke of that class and I'll often tell a version of it myself as a means to indicate I believe that given the history they have every right to take the piss out of us as much as they like, after which anybody of Indian ancestry in the group will tend to grin and start telling better jokes than that one with me and my fellow white English as the target - magnificent way to be entertained over a pint ;)
I suppose the Irish antagonism with the British dates from the much more recent "Troubles", rather than historic English Imperialism.
History does not have to be celebrated, it definitely has to be remembered so.
However as somebody who's generic white british and grew up in an area that was unusually white even compared to the median bit of britain I tend to default to expecting that most of the time my perspective isn't going to add much to a debate in progress and leave it be instead.
WW2 and holocaust memorials can be found all over the place, ranging from impressive, and depressing, sites like Dachau Concentration Camp to a some ruins and a explanation at sites of former KZ satelite locations somewhere in the woods. Not everything the Nazis built was torn down. And I highly doubt there are Churchil or Auchinlek statues in former Bengal, and if there are, sure, get rid of those.
There is no Indian architecture in the last 100-200 years because of the brutal british colonialism.
People know that beating closed Tokugawa shogunate and pre-WW2 regime were finally somewhat good thing so they don't blame them so much.
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.
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.
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.
(Edit: had -> has. flippin’ phone)
You're being ridiculous, @notadev. While I realize that by engaging, I'm falling into the trap of wrestling with a pig, no one's torn down any statues of Matthew Perry in the US.
>"Who taught you how to do this?"
>"You, dad! I learned it from watching you!"
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...
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.
_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.
They also traded with China and Korea.
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.
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.
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.
Or simply forced