Breaking Open Japan: Commodore Perry, Lord Abe, and American Imperialism in 1853

by George Feifer

Book Overview

On July 14, 1853, the four warships of America's East Asia Squadron made for Kurihama, 30 miles south of the Japanese capital, then called Edo. It had come to pry open Japan after her two and a half... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0060884320
• ISBN13: 9780060884321
• Release Date: October 2006
• Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
• Length: 389 Pages
• Weight: 1.37 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.4" x 6.3" x 9.3"

Customer Reviews

Essential Reading

On one level this remarkable book will provide invaluable background for anyone interested in understanding why Japan's love-hate relationship with the United States continues to this day. It should also serve to underline the dangers of imposing one nation's views on another. But the book will also appeal to readers simply interested in a rich historical tour of Japan at the dawn of its modern era. The skillful weaving of the descriptions of the personalities, prejudices and political backgrounds of Commodore Perry and his Japanese counterpart Lord Abe brings to life and keeps in focus a story that might otherwise have drifted into an academic dissertation. Breaking Open Japan will now be added to my list of must-reads for friends and acquaintances interested in peeling away the layers of a society that remains the most complex and conflicted of the modern era.

A revelation about our use of power

This challenging and deeply researched book on Perry's "opening up" of Japan has the most painful relevance possible to our current government's colossal misadventure in allegedly trying to bring "Freedom and Democracy" to a land of darker-skinned people about whose history we are -- not willfully mis- informed, which would be bad enough, but wildly, tragically ignorant. And what kind of reverberations can we expect, decades and even a century down the road of history? What Pearl Harbors, what Okinawas, what Hiroshimas are there to come?

Liberated or Oppressed?

Early on in his excellent history of Commodore Perry's deliberate and U.S. sanctioned effort to spread the gospel according to American interests in mid-19th century Japan, George Feifer has this to say: "Like the overwhelming majority of his fellows, the Commodore had a penchant for criticizing other societies while remaining silent about the flaws of his own. The notion of a Japanese squadron sailing into the Chesapeake Bay to demand cessation of slavery or of the obliterating of Native American culture would have seemed preposterous to him and virtually all other Americans." Sadly, not much has changed since then. From Japan to Vietnam to Central America to Iraq many of our political sages continue to act from hubris and fundamentalist missionary zeal in an effort to expand our spheres of influence, while doing little to understand the consequences of our actions or the societies we set out to plunder and remake in our own image. While Breaking Open Japan will be read by scholars, it's narrative gifts make it accessible to anyone with an interest in understanding the folly of imperialist attitudes.

"Breaking Open Japan" Opens the Much Wider Subject of Japan itself

In 1853, in one of America's earliest demonstrations of its willingness to flex its muscles internationally, President Fillmore sent Perry to Japan to open an exotic ancient country to diplomacy and trade. Less than 90 years later, the Japanese invaded us. Obviously, between these two momentous happenings, there there were thousands of other intervening events which contributed to the forming of Japanese-American relations. However, beginnings contain the seed of what comes after, and this book is a terrific account of the often overlooked story of Commodore Perry. The author also does a wonderful (and frequently entertaining) job of linking Perry's story to Japanese history before and afterwards. This book is certainly the best book I have read about Japanese history and culture, and it goes well beyond its ostensible subject, while stll keeping that amazing story as its main focus.

A gripping, masterful telling

Commodore Perry's opening of Japan is an event that has faded somewhat in U.S. history, coming as it did in the years before the Civil War and well before the fateful attack on Pearl Harbor. But Feifer's scholarly, yet entertaining telling of the events deserves the attention of anyone who enjoys a good historical yarn or who seeks a better understanding of U.S. history in general. Feifer's Breaking Open Japan is both magisterial in its understanding and colorful in its narrative. The author has a masterful knowledge of his subject--including the Japanese history that led it to the point of Perry's arrival in 1953--and he combines it with a novelist's style and an eye for detail. The idea of any nation--especially Japan, now perhaps the world's greatest trader--being closed off from other nations is so foreign to modern eyes. But Feifer makes it understandable. He also shows how Perry's mission grew from the American sense that it had a duty to modernize, civilize, and (to some extent) Christianize the world. This is an attitude that grew through the 19th Century and into the 20th. In Perry, Feifer shows its personal embodiment. If the book is to be faulted it is that Feifer seems to assume at least some knowledge of who Perry was and what he did. I doubt though that most Americans could recall his name. The result is that the beginning can be somewhat slow going. But as the reader warms to the fascinating, though foreign subject, Feifer's Breaking Open Japan gains focus. In the end his history is more riveting than one would have ever imagined possible. It's a huge achievement and no doubt essential for scholars of American history and Japanese history as well.