hostages during the lords' absence from Edo, but also, since their position demanded that they maintain a suitably impressive estate in Edo and an appropriately large retinue to accompany them on their annual processions to and from the capital, it diverted a substantial amount of clan funds from more practical uses of which the shogunate might not have approved. Nevertheless, in the first half of the nineteenth century a current of opposition to the bakufu began to make itself felt, and more outspoken critics began to question both the legitimacy of the Tokugawa administration and one of its mainstays, the policy of national seclusion.
The early Tokugawas regarded isolation from the outside world as a useful way to stifle opposition inside Japan, since it deprived potentially disruptive elements of the means to ally themselves with predatory foreign nations. Until the arrival in 1853 of Commodore Matthew Perry, Japan's only contact with the outside world was through a small, artificial island at Nagasaki called Deshima, where a few Dutch merchants were allowed to maintain a trading settlement. Through this small, Dutch foothold came a trickle of information about developments in the West, especially in the fields of medicine and military technology. Dutch textbooks and manuals were diligently translated into Japanese, and by this means news of the latest scientific discoveries, including Louis J. M. Daguerre's announcement in 1839 of his successful photographic experiments, reached Japan.
News of more disturbing developments in the outside world also came through Deshima. The first decades of the nineteenth century brought reports of the inroads made by the Western powers in the Far East. Of particular concern was news of the so-called Opium War between Britain and China from 1839 to 1842. The ease with which British warships destroyed the Chinese navy came as a great shock to the Japanese, who had long respected China as a superior civilization. In addition, the concessions extorted from China, including the cession of Hong Kong and the opening of selected ports to foreign trade, provided an object lesson in how Western military strength made a mockery of national isolation. The bogey of seaborne foreign invaders haunted the Japanese imagination over the next two decades, and what many perceived as the inept, not to say spineless, response of the shogunal government to the foreign menace provoked a political crisis that eventually led to the bakufus demise in 1867.
Although popular opinion in the West favored Russia and Britain as the powers most likely to force Japan to open to trade, it was in fact the United States that took the lead. On July 8,1853, Commodore Perry, with a squadron of four American warships under his command, landed at Uraga in Tokyo Bay. Bearing a letter and gifts from President Millard Fillmore, Perry delivered a request for Japan to open diplomatic and commercial relations with the United States, and declared his intention to return with a larger squadron early the following year to receive an answer. Aware of its own weakness and unable to prevaricate, the bakufu reluctantly concluded the so-called Treaty of Peace and Amity at Kanagawa in March 1854, by which the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate were grudgingly opened to American ships. Britain, Russia, and Holland swiftly concluded similar agreements.
In July 1858 the door was further opened when the United States consul general, Townsend Harris, secured a commercial treaty with the shogunate. Among its terms, diplomatic representatives were to be exchanged between the two nations; more Japanese cities (including the capital, Edo) were to be opened; Americans were permitted to reside and trade in these areas without hindrance and under the protection of extraterritorial rights; and trade was to be subject to fixed tariffs. This treaty provided a model for similar agreements concluded with Holland, Russia, Britain, and France in the following month. Granting Westerners full exemption from Japanese law while denying Japan the right to fix its own commercial tariffs, these "unequal treaties," as most Japanese subsequently referred to them, set the tone for Japan's foreign relations until the end of the nineteenth century. In the short term, the treaties, and the opposition they generated in Japan, bedeviled the bakufu for the remainder of its existence.
With the implementation of the treaties, foreign merchants descended upon the newly opened ports and almost at once proved disruptive to both the economic and social order of the country. Most had come in search of easy profits and, taking advantage of the low exchange rate, sought to export as much gold as possible. The drain of domestic bullion, as well as an unusually heavy demand for commodities like silk and tea, helped dislocate the local economy. The very presence of Westerners was just as disruptive. Most foreign residents tended to be arrogant and over-bearing toward the Japanese, and many behaved like the barbarians the Japanese imagined them to be. Not surprisingly, they provided a good target for xenophobic samurai. In 1859, the first year of the foreign settlement in Yokohama, two Russian sailors and a Dutch merchant captain were murdered. The foreign legations established in Edo were also prey to attack. One evening in January 1861 the Dutch interpreter at the American legation in Edo was killed, while six months later a group of rōnin, or masterless samurai, staged an unsuccessful night attack on the British legation at the Tozenji temple. Concern about such incidents, especially at the failure of the Japanese authorities to find or punish any of the perpetrators, led the governments of Britain and France in 1863 to maintain troops in Yokohama for the protection of foreign residents. Ironically the next victims of the rōnin were officers of these same garrisons. On October 14, 1863, Lieutenant Henri Camus of the French colonial infantry was dragged from his horse and cut to pieces while riding through Yokohama. His murderers were never found. On November 21 of the following year, two officers of the British 20th Regiment, Major George Baldwin and Lieutenant Robert Bird, were brutally murdered during a visit to Kamakura. Significantly, after five years of such incidents, this was the first attack to be punished, and the summary execution of those involved in the murder discouraged further attacks for a time.
In the years following 1860 the bakufu dispatched six major missions to America and Europe, largely in an attempt to settle difficulties created by the treaties of 1858 and occasionally to renegotiate some face-saving amendments. On a diplomatic level these efforts served only to reveal how poorly prepared the shogunate and its representatives were to deal with the realities of international diplomacy. Especially poignant was the mission to France in 1863 of Ikeda Nagaoki, the governor of Chikugo Province (now the southern part of Fukuoka Prefecture). Given the unwanted and unrealistic commission to secure separate French agreement to the closure of Yokohama, Ikeda came round instead to the view that Japan should indeed open to the West. This revelation did not, however, prepare him for the wiles of French diplomacy, and unwittingly, it seems, he concluded a treaty which, far from securing the bakufu's object, committed it to purchasing armaments from French firms and consenting to French intervention against the Choshu clan at Shimonoseki. When Ikeda returned to Edo, he was immediately dismissed and placed under house arrest, and the only pleasant memory he came to retain of his visit to Paris was of having his portrait taken by the celebrated French photographer Gaspard Félix Tournachon (better known by his pseudonym, Nadar). Where the shogunal missions were most successful was in giving their younger members the opportunity to improve upon their knowledge of the West, which so far had been gained only from books. Among those who benefited from this experience and in turn were able to assist in the modernization of Japan was the educator Fukuzawa Yukichi, who served as a member of missions in 1860 and 1863 and in the Meiji era would be the foremost advocate of Western ideas in Japan.
In the meantime the bakufu suffered further upsets. Violence against foreigners by discontented samurai found the bakufu powerless to act and yet liable to pay compensation for incidents over which it had no control. Opposition to the opening of the country also swelled the ranks of the shogunate's critics, who now rallied under the slogan sonnō jōi, or "Revere the emperor, expel the barbarian." Particularly prominent in the antiforeign agitation were members of the Choshu clan, who for a time influenced the policies of the imperial court at Kyoto. At Choshu prompting, the emperor refused to endorse any of the treaties concluded in Japan's name with the Western powers and in 1862 ordered the shogun to revoke them and to commence expelling the "barbarians" from Japan forthwith. Although painfully aware that such instructions were impossible to implement, the shogunate could hardly refuse. The efforts of its most able councilor, Ii Naosuke, to enforce the treaties had resulted in his assassination in 1860, while the shogun's control over the daimyo had weakened to the extent that the alternate-attendance system was terminated in October 1862. Faced with growing opposition, the shogun reluctantly
