Spanish colonial administrator José Antonio de Areche…

Famine continues in Japan as three hundred thousand die of starvation.

There is a general sense of crisis in Japan by the 1830s.

Famines and natural disasters hit hard, and unrest leads to a peasant uprising against officials and merchants in Osaka in 1837.

Although it lasts only a day, the uprising makes a dramatic impression.

Remedies come in the form of traditional solutions that seek to reform moral decay rather than institutional problems.

The shogun's advisers push for a return to the martial spirit, more restrictions on foreign trade and contacts, suppression of Rangaku, censorship of literature, and elimination of "luxury" in the government and samurai class.

Others seek the overthrow of the Tokugawa and espouse the political doctrine of sonnd-joi (revere the emperor, expel the barbarians), which calls for unity under imperial rule and opposes foreign intrusions.

The bakufu perseveres for the time being amid growing concerns over Western successes in establishing colonial enclaves in China following the Opium War of 1839-42.

More reforms are ordered, especially in the economic sector, to strengthen Japan against the Western threat.

Foreign contacts increase as japan grants more concessions in the final years of the Tokugawa.

The new treaty with the United States in 1859 allows more ports to be opened to diplomatic representatives, unsupervised trade at four additional ports, and foreign residences in Osaka and Edo.

It also embodies the concept of extraterritoriality (foreigners are subject to the laws of their own countries but not to Japanese law).

Hotta loses the support of key daimyo, and when Tokugawa Nariaki opposes the new treaty, Hotta seeks imperial sanction.

The court officials, perceiving the weakness of the bakufu, reject Hotta' s request and thus suddenly embroil Kyoto and the emperor in Japan's internal politics for the first time in many centuries.

When the shogun dies without an heir, Nariaki appeals to the court for support of his own son, Tokugawa Yoshinobu (or Keiki), for shogun, a candidate favored by the shinpan and tozama daimyo.

The fudai win the power struggle, however, installing Tokugawa Yoshitomi, arresting Nariaki and Keiki, executing Yoshida Shoin (1830-59, a leading sonnō jōi intellectual who had opposed the American treaty and plotted a revolution against the bakufu), and signing treaties with the United States and five other nations, thus ending more than two hundred years of exclusion.

Japan had turned down a demand from the United States, which is greatly expanding its own presence in the Asia-Pacific region, to establish diplomatic relations when Commodore James Biddle appeared in Edo Bay with two warships in July 1846.

However, when Commodore Matthew C. Perry's four-ship squadron appears in Edo Bay in July 1853, the bakufu is thrown into turmoil.

The chairman of the senior councilors, Abe Masahiro (1819-57), is responsible for dealing with the Americans.

Having no precedent to manage this threat to national security, Abe tries to balance the desires of the senior councilors to compromise with the foreigners, of the emperor who wants to keep the foreigners out, and of the daimyo who want to go to war.

Lacking consensus, Abe decides  to compromise by accepting Perry's demands for opening Japan to foreign trade while also making military preparations .

In March 1854, the Treaty of Peace and Amity (or Treaty of Kanagawa) opens two ports to American ships seeking provisions, guarantees good treatment to shipwrecked American sailors, and allows a United States consul to take up residence in Shimoda, a seaport on the Izu Peninsula, southwest of Edo.

A commercial treaty, opening still more areas to American trade, is forced on the bakufu five years later.

The resulting damage to the bakufu is significant.

Debate over government policy is unusual and has engendered public criticism of the bakufu.

In the hope of enlisting the support of new allies, Abe, to the consternation of the fudai, had consulted with the shinpan and tozama daimyo further undermining the already weakened bakufu.

In the Ansei Reform (1854-56), Abe now tries to strengthen the regime by ordering Dutch warships and armaments from the Netherlands and building new port defenses.

In 1855 a naval training school with Dutch instructors is set up at Nagasaki, and a Western-style military school is established at Edo; by the next year, the government is translating Western books.

Opposition to Abe increases within fudai circles, which oppose opening bakufu councils to tozama daimyo, and he is replaced in 1855 as chairman of the senior councilors by Hotta Masayoshi (1810-64).

At the head of Japan's dissident faction is Tokugawa Nariaki, who had long embraced a militant loyalty to the emperor along with antiforeign sentiments, and who had been put in charge of national defense in 1854.

The Mito school—based on neo-Confucian and Shinto principles—has as its goal the restoration of the imperial institution, the turning back of the West, and the founding of a world empire under the divine Yamato Dynasty.

Japan remains virtually closed to international commerce.

Sakoku (Japanese:, literally "country in chains" or "lock up of country"), the foreign relations policy of Japan under which no foreigner or Japanese can enter or leave the country on penalty of death, had been enacted by the Tokugawa shogunate under Tokugawa Iemitsu through a number of edicts and policies from 1635-1641 and remains in effect.

The shogun Ieyoshi opposes mounting Japanese pressure to trade with the West.

U.S. Commodore Matthew C. Perry, younger brother of War of 1812 naval hero Oliver Perry, had embarked in 1852 from Norfolk, Virginia for Japan, in command of a squadron in search of a Japanese trade treaty.

The Japanese have been forewarned by the Dutch of Perry’s voyage, but are unwilling to change their two hundred and fifty-year-old policy of national seclusion.

There is considerable internal debate in Japan on how best to meet this potential threat to Japan’s economic and political sovereignty.

Perry, aboard a black-hulled steam frigate, ports Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna at Uraga Harbor at the entrance to Edo Bay (modern Tokyo) on July 8, 1853, and is met by representatives of the Tokugawa Shogunate who tell him to proceed to Nagasaki, where there is limited trade with The Netherlands and which is the only Japanese port open to foreigners at this time.

His actions at this crucial juncture are informed by a careful study of Japan's previous contacts with Western ships and what he knows about the Japanese hierarchical culture

As he arrived, Perry had ordered his ships to steam past Japanese lines towards the capital of Edo, and turn their guns towards the town of Uraga.

Perry refuses Japanese demands to leave, or to proceed to Nagasaki, instead demanding permission to present a letter from President Millard Fillmore, threatening force if he is denied.

Perry attempts to intimidate the Japanese by presenting them a white flag and a letter that tells them that in case they choose to fight, the Americans will destroy them.

He also fires blank shots from his seventy-three cannons, which he claims is in celebration of the American Independence Day.

Perry's ships are equipped with new Paixhans shell guns, cannons capable of wreaking great explosive destruction with every shell.

He also orders his ship boats to commence survey operations of the coastline and surrounding waters over the objections of local officials.

In the meantime, the Japanese government is paralyzed due to the incapacitation by illness of shōgun Tokugawa Ieyoshi and by political indecision on how to handle the unprecedented threat to the nation's capital.

On July 11, Rōjū Abe Masahiro temporizes, deciding that simply accepting a letter from the Americans will not constitute a violation of Japanese sovereignty.

The Japanese military forces cannot resist Perry's modern weaponry; the "Black Ships" are now to become, in Japan, a threatening symbol of Western technology.

The Japanese government agrees to let Perry come ashore to avoid a naval bombardment.