Japan–United States relations
between Japan and the United States began in the late 18th and early 19th century with the 1852–1855 diplomatic but force-backed missions of U.S. ship captains James Glynn and Matthew C. Perry to the Tokugawa shogunate. Following the Meiji Restoration, the countries maintained relatively cordial relations. Potential disputes were resolved. Japan acknowledged American control of Hawaii and the Philippines, and the United States reciprocated regarding Korea. Disagreements about Japanese immigration to the U.S. were resolved in 1907. The two were allies against Germany in World War I.
From as early as 1879 and continuing through most of the first four decades of the 20th century, influential Japanese statesmen such as Prince Iesato Tokugawa and Baron Eiichi Shibusawa led a major Japanese domestic and international movement advocating goodwill and mutual respect with the United States. Their friendship with the U.S. included allying with seven U.S. presidents – Grant, Theodore Roosevelt, Taft, Wilson, Harding, Hoover, and Franklin D. Roosevelt. It was only after the passing of this older generation of diplomats and humanitarians, along with the evidence that many Americans believed all Asians to be alike with President Calvin Coolidge's signing of the Immigration Act of 1924 that Japanese militarists were able to gain control and pressure Japan into joining with the Axis powers in World War II.
Starting in 1931, tensions escalated. Japanese actions against China in 1931 and especially after 1937 during the Second Sino-Japanese War caused the United States to cut off the oil and steel Japan required for their military conquests. Japan responded with attacks on the Allies, including the attack on Pearl Harbor, which heavily damaged the US naval base at Pearl Harbor, opening the Pacific theater of World War II. The United States made a massive investment in naval power and systematically destroyed Japan's offensive capabilities while island hopping across the Pacific. To force a surrender, the Americans systematically bombed Japanese cities, culminating in the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. Japan surrendered, and was subjected to seven years of military occupation by the United States, during which the Americans under General Douglas MacArthur eliminated militarism and rebuilt the country's economic and political systems.
In the 1950s and 1960s Japan entered into a military alliance with the United States, and experienced unprecedented economic growth by sheltering under the U.S. nuclear umbrella, taking full advantage of U.S.-backed free trade schemes, and supplying American wars in Korea and Vietnam. Japanese exports to the United States dramatically expanded in the postwar period, with Japanese automobiles and consumer electronics being especially popular, and Japan became the world's second largest economy after the United States. From the late 20th century and onwards, the United States and Japan have had firm and active political, economic and military relationships. US government officials generally consider Japan to be one of its closest allies and partners.
History
Early American contacts
In the early 1600s, Japan's ruling Tokugawa shogunate enacted a policy of national seclusion known as sakoku. Foreigners were barred from setting foot in Japan save for limited contact with the Dutch and Chinese at Nagasaki, Christianity was banned, and Catholic missionaries were expelled. Japanese citizens were also forbidden to leave Japan in most cases.There were occasional minor contacts. For example, in 1785 a ship owned and commanded by an Irishman, John O'Donnell, docked at Baltimore and reportedly had ethnically Japanese sailors as part of its crew. And in 1791, two American ships commanded by the American explorer John Kendrick stopped for 11 days on Kii Ōshima island, south of the Kii Peninsula. He is the first American to visit Japan, but there is no Japanese account of his visit.
Image:VincennesYedoBay1846.PNG|thumb|The USS Columbus of James Biddle, and an American crewman in Edo Bay in 1846
In the early 1800s American whaling vessels operating in the North Pacific whaling grounds routinely sought to land in Japan to gather firewood and fresh water, but were routinely turned away or even driven off with cannon fire. Meanwhile, the U.S. government increasingly cast its eyes on Japan as a possible coaling station for the U.S. Navy and a stopping point for U.S. merchants engaged in the lucrative China trade. In 1846, Commander James Biddle was dispatched to Japan by Washington with orders to open trade, anchoring himself in Tokyo Bay with two ships, one of which was armed with seventy-two cannons. However, Japanese representatives refused to negotiate, and he returned home empty-handed.
Perry Expedition 1853–1854
In 1848, Captain James Glynn sailed to Nagasaki, which led to the first successful negotiation by an American with sakoku Japan. Glynn recommended to the Congress that any negotiations to open up Japan should be backed up by a demonstration of force; this paved the way for the 1853–1854 expedition of US Navy Commodore Matthew Perry.The Perry Expedition lasted from 1853 to 1854. It was a significant diplomatic and military undertaking of the United States Navy towards the Tokugawa Shogunate in Japan. The expedition involved two separate voyages by American warships with objectives such as exploration, surveying, and establishing diplomatic relations and trade agreements with countries in the region. The primary aim of the mission was to establish contact with the Japanese government and open up Japanese ports to American trade, which was a top priority. Under the command of Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, who received orders from President Millard Fillmore, the expedition aimed to end Japan's 220-year-old policy of isolation by using gunboat diplomacy if necessary. As a result, the Perry Expedition played a crucial role in establishing diplomatic relations between Japan and the western Great Powers, leading to the collapse of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the Emperor in the Meiji Restoration of 1868. Furthermore, Japan's growing trade relationships with the world after the expedition resulted in the rise of Japonisme, a cultural trend where Japanese culture influenced art in Europe and America.
Image: Commodore Perry's second fleet.jpg|thumb|Commodore Perry's fleet for his second visit to Japan in 1854
In 1852, American Commodore Matthew C. Perry embarked from Norfolk, Virginia, for Japan, in command of a squadron tasked with negotiating a trade treaty with Japan. Aboard a black-hulled steam frigate, he ported Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna at Uraga Harbor near Edo on July 8, 1853, and he was met by representatives of the Tokugawa Shogunate. They told him to proceed to Nagasaki, where the sakoku laws allowed limited trade by the Dutch. Perry refused to leave, and he demanded permission to present a letter from President Fillmore, threatening force if he was denied. Japan had shunned modern technology for centuries, and the Japanese military would not be able to resist Perry's ships; these "Black Ships" would later become a symbol of threatening Western technology in Japan. The Dutch behind the scenes smoothed the American treaty process with the Tokugawa shogunate. Perry returned in March 1854 with twice as many ships, finding that the delegates had prepared a treaty embodying virtually all the demands in Fillmore's letter; Perry signed the U.S.-Japan Treaty of Peace and Amity on March 31, 1854, and returned home a hero.
Perry had a missionary vision to bring an American presence to Japan. His goal was to open commerce and more profoundly to introduce Western morals and values. The treaty gave priority to American interests over Japan's. Perry's forceful opening of Japan was used before 1945 to rouse Japanese resentment against the United States and the West; an unintended consequence was to facilitate Japanese militarism.
Harris treaty of 1858
served 1856–1861 as the first American diplomat after Perry left. He won the confidence of the Japanese leaders, who asked his advice on how to deal with Europeans. In 1858, Harris successfully concluded a full trade treaty with Japan, remembered in the United States as the "Harris Treaty of 1858." Via the new treaty, Harris obtained the privilege of Americans to reside in Japan in five "treaty ports" and travel in designated areas. The treaty also banned the opium trade, established extremely low tariffs favorable to American merchants, and guaranteed extraterritoriality for American citizens in Japan. Following the conclusion of the Harris Treaty, other western powers, including Great Britain, France, the Netherlands, and Russia, rushed to secure "unequal treaties" of their own from Japan; these treaties closely followed the American model and granted similar rights to treaty ports and extraterritoriality. The extreme one-sidedness of the new treaties caused significant domestic unrest within Japan, and contributed to the collapse of the 250-year-old Tokugawa Shogunate just ten years later.Japanese Embassy to the United States
Two years later, the Shōgun sent Kanrin Maru on a mission to the United States, intending to display Japan's mastery of Western navigation techniques and naval engineering. On January 19, 1860, Kanrin Maru left the Uraga Channel for San Francisco. The delegation included Katsu Kaishu as ship captain, Nakahama Manjirō and Fukuzawa Yukichi. From San Francisco, the embassy continued to Washington via Panama on American vessels.Japan's official objective with this mission was to send its first embassy to the United States and to ratify the new Treaty of Friendship, Commerce, and Navigation between the two governments. The Kanrin Maru delegates also tried to revise some of the unequal clauses in Perry's treaties; they were unsuccessful.
Townsend Harris returned to the United States in 1861 after five years as the main U.S. diplomat in Japan. Harris was succeeded by Robert H. Pruyn, a New York politician who was a close friend and ally of Secretary of State William Henry Seward. Pruyn served from 1862 to 1865 and oversaw successful negotiations following the Shimonoseki bombardment.