Surf vs Turf

Part II: The Surf Strikes Back...

When the American Commodore Matthew C. Perry arrived off Japan’s shores in 1853, demanding diplomatic relations at the point of a gun, Japan was thrown into a crisis. But the Tokugawa shogunate had been around since the early 1600s, and knew a thing or two about holding onto power. Its gambit in the late 1850s and 1860s was to forge foreign friendships that might secure Japan’s security, and their own position at the helm.

Embassies were duly sent westwards, to the United States in 1860 and to Europe in 1862. A photograph of the US embassy gives a vivid sense of a Japan as-yet largely untransformed by contact with modern western culture. Top-knots, sandals, silk kimono and swords - all these things would be gone within twenty years of this photograph being taken.