Dr Chris Harding

And then, of course, you've got the British and others in China.

Yeah, exactly.

China is having obviously a terrible time at the beginning of its century of humiliation, as they now call it.

So Japan, yeah, there's nowhere to hide anymore.

People are becoming really interested in Japan, almost not so much for what Japan has, but a sense of, well, as a big colonial power, if we don't claim it, someone else is going to claim it.

And so the first really to have any success with knocking on the door, as it were, of Japan are the Americans.

1853, by this point, so California is there as part of the US.

You can now get from California to Japan across the Pacific on a steamship in about 18 days.

So for the Americans, it's their doorstep, right?

That's how they think about Japan, I think, at this point.

And that Japan can be thought about as their backyard.

That's what technology has made possible, much to the detriment of Japan, I think.

So the Americans actually send some of these extraordinary steamships.

In the summer of 1853, they arrive off Japan under the command of this guy called Commodore Matthew C. Perry.

And the Japanese are...

Maybe terrified is putting it a bit strongly, but they'd never seen that kind of technology before.

These huge, great black ships spewing smoke out of their funnels.

And Commodore Matthew C. Perry comes ashore.

And he's an interesting guy.

His mission, basically, from his president, Millard Fillmore, is to persuade the Japanese to at least say that if American sailors and whaling vessels, whatever it might be, end up shipwrecked in Japan, they'll be taken care of.