Tokyo Bay Read Online Free

to the colonization of many weaker nations. Treaty ports and foreign concessions were snatched from China by both Americans and Europeans - Britain seizing Hong Kong in the first Opiu m War - and trade and territorial aggrandizement went hand in hand in Africa, Latin America, India and many other parts of Asia.
News of these historical tides sweeping ever nearer to Japan was conveyed to its rulers by a tiny, unique group of foreigners. Although British, Spanish and Portuguese merchants had finally submitted to the xenophobic exclusion laws and departed from Japan in the early seventeenth century, a few tenacious Dutch merchants had hung on determinedly by their fingertips. Because the Japanese believed that their land was exclusively sacred to them - Nippon, or Nihon, the country ’ s indigenous name, means ‘land begotten by the Sun’ - the Dutch traders were humiliatingly confined throughout tw o centuries to an art i ficial, man-made island in the southernmost port of Nagasaki. Closely watched and supervised without let-up, they left this virtual prison only once a year, under escort, to attend an audience granted by the S h ogun in his capital, Yedo - now called Tokyo. During their journey, great canvas curtains and screens were often hung along the route in towns and villages, to deny their foreign eyes any genuine glimpse of Japanese life. To retain their exclusive position, these Dutchmen, among other indignities, had to perform like circus bears before the Shogun, demonstrating European dances for his amusement.
But the commercial advantages gained by these traders from Holland were nevertheless considerable, and in return they acted as a channel of information from the outside world. At the Shogun’s command they prepared regular reports describing political developments in Europe, America, and other parts of the Far East. This information made Japan’s rulers uneasy - and greatly increased their determination to maintain the country’s inviolability. During the first ha l f of the nineteenth century a few isolated foreign ships tried without success to put into Japanese ports. One tentative visit to Yedo Bay by American Navy men- of-war in 1846 ended abruptly when guard sampans rowed furiously by brawny samurai attached ropes to the two US sailing ships and dragged them back out to sea. Other foreigners who tried to land were denied entry with similar warnings and threats until, in 1853, a determined United States Navy squadron under the co mm and of Commodore Matthew Ca l braith Perry hove in sight. Because of what had happened to their sailing ships seven years earlier, the Americans arrived this time in more powe r ful steam-driven warships. They also carried the latest cannon and a strong force of marines to back up their demand for trade and port facilities for all American shipping. During the long centuries of seclusion and ignorance, the Japanese people had been encouraged by their rulers to think of all other races in the world as ‘hideous barbarians’. Therefore many frightening images of foreigners abounded in the uninformed popular mind. En route to Japan, this US Navy squadron had called at the Ryukyus, tributary islands hundreds of miles to the south-west, the largest of which is Okinawa.
As a result, fast courier junks had raced ahead to the southern regions of Japan to warn of the imminent arrival of foreign barbarians travelling in fearsome, smoke-belching mac hines, the like of which had nev er been seen before in Japanese waters. As rumours abo u t these approaching newcomers spread northward towards the city known today as Tokyo, the ordinary people of Japan panicked en masse. In their fevered minds they were convi n ced they were about to be invaded by hordes of ape-like giants as monstrous and terrifying as alien creatures from another planet.
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    MATSUMURA TOKIWA was stepping naked from her bath at the instant when a great commotion began in the city beyond her shoji screens. She was