Black Ships

The Black Ships (in Japanese: 黒船, romanized: kurofune, Edo period term) was the name given to Western vessels arriving in Japan in the 16th and 19th centuries.

In 1543, Portuguese initiated the first contacts, establishing a trade route linking Goa to Nagasaki. The large carracks engaged in this trade had the hull painted black with pitch, and the term came to represent all Western vessels. In 1639, after suppressing a rebellion blamed on the influence of Christian thought, the ruling Tokugawa shogunate retreated into an isolationist policy, the Sakoku. During this "locked state", contact with Japan by Westerners was restricted to Dutch traders on Dejima island at Nagasaki.

In 1844, William II of the Netherlands urged Japan to also open the mainland to trade, but was rejected. ^[1] On July 8, 1853, the U.S. Navy sent four warships into the bay at Edo and threatened to attack if Japan did not begin trade with the West. The ships were Mississippi, Plymouth, Saratoga, and Susquehanna of the Expedition for the opening of Japan, under the command of Commodore Matthew Perry. The expedition arrived on July 14, 1853 at Uraga Harbor (present-day Yokosuka) in Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.^[2] Though their hulls were not black, their coal-fired steam engines belched black smoke.

Their arrival marked the reopening of the country to political dialogue after more than two hundred years of self-imposed isolation. Trade with Western nations followed five years later with the Treaty of Amity and Commerce. After this, the kurofune became a symbol of the end of isolation.