Convention of Kanagawa

What Happened

On 31 March 1854, representatives of the United States and the Tokugawa shogunate signed a treaty at Kanagawa, on the shore of what is now Yokohama. The agreement is known in English as the Convention of Kanagawa, and it was concluded under the direct pressure of an American naval squadron anchored in Edo Bay. It ended Japan's 220-year-old policy of national seclusion, known as sakoku (鎖国, さこく, "closed country"), by opening two ports to American vessels: Shimoda, on the Izu peninsula, and Hakodate, on the southern tip of Hokkaido.

The treaty also guaranteed the safety of American castaways and provided for an American consul to be stationed in Japan. It was signed in the first year of the Genji era (元治, げんじ), during the Edo period.

Background

For more than two centuries, the Tokugawa shogunate had restricted foreign contact to a narrow set of channels: Dutch and Chinese traders at Nagasaki, Korean and Ryukyuan embassies, and limited contact with the Ainu and with Satsuma domain's holdings in the Ryukyu Islands. Japanese subjects were forbidden to leave the country, and most foreigners were forbidden to enter it.

That system was tested in 1853, when Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Edo Bay with a squadron of American warships and demanded that Japan open its ports. Perry's expedition — the Perry Expedition, as it is usually called — returned the following year with a larger force, and the shogunate, aware that its coastal defences could not resist modern naval artillery, agreed to negotiate. The resulting Convention of Kanagawa was signed on 31 March 1854. The treaty was named after Kanagawa-juku, the post town on the Tōkaidō road where the negotiations took place.

Why It Mattered

The Convention of Kanagawa is conventionally treated as the end of sakoku. By opening Shimoda and Hakodate to American ships and permitting an American consul to reside in Japan, it broke the shogunate's monopoly on foreign relations and set a precedent that other Western powers were quick to follow. Britain, Russia and the Netherlands concluded similar agreements with Japan within a few years.

The treaty also had consequences inside Japan. The shogunate's decision to sign under military threat was widely criticised by domains that favoured expelling foreigners, and the dispute over how to respond to the West became one of the central political conflicts of the late Edo period. That conflict fed directly into the upheavals of the 1860s and the eventual collapse of the shogunate in 1868.

The Name in Japanese

The treaty's Japanese name is 日米和親条約, read にちべいわしんじょうやく (Nichibei Washin Jōyaku). It is also known more briefly as 神奈川条約 (Kanagawa Jōyaku), the "Kanagawa Treaty".

The name breaks down into five kanji compounds and a final word:

• 日 (にち, nichi) — "Japan". Here it is an abbreviation of 日本 (Nihon), used as the first element of a compound naming a bilateral relationship.
• 米 (べい, bei) — "America". This is not the character's usual meaning of "rice"; it is a conventional abbreviation of 亜米利加 (Amerika), an ateji spelling of "America" that was later shortened to the single character 米. The same convention appears in 日米関係 (Nichibei kankei, "Japan–US relations").
• 和親 (わしん, washin) — "peace and amity". 和 (わ, wa) means "peace" or "harmony"; 親 (しん, shin) means "close", "intimate" or "friendly". Together the pair describes a relationship of friendly peace rather than a full alliance.
• 条約 (じょうやく, jōyaku) — "treaty". 条 (じょう, jō) means "article" or "clause"; 約 (やく, yaku) means "agreement" or "promise". A 条約 is literally an agreement made up of articles.

So the whole name means, roughly, "Japan–United States Treaty of Peace and Amity" — a title that stresses friendship rather than the unequal terms and the gunboat diplomacy that produced it. The English name "Convention of Kanagawa" instead takes its label from the place of signing, which is why the two names look so different despite referring to the same document.

Key Figures

Matthew Perry commanded the United States naval expedition that forced the negotiations. His squadron's arrival in Edo Bay in 1853 and his return in 1854 created the pressure under which the treaty was signed.

Tokugawa Iesada was shogun at the time of the signing, though effective decision-making lay with senior shogunate officials, who concluded that resistance to Perry's squadron was not militarily viable.

Hayashi Akira led the shogunate's delegation in the negotiations with the American side. The talks took place at Kanagawa-juku, the post town that gave the treaty its English name.