Millard Fillmore, 1800-1874; Matthew Perry, 1794-1858
• Commodore Perry and Japan (1853-1854)
On July 8, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry of the United States Navy, commanding a squadron of two steamers and two sailing vessels, sailed into Tôkyô harbor aboard the frigate Susquehanna and forced Japan to enter into trade with the United States. This unit examines that historical exchange with an introductory essay and an examination of the three letters that President Fillmore and Commodore Perry wrote to the Japanese emperor [PDF].

• Excerpts from the Letter from Emperor Meiji (Mutsuhito) to President Ulysses S. Grant, on the Iwakura Mission, 1871
"In 1871, the fledgling Meiji government dispatched a mission [the Iwakura Mission] of almost fifty high officials and scholars to travel around the world, including extended tours of the United States... The leaders of the mission also attempted to begin the renegotiation of the 'unequal treaties' — the exploitative diplomatic and economic agreements imposed by the Western powers on Japan in the 1850s... This letter from the Emperor Meiji was presented to U.S. President Ulysses S. Grant when the Iwakura Mission visited Washington, D.C."

Codes of Merchant Houses, Late Tokugawa Period

• Codes of Merchant Houses: The Code of the Okaya House (1836) [PDF]
"Although merchants were accorded low social status in the Tokugawa order and the Confucian orthodoxy of the time, commerce thrived in early modern Japan. ... The Okaya house was based in Nagoya in central Japan and had its origins trading in hardware. This code was written by Okaya Sanezumi, under whose leadership the house prospered, in 1836."

1900 - 1950

Nationalism and Propaganda

• Kokutai no hongi (Fundamentals of Our National Polity), 1937 [PDF]

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905); World War I and Its Aftermath

• The Treaty of Portsmouth (1905)

Okuma Shigenobu, 1838-1922
• "Illusions of the White Race" (1921) [PDF]

Japan and World War II; The Atomic Bomb; Allied/American Occupation of Japan

Nagai Ryutaro, 1881-1944
• "Some Questions for President Roosevelt" (1939) [PDF]

• Japanese Ambassador Hiroshi Saito on the Conflict in the Far East [PDF]

• The Atomic Bomb
Background reading discussing some of the events that preceded the U.S. dropping of the atomic bomb and presenting some of the questions left about the necessity and results of the bombing. With three primary source documents with document-based questions [Report of the Interim Committee on the Military Use of the Atomic Bomb (May 1945) [PDF]; Report of the Franck Committee on the Social and Political Implications of a Demonstration of the Atomic Bomb (For a Non-Combat Demonstration) (June 1945) [PDF]; The Potsdam Declaration (July 26, 1945) [PDF]], plus activities for students.

• "The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb," by Henry Lewis Stimson (February 1947) [PDF]

• The Constitution of Japan (1947) [PDF]

1950 - 2000

Japan's Postwar Military Policy

• Article 9 and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty
Both Article 9 of the Japanese Constitution [PDF], which prohibits Japan from maintaining military forces for settlement of international disputes, and the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty, which allows the U.S. military to maintain bases on Japanese soil, have been at the center of controversy both in Japan and the United States. This unit includes an essay that explores the changing attitudes towards these two agreements, as well as two primary-source readings: the U.S.-Japan Security Treaty of 1951 [PDF] and the revised security treaty of 1960 [PDF]. With discussion questions for students.

Literature: Kawabata Yasunari (1889-1972)

• "The Pomegranate," by Kawabata Yasunari

Primary Sources with DBQs—Japan

4000 - 1000 BCE

Origin Myths in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki

1000 BCE - 300 CE

Origin Myths in the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki

Women Rulers: Pimiko, the Queen of Wa

600 - 1000

Buddhism in Japan

Remaking the Japanese Government after the Chinese Model

Literature

1000 - 1450

New Sects in Buddhism

Government: Maintaining Order during Times of Political Transition

War Tales: The Tale of the Heike

Military: The Northern Song Defeated by the Jurchen Jin

Literature: Chômei and Kenkô

1450 - 1750

The Government of the Tokugawa Shôgunate

Social Hierarchy under the Tokugawa Shôgunate

The Samurai Class

The Merchant Class

Women

Literature: Comic Novels, Comic Verse; Poetry of Matsuo Bashô; Drama

1750 - 1919

Reflections on Encounters with "the West" and Japan's Modernization

The Meiji Government

Russo-Japanese War (1904-1905)

U.S. Forces Japan to "Open" Its Ports