Yamato Dynasty

The future Meiji emperor was only eight months old in July 1853 when four large, black-hulled American Navy ships appeared off the entrance to what is now called Tokyo Bay. Two of the heavily gunned warships were steam-powered, spewing smoke and terrifying onlookers. Commanding the squadron was Commodore Matthew Perry, carrying a letter to the Tokugawa shogun from the president of the United States asking Japan to establish commercial and diplomatic relations. For centuries, Japan had been closed to foreigners. Past shoguns had distrusted Western traders and regarded Christian missionaries as subversives who encouraged opposition to the military regime. All Westerners were expelled except a few merchants restricted to a man-made island in the port of Nagasaki. Contact with the outside world became illegal, and Western ships were turned away from Japanese harbors. Commodore Perry refused to be diverted, however, and demanded that the president's letter be accepted by an official representative of the shogun. After six days of tense confrontation, the Japanese complied and Perry delivered his letter, adding that he expected a positive answer the coming year, when he would return with a larger squadron. To drive his point home he steamed his black ships directly across the bay toward the shogun's capital. Expecting bombardment, people panicked. Savoring the moment, Perry turned and sailed away. In his wake he left Japan in crisis, climaxing fifteen years later with the overthrow of the shogun, the restoration of an ancient monarchy after eight centuries in eclipse, and a teenage Meiji emperor on the throne. The Meiji Restoration was followed by other dramatic changes, and in only a few decades Japan was transformed into a world power, today the second biggest economic force on the planet. But in Japan things are rarely what they seem--powerful mythology hides what is really going on. After making a great public display of restoring the emperor to power, the new state obliged the emperor and the imperial family to resume their deep seclusion, hidden by a screen of ritual, protocol and mystification. As one of Meiji's grandsons exclaimed, they are like "caged birds." Japan might be liberated from centuries of feudal samurai dictatorship, and be thoroughly modern in most other respects, but the Sons of Heaven, and heaven's daughters, remain hostages of the past. Keeping hostages for long periods is a venerable tradition in Asia. What better than to hold the gods themselves captive. This is not just a turn of phrase. For eight centuries Japan's emperors were kept hostage by military regimes, and defiant emperors were roughly treated. Plots to capture the emperor were central to the overthrow of the shogun in 1868. Once young Meiji was on the throne, he remained in effect a political prisoner to prevent any countercoup by rival forces. And for other important reasons. On the surface Japan seems to be a passive society devoted to loyalty and consensus. But underneath it is a power country. Treachery, so common throughout its history, made loyalty admired precisely because it is so rare and beautiful. Consensus is idealized, because everyone cheats or colludes behind the scenes. In such a corrupt situation, an icon of divine purity is handy to solve power struggles. As the Son of Heaven, directly descended from mythic gods, and as chief priest and embodiment of all supernatural qualities in the national religion, Shinto, the emperor provides that divine icon. In the past, Japanese strongmen who held the emperor hostage claimed that they derived their office from the throne (meaning from the gods). Anyone who challenged their rule was not only treasonous but blasphemous, deserving terrible punishment. Out of this grew a mythic tradition and a double standard that keep most Japanese submissive and silent even today. Given the fact that they were gods, it is astonishing how badly the Yamato emSeagrave, Sterling is the author of 'Yamato Dynasty' with ISBN 9780767904964 and ISBN 0767904966.