All this sounds very academic, and it was. But it was also an existential adventure. In the courtyard we saw a Tabunoki Tree. They call this tree the last living witness to the signing of the treaty. Supposedly, after the great Kanto earthquake and the subsequent fires, this tree grew from the roots of the one standing in the same spot in 1854.
Me in front of the Tabunoki Tree in the courtyard.
Inside the museum, I got that Scooby-Doo-esque sensation that the reflection in the mirror wasn't mine, but someone else, aping my movements. It was disconcerting to see a time line listing China's Opium wars and the American Civil war as events that kept other countries from seeking trade relationships with Japan. One wall displayed a series of portraits of Commodore Perry, the U.S. Naval Officer who landed in Yokohama in 1854 and helped to open the ports of Japan.
One picture was an actual portrait of Perry from the Illustrated London News. The others were artist renditions of Perry, mostly drawn by people who had never seen him or a picture of him in their lives. There was one of him holding a Samurai sword, another of him with the long nose of a tengu, or heavenly dog. Only one of the six artist renditions looked anything like the actual man, and there was that using-someone-elses-mirror feeling again.
Exhibit after exhibit, I saw bits of American history skimmed through a filter of how they affected Japan.
In Scooby-Doo cartoons, the monster mimics someone, usually Shaggy, so well that he almost begins to wonder if that really is what he looks like after all. I wondered what the Americans who landed in Japan thought of the drawings and sketches showing the foreigners at work, at play, in foreign costume, eating foreign food, drinking foreign drinks, and living in strange houses like none the Japanese had ever seen.
Grant walking on a Yokohama survey map from 1881.I leave you today with a quote from Drew Carey, “I see my face in the mirror and go, 'I'm a Halloween costume? That's what they think of me?”
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