The opening of Japan.

The drama and historical significance of Commander Matthew Calbraith Perry's entrance into Edo (now Tokyo) Bay in 1853, some two centuries after Japan had become isolated, has overshadowed the fact that in the interim American whaling ships did land on Japanese shores, albeit infrequently and always uninvited. While foreigners were for the most part banned from Japan, a few Chinese and Korean vessels and one Dutch ship were permitted to dock at Nagasaki each year.

This year marks the 150th anniversary of the opening of Japan to the West with the signing of the Treaty of Kanagawa. An exhibition organized to celebrate this event concentrates on the maritime industries that brought Americans to Japan, namely whaling, and on Manjiro, said to be the first Japanese-born individual to live in the United States. The show, entitled Pacific Encounters: Yankee Whalers, Manjiro, and the Opening of Japan is on view at the New Bedford Whaling Museum in Massachusetts until April 2005 and includes some fifty objects associated with whaling and Manjiro.

Manjiro, called John Mungero or Mung in this country, is referred to in Japan as the man who discovered America. In fact in 1841, when he was fourteen, he and four men were rescued on a Pacific island by William Whitfield, the captain of the whaler John Howland. The four older men disembarked in Hawaii, but Manjiro continued on to Fairhaven, Massachusetts, at Whitfield's invitation. Once in the United ...