The miracle is no blood was shed. On the contrary, the Americans and the Japanese rather liked each other. That too is something of a miracle.
They met under strained circumstances, one party menacing, the other defenseless. And they had so little in common, these two civilizations from opposite ends of the Earth -- the one young, open, expansive, confident; the other the opposite. One society's civilization was the other's barbarism; one's good, the other's evil. Official Japan wanted no part of what America had to offer. But America was not taking "no" for an answer.
The "Black Ships of evil mien" steamed into Edo Bay on Feb. 13, 1854, the very picture of a force not to be defied. When defiance is unthinkable prevarication must serve, and the cornered Japanese, steeped in Confucian formality, were masters at it. A less patient invader than Commodore Matthew Perry might have succumbed to bellicose frustration. A veteran naval officer and seasoned diplomat, Perry was 59 when he undertook the mission to open Japan to American trade. He would use force if necessary, but preferred not to. "With people of forms," he wrote in an official dispatch, "it is necessary . . . to out-Herod Herod in assumed personal consequence and ostentation.