Perry Expedition
Commodore Perry's four-ship squadron arrives off Uraga in Edo Bay
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Original prompt & settings (JSON) ↗The first message from the Japanese boats amounted to "leave." Perry stayed at anchor and refused to meet any official he considered too junior.
8 July 1853, off Uraga
Perry's squadron anchored off Uraga, near the entrance to Edo Bay, on the afternoon of 8 July 1853: the steamers Susquehanna and Mississippi and the sailing sloops Plymouth and Saratoga.
Japanese boats approached and signalled that the ships should leave. The Americans remained at anchor while Perry insisted that an appropriately senior official receive his documents.
He had chosen Edo Bay so that the request could not simply be redirected through the established Nagasaki channel.
What the letter asked for
Perry announced that he had brought a letter from President Millard Fillmore seeking friendship and commercial relations, along with protection for castaways and access to coal and supplies — one paragraph was devoted specifically to somewhere Pacific steamships could buy coal.
The letter proposed commercial intercourse rather than demanding a trade treaty; Perry's own language and military posture were considerably more coercive than the document he carried.
On 9 July the four warships were placed in a line bearing directly on Uraga.
Delivery came six days later
The letter was not ceremonially delivered on the day of arrival. The Uraga magistrates Toda Ujiyoshi and Ido Hiromichi accepted it at Kurihama on 14 July.
The expedition eyewitness William Speiden put the Japanese personnel present at about 6,000; Perry landed an armed shore party of about 300.
The squadron left on 17 July, after Perry announced that he would return for a reply.
Sources
Researched 24 Aug 2026 6 sources not yet audited
How this was checked
Researched from the web into a fact sheet and rewritten from that sheet. This article has not yet had an independent model audit. How the pipeline works →
What the sources leave uncertain
- July 8 is the Gregorian date; the Japanese date was Kaei 6, sixth month, third day.
- Sources sometimes compress the arrival, landing and delivery into one event. They occurred on July 8, July 14 and July 14 respectively.
Checked against
- Official U.S. correspondence concerning Perry's first visit
- William Speiden Journals — Library of Congress timeline
- Modern Japan in Archives — National Diet Library of Japan
- Fillmore and Perry letters — Brown University Library
- The United States and the Opening to Japan — Office of the Historian
- Treaty of Kanagawa — U.S. National Archives