Convention of Kanagawa

Twelve articles at Kanagawa

At Kanagawa on 31 March 1854, Matthew C. Perry and commissioners of the Tokugawa shogunate concluded the Treaty of Peace and Amity, the first treaty between the United States and Japan. Hayashi Akira led the Japanese delegation named in the document.

Its twelve articles established peace and amity and granted American vessels access to Shimoda immediately, and to Hakodate in the following Japanese year, for wood, water, provisions, coal and other necessities.

Castaways, a consul, and whatever the next nation got

Japan undertook to assist shipwrecked American vessels, convey their crews to Shimoda or Hakodate, and restore saved property — and to stop confining shipwrecked Americans merely because they were foreigners.

The treaty allowed the appointment of a United States consul or agent at Shimoda after eighteen months. It also granted the United States any additional privileges Japan might later grant to another nation.

Not the commercial treaty Perry wanted

The convention was not a commercial agreement and did not guarantee a general American right to trade. Port access was for supplies under Japanese control; the broad commercial relationship came with Townsend Harris's Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1858.

The surviving English instrument carries Perry's signature but no Japanese signatures: the commissioners would not sign a document written in a foreign language, so separately executed versions were used.

Describing the day as the immediate end of total national isolation overstates both the treaty's terms and what preceded it — Tokugawa foreign relations were tightly controlled rather than nonexistent.