The crowd assembled in the parking lot of Shimoda Community Hall is a motley crew of spectators from far and near, Edo Period (1603-1868) samurai and geisha, and a small band of Star Wars stormtroopers led by series’ villain Kylo Ren. When the U.S. Navy 7th Fleet Band takes the stage with a raucous jazz performance, the crowd of locals, foreign residents and overseas visitors breaks into enthusiastic applause.
It’s a festive atmosphere for an undeniably odd cause: The Black Ship Festival celebrates Japan’s near-complete military and political capitulation to the United States.
In 1853, U.S. Commodore Matthew Perry arrived in Tokyo Bay with four coal-fired, black smoke-belching warships, a show of gunboat diplomacy meant to threaten the Tokugawa shogunate with mass destruction if it did not open trade relations with the U.S. and change its policy of self-imposed national isolation known as “sakoku” that had been in effect for 220 years. After giving the shogunate until the following year to make a decision, Perry returned with 10 ships and 1,600 soldiers, landing at Yokohama, where the Convention of Kanagawa was signed.
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