Japanese residents re-enact Edo Period Japan while sailors from the USS McCampbell march in the Black Ship Festival in Shimoda, Japan, on Saturday. McCampbell represented the U.S. Navy in the festival, which commemorated the 1854 landing of Commodore Matthew Perry and his crew at Shimoda and the subsequent opening of trade between Japan and the West. (Nicholas Schaaf/Courtesy of the U.S. Navy)
A lot has changed in 155 years.
Japan was an isolated country that refused trade and relations with outsiders when U.S. Navy Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed here in 1854.
Perry negotiated an agreement that year with the Japanese to open the ports of Shimoda and Hakodate near Tokyo — a move that led to trade between the two nations and set the wheels of history in motion, according to the U.S. Naval Historical Center.
Japan and the United States are now the world’s top economies, maintain a deep military relationship and share the history of World War II.
Each year for the past seven decades, that initial treaty and Perry’s landing in Japan — the start of that long and sometimes rocky relationship — is revisited at the port of Shimoda during the Black Ship Festival.
Over the weekend, a destroyer from Yokosuka Naval Base was part of this year’s festival in southwest Kanagawa Prefecture, the U.S. Navy said.
The USS McCampbell was opened for tours by Japanese officials and its crew participated in ceremonies and sporting events Friday through Sunday, the ship said in a news release.
About 60 McCampbell sailors went to Shimoda Elementary School to visit Japanese students and see the school’s specially prepared presentations.
On Saturday, sailors paraded down Shimoda’s streets and hundreds of citizens came to see the U.S. 7th Fleet band and Yokosuka’s Nile C. Kinnick High School Junior Reserve Officers’ Training Corps Drill Team march in the parade.
