By Angela Yon

Japan experienced isolation from the rest of the world for over 200 years since the 17th century under the Tokugawa period (1603-1867). Any impressions Americans may have created about Japan in the early 19th century would have come indirectly from China or Holland, countries that had limited interaction with the Japanese. United States Commodore Matthew Perry’s 1853 expedition to Japan ended the country’s isolation. Perry threatened the Tokogawa Shogunate into a trade agreement with the threat of a naval attack on the port city Nagasaki. The Japanese, due to their years of isolation, had no navy with which to defend themselves, and were forced to agree to the demands of the United States. In 1854, under the Treaty of Kanagawa, Japan permitted trade and opened Japanese ports to merchant ships. Shortly after, Japan had trade treaties with Britain, Holland Russia and France in 1858.

In both North America and Northern Europe, after the treaties of the 19th century that ended Japanese isolation, there began a fascination in all things Japanese. The opening of the ports fostered an active market in screens, fans, vases, kimonos and other Japanese goods.

Few Americans had a clear understanding of Japanese culture just as Japonisme (note - an aesthetic movement that embraced Japanese culture for its artistic value, French term coined in the late nineteenth century to describe the craze for Japanese art and design in the West) began to draw American popular attention. Americans perceived Japan through the lens of Japonisme and Japonaiserie (note - a style in art reflecting Japanese qualities or motifs, also : an object or decoration in this style).

Similarly to the Chinese, Americans' view about Japan and the Japanese came from their commodification and feelings on Japanese decorative arts and objects. Aristocrats enjoyed Japanese ceramics during Japan’s period of isolation, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. But a full-fledged Japan craze for Japanese arts and crafts such as prints, pottery, bronzes, china, fans, silks, swords, parasols, and kimonos, increased by Japan’s opening to the West in 1853 and exhibitions at world fairs in Paris, London, and Philadelphia.

Japonisme flourished in both academic and commercial circuits. These Japanese goods had a particularly profound impact on the arts.  Most famously is the impact on European artists and the Impressionism movement. Image - painting by monet white lady in Japanese clothes

“Everyone was going to the famous Paris Exposition- I, too, was gong to the Paris Exposition…If I met a dozen individuals…who were not going to Europe shortly, I have no distinct remembrance of it now.” – Mark Twain, 1867

The Exposition Universelle in the summer of 1867 was a showcase for international progress. It attracted over ten million people from around the world, from royalty to common citizens. While not officially part of the Exposition, Professor Risley’s Imperial Japanese Troupe arrived to perform for the same audience. Coinciding with the beginnings of the Japonisme movement, Japanese acrobats introduced themselves to the American and European audience. The opening of the ports allowed Japanese commoners to travel overseas and view the West for the first time, and ordinary Europeans and Americans to gawk at “exotic” performers from the East. Japanese performers brought a new spectacle diversity to circuses, variety shows and theater.

Japanese acrobat troupes from Japan grew very popular in circuses and variety shows in the 1860s. Blackface minstrelsy was quick to capitalize on the popularity of Japanese acrobatics, either adding actual Japanese troupes or performed by their blackface imitators to the minstrel performance. Minstrel companies advertised this new act as “jap-oh-knees”, “The Flying Black Japs” or the single word “Jap.” Musical (Japanese fiddle) and dance numbers were also popular; the addition of Japanese racial performances incorporated well into the loose structure of blackface minstrelsy.

Thomas Dilward  (1842-1887) was an actor initially known as Little Tommy in minstrel shows. With the popularity of Japonisme, he took the name Japanese Tommy. He was said to be of Native American and African American ancestry. Dilworth was best known for his acrobatic tumbling, burlesques, singing, dancing and playing the violin. He took his name referencing Tateishi Onojirō Noriyuki, a popular young interpreter who was a member of the Japanese diplomatic embassy that had come to the United States in 1860  to ratify the first commercial treaty between the two nations. Newspapers typically reported on the Japanese visitors, and especially on Tateishi, who had been called “Tommy” by American sailors on his incoming voyage and then by white women who were admirers. “Japanese Tommy” performed in acts such as the “Japanese Ballet,” with slapstick and humor. Dilworth performed with white minstrel troupes before the Civil War. He is only one of two African American men to perform with a white troupe. John Russell Bartlett's 1877 Dictionary of Americanisms credits him with inventing the word hunky-dory, meaning "everything is all right."