They built a pavilion for the occasion. The Tokugawa hollyhock crest hung over the entrance — an assertion of sovereign dignity in the very act of receiving a foreign ultimatum. Thousands of samurai and soldiers stood in formation along the beach at Kurihama, swords at their sides and absolutely nothing they could do with them.

At approximately ten in the morning on July 14, 1853, Commodore Matthew Perry came ashore from the USS Susquehanna with 250 sailors and Marines in fifteen ships' boats. A military band played "Hail Columbia" on the beach of a country sealed to foreigners for two centuries. To the roll of drums and a 13-gun salute, Perry presented a rosewood box lined in velvet containing a letter from President Millard Fillmore — demanding open ports, coaling stations, and the protection of shipwrecked American sailors. The ceremony was elaborate and the threat was absolute.

The shogunate had staged the 上陸 (jōriku) — the landing — as carefully as it could manage. The officials sent to receive the letter were mid-ranking hatamoto, not senior daimyo, a deliberate choice to avoid the appearance of elevating a foreign demand to an official state negotiation. One of them, Toda Ujiyoshi, had reportedly been given a hasty nominal promotion to daimyo rank the very day before, specifically because Perry had demanded a sufficiently senior official. The promotion solved the protocol problem without requiring the shogunate to send anyone who truly mattered.

Perry had previously warned that if no official appeared at Kurihama, he would sail his squadron directly up the bay and deliver the letter at Edo itself. The shogunate had capitulated to this threat before a single shot was fired. The four black-hulled ships anchored offshore — their steam engines giving them the terrifying ability to move without wind — represented a kind of military force Japan had no answer for.

After the ceremony, Perry departed for Hong Kong, promising to return within a year for the shogunate's reply. He came back in February 1854 with eight warships instead of four. The Convention of Kanagawa was signed the following month, granting virtually every American demand. The era of 鎖国 (sakoku) — national seclusion — was over. The era of reckoning had begun.