By Bob Krauss
Advertiser Columnist

I would give a year's salary to have been able to cover Commodore Matthew Perry's arrival at Yokohama in 1854 when he opened up Japan after 250 years of isolation. The next best thing is the traveling exhibit in John A. Burns Hall at the East-West Center.

It's called "Black Ships and Samurai; Commodore Perry and the Opening of Japan." The exhibit is open through Sunday.

Talk about culture shock on both sides. Perry's expedition was supposed to "carry the Gospel of God to the Heathens." Japanese artists depicted Perry as a "hairy barbarian." The government gave him cheap gifts because the shogun knew Americans didn't appreciate quality.

Picture the scene: Perry's troops in formation on the shore, the masts of his ships prickling the horizon. The shogun's elaborately robed officials waiting at the royal pavilion, a thousand restless samurai hoping for an excuse to fight.

It's fascinating to compare photographs of Perry with the way Japanese artists depicted him. In the photographs he's heroic. In Japanese woodblock prints he's sullen, scowling. And it rapidly got worse, according to Shigeru Miyagawa, professor of Japanese language and culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Miyagawa, co-creator of the exhibit, said Perry didn't help by secluding himself in his cabin to appear imperial. Japanese artists couldn't see him so they made him up.

"The newspapers of the day were sheets of cheap paper printed on both sides, called kawaraban, for the common people," Miyagawa explained. "Probably within a week the artists transformed Perry into a hairy, demonic character."

For me the most delightful part of the exhibit is a 30-foot-long scroll from the Honolulu Academy of Arts that was collected from a Perry descendant by Mrs. Walter F. Dillingham. The scroll depicts activities at Shimoda where the expedition visited after the treaty was signed at Yokohama.

"In Shimoda, the Americans mingled with the Japanese people," said Miyagawa. "It became one of the treaty ports."

An "unknown Japanese artist" painted the scroll. Miyagawa said he doesn't know for what purpose it was done or for what audience it was intended. It's the best reporting on the visit in the exhibit, like an old Japanese woman giggling while two sailors take a turn hulling her rice and two more do a drunken dance.

The artists shows American sailors fishing with a lu'au net. He drew Perry's young German artist, William Heine, sketching scenes of Japan on the beach. There's a sea turtle being butchered. The calligraphy says it was served with eggs and sugar by Perry at a banquet for Japanese guests. Only a few refused to eat.

One Japanese answer to American firepower was sumo wrestlers. Miyagawa said kawaraban artists depicted a wrestler throwing Matthew Perry. But it never happened.

Reach Bob Krauss at 525-8073.