In Yokohama earlier this week I sat beneath the Tamakusu, the tree that stood beside the site where Commodore Perry and the Japanese commissioners negotiated the 1854 Treaty of Kanagawa.
Pilgrimage seems too grand (and loaded) a word for this easy day trip from Tokyo — but when, for the first time, you find yourself within touching distance of the history that animates Pacific Overtures, you have to take that train, don’t you?
The boy watching from the branches in “Someone in a Tree”, the “someone” of the title, is a beautiful invention. But the tree itself — this tree, at least — really did bear witness to the history that imagined boy relates. This particular tree, already growing, was here when Perry came ashore. Nearly two centuries on, it continues to grow. I am here still, it seems to say.
The Tamakusu stands today in the courtyard of the Yokohama Archives of History, on the site of the former British Consulate. It spreads its canopy wide, predating all that now surrounds it. We can see the tree in contemporary depictions of Perry’s landing at Yokohama. Look at the famous lithograph below, after a drawing by Wilhelm Heine, who accompanied Perry’s expedition to Japan. The Americans process towards the treaty site, the Japanese officials wait to receive them. Off to one side, a great tree completes the scene.
The tree in whose shade I sat has a remarkable history of its own.