Who opened Japan to trade?

Answer 1

Commodore Matthew Calbraith Perry, USN in 1854. -- not true and a common misconception. Perry's primary missions were to help American shipwrecked whalers and to establish supply ports to get to China and elsewhere more easily. He was instructed to open trade if he could, but he fell short. He did establish a person that would have the authority to discuss trade at a later date (something that was left out of the Japanese translation, actually...). Townsend Harris was the man who negotiated the Treaty of Amity and Commerce several years after Perry. Honestly. Perry was fairly inconsequential, even in terms of technology revealed, since most of the important people of the time were well aware of western technology due to trade through the Ryukyus, who had extensive trade with China, which had just lost the Opium Wars to the western nation of Britain.