How did the U.S. expedition team communicate with the Japanese people? | AskHistorians Archive Observer

How did the U.S. expedition team communicate with the Japanese people?

by tomanonimos

I am talking in context of when Japan closed their borders and U.S. ships came and forced Japan to open their borders again.

My assumptions are that no one in the U.S. expedition knew Japanese and the Japanese knew little to no English before this event.

khosikulu

Start with this thread. Others may have more to add, but it's important to point out that Japanese had some access to European languages even if their visitors didn't know languages of the region that more Japanese knew. So it rarely required more than one intermediary.