A tack on question:

What was the Japanese perception on evolution/biology/natural sciences prior to the open door policy? How much of that perception was based around religion in particular?

While we wait for a qualified historian of Japan, I'll chime in. In the wake of the opening of Japan and the Meiji Restoration in the mid-nineteenth century, young scholars began to study at European and American colleges. While there they embraced what they considered the best of European thought. In philosophy, this usually meant Kant and Hegel; in political and social thought: Comte, Spencer, and Mill; and in natural science: Darwin and Huxley. These scholars returned to Japan and formed the backbone of the new Japanese educational system.

I don't know the full reception history of evolution in Japan. But I do know that Darwin's Descent of Man was first translated into Japanese in 1881, and a Japanese translation of The Origin of Species followed in 1896.

Finally, while on a research trip in 1877, a Harvard zoology student, Edward Morse, gave the first public lecture on Darwin and Evolution in Japan. The lectures were apparently warmly received his academic audience.

For sources, see:

1. Alfonso M. Nebreda, "The Legacy of the West. The Japanese University Student Confronts Religion. Part II," Monumenta Nipponica, Vol. 20, No. 3/4 (1965), pp. 298-318. JSTOR link.
2. John van Wyhe, "Darwin in Translation: Japanese," The American Philosophical Society website.
3. Benjamin Duke, The History of Modern Japanese Education: Constructing the National School System, 1872-1890 (Rutgers University Press, 2014), 233-6.