In 1853, less than eight years after Texas joined the Union, Commodore Matthew C. Perry sailed a fleet of four American warships into Edo Bay (now Tokyo). This ended more than two centuries of Japanese self-isolation from the rest of the world. His actions also led to the beginning, less than two decades later, of Japanese emigration to the United States. By the 1900s a few Japanese had even settled in the Lone Star State, thus laying claim to the title of “ first Japanese Texans.”