 After its defeat and economic collapse after the war, Japan's economy recovered in the 1950s with the post-war economic miracle in which ushered in three decades of unprecedented growth and propelled the country into the world's second-largest economy by the 1980s only to experience an economic slowdown during the 1990s, but Japan nonetheless continues to remain a global economic power.In 1853, an American fleet led by US Commodore Matthew C. Perry appeared off the Japanese coast.Faced with the threat of invasion, Japan was forced to cast aside global isolation, and opened up to Western trade.