Abstract
By the second half of the nineteenth century Britain believed that as a mature industrial economy, she required the stimulus of further demand for her manufactured goods from ever wider markets. Lord Clarendon, the Foreign Secretary, in writing to Lord Elgin prior to his departure for the Far East, recognised the importance of trade, writing ‘the object to be kept in view by your Excellency is to establish commercial relations with Japan … We desire no exclusive advantage … are anxious that other countries should reap the full benefit of our exertions for the promotion of civilization and commerce.’1 The attitudes expressed here accord ill with the actual behaviour of British merchants in the Far East.
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Notes and References
The comments of William Rathbone V (about business in China) could also apply to trade with Japan. Rathbone wrote ‘an untried business, entered into recklessly and ignorantly, and sure therefore to be overdone at first, ending in heavy losses, taking time to weed out the unknowing and imprudent’. See S. G. Checkland, ‘An English Merchant House in China after 1842’, Bulletin of the Business Historical Society, vol. XXVII, September 1953, no. 3, pp. 158–89.
J. McMaster, Jardines in Japan, 1966, p. 9.
See H. S. Williams, Foreigners in Mikado Land, Tokyo, 1963.
E. M. Satow, A Diplomat in Japan, 1921, p. 25.
See J. P. Mollison, ‘Reminiscences of Yokohama’, Lecture to Yokohama Literary and Musical Society, 8 January 1909 (copy in Yokohama Archives of History).
G. A. Lensen, Korea and Manchuria… Observations of Sir Ernest Satow, 1966, p. 181.
Marcus Flowers, Consular Report, 1868, Accounts and Papers, Manufacturers, Commerce, China, Coal, vol. XIX, p. 1014.
See D. A. Farnie, The English Cotton Industry, Oxford, 1979.
T. Hayashi, ‘The Automatic Loom and the Automobile’, Entrepreneurship, no. 5, March 1983, pp. 8–15.
Osborn’s account reads: By the old laws of the Japanese Empire, the exportation of their currency, whether gold, silver or copper, is strictly prohibited and to ensure it, no European is allowed to possess native coin. The difficulty therefore of purchasing would be great upon that ground alone; but in addition to this rule, another exists, by which the natives are forbidden to receive our coins either. For a while it seemed there must be a deadlock in the market, but it was explained to us that a government bank existed in the bazaar, where we could obtain paper currency (available only in Nagasaki) in exchange for our dollars. From that bank we came out with bundles of very simple-looking strips of cardboard covered with cabalistic signs, indicative of their value, in lieu of the silver we had given … With these Japanese banknotes we paid the tradesmen, whom no amount of persuasion could induce to receive silver; and they again had to present them at the bank and receive the amount in the metallic currency of the country, paying of course a handsome tax for the honour of selling to foreigners (S. Osborn, A Cruise in Japanese Waters, 1859, pp. 43–4).
T. Hamashita, ‘A History of the Japanese Silver Yen’, in F. H. H. King (ed.) Eastern Banking, pp. 321–49; the London branch of the Yokohama Specie Bank opened in 1884.
See P. Kauch, La Banque Nationale de Belgique, 1850–1918 (Brussels, 1950), published by the National Bank of Belgium, p. 82, ‘en 1850, la Banque Nationale se présentait réelement comme le modile le plus parfait de banque d’émission sur le continent’. See also p. 327, note 161, ‘Voir les declarations du ministre des finances du Japon, comte Matsukata, lors de la réforme monétaire du Japon en 1881’. ‘In point of the perfectness of organisation and the well-regulated conditions of business management, the National Bank of Belgium stands highest’; my thanks to Hermann van der Wee. See also The Centennial History of the Bank of Japan, 1982, and
K. Ishii, ‘Establishment of the Bank of Japan and the Japanese Industrial Revolution’, unpublished paper, 1986.
See S. G. Checkland review of F. H. H. King, Eastern Banking and G. C. Allan, Appointment in Japan, TLS, 30 March 1984, p. 330.
See H. Mui, The Management of Monopoly, 1984.
Gen-ichiro Fukuchi, a well-known Shogunate official stationed at Yokohama, reported that: In those early days of port-opening everyone was groping in the dark, for no one was any wiser than anyone else about how to proceed. In Yokohama the two thoroughfares Honcho and Bentendori were lined with shops displaying in a haphazard manner, lacquer-ware, porcelain, copperware, fancy goods, piece goods, and what-not somewhat in the manner of a bazaar today. In this respect foreign merchants fared no better. They had a foreign bazaar where woollen and worsted fabrics, woollen and cotton mixed goods and haberdashery were all on view, so as to get a line on Japanese taste in merchandise (Anon., Foreign Trade in Japan, Tokyo, 1975, p. 14).
S. Okuma, ‘The Industrial Revolution of Japan’, North American Review, vol. CLXXI, 1900, p. 678 and p. 683.
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© 1989 Olive Checkland
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Checkland, O. (1989). Traders and Bankers. In: Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-349-10609-7_2
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