Abstract
Although Britain’s contacts with Japan stretched back to the last years of Elizabeth I’s reign, they had made little impact on either government or commercial thinking until the nineteenth century. Memories of the relative poorness of early trade did not incline either merchants or governments to push very hard for its resumption, even though the steady growth of the China trade in the eighteenth century brought Britain ever closer to Japan. Japan was seen as an even more remote and even more difficult market than China, and while for Americans it seemed a logical stepping stone to China, for the British, it was on the road to nowhere.
This essay was presented at the Anglo-Japanese History project Workshop held at Shonan, Hayama, in September 1997. I am grateful for the comments and views expressed there. I should also point out that the views and opinions herein are my own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Her Majesty’s Government.
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Notes
See W.G. Beasley, Great Britain and the Opening of Japan, 1834–1858 (London: Luzac and Co. Ltd, 1951), for the background.
For traditional East Asian diplomacy as it applied in the Japanese context, see Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984; reprinted Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1991),
and W.G. Beasley, Japan Encounters the Barbarians: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe (New Haven, Conn., and London: Yale University Press, 1995), Chapter 1.
Sir Hugh Cortazzi, ‘The First British Legation in Japan (1859–1874)’, The Japan Society of London Bulletin, no. 102 (October 1984), pp. 25–50,
and Kawaseki Seiro, ‘Edo ni atta gaikoku kokan’, (Foreign missions in Edo), Gaimusho choso geppo, 1987/1, pp. 45–59.
See also J.E. Hoare, ‘The Tokyo Embassy 1871–1945’, Japan Society Proceedings, no. 129 (Summer 1997), pp. 24–41.
See J.E. Hoare, ‘Britain’s Japan Consular Service 1859–1941’, in Ian Nish (ed.), Britain and Japan: Biographical Portraits, vol. II (Richmond, England: Japan Library, 1997), pp. 94–106.
J.E. Hoare, Japan’s Treaty Ports and Foreign Settlements: The Uninvited Guests 1858–1899 (Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library, 1994), Chapters 3 and 4.
See the discussion of this point in J.E. Hoare: Review of Richard T. Chang, The Justice of the Western Consular Courts in Nineteenth Century Japan (Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press, 1984),
in Monumenta Nipponica, vol. 39, no. 4 (Winter 1984), 464–6.
For the idea of a deliberate western policy to undermine the bakufu, see John McMaster, Sabotaging the Shogun: Western Diplomats Open Japan, 1859–69 (New York: Vantage Press, 1992).
See also the criticism of this approach in a review article by Stephen S. Large, ‘Modern Japan: Troubled Pursuit of “Wealth and Power”’, Historical Journal, vol. 40, no. 2 (1997), 537–50.
For Parkes more generally, see Gordon Daniels, Sir Harry Parkes: British Representative in Japan, 1865–83 (Richmond, Surrey: Japan Library, 1996).
The telegraph arrived via the Great Northern System through Denmark, Russia and China: Olive Checkland, Britain’s Encounter with Meiji Japan, 1868–1912 (London: Macmillan, 1989), p. 51.
A theme discussed in Gordon Daniels, ‘The British Role in the Meiji Restoration: A Re-interpretative Note’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. II, no. 4 (1968), 291–313.
Satow himself acknowledged that whatever he thought he was doing in 1867–8 in his dealings with the anti-Tokugawa clans, and his writings, neither seemed to have come to Parkes’s attention: Grace Fox, Britain and Japan, 1858–1883 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), pp. 179–80.
For more background on the Iwakura mission in Britain, see D.W. Anthony and G.H. Healey, ‘The Itinerary of the Iwakura Embassy in Britain, August-December 1872’, Research Papers in Japanese Studies, Special Issue (Cardiff Centre for Japanese Studies, October 1997).
See S. Hirose, ‘Meiji shonen no tai O-Bei kankei to gaikokujin naichi ryoko mondai’ (The question of foreigners’ travel in the interior and diplomatic relations with Europe and America in the early Meiji period), Shigaku zasshi, vol. 83 (1975), no. 11, 1–29; no. 12, 40–61.
For a fuller account of this long battle, which the Japanese ultimately won, see Janet Hunter, ‘The Abolition of Extraterritoriality in the Japanese Post Office, 1873–1880’, in Proceedings of the British Association for Japanese Studies, vol. 1 (1976), Part 1: History and International Relations, edited by Peter Lowe, 17–37.
J.E. Hoare, ‘The “Bankoku Shimbun Affair”: Foreigners, the Japanese Press, and Extraterritoriality in Japan’, Modern Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 3 (1975), 289–302.
For a recent linkage of the Japan Punch to the Japanese manga, see Saya S. Shiraishi, ‘Japan’s Soft Power: Doraemon Goes Overseas’ in Network Power: Japan and Asia, edited by Peter J. Katzenstein and Takashi Shiraishi (Ithaca, NY, and London: Cornell University Press, 1997), p. 236.
See also James L. Huffman, Creating a Public: People and Press in Meiji Japan (Honolulu: University of Hawaii Press, 1997), which shows how quickly the Japanese raced ahead of the foreign pioneers;
James Hoare, ‘British Journalists in Meiji Japan’, in Britain & Japan: Biographical Portraits, edited by Ian Nish (Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library, 1994), pp. 20–32;
N. Umetani, Oyatoi gaikokujin (Tokyo: Nihon keizai shimbunsha, 1965);
H.J. Jones, Live Machines: Hired Foreigners in Meiji Japan (Tenterden, Kent: Paul Norbury Publications, 1980), especially pp. 145–52.
See for example, his support for Henry Brunton: Richard Henry Brunton, Building Japan, 1868–1876, with an introduction and notes by Sir Hugh Cortazzi, in addition to the 1906, introductory, postscript and notes by William Elliot Griffis (Folkestone, Kent: Japan Library, 1991), pp. 27, 45–6, 148.
Sugiyama, using different sources, comes up with very similar figures: S. Sugiyama, Japan’s Industrialisation in the World Economy: Export Trade and Overseas Competition (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 46–7.
Different currencies and methods of accounting make precise comparisons with the China trade difficult, but see the tables in Albert Feuerwerker, ‘Economic Trends in the Late Ch’ing Empire, 1870–1911’, in The Cambridge History of China, Volume 11: Late Ch’ing, 1800–1911, Part 2, edited by Denis Twitchett and John Fairbank (Cambridge, England; New York and Melbourne: Cambridge University Press, 1980), pp. 46–7.
More generally, see R. Hoffman, The Anglo-German Trade Rivalry (Philadelphia: University of Philadelphia Press, 1933).
Sir Paul Newall, Japan and the City of London (London and Atlantic Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1996), p. 6.
Francis E. Hyde, Far Eastern Trade, 1860–1914 (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1973), p. 176.
Yuen Choy Leng, ‘The Japanese Community in Singapore and Malaya before the Pacific War: its Genesis and Growth’, Journal of South East Asian Studies, vol. 9, no. 2 (September 1978), 163–179.
See Martina Deuchler, Confucian Gentlemen and Barbarian Envoys: The Opening of Korea 1875–1885 (Seattle: University of Washington Press for the Royal Asiatic Society, Korea Branch, 1977).
Peter Duus notes that the 1876 treaty was ‘even more “unequal”’ than the treaties between the Bakufu and the West: Peter Duus, The Abacus and the Sword: the Japanese Penetration of Korea, 1895–1910 (Berkeley, Los Angeles, and London: University of California Press, 1995), p. 48.
Baba Tatsui, The English in Japan: What a Japanese Thought and What He Thinks about Them (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1875).
For Baba Tatsui more generally, see two works by N. Hagihara: ‘Baba Tatsui: An early Japanese liberal’, St Antony’s Papers Number 14: Far Eastern Affairs Number Three, edited by G.F. Hudson (London: Chatto and Windus, 1962), pp. 121–43;
and Baba Tatsui (Tokyo: Chuo Koronsha, 1967).
For House, see Toshio Yokoyama, Japan in the Victorian Mind: A Study of Stereotyped Images of a Nation, 1850–80 (London: Macmillan, 1987), p. 102.
See also E.H. House, ‘The Martyrdom of an Empire’, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 48 (January-June 1881), 610–23.
For a couple of examples, see Sir Edwin Arnold, Seas and Lands (London: Longmans, 1892);
and M. Bickersteth, Japan as We Saw it (London: Sampson Low, 1893).
See Stanley Lane-Poole, Sir Harry Parkes in China (London: Methuen, 1901), pp. 317, 371.
Basil Hall Chamberlain, Things Japanese, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan (London: Kegan Paul, 1890),
reprinted as Japanese Things, Being Notes on Various Subjects Connected with Japan (Tokyo and Rutland, Vt: Charles E Tuttle Co., Inc., 1971), p. 362.
See the picture of Fraser portrayed by his wife, Mary, in Mrs H. Fraser, A Diplomatist’s Wife in Japan (London: Hutchinson, 1899), 2 vols,
and A Diplomatist’s Wife in Many Lands (London: Hutchinson, 1911), 2 vols.
The only published account is F.C. Jones, Extraterritoriality in Japan (London and New York: Yale University Press, 1931).
In Japanese, there are a number of works, also dated and without benefit of the Western archives, including F. Yokata, ‘Nihon ni okeru chigaihoken’ (Extraterritoriality in Japan), in Kokkagakkai Gojunenshunen Kinen (Tokyo: Kokkagakkai, 1957).
A recent example is Donald Calman, The Nature and Origins of Japanese Imperialism: a Reinterpretation of the Great Crisis of 1873 (London and New York: Routledge, 1992).
Banno Junji, British Influence on Japanese Political Liberalism, 1873–1893, The Richard Storry Memorial Lecture, no. 8, 12 October 1995 (Oxford: St Antony’s College, 1997).
For a brief account of the circumstances of its negotiation, see W.W. McLaren, A Political History of Japan during the Meiji Era 1867–1912 (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1916; reprinted London: Frank Cass, 1965), pp. 333–4.
A. Morgan Young, Imperial Japan 1926–38 (New York: William Morrow, 1938), pp. 295 and 320n.
Henry Bonar at Kobe described it as an acceptable compromise, while to J.C. Hall at Yokohama, it was ‘illogical, inequitable and impractical’: Sir C. MacDonald, ‘Annual Review for 1909’ in Japan and Dependencies: Political and Economic Reports, 1906–1960 (Farnham Common, Slough: Archive Research Ltd, 1994), I, 129–31.
Grace Fox, British Admirals and Chinese Pirates, 1832–1869 (London: Kegan Paul, Trench and Trubner, 1940), pp. 183 et seq.
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Hoare, J. (2000). The Era of the Unequal Treaties, 1858–99. In: Nish, I., Kibata, Y. (eds) The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations. The History of Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1600–2000. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230598959_5
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