EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

Foreign Affairs And Frontiers in als, to craft diplomatic ceremonies so that they
bolstered Tokugawa authority, to defend border-
Early Modern Japan: A Historio- lands from invasions and uprisings, and to rigidly
graphical Essay1 scrutinize the implications of the importation of
© Brett L. Walker, Montana State Univer- new technologies and ideologies from around the
sity at Bozeman globe. The Edo shogunate's stance toward the
outside world, as this narrative portrays it, was a
When the Edo shogunate implemented mari- loosely knit fabric of political and cultural as-
time prohibitions (kaikin) in the 1630s, it marked sumptions about foreign affairs and prejudices
the beginning of a historical era wherein the sho- about the outside world, not to mention real fears
guns strictly regulated Japan's contact with the of events unfolding in Asia, fears motivated by
outside world. In pre-Meiji Japanese history, it the Jurchen-Tartar unification wars, the Manchu
represented one of the few moments when such conquest of Ming China, Ainu insurrection, and
hegemons, whether in Kyoto, Kamakura or, in European expansion. In short, Edo shoguns
this case, Edo, were powerful enough to usurp the wove together the threads of military violence,
prerogatives of coastal domains in Kyushu or ideological containment, political legitimacy,
such port cities as Sakai, and channel foreign identity formation, cultural arrogance, individual
contact through the center. The shoguns prohib- paranoia, and the economics of foreign trade
ited local state and non-state interests from for- when crafting their approach to dealing with the
mulating independent foreign agendas, sponsor- outside world.
ing religious exchange, and conducting overseas In the first section, entitled "Kultur Politik," I
trade without authorization. As the new histori- draw on the scholarship of Jurgis Elisonas, Her-
ography on the topic argues, it was a powerful man Ooms, and others to paint a portrait of
assertion of the realm-wide legitimacy of the new Hideyoshi's invasion of Korea and China. Even
regime in Edo, as well as an obvious birthplace of though a gruesome failure, Hideyoshi's invasion
an early "national" consciousness among many needs to be viewed within the context of the
Japanese and a critical element in the formation process of state consolidation and border forma-
of what historians call Japan's early modern pe- tion in the beginning decades of the early modern
riod, or kinsei period. Second, in "Diplomacy," I explore the
This essay attempts to create an updated narra- pioneering work of Ronald Toby, as well as
tive of early modern Japan's foreign relations and Gregory Smits and others, to illustrate how the
frontier experiences, one that incorporates previ- Tokugawa regime used diplomacy to legitimize
ously neglected topics and highlights the new its authority both at home and abroad. Third, in
directions explored by this vibrant sub-field of "Diplomatic Sham," I look briefly at the critique
Japanese studies. This narrative suggests the of Toby's work articulated by Jurgis Elisonas in
selective exclusion of certain foreigners from The Cambridge History of Japan, and then, in an
Japanese soil should be viewed as a proactive attempt to mediate this dispute, I project both
engagement of the outside world, one which re- Toby's and Elisonas' main arguments against the
quired a fairly sophisticated understanding of the backdrop of observations made by Engelbert
religions and cultures of trading partners and the Kaempfer in the seventeenth century. In the
implications of exchange with them. That is to fourth section, "Others," I survey new research on
say, the Edo shogunate actively sought to author- the birth of an early modern identity for Japanese,
ize or prohibit certain domains from conducting one which positioned foreign peoples as "others"
trade unilaterally, to debrief repatriated individu- in the creation of ethnic boundaries, political bor-
ders, and notions of a Japanese "self." In this
context, as Toby, David Howell, and Tessa Mor-
1
Originally, this essay appeared as a conference ris-Suzuki argue, foreign "others" served to bol-
paper for "Early Modern Japanese Studies: The State of ster a sense of a Japanese "self" in an otherwise
the Field," an Early Modern Japan Network Symposium fragmented political and social environment
at Ohio State University, April 21-23, 2000. It benefited
greatly from the suggestions of the participants.
where most Nihonjin (a term that people of the

44
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

early modern period seldom used outside discus- hence sparking technological innovations in min-
sions of things foreign) delineated identities ing, fishery development, and other industries.
along patrilineal, domainal, regional, or status In the case of Ezo, Japanese markets and Matsu-
lines. Under the Edo shogunate, it was in the mae trade policy led to regional depletions of
realm of foreign contact that the dominant ethnic deer numbers in Ezo and undermined the ability
group of the present-day Japanese Archipelago, of Ainu to subsist independently. The economic
the people we view as "Japanese," best under- intrusion into Ezo also witnessed the introduction
stood themselves to be just that, Nihonjin. of deadly contagions--as European advancement
The fifth section, entitled "People," looks at did in "virgin soil" populations around the world
multiethnic interaction within the Japanese in the form of what Alfred Crosby calls "ecologi-
Archipelago's most ambiguous spaces. As cal imperialism"2 -- exposing the implications of
Smits demonstrates, Ryukyu Islanders possessed Japan's move into new epidemiological terrain.
more agency in their own cultural assimilation As this introduction suggests, a fair amount has
than previously thought. In a fascinating twist, been written on Japanese early modern foreign
even following the invasion of the Ryukyu relations and frontiers in recent years, and so not
Kingdom, Satsuma and Edo officials preserved all of it can be discussed in this essay. (For this
Ryukyuan foreignness, or place as "other," in reason, a fairly comprehensive bibliography has
order to keep trade with China alive, while at the been included in this volume.) I focus mainly
same time Ryukyuan ideologues, such as Sai On, on historical writings that I see as pushing the
emulated Japan, a country they believed to be boundaries of this subfield, writings that have
exemplary in the Confucian world. To the north, reshaped the ways we look at the early modern
the intensification of trade between Ainu and period in particular and Japan in general.
Matsumae domain led to the emergence of such
charismatic chiefs as Shakushain, who, in 1669, Kultur Politik
waged a bloody war against Japanese after Mary Elizabeth Berry argues in her political
forging a pan-Ainu alliance to expel Japanese biography Hideyoshi that in the closing years of
from the southern tip of the Oshima Peninsula. the sixteenth century, the second great unifier
And, at Deshima, the small islet near Nagasaki, crafted what she refers to as a "federal" state from
the experiences of Engelbert Kaempfer support the remnants of the late medieval polity. Through
the notion that Japan, because of the shogunate's a variety of political and personal devises,
fear of Christianity, had closed its doors, Hideyoshi linked powerful warring states lords
particularly at the level of interpersonal (sengoku daimyo), rulers who only decades be-
interaction, during the early modern period. I fore had viewed their domains as semi-
argue that these three figures caution against independent states (kokka), to the center in Kyoto,
using foreigners as simply "others" either in a and thereby extended his authority over the tradi-
cultural anthropological sense or to generalize tional provinces of the realm.3 By the 1590s,
about Japan's relationship with all foreigners. Hideyoshi extended this vision of unification
That is to say, just as Shakushain fought against even further, and orchestrated the failed invasion
what he viewed as an expanding Japan to the of Korea and Ming China. To contextualize this
north, Kaempfer was confronted by an inward invasion, we must start by looking briefly at the
looking and, not to put too fine a point on it,
paranoid society, one which basically staged 2
diplomatic conduct in the name of domestic On the notion of "ecological imperialism," see
Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The
politics. Biological Expansion of Europe, 900? 1900 (Cambridge:
The sixth section, called "Place," investigates Cambridge University Press, 1986).
the interdependency of Japan's domestic economy, 3
Mary Elizabeth Berry, Hideyoshi (Cambridge:
overseas commerce, and the ecology. As Toby, Harvard University Press, 1982), 147-67. On the
Howell, and Robert Innes argue, Tokugawa for- reunification of Japan and the Weberian model, see Berry,
eign relations had an important impact on the "Public Peace and Private Attachment: The Goals and
Conduct of Power in Early Modern Japan," Journal of
domestic economy by fueling market growth, and Japanese Studies 12, no. 2 (Summer 1986): 237-71.

45
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

late medieval period. This fact might seem ob- ently offending Hideyoshi's Buddhist sentiments)
vious to those who study pre-modern Japan. that they allowed the slaughter of horses and
But all too often, the early modern period serves oxen for food.7 With the San Felipe Incident of
as a kind of preface to discussions of Japan's 1596, moreover, Hideyoshi's resolve hardened
modern period--an epochal "straw man" posi- considerably, and he undoubtedly viewed Christi-
tioned to show just how fast Japan modernized anity as a threat to the realm. "I have received
and industrialized in the late nineteenth century-- information that in your kingdoms the promulga-
when the birth of the Edo shogunate also repre- tion of the law [i.e., Christianity] is a trick and
sented the termination of the chaotic medieval deceit by which you overcome other kingdoms,"
period and the emergence of a more perfected he wrote in a letter to the Philippines in reply to
form of feudalism. The invasion of Korea (as the embassy led by Navarrete Fajardo in 1597.
cruel and ill-fated as it was) was an offshoot of Christian missionaries, in Hideyoshi's mind, rep-
these political developments. resented the first wave of European imperialism.8
At the outset, there was no "Christian century" The expulsion of these missionaries, therefore,
in Japan at this time. With only about 130,000 needs be viewed as a first step in centering con-
converts in 1579, the height of missionary activ- trol over foreign affairs in Kyoto and the stepping
ity and only eight years before the first expulsion up of an ideological campaign designed to articu-
edicts issued by Hideyoshi, what C. R. Boxer saw late Hideyoshi's legitimacy to rule "all under
as the "Christian century" was in fact the terminal heaven," or the East Asian notion of tenka.
decades of the Era of the Warring States and the Hideyoshi, taking a page out of the mission-
primordial beginnings of early modernity in Ja- ary's own handbook, began to fantasize about his
pan. 4 What Boxer exposed was that the late own vision of religion as a means to articulate a
medieval period witnessed intense spiritual ex- world hierarchy that legitimized overseas con-
ploration by many Japanese, no doubt a response quest. Herman Ooms, elaborating on the role of
to endemic warfare and the "culture of lawless- religion and thought, illustrates that Hideyoshi, in
ness" that gripped the late medieval years.5 Af- letters to the Portuguese Viceroy of Indies in Gao
ter the Onin War (1467-77), the Ashikaga sho- (1591) and the governor-general of the Philip-
gunate had basically lost any semblance of con- pines, explained that Buddhism in India and Con-
trol over the warring states lords of Kyushu, the fucianism in China both spoke of the same dei-
greatest patrons of the new faith, and motivated ties: the kami of Japan's Shinto. Therefore, it
for reasons of devotion, exotic magic, weapons stood to reason that Hideyoshi's Japan had reli-
technology, domestic ambitions, and access to gious justification to physically, not just meta-
foreign markets, some gladly accommodated the physically, extend its power over the entire
early missionaries of the sixteenth and early sev- known civilized world. It was, as Ooms con-
enteenth centuries.6 By 1587, however, Hideyo- cludes, Hideyoshi's version of kultur politik. 9
shi had become alarmed. Not because of too The invasion of Korea, in other words, imple-
many converts, but rather because the hegemon mented a broader spiritual unity that already ex-
learned that Christian lords reportedly oversaw isted in Hideyoshi's imagination, albeit with Ja-
forced conversions of retainers and commoners, pan--shinkoku, or the Land of the Gods--as the
that they had garrisoned the city of Nagasaki, that sacred center. Hideyoshi's reorganization of
they participated in the slave trade, and (appar- foreign relations, then, was not necessarily, as
Elisonas submits, "a matured antecedent to the
4
George Elison, Deus Destroyed: The Image of
Christianity in Early Modern Japan (Cambridge: Harvard
7
University Press, 1973), 54 and 63. Elison, Deus Destroyed, 117-18.
5 8
On the "culture of lawlessness," see Mary Elizabeth Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the Interpreter: An
Berry, The Culture of Civil War in Kyoto (Berkeley: Early Jesuit in Japan and China (New York: Weatherhill,
University of California Press, 1994), 11-54. 1974), 160.
6 9
On the "Christian Century," see C. R. Boxer, The Herman Ooms, Tokugawa Ideology: Early
Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650 (Berkeley: Constructs, 1570-1680 (Princeton: Princeton University
University of California Press, 1967). Press, 1985), 46.

46
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

Tokugawa construction, Sakoku," but rather a (the Matsumae family after 1599) of southern
form of sixteenth-century Japanese expansionism, Ezo (present-day Hokkaido). In 1593, when
interwoven with a program of domestic pacifica- Kakizaki Yoshihiro met with Hideyoshi at Na-
tion and legitimation, and rooted in nativist tradi- goya in Hizen Province, the staging area for the
tions of Japan as a divine land.10 invasion of Korea, they discussed the possibility
Armed with this newly fashioned world order, of a northern route through Orankai (north of the
Hideyoshi launched his infamous attack on the Korean Peninsula near Manchuria, home of the
Korean Peninsula. The invasion, skillfully nar- Tartar and Jurchen) onto the continent. Maps in
rated by Elisonas, resulted in Japanese defeat. Hideyoshi's possession, and earlier maps attrib-
Elisonas' moving account of Japan's "sanguinary uted to Matteo Ricci, illustrated Ezo (that is, the
excesses" during the invasion, the utterly horrific island of Hokkaido) as part of North Asia. It
atrocities inflicted against Koreans of all stripes, was widely rumored, moreover, that the Jurchen
ranks among the most disturbing scholarship on and Tartar carried on trade with the Ainu (at this
Japan. On the one hand, the lurid 1597 threats time called Ezojin). Kato Kiyomasa, after at-
by Japanese warlords to mass murder Korean tacking Hamgyong-do, crossed into Orankai
officials and farmers illustrates that Japanese ar- where he captured Goto Jiro, a Japanese native
mies made few, if any, distinctions between com- from Fukuyama (at this time only a fort, but later
batants and noncombatants. The Japanese col- the castle town of the Matsumae family). He
lection of pickled noses, on the other hand, when had been living in the region for twenty years,
such domainal contingents as Kikkawa Hiroie's spoke both Korean and Japanese, and told Kiyo-
and Nabeshima Katsushige's boasted the collec- masa that Fukuyama, in southern Ezo, was "close
tion of some 23,794 noses in about two months, to Orankai [and hence Korea]."12
remains inexplicable even by modern standards. Chronicles describe Hideyoshi, after his meet-
The Chosen nichinichiki (Korean days), the work ing with Yoshihiro, as "extremely excited." Ob-
of a Buddhist priest named Keinen, tells of Ko- viously, the reasons for his excitement were two-
rean slaves being led by Japanese slave traders. fold. First, Hideyoshi sought to use Ezo as a
In a section translated by Elisonas, Keinen wrote, possible northern route for his invasion of the
continent. Second, he sought to position the
Among the many kinds of merchants who Kakizaki family as a bulwark against Jurchen and
have come over from Japan are traders in Tartar unification wars that were, according to
human beings, who follow in the train of descriptions offered by missionary Luis Frois,
the troops and buy up men and women, underway in Orankai, and that he and others be-
young and old alike. Having tied these lieved might spill over into Ezo and possibly Ja-
people together with ropes about the neck, pan. It was foreign policy based on realm secu-
they drive them along before them; those rity, much like his expulsion of European mis-
who can no longer walk are made to run sionaries was motivated (at least in part) by fears
with prods or blows of the stick from be- of imperialism. To bolster Kakizaki authority,
hind. The sight of the fiends and man- Hideyoshi granted the Kakizaki the exclusive
devouring demons who torment sinners in rights to levy shipping duties in Ezo (funayaku):
hell must be like this, I thought.11 Kakizaki ports henceforth became the hubs of the
region's economic activity. Implicit within this
Simultaneous to orchestrating these hellish poli- arrangement was the fact that Kakizaki lords be-
cies in Korea, Hideyoshi also extended Japan's came obliged to recognize Hideyoshi's authority
northern border to include the Kakizaki family to grant such shipping duties, duties subsequently
recognized by Japan's sometimes cantankerous
political community. When Yoshihiro returned
10
Elison, Deus Destroyed, 117.
11
Jurgis Elisonas, "The Inseparable Trinity: Japan's
12
Relations with China and Korea," in The Cambridge Brett L. Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands:
History of Japan, Vol. 4, ed. John Whitney Hall Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590-1800
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 290-93. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2001), 29-35.

47
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

to Ezo after the 1593 meeting, chronicles trumpet host to a 1607 Korean embassy to "normalize"
that he gathered Ainu "from east and west" and relations to the benefit of both countries, when a
read to them, in translation, Hideyoshi's vermil- forged letter from King S? njo was given to sho-
lion-seal order granting the Kakizaki the right to gun Hidetada. The 1607 embassy, argues Toby,
levy shipping duties. If Ainu failed to observe "functioned to the advantage of both [Japan and
these orders, the chronicle continues, a force of Korea] as legitimating propaganda for the bakufu,
100,000 warriors would be sent by the hegemon and as a channel of political and strategic intelli-
to crush them. With this, "Hideyoshi had ex- gence on continental affairs, as the political foun-
tended his control beyond the confines of the tra- dation for trade, and as one element in an emerg-
ditional provinces of the realm, which suggests ing diplomatic manifestation of Japan's ideal vi-
that not all his overseas ambitions ended in utter sion of the structure of international order."14
disaster."13 Supported by this new political foundation,
Recent writings, in other words, view Hideyo- foreign trade flourished among those domains
shi's policy toward the continent less as simply a that the shogun authorized to trade. By the late
bungled invasion of Korea that ended in the later seventeenth century, the profits from the private
Tokugawa withdrawal from the international trade between Pusan and Tsushima domain, for
arena, but rather as part of a broader process of example, exceeded 10,000 kan in silver, an
state consolidation, the conversion of military amount, Toby notes, comparable to the nengu
power to political legitimacy, border demarcation, (annual tax) revenues of all but the largest early
realm wide security, and the continuing formation modern domains.15 This diplomatic "normaliza-
of a Japan-centered epistemology in the form of tion"--if such a term can be comfortably applied
shinkoku. In short, Hideyoshi's foreign policy to conquest--also extended southward between
set the stage for a proactive engagement of the the Ryukyu Islands and Satsuma domain. In
Eurasian continent designed to strengthen domes- 1609, Shimazu Iehisa, after receiving authoriza-
tic authority and, unless you view events from the tion from Edo, invaded Ryukyu with a force of
singular perspective of Jesuits and Franciscan 3,000 troops.16 Essentially, Satsuma then incor-
friars on ships departing Nagasaki, moved to pro- porated the Ryukyu Kingdom: it ruled over the
tect Japan, a country he understood to be the sa- islands, conducted cadastral surveys, and eventu-
cred core of a more far-flung agenda of kultur ally claimed Ryukyu's kokudaka (assessed yield)
politik. as its own.17
Gregory Smits, in Visions of Ryukyu, writes
Diplomacy that Satsuma also proceeded to reinvent Ryu-
The Tokugawa stance toward foreign affairs kyuan history in the form of a pledge, signed by
was initially shaped by Hideyoshi's invasion of King Sho Nei, that acknowledged Satsuma's his-
Korea, and so, Ronald Toby, in his pioneering torical role in governing the islands. Smits con-
State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan, cludes, "Satsuma's military power had trans-
begins with a discussion of how the Edo sho- formed Ryukyu's past." From this point forward,
gunate attempted to patch up relations with Korea
and China. Following the death of Hideyoshi,
writes Toby, "the most urgent diplomatic business 14
Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early
at hand was what in modern terms would be Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa
called the normalization of relations with East Bakufu (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984;
reprint, Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1991), 23, 25,
Asia." In concrete terms, this meant a with- 26, 33-35.
drawal of troops from the peninsula; offering 15
Ibid., 39-40.
paddy lands to Tsushima to raise its status so that 16
George H. Kerr, Okinawa: The History of an
it could, under the protocol of the day, enter Island People (Rutland: Charles E. Tuttle Company,
commercial relations with Pusan; and playing 1958), 156-60. See also Toby, State and Diplomacy, 45.
17
Toby, State and Diplomacy, 45-46. See also
Gregory Smits, Visions of Ryukyu: Identity and Ideology
in Early-Modern Thought and Politics (Honolulu:
13
Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands, 34-35. University of Hawaii Press, 1999). 15-16.

48
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

despite the creative resistance of such Ryukyuan centric calendars and era names, and crafting its
figures as Tei Do, Satsuma oversaw the king- own tally trade with China. In relations with
dom's relations with China. Among the Fifteen China, the shogunate invented new diplomatic
Injunctions given to the king of Ryukyu, one for- titles such as Nihonkoku taikun, Great Prince of
bade "any merchant ship to sail from Ryukyu to a Japan, rather than simply "king," which smacked
foreign country" without Satsuma's approval. of the Sinocentric order, because it correctly un-
Smits points out, however, that a conflict quickly derstood these aspects of political and diplomatic
broke out between shogunal and domainal offi- life to be an important part of extending its he-
cials over the administration of Ryukyu, a con- gemony over the realm and bolstering its prestige
flict that the Shimazu family ultimately lost. In abroad.
1613, Satsuma had sought to assimilate the is- In this way, while foreign envoys visited Edo,
lands: one domainal order read that "[t]he various ceremony was carefully constructed to create a
customs and practices of Ryukyu are not to differ Japan-centered world. As Toby explains, "the
from those of Japan." However, three years bakufu sought a set of protocols and norms for
later, Shimazu Iehisa reversed Satsuma policy, the conduct of foreign relations which would be
arguing, as Smits paraphrases, that "for Ryukyu acceptable to a sufficient number of foreign states
to follow Satsuma in every way would be detri- to sustain the levels of trade and cultural contact
mental to Ryukyu's continued existence as a deemed essential, and which might constitute a
country."18 In time, Satsuma prohibited Ryukyu symbolic mirror of the structure of an ideal 'world
Islanders from wearing Japanese hairstyles and order' of Japanese fantasy." 21 Specific diplo-
clothing. The reason that Ryukyu needed "con- matic language, the manipulation of spatial hier-
tinued existence as a country," even after its con- archy, the strict use of a Japanese-based schedule
quest, was because the island kingdom was more of ambassadorial visits, employing popular art as
useful as a foreign country in the Tokugawa dip- propaganda in the form of the Edo zu byobu
lomatic order and more lucrative as a trading [1637], ritualizing gift giving, and pushing no-
partner with China than it was as a newly assimi- tions of Japan as the "central kingdom" and for-
lated province. eigners as "barbarians"--or the ka'i chitsujo--all
Toby also explains that in this competition be- served to legitimize Tokugawa authority and set a
tween Satsuma and the shogunate over what to do standard for realm wide diplomatic practice.
with the conquered Ryukyu Islands, Edo won. In Matsumae domain's "barbarian audiences"
In fact, between 1610 and 1850, Ryukyu kings, with Ainu, for example, officials employed these
adorned in their intentionally preserved native realmwide diplomatic practices. Kakizaki
and, more importantly, foreign garb, made Orindo's Matsumae jonai nenju gyoji (The annual
twenty-one trips to Edo to visit the shogun. 19 events of Matsumae Castle), which includes a
Shogunal officials, moreover, manipulated these section on the protocol used in Ainu visits to Fu-
visits to serve as a powerful legitimizing tool for kuyama Castle--visits called uimamu, a term, as
Tokugawa authority. This fact, Toby submits, David Howell observes, that was a reinvention of
"should serve to lay to rest some of the miscon- a native Ainu form of greeting22--illustrates that
ceptions that exist about the direction of early these Ainu visits were meticulously constructed
Tokugawa foreign policy: the bakufu actively to assert the military power and political authority
sought contact with Korea and the rest of Japan's of the Matsumae family, and hence Japanese rule,
international environment, pulling back only on the northern border. When Ainu participated
when it perceived real danger."20 In brief, im- in attendance at the castle, Kakizaki noted that
mediately following the military victory at Seki- the ceremony was held in the audience chamber,
gahara, the shogunate took an active interest in a room carefully adorned with the symbols of
manipulating audiences in Edo, disputing sino-
21
Ibid., 173.
18 22
Smits, Visions of Ryukyu, 16-19. David L. Howell, "Ainu Ethnicity and the
19
Toby, State and Diplomacy, 48-49. Boundaries of the Early Modern Japanese State," Past &
20
Ibid., 81. Present 142 (February 1994): 80-81.

49
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

Matsumae authority, including armor and hang- arguing that Korea and the Ryukyu Kingdom, the
ing curtains with the household crest. Spatial two countries with which Japan conducted so
hierarchy dramatized Japanese power, moreover: called "diplomatic relations"--that is, tsushin, as
the domain lord occupied a raised section of the opposed to tsusho, or "commercial relations"--
chamber while Ainu sat in the outer chamber. A were either reluctant participants in Japan's
designated official mediated all edicts, while a staged diplomatic sham or not really foreign
translator made sure Ainu understood them. countries at all. Turning the East Asian per-
Even the gifts carried political nuances. Ainu spective against Toby and others, moreover, Eli-
offered kenjobutsu, or gifts presented upward, sonas points out that the model for the Tokugawa
while the lord presented kudasaremono, or gifts policy of kaikin, "maritime prohibitions," was
bestowed downward. The goyoban, or master Ming China, a country that, Elisonas insists,
of ceremonies, then escorted Ainu elders to in- "constructed the model of an isolationist policy."
spect the military hardware of the domain. This "The means and motives of what the Chinese of
protocol shared several similarities with the sev- the Ming period called hai-chin (J: kaikin), or
enteenth-century visits to Edo by Korean and maritime prohibitions," writes Elisonas, "were
Ryukyuan embassies.23 analogons to those of the Tokugawa period's sa-
Only four decades after Sekigahara the sho- koku directives."25 Hence, the very spirit and
gunate found itself confronted by a major for- historical precedent of the notion of kaikin,
eign-policy issue on the Eurasian continent. (strictly speaking, of course, there were no "sa-
With the Manchu conquest of China, Edo realized koku directives"), spawned from the very East
what Toby calls (and all Japan specialists should Asian context that Toby and others emphasize as
recognize as) a manifest truth: "Japan is in Asia, being so important.
and cannot isolate herself from it." To varying Elisonas continues by pointing out that Korea,
degrees, the shogunate, or domains under its au- "the only foreign country with which the Toku-
thority, assisted continental allies in their fight gawa regime maintained diplomatic relations,"
against Manchu takeover. In 1627, anticipating sent only twelve official embassies to Japan dur-
a Manchu push, shogun Iemitsu ordered that ing the entire Tokugawa period, and that the first
gunpowder and swords, and possibly some fire- and most famous of these, the 1636 mission to
arms, be sent to Korea. Later, in 1645, Ming visit shogun Iemitsu and the deified Ieyasu at the
loyalist Cui Zhi, through the Nagasaki magistracy Nikko mausoleum, was in fact a "diplomatic mis-
(bugyo) requested shogunal assistance in fighting sion" rather than a "return embassy," thus hardly
the Qing. "[D]ozens of embassies," Toby ex- constituting a tributary visit as understood by the
plains, followed, all looking for Tokugawa aid.24 rules of the East Asian diplomatic order. As for
However, the absence of a Ming state, the poor the Ryukyu Kingdom, between 1634 and 1806,
prospects of Ming pretenders, and other factors the Ryukyu king dispatched some fifteen embas-
all pointed to a cautious stance by the shogunate. sies to visit Tokugawa shoguns. Elisonas insists,
Finally, with the defeat of Zheng Zhilong, any however, that Ryukyu "could scarcely be called a
hope of driving the Manchus out of China died, foreign country insofar as Japan was concerned.
and shogun Iemitsu chose to stay out of the con- Ryukyu was not an independent or even an
flict. Still, by favoring anti-Qing merchants and autonomous state: it had been conquered in 1609
serving as a haven for Ming loyalists, Japan had by the Shimazu and was no more than a depend-
taken sides in a continental matter. ency of the daimyo of Kagoshima, whom the ba-
kufu enfeoffed with Ryukyu just as it did with
Diplomatic Sham Satsuma and Osumi."26
Jurgis Elisonas, in The Cambridge History of Elisonas is correct about Ryukyu. Nonethe-
Japan, leveled the first critique of Toby's thesis, less, remarks made by the German doctor Engel-
bert Kaempfer, whose seventeenth-century his-

23 25
Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands, 214-17. Elisonas, "The Inseparable Trinity," 237.
24 26
Toby, State and Diplomacy, 112, 114, 119. Ibid., 299-300.

50
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

tory of Japan Beatrice Bodart-Bailey recently although Elisonas never questioned its authentic-
translated under the title Kaempfer's Japan, illus- ity as a foreign country in trade and diplomatic
trate the complexity of the relationship between exchange, some Japanese historians, such as Ya-
the Ryukyu Kingdom and Japan, as well as some mamoto Hirofumi, float the notion that southern
noteworthy comments about Chosen (Korea) not Korea was part of the administrative frontiers of
mentioned by Elisonas but that support his cri- the early modern Japanese state or, as Kaempfer
tique. "Some centuries ago," Kaempfer wrote, mentioned, that the shogun oversaw part of the
the Ryukyu Islands "submitted to the king of Sat- Korean frontier "as safety for his own country."29
suma as a result of military force, and he keeps Hence historians raise questions regarding even
them subservient with bugyo, or commissioners Chosen's authenticity as a real diplomatic partner.
and magistrates, strong military commanders, and If we return to Kaempfer's earlier remarks,
guards." Kaempfer continued, "Even though however, we learn that Ryukyuans were "treated
they are not considered foreigners, but to some as foreigners and outsiders when it comes to
extent as Japanese subjects, they are, nevertheless, trade," which was, if we understand Kaempfer's
treated as foreigners and outsiders when it comes use of the word "trade" to mean both economic
to trade." In the case of Chosen, Kaempfer re- and diplomatic exchange, precisely Toby's point.
marked in his section on "Japanese Possessions That is to say, the Tokugawa shoguns partly
Overseas" that, after Hideyoshi's invasion, manufactured such foreigners to fit within its ver-
"Ieyasu had the Koreans appear at court every sion of diplomatic exchange to bolster its political
three years with a delegation as proof of their power at home and abroad, even if such diplo-
submission. After that, they slowly came again matic exchange was largely the product of the
under the sway of the Tartars and pushed the Japanese imagination.
Japanese occupation to the furthest corner of their
last province, which indeed is still subservient to Others
the present Japanese ruler." Kaempfer ex- By retelling a fascinating story from Ezo,
plained that the Tokugawa shogun "is happy to David Howell demonstrates that Matsumae pol-
own no more than the Korean frontier as safety icy toward the Ainu shared similarities to the
for his own country and has it guarded by the lord shogunal and, later, the Satsuma strategy of what
of Tsushima, who maintains a military guard of might be called mandated difference toward the
sixty people under the command of a bugyo. Ryukyu Islands. That is, Ainu were, like the
The Koreans are ordered to appear at court only Ryukyuans, "treated as foreigners" by Matsumae
at a time of shogunal succession to take an oath domain, even when the status of their actual for-
of loyalty to the new ruler."27 eignness, at least in the area called Wajinchi
Herein lies the crux of the debate between (Japanese land) was less clear. Howell points to
Toby and Elisonas. If we follow Kaempfer's an Ainu named Iwanosuke, of Kennichi village in
line that Ryukyu Islanders "are not considered Wajinchi, the Japanese occupied section of south-
foreigners," then we can accept the rather sharp ern Hokkaido, who was thoroughly assimilated to
critique of Toby leveled by Elisonas: "Japan had the everyday customs of Japanese life: he had a
a government that barely pursued foreign rela- Japanese name, lived in a Japanese village, and
tions at all." That the "sham played with Ryu- wore his hair in a Japanese fashion. During
kyu enforced participation and the facsimile of a New Year's ceremonies, however, Iwanosuke un-
formal relationship in which Korea acquiesced derwent what Howell calls a "curious metamor-
sufficed to create for the bakufu its own interna- phosis." "As a representative of the Ainu peo-
tional order, in which Japan ranked first, even if it ple," writes Howell, Iwanosuke went to Fuku-
had to be prima in vacuo."28 Regarding Chosen, yama Castle to participate in an audience with the
Matsumae lord. Iwanosuke's metamorphosis
27
was cast by contemporary Japanese observers as
Engelbert Kaempfer, Kaempfer's Japan, ed.
Beatrice M. Bodart-Bailey (Honolulu: University of
29
Hawaii Press, 1999), 42-43, 228. Yamamoto Hirofumi, Sakoku to kaikin no jidai
28
Elisonas, "The Inseparable Trinity," 300. (Tokyo: Azekura, 1995), 1-9.

51
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

a "remnant of old Ezo customs." However, as Following an analysis of the 1713 Wakan san-
Howell argues, the opposite was true: "Iwanosuke sai zue (An Illustrated Japanese-Chinese ency-
assumed what had become for him a false iden- clopedia), Morris-Suzuki conjectures that the
tity for reasons that had little to do with old Ainu "feeling conveyed by this work is of a world
customs and everything to do with the institutions made up of concentric circles of increasing
of the Matsumae domain."30 strangeness, stretching almost infinitely outwards
This invention of tradition and fabrication of from a familiar centre." She points out how this
foreignness, Howell points out, served several model was born from the ka'i chitsujo--or the
purposes. Most pertinently, it demarcated "eth- model of the "civilized center" and "barbarian
nic boundaries" which in turn served to establish periphery"--although it remains not entirely clear
"political boundaries." At the same time, it cast whether Japan or China served as the hub in this
the Japanese domination of the Ainu "in history first work (it being modeled after earlier Chinese
and the 'timeless' traditions of Ainu culture." encyclopedias). Bruce Batten, though more
Howell observes of the Tokugawa shogunate that concerned with comparative models of frontier
it "was the first regime in Japanese history to and boundary creation, emphasizes a similar fron-
draw clear physical borders for itself." Qualify- tier theme, albeit on a more state-centered level,
ing this assertion, however, he continues that in his Japanese-language history of premodern
"rather than establish a dichotomy between Japan Japanese boundaries and frontiers. Rather than
and the rest of the world, it surrounded itself with identify "concentric circles of increasing strange-
peripheral areas that were neither fully part of the ness" which stretched out from a "familiar cen-
polity nor completely independent of it." How- tre," as Morris-Suzuki did, Batten draws on
ell submits that this "spurred the formation of a Robert Gilpin's state-centered model of "loss-of-
Japanese identity even before the emergence of a strength gradient," wherein premodern frontiers
modern nation-state in the mid-nineteenth cen- are defined by their distance from the political
tury."31 core and by their political strangeness.33
Similarly, Tessa Morris-Suzuki points out that Morris-Suzuki argues that in the late Toku-
even the assimilation policies aimed at the many gawa period, other popular encyclopedias drew
"societies on the periphery" of the early modern on the increasingly important nativism of Mo-
polity "involved a sharpening of the official defi- toori Norinaga, "in which Japanese identity was
nition of what it meant to be Japanese." Scruti- defined in terms of spontaneous virtue and crea-
nizing the place of the "frontier" in mapping out tivity, as opposed to the rigidity and sterility at-
what was spatially "Japan," Morris-Suzuki asks tributed to Chinese learning," and the civilized
important questions regarding "the whole way in hub was clearly identified by an "urbanized
which we deal with space in history." "The eye samurai encountering a group of Geisha in a city
of the historian," she writes, "tends to look for street." "Moral rectitude" emerged as one of the
change over time rather than diversity across defining characteristic of being a Japanese. 34
space." Through investigating Japan's relation- Like Howell, Morris-Suzuki writes that the "cor-
ship with its neighbors, Morris-Suzuki argues for nerstone" of the ka'i chitsujo was "the logic of
a sensitivity to "spatial diversity" as well as difference," even if it was sometimes trumped up.
"temporal change."32 She explains that the "relationship with the Ainu
and the Ryukyu kingdom were important pre-
30
cisely because they represented the subordination
Howell, "Ainu Ethnicity and the Boundaries of the
Early Modern Japanese State," 79-80. See also David L.
Howell, "Kinsei Hokkaid? ni okeru midoru-gurando no Tønnesson and Hans Antlöv (Richmond: Curzon, 1996),
kan? sei," in Basho ukeoisei to Ainu, ed. Hokkaido- 42, 44. See also Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Re-Inventing
Tohokushi Kenkyukai (Sapporo: Hokkaido Shuppan Japan: Time, Space, Nation (New York: M.E. Sharpe,
Kikaku Sento, 1998), 417-18, 420. 1998), 11-20.
31 33
Howell, "Ainu Ethnicity and the Boundaries of the Bruce Batten, Nihon no 'kyokai': Zenkindai no
Early Modern Japanese State," 69, 71, 83. kokka, minzoku, bunka (Tokyo: Aoki Shoten, 2000), 35.
32 34
Tessa Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of Japanese Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of Japanese
Identity," in Asian Forms of the Nation, ed. Stein Identity," 48.

52
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

of foreign people to Japanese dominion. Every- marks of modernity in Japan was the transforma-
thing about the relationship, therefore, had to be tion of once "concentric circles of increasing
structured in such a way as to magnify the exotic strangeness" or "loss-of-strength gradient" ema-
character of the peripheral societies." The em- nating from the political center to political bor-
bassies dispatched to Edo from the Ryukyu ders and the ultimate assimilation of foreign peo-
Kingdom, for Morris-Suzuki, were an "extrava- ples who found themselves living within these
gant and elaborately staged dramatization of the newly drawn lines.
logic of ka'i," or mandated difference.35 In 1857, in a different kind of example of this
Later, with late-eighteenth and early- spatial and ethnic demarcation of the boundaries
nineteenth-century contact with European nations, of the early modern polity, the Edo shogunate
Japan was forced to grapple with a modified no- sponsored medical treatment and Jennerian
tion of the frontier. Morris-Suzuki explains that smallpox vaccinations for all Japanese and Ainu
Japan needed to adjust to the idea of a frontier as in Ezo. With this policy, shogunal officials,
a "line marking the boundary between one nation working through the Hakodate bugyo, placed
and another, instead of the idea of a series of medical treatment and smallpox vaccinations in
frontiers marking gradually increasing degrees of the same context as the other forms of assimila-
difference." (Pointing to a later transformation tion discussed by Howell and Morris-Suzuki.
of frontiers to national boundaries, Batten picks State-sponsored medicine in Ezo "sought to trans-
up this theme as well, arguing that actual bounda- form the place of the Ainu, even at the level of
ries failed to emerge in the north until around the individual Ainu body, in relation to the early
1855 with the Shimoda Treaty between Japan and modern Japanese polity." Like the Foucauldian
Russia.36) But for Morris-Suzuki, evidence of relationship between public medicine and state
boundary creation earlier than 1855 include the power that emerged in modern Europe, medicine
formulation of an assimilationist discourse in in Ezo was employed by the shogunate to protect
Japan, a discourse that forced Edo officials and what it viewed as "a newly acquired appendage
intellectuals to sharpen their definition of what of the body politic--or something to be integrated
was, and what was not, the Japanese realm. The into the national whole--as well as demarcate, at
geographer Honda Toshiaki, for example, follow- the level of the individual body, the borders of the
ing the intrusion of Russian trappers into the Japanese state in the north."39
North Pacific, believed that Ainu should be made Beginning in 1799, with the Tokugawa attain-
more Japanese.37 "[W]e must establish a mutual der of lands and administrative powers once un-
frontier between Japan and other countries and der Matsumae control, officials in Ezo mandated
create a fortress to withstand foreign enemies," he that Ainu infected with disease report to adminis-
wrote on one occasion. Thus, even the slow trative posts throughout Ezo. In other words, in
absorption of "peripheral societies" into the early the same context as ordering Ainu to change their
modern polity (and hence the clean delineation of hairstyles, conform to Japanese customary norms,
borders between Japan and other nations) further use the Japanese language, or to abandon the
helped clarify what it meant to be Japanese.38 practice of polygamy, Ainu were forced, via sho-
For Morris-Suzuki and Batten, one of the hall- gunal policy, to recognize Japanese-based notions
of health and medical culture. The ultimate
manifestation of this was the 1857 vaccination
35
Ibid., 51. project. Physicians on Tokugawa payroll set out
36
Batten, Nihon no'kyokai’, 21, 50. to vaccinate people increasingly thought to be
37
On Honda Toshiaki, see Donald Keene, The
Japanese Discovery of Europe, 1720-1830 (Stanford:
wards of the early modern state, even if they were
Stanford University Press, 1952); George Alexander ethnic Ainu, and conscious decisions were made
Lensen, The Russian Push Toward Japan: Russo-
Japanese Relations, 1697-1875 (Princeton: Princeton
39
University Press, 1959); Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of Brett L. Walker, "The Early Modern Japanese
Japanese Identity," 54. State and Ainu Vaccinations: Redefining the Body Politic,
38
Morris-Suzuki, "The Frontiers of Japanese 1799-1868," Past & Present 163 (May 1999): 126-27,
Identity," 54-56. 128-29.

53
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

at the outset about who and where to vaccinate. The symbolic meaning of Korean embassies
In short, in the arena of public medicine, the Edo also altered the nature of the Tokugawa status
shogunate consciously mapped out the ethnic, system. When townspeople undertook their
spatial, and administrative boundaries of the early own Tojin gyoretsu, or foreigners parades, and
modern body politic before the rise of the modern crafted Chosen yama, or Korean floats, common
nation-state.40 people asserted an "identity radically different
The emergence of an early modern Japanese from that sanctioned by official social ideology,"
identity, and the delineation of modern state and by masquerading as foreigners, they "li-
boundaries, was not confined to the political censed themselves temporarily to step outside the
arena, but extended into the popular conscious- tightly controlled behavioral requirements of role
ness as well. As Toby illustrates in several arti- and status demanded of them by the norms of
cles on the topic, images of "foreign others," ones their society." In other words, participants
usually built on strongly held, and sometimes stepped from the realm of the Japanese self, and
state-sponsored, stereotypes -- or "codes of its implicit rigid status categories, to the realm of
Other"41 -- of Koreans and other outsiders, gal- stereotyped-ethnic alterity, appropriating the
vanized the imagination of urban commoners in "codes of Other" which remained alien enough to
Japan. He writes that along the routes of Ko- serve as a commonly perceived liminal space for
rean embassies, "rich and poor; courtier, daimyo, escaping the officially endorsed social norms of
and commoner, competed--and paid dearly--for the day. Common people, Toby concludes,
the best vantage point from which to watch the masquerading as foreigners, brought the political
passage of an embassy." To preserve and profit center, that lavish capital where embassies visited,
from these embassies, "artists and printmakers to themselves, thus "asserting their own, commu-
recorded virtually every stage of a Korean em- nal parity with the shogun."43
bassy's progress through Japan, from first landfall Ultimately, however, confronting foreigners
in Tsushima, to passage by ship through the forced early modern Japanese to, as Toby ex-
Inland Sea and riverboat up the Yodo River, and plains, "reorder not only their cosmology, but
overland through Kyoto, and along the highways their imaginings and imaging of the range of hu-
to Edo, and occasionally beyond." Toby's man variation that they encountered in the wake
highly original analysis of these visual sources of Columbus."44 The greater the number of out-
illustrates that the tropes of alterity (or "codes of side people Japanese witnessed in the early mod-
Other") employed by Japanese served to affirm ern period, the less blanket terms used to describe
what it meant to be Japanese. "Through reen- this outside world, such as Sangoku, or the Three
actment and representation," writes Toby, "the Realms, remained meaningful. Prior to what
alien embassy became permanent and omnipres- Toby describes as the "Xavierian moment," the
ent, an enduring element in contemporary culture. tripartite framework Japanese employed to de-
It was an instrumentality for the construction of scribe the outside world was the Three Realms of
'Korea', and implicitly of all 'others', in Japanese Wagachu ("Our Land," or Japan), Shintan or Kara
culture, and by extension it was a means for cre- (usually "China," but also other continental peo-
ating 'Japan'."42 ples such as Koreans), and Tenjiku (rendered as
"India," but more of a theologic term that meant
"Land of the Buddha"). Toby writes that for
40
early-sixteenth-century Japanese, "the real world
Walker, "The Early Modern Japanese State and consisted largely of two possible identities: peo-
Ainu Vaccinations," 141-58.
41
Ronald P. Toby, "The 'Indianness' of Iberia and
changing Japanese iconographies of Other," in Implicit
Understandings: Observing, Reporting, and Reflecting on Monumenta Nipponica 46, no. 4 (Winter 1991): 416, 418,
the Encounters Between Europeans and Other Peoples in 423.
43
the Early Modern Era, ed. Stuart B. Schwartz Ibid., 445, 452, 454.
44
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 331. Ronald P. Toby, "Imagining and Imaging
42
Ronald P. Toby, "Carnival of Aliens: Korean 'Anthropos' in Early Modern Japan," Visual Anthropology
Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture." Review 14, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1998): 19.

54
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

ple of 'Our Land', and people from China-- "others," has had its dangerous interpretive pit-
comprising 'the Continent', with which there was falls. Fine tuning this notion of an early modern
a long history of contact and commerce." 45 Japanese identity has meant casting foreign peo-
(Perhaps for this reason, when Kaempfer traveled ples, both real and imagined, as reflexive or re-
to Edo, he was called Tojin, or Chinese, by flective "others," with little or no historical
onlookers.46) After the 1550s, however, in the agency. More often than not, such foreigners
wake of the "Xavierian moment," Japanese were, and the places where they lived have served the
argues Toby, "inundated with a bewildering array purposes of either Japan or those who write its
of new-found Others," people who "came in hith- history, which is, of course, a biased vantage
erto inconceivable variety of colors, shapes, hir- point from which to view any country's foreign
sutenesses, and habiliments." These were the relations and frontier experiences. New re-
people not of Sangoku, but rather of the more search reveals that relations with foreigners not
broadly cast Bankoku, or "Myriad Realms."47 only transformed the Japanese idea of self, but
The notion of Bankoku required a new way of that these foreigners themselves--the "others"
construing the world, one riddled with unfamiliar with whom the Japanese interacted--also wit-
geographies and taxonomies, demanding that nessed political and cultural changes as a result of
Japanese artists, who rendered these new cartog- their contact with early modern Japan. Outside
raphies visually, move beyond distinguishing important observations related to missionaries, or
between Japanese and others, now distinguishing brief discussions of seventeenth-century Korean
Japanese from among a vast variety of human politics, this point has only been made by Eliso-
kinds--jinrui. In his analysis of such works as nas, Smits, and Bodart-Bailey, but nonetheless it
the 1645 Shoho bankoku jinbutsu zu (Shoho illus- should be considered central to our discussion.
tration of the peoples of the myriad realms), Toby Really, this lesson is simple yet critical: vantage
describes a "groping toward an 'anthropology' of point, or the temporal, spatial, and human per-
sorts," or what he later refers to as the "anthro- spective from which history is construed, shapes
pology of representation." Moreover, Toby cau- our rendering of the past.
tions against dismissing this type of early modern When Boxer and Elisonas argued that Japan
"anthropology of representation" as overly imag- was isolated under the Tokugawa regime--the
ined by pointing out that "European 'knowledge' "sakoku directives"--their vantage point and tem-
of the foreign was not consistently empirical, poral site stemmed from European experiences in
either. . .." The principal medium for represent- the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.
ing foreigners became the visual image and, as Of course, for these Europeans, Japan was a
Toby argues, "each image was a specimen, much "closed country," and so not surprisingly, histori-
like museum dioramas or specimen villages at a ans most reliant on this European perspective
World's Fair."48 This explosion of anthropos in most passionately pushed the sakoku thesis.
the Japanese world view engendered new knowl- Reinier Hesselink, who actually bridges the Japa-
edge of "other" and "self," and visual sources, nese and European perspectives, has most re-
unlike texts, provide a rare glimpse into this cently made this point in Prisoners from Nambu.
world of the early modern imagining and imaging In July 1643, when Japanese authorities from the
of the outside world. northeastern domain of Morioka (overseen by the
Nanbu family) cleverly lured ashore and then
People incarcerated ten crew members of the Breskens, a
Focus on the formation of an early modern yacht out of Batavia that Dutch officials had dis-
identity, one which required casting foreigners as patched along with the fluyt Castricom, these
Dutch sailors correctly came to the conclusion
that Japan was a country run by paranoid and at
45
Ibid. times even sadistic rulers. What else could they
46
Kaempfer, Kaempfer's Japan, 285. possibly have concluded as they watched as the
47
Toby, "Imagining and Imaging 'Anthropos' in Christian hunter Inoue Masashige and others sub-
Early Modern Japan," 19.
48
Ibid., 36.
jected Catholic missionaries to horrific tortures

55
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

such as the anatsurushi (the legendary "pit tor- king as a Confucian sage.51 In one polemic, Sai
ture")?49 By contrast, it stands to reason that inferred that the Satsuma conquest of the Ryukyu
historians illustrating the pervasiveness of East Islands had in fact benefited his kingdom. Ryu-
Asian contact in the early modern period should kyu, under Satsuma rule, now practiced what he
depend on an Asia-centered perspective. These identified as "fundamental principles of the Way
historians argue that some foreign groups under- of Government." Smits illustrates that Sai ex-
stood Japan to be an altogether too-open country. pressed his indebtedness to Satsuma in largely
In other words, if certain Europeans understood Confucian terms, believing that even the rice tax
Japan to be closed, then Ryukyu Islanders, Kore- extracted by the powerful Kyushu domain, which
ans, and Ainu had a different opinion. Japan was no doubt pained the Ryukyuan countryside, had
not only open, but slowly expanding and at times led to better agriculture among farmers, in turn
highly intrusive. leading to a "rectification" of Ryukyuan customs.
In his introduction to Visions of Ryukyu, Smits Moreover, Sai oversaw important policy initia-
stakes out a decidedly Ryukyuan vantage point. tives that in today's world might be viewed as
He writes that his study "seeks to center Ryukyu traitorous to his country. In the mid-eighteenth
as a historical agent, examining Ryukyu history century, for example, Sai oversaw widespread
mainly from the vantage point of Shuri (capital of forestry reform and the Genbun survey. Smits
the Ryukyu Kingdom), not Edo or Beijing." points out that the Genbun survey, based on Japa-
Smits accomplishes this largely through the per- nese cadastral practice, "established the basic
son of Sai On, a Ryukyuan ideologue and states- economic framework for early modern Ryukyu,"
man who believed that the small island kingdom and resulted in a revision of the original cadastral
must strive to reach a "moral parity" with Japan numbers and a tightening of the central govern-
and China. Smits explains that Sai On under- ment's control over rice-producing districts.
stood that "Ryukyu's long-term survival and However, as it did in Japan, the survey went fur-
prosperity. . . depended in large part on its adop- ther than just the realm of agronomics. As
tion and adaptation of the Confucian way." 50 Smits argues, in Ryukyu it provided the govern-
Thus, in an ironic twist, the idea of the dominant ment with a means to regulate everyday life in the
Japanese forcing the acculturation and assimila- districts, which extended into the realm of "moral
tion of neighboring people is cast in a fresh (and behavior" and ceremonial practice. With in-
slightly uncomfortable) light: some of these creased central control, Sai was able to oversee a
neighbors also advocated a policy of assimila- crackdown on "native" Ryukyuan festival life,
tion--of assimilating themselves--through the assert a ban on shamanism, and reinvent the
adoption of certain aspects of Japanese life in original meanings of such rites as worshiping the
order to assure their country's survival. hearth deity. Of course, these measures met
To begin with, Sai advocated a Confucian with mixed results; but the point is that some of
agenda for Ryukyuan officials that would have the deculturation and assimilation of the Ryukyu
brought a grin to even the face of his stoic hero, Kingdom was generated internally. 52 Oddly,
Kaibara Ekken. He believed officials should while Tokugawa officials pushed to preserve
thoroughly familiarize themselves with the Clas- Ryukyuan foreignness, Sai On and others advo-
sics; nurture a Confucian-based notion of sincer- cated that country's move in the opposite direc-
ity of will; employ geomancy in the construction tion.
of sacred and political sites; adopt Confucian no- In the far north, Shakushain's seventeenth-
tions of family relations; replace certain "native" century struggle against Matsumae domain serves
Ryukyuan rites with Japanese ones; and recast the as another example of the historical agency of
foreigners. A survey of the twenty some years
leading up to Shakushain's War demonstrates that
49
Reinier H. Hesselink, Prisoners from Nambu:
Reality and Make-Believe in 17th-Century Japanese
51
Diplomacy (Honolulu: University of Hawai'i Press, 2002). Ibid., 75, 76, 97, 101, 103.
50 52
Smits, Visions of Ryukyu, 3, 8. Ibid., 109-16.

56
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

the roots of this conflict lay planted in the soil of realm."54

cultural and ecological change brought about by However, Shakushain's War also forged strong
trade with Japan. By the late sixteenth century, ethnic identities among the participants, leading
Ainu notions of political power, social prestige, some Japanese historians to call the conflict a
and ritual practice had become tied to trade with "greater ethnic war." Once underway, Shaku-
Japan. That is, like the example of Sai On's re- shain's War served to strengthen ethnic identities
form policies, Ainu generated political and cul- in Ezo. Although competition for resource
tural change internally. Everything from the sparked the conflagration, the two sides of the
clothing that adorned powerful chiefs, to the lac- conflict, with some important exceptions, were
querware cups and saké used in ceremonies, Ainu drawn along ethnic lines. Matsumae command-
acquired in trade. To obtain these items, Ainu ers, such as Kakizaki Hiroshige, went so far as to
brought dried fish, animal skins, and certain threatened to "destroy all the Ainu." Shakushain,
pharmaceuticals to trading posts. Consequently, by contrast, boasted that his forces should "slash
as certain chiefs maneuvered to extend their he- their way to the Matsumae" stronghold. In short,
gemony through acquiring more emblems of Shakushain's War took on a disturbing us-against-
prestige, they positioned themselves to extend them mentality, prompting the shogunate to assert
their control over the land that produced the ani- its duty to defend the realm by conscripting sup-
mals whose skins purchased these goods. Early port among northeastern domains under the al-
on, this led to border conflicts between Ainu ready arcane gunyaku (military conscription) sys-
chiefdoms, including the construction of Ainu tem.
fortifications called casi. In the case of Shaku- The important point is that trade with Japan,
shain's War, the two main chiefdoms involved and the incorporation of Japanese-manufactured
were the Hae, under Onibishi (and his territory items into Ainu politics and culture, was a power-
known as Haekuru), and the Shibuchari (or Me- ful ingredient in this war and the formation of
nashikuru), under Shakushain.53 pan-Ainu alliances. Moreover, at the same time
In the 1660s, Shakushain defeated Onibishi, that Japanese probably viewed themselves as
but not before forcing Matsumae domain to take "Japanese" while facing tenacious Ainu fighters,
sides in the conflict. Just prior to the outbreak Ainu probably formed broader conceptions of
of full-scale war, Hae Ainu sought assistance their Ainu-ness while facing Japanese warriors as
from Japanese miners and Matsumae domain, and well. Before and after this point in 1669, Ainu
Shakushain, viewing these events from his forti- society remained fragmented among patrilineal
fied position in eastern Ezo, believed himself to political alignments called petiwor, or river-based
be boxed in by hostile neighbors. So he lashed villages and chiefdoms. However, as Shaku-
out, killing just under 300 Japanese in two well- shain watched his hunting and fishing grounds
planned assaults. Matsumae domain dispatched transform into akinaiba chigyo, or trade fiefs,
troops to Kunnui, in eastern Ezo, to stem a poten- under Matsumae's economic expansion, it forced
tial Shakushain-led march on Fukuyama Castle, him to think more bilaterally about ethnic rela-
and at Kunnui a stalemate ensued. Ultimately, tions on the island. Importantly, for these Ainu,
the shogunate, in an unqualified example of how Japan must have been a country all too actively
it viewed its role on the borders of the realm, dis- engaged with the outside world, or from Shaku-
patched a retainer, Matsumae Yasuhiro, to take shain's vantage point, actively conquering his
over local command of military activities in Kun- homeland.
nui and see to the "subjugation of the barbarians." Situated on the southern and northern edges of
Indeed, "Campaigns to 'subdue the barbarians' Tokugawa hegemony, Sai On and Shakushain
were urgent prerogatives of the shogunate; after faced the ensuing complications of an expanding
all, it was the imperial duty of the Barbarian Sub- early modern Japanese polity at different periods
duing Generalissimo (seii taishogun; the formal of time. Sai On, on the one hand, resisted the
imperial title of the shogun) to defend the Edo shogunate's attempts to mandate Ryukyuan

53 54
Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands, 53-54. Ibid., 66.

57
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

difference on an intellectual and political level, situation of their country. . . ." In others words,
pushing the small kingdom in the direction of as Kaempfer concluded--in many ways setting
Japanese-style Confucian reform. On the other the tenor in Japan and the West for nearly three
hand, Shakushain resisted Japanese economic centuries of historiography related to early mod-
designs on the cold, harsh battlefields of eastern ern Japan's foreign affairs and frontiers--Japan
Ezo by attempting to create an united Ainu front was a "secluded world apart from the rest of the
to expel the Japanese from his homeland. For world."56
these two non-Japanese societies situated on the Offering much needed details on the nature of
fringes of the Japanese realm, Japanese expansion the Nagasaki trade, Kaempfer wrote that when
resulted in nothing less than their ultimate con- European ships first entered the waters off Japan,
quest and acculturation, and so, consequently, any their arrival was announced by guards called
characterization of early modern Japan as a tomiban. They manned watch towers to warn of
"closed country" would have come as some sur- European invasion (an invasion thought imma-
prise to them. nent, incidently, after the expulsion of the mis-
Such a characterization would not have sur- sionaries). In the case of such an invasion, sig-
prised other foreigners, however, proving once nal fires would be lit in succession until the fires,
more that vantage point is critical to understand- and hence the news of the European attack, had
ing early modern Japanese attitudes about the reached Edo. Later, as European ships entered
outside world. As mentioned, Engelbert Nagasaki harbor, they were assisted (or accosted,
Kaempfer was stationed on Deshima Islet near depending on your perspective) by guard boats
Nagasaki, (like Ryukyu and Ezo, Nagasaki was called funaban. Kaempfer described the city of
also an ambiguous space, with Chinese temples Nagasaki as having an international flare, a prod-
and the Chinese factory, not to mention the Dutch uct of late-sixteenth and early-seventeenth-
presence at Deshima). He viewed seventeenth- century trade. Three Chinese temples (the
century Japan not as an expanding country but as Nankin, Chokushu, and Hokushu temples) graced
a closed and highly paranoid one. Given a the port city and upwards to 10,000 Chinese mer-
chance, he speculated, the Japanese people would chants had once visited Nagasaki every year in
have lavished "the best possible treatment on us well over 200 ships. Some Chinese, according
[Dutch visitors]," but owing to the strict prohibi- to Kaempfer, had even set up permanent resi-
tions against Christianity, the Edo shogunate kept dences in the city. After 1688, however, follow-
Europeans under a watchful eye.55 ing shogunal suspicions that the Qing state had
Even a superficial reading of Kaempfer's writ- accommodated the Jesuits (the Tokugawa fam-
ings related to his stay in Japan (between Sep- ily's "sworn and banished enemy"), and that
tember 1690 and October 1692) expose the ex- Christian books "printed in China were hidden
treme steps taken by the Edo shogunate to immu- among the other Chinese volumes that annually
nize Japan from any potential Christian infection. arrived in the country," the Chinese trade was
It is hard to overestimate the shogunate's fears of restricted and Chinese merchants themselves,
the monotheistic religion. Like antibodies scur- much like Dutch merchants at Deshima, were
rying around an alien, and quite threatening, virus, forced to reside at the Chinese factory. Al-
trying to protect the larger body from infection, though the Chinese were allowed to intermix with
attendants and translators followed Kaempfer the Japanese population for a longer period of
throughout his stay in Japan, making sure that he time, in the case of the European presence, "No
did not infect people, and hence the Tokugawa Japanese who treats the Dutch with sincerity is
body politic, with the toxins of Christianity. considered an honest citizen," observed
Those Japanese who dealt with the "imprisoned Kaempfer.57
visitors," as Kaempfer called the Dutch, were Kaempfer described Deshima as a "jail" or a
"bound by an oath and sign with their blood not "fortified compound," one where Europeans were
to talk or entrust to us information about the
56
Ibid., 27, 56.
55 57
Kaempfer, Kaempfer's Japan, 285. Ibid., 186-88, 153-54, 224-25, 199.

58
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

"sealed off and guarded like thieves." Japanese Innes, in his unpublished dissertation on the eco-
who worked with the Dutch were inoculated from nomic value of such trade, argues that the conti-
foreign influence through a "Letter of Accep- nental trade led to technological advances in min-
tance," wherein a guarantor promised that the ing in some Japanese communities. Trade
new employee would not "listen to any talk about spurred an expansion of mining in Japan to meet
the banned Christian sect" and not "have any se- the foreign demand. The main reason for this
cret discussions with the Dutch." Even when expansion was that the major Japanese export
traveling to Edo for a shogunal audience, Japa- specie in the early Tokugawa years (as Hall
nese attendants watched over Kaempfer's every pointed out) was precious metals: gold, silver,
move, "even when stepping aside to follow the and copper. Facilitating the expansion of the
call of nature." At the inns where they stayed mining industry, and the exploitation of these
along the Tokaido Circuit, "the Dutch must rely valuable resources, were technological innova-
on the small walled garden during the day and, if tions in excavation techniques, drainage, survey-
it pleases them, the bath at night." While travel- ing, and smelting. In short, Innes concludes that
ing, "young gentlemen" followed Kaempfer and foreign trade "speeded the pace of innovation by
his entourage shouting, "tojin bai bai!" (or increasing the demand first for silver and later for
"Chinaman, haven't you got something to ped- gold and copper."60 Toby echoes this point, ex-
dle!"), illustrating a curious clumping of all for- plaining that the influence of foreign trade on the
eigners under one category of "other" in the Japa- early modern domestic economy was several
nese mind, hardly a quality that one expects from fold: it fostered a general advancement of the
a country really open to outside contact. Once market economy, sparked regional industries such
at Edo Castle, much like infected people in need as sugar and silk, facilitated an expansion of na-
of quarantine, "Our rooms were isolated from all tional transportation networks, and led to market
other human beings," wrote Kaempfer. Fol- competition which improved the quality and in-
lowing the audience, Kaempfer returned to Na- creased the quantity of goods.61
gasaki in time to witness the execution of Japa- Economic and technological advancement also
nese who had smuggled with the Dutch (a com- transformed Japanese commercial activity be-
mon occurrence). For the crime of illegal trade yond the traditional provinces. In Capitalism
with the Dutch, "with neither a word nor cere- From Within, Howell illustrates how the intensifi-
mony," an executioner "cut off the heads of their cation of cash-crop farming in the Kinai led to
charges as soon as we arrived and turned our eyes increased demand for herring-mulch fertilizer.
upon the scene." Although the Japan trade was This demand, in turn, sparked a massive expan-
lucrative for the Dutch, their treatment at the sion of merchant-run fisheries in Ezo, transform-
hands of paranoid Tokugawa attendants and ing the production habits of local Japanese and
translators was the conduct of people who had, in Ainu. It was not long until Japanese were
Kaempfer's opinion, "closed their mouths, hearts, searching out fresh supplies of herring on south-
and souls" to their foreign guests.58 ern Sakhalin, hoping to fill the large merchant
vessels, or kitamaebune, which followed the Ja-
Places pan Sea coast to ports such as Tsuruga or
Where early modern Japan did actively engage Obama. 62 Along with engendering depend-
the outside world it often reshaped such places
through prolonged ecological and cultural ex- 60
Robert Leroy Innes, The Door Ajar: Japan's
change. John Hall, for example, has illustrated Foreign Trade in the Seventeenth Century (Ph.D. diss.,
the importance of the copper trade in commercial University of Michigan, 1980), 533, 543.
relations between Japan and China. 59 Robert 61
Ronald P. Toby, "Ikinai shi no naka no kinsei
Nihon no kokushi--meshita kadai." In Ajia koeki ken to
Nihon kogyoka, 1500-1900, ed. Hamashita Takeshi and
58
Ibid., 142, 187, 234, 282-83, 285, 355, 396, 27. Kawakatsu Hirao (Tokyo: Riburopoto, 1991), 235.
59 62
John Whitney Hall, "Notes on the Early Ch'ing Robert G. Flershem, "Some Aspects of Japan Sea
Copper Trade with Japan," Harvard Journal of Asiatic Trade in the Tokugawa Period," The Journal of Asian
Studies 12, no. 3-4 (December 1949): 444-61. Studies 23, no. 3 (May 1964): 405-416; David L. Howell,

59
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

ency in Ainu communities by forcing them to appetite for animal skins, and as certain Asian
labor in fisheries, however, the herring industry markets were increasingly closed off, or as deer
depleted fishery yield throughout Hokkaido and became scarce, Ezo began to supply deer skins in
beyond. At one point, explains Howell, herring their place.
shoals which migrated from the Sea of Okhotsk Ainu trapped and hunted deer throughout Ezo,
to the west coast of Hokkaido to spawn had been exchanging the skins with Japanese at trading
so dense that "a pole could almost stand unsup- posts. Matsumae Norihiro, in an eighteenth-
ported." At these sites, gams of whales and century memorandum to Edo officials, remarked
flocks of seagulls gathered to feed off the concen- that trade in deer skins had depleted herds in Ezo.
tration of fish. However, with advances in fish- (These herds, it should be mentioned, along with
ing technology, such as the invention of the healthy salmon runs, were closely tied to Ainu
pound-trap, not only were small family fisheries subsistence systems.) Norihiro was not the only
unable to compete with the proto-capitalist firms observer to note the depletion of deer herds, how-
which owned this equipment, but the environ- ever. Five years earlier, Matsumiya Kanzan had
ment witnessed a drastic decline in fishery yield briefly remarked of deer pelts that "in recent
by the Meiji period.63 years none are traded." Likewise, in 1717, a
This type of environmental degradation and shogunal inspector wrote that "in past years deer
ecological change occurred throughout Ezo (and pelts were mainly taken in the Saru River and
other places in Asia) with the expansion of Japa- Yubetsu areas, but in recent years few pelts are
nese markets and trade networks. In the early taken at all." These are important observations
seventeenth century, large quantities of deer skins because healthy deer herds were central to Ainu
were imported into Japan from Asia, an early survival.66
trade largely ignored by Western scholarship. In 1792, Kushihara Seiho, a local observer in
Once in Japan, these skins were used to make Ezo, offered hints as to how deer had come under
armor and other specialty crafts such as brushes so much pressure. He wrote that in the fall deer
for calligraphy or tabi, a kind of sock worn with from the mountains of the southern section of the
traditional Japanese footwear. Deer-skin items Ishikari region crossed the Ishikari River and mi-
became so popular that Japanese merchants trav- grated southeast to Shikotsu. Illustrating eco-
eled to Southeast Asia in search of more skins to logical trends in fauna distribution, he observed
import. Dutch records from 1624 lament that that in western Ezo the snow became very deep in
European traders could not get their hands on any the winter, and deer found it difficult to forage for
decent deer skins because Japanese had bought food. During this migration, when deer crossed
them all up. That year alone, 160,000 skins the Ishikari River, Ainu concealed themselves
were imported. It reached the point where and their boats behind reed blinds and waited for
Spanish observers (no doubt motivated by their deer to cross the river so that they could overtake
own greed) worried that deer herds were disap- them in boats and kill them. "In recent years an
pearing from Southeast Asia.64 John Shepherd, increasing number of deer have been taken, and
in his history of early Taiwan, points out that the none are left. Those deer that did remain have
deer skin trade with Japan also became an impor- swum across the straits to Morioka domain,"
tant part of that island's economy under early wrote Kushihara. Now, "there are very few if
Dutch and Chinese rule.65 Thus Japanese had an any deer in eastern Ezo."67
Finally, maritime prohibitions, and Japan's
geographic isolation from the Eurasian continent,
Capitalism From Within: Economy, Society, and the State
in a Japanese Fishery (Berkeley: University of California
shaped the disease ecology of the archipelago,
Press, 1995), 38; and Walker, The Conquest of Ainu and hence the rhythms of life and death in early
Lands, 138-44. modern Japan. In her research on disease and
63
Howell, Capitalism From Within, 50, 117. mortality crisis in the early modern period, Ann
64
Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands, 120-21.
65
John Robert Shepherd, Statecraft and Political
66
Economy on the Taiwan Frontier, 1600-1800 (Stanford: Walker, The Conquest of Ainu Lands, 119-20.
67
Stanford University Press, 1993), 57, 73-79, 100. Ibid.

60
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

Bowman Jannetta argues that with the establish- ated between the Edo shogunate and the early
ment of the Edo shogunate few new diseases ac- Meiji state with the Western powers. Quite
tually entered Japan. Pointing to evidence such simply, in my opinion, such forms of interna-
as the absence of bubonic plague and epidemic tional interaction and diplomatic order no longer
typhus, Jannetta argues that "Japan's geography resemble early modern forms and so are beyond
and her isolation from the major world trade the scope of this narrative. As W. G. Beasley
routes provided a cordon sanitaire that prevented and, more recently, Michael Auslin point out,
major diseases from penetrating Japan until the after 1855, Japan was forced to navigate within a
mid-nineteenth century."68 new logic of foreign relations and international
That is not to say, however, that certain dis- order, one not premised on the notion that Japan--
eases did not spread outward from Japan. Simi- or even China for that matter--stood at the center
lar to the scenario outlined by William McNeill in of a real or imagined global community, but
Plagues and Peoples, Japanese contributed to the rather one that exposed that Japan sat precari-
dissemination of deadly contagions in Ezo as ously on the edge of modern civilization. As
their commercial and political interests advanced Auslin cautions, this is not to say that between
into Ainu communities.69 In Ezo, Japanese trad- 1858 and 1872 the Japanese were completely
ers brought diseases such as smallpox and syphi- unable to assert some political and diplomatic
lis, incorporating the northern island into the dis- agency when negotiating with the Western pow-
ease ecology of early modern Japan and sparking ers. For example, Japanese diplomats did suc-
demographic havoc in Ainu communities. 70 ceed in shifting the location of some key treaty
Ecologically speaking, viewed from the perspec- ports (along with other minor diplomatic suc-
tive of the epidemiologic range of Japan's disease cesses) during this early phase.72 However, the
ecology, Ezo was incorporated into the Japanese mere advent of such ports, not to mention the
Archipelago in the early modern period via forms "unequal treaties" that made them legally binding
of "ecological imperialism." 71 Not only were and the "extraterritoriality" that made them sting,
people moving beyond the traditional confines of meant that Japan, whether it liked it or not, had
the realm, but it seems pathogens were as well. joined the dog-eat-dog international climate of
the late nineteenth century.
Conclusion As for the early modern period, three points
stand out after surveying new literature on its
I should offer at least a brief explanation as to
foreign affairs and frontier experiences. The
why this historiographical essay concludes prior
first comes in the form of (not altogether unbi-
to the rise of the "unequal treaty" regime negoti-
ased) praise: with the exception of John Whitney
Hall's Government and Local Power in Japan,
500-1700 and Thomas C. Smith's The Agrarian
68
Ann Bowman Jannetta, "Disease Ecologies of East Origins of Modern Japan, possibly no single
Asia," in The Cambridge World History of Human monograph on the early modern period has
Disease, ed. Kenneth F. Kiple (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1993): 476-482; Ann Bowman Jannetta,
spawned the kind of explosion of historical writ-
"Diseases of the Early Modern Period in Japan," in The ing as has Ronald Toby's State and Diplomacy in
Cambridge World History of Human Disease, ed. Early Modern Japan. To different degrees, the
Kenneth F. Kiple (Cambridge: Cambridge University writings of Howell, Morris-Suzuki and others
Press, 1993): 385-389; and Epidemics and Mortality in expand on Toby's point that the notion of sakoku
Early Modern Japan (Princeton: Princeton University was highly Eurocentric and that historians need to
Press, 1987), 5.
69
William H. McNeill, Plagues and Peoples (New
focus on the Edo shogunate's relations with Asia.
York: Anchor Books, 1976). With the thesis that Japan isolated itself from all
70
Walker, "The Early Modern Japanese State and
Ainu Vaccinations,"102-7; Walker, The Conquest of Ainu
72
Lands, 177-93. Michael Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism:
71
Alfred W. Crosby, Ecological Imperialism: The Japan and the Unequal Treaties, 1858? 1872 (Ph.D.
Biological Expansion of Europe, 900-1900 (Cambridge: dissertation, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign,
Cambridge University Press, 1986). 2000).

61
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

foreign contact wiped clean from the deck (al- vincing narrative of Japan's early modern experi-
though, as the case of Kaempfer shows, certain ence. To date, in the collective scholarship of
important issues clearly have yet to be swept Japan specialists, two political countries coincide
away), Japan specialists have started to navigate and sometimes collide in one temporal and spatial
entirely new waters. For this reason, some of frame. One aim of future research should be to
the most interesting work in early modern Japa- reconcile some of these differences.
nese studies relates to the subfield of foreign af- Third, the new writings on early modern for-
fairs and frontiers. At the same time, however, eign affairs and frontiers have failed to convince
so much still could be done: multiethnic commu- historians of the modern period of the complexity
nities in Nagasaki, Japanese-trading stations in of Japan's pre-Meiji relations with the outside
Korea, foreign trade and environmental degrada- world. Many modernists still slavishly use the
tion in Japan, early-seventeenth-century Japanese "closed country" (sakoku) and "open country"
trading communities in Southeast Asia and their (kaikoku) dichotomy to explain Japan's plunge
environmental impact, and many other topics cry into the modern age. It is still common to talk
out for investigation by talented scholars. of the "opening of the country" with Matthew C.
Second, an interpretative gulf exists among Perry, and how in the 1850s Japan was forced to
scholars of early modern Japan. Those who confront for the first time the practice of interna-
study domestic-centered topics, ranging from tional diplomacy. This is, of course, highly mis-
literary studies to domainal politics and econom- leading, but it does make the task of writing
ics, often sound like they are talking about a dif- about the Meiji years easier. With sakoku, we
ferent country than those writing on foreign af- can be told that only in the Meiji period did Japan
fairs and frontiers. Increasingly, historians such master diplomacy, conduct foreign trade, conquer
as Philip Brown, Luke Roberts, and Mark Ravina foreign lands, and develop collective philoso-
paint a picture of an early modern polity where phies similar to what might be described as a "na-
local domains remained the most pervasive mani- tional" identity. The next step, it seems to me, is
festation of the political and economic country. to have a broader penetration of the complexity
However, in the realm of foreign affairs, few of early modern foreign affairs and frontiers into
would dispute the idea that the Edo shogunate the other sub-fields of Japanese studies. This
maintained tight control over contact with the would require the onerous process of rethinking
outside world, a concrete manifestation of a state topics such as modern Japan expansionism, but it
in the process of centering power. These two would surely enrich our understanding of Japan's
ideas are not mutually exclusive, but Japan spe- past and present.
cialists have yet to integrate them into one con-

Summary (Introduction, 9-10): Chapter 1 aims

Timon Screech, Sex and the Floating to correct “those who persist in seeing Japanese
World: Erotic Images in Japan 1700-1820. shunga as categorically separate from solitary-use
London: Reaktion Books, 1999. pornography” [i.e., masturbation]. Chapter 2 “in-
© David Pollack, University of Rochester vestigates social relations to the exotic images
which proliferated during the eighteenth century.”
Contents: (1) Introduction; Erotic Images, Regarding their impact on social health, these
Pornography, Shunga and Their Use; (2) Time images were not “benignly viewed in their own
and Place in Edo Erotic Images; (3) Bodies, time,” and with “anxiety peaking in the 1790s”
Boundaries, Pictures; (4) Symbols in Shunga; they “include the non-overtly sexual pictures of
The Scopic Regimes of Shunga; (5) Sex and the the Floating World as well as pornography.”
Outside World. References, bibliography, list of Chapters 3 and 4 “offer close readings of some
illustrations (115 monochrome, 34 color). 319 images, both overtly sexual and more subtly li-
pages. bidinous, in order to assess their status as figures

62
EARLY MODERN JAPAN FALL, 2002

Foreign Affairs and Frontiers in and the Pacific, 1785-1885, ed. Archibald R.
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phy Flershem, Robert G. "Some Aspects of Japan Sea
©Brett L. Walker Trade in the Tokugawa Period." The Journal of
Asian Studies 23, no. 3 (May 1964): 405-16.
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