The Meiji Restoration Japan As A Global Nation 9781108478052 9781108775762

The Meiji Restoration
In world history, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 ranks as a revolutionary

watershed, on par with the American and French Revolutions. In this
volume, leading historians from North America, Europe, and Japan
employ global history in novel ways to offer fresh economic, social,
political, cultural, and military perspectives on the Meiji Restoration
and the subsequent creation of the modern Japanese nation-state.
Seamlessly mixing meta- and microhistory, the authors examine how
the Japanese state and Japanese people engaged with global trends of the
nineteenth century. They also explore the internal military conflicts that
marked the 1860s and the process of reconciliation after 1868. They
conclude with discussions of how new political, cultural, and diplomatic
institutions were created as Japan emerged as a global nation, defined in
multiple ways by its place in the world.
Robert Hellyer is Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest

University and has published widely on topics related to Japanese for-
eign relations and trade as well as Pacific history. His publications
include Defining Engagement: Japan and Global Contexts, 1640–1868
(2009).
Harald Fuess is Professor of History and Director of the Heidelberg
Center for Transcultural Studies, Heidelberg University, and Project
Professor at Kyoto University. He also served as elected President of the
European Association of Japanese Studies. His publications include
Japanese Imperialism and Its Postwar Legacy (1998) and Divorce in
Japan: Gender, Family, and the State (2004).
The Meiji Restoration
Japan as a Global Nation
Edited by
Robert Hellyer
Wake Forest University
Harald Fuess
Heidelberg University
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Contents
List of Figures page vii

List of Tables ix
List of Contributors x
Acknowledgments xiii
Notes on Conventions xiv
Introduction 1
robert hellyer and harald fuess
Part 1 Global Connections 13

1 Japan and the World Conjuncture of 1866 15
mark metzler
2 Western Whalers in 1860s’ Hakodate: How
the Nantucket of the North Pacific Connected
Restoration Era Japan to Global Flows 40
noell h. wilson
3 Small Town, Big Dreams: A Yokohama Merchant
and the Transformation of Japan 62
simon partner
4 The Global Weapons Trade and the Meiji
Restoration: Dispersion of Means of Violence
in a World of Emerging Nation-States 83
harald fuess
Part 2 Internal Conflicts 111

5 Mountain Demons from Mito: The Arrival
of Civil War in Echizen in 1864 113
maren a. ehlers
v
vi Contents
6 “Farmer-Soldiers” and Local Leadership

in Late Edo Period Japan 137
brian platt
7 A Military History of the Boshin War 153
hō ya tō ru
8 Imai Nobuo: A Tokugawa Stalwart’s Path from
the Boshin War to Personal Reinvention
in the Meiji Nation-State 171
robert hellyer
Part 3 Domestic Resolutions 189

9 Settling the Frontier, Defending the North:
“Farmer-Soldiers” in Hokkaido’s Colonial
Development and National Reconciliation 191
steven ivings
10 Locally Ancient and Globally Modern: Restoration
Discourse and the Tensions of Modernity 212
mark ravina
11 Ornamental Diplomacy: Emperor Meiji
and the Monarchs of the Modern World 232
john breen
12 The Restoration of the Ancient Capitals of Nara
and Kyoto and International Cultural Legitimacy
in Meiji Japan 249
takagi hiroshi
Suggestions for Further Reading 266

Index 277
Figures
1.1 “View of a Japanese seaport,” (Yokohama) 1868–1870.

Wilhelm Burger Collection, courtesy of Austrian National
Library page 13
4.1 Imports into Nagasaki (in Mexican dollars): ships versus
arms and ammunitions, 1863–1870 88
4.2 “Faust and Margerite” Arms Sales, Japan Punch (1868):
no. 2 From Fukkoku-ban: Japan panchi [Reprint Edition:
Japan Punch] Volume 2 (Tokyo: Maruzen-Yushudo
Company Limited, 1999), p. 113. Used with permission
of Maruzen Yushudo Company Limited 105
5.1 “Japanese military,” 1868–1870. Wilhelm Burger
Collection, courtesy of Austrian National Library 111
9.1 “River landscape in Izu Province,” 1868–1870. Wilhelm
Burger Collection, courtesy of Austrian National Library 189
9.2 Incoming farmer-soldier (tondenhei) households
and key dates 199
10.1 1873 Japanese National Bank ¥10 note 216
10.2 US $10 National Bank note, First National Bank,
Bismarck, North Dakota 216
10.3 1873 Japanese National Bank ¥1 note 217
10.4 US $1 National Bank note, First National Bank,
Lebanon, Indiana 217
11.1 Edoardo Chiossone’s portrait of the Emperor Meiji.
Kō shitsu kō zoku seikan Meiji hen [The Imperial Family
and Its Members: Album of Sacred Images] (Tokyo:
Miyako Nippō sha, 1935) 233
11.2 Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum. J. L. Brunet,
Les Ordres de Chevalerie et les Distinctions Honorifiques
au Japon [The Orders of Chivalry and Honorary
Distinctions of Japan] (Paris: Actualités Diplomatiques
et Coloniales, 1903) 236
vii
viii List of Figures
11.3 Portrait of Empress Shō ken, Kō shitsu kō zoku seikan
Meiji hen, 1935 237
11.4 The Emperor Meiji invested in the Order of the Garter.
Bijutsu jiji gahō [Album of Contemporary Art] no. 6 (1906)
© Trustees of the British Museum, used with permission 247
12.1 Nara meisho ezu [Map of Famous Places in Nara], 1845.
Courtesy of Takagi Hiroshi 252
12.2 Around the foot of Mt. Unebi in the late Edo period 253
12.3 Kagenkei, owned by the Kō fukuji Temple. Courtesy of
Kō fukuji Temple, Nara, Japan 260
12.4 Hō -ō -den at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago,
1893. Courtesy of Tokyo National Museum, Japan 261
Tables
1.1 Rice prices on Osaka markets, Keiō era years 1 and 2

(1865–1866) page 28
4.1 Small arms imports by harbor, 1863–1869 89
4.2 Major small arms importers in Nagasaki, 1866–1867 93
9.1 Farmer-soldiers’ (tondenhei) share of total and agricultural
populations of Hokkaido, 1875–1900 207
ix
Contributors
john breen (PhD Cambridge) is professor at Nichibunken in Kyoto

(Japan) where he edits the journal Japan Review. His research focuses
on the imperial institution and the history of shrines in modern Japan. He
has written widely in English and Japanese, and his latest books are A
Social History of the Ise Shrines: Divine Capital (Bloomsbury, 2017; co-
authored with Mark Teeuwen) and Henyō suru seichi Ise [Ise:
Transformations of a Sacred Site] (Shibunkaku, 2016; edited). He is
presently writing a book on the construction of sovereignty in Meiji Japan.
maren a. ehlers (PhD Princeton) is Associate Professor of History at
the University of North Carolina at Charlotte (USA). Her research
focuses on the social history of early modern Japan with a particular
interest in social marginality, the status order, and its implications for
the political economy. She is the author of Give and Take: Poverty and
the Status Order in Early Modern Japan (Harvard University Asia
Center, 2018).
takagi hiroshi (PhD Hokkaido) is professor at the Institute for
Research in Humanities, Kyoto University (Japan). His research
focuses on the modern emperor system, culture, and the construction
of Nara and Kyoto as “ancient capitals.” His major publications
include Kindai tennō sei no bunkashiteki kenkyū [A Cultural History of
the Modern Emperor System] (Azekura Shobō , 1997), Kindai tennō sei
to koto [The Modern Emperor System and Ancient Capitals] (Iwanami
Shoten, 2006), and Ryō bo to bunkazai no kindai [Imperial Mausolea
and Cultural Assets in the Modern Period] (Yamakawa Shuppansha,
2010).
steven ivings (PhD London School of Economics) is a Senior Lecturer
at the Graduate School of Economics, Kyoto University (Japan). His
research focuses on the socioeconomic history of Northeast Asia, espe-
cially migratory labor and colonial settlement in Hokkaido and
Sakhalin (Karafuto) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. He
x
List of Contributors xi
has published in several journals including Labor History, Japan Forum,

and Transcultural Studies, and is currently working on a socioeconomic
history of colonial Karafuto.
mark metzler (PhD UC Berkeley) is Professor of History and
International Studies at the University of Washington (USA). His
publications include Lever of Empire: The International Gold Standard
and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (California, 2006), Capital as
Will and Imagination: Schumpeter’s Guide to the Postwar Japanese Miracle
(Cornell, 2013), and with Simon Bytheway, Central Banks and Gold:
How Tokyo, London and New York Shaped the Modern World (Cornell,
2016). He is now working on a global history of booms, bubbles, and
busts in the nineteenth century.
simon partner (PhD Columbia) is Professor of History at Duke
University (USA). Partner’s interest in history “from the bottom up”
has led him to concentrate on the social and cultural histories of
ordinary Japanese – farmers, workers, and merchants. His latest book
is The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan
(Columbia, 2017).
brian platt (PhD Illinois) is Associate Professor of History in the
Department of History and Art History at George Mason University
(USA). He also serves as Department Chair and as Director of the
Smithsonian-Mason Graduate Certificate in Digital Public
Humanities. He is a specialist in Japanese history, with a research
focus on the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. He is the author
of Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750–
1890 (Harvard University Asia Center, 2004). In addition, he has
received grants from the Fulbright Foundation, the National
Endowment for the Humanities, the Spencer Foundation, the
National Academy of Education, and the Association for Asian
Studies. His current research project deals with historical commem-
oration and autobiography in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century
Japan.
mark ravina (PhD Stanford) is Professor and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries
Chair in Japanese Studies at the University of Texas, Austin (USA). His
research focuses on early modern and modern Japan, especially political
thought and language. His publications include Land and Lordship in
Early Modern Japan (Stanford, 1999) and The Last Samurai (Wiley,
2004). His most recent book, To Stand with the Nations of the World:
Japan’s Meiji Restoration as World History (Oxford, 2017) was awarded
the best book prize of the Southeast Conference of the Association
xii List of Contributors
for Asian Studies. His current project uses digital humanities methods to
explore political language in early Meiji Japan.
hō ya tō ru (MA University of Tokyo) is Professor and Director of the
Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo (Japan). His research
focuses on early modern Japan, especially diplomatic and military
events in the closing decades of the Edo period. His publications
include Boshin sensō [The Boshin War] (Yoshikawa Kō bunkan,
2007), Boshin sensō no shin-tenkai [New Perspectives on the Boshin
War] (Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2018), and numerous articles.
noell h. wilson (PhD Harvard) is chair of the Arch Dalrymple III
Department of History and Croft Associate Professor of History and
International Studies at the University of Mississippi (USA). She is the
author of several publications on Japan as a maritime nation and on
aspects of Pacific history, including Defensive Positions: The Politics of
Maritime Security in Tokugawa Japan (Harvard University Asia Center,
2015), winner of the 2017 Book Prize from the Southeastern
Conference of the Association for Asian Studies. She was a Fulbright
Researcher at Hokkaido University (2017–2018) and when not writing
about maritime history, stays connected to the ocean through sailing
and diving.
Acknowledgments
This volume is a result of a multiyear, international research project that

explored the Meiji Restoration upon its sesquicentennial. The project was
organized by Robert Hellyer (Wake Forest University), Harald Fuess
(Heidelberg University), and Daniel Botsman (Yale University) and
involved tri-continental collaboration between historians in the United
States, Europe, Japan, and East Asia.
A number of the chapters began as papers presented at “The Civil Wars
of Japan’s Meiji Restoration and National Reconciliation: Global
Historical Perspectives,” an international conference convened at Wake
Forest University in January 2015. The conference was made possible by
funding from the Wake Forest Departments of History and East Asian
Languages and Cultures, Provost Office of Global Affairs, Provost Fund
for a Vibrant Campus, the Humanities Institute, and the Dean of Wake
Forest College. The Japan Foundation, Carolina Asia Center (University
of North Carolina, Chapel Hill), and the Asian/Pacific Studies Institute at
Duke University also generously provided support. Other chapters were
initially presented at a subsequent international conference, “Global
History and the Meiji Restoration,” held at Heidelberg University in
July 2015 that was supported by grants from the German Research
Foundation (DFG), the Japan Foundation, and the Toshiba
International Foundation (TIFO).
The editors also wish to thank the two anonymous readers who offered
valuable comments and critiques that markedly improved this book as
well as Nora Bartels and Charlotte Schäfer for their editorial assistance.
Miho Ayabe, Daniel Botsman, Mary Elizabeth Berry, Paul Escott,
Haneda Masashi, David Howell, Lucy Rhymer, Kären Wigen, and
Yamamoto Takahiro provided assistance, advice, and support at various
stages that proved vital in bringing this book to publication.
xiii
Notes on Conventions
Romanization
Japanese words, names, titles, and place names are spelled using the
modified Hepburn system. Japanese words include macrons, except for
commonly used ones, such as shogun and Tokyo, which appear in stan-
dard, English dictionaries.
Korean words and place names are spelled according to the McCune-
Reischauer system.
Chinese words, proper names, and place names are spelled according
to the pinyin system except in some book titles and in cases, such as
Canton (Guangzhou), where the older romanization is more familiar to
English-language readers.
Proper Names
Chinese, Korean, and Japanese names appear in the original order, with the
family name first, followed by the given name, except for citations in
English-language works where the author’s name appears in western order.
Dates
Except for those included in direct quotations from sources, dates have been
converted into the Gregorian calendar. Months referred to by name (e.g.,
“June 21”) are Gregorian dates, while references by number (e.g., “the 5th
month”) are dates according to the Japanese calendar employed until 1873.
Money
During the Edo period (1600–1868), Japan had a trimetallic currency
system. Silver was used primarily in western Japan and on the Osaka
market, gold was standard in the east and in Edo, and copper coins
were used throughout Japan for smaller market transactions. While the
xiv
Notes on Conventions xv
Tokugawa shogunate set official conversion rates, in reality rates fluctu-

ated based upon market conditions and varied by region.
The silver kan consisted of 1,000 monme of silver reckoned by weight.
From the 1780s through the 1840s, 1 monme of silver was worth roughly
100 copper coins. The gold ryō , which corresponded to the koban coin,
equaled about 60 monme of silver.
This monetary system changed rapidly in the mid-nineteenth century,
trends explored by Mark Metzler in his chapter. For a more complete
explanation of money and monetary terms used, please see the first page
of his chapter.
Measures Used in the Volume

chō : linear measure – 119 yards or 109 meters; square measure –
2.45 acres or .992 hectares
koku: 47.5 U.S. gallons (approximately 6 bushels) or 180 liters
shō (of rice): 1.92 U.S. quarts or 1.8 liters
kin: 1.32lbs or .6 kilograms
tsubo: 3.3 square meters or 35.5 square feet
Introduction
Robert Hellyer and Harald Fuess
The Meiji Restoration began largely in private within the grounds of

Kyoto’s Imperial Palace. Following meetings that commenced the
previous day, on the morning of January 3, 1868, an alliance led by
samurai from the Satsuma and Chō shū domains seized control of the
palace complex, thereby assuring their influence over the young emperor,
Mutsuhito. Later that day, alliance leaders proclaimed the restoration of
imperial rule.1 In response to the proclamation, Tokugawa Yoshinobu,
who had abdicated his position as shogun a few months earlier, deployed
his forces near Kyoto. In the ensuing Battle of Toba-Fushimi, the alliance
achieved a surprisingly easy victory and continued to press its military
advantage in central and northern Honshu throughout 1868 in what
became known as the Boshin War (1868–1869). By the summer of
1869, the nascent regime, headed by Emperor Meiji, had vanquished
the fragmented opposition and established its control over the main
islands of Japan, including Hokkaido.
In these dramatic events of 1868–1869, the primacy of internal forces is
apparent. We can say the same of the models that inspired the men of the
Satsuma-Chō shū alliance in constructing a new regime. Initially the
samurai heading the alliance looked not to the words of a foreign philo-
sopher, as the leaders of the American Revolution did from Montesquieu
and Rousseau, but instead to the Japanese past. They declared a desire to
revive “ancient kingly rule” (ō sei fukko) as had existed during the earliest
days of the Japanese state in the seventh and eighth centuries. Moreover,
unlike the US Civil War (1861–1865), neither side in the Boshin War
actively courted intervention by foreign states. For their part, Western
governments officially declared their neutrality and chose not to overtly
1
A copy of the proclamation, issued on 1867/12/09, the date according to the Japanese
calendar, is included in reel number KE161-0798 of the “Dai Nihon ishin shiryō kō hon”
[Manuscript of Historical Records of the Meiji Restoration of Japan], a document collec-
tion in the archives of Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo. Perhaps because of
the brevity of the January 3 proclamation, historians of Japan have given more focus to the
Charter Oath, issued in April 1868. For an English translation see, David Lu, Japan:
A Documentary History, Vol. 2 (Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 1997), pp. 308–310.
1
2 Robert Hellyer and Harald Fuess
aid one side, a stance different from that taken by some Western states
during the Taiping Rebellion in the Qing Empire (1850–1864), and one
that ended up assisting the Meiji government.
Given the prominence of internal actors and dynamics, the “global”
within the Meiji Restoration is often understood in a limited way – as an
outside trigger mechanism symbolized by the arrival of US Commodore
Perry in 1853. In the decade surrounding the 1968 centennial, Japanese
and Western historians, often employing Marxist theory, debated global
influences by comparing the Restoration to other revolutionary turning
points in world history, notably the French Revolution.2 At the same
time, prominent US historians identified the Restoration as the start of
a process whereby Japan, by imitating Western models, followed a path to
modernity blazed by European nations and the United States.3
Partially in response to these approaches, Western historians crafted
studies focused on identifying and dissecting political, military, and eco-
nomic causes and motivations during the pivotal 1850s and 1860s.4 This
trend extended throughout the 1980s and brought the publication of
edited volumes examining conflict in the form of loyalist, peasant, and
millenarian uprisings in the 1850s as well as political and institutional
change surrounding the 1868 watershed.5 Scholarship also explored the
global in the form of Japan’s Western borrowing of ideas, policies, and
practices that after the initial embrace of the mythical Japanese past,
guided the new regime during most of the Meiji period (1868–1912).6
The 1990s witnessed Western historians giving more consideration to
socioeconomic trends across the nineteenth century, deemphasizing
1868 as a turning point.7 The decade also welcomed studies that impor-
tantly gave voices to ordinary people and women within the story of the
2
Kawano Kenji, Furansu kakumei to Meiji ishin [The French Revolution and the Meiji
Restoration] (Tokyo: Hō sō Shuppan Kyō kai, 1966).
3
Marius B. Jansen, ed., Changing Japanese Attitudes toward Modernization (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1965).
4
W. G. Beasley, The Meiji Restoration (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1972);
Conrad Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–1868 (Honolulu: University
of Hawai’i Press, 1980).
5
Tetsuo Najita and J. Victor Koschmann, eds., Conflict in Modern Japanese History: The
Neglected Tradition (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982); Marius Jansen and
Gilbert Rozman, eds., Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa to Meiji (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 1986).
6
Ardath W. Burks, ed., The Modernizers: Overseas Students, Foreign Employees, and Meiji
Japan (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1985); D. Eleanor Westney, Imitation and
Innovation: The Transfer of Western Organizational Patterns to Meiji Japan (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1987).
7
David Howell, Capitalism from Within: Economy, Society, and the State in a Japanese Fishery
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Kären Wigen, The Making of a Japanese
Periphery, 1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995).
Introduction 3
Restoration and the early years of the Meiji state.8 Other research identi-
fied global influences in the form of Western military and political pres-
sure viewed as steadily mounting following Britain’s victory over the Qing
Empire in the Opium War (1839–1842).9 In addition, scholarship
explored in new and valuable ways Japan’s diplomatic sparring with
Western nations during the 1850s and 1860s.10 Increased interest in the
Meiji Restoration in advance of the 2018 sesquicentennial, which
prompted discussions that led to this volume, stimulated a more recent
surge in publications in English and Japanese.11
Building on the foundations laid by these interpretations, this book
submits that the “global” must be identified and analyzed anew within the
complex landscape that brought the downfall of the Tokugawa regime,
the civil war that followed it, and the formation of a Japanese nation-state
in the decades after 1868. The contributors view and employ the word
“global” as encapsulated in the external forces, trends, and influences
that in immediate and contextual ways, shaped the course of the Meiji
Restoration.
This volume’s use of global draws upon the burgeoning field of global
history, which along with the related fields of universal and world history,
world systems theory, as well as diplomatic and international history,
shares a basic aim of expanding the scope of inquiry beyond the confines
of the nation-state or geographical boundaries.12 Many practitioners of
8
George M. Wilson, Patriots and Redeemers in Japan: Motives in the Meiji Restoration
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992); Anne Walthall, The Weak Body of
a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1998). Published somewhat earlier is the important work on Meiji period
life, Mikiso Hane, Peasants, Rebels, Women and Outcasts (Lanham, MD: Rowan &
Littlefield, 1982).
9
Bob Tadashi Wakabayashi, “Opium, Expulsion, Sovereignty. China’s Lessons for
Bakumatsu Japan,” Monumenta Nipponica 47, no. 1 (Spring 1992): 1–25.
10
Key-Hiuk Kim, The Last Phase of the East Asian World Order: Korea, Japan, and the
Chinese Empire, 1860–1882 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980);
Michael Auslin, Negotiating with Imperialism: The Unequal Treaties and the Culture of
Japanese Diplomacy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006).
11
Mark Ravina, To Stand with the Nations of the World: Japan’s Meiji Restoration in World
History (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017); Daniel V. Botsman and
Adam Clulow, eds., “Commemorating Meiji: History, Politics and the Politics of
History.” Special Issue Japanese Studies 38, no. 3 (November 2018); Catherine Phipps,
ed., “Meiji Japan in Global History,” Special Issue, Japan Forum 30, no. 4 (December
2018); Daniel V. Botsman, Tsukada Takashi, and Yoshida Nobuyuki, eds., Meiji hyaku-
gojū nen de kangaeru – kindai ikō ki no shakai to kū kan [Thinking Through Meiji 150 – Social
and Spatial Change in the Transition to Modernity] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan-sha,
2018).
12
Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World System (New York: Academic Press, 1974);
Bruce Mazlish, “Global History” Theory, Culture & Society 23, no. 2–3 (2006): 406–408;
Akira Iriye, Global and Transnational History: The Past, Present, and Future (Basingstoke:
Palgrave Macmillan, 2013).
global history emphasize the need to overcome a standard focus on

national political elites by exploring groups or topics transgressing terri-
torial borders. Since the end of the Cold War in the early 1990s, an
increasing number of edited volumes have appeared, as well as mono-
graphs using more specialized lenses such as food, that chart connectivity
in global history.13 The field of global history has also come to include
what many view as canonical collections and like any self-respecting
subfield, now supports a dedicated journal.14
In Japan, early Meiji universal history (bankokushi) preceded world
history (sekaishi) as an established concept in school education for the
study of history, with a focus on the West and China.15 The academic
realm has also seen the publication of important works that emphasize the
role of foreigners, engagement with the outside world, and global contexts
in the course of the Restoration and the creation of the Japanese nation-
state.16 Gurō baru hisutorı̄, written in the katakana syllabary for foreign
loanwords, has appeared in about forty book titles and articles since the
start of the twenty-first century, including a Japanese translation of
13
Prominent edited volumes include A. G. Hopkins, ed., Globalization in World History
(New York: W.W. Norton, 2002); A. G. Hopkins, ed., Global History: Interactions
Between the Universal and Local (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006); and
Bruce Mazlish and Ralph Buultjens, eds., Conceptualizing Global History (New York:
Westview Press, 2006). Also Raymond Grew, Food in Global History (New York:
Westview Press, 2008).
14
Such as Bruce Mazlish and Akira Iriye, The Global History Reader (New York: Routledge,
2005) and D. R. Woolf, A Global History of History (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2011). The Journal of Global History, an organ of the subfield, is published by the
London School of Economics. In the German-speaking world, Globalgeschichte [Global
History] has also become a widely used term. In addition, German historians have
produced publications that have become influential in English-language scholarship
such as Sebastian Conrad, What Is Global History? (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2016) and Jürgen Osterhammel, The Transformation of the World: A Global History
of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2014).
15
In the 1870s, Japanese secondary school textbooks were based on, for example,
Peter Parley, Peter Parley’s Universal History on the Basis of Geography [With
Illustrations] (London: John W. Parker, 1837).
16
Some examples include: Sakata Yoshio and Yoshida Mitsukuni, Sekaishi no naka no Meiji
ishin: gaikokujin no shikaku kara [The Meiji Restoration in World History: From the
Perspective of Foreigners] (Kyoto: Kyoto Daigaku Jinbun Kagaku Kenkyū jo, 1973);
Shibahara Takuji, Seikaishi no naka no Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration within World
History] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1977); Miyachi Masato, Kokusai seijishita Meiji Nihon
[Meiji Japan Under the International Political System] (Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan,
1987); Tanaka Akira, ed., Sekai no naka no Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration within the
World] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2001); Mitani Hiroshi, Meiji ishin to nashonar-
izumu – bakumatsu no gaikō to seiji hendō [The Meiji Restoration and Nationalism:
Diplomacy in the Closing Days of the Shogunate and Political Change] (Tokyo:
Yamakawa Shuppan, 2009). Meiji Ishin-shi Gakkai, ed., Kō za Meiji ishin: Sekaishi no
naka no Meiji ishin [Studies on the Meiji Restoration: The Meiji Restoration in World
History] (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010).
Introduction 5
Pamela Crossley, What Is Global History?17 A number of Japanese histor-

ians have used gurō baru hisutorı̄ when discussing the history of Asia but also
occasionally in reference to Europe or the United States. Many have
included discussions of Japan in gurō baru hisutorı̄ when explicitly examining
cross-cultural dimensions, such as a study of foreign communities in the
port of Nagasaki.18 Recent studies have explored the Restoration and early
Meiji periods through the lens of Japan’s engagement with nineteenth-
century globalization. The 2017 volume in the important series edited by
the Meiji Restoration History Seminar (Meiji Ishin Shigakkai) examines
Japan’s embrace of “global/Western” standards of international relations
following attempts to revise and reinterpret the East Asian diplomatic
system of “civilization and barbarian” that governed early modern East
Asia’s connections with the outside world.19
Inspired by these historiographic trends, this book offers comparative
insights on Japan and other parts of the nineteenth-century world. Yet as
its primary approach, the book traces several global threads and their
particular and profound intersections with the Japanese experience of
the mid-nineteenth century. It first examines the global economic con-
texts that shaped the Restoration and early Meiji periods, revealing ways
in which growth in commodity production and surging demand
throughout much of the world created risks and opportunities on
state, domain, and individual levels. Discussion across several chapters
elucidates how a 1860s’ global commodity boom – manifested in mar-
itime resource extraction, agriculture, and foreign trade – shaped socio-
economic and political trajectories across Japan both before and after
the Restoration.
The economic thread intersects with the book’s multifaceted exam-
ination of the endemic violence and armed conflicts that arose through-
out the Japanese state in the 1860s. Japan was part of a worldwide trend
that witnessed some 177 armed conflicts across the globe between 1840
and 1880, with the 1850s and 1860s proving especially bloody and
17
Pamela Crossley, What Is Global History? (Cambridge: Polity, 2006); Pamela Crossley and
Satō Shō ichi, trans. Gurō baru hisutorı̄ towa nanika (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012).
18
For example, Tō yama Jun, “Nihon to Higashi Ajia no komyunikeshon no sō gō teki
kenkyū , Gotō -Nagasaki o meguru ibunka kō ryū no tobogurafı̄ – sakoku shikan kara
gurō buru historı̄ no shiten e – joron ni kaete [General Research on Communication in
Japan and East Asia – The Topography of Exchange with Foreign Cultures in Nagasaki
and the Gotō Islands: Moving from the Historical Perspective of the Closed Country
Concept to a View Using Global History, An Introduction] Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku
sō gō kenkyū jo kiyō 37, no. 1 (July 2011): 109–123.
19
Morita Tomoko, “Sō ron: Meiji ishin to gaikō ” [General Remarks: Diplomacy and the
Meiji Restoration] in Meiji Ishin Shigakkai, ed., Kō za Meiji ishin 6: Meiji ishin to gaikō
[Studies on the Meiji Restoration 6: Diplomacy and the Meiji Restoration] (Tokyo:
Yū shisha, 2017), pp. 1–14.
destructive.20 Japan’s death toll during its violent 1860s – around

30,000 souls – pales in comparison to the millions who perished during
the Taiping Rebellion or the approximately 700,000 lives lost during the
US Civil War.21 Yet, as discussions across multiple chapters will make
clear, to better understand the Meiji Restoration we must take a closer
look at the roots and consequences of Japan’s decade of conflict. Here,
too, global intersections proved key and came in tangible forms, such as
Western military incursions and the importation of more advanced
European and US rifles used in battles large and small. As several
chapters will explore, the fear of Western attacks proved equally trans-
formative, helping to instigate clashes and new methods of military
mobilization. Together global influences, both concrete and perceived,
shook the status system and established political structures, setting the
stage for the political watershed of 1868.
As its title reveals, this book places particular focus on exploring the
Japanese experience within mid-nineteenth-century global environments
that witnessed, over the span of a decade, the birth of a string of new
nation-states: Italy, Germany, and Canada (as a unified British domin-
ion). To explain how the Meiji Restoration brought forth Japan’s trans-
formation into a “global nation,” a member of what was initially
a European-American “nation-state club,” several chapters highlight an
underemphasized theme in current scholarship: the reconciliation
achieved following the violence of the 1860s. Together, the chapters
show how local authorities and the new Meiji central government took
steps to allow those who had previously contested their rule to become
stakeholders in the coalescing Japanese nation-state that notably included
Hokkaido, which had existed on the margins of the Edo period state.
The closing chapters further that conversation by demonstrating ways
in which the creation of a new Japanese national identity involved sig-
nificant intersections with global trends, embodied in decisions about
images embossed on currency, the diplomatic role of the Emperor
Meiji, and the emergence of Kyoto and Nara as cultural capitals. As
these chapters make clear, Japanese leaders and intellectuals did not
simply imitate established Western methods and practices. Rather, as
they found inspiration in an idealized Japanese antiquity, the leaders of
20
Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “Global Violence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia
and America: The Geopolitics of War in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 38, no. 4 (October 1996): 622. In their chapters, Brian Platt
and Harald Fuess explore these comparisons and connections in more detail.
21
Mitani Hiroshi, Kokkyo o koeru rekishi ninshiki – hireishi no hatten teki kō yō [Historical
Understanding Across National Borders – The Value of Advancements in Comparative
History] Iwanami kō za Nihon rekishi 22 [Iwanami Studies on Japanese History 22]
(Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2016), p. 267.
Introduction 7
the new Meiji state simultaneously moved in conjunction with unfolding

global trends in nation-state construction.
Overall, by highlighting the breadth of global intersections, the book
innovatively employs global history, which often seeks to move away from
the story of the nation-state, to explain in numerous new ways the forma-
tion of a modern, Japanese national polity. Although not explicitly
explored in them, the volume’s wide-ranging discussions also point to
ways to consider how that polity became invested in creating an empire in
Asia and the Pacific in the early twentieth century.
Global Connections, Internal Conflicts,

and Domestic Resolutions
As its temporal parameters, this volume examines the bakumatsu, the “last
days of the shogunate,” extending from the early 1850s until the Meiji
Restoration in 1868, as well as the Restoration period, spanning from the
regime change in 1868 to the final stages of nation-state formation in the
1890s. Chapters in the first section, Global Connections, reveal
the larger, mid-nineteenth-century interfaces with global economic
trends and contexts, highlighting the socioeconomic impacts of expanded
foreign trade on individuals and the course of the Boshin War. Exploring
macroeconomic trends, Mark Metzler identifies 1866 as a point of global
economic conjuncture. He outlines ways in which the bakumatsu and
Restoration periods were shaped by Japan’s intersection with a world
revolution in prices, the global commodities boom of the 1860s, as well
as harvest crises and grain shortages throughout much of Eurasia.
Through a careful analysis of nineteenth-century global economic his-
tory, Metzler offers a number of novel conclusions surrounding socio-
economic unrest during the bakumatsu period. He shows that, in
international finance as well as the reconstitution of political regimes,
1866 marked a watershed both in Japan and on the global economic stage.
In so doing, Metzler demonstrates that in order to understand the baku-
matsu and early Meiji periods and their global intersections, we should
take seriously the unexpected unities revealed in “synchrony”: comove-
ments in places and social realms we have assumed to be separate.
Numerous other chapters point to cases of synchrony, including Noell
Wilson who addresses a long-standing omission in our understanding of
whaling, a global trend that shaped the bakumatsu period. Past scholar-
ship invariably mentions how US whalers, fanning out throughout the
Western Pacific, helped prompt Commodore Perry’s mission. Yet histor-
ians have neglected to examine fully the whaling fleets that subsequently
called in large numbers at Japanese ports. Wilson points out the
synchrony inherent in the continued US demand for whale oil, and its
impact on emerging Japanese maritime agendas. She also identifies it in
yet another key event of 1866: an often, overlooked convention, signed
that year between the shogunate and the United States. Although con-
cerned primarily with bilateral trade, the agreement included a few lines
permitting Japanese to obtain passports and travel overseas. Wilson
explains how thereafter Japanese began to serve on whaling vessels plying
the Pacific, thereby individually participating in the North Pacific com-
modity and cultural flows that stretched the northern latitudes between
Russia and the Americas.
The section’s two subsequent chapters outline not only global influ-
ences on socioeconomic, military, and political events but also touch
upon the process of reconciliation within nation-state formation follow-
ing 1868. Through a microhistory approach, Simon Partner elucidates
how the world commodity boom shaped the life of a Japanese merchant in
the treaty port of Yokohama. Partner chronicles Shinohara Chū emon,
who in 1859 at the age of fifty, traveled to Yokohama to begin selling silk
from his home province to Western merchants. As he overcame commer-
cial challenges, Shinohara grappled with a commercial scene destabilized
by attacks on Westerners in and around Yokohama. Shinohara navigated
tensions in the market brought by these events and especially the panic
that gripped the port amidst British threats to use naval force to retaliate
for the murder of a British merchant in 1863. Partner explains that
Shinohara faced bankruptcy following another synchronic event: the
dramatic drop in silk prices that occurred with France’s loss in the
Franco-Prussian War (1870–1871). Overall, through Shinohara we
understand not only individual merchant initiatives within the turbulent
political and commercial landscapes of the 1860s, but also the possibili-
ties for personal reinvention present in a more globally connected, baku-
matsu Japan.
Harald Fuess examines the ways in which the global weapons trade
fueled armed conflicts beginning with interdomain clashes in the early
1860s and extending into the Boshin War. He details the personal rela-
tionships and the breadth of weapon imports, demonstrating the inter-
section of internal military and political events with Japan’s expanding
economic connections with the United States, Europe, India, and China.
Examining especially the activities of German and Dutch trading firms,
Fuess details how independent European and US traders supplied both
sides in the Boshin War, further exacerbating internal divisions. Tracing
the international arms flow to Japan, he argues that Satsuma-Chō shū
leaders may have staged what they believed was a preventive coup d’état
in January 1868 out of fear that the import of foreign arms would soon
Introduction 9
strengthen the military prowess of the Tokugawa regime. Fuess also

locates international diplomatic influence in another example of political
reconciliation: the Meiji government’s decision to assume the debts to
foreign arms dealers held by several domains, even those that had actively
opposed the Satsuma-Chō shū alliance.
Chapters in the “Internal Conflicts” section identify numerous global
influences while illustrating the toll – both real and anticipated – of armed
conflicts during the 1860s. Maren Ehlers explores how leaders in Ō no,
one of the smaller domains in the Edo period state, grappled with the
threatened arrival of a rebel, samurai band from Mito. The Mito group
was part of a loyalist cause advocating a revival of imperial influence and
the forced expulsion of foreigners, a movement that emerged in response
to real and perceived threats of Western military encroachment. Ehlers
underscores the contextual influence of global forces by illustrating how
the people of Ō no, living in a previously peaceful domain, confronted the
Mito band. As they prepared for the band’s anticipated incursion, domain
leaders sacrificed the well-being of Ō no’s commoners to protect the
samurai elite, laying bare simmering, intradomain class tensions.
Brian Platt also emphasizes how feared Western military incursions
prompted proposals to create armed units that included farmer-soldiers
(nō hei), plans that fundamentally challenged the monopoly on military
service held by the ruling samurai class. Platt shows that village-level
commoner elites in numerous domains, not just in the well-known case
of Chō shū , formed such units as a sense of crisis gripped the Japanese
realm. He points to ways in which the long-term significance of peasant
mobilization in Japan differed from other parts of the nineteenth-century
world. In China regional, private armies raised to fight the Taiping
Rebellion contributed to growing regionalism and eventually, the rise of
warlords in the early twentieth century. By contrast, Japan’s new form of
military mobilization merged into a centralized military organization,
punctuated by the institution of conscription to create a national army
for the Meiji nation-state.
Drawing on his broad research of military practices and technology,
Hō ya Tō ru outlines ways in which armed conflicts during the 1860s,
especially the Boshin War, decisively altered long-standing military stra-
tegies and organization. Hō ya stresses that the expanded use of firearms,
particularly imported Western rifles – a trade explored by Fuess – forced
a departure from feudal military practices. He reminds us of the military
dimension of the success of the Satsuma-Chō shū alliance in both accom-
plishing the Meiji Restoration and solidifying its grip on power after 1868.
In short, the alliance more actively adopted Western weapons and parti-
cularly Western-style military organization, compared to the often
halfhearted attitude toward military reform held by the Tokugawa sho-

gunate and its supporters. Hō ya, therefore, presents another global influ-
ence on the bakumatsu and Restoration periods: how the introduction of
Western rifles and military structures substantially eroded the legitimacy
of the established status system and thus helped to facilitate the creation
of a new national polity in the Meiji period.
Robert Hellyer illustrates yet another perspective on the armed con-
flicts of the 1860s: the breadth of devotion and personal toll experienced
by many Tokugawa retainers. Hellyer examines the life of Imai Nobuo,
who organized a pro-bakufu peasant militia similar to those explored by
Platt, and subsequently traveled to Kyoto in 1867, joining a Tokugawa
ancillary police force. In that role, Imai was involved in the killing of
Sakamoto Ryō ma, today one of the more popular figures of the
Restoration period. An ardent Tokugawa supporter, Imai fought in the
major battles of the Boshin War before surrendering at Hakodate in 1869.
Along with other vanquished, pro-bakufu groups, he eventually settled in
Shizuoka and became a tea farmer. In another case of synchrony,
Shizuoka’s tea industry emerged thanks to burgeoning US demand for
Japanese green tea during the 1860s and 1870s. Hellyer thus reveals how
Japan’s new interfaces with global markets fostered opportunities for even
the most hard-core opponents of the Satsuma-Chō shū alliance to over-
come the bitterness and resentment of the Boshin War and create pro-
ductive, individual niches in the post-Restoration nation-state.
In the initial chapter of the “Domestic Resolutions” section, Steven
Ivings builds on the theme of renewal for ex-samurai to show individual
reinvention and post-1868 reconciliation through the stories of a new
brand of “farmer-soldiers” (tondenhei): settler groups, composed of
samurai and commoners, which farmed Hokkaido in the decades after
the Restoration. Through these groups, Ivings reveals another nineteenth-
century global trend evident in post-Restoration Japan: settler colonialism.
Furthermore, he demonstrates that the tondenhei program was initially
geared toward reconciling disaffected elements of the samurai class, espe-
cially those from defeated clans in the northeast, and was thus more about
internal reconciliation than the professed goal of Meiji leaders to create
a buttress against possible Russian incursions.
Mark Ravina uses the lens of paper currency to consider how Meiji
leaders harmonized “new” with “ancient” and “foreign” with “Japanese”
in their nation-building project. He explains that in 1873, they commis-
sioned a US company to design paper currencies sporting images drawn
from ancient triumphs such as the victory over Mongol invaders in the
late thirteenth century. Ravina reveals that with these currency choices,
Meiji leaders did not simply embrace “Westernization” but rather moved
Introduction 11
in concert with an emerging global trend: the creation of exclusive,

national currencies often emblazoned with national heroes on paper
bills. Presenting another example of synchrony, he notes that over the
course of the nineteenth century, Japan and the United States gradually
and independently abolished local and privately issued paper currencies
in favor of a national currency guaranteed by the central government.
Overall, Ravina stresses that in order to fully analyze the Meiji nation-
building enterprise, we must abandon the idea of Meiji leaders simply
imitating Western models and instead confront the degree to which they
found Western norms, such as nationalism and the nation-state model,
both constraining and empowering.
John Breen explores the development of a system of imperial
insignia and awards to offer multiple, fresh insights on the Emperor
Meiji’s personal role in post-Restoration diplomacy. Breen demon-
strates that in pursuit of international recognition, Meiji leaders cre-
ated a system of ornaments and honors based upon Western
European models. He traces how they first implemented that system
through exchanges with European royal courts. Nonetheless, until
Japan’s victory in the Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), British dip-
lomats refused to participate, deeming Japan unworthy of reciprocal
diplomatic recognition. In a similar vein, Meiji leaders cast Japan as
detached from neighboring East Asian states by refusing to offer
ornaments and awards to Qing and Korean leaders. Breen highlights
the key role the Emperor Meiji played in facilitating Japan’s “orna-
mental diplomacy,” explaining that the monarch spent many of his
days receiving foreign envoys. Overall Breen stresses that the
Emperor Meiji proved a vital actor in the dynamic construction of
Japan’s interstate relationships in the Restoration period.
The emperor’s importance in cultural diplomacy is also a concern of
Takagi Hiroshi in his discussion of the creation of cultural capitals. In the
early Meiji period, leading intellectuals and politicians realized the sig-
nificance of a cultural pedigree for Japan to emerge as a “civilized” nation
of equal standing in the modern international world order. Noting how
Europeans made Athens and Rome capitals of classical civilization, they
advocated and implemented a restoration and revival of Nara and Kyoto,
replete with imperial tombs, as sites embodying a Japanese imperial
tradition. In the process of rewriting history for domestic and interna-
tional consumption, these intellectuals and politicians cast the then
dilapidated ancient capitals as geographic and ideological counterparts
to the political capital of Tokyo, thereby also helping to transform the Edo
period administrative center into the seat of power of the new Meiji
government.
In sum, this collaborative study of the global intersections at the heart

of the Meiji Restoration challenges the idea of a national formation
process with an expected “progression”: Japan leaving behind its tradi-
tional past and embracing the modernity of the West. It highlights instead
the ability of Japanese – on individual and institutional levels – to over-
come the often bitter armed clashes of the 1860s and achieve a high level
of national cohesion by the close of the 1870s. Similarly, the volume
demonstrates the ways in which Japan’s expanding maritime and com-
mercial connections accelerated that process of national reconciliation.
Moreover, it explores how Meiji leaders successfully created national
icons – the Emperor Meiji as a diplomatic actor, a unified paper currency,
and cultural capitals – working within new international structures
unfolding in the late nineteenth-century world. All told, the convergence
of multiple internal factors, shaped in immediate and contextual ways by
global trends and contexts, brought particular historical outcomes not at
all evident when the palace coup d’état initiated the Meiji Restoration in
January 1868.
Part 1
Global Connections
Figure 1.1 “View of a Japanese seaport,” (Yokohama) 1868–1870.

Wilhelm Burger Collection, courtesy of Austrian National Library
1 Japan and the World Conjuncture of 1866
Mark Metzler
How would things look if we were to consider the Keiō era, that brief
interval on the eve of the Meiji era, as a period in global history? By
Gregorian calendar reckoning, Keiō began on May 1, 1865, and ended
October 23, 1868. This pivotal moment in Japanese history happens to be
congruent in time with an international economic downturn, whose
signal event was the London financial panic of May 1866. In Japan,
1866 was a year of political revolution, with the alliance of the Satsuma
and Chō shū domains in March, followed by the Chō shū victory over
Tokugawa-led forces in the summer. The year stands out in the history of
prices as well, and attention to changes in prices can help integrate stories
that are often thought to belong to separate countries, separate social
milieus, and separate domains of activity.1
As a step toward understanding the codevelopment of global and
domestic histories at this turning point, this chapter focuses on the year
1866 and surveys four themes. The first is the revolution in prices. The
outstanding event of Japan’s nineteenth-century price history was the
great inflation of the 1860s. The most extreme point of the inflation
came in 1866. Japan’s great inflation also arose at a time of international
inflation.2
1
A note on time: I have converted all dates in the old Japanese calendar to their Gregorian
calendar equivalents. This is consistent with the usage in this volume and underscores the
international codevelopment of events discussed in this chapter.
2
A note on money: Dollars in this chapter signify silver dollars. The Mexican silver dollar
was the most widely used trading currency in nineteenth-century East Asia. US silver
dollars and Japanese silver yen (after 1871) were variations of this coin, with nearly the
same fineness and weight. Between 1861 and 1865, the exchange rate between Japanese
silver monme and silver dollars was around 35 to 36 monme per dollar. Yamamoto Yū zō ,
Ryō kara en e – bakumatsu / Meiji zenki kahei mondai kenkyū [From the Ryō to the Yen –
Research on the Currency Question in the Bakumatsu and Early Meiji Period] (Kyoto:
Minerva Shobō , 1994), p. 194.
Within Japan, in 1857, a single gold ryō equaled about 70 silver monme or about 6.6
kanmon, with one kanmon consisting of 960 bronze zeni coins. The currency system was
reformed in 1860 in response to the great export of gold that followed the opening of the
ports in 1859. By 1867, Osaka exchange rates were 1 ryō ≈ 139 monme ≈ 9.8 kanmon.
15
16 Mark Metzler
A second, connected theme is the global commodities boom of the

1860s, and its end. Japan joined the international trading system at a time
when world commodity prices were surging. This is one reason for the
speed at which Japan’s foreign commerce developed in the first half of the
1860s. Beginning in the spring of 1865, however, and affecting increas-
ingly many lines of trade in 1866, international commodity prices fell
heavily. Falling prices triggered waves of debt default in commercial and
financial centers from Bombay to London to Shanghai.
While prices fell for cotton and other staple commodities, the price of
food grains jumped upward. This movement too was international, and it
involves a third theme, of harvest crises and grain shortages. Already by
1865, monetary inflation and civil conflict had pushed Japanese rice
prices to what would have been considered famine prices a few years
earlier. On top of this, the cold, wet summer of 1866 made for the poorest
rice harvest since the great famines of the 1830s. Simultaneously there
were weather anomalies across Eurasia, including cold, wet weather that
damaged wheat harvests in Europe and droughts that ruined rice crops in
India.
Grain shortages connect to a fourth and final theme, for the year 1866
also set an Edo period record for the number of urban and rural rice riots.
These were part of a larger wave of popular rebellion.
A Global Commodities Boom

The world as a whole underwent a phase of greatly accelerated commer-
cial and financial integration in the 1860s. This movement was stimulated
by a cyclic recovery after the international depression of 1857. It was also
connected to wars.
In 1857–1858, British imperial forces were warring in Asia on multiple
fronts. In India, the anti-British rebellion and civil war ended with the
consolidation and intensification of British governance. It was followed
by a boom in investment into the building of new railroads and port
facilities, largely organized and funded as state-supported private under-
takings. The British-French War against China (1856–1860) happened
simultaneously. This war for “free trade” led to a great extension and
intensification of international commerce in China, especially after the
Taiping Rebellion ended in 1864. Nine new treaty ports were opened
Shinbo Hiroshi, Kinsei no bukka to keizai hatten [Early Modern Prices and Economic
Development] (Tokyo: Tō yō Keizai Shinpō sha, 1978), p. 173; Simon J. Bytheway and
Martha Chaiklin, “Reconsidering the Yokohama ‘Gold Rush’ of 1859,” Journal of World
History 27, no. 2 (2016): 281–301. In 1871, the yen was established as the national
currency at a rate of 1 yen = 1 ryō .
Japan and the World Conjuncture of 1866 17
between 1860 and 1864, including the first three ports in north China and
the first three Yangzi River ports (see Figure 1.1). Steamship service
regularized trade and quickened its pace. Thus, when Nagasaki and
Yokohama became treaty ports in July 1859, it was part of an enormous
movement, by which Asian peasantries en masse – tens of millions of
producing households – were within a few years’ time linked into
a worldwide division of labor. This division of labor had its most impor-
tant coordinating center in London, and it is worth noticing the transfor-
mation of British trade and finance during these years.
World economic integration was intensified rather than retarded
by the US Civil War. Cotton was the world’s number one industrial
crop and the raw material for the leading industry of the industrial
revolution. By value, raw cotton was Britain’s biggest import in the
mid-century decades, and before the US Civil War these imports ran
overwhelmingly in a single channel, being grown by enslaved work-
ers in the southern United States and shipped to the cotton mills of
Lancashire. By 1862, the Union naval blockade of southern ports
was cutting off these shipments, causing a crisis in Lancashire.
British demand caused world cotton prices to increase more than
fourfold between April 1861 and the summer of 1864, inducing
a boom in cotton-growing districts around the world.3 Western
India became the world’s largest zone of substitute cotton produc-
tion. The boom was centered on Bombay, where super-profits from
the cotton trade fueled a boom in building port facilities and other
infrastructure, in new company formation, and in banking.
From the standpoint of British industry, Japan was a minor producer of
cotton, but within Japan, the international shift in supply and demand
had big effects. Before 1863, Japan exported virtually no cotton. Briefly,
in 1864, cotton was Japan’s single most valuable export to Britain,
exceeding silk (which was also exported to Britain in record volume in
1864). In that year, sixty-two foreign ships, most of them British, left
Japan carrying cargoes that consisted mainly of raw cotton. British trade
statistics show the year’s import of cotton from Japan to be about 4,300
metric tons (84,000 cwt.), for which British buyers paid £696,000 (or
about $2.8 million). This number is evidently understated.4 This was
3
William O. Henderson, The Lancashire Cotton Famine, 1861–1865 (Manchester:
Manchester University Press, 1934): pp. 122–123; Sven Beckert, Empire of Cotton:
A Global History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2014), chapter 9.
4
British import statistics did not record a large share of these exports as Japanese because
many ships passed first through Hong Kong. Of the sixty-two ships carrying Japanese
cotton in 1864, thirty-three sailed direct from Japan to Britain, while the other twenty-nine
sailed first to Hong Kong. “Kanagawa,” in Commercial Reports from Her Majesty’s Consuls
18 Mark Metzler
only about 1 percent of Britain’s total import of raw cotton, and only
a fraction of the cotton Britain imported from China. From the Japanese
side, however, this was a big business. Cotton was then Japan’s most
important commercial crop after rice, forming the basis for a great,
domestically oriented cottage industry of cotton spinning and weaving.
The British consul at Yokohama reported that prices as high as
$34 per picul (≈60 kg) “drained the country” of available cotton.5
Given the actual export volumes involved, he could only have been
speaking of the country nearby, but the price effects spread out more
widely. For cotton growers and dealers, high prices were a windfall, as
Simon Partner’s chapter in this volume reveals in close detail. For
Japanese spinners, weavers, and dyers, high prices could be disastrous.
High prices also meant that many buyers took on larger debts to fund their
purchases.
Silk was, like cotton, in international short supply, because of the
silkworm disease that ruined silk production in Europe and western
Asia. Foreign demand was therefore practically unlimited relative to
the scale of Japanese production, and Japanese sericulture boomed as
never before in the early 1860s, fostering rapid technical advances
based on established techniques. Contemporary surveys estimated
that by 1863 total silk production was double pre-1859 levels.6
Again, many thousands of agricultural households were affected. In
1865, Fukuzawa Yukichi wrote that people complained of high prices
and that it took 3 or 4 ryō to buy what formerly cost just a single ryō .
But wages too had risen, and owing to foreign trade, people were
better off. In silk-producing districts in the northeast that once suf-
fered from famine, “nobody is going out into service, but everybody is
engaged at silk . . . Those who ate only barley rice with salt now eat
pure rice with a side dish, and rice and fish are going up in price.
Peasants who produce rice, fishermen, carpenters and plasterers are
all better off.” And not only silk was booming: “Where silk cannot be
produced, cotton is raised, and where cotton cannot be produced,
rapeseed is produced. Even for things like rice and wheat that do not
enter into foreign trade, goods are circulating and selling widely
throughout Japan, and peasants and tradespeople can’t keep up
with business.” The feeling caused by the boom in foreign trade
in China and Japan, 1865 (London: Harrison, 1866), pp. 241–244. One pound sterling
(£1) was worth about 4 silver dollars.
5
“Kanagawa,” Commercial Reports, 1865, pp. 241–244.
6
Yamaguchi Kazuo, “Opening of Japan at the End of the Shogunate and its Effects,” in
Japanese Society in the Meiji Era, ed. Shibusawa Keizō , trans. Aora H. Culbertson and
Kimura Michiko (Tokyo: Ō bunsha, 1958), pp. 11–15.
was “like the joy of ‘kite men’ [tobi no mono: firemen/construction

workers] when there is a fire in Edo.”7
Tea producers also enjoyed an export boom, as Robert Hellyer explores
in his chapter in this volume. The boom in trade with China also meant
a boom in the export of dried seaweed, shellfish, and other marine
products.
Altogether, Japan’s exports rose from perhaps $5 million in 1861 to
around $20 million in 1865, equivalent to 700 million monme, or some-
thing over 7 million ryō . In an overwhelmingly agricultural land of nearly
33 million people, this may not seem a big amount, but for multiple
reasons, the new export trade had greatly magnified effects. One effect
was on prices. Japanese prices were pulled upward by foreign demand.8
They were also pulled upward by the inflationary creation of new money
and credit.
An International Credit Bubble

Together with the boom in international trade came a great expansion of
credit, especially between 1862 and 1865. This expansion had its center
in London, where international trade was funded by means of trade bills
handled by specialized bill brokers. These bills, which were backed by
a pledge of the goods in transit, could be monetized during the period
before they were due by sale at a discount to banks and other agencies.
Trade bills were also kited around between agencies, becoming a vehicle
for repeated creation of new credit unsecured by any real claim to goods.
The largest of the bill brokers was Overend, Gurney, and Company,
whose failure would set off the London financial panic on May 11, 1866.
The international credit boom was also promoted by a package of
institutional innovations that, in retrospect, effectively completed the
framing of London’s globally oriented financial-capitalist order. In
1857, Britain liberalized corporate law to enable the establishment of
7
From “Tō jin ō rai” [Intercourse with Foreigners], published in 1865; cited in Tō yō
Keizai Shinpō , Nihon bō eki seiran [Foreign Trade of Japan, A Statistical Survey] (Tokyo:
Tō yō Keizai Shinpō sha, 1935), pp. 11–12, 17; Keiō Gijuku, ed., Fukuzawa Yukichi
zenshū [The Collected Works of Fukuzawa Yukichi], Vol. 1 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1958), pp. 17–19.
8
Shinbo’s analysis demonstrates the greater price rises of goods with export markets as
opposed to goods that traded only domestically. Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka, pp. 289–297;
Shinbo, “Edo makki (Bunsei~Bakumatsu / Ishinki) ni okeru bukka dō kō to keizai hatten”
[Price Trends and Economic Development at the End of the Edo Period (Bunsei –
Bakumatsu, Restoration Era)], in eds. Harada Toshimaru and Miyamoto Matao, Rekishi
no naka no bukka: zenkō gyō -ka shakai no bukka to keizai hatten, shinpojiumu [Symposium:
Prices in History – Prices in Preindustrial Society and Economic Development] (Tokyo:
Dō bunkan Shuppan, 1985), pp. 119–121.
20 Mark Metzler
banking corporations. There followed a “manic” wave in the formation of

British overseas banks, mainly between 1862 and 1866, when twenty-five
foreign and thirteen colonial banks were registered in England.9
Conspicuous here were the new “eastern exchange banks” specializing
in financing trade with Asia. By 1863, these banks were making record
profits, and the boom in overseas banking, like the brokering of trade bills,
assumed the aspect of a bubble. Simultaneously, limited liability for
corporations was instituted in the Companies Act of 1862, stimulating
a surge of company flotations. British authorities also loosened banking
laws in India in 1862, and there was a wave of speculation in Bombay in
1864. Riding the boom in the Asian cotton trade, the new British Indian
banks extended their business to Shanghai. Thus, international credit
networks centered in London extended via the operations of the British
eastern exchange banks and trading companies to traders based in Asian
port cities, which were undergoing their own growth booms.
How were events in Japan related to this international credit cycle?
Japan’s own system of credit and debt remained at (or beyond) the distant
edges of this movement, but multiple indirect connections were being
formed. The Western and Chinese merchants who traded in Japan’s new
treaty ports depended almost entirely on credit. In order to procure
Japanese goods, foreign merchants in turn extended credit to a few
Japanese merchants and to some domains.10 When it came to buying
foreign goods, Japanese merchants had to pay cash. This meant a big
demand for silver, supplied by Japanese credit networks centered in
Osaka.
The biggest effects within Japan were caused by the domestic creation
of new money and credit. The 1860 currency reform substantially
reduced the gold and silver content of the coinage in order to stem the
outflow of gold that followed the opening of the ports in 1859. Tokugawa
officials also issued large amounts of debased currency for their own fiscal
purposes. Seignorage profits from the coinage had been a major
Tokugawa revenue source, and this continued to be the case. The sho-
gunate’s money revenue for 1866 totaled 3.7 million ryō , of which nearly
1.7 million ryō was revenue from recoinage. Many domains, especially in
western Japan, issued their own local paper money, with Chō shū ’s being
9
P. L. Cottrell, “The Coalescence of a Cluster of Corporate International Banks,
1855–75,” Business History 33, no. 3 (1991): 32–35.
10
Ishii Kanji, “Bakumatsu kaikō to gaiatsu e no taiō ” [The Opening of Ports in the
Bakumatsu Period and Reactions to Foreign Pressure], in Ishii et al., eds., Nihon keizai
shi [Japanese Economic History], Vol. 1, Bakumatsu ishin ki [Bakumatsu and Restoration
Periods] (Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2000), pp. 24–27. Foreign debts of the
domain governments added up to 4 million yen (= 4 million ryō ) by 1871. Most of this
debt seems to have been contracted after the Meiji Restoration.
especially highly leveraged. Satsuma began to mint a large volume of zeni

coins with lower copper content than those of the shogunate, turning an
estimated 2 million ryō in profit between 1862 and 1864.11 A temporarily
stimulating international price conjuncture and a temporarily permissive
international credit environment thus enabled local expansionary mea-
sures as well.
The Onset of International “Overproduction”

and Recession in 1865
The early 1860s’ credit boom was international, as was the wave of
company and bank formation. So too was the contraction between 1865
and 1867, when many of these new enterprises failed. The year 1865
began with very high prices for commodities in general. When the end of
the US Civil War seemed imminent in March 1865, prices of cotton
began to fall. In the initial market overreaction, cotton prices in April
and May dropped temporarily to one-half the level of the year before.
Although cotton prices then recovered somewhat, this was the beginning
of a price decline that would continue for the next thirty years.
The initial collapse of prices caused a crisis for merchants who had
bought large stocks of raw cotton on credit at high prices. In Bombay, the
first big failure in the cotton trade, on May 17, 1865, initiated a panic.
Thus, the “panic of 1866,” which has been told as a story of the London
financial markets, actually began in the spring of 1865 in Bombay. In
June, there was a run on the Bank of Bombay, which operated doubly as
a commercial bank and as the central bank of the Bombay Presidency.
The economic crisis in Bombay continued through 1866, leading ulti-
mately to the failure of the Bank of Bombay in early 1867.12
One could also begin the story of this downturn with the United States.
There, wartime financial innovations included the issuing of inconvertible
“greenback” paper money by the US Treasury and the creation of a system
of national banks designed to purchase government bonds and to issue
their own loans and paper money backed by their holdings of government
11
Ishii, “Bakumatsu kaikō ,” pp. 14, 16–17. Thus, despite the currency reforms forced by
the new treaties, the shogunate retained substantial money-creation power. (This cor-
rects my earlier statement in Mark Metzler, Lever of Empire: The International Gold
Standard and the Crisis of Liberalism in Prewar Japan (Berkeley, CA: University of
California Press, 2006), p. 18.) The other main sources of Tokugawa money revenue
were goyō kin forced loans (700,000 ryō in 1866) and customs revenue (571,000 ryō in
1866).
12
J. B. Brunyate, An Account of the Presidency Banks (Calcutta: Office of the Superintendent
of Government Printing, 1900), pp. 15, 30–31; D. E. Wacha, A Financial Chapter in the
History of Bombay City (Bombay: Combridge and Co., 1910).
22 Mark Metzler
debt. This surge of money and credit creation funded a wartime boom in
the northern United States. With the war’s end in April 1865, the US
Treasury immediately began to contract the currency and the government
debt, contributing to a great fall of prices and economic depression that
began in the spring of 1865 and deepened in 1866.13 In Chinese ports also,
there were serious economic disturbances in 1865 and 1866.
As world cotton prices fell back in early 1865, cotton prices in Japan
continued to rise for a time. Altogether, cotton prices in Japan quadrupled
between 1862 and 1866, and they did not decrease thereafter. The domestic
movement of cotton prices thus reflected the stepwise, irreversible character
of Japan’s wider price revolution.14 After 1866, however, Japanese exports of
raw cotton practically ended. Simultaneously, there were large imports of
British cotton cloth, in part to fill the local supply shortfall. By way of
contrast, Japanese silk exports boomed in 1865 because of record high
prices, even though the physical volume shipped was less than in 1864.15
Japanese exports reached about $20 million in 1865. The period of
rapid increase then stopped. For the next decade, total exports fluctuated
around the same level, only beginning to increase again from 1876.
Japan’s trade surplus also disappeared in 1866 and turned to a deficit
after 1867.16 This had knock-on monetary effects, because the silver
dollars earned by exports served as a stock of silver for minting the
shogunate’s token nibukin coins.17 The end of trade surpluses thus
dried up the sources of Tokugawa coinage revenues.
Simultaneously, grain prices began to move upward. This movement
was connected to Japan’s domestic political drama, which entered a new
phase in March 1865 when the shogunate announced a second expedi-
tion to subdue Chō shū . This enormously expensive operation cost some
4.4 million ryō in 1865 and 1866. It got underway June 9, 1865, when the
nineteen-year old shogun, Iemochi, departed Edo, accompanied by
armed forces and baggage carriers numbering in the thousands.
Proceeding by stages along the Tō kaidō , the shogun, his army, and
baggage train arrived in Kyoto on July 14 and then went on to Osaka. Rice
13
Rendigs Fels, American Business Cycles, 1865–1897 (Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 1959), pp. 92–95.
14
Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka, pp. 338–339. Local shortages helped keep cotton prices high in
Japan, where there were poor cotton harvests in 1865 and 1866. Japanese exports of raw
cotton fell sharply in 1865. Great Britain. Parliament, House of Commons, ed., Annual
Statement of the Trade and Navigation of the United Kingdom with Foreign Countries and
British Possessions in the Year 1868 (London, 1869), pp. 308, 312.
15
“Kanagawa,” Commercial Reports, 1865, pp. 241–244.
16
Shinya Sugiyama, Japan's Industrialization in the World Economy, 1859–1899 (Atlantic
Highlands, NJ: Athlone Press, 1988), pp. 44–48.
17
Ishii, “Bakumatsu kaikō ,” p. 15.
prices in Osaka markets began to increase at a rate higher than the general
level of price inflation. Already in October 1864, Osaka rice prices had
moved above 230 silver monme per koku, surpassing the historic peak
reached during the great famine of 1837 – the year Ō shio Heihachirō ’s
rebels had burned a quarter of the city. In July, as the shogun moved into
new headquarters at Osaka Castle, the price for a koku of rice passed
300 monme. In August, the price passed 400 monme.18 Shogunal and
allied domain forces remained in Osaka for months before commencing
a slow advance toward Chō shū in December 1865.
The International Panic of 1866

It was not only Japan that had troubles in 1866. In London, the
Commercial History and Review of 1866, published by the Economist in
March 1867, described the year just passed as one “of almost uniform
disaster.” The summer of 1866 particularly stood out in England as
a time of cold wet weather, epidemics, trade disruptions, and record-
high interest rates. In commerce, there had been a great reversal. “For
three or four years,” the Review of 1866 explained – that is, from 1862 or
‘63 until 1865 – “from the operation of a variety of causes, . . . demand, in
a large number of cases, had outrun supply.” Cotton was the most
conspicuous of these cases. However, “the events of 1866 have, in the
most abrupt and decisive manner, reversed this order of things, and, by redu-
cing demand far within the limits of supply, have entailed confusion and
loss upon large interests.”19 As demand contracted, goods of many kinds
appeared to be in oversupply and prices began to fall.
Another movement that reversed in the spring of 1866 was “the large
drain of gold and silver to Egypt, India, and the East, which have been in
progress since 1861, chiefly in payment of cotton.” These shipments of
silver and gold specie from Europe to Asia were a basic factor in the
expansion of banking and credit in Asian port cities during these years.
Eastward shipments of specie ended in March and April 1866 – shortly in
advance of the London panic. One might suppose that the end of this
18
of Hawai’i Press, 1980), pp. 154–155, 191; Ishii, “Bakumatsu kaikō ,” p. 14;
Mitsui Bunkō , ed., Kinsei kō ki ni okeru shuyō bukka no dō tai [Movement of Major
Commodity Prices in the Late Early Modern Period] (Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku
Shuppankai, 1989), pp. 46, 74–76. Here and below, the price of rice from Higo (today’s
Kumamoto Prefecture) is taken as representative. In the Edo period, one koku of rice was
the ration needed to sustain one person for one year.
19
“Commercial History and Review of 1866,” Supplement to the Economist, March 9, 1867,
pp. 8–9, emphasis in original.
24 Mark Metzler
external “drain” would help stabilize London credit markets. In fact, it

was symptomatic of a widespread crisis in the repayment of debts.20
At the heart of London’s globalized credit system sat the Bank of
England (BoE), whose own gold reserve ran short as banks and merchants
suddenly withdrew specie money to cover their debts. At the beginning of
May, the BoE’s interest rate for lending to other banks already stood at the
relatively high level of 6 percent. On May 3, the BoE raised its bank rate to
7 percent, then a full percentage point higher on May 8. On May 11,
the day the bill broker Overend, Gurney announced it could not repay its
debts, the BoE raised its rate to 9 percent. With this, the general financial
panic commenced. The next day, the Bank of England raised the bank rate
to 10 percent, where it remained until August.21 This “10 percent” was
a historically high level, and it meant severe pressure for anyone who
needed to borrow. Most merchants fell into this category.
The story of an “abrupt and decisive” reversal, “reducing demand far
within the limits of supply,” was more or less repeated for many commodities,
including sugar, jute, copper, tin, and petroleum. It was also so for tea.
The year 1866 opened with unheard of high prices for tea in China. This
was the year of the “great tea race” from Fuzhou to London, which increased
the market excitement.22 The race ended on August 29, when three fully
loaded clipper ships arrived within hours of one another at the London docks
after a ninety-nine-day voyage. Combined shipments out of China’s ports up
to August 31 were the “heaviest on record,” but by September, shippers were
dumping tea on the London market amid severe price falls. Consequently,
“the losses borne by dealers, importers, and, in fact, by all engaged in the trade, have
been beyond precedent.”23 The British consul at Fuzhou, then China’s second
busiest foreign-trade port, told of “reckless speculation” and “ruinous com-
petition.” News of the financial crisis in London arrived there in June, and
by year’s end, there were mounting business losses.24 The collapse of cotton
prices helped to generate a sharp reaction in Ningbo, which suffered a serious
trade depression in 1866.25 Several of the new British eastern banks now
20
“The Commercial History and Review of 1866,” pp. 3–4; Economist, September 29,
1866, pp. 1133–1134.
21
R. G. Hawtrey, A Century of Bank Rate (London, New York: Longman, Green & Co.,
1938), pp. 84–86, Appendix I.
22
Sabrina Fairchild, “Fuzhou and Global Empires: Understanding the Treaty Ports of
Modern China, 1850–1937” (PhD dissertation, University of Bristol, 2015), chapter 3.
23
“Commercial Review of 1866,” Economist, pp. 8–9, emphasis in original. Also, “Foo-
chow-fu, 1866,” and “Shanghae, 1866,” in Commercial Reports of Her Majesty’s Consuls in
China, Japan, and Siam, 1865–66 (London, 1867), pp. 45–46, 103–104.
24
“Foo-chow-fu, 1866,” Commercial Reports, pp. 45–47.
25
Susan Mann, Local Merchants and the Chinese Bureaucracy, 1750–1950 (Stanford, CA:
Stanford University Press, 1987), pp. 140–141; Yen-p’ing Hao, The Commercial
failed. Shanghai experienced the worst financial panic since its opening in the
1840s.26
Writing from Yokohama, the British consul described a larger shift in
the East Asian trade. In the initial phase of free trade, “the success
attending the first opening of the ports in China and Japan brought into
the commercial field a large number of adventurous men, with little or no
capital, eager to make rapid fortunes and quit the scene.” These adven-
turers with their “gambling spirit” created “a degree of competition and
reckless speculation which the trade could not possibly sustain,” while the
banks “afford[ed] them accommodation to an unwarrantable extent.”
The meaning of the year 1866 was that “the career of this class of
merchant” was “brought to an abrupt termination, after having caused
incalculable mischief.” As for the banks that funded them, “many of them
having been ruined, and nearly all having met with serious losses, they
now run with an ill-judged caution in the opposite direction, and are slow
to give facilities even to houses of the most undoubted standing.”27
There was a great falloff in the business of the big trading firm of
Jardine, Matheson, and Company which had borrowed from the eastern
exchange banks and then in turn acted as a kind of bank itself by funding
a network of other operations. (These included the arms trade explored
by Harald Fuess in his chapter in this volume.) The big trading firm Dent
and Company, having run into trouble in 1865, now failed.28
Altogether, about half the Western firms doing business in Hong Kong
and Shanghai in 1865 disappeared in the second half of the 1860s. There
was an even bigger dropoff in the Western firms doing business in
Yokohama.29 It was Japan’s trade with Britain particularly that fell off
in 1866. British-Japanese trade thus displayed a more sharply defined
business cycle than did Japanese trade in general.
As another factor for diminished trade, the British consul in Nagasaki
noted “a great depreciation of the native coin” during 1866, “arising from
the scarcity of dollars with the natives.” Japanese silver monme began to
depreciate against silver dollars in 1866 and especially 1867, falling from
Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism

(Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1985), p. 324.
26
Hamashita Takeshi, “Jū kyū seiki kō han, Chū goku ni okeru gaikoku ginkō no kin’yū shijō
shihai no rekishiteki tokushitsu: Shanhai ni okeru kin’yū kyō kō to no kanren ni oite”
[Historical Characteristics of Domination over the Chinese Financial Market by Foreign
Banks in the Latter Half of the Nineteenth Century: In Connection with the Financial
Crisis in Shanghai], Shakai keizai shigaku 40, no. 3 (1974): 230–233.
27
“Japan. Kanagawa, 1866,” Commercial Reports, p. 255.
28
Ishii Kanji, Kindai Nihon to Igirisu shihon: Jā din-Maseson shō kai o chū shin ni [Modern
Japan and English Capital: Focus on the Jardine-Matheson Trading Company] (Tokyo:
Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 1984), chapter 2; pp. 159–161.
29
Sugiyama, Japan’s Industrialization, p. 239 (note 18).
26 Mark Metzler
35 or 36 monme per dollar to around 60 per dollar in 1871.30 One can note
here again the context of declining specie shipments from Europe to Asia
after April 1866.
Japan in 1866: Civil Strife, Price Revolution,

Provisioning Crisis
Another factor that depressed purchasing power was the fact that
Japanese consumers were suddenly having to pay much more for food.
When the second year of the Keiō era opened in early February 1866, rice
prices in Osaka already exceeded 400 monme per koku, double those of
a year before. In March, Osaka rice prices moved above 500 monme, and
in May, they passed 700 monme per koku.31 Later in that month, the year’s
first major riots broke out, in villages in the Mito domain in the eastern
Kanto region, where there had been a substandard harvest in 1865. These
rural riots then began to spread in eastern Japan.32
Simultaneously, the political situation approached a showdown, as the
Satsuma and Chō shū domains secretly allied against the Tokugawa gov-
ernment on March 7, 1866. In effect, two coalitions of states claiming
loyalty to the emperor were now aligned against one another, for the
Tokugawa side increasingly seemed to be no more than a coalition. It
was also an unexpectedly ad hoc and shaky coalition, as numerous lords
refrained from dispatching their own military forces in response to
Tokugawa requests, whether on pretexts or because they were actually
disabled by bankruptcy, violent factional strife among their own retainers,
or peasant rebellion and noncompliance in delivering taxes.
Meanwhile in Osaka, the presence of the shogun and his men is esti-
mated to have cost over 3 million ryō . To provision 8,000 shogunal troops
and officers in Osaka, the forces of vassal lords, plus an army of porters
and servants, required large stores of rice. The shogunate’s own receipts
of tax rice had fallen well below their former levels, causing government
officials to purchase rice on the market. To fund these expenses during
May and June, the shogunate imposed a large levy on the Osaka merchant
community, something it had done in 1864 and again in 1865. These
three levies totaled nearly 2 million ryō . Formally, these were mandatory
low-interest loans, which might be compared to mandatory war bond
purchases in the twentieth century. In practice, they were not always
30
“Nagasaki, 1866,” Commercial Reports, pp. 237, 240; Yamamoto, Ryō kara en e,
pp. 194–195.
31
Mitsui Bunkō , Shuyō bukka, pp. 46, 74–76.
32
Totman, Collapse, pp. 219–221; Aoki Kō ji, Hyakushō ikki no nenjiteki kenkyū
[Chronological Research on Peasant Uprisings] (Tokyo: Shinseisha, 1966), p. 248.
repaid. These de facto taxes were another factor pushing merchants to

raise their sale prices.33
Simultaneously, preparing for war, the Tokugawa and domain govern-
ments refrained from their usual sales of tax rice to the markets. Private
hoarding magnified the shortages. The sudden increase in rice prices at
this point also had aspects of a commodity bubble. Merchants who had
earned large profits in other branches of trade – several of which now
stalled – used their funds to buy up rice on speculation. Tokugawa
authorities, aiming to secure a sufficient supply of rice in Osaka, liberal-
ized trading regulations to allow the participation of merchants not
licensed in the rice trade. These nonlicensed merchants made direct
purchases in rice-producing areas. The increase in rice prices fed back
into price increases for other foodstuffs, meaning a great fall in the real
purchasing power of wages.34
Table 1.1 shows Osaka rice prices month by month. As a point of
comparison, rice prices in the mid-1850s, the final period of normal
Edo period prices, were around seventy-five to ninety-five monme per
koku.35
As rice prices soared, a new wave of “smashing riots” (uchi-kowashi)
began in the Osaka region. On June 20, the first riots occurred in Hyō go
(Kobe) and spread immediately to neighboring Nishinomiya, Itami,
Ikeda, and other villages in Settsu Province (today’s Osaka and Hyogo
Prefectures). Significantly, Hyō go was a port and highway town on the
Sanyō (or Saigoku) high road from Osaka and Kyoto to western Japan.
Hyō go was scheduled to be opened as a treaty port and had been visited
by British minister Harry Parkes in 1865. It was thus on the military road
to Chō shū as well as on the front lines of the foreign advance into Japan.
On June 25, there was a great smashing action in Osaka itself. Rioters
destroyed 885 houses, targeting mainly rice dealers and moneylenders.
The shogun and his army evidently could not preserve law and order in
their own, new headquarter city. In fact, the underpaid troops themselves
were a source of crime and disorder. Rioters openly mocked the political
authorities. The Osaka riots were followed by smashing riots in villages in
the whole surrounding area. In this region of highly diversified and
commercialized rural production, the cotton trade was particularly
33
Totman, Collapse, pp. 187, 191, 193, 197–201; Ishii, “Bakumatsu kaikō ,” pp. 13–14;
Suzuki Kō zō , Edo no keizai shisutemu [The Edo Economic System] (Tokyo: Nihon Keizai
Shinbunsha, 1995), pp. 231–234.
34
Yamamuro Kyō ko and Lee Chang Min, “Bakumatsu ni okeru beika no bō tō to bō raku ni
kansuru kō satsu” [Examining the Sudden Rise and Decline in Rice Prices at the End of
the Edo Period], Nihon bunka kenkyū 49 (2014): 227–231; Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka,
p. 276.
35
Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka, p. 338.
28 Mark Metzler
Table 1.1 Rice prices on Osaka markets, Keiō years 1 and 2 (1865–1866)
Gregorian Japanese date Rice price†

date (mo./day)* (monme per koku) Other events
1865 Keiō year 1

May 25 5/1 275 [5/7] International fall of cotton prices; financial
panic in Bombay (May 17); beginning
of deflation in the United States.
June 9: shogun and army depart from Edo.
June 23 Int. 5/1 301
July 23 6/1 285 [6/2] Late July: shogun and army arrive at Osaka.
Aug. 21 7/1 357
Sept. 20 8/1 344 [8/2]
Oct. 20 9/1 370
Nov. 18 10/1 448
Dec. 18 11/1 414 December: shogunal army begins advance
toward Chō shū .
1866
Jan. 17 12/1 398 [12/2]
Keiō year 2
Feb. 15 1/1 469 [1/4] Mar. 7: Satsuma–Chō shū secret alliance.
Mar. 17 2/1 496 [2/4]
Apr. 15 3/1 585 [3/5] May 11: Overend, Gurney failure in
London – “panic of 1866.”
May 15 4/1 753
June 13 5/1 780 [5/7]
June 20–25: Osaka-area riots.
July 10–15: Edo-area riots.
July 12 6/1 830 [6/2] July 18: Chō shū war begins.
July 24: beginning of “world renewal”
uprisings in eastern Japan.
Aug. 10 7/1 945 Aug. 29: death of shogun; end of
Chō shū war.
Sep. 9 8/1 1,020 [8/4] Sept. 13–16: great typhoon.
Sept.: big fall of tea prices in London.
Oct. 9 9/1 1,290
Nov. 7 10/1 880
Dec. 7 11/1 1,200
1867
Jan. 6 12/1 1,290
Data: Daily rice prices given in Mitsui-ke Hensanshitsu ed., Ō saka kin gin bei sen narabini
kawase hibi sō ba hyō [Daily Market Charts of Osaka Gold, Silver, Rice, and Zeni Exchange],
Vol. 2 (1916), pp. 889–939. Equivalents in the two calendars are based on Nojima Jusaburō ,
Nihonreki seireki gappi taishō hyō [Japanese Chronological Table Contrasted by Gregorian]
(Nichigai Associates, 1987), pp. 284–285.
* Prices are given for the first day of each month. When the markets were closed, the next
closest date is given (specified in brackets). “Int.” = intercalary month.
†
Prices are for Kaga rice; Chikuzen rice when Kaga rice price not recorded.
important. It also seems that land-poor peasants were relatively more

dependent on cotton cultivation, and that the Osaka-area cotton harvest
was exceptionally poor in 1866. On top of all this, on June 26 a huge storm
hit central Japan, causing serious economic hardship.36
On July 10, fifteen days after the great Osaka riot, there was
a smashing riot in Shinagawa just outside Edo. The Shinagawa riot
inaugurated a wave of urban rioting in the Kanto region. Thus, in the
week before the Chō shū war began, political authorities temporarily
lost control in the Tokugawa capital itself, from which the shogun
and his army had absented themselves a year before. Again the
microgeography of this movement is notable, for Shinagawa, just
two stations along the Tō kaidō Road from Kanagawa (Yokohama),
was another port-and-highway town on the front lines of the foreign
advance into Japan. In the city of Edo, rioting reached a peak
between July 12 and 15.37
We might also consider the social and political limits now on display.
At one level, the riots were a social communication of grievances to
political authorities. They were also a way of enforcing commoners’
norms internally within the farming villages and urban wards. When
rioters opened rice stores and destroyed debt records, their actions were
also an immediate means of food relief and debt relief. These social
forms and functions fit into a multigenerational history of similar actions
and seemed to be understood on all sides.38 Rioters attacked property,
but attacks on persons were rare, and loss of life was very rare. They
tended to follow a set script, targeting rice merchants (but sparing those
who made charity contributions to the poor), moneylenders, and the
new merchants who dealt in foreign goods, who were also blamed for the
inflation of prices.
In these inauspicious circumstances, the Tokugawa-led coalition
began its war against Chō shū on July 18. Things quickly went badly
for the Tokugawa side. Militarily and politically, it is a picture of
36
William B. Hauser, Economic Institutional Change in Tokugawa Japan: Ō saka and the Kinai
Cotton Trade (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 122–126; Aoki,
Hyakushō ikki, pp. 139, 248; Totman, Collapse, pp. 224, 299.
37
Aoki, Hyakushō ikki, pp. 139–140.
38
See, among others, Irwin Scheiner, “Benevolent Lords and Honorable Peasants:
Rebellion and Peasant Consciousness in Tokugawa Japan,” in Japanese Thought in the
Tokugawa Period, 1600–1868, eds. Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1978), pp. 39–62; Stephen Vlastos, Peasant Protests and
Uprisings in Tokugawa Japan (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986);
Anne Walthall, “Edo Riots,” in Edo and Paris: Urban Life and the State in the Early
Modern Era, eds. J. L. McClain, J. M. Merriman, and Ugawa Kaoru (Ithaca, NY,
London: Cornell University Press, 1994), pp. 407–428.
30 Mark Metzler
Tokugawa coalition forces being beaten by better motivated and trained

Chō shū forces, who had superior firearms, as Fuess explains in his
chapter, and who also enjoyed informal British support.39 If we broaden
our sense of politics to take in the “social” and the “everyday,” other
dimensions of change become visible.
In eastern Japan, the urban rice riots in the Kanto area subsided after
mid-July, but a series of rural revolts got underway, part of a wave of
peasant uprisings that extended from mid-June to September. These
“world renewal” (yonaoshi) uprisings had a radical and millenarian flavor,
as peasant rebels veered off the established social script. In land-poor
upland villages that relied on silk production, peasants were squeezed by
high rice prices in the same way that townspeople were. They were also
squeezed by new shogunal taxes on silk producers. The “world-renewal”
uprisings began in the Kanto region on July 24 and in Iwashiro (today’s
western Fukushima Prefecture) on July 26. Tens of thousands reportedly
took part in each. In Chichibu and Tama in the western Kanto, a peasant
army, armed with farm implements and flying battle flags bearing the
slogan “world renewal,” attacked village rice merchants and moneylen-
ders. They decided to march on the treaty port of Yokohama but were
blocked by armed forces of area domains. In Shindatsu, thousands of
peasants took part in an uprising whose causes included the new taxes on
silk together with the sudden increases in rice prices and interest rates.
Climatic fluctuations enforced their own effects, as the region was chilled
by extended, cold summer rains at a critical season for both the rice crop
and for silkworm rearing.40
On August 29, the twenty-year old shogun Iemochi died in Osaka
Castle but his death was not announced until a full month later. The
British diplomat, Ernest Satow, reported rumors that he had been poi-
soned. There was now a major political turn. Tokugawa Yoshinobu,
effectively acting as shogun, immediately ended the war against
Chō shū , sending Katsu Kaishū to negotiate a settlement. Almost imme-
diately, Yoshinobu also implemented far-reaching reforms along Western
lines, advised by the French minister Léon Roches. It was alarm at the
prospect of Yoshinobu’s success that would cause Chō shū and Satsuma
leaders to see the third year of the Keiō era as a do-or-die moment for their
movement. Larger forces seemed to be with them.
To anyone inclined to believe in portents, the month between the
young shogun’s death and the announcement of it must have appeared
39
Albert M. Craig, Chō shū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1961), pp. 329–333.
40
Aoki, Hyakushō ikki, pp. 140–142; Vlastos, Peasant Protests, pp. 114–141.
highly significant. First and most revealing was the “voice of the people”
as expressed on the frontlines of the war against Chō shū . The Iwami
Silver Mine Territory, under direct Tokugawa administration, was
a historic source of Tokugawa money power. It was also a scene of the
“four-front” war against Chō shū . When Chō shū forces attacked at the
end of August, officers representing Tokugawa authority fled. From
September 2–5, 1866, a reported force of 4,000 to 5,000 peasants
armed with bamboo spears began to conduct smashing raids on the
houses of village officials and “unjust people.” Between September 14
and 16, another peasant uprising erupted in a neighboring domain.41
A second front in the war was the Kokura domain of northern
Kyushu, located across the Straits of Shimonoseki from Chō shū .
Responding to Tokugawa orders, Kyushu-area domains gathered
12,000 men for the campaign but refrained from fighting for the shogu-
nate. Kokura forces were defeated by a small but decisively led Chō shū
raiding force. The Kokura lord, his retainers, and their families fled on
September 9 after setting fire to Kokura Castle. Again, a temporary
abdication by the political authorities brought an immediate social
revolt. The same day, groups of armed peasants began a series of
smashing raids that systematically targeted the houses of village head-
men and moneylenders. They made sure to destroy land deeds and debt
records. Among the raiders were recently recruited peasant-soldiers
carrying guns.42
Next came the monstrous typhoon that hit central Japan between
September 13 and 16. It was said to be the worst in decades or perhaps
even centuries. The area around Hyō go and Kyoto was severely damaged
by storms and flooding, which swept away bridges on the Kamo River and
destroyed many buildings. As this giant tropical low-pressure system
advanced northward through central Japan, it appears to have sucked in
cold Arctic air in its wake, for it was immediately followed on the morning
of September 17 by a freak frost reported in Shinano Province (now
Nagano Prefecture). A run of early frosts followed, ruining many unhar-
vested crops. A week later, on September 23–24, a second great typhoon
hit central Japan. Thousands of people died in the two storms, which
destroyed fields, grain stores, and cargo boats, making a bad food-supply
situation much worse.43
These storms came at the end of a summer of cold, wet weather in the
northeast of the country. Japanese rice harvests were mostly good in the
41
Katsunori Miyazaki, “Characteristics of Popular Movements in Nineteenth-Century
Japan: Riots during the Second Chō shū War,” Japan Forum 17, no. 1 (2005): 1–24.
42
Ibid. 43 Totman, Collapse, pp. 299–300.
32 Mark Metzler
1860s, but there were serious crop shortfalls in 1866 and again in 1869.
Rice plants need hot summers and do best when mean temperatures in
July and August, day and night, are above twenty degrees centigrade.
Particularly in the northeast of the country, abnormally poor rice harvests
are most typically caused by cold, cloudy, and rainy summers, brought by
the yamase winds from the northeast.44 Climate historian Arakawa
Hitoshi reports that a northeast wind blew continuously in the summer
of 1866, as happened again in the summer of 1869. The US consul at
Yokohama reported on September 30, 1866, that the year had been
exceptionally cold and wet, with August temperatures averaging six
degrees Fahrenheit below those of 1865, but that local cereal crops
were nonetheless abundant. Further north and east, however, the 1866
rice harvest appears to have been the worst since the famines of the
1830s.45
Under these combined influences, rice prices in Osaka increased by
another 50 percent in August and September, reaching 1,300 monme per
koku at the beginning of October.46 There was also a significant monetary
element in the price spike. In early August, silver monme and bronze zeni
suddenly depreciated by nearly 40 percent in Osaka markets vis-à-vis
gold-denominated ryō . Thus prices in silver monme (in western Japan)
were significantly higher than prices in gold ryō (recorded for Nagoya and
Edo).47
With a truce in the war against Chō shū agreed on October 10, rice
prices in Osaka fell back a bit. Amid this ongoing uncertainty, however,
Osaka merchants continued to invest in rice. Osaka rice prices held to
extremely high levels, around 1,300 or 1,400 monme per koku, through
February 1867.48
The records compiled by Aoki also indicate a lull in peasant upris-
ings in October, followed by a new wave of uprisings in the final
months of the year. Poor harvests were now identified as a primary
cause. Many of these uprisings also had a hard edge not seen under
44
Yamase are northeasterly winds that blow from the Pacific Ocean to the east coasts of
Hokkaido and the Tohoku Region from May to August.
45
H. Arakawa, “Meteorological Conditions of the Great Famines in the Last Half of the
Tokugawa Period, Japan,” Papers in Meteorology and Geophysics 6 (1955): 101, 107;
“Japan. Kanagawa,” in Commercial Relations of the United States with Foreign Nations for
the Year Ended September 30, 1866 (Washington, 1867), p. 450.
46
Price for Chikuzen rice, given in Mitsui-ke Hensanshitsu, Ō saka sō ba hyō . Prices were still
higher for other types of rice. Yamamuro and Li, “Beika no bō tō ,” p. 224; Mitsui Bunkō ,
Shuyō bukka, p. 76.
47
Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka, pp. 36–37, 281; Iwahashi Masaru, “Bukka to keiki hendō ,” in
Nihon keizai no 200-nen [200 Years of the Japanese Economy], eds. Nishkawa Shunsaku,
Odaka Kō nosuke, and Saitō Osamu (Tokyo: Nihon Hyō ronsha, 1996), pp. 61–62.
48
Mitsui Bunkō , Shuyō bukka, pp. 46, 74–76.
the previously normal conventions of the Tokugawa order. In the

Tsuyama domain (today’s Okayama Prefecture) in western Japan,
for example, on December 31 peasants conducted a smashing raid
on the mansion of the feudal lord and destroyed much of the castle
town. Troops killed several rioters.49
In Edo, Tokugawa leaders announced on November 19 the impor-
tation of foreign rice, apparently an historic first, in order to relieve
domestic shortages. Japanese grain markets were not yet integrated
with international markets, but here too connections were being
made. In Nagasaki also, rice was imported in 1866 for the first
time since the opening of Nagasaki as a treaty port in 1859. The
British consul reported that poorer people bought rice imported from
India, Siam, and Cochin China, which was much cheaper than
Japanese rice.50
The year ended with other strange manifestations. On November 26,
when a violent wind was blowing from the northwest, a great fire burned
much of Yokohama including many warehouses, destroying large stocks
of cloth goods awaiting local sale. (Satow gave an on-the-spot account.)51
These losses notwithstanding, the British consul in Yokohama described
a situation of oversupply relative to demand. A similar situation of over-
supply prevailed in the Chinese ports, as in England itself. In fact, large
stocks of goods were brought from China to Yokohama after the fire,
quickly making up for the goods destroyed. The fact that rice was selling
at famine prices restricted people’s purchasing power and acted to check
demand for other goods.52
Were the fires in Yokohama deliberately set? In late 1866, the
country was full of desperate, aggrieved people. Edo itself had
a tradition of arson by “kite men” and other workers in the building
trades. They were said to call Edo’s fires “world renewal” (yonaoshi)
because of the way they simulated business. Whatever the causes,
between December 10 and December 22, there were five major fires
in Edo. The fire of December 15, again driven by northwest winds,
destroyed a large densely populated area extending from Kanda to
Kyō bashi. The other fires burned several half-abandoned, lordly
mansions.53
49
Totman, Collapse, pp. 301–303.
50
Totman, Collapse, pp. 296–297; “Japan. Nagasaki,” Commercial Reports, p. 238 (Consul’s
report dated January 31, 1867).
51
Ernest Satow, A Diplomat in Japan (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1968 (reprint with
an introduction by Gordon Daniels, orig. 1921)), pp. 161–164.
52
“Japan. Kanagawa. 1866,” Commercial Reports, pp. 252–254.
53
Suzuki, Edo no keizai, pp. 80–87; Totman, Collapse, pp. 298–299.
34 Mark Metzler
Connecting Global and Local Histories:

Spatial and Temporal Scales
A premise of this chapter is that co-movements in seemingly separate
places and social domains may offer clues to unexpected unities. The
local and global contexts of the Restoration invite this kind of approach.
The chapter has focused on the temporally concentrated crises of 1866, at
a close-up timescale of months and days. How might we connect these
events to movements happening on a timescale of decades or a timescale
of centuries?
In the long run of Japanese history, the turn from Tokugawa to
Meiji is a great hinge in social time, consequential in the cultural,
economic, demographic, social-ecological, as well as political realms.
This great turn is exceptionally visible in the history of prices. During
the entire second half of the Edo period, prices fluctuated but
remained generally level. Remarkably, Osaka rice prices were no
higher in the mid-1850s than they had been 150 years earlier, at
the beginning of the eighteenth century. Prices rose in the late
1850s, but remained within the bounds of historical experience.
Then came the great ramping-up of prices in the decade after the
opening of the ports in 1859. In nineteenth-century Japan, 1866 was
the single most inflationary year. It was also the year in which prices
more or less reached their new levels. By the end of this price
revolution, circa 1870, the overall level of prices, reckoned in the
standard gold, silver, and bronze currencies, was four to ten times
higher than the level of late Edo times.54 Prices then fluctuated
around this new level in the 1870s and 1880s.
Japan was not the only country to experience a great inflation in the
1860s. In China, the Qing government adopted inflationary means of war
finance in the 1850s and early 1860s. Rice prices in the Yangzi Delta also
increased by three or four times, to a peak in 1864–1865. But prices in
China then fell sharply in the late 1860s and continued downward to
a trough in the early 1880s.55
The US government also financed its civil war expenditures by
inflationary means. Prices in the northern United States more than
doubled during the Civil War, to a peak in January 1865. US prices
then fell sharply from the spring of 1865 and continued to decline as
54
Iwahashi, “Bukka,” pp. 61–62; Iwahashi, Kinsei Nihon bukka shi, pp. 461–465; Shinbo,
Kinsei no bukka, p. 282.
55
Yeh-Chien Wang, “Secular Trend of Rice Prices in the Yangzi Delta, 1638–1935,” in
Chinese History in Economic Perspective, eds. Thomas Rawski and Lillian Li (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1992), pp. 35–68.
a trend into the mid-1890s. Thus, the inflation of the 1850s and
1860s was temporary in both China and America, as it was in
Europe. Japan experienced a stepwise price revolution in the 1860s
but China and Western countries did not.
For Japan, this inflation was also a definite turn away from the
deflationary price regime of late Tokugawa times, to a new, inflation-
ary price regime that would persist into the 1980s. In the imperial
loyalists’ view of their own place in Japan’s political history, the Meiji
Restoration was a turning point on a millennial timescale. Even in
the briefer 400-year timespan presented by the price statistics, it
was an inflection point in a movement lasting some twenty-seven
decades.
If one zooms in to a decade-level scale, other dynamic movements
become salient. In the international history of the nineteenth cen-
tury, the panic of 1866 is one of a sequence of international finan-
cial panics. There is a strange grandeur to this rhythmic succession,
which had already begun in the eighteenth century and became
increasingly coherent internationally with the panics of 1837,
1847, 1857, and 1866, to be followed by the panics of 1873,
1882, and 1890. Observers recognized common patterns in these
crises, and they developed a common language to describe them,
diagnosing a recurring condition of “overtrading” and “overproduc-
tion.” These recurring crises were understood to typify a new indus-
trial capitalist order, a view shared by conservative business leaders
and by radical socialists. Bakumatsu Japan’s entry into the new “free
trade” order was conditioned by a wave of credit creation in the
early 1860s followed by economic contraction and debt default in
the late 1860s. Involvement in capitalist business cycles thus fol-
lowed immediately on the opening of the treaty ports in 1859.
The initial growth and then temporary leveling off of Japan’s
foreign trade was also a matter of structural shifts. International
isolation had created large price differentials that could be exploited
immediately upon the opening of the treaty ports. By 1866, this
situation had already changed for several key commodities. Japan’s
balance of trade was in surplus during the first years after the open-
ing of the ports but turned persistently negative after 1866. The
composition of Japanese trade also shifted in 1866, as rice and raw
cotton were imported rather than exported, reversing the former
direction of trade. Saltpeter, for instance, being needed for gunpow-
der, was also now imported rather than exported. Sugar, too, was
now imported, as Japanese sugar production seemed “unable to
36 Mark Metzler
compete with imports from China, principally Canton,” as the

British consul at Nagasaki saw it.56
Existing accounts of the “panic of 1866” describe it mainly as a matter
of events in London. London’s financial disturbances were certainly
impressive enough. In terms of the Bank of England’s lending rate, the
biennium 1866–1867 saw the greatest fluctuation of the entire mid- to
late nineteenth century, with a record run of high rates (fourteen weeks of
10 percent in the summer of 1866), followed by a record run of low rates
(2 percent for sixty-nine weeks after July 1867). A bank rate of 10 percent
would not be seen again, for any length of time, until the financial crisis of
August 1914. A longer sustained run of high rates (in that case, 7 percent)
would not be seen again until 1920 – again coming at the crest of
a postwar boom–bust cycle that has many structural features in common
with the cyclical turn of 1865–1866.57 It was in response to the panic of
1866 that the Bank of England fully took on the role of “lender of last
resort” in the London financial markets – an origin point for present
central-bank doctrine. Paired with limited liability for corporations,
another innovation of the time, the result was an entirely new level of
security for big capital. Marc Flandreau and Stefano Ugolini suggest that
1866 was also a turning point in the formation of an international mone-
tary and financial system centered on London, which had its golden age
between 1873 and 1914. The aftermath of the panic of 1866, once things
settled down, was actually to confirm London’s emergence as a uniquely
central, world financial marketplace.58 Nonetheless, metropolitan obser-
vers at the time regularly missed the international interconnection of
these movements, especially as they concerned events in Asia.
Nationally focused historians have often overlooked them in the years
since. London was indeed at the hub of things, but as we have seen, the
crisis began in the spring of 1865 on the other side of the world.
Weather and climate have their own historical dynamism. Across much
of the world, 1866 was a year of anomalous weather, including an exces-
sively cold wet summer in northeastern Japan, a cold wet summer in
northwestern Europe, and widespread droughts in many areas typically
affected by the El Ninõ–Southern Oscillation (ENSO). Japan is outside
56
Yamaguchi, “Opening of Japan,” p. 3; “Japan. Nagasaki,” Commercial Reports, 1865–66,
pp. 235–238. Japan again exported rice after 1872. Steven J. Ericson, “Japonica, Indica:
Rice and Foreign Trade in Meiji Japan,” Journal of Japanese Studies 41, no. 2 (2015): 323.
57
Hawtrey, Century of Bank Rate, Appendix I. For structural aspects of the 1919–20 boom–
bust cycle, see Mark Metzler, “The Correlation of Crises, 1918–1920,” in Asia after
Versailles, ed. Urs Matthias Zachmann (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017),
pp. 23–54, and Metzler, Lever of Empire, chapter 6.
58
Marc Flandreau and Stefano Ugolini, “The Crisis of 1866,” Graduate Institute of
International and Development Studies Working Paper, no. 10 (Geneva, 2014).
the area normally affected directly by the ENSO phenomenon, but that
area is wide indeed, and the second half of the 1860s stands out for
a nearly continuous run of strong ENSO events, in the years 1864,
1865, 1866, 1867, and 1869. These events were associated with droughts
in Australia, Indonesia, South Asia, and elsewhere. Although William
Quinn has listed the El Niño of 1866 as moderate, it was actually accom-
panied by the most geographically widespread droughts of these years.59
In eastern India, there was drought in 1865 and early 1866, causing
famine in Bengal, Bihar, Madras, and especially Orissa. In India’s history,
the year 1866 is thus another kind of watershed, for this was the first of
India’s great late nineteenth-century famines. It was also a time of record
Indian grain exports, which continued even as the famine began. The
colonial government’s belated relief effort foundered in monsoon-season
transport difficulties after June 1866, compounded by an “unprecedented
flood” in Orissa in August. Bidyut Mohanty estimates that in Orissa,
1 million people died out of a population of 3.7 million. The worst time
came between April and September of 1866.60 Extreme weather was part
of the story in China, too, as the British consul in Hankou in central China
reported that the rains in the summer of 1866 were the most intense in
living memory.61
How these events interacted with the development of a globalized grain
market is another open question. In Britain, after a run of exceptionally
good harvests in the first part of the 1860s, the wheat harvest of 1866 was
substandard, and the 1867 harvest was even poorer. Wheat harvests were
poor in much of Europe in these two years. A smaller British harvest
meant larger grain imports, at a time when Britain was by far the world’s
largest grain importer. In Britain, economic depression and falling prices
for many commodities was therefore combined with food price inflation
in 1866–1867. The increase in grain prices was mild compared to what
happened in Japan, but it was enough to spark the last of England’s
traditional-style bread riots in late 1867.62
59
William H. Quinn, “The Large-Scale ENSO Event, El Niño and Other Important
Regional Features,” Bull. Inst. fr. études andines 22, no. 1 (1993): 13–34; Mark Metzler,
“Teleconnections: Globalized Grain Markets, Climate, and Famine during the Great
Depression of the Late 19th-Century,” Conference on Global Commodity Flows,
Institute for Historical Studies, Austin, Texas, April 17, 2015.
60
Bidyut Mohanty, “Orissa Famine of 1866: Demographic and Economic Consequences,”
Economic and Political Weekly 28, no. 1/2 (1993), 55–57, 63; Mike Davis, Late Victorian
Holocausts: El Niño Famines and the Making of the Third World (New York: Verso, 2001).
61
“Hankow,” Commercial Reports, p. 150.
62
“Commercial Review of 1866,” Economist, pp. 7–8; R. F. Crawford, “An Inquiry into
Wheat Prices and Wheat Supply,” Journal of the Royal Statistical Society 58, no. 1 (1895):
75–120; Robert D. Storch, “Popular Festivity and Consumer Protest: Food Price
38 Mark Metzler
As for riots and peasant uprisings in Japan, Aoki recorded a total of

thirty-five urban riots and 150 peasant uprisings and riots during
the second year of the Keiō era. This was the highest annual count for
the entire Tokugawa era.63 Here too, the summer of the year stands out as
a peak, both in a short-run perspective of months and in a long-run
perspective of centuries.
Rice prices remained high in Japan through the spring and early sum-
mer of 1867. Rice crops were excellent that year, and by the late summer
of 1867, merchants released hoarded stockpiles onto the markets, and
prices fell.64 There was a lull in popular uprisings and simultaneously the
strange outbreak of ee-ja-nai-ka dancing along the main highways in the
late summer and autumn. As divine paper amulets fell from the heavens
(for so it was said), dancers tossed depreciated paper money into the air.
On November 9, 1867, Shogun Yoshinobu formally declared the return
of his deputed governing powers to the emperor, thus beginning the final
act of Japan’s Keiō era revolution.
The global political synchronicities may be the most mysterious of all.
Not only Japan was “refounded” as a new nation-state. The “second
founding” of a powerfully reunited United States in 1865 was followed
early in 1867 by the second founding of the Mexican Republic and the
founding of the Dominion of Canada. In Europe, the “summer war” of
1866 meant the national reconstitution of Germany, Italy, and Austria-
Hungary, signaling the biggest shift in the European state system since
1815. Other synchronous national reforms could be added to this list.
Historians have customarily explained these movements at the level of
national histories, but how might these coincidental processes be inter-
connected? The constitutional regime changes of the 1860s seem mani-
festly the result of social-political processes happening on long time
scales, based on internal dynamics that are distinct from most of the
points discussed here. But what if we turn the picture around, and rather
than thinking of the whole human world as an aggregation of essentially
separate national parts, we instead consider these national reconstruc-
tions as parts of a larger human whole, which has its own global dynamics?
Historians often refrain from raising questions for which they cannot
Disturbances in the Southwest and Oxfordshire in 1867,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal

Concerned with British Studies 14, no. 3/4 (Autumn, 1982 – Winter, 1998): 209, 231.
63
Aoki Kō ji, Hyakushō ikki sō gō nenpyō [Chronological Table of Peasant Uprisings]
(Tokyo: San-ichi Shobō , 1971), Appendix Table 1. The historical record is doubtless
biased in that more recent events are more fully recorded, but even if we added gener-
ously to the count for earlier decades, 1866 would still stand out.
64
Shinbo, Kinsei no bukka, p. 282; Yamamuro and Lee, “Beika no bō tō .” Shinbo’s com-
posite price index suggests outright deflation in 1868. This was not a general deflation but
rather reflects the singular falling back of rice prices.
produce satisfying explanatory stories. The present chapter demonstrates

the value of a different approach: that, as a method of discovery, it is
fruitful to take synchrony seriously, to postpone the urge to judge
“causes” and “effects,” and to give close attention to the temporal pat-
terning of events.
2 Western Whalers in 1860s’ Hakodate
How the Nantucket of the North Pacific Connected
Restoration Era Japan to Global Flows
Noell H. Wilson
Hundreds of foreign whaling ships stopped in newly opened Japanese treaty

ports between 1855 and the overthrow of the Tokugawa regime in 1868. The
demands of the global whaling industry for North Pacific entrepôts not only
precipitated US Commodore Matthew Perry’s initial 1853 visit to Edo Bay
but continued to influence Japan’s external relations and domestic policy
through the end of the century. As historian Adam McKeown observed in his
important essay on “Movement” in the Pacific World: “The links created by
traders were augmented by whalers, who were perhaps most responsible for
the early, ground-up integration of the Pacific.”1 In the early nineteenth
century, worldwide whaling interests (including vessels registered not only in
the United States but also in Australia, Britain, Denmark, France, and
Prussia) built transmarine connections among South Pacific ports in New
Zealand, Australia, and Chile. A newly opened Japan was the last Pacific
state to join that whaling network as it spread north of the equator. When the
North Pacific emerged as the most profitable whaling grounds of the world’s
oceans in the 1840s, Western whaling vessels began traveling to the Okhotsk
Sea, Bering Sea and beyond, bypassing inhospitable Japanese ports en route.
The opening of Japan to Western ships in the 1850s allowed the harbors of
Yokohama, Nagasaki, and Hakodate to embrace these same vessels. Perry
had been charged to negotiate provisioning and repair privileges for
American seamen, but by the mid-1860s, an equally important goal of US
whalers became acquiring the right to hire Japanese sailors as crew. The
creation of a pelagic, whaling apprentice program onboard Western vessels
inserted Restoration era Japan into transnational maritime webs of commod-
ity and cultural flows.2 It also brought Japanese seamen, newly permitted to
travel abroad, into global networks of human movement.
1
Adam McKeown, “Movement,” in Pacific Histories: Ocean, Land, People, eds.
David Armitage and Allison Bashford (New York: Macmillan, 2014), p. 148.
2
This chapter explores one pilot “pelagic” Tokugawa initiative before the definitive emer-
gence of imperial aspirations outlined in William Tsutsui, “The Pelagic Empire:
40
Western Whalers in 1860s’ Hakodate 41
In the mid-nineteenth century, Hakodate was the core site through

which Western whalers linked Japan to the Pacific World and beyond.
The island of Ezo (renamed Hokkaido by the Meiji government), boasted
a long history of interactions with indigenous traders of the Northwest
Pacific, shipwrecked sailors, and Western explorers. Over centuries, these
contacts had created a maritime zone of interconnectivity and openness to
exchange, even if conflict occasionally erupted.3 This tradition of engage-
ment with the non-Ezo world created a receptivity to non-Japanese actors
lacking in the other islands of the Japanese archipelago where the shogu-
nate had limited external relations since the early seventeenth century. The
Ezo maritime region was culturally complex given the frequent movement
across the Okhotsk Sea – to Sakhalin, the Kuril Islands, and the Kamchatka
Peninsula, an area of over 600,000 square miles – making ocean voyages
a regular activity in seasonal cycles of trade. This local history of interaction
with foreigners, and engagement with the Okhotsk maritime region now
teeming with whaling ships, made Ezo, where Hakodate was located,
singularly promising as a site through which to ship trainees aboard
Western whalers.
Hakodate was not merely a receptacle for US whaler demands but also
a launch pad for Japanese offshore maritime aspirations, namely cultivat-
ing the independent capacity to sail multimasted fishing and trading
vessels across the deep ocean. Throughout the Edo period, Japanese sea
going vessels had been small, single-masted crafts captained by men
without advanced, celestial navigational skills because voyages generally
stayed within sight of land.4 Thus the Japanese goal in luring whaling
vessels to their ports was not merely to acquire foreign, pelagic whaling
technologies but also to cultivate more generic, deep-sea navigation skills
that were transferrable to other industries. As historian Torisu Kyō ichi
has observed: “US whalers who came to Japan certainly sparked the
Reconsidering Japanese Expansion,” in Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context

of a Global Power, eds. Ian Miller, Julia A. Thomas, and Brett Walker (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 2013), pp. 21–28.
3
Important work exploring Ezo’s early modern history as an intricate balance of collabora-
tion and conflict across the greater Okhotsk maritime region includes David Howell,
Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Princeton, NJ: University of
California Press, 2005); Tanimoto Akihisa, “Kinsei no Ezo” [Early Modern Ezo], Kinsei
[Early Modern Japan], Vol. 4, Iwanami kō za Nihon rekishi, vol. 3 [Iwanami Studies on the
History of Japan, Vol. 3] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2015), pp. 68–102; and Brett Walker,
The Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800, rev. ed.
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006).
4
Douglas Brooks, “Beizaisen, Japan’s Coastal Sailing Traders,” in Sailing into the Past:
Learning from Replica Ships, ed. Jenny Bennett (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press,
2009), pp. 134–149, surveys the structural and operational difference between early
modern Japanese and Western-style sailing vessels.
42 Noell H. Wilson
strengthening of Ezo’s coastal defenses but more importantly catalyzed

the improvement of local navigational knowledge necessary to operate
modern sailing ships.”5 This result first crystallized in the whaler appren-
ticeship program launched for Japanese sailors in Hakodate in 1867.
The interest of the US whaling industry in North Pacific fishing
grounds prompted Commodore Perry to request the opening of a treaty
port in northern Ezo during initial negotiations with the Tokugawa
regime in 1853. US government support for whaling emerged not merely
in diplomacy, but also in domestic legislation. The summer before Perry
arrived in Japan, the US House of Representatives appropriated $125,000
for a new United States surveying expedition to the North Pacific Ocean
to prosecute “a survey and reconnaissance for naval and commercial
purposes, of such parts of Behrings [sic] Straits, of the North Pacific
Ocean and of the China Seas, as are frequented by American whaleships
and by trading vessels in their routes between the United States and
China.”6 Whaling preceded commerce in this list, indicating the per-
ceived priority of this industry’s concerns. Although US whalers had
been unofficially provisioning on Japanese shores for decades, the first
permitted US whalers began to arrive there in early 1855.7 Historians
seldom note how whaling concerns drove Perry’s request for the opening
of Shimoda (along with Hakodate) in the 1855 Treaty of Peace and
Amity. Perry wrote that “[t]he position of this port as a stopping place
for steamers and other vessels plying between China and California, and
for whaling ships cruising in this part of Japan could not be more
desirable.”8 Aboard the US Surveying Expedition’s flagship, Vincennes,
anchored at Hakodate in June 1855, just weeks after the close of the first
US whaling season in the port, Commander John Rogers wrote: “Our
5
Torisu Kyō ichi, “Edo kō ki Ezochi ni okeru hogei kaitaku” [The Development of Whaling
in Late Edo Period Ezo], in Fukuoka daigaku shō gaku ronsō 43 (1998): 38. For an overview
of how US whalers influenced Ezo’s coastal defense system, see Matsumoto Azusa,
“Kinsei Ezo ni torai shita hogeisen” [Foreign Whaling Vessels in Early Modern Ezo], in
Hokkaido shi kenkyū kyō gikai kaihō 95 (December 2014): 8–11; Matsumoto Azusa,
“Kinsei kō ki Ezochi ni okeru ikokusen bō bi taisei” [Maritime Defense against Foreign
Vessels in Late Edo Period Ezo], Shigaku zasshi 115 (April 2006): 64–88.
6
Quoted in Allan B. Cole, ed., Yankee Surveyors in the Shogun’s Seas: Records of the United
States Surveying Expedition to the North Pacific Ocean, 1853–1856 (New York: Greenwood
Press, 1947), p. 5. US House of Representatives appropriation allocated on August 31,
1852.
7
Although the port was to officially open on September 17, 1855, seven whalers stopped in
Hakodate between March and August, 1855, with the majority in March and April. Crew
size averaged 35 men. Hakodate shishi, tsū setsu hen [History of Hakodate, General
Overview], Vol. 2 (Hakodate: Hakodate Shishi Hensan Shitsu, 1990), p. 52.
8
Roger Pineau, ed., The Japan Expedition, 1852–4, The Personal Journal of Commodore
Matthew C. Perry in The Perry Mission to Japan, 1853–1854, Vol. 7 ed. W. G. Beasley
(London: Curzon Press, 2002), p. 171.
Whalers have already made arrangements to resort in large numbers to

Hakodadi [sic].”9 By August 1855, Townsend Harris, the newly
appointed US Consul in Shimoda, emphasized the importance of tariff
revisions to the whaling industry. Writing to US Secretary of State Lewis
Cass, Harris stressed: “I have drawn regulations with a view to the
protection of the revenue and the tariff is arranged with a view first to
secure the income of the Japanese Government, and second to enable our
whaling ships in the North Pacific Ocean to obtain their supplies on
reasonable terms.”10 These observations revealed the growing role of
Hakodate, and to a larger extent Japan overall, in supporting US whalers,
which now dominated the global whaling industry in the North Pacific.
The presence of US whalers in Hakodate escalated, such that, by 1859,
thirty-six US whalers called in the harbor, roughly five times the number
of 1855.11 As whaling ships outnumbered merchant vessels in Hakodate,
Elisha Rice, the US Consular official in Hakodate, discovered that assist-
ing whalers was an important vehicle to justify his presence until com-
mercial traffic increased sufficiently to render more necessary a “US
Commercial Agent” (Rice’s title until 1865, when he gained the title of
“Consul”).12 Pemberton Hodgson, the British Consul in Hakodate,
recalled that during the 1850s “an American commercial agent was
installed [in Hakodate], not for commerce, but solely for the protection
of the whalers who visited the port.”13 Employing Japanese crew was
a core yet elusive goal of US whalers that Rice labored to achieve during
his first decade of service in Hakodate. One can comprehend the Japanese
interest in mastering this new offshore industry given that the Ezo seas
9
Letter of Commander John Rodgers to James Dobbin, Secretary of the Navy, June 11,
1855 reprinted in Cole, ed., Yankee Surveyors in the Shogun’s Seas, p. 61.
10
Tyler Dennett, Americans in Eastern Asia: A Critical Study of United States’ Policy in the Far
East in the Nineteenth Century (New York: Barnes & Noble, 1963), p. 359.
11
These 1859 Hakodate US whaler figures are from F. G. Notehelfer, ed., Japan Through
American Eyes: The Journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), p. 251. Francis Hall detailed activities
in Hakodate in a letter of October 29, 1860 published in the New York Daily Tribune,
December 29, 1860, p. 8. In 1859 twelve US merchant ships, thirty-six US whalers
(ninety-one total ships) called in Hakodate, including twenty-six Russian men-of-war. In
1860, ten US merchant ships, seventeen US whalers (forty-eight total ships) visited
Hakodate, including five Russian men-of-war.
12
Rice, in fact, arrived in Hakodate aboard the US whaler Ontario out of New Bedford,
Massachusetts. This detail appears in the public diary of Muragaki Norimasa, Hakodate
Magistrate at the time of Rice’s arrival. “Muragaki nikki” [Muragaki Diary] in Dainihon
komonjo: Bakumatsu gaikoku kankei monjo [Manuscript Sources of Japan: Foreign Affairs
in the Late Edo Period] supplement Vol. 4 (Tokyo: Tokyo Teikoku Daigaku, 1926), p.
437. Entry for Ansei 4.4.5 (April 28, 1857). Rice was US Commercial Agent (1856–
1865) and then US Consul (1865–1871).
13
C. Pemberton Hodgson, A Residence at Nagasaki and Hakodate in 1859–1860 (London:
Richard Bentley, 1861), p. 98.
44 Noell H. Wilson
teemed with US whalers, which prompted Rice to remark that Hakodate

“reminded me more of Nantucket, than any other place I ever saw.”14
This chapter analyzes the Meiji Restoration era from the global per-
spective of whaling, framing the 1860s as an epochal decade that trans-
formed Japanese human movement. Although focused on the
introduction of Japanese seamen to pelagic voyages, it underscores the
broader role of a new geographical mobility – also at the core of Ivings’
chapter on the farmer-soldiers (tondenhei ) – in linking Meiji Japan to
global developments. It first examines how Western requests for
Japanese sailors helped precipitate the revocation of the long-standing
prohibition on overseas travel and the subsequent creation of a modern
passport system, which allowed seamen to travel outside Japanese
coastal waters. Next, it analyzes the personal histories of the first
Japanese sailors to serve on board US and Prussian whaling vessels to
identify how their stories illustrate a new stage of individual mobility.
Through a microhistory of 1867, the chapter concludes by assessing the
legacy of this inaugural cohort of whaler apprentices in promoting
pelagic whaling and Japan’s engagement with the deep sea in the Meiji
period. The seldom mined empirical evidence undergirding these stor-
ies restores Hakodate to the Restoration narrative for reasons other than
hosting the final naval battle of the Boshin War. It also underscores the
dynamic flow of Japanese of all stations of life as critical in acclimatizing
Japan to the worldwide cultural exchange that defined the early Meiji
period.
Legal Foundations for Japanese Crew on Western

Whalers: Treaty Revision and the Passport System
Throughout the 1850s, the Hakodate whaling entrepôt benefitted US
whalers through repairs, provisioning, and as a site of shore leave, with
minimal reciprocal benefit to the Japanese residents of the port city.15 The
Tokugawa shogunate attempted to launch Western-style whaling initia-
tives in Hakodate in the 1850s. These all ended in failure, however, due to
insufficient financing for imported equipment and a shortfall in
14
Rice letter to US Secretary of State Lewis Cass, October 17, 1859. Reprinted in
Hakodate Nichibei Kyō kai, ed., Hakodate kaika to Beikoku ryō ji [The Opening of
Hakodate and the US Consul] (Sapporo: Hokkaido Shinbunsha, 1994), p. 69.
15
Hakodate authorities did benefit from minimal port tax/pilot revenue and patronage of
local restaurants and brothels. One document co-signed by the Hakodate Magistrate in
late 1857 estimated that the money spent by the sailors of a single US whaling ship on
prostitutes could add up to as much as 100 ryō . Abe Yasushi, “Bakumatsuki no yū kaku:
kaikō ba no naritate ni kanren shite” [Pleasure Quarters in the Late Edo Period: Episodes
from a Newly Opened Port City], Hakodate chiiki shi kenkyū , 25 (1997): 16.
experienced sailors.16 The Hakodate Magistrate nonetheless remained

interested in developing an apprentice program whereby Japanese sailors
would serve onboard Western whaling ships. The magistrate aimed for
sailors not only to learn specific whaling techniques but more importantly
to gain training in deep ocean seamanship and the operation of multi-
masted, sailing vessels. Tokugawa administrators in Ezo managed port
activities and trade in Hakodate and oversaw the larger protection and
economic development of the island. Deep-sea capabilities would
improve their ability to execute all of these responsibilities. Beginning in
1856, the Hakodate Academy of Western Learning started to train young
men in open sea navigation, depth sounding, and ship building, in addi-
tion to metallurgy and firearms technology, to equip them for large vessel
voyages in the Pacific.17 Training excursions for students included an
1859 trip in the two-masted schooner, Hakodate Maru, to the southern
Ogasawara Islands, and an 1861 voyage on the Kameda Maru to the
Russian port of Nikolayevsk, located in the Amur River delta near the
northern tip of Sakhalin Island. The Japanese involved found these train-
ing ships challenging first because of their complex sail design. They were
also larger than ships used in Japanese waters and required deeper seas to
operate in. With the Academy’s closure in 1864, Hakodate’s only official
school for maritime training disappeared, forcing the magistrate to
explore alternative methods for preparing sailors for deep-sea voyages.
One prospective substitute was a whaler apprentice program. This
method, however, required travel onboard a foreign vessel operating
outside Japanese waters, activities prohibited by the Tokugawa regime.
Even before the Academy’s closure, US consular officials in Hakodate
had begun to discuss the rights of US citizens to employ Japanese on trips
beyond Japanese waters. This discussion framed the “right” for US citi-
zens to employ Japanese, regardless of location, as a privilege guaranteed
by the 1858 Treaty of Amity and Commerce. Tokugawa officials, how-
ever, hesitated to recognize this interpretation and denied the 1861 request
of an American, C. A. Fletcher, to travel to Shanghai with “Koue-ze-ro,”
(Kō jirō ) his servant boy. Fletcher set sail with his manservant anyway
16
Detailed analysis of these efforts appears in both Torisu Kyō ichi, “Edo kō ki Ezochi ni
okeru hogei kaitaku” and Hattori Kazuma, “Bakumatsuki Ezochi ni okeru hogei gyō no
kito ni tsuite” [Whaling Enterprises in Late Edo Period Ezo] Yokohama daigaku ronsō 5,
no. 2 (December 1953): 77–94.
17
Hakodate shishi, tsū shi hen, Vol. 1, pp. 663–665 and Honda Toshio, “Hakodate shojutsu
shirabesho no gijutsu kyō iku to hensen ni tsuite: Kō kaijutsu kara saikō jikin gijutsu e”
[The Transition in the Hakodate Foreign Studies Academy Curriculum from Navigation
to Mining Technology], Shunki taikai kō enshū , shigenhen 14, no. 1 (2002): 38–45.
46 Noell H. Wilson
using a “passport” issued by US diplomats in Hakodate. The incident

sparked months of tense negotiations between the shogunate and the US
mission in Edo. The incident was resolved when US officials apologized
for issuing the passport but not for assisting Kō jirō to travel overseas.18
W. R. Pitts, the acting US Vice Consul Agent in Hakodate, invoked Article
3 of the 1858 Treaty in a letter to the Hakodate Magistrate explaining why
Captain Fletcher had been allowed to set sail with his Japanese servant.
Pitts asserted that, according to the Article 3 of the 1858 treaty, Americans
residing in Japan had a “right to employ a Japanese (Man or Woman, boy
or girl) as a servant to accompany him to China or elsewhere – not only has
he the right to employ a Japanese to accompany him, but he has clearly the
right to employ Japanese as sailors to man ships to go the world over . . .
A non-resident cannot employ a Japanese at all, but it is only necessary for
an American to become a Resident in Japan in order to attain that right,
which our treaty so clearly defines.”19 Indeed Article 3 provided that
“Americans, residing in Japan shall have the right to employ Japanese as
servants, or in any other capacity.”20 Hakodate Magistrate Muragaki
Norimasa, perhaps realizing the inevitability of such travel abroad, pro-
posed that the bakufu might agree to issue future travel documents if the
United States would guarantee the return of Kō jirō to Japanese soil.21
As similar passport requests emerged, Rice and successive Hakodate
magistrates leveraged this shift in the interpretation of US–Japan treaty
agreements to discuss placing Japanese sailors on board US whalers.
Acknowledging the Japanese interest in securing the return of their
subjects, by 1865, Consul Rice explicitly proposed to the Hakodate
magistrate that:
shipment of Japanese sailors on board all Am. [sic] whale-ships touching here for
supplies. The men to be shipped upon the same terms as the Am. sailors, and the
Capt. giving bonds according to the usual custom for their safe return to Japan at
the close of the voyage. If your Government will do this, you can safely calculate
on the yearly arrival of 30 to 50 ships at this port to get supplies. Your Excellency
will readily perceive the great advantage to your Gov’t and people, that would
arise from such an arrangement.22
18
For details on the incident, see Kamishiraishi Minoru, “Meiji ishinki ryō ken seido no
kisoteki kenkyū ” [An Analysis of the Meiji Restoration Period Passport System], Shien
73, no. 1 (2013): 165.
19
Letter from Pitts to Governor of Hakodadi, July 11, 1861, in Beikoku raikan hensatsu 62
(1861), Hokkaido Archives, Sapporo.
20
Hunter Miller, ed., Treaties and other International Acts of the United States of America, Vol. 7
(Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1942), pp. 952–953.
21
Kamishiraishi, “Meiji ishinki ryō ken seido no kisoteki kenkyū ,” p. 166.
22
Letter from E. E. Rice U.S. Consul to His Excellency the Governor, May 22, 1865,
Beikoku raikan hensatsu, 140 (1865–1869), Hokkaido Archives.
Yet Hakodate officials hesitated to embrace an agreement until the

shogunate lifted the ban on overseas travel the following year. In his
analysis of the creation of the modern Japanese passport system, historian
Kamishiraishi Minoru observes that previous foreign diplomats had taken
Japanese manservants abroad (without passports), but until the Fletcher
incident and another case in Yokohama, private citizens had not. This
specific expansion of the scope of permitted travel to include accompany-
ing nondiplomats was a first step in allowing Japanese to sail as crew
members on Western whalers. As Yamamoto Takahiro suggests, the
activities of passport recipients, such as whaler apprentices, placed the
“crossborder activities of the Japanese in the late nineteenth century in the
global network of human movement.”23 This newfound mobility offi-
cially emerged from the Tariff Convention, signed in 1866 by the shogu-
nate and the United States.
Elsewhere in this volume, Mark Metzler presents 1866 as a year of
momentous global economic developments that influenced the Japanese
economy and political events in multiple ways. He urges us to note the
synchronicities of the 1860s, of which the Tariff Convention, signed in
1866, offers an example. The convention had a profound impact, parti-
cularly in the benefits it afforded Western treaty nations by lowering
duties and establishing other favorable trade arrangements. Because the
majority of the Convention addressed commerce, scholars seldom
explore its final and substantive “Article X,” which allowed Japanese
citizens to legally travel beyond Japanese borders. This permission
included service as crew on board US vessels. Many historians agree
that the depletion of the shogunate’s treasury, which prompted the
Tokugawa request to postpone the Shimonoseki indemnity, gave the
Western nations attacked by the Chō shū domain in 1864 increased
leverage in the 1866 tariff negotiations.24 In return for the rescheduled
indemnity payments, Western negotiators pushed not only for more
favorable duties, but also for expanded diplomatic ties and privileges
only indirectly related to trade. The most significant of these was the
permission granted for Japanese to visit foreign countries.25 Thus the
resulting 1866 Convention concluded with the following article:
Furthermore on being provided with Passports through the proper Department of
Government, in the manner specified in the Proclamation of the Japanese
23
Takahiro Yamamoto, “Japan’s Passport System and the Opening of Borders,
1866–1878,” Historical Journal 60, no. 4 (2017): 1000.
24
Grace Fox, Britain and Japan: 1858–1883 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), p. 82;
Payson Treat, “The Return of the Shimonoseki Indemnity,” Journal of Race
Development, 8, no. 1 (July 1917): 8.
25
Fox, Britain and Japan, p. 82.
48 Noell H. Wilson
Government, dated the twenty third day of May 1866, all Japanese subjects may
travel to any foreign country for purposes of study or trade. They may also accept
employment in any capacity on board the vessels of any nation having a Treaty
with Japan. Japanese in the employ of Foreigners may obtain Government pass-
ports to go abroad on application to the Government of any port.
This text, which no longer required a foreign employer of a Japanese to
be a resident of Japan (as mandated in the 1858 Treaty), provided the
final legal underpinnings for Japanese seamen, regardless of class, to serve
on US whaling vessels. A new passport system would both legitimize and
protect their movement, providing official government approval of their
travel and a state-level request to other nations for succor in emergencies.
Even though the US Congress did not ratify the document until
June 1868, approval was a formality, and all the treaty powers involved
agreed for the new terms to take effect on July 1, 1866.26 Thus began
a flurry of preparations to equip Japanese seamen for whaler apprentice-
ships, particularly the process of issuing them passports.
The convention went into effect just a few months before another major
event of the bakumatsu period: Chō shū ’s defeat of the Tokugawa aligned
army in the Summer War of 1866. Conrad Totman concludes that this
loss “determined the character of Japan’s future leadership” by cementing
Chō shū leaders as core figures in the new regime established in 1868. In
his view, it also definitively destroyed the movement for “conservative
reassertion” within the shogunate.27
Perhaps overly focused on the political events surrounding the fall of
the Tokugawa regime, historians seldom note the Tariff Convention, also
agreed to in the summer of 1866, in constructing narratives of the Meiji
Restoration. The Convention proved key in establishing the legal founda-
tion for the reciprocal movement of people between Japan and nations
with which it had signed treaties. This lifting of the ban on overseas travel
proved equally, if not more, significant than internal military conflicts of
the same period. Several years before the Convention, domains and the
shogunate had repeatedly dispatched elite students to Western nations,
ignoring this hallmark of Tokugawa foreign relations instituted in 1635.
The Hizen domain (now Saga Prefecture) sent students to Britain, and
the Kumamoto domain (present-day Kumamoto Prefecture) dispatched
nephews of a samurai advisor to study at Rutgers University and US
Naval Academy at Annapolis. The shogunate also secretly sent two
Chō shū samurai, Itō Hirobumi and Inoue Kaoru, to study in Britain in
26
“Establishment of Tariff Duties with Respect to Japan,” Article XII, US Library of
Congress, www.loc.gov/law/help/us-treaties/bevans/m-ust000001-0018.pdf.
27
Conrad D. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, 1862–68 (Honolulu:
University of Hawai’i Press, 1980), p. 228.
May 1863.28 In the summer of 1866, the movement of Japanese across

emerging national borders became a critical vehicle for integrating
Japanese state practice and culture into a globalizing Pacific World.
US whaling vessels would carry several such Japanese pioneers. Such
vessels typically arrived in Hakodate in the spring, which conveniently lay
some eight or nine months after June 1866, allowing time for new measures
to be instituted on a bureaucratic level. Consul Rice and the Hakodate
Magistrate, who had discussed Japanese whaler-apprentice prospects since
1865, were likely anxious about the ability of the increasingly debilitated
shogunate to create a passport system within this timeframe. Edo officials
apparently wanted to project that the Convention’s Article X reflected an
internal policy change already underway, so roughly a month before the
signing of the Convention had issued an edict promulgating permission to
travel overseas.29 Within a few days, the shogunate informed the treaty
partners of this new position,30 and a month later, the privilege appeared in
Article X of the revised tariff treaty.31 The first modern Japanese passport
was issued at Yokohama on November 23, 1866 to Sumidagawa
Namigorō , a member of a Japanese troupe of acrobats headed to the
United States and Europe.32 This action interjected the first member of
a generation of newly defined global citizen into trans-Pacific travel. Four
months later, the first Japanese whaler-apprentices received their passports
when US vessels arrived in Hakodate to prepare for the Arctic whaling
season.
Western Whalers and the First Japanese Seamen

Apprentices
Ad hoc apprenticeships for Japanese seamen onboard US whaling vessels
had existed since at least the 1830s when US whalers rescued ship-
wrecked Japanese sailors, such as crew of the Choja Maru, who worked
for five months on board the US vessel, James Roper, which picked them
up in 1839. Tens, if not hundreds, of Japanese sailors would experience
similar exposure to pelagic whaling over the coming decades, including
28
For the 1635 edict, see David Lu, Japan: A Documentary History, Vol. 1 (Armonk, NY:
M.E. Sharpe, 1997), p. 221. For individual travelers, see William Beasley, Japan
Encounters the Barbarians: Japanese Travellers in America and Europe (New Haven, CT:
Yale University Press, 1995), p. 135; Fox, Britain and Japan, p. 459.
29
Yanagishita Hiroko, “Senzenki no ryoken no hensen” [Developments in the Prewar
Japanese Passport System], Gaikō shiryō kan hō 12, no. 3 (1998): 32.
30
Ibid, p. 31. 31 “Establishment of Tariff Duties with Respect to Japan.”
32
Frederik L. Schodt, Professor Risley and the Imperial Japanese Troupe: How an American
Acrobat Introduced Circus to Japan and Japan to the West (Berkeley, CA: Stone Bridge
Press, 2012), p. 240.
50 Noell H. Wilson
the famous case of John Manjiro, rescued by an American whaler and

transported to Fairhaven, Massachusetts in 1841.33 Because travel
abroad was still illegal, departures from the Japanese archipelago went
unrecorded, but evidence suggests that the first official whaler trainees
were three retainers of the Fukuoka domain (present-day Fukuoka
Prefecture) who set sail from Nagasaki on a US whaler in 1864.
That year, Kuroda Nagahiro, the enterprising lord of Fukuoka, dis-
patched whaling apprentices as part of an initiative to improve domain
finances through the creation of new industries. These men returned to
start an enterprise to whale in Kyushu waters but folded it within two
years without a single whale caught.34 The reasons for their failure are
unclear, but one can imagine the potential friction of introducing new
offshore whaling methods in a region like northern Kyushu known for its
centuries-old tradition of shore whaling using nets to trap whales in
shallow bays. A domain-led project had even less chance of success
given the cost of funding an expensive offshore whaling enterprise
where Western-style, multimasted barks could cost US$60,000.35 In
fact, the Fukuoka experiment used a smaller Japanese-style boat (wasen)
propelled by a single mast, a craft unlikely to accommodate the crew and
launches needed to handle a thrashing, harpooned whale at sea. More
importantly, the Fukuoka lord failed to receive official Tokugawa permis-
sion for his men to sail beyond Japanese waters, and without a passport or
travel permit system in place, this Fukuoka effort likely never would have
expanded to create the critical mass of pelagic whaling experience neces-
sary for success.
The Hakodate apprenticeship arrangements addressed each of these
hurdles. First, the Ezo maritime region did not have an entrenched
history of local whaling, although some villages, particular Ainu com-
munities, relied on drift whales as an occasional source of protein.
Throughout the early modern period, tribute products created from
drift whales, such as oil and dried whale meat, were exchanged in
trade among the Ainu, the Matsumae domain, Russians, and the
Tokugawa. By contrast, harvesting whales using lookouts and specially
trained crew was not an indigenous custom in Ezo as it was in western
Japan and the Wakayama domain (today composed of the Mie and
33
For estimates of numbers, see Katherine Plummer, The Shogun’s Reluctant Ambassadors:
Japanese Sea Drifters in the North Pacific (Portland: Oregon Historical Society, 1991).
34
Miyamoto Mataji, “Fukuokahan ni okeru bakumatsu no shinjigyō ” [New Industries in
Late Tokugawa Period Fukuoka Domain], in Kyū shū keizaishi ronshū [Annals on Kyushu
Economic History], ed. Miyamoto Mataji (Fukuoka: Fukuoka Shō kō Kaigisho, 1954),
pp. 196–197.
35
“Hakodate gō yō dome,” Shin Hokkaidō shi [A New History of Hokkaido], Vol. 7, Shiryō
hen [Historical Sources] 1 (Sapporo: Hokkaidoshi Hensankai, 1979), p. 662.
Wakayama Prefectures).36 Thus the introduction of Western pelagic

whaling techniques to Ezo through Hakodate would not spark opposi-
tion from local whaling cooperatives as might have been the case with
apprentice agreements organized through diplomatic channels in the
other two important whaling entrepôts, Nagasaki, close to the whaling
center at Hirado, or Yokohama, near the Godaigo whaling operation on
the Boso Peninsula.37 Second, both the Hakodate Magistrate, and,
ultimately, Edo officials, supported the program. They were no doubt
aware of the substantial costs of outfitting vessels for pelagic whaling,
a burden that undermined previous whaling attempts mounted by John
Manjiro in the Ogasawara Islands and Hakodate. Tokugawa officials
must have optimistically envisioned a different outcome, which would
include new sources of financing. And finally, with a group of eight
sailors, this Hakodate cohort would create a critical mass of crew with
whaling skills when previous efforts had included only one or two
individuals.
The 1867 apprentice “program” included eight Japanese seamen and
three whaling vessels: the US whaler, Norman, and the Prussian whalers
Oregon and Shorin.38 Norman, a 338-ton bark from New Bedford, arrived
in Hakodate in March 1867 and sometime after April 5, the date recorded
on the sailors’ passports, took on board four men.39 US Consul Rice
wrote that after years of negotiations, he had “this day succeeded in
obtaining native sailors [for the first time in Japan] to go onboard the
whaleship Norman of New Bedford [this] is a grand step for our shipping
interest and I feel that I have not labored in vain . . . whaleships have great
difficulty in getting crews of the S.I. [Sandwich Islands] and hereafter
36
Kikuchi Isao, “Ishiyaki kujira ni tsuite: Ainu no kujira riyō to kō eki” [A Study of the Role
of Stone Baked Whale in Ainu Culture and Trade], Tō hokugaku 7 (October 2002): 90;
Nattori Takemitsu, Funkawan Ainu no hogei [Ainu Whaling in Funka Bay] (Sapporo:
Hoppō Bunka Shuppansha, 1945), pp. 1–32.
37
We see this category of opposition in Wakayama Prefecture in the 1880s. Jacobina Arch,
“From Meat to Machine Oil: The Nineteenth-Century Development of Whaling in
Wakayama,” in Japan at Nature’s Edge, eds. Miller, Thomas, and Walker, pp. 39–55.
38
Only eight seamen sailed as whalers but the magistrate issued nine passports for appren-
tices because one of the seamen, Yagura Zen’emon (aged 36, from Sanuki Province), fell
sick and was replaced. Shorin and Jorin are the transliterations of ships names in the
passport documents. A slightly different rendering of the first name, Jauriya, appears in
apprentice-whaler Urata Isuke’s biography (see note 51). Gaikokujin goinshō ikken goyō -
dome, Hokkaido Archives, A1-3–59.
39
Arrival noted in “Quarter ending March 31 1867.” July 15, 1856–December 31, 1869.
MS Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Hakodate, Japan, 1856–1878, Vol. 1, National
Archives (United States), Nineteenth Century Collections Online, Gale Cengage. Details
about the ship’s history can be found in Judith Lund, Elizabeth A. Josephson,
Randall Reeves, and Tim Smith, eds., American Offshore Whaling Voyages, 1667–1927,
Volume 1 Voyages by Vessel (New Bedford, MA: New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2010),
pp. 438–439.
52 Noell H. Wilson
plenty hardy sailors can be had here.”40 US whaling captains welcomed

this development that made Hakodate an alternative, more northern
source of seamen for voyages in the North Pacific. The prospect of
obtaining crew members at Hakodate would allow them to sail with
a minimal crew – with fewer mouths to feed – during a voyage between
the Sandwich Islands (as the Hawaiian Archipelago was then called) and
Ezo. As Rice’s rationale reflects, the large numbers of whaling vessels
stopping in the Sandwich Islands in the 1860s, primarily at Lahaina on
Maui Island, could create labor shortages there, prompting captains to
search for other options. From the perspective of whaling captains,
Hakodate, like the Fiji Islands, was attractive because given its remote
location and the presence of relatively few foreign vessels, existing crew
were less likely to desert than at ports such as Lahaina.41 Hawaiian
authorities, which had provided as many as 2000 whaling crews in the
mid-1840s and continued to dispatch some 400 men per year in 1866,
occasionally complained about the large numbers of promising young
men deserting their local communities for life at sea.42
Both the Hakodate Magistrate and the US Consul in Hakodate seemed
confident in a whaler-trainee season in the spring of 1867, since the
Magistrate’s office selected Japanese sailors, and issued their passports,
even before the host whaling vessels arrived in Hakodate. Signaling the
interest of bakufu leaders in this initiative, the Hakodate Magistrate,
Sugiura Baitan, had written to the Magistrate of Foreigners in Edo on
March 16 stating that, “we have prepared twenty passports for (indivi-
duals) wishing to go overseas, given that in the waters surrounding Ezo,
whalers are numerous, and every year American vessels and those of other
countries reap great profits from these waters.” After consultation “with
senior councilors (rō jū ), we will send five to seven men per vessel . . . and
our plan is to so distribute passport numbers to between twenty and fifty
men.”43 In 1867, the magistrate did not meet these figures, but their scale
shows his ambitious vision for the project.
Providing seamen passports to travel overseas was a new state practice,
yet the whaler-apprentice program reconfigured a longstanding history of
40
MS Despatches from from U.S Consuls in Hakodate, Japan, 1856–1878, Vol. 1, p. 251.
41
As Sarah Smythe observed in Fiji in 1860s, captains of US whalers preferred visiting
“unfrequented islands for food and water, as they get their supplies cheaper and have less
trouble with men.” Sarah Smythe, Ten Months in the Fiji Islands (Oxford: John Henry &
James Parker, 1864), p. 47. My thanks to Nancy Shoemaker for bringing this source to
my attention.
42
“Hawaiian Seamen on Board American Ships,” The Friend, December 1866, p. 108;
Ralph Kuykendall, The Hawaiian Kingdom, 1778–1853, Vol. 1 (Honolulu: University of
Hawaii Press, 1938), p. 312.
43
Gaikokujin goinshō ikken goyō dome, Hokkaido Archives, A1-3–59, item 5.
the maritime trades driving a culture of mobility in Edo period Japan.

Although most studies of Edo period travel focus on movement across
terrestrial spaces, the coastal shipping industry, in particular the network
of northbound cargo vessels (kitamae bune), regularly carried to Hakodate
itinerant seamen from provinces on the Inland Sea as well as Sea of Japan
coast. Some ships even transported men as far as the Kuril Islands as they
traded rice, sugar, and wheat from central Japan for dried seaweed, fish
fertilizer, and other marine products of the north. These networks had
certainly carried many of the 1867 whaler cohort to Hakodate, five of
whom (over half) hailed from provinces on the northern vessels’ routes.44
Two men were from northern Shikoku, bordering the Inland Sea, one
from the Noto Peninsula, and two from provinces along the southwest
coast of Honshu bordering the Sea of Japan. All of these coastal regions
contained ports frequented by northbound cargo vessels, which likely
transported the men to Hakodate as well as provided them experience
navigating waters of the Sea of Japan and the Okhotsk Sea, both fre-
quented by Western whalers. Thus, we can conclude that previous coastal
sailing experience was likely a key qualification for selection of whaler
seamen. Yet these whaler trainees shipped as “sailor retainers” (suifu
ashigaru) in the service of the Hakodate Magistrate, so they did not travel
aboard the Western whalers as private citizens but rather as representa-
tives of the Tokugawa regime. Records are unclear if these men possessed
the low-ranking samurai title (ashigaru) before sailing as whaler crew. The
Hakodate Magistrate likely awarded this rank to help ensure humane
treatment by the ship captains and to encourage the men, armed with
improved social status, to return home after their voyages and apply their
newfound skills.
In 1867 Sugiura, the 40-year-old, newly appointed Hakodate
Magistrate, possessed little background in maritime affairs, yet had arrived
at his post aboard the 300-ton wooden schooner, Hakodate Maru. Thus
from his first day in Ezo he sampled travel aboard a sailing ship (his first
experience) similar in size to whaling vessels and viewed Hakodate from the
perspective of sea captains entering port. During this first year when not
negotiating the Sakhalin boundary dispute with Russia, he helped finalize
the new passport system critical for the apprentice program. As the first
Japanese sailors finally shipped out, Sugiura recorded three observations
about the benefits of pelagic whaling. First, he saw the urgent need for
Japan to extract profits from the economic space of the proximate ocean,
income now reaped by Westerners. Second, he identified an opportunity
for Hakodate to develop a successful offshore whaling operation when two
44
The remaining four men came from “Mutsu” or northern Honshu.
54 Noell H. Wilson
previous attempts (in the Ogasawara Islands and Hakodate) had failed,
from his perspective because of insufficient training. Finally, he also
stressed the importance of talking with the captains when in port to learn
the details of the investment structure used to finance whaling voyages.
Perhaps this focus on the economics of whaling portended his appointment
later that year as magistrate of finances (kanjō bugyō ) in the Tokugawa
regime. Overall, Sugiura’s writings suggest that Tokugawa officials shared
the view that Japanese working on US whalers would not only help launch
a successful offshore whaling operation but that the navigation skills
acquired could transfer to the shipping business, benefitting the broader
economy (kokueki ).45
One extant contract, that of two sailors placed on board the whaler,
Oregon, reminds us that the pilot program included negotiations not only
with US diplomats but also with the Prussian Vice Consul in Hakodate.
In 1867, the Oregon was one of a handful of Prussian whaling vessels
operating in the Pacific, a small fleet that would halt service in 1870 with
the outbreak of war with France.46 Given the fleet’s modest size, it offered
limited future opportunities for Japanese sailors. However, because hun-
dreds of US whalers continued to ply the North Pacific, the attraction of
the Oregon arrangement was undoubtedly the chance to gain experience
on board a US-built and outfitted whaler regarded as model for Japanese
pelagic whaling. The Oregon contract, signed at Hakodate on March 20,
1867, with copies in both English and Japanese, specified the conditions
of work for two sailors, a Nakamura Shō kichi of Mutsu Province in
northern Honshu and Hamada Sakuzō of Iwami Province in western
Honshu on the Sea of Japan.47 According to this contract, the two
45
Sugiura, “Hakodate goyō dome” [Hakodate Official Records] in Shin Hokkaidō shi Vol.
7, Shiryō hen 1, pp. 662–663.
46
Built in Fairhaven, Massachusetts in 1841, the Oregon sailed out of that port on Pacific
voyages for two decades until its transfer to Prussian owners in 1862, who operated it
from Honolulu. Judith Lund, Elizabeth A. Josephson, Randall Reeves, and Tim Smith,
eds., American Offshore Whaling Voyages, 1667–1927, Vol. 1, Voyages by Vessel, p. 453.
For a brief overview of Prussian whaling, see Joost Schokkenbroek, Trying-Out: An
Anatomy of Dutch Whaling and Sealing in the Nineteenth Century, 1815–1885 (Amsterdam:
Aksant, 2008), pp. 49–50.
47
“Hakodate bugyō geiryō denshū sei Puroshiya sen Orikon gō jogumi keiyakusho, Keiō
san nen, genpon,” Hakodate City Library, Digitaru Shiryō kan, accessed at archives
.c.fun.ac.jp/fronts/detail/reservoir/519c73e61a5572427000280b. The English portion
of the document states that the contract was annulled on “2/14.68,” suggesting that
perhaps the men were returned to Hakodate on that date. That date is March 7, 1868 in
the Gregorian calendar and lines up approximately with the return date of Urata Isuke on
the Shorin, which arrived at Hakodate sometime in the second month of the lunar
calendar (a date that falls between late February and mid-March on the Gregorian
calendar). The passports of these men are located in and Hokkaido Archives, A1-3–59
(see note 43).
Japanese seamen would not receive wages because they were shipped
“only for the learning, in difference with other seamen” although they
would be fed as other sailors “after the Customs on board.” The terms of
service specified that the two men would be discharged at Hakodate the
following year, although, if the vessel did not return, the captain would
assist in finding them passage from Honolulu, with the expenses paid by
the “Japanese government.”
This document allows us to see how details of arrangements discussed
in correspondence between US Consul Rice and the Hakodate
Magistrate Sugiura had shifted during the many months of negotiations.
Rice’s letter to Sugiura of March 1867 revealed that conversations about
an apprenticeship had been ongoing since at least the previous year:
“Last year you told me you wished some of your men to learn the whaling
business. The Capt. of the Whale Ship now here will take 4 men for
one year only and pay each man the same wages or lay, that he now pays
his American Sailors. The men to be put on shore here next year. The capt
[sic] intends to fish for whales in the Japan Sea this spring.”48 This
document is interesting for three reasons. First, it pledged to pay the
Japanese seamen when the sole extant whaling apprentice contract from
1867, that of the two Japanese on the Prussian whaler, Oregon, specified
that the men would not receive wages. Perhaps Sugiura reached a slightly
different agreement with the Prussian Vice Consul (with the Magistrate’s
office covering the men’s wages), or perhaps Rice made this promise
without consulting the whaling captains and discovered, when the vessels
entered port, that captains were unwilling to pay greenhands. Whatever
the source of the disparity, these discussions over remuneration demon-
strate that the apprentice system was a financial arrangement as much as
a training program. The second revealing detail is the mention of an
anticipated trip to the Sea of Japan. Knowledge of this destination sug-
gests that Rice had discussed the apprentice program with specific cap-
tains during the previous season. It also underscores that whaling captains
would have been keen to employ sailors with specific knowledge of
currents, underwater obstacles, and wind patterns of the Sea of Japan,
waters well-traveled by crew from the northbound cargo vessels. Finally,
although Rice had promised to have the men returned to Hakodate as the
Hakodate Magistrate Muragaki had insisted in 1861 passport negotia-
tions, the Oregon contract did not absolutely guarantee this result. Instead
the contract stated that: “To be discharged at this port of Hakodate
next year if the vessel however should not return to this port the sailors
48
Rice letter of March 30, 1867, Hokkaido Archives, Beikoku raikan hensatsui (1865–
1869), A1-3, p. 140.
56 Noell H. Wilson
have to find their own passage from – Honolulu with the assistance of the
captain if possible as sailors and Japanese government answerable for any
expenses that might be occurred thereof.” In the Japanese version of the
document, too, the “Japanese government” promised to cover any
expenses related to the homeward voyage. This word choice revealed
that the apprenticeship program was one of the first initiatives to identify
sailors as Japanese citizens.
Although the exact path is unclear, somehow these men returned to
Japan, at least the half of them for which we can trace basic life histories
after 1868. Archivists cannot locate extant logbooks for these three ves-
sels’ voyages (logs exist for only about one-third of US whaling voyages
between the early eighteenth and early twentieth centuries), but other
Japanese and English language documents provide revealing evidence.
Nakamura Shō kichi (Oregon) and Honma Ryunosuke (Shorin), both from
Mutsu province and both 20 years old when they joined whaling crews,
become low-level employees in the new Hokkaido government estab-
lished after the Meiji Restoration.49 Urata Isuke (from Noto) became
captain of a Western-style cargo ship, Shō hei Maru, hauling goods along
the west coast of Hokkaido. Hakuta Mankichi (from Tajima) helped
launch a Western-style whaling operation for the Yamaguchi domain
(later Yamaguchi Prefecture) at the Hokkaido port of Rumoi.
Urata’s records from the Shorin are the only evidence we have of where
these sailors actually traveled to, but this sketch, prepared to justify his
appointment as master of the Shō hei Maru, reveals a voyage covering the
longitudes of the Pacific.50 Onboard until February 1868 (almost 12
months, as his passport permitted), he sailed near Kamchatka and the
Aleutian Islands and then as far south as islands home to “naked dark
skinned natives” (konrinya).51 The details of his trip do not mention
a stop in Hawaii (although the summary does name other unidentifiable
islands south of Japan), but apparently the numbers of Japanese sailors at
that port was then on the rise. In December 1867, The Friend newspaper
of Honolulu reported that “some of the Japanese now in port and
attached to whaleships, [sic] wear two swords.”52 Given that the appren-
tices of 1867 had shipped as low-level retainers of the Hakodate
49
Hakodate shishi, tsū setsuhen, Vol. 2, pp. 1027–1029; Hokkaido Archives, bocho 156, no.
108, Meiji 1.4–Meiji 2.9.
50
I am grateful for the introduction to his life history included in Mori Yū ji, “Shō hei-maru
senshi, Urata Isuke no koto” [Urata Isuke and the Ship Shohei-maru], Sapporo bunka
shiryō shitsu, Bunka shiryō no nyuusu, 3 (August 2007): 3. Personal communication with
Mori of February 1, 2018 suggests that archivists are not aware of documents identifying
the whaling journeys of the other seven Japanese apprentices.
51
Hokkaido archives, 6326, Rakugo kaitakushi kaikei shorui, Dai san go, Dai issatsu.
52
“Two-sworded Japanese,” The Friend, December 1867, p. 109.
Magistrate and used surnames, they may have been granted sword-
carrying privileges. We do not know if these individuals were our
Hakodate seamen, but if not, greater numbers of whalers than previously
thought were now counting Japanese among their crews. Originally hail-
ing from the Noto region on the Sea of Japan coast, Urata had served as
a sailor transporting coal off the western Hokkaido coast, and then as
a lighthouse guard, before shipping on the Shorin. He was 45-years-old
when he boarded (fifteen years beyond the average age of these appren-
tices), making him more suited to hold leadership positions. Immediately
after his return, he served as first mate aboard the Western-style schooner,
Hakodate Maru. On a journey into the Okhotsk Sea Hakodate Maru
wrecked, forcing Urata to spend the winter on Sakhalin. Returning to
Japan, he became master of the Shō hei Maru, and seemed poised to help
expand Hokkaido’s growing maritime trades. Sadly, Urata perished when
the ship wrecked off the southwestern coast of Hokkaido in February 1870,
meeting a fate all too common among sailors of his day.
We can also trace a few years of the life path of Hakuta Mankichi (aged
32 when he joined a whaler) who returned to play a core role in
Yamaguchi’s attempt to create a pelagic whaling operation in northwest
Hokkaido. Records there follow his activities through the 1870s. That
initiative, while ultimately a failure, trained a new cohort of Japanese whaler
apprentices in skills that were transferrable to other maritime trades even if
pelagic whaling took a decade longer to become established.53
In addition to the nine whaling apprentices, the Hakodate Magistrate
issued fourteen more passports in 1867, nine to sailors to train aboard the
British merchant ship, Akindo, transporting cargo, and five issued to
manservants, including one Konokichi who accompanied US Consul
Rice to San Francisco. Thus, roughly 80 percent of the first passports
issued by the Hakodate Magistrate went to men learning maritime navi-
gation aboard Western vessels. In Nagasaki that same year, of the thirty-
eight passports issued, only one or two were issued for maritime training
with the majority given for personal servants to accompany foreigners. Of
the 109 issued from Kanagawa, only four were issued for purposes other
than as a personal attendant: one for a translator and three for trade-
related service.54 On the eve of the Restoration, of the three ports granted
permission to issue passports, Hakodate was by far the leading site for
53
For an overview of the Yamaguchi initiative, see Oyama Yoshimasa, “Wagakuni saisho
no yō shiki hogei dō nyū : Yamaguchi Hokkaidō shihaichi ni okeru hogeigyo no tenmatsu”
[Yamaguchi Prefecture’s Hokkaido Whaling Operations and the Introduction of
Western Whaling Methods to Japan], Yamaguchi ken chihō shi kenkyū 54 (1985): 25–34.
54
See Kamishiraiishi, “Meiji ishinki no ryō ken no kisoteki kenkyū ,” pp. 179–183 for passport
lists from Kanagawa and Nagasaki.
58 Noell H. Wilson
launching sailors to train in Western-rigged ships with Western methods

of navigation. The other two ports sent greater total numbers of indivi-
duals abroad, but even combined, sent fewer men than did Hakodate to
train in maritime trades. At least in 1867, Hakodate was the springboard
for Restoration Japan’s pelagic knowledge building that would ultimately
transform its nonelite citizens into ocean going travelers, migrant
laborers, entrepreneurs, and naval sailors during the Meiji period.55
Conclusions
During the tumultuous political shift from Tokugawa rule to the creation
of an imperial government in the spring of 1868, Japan’s integration into
global flows of human movement through US whalers continued apace.
Japanese crew were now entering and exiting other Japanese whaling
ports, even though some of this mobility continued to be “unofficial”
and passportless. In February, 1868, Captain E. F. Nye of the whaler,
William Rotch, discovered seven shipwrecked Japanese on Saint Peter’s
Island, between Japan and Hawaii, and questioned them through the
“Japanese we had on board.”56 Japanese sailors numbered at least two
among Nye’s existing crew since he reported that he took “one of my
Japanese and one of the wrecked men” on shore to see where they had
lived. Nye ultimately placed the shipwrecked seamen on two US whalers
bound for Yokohama that he met at the Ogasawara Islands: the Eagle
(which transported three men) and Ohio (which transported four). These
US whaling vessels provided a microcosm of the culturally intercon-
nected world with which Restoration era Japan engaged.57 Even the
fragmentary initial “boarding” crew lists of the Ohio and Eagle reveal
that the Japanese on these ships likely sailed with a multicultural (if very
55
Local microhistories, such as these, provide an important corrective to extant reference
works of overseas Japanese travelers in the 1860s such as the three-volume Tezuka Akira,
ed., Bakumatsu Meiji kaigai tokō sha sō ran [A Comprehensive Survey of Japanese
Travelers Abroad in Late Edo and Meiji Japan] (Tokyo: Kashiwa Shobō , 1992). This
(putatively authoritative and comprehensive) source lists forty-four Japanese traveling
abroad in 1867 but all of these individuals are elite students sent to train at Western
universities or technical institutes. None of the twenty-two men who sailed from
Hakodate with passports appears in this list.
56
Nye’s letter recounting the details of this encounter originally appeared in the Hawaiian
Advertiser, and were reprinted in the Japan Times Overland Mail, January 13, 1869, pp.
7–8. The editor of the Advertiser appended a concluding note that identified the location
of St. Peter’s Island as “some three thousand miles west of this group, in N lat. 30˚29 and
east long. 140˚15.” Nye wrote that while nine men survived the original wreck, two died
on the island, leaving only seven sailors to repatriate.
57
New Bedford Whaling Museum, Whaling Crew List Database, www.whalingmuseum
.org/online_exhibits/crewlist/about.php.
Atlantic) crew of men from the Azores, Germany, and France, in addition
to the United States.
Japanese sailors also came on board vessels in Yokohama, the most
important Restoration era whaling port after Hakodate. The logbook of
the whaler, Saint George, calling at Yokohama in April 1868, noted that
at “8AM Capt went on shore to get a Cook and 3 Japponanies [sic]
seamen.”58 Competition for crew may have been particularly fierce
that spring, because with seven whalers calling at Yokohama between
March 10 and April 25, and three of these vessels in port with the Saint
George, Western crew were likely in short supply. Japanese seamen
therefore could have been Captain George Soule’s only choice for
hiring additional hands.59 As the previous examples reveal, captains
likely preferred Japanese sailors if they had northern coastal shipping
experience, and familiarity with local wind and tide patterns in the Sea
of Japan and Okhotsk regions.
The shogunate’s interest in forming apprenticeships with US and
Prussian whalers was but one manifestation of a growing commitment
to engage on a new scale with the globalizing Pacific. The 1866
Convention, although primarily a tariff renegotiation, had not only
appended a concluding Article X providing passports for Japanese to
work on board foreign vessels, but also an Article XI mandating that the
Japanese government equip newly opened ports with “lights, buoys, and
beacons” to “render secure the navigation of the approaches.” These
markers were critical not only for Western captains entering harbors for
the first time without fully developed coastal charts, but also for Japanese
seamen increasingly sailing larger, deeper draft vessels built for the open
sea, which might be damaged by marine obstacles that shallow draft
Tokugawa coastal traders could skim over without incident. Conceptual
shifts followed new physical realities. Journeys aboard US whalers, and
the passports produced for them, were a core vehicle in the transforma-
tion of the meaning of “overseas” (kaigai, literally “beyond the water”),
from a primary, Tokugawa specific definition of “travel to a foreign land,”
to now also signify deep sea journeys, without a particular terrestrial
destination in mind. Magistrate records documenting the Japanese wha-
lers’ apprenticeship specified approval of overseas journeys but these
vessels were not headed to a defined, land-based destination such as an
58
Log of the Saint George, Captain George H. Soule, April 1, 1868, Reel #586 of the
Providence Public Library Nicholson Whaling Collection, digital copy accessed online at
http://pplspc.org/nicholson/rj5_nicholson_586/pdf/rj5_nicholson_586r.pdf.
59
Dates of whaling vessels in Yokohama during the spring of 1868 compiled from the
weekly editions of the Whaleman’s Shipping List and Merchant’s Transcript (hereafter
abbreviated as WSL) between May 26 and July 7, 1868.
60 Noell H. Wilson
US metropolis or European capital, as had the “illegal” Japanese students

of the early 1860s. The end goal of whaler apprentices was a successful
cruise on the distant, open sea. The “overseas” of Japanese whaler
voyages suggested a new connotation for the term that merged the
Tokugawa “Small Eastern Sea” (the ocean space closest to Japan) with
the deep sea space of the Tokugawa “Large Eastern Sea” (which
stretched to the North American continent). The Japanese aboard US
and Prussian whaling vessels in the late 1860s therefore helped integrate
this previous conceptual division into a consolidated Pacific World.60
Even as the US North Pacific whaling fleet anticipated future cohorts of
Japanese seamen, it seemed little concerned about disruptions from the
Boshin War as it raged from early 1868 until the summer of 1869.61 The
only mention of the conflict in the Whalemen’s Shipping List and
Merchants’ Transcript, the US whaling industry’s weekly paper of record,
was the 1869 Tokugawa payment of maintenance fees for the CSS
Stonewall, the US warship originally purchased by the shogunate, but
which Washington maintained possession of until the end of the
“Japanese rebellion” in order to remain a neutral party.62 Delivered to
the Meiji government in February 1869, the ironclad vessel proved deci-
sive in several engagements against shogunal loyalists during the Battle of
Hakodate. These naval firefights occurred in May 1869, after the typical
window during which US whalers anchored in port, thus preventing the
Boshin War from disrupting US whalers’ long-standing patterns of enter-
ing Hakodate harbor on the way to Arctic fishing grounds newly open
with the early summer ice melt. Indeed, writing to US Secretary of State
Hamilton Fish in December 1869, some six months after these naval
firefights, US Consul Rice relayed expectations for the opening of two
new ports on the east coast of Hokkaido that “might be a fine resort for
whalers during their spring cruises.”63 Hokkaido would remain an impor-
tant port of call for US whalers over the next decade even as sealing vessels
gradually outnumbered those of whalers.
Exploring the role of Western whalers in 1860s’ Hakodate recuperates
global whaling networks as a critical actor connecting Restoration era
60
For the origin and interpretation of the concepts of “Small Eastern Sea” and “Large
Eastern Sea,” see Marcia Yonemoto, “Maps and Metaphors of the ‘Small Eastern Sea’ in
Tokugawa Japan (1603–1868),” Geographical Review 89, no. 2 (April 1999): 169–187.
61
The Friend, the monthly newspaper published in Honolulu that served Western sailors
plying the Pacific, often carried news from Japan, but ran no articles about the
Boshin War.
62
WSL, June 22, 1869.
63
July 15, 1856–December 31, 1869. MS Despatches from U.S. Consuls in Hakodate,
Japan, 1856–1878, Vol. 1, US National Archives. Nineteenth Century Collections Online,
Gale Cengage.
Japan to the world. The demands of whalers not only accelerated the
creation of a Japanese passport system but also inserted a new category of
nonelites into trans-Pacific travel. Yet an equally significant legacy of the
inaugural cohort of apprentices was their later contributions to maritime
initiatives, including cargo transport in Western-style sailing vessels and
pelagic whaling. These enterprises are particularly noteworthy since the
150-year anniversary of the Meiji Restoration was also the sesquicenten-
nial of the reinvention of “Ezo” as “Hokkaido.”64
Initial development plans in Meiji era Hokkaido focused on shoreline
areas and harbors, revealing how the island’s integration into the new
nation-state was fueled by settler colonialism, as explored by Ivings in this
volume, but also one emphasizing the perimeter and connections to the
sea, including the construction of whaling ports.65 Nowhere was the early
Meiji focus on developing the coastal regions of Hokkaido more apparent
than in the map created after the first ever trigonometrical survey of the
island in 1876. As this image reveals, one of many regions in which
immigration to the coast was critical was Rumoi, which had a large
transplanted population, and was the home to Hokkaido’s first post-
Restoration pelagic whaling experiment undertaken by Yamaguchi
Prefecture. Early Meiji Hakodate, Japan’s gateway to larger Hokkaido
and the Okhotsk maritime region in the 1870s, would serve as
a handmaiden to this whaling venture as the city’s officials brokered
purchases of equipment from US suppliers. Japanese sailors and captains
trained by US whalers would enter both the Japanese maritime trades and
the fledgling national navy, traveling not only throughout the Pacific, but
also to the Atlantic and Indian Oceans. These legacies of the apprentice-
ship program revealed how the Nantucket of the North Pacific helped
launch Meiji Japan as a global maritime nation that would more exten-
sively engage with the outside world.
64
The Japanese character ultimately used for the middle syllable of “Hokkaido” was that for
sea (umi). Yet the name originally submitted by nineteenth-century explorer Matsuura
Takeshiro used a two-character combination for this syllable, also pronounced “kai,” but
which was a moniker the indigenous Ainu used to call themselves. Even so, among the six
new potential names proposed by Matsuura, two others included the character for sea,
demonstrating how decades of surveying Hokkaido topography had revealed to
Matsuura the central role of Ezo in connecting a larger Japan to the ocean. Hokkaido
archives website, accessed February 12, 2018, www.pref.hokkaido.lg.jp/sm/mnj/d
/faq/faq02.htm.
65
“Hokkaido jissokuzu” (1876), Murray Day and Arai Ikunosuke, collection of the
Hokkaido University Library. The perimeter along the coast is intricately mapped
while the interior sections of Hokkaido remain largely blank.
3 Small Town, Big Dreams
A Yokohama Merchant and the Transformation
of Japan
Simon Partner
This chapter links the experiences of an individual merchant to the larger

narratives of transformation during and after the bakumatsu period. It
takes as its central character a villager from Kō shū province (currently
Yamanashi Prefecture), Shinohara Chū emon (1809–1891), who traveled
to Yokohama in March 1859 to set up shop in the new treaty port. By
examining the activities, decisions, and fortunes of Chū emon in the
context of the new global space of Yokohama, the chapter offers an
interpretation of continuity and change during the turbulent final years
of the Tokugawa shogunate.1
The Road to Yokohama

Shinohara Chū emon was a member of the village elite of Higashi-
Aburakawa Village, now part of Fuefuki City. Higashi-Aburakawa was
some 130 kilometers from Yokohama: three to five days away on foot over
the mountainous Kō shū Highway. The family farmed 2.2 hectares (about
five acres) of land, with registered income equivalent to thirty-four koku of
rice – roughly the salary of a low-ranking samurai official. They were also
hereditary officials in the village administration, sharing the village head-
ship (nanushi) with several other families on a rotating basis. As did many
of the wealthier families in the region, they made income by extending
loans to small-scale farmers, growing and selling cash crops, and investing
in small-scale manufacturing operations. Indeed, it is clear from the high
status of the family relative to their landholdings that they were well-
established as regional merchants, and that they derived most of their
income from trading and manufacturing activities. In 1859, more than
half of the family’s 25 ryō in cash income was derived from cotton sales.
1
This chapter draws substantially on my book on Chū emon’s life in Yokohama.
Simon Partner, The Merchant’s Tale: Yokohama and the Transformation of Japan (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2017).
62
A Yokohama Merchant 63
The family’s accounts indicate that they were employing hired labor to
process raw cotton into thread and cloth. They were, in effect, merchants
and small-scale manufacturers.2
At fifty, Chū emon was old enough to begin considering retirement in
favor of his oldest son, Shō jirō . Instead, he applied in early 1859 for
a license to open a new business in Yokohama. Chū emon was one of
only a small group of merchants from outside the Edo-Yokohama area to
apply for a license prior to the opening of trade. In doing so, he displayed
the entrepreneurial opportunism that was to characterize much of his
career in Yokohama.
When Yokohama opened its doors to foreign trade in July 1859,3 about
half of the seventy Japanese merchants in the new city hailed from
branches of established Edo houses. While the Edo merchants were
mostly installed in Yokohama at the invitation and even urging of
Tokugawa authorities, the merchants from Kanagawa and the surround-
ing domains were generally rural entrepreneurs attracted by the prospects
for exporting their principal cash crops, notably tea and silk. Unlike the
wealthy Edo merchants who established branch stores in Yokohama, they
came with very little capital, limited contacts, and no experience with the
foreigners with whom they were hoping to deal. They were the merchants
whom the shogunal official, Fukuchi Genichirō , described as adventurers
(yamashi), men who dreamed of huge profits “as though trees would turn
into rice cakes.”4 Ernest Satow, a British diplomat resident in Yokohama
in the early 1860s, described the Japanese merchant community as
“adventurers, destitute of capital and ignorant of commerce.”5
Challenges
The lack of capital was, indeed, the defining feature of Chū emon’s early
years in business in Yokohama. In addition to the costs of building and
stocking his premises, Chū emon had to take care of his family and staff
members (Chū emon had at least seven children, the youngest of whom
was still under ten years old in 1859). Everything was expensive in
Yokohama. Since the area was heavily farmed, there were limited
2
Ishii Takashi, Yokohama urikomishō kō shū ya monjo [Yokohama Export Sales – Kō shū
Business Correspondence] (Yokohama: Yū rindō , 1984), p. 6.
3
The port was scheduled to open on July 4, 1859, but actually opened on July 1. All dates in
this paper are converted to the Gregorian calendar, with equivalent dates in the Japanese
calendar noted in parentheses where relevant.
4
Ibid, p. 208.
5
Ernest Mason Satow, A Diplomat in Japan; the Inner History of the Critical Years in the
Evolution of Japan When the Ports Were Opened & the Monarchy Restored (Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1921), p. 22.
64 Simon Partner
supplies of lumber, making construction projects much more expensive

than they were in Kō shū (Chū emon responded by having lumber floated
down the Fujikawa River and transshipped to him in Yokohama). Food
was expensive too. James Hepburn, an American missionary, com-
plained that “[w]e pay as much for fish as we did in New York.”6
As a merchant in the heavily controlled community of Yokohama,
Chū emon also found himself subject to a variety of exactions. In
July 1860, the town threw an extravagant party in honor of the deity of
the local Benten Shrine. Chū emon and his family thoroughly enjoyed the
festival itself, for which he was called on to dress in samurai clothes and
act as one of the managing officials. He was less pleased, however, to get
a demand for 40 ryō – more than his entire income for the previous year –
as his personal contribution to the cost of the festival. Meanwhile, even
after the initial investment of building his premises, in 1860 he had to
spend another 70 ryō to build a fireproof warehouse – a devastating fire in
January 1860 had shown both Japanese and foreign merchants the peril
they faced in the event they should lose their precious inventory. And, on
the topic of fire, Chū emon was also called on in early 1861 to contribute
10 ryō toward the rebuilding of the shogun’s castle, which had burnt the
previous fall: “I have no choice but to pay . . . It is inconvenient and
unpleasant.”7 Although Chū emon does not mention it, it is likely that
official corruption also contributed to his expenses. Satow noted that the
customs officials who oversaw every transaction were “in the highest
degree corrupt,” and a US merchant, Francis Hall, cites numerous exam-
ples of bribery and corruption in his diary.8
Ill health also took its financial toll. In the fall of 1860, Chū emon
complained to his oldest son, Shō jirō , (who remained in the village)
that “at present my skin is suppurating and causing me hardship.” And,
two months later, “I have broken out all over my hands and legs, and at
present I am not able to perform my official duties; instead I am shut up in
my house, lying in bed next to my wife. Naotarō [Chū emon’s second son]
too has broken out over his legs and is in pain.” Chumeon’s wife was the
worst off. In addition to being unable to eat or walk unassisted to the
bathroom, she “has broken out all over her behind.” The medical treat-
ment was, of course, expensive. Meanwhile, neither Chū emon nor
6
Letter from James Hepburn, November 22, 1859, in J. C. Hepburn and Michio Takaya,
The Letters of Dr. J. C. Hepburn (Tokyo: Toshin Shobo, 1955), pp. 21–30.
7
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, April 20, 1861 (Bunkyū 1/3/11), in Ishii, Yokohama
Urikomishō Kō shū ya Monjo, p. 31.
8
Satow, Diplomat in Japan, p. 23. Francis Hall and F. G. Notehelfer, Japan through
American Eyes: The Journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866
(Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1992), see, for example, p. 184.
Naotarō could go to the town office where they held official positions,
they were not selling anything out of the shop, they could not leave
Chū emon’s wife unattended, and they had no money. “It’s hard to get
through each day,” wrote Chū emon.9
In these circumstances, Chū emon was forced to ask his son in their
home village for help. “No matter how difficult it may be, you must
succeed in raising some money on this occasion and send it to
Yokohama. I have put my house and land up as security for a loan, but
still I need you to send 40 or 50 ryō . If we can just pull through this, we will
be safe.”10
With all of these immediate and pressing financial needs, Chū emon
struggled just to live from day to day. When it came to stocking his shop
with inventory, the costs were truly daunting. The major product in
demand in Yokohama was silk thread. Chū emon was well-placed to pro-
cure this commodity, which was produced in Kō shū . But silk was one of
the costliest items in the Japanese commercial sphere. Depending on
market conditions, a single horseload of silk thread on the Kō shū market
cost anywhere from 475 to 950 ryō .11 While Chū emon was sometimes able
to act as a commission agent for Kō shū merchants shipping silk to
Yokohama, it was almost impossible for him to buy a significant quantity
on his own account. Instead, he was forced to look for lower-value items,
such as cotton thread, fruit, tea, herbal medicines and seaweed. At one
point, Chū emon was even running a small factory on the upper floor of his
house, with his son’s wife and the maid making traditional Japanese socks
(tabi) using Kō shū cotton. However, few of these products commanded
a significant premium from the foreign merchant community. Many items,
such as the socks, could only be sold to Japanese in and around Yokohama.
So severe was the capital shortage in the treaty port that money could
only be borrowed at extraordinarily high rates. In late 1860, Chū emon
wrote to his son that “here in Yokohama at present it’s possible to borrow
any amount of money, but on a loan of 50 ryō the monthly interest is from
6 to 7 ryō , which you could hardly call a good deal. At home, even a so-
called high interest rate is only 10 or 20 or at most 30 percent. Please
understand this and borrow money even at a high rate.”12
9
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 1, 1860 (Man’en 1/10/19), in Ishii,
Yokohama urikomishō kō shū ya monjo, p. 23.
10
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, November 19, 1860 (Man’en 1/10/7), in ibid, p. 22.
11
Yamanashi-ken, Yamanashi kenshi, tsū shi hen [History of Yamanashi Prefecture. General
History], Vol. 4, Kinsei 2 [Early Modern Period 2] (Kō fu-shi: Yamanashi-ken Yamanashi
Nichinichi Shinbunsha, 2004), p. 791. (Calculated at 178 kin to one horseload and 160
monme to 1 kin.)
12
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 16, 1860 (Man’en 1/11/5), in Ishii,
66 Simon Partner
The shortage of capital was only one of a range of daunting challenges for
small-scale Japanese merchants trying to do business in Yokohama.
Misunderstandings and disputes with foreign merchants were another.
Such disputes appear to have been very common. In part, they must have
been caused by the cultural and linguistic barriers that separated the Japanese
and foreign communities. Dishonesty and failure to honor commitments also
contributed. When disputes did arise, there was little recourse on either side.
The treaties prevented Japanese merchants from suing foreigners under
Japanese law. Instead, both foreign and Japanese merchants had to rely on
the good offices of the Kanagawa commissioners (bugyō ), who undertook the
role of mediators in trade disputes. The commissioners could adjudicate in
a dispute, but their decision held no sway with the foreigners. Instead, they
had to rely on mutual goodwill, and hope to broker a settlement that would at
least give some satisfaction to the aggrieved parties.
There were numerous grumblings on both sides. Foreign merchants,
on learning of price declines on the global market, sometimes refused to
pay for shipments of silk they had ordered, falsely claiming that it was not
of the same quality as the sample on which the contract was based. By the
same token, Japanese merchants often sullied their own reputations.
Writing some decades later, Ernest Satow remembered that:
Foreigners made large advances to men of straw for the purchase of merchandise
which was never delivered, or ordered manufactures from home on the account of
men who, if the price fell, refused to accept the goods that would now bring them
in only a loss. Raw silk was adulterated with sand or fastened with heavy paper
ties, and every separate skein had to be carefully inspected before payment, while
the tea could not be trusted to be as good as the sample . . . [T]he conviction that
Japanese was a synonym for dishonest trader became so firmly seated in the minds
of foreigners that it was impossible for any friendly feeling to exist.13
Very soon after the port opened, Chū emon sold a consignment of silk on
commission to James Barber of the English firm, Jardine, Matheson, and
Company. Unfortunately, the transaction soon went sour. The details are
obscure, but it appears Barber took delivery of a sample worth 80 ryō , and
subsequently refused to pay for it. Across the fog of language and status
difference, Chū emon tried to reason with the Englishman, but “Barber is
obstinate and I’m unable to make any progress with him. I plan to take the
matter to the town office, but it’s by no means easy . . . However, I certainly
do not plan to lose. The investors can rest easy that I will meet my obliga-
tions” (it is not clear whether, in fact, he did).14
13
Satow, A Diplomat in Japan, pp. 22–23.
14
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, September 9, 1859 (Ansei 6/8/12), in Ishii, Yokohama
urikomishō kō shū ya monjo, p. 9.
As if these issues were not enough, Japanese merchants also had to

contend with the volatile political situation in Yokohama and Japan more
broadly, the impacts of which Hellyer, Ehlers, and Platt examine in their
chapters. Ironically for a town in which most residents were far more
interested in making money than in settling political scores, the very name
of Yokohama was a lightning rod for the political upheavals that roiled the
Japanese state throughout the 1860s. As soon as the port opened, oppo-
nents of the government coalesced around the goal of closing the port and
“expelling the barbarian.” Otherwise law-abiding subjects began plotting
violent attacks against the foreigners,15 and although there were relatively
few direct assaults within the town of Yokohama itself, there were
a number of dramatic attacks on the roads outside Yokohama and on
the foreign legations in Edo.
Chū emon reported on such attacks in his letters to his son. Sometimes
he described the events in considerable detail – they were obviously of
great interest to those who depended on the Yokohama market for their
livelihood. Chū emon did his best to reassure his investors and suppliers
that business would continue, and indeed that it would keep growing.
“Regarding Yokohama,” he wrote in early 1861, “I understand that it has
a very bad reputation in Kō shū . However, there is nothing out of the
ordinary here. Although there are rumors of Mito lordless samurai (rō nin)
attacking us, there are no signs whatever of this happening. Indeed, in the
[Japanese] New Year they are going to reclaim the Tadaya Shinden
marshes and extend the town. You will have to see what prosperity is
about to come to this town.”16
The most dramatic attack occurred in September 1862, when a British
merchant, Charles Richardson, was murdered by a group of Satsuma
samurai. The Richardson incident threw the entire community into
a state of high alarm. Chū emon wrote: “This affair will not end quickly,
and is causing great upset. As things stand I can’t see any easy way to
manage this problem.” Above all, Chū emon was concerned about the
impact on the silk market. “With these rumors, the price of silk in Kō shū
is sure to fall, and we will suffer a loss . . . I don’t see any easy way to settle
this matter; truly this disturbance is worrying.”17 Nevertheless, Chū emon
never lost his faith in the money-making potential of the Yokohama
market: “Although the reputation of Yokohama is bad at the moment,
you should not worry. Mitsui Hachirō emon [Yokohama’s wealthiest
15
See, for example, Shibusawa Eiichi and Teruko Craig, The Autobiography of Shibusawa
Eiichi: From Peasant to Entrepreneur (Tokyo: University of Tokyo Press, 1994), pp. 18–22.
16
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, January 31, 1861 (Man’en 1/12/21), in Ishii,
17
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, September 14, 1862 (Bunkyū 2/8/21), in ibid, p. 42.
68 Simon Partner
merchant] is undertaking all sorts of new construction, and he is expand-

ing his storehouses. If things here were really as bad as they say, then
surely all this construction would not be taking place. . . . I am making
money a little at a time, and I am stouthearted.”18
The political crisis came to a head in May 1863, when British envoy
Edward St. John Neale gave a firm deadline for a huge indemnity to be
paid for Richardson’s murder. Anticipating the outbreak of full-scale war,
Japanese residents of both Edo and Yokohama began packing up their
valuables and fleeing the city. Francis Hall wrote in his journal that “the
native population are fleeing in the utmost haste . . . Scarcely a native
merchant has the nerve to remain, but all offer their wares at any price
they can get.” Anticipating the flight or even murder of foreigners who
owed them money, some Japanese resorted to extreme measures. An
American was “surrounded, thrown down, and beaten severely until his
native servants interfered for his rescue.” In other cases, “servants left
their masters robbing them as they went.”19
In spite of the exodus he saw going on around him, Chū emon decided
to stay put. “While we are keeping an eye on the military situation, we
hope we can just live peacefully . . . Naotarō and his wife are working hard
at their business and they are making a good living from it, so please be
reassured, and tell Mother too. As for me, I am working without taking
even half a day of rest. Everyone has fled, but we are prospering.”
Chū emon did, however, move his valuables to a nearby village, where
some relatives of Naotarō ’s wife lived: “we are just keeping here our
clothes, utensils, and other daily necessities.”20
In addition to these major challenges, Chū emon faced a host of smaller,
but nevertheless vexing issues as he tried to do business in Yokohama. There
was, of course, the language barrier. Bilingual speakers of Japanese and
a European language were very few. Many of the intermediaries employed
by the foreigners were Chinese, which hardly simplified matters. Then there
was the extraordinary complexity of the various systems of weights, mea-
sures, and currencies in use in the Edo area in the 1860s. As he calculated his
potential profits, Chū emon had to make conversions of the array of curren-
cies used in the treaty port: copper coins, Mexican dollars, silver ichibu and
monme as well as gold ryō . He paid for silk by the horseload of 178 kin
(235 pounds), but he sold it based on the Chinese picul (about 140 pounds).
18
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, January 18, 1863 (Bunkyū 2/11/29), in ibid, p. 46.
19
Diary entry for May 5–6, 1863, in Hall and Notehelfer, Japan through American Eyes: The
Journal of Francis Hall, Kanagawa and Yokohama, 1859–1866, pp. 474–475. In the event,
the crisis was resolved when the bakufu paid the indemnity in full on June 24, 1863.
20
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, May 19, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/4/2), in Ishii, Yokohama
urikomishō kō shū ya monjo, p. 49.
Many of these challenges and complexities came together in one of the

worst debacles of Chū emon’s career, when he tried to buy a large ship-
ment of charcoal to sell on the Yokohama market. This story, however,
also highlights Chū emon’s extraordinary optimism and entrepreneurial
spirit, even in the midst of severe difficulties.
In the fall of 1860, Chū emon was at a very low ebb. His entire family
was sick, none of them able to work. Chū emon was completely broke – so
desperate for funds that he even had to pawn his wife’s kimonos. Business
was poor, he had no inventory, he owed taxes in his home village, and he
was unable to pay his creditors by the traditional year-end settlement of
accounts. He had been forced to make large contributions to a variety of
civic causes, and also had to pay heavy doctor’s fees for his family’s
treatment. In spite of Chū emon’s repeated pleas, his son Shō jirō was
unable to send him money from his home village.
And yet, in the midst of this dark period, Chū emon saw opportunity.
The previous winter, he had noticed the enormous consumption of
charcoal by the foreign community, who heated their entire houses with
charcoal-burning stoves. Since there was little forest in the area surround-
ing Yokohama, the price of charcoal was very high – much higher than in
Chū emon’s home province of Kō shū . Chū emon was convinced that if he
bought a large consignment of charcoal at a good price in Kō shū , he could
sell it for a high profit in Yokohama.
In spite of his sickness and his financial worries, Chū emon decided to
mortgage his entire property in order to raise 40 ryō . This money he sent
with his son Naotarō , who set off for Kō shū to meet with a merchant in
the charcoal-producing district of Minobu. The interest on the loan was
2.2 ryō a month, and the plan depended on getting the charcoal to
Chū emon as soon as possible. According to Chū emon’s plan, the char-
coal would be shipped down the Fujikawa River, and then transshipped
for ocean passage around the Izu peninsula to Yokohama. Chū emon
estimated a month for Naotarō to travel to Minobu, negotiate with the
seller there, arrange transport, and for the goods to then make their
journey by river and sea to Yokohama. However, more than a month
later, Chū emon was still waiting for the shipment to arrive.
By the beginning of 1861, it was clear that something had gone ser-
iously wrong. Chū emon had yet to get any clear information on the
progress of the shipment. “Is this all on their side? Did they deceive
Naotarō ? I can’t really believe that. We had a firm contract, and I had
made a deposit. If they were lying to me, then it is a big waste of expenses.
Or perhaps it is because the goods have been delayed at sea.”21 Chū emon
21
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, February 14, 1861 (Bunkyū 1/1/5), in ibid, p. 28.
70 Simon Partner
was already starting to suspect that the problem was not with the seller or
with the shipper, but with Naotarō himself. And indeed, later on the
same day he was to learn from a returning villager that Naotarō had failed
to conclude a contract with the seller, and was staying in his home village,
apparently afraid to return home to face his father. The charcoal had not
yet been shipped.
Furious, Chū emon sent his older son Shō jirō to Minobu to try and sort
out the mess. As for Naotarō , Chū emon was ready to disown him com-
pletely. “For Naotarō to just go home and play shows a complete lack of
responsibility with regard to money and a lack of feeling. This isn’t just
regular money. It is at a high rate of interest, and it is unacceptable for it to
cost me even one day – or even half a day – of extra interest . . . No matter
what happens we will make no profit from this.”22 Shō jirō managed to get
the deal back on track, but the shipment was delayed by several months.
On June 24, Chū emon reported that 250 bales had finally arrived; but in
the summer heat, the price of charcoal had dropped. All Chū emon could
do was “hope that prices will go up in the ninth month [October], and
then perhaps I can redeem my losses.”23 Meanwhile, “I know people
must be getting angry with me,” he wrote to Shō jirō , “but please ask them
to be patient a little longer . . . The thirteenth of this month [August 1861]
was the deadline for the settlement of all accounts, whether official or
private. But as usual I am out of funds.”24
Opportunities
In spite of all the difficulties Chū emon experienced getting his business
started in Yokohama, he was ultimately successful. The biggest factor
working in his favor was the enormous demand from the foreign merchant
community for products that were already well-established in Kō shū ,
particularly silk and cotton. Although he was limited by the high price
of silk, Chū emon recognized the opportunity in the booming market and
exerted all his powers to strengthen his business network in the Kō shū
area and acquire as much silk as possible, whether on commission or by
outright purchase. In this he was aided by his son Shō jirō , who was
serving as village headman. The status of the Shinohara family as heredi-
tary headmen helped them deepen their ties to the wealthy farmers and
merchants in the surrounding region. Chū emon’s share would only be the
small percentage he could take as a commission. Nonetheless, he urged
22
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, February 17, 1861 (Bunkyū 1/1/8), in ibid.
23
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, August 10, 1861 (Bunkyū 1/7/5), in ibid, p. 33.
24
Shinohara Chū emon to Shinohara Shō jirō , August 23, 1861 (Bunkyū 1/7/18), in ibid.
his son to inform their business associates as quickly as possible about the
high prices prevailing in Yokohama and the profits to be made from the
immediate dispatch of silk to the Yokohama market.25
Soon, Chū emon was to seize a new opportunity. After the outbreak of
the US Civil War in April 1861, the Union Navy blockaded the South’s
ports, preventing the export of its major income-producing commodity,
cotton. The largest consumers of southern cotton were the textile indus-
tries of England and France. So extreme was England’s dependence on
American cotton that the Confederate government had hoped Britain
would join the war against the North. Instead, British and French pro-
ducers looked urgently to alternative sources of supply.
Chū emon first noticed this development in the middle of 1862. He
mentioned to his son that the foreigners were looking to buy large quantities
of cotton, from 300,000 to 500,000 kin (400,000 to 660,000 pounds).26 In
a series of letters in the latter half of 1863, Chū emon emphasized the
enormous opportunity in the Yokohama cotton trade. “If you have goods
to supply, the foreigners are repeating that they will buy any number of tens
of thousands of kin.”27 Chū emon suggested selling the family’s rice surplus
and putting the money into cotton. “Now is the time to put in all of our
efforts if we want to make profits.”28 And “if you can buy it all on credit,
there will be no loss. I can sell it at a high price, and reinvest the proceeds in
another shipment.”29
Recognizing that his own credit would not be enough to take full
advantage of the opportunity, Chū emon entered into an alliance with
a wealthy Edo merchant, Kojikahara Jihei. In November 1863, Jihei
traveled to Kō shū with 1,000 ryō in cash to invest in cotton.30 With his
relationship with Jihei, Chū emon initiated a business model that was to
stand him in good stead for years to come. Chū emon and his local agent,
a Kō shū cotton broker called Matsudaya, offered Jihei access to large
supplies of Kō shū cotton, which Chū emon could peddle to foreign mer-
chants. Chū emon, Jihei, and Matsudaya typically split the net profits
from their transactions equally among themselves. For example on
November 22, 1863, Chū emon arranged for his son, Shō jirō , to buy
almost 5,000 pounds of cotton through Matsudaya. Chū emon sold the
25
Isawa-chō Chō shi Hensan Iinkai, Isawa chō shi [Isawa Town Magazine], Vol. 1, Shizen-
hen, rekishi-hen [Nature, History] (Yamanashi-ken Higashiyatsushiro-gun Isawa-chō :
Isawa-chō , 1987), pp. 922–923.
26
Shinohara Chū emon to Shinohara Shō jirō , October 1, 1862 (Bunkyū 2/intercalary8/8),
in Ishii, Yokohama urikomishō kō shū ya monjo, p. 44.
27
28
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 20, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/11/10), in ibid, p. 55.
29
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 23, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/11/13), in ibid, p. 56.
30
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, November 14, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/10/5), in ibid, p. 54.
72 Simon Partner
consignment in Yokohama for a net profit of 70 ryō (Mexican dollars

$163), which the business partners split three ways.31 Chū emon called
this process “riding together” (noriai).
Eventually, Jihei was willing to invest as much as 6,000 ryō at a time,
with which Chū emon was able to buy consignments of up to 300 horse-
loads (over 70,000 pounds). By the end of 1864, Chū emon was partici-
pating in transactions worth as much as 30,000 ryō .32
Chū emon’s business model depended on the rapid circulation of his
scarce capital. The faster and more frequently he could buy and sell, the
more profit he could make. As he wrote, “no matter how many times we
[purchase], it will be to our profit.”33 Chū emon’s profits nevertheless
reflect the very high risks that he was willing to take. Well-established
firms were more likely to act as brokers, taking a commission of around
3 percent on each transaction and relying on very high turnover for their
profits. Entrepreneurs such as Chū emon were more inclined to throw
their limited resources into areas where they could maximize returns.
Chū emon and his venture partners not only took on the market risk of
potential losses from price movements while their inventory was on its
way to the market; they also bore transportation costs and the accompa-
nying risk of loss or spoilage, as well as transactional risks in the context of
largely unregulated relations with the foreign merchant community.
Chū emon understood that his main competitive advantage lay in his up-
to-the-minute knowledge of the Yokohama market. He repeatedly cau-
tioned his son in Kō shū to keep the information contained in his letters
secret. “On no account talk to others about this,” he wrote. “If they should
gain knowledge of it, it will become more difficult to buy.”34 Indeed,
Chū emon at times asked his son to deliberately disseminate misinforma-
tion, telling him, for example, to spread the word that “Yokohama is in the
midst of an economic downturn” even as Chū emon and his partners took
advantage of rising cotton prices there.35 In the midst of the political
disarray that followed the Richardson murder, Chū emon wrote a letter to
a group of business associates suggesting they immediately unload their
inventory before word got out about the severity of the crisis. They were
then to circulate a letter making the situation sound even worse than it was.
31
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, November 21, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/10/12), in ibid. See
also Isawa-chō Chō shi Hensan Iinkai, Isawa chō shi, 1: pp. 928–929. Calculated at 1.5 kan
per ryō purchase price, 180 kin per horse-load, $1.70 per ryō .
32
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, October 23, 1864 (Genji 1/9/23), in ibid, p. 66.
33
Shinohara Chū emon to Shinohara Shō jirō , December 6, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/10/26), in ibid,
p. 55. See also Isawa-chō Chō shi Hensan Iinkai, Isawa chō shi, 1: p. 929.
34
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 6, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/10/26), in Ishii,
35
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, December 6, 1863 (Bunkyū 3/10/26), in ibid.
If they spread rumors of a looming war, then “prices will collapse and you
can perhaps profit by buying again.”36 On another occasion, when they
were exploring the market for selling large quantities of goji berries in the
Yokohama market, Naotarō (writing on Chū emon’s behalf) cautioned his
brother that “unlike other products these goods are not plentiful, so please
avoid talking to others about this . . . If you handle it badly, the price will go
up. If anyone asks, tell them that you are buying them as gifts for
children.”37
Chū emon also understood the importance of speed. The sooner he
could convey instructions to Kō shū , the less likely it was that local
merchants would have learned of market movements in Yokohama.
Chū emon could thus more quickly turn over his capital. Starting in
1862, Chū emon began using the services of runners (hikyaku) who
offered fast delivery service along major highways. At times, he was will-
ing to pay a huge premium to have a hikyaku run nonstop, door-to-door
with a large order.
In addition to cotton and silk, Chū emon also built a substantial busi-
ness in silkworm eggs. In the early 1860s Europe was struck by a silkworm
blight, and there was strong demand from French and Italian buyers for
Japanese silkworms, which were distributed in Japan in the form of eggs
pasted to sheets of cardboard. The shogunate refused to allow their export
until mid-1865, when it relented under pressure from the French. With
the US Civil War now over and the cotton market no longer so attractive,
Chū emon quickly seized this new opportunity, alerting Shō jirō more than
two months before the export ban was actually lifted to be on the lookout
for inventory.38 Once the trade began, Chū emon wrote to one of his
business partners that the foreigners were buying up egg cards as fast as
they could. “They want to buy as many as a million cards, although
I don’t think that many exist in the whole of Japan.”39
Chū emon’s trade in silkworm egg cards grew rapidly, supplanting raw silk
as the firm’s main trade item. Demand was so high that prices climbed
steadily, from half a ryō per card in the mid-1860s to as high as 3 ryō for top-
quality cards by the end of the decade. Although Chū emon continued to
look to Kō shū as a major source of inventory, Kō shū egg cards were limited
in supply, and they were considered to be of inferior quality to those from the
Shinshū region (present-day Nagano Prefecture). Increasingly, Chū emon
employed buyers to travel in Shinshū and other producing areas in search of
36
37
Shinohara Naotarō to Shinohara Shō jirō , November 13, 1866 (Keiō 2/10/7), in ibid,
p. 103.
38
Shinohara Chū emon to Shinohara Shō jirō , May 11, 1865 (Keiō 1/4/17), in ibid, p. 76.
39
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, August 12, 1865 (Keiō 1/6/21), in ibid, p. 80.
74 Simon Partner
supplies. He provided his buyers with enough capital to buy 1,000 to 1,500
cards at a time. In Yokohama Chū emon could sell them more or less
instantly, sometimes even before he took delivery, for a profit of anything
from 50 to 100 percent.
In 1868 there was a pullback in prices, caused in part by political
turmoil and the sudden outbreak of civil war. But after the emergence
of the new imperial government in mid-1868, the market quickly recov-
ered. In June 1868, Chū emon boasted that “Every day without fail we are
finding more buyers, and soon I will have completely sold out of my
stock.”40 With the stability provided by the new government, the market
for egg cards expanded rapidly, and prices continued their steep rise. In
1869, top-quality cards from Kō shū were selling in Yokohama for 4 ryō
each, and cards from the most famous producing areas in Shinshū were
selling for as much as 8 ryō a card.
Diversification and Opulence

At the end of the 1860s, flush with the success of his rapidly growing
business, Chū emon embarked on a wide-ranging program of diversifica-
tion. In 1867 he traveled to northern Japan to investigate opportunities in
the mining business. The following year, Chū emon applied for licenses to
diversify into the money-lending and foreign-exchange businesses. He
saw such prospects in these businesses that he did his best to persuade his
oldest son, Shō jirō , to come to Yokohama and take over their operations.
This was an extraordinary gesture, given that Chū emon’s family
remained rooted in their village as one of its leading families, and
Shō jirō was the heir to the family headship. Chū emon was effectively
telling Shō jirō to abandon his farming heritage and come to Yokohama to
engage in trade.
Chū emon also found opportunities in the worsening political situation.
Beginning with the abandonment in 1863 of the alternate attendance
system that required lords to keep family members as hostages in Edo,
the families of the lords and their samurai attendants began leaving Edo in
large numbers. As the ruling samurai class thinned out, the opportunities
for commerce and artisanal patronage also declined, triggering a more
general decline in Edo’s fortunes. In 1865, Chū emon reported on an
opportunity to take over management of one of Edo’s large urban estates.
“This place is 6,800 tsubo [more than 240,000 square feet] in size. They
are looking for someone to work as the guardian (shugo) of this place, and
I have secretly applied for this position. Whoever holds it would have the
40
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, June, 1868, in ibid, p. 8.
same rank as a senior minister. If I had this position, my status would be

very different from that of a minor official in Yokohama! . . . There are
roughly 25 rooms of up to 50 tatami mats. Inside the compound there are
rice fields that produce 50 bales of rice. There is also a pine mountain,
a spring, a plum garden, a cherry garden, stables, and so on. It is truly
a huge place. If I moved here, your mother, the children, and others could
all come.”41 This particular plan never came to fruition, but eventually
Chū emon bought some land in Edo and built himself a house. By the
middle of the 1860s, Chū emon, who just a few years earlier had been
forced to pawn his wife’s kimonos, could look with satisfaction on a large
and growing business operating between Yokohama, Edo, Kō shū , and
even further afield.
Building on his successes, in 1869 Chumeon constructed a large inn,
one of the finest in the Japanese quarter of Yokohama. He invested over
500 ryō in the project, and once it opened he boasted that “my visitors
have told me that there are no rooms along the Tō kaidō or in Yokohama
that are as fine as mine.”42 By September 1869, Chū emon could report
that 40 to 50 guests each night were staying in his hotel, and “at present, if
we only had more space available we would have 100 guests a night.”43
However, in a hint of how overextended he was becoming, Chū emon
admitted that he was still short of ready cash. “I understand that I need to
send 50 ryō [to a business partner in Kō shū ], but at present I have nothing
on hand. When I looked into the expense of feeding our guests in the
hotel, I found that it comes to 150 ryō [per month].44 Indeed, even as his
business prospered, Chū emon chose growth over consolidation, borrow-
ing as much as he could to finance his ever-expanding activities. Perhaps
he did not recognize how vulnerable he had become.
Collapse
The collapse came suddenly, caused by an event that took place thou-
sands of miles away. In July 1870, Napoleon III of France declared war on
Prussia, assured by his advisors of a swift victory. Instead, the French
army was decisively defeated, and on September 2, Napoleon himself
captured at the Battle of Sedan. By the end of the year, the Prussian
armies were at the gates of Paris. The French capital, which had sustained
the market for luxury products including silk throughout the 1860s, was
brought to the brink of starvation. News reached Yokohama on
41
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, January 16, 1865 (Genji 1/12/19), in ibid, p. 73.
42
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, March 26, 1869 (Meiji 2/2/14), in ibid, p. 162.
43
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, September 24, 1869 (Meiji 2/8/19), in ibid, p. 178.
44
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, January 18, 1870 (Meiji 2/12/7), in ibid, p. 187.
76 Simon Partner
September 28. On the 30th, Chū emon wrote to his son that “I still have
not been able to sell all the egg cards and the price is falling . . . All of the
merchants in Yokohama are suffering. I don’t know how this is going to
work out going forward, but at present the business conditions are very
poor . . . The Prussian army has defeated the French army in a great battle,
and the French king taken prisoner. It is said that 60,000 French troops
were killed in the battle. Here in Yokohama, yesterday there was a fight
between the nationals of the two countries and one Frenchman was killed.
As a result, the market for egg cards is collapsing.”45 And indeed, by the
turn of 1871, egg cards that had been selling for 6 ryō or more a year earlier
were fetching barely more than half a ryō , a decline of 90 percent.
Chū emon was forced to absorb enormous losses from the sudden
collapse, compelled eventually to sell both his buildings and land and
move into a small house elsewhere in town. Always the entrepreneur, he
tried his hand at several other business ventures, including the purchase
of imported sugar in 1871 (Chū emon’s son, Shō jirō , was forced to peddle
the sugar from village to village in their home province) and the opening
of a Western-style tailor shop in 1872. None of these businesses pros-
pered, and in 1874 Chū emon departed from Yokohama for good. He
settled in Hachiō ji for some years, before moving in 1879 to Kami
Tsuruma Village in Sagamihara City, where he and Naotarō reclaimed
20 hectares of land to farm. Eventually Chū emon returned to his home
village of Higashi-Aburakawa, where he died in 1891 at the age of 82.
Conclusion
Shinohara Chū emon was only one of hundreds of entrepreneurs and
small-time businessmen who responded to the opportunities offered in
the new port city of Yokohama. What can his experiences tell us about the
new transnational space of Yokohama, and the changes that it wrought?
And what light can this analysis cast on the broader context of revolu-
tionary change exemplified by the Restoration and the new Meiji
government?
Chū emon’s story highlights the continuity, strength, and flexibility of
many of the institutions and social arrangements that had brought eco-
nomic and commercial growth to the Kanto area over the course of the
preceding century. Farmers had developed extensive crop specialization
to supply growing urban centers, particularly Edo, with fresh produce,
luxury foods, and commercial crops such as cotton and silk. Small-scale
farmers could access highly developed systems of credit, and they could
45
Letter from Shinohara Chū emon, September 30, 1870 (Meiji 3/9/6), in ibid, p. 190.
sell their produce into a dense network of manufacturers, wholesalers,

and distributors. The class of privileged landowning families (gō nō )
within the villages had increased their wealth and influence, often
expanding into manufacturing and commerce as well as moneylending.
The gō nō may be seen as a proto-capitalist class that was well-prepared to
meet the new demands of the international market. The existence of this
highly developed system of regional commerce undoubtedly helps explain
Japan’s remarkably rapid adaptation to the opportunities of the global
market.46
However, this emphasis on continuity should not hide the radically
transformative aspects of Japan’s new situation. These effects can be seen
both in Yokohama itself and in the provinces that supplied the export
market. First, the opening of the Yokohama port and the expansion of
international trade brought substantial economic opportunity that
extended to Chū emon’s home province of Kō shū . Silk production, for
example, more than quadrupled by volume between 1863 and 1868.47
This expansion meant huge opportunities for growth and new business
for merchants and farmers. Some regional brokers even diversified into
manufacturing operations reeling cotton and silk thread. Wakao Ippei, for
example, opened two silk reeling factories in Kō fu, which together used as
many as twenty-five silk-reeling machines, employing local women to
operate them.48
Small-scale farmers also benefited from the new opportunities in silk,
cotton, and other regional specialties such as tea, as detailed in Robert
Hellyer’s chapter. Farmers who had struggled to squeeze a living from
inadequate plots of land could now benefit from rising demand and high
prices by rearing silkworms and selling their cocoons to local buyers. The
result was a significant increase in prosperity among marginal farmers in
Kō shū and beyond. Nonetheless, the treaty port system also brought
a great deal of disruption. Existing elites often failed to adapt to the
rapid transformations of the market. For every aggressive, risk-taking
entrepreneur (like Chū emon) who was able to exploit the new opportu-
nities, an established player fell by the wayside. Only one house among
46
The argument for Japan’s early modern “proto-industrialization” or “industrious revolu-
tion” is, of course, well-established. For notable contributions, see Thomas C. Smith,
The Agrarian Origins of Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1959);
David Howell, “Proto-Industrial Origins of Japanese Capitalism,” Journal of Asian
Studies 51, no. 2 (1992): 269–286; Kä ren Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery,
1750–1920 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995); Edward E. Pratt, Japan’s
Protoindustrial Elite: The Economic Foundations of the Gō nō (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Asia Center, 1999).
47
Yamanashi-ken, Yamanashi kenshi, tsū shi hen, 4, p. 791. 48 Ibid, p. 801.
78 Simon Partner
the elite Kō fu silk merchants survived the turbulent decade of the
1860s.49
Meanwhile the farmers, artisans, and laborers of Kō shū had to contend
with significant, and sometimes extreme, disruptions arising from the
political and economic events of the period, trends explored in depth by
Mark Metzler in his chapter. Here, it becomes difficult to separate out the
effects of political disruption, much of which itself originated with unrest
over the opening of Yokohama, from the economic effects of Japan’s
plunge into the global market. The most noticeable disruption was the
extreme rise in prices during the course of the 1860s, which was, in large
part, the result of the currency adjustments triggered by Japan’s exposure
to the global gold and silver markets. In the Kō fu market, a one-shō
measure of rice that cost 163 mon in 1861 rose to as high as 769 mon in
1867. The problem was compounded by widespread crop failures in
1860, 1861, 1865, and 1866. In 1864, a group of wealthy Kō fu merchants
donated hundreds of bales to rice to the city to feed the most desperate.
Some 40 percent of the city’s population qualified for handouts from this
supply.50
The accompanying political upheavals also placed heavy new demands
on villagers as they were called on to provide labor and defense services as
well as financial contributions to the struggling Tokugawa regime. For
example, due to the enormous increase in official traffic, the villagers of
Kō shū were called on repeatedly to provide labor and transport services
for the highway system.51 And as regional security deteriorated, the
authorities also compelled on the villagers of Kō shū to mobilize for
defense. For example, when the “Tengu faction” of Mito samurai
began a march on Kyoto at the end of 1864, the Kō shū government
summoned five villagers for each 1,000 koku of assessed production to
present themselves for military service. Then in 1865, when the Edo
government began raising large amounts of money for its second expedi-
tion to chastise the recalcitrant domain of Chō shū , it called on Kō shū
residents to provide financial support. The townsmen of Kō fu alone were
forced to provide almost 6,000 ryō to the government, allocated based on
their wealth. Hayashi Village, a poor mountain village with twenty-seven
households and an assessed production of only twenty-eight koku, was
required to contribute 70 ryō to the shogun’s military campaign. Its
normal annual tax burden was only 45 ryō .52
Just as the effects of global trade disrupted merchant hierarchies in
Kō shū and other provincial centers of production, so also the new con-
ditions of uncontrolled trade and foreign residence in Yokohama
49 50 51 52
Ibid, p. 799. Ibid. pp. 823–824. Ibid, p. 810. Ibid, p. 820.
disrupted existing hierarchies of class, status, and institutional affiliation

closer to the capital. Tokugawa authorities had planned to give much of
the Yokohama business to established Edo merchant houses, such as the
famed house of Mitsui, Japan’s largest textile retailer and financier.
Mitsui, however, was reluctant to risk involvement in this unknown,
new business, and ultimately it only opened a branch in Yokohama
under pressure from the shogunate. It never developed a significant
export business, relying instead on its role as customs collector and
foreign-exchange broker.53
By contrast, the dominant Japanese silk merchants by the end of the
1860s – Hara Zenzaburō , Mogi Sō bei, and Yoshida Kō bei – all came from
provincial or rural backgrounds, and none was especially wealthy or
privileged at the outset. Rather, they displayed the qualities demanded
by the rapidly changing times: flexibility, entrepreneurship, and bold
decision making. Chū emon, an extremely undercapitalized merchant
with few inherent competitive advantages, prospered precisely because
of his neediness, his determination to take advantage of any opportunity,
and his high appetite for risk.
Of course, it has long been known that the realities of social relations
in the late Edo period were far removed from the rigid theory of class
hierarchy. Nevertheless, the Yokohama trade opened new fissures in
existing hierarchies. For Chū emon and others like him, Yokohama
offered an unprecedented opportunity for economic and social advance-
ment. Chū emon’s dream of installing his family in one of Edo’s great
mansions is emblematic of his rise to wealth and status. Meanwhile,
many members of the established elites of Edo were ruined by the rapid
decline of the shogunal capital, which lost more than half its population
during the decade of the 1860s. The contrast with the rapidly growing
Yokohama, which quickly grew into a thriving city with tens of thou-
sands of new residents, could hardly be more stark. Underlying this
reversal was the shogunate’s unwillingness (or inability) to embrace
the opportunities presented by expanded foreign trade. The Edo/
Tokyo economy began to thrive again only after 1868 when Japan's
new leaders took greater advantage of foreign trade. For the following
century, Tokyo and Yokohama operated in tandem, combining political
power and foreign trade. By the mid-twentieth century, Tokyo had
become a global economic powerhouse (and the imperial capital, as
53
See John G. Roberts, Mitsui: Three Centuries of Japanese Business, 2nd ed. (New York:
Weatherhill, 1989), pp. 45–72; Yokohama shishi [History of Yokohama City], Vol. 2
(Yokohama: Yokohama-shi, 1999), pp. 205–208.
80 Simon Partner
Takagi Hiroshi outlines in his chapter), and Yokohama had grown to

become the second largest city in Japan (which it remains today).
This portrait of a complex, transformative process that encompasses
both vital continuities of economic growth and development, and severe
disruptions caused by Japan’s sudden integration into global capitalist
markets, is consistent with studies by Kären Wigen, Edward Pratt, and
David Howell among others.54 In this sense, Chū emon’s story confirms
and conforms to an increasingly confident historiography of continuity
and change in nineteenth-century Japan.
However, the transformational impact of Yokohama is also discernable
in more subtle manifestations that are not so easily captured by the
balance sheet of continuity versus change, and that perhaps point to
new directions in the study of urban space and its transformational
potential. With Japan’s sudden integration into global markets, both the
perceptions and realities of space and time shifted in complex but ulti-
mately momentous ways.
For example, the global connections of Yokohama often emphasized
the importance of distant events over local ones. Chū emon’s letters fre-
quently dwell on changes in the Yokohama market. Perhaps Chū emon
himself was unaware of the global currents that dictated market prices in
Yokohama (certainly he seldom mentions international events); but he
was intensely aware of the disparity between Yokohama prices and those
in his home province, and when those disparities brought opportunities,
he seized them. By contrast, while the great drama of the overthrow of the
Tokugawa shogunate brought Chū emon much personal anguish, it
affected his business remarkably little. Ultimately, Chū emon was undone
not by domestic politics, but by a conflict taking place 6,000 miles away.
Neither was Chū emon alone. Even village families living in remote
mountain valleys were now – via the global node of Yokohama – depen-
dent on the consequences of events taking place far away.
The new transnational space of Yokohama also acquired an enormous
symbolic importance in Japan, which was, in some ways, quite out of
proportion to its political or even economic weight. From Mito to
Chō shū , clashes took place in the name of “expelling the barbarian.”
One of the key moments in the agonizing, slow-motion collapse of the
shogunate was its acquiescence to the Emperor Kō mei’s command to set
a date for expelling the foreigners from the realm and close the port of
Yokohama. When the shogunate failed to execute the latter, high-spirited
54
Wigen, The Making of a Japanese Periphery, 1750–1920; Pratt, Japan’s Protoindustrial Elite:
The Economic Foundations of the Gō nō ; for Howell, see, in particular, David Howell, “Hard
Times in the Kanto – Economic Change and Village Life in Late Tokugawa Japan,”
Modern Asian Studies 23 (1989): 349–371.
samurai and even villagers dreamed of taking matters into their own
hands, and launching attacks on Yokohama to slaughter the foreigners.
All of this contrasts with the relative banality of daily life in Yokohama,
where, as Chū emon’s letters and other records attest, the residents’ main
concerns were moneymaking and pleasure seeking. Nevertheless, this
symbolic importance contributed to tangible results that were to have far-
reaching consequences for Japan’s social and political landscapes. The
undermining of Tokugawa authority caused by the regime’s inability to
“expel the barbarian” contributed to the collapse of Edo’s elite governing
class. Ultimately, the powerlessness of the samurai class to repel the
foreign threat helped pave the way for the abolition of the feudal system,
and the replacement of hereditary samurai elites by a bureaucracy better
adapted to a modern, globally connected society.
In addition to the effects of new spatial configurations, it is also possible
to discern in the case study of Shinohara Chū emon the beginnings of
a powerful, new temporal dynamic. From relatively early in his business
career in Yokohama, Chū emon understood the value of rapid commu-
nication. In letters to his son that emphasize the importance of speedy
communications and information security, Chū emon shows his grasp of
the financial implications of information advantage. Indeed, Chū emon’s
success was largely based on his ability to take advantage of inefficiencies
in communication and transport that prevented news being disseminated
in a timely way, and that hindered prices and the movement of goods from
responding quickly to information flows. Chū emon’s advantage came
from his knowledge of global market movements, and his use of the best
available communication channels, mainly in the form of special messen-
ger services.
This turned out to be a very short-term advantage, and its evanescence
may indeed have contributed to Chū emon’s downfall. Throughout the
mid-nineteenth-century world, the imperative to employ new technolo-
gies of communication and transportation led to the rapid implementa-
tion of railway, telegraph, and other communication systems. Starting in
the 1870s, the spread of telegraph and railways brought about a radical
reconfiguration of Japan’s provincial landscape. News that might have
taken days or weeks to travel on foot or horseback along Japan’s moun-
tainous highway system could now be transmitted instantaneously.
Goods could be moved in a matter of hours along routes that previously
took weeks. The introduction of radically new transport and commu-
nication technologies would within the next few decades tie the Kanto
hinterland into a powerful capitalist and imperialist ecosystem that
would play a dominant role in Japan and East Asia for generations to
come.
82 Simon Partner
The revolutions in information and transportation technologies during the

Meiji period would bring new elites to the fore. During the coming decades,
ambitious and entrepreneurial newcomers – men who were in many ways
like Chū emon himself – would make vast fortunes in railways, banking,
shipping, trade, and commerce. Chū emon, however, was not destined to
be included in their number. Returning to the role of a small-scale farmer, he
lived out his final days in his birthplace of Higashi-Aburakawa, where his
descendants remain to this day.
4 The Global Weapons Trade and the Meiji
Restoration
Dispersion of Means of Violence in a World
of Emerging Nation-States
Harald Fuess
The Meiji Restoration initiated a radical change in the governance of

Japan through a process that contemporaries in 1868 had already called
a “bloodless revolution.”1 Japan thereby contained Western powers and
embarked on a path to realize visions of a rich nation and strong army
that led to modernization at home and empire abroad. This simple story
of the Meiji Restoration has continued to appeal to scholars and the
public alike. Whether praising or condemning its effects, they seldom
deny the centrality of the Meiji Restoration in national historical narra-
tives. Moreover, the Meiji Restoration has served as a template for
progressive change in other countries eager to “catch up” with those
countries that had come to dominate the world since the nineteenth
century. The circumstances, contexts, and consequences of the Meiji
Restoration were less unique than is commonly assumed. After all,
modern state formations took place around the world in the nineteenth
century and more often than not, they were accompanied by major
ruptures and violent processes.
Charles Maier has recently argued for a global perspective on the
formation of the modern state. He contends that the 1850s inaugu-
rated a “long century of modern statehood” based on the ideals of
the Westphalian order of 1648. According to Westphalian structure,
rulers often claimed absolute authority at home and independence
from outside intervention. By the mid-nineteenth century, that con-
cept of statehood was strengthened by new and unprecedented tech-
nological innovations in the form of rapid-firing guns, steamships,
1
The North China Herald and Market Report, January 31, 1868, p. 44, citing Japan Times
when discussing the resignation of Tokugawa Yoshinobu as shogun prior to the
1868–1869 civil war. The North China Herald eventually altered its name in 1870 to The
N.N. Herald and S.C. & C. Gazette and is referred to in this chapter as NCH.
83
84 Harald Fuess
and railways that effectively extinguished alternative forms of

governance.2
This chapter shows how the new and violent world order, introduced
by expanded links to global trade that brought more advanced weapons
and other technologies to Japan, helped to bring about the transformation
of the Meiji Restoration. It does so by exploring in detail the import and
trade of Western-style weapons. Focusing on the flow of infantry firearms
and the Western merchants based in Japan, it reveals the global intersec-
tions of the Meiji Restoration by tracing multiple connections between
violence in the world, the international arms trade, and what became an
arms race in Japan during the late 1860s.
In Western Europe, the nineteenth century was a relatively peaceful
period between the bloody Napoleonic Wars and the trauma of World
War I. In other parts of the world, political violence seemed to be far more
common to the extent of appearing “endemic.” As noted in the introduc-
tion to this volume, Michael Geyer and Charles Bright counted 177
warlike confrontations between 1840 and 1880 alone. Europe experi-
enced some conflicts, notably the Crimean War (1853–1856), intermit-
tent fights surrounding Italian unification (1859–1871), as well as the
German Unification Wars (1864, 1866, 1870–1871). Wars in the
Americas proved even more disruptive to the social fabric and generated
higher death tolls. The US Civil War (1861–1865) in which over half
a million people perished is the most well-known but wars in South
America also brought much bloodshed.3 Western imperial powers
reshaped the status quo especially in Asia. Great Britain fought several
wars with China and extended direct control over India in conflicts waged
from 1857 to 1859. The most devastating civil war in the nineteenth
century, the Taiping Rebellion (1851–1864), cost the lives of at least
two million people in China.4
After centuries of peace, Japan also experienced Western gunboat
diplomacy beginning in 1853. US Commodore Perry displayed his super-
ior naval force with black, smoke-belching steamships and imposing
cannons. These symbols of violence were more than empty threats.
A decade later foreign warships proved their devastating firepower in
2
Charles S. Maier, “Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood,” in A World Connecting:
1870–1945, ed. Emily S. Rosenberg (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2012),
pp. 34–39.
3
The wars in South America were the Franco-Mexican War (1862–1867), the Triple
Alliance War (1864–1870), which caused a high death toll in Paraguay, and the Pacific
War between Chile, Bolivia, and Peru (1879–1884).
4
Michael Geyer and Charles Bright, “Global Violence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia
and America: The Geopolitics of War in the Mid-Nineteenth Century,” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 38, no. 4 (1996): 623–627.
The Global Weapons Trade 85
combat. In August 1863, a British naval squadron bombarded

Kagoshima, the castle-town of the Satsuma domain. Roughly a year
later, British forces tested the effectiveness of their new Armstrong guns
on the port town of Shimonoseki in Chō shū .5 These so-called punitive
expeditions got the message across to politically savvy Japanese that for
the time being Western military technology could not be beaten.
The foreign threat led to political tensions in Japan over foreign and
domestic policy, which turned violent. Chō shū samurai openly rebelled
against the Tokugawa order and attacked the Kyoto Imperial Palace on
August 20, 1864. In 1865, Chō shū purchased 7,300 Western-style rifles
at Nagasaki and reorganized its troops along Western lines.6 In 1866,
Chō shū upset the existing balance of power by singlehandedly defeating
an alliance of Tokugawa forces, thereby exposing the weakness of the
central government. When Yoshinobu submitted his unprecedented res-
ignation as shogun in November 1867, it marked the beginning of the end
of the Tokugawa. The coup d’état on January 3, 1868 seemed almost an
expected outcome of Japan’s exposure to a wider world of violence where
political differences would be settled by military means.
The Tokugawa regime then collapsed. The three-day battle at Toba-
Fushimi on the outskirts of Kyoto in late January 1868 resulted in
a critical victory for the better-motivated and organized insurgents.
Both sides employed units with modern arms. Conrad Totman concludes
that the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance won “in having their best weapons at
the right place at the right time.”7 Nevertheless, more bloodshed
occurred subsequently during the Boshin War. Estimates of the death
toll for the Boshin War and the Satsuma Rebellion vary from the low
thousands to more than 10,000. The Battle of Toba-Fushimi left 500
dead and perhaps up to 1,500 soldiers wounded.8 By the standards of the
nineteenth-century world’s most violent wars, Japanese causality figures
remained low. Historians usually identify the Boshin War as the most
significant period of internal strife. As many chapters in this volume
explore, however, the years between the first Chō shū Expedition in
1864 extending to the Meiji government’s victory in the Satsuma
Rebellion of 1877, formed a broader period of internal conflict that
brought military destruction and political creation.
5
Augustus Kuper, “Armstrong Guns,” in Japan Vol. 2, British Parliamentary Papers, 1864,
pp. 141–150.
6
Albert M Craig, Chō shū in the Meiji Restoration (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
Press, 1961), p. 316.
7
Conrad Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i
Press, 1980), p. 433.
8
Ibid, p. 430. See also figures by Mitani Hiroshi noted in the Introduction.
86 Harald Fuess
The Japanese Arms Race and the Global

Weapons Trade
In his chapter, Hō ya Tō ru shows how modern rifles disrupted the political
order of Japan at multiple levels. These arms shifted the balance of power
between the Tokugawa and outside (tozama) lords. Throughout the
fights of the 1860s, units trained in Western-style military organization
with rifle firepower supported by field artillery proved far more effective
than samurai swords, pikes, or old-style Japanese-made muskets. The
introduction of the rifle triggered military reforms that had far-reaching
implications for the political order at large and the social fabric in general.
Samurai were often reluctant to take up these new weapons, which they
saw as lowering their social rank and allegedly called “the weapon of
cowards.”9 As Hō ya and Brian Platt explain in their respective chapters,
warring factions, to various degrees at different times of distress, began to
recruit peasants for military service, thereby substantially eroding the
hereditary status system. Despite the political, social, and military cen-
trality of these imported rifles in the Meiji Restoration, the international
trading routes that brought these weapons to Japan have yet to receive
systematic, scholarly attention.
The key facilitators of the weapons trade, Western merchants, feature
almost en passent in classical narratives of the Meiji Restoration. Totman
summarized the generally negative consensus of “foreign gunrunners”
who worked “feverishly to profit from Japanese distress.”10 One undis-
puted exception is the central role attributed to Thomas Glover, the
young Scottish trader in Nagasaki who, with the tacit support of the
British Minister Sir Harry Parkes, supplied arms to the southwestern
domains.11 The relatively rapid organization of a new type of rifle unit
in Chō shū , Satsuma, Saga, and Tosa proved a decisive advantage in
domestic military conflicts after 1866. By contrast, military reforms on
the Tokugawa side supported by the French diplomat, Léon Roches, only
began to be effective with the arrival of the French military mission in
January 1867, which was too late to have a transformative impact on the
subsequent battlefields. As Hō ya shows, even in the moment of existential
9
John Reddie Black, Young Japan: Yokohama and Yedo, 1858–79, Vol. 2 (London:
Trubner & Co., 1881), p. 33.
10
Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, p. 539.
11
For scholarship on Glover, see Shinya Sugiyama, “Thomas B. Glover: A British
Merchant in Japan, 1861–70,” Business History 26, no. 2 (1984): 115–138;
Alexander McKay, Scottish Samurai: Thomas Blake Glover 1838–1911 (Edinburgh:
Canongate Press, 1997); Michael Gardiner, At the Edge of Empire: The Life of Thomas
B. Glover (Edinburgh: Birlinn, 2007).
crisis in early 1868, Tokugawa leaders were still reluctant to commit to

a radical overhaul of their military organization.
Domestic Demand and Worldwide Supply

The treaty port trading regime, initiated in 1859, had a transformative
impact on Japan’s domestic economy as Mark Metzler and Simon
Partner compellingly show in this volume. In the Ansei treaties, the
Tokugawa state explicitly kept its monopoly over the purchase of war-
ships, cannons, and guns. Despite its wariness of domains arming them-
selves, the shogunate lifted the import ban in 1862. Tokugawa officials,
through various channels including its network of informants and spies in
Nagasaki, kept track of arms deals. When they suspected illegal arms were
flowing to Chō shū , Tokugawa officials asked foreign diplomats to stop
such “smuggling.” British officials responded by issuing warnings to their
merchants without apprehending a single gunrunner. Meanwhile, the
Tokugawa placed an order with Glover, one of the foremost smugglers,
for thirty-five Armstrong guns and ammunition costing $183,847 in
June 1865.12 Especially after the Second Chō shū Expedition (1866),
demand soared and Western weapons began to circulate widely. When
domestic tension rose further in 1867, firearms became Japan’s single
most important import good. British official trade figures show the high
level of demand. Total recorded small arms imports from 1863 to the end
of the fighting in 1869 exceeded half a million. In addition, import
statistics recorded ammunition cartridges, percussion caps, fittings, and
sundry equipment. When small arms imports to Japan peaked in 1867,
the amount spent on guns overtook the total for ships, which were far
more capital-intensive (see Figure 4.1).
Foreign diplomats deplored this change in the composition of com-
merce but recognized its economic significance. British Consul Marcus
Flowers stressed the “great demand for arms and ammunition” due to the
“troubled state of the country” in his trade report for Nagasaki. Since
imports exceeded exports by $4.3 million, there was “great difficulty . . . in
finding the means of remitting so large a surplus.”13 On the eve of the
Chō shū -Satsuma alliance’s military campaigns in northern Honshu in
12
The only Western gun smuggler who received a penalty was the captain of the US steamer
Anna Kimball, who was fined $1,000 in the US Consular Court in May 1866. McKay,
Scottish Samurai, pp. 40, 70–71, 73.
13
Consul Flowers April 15, 1868, Trade Reports on Nagasaki, 1867–1868, in Commercial
Reports from Her Majesty’s Consuls in China, Japan, and Siam, 1866–68. Presented to Both
Houses of Parliament by Command of Her Majesty. July 1868 (London: Harrison & Sons,
1868), p. 288.
88 Harald Fuess
16,00,000
14,00,000
12,00,000
10,00,000
8,00,000
6,00,000
4,00,000
2,00,000
0
1863 1864 1865 1866 1867 1868 1869 1870
Ships Arms & Ammunition
Figure 4.1 Imports into Nagasaki (in Mexican dollars): ships versus
arms and ammunitions, 1863–1870
Sources: Foreign Office: Consulate, Nagasaki, Japan: General
Correspondence and Consular Court Records, Nagasaki, 1859–1870
and Shinya Sugiyama, “Thomas B. Glover: A British Merchant in
Japan, 1861–70,” Business History 26, no. 2 (1984): 120
June 1868, a Yokohama colleague concurred that demand for weapons

there had become so large that it had crowded out all other commercial
activities:
Arms . . . have, in most instances, been profitable investments to the individual
importer, still such business only tends to fritter away the energies of the people
and to turn their attention from proper objects of industry . . . Respectable English
firms, until very recently, abstained altogether from participating in this trade; but
they found they could not afford to stand aloof any longer, and during the
past year all nationalities have been eager competitors in the field, and upwards
of 100,000 stand of rifles were imported, all of which found a ready market.14
In fact, Yokohama attracted a larger stream of imported weapons than
Nagasaki, a point neglected by previous studies (see Table 4.1).
Contraband trade was presumably higher in Nagasaki than elsewhere
14
Consul Fletcher May 31, 1868, Trade Reports on Kanagawa 1867–1868. Ibid, p. 308.
Table 4.1 Small arms imports by harbor,

1863–186916
Year Yokohama Nagasaki Kobe Japan
1863 5,817 5,817

1864 11,568 11,568
1865 56,843 25,850 82,693
1866 53,000 (est.) 21,620 74,620
1867 102,333 65,367 167,700
1868 106,036 36,514 142,550
1869 58,613 19,163 7,120 84,896
Total 394,210 168,514 7,120 569,844
Note: Due to a Yokohama Custom House fire in 1866, no

official total remains for the entire year. Yokohama figures
from May to December were 35,427; at a constant rate,
annual imports would have amounted to 53,140.
Considering that the previous year and the following year
imports were higher, this is a rather conservative estimate.
but the official aggregates suggest that the Kanto Plain could have out-
gunned western Japan at a ratio of almost two to one. It is an over-
simplification to assume that Nagasaki arms imports mostly supplied
future “southern” rebels and the Yokohama trade led exclusively to
a strengthening of the shogunate and its allies. Nevertheless, arms trade
figures imply that the Kanto region and the Tokugawa seat of government
were being strengthened over the peripheries and in due time should have
had the upper hand in military clashes, if under a comparable level of
leadership. The Keiō reforms (1866–1867) instituted by the bakufu, had
quantifiable results in raising demand for arms. Moreover, French diplo-
mat Léon Roches had started to have such an impact that the US mer-
chant Eugene Van Reed complained in the summer of 1866:
The French influence with the Japanese is astonishing to me, the more so as when
I left there were but half a dozen merchants and no trade to make us feel their
presence. Now everything is French, and they possess the very key to the power of
the Tycoon.15
The arrival of French military advisors in 1867 further spread the fear –
also dissipated by the British – that the Tokugawa were about to gain
15
Augustine Heard & Co. Collection 39 88, Letter Van Reed to Heard, July 12, 1866,
p. 66. Yokohama Kaikō Shiryō kan (hereafter YKS).
16
Hō ya Tō ru, Boshin sensō [The Boshin War] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007), p. 99.
90 Harald Fuess
stronger control over the country and possibly remodel it in a centralized

French way.
Trade figures point to other issues often offered as reasons for the
collapse of Tokugawa order: widespread lack of commitment and disen-
gagement. When Scottish journalist John R. Black reported rumors that
the shogunate had up to 300,000 rifles but only 10,000 men ready to use
them, he noted a central problem in the acquisition of the new
technology.17 Distributed evenly among the male population of Japan,
the number of gun imports would have meant that about 3 percent of the
population could have carried one by the end of the Boshin War. By
comparing import figures to the number of actual fighters in any one
Boshin theater, which often ranged from a few hundreds to tens of
thousands, we can conclude that many imported arms were employed
not in combat but in local defensive or policing activities.
During the summer campaign of 1866 against Chō shū , the bakufu
confronted a “massive daimyo betrayal” with many domains refusing to
dispatch troops to the battlefield.18 The commander of the Chō shū
campaign, the daimyo of Wakayama, Tokugawa Mochitsugu, withdrew
his support of Yoshinobu before the Battle of Toba-Fushimi. This
removed a domain force that had initiated a large-scale military reform
plan with Western rifle units.19 Other domains purchased rifles for a fight
that never occurred. In the Tohoku region, the Nanbu domain bought
boxes of rifles in preparation for the Boshin War. Eventually domain
leaders transshipped the unopened cases to Hakodate after they had
worked out a political settlement with the new Meiji government.
Foreign merchants rarely sold single rifles, but rather orders in the hun-
dreds. Treaty port foreigners used rifles for sport and the Yokohama rifle
unit, a militia protecting the treaty port, was a tiny force. Japanese
commoners could have potentially acquired arms. For untrained com-
moners, however, their defensive value was questionable given that
Japanese had been accustomed to view guns as hunting devices subject
to a strict licensing system.20
During the early 1870s, as it was moving to abolish the domains and
establish prefectures in their place, the Meiji government surveyed
domains for their military holdings. It counted 6600 cannons (taihō )
and 370,000 small arms (shō jū ).21 The number of small arms recorded
17
Black, Young Japan, Vol. 2, pp. 32–33.
18
Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, p. 231. 19 Ibid, pp. 406, 420, 431.
20
David Howell, “The Social Life of Firearms in Tokugawa Japan,” Japanese Studies 29,
no. 1 (2009): 65–80.
21
Nanbō Heizō , “Meiji ishin zenkoku shohan no teppō senryoku” [The Firearm Strength
of All Domains during the Meiji Restoration] Gunjigaku 13, no. 1 (1977): 77.
in these surveys is lower than the British import figures of the 1860s by
about 200,000, suggesting much undercounting.22 Even several years
after the end of the conflicts, over 80 percent of small arms were single-
shot, muzzle-loading rifles like the Enfield or Minie. Less than 8 percent
fell into the categories of more advanced arms such as breech-loaders.
Even old-style matchlock muskets and smoothbore guns appeared in
local military collections. Based on these surveys, Nanbō Heizō estimates
from the average density of guns per koku that the defunct Tokugawa
military alliance would have possessed around 75,000 firearms. By con-
trast, Chō shū and Satsuma each had over 20,000 firearms. Including
other domains in their coalition, such as Saga and Tosa, the figure rises
to over 60,000 guns. Based on these estimates, on the eve of the
Restoration, the Tokugawa held twice as many advanced breech-
loaders as its closest domain rival, Chō shū , and more combined firearms
than the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance overall.
The surveys also showed an uneven distribution of gun holdings in
Japan. The top ten domains held three-quarters of the country’s fire-
power. By contrast, most of the 258 domains held hardly more than
a few hundred guns. A regional entity could not resist larger centralized
forces, as was illustrated in the case of the Aizu domain. When it surren-
dered Wakamatsu Castle in November 1868 after a month of fighting,
Aizu handed over 2,845 firearms and 51 cannons.23 Despite its defeat,
Aizu offers an instructive example. If so few weapons had such
a noteworthy impact, one wonders how a more concentrated and coordi-
nated Tokugawa regime, willing to fight and armed with Western military
technology, could have shaped the course of the Meiji Restoration.
Western Arms Traders in Nagasaki and Yokohama

Thomas Glover exemplifies the iconic young, risk-taking bakumatsu arms
dealer. This chapter does not diminish his leading stature in the Nagasaki
arms trade but argues that there were other merchants like him. By the
late 1860s, Dejima, the former outpost of the Dutch East India
Company, turned into an island of Dutch and German gun merchants.
Prominent among the twenty-six lotholders was Albert Johannes
Bauduin, the representative of the Netherlands Trading Society and
Dutch merchant consul. Another firm of note is Louis Kniffler & Co.,
which several times staffed the position of Prussian consul in Nagasaki.
22
British import numbers included revolvers in the numbers of small arms tallied, another
possible reason for the statistical discrepancy. Moreover, after the Boshin War guns were
resold abroad as domestic demand had declined precipitously.
23
Ibid, p. 83.
92 Harald Fuess
Other Dejima merchants dealing in arms were the Germans Carl

Hermann, Oscar Hartmann, and Carl Lehmann. The Nagasaki Foreign
Settlement also included Western traders in arms such as the Britons
Thomas Glover, William Alt, and Frederick Ringer. The US firm, John
Walsh and Company, was also very active along with Jose da Silva
Loureiro, who also served as Portuguese merchant consul.24
From 1866 to 1867, the vast majority of the official weapons trade in
Nagasaki (85 percent) went through British or Dutch/German hands.25
From domain contracts, we can trace transactions for 33,875 small arms,
which amounts to about 40 percent of the Nagasaki import figures and
thus constitutes a well-documented proportion of the international trade
(Table 4.2). The top two traders, Glover and Kniffler, had more than half
the sales and the top five merchant houses held 72 percent of the market
share in guns, indicating a rather high level of economic concentration. As
for their national backgrounds, Glover and the British took the lead
(53 percent), followed by Kniffler and a group of Germans (Prussia/
Hamburg) and Dutch (32 percent). Loureiro, with 1,780 small arms
sold, held the fifth position among all traders. Surprisingly low is the
share of US traders, who together did not sell many more guns than this
single Portuguese merchant house. The only “French” was William
F. Gaymans, claiming Swiss citizenship and French protection, but who
had been born in the Netherlands and died in Germany.26 Overall,
European traders were responsible for over 95 percent of the small arms
flowing into southwestern Japan. As discussed in detail below, they
procured arms mostly through existing trade networks with European
merchants in Asia or directly from Europe.27
In Yokohama, US and French merchants played a larger role with British,
Dutch, German, and Swiss firms also active arms importers. At that port,
24
Document 14 34–7 2 “Shoka todoke ukagai senkaiire otsukefuda gojō yakugai no fune
toraitachidome” [Replies to Correspondence from Various Houses on Purchases of
Ships; Record of Announcements Regarding the Arrival of Ships from Countries without
a Treaty] 1866 and Document 14–171-3–1 “Shoka kaiiremono ukagai otsukefuda”
[Replies to the Inquiries from Various Houses on Purchased Good] 1867. Nagasaki
Magistrate and Customs House Records preserved in Nagasaki Rekishi Bunka
Hakubutsukan (Nagasaki Museum of History and Culture) (hereafter NRBH).
25
Prior to the foundation of the German Empire in 1871 German merchants from
Hamburg usually registered as Dutch nationals or sought the protection of other treaty
nations such as Prussia.
26
Born in 1836, Willem Frederik Gaymans also acted as the Italian Consul in Nagasaki
after 1868 until he left in 1870 revealing the fluidity of the concept of nationality. Oura
Biographies, “Nagasaki: People, Places and Scenes of the Nagasaki Foreign Settlement,
1859–1941,” www.nfs.nias.ac.jp/page019.html (accessed August 2, 2017).
27
Percentages calculated from Takeo Shigefuji, Nagasaki kyoryūchi to gaikoku shō nin [The
Foreign Settlement in Nagasaki and Foreign Merchants] (Tokyo: Kazama Shobō , 1967),
p. 458.
Table 4.2 Major small arms importers in Nagasaki,

1866–186728
Trader Nationality 1866 (1/2 year) 1867 Total
1 Glover British 685 12,140 12,825

2 Kniffler German 3,100 1,901 5,001
3 Alt British 250 2,829 3,079
4 Hughes British 1,810 1,810
5 Loureiro Portuguese 1,780 1,780
6 Lehmann German 926 526 1,452
7 Bauduin Dutch 1,000 300 1,300
8 Gaymans French 1,120 1,120
9 French USA 500 366 866
10 Bohlens German 268 500 768
the connection between foreign state diplomacy and government-induced

trade was more apparent than in Nagasaki. The most glaring example of
a diplomat who combined personal and public interest was US “General”
Robert Pruyn. President Lincoln appointed him minister to Japan in 1861,
and during his four-year tenure, members of the US Senate became suspi-
cious of his “mercantile and business speculations.” Between 1862 and
1863, he promised to deliver three warships for which he obtained from
the shogunate $637,000 in Mexican silver dollars, which was a vast sum
amounting to almost two years of Yokohama custom revenues. In early
1868, the CSS Stonewall, originally built in France and procured from the
defeated Confederate fleet, was delivered to Yokohama. The new Meiji
government renamed it Kō tetsu and deployed it against the remnants of
the Tokugawa fleet in the Battle of Hakodate in May 1869.
European diplomats also played a central role in the arms trade. French
Minister Léon Roches advised the shogunate between 1864 and 1868.29
The trading company of Jacques Coullet, backed by the Société Générale,
sent arms to Japan via Paul Fleury-Hérard, a banker and merchant in France
named honorary consul of Japan. When sixteen French cannons arrived in
Yokohama in June 1865, they presented such a conspicuous shipment that it
alarmed envoys from other Western nations, especially British officials,
afraid of an increase in French influence on the domestic scene. Some
domain leaders also viewed the shipment as a substantial strengthening of
28
Ibid.
29
Richard Sims, French Policy towards the Bakufu and Meiji Japan 1854–95 (Richmond:
Japan Library, 1998), pp. 48–72.
94 Harald Fuess
the central Tokugawa authority.30 By the summer of 1867, the bakufu had
outstanding orders for 40,000 breech-loading chassepot rifles and 300 field
cannons for its troops who were to be trained by French military officers.31
French imports to Japan soared from 546,000 francs in 1865 to 7,480,000
francs in 1867, half of the orders received by Coullet’s firm.32 Despite an
inquiry of the Yokohama Chamber of Commerce in 1866 against Roches,
there is no evidence of personal financial interests propelling his involvement
in the French weapon business.33 By contrast, merchant consuls benefitted
from their access to Tokugawa inner circles to engage in the arms trade. The
Swiss Consul General, Caspar Brennwald, exported silk and silkworms and
enjoyed the privilege of traveling freely in the interior thanks to his diplo-
matic status. From September 1866 to August 1867, he noted in his diary
negotiations over rifles, cannons, gunpowder, and military uniforms. His
trading counterparts were high-ranking Tokugawa officials and representa-
tives of Matsuyama, Shimō sa, Owari, and Satsuma. Successful deals with
the shogunate included 3,000 barrels of gunpowder and American carbines.
In the spring of 1867, samples of Swiss-made breech-loading guns were test-
fired. The head of the Tokugawa forces, however, told Brennwald that they
would not proceed with an order since the soldiers had not yet received
sufficient training in such advanced weapons.34
Yokohama as a weapons entrepôt was subject to the shift in political
power in 1868. Following news of the outcome of the Battle of Toba-
Fushimi, Yokohama traders began to doubt that the Tokugawa regime
would survive. Already on February 6, 1868, F. Piguet of the French
Société Générale refused to deliver 1,000 chassepot rifles and ammuni-
tion to the bakufu official, Oguri Tadamasa, unless he was paid
$80,000.35 Thereafter, demand for rifles, including breech-loaders and
repeating rifles exploded. Northern domains arming for their potential
defense scrambled to obtain all available weapons on the Yokohama
market. In the spring of 1868, domains in the Tohoku region actively
imported Enfields, as well as American-made Springfields, Sharps, and
30
Meron Medzini, French Policy in Japan during the Closing Years of the Tokugawa Regime
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1971), pp. 125–126.
31
By the end of 1867 not more than 3,000 chassepot had arrived in Edo but they were not
used in the conflict. Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, p. 334.
32
Sims, French Policy, p. 221. 33 Ibid, p. 68.
34
Yokohama Kaikō Shiryō kan, ed., Burenwarudo no Bakumatsu Meiji Nippon nikki
[Brennwald’s Diary of Bakumatsu and Meiji Japan] (Tokyo: Nikkei BP-sha, 2015), pp.
100–102, 241–242.
35
M. Kanai, “Oguri Tadamasa no taieifutsu shakkan ni kansuru Kishigawaka denrai
bunsho no saihyō ka” [Reassessment of the Documents of the Kishigawa House in
Regards to the Anglo-French Loan of Oguri Tadamasa] Tokugawa rinseishi kenkyū jo
kenkyū kiyō (1971): 401–403.
Snider rifles.36 Several domains with a doubtful future in a new political

system formed a Northern Alliance under the formal leadership of house
elders from Shō nai and Yonezawa. Two affiliated members, Aizu and
Sendai, possessed the largest military forces. Hoping to procure advanced
Western arms, these domains prepared for a fight for their political
survival. For a brief moment, the division of Japan into two separate
autonomous regions seemed conceivable when Roches in early 1868
tried to mediate in the civil war so that the Tokugawa and their allies
would retain control of eastern Japan.37
Procuring from Global, Regional, and Local Arms

Markets
Western traders in Nagasaki and Yokohama sourced their arms globally,
regionally, and locally. Popular narratives credit the US Civil War as
providing a ready supply of arms for the Boshin War.38 US firms and the
US government did indeed sell military equipment to Europe, Latin
America, and the Middle East.39 Between 1865 and 1870, the United
States exported over 1.5 million rifles, especially to the Ottoman
Empire.40 Remington, the largest private arms manufacturer in the
United States, exported breech-loading rifles to China and Japan.41
The firm of Schuyler, Hartley, & Graham became one of the largest
arms merchants in the United States during the 1860s. In August 1868,
it sent 200 Austrian muskets with bayonets, 200 Spencer rifles with
bayonets, as well as 300 bayonets and scabbards to Japan.42 US mer-
chants in Yokohama also served as intermediaries. In late 1864, the
representative of Augustine Heard & Co. wrote about Satsuma leaders’
desire for Enfields and their search for ships armed with rifled
36
Kunio Maruyama, “Ishin zengo ni okeru tohoku shohan no buki kō ’nyū mondai” [On the
Issue of Arms Purchase by Several Tohoku Domains after the Restoration] Rekishi chiri
71, no. 1 (1938): 15–38.
37
Sims, French Policy, p. 71.
38
See the opening scenes of the 2013 NHK Taiga drama “Yae no Sakura.”
39
Top-five small arms firms were Remington, Colt, Winchester, Smith & Wesson, and
Providence Tool Company. Remington alone exported more than 500,000 arms.
40
Jonathan A. Grant, Rulers, Guns, and Money: The Global Arms Trade in the Age of
Imperialism (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2007), pp. 15–17.
41
“The Colt Papers” in the Connecticut State Library in Hartford, Connecticut, mention
114,500 Remington rifles sold to China before the Franco-Prussian War. Sales figures for
Japan are unknown. Geoffrey Shannon Stewart, The American Small Arms Industry: In
Search for Stability, 1865–1885 (MA thesis, Brown University, 1973), pp. 64, 70, 133.
42
“Folder 9: August 1868, 08/01/1868 – 08/31/1868” from Schuyler, Hartley & Graham
Papers, 1868–1963, McCracken Research Library, Cody, Wyoming, http://centerofthe
west.libraryhost.com/?p=collections/findingaid&id=35&q=&rootcontentid=16688
(accessed March 22, 2018).
96 Harald Fuess
cannons.43 During the summer of 1868, the US firm received from San
Francisco breech-loading Spencer rifles “most favorably known by the
Japanese” and sold them to Favre-Brandt, a Swiss merchant house in
Yokohama. When offered Smith & Wesson’s revolvers with cartridges
from its partners in Boston, it purchased them as well, expecting a ready
market in Japan. By contrast, Heard & Co. had difficulty disposing of
1,000 French chassepots that had arrived in July 1868 and sold them
only in April 1869.44
In rare cases, Japanese representatives would interact directly with
producers and military arsenals in Europe. In January 1863, “the
Japanese ambassador” inspected the innovative mass production meth-
ods of the Royal Small Arms factory in Enfield.45 A “Japanese commis-
sioner” in 1865 had ordered twelve cannons and shells from the Fonderie
Royal in Liège. Upon hearing the news, the French government inquired
why Japanese were purchasing from Belgium and not from France.
Tokugawa officials responded that this must have been an acquisition
by a Japanese lord. Their response shows how much the Tokugawa had
lost control over these unprecedented armament purchases.46
German manufacturers provided cannons and rifles. A Japanese delega-
tion contacted the German Krupp steel works in Essen to arrange a visit in
July 1862. From Krupp the Japanese contingent also ordered sixteen-inch
barrels in 1864 and received twenty-four breech-loader cannons in 1865.47
After the Prussian victory over Austria in 1866, German gun technology
received increased attention in Japan. Representatives of the Kii domain in
Wakayama and of Aizu signed contracts in April 1867 with the German
trading firm of Lehmann, Hartmann, & Company, which was established as
a partnership in Nagasaki in 1866. Carl Lehmann then went to Germany to
obtain Dreyse needle guns (Zündnadelgewehr) made in the small German
town of Suhl, famous for its weapons industry. In December 1868, the arms
were loaded in Hamburg and the last shipment finally arrived in Kobe in
June 1869, which was long after the defeat of Aizu.48 Carl Lehmann then
43
A. Heard & Co. Collection, 39 88 Letters received 1863–66, Van Reed to Heard,
December 17 and 22 1864, pp. 43–44, YKS.
44
A. Heard and Co. 39 142 Volume 461 Letters Sent – Yokohama, various letters 1868-
69, YKS.
45
David Owen Pam, The Royal Small Arms Factory, Enfield, & Its Workers (Enfield: David
Pam, 1998), p. 61.
46
Medzini, French Policy in Japan, pp. 144–145.
47
“Krupp – Japan ausführliche Zusammenstellung vom 10. August 1983” [Krupp Japan
Detailed Summary August 10, 1983]. Krupp Archive, Essen (Germany).
48
Lehmann also had three iron coastal steamships made in Hamburg for the Japanese
government. Gerd Hoffmann, “Rudolph Lehmann (1842–1914) – ein Lebensbild”
[Rudolph Lehmann (1842–1914) – a Life Portrait] OAG-Notizen, Vol. 9 (Deutsche
Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens) (September 2006): 20–21.
sued the representatives of the former Aizu domain about contract

fulfilment.49 By contrast, Kii, under new leadership, gladly took the consign-
ment of 3,000 rifles and hired the German Carl Köppen as military instruc-
tor. By December 1871, Kii had obtained 13,970 rifles from Germany and
was one of Japan’s technological trendsetters.50
Throughout the 1860s, ports in India and China were also potential hubs
for trade in small arms, especially prior to the end of the US Civil War in
1865. The Sepoy Mutiny in India (1857–1859) had erupted over the intro-
duction of the Enfield rifles and their related drill practice of biting off
cartridges, which were allegedly greased with animal fat and thus contrary
to many local religious practices. Furukawa Manabu suggests the Enfield
rifles collected by the British during and after the conflict in India may have
been sold at a profit in Japan, which had just been opened to trade.51
Moreover, the arsenals of the English East India Company produced gun
carriages, percussion caps, bullets, and munitions that may also have sup-
plied other Asian markets.52 The guns of India could have made it to Japan
via China. Singapore had also turned into an arms trading hub, illustrated by
its governor’s complaints, issued as early as 1858, about local militias armed
with Enfields.53 China itself served as a source of arms, gunpowder, and gun
parts. By the early 1860s, both sides in Taiping Rebellion were using Western
firearms. Americans in Shanghai were accused of selling to the Taipings
since a single musket could fetch the “fabulous sum” of $100. In 1862,
a Shanghai trading house supplied the Taipings with 3,000 muskets, rifles
and shotguns as well as 18,000 cartridges.54 The Qing government also
eagerly bought foreign military equipment. In 1867 authorities in Tientsin
imported 419 foreign cannons, “220 muskets, 2,000 revolvers, 27,675 lbs. of
gunpowder, and 1,300,000 percussion caps.” Moreover, the Qing aimed to
construct military arsenals for gunpowder or the production of gun parts,
and hoped to initiate production of modern rifles.55
49
Shigefuji, Nagasaki kyoryū chi, pp. 276–288.
50
Margaret Mehl, Carl Köppen und sein Wirken als Militärinstrukteur für das Fürstentum Kii-
Wakayama (1869–1872) [Carl Köppen as a Military Instructor for Kii-Wakayama
Domain, 1869–1872] (Bonn: Förderverein “Bonner Zeitschr. für Japanologie,” 1987),
pp. 34–35, 52. Oscar Hartmann left the partnership in late 1871 and returned to
Hamburg.
51
Manabu Furukawa, “Indo daihanran to bakumatsu seiyō jū ” [The Indian Mutiny and
Western Arms in the Bakumatsu Period] Shigaku 56, no. 1 (1986): 11. However, the
evidence is circumstantial since no direct trade and transport links existed then between
India and Japan.
52
Chew, Arming the Periphery, p. 235. 53 Ibid, p. 183.
54
Ian Heath, The Taiping Rebellion 1851–66 (London: Osprey, 1994).
55
Unlike their reports on Japan the British customs reports on China ignored the flow of
weapons that were exempt from customs duties. A rare exception was a reference in 1867
“Report on the Trade of Tient-tsin for the Year 1867” Commercial Reports from Her
Majesty’s Consuls in China, Japan, and Siam, 1866–68, pp. 167, 173.
98 Harald Fuess
In the 1860s, Shanghai newspapers carried European and US manu-

facturers’ advertisements for military goods. Merwin & Bray of New York
praised its Ballard breech-loading rifle and carbine as being of “high
character.”56 Colt’s FireArms Company boasted about supplying the
British, US, Russian, and Prussian governments and warned potential
buyers of counterfeits, identified by the absence of the company’s trade-
mark. Besides selling directly from London, the company also mentioned
the possibility of ordering “through any India or Colonial Agency.”57
Advertisements often alluded to the dual usage of guns for sport and the
military but one firm, Joyce’s Ammunition, invoked its status as contrac-
tors to Her Majesty’s War Department and thus targeted armies in need
of supply.58 Eley Brothers of London advertised its ammunitions for
several years as wholesale only. In 1866, the company publicized its ball
cartridges for Enfields and Westley Richard’s as “Bullets of uniform
weight, made by compression from soft Refined Lead.”59 By the end of
the decade, it had kept pace with military progress in ammunition and
rifle technology. It now wanted to sell metallic boxer cartridges explicitly
suited for military rifles.60 All the while, the North China Herald followed
the state of Japanese armed conflicts and the importance of advanced
military equipment in them, claiming in 1866 that one could say that
Chō shū boasted five rifles to the shogun’s one and was gaining easy
victories “by mere force of superior arms.”61 The treaty port merchant
community in Shanghai was thus alert to Chinese and Japanese market
opportunities.
Shanghai served as marketplace for both sides in the Boshin War. In
May 1868, the British merchant house, Lane Crawford & Company,
promised to deliver 2,000 stands of short Enfields to George Porter in
Hakodate for the sum of $37,686. The company delayed the contracted
delivery for half a year and expected a profit of over $10,000 for the deal.
These two factors indicate the high demand for merchandise as well as the
fact that it was not locally available in Shanghai and thus imported from
elsewhere. A later court case over payments further reveals how the
international rifle trade was subject to changing political fortunes and
mercantile circumstances in Japan. In December 1868, Hakodate autho-
rities refused landing of an arms shipment, which was then returned to
56
“Merwin & Bray Fire-arms Co.’s” advertisement in NCH January 20, 1866. Supplement.
57
“Colts’ Revolvers” NCH March 24, 1866, 48.
58
“Joyce’s Ammunition” NCH August 18, 1866, 132.
59
“Ammunition” NCH January 20, 1866. Supplement.
60
“Eley’s ammunition” NCH February 1, 1870, 89. See also advertisement by Colt’s Fire
Arms Company, London, NCH May 5, 1870, 333.
61
“War in Japan” NCH October 6, 1866, pp. 159–160, reprint from Japan Times.
Shanghai for Glover & Company to “hold as security” until full payment.
In the meantime, Glover pawned the rifles to the Hong Kong and
Shanghai Bank. By 1870, their commercial value had declined and
a lawyer for Lane Crawford & Company complained that the arms
could have been sold for a good price in Osaka in early 1869 had they
been shipped there.62
Mercantile Alliances in the South and the North

Much scholarship has examined the large, well-known trading houses
such as Jardine Matheson & Company and Walsh, Hall, & Company.
This section explores instead the activities of two, middling trading
houses that, in fact, imported the bulk of arms provided to the domains.
Despite or because of their German-Dutch background, which repre-
sented none of the three most important foreign powers in Japanese
diplomacy of the late 1860s, the firms of Kniffler and Schnell became
significant arms dealers. One supplied southwestern domains, especially
through Nagasaki, and the other supported the Northern Alliance
through Yokohama and later Niigata.
Kniffler & Company: “Top Arms Dealer after Glover”

Kniffler & Company was the top weapons dealer after Glover in the
Nagasaki trade.63 The firm started in general merchandise in Nagasaki
in July 1859. Its founder, Louis Kniffler, grew up in a town in Prussia and
became an apprentice in Hamburg. Later he moved to the German firm,
Pandel & Stiehaus, operating in Dutch Batavia. When he heard about the
opening of Japan, he left the firm to explore Nagasaki. Kniffler was one of
the first foreign merchants to open shop in Yokohama and Fukuzawa
Yukichi records buying two English-Dutch dictionaries from the Kniffler
store.64 Kniffler originally planned to sell wool and cotton textiles, glass-
ware, medicines, and arms. In letters to supporters in Hamburg, these
goods were praised as of “increasing relevance for German industry.”65
The firm initially started trades with Batavia, Manila, Hong Kong, and
Shanghai. Most lucrative proved the seasonal export of kelp such as in
62
NCH “Law Reports” January 18, 1870, pp. 45–48.
63
Shigefuji, Nagasaki kyoryū chi, p. 458.
64
Yukichi Fukuzawa, The Autobiography of Yukichi Fukuzawa, ed. and trans. Eiichi
Kiyooka, Unesco Collection of Representative Works (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1966), p. 97.
65
Regine Mathias-Pauer and Erich Pauer, Die Hansestädte und Japan, 1855–1867:
ausgewählte Dokumente [The Hanseatic Cities and Japan, 1855–1867: Selected
Documents] (Marburg: Förderverein Marburger Japan-Reihe, 1992), pp. 53, 80.
100 Harald Fuess
1865 from Wilkie & Gärtner of Hakodate to a Chinese merchant in

Shanghai.66 Just as other merchants, the firm engaged in miscellaneous
trades. It exported silk from Yokohama, and it may have maintained a tea-
firing plant in Nagasaki.67 By 1866, Kniffler’s company rented one-third
of the island of Dejima for its storehouses and its cargo amounted to
about half of the volume of Prussian shipping to Yokohama.68 The firm
had established a respectable position in the volatile markets of the
Japanese treaty ports when Louis Kniffler left for Germany in late 1865,
possibly to deepen his contacts to German industry.
Kniffler & Company gradually expanded its weapons business. In
1862, the company received a shipment of rifles from the Bremen com-
pany of Joh. Lange Sohn’s Witwe & Company.69 In September 1863,
Louis Kniffler observed the high prices obtained for American-made
revolvers in Japan.70 In July 1865, a corporate letter notes that throughout
the previous year the domains have been assembling significant positions
in “fine weapons” with the French minister actively recommending the
purchase of French arms.71 By 1866, the Kniffler firm was fully involved
in arms deals, selling a total of at least 8,000 small arms, as well as
ammunition and gunpowder over the next two years. Most of its trading
partners were domains in Kyushu. By September 1866, the company had
supplied Satsuma (1,820 Enfields), Saga/Hizen (2,990 Enfields and 500
other rifles), Kumamoto (500 Enfields), Kokura (200 Enfields), Ō mura
(320 Enfields). Northern domains such as Yonezawa (Yamagata),
Kubota (Akita), and Sendai were also customers. The Nagasaki
Magistrate kept the receipts of payments for arms deals conducted by
“L. Kniffler shō kai [company].” Often receipts were addressed to the
Nagasaki Customs House and included a sum and the number of arms –
for example 9,000 ichibu for “150 Enfield Rifles” on March 18, 1867,
without naming the Japanese counterpart of the deal.72
Kniffler & Company also shipped the first Krupp cannons to Japan.73
In 1871 the firm took an order from Kii for twenty pieces of Krupp field
artillery that had proved devastating in the Battle of Sedan during the
66
Kikkawa Takeo and Eisenhofer-Halim Hannelore, Irisu 150 nen: reimeiki no kioku [150
Years of Illies: Memories of the Period of Dawn] (Tokyo: Irisu, 2009), pp. 70–73.
67
Ibid, p. 71.
68
Martin Hermann Gildemeister, Ein Hanseat in Japan 1859–1868 [A Hamburg Citizen in
Japan 1859-1868] (Hamburg: Hanseatischer Merkur, 1993), p. 32.
69
Johannes Bähr, Jörg Lesczenski, and Katja Schmidtpott, Winds of Change: On the 150th
Anniversary of C. Illies & Co. (Munich: Piper, 2009), pp. 35–36.
70
Ibid, 46. 71 Gildemeister, Ein Hanseat, pp. 247–249.
72
NRBH, “Shoka kaiiremono ukagai.”
73
Michael Rauck, “Die Beziehungen zwischen Japan und Deutschland 1859–1914 unter
besonderer Berücksichtigung der Wirtschaftsbeziehungen” [Relations Between Japan
and Germany 1859–1914 with Special Consideration for Economic Relations] (PhD
Franco-Prussian War.74 Gustav Reddelien was the key dealmaker for

Kniffler & Company. Like Glover but different from many other traders,
he apparently acquired sufficient Japanese competency to negotiate with-
out a translator with the Tosa domain representative Gotō Shō jirō .75
Tosa was its most valuable customer to which it delivered two English
warships (Rattler, Leopard) between 1866 and 1867. As Tosa lacked funds
these were high-risk deals consisting of a mixture of cash, barter, and
promises for future payments. The first transaction in April 1866 con-
sisted of 300 rifles, 140 bales of wool, and 9,915 ryō for 900 tons of
camphor. In November, Tosa exchanged 180 tons of camphor for 500
breech-loading rifles. In March 1867, Tosa bought the steamer, Hiogo,
for $70,000 and, as part of the deal, Kniffler received the Shanghai valued
at $30,000. At that time, about two-thirds of Japanese camphor exports
came from Tosa, a product used in many ways, including by Europeans to
treat rheumatism. Kniffler hoped to set European prices and reap
a monopoly profit. Relations with Tosa worsened over nonpayments and
the desire to renegotiate terms of the deal. This souring was partly due to
turmoil within Tosa and ensuing leadership changes but also due to
Japanese awareness of the profits Kniffler was making. Richard Lindau,
the Prussian consul at Nagasaki, arbitrated the disputes, while simulta-
neously informing his American employer about the lucrative nature of the
camphor trade.76 Still, in December 1867, Kniffler demanded the con-
fiscation of Tosa ships in the Nagasaki harbor as the domain still owed
$80,000. Eventually Iwasaki Yatarō , the future founder of Mitsubishi,
negotiated an installment plan on behalf of Tosa.77
Frictions with Kniffler or sheer lack of funds induced Tosa representa-
tives to look for alternative arms suppliers willing to sell on credit.
Sakamoto Ryō ma’s trading organization, the Kaientai, which was loosely
diss., Erlangen, Nürnberg University, 1988), p. 434; Kikkawa, Irisu 150 nen, 76; Bähr,
Winds of Change, p. 47.
74
Kasai Masanao, “Meiji zenki heiki yu’nyū to bō eki shō sha: rikugun kō shō to no kanren ni
oite” [Weapons Imports in the Early Meiji Period and Trading Firms: the Connection to
the Army Arsenal] Keizai kagaku 34, no. 4 (1987): 384.
75
With his Japanese wife, Ozone Fukui, he had three children. Rudolf Beisenkötter,
“Gustav Reddelien und der Beginn des deutsch-japanischen Handels” [Gustav
Reddelien and the Beginning of German-Japanese Trade] OAG Noitzen vol. 11
(November 2001): 9–10.
76
Richard Lindau worked for Walsh & Company until 1867, then for Alt & Company until
1870. Arthur Richard Weber, Kontorrock und Konsulatsmütze [Business Dress and
Consular Cap] (Tokyo: Deutsche Gesellschaft für Natur- und Völkerkunde Ostasiens,
1973), pp. 142–143.
77
“Nagasaki Tosa shō kai kankei bunsho: Nagasaki bugyō sho kiroku” [Documents Relating
to the Tosa Trading Company in Nagasaki: Records of the Nagasaki Magistrate’s Office]
in Kō chi chihō shi kenkyū kai, ed., Tosa gunsho shū sei [Collection of Records from Tosa],
Vol. 19. (Kō chi: Kō chi shiritsu shimin toshokan, 1969).
102 Harald Fuess
affiliated with the Tosa domain, purchased 1,300 rifles from Oscar
Hartmann with a down payment of 4,000 ryō with 12,000 to follow.
Sakamoto’s good relations with Satsuma and mutual interests to arm
a strong, anti-Tokugawa coalition made the deal possible. Sakamoto
brought the rifles with him to Kyoto in early November 1867 only to be
assassinated a few weeks later.78
At Nagasaki, Kniffler & Company traded in many types of small arms, the
majority not made in Germany.79 The firm procured most of its weapons in
Chinese treaty ports. Extant correspondence with its German partner in
Shanghai, Telge Nölting & Company, suggests Kniffler & Company con-
ducted opportunistic arms trading in response to supply and demand. In
June 1865, Telge offered 600 rifles stored in Shanghai.80 Correspondence in
January 1866 discussed an order for 200 picul of saltpeter from Hong Kong,
a deal related to the possible purchase of 2,350 muskets. Moreover, com-
pany records mention the sale at a profit to Walsh & Company of the
remainder of a shipment of Enfields for which there was “lively demand”
in Yokohama.81 After 1866 the firm also expanded its international network
and corresponded directly with business partners throughout Western
Europe. It also dealt with firms in San Francisco and New York. Despite
its role as a weapons importer in the 1860s, Kniffler continued its trade in
silk and textile fabrics, deals that allowed the firm to be involved in other
kinds of transaction.82 As with other Western merchants in Japan, we can
effectively trace the connections between Japanese and Chinese treaty ports
as well as to other points within China.
Kniffler & Company provided domains with weaponry in the years sur-
rounding the Meiji Restoration and thrived thereafter. Yet this was not an
automatic outcome for Western arms traders of the 1860s. Glover &
Company famously declared bankruptcy in 1870 due to unpaid debts
when the arms market collapsed and its ambitious mining venture failed.
Kniffler & Company continued to profit from arms deals with the new Meiji
government’s Department of Military Affairs in Tokyo. A sale of Enfields
was its first such contract in the 1870s.83 In 1871, it delivered 5,700 Dryse
needle guns and carbines for $74,355 and twenty Krupp cannons.84 As head
of the biggest German merchant firm in Japan, Louis Kniffler accompanied
78
Marius B. Jansen, Sakamoto Ryō ma and the Meiji Restoration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1961), pp. 310, 326.
79
Kniffler’s only documented involvement in a rifle deal with a German manufacturer was
arranging for the payments for the Dreyse needle guns on behalf of the Kii domain.
80
Letter Telge to Kniffler, June 21, 1865. Illies & Company Corporate Archive (hereafter
ICA), Hamburg.
81
Letters Telge to Kniffler, January 10, 1866, January 22, 1866 and January 24, 1866. ICA.
82
Bähr, Winds of Change, pp. 53–54. 83 Ibid, p. 57.
84
Kasai, “Meiji zenki heiki yu’nyū ,” pp. 362, 367, 382.
the Iwakura Mission on its visit to Germany where it also inspected the
Krupp facilities in Essen. Over the long term, Kniffler & Company profited
from its intermediary role between German industry and the Japanese
government. Between 1880 and 1910, the company served as the main
Krupp representative in Japan, during which time the Japanese government
ordered Krupp cannons.85 Upon the retirement of the childless Louis
Kniffler, a younger partner took over the firm and, in April 1880, renamed
it Carl Illies & Company, which still exists today as a German family-owned
enterprise with businesses in Japan.
Schnell & Company: “Glover of the North”

The Schnell brothers, specialized arms dealers in Yokohama, contin-
ued to supply northern domains even after it became politically
dangerous. Harold Bolitho called Edward Schnell the “Glover of
the north” thereby reifying the British trader as the key reference
point for a successful arms dealer.86 Ishii Takashi’s characterization
of him as a “merchant of death” (shi no shō nin) also testifies to the
importance of Schnell.87 The parents of the Schnell brothers were
born in Kurhessen, which became part of Prussia in 1866. Because
their father joined the Dutch colonial army, Henry (Johann Heinrich)
and Edward (Friedrik Hendrik Eduard) Schnell grew up in Batavia.88
Both brothers came to Yokohama in the early 1860s and acquired
a working knowledge of the Japanese language as well as broad
contacts within the treaty port community. The younger brother,
Edward, collaborated with a Swiss merchant, François Perregaux,
from 1862 until 1867 selling watches and in 1869 began to partner
with his brother.89 The aforementioned Swiss Consul Brennwald
recorded the presence of Edward Schnell in arms negotiations with
85
“Verzeichnis der von der Gußstahlfabrik und dem Grusonwerk von 1847 bis 1912
gefertigten Kanonen (Geheim)” [List of Cannons (Secret) Made by the Cast Steel
Factory and the Gruson Factory from 1847 to 1912] Krupp – Japan ausführliche
Zusammenstellung vom 10. August 1983. Historisches Archive mit Fußnoten,” Krupp
Archive. In the 1870s, Krupp paid its agents in Japan like Bair & Co. and Ahrens & Co.
a commission of 10 percent for cannons and 5 percent for other materials. Concerning
the Iwakura Mission and military contacts with Meiji Japan, see following files:
Documents WA I 584, FAH II/B/337, and WA 7 f 862, Krupp Archive.
86
Harold Bolitho, “The Echigo War 1868,” Monumenta Nipponica 34, no.3 (1979): 266.
87
Takashi Ishii, Ishin no nairan [Civil Wars of the Restoration] (Tokyo: Shiseidō , 1968),
p. 142.
88
Fukuoka Mariko, “Boshin sensō ni kan’yo shita Shyuneru kyodai no ‘kokuseki’ mondai,”
[The Nationality Problem of the Schnell Brothers in the Boshin War] in Boshin sensō no
shiryō gaku, ed. Hakoishi Hiroshi (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013), pp. 116–117, 121.
89
Kurt Meissner, “‘General’ Eduard Schnell,” Monumenta Nipponica 4, no. 2 (July 1941):
71–72.
104 Harald Fuess
bakufu officials conducted in October 1866.90 In 1866, Schnell began

arms trading in Edo with Ō kura Kihachirō , who was a native of
Echigo province and later founded the Ō kura zaibatsu.91 From his
Yokohama base in 1867, Edward developed links with the northern
Honshu domains of Echigo, Dewa, and Mutsu. Unlike other
Yokohama merchants, the Schnell brothers, especially Henry, appar-
ently became involved in the Boshin War out of personal and not
simply commercial interest.92
After 1863, Max von Brandt, the Prussian diplomatic representative,
employed Henry Schnell as secretary and translator.93 Henry was still
working for the Prussian government when a samurai threatened him and
Edward on their way from Yokohama to Edo in August 1867.94 This
incident caused von Brandt to ask for the death penalty of the offender,
who had admitted that he wanted to kill the brothers. It is not surprising
that many viewed the Schnell brothers as supporting Prussian diplomacy
in arming northern domains. A British cartoonist, writing in the Japan
Punch, bluntly portrayed a Western male figure as Faust, who looked like
Schnell, with the word “arms” written on a silkworm box offered to a coy
Japanese female, Margerite, as dealing with the Faustian German devil
(see Figure 4.2). Readers no doubt could identify the devil, who was
watched indulgently by the figure of Max von Brandt with a Japanese
castle tower appearing in the background.
After the demise of French influence in Japanese politics with the
resignation of Roches in 1868, Prussia seemed to have turned into poten-
tially the most formidable local opponent of British policy. In the con-
troversy surrounding the opening of Niigata as a treaty port, Harry Parkes
decided to postpone trade, while German, Italian, and Dutch diplomats
insisted that the start of commercial relations not be delayed beyond mid-
July 1868. The desire for access to silkworms and silkworm eggs in the
hinterland of Niigata were the official commercial matters of dispute but
the core political issue was whether to open an international maritime
arms supply route to the north.
Max von Brandt was skeptical about the advance of the southern
domains. Ferdinand von Richthofen, a German visitor to Yokohama,
90
Yokohama Kaikō Shiryō kan, ed., Burenwarudo, pp. 100–102.
91
Ō kura Zaibatsu Kenkyū kai, ed., Ō kura zaibatsu no kenkyū : ō kura to tairiku [Studies on the
Ō kura Zaibatsu: Ō kura and the Continent] (Kintō Shuppan-sha, 1977), pp. 21–22.
92
Leysner & Company, Textor & Company, Adrian & Company, Siber & Company, and
C. & J. Favre-Brandt & Company are some of the other German-Swiss merchants with
known connection to northern domains.
93
In 1869 he left the country with a Japanese wife and two young daughters; see Meissner,
“‘General’ Eduard Schnell,” p. 397.
94
Black, Young Japan, Vol. 2, pp. 78–79.
Figure 4.2 “Faust and Margerite” Arms Sales, Japan Punch (1868): no. 2.
From Fukkoku-ban: Japan panchi [Reprint Edition: Japan Punch]
Volume 2 (Tokyo: Maruzen-Yushudo Company Limited, 1999), p. 113.
Used with permission of Maruzen Yushudo Company Limited
reported in his diary in August 1868 that von Brandt expected a permanent
partition of Japan into northern and southern halves with a few independent
princes in the middle.95 Moreover, we know that von Brandt had proposed
a Prussian takeover of Hokkaido to Chancellor Bismarck in 1865 and again
in January 1867. Instead of migrating to the United States, he argued that
one and a half million Germans should instead come to Japan to establish an
agricultural colony. To protect the enterprise, an armed force of 5,000
German soldiers would suffice, as Hakodate had weak defenses.
Chancellor Bismarck ignored the suggestion but his local representative
might still have been exploring such opportunities. In July 1868, von
95
E. Tiessen, ed., Ferdinand von Richthofen’s Tagebücher aus China [Ferdinand von
Richthofen Diaries from China] (Berlin: Dietrich Reimer, 1907), p. 5. Fabian Drixler
has explored the possibility of a more permanent division of Japan during the Boshin War
in an unpublished essay “Alternative Japanese Nations in the Meiji Restoration: The Lost
History of Azuma,” paper presented at “Global History and the Meiji Restoration,”
conference convened at Heidelberg University, July 3–5, 2015.
106 Harald Fuess
Brandt seemed to be close to realizing his dreams of gaining an East Asian

foothold for the German empire. He excitedly reported home about an offer
from a northern domain, possibly drafted under the advice of Henry Schnell:
The daimyo of Aizu and Shō nai in the North of Japan have told me secretly that they
are wishing to sell their territories on Yezo [Hokkaido] and the West coast to
Prussia.96
For the Schnell brothers, 1868 proved a watershed year. They were willing
to supply weapons and desperately needed ammunition to northern
domains when others refused or failed do so. Moreover, they left the safety
of Yokohama to personally deliver goods in the northern regions. One of
their first transactions took place in the spring of 1868 with Kawai
Tsugunosuke, the house elder of the Nagaoka domain. When the domain
traded its Edo mansion and treasures for military equipment from mer-
chants such as Schnell and Favre-Brandt, it established the basis for the later
Echigo wars of resistance, especially with the acquisition of two, rare rapid-
firing American Gatling guns, purchased for 10,000 ryō . In July, Eduard
Schnell moved his business base to Niigata and barely escaped when the city
was occupied by Satsuma-Chō shū forces on September 15.97 His brother,
Henry, had resigned his post in the Prussian legation in January 1868.98 This
act may have served to disassociate his intended military activities from
official Prussian diplomacy.99 Henry then traveled to Wakamatsu and func-
tioned as a kind of military, diplomatic, and commercial advisor to the
domains of the Northern Alliance. During this time, Henry became
known as the “Prussian General” and took up the Japanese name of
Hiramatsu Buhei, the surname formed by the inversion of the two characters
of the family name of the Matsudaira daimyo of Aizu.100 When Aizu fell,
Henry continued to believe in the cause. He went to Shanghai to procure
additional arms and tried to convince Shibusawa Eiichi and the younger
brother of Tokugawa Yoshinobu to come to Hakodate to continue the fight.
We do not know much about him afterwards, except that in spring 1869, he
left with his wife (a woman from northern Japan) and their children, leading
96
Rolf-Harald Wippich, Japan als Kolonie? Max von Brandts Hokkaidō -Projekt 1865/1867
[Japan as a Colony? Max von Brandts Hokkaidō Project 1865/67] (Hamburg: Abera-
Verlag, 1997), p. 25.
97
Ishii, Ishin no nairan, pp. 134–135, 144–145, 155; Bolitho, “The Echigo War 1868,”
p. 276; Meissner, “‘General’ Eduard Schnell,” pp. 90–91.
98
Holmer Stahncke, Die Brüder Schnell und der Bürgerkrieg in Nordjapan [The Brothers
Schnell and the Civil War in Northern Japan] (Dt. Ges. für Natur- und Völkerkunde
Ostasiens, 1986), p. 19.
99
Masahiro Tanaka, “Tō hoku sensō ni katsuyaku seru Suneru no sujō ,” [The Identity of
Schnell: A Man Active in the Tohoku Wars] Kokugakuin zasshi 74, no. 5 (May 1973): 23.
100
“Aidzu’s General,” Japan Punch (third issue 1868), in Japan Punch, 1867–1869, Vol. 2
(Tokyo: Yū shō dō Shoten, 1975), p. 118.
a group of Japanese migrants to California to establish the tea farm

“Wakamatsu,” which failed after two years.
Edward remained in Yokohama for another five years despite or
because of continuous litigation with the new government. On
December 6, 1868, the Kanagawa governor, Terashima Munenori,
brought Edward to the Dutch Consular Court for having illegally traded
with rebel groups. The plaintiffs introduced a contract with Schnell
discovered on the body of Ishihara Kuraemon, a leading vassal of the
Shō nai domain. Schnell was supposed to deliver within a month rifles,
ammunition, revolvers, trumpets, gunpowder, and five maps of the Sea
of Japan for $51,131. Because the goods were brought from San
Francisco, the delivery period was extended to 100 days. Schnell was
asked to return the down payment of $13,032. In 1869, the presiding
judge, the Dutch Consul Dirk de Graeff von Polsbroek, cofounder of the
firm of Textor & Company that had later sold arms to the Schnell
brothers and the Sendai domain, dismissed the government claim on
the grounds that trade at a treaty port was not illegal and that Schnell
never received the payments in question. Moreover, foreign nations had
declared their neutrality in the domestic conflict and since Schnell’s firm
was permitted to sell to the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance, it should also have
been legal to sell to the Northern Alliance. In 1872, Edward in return sued
the Meiji government for compensation for the losses he bore when
his storehouse in Niigata was captured. From his own firm in Yokohama
he had received goods worth $144,000 from July to September, mostly
textiles, rifles, and ammunition procured especially for Aizu and
Yonezawa. He also brokered a munitions deal for E. Wyttembach
of Yokohama for $56,250. As payment, Schnell received cash, raw silk,
and silkworm egg carts. The wealthy Sakata merchant house of Honma
Tomosaburō would act as guarantor. Northern Alliance domains had even
pawned the proceeds of copper mines to Schnell in a desperate attempt to
get more arms. Peshan Smith, the foreign legal counselor of the Meiji
government, argued that the official prohibition to trade with rebels was
well-known. Therefore, the Meiji government should not reimburse
Schnell for the goods worth $60,410 sent to Yonezawa between
August and September 1868. Schnell insisted that he wanted to be treated
like other merchants engaging in legitimate business and asked for
compensation, including a four-year interest payment totaling approxi-
mately $150,000. In April 1873, a settlement was reached for $40,000
and within a year, Edward had left the country.101 The Meiji government
had resolved the Schnell case as part of a more general foreign debt
101
Meissner, “‘General’ Eduard Schnell,” pp. 90–92, 99–100.
108 Harald Fuess
settlement. The step was necessary for international legitimacy given that
in 1872 twenty-eight domains were indebted to forty-four foreign traders
for a total of 4,000,000 yen.102
Conclusion
The armed conflicts that surrounded the Meiji Restoration were part of
a worldwide experience that coincided with the advent of the modern and
sometimes violent nation-state. In the mid-nineteenth century, Japan was
connected via an international arms trading network to other civil war
theaters in the United States, India, and China, which were all exposed to
the industrial arms production revolution that unfolded in Europe and
the United States. Industrial production of weaponry meant that new
means to perpetuate large-scale violence were disseminated through
international trade on an unprecedented scale. The introduction of rifles
proved highly disruptive in military affairs and upset the sociopolitical
fabric, while altering the balance of power between domains and the
central Tokugawa authority. More fundamentally, modern weapons
like the rifle challenged the rights and prerogatives of the samurai aris-
tocracy as a whole. Without foreign rifles, the Chō shū challenge would
have been more difficult to implement and the victory against northern
domains less complete.
Nevertheless, some counterfactual questions are useful: what would
have transpired if weapons ordered in Europe by the Tokugawa and their
allies would have arrived sooner to the battlefields of Japan? Or, if the
firearms assembled by the Tokugawa side had been used more quickly
and effectively? Would this have changed the outcome by enabling
a different group to run the state, or brought about a political stalemate
that might have exposed parts of Japan to colonial annexation, as desired by
the Prussian minister? What we know for sure is that the trend in arms
imports toward Yokohama was about to strengthen the Tokugawa and the
Kansai region under Tokugawa control. Leaders of the Chō shū -Satsuma
alliance were aware of the existence of the French military mission in Edo
and through hearsay probably understood the effect of the weapons trade
in which they themselves were prime participants. If they were afraid of
losing their political and military momentum, they would have had to act
quickly and decisively, making the Meiji Restoration akin to a preventive
coup d’état in anticipation of a military backlash. Regardless of the eventual
outcome, the rising supply and demand of arms beginning in 1866
102
Kevin C. Murphy, The American Merchant Experience in Nineteenth-Century Japan
(London: Routledge Curzon, 2003), p. 240.
indicates an arms race resulting from widespread domestic tensions and

a budding consensus that military force offered the most appropriate
means of resolving a political impasse in Japan.
In the 1860s, Western merchants and consuls played a crucial inter-
mediary role in connecting Japan to international arms markets. Without
them, domains would not have had access to Western military technol-
ogy. Traders such as Kniffler & Company contributed to the military
mobilization for civil war while Schnell & Company helped prolonged the
Boshin War. Consular courts and extraterritoriality served to protect
foreign economic interests from political retribution and thus minimized
business risk. During the bakumatsu period, import and export trades
shifted away from Nagasaki to Yokohama and, later, to Kobe. Following
the Restoration, arms traders converted back to dealing in mainstream
merchandise such as textiles, silk, and tea. Meanwhile, Japan began
producing its own rifles. Some foreign merchants continued to supply
military goods to the Japan but, increasingly, Japanese companies such as
the Ō kura zaibatsu, which started as a Japanese counterpart of Western
arms traders, took over control of that crucial connection between Japan
and the outside world.
Part 2
Internal Conflicts
Figure 5.1 “Japanese military,” 1868–1870. Wilhelm Burger Collection,

courtesy of Austrian National Library
5 Mountain Demons from Mito: The Arrival
of Civil War in Echizen in 1864
Maren A. Ehlers
The Ō no Plain in Echizen Province (today a part of Fukui Prefecture) is

surrounded by high mountains and can only be reached through passes
and narrow valleys, including the somewhat larger Kuzuryū River Valley
in the north. In late 1864, the residents of this remote area learned that
a large army of battle-hardened warriors was approaching through the
mountains and would soon descend upon their peaceful homes. Although
not knowing the army’s exact size or intentions, the people of Ō no were
aware that these warriors were enemies of the shogunate – masterless
samurai from Mito, a prominent domain in eastern Japan. The Tengu
Insurrection of 1864, of which this band was a part, constituted the first
military clash between shogunal armies and self-proclaimed, pro-imperial
forces. Although the shogunate was able to suppress the insurrection, the
conflict left a deep impression on bakumatsu popular consciousness. The
Tengu warriors had not only challenged the shogunate’s long-held hege-
mony but also brought the experience of war back into the lives of the
Japanese people. This was significant because during the previous 250
years, the Japanese state had experienced only peasant uprisings and
urban unrest – large and violent in some cases, but not disruptive enough
to destroy the notion that a “Great Peace” under Tokugawa rule still
prevailed. Thus for most Japanese living in the nineteenth century, con-
frontations between warrior armies, commonplace during the sixteenth
century, had become the stuff of romantic legend.
This chapter illustrates the return of warfare to Japanese society by
zooming in on one locality – Ō no – and examining the encounter of local
people with the Mito rebels through source materials written by a variety
of contemporary observers. Although this particular encounter ended
with little bloodshed, it demonstrates the disruptive nature of the military
conflicts surrounding the Meiji Restoration. Such conflicts resulted not
only in the destruction of life and property, but also raised questions
about the social role of the samurai class, the idea of the domain as
a defensive community, the effectiveness of military mobilization, and
113
114 Maren A. Ehlers
the political legitimacy of the Tokugawa regime. The microscopic per-

spective highlights the open-endedness of this moment of rude awaken-
ing, when warfare – both real and anticipated – gradually crept back into
people’s lives and elicited a variety of reactions. In retrospect, these
reactions prepared the ground for later reforms such as military conscrip-
tion and the abolition of samurai status, but these outcomes were still far
from evident in 1864.1
This chapter describes how the political shocks of the bakumatsu era
played out in the context of local society. Although not all of these shocks
were external in nature, Japan’s greater engagement with Western nations
in the 1850s was the trigger that set into motion the chain of events leading
to the antiforeign Tengu Insurrection of 1864. Even in places like Ō no,
which were located far from the treaty ports and never received visitors
from abroad, residents were aware of the foreign presence and of the
antiforeign movement advocating their expulsion. In 1860, for example,
Ō no’s townspeople almost rioted when the shogunate debased Japan’s gold
currency to balance the effects of the unequal trade treaty with the United
States, which caused inflation throughout the Japanese state.2 Already in
the 1840s and 1850s, Ō no’s seventh lord, Toshitada (r. 1829–1862), had
begun to reform the domain’s military to incorporate Western-style mus-
ketry and gradually expanded its investment in Western military science
and other fields of Western learning. Ō no’s case thus confirms Brian Platt’s
observation in this volume that fear of foreign invasion and domestic unrest
mattered more than the actual experience of warfare in spurring adminis-
trators to experiment with new forms of military mobilization. Among
domain subjects, educated elites proved relatively well informed of current
events, thanks to their cultural and business networks that allowed them to
obtain information from other parts of the realm.3 Yet, as this chapter will
show, even well-connected elites did not immediately grasp the significance
of the political events that unfolded in Edo, Kyoto, and beyond, and their
understanding continued to depend on their personal experiences and
interests, which were, in turn, shaped by local circumstances and the
1
One immediate result of the Tengu Insurrection was the shogunate’s decision to improve
the training of its infantry by hiring foreign advisers and learning from Western models
other than the Dutch. D. Colin Jaundrill, Samurai to Soldier – Remaking Military Service in
Nineteenth-Century Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016), pp. 55–58.
2
Maren Ehlers, Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in Early Modern Japan
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018), pp. 261–272.
3
Miyachi Masato, “Fū setsudome kara mita bakumatsu shakai no tokushitsu – ‘kō ron’ sekai
no tanshoteki seiritsu” [The Character of Bakumatsu Society as Seen in Records of
Hearsay: The Inception of a World of “Public Opinion”], Shisō 831 (1993): 4–26. On
the role of broadsheets in influencing and expressing popular opinion on foreigners in Edo,
see William Steele, Alternative Narratives in Japanese History (New York: Routledge
Curzon, 2003), pp. 4–18.
The Arrival of Civil War in Echizen 115
contours of collective memory. When loyalist invaders appeared at their

doorstep, the people of Ō no were taken by surprise. Overwhelmed by fear
of impending warfare, they turned to sometimes centuries-old precedents
and experiences to make sense of their situation.
Domain officials, administrators of commoner status, as well as village
and town elites from the Ō no area kept a variety of records that relate
details about the insurgency. Among these, the house journals of three
wealthy commoners offer especially detailed descriptions of popular reac-
tions to the events. Nojiri Gen’emon, a large landowner in Yokomakura,
a village on the plain somewhat removed from the castle town, kept
journals that reveal his keen interest in contemporary political affairs
and his often critical stance toward the domain leadership.4 Miyazawa
Yoshizaemon, a merchant and domain financier in the castle town with
close business ties to mountain villages, also kept a journal,5 as did Suzuki
Zenzaemon, one of several wealthy farmers in Nakano, a village directly
adjacent to the castle town. In 1864, Zenzaemon was serving in the town
as one of two village group headmen and might have been responsible for
keeping the headmen’s official journal in addition to his own house
journal.6 Besides the journals of these individuals, this chapter relies on
domain and other miscellaneous records from the area to explore the
widest possible range of experiences. It also draws on the insights of local
scholars such as Sakata Tamako and Yoshida Mori.
The Tengu Insurrection and Ō no Domain

Although the Tengu Insurrection did not involve any of the domains that
later toppled the Tokugawa regime, it constituted the shogunate’s first
open confrontation with opponents on the battlefield. It was preceded by
many violent antiforeign incidents in the wake of the shogunate’s signing
of treaties with Western nations in 1858, but none of these had resulted in
the mobilization of armies. In the spring of 1864, a pro-imperial, radically
antiforeign faction of Mito domain vassals took up arms in response to an
imperial edict of 1863 that called for the expulsion of foreigners from the
4
“Shoyō dome” [Record of Miscellaneous Business], 1864 and “Shoyō dome,” 1865, Nojiri
Gen’emon-ke monjo, privately owned. Photographs are accessible at the Cultural Properties
Division of Ō no City.
5
“Goyō ki” [Record of Official Business], 1840–1865, Miyazawa Yoshizaemon-ke monjo,
privately owned. Photographs are accessible at the Cultural Properties Division of Ō no
City.
6
“Shichiban kiroku” [Record Number Seven], 1863–1869, Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo,
privately owned; “Goyō dome” [Record of Official Business], 1864, Fukui Daigaku
Toshokan monjo, Fukui University Library. Photographs of both records are accessible at
the Cultural Properties Division of Ō no City.
116 Maren A. Ehlers
country. This loyalist faction had emerged from an earlier camp of refor-
mist vassals during the reign of lord Tokugawa Nariaki (r. 1829–1844),
which drew on Mito’s long tradition of pro-imperial scholarship. The
imperial loyalists in Mito gained the derisive nickname “Tengu [moun-
tain demons] Party,” after the long-nosed mountain demons of Japanese
folk belief. Lord Nariaki once claimed that the name referred to the
superhuman loyalty and determination he personally associated with
this faction, but in the Edo dialect, Tengu was also an epithet for arrogant,
“long-nosed” boasters, and it is likely that the name was, in fact, invented
by the group’s opponents.7 The name “Tengu Party” is absent from most
contemporary records from the Ō no area, except for a report from the
Kanto region that had been copied by a local village group headman.8 If
they had been more familiar with the name, the people of Ō no might have
made a more literal association that reflected their own encounter with
the rebels: frightening, seemingly superhuman creatures who descended
from impenetrable mountains.
Because the leadership of Mito domain had disintegrated into several
opposing factions, the shogunate had to mobilize its immediate vassals
and men from nearby domains to quash the insurrection. In late
November 1864, following more than two months of intense fighting in
Nakaminato, about 1,000 rebels regrouped under the leadership of for-
mer domain elder Takeda Kō unsai and embarked on a journey to Kyoto
along the Nakasendō inland highway. They planned to offer appeals to
the emperor through the offices of Tokugawa Yoshinobu, the son of
Mito’s former lord, Nariaki. At the time, Yoshinobu served as defender
of the imperial palace in Kyoto and as guardian of the young shogun,
Iemochi. The shogunate ordered all domains between Mito and Chō shū
to stop the insurgents,9 but the rebels were able to make it as far as Mino
Province (today part of Gifu Prefecture) before being forced to take
a detour to the north. The desperate warriors decided to cross the moun-
tains into Echizen Province and march to the Sea of Japan, despite
warnings that they might freeze to death in the snowy, mountainous
terrain.
Wherever they went, the Mito radicals challenged administrators to for-
mulate an appropriate response. They forced all domains along the
7
Yoshida Toshizumi, Mitogaku to Meiji ishin [Mito Learning and the Meiji Restoration]
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2003), p. 179.
8
“Yashū furō tengu no to ranbō ikken” [Violent Incident Caused by the Tengu Rebels from
Yashū ],” copied while on duty in Shigaraki, 1864, ninth month, Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke
monjo, in Okuetsu shiryō 2 (1971), 6–9.
9
Shidankai, ed., Basan shimatsu [Account of the Events of Mt. Tsukuba] (Tokyo: Itō
Iwajirō , 1899), p. 103.
Nakasendō to mobilize their retainers and take steps to protect their respec-
tive territories. This often proved a difficult balancing act, complicated by
the fact that domain officials had scant experience handling a military
emergency. Second, the Mito rebels insisted on the righteousness of their
cause and rejected the label of “bandits” (zokuto) attached to them by the
shogunate, thus pushing people along their path to make up their minds
regarding the band’s antiforeign, pro-imperial agenda. Previous scholarship
has emphasized the galvanizing effect of the rebels’ passage on certain
commoner elites, particularly in Shinano Province (present-day Nagano
Prefecture). Set in Shinano, Shimazaki Tō son’s 1930s’ novel, Before the
Dawn, portrays poststation elites as sympathizers of the rebel army.10 As
Anne Walthall and Miyachi Masato have shown, wealthy commoners in
Shinano’s Ina Valley, influenced by the scholar of National Learning, Hirata
Atsutane, actively supported the Mito force and found their beliefs rein-
forced by the encounter.11 In Mito itself, considerable numbers of wealthy
peasants and Shinto priests joined the ranks of the insurgents,12 and many
common people along the army’s route worshiped at the graves of fallen
rebels and prayed on behalf of their executed leaders.13
Such support was, however, only one of several possible reactions. In
Mito and surrounding areas, the rebels became notorious for harassing
peasants and townspeople, pressuring them into porter service, extorting
funds and provisions, and burning down the houses of reluctant “donors.”
Combatants on both sides treated commoners and their property with
callous disregard.14 The war in Mito triggered a wave of popular protests
against wealthy merchants and peasants that touted the millenarian goal of
“world renewal” (yonaoshi) and, in some cases, specifically targeted village
elites known to be sympathetic to the “mountain demons.”15 Such reactions
10
Shimazaki Tō son, Before the Dawn, trans. William E. Naff (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 1987), pp. 253–297.
11
Anne Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji
Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Miyachi Masato, Bakumatsu
ishin henkakushi [The History of the Bakumatsu and Meiji Restoration Transformations],
Vol. 2 (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012), pp. 86–106.
12
J. Victor Koschmann, The Mito Ideology: Discourse, Reform, and Insurrection in Late
Tokugawa Japan, 1790–1864 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1987), pp.
130–151.
13
Yasumaru Yoshio, “‘Yonaoshi jō kyō ’ ka no minshū ishiki” [People’s Consciousness in
a State of World Renewal], in Minshū no rekishi 5: Yonaoshi [People’s History 5: World
Renewal], ed. Sasaki Junnosuke (Tokyo: Sanseidō , 1974), pp. 219–220.
14
Koschmann, The Mito Ideology, pp. 157–162; Saitō Yoshiyuki, “Tengutō sō ran-ka no
minshū tō sō to yonaoshi” [People’s Struggles and World Renewal at the Time of the
Tengu Party War], Shikan 121 (1989): 31–52.
15
Takahashi Hirobumi, Bakumatsu Mito-han to minshū undo – sonnō jō i undō to yonaoshi [Mito
Domain and Popular Movements in the Bakumatsu Era: The Anti-Foreign Movement and
World Renewal] (Tokyo: Seishi Shuppan, 2005); Saitō , “Tengutō sō ran-ka”;
118 Maren A. Ehlers
suggest that despite the cases of political activism, many people outside the
warrior class viewed the conflicts around the Meiji Restoration as abhorrent
and destructive.16 David Howell explains that many villagers in the Kanto
region dreaded the violence of any party, whether loyalists, shogunal forces,
foreigners, bandits, or rioting peasants, and obtained guns and engaged in
military training for self-defense, sometimes with the encouragement of the
shogunate.17 Yet, as we shall see, peasants – and warriors for that matter –
could not always be counted on to effectively engage in mortal combat, even
if they possessed arms and training in their use.
At 40,000 koku, the Ō no domain was much smaller than Mito (250,000
koku). Moreover, the lord’s lineage – the Echizen Doi, a shogunal vassal
family – was much less illustrious than that of the Mito rulers, who, as
a collateral house of the Tokugawa, supplied shogunal successors. The
Ō no domain sported only one town – a castle town also known as Ō no –
and did not even cover the entirety of the Ō no Plain, which was composed
of a patchwork of scattered fiefs. Whereas the villages on the western side of
the plain belonged to Ō no domain, various domains and the shogunate
administered those in the east and south. Among area domains, Ō no took
the lead against the Mito army, at least initially, because it held a castle
directly on the plain and governed the villages through which the insurgents
first entered the province. Other domains in the region also mobilized
troops against the intruders, and once the rebels departed, the more power-
ful domains of Kaga and Fukui took over the pursuit, receiving reinforce-
ments from Ō no and other area domains.
Ō no conducted reforms during the bakumatsu period that differed in
important ways from those implemented in Mito. Whereas Nariaki
emphasized a pro-imperial doctrine, Ō no’s lord, Toshitada, and his
reformers actively and often enthusiastically promoted Western learning
and culture. One must be careful not to overstate these differences for, in
spite of his advocacy of foreign trade, Toshitada did not support foreign
contact at all cost. For his part, Nariaki promoted Western, utilitarian
learning in the military and medical fields.18 Yet the intellectual climate in
Suda Tsutomu, Bakumatsu no yonaoshi – bannin no sensō jō tai [World Renewal in the
Bakumatsu Era: The Masses in a State of War] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2010),
pp. 113–123.
16
For examples from the Boshin War, see Hō ya Tō ru, Boshin sensō [The Boshin War]
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007), pp. 74–75, 196–201.
17
David Howell, “Busō suru nō min no naiyū to gaikan” [“Troubles from Within and
Without” of Self-Arming Peasants], in Kō za Meiji ishin 1: sekaishi no naka no Meiji ishin
[Studies on the Meiji Restoration 1: The Meiji Restoration in World History], ed. Meiji
Ishinshi Gakkai (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010), pp. 84–107.
18
Fukui-ken, ed., Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen [The History of Fukui Prefecture: A Narrative
Overview], Vol. 4, Kinsei 2 [Early Modern Period 2] (Fukui, 1982); Koschmann, The
Mito Ideology, pp. 81–129.
these two domains seems to have differed dramatically. Ō no never experi-

enced the vicious factional infighting that tore Mito’s leadership apart
after Nariaki’s death in 1860. Some confrontations with conservatives
notwithstanding, Toshitada’s reform faction dominated domain politics
from 1842 until the Meiji Restoration, and Toshitada remained influen-
tial, even after retiring in favor of his teenage son in 1862. As a cousin of Ii
Naosuke, an antiloyalist bakufu official, Toshitada was less inclined than
Mito’s lord to challenge the shogunate, and his domain never became
a hotbed of loyalist activity. Nevertheless, his successor eventually threw
in his lot with the imperial side during the Boshin War by dispatching
troops to the final siege in Hakodate.
Toshitada took a deep interest in the modernization of his military, so
much so that his domain came to be considered one of the most progres-
sive in the Hokuriku region.19 Ō no’s military reforms began in the 1840s,
when the domain sent a vassal for training in the Takashima school of
musketry.20 In 1853, the year of Commodore Perry’s first intrusion, Ō no
succeeded in casting its first cannon, and Toshitada employed a gunsmith
and a metal caster to produce firearms and gunpowder. The
following year, he held a grand military exercise that mobilized 700
people, including 200 porters (ninsoku) of commoner status – the
domain’s largest military mobilization since 1695.21 With six infantry
units and eight cannons, Ō no’s small force put a heavy emphasis on
Western weaponry and strategy.22 In 1855, Toshitada received permis-
sion to arm his entire retinue in Western fashion when traveling to and
from Edo to fulfill his duties of alternate attendance. He subsequently
established an Academy of Western Learning where vassals received
linguistic training in Dutch and English and studied and translated
Western texts on military subjects such as artillery, gunnery, and fortress-
building. Because Ō no’s lands included an exclave of two coastal villages,
the domain participated in the shogunate’s coastal defense plans, and in
1859 obtained Tokugawa permission to establish a colony on Sakhalin,
a potential flashpoint in the defense of the Japanese realm. As these
initiatives show, Ō no’s leaders were more than eager to shake off the
slumber of 250 years of Pax Tokugawa, but in 1864, the reality of civil
war caught them completely unprepared.
19
Fukui-ken, ed., Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 4.
20
On the Takashima school as a reaction to the growing Western threat and as a stepping-
stone for subsequent military reforms, see Jaundrill, Samurai to Soldier, pp. 20–46.
21
Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 4, pp. 827–833. In 1695, Ō no’s lord was ordered to serve as
a temporary caretaker of Maruoka Castle and mobilized more than 1,600 men for that
purpose. See Fukui-ken, ed., Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 3, Kinsei 1, pp. 186–187.
22
Especially when compared to other domains in the region, see Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen,
Vol. 4, p. 832.
120 Maren A. Ehlers
A Record of the Encounter

In the final month of 1864, Ō no domain officials still confidently believed
that the Mito army would bypass their territory given that Echizen
Province was not located on the standard route to Kyoto. When the
insurgents reached Gifu in Mino Province, however, they found their
advance blocked by shogunal troops as well as units of the Hikone and
Ō gaki domains. In late December 1864, Takeda Kō unsai and his men
abruptly changed course and marched north with the intention of cross-
ing Haeboshi Pass and traveling on to Kyoto (or perhaps even Chō shū )
via Tsuruga in Echizen Province.23 On the same day, Ō no’s officials
received an express communication from the lord of Ō gaki that described
the rebels as “brutal marauders driven to utter desperation” and warned
that they might try to cross the mountains.24 Domain leaders must have
been shocked to receive this missive because the young lord, Toshitsune,
and his retired father were in Edo along with many of their 540 vassals.25
Ō no’s forces were thus vastly outnumbered by the rebels. According to
scouts, the Mito army numbered over 2,000 men, although the actual
number was probably closer to 800. Yet even the prospect of confronting
this smaller number of battle-hardened warriors would have been more
than daunting for such a small domain. The rebels were equipped with
about eighty-nine horses, dozens of boxes of armor and gunpowder, many
guns, and nine cannons.26
The rebels fortuitously found Haeboshi Pass almost snow-free. If they
had crossed only a few days later, they might have been stuck in masses of
fresh snow in an area prone to deadly avalanches. Nonetheless, the force
apparently lost five men and one horse during this perilous passage.27 On
December 31, 1864, Ō no’s soldiers intercepted three rebel scouts, one of
whom, to their surprise, was a former Ō no vassal, earlier expelled from
the domain due to a family conflict.28
23
Ō no officials interrogated two rebel scouts who reported that the rebels planned to travel
to Chō shū by ship. Sakata Tamako, “Tengutō jiken, muttsu no hanashi” [Six Stories
Regarding the Tengu Party Incident], Okuetsu shiryō 10 (1981): 87.
24
Ibid, pp. 72–73.
25
In 1871. See Funazawa Shigeki, “Ō no-han kashindan no shokusei to kyū roku” [System
of Official Appointments and Stipends of the Ō no Domain’s Vassal Band], Fukui kenshi
kenkyū 9 (1991): 53–74.
26
Yoshida Mori, Nishinotani sonshi, jō [Nishinotani Village History, Vol. 1] (Ō no-gun
Nishinotani-mura, 1970), p. 391.
27
Ibid, p. 394.
28
Sakata, “Tengutō jiken,” pp. 80–92. On this man (Matsuzaki Teizō ), see Nagami Shigeo,
“Mito Tengutō to Ō no-han e kijun shita Miyao Tamenosuke to Shibata Teizō ” [Mito’s
Tengu Party and Miyao Tamenosuke and Shibata Teizō , Who Surrendered to the Ō no
Domain], Okuetsu shiryō 24 (1995): 45–79.
The following day, more rebels trickled into Ō no’s “Western Valley,”
lodging in Akiu, a village of the domain. A few villagers had opted to
remain and hosted the rebels in their homes. According to village lore, the
rebels reimbursed the villagers for their hospitality, leaving behind a piece
of armor, which the village headman’s family still owns today.29 These
accounts appear credible given that Takeda Kō unsai had issued a code of
conduct prohibiting his men from looting and committing violent acts
against uninvolved commoners, probably to prevent a recurrence of ear-
lier brutalities and to secure much-needed support along the way.30
Although the rebels had little incentive to provoke unnecessary clashes,
there is evidence that in Shinano Province, they coerced many men into
porter service and extorted money from wealthy commoners, claiming
they would use the funds to expel foreigners from the Japanese realm.
Even commoner converts to the loyalist cause probably did not make
entirely voluntary contributions.31
The shogunate’s instructions were unambiguous. In a letter circulated in
Echizen Province, Tokugawa leaders ordered lords to stop and apprehend
the rebels as quickly as possible.32 This command put Ō no’s ruler in
a quandary because he was expected to fulfill his duties as a Tokugawa
vassal, but also knew that domains along the Nakasendō had already
engaged the rebels and met defeat.33 The administrators of several smaller
territories had either retreated or negotiated with the rebel leaders. In Iida,
a small domain in Shinano, the domain leadership used two local followers
of Hirata Atsutane as mediators, convincing the rebels to bypass the castle
town in exchange for a payment requisitioned from the townspeople.34
Local guides led them to a lesser-known path, and the domain fired some
perfunctory cannon shots in their direction. Ironically, Iida’s lord was then
serving as governor of the shogunate’s Military Academy in Edo, and when
the shogunal commander, Tanuma Okitaka, learned of this charade, he
29
Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō , p. 399; Fukui-ken, ed., Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 4,
p. 878.
30
Nagano-ken, ed., Nagano kenshi, tsū shi-hen [The History of Nagano Prefecture:
A Narrative Overview], Vol. 6, Kinsei 3 [Early Modern Period 3] (Nagano: Nagano
Kenshi Kankō kai, 1989), p. 825.
31
Ibid, pp. 833–837. 32 Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō , p. 398.
33
When Takasaki domain men attacked the rebels at Shimonita, thirty-six vassals were
killed, ten captured, and many weapons taken. Men from Matsumoto and Takashima
domains confronted the rebel army with a much greater force at Wada Pass, but were
tactically outwitted and lost a total of eleven vassals (with eight more captured) while the
rebels lost only six of their men. Nagano-ken, ed., Nagano kenshi, tsū shi-hen 6, pp.
826–828.
34
These two men were cousins of famous loyalist woman, Matsuo Taseko. Nagano-ken,
ed., Nagano kenshi, tsū shi-hen 6, pp. 830–833; Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless
Woman, pp. 234–237.
122 Maren A. Ehlers
became very upset and later had Iida’s lord punished by dismissing him
from his Edo post and reducing the value of his fief. Ō no leaders thus
needed to tread carefully in their response. Although loath to risk the
destruction of their town and military, they had to present the lord as
a dutiful Tokugawa vassal.
In the morning of January 1, 1865, after the arrest of the scouts, Ō no
officials sent three battalions into Nishinotani. Finding the rebels already
in Akiu village, the commanders implemented a scorched-earth tactic
that incurred a terrible price on the villagers. They ordered the burning
of seven outlying villages of Nishinotani, evacuating the inhabitants on
short notice. To make things as inhospitable as possible for the rebels,
they even burnt the villagers’ food reserves for the winter. When learning
of these actions, village group headman, Suzuki Zenzaemon, conveyed
his horror.35
Around dusk on the same day, the vanguard of the masterless samurai eventually
reached Kami-Akiu. Due to that, five or six houses in this village were burned, and
because it seemed that the masterless samurai had already begun to arrive, the
whole force withdrew and burnt down Shimo-Akiu in its entirety as well as the two
Sasamata villages and Nakajima. The villagers were taken by surprise. Young and
old as well as children were crying and screaming and fleeing up the mountains; it
was an unbearable sight to behold.
The burning of Kami- and Shimo-Akiu was especially distressing because

the rebels had already passed through these villages when the houses were
put to the torch. The ungrateful task of setting the villages on fire fell upon
a mining official of the domain, who insisted on carrying out his order
against the villagers’ desperate pleas. According to one account, when the
villagers resisted, he committed ritual suicide to atone for his “disobe-
dience.” The author of Nishinotani’s village history speculates that angry
villagers may have killed the official.36
Ō no’s commanders withdrew their force to Sasamata Pass and enlisted
the help of carpenters, firefighters, and lumberjacks from the castle town
to barricade the road with trees and fences.37 They also tore down
bridges, lined up big rocks on top of slopes, set up cannons, and made
cuts into tall trees, readying them to be toppled on the invaders. They
35
“Shichiban kiroku,” Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo.
36
This incident is reported in a source in Miyazawa Yoshizaemon-ke monjo, which is now
lost but excerpted in Ō no Chō shi Hensankai, ed., Ō no chō shi [History of Ō no Town] Vol.
5 (Ō no: Ō no Chō shi Hensankai, 1951–1952), p. 505. See Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō ,
pp. 401–402.
37
“Kyū -Ō no-han ni kan suru shorui, part 7: Bō dō ni kan suru tsuzuri” [Documents
Regarding the Former Ō no Domain, part 7: File on Uprisings] 1865, 1/28, in Ō no
Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Ō no shishi [The History of Ō no City], Vol. 5, Hansei shiryō -
hen 2 [Material on Domain Administration 2] (Ō no: Ō no-shi, 1984), pp. 377–383.
called in more troops from Ō no and requested reinforcements from

neighboring domains.38 The following day, about one hundred soldiers
from Katsuyama domain began to climb up to Sasamata. The Fukui
domain also dispatched another fifty men, whose deployment Ō no lea-
ders had originally deemed unnecessary.39
That evening, the first rebels reached Sasamata while the remainder
camped in two of the destroyed villages.40 Instead of attacking the rebels,
Ō no’s commanders suddenly decided to withdraw their forces to the plain.
In two communications with the shogunate, Ō no’s lord based the justifica-
tion for this decision on the small size of his army and requested permission
to interrupt his tour of duty in Edo to travel home to his domain:
Officials at home notified me through express messenger that [. . .] they had made
preparations to beat them [the rebels] in one stroke and everyone was ready to die
in bloody combat. But they also said that our force was small due to my [the
lord’s] absence and that they were deeply worried about this.41
In an internal report, domain commanders also explained that a bad

snowstorm had raged that evening and “no one could see anything front
or behind.”42 They mentioned the exhaustion of the warriors, who had
gone without sleep for several days with their hands and legs becoming
numb in the icy winds. Although their fighting spirit was beyond
reproach, “it is natural that their bodies would get exhausted.” The
enemies, meanwhile, had been restlessly running up and down steep
mountains and might be capable of just about anything, including
a sneak attack on the castle town. Therefore, the report concluded, it
would be necessary to change strategy and fully focus on the defense of
the castle town. The weather that night was clearly unfavorable for
a military battle, but if anything, the men from Ō no would have been
the ones to benefit due to their intimate knowledge of the climate and
terrain. As Ō no officials explained to their peers in Fukui, although
fiercely determined, they were reluctant to engage this large rebel army
38
39
“Jō ya dassō no rō to Echizenji e ochiiri go-tsuitō ikken” [The Case of the Pursuit of Rebels
Escaping From Hitachi and Shimotsuke to Echizen], in Ō no Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed.,
Ō no shishi, Vol. 5, p. 339; “Mito rō shi on-ryō nai rannyū no setsu tairyaku shimatsusho”
[Account of Grand Strategy at the Time of the Mito Samurai’s Invasion of the Domain]
copied by Morimoto Kintarō , “Iioka Hikobei-ke monjo” [Archives of the Iioka Hikobei
Family], in Okuetsu shiryō 2 (1971): 6–9.
40
“Goyō ki,” Miyazawa Yoshizaemon-ke monjo.
41
“Jō ya dassō no rō to Echizenji e ochiiri go-tsuitō ikken,” p. 315.
42
Ibid, p. 339. The snowstorm is corroborated by other sources such as “Mito rō shi on-
ryō nai rannyū no setsu tairyaku shimatsusho,” p. 11; “Chō nai yō domeki” [Record of
Neighborhood Business], Honmachi kuyū monjo, privately owned. Photographs are
accessible at the Cultural Properties Division of Ō no City.
124 Maren A. Ehlers
with a small force while their lord was away.43 After their retreat from the
mountains, the Ō no units took up positions in the castle town and
anxiously awaited the rebels’ arrival.44
Rebel records show that the mountain passage had, in fact, taken
a heavy toll on the rebels’ bodies as well.45 Now free to enter the more
forgiving landscape of the plain, they arrived in Konomoto, a village on
the southern edge of the plain about six kilometers from the castle town
under the jurisdiction of the Sabae domain. As the local headman was
temporarily absent, peasant elites of other nearby, Sabae-administered
villages handled the situation in his stead. They assigned warriors to each
of the houses in Konomoto as well as neighboring Moriyama and allowed
Takeda Kō unsai to hold court in the main reception room of the head-
man’s large residence.46 After spending the previous night camped out-
side in icy-cold weather, the rebels must have been quite relieved at this
friendly reception.
While the rebels rested in Konomoto, Ō no officials reached a secret
deal with the rebel commander. By that point, Kō unsai had officially
requested free passage by delivering a letter to a domain checkpoint.47
Nunokawa Genbei, a town elder and practitioner of Japanese waka
poetry – a hobby that might have predisposed him to favor the imperial
cause – rode to Konomoto to negotiate with the rebels.48 Genbei obtained
Kō unsai’s promise that the rebels would exit the plain through
a mountain pass in the direction of Ikeda and not enter Ō no’s castle
town. Most likely, this agreement involved the payment of a large mone-
tary sum.49 Because Ō no officials were not in a position to talk to the
rebels directly, they needed a commoner to resolve the situation through
negotiation. Genbei’s descendants still own a calligraphic inscription by
Kō unsai’s hand – izukunzo utagawan ya (“How could I doubt you?”) –
implying that this deal involved risk for the rebels as well.50
In the morning of January 4, 1865, the rebels departed Konomoto
and entered the Ikeda Valley, leaving behind another token of their
presence: two sections of a room-sized map of Japan still preserved in
43
“Mito rō shi on-ryō nai rannyū no setsu tairyaku shimatsusho,” p. 11.
44
See “Shichiban kiroku,” Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo. 45 Basan shimatsu, p. 112.
46
47
Fukui-ken, ed., Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 4, p. 880.
48
“Genji Taiheiki” [Chronicle of the Great Peace of the Genji Era], 1864, Nunokawa-ke
monjo, privately owned. Photographs are accessible at the Cultural Properties Division of
Ō no City.
49
Perhaps as much as 26,000 ryō . Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō , pp. 410–411; Nagami,
“Mito Tengutō to Ō no-han e kijun shita Miyao Tamenosuke to Shibata Teizō ,” pp.
63–64.
50
Ō no Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Ō no shishi, Vol. 7, pp. 155, 174–175.
Konomoto.51 They eventually reached Imajō , a poststation on the

Hokuriku Highway, and after resting a few days, marched to the
poststation of Shinbo. In the meantime, large troop contingents
from Hikone, Kaga, Fukui, and other domains had begun to arrive
and prepare a counteroffensive. After making a final, unsuccessful
appeal to Tokugawa Yoshinobu, Kō unsai surrendered to the com-
mander of Kaga domain troops on January 14, 1865. The Ō no
domain participated in the pursuit’s final phase. It dispatched
troops to prevent the reentry of the rebels into the domain and
joined the siege at Shinbo under the command of the lord of
Fukui, although none of these engagements involved any actual
fighting.52 Nevertheless, it is possible that Ō no’s relatively robust
participation in the Shinbo campaign helped Toshitsune evade the
fate of his colleague in Iida.
Days of Fear
When the Mito rebels had arrived in their domain, the vassals and
commoners of Ō no grew petrified because they lacked a clear sense
of the band’s intentions. Literate and well-connected commoner
elites had reason to fear the rebels because they had read reports
about the insurgents’ past atrocities in Mito. In October 1864, for
example, Suzuki Zenzaemon’s son copied a detailed report of the
band’s previous military actions in eastern Japan that stressed the
suffering of commoners and the violent behavior of the rebels.53
The year before he had experienced extortion by a masterless
samurai while traveling as part of a domain delegation near
Kyoto.54 Nojiri Gen’emon gave a brief history of the rebellion in
his journal in which he mentioned the hardships the rebels had
inflicted on the common people:
One hears that this summer, a great force of masterless samurai from Mito
barricaded themselves on Mt. Tsukuba in Hitachi Province and frequently ven-
tured out into the nearby towns and villages and committed violence. The
peasants around there were entirely unable to practice agriculture, and the town
households could not engage in trade at all. It came to Edo’s attention that the
51
Fukui kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 4, p. 880; Ō no Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Ō no shishi, Vol. 7,
pp. 191–192, 206.
52
For example the village group headmen’s office journal, “Goyō dome,” 1864, Fukui
Daigaku Toshokan monjo.
53
“Yashū furō tengu no to ranbō ikken,” ninth month, 1864, Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo,
in Okuetsu Shiryō 2 (1971): 6–9.
54
126 Maren A. Ehlers
houses in a town called Tochigi near Mt. Tsukuba went up in flames with their
household goods and tools still piled up.55
Needless to say, Zenzaemon and Gen’emon were both wealthy peasants
with money to spare and would have made perfect targets for extortion.
The news of the rebels’ approach threw the entire castle town into
a panic. The townspeople could see the fires burning in Nishinotani,
and according to Miyazawa Yoshizaemon, “the townspeople became
greatly agitated, not knowing whether this fire had been started by the
masterless samurai or by our own side. But when I asked a porter who had
returned from Sasamata, I learned without a doubt that it had been our
own side that started the fire.”56 On the second or third day following the
rebel entry, most townspeople and vassals began to send their families
into the nearby countryside and evacuated cabinets and chests filled with
their most valuable possessions.57 Yoshizaemon, for example, sent his
two daughters, his younger brother, and a maid to nearby Kanazuka
village and stayed behind in the town with only a few servants.58 The
staff of the village group headmen’s office transported all official docu-
ments to three different villages on the plain. A village headman noted in
his journal:
Around the fourth hour in the daytime, there were no vassals in the town except
for the fighters, and all sounds died down for a while; it was an eerie situation.59
According to Suzuki Zenzaemon, “only the household heads were pre-

sent, one per house, and strangely, there was not a single dog out; it was
completely quiet.”60 When the news of the rebels’ departure reached the
town, “everyone breathed a little sigh of relief.”61
Suzuki Zenzaemon was especially outspoken about his fears because
his son, Kyō suke, had entered the service of the lord as a retainer.
The year before the Mito incident, Zenzaemon proudly noted that
Kyō suke had been rewarded with the lifetime rank of foot soldier
(kachi) for his progress in gunnery training.62 In the 1860s, Ō no had
begun to recruit commoners for its new Western-style infantry units, in
exchange granting them low-ranking warrior status. In this step, Ō no
55
“Shoyō dome,” eleventh month, 1864, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo.
56
57
58
59
Village group headmen’s office journal “Goyō dome,” 1864, Fukui Daigaku Toshokan
monjo.
60
61
monjo.
62
officials followed the example of the shogunate and other domains, as

outlined by Platt in his chapter. Nonetheless, Zenzaemon lost enthusiasm
about his son’s new status when Kyō suke was mobilized to employ his
skills in actual combat. He wrote:
They were sending the vassals to the military parade ground, and I heard that
Kyō suke was part of the first battalion that was about to go into the field, and that
they were sending every single one of them. That is, I heard from a vassal that they
were immediately going to leave for Minami Yamanaka [= Nishinotani], and
I was terribly shocked. When I went out to Hirokoji, the vassals stood there
assembled in field uniforms and with guns and spears. I was frightened out of
my wits.63
Following his return from the mountains, Kyō suke received another
assignment related to the defense of the castle town. He arranged
a secret meeting with his father to exchange what could have been
a final farewell. Kyō suke explained to his father that his unit had received
orders to take a defensive posture and avoid shooting at the rebels unpro-
voked. Zenzaemon anxiously advised his son to “shoot quickly, and if
things ended up getting tight, aim at them without hesitation.” The
prospect of his son and heir dying in the field so depressed Zenzaemon
that he even lost interest in evacuating his property:
Regarding my own house, I told my family that if things went so far that the castle
fell and the town burnt down, Kyō suke would inevitably be killed. In that case,
our various furnishings and household effects would no longer be of use to us
anyway, so they should not bother putting anything away. But while I was away at
the office, they took the cabinets and chests and so on out of the storehouse and
placed them in the rice fields north of the house. With this, they intend to take
them to Sō emon’s in Ya village or to the mountains if the town does eventually
catch fire.64
Clearly, Zenzaemon had not expected a military emergency to arise at his
doorstep. If anything, he had probably anticipated a foreign invasion, but
instead of contributing to the Japanese realm’s defense, the Ō no domain
now confronted an internal enemy almost alone, with minimal reinforce-
ments from other domains.
The Involvement of Lower-Class Commoners

The sentiments of lower-class subjects are more difficult to gauge because
commoner elites penned most records of the incident. The domain
drafted a large number of people into service over the course of the
63 64
Ibid. Ibid.
128 Maren A. Ehlers
incident. In a span of several weeks in late December 1864 and early

January 1865, the domain mobilized nearly 14,000 porters from among
the villagers and townspeople, primarily to assist and supply deployed
units. The domain assigned another roughly 6,000 to transport aid to the
victims of the fires in Nishinotani and to provide highway porter services
to the troops of other domains.65 These figures counted labor units rather
than individuals. Because the domain constantly replaced the helpers,
many individuals likely served multiple times. Suzuki Zenzaemon, in his
position as village group headman, recorded the traffic for later reimbur-
sement, but found it difficult to keep track:
On the fourth, fifth, and sixth day, the situation was similar to a great fire; of
course we could not keep up with the register, nor could we write down what we
gave [to the helpers]. It is the same in the villages, and we are really in trouble.66
According to the official journal of the village group headmen,
The helpers for transportation to Imajō and Ō hida were being replaced again and
again and again. Rokuzaemon was tirelessly handing out rations of one shō of rice
per day per helper, day and night – without even a moment to wipe the dust from
his eyes. One hears that the turnover of helpers was extremely complicated and
chaotic.67
Consistent with the Edo period feudal structure, peasants and towns-
people bore the cost of these helpers, so-called “corvée laborers” (fu-
ninsoku). The village group headmen applied the same formula normally
used for mobilizations at times of fire and divided one half of the expenses
for a total of over 20,000 porters by household and the other half by
productive capacity of village land, except for the villages that had been
burnt. Ō no’s lord offered to step in and pay the bulk of the helpers’
expenses. Zenzaemon pointed out that the lords of nearby domains had
not been so generous.68
Nojiri Gen’emon was less satisfied with the domain’s response.69 As he
explained, the incident had caused area domains to postpone the
New Year’s celebrations by an entire month. Although other domains
extended their deadlines for tax payments to bring them in line with the
festivities, Ō no strictly enforced the usual deadline, making exceptions
only for private rent collection on land and town houses. According to
65
“Shichiban kiroku,” Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo. 66 Ibid.
67
monjo.
68
“Shichiban kiroku,” Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo. Zenzaemon criticized the selfishness of
the town officials, who bargained hard for the highest possible reduction on behalf of tax-
paying house owners in the castle town.
69
“Shoyō dome,” 1865, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo.
Gen’emon, this decision caused economic hardships for peasants, espe-

cially, one should add, wealthy peasants such as himself who had to pay
land tax but could no longer collect rent from their tenants on time. He
also resented the deviation from popular custom: “[In each of these
months] there were people who pounded rice cakes [to celebrate the
New Year] and those who did not.” Such chaos reoccurred in the early
1870s when the new Meiji government adopted the Gregorian calendar.
The true victims of the domain’s response were, of course, the residents
of Nishinotani. The domain decision to burn its subjects’ homes caused
deep and lasting resentment in the affected communities. In 1911, the
head of the Nishinotani elementary school submitted a report on the
invasion to the Ō no county office to contribute material for a new county
gazetteer. At that time, some of the witnesses of the event were still alive,
and recalled that the Ō no domain did not fulfill its promise of compensat-
ing them for the lost buildings and food reserves and supplied them with
only a small amount of food. The villagers ended up without houses,
charcoal, firewood, and heavy clothing in the depth of winter. As late as
the postwar era, the compiler of a local history noted that Nishinotani
villagers had related a vow they had exchanged never to worship at the
shrine for Lord Toshitada, erected in 1882 by former vassals.70 As Robert
Hellyer shows in his chapter, after the Meiji Restoration former
Tokugawa vassals often upheld the memory of their lords as an anchor
for their identity and social networks. Such nostalgia, was lost on com-
moners victimized by warfare during the turbulent 1860s.
The villagers were understandably shocked by the domain’s ruthless
and ultimately unnecessary measure, but other accounts suggest that the
domain’s relief efforts may have been a bit more substantial than villagers
remembered. In early February 1865, domain officials announced a plan
to establish a loan society to help villagers rebuild their homes:
Because the bandits came and entered [the domain] from there, and also because
of the order we had previously received from the shogunate, the seven villages of
Nishinotani were set on fire by us in this manner – a merciless but inevitable act.
One can say that these seven villages have taken on a great calamity on behalf of
the entire domain.71
According to the same statement, the lord chose the format of a loan
society because duties demanded by the shogunate prevented him from
extending much direct assistance. He also sought not to impose further
70
Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō , p. 387.
71
Machidoshiyori goyō dome [Administrative Journals of the Town Elders] 1/10, 1865, no.
1297 in Ō no Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Ō no shishi, Vol. 9, Yō dome-hen [Administrative
Journals Volume] (Ō no: Ō no-shi, 1995), p. 929.
130 Maren A. Ehlers
duties on wealthy commoners. Instead, he called upon all his subjects to

make a one-time contribution appropriate to each household’s economic
standing. He announced that he would add annual interest and use the
fund to disburse grants to future disaster victims. The first beneficiaries
were the villagers of Nishinotani, who were exempted from the initial
payment. Donors received assurances that membership in the fund would
protect them from poverty, loss of business liquidity, and crop failure.72
An insurance-like mechanism such as this one had the advantage of
guarding its members against future disasters, and the domain in the
1860s showed a general preference for self-perpetuating funds.73
Nevertheless, the domain leadership also used the scheme to distract
from its own responsibility for the conflagration and to portray the
domain as a unified social body whose members sacrificed themselves
for each other during times of war. The scheme was named Sekizenkō –
Society to Accumulate Good – and embodied the vision of the domain as
a united, mutually supportive community. To emphasize the spirit of
mutuality, even vassals were required to contribute. In the statement
cited above, the lord attributed some of the responsibility for the fires to
the shogunate and in one rendition of the text, even mentioned its duty to
the imperial court. The statement also implicitly compared the burning
to a natural disaster.
Such disregard for commoners’ property, which built on precedents of
the Warring States period, was not uncommon among military strategists
in the 1860s. In what appears to have been an internal report, a Fukui
domain commander noted matter-of-factly that when the rebels were
withdrawing from the Ō no Plain, his men set up camp in a draw on the
way from Ō no to Fukui and prepared for defense “by cutting down a few
big trees, blocking the road, destroying bridges, and burning down one
village.”74 Apparently, the Fukui forces also informed the headmen of
some of Ō no’s villages that they intended to burn them down, and spared
them only because their headmen lodged a protest with Ō no’s
government.75 Other cases occurred later in the decade, for example
after the Battle of Toba-Fushimi in 1868, when the retreating Tokugawa-
allied forces set many villages ablaze to obstruct the progress of enemy
forces.76
72
“Shichiban yō dome,” Suzuki Zenzaemon-ke monjo.
73
Ehlers, Give and Take, pp. 286–287.
74
“Mito rō shi on-ryō nai rannyū no setsu tairyaku shimatsusho.”
75
76
Hō ya, Boshin sensō , p. 75. See also Nagano-ken, ed., Nagano kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 6,
p. 827.
The Society to Accumulate Good attracted many donations from

vassals, merchants, and peasants as well as various bureaus of the domain
administration. Many wealthy individuals gave substantial sums that
allowed dozens of other people to subscribe to the scheme. In total, the
fund attracted over 12,400 subscriptions at one ryō of gold each, and
dozens of people donated directly to the affected villages.77 It remains
unclear to what extent the Nishinotani villagers benefited from the fund,
but according to surviving records, the scheme operated at least until
1869. The domain seems to have lent out some of the money and made
regular disbursals from the fund, although the specifics are difficult to
gauge.78 Reconstruction progressed quickly, and around the time of the
spring equinox the victims were finally able to return to their homes.79
Observations on War and Valor

The Mito rebels denied any intention of seeking to topple the Tokugawa
regime, but took a stance in the shogunate’s factional struggle and insisted
on the absolute righteousness of their antiforeign, pro-imperial cause.
How did the people of Ō no perceive this agenda? Did they see the
confrontation with the Mito rebels as the start of a civil war or rather as
an invasion of bandits? Surviving materials allow for two larger conclu-
sions. First, whether they supported the rebels’ cause or not, people in the
Ō no area did regard the standoff as a war situation and observed it with
fascination and a good deal of historical awareness. Second, to a certain
degree, the people of Ō no did admire the rebels for their martial skills and
high status, and some, such as Nojiri Gen’emon, extolled the fighting
spirit of the Mito army to denigrate their own domain leaders. On the
other hand, loyalist activism in the Ō no area remained low, and other
local commoners portrayed themselves as bystanders and mediators in
this conflict within the warrior class.
As frightened as Ō no’s commoner elites certainly were, the events also
piqued their curiosity, a situation similar to what Hellyer describes con-
cerning locals viewing the Battle of Yanada during the Boshin War.
Miyazawa Yoshizaemon marveled at the sight of the “beautiful” light
armor donned by troops from Katsuyama domain as they marched
77
“Goyō ki,” Miyazawa Yoshizaemon-ke monjo; Ō no Chō shi Hensankai, ed., Ō no chō shi,
Vol. 5, pp. 511–512; “Shoyō dome,” 1865, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo.
78
“Sekizenkō honcho” [Basic Register of the Sekizenkō ], 1865; “Sekizenkō hibarai” [Daily
Payments of the Sekizenkō ], 1865; “Risoku jō nō chō ” [Register of Interest Collection],
1865; “Sekizenkō genri shirabechō ” [Register of Sekizenkō Principal and Interest], 1865,
in Ō no Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Ō no shishi, Vol. 5: Hansei shiryō -hen 2, pp. 581–594.
79
“Shoyō dome,” 1865, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo; Yoshida, Nishinotani sonshi, jō , p. 423.
132 Maren A. Ehlers
through his neighborhood.80 After the event, Nojiri Gen’emon composed

a lengthy account of the rebellion and inserted copies of several key
documents that must have been circulating among the region’s educated
people at the time.81 He showed himself quite impressed by the military
capacities rolled out during the war in the Kanto. In his description of the
shogunate’s forces, he emphasized that there were fifty thousand troops
overall, who “were each wearing armor and helmet and were rigorous.”
He remarked that “during the big battle of the twenty-second day”
[probably the Battle of Nakaminato in October 1864], “day turned into
night from the smoke of cannons; the battle was so big that one was
reminded of the Battle of Sekigahara in 1600.” Gen’emon thus drew
a direct parallel to the civil wars of the sixteenth century, his closest
referent for what a civil war might look like. He also took a particular
interest in the exact length and width of the lord of Sakura’s new Western-
style cannons. One of these giants, he noted, could fell 100 or 200
masterless samurai with a single blow. It is clear that he regarded the
scope of the confrontation as unprecedented. He did not consider his
local domains as serious players in this war:
Later, the lord of Katsuyama sent over six hundred troops [for the defense of the
Ō no Plain], but these were not samurai but provisional fighters such as sword-
bearing townspeople, and they had also mobilized peasants for porter duty. The
number of actual samurai might have been around fifty. One hears that they even
gathered foot soldiers (ashigaru) and minor officials; they are a laughing stock.82
Gen’emon did not mention that Ō no also mobilized an armed peasant
unit (nō hei) on at least one occasion during the conflict, although the
exact numbers and circumstances are unclear.83 He might not have been
aware of the extent to which all Japanese armies in the 1860s relied on the
mobilization of commoners as soldiers.
Gen’emon’s sympathies clearly lay with the loyalists. Takeda Kō unsai,
he wrote, “is the house elder of Mito’s lord Zō -Dainagon Keizan
[Nariaki] and is a man of benevolence; therefore, he also has [Nariaki’s]
last will. Those of Mito’s vassals who seek to fulfill [Nariaki’s] last will to
expel the foreigners have thus chosen Takeda Iga no kami as their gen-
eral.” He condemned Mito’s pro-foreign-trade faction, whom he saw as
“sucking up to the shogunate.” But Gen’emon also measured the rebels
by the moral standards of a wealthy commoner. He denounced one of the
rebels’ earlier generals, Tamaru Inaemon, a former town governor of
Mito who had frequently extorted money from commoners in the
80
81
“Shoyō dome,” 1864, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo. 82
Ibid.
83
Kanto region, as “a thoroughly problematic character.” He emphasized

that Kō unsai had initially refused to ally with Inaemon because of his
extortionist ways.84
Gen’emon also seems to have been impressed by the rebels’ dignified
and valorous comportment during their passage through the Ō no Plain.
He relayed rumors regarding Kō unsai’s stay in Konomoto village:
I heard that when Takeda Iga no Kami stayed there, he wrapped the central
reception room in a curtain of bright-red chirimen, and not even the head of
the household would go by his side. I also heard that they displayed the
mortuary tablet of Zō -Dainagon Keizan, the lord of Mito, in the alcove. On
the road, they were carrying it on a rod in a box decorated with the crest of
the triple hollyhock. I heard that Takeda was in a palanquin and not exposed
to the eyes of the ordinary people, and each of [the leaders] were passing in
palanquins like generals [. . .] There are rumors that all these weapons and
field garments were better than what any provincial governor (kokushi) or
daimyo could have mustered; they were not even inferior to the retinue of the
lord of Kaga, ruler of one million koku.85
In other words, Kō unsai was rumored to be comporting himself like

a legitimate leader. He acted in the name of a prince of Tokugawa
blood, and his men were valorous like real warriors. Gen’emon claimed
that the rebels “had a good reputation,” performing martial arts and
equestrian stunts during their stay in Konomoto. They also possessed
the determination and endurance that had been so sorely lacking among
Ō no’s own retainers:
[The rebels] arrived with horses by way of Haeboshi Pass, which has been
impassable to oxen and horses since ages past. They also went from Hō kyō ji to
Ō moto and passed through Ikeda and Takuranoyama Pass on horseback. People
are rumoring that this was not a feat appearing possible to humans, and they
regard these men as heroes – the kind of warrior who can take on a thousand
enemies all by himself.86
According to Gen’emon, the rebels had killed or divorced their wives and
children before leaving Mito, thus freeing themselves to die in battle to
fulfill their deceased lord’s final wish. By contrast, none of the fighters
sent out by the various daimyo had severed bonds with their loved ones.87
Apparently, the rebels had left a Chinese-style poem on the paper door of
a peasant’s house in Shinbo that expressed their fierce sense of loyalism.
Gen’emon cited the poem and concluded: “Even when compared to the
84
“Shoyō dome,” 1864, Nojiri Gen’emon-ke monjo. 85 Ibid. 86 Ibid.
87
In reality, some of the rebels were traveling with their families. Nagano-ken, ed., Nagano
kenshi, tsū shi-hen, Vol. 6, pp. 825, 835.
134 Maren A. Ehlers
loyal and righteous samurai of old, they have nothing to be ashamed of.
The people are overflowing with feelings [of admiration].”88
Gen’emon repeatedly claimed to be relaying hearsay from “the
people.” We cannot know to what extent this was true because he
probably selected rumors that resonated with his own point of view.
Neither should one conclude that he was a supporter of feudal rule –
on the contrary, one of his journal entries of 1873 celebrated the
demise of the “useless warrior” class.89 For him, the rebels’ warrior
spirit was worth mentioning primarily because it highlighted the
corruption of the old order and underscored the need for ground-
breaking social and political change.
Yet not all Ō no records related to the Tengu Insurrection were as
biased toward the rebels. A few days after the conclusion of the
incident, Fujita Mosaburō , an educated villager, wrote the account,
“Genji Taiheiki” (Chronicle of Great Peace of the Genji Era; appro-
priating the title of a fifteenth-century warrior epos) to remind his
descendants of Nunokawa Genbei’s heroic intervention with Takeda
Kō unsai.90 He credited Genbei with saving Ō no town and the val-
leys between Ō no and Fukui (including his own) from “violence and
fire” by persuading the rebels to leave the plain. According to his
own postscript, Mosaburō had personally guided the rebels along the
Ikeda Valley and scouted them out on behalf of Ō no domain. To
Mosaburō , the armies on both sides were equally valorous and
splendid. He inserted plenty of poetic references to such classic
texts as the Tale of the Heike and the Man’yō shū and even included
full poems – both the rebels’ and his own. He thus romanticized the
encounter, situated it in Japanese history, and highlighted the impact
of Genbei’s mediation. The whole narrative stressed the value of de-
escalation. Mosaburō admired most the warriors’ ability to avoid
unnecessary fighting that destroyed commoner property. He com-
mended both the rebels and Ō no’s commanders for canceling their
exhausting battle in the snowstorm, and applauded Kō unsai’s deci-
sion to respond to Genbei’s offer and focus on reaching Kyoto
rather than bringing pointless destruction to Ō no town and its
surrounding villages. He also praised the rebels for surrendering
without a fight in Shinbo, thus saving the local poststation from
warfare. Although Mosaburō took pains to explain that all these
choices were compatible with the group’s own priorities, his main
88
89
90
“Genji Taiheiki,” Nunokawa-ke monjo.
interest was in seeing the conflict resolved in a nonviolent manner.

He had, however, surprisingly little to say about the suffering in
Nishinotani.
Conclusion
The passage of the Mito rebels through Ō no ended without
bloodshed, thanks in part to the prudent decision of the domain
leadership not to provoke the rebels from a position of weakness.
Ō no domain subjects were terrified of the prospect of war and
relieved by the event’s anticlimactic outcome. Yet, the passage of
the rebels was also an embarrassment for the domain because after
more than a decade of ambitious military reform, it had failed to
confront an army of battle-hardened warriors. The lords in the area
struggled to coordinate their response, and the number of available
troops was low – a performance that did not bode well for a possible
future confrontation with a more aggressive enemy. What is more,
Ō no domain leaders had not hesitated to sacrifice the well-being of
their subjects while protecting their warrior band.
After more than 200 years of “Great Peace,” the people of Ō no
suddenly felt thrown back into the era of Warring States. Subjects
showed a keen interest in the warriors’ armor and status symbols
and praised what they considered conventional samurai virtues such
as martial arts, fighting spirit, loyalty, and endurance. Some imbued
the Mito rebels with a supernatural aura because the men displayed
the physical and mental strength associated with warriors of old.
Ō no leaders seem to have been more forward-looking in their adop-
tion of Western military practices and recognized the need to con-
struct an imagined community in which all social groups in the
domain sacrificed themselves for one another in war. Nonetheless,
the domain leadership treated its villagers like a sixteenth-century
warlord when it came to preparing its territory for defense.
By 1864, the people of Ō no already knew they were living in
turbulent times. Although far from the treaty ports, they were
aware of the foreign presence and had witnessed their domain’s
bold experiments in military modernization. They were suffering
the same economic instability as the rest of the Japanese realm as
a result of the unequal treaties and eagerly absorbed reports about
political upheavals. But until the arrival of the Mito rebels, the
people of Ō no had not experienced what it meant to actually be at
war, to be drafted into the military, and to risk their lives for leaders
whose decisions they could not control. Even people such as Suzuki
136 Maren A. Ehlers
Zenzaemon, who supported the domain’s military reforms, cringed

at the thought of sending their own flesh and blood into battle. Only
a few years after this incident, in 1868, Zenzaemon’s son, Kyō suke,
had to put his life on the line again during the Boshin War in the
imperial army’s siege of Hakodate. The field journal he kept during
that campaign frankly conveys the horrors of the battlefield,91 testi-
fying once again that it took Japanese soldiers some time to take
self-sacrifice and killing in the name of the nation-state for granted.
91
Sakata Tamako, “Hakodate sensō shiryō ” [Documents from the Hakodate War],
Okuetsu shiryō 9 (1980): 48–105.
6 “Farmer-Soldiers” and Local Leadership
in Late Edo Period Japan
Brian Platt
A number of historians working in the field of global history have argued

that the mid-nineteenth century should be seen as a watershed moment of
military conflict around the world. These scholars have characterized the
middle decades of the nineteenth century as a distinctive era of warfare, in
terms of both the volume of conflict and its significance. In so doing, they
have challenged the tendency among military historians to focus on the
eras of warfare that bookended the nineteenth century – the revolutionary
wars in Europe and the Atlantic on the front end, or the global conflicts
among nation-states that began in the twentieth century. Similar to the
research of Geyer and Bright noted in the Introduction, David Armitage
has also surveyed conflicts throughout the world during the mid-
nineteenth century. He identifies the period between 1850 and 1871 as
a period of “world crisis” and argues that conflicts such as the Crimean
War, the Taiping Rebellion, the Indian Rebellion, and the Franco-
Prussian War constituted a new phase of “large-scale militarized
violence.”1 There are a number of commonalities among these mid-
nineteenth-century conflicts, in particular their shared origins in the
protracted breakdown of large, early modern empires and the concomi-
tant ushering in of an era of nationalized state-making.2 Most parties in
these conflicts also confronted the common challenge of assembling
armies despite lacking both the precedent and the administrative infra-
structure to accomplish large-scale military mobilization. In other words,
the wars that gave rise to the political formation that Charles Maier calls
“Leviathan 2.0” could not draw upon Leviathan 2.0’s machinery or its
ideological foundations to amass and equip armies.
1
David Armitage, “Interchange: Nationalism and Internationalism in the Era of the Civil
War,” Journal of American History 98, no. 2 (September 2011): 461; Geyer and Bright,
“Global Violence and Nationalizing Wars in Eurasia and America,” p. 622.
2
Charles Maier, Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood (Cambridge, MA: Harvard
University Press, 2012), pp. 79–150; C. A. Bayly, The Birth of the Modern World,
1750–1914 (Oxford: Blackwell, 2004), pp. 148–169; and Jürgen Osterhammel, The
Transformation of the World: A Global History of the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press, 2015), pp. 543–558.
137
138 Brian Platt
In this volume, Harald Fuess and Hō ya Tō ru demonstrate how these
global military and political contexts, particularly Western military tech-
nologies and tactics, shaped Japan’s mid-century conflicts – and, by
implication, the Tokugawa-Meiji transition. In a related vein, Noell
Wilson and Mark Metzler examine how global economic contexts set
the stage for the political and military conflicts of the Restoration era.
This chapter takes an alternative approach by focusing instead on the
internal dynamics of those conflicts while placing them in a comparative
framework. When comparing Restoration era conflicts to contempora-
neous wars elsewhere in the world, we can identify at least one obvious
point of difference: in Japan, no large-scale conflicts necessitated the
mobilization of massive armies. In fact, the Restoration conflicts were
relatively small-scale affairs. Moreover, in Japan those conflicts were not,
at least initially, the impetus for new forms of military mobilization: by the
time the conflicts occurred, authorities had been discussing and experi-
menting with new models for military mobilization for several decades.
Beginning in the early nineteenth century, many officials throughout the
Japanese state came to believe that their existing military and security
forces were not sufficient to meet the challenges they faced first, from
foreign powers, and then, increasingly, from domestic disorder. In
response, some proposed reaching beyond the existing pool of soldiers
formed exclusively from the samurai military caste and mobilizing com-
moners for military service, to serve either alongside samurai or in com-
moner-only auxiliary units. This was a radical proposal that stood against
basic assumptions undergirding the social and political order, and those
who championed it were motivated by the perception that the nation
faced unprecedented crises. While it was never implemented on a mass
scale, at least in comparison to what occurred during the Taiping
Rebellion or the US Civil War, it became a widespread administrative
experiment in the last several decades of the Edo period.
Many historians in Japan, although surprisingly few in the United
States and Europe, have ascribed great significance to commoner military
mobilization, albeit more due to its symbolism than its historical impact.
I will argue for its significance from a different perspective by taking it as
an example of a larger trend in local governance in the late Edo period.
Although the issue of mobilizing commoners for military service was first
raised in elite circles in domains and within the bakufu, the momentum
for its implementation came from all levels of political administration,
including village- and town-level commoner elites. In this sense, it was an
example of a broader trend in which local social and political elites
attempted to take on new functions and intervene in new areas of public
life. This phenomenon fits the global nineteenth-century pattern in which
Late Edo Period “Farmer–Soldiers” 139
governments brought additional functions under their administrative

purview, pointing to the formation of expansive, administratively inte-
grated nation-states, although not in a continuous, predictable fashion.3
In the case of Japan, however, it was the perception of crisis, rather than
the experience of large-scale military conflict, that drove this process.
This chapter will first outline the development of efforts to mobilize
commoners for military service during the last several decades of the
Edo period. It will then detail specific examples of local elites pursuing
military mobilization as part of broader efforts to address the problems of
local society by expanding the administrative scope of their local
leadership.
Commoner Mobilization and the Late Tokugawa

Context
Historians of Japan often discuss commoner mobilization using the term
“farmer-soldier” (nō hei), justifying its use based upon its ubiquity in late-
Edo period sources.4 Twentieth-century scholars surely also are attracted
to the term in part because of the provocative notion of armed farmers
appearing in an Edo period state that had been disarmed for over 200
years. The initial disarming was undertaken famously in Toyotomi
Hideyoshi’s 1588 “Sword Hunt” and then implemented thoroughly by
the Tokugawa bakufu, both for its practical value in monopolizing the
means of violence and its symbolic significance in distinguishing the
samurai status group.5 For historians, the notion of armed peasants has
also been provocative in helping them to place late Tokugawa phenomena
into broader historical schema. Marxist historians, in particular, have
used nō hei to discuss the potential for revolution at the end of the Edo
period. This perspective can be seen in what is still after seventy-five years
the most extensive treatment of nō hei in English-language scholarship:
E. H. Norman’s two-part article, “Soldier and Peasant in Japan.”6
Because Norman viewed Edo period society in terms of a division
3
Maier, Leviathan 2.0: Inventing Modern Statehood, pp. 94–102; Bayly, The Birth of the
Modern World, 1750–1914, p. 162.
4
As explained in the Introduction of this volume, the “farmer-soldiers” (nō hei) explored in
this chapter emerged in the late Edo period and are distinct from the later “farmer-
soldiers” (tondenhei) examined by Steven Ivings in Chapter 9.
5
Hideyoshi was not the first to attempt the disarmament of farmers. Oda Nobunaga issued
a command in 1576 requiring farmers to return to the land and give up their arms. See
George Elison, “The Cross and the Sword: Patterns of Momoyama History,” in Warlords,
Artists and Commoners: Japan in the Sixteenth Century, eds. George Elison and
Bardwell L. Smith (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1981), pp. 68, 299.
6
E. H. Norman, “Soldier and Peasant in Japan: The Origins of Conscription,” Pacific
Affairs 16, no. 1 (March 1943): 47–64; and 16, no. 2 (June 1943): 149–165. Other
140 Brian Platt
between a feudal military class and a “disarmed and oppressed” peasan-

try, the mere fact of peasants taking up arms necessarily carried the
implication of revolutionary, antifeudal resistance. He ultimately argued
that this revolutionary potential was unfulfilled, as samurai elites
“canalize[d] the power of peasant insurrection, diverting it from its nar-
row class economic motivation” toward the political struggle against
Tokugawa hegemony.7 For several decades after World War II,
Japanese scholars similarly built analyses of nō hei around the question of
their revolutionary potential, and continued to cite Norman’s work
prominently.8 This shared emphasis is not surprising, considering the
Marxist thrust of early postwar Japanese scholarship and its tendency to
focus on the nō hei forces in Chō shū , which often has the result of tying the
nō hei to the overthrow of the bakufu. In the past two decades, historians
have begun to approach the nō hei with other questions in mind. Some
have looked at nō hei as part of a reexamination of late Edo period diplo-
matic history, pointing out the role of debates about national defense in
proposals for nō hei mobilization.9 Others, such as Hō ya Tō ru and
D. Colin Jaundrill, have looked at nō hei as part of larger examinations of
military reform.10 David Howell has used nō hei as a lens to consider issues
of status, violence, and social order during a time of perceived crisis.11
research on nō hei in English includes Albert Craig, Chō shū in the Meiji Restoration
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), pp. 281–295.
7
Norman, “Soldier and Peasant in Japan,” 16, no. 1, p. 62.
8
For example, Inoue Kiyoshi, Nihon no gunkokushugi [Japanese Militarization], Vol. 1,
Tennō sei guntai to gunbu [The Forces of the Imperial System and the Military Authorities]
(Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 1953); Aoki Michio, “Bakumatsu ni okeru nō min
tō sō to nō heisei” [Bakumatsu-era Peasant Conflicts and the System of Conscripted
Farmers], Nihon shi kenkyū 97 (1968): 104–125; Shigeki Yō ichi, “Bakumatsu-ki bakuryō
nō hei soshiki no seiritsu to tenkai” [The Establishment and Development of Farmer-
Soldier Organizations in Tokugawa Lands During the Bakumatsu Period], Rekishigaku
kenkyū 464 (January 1979): 18–26; Ozaki Yukiya, “Bakufu-ryō ni okeru nō hei soshiki”
[Farmer-Soldier Organizations in Tokugawa Territories], Shinano 20, no. 10 (October
1968): 22–32; 20, no. 11 (November 1968): 37–49.
9
Kamishiraishi Minoru, Bakumatsu taigai kankei no kenkyū [Studies in Bakumatsu-era
Foreign Relations] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2011), especially chapters 1–3.
10
Hō ya Tō ru, “Bakumatsu Ishin no dō ran to gunsei kaikaku” [Upheaval and Military
Reform during the Bakumatsu Period and the Meiji Restoration], in Nihon gunji shi
[Japan’s Military History], eds. Takahashi Noriyuki, Yamada Kuniaki, Hō ya Tō ru, and
Ichinose Toshiya (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2006); D. Colin Jaundrill, Samurai to
Soldier: Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-Century Japan (Cornell, NY: Cornell
University Press, 2016), pp. 58–66.
11
David Howell, “Nō hei no rekishiteki igi: bō ryoku no renzokutai e no ichizuki o megutte”
[The Historical Significance of Peasant Militias and Their Place in the Continuum of
Violence], Shidai Nihonshi 16 (May 2013): 1–11; David Howell, “Busō suru nō min no
naiyū to gaikan” [Troubles at Home and from Abroad Through the Lens of Armed
Peasants] in Kō za Meiji ishin: Sekaishi no naka no Meiji ishin [Studies on the Meiji
Restoration: The Meiji Restoration in World History], eds. Kimura Naoya and
Mitani Hiroshi (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010), pp. 84–107.
While the Japanese historiography on nō hei has been focused (perhaps
excessively so) on the question of their revolutionary potential, it has
yielded an increasingly fine-grained picture of both the late Edo period
debates concerning nō hei as well as the actual process of mobilization. My
own analysis here leans heavily on that scholarship. Discussions about the
role of nō hei began in earnest in the 1820s amidst growing concerns about
encroachments by Russia from the north and the British from the south.
Particularly troubling were two incidents that occurred in 1824. Both
involved British whaling ships, which, as Noell Wilson notes in her
chapter, had proliferated in the North Pacific due to growing demand
for lamp oil in Europe and the United States and the thinning of the whale
population in the Atlantic. One ship landed in Ō tsuhama, a village on the
northern coast of Mito, prompting officials from the bakufu, Mito, and
other nearby domains to descend upon the area before determining that
the ship could be released after they had instructed the crew on the laws
prohibiting unauthorized landing on Japanese shores. In the second inci-
dent, a British whaler approached a coastal village in southern Kyushu to
load provisions. The situation turned violent when the sailors attempted
to seize livestock, prompting samurai from the Satsuma domain to attack
the crew, killing one.12
These incidents seem to have led the bakufu to issue new orders in
1825, directing coastal authorities to expel “without hesitation” foreign
ships appearing off the Japanese coast (the “Law on the Expulsion of
Foreign Ships”). It was in the response to this exclusion order, and to the
general sense of crisis surrounding coastal defense, that the idea of com-
moner mobilization became a matter of widespread discussion. Historian
Kamishiraishi Minoru identifies some early proposals concerning the
formation of nō hei, all of which emerged in the context of broader propo-
sals for military reform in an effort to strengthen coastal defenses. One
proposal came from Tō yama Kagekuni, a superintendant of finances
(kanjō bugyō ), who had been deeply involved in navigating the bakufu’s
response to Russian demands to open commercial relations during the
first two decades of the nineteenth century. Tō yama anticipated that the
two incidents involving British whalers were a sign of things to come, and
worried that the Japanese state would be weakened if the populace began
to trade freely with foreigners. As part of an aggressive response to such
overtures for trade, he called for fishers and farmers to form militia units
12
Conrad Totman, Early Modern Japan (Berkley: University of California Press, 1993), pp.
500–502.
142 Brian Platt
of twenty to thirty, under the direction of samurai dispatched by nearby

daimyo.13
A second proposal came from Takahashi Kageyasu, an official who had
previously headed the Tokugawa Institute for the Translation for
Barbarian Books (Bansho shirabesho) and served as interpreter during
the Ō tsuhama incident in Mito. Takahashi advocated for the construc-
tion of fortifications along the eastern coast of Honshu, to be coordinated
by area domain and bakufu intendants and staffed by village officials and
other wealthy farmers. These recruits, he proposed, would build and staff
coastal fortifications equipped with empty cannons in order to deter
whalers from coming ashore.14 Also in the wake of the two incidents
involving whalers and the 1825 expulsion law was a domain plan to
recruit fifty commoners from three villages in what is today northern
Ibaraki Prefecture.15 The domains involved followed through on this
proposal, training a group of men in firearms and placing them at the
ready to respond if foreign ships were sighted. These calls for commoner
mobilization generally acknowledged that mobilizing commoners was
unprecedented and carried risks of status transgression and social disor-
der. Reformers justified the step on the basis of the urgency of the task of
coastal defense, and also by the obvious advantages of using commoners
for this purpose namely, this measure allowed for the deployment of on-
site personnel who could respond more quickly and cheaply than samurai
coming from a greater distance.
The debates about nō hei surged again in the 1840s amidst a series of
new encounters with foreign ships and the spread of news about the
Opium War, which intensified the sense of crisis among bakufu and
domain officials.16 Fearing foreign incursions, several domains began to
undertake military reforms to strengthen their coastal defenses, often
turning to Western models of weaponry, training, and strategy. These
reform efforts frequently involved the mobilization of commoners.
Perhaps the most prominent advocate for this measure at this time was
Egawa Hidetatsu, a bakufu intendant who in 1849 urged his Tokugawa
superiors to begin a large-scale mobilization of farmers for the purpose of
coastal defense. While the bakufu leadership did not adopt his proposals,
Egawa was able to implement his plans on a small scale in his own area of
jurisdiction in Nirayama, relying on village officials and rural samurai to
recruit men. Similar proposals surfaced in other domains and Tokugawa
territories. In Kaga, for example, a number of instructors of military
training at the domain school submitted plans. One called for 300 troops
13
Kamishiraishi, Bakumatsu taigai kankei no kenkyū , p. 81. 14 Ibid, p. 80.
15
Howell, “Busō suru nō min no naiyū to gaikan,” p. 3. 16 Kamishiraishi, p. 83.
from thirteen villages to be armed with bamboo spears. Another recom-

mended a nationwide coastal defense system in which 160 able-bodied
men between fifteen and thirty would be mobilized from each district.17
Through the 1850s, despite the intensity of discussions about nō hei,
attempts to implement plans for commoner mobilization were compara-
tively limited. In the 1860s, however, coastal areas increased recruitment
efforts. By 1867, fifty-four out of the roughly 120 domains that bordered
the coast had mobilized nō hei (and some domains without coastlines also
did so).18 Authorities in Kaga, for example, crafted a policy in 1863 in
which 1,000 commoners would be mobilized for coastal defense from
every community, regardless of whether they bordered the coast or not.
The troops were to receive training under the supervision of the domain
and would be deployed in groups of one hundred, half for coastal defense
and the other half at the ready to be mobilized for dispatch in emergency
circumstances.19 The domain succeeded in recruiting, mainly from vil-
lage and town officials and their employees, although only after combat-
ing rumors that recruits did not have to pay for their own guns and
reassuring people that the training would not interfere with their regular
work.20 In addition, commoner and mixed samurai/commoner units
fought in domestic conflicts. The well-known Kiheitai, formed in
Chō shū , fought in the domain’s conflicts with Westerners, as well as
those with the bakufu. In this volume, Robert Hellyer provides another
example of a samurai mobilizing commoners in support of the shogunate
through the case of Imai Nobuo. Motivated in part by his dismay at the
use of peasant soldiers against the bakufu in the Tengu Insurrection of
1864–1865, Imai traveled to what is today Gunma Prefecture and formed
a commoner militia to maintain social order and affirm Tokugawa rule. In
her chapter, Maren Ehlers reveals how conflicts during the 1860s – in this
case, between Mito rebels and the bakufu – brought small domains such
as Ō no into the fray and prompted them to mobilize large forces (in the
case of Ō no, nearly 20,000 men). Ō no officials characterized recruits as
helpers (ninsoku) and mobilized them to assist combat units and provide
transport rather than serving as armed fighters. In other areas, too,
officials deployed commoners for a variety of purposes, including security
for religious festivals and labor for castle repair, thus blurring the lines
17
Myō jin Hiroyuki, “Hansei makki no Kaga-han ni yoru nō hei chō bo” [Farmer-Soldier
Recruitment in Kaga at the End of the Edo Period], Gunji shigaku 39, no. 2 (February
2003): 18–19.
18
Hara Takeshi, Bakumatsu kaibō shi no kenkyū [A Study of the History of Coastal Defense
in the Bakumatsu Period] (Tokyo: Meichō Shuppan, 1988), p. 312.
19
Ibid, pp. 20–23. 20 Ibid, p. 20.
144 Brian Platt
between military recruitment and other forms of service obligations, such

as corvée.21
This expansion of nō hei recruitment during the 1860s occurred even as
the practical need for coastal defense had waned. The treaties governing
Japan’s trade and diplomatic relations with Europe and the United States
had by this time been signed, and it was apparent that locally driven efforts
with makeshift bands of soldiers – samurai or commoner – were neither
effective nor appropriate for Japan’s new national security situation. The
push for nō hei mobilization in the 1860s derived instead from the perceived
need to stem domestic disorder, reflecting a shift in the impetus for nō hei
recruitment from a concern about “dangers from abroad” to the perceived
need to address “troubles at home” (from gaikan to naiyū ).22 This shift can
be seen within the aforementioned Egawa magistrate office, one of the
initial champions of the idea of commoner mobilization. Whereas Egawa
Hidetatsu’s initial proposals in the early 1850s stressed the need to recruit
commoners for coastal defense, his son Hidetoshi and grandson Hidetake
took up the cause in the 1860s with an explicit focus on maintaining order
in local society.23 Indeed, when the new Meiji leadership asked Hidetoshi
in 1868 to fight against the Tokugawa forces, he refused, saying that the
purpose of farmer-soldier units was to maintain local order, not to fight in
battle.24 The disorder that was of such concern to local authorities was
manifested in particular by the growth of popular uprisings against local
leadership, usually categorized by Japanese historians as “world-renewal
rebellions” (yonaoshi ikki). Howell also points to fears of ruffians (akutō )
from outside the community who fostered local disorder by stealing, gam-
bling, or initiating quarrels. Against the backdrop of these fears of disorder,
and particularly after the bakufu’s 1863 directive to magistrates regarding
the mustering of commoners for military and security purposes, nō hei
recruitment expanded significantly, bringing to Tokugawa territories and
interior areas a development that had previously been common mainly in
the coastal domains.25 This expansion illustrates the urgency with which
officials engaged with the issue of local security, and in general with the
21
Ueda Junko, “Bakumatsu-ki Hagi-han ni okeru kyū ryō toritate nō hei: yorigumi Ura-ke
o jirei toshite” [Farmer-Soldiers as Mobilized Labor in the Hagi Domain During the
Bakumatsu Period: A Case Study of the Landlord Ura], Shisō [Kyoto Jō shi Daigaku
Shigakkai] 58 (February 2001): 270–272.
22
Aoki, “Bakumatsu ni okeru nō min tō sō to nō heisei,” pp. 104–125; Shigeki, “Bakumatsu-
ki bakuryō nō hei soshiki no seiritsu to tenkai,” pp. 18–26; Howell, “Busō suru nō min no
naiyū to gaikan,” p. 4.
23
Shigeki, “Bakumatsu-ki bakuryō nō hei soshiki no seiritsu to tenkai,” p. 19; Howell,
“Busō suru nō min no naiyū to gaikan,” p. 4.
24
Shigeki, “Bakumatsu-ki bakuryō nō hei soshiki no seiritsu to tenkai,” p. 25.
25
Hara, Bakumatsu kaibō shi, p. 312.
challenges of political administration in an atmosphere of perceived social

crisis.
In order to make the connection between this administrative experiment
and the broadening of the purview of local leadership, I will focus on one
example of nō hei mobilization that occurred in the Saku district of Shinano
Province. Now part of Nagano Prefecture, Saku is far from the coast, under-
scoring how this particular mobilization was not for coastal defense.
Tokugawa territory in the Saku district encompassed eighty-seven villages,
under the administrative direction of a bakufu intendant, Amari
Hachiuemon. As was the case in many areas under direct Tokugawa jurisdic-
tion, nō hei recruitment in Saku began in 1863, following the bakufu’s direc-
tive to magistrates regarding military reform and commoner mobilization.
The Saku example reveals that recruitment was the product of a collaboration
between the magistrate’s office and a team of village elites under its jurisdic-
tion with the primary initiative, it seems, coming from the latter.
In late 1863, the magistrate’s office circulated a memo regarding the
establishment of a military training facility for commoners.26 The memo
reported that the neighboring provinces of Kō zuke and Musashi had
succeeded in clamping down on scoundrels (akutō ) and homeless people
(mushuku), generating fears that those scoundrels would come to Saku
and cause damage to the social order and public spirit. In response,
a village official named Kō zu Kuranosuke and three other public-
minded men proposed to raise their own funds to recruit and train
“supplemental foot soldiers” (biashigaru) from among the local popula-
tion to help preserve order. The magistrate explained that these men,
once trained, would serve as needed and under the direction of the
magistrate’s office. The magistrate would allow them to wear swords as
well as distinctive indigo- and yellow-colored gaiters only during their
deployment. Naturally, the circular commented, these recruits should be
of good character, and by their service they would bring glory to their
ancestors. The magistrate seemed cognizant of the magnitude of this step
and expressed an awareness of the arguments against it. In another
circular from two weeks later, the magistrate provided additional details
about the plan and noted: “It is forbidden for farmers to bear arms, but at
a time when the world has become disordered and difficulties have spread
to our district,” such steps are necessary. At this point, the plan was to
recruit village officials, or their sons or brothers or others in their house-
holds. Moreover, the magistrate added that the military training “should
not interfere with their agricultural work.”27
26
This document is reprinted in Ozaki, “Bakufu-ryō ni okeru nō min soshiki,” pp. 729–730.
27
Ibid, p. 731.
146 Brian Platt
Much about this recruitment effort seems typical of those mounted

throughout Tokugawa lands following the nō hei recruitment directive in
1863. We can see this in the scope of the recruitment, which amounted to
only one hundred soldiers from forty-six villages, although around half of
those villages were exempted from recruitment due to their size or pov-
erty. The magistrate promised status benefits, even if temporary, as an
incentive for participation. To allay concerns about transgressing status
boundaries, he issued calls to moral rectitude and cautions against inter-
ference with agricultural work.
Another element that was true of most recruitment efforts but is explicit in
this example from Saku is the collaboration between the magistrate and
village elites. Local notables raised their own funds and petitioned the
magistrate for permission to recruit men for planned auxiliary units. In
documents issued a few weeks later detailing arrangements for military
training, we learn about the four men who played a central administrative
role in the implementation of a plan to develop a unit.28 In these missives,
the magistrate explained that while the training center would be located at
the magistrate’s office, interested recruits should first go to a man named
Kō zu Kuranosuke and his three collaborators to register for training. The
documents also explained that, while village officials who wished to serve
should bring their own lunches, the four men would provide food for
ordinary farmers. Moreover, the documents state that the four men would
pay for the expenses of recruits traveling long distances to the training center.
This set of documents also makes explicit the connection between
military mobilization and other initiatives undertaken by village elites in
the late Edo period. The initial document in this series was circulated
alongside another that opened with an expression of concern about the
breakdown of the social and moral order. The document voiced appre-
hension about “farmers forgetting their work, competing over commer-
cial profit, indulging in luxury, and committing infanticide and
abortion.”29 People had “lost the way of human morality,” and as
a result, “filial relationships have deteriorated,” and “feelings towards
others are lacking.” The document reported that four village officials – the
same four who initiated the effort to recruit villagers for military training –
had made plans for additional measures to renovate local society. They
proposed to establish schools in each village and appoint Confucian
teachers to them, first and foremost to provide instruction in filial
piety.30 Moreover, they proposed to build annexes at the schools where
28
Ibid, pp. 731–732. 29 Ibid, pp. 729–730.
30
Myō jin Hiroyuki’s research on nō hei in the Kaga domain also shows a significant overlap
between nō hei organizers and teachers. Myō jin, “Hansei makki no Kaga-han ni yoru
nō hei chō bo,” pp. 20–22.
local residents would make straw goods. The village officials would then
collect the profits from the sale of these goods and use them to provide for
poor children in the community. The effect would be to “rebuild the
human spirit” in their community and thereby “stop the aforementioned
evils” and “protect against scoundrels [akutō ].” These activists were
proposing a comprehensive strategy for shoring up the social and moral
order. They wanted to recruit local forces to address the symptoms of the
disorder – scoundrels, ruffians, and homelessness – and at the same time,
address the economic and moral origins of the disorder through educa-
tion, charity, and mutual assistance. The magistrate endorsed such efforts
and reported that the local elites had already developed plans for the
school, but the deep snow had forced them to postpone construction.
This sort of proactive response by local elites to calls for military
recruitment was not universal. In his study of late Edo period nō hei,
Aoki Michio focuses on the response of village officials in two jurisdic-
tions administered by a magistrate’s office in Dewa province, now com-
posed of parts of Yamagata and Akita Prefectures. The village leadership
in one area responded proactively, in much the same as leaders in Saku,
by raising funds, providing administrative support and practical assis-
tance, and volunteering to serve as unit heads. In the other district,
however, some village leaders showed recalcitrance. They complained
that the mobilization plan would require not only wealthy but also poor
families to provide nō hei, which would distract from agricultural tasks.
They also complained of the financial hardship imposed on less wealthy
village officials expected to lead the units and contribute their own funds
to the cause. These officials argued that as a result, nō hei mobilization
would have the effect of impoverishing and enervating society, and thus
“fostering national disorder.”31 Their resistance appears to have been
successful: it forced a change in the leadership of the magistrate’s office
and led the office to scale back the scope of the mobilization effort.32
However, their resistance reveals that the magistrate expected village
leaders to play an instrumental role in coordinating recruitment efforts,
and also that some of them were assuming such positions. Moreover, their
use of the specter of statewide disorder, whether a sincere concern or
a tactical deployment of language they anticipated would elicit the desired
response on the part of the authorities, reveals an atmosphere in which
local reforms and initiatives are seen through the prism of the problem of
31
Aoki, “Bakumatsu ni okeru nō min tō sō to nō heisei,” p. 115.
32
Even in the case of proactive village leadership, mobilization efforts sometimes ran into
trouble when people resisted the recruitment efforts of village officials, reflecting existing
cleavages within village society. See Shigeki, “Bakumatsu-ki bakuryō nō hei soshiki no
seiritsu to tenkai,” pp. 20–24.
148 Brian Platt
disorder. It is also noteworthy that although they referenced very specific

local circumstances, the village leaders linked those issues to the problem
of statewide disorder. Their stance reveals a larger development of the
bakumatsu period: the spread of information among local, elite networks.
Elites could learn about events elsewhere in the Japanese realm and in so
doing, determine if their local circumstances melded with broader social
and political contexts.33
Nō hei and the Tokugawa-Meiji Transition

The value of the Saku example lies in the fact that local officials made
explicit the connection between nō hei recruitment and other initiatives
intended to maintain order in local society. Even when those connections
are not explicit, I suggest that we should see nō hei as one example of
a range of public initiatives undertaken by local leaders during the last
century of the Edo period to address perceived social problems. This is
particularly true of nō hei formed during the 1850s and 1860s, after the
notion of coastal defense as a responsibility of local leadership began to
wane. Overall, we can view the earlier efforts undertaken for the purpose
of coastal defense as part of a broader phenomenon in which local
political authorities responded to the perception of crisis by expanding
the customary range of governing functions and by devising new forms of
administrative intervention within their jurisdictions.
While others have explored this issue in regard to domain
administration,34 I will focus here on new administrative interventions
at the village level. One example of such an intervention is that of schools,
which proliferated dramatically in the closing decades of the Edo period.
As I have argued elsewhere, this growth should be seen not simply as
a function of increasing demand from a society in which the benefits of
literacy were becoming more apparent. Instead, I maintain that it also
emerged from the proactive efforts of village leaders to open schools, both
33
Miyachi Masato, “Bakumatsu seiji katei ni okeru gō nō shō to zaison chishikijin” [Wealthy
Commoners and Rural Intellectuals in the Bakumatsu-era Political Process], in Ishin
henkaku to kindai Nihon [Modern Japan and the Reforms of the Meiji Restoration], ed.
Miyachi Masato (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1993), pp. 29–76; Iwada Miyuki,
“Bakumatsu no taigai jō hō to chiiki shakai – fū setsudome kara miru” [Information
from Abroad and Local Society During the Bakumatsu Period], in Sekaishi no naka no
Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration in the Context of World History], eds. Kimura Naoya
and Mitani Hiroshi (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010).
34
Mark Ravina, Land and Lordship in Early Modern Japan (Stanford, CA: Stanford
University Press, 1999); Luke Roberts, Mercantilism in a Japanese Domain: The
Merchant Origins of Economic Nationalism in 18th-Century Tosa (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1998); Maren Ehlers, Give and Take: Poverty and the Status Order in
Early Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2018).
as a form of community service and as a strategy of shoring up their

positions in local society.35 Another example of public initiative can be
seen in Ninomiya Sontoku’s Hō toku Movement and other efforts to
revitalize rural communities through a mixture of economic assistance
and moral instruction.36 Anti-infanticide campaigns, too, found an eager
audience among village elites eager to address what they perceived to be
the symptoms of social, economic, and moral disorder in their
communities.37 Although domain authorities initiated new forms of fam-
ine relief, they succeeded by collaborating with town elders, inclined to
follow through on such initiatives.38
Previous scholarship has often described late Edo and early Meiji
period local elites as acting based on pragmatism, emphasizing how
they sought to preserve order, and their own status, in a time of
upheaval.39 Albert Craig similarly describes local elites in Chō shū not
as radicals seeking to organize or join militia to overthrow the feudal
order, but as apolitical pragmatists attempting to navigate a chaotic era
without putting their communities or their own positions in jeopardy.40
To be sure, most local officials were pragmatic in their efforts to preserve
order amidst the chaos of the late Edo period. Yet many determined that
this goal required deviation from received ideas about local administra-
tion. As a result, they adopted new initiatives for local reform, often in
a spirit of public activism. Most village elites establishing schools, leading
anti-abortion campaigns, or devising new means for ensuring public
welfare – including organizing rural security forces – did so because of
strong ideological commitments, such as Ninomiya’s Hō toku Movement
or Hirata Atsutane’s brand of kokugaku.
In this volume, Ehlers offers a vivid example of the environment faced
by local officials that produced such new administrative interventions. As
the Mitō rebels passed through central Honshu on their way to Kyoto,
village leaders faced difficult, unprecedented decisions. The bakufu had
ordered domains along the rebels’ path to resist them, thus bringing the
35
Brian Platt, Burning and Building: Schooling and State Formation in Japan, 1750–1890
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 2004).
36
On the Hō toku Movement, see Tetsuo Najita, Ordinary Economies in Japan: A Historical
Perspective, 1750–1950 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2009), pp. 104–140.
37
Fabian Drixler, Mabiki: Infanticide and Population Growth in Eastern Japan, 1660–1950
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2013).
38
Maren Ehlers, “Benevolence, Charity and Duty: Urban Relief and Domain Society
during the Tenmei Famine,” Monumenta Nipponica 69, no. 1 (2014): 55–101.
39
Neil Waters, Japan’s Local Pragmatists: The Transition from Tokugawa to Meiji in the
Kawasaki Region (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1983);
James Baxter, The Meiji Unification through the Lens of Ishikawa Prefecture (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Asia Center, 1995).
40
Craig, Chō shū in the Meiji Restoration, pp. 291–294.
150 Brian Platt
potential for armed conflict right into the backyards of communities along
the way. Local administrators at every level, from domain leaders down to
village headmen, had to make urgent decisions about how to respond – for
example, whether to support the rebels or the domain forces loyal to the
Tokugawa.41 As the rebel forces approached, officials in remote villages
had to determine how to prepare, not knowing whether the rebels would
treat the locals with generosity, or with violence and looting. The conflicts
often brought violence to these communities, such as when the Ō no
leadership decided to evacuate villages in the rebels’ path and set fire to
them in order to cripple the rebels’ supply of provisions. Although the
urgency of their decisions and the potential for violence was unusual, the
village officials thrust into such situations would have been accustomed to
making decisions through the lens of crisis and devising new adminis-
trative solutions to what they considered the unprecedented problems of
social and moral disorder during the bakumatsu period.
The picture of public-minded local elites taking upon themselves the
responsibility of “saving the world” by addressing the problems of local
society – and then raising arms in order to suppress rebellion – calls to
mind the roughly contemporaneous situation in Qing China.42 In China,
of course, the manifestation of disorder in the mid-nineteenth century
was not simply that of a few wandering scoundrels or peasant protests, or
even the violent but localized clashes surrounding the Meiji Restoration,
but major military conflicts that brought death and destruction on
a catastrophic scale. Zeng Guofan and Li Hongzhang built large regional
armies on a foundation of small-scale organizations conceived by village
elites before the eruption of large-scale military conflict, and which were
founded with a variety of public initiatives in mind. Philip Kuhn offers the
example of Wang Chen, a degreeholder in Hunan who organized a militia
in 1849 after a famine-induced rebellion in his area – a militia that was
41
One can easily see how, in such an environment, access to information would become
critical to village elites. Ehlers notes how the diary of one village official, Suzuki
Zenzaemon, contained a copy of a report of military action elsewhere. Although it is
not clear where he obtained the report, this sort of collection and copying of information
into journals, via networks of village elites, was the primary means through which village
elites obtained information about goings-on elsewhere in the country. While these net-
works were originally formed through cultural activity, Miyachi shows how, at the end of
the Edo period, village elites exploited those networks to obtain information about
national political developments. See Miyachi, “Bakumatsu seiji katei ni okeru nō nō shō
to zaison chishikijin.”
42
The phase is a reference to a refrain in the writings of Cheng Hongmou, an eighteenth-
century Qing official who advocated an expansive use of the state apparatus in the effort
to bring order to local society. See William Rowe, Saving the World: Cheng Hongmou and
Elite Consciousness in 18th-Century China (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2002).
later folded into Zeng Guofan’s Hunan army. Several years earlier, Wang
had organized a voluntary association called a “local covenant” (xiang-yue
in Chinese, gō yaku in Japanese) for a multifold purpose: “to promote
morality, encourage agriculture, aid the indigent, and secure local order.”
This association, Kuhn points out, served as the “organizational nucleus”
for a militia that took shape four years later.43 In contrast to Japan, in
which military mobilization remained a relatively small part of the leader-
ship portfolio of local elites, in China the military challenge presented by
the Taipings had the effect of bending the public initiatives of local elites
more decisively in the direction of militarization. As Kuhn, Mary Rankin,
and others have pointed out, this militarization of local elites during the
war also entrenched their power. The Qing state had empowered them to
divert tax revenues from central coffers to fund the formation of private
armies, and after the defeat of the Taipings, they used those funds to build
up their regional power bases.44 Most historians argue that China’s late
nineteenth- and twentieth-century warlordism had its roots in these
developments. The mobilization for civil war, therefore, represented
a usurpation of existing institutions of local government, and in the
decades following the war had a decentralizing political effect on the
Qing Empire.
In Japan, by contrast, mid-century experiments with local military
mobilization were followed, before too long, by the formation of
a centralized, national army to defend the new nation-state. The connec-
tion between nō hei and Meiji centralization can be traced in various ways.
Looking narrowly at the issue of military mobilization, Japanese histor-
ians have argued that the nō hei served as a bridge of sorts between early
modern military arrangements and the modern, centralized Japanese
military, in that they reflected new ideas about tactics and a precedent
for universal conscription. By the same token, one might just as easily
argue that commoner mobilization contributed only to the fragmentation
and chaos of the Restoration era, and that Meiji era efforts to build a truly
national military force marked a point of clear departure from pre-Meiji,
distinctly local efforts.
If we step back and look beyond the issue of military organization, we
can view nō hei as one of a range of new administrative measures
43
Philip Kuhn, Rebellion and Its Enemies: Militarization and Social Structure, 1796–1864
(Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1970), pp. 136–137.
44
In addition to Kuhn’s Rebellion and its Enemies, see James Polacheck, “Gentry Hegemony:
Soochow in the T’ung-chih Restoration,” in Conflict and Control in Late Imperial China,
eds. Frederic Wakeman and Carolyn Grant (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1975), pp. 211–256; Mary Rankin, Elite Activism and Political Transformation in China:
Zhejiang Province, 1865–1911 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1986).
152 Brian Platt
undertaken by local authorities at the domain, magistrate, and village

levels. Placing the nō hei in this broader context opens new possibilities for
understanding Japan’s experience in a global framework of modern mili-
tary conflict and state formation. In other parts of the world, large-scale
warfare prompted the state to blur status distinctions in order to mobilize
people and to create new kinds of administrative machinery to obtain
resources.45 In the case of nō hei, what precipitated this new administrative
experiment was not the demands of mass mobilization but the anticipation
of new military challenges, as well as the perception of social and cultural
crisis. This broader context also helps us trace the connection between
nō hei and developments on the other side of the Restoration. In this
context, nō hei can be seen as part of a broader trend in which local social
and political elites, motivated by the specter of crisis, attempted to expand
their administrative reach by intervening into new areas of local life. After
the Restoration, the Meiji government’s state-building project depended
not just on political elites who could envisage nationalizing reforms, but
also on the active participation of political officials at the prefectural,
district, and village level who were willing to implement new solutions
to the administrative challenges of local society. In other words, nō hei,
along with other late Edo period administrative experiments, created
precedent for a more expansive centralized state and also activated
a broad stratum of political elites who were eager to contribute to the
work of restoring order, by whatever administrative means might serve
that purpose.
45
On the role of warfare in eroding early modern status hierarchies in France, see
David Bell, The First Total War: Napoleon’s Europe and the Birth of Warfare as We Know
It (New York: Mariner, 2007). For an example of how warfare generated administrative
innovation and state growth, see David Wilson’s analysis of the US Civil War and the
emergence of the Quartermaster Department. David Wilson, The Business of Civil War:
Military Mobilization and the State, 1861–65 (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2006).
7 A Military History of the Boshin War
Hō ya Tō ru
On January 27, 1868 the army of the former shogunate, while heading to
the capital of Kyoto, clashed with the forces of Satsuma and Chō shū at
Toba and Fushimi, marking the outbreak of the Boshin War, which
would last approximately one year and five months. Although the sho-
gun’s army lost its appetite for battle and officially disbanded after losing
at Toba and Fushimi, hardline Tokugawa loyalists managed to escape
and organize resistance across Japan. In the northeast, several domains
formed the Northern Alliance (Ō uetsu Reppan Dō mei or Hokubu Dō mei )
that fought against the new government, first in the Tohoku region, and
later in Ezo (present-day Hokkaido).
This chapter explores some of those events, focusing on how the
Boshin War became a transformative period in the military and social
history of Japan by bringing an end to the traditional military system. In
the wake of armed internal conflicts, almost every domain embraced
modern, military organizational methods modeled after those of contem-
porary Europe. The key trigger to these reforms was the adoption of
modern firearms, notably rifles, which decisively reshaped the military
organizations of the day.
Advancements in Weapons and Military Systems

in Europe
Rapid advancements in technology transformed firearms in mid-nineteenth-
century Europe from smoothbore to rifled firearms. Although many had
learned that cutting spiral-rifling grooves into the bore of small guns could
increase power by causing projectiles to spin as they came into contact with
the rifling, gunsmiths were challenged to devise a way for bullets to be
smoothly loaded into muzzle-loaded rifles. What is more, hunting guns
such as the Jagdgewehr rifle, in use since the eighteenth century, were
cumbersome to load as a man in the field would first have to insert
a ramrod to pack the bore with a lead bullet. As a result, such rifled guns
were used primarily as a single, sniper shot weapon.
153
154 Hō ya Tō ru
In the 1840s, the invention of an expanding conical-shaped bullet by

a French Army captain, Claude-Étienne Minié, led to the popularization
of the rifle among the armies of the major European powers.1 Because of
this advancement, European armies adopted muzzle-loading rifles (here-
after MLR) in the mid-1850s. For example, the British army began to use
the Enfield rifle (an MLR) on a large scale during the Crimean War
(1853–1856) waged against Russia. A soldier fired by inserting a bullet
and powder into the bore of the gun and then mounting a primer. New
types of rifle like the Enfield fired conical bullets instead of the round
bullets used in smoothbore muskets. In Europe and the United States,
rifle technology advanced so rapidly that by the mid-1860s armies began
to employ even more advanced breech-loading rifles (hereafter BLR).
Historians have long noted how the Prussian army defeated forces of the
Austrian Empire in the 1866 Battle of Königgrätz with its high firepower,
breech-loading Dreyse needle-gun (Zündnadelgewehr) while its oppo-
nents employed the muzzle-loading Lorenz rifle.2
The improvements in rifle technology transformed warfare by increas-
ing the firing range and firepower of armies. Earlier battle tactics such as
those applied during the Napoleonic Wars, saw infantry send volleys of
shots from distances of fifty to one hundred meters into densely packed
concentrations of enemy troops operating in battalions to be followed by
a massive bayonet charge. With better rifle technology, battles often
turned into sniping skirmishes, with more engagements occurring at
distances of more than 200–300 meters between armies. As a result,
armies deployed men at wider intervals in the battlefield and riflemen
concealed themselves behind breastworks and other improvised covers.3
The US Civil War witnessed a large-scale transition from the earlier forms
of military engagement to the latter types of battle. Incidentally, this also
meant that the cavalry became virtually obsolete as a military battle force
as the infantry could massacre the horses before they even reached enemy
lines.
As will be discussed more below, during the Boshin War, combatants
still used smoothbore guns but increasingly employed MLRs, especially
Enfields, as well as some British-produced Sniders, (a BLR modeled on
the Enfield), and a few repeating rifles such as the American Spencer
1
Takahashi Noriyuki, Hō ya Tō ru, et al., Nihon gunji-shi [A Military History of Japan]
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2005), pp. 254–257.
2
For an analysis of the reasons for Prussian military success, see Gordon A. Craig, The
Battle of Königgrätz: Prussia’s Victory over Austria, 1866 (Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1964).
3
Hō ya Tō ru, “Sejō hō dankai no gunji-gijutsu to Boshin sensō ” [The Advent of Rifle
Technology and the Boshin War] in Boshin sensō no shiryō gaku [The Study of Historical
Sources of the Boshin War] ed. Hakoishi Hiroshi (Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013), pp.
61–87.
A Military History of the Boshin War 155
seven-shot. In addition to the Enfield, the French Minié was also widely
adopted and became a generic name for the MLR in Japan.
Military Organization during the Edo Period

Before explaining how the advent of rifles disrupted Japan’s early mod-
ern military organization, we need to first review the overall structure of
the early modern military system. Until the late Edo period, smoothbore
muskets had been used in conjunction with other weapons such as bows
and spears. Furthermore, engagements involved hand-to-hand combat
with weapons such as the short spear. As summarized by historian
Takagi Shō saku, samurai generals, usually senior retainers of a lord,
led military units. Each unit consisted of three core sections, the first
being foot soldiers (ashigaru), junior vassals to the lord, armed with
bows, long-shafted spears and matchlock muskets. A retainer of the
lord served as the mounted commander of the second core section, the
unit’s cavalry. Bands of warriors belonging to, or allied with the same
family, composed the cavalry’s rank and file. Peasants mustered from
feudal estates made up the final section: supply units supporting the men
in the field.
Foot soldiers would often engage an enemy force by first firing
their muskets and bows, and then units armed with spears would
move in when the enemy came within hand-combat fighting range.
This “foot-soldier battle” would mark the first stage of an engage-
ment. According to the philosophy of early modern combat, mounted
warriors would subsequently ride out, and those warriors would
decide the battle via hand-to-hand combat using spears and other
comparable weapons. Vassals in a lord’s retainer band mustered
personnel and armaments based on a military service criteria set
according to the annual rice stipend (measured in koku) received
from the lord, which vassals were granted according to their social
rank within the domain. Military service personnel also included low-
status individuals, noncombatants who served as attendants to the
needs of the vassals and were not allowed to participate in battles.
Takagi points out that military roles in early modern army units came
to designate status organization, characterizing what can be termed
the “garrison state.” This system of rule was being consolidated and
legitimized almost as if a huge army had been stationed to dominate
all of Japan.4
4
Takagi Shō saku, Nihon kinsei kokka-shi no kenkyū [The History of the Early Modern
Japanese State] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1990).
156 Hō ya Tō ru
Late Tokugawa Military Reforms

In the closing decades of the Edo period, Gewehr firearms came into use,
which were the flintlock, cap-lock, muzzle-loading smoothbore muskets
popular in Europe until the early nineteenth century. This occurred along
with the gradual introduction of Western-style artillery imported by the
Nagasaki artillerist, Takashima Shū han. Nonetheless, such innovation
was limited to the Westernization of firearms for foot-soldier units in
peacetime (the first group in Takagi’s model) and thus did not challenge
the established military system. Moreover, flintlock muskets did not yet
amount to a disruptive technology. The limited range of flintlock Gewehr
guns was still on par with the conventional matchlocks widely used in
Japan. Their use did not affect the conventional military wisdom and
strategy of samurai warriors who favored “honorable” hand-to-hand
combat. The shogunate implemented some military restructuring during
the Ansei Reforms of the late 1850s, but these forces still used less
sophisticated smoothbore muskets.5
During the bakumatsu period, lower-ranked vassals equipped with
muskets were trained to march in unison and fire volleys from dense
formations. With the introduction of modern rifles from Europe and the
United States in the 1860s, this structure quickly became obsolete.
A Tokugawa delegation sent to the United States for the ratification of
trade agreements returned with presents offered by Americans as a token
of amity between the United States and Japan. Among the gifts, the US
government gave a state-of-the-art, muzzle-loading rifle cannon (akin to
a field cannon)and one hundred Springfield infantry rifles, named after
the Springfield Armory in Massachusetts that was supplying the US
Army. The muzzle-loading Springfield was equipped with the so-called
Maynard tape primer and became the most widely used gun in the US
Civil War ahead of the Enfield rifle.6
Based on these two aforementioned weapons, Egawa Hidetoshi,
a Tokugawa retainer and specialist in Western gun technology, initiated
the production of firearms. Egawa’s project encountered various techni-
cal difficulties, however, and he failed to produce these new types of
weapon on a large scale. Egawa used a few imitation firearms that his
project produced to equip peasant soldiers (nō hei ) under his command,
5
Hō ya Tō ru, Boshin sensō [The Boshin War] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007), pp.
242–254.
6
Hō ya, “Bakumatsu no gunji kaikaku to sejō hō – beikoku-sei raifurukanon nitsuite”
[Rifling Technology and Military Reform in the Bakumatsu Period – American-Made
Rifle Cannons] in Teppō denrai no Nihon shi: hinawajū kara raifurujū made [The
Introduction of Firearms in Japan: From Matchlocks to Rifles] ed. Udagawa Takehisa
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007).
units explored by Brian Platt in his chapter.7 At the time Japanese gun-
smiths, working by hand, could craft muzzle-loading rifles similar to those
manufactured abroad but the time required limited the number of weap-
ons being produced. Moreover, the gunsmiths could not manufacture
muzzle-loading rifles with strong enough steel barrels to withstand speed
firing in combat.
After 1862, the shogunate encouraged domains to import firearms.
Throughout its rule, the Tokugawa regime had restricted the military
capacity of lords as a means of assuring its dominant place in the Japanese
realm. Yet bakufu leaders put aside concerns about allowing a military
strengthening of domains in order to bolster the overall defenses of the
Japanese state. As Harald Fuess details in his chapter, the Tokugawa
move resulted in tens of thousands of imported guns flowing through
the newly established treaty ports. The wealthy Shimazu clan of Satsuma
notably purchased Enfield rifles, breech-loading and repeating guns, as
well as field artillery.
The shogunate’s reforms induced radical military developments.
During the Bunkyū period (1861–1863), the shogunate established
three types of army unit (infantry, cavalry, and artillery) in addition to
existing feudal military organizations. The shogunate ordered that half of
the men mobilized by bannermen (hatamoto), most of whom were pea-
sants mustered from the lands of bannermen, should be placed under
direct Tokugawa control to form a standing rifle corps. After the start of
the Tokugawa conflicts with Chō shū (1864–1866), the shogunate
ordered that peasants in lands under its direct control be pressed into
service as infantry troops. On Tokugawa estates, peasants were mobilized
in proportion to the assessed wealth of the said territory: namely one man
for 1,000 koku. In Tokugawa lands in eastern Japan, a form of peasant
conscription was adopted. Furthermore, the bannermen’s military levies
were transformed into cash payments in the Keiō period (1865–1868),
bringing all infantry officially under the direct control of the shogunate.
The established lord-and-vassal military units of the early modern period,
which had been composed of samurai retainers and their liegemen, were
dismantled. The shogunate commissioned a few samurai retainers into
the officer class, and assigned the rest to rifle corps according to their
status. At the time, Tokugawa leaders instituted measures to expand the
recruitment base for personnel in its rifle corps, for example, by including
servant retainers (hō kō nin) who heretofore had assumed noncombatant
7
Hō ya, “Bakufu no beikoku-shiki sejō jū seisan nitsuite” [The Production of American-
Style Rifles by the Bakufu] Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō hensanjo kenkyū kiyō [Research Bulletin
of the Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo] 11 (2001), 36–52.
158 Hō ya Tō ru
roles. They also implemented the provisional recruitment of peasant

commoners (hyakusho) by elevating their status to servant retainers and
providing them salaries and short swords as a mark of their temporarily
elevated social positions.8
These radical reforms threatened the very foundation of the status-
based rule of the samurai class. As a result, their implementation proved
difficult. Nonetheless, for the shogunate to resist the military capabilities
of the Western powers while maintaining military dominance within the
Japanese state, implementing reforms to address this new stage of tech-
nological development was a challenge of paramount importance.
By the autumn of 1867, the shogunate’s forces probably comprised
24,000 troops organized into forty-eight battalions modeled on armies of
Western nations. Conversely, as is well known, the domains of Satsuma and
Chō shū , which had fought against Western military forces during the bom-
bardments of Kagoshima and Shimonoseki, had rapidly adopted rifle-corps
organizations, and each domain had the capability of mobilizing over 11,000
troops, respectively. In addition, other lords had started switching their
domain forces to Western-style rifle troops with varying degrees of success.9
Bakufu leaders enforced reforms to the “shogunate model” amidst
internal armed conflicts such as those with Chō shū and the Tsukuba
War (1864–1865) initiated by disaffected samurai from the Mito domain,
an internal conflict that had a wide-reaching impact, as Maren Ehlers
explains in her chapter. The shogunate also required domain leaders to
take a similar approach and prepared proposals in the mid-1860s for how
they could reform their military forces to support the shogunate.
Specifically, Tokugawa leaders encouraged domains to replace foot,
cavalry, and artillery units to allow the adoption of rifle technology.
Bakufu leaders, however, ultimately lacked the ability to force these
reforms fully on the domains. They aimed for the hereditary vassals of
the Tokugawa shoguns (fudai daimyō ) to pledge a certain number of
troops, even in times of peace, which in combination with the military
under the direct control of the shogunate, would constitute a standing
national army. The Tokugawa War Office moved to reform the mobiliza-
tion standards of the wealthier “outside lords” (tozama daimyō ) but was
never able to implement that plan. Lords resisted this interference with
their local sovereignty and the shogunate lacked the authority to convince
domain leaders to implement more radical reforms. Pushing through
realm-wide, military reforms to establish a unified military system that
8
Hō ya, Boshin sensō , pp. 267–270, 276–280.
9
Hō ya, Boshin sensō no gunji-shi: kō za Meiji ishin 3 [The Military History of the Boshin War:
Lecture 3 on the Meiji Restoration] (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2011).
could adapt to new rifle technology as well as the creation of a unified

national navy, which included steam-driven vessels, ultimately required
strong central authority. Thus, if the shogunate could not accomplish this
task, which other force could do so in Japan? This was precisely the
question addressed in the Boshin War.
Military Mobilizations by Old and New Regimes

Immediately after the Battle of Toba–Fushimi, the imperial court issued
an order for punitive expeditions against the former shogun, Tokugawa
Yoshinobu. Eastern expeditionary forces marched toward Edo on three
fronts: along the Tō kaidō Pacific coastal route, the Tō sandō inland route,
and the Hokuriku route on the coast of the Sea of Japan.
On February 29, 1868, the nascent Meiji government established the
Defense Secretariat (gunbō jimukyoku) with central jurisdiction over the
navy and army, as well as military training, security, and emergency
military services. As a result, the new government created an effective
institutional infrastructure for waging war. Five days later, the govern-
ment handed a strategic plan known as “Plan of the Court” to the field
generals, accompanied by specific military orders and camp regulations.
As a basic precondition, the new Meiji government demanded that those
who sought to become its allies would actively support the government’s
military activities. The leaders of the new government regarded mere
verbal and written pledges of allegiance as insufficient, instead asking
for concrete contributions. Meiji leaders directed lords to pay homage
to the emperor by flatly rejecting any feudatory relations with the
Tokugawa shogun and by responding to the calls of military mobilization.
The military force of the new government consisted of the military power
of the lords who had been ordered to Kyoto in order to establish a force
“commensurate with their domestic power.” One or two officers from each
domain were nominated to the governor general’s camp, forming
a “Council Chamber” (kaigisho) that represented the units from various
domains. This Council Chamber served as a forum for the execution of
a range of matters regarded as requiring coordination among the lords.
Although domains were ordered to submit “state-of-war notifications,”
the fact that these were essentially created by each domain underscores
Hakoishi Hiroshi’s conclusion that the new government’s army was “an
aggregate of soldiers from largely independent domains.”10
10
Hakoishi Hiroshi, “Sō ron: Boshin sensō kenkyū no tame no shiryō gaku” [General Remarks:
Using the Study of Historical Sources to Research the Boshin War] in Hakoishi ed.,
Boshin sensō no shiryō gaku, pp. 31–32.
160 Hō ya Tō ru
Thus, initially at least, the military contributions of the domains

remained essentially unchanged from their military service duties of the
Edo period. In late 1868, Meiji leaders attempted to standardize the
military levy at “60 men per each assessed 10,000 bushels of rice.”
They subsequently stipulated standard rations and pay when on duty or
on leave for the eastern expeditionary forces. It prescribed that each
mobilized soldier would receive “four cups of rice and one gold coin
(shu) in camp and two cups of rice and 100 mon coins on leave.” This
was later revised to six cups of rice and one gold coin. In contemporary
terms, this amounted to the provision of a subsidy for food and lodging by
the new government to the various allied domains who mobilized troops.
In addition to the regular forces of allied domains, the new government
raised a “grassroots army” (sō mō tai) composed of peasants, priests, and
“masterless samurai” (rō nin), which, as the vanguard of the new army,
participated in raids and seizures of Tokugawa administrative offices.
Drawing on a range of historical sources, historians have explored in
depth these grassroots bands. Although the new government used these
military forces to establish its hegemony, their usefulness diminished after
the quick pacification of western Japan. Many participants in the grass-
roots army ardently opposed foreign intervention. Consequently, in con-
junction with its policy to cultivate peace and amity with foreign nations,
the new government cut ties with these grassroots xenophobes and issued
an order forbidding their employment in the private armies of “court
aristocrats” (kuge). The government included this prohibition as the
fifth item of the Five Public Notices issued on April 6, 1868.
Next, let us look at the makeup of the military forces to be supplied by
the domains. The new government made strict and unprecedented
demands. On February 28, 1868, the Bureau of Army and Naval
Affairs (kairiku gunmū -kyoku) informed domains that, for the Eastern
Expedition, they should only dispatch gunnery and artillery corps and
no further manpower. In addition, it instructed domains that “your
troops should not bring clothing or other miscellaneous equipment
that has no practical use.” The government also directed that units
should not include surplus officers beyond those actually required to
perform necessary duties. It did allow, however, for lords to remain in
Kyoto instead of going into the field.11
The new template that the Meiji authorities presented to the domains
was merely “some gunnery units with officers, some cannons with com-
manders of those artillery units, and some porters.” With this short
11
Miyachi Masato, “Fukko-ki genshiryō no kisoteki kenkyū ” [A Basic Study of the Original
Documents of Fukko-ki] Tokyo Daigaku Shiryō hensanjo kenkyū kiyō 1 (1990): 66–139.
directive, the government effectively disbanded units of archers and

spearmen, key components of the early modern military structure.
Moreover, the mounted cavalry, which had been the backbone of samurai
military organization, was completely eliminated. The records of various
lords show the thoroughness of the implementation of the new govern-
ment’s instructions. We find orders stating that, “spear corps are to be
terminated,” in records from Obama domain (now part of Fukui
Prefecture) and “spears are now forbidden” in records from Kumamoto
domain (today’s Kumamoto Prefecture). Implementing the Western-
style military systems had become a question of political survival under
the new regime. This is revealed in domain records, which include state-
ments such as “the Imperial Court has issued various specifications for
troop dispatches” (Kumamoto), and “it must be an appropriate, practi-
cal, and lightly-equipped military system” (Tottori domain). Even
domains that had previously been ambivalent about the adoption of
Western-style military systems began to embrace such practices.12
Hosokawa Moriyoshi of the Kumamoto domain recognized that
reforms to the military system would be indispensable for victory in the
battlefield. He also supported the strong pressure exerted by the new
government, stressing that “without these resolute reforms,” it would be
“impossible to imagine situations that might arise in future.” However,
some groups within the Kumamoto domain offered strong opposition to
reform, as is evident from the fact that the enactment of reforms in
April 1868 forced the retirement of several, conservative high-ranking
retainers. Hosokawa had to wait three months to disband six established
battalions and replace them with units organized along Western-style
military lines.13
The new government also pushed decisive reforms of military organi-
zation even in domains where the Edo period military service system had
been maintained, therefore interfering profoundly with feudal rulers’
control over their military forces. The fighting strength of the established
houses declined, and soon the old military order collapsed completely. As
the Boshin War began, military men, whether they supported the
Tokugawa regime or the new government, realized that soldiers armed
with short-range matchlocks and old-style Gewehr muskets would prove
12
Kō shaku Hosokawa-ke Hensanjo, Higo-han kokuji shiryō [Official Records of the Higo
Domain] (Kumamoto, Kō shaku Hosokawa-ke Hensanjo, 1932); “Tottori-hanshi
Amano Yū ji nisshi” [The Journal of Amano Yū ji, Retainer of Tottori Domain]
Unpublished document, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo.
13
Morita Seiichi, “Bakumatsu ishinki ni okeru Higo-Kumamoto-han” [The Higo-
Kumamoto Domain in the Bakumatsu-Restoration Period] in Meiji ishin to Kyū shū ,
Kyū shū bunka ronshū 3 [Kyushu and the Meiji Restoration: A Collection of Essays on
Kyushu Culture, Vol. 3] ed. Ō kubo Toshiaki (Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1973).
162 Hō ya Tō ru
useless. As Fuess explores in his chapter, this prompted domains to

procure more long-range rifles and artillery from Western merchants
based in the treaty ports of Nagasaki and Yokohama. Moreover, while
domains in Tohoku such as Shō nai and Yonezawa implemented reforms
to their military systems in early 1867, other northern domains, namely
Sendai and Akita, only began shifting to gunnery corps following orders
by a new government in the spring of 1868.14
Meanwhile, the leaders of the defeated Tokugawa regime mustered the
troops of their allies and reconsidered their approach to military mobili-
zation. Immediately after the Battle of Toba–Fushimi, they adopted
a policy of nominal allegiance to the new imperial government while
preparing to wage war against it. On February 9, 1868, the council of
elders meeting at Edo ordered lords remaining loyal to the shogun to draw
up a list of the forces they could assemble.
The remaining Tokugawa senior councilors (rō jū ) asked loyal lords
how many soldiers with firearms they could dispatch. They also queried
about the number of available artillery cannon to establish roughly how
many field guns could be employed in battle. In addition, they enquired
about the “presence of spearmen and swordsmen” and “what style would
either Japanese or Western troops have?” These latter Tokugawa enqui-
ries reveal the leaders’ halfhearted attitude toward reform even in the face
of their regime’s existential crisis. Moreover, Tokugawa officials asked
about the “total number” of men including noncombatant followers,
a question that confirms that they were still approaching military prepara-
tion within the mindset of Edo period military mobilization practices. On
February 12, 1868, Tokugawa leaders attempted to implement elements
of infantry conscripted in lands under direct Tokugawa control. In many
respects, this initiative had already been partially carried out during the
mid-1860s. Yet Tokugawa leaders abruptly ended these efforts on
February 27, 1868, claiming they were no longer necessary following
the withdrawal from Osaka of Tokugawa infantry units. As these events
demonstrate, even when their very survival was at stake, the leaders of the
Tokugawa government proved unable to radically overhaul the estab-
lished model of feudal military service and strategy.
Yet that was not always the case with the pro-Tokugawa units on the
ground. As the war spread across eastern Japan, members of the former
Tokugawa army employed more sophisticated tactics, with some units
transforming into veritable, modern forces. Former bakufu infantry units
emerged as a core group embracing Western practices. Imai Nobuo, the
14
In early 1868, Sendai leaders initially obeyed directives from the Meiji government but
later joined the alliance against the new regime.
Tokugawa retainer profiled by Robert Hellyer, was a well-known swords-

man. Along with Furuya Sakuzaemon, Imai commanded a unit com-
posed of former bakufu infantry, the Shō hō tai, which fought in clashes in
the northern Kanto and Shinetsu regions, before also participating in
battles in Aizu and Hokkaido. On May 23, 1869, the Shō hō tai, and
another unit, the Denshū tai, both under Imai’s command, engaged
Meiji government forces at the Battle of Futamataguchi near Hakodate.
Over a span of seventeen hours, the two units, which together numbered
no more than 130 men, reportedly fired 35,000 rounds of ammunition.15
The heavy use of rifle fire demonstrates that Imai had definitely trans-
formed himself from a swordsman into a leader of a rifle brigade employ-
ing modern tactics.
Supplies, Transport, and Various Devices

for the Execution of War
Wars are decided not only on the battlefield; logistics also matter.
The movement of personnel and associated arrangements for meals,
accommodation, provisioning, and transportation, as well as the ship-
ping of materials such as weapons and ammunition often pose sig-
nificant challenges. In the case of its eastern expeditionary forces, the
new government entrusted smaller domains along the major highway
routes with responsibility for provisioning as well as the handling of
transport and shipping arrangements, thereby spreading out the
duties of transporting troops and setting up accommodations along
multiple poststations. In addition, the government placed station
supervisors at each poststation, and entrusted the transportation of
ammunition and provisions to a system whereby each poststation
would relay official personnel and their baggage to the next station
along the route.
The new government assumed authority over the realm’s five major
routes and side roads, and on April 23, 1868, it set up a poststation
authority in Kyoto. In 1711, the shogunate had established official fares
for the poststation system: 20 mon per person per league per day, and
twice that for each horse. Those rates were successively raised in later
years. The new Meiji government set fares at 7.5 times the 1711 standard,
which was the real level of fares at the time. However, during the Boshin
15
Imai Nobuo, Ezo no yume [The Dream of Ezo] in Nanka kikō [The Southern Advance]
Hokkoku sensō gairyaku [A Rough Account of the War in the Northern Provinces]
Shō hō tai no ki [An Account of Corps of the Piercing Halberd] eds. Ō tori Keisuke and
Imai Nobuo (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ō raisha, 1998), p. 208.
164 Hō ya Tō ru
War inflation soon made the official, Meiji government rate obsolete, as it
turned out to be much lower than the de facto market price.16
By April 1868, the new government enacted levies that required vil-
lages near poststations to supply personnel and horses for military trans-
port. The government imposed these levies across the realm, even on
previously exempted villages. Meiji leaders emphasized that these were
temporary wartime measures and that “exemptions would resume imme-
diately on the conclusion of the expeditionary war.” They did not keep
their promise.
Important military equipment, too valuable to be entrusted to support
personnel, had to be transported by the expeditionary forces themselves.
Each domain’s military was permitted coolie laborers for this purpose
designated as “military porters” or “camp porters.” As was the case with
Tokugawa units, these included noncombatant servants (hō kō nin) at the
bottom end of the retainer hierarchy. To secure the necessary manpower,
domains also often hired local peasants who had no relationship to the
retainer hierarchy. A quartermaster, appointed by each domain, took
responsibility for necessary provisions and their transport. He also
assumed the duties of supplying ammunition and provisions for men in
the field and fodder for horses. In addition, he supervised financial
matters, and assured evacuation of wounded to hospitals. The quarter-
master therefore combined the logistical roles of the modern military’s
transport corps, accounting department, and medical staff. Despite logis-
tical exigencies of war and theoretical plans drawn up in advance, many
people fled from the poststations when battles occurred. As a result, few
remained to carry artillery and ammunitions to battlefields. Therefore, for
all intents and purposes, the existing poststation system ceased to
function.17
The new government appointed three lords from the minor northern
Kanto domains of Kurobane, Otawara, and Karasuyama to be in charge
of provisioning imperial forces, granting them the direct authority to
commandeer peasants from agricultural villages to serve as military por-
ters, a power beyond that normally enjoyed by an individual lord in
peacetime.
Traditional methods predominated in war finance. On February 16,
1868, the new government decided that it needed to raise 3 million ryō to
fund the war. To meet that goal, the government demanded that merchants
in Kyoto and Osaka provide money, and forced villages and merchant
16
Yamamoto Hirofumi, Ishinki no kaidō to yusō [Roads and Transportation at the Time of
the Meiji Restoration] (Tokyo: Hō sei Daigaku Shuppan-kyoku, 1972), pp. 17–18.
17
Hō ya, Boshin sensō , pp. 132–133.
associations to contribute as well. In addition to these resources, the govern-

ment borrowed and procured a total of 4.64 million ryō during the Boshin
War.18
Also on February 7, the new government issued an order halving the
amount of annual tribute for its allied domains. While the object of this
ploy was to win the hearts of those in enemy territory, the unexpectedly
rapid pacification of western Japan prompted the new government to
rescind its original proclamation, and covertly renege on the tribute
reduction order.19 The government did not officially announce this
step, except in the form of responses to direct inquiries. This led to
incidents such as that which befell the Sekihō Brigade, a grassroots mili-
tia. The government labeled the unit a “false army,” and ordered the
execution of its members for spreading word of the purported tribute
reduction. The cancelation of the promised reduction in annual tribute
proved to be indispensable for funding the war.20
In July, the new government began to issue large amounts of bills
denominated in gold. In the first two years, it issued 48 million yen (ryō )
worth of “Great Council of State” notes and 7.5 million yen (ryō ) worth of
“Civil Department” notes. Because its procurement of resources had
stalled, the government financed its forces using promissory notes to pay
for military resources. In addition, the government financed its expedition-
ary forces using booty – gold, rice and other various grain crops – seized
from Tokugawa territories. It also benefited from voluntary contributions
proffered by Edo-based lords and bannermen who sought to demonstrate
their allegiance to the new regime.
Local procurement of cash by military expeditions and remittances
from the accounting offices of the new government necessitated the use
of exchange houses. The new government tapped the three major mer-
cantile houses of Mitsui, Ono, and Shimada to act as exchange autho-
rities. Serving as pursers, representatives of these families accompanied
each of the three expeditionary forces. The Meiji government thus sup-
ported the advance of its new army by drawing on large amounts of credit
and by creating special capital reserves.21
The active role of the emperor was a key factor in military centraliza-
tion. On April 6, 1868, the emperor personally proclaimed the famous
Charter Oath, which included swearing before the divine spirits of Japan
18
Sawada Akira, Meiji zaisei no kisoteki kenkyū [A Basic Study of Meiji Finances] (Tokyo:
Kashiwa Shobō , 1966).
19
Miyachi, “Fukko-ki gen-shiryō no kisoteki kenkyū ,” pp. 66–139.
20
21
Mitsui Bunko, ed., Mitsui jigyō shi [The History of Mitsui Business Enterprises] honpen 2
kan [Original edition, Part 2] (Tokyo: Mitsui Bunko, 1980), pp. 3–23.
166 Hō ya Tō ru
(kami ) that “deliberative assemblies shall be widely established and all

matters decided by open discussion.” Court nobles and lords who parti-
cipated in the ceremony paid homage before the kami and to the emperor,
each signing an oath to follow direct, imperial rule. Other lords and nobles
subsequently signed the document over the course of the year. Meiji
leaders took a strict stance toward those who stood against their new
regime by invoking a reference to the power of the kami read aloud on the
occasion of the official signing: “traitors and enemies [to the new regime]
shall perish.” On April 12, 1868, the Emperor Meiji personally dedicated
shrines in the imperial palace to four kami associated with war, deities that
appeared in the mythical conquest of Izumo by the Yamato state.22 With
this “war-deity ceremony,” Meiji leaders created a new sacred celebration
that drew on myths surrounding the formation of the Yamato state, which
as Mark Ravina explores in his chapter, was a step they considered in the
creation of a national paper currency as well.23
Meiji leaders also employed strategic devices, such as war memorials,
to emphasize the sacred mission and legitimacy of the “government
armies” led by the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance. On February 5, 1868,
they rewarded lords who had distinguished themselves in the Battle of
Toba–Fushimi, and recognized as “national war martyrs” those who died
in battle from the new ruling coalition of domains of Satsuma, Chō shū ,
Hiroshima, Tosa (present-day Kō chi Prefecture), and Inshū (present-day
Tottori Prefecture). Moreover, shrines were established to memorialize
the souls of these dead loyalists. On July 21, 1868, a ceremony commem-
orating the spirits of the dead was held in the grand hall of the west citadel
of Edo Castle. In Kyoto, the construction of a shrine to venerate the war
dead began in the Higashiyama temple district. It enshrined not only the
dead from the Boshin War but also those “martyred” in service of the state
since the arrival of Commodore Perry in 1853. In addition, in
August 1868 a ritual service to comfort the souls of the war dead was
held on the grounds of the Kawahigashi military training ground in
Kyoto.24 Similar ceremonies were also performed on battlefields, as
well as in domains supporting the new government. In 1869, construction
began on a shrine in Tokyo, later named Yasukuni Shrine.
Meiji leaders emphasized their legitimacy by directing that their sol-
diers carry gold brocade banners to distinguish them as members of
22
These were Amaterasu-ō mikami, Ō kuninushi-no-ō kami, Takemikazuchi-no-ō kami, and
Futsunushi-no-kami.
23
24
Kishimoto Satoru, “Boshin sensō to shō konsai – Tottori shō konsha kigen” [The Boshin
War and Ceremonies for War Dead – The Origin of Shrines to Commemorate War Dead
in Tottori] Tottori chiiki shi kenkyū 4 (2002): 49–58.
“government armies” in contrast to the rebel contingents. These pen-

nants were designed by a scholar of National Learning, Tamamatsu
Misao, reputedly based on an essay, “A Consideration of the Imperial
Banner,” penned by the Heian era scholar, Ō e Masafusa. Shinagawa
Yajirō , a military officer from Chō shū , played a hand in developing these
banners. He possessed a flair for propaganda and probably composed
the loyalist ballad, “Go-all-the-Way” (Tokoton-yare-bushi). Following
its debut in Kyoto, troops often sang it during marches. Further propa-
ganda devices were gold cloth epaulets, conceived of as “scraps of cloth”
from the brocaded banners. These were distributed beginning on
March 13, 1868 to honor troops from the domains who served in the
expeditionary forces and mark their places in the “government army.”25
A Social History of the Battlefield

The Boshin War was Japan’s first war with the full-fledged use of contem-
porary modern weapons clashing in battles against early modern fighting
strategies. Firefights with rifles exemplified the shift in combat techniques.
When encountering an enemy force, soldiers would look to find cover or
gain the high ground before starting a firefight. Based on extant records, it
appears that firefights often began at distances between 300 and 500
meters. Long-distance firefights consumed large amounts of ammunition.
A 128-man rifle company led by Ogawa Sennosuke from the Kaga Domain
(today’s Ishikawa Prefecture) used 46,000 rounds of ammunition in battles
on the Hokuetsu Front during the first half of 1868.26 During a single day
of fierce fighting, one rifleman would fire fifty to sixty bullets. However,
because engagements usually occurred at distances of approximately 500
meters, the accuracy of the shots fired was quite low.
Perhaps the most dramatic example of sustained early modern battle-
field practices was the taking of heads of enemies wounded or killed by
gunfire. Even when continuing an advance, the taking of heads would
begin as soon as the battle lulled, contrary to the explicit orders of field
commanders. To inspire victory, the gathered heads of enemy soldiers
would be left exposed to the elements on the battlefield. Records of battles
in the Tohoku region reveal that enemy heads would be loaded into sacks
and then exposed to the elements below castles of a defeated lord.
25
Asakawa Michio, “Kenmon gumon kaisetsu kō nā – ishin dō ran to nishiki no mihata”
[Explanation Corner for Clever and Foolish Questions – The Upheaval of the Meiji
Restoration Period and the Nishiki no Mihata Banner] Rekishi to chiri 582 (March 2005):
28–33.
26
Noted in Ogawa’s diary, which is held in the Ishikawa Prefectural Museum of History.
168 Hō ya Tō ru
Soldiers captured alive were put to the sword. William Willis,

a physician attached to the British Legation, treated wounded soldiers
in hospitals established by the new regime. He was appalled to find that,
“wounded prisoners received almost no sympathy and were usually
beheaded.” In November 1868, Willis went to Niigata, which had sur-
rendered, to continue treating the wounded. He wrote that, “to date,
I have yet to see even one wounded enemy prisoner,” which he attributed
to the fact that “wounded enemy soldiers are slain indiscriminately.”27
This suggests that the systematic killing of adversaries was a particular
characteristic of Japanese warfare in the mid-nineteenth century, possibly
inspired by popular tales written during the Tokugawa peace detailing
how samurai should show no mercy in battle.
The general staff of the government army that captured Wakamatsu,
the castle town of Aizu, issued the following circular memorandum
expressing the need to punish atrocities:
We have received reports of cruel behavior such as carving flesh from the bellies of
dead rebel soldiers (zokuhei). Such behavior is reprehensible. Although called
rebel soldiers, they too are children of the empire, and all men are ordered to
comply to prevent such violent treatment.28
As a battlefield custom, plunder was a common practice and recognized
as legitimate behavior. The government army issued regulations stating
that: “[P]lundered material including guns, ammunition, as well as specie
and caches of grain, are to be reported to central command.” Although
surrendered items were supposed to be forwarded to headquarters, after
the war advanced into Tohoku, the government ordered that equipment
such as artillery and ammunitions gained as plunder by each domain
instead be sent to the government’s munition office. It directed that
specie and caches of grain be delivered to the purser, with one-third of
the plundered goods given as a share to the domain whose troops had
procured the booty. Although weapons and provisions taken directly
from the enemy forces were legitimate plunder, shortages of foodstuffs
and materials meant that anything found in enemy territory became
a target. In short, sanctioned expropriation devolved into simple looting.
27
William Willis and Ō yama Mizuyo, trans. Bakumastu-ishin o kakenuketa Eikokujin ishi:
yomigaeru Wiriamu Wirisu monjo [An English Physician Running through the
Bakumatsu Restoration Period: Reviving the Documents of William Willis] (Tokyo:
Sō sendō , 2003), pp. 380–381. See also Hugh Cortazzi, Dr Willis in Japan, 1862–77:
British Medical Pioneer (London: Athlone Press, 1985).
28
Twelfth day of the ninth month (October 27, 1868). “Amano Yū ji gunryo nisshi” [The
Military Travel Journal of Amano Yū ji] in “Tottori-hanshi Amano Yū ji nisshi,”
Unpublished documents, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo.
Inhabitants of villages near battlefields feared arson above all. A much-

favored combat strategy for breaking open a tactical situation would be to
set fire to a homestead. In addition, in areas where the enemy had the
upper hand, the opposing side would set fire to houses with the aim of
depriving the enemy of its base of support and dampening its strength.
While arson was considered a legitimate combat tactic, both sides pro-
hibited indiscriminate incendiarism. The anti-Meiji forces issued com-
mands declaring that: “burning houses without the order of a superior
would be punished as a grave offense, similar to arson.” Nonetheless,
villages allegedly allied with the enemy were burned without compunc-
tion. As the tide war approached, villagers would carry away their house-
hold goods and even parts of their homes, transporting them to the hills or
forests where they hid. This suggests the difficulty of preventing fires to
private homes. We know that some evacuated their homes after removing
the floorboards.
Finally, both the government army and the Northern Alliance con-
scripted a large number of people as military porters when the Boshin
War reached the Tohoku region. Young people in urban areas and those
traveling in the mountains or between towns were on the lookout for
military band members, who might conscript them to serve as laborers.
This random requisitioning practice of civilians was a wartime custom that
dated back to the sixteenth-century Sengoku [Warring States] Period.29
Conclusions
Despite its short duration, the Boshin War transformed military technol-
ogy, practices of warfare, and social organization. The war acted as
a catalyst in the adoption of Western-style military systems, which were
quickly implemented because of rapid advances in rifle technology. Yet
importantly this new system included existing feudal features of military
mobilization. Although both the shogunate and individual domains had
adopted elements of Western military technology, reformers within the
shogunate proved unable to effectively turn the use of new technology
into a uniform, national military system of organization. By contrast, the
leaders of Satsuma and Chō shū , who seized the reins of power and
established a new government in the name of the restoration of imperial
rule, successfully accomplished this military transformation on a national
scale.
29
Fujiki Hisashi, Zō hyō tachi no senjyō : Chū sei no yō hei to dorei-gari [The Battlefield of Rank
and File Soldiers: Medieval Mercenaries and Slave Hunting] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha,
1995).
170 Hō ya Tō ru
This military revolution shattered multiple, early modern conventions.

The strengthening of the central military authority was achieved by
specific state interventions in the military organizational authority of
individual feudal rulers. Although continuing to fight after the Battle of
Toba-Fushimi, the remnants of the deposed shogunate proved unable to
push through similar reform measures even during the war. The political
and organizational differences in the character of both sides in a moment
of crisis became apparent.
Overall, the Boshin conflict demolished the autonomous military orga-
nizational authority and capability of lords, thus enabling the central state
to intervene in the feudal territorial system. The war demonstrated that
early modern military forces with matchlock muskets, bows, and spears
and mounted warriors were obsolete. As a result, the centuries-old feudal
military system, with samurai families as its core units, collapsed. As
Takagi Shō saku has argued, the adoption of a military system in response
to the new technologies introduced from the West had repercussions
beyond the battlefield and shook the very foundations of the early modern
status system and facilitated the transition to a modern, centralized form
of governance. Yet to develop a unified national army, a key part of the
establishment of a centralized nation-state, Japan had to experience what
can be termed a second coup d’état. This came with the abolition of
domains and the establishment of the prefectures in 1871, a move that
completely eliminated the feudal territorial system and eventually led to
the dismissal of the hereditary warrior aristocracy as the governing class of
Japan.
8 Imai Nobuo
A Tokugawa Stalwart’s Path from the Boshin War
to Personal Reinvention in the Meiji Nation-State
Robert Hellyer
In his comprehensive study of Sakamoto Ryō ma, arguably the most

popular figure of the Meiji Restoration, Marius Jansen concluded that
the Meiji government’s success in forming a viable nation-state in the
decades following 1868 created an environment in which Japanese could
begin to revere the Tosa samurai. In the eyes of many, Sakamoto became
a hero, killed on the eve of the Restoration at just thirty-two years of age
while fighting for a noble, national cause.1 Writing in the run up to the
Meiji centennial, the novelist, Shiba Ryō tarō , helped solidify that heroic
image. Inspired by Jansen’s work, Shiba cast Sakamoto as an ambitious
nationalist offering a proactive plan to drastically revise Japan’s governing
structure along democratic lines. Moreover, Shiba portrayed the Tosa
samurai, who started his own trading firm in Nagasaki in the mid-1860s,
as a man imbued with an entrepreneurial, commercial spirit akin to that
which had helped Japan experience high-speed economic growth
a century later.2 Today, tourists flock to the site of Sakamoto’s trading
office in Nagasaki as well as the merchant residence in Kyoto’s
Kawaramachi District where in, December 1867, he perished at the
hands of the Mimawarigumi, a pro-Tokugawa, auxiliary constabulary
then assisting police in the capital.
Not surprisingly, Imai Nobuo, identified as the Mimawarigumi man
whose sword struck the fatal blow to Sakamoto, has been relegated to the
shadows of Restoration history, although in recent years local groups in
Shizuoka have established monuments in his honor.3 Although not
1
Marius B. Jansen, Sakamoto Ryō ma and the Meiji Restoration (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1961), pp. 345–346.
2
Christian Tagsold, “Popular Realms of Memory in Japan: the Case of Sakamoto Ryō ma,”
Contemporary Japan 25 (1) (2013): 50–51.
3
In 2003, a stone monument was erected on the location of Imai’s former residence in
Shizuoka. Tsukamoto Shō ichi, ed., Ishin no gunzō : Makinohara kaitaku hiwa [A Dynamic
Band of Surviving Retainers: the Secret History of the Development of Makinohara]
(Shizuoka: Hatsukura Kyō dokai, 2011), p. 253.
171
172 Robert Hellyer
making the same grand mark on political events as Sakamoto, Imai belies
being categorized as an antihero to Sakamoto and other men awarded the
moniker of “men of high purpose” (shishi ) in the Restoration drama. Imai
proved himself a crack soldier, battlefield leader, and loyal comrade as he
fought tenaciously for the pro-Tokugawa/anti-Meiji causes in points
throughout Japan before and after the Restoration. He and his compa-
triots thus offer intriguing lenses through which to move away from the
usual emphasis on the victorious Satsuma-Chō shū alliance and instead
chart a narrative of Restoration era conflicts from the perspective of pro-
Tokugawa groups.4
Through the stories of Imai and other pro-bakufu individuals and groups,
this chapter will consider the 1860s as a decade of violent, armed conflicts
that occurred throughout the Japanese realm, capped by the Boshin War. It
will highlight the relationships that helped to sustain many groups before
and after the Restoration, as well as the personal losses and dislocation
caused by the conflicts. In addition, it will examine how Imai and other
Tokugawa stalwarts moved beyond the violence and disappointment of the
Restoration period and achieved individual reinvention as tea farmers in
Shizuoka Prefecture. The men and their families benefited not from
a coherent and sustained Meiji government policy, but rather a patchwork
of financial support from the Tokugawa house and local governments.
In so doing, the chapter will thus demonstrate the influence of a global
trend: the rise of tea consumption in Britain and the United States. Soon
after the Restoration, tea emerged as Japan’s second largest export (after
silk), shipped almost exclusively to the United States. US consumer taste for
green tea allowed Japan’s nascent tea industry to boom, creating economic
opportunities for ex-Tokugawa stalwarts and thus propelling Shizuoka to
become Japan’s biggest producer of tea, a position it continues to hold today.
In sum, because of Meiji Japan’s intersection with global commodity mar-
kets, déclassée Tokugawa retainers, intriguingly in new roles as farmers
producing a key export good, could contribute to, and benefit from, nation-
state formation in the decades after the Meiji Restoration.
Imai and Pre-Restoration Violence

The assassination of Ii Naosuke, then serving as the bakufu’s great elder
(tairō ), on a February morning in 1860 set a violent tone for the decade,
4
Michael Wert has recently added to our understanding of those on the losing side of
Restoration conflicts with an examination of Oguri Tadamasa and his place in memory
and historical discourse since 1868. Michael Wert, Meiji Restoration Losers: Memory and
Tokugawa Supporters in Modern Japan (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,
2013).
Imai Nobuo 173
marked first by a string of attacks by loyalist groups, which also often

advocated the forced expulsion of Westerners from the realm. Over the
next few years, loyalists waged a terrorist campaign targeting Tokugawa
officials for their “tyranny” and lack of reverence to the political position
of the emperor. Other bands also attacked Western merchants and diplo-
mats. As Maren Ehlers explores in her chapter, loyalists from Mito (the
Tengu Insurrection of 1864–1865), pursued by shogunal forces,
embarked on an often destructive march through areas such as the Ō no
domain to bring their appeals to leaders in Kyoto.
Executing Emperor Kō mei’s edict declaring that all foreigners be for-
cibly expelled from the Japanese realm, in early 1863, officials in Chō shū
trained domain shore batteries on Western ships (and those of rival
domains) plying the straits between Honshu and Kyushu. In response
a combined naval force from the United States, France, Britain, and the
Netherlands handily defeated Chō shū ’s units and forcibly removed the
domain’s batteries in an engagement in September 1864. The previous
month, a combined contingent of Satsuma and Aizu men repulsed
a group from Chō shū as it attempted to gain control of the imperial
residence. Bakufu leaders would subsequently assemble a force to punish
Chō shū for its transgressions against Tokugawa rule, but disbanded it
when the domain’s loyalist leaders capitulated, marking in many respects
an end to that movement’s role. Nonetheless, Chō shū remained a thorn
in the side of the shogunate, and bakufu leaders assembled another force
to move against the domain in 1866. The Tokugawa contingent, although
enjoying superior numbers, demonstrated unexpected weakness, and
eventually withdrew.
Imai watched these events with disgust from Yokohama, where he
served in the magistrate’s office. Thankfully for historians, he related his
remembrances of the turbulent 1860s to a reporter, who penned an
exposé that ran in an Osaka magazine in 1900. In the piece, Imai noted
how his time in Yokohama became especially important for the relation-
ships he formed with two other Tokugawa retainers who had traveled to
Western nations: Masuda Takashi, subsequently head of a branch of the
Mitsui Corporation, and Yano Jirō , who would serve in the Meiji govern-
ment’s diplomatic corps and help to establish a number of educational
institutions.5 Imai also developed lasting friendships with two other men
who, like him, hailed from Tokugawa vassal (hatamoto) families: Furuya
Sakuzaemon and Kubota Sendairō (aka Shigeaki). In Yokohama, both
5
Christine Guth has chronicled Masuda’s later life as a patron of the tea ceremony and
other Japanese traditional arts. Christine M. E. Guth, Art, Tea, and Industry: Masuda
Takashi and the Mitsui Circle (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1993).
174 Robert Hellyer
men studied Western military tactics and Furuya apparently distin-

guished himself by learning to speak excellent English under the tutelage
of an American missionary.6
Imai grew particularly angry at Chō shū ’s brash moves supporting
expulsion, as well as reports of pro-Tokugawa units fleeing from engage-
ments with Chō shū troops. With Masuda and Yano, he decided to muster
a militia of “loyal and brave” samurai who could assist Tokugawa forces.
Bakufu officials rebuked their efforts, however, seeing the militia not as
a means of assistance but, instead, a potential threat to Tokugawa author-
ity. Undaunted, Imai traveled to what is today Gunma Prefecture, an area
where he noted, with frustration, that members of the Tengu Insurrection
had organized “peasants and gamblers” into an anti-bakufu force during
their aborted rebellion. He therefore set about giving martial training to
peasants in order to develop a unit of farmer-soldiers (nō hei ) like those
explored in detail by Brian Platt in his chapter. As Platt notes, the greater
internal unrest that emerged in the 1860s prompted many throughout the
Japanese realm to form such units. Imai aimed to develop a force that pro-
bakufu leaders could deploy to quash local disturbances. At the cusp of
achieving success, he decided to abandon that enterprise and travel to
Kyoto in November 1867 because of what he identified as the grave
disturbances unfolding there. Through introductions from acquain-
tances, he became a member of the pro-Tokugawa Mimawarigumi,
which along with the better-known Shinsengumi, included several hun-
dred members. Together the two groups worked with police to quell the
growing number of political plots in Kyoto, many spearheaded by lordless
samurai.7
Imai recounted these events later in life, and thus we should approach
his remembrances with caution, aware that he perhaps emphasized some
activities to put him on a historical footing with prominent samurai from
the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance. For example, in recalling his goal to train
a peasant force, Imai may have sought to cast himself as an activist akin to
Takasugi Shinsaku, renowned for his contribution in creating the
Kiheitai, a Chō shū militia composed of samurai and peasants.8 Imai
6
“Sakamoto Ryō ma satsugai-sha” [The Man Who Killed Sakamoto Ryō ma] Kinki hyō ron
17 (May 1900): 22–23. I thank Suzuki Keiko of Ritsumeikan University for helping me
gain access to this article; Memoir of Uchida Manjirō , who at the age of 15 fought along
with his father in Imai’s unit. Quoted in Mashimo Kikugorō , Meiji Boshin Yanada senseki-
shi [A Military History of the Meiji-Boshin Era Battle of Yanada] (Koizumi-chō (Gunma
Prefecture)) Yanada Senseki-shi Hensan Kō enkai, 1923), p. 274.
7
“Sakamoto Ryō ma satsugai-sha,” p. 23.
8
For an overview of the Kiheitai and other such units in bakumatsu Chō shū , see
Press, 1967), pp. 270–281.
Imai Nobuo 175
offered some positive appraisals of Sakamoto, describing the Tosa

samurai as resourceful, particularly in creating his own activist/commer-
cial band, the Kaientai.9 Imai emphasized that as a member of the
Mimawarigumi, he saw Sakamoto not as part of either the anti-
Tokugawa or loyalist causes, but simply a criminal who needed to be
brought to justice for stirring up unrest in Kyoto. When Mimawarigumi
members located Sakamoto’s whereabouts, they therefore did not hesi-
tate to move against him with force.10 In subsequent correspondences,
Imai stressed that the Mimawarigumi acted based upon reports that
Sakamoto had killed two constables sent to arrest him the previous year.11
Imai and Battles of the Boshin War

In the aforementioned Osaka magazine interview, the reporter focused on
exploring events surrounding the killing of Sakamoto, underscoring that
popular interest in the Tosa samurai was already strong during the Meiji
period. Yet for Imai, the incident with Sakamoto was but a small part of
a violent and eventful two-year period of his life marked by his involve-
ment in most of the key battles of the Boshin War.
A few weeks before Sakamoto’s death, Tokugawa Yoshinobu stepped
down as shogun and returned political power to the imperial house,
ending over 250 years of Tokugawa dominance over the Japanese
realm. Michio Umegaki has argued that this move capped a trend devel-
oping over the 1860s whereby the Tokugawa regime had acted more as
a regional power than as a national government. He concludes that by
abdicating as shogun, Yoshinobu put the Tokugawa house in a more
advantageous position to compete with the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance.12
Yet any political advantage Yoshinobu may have garnered from the
abdication was short-lived. Following the January 3, 1868 coup at the
Kyoto Imperial Palace, leaders of the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance gained
unfettered access to the Emperor Meiji and proclaimed the “restoration”
of the emperor to what they claimed was his rightful position as the
9
Sakamoto’s development of the group during the fluid political scene of the mid-1860s is
outlined in Jansen, Sakamoto Ryō ma, pp. 223–270.
10
“Sakamoto Ryō ma satsugai-sha,” pp. 24–25.
11
“Imai Nobuo shokan” 1909/12/17 (December 17, 1909) ME198-0006 (document
number), Dai Nihon ishin shiryō kō hon (hereafter DNISK) [Manuscript of Historical
Records Related to the Meiji Restoration of Japan]. 1846–1873. Unpublished
manuscript collection, Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo.
12
Michio Umegaki, “From Domain to Prefecture,” in Japan in Transition: From Tokugawa
to Meiji, eds. Marius B. Jansen and Gilbert Rozman (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 1986), pp. 93–94.
176 Robert Hellyer
definitive leader of the Japanese state. Yoshinobu and Tokugawa leaders

resisted this power grab, fearing it would lead to the creation of a new
shogunate dominated by Satsuma and Chō shū . Over the next few weeks,
they set up a headquarters at Osaka Castle and mobilized loyal groups to
combat those of Satsuma, Chō shū , and other alliance domains arriving in
and around Kyoto. Tokugawa leaders deployed their units, with a total
strength of roughly 13,000 men, at key positions in Kyoto and at nearby
Toba and Fushimi.13
Some 400 men strong, the Mimawarigumi joined a Tokugawa force at
Lower Toba. Given the vital role of rifles as detailed by Hō ya Tō ru in his
chapter, the Mimawarigumi must have been at a significant disadvantage
as its men had few firearms and, instead, primarily carried pikes.
Nonetheless, the group reputedly fought valiantly, particularly in limiting
advances of Satsuma units in several key engagements. Although the
Mimawarigumi’s overall casualty toll was low, Imai did lose two of the
comrades involved in the attack on Sakamoto a few months earlier. In
addition, he saw Kubota, his friend from his days in Yokohama, being
carried from the battlefield, mortally wounded.14
The five days of battle at Toba and Fushimi ended in a dramatic
Tokugawa defeat. Yoshinobu retreated to Edo on a Tokugawa warship
and the Mimawarigumi disbanded, apparently deemed no longer neces-
sary by Tokugawa leaders. Imai also made his way back to Edo, returning
to his family’s home in the Hongō district. Yet he quickly returned to
service, becoming second in command of a unit led by Furuya. Katsu
Kaishū , a prominent Tokugawa leader then attempting to find ways for
the Tokugawa house to regroup, provided financial support for the unit,
which included approximately 400 men and was equipped with four
cannon.15
The unit soon readied to leave Edo, ostensibly to pacify areas to the
north of the city in parts of what are today Gunma, Saitama, and Tochigi
Prefectures. Imai’s sister recalled keenly feeling her brother’s departure.
She noted that his earlier posts had largely been as a guard or in the case of
Kyoto the previous year, akin to an auxiliary constable. Watching him
walk through the gate of their Hongō home, sharing a laugh while arm in
13
of Hawai’i Press, 1980), pp. 418–420.
14
Totman, The Collapse of the Tokugawa Bakufu, p. 422; Imai Sachihiko, Sakamoto Ryō ma
o kitta otoko: bakushin Imai Nobuo no shō gai [The Man Who Killed Sakamoto Ryō ma: The
Life of a Tokugawa Retainer, Imai Nobuo] (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ō raisha, 1971), pp.
54–56. Imai Sachihiko was the grandson of Nobuo.
15
Many sources describe Katsu as providing financial support including an account
recorded by Furuya’s son, Kō jirō . Quoted in Mashimo, Meiji Boshin Yanada senseki-
shi, p. 300.
Imai Nobuo 177
arm with the Furuya, she sensed a difference: this time her brother was
a soldier, heading to a war from which he may not return.16
As it moved north, the unit picked up supporters, achieving an
overall force strength of roughly 1,100 men.17 After strategically
avoiding Satsuma and aligned forces fighting under the imperial
banner, Imai and the unit engaged them at Yanada in what is today
Ashikaga City in Tochigi Prefecture. Having supplied provisions to
both sides, local villagers sensed a battle was in the making. They
therefore gathered around the somewhat remote Yanada area early on
the morning of April 1, 1868 to view an expected clash. Taking
advantage of a thick morning mist, imperial troops stealthily
approached the pro-Tokugawa unit’s perimeter. The imperial forces
launched what Imai what later describe as a surprise, “jet black
attack,” using the mist and especially the darkened background of
spectators in the distance as cover for their approach. Imai’s men
found it difficult to pinpoint exact targets on which to focus their rifle
fire against what appeared to be a black horizon. The battle, there-
fore, involved more hand-to-hand combat than other Boshin War
engagements. Within a few hours, the imperial forces had achieved
a rout while suffering only a handful of causalities. Imai and his force
retreated with a loss of sixty-two men and eighty wounded. They
would eventually regroup at the pro-Tokugawa bastion of Aizu.
Domain officials provided aid to the unit’s wounded and at an area
temple, held a ceremony memorializing the men lost.18
A Stuffed Sunpu
Meanwhile events in Edo took dramatic turns that would have implica-
tions for Imai and others opposing the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance’s nas-
cent imperial government. In May 1868, Katsu made the strategic
decision for the Tokugawa house to assume a passive stance against its
imperial opponents and surrendered Edo Castle without a fight.19 The
following month, Satsuma and Chō shū forces routed the Shō gitai [The
League to Demonstrate Righteousness], which had been asserting
16
Imai Sachihiko, Sakamoto Ryō ma o kitta otoko, pp. 64–65. 17 Ibid, pp. 62–64.
18
Ibid, pp. 74–78. Imai Nobuo described the battle in an account penned a few years later,
Shō hō tai no ki [An Account of Corps of the Piercing Halberd]. Ō tori Keisuke and
Imai Nobuo, Nanka kikō [The Southern Advance] Hokkoku sensō gairyaku [A Rough
Account of the War in the Northern Provinces] Shō hō tai no ki [An Account of Corps of
the Piercing Halberd] (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ō raisha, 1998), pp. 160–161.
19
M. William Steele, “Against the Restoration: Katsu Kaishu’s Attempt to Reinstate the
Tokugawa Family,” Monumenta Nipponica 36 no. 3 (Autumn 1981): 299–316.
178 Robert Hellyer
increasingly influence in Edo, during a one-day engagement at the Battle

of Ueno Hill.20
For the Tokugawa house, the next few months would prove devastating
as it surrendered the majority of its estates and thus lost the income
derived from them. Yoshinobu entered formal retirement on the remain-
ing Tokugawa estates that fanned out from the castle town of Sunpu,
today’s city of Shizuoka. The six-year old Tokugawa Iesato became the
head of the Tokugawa house and in July 1868, the lord of those lands,
which together formed the Sunpu domain. Because the Tokugawa house
enjoyed substantially less income, it could no longer provide stipends,
annual grants of rice bestowed by a samurai lord, to most of its retainers
and their families.
Foreseeing limited opportunities and fearing reprisals from the
Satsuma and Chō shū men now asserting control over Edo, in the late
summer of 1868 roughly 6,000 people, mostly Tokugawa retainers and
their families, chose to travel to Sunpu by land and sea. The refugee
families stayed in the homes of samurai and commoners in the castle
town. Yet because the Sunpu castle town had only around 4,500 houses,
the former Edo denizens also had to lodge in farmhouses and temples in
the surrounding countryside, where some samurai families remained for
several years.21 In his memoirs, Katsu recalled being part of a group of
fifty people who rented a large farmhouse in the mountains near Numazu,
a port city east of the Sunpu castle town.22 Some of Furuya’s family
members also fled Edo, eventually subletting a house in Sunpu.23
Tea Farming as a New Samurai Profession

Beginning in 1869, the newly formed Meiji government instituted
a number of measures that, in stages, eliminated the samurai class over
the next few years.24 The samurai families relocating to Sunpu were
therefore at the cusp of the dissolution of their class. Given their lord’s
20
M. William Steele, “The Rise and Fall of the Shō gitai: A Social Drama,” in Conflict in
Modern Japanese History: The Neglected Tradition, eds. Tetsuo Najita and
J. Victor Koschmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1982), pp. 134–142.
21
Ō ishi Sadao, Makinohara kaitaku shi kō [A Study of the History of the Development of
Makinohara] (Shizuoka: Shizuoka-ken Chagyō Kaigisho, 1974), p. 10.
22
Katsu Kaishū , Katsu Kaishū jiden – Hikawa seiwa [The Autobiography of Katsu Kaishū :
A Retrospective – Told at Hikawa] ed. Katsube Mitake (Kashiwa, Chiba: Hiroike
Gakuen Shuppanbu, 1969), p. 184.
23
Reminiscences of Furuya Kō jirō in Mashimo, Meiji Boshin Yanada senseki-shi, p. 304.
24
The Meiji government began the process in 1869 by dividing the class into of two groups,
upper samurai (shizoku) and lower samurai ranks (sotsu), and more or less completed it in
1876 when samurai stipends were converted to bonds and samurai were denied the right
to wear swords. Andrew Gordon, A Modern History of Japan: From Tokugawa Times to the
Imai Nobuo 179
diminishing influence, they realized the necessity of finding new voca-

tions. Some hoped to gain positions in the new government or become
schoolteachers. Still others attempted to develop businesses. Although
often described as a noble return to a purer existence tied to the soil, many
samurai, who had only known life in the urban metropolis of Edo,
demurred at the idea of taking up farming as a profession.
Nonetheless, a good number did choose to begin farming thanks to
a global trend explored by Mark Metzler in his chapter: the commodities
boom of the 1860s. Over the course of the nineteenth century, Britain and
the United States, both with burgeoning industrial economies, experi-
enced dramatic rises in tea consumption, stimulating increased produc-
tion in East Asia. In Britain, then importing almost exclusively Chinese
tea, per capita consumption rose from 1.39 pounds in 1840–1844 to
3.48 pounds from 1865–1869.25 US per capita tea consumption fluctu-
ated from .99 pounds in 1840 to 1.21 in 1850 before dropping to
.91 pounds between 1861 and 1870, a decline no doubt due to the
disruption of imports during the US Civil War.26 Yet, overall during the
same period, US tea imports by volume more than doubled, from
20 million pounds in 1840 to 47 million in 1870.27
Japan became the first state to challenge China’s monopoly of the world
tea market and supply tea to the British and US markets. Following the
establishment of Hakodate, Yokohama, and Nagasaki as treaty ports in
1859, green tea emerged as one of Japan’s key exports. Shipments of the
leaf rose from a mere 500,000 pounds in 1859 to just under 12.5 million
pounds by 1867, with tea comprising approximately 20 percent of all
exports by value.28 Although the first shipments had been sent to both
Britain and the United States, by the time of the Meiji Restoration the
United States, then primarily a green-tea consuming nation, had emerged
as the biggest market for Japanese green tea. Thanks to increasing US
Present, 3rd ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2014), pp. 64–65. For consistency,
in this chapter, I will refer to anyone in the samurai class until 1876 as “samurai.”
25
Robert Gardella, Harvesting Mountains: Fujian and the China Tea Trade, 1757–1937
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), p. 61.
26
E. G. Montgomery and C. H. Kardell, Apparent Per Capita Consumption of Principal
Foodstuffs in the United States, U.S. Department of Commerce, Domestic Commerce
Series 38 (Washington, DC: United States Government Printing Office, 1930), p. 48.
27
Susan B. Carter, Scott Sigmund Gartner, Michael R. Haines, Alan L. Olmstead,
Richard Sutch, and Gavin Wright, eds., Historical Statistics of the United States,
Millennial Edition On Line, Series Ee590-611 (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2006), pp. 5–554–5–555.
28
Nihoncha Yushutsu Hyakunenshi Hensan Iinkai, Nihoncha yushutsu hyakunenshi [The
History of 100 Years of Japanese Tea Exports] (Shizuoka: Nihoncha Yushutsu Kumiai,
1959), pp. 32, 527.
180 Robert Hellyer
demand, a cultivator could earn higher profits for tea than other com-
modities, such as rice, on the Shizuoka market.29
In response to these high prices, both farmers and the newly arrived
samurai began to plant tea fields throughout Shizuoka. For centuries,
Japanese farmers had grown tea, usually a bush or two in between fields,
to supply the individual needs of their families. Farmers had limited
knowledge, however, about cultivating and processing tea on a large
scale. New cultivators therefore probably consulted some of the few
available guidebooks on tea farming and refining. In 1871 the Hikone
domain (today’s Shiga prefecture), located near Kyoto, published one
such manual. Its authors stressed that their volume would present all
aspects of tea production in an accessible way for the benefit of individual
cultivators and by implication, the greater imperial nation (kō koku).30
A similar guide with more detailed information and diagrams of tools
required to pick and process tea was published in 1873.31
The Development of Makinohara

Following their group’s arrival in Sunpu, the samurai of the Shinbangumi
[the New Guard Unit] (previously known as the Seieitai [the Elite
Corps]) initially maintained their positions as Yoshinobu’s personal
guards, stationed near the shrine to Tokugawa Ieyasu at Mt. Kunō
(Kunō zan Tō shō -gū ). In July 1869, Tokugawa Iesato was appointed
governor of the Sunpu domain, which was subsequently renamed
Shizuoka (which also became the name for the castle town of Sunpu).
As the Tokugawa lord assumed the trappings of a “modern” governor,
the new domain administration deemed the Shinbangumi outdated and
disbanded the group, leaving the unit’s samurai without official positions,
and the regular stipends that went with them.
Shinbangumi leaders identified Makinohara, a largely uncultivated and
unpopulated stretch of former Tokugawa lands west of Shizuoka City, as
an area for resettlement. In 1869, an estimated 250 samurai families
29
Kawaguchi Kuniaki, Chagyō kaika: Meiji hatten shi to Tada Motokichi [The Creation of
the Tea Industry: Tada Motokichi and the History of Meiji Era Expansion] (Tokyo:
Zenbō sha, 1989), pp. 58–59.
30
Hikone-han, Seicha zukai [A Guide to Tea Manufacturing] in Meiji zenki sangyō hattat-
sushi shiryō bessatsu [Documents Related to the Development of Industry in the Early
Meiji Period, Supplemental Volumes] 107 (II), ed. Meiji Bunken Shiryō Kankō kai
(Tokyo: Meiji Bunken Shiryō Kankō kai, 1971) (originally published in 1871), p. 202.
31
Masuda Mitsunari, ed., Seicha shinsetsu [New Methods of Tea Production] in Meiji zenki
sangyō hattatsushi shiryō bessatsu [Documents Related to the Development of Industry in
the Early Meiji Period, Supplemental Volumes] 107 (II), ed. Meiji Bunken
Shiryō Kankō kai (Tokyo: Meiji Bunken Shiryō Kankō kai, 1971) (originally published
in 1873).
Imai Nobuo 181
moved into Makinohara, once again living as guests in farmhouses,

temples, or temporary shacks until they could build more permanent
homes. Each samurai family received a small stipend as well as an allot-
ment of land, often with stands of woods that needed clearing to make
way for tea fields. Historian Ō ishi Sadao explains that while historians
disagree about when and how much was distributed, most conclude that
the Shinbangumi’s initial funding came from the Tokugawa house, with
additional support later provided by the Shizuoka domain.32
On their respective plots, each samurai family began to build a home,
dig a well, and plant trees to serve as windbreaks for the new house and tea
fields. Many constructed a separate room or detached shack for proces-
sing tea. At the time, a tea farmer would process freshly picked tea leaves
first by steaming them for a short time. He would then place them on
a sturdy tray positioned atop a charcoal brazier. By hand, he would
gradually work the tea to eliminate moisture and stop the oxidation
process, thereby making a product that could be shipped to Yokohama
for further processing before export.33
In his examination of early Meiji period samurai resettlement, David
Howell notes that some groups fought to hold onto a marker of their
samurai status, the wearing of two swords, as they began lives predomi-
nately as farmers in Hokkaido.34 In Makinohara as well, the male heads of
samurai households sought to maintain connections to the martial roots
of their class, for example, by including areas in their homes for their
children to practice kendo and archery. Some samurai also taught those
martial arts to the children of farmers in Makinohara.35
As they settled into their new lives, Shinbangumi leaders communi-
cated with a group of former Shō gitai who after their defeat at Ueno, had
settled in Numazu. Ō taniuchi Ryō gorō had led just under one hundred
Shō gitai members and their families to the port city where they hoped to
secure employment and begin new lives. Although providing some finan-
cial assistance to the Shinbangumi, the leaders of Shizuoka domain
refused to offer any aid to the Shō gitai members, stressing that the group’s
brash actions at Ueno in 1868 had tarnished the name of the Tokugawa
house. After nearly two years of failed appeals to domain officials, in 1870
Ō taniuchi urged his members to join the Shinbangumi in Makinohara.
For many in the group, the decision was not an easy one, as few aspired to
become tea farmers. Ō taniuchi resisted in part because of his own physi-
cal condition: a bullet wound suffered during the Battle of Ueno had
32
Ō ishi, Makinohara kaitaku shi kō , pp. 25–27. 33 Ibid, p. 24.
34
David L. Howell, “Early Shizoku Colonization of Hokkaidō ,” Journal of Asian History 17
(1983): 54–56.
35
Ō ishi, Makinohara kaitaku shi kō , pp. 19–25.
182 Robert Hellyer
paralyzed his right arm. Yet as an indication of the sense of group identity
that the Shō gitai maintained, fifty-three men and their families chose to
move to Makinohara at the behest of Ō taniuchi. As with the
Shinbangumi, the Shō gitai members sought to maintain their martial
skills by practicing kendo, often in the gardens of their homes.
Nonetheless, that group cohesion proved hard to maintain as Ō taniuchi
feuded with other members. When it was learned that the previous year he
had ordered the murder of two “disloyal” compatriots, Ō taniuchi, then
thirty-seven years old, chose to commit suicide at an area temple in
February 1871. Ō taniuchi, however, appears to have been an extreme
case. With the assistance of Shinbangumi samurai, a good portion of the
remaining Shō gitai members and their families transitioned into lives as
tea farmers.36
Although smaller in number, another displaced group, workers in the
transport system across the Ō i River, which empties into the Pacific
Ocean just north of Makinohara, joined the samurai farmers. In the
seventeenth century, the Tokugawa regime, remembering the bitter mili-
tary battles of the previous century, had restricted bridge construction
across the Ō i to maintain it as a barrier against a possible military strike
against Edo. Travelers on the Tō kaidō , the thoroughfare linking Edo and
central Japan, therefore relied upon a regulated labor pool of porters who
transported people and goods across the river. The porters would receive
wages based upon how far the water reached on their bodies as they
ferried people and goods, as well as assisted horses across the river.37
In 1870, the Meiji regime abolished the porters’ guild in anticipation of
building a bridge across the Ō i, a move that placed approximately 1,300
men out of work. In response, a guild leader submitted a series of petitions
to the local government, detailing the now indigent conditions of the
unemployed porters. Although supporting the construction of the new
bridge, he urged that the porters and their families receive plots in
Makinohara to begin cultivating tea. After repeated requests, local leaders
relented, providing land and funds for the former porters.38
In August 1871, the Meiji government further centralized its power by
abolishing the domains and establishing in their place prefectures admi-
nistered not by lords but by governors dispatched from Tokyo. As another
step in the elimination of the samurai class was implemented, fields in
Makinohara planted a few years earlier matured, producing more tea.
36
Ibid, pp. 52–60.
37
Inagaki Shisei, ed., Edo seikatsu jiten [A Dictionary of Life in Edo] (Tokyo: Seiabō , 1975),
p. 74.
38
Shimada Shishi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Shimada shishi [The History of Shimada City], Vol. 2
(Shimada, 1973), pp. 80–81.
Imai Nobuo 183
The new prefectural government continued to provide funds to assist

samurai farmers and all the while, the export trade grew: in 1872 Japan
shipped 14.7 million pounds of tea, valued at just over 4.23 million yen.39
Imai in Makinohara
When we left his story, Imai and the other unit leaders were regrouping in
Aizu following their defeat at Yanada in April 1868. The group thereafter
decided to travel to Echigo Province to join the battles there.
Reconstituting its force along way, the unit eventually took the moniker
of the Shō hō tai [Corps of the Piercing Halberd].40 Imai and his men
participated in battles for Nagaoka Castle against Chō shū and Satsuma
forces. When imperial troops finally prevailed after some of the more
bitter engagements of the Boshin War, the Shō hō tai traveled to nearby
Aizu where it supported the defense of Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle. Resolved
to continue the fight even after that anti-Chō shū -Satsuma bastion fell,
Imai and remaining members of the Shō hō tai boarded the Chō geimaru, an
English-made steamship purchased by the bakufu in 1864, and sailed to
Hakodate in the autumn of 1868. After several months carrying on the
fight, in June 1869 the remaining 150 men of the Shō hō tai surrendered
along with the rest of the Hakodate garrison. The imperial army took Imai
into custody, subsequently sending him to a Tokyo prison.41
In an extensive report, a Shizuoka official later detailed Imai’s transgres-
sions, explaining his involvement in the killing of Sakamoto. The official
described Imai as subsequently fleeing Kyoto and “repeatedly opposing
and attacking” imperial troops before surrendering, a rendering that gave
short shrift to Imai’s committed service fighting in numerous battles
throughout the Boshin War.42
Little is known as to why Imai was released from prison and sent to the
Shizuoka in 1872. A popular account asserts that Saigō Takamori per-
sonally ordered the release although no evidence exists to support that
claim. Whatever the circumstances, it is striking that a previously ardent
39
Ō ishi, Makinohara kaitaku shi kō , pp. 27–30; Japan Department of Finance, Returns of the
Foreign Trade of the Empire of Japan for the Thirty-two Years from 1868 to 1899 Inclusive
(Tokyo: Hō yō dō , 1901), pp. 43–45.
40
Historians describe the Shō hō tai as composed primarily of men from bakufu units that
had received French training before 1868. Konishi Shirō , Kamiya Jirō , and
Yasuoka Akio, eds., Bakumatsu ishin shi jiten [A Dictionary of the Bakumatsu and Meiji
Restoration Periods] (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ō raisha, 1983), p. 113.
41
Imai Sachihiko, Sakamoto Ryō ma o kitta otoko: bakushin Imai Nobuo no shō gai, abridged
edition (Tokyo: Shin Jinbutsu Ō raisha, 2009), pp. 292–300.
42
“Gyō bu-shō mō shiwatashi” [Orders of the Ministry of Justice] 1870/9/20 [Gregorian
calendar: October 14, 1870], ME198-0006, DNISK.
184 Robert Hellyer
opponent of the Meiji regime was allowed to not only quickly re-enter
society but also join the bureaucracy. In 1875, Imai gained a low-ranking
position in the Shizuoka prefectural government, which stationed him
temporarily on Hachijo Island, at the time administered by Shizuoka. In
1877, however, he abruptly quit his post and traveled to Tokyo ostensibly
to join imperial troops trying to suppress the Satsuma Rebellion led by
Saigō . Yet, intriguingly, Imai actually aimed to throw in his lot with Saigō ,
one of the leaders of the imperial cause that Imai had fought so tena-
ciously against. Before he could travel to Kyushu, however, the conflict
ended in victory for the Meiji regime.43
The Satsuma Rebellion became a personal watershed for Imai, who
thereafter would once again reinvent himself: embracing the life of
a farmer while turning his back on his warrior past. Perhaps because of
his previous official position, Imai received roughly two hectares of gov-
ernment land in Makinohara near the farms of Shinbangumi samurai. He
built a home and devoted half of his acreage to a new tea field. During
times of harvest, he employed seven or eight farmhands to assist in picking
and processing tea. Imai no doubt benefited from the agricultural knowl-
edge of his wife, who was raised on a farm outside of Edo, an advantage
not enjoyed by many of his samurai neighbors, who were also learning
how to farm on a large scale. During this final phase of his life, Imai
remained active in local affairs, including establishing a school. Further
showing his desire to bury his martial past, he pointedly refused to view
a kendo competition held at the school a few years later. Imai would also
serve as mayor of his village before passing away in 1918.44
Conclusions
As noted in this volume’s introduction, conflicts in Japan during the
1860s, including the bloodiest battles of the Boshin War, did not match
the death toll and scale of devastation witnessed during other contem-
porary intrastate clashes, notably the US Civil War and China’s Taiping
Rebellion. Yet as outlined above, Imai and other pro-Tokugawa stalwarts
offer perspectives on what led the 1860s to become a violent decade,
culminating in the Boshin War. Imai and his compatriots remained
deeply committed to the Tokugawa house, as epitomized by Imai’s
43
Imai Sachihiko, Sakamoto Ryō ma o kitta otoko, abridged ed., pp. 292–300.
Tsukamoto Shō ichi, ed., Hakuun no sakigake: kaiteiban Sakamoto Ryō ma o kitta otoko
[A Pioneer in the White Clouds: A Reconsideration of the Man Who Killed Sakamoto
Ryō ma] (Shizuoka: Hatsukura Mahoroba no Kai, 2017), pp. 111–114.
44
Ō ishi, Makinohara kaitaku shi kō , pp. 66–74.
Imai Nobuo 185
attempts to form peasant and samurai militias and his willingness to

resolutely fight for the anti-Meiji cause. We should also note the role of
personal connections, such as Imai’s long-standing friendships formed at
Yokohama as well as the bonds at the heart of the Shō gitai and
Shinbangumi, which helped those groups retain a sense of community
even after relocating to Shizuoka. Finally, we should not forget the
personal toll of the conflicts revealed in, among other events, the anxiety
of Imai’s sister watching him leave to join the Boshin War and the physical
scars such as the crippled arm of Shō gitai leader, Ō taniuchi.
As with any armed conflict, the battles of the Restoration period
left bitter memories on both sides. Yamagata Aritomo, an officer in
the triumphant imperial forces and a key Meiji government leader,
was said to be brought to tears decades later when recalling the death
of a childhood friend in a hard-fought battle near Nagaoka in 1868.45
Shiba Gorō , born to a high-ranking samurai family in the domain of
Aizu, recounted later in life the tragedy and tumult experienced by
his family during and after the battle for Aizu-Wakamatsu Castle in
the summer of 1868. Before the battle, his family sent Shiba, then
eight-years old, to the safety of the countryside. Returning following
the victory of imperial forces, Shiba found his home destroyed and
his grandmother, mother, and two of his sisters dead, having taken
their own lives in order to conserve food as the men of the family held
up in the besieged castle. As part of the Meiji government’s relocation
of the lord of Aizu and his retainer band, Shiba and his family were
later sent to the northern tip of Honshu, where they cleared and
attempted to farm a windswept plot of land. Shiba grimly recalled
the lack of food, days of hard labor, and nights spent in a small and
drafty home.46
The treatment of Shiba’s family, along with Imai’s arrest, under-
score how immediately following the Boshin War, sentiment within
the Meiji leadership advocated punishment for many vanquished
enemies. Yet within a few years, central government leaders chan-
ged tack and created opportunities for men from Aizu and other
defeated domains to find reinvention and places in Meiji society.47
As Steven Ivings outlines in his chapter, Meiji leaders encouraged
men from Aizu and other former opposing domains to become
45
Harold Bolitho, “The Echigo War, 1868” Monumenta Nipponica 34, no. 3 (Autumn
1979): 262.
46
Shiba Gorō , Mahito Ishimitsu, and Teruko Craig, Remembering Aizu: The Testament of
Shiba Gorō (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, 1999), pp. 45–59, 74–99.
47
This included Shiba, who was able to attend a military school and enter the Japanese
Imperial Army, rising to the rank of general in 1919. Ibid, pp. 127–138, 149–150.
186 Robert Hellyer
“farmer-soldiers” (in this case called tondenhei because of their

anticipated role in farming new lands and defending against
a possible Russian incursion) and settle in Hokkaido after 1874.
The tondenhei program allowed a samurai family to receive a plot of
land, along with financial support, in order to begin a new life of
farming. In the program, the men of each household also trained as
soldiers with the goal that they could form a military bulwark
against feared Russian military encroachments. As Ivings explains,
the tondenhei never coalesced to form a viable military force.
Nonetheless for the samurai moving to Hokkaido, the program
offered, at least in theory, a means to become invested personally
in agendas related to the formation of the nation-state: the defense
of newly defined national borders as well as the “taming” of
a frontier region.
As has been explored in this chapter, the samurai who became farmers
in Makinohara had no such grand and immediate national banner to
follow as they traded their swords for hoes. Instead, many could transition
to lives as farmers because of a trend on the other side of the Pacific: US
consumers, thanks to their larger disposal incomes, purchasing increasing
amounts of Japanese green tea. The success of these samurai in becoming
tea farmers was also a result of private initiatives of the Tokugawa house,
as well as domain and prefectural financial support. The leaders of the
Meiji central government contributed primarily by choosing not to seek
retribution from their former enemies.
Of course, the success of these small groups of former Tokugawa
retainers was not always replicated throughout Japan as the samurai
class was disestablished and approximately 250 independent
domains were eliminated in order to form a cohesive nation-state.
Meiji leaders faced rebellions led by disgruntled samurai in western
Honshu and Kyushu, punctuated by the Satsuma Rebellion in
1877. Nonetheless, the story of Tokugawa stalwarts to tea farmers
in Shizuoka reveals that individual reinvention was possible for
many, and with it national reconciliation after a divisive and violent
1860s.
This was epitomized by the case of Imai, a man who personally
experienced a fair share of violence and fought to the very last
against the new Meiji regime. Imai, who may have killed the hero
seen as inspiring the enterprise of national formation, could reinte-
grate into society and live quietly farming tea, a citizen of the
Japanese nation-state. It was a surprisingly comfortable fate and
one that Imai may himself have believed was too good to last. He
built his house in Makinohara with a single entry, replete with walls
Imai Nobuo 187
to stymie would-be intruders. For good measure, he devised escape

routes through the bamboo grove behind the house that led to the
homes of other ex-Tokugawa retainers.48 If Meiji leaders changed
their minds and decided to move against their former enemy, he was
ready. Yet no one ever came.
48
Tsukamoto Shō ichi, ed., Hakuun no sakigake, pp. 200–201. I thank Tsukamoto Shō ichi
for taking the time to show me the remains of Imai’s house in July 2018.
Part 3
Domestic Resolutions
Figure 9.1 “River landscape in Izu Province,” 1868–1870.

Wilhelm Burger Collection, courtesy of Austrian National Library
9 Settling the Frontier, Defending
the North
“Farmer-Soldiers” in Hokkaido’s Colonial
Development and National Reconciliation
Steven Ivings
Few places went through as rapid and profound a transformation as

Hokkaido did during the Meiji period. As the final battles of the Boshin
War reached their conclusion at Hakodate in the summer of 1869, the
island of Hokkaido (formerly Ezo) was not solidly within Japan’s orbit,
and much of the island continued to be primarily the realm of the Ainu. In
such places, the Japanese presence was in reality limited to seasonal fish-
ing posts, a foothold that led many prominent figures of the Meiji period
to warn of the vulnerability of the empire’s northern gate and call for
special efforts to ensure it remained under Japan’s sway.
Despite these limited foundations, Kuroda Kiyotaka, the head of
the Hokkaido Development Agency (hereafter Kaitakushi ), could
proclaim in 1881 that “today’s Hokkaido is not yesterday’s Ezo.”1
These words were a little premature in their triumphalism, but they
still had a ring of truth to them and certainly, by the end of the Meiji
period, Hokkaido had been transformed. An unprecedented expan-
sion in both industry and agriculture had taken place and the island’s
population mushroomed. In 1869, little over 58,000 people resided in
Hokkaido – approximately 10,000 of which were Ainu – yet by the
turn of the century a huge influx of settlers saw this number climb to
almost 1 million. By the end of the Meiji period in 1912, Hokkaido
was home to over 1.7 million.2
The scale and speed of this flow of population to the northeast
Asian frontier constitutes a Meiji parallel to an ongoing “settler
revolution,” a global phenomenon that was transforming – often
1
Michele Mason, Dominant Narratives of Colonial Hokkaido and Imperial Japan Envisioning
the Periphery and the Modern Nation-State (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), p. 43.
2
Hokkaidō -chō Takushokubu, Hokkaidō -chō takushoku tō keisho daisankai [Third Statistical
Report of Hokkaido Prefecture] (Sapporo: Hokkaidō -chō , 1917), pp. 77–79.
191
192 Steven Ivings
after first creating – “uninhabited” territories,3 which were reshaped

into productive appendages of expanding colonial empires.4
However, as Hokkaido (Ezo) had long been a territory somewhat
vaguely, and confusingly, located both on and beyond the edge of
Japan’s contingent realm, it has largely escaped the attention of
most scholars of settler colonialism.5 Hokkaido was located too
close to the Japanese metropole to be a “new world” in the sense
that the Americas or Australasia were for European settlers, and it
may be that its incorporation proceeded both so thoroughly and
rapidly that it went largely unnoticed by scholars outside the field
of Japanese history. Indeed, even standard Japanese accounts are
able to weave Hokkaido’s history firmly into the national fabric with
Hokkaido’s past recast as “local history” (chihō shi or kenshi ) in
which terms such as “colonization” are substituted with the tame
equivalent “development” and the displacement and dispossession
of the Ainu is recast as the transplantation of Japanese civilization to
an otherwise empty wilderness.6 Still, not all scholarship has shied
away from the more awkward or ambiguous aspects of Hokkaido’s
past, as evinced by the use of the term “inner colony” (naikoku
shokuminchi ). But even this term serves to keep Hokkaido in the
embrace of the national historical narrative – albeit as a territory
requiring a special form of governance – while simultaneously
recognizing its historical experience as distinctly Ainu land.
Whatever line we take on the degree to which the whole of Hokkaido
could be considered a part of Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, this
should not serve to obscure the startling transformation that occurred
there during the Meiji period. If not internal in 1869, it certainly had been
internalized by 1912, as the flood of Japanese settlers extended far beyond
the Matsumae domain’s Oshima peninsula enclaves of yesteryear. This
chapter focuses on the process of internalizing Hokkaido via colonial
settlement, which is defined as the establishment of permanent commu-
nities of settlers who proceed to transform what they deem a terra nullius –
however constructed or imagined that notion may be – into sites of
3
Patrick Wolfe, “Settler Colonialism and the Elimination of the Native,” Journal of
Genocide Research 8, no. 4 (December 2006), 387–409.
4
James Belich, Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Anglo-world,
1783–1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009); Lorenzo Veracini, Settler
Colonialism: A Theoretical Overview (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).
5
Ezo in the Edo era was described by Brett Walker as “indisputably foreign but nonetheless
within the orbit of Japanese cultural and commercial interests.” Brett Walker, The
Conquest of Ainu Lands: Ecology and Culture in Japanese Expansion, 1590–1800 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2001), p. 40.
6
Mason, Dominant Narratives, p. 2.
Settling the Frontier, Defending the North 193
productive activity. Japanese activity on Hokkaido in the Meiji period

aimed at bringing the island closer into the nation’s embrace so as to ward
off potential foreign encroachment. This would be achieved by a process
familiar to scholars of colonial history, and which is firmly at the heart of
efforts at “making settler colonial space.” Aptly termed the transforma-
tion of “frontiers into assets,” the process serves to legitimize territorial
claims through a demonstration of effective governance, inhabitation,
and the productive use of resources.7 In this sense, the settler colonial
nature of Hokkaido in the Meiji period is clear, even if unlike Japan’s
other colonies Hokkaido survived the breakup of the Japanese colonial
empire in 1945. What is important here is that the internalization of
Hokkaido was not complete at the onset of the Meiji period, and thus
warranted a special colonial arrangement to its governance which, in the
words of Iwakura Tomomi, sought to “make Ezo into a small Japan.”8
In the standard narratives of Hokkaido’s Meiji period transformation,
center stage is given to the government, and a settlement program it
devised which sought to establish communities of farmer-soldiers – lit-
erally “soldiers in the fields” (tondenhei ) – in the Hokkaido wilderness in
order to cultivate land and ward of the Russian threat. The tondenhei have
become synonymous with Hokkaido’s development. The heroic narra-
tives of the tondenhei’s dual struggle to tame the wilderness and defend the
frontier have permeated historical accounts and left a strong imprint on
local identity in Hokkaido. Local politicians on occasion invoke the
“tonden spirit” (tonden seishin) as a rhetorical device,9 while numerous
monuments and museums dedicated to the tondenhei dot the Hokkaido
landscape. This chapter joins Michele Mason in suggesting that the
significance of the tondenhei in Hokkaido’s colonial development has
been exaggerated. Unlike Mason, however, it is not concerned with
a discussion of their function in the historical narrative of Hokkaido’s
development. Instead, the chapter will evaluate them on their own terms,
assessing the contribution of the tondenhei to the defense of Hokkaido and
their role in fostering permanent and productive Japanese communities
on the island. In so doing, it will stress their mixed record as agricultural
settlers and the limited nature of their defense capabilities. Ultimately, it
argues that the tondenhei form only a minor part of a much broader and
diverse process of internalizing Hokkaido as an integral part of Japan.
7
Lorenzo Veracini, “The Imagined Geographies of Settler Colonialism,” in Making Settler
Colonial Space: Perspectives on Race, Place and Identity, eds. Tracy Banivanua Mar and
Penelope Edwards (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010), p. 182.
8
Mason, Dominant Narratives, p. 1.
9
Ibid, p. 31; also see foreword in Sapporo-shi Kyō iku Iinkai, Tondenhei [Farmer-Soldiers]
(Sapporo: Sapporo Bunkō , 1985).
194 Steven Ivings
Furthermore, it posits that initially the tondenhei program was geared

toward reconciling disaffected elements of the samurai class, especially
those from the defeated clans of the northeast, and thus the program had
more to do with taming internal rather than external threats.
An Outline of the Tondenhei Settlement Program

The tondenhei system became something of a pet project of Kuroda
Kiyotaka, a key Satsuma figure, who commanded imperial troops in the
capture of Hakodate in 1869. He served as the head of the Kaitakushi and
eventually went on to become Japan’s second prime minister.10 Before
Kuroda submitted the proposal calling for the establishment of the ton-
denhei system, he had served as the head of the Karafuto (Sakhalin)
Kaitakushi. In this role, Kuroda witnessed the complete failure of
Japanese efforts at colonizing Karafuto with a group drawn from the
Tokyo poor, and the comparative Russian success in colonization.
Alarmed by these developments, Kuroda petitioned the central govern-
ment to abandon Karafuto and drastically redouble efforts on
Hokkaido.11 How these efforts should proceed continued to be the source
of much debate within the inner circles of the fledgling Meiji state. In late
1873, Kuroda, now head of the Hokkaido Kaitakushi, submitted
a proposal to establish a system whereby members of the former samurai
class would be resettled in Hokkaido as farmers who would also perform
a military function.
Saigō Takamori and others had previously advocated a system whereby
development and defense would be pursued by the samurai class. In some
ways, Kuroda’s proposal borrowed from the ideas of Enomoto Takeaki
who, in the last phase of the Boshin War, had established a short-lived
government on Ezo composed of forces that still resisted the authority of
the new regime. In Ezo, Enomoto attempted to end the conflict with
a compromise whereby the Meiji government would allow shogunal
forces to develop and fortify the vulnerable north. This offer was, of
course, rejected by the Meiji regime, but after the war Kuroda had worked
hard to secure Enomoto’s pardon, and then reemployment in the
Kaitakushi. The two became close political allies and as such it is quite
possible that Enomoto’s ideas influenced Kuroda, especially as Kuroda
10
Okuda Shizuo, “Hokkaidō kaitaku o kenbiki shita hito – Kuroda Kiyotaka” [The Man
behind Hokkaido’s Colonization, Kuroda Kiyotaka], Tonden 45 (2009): 3.
11
Eventually, Kuroda had his way in 1875, as Enomoto Takeaki – the very man who had
surrendered to Kuroda at the battle of Hakodate – led a delegation to St. Petersburg to
conclude a treaty in which Japan ceded its claims to Karafuto in exchange for Russia’s
reciprocal cessation of claims to the entire Kurile Island chain (Chishima).
advocated that the program could serve as a means to provide employ-

ment to the samurai of former domains who had been on the losing side of
the Boshin War.12
If the idea to settle samurai in the far north of the Japanese realm was
not entirely new, neither was the term tondenhei itself. Like many Meiji era
reforms, the system proposed by Kuroda dressed innovation in language
that appealed to antiquity as a means of instilling a modern national
subjectivity.13 The tondenhei of yesteryear appear in ancient Japanese
and Chinese historical chronicles as groups of farmer-soldiers residing
in frontier areas who could be called upon to guard the imperial realm
should a threat materialize.14 This connection to antiquity may have
served an important rhetorical purpose, linking the settlers to the emperor
as guardians of the imperial realm, but in the context of Hokkaido, the
construction of a comprehensive tondenhei settlement program was cer-
tainly a Meiji innovation. Nevertheless, the tondenhei were not the first
samurai settlers of the Meiji period, and, in many ways, they built on, and
borrowed from, the private efforts of (former) domains at group migra-
tion to Hokkaido, which will be mentioned later. Kuroda’s proposal
instead represented the first time that the Kaitakushi took full responsi-
bility for the recruitment and maintenance of samurai settlers in a flagship
program. The proposal itself was received in November 1873, and swiftly
accepted by the Council of State (Dajō kan). In 1874, regulations were
issued for the tondenhei system’s implementation and the following year
the first group arrived in Sapporo.
The rationale behind Kuroda’s proposal centered on four pressing
concerns: the need for improved defense in Hokkaido; the need to further
develop Hokkaido; the need to provide (re)employment for the samurai
class; and the need to reduce expenditures on development and
defense.15 In a similar way to the Tokugawa retainers turned tea farmers
who appear in Robert Hellyer’s chapter in this volume, there really was
a sense of two birds with one stone about this proposal. In Shizuoka,
veterans of the losing side of the Boshin War could be personally recon-
ciled with the national cause and reinvented as agricultural colonists who
by producing one of Meiji Japan’s key exports, contributed to national
development. In Hokkaido, the dual concerns of development and
defense were to be met by a single program based on samurai settlers.
The program would reemploy a samurai class that was losing its purpose
12
Enomoto Morie, Hokkaidō no rekishi [The History of Hokkaido] (Sapporo: Hokkaidō
Shinbunsha, 1987), pp. 182–191; Sapporo-shi Kyō iku Iinkai, Tondenhei, pp. 21–22.
13
Mason, Dominant Narratives, p. 34. 14 Sapporo-shi Kyō iku Iinkai, Tondenhei, p. 11.
15
Uehara Tetsusaburō , Hokkaidō tondenhei seido [Hokkaido’s Tondenhei System] (Sapporo:
Hokkaidō -chō Takushokubu, 1914), p. 8.
196 Steven Ivings
following reforms such as the abolition of the domains and the conscrip-
tion order, both implemented in the 1870s.16 We will return to an
assessment of the performance of the tondenhei system in each of these
regards later, however, first it is worth outlining the system and what it
entailed for those who participated in it.
The tondenhei system existed between 1874 and 1904 and involved the
relocation of 7,337 households (approximately 40,000 people) – usually
in groups of 200 households at a time – to thirty-seven preselected settle-
ments across Hokkaido. The first tondenhei settlements were established
in Kotoni and Yamahana near Sapporo in 1875 and 1876. The last was
started at Kenbuchi in 1899 and ran as a tondenhei settlement until 1904,
when the Kenbuchi tondenhei completed their official term of service. As
the program drew to a close, it was clear that Hokkaido’s population
growth and level of development rendered the special settlement program
obsolete. Moreover, the tondenhei were no longer required to ensure
Hokkaido’s defense, following the establishment of the seventh division
of the imperial army at Asahikawa in 1896.17
The regulations of the tondenhei system initially required that recruits
were drawn from the samurai class, however, from 1890 onwards this
restriction was removed and thereafter commoners accounted for the vast
majority of recruits.18 In some ways, the opening of recruitment to the
nonsamurai classes can be interpreted along the lines of the wider trend
toward incorporating farmers into local militia for defense and policing
purposes. That trend began in the later part of the Edo period and
continued into the Meiji era, as Platt outlines in his chapter of this
volume. The regulations also required that recruits should be aged
between seventeen and thirty-five, exceed 152 centimeters in height,
and be of good health – determined through a physical examination.
In addition, recruits were required to bring their families with them to
Hokkaido and to settle as farmers. This transplanting of young samurai to
Hokkaido as farmers alongside their family units made sense for the goals
of the program on a number of levels. Settlers in their physical prime were
best suited to the arduous task of clearing the northern wilderness and
bringing it under cultivation. In addition, the settlement of entire families
16
Wakabayashi Shigeru, “Tondenhei-tachi no Meiji ishin” [The Farmer-Soldiers’ Meiji
Restoration], Tonden 41 (2007): 11.
17
Uehara, Hokkaidō tondenhei seido, pp. 26–27.
18
While it is well-established that the vast majority of pre-1890 recruits were drawn from
the samurai class, on occasions, regulations were not fully enforced, and so it is possible
that a few of the earlier tondenhei had a commoner background. “Miyagi Aomori Sakata
sanken no tondenhei boshū wa shizoku ni kagirazu heimin demo yoi” [Recruitment of
Farmer-Soldiers from the Three Prefectures of Miyagi, Aomori, Sakata Is Not Restricted
to Samurai, Commoners Are also Fine], Yomiuri shinbun, March 3, 1875.
provided extra farm labor and reduced the likelihood that individual
tondenhei would seek to return to the mainland to reunite with family, or
to seek a marriage partner.19 For the purposes of defense, making farmers
out of samurai made sense as they could be a cost-effective physical
presence on the frontier. Unlike a full-time military, the tondenhei were
eventually supposed to provide their own sustenance from their farms. As
they would be defending land that directly supported their livelihood, it
was thought they would offer a more spirited defense.
For those applicants who were admitted as tondenhei and dispatched to
Hokkaido alongside their families, colonial settlement came with both
duties and privileges. Tondenhei committed to fostering a family farm in
the Hokkaido settlement to which they were dispatched, and to three
years of active service in the settlement’s militia, followed by two years in
the reserves.20 Farming duties continued throughout the year, with mili-
tary duties less frequent. In most settlements, tondenhei were expected to
participate in small-scale military drills around once a month. During the
slack winter season, maintenance of the farm could be left to the family,
and so these months saw more comprehensive military drills, often invol-
ving travel around Hokkaido and maneuvers alongside tondenhei militia
from other settlements.
In return for their commitment to farming and military service, tonden-
hei received a number of privileges that were not bestowed on other
settlers – even those who were partially subsidized by the Hokkaido
authorities. Transportation costs were covered, and upon arrival tonden-
hei could immediately move into prebuilt houses, which although admit-
tedly simple constructions, had been designed with reference to American
and Russian equivalents so as best to deal with Hokkaido’s climate. These
basic, yet sturdy, constructions were above all practical. They were
equipped with a central stove and were furnished with basic home trap-
pings – luxuries that were not afforded ordinary settlers. Moreover,
tondenhei were also supplied with essential agricultural implements,
a rifle and sword, as well as a military uniform. Perhaps most importantly
of all, tondenhei households received three years of rice provisions and
a subsidy for other food staples from the authorities.21 This was particu-
larly important as a secure food supply mitigated the dangers that a poor
harvest would pose for ordinary settlers (poor harvests were especially
19
Ibid, pp. 47–50, 61–62. 20 Ibid, pp. 51–52.
21
The ultimate responsibility for financing the tondenhei settlement program shifted over
time between the Kaitakushi, Hokkaido prefecture, and the Army Ministry (see Figure
9.1 for the exact timing). In this sense it appears to have been much like the patchwork of
financial support received by the samurai turned tea farmers of Shizuoka prefecture that
appear in Hellyer’s chapter in this volume.
198 Steven Ivings
likely in the difficult early years when land clearance work was still in
progress).22 This level of subsidy and support from the authorities
marked the tondenhei as a privileged settler group.
The Tondenhei as Protectors of the Northern Gate

Most accounts suggest that, in the face of an expanding Russian empire,
the tondenhei played a crucial role in keeping Hokkaido in Japanese hands.
Nonetheless, there is much to suggest that the tondenhei were as much
about the diffusion of internal as they were about external threats.
Tondenhei settlements were heavily concentrated around Sapporo and
the Ishikari Plain, far removed from the Sō ya Straits, from where on
a clear day, Sakhalin – the most proximate part of the Russian Empire –
could be seen (see Figure 9.2). Most settlements were also located in the
interior, and while tondenhei there could perhaps have provided guerilla-
type resistance, they offered virtually no coastal defense capability should
an invading force reach the Sea of Japan. Indeed, while one of the few
coastal settlements at Wada (today part of Nemuro) is located facing the
Kuril Islands (Northern Territories or hoppō ryō do), which is the de facto
Russia–Japan border today, it must be remembered that this was not the
case when the said settlement was established in 1886. At this point Japan
possessed the entire Kuril Island chain, and had done so for over a decade,
rendering it difficult to argue for a singular preoccupation with Russia.
Timing also indicates that the system was not solely geared toward
deterring a Russian threat (refer to Figure 9.1 for the number of tondenhei
arriving in Hokkaido each year). The first tondenhei settlers arrived in
May 1875, the same month in which Japan and Russia reached a formal
agreement on their borders in the Treaty of St. Petersburg, removing
what had hitherto been a major factor complicating Russo-Japanese rela-
tions. The tondenhei system thus came into being at a time when the threat
posed by its assumed principal target had been much diminished. Yet the
tondenhei system had been on the debating table prior to this improvement
in Russo-Japanese relations, and as such its inception may have had much
to do with a perceived Russian threat. Indeed, Kuroda had argued for the
abandonment of Karafuto in the early 1870s, having observed firsthand
the ability of Russia to establish a more telling presence on that island.
Thus the tondenhei system he advocated was a key component of his call to
redouble efforts on Hokkaido. However, if we accept that warding off
Russia was the main purpose of the tondenhei system, there can be no
doubt that the Treaty of St. Petersburg reduced its necessity. Perhaps, as
22
Ibid, p. 91.
900
Under the jurisdiction of the army ministry (rikugunshō) except
Under the
1886–1890 when under Hokkaido Prefecture.
800 jurisdiction of the
Hokkaido Development
Agency (kaitakushi).
700
600
500
400
300
200
100
1868
1869
1870
1871
1872
1873
1874
1875
1876
1877
1878
1879
1880
1881
1882
1883
1884
1885
1886
1887
1888
1889
1890
1891
1892
1893
1894
1895
1896
1897
1898
1899
1900
1901
1902
1903
1904
1905
Matsukata Deflation
Abolition
of Domains Satsuma Sino-Japanese War
Rebellion
Fishermen’s revolt Russo-Japanese
near Hakodate Abolition of shizoku stipends War
Conscription
Law Treaty of St. Petersburg
Figure 9.2 Incoming farmer-soldier (tondenhei) households and key dates

Compiled from: Itō Hiroshi, Tondenhei no hyakunen
[One Hundred Years of the Farmer-Soldiers] (3 volumes) (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Shinbunsha, 1979), pp. 176–231
200 Steven Ivings
a consequence, there was an immediate lull in the establishment of new

tondenhei settlements after the initial plans, drawn up before the treaty,
had been completed.
The low numbers of new recruits continued as the government
struggled with its finances, but suddenly in the mid-1880s the program
enjoyed a new lease of life, and in the 1890s, as the construction of the
Trans-Siberian Railway was in progress, the system passed through its
heyday. Nonetheless, it is one of the great ironies of the tondenhei system
that it was abolished in the same year that the Russo-Japanese War broke
out. This did not mean that former tondenhei were not involved in the
conflict. A large number of tondenhei were drafted into the Seventh
Division of the Imperial Army, serving in the siege of Port Arthur and
Battle of Mukden. Nonetheless, at this point the tondenhei had lost their
significance, forming no more than a reservist contingent – much like
those elsewhere in Japan – within the permanently stationed infantry
division at Asahikawa. By the Russo-Japanese War, the Seventh
Division was largely composed of regular conscripts, following the full
extension of the conscription law to Hokkaido in 1898, and as such,
former tondenhei served as a supplementary source of manpower, rather
than the backbone of Hokkaido’s military force.23
Even though tondenhei did not serve actively against Russia when the
system was in place, part of their role as a bulwark against foreign
encroachment would have been as a combat-ready physical presence in
Hokkaido. On the basis of the small numbers of active tondenhei stationed
in Hokkaido at any given time, it seems reasonable to suggest that they
were not a comprehensive solution to defense. In the late 1870s, for
example, there were fewer than 500 tondenhei available for service,24
and it was not until 1886 that this number exceeded 1,000.25
Eventually, the surge of interest in the tondenhei system in the 1890s
meant that the peak number of actively serving tondenhei was reached in
1894, with no more than 4,600 individuals. The growth of the tondenhei to
this level strikes one as a case of too little, too late, as only two years later
their role as a deterrent was usurped by the Seventh Division at
Asahikawa.26 Whatever the role of the tondenhei in Russo-Japanese con-
cerns – and I have argued that they were no more than a minor deterrent –
they were only called upon by the central government for combat on two
occasions: the Satsuma Rebellion of 1877, and the Sino-Japanese War of
1894–1895. The latter conflict came at a time when the tondenhei had
been readied for combat and thus offered a potentially significant number
23
Sapporo-shi Kyō iku Iinkai, Tondenhei, p. 39.
24
Uehara, Hokkaidō tondenhei seido, p. 235. 25 Ibid. 26
Ibid, p. 236.
of troops. Nonetheless, the war ended with the tondenhei still in transit,
and they returned home to Hokkaido without ever reaching the
battlefield.
Hokkaido, the Tondenhei, and Reconciliation

The only occasion on which the tondenhei did serve on the battlefield was
in Kyushu in 1877, when they were directed against their fellow country-
men (the Aizu contingent among the tondenhei force may not have viewed
it this way) led by the disaffected Saigō Takamori, a prominent figure in
the Meiji Restoration and an early proponent of the tondenhei system.
Despite the sensationalist claims of some of those who participated in the
conflict against Saigō ,27 the tondenhei contribution to the victory of the
Meiji government appears minor. When the uprising broke out, there
were only two tondenhei settlements, and so the force dispatched from
Hokkaido to Kyushu was limited in numbers. Evidence suggests that no
more than 500 tondenhei participated in quashing the Satsuma Rebellion,
with seven deaths suffered by the group, in a conflict that saw a total death
toll of 6,279 on the government side.28 The tondenhei contingent played
only a minor role in the fighting, as the distance between Hokkaido and
Kyushu, and the nervousness of the government that unrest might also
break out in the north, delayed their arrival. As a result, the tondenhei force
only reached the battlefront at the mid-point of the conflict, and was sent
home once victory was certain.29 Despite this limited role, it remains
significant that during the operation of the tondenhei system, the only
active combat in which the tondenhei engaged involved containing an
outbreak of domestic strife.
Indeed, it has been suggested that what finally triggered the implemen-
tation of a tondenhei system was not the looming Russian menace, but
actually a fishermen’s riot against increased taxation in Esahi in southern
Hokkaido in 1873. During the riot, the Hakodate guard, numbering
fewer than 200, was simply overwhelmed and troops were dispatched
from Aomori to quell the uprising. This outbreak clearly demonstrated
the inadequacy of local forces in Hokkaido for the task of maintaining
27
Abiko Toshihiko, “Tondenhei kō rō monogatari 1” [Stories of the Distinguished Service
of the Farmer-Soldiers] 1 in Hokkaidō kyō doshi kenkyū [Hokkaido Local Historical
Research], ed. Sapporo hō sō kyō kai (Sapporo: Nihon Hō sō Kyō kai Hokkaidō Shibu,
1932), pp. 192–193.
28
Itō Hiroshi, Tondenhei no hyakunen [One Hundred Years of the Farmer-Soldiers], Vol. 1
(Sapporo: Hokkaidō Shinbunsha, 1979), pp. 59–64; Kojima Keizō , Boshin sensō kara
seinan sensō e [From the Boshin War to the Satsuma Rebellion] (Tokyo: Chū ō Kō ronsha,
1996), p. 245.
29
Abiko, “Tondenhei kō rō monogatari,” p. 192.
202 Steven Ivings
order in the face of a major public disturbance, let alone a foreign inva-
sion, and as such may have also prompted Kuroda to implement the
tondenhei system.30
Little is known of the role played by tondenhei in maintaining
public order in the fluid and remote colonial space of Meiji era
Hokkaido. Newspaper reports suggest that on occasion tondenhei
were dispatched alongside police to ward off dangerous bears31
and to round up escaped convicts,32 but they also caused distur-
bances of their own, including infighting, brawling, and intimidation
of the local press.33 According to Itō Hiroshi, there was often ten-
sion between tondenhei and the Sapporo police, and, on one occasion
in 1881, this boiled over as three tondenhei were arrested for unruly
behavior at the Susukino red light district. In response, around one
hundred tondenhei stormed a police station demanding the release of
their fellow tondenei, shouting “how can you put the guards of the
north in the ‘pig pen?’” Swords were drawn between the opposing
parties and brawling ensued, resulting in a number of injuries
inflicted and a smashed-up police station.34
The tondenhei system was also aimed at providing an outlet for dis-
affected members of the samurai class who could be reemployed as farm-
ers while at the same time maintaining a semblance of their status as
warriors. Yet, while some former samurai did find reemployment in
Hokkaido, the scale of the system suggests a very minor role in this regard.
Even the most enthusiastic proponent of the tondenhei system in prewar
Japan, Uehara Tetsusaburō , a Hokkaido Imperial University agricultural
and colonial policy specialist who wrote a semiofficial account of the
tondenhei, was dismissive of the system’s role as a large program for
samurai reemployment. In later publications, he suggested that there
were in reality only 13,000 tondenhei with samurai family background,
representing about 0.1 percent of the total number of samurai families at
30
Sapporo-shi Kyō iku Iinkai, Tondenhei, pp. 12–18.
31
“Fushi o kuikoroshita kuma ni tondenhei ga shutsudō ” [Farmer-Soldiers Dispatched to
Hunt Bear that Killed a Father and Child] Yomiuri shinbun, February 2, 1878.
32
Itō , Tondenhei no hyakunen, Vol. 1, p. 56.
33
“Tondenhei ga nakamara danjo futari o sasshō ” [Farmer-Soldier Sheds the Blood of Two
Comrades], Yomiuri shinbun, September 13, 1875; “Tondenhei Nakasato Shigetaka wa
dō ryō o koroshita tsumi de shikei shikkō ” [Farmer-Soldier, Nakasato Shigetaka Has Been
Sentenced to Death for Killing Colleagues], Yomiuri shinbun, September 13, 1875;
“Tondenhei shinbunsha ni maikomu” [Farmer-Soldiers Engulf a Newspaper Company’s
Office], Asahi shinbun, April 2, 1891; “Nemuro tondenhei bō kō ” [Farmer-Soldiers Riot at
Nemuro], Asahi shinbun, April 17, 1891; “Nemuro tondenhei no shokei” [Nemuro
Farmer-Soldiers Punished], Asahi shinbun, July 5, 1891; “Tondenhei no bō kō ” [Farmer-
Soldier Riot], Asahi shinbun, October 21, 1901.
34
Itō , Tondenhei no hyakunen, Vol. 1, p. 57.
the outset of the Meiji period.35 Indeed, the majority – 70 percent accord-
ing to Uehara – of the tondenhei were drawn from the commoner class, and
were recruited in the 1890s long after the samurai class and its concomi-
tant social privileges had been dissolved.
Although the tondenhei system appears a minor outlet for the wider
problem of samurai unemployment, a case could be made that a specific
targeting of the disaffected had taken place with the earlier Sapporo
tondenhei settlements. These settlements focused upon recruiting from
areas of northeast Japan that had strongly resisted the new regime during
the Boshin War.36 Indeed, 447 of the 480 recruits for the Kotoni (1875)
and Yamahana (1876) settlements were mustered from these areas.37 In
particular, recruits were drawn from the former Sendai and Aizu
domains, including the short-lived Tonami domain – centered on mar-
ginal land on the Shimokita Peninsula – where Aizu retainers had been
transferred as punishment for their resistance to the Meiji state.38 Many
of the samurai on the losing side of the civil war struggled in the early years
of the Meiji period. They had been imprisoned, removed from their
domains, and, in many cases, had taken part in efforts to open new land
in Tonami or Hokkaido, which in the case of Tonami saw some of them
plummet to the brink of starvation.39 The tondenhei system appealed to
such men, especially as it came with official assistance and a guaranteed
food supply for three years, but also because it provided the security and
status of an official calling. Becoming a tondenhei in this sense offered
reconciliation between the Meiji state and its former enemies, allowing
the latter a chance to clear their name (having been branded imperial
rebels (chō teki) during the Boshin War) by participating in a special
defense force in the service of the emperor.40
A former Aizu and Tonami samurai, Abiko Toshihiko, was a member
of the very first tondenhei group that settled at Kotoni. In the 1930s he
35
Uehara Tetsusaburō , “Hokkaidō tondenhei seido ni tsuite” [On the Hokkaido Farmer-
Soldier System], in Hokkaidō kyō doshi kenkyū [Hokkaido Local Historical Research], ed.
Sapporo hō sō kyō kai (Sapporo: Nihon Hō sō Kyō kai Hokkaidō Shibu, 1932), p. 184.
36
Wakabayashi, “Tondenhei-tachi no Meiji ishin.”
37
38
Hoshi Ryō ichi, Aizuhan Tonami e [Aizu Domain to Tonami] (Tokyo: Sanshū sha, 2009).
39
An excellent firsthand account of the difficult times faced by former Aizu samurai in the
early Meiji period was written by Shiba Gorō , and has been expertly translated by Teruko
Craig: Shiba Gorō , Remembering Aizu, trans. Teruko Craig (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 1999), pp. 83–112.
40
In 1881, the Emperor Meiji visited Sapporo, where he was given a tondenhei guard and
observed their accomplishments. One tondenhei recalled the great honor (kō ei) this
occasion made him feel. Nagoshi Gengorō , “Tondenhei kō rō monogatari 2” [Stories of
the Distinguished Service of the Farmer-Soldiers] 2, in Hokkaidō kyō doshi kenkyū
[Hokkaido Local Historical Research], ed. Sapporo Hō sō Kyō kai (Sapporo: Nihon
Hō sō Kyō kai Hokkaidō Shibu, 1932), p. 195.
204 Steven Ivings
recalled that the appeal of becoming a tondenhei came with the promise of
food and the lure of an official post. He stated that: “[F]or us former Aizu
samurai who, as a result of the Boshin War, had been removed from the
permanent home of our ancestors and had thereafter faced one difficulty
after another, to finally be on an official salary and posting after eight years
was really a relief and joy.”41 Moreover, when arriving at his new home,
which the Kaitakushi had constructed before his arrival, Abiko felt “pride
and a burning desire to be of service to the nation as a military man and in
opening virgin land.”42 It is important to resist the temptation to accept
these words at face value, especially as they were communicated many
decades after the first tondenhei contingent arrived in Sapporo. With the
distorting effects of hindsight and a nostalgic lens, it is possible that Abiko
may understate the underlying resentment between the samurai of
defeated domains such as Aizu and the new authorities. In 1871, for
example, a group of non-tondenhei Aizu settlers around Yoichi gave
a hostile reception to a senior Kaitakushi official passing through the
settlement.43 The official was Iwamura Michitoshi, a samurai from
Tosa who had participated in the siege of Aizu-Wakamatsu by imperial
forces, and the rude welcome he received suggests that some of the
defeated continued to bear a grudge.
Joining the tondenhei did not guarantee such resentment would disap-
pear, but it did offer sustenance to the destitute of former domains like
Aizu/Tonami. By establishing a connection to the authorities and
emperor, it could also provide a means to foster reconciliation. While
the logic that even former opponents would not bite the hand that feeds
them was the foremost basis for reconciliation, the efforts of the autho-
rities to produce a relationship with their former foe extended beyond
employment and financial support. The Kaitakushi also made sure to
acclaim the tondenhei whenever possible and the very public celebration
of their return to Sapporo following the Satsuma Rebellion provides
a case in point.44
Still, the scale of the two settlements (440 households) that targeted
these areas suggests that on its own, the tondenhei system did not act as
a significant source of reemployment for the samurai of the northeastern
domains that had lost the Boshin War. It is therefore unlikely to have
played anything but a minor role in containing the potential outbreak of
discontent among those groups. Instead, the tondenhei system built on
41
Abiko, “Tondenhei kō rō monogatari,” p. 190. 42 Ibid, p. 189.
43
Wakabayashi, “Tondenhei-tachi no Meiji ishin,” p. 16.
44
“Sapporo e kaetta tondenhei shichū wa noki ni hata kakagete kangei” [The Whole of
Sapporo is Full of Flags Hanging from the Eaves to Welcome Returning Farmer-
Soldiers], Yomiuri shinbun, October 17, 1877.
existing efforts by the Meiji regime to dispatch former opponents to

Hokkaido, as well as appropriating elements of the private initiatives of
group settlement based on former domain lines.45 In some of the earliest
cases, the Meiji state’s efforts seemed more like exile than genuine oppor-
tunity and often compared unfavorably with private efforts, such as those
led by Date Kunishige who oversaw the transfer of approximately 2,600
settlers from Sendai/Watari domain to Hokkaido between 1870 and
1881.46 Although not without their own difficulties, the Date settlements
appeared successful when contrasted with early government efforts. The
aforementioned Aizu group at Yoichi, for example, was supposed to be
under the government’s authority and was eventually settled in the Yoichi
area after much indecision regarding where they were to be dispatched,
and having been shuffled between the army, Kaitakushi, and the virtually
bankrupt Tonami domain. Initially, the group of approximately 200
families was temporarily transported to Otaru in autumn 1869 where
they were to await further instructions. For a while it appeared that they
would be ultimately bound for Karafuto, where Russia had already begun
sending convicts. However, uncertainty about how best to respond to
Russian activity in Karafuto delayed this relocation, causing some mem-
bers to abscond, before finally in 1871, the remnants of the group were
given land in Yoichi to settle.47
The Yoichi settlement would eventually become a success, but in its
early years uncertainty surrounding the group’s fate and their mistreat-
ment at the hands of the authorities must have further fueled the sense of
resentment. The tondenhei system thus emerged at a time when the
Kaitakushi sought to better manage its existing settlement efforts and
work toward reconciliation. This would be achieved by offering a more
extensive support structure and by implanting a greater sense of prestige
and purpose on settlers. The presence of some of the Aizu samurai-cum-
settlers, who had struggled in Yoichi and Tonami, among the first ton-
denhei settlements in Sapporo is indicative that the Kaitakushi was seeking
to make amends. Moreover, the incorporation of some of the Date group,
who had experience of farming in Hokkaido, as well as new settlers from
Sendai/Watari, who had also farmed, indicates that, this time at least, the
45
Enomoto Morie, Samurai tachi no Hokkaidō kaitaku [The Samurai and Hokkaido’s
Colonization] (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Shinbunsha, 1993); David Howell, “Early Shizoku
Colonization of Hokkaidō ,” Journal of Asian History 17 (1983): 40–67.
46
Tabata Hiroshi et al., Hokkaidō no rekishi [History of Hokkaido] (Tokyo: Yamakawa,
2000), pp. 184–186, 202–204. This case is also covered extensively in Enomoto, Samurai
tachi no Hokkaidō kaitaku; Howell, “Early Shizoku Colonization of Hokkaidō .”
47
Ibid, pp. 178–184.
206 Steven Ivings
Kaitakushi was serious about ensuring the success of its agricultural

settlements.48
Reemployment with the Kaitakushi had already provided an outlet for
some of the prominent figures who had opposed the Meiji state. Indeed,
most of the leaders of the final Tokugawa resistance who held out at
Hakodate until the early summer of 1869 – including Enomoto
Takeaki, Matsudaira Tarō , Nagai Genba, and Ō tori Keisuke – initially
took up positions in the Kaitakushi after their release from prison in the
early to mid-1870s.49 The tondenhei system was only a departure from this
practice of rehabilitation and reconciliation in Hokkaido, in that it now
extended to the rank and file among the defeated, replacing the hitherto
indifferent official efforts at samurai settlement in Hokkaido with
a celebrated and well-funded alternative. Nonetheless, it must be con-
cluded that the small numbers involved in the project and its late imple-
mentation ultimately point to an effort by the Kaitakushi to offer targeted
reconciliation, and perhaps recover some face following on from their
hitherto haphazard official settlement efforts.
The Tondenhei as Agricultural Settlers

How important were the tondenhei to the processes of populating
Hokkaido and bringing its land under cultivation? In the period from
1875 to 1899, the Hokkaido authorities recorded a total of just over
138,000 ordinary settler households coming to Hokkaido; in the same
period there were 7,337 tondenhei households.50 These numbers indicate
that tondenhei were but a small wave in an incoming tide of settlers from
mainland Japan. In 1880, the tondenhei accounted for only 1.2 percent of
Hokkaido’s resident household population (see Table 9.1), rising slowly
thereafter, and peaking in 1891, when 3.9 percent of Hokkaido’s resident
households were tondenhei households. Five years later, as the flow of
settlers to Hokkaido accelerated, the tondenhei accounted for no more
than 2.5 percent of the island’s household population. In terms of their
share in the island’s agricultural population, there are no accurate data
available for the first years of the tondenhei system, however, the data we
48
Abiko recalls that most of the Aizu/Tonami contingent was dependent on the knowledge
of the settlers from Sendai/Watari in their group when it came to setting up their farms.
Abiko, “Tondenhei kō rō monogatari,” p. 191.
49
Higuchi Takehiko, Hakodate sensō to Enomoto Takeaki [Enomoto Takeaki and the Battle
of Hakodate] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa, 2012), pp. 124–127; Kadomatsu Hideki, Kaitakushi to
bakushin bakumatsu ishinki no gyō sei teki renzokusei [Tokugawa Retainers and the
Hokkaido Development Agency: Administrative Continuity during the Late Edo and
Early Meiji Periods] (Tokyo: Keiō Gijuku Daigaku, 2009).
50
Uehara, Hokkaidō tondenhei seido, pp. 262–264.
Table 9.1 Farmer-soldiers’ (tondenhei) share of total and agricultural

populations of Hokkaido, 1875–1900 (in number of households)
Agricultural Tondenhei share Tondenhei share

Tondenhei Hokkaido population of of total of agricultural
population population Hokkaido population population
1875 198 35,843 - 0.5% -

1880 490 40,082 - 1.2% -
1886 1,145 62,745 14,559 1.8% 7.9%
1891 3,405 86,403 26,075 3.9% 13.1%
1896 3,783 149,140 54,328 2.5% 7.0%
Date compiled and calculated from: Uehara, Hokkaidō tondenhei seido, pp. 269–276.
do have for the years between 1886 and 1896 suggest they made up
a significant 7 to 8 percent of the total. With the sudden surge in new
tondenhei settlements in the early 1890s, they briefly accounted for as
much as 13.1 percent. However, while the tondenhei were overrepresented
in agricultural occupations, they did not by any stretch of the imagination
dominate agricultural settlement.
The tondenhei were a significant minority among a heterogeneous land-
scape of agricultural settlers, but given that the tondenhei were marked out
for generous subsidy and support, perhaps we might expect that they were
able to punch above their weight in numbers when it came to bringing
land under cultivation. The tondenhei were granted access to more favor-
able farm land – often selected based on the recommendations of agri-
cultural technicians at the Sapporo Agricultural College – and usually
benefited from close proximity to the main arteries of transport and
communication.51 Moreover, in most cases, their lodgings had been
built before they arrived and a small part of their land cleared, often by
convict labor. They were furnished with food supplies, a privilege not
enjoyed by ordinary settlers, and the security this provided meant that, in
theory at least, the tondenhei could devote more time to opening land,
unlike ordinary settlers who often pursued side-work as a contingency
against the risk of a bad harvest.52 Here, the evidence does suggest that
the tondenhei were able to bring more land under cultivation than most
settlers, but not overwhelmingly so. Tondenhei made up about 7 percent
of the resident agricultural population by the turn of the nineteenth
century. However, despite their privileged status, between 1875 and
1900, they accounted for 9.9 percent of the total amount of land that
51 52
Ibid, pp. 106–109. Ibid, p. 153.
208 Steven Ivings
had been newly opened and brought under cultivation.53 Punching above
their weight perhaps, but these numbers suggest that the program was
hardly the main thrust of Meiji agricultural settlement in Hokkaido. The
same could be said for the contribution of tondenhei to agricultural output.
Generally cultivating superior land, tondenhei farms accounted for an
estimated 10 percent of Hokkaido’s agricultural production by value in
1900, a number that includes land owned by tondenhei but cultivated by
tenant farmers.54 In the area around Sapporo and the Kamikawa-Ishikari
districts a case could be made for the importance of the tondenhei, but less
so for the rest of Hokkaido. The Tokachi area, for example, which by the
mid-1920s had become Hokkaido’s most productive agricultural
region,55 had no tondenhei settlements. The challenging task of opening
land in the more marginal parts of Hokkaido, such as the Sō ya region, was
left wholly to private settlers.56
In 1891, the authorities in Ō ita Prefecture conducted a survey into the
situation of tondenhei recruited from Ō ita in order to assess whether or not
the prefectural authorities should promote further applications. The
survey covered nineteen households who had settled in Shin-Kotoni in
1888 and remained there after three years had passed. The results of the
survey suggest that the performance of these tondenhei in bringing land
under cultivation was far from impressive. Just one household among the
Ō ita contingent had managed to bring all of their 3.3 chō (approximately
eight acres) land grant under cultivation. Across the nineteen households,
less than half (48 percent) of the land granted to them by the Kaitakushi
was in productive use at the time of the survey.57 Furthermore, the
income of these families does not appear to have been at all related to
the amount of land they were cultivating. This was most likely the result of
families branching out of agriculture, which, in some cases, caused ton-
denhei to abandon the occupation altogether when their term of service
was up. Despite the generous support received by tondenhei households,
there were many that were neither able nor willing to commit to perma-
nent settlement as farmers in Hokkaido.
This was as true in the earlier as it was in the later tondenhei settlements.
In Kotoni, a survey found that only 12.5 percent of the original tondenhei
settler households were still resident there fifty years after the settler group
53
Ibid, pp. 312–314. 54 Ibid, pp. 354–357.
55
Ō numa Mario, Hokkaidō sangyō shi [The Industrial History of Hokkaido] (Sapporo:
Hokkaidō University Press, 2002), p. 46.
56
Uehara, “Hokkaidō tondenhei seido ni tsuite,” p. 180.
57
The data have been calculated by the author from excerpts of the original report pub-
lished in Yoshida Yū ji, “Ō ita-ken to tondenhei” [Ō ita Prefecture and the Tondenhei],
Ō ita-ken chihō shi 122 (1986): 72–73.
had ventured north. In Yamahana, the other of the first settlements,

fortunes diverged considerably within the village itself. At the end of the
Meiji period, the western part of Yamahana retained only approximately
10 to 20 percent of the original settler households, while the eastern part
retained an impressive 90 percent. In the other two Sapporo tondenhei
settlements, established a decade later in the late 1880s, the rates of
settlement were not much better. Shin-Kotoni retained approximately
25 percent of its tondenhei settlers in 1912, dropping off to 9.5 percent in
1936. The settlement of Shinoro (Ebetsu) suffered flooding on occasion,
and as a result, only 32.7 percent of its tondenhei settlers remained in
1905, falling to 11.4 percent in 1938.58
Part of the reason for the flight of tondenhei from their agricultural
settlements was due to the expansion of Sapporo as an administrative
and commercial center. This created a temptation for tondenhei families to
transfer from arduous agricultural work to white-collar employment,
especially as civil servants. The Sapporo settlements included tondenhei
with samurai background and many lacked experience as farmers, ren-
dering a transfer out of agriculture all the more appealing. As former
samurai, they often had experience as bureaucrats, and their connection
to the authorities via the tondenhei system may have given them another
advantage in finding employment in the government. I was able to locate
biographical information on thirteen individuals from these Sapporo
settlements, and, from among these cases only two continued as farmers
(one of the two had returned to farming after a failed venture in a distilled
liquor (shō chū ) brewery). In contrast, seven of the thirteen left agriculture
to become civil servants, either relocating to central Sapporo – working in
the education or colonization bureaus – taking up a post elsewhere in
Hokkaido, or in the colonial administrations of Japan’s later colonial
acquisitions, Taiwan and Karafuto. Another two of the thirteen held on
to the agricultural land they had acquired as tondenhei. Instead of cultivat-
ing it themselves, they turned their lands over to tenant farmers, becom-
ing absentee landlords and expanding their commercial interests by
setting up haulage and construction firms. The remaining two settlers
for whom we have biographical information entered commerce, one in
a Sapporo-based wood materials firm, and the other in northern
Hokkaido as the operator of a commercial fishery.59
58
59
Information compiled from: Hokkaidō Tosho Shuppan, ed., Hokkaidō risshi [Influential
Persons of Hokkaido] (4 volumes) (Sapporo: Hokkaidō Tosho Shuppan Gō shi Kaisha,
1904); Suzuki Genjū rō and Toishi Hokuyō , Sapporo shinshiroku [Sapporo Directory of
Local Notables] (Sapporo: Sapporo Shinshiroku Hensankai, 1912); Suzuki Genjū rō ,
ed., Sapporo no hito [People of Sapporo] (Sapporo: Buneidō , 1915).
210 Steven Ivings
Beyond Sapporo, evidence of the rate of settlement is scattered and

mixed. In Nokkeushi (later Kitami), 62.6 percent of tondenhei households
remained in the village in 1936,60 while in Kamiyū betsu the number was
55.5 percent, and in the rest of Yū betsu 43.2 percent.61 In the Wada
(Nemuro) and Ō ta (Akkeshi) tondenhei settlements, many absconded
after the official supply of provisions ceased upon the completion of
three years of active service. Here it was found that especially after the
Russo-Japanese War “the number of people abandoning this village kept
increasing [. . .] they left to find work that held some promise and those
who remained took up livestock. It proved too difficult to build enough of
a livelihood for a family from farming alone.”62 Even before the Russo-
Japanese War, the outflow from Wada was serious. From 1899 until
1901, just after active service had ended, 20 percent of the tondenhei
households abandoned their farms in Wada.63 In Ō ta, agricultural settle-
ment also proved difficult for many, and from the fifty seven former
Yonezawa domain samurai households who came to the settlement as
tondenhei, only eleven remained in 1940.64 In some cases, agricultural
settlement posed a serious challenge and despite their best efforts, ton-
denhei families were unable to settle on the land that they had acquired.
Yet there is also evidence that participants abused the system, taking
handouts while they could and abandoning their farms as soon as
a more lucrative opportunity arose. Hokkaido councilor, Kinoshita
Seitarō , complained to members of a select committee of the Diet that
there were “villages near Nemuro, Akkeshi, and Muroran, where tonden-
hei were settled, and supported by the state at considerable expense for
three years, only for them to abandon their farms during the fishing
season. They saw that they could make higher earnings in the fisheries,
so whenever the herring came, they were pulled away from their farms
and step-by-step became fishermen.”65
60
Endō Yukiko, “Meiji 30-nendai ni keisei sareta tondenheimura to jinja no kenkyū –
Kitami Kamiyū betsu chiiki o rei ni shite,” [Research on Shrines in Farmer-Soldier
Villages Started in the Fourth Decade of the Meiji Era: The Case of Kitami
Kamiyū betsu] Shō wa Joshi Daigaku kenkyū kiyō 16, no. 2 (2007): 38.
61
Ibid, p. 43.
62
Shotarō Itō , Wada-mura shi [History of Wada Village] (Nemuro: Bun’yō dō , 1938), p. 35.
63
Endō Yukiko, “Nemuro chiiki ni okeru tondenhei-mura to jinja no kenkyū – shizoku
tonden toshite no Wada-heison to Ota hei-son o chū shin ni” [Research on Shrines in the
Farmer-Soldier Villages in the Nemuro Area: Examining the Samurai Settlements at
Wada and Ota], Shō wa Joshi Daigaku kenkyū , no. 10 (2006): 45.
64
Ibid, p. 51.
65
House of Representatives 30th Session Committee Papers no. 27, “Karafuto gyogyō
seido kaisei ni kan suru kengian iinkai” [Committee on the Proposal for the Reform of the
Karafuto Fisheries System] (March 25, 1913), pp. 7–8.
Conclusions
In this chapter, the role of the tondenhei as brave, iconic defenders of the
northern frontier and the vanguard of agricultural settlement has been
questioned. The scale of the program, the timing of its implementation,
and the location of most tondenhei settlements, meant that the tondenhei
did not provide a comprehensive solution to the defense of the island,
especially if it was targeted against Russia, a point also questioned here. At
best, the tondenhei offered a limited deterrent, but they were unlikely to
have been able to prevent an invasion should one have materialized.
Instead, the tondenhei served only once on the Meiji state’s behalf, playing
a minor role in the Satsuma Rebellion, a domestic conflict in southwest
Japan.
While the tondenhei have received plaudits as pioneering farmers at the
forefront of Japanese settlement in Hokkaido,66 there is much evidence to
doubt this claim, both on the grounds of the scale of the program and on
its measurable outcomes. Available biographical evidence suggests that
tondenhei were inclined to move out of agriculture, and become local
businessmen, landlords, teachers, or to join the ranks of the government
administration at the prefectural level, which is not unlike many of the
Tokugawa stalwarts turned tea farmers from Hellyer’s chapter in this
volume. In this regard, an examination of the role of former tondenhei in
Hokkaido’s nonagricultural development may prove a fruitful pursuit and
provide a more nuanced account of the tondenhei. Here it seems appro-
priate to question their enduring image as farmer-soldiers, a role that
many of the participants in the tondenhei program performed only fleet-
ingly. Instead, if we are to better understand Hokkaido’s Meiji transfor-
mation and link it to the thousands of communities across Japan that sent
people to participate in this settler revolution, we need to look at the
plethora of individual settlers and settler groups who came to Hokkaido in
the Meiji period, often without any immediate connection to the state.
These included poverty-stricken farmers, merchants, land speculators,
those seeking religious freedom, political exiles, convicts, and outcastes,
as well as vassals dispatched by their domains. Hokkaido was also a place
in which the Meiji state sought to redirect tension and foster new alle-
giances. The significance of the early tondenhei settlements rests on this
latter point.
66
Ō numa, Hokkaidō sangyō shi, p. 38.
10 Locally Ancient and Globally Modern
Restoration Discourse and the Tensions of Modernity
Mark Ravina
The language of the Meiji Restoration embodies a profound contradic-

tion. The new government described its actions and policies both as
a “revival of ancient kingly rule” (ō sei fukko), but also as a revolution
(isshin). These phrases are in direct opposition: fukko refers explicitly to
the ancient past, while isshin declares, on the contrary, that all is being
made new. In some ways, such revolutionary invocations of the ancient
past suggest Marx’s famous Eighteenth Brumaire: “[P]recisely in such
epochs of revolutionary crisis, [men] anxiously conjure up the spirits of
the past to their service, borrowing from them names, battle slogans, and
costumes in order to present this new scene in world history in time-
honored disguise and borrowed language.” For Marx, of course, this was
the ultimate betrayal of revolutionary potential. Thus, he continued,
history repeats itself, “the first time as tragedy, the second time as
farce.”1 In a less dire mode, we might consider the presence of ancient
tropes in Restoration discourse as evidence of the “invention of tradi-
tion,” the invocation of the past to legitimize and naturalize new political
projects. But, in the case of the Meiji Restoration, there is yet another
tension, beyond this concatenation of ancient and new. Not only did
government fuse the glorification of the past with an embrace of radical
change, it also reconciled a celebration of Japanese uniqueness with the
adoption of new Western ideas and technologies. Thus, government
discourse encompassed the dual tensions of “both new and ancient”
and “both foreign and uniquely Japanese.”
These tensions were central to Restoration politics. Consider, for
example, the establishment of the Japanese conscript army, unquestion-
ably a cornerstone of the modern state. The 1872 imperial decree
announcing conscription combined celebrations of the ancient and the
modern, as well as the local and the international. The declaration has
two parts: an imperial edict (shō sho), voiced in the Japanese imperial
1
Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Collected Works of Marx and Engels (New York:
Progress Publishers, 1975), Vol. 11, pp. 103–104.
212
Locally Ancient and Globally Modern 213
“we,” and a less rarified government edict (kokuyu). The edict opens with
the emperor reflecting on Japan’s glorious past: in ancient times, the
emperor himself would collect hardy young men from throughout the
realm and lead them in defense of the state. Only in the “middle ages” did
a distinction between farmer and soldier arise. Thus, the conscription of
commoners and the elimination of samurai privilege were both parts of
a return to a 1,000-year-old system of imperial rule. The conscription
order itself describes this leveling of class distinctions in terms of new,
Western-oriented notions of “freedom” and “rights.” “The four classes of
the people are at long last receiving their right to freedom. This is the way
to restore the balance between the high and the low and to grant equal
rights to all.” Thus according to the Meiji state, the restoration of ancient
national unity was fully consonant with Western natural rights discourse.
Indeed, since Japan had neglected its own glorious tradition of a national
conscript army, reviving that army would require the careful examination
of Western models. Japan could best recover its own unique, ancient
practices by working closely with Western advisors to implement new
practices and technologies.2
Such documents suggest the limits of older concepts, such as
“Westernization” and “modernization,” as well as the newer approach
of “modernity.” The activists who toppled the shogunate acted, as Albert
Craig observed over a half century ago, “in the name of old values,”3 but
they produced a modern Western-style bureaucratic state. While some
activists were dismayed by this turn of events, the Meiji government
quickly removed “expel the barbarian” from the couplet “revere the
emperor and expel the barbarian” in favor of diplomatic negotiations
and parlor-room conversations with Western friends and associates.
Texts such as the 1872 conscription decree reflect how the Meiji state,
and Meiji-era discourse more broadly, contained a tension between
a chauvinistic glorification of ancient Japan and the adoption of
Western technologies and practices. That tension needs to be at the
center of any analysis of the Restoration. What allowed Meiji discourse
to harmonize “new” with “ancient” and “foreign” with “Japanese”?
One means of making sense of these tensions is to examine Meiji-era
discourse and politics in the context of broader global processes: the
2
For a superb, recent study of conscription see D. Colin Jaundrill, Samurai to Soldier:
Remaking Military Service in Nineteenth-century Japan (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University
Press, 2016), pp. 105–130. An English translation of the imperial edict, strangely attrib-
uted to Yamagata Aritomo, can be found in Ryū saku Tsunoda, Sources of the Japanese
Tradition, eds. Ryū saku Tsunoda, William Theodore De Bary, and Donald Keene
(New York: Columbia University Press, 1958), pp. 703–705.
3
Press, 1961), p. 360.
214 Mark Ravina
emergence of nationalism, and the concurrent surge in “invented tradi-

tions.” Benedict Anderson famously argued that nationalism is “‘modular,’
capable of being transplanted, with varying degrees of self-consciousness, to
a great variety of social terrains, to merge and be merged with
a correspondingly wide variety of political and ideological constellations.”4
Thus we should expect Japanese nationalism to be, on the one hand, similar
to other instances of the same nationalist base “module,” but, on the other,
distinct as it was modified to fit local conditions. Japanese history and culture
needed to be reconceptualized in order to fit into the global forms of
nationalism and the nation-state. At the same time, however, Japanese
nationalism needed to celebrate Japanese distinctiveness. Further, national-
ism embodies a temporal contradiction, since it requires an instrumental
ransacking of the historical record to justify the present moment. In the
words of Ernest Renan, “forgetting, I would even say historical error, is an
essential factor in the creation of a nation.”5 Anderson describes this phe-
nomenon as one of the central paradoxes of nationalism: “the objective
modernity of nations to the historian’s eye vs. their subjective antiquity in
the eyes of nationalists.”6 Thus the Meiji state-building project required
a selective appropriation of the Japanese past in order to fit Japanese history
into a “module” of nationalism and the nation-state. The global norms of
nationalism required a specific form of Japanese difference.
A coherent account of the Meiji Restoration requires foregrounding
these contradictions. Indeed, the Restoration points to a tension within
many theories of “modernity.” Because the nation-state and nationalism
are central to most accounts of “modernity,” “modernity” itself must be
both unitary and locally distinctive. Much as each nation must have its
local inflection of the universal tropes of nationalism, so too must it have
its own flavor of modernity. Thus, theorists have posited “multiple
modernities,”7 “alternative modernities,”8 and “local modernities,”9 all
in attempts to capture these inherent tensions. In the specific case of
Japanese history, Carol Gluck has offered “modernity is not optional in
4
Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflection on the Origins and Spread of
Nationalism, 2nd ed. (London: Verso, 1991), p. 4.
5
Ernest Renan, “What Is a Nation,” in Nation and Narration, ed. Homi K. Bhabha
(London: Routledge, 1990), p. 11, from a speech delivered at the Sorbonne in 1882.
6
Anderson, Imagined Communities, p. 5.
7
Dominic Sachsenmaier and S. N. Eisenstadt, eds., Reflections on Multiple Modernities:
European, Chinese, and Other Interpretations (Leiden: Brill, 2002).
8
Dilip Parameshwar Gaonkar, ed., Alternative Modernities (Durham, NC: Duke University
Press, 2001).
9
Joel Robbins and Holly Wardlow, eds., The Making of Global and Local Modernities in
Melanesia: Humiliation, Transformation, and the Nature of Cultural Change, Anthropology
and Cultural History in Asia and the Indo-Pacific (Aldershot and Burlington, VT: Ashgate,
2005).
history, in that societies could not simply ‘choose’ another regime of

historicity for themselves, for such is the tyranny of modern times.” Yet,
at the same time, modernity is “not unitary or universal” and it is experi-
enced differently in different places. Thus Gluck has posited “available
modernities” and a “grammar of modernity,” invoking modernity as both
potential and constraint.10
The Meiji Restoration is replete with examples of these tensions: global
norms required the effacement of certain local practices but the celebra-
tion of others. A visually compelling example is the Meiji government’s
paper currency. In 1873, the Meiji government released a new series of
national bank notes, designed to celebrate the glories of the Japanese past.
The ¥1 note, for example, showed the 1281 destruction of the Mongol
fleet by a massive storm. The Mongols had conquered China and Korea,
but Japan had driven back the invaders through a combination of samurai
valor and divine intervention, specifically the kamikaze, a “divine storm”
that sank the Mongol fleet. The ¥10 note showed the legendary Empress
Jingū (CE 169–269) leading troops in the conquest of the Korean penin-
sula (see Figure 10.1). Her victory, according to ancient chronicles, was
divinely decreed and she defeated enemy forces while pregnant with Ō jin,
a future emperor. Ō jin’s willingness to delay his birth until his mother had
finished her mission made Jingū a patron deity of midwives, but the ¥10
note emphasized her military prowess rather than safe childbirth.11 In
both cases, the iconography invoked well-known tropes of Japanese
uniqueness, celebrated by Edo period nativists and Mito scholars. Japan
alone has never been conquered by foreign invaders. Japan alone is the
land of the gods, where empire is decreed by heavenly command.
Looking more closely, however, it is clear that the notes are neither
“traditional” nor especially “Japanese.” The notes were actually engraved
and printed in the United States by the Continental Bank Note
Company: the new Meiji government wanted advanced technology to
discourage counterfeiting, and modern copperplate printing was deemed
far superior to traditional Japanese woodblocks. The notes also closely
resemble United States National Bank Notes from the 1860s. The ¥10
note, for example, is similar in both theme and design to the $10 United
States National Bank Note, which depicts Hernando DeSoto’s “discov-
ery” of the Mississippi (see Figure 10.2). Both the Japanese and US
10
Carol Gluck, “The End of Elsewhere: Writing Modernity Now,” American Historical
Review 116, no. 3 (2011): 676.
11
Melanie Trede, “Banknote Design as the Battlefield of Gender Politics and National
Representation in Meiji Japan,” in Performing “Nation”: Gender Politics in Literature,
Theater, and the Visual Arts of China and Japan, 1880–1940, eds. Joshua Mostow,
Doris Croissant, and Catherine Yeh (Leiden: Brill, 2008).
216 Mark Ravina
Figure 10.1 1873 Japanese National Bank ¥10 note
Figure 10.2 US $10 National Bank note, First National Bank,

Bismarck, North Dakota
images establish a supernatural basis for the conquest of a neighboring

territory. In the $10 note, based on an oil painting by William Powell,
DeSoto’s conquest is linked to the US ideal of Manifest Destiny. The
juxtaposition of the crucifix with naked “savages” suggests that DeSoto’s
subjugation of the Chickasaw and Muskogee was divinely ordained.12
Empress Jingū ’s conquest of Korea is thus a Japanese counterpart to
12
For the images on US National Bank notes, see Richard G. Doty, Pictures from a Distant
Country: Images on 19th-Century U.S. Currency (Raleigh, NC: Boson Books, 2004), pp.
189–194. For the invocation of the conquistadors in the development of manifest destiny
see Matthew Baigell, “Territory, Race, Religion: Images of Manifest Destiny,”
Smithsonian Studies in American Art 4, no. 3/4 (1990): 2–21.
Manifest Destiny. The 1873 ¥10 National Bank Note thus celebrated the
uniqueness of Japan’s imperial destiny, but in a voice that echoed US
claims to exceptionalism.
In similar fashion, the layout and theme of the $1 note were templates
for the ¥1 note (see Figures 10.3 and 10.4). Instead of a divine wind
saving Japan from a Mongol invasion, the United States template showed
the Puritans, arriving safely in Plymouth, shielded from a stormy sea by
Providence. In both cases, divine forces saved those destined to found
a new nation. Here too, the Japanese notes seem strangely derivative, as
though the Continental Bank Note Company merely patched Japanese
history into an American template. But this points to a tension inherent in
Figure 10.3 1873 Japanese National Bank ¥1 note
Figure 10.4 US $1 National Bank note, First National Bank, Lebanon,

Indiana
218 Mark Ravina
the “copying” of the technologies of nationalism. In order to emulate

celebrations of American uniqueness, such as Manifest Destiny, Japanese
banknotes needed to trumpet Japanese uniqueness. To be more like US
models, Japanese notes needed to define and extol Japanese national
identity.13
At a practical level, the two currency issues were similar because the
Meiji government commissioned a US company to design and print the
notes. But at a deeper level, both US and Japanese national banknotes
reflected a broader global process: the creation of national currencies as
part of the formation of new nation-states. We might call this
“Westernization” but national currencies were new in the West as well.
Indeed, the American templates were only ten years old, a product of the
US Civil War. The very notion that a sovereign state should have a single
and exclusive currency was itself a nineteenth-century innovation. Single
and exclusive national currencies were developed as part of the broader
nineteenth-century process of state formation and the construction of
national identities.14
Prior to the nineteenth century, almost all states allowed the
circulation of a broad range of public and private currencies. By
one estimate, between 1790 and 1865 no fewer than 8,000 fiscal
entities issued currency in the United States.15 Congress first
authorized a national bank to issue paper money in 1791 (the First
Bank of the United States), but it did not grant a monopoly on
printing money. Thus, federal government notes circulated along-
side privately printed currencies. Nonnational currencies increased
after the charter of the Second Bank of the United States expired in
1837. In the absence of a national bank and under lax federal bank-
ing laws, a wide range of institutions issued paper money: states,
cities, counties, private banks, railroads, stores, churches, and indi-
viduals. Unlike later national currencies, these notes were commonly
decorated with emblems evoking wealth or beauty, rather than por-
traits of national heroes. A $3 bill issued by Drover’s Bank in Salt
Lake City, for example, featured cattle, while a $10 note from
Mechanics Bank in Tennessee featured, not surprisingly, mechanics.
Other popular images included beautiful and elegant women,
13
For a brief discussion of nationalism and Meiji banknotes, see Tō no Haruyuki, “Meiji
shonen no kokuritsu ginkō shihei o meguru Kikuchi Yō sai to Ishii Teiko: ‘Zenken kojitsu’
o tegakari to shite” [On the Connection between the Design of National Banknotes in
Early Meiji Era with the Painter Yō sai Kikuchi and Teiko Ishii: Using Ancient Sages and
Customs as Cues], Bunkazai gakuhō 29, no. 3 (2011): 9–10.
14
Eric Helleiner, “Historicizing Territorial Currencies: Monetary Space and the
Nation-State in North America,” Political Geography 18 (1999): 100–120.
15
Doty, Pictures from a Distant Country, p. 8.
steamboats, railroads, factories, and prosperous farms.16 These

notes were commonly denominated in dollars, but were discounted
based on local assessments of market value. Thus, a $3 bill issued by
Drover’s Bank in Salt Lake City would be worth less than face value
in Alabama or New York. Arguing in favor of a national banking
system, Senator John Sherman of Ohio lamented:
[T]he different States were as to their bank notes so many foreign nations each
refusing the paper of the other, except at continually varying rates of discount.
Frequently there was a greater loss on paper taken or sent from an eastern to
a western State than on English bank notes converted into Austrian money in
Vienna. Only adepts and regular money changers could tell whether a note was
current or not, the paper of broken or suspended banks remaining in circulation
long after their value had departed.17
The antebellum American monetary system was thus surprisingly

similar to its Japanese counterpart. While the Tokugawa shogunate
had minted a range of gold, silver, and copper coins, these circulated
alongside a wide range of paper currencies. Domains, liege vassals
(hatamoto), temples, and shrines all issued their own paper notes. On
the eve of the Meiji Restoration, over 1,600 forms of paper money
were circulating in Japan.18 As with antebellum American notes, the
iconography of Tokugawa-era paper money featured images of wealth
and beauty rather than national history. The gods of wealth, Ebisu
and Daikokuten, were popular, as were more abstract symbols of
prosperity, such as dragons and phoenixes. The texts on the notes
did not mention a Japanese state. There was no need since the notes’
circulation was primarily local and they were used exclusively within
the Japanese realm. Instead, text on the notes specified the purpose of
the issue and conditions of convertibility. A note from Sakami
Temple in Harima Province, for example, explained that it was issued
to pay for a construction project. A note issued by the Satō liege
vassal house in Yamato Province (present-day Nara Prefecture) spe-
cified that it could be redeemed by a designated merchant: Higami
Magoemon. The iconography and text of these currencies sought to
convey a sense of stable value, rather than to extol a glorious history
16
For a survey of images, see Doty, Pictures from a Distant Country. The Federal Reserve
Bank of San Francisco has an excellent digital exhibition of historical currencies. See
“American Currency Exhibit,” Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco, www.frbsf.org
/education/teacher-resources/american-currency-exhibit.
17
Andrew McFarland Davis, The Origin of the National Banking System (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1910), pp. 14–15. Sherman is today best known for the
Sherman Anti-Trust Act of 1890.
18
Hugh T. Patrick, “External Equilibrium and Internal Convertibility: Financial Policy in
Meiji Japan,” Journal of Economic History 25, no. 2 (1965): 192–194.
220 Mark Ravina
of the issuer.19 Finally, as with antebellum US currency, these notes

circulated outside their place of issue, but often at a discount, and
enterprising merchants profited through arbitrage, exploiting these
spatial variations in value.20
In both the US and Japanese cases, the creation of a national financial
system, with a single currency, was an element of a broader project of
state-building and national unification. As Eric Helleiner has observed,
national currency regimes were part of a wider reconceptualization of
state power. States had long used coins as tangible representations of the
crown, but only in the nineteenth century did states become powerful
enough to compel the exclusive use of single currency within their terri-
tories. Under legal tender laws, the state could “force people to use
whatever money the state declared to be valid.” At the same time,
a succession of advances in printing technology, such as steam-powered
plate printing and then electrotyping, made forgery vastly more difficult.
Technology thus emboldened states to assert that trust in their paper
currency was analogous to trust in the state itself. In that way, national
currencies were part of broader projects to foster national identity. An
American proponent of a single national currency argued that: “every
citizen” who uses “a currency which will be equal to gold through every
foot of our territory . . . would feel and realize, every time he handled or
looked at such a bill bearing the national mark, that the union of these
states is verily a personal benefit and blessing to all.”21
The images on national currencies were chosen to support such nation-
building projects. The iconography of the US National Bank Notes of
1863, for example, was part of an explicit project to inculcate nationalism.
Writing to the Secretary of the Treasury in 1863, Spencer M. Clark, the
head of the National Currency Bureau, outlined this project in detail:
A series properly selected, with their subject titles imprinted on the notes, would
tend to teach the masses the prominent periods in our country’s history. The
laboring man who should receive every Saturday night, a copy of the “Surrender
of Burgoyne” for his weekly wages, would soon inquire who General Burgoyne
was, and to whom he surrendered. His curiosity would be aroused and he would
learn the facts from a fellow laborer or from his employer. The same would be true
19
Nihon Ginkō Chō sa Kyoku, ed., Zuroku Nihon no kahei [Japanese Currency Illustrated],
Vol. 6, Kinsei shinyō kahei no hattatsu 2 [The Development of Credit Currency in the
Early Modern Period 2] (Tokyo: Tō yō Keizai Shinpō sha, 1975), images 6 and 205. See
also the commentaries of pp. 90, 101.
20
Higaki Norio, “Hansatsu no hatashita yakuwari to mondaiten” [The Roles and Problems
of Domain Currencies], Kinyū kenkyū 8, no. 1 (1991): 136–138.
21
Eric Helleiner, The Making of National Money: Territorial Currencies in Historical
Perspective (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2003), pp. 42–61, 100–139, quote
from p. 111.
of other National pictures, and in time many would be taught leading incidents in
our country’s history, so that they would soon be familiar to those who would
never read them in books, teaching them history and imbuing them with
a National feeling.22
The final selection of images on US currency reflects this project of
using bank notes as passive national history textbooks. In addition to the
scenes noted above (De Soto, the Pilgrims, and the Surrender of
Burgoyne), the notes featured the arrival of Columbus, the baptism of
Pocahontas, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In
short, the notes constituted a metanarrative in which the unity and
greatness of the American nation was presaged by the arrival of the
first European Christians. Ironically, the Surrender of Burgoyne was
placed on the $500 note, which was unlikely to be handled by
a “laboring man” receiving his “weekly wage.” Overall, however, the
1863 series was designed both to foster and to celebrate a new level of
national unity.
The Meiji government copied both the US financial system and its use of
imagery to promote national unity. The surviving record on the design of
the 1873 Japanese National Bank Notes is fragmentary, but it is clear that
the Meiji government was emulating the new practice of using currency to
disseminate a nationalist iconography. Writing from Washington, DC in
1871, where he was negotiating with the Continental Bank Note
Company, Inoue Kaoru described the sort of images Japan should put on
its currency: “please send pictures of famous ancient heroes and great
men.” Japanese officials in Washington had already received serviceable
images of the ancient conquest of Korea and the sun goddess Amaterasu
emerging from the Rock Cave of Heaven (as told in the ancient chronicle,
the Kojiki ), but Inoue wanted at least six or seven more images. He
suggested that appropriate images could include depictions of the sinking
of the Mongol invasion fleet in the late thirteenth century, and Kusunoki
Masashige welcoming the return of Emperor Go-Daigo from exile in the
early fourteenth century. Inoue discouraged depicting current or recent
government officials, since such images, unlike those of ancient heroes,
would not “bring the blessings of enlightenment” to the Japanese people.23
22
“Exec. Doc. no. 50: Letter from the Secretary of the Treasury in Answer to a Resolution
of the House of January 24, in Regard to the Printing Bureau of the Treasury
Department,” in Executive Documents Printed by Order of the House of Representatives,
During the Second Session of the Thirty-eighth Congress, 1864–65 (Washington, DC:
Government Printing Office, 1865).
23
Meiji Zaiseishi Hensankai, Meiji zaiseishi [History of Meiji Financial Administration],
Vol. 14 (Tokyo: Meiji Zaiseishi Hakkō jo, 1926–28), pp. 287–289. See also Nihon
Ginkō Chō sa Kyoku, Zuroku Nihon no kahei [Japanese Currency Illustrated], Vol. 7,
222 Mark Ravina
There are no surviving records detailing Inoue’s deliberations with the

Continental Bank Note Company on currency design. But it is clear that
Japanese leaders were engaged in ongoing discussions with Western
experts on how to develop a Japanese national iconography. As John
Breen notes elsewhere in this volume, the Meiji state sought to situate
the Japanese emperor in a transnational hierarchy of monarchs, and
proper iconography was central to that project. As late as 1890, the
Japanese finance ministry was repeatedly asking its representative in
Berlin to ascertain whether Germany’s new currency depicted the coun-
try’s reigning monarch.24 There is also a detailed surviving record of
parallel discussions over the iconography of postage stamps. In 1873,
officials at the Home Ministry (Naimushō ) sent recommendations for
stamp design to the Council of State (Dajō kan). They suggested adopting
Western printing techniques and featuring faces on the stamps, so as to
prevent counterfeiting. Further, since the stamps would circulate over-
seas, they needed to showcase the advancement of industry in Japan. The
Home Ministry also reported that many foreign stamps featured the face
of the country’s king, people of great renown, and sometimes the head of
the national post office. Accordingly, they asked if Japanese stamps
should feature the faces of current Japanese government officials.
The Council of State consulted with Georges Bousquet, a French jurist
employed primarily as a legal advisor. Bousquet rebutted many of the
Home Ministry’s assertions. The use of faces on stamps was not, in fact,
an effective anticounterfeiting measure. Color and detailed pattern were
more difficult to copy. As for the images of people on stamps, Bousquet
advised against depicting any living person besides the monarch. Western
practice was to feature only two types of personage: kings, who either
founded the empire or restored its lost glory, and well-known heroes who
rendered great service to the realm. Current officials should not be
featured, since they might be dismissed, making the stamps an embar-
rassment. As an example, Bousquet noted that even Bismarck himself did
not appear on German stamps.25
Kindai heisei no seiritsu [The Formation of the Modern Monetary System] (Tokyo: Tō yō
Keizai Shinpō sha, 1975), pp. 310–321.
24
Gaimushō , “Doitsukoku shihei ni dō koku kō tei no gazō satsunyū no yū mu torishirabe-
kata ō kura daijin yori irai no ken” [Finding Out Whether the German Emperor Is
Depicted on German Paper Currency: Requests by the Finance Minister],
B11090590900 (National Archives of Japan).
25
Takahashi Zenshichi, Oyatoi gaikokujin: tsū shin [Hired Foreign Experts: Correspondence]
(Tokyo: Kajima Kenkyū jo Shuppankai, 1969), pp. 120–121; Yū seishō Yū sei kenkyū jo
Shozoku Shiryō kan, Yū bin kitte rui enkakushi [The Past and Present of Postal Stamp
Types] (Tokyo: Yū seishō Yū sei kenkyū jo Shozoku Shiryō kan, 1996), p. 67.
This engagement with Western iconographies was part of a broader

effort to fit Japanese culture into a new transnational frame. The concepts
of “modernization” and “modernity” are not helpful here, since much of
this engagement involved non- or antimodern practices. The Meiji state
dissolved the samurai status hierarchy but, as Breen notes in his chapter,
it promptly created a new peerage and sought to situate the Japanese
emperor in a global hierarchy of monarchs. Making Japan modern
involved creating new emblems to trumpet the Emperor Meiji’s links to
the ancient past.
The development of a Japanese banknote iconography reflected these
tensions: celebrating Japanese uniqueness without making it too “Asiatic”
or exotic. Images on currency needed to be “ancient,” “famous,” and
heroic, but roughly analogous to Western models. Those criteria resulted
in the celebration of some Japanese heroes, but the effacement of others.
The sun goddess Amaterasu, for example, was part of early discussions, but
she disappeared in the later stages of note design. Inoue specifically men-
tioned having received from Japan a painting of Amaterasu emerging from
the Rock Cave of Heaven, and he deemed the image ready for engraving.
But Amaterasu does not appear on any of the 1873 notes: she must have
been removed after Inoue presented the image to engravers in Washington.
Intriguingly, many official Japanese government publications follow
Inoue’s initial plan and report that the Rock Cave appears on the face of
the ¥10 note, although the actual image is of Japanese musicians.26 Only in
a 2001 publication by the Japanese Currency Museum is the image
described simply as a musical performance. What happened to
Amaterasu? Why was she included and then removed from Japanese
currency?
Inoue’s reasons to include Amaterasu on Japanese currency are
obvious: she was a well-known and revered national figure. During the
Shinto revival of the Edo period, pilgrimages to the Sun Goddess shrine at
Ise became a mass movement. In ordinary years, roughly 300,000 pil-
grims traveled to Ise, but there were three mass pilgrimages, approxi-
mately on the sexagenary cycle of the Chinese zodiac: 1705, 1771, and
1830–1831. At least 2 million pilgrims visited Ise in 1705 and 1771, and
roughly 5 million in 1830–1831. These mass pilgrimages had a broad
effect on society and the economy. Roads were clogged, inns were full,
and river porters were overwhelmed. Because of the religious nature of
their travel, pilgrims had an especially powerful claim to alms, even when
they indulged in revelry such as ecstatic dancing. Travel to Ise also
26
Meiji Zaiseishi Hensankai, Meiji zaiseishi [History of Meiji Financial Administration],
Vol. 13 (Tokyo: Maruzen, 1904–1905), pp. 292–293.
224 Mark Ravina
provided a pretext to challenge social norms: women, children, servants,

farmhands, and apprentices left spontaneously and surreptitiously with-
out the permission of their husbands, parents, masters, or lords.27
Images of Amaterasu and Ise were accordingly prominent in popular
culture. The famous landscape artist Andō Hiroshige, for example, fea-
tured Ise in multiple prints of “famous places,” as well as prints focused
specifically on pilgrimage. Utagawa Kunisada I (Toyokuni III) produced
at least two prints focused on Amaterasu’s emergence from the cave,
surrounded by other gods of the Plain of High Heaven.28 Hokusai, with
his characteristic flair for innovation, published a diorama. By carefully
cutting along the lines of his two-part print, consumers could create
a three-dimensional model of Amaterasu’s emergence from the cave.29
Despite such domestic popularity, the image of Amaterasu and the Rock
Cave of Heaven did not fit with international norms of national heroes.
Consider, for example, the backstory to Amaterasu’s reappearance. The
Sun Goddess and her brother Susa-no-o, the Wind God, engaged in
a childbearing contest. When Susan-no-o won, through his greater ability
to procreate, he became wild and disrespectful. He destroyed Amaterasu’s
rice fields and defecated in her sacred spaces. In a final escalation of his
rampage, he ripped open the roof of her Sacred Weaving Hall and threw in
a flayed pony. That offense so startled Amaterasu’s weaver that she struck
her genitals on her loom shuttle and died. In response, Amaterasu fled into
the Rock Cave of Heaven, plunging the High Plain of Heaven into darkness.
Myriad deities then collaborated on an elaborate plan to lure Amaterasu out
of the cave. They uprooted a tree and decorated it with specially crafted cloth
and beads, as well as a newly forged mirror. Then the deity, Amenouzume
no Mikoto, stood in front of the cave, entered a shamanistic trance, exposed
her breasts and genitals, and began dancing. The assembled gods responded
with uproarious laughter and this confused Amaterasu. “Because I have shut
myself in, I thought that Takamanohara would be dark, and that the Central
Land of the Reed Plains would be completely dark. . . . But why is it that
Amenouzume sings and dances, and all the eight-hundred myriad [sic]
deities laugh?” Amenouzume responded, “We rejoice and dance because
there is here a deity superior to you.” The assembled gods then brought the
27
Winston Davis, “Pilgrimage and World Renewal: A Study of Religion and Social Values
in Tokugawa Japan, Part I,” History of Religions 23, no. 2 (1983); Winston Davis,
“Pilgrimage and World Renewal: A Study of Religion and Social Values in Tokugawa
Japan, Part II,” History of Religions 23, no. 3 (1984); Laura Nenzi, “To Ise at All Costs:
Religious and Economic Implications of Early Modern Nukemairi,” Japanese Journal of
Religious Studies 33, no. 1 (2006).
28
Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) Boston, Massachusetts, William Sturgis Bigelow
Collection, Accession number 11.22318-20.
29
MFA, William Sturgis Bigelow Collection, Accession numbers 11.20433 and 11.20434.
mirror close to the Rock Cave door. Amaterasu, apparently unable to

recognize her own reflection, approached the mirror with curiosity and
was grabbed and pulled out by Amenotajikarao-no-Kami, who was hiding
by the door. With Amaterasu’s emergence, the heavens were again illumi-
nated by her light, and the assembled deities then barred the Sun Goddess
from returning to the cave, marking off the entrance with a sacred rope. The
deities also agreed to punish Susa-no-o with a “thousand tables of restitutive
gifts, and also, cutting off his beard and the nails of his hands and feet, had
him exorcised and expelled with a divine expulsion.”30
While there is no surviving record of Inoue Kaoru’s conversations with
the Continental Bank Note Company, nineteenth-century Western discus-
sions of Japanese mythology suggest why the Rock Cave of Heaven image
was rejected. Rather than inspiring awe or reverence, for Western audiences,
the Rock Cave of Heaven legend suggested the primitive and underdeve-
loped nature of Japanese religion. Writing in 1877, for example, the anthro-
pologist Edward B. Tylor attempted to situate the Kojiki in his theories of
world religion. Amaterasu and the Rock Cave of Heaven thus became “in
a very clear and perfect form, the nature-myth of the Sun driven into hiding
by the storm and peeping out from her cloud-cave, when presently the great
cloud is rolled away like a rock from a cave’s mouth.”31 For Tylor, such
myths were part of a deep-seated human desire to explain the natural world,
and he insisted that practices from “earlier and ruder stages of culture” could
provide insight into “some of the deepest and most vital points of our
intellectual, industrial, and social state.”32 Such natural myths were, in
essence, the forerunners of modern scientific inquiry. At the same time,
however, Tylor took an evolutionary view of culture, and he associated
nature myths with “primitive” culture: “savage minds” and “barbaric edu-
cation” produced “childlike devices” to explain the world. Within Tylor’s
schema, the crude animism of creation myths was supposed to evolve,
eventually into increased abstraction, culminating in a coherent moral
code and a single supreme deity. Japanese mythology, however, was the
product of a more primitive state of human development.33
30
Kojiki, Book One, Chapters 15–17, trans. Donald L. Philippi, (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1968), pp. 76–86 with reference to Gustav Heldt, The Kojiki: An
Account of Ancient Matters (New York: Columbia University Press, 2014), pp. 22–25.
31
Edward B. Tylor, “Remarks on Japanese Mythology,” Journal of the Anthropological
Institute of Great Britain and Ireland 6 (1877), 57.
32
Edward B. Tylor, Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology,
Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom, Vol. 2 (London: J. Murray, 1871), pp. 401–402.
33
Tylor, Primitive Culture, esp. Vol. 2, pp. 401–410. For a thoughtful evaluation of Tylor,
see Martin D. Stringer, “Rethinking Animism: Thoughts from the Infancy of Our
Discipline,” Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute 5, no. 4 (1999): 541–556.
226 Mark Ravina
Nineteenth-century Japanese specialists followed Tylor’s schema, and

contrasted the simplicity of Japanese mythology with more sophisticated
religious forms. W. G. Aston, who translated the Chronicles of Japan
[Nihon shoki ] into English, saw the odd anthropomorphism of Japanese
gods as a sign of Japanese cultural inferiority. Japanese deities, he wrote,
“are for the most part personified powers, elements and objects of nat-
ure,” but there is no sense of a more developed, abstract sense of the
divine. Amaterasu:
although the most eminent of the Shinto Gods, is grossly insulted by Susa no wo,
and instead of inflicting on him the punishment which he deserves, hides in a cave
from which she is partly enticed, partly dragged by the other deities. This is not the
behaviour of a Supreme Being.
The Rock Cave of Heaven story thus highlighted precisely the forms of
“otherness” the Meiji state wished to rebut: Japan as morally and intel-
lectually underdeveloped. Indeed, Aston felt compelled to insist that,
despite the crudeness of Japanese mythology, “it does not follow that
the ancient Japanese were backward in their general intellectual
development.”34 Faced with such a Western reception, the Rock Cave
of Heaven was reduced to an innocuous image of traditional musicians.
That image was nominally related to ancient mythology, since the gods’
performance before the Rock Cave of Heaven is considered the origins of
Japanese music. But, unlike a direct depiction of the myth, it did not raise
questions of why the Japanese gods might indulge in whimsical cruelty or
deceit.
Instead of the Rock Cave of Heaven, Japanese currency featured
legends that offered divine support for modern Japanese territoriality.
The ¥20 notes, for example, featured the Wind God, Susa-no-o, and
Yamata no Orochi, an eight-headed dragon, or more literally an “eight-
branched giant snake.” Like the story of the Rock Cave of Heaven, the
Wind God’s defeat of the dragon was well known in popular culture, with
prints by Utagawa Toyokuni,35 Tsukioka Yoshitoshi,36 and Toyohara
Chikanobu, as well as depictions on sword scabbards. In the Kojiki
version of the tale, Susa-no-o descends to earth and hears of a massive
and terrifying serpent, with eight heads and eight tails, stretching across
eight valleys and eight mountain peaks, and with a belly oozing blood.
Susa-no-o learns that the serpent has been terrorizing the locals and
eating their daughters. He contrives to defeat the monster by getting it
34
W. G. Aston, “Japanese Myth,” Folklore 10, no. 3 (1899): 294–324.
35
Tokyo National Museum, Registration numbers C0073788, A-10569_5083,
A-10569_5084.
36
British Museum, Registration number 2008,3037.01003.
drunk with eight vats of strong wine, one for each head. Susa-no-o then
cuts off each of the eight heads and when cutting off one of the eight tails,
his own sword breaks on a sword encased within the tail. Susa-no-o takes
this broadsword, named Kusanagi (lit. “grass scythe”), and offers it to
Amaterasu. It later becomes part of the three sacred regalia of the
Japanese imperial house, along with the mirror and special curved jewels
that were hung before the Rock Cave of Heaven.37
Like the story of the Rock Cave of Heaven, the legend of Susa-no-o and
the eight-headed dragon is full of inconsistences. Kusanagi, for example,
is found in the serpent’s “middle” tail, although, since eight is an even
number, the dragon cannot have a middle tail. The sudden transforma-
tion of Susa-no-o from a violent and dangerous rebel into a loyal hero
points to the hybrid nature of the Kojiki as a fusion of independent mythic
traditions. But the story of Kusanagi also includes a reconciliation of
those different traditions: Susa-no-o offers Kusanagi to Amaterasu, sym-
bolizing the submission of ancient noble houses to the imperial line. Most
important, Susa-no-o’s encounter with the dragon could be integrated
with internationally established tropes of supernatural intervention and
sovereignty. The connection between possession of a mystical sword and
a sovereign’s right to rule was, for example, common to the Kojiki
and Arthurian legend. There are two popular versions of the tale of
King Arthur and his sword Excalibur. In the first, the king’s right to rule
is confirmed when he alone is able to pull Excalibur from a stone.
Alternately, an enchantress, the Lady of the Lake, saves a wounded
King Arthur and bequeathes him the sword.38 The sacred swords
Excalibur and Kusanagi both symbolize and establish royal legitimacy.
Dragon slaying was also a part of European iconographies of state
power. The legend of St. George, for example, bears a striking resem-
blance to the story of Susa-no-o. In both cases, the hero finds a land in
which terrified people feed their own children to a monstrous snake/
serpent/dragon, and the hero proceeds to kill the beast with special
weapons and to take as his wife a local noble’s daughter. As part of the
transformation of an earlier pagan hero into a Christian saint, George first
wounds the dragon with his lance, and then asks that the locals be
baptized, before slaying the dragon with his sword. The veneration of
St. George was common across Europe and images of George and the
dragon appeared on European coats of arms and official insignia from
Moscow to London. The English national flag is based on St. George’s
37
Kojiki, Book One, Chapter 19, trans. Philippi, Kojiki, pp. 88–90 with reference to Heldt,
The Kojiki: An Account of Ancient Matters, pp. 25–27.
38
For a survey of Arthurian legend, see Elizabeth Archibald and Ad Putter, eds., Cambridge
Companion to the Arthurian Legend (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009).
228 Mark Ravina
cross, and the red cross in the British Union flag represents England as
part of the United Kingdom.39 The story of Susa-no-o and the eight-
headed snake thus fit neatly as a “module” of Japanese national identity.
It was distinctly Japanese but also neatly analogous to Western national
legends. Susa-no-o was therefore accessible as a “Japanese St. George,”
foreign and different, yet recognizable as a national hero.40
Modular nationalism thus precluded some forms of alterity while pro-
moting Japanese legends involving honor, loyalty, valor, and divine inter-
vention, especially those that legitimized Japanese territoriality and
sovereign legitimacy.41 The face of the ¥2 note, for example, featured
the celebrated imperial loyalist Nitta Yoshisada (1301–1338). Nitta is
shown casting his sword into the sea before attacking the Hō jō in
Kamakura in 1333 on behalf of Emperor Go-Daigo. According to the
Taiheiki, since the land approaches to Kamakura were well-defended,
Nitta cast his sword into the sea and prayed to the gods to part the waters
and create a beachhead fan, Cape Inamura. “I have heard,” declared
Nitta, “that the Sun Goddess of Ise, the founder of the land of Japan,
conceals her true being in the august image of Vairochana Buddha, and
that she has appeared in this world in the guise of a dragon-god of the blue
ocean . . . let the eight dragon-gods on the inner and outer seas look upon
my loyalty; let them roll back the tides a myriad [sic] league distant to
open the way for my hosts.”42 In Nitta’s understanding of Amaterasu, she
appears in many guises, and is thus both omnipresent and hidden.
Further, she acts in the present to reward loyalty to the imperial house.
Like the story of Susa-no-o and the snake/dragon, the story of Nitta and
Amaterasu served the dual criteria of being uniquely Japanese but run-
ning parallel to Western analogues. There were numerous Western exam-
ples of divine intervention to turn the tide of battle, including God
slowing the passage of time for both Joshua at Jericho and Charlemagne
at Roncesvalles (Rencesvals). Thus, a story of Amaterasu creating
a beachhead at Inamura for her loyal servant, Nitta Yoshisada, could be
fit into an emerging global corpus of national mythologies. Amaterasu
hiding in a cave confirmed Orientalist conceits about Japanese under-
development, but Amaterasu changing the tides for Nitta Yoshisada
established parallels between Japanese culture and the “civilized” West.
39
For an overview of St. George legends, see Samantha Riches, St. George: Hero, Martyr,
and Myth (Stroud: Sutton, 2000).
40
For Susan-no-o as St. George, see J. Edward Kidder, Jr., Himiko and Japan’s Elusive
Chiefdom of Yamatai: Archaeology, History, and Mythology (Honolulu: University of
Hawai’i Press, 2007), p. 286.
41
The term “modular” nationalism derives from Anderson, Imagined Communities.
42
Hō shi Kojima, The Taiheiki: A Chronicle of Medieval Japan, trans. Helen Craig
McCullough (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1976), pp. 289–291.
This seemingly narrow case of Meiji currency iconography thus reveals

broader tensions within Meiji nationalism and the construction of the
Meiji nation-state. On the one hand, the removal of Amaterasu from
Meiji currency was part of a broader abandonment of pre-Meiji political
aspirations. Nativists, for example, had hoped that the Restoration would
bring about a return to ancient patterns of rule and a concomitant dis-
appearance of the state. They envisioned that as ancient rituals drew
together ordinary people, the imperial house and the gods themselves
would achieve a primal unity. Those utopian hopes, reflected in the
slogan, the “Union of Ritual and Rule” (saisei itchi ), emerged from a
belief in Japan’s fundamental and essential difference from all other
cultures. Almost all foreign influences, even the Chinese writing system,
were viewed as potential perversions of an essential Japanese nature. But
that vision of a stateless, organic unity of the Japanese people and their
gods was ill suited to the nineteenth-century world system. Rather than
dissolve the Japanese state into a network of local shrines, the Meiji
government relied on Western advisors to create a newly powerful, highly
centralized nation-state. The constraints of “modular” nationalism and
the nation-state precluded a popular and compelling vision of how the
Japanese past might shape the Japanese future.43
This disappearance of Amaterasu thus supports the argument that, for
most of the world, nationalism and the nation-state are foreign political
forms that preclude alternative political paths. As Partha Chatterjee has
argued, nationalist aspirations in the colonial world require
a contradictory move: a celebration of local culture as a distinctive mark
of identity, but also a rejection of that culture as an obstacle to progress.
For Chatterjee, nationalist thought is “a particular manifestation of
a much more general problem . . . the bourgeois-rationalist conception
of knowledge, established in the post-Enlightenment period of European
intellectual history, as the moral and epistemic foundation for
a supposedly universal framework of thought which perpetuates, in
a real and not merely metaphorical sense, a colonial domination.”
Thus, nationalists in the developing world “challenged the colonial
claim to political domination” but also “accepted the very intellectual
premises of ‘modernity’ on which colonial domination was based.”44 In
the Japanese case, the disappearance of Amaterasu represents how
43
For the utopian aspirations of nativism, see Anne Walthall, The Weak Body of a Useless
Woman: Matsuo Taseko and the Meiji Restoration (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1998).
44
Partha Chatterjee, Nationalist Thought and the Colonial World: A Derivative Discourse
(London: Zed Books, 1986), pp. 1–35.
230 Mark Ravina
Japanese culture was self-censored based on Western standards of

“rational” discourse and Western precedents for national heroes.
At the same time, the Meiji case seems to substantiate the claim that
nationalism and the nation-state are universal forms. Setting aside
Amaterasu and the Rock Cave of Heaven, there were numerous images
from Japanese popular culture that meshed easily with the criteria of
“modular” nationalism. Indeed, by the 1890s, “the way of the samurai”
(bushido), once a marker of samurai status, was reworked as a nationalist
ideology, the common heritage of all Japanese subjects.45 It is thus
difficult to argue that Meiji nationalism was a failure. On the contrary,
by the early 1900s, Meiji nationalism was so successful that anxious
Westerners began wondering how they might reimport it from Japan.
Victory in the Russo-Japanese War, and the reinvention of bushido as
a national creed, convinced Western observers that Japanese nationalism
was not a faulty derivative of Western nationalism, but a new and
improved model. Robert Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy Scout move-
ment, extolled the Japanese as models of modern patriotism and self-
sacrifice.46 Japanese patriotism, according to Baden-Powell, stemmed
from their “upper classes learning, as boys, the chivalry of their forefathers
the Samurai (or knights of Japan).”47 The Boy Scout movement was
designed, in no small part, to bring Japanese models of national service
to Britain. Advocates of “national efficiency” argued that Britain should
emulate Japan in order to stem its decline.48 One of the most imaginative
examples of that new assessment of Japan was H. G. Wells’ Modern
Utopia, featuring a “voluntary nobility,” known as the “samurai,” who
rule a utopian society on a distant planet.49 Thus, not only Japanese
subjects, but also Westerns observers, were seduced by the conceit that
the Japanese nation was natural, timeless, and organic. “Forgetting,” as
Renan observed, or even “historical error, is a crucial factor in the crea-
tion of a nation.”50 In the Japanese case, however, such historical amnesia
45
Mark Ravina, “The Apocryphal Suicide of Saigō Takamori: Samurai, Seppuku and the
Politics of Legend,” Journal of Asian Studies 69, no. 3 (2010): 691–721.
46
Robert Stephenson Smyth Baden-Powell, Boy Scouts Beyond the Seas; “My World Tour”
(London: C. Arthur Pearson Ltd., 1913), pp. 86–100; Michael Rosenthal, The Character
Factory: Baden-Powell and the Origins of the Boy Scout Movement, 1st ed. (New York:
Pantheon Books, 1986), pp. 125–130.
47
Baden-Powell, Eton College Chronicle, December 2, 1904, p. 600 quoted in
Michael Rosenthal, “Knights and Retainers: The Earliest Version of Baden-Powell’s
Boy Scout Scheme,” Journal of Contemporary History 15, no. 4 (1980), 605.
48
G. R. Searle, The Quest for National Efficiency: A Study in British Politics and Political
Thought, 1899–1914 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971), pp. 57–59.
49
H. G. Wells, A Modern Utopia (Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1967, originally
published 1905).
50
Renan, “What Is a Nation,” p. 11.
was global in scope. The very nations that, in the 1850s and 1860s,
imposed unequal treaties on a “backwards” nation became enthralled
by the power of the Japanese nation-state and its organic unity with its
people.
This new appreciation of Japan was marked in both practical and
symbolic registers. Through the Anglo-Japanese Alliance of 1902, the
United Kingdom and Japan recognized their common interest in oppos-
ing Russian ambitions. Notably, the treaty was the first formal alliance
between an independent Asian power and a European country against
a European rival. Over the same period, British royalty embraced the
Emperor Meiji as a peer. As Breen notes, Edward VII was the first British
monarch to exchange honors with the Japanese imperial house. The
Emperor Meiji bestowed the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum in
1902 and received the Order of the Garter in 1906. Japan now had a seat
at a Eurocentric table.
Making sense of the Meiji Restoration requires engaging this tension:
confronting the degree to which Western norms, such as nationalism and
the nation-state, were both constraining and empowering. For Meiji-era
ideologues, the Japanese past offered ample precedent for the construc-
tion of a Japanese nation-state and the iconography of Japanese paper
money suggests how visualizations of the Japanese past were marshaled
on behalf of that project. Meiji era ideologues quickly mastered the
“grammar of modernity,” to borrow Carol Gluck’s phrase, and began
speaking fluent Japanese within the confines of that grammar. The price
of that mastery was an effacement of alternative visions of Japanese
identities, as emblematized by the consignment of the Rock Cave of
Heaven to a “primitive” Japanese past.
11 Ornamental Diplomacy
Emperor Meiji and the Monarchs of the Modern
World
John Breen
What more is there to say about this utterly familiar portrait of the
Emperor Meiji (Figure 11.1)?
Owing to the pioneering work of Taki Kō ji, it is now common knowl-
edge that this is not a photograph of the emperor – first impressions
notwithstanding – but a photograph of a painting of the emperor. The
Italian Eduardo Chiossone was the artist responsible for the painting,
which Maruki Riyō then photographed.1 The emperor’s refusal to have
his photograph taken was well-known, and it explains why Chamberlain
Tokudaiji Sanemori solicited Chiossone’s assistance. Chiossone began by
making a series of sketches of the emperor without the latter’s knowledge
while he was at dinner on January 14, 1888. Working from the dinner
sketches, Chiossone then painted the emperor sitting as nineteenth-
century European monarchs were wont to sit, and dressed him military
style as they were typically dressed. The artist drew here on European
traditions of royal portraiture, and his portrait was meant to present to all
whose gaze fell upon it the emperor as modern constitutional monarch.
The portrait, after all, was commissioned and completed just a year before
the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. As for the portrait’s public, it
is well-known that it was distributed across the country, first to govern-
ment offices and then to schools and that, in time, it became the object of
nation-wide, and subsequently empire-wide, cultic practices.2
1
Taki Kō ji, Tennō no shō zō [Portrait of the Emperor] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1988),
chapter 4.
2
On the national cult of the portrait, see Taki, Tennō no shō zō , chapter 6, and Mashino Keiko,
“Sei to zoku no tennō zō : Meiji tennō onshashin to hikō shiki shō zō ” [The Sacred and the
Secular Imperial Image: Photographs and Unofficial Images of Meiji Emperor], in Kindai
kō shitsu imeˉ ji sō shutsu [The Creation of Modern Images of the Imperial Family], Vol. 6, Kindai
ni okeru tennō no ariyō o toinaosu [Questioning the Image of the Emperor in the Modern
Period], ed. Shioya Jun et al. (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2017). On aspects of the
imperial portrait in Korea, see Hiura Satoko, Jinja, gakkō , shokuminchi: gyaku kinō suru
Chō sen shihai [Shrines, Schools, Colonies: The Reverse Function of the Ruling of Korea]
(Kyoto: Kyō to Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013), chapter 5; for Taiwan, see Tsai Chin Tang,
232
Emperor Meiji and Modern World Monarchs 233
Figure 11.1 Edoardo Chiossone’s portrait of the Emperor Meiji.

Kō shitsu kō zoku seikan Meiji hen [The Imperial Family and Its
Members: Album of Sacred Images] (Tokyo: Miyako Nippō sha, 1935)
The image was composed – primarily perhaps – with an elite foreign

audience in mind. Chiossone drew on European norms of portraiture
precisely to render the Japanese emperor familiar, and so appealing, to the
monarchs of contemporary Europe. Foreign diplomats brought to Japan
photographs of their monarchs, and expected to receive in return an
image of the emperor and indeed the empress. No photo of the emperor
had been taken since a black and white image captured by Uchida Kuichi
in 1872.3 In the intervening years, the sullen, slender youth of twenty, had
filled out to become a charismatic sovereign of thirty-six; the early
Nihon teikokushugika Taiwan no shū kyō seisaku [Taiwan’s Religious Policies under Japanese
Imperialism] (Tokyo: Dō seisha, 1994).
3
Uchida, who was employed as official court photographer, took the photograph in question in
June 1872. In the previous month, he had taken another with the emperor wearing traditional
sokutai court garb. On these early photographs and their history, see Taki, Tennō no shō zō ,
chapter 4 and Okabe Masayuki, “Egakareta Meiji, utsusareta Meiji” [Painted Meiji,
Photographed Meiji], in Meiji tennō to sono jidai, ed. Okabe Masayuki ed., Meiji tennō to sono
jidai [The Meiji Emperor and His Age] Sankei shinbun (2002), pp. 50-52 and 112–113.
234 John Breen
photographs were no longer a true likeness. Itō Hirobumi had been

pressing the emperor to have a second photograph done; the emperor’s
stubborn refusal had led to the recruitment of Chiossone.4 We owe much
to Taki for our knowledge of this historic 1888 portrait, then, but there is
one point that he overlooks. Just a year beyond the portrait’s composition
lay the promulgation of the Meiji Constitution. To be sure, this explains
much about the portrait’s timing. Immediately preceding it, however, was
a little-known event of considerable historical significance. On January 3,
1888, just eleven days before Chiossone sketched the emperor, the
Japanese government had overhauled the honors system, revamping
existing orders, adding new ones, creating in the process an array of
new insignia: medallions, ribbons, badges, cordons, and collars.
If we look again at Chiossone’s image, it is clear that the display of
insignia is a principal purpose. The emperor’s posture is straight, and
his shoulders are back; his renowned stoop is nowhere in evidence.
The emperor thrusts his chest out drawing our gaze toward the
ornaments that adorn it: the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum
with badge, collar, and grand cordon, the badge of the Order of the
Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers, and the medallions and ribbons
of the Order of the Sacred Treasure. The emperor was not so
adorned when Chiossone sketched him at dinner; these were details
the artist added later. The ornaments are material objects in the
emperor’s gift, and they are essential to his structuring of power
relations, and defining of status distinctions. They identify him as
the “fount of all honor,” a quality confirmed in Article 15 of the new
constitution, which sanctions his right to grant “titles of nobility,
rank, orders and other marks of honor.” They are his alone to confer
on his subjects and, once conferred, they transform the subject’s
status in society. They are, equally, a vital medium of exchange: for
example, the emperor gifts them to other monarchs in exchange for
different objects of similar value. In the nineteenth century, it was in
the exchange – and the withholding – of these honor-laden objects
that personal relationships between monarchs were forged, and dip-
lomatic relations between states, were structured. What was really
being exchanged, of course, was the recognition of sovereignty.5 In
4
Chiossone was in Japan from 1875 to 1891 and also painted portraits of other prominent
Meiji leaders, including Ō kubo Toshimichi, Saigō Takamori, Sanjō Sanetomi, Kido
Takayoshi, and Iwakura Tomomi.
5
Immanuel Wallerstein writes of sovereignty as a “hypothetical trade” of recognition
between nations. Immanuel Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis: An Introduction
(Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004), p. 44.
the more familiar parlance of nineteenth-century monarchs, it might

be thought of as the recognition of “cousinhood.”6
This chapter takes up the Emperor Meiji’s exchange of ornaments with
monarchs of the modern world in order to argue two simple, and inti-
mately related, points. First, it demonstrates that the Emperor Meiji is
vital to an understanding of the dynamic construction of Japan’s inter-
state relationships in the latter half of nineteenth century. Second, con-
sistent with the global approach at the heart of this volume, it posits that it
is only possible to evaluate the Emperor Meiji’s historical role by locating
him in a transnational, diplomatic context.
Modern Japanese Honors and Ornaments

The modern Japanese honors system was launched by imperial decree in
1875. It was the outcome of a two-year investigation of European honors
commissioned by the Council of the Left. Hosokawa Junjirō of the
Education Ministry, and Albert Charles Du Bousquet, a French military
officer employed by the government to help modernize the army, were key
figures. The upshot of their several reports was the creation of the Order
of the Rising Sun, comprising eight ranks, each designated by a medallion
with ribbon. The medallion had for its center a red sun; it was linked to its
ribbon by a three-petaled purple paulownia. The first recipients of this
honor were four imperial princes: Arisugawa no Miya Takahito and his
son Taruhito, Yamashina no Miya Akira and Kuni no Miya Asahiko.7
In the following year, 1876, the government established an Honors
Bureau under the stewardship of Itō Hirobumi. The bureau’s inaugural
act was the creation of a second order, superior to that of the Rising Sun:
namely, the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum (see Figure 11.2).
Recipients of the new order were identified not only by the medallion –
comprising a red sun emitting thirty white rays surrounded by chry-
santhemums – but also by a distinctive new cordon: a broad sash, that
is, of red silk with purple edging, worn over the right shoulder.
The emperor’s dispatch of an emissary to the Ise shrines in 1877 to place
these insignia before his ancestor, the Sun Goddess, might be construed as
6
It was for example as “good brother and cousin” that Queen Victoria addressed the
Emperor Meiji in the credentials that Sir Harry Parkes handed him in spring of 1868.
On this, see John Breen, “Kindai gaikō taisei no sō shutsu to tennō ” [The Construction of
the Modern Diplomatic Structure and the Emperor], in Nihon no taigai kankei [Japanese
Foreign Relations], Vol. 7, Kindaika suru Nihon [Modernizing Japan], ed. Arano Yasunori
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2012), pp. 120–121.
7
On the early history of the honors system, see, for example, Kurihara Toshio, Kunshō :
shirarezaru sugao [Honors: The Unknown True Face] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shinsho, 2011),
pp. 16–19.
236 John Breen
Figure 11.2 Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum. J. L. Brunet, Les

Ordres de Chevalerie et les Distinctions Honorifiques au Japon [The Orders
of Chivalry and Honorary Distinctions of Japan] (Paris: Actualités
Diplomatiques et Coloniales, 1903)
marking the modern honors system’s formal establishment.8 In fact, how-

ever, further calibrations were to follow. In 1888, just days before Chiossone
sketched the imperial portrait, the system was brought more neatly into line
with Western models. In practice, this meant the creation of a new collar
(kubikazari) for the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum. The collar was
made of pure gold embossed with the Chinese characters for mei and ji. The
Order of the Rising Sun was now refined by the fashioning of new insignia:
Rising Sun with Paulownia Flowers and Grand Cordon. Two entirely new
orders were also created: those of the Sacred Treasure and the Precious
Crown, graded into eight and five ranks respectively. The badge of the
former featured an image of the Ise mirror at its center, and was created to
8
Sō rifu Shō kun Kyoku, ed., Shō kun kyoku hyakunen shiryō shū (jō ) [Decoration Bureau,
100 Year Document Collection, Part One] (Tokyo: Sō rifu Shō kun Kyoku, 1978), p. 117.
*(The author wishes to thank Mark Ravina for introducing him to Brunet and his
passion for ornaments.)
Figure 11.3 Portrait of Empress Shō ken, Kō shitsu kō zoku seikan Meiji
hen, 1935
(The Precious Crown is visible by the empress’s hip in this photograph
from 1889.)
reward acts of military valor by Japanese soldiers and sailors.9 The Order of
the Precious Crown, whose medallion comprised one hundred pearls set
around an image of an ancient court crown, is of interest as the first order
specifically for women (see Figure 11.3). Its first recipient was Princess
Arisugawa no Miya Tadako.
Two years later, in 1890, the emperor introduced the seven ranks of the
Order of the Golden Kite to honor “military men of outstanding valor.”
The golden kite, set atop a striking red, blue, and yellow medallion, was the
mystical bird, which according to myths recounted in the foundational
9
Sō rifu Shō kun Kyoku, ed., Shō kun kyoku hyakunen shiryō shū , pp. 86–87. Note that
military men had been honored before now. For example, Saigō Tsugumichi had been
invested in the Order of the Rising Sun in 1876 for his role in the Taiwan campaign. Sō rifu
Shō kun Kyoku, ed., Shō kun kyoku hyakunen shiryō shū , p. 49.
238 John Breen
epic, the Chronicles of Japan [Nihon shoki], bedazzled and so helped anni-
hilate the foes of Japan’s first emperor, Jinmu.
The global activation of Japan’s modern honors system can be dated
with precision to 1879. It is worthy of note that the emperor’s active
engagement with foreign monarchs coincided precisely with the govern-
ment’s shoring up of imperial tradition, as discussed by Takagi Hiroshi in
his chapter. Two of Japan’s Europe-based diplomats, Aoki Shū zō , min-
ister in Berlin, and Samejima Naonobu, Paris-resident minister for
France and Belgium played pivotal roles. In March 1879, Aoki informed
the Foreign Ministry in Tokyo of the Golden Wedding anniversary later
in the year of Wilhelm I, King of Prussia and Germany’s first kaiser, and
Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach. Foreign Minister Terajima
Munenori acted swiftly on Aoki’s intelligence with a formal proposal to
the Council of State: “Our nation is isolated in the East, and our relation-
ships will always be more remote than those enjoyed by the neighboring
monarchies of Europe, related as they are by blood.”10 Japan needed to
act swiftly and dispatch an emissary to Berlin bearing gifts for the kaiser
and his wife from the emperor and empress. Aoki persuaded the Foreign
Ministry that the investiture of foreign sovereigns into the new Japanese
orders had a vital role to play. This was “not merely a mark of honor
bestowed but an expression of friendship between monarchs.” Wilhelm
was the “longest reigning monarch in Europe,” and he was “a man of
dignity and influence, and Japan’s diplomacy with his empire is hardly in
its infancy.”11 The government duly dispatched an emissary to Wilhelm’s
anniversary celebrations bearing the medallion and cordon of the
Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum along with a personal missive
from the emperor and gifts from the empress.
Later in the year, Samejima reported to the foreign ministry on the
imminent marriage – the second marriage, in fact – of King Alfonso XII of
Spain to Maria Cristina of Austria. It was vital for the Japanese emperor to
“celebrate and mourn” with the monarchs of Europe, insisted Samejima.
Only thus will they be persuaded that we are “members of the same
society”; only thus will they “abandon their practice of not viewing
Eastern states as friends.”12 Samejima proposed he be dispatched to the
king’s wedding at the Basilica of Atocha in Madrid as representative of the
Emperor Meiji. Thereafter, he would invest the king in the Supreme
Order of the Chrysanthemum. Samejima’s proposal found favor, and he
became the first Japanese diplomat to attend the nuptial Mass of
10
Naikaku Kiroku Kyoku, ed., Hō ki bunrui taizen [The Complete Index of Law], Vol. 24,
Gaikō mon 3 [Diplomacy 3] (Tokyo: Hara Shobō , 1977), p. 25.
11
Naikaku Kiroku Kyoku, ed., Hō ki bunrui taizen, pp. 25–26. 12 Ibid, p. 24.
a European sovereign. Hereafter it became practice for the Japanese

emperor to dispatch ornament-bearing envoys to European courts on
the occasion of royal weddings, enthronements, and funerals.
From the perspective of ornamental diplomacy, 1879 proved pivotal.
While Aoki Shū zō was in Berlin celebrating the kaiser’s fifty years of
marriage to Augusta of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach, his eighteen-year old
grandson, Prince Heinrich, was touring Asiatic waters with the German
Navy. In May 1879, Heinrich dropped anchor in Yokohama. At the end
of the month, he was in the Kogosho Hall of the temporary imperial
palace in Akasaka, being received by the emperor for what was to be
a momentous audience: the emperor’s investment into the German Order
of the Black Eagle. The emperor, sporting the medallion and cordon of
the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum over his military uniform,
welcomed the prince. He then removed the insignia, and the prince
stepped forward to pin to the left side of the emperor’s chest
a medallion comprising a blue enamel Maltese cross surrounded by gold-
crowned black eagles. Prince Heinrich then placed over his left shoulder
the cordon of orange silk. As the editors of the Chronicle of the Emperor
Meiji recorded with evident pride, “Never before had an Asian monarch
been invested in this order.”13 This was, indeed, the first occasion on
which the emperor had worn the insignia of any foreign order. In June,
Prince Heinrich returned to the Akasaka Palace for his audience of fare-
well, and the emperor duly invested him into the Supreme Order of the
Chrysanthemum, personally adorning him with medallion and cordon.14
The protocol was precisely that observed in European courts of the nine-
teenth century.
On September 5, 1879, the emperor received in audience the Russian
plenipotentiary minister to Japan, Karl von Struve. At the Akasaka
Palace, Struve handed the emperor a personal missive from Tsar
Alexander II, before investing him in the Order of St. Andrew the
Apostle, the First-Called.15 St. Andrew was Russia’s patron saint, and
the medallion featured St. Andrew nailed to a cross, surrounded by six
eagles.16 Meiji was the first Asian monarch to be so honored. In
November, the emperor underwent his third investment of this
13
Naikaku Kiroku Kyoku, ed., Hō ki bunrui taizen, 279. See also Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō
ki 4 [Chronicle of the Emperor Meiji 4] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 1967) pp.
746–747.
14
Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō ki 4, p. 681.
15
Naikaku Kiroku Kyoku, ed., Hō ki bunrui taizen, p. 171; Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō ki 4,
pp. 743–744.
16
There was a version of the medallion that featured eagles instead of the crucified
St. Andrew, which was designed for Muslim leaders. (Personal communication from
Danslav Slavenskoj.) It is not clear which version the Emperor Meiji received.
240 John Breen
extraordinary year. Prince Tommaso of Savoy, the second Duke of

Genoa, was in Japan for a return visit after a gap of six years. He was
touring with the Italian Navy, and came armed with the medallion and
collar of the Supreme Order of the Most Holy Annunciation. As the name
suggests, the order was dedicated to the Virgin Mary, and medallion and
collar both featured an image of the Angel Gabriel appearing before the
Mother of God. The honor was once limited to Catholics, but the newly
enthroned King Umberto I wished to bestow it on the emperor in grati-
tude for kindnesses extended to the prince six years before. In a ceremony
in Akasaka on November 29, Prince Tommaso pinned the badge to the
emperor’s breast and placed the collar around his neck, declaring these
acts signified they were now “cousins.” The prince then stepped forward,
embraced the emperor, placing a kiss on his cheek.17 The Italian minister,
who accompanied the prince, reported that all present were delighted to
see the emperor so honored. Yoshida Yō saku was in attendance that day
as an interpreter, and later recalled that the emperor’s attitude through-
out the ordeal was “truly splendid.”18
Imperial Diplomacy
For the leaders of the Meiji Restoration, the single greatest political
objective after gaining power was purging the insult of the unequal
treaties in order to place Japan on an equal footing with the Western
powers. In his chapter, Takagi reflects on the Meiji government’s efforts
to align Japanese enthronement rites with Western practice; the goal was
precisely to establish parity between Japanese and Western sovereigns. It
was, of course, to this end that the emperor was deployed in what I am
here calling ornamental diplomacy. We might usefully pause to reflect on
the institutional dimension of Japanese state diplomacy, as it was recon-
figured about the emperor in the wake of the 1868 Restoration. How –
and how far – did the government define the emperor’s role in interstate
relations? In 1871, the men who carried out the Restoration abolished the
260 or so feudal domains, and laid the foundations for a centralized
modern state. In the same breath, they reformed government institutions.
The emperor would “preside over” the senior bureau within the Council
of State, and “on all things pass judgment.” The prime minister (dajō
daijin), the ministers of left and right and the body of state councilors
would serve as imperial advisors (hohitsu). Government ministries were
17
Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō ki 4, p. 810. Not all accounts have the prince actually kissing
the emperor.
18
Kimura Ki, Bunmei kaika: Seinen Nihon no enjita hikigeki [Bunmei Kaika: The
Tragicomedy Played by Adolescent Japan] (Tokyo: Shibundō , 1954), pp. 30–33.
redefined now as “branches” of the Council of State. The fiction was that
the emperor “entrusted” ministry chiefs with their respective roles. The
reality was that the chiefs acted independently of the emperor, but sought
the imperial seal of approval to legitimate their actions. The 1871 Charter
of the Foreign Ministry set out the relationship between foreign minister
and emperor in matters diplomatic. Article 1 spoke of the emperor
exchanging missives with foreign sovereigns “on occasions of celebration
and commiseration”; to those missives, the foreign minister would add his
seal. Article 2 stressed the vital importance, for Japan’s “cordial relations”
with foreign powers, of the emperor receiving foreign sovereigns, foreign
royalty, diplomats, and nobility in audience, but the responsibility for
staging these events was to lie exclusively with the foreign minister.19 The
emperor could not, in other words, act independently of his foreign
minister in matters diplomatic.
The ministry charter was revised in 1873, defining the foreign minister
as “supreme among ministry chiefs.” The foreign minister was to be “fully
apprised of all matters relating to imperial government, to take humble
heed of the [emperor’s] sacred will and adhere to his occasional instruc-
tions.” If this appears to hint at the possibility of imperial spontaneity in
interstate relations, in practice, the foreign minister remained uniquely
responsible. It was his remit to “administer the relations between foreign
governments and the government of His Majesty the Emperor and, to this
end, to keep within his purview international law as it governs relation-
ships between states.”20 In 1871, with the creation of the foreign ministry,
the emperor’s limited but vital engagement in modern diplomacy began
in earnest. The charters of the Foreign Affairs Office (gaikoku jimu kyoku)
and the Foreign Office (gaikoku kan) – two early precursors of the min-
istry – are striking for the absence of any reference to the emperor. This is
notwithstanding the fact that the emperor had received foreign diplomats
in an historic audience in 1868, before hosting a visit by Queen
Victoria’s second son, Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh in 1869.21
Diplomats, styled as consuls (benmushi), were stationed overseas from
1870, but there was as yet no suggestion that they were dispatched by –
still less that they represented – the emperor. This changed with the
Foreign Ministry’s 1871 Charter. The first Japanese diplomat to head
19
Gaimushō no Hyakunenshi Hensan Iinkai, ed., Gaimushō no hyakunen [Hundred Years
of the Foreign Ministry] (Tokyo: Hara Shobō ), pp. 88–92
20
Gaimushō no Hyakunenshi Hensan Iinkai, ed. Gaimushō no hyakunen, pp. 99–103.
21
On these events, see John Breen, “The Rituals of Anglo-Japanese Diplomacy: Imperial
Audiences in Early Meiji,” in History of Anglo-Japanese Relations 1600–2000, Vol. 5, Social
and Cultural Perspectives, eds. Tsuzuki Chū shichi and Gordon Daniels (New York:
Palgrave, 2002), pp. 60–76.
242 John Breen
overseas bearing credentials from Emperor Meiji was Terajima

Munenori, who assumed his post as minister to Britain in 1872. The
credentials he took with him were faithful to Western precedent. They
began: “Mutsuhito Emperor of Great Japan who, protected by Heaven,
has inherited the Throne in a Line of Sovereigns unbroken for All
Eternity, respectfully addresses Her Imperial Majesty the Empress of
Great Britain.” They concluded: “Signed and Sealed by the Emperor in
Person in Tokyo Castle on this 28th day of the 4th month of the 5th year
of the reign of Meiji.”
In 1872, the government further aligned Japanese diplomatic practice
with Western models by appointing plenipotentiary ministers and delega-
tion secretaries. In the emperor’s name, the government began now to
dispatch diplomats of these ranks to all states with which Japan had treaty
relations; Japanese legation buildings were constructed in all the major
capitals of the Western world. Exceptionally, the emperor also appointed
diplomats of ambassadorial rank and special emissaries. Iwakura
Tomomi led his historic diplomatic mission to the United States and
Europe in 1871 as ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary (toku-
mei zenken taishi); Soejima Taneomi headed a mission to China in 1873
also as ambassador. When Samejima Naonobu attended the Spanish
king’s nuptial Mass in Madrid in 1879, he did so as “special emissary.”
It was as ambassador that first Yanagihara Sakimitsu and then Itō
Hirobumi headed to Russia to attend respectively the state funeral for
Tsar Alexander II in 1881, and the enthronement of Tsar Alexander III in
1883. The emperor not only dispatched his ministers and ambassadors
overseas – and members of the imperial family, too – but he played host in
Tokyo to foreign diplomats, foreign royalty, and other foreign visitors. It
is worth highlighting the intensity of the emperor’s personal engagement
in court-based diplomacy. Judging by the entries in the Chronicle of the
Emperor Meiji for the period from 1868 to the outbreak of war with China
in 1894, there can have been few Japanese who encountered more for-
eigners than the emperor. With the exception of his absence from the
capital on his six great tours of the realm between 1872 and 1885, there
was never a month, and in many months not a week, in which the emperor
was not granting an audience to one foreign dignitary or another.
These audiences took place in the halls of the temporary Akasaka
Palace, until the modern new palace was completed in 1889. The
emperor received the Hawaiian king, former US president Ulysses
Grant, British, Italian, Russian, German, Austrian, Greek, and Siamese
royalty and nobility. He also granted audiences to a Papal delegation,
plenipotentiary ministers from all of Japan’s treaty nations – including
diplomats from Korea and China – and an array of naval admirals, not to
mention foreigners employed by the Meiji government for their expertise

on everything from law to finance, medicine to engineering, and the
military to education. In addition to these ad hoc audiences, the emperor
(and from 1873 the empress, too) hosted regular events for the diplomatic
community. From 1881, the court’s annual ritual cycle was reconfigured
to maximize the imperial couple’s engagement with foreign dignitaries –
and so indirectly with their monarchs.22 At the initiative of Foreign
Minister Inoue Kaoru, emperor and empress welcomed foreign diplo-
mats and their wives to the refurbished Akasaka Palace for modern
Japan’s Three Great Feasts: New Year in January, State
Foundation Day in February and the Emperor’s birthday in November.
In this same year, Inoue Kaoru began the modern tradition of annual
cherry blossom viewing parties in April and the November chrysanthe-
mum viewing parties; these events were cohosted by the emperor and
empress. The imperial couple thus became the measure of Japan’s civili-
zation and enlightenment, and were therefore indispensable to the
Japanese leadership in its pursuit of “parity with all nations” (bankoku
taiji).
Strategic Honor
From the Restoration through to the start of the Sino-Japanese war in
1894, the Meiji emperor received the highest honors from the sovereigns
of Austria, Germany, Russia, Italy, Hawaii, Belgium, Netherlands,
Sweden, Spain, Montenegro, Siam, Turkey, and Greece (in that order),
as well as from the French president. The emperor reciprocated by
conferring Japan’s highest chivalric order, the Supreme Order of the
Chrysanthemum, on heads of all these states. Occasionally, he did this
“intimately,” as in the case of King Kalā kua of Hawaiʻi, at ceremonies
held in the Akasaka Palace and subsequently in the imperial palace. The
more usual practice, however, was for him to bestow honors indirectly via
diplomatic representatives or, indeed, through the hands of emissaries the
emperor dispatched to overseas courts. Here I want to point up the
fundamentally strategic nature of the emperor’s ornamental diplomacy.
It is evident above all in the act of withholding.
22
On the construction of Japan’s modern court ceremonial, see Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai
tennō sei no bunkashiteki kenkyū [Cultural History of the Modern Imperial System]
(Tokyo: Azekura Shobō , 1997) and John Breen, “Kindai no kyū chū girei: tennō ni
motomerareta seiji” [Imperial Court Ceremonies in the Modern Period: Politics as
Demanded of the Emperor] in Kō za Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration: Collected
Essays], Vol. 11, Meiji ishin to shū kyō , bunka [The Meiji Restoration and Religion,
Culture], ed. Meiji Ishinshi Gakkai (Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2016).
244 John Breen
Strikingly absent from the inventory of honors exchanged in the period

under consideration is the Chinese emperor. In late December 1877,
Emperor Meiji received in audience He Ruzhang, the first Chinese min-
ister plenipotentiary to Japan. No Chinese envoy had entered the court of
a Japanese emperor since the year 758, well over 1,000 years before, when
Emperor Junnin received the monk Ganjin. His audience was truly his-
toric, and it served to reciprocate the audience granted by the Tongzhi
Emperor to Ambassador Soejima Taneomi in 1873. The latter event was
also historic in the terms of modern Asian diplomacy since the Tongzhi
Emperor received Soejima according to the protocol of international law.
Soejima had used his ambassadorial status – and his deep knowledge of
Chinese history and protocol – to bully the Chinese court into abandon-
ing the “three kneelings and nine prostrations” of the kowtow.23 He was
the first foreign diplomat so to be received in China. Just four years later,
the newly enthroned Guangxu Emperor was dispatching a personal envoy
to the court of Emperor Meiji. The Guangxu Emperor’s envoy brought
with him credentials, which accorded to Meiji the status of a monarch in
every way equivalent to that of his own sovereign.24 Meiji received him
precisely as he had received European diplomats, and yet there was no
exchange of honors. This is in spite of the fact that the Chinese had
created their own chivalric order, the Order of the Double Dragon, in
1882.
The Korean king is also conspicuous by his absence from the inventory
of sovereigns upon whom the Emperor Meiji conferred honors. Meiji
received three delegations from Korea in the period under consideration.
These, too, were events of great historical moment since no Japanese
emperor had granted an audience to a Korean mission since the eighth
century. In 1876, just three months after the signing of the Japan-Korea
Treaty of Amity, but before the exchange of diplomats stipulated in
Article 2 of the treaty, Kim Ki-su led a delegation to Japan. In 1880,
there was a second delegation, this time under the leadership of Kim
Kō shū , who came to insist that the port of Inchon remain closed to
international trade. Neither delegation brought credentials from the
Korean king, and this goes some way to accounting for the sustained
ritual humiliation to which the emissaries were subjected in the Akasaka
Palace.25 It was only in 1881 when envoy Cho Byonho arrived with
credentials recognizing Emperor Meiji as the equal of the Guangxu
23
On this historic audience, see Wayne C. McWilliams, “East Meets East: The Soejima
Mission to China, 1873,” Monumenta Nipponica 30: no. 3 (1975), 237–275.
24
Breen, “Kindai gaikō taisei no sō shutsu to tennō ,” pp. 133–135.
25
On the ritual humiliation of the Korean delegates and the reception accorded Cho
Byonho, see Ibid, pp. 137–139.
Emperor, that Meiji finally received him according to international pro-

tocol. But the bestowal of Japanese orders on Korean royalty or diplomats
was never, it seems, discussed.
These several audiences that the Meiji emperor granted to envoys from
Asia were vitally important: they dramatized the dismantling of the old
East Asian order, and they signaled the birth of a new network of power in
which he was a pivotal presence. Chinese and Korean monarchs are
absent from the honors inventory for the simple reason that the
Japanese did not see fit to confer honors upon them. They chose to
deny them the visible signs of parity and cousin-like intimacy. The spe-
cific reasons are nowhere articulated, although the withholding of honors
must surely have been discussed in the highest levels of the Japanese
government. It was not until 1898 that the Emperor Meiji first engaged
in ornamental diplomacy with the Guangxu Emperor; in 1900, he finally
exchanged honors with the Korean Emperor Gwangmu.26
The inventory of ornaments bestowed upon and received by the
Japanese emperor is of further interest for what it intimates about rela-
tions between Japan and Britain in the latter half of the nineteenth
century. It is striking that the emperor received no honors from Queen
Victoria (r. 1837–1901) in this period, and that he bestowed none upon
her. The mutual denying of honors – for this is what it is – is revealing once
more of the essentially strategic nature of ornamental diplomacy. Early in
1881, Japanese Foreign Minister Inoue Kaoru sounded out the British
government on the possibility of Queen Victoria conferring the Order of
the Garter on the emperor. The imminent visit to Japan of her grandsons,
Princes Albert and George, seemed the ideal opportunity. The Queen’s
private secretary said the Queen thought the idea “preposterous,” and
Inoue’s inquiry was dismissed with an unequivocal “no.” The Queen did
not invest non-Christian monarchs in the Order. She would, however,
bestow on the Japanese emperor the Star of India. This the government
declined, fearful that it reduced the emperor to the status of “a mere
Asiatic prince.”27 Inoue took the refusal of the Garter as the snub it was
meant to be; he well knew that in recent years two non-Christian mon-
archs – the Turkish in 1868 and the Persian in 1873 – had, in fact, been
invested in the Order of the Garter. In 1881, the emperor duly received
Princes Albert and George in audience at the Akasaka Palace. But they
neither sought honors from him, nor conferred any upon him. They
26
Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō ki 9, pp. 566 and 886.
27
On this, see Anthony Best, “The Role of Diplomatic Practice and Court Protocol in
Anglo-Japanese Relations, 1867–1900,” in The Diplomats’ World: The Cultural History of
Diplomacy, 1815–1914, eds. Markus Mosslang and Torsten Riotte (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2008), p. 248.
246 John Breen
hoped, nonetheless, a portrait in oil of their grandmother – commissioned

but not yet completed – might afford him pleasure.
In 1883, Sir Harry Parkes bade farewell to the Emperor Meiji after
serving in Japan for eighteen years as British minister. The emperor made
clear his wish to invest him in the Order of the Rising Sun, but Parkes
declined. British practice did not allow him to receive honors from foreign
monarchs, he said. Once again, the Japanese attempt to engage Britain in
ornamental diplomacy ran aground. But in 1886, things changed – or so
at first it seemed. Prince Komatsu no Miya Akihito was in Britain to
attend Queen Victoria’s Golden Jubilee, and at a ceremony in
Marlborough House conferred upon the Prince of Wales the Supreme
Order of the Chrysanthemum with Cordon. And yet a new era of “cou-
sinhood” was not poised to begin. There was no further talk of the Garter;
indeed, Prince Komatsu found himself subjected to one public humilia-
tion after another. He returned home persuaded that Japan to Britain was
nothing more than “an insignificant island in Asian waters.” It is true that
in 1890, Prince Komatsu was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of
the Bath.28 It was not, however, until the start of the twentieth century in
the short reign of Edward VII (r. 1901–1910), that change finally
occurred. In 1902, Edward became the first British monarch to accept
the Supreme Order of the Chrysanthemum, adding the collar to the
cordon he had received as Prince of Wales back in 1886. It was Edward
who, in 1906, finally deemed the Emperor Meiji worthy of the Order of
the Garter (see Figure 11.4). The investiture took place in the Imperial
Palace in Tokyo on February 29 of that year.29 The explanation for this
turn of events is simple. Japan had defeated Russia in the Russo-Japanese
War of 1904–1905, and victory demonstrated that the emperor, as com-
mander in chief, was at last a worthy cousin of British royalty.
Conclusion
Studies of Meiji diplomacy invariably fail to reference the emperor. But
Meiji was a vital, active presence in modern Japan’s interstate relations.
Without an understanding of his role, we overlook a key dynamic in
nineteenth-century Japanese diplomacy. What the emperor did not do
was influence foreign policy, of course. Indeed, his views were frequently
ignored. He was rather the lynchpin that fixed Japan in the nineteenth-
century firmament of nations. Just as he was guarantor of order,
28
Best, “The Role of Diplomatic Practice and Court Protocol in Anglo-Japanese Relations,
1867–1900,” p. 248.
29
On this see investiture, see, especially, Algernon Bertram Redesdale, The Garter Mission
to Japan (London: Macmillan, 1906).
Figure 11.4 The Emperor Meiji invested in the Order of the Garter.
Bijutsu jiji gahō , [Album of Contemporary Art] no. 6 (1906) © Trustees
of the British Museum, used with permission
hierarchy, status, and honor within Japanese society, so it was the

emperor – as equal of the sovereigns of Europe and Asia – who held
Japan’s place in international society. Studies of the emperor have simi-
larly failed to reflect on this diplomatic dimension to the throne. The
importance of diplomacy for understanding the emperor is nowhere more
evident than in the transformative effect it had on the imperial body. The
emperor cut his hair, grew and trimmed his beard, clad himself in
Western-style military uniform, complete with leather boots, plumed
hat, ceremonial sword, and, of course, his ornaments. He learned to sit,
stand, walk. and ride like a European sovereign. He acquired other body
techniques, too: he shook hands with countless European royalty, diplo-
mats, and delegates. He pinned medals and ribbons on their chests,
placed cordons across their shoulders, and collars about their necks. He
rode carriages, boarded trains, and embarked on foreign warships with
foreign royalty; and he dined, smoked, talked, and laughed with them.
This transformed the imperial body, and the transformation was all to the
greater end of establishing a new parity between the emperor and the
248 John Breen
monarchs of the modern world and a new symmetry in Japan’s modern

interstate relations.
It is finally worth pointing out one particular case in which these body
techniques, the fruits of nothing so much as the emperor’s engagement in
ornamental diplomacy, served Japan exceedingly well. In 1891, the
Russian Crown Prince Nikolai was visiting Japan. As he passed through
the town of Ō tsu on May 22, he was attacked by a sword-wielding police-
man, and cut in the head. The Itō cabinet was paralyzed with fear lest the
incident lead to war with Russia. It was the emperor who took action.
Having dispatched an apologetic telegram to the prince’s father, Tsar
Alexander III, he headed by train to Kyoto where Prince Nikolai was
recovering, to offer his sympathies. When the prince decided to withdraw
to a Russian warship to recuperate further, the emperor accompanied him
to Kobe where the vessel was anchored. The two men shook hands in the
harbor before parting. The prince, who was now summoned back to
Russia by his father, invited the emperor to a farewell dinner on board
the warship. Prime Minister Itō , fearful lest the emperor be kidnapped,
urged him to decline, but the emperor went ahead. He duly accepted the
invitation, went on aboard where he dined with Prince Nikolai and then
smoked and drank with him as a Russian military band played. The
Russian Minister reported that he had never before heard the emperor
laugh and chat in so animated a fashion.30 It was the Emperor Meiji who
averted the crisis of the Ō tsu incident. He did so by unconsciously
deploying the several body techniques he had assimilated, especially in
the last decade of his deployment of what I have called ornamental
diplomacy.
30
Breen, “Kindai gaikō taisei no sō shutsu to tennō ,” pp. 140–141.
12 The Restoration of the Ancient Capitals
of Nara and Kyoto and International
Cultural Legitimacy in Meiji Japan
Takagi Hiroshi
Introduction
In the nineteenth century, the model of “classical antiquity” of Greece
and Rome carried great significance for political legitimacy. “Classical
antiquity” thus played a key role in the creation of modern European
nation-states, and also contributed to the formation of the United States.
The Elgin Marbles of the British Museum, the “Italian” design of the
Altes Museum in Berlin, the original Venus de Milo, and the great
treasures of the Louvre Museum, as well as the Greek and Roman
collections held by the Boston Museum of Fine Arts and Metropolitan
Museum in New York in the United States, testify to the universality of
this trend to emphasize antiquity in the arts.1 As Satō Dō shin points out,
the identification and classification of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance,
Dutch, and French art styles as the art of various peoples, served as the
basis for the creation of a comprehensive history of European arts.2 In
Western European nations, the history of art seeped into the political
realm. Britain, France, Austria, and Germany regarded the Greek and
Roman “classical antiquity” as the origin of their “civilizations” and
competed with one another for the position of legitimate heir. The
Elgin Marbles and Venus de Milo served as regalia to testify to the origin
and preeminence of Britain and France as civilized nation-states, destined
to rule the world. Greece is significant as the symbolic beginning of
European history and the imagined origin of its civilization, while Rome
also carries the image of an imperial power ruling over an expansive space,
1
Kuchiki Yuriko, Parutenon sukyandaru [The Parthenon Scandal] (Tokyo: Shinchō sha,
2004); Tō kyō Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan and Asahi Shinbunsha, eds., Berurin no shihō ten:
sekai isan, hakubutsukan-tō yomigaeru bi no seiiki [Masterpieces of the Museum Island,
Berlin: Visions of the Divine in the Sanctuary of Art] (Tokyo: Asahi Shinbunsha, 2005).
2
Satō Dō shin, Bijutsu no aidentitı̄: dare no tame ni, nan no tame ni [The Identity of Art: For
Whom, and for What?] (Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007).
249
250 Takagi Hiroshi
as well as the capital of “the Empire,” similar to the aspirations of London

during the Victorian Age and Berlin during the Third Reich.
Cultural tradition as a source of political legitimacy in the present age
was also a discursive strategy invoked in Meiji Japan, a theme explored
by John Breen in his chapter. In 1878, the American Ernest Fenollosa
was the first to claim that Nara held a position of great antiquity, similar
to that of Greece in Europe. He believed that an emphasis on the ancient
capitals of Nara and Kyoto was indispensable in the process of nation-
state formation. Namely, Japan needed to stress the ideas of “history”
and “tradition” to the international community in order to build
a national identity.3 In subsequent years, the comparison between
Nara and Greece acquired a double meaning in Japan. On the one
hand, we have Japan appealing to the international community, trying
to adopt the common grammar of the development of “civilization” by
comparing itself to Europe, which places Greece, the site of classical
antiquity, at its original core. So the meaning of the Shakyamuni (his-
torical Buddha) triads of the Hō ryū ji Temple changed in the 1890s,
from Buddhist statues to sculptures, from objects of worship to cultural
properties. On the other hand, Japan adhered to the cultural dissemina-
tion theory, according to which Greek culture was transmitted via India
and China to the columns of the main hall of the Hō ryū ji Temple, the
entasis, by means of Alexander the Great’s Eastern expedition and its
propagation of Hellenistic culture.4
The meaning of Greek Studies carried out at Tokyo Imperial
University and Kyoto Imperial University was inseparable from the pro-
cess of reinterpreting ancient Japan. Sakaguchi Takashi, who in 1907
established the Department of European History at Kyoto Imperial
University, argued in his essay, “Plato’s Academy,” that the European
nation-states felt “that they had to repay their ancestors’ favor, as they
thought the origin and the history of their own cultures owed so much to
so-called classical Greece.”5 He elaborates that:
[F]rom the end of the eighteenth century to the nineteenth, European nations and
peoples reviewed their own history, protected their indigenous characters and
3
Murakata Akiko, “E.F. Fenorosa ‘Tō yō bijutsushi kō ’: Nihon wa ‘Tō yō no Girisha’ to
kantan” [E.F. Fenollosa’s “Epochs of Chinese and Japanese Art”: Appreciation of Japan
as “the Hellas of the Orient”], Kokubungaku kaishaku to kanshō [Interpretation and
Evaluation of National Literature] 60, no. 5 (May 1995): 59–66.
4
Itō Chū ta, “Hō ryū ji kenchikuron” [Discussing the Architecture of Hō ryū ji Temple],
Journal of Architecture and Building Science 7, no. 83 (1893): 317–350; Inoue Shō ichi,
Hō ryū ji e no seishinshi [The Intellectual History of the Hō ryū ji Temple] (Tokyo: Kō bundō ,
1994).
5
Sakaguchi Takashi, “Puratō no akademi” [Plato’s Academy], in Sekaishi ronkō [Lectures
on World History] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1931), p. 621.
The Restoration of the Ancient Capitals 251
duties, and were anxious about the realization of national ideals corresponding to
these characters and duties. This was their Romanticism.6
In each nation’s adoration of classical antiquity and longing for the
creation of a national culture, he identifies the Romantic ideas that
accompanied the establishment of all European nation-states.
This understanding of history was influenced by the German historian,
Leopold von Ranke, who claimed that civilization had spread all over the
world from Greece and Rome. His disciple, Ludwig Riess, took up
a professorship in 1887 at the newly established Department of History
at Tokyo Imperial University and then laid the academic foundations of
European and Japanese historical studies in Japan.
This chapter shall discuss the increasing role played by the cities of
Nara and Kyoto as the ancient capitals where the emperor once resided
and Japanese culture developed, in the discursive formation of the mod-
ern Japanese nation-state. In other words, it will explain how, in modern
times, antiquity was reinterpreted as a usable past.7
The Meiji Restoration and the Ancient Capitals

In modern times, Nara and Kyoto experienced very different trajectories
of urban development. By the beginning of the Shō wa period (1926–
1989), Kyoto was a large city with a population of over 700,000 people.
By contrast, at the same point, the total population of Nara Prefecture
was just over 610,000 people. Nonetheless, the big city of Kyoto and the
small countryside town of Nara were increasingly combined under the
name of “ancient capitals.” The expression “ancient capitals” gained
great popularity not due to the actual political, economic, or social reality
of the two historic cities, but as a result of a flourishing of mass tourism
during the period of rapid economic growth that began in the 1960s.
Yet already by the middle of the Edo period, tourists came to Nara
especially to see the Great Buddha (Daibutsu), following the second
reconstruction of the Great Buddha Hall of the Tō daiji Temple, ordered
in 1709 by Shogun Tsunayoshi. The Nara meisho ezu, a 1845 map of
famous places in Nara penned by Ezuya Shō hachi, showed Nara as
a microcosm (see Figure 12.1). Tō daiji’s Great Buddha Hall was the
center, with Kō fukuji Temple, surrounded by a roofed mud wall on the
left side, the Nigatsudō Hall of Tō daiji Temple, Mt. Kasuga and Kasuga
Shrine on the right side, and the town of Nara at the bottom.
6
Ibid.
7
Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai Tennō -sei to koto [The Modern Japanese Emperor System and the
Ancient Capitals] (Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2006).
252 Takagi Hiroshi
Figure 12.1 Nara meisho ezu [Map of Famous Places in Nara], 1845.
Courtesy of Takagi Hiroshi
Repair and mending of imperial mausolea in Nara had already been

undertaken during the Genroku period (1688–1704) but the reconstruc-
tion initiated during the Bunkyū period (1861–1864) became a veritable
“national” project, which the shogunate and the imperial court carried
out together as part of the plan to “unify the imperial court and the
shogunate” (kō bu gattai). The shogunate allocated 10,000 ryō to symbo-
lically create a mausoleum for Emperor Jinmu, the fictitious first emperor,
as part of a strategy to propagate the myth that Jinmu had been enthroned
on January 1, 660 BCE at the Kashiwara Court, at the foot of Mt. Unebi
in Nara Prefecture as described in the eighth-century texts, Kojiki
(Records of Ancient Matters) and Nihon Shoki (Chronicles of Japan)
(see Figure 12.2). Seminal research carried out by Tsuda Sō kichi argues
that the Kojiki and Nihon Shoki are historical records reflecting the poli-
tical ideology of the fifth through the seventh century, and should no
longer be taken at face value.8 In the late Edo period, however, the
location of the mausoleum of Emperor Jinmu triggered a political
8
Tsuda Sō kichi, Jindaishi no atarashii kenkyū [Latest Research in the History of the
Mythological Age] (Tokyo: Nishō dō Shoten, 1913).
Figure 12.2 Around the foot of Mt. Unebi in the late Edo period
controversy. Emperor Kō mei himself had to arbitrate in a dispute and in

1863 officially decided on the authentic site of the grave of his ancestor.
The potential choices of sites included the Maruyama Tumulus, near
a community of outcasts, the Hō ra buraku. It was not selected. Instead, the
Misanzai Tumulus, located on the site of the medieval Kokugenji Temple
was chosen. After that, in a little over fifty years, the villages around the
mausoleum were relocated, and a clean Shinto space was built, with
a worship place, a Shinto shrine archway, and an approaching alley.
On January 3, 1868, the Decree for the Restoration of Imperial Rule
issued by the Chō shū -Satsuma alliance invoked the idea of “doing every-
thing as in the times of Emperor Jinmu.” It rejected cultural influences from
China and the politics of samurai warriors from the Kamakura through the
Edo periods. It instead postulated a return to the emperor’s direct admin-
istration as executed during ancient times. Subsequently, the new Meiji
government aimed to distinguish Buddhism and Shinto and to establish
the hegemony of Shinto as the national religion. Ichijō in and Daijō in, the
Buddhist subtemples of the Kō fukuji Temple in Nara were destroyed and
turned into Nara Park, now famous for its deer, which according to Shinto
beliefs, are believed to be messengers of the gods. Uchiyama Eikyū ji Temple
and Jingū ji Temple in the Isonokami Jingū Shrine were also abolished. The
temple treasures were taken to the Fujita Museum of Art in Osaka and to
foreign countries. In Kyoto, the Jingū ji Temple of Iwashimizu Hachimangū
Shrine, considered “a place full of demons,” was demolished and the site
later developed into Maruyama Park.
The movement for the abolishment of Buddhism (haibutsu kishaku)
destroyed Buddhist temples and images and shows how the denial of the
Buddhist cultural tradition in the first years of the Meiji period was closely
tied to an attempt to purify Japan from “foreign” cultural and religious
254 Takagi Hiroshi
influences as part of the “civilization and enlightenment movement”

(bunmei kaika) that in return displayed contempt for the cultural proper-
ties embodied in the history and tradition of temples and shrines. At the
Nara Exhibition of 1875, held at the Great Buddha Hall of Tō daiji
Temple, imperial treasures from the Shō sō in were exhibited, even though
their management had just been transferred from Tō daiji Temple to the
Department of Home Affairs (Naimushō ). The exhibition included newly
unveiled treasures, such as Buddha statues and pictures from shrines and
temples, and it attracted more than 170,000 visitors. After that display,
the treasures of Shō sō in became the “concealed” private property of the
emperor.
In a similar way, Kyoto was repositioned as an ancient capital providing
cultural legitimacy for a modern nation-state aiming to be equal to other
cultured nations. After the transfer of the capital to Tokyo in 1869, the
imperial palace in Kyoto and the court nobles’ residences surrounding it
initially fell into ruin. The relocation of the capital also affected religious
and social rituals. The three major chokusai (religious services at a shrine
where messengers are sent by the emperor) – the Iwashimizu Festival, the
Aoi Festival, and the Kasuga Festival – were discontinued despite being
held regularly since the Heian period (794–1185). In the new Meiji state,
they were deemed as no longer having any relation with the annual events
conducted by the Imperial Household in Tokyo. Already in 1871, Shinto
and Buddhist deities in the Imperial Household were separated, and the
relationships between the emperor and influential Kenmon temples like
Tō ji and Enryakuji, which had existed since the Heian period, were
severed. The Buddhist Sennyū ji Temple had been the ancestral temple
of the imperial family in the Edo period, but from the 1870s, Buddhist
memorial services were permitted only within the private confines of the
imperial family’s residence. By contrast, state Shinto religious services
became the official state ritual for worshiping imperial ancestors.
The Kyoto Exhibition, held in 1873 at the site of the former Kyoto
Imperial Palace, provided the occasion for many foreigners to leave their
treaty port settlements and visit Kyoto for the first time. (The Meiji
government bestowed special permission for the exhibition.) A total of
406,000 Japanese and foreign visitors traveled to the city. The first
English guidebook of Kyoto, Guide for the Celebrated Places for the
Foreign Visitors, was published in 1873 for the event.9 In Gion, the still
popular miyako odori, the dance of the capital, a seasonal dance perfor-
mance of the Gion Kobu district, started imitating European revues. The
9
Yamamoto Kakuma, The Guide to the Celebrated Places in Kyoto & the Surrounding Places for
the Foreign Visitors (Kyoto: Niwa, 1873).
Higashiyama district, where the hotels for foreign visitors and foreign
restaurants were concentrated around Maruyama Park, became a new
symbol of civilization and enlightenment. Before the gates of Chion’in
Temple, many antique stores for foreigners opened. The early modern
pictures of Higashiyama show people looking up from the center of the
city, but the new guidebook urged people to instead “look down upon the
city’s fine flowers.” The new modern eyes appreciated the landscape by
looking down at the full view of Kyoto from the hillside hotels and
restaurants.
Establishment of the Constitutional Monarchy

and the Ancient Capitals
As they invoked a political restoration in 1868, the men who would
establish the Meiji government rejected some Japanese cultural tradi-
tions. Emperor Meiji’s return trip to Kyoto, in 1877, triggered
a movement in the opposite direction.
His six-month stay was caused by the military emergency of the
Satsuma Rebellion that same year. While in Kyoto, the emperor visited
the Mausoleum of Emperor Jinmu on February 11 for the imperial
memorial service marking the tenth anniversary of Emperor Kō mei’s
death. He also attended the unsealing of the Shō sō in treasures, and
a special offering ceremony for the past emperors’ mausolea. The
Emperor Meiji lamented the decay of the Kyoto Imperial Palace after
the relocation of the capital to Tokyo and offered to pay for its restoration
with his own funds. The interior garden of the imperial palace was named
Kyoto Imperial Garden (Kyō to Gyoen), and from 1878 to 1880, the outer
compound of stone mounds around the gate of the palace was repaired,
roads were improved, and trees were planted. One important factor
contributing to the development of the palace grounds was the diplomatic
movement that advocated the use of the park as a location for foreigners to
visit and see as a representation of traditional Japanese culture. In the
1880s, the Katsura and Shugakuin Imperial Villas and Nijō Castle, once
a bastion of Tokugawa power in Kyoto, came under the supervision of the
Imperial Household Ministry (Kunaishō ). A later publication in celebra-
tion of the enthronement of Emperor Taishō (r. 1912–1926) mentions as
special scenic points: the Imperial Palace, Imperial Garden, Sentō Palace,
Ō miya Palace, Nijō Imperial Villa, Shugakuin Villa, and the Katsura
Villa.10 All these places had been systematically assembled as a group of
10
Kyoto-shi, ed., Shinsen Kyoto meishō shi [New Collection of Kyoto’s Scenic Beauties]
(Kyoto: Kyoto-shi, 1915).
256 Takagi Hiroshi
cultural properties, dubbed the Imperial Properties in the 1890s. The

imperial mausolea and Shō sō in’s properties were then placed under the
exclusive jurisdiction of the Imperial Household Ministry in 1878 and
1884, respectively. It is important here to note that the cultural proper-
ties, which had been designated as a group in the 1880s, subsequently
became official imperial properties.
European royal households served as models in celebrating the ancient
history in Japan. Itō Hirobumi, the mastermind behind the Meiji
Constitution, believed that it was indispensable to know the history of
one’s own nation in order to arouse patriotic sentiments. He wrote
a report exploring “the issue of the selection of the imperial estates”
(ca. 1887–1888), providing details about how European monarchies
appropriated aspects of their respective national histories. Since
European monarchies preserved “historic places and former living
sites,” he proposed to incorporate into the imperial estates “sacred and
historic places” such as Kamakura, Shiga, Oki Island, and Mt. Kasagi,
where emperors lived or retired in ancient or medieval times.11 We thus
see how the Meiji state used cultural strategies of representation to
implement “treasure diplomacy.” The Meiji government welcomed
honored foreign guests, such as German and British princes, by exclu-
sively opening the concealed Shō sō in chambers, thereby giving them
a window on Japan’s long cultural history.
By the 1880s, Meiji leaders had learned from studying the moves of
European states that a defined “cultural tradition” could be wielded as
a powerful tool in diplomacy and domestic politics. In 1882, Yanagihara
Sakimitsu reported to Sanjō Sanetomi and Iwakura Tomomi on the
emphasis of tradition in the Austrian coronation ceremony, in which,
during the reign of Francis Joseph I, bonfires were lit for impact even
though gaslights had already been installed along the splendid new Ring
Road in Vienna. He additionally emphasized the mercy shown by the new
emperor, who gathered poor people at Vienna’s St. Stephen’s Cathedral
and washed their feet himself before the new empress wiped them dry
with a cloth.12 He also reported that in Russia, the tsar of the Romanov
family moved from St. Petersburg, the political capital oriented toward
Western Europe, to “the ancient capital” of Moscow, and held
a coronation ceremony in the cultural tradition of the Greek Orthodox
11
Itō Hirobumi, ed., Hisho ruisan: teishitsu seido shiryō jō kan [The Secretary’s Collection:
Archive of the Imperial Household, Vol. 1] (Tokyo: Hisho Ruisan Kankō kai, 1936), pp.
431–432.
12
Emperor Franz Joseph I reigned over the Austrian Empire from 1848 to 1916 and, in
1867, was crowned as the Hungarian monarch in Budapest. Yanagihara thus likely
referred to an anniversary celebration of the original coronation.
Church. At the ceremony, ladies wore traditional, Russian court dresses.

In addition at the beginning of the year, the court held a special seasonal
ceremony in which the hard ice on a major river was broken.13 Suematsu
Kenchō , who served as diplomat in London, also marveled in 1881 at the
“bizarre” and ridiculous respect for “rites and ceremonies” in Britain, but
felt they were nevertheless meaningful.14 To be “a first-class power,” it
was not enough to fulfill the universal requirements of civilization such as
having a constitution, an army, and universal education. Not only in
Austria and Russia but also in Britain, France, and Germany, it was
common to use one’s own history and traditional culture to impress the
international community.15
Thus, in January 1883, Iwakura Tomomi recommended that following
the Russian system of two capitals, a ceremony of enthronement and the
Daijō sai Festival to celebrate the succession of an emperor should be
carried out in the Kyoto Gyoen, the former palace grounds turned imper-
ial garden in the “traditional capital” of Kyoto.16 He also proposed the
revival of the Kamo, the Iwashimizu, and the Kasuga Festivals, the
founding of a Heian Jingū Shrine, as well as the establishment of
a repository of treasures. In addition, he called for the revival of annual,
imperial religious events in Kyoto. These proposals were specified in the
Imperial House Act in 1889, and the contents of the ceremonies were
stipulated in detail by the Imperial House Law (tō kyokurei) issued in
1909. They were eventually implemented in the imperial enthronement
ceremonies held in Kyoto Gyoen for Emperor Taishō in 1915, and for
Emperor Shō wa in 1928.
The promulgation ceremony of the Constitution of the Empire of Japan
commemorated the fictitious National Foundation Day (kigensetsu) of
February 11, 1889, taking the form of the Emperor Meiji’s vow before his
imperial ancestors.17 The organizers of the ceremony presented Japan’s
unique history as a key factor in allowing it to be the first country in Asia to
promulgate a constitution. Moreover, during 1889, the Meiji government
hastily classified tombs as imperial mausolea, including some that
13
Iwakura Tomomi, “Teishitsu gishiki no gi” [The Issue of the Imperial Ceremonies], in
Iwakura Tomomi bunsho [Iwakura Tomomi Documents], National Diet Library.
14
Nagasaki Shō go, Nagasaki Shō go kankei bunsho [Documents Related to Nagasaki Shō go],
National Diet Library.
15
Takagi Hiroshi, Kindai tennō sei no bunkateki kenkyū : Tennō shū nin girei, nenjū gyō ji,
bunkazai [Cultural Research on the Modern Emperor System: Inauguration Etiquette,
Annual Ceremonies, Cultural Heritage] (Tokyo: Azekura Shobō , 1997).
16
Iwakura Tomomi, Iwakura kō jikki 2 [Personal Notes by Duke Iwakura 2], ed.
Tada Kō mon (Tokyo: Kō gō Gū shoku, 1906), pp. 2038–2048.
17
Kunaichō , ed., Meiji Tennō ki [The Diary of the Emperor Meiji], Vol. 7 (Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kō bunkan. 1972), pp. 204–211.
258 Takagi Hiroshi
archeologists mistakenly designated as imperial, such as the mausoleum

of Emperor Keitai. This group of mausolea, in conjunction with the
Kō reiden Ancestral Spiritual Sanctuary where religious services to the
ancestors’ spirits were carried out in the new Imperial Palace in Tokyo,
became public, visual representations of the unique, unbroken imperial
line. Itō Hirobumi insisted that, to succeed in revising the unequal trea-
ties, it was necessary to emphasize cultural equality with foreign nations.
The designation of all imperial tombs served to publicize the special
history of the Japanese imperial family with its “unbroken line” and
exhibited the national character in all its beauty both within and outside
Japan.18 Itō argued that classifying tombs as designated imperial mauso-
lea was a crucial strategy to allow Japan to be recognized as “a first-class
power” in the international community. The state thereby propagated
a spatial arrangement of Japan’s national territory designating Nara and
Kyoto as ancient capitals, in contrast to the modern, administrative
capital of Tokyo, where the new imperial palace celebrated its grand
opening, also in 1889. The Meiji government directed the designation
of a total of 120 imperial mausolea, with Emperor Meiji to be buried in
the 121st tomb. Of the 121 total mausolea, thirty were in Nara and fifty-
nine were in Kyoto. We can say that the history and tradition of the
imperial system was physically embodied in the Kansai landscape of
these two ancient capitals, which thus became repositories of Japanese
culture.
Nation-States and Ancient Capitals

In 1889, the Meiji government established three “Imperial Museums” in
Tokyo, Kyoto, and Nara and modeled their organization after similar
museums in the capitals of Austria, Germany, Britain, and France.19 It
furthermore established the Tokyo School of Fine Arts (Tō kyō Bijutsu
Gakkō ) in 1887 and appointed Okakura Tenshin, still in his twenties, as
its director. This systematic promotion of “fine arts” was further carried
out after the promulgation of the constitution by core members such as
Kuki Ryū ichi, who later became the first president of the Imperial
Museum in Tokyo, and Okakura, who brought back Fenollosa’s fine art
theory from the United States.20 Between 1888 and 1897, a national
18
Kunaichō , Meiji Tennō ki, Vol. 7, pp. 279–280.
19
Today they are known as “National Museums”; see Tokyo Kokuritsu Hakubutsukan,
ed., Tokyo kokuritsu hakubutsukan hyaku-nen shi [A Centennial History of the Tokyo
National Museum] (Tokyo: Dai-ichi Hō ki, 1973), pp. 249–250.
20
Satō Dō shin, “Nihon bijutsu” tanjō [The Creation of “Japanese Fine Arts”] (Tokyo:
Kō dansha, 1996).
inspection system of treasures developed that classified objects according

to analytical methods of “art history,” employing categories such as
genre, grade, age, and producer that are still used today.
The current classification of historical periods in Japan, from ancient to
modern, was first established in the domain of art history, a field that
became visibly engaged with the international community via world
expositions and diplomatic encounters. In an 1891 lecture on “Japanese
Art History” at the Tokyo School of Fine Arts, Okakura introduced
a periodization still used today that includes: the Suiko period (592–628),
Asuka Culture – Tenji period (668–671), Hakuhō Culture – Tenpyō
period (729–749), followed by the Heian and Kamakura periods.21 Nara
became a capital characterized by the beginning of ancient civilization,
with Kyoto distinguished by the aristocratic culture of the Heian period.
In other words, the spaces of Nara and Kyoto are located on different
positions on the time axis. Okakura matched this historical periodization
with that of the national treasure classification scheme. For the periods
during which Nara was the capital, he emphasized the prominence of the
artifacts of the Hō ryū ji and Tō daiji temples. He presented the Suiko
period as characterized by the triadic Shakyamuni statues of the Hō ryū ji
Temple, created under the influence of the culture of the Six Dynasties
(222–589) in China. He visualized the Tenji period as defined by the wall
paintings in the Main Hall (kondō ) of the Hō ryū ji Temple, which had
been influenced by the arts of India and Greece. Okakura identified the
Tō daiji Temple as representing the Tenpyō period because the temple’s
standing statues of the four heavenly kings (shitennō ), gate guardian statue
(shitsukongoshin), and glasswork of the Shō sō in, all showed the influence
of the cosmopolitan culture of the Tang Dynasty (618–907). He viewed
Kyoto as becoming an ancient cultural capital when the imperial court
moved there in 794, initiating the Heian period. Within Heian period art,
Okakura stressed the originality developed under the influence of Esoteric
Buddhism introduced into Japan by Kū kai. He also singled out the Engi
period (901–923, during the reign of Emperor Daigo, r. 897–930) as an
era that witnessed the flowering of elegant court splendor of an “absolute
Japanese style.” Okakura stressed that artists such as the ninth-century
painter, Kanaoka, and the tenth-century Buddhist sculptor, Jō chō , cre-
ated new trends based on artistic themes of the Engi period. He applied
retroactively the Western concept of a European Renaissance to Japan by
locating the Engi period as the origin point of “national identity.” In the
same stroke, he thus cast Kyoto as the fountainhead of a “national
21
Okakura Tenshin, Okakura Tenshin zenshū [Complete Works of Okakura Tenshin]
(Tokyo: Heibonsha, 1993), Vol. 4, pp. 5–167.
260 Takagi Hiroshi
culture” (kokufū bunka). In addition to his periodization of art history,

Okakura pioneered the institutional support for a new genre of “Japanese
painting” as an answer to the cultural challenge of Western painting. In
this scheme, he trained modern painters such as Yokoyama Taikan and
Hishida Shū nsō under the slogan: “Future art is in the making.”
Okakura repeatedly emphasized the analogical relationship in the pro-
cess of nation-state formation between Greek civilization in European
countries, and Chinese civilization in Japan. He considered a Japanese
national treasure, the Kagenkei, a Buddhist religious object made in
China and owned by the Kō fukuji Temple (see Figure 12.3).
Okakura argued in his “Japanese Art History” that Occidental civiliza-
tion has Greece and Rome as its models. He also wrote that Europe had
made Greece and Rome their own. “We ourselves have imitated things
belonging to the Sui (581–618) and Tang Dynasties, harmonizing and
fusing them. Thus, it is not impossible to talk of them as our own.” He
insisted that the contemporary strength of Western European countries
such as Britain and France resulted from their claiming to have drawn on
Figure 12.3 Kagenkei, owned by the Kō fukuji Temple. Courtesy of

Kō fukuji Temple, Nara, Japan
the ancient civilizations of Greece and Rome. Therefore Japan should

appropriate aspects of Chinese civilization as its own, given that they had
been fused and harmonized according to Japanese sensibilities over the
years. After the Middle Ages, “Japanese”-made art objects appeared.
During the Asuka period, however, items that in the Meiji period were
classified as national treasures were actually imported from the continent
or made by immigrants. If these were excluded, what would remain as
“Japanese culture?” This is a clear example of how the builders of the
modern Japanese nation-state, whose cultural identity and borders had
barely been defined, were trying to appropriate the history and culture of
East Asia in a way that fit their political aims.
Okakura was also instrumental in creating an international image of
Kyoto as the ancient capital and the repository of native culture. He
drew the original plan for the Japanese pavilion at the Chicago World’s
Fair in 1893 in the style of the “national culture” (kokufū bunka) imitat-
ing the Phoenix Hall (Hō -ō -dō ) of the Byō dō in Temple in Uji near
Kyoto (see Figure 12.4).
He used the newly coined term of kokufū bunka then being employed to
denote a “pure Japanese culture” exemplified by the eleventh-century
Tale of Genji and traditional waka poetry. In his “Japanese Art History,”
Okakura presented kokufū bunka, removed of all Chinese influence, as the
true image of “Japanese culture.”
Two years later, the Meiji government held a celebratory festival to
mark the 1100th anniversary of the transfer of the capital to Kyoto
(Heiankyō ) and convened the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition in
Figure 12.4 Hō -ō -den at the World’s Columbian Exposition, Chicago,
1893. Courtesy of Tokyo National Museum, Japan
262 Takagi Hiroshi
the Okazaki district on the eastern bank of the Kamo River. The celebra-
tion, embodying the “history” and “tradition” of Japan, initiated the
annual Festival of the Ages (jidai matsuri), a parade displaying Japanese
history and the customs from the Heian period until the Meiji
Restoration. The exhibition symbolized “modern times” and “civiliza-
tion,” and its mounting coincided with the construction of the Lake Biwa
Canal, the building of city trams, and the spreading of electric lighting
throughout Kyoto. Somei Yoshino cherry trees, a clone with splendid
pink flowers created in modern times, were planted in rows along the
newly developed urban streets and canals. In addition, influenced by
Okakura’s “Japanese Art History,” Yumoto Fumihiko oversaw publica-
tion of the General History of Heian (Heian tsū shi), which showcased
Kyoto’s history, and which was packaged as a companion work, comple-
menting the “modern” National Industrial Exhibition. Also, the Kyoto
Imperial Museum was scheduled to open at the same time as the
Industrial Exhibition to demonstrate the systematic preservation of art
and cultural properties. (The museum, now the Kyoto National
Museum, opened its doors in 1897.)
The number of guidebooks about Kyoto sharply increased from only
four in 1894 to thirty-three in 1895, further pushing the growth of tour-
ism. The Kyoto Municipal Council prepared a guidebook that simulta-
neously marked the opening of the Fourth National Industrial Exhibition
and the 1100th anniversary of the founding of the city, thereby explicitly
linking economic and technological development to the ancient past.22
Although the real tourism boom began as part of a flourishing of popular
culture after World War I, the events held in 1895 served as preliminary
steps toward standardizing Kyoto tourism.
The Law for the Preservation of Old Shrines and Temples in 1897
officially established the concept of national treasures (kokuhō ). Around
that time, we also see more concerted efforts to convey a unitary “self-
image” of Japanese culture to the international community. For example
in 1900, the Histoire de l’art du Japon (Japanese Art History) was published
in French for the World Exposition in Paris.23
In the preface to this book, Kuki Ryū ichi declared that the project of
compiling an Oriental history of art will be accomplished first in “the
Empire of Japan, the true repository of Oriental treasures” and then in
22
M. Ichihara, The Official Guide-Book to Kyoto and the Allied Prefectures (Nara: Meishinsha,
1895).
23
La Commission Impériale du Japon à l’Exposition Universelle de Paris, Histoire de l’art du
Japon (Paris: Bruneff, 1900); Japanese translation as Teikoku Hakubutsukan, ed., Kō hon
Nihon teikoku bijutsuryakushi [Abbreviated Art History of the Empire of Japan/
Manuscript] (Tokyo: Nō shō mushō , 1901).
China or India. Thus, in the twentieth century, the Japanese Empire

aimed at the protection and promotion of Japanese culture as
a representative of Asia.
In 1919, the Meiji government promulgated the Historical Scenic
Beauties and Natural Monuments Preservation Act, following the pre-
cedent set by the Japanese colonial government (Chō sen Sō tokufu) in
Korea, which had earlier moved to preserve historic sites and relics.
Previously Kuroita Katsumi, Professor of National History at Tokyo
Imperial University, had introduced the German term and practice for
homeland protection (Heimatschutz). The movement to improve rural
communities after the Russo-Japanese War and the laws for historic
preservation and conservation worked to connect the love for one’s
home province to the love for one’s country, and fostered historical
awareness and admiration for the imperial family. Many more came to
appreciate the cultural properties of the ancient capitals of Heijō and
Kyoto (Heian), as well as the nearby scenic spots of Arashiyama and
Yoshino. In addition, historical spots related to Toyotomi Hideyoshi
were preserved. During the colonial period, Japanese imperial authorities
recast the city of Gyeongju as a Korean version of Nara, and designated it,
for touristic purpose, “the old capital” of Korea.
Sekino Tadashi, who submitted his graduation thesis on the architec-
ture of the Phoenix Hall of Byō dō in Temple to the Department of
Architecture, Tokyo Imperial University in 1895, worked as an engineer
in Nara Prefecture after the promulgation of the Law for the Preservation
of Old Shrines and Temples.24 In 1901, he became an associate professor
at Tokyo Imperial University. He subsequently explored several ruins in
the Korean Peninsula and completed a Research Report on Korean
Architecture (1904). His later outline of “Korean Art History” (1932)
led to a classification of Korean historical periods, i.e., the Shiragi
(Silla) period (57 BCE to 935), the Kō rai (Goryeo) period (935–1392),
and the Chō sen (Joseon) period (1392–1897). Sekino’s “Korean Art
History” states that “especially in the Shiragi period, the most splendid
original taste is present, in architecture, sculptures, and paintings.” In
other words, he applied the methodology of “Japanese Art History” of his
graduation thesis to the case of Korea and discovered a Korean equivalent
of the native Japanese kokufū bunka culture, free from Chinese influence.
Sekino viewed the Phoenix Hall of Byō dō in Temple in Uji and the
Seokguram in Gyeongju as symbolic cultural properties of art history,
24
Sekino Tadashi, “Hō ō dō kenchiku setsu” [Explanation of the Architecture of the
Phoenix Hall], Journal of Architecture and Building Science 9, no. 102 (June 25, 1895):
122–141.
264 Takagi Hiroshi
which supported the two states’ claims of independence from Chinese

influence.25
Thus, by the early twentieth century, Nara and Kyoto had not only
become model ancient capitals of Japan but throughout the Japanese
Empire they served to contain Chinese claims of antiquity and cultural
superiority. With the expansion of the Japanese Empire during the 1910s,
the Azuchi-Momoyama culture of the sixteenth-century Warring States
period received more public attention as a time of economic and cultural
exchanges with East Asia. In the Shokuhō period, defined by the political
domination of the Japanese state by Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi
Hideyoshi during the final decades of the sixteenth century, luxury castle
architecture, as well as screen and wall paintings flourished. Europeans
brought Christianity and firearms to Japan, while Japanese carried on
trade as far as Southeast Asia. The previously ignored Azuchi-
Momoyama culture was reimagined as an “Age of Exploration” and this
image was superimposed on that of Kyoto beginning around 1920.
The Momoyama Mausoleum for the Emperor Meiji was to be the last
tomb for an emperor erected in Kyoto. Beginning with the Emperor
Taishō , who died in 1926, emperors were buried in the Musashino
Imperial Mausoleum near Tokyo. Thus, Nara and Kyoto became
fixed in the cultural memory of East Asia as ancient capitals, evoking
Japanese nostalgia while the image of a modern Tokyo was propagated
as the center of power, the capital to rule the Japanese Empire in East
Asia.
During the Meiji period, the ancient capitals of Nara and Kyoto thus
served in the creation of the modern nation-state through their portrayal
of Japanese antiquity as a unique, independent civilization that could be
found neither in China nor in Europe. The goal was to have the interna-
tional community recognize Japan as a first-rate, civilized country due to
its ancient history and unique myths. To reinforce the image of Japanese
cultural legitimacy, Nara, as a capital of ancient Japan, was placed on
a par with Greece, well-known as the birthplace of European civilization.
The creation of the Japanese empire changed the dominant historical
narratives of the Japanese past. During the 1910s and 1920s, many
scholars continued to glorify the Azuchi-Momoyama period as an era of
Japanese overseas expansion. They simultaneously paid tribute to the
Japanese invasions of Korea (launched by Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the
25
Takagi Hiroshi, “Nihon bijutsu shi / Chō sen bijutsu shi no seiritsu” [The Formation of
Japanese Art History and Korean Art History], in Sekai isan jidai no minzokugaku:
gurō baru sutandā do no juyō o meguru Nikkan hikaku [Folkloristics in the Era of Cultural
Heritage: Comparing Japan and Korea with Respect to Global Standards], ed.
Iwamoto Michiya (Tokyo: Fū kyō sha: 2013).
1590s), the Japanese towns established in Southeast Asian port cities, as

well as the influx of European culture during the late sixteenth century.
Moreover, by turning the former Silla capital of Gyeongju in Korea into
an imitation of Nara, Japanese scholars and officials attempted to estab-
lish the cultural superiority of the ancient cities of Nara and Kyoto in East
Asia.
Suggestions for Further Reading
Although there is some overlap with citations in the chapters of this volume, this
bibliography is intended to serve primarily as a general overview of works
related to the study of the Meiji Restoration, the Meiji period, as well as global
history.
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“The Meiji at 150 Project.” University of British Columbia. https://meijiat150
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Tanaka Akihiko. “‘The World and Japan’ Database Project.” Institute for Advanced
Studies on Asia, University of Tokyo. Last updated February 19, 2018. www
.ioc.u-tokyo.ac.jp/~worldjpn/front-ENG.shtml
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Period (in English and German)
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266
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1867 [Japan as a Colony? Max von Brandt’s Hokkaido Project]. Hamburg:
Abera-Verlag, 1997.
Yamakawa, Kikue. Women of the Mito Domain: Recollections of Samurai Life.
Translated by Kate Wildman Nakai. Stanford, CA: Stanford University
Press, 2001.
Secondary Literature on the Meiji Restoration & the Meiji

Period (in Japanese)
Aoyama Tadamasa. Nihon kinsei no rekishi [Japan’s Early Modern History]. Vol.
6, Meiji ishin [Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2012.
Banno Junji. Mikan no Meiji ishin [The Unfinished Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo:
Chikuma Shobō , 2007.
Botsman, Daniel V., Tsukada Takashi, and Yoshida Nobuyuki, eds. Meiji hya-
kugojū nen de kangaeru – kindai ikō ki no shakai to kū kan [Thinking Through
Meiji 150 – Social and Spatial Change in the Transition to Modernity].
Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppan-sha, 2018.
Breen, John. Girei to kenryoku: tennō no Meiji ishin [Ceremonies and Power: The
Emperor’s Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo: Heibonsha, 2011.
Fukuoka Mariko. Puroisen Higashi Ajia ensei to bakumatsu gaikō [The Prussian
East Asian Expedition and Japanese Diplomacy in the Late Edo Period].
Tokyo: Tokyo Daigaku Shuppankai, 2013.
Gotō Atsushi. Kaikokuki Tokugawa bakufu no seiji to gaikō [The Shogunate’s
Politics and Diplomacy in the Era of the Opening of the Country]. Tokyo:
Yū shisha, 2015.
Haga Tō ru. Meiji ishin to nihonjin [The Meiji Restoration and the Japanese
People]. Tokyo: Kō dansha, 1986.
Hakoishi Hiroshi, ed. Boshin sensō no shiryō gaku [A Study of Sources Related to
the Boshin War]. Tokyo: Bensei Shuppan, 2013.
Hani Gorō . Meiji ishin: gendai Nihon no kigen [The Meiji Restoration: The Birth of
Today’s Japan]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1974.
Hattori Shisō . Meiji ishin no kakumei oyobi hankakumei [The Revolution and
Counterrevolution of the Meiji Restoration]. 1933 Reprint. Tokyo:
Iwanami Shoten, 1982.
Hō ya Tō ru. Sensō no Nihonshi [Japanese History Through War]. Vol. 18, Boshin
sensō [The Boshin War]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2007.
Iechika Yoshiki. Saigō Takamori to bakumatsu ishin no seikyoku: Taichō furyō
mondai kara mita Satchō dō mei, Seikanron seihen [Saigō Takamori and the
Political Situation during the Bakumatsu and the Restoration Periods: The
Satsuma-Chō shū Alliance and the “Invade Korea” Coup Through the Lens
of Saigō ’s Ill Health]. Kyoto: Mineruva Shobō , 2011
Ikeda Yū ta. Ishin henkaku to jukyō teki risō shugi [The Changes in the Restoration
and Confucian Idealism]. Tokyo: Yamakawa Shuppansha, 2013.
Ishii Takashi. Gakusetsu hihan Meiji ishin ron [Theoretical Critiques of Meiji
Restoration Discourse]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 1967.
ed. Zusetsu Nihon no rekishi [An Illustrated History of Japan]. Vol. 13, Sekai jō sei
to Meiji ishin [Global Conditions and the Meiji Restoration]. Tokyo:
Shū eisha, 1976.
Meiji ishin to gaiatsu [The Meiji Restoration and Foreign Pressure]. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 1993.
Karube Tadashi. “Ishin Kakumei” e no michi: “Bunmei” o motometa jū kyū seiki
Nihon [A Road to the “Ishin Revolution”: A Nineteenth-Century Japan that
Sought “Civilization”]. Tokyo: Shinchō sha, 2017.
Kobayashi Noburu. Meiji ishinki no kahei keizai [The Monetary Economy During
the Restoration Period]. Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2015.
Kō no Yū ri. Meiroku zasshi no seiji shisō : Sakatani Shiroshi to “dō ri” no chō sen [The
Political Thought of the Meiji Six Journal: Sakatani Shiroshi and the
Challenge of “Order”]. Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2011.
Matsuo Masahito, ed. Nihon no jidaishi [Japanese History Through its Eras]. Vol.
21, Meiji ishin to bunmei kaika [Meiji Restoration and Civilization and
Enlightenment]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2004.
Matsuyama Megumi. Toshi kū kan no Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration and
Urban Spaces]. Tokyo: Chikuma Shobō , 2019.
Matsuzawa Yū saku. Meiji chihō jichi taisei no kigen [The Origins of the Meiji Local
Autonomy System]. Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2009.
Ikidurai Meiji shakai [The Challenges of Living in Meiji Society]. Tokyo:
Meiji Ishin-shi Gakkai, ed. Kō za Meiji ishin [Essays on the Meiji Restoration]. 11
vols. Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010.
Mitani Hiroshi. Ishin shi saikō : Kō gi ō sei kara shū ken datsu mibunka e [Rethinking
the History of the Restoration: From Public Authority and Imperial Rule to
Centralization and the Removal of Status]. Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2017.
Miyachi Masato. Bakumatsu ishinki no bunka to jō hō [Information and Culture
During the Bakumatsu and Meiji Restoration Periods]. Tokyo: Meicho
Kankō kai, 1994.
Bakumatsu ishinki no shakaiteki seijishi kenkyū [The History of Social Politics in
the Bakumatsu and Meiji Restoration Periods]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten,
1999.
Bakumatsu henkakushi [The Transformations of the Bakumatsu and Meiji

Periods]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012.
Miyama Jun’ichi. Boshin nairanki no shakai: sabaku to kinnō no aida [Society in the
Boshin Civil War Era: Between Pro-shogunate and Pro-emperor]. Kyoto:
Shibunkaku Shuppan, 2015.
Nagano Hiroko. Meiji ishin to gendā [The Meiji Restoration and Gender]. Tokyo:
Akashi Shoten, 2016.
Nara Katsuji. Meiji ishin to sekai ninshiki taikei: Bakumatsu no Tokugawa seiken
shingi to seii no aida [The Meiji Restoration and Worldview Systems:
Tokugawa Administration in the Bakumatsu Era and the Space Between
Faith and Foreign Conquest]. Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2010.
Ogawara Masamichi. Seinan sensō to jiyū minken [The Satsuma Rebellion and
Popular Rights]. Tokyo: Keiō Gijuku Daigaku Shuppankai, 2017.
Ō kubo Takeharu. Kindai Nihon no seiji kō sō to Oranda [The Quest for Civilization:
Encounters with Dutch Jurisprudence, Economics, and Statistics and the
Dawn of Modern Japan]. Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2010.
Sano Mayuko. Bakumatsu gaikō girei no kenkyū : Ō bei gaikō kantachi no shō gun
haietsu [Diplomatic Etiquette in the Bakumatsu Period: Western
Diplomats’ Audiences with Shoguns]. Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 2016.
Sekiguchi Sumiko. Goisshin to gendā : Ogyū Sorai kara Kyō iku chokugo made [The
Meiji Restoration and Gender: From Ogyū Sorai to the Imperial Rescript on
Education]. Tokyo: Tō kyō Daigaku Shuppankai, 2005.
Shiba Ryō tarō . Ryō ma ga yuku [Ryō ma Goes His Way]. Tokyo: Bungei Shunjū ,
1997–1998.
Shibahara Takuji. Sekaishi no naka no Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration within
World History]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1985.
Suzuki Yukiko. Onnatachi no Meiji ishin [Women in the Meiji Restoration].
Tokyo: NHK Shuppan, 2010.
Takagi Shunsuke. Meiji ishin to gō nō : Furuhashi Terunori no shō gai [The Meiji
Restoration and Wealthy Farmers: The Life of Furuhashi Terunori]. Tokyo:
Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2011.
Takahashi Noriyuki, Yamada Kuniaki, Hō ya Tō ru, and Ichinose Toshiya.
Nihon gunjishi [Japan’s Military History]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan,
2006.
Tanaka Akira. “Datsua” no Meiji ishin: Iwakura shisetsudan o ou tabi kara [The
Meiji Restoration and the Decoupling from Asia: Following the Trails of the
Iwakura Mission]. Tokyo: Nihon Hō sō Shuppan Kyō kai, 1984.
Meiji ishinkan no kenkyū [Perspectives on the Meiji Restoration]. Sapporo:
Hokkaidō Daigaku Toshokankō kai, 1987.
ed. Nihon no rekishi [History of Japan]. Vol. 7, Meiji ishin [The Meiji
Restoration]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2001.
Tō yama Shigeki. Meiji ishin to gendai [The Meiji Restoration and Today]. Tokyo:
Ugai Masashi. Meiji ishin no kokusai butai [The International Stage of the Meiji
Restoration]. Tokyo: Yū shisha, 2014.
Yasumaru Yoshio. Kamigami no Meiji ishin [Gods of the Meiji Restoration].
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1979.
Kindai tennō zō no keisei [The Formation of the Image of the Modern Emperor].
Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 1992.
Yokohama Kaikō Shiryō kan, ed. Shiryō de tadoru Meiji ishin-ki no Yokohama Ei-
Futsu chū tongun [Written Material Traces: The Anglo-French Occupation
Forces in Yokohama during the Meiji Restoration]. Yokohama: Yokohama
Kaikō Shiryō kan, 1993.
Yokoyama Yoshinori, ed. Bakumatsu ishin to gaikō [Diplomacy and Bakumatsu
and Meiji Restoration Periods]. Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2001.
Kaikoku zenya no sekai [The World on the Eve of the Opening of the Country].
Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kō bunkan, 2013.
Yokoyama Yuriko. Edo Tokyo no Meiji ishin [The Meiji Restoration of Edo and
Tokyo]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2018.
Yukawa Fumihiko. Rippō to jimu no Meiji ishin: kanmin kyō chi no kō sō to tenkai
[The Meiji Restoration through Legislation and Administration: The Idea
and Development of Public-Private Co-Governance]. Tokyo: Tō kyō
Daigaku Shuppankai, 2017.
Secondary Literature on Global History and Works

Exploring Japan and East Asia in Global Contexts
(in English and German)
Conrad, Sebastian. What is Global History? Princeton, NJ: Princeton University
Press, 2017.
Conrad, Sebastian and Dominic Sachsenmaier, eds. Competing Visions of World
Order. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007.
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. What Is Global History? Cambridge: Polity, 2008.
Forum/German History. “Asia, Germany and the Transnational Turn.” German
History 28, no. 4 (2010): 515–536.
Hamashita, Takeshi. China, East Asia and the Global Economy. London:
Routledge, 2008.
Hopkins, A. G., ed. Global History: Interactions between the Universal and the Local.
New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2006.
Miyoshi, Masao and Harry Harootunian, eds. Learning Places: The Afterlives of
Area Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002.
Mizushima, Tsukasa, George Bryan Souza, and Dennis Owen Flynn. Hinterlands
and Commodities: Place, Space, Time and the Political Economic Development of
Asia over the Long Eighteenth Century. Leiden: Brill Academic Publishers,
2014.
Osterhammel, Jürgen and Niels P. Petersson. Globalization: A Short History.
Translated by Dona Geyer. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press,
2005.
Parthasarathi, Prasannan. Why Europe Grew Rich and Asia Did Not. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2011.
Yang, Daqing. Toward a History Beyond Borders: Contentious Issues in Sino-
Japanese Relations. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Asia Center,
2012.
Secondary Literature on Gurō baru hisutorı̄

(in Japanese)
Akita Shigeru. “Gurō baru hisutorı̄ to Ajia sekai tokushū : rekishi toshite no gur-
obarizeˉ shon” [Special Collection of Essays on Global History and the Asian
World: Globalization as History]. Ex Oriente [Osaka Gaikokugo Daigaku
Gengo Shakai Gakkai] 10 (2004): 75–99.
“Gurō baru hisutorı̄ no chō sen to Seiyō -shi kenkyū .” [The Challenges of Global
History and Research on Western History] Paburikku hisutorı̄ 5 (2008):
34–42.
Ajia kara mita gurō baru hisutorı̄: “chō ki no 18-seiki” kara “Higashi-Ajia no
keizaiteki saikō ” e [Global History from Asia’s View: From the “Long 18th
Century” to the “Economic Renaissance of East Asia”]. Kyoto: Minerva
Shobō , 2013.
Crossley, Pamela Kyle. Gurō baru hisutorı̄ to wa nani ka [What Is Global History?].
Translated by Shō ichi Satō . Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2012.
Fujiya Kō etsu. “Nihon Sonbun kenkyū kaishū ‘Gurō baru hisutorı̄ no naka no
Shingai kakumei – Shingai kakumei 100 shū nen kinen kokusai shinpojiumu
(Kō be kaigi) ronbunshū ’” [Japanese Sun Yat-sen Conference Papers: “The
Xinhai Revolution within Global History – Papers on the International
Symposium on the 100 Year Anniversary of the Xinhai Revolution
(Kobe)”]. Chū goku kenkyū geppō 67, no. 9 (2013): 43–46.
Hama Kunihiko, Nishi Masahiko, and Higashi Takuma. “Shitsugi ō tō
(2011nendo renzoku kō za ‘Gurō baru hisutorı̄zu: kokumin kokka kara ara-
tana kyō dō sei e’ dai-2 shirı̄zu ‘rekishi no naka no kankaku hen’yō ’) dai-1-kai
‘Onsei o meguru kankaku hen’yō : “koe” no seijishi, “oto” no sekaishi’”
[Q&A (2011 Lecture on Global Histories: “From a Nation State to a new
Cooperativity” 2nd Series: “Changing Feelings within History”) 1st
Meeting: “Changing Feelings on Voices: The Political History of ‘Voice’
and the Global History of ‘Noise’”]. Ritsumeikan gengo bunka kenkyū 24, no.
2 (2013): 23–30.
Haneda Masashi. Atarashii sekaishi e: chikyū shimin no tame no kō sō [Towards
a New World History: A Framework for Global Citizens]. Tokyo: Iwanami
Shoten, 2011.
Harada Tomohito. “Gurō baru hisutorı̄ no kanō sei: L. S. Sutaburiā nosu no sekaishi-
ron o tegakari ni” [The Possibilities of Global History: L. S. Stavrianos’ World
History as a Model]. Shakaika kyō iku ronsō 40 (1993): 27–36.
Kawanishi Hidemichi, Namikawa Kenji, and M. William Steele, eds. Rō karu
hisutorı̄ kara gurō baru hisutorı̄ e: tabunka no rekishigaku to chiikigaku [From
Local History to Global History: The Historiography and Local History of
Multiculturalism]. Tokyo: Iwata Shoin, 2005.
Kawanishi Masaaki. Nihon bungaku kara sekai bungaku e [From Japanese
Literature to Global Literature]. Tokyo: Iwanami Shoten, 2013.
Kondō Takahiro. “Gurō barizeshon wa rekishikyō iku o kaeru ka: Doitsu no taiō ni
miru hen’yō to renzokusei (tokushū gurō baruka to kyō iku naiyō )” [Can
Globalization Change History Education? Changes and Continuities
Observed in German Responses (Special Collection on Globalization and
Education Content)]. Kyō ikugaku kenkyū 81, no. 2 (2014): 187–199.
Monbu Kagaku Shō . Kō tō gakkō gakushū shidō yō ryō kaisetsu/chiri rekishi hen [High
School Curriculum Instruction Points: Geography and History]. Toyko:
Monbu Kagaku Shō , 2014.
Kō tō gakkō gakushū shidō yō ryō /shin-kyū taishō hyō [High School Curriculum
Instruction Points: Comparison Chart of Changes]. Tokyo: Monbu Kagaku
Shō , 2014.
Nakamura Takeshi. “Hyō ron: Mizushima Tsukasa hen ‘Gurō baru hisutorı̄ no
chō sen’” [Review: Mizushima Tukasa’s “The Global History Challenge”].
Rekishi kagaku 197 (2009): 13–18.
Nii Masahiro. “Gurō baru hisutorı̄ kyō iku ni okeru nashonaru aidentiti no atsukai
ni kansuru shitsuteki kenkyū : [World History for Us All] ni okeru tangen
[New Identities: Nationalism and Religion 1850–1914 CE] no jissen
o tō shite” [How to Teach about National Identity in Global History
Education: With a Case Study of the Teaching Unit “New Identities:
Nationalism and Religion 1850–1914 CE” from the World History for Us
All] Website. Shakaika kyō iku kenkyū 120 (2013): 10–21.
Nishitani Osamu. Sekaishi no rinkai [Criticality of World History]. Tokyo:
Odanaka Naoki. “Taikai kō en: gurō baru hisutorı̄ no shigakuteki ichi”
[Conference Lecture: The Historiographic Standpoint of Global History].
Shisō 91 (2014): 112–128.
Okamoto Michihiro. “Dokusho annai gurō baru hisutorı̄” [Reading Guide:
Global History]. Rekishi to chiri 2 (2013): 35–38.
Ō mi Yoshiaki. “Sekaishi ron no ayumi kara mita ‘gurō baru hisutorı̄ ron’”
[“Global History” from the View of the Steps in World History]. Rekishi
hyō ron 741 (2012): 50–60.
Schwentker, Wolfgang. “Gurō barizeˉ shon to rekishigaku: gurō baru hisutorı̄ no
teˉ ma, hō hō , hihan” [Globalization and Historiography: Themes, Methods
and Critiques of Global History]. Seiyō shigaku 224 (2006): 265–281.
Seo Tatsuhiko. “Pekin no chiisana hashi: machikado no gurō baru hisutorı̄” [A
Small Bridge in Peking: Global History on Street Corners]. Kokuritsu
Minzokugaku Hakubutsukan chō sa hō koku, Sekine Yasumasa hen “Sutorı̄to no
jinruigaku” gekan [National Folklore Museum Research Report: Sekine
Yasumusa’s “Anthropology of the Streets,” second volume] 81 (March
2009): 95–183.
Shimada Ryū to. “Rekishigaku wa sude ni ‘kokkyō ’ o koetsutsu aru: gurō baru
hisutorı̄ to kindaishi kenkyū no tame no oboegaki” [Historiography Is
Already Crossing Borders: Memoranda for Global History and Modern
History Research]. Paburikku hisutorı̄ 8 (2011): 1–13.
Shingo Minamizuka. “Hihan to hansei rekishigaku no aratana chō sen: gurō baru
hisutorı̄ to atarashii sekai” [Criticism and Reflection – The New Challenges
of Historiography: Global History and a New World]. Rekishigaku kenkyū
899 (November 2012): 72–76.
Sugihara Kaoru. “Gurō baru hisutorı̄ to Ajia no keizai hatten keiro” [Global
History and the Course of Asian Economic Development]. Gendai chū goku
kenkyū 28 (2011): 12–19.
Takahashi Masaaki. “Shinkamoku ‘rekishi kiso’ no tokuchō to gutaika ni mukete”

[New Lecture: Towards the Idiosyncrasies and the Concretization of
“History Basics”]. Gakujutsu no dō kō 16, no. 9 (2011): 22–27.
“Umi kara mita kindai sekai shisutemu” [The Modern World System Seen
From “Seas”]. Kyō to Sangyō Daigaku sō gō kenkyū jo shohō 9 (July 2014):
109–117.
Tō yama Jun. “Nihon to Higashi Ajia no komyunikeshon no sō gō teki kenkyū ,
Gotō -Nagasaki o meguru ibunka kō ryū no tobogurafı̄ – sakoku shikan kara
gurō buru historı̄ no shiten e – joron ni kaete” [General Research on
Communication in Japan and East Asia – The Topography of Exchange
with Foreign Cultures in Nagasaki and the Gotō Islands: Moving from the
Historical Perspective of the Closed Country Concept to a View Using
Global History, An Introduction]. Momoyama Gakuin Daigaku sō gō kenkyū jo
kiyō 37, no. 1 (2001): 109–123.
Wakimura Kō hei. “Ekibyō no gurō baru hisutorı̄: ekibyō shi to kō ekishi no setten”
[Epidemics and Global History: The Junction of Epidemic History and the
Common Good]. Chiiki kenkyū /JCAS Review 7, no. 2 (2006): 39–58.
Index
Abiko Toshihiko, 203–204 Bismarck, Otto von, German Chancellor,

Ainu, 50, 191–192 105, 222
Aizu domain, 91, 95, 96–97, 106–107, 168, BLR. See breech-loading rifle
173, 177, 183, 185, 203 BoE. See Bank of England
settlers in Hokkaido, 203–205 Bolitho, Harold, 103
tondenhei soldiers, 201 Bombay, 16, 21
Aizu-Wakamatsu castle, 91, 106, 185 Bank of, 21
battle of, 183 Boshin War, 1, 7, 8–10, 60, 85, 90, 95, 104,
Akasaka Palace, 239–240, 242–245 109, 131, 153, 154–159, 161, 164,
Kogosho Hall, 239 165, 166, 167, 169, 170, 171, 172,
akutō (ruffians, scoundrels), 144, 145, 147 175, 177, 183–185, 191, 194–195,
Alt, William, 92 203–204
alternative modernities, 214 imperial forces, 119, 136
Amaterasu sun goddess, 221, 223–230, 235 Bousquet, Albert Charles du, 222, 235
American Civil War, 1, 6, 21, 34, 71, 73, 84, Brandt, Max von, 104–106
95, 97, 138, 154, 156, 179, 184, 218 breech-loading rifle (BLR), 91–101,
Anderson, Benedict, 214 154, 157
Andō Hiroshige, 224 Breen, John, 11, 222–223, 231, 250
Anglo-Japanese Alliance (1902), 231 Brennwald, Caspar, Swiss Consul General,
Ansei period 94, 103
reforms, 156 Bright, Charles, 84, 137
treaties. See unequal treaties Britain, 3, 17–18, 19, 25, 84, 172–173, 179,
antiforeign movement, 114, 115, 131 230, 242, 245–246, 260
Aoki Kō ji, 32, 38 Elgin Marbles, 249
Aoki Shū zō , 238–239 London as cultural capital, 250
Arakawa Hitoshi, 32 trade, 37
Armitage, David, 137 British-French War against China
arms trade. See weapons trade (1856–1860). See Opium Wars
arson as a means of battle, 33, 169 Buddhism, 250, 259
ashigaru, 53, 132, 145, 155 imperial memorial services, 253–254
Aston, W. G., 226 Kū kai and origins in Japan, 259
Augustine Heard & Co., 95–96 movement to abolish, 253
Azuchi-Momoyama period, 264 national treasure, 259–260
Bunkyū period (1861–1864), 157, 252
bakumatsu period, 7, 8–10, 35, 48, 62, 91, bunmei kaika (civilization and enlighten-
109, 113–114, 118, 148, 150, 156 ment), 254
bank notes, 215–219, 220–222 Byō dō in Temple (Uji), 261, 263
Bank of England (BoE), 24, 36
Battle of Sedan (1870), 75, 100 Charter Oath, 165
Battle of Toba-Fushimi (1868). See Toba- Chatterjee, Partha, 229
Fushimi chihō shi. See local history
Bauduin, Albert Johannes, 91, 93 Chiossone, Eduardo, 232–234, 236
277
278 Index
Chō shū domain, 1, 9, 15, 20, 22, 23, 27, Emperor Jinmu, 238, 252–253, 255
29–31, 32, 47, 48, 80, 85–87, 90–91, Emperor Kō mei, 80, 173, 253, 255
98, 108, 140, 143, 149, 153, 157–158, Emperor Meiji, 1, 6, 11, 12, 175, 223, 231,
167, 169, 173–176, 177–178, 183 232–248, 255, 257–258, 264
Chō shū Expedition, Second (1866), 78 foreign guests, 242
Chō shū -Satsuma alliance. See Satsuma-Ch Emperor Shō wa, 257
ō shū alliance Emperor Taishō , 255, 257, 264
Chronicles of Japan. See Nihon shoki English East India Company, 97
Commodore Matthew Perry, 2, 7, 40, 42, Enomoto Takeaki, 194, 206
84, 119, 166 Ezo, 41–42, 43, 45, 50–51, 52, 53, 61, 153,
commoner mobilization, 139, 191, 192, 193, 194. See also Hokkaido
141–145, 151 Ezuya Shō hachi, 251
Corps of the Piercing Halberd, The. See
Shō hō tai farmer-soldiers. See nō hei; tondenhei
cotton, 17–18, 21–22, 23, 27–29, 63, Fenollosa, Ernest, 250, 258
70–71, 73, 99 Festival of the Ages, 262
prices, 24 financial panic, London 1866, 19, 21,
production, 17, 77 23–24, 35, 36
trade, 17, 22, 35, 65 Fletcher, C.A., 45–47
Coullet, Jacques, 93–94 Fleury-Hérard, Paul, 93
Council of State. See Dajō kan Foreign Ministry (Japan), 238, 241
Craig, Albert, 149, 213 Charter of the, 241
Crimean War (1853–1856), 84, 137, 154 France, 93, 96, 173, 249, 257–260
CSS Stonewall, 60, 93 Franco-Prussian War, 8, 54, 101, 137
currency, 6, 12, 78, 166, 218–223 French Revolution, 2
coinage, 219 Fuess, Harald, 8–9, 25, 30, 138, 157
devaluation, 20, 25, 114 Fujita Mosaburō , 134
Germany as model, 222 Fukuchi Genichirō , 63
iconography, 10–11, 215–217, 219–223, Fukui domain, 118, 123–125, 130
226, 229, 231 Fukuoka domain, 50
Fukuzawa Yukichi, 18, 99
Daijō sai Festival, 257 Furukawa Manabu, 97
Dajō kan, 195, 222, 238, 241 Furuya Sakuzaemon, 163, 173,
Date Kunishige, 205 176–177, 178
Decree for the Restoration of Imperial
Rule, 253 Gaymans, William F., 92, 93
Dejima, 91–92, 100 Germany
Dent and Company, 25 Berlin as cultural capital, 250
Dreyse needle guns (Zündnadelgewehr), 96, Unification Wars (1864, 1866,
102, 154 1870–1871), 84
Geyer, Michael, 84, 137
Echigo Province, 104, 183 global commodities boom, 7, 16
Echizen Province, 116, 120, 121 Global History, 3–4, 7, 15. See also gurō baru
Edo Castle, 166, 177 hisutorı̄
Edo period (1600–1868), 16, 27, 34, 41, global markets, 10, 66, 77, 78, 80,
53, 79, 128, 137, 138–141, 146–149, 81, 84
152, 155–156, 160, 161–162, 196, global trade. See global markets
223, 251–254 Glover, Thomas, 86, 91–92, 99–101
Edo-period state, 6, 9 bankruptcy, 102
Edward VII, British monarch, 231, 246 Gluck, Carol, 214, 231
Egawa Hidetatsu, 142, 144 gold, 23–24, 32, 160, 165–167,
Egawa Hidetoshi, 144, 156 219–220, 239
Ehlers, Maren, 9, 67, 143, 149, 173 gō nō , 77
Emperor Guangxu, Chinese monarch, 245 Great Britain. See Britain
Emperor Gwangmu, Korean monarch, 245 great elder (tairō ), 172
Index 279
Greek Classical Studies at Imperial Iemochi. See Tokugawa Iemochi

Universities, 250 Ii Naosuke, 119, 172
Gregorian calendar, introduction, 129 Iida domain, 121–122, 125
Gunma Prefecture, 143, 174, 176 Imai Nobuo, 10, 143, 162–163, 171–177,
gurō baru hisutorı̄, 4–5. See also Global 183–186
History Imperial Army, 183, 200
Imperial Army at Asahikawa, 196
Hachijo Island, 184 Imperial Decree of 1872, 212
Hakodate, 44–47, 90, 98, 106, 179, 183, Imperial Expulsion Edict, 115
191, 194, 201, 206 Imperial House Act of 1889, 257
Academy of Western Learning, 45 Imperial House Law of 1909, 257
battle of, 44, 60, 93, 119, 136 Imperial Household Ministry, 255–256
treaty port, 40, 42 Imperial Museum, 258
whaling, 40–44, 49 imperial rebels (chō teki ), 203
Hakodate Maru, 45, 53, 57 Incheon, port of, 244
Hall, Francis, 64, 68 India, 8, 16–17, 20, 23, 97, 98, 108, 263
Harris, Townsend, 43 British colony, 84
Hartmann, Carl Hermann Oscar, 92 trade, 33, 37
hatamoto, 157, 173, 219 infanticide, 146, 149
Heian period, 167, 254, 262 Inoue Kaoru, 48, 221–223, 225, 243, 245
Heimatschutz, 263 Ise Shrine, 223–224, 235–236
Helleiner, Eric, 220 Italian unification (1859–1871), 84
Hellyer, Robert, 10, 19, 67, 77, 129, 143, Itō Hirobumi, 48, 234, 235, 242, 248,
163, 195, 211 256, 258
Hepburn, James, 64 Itō Hiroshi, 202
Hikone domain, 120, 125, 180 Ivings, Steven, 10, 44, 61, 185–186
Hirata Atsutane, 117, 121, 149 Iwakura Mission, 103
Historical Scenic Beauties and Natural Iwakura Tomomi, 193, 242, 256–257
Monuments Preservation Act, Iwasaki Yatarō , 101
1919, 263 Izumo, 166
Hizen domain, 48, 100
Hokkaido, 1, 6, 10, 60–61, 106, 153, 181, Jansen, Marius, 171
186, 191–211 Japanese banknotes
colonization versus development, 192 printing, 215
Imperial University, 202 Japan-Korea Treaty of Amity, 244
inner colony, 192 Jardine, Matheson and Company, 25,
Prussian takeover plan, 105 66, 99
whaling, 41, 56–57 Jaundrill, D. Colin, 140
Hokkaido Development Agency. See jidai matsuri. See Festival of the Ages
Kaitakushi John Walsh and Company, 92, 102
hō kō nin, 157, 164 Joseon period, 263
Hokuetsu Front, 167
Hokusai, 224 Kaga domain, 118, 125, 133, 142–143, 167
Home Ministry. See Naimushō Kagenkei, 260
Hong Kong, 99, 102 Kagoshima, 158
Honors Bureau, 235 bombardment, 85
honors system, 234, 238 Kaientai, 101, 175
Honshu, 1, 87, 104, 173, 185, 186 Kaitakushi, 191, 194–195, 204–206, 208
Hosokawa Junjirō , 235 Kamakura
hostility to enemies, 204 period, 253
Hō toku Movement, 149 Kamchatka, 41, 56
Howell, David, 80, 118, 140, 144, Kameda Maru, 45
181 Kamishiraishi Minoru, 47, 141
Hō ya Tō ru, 9–10, 86, 138, 140, 176 Kanagawa commissioners (bugyō ), 66
Hyō go treaty port opening, 27 Kansai region, 108, 258
280 Index
Kanto region, 81, 89 Kusunoki Masashige, 221

economy, 76 Kyoto, 1, 6, 85, 153, 164, 166–167, 173,
violence, 26, 29, 30, 118, 132 174–176, 180, 183
Karafuto, 198, 205 ancient capital, 11, 250–265
colonization, 194, 209 Exhibition of 1873, 254
Kashiwara Court, 252 Heian Jingū Shrine, 257
Katsu Kaishū , 30, 176–178 Higashiyama, 166, 255
Katsuyama domain, 123, 131–132 Imperial Palace, 1, 85, 175, 257
Keiō period (1866–1868), 15, 26, 30, 38, revival of festivals, 257
89, 157 Kyō to Gyoen. See Kyoto Imperial Palace
Kenbuchi, 196 Kyoto Imperial Museum, 262
kenshi. See local history Kyushu, 100, 141, 173, 184, 186, 201
Kigensetsu. See National Foundation Day
Kiheitai, 143, 174 landowning families. See gō nō
Kii domain, 96–97, 100 Law for the Preservation of Old Shrines and
Kim Ki-su, 244 Temples 1897, 262, 263
Kim Kō shū , 244 Law on the Expulsion of Foreign Ships, 141
King Alfonso XII of Spain, 238 League to Demonstrate Righteousness,
King Kalā kua of Hawaiʻi, 243 The. See Shō gitai
Kinoshita Seitarō , 210 Lehmann, Carl, 92, 93, 96
Kniffler Company. See Louis Kniffler & Co. Li Hongzhang, 150
Kobe, 27, 89, 96, 109, 248 local history, 129, 192
kō bu gattai, 252 local modernities, 214
Kojiki, 221, 225, 226–227, 252 Louis Kniffler & Co., 91–92, 93,
kō koku, 180 99–103, 109
kokufū bunka, 260, 261, 263
kokugaku, 149 Maier, Charles, 83, 137
Kokugenji Temple, 253 Makinohara, 180–183, 184, 186
Kokura domain, 31, 100 Manjiro, John, 50, 51
Königgrätz, Battle of, 154 Maruki Riyō , 232
Konomoto, 133 Marxist historiography, 2, 139, 140, 212
Köppen, Carl, 97 Mason, Michele, 193
Korea, 11, 244–245 Matsudaira Tarō , 206
Chō sen period. See Joseon period Matsudaya, 71
conquest of, 221 Matsumae domain, 50
diplomatic missions, 242 settlements, 192
Gyeongju, 263–265 McKeown, Adam, 40
Korean history Meiji Emperor. See Emperor Meiji
periodization, 263 Meiji government, 2, 9, 85, 90, 93, 102,
Kō reiden Ancestral Spiritual 107, 159, 163, 165, 172, 173, 178,
Sanctuary, 258 182, 185, 194, 201, 213, 215–218,
Kō shū Province, 62, 64, 71–74 253, 261–263
Kō tetsu. See CSS Stonewall Constitution, 232–234, 255–258
Kotoni, 196, 203, 208–209 cultural policies and imperial museums,
Kō zu Kuranosuke, 145, 146 254–258
Krupp factory, 96, 100, 102–103 foreign policy, 246
kubikazari, 236 ornamental diplomacy, 11, 240
Kubota Sendairō , 173, 176 trade, 5, 7–9, 16–27, 35, 45, 61, 97, 107,
Kuhn, Philip, 150–151 141, 144, 156, 183, 264
Kuki Ryū ichi, 258, 262 Meiji period (1868–1912), 2, 5, 7, 10, 11,
Kumamoto domain, 48, 100, 161 82, 149, 175, 181, 191–193, 195, 203,
Kuril Islands, 41, 198 209, 211, 253, 261, 264
Kuroda Kiyotaka, 191, 194–195, 198, 202 Meiji Restoration
Kuroita Katsumi, 263 abolishment of domains, 240
Kusanagi sacred sword, 227 bloodless revolution, 83
Index 281
coup d’état, 1, 12, 85, 108, 175, 253 Nara Meisho Ezu, 251
historiography ō sei fukko and isshin, 212 National Foundation Day, 257
men of high purpose (shishi), 172 National Industrial Exhibition, 261–262
Metzler, Mark, 7, 47, 78, 87, 138, 179 National Learning, 117, 167
Michio Umegaki, 175 nationalism, 11
Mimawarigumi, 171, 174–175, 176 nation-state creation, 152, 214, 220,
Minié, Claude-Étienne, 154, 155 229, 243
Ministry of Education, 235 natural disasters, 31
Mino Province, 116, 120 Netherlands Trading Society, 91
Mito domain, 26, 80, 115–119, 126, New Guard Unit, The. See Shinbangumi
141–142, 173 Nihon shoki, 226, 238, 252
masterless samurai, 9, 67, 78, 113, 118, Niigata, 99, 168
120, 125, 132–133, 149 trade in silk, 104
nativist scholars, 215 Nikolai, Crown Prince of Russia, 248
Mitsubishi, 101 Ninomiya Sontoku, 149
Mitsui, 165, 173 ninsoku (helpers), 119, 128, 143
Mitsui Hachirō emon, 67 Nitta Yoshisada, 228
Miyachi Masato, 117 nō hei, 9, 132, 139–146, 147, 148, 151–152,
Miyazawa Yoshizaemon, 126, 131 156, 174
MLR. See muzzle-loading rifle Nojiri Gen’emon, 125–126, 128–129,
modern statehood 131–134
Westphalian order of 1648, 83 Norman, E.H., 139–140
Momoyama Mausoleum, 264 Northern Alliance, 95, 99, 106–107,
Mt. Tsukuba 153, 169
battle of, 125 Northern Territories, 198
Mt. Unebi, 252 Nunokawa Genbei, 134
Mukden, Battle of, 200
multiple modernities, 214 Oda Nobunaga, 264
Muragaki Norimasa, 46, 55 Ō e Masafusa, 167
Mutsu Province, 56 Ō gaki domain, 120
Mutsuhito, 1. See also Emperor Meiji Ogasawara Islands, 45, 51, 54, 58
muzzle-loading rifle, 91, 154–155, 156–157 Ogawa Sennosuke, 167
Oguri Tadamasa, 94
Nagai Genba, 206 Ō i River, 182
Nagaoka domain, 183, 185 Ō ishi Sadao, 181
Kawai Tsugunosuke, 106 Ō ita Prefecture, 208
Nagasaki, 85, 89, 95, 96, 99–102, 156 Okakura Tenshin, 258–262
port of, 5, 17, 101, 162, 179 Okhotsk Sea, 40, 41, 53, 57, 59, 61
trade, 25, 33, 51, 86–89, 91–93, 99, 109 Ō mura domain, 100
travel, 57 Ō no domain, 9, 113, 143, 150, 173
treaty port, 33, 40, 50 Akiu villages, 121, 122
naikoku shokuminchi. See inner colony lords, 114, 118–119, 120, 125, 129
Naimushō , 222, 254 Mito samurai, 113–135
Nakaminato, Battle of, 116, 132 Nishinotani, 126, 127–128,
Nakasendō Road, 117, 121 129–131, 135
Nanbō Heizō , 91 Opium Wars (China), 3, 16, 84, 142
Nanbu domain, 90 Order of the Chrysanthemum, 231, 234,
Nantucket, 40, 44, 61 235–239, 243, 246
Napoleon III, French monarch, 75 Order of the Garter, 231, 245
Napoleonic Wars, 84, 154 Order of the Rising Sun, 234, 235–236, 246
Nara, 6, 249, 250–254, 258–259 first recipients, 235
ancient capital, 11, 263–265 Order of the Sacred Treasure, 234, 236
Hō ryū ji Temple, 250, 259 ornamental diplomacy, 232, 239, 243,
Kō fukuji Temple, 251, 253, 260 245–248
Prefecture, 251, 263 Osaka, 22–23, 26–29, 164, 175, 176
282 Index
Osaka, (cont.) Ringer, Frederick, 92

Fujita Museum of Art, 253 Roches, Léon, 86, 89, 93–94, 95, 104
riots, 27–29 Russia, 8, 10, 53, 141, 154, 186, 193, 194,
trade, 20, 32, 34 205, 211, 231, 243, 246, 248
ō sei fukko (restoration of imperial rule). See diplomatic relations with, 239
Meiji Restoration:coup d’état Karafuto colonization, 194
Ō shio Heihachirō , 23 model for Japan, 257
Ō taniuchi Ryō gorō , 181–182, 185 threat of, 197–201
Ō tori Keisuke, 206 Russo-Japanese War (1904–1905), 11, 200,
Ō tsu incident, 248 210, 230, 246, 263
Ō tsuhama incident, 141–142
Ottoman Empire, 95 Sabae domain, 124
Overend, Gurney, 19, 24 Saga domain, 86, 100
Saigō Takamori, 183–184, 194, 201
paper bills. See currency Saitama Prefecture, 176
paper currency. See currency Sakaguchi Takashi, 250
parity with all nations (bankoku taiji), 243 Sakamoto Ryō ma, 10, 101–102, 171–172,
Partner, Simon, 8, 18, 87 175–176, 183
passport system, 44, 47–48, 49 Sakhalin, 41, 45, 53, 194. See also Karafuto
Paulownia Flowers, 234, 236 colony, 119
peasant conscription, 157 Samejima Naonobu, 238, 242
Periodization of Japanese History, 259 samurai settlers, 195 See also tondenhei
Platt, Brian, 9, 67, 86, 114, 127, 157, Sanjō Sanetomi, 256
174, 196 Sapporo, 202–205, 209–210
popular rebellion, 16 Agricultural College, 207
Port Arthur, 200 Satō Dō shin, 249
Pratt, Edward, 80 Satow, Ernest, 30, 33, 63, 64, 66
price inflation, 34 Satsuma, 1, 15, 21, 85, 86, 91, 95, 100, 141,
Prince Alfred, the Duke of Edinburgh, 241 153, 157, 169, 173, 176–178, 183, 194
Prince Heinrich of Prussia, 239 Satsuma Rebellion, 85, 184, 186, 200, 201,
Prince Komatsu no Miya Akihito, 246 204, 211, 255
Prince Tommaso of Savoy, 240 Satsuma-Chō shū alliance, 1, 8–9, 10, 26,
Pruyn, Robert, 93 30, 85, 87, 91, 106, 107, 108, 166,
172, 174–175, 177, 253
Qing Empire, 2, 3, 11, 34, 97, 150–151 Schnell
Queen Victoria, 241, 245–246 brothers, 103–104, 106, 107
Edward, 104, 107
railway, 84 Henry, 103–104, 106
investment, 81–82 Schnell & Company, 103, 109
trans-Siberian, 200 Schuyler, Hartley & Graham, 95
Ravina, Mark, 10–11, 166 Sea of Japan, 53, 55, 57, 59, 116
rebel soldiers (zokuhei), 168 Sekigahara, Battle of, 132
reconciliation, xiii, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12, 186, Sekihō Brigade, 165
204, 206 Sekino Tadashi, 263
rice Sendai domain, 95, 100, 107, 203
harvests, 38, 75 Sengoku period. See Warring States period
riots, 16, 30 Sennyū ji Temple, 254
trade, 71 Sepoy Mutiny, India (1857–1859), 97, 137
rice (as a commodity and tax item), 16, 18, settler colonialism, 10, 61, 192
22–23, 26–35, 155, 160, 165, 178, settler revolution, 191, 211
180, 197 Settsu Province, 27
Rice, Elisha, 43–44, 46, 49, 51–52, 55, Shanghai, 16, 97–100, 102, 106
57, 60 banking, 20, 25
Richardson, Charles, 67–68, 72 foreign business, 25
Riess, Ludwig, 251 market for arms, 98
Index 283
Shiba Gorō , 185 Suzuki Kyō suke, 126–127, 136

Shiba Ryō tarō , 171 Suzuki Zenzaemon, 122, 125–127,
Shimazaki Tō son, 117 128, 136
Shimazu clan, 157
Shimokita Peninsula, 203 Taiping Rebellion, 2, 6, 9, 16, 84, 97, 137,
Shimonoseki, 31, 85 138, 184
Shimonoseki indemnity, 47 Taiwan, colonization, 209
Shinagawa riot, 29 Takagi Hiroshi, 11, 80, 238, 240
Shinagawa Yajirō , 167 Takagi Shō saku, 155, 156, 170
Shinano Province, 117, 121 Takahashi Kageyasu, 142
Saku district, 145–146, 147, 148 Takashima school of musketry, 119
Shinbangumi, 180–182, 184, 185 Takashima Shū han, 156
Shinohara Chū emon, 8, 62–75, 76, 79–82 Takasugi Shinsaku, 174
Shinohara Naotarō , 64–65, 68, 69–70, Takeda Kō unsai, 124–125, 132–134
73, 76 Taki Kō ji, 232, 234
Shinohara Shō jirō , 63, 64, 69–70, 71, 73, Tamamatsu Misao, 167
74, 76 Tariff Convention, 1866, 47, 48, 49, 59
Shinsengumi, 174 tax, rice, 26–27
Shinto, 223, 253–254 tea, 10, 19, 24, 28, 63, 65–66, 77, 100, 109,
Shizuoka, 10, 171–172, 178, 180–181, 172, 178–183, 184, 186, 195, 211
183–184, 185, 186, 195 telegraph, 81
Shō gitai, 177, 181–182, 185 Tengu Insurrection of 1864, 113, 114,
Shō hō tai, 183 115–116, 134, 143, 173, 174
Shokuhō period, 264 Terajima Munenori, 107, 238, 242
Shō nai domain, 95, 106, 107, 162 Toba-Fushimi, Battle of, 1, 85, 90, 94, 130,
Shō sō in, 254, 255–256, 259 153, 166, 170, 176
Shō wa period (1926–1989), 251 Tō daiji Temple, 251, 254, 259
silk, 17–18, 22, 30, 63, 102, 109, 172 Tohoku region, 90, 153, 167–169
market collapse, 75 Tō kaidō , 22, 182
price, 66–67, 70–71 Tokugawa ban of overseas travel, 45,
production, 77 47–48
trade, 65, 76–78, 79, 94 Tokugawa Iemochi, 22, 30, 116
silkworm, 18, 30, 77 Tokugawa Iesato, 178, 180
trade, 73–74, 94 Tokugawa Institute for the Translation for
Silva Loureiro, Jose da, 92 Barbarian Books (Bansho shirabesho),
silver, 23, 93 142
dollars, 25, 68 Tokugawa Nariaki, 116, 118–119, 132–133
Singapore, 97 Tokugawa regime, 3, 9, 10, 40, 44, 48,
Sino-Japanese War (1894–1895), 200, 53–54, 62, 78, 85, 91, 94, 131, 157,
243 161–162, 175, 182, 219
Sir Parkes, Harry, 27, 86, 104, 246 end of, 79–80
Smith, Peshan, 107 Tokugawa shogunate. See Tokugawa
Société Générale, 93 regime
chassepot rifles, 94 Tokugawa Yoshinobu, 1, 30, 38, 85, 90,
Society to Accumulate Good (Sekizenkō ), 106, 116, 175–176, 178, 180
130–131 Tokyo, 79, 102, 182–184, 194
Soejima Taneomi, 242, 244 Imperial Palace, 246, 258
St. George and Susa-no-o, 227–228 Musashino Imperial Mausoleum, 264
St. Petersburg, Treaty of, 198 political capital, 11, 254–255
steamship, 17, 83, 101, 183 Tokyo Imperial University, 263
Struve, Karl von, 239 Tokyo School of Fine Arts, 258, 259
Sugiura Baitan, 52, 53–54, 55 Tonami domain, 203–205
Sumidagawa Namigorō , 49 tondenhei, 10, 44, 186, 193–211
Sunpu, 177, 178, 180 settlements, 198
Susa-no-o, 224–225, 226–228 Torisu Kyō ichi, 41
284 Index
Tosa, 86, 101–102 Wakamatsu, 168

samurai, 175 California tea farm, 107
Totman, Conrad, 48, 85, 86 Wakayama, 90, 96
Tō yama Kagekuni, 141 Walsh, Hall & Company, 99
Toyotomi Hideyoshi, 139, 263, 264 Walthall, Anne, 117
tozama (outside lords), 86 Warring States period, 130, 169, 264
trade surplus, Japan, 22 weapons trade, 8, 25, 83, 86, 89–94, 102,
trade, gold and silver, 20 108–109
Treaty of Amity and Commerce 1858, 45, Wells, H. G., 230
46, 48 Western learning, 114, 118, 119
Tsar of Russia Western whalers. See US whalers
Alexander II, 239, 242 Westernization, 10, 156, 213, 218
Alexander III, 242, 248 whaling in the Pacific, 40
Tsuda Sō kichi, 252 Wigen, Kären, 80
Tylor, Edward B., 225–226 Wilhelm I, German monarch, 238
Willis, William Dr., 168
Uchida Kuichi, 233 Wilson, Noell, 7–8, 138, 141
Uehara Tetsusaburō , 202–203 Wind God. See Susa-no-o
Ueno Hill, Battle of, 178, 181 world renewal (yonaoshi), 30, 33, 117,
unequal treaties, 87, 114, 135, 231, 144
240, 258 World War I, 84, 262
Union of Ritual and Rule (saisei itchi), 229
United States, 2, 5, 8, 11, 21–22, 28, 34, 38, Yamagata Aritomo, 185
46–47, 95, 105, 108, 138, 141, 144, Yamahana settlement, 196, 203, 209
154, 156, 172–173, 179, 215–218, Yamamoto Takahiro, 47
220 Yamato state, 166, 219
collections of antiquities, 249 Yanada, Battle of, 131, 177, 183
Japanese mission to, 242 Yanagihara Sakimitsu, 242, 256
whaling, 42 Yasukuni Shrine, 166
US Civil War. See American Yoichi settlement, 204–205
Civil War Yokohama, 8, 18, 25, 29, 32, 33, 47, 88–90,
US Continental Bank Note Company, 215, 91, 92–94, 95–96, 99–100, 102,
217, 221 103–107, 109, 173, 181, 185
US whalers, 40–44, 48, 49, 52, 53–56, foreign business, 25, 94
58–61 port of, 17, 30, 179, 239
Utagawa Kunisada, 224 trade, 58–59, 70–74, 79, 94, 100, 108
travel, 49, 57
Van Reed, Eugene, US merchant, treaty port, 40, 62–63, 77, 80
89 Yonezawa domain, 95, 100, 107, 162,
210
Wada village, 210 Yumoto Fumihiko, 262

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The Meiji Restoration

In world history, the Meiji Restoration of 1868 ranks as a revolutionary

Robert Hellyer is Associate Professor of History at Wake Forest

Cambridge University Press is part of the University of Cambridge.

List of Figures page vii

Part 1 Global Connections 13

Part 2 Internal Conﬂicts 111

6 “Farmer-Soldiers” and Local Leadership

Part 3 Domestic Resolutions 189

Suggestions for Further Reading 266

1.1 “View of a Japanese seaport,” (Yokohama) 1868–1870.

1.1 Rice prices on Osaka markets, Keiō era years 1 and 2

john breen (PhD Cambridge) is professor at Nichibunken in Kyoto

has published in several journals including Labor History, Japan Forum,

This volume is a result of a multiyear, international research project that

Tokugawa shogunate set ofﬁcial conversion rates, in reality rates ﬂuctu-

Measures Used in the Volume

Robert Hellyer and Harald Fuess

The Meiji Restoration began largely in private within the grounds of

global history emphasize the need to overcome a standard focus on

Pamela Crossley, What Is Global History?17 A number of Japanese histor-

destructive.20 Japan’s death toll during its violent 1860s – around

the new Meiji state simultaneously moved in conjunction with unfolding

Global Connections, Internal Conﬂicts,

strengthen the military prowess of the Tokugawa regime. Fuess also

halfhearted attitude toward military reform held by the Tokugawa sho-

in concert with an emerging global trend: the creation of exclusive,

In sum, this collaborative study of the global intersections at the heart

Figure 1.1 “View of a Japanese seaport,” (Yokohama) 1868–1870.

A second, connected theme is the global commodities boom of the

A Global Commodities Boom

was “like the joy of ‘kite men’ [tobi no mono: ﬁremen/construction

An International Credit Bubble

banking corporations. There followed a “manic” wave in the formation of

especially highly leveraged. Satsuma began to mint a large volume of zeni

The Onset of International “Overproduction”

The International Panic of 1866

external “drain” would help stabilize London credit markets. In fact, it

Revolution in Nineteenth-Century China: The Rise of Sino-Western Mercantile Capitalism

Japan in 1866: Civil Strife, Price Revolution,

repaid. These de facto taxes were another factor pushing merchants to

Gregorian Japanese date Rice price†

1865 Keiō year 1

important. It also seems that land-poor peasants were relatively more

Tokugawa coalition forces being beaten by better motivated and trained

the previously normal conventions of the Tokugawa order. In the

Connecting Global and Local Histories:

compete with imports from China, principally Canton,” as the

As for riots and peasant uprisings in Japan, Aoki recorded a total of

Disturbances in the Southwest and Oxfordshire in 1867,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal

produce satisfying explanatory stories. The present chapter demonstrates

Hundreds of foreign whaling ships stopped in newly opened Japanese treaty

In the mid-nineteenth century, Hakodate was the core site through

Reconsidering Japanese Expansion,” in Japan at Nature’s Edge: The Environmental Context

strengthening of Ezo’s coastal defenses but more importantly catalyzed

Whalers have already made arrangements to resort in large numbers to

teemed with US whalers, which prompted Rice to remark that Hakodate

Legal Foundations for Japanese Crew on Western

experienced sailors.16 The Hakodate Magistrate nonetheless remained

using a “passport” issued by US diplomats in Hakodate. The incident

Yet Hakodate ofﬁcials hesitated to embrace an agreement until the

May 1863.28 In the summer of 1866, the movement of Japanese across

Western Whalers and the First Japanese Seamen