Treaty Ports | From City to Home: Spatial Histories of Modern East and Southeast Asia

Foreigners in Treaty-Port Japan (1859 – 1872)

In 1854, with the Treaty of Kanagawa, Japan’s ‘closed country’ sakoku policy was replaced with an ‘open country’ kaikoku policy.¹ This open era created new markets, new distribution routes and critically opened new Treaty Port towns. The most significant of these was the Treaty Port of Yokohama. Yokohama’s success and use as trading hub was so significant that it led it to the town being known to be ‘synonymous with the West’.² John Dower explores how the local Japanese viewed this new commercial hub and their new foreign counterparts through analysing Yokohama prints, Yokohama-e. Yokohama prints were woodblock prints that, during the 19^th century, became an extremely popular way to depict Treaty Port towns and depict the actions of the new foreign merchants and traders. This blog entry will explore how the Yokohama prints illustrated; first, the different uses of the new Treaty Port towns, second the lack of knowledge or information the locals had about these new foreigners and, third the suspicion the locals attributed to the foreigners.

One primary source, Utagawa Sadahide’s ‘Pictures of Western Traders at Yokohama Transporting Merchandise’, 1861, will be the principal source for this blog entry; Dower uses it to gain an insight into the different activities within the thriving treaty port harbour in Yokohama. The woodblock depicts five vessels within the bustling Yokohama port and the various tasks that are occurring on them when they are coming into the harbour. The five vessels represent the five nations with bilateral treaties allowing them to use the harbour. Many different activities are occurring within the print, from clerks making notes to crewmen climbing the riggings. These various activities illustrating what Dower calls ‘the unprecedented bustle’³ in the Yokohama harbour and reinforces how Treaty Ports were a hub of trading, business and all the other activities that facilitated Japan’s new international markets. The American ship, denoted by an American flag, includes a long row of small cannons running along the length of their ship.² The presence of these cannons, Dower views as a ‘subtle touch of the ominous’⁴, signalling the Japanese’s uncertainty and discomfort with their new open era; they now looked out ‘upon the unknown world of foreign nations’.((Ibid.))Second, most critically, it displays the suspicion attached to foreigners in Yokohama. Locals still were sceptical of the Americans after their aggressive ‘gun-boat diplomacy’ which triggered the kaikou policy. It further illustrates how alongside treaty port towns being a hub of commerce, they were also a place where foreigners could display their naval strength. As Jeremy Taylor explores, the harbour in Yokohama was ‘on occasions lined with foreign troops of all kinds to intimidate Japanese government officials into further concessions’.⁵

It should be noted that, as Dower argues, it is unlikely that Sadahide was creating this print based on his first-hand view of the harbour. Dower explores how a similar European port scene appeared in the Illustrated London News before the publishing of Sadahide’s print, and this had potentially been the inspiration behind Sadahide’s work. This use of a European source to depict Yokohama’s harbour exposes again the lack of understanding and great uncertainty that Japanese locals and artists had towards these foreign nations and this new influx of trade and chaos. Dower emphasises how often different features of the woodblock prints were a ‘departure from strict reality’.⁶

Overall, Sadahide’s woodblock print is used by Dower to draw conclusions about the Yokohama local’s impression and interactions with their new foreign counterparts and their attitude towards the new use of their previously quiet village. It is clear the locals viewed their foreign counterparts with caution and uncertainty, often relying on European sources or images to fill their lack of knowledge of the new concepts and people that now surrounded them.

John W Dower, “Yokohama Boomtown, Foreign Community in Treaty Port Japan 1859-1872,’” MIT Visualising Cultures, 2008, https://visualizingcultures.mit.edu/yokohama/yb_essay01.html, 1. [↩]
Ibid., 27. [↩] [↩]
Ibid., 25. [↩]
Ibid. [↩]
Jeremy E. Taylor, “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia,” Social History 27, no. 2 (2002): pp. 125-142, https://doi.org/10.1080/03071020210128364, 137. [↩]
Dower, Yokohama Boomtown, 27. [↩]

The United States Consulate, Yokohama United States Consulate Text

The Ansei Treaties of 1858 ended Japan’s national exclusion through the development of treaty ports such as Yokohama, involving the country in an international trade network dependent on foreign accommodations and concessions. It has been suggested that the treaty ports became a “place of intersection for modern imperialism”. [1] This is evidenced in The Far East publication’s article on the United States Consulate, which demonstrates a conflict between America’s cultural assumptions of its Japanese hosts and the necessity for a productive coexistence.[2]

The article places significance on the location and arrangement of the American Consulate buildings, implying that the physical landscape of the Treaty Ports acted as an authoritative stamp of foreign power, despite the lack of formal territorial possession. It states: “The building is directly opposite the Saibansho” and lists the varying functions of the Consulate itself. The spatial proximity of the buildings creates an impression of American dominance, where the Consulate acted as the capital of success. Indeed, the presence of the Consul’s private residence alongside national corporations, such as the US post office, implies that the infiltration of the US into Yokohama occurred on both a public and private level. Seemingly, traditional boundaries between administrative, commercial and domestic space were largely discarded in favour of the pervasion of a ‘total’ American identity. Social measures such as the importation of American food and the introduction of baseball were important accompaniments to this policy of cultural distinction from the Japanese.[3]

Despite this, the ensuing discussion of commerce in Yokohama presents a conflict between the retention of an American national identity and the necessity for interaction with Japanese industry. The writer’s commending tone toward American commercial success is heightened by the deliberate contrast with Japanese efforts of industrialisation. The writer suggests that the local community comprised of “loafers”, who were better off shipped across to America where they could experience the true meaning of modernity. This implies that American inhabitants of Yokohama subscribed to stereotypes that the Japanese were “essentially feeble” and that foreigners had a “moral imperative” to improve the situation of this isolated outpost.[4] Emphasis of “increased business” as a result of the Pacific Mail Company steamers suggests that the treaty port of Yokohama fostered solely American ambitions which dragged Japan into an international modernity, both physically and psychologically.

This description devalues The Far East’s article as a measured assessment of industrial development in the 19^th century. Instead, it suggests that the concept of ‘modernity’ which was fostered during this time was a Western mediated phenomenon, rather than a progression which occurred on Japanese soil. It is true that Japan’s trade increased after foreign intervention- by the end of the twentieth century, Japan and China together supplied one third of the world’s silk.[5] However, in contradiction, there was never one obsolete power in Yokohama. The intersection of West and East created a territorially ambiguous space where both powers met through commercial necessity. Cultural assumptions of Japanese inadequacy still prevailed but were reshaped and overridden by the necessity for interaction. Japan retained autonomy over the division of space in the port, where institutions were “lined up” and jockeying for valuable access to the water.[6] The derogatory description of the local community suggests that American survival depended on interactions with local Japanese as physical isolation was both impossible and detrimental. Imports from the West have been described as “the first step toward prosperity” for new Meiji Imperialism. The state propagated an image of aspirational Japan who acted as a facilitator of international trade, inserting themselves into the narrative of modernity which the Far East implies was exclusively ‘Western’.[7] Consequently, whilst the American presence was notable in Yokohama, it did not exist without interdependence on the locals, which stimulated a search for national identity on both parts. This made the treaty ports a unique setting, where national identities were forged and redefined in an environment of divergence.

Bibliography

Primary Source

Anglin, James, “The United States Consulate”, The Far East, Vol.1, No.18, (Yokohama February 1871), pp.5-6.

Secondary Sources

Ambaras, David, Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire, (Cambridge 2018).

Bytheway, J, “The Arrival of the Modern West in Yokohama: Images of the Japanese Experience 1859-1899”, in Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig, Life in Treaty Port China and Japan, (Singapore 2018), pp.246-267.

Hoare, James, The Japanese Treaty Ports 1868-1899: A Study of the Foreign Settlements, (London 1970).

Roden, Donald, “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan.” The American Historical Review, vol. 85, no. 3, (Oxford 1980), pp. 511–534.

Taylor, Jeremy, “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia”, Social History, Vol. 27, No.2, (2002), pp. 125-142.

Xu, Yingnan, “Industrialization and the Chinese Hand-Reeled Silk Industry (1880-1930)”, Penn History Review, Vol. 19, No.1, (Pennsylvania 2012), pp.27-46.

[1] David Ambaras, Japan’s Imperial Underworlds: Intimate Encounters at the Borders of Empire, (Cambridge 2018), p.71.

[2] James Anglin, “The United States Consulate”, The Far East, Vol.1, No.18, (Yokohama February 1871), pp.5-6.

[3] James Hoare, The Japanese Treaty Ports 1868-1899: A Study of the Foreign Settlements, (London 1970), p.111. Donald Roden, “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity in Meiji Japan”, The American Historical Review, vol. 85, no. 3, (Oxford 1980), p.512.

[4] Roden, “Baseball and the Quest for National Dignity”, p.152.

[5] Yingnan Xu, “Industrialization and the Chinese Hand-Reeled Silk Industry (1880-1930)”, Penn History Review, Vol. 19, No.1, (Pennsylvania 2012), p.31.

[6] Jeremy Taylor, “The Bund: Littoral Space of Empire in the Treaty Ports of East Asia”, Social History, Vol. 27, No.2, (2002), p.134.

[7] J. Bytheway, “The Arrival of the Modern West in Yokohama: Images of the Japanese Experience 1859-1899”, in Donna Brunero and Stephanie Villalta Puig, Life in Treaty Port China and Japan, (Singapore 2018), p.256.