Papers by Takahiro Yamamoto
国際日本学, 2023
This article discusses the process of territorial demarcation around Japan in the late nineteenth... more This article discusses the process of territorial demarcation around Japan in the late nineteenth century from the perspective of multilateral relations. First it argues for a multilateral framework to investigate the process in which the territorial status of remote islands around the Japanese archipelago was determined in the late nineteenth century. The point is that these remote islands were often treated as having only marginal value, and its possession was seen not as an asset but rather as a nuisance. Japan's expansion into these places with hitherto ambiguous territorial borders needs to be examined in this light. Japanese political leadership was partly aware of such attitudes taken by imperial powers, though they found it unable to forgo even the valueless islets for fear of triggering a territorial scramble against Japan. The second half of the article uses two examples of border agents who crisscrossed in and out of the Japanese archipelago to argue that these individuals, with their own personal ambitions and motivations, impacted the process of territorial demarcation. Finally, the article offers some reflections on the challenges of engaging Japanese studies while utilising the framework of transnationalism. 110 Views
Academia Letters, 2021
The Boshin War that broke out in early 1868 brought down the Tokugawa shogunate that had ruled Ja... more The Boshin War that broke out in early 1868 brought down the Tokugawa shogunate that had ruled Japan over 260 years within a matter of several months. Scholars have uncovered extensive involvements of foreign merchants and diplomats who supplied arms on both sides of the war-the imperial force led by the Satsuma and Chōshū domain, as well as the pro-Tokugawa Northern Alliance (Ōu Reppan Dōmei). 1 One of the most vocal in the latter camp was the Aizu domain in northeastern Japan, which saw the imperial force's campaign as little more than the pursuit of self-interest by Satsuma and Chōchū. By September, however, Aizu found itself increasingly isolated and financially pressured. The imperial force had ordered major merchants in Kyoto and Osaka to contribute for their cause, to which the merchants largely obliged. In need of quick cash to keep fighting, Aizu turned to foreign merchants. This short piece introduces what I have been able to find out about one such figure, a man named J. M. Jaquemot. In the archival collection of papers of Harry Parkes, the British minister to Japan during the Boshin War, there is a document titled "Mine lease contract between Prince of Aidzu and J. M. Jaquemot. Wakamatsu." 2 First introduced to the academia by Hōya Tōru, the contract 2,509 Views
![Research paper thumbnail of Recording violence as crime in Karafuto, 1867–1875 [link to PDF]](data:image/webp;base64,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)
Recording violence as crime in Karafuto, 1867–1875 [link to PDF]
Japan Forum, 2018
In early Meiji, Karafuto (the Sakhalin Island) was transformed through the influx of settlers fro... more In early Meiji, Karafuto (the Sakhalin Island) was transformed through the influx of settlers from Russia and Japan, causing a series of conflicts and violence among the residents. The Japanese historical record has framed the stories into competition with Russia over the territorial control, emphasising the place of the island in the emergence of the Meiji state. This paper contends that such framing should be the object of historical investigation. The main case studies are two homicides of commoners, which would have been easily forgotten without the larger political imperative. The lengthy interrogations of witnesses, conducted by officers from two governments, signified the interpretation of local violence into criminal offence, giving grounds for the intervention by the Russian and the Japanese authorities. Meiji Diplomacy utilised the pursuit of redress for a crime against its subjects as a way of strengthening territorial claims in the periphery. Once the border demarcation was concluded at the highest level of diplomacy, however, the murder and other crime cases lost their significance. Based on Kaitakushi manuscripts held in the prefectural Archives of Hokkaido, this article traces the impact of the national history paradigm that has affected our writing of the history of Meiji Japan’s far north.
19 Views
Transcultural Studies, 2017
This paper attempts to illustrate the connectivities of the late-nineteenth-century treaty ports ... more This paper attempts to illustrate the connectivities of the late-nineteenth-century treaty ports in East Asia, experienced by a Japanese business called Tashiroya. In the 1860s it had a monopoly over foreign trade in porcelain in Nagasaki, under the protection of the Saga domain. After the emergence of treaty port network that enabled freer movement of goods and people, Tashiroya lost its privilege and found itself in a competition in Chinese ports, not so much against the Western merchants, but with its domestic peers. In an effort to deal with the new commercial environment around the East China Sea, Tashiroya’s family members and employees set up branch stores in the treaty ports and travelled around to carry goods and to seek business opportunities. They aimed at diversifying the merchandise and markets, which saw partial success. In doing so they also attempted to get around the taxation by the Chinese Maritime Customs, rather than calling for the revision of Japan’s unequal treaties. After a series of botched effort to maintain the price of porcelain products by forming a cartel with other Japanese exporters, Tashiroya ventured into an uncharted territory of exporting roof tiles to Korea, which it failed to implement. The paper overall provides a microhistory of the East Asian treaty ports, decoupled from the state-level analysis and the narratives driven by national history. 200 Views
Historical Journal, 2017
This article sheds new light on the opening of Japan in the late nineteenth century focusing on t... more This article sheds new light on the opening of Japan in the late nineteenth century focusing on the legalization of overseas travel and the introduction of passports. It argues that the Tokugawa shogunate introduced passports as a belated endorsement of the increasingly common practice of undercover border-crossing as it feared losing the political grip. Once the new regulation was in place, most travellers went to China or Korea as petty merchants or low-skill labourers, in part recruited by Western merchants and consuls. The foreign ministry, fearing that unrestricted emigration of labourers and mercenaries might harm the country's international reputation and political stability, limited the number of passports to distribute to the treaty ports. Japan's passport system thus focused more on regulating the overseas travel than promoting it, in contrast to the positive light in which the opening of Japan is commonly portrayed. The government largely succeeded in preventing the unwanted emigration, but never fully controlled the process because of the less vigilant port officials and the ambiguity on some of the borders' exact location. Overall, the investigation into the first two decades of the Japanese passport travellers leads to a more complex understanding of modern Japan's opening of borders. 373 Views
Historical Research, 2016
This article revisits the history of Russo-Japanese ‘dual possession’ of Sakhalin in the late nin... more This article revisits the history of Russo-Japanese ‘dual possession’ of Sakhalin in the late nineteenth century from a multilateral perspective. Using unpublished sources from Japanese and British archives, and benefiting from recent research on Russian materials, it argues that Russia’s attempt at the exclusive control of Sakhalin was aimed primarily at keeping out the Americans and the British, not the Japanese. It also reveals that Japanese and British officers in the region falsely believed that Russia was preparing the occupation of Hokkaido. The findings challenge the existing historiography, which has treated the island’s history solely in the context of Russo-Japanese relations. 259 Views
Talks by Takahiro Yamamoto
Japanese overseas travellers and the development of the passport system, 1866-1878
"This paper attempts to shed new light on the so-called opening of Japan in the late nineteenth-c... more "This paper attempts to shed new light on the so-called opening of Japan in the late nineteenth-century from the perspective of the cross-border movement of Japanese people with a focus on the passport travel introduced in 1866. The passport system was initially launched as part of the Tariff Convention, but it was a retrospective endorsement of the practice of overseas travel that had been conducted by the Tokugawa officials as well as the rival powers within the country. Based on the archival records located in Tokyo and Nagasaki, among other places, the paper demonstrates that the oft-told story of Japanese students who travelled to obtain the advanced knowledge of Western civilisation and came back to modernise the country does not convey the full picture of the outflow of people from Japan in the early years of passport travel. Neither Europe nor the United States appears to have been the most common destination. After the Meiji Restoration, following the incident of unauthorised migration to Hawaii in 1868, the issuing of passports principally aimed at regulating the movement of merchants and labourers. It became the essential tool with which the Meiji government resisted the demand from the outside world to employ the Japanese for manual labour in white settler colonies and plantations across the Pacific Rim. At the same time the Meiji officials fine-tuned the regulations and accommodated some of the needs of Japanese traders.
The findings of the paper provide grounds for complicating the conventional understanding of the opening of Japan as a rapid process propelled by the sense of urgency felt by the Meiji leaders. Seen from the perspective of border control, the opening of Japan materialised as a gradual shift, reflecting the cautious attitude of the Meiji officials. It is telling that the first officially sponsored emigration project from Japan came about almost twenty years after the legalisation of overseas travel. The fear that the outright liberalisation of overseas travel might result in an uncontrolled draining of indentured labour and thus tarnish the reputation of the country compelled the foreign ministry to use the issuing of passport as a means to limit the number of overseas travellers. The paper argues that their attempt was largely but not completely successful, since the officials at the treaty ports turned out to be less strict about the regulations than the foreign ministry wanted them to be.
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98 Views
Governing a Borderland: The Russians and the Japanese in Sakhalin, 1867-1873
The island of Sakhalin became a Russian possession with the signing of the Russo-Japanese treaty ... more The island of Sakhalin became a Russian possession with the signing of the Russo-Japanese treaty in 1875. Until then these two governments recognised the territorial claim of each other, thus allowing for 'mixed inhabitancy'. The residents were the Russians and the Japanese as well as the Ainus and the Giliyaks. Faraway from any major city and unsuited for agriculture, the island was ill-supplied with food and other daily necessities. Making Sakhalin part of a modern state was a formidable task that made little financial sense for any government. However the fear of losing it to another, potentially hostile power forced Russia and Japan to aim for its possession. Russia established a penal colony on the entire island in 1868 and worked on coal mines, while the Japanese mainly engaged in fishing on the coast and the rivers. Both employed and often abused the indigenous peoples in doing so. The two countries' competing claims and the lack of a clear modus vivendi led to violence of various sorts, from petty drunken fights to arson to murder. Officials of the two governments stationed in Sakhalin tried to bring justice to each case, but the challenge proved insurmountable. Unlike in treaty ports, no standard procedure for cases involving multiple nationalities existed in Sakhalin. The geographical distance from a proper court prolonged investigations and trials. Linguistic barriers added another layer of complication. The realisation of these difficulties, the paper argues, prepared the Russian and the Japanese government to settle on the border question which had lingered for two decades. This account thus provides an alternative look at this important chapter of the Russo-Japanese relations by focusing on the local incidents and the officials stationed there, as opposed to diplomatic (and often rhetorical) communications between the capitals. The paper concludes that the escalation of violence and the limited resources with which to address it pushed the two governments towards making a compromise that they had been reluctant to.
29 Views
Borders in Name: Trade, fishing and hunting in Sakhalin/Karafuto and the southern Kuril Islands, 1870-1875 (provisional)
(Provisional Abstract as of 25-05-2013)
This paper looks at human interactions around Sakhalin/K... more (Provisional Abstract as of 25-05-2013)
This paper looks at human interactions around Sakhalin/Karafuto and the southern part of the Kuril Island chain in the early 1870s. The Meiji Japan’s modernisation in this period, including the development of Hokkaido, is well studied. Yet the discussion on the northern borders has seen it almost exclusively from the angle of Russo-Japanese relations. This focus has produced in-depth analyses of diplomatic negotiations, but the local day-to-day proceedings included more diverse actors and often conflicted with official agreements. Moreover, the Russo-Japanese diplomatic history has focused on Sakhalin/Karafuto and treated the Kuril Islands as a side story. Meanwhile the history of early Russo-American relations, typically ending with the 1867 Russian sale of Alaska to the Americans, has paid little attention to the developments after the Russian rights on the Kuril Islands were concurrently transferred to an American trading house. Despite this paucity of attention from historians, however, the Kuril Islands were hardly an empty place. Maritime resource here attracted hunters from across the globe. Multi-national crews from the United States, western Europe, Russia and Scandinavia headed their ships to this area in search for whale, sea otters, seal and so forth. Japanese workers also joined them and sailed around, often crossing the Japanese border without proper documents. The hunting activity was so prevalent that the senior officials at the Hokkaido Development Office (Kaitakushi) feared that it might give ground for the Western powers to claim the islands. This study thus aims to add a maritime and multilateral perspective to the historiography of Japan’s northern border. The history of Meiji Japan will then be further intertwined with a larger picture of international relations in the late nineteenth-century East Asia.
39 Views
Historiographical essay: the Emergence of Japan as a modern state
55 Views
No pain in losing, no gain in owning: the status of the Ogasawara/Bonin Islands, 1873-1875
This paper discusses Meiji Japan’s diplomatic negotiations with the United States and Britain in ... more This paper discusses Meiji Japan’s diplomatic negotiations with the United States and Britain in the 1870s over the status of the Ogasawara (Bonin) Islands in the western Pacific and their eventual incorporation into the Japanese territory. It is a part of a wider study which comprises my PhD thesis on the emergence of modern Japan in the 1860s and the 1870s. Scarcely populated until the 1830s and remote from any major political authority, the islands were left alone as the hinterland for runaway sailors and their companions. Few scholars have tried to integrate the history of the island to any wider context, whether it is Japanese history or maritime history of the Pacific. Existent literature dealing with Ogasawara predominantly focuses on the diplomatic negotiations in the late-nineteenth century from the legal perspective. It has paid little attention to the respective governments’ strategic motivations for claiming these remote islets. Above all, it needs to be more closely investigated why the United States and Britain, whose citizens had collectively comprised the majority of the islands’ inhabitants, gave up their territorial claims rather easily after the Japanese official notification of incorporation in 1876. An archival research on the diplomatic records of these governments, along with the letters kept by the residents and a Japanese official in Ogasawara, reveals that, first, the islands’ value for the United States and Britain had diminished as a result of the decline of the whaling industry and the opening of trans-Pacific passage route that bypassed the islands. Secondly, the United States and Britain were more interested in maintaining free access to ports rather than the control over the lands of Ogasawara. Only Japan, whose domestic politics did not allow backing off from territorial negotiations regardless of the importance of the disputed land itself, had the determination to establish its rule. These findings add to the base for analysis on the history of the Pacific islands and the emergence of the modern international order in the nineteenth-century Pacific and other maritime worlds. One might also see the parallel or lack thereof in the current diplomatic squabbles over other sets of small islands in the west of the Japanese archipelago which the Japanese government claims as its “inherent territory (koyu no ryodo)”. Furthermore the present research serves to add a non-European perspective to the debate over the development of state sovereignty in the nineteenth century, which has been dominated by the studies of the European states and Western empires.
24 Views
“Japan's border formation in the mid-nineteenth century: the case of the Tsushima Island.”
24 Views
The 1861 Tsushima Incident: The Border Formation Around Japan and the Race Among the Western Powers
75 Views
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Papers by Takahiro Yamamoto
Talks by Takahiro Yamamoto
The findings of the paper provide grounds for complicating the conventional understanding of the opening of Japan as a rapid process propelled by the sense of urgency felt by the Meiji leaders. Seen from the perspective of border control, the opening of Japan materialised as a gradual shift, reflecting the cautious attitude of the Meiji officials. It is telling that the first officially sponsored emigration project from Japan came about almost twenty years after the legalisation of overseas travel. The fear that the outright liberalisation of overseas travel might result in an uncontrolled draining of indentured labour and thus tarnish the reputation of the country compelled the foreign ministry to use the issuing of passport as a means to limit the number of overseas travellers. The paper argues that their attempt was largely but not completely successful, since the officials at the treaty ports turned out to be less strict about the regulations than the foreign ministry wanted them to be.
"
This paper looks at human interactions around Sakhalin/Karafuto and the southern part of the Kuril Island chain in the early 1870s. The Meiji Japan’s modernisation in this period, including the development of Hokkaido, is well studied. Yet the discussion on the northern borders has seen it almost exclusively from the angle of Russo-Japanese relations. This focus has produced in-depth analyses of diplomatic negotiations, but the local day-to-day proceedings included more diverse actors and often conflicted with official agreements. Moreover, the Russo-Japanese diplomatic history has focused on Sakhalin/Karafuto and treated the Kuril Islands as a side story. Meanwhile the history of early Russo-American relations, typically ending with the 1867 Russian sale of Alaska to the Americans, has paid little attention to the developments after the Russian rights on the Kuril Islands were concurrently transferred to an American trading house. Despite this paucity of attention from historians, however, the Kuril Islands were hardly an empty place. Maritime resource here attracted hunters from across the globe. Multi-national crews from the United States, western Europe, Russia and Scandinavia headed their ships to this area in search for whale, sea otters, seal and so forth. Japanese workers also joined them and sailed around, often crossing the Japanese border without proper documents. The hunting activity was so prevalent that the senior officials at the Hokkaido Development Office (Kaitakushi) feared that it might give ground for the Western powers to claim the islands. This study thus aims to add a maritime and multilateral perspective to the historiography of Japan’s northern border. The history of Meiji Japan will then be further intertwined with a larger picture of international relations in the late nineteenth-century East Asia.