Western Economic Expansion
Thursday, September 4, 1856. Slept very little from excitement and mosquitoes,—the latter enormous in size. At seven A.M. men came on shore to put up my flagstaff. Heavy job. Slow work. Spar falls; break cross- trees; fortunately no one hurt. At last get reinforce- ment from the ship. Flagstaff erected; men form ring around it, and, at two and a half P.M. of this day I hoist the “First Consular Flag” ever seen in this Empire. Grim reflections—ominous of change—undoubtedly beginning of the end. Query,—if for the real good of Japan?
Townsend Harris, First US Consul to Japan1
When considered overall, I believe that although Harris now has access to the highest levels he is not one to be deeply feared. He is given to making numerous empty statements, although lamentably there is no- one within government who has the wit to understand this yet. Even so, if Harris’ utterances are put into practice one by one, it will fare badly for our sacred country; if they count for nought, then all will be well.
Yoshida Sho-in (7 April 1859)2
The predominant image of Japan during the “Isolation” period is that it was locked up and entirely secured from intercourse with Western culture. This is for the most part, and for the greater proportion of the populace, undoubtedly true. Yet by the end of the 1700s, there was a more dense concentration of medical specialists and scholars in Edo
as well as in the broader Kansai region around Kyôto (the Imperial capital), who were procuring and disseminating a greater awareness of Western technology. On one level, it merely fuelled a vague curiosity for things arcane and there were many random iconic elements of Western culture that were adapted into the popular media. At the same time, the tangible applications of Western inventions undoubtedly contrib- uted to the expansion of technical knowledge and, more significantly, a growing unease about Japan’s capacity to maintain its defenses in the near future.3
At the turn of the century, the quality of this knowledge was of course uneven and at times inaccurate, and so the true dimensions of Western society and its military threat were not always fully appreciated by the greater part of even the literate population. There were also social diversions and political compensations enough to make a fundamental reconsideration of the world outlook unthinkable for the majority. The Edo intellectual mindset was oriented toward a confidence in an immutable and serene permanence, reinforced occasionally through the ritual inculcation of a non- negotiable orthodox oeuvre of learning, the Chinese classical texts and the Neo- Confucian teachings of Chu Hsi (Shushigaku). The Shushigaku orthodoxy enjoined all to maintain the positive virtues of benevolence, self- sacrifice and devotion in inter- personal dealings.4 Ultimately, in practical terms, this meant simply
a requirement for each person to follow the admonitions of those of a higher station. In this sense, the objective of the ideological apparatus of the Edo state was little different from that of the Absolutist monar- chies of Europe; a key distinction, however, was that in Edo Japan, this ideology was underpinned by an extremely sophisticated system of political control (in certain regards it was a proto-“police state”) and it was perpetuating itself despite the intensifying dislocations in society that were being generated by an increasingly sophisticated system of commerce and popular communication.5 This is perhaps one of the
pivotal differences in the experience of modernization between Japan and the emerging nation states of Western Europe; whereas in Britain (for example) the burgeoning commercial classes gradually undermined and transformed the system of aristocratic control from both within and without, the commercial classes in Japan flourished as a relatively separate entity whose influence was almost never permitted to be con- verted into political power. In other regards, however, the flourishing of a national exchange economy and a dynamic urban popular culture— and it was in fact exceptional in the degree to which culture was being mass produced and mass consumed at this time—was on a par with the
development of popular culture in the great urban conglomerations of Europe.
Late Edo Japan was therefore subject to a profound social contradic- tion; it had the potential for rapid adaptive change culturally and, to some extent, economically, yet it remained firmly in the grip of a po- litical system that prioritized political stasis. The series of fiscal crises and famines that afflicted the country from the mid-1700s onwards did not dent the resolve of the ruling class to preserve the political system; indeed, it seemed to foster a determination to more thoroughly recon- stitute the Bakufu on its repressive founding principles. This aim was practically unattainable given the social developments that had already taken place over the previous two centuries and was therefore increas- ingly futile, yet it was a mirage that seemed no less achievable for its being apparently within reach. It would take an extraordinary degree of force to shake Japan out of this condition of political ossification.