Paper short abstract:

Tsutsui Masanori (1778-1859) was a shogunal retainer who held extensive experience in foreign relations. By drawing on Japan's long-term friendship with Korea, his role in formulating the Tokugawa Shogunate's new relationship with the United States helped shape a new era of diplomacy.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will highlight the life and work of Tsutsui Masanori, a shogunal retainer, who lived from 1778 to 1859 and held more extensive experience than any other Japanese official of his generation in the field of external relations. His name is known in Japan's diplomatic history as one of the Shogun's plenipotentiaries for the Russian envoy Yevfimy Vasilyevich Putyatin in 1854-55. For him, however, it was more important to have served as Governor of Nagasaki between 1817 and 1821, and to have been involved in the practical arrangements for receiving Korean envoys at different stages during his long career. In this context it should be noted that although no Korean envoy was sent to Japan after 1811, preparations and discussions for a new envoy continued until the 1860s.

Based on these experiences, Tsutsui played a key role in the Tokugawa Shogunate's decision to receive the first US Consul-General Townsend Harris in Edo in 1857, and grant him an official audience with the Shogun. He made a breakthrough during a heated debate by proposing to use Japan's continuing friendship with Korea as a theoretical and practical platform for the Shogunate's strategy in opening and building new relations with other foreign powers. Indeed, the ceremony in which Harris presented his credentials to the Shogun Tokugawa Iesada in Edo Castle was conducted in a nearly identical format to those previously used to receive Korean envoys.

Significantly, Harris himself perceived this ceremonial occasion as the moment when the Japanese "acknowledge[d] the Laws of Nations" (Harris to Cass, 10 Dec. 1857). It was also the departure point in the Tokugawa Shogunate's own efforts to develop a diplomatic protocol for Japan's growing relations with the treaty powers, a process that Western diplomats in Japan recognized and contributed to themselves. This paper will assess the importance of the steps taken by the Tokugawa Shogunate in 1857 that allowed Japan to be accommodated within the international order so early in its diplomatic contacts with Western powers, and the role played by the experienced Tsutsui in enabling this to happen.