Paper short abstract:

Sameshima Naonobu, Japan's first resident minister in Europe, played a key role in the Meiji government initiative to open legations abroad. Despite outward appearances of following Western forms, the strategy was to gain diplomatic leverage and enhance Japan's standing in the international order.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will focus on the experience of Sameshima Naonobu, Japan's first resident minister in Europe, to explore a pivotal moment in Meiji diplomacy, the opening of legations abroad. Japanese envoys had already started venturing overseas in the last years of Tokugawa rule, to ratify treaties or negotiate questions on open ports and borders. American and French officials were even appointed as consuls to represent Tokugawa interests in San Francisco and Paris. Yet not until 1871 did permanent missions appear, as legations were established in foreign capitals, housing Japanese resident ministers and their staff.

It marked the onset of a proactive strategy of engagement that, already by the end of the decade, led to Japanese legations opening across Europe from St Petersburg to Madrid. This was a striking departure given Japan's reputation for keeping the West at arm's length. Furthermore, the concept of resident ambassador - first developed in Renaissance Europe - was still culturally unfamiliar beyond the Western world. Japan's new network of legations was the most dynamic example among several comparable initiatives taken by non-Christian states such as the Ottoman Empire, Persia, and subsequently China and Siam. Collectively, these contributed to reshaping the field of diplomacy itself at a formative stage in the evolution of the international order.

By charting the transition from sending visiting envoys to establishing permanent missions, this paper highlights the cultural barriers faced by non-Christian representatives in gaining acceptance within the diplomatic corps in Europe. In 1871, for example, Sameshima arrived in London only to have his credentials refused by the Foreign Office, so Japan's first legation in Europe was opened in Paris instead. Intrigued by the unwritten assumptions he found encoded in the culture of the diplomatic corps, he embarked on a detailed analysis of this particular social universe. His research was not just an exercise in cultural borrowing, however; beyond any outward appearance of subscribing to Western modes of diplomacy, Sameshima's underlying agenda was to enhance Japan's prestige abroad, and subvert the asymmetric pattern of diplomatic relations hitherto dominated by representatives of the treaty powers in Japan.