Paper short abstract:

The Iwakura Embassy’s efforts to broach the issue of treaty revision have generally received quite negative appraisals. Yet this paper shows that in one crucial aspect - access to the interior - the experience gained during their global odyssey had an immediate impact on their return to Japan.

Paper long abstract:

While the Iwakura Embassy’s attempts to broach the question of treaty revision have generally received quite negative appraisals, this paper shows that in one crucial aspect - access to the interior - the experience gained during their global odyssey had an immediate impact on their return to Japan. The party arrived back in 1873 to find the foreign community lobbying for more access to the hinterland beyond the Treaty Limits, including the right to trade. Incremental developments during the mission's absence even gave the impression that this was just a matter of time. The caretaker government had allowed foreign visitors to the Kyoto Exhibition in 1872, a passenger coach service was now running from Yokohama to Odawara, and some Italian silk merchants had received permission to venture inland, a precedent seized upon by foreign diplomats to demand commercial access for all. They also pointed to the more than 600 foreign oyatoi employees now working there in the service of the Japanese authorities as evidence that it was unsustainable and unfair to deny similar access to residents of the treaty ports as well.

In response to such encroachment it was the round of negotiations led by Terashima Munenori on the Iwakura Embassy's return that finally ruled out the prospect of unfettered access to the interior, and for trade in particular, for as long extraterritorial jurisdiction remained in place. The rationale for this stance drew on a range of recently acquired knowledge drawing comparisons with Turkey, Egypt and China, and citing reports by Sir Rutherford Alcock, the former British Minister to China, on his recent attempts to revise the Treaty of Tianjin. The outcome was a controlled system of passports granting access for the purpose only of health or science, but not trade, an arrangement that held until extraterritoriality was finally abolished in 1899. It served as a salutary warning to both foreign merchants and diplomats that treaty revision in Japan's case was not simply a matter of obtaining further concessions for future commercial expansion, but would ultimately involve a trade-off restoring sovereign rights as well.

Paper short abstract:

In December 1790, a group of Dutch interpreters was sentenced to house confinement in Nagasaki as the result of the mistranslation of an official decree regarding the reduction of camphor export to the Dutch traders. The paper intends to discuss the suspected political agenda behind the incident.

Paper long abstract:

In December 1790, a small group of Dutch interpreters was sentenced to house confinement in Nagasaki as the result of the mistranslation of an official decree regarding the reduction of camphor export to the Dutch traders. The following year in March, three of the most prominent amongst this group, namely Yoshio Kōgyū, Narabayashi Jūbei, and Nishi Kichibei were placed under house arrest for five years per direct order of Rōjū Matsudaira Sadanobu. This incident is generally referred to as the “Translation incident” or Goyakujiken (誤訳事件). In this paper, we will have a look at the socio-economic background of late 18th century Japan, the suspected political agenda behind the incident, and how it may have indicated a temporary crackdown from the Edo Bakufu on Nagasaki as a center of intelligence gathering, as well as toning down on some of the liberties Nagasaki interpreters had enjoyed under previous Rōjū Tanuma Okitsugu.

Paper short abstract:

Foreign diplomats and the Daimyō were unable to officially interact in the treaty ports due to the Tokugawa’s monopoly on diplomacy. To break free, British diplomats began eroding this monopoly after 1865, turning Royal Navy ships into mobile legations that could negotiate with the Daimyō directly.

Paper long abstract:

The nature of mid-nineteenth century Japanese politics means that it is more accurate to describe Anglo-Japanese diplomacy as a relationship between Britain and one major power, the Tokugawa Shogunate, alongside many numerous minor ones, the Daimyō, rather than a strict binary relationship. This split presented both Britain and Japan more widely with a diplomatic challenge. The Shogunate understandably monopolised all diplomatic relations with the outside world to further legitimise itself as the sole polity of Japan. It profusely shut out the Daimyō from having any power or presence in the recently opened treaty ports spread along Japan’s coast. By 1865 there existed an ever-growing desire among British diplomats to make contact with the Daimyō and escape the geographical restrictions placed upon them.

My paper will show how British diplomats broke free of their diplomatic entrapment by transforming Royal Navy ships into mobile legations. British diplomats successfully took back their diplomatic agency by uprooting their own diplomatic space and adapting it to meet the needs of their present locale. By engaging with the Daimyō more formally as diplomatic equals through their mobile legations, Britain was able to initiate more positive subliminal diplomacy that could then flatter and impress. The ship became a more versatile diplomatic space where diplomats could effectively sell British power and prestige to the geographically spread and previously diplomatically excluded Daimyō.

The ramifications of this argument are twofold. We will have a better understanding of how Britain successfully expanded and rapidly evolved its diplomatic foothold across Japan during the 1860s, and more generally also see how diplomatic spaces are not always static, fixed positions, but rather places that can be shaped and challenged by diplomatic actors themselves.