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Conceptualizing Kyushu in the Nineteenth Century: Defense, Trade and Political Agency across a Maritime Region
Organizer: Noell Howell Wilson, University of Mississippi
Chair and Discussant: Mark Ravina, Emory University
In studies of nineteenth century Japan, the island of Kyushu has often been depicted as a repository of conservative tradition, origin of both individuals and groups reluctant to embrace political and economic change. This panel suggests that reconceptualizing Kyushu as a maritime region, instead of identifying it solely as a land mass, contests this image, revealing instead its centrality in propelling Japanese political development across the nineteenth century.
To explore the evolution of Kyushu as a maritime region from Tokugawa isolation to Meiji imperialism, the panel examines the interaction of the local ports of Nagasaki, Tsushima and Moji with the outer world through trade relations and military defense between 1805 and 1895. The temporal structure of the panel spans the dynamic nineteenth century -- early (Wilson), middle (Hellyer) and late (Phipps). Wilson explores the Phaeton incident of 1808 to demonstrate how organizational ambiguities in the military relationship between domains and the Nagasaki Magistrate revealed critical obstacles to defining Tokugawa water rights. Hellyer's paper examines how the island domain of Tsushima's expanded defensive role between 1840 and 1860 reveals regional agency in defining "national" boundaries. Phipps considers how the defensive concerns of the Meiji government during the Sino-Japanese War limited Moji's commercial prospects in an era of increasing maritime prosperity.
With this framing, we suggest that the emergence of Kyushu as a politically influential maritime region in the modern period can best be understood through historical analysis of trade and defense that considers longterm continuities and shifts, and not just ruptures of the Meiji Restoration, as central subjects of examination.
Nagasaki Defense Redux: Organizational Failure in the Phaeton Incident of 1808
Noell Howell Wilson, University of Mississippi
In 1808 a British frigate, the Phaeton, sailed into Nagasaki harbor disguised as a Dutch trading vessel. This duplicitous incursion into Tokugawa waters, and the delayed response of Fukuoka and Saga domain troops, sparked a defensive crisis resulting in the suicide of the Nagasaki Magistrate, resident deputy of the Tokugawa in the port city. Traditionally, treatment of this incident has been confined to a pair of sentences in survey texts because its apparent lessons of Tokugawa technological inadequacy are assumed to be so blatantly obvious. In fact, however, no shots were fired during the two days the ship was in port; local troops could not respond because so few soldiers were stationed at the coastal fortifications. Previous studies of Tokugawa military weakness have focused on the absence of firearms development in this period, but analysis of this incident suggests that ambiguous military organization, and lack of a unified command able to supervise mobilization in an emergency, were an equally critical impediment to effective defense of Tokugawa maritime boundaries.
This study employs a comparative analysis of contemporary documents of the Nagasaki Magistrate, Fukuoka and Saga domains (which were responsible for harbor defense) to interpret the core defense crisis at the beginning of the nineteenth century as less the product of technological inadequacy than of organizational ambiguity. This new critical perspective allows us to consider the influence of Kyushu coastal defense on political reconfiguration in the early nineteenth century and to revise conventional Western critiques of Tokugawa military failure based on technological backwardness.
From Intelligence Conduit to Border Bulwark: Tsushima’s Changing Defensive Role in the Nineteenth Century
Robert Hellyer, Wake Forest University
Two factors distinguished the island domain of Tsushima: its location closer to Korea than mainland Japan, and its role as the lone Japanese domain involved in diplomatic and commercial relations with Korea. In the mid eighteenth century, Tsushima asserted that it contributed to the overall defense of Japan by gleaning intelligence about the outside world through its trade with Korea. The bakufu recognized this as Tsushima’s special defensive contribution and granted the domain monetary privileges as well as exemptions from other defensive duties.
From the mid 1840s to the early 1860s numerous Western vessels visited the island, forcing the domain to bolster coastal defenses. As a result, Tsushima asked for additional monetary aid and greater Tokugawa involvement in the defense of the domain. In support of this push, Tsushima redefined its defensive role. Instead of emphasizing its intelligence gathering activities, the domain began to stress that it functioned as a border bulwark that required increased fortification as part of the larger defense of Japan. Until the Meiji Restoration, domain leaders touted this new role as they appealed for more aid and greater bakufu involvement in defending the domain from Western military incursions.
Tsushima’s actions illustrate first how conceptions of defense changed, along with trade-related agendas, as Japan’s foreign relations shifted away from a system centered on relations with East Asia. Second, it shows how an area on Japan’s maritime margin asserted agency, pushing the center to define “national” borders.
Kyushu in the Age of Maritime Empire: Military Defense and Commercial Offense in the Port City of Moji
Catherine Phipps, University of Memphis
During the Sino-Japanese War of 1894-95, Kyushu’s northern port city of Moji petitioned the central government for special trading privileges based on its growing commercial prosperity as a coaling station and its promising future as a hub of the newly created “Toyo trade” of East Asia. Situated at both the strategic intersection of the Korean and Shimonoseki Straits and at the northern head of the Kyushu Railroad, Moji occupied a vital position in maritime and land-based transportation networks. Despite Moji’s favorable location and the enthusiasm of its businessmen and politicians, however, the petition was rejected due to the military’s concerns for national defense. The same geographical advantage that favored Moji in commerce also rendered it militarily vulnerable, making it at once a convenient port of call and a natural garrison at the entrance to Japan’s territorial waters.
By focusing on Moji’s domestic and international postures, this paper examines the reciprocal processes of place-making and imperialism in the late nineteenth century. Local efforts to increase trade initially clashed with national concerns for Japan’s sovereignty, but ultimately nurtured Japan’s imperial expansion. In detailing the interplay between Moji’s commercial and military roles as well as the central government’s attempts to balance demands for greater port access with national efforts at treaty revision, this study shows how imperial initiatives on the Asian continent influenced the commercial and military development of Moji and works to formulate a new approach to the geography of imperialism.