East Meets East: The Soejima Mission to China, 1873 by Wayne C. McWilliams

Soejima Taneomi, 1872

Wayne C. McWilliams’ article East Meets East - The Soejima Mission to China, 1873 takes a close look at the personality of Japanese Foreign Minister Soejima Taneomi (1828-1905) during the high point of his career, which was the 1873 trip to China where he managed to secure an audience with the emperor, an almost-impossible accomplishment at the time. The author also makes the strong argument that the real significant outcome of Soejima’s trip planted the seeds of Japanese expansionism. Under the disguise of necessitating a diplomatic interchange with the Chinese government on matters regarding Formosa (as Taiwan was known back then) and Korea, the new Ambassador Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary ordained by the fledgling Meiji government sought to

…lay the diplomatic groundwork for an ambitious program of Japanese expansion in Asia. This program included the assertion of the Japanese claim to the Ryukyu Islands, the conquest of Korea, and the sending of a military expedition to Formosa with the design of annexing a part, if not the whole, of that island.

The official reason behind the mission to China as given by the Japanese government ostensibly included an incident in which a group of shipwrecked Ryukyu islanders were massacred by the aboriginal tribesmen of southern Formosa. In addition, the tensional relations with Korea who wouldn’t recognize the legitimacy of the newly-installed Meiji Emperor at the helm of the country’s leadership was taken as an affront by the Japanese statesmen, many of whom called for punitive armed conflict. 

As I showed in a previous post, the Koreans had enjoyed positive relations with the Tokugawa regime. Significant cultural and trading exchanges between Japan and Korea took place from the early 1600s until 1811 (in this interval, Korea sent twelve diplomatic missions to Japan but there were no missions in the reverse direction). When the bakufu government fell in the aftermath of the Meiji revolution, the Korean government refused to officially admit the legitimacy of the new Emperor as the head of state not only because they had lost their Tokugawa allies but also because, at the time, it was regarded that only the Chinese Emperor had the unique distinction of even being allowed to use the title of ‘Emperor’. This was a prevalent view coming from China across most Asian nations who, along with Korea, were paying tributaries to China in exchange for military defense, political recognition and a certain degree of autonomy. McWilliams argues that Soejima “made it his purpose to render preposterous China’s long-held posture of world supremacy and to undermine or eliminate the vestiges of Chinese condescension toward his own country.” It is noteworthy to mention here that the Tokugawa regime also rejected the Chinese-centered order and refused to pay tribute to China, a point that was specially emphasized during the Korean missions to Edo. Andrew Gordon reminds us that during their ambassadorial visits,

The Koreans were treated with a certain respect. They were not expected to prostrate themselves or to convey symbolic servitude, as they were in visits to the Chinese court. They interacted more or less as equals…

Despite their close historical bond, by the time the Meiji Restoration took off, relations between Japan and Korea soured. Meiji statesmen, encouraged by their advances in science and military which came with the opening of Japan to the West, became more hawkish and confident that the superiority of their forces would prevail in an open conflict against Korea — a conflict which was seen as inevitable due to Korea’s continued refusal to establish treaty relations and the affront brought against the Meiji Emperor. They sought to prove this by engaging in a course of action that strived to clarify Japan’s national boundaries and to counterbalance the regional influence of Western countries which imposed on Japan strict, disadvantageous treaties. This course of action was brought to a favorable conclusion by Soejima. His reception by the Chinese Emperor before all other world delegates in 1873, the falsely implied, unwritten consent by the Chinese that Japan can invade and occupy Formosa, the skillful political manipulation which saw the removal of Chinese involvement from Korean foreign policy — these were but a few successes that propelled Soejima to a position of historical eminence. In the author’s own words, Soejima’s political adroitness

…set the tone for future Japanese relations with China, and like the Iwakura mission that visited the major capitals in the West, his embassy effectively proclaimed to the rest of the world, both East and West, that Japan was ready and able to take its place as a proud and independent member of the community of nations. In joining — indeed, in leading — the representatives of the Western powers in the successful quest for an audience with the Chinese Emperor, Soejima was in effect declaring Japan’s new identity; no longer was Japan to be identified together with China as a tradition-bound, exclusive and isolationist Asian country beyond the pale of modern international intercourse. Instead, Japan would line up with the nations of the modern West and challenge its reluctant Asian neighbors to abandon the closed world of the past for brave new world.

Some significant points I learned from reading McWilliams’ article:

• Taking his cue from Commodore Perry’s arrival to Japan almost two decades earlier, Soejima’s diplomacy was correctly viewed as gunboat diplomacy as his envoy was deliberately escorted by Japan’s modern naval boats completely manned by Japanese military attaches and sailors. This colossal technology contrasted with the undeveloped Chinese navy and conveyed a striking, threatening message; 
• Thirty years before the Russo-Japanese War, Soejima was building good relations with Russian representatives, such as Grand Duke Alexis. He apparently liked to socialize and entertain the Russians more than the rest of the Western diplomats present in Peking. By cultivating his friendship with General Vlangaly, he confirmed Russian neutrality in the event of a Japanese invasion of Korea and he was able to settle the boundaries of the Sakhalin Island (also known as Karafuto). These ties of friendship were completely dispelled when Japan, at the height of its assertiveness, started the Russo-Japanese War under the motive of liberating Korea from Western colonialism;
• The Chinese held in contempt the adoption of Western customs by the Japanese. Soejima’s assertive proclamations that Japan had gained military supremacy and secured the consultation of Western generals like Charles William LeGendre were not regarded favorably by the Peking government who emphasized China’s stolid traditionalism as a superior vehicle for dealing with foreign powers;
• The Chinese persisted in their view that the Emperor is the Son of Heaven without peer on earth, despite the fact that they were forced to enter into treaty relations with the West. The Chinese rejection of global politics was encompassed by the sovereign’s refusal to meet and conduct political negotiations with delegates from other nations, even while these occupied and controlled large portions of China. Soejima took the Chinese at task for showing servitude to Western powers;  
• Soejima, an astute master of Confucianist texts, was able to quote at length from the classics and to offer interpretations that favored his position. For example, he drew from T’ang dynasty history “to illustrate his point that China, by its stubborn persistence in the Middle Kingdom myth and its arrogant and condescending attitude to foreign countries, was not following the way of the ancient sages”;
• Soejima refused to follow Chinese protocol in regard to the audience ceremony. This was probably  the biggest stumbling block that prevented him from securing an earlier audience. He, just like the Western delegates, “was not willing to accept the humiliating form of etiquette that was demanded by the Chinese” nor did he have “any intention of performing the kowtow, the traditional form of ritual obeisance consisting of three bows followed by nine kneelings before the Chinese Emperor.” When he was finally received by the emperor on 29 June 1873 Soejima, dressed in Western attire and carrying a sword (to the chagrin of the Chinese statesmen) performed three bows sans the kowtows;
• In the most controversial move of his visit — details which are highly debated to this day — Soejima acquired China’s assurance that it won’t intervene in the eventuality of a Japanese invasion of Korea, regardless of the latter’s status as a tributary. This agreement, which suspiciously does not appear in any written Chinese record, also included the provision that China won’t continue any claims of sovereignty over the Ryukyus and Formosa and that China would consent to a Japanese expeditionary force to suppress the unruly Formosa aborigines. 

       McWilliams takes a firm position on Soejima’s accomplishments over this last point. He addresses the ambassador’s success in the following way:

The failure of the Chinese government to make its position clear to the Japanese and to allow them to leave China without further questioning on these matters has generally been attributed to its ineptitude and lack of experience in diplomacy. But it may just as reasonably be argued that they were victimized by Soejima’s shrewd and deceptive diplomatic tactics. Soejima purposely obscured these important issues by placing pressure on the Chinese about the audience issue. The Korean and Formosan questions were dealt with in a covert manner so as to disguise their gravity.

Whatever the case may be, Soejima’s plan to see the Japanese Empire expand into Korea didn’t take fruition due to the seikanron dispute from October 1873, when members of the Meiji government voted against this course of action. The expedition into Formosa took place on April 1874 and this can be easily considered a victory for Soejima. The kokken gaikō policy, meaning the “defending, asserting and expanding the national sovereignty of Japan” took root and flourished under his leadership. His greatest accomplishment however was securing his position as the first representative of a foreign power to be received by the Chinese Emperor in almost eighty years, an event which had momentous implications for the future Empire of Japan and for Asia in general.

Works cited: 

Gordon, Andrew. A modern history of Japan: from Tokugawa times to the present. New York: Oxford University Press, 2003.

McWilliams, Wayne C. "East Meets East. The Soejima Mission to China, 1873." Monumenta Nipponica (1975): 237-275.

Pictures were taken from McWilliams' article.

Remembering Pearl Harbor, Forgetting Chaplin, and the Case of the Disappearing Western Woman: A Picture Story by Miriam Silverberg

     The only reason why I move so slow through Miriam Silverberg’s Erotic Grotesque Nonsense - The Mass Culture of Japanese Modern Times is the book’s singular flaw (solely in terms of affecting my reading speed, that is) which is also its greatest asset: the endnotes. Virtually every paragraph will turn you to the back of the book. And things are not any different with her articles or essays: in Remembering Pearl Harbor, Forgetting Chaplin, and the Case of the Disappearing Western Woman: A Picture Story more than 10 pages out of a 53-page commentary are endnotes. 53 is also the exact number of endnotes in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. In hindsight, it doesn’t seem that big of a number. And content-wise, the book will indeed press you — no, actually engage you — to turn to the back for an exciting read of extracts, references and added insight concerning the plethora of ideas that Silverberg blends into her argument with sheer refinement and analytical prowess. Like the true intellectual that she was (she passed away in 2008) and still is through the enduring exceptionality of the work she left behind, Silverberg prods the reader to extend his or her knowledge beyond the confines of the main narrative. The endnotes encouraged or rather strengthened my already-obsessional impulse to investigate a surplus of primary and secondary material covering Silverberg’s main topic — and that was a good thing.

     This post is not about her book, but about the essay I introduced above. Remembering Pearl Harbor… is part of a series of debates on a subject that preoccupied much of Silverberg’s illustrious career: Japan and the modern or the “modan," which was the term used during the Taishō and early Showa period. This is a polymorphous concept of considerable historical and sociological weight and it is more carefully scrutinized in her masterpiece Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. In this book, Silverberg returns with added emphasis to demonstrate how the constantly-shifting modan permeated every aspect of all subjects of Imperial Japan. As such, the article that I’m about to examine functions as a good introduction to her oeuvre and I recommend everyone to read it before heading into her lengthier works. In the following paragraphs I want to summarize the main theoretical constructs employed by Silverberg in her investigation of modernity, consumer habits and, above all, the contradictory notion of identity at a time when Japan found itself at the height of its colonizing power.

  To start with, here, just like in her book, Silverberg uses a specific definition of the main concepts of modernity and identity. She uses the term "modan" in order to underscore the specificity of the associated Japanese history, and to distinguish this term from the wide-ranging philosophical, literary, and historical English-language literature on the variants “modern,” “modernist,” and “modernization…” She then alludes to a number of historical and literary anecdotes to reinforce her argument that modernity and identity are interrelated and in constant flux, despite or in spite of the presence of a coercive nation-state apparatus that sought to homogenize and change the mores of the population, both at home and in the new colonies. 

  The first anecdote involves the 1937 meeting between Yamaguchi Yoshiko (later known as the Hollywood starlet “Shirley Yamaguchi”  who married sculptor Isamu Noguchi, served for 18 years as a Diet member for LDP and, at the present time, she is still a popular TV personality in Japan) and Kawashima Yoshiko, “the Mata Hari of the Orient,” cousin of the puppet emperor Pu Yi and famous spy, eventually captured and executed by the Kuomintang. When these two meet, in a funny exchange that reveals the complex interplay between two shifting identities, Kawashima, who is the eldest and dressed like a boy, is surprised to find out that Yamaguchi, who is dressed in Chinese garb to fit with her idol persona of Ri Ko-ran, is actually Japanese:

“Oh, so you were really Japanese!” The Manchurian woman, doubly cross-dressing as a Japanese male, then turned to the younger Japanese woman, who was dressed as a Chinese female. Addressing herself in masculine, familiar terms as “Boku,” this woman, then over thirty, flirtatiously asked Yoshiko to “call me big brother!”

Yamaguchi Yoshiko and Kawashima Yoshiko

  In this fateful encounter, Silverberg discovers a new dimension, one reminiscent of a Platonic event. Gender identity, supposedly of a fixed nature in a traditionalist setting, is put into question or, in Silverberg’s words, is “up for grabs.” As a spy in the service of an empire which simultaneously boasts misguided pan-asiatic ambitions on the international stage and reactionary policies at home, Kawashima Yoshiko is assumed to follow conservative values among which a clear division between male and female genders is absolutely indisputable, if not inviolable. Instead, she clearly identities herself as a male, not only by dressing as a boy but also by using specific language signifiers that only boys use. Although she does not engage in the sort of conservative discourse mentioned above, Kawashima is still a national hero. The notion of identity is complicated even further by Yamaguchi Yoshiko’s nationality as a Japanese national who, “like the state of Manshu” (two years earlier), “was made by the hands of the Japanese.” Yamaguchi becomes the Chinese idol Ri Ko-ran (or Li Hsiang-lan) and is accepted as such to the degree that her actual Japanese nationality is cast into oblivion (as shown earlier by Kawashima’s confusion). This circumstance enforces Silverberg’s original position that Japanese identity is never static but constantly fluctuating and self-defining, notwithstanding the many racist declarations by various politicians (past and present) who try to paint it as one homogenous, unchanging totality.  

This notion of “identity-in-flux” cannot be separated from the consumption of images within a culture of modernity which was most prominent during the time of Japanese colonialism. In this setting, the consumers of images also built their own individual identities through the availability of choices that the interwar age of mass-consumerism offered in the form of “photographs and advertisements in the mass press, in posters, in movie programs, and in the movies during the 1920s and 1930s.” As Silverberg demonstrates by using Ozaki Midori’s short story from March 1929 issue of Nyonin geijutsu the protagonists’ fantasies about Valentino and Charlie Chaplin contain mechanisms for identity formation, independent of what the government prescribed or popular consumption demanded (even though they cannot escape the scope and background of these two entities/institutions). 

Because she’s dealing with a Japan in the midst of empire-expansion and colonization, Silverberg diverges from the main narrative to offer some painstaking references to objectifying attitudes towards Koreans, the most noteworthy ones involving the image of Korean people — especially that of cafe waitresses (jokyū) who can be considered “a chilling harbinger of the ianfu  [or comfort women] history” — in Moro Genzo’s 99-volume series Shin Chosen Fudoki published in 1930. In this chronicle, counterfeit reasons for the annexation of Korea into Japan abound, such as the claim that Korea lacks folk culture (minshu bunka). But most surprising are the frequent declarations of admiration for the simplicity and preservation of Korean traditions, in contrast to the aggressive modernism of mainland Japan, which has managed to supplant traditionalism in favor of an infatuation with European and American culture. These feeble attempts at national identity-formation by casting the colonizer as the colonized were furthermore complicated by the country’s entrance into WWII and by the modern citizens who, like all consumer-subjects of their time, were beset by a multiplicity of images that created confusion and contradictions.

Elsewhere I mentioned that Silverberg uses Charlie Chaplin’s 1932 visit to Japan as an effective hook to lead people into the bedazzling universe of Taishō mass-culture. In this article too, Silverberg mentions Charlie Chaplin’s visit but focuses on the effects of mass production and consumption that it elicited. We find out, for example, that Chaplin’s visit was an overwhelmingly marketable media event: anything from hard-boiled eggs and tempura to chocolate, straw hats, fountain pens, poems and even the spirit of the Japanese army — all of this was advertised in the mass media with the accompaniment of Chaplin’s famous “Little Tramp” persona. His glorious reception at all levels in the capitalist interchange between consumer and producer stood proof that “Chaplin’s appeal crossed class boundaries in modan Japan.” 

Charlie Chaplin in Japan

This is also where we encounter Silverberg’s concept of code-switching. Code-switching is a key notion which is used repeatedly to emphasize the appropriation of foreign elements in the representation of indigenous Japanese cultural artifacts as they appear in various forms of mass media. A better definition of code-switching is revealed in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense:

The cultural articulations of the Japanese consumer-subjects constantly juxtaposed distinct ideas and entities in such sites as magazine layouts, theater costumes, and language, because culture was seen as fragmented in time and space. [Code-switching is] the active and often sophisticated process of moving between pieces chosen from various cultures within and outside Japan…

In Silverberg’s essay, code-switching emerges in a montage of newspapers featuring photographs and articles moving between western to eastern topics. More than 30 interesting photographs are used to drive home Silverberg’s argument that “the fluidity of identity in modan Japan” and “the relationship of movies to Japanese fantasies” was at the heart of the Japanese Empire, even while it was being exhausted and decimated in the battles of the Pacific War. The photographs show the habitual use of Western objects alongside Japanese elements. Some of them will be revisited in Erotic Grotesque Nonsense along with the concept of code-switching.

During the WWII, this type of images largely disappeared from the mass media due to government censorship. However, as Silverberg points out in the last paragraph of the article, shades of Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times still had an impact on some Japanese movies, like in the scene of a sushi-machine running out of control. And when she asked a film archivist how he felt once images of Buster Keaton and Charlie Chaplin disappeared from public view, his response was: “It was lonely.” 

Works cited and images source:

Silverberg, Miriam. Erotic Grotesque Nonsense. Univ of California Press, 2006.

Silverberg, Miriam. "Remembering Pearl Harbor, forgetting Charlie Chaplin, and the case of the disappearing Western woman: a picture story." positions 1.1 (1993): 24-76.

Images of Black People in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Japan, 1543-1900 by Gary P. Leupp & Beyond an Alliance of Color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan by Yukiko Koshiro

The Arrival of 'Southern Barbarians,' 17th Century

I interrupted my reading of Miriam Silverberg’s masterpiece in order to peruse two articles which call attention to Japan’s earliest exposures to African and African-American people(s) and culture(s) and the historical significance of these contacts. The corpus of identity issues in Japan, especially with reference to race, minority and discrimination, is not only of personal interest but, in my opinion, has carried political and cultural weight from medieval times up to the present day. My intention here is to expose the ways in which images of black people have been a matter of considerable importance to Japan’s history by making specific reference to Gary P. Leupp’s Images of Black People in Late Mediaeval and Early Modern Japan, 1543-1900 and Yukiko Koshiro’s Beyond an Alliance of Color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan. I also want to investigate historical similarities between black people and Koreans (the latter whom I covered in a previous post) in regard to racial acceptance and rejection in a country which constantly redefined its position towards other ethnic groups in order to benefit its shifting geopolitical agenda. Lastly, I want to show the impact of African Americans’ striving for social justice and how this inspired and mobilized Japanese leftist movements.

Interesting things I learned from reading Prof. Leupp’s article:

• The first appearance of black people in Japan occurred in the 16th century;
• Black people arrived on European ships, either as slaves, sailors or attendants to Christian missionaries or traders; 
• They were the subject of intense fascination among people of various social status (both upper-class and commoners);
• One famous African was a man from Mozambique to whom Oda Nobunaga gave the name ‘Yasuke.’ Nobunaga was so intrigued by this foreigner that he put him on his payroll. Yasuke fought for his new master until Nobunaga was forced to commit suicide. Akechi Matsuhide (Nobunaga’s vanquisher) spared Yasuke and eventually released him from service;
• Before the deterioration of tolerance towards foreign presence and the closing of the country in the early 17th century, black people were allowed to move freely, take Japanese wives, buy Japanese slaves and were even recruited in the service of various daimyō;
• The black people employed by the Dutch East India Company served as translators at the shogun’s court and sometimes engaged in smuggling European goods;
• African people were often confused with Indian people. This confusion contributed to radical revisions of Buddhist art as when Bodhidharma and Sakyamuni Buddha were depicted as having black skin. 

     With the advent of Dutch Studies (Rangaku), the overall positive, tolerant attitudes towards people with dark skin changed radically. Derogatory descriptions and terms started to appear in poetry and scholastic writings as early as 1764. In all instances, dark skin was associated with low status and a lack of civilization. However, some scholars adopted a more skeptical view. For example, Ōtsuki Gentaku, a Dutch Studies scholar, had this to say:

Among koronbō [a term heterogeneously spelled referring to black people, which only later started to carry derogatory connotations] there is certainly a distinction between the noble and the lowly and the wise and the foolish.

Following the weakening of bakufu closed-country policies and the arrival of the Black Ships in 1853, interactions with white Westerners became more widespread. Feelings of appreciation and awe for Western superior technology and weapons gave way to disparaging attitudes towards all non-white people, especially those colonized or conquered by the West. These included non-Japanese Asians such as Indonesian, Chinese Koreans, etc. White color skin became associated with superior intellect while the opposite judgement was accorded to dark color skin. Questionable Western perspectives of an absolute racial hierarchy (with white-skinned Europeans and Americans at the top and black Africans at the bottom) were readily accepted. Moreover, foreign racialist attitudes had a role to play in the dissemination and assimilation among the Japanese people of the idea that blacks belonged to an inferior civilization. The American envoy, for example, was no stranger to such circumstance:

In Yokohama on 23 March 1954, Perry announced a ‘minstrel show’ after dinner and drinks with his hosts. (One diary referred to the event as an ‘Ethiopian Concert’). Crewmen in Perry’s vessel, The Powhatan, put on black faces and sang ‘Mistah Tambo’ and ‘Mistah Bones’ to the apparent delight of the Japanese in attendance. The show was a huge success.

Assembled Paintings of Commodore Perry's Visit, 19th Century

This and other similar depictions of black people as innately inferior or as objects of ridicule became ingrained on the Japanese psyche. Soon, Japanese scholars and politicians started to promulgate this notion far and wide. For instance, various members of the ambassadorial missions to US were recorded as making the following distasteful remarks:

The blacks are inferior as human beings and extremely stupid.

The laws of the land separate the blacks. They are just like our eta caste… The whites are of course intelligent, and the blacks stupid. Thus the seeds of intelligence and unintelligence are not allowed to mix together.

It seems that the whites are beautiful and shrewd and intelligent; and the blacks are ugly and stupid. So the whites always despise the blacks.

Statements like these were proof of the enthusiasm and willingness by which Japanese people adopted and routinely parroted Western behavioral norms and morals. The deep-rooted racist structures of the colonial West appeared in the mind of the Japanese as perfectly acceptable social prerequisites for a strong national economy and state-of-the-art military. There were only a few resisters to this view but it’s important to mention that they existed. However, when the tenets of Social Darwinism began to make incursion in the Japanese academia, these dissenting voices were largely suppressed in favor of a theory that stimulated and endorsed feverish dreams of empire — a modern nation’s new grail — and Japan’s superiority over non-Japanese Asian nations. It also upheld the social divisions in the society as the discourse of nationalism became more ingrained and accentuated: discrimination against Koreans and burakumin was now not only admissible by centuries of tradition but it was also justified by modern science imported from the West. 

Strange as it may seem, the fate of the earliest contacts between Japan and black people suffered the same fate as the Koreans. While the initial exposure to blacks and Koreans before and during Tokugawa rule was graced with vibes of inquisitiveness and acceptance, after the Meiji Restoration these tendencies took a turn for the worst, mostly under the auspices of Western influence. For decades afterwards up to the end of WWII, Japanese scholars and statesmen became entangled in the push for world racialization both at home (where domestic legislature and tradition discriminated against burakumin and Koreans) and overseas (where the Asian Co-Prosperity Sphere was ideologically and materially built upon racialist views of Japanese superiority). And even though Japan tried to use the exploitation of blacks in the USA as a warning signal to other Asian nations and urged them to unify and stay strong against Western imperialism (under the aegis of the Japanese Emperor, it was implied), in the end, as Mr. Leupp wrote, “such exploitation itself served racist and fascistic goals.”

But there was another side to relations between Japan and black people. Prof. Yukiko Koshiro describes in her article the substantial role that African Americans played in Japanese culture and politics. She argues that African American history, literature and especially the struggle for recognition, acceptance and equality were extensively celebrated in Japanese arts and politics as early as the 1930s. In her detailed exploration of race relations beginning with the Meiji period, prof. Koshiro manages to put together a pastiche of positive causes and effects resulting from the interactions between Japanese and African Americans. In fact, she argues that,

Throughout the twentieth century, African American struggles for freedom and equality have inspired Japanese people far beyond the doomed rhetoric of alliance under the Japanese banner of Pan-Asianism. Those Japanese who attempted to build different kinds of trans-Pacific relations with African American people…dissented from the troublesome race ideology of the nation, challenged it, and envisioned a better Japan.

Before race relations took a sour turn, it is worthy to remember that the Iwakura Mission of 1871-1873 showed respect and admiration for African American advancements in society and politics. The encounter with African American culture had a constructive effect upon members of the mission who went on record stating the following:

It is obvious that skin color has no bearing on one’s intellect. Therefore, those ambitious blacks who saw the importance of education strove to learn and work harder and became great intellectuals, for who uneducated whites were no match.

The history and social condition that befell African Americans were a source of inspiration for Japanese people, especially for the nation’s newly-ensconced statesmen who tried to replicate the gains of a supposed inferior Asian race back at home. Just in the same way that black people managed to secure rights and freedoms in America (albeit limitedly), so Japan wanted recognition of its worth as an equal, strong Asian nation on the world stage. Even though it sought the validity of white supremacy in this matter (validity which, ironically, was incentivized by colonial prospects and, in time, came to be applied brutally against other non-Japanese Asian races) it can be said that Japan’s earliest understanding of African-American people was handled with natural, positive charm.

Another example of positive Meiji attitudes towards African Americans was the translation of Uncle Tom’s Cabin which came out in print in 1896. The publication of similarly-themed books continued in the Taishō period with the appearance of Booker T. Washington’s autobiography in 1919. In a show of admiration for black culture that continued to be evidenced in Japan around this time, many prominent African American leaders were invited to special events or held lectures at distinguished academic institutions. For example, James Weldon Johnson became the first  African American to be invited at the emperor’s garden party in 1929 and W.E.B. Du Bois visited Japan in December 1936. When relations between Japan and America became tarnished, even ultranationalists like Mitsukawa Kametarō and Kita Ikki turned in their writings to examples of African American struggles, such as Marcus Garvey’s call ‘return Africa to the Africans’, in order to spark a national reaction against Western influence.  

Unfortunately, this seeming appropriation and defense of African American culture was nothing but a facade. While Japan continued on an imperialist path and began occupying other Asian nations, it borrowed Western methods of discrimination and exploitation in their dealings with their colonies. Western racist hierarchies of social division  started to be enacted both at home and overseas with little concern for the hypocrisy behind political maneuvers like the racial equality motion put forward by Japan at the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. Here, Prof. Koshiro is in agreement with Prof. Leupp when she observes that “Pan-Africanism [was] merely one branch of Japan’s Pan-Asianism.”

Into this complicated fold of identity politics and race enter the Japanese Marxists who regarded African Americans as “a revolutionary resource” and “as the vanguard of the world’s proletarian movement.” Prof. Koshiro’s article deals at length with Japanese Marxists and the cultural and political impulses coming from African Americans which galvanized their movement. I found this part to be the most interesting.

Japanese leftists fighting against imperialism at home were largely and brutally crushed. Some of them, like Katayama Sen (1860-1933) and Ishigaki Eitarō (1893-1958), successfully fled to the United States where they continued their fight against social injustice while drawing inspiration from the emancipation of African Americans. Katayama built relations with African American radicals and even published their writings in his journal, The Liberator. Ishigaki portrayed the struggles of black people throughout his work. For a Japanese immigrant to make art which criticized the discriminatory culture of his adopted country and to imbue this art with proletarian flavor (at a time when socialist trends were frowned upon) is nothing short of remarkable. It’s no wonder that in 1938 his works were removed and destroyed after 

the New York City Concil found it offensive that a Japanese not only took it on himself to interpret American history, but also publicly gave African Americans a heroic appearance. Worse, the concil also condemned Ishigaki of panting Abraham Lincoln “with Negroid features.”

     Meanwhile, back in Japan, black writers continued to be translated and published. The most radical works by Jean Toomer, W.E.B. Du Bois and Walter White appeared between 1923 to 1928. In 1933 Langston Hughes visited the country and built close ties with Japanese leftists (I will talk more on this subject in a future post). Prominent leftist intellectuals like Akamatsu Katsumaro and Hayasaka Jirō built their own critiques of their country’s imperialist, racist exploits around the thesis that African American discrimination was an inevitable consequence of the capitalistic order. Japan’s brutal modes of racialization and exploitation were entangled with the newly technological, militaristic and capitalist codification of society, which mimicked Western advancements. Akamatsu argued that an alliance with African Americans was necessary in the anti-imperial, proletarian struggle, for this fight was also against Japan’s racist views of other Asian people. Hayasaka criticized Japan for its aggressive tactics in expanding its imperial reach and accused it of ignoring the voices of oppressed Asians in the national literature, “proving no match for African American literature.”

The close ties between Japanese leftist intellectuals and African American culture survived WWII. Unfortunately, the sources of WWII tragedy — embodied in the emperor system, militarism and oligarchic control of the economy — survived as well and they now thrived and enjoyed the protection of the American occupation. With the American occupation in force, the sufferings of the Japanese people were being compared to African American persecution. Marxist historians like Kikuchi Ken’ichi saw similarities between the exploitation of black people in the US and Japanese people in Japan. As the social emancipation of both ethnic groups was kept in line and regimented under the new imperialist order of capitalism, Nukina Yoshitaka published in October of 1956 the journal Kokujin Kenkyū (Journal of Black Studies), which further cemented the relations between leftist intelligentsia and African American culture. 

But the most notable social development in Japan during the postwar years was the emancipation of Japanese minorities who found new strength to voice their discontentment with decades of state-enforced discrimination and abuse. These minorities sought inspiration for their challenges in the historical experience of African Americans. As a result, burakumin, Ainu, Korean and Okinawan people 

“stood up to challenge the notion of Japan as the land of a homogenous population. Their postwar movement looked at the African American experience as a lesson and a model, and it hoped to eventually find a solution for a universal pattern of discrimination.”

The two articles I dealt with in this post made me acknowledge the depth to which black people and African American culture were able to permeate the historical and social edifices of Japan. Prof. Koshiro especially articulated the interlinkages between African American struggle for social justice and Japan’s battle for recognition on the international stage, but also at a domestic level with regard to minority issues. Resistance against Japan’s imperialist action in Asia (and the repulsive racism which it demonstrated in its expansion) existed with the impetus of African American influence. But this was only expected because, as we saw from prof. Leupp’s essay, the links between black people and Japanese people ran deeper than one might think.

K.K.K., 1936

Whipping, 1925

The Noose, 1931

Works cited:

Koshiro, Yukiko. "Beyond an alliance of color: The African American Impact on Modern Japan." positions: east asia cultures critique 11.1 (2003): 183-215

Leupp, Gary P. "Images of black people in late mediaeval and early modern Japan 1543-1900." Japan Forum. Vol. 7. No. 1. Taylor & Francis Group, 1995

Ishigaki Eitaro's images borrowed from here and here.

        Credit for the The Arrival of 'Southern Barbarians' and Minstrel Show paintings goes to Visualizing Cultures Website, developed by MIT.

Marginalia

     I started reading Hikaru Shimoda’s Lost and Found - Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan (I will probably post a review as early as next week). I just wanted to note down a paragraph I encountered in the first chapter (page 24-5) relevant to the contents of this blog up to this point:

      It was, however, the relatively friendly Koreans whom the Aizu men engaged most frequently and personally. As Choson emissaries made their way overland to Edo for their audience with the shogun, an official Japanese party greeted them along the way, and Aizu samurai were a part of this envoy five times between 1682 and 1764. On three of these occasions, the Koreans paid a visit to the Aizu mansion in Edo, sharing tea and tobacco with the hosts and leaving gifts of black hemp, ink brushes, and the obligatory ginseng.

    Aizu is a region presently incorporated in the Fukushima Prefecture and is the subject of Shimoda’s book which is, by all accounts, an honest interrogation of the notion of regional identity. 

     I’m uploading here an informative map extracted from Ronald B. Toby’s article (from my previous review) to give an idea how far the Korean envoys had to travel from Seoul to Edo (which was probably a good reason why the visits were so rare, considering the means of transport and the road infrastructure of the Edo Period — only twelve times have the Koreans embarked on this lengthy, tiresome trip).

Work cited:

Shimoda, Hiraku. Lost and Found. Recovering Regional Identity in Imperial Japan. Harvard University Press, 2014.

Picture source:

Toby, Ronald P. "Carnival of the Aliens. Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture." Monumenta Nipponica (1986): 415-456.

Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han by James B. Lewis & Carnival of the Aliens - Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture by Ronald P. Toby

I picked up a few significant items from reading James B. Lewis’ article Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han:

• Hatada Takashi  supports my initial observation (inspired by reading Bayliss’ book) about Japanese-Korean relationship when, according to James B. Lewis, he remarks that ‘the Japanese view of Korea throughout most of the Tokugawa period was the antithesis of the twentieth century Japanese view, shaped as it was by the imperatives of imperialism and colonization;’
• In the 16th and 17th century Korea was also a secluded country, cut off economically and diplomatically from the rest of the world, earning it the appellation of ‘Hermit Kingdom;’
• The poverty of Tsushima Island in the postwar years following Hideyoshi’s failed attempts to conquer China in 1592-1598 was an important factor in opening up trade relations with Korea;
• The other factor was the need for an external recognition and legitimization of the authority of the bakufu over a newly unified country — a factor supported by Toby in his article (see below);
• Between 1607 and 1811 Korean envoys visited Japan 12 times and these visits, followed by trade activity, spurned record revenues for Japan’s economy due to the widespread manufacturing and sale of cultural products based on these visits; 
• Protocol seemed to be equally imperative and impedimental in smoothing out relations while forgery of politically-sensitive documents was rampant;
• Korea’s cultural output was very popular among all classes of Japanese society and this sweeping cultural demand outweighed diplomatic achievements.

        The highlight of James B. Lewis’ article is the Appendix or A Translation of a Selection from Shin Yu-han’s Haeyurok: The Entry into Edo, and Comments on the Shōgun and his Retainers. This part is well worth reading as it offers rare first-hand insights into eighteenth century Japan. Shin Yu-han (or Sin Yuhan whom I’ve mentioned briefly when I talked about Jeong-Mi Lee’s article) took part in the 1719 diplomatic mission to Japan. He kept a diary entitled the Haeyurok in which he recorded in astute, critical and sometimes funny deftness all that he saw and experienced in his long travels throughout Japan. There is mundane stuff about official attire, banquets, and rigid schedule that had to be followed to an annoying precision. The most remarkable passages are his descriptions of meeting Yoshimune (the eight shogun, 1684-1751) and his interpretive take on Japanese hierarchical, hereditary system of leadership. I would like to render below some of the most informative and exciting excerpts from Shin Yu-han’s diary. The translation was done by James B. Lewis and I reproduce it as it appears in the original: 

Yoshimune’s character is dauntless, superior and wise, and this year, he is thirty-five years old. He is of strudy spirit and his (sic) a diginified bearing. He is a lover of the martial arts but finds no joy in literature. He respects economy and rejects extravagance. Ordinarily he says, “Japanese think highly of Korean letters. But the style is unique for each. Although we study it, since we cannot become skillful, for us, it is best to write in Japanese. When the Korean ambassador comes to Japan, there are ceremonies to display our military might and to provide music, but these have no meaning, either. The military is the way to defend ourselves, but if they see it and it scares them, we lose the meaning of our desire for contact, or if they despise it we have not achieved out (sic) scheme of displaying force. When it comes to musical skills, we have our mutual customs. Why should foreign music gladden the ear; what is the purpose of this ceremony? In the way of friendly relations, value lies in sincerity. They are men from a faraway land, do not delay them. We must see them home pleased. We shall pare away and remove all extreme rhetorical flourishes and details,” and so forth.  When practicing governance, he puts honesty and humility first. He aids the poor and reduces their taxes. Those who commit capital crimes have their noses severed instead of being executed. All sing his praises.

When one of his minsters entered his presence dressed in brocades, Yoshimune immediately asked him the cost of the gown, and said, “Even the cotton robe I have on is sufficient to cover the body.” Thereafter it is said that not one of his ministers wore brocades.

…the Hayashi house has presided over letters in Japan. Generally speaking, all those who practice literature with the state as their patron, come from this house. Those who have been recommended as students and draw a salary are several tens of people. However, when viewed, the (product) is clumsy and simple and does not succeed (in having) a style. Since all Japanese offices are hereditary, even if there is a scholar of high caliber and profound learning, without studying under Nobuatsu [Hayashi], he will not find a position. The situation is laughable. 

The rules which were brought at daybreak, were not only written in Japanese kana, but were also written in grass writing and not at all clear. According to the magistrate, Amenomori Akira was bed-ridden with illness and there was no one who could interpret the document, no one who could translate it into Chinese. The envoys said that with unclear rules of protocol, they could not present the communication. They dispatched a fast messenger to summon Matsuura Tadashi, but he said it would be difficult to write it on the spur of the moment and declined. Japanese literature is, in the main, written carelessly, is blurred, muddled, and unskillfully copied. Accordingly, everyone expressed disapproval. 

Before I move on to the next article, I would like to point out that James B. Lewis wrote a book entitled Frontier Contact Between Choson Korea and Tokugawa Japan which, from what I can tell, has a richness of complementary information regarding the same subject matter described above, complete with demographic statistics, pictures and other interesting details related to the Korean envoys to Japan in the early modern era. That book is in my possession and I hope to read it one day, if not in its entirety, then at least a couple of chapters that could add some new information to the topic of early Korean-Japanese contact. 

The second article that I want to talk about is Ronald P. Toby’s Carnival of the Aliens - Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture. Complementing the topic of Korean ambassadorial visits to Japan, this compelling essay contains, to a large extent, meticulous art criticism in reference to the many pictorial representations of Korean processions. Toby looks at the historical origins of these paintings but, mainly, he details the color composition and visual arrangement of elements contained in them, which are of interest not only to the art scholar but also function as clues to the assortment of commendatory attitudes toward Korean envoys prevalent among the Japanese people. Among the detailed exploration of such artistic products is Hanegawa Tōei’s Chōsenjin raichō zu which I have attached at the beginning of this review. This and other similar artistic depictions and representations of Edo-period Korean envoys (in the form of ema, byōbu-e, and emaki) were a successful source for financial investment and national trade. As Toby mentions,

The depiction of embassies, particularly Korean ones, by the turn of the eighteenth century had become a major thematic genre in every medium of Japanese art. Not only did courtiers, the bakufu, and daimyo commission paintings to record the embassies, but artists and print shops churned out dozens of versions of prints and pamphlets with Korean embassies as their subjects, suggesting an eager and ready market.

However, for me, the most interesting item in Toby’s essay is his exploration of Tōjin gyōretsu (foreign parades) in which participants put together Chōsen yama (Korean floats) and paraded in the streets masquerading as Korean envoys. The earliest recorded incidence of this kind of matsuri (festival) took place in 1647. For this historical occasion hundreds of participants adorned Korean attire and their floats sported 

Nishijin silks, already the finest in all Japan [and] were decorated lavishly with dragons and phoenixes, lions and unicorns, all embroidered and appliquéd in gold thread.

The most astounding aspect of these festivals was the ability of the common folk to gain the viewership of the shogun himself, something that not even samurai of higher social rank could obtain easily. As a result, members of the lower class were given the rare opportunity to escape the rigid strictures of Edo-period social division and to assert equality and even moral superiority over members of higher status. In the Meiji period, these festivals were discontinued because they were seen as remnants and reminders of the Tokugawa Shogunate and its link to a past where peasants could step outside their social class.

The historical importance of Korean culture on the effects and development of Japanese identity (with all the complexities this notion has to offer) cannot be underestimated or forgotten (as various Japanese revisionist scholars of extreme nationalistic persuasion have been attempting to do for some time). The last lines of Toby’s article resonate strongly with me:

Korean embassies had become part of the fabric of national consciousness, helping ordinary people articulate the very nature of their world, and their own place in it. Korean embassies, that is, had, by the Genroku period, become part of the universal vocabulary of contemporary Japanese art and popular culture, part of the landscape of the mind of artist, celebrant, and viewer alike.

Works cited in this article:

Lewis, James B. "„Beyond Sakoku: The Korean Envoy to Edo and the 1719 Diary of Shin Yu-han.”." Korea Journal 25 (1985): 22-41.

Toby, Ronald P. "Carnival of the Aliens. Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture." Monumenta Nipponica (1986): 415-456.

The pictures used here all come from Toby's article.