Travelers' Tales: Three Eighteenth-Century Travel Journals by Harold Bolitho

Prof. Harold Bolitho’s essay Travelers’ Tales: Three Eighteenth-Century Travel Journals introduces the travel journal as a significant cultural artifact which, by its qualitative appeal and ubiquitous presence among the masses, was fundamental in laying the foundation for Japanese modernity. Modernity, a historically-loaded, complicated notion, took roots during the Tokugawa period, roughly between 1600 and 1868, when political power and cultural prestige started to concentrate around large urban centers which today are the famous, sprawling metropoles on every tourist’s ‘must-visit’ list. Prof. Bolitho’s cultured travelers by contrast sought to visit inaccessible, uninviting, far-off locations. They left behind a rich treasury of written records about difficult journeys, remote destinations and unexpected (and oftentimes whimsical and fanciful) encounters. These records were and still are of an exceptional literary quality, foreshadowing an unparalleled development on the Japanese literary stage, even surpassing the West at the time in both output and consumption. 

Furukawa Koshōken

The three protagonists of Prof. Bolitho’s article are Furukawa Koshōken (1726-1807), Tachibana Nankei (1753-1805) and Sugae Masumi (1754-1829). It is noteworthy to point out that these three travelers conducted their journeys in the eighteenth century, at a time when, in Prof. Bolitho’s words, “recreational travel came into its own.” This unexpected evolution was caused in great part by the introduction of the sankin kōtai (or ‘alternate attendance’) system in 1637, which required all daimyō to travel regularly from their residential domains — regardless how far they were located — to Edo (as Tokyo was known then), to maintain lodgings in the capital and to leave their wives and children behind upon their return home. As a result, the unprecedented development of the highway network took off. And even though the government sought to hamper free travel with a complicated checkpoint system including heavily-armed guard posts, signed documents, travel passes and bodily check-ups, the frequent movement of multitudes of samurai to Edo “led to the provision of facilities of a kind which could be used by all travelers, commoners as well as samurai — inns at which they could lodge, teahouses at which they could rest, porters and horses whose services they could use.” On the extensive precautions that the government officials instituted on its highways, Sugae was begrudgingly straightforward:

On going to get a pass from the local official, he noted that “On it was written who you were, where you came from, what kind of clothes you were wearing, whether or not you carried a short sword, what your destination was, and the fact that you had been checked at this barrier. Then you paid a sum of money as a fee…whereupon the official took you to the check-point, you handed in your pass at the barrier and you were then allowed through. All check-points are the same.

Despite tight government control, traveling was oftentimes a risky enterprise. The most notable danger were bandits that robbed and killed people although their incidence decreased significantly by the time our three protagonists embarked on their journeys. Bears were still a constant threat. The only important hazard, however, remained the general unsafeness of the relief and the means of transport. Nankei attempted to scale down these risks by developing five prohibitions or rules for a successful trip: “not to travel by sea, not to ford a river on foot, not to travel at night, not to eat strange food, and not to associate with low women.”

Tachibana Nankei

Although of different ages, Koshōken, Nankei and Sugae share qualities and skills that overlap; more often than not, they have distinctive personalities although it is noteworthy to mention that the main attribute which unifies them is the exhaustive interest they took in recording every absorbing detail from their journeys to the various corners of Japan. They differed in motivation (it seems that Nankei was particularly interested in making a fortune from his writings, while Koshōken had a rigid Neo-Confucianist view in regard to money-handling) but this did not hamper their style or their enthusiasm to bring their experiences to audiences who couldn’t risk or afford to journey outside their village or city. Their written chronicles (Koshōken’s Saiyū zakki, Nankei’s Saiyūki and Tōyūki, and Sugae’s Yūranki) are still accessible today and they are popular among scholars of Japanese history as well as casual readers. Moreover, all three of them travelled (although not at the same time and it’s presumed that they never met) to the Tōhoku region, in the north-eastern part of Japan. Their descriptions of Tōhoku form the central point of Prof. Bolitho’s essay. Having lived in Sendai for a long period of time, these descriptions are of a personal interest to me, reason for which I am bringing this article to your attention.

Sugae Masumi

Anyone who is familiar with the history of the Tōhoku region will know that it has always been isolated from the rest of Japan, politically, economically as well as culturally. The long and bitter winter gave this part of Japan a notorious fame for its harsh and dangerous living conditions. The mountainous terrain unfavorable to cultivation forced the region into famine on more than one occasion. Capricious weather impacted negatively the insufficient crops, and these were often failing. Generally, the people lived in abject poverty. (As a side-note, it is worth mentioning that the misfortunes of the inhabitants of Tōhoku following the 1905-1906 famine was used by extremist right-wingers as a motivational point for domestic unrest and support for empire expansion.) When Tachibana Nankei came to Tōhoku the Tenmei famine was far from over, rather it seemed to have reached its peak. He recorded the following:

“I came to Ōshū [i.e. Tōhoku] at the beginning of 1786,” he wrote, “believing that the region would by now be amply supplied with food. But the famine of 1783 was a hundred times worse than we had heard in Kyoto. Many were dying of hunger, the Nambu-Tsugaru region was a wasteland. Such sights I had never seen,” Nankei continued, describing bodies, or portions thereof, left by the roadside. “In the course of a morning I would see the remains of perhaps five people, and in the afternoon another fourteen or fifteen; then the next day I would see twenty-three, and the day after fifty or sixty. Thereafter I became accustomed to seeing them, and felt no particular unease.”

Sugae also wrote of his encounter with a beggar from the famine-ridden area who claimed to have eaten horse flesh and even indulged in cannibalism, preferring ears and noses over the rest of the human body. The poverty and backwardness of the region bothered all three travelers. Koshōken blamed the daimyōs of Sendai and Akita for the miserable conditions of the populace:

“In the world today,” he wrote, “demons are those who, lost in selfishness, kill people and take their money. Or they are rulers who govern badly, and who when their peasants are in difficulties because their money has been unlawfully taken from them, and come to complain, will accuse them of rebellion and have them killed. These too are demons, whether in the past or in the present…”

 The travelers had very different approaches regarding the Tōhoku people. For example, Sugae displayed in his writings a detached, almost ethnographic sensitivity. He described everything he saw without passing any sort of moral judgement. Here’s an observation which is exemplary of his neutral attitude; on seeing the traditional face covering of the Shōnai area he remarked the following:

“It is the custom in this province,” he wrote, in his usual emphatic way, “to place something called a domokko on the head, and on top of that to affix a turban, and then to wind a three-foot long strip of cloth called a tenno around the jaw and the cranium, leaving only the eyes visible.” 

In contrast, according to Bolitho, Nankei made blatant racist remarks whenever he witnessed a custom that didn’t prefigure in his definition of ‘normal.’ He was particularly stuck on the allegedly non-Japanese ethnic background of the Tōhoku inhabitants: 

“In ancient times,” [he wrote], “…Oshu…was in part dominated by the Ezo (i.e., the Ainu). Furthermore, the barbarians would appear to have lived here until comparatively recently, for there are many barbarous names among the place-names of the Nanbu and Tsugaru regions…Even now in areas such as Uten the customs are very like this of the Ezo, and the people of Tsugaru are disliked because they are thought to be of Ezo stock…For this reason manners and culture are still undeveloped…In ancient times the Nanbu, Tsugaru, and Akita region was inhabited by barbarians. Only in the past two hundred years has it become so thoroughly part of Japan, so people say.”

Moving away from bleak topics, it is important to add that all three writers enjoyed the natural beauty of Tōhoku, particularly the scenery at Matsushima, a tourist magnet even to the present day. Many exhilarating encounters were recorded here:

In Nankei’s case, nothing could spoil the experience for him, not even an unfortunate encounter with a group of Zen priests, “quite unlike priests in their deportment, laughing at the top of their voices, and summoning four or five geisha from the town in the early evening, drinking sake and eating meat,” and to compound their crimes further, speaking in Tōhoku accents. After viewing the panorama of pine-covered islands from a temple on Tomiyama, he was reluctant to leave, and when he did so, “came down feeling as though I had just parted from an old friend.” Koshōken similarly was full of anticipation, and was not disappointed — “on seeing these islands scattered on the surface of the sea we were struck dumb, having no words with which to frame poems.”

I would like to conclude by recording the last lines of Prof. Bolitho’s article, lines which were written down by Koshōken at the end of his journeys. For me Koshōken was the more interesting fellow of the three travelers, mostly due to his comical dislike of all Japanese religions (whether indigenous Shinto or Buddhist sects, they were all equally scorned by Koshōken) and his acerbic critiques of daimyōs who failed in their duty to maintain their fiefs in a sustainable if not prosperous state. Koshōken was an old man by the time he wrote the following:

“Although I am in my sixties, I am still vigorous. I have traveled many hundreds of miles in the north-east in the company of the inspectors, my nerves chilled by steep-sided mountains, my eyes amazed by the turbulent billows of mighty oceans, my travel-fatigue dispelled by noble vistas. Now, seeing my humble abode, I drenched my sleeves.”

Work cited:

Bolitho, Harold. “Travelers’ Tales: Three Eighteenth-Century Travel Journals.” Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (1990): 485-504.

Pictures were borrowed from here, here and here.

New Publication: Inventing the Way of the Samurai - Nationalism, Internationalism, and Bushidō in Modern Japan

Inventing the Way of the Samurai examines the development of the 'way of the samurai' - bushidō - which is popularly viewed as a defining element of the Japanese national character and even the 'soul of Japan'. Rather than a continuation of ancient traditions, however, bushidō developed from a search for identity during Japan's modernization in the late nineteenth century. The former samurai class were widely viewed as a relic of a bygone age in the 1880s, and the first significant discussions of bushidō at the end of the decade were strongly influenced by contemporary European ideals of gentlemen and chivalry. At the same time, Japanese thinkers increasingly looked to their own traditions in search of sources of national identity, and this process accelerated as national confidence grew with military victories over China and Russia.

Inventing the Way of the Samurai considers the people, events, and writings that drove the rapid growth of bushidō, which came to emphasize martial virtues and absolute loyalty to the emperor. In the early twentieth century, bushidōbecame a core subject in civilian and military education, and was a key ideological pillar supporting the imperial state until its collapse in 1945. The close identification of bushidō with Japanese militarism meant that it was rejected immediately after the war, but different interpretations of bushidō were soon revived by both Japanese and foreign commentators seeking to explain Japan's past, present, and future. This volume further explores the factors behind the resurgence of bushidō, which has proven resilient through 130 years of dramatic social, political, and cultural change.

Link. 

New Publication: Kyoto - An Urban History of Japan's Premodern Capital

Kyoto was Japan’s political and cultural capital for more than a millennium before the dawn of the modern era. Until about the fifteenth century, it was also among the world’s largest cities and, as the eastern terminus of the Silk Road, it was a place where the political, artistic, and religious currents of Asia coalesced and flourished. Despite these and many other traits that make Kyoto a place of both Japanese and world historical significance, the physical appearance of the premodern city remains largely unknown. Through a synthesis of textual, pictorial, and archeological sources, this work attempts to shed light on Kyoto’s premodern urban landscape with the aim of opening up new ways of thinking about key aspects of premodern Japanese history. 

The book begins with an examination of Kyoto’s highly idealized urban plan (adapted from Chinese models in the eighth century) and the reasons behind its eventual failure. The formation of the suburbs of Kamigyō and Shimogyō is compared to the creation of large exurban temple-palace complexes by retired emperors from the late eleventh century. Each, it is argued, was a material manifestation of the advancement of privatized power that inspired a medieval discourse aimed at excluding “outsiders.” By examining this discourse, a case is made that medieval power holders, despite growing autonomy, continued to see the emperor and classical state system as the ultimate sources of political legitimacy. This sentiment was shared by the leaders of the Ashikaga shogunate, who established their headquarters in Kyoto in 1336. The narrative examines how these warrior leaders interacted with the capital’s urban landscape, revealing a surprising degree of deference to classical building protocols and urban codes. Remaining chapters look at the dramatic changes that took place during the Age of Warring States (1467–1580s) and Kyoto’s postwar revitalization under the leadership of Oda Nobunaga and Toyotomi Hideyoshi. Nobunaga’s construction of Nijō Castle in 1569 transformed Kyoto’s fundamental character and, as Japan’s first castle town, it set an example soon replicated throughout the archipelago. In closing, the book explores how Hideyoshi—like so many before him, yet with much greater zeal—used monumentalism to co-opt and leverage the authority of Kyoto’s traditional institutions. 

Richly illustrated with original maps and diagrams, Kyoto is a panoramic examination of space and architecture spanning eight centuries. It narrates a history of Japan’s premodern capital relevant to the fields of institutional history, material culture, art and architectural history, religion, and urban planning. Students and scholars of Japan will be introduced to new ways of thinking about old historical problems while readers interested in the cities and architecture of East Asia and beyond will benefit from a novel approach that synthesizes a wide variety of sources.

Link.

Marginalia: Beef

                   I was preparing to examine an article by Prof. Harold Bolitho when I stumbled upon this particular precious item which I thought would be an appropriate fit among the marginalia already included on this website. My discovery involves a 'dispute' between two giants in the field of Japanese Studies. The conflict took place in the pages of Monumenta Nipponica, a journal published by Sophia University in Tokyo. In the 1980 spring issue, Prof. Bolitho reviewed unfavourably the anthology of essays edited by Tetsuo Najita and Irwin Scheiner Japanese Thought in the Tokugawa Period 1600-1868: Methods and Metaphors and he singled out Prof. Harootunian's article as the most unsatisfactory of the bunch. Here's the original review.

       

                   Professor Harootunian responded to Prof. Bolitho's criticism in the Autumn issue of the same publication. As the readers will see, the retort is heavily worded and it shows the author's clear irritation. Finally, in the pages of the same issue, Prof. Bolitho was offered the opportunity of rebuttal. At first I thought that I'm witnessing a case of the old adversarial divide which haunts the Japanese Studies academia and which was instigated by the now decades-old contentious debate over the 'modernisation theory.' To summarise the issue, it suffices to say that the divide was initiated (and is being kept ongoing) by the separation between Marxist-based historical approach to the study of Japanese history (the kind conducted in the English-speaking world by E. H. Norman, John W. Dower and, according to the statements included above, Harold Bolitho) and the practitioners of non-Marxist scholarship (like Marius B. Jansen). A better overview of this debate can be found in this London Review of Books article. I was amused and somewhat pleased to discover that the dispute between Prof. Bolitho and Prof. Harootunian was sparked by a simple case of irremediable displeasure with a bad review. Here's how the 'correspondence' between the two scholars concluded.

Sources:

Bolitho, Harold. "Concrete discourse, manifest metaphor, and the Tokugawa intellectual paradigm." Monumenta Nipponica. Vol. 35, No. 1 (Spring, 1980): 89-98.

Bolitho, Harold & Harootunian, H.D. "Correspondence." Monumenta Nipponica. Vol. 35, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980): 368-374.

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.