A pioneer in Yokohama
The Dutch experience in the early days of European trade with Japan has mostly been depicted through letters written by company directors, or through the accounts of officers, such as Engelbert Kaempfer, that have provided a foundation to understand much of the early cultural exchanges that occurred through Deshima.
A Pioneer in Yokohama is a different kind of book and adopts a more casual storytelling style. De Coningh’s descriptions of his days in the open port of Yokohama are particularly interesting as he imparts an impression of the stressful situation and latent conflict ready to erupt in the treaty ports. His interest was primarily focused on the trade in gold, in whale oil or in other imported materials. Yet, his lively account of events provides an interesting complement to more formal market and trade information that was more typically collected by the trading companies at the time.
“We landed on Decima…The colossal black door creaked on its hinges and, encircled with guards as if we were state criminals, we entered Decima.”
The Dutch East Indian Company gained a privileged position in Asia as the only direct trade channel between Japan and Western countries for more than 200 years, with its sole trading post being relocated at Deshima (Decima) in 1641. In part, the success of Dutch merchants came from their secular ideology, allying local lords against Christians through diplomacy, or by force where necessary. At a time when religious conflicts raged in Europe, the Dutch warned any trading partner against the dangers posed by the missionaries. This anti-Christian position was echoed in various documents including in advice to the Bakufu that warned authorities about the religious threat, for:
“They scheme in such a way: if soldiers are used to conquer the land, this does not imply that the population has submitted itself…It is far better to lead the people on by means of the Christian faith…If then, afterwards, [they] seize some good opportunity for invading the country, then, without losing a single soldier, and without spending one single gold piece, [they] will make the people faithful servants”.[i]
In Cochinchina, similarly, a French missionary reported that “the King ordered missionaries to step on the image of Jesus on the cross, because of the advice of the Dutch who knew the impact of such an order in Japan, and are accused of advising the King in the ways of chasing away Missionaries.”[ii] De Coningh conveys an equally threatening advice to his local trading partners, warning them that “Western peoples, when they set foot in Eastern lands, act increasingly like an army (..) a process that begins with missionaries seeking converts and ends with soldiers writing the laws. [The] Christian cross of love has eradicated whole peoples.”
The era of Dutch trade supremacy in Japan, however, came to an abrupt end with the signature of the Ansei treaties of 1858 that opened Japanese ports to foreign citizens. The treaties increased tensions significantly between foreigners and the local elite and, in this context, a trading nation like the Netherlands found itself incapable of keeping up with the armed convoys that their competitors displayed.
A robber’s den
The early years of the open Port of Yokohama are representative of the complex changes that followed the transportation revolution brought about by steam ships. Coal mining and steam power gave an ultimate boost to the world’s division of labour, enabling soldiers to cross the oceans from Europe to Asia within a few months, in comparison to the one-year travel previously required for sailing ships.
The period from 1850 to 1860 thus challenged both Dutch trade supremacy and the authority of the Bakufu. On Japan’s coast, as the first steam ships arrived, several missions from Western powers made their way to Yokohama and, with the opening of the port, the “fungi of civilization” was brought to Japan, “the scum of the white race in their ignoble decay…more brutal than the lowest rabble...just by the look of them, one would wish sent to the galleys or behind the bars of a prison.” Suddenly, Yokohama had turned into “a robber’s den”.
The opening of the port brought the foreign problem to the very centre of attention of the Bakufu and anti-Bakufu elements. Anti-foreign clans were headed by a number of people close to the Tokugawa shogunate among whom was the Lord of Mito, Nariaki (1800-1860), who is often mentioned by De Croningh. Since the 17th century, Mito had been a centre of learning and its lords were patrons of Shinto studies who emphasized the centrality of the emperor.
In this context, the presence of merchants and fortune seekers within the city of Yokohama created inevitable tensions. Numerous dwarskijkers, or sword bearing samurai, “would have liked nothing better than to exterminate foreigners to the last man…They feared the wellspring of gifts of Western society; the extreme politics and religious hate… and set out to make the foreigners as uneasy as possible in the hope that they would depart of their own accord.” Foreigners leaving the settlement to wander around could be “minced to pieces”.
By order of the Bakufu, the Lord of Mito was confined to his Edo mansion, while one of his most faithful retainers was beheaded at Edo and a close counsellor was ordered to commit suicide. Yet the Bakufu was caught in the middle of rising tensions and the restoration would go on. For De Coningh, the Bakufu needed “a scapegoat to take all the blame”, one “who unfortunately had so much power that there is nothing the Keiser [Emperor] can do about it (…) so the Japanese tactic is to frighten and discourage us until they finally get what they want, which is that we go back from whence we came.”
Although this is not reported by De Coningh, at the time of the second Opium War (1856-60), the Bakufu asked the Dutch to report on the exact number of the English troops and the tactics of maritime warfare. Expeditionary troops from France and England were storming the China coast; China had been asked to pay indemnities amounting to eight times its annual revenues. Japan stood by, De Coningh ventures to say that success in the Chinese war was due to the “benevolence of Japan” that provided one thousand horses and provisions to the European powers “even if it had been forced upon them.”
In Yokohama the tension rose. The foreign quarters, filled with whale oil destined for the Chinese market, were burned; “even the American legal secretary, Mr. Heusken, has been murdered in Jedo [Edo],” along with the regent of the Shogun who signed the treaties opening up the ports. Eventually, fears of retaliation created a state of siege in the settlement: “the Japanese knew (…) that a band of diehards would try to burn us out and run us off.”
Overall, this unique story of the foreign settlement in Yokohama is a glimpse into the chaotic implementation of early trade treaties with Asian countries. As such, it offers a good complement to more academic work on early modern relations with Asian countries, such as Gerrit W. Gong’s Standard of Civilization.[iii]
Benoit Leduc, Ph.D., University of Ottawa, bleduc@uottawa.ca
[i] Robert van Gulik, “Kakkaron: A Japanese Echo of the Opium War,” Monumenta Serica (1939): 533.
[ii] Letter from a Jesuit missionary, September 14, 1754, in Lettres édifiantes et curieuses, écrites des missions étrangères, Volume 13 (J. Vernarel : 1819).
[iii] See: Gong, Gerrit W., The Standard of Civilization in International Society. 1984 Oxford: Oxford University Press. 267pp.