ADRIAN BIHUN ADRIAN BIHUN Dejima and Japan’s Trepidatious Relationship with the West Adrian Bihun, class of 2016, graduated with a degree in History. He is now pursuing a Masters in Education at USF. 17 DEJIMA AND JAPAN’S TREPIDATIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE WEST WRITER’S COMMENTS As an ethnic Ukrainian I have closely followed my people’s fight for closer ties with the former Western Bloc, as we believe that the future of our country is intimately linked with cooperation with Europe. Ukraine’s government is con- vinced that its people will benefit from the influx of culture, technology, and wealth which only the West can provide. A stark juxtaposition to this belief is the rhetoric of Vladimir Putin’s Russia and the Brexit campaign, which lambast Western-led unilateral cooperation on the grounds that it threatens to erode national identities and create homogeneity. I recognize the validity of both of these perspectives, and it has become a fascination of mine to study the tension between homogenous cultures and the pan-ethnic entities which seek to assimilate them. Perhaps no polity in the Early Modern period encapsulates this dichotomy better than Japan, which provides a quintessential case of a people’s wariness to associate with a globalist entity. As I came to understand what Dejima was to the Japanese, I began to notice that sentiments regarding homogeneity and national identity back then are all too similar to what I have observed in the twenty-first century—indicating skepticism, xenophobia, and isolationism as ubiquitous features of globalization. —Adrian Bihun INSTRUCTOR’S COMMENTS Adrian Bihun’s beautifully presented article derives from the research he undertook during his time at the Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, in the heart of the Oxford. Using state-of-the-art understandings of how space is not a given but rather is something that has to be con- sciously articulated, Adrian found the ideal subject to study—Dejima, the area chosen by the Japanese as the sole point of entry into the country for European merchants. As an artificial island in the harbor at Nagasaki, Dejima was constructed to show symbolically that foreigners were not to enter the sacred and self-sufficient space of Japan. Adrian employed all the resources at Oxford’s disposal, using not only the University’s venerable Bodleian Library but consulting rare items only available in the private collections of Worces- ter and Keble Colleges. With the help of centuries-old maps and sources in various languages, Adrian’s work skilfully blends the visual with the written and even questions received historiography. The popular imagination sees Japan’s policy of sakoku (closed country) as being brought to an end by the gunboat diplomacy of the 19th century, but Adrian’s article deftly reveals a far longer—and richer—history. —Glyn Redworth, Associate Member, History Faculty, Oxford University 18 ADRIAN BIHUN Abstract During Europe’s seemingly unstoppable expansion during its “Age of Exploration,” one country held its own: Japan. Despite its size being a fraction of that of previous victims to European avarice, Japan, under its newly founded Shogunate government, was adamant to retain its auton- omy and homogenous culture in the wake of increasing globalization. As a testament to its determination to show both the world and its people who controlled its future, Japan’s government built an island in Nagasaki Bay for the explicit purpose of trading with Europe. Naming this arti- ficial island Dejima, its architects used its space and strict rules to force Europe to capitulate to the will of the Shogun. The Dutch were the only European power allowed to participate in direct trade with Japan, and so were the unofficial (and only) ambassadors of Europe in Japan until the nineteenth century. Dejima would prove to epitomize the East–West dichotomy in Japan, with the Dutch’s intellectual and exotic imports con- flicting with the official isolationist policy of the Japanese government. Over centuries, despite the draconian efforts of various Shoguns, Deji- ma became the focus of both Europe and Japan’s desire to learn about each other. By the time Commodore Perry infamously “opened” Japan in the mid-nineteenth century, the Dutch on Dejima had already used their unique position to connect Western civilization to Japan and steer the Japanese away from isolationism. 19 DEJIMA AND JAPAN’S TREPIDATIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE WEST Dejima and Japan’s Trepidatious Relationship with the West OR OVER TWO HUNDRED years virtually all of Japan’s contacts with the FWest took place on a man-made island hardly larger than a football field. Called Dejima, it was built for the specific purpose of confining the Dutch, the only Europeans allowed in Japan, into a space which would keep Western influence out of Japan, and overseeing what goods came into the country. Designed by the Japanese to emphasize Dutch submis- sion to Japanese sovereignty, Dejima was intended to epitomize Japan’s policy of sakoku (meaning “closed country”), introduced by the newly formed Shogunate government. Over the centuries, Dejima’s role as a trading station lessened, and instead became a catalyst for an increasing fascination with Western peoples and their practice. In terms of both the island and the buildings erected on it, Dejima proved to be the main stage for Euro–Japanese interactions until the mid-eighteenth century, and ground zero for the expansion of European influence into Japan. From its conceptual origins in the 1630s, Dejima was intended to be a profound statement—distinguished from every other construct in Japan. Its design as an island of reclaimed land set it at odds with conventional Japanese architecture which, even in the Early Modern period, remained based on traditional notions of harmony with nature. The Japanese saw nature and kami, the spirits which dwelled within it, as preexistent to all of man’s structures. Therefore, all constructs were placed in the space that nature had left vacant for the use of people.1 The notion of “space,” or kukan, was not even conceptualized until the nineteenth century, mil- lennia after this practice was first implemented, implying that Japanese architects were focused on accommodating themselves to preexisting natural features, and not interpreting the world as a blank canvas. Tem- ples and other religious complexes in particular exhibited these notions, typically being adapted to the landscape so as not to disrupt the aesthet- ics and spirits of the natural world. Figures one and two in the Appendix show both the larger and smaller scale how the Japanese architecture ac- commodated previously undesirable terrain in their construction. Nature was the ultimate foundation for any significant Japanese structure before 1 Kevin Nute, Time and Being in Japanese Architecture (London: Routledge, 2004), 11. 20 ADRIAN BIHUN the Momoyama and Edo periods,2 with edifices being additions to what had already been there, rather than replacements. As an artificial island, Dejima was therefore seen by Japanese as hav- ing less status than its contemporary buildings. In being reclaimed land and built off the shore of Japanese land, Dejima was just as foreign and unnatural to Japan as its foreign-born tenants. The island was designed to be a confining space that would not only restrict foreign trade to a par- ticular area, but also to minimize contact between the Japanese and the Europeans. This need to erect cultural and physical barriers between the Dutch and Japanese came at the behest of the Shogunate government to consolidate its authority by restricting foreign access to the country, thereby maintaining singular influence over the Japanese people. By mak- ing the decision to place the Dutch on Dejima, the Shogunate employed what Marcia Yonemoto called the “logic of difference”: the notion that proximity to the geographical center of cultural sophistication indicat- ed status.3 According to Yonemoto, this concept has existed in societies around the world, but in the case of the Shogunate government it was used it to make its new capital city, Edo, the locus for all Japanese sophis- tication and culture.4 By moving the Dutch from their previous base at Hirado to the artificial island at Nagasaki in 1641,5 the Shogunate pushed the Dutch to the very edge of Japan and Japanese society. After all, the word Shogun meant the “barbarian-quelling generalissimo,” and with Europeans being known dismissively as nanban, or “southern barbar- ians,”6 the Shogun was making a statement to his own people that he was subduing these nanban by confining them to a virtual prison in Nagasaki Bay, which lay in the southernmost region of Japanese territory. (see Fig- ure 1). Dejima was thereby the Japanese government’s proclamation that 2 From 1573–1603 and 1603–1867, respectively 3 Marcia Yonemoto, Mapping Early Modern Japan: Space, Place, and Culture in the Tokugawa Period (1603–1868) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2003) , 3. 4 Yonemoto, Early Modern Japan, 103–104. 5 Leonard Blussé, Willem Remmelink and Ivo Smits, Bridging the Divide: 400 Years of Dutch–Japanese Relations (Leiden: Hotei, 2000), 43; Cal French, Through Closed Doors: Western Influence on Japanese Art 1639–1853 (Rochester: Meadow Brook Art Gallery, 1977), 27; Suzuki Yasuko, Japan–Netherlands Trade 1600–1800: The Dutch East India Company and beyond (Kyoto: Kyoto University Press, 2012), 14. 6 Due to their arrival and presence in Japan being predominantly in the southern regions. 21 DEJIMA AND JAPAN’S TREPIDATIOUS RELATIONS WITH THE WEST it was to dictate to what extent Japan was to interact with Europe.7 The construction of the island of Dejima, and the erection of build- ings on it, was deliberate as to reinforce such notions (both explicit and implicit) of government control.