CHAPTER 2 Japanese-German Mutual Perceptions in the 1860s and 1870s: The Eulenburg and Bunkyū Missions

Suzuki Naoko

Most accounts of modern Japanese-German relations begin with the 1860– 1861 Eulenburg Mission to , which was part of a broader mission dis- patched by Prussia to under the command of Friedrich Albrecht Graf zu Eulenburg (1815–1881)1 on behalf of the member states of the German Customs Union (Deutscher Zollverein, est. 1833). Also represented were the Union’s non-members, the Hanseatic city states and the grand duchies of Mecklenburg-Schwerin and Mecklenburg-Strelitz.2 The Eulenburg Mission is understood as an important diplomatic move made by Prussia under the Lesser German principle (i.e. a unified Germany under Prussian leadership and excluding Austria), and is regarded as the Prussian government’s initial at- tempt to represent Germany abroad. Prussia’s underlying aim in organizing the mission was to counter the influence of Austria (the Habsburg dynasty), which had been the leading force in Germany until the early nineteenth century. Although the mission fulfilled only part of its original purpose, securing only a treaty between Japan and Prussia—the Prusso-Japanese Treaty of Amity and Commerce (Ger. Freundschafts- und Handelsvertrag zwischen Preußen und Japan; Jp. Nippon-koku Puroshia-koku Shūkō Tsūshō Jōyaku 日本国普魯士国 修好通商条約)—it did succeed in gaining valuable information regarding the political situation in Japan at this time. The records of the Eulenburg Mission are today an invaluable historical resource (Stahncke 2000; Dobson and Saaler 2011). The (bakufu) received a number of foreign diplomatic missions in the 1860s; it also dispatched its own missions to the United States and . The members of these missions compiled records about Western countries (Matsuzawa 1993) and continued the “Japanese discovery of Europe” that had already begun earlier in the period (1603–1868) (Keene 1969).

1 On Eulenburg, see the introduction and ch. 1 in this volume. 2 For a map showing the political situation in Germany in the 1860s, see p. 73.

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Studies to date have paid little attention to these events in Japanese-German history, and this chapter attempts to redress this lacuna. First, I will outline the Tokugawa shogunate’s knowledge of Prussia and “Germany” prior to the Eulenburg Mission: what characterized German perceptions of Japan at this time? Secondly, I will examine Japanese and German diplomatic records to show how mutual perceptions altered as a result of the treaty negotiations. Thirdly, I will analyze how these mutual perceptions changed after the 1862 Japanese Bunkyū Mission (also known as the Takenouchi Mission) to Germany. And finally, I will look at travelogues written by members of the Eulenburg Mission in an effort to shed further light on German perceptions of Japan.

Japanese-German Mutual Perceptions Before the Eulenburg Mission

Japanese Perceptions of Germany To date, few studies have thoroughly analyzed Japanese perceptions of Germany on the eve of the Eulenburg Mission to Japan (Kerst 1962: 9–12). This might explain in part the general perception that information on Germany in pre- Japan was scarce. Although this period in Japanese history is often described as one of “isolation” (sakoku or kaikin), knowledge about the outside world in fact reached Japan regularly through the “Four Gates to the World.”3 In particular, information about Western countries, including Germany, was brought to Japan by the Dutch, who conducted trade with the Japanese from the man-made island of in (see Matsukata 2007; 2010). The Dutch monopoly on providing information about the West to Japan may have ended with the First War (1839–1842); however, Dutch scholars contin- ued to play a vital role in editing the Japanese translations of foreign geograph- ical works that entered Japan after the conflict. These works were influential in shaping Japanese perceptions of foreign countries. In the following section, I will examine four of the most noted works in order to gauge Japanese per- ceptions of Germany following Japan’s “opening”: Oranda fūsetsugaki, Kon’yo

3 It should be noted that the Tokugawa shogunate’s foreign policy was not called sakoku (liter- ally “a country in chains”) until the 1801 publication of Sakoku ron (On the Closed Country), a Japanese translation of ’s book (first published in English in 1727). The “Four Gates to the World” were the connection denoted the contacts of the Matsumae feudal domain with the Ainu in (present-day Hokkaido), of the Tsushima feudal domain to , the Nagasaki connection with Dutch and Chinese traders, and of the Satsuma feudal domain to the Ryukyu kingdom.