Pär Cassel, Harvard University,
[email protected]. Working draft: do not circulate or quote without the permission of the author. Executing Extraterritoriality: Sino-Japanese Relations under the Treaty of Tianjin, 1871-95 Pär Cassel Paper presented at the conference “Chinese Cities in Transition: The Next Generation of Urban Research: Part 4” in Shanghai, 7-9 July 2005. 1 Pär Cassel, Harvard University,
[email protected]. Working draft: do not circulate or quote without the permission of the author. On a Nagasaki street in 4 November 1881, following a drunken brawl over a woman and an unsettled debt, 34 year-old Chinese barber Wu A’er 吳阿二 cut down Furukawa Yoshimasa 古川吉正 with a knife. Wu quickly fled the scene, but he soon came to his senses and realized he had committed a serious mistake. Hoping to get a more lenient punishment, Wu decided to give himself up to the authorities. 1 The competent authority in this case was not the Nagasaki Police Department, but the Qing consul, Yu Xi 余瓗. Having obtained a deposition from the repentant offender, Yu contacted the public prosecutor in the Nagasaki district court, Kawano Michitomo 河野 通倫, and the two of them started to hear witnesses and collect evidence.2 Unlike many other episodes in the treaty port era, the Wu A’er Case has not made its way into the vast literature on extraterritoriality in China and Japan. If it were not for a passing mention in Nihon gaikō bunsho and some scattered records in the Diplomatic Records Office in Tokyo, we would know nothing of the case, which was adjudicated under the Sino-Japanese Treaty of Tianjin 1871.