Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan Geographies of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan David L. Howell UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley . Los Angeles . London University of California Press Berkeley and Los Angeles, California University of California Press, Ltd. London, England © 2005 by the Regents of the University of California Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Howell, David L. Geographies of identity in nineteenth-century Japan / David L. Howell. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-520-24085-5 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Japan—Civilization—19th century. 2. Japan— Social conditions—19th century. 3. Ainu—Ethnic identity. I. Title. ds822.25.h68 2005 306'.0952'09034—dc22 2004009387 Manufactured in the United States of America 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 05 10987654 321 The paper used in this publication is both acid-free and totally chlorine-free (TCF). It meets the minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48–1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper). Contents List of Maps vi Acknowledgments vii 1. Introduction 1 2. The Geography of Status 20 3. Status and the Politics of the Quotidian 45 4. Violence and the Abolition of Outcaste Status 79 5. Ainu Identity and the Early Modern State 110 6. The Geography of Civilization 131 7. Civilization and Enlightenment 154 8. Ainu Identity and the Meiji State 172 Epilogue: Modernity and Ethnicity 197 Notes 205 Works Cited 237 Index 255 Maps Japan 2 Territory of the outcaste headman Suzuki Jin’emon 38 Hokkaido 111 vi Acknowledgments In the long course of writing this book I accumulated sizable intellectual debts to numerous institutions and individuals. I received funding for my initial research from the National Endowment for the Humanities; the University Research Institute of the University of Texas at Austin; the Joint Committee for Japanese Studies of the Social Science Research Council and the American Council of Learned Societies with funds pro- vided by the Ford Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities; and the Japan Foundation. The Northeast Asia Council of the Association for Asian Studies and the Princeton University Com- mittee on Research in the Humanities and Social Sciences underwrote additional trips to Japan. I did supplemental research and wrote much of a preliminary draft during a year at Keio University on a Fulbright Senior Scholar Research Award from the Japan-U.S. Education Commission. I made final revisions to the manuscript while in Kyoto at the Inter- national Research Center for Japanese Studies. I would not have been able to write the book without the support of these institutions, and I am pleased to be able at last to acknowledge their generosity. In Japan, a number of universities and archives facilitated my research. I owe special thanks to Hokkaido University, Keio University, and the International Research Center for Japanese Studies for hosting me during my research visits. I did research at those institutions, as well as at the Chiba Prefectural Archives, Hakodate Municipal Library, His- torical Museum of the Tsuyama Region, Hokkaido Prefectural Library, vii viii Acknowledgments Muroran Institute of Technology Library, and Okayama Prefectural Archives. Back in Princeton, I benefited greatly from the expertise of Martin Heijdra, Yasuko Makino, and other staff members at the Gest East Asian Library. Over the course of writing and revising the manuscript I had the opportunity to present my ideas at conferences and colloquia held at the Australian National University, Brown University, Columbia University, Harvard University, City College of New York, Historical Museum of Hokkaido, Institute for Advanced Study, International Christian Univer- sity, International Research Center for Japanese Studies, Joetsu University of Education, Kansai University, Montana State University–Bozeman, New York University, Princeton University, Stanford University, Swedish Academy for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Kentucky, University of Texas at Austin, and Yale University. My heartfelt thanks go to the colleagues who so kindly invited me to speak, and to the many people who attended my presentations and whose insights and comments have enriched my work. I should like to thank a few colleagues by name for their help and advice. Tessa Morris-Suzuki, Brett Walker, Anne Walthall, and Kären Wigen all read the manuscript in its entirety at one stage or another, as did anonymous readers for the press. Their comments were invariably thoughtful and thought provoking; I am sorry I have been too stubborn to follow more of their good advice. Carol Gluck read and commented on various parts of the manuscript in various incarnations; she has, moreover, been a great source of support throughout my career. Ronald Toby has likewise been an inspiring mentor over the years. Mary Elizabeth Berry gave an early draft an especially thorough and charac- teristically incisive reading that forced me to think more clearly about my goals for the project as a whole. Many other colleagues have offered counsel on the project over the years. I am particularly grateful to David Ambaras, Daniel Botsman, Susan Burns, Albert Craig, S. N. Eisenstadt, Gerald Figal, Takashi Fujitani, Andrew Gordon, Marta Hanson, Harry Harootunian, Christine Marran, Hirota Masaki, Kawanishi Hidemichi, James Ketelaar, Kikuchi Isao, Mitani Hiroshi, Herman Ooms, Gregory Pflugfelder, Henry Smith, Tomiyama Ichiro, and Tsukada Takashi. Tashiro Kazui was my gracious and generous host during a year at Keio University; more recently, Komatsu Kazuhiko and James Baxter created a collegial intellectual environment for me at the International Research Center for Japanese Studies. Acknowledgments ix I started work on the book while I was with the History department at the University of Texas at Austin and finished it after moving to Princeton University, where I am a member of the East Asian Studies and History departments. My colleagues at both schools and all three depart- ments have always been extremely supportive of my work. At Princeton I have profited particularly from the insights of Stephen Kotkin, Susan Naquin, Willard Peterson, and Ruth Rogaski. I have, in addition, had the privilege of working with an extraordinarily talented group of graduate students at Princeton; their comments have forced me to sharpen my thinking about this project and about history more generally. Finally, I owe a special debt of gratitude to my colleagues in Japanese history at Princeton, Martin Collcutt and Sheldon Garon. For two decades I have enjoyed their friendship and mentoring; it has been a great privilege to work with them. Matthew Stavros drew the maps and helped me to think about the most effective ways to represent spatial information. At the University of California Press, Laura Driussi and Sheila Levine offered encouragement and patience during the project’s long gestation. My editor, Reed Malcolm, was especially supportive at a time when the whole project seemed to be in jeopardy. I would like to acknowledge with gratitude the permission I have received to include in the book revised (sometimes heavily revised) ver- sions of work published previously. Material from my article “Territor- iality and Collective Identity in Tokugawa Japan” is reprinted by per- mission of Dædalus, Journal of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, from the Summer 1998 issue (vol. 127, no. 3, pp. 105–32) enti- tled “Early Modernities.” Parts of my “Ainu Ethnicity and the Bound- aries of the Early Modern Japanese State,” Past and Present, no. 142 (Feb. 1994), pp. 69–93, appear with the permission of the Past and Present Society. My article “The Meiji State and the Logic of Ainu ‘Pro- tection,’” pp. 612–34 in New Directions in the Study of Meiji Japan (1997), edited by Helen Hardacre with Adam Kern, appears with the permission of E. J. Brill. Finally, parts of my “Civilization and Enlightenment: Markers of Identity in Nineteenth-Century Japan,” in “Japan” and “China”: The Teleology of the Modern Nation-State, edited by Joshua A. Fogel (forthcoming), appear with the permission of the University of Pennsylvania Press. I first began work on this book more than a decade ago. I wish I had been able to finish it in time to show it to two men who influenced my personal and professional growth profoundly. My father, Richard W. x Acknowledgments Howell, and my mentor, Marius B. Jansen, passed away within two months of each other in 2000, and I feel the loss keenly. Fortunately, two others precious to me entered my life during the course of research and writing: my son, Isaac, was born just as I was getting started with the project, and my daughter, Momoko, was born well after I had expected to be finished with it. Much as I love my work, I have enjoyed the time spent in Isaac’s and Momoko’s company much more than my solitary hours in front of the computer screen. And speaking of love, I send it out to Koko, who has meant so much to me over the years. Chapter 1 Introduction The history of the world in the nineteenth century is an anthology of rad- ical change. The period from the French Revolution to World War I saw the impact of republicanism and socialism, industrialization and prole- tarianization, imperialism and colonialism, and all the other hallmarks of modernity. Among the many stories of metamorphosis, perhaps none is as striking as Japan’s. At the beginning of the century the country was relatively isolated from the rest of the world, prosperous and stable to be sure, but governed by political, economic, and social institutions poorly suited to cope with the challenges presented by an increasingly expansive and self-confident West. By the time of the Meiji emperor’s death in 1912, Japan, alone in the non-Western world, had joined the ranks of the advanced military and industrial powers and had enthusiastically em- braced the institutions and ideals of Western-style modernity.