Dottorato di ricerca in Lingue, Culture e Società Scuola di Dottorato in Lingue, Culture e Società XXVI Ciclo (A.A. 2010/2011―A.A. 2012/2013) The termination of the Ryukyuan embassies to Edo: an investigation of the bakumatsu period through the lens of a tripartite power relationship and its world SETTORE SCIENTIFICO DISCIPLINARE DI AFFERENZA:[L-OR/23] Tesi di Dottorato di Tinello Marco, 955866 Coordinatore del Dottorato Tutore del Dottorando Prof. SQUARCINI Federico Prof. CAROLI Rosa Co-tutore del Dottorando Prof. SMITS Gregory 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgements 6 Introduction Chapter 1-The Ryukyuan embassies to Edo: history of a three partners’ power relation in the context of the taikun diplomacy 31 1.1. Foundation of the taikun diplomacy and the beginning of the Ryukyuan embassies 34 1.2. The Ryukyuan embassies of the Hōei and Shōtoku eras 63 1.3. Ryukyuan embassies in the nineteenth century 90 Chapter 2-Changes in East Asia and Ryukyu in the first half of the nineteenth century: counter-measures of Shuri, Kagoshima and Edo to the pressures on Ryukyu by the Western powers 117 2.1. Western powers in Ryukyu after the Opium War and the Treaty of Nanjing 119 2.2. Countermeasures of the Shuri government to the Gaikantorai jiken 137 2.3. Countermeasures of Kagoshima and Edo after the arrival of Westerners in Ryukyu 152 Chapter 3-Responses of Edo, Kagoshima and Shuri to the conclusion of international treaties: were Ryukyuan embassies compatible with the stipulations of the treaties? 177 3.1. Responses of Edo and Kagoshima to the Ansei Treaties 179 3.2. Responses of the royal government of Shuri to the international treaties 198 3.3. The opening of the Ryukyu kingdom 216 2 3.4. “Reciprocal friendship” and “elimination of the official-followers:” clashes between Shuri and the French 225 Chapter 4-Movements of Edo, Satsuma and Shuri against the background of the postponement of the 1856 and 1858 missions 246 4.1. The postponement of the mission planned for 1856 248 4.2. The postponement of the mission planned for 1858 257 4.3. The missions of 1856 and 1858 seen from Shuri’s standpoint 277 Chapter 5-The postponement of the 1862 Ryukyuan mission to Edo 291 5.1. June 1860: Postponement of the Ryukyuan mission planned for 1862 293 5.2. Considerations with regard to the postponement of 1860 302 5.3. A bakufu loan for Satsuma 312 Chapter 6-The end of the Ryukyuan embassies to Edo 331 6.1. The suspension of the Ryukyuan mission planned for the fall of 1862 332 6.2. The evolution of Tadayoshi’s sankin kōtai schedule during the bakumatsu 339 Chapter 7-Epilogue and Conclusions 360 7.1. The Ryūkyū shobun seen from the Ryukyuan embassies to Japan 360 7.2. The Satsuma domain during the final years of the Tokugawa shogunate 377 7.3. The 1872 Ryukyuan mission seen from Shuri’s perspective 384 7.4. Conclusions 395 Works Cited 408 3 Acknowledgements First, I would like to thank my tutors, Professor Rosa Caroli, for her constant support and invaluable guidance and advice throughout the Doctoral course and thesis, and Professor Gregory Smits, whose competence and insights helped me to situate my study in a larger framework. I am particularly grateful to Professor Kamiya Nobuyuki for carefully teaching me to read and interpret early-modern Japanese and Ryukyuan primary sources. I am also very grateful to the never-ending support of the Institute of Okinawan Studies, Hosei University, especially to Professors Yaka Munehiko, Yasue Takashi, and Iida Taizō. A very special thanks to Professor Tokunō Yoshimi, who generously offered me the opportunity to co-author an article and who helped me to interpret a considerable number of documentary sources. I would also like to thank Professor Takeuchi Mitsuhiro, who kindly accepted to read and provide comments on my Japanese articles. A special thanks goes to Professor Ellen Van Goethem for her competence and patience in reading my English. I am also very grateful to my friends who offered me a much needed means of escape from my studies while helping me to keep things in perspective. Finally, my deepest thanks to my “families,” both in Japan and Italy, for their support, encouragement and patience during the entire Doctoral course. 4 Note on Usage Japanese words are transcribed according to the Hepburn system. Names are written in Japanese fashion, with family names first and personal names second. Macrons are added to all Japanese place names except for Tokyo, Osaka and Kyoto, which are commonly printed without them in English-language publications. Macrons have also been excluded on those common nouns, such as daimyo, bakufu and shogun, found in English dictionaries. All translations of primary sources in the text are my own unless stated otherwise. Prior to 1873 Japan used a lunisolar calendar; for dates in the translation of primary sources I have followed the historiographic convention to express them in the year/month/day format. I provide the conversion of those dates to the Gregorian calendar in the text or in the notes. 5 Introduction In this study I argue that the kingdom of Ryukyu played a significant and hitherto unacknowledged role in Japanese politics of the bakumatsu era. I will use the missions scheduled to be dispatched from Ryukyu to Edo during those turbulent years as a lens through which I will try to demonstrate my argument. Below, I will first explain in which terms I intend to conceive of these embassies in this study. The tributary system which developed in Han dynasty China (206 B.C.-220 A.D.) was based on the concept of sino-centrism and on the assumption of the superiority of Chinese culture (ka 華) with regard to the surrounding barbarian states (i 夷). The common keystone of this ka-i structure was the logic of difference. The bilateral relationship between China and the barbarian states was, in fact, characterized as one of superior and subordinate where the barbarian rulers were expected to send envoys (tributary missions) to the Chinese emperor bearing gifts as tokens of respect and submission. Furthermore, the tributary system and its notions of inequality constituted the model for multiple and intertwining relations between states in the East Asian arena.1 There can be no doubt about the fact that all the measures and regulations which the Tokugawa bakufu enacted in the 1630s and 1640s constituted an integral part of an attempt to redraw the traditional ka-i view of the world from a Japan-centered perspective. To claim a place at the center of the world, it was indeed necessary for Japan—as it had been for centuries in China—to receive tribute from the barbarian 1 David C. Kang, East Asia Before the West: Five Centuries of Trade and Tribute (New York: Columbia University Press, 2012), p. 3. 6 states on its periphery. Within this order, the Ryukyuan embassies, Edo dachi 江戸立 or Edo nobori 江戸上り, played a key function. In fact, they were sent throughout most of the Edo period, on the occasion of the appointment of a new Tokugawa shogun (congratulatory missions or keigashi 慶賀使) and upon the enthronement of a new Ryukyuan king (missions of gratitude or shaonshi 謝恩使). The Ryukyuan missions, as well as the Korean embassies (Chōsen tsūshinshi 朝鮮通信使), started within the context of this new international order centered on the Nihon koku taikun 日本国大君, the title which the shogun used from 1636 in foreign relations. The creation of this new title constituted a very important transition in bakufu policy, marking the beginning of a progressive separation from the Chinese world order and the creation of a new interstate Japan-centered order, to which recent historiography refers with the expression taikun gaikō 大君外交, or taikun diplomacy.2 Regarding the dispatch of the Ryukyuan embassies to Edo, some of the most important works in English have provided the following insights. Ronald Toby argues that during the first phase of government by the Tokugawa bakufu the Korean and Ryukyuan missions were a central element for its legitimation and authority within and without Japan. Subsequently, the shogunate used those embassies to shape a new Japanese self-awareness in the East Asian framework and to create an ideal interstate order that was centered on Japan.3 Tessa Morris-Suzuki asserts that the bakufu through its relationships with Ainu and Ryukyu could boast off its supremacy over foreign populations. To this end, it organized such relations in order to heighten the 2 The “taikun diplomacy” will be explained in detail in chapter one. 3 Ronald Toby, “Carnival of the Alien. Korean Embassies in Edo-Period Art and Popular Culture,” Monumenta Nipponica 41, no. 4 (Winter 1986), p. 415; Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the Tokugawa Bakufu (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1984) 7 heterogeneity of those people. In particular, in the relations between the Satsuma domain and Ryukyu the tribute missions sent to Edo were of crucial importance because they explicitly represented the unequal nature of those connections inasmuch as “each mission was an extravagant and elaborately staged dramatization of the logic of ka-i.”4 Gregory Smits states that on the occasion of the dispatch of the Ryukyuan embassies to Edo the Shimazu of Satsuma made a great effort to display the exotic aspect of the Ryukyuan envoys while the shogunate took advantage of those rituals to exhibit its power.5 It is thus evident that many earlier studies in English have considered the dispatch of the Ryukyuan embassies mainly from the Japanese perspective; that is, from the perspective of the bakufu or that from the Satsuma domain.