Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40050160 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA ! Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century A dissertation presented by Michael Alan Thornton to The Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of History Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2018 ! © 2018 Michael Alan Thornton All rights reserved. ""! ! Dissertation Advisor: Professor Andrew Gordon Michael Alan Thornton Settling Sapporo: City and State in the Global Nineteenth Century Abstract In this thesis, I investigate the role of citybuilding in the colonization of Japan’s northernmost island, Hokkaido, during the nineteenth century. Using archival sources from the United States and Japan, I explore five spatial strategies deployed by the Japanese state to assert its control over the region: planning for a new capital; mapping the city; encouraging and controlling migration to the city; administering the city; and modeling new forms of agricultural practice in the city for use throughout the wider colony. I consider the debates and contests that characterized all these strategies, and illustrate their importance in turning Sapporo from a riverside outpost of two houses into the indisputed capital of the region. I argue that Sapporo was essential as a centralized site of power and authority for a settler-colonial Japanese regime. Despite the strong role of the state, ordinary people—whether Indigenous Ainu or settler Japanese—made their own way in the young town. High levels of transience, temporary residence, and disorder characterized Sapporo’s early years, and its frontier location meant that the rule of law often had to be modified to encourage settlement. Yet this frontier location did not mean isolation: flows of people, ideas, and plant matter connected Sapporo to the rest of Japan, and further afield. Its founding and development took place in a world that was become much more closely connected by the second half of the century. Sapporo’s functions, therefore, evolved from a version of Japan’s early modern castle towns toward the central node in a modernizing bureaucratic apparatus that envisioned a much more powerful state role in territorial expansion in northern Japan. iii Table of Contents Abstract – iii Table of Contents – iv Dates, Measures, and Abbreviations – vi Introduction – p. 1 Context Historiography New Directions: Methods and Theories Dissertation Structure and Argument Chapter 1 – p. 37 Envisioning a Capital: The Urbanization of Ezochi and Hokkaido, 1785–1882 Ezochi in 1785 The Shogunate’s Plans for Ezochi, 1785–95 Kond! J"z! and the Tokugawa Seizure of Ezochi, 1795–1821 Shogunal Retreat, 1821–54 Centralized Reengagement, 1854–82 The Birth of Hokkaido, 1868–1882 Conclusion: City and State in an Era of Territorial Reconfiguration Chapter 2 – p. 97 Mapping Sapporo: Past and Future in Plans for a Colonial Capital, 1869–1893 Mapmaking: Theory and History The Cartographic Archive Technical Analysis: Context, Format, Function Cartographic Narratives Spatial Themes Conclusion Chapter 3 – p. 183 Flows of People: Temporary Residents and State-led Settlement, 1869–1887 Demographic Overview Vignette 1: Migrants from Imari Vignette 2: The T!ky!-r! Brothel Beyond 1873 "#! Conclusion Chapter 4 – p. 233 Administering Sapporo: Urban Disorder and Local Government, 1869–1887 Lawless Sapporo: Bad Behavior as Criminal and Civilizational Affront Creating Order: Police and Policy Structures of Authority: City Government in 1870s Sapporo The Limits of State Power: The Growth of Civil Society? Conclusion: Settler-Colonial Urban Government Chapter 5 – p. 293 The Capitol Orchard: Botanical Networks and the Production of Urban Space, 1780s–1880 Agricultural Experimentation in the Settlement of Hokkaido, 1780s–1869 Fruit and Foreigners, 1854–73 The Origins of the Capitol Orchard: the View from Tokyo The Origins of the Capitol Orchard: the View from Sapporo The Capitol Orchard as Urban Place, 1874–78 Conclusion Conclusion – p. 345 Beyond 1886 Beyond Japan Revisiting Nineteenth-Century Japanese Urban History Glossary – p. 357 Bibliography – p. 365 #! Dates, Measures, and Abbreviations Dates and measures Japan switched from a lunar-based calendar to the Gregorian calendar, starting with January 1873 (the eleventh month of 1872 in the old calendar). Because of the complexity of keeping everything straight, I have written dates in the same way as my sources: 1871/4/3 for the third day of the fourth month of 1871, or 3 April 1871 if the source writes it so. There is one exception: I have not used Japanese era names for years, converting those into western calendar years (e.g. Kei! 2 to 1866). Changes in the Japanese currency systems are confusing throughout the nineteenth century. I have tried to indicate the value of items where relevant to guide the reader. In 1871, one ry! was made equal to one new yen. Abbreviations The following abbreviations for frequently used sources appear throughout the notes: HC Papers: Horace Capron Papers, Manuscripts and Archives, Yale University Library KJH: Kaitakushi jigy! h!koku LB Papers: Louis Boehmer Papers, Hokkaido University Library Northern Studies Collection SSS: Shin Sapporo shishi #"! Settling Sapporo Introduction How did Japan’s cities change across the nineteenth century? This broad question serves as a starting point for this thesis, in which I investigate the transformation of ideas about urban planning, forms of urban governance, and experiences of urbanization in the city of Sapporo, capital of Japan’s northernmost island Hokkaido. Today, Hokkaido is known for its wintry climate, agricultural bounty, and sparsely populated expanses. It is Japan’s largest prefecture by size, at 83,500 square kilometers, but only its eighth largest by population, at 5.5 million people. It has the lowest population density of any prefecture. Yet Sapporo is Japan’s fifth-largest city, with a population of 1.95 million, and a metropolitan region incorporating nearly half of Hokkaido’s population. It occupies an overwhelming position in a prefecture otherwise known for pristine national parks and rural spaces. Despite Sapporo’s present-day prominence, in 1869—when the city was founded—the area now occupied by central Sapporo contained only a few homes belonging to indigenous Ainu people, and the residences of two ethnic Japanese ferrymen on the banks of the Toyohira River. In the eyes of most mid-century travellers to the region, Sapporo was a desolate forest, “inhabited only by bears and wolves,” with little to recommend it to the merchant, bureaucrat, or tourist.1 How did the Japanese government decide to build a city here, and for what purposes? Why did the city become so important? What was the specific experience of urbanization in Sapporo from the perspective of the people who lived there? While the answers to these particular questions cannot fully answer the broader question of urban change across the nineteenth century, they offer a starting point for thinking about the relationship between city !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! 1 Kaitakushi, “Imin rireki shirabe,” 1878, 別 325-Im, Hokkaido University Library Northern Studies Collection (hereafter NSC), also available at http://www2.lib.hokudai.ac.jp/cgi- bin/hoppodb/record.cgi?id=0A016250000000000. 1 Settling Sapporo Introduction building, state building, settler colonialism, and the increasingly global connectedness of the nineteenth-century world. Sapporo offers an interesting perspective on the question of how Japanese cities changed in the nineteenth century, because in many respects it is dissimilar to cities in the Japanese mainland. Its relative youth in comparison to other Japanese cities means that we can trace very clearly the origins of city planning, municipal governance, and urban society, and thus gain a window into how people thought about cities in mid-nineteenth-century Japan. Similarly, it was planned in a top-down fashion by the central state, largely without reference to preexisting settlements, which offers insights into the ideal form of urban space from the perspective of official planners. Finally, it was designed from its beginnings as a colonial capital, the headquarters of the nineteenth-century project of turning Hokkaido from a semi-foreign land, tied to mainland Japan by trade and diplomacy, into a settler colony dominated by ethnic Japanese and governed by an arm of the imperial government. This meant both that Sapporo reflected the transplantation of ideas from other parts of Japan, tying it to forms of urban practice elsewhere in the archipelago, and that the city was the product of fundamentally different circumstances: a different climate, a foreign society and culture, and an economy undergoing massive changes under the direction of the colonial state. The desire to recreate a Japanese city on foreign soil was often at odds with a recognition that Sapporo fundamentally differed from cities elsewhere in the archipelago. More abstractly, Sapporo’s planning and