Reading notes on Yasuoka Akio and Suzue Ei'ichi

Source 1: Soejima Taneomi by Yasuoka Akio
(Tokyo: Yoshikawa Kōbunkan, 2012.)

There's a chapter on Soejima Taneomi's involvement in the disputes with the Russian Empire over Karafuto/Sakhalin. Typically of positivist history on early Japanese colonialism, the author doesn't say a word about the indigenous people of southern Sakhalin whose land was being argued over by two competing imperial powers. For that matter, it doesn't say anything about the Ainu removal or motivations behind forcibly removing a people from their native land after giving up a land claim, or even a word about the Japanese settlers for that matter who, in some cases, had lived on Sakhalin for their entire lives and were largely forced to return to Japan. However, the chapter provides good background of the dispute from a (strictly) statist. top-down point of view.

What this book does very well is give a brief but interesting background of Tokugawa-period fears over a Russian push southward. While Morris-Suzuki does this in regards to the first decade of the 19th century, Yasuoka discusses the bakumatsu period fears over Russian colonization, and the founding of the 北門社/Hokumonsha: an organization that lobbied for more aggressive Japanese colonization of Ainu Moshir. There seems to be relatively little about the Hokumonsha, but this would be an interesting direction to look into.

Critically, we learn that Japanese-Russian negotiations took place partly in Hakodate and that the Japanese were aided by Ivan Dimitrovich Kastkin (St. Nicholas of Japan), who tutored Soejima's nephew in Russian studies. This immediately calls into question of whether -- by the Meiji period -- there were serious concerns over whether Russia had immediate plans to colonize Hokkaido itself. This is to say, if they held these negotiations in Hokkaido, the Russians likely recognized Japanese sovereignty over the island, calling into question the sense of crisis that seemed to push these negotiations forward. And, the anxiety over Japanese/Russian(/Ainu) "mixed residence" (雑居) areas is interesting but not explained fully. We learn about incidents that occurred in these areas, but the author doesn't go into it in detail. Is it a question of violence? Or were there other things happening that the Japanese state was anxious about?

Soejima himself, it seems, is a dead end, though I do have a copy of his writings in English and Japanese on the negotiations with the Russians. Still, other than the fact that he didn't feel the need to mention the Ainu or any other indigenous people of Sakhalin and that in and of itself being quite telling, there's not much there to work with.

Also, the Russian motivations were not that clear. Yasuoka argues they wanted it as a place to dump criminals (罪人放竄/zainin bouzan), but is that all?

Key points for future study:

• E.K. Byutsov (Butzow), the Russian diplomat who was stationed in Tokyo and then Beijing. He pressed the issue, apparently with great effectiveness.
• Harry Parkes is mentioned as spurring on Japanese negotiations, however, according to Horace Capron, he thought Hokkaido was a wasteland where nothing would grow-- what was his motivation for hoping the Japanese would take possession of Sakhalin if he thought it was useless land?
• Fukumoto Bunpei and Yamatoyo Ichiro, partly based on Fukumoto's tutor, Fujikawa Sankei's lectures on Sakhalin, founded the Hokumonsha and lobbied the Tokugawa and Meiji governments. Fukumoto himself lived on Sakhalin and toured the island by himself. His writing on the Ainu -- if there is any -- might be worth looking into.
• St. Nicholas, while not that interesting in and of himself, might be interesting if paired with John Batchelor, since -- as Oguma Eiji wrote -- there was a great deal of Japanese anxiety over the latter. What role did these missionaries play as exogenous others in relation to both the colonization of the Ainu and in regards to international politics?

Source 2: Kaitakushi Monjo wo Yomu by Suzue Ei'ichi.

(Tokyo: Yūzankaku Shuppan, 1989.)

Despite the name, this is not only not a source book, but is also not a detailed analysis of key Kaitakushi documents. If anything, this strange little book is a vague rumination over the nature of law and state sovereignty as Japan -- according to the author -- moved from the 近世 to 近代 periods ("early modern" to "modern"). The periodization as cause rather than effect is ridiculous. Not only because periodization is completely made up and ideologically driven and should never be treated as a metaphysical reality, but also because Suzue seems to say that because Japan was entering the "modern" period, legal institutions were dragged along with it. Rather than, for example, the Westernization of Japanese administrative and tort law as intimately linked to the changing nature of sovereignty and subjectivity in late Tokugawa and Meiji Japan (and as so many scholars have argued regarding the Japanese adoption of international law or the Westernization of Japanese criminal law). 

I read two chapters in full: (II-3) 北海道の特例 ("Hokkaido's Exceptionality") and (II-3)「勧農規則」の性格 ("The Nature of the 'Encouragement of Agriculture' Regulation"). The former is arguing that there was a slight difference in how Hokkaido adapted how new laws and ordinances were publicly announced, enacted, and enforced, apparently due to concerned over communication during Hokkaido's comparatively harsh winters. Nothing mind-blowing, though we learn that Okinawa was similarly treated as an exception. The Ainu and Ryukyuans were, of course, in what Agamben would call a "state of exception" during this period, where their rights as normal citizens were not recognized and in Hokkaido. In the case of the Ainu, especially, their rights to sovereignty over the land or private property were negated. Suzue ignores this legal "exceptionality" completely, and focuses on this small detail. Even where he does, I suspect the link with Ryukyu means there was more going on than harsh winters. 

The second chapter, and I suspect maybe the entire book, continues the basic thesis that the coming of the 近代 is the egg to the chicken that is the changing nature of public proclamation of laws. In this chapter in particular, however, Suzue characterizes the nature of this law which was designed to provide financial assistance to farmers as quintessentially "early modern", and seems surprised that the law was classified as a "development" (開墾) law rather than a "immigration" (移民) law, without going into how or why in any deeper way. To me, if you take a bunch of rice farmers from subtropical Kagoshima and drop them in eastern Hokkaido and expect them to grow wheat or raise cattle and deal with -20° winters, it seems reasonable and "modern" for the state to provide short-term financial aid. The Japanese government still subsidizes farmers when needed, so I truly to get this periodization scheme. 

Moreover, almost the entire section is not discussing this so much as it is discussing whether the law was promulgated or not, since the original manuscript doesn't exist and all we have left is copies. Yamada Shinichi's book, as far as I remember, went into the law in some detail and didn't treat is as a hypothetical as Suzue does.

The law itself is interesting as a counter-point to the 旧土人保護法 in that it is doing the same thing, basically, for the opposite ends. It's about accelerating the "development" of Ainu land, whereas the 旧土人保護法 was about ensuring Ainu would not gain normal property laws and that their land could be appropriated by the state.

All in all, Suzue is up front that this second chapter is conjecture, and it shows.

Key points for future study:

• It would be worth going back to Yamada Shinichi to see what he says about it. 
• Aside from Suzue's trivial discussion of periodization, the question of "法令公布制度の近代化" is very important-- the legal scope in which Hokkaido was developed was part of a wider drive to Westernize. At a later point, doing a detailed close reading and expanding on this argument might be useful.
• The author references Kaitakushi legal sourcebooks that might be worth looking at: 開拓使布令録, 開拓使事業報告, and 布令類聚, and 事業報告, and while he doesn't give specific names, he references the existence of internal Kaitakushi and public Hokkaido newspapers that were used to spread details about legal changes.