Source overview: Henry Frei: "Japan Discovers Australia: The Emergence of Australia in the Japanese World-View, 1540s-1900"

This paper by Henry Frei gives a chronological description of knowledge of the Australian continent and interchange with British Australia from the earliest descriptions of Australia by Portuguese sojourners in Japan and particularly through the wide dissemination of the famous Matteo Ricci map in Japan.

Besides dated allusions to "the Japanese mind" (which is the Hivemind that all Japanese are linked to), the "discovery" of Australia by Europeans, blithe references to "pioneers" taking control of that country, narratives of Tokugawa-era national 'stagnation', or ruminations on the degree of "authenticity" of Japanese illustrations of what the world might look like if it were the size of a piece of paper, the paper provides a good overview of Japanese geographical knowledge during the Tokugawa period and Meiji-era participation in colonial fairs.

On the Ricci map's afterlife in Japan, Frei writes:

In 1602, by order of the Chinese court in whose employ he was, the Jesuit missionary drew, what was for China, a revolutionary new map. Based on reports of Italian and Portuguese voyages to different parts of the world,’ Ricci’s map was widely esteemed for its accuracy and scientific exposition, and copies of it were sent from Nanking to various parts of China, to Macao, and almost immediately to Japan. As this map was transmitted to Japan mainly for scholarly purposes and was written in the familiar Chinese script, it reached a wider audience of Japanese intellectuals and cartographers than did the contemporary world-maps from Portugal, Spain, and Holland, which were either gifts for the shogun or passed into the hands of unappreciative bakufu officials, whence geographical knowledge went no further. 

The influence of Ricci’s map of the world was accordingly more penetrating and lasting. It served as an important basis for the making of Japan’s first printed world-map in 1645, which, meant for popular education, had all place names spelled in easily readable katakana. In this new world-map, the Southland, or ‘Magellanica’ [瓦喇尼加], still extended around the entire lower part of the globe, not far below the Tropic of Capricorn. But its shape was now drawn with greater consistency, almost as an even strip of land, except for three or four major protruding interruptions in the places where there was now definite geographical evidence of the Australian continent.

On Russian maps filtering into late Tokugawa Japan after the return of the castaway Daikokuya Kodayū, Frei notes:

In that same year of 1792, however, amid all the diligent copying of outdated Dutch world-maps, a new map reached Japan from Russia, which, in the fourth stage of our study, revealed probably for the first time the correct shape of the Australian continent.’ An up-to-date and precise world-map even by European standards, it had been printed on a Russian copper-plate press as recently as 1791. We have already referred to it above as the Katsuragawa Map, named after its translator, the rangakusha Katsuragawa Hoshū 桂川甫周, 1751-1809, who reproduced the map in 1794 with the collaboration of Daikokuya Kodayū 大黒屋光太夫. And here it is worth digressing to recount the circumstances that had allowed this advanced world-map to reach Japan from Russia, for its prompt transmission owed much to the Japanese castaway Kodayū and his repatriation in 1792.

In part due to the influence of these maps, he quotes Yoshida Shōin, the bakumatsu Nihonjinron-influenced revolutionary who wrote in his Prison Notebook (幽囚録):

South of Japan, separated by an ocean but not too distant, lies Australia, with its latitudes situated right on the middle of the globe. Australia’s climate is fertile, its people rich and prosperous, and it is only natural that various countries compete for the profit of that territory. England cultivates only one-tenth of it as a colony. I have always thought that it would be most profitable for Japan to colonize Australia. 

Quoted from 吉田松陰全集 II, 105

While the author describes this as seemingly holding "ominous prospects" for the future of British colonialism in Australia (or "for the future of Australia"), if we take a closer look at Yoshida's writings, we see a wider pattern emerge:

日は升のぼらざらば則ち昃かたむき、月は盈みたざれば則ち虧かけ、國は隆さかんならざれば則ち替すたれる。故に善く國を保つ者は、徒いたずらに其れ有る所を失うこと無からず、又た其れ無き所を増すこと有り。今ま急に武備を修め、艦略具そなえ、礮略足らし、則ち宜しく蝦夷を開墾して、諸侯を封建し、間に乘じて加摸察加カムチャッカ隩都加オホーツクを奪かちとり、琉球を諭し朝覲會同し比ひして内諸侯とし、朝鮮を責め、質を納め貢を奉る、古いにしえの盛時の如くし、北は滿州の地を割わり、南は台灣・呂宋ルソン諸島を牧おさめ、漸に進取の勢を示すべし。然る後に民を愛し士を養い、守邊を愼みて、固く則ち善く國を保つと謂うべし。然らず坐して群夷が爭い聚まる中、能く足を擧げ手を搖すこと無けれども、國の替すたれざらん者は其の幾きと與ともなり。

So while elsewhere in the book, Yoshida may well be calling for the colonization of Australia, he's also calling for Japan to colonize (kaikon) Ezo (Hokkaido), as well as Kamchatka and Okhotsk. He then sees Japan as taking possession of the Ryukyu Kingdom, seizing Korea as a vassal state, moving into Manchuria, and then south into Taiwan and the Philippines. While this was more or less Japan's colonial trajectory, with the exception of the Russian territories north of Hokkaido, there is no reason to see this as anything other than pie in the sky.

Yoshida provides a clear vision of Japan as a settler colonial power. And while no doubt while Yoshida's great popularity in the Bakumatsu period and into the Meiji may very well have spurred on actual colonial policy regarding at least Hokkaido, he was one of many thinkers during this time period who advocated colonial policy. Decades before, for example, Koga Kokudō (古賀穀堂) in Saga Domain also called for the colonization of Hokkaido and Australia as part of the same colonial venture, and, like Yoshida's proposal, also in the context of Japanese coastal defence. 

Entering Meiji, Frei refers to Fukuzawa Yukichi publishing Sekai Kunizukushi (世界国尽) in 1869 describing the countries of the world. This sort of document may be interesting in how, based on Western books and widely published Japan, disseminated what was essentially a colonial view of the world to a Japanese audience. 

Finally, Frei describes Japanese attendance at the Australian Intercolonial Exhibition in Melbourne, 1875-76 by Hashimoto Masato (橋本正人) and Sakata Haruo (坂田春雄). Hashimoto in particular wrote a report on the agricultural products of Australia and his racist reaction to some Australian Aborigines he met, who he apparently calls "black devils" (which the author glibly compares to Dampier's and Cook's descriptions of "coal-black savages" and the "wretchedest people of the earth"). We learn that Hashimoto produced a similar travelogue of his trip to the United states. Discussing Australia, Frei does not make reference to Hokkaido, however, it would be interesting to see if he does have anything to say. Both in Japan's participation in an intercolonial exhibition as well as his descriptions of how the British economically developed Australia, it could be quite interesting. 

Misc references

Just to clear out my Firefox tabs, I'm temporarily posting some notes from Google books here:

Nitobe Inazō on hygiene/衛生 in Japan refers to Faust in arguing that farming is the most "hygienic" of lifestyles somewhat dubiously quotes Mephistopheles, who says in an English translation of Faust:

Good ! would'st thou means that need
Nor gold, nor drug, nor witchcraft to possess?
Up, and betake thee to the field with speed.
Where thou the earth may'st hack, and dig, and dress,
To keep thyself and sense within the bounds
Of this thy narrow circle, duly care.
Nourish thy body with unseasoned fare,
Nor heed the idle riot that surrounds ;
Live with the beast as beast, disdain not thou
Thyself to dung the acre thou dost reap.
These are the best of means, in sooth, I know,
A man at eighty years still young to keep. 

From Faust; a tragedy by Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 1749-1832; Bowen, Charles Hartpole Published 1878 (pg. 109)

Unrelated to this, Darwin helped popularize a discourse of Ainu racial primitivity which we see in various Euro-American writings on the Ainu from around the time of the Japanese annexation of Ainu territories, and not long after this in Japanese writings. One N. Holmes responds to Darwin's writings on the Ainu, with reference to the contradictions and anxieties present in European race theory:

It is forcibly argued by Mr. Darwin that the earliest semi-human tribes were both bearded and hairy, and that their successors, in the course of time, by sexual selection, became more and more naked and beardless. Whatever the cause, the fact seems to be so, generally, with all the colored races to the present time. In this characteristic, the red Indians share with the Mongolian and Malayan populations. At the same time, they exhibit such well-marked differences in color, in the high nose, in the forms of the skull, and other peculiarities, as to distinguish them now from all other races of men. And this fact would certainly argue a separation from them for an immense length of time, if not an occupation of this continent since the beginning of the Pliocene period. Except the Ainos (most probably an isolated survival form a very ancient origin), the white race is said to be the most bearded and hairy of all. The suggestion of Mr. Darwin, that this character is due to a later reversion toward a primitive characteristic in the semi-human progenitors of all, is at least not inconsistent with the theory here maintained, viz., that the white race and color received its distinctive development from approximate types of darker shades growing lighter and lighter as in the course of migration from lower latitudes and levels they ascended to the fertile valleys of Central Asia; not suddenly, but as the slow effect of climates and conditions (together with inward causes) operating through a geological epoch, in which sexual selection may have continued to have some operation. (pg. 34)

From N. Holmes: "Geological and Geographical Distribution of the Human Race" in "Transactions of the Academy of Science of St. Louis, Volume 4 (1878-1886)"

Just briefly, for future reference, related to both settler colonialism, race, and agrarianism, Brian Dippie's 1970 book The Vanishing American; Popular Attitudes and American Indian policy in the Nineteenth Century seems to be useful for understanding this topic. 

Similarly W. Arens' 1979 book The Man-Eating Myth: Anthropology and Anthropophagy may be useful in unpacking the relationship between discourses of Ainu primitivity/savagery, and 19th century anthropological assertions that some or all of the Ainu had, at some point in the past, practiced cannibalism. 

Source overview: Hokkaido Kaisōroku (1964)

I've began selectively reading through this collection of recollections of the children of influential Meiji-era figures involved in the colonization of Hokkaido. Today I read through the first two chapters belonging to Nagayama Takemi, the son of Tondenhei head and Hokkaido governor Nagayama Takeshirō, and Dan Mariko, the daughter-in-law of the American Kaitakushi employee, rancher, and diplomat Edwin Dun. In both cases, I'm reading these short, intimate family biographies to try to better understand these figures outside of their formal role in colonial politics.

Nagayama Takeshirō

Takemi, the third son of Nagayama Takeshirō, remembers his father as a stern, almost severe man. It's clear that Takemi loved his father, though always at some distance. In contrast, Takeshirō was deeply loved by other soldiers, and seemed to reciprocate. He seemed to be a 'soldiers' soldier', being visited frequently by high ranking officers in the Imperial Army, and being visibly energized as he lay dying of cancer by news about the Russo-Japanese War, and particularly devastated to hear about the death of a friend. He was not, according to Takemi, completely without affection for his children, but largely the children seemed to be afraid of their father when they were young. There's a sense that there were some issues beyond the Nagayama patriarch simply being an authoritarian father. We learn that he suffered from stress headaches, apparently from overwork during the time he was simultaneously the Tondenhei commander and the Hokkaido governor, and in all of this, there's some sense of him as being an incredibly repressed person who is unable to connect with his own family members except in brief instances.

We learn that Takeshirō's last wish, while dying in Tokyo, was to return to Sapporo one last time, which he wasn't able to do because of his health and the arduous journey by train and sea to what was still then a remote location. Takemi recounts that his father said 「じぶんは屯田兵と約束しているから、東京では死にたくない、札幌の家へ帰って、あの庭を見ながらおれは死にたい、骨は、豊平の墓地に埋めて欲しい」(I've made a promise to the Tondenhei, and so I don't want to die in Tokyo; I want to go back to my house in Sapporo and I want to die there while looking out at my garden. I want my bones to be buried in the Toyohira cemetary.). About this, Takemi explains that his father welcomed incoming Tondenhei recruits by saying 「おまえたちは途中で内地に帰ってはならぬぞ、北海道の開拓というものは、容易なものじゃない、おれもおまえたちと同じように、ここの土になる」(You guys don't to go home to the mainland part way through. Colonizing Hokkaido is no easy job, and like me, all of you are going to become dirt here).

In this, there's a powerful sense of connection between Takeshirō as a settler and the land, for the most part typical of settler colonial discourse elsewhere. More on this later.

Edwin Dun

More briefly, the second essay gives a sketch of an elderly Edwin Dun from the perspective of his daughter in law, Michiko. While it consists of short glimpses into Dun's life, particularly during a reassessment of his historical importance in the post-war years as a sort of civilizer of Japan/pioneer of Hokkaido.

We learn that Dun was deeply moved by his encounter with the Meiji emperor, which is a sentiment seemingly shared by Horace Capron. Dun, however, was not simply awed by the experience of being honoured by a monarch, but rather claimed well into his old age (at which time the Meiji emperor was long dead) that 「日本でいちばん好きな人は明治天皇さま」(My favourite person in Japan is His Royal Highness Meiji).

Moreover, we learn about Edwin Dun's infamous campaign, evidently successful, to exterminate the Hokkaido wolf with strychnine. Michiko recounts this story fondly, using it to demonstrate Edwin's humility in simply saying 「″ご飯だ″と言われたから手を洗ってテーブルのところへ行ったら、お皿にはもう何もなくバターのおふたが取れていて歯形がついていた」(We're told "dinner!" but when we get to the table, there's nothing on the plate, the lid to the butter's missing, and there are teeth marks in it). Others have discussed this a length, but Dun is referring indirectly to ranchers losing livestock to wolves as a sort of domestic theft, which can be directly contrasted to the perceived value of wolves, foxes, etc., just a few short decades earlier in the Tokugawa period where these predators helped in the cultivation of rice by killing rodents. Similar to Leonard Cohen's line that "there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order", it is actually quite shocking how nonchalant the decision was on the part of Dun and his contemporaries to drive a species into extinction to minimize unpredictable loss and thereby maximize the profits of large scale commercial agriculture.

This too is a common occurrence in other settler colonies, including Dun's birthplace, the United States, where wolves, bears, and buffalo alike were largely exterminated to allow for high profits in ranching and to allow for uninterrupted lines of transportation to be opened. This is a particular form of capitalist accumulation which should be explored further.

Source overview: Eiwa Taiyaku Jisho

荒井郁之助 編 - 英和対訳辞書 (小林新兵衛//開拓使蔵版 pub) – 1872

I’ve been working to more clearly understand the semantics of terms related to colonialism in Hokkaido and Karafuto in the Meiji period. Authors such as James Hevia and Lydia Liu have written at length about translation and British colonialism in China, where certain terms in either language started to be treated as absolute equivalents with direct politically and ideologically laden implications and direct consequences in Anglo-Qing relations. For example 夷/yi and “barbarian” as supposedly referring to the British rather than a more nuanced translation of “foreigner”.

Not dissimilar to this, Nakamura Jun has talked about the phrase 土人/dojin (often translated as “aborigine” or “native”) which seemed to have experienced a sort of semantic drift from referring to “locals” to becoming a racial slur by the end of the Meiji period and thereafter. Given the richness of the research into this topic by these scholars and many others, I’m not going to conduct any sort of philological work on my own, however, I am very conscious of the fact that I’m reading an archaic form of Japanese and that many of the terms used in formal Chinese-inflected documents may have been archaic-sounding even at the time they were written. I’ve been keeping an eye out for old dictionaries

I was lucky enough to find a Kaitakushi-published Japanese-Russian glossary from the early Meiji period, which I glanced through and found 土民 as (through an English-Russian dictionary) “national” (as in, a member of a national community). Later I found a full Kaitakushi English-Japanese dictionary, the Eiwa Taiyaku Jisho, published in 1872, which after a thorough peruse, seems to be quite accurate and thorough.

I intend to use this (and hopefully, if I can find one, a Japanese-English dictionary from the period) to better understand texts from this time period. As both the nuance of Japanese words and English words have changed a great deal in the past 150 years, it’s something of a challenge not just to understand these early texts but translate them. So, for this, it’s useful to at least have a hint of what the intentions of the authors were.

More than this, however, I’m interested in, like Hevia and Liu’s studies referred to above, value-laden Western colonial terms rendered into Japanese and how these loan-translations were paired with or superimposed onto existing Japanese vocabulary. For this purpose, I did a survey of key terms related to race/racism, indigeneity, and colonialism to better ascertain how these ideas were framed in the time period.

In this dictionary, “aborigines” (pg. 5) is defined as “最初の住民” or “土人”, whereas “native” (pg. 310) refers generally to locals (“此土地の住たる人”), and in its adjectival form, to native plants, animals, etc (“根元, 生付, 生の”). “Indian” (pg. 238) refers strictly to India. “Savage” (pg. 415) is defined as “荒の？き人” and “猛悪人” , or in its adjectival form, “荒き”, “馴れて居るた” and “猛なる夷狄” and doesn’t seem to have been used to specifically refer to particular nations or ethnic groups. This is closely mirrored by Barbarian (pg. 39), translated as “バルバリン人”, “夷人”, “夷狄”, and while “barbarism” is much the same definition as the adjectival form of “savage”, added to this is “荒テ居ル不行儀なる蛮夷ノ” and “規則ナキ”. “Colony” (pg. 89) is defined as “殖民”, “殖民所” or “動物の一群”.

The fact that, at least in this dictionary, there isn’t a clear racialization of terms like “savage” or “barbarian” which – by the mid 19th century – were quite racist in English is interesting, as is the factual definition of “aborigine” as “first people” or “first residents”. This seems to confirm to some degree Nakamura Jun’s thesis. However, it’s interesting that there is strong association of lack of law and order and “savage”, which would make this an accurate translation of the English term. Interesting in that from Vitoria’s time forward, “Indians” are defined as devoid of sovereignty and sovereign power, which is the nucleolus of any legal system. They would not be savages because they’re lawless, but lawless because they’re savages. Finally, it’s interesting that (while I didn’t include it in my list above) “civilized” is not yet calqued at this time as “文明”, and “barbarian” is not so much translated, but transliterated, and the 夷/yi character is prominent in the other two translations given.