Collected Writings of W. G. Beasley

The Collected Writings of Modern Western Scholars of Japan Volume 5

W. G. Beasley

• Publisher: Taylor & Francis
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9781873410554
• eBook ISBN: 9781134245659
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Ethnic Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Developed in close collaboration with W. G. Beasley, this book contains a wide and substantial cross-section of writings, thematically structured around essays in the special areas of Bakufu and Meji Studies.

Part I

Japanese Foreign Relations in the Mid-nineteenth Century

First published in BSOAS (Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies), vol. xiii (1950), 746–58

1

The Language Problem in the Anglo-Japanese Negotiations of 1854^1

AT THE BEGINNING of September 1854, almost six months after Commodore Perry had concluded his convention with Japan, Sir James Stirling, Commander-in-Chief of the British East Indies fleet, took a squadron into Nagasaki harbour to negotiate with the Japanese officials there. Unlike Perry, his primary object was not to obtain a treaty of commerce and friendship. War between Britain and Russia had broken out in March, and it was his duty to hunt down, if possible to destroy, Admiral Poutiatin’s squadron then in Pacific waters. This task, he realized, would be made much easier if he could use Japanese ports for obtaining stores and refitting on the terms usually allowed a belligerent by a neutral state; and if this meant that Russia could use those ports on similar terms, he was confident that he could deny her access to them by his own greater strength at sea. In fact, whatever secret hopes he may have had as to the ultimate effect of his discussions on Anglo-Japanese relations, Stirling went to Nagasaki principally to settle a point of practical importance to his conduct of naval operations. He wished to know in what light the Japanese government would view the use of its ports by the belligerents, and was ready to suggest, perhaps insist on, a policy favourable to Great Britain.

Despite this limited objective, there followed an exchange of letters, some weeks of waiting, and a number of discussions with the Nagasaki bugyō, the port’s governor, as a result of which Stirling obtained a convention similar in many respects to that of Perry, though somewhat more restricted in its provisions. It opened the two ports of Nagasaki and Hakodate to British ships, merchantmen as well as warships, as harbours of refuge and ports of call where food, water and stores could be obtained under certain conditions. It also provided that Great Britain was to share equally in any future privileges accorded to Western countries in Japan, except those which already permitted trade to Dutch and Chinese.

These negotiations have already been described in some detail from the British sources,² but the latter provide no satisfactory solution to the chief problem. Indeed, they emphasize it. The opening of the two ports was by Stirling’s own account³ the result, not of his demands, but of an apparently spontaneous offer from the Japanese. In no other negotiations with the West did the Japanese show themselves willing to grant as much as was asked, still less offer more. True, the Admiral was quick to see his opportunity and expand the terms of the agreement in every way he could, but that does not remove the essential difficulty, that the first move was made by Japan.

At first sight it seems that there are a number of possible explanations. The Japanese had long viewed with trepidation what they regarded as the predatory activities of Britain in India and China. Many, even among officials, feared that these would soon be extended to Japan. Some urged that a few timely concessions might bring at least a temporary safety. One might perhaps argue that this group, failing to understand Stirling’s purpose, and believing it would be impossible to satisfy him with terms much less than those obtained by Perry, had sought to forestall his demands by making a moderate and relatively innocuous offer. One objection to such a theory is that it would give insufficient weight to the influence in the formation of Japanese policy of those who opposed any kind of relations with the West, notably the supporters of Tokugawa Nariaki of Mito. The latter were unable to prevent agreements being exacted from Japan by the threat of force, but could certainly prevent the Bakufu from making any spontaneous offer of concessions.

In fact, it is not necessary to seek an explanation at any such level. Once one accepts as a general background the existence in Japan of a widespread fear and distrust of Britain, plus an expectation of a demand for the opening of ports, and a knowledge among officials of the terms exacted by Perry earlier in the year, then the offer made to Stirling can readily be explained. It was due primarily to the errors made in translating and interpreting Stirling’s letters and statements at Nagasaki in September and October 1854.

Stirling’s visit to Nagasaki was not the result of any sudden decision. He had planned it some weeks before while at Shanghai, and had thus had an opportunity to obtain an interpreter for his squadron. His choice, however, was limited. There were, indeed, a number of men on the China coast who could speak the Japanese language, but few of them were available for service with the fleet. Missionaries could hardly be taken on what were essentially naval operations in time of war. Moreover, the only British missionary known to have the necessary linguistic qualifications, Dr Bettelheim in the Loochoo (Ryukyu) Islands, was not by temperament suited for the task.⁴ More valuable would have been the assistance of one of the consular officials in China who had made a study of Japanese. The most proficient of them, Charles Gutzlaff, interpreter to the privately-organized Morrison expedition, which went briefly to Japan in 1837, and later Chinese Secretary to the Superintendency of Trade at Hong Kong, had recently died, but there were others who might have served. G.T. Lay had begun to learn Japanese ‘under an intelligent native’ before he went to Foochow as interpreter in Chinese to the consulate there in 1844, and had continued his studies until he had reached the interesting, if questionable, conclusion that the language showed so many affinities to the Foochow dialect as to suggest that the Japanese people had originally emigrated from the Min valley.⁵ Another official, Harry Parkes, later to be British minister in Japan, had begun to study the language in 1847 when interpreter at the Shanghai consulate. The Foreign Office, mindful of the possibility of opening relations with Japan, had encouraged him by offering to increase his salary as soon as he could show himself proficient. He continued his studies until he left Shanghai, handicapped by lack of time and books and by the fact that his only teacher was an uneducated Japanese castaway. He was unable to claim the reward he had been offered, but as late as 1851, when he was consul at Amoy, was urging London to allow him to visit the Loochoo Islands for a few months to improve his Japanese.⁶

These men were best qualified to act as interpreters for any negotiations with Japan, not only because they were experienced in that kind of work, but also because their knowledge of Chinese would have been invaluable. They would certainly have been spared from their consular duties for any full-scale diplomatic mission, but Stirling had no diplomatic standing on this occasion, no authority to negotiate formally with Japan, no intention originally of concluding a treaty. He sought only a declaration of policy from the Japanese government, and regarded this as purely naval business. He was, then, unable to draw on the resources of the consular service and was forced to provide himself with an interpreter from the only other source available, the handful of shipwrecked Japanese sailors who had found refuge on the China coast.

Four such castaways had close connections with the British authorities. One of them, Rikimatsu of Amakusa in Kyushu, who became a resident of Hong Kong and was employed as interpreter to a British squadron which visited Hakodate in 1855,⁷ is important here only as a source of information about the other three. The others had played a prominent or at least well-known part in Japan’s foreign relations in the 1830s. They were natives of Nagoya, the only survivors of a Japanese junk blown across the Pacific and wrecked on the north-west coast of America in 1834. They were sent to London by the Hudson’s Bay Company and thence to Macao, finally being taken to Japan by the Morrison in 1837, when she was fired on at Uraga and Kagoshima during an attempt to open up a communication with that country by restoring them, together with four other castaways, to their homeland.⁸ It was from these men that Gutzlaff had first begun to learn Japanese; and as the British government felt some responsibility for them, the Superintendent of Trade found them all employment when the Morrison brought them back to Canton.⁹ Of one, Iwakichi, we know only from Rikimatsu that he had died some years before 1854.¹⁰ The most intelligent of the three, Kyukichi, was employed by Gutzlaff in the Chinese Secretary’s office, first at Macao and later at Hong Kong. He learnt both Chinese and English, and proved to be an efficient and and reliable clerk, in which capacity he was also employed by the Hong Kong Land Office. In 1849 he complained that his salary was inadequate and was only persuaded to stay by an increase granted ‘on account of his general efficiency, and also on account of his being the only Japanese in Her Majesty’s service, who could render assistance in the event of an intercourse with Japan being opened’.¹¹ The increase did not prove a permanent lure, however, and in 1852 he at last resigned,¹² to be referred to no more either in the Foreign Office records or in the statements of Rikimatsu.

The last of this group, Otokichi, actually accompanied Stirling to Nagasaki as his interpreter in 1854. By his own account,¹³ he had travelled once more to America after the Morrison expedition, presumably as a seaman, and returned to China after an absence of four years. He moved to Shanghai, where he married and settled down, being employed occasionally by the British consulate. It seems probable that it was Otokichi who taught Parkes Japanese. He was certainly in Shanghai in 1854 when Stirling was planning his visit to Nagasaki and must have seemed the logical choice for interpreter to the squadron. He was accordingly engaged to act in that capacity aboard the flagship.

Since Otokichi could neither read nor write Sino-Japanese characters (kanji), and the kana he normally employed were inadequate for diplomatic negotiations, his services were only called on at meetings between British and Japanese officials. Stirling’s first letter to the Nagasaki governor (bugyō), in which he stated the object of his visit, and all subsequent written communications were taken first to Donker Curtius, head of the Dutch Deshima factory, to be translated into Dutch. They were then put into Japanese by the interpreters attached to the Bugyo’s office. Similarly, the Bugyo was able to send his own letters first to Deshima and thence to Stirling, though he usually preferred to have them read aloud aboard the flagship to be translated by Otokichi.¹⁴

Such an arrangement left ample scope for errors of translation, while the turgid style of Stirling’s English prose did nothing to minimize their number. Even in English his letter of 7 September 1854 to the Nagasaki bugyō, from which the discussions began, was not a model of lucidity. His main interest, it is clear, was in obtaining facilities for naval operations, not trade, but the wording leaves some doubt about the exact nature of his request (perhaps deliberately, in order that the request need only be specifically set out after the admiral had ascertained the initial reactions of the Japanese). Undoubtedly the letter gave the overall impression that he wanted to make use of Japanese ports in the war against Russia, but it did in fact ask only for information: that Stirling might be informed of Japan’s attitude ‘with respect to the admission into its ports of the ships of war of the belligerent parties in the present contest’.¹⁵

The Japanese translation of the document was at a number of points a still vaguer document. Stirling’s phrase ‘the ships of war of the belligerent parties in the present contest’, for example, became merely ‘those concerned in the present affair’. On the other hand, his statement that British ships would have ‘frequent occasion to visit’ Japan, which left it in doubt whether such visits would be made only after Japan’s permission had been obtained, or whether British needs would be taken as paramount, could not have been translated by any equivalent ambiguity in Japanese, even if the translators had recognized the need for it. As it was, they did not say definitely that ships would come, but neither did they imply that the decision would be left to Japan. Their version might be rendered as saying that British ships ‘may be expected very often to visit Japanese ports’. And at one point the translators substantially altered the tone of Stirling’s language. Britain wished as far as possible to avoid, Stirling wrote, ‘any act which may justly give offence’ to Japan. This was made into a thinly veiled threat, being translated as a statement that he wished to avoid, if he could, ‘any act of war against the emperor of Japan or his nobles’.

Had the differences been no more than this, they would probably have given rise to occasional misunderstandings, but would not, one imagines, have resulted in a total misconception of the letter, hence of Stirling’s mission. In the event, other more serious errors did have this result. In general, the order of clauses in the Japanese version follows more closely that of the English than would be desirable to give an accurate rendering of Stirling’s meaning. This suggests that the translators, not very skilled in their task, preferred to translate the letter one clause at a time. It is impossible to be sure that this was the case, or even, for lack of a copy of the Dutch version, to know at what point in the complicated trilingual process any particular mistakes occurred, but the result was to credit Stirling with aims quite different from those expressed in the English text. His request that he ‘be informed of the views and intentions of the Japanese Government with respect to the admission into its ports of the ships of war of the belligerent parties in the present contest’ became instead a request that the government [or the governor], having considered well the position, should ‘give permission for those concer...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title page
• Frontmatter
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction A Personal Memoir
• I Japanese Foreign Relations in the Mid-nineteenth Century
• II The Meiji Restoration
• III Japanese Foreign Relations After 1868
• IV Occasional Pieces
• Index