The Merchant's Tale by Simon Partner

Author:Simon Partner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Columbia University Press

The middle years of the 1860s were a time of great opportunity but also of great challenge and hardship for many. The very factor that created new possibilities for wealth and prosperity—the enormous demand for export products in the new treaty ports—was also deeply destabilizing for Japan’s economy and political system. Shinohara Chūemon made his fortune in the midst of dramatic upheavals, including the threat of war between Japan and the Western powers; the very real possibility of the massacre of both Japanese and Western merchants in Yokohama; samurai unrest and widespread acts of terror, many of them targeting merchants like Chūemon; the fracturing of the two-hundred-fifty-year old “Pax Tokugawa” and the threat of civil war; and severe economic distress among large sections of the population.

At the center of many of these events was the rapidly growing city of Yokohama, the outlet that connected Japan to the global network of markets and commerce. While some blamed Yokohama and its foreign residents for the ills that were afflicting Japan, for many the wealth and prosperity of this city were a siren call, luring them from all parts of Japan and the world to share in the opportunities created by its rapid growth. A huge outpouring of printed materials and other media created alluring images of this exotic place, where strange customs, beautiful women, exciting new technologies, and new economic opportunities could all be enjoyed.

The processes of economic, cultural, technical, and human exchange that took place in Yokohama were also influential in creating new understandings of the world and of Japan’s place in it. For many Japanese, this meant casting aside long-established preconceptions and prejudices and reconceiving the meanings of lifestyle, class, race, civilization, and indeed of “Japan” itself. In the West, too, a new “Japan” was being created through print media, photography, souvenirs, exhibitions, arts and crafts collections, and performances—many of them mediated by the commercial marketplace of Yokohama. The images of Japan were both crafted and commodified—exotic, erotic, and looking back to Japan’s ancient traditions—but also exquisite, original, exhibiting extraordinary artistic and physical prowess and looking forward to Japan’s new role as a rapidly modernizing society taking its place in the community of nations.

The middle years of the decade brought great prosperity for Chūemon. They also brought about a shift in his perception of his spatial and political identity. He started his sojourn in Yokohama as a subject of the shogun and a representative of his “country,” Kōshū. But by the mid-1860s his business activities extended well beyond the boundaries of Kōshū as he adjusted to a new frame of reference that was both national and international. And while he remained loyal to the shogunate and no doubt abhorred the idea of revolution, it is also possible to see him reevaluating his identity and coming to understand what it might mean to be “Japanese.” It would not be long indeed before Chūemon was called on to cast aside his old loyalties and take on a new identity as citizen and subject of a unified Japan and its new symbol, the emperor.

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