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China in Tokugawa Foreign Relations:

The Tokugawa Bakufu’s Perception of and Attitudes

toward Ming-Qing China

Mizuno Norihito 水野智仁

Ohio State University

Throughout the Tokugawa era, there were no government-to-government

relations between Japan and China. It was not until the Meiji government and the Qing

dynasty signed a treaty in 1871 that such a relationship was established between the two

countries. The absence of diplomatic relations does not, however, mean that there was no

communication between the two countries in the Tokugawa era. There were both direct

and indirect unofficial routes of contact between them. Japanese, with few exceptions

such as Tsushima 対馬 retainers’ visits to Korea, were not allowed to go overseas from

the mid-1630s until the late 1850s under the bakufu policy often called sakoku 鎖国 or

kaikin 海禁. Chinese merchants, on the other hand, were permitted to visit Nagasaki, a

trade port located in northern Kyushu. For the Japanese, this was the only way to contact

China directly. There was also indirect contact with China. Satsuma, a large domain

located in southern Kyushu, maintained indirect trade access to China via its tributary

state, the Kingdom of Ryukyu, which had been under virtual Japanese dominance since

Satsuma’s conquest in 1609. Tokugawa diplomatic relations with Korea also gave the

Japanese a chance to contact China through irregular embassies from neighboring

countries.

Nor did the absence of diplomatic relations mean that the bakufu had no interest

in associating with China, at least in its early years. Tokugawa Ieyasu 徳川家康, founder

of the warrior regime, in fact, undertook a rapprochement with Ming China. This began

shortly after the war in Korea, which Toyotomi Hideyoshi 豊臣秀吉 had launched in the

early 1590s, and ended with his death and the subsequent withdrawal of expeditionary

forces from the Korean peninsula in 1598. The result was that Ieyasu, failing to

overcome China’s hostility and distrust of its aggressive neighbor Japan, could not

accomplish the rehabilitation of official ties with China. By the early 1620s, his

successors lost interest in developing official relations with China and never again

attempted to approach China until the final moments of the Tokugawa era. As a result,

the trade maintained by the unilateral visits of Chinese merchants to Nagasaki and the

indirect contacts via Korea and the Ryukyus became the only connections between the

neighbors throughout the rest of the period.

Hierarchical positioning was a crucial and almost unavoidable matter not only for

Japan but also for any other countries which wanted to associate with the self-proclaimed

Middle Kingdom, before the Western principle of equality between sovereign nations

was introduced to East Asia in the nineteenth century.1 For successive Chinese dynasties,

1 I do not mean at all that there were no equal relations among Asian countries prior to the

Western impact in the nineteenth century. Within the Chinese world order, China’s tributary

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setting up hierarchical Sinocentric international relations based upon a tributary system,

called the Chinese world order, was related to the legitimacy of their own regimes.2 It

was not that Japan, as China’s neighbor, had had nothing to do with or been indifferent to

hierarchical international relations when seeking relationships with China or the

constituents of the Chinese world order. It had sporadically paid tribute to Chinese

dynasties in ancient and medieval times but had usually not been a regular vassal state of

China. It had obviously been one of the countries most reluctant to participate in the

Sinocentric world order.3 Japan did not identify itself as a vassal state of China during

most of its history, no matter how China saw it. In this traditional setting of international

relations in East Asia, it was quite natural that the Tokugawa bakufu also had concerns

about Japan’s international status when seeking to restore diplomatic and commercial ties

with China.

Previous studies have made conflicting arguments over the Tokugawa vision of

status relations with China. Their arguments can be separated into three categories. First,

it has been argued that Ieyasu and his regime, the Tokugawa bakufu, sought to normalize

relations with Ming China by accepting its superior status. Nakamura Hidetaka 中村英

孝, for example, argued that the Tokugawa regime sought to be reintegrated into the

Sinocentric international order.4 Examining a letter which Ieyasu’s trusted henchman,

Honda Masazumi 本多正純, sent to Ming China in 1611, Fujii Jōji 藤井譲二states that

though it contains no clear appeal for Chinese recognition of the vassalage of Tokugawa

Japan, the letter implied the bakufu’s recognition of Chinese superiority.5

Second, on the contrary, it has been argued that the bakufu had no intention of

placing its own country at a lower status vis-à-vis China. Arano Yasunori 荒野泰典 and

Nakamura Tadashi 中村質 draw a conclusion opposite to Fujii’s from the same source.

Arano makes no specific reference to a Tokugawa vision of Japan’s status with China.6

states were supposed to be engaged in equal relations. A good example is Korea’s vision of its

relationship with Japan.

2 John King Fairbank, “A Primary Framework,” in The Chinese World Order (Cambridge, Mass.:

Harvard University Press, 1968), pp. 1-19; Nishijima Sadao 西嶋定夫, Kodai Higashi Ajia sekai

to Nihon 古代の東アジアと日本 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 2000), pp. 15-112.

3 Ronald P. Toby, State and Diplomacy in Early Modern Japan: Asia in the Development of the

Tokugawa Bakufu (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), p. 139.

4 Nakamura Hidetaka 中村英孝, “Taikun gaikō no kokusai ninshiki: kai chitsujo no naka no

Nihon” 大君外交の国際認識：華夷秩序のなかの日本, Kokusai seiji 国際政治 51 (1974), pp.

10, 14. Nakamura did not, however, suggest any source for his argument in this article.

5 Fujii Jōji 藤井譲二, “Junana seiki no Nihon: buke no kokka no keisei” 十七世紀の日本：武家

の国家の形成, in Iwanami kōza Nihon tsūshi 岩波講座日本通史 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten,

1994), vol. 12, pp. 40-41. Kamiya Nobuyuki 紙屋敦之 also maintains that Ieyasu was seeking

equality with China, bearing the title “King of Japan” (Nihon kokuō) bestowed by the Ming

emperor. However, he does not clearly argue that it meant that Ieyasu wished to become a

Chinese vassal, for Kamiya also argues that the Japanese considered the vermilion seal as

equivalent to the tally.

6 Arano Yasunori 荒野泰典, “Taikun gaikō taisei no kakuritsu” 大君外交体制の確立, in Kōza

Kinsei Nihon shi 2: sakoku 講座近世日本史, 2: 鎖国 (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1981), p. 142.

110

Nakamura, on the other hand, states that the bakufu envisaged parity with China.7

Kamiya Nobuyuki 紙屋敦之 also maintains that Ieyasu was seeking equality with Ming

China, bearing the title, “King of Japan,” bestowed by the Ming emperor.8

Third, Ronald P. Toby states: “The Tokugawa bakufu had had ambivalent

feelings about participating in the Ming world order from the very beginning of the

[seventeenth] century.”9 He argues that the bakufu was certainly attracted by the trade

benefits and legitimacy which Chinese recognition and bestowal of the title of king

would bring and that though it once considered being reintegrated into the tributary

system, the bakufu eventually chose not to do so because of its concern that tributary

relations with China might mar the legitimacy of its own rule.10

One purpose of this study is to resolve the question at issue, and I will take the

position of disagreeing with the first and third positions. The major problem is that they

comprehend the request for resumption of the tally trade (kangō 勘合) system

unconditionally on the analogy of the precedent of the Ashikaga period and miss the

change in Japanese understanding. The tally, kangō (C. kanhe), was a trading visa issued

to tributaries by the Ming court.11 I agree with Toby’s analysis that the 1611 letter, as

mentioned below, did not take the form of biao (hyō 表), which suggests one’s will to be

subordinated to China. His interpretation of the Tokugawa request for the tally trade on

the analogy of the Ashikaga precedent, however, leads to an argument of ambivalence in

the early Tokugawa attitudes toward the Chinese tributary system. Supporting the second

position, I will argue that the Tokugawa bakufu consistently intended from its outset not

to be an inferior member of the Sinocentric world order.

My position however differs from those previous arguments in two respects. First,

I do not find any concrete evidence that the bakufu sought to obtain the specific status of

an equal with China. In this respect, the Tokugawa view and attitudes toward China were,

I will maintain, ambiguous, though at least premised on the bakufu’s unwillingness to

pay tribute to China. Second, apart from the problems mentioned above, Kamiya’s

interpretation is speculative, not supported by any evidence that Ieyasu was seeking the

title of king along with the restoration of the tally trade. He would also need to prove that

7 Nakamura Tadashi 中村質, “Higashi Ajia to sakoku Nihon: Tōsen bōeki o chūshin ni” 東アジ

アと鎖国日本：唐船貿易を中心に, in Bakuhansei kokka to iiki ikoku 幕藩制国家と異域異国

(Tokyo: Azekura shobō, 1989), p. 344.

8 Kamiya Nobuyuki, “Taikun gaikō to kinsei no kokusei” 大君外交と近世の国制, Waseda

Daigaku daigakuin bungaku kenkyū kiyō 早稲田大学大学院文学研究紀要 38 (1993), p. 92.

9 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 87; Toby, “Kinsei ni okeru Nihongata kai chitsujo to Higashi

Ajia no kokusai kankei” 近世における日本型華夷秩序と東アジアの国際関係, Nihon rekishi

日本歴史 463 (December 1986), pp. 45, 59-60. Marius B. Jansen has also noted, “The bakufu,

after considering the possibility of formal relations, concluded that the cost—acceptance of a

tributary role in China’s East Asian order—was incompatible with its dignity and with Japanese

sovereignty.” See Marius B. Jansen, China in the Tokugawa World (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard

University Press, 1992), pp. 1-2.

10 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 59.

11 Jurgis Elisonas, “The Inseparable Trinity: Japan’s Relations with China and Korea,” in

Cambridge History of Japan, vol. 4: Early Modern Japan, ed. John Whitney Hall (Cambridge,

Eng.: Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 236.

111

the Japanese understanding of “King of Japan,” which had originally implied a vassal

status to the Chinese emperor, had changed.

My position that the Tokugawa bakufu had no intention of surrendering Japan to

Chinese suzerainty naturally and logically disagrees with these arguments, coming out of

the first and third positions noted above, that attitudes toward the Chinese tributary

system had also altered by the 1620s or the 1630s. Nakamura Hidetaka saw “Taikun

gaikō taisei” 大君外交体制 (Taikun diplomacy or Great Prince diplomacy), which was

formed by the end of the 1630s, as a declaration of independence from the Chinese world

order.12 Fujii and Toby argue that the change occurred earlier. Fujii states that the

bakufu raised Japan’s status vis-à-vis China from that of an inferior to that of an equal by

the early 1620s, arguing that the term, tsūshin (C. tongxin 通信), used in the letter of

Honda Masazumi to Fujian Province designates the bakufu’s will to obtain parity with

China.13 Favoring Nakamura’s view of “Taikun diplomacy,” Toby maintains that the

bakufu’s rejection of the Chinese envoy in 1621 meant its rejection of subordination to

China.14

On the other hand, my position opposing these historians will draw the

conclusion that the cases which they have seen as signs of change manifested the

bakufu’s consistency in not participating in the Chinese tributary system.

Few studies have explored Tokugawa attitudes and policies toward China,

especially in terms of the status relations between the two countries after the 1630s. In

his analysis of the Tokugawa diplomatic protocols especially after the Manchu conquest

of China in 1644, Toby, a rare case, argues that the bakufu came to situate China at the

lowest level of its hierarchical international order which historians, including Toby, have

called “Nihon-gata kai chitsujo” 日本型華夷秩序 (Tokugawa world order, or Japan-

centered civilized-barbaric world order).15 He also regards the trade certificate or shinpai

信牌 (Nagasaki tsūshō shōhyō 長崎通商照票), which the bakufu introduced to regulate

the China trade at Nagasaki in 1715, as a Japanese proclamation of superiority over

China.16

Another purpose of this study is to offer a contrary interpretation. In other words,

I disagree that the treatment of Chinese merchants represented China’s status in the

hierarchy of Tokugawa international relations. The use of the Japanese era name in the

trade certificate and its resemblance to the Chinese-issued tally, for example, announced

nothing more than the Japanese rejection of becoming an inferior constituent of the

Sinocentric world order or of recognition of China’s superiority. Despite this explicit

stance, ambiguity remained in the Japanese views and attitudes over a status relationship

with China, even after it came under the control of the “barbaric” northern ethnic group,

the Manchu Qing. Tokugawa attitudes toward the Chinese tributary system remained

consistent, and the Japanese ideological perception of Qing China even showed some

elements of Japanese superiority. Nevertheless, the Tokugawa attitudes remained

12 Nakamura Hidetaka, “Taikun gaikō no kokusai ninshiki,” pp. 14-15.

13 Fujii, “Junana seiki no Nihon,” p. 46. The term did not necessarily bear an exclusive meaning

of parity; the relationship with the Ryukyus, which was by no means equal, was also referred to

by the same term.

14 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 227.

15 Ibid., pp. 155-56.

16 Ibid., pp. 156-59.

112

ambiguous and were not necessarily compatible with the intellectual perception which

engendered a sense of Japanese superiority because of the Manchu conquest of China.

The bakufu did not suggest any concrete vision of a status relationship between Japan and

Qing China, other than rejecting integration into the tributary system. Over status

relations with Qing China, as its Ryukyu and trade policies indicated, the bakufu chose

rather to avoid any antagonism or friction and did not hesitate even to make compromises

with the dynasty of conquest on the East Asian mainland.

The Tokugawa Rapprochement Policy Toward China

Ieyasu’s China policy began almost in parallel with or shortly after the beginning

of the policy to restore peace with Korea. The purposes of Tokugawa China policy were

similar to the peacemaking policy toward Korea. Confronted by Chinese and Korean

hatred caused by Hideyoshi’s war of aggression, Ieyasu wanted to eliminate any potential

external threat to the security of Japan. The normalization of relations with China, as

well as with Korea, would demonstrate the political capability and qualifications of the

Tokugawa to succeed the Toyotomi. With great interest in overseas trade, Ieyasu would

not have neglected China, the largest regional producer of silk which enjoyed a

significant presence in Japanese markets.17

In 1598, a group of shipwrecked Chinese was cast ashore on the Gotō Islands of

Kyushu. They were rescued by Satsuma, the domain of the house of Shimazu located in

southern Kyushu, and in November (?) 1598 (Keichō 慶長 3/10/u) sent to Fushimi where

the daimyo of the domain, Shimazu Yoshihiro 島津義弘, was residing. Yoshihiro

thereafter sent the shipwrecked Chinese to Jin Xuezeng 金学曽, the military commander

of Fuzhou, along with some gifts.18 Although there is no evidence that Tokugawa Ieyasu

instructed Yoshihiro to return the shipwrecked Chinese, he could well have done so, as he

was then presiding over foreign affairs, as well as domestic affairs, as the caretaker of the

Toyotomi regime under the mandate of the deceased hegemon, Hideyoshi. Upon

receiving the repatriated nationals and gifts in April (?) 1599 (Keichō 4/3/u), the Chinese

military commander dispatched a ship with 250 crew members in gratitude to Satsuma.19

An unexpected incident over the Chinese ship brought Ieyasu an opportunity to

take substantial action toward normalization of relations with China. On its way to Japan,

the ship was assaulted by a pirate crew of 150 Chinese and Japanese. Of the crew, forty

were killed, and the rest were cast ashore on the island of Luzon in the Philippines.

Shimazu Yoshihiro sent a letter informing his son Tadatsune 忠恒 (later renamed Iehisa

家久) of the incident. This letter, dated October 19, 1599 (Keichō 4/9/1), also noted that

two of the survivors of the incident visited Satsuma on a ship from the Philippines. The

17 Matsuura Masatada 松浦允任, comp., Chōsen tsūkō taiki 朝鮮通交大記 (Tokyo: Meicho

shuppan, 1978), p. 78; Amenomori Hōshū 雨森芳州, Manomori Hōshū zensho 雨森芳州全書

(Osaka-shi: Kansai Daigaku shuppan kōhōbu, 1981), vol. 2, p. 85; Nakamura Hidetaka, Nis-Sen

kankei shi no kenkyū 日鮮関係史の研究 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1965), vol. 3, p. 260;

Tanaka Takeo田中健夫, “Sakoku seiritsuki Nit-Chō kankei no seiritsu” 鎖国成立期日朝関係の

成立, Chōsen gakuhō 朝鮮学報 34 (January 1965), p. 33.

18 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen 旧記雑録後編 (Kagoshima-shi: Kagoshima-ken, 1983), vol. 3, no. 867.

19 Ibid.

113

survivors requested the return of their ship, which had been found in Amakusa, Kyushu,

and the surrender of the ringleader of the pirates. The survivors continued that if their

demands were fulfilled, they would report to the Chinese authorities regarding the

severity of the Japanese regulations against piracy, and that trade with China would be

resumed.20

Although it is unknown exactly when the conditions proposed by those survivors

were transmitted to Ieyasu, it was probably before late August 1599. Shimazu Yoshihiro

wrote to Tadatsune in early September 1599 (Keichō 4/mid-7). In this letter, Yoshihiro

mentioned that Ieyasu, informed of the conditions, revealed his desire to rehabilitate

relationships with Ming China.21 Two other letters which Tadatsune received indicated

that Ieyasu soon began to take action in compliance with such conditions. One letter

from Yoshihiro, dated August 29 (Keichō 4/7/9), noted that Yoshihiro had received an

order from Ieyasu through Terasawa Masanari 寺沢正成, daimyo of Karatsu in Kyushu,

to crack down on those who had committed piracy against the Chinese ship.22 The other

from Terasawa, dated September 5 (Keichō 2/7/16), informed Tadatsune of Ieyasu’s

decision to transfer a Chinese war captive, Mao Guoke 茅国科, from Karatsu to

Satsuma.23 Mao was a Chinese general who had been surrendered to the Japanese when

the Japanese and Chinese generals signed a truce in Korea in November 1598 (Keichō

3/10/u), and since then he had been under detention as a hostage in Karatsu. This transfer

proposed to repatriate him to China.

Along with the repatriation of war captives, Ieyasu decided to send a letter to

China. This letter, drafted by Saishō Jōtai 西笑承兌, was the first of three letters

addressed directly from the Tokugawa to Ming China.24 This one, dated March 12, 1600

(Keichō 5/1/27; hereafter the 1600 letter), showed the consistency of Tokugawa China

policy with its Korea policy and the linkage between the two. It did not take the form of

an official state letter (kokusho 国書), nor was it addressed from Ieyasu. This was

perhaps intentional; the letter, in a euphemistic way, indicated that it was issued at

Ieyasu’s request, mentioning that he was presiding over state affairs on behalf of his child

lord, Toyotomi Hideyori 豊臣秀頼, after the death of the latter’s father, Hideyoshi.

There were neither words of apology for the invasion of Korea nor a direct reference to

peace with China. Ieyasu seemed to consider a “victor’s peace” with Korea, based on the

truce arranged between Chinese and Japanese generals in November 1598, to be a

stepping stone to the recovery of relationships with Ming China, as the letter referred to

the expected visit of a Korean peace mission to Japan before restoring relationships with

China.25

20 Ibid.

21 Ibid.

22 Ibid., no. 795. Before and after Tadatsune received the letter from Terasawa in the seventh

month, anti-piracy regulations were issued with the names of the Five Seniors of the Toyotomi

regime to the daimyo of Kyushu including Shimazu, in the fourth and eighth months of 1599.

Fujiki Hisashi 藤木久志, Toyotomi heiwarei to Sengoku shakai 豊臣平和令と戦国社会 (Tokyo:

Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1985), pp. 237-38.

23 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 3, no. 807.

24 Ibid., no. 1017, 1025.

25 Ibid., no. 1025.

114

The letter also did not hide the growing Japanese irritation with the delay of the

Korean peace mission. Reminding China of its indebtedness to Japan, it noted

reproachfully: “Regarding the peace between our country and Korea, it is righteous that a

breach of promise and agreement would necessarily result in the execution of the

hostages. However, the Privy Minister [Naidaijin 内大臣, namely Ieyasu] is reluctant to

execute [the four Chinese hostages, including Mao Guoke] without strong evidence of

their guilt. If there is no realization of peace because no Korean minister visits Japan,

this will be wholly due to Korea.”26 It further stated that if the arrival of a Korean

mission and the restoration of the tally trade were not accomplished by 1602, Japanese

generals would again send troops to Korea as well as Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces.27

The greater importance of this letter is that it gives a picture of Ieyasu’s vision of

peace and a restored relationship with China. He hoped to restore Japan’s relationship

with China by reinstituting the tally trade which had existed between the two countries

from the early fifteenth century until the mid-sixteenth century. The letter states that

after making peace with Korea, Japan was to associate with China, bearing a golden seal

and a tally in accordance with precedent.28 The 1600 letter is the very first time the

Japanese expressed their wish for the restoration of the tally trade, and the same request

was repeated in the two subsequent letters which the Tokugawa bakufu sent to Ming

China in 1611.

Some historians have seen the request as evidence that Ieyasu intended for Japan

to be subjected to Ming China as had the Ashikaga.29 This interpretation would be valid

if the tally trade was understood as it had been in the Muromachi period. In that period,

the tally system fixed a grantor and grantees: the grantor was Ming China, and the

grantees were its vassal states such as Thailand and Japan. The purpose was to put

overseas trade under Chinese control within the framework of the tributary system and

was intended to distinguish traders from pirates, particularly the “Japanese” pirates

known as Wakō 倭寇

30 To be granted the tally meant to be recognized as a Chinese

vassal; the Ashikaga bakufu first received a tally from the third emperor of the Ming,

Yongle永楽 (r. 1403-24), in 1404, two years after the Ming dynasty had bestowed upon

the abdicated third shogun of the bakufu, Ashikaga Yoshimitsu 足利義満 (r. 1368-94),

the title of king and the golden seal. Since then, Japan had been a participant in the

Chinese tributary system and received one hundred sets of tallies upon the accession of

each new Ming emperor, until the last piece of tally was reduced to ashes, when the

house of Ōuchi 大内, a powerful warrior house in western Japan, fell in 1551.

The assumption that Ieyasu understood the tally system in this historical context,

nevertheless, not only lacks proof but also overlooks the fact that the Japanese

understanding of the tally trade was not necessarily the same as it had been. Two

26 Ibid.

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.

29 For example, see Nakamura Hidetaka, “Taikun gaikō no kokusai ninshiki”; Fujii, “Junana seiki

no Nihon”; and Toby, State and Diplomacy.

30 Sakuma Shigeo 佐久間重男, Nichi-Min kankei shi no kenkyū 日明関係史の研究 (Tokyo:

Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1992), pp. 352-54. Before Japan, Siam, Champa, and Cambodia had also

been granted the tally by Ming China.

115

Japanese historians, Tanaka Takeo 田中健夫 and Kamiya Nobuyuki, have demonstrated

that the Japanese understanding of tallies had changed from the mid-sixteenth century,

and that kangō had become a type of official trade that was no longer inseparable from

tributary relations with China.31

Desiring to establish the tally trade with Ming China, Toyotomi Hideyoshi also

refused to recognize China’s superior status which the tally originally implied. Before

Hideyoshi dispatched a large army to the Korean peninsula for the purpose of conquering

the East Asian mainland, a letter which two of his vassals, Hosokawa Fujitaka 細川藤高

and Ishida Mitsunari 石田三成, addressed to Shimazu Yoshihisa 島津義久, on March 7,

1589 (Tenshō 天正 17/1/21), indicated that their lord desired to restore the tally trade

with Ming China.32 The unifier of warring Japan never expected that his country would

be reintegrated into the tributary system, however. He believed rather that the tally trade

would be reinstituted if China first submitted it and that he then accepted it.33 His

wishful anticipation that the tally trade would be restored in the way he desired seemed to

have continued for a few more years, and the crossing of Japanese troops to the continent

meant the renunciation of his earlier optimism. Realizing that his grand design of

constructing a large empire of conquest in East Asia had been frustrated, he again desired

the restoration of the tally trade. This was not, however, because he intended to surrender

and be subject to Ming China again. In 1593, during the stalemate in the war in Korea,

he suggested to his enemies seven conditions for peace, one of which was the recovery of

the tally trade.34

The day after the peace conditions were suggested to the Ming

representatives on July 25, 1593 (Bunroku 文禄 2/6/27), the Japanese negotiators stated

that the bestowal of vassalage by the Ming emperor was undesirable.35 For the Japanese

unifier, the tally was one of those conditions necessary to proclaim that the war

concluded with a Japanese victory as he simultaneously demanded China’s surrender of

an imperial princess to the Japanese emperor and Korea’s concession of its four southern

provinces.36

One might argue that it would be premature to draw from those two scholars’

studies and Hideyoshi’s example the conclusion that the Japanese understanding of the

tally trade had changed. Kobata Atsushi 小葉田淳, for example, has demonstrated that

31 Tanaka Takeo, “Kangōfu, kangōin, kangō bōeki” 勘合符、勘合印、勘合貿易, Nihon rekishi

日本歴史 392 (1981), p. 11; Kamiya, “Taikun gaikō to kinsei no kokusei,” pp. 87-88.

32 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 2, no. 571.

33 Ibid. In the earlier part of this letter, Hosokawa and Ishida stated: “Since not only Japan but

also the ocean recovered its calm [as a result of issuing the decree prohibiting piracy in 1588],

China desirably dispatched a ship with a gift.” According to Fujiki Hisashi, the Chinese ship was

by no means officially dispatched by the Ming court but was probably a pirate vessel. See Fujiki,

pp. 232-33.

34 Tanaka Takeo, ed., Zenrin kokuhō ki, Shintei zoku zenrin kokuhō ki 善隣国宝記 新訂続善隣国

宝記 (Tokyo: Shūeisha, 1995), pp. 376-79 (hereafter, Zenrin kokuhō ki or Zoku zenrin kokuhō ki).

35 Sanyō shinbunsha 山陽新聞社, ed., Nene to Kinoshita-ke monjo ねねと木下家文書

(Okayama: Sanyō shinbunsha, 1982), p. 43.

36 Zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 376-79. One document attached the seven conditions. One of the three

articles in the document shows that Hideyoshi reasoned that China’s failure to express gratitude

for his achievement in the ocean brought about his punitive expedition.

116

in the late sixteenth century, some daimyo still perceived trade with China as within the

context of tributary relations.37 The 1600 letter indicated, however, that Ieyasu was not

the inheritor of the traditional understanding of the tally. In the letter, the conventional

order of the tally and the initiation of official relations was reversed. According to the

Ashikaga precedent, tally trade was supposed to be granted by the Ming emperor after

diplomatic relations, namely tributary relations, were established. In the letter,

government-to-government relations were considered to follow the restoration of the tally.

This reversed order furthermore indicated that Ieyasu possibly considered restoring the

tally trade in the same (or a similar) way as Hideyoshi had.

The style of the letter also indicated that Ieyasu had no intention of reintegrating

his country into the Chinese tributary system. If he had desired to be recognized as a

vassal by the Chinese emperor, Ieyasu would simply have followed the precedent of the

Ashikaga bakufu. He would simply have submitted a letter fulfilling the conditions as

biao (J. hyō) to the Ming emperor as his subject, chen (J. shin 臣). From the viewpoint of

the Middle Kingdom, a foreign state letter should have proclaimed its monarch’s homage

to the Chinese emperor, in compliance with fixed diplomatic etiquette. For Chinese

dynasties, to substantiate successfully the Middle Kingdom ideology through diplomacy

was a matter of the legitimacy of their power and rule.38 Two letters from Ashikaga

Yoshimitsu to the Ming emperor had been declined before 1401 because their styles

failed to satisfy the Chinese, and the 1600 letter failed in this respect as well.39

The letter was not written as an official state latter (kokusho) either, as mentioned

above. If it had been drafted as a state letter, it would have been addressed from a ruler

of Japan to the Ming emperor. Since the time that diplomatic prerogatives were taken

over from the imperial court by warriors in the early fifteenth century, state letters had

been written and sent to foreign countries in the name not of the emperor but of such

successive warrior rulers as the Ashikaga shoguns and Hideyoshi. On the other hand,

while not necessarily concealing that the initiative came from Ieyasu, the letter took the

form of being addressed from the three daimyo—Terasawa Masanari, Shimazu Yoshihiro,

and Shimazu Tadatsune—to the military commander of Fujian Province, Mao Guoqi 毛

国器, instead.

40 According to diplomatic customs practiced since antiquity in the East

Asian world, this letter could have elicited rejection by China. A diplomatic letter from

one country to another was in principle to be addressed from a monarch or a ruler to his

37 Kobata Atsushi 小葉田淳, Chūsei Nis-Shi tsūkō bōeki shi no kenkyū 中世日支通交貿易史の

研究 (Tokyo: Tōhō shoin, 1941), p. 23. Kobata demonstrated that some warring daimyo had sent

trade ships to Ming China in the name of a tributary mission. This indicates that while some were

changing their understanding of the tally, others still saw trade with China in the context of

tributary relations.

38 Fairbank, “A Primary Framework,” p. 3; Nishijima Sadao, Kodai Higashi Ajia sekai to Nihon,

p. 209.

39 Tsuji Zennosuke 辻善之助, Zōtei kaigai tsūkō shiwa 増訂海外通交史話 (Tokyo: Naigai

shoseki kabushiki kaisha, 1930), p. 301; Tanaka Takeo, Chūsei taigai kankei shi 中世対外関係

史 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1975), p. 59.

40 Regarding Mao’s surname, Kamiya notes “Mao 毛 Guoqi” instead, and mentions that he was

Mao Guoke’s elder brother. On the other hand, Ming shilu Shengzong shilu 明實録神宗實録

records “Mao” 茅. I have not yet discovered which is correct.

117

counterpart, as the phrase, “none other than monarchs take charge of diplomacy” (jinshin

ni gaikō nashi 人臣に外交なし), indicates. Although warrior diplomacy contained an

essential contradiction with this East Asian diplomatic principle because of the warrior

rulers’ domestic status relations with the Japanese emperor, neither China nor Korea saw

this as disturbing their diplomatic relations with Japan, so long as the emperor was kept

invisible in the diplomatic arena. In this situation, a state letter requesting normalization

should have been submitted to the Chinese emperor by Hideyoshi’s heir, Hideyori, during

the time before Ieyasu established his own regime in 1603. He should have submitted a

state letter under his own name; otherwise, his caretaker status—in other words, his

vassal status to the child master—would have inevitably questioned his right to take such

action. According to the diplomatic tradition of the East Asian world, dispatching a

diplomatic note or a mission to another country first meant surrender or subordination.41

And, Ieyasu knew what submitting an official letter first, with his name, could mean.42

It is unlikely that the Japanese were ignorant of China’s favored diplomatic

protocols. They would not have failed to fulfill the necessary conditions of the Chinese

requirements if they had intended to pay tribute. As mentioned above, the 1600 letter

was drafted by Saishō Jōtai, who also wrote other diplomatic notes, such as the letter to

Korea in 1607. Since the early Muromachi period, monks of the Five Mountains, the five

major Zen Buddhist monasteries in Kyoto, had been in charge of the administration of

diplomacy for the warrior regimes, and their knowledge and experience had accumulated

and been transmitted over several centuries. They were steeped in traditional Japanese

diplomatic notions and practices. Jōtai was a Zen monk of one of the Five Mountains,

Shōkokuji 相国寺 Temple, who had been in charge of diplomatic administration since

the time of Hideyoshi. He had inherited the ancient diplomatic notion of Sino-Japanese

equality based on parity between the Chinese and Japanese emperors.43 Thus, even

though the warrior rulers themselves may have been ignorant of diplomacy, their regimes,

depending on the wisdom of Zen monks, could have handled foreign affairs properly in

light of Japanese foreign perceptions and the Japanese vision of status relations in

diplomacy.

The arrogant and threatening phrases in the letter may also be an eloquent sign of

the Japanese stance against the tributary system, despite their great interest in recovering

lost ties with China. The letter showed that the Japanese unilaterally imposed a two-year

deadline for achieving peace with China and Korea and the restoration of the tally system.

As they had done to Korea, they then threatened China, stating: “When the year 1602

comes, [Japanese] generals will cross the sea [to Korea] again, and in addition will sail

41 Kitajima Manji 北島万次, Toyotomi seiken no taigai ninshiki to Chōsen shinryaku豊臣政権の

対外認識と朝鮮侵略 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1986), pp. 239-40.

42 In the peacemaking with Korea, neither proposing peace nor submitting a letter first was

Ieyasu’s consistent stance. See, for example, Kihaku Genpō 規伯玄方, Hō Chō rō Chōsen

monogatari: tsuketari Yanagawa shimatsu 方長老朝鮮物語:付柳川始末 (Tokyo: Kondō

kappansha, 1902), p. 21; Chōsen tsūkō taiki, p. 65.

43 Kyŏng Sŏn 慶暹, Haesarok 海槎録, Kaikō sōsa 海行惣載 (Keijō: Chōsen kosho kankōkai,

1914), vol. 2, p. 55.

118

battleships on the shore of Zhejiang and Fujian Provinces and destroy the towns and

villages of those areas.”44

It would not be surprising that the 1600 letter broke little ground toward realizing

the restoration of relationships with China. The letter left Bōnotsu, Satsuma for Fuzhou

aboard the ship of a Satsuma merchant, Torihara Sōan 鳥原宗安, in September (?) 1600

(Keichō 5/8/u). Torihara, along with some Chinese hostages, including Mao Guoqi, was

taken to Beijing, the capital of Ming China.45 The response of the Chinese emperor

Wanli 萬暦 (r. 1573-1619) to the Japanese mission was surprising. While making no

response to the letter, he promised to dispatch two commercial vessels annually to

Satsuma, though the Chinese authorities never relaxed their cautious attitude toward

Japan.46 Since it is unlikely that he was pleased by the insolent Japanese letter, he might

have been happy about the return of his subjects, or he might also have found a chance to

reduce tensions with Japan without disgracing his country.

The Chinese vessels, dispatched to Japan in accordance with the decision of the

emperor did not, however, reach Japan. They were attacked in 1601 by the pirates of

Itamiya Sukeshirō 伊丹屋助四郎, a merchant of Sakai, on the shores of Iōjima 硫黄島,

located to the north of Yakushima.47 Informed of the incident, Ieyasu seemed determined

not to lose the thread of contact with China. He arrested and executed the perpetrator.48

The Chinese record notes that the Japanese thereafter repatriated Chinese war captives at

least twice after the incident. In June or July 1602, (Keichō 7/5/u), Katō Kiyomasa 加藤

清正, one of the Japanese generals most notorious among Chinese and Koreans during

the war, returned eighty-seven prisoners of war. Two months later, another unidentified

Japanese returned fifty-three prisoners of war. Officially-sanctioned Chinese vessels,

nevertheless, never appeared in Japan again.49

Undertaking no further direct approach until 1611, Ieyasu attempted to pursue a

policy of rapprochement toward Ming China via its tributary states—Korea and the

Ryukyus. This temporary suspension of the direct approach might have been because

there were issues of greater magnitude for his newborn regime, such as the consolidation

of domestic rule and peacemaking with Korea as a stepping stone of the China policy.

When the first Korean embassy visited Japan in the early summer of 1607, Ieyasu might

have optimistically seen the realization of peace with Korea as a good chance to break

through the stagnant China policy. He thought of asking the Korean king to mediate with

China by sending him a letter. He did not seem to notice that the indirect approach would

still have a possibility to cause what he wanted to avoid. Saishō Jōtai, however, warned

against that idea and remonstrated with him, saying that such action would imply that

44 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 3, no. 1025.

45 Kamiya Nobuyuki, “Ryūkyū Ainu to kinsei kokka” 琉球アイヌと近世国家, in Iwanami kōza

Nihon tsūshi 岩波講座日本通史 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1993), vol. 11, p. 192. There is no

evidence to prove, but it can be conjectured, that it was decided to charge a merchant with this

duty in order to reduce the formality of the Japanese action. Torihara’s arrival in China can also

be found in Ming shilu Shengzong shilu, the entry for the first day of the seventh month of 1600.

46 Ibid., p. 197.

47 Ibid.

48 Ibid., p. 154.

49 Ming shilu, entry of the twenty-second day of the fifth month of 1602.

119

Japan had become subordinated to China as its strength declined after Hideyoshi’s

death.50 His remonstration also came probably out of Jōtai’s belief in Sino-Japanese

parity.51 Ieyasu perhaps understood soon that the idea would contradict the stance which

he had been taking in his China policy. He deferred to him with no fuss and never wrote

to the Korean king.52 In the same year, his son, Tokugawa Hidetada 徳川秀忠, also

remarked that Japan was not a Chinese tributary state, and this was a reason to support

Jōtai’s refusal to use a Chinese era name in his state letter to the Korean king. This

remark should be understood to mean that the second shogun followed or shared the line

as his father who still held the reins of foreign policy as ōgosho 大御所 and was the head

of the Minamoto 源 Clan.53

Two years later, Satsuma launched an expedition and conquered another Chinese

tributary state, the Kingdom of Ryukyu, with about three thousand soldiers. This military

operation was carried out under the authorization of the bakufu. Umeki Tetsuto 梅木哲

人 mentions that for the bakufu the Ryukyu policy had no more meaning than as a part of

China policy.54 In addition, the subjugation and incorporation of the Ryukyus into the

bakuhan system must have been a necessary political gesture for the Tokugawa to

counter the authority of the previous regime, which had regarded the archipelago

kingdom as being within its sphere of influence.55 Since the conquest of 1609, the

kingdom had endured dual subordination to both China and Japan, until it was finally

annexed into Japan in the 1870s.

The Letters of 1611

The unexpected arrival of Zhou Xingru 周性如 seemed to please Japanese leaders

and probably encouraged the bakufu to pursue peaceful measures. In1610, the bakufu

was considering military measures to break through the stagnation of the China policy, as

mentioned below. Some time in that year, Zhou Xingru had reached the Gōto Islands,

and on January 25, 1611 (Keichō 15/12/12) he was granted an audience with Ieyasu at

Sunpu 駿府 Castle in present-day Shizuoka. It is still not known who Zhou was; he is

said to have been either a merchant from Nanjing or an official of Fujian Province.56 He

requested that Ieyasu exert greater control over pirates, mentioning that he would bring

back a tally in the next year if his petition were heard.

50 Tsūkō ichiran 通航一覧 (Osaka: Seibundō shuppan, 1967), vol. 3, p. 2.

51 Kyŏng Sŏn, Haesarok, p. 55.

52 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 3, p. 2.

53 Kyŏng Sŏn, Haesarok, p. 55.

54 Umeki Tetsuto 梅木哲人, “Kinsei ni okeru Sappan Ryūkyū shihai no keisei” 近世における薩

藩琉球支配の形成, in Fujino Tamotsu 藤野保, ed., Kyūshū to hansei 九州と藩政 (Tokyo:

Kokusho kankōkai, 1984), vol. 2, p. 367.

55 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 2, no. 810, 815. For Satsuma’s conquest and rule of the Ryukyus,

see Kamiya, Bakuhansei kokka no Ryūkyū shihai 幕藩制国家の琉球支配 (Tokyo: Azekura

shobō, 1990).

56 Li Xianzhang 李献璋, Nagasaki Tōjin no kenkyū 長崎唐人の研究 (Sasebo: Shinwa ginkō,

1991), p. 131.

120

On January 29 (Keichō 15/12/16), the bakufu prepared two letters (hereafter, the

1611 letters) to Ming China and entrusted Zhou Xingru to deliver them to the military

governor of Fujian Province, Chen Zizhen 陳子貞.57 The 1600 letter had been drafted by

the Zen monk, Saishō Jōtai, while these two letters were drafted by Ieyasu’s Neo-

Confucian advisor, Hayashi Razan 林羅山. Jōtai died in 1607, and Konchiin Sūden 金地

院崇伝, also a Zen monk of the Nanzenji 南禅寺 Temple in Kyoto, had taken over his

position in 1609 but merely modified and wrote out a fair copy of Razan’s draft because

of the Neo-Confucianist’s poor handwriting.58 Razan’s drafting of the diplomatic letters

was indeed the only exception until the house of Hayashi came to dominate diplomatic

administration after Sūden’s death in 1633.59 Hori Isao 堀勇雄 has conjectured that

Razan had ingratiated himself with the bakufu and thus was given the chance to draft

these letters.60

The 1611 letters had some characteristics in common with the 1600 letter. First,

these two letters were neither state letters nor biao. The vermilion seals (shuin 朱印)

found on the tails of the letters connoted that they were written based on the will of

Ieyasu. One of them, hereafter called the 1611 Hasegawa letter, stated this even more

explicitly.61 However, in common with the 1600 letter, neither of them was addressed

from Ieyasu. They were addressed by Honda Masazumi and by Hasegawa Fujihiro 長谷

川藤広, the Nagasaki Magistrate (Nagasaki bugyō 長崎奉行).

62 The expected recipient

was not the Wanli Emperor but again the military governor of Fujian Province.63 They

also showed no indication that Ieyasu intended to pay homage to the Chinese emperor as

his vassal. Second, the letters made no reference to an apology for the Japanese invasion

of Korea. In the Honda letter, there was a term, ikan 遺憾 (regret), which referred not to

the war per se but to the frustrated peace settlement between Japan and Ming China in

1596 during the war in Korea.64

Third, both letters repeated the request for the restoration of the tally trade system

but indicated that the Japanese had no intention of conducting a restored tally trade in the

traditional way. It should be remembered here that some historians have seen this as

evidence of Ieyasu’s desire to be reintegrated into the Chinese tributary system. The

Honda letter did not, however, show that Ieyasu hoped for the revival of tally trade in the

57 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, pp. 340-41.

58 Hori Isao 堀勇雄, “Kaisetsu” 解説, in Hayashi Razan bunshū 林羅山文集 (Tokyo: Perikansha,

1979), supplementary volume, p. 14.

59 Ibid. Sūden mentioned Enkōji Genkitsu 円光寺元佶 and he did not know that Razan

was appointed to be the drafter of the letters. Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, p. 308.

60 Hori, Hayashi Razan 林羅山 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1964), pp. 140-41.

61 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, pp. 131-132.

62 Ibid., 130-32. These letters are also compiled in Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, pp. 342-43. Toby

argues that this was the first time Tokugawa Japan had announced its independence from the

Chinese world order; as we saw in the 1600 letter, 1611 was not the first time.

63 Diplomatic letters were supposed to be exchanged between equals according to the East Asian

diplomatic custom. It might be possible to say that the bakufu at least observed the custom at this

point if they had regarded Mao Guoqi and Chen as equals to the three daimyo, and to Honda and

Hasegawa.

64 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, p. 130.

121

conventional way. According to Ashikaga precedent, the tally came after Ashikaga

Yoshimitsu paid homage to the Ming emperor. That is, the tally followed the

establishment of tributary relations. On the other hand, as with the 1600 letter, the Honda

letter showed that the Tokugawa bakufu reversed the conventional order of the tally and

the initiation of official relations, as it stated that after receiving the tally, the bakufu

would dispatch an official ship (taishisen 大使船).

65 It further continued: “If other ships

arrived without our insho 印書 they will not be the ships which we dispatched.”

66 The

term insho suggested a trade credential with the vermilion seal, shuinjō 朱印状, which

Ieyasu and his successors issued to both Japanese and foreign traders for their voyages

abroad and for their visits to Japan.67 During the Muromachi period, Japanese ships

setting out for Ming China were required to bear the tally. The Chinese-issued tally was,

at the time, the sole authority enabling the Japanese to trade with China. As Ming China

issued and granted the tally to its tributary states every time a new emperor ascended to

the imperial throne, it embodied the authority of the Chinese emperor as the Son of

Heaven (Tianzi 天子). For the Tokugawa bakufu, the tally was no longer the only source

of authority for regulation of the China trade. The Tokugawa rulers intended to deny the

traditional authority of the tally and instead initiated a vermilion seal, along with the tally,

as another authority for regulation of the trade. Furthermore, in the Sino-Japanese trade,

while the tally was considered to be issued to the Japanese unilaterally as it had been

previously, a vermilion seal was intended for Chinese traders who wanted to come to

Japan, as well as for the Japanese going to China. Ieyasu had actually granted vermilion

seals to several Chinese visiting Japan, including Zhou Xingru.68 In the Tokugawa vision

of trade relations with Ming China, the vermilion seal might have had a wider range of

application than the Chinese-issued tally and may have even given the impression that the

bakufu intended to treat the tally as functioning supplementally in the institution of

Tokugawa foreign trade.

The letters furthermore showed the Tokugawa vision of international relations,

which also appeared to challenge and deny Chinese superiority and supremacy. After

referring to Ieyasu’s wish to reinstitute the tally trade, the Hasegawa letter continued that

the rehabilitation of the relationship between the two countries would “unite the delighted

hearts of two universes” (niten 二天).

69 The context of the letter indicates that the term

“two universes” suggests two universes which centered on China and Japan. The Honda

letter showed what the Tokugawa Japan-centered universe was like. Referring to

Ieyasu’s unification and pacification of Japan, it stated that the reign of the Tokugawa

had extended over three generations, which probably included Ieyasu’s grandson, Iemitsu

家光, who became the third shogun in 1623.

70 As Ronald Toby notes, Hayashi Razan,

the drafter of the letter, perhaps inserted this passage in order to assert the legitimacy of

Tokugawa rule in Chinese rhetorical terms.71 It then continued that Korea paid tribute,

65 Ibid.

66 Ibid.

67 As for Ieyasu and his successors’ issuing of vermilion seals, see Tsūkō ichiran.

68 Li Xianzhang, Nagasaki Tōjin no kenkyū, pp. 123-30.

69 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, p. 132.

70 Ibid., vol. 1, p. 130.

71 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 60.

122

Ryukyu paid homage, and others such as Vietnam and Siam extended letters and tributes

as the virtuous sway of the Tokugawa had reached over them.72 The Tokugawa bakufu

seemed to dream of forming hierarchical international relations based on Japanese

superiority and centrality, as it called the visits of foreign envoys onrei 御礼 (gratitude

and obedience) to a Japan ruled by the Tokugawa shogun, and as it envisaged that peace

with Korea was achieved in the form of Korean subordination to Tokugawa Japan.73 The

Tokugawa worldview corresponded little to reality, however. Except for the Ryukyus,

the countries and regions to which the Honda letter referred were by no means either

Japanese subordinates or tributaries in actual diplomatic and commercial relations.

Regardless of the truth of these claims, it is easy to imagine that the Japanese

proclamation of another universe was intolerable to China which was, it believed,

supposed to be the only center of the only heaven under the rule of the Son of Heaven,

the bearer of the mandate of heaven (tianming 天命), namely the Chinese emperor.

The Japanese seemed to be aware that such remarks would make rapprochement

difficult to achieve but continued to be outspoken about their ideal of international order.

There are actually two versions of the Honda letter, one in Hayashi Razan bunshū 林羅

山文集 and the other in Konchiin Sūden’s Ikoku nikki 異国日記, between which there

are differences. The passage referring to Korea’s tribute, the Ryukyus’ subordination,

and so on in the Honda letter is not found in the version compiled in Ikoku nikki.74 From

the fact that fair copies of the letters were made by Konchiin Sūden, Fujii Jōji conjectures

that Sūden modified Razan’s draft and that the draft found in Ikoku nikki was the one sent

to Ming China.75 Supposing this conjecture is correct, it was probably because the Zen

monk knew the diplomatic protocols acceptable to China. He, in fact, had consulted

Zenrin kokuhō ki 善隣国宝記, a collection of ancient and medieval diplomatic

documents edited and annotated by the Zen monk Zuikei Shūhō 瑞渓周鳳 in the late

fifteenth century.76 The manuscript in Ikoku nikki, however, still sounded sufficiently

insolent to upset China. This manuscript still maintained the idea of another Japan-

centered universe as it stated that the moral sway of Tokugawa Japan had reached Korea

and other countries.77

Political and Ideological Sources of the Tokugawa Perception of China

and Attitudes Toward Its Tributary System

Why was the reintegration of Japan into the Chinese tributary system not an

option to the Tokugawa regime from its inception? As with the Korea policy,

72 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, p. 132.

73 See Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku shiryō hensangakari 東京帝國大學史料編纂係, ed., Dai Nihon

shiryō 大日本史料 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Teikoku Daigaku, 1903), vol. 12, part. 4, p. 785. See also

Dai Nihon shiryō (1904), vol. 12, part. 6, pp. 132-34.

74 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, pp. 130-31. Konchiin Sūden 金地院崇伝, Eiinbon ikoku nikki:

Konchiin Sūden gaikō monjoshū 影印本異国日記：金地院崇伝外交文書集 (hereafter as Ikoku

nikki) (Tokyo: Tōkyō bijutsu, 1989), pp. 4-16.

75 Fujii, “Junana seiki no Nihon,” pp. 38-40.

76 Konchiin Sūden, Shintei honkō kokushi nikki新訂本光国師日記 (Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruijū

kanseikai, 1970), vol. 5, p. 163.

77 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, p. 15.

123

rehabilitating the relationship with China was an occasion for the Tokugawa to

demonstrate its ability to handle foreign affairs as a new unification regime replacing the

Toyotomi. That it defined peace with China as inseparable from peace with Korea is

shown in the 1600 letter; the Tokugawa needed to normalize relations with Ming China

without surrendering to China’s claim of suzerainty. In fact, as one of the executive

members of the Toyotomi regime, Ieyasu seemed to know the late hegemon’s stance

toward China and even to share a similar vision of peace with China. The seven peace

conditions of 1593 revealed that Hideyoshi was to behave as victor.78 The state letter of

1596 from the Wanli Emperor, treating him as his vassal, hence enraged him and drove

him into continuing the fighting in Korea. Ieyasu expected the same conclusion to the

war as Hideyoshi. He perceived the previous Chinese envoy, visiting the wartime

headquarters in Nagoya, Kyushu, in 1594, as a sign of China’s begging for Japanese

forgiveness (wabi 侘び).

79

For him, subordination to China, which Hideyoshi had

rejected, would not have been a proper choice, given his desire to establish his legitimacy

in taking over from the Toyotomi regime. Demonstrating legitimacy by refusing to

become a Chinese tribute was also necessary for the Tokugawa as a warrior regime.

When Japanese military superiority was a shared perception among the warriors of the

time, and while the failure of the war of conquest in Korea did not lead to the complete

discouragement of this unsubstantiated conceit, to behave as a Chinese tributary might

have been harmful or even destructive for a military regime which was supposed to

represent Japanese military might externally and whose legitimacy of domestic rule

depended on demonstrating and maintaining the military prowess of the Tokugawa as a

new hegemon.80

The Tokugawa regime might also have learned how to deal with the Chinese

tributary system from the experience of the Ashikaga bakufu. In the civil war of the

fourteenth century known as the Northern and Southern Courts period, Chinese

suzerainty seemed to become an alternative source of authority when imperial authority

had been diminished by the split of the imperial court, which lasted from the fall of the

Kenmu 建武 regime of the Emperor Godaigo 後醍醐 in the 1330s until the reunion of

the two imperial courts in 1392. The decision of Ashikaga Yoshimitsu to become a

Chinese vassal was probably intended to reinforce his own regime by relying on the

authority of a foreign throne, in addition to any commercial interest.81 However, he

78 Zenrin kokuhō ki, p. 376.

79 Kitajima Manji, Toyotomi Hideyoshi, pp. 62-65. The distorted information of the peace

negotiations reported by such Japanese negotiators as Konishi Yukinaga 小西行長 seemed to

give Hideyoshi and others an understanding that the envoy was Ming China’s expression of

apology, although Hideyoshi did not seem to believe China’s sincerity fully.

80 As for the Japanese perception of martial superiority, see Yoshino Jingoemon 吉野甚五右衛門,

Yoshino nikki 吉野日記, in Chūgai keiiden 中外経緯伝 (Tokyo: Kondō kappansha, 1901), pp.

201-02; Asao Naohiro朝尾直弘, “Sakokusei no seiritsu” 鎖国制の成立, in Kōza Nihon shi, 4:

Bakuhansei shakai 講座日本史, 4:幕藩制社会 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1973), p. 60.

81 Satō Shin’ichi 佐藤慎一, “Ashikaga seikenron” 足利政権論, in Iwanami kōza Nihon rekishi

(Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1962-64), vol. 7, p. 48. Before Yoshimitsu, Prince Kaneyoshi, who had

stood against the Ashikaga in northern Kyushu, sent a biao to the first Ming emperor and became

his vassal as King of Japan in 1371, according to Ming shilu. Although Kameyoshi seemed to

124

encountered the criticism of his contemporaries, even those who were close to him.

When Yoshimitsu received a Chinese envoy in 1402 as a reply to his letter of the

previous year, Nijō Mitsumoto 二条満基, a court noble, noted in his diary regarding the

Chinese letter in which China’s superiority was clearly spelt out: “The style of the letter

was unthinkable. This is a grave matter for the country [i.e., Japan].”82 Sanpōin Mansai

三宝院満済, Yoshimitsu’s adopted son (yūshi 猶子), also noted in his diary that among

some, such as Shiba Yoshimasa 斯波義将, a prominent shugo 守護 daimyo of the time,

there was a critical view of Yoshimitsu’s reception of the Chinese embassy as

“excessive.”83 Yoshimitsu continued to be criticized by later generations. In Zenrin

kokuhō ki, which Konchiin Sūden consulted, Zuikei Shūhō, a late-fifteenth century

diplomat and Zen monk of Shōkokuji Temple, criticized Yoshimitsu for his use of the

title of king and a Chinese era name and for styling himself a “subject” of the Chinese

emperor as a national humiliation and as infidelity to Japan’s own emperor.84

Arai

Hakuseki 新井白石, a Confucian advisor of the sixth Tokugawa shogun, Ienobu 家宣, in

the early eighteenth century, commented that such criticisms were “sensible.”85

The criticism which the Ashikaga attitudes toward the tributary system evoked

actually came from the traditional notion of Sino-Japanese equality. We can find in

Chinese documents the Japanese paying tribute to Chinese dynasties in antiquity; the

tribute of Himiko 卑弥呼, Queen of Yamatai, to the Wei dynasty (220-65) in the early

third century is well known. Some imperial rulers such as “Five Kings of Japan” (Wa no

go ō 倭の五王) had also paid tribute to Chinese dynasties in antiquity. However, by the

beginning of the seventh century, the Japanese were no longer trying to earn a

relationship with China by becoming its tributary.86 Prince Shōtoku 聖徳太子, the regent

of the Empress Suiko 推古 (r. 593-628), sent an envoy, led by Ono no Imoko 小野妹子,

send a letter to the Ming court, the fact that he became a Chinese vassal cannot be found in

Japanese records. See Tsuji Zennosuke, Zōtei kaigai, pp. 302-03; Mori Katsumi 森克己 and

Numada Jirō 沼田次郎, eds., Taigai kankei shi 対外関係史 (Tokyo: Yamakawa shuppansha,

1978), pp. 75-76.

82 Tanaka Takeo, Chūsei kaigai kōshō shi no kenkyū 中世海外交渉史の研究 (Tokyo: Tōkyō

Daigaku shuppankai, 1981), p. 165.

83 Mansai Jugō 満済准后, Mansai Jugō nikki 満済准后日記 (Tokyo: Zoku gunsho ruijū

kanseikai, 1958), vol. 2, p. 55.

84 Zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 77-9. Itō Tasaburō 伊東多三郎 and Tanaka Takeo argue that Zuikei

Shūhō criticized Yoshimitsu in terms of diplomatic justice rather than his presumptuousness to

the emperor. As Min Tu-ki 閔徳基 has noted, in Zenrin kokuhō ki Zuikei explicitly indicated that

he saw Yoshimitsu’s vassalage bestowed from Ming China as a matter of loyalty to the Japanese

emperor. See Itō Tasaburō, “Shōgun, Nihon kokuō to shōsu: sono rekishiteki igi” 将軍、日本国

王と称す：その歴史的意義, Nihon rekishi 60 (January 1956), p. 56. Tanaka Takeo, Chūsei

kaigai, p. 168; idem., “Kaisetsu” 解説, in Zenrin kokuhō ki, Shintei zoku zenrin kokuhō ki, p. 629;

Min Tu-ki, Zenkindai Higashi Ajia no naka no Kan-Nichi kankei 前近代東アジアのなかの韓日

関係 (Tokyo: Waseda Daigaku shuppanbu, 1994), pp. 235-36.

85 Arai Hakuseki 新井白石, Arai Hakuseki zenshū 新井白石全集 (Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai,

1977), vol. 3, pp. 634-35.

86 Taigai kankei shi, pp. 1-21. See also Zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 18-27.

125

to the Sui dynasty (589-618) in 607. The Japanese state letter addressed to the second

emperor of the dynasty, Yangdi 煬帝 (r. 604-18), stated: “The Son of Heaven of the

country of the sunrise (hiizuru tokoro no tenshi 日出処天子) addresses the Son of

Heaven of the country of the sunset (hibossuru tokoro no tenshi 日没処天子).”

87 This

reveals that Shōtoku ventured to claim equality in the relationship of the two countries by

making the Japanese emperor a peer of his Chinese counterpart. The notion of Sino-

Japanese equality was specified in the eighth century political codes, ryō 令, as they fixed

Tang China (618-907) as an equal neighboring country (ringoku 隣国), contrasted with

Korea as a barbarian tributary (bankoku 蕃国).

88 Government-to-government relations

with China had been absent after the embassies to Tang China (ken-Tōshi 遣唐使) were

cancelled in 894. Although Ashikaga Yoshimitsu restored official relations by paying

tribute to Ming China in the early fifteenth century, Japan’s participation in the tributary

system did not alter the traditional notion that Japan would not be subject to China.

Yoshimitsu’s attitude toward Ming China was therefore considered unprecedented and

continued to be criticized for centuries. Jōtai’s view of the status relations between the

two countries and the remarks of Tokugawa Hidetada in 1607 that Japan was not a

subordinate of Ming China indicated that the Tokugawa policymakers had inherited the

traditional notion.

Japanese attitudes toward the Chinese tributary system reflected their traditional

ideology and beliefs. This can be found first in the fact that their religious and

ideological self-perception of a divine land (shinkoku 神国) made the Japanese refuse to

recognize Chinese superiority. In 1411, Yoshimitsu’s son, Yoshimochi 義持, the fourth

shogun of the Ashikaga bakufu (r. 1394-1423), repealed his father’s China policy and

refused to behave as a Chinese vassal.89 He reasoned that Yoshimitsu’s behavior violated

the covenant bequeathed by the Japanese deities and that his death in 1408 had been

caused by their curse.90

Resuming tributary relations with Ming China in 1432,

Yoshimochi’s younger brother Yoshinori 義教, the sixth shogun (r. 1429-41), did not

believe that emulating the style of his father’s state letter to the Ming emperor would be

proper. Summoned for advice on the proper style of a state letter to China by the shogun,

Mansai responded: “Since [Japan is] a divine land, to comply with the protocol of China

is impossible.”91 Zuikei Shūhō, criticizing Yoshimitsu, also seemed an inheritor of the

divine land ideology. He began Zenrin kokuhō ki by quoting a famous passage, “Great

Japan is a divine land” (ō Yamato wa kami no kuni nari 大日本ハ神国也), from

87 Ibid., p. 33; Nishijima Sadao, Nihon rekishi no kokusai kankyō 日本歴史の国際環境 (Tokyo:

Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1985), p. 89. The letter is compiled in Zenrin kokuhō ki; see p. 34.

88 Nishijima, Nihon rekishi, pp. 104-06; Saijō Tsutomu 西条勉, “Nihon shoki no shisō: ‘Nihon’

to iu gensō” 日本書紀の思想：「日本」という幻想, in Kojiki, Nihon shoki, Fudoki: Kodai

bungaku kōza古事記・日本書紀・風土記：古代文学講座 (Tokyo: Benseisha, 1995), vol. 10,

pp. 160-61.

89 Tsuji, Zōtei kaigai, p. 312; Sakuma, Nichi-Min kankei, pp. 359-60. See also Zenrin kokuhō ki,

pp. 138-44.

90 Zenrin kokuhō ki, p. 140.

91 Mansai Jugō nikki, vol. 2, p. 65.

126

Kitabatake Chikafusa’s 北畠親房 Jinnō shōtōki 神皇正統記.

92

Toyotomi Hideyoshi

deified himself by fabricating a legend of his birth and exploited the claim of Japan’s

divinity as justification for overseas conquest.93

The Tokugawa bakufu appeared to be under the sway of this traditional ethos, as

its decree on banning Christianity in 1613 began with the proclamation: “Our Japan is a

divine land.”94 Tōshōsha engi 東照社縁起 explains this notion in detail: “It is said that

there were once three golden rings floating above the vast blue ocean. After the world

was created, yin and yang were divided, and the three golden rings turned into three

shining sanctities and appeared there. Hence our country is a divine land.”95 Engelbert

Kaempfer, a German serving as physician for years at the Dutch factory in Nagasaki in

the late seventeenth century, also noted that the Japanese claimed to be the descendants

of deities.96

The Japanese beliefs in the divinity of their country and the “unbroken” imperial

lineage was also counted as a rationale for Japanese superiority over others, including

China. Tōshōsha engi claimed that the divine origin of Japan and the unbroken line of

imperial rulers, whose ancestry was believed to trace back to Amaterasu, placed the

country in the center of the world, which the Japanese had described as having three

constituents—Japan, China, and India. “Time passed until the deities counted tens of

thousands of generations,” it continued, “and until the imperial lineage counted a

thousand generations, and no dynastic change has ever occurred, and so imperial

descendants have been. Is there any land as well ruled as this in this world? It is hence

clear that Japan is the root and India (Indo 印度) and China (Shina 支那) are branches

and leaves.”97 Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行, a prominent scholar in the late seventeenth

century, stated: “Our country (honchō 本朝) is descended from Amaterasu Ōmikami 天

照大神, and its imperial lineage has remained unchanged from the times of the deities

until today.” As a Confucian, he valued this as evidence of Japanese moral superiority.98

His contemporary and another notable Confucian of the Yamasaki Ansai 山崎闇斎

School (Kimon崎門), Asami Keisai 浅見絅斎, shared Sōkō’s view.

99 Later Confucian

and non-Confucian scholars also inherited this claim.100

92 Zenrin kokuhō ki, p. 10. Kitabatake Chikafusa, Jinnō shōtōki, in Jinnō shōtōki, Masukagami 神

皇正統記、増鏡, Nihon koten bungaku taikei 日本古典文学大系, vol. 87 (Tokyo: Iwanami

shoten, 1965), p. 41.

93 Zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 380-84; Ishige, “Shokuhō seiken no seiji shisō,” p. 26.

94 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, pp. 33-34.

95 Tōshōsha engi 東照社縁起, Zokuzoku Nihon emaki taisei: denki, engi hen続々日本絵巻大

成：伝記・縁起編 (Tokyo: Chūō kōronsha, 1994), vol. 8, p. 3.

96 Engelbert Kaempfer, Kaempfer’s Japan: Tokugawa Culture Observed (Honolulu: University of

Hawai’i Press, 1999), p. 51.

97 Tōshōsha engi, p. 3.

98 Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行, “Haisho zanpitsu” 配所残筆, in Yamaga Sokō 山鹿素行, Nihon

shisō taikei 日本思想体系 (NST), vol. 32 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), p. 333.

99 Asami Keisai浅見絅斎, “Chūgoku ben” 中国辨, in Yamazaki Ansai gakuha 山崎闇斎学派,

NST, vol. 31 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1980), pp. 416-19.

100 Aizawa Seishisai 会沢正志斎, “Taishoku kanwa” 退食閑話, in Mitogaku 水戸学, NST, vol.

127

The Tokugawa Vision of Status Relations with Ming China

What vision of status relations with China did the Tokugawa bakufu have when it

abandoned the option of becoming a tributary? Some historians have argued that equal

relations were what the bakufu sought. Nakamura Tadashi has argued that the 1611

Honda letter designated the bakufu’s will to obtain parity with China.101

Fujimura

Michio 藤村道夫 has contended that if the letter had been accepted by Ming China, an

equal association could have been established between the two countries.102 Concerning

these arguments, the following problems can be pointed out. Nakamura would still need

to explain what specific aspects of the letter demonstrated the Tokugawa regime’s

intention of parity with Ming China. Fujimura’s argument is little more than speculation,

failing to suggest evidence that the Tokugawa sought an equal status with Ming China.

Kamiya Nobuyuki has offered an interpretation regarding the Tokugawa vision of

status relations with Ming China. Like the tally system, the reception of a kin’in金印

(gold seal) and the title, Nihon kokuō 日本国王 (King of Japan), bestowed by the

Chinese emperor would symbolize subordination to China. Examining the 1600 and

1611 letters, Kamiya notes the point that the Japanese intended to dispatch an envoy

bearing the gold seal, along with a tally granted in advance, and saw normalization in that

way as following a “precedent” (zenki 前規).” He interprets “precedent” as referring to

the visit of the Chinese envoy in 1596 and the gold seal which was brought, along with

the state letter from the Wanli Emperor to Hideyoshi.103 In the Muromachi period, the

investiture of the gold seal, as well as the title of king, meant the Ming emperor’s

recognition of the Ashikaga shogun as his vassal. Seeking a “victor’s peace,” Hideyoshi

on the other hand had no intention of becoming a foreign vassal and hence became

furious and rejected the peace settlement. Kamiya refuses to regard the Tokugawa

request for a tally and the reference to a gold seal as evidence of Ieyasu’s intention of

joining the queue of Chinese vassals. He instead interprets the reference to the gold seal

as revealing Ieyasu’s desire for Chinese recognition of him as “King of Japan,” in which

the shogun and the Japanese emperor were incorporated, and concludes that Ieyasu, as

King of Japan, was aiming to associate with the Chinese emperor as a peer.104

This interpretation is not, however, convincing for the following reasons. First, as

mentioned above, I agree that the vermilion seal denied the exclusive authority which the

tally had enjoyed in previous centuries in Sino-Japanese trade. However, it

simultaneously referred to no specific Tokugawa view of status relations with China.

53 (Tokyo Iwanami shoten, 1973), p. 240; Ōkuni Takamasa大国隆正, “Hongaku kyoyō” 本学挙

要, in Hirata Atsutane, Ban Nobutomo, Ōkuni Takamasa平田篤胤・伴信友・大国隆正, Nihon

shisō taikei, vol. 50 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), pp. 412-13; Motoori Norinaga 本居宣長,

Motoori Norinaga zenshū 本居宣長全集, (Tokyo: Chikuma shobō, 1968), vol. 18, p. 405.

101 Nakamura Tadashi, “Higashi Ajia to sakoku Nihon,” pp. 343-44.

102 Fujimura Michio 藤村道夫, “Taikun gaikō taisei no ronri: Meiji zenki gaikō shiron josetsu”

大君外交体制の論理：明治前期外交史論序説, Nagoya Daigaku Nihon shi ronshū 名古屋大

学日本史論集 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1975), vol. 2, pp. 382-83.

103 Kamiya, “Taikun gaikō to kinsei no kokusei,” pp. 89-102.

104 Ibid., p. 92.

128

Second, Kamiya fails to cite any direct evidence that Ieyasu wanted that particular title

from the Chinese emperor. No reference to the title can be found in any documents,

although he probably drew that conclusion from the reference to the gold seal in the 1600

letter. In addition, he would need to prove that the Japanese, or at least Ieyasu’s,

understanding of “King of Japan,” which had traditionally implied inferiority to the

Chinese emperor, had changed, as had the understanding of the tally. It is unlikely that

the bakufu was interested in this issue, as it continued to reject the Korean request of the

shogun’s use of the title.105

Examining existing primary sources, it might be better not to go beyond arguing

that the Tokugawa bakufu had no intention of being reintegrated into the Chinese

tributary system. The Japanese letters to Ming China contain no reference to or

indication of subordination to Ming China. The Japanese refused to comply with the

form of biao; they denied the traditional authority the tally had enjoyed for centuries and

the Chinese Weltanschauung. So far from seeking subordination, their letters threatened

China with another military assault unless China acceded to the Japanese vision of

normalization. The traditional Japanese diplomatic and ideological perceptions of China,

which the Tokugawa policymakers inherited, suggested the possibility that Tokugawa

Japan would seek at least equality or perhaps more. The letters did not, however, show

anything but a rejection of reintegration into the tributary system. The Tokugawa attitude

toward Ming China was thus, with respect to status relations, ambiguous, outside of their

rock-ribbed stance against becoming a Chinese tributary.

This ambiguity toward status relations may partially have reflected the limitations

of the Tokugawa regime’s ability in foreign policy. Rejecting Chinese tributary status,

the Japanese would be left with the following options—obtaining either a superior or an

equal status vis-à-vis China, leaving status relations behind, or giving up on restoring a

relationship itself. Nevertheless, establishing both a negotiation route and a relationship

with Ming China had traditionally required foreign countries to comply with a certain set

of manners, such as behaving as a subject and paying tribute to China. To try to establish

a relationship with China based on either of those options, aside from giving up on the

process, would have, therefore, required the Japanese to take forcible measures to compel

China to surrender to the Japanese vision of Sino-Japanese relations. Otherwise, they

would have had to accede to diplomatic relations acceptable to China. While consistent

in not subordinating themselves to China, the Japanese seemed to be historically aware

that they would need to give way to the Chinese to a certain degree. For example, as

mentioned above, eighth-century Japan defined China as a peer but simultaneously

understood the necessity of compromising in order to maintain diplomatic relations with

Tang China. In 733, the Japanese state letter, written in Chinese, styled the Japanese

emperor sumeramikoto 主明楽美御徳, instead of styling him Tennō 天皇 or Kōdai

(Kōtei皇帝). “Sumeramikoto” was the Japanese vernacular for the emperor, but it had

never been employed in diplomacy before. The Japanese probably used it intentionally,

by spelling it with six Chinese characters (C. zhu, ming, le, mei, yu, de), in order to

conceal the contradiction between the Chinese and Japanese diplomatic perceptions. The

Chinese seemed to misunderstand it as the surname and given name of the Japanese

105 As for the Tokugawa attitude toward the title, for example, see Miyake Hidetoshi 三宅英利,

Kinsei Nit-Chō kankeishi no kenkyū 近世日朝関係史の研究 (Tokyo: Bunken shuppan, 1986).

129

“king,” as the Japanese perhaps expected.106 The Tokugawa bakufu also compromised in

a different way. The bakufu, which did not take forcible measures against even the much

smaller state of Korea, chose to tame the Chinese claim of being the Middle Kingdom by

calling Ming China “Chūka” (C. Zhonghua 中華) and “Tenchō” (C. Tianchao 天朝) in

the letters of 1600 and 1611.107

The ambiguity perhaps may also have grown out of the complexity of the

Japanese perception of China. As noted above, at least since the early seventh century,

parity had been the diplomatic and political stance which successive imperial and warrior

rulers had deemed adequate. Even Japanese superiority based on religious and

intellectual rationales had been claimed and discussed among political and intellectual

elites as mentioned above. The Japanese had, on the other hand, continued to revere

China and had depended on its civilization since antiquity. Even claims and discourses

on Japanese superiority had depended on Chinese rhetoric, consciously or

unconsciously.108 The Japanese knew that China was far larger than their own country.109

The cultural dependency, the sentiment of reverence, and the awareness of smallness

could possibly engender an inferiority complex.110 Nevertheless, Uete Michiari 植手道

有 has noted that the Japanese distinguished China as a state from China as a civilization;

the notions of equality and superiority indicated that cultural dependency did not

determine the Japanese perception of status relations with China.111 Notions of equality

and superiority might have been a reaction to such an inferiority complex and may have

produced desire for emulation or a sense of rivalry. This would have been a natural

human response of self-esteem and respect. Tokutomi Sohō 徳富蘇峰 (Iichirō 猪一郎),

a noted journalist in the Meiji, Taishō, and Shōwa periods, wrote that the Japanese,

fascinated, adoring, envying, and yearning after the civilization of China, had tried to

preserve their independence and individuality by fostering a sense of rivalry, which

generated the ideology of Japan as a divine land.112 The Japanese claim to be dai Nihon

106 Nishijima, Nihon rekishi, pp. 177-78.

107 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 3, no. 1025; Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, pp. 131-32.

108 For example, see Arai Hakuseki zenshū, vol. 4, p. 724; vol. 5, pp. 603-04, 649-50.

109 Zoku zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 372-75; Yamaga Sokō, Chūchō jijitsu 中朝事実 (Tokyo: Chūchō

jijitsu kankōkai, 1985), pp. 35-36, 150; Nishkawa Joken 西川如見, Nihon suido kō, Suido kaiben,

Zōho kai tsūshō kō 日本水土考、水土解辯、増補華夷通商考 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1944),

pp. 25-26.

110 Satō Seizaburō 佐藤誠三郎, “Bakumatsu, Meiji shoki ni okeru taigai ishiki no shoruikei” 幕

末明治初期における対外意識の緒類型, in Satō Seizaburō and Roger Dingman, eds., Kindai

Nihon no taigai taido 近代日本の対外態度 (Tokyo: Tōkyō Daigaku shuppankai, 1974), pp. 4-

10.

111 Uete Michiari 植手道有, Nihon kindai shisō no keisei 日本近代思想の形成 (Tokyo:

Iwanami shoten, 1974), p. 281.

112 Tokutomi Iichirō 徳富猪一郎, “Tokutomi Iichirō sensei kyōjutsusho” 徳富猪一郎先生供述

書, in Kobori Keiichirō 小堀桂一郎, ed., Tōkyō saiban Nihon no benmei 東京裁判日本の弁明

(Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1995), pp. 284-85. See also Furukawa Tetsushi 古川哲史, “Shinkoku shisō

no keisei to tenkai” 神国思想の形成と展開, in Nihon shisō shi kōza, 3: Chūsei no shisō 日本思

想史講座, 3:中世の思想 (Tokyo: Yūzankaku, 1976), pp. 57-81.

130

大日本 (great Japan) and the center of the universe was, he mentioned, due to the

indomitable spirit which grew out of the Japanese awareness that their own country was

small and poor. Sohō claimed that without this spirit, Japan would otherwise have

become China’s subordinate.113

The following episode indicates that the sense of inferiority displeased the

Japanese rather than persuaded them to recognize China’s superiority. One day, Ieyasu

questioned Hayashi Razan about the education system of China. When Razan replied

that the Chinese education and school system was superior to that of Japan, Ieyasu looked

displeased and terminated their talk.114 Sir Thomas Stamford Raffles’s speech in Batavia

in 1815 may also indicate the Japanese sense of rivalry with the Chinese. Based on the

report of W. Ainslie dispatched to Nagasaki for the purpose of resuming trade with Japan

four years earlier, he mentioned that the Japanese detested being compared to the

Chinese.115 The Japanese also refused to accept the disparity in size as a rationale for

China’s superiority (Japan’s inferiority).116

Although the assumption of equality or

superiority might thus have grown out of an inferiority complex and such sentiments as

emulation and a sense of rivalry, the undeniable facts of Japan’s cultural importations and

its territorial size, along with the lack of measures to overcome the Chinese claim of

superiority, might simultaneously have prevented the bakufu from finding a concrete

status relationship with Ming China.

Tokugawa China Policy after 1611

The 1611 letters became a last attempt at a direct approach to Ming China, but

Ming China did not reply to either of them. The Ming shilu 明實録 states that the 1600

letter reached Fuzhou and was transmitted to the Ming imperial court in Beijing.117

Meanwhile, inasmuch no reference to the 1611 letters has been found, it is likely either

that Zhou Xingru did not deliver the letters to the Fuzhou authorities, or that local

Chinese officials received them but did not transmit them to Beijing. After the two

Chinese ships which the Wanli Emperor had dispatched suffered an attack from Japanese

pirates in 1601, the Ming authorities maintained vigilant observation of Japan. Informed

of Satsuma’s conquest of the Ryukyus in 1609, the Ming authorities tightened their

maritime prohibitions. The military governor of Fujian Province, Chen Zichen, was in

fact one of the firmest advocates of stricter precautions against Japanese piracy.118 To

send a letter to such a person without fulfilling the necessary conditions for

communicating with the self-proclaimed Middle Kingdom and to anticipate a reply was a

fatuous expectation.

113 Tokutomi Iichirō, Shōrisha no hiai 勝利者の悲哀 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1952), p. 52; Tokutomi

Iichirō, Haisen gakkō kokushi no kōgi 敗戦学校國史の講義 (Tokyo: Hōunsha, 1948), pp. 23-25.

114 Hori, Hayashi Razan, pp. 164-65.

115 Kamigaito Ken’ichi 上垣内憲一, “Sakoku” no hikaku bunmeiron: Higashi Ajia kara no

shiten 「鎖国」の比較文明論：東アジアからの視点 (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1994), p. 107.

116 Zoku zenrin kokuhō ki, pp. 372-75; Yamaga Sokō, Chūchō jijitsu, pp. 35-36, 150; Nishkawa

Joken, Nihon suido kō, Suido kaiben, Zōho kai tsūshō kō, pp. 25-26.

117 Ming shilu, entry for the first day of the seventh month, 1600.

118 Ibid. For example, on the sixteenth day of the eleventh month, 1610, Military Governor Chen

proposed to the imperial court that maritime defenses and prohibitions be reinforced.

131

Because its direct approach had been frustrated, the Tokugawa bakufu came to

concentrate on indirect approaches via China’s tributaries—Korea and the Ryukyus.

Some accounts of Tsushima’s request for “borrowing a route to Ming China” are found in

Korean documents, which, however, present no details of what instructions the bakufu

passed to the domain.119 No such account can be discovered in bakufu documents either.

It should also be remembered that Tsushima secretly and wrongly continued to

manipulate the Tokugawa regime’s Korea policy by forging and distorting Japanese and

Korean diplomatic letters for several decades until the Yanagawa 柳川 Affair exposed its

malpractice in the early 1630s. Kondō Morishige 近藤守重 (Seisai正斎), the editor of

Gaiban tsūsho 外蕃通書, noted that this would make it difficult to credit those

documents.120 All we know is that the Japanese still expected the Chinese tributary state

to mediate in negotiations with its suzerain, as Ieyasu had in 1607. The bakufu, however,

seemed to be more conscious of possible influence from these diplomatic actions on

Japan’s and its own dignity and prestige after Saishō Jōtai’s remonstration with Ieyasu.

The founder of the bakufu had once thought of contacting the Korean king by writing to

him directly; his successors never intended to ask the Yi dynasty to mediate with China

directly and instead used the Tsushima channel. As Korea rejected Tsushima’s request,

this attempt also failed. The Koreans may have been afraid that helping Japan would

incur the displeasure of Ming China. They also would not have wanted to invite the

Japanese to their territories, because the transit of the Ashikaga tributary missions to

China via the Korean peninsula gave the Japanese the opportunity to acquire knowledge

of Korea and helped them to invade in the 1590s. Korea did not, therefore, allow the

Japanese to go beyond the southern port city of Pusan, except for the 1629 Tsushima

mission which went up to Seoul.

Meanwhile, Satsuma documents give more details of the indirect approach via the

Ryukyus. In 1606, in a letter to the Ryukyu king, Shō Nei 尚寧 (r. 1589-1612), Shimazu

Iehisa stated that the shogun Hidetada expected the China trade to be restored in the

Ryukyus.121 When Iehisa brought Shō Nei as a captive of the conquest of 1609 to Edo in

late September 1610 (Keichō 15/9), Tokugawa Hidetada guaranteed the rule of the house

of Shō over the Ryukyus in order to use the Ryukyus’ status as a Chinese tribute to

facilitate Tokugawa China policy.122 On December 2, 1611 (Keichō 16/10/28), Iehisa

suggested to Shō Nei three options for Sino-Japanese relations which the bakufu desired

and instructed him to mediate negotiations with Ming China on trade. First, China and

Japan would trade on a peripheral island. Second, both countries would dispatch

119 Ŏ Suk-kwŏn 魚叔権, comp., Kosa ch’waryo 攷事撮要 (Seoul: Keijō Teikoku Daigaku hōbun

gakubu, 1941), p. 120; Tsuji, Zōtei kaigai, p. 473.

120 Kondō Morishige 近藤守重, Gaiban tsūsho 外蕃通書, in Kondō Seisai zenshū 近藤正斎全集

(Tokyo: Kokusho kankōkai, 1905), vol. 1, pp. 21-22.

121 Nanpo Bunshi 南浦文之, Nanpo bunshū 南浦文集, vol. 2, in Shin Sappan sōsho 新薩藩叢書

(Tokyo: Rekishi toshosha, 1971), vol. 4, p. 513.

122 Tokugawa jikki 徳川實記, in Shintei zōho kokushi taikei 新訂増補国史大系 (Tokyo:

Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1976), vol. 38, p. 530; Butoku hennen shūsei 武徳編年集成 (Tokyo:

Meicho shuppan, 1976), vol. 2, p. 134.

132

commercial vessels annually to the Ryukyus for trade. Third, both countries would

communicate by exchanging envoys.123

In his Nanhei kikō 南聘紀行, Ijichi Sueyasu 伊地知季安 states that in 1612

Shimazu Yoshihiro, receiving the order of Ieyasu, also instructed Shō Nei to pass the

three options mentioned above for restoring trade.124 Nanpo Bunshi 南浦文之, a Zen

monk in charge of drafting diplomatic notes for Satsuma, was to draft a letter to be

addressed to China. Satsuma let a Ryukyu tributary mission deliver the letter, dated the

spring of 1613; this letter suggested the three options to Ming China. First, Ming China

would allow Japanese commercial ships to trade in its border region. Second, Chinese

commercial ships would come to the Ryukyus to trade with the Japanese. Third, China

and Japan would trade with an exchange of envoys.125 The border trade referred to in the

letter may suggest trade in the coastal region of Taiwan, located on the opposite shore of

Fujian Province. Expeditions by Arima Harunobu 有馬晴信, a Catholic daimyo in

Kyushu, in 1609, and Murayama Tōan 村山等安, Nagasaki Deputy (Nagasaki daikan 長

崎代官), in 1616 were carried out under the sanction of the bakufu deriving from the

latter’s interest in Taiwan as a potential trade spot.126 The third option, in these two

letters, is not clear but should be understood as repeating the same request as that in the

1600 and 1611 letters.

After suggesting these three options, both Iehisa and Yoshihiro continued that

Chinese rejection of the options would result in China’s being subjected to a Japanese

military action. Satsuma followed instructions from the bakufu, as Yoshihiro said to Shō

Nei that Ieyasu intended to dispatch troops should China reject all of them.127 On April 3,

1610 (Keichō 15/leap 2/10), Honda Masazumi passed to Shimazu Iehisa an instruction,

stating that Satsuma was exempted from the construction of the Nagoya Castle, which

had been started in 1609. Masazumi continued that it would instead prepare to dispatch

troops to China in case the effort to restore the tally trade failed.128

In August or

September 1610 (Keichō 15/7/u), Iehisa met with Itakura Katsushige 板倉勝重, Kyoto

Deputy (Kyōto shoshidai 京都所司代), in Fushimi on his way to Edo, with Shō Nei

captured in the conquest of 1609. Itakura told Iehisa that an expedition to China was

more like a reason to other daimyo to exempt Satsuma from the construction.129

123 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 4, no. 876; Kamiya, “Satsuma no Ryūkyū shinnyū” 薩摩の琉球

支配, in Shin Ryūkyū shi kinsei hen 新琉球史近世編 (Naha: Ryūkyū shinpōsha, 1989), vol. 1, p.

69.

124 Ijichi Sueyasu 伊地知季安, Nanhei kikō 南聘紀行 (no publication information), p. 26.

Although Shō Nei dispatched a tributary envoy to China within the year, it could not accomplish

its mission. The Ryukyuans were merely allowed to pay tribute every ten years. Miyata

Toshihiko 宮田敏彦, “Kinsei shoki no Ryū-Min bōeki” 近世初期の琉明貿易, Nihon rekishi 日

本歴史 340 (September 1976), pp. 3-4.

125 Nanpo bunshū, vol. 2, p. 508; Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, p. 40.

126 Uehara Kenzen 上原兼善, “Bōeki no tenkai” 貿易の展開, in Shin Ryūkyū shi kinsei hen, vol.

1, p. 124; Dai Nihon shiryō (1904), vol. 12, part. 6, pp. 138-39; ibid. (1925), vol. 26, part. 26, pp.

899-909.

127 Nanhei kikō, p. 26.

128 Kyūki zatsuroku: kōhen, vol. 4, no. 672.

129 Ibid., no. 703, 716.

133

Complaints about the series of large-scale construction projects to which the bakufu

obliged daimyo to contribute had reached the ears of the bakufu.130 The bakufu probably

considered that an excuse necessary to ease the discontent among the daimyo. At the

same time, still uncertain of China’s reaction to the conquest of its tributary, the bakufu

wanted to make Satsuma concentrate on the China-Ryukyu issue.131 However, Itakura

did not entirely reject the bakufu’s consideration of using military measures. He told

Iehisa that bahan 八幡 (piracy) would be proper.

132 The term bahan originally came

from the Chinese name for Japanese pirates, bafan, after the name of the Japanese deity

of war, Hachiman 八幡(神), who was depicted on their flags.

This indirect approach did not, however, bear the fruit which had been anticipated.

Although the 1613 letter was entrusted to the Ryukyu tributary mission in October 1614

(Keichō 19/9), Ming China refused to accept the mission itself.133 Having been informed

of Satsuma’s conquest of the tributary kingdom in 1609, China was suspicious of the

Ryukyus’ relationship with Japan.134

The Fujian authorities feared that the eastern

coastal area of Taiwan, such as present-day Danshui 淡水, might be subjected to

Japanese piracy and strengthened the maritime prohibitions and coastal defense of the

mainland.135 Konchiin Sūden later wondered if the Ryukyus had truly transmitted the

Japanese request to China.136 In late April or early May 1616 (Genna 元和 2/3), Shimazu

Iehisa again ordered Shō Nei to mediate in negotiations with China.137 Iehisa received a

report from Shō Nei three months later that the Japanese request had been declined,

though it has been an issue of debate among historians whether the Ryukyus truly

transmitted the Japanese request to Ming China.138 Along with this repeated indirect

approach, in the same year, Murayama Tōan launched an expedition to Taiwan, under the

sanction of the bakufu, for the purpose of opening a trade site on the island. In April (?)

1617 (Genna 3/3), the bakufu returned a Chinese captured in an expedition to Fuzhou.139

This Japanese use of force, in parallel with the peaceful diplomatic measures via the

130 Tokugawa jikki, in Kaitei zōho kokushi taikei, vol. 38, p. 210.

131 Kyūki zatsuroku: kōhen, vol. 4, no. 1280.

132 Ibid., no. 672.

133 Ibid., no. 1281.

134 Ming shilu, entry for July 28, 1612.

135 Ibid., entry for the fourteenth day of the seventh month of 1616.

136 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, p. 40.

137 Kyūki zatsuroku kōhen, vol. 4, no. 1239.

138 Ibid., no. 1356; Tomiyama Kazuyuki豊見山和行, “Kinsei shoki ni okeru Ryūkyū Ōkoku no

tai-Satsuma gaikō: Shō Nei, Shō Hō seiken ikōki o megutte” 近世初期における琉球王国の対

薩摩外交：尚寧、尚豊政権移行期をめぐって, Ryūkyū Daigaku kyōiku gakubu kiyō 九州大

学教育学部紀要 54.1-2 (March 1999), pp. 53-66. As Komiyama notes, it seems doubtful that

the Ryukyus fulfilled Satsuma’s instructions, as, for example, Shō Nei leaked news of

Murayama’s expedition to Ming China. In the Ming shilu, the entry of the fourteenth day of the

seventh month of that year states that the King of the Ryukyus claimed that Japanese pirates may

attack Jilongshan (present-day Jilong, Taiwan) with more than 500 battleships, warning that if it

were seized by the Japanese other regions in Taiwan and along the Fujian coast would be

endangered.

139 Kamiya, Bakuhansei kokka no Ryūkyū shihai, p. 89.

134

Ryukyus, did not contribute to Tokugawa China policy. After these attempts resulted in

failure, the indirect approach also ceased.

It has been argued that after the death of Ieyasu in 1616, his successors lost their

enthusiasm for rehabilitating the relationship with Ming China. After the Ryukyu-route

approach failed either because of Chinese rejection or because of Ryukyu sabotage, the

bakufu never reiterated its request for restoration of diplomatic and commercial ties, nor

did Japanese troops cross the sea to assault China. The success of the trade system of

vermilion seals (shuinsen bōeki 朱印船貿易) and the visits of Portuguese and Chinese

ships to Japanese ports, violating the Ming maritime prohibitions in the latter case, might

have filled Japanese demands for foreign goods, especially Chinese silk. The bakufu

might not therefore have wanted to waste any more energy on the difficult issue of its

status relationship with China.140

The bakufu’s attitudes toward the Chinese envoy in 1621 revealed its declining

interest not only in diplomatic relations but also in official commercial ties with the Ming

dynasty. In April or May 1621 (Genna 7/3/u), more than fifty Chinese, led by the

merchant Shan Fengxiang 単鳳翔, came to Nagasaki, carrying two letters dated 1619,

from the military governor of Zhejiang Province. One of them was addressed to the

shogun, and the other was addressed to the Nagasaki Magistrate.141 It was the first time

Ming China had sent letters to Japan since the end of the war in Korea. The Chinese

letters contained neither any suggestion of peace nor any reference to the restoration of

the tally system but instead demanded that the Japanese control Japanese piracy.142 The

fact that bakufu officials spent more than three weeks deciding on a response to the letter

and more than three months on deciding how to treat the Chinese visitors, who had been

detained in Kyoto, might indicate that they had not totally lost interest in rehabilitating

ties with China.143 However, the Chinese letter had a blemish from the Japanese point of

view: It styled the Tokugawa shogun—Hidetada at the time—shōgunsama (C.

jiangjunyang 将軍様). Jiangjun (J. shōgun), namely shogun, had never been a

diplomatic title in East Asian international relations.144 Successive Japanese warrior

rulers, including the Tokugawa shoguns, had never employed the title in diplomacy.

Because of this odd feature of the letter, Konchiin Sūden even suspected that the letter

might be a fake.145 As Ii Naotaka 井伊直孝 noted when he conferred with other bakufu

officials to decide on a shogunal diplomatic title after the Yanagawa Affair in 1635, the

title could imply Japan’s inferior status to China as it meant military commander and was

employed as a title for a subject in both China and Japan.146 The final decision was not to

accept the letter, and the bakufu ordered the envoy to leave Japanese territory. The

140 Toby, State and Diplomacy, pp. 63-64

141 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, pp. 38-39; Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, pp. 556-58.

142 Ibid.

143 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, pp. 38-39; Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, pp. 556-61.

144 Konchiin Sūden, Ikoku nikki, p. 39.

145 Ibid., p. 38.

146 Kanei jūsannen heishi Chōsen shinshi kiroku 寛永十三年丙子朝鮮信使記録 (ms. copy,

collection of Tōkyō Daigaku shiryō hensanjo).

135

explanation given to the envoy was that the letter was discourteous to the Japanese and

that communication between China and Japan had been to be handled through Korea.147

The response of the bakufu to another Chinese letter also showed its declining

interest in the restoration of relationships with China. In 1624, the bakufu received a

letter, addressed from the Fujian authorities to the Nagasaki Magistrate. The letter again

asked the bakufu to control piracy, though it is not clear whether Japanese piracy was as

active at the time as the Chinese asserted.148 It should be remembered that for Ming

China, the tally trade with Ashikaga Japan had been a measure for coping with Japanese

piracy, as well as a way to manifest its power as the Middle Kingdom. This would have

been, accordingly, another chance for the bakufu to attempt the restoration of either

diplomatic or commercial relations; a letter addressed from Hasegawa Gonroku 長谷川

権六, who was Fujihiro’s nephew and had taken over the office of Nagasaki Magistrate

in 1614, contained no words indicating Japanese interest in reconciling China. It merely

rebuffed the Chinese demand by asserting that Japanese maritime control was functioning

efficiently and was sufficiently strict.149

Some historians have seen the 1620s and the 1630s as a turning point in Japanese

attitudes toward the Chinese world order. Ronald Toby, arguing that the Tokugawa

bakufu once considered participating in the Chinese tributary system and also that the

Tokugawa attitude toward China was ambivalent, has argued that the bakufu’s rejection

of the Chinese envoy in 1621 was a declaration of its rejection of participating in the

Chinese tributary system.150 Nakamura Hidetaka, stating that the bakufu had previously

intended to be reintegrated into the Sinocentric international community, has understood

“Taikun diplomacy,” which refers to the diplomatic and foreign trade relations formed by

the end of the 1630s and which was named after the shogunal diplomatic title, Taikun, as

the Japanese declaration of independence from the tributary system.151

In this study, my position has been that those events merely revealed the

continuity of Tokugawa attitudes toward Ming China. If the bakufu had accepted the

letter of 1621, it might have implied that Japan admitted Chinese superiority. The

rejection of the Chinese envoy and of the letters of the 1620s certainly showed the

bakufu’s declaration of not becoming a Chinese tributary. However, it simultaneously

showed that the bakufu was behaving as it had before in the previous decades. That is to

say, the bakufu maintained the stance of not humbling itself as China’s inferior partner.

The formation of Taikun diplomacy by the end of the 1630s was also no more than a

reconfirmation of the bakufu’s unchanging attitude toward the Chinese tributary system.

Along with the new shogunal diplomatic title of taikun 大君, the bakufu decided to use a

Japanese era name in its diplomatic letters. This decision was based on the claim that

Japan was not a Chinese tributary, which had been indeed the bakufu’s consistent stance

toward China since the beginning of the seventeenth century.152

147 During the Muromachi period, some Ashikaga tributary missions to Ming China had passed

through the Korean peninsula; after the virtual termination of Sino-Japanese tributary relations in

the mid-sixteenth century, there had been no such fixed rule.

148 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, p. 563.

149 Ibid., pp. 563-64.

150 Ibid.

151 Nakamura Hidetaka, “Taikun gaikō no kokusai ninshiki,” p. 16.

152 The second shogun Hidetada had already refused to use a Chinese era name because his

136

The Tokugawa Response to the Manchu Conquest of China

and Attitudes toward the Qing Dynasty

History repeats itself. China was again fated to go through a dynastic change in

the mid-seventeenth century. In 1644, the “mandate of heaven” slipped out of the hands

of the house of Zhu 朱 into the house of Aisin Gioro 愛新覚羅 after more than 270 years

of Ming rule. The Ming dynasty, failing to suppress a peasant uprising led by Li Zicheng

李自成, ended with the suicide by hanging of its last emperor. The new rulers were

neither the rebels who had toppled the Ming nor Han Chinese, but the Manchus, a

minority ethnic group originally dwelling in present-day northeastern China (Manchuria)

and far eastern Russia. The alien conquerors, naming their dynasty the Great Qing (Da

Qing 大清) in 1636, crossed the Great Wall, crushed the peasant uprising, and transferred

their capital from Shenyang in southern Manchuria to Beijing in 1644. The Chinese

mainland thereafter continued to be ruled by the Manchus until the last emperor, Puyi 溥

儀 (r. 1908-1912 ), abdicated in 1912 following the Republican Revolution.

When the news of the Manchu conquest of China was brought to Japan by

Chinese merchants arriving in Nagasaki early in October 1644 (Kan’ei 寛永 21/9),

indifference was not the response of the Tokugawa bakufu to the event on the East Asian

mainland.153 The Tokugawa had in fact kept its eyes on the movements of the Manchus

even before Ieyasu initiated the bakufu in 1603. The Japanese had already discovered

during the Korea campaign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi in the 1590s that Manchu tribes were

fighting for unification in the land called Orankai オランカイ(兀良哈) during the Korea

campaign of Toyotomi Hideyoshi.154 Ieyasu perceived the growing Manchu power in

northeastern Asia as a potential obstacle to his China and Korea policies. The limited

Japanese knowledge of geography furthermore generated the misunderstanding that

Orankai was connected by land with Ezochi 蝦夷地 (present-day Hokkaido) and caused

Ieyasu to fear that the Manchus would pose a threat to Japanese national security from

the North.155

When Korea suffered a major Manchu invasion in 1627, the bakufu

proposed to offer relief, which the Korean government declined, through Tsushima.156

The Japanese apprehension and even their hostile view of the Manchus may have been

embedded not only in their common memories of the invasion of the Tatars some

centuries earlier but also in their ideological view of the Manchus. In 1019, a Jurchen

tribe dwelling in the Maritime Province, whom the Japanese called Tōi 刀伊, assaulted

Tsushima, Iki 壱岐, and the northern Kyushu coast across the Sea of Japan. The Mongol

empire and the Yuan dynasty (1271-1368) made abortive attempts to conquer Japan in

1274 and in 1281, and the Mongol menace continued to cause the Japanese concern over

country was not a Chinese subordinate when he received the first Korean embassy in 1607. See

Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 3, p. 187.

153 Enoki Kazui 榎一男, ed., Kai hentai華夷変態 (Tokyo: Tōhō shoten, 1981), vol. 1, pp. 3-8.

154 For example, see Katō Kiyomasa monjoshō 加藤清正文書, Kumamoto-ken shiryō: chūsei-hen

熊本県史料中世編 (Kumamoto: Kumamoto-ken, 1969), vol. 5, no. 15.

155 Kamiya, Taikun gaikō to Higashi Ajia 大君外交と東アジア (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan,

1997), pp. 114-15.

156 Tokugawa jikki, vol. 2, in Shintei zōho kokushi taikei, vol. 39, p. 451.

137

national security until the late fourteenth century.157 In addition, the Japanese, who had

adopted the Chinese distinction of civilized and barbarian in viewing the self and others,

perceived the Tatars as inferior barbarians.158

As previous studies have already noted, turmoil on the East Asian mainland

seemed to affect the Japanese perception of China. Hayashi Gahō 林鵞鳳, Razan’s son

and the “rector of the Confucian college” (daigaku no kami 大学頭) did not recognize the

emergence of the Manchu dynasty as an ordinary dynastic change of the sort China had

undergone for the previous thousand years. Under the order of the bakufu, Gahō began

in 1674 to compile information and documents regarding the events on the continent and

gave his work the title, Kai hentai 華夷変態 (Metamorphosis from civilized to barbarian.)

Its preface reveals that he understood the Manchu conquest as China’s transformation

from “civilized” (ka 華) to “uncivilized” (i 夷).

159 The fact that the vast neighboring

country which had claimed its superiority to all others was conquered by the small ethnic

group of the Manchus seemed to give strength to the Japanese claim of superiority.

Yamaga Sokō, for example, discussed Japanese superiority by contrasting his own

country, whose martial might he claimed had prevented foreign conquest, with China’s

repeated humiliations from barbarian conquests including that of the Manchus.160

Given the policies of the bakufu and the Manchus toward each other, Japan’s

involvement in the continental convulsion and in a direct confrontation with the Manchus

was a possibility. Prior to the events of 1644, when Korea suffered another major

invasion by the Manchus and finally surrendered to their overlordship in 1636, the

Manchus ordered the Yi dynasty to summon a Japanese mission to pay homage and

tribute to them, instead of allowing the Koreans to continue trade with Japan. Probably

acquainted with the Japanese attitude toward the Chinese tributary system, Korea

sabotaged the order by instead promising to provide information on Japan.161 It was

fortunate for Japan that the Manchus did not persist and finally lost interest in subjugating

Japan. Meanwhile, the Tokugawa bakufu showed no interest in establishing either

diplomatic or commercial relations with the dynasty of conquest, until the early 1860s.

Nor did the bakufu even consider becoming a Chinese vassal. At the inception of the

new regime in China, the bakufu did not even allow visits by traders from Manchu-

occupied territories for several years after being informed of the Manchu conquest, while

maintaining commercial relations with other Chinese coming from areas occupied by

Ming loyalists.162

157 Kaizu, Ichirō 海津一朗, Kamikaze to akutō no seiki: Nanbokuchō jidai o mitsumeru 神風と悪

党の世紀：南北朝時代を読み直す (Tokyo: Kōdansha, 1995), pp. 25-27.

158 For example, see Kai hentai, vol. 1, p. 3. The perception of the Manchus as barbarians seemed

to remain among the Japanese throughout the Tokugawa period. See Nōtomi Kaijirō 納富介次郎,

Shanhai zakki 上海雑記, in Bakumatsu Meiji Chūgoku kenbunroku shūsei 幕末明治中国見聞録

(Tokyo: Yumani shobō, 1997), vol. 1, p. 11. Nōtomi visited Shanhai when the Tokugawa bakufu

dispatched a mission consisting of the bakufu retainers and others from various domains in 1862.

159 Kai hentai, vol. 1, p. 1.

160 Yamaga Sokō, Chūchō jijitsu, p. 58; idem., “Takkyō dōmon” 謫居童問, in Yamaga Sokō,

NST, vol. 32 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1970), p. 333.

161 Yamamoto Hirofumi, Kan’ei jidai 寛永時代 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1996), pp. 233-34.

162 Nagasaki Oranda shōkan no nikki 長崎オランダ商館の日記 (Tokyo: Iwanami shoten, 1957),

138

Some Japanese policymakers even wanted the Manchus, who had been perceived

as a latent menace to Japan, to be removed from China and thought of taking actions to

facilitate this outcome. In January 1646 (Shōhō 正保 2/12), a Chinese merchant named

Lin Gao 林高 delivered two letters to the Nagasaki Magistrate, Yamazaki Gonpachirō 山

崎権八郎. Those letters were from Cui Zhi 崔芝, who served under a known Ming

loyalist, Zhang Zhilong 鄭芝龍, asking for Japanese military help to restore the Ming

dynasty.163 It would be easy to suppose that the Chinese request for military aid and

words as flattering as those in the Chinese letters appealed to notions of Japanese

superiority, especially their belief in their own martial superiority.164 Receiving a second

request in October 1646 (Shōhō 3/9), the shogun Iemitsu’s uncle, Tokugawa Yorinobu 徳

川頼宣 of Kishū 紀州, for example, considered an expedition to be a great opportunity to

rescue China from its barbarian occupation. He even dreamed of demonstrating Japanese

military prowess overseas and of obtaining overseas territories on the continent.165

Anti-Manchu resistance continued until the early 1680s, and envoys “begging”

for relief, which the Japanese called Nihon kisshi 日本乞師, came repeatedly to Japan

until the mid-1660s; the bakufu never offered a favorable response to anti-Manchu (anti-

Qing) forces.166 Historians have offered different explanations for this. Tsuji Zennosuke

辻善之助 and Ronald Toby have maintained that the shogun, Iemitsu, was interested in a

rescue expedition.167 Toby argues that the bakufu was discouraged from dispatching

troops to the continent when anti-Manchu resistance forces, let by Zheng Chenggong 鄭

成功, Zhilong’s son and also known as Coxinga (Guoxingye 国姓爺), had lost their

continental foothold, Fuzhou, in November 1646.168 Komiya Kiyora 小宮木代良 and

Yamamoto Hirofumi 山本博文 contend that there was no convincing evidence that the

top-ranking leaders of the bakufu, including the shogun, were involved in the expedition

plan. Yamamoto states that the bakufu had already decided not to be involved in the

turmoil on the continent before the fall of Fuzhou.169

As the Manchus secured ever-larger territories on the continent, the bakufu

seemed to accept the reality that the Qing was the new ruling dynasty of China and to

assume a more pragmatic attitude. The Manchu conquest of China did arouse Japanese

concern over the status of the Ryukyus and over their own security as well. The

vol. 2, pp. 96, 101-02.

163 Kai hentai, vol. 1, p. 11-14. Regarding the Ming loyalists’ request for Japanese military aid,

the most detailed study is Ishihara Michihiro’s work. See Ishihara Michihiro 石原道博, Nihon

kisshi no kenkyū 日本乞師の研究 (Tokyo: Fuzanbō, 1945).

164 For example, Cui Zhi’s letter called Japan a “great power” and praised Japanese gallantry.

165 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, p. 399.

166 See Ishihara, Nihon kisshi; see also Kai hentai and Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5.

167 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 124; Tsuji, Zōtei kaigai, pp. 640-48.

168 Toby, State and Diplomacy, pp. 128-29.

169 Komiya Kiyora 小宮木代良, “‘Minmatsu Shinsho Nihon kisshi’ ni taisuru Iemitsu seiken no

taiō: Shōhō 3-nen 1-gatsu 12-nichi-zuke Itakura Shigemune shojō no kentō o chūshin to shite” 明

末清初日本乞師に対する家光政権の対応：正保３年１月１２日付板倉重宗書状の検討を

中心として, Kyūshū shigaku 九州史学 97 (1990), pp. 1-19; Yamamoto Hirofumi, Sakoku to

kaikin no jidai 鎖国と海禁の時代 (Tokyo: Azekura shobō, 1995), pp. 191-95.

139

archipelago to the south had paid tribute to the Ming dynasty since the late fourteenth

century, that is, since before the Ryukyu chain was unified under the royal house of Shō

in 1429. The Japanese—the bakufu and Satsuma—were concerned about what attitudes

the Manchu conquerors would take toward the Ryukyus. For the bakufu, the

subordination of the Ryukyus to the barbarian dynasty Qing was undesirable; it was

afraid that the Ryukyus would be affiliated with the Manchus and become a menace to

Japan.170 As the central government, the bakufu was also concerned that the subjugation

of the Ryukyus by the Qing would also damage Japanese national prestige which it was

supposed to represent and sustain.171 For Satsuma, surrendering the Ryukyus, which had

been granted by the bakufu as a reward for the military conquest of 1609, to the Manchus

could cause the loss of a revenue source and of the honor of the house of Shimazu as a

warrior house vis-à-vis other warrior houses.172 However, communications exchanged

between the bakufu and Satsuma in the late 1640s and mid-1650s reveals that neither had

been able to find decisive and effective measures against a possible Manchu menace to

the Ryukyus. When they learned, by late 1649, of the intention of the Qing to set up

tributary relations with the Ryukyus, the bakufu did not employ its prerogative in foreign

affairs; instead it entrusted to Satsuma the final decision on the Ryukyu-Qing issue on

October 26, 1650 (Keian 慶安 2/10/2).173 Nor was Satsuma quite sure what to do. On

October 15, 1651 (Keian 3/9/20), it instructed the Ryukyus to dispatch tributary missions

both to the Qing and to one of the Ming loyalists, keeping an equal distance from both.174

Whether the Ryukyuans would accept Manchu customs such as the queue was

another concern. On August 13, 1655 (Meireki 明暦 1/7/12), Satsuma pointed out that

the Ryukyus’ surrender to barbarian customs would bring disgrace upon Japanese

national prestige and force the bakufu and Satsuma to take action against the Manchus.175

On September 21 (Meireki 1/8/22), the bakufu, however, decided to tolerate the

Ryukyus’ inevitable acceptance of Manchu customs, ignoring Satsuma’s firm voice.176 It

was again fortunate for the Japanese that their fear after all resulted in needless

apprehensions, as the Qing in this instance did not compel their subordinates, including

the Ryukyus, to comply with their customs. The Japanese never thought of renouncing

the subordinate kingdom; Satsuma continued to station its retainers on the islands of the

Ryukyu chain, to require the Ryukyus to surrender a prince to its domainal capital of

Kagoshima as a hostage, and to oblige them to pay annual tribute.177 Ryukyu missions

continued to pay tribute to Edo, a total of fourteen in all before the end of the Tokugawa

era.178 On the other hand, they had no intention of coming into conflict with the Qing

170 Kyūki zatsuroku tsuiroku 旧記雑録追録 ([Kagoshima-shi]: Kagoshima-ken, 1971), vol. 1, no.

283.

171 Rekichō seido 歴朝制度, in Hanpōshū 藩法集, vol. 8 (Tokyo: Sōbunsha, 1969), vol. 21, no.

1228.

172 Yamamoto, Sakoku to kaikin no jidai, p. 200.

173 Rekichō seido, vol. 21, no. 1228.

174 Kyūki zatsuroku tsuiroku, vol. 1, no. 396.

175 Rekichō seido, vol. 21, no. 1228, 1231

176 Ibid., vol. 21, no. 1233.

177 Kamiya, Bakuhansei kokka no Rykūyū shihai, p. 196.

178 Miyagi Eishō 宮城栄昌, Ryūkyū shisha no Edo nobori 琉球使者の江戸上り (Tokyo: Daiichi

140

over the Ryukyus and chose to compromise. The bakufu seemed to recognize the Qing

as the new Chinese dynasty by late 1655. On November 3, 1655 (Meireki 1/10/6), the

bakufu acceded to the Ryukyu subordination to the Qing, informing Satsuma that the

Ryukyu throne, to which the Ming imperial throne had lent authority and legitimacy,

could not be preserved without the bestowal of the title of king from the Qing.179

Satsuma also came to hide any signs of Japan and the Japanese from the eyes of the Qing

during each of the visits of its missions; in 1719 it prohibited its retainers from contacting

the Qing missions visiting the Ryukyus.180

Although it did not intend to establish official relations again until the very last

years of the era, the bakufu continued to allow Chinese merchants to visit Nagasaki in

Kyushu. It was the only trade port open to them until the 1850s, inasmuch as the bakufu

had moved the Dutch factory from the other trade port in Kyushu, Hirado 平戸. The

bakufu made the Chinese who came to Nagasaki stay in the settlement called Tōjin

yashiki 唐人屋敷 (Chinese Compound) to prevent them from smuggling. The segregated

settlement was based on the example of Dejima (or Deshima 出島), which was an

artificial island constructed to segregate the Portuguese and then the Dutch.181 Since the

bakufu prohibited Japanese from going abroad in 1635 with only few exceptions, the

unilateral visits of Chinese merchants to Nagasaki maintained direct contact between the

two countries.

A comparative analysis of Tokugawa diplomatic protocols and trade credentials

which the bakufu introduced in 1715 indicates that the bakufu placed China at the lowest

status within its international order and succeeded in establishing Japan’s superior status

over China.182 While Korea and the Ryukyus were categorized as diplomatic partners,

the Dutch and the Chinese were given lower statuses as trade partners. The Dutch East

India Company maintained trade relations with Tokugawa Japan after the temporary

termination of their relationship from the late 1620s until the early 1630s. The bakufu

actually regarded the Dutch as more than simply merchants. A minor military conflict

between the Dutch and Japanese traders, led by Hamada Yahyōe 浜田弥兵衛, dispatched

by Nagasaki Deputy Suetsugu Heizō 末次平蔵 in Anping 安平, Taiwan, in May 1628

(Kan’ei 5/4) terminated the relationship between the two countries. The rupture ended

shobō, 1982), pp. 11-20. Also see Yokoyama Manabu 横山學, Ryūkyū shisetsu torai no kenkyū

琉球使節渡来の研究 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa kōbunkan, 1987). Shō Nei’s tribute to Edo in 1610 is

not usually counted.

179 Rekichō seido, vol. 21, no. 1238.

180 When the Qing envoy visited the Ryukyus to bestow the title of king upon Shō Tei in 1683,

the Satsuma retainers met with Qing officials. But the retainers called themselves “Tokarajin”,

the dwellers of the Tokara Chain, composed of the northern part of the Seinan Islands, hiding the

fact that they were Japanese. Kamiya Nobuyuki notes that this concealment policy was

established in the early eighteenth century. See Kamiya, Bakuhansei kokka no Ryūkyū shihai, pp.

200, 228-36, 260.

181 The bakufu originally constructed Dejima to segregate the Portuguese in 1636. After ousting

them from Japan, it made the Dutch Factory in Hirado move to the segregated island. Before

constructing the “Tōjin yashiki,” the bakufu allowed the Chinese to stay together with the

Japanese in Nagasaki. Because of the increase of smuggling, it constructed the settlement and

segregated the Chinese in 1689.

182 Toby, State and Diplomacy, pp. 156-59.

141

when the Dutch officials at Batavia surrendered the governor of Taiwan, Peter Noits, as a

prisoner to Japan in 1632.183

Trade with the Dutch was then restored. The

representatives of the Dutch East India Company, led by the Oranda kapitan 阿蘭陀カピ

タン（かぴたん）, had been allowed to visit Edo and were honored with an audience

with the shogun, as the only Europeans who retained the favor of the Tokugawa bakufu,

in the third month of every year after 1633.184 The Japanese stance was that Dutch-

Japanese relations had been rehabilitated as a result of the Dutch apology for their

misconduct in Taiwan and their subjugation to Japan. The bakufu as a result came to

regard the Dutch as hereditary shogunal vassals (fudai no gohikan 譜代の御被官) and

adopted a quasi-official character in their presence. It called their service chūsetsu 忠節

(fidelity) and hōkō 奉公 (duty).

185

On the other hand, the Chinese merchants coming to Nagasaki were treated with

less form than the Dutch and were not so honored. Kaempfer noticed that the Japanese

treatment of the Chinese was different from that of the Dutch, pointing out that Japanese

officials and interpreters actually treated the Chinese discourteously.186 The Nagasaki

Magistrate’s Office (Nagasaki bugyōsho 長崎奉行所) was the highest ranking Japanese

office with which they were allowed to communicate.187 The bakufu did not give them

the quasi-official status which it gave the Dutch and instead treated them in the same

manner as it did Japanese merchants (akindo dōzen 商人同然).

188 Hayashi Gahō called

the Chinese merchants barbarians (ban’i 蕃夷) in his annotation of the collection of the

writings of his father; he considered this treatment of the Chinese at Nagasaki to be

proper.189

Nevertheless, it would be premature to conclude, on this evidence alone, that the

Tokugawa bakufu placed China at the lowest status. Because it did not regard either the

Dutch or the Chinese as diplomatic partners, as mentioned above, the bakufu did not

183 For the Hamada Yahyōe Incident and its aftermath, see Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 6, pp. 306-15; Katō

Eiichi 加藤栄一, “Sakoku to bakuhansei kokka” 鎖国と幕藩制国家, in Sakoku鎖国, in Kōza

Nihon kinsei shi 講座日本近世史 (Tokyo: Yūhikaku, 1981), vol. 2,pp. 83-92

184 The arrival of the envoy of the Dutch East Indian Company followed the restoration of the

relationship in 1632. See Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 6, pp. 306-07. After 1790, the tribute to the

shogunal capital was held every five years. Arano, “Taikun gaikō taisei no kakuritsu,” p. 58. See

also, Katō Eiichi, “Sakoku to bakuhansei kokka,” vol. 2, p. 92; Hirai Kiyoshi 平井聖, ed., Edojō

to shōgun no kurashi 江戸城と将軍の暮らし (Tokyo: Gakushū kenkyūsha, 2000), p. 50.

185 See Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 6; Nagazumi Yōko 永積洋子, “Orandajin no uketa goon to hōkō” オ

ランダ人の受けた御恩と奉公, in Kawakatsu Heita 川勝平太, ed., “Sakoku” o hiraku 鎖国を

開く (Tokyo: Dōbunkan, 2000), pp. 24-34. As Nagazumi points out, in Tsūkō ichiran, Dutch

affairs are referred as “gohōkōsuji.” See also Fujii, “Junana seiki no Nihon,” p. 61; Katō,

“Sakoku to bakuhansei kokka,” p. 89. The Dutch began to use the term “keizers eigen volck” for

the purpose of flattering to the Japanese in order to secure and facilitate the Japan trade.

186 Kaempfer, Kaempfer’s Japan, p. 226.

187 The China trade became concentrated in Nagasaki in 1635. See Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 5, p. 228.

The Chinese merchants at Nagasaki usually communicated with the Chinese language interpreters

serving in the Magistrate’s Office.

188 Arano, “Taikun gaikō taisei no kakuritsu,” p. 11.

189 Hayashi Razan bunshū, vol. 1, p. 136.

142

actually identify the Chinese merchants as representatives of a Chinese state—the Ming

or the Qing. The expression akindo dōzen implied that those Chinese were unrelated to

either of the Chinese regimes.190 The treatment of mere merchants, as distinguished from

that of the quasi-shogunal vassals, was quite reasonable, because the Tokugawa class

stratification, known as shi-nō-kō-shō 士農工商, accorded merchants the lowest status.

This different treatment did not thus mean that the bakufu placed China in a lower

position than Korea, the Ryukyus, and Holland in the Tokugawa diplomatic order.

In February 1715 (Shōtoku正徳 5/1), the bakufu introduced a trade credential

called the shinpai (Nagasaki tsūshō shōhyō) into the China trade at Nagasaki. It was a

part of the new trade regulations the bakufu enacted, known as Shōtoku shinrei 正徳新例

(kaihaku goichi shinrei 海舶互市新例).

191

Arai Hakuseki played a pivotal role in

policymaking and drafted the regulations. At the time, the exodus of mineral resources

through the Nagasaki trade had caused shortages which had restrained trade and

increased smuggling (nukeni 抜荷). The regulations aimed at restricting the Nagasaki

trade according to the availability of the mineral sources, especially copper, and the

bakufu limited the number of Chinese ships visiting Nagasaki to thirty per year. Only

those who swore to comply with the regulations and accepted the credentials were

permitted to come back to Nagasaki.192 Arai Hakuseki not only played a crucial role in

drafting these new regulations, but he was also concerned about Qing China’s

expansionist policy and had a suspicion that the fourth emperor Kangxi 康煕 (r. 1662-

1722) was maneuvering to weaken Japan’s national strength by exhausting its mineral

resources.193

The argument that the credential system marked Japan’s success in claiming its

superiority over China may seem valid if one sees the credential as an analogy to the

Chinese tally, kangō, which the Ming dynasty had granted to its tributary states.194 Just

as the tally was unilaterally issued by the Ming dynasty, the trade credentials were also

issued unilaterally to a restricted number of Chinese merchants. In either case, those who

refused to surrender to the authority of the trade regulations were excluded from trade

with either China or Japan. The Japanese era name, Shōtoku, was used in the trade

credential, and the Chinese, who believed that their emperor was the only one in the

universe who was privileged to set an era name, surrendered in this instance to the

Japanese era name.195 This might reinforce the impression that it was a Japanese version

190 Arano, “Taikun gaikō taisei no kakuritsu,” p. 11.

191 See Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 4. As to the shinpai, see ibid., 375-76; Ōta Katsuya 太田勝也, Sakoku

jidai Nagasaki bōeki shi no kenkyū 鎖国時代長崎貿易史の研究 (Kyoto: Shibunkaku, 1992), pp.

524-628.

192 Kikuchi Yoshimi 菊池義美, “Shōtoku shinrei to Nagasaki bōeki no henshitsu” 正徳新例と長

崎貿易の変質, in Kinsei taigai kankeishi ron: zōhoban 近世対外関係史論：増補版 (Tokyo:

Yūshindō, 1979), pp. 154-61. See also Arano, “Taikun gaikō taisei no kakuritsu,” pp. 103-06.

193 Miyazaki Michio 宮崎道生, Arai Hakuseki no kenkyū 新井白石の研究 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa

kōbunkan, 1969), pp. 188-92, 380-81; idem., “Arai Hakuseki” 新井白石, in Kokubungaku

kaishaku to kanshō 国文学解釈と鑑賞 61.9 (September 1996), p. 117.

194 Toby, State and Diplomacy, p. 198.

195 Ibid., pp. 198-99.

143

of the tally, and Chinese merchants’ acquiescence to the Japanese era name suggests their

recognition of Japan’s superior status.

The trade credential was, however, designed neither to deprive China of the

diplomatic symbols of its claims to superiority and centrality nor to demote it to the

lowest level of the hierarchical order of Tokugawa international relations. It should be

first remembered that the use of a Japanese era name had merely been a diplomatic

practice from the 1630s. Otherwise, the bakufu would have had to justify why only

Chinese merchants were exempted from such diplomatic practice. In the trade credential,

China was referred to not by the formal state name, “Great Qing” (Da Qing) or Qing, but

with the term, Tō 唐; this too cannot be evidence of a Japanese claim of superiority over

China, inasmuch as the term itself had no connotation of Chinese inferiority. The

employment of the term was rather congruent with the bakufu’s stance that the Chinese

merchants were unrelated to the Chinese state.

Furthermore, while the Chinese tally was an officially issued, or more specifically

emperor-issued, trade permission bestowed on tributaries, the Tokugawa bakufu

intentionally avoided giving an official character to the trade certificate. Nagasaki

Magistrate Ōoka Kiyosuke 大岡清相, another central figure in forming trade regulations,

testified that the bakufu considered it kōken 公験, a credential issued by public authority,

namely the bakufu, would be a better way to regulate the number of Chinese ships.196

This might have derived from its dream of spelling out Tokugawa Japan’s

superior status over Qing China. However, concerned that its authority would be

compromised in case the Chinese ignored the new trade regulations, the bakufu decided

to wait for several years until it ascertained that the Chinese were complying with these

trade regulations.197 The trade credential as a result took the form of being issued by

Chinese language interpreters (Tōtsūji 唐通詞).

198

Not even once did the bakufu make an attempt to upgrade shinpai to kōken until

the very end of its rule.199 The trade credential soon ignited a dispute in China. Some

Chinese merchants, who failed to receive the credential and lost their access to the Japan

market because they had not come to Japan in 1715, took this matter up with Qing

officials. They charged that the acceptance of the Japanese era name could be considered

treason to the Qing. Local Qing officials in Fujian and Zhejiang Provinces responded by

confiscating the Japanese trade credentials and reported the matter to the imperial court in

Beijing.200 Informed of the dispute, probably by Chinese on one of the seven ships which

narrowly escaped and returned to Nagasaki with the credentials, through a letter, the

bakufu accused the Qing dynasty of ignoring foreign statutes.201

Despite this firm

response, the bakufu did not want to antagonize Qing China further. It also stated that the

196 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 4, pp. 398-407. The trade regulations were shaped based on his proposal in

1714.

197 Ibid.

198 Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 4, pp. 375-76, 428, 429.

199 Ibid.

200 For the dispute in Qing China, see Matsuura Akira 松浦章, “Kōkitei to Shōtoku shinrei” 康熙

帝と正徳新例, in Sakoku Nihon to kokusai kōryū 鎖国日本と国際交流 (Tokyo: Yoshikawa

kōbunkan, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 29-53.

201 Kai hentai, vol. 2, p. 2702.

144

trade credential was a contract made between the interpreters, not the Nagasaki

Magistrate’s Office, and the Chinese merchants, and was like a private pledge.202 In

1717, the dispute in China was eventually settled by a direct decision of the Kangxi

Emperor. The emperor, considered one of the wisest monarchs in all of Chinese history,

knew the indispensability of Japanese copper for the economy of his country.203 As a

result, Chinese ships, bearing the proper trade credentials, continued to visit Nagasaki

throughout the rest of the Tokugawa era, and the trade credential, which was originally

designed as a temporary and transitional measure, continued to regulate the Nagasaki

trade.

Conclusion

This study has focus on the Tokugawa regime’s China policy from the last years

of the sixteenth to the early eighteenth century. I have tried to demonstrate that from the

beginning, the Tokugawa bakufu had no intention of being reintegrated into the Chinese

tributary system. It consistently sought to restore diplomatic and trade relations with

China, without becoming an inferior constituent of the Chinese world order. The

bakufu’s refusal to recognize Chinese superiority did not mean that it had any alternative

idea of a status relationship between the two countries. Although there was an

ideological and religious claim of Japanese superiority, the Japanese perception of China

had complicity. Tokugawa China policy in fact did not project any explicit vision of a

status relationship between the two countries, except for indicating that the bakufu was

not going to be a Chinese vassal. When the rapprochement failed, the bakufu gave up

pursuing the restoration of any official communication with China.

This study has also attempted to refute the argument that China was a part of a

Japan-centered world order which the bakufu formed. After the early China policy was

frustrated by the rejection of the Ming dynasty, and after it decided not to arrange any

direct official contact with China, as previous studies have argued, the bakufu formed its

own international order which some historians have called Nihon-gata kai chitsujo. No

official contact with China continued to be the Tokugawa attitude toward China after the

Manchu conquest in the mid-seventeenth century. Although there is an argument that the

bakufu placed Qing China at the bottom of its hierarchical international order, I have

contended that China was also not a constituent of the Tokugawa international order, still

less its inferior constituent. The Manchu conquest reinforced the Japanese ideological

claim of superiority over China but did not encourage the bakufu to attempt to spell out

Japanese superiority in an actual relationship with China. The lighter treatment of

Chinese merchants than that of others did not also mean that the bakufu regarded them as

the representatives of “China.” It chose not to cause a conflict with China by virtually

recognizing Qing China as another suzerain of the Ryukyus, and by not giving an official

status to the trade credential (shinpai). It was not until the early Meiji period that the

status relationship became an issue between Japan and China.

202 Ibid; Tsūkō ichiran, vol. 4, pp. 430-31.

203 Matsuura, “Kōkitei to Shōtoku shinrei,” p. 50.