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JAPAN'S PASSPORT SYSTEM AND THE OPENING OF BORDERS, 1866–1878*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 March 2017

TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO
TAKAHIRO YAMAMOTO*
Affiliation:
The University of Tokyo
*
Graduate Schools for Law and Politics, The University of Tokyo113–8654Japanjyamamot@mail.ecc.u-tokyo.ac.jp
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Abstract

This article sheds new light on the opening of Japan in the late nineteenth century focusing on the legalization of overseas travel and the introduction of passports. It argues that the Tokugawa shogunate introduced passports as a belated endorsement of the increasingly common practice of undercover border-crossing as it feared losing the political grip. Once the new regulation was in place, most travellers went to China or Korea as petty merchants or low-skill labourers, in part recruited by Western merchants and consuls. The foreign ministry, fearing that unrestricted emigration of labourers and mercenaries might harm the country's international reputation and political stability, limited the number of passports to distribute to the treaty ports. Japan's passport system thus focused more on regulating the overseas travel than promoting it, in contrast to the positive light in which the opening of Japan is commonly portrayed. The government largely succeeded in preventing the unwanted emigration, but never fully controlled the process because of the less vigilant port officials and the ambiguity on some of the borders' exact location. Overall, the investigation into the first two decades of the Japanese passport travellers leads to a more complex understanding of modern Japan's opening of borders.

Type
Articles
Information
The Historical Journal , Volume 60 , Issue 4 , December 2017 , pp. 997 - 1021
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Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

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Footnotes

*

I would like to thank Mitani Hiroshi, Fukuoka Mariko, Almaz Zelleke, Mick Deneckere, Jin Li Lim, and two anonymous reviewers for their suggestions and comments. This research was supported by MEXT/JSPS KAKENHI Grant Number JP 16J07860.

References

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5 Other early examples were Vladivostok, Pusan, and San Francisco.

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38 NMHC 303–1-2.

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51 Inclosure 1 in McCook to Seward, 14 Sept. 1868, Executive documents, 1868–1869, i, p. 347.

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57 DAJP B1.1.1.40, dialogue between Terashima and van der Hoeven, 7 Oct. 1871. Kamishiraishi Minoru has pointed out that this requirement for a guarantor was introduced in May 1869, along with the instructions to travellers. Kamishiraishi, ‘Kisoteki kenkyū’.

58 DAJP B1.1.1.40, dialogue between Terashima and van der Hoeven, 7 Oct. 1871. This means that the Meiji government was already reluctant to send migrants before the Maria Luz incident hit the government.

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61 NMHC 18–5 document 81, the foreign ministry to Nagasaki prefecture, 11 Nov. 1869.

62 NMHC 14–18–4 document 63, the foreign ministry to Nagasaki prefecture, 31 July 1870.

63 Kamishiraishi, ‘Kisoteki kenkyū’, p. 174; NMHC 14–18–5 document 30, the foreign ministry to Nagasaki prefecture, 4 June 1869.

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78 Translated and quoted in John Bull (London), 631 issue 2440, 14 Sept. 1867.

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85 Ibid., p. 19; ‘Extract from the “Journal Officiel” of 14 April, 1872’, enclosure to Lyons to Granville, 14 Apr. 1872, no. 38, Paris.

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