Below the level of the neighborhood headmen were the five-household groups (goningumi), which were responsible for the smooth operation of daily life in the neighborhood. They implemented fire and security checks, inspected houses and streets, and generally took joint responsibility for maintaining an orderly and law-abiding neighborhood. Fighting or disorderly conduct in the street or in any one house might result in the punishment of the whole neighborhood, on the principle that “he who neglected to prevent a crime when he could have is beyond doubt guilty of the same crime.”11
Compared with Edo, which was administered by townsmen with relatively light supervision by the samurai class, in Yokohama the office of the Kanagawa commissioners was much more involved in day-to-day administration. Most merchants would encounter the samurai officials on a daily basis as the officials certified business transactions, inspected incoming shipments, mediated relationships with the foreign merchants, managed the town hall, and administered land transactions. The officials were particularly concerned to manage contacts with foreigners. For example, Japanese in foreign employ were required to pay a monthly fee to help pay for “a man who kept a register of all foreigners’ servants, their names, ages, where they came from, and other particulars of personal identity,” an example in one foreigner’s opinion of “the absolute knowledge this government endeavors to obtain of all its subjects, particularly those in foreign service.”12
Chūemon was connected to this administrative and social web on several levels. As a merchant in the busy Nichōme district, he was an integral part of the local community. He participated in community events, and he contributed financially when called on, participating, for example, in an informal insurance network to compensate victims of fire and other disasters. Beginning in mid-1860, Chūemon also worked as a staff member in the town hall. This administrative position, which came with a nominal salary, involved a considerable commitment of time and effort. Chūemon was reluctant at first to take it on, not least because he was still one of the headmen of his home village in Kōshū. But “they told me that if I refused, my status in the community would suffer.”13 Once in the position, Chūemon took his duties seriously—indeed, with his previous bureaucratic experience he was a valuable member of the staff. Although we do not know the exact nature of his duties, one remarkable document that has survived in his family archive shows that in 1861 Chūemon performed a detailed survey of every merchant house in the five neighborhoods of Honchō. Chūemon’s report recorded the names of the owner and manager, the land rent, the size of the buildings, the place of origin of the owner, any changes in or additions to the premises, and the trade items registered for that business. It remains today one of the most comprehensive sources of information on Yokohama’s merchant community in the early 1860s.14
In addition to his role and responsibilities in the local and town communities, Chūemon also represented his home province of Kōshū. Chūemon’s shop was a meeting place and even an overnight refuge for large numbers of visitors from Kōshū—mostly farmers and petty merchants hoping to sell consignments of silk, cotton, or other local commodities in the Yokohama marketplace. The flow of visitors from the provinces swelled the population of Yokohama, as did the rapid influx of petty shopkeepers, service workers, tea and sake shop proprietors, hawkers and street entertainers, porters and laborers, boatmen, beggars, prostitutes, and outcasts. Estimates of the Japanese population of Yokohama at the turn of the 1860s vary widely. Foreign consular estimates put it at three thousand, but Samuel Oliver, who visited Yokohama in 1861, estimated it as closer to twenty thousand. A Japanese guidebook written around 1863 estimated there were ten thousand households in Yokohama, implying a population of thirty thousand or more.15
The bustling new port created enormous demand for manual labor. Porters were everywhere to be seen pushing heavily laden handcarts or carrying loads suspended on each end of a pole. They were typically organized into informal groups, with a leader selected for his strength and charisma, who contracted with employers on behalf of the group in exchange for a share in the income. The groups operated like gangs, sometimes intimidating rivals or taking part in public disturbances to protest rising prices or other difficulties.16 According to Francis Hall, the Yokohama porters were “bare legged fellows with ragged wrappers around their shoulders, a dirty set of vagabonds as one could hope to see.” In the summer months they worked naked except for a cloth around their waists. They were “poor men who have no house, no clothes, no family, who live by coolie jobs, drink sake, and gamble. The government furnishes them shelter, and if two or three hundred laborers are wanted, you apply to the government and the government knows where to get them.”17
Slightly higher on the social scale, the skilled laborer might live “in his room [with] no furnishings other than his bed, a little chest of unfinished wood, the strictly necessary pieces of clothing, and some kitchen utensils. Of course he has no servants, and he lives with his wife and two or three children quite well, on an income of twelve to fourteen itsebus a month [12–14 bu, $6–$7], including the house rent.”18 This class of laborer included carpenters, builders, gardeners, metalworkers, and the boatmen who rowed between the piers and the ships waiting to load and unload their cargo.
Boatmen also operated the ferry service between Yokohama and Kanagawa, carrying passengers on their backs to the waiting boats during low tide. The Japanese women would “throw their arms around the bearers’ necks, who throw their arms back under the fleshiest part of the riders’ body behind, and thus with her bare red legs hanging straight down (not astraddle) the Japanese girl goes laughing to the ferryboat.” Like many laboring groups, the boatmen had a strong collective spirit. On feast days, they would carry their boats through the streets “with loud demonstrations of joy” and row out into the bay, “shouting, and flinging iron cash into the water for good luck.”19
At the bottom of the social scale were the outcasts and beggars. Outcasts (known as eta or hinin) lived in designated areas on the edges of communities throughout Japan. They were an essential part of the social and economic functioning of Tokugawa-era society, performing a wide variety of reserved tasks—often those involving contact with blood. Outcast status was hereditary, but it was possible to be cast into its ranks as punishment for a criminal offense. In spite of the discrimination and limitations from which they suffered, the outcasts had found useful niches for themselves in society, and they benefited from their monopoly over certain services. On April 21, 1860, Francis Hall visited a community of leather workers in a segregated hamlet outside Yokohama:
The houses were in a thick cluster with no apparent regulation of streets. A few hides were stretched and drying in the sun. There was nothing about this quarter to indicate any special poverty except a number of houses that were underground. A cellar was dug and over it a straw roof placed with a paper window in the floor. In the quarter generally the people were as well clad and looked as prosperous as other parts of Kanagawa. Some of these leather dressers are said to grow rich in their proscribed traffic. Persecuted they truly are, being forbidden to marry without [outside] their own guild, or to enter the houses of others.
Beggars were highly visible on the nearby Tōkaidō highway, “a most degraded looking lot of outcasts. A few seemed beggars from disease, but the most appeared to be professional beggars. They had a sinister expression of countenance[,] their hair was cut short to about a half inch in length, their clothing and whole appearance filthy beyond measure. Many boys were among them.” In addition, “travelling priests, shaven and shorn, followed the road for alms.”20 The beggars were “very importunate throwing themselves across our way and following after us.” But unlike in the West, they were “never teased in Japan and are seldom refused a mong [mon], or the 50th part of a cent, the smallest of coins.”21
However, beggars who attempted to solicit foreigners for money within the Yokohama town limits were quickly ejected. John Black reports that in the wake of a severe food sho
rtage in 1867, poverty-stricken Japanese gathered at the Yokohama docks, where large quantities of rice were being imported: “They would be seen at the landing-places, watching the unloading of the cargo-boats, sweeping up the grain that might be shaken out of the bags in handling them; and even following the kurumas, or trucks, on which they were conveyed from the hatobas [piers] to the merchant’s godowns, to sweep up what might fall by the way.” However, “the Governor of Kanagawa had the whole of them taken in hand by the police. From that day to this [Black was writing in the late 1870s], with an exceptional individual or two, the sight of the begging fraternity … is exceedingly rare.”22
The streets of Yokohama were, however, crowded with peddlers selling “fancy goods, confectionery … dolls, figures of dogs, rabbits, cats, and other animals.”23 Some of the children’s toys offered for sale were, as Francis Hall noted, “too indecent to describe. Every day convinces me more and more of what an utter want of modest[y] in some things pervades this people.”24 The peddlers tended to congregate around the shrines and other public gathering places: “Their wares were spread out on stands and lighted by paper lanterns suspended from bamboo poles. Children’s toys, prints, and eatables were the principal wares offered for sale. There were oranges and dried persimmons, and sticky looking confectioneries, rice cakes, fish dipped in rice batter and fried in oil, crabs and prawns served up hot or cold, and tea and sake. There were miniature swords and boats for the children, dolls without clothes that could and could not cry, jumping jacks, sugar cats and wooden dogs and tiny houses and pictures of the great emperors.”25
A contemporary Japanese guidebook described the sights and sounds of the Yokohama streets:
There are countless carts coming and going, and the noise resounds in the heavens … At night, beside the gate, one can find peddlers of all sorts, selling sweets, tempura, sushi, daifuku [sweet rice cakes], yakisoba [fried noodles], and dengaku [miso-coated tofu]. There are also blind masseurs, impersonators, gidayu storytellers, and jōruri balladeers singing in high voices. Mixed with all these are the sounds of the merrymakers returning from Miyozaki in their palanquins, the clatter of wooden clogs, and the laughter of beautiful women as they walk together … Then there is the chanting of the pilgrim as he makes a trip to the licensed quarter on his way from Naritasan temple to Akihabarasan temple. And there is the cry of “Hi no yōjin!” [“Watch out for fire!”] of the town officers. Then there are night watchmen rattling their iron staffs. It is no different from Edo: as you try to sleep in your inn … the sounds of the blind masseurs, the cries of the eta house girls, the chatter of passing travelers all enter into your sleeping ears.26
Another book describes how “day and night, an unusual number of peepshows, mechanical contraptions, magic tricks, and street comics all ply their trades.”27
No foreigner who visited Yokohama failed to mention the children, who must have been a prominent feature of the urban landscape: “The streets are full of them. They seem always to be merry and good natured. I have not seen a quarrel yet and rarely see a child crying.” The children would gather in sunny spots and play with balls or spinning tops, many of the girls with baby brothers and sisters strapped to their backs. The boys loved to fly kites, whether decorated with “the hideous face of an ancient hero, or fabulous monster, or the pictured representative of just such a boy as themselves.”28 Foreigners often remarked on the harmony with which the children played: “graceful, dignified, and yielding to each other’s wishes as so many little misses at home would hardly do.” When offered a gift, they “not only awaited in quiet the division, showing no shade of greediness, but were rather pleased that all were to share alike.”29
On holidays, the children would pour into the streets in their finest clothes, red ribbons in their black hair, cheeks bright, kimonos brilliantly colorful. The daughters of the samurai officials had “faces artificially whitened till not a vestige of the original color is left, with vermillion lips, hair in great shining coils of midnight, broad girdles gathered in buns behind half as large as themselves, and socks of spotless purity.” As for the samurai boy, he would “strut … proudly in his new silk trousers and a gala robe such as his father wears and two swords tied to his side.”30
Chūemon’s youngest son, Katsusuke, was seven years old in 1860. It is not hard to imagine him playing with these children in the brightly decorated main street of Honchō Nichōme on a holiday afternoon. He would never have lacked for company, on the streets or in his home, which was usually full to bursting. For the thirty or forty Kōshū merchants who were sleeping on Chūemon’s floor each night, Yokohama represented the hope of a profitable sale. For Chūemon, they brought news and familiar goods from home. Sometimes they brought letters from his family, and Chūemon often asked one of them to carry a letter back to Higashi-Aburakawa for him.
Every day, thousands of merchants and tourists poured into Yokohama. To the travelers on the Tōkaidō who turned off the main road to take a look at this famous new place, Yokohama offered gratification for their curiosity and a good story to tell their families back home. “From early in the morning till late at night the crowds will astonish the eye,” wrote one observer. “Since we are living in such a fortunate era, it would truly be a shame not to see this place.”31 When Chūemon’s in-laws came to pay him a visit and see the sights, he wrote, “I wanted to show them the foreigners’ houses, but the crowds were so great, and everyone in such a hurry, that they just walked along the street and then hurriedly left for Edo … I’m so sorry that they went to so much trouble but saw so little.”32 So great was the crush of curious visitors that the government issued wooden tags to bona fide merchants who wanted to enter a foreigner’s house or place of business. If they could not show an identity tag, they were liable to be rudely ejected from the premises. A contemporary travel guide described the house of Yokohama’s wealthiest merchant, William Keswick of Jardine Matheson: “Outside the gate of this house congregate innumerable travelers who have come to see the foreigners of Yokohama and their houses … If someone sneaks in, there are black men and Chinese patrolling who will chase them off with sticks.”33
Within a short space of time, a pioneer community was transformed into a teeming urban space, filled with all the diversity and restless energy of men, women, and children in search of entertainment and opportunity. People poured into the town from all parts of Japan and the world: some just to look, many to try their luck at gaining some small share of the town’s reputed wealth and opportunity.
From the beginning, Yokohama was a global community. In spite of the government’s efforts to separate Japanese and foreigners and control their interactions, the town depended on and prospered from those connections. Chūemon was no exception. Unfortunately, he offers little comment in his letters on his relations with the foreign community. He mentions a few by name, but for the most part the foreigners are lumped together as ijin (aliens). Chūemon refers several times to foreigners making the rounds of the Japanese traders in search of particular items, but he never specifies whether these are the British or American merchants themselves, or their Chinese intermediaries, or indeed their Japanese employees.
In fact, the foreign community that Chūemon would have encountered on any given day was extraordinarily diverse. The 135 registered foreign residents (in 1862) were a small section of a population that included not only merchants but also petty tradesmen, publicans, servants, artisans, sailors, and vagrants from Europe, the Americas, India, Southeast Asia, and China.34
Usually the foreigners were lured by the same impulse that brought Japanese people to Yokohama from far and wide: the desire for gain. Some were respected members of international merchant houses. Others were tradesmen or artisans in search of new opportunity, or missionaries in search of converts. Many were brawlers and adventurers, men who attracted epithets such as “lawless and dissolute,” “a disgrace to Western civilization,” and “the scum of the white race.” They included “persistently drunk do
ctors, dissipated lawyers, absconding bankrupts, discharged officers, sottish ship captains—in short, all kinds of common characters that, just by the look of them, one would wish sent to the galleys or behind the bars of a prison.”35 Indeed, the life of the East Asian treaty ports was not for the fainthearted. Many of the residents of Yokohama had moved on from Shanghai or other Chinese ports, where they might have cut their teeth smuggling opium, and where they had seen their fellow countrymen decimated by epidemics. At the turn of the 1860s, China was suffering the convulsions of the Taiping Rebellion, combined with a severe cholera outbreak. Yokohama was thought to be a healthier place than Shanghai, but given the hostility of many Japanese to the foreign presence, here, too, the threat of violence always lurked in the background. It is not surprising, then, that Yokohama’s foreign community quickly acquired a reputation for lawless and quarrelsome behavior.
Guns were common, hunting popular, and litigation rampant. In a notorious incident that combined all three, an English merchant named Michael Moss was arrested by a party of Japanese samurai officials with a dead goose in his hands. Hunting was prohibited by the Japanese authorities, and Moss had been caught red-handed. But he resisted arrest, and as he fought his captors his gun went off, hitting one of the Japanese guards. After Moss’s release into British custody, the consul fined him a thousand dollars as a gesture of support for his Japanese colleagues (never mind that the consul was himself a keen hunter). On reviewing the case, British minister Sir Rutherford Alcock went even further, sentencing Moss to three months’ imprisonment in the Hong Kong jail and permanently deporting him from Yokohama. Although Moss served only five days in jail, he launched a suit against Alcock for wrongful imprisonment and won two thousand dollars in compensatory damages.36 Most lawsuits were pettier, such as that against American missionary Jonathan Goble, who shot the British vice-consul’s dog from his bedroom window in front of the owner’s eyes after the dog had strayed onto Goble’s lot.37 Perhaps, with this sort of incident taking place, it is not surprising that the British consul issued a decree against “the common practice of carrying fire-arms during the day and in the most ostentatious manner … There is something especially provocative and irritating in such ostentatious display of fire-arms, for men supposed to be following the avocations of merchants, which are or ought to be entirely peaceable … British subjects are hereby prohibited from so offending under penalty of fines and imprisonment.” For good measure, the consul added, “Furious horse riding in the streets of Yokohama is a common practice among foreigners, and not only among them but among their Chinese servants … The undersigned can see no adequate justification for this.”38
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