Of course, many members of the foreign community were known for their helpfulness and for the good works they did among the Japanese. James Hepburn, a doctor and American missionary, offered a free clinic for the Japanese in Kanagawa, and he published the first Japanese-English dictionary, which remained the standard work for the next hundred years. Hepburn opened an academy of Western sciences, and his wife opened a school. Duane Simmons, a Dutch Reform missionary and also a doctor, treated Japanese patients free of charge.
The fastest-growing section of the foreign population were the Chinese. At the outset, these were mostly the agents of European or American merchant houses—the so-called compradors—who handled many of the companies’ dealings with the Japanese merchant community. Although few of the compradors would have spoken or understood Japanese, they did share a common culture with the Japanese, and they could communicate to some extent through the character-based writing system. The compradors working in the merchant houses managed many of the day-to-day activities of the business, including communications, assaying of goods and currency, customs procedures, bookkeeping, and the hiring of local labor. The chief compradors were important businessmen in their own right, bringing with them staffs of bookkeepers, accountants, inventory managers, cooks, and other servants.39 Increasingly, foreigners also hired Japanese assistants (bantō) to take on many of the administrative duties of the firm. Japanese agents or employees were useful to foreign merchants not only as administrators but also as direct buyers of silk and tea in the producing regions, since neither European merchants nor their Chinese agents were allowed to travel outside the treaty limits. Nevertheless, the Chinese retained powerful influence within the foreign merchant houses, in spite of frequent complaints about their greedy or dishonest business dealings.40
The Chinese compradors in Yokohama fit into a broader diaspora that already had deep roots throughout Asia. In Japan, Chinese communities had been living in Nagasaki for some centuries. Chinese merchants might have preferred to come independently and operate their own trading operations, but since China did not have treaty relations with Japan, allying themselves with foreign merchants gave them a level of protection and security that they would not otherwise have had. Many of them, however, launched their own business activities once they had established themselves in Yokohama, and some became extremely wealthy importing Chinese products such as sugar and medicines.41
As the port grew, small-scale Chinese tradesmen also began arriving in Yokohama: tailors, printers, stationery suppliers, launderers, brick makers, silversmiths, barbers, furniture makers, and building contractors experienced in Western-style house construction. In 1862, a Chinese entrepreneur opened the first hotel in Yokohama aimed specifically at the growing Chinese market.42
English newspaper proprietor John Black, in his memoir of Yokohama in the 1860s, had little good to say about the Chinese: “The lower orders … flocked over in great numbers; the quarters of the foreign settlement that they quickly filled became an eye-sore from the filth in which they lived; and it was feared that it would become a hot-bed of disease and the source of some dire epidemic, unless some control were exercised over it.” The Chinese were also “suspected of supplying the thieves who had latterly committed numerous depredations in the settlement; and they certainly had many gambling dens opened. So that they were very undesirable neighbours in a variety of ways.”43
In 1865, there were fewer than six hundred Chinese registered with the Japanese authorities.44 Most lived in a newly developed section in the southeast of Yokohama, behind the original foreign settlement—the area that was to become Yokohama’s Chinatown. In addition, a significant number of undocumented Chinese undoubtedly slipped through the cracks of Japanese and foreign oversight. In an article of June 23, 1866, the Japan Times questioned the official statistics, pointing out that unemployed Chinese congregated nightly in two “low Chinese eating houses” and claiming that several recent robberies and thefts had been committed by Chinese drifters. Ishii Kanji estimates that of the thousand Chinese known to be resident in Yokohama in 1870, only thirty were compradors, sixty were servants or independent tradesmen, and the remaining nine hundred or so were “semiemployed day laborers.”
At any given time, the majority of the foreigners in Yokohama would have been transients: sailors on shore leave, soldiers on short-term assignments, and a sprinkling of drifters, deserters, and vagrants. The sailors included merchant seamen who were temporary sojourners, in port for a few days and determined to have as much drink and sex as they could, and navy men who were stationed for longer periods. All of them, like sailors everywhere, were notorious for their drunkenness and rough behavior. Images of drunken foreigners were a favorite with illustrators of Yokohama street life, and Ernest Satow wrote that “drunken” (doronken) was one of the few foreign words that almost all the residents of Yokohama knew.
FIGURE 2.1 Picture of the private room of the Chinese employees of a foreign merchant house in Yokohama. Utagawa Sadahide, Yokohama kaikō kenbunshi (ca. 1863)
Although the lives of the sailors are not well documented, we can get a hint as to their conditions from the consular court reports of the time. On any given day, the majority of the British court’s cases dealt with drunken, and sometimes violent, sailors. For example, on April 3, 1866, the court recorded the following cases:
Samuel Cook, a Seaman belonging to H.M.S Adventure, was charged by Constable Vollhardt, with being drunk and incapable in the public streets at 3 A.M. this morning. Prisoner in defence said, that he was not incapable, he had stowed a little liquor away and was slightly the worse for it, but was quite capable of taking care of himself without intruding upon the hospitality of the police for a night’s lodging. The prisoner was dismissed after being admonished and warned never to be brought up again … George Whitston, who described himself as being an Assistant Military Steward aboard H.M.S. Adventure, was charged with being drunk in the Main Street about 1 A.M. this morning, also with assaulting a French police constable while in the execution of his duty … The prisoner in defence stated that he had taken a glass too much or he would not have behaved as he did. As a rule he was generally very quiet when in liquor; was very sorry for what occurred, but could not recollect anything about it. Fined $2 for being drunk and lying asleep in the streets, and $3 for the assault.45
FIGURE 2.2 Picture of drunken foreign sailors in Ō-dōri, Honchō Itchōme. Utagawa Sadahide, Yokohama kaikō kenbunshi (ca. 1863)
Contingents of soldiers began arriving in Yokohama in 1863–1864. The British “China station” naval fleet, which arrived in January 1864, carried some six hundred sailors and Royal Marines, who were to remain in Yokohama on and off for the rest of the decade. In July 1864, they were augmented by almost six hundred men of the British Twentieth Light Infantry regiment. In August 1864 a further three hundred eighty men of the Sixty-Seventh Regiment arrived—most of them were South Asian sepoys.46 Other British reinforcements came from the Ninth and Eleventh regiments, as well as detachments of artillery, engineers, and marines. While the British were much the biggest contingent, the French, Dutch, Russians, and Americans also brought military forces to Yokohama. By the middle of the 1860s, the military forces probably constituted the single largest segment of the foreign population, totaling as many as eighteen hundred men (as well as a few officers’ wives). The sailors remained mainly on their ships, while the soldiers took up residence on “The Bluff,” a hill directly adjacent to the foreign settlement. At first they were forced to live in tents, but eventually a small town grew up around them, including barracks, training grounds, rifle range, and riding circuit. Much of this infrastructure was built at Japanese expense.47
The soldiers and sailors were multiethnic and multiracial. They might have signed on in Boston, Liverpool, Calcutta, Charleston, Batavia, or Shanghai. Europeans also brought servants from their various colonies, adding to the racial diversity. Japanese observers found it hard to distinguish between African, Afro-
American, Indian, and Javanese, generally lumping them all together as “blacks” (kuronbō). Japanese writers and illustrators had been depicting dark-skinned people throughout the Tokugawa era, as a part of the genre of exotic images of foreigners in Nagasaki.48 From the perspective of commercially minded Japanese writers aiming to appeal to a curious readership, the multiracial community added greatly to the exotic aura of the new port town. The black men’s “hair is curly like mustard, though their eyes are just the same color as ours. Among them are some very beautiful men. To look at, they are as lovely as the recently arrived Chinese women … [They] wash clothes in a tub with soap, just like women. They wrap red silk crepe around their heads, they wear yellow jackets and white trousers, and their faces are black. It’s quite a sight!”49
Yokohama was also home to a number of foreign vagrants and beggars. John Black wrote that the community of foreign beggars, known locally as loafers, were
far more importunate on Japanese than the Japanese poor had been with us. These men were generally seamen of intemperate habits, who, having got their discharge from their ships, soon spent the little money they had received from their captains, and instead of shipping again, and getting away as quickly as possible, wandered about the settlement for a time, getting any Jack ashore with whom they could foregather, to “stand a drink” or a meal at a grog-shop, until they became so well-known and so besotted in appearance that they were ashamed to show their faces any longer by day among their own countrymen. They would wander away among the country walks or sea-side villages, ever and anon begging a little rice from the kind-hearted natives, and towards evening making a descent upon the native settlement of Yokohama, or the adjoining Japanese village of Homura [Honmura], and levying blackmail upon the people.50
FIGURE 2.3 Scene of black people carrying fresh water. Utagawa Sadahide, Yokohama kaikō kenbunshi (ca. 1863)
While Chūemon offers few clues as to the nature of his personal contacts with foreigners, there is ample documentation attesting to a wide range of relationships between the Japanese and foreign communities, from strictly business dealings, to personal friendships, to student-teacher relations, to enmity and even murder. The most intimate relationships between foreigners and Japanese were with concubines, employees, and servants.
Japanese servants were readily available, although many of the more affluent merchants preferred to bring their personal staff with them from China or even England. Many foreigners seem to have formed close ties with their servants. Their biggest complaints were laziness and drunkenness. As one Japanese observer commented, it was “difficult to get a servant in Nippon that was good for anything that did not drink … All that are active and intelligent drink and all that do not drink are fools.”51
Although for the most part the foreign community were appreciative of their Japanese servants, there were also accounts of bad behavior and even violence on both sides. Theft by Japanese servants was not uncommon. On May 26, 1866, the Japan Times wrote of a servant caught in the act who, on learning that he would be turned over to the Japanese authorities, tried to kill himself by slashing his own throat. According to the newspaper, “It is suspected that he has been convicted several times for crimes which he has committed, and thinking that he would suffer the full penalty of the law for this last offence, attempted to defeat the ends of justice by his self-destruction.” Similarly, Francis Hall wrote of a missionary who had to protect his servant even though he had repeatedly stolen from his master, because “the Japanese have knowledge of his offence and are watching for him, [and] if they take him he will probably be executed.”52
On the other hand, the Reverend Buckworth Bailey, rector of the English church in Yokohama, was said to have “whipped his servants and on one occasion put them in sacks to prevent them running away.”53 And in 1869, when an Englishman called Hoey was murdered, the Japanese who were arrested claimed that his killing was in retribution for a severe beating they had suffered at his hands.54
The most intimate relations were between foreign men and Japanese women. The Miyozaki brothel quarter was open to both Japanese and foreign men, with separate facilities for each ethnic group and social class. Although few writers or even diarists felt free to write honestly about their experiences, there are enough accounts surviving to indicate that it was a place of charm and hilarity as well as sexual pleasure. W. H. Poyntz describes a party at the Gankirō given for Sir Vincent King and the officers of his flagship in the early 1860s:
The whole party assembled in a large room at the Gankirō at the entrance to which were boxes where the money was taken … Presently there entered about a dozen musume [girls], each with a musical instrument like a small banjo, who squatted on a raised dais and formed the orchestra; following them about twenty girls appeared, with a little more colour in their costumes than usual. The music struck up, and the young ladies attitudinized, pirouetted, and danced with considerable vivacity; some of them were very pretty, and all graceful. In company with the instruments, singing and dancing went on at the same time; the former composed of apparently a single sentence over and over again, winding up at intervals with ‘yah, yah, yah’, jerked sharply out, at the expiration of which the dancers threw off a garment, till at last the greater part of their clothing was conspicuous by its absence, and the one who retained the most was the winner. It was a lively-spirited scene, and the officers of the flagship as well as ourselves much enjoyed it.55
FIGURE 2.4 Ochiai Yoshiiku, Five Nations: Merrymaking at the Gankirō Tea House (1860). Chadbourne collection, Prints and Photographs Division, Library of Congress, LC-USZC4-8479-81
While the Miyozaki quarter was clearly frequented as a place of entertainment by most of the foreign community (including the rapidly growing Chinese community), for sex most of the established foreign merchants preferred the more personal intimacy of an exclusive relationship. These relationships are almost never referred to by the foreigners themselves, even in their diaries and personal papers. But without a doubt many of these relationships were loving and deeply felt. Ernest Satow, for example, who was to become a distinguished diplomat and eventually British ambassador to Japan, remained close to his Japanese partner, Takeda Kane, throughout his life and supported and loved his two sons by her—without ever publicly acknowledging their relationship.56 In other cases, the relations were more purely commercial: many of the foreigners selected women from the Miyozaki entertainment district and kept them for their exclusive use. As early as July 10, 1859, one of the brothel keepers, Zenjirō, submitted a request to lease two of his women, Kazeshima and Hatsukiku, to live in the foreign quarter for a fee of fifteen ryō (about $30) per month.57 There were other cases in which women who were not from the licensed quarter were kept by foreigners.
No matter the circumstances, women who lived as the mistresses of foreigners were required to register as prostitutes with the Japanese authorities and pay a monthly fee of 1.5 ryō ($3) to Sakichi, the manager of the licensed quarter. If they came from a brothel, they would continue to be under contract to that institution, which would bill the foreigner a monthly fee for their services. A Detailed Account of Miyozaki (Miyozaki saikenki), published in 1865, lists the fees for the prostitutes of the Gankirō who became mistresses of foreigners as $50 per month, $25 per half month, or $5 per night. Other brothels charged only $25 per month and $2 per night. Sakichi’s office charged the same $3 monthly fee regardless of the amount paid by the foreigner to the brothel.58
Women who consorted with foreigners were known by the derogatory term rashamen. The word means “sheep’s wool.” As a contemporary Japanese guidebook explains, “The origin of this name is that the foreigners carry with them across the ocean an animal called a sheep [rasha]. The character of this animal is to be very open and trusting with people. On the ship, when the sailors begin to burn with fleshly appetites, they are said to sometimes force themselves on these animals. For this reason, a person on whom the foreigners force themselves is known as
a rashamen.”59 The derogatory name suggests the ambivalence and even contempt that Japanese men felt for women who served the sexual needs of foreign men. Of course, in most cases the women themselves had little or no choice in the matter. Some women did refuse to become the mistresses of foreign men. A prostitute called Kiyū, for example, was said to have killed herself rather than become the mistress of a foreigner: she subsequently became the subject of several popular dramas.60 A report prepared by the Kanagawa commissioners’ office in 1862 estimated that there were five hundred women servicing foreign men under the management of the Yokohama licensed quarter. Other estimates ranged as high as twenty-five hundred, with many of the women outside the purview of the official regulations. Given that the total resident population of foreigners including Chinese, Europeans, Americans, and their servants was probably no higher than five hundred in 1862, a large number of these women must have been serving the desires of transients, mainly sailors. According to a guidebook of 1862 called Tales of Yokohama (Yokohamabanashi), “What with the squealing of pigs [a favorite food of the foreign residents] and the crying of sheep [rashamen], Japan has come to an unimaginable state of things.”61
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